Never before had the song of war been the song of hope ascending
- L.L. Tyrell

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- Victorine -

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Nicolas looked at me for a few seconds. His decision would decide the course of everyone's destiny.

"How are you so sure?" he asked now, instead of pronouncing a decision.

"I've seen Cepha's troops. There are far too many of them. You have to believe me, Nicolas," it poured out of me so quickly and desperately that my words were barely intelligible. "They are not only people. But also beings, not from this world. He didn't just create some with the heart, he's bringing them out of the underworld."

From the expression on his face, I couldn't even tell if he believed me. He seemed to be weighing his options. Trusting me and getting us to safety. Or to abandon forever his deepest desire to overthrow Cephas. I suppressed the urge to look into his mind because he would probably notice and I didn't want to make him angry right now.

The tension was so thick in the air that it penetrated through my skin into the depths of my body. The world seemed to stand still, waiting for his decision - until suddenly my name was called.

I whirled around to the front. Toward the direction where the village walls lay in the distance.

It was Hekate. She flew towards me on the huge raven, the second bird flew after her and landed in front of me as well. The witch towered above us. The black eyes gave away nothing, no feeling or emotion. "Cephas sends his first troop, Victorine."

There was no fear or dread in her voice. But something else that I was unable to name.

I heard the soldiers stomping on the ground behind us, stepping into position and drawing their swords.

"One moment!", I commanded Sanguis' army without looking back. Then I swung myself onto the free raven, whereupon it flew me a few meters higher and I could see better.

Cephas's first army had lined up in the entrance of the huge stone village walls. At first they were just dark little dots in the distance. As I approached and I could make out the figures, my blood froze in my veins. I gasped for air, then sour liquid came up my esophagus and a horrified shudder overcame my body, only to immediately expel the knowledge I had gained.

They spread out and I was unable to do anything. They lined up in rows in front of the walls. They blocked the entrance. Nicolas, who was on the ground below me and had approached with his army, had drawn his sword. But when he realized he too was unable to give an order.

The troops of Sanguis and Spero arrived below me and stopped at a distance of a few meters in front of Cephas' first army.

They were children. Women. Old and injured people.

There were crying girls and trembling boys. There were pregnant women. Women holding their newborns in their arms and sobbing. There were old people who could barely stand on their feet. There were injured people. One, who had only one leg and had been hobbled and supported all the way here, fell to the ground from exhaustion. A little girl clung to her mother and cried.

Not one of them was armed. And they weren't supposed to be. They themselves were the weapon.

Never in my life had I seen a king do anything like this. Never.

Cephas' first army was the hardest to kill. Perhaps even impossible to kill.

Behind the chain formed by the innocents was a line of soldiers and archers. The innocents had been driven here by them. If one resisted, he would be killed immediately.

We could not go around them because of the village wall. Moreover, they were tied together. If we tried to just knock them over, they would fall over and not be able to run away. We would trample them all to death.

So in order to attack Tenebris, we had to slaughter all the innocent people first.

And this realization should have encouraged me to pull back. Should have made me finally decide to give up.

But instead, Cephas' act awakened a blazing, raging fire in me. And I recognized the error in my previous thinking so clearly all at once.

"Citizens of Tenebris," I raised my voice, clawing tighter at the feathers of the raven that held itself aloft with this powerful wings.

"Until just now, I was thinking that we should retreat," I spoke aloud as some of the people in front of me now looked up at me. "I was thinking that we should all live oppressed rather than die. At least live, I thought."

The crying of the innocent had stopped. Everyone had fallen silent as my words cut through the icy cold air. "But I've changed my mind. This, this isn't living anymore. It's not even survival. No one should suffer like this under Cephas' rule. We should all rather be dead than live like this."

And at that moment, I understood even more. I had really only wanted to save myself. All this time. I had wanted to save Crescentia so I wouldn't have to live with the guilt. I had wanted to save the armies of Sanguis and Spero so that I would not have to carry more deaths on my shoulders. It had been only the last attempt to save myself. But actually, I had already been lost and beyond saving.

