047.001

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Interlude

Fela

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They were gone.

Spots in Fela’s eyes from the blinding light of Alyssa’s strongest spell were still here and there. She thought she must have missed them riding off. One moment, Alyssa and Izsha had been standing right next to a silvery wall, protected from the arrows. The next moment, they were gone. Not just them, but the silvery wall as well. Fela looked left. Fela looked right. She could see nothing but the enemy army.

Strange things were happening to them. As she watched, dozens of them just fell over. Mostly the ones wielding the long stick weapons. Muskrats… or whatever. They were clearly just inferior copies of Alyssa’s guns. It didn’t make sense why they needed their own name. Unless Alyssa just didn’t want to sully the name of her own guns with the work of incompetent craftsmen. That was probably it.

Not that Alyssa ever used her guns. She preferred magic.

Before Fela could even begin to get excited that Alyssa, clearly invisible, was going around and wreaking havoc inside the enemy lines, pandemonium broke out.

Thunder crashed against Fela’s ears. Not just once. Twice. Five times. Ten. She lost count. Over and over again. Some massive explosions that rattled her chest even under the armor Alyssa had crafted for her. Others smaller, but no less loud. At times, she cursed her hearing. The humans around her didn’t look half as pained by the noise. Surprised, yes.

And there was plenty to be surprised about. Not just the noise, but the sights as well.

Over and over again, pockets of the enemy army exploded into a giant fireball of black smoke. Bodies went flying. Metal from armor and weapons flew through the air in long arcs. Wood from the carts. All of it launched high up into the air. And all of it came crashing down on the survivors.

Ripples in the air pulsed outward from each of the explosions. Even people a short distance away fell to the ground or were flung from their horses as the wave pulsed over them. Horses were panicking—they had already been spooked by the Annihilator, but the riders had managed to keep control. Now, there was no control at all as they carried off riders to places where the riders did not want to go, trampling more soldiers. Dragging equipment with them.

The ripples in the air did not stop at the edges of the enemy army.

The very ground moved as the largest ripple raced toward Fela.

She grit her teeth together, expecting to be thrown through the air like so many of the enemy.

It hit her like a young pup might while playing. Hard enough to force her body backward, but not hard enough to throw her to the ground. Dasca acted like it barely noticed. Of course, Dasca actually had its claws down in the ground and was able to shift its stance a whole lot better than Fela was. One reason she didn’t really like riding the draken.

But it was past her. Behind her. Turning, she found most of the humans still standing as well. It did not throw them to the sky as it had done to the people closest to the explosion. The ones who did get knocked over only looked like they had been shoved. Most were already getting back to their feet.

The same could not be said for the opponent. Although Fela’s ears were ringing worse than she had ever experienced before, she still had hearing far, far greater than anyone else around her. And what she heard on the other side of the battlefield were nothing but the groans of pain, crying, humans calling out for their mothers, and noises so depressing that some spark of empathy for other living beings almost wiped the wide grin from Fela’s face.

Almost.

Then she remembered just who these people were. People who had captured her, killing her family, and subjected her to the mind magic of fairies.

With that thought on the edge of her mind, her grin only grew wider.

Not everyone was lying on the ground dying, of course. Almost all the soldiers that had charged forward when Alyssa fell were still alive. Many of them were even on their feet. But none were charging any longer. None were even facing their enemy. They were staring at the decimated ruins of their support. The twisted wreckage of their secret weapons. The dead arcanists and leaders.

They were hearing the moans and groans of the survivors, just as Fela was hearing. More than that, they were hearing cheers.

Behind Fela, the Lyrian humans were yelling out. Chanting, even. “Hurrah! Hurrah!” A victory cry as if they had actually done something.

It was a victory. There was no mistaking that. The battle was over. It was over before it even began. As expected of Alyssa. The remaining survivors would surely surrender. While Fela hadn’t seen it happen, they had apparently never beaten Lyria. Now that their army was in shambles, they couldn’t possibly pick up their swords and charge again.

Fela was a little disappointed. She hadn’t done anything. She was like the soldiers in the back. Not cheering, but grinning and smiling. The thought that there wouldn’t be anything for Alyssa to praise her over was disheartening. Maybe she would get lucky and one of the prisoners would try to escape on the way back. She could pounce on him and get a nice patting between her ears for a job well done.

