There was a tired and sad atmosphere the whole time we bought the surviving townspeople to the next larger settlement. We didn’t talk much during that time, especially not about the four idiots’ ignoring my orders.
As soon as we dumped the townspeople though, my gaze never left the road in front of us. I was angry. Very angry.
“Lucy. I’m sorry. But I couldn’t leave them to their demise.” Sofie started several minutes after we had exited the town again.
“Yeah, we are heroes! We aren’t supposed to sit around while there is an adventure waiting for us.” Gregory added which earned him a deathly glare from their healer.
“And that dragon could have attacked us from the rear if we hadn’t dealt with it.” Ellie said, looking at Schwarz to say anything, but he kept his gaze directed at the ground.
“First and foremost, you are soldiers. And your actions endangered the comrades you swore to protect. Everything we will see later will be your fault.” I claimed angrily, already imagining all the things that could have happened to the army.
“What do you mean?” Ellie asked completely oblivious.
“A dragon attacking a town which is close enough for you to get in time, but forces you to leave the rest behind surely is a rare coincidence, isn’t it?” I asked sarcastically and balled my hands to fists. My horse stirred a little as I jumped off it and stood in their way while glaring at the four idiots.
“I … we haven’t th-“ Ellie started, but I was so enraged that only listening to her made me more furious.
“Oh, yeah? You haven’t thought about that? What a surprise! But I knew that much already, Ellie. You are as far away from the chain of command as you can get, because you are just teenagers who apparently feel the need to proof yourselves at every opportunity!” I shouted out, stomping the dirt beneath my feet and kicking bits of it in their direction.
“That’s not true! We only rushed there because we wanted to save life!” Sofie said, even though she knew at least Gregory didn’t feel that way.
“Shut up! I don’t care about your motivation! I let everything slide you four did! Everything! You have absolutely no responsibility in the army! NONE! The only thing you had to do was to stick with us and that’s it! But even that is too hard for you, ISN’T IT?” Gritting my teeth, I stormed toward them and slammed my shoulder into Sofie’s belly. She fell backwards right away, bending over in pain as I fell alongside her, hitting the ground painfully. Rolling over, I used my unbroken arm to steady myself a little before I grabbed her and straddled her belly.
“WHY? WHY!!” They couldn’t follow any orders, they could do nothing the way I told them to.
Crashing my fist into a barrier which appeared right before Sofie’s shocked face, I broke a few fingers in the process and was quickly thrown to the side as Schwarz pounced into me. Grabbing both of my arms, he pinned me down beneath him easily. I thrashed around a little, but I had to admit that I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Let go!” I growled aggressively which made him shrink back a little. “I said let go!” Gathering every bit of strength I had in my upper body, I jerked upwards and smashed my forehead onto his nose. He groaned loudly and immediately let go of my arms which allowed me to turn over and stand up slowly while glaring at Sofie.
“WHY?” I screamed loudly once more and dashed towards her again, punching her belly with every bit of strength I had. And yet another barrier appeared, stopping my fist in its tracks.
“Let her, Ellie.” Sofie said quietly as I had punched once again against the barrier. Finally, I could hurt her directly. Nothing stood in my way anymore. Punching her shoulder weakly, I leaned forwards and pressed my forehead onto her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Lucy … I couldn’t follow that order you gave me, because it goes agains everything I believe in.” She admitted and hugged me tightly while I let my tired arm slide downwards. “You had asked me this question yourself in this test and my answer is still the same. I cannot follow every order you give me, no matter how logical they are.”
“You …” Balling my left hand into a fist once more, I pressed it weakly against her and made my final decision. “You have lost my trust … every single one of you. I really wanted to believe I could count on you Sofie, so much so that I ignored what you did during the test. But apparently, I was wrong valuing our friendship more than logic …” Wrestling myself free of her embrace, I looked at her saddened and turned back towards my horse. “You all will work as a detached group once we have entered the demon territory. You are free to help … but I won’t count on you.” I explained unhappily and nodded towards the distance. “Go ahead … I don’t want to deal with you right now.”
