While Asuseni holds her hand to Bryant’s stomach, repairing his internal injuries, I dart off with a word for Ela and Asuseni, “Please hold the fort here. I’ll return with Bret.”

I’m sure Bret can help clean things up here. What’s going to happen to me? I—I… I killed… Am I a murderer now?

Distracted by my musing about my fate, I belatedly hear nearby screeching and flapping wings, its movements cloaked by the night. The eagle I had heard swoops at my head, scoring my cheek with its talons. Blood drips from my cheek from the wounds. Its talons narrowly missed taking an eye.

Is this a trained pet of Carl’s? Is it getting revenge for…?

The eagle in question comes to a rest in the road, fluttering its plumage. It looks over its shoulder at me, shaking its tail feathers. ,Its neck cranes around to give me a fierce and angry look.

“Hah…” I clutch my burning cheek and look at the Eagle with narrowed eyes. This thing could have taken out my eye. Why didn’t it?

“I deal with a gang of rapist adventurers and now a psycho eagle wants to kill me?” I shake my head with a sigh.

The eagle’s body glows as it continues to glare at me and gradually takes on the shape of a human being with long pink hair and lovely light blue eyes. Her eyes pierce me. She wears a dress that seems faintly familiar. Walking towards me, she draws an arm back to strike me.

“Jayne?” I ask quickly before she snaps her arm forward. My giving the name surprises me as much as her. But where did I get this name? Why am I so certain that I know her? She glares at me, blinking.

After a moment, the answer comes to me. In one of my visions, I saw a girl that looked just like this. Her name was Jayne. However, that girl was younger-looking than this woman standing before me. The tall girl here sure has ripened since.

Freezing mid-slap, Jayne looks at me for a long moment, her anger fading somewhat. She’s unable to hide her startlement, her eyes opening wide.

“Am I right? Isn’t your name Jayne?”

“D-damn it!” She hisses between her teeth like an angry bird. “Did Delara speak about us? Even though she was… I never thought that she would do this! What do you know?!” She flares up again, her anger hotter than before.

I look at her for a long moment in return. Not recognizing the name she gave me, I decide it’s best to not tell her the truth right away.

Nodding my head, I say nothing.

“How much do you know, bitch? Do you have our numbers?” Her eyes go wild now as she paces.

“Why are you here, Jayne? You’re worried about Delara?”

With a gasp she pulls back her arm again and snarls, not holding back this time. I catch her arm carefully and look her in the eye. 

She squirms as I stare at her and finally squawks, “Yes! Your witless actions tonight nearly got her killed, right! What the hell are you thinking?! I had a different impression of you, but you’re nothing but a…”

Oh… Ela. Delara. That vision was from her memories. I should have thought more.

“I’m sorry.” I cut in. “I didn’t think it would work out like that. The last time that rapist came at me, it was alone. This time he led a group of armed men against unarmed women and their employer. If it wasn’t for a stranger showing up last time, I’d truly have ended up getting violated…” I think for a moment and remember the eagle’s crying out overhead at that time too. “You were watching me then too, weren’t you?”

“...” Jayne stares at me for a long moment, saying nothing

Her hand lashes out while I’m thinking and scores a full-palmed strike on my cheek. I wince, but don’t flinch as the sound of her slap echoes up the street.

Finally Jayne mutters to herself and says, “Just take a weapon along with you from now on in this town. In fact, if humans are so damned dangerous, take her with you tomorrow outside the city and never return. We’ll take you with us.”

“...Says the woman who just nearly plucked one of my eyes from my skull in a fury and for good measure, slapped me hard across my face.”

Jayne glares at me and stamps.

“You ungrateful fool! That has nothing to do with my offer, idiot!” Jayne growls.

“Santara wouldn’t much like me either,” I comment dryly.

Gritting her teeth, Jayne hisses. “...You even have his name? Shit. She really has betrayed him. But, I don’t blame her for making that choice. She must have a soft spot for you idiotic humans.” With a sigh, Jayne crosses her arms and frowns.

I say nothing more, not wanting to give away how little I truly know.

“She loves you a great deal,” Jayne frowns, her voice harsh. “This much I can tell from above, to my displeasure. She’s fucking in love with you. I’ve been watching both of you almost all the time and… and…” She paces in front of me. “But… as awful as this situation is, she’s been changing in ways that I never thought possible here. I watched when she took up a bow again under the tutelage of that old man. The sight brought a tear to my eye. Heh… I’m surprised that her skills haven’t dulled in all this time.”