Even without that to look forward to, the explosions put her into a good mood. After all, they could go back. More than jumping on an enemy and getting praised by Alyssa, Fela enjoyed rest and food. The palace had ample resting places and plenty of food. Servants even attended to her, bringing her big slabs of meat whenever she wished. The Pharaoh might even throw another feast. She could do without the dancing, but the food back then had been some of the best she had ever eaten.

Sighing in contentment, Fela started sniffing around for where an invisible Alyssa might be.

She found a smell quickly. Izsha and Alyssa. Strong. Too strong.

The wind was coming from the wrong direction, blowing from her back toward the enemy army. And the smell with it.

Turning, Fela narrowed her eyes as she tried to figure out how Alyssa got behind her so quickly.

She quickly spotted Brakkt, riding atop Ensou. He didn’t look like he had been ruffled at all by the explosions or that wave that followed. Then again, his helmet was on and his armor completely hid his body, so Fela couldn’t really say what he really looked like. But he was sitting straight as he looked to…

To Izsha?

And only Izsha.

Fela sniffed at the air. Alyssa’s scent was definitely strongest in Izsha’s direction. Which made perfect sense to Fela. Izsha was, after all, where Alyssa spent most of her time sitting. However, the smell wasn’t so strong as to indicate that the person in question might be sitting there completely invisible. But if she wasn’t here…

Looking back around the battlefield, Fela found the army marching forward. One of the human captains took control and was organizing them all to press toward the enemy army. What Fela gathered with her sharp ears was that the Juno Federation apparently had fought to the absolute last man in the past. The captain wished to disarm them—she couldn’t tell if he meant literally or figuratively—before they got back to their feet.

Maybe Fela would have a chance to grind some heads into paste after all. But first…

“Hey. Dasca! Go back to Brakkt!” Fela said, slapping her mount on the hindquarters. It gave a little snarl as it always did, but Dasca didn’t care that much. After all, it hardly ever tried to bite her any more. They weren’t far away. A small trot got them back to Brakkt in only a few seconds.

Which was apparently long enough for things to turn sour.

Izsha was snapping at Brakkt, making a whole lot of angry draken noises. Far more than Fela had ever heard from that draken, though maybe not as much as what Dasca did the last time Fela tried to ride while standing up. She had fallen forward, ending up trampled, which then turned into a bit of a fight against the draken. Playful wrestling, really. But still, the noises Izsha were making were pretty close to being that angry.

Brakkt listened in silence. He always seemed to be able to understand the draken a whole lot better than anyone else. He was even nodding along at times, despite it all sounding like gibberish to Fela.

So she asked. “Hey! What’s Izsha saying?”

Still helmeted, Brakkt looked over. The way she could barely see his eyes behind the visor would have been unnerving had they met on the battlefield. Luckily, he was good to monsters.

“I have no idea.”

Oh. Fela blinked, watching as he turned back to Izsha… who was making some really angry draken noises now. Dasca might just be beat in terms of growl length and ferociousness.

“Hey, where’s Alyssa gone?”

Izsha turned with a sharp glare.

And now I’ve got angry draken noises aimed at me, Fela thought with an audible sigh. “What are you barking at me for? I don’t even know what you’re saying.”

Dasca, however, seemed to understand. At least, Fela assumed so when it walked right up to Izsha’s side and stuck its nose right against one of the pouches in the saddle. It opened its mouth and tried to bite at something inside, but the flap was too small. Looking up to Brakkt, it gave a small whine.

Which Izsha actually seemed pleased with. It trotted right back over to Brakkt and angled its side so that the pouch with little teeth marks in it was facing him. He reached in and pulled out a few scraps of paper. Little ones, each folded over with some writing on them. He quickly flipped through them, looking only at the cover and not at the lines of words that were clearly on the inside of the folds.

Alyssa had tried to teach Fela a little about reading, but she didn’t see much point in it. It wasn’t like she could ever write with her paws. It was hard enough just holding a paper spell card. However, thanks to those brief lessons, Fela could recognize her own name.

And her name was on the front of one of those letters.

“What does that say?” she asked, trying to point to the one addressed to her.

“I’m not sure that we should read them right now,” Brakkt said, holding the papers but not reading them or putting them away. “We shouldn’t be distracting ourselves in combat.”

“Combat?” Fela looked around again, but it really didn’t look like there was going to be any serious fighting anytime soon. “Can’t the regular soldiers take care of it all? That’s their job, right?”