With low hanging heads for the most part, they went past me one by one without uttering a single word while I bit on my tongue to suppress a little giggle escaping my lips. I had several broken bones, a reopened wound and my whole right side felt largely unresponsive to my touch. I didn’t need them to see me like this and so, I made my horse trot after them slowly.
For the rest of the day, we were making our way to the biggest fort in the area and I didn’t let them stop during the night either. We were close already as the sun went down and I was much more eager to get back to Luna than to worry about their stamina.
“That’s not looking good …” I mumbled as I caught a glimpse of a shining dome in the distance. On top of it were two dragons, clawing at the shield and pressing onto it with their weight. It was a wonder the fort hasn’t fallen yet, but it was only a matter of time to do so.
“Extinguish your lamps!” I said, looking at the many smaller demons flying around the area as well. Getting off my horse, I quickly approached the idiots and looked at them sternly. “Do whatever.” I had no control of them whatsoever, but they were indeed quite useful in slaughtering demons which was honestly exactly what I needed them to do.
And then, I turned around and dashed into the forest to our right, always keeping an eye on the dome of light. After a few minutes, I turned left again and approached it from underneath the cover of the trees. Luckily there were no ground troops there, otherwise this whole endeavour could have ended in a complete disaster already.
Gritting my teeth and already fearing for the worst, I stopped only at the edge of the forest, staring at the burnt out tents with worry. But at least I couldn’t see any burnt out copses, which probably meant Hannah bought them inside the fort safely. Scanning the fort, I saw the walls being manned by soldiers and adventurers alike which made me sigh in relief. Additionally, there were several ballistas on the walls, but their angle wasn’t good enough to shoot at the dragons on top. In fact, nobody shot anything at these dragons or other flying demons, which most definitely meant that the barrier was stronger, but also blocked every attack. Looking over to my left, I noticed the four idiots doing idiotic things once more by storming towards the fort and blasting at the dragons with long range magic which did unsurprisingly very little to them.
Shaking my head a bit disappointed, I noticed lots of demons swooping down on them, but they were dealt with rather quickly by Gregory’s spells.
“What do I do?” I mumbled and stepped out of my cover, grabbing the first bird-like demon by its ankles and pulled him down onto the ground. It’s head slammed into the ground straight away and his neck broke audibly. Death filled the area around me and I giggled loudly, drawing the attention of tens of demons right away.
Smiling brightly, I drew my daggers and curtsied elegantly with one dragon already staring at me.
“Come and get me.” There was no chance I could do anything to them while I was so far away from them without using my magic. And so, I taunted the dragon while dancing around a little, avoiding the attacks of these small fries by hair’s breadth until one of the dragons roared. He dove down from his shiny throne, aiming directly at me. Closing my eyes a little, I focused myself and listened to the flapping of leathery wings all around me, the screaming of demons which were hit by my weapons and the distant breaths.
Opening my eyes wide, I stared into the dragons open mouth and tilted my head to the side as a fist sized ball of spit flew towards me.
“Trust me … you don’t want to do that.” I shouted as the air around me turned rather cold around me. From its shimmering blue scales, I could already guess this one was an ice dragon, but at least I had confirmation after this point.
His breath did came quicker than expected though, which was why my toes felt quite cold as I jumped over it and stared at the water in the air freezing below me. With raised eyebrows, I landed on the dragons nose which directly tried to throw me into the air and bite me there. But I had already expected such a move. Before my feet left the ground, I was already twirling around my own axis, accelerating the daggers in my hands quickly before letting go of them.
They both flew in a singular line, straight towards the dragon’s unprotected right eye. The first one stabbed into it until the hilt with the second one hitting a split second afterwards, driving it even deeper into its eye. Landing on its nose once more as the dragon had given up on biting me and voiced its pain, I giggled a little before grabbing onto a scale as the dragon flapped its wings violently.
“Nonono! I can’t fly!” I screamed out, holding onto the dragon with all I got as it catapulted itself upwards. “Stop it! Stop it!” That was seriously unexpected. I didn’t think that that dragon was actually capable of flight after having a dagger drilled near his brain, but apparently I overestimated my strength a little.