“She’s very impressive.” I start understanding who Delara is. Of course. “She’s an absolutely amazing person. I love her too.”

Jayne facepalms and paces even more furiously, kicking up dirt from the hard packed road.

She whirls, finally stopping, and stalking over to me she puts her face close to mine. “If you love her so much… If I can trust you…” She turns away, striding a few steps and turns her head and tilts her head. “Don’t put her life at risk ever again like that again. To us, to me, she’s like a… a…”

“She’s the chief’s daughter. Very much like a princess.” I finish for her.

“... So… You know everything.” Jayne lets out a heavy breath, grumbling. “Fine. If she believes so much in you, I’ll tell you something that you don’t know, you know-it-all.” She steps close to me and grabs my bloodstained maid’s dress’s bodice in a surprisingly strong grip. Her nose and eyes change to that of an eagle’s on her human’s face, and the sight of that actually scares the shit out of me, despite my attempt to keep my cool.

“We’re coming, human.” She squawks aggressively.

Waiting for any additional reaction for good measure, she goes on to say in a less scary voice, her face returning to ‘normal’, “I don’t agree with what Santara wants. I always hoped that Delara would come back, depose Santara and become our leader like she should have. With her level of archery, she should be able to bring him down before he could maul her, given that he eschews using anything but his own bare hands in combat. Hah… that is assuming he fought her fairly. No, he probably wouldn’t. He kills to get his way and even years ago...” Her expression becomes inward as she remembers. After a brief pause, she adds, “You have two days, maybe three tops before we begin our siege of this town. So take her away from here right away, no matter wherever else you choose to go. Just take her with you.”

“You’re all going to attack a walled city?” I blink.

Jayne chuckles. “...You may have noticed that some of us can fly. Some of us can bust down even big ass gates like you have here too,” she says mockingly.

“Fair enough, but I don’t see it working out,” I say dryly. “I may not know what you’re all capable of, but given how well Delara shoots…”

“Yeah…” Jayne nods and barks another laugh. “Guess you don’t know everything. It’s not like she’s the only one, either, that reached a master level. Archery’s an art our people have passed down in our tribes for the sake of hunting in a human’s form. Speed and accuracy are highly prized among us.”

“And?” I ask.

“What do you expect?” Jayne whistles between her teeth. “We’ll swoop in, land on the walls, change forms, holding our weapons, training them on our people, picking them off one by one. We’ll all lay into your people from the highground to start with. That’s how we do things. Some of us are big enough to drop the carnivores into your midst, just so you get it. They’ll cut you to pieces on the ground from the inside. What are you going to do about that?”

“And… you’re telling me everything now that you have planned… and because of that…” I turn away, thinking quickly. “...I have two days at least to warn the guard of your plans,” I say slowly.

“Yes.” Jayne curls her fingers into clawlike shapes. “I don’t really want this siege to be successful. It will just strengthen Santara’s position. The people’s faith in him will only get stronger.  Only a few of us are actually bloodthirsty idiots, I’ll have you know. Santara commands our fighter’s complete loyalty and there’s nothing I can do except for warning you, not that I was going to to start with… You just forced it out of me, didn’t you? How shitty of you. Now I’m in a bad position with my people.”

“Stay with us, then.” I suggest.

“... No.” Jayne mutters, annoyed. “I’ll take whatever I get come the day of the battle. I’ll help you however I can on the field and report what I can to you in the meantime, got it?”

“Thank you, Jayne.” I smile warmly, grateful for her help. I was initially skeptical of her statements, but from what she says, their plan could actually work, unforewarned.

Jayne flushes, pursing her lips. “I don’t need your shitty thanks, human.”

Glowing, she transforms into an Eagle’s form and flapping up, she digs at herself as though scratching an itch, two long feathers fall to the road.

“Take these for good luck. You’ll need it, idiot. And… thanks for helping Delara to change.”

Flapping away into the deep dark of the night, she silently slips away as I bend down, lifting the two feathers to hold them as a breeze caresses my face.

Barging into Bret’s home, I blink, seeing that Jak is here speaking with Bret. A fire cheerilly feeds on a log in the kitchen with pockets of sap crackling and popping.

Jak looks up at me from the sofa in startlement and Bret gasps at the sight of me.

“What happened to you?” Bret hollers as he lurches up and lopes over to me, eating up the distance between us to seize my arm. The smell of spilled blood staining my maid’s dress steams rises off, filling the air with its iron-like odor.