"It is not a possibility that we kill innocent people!", I now shouted in a harsh voice. "But it's also not an option that we retreat. No matter how and no matter what it may cost. Cephas will fall today."

I glanced at the motionless archers, who could not attack me from a distance anyway. Their arrows would not be able to penetrate my armor.

Briefly, I closed my eyes, breathing in and out. I gestured for the raven to fly to the ground, dismounted, and approached the innocent. Finally, I stopped at a frightened, scrawny woman whose brown, watery eyes stared at me.

"I am Victorine, first daughter of the murdered king from Spero. And I am here to watch your backs. We are not here to fight you. We are here to help you. We want to free you and rid you of your king forever. But we can't do it alone. We need your courage. We need your first step."              

The woman's eyes continued to stare into mine. For several agonizing seconds. And then the woman reached out her fingers to me, to reach my outstretched hand. And whoever did that had to be truly desperate. To reach out one's hand to a wild stranger, even though one had ready archers and soldiers at one's back. The desperation and desire to escape the oppressed life and suffering under Cephas had to be greater than the worry of dying here and now.

In the corner of my eye, I saw that an archer had shot an arrow. It sped up in a high arc, then turned in midair and flew toward us. I prepared to protect the woman with my body, but then the arrow slowed down. So slow, in fact, that it finally froze in mid-air and then burst into flames. The wood burned instantly, the pointed iron of its tip melted in the air and dripped down. Sparks of fire rained down on us.

For another moment I continued to look up into the sky, then slowly turned around. Hekate was flying in the air a few paces away above us. Her raven was swinging its wings powerfully and emitting a croaking cry.

The witch's eyes were as perfectly abysmal black as usual, which is why I should be used to the sight. But all at once they sent a shiver down my spine. With her face distorted with rage, the huge bird and the hair blowing in the wind, she looked like a war goddess whom I did not want to meet on my enemy side.

Hekate stretched out her hands. Golden light poured out of them, which flew over me. Now I turned back to the innocents and realized that the light was spreading over them. All the deadly arrows that were trying to rain down on the people dissolved into dust and ash when they hit the light.

With another casting of the spell, the chains that bound the innocents to each other shattered. Upon realizing this, they ran off, in our direction. In our saving direction.

As the people ran past me, I caught glimpses between their bodies of Cephas' soldiers advancing and trying to strike the innocents with their swords.

My fingers went to the hilt of my sword and pulled out the razor-sharp weapon. Letting out a war cry of rage, I dashed forward. While the innocents ran away as fast as they could, I ran to the other side in exactly the opposite direction.

My sword met the iron of the soldier who had tried to bring his weapon down on an old man. I gritted my teeth and blocked his attack, knowing the man lying on the ground was safe behind my feet.

The soldier's dark eyes widened as I roared, shifted my weight forward and pushed him away. The soldier stumbled backwards two steps, then caught himself again and pushed against me with his weight.

Before my strength could fade, I unblocked, ducked, and took a step aside. The man stumbled past me, whereupon I kicked his foot away and he fell to the ground.

Before he could get back up I was on him, grabbing his helmet with my left hand to clear his neck and then thrusting my sword through him with my right hand. Blood splattered through the slit of my helmet onto the eye area of my face, so I blinked to make sure nothing got into my eyes.

I straightened up again. The old man was gone, thank heaven. I could only pray that he would make it out of here safely. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another soldier running toward me, swinging his sword at me. But before I could raise my weapon, another soldier stood between us and repelled the attack.

It was Nicolas. I could tell by the breathtaking speed and skill with which he blocked his opponent's sword thrusts. When the enemy made the first and only fatal mistake, Nicolas reduced the distance between them. The enemy wore only a piece of chain armor on his neck, which the king grabbed with a burning hand and melted with the help of the heat, whereupon he stepped back with incredible speed, swung his sharp sword and severed the soldier's head, which hit the ground dully. The rest of the body toppled back lifelessly.