Suddenly, our ascend was stopped abruptly and the dragon flailed his head around to shake me off, which actually worked as I had very little to hold onto. With no way to manoeuvre, let alone defend myself, I was tumbling through the air at first, catching a glimpse of the deactivated magical shield and the fort spewing out all kinds of magic as my adventurers did their work.
But my happiness was rather short lived as the dragons rage still hadn’t stopped in the slightest and he dove down after me, his mouth wide open.
Turning around mid air, I used my limbs to steer a little and managed to grab onto its cold teeth before it could bite onto me. Pressing my feet onto the lower row of sharp teeth, I pressed against the closing lips with all I got. For seconds, I was in colder and colder mouth, pressing against the teeth while they dug into my feet.
Giggling, I thought that it was either at this point or never and pushed myself out of its mouth, twisting my body a little to make place for the approaching sword flying through the air, shocking me and the dragon with red electricity alike.
I merely felt my body numbed by it as the damage to my organs healed within seconds, but the dragon was less fortunate.
The black sword impaled itself into its open mouth, vanishing from my sight as it embedded itself too deeply into the flesh. I could merely see the dragon trembling a little and his last remaining eye opening wide as he unnecessarily erupted in lightning. Because he was as dead as he could get.
Using my limbs to turn around mid air once more, I steered myself out of the way of the dragon falling to the ground like a rock and breathed out in relief as a strong wind feathered my fall quickly.
Slamming into the ground under the gaze of all my subordinates wasn’t something I was very keen on after all. Luckily, that didn’t happen, at least for me as I landed on the walls of the fortress while holding my skirt down.
“You could have killed me there!”I complained, pressing my fist against Hannah’s shoulder.
“You knew what I would do.” Well … yes. The moment the shield deactivated, I was basically bait and I knew that much so I made sure she had a prime target to fire at.
“Hmm!” I said, grabbed the demon which flew in between us and slammed it onto the ground just like the other one.
“Maybe …” Hannah said, extending her hand over my shoulder and blasting the one behind me with an air bullet. “Maybe we shouldn’t stand around here.”
“Agreed.” I admitted, dashed to my left to grab the sword of a fallen soldier.
It was cleanup time for us, especially after the second dragon had its belly cut open by my sword.
There was a tired and sad atmosphere the whole time we bought the surviving townspeople to the next larger settlement. We didn’t talk much during that time, especially not about the four idiots’ ignoring my orders.
As soon as we dumped the townspeople though, my gaze never left the road in front of us. I was angry. Very angry.
“Lucy. I’m sorry. But I couldn’t leave them to their demise.” Sofie started several minutes after we had exited the town again.
“Yeah, we are heroes! We aren’t supposed to sit around while there is an adventure waiting for us.” Gregory added which earned him a deathly glare from their healer.
“And that dragon could have attacked us from the rear if we hadn’t dealt with it.” Ellie said, looking at Schwarz to say anything, but he kept his gaze directed at the ground.
“First and foremost, you are soldiers. And your actions endangered the comrades you swore to protect. Everything we will see later will be your fault.” I claimed angrily, already imagining all the things that could have happened to the army.
“What do you mean?” Ellie asked completely oblivious.
“A dragon attacking a town which is close enough for you to get in time, but forces you to leave the rest behind surely is a rare coincidence, isn’t it?” I asked sarcastically and balled my hands to fists. My horse stirred a little as I jumped off it and stood in their way while glaring at the four idiots.
“I … we haven’t th-“ Ellie started, but I was so enraged that only listening to her made me more furious.
“Oh, yeah? You haven’t thought about that? What a surprise! But I knew that much already, Ellie. You are as far away from the chain of command as you can get, because you are just teenagers who apparently feel the need to proof yourselves at every opportunity!” I shouted out, stomping the dirt beneath my feet and kicking bits of it in their direction.
“That’s not true! We only rushed there because we wanted to save life!” Sofie said, even though she knew at least Gregory didn’t feel that way.
“Shut up! I don’t care about your motivation! I let everything slide you four did! Everything! You have absolutely no responsibility in the army! NONE! The only thing you had to do was to stick with us and that’s it! But even that is too hard for you, ISN’T IT?” Gritting my teeth, I stormed toward them and slammed my shoulder into Sofie’s belly. She fell backwards right away, bending over in pain as I fell alongside her, hitting the ground painfully. Rolling over, I used my unbroken arm to steady myself a little before I grabbed her and straddled her belly.
