“What—how did it go so wrong?!” Iling stared at the sky-piercing blaze like a red spear and let out a wail, as if the mountain itself had groaned. Her squad had barely looped the ridge, and disaster flared like dry tinder.
“Back to the captain—now!” She didn’t hesitate. She swept her people upslope like arrows skimming a green tide toward the summit.
[Medith’s Battlefield]
“What’s happening?! That fire—what is that?! Where’s Rita’s report?!” Lina’s eyes fixed on the distant inferno, worry frosting her face like cold dew.
Medith slammed her fist into a nearby tree—bang! The trunk shuddered like a drum, and leaves fell in a green shower.
“Mountain Bandits… why the Mountain Bandits?!” Her chest heaved like a bellows, silver teeth grinding like ice.
“Bandits… it shouldn’t be… why would it be the bandit troupe?” Milia’s thoughts fogged over like a valley in dawn mist.
Medith drew a long breath, steady as a lake in moonlight. “I should’ve seen it. The first human arrows went whoosh—like reeds in wind.”
“But the National Corps’ arrows go thrum—like a plucked bowstring. Different sounds. Clear as thunder.”
“I never saw the first wave’s faces, so I assumed they were National Corps. Habit blinded me like dust in a storm.”
“Thinking on it now, the Corps likely never made it home. They were ambushed deep in the forest’s unknown by the Mountain Bandits. Cut down, gear stolen, mouths silenced.”
“That’s why the Corps stayed quiet for days, not a ripple on the water.”
“Because no message ever reached their count.”
“But… but aren’t they also National Corps?” Phiby stared at the glow below like a lamb before wildfire. “Wouldn’t someone care if nearly three hundred vanished?”
“It’s not that they don’t care. They can’t act,” Medith said, voice flat as steel. “Bandits did it, not us. The bandits’ web drapes the whole continent like shadow.”
“Even if it happened on our turf, it changes nothing. They won’t hurl a war-grade army at our walls on a guess.”
“That’d hand our allies a reason to strike, like a blade offered hilt-first.”
“None of that matters now. I made a fatal error. I misread the enemy’s kind and their route. My whole dragnet snapped like a rotten net.”
“Most of our main force is still out there. By the time they race back, the bandits will take the goat paths and crest the mountain like wolves.”
“We’ve lost the high ground’s bite.” Her voice dipped, bitter as ash.
“No—it’s not on you, Captain,” Milia said, shivering as nearby beast-roars rolled like thunder. “You’re not a god. You can’t watch every leaf fall. We haven’t lost. The Glimmering Green Forest still fights with us.”
“You’re right.” Medith’s gaze hardened like flint as Rita’s team, Iling’s team, and the main road’s core force folded back like waves returning. “The fight starts now. I’ll show you what a real devil looks like.”
Medith turned toward the Mountain Bandit mass, their shadows flickering like a storm front. She drew her longsword in a ribbon of cold light and bellowed, voice like an iron bell.
“Move exactly as drilled!”
“This is a true war! No one will bark orders beside you anymore!”
“No one will point out your mistakes!”
“There’ll be no second tries!”
“Our backs are to the home we guard, to the faith we carry like a torch!”
“In this battle, we fight unto death!”
“Our will shall outlast ages like stone under stars!”
“May the world—”
“Know no slaughter—”
“Hooo-ahhhh—!” Vortex Squad roared as one, fear pouring from their throats like smoke and feeding a blaze of courage.
The Mountain Bandits surged onto the summit like a dark tide. Across the river in the Glimmering Green Forest, they faced Medith’s line like wolves at a firelit camp.
Ten thousand Mountain Bandits versus Medith and 295 sprites. The gap was a chasm. For the Elf Clan, the horn of the first war in nearly five centuries blew cold as winter wind.
“Good. No wonder you could forge a pack of country-bred sprites into iron-blooded elites,” a man in a wolf-head mask said as he strolled out, voice smooth as oil, build sun-dark and callused like old oak. “A few lines, and you turned fear to smoke and smoke to steel. I’m impressed.”
Milia snorted, a spark in dry grass. “What is it? Are the [Well-Read Mountain Bandits] laying out last words before a bunch of country-bumpkin sprites cut you down?”
Rita stepped forward in the Vortex Squad’s white uniform, bright as frost. “Well-read? Sounds more like beast at heart. You pounced at our sisters like lust possessed, slavering like dogs. You’re animals. What did we ever do to deserve such cruelty from you humans?!”
The wolf-mask brute said nothing.
A voice drifted from the bandit crowd like a flute over swamp water. “Not so, not so. I merely saw a few green sprites, moving and fair as stars out of reach, pure as a snow lotus on a holy peak.”
“So I wished to invite them to my estate as guests. As the saying goes, when a lady is fair, a gentleman pursues. My men lack my restraint, so the means were a touch… excessive.”
“But don’t worry. We’ll ‘treat’ the ladies’ wounds with care.”
Medith’s blade flashed, a green arc like a falling comet. Sword-qi screamed and burst against the bandit front with a crack of lightning. Dozens of shields rose as one like a steel wall, and her strike broke harmlessly as spray on rock.
“Stop skittering behind masks,” she said, voice sharp as sleet. “You call yourself a gentleman, and you don’t dare show your face to a woman.”
“A guest? More like a guest in irons.”
“Lack their restraint? Aren’t you the least restrained of all?”
“Treatment? After your treatment, could our sisters lift their faces to the sun? No. They’d live a life worse than any hell.”
“I don’t even like scholars, but I won’t let you smear them with your filth.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“You’re not fit to mouth their words, or mimic their tone.”
A man in a lion-head mask stepped to the front, huge as a bull, his forearms like carved pillars. Every move carried the weight of a falling boulder, a promise to pulp a body with one punch.
Black knuckle-rings hugged his fists, each crowned with five spikeed irons, each spike etched with pale, glimmering lines. Under moonlight, the metal gleamed with a chill that raised gooseflesh like a cold wind.
“Enough talk,” the lion-mask man said, contempt dry as dust. “Hand over your Queen and her guards. I’ll spare every male sprite inside your walls. Five lives for hundreds of thousands. Fair trade, isn’t it?”
“Fine,” Medith said, one brow lifting like a drawn bow. “But I won’t hand the Queen over. I’ll take you to her. I’ll let you admire our city’s view from the sky.”
“Cross the bridge,” the man said.
“Awooo—!”
“Roooar—!”
“Ah-ho-ho—!”