Pulling my arm back, I say, “...I ran into some more would be rapists in the street tonight. If it wasn’t for Lady Asuseni’s intervention, who’s currently curing Bryant’s possible lethal wound…”

“Who?” Bret asks, frowning.

“The café proprietor. I asked him along to look after us, but things went very badly when we were ambushed by more than I expected. They’re a few streets over at the site of where we were fighting, they’d have gotten their way with myself and the maids if it wasn’t for her intervention. But there’s a bigger problem to worry about.” I hold up Jayne’s feathers in my hand with a sigh.

Back at the scene of the attack, Jak following along, he coolly regards Asuseni and their eyes meet as she calmly dusts off her hands with distaste and stands up from where she was kneeling by Bryant’s prone form.

“Your good man will be fine now, Hana.” Her eyes shift to me. “Got hurt again, already, I see.”

“It’s good to know that Bryant is alright. Thank you, your Ladyship, Asuseni.” I offer her a curtsey.

“Hmph…” Asuseni waves a hand dismissively. “Not that he was about to die anyway.” Asuseni mutters.

Ela rushes over to me and throws arms around me, asking me, “Did you get Bret? I don’t see him. Why’s Jak…?”

“Don’t worry, Ela.” I pet Ela’s ears that she’s let out in the heat of the moment. “Bret is at the moment running to get more guards here. There will be some questions asked of us, but given that I gave him my account of what happened, things should work out.”

Jak walks over to Bryant and kneels to touch the recovering Bryant, running glowing fingers over his body. He chuckles.

“What? Why delve him? How insulting! Do I sense criticism?” Asuseni challenges Jak with a glare.

“Not at all. This is the finest healing I've seen in many years, your Ladyship.” Jak beams an unexpected grin at Asuseni. “There’s hardly any mark left over, even. He’ll recover splendidly and be able to resume his work as though nothing happened on the morrow, but I wonder if he’ll forgive young Hana,” Jak says, rubbing his beard.

“I wouldn’t be so understanding if I had a sword run through my stomach for her sake,” Asuseni glares at me.

I wince and sigh, my head hanging. “I know. I hope Bryant is understanding of everything when he wakes up.” I look for a long moment at his strong, gentle, bearded face in the dim light shed by a spell that Asuseni has tethered to her, an orb of light hovering over her. Even his nose has been straightened as though it was never broken.

“You could have at least changed your clothes before returning, Hana. Cleaning bloodstains isn’t easy the longer they have to set.” Asuseni steps over to me and pinches her nose. “You smell like a charnelhouse after your ferocious display on the battlefield…”

With the corner of my lips lifting slightly, I feel like in her high manner, I’ve just gotten a ‘compliment’.

When the guards arrive, instead of Bret trots over to us with a clattering of sollerets on the firmly packed road. Ser Mordet leads the investigation and when he stops and takes a long moment to examine the site, summoning his own orb of light, he looks at me first. His questions are more grueling than expected, though it’s reassuring when I see Bret approaching us minutes later. Some of the guards hold lanterns up, obviously incapable of using basic magick spells. Their lanterns illuminate the scene, showing me more vividly the gore left over from the fight.

Ser Mordet says seriously, eyeing Bret momentarily, and returning his attention to me, “In your own words, tell me what happened to these five slain men and this wounded good man.” His eyes narrow seriously as he recognizes the café’s owner. Scanning more, he spots another familiar face and says, “Ah, Carl. I’m not surprised.”

I answer firmly, though his attention isn’t on me at the moment, “This man followed Bryant, the café’s owner, and his maids were also present. We were all ambushed while walking up this backstreet.” I move on to say something of what happened, “The other two of us maids ran as soon as I was able to open a way for them to escape. These six were intent on raping us all and killing Bryant to silence him.”

Ela or Delara, nods supportively and adds her piece, “They were acting very creepy. Three showed up in front of us here and the other three were following us from before and I didn’t hear them…” She reaches up, touching her ears and blushes, quickly shifting her appearance to that of a pure human. Ser Mordet’s lips twist for a moment. “Um… and there was nowhere to go.” Ela finishes, straightening, her face still sunset colored.

“And then?” Mordet asks, frowning. “That sounds like a neat trap.”

“It was,” I say, beyond exhausted by now. “Asuseni, her Ladyship here stepped in, throwing me her rapier over the leader’s, Carl’s, head, who happens to still be alive to tell the tale at least.” I glare down at Carl’s unconscious form. “For now.”