After that, we made eye contact only briefly. Instantly, we stood back to back and tried to get an overview of the situation. The innocents were screaming and trying to make their way out of the battlefield. They wore no armor at all. A single swift stroke of the sword and they could be mortally wounded.

In the heat of battle, I spotted my brother and Spero's army in the distance. Beside us, Tryphosa now stood and shouted orders to the rest of the troops, including Orestes. The enemy soldiers, the innocents, our allies. Everyone suddenly seemed to be mixed together. It was all chaos and confusion.

There was a roaring in my ears. Shouts. The clang of weapons striking against each other. I allowed myself a single, deep breath, then refocused.

I looked ahead. Among all the various battles, a scene played out in front of me, which I now followed more closely. A soldier with the arms of Spero fell, but that was not what caught my attention. A mother, bleeding profusely from the head, was dragging a little girl and an even smaller boy along. And it was toward the winner of this duel, not in the direction where most of our own soldiers were.

I put one foot in front of the other as fast as I could. Avoided sword blows from the side, was hit on the shoulder, but this only bounced off my thick armor.

When I looked forward again, the family had already been separated from each other. The girl was screaming for her mother, who wouldn't hear her in the noise or find her in the confusion.

Behind me, Nicolas was screaming my name. It reassured me that he was struggling to get to me as I approached the scene.

The winner of the duel, approached by two soldiers from Spero, turned and started to flee. His sword he drew with him. And in the next moment he had already knocked down the little girl. The soldier trampled over her like a piece of dirt and disappeared into the crowd.

I dodged a soldier who stood in my way. Nicolas had my back, I knew that. Then I finally arrived at the girl, but much too late.

Breathless, I sank to my knees. The girl's dirty T-shirt was already completely soaked with blood in the stomach area. I flipped up the face shield of my helmet, gently pulled her head and half her body onto my lap.

The small hand that now clasped my fingers trembled. The big brown eyes that looked up at me were full of fear.

All at once I felt her fear and pain in my own body and for the hundredth time in my life I wished I didn't have that ability.

The smile I forced on my lips did not match my eyes, which filled with tears. But I wanted her last sight to be a smile. That her last sight was a beautiful sight. "It's going to be okay," I whispered in a choked voice. Knowing full well that this was the biggest lie of my life.

I had always admired soldiers in the past. They and their wars had always been described heroically in my history books. Defeating an enemy and saving their own people. I had admired them so much that I had always wanted to become a soldier myself, ever since I was a child.

However, I now realized that wars were anything but heroic. As the little head in my hand grew heavier and the little body in my arms sagged, as the eyes lost their fearfulness and became lifeless, war suddenly had nothing heroic about it. The only thing I saw was blood and cruelty. The only thing I heard was people screaming. And even worse were the people who could no longer be heard screaming. Who whispered their last words and breathed their last breaths and then would be silent forever.

I wanted to curl up into a ball, close my eyes and press my hands over my ears. All at once, it was all too much for me. And yet I knew I couldn't give up, so that the other innocents would still have a chance at survival.

"Victorine." Someone said my name and gently grabbed my arm.

Carefully, I placed the body on the ground, blinked away my tears, and looked up at the head soldier Tryphosa, who now held out her hand to me. "We must continue to fight," she made clear to me in a tone that resonated harshness and litter at the same time.

I hesitated only a few seconds before I grasped her hand, stood up with her help, and then stood on my own two feet. Then I returned Tryphosa's vigorous nod. For I had no choice but to return to the fighting if I wanted to give the remaining innocents a chance of survival.

I flipped my face shield back down and drew my weapon. This time Cephas had gone too far. This time Cephas had created enemies who would stop at nothing to protect the remaining living beings from him.

This war would be Cephas' last war.