“WHY? WHY!!” They couldn’t follow any orders, they could do nothing the way I told them to.
Crashing my fist into a barrier which appeared right before Sofie’s shocked face, I broke a few fingers in the process and was quickly thrown to the side as Schwarz pounced into me. Grabbing both of my arms, he pinned me down beneath him easily. I thrashed around a little, but I had to admit that I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Let go!” I growled aggressively which made him shrink back a little. “I said let go!” Gathering every bit of strength I had in my upper body, I jerked upwards and smashed my forehead onto his nose. He groaned loudly and immediately let go of my arms which allowed me to turn over and stand up slowly while glaring at Sofie.
“WHY?” I screamed loudly once more and dashed towards her again, punching her belly with every bit of strength I had. And yet another barrier appeared, stopping my fist in its tracks.
“Let her, Ellie.” Sofie said quietly as I had punched once again against the barrier. Finally, I could hurt her directly. Nothing stood in my way anymore. Punching her shoulder weakly, I leaned forwards and pressed my forehead onto her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Lucy … I couldn’t follow that order you gave me, because it goes agains everything I believe in.” She admitted and hugged me tightly while I let my tired arm slide downwards. “You had asked me this question yourself in this test and my answer is still the same. I cannot follow every order you give me, no matter how logical they are.”
“You …” Balling my left hand into a fist once more, I pressed it weakly against her and made my final decision. “You have lost my trust … every single one of you. I really wanted to believe I could count on you Sofie, so much so that I ignored what you did during the test. But apparently, I was wrong valuing our friendship more than logic …” Wrestling myself free of her embrace, I looked at her saddened and turned back towards my horse. “You all will work as a detached group once we have entered the demon territory. You are free to help … but I won’t count on you.” I explained unhappily and nodded towards the distance. “Go ahead … I don’t want to deal with you right now.”
With low hanging heads for the most part, they went past me one by one without uttering a single word while I bit on my tongue to suppress a little giggle escaping my lips. I had several broken bones, a reopened wound and my whole right side felt largely unresponsive to my touch. I didn’t need them to see me like this and so, I made my horse trot after them slowly.
For the rest of the day, we were making our way to the biggest fort in the area and I didn’t let them stop during the night either. We were close already as the sun went down and I was much more eager to get back to Luna than to worry about their stamina.
“That’s not looking good …” I mumbled as I caught a glimpse of a shining dome in the distance. On top of it were two dragons, clawing at the shield and pressing onto it with their weight. It was a wonder the fort hasn’t fallen yet, but it was only a matter of time to do so.
“Extinguish your lamps!” I said, looking at the many smaller demons flying around the area as well. Getting off my horse, I quickly approached the idiots and looked at them sternly. “Do whatever.” I had no control of them whatsoever, but they were indeed quite useful in slaughtering demons which was honestly exactly what I needed them to do.
And then, I turned around and dashed into the forest to our right, always keeping an eye on the dome of light. After a few minutes, I turned left again and approached it from underneath the cover of the trees. Luckily there were no ground troops there, otherwise this whole endeavour could have ended in a complete disaster already.
Gritting my teeth and already fearing for the worst, I stopped only at the edge of the forest, staring at the burnt out tents with worry. But at least I couldn’t see any burnt out copses, which probably meant Hannah bought them inside the fort safely. Scanning the fort, I saw the walls being manned by soldiers and adventurers alike which made me sigh in relief. Additionally, there were several ballistas on the walls, but their angle wasn’t good enough to shoot at the dragons on top. In fact, nobody shot anything at these dragons or other flying demons, which most definitely meant that the barrier was stronger, but also blocked every attack. Looking over to my left, I noticed the four idiots doing idiotic things once more by storming towards the fort and blasting at the dragons with long range magic which did unsurprisingly very little to them.
Shaking my head a bit disappointed, I noticed lots of demons swooping down on them, but they were dealt with rather quickly by Gregory’s spells.
