Chapter 47

Evanis, motionless, looked to the north, disregarding her enemies. The mercenaries had quickly surrounded the commander of the Imperial Alorian Guard. Two of their number had tried poking her with their weapons, as they had done with the patch-men before. The gore of those two men was still dripping off her falcata. Subsequently, the mercenaries had progressed rather slowly toward Evanis until the fifth commander of the Forsaken Army arrived. Now, Valen Corfin led the attack against the isolated warrioress.

“Surrender to us, Evanis,” he demanded, carefully inching forward.

“I never even surrendered to him,” she absent-mindedly replied, still looking past her enemies.

“Lay down your weapons,” he tried anew, “I give you my word as a soldier that we won’t kill you if you surrender.”

“I gave my word as well,” Evanis said, finally facing her enemies. “I swore I’d follow him forever.”

Then she attacked.

Evanis’ attack was the first of a series of consecutive actions. In the back of the mercenary formations, the gate of the White Citadel opened and three-hundred heavy cavalrymen charged out of it. From the east, new forces stormed onto the battlefield - forces wearing the Ibanee coat of arms and troops carrying the imperial Alorian banner.

The experienced commanders of the alliance armies regarded the new offensive as what it was - an act of desperation. Aware of their superior numbers, King Aerathon of Danuba and the Lords of Barthobar immediately ordered a counter-attack from their positions at the northern and southern flanks of the battlefield.

Signal horns sounded from all around as the Alliance of the Faithful was closing-in to squash the inferior forces of the infidels. Thousands of marching feet stomped the ground and the earth quaked. The quaking of the earth was unrelated to the marching feet, though - or at least there was no physical relation. The battlefield, as all of Katerra and far beyond, trembled due to the eruption of the Temple Hill. Such an outbreak on the Alorian gods’ holy grounds could have been seen as a bad omen but it quickly proved to be much more than merely an augury of doom.

King Dharos stared to the north where jet flames darted high up into the sky and burning rocks were flung across the town. Then his eyes followed one of the incendiary projectiles; one whose trajectory was directed with an infallible precision upon a target on the battlefield in front of the White Citadel.

Evanis, encircled by dozens of mercenaries and bleeding out of equally numerous wounds, was fighting. She wasn’t fighting for her survival or to defeat the enemy, though. No, she fought because she was born to fight and it also was the way she wanted her life to end. Suddenly, screams of terror resounded all around the morbid warrioress. The battle subsided slightly as she and her foes slowed to glance at the reason for the hubbub. At first, Evanis gasped when she espied what was coming upon them but then she spread out her arms and laughed.

“No need to worry,” she cheerfully soothed the panicking mercenaries. “The fireball is just my lover’s gentle manner of notifying me about his return.”

Kuwasi, Shinta, and a thousand warriors of the Midnight Council were rushing to save Evanis. Helplessly they had to watch as a burning lump of lava struck the battlefield, its explosion blasting the area of their rescue mission. They ran and reached their destination just as the smoke of the impact slowly receded. Every mercenary in a twenty-step wide perimeter had been scorched into a smoldering lump of flesh. Shinta dashed toward Evanis, who lay motionless at the edge of the crater. Kuwasi followed just a little slower.

“I think... , “ Shinta observed, kneeling next to Evanis.

“She’s alive!” Kuwasi interrupted.

“Yes I am,” Evanis replied and scrambled to her feet with a groan.

Kuwasi and Shinta stared at the warrioress standing in front of them. Apart from a few singed scraps of leather and cloth clinging to her skin, she was nude.

“When did you get that?” Shinta asked, pointing to the intricate copper lettering, adorning Evanis’ right hip. “And what does it mean?”

“I got that just now,” she replied, “That’s my copper coin, molten and burned into my skin. So I don’t think it means anything aside from a warning to seek cover when burning rocks fall from the sky.”

“You’re wrong, my friend,” Kuwasi opposed. “That’s old Alorian scripture. ‘Ani’Mussai’ is written on your hip; it means ‘My Demoness’.”

Evanis gawked at Kuwasi. “Really? You aren’t kidding me, are you?”

Kuwasi shook his head and grinned. “No, I’m not. It looks like our deity has marked his property.”

“Shut up,” Evanis hissed.

She spun around, looking for her weapons. She quickly found them and then searched for a target to vent her ire. She quickly found that as well.

“Rise and follow me!” She commanded as she stormed toward the remaining mercenary formations.

“Aye, Commander,” the hundreds of charred corpses all around obeyed.

“Apparently Eva doesn’t need armor anymore,” Shinta concluded.

“A scarily beautiful demoness going to war doesn’t need any clothes at all,” Kuwasi readily agreed.