“It is my duty as well.”

“Well it isn’t mine.” Fela crossed her arms. She was pretty sure it wasn’t her duty. Her actual job was to sniff out any plague in the city, of which there had been very little since their return. She had just tagged along today because of Alyssa. “Let me have my letter. Um. Please?”

Brakkt hesitated, but, after a long moment, held out one of the papers. Fela started to reach for it before realizing her problem.

It would either get crushed up or slip from her paws and lost completely. And she wouldn’t be able to read most of it anyway. Maybe not even a little bit of it. “Could you just read it to me? You want to know too, right?”

Brakkt sighed. Opening his own satchel, he pulled out a spell card. “Message. Irulon. Ride forward and find me. I have letters addressed to you and Companion from Alyssa. I am not sure what they say yet as I’ve not read them. Fela is with me and has one addressed to her as well.

“Can you wait until they arrive?” Brakkt said, Message spell clearly ended now as he was facing her.

“Guess so,” Fela said. She wasn’t happy about it, but there wasn’t much else she could do. It was a little worrying that he was so against them reading it that he wouldn’t even read it to her. What did he think they might say?

Where was Alyssa?

“Ensou,” Brakkt said sharply. Both of them started walking with the guard, moving closer to the enemy humans. Walking away from where Irulon would be coming from. Fela didn’t have much to do other than keep after them. He still had her letter. She kept careful watch as he slid them all into a pouch on Ensou’s saddle.

The walk forward only took a few minutes, during which time Irulon and her dragon-self didn’t appear. The troops marched with urgency, but not at a full assault charge. When they met with the Juno Federation… there was not much resistance. Most of the enemy threw their swords to the ground, if they had even bothered to pick them up after the explosion.

One pretended to surrender, only to strike at a guard who went to retrieve his weapon.

Brakkt’s sword flashed through the air, embedding itself in the man’s chest before he could strike again. He quickly went up, dismounted from Ensou, and tended to the guard who now had blood leaking from his wrist guard. He didn’t even pay attention to his sword as he stripped the armor and dressed the wound with bandages taken from Ensou’s saddle.

Irritated, Fela jumped from Dasca, landing between the sword and some other human. This one had already given his sword to one of Brakkt’s men, but she didn’t like the way he was looking at the faintly glowing blade. With a guttural growl, Fela stepped toward him, planting a foot on his chest when he fell over. “I’ll bite your arm off.”

Living with Alyssa and the others, it had been a long time since she had threatened a human. Judging by the pig-like squealing he made, she hadn’t lost her touch. “You should watch your sword better,” she barked over her shoulder. Brakkt’s dark armor looked fancy, but she didn’t think it would hold up to that enchanted blade. Her instincts screamed at her to avoid that sharp edge coming for her at any cost and her fur normally stood up to human weapons.

Brakkt simply shrugged. “It is my sword. It will do as I ask, whether that be forcing a wielder to cut off their own head or fight their own countrymen.”

“Seems reckless,” Fela huffed. What if someone could resist that? Or claimed ownership somehow. Then Brakkt might be the one without a head.

“It was mostly a trap to see who here might still have some spark of combat in them.”

“Oh.” Fela looked down at the man beneath her foot and started putting more of her weight on his chest. “I could stomp out his insides if you wanted him to be an example?” The guy couldn’t even squeal like a pig anymore. He was struggling to breathe with the added weight.

“Let him go,” Brakkt said without looking up from his mending task. “We’re not harming those who surrender peacefully. Doing so would just force those who are left to fight.”

Fela grunted an agreement. A monster given the option to surrender would often become a slave. Yet they would almost always take that if the choice was between that or fighting to the death. With one last warning glare to the man, she stepped off his chest and headed back over to Dasca. Her claws tapped at her thighs as she tried to focus on watching for other attacking soldiers. There didn’t seem to be any. At least none that had seen what happened to the last one. She heard a bit of metal clanging against metal, but it was far enough off that it had to have been on the other side of the army.

It stopped before she could even pinpoint exactly where it had come from.

So instead, she just sat there, wondering what was taking the other two so long to get over to them. Were they being held back? As arcanists, and strong ones at that, they were supposed to be supporting from the back with powerful spells. No one would want them charging to the very front lines. But they were princesses. Or close enough in Companion’s case. Surely they could do whatever they wanted…

And yet, Brakkt finished what he was doing, remounted on Ensou, and started patrolling. After grabbing his sword, of course. Fela followed after him, walking this time with Izsha and Dasca at her sides. Everywhere they walked, noise of the enemy force died down. Several people sent glares in Brakkt’s direction. Like they knew him. They probably did, actually. He was some kind of famous warrior-prince-guy.