“What do I do?” I mumbled and stepped out of my cover, grabbing the first bird-like demon by its ankles and pulled him down onto the ground. It’s head slammed into the ground straight away and his neck broke audibly. Death filled the area around me and I giggled loudly, drawing the attention of tens of demons right away.
Smiling brightly, I drew my daggers and curtsied elegantly with one dragon already staring at me.
“Come and get me.” There was no chance I could do anything to them while I was so far away from them without using my magic. And so, I taunted the dragon while dancing around a little, avoiding the attacks of these small fries by hair’s breadth until one of the dragons roared. He dove down from his shiny throne, aiming directly at me. Closing my eyes a little, I focused myself and listened to the flapping of leathery wings all around me, the screaming of demons which were hit by my weapons and the distant breaths.
Opening my eyes wide, I stared into the dragons open mouth and tilted my head to the side as a fist sized ball of spit flew towards me.
“Trust me … you don’t want to do that.” I shouted as the air around me turned rather cold around me. From its shimmering blue scales, I could already guess this one was an ice dragon, but at least I had confirmation after this point.
His breath did came quicker than expected though, which was why my toes felt quite cold as I jumped over it and stared at the water in the air freezing below me. With raised eyebrows, I landed on the dragons nose which directly tried to throw me into the air and bite me there. But I had already expected such a move. Before my feet left the ground, I was already twirling around my own axis, accelerating the daggers in my hands quickly before letting go of them.
They both flew in a singular line, straight towards the dragon’s unprotected right eye. The first one stabbed into it until the hilt with the second one hitting a split second afterwards, driving it even deeper into its eye. Landing on its nose once more as the dragon had given up on biting me and voiced its pain, I giggled a little before grabbing onto a scale as the dragon flapped its wings violently.
“Nonono! I can’t fly!” I screamed out, holding onto the dragon with all I got as it catapulted itself upwards. “Stop it! Stop it!” That was seriously unexpected. I didn’t think that that dragon was actually capable of flight after having a dagger drilled near his brain, but apparently I overestimated my strength a little.
Suddenly, our ascend was stopped abruptly and the dragon flailed his head around to shake me off, which actually worked as I had very little to hold onto. With no way to manoeuvre, let alone defend myself, I was tumbling through the air at first, catching a glimpse of the deactivated magical shield and the fort spewing out all kinds of magic as my adventurers did their work.
But my happiness was rather short lived as the dragons rage still hadn’t stopped in the slightest and he dove down after me, his mouth wide open.
Turning around mid air, I used my limbs to steer a little and managed to grab onto its cold teeth before it could bite onto me. Pressing my feet onto the lower row of sharp teeth, I pressed against the closing lips with all I got. For seconds, I was in colder and colder mouth, pressing against the teeth while they dug into my feet.
Giggling, I thought that it was either at this point or never and pushed myself out of its mouth, twisting my body a little to make place for the approaching sword flying through the air, shocking me and the dragon with red electricity alike.
I merely felt my body numbed by it as the damage to my organs healed within seconds, but the dragon was less fortunate.
The black sword impaled itself into its open mouth, vanishing from my sight as it embedded itself too deeply into the flesh. I could merely see the dragon trembling a little and his last remaining eye opening wide as he unnecessarily erupted in lightning. Because he was as dead as he could get.
Using my limbs to turn around mid air once more, I steered myself out of the way of the dragon falling to the ground like a rock and breathed out in relief as a strong wind feathered my fall quickly.
Slamming into the ground under the gaze of all my subordinates wasn’t something I was very keen on after all. Luckily, that didn’t happen, at least for me as I landed on the walls of the fortress while holding my skirt down.
“You could have killed me there!”I complained, pressing my fist against Hannah’s shoulder.
“You knew what I would do.” Well … yes. The moment the shield deactivated, I was basically bait and I knew that much so I made sure she had a prime target to fire at.
“Hmm!” I said, grabbed the demon which flew in between us and slammed it onto the ground just like the other one.
“Maybe …” Hannah said, extending her hand over my shoulder and blasting the one behind me with an air bullet. “Maybe we shouldn’t stand around here.”
“Agreed.” I admitted, dashed to my left to grab the sword of a fallen soldier.
It was cleanup time for us, especially after the second dragon had its belly cut open by my sword.