The two Ibanee friends grinned at each before they charged the enemy lines, roaring their joint war cry.

“Danjapur!”

In the north, the remaining one-thousand fighters of the Midnight Council had to face the five-thousand men strong army of Danuba. Dabas’Lohross, Warlord of the Strong Arm, led the Alorians. Of course, the warlord was concerned about the disparity of the numbers. However, his religious adviser assured the warlord victory was a certainty with her god on their side. When the forces met, Princess Rhaseris, First Priestess of Jabbit, strode between the enemy lines.

“I want to talk to my father, the King,” Rhaseris loudly demanded.

At first, the muttering among the Danubian soldiers was her only reply but soon a corridor opened up between their formations and a rider approached through it.

King Aerathon of Danuba looked down from the back of his dapple-gray at his daughter. “It seems the accusations are true,” he coldly stated. “You defected to the enemy.”

“Before you sent me away to become a priestess and Empress of Aloria, I didn’t even know I had enemies,” Rhaseris answered. “But I’ve learned a lot of new things since that day. Although I know your plans for me were different, I have become a priestess - just as you wished - a First Priestess even. I’ll never become the Alorian Empress but I could ask my god to make me Queen of Danuba instead. Would that lessen your disappointment in me, father?”

“You and your god soon will be defeat-,” Aerathon stopped in mid-sentence as the ground shook followed by the sound of an explosion in the north. Thousands of screeching crows crossed the battlefield close above their heads. The king’s horse reared up, the King fell off, and the dapple-gray cantered away.

“My god is defeated – is that what you were going to say?” Rhaseris asked, looking down on her father lying at her feet.

Glaring at his daughter, he tried to get up but flinched and fell on his ass again as a fireball flew overhead. Scrambling to his feet once more, he watched the fireball explode a little farther in the south.

“Return to me, my daughter.” Aerathon changed his tone and pleaded. “You serve an incarnation of evil. Secede yourself from the Nameless Son and I swear I will protect you.”

“Neither could you protect me nor do you own the authority to judge a god,” Rhaseris dismissed his offer. “My god’s name is Jabbit. Surrender and plead for mercy or continue a war you cannot win. Either way, you’ll be the one who will be judged by a power you’ll never even come close to understanding.”

King Aerathon looked at his daughter, saw the Alorians behind her, and he looked at his own army. “Attack!” He shouted, reaching for Rhaseris. “You’re the one who doesn’t have the right to refuse your father.”

Before the king’s hand could touch his daughter, a sphere of glaring light flared around her. Aerathon cried out in pain as his outstretched arm burned into a stump. The men of his army were screaming, too, as a lava boulder the size of a fully loaded cart impacted and exploded among them.

In the south, Agon var Dosha and four-hundred Ibanee marine soldiers were marching against five-thousand warriors from Barthobar. They encountered each other a league south of the White Citadel, in a largely deserted district of Katerra called the Last Retreat. A group of three riders, carrying a white flag, left Barthobar’s army and advanced toward the middle between the opposing formations. There they halted. Agon, in lack of a mount, had to walk to meet the negotiators. They waited patiently.

“My Lords,” Agon greeted when he arrived. “I am Agon var Dosha, Prince Commander of Ibanee.”

“Greetings Prince Agon,” the foremost of the three riders welcomed. “I am Lord Sachson, legate of Barthobar. To my left and to my right are Lord Wharrinos of Aybengrove, and Lord Sherbinghem of Koystermaar. We are here to investigate the reasons for our confrontation with the Ibanee nation. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find a peaceful solution to this unfortunate situation.”

“I agree,” Agon replied, “the situation is most unfortunate. Ibanee always looked at Barthobar as our friendly northern neighbor on the Alorian shore. The hospitality Barthobar’s harbors provide to our navy is legendary. A change in our relations would indeed be a tragedy.”

“For true, Prince Agon, for true,” Lord Sachson emphatically agreed. “Let me please ask you, my Prince - we lately heard very strange rumors about Ibanee. One of those rumors indicated a significant change concerning the Ibanee throne succession. Could it be true that your esteemed uncle Hassunabi has abdicated as king and your lovely daughter Nahseyra has been crowned the new Queen of Ibanee?”

“Yes, my Lords,” Agon confirmed. “My daughter Nahseyra is the Queen of Ibanee.”

“I’ve heard the Queen, your daughter, is a very religious young woman,” Lord Wharrinos rather asked than stated.

“My daughter is six-years-old,” Agon first grumbled but then he sighed. “Yes, Queen Nahseyra deeply believes in a certain deity with a special fondness for the dead, crows, and black rabbits.”

“Another rumor mentioned... , “ Lord Sachson fell silent, surprised by the trembling of the ground beneath them.