Fela really only knew him as Brakkt. It took situations like this to remind her that he was more than just some random human off the streets.

They stopped a few times, mostly to threaten people without actually threatening them, it seemed.

Their last stop wasn’t actually because of Brakkt. It was because of a pair of guards who were dragging a battered and bloody man up to him. The same guy that had been at the meeting the other day.

“Bercilak,” Brakkt said, saving Fela from trying to remember his name. “So much for your prophecy.”

The man looked up. One of his eyes was swollen and some of his clothes looked like they had been burned away. He started to talk, only to stop and spit a bit of blood to the ground. “Victory comes in many forms, young prince.” His voice sounded carefully measured, like he was trying to act stronger than he actually felt. “Stripping the power from the avatar of your false god… might just be the victory we sought today.”

Brakkt went very still. All except his fingers, which tightened around the hilt of his sword. Even with the armor in the way, Fela could practically see the way his muscles tensed. The blood pumping through his veins picked up as his heart beat a little harder in his chest. She could hear that just as clearly as she could hear what they said.

For a moment, she thought he was going to take the man’s head off.

But just as quickly as it came, the moment passed. “You will not be escaping from the dungeons this time.”

“Then perhaps I have accomplished all I have been meant to.”

Fela could hear Brakkt’s teeth grind together. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t the only one. Even the humans with their incredible disability were looking a little nervous to be around him. All except for the prisoner, who tried to put on a smile. Tried. His broken face and missing teeth marred his effort.

“Take him away,” Brakkt said eventually. “Don’t let me see him again.”

The guards didn’t argue. They also didn’t make any attempt at coddling the prisoner as they rushed to leave the area.

Brakkt didn’t move for a long time. He sat atop Ensou, slowly scanning the area. Fela and Dasca didn’t do anything to disturb him. He was clearly in a bad mood. Even Izsha had ceased the occasional noises of discontent that it had been making the whole time.

And Irulon and Companion were still gone. The thought that Brakkt sent a fake Message as a way to get to his troops without Fela complaining did cross her mind. In fact… had that spell card even disappeared? They normally did that, but she couldn’t remember. And she certainly wasn’t going to ask him about it now. She didn’t think he would attack her. He was a nice guy despite his scary sword and armor. But he was holding her letter and she didn’t want that running off on its own.

So she just stayed silent. Watching. Waiting.

Until eventually, Brakkt slowly and carefully pulled the letters from Ensou’s pouch. He flipped through until he found his, which he promptly opened.

Fela pouted when he didn’t start reading it aloud, but she could be patient when required. Right now, patience seemed like the best course of action.

She could see over his shoulder. There wasn’t much written down. Alyssa’s notebooks had much more words in them than this one letter, even on a single page. Yet Brakkt was taking forever to read it. He can read, right? Fela was pretty sure he could, though she never saw him do it.

“What does it say?” Fela eventually asked, speaking softly in the hopes that she wouldn’t disturb him.

“Alyssa is trying something stupid.”

That… wasn’t that surprising, actually. Alyssa was really strong and probably smarter than Fela in some cases, but even Fela thought she did dumb things every now and again. “Does she need help?”

“I don’t think we can even if she did need some.”

“Oh. Angel things?”

“Seems to be the case.”

“Where did she go?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“When will she be back?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“What about—”

“It is a very short letter,” Brakkt said, voice tense. “There is a small personal note to me, but I won’t be sharing that.”

“Then what about my letter?”

He shuffled the papers, pulling out the one that Fela recognized her own name on. Her tail wagged back and forth as she waited for him to read it to himself. But again, it was taking too long. “Well?”

“Pretty much the same thing. She has gone to do something dangerous with Tenebrael. She hopes to be back soon.”

“And..? A small personal note to me?”

For some reason, Brakkt sounded a bit more irritated now than he had just a moment ago. But he still was nice enough to read what her letter said. “And if you go into her room, you can find a special box under her bed that is sealed up with food inside it. She says you can eat it.”

Alyssa is the best, Fela thought, tail swinging from side to side.

“If you share it with Izsha.”

Mostly the best.

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