“Such bloodlust. “ Asuseni frowns. “In any case, I don’t know what sword she’s talking about.”

“Really?” Shifting into the birds dancing on the lake stance, I close the distance between us, walking on the ballpoints of my feet to Asuseni and grab the handle of her parasol and heave out a length of her sword from its hidden scabbard in her parasol.

Ser Mordet stares at her sword and then at me. His eyes shift to Asuseni and his eyes narrow while she adjusts her immaculate, shiny hair. “How surprising. I guess father is far too anxious for my safety.”

“Where are your guards?” I ask softly.

“Somewhere.” Asuseni smiles. 

“Alright.” I laugh and look at Sir Mordet again. “She loaned me this sword and I used it to kill a few of our attackers, although they didn’t give me much choice.” I suppress the urge to blush. The fact that I’m new to the sword is probably the reason why I wasn’t able to hold back. If I was stronger, maybe I could have done it without taking lives. “The remaining two spontaneously combusted.”

“Really?” Mordet looks at the charred corpses of the two that Asuseni dispatched with ease. “It happens sometimes. However…” His eyes narrow and Bret steps forward, putting himself between us, the same way he did at the gate when I first came here. “She speaks the truth, Ser.”

“Did she?” Ser Mordet’s lips tighten around his teeth. “These men are card-carrying adventurers all. You want me to believe that she faced six men and lives to tell the tale with only a scratch under her eye? What of that?”

Jak grins broadly and bows floridly in a way that I never expected from a broken down old countryman. “As you know, I’m known to some by my rightful name, Lord Shaja of dead Morga. I vouch for my student, Hana’s character. She acted purely out of self-defense.”

“Another of your students? I suppose it makes sense given the known facts about you.” Mordet looks at Jak with a startled look. “Do you reclaim the privilege of your old rank in a dead nation for a mere student?”

Asuseni looks at me with thoughtful eyes. She turns her eyes on Mordet and says, “I will take my leave. I’ve had enough of all this silly investigation. I’m going to sleep.”

Ser Mordet opens his mouth, but Asuseni has already disappeared… without a trace. 

With a sigh, Ser Mordet stares at us with suspicion-filled eyes. He looks at two soldiers and points at Bryant. “Nobles… two men take this citizen to his café. I believe he has a loft above it. We’ll ask him a few questions later to see if what he says corroborates what you claim took place.” 

The two fur-lined soldiers he indicates salute crisply and bend to lift Bryant between them and trot off with him. “The rest of you, clean this up. Check the deceased’s possessions. And you.” He looks at me pointing with a quivering finger. “I don’t entirely believe your alibi, but I’ll let you go tonight, for my own student, Bret’s sake. Here in Haldor’s stand, his vouchment is worth more than a retired Mulgan lord’s.”

He looks at Jak with a sharper look. “Your rank is meaningless here and today… and assuming you’re correct about this vagrant’s identity, you gain no authority by its revelation here, nor have either of you any weight to throw around by using it such. If the two of you continue to make trouble in Haldor’s Stand, I’ll throw the both of you into cells without any hesitation.”

“Doesn’t it matter that those men wanted to ravish our bodies?” Ela asks Ser Mordet with sad eyes, looking up into his cold face.

Scowling at her, Ser Mordet shakes his head. “We’ll interrogate Carl and verify your case as well as speaking with Bryant to get his side of things.”

“The rapist will probably lie.” Ela frowns.

“Probably so.” Ser Mordet says simply. “That’s why we’ll be using some stern methods on that one to get the right of things.” He turns away while the street is cleared, his cloak billowing behind him. “Go home and have a bath.” He looks directly at me over his shoulder and turning back, he continues on his way.

Back home, I furiously scrub at my dress, working to get these stubborn blood stains out of the fabric with freezing fingers as I scrub the dress using a washing board set in a barrel.

*Scrub* *Scrub* *Scrub*

Freaking annoying medieval technology. Shit. Damn it… I want to learn magic! There has to be a better way to do this than spending four hours of my sleep.

My hands feel like the fingers want to drop off. They numbly throb. Ela shoulders me and smiles. “Let me help you. It’s not good to soak your fingers too long when the water’s this cold.”

With red hands, I gratefully hand the hem of my dress to Ela and she seriously scooches over to take my place as I walk over to the hearth and warm my fingers. “I’ll take over as soon as my hands stop cramping. Isn’t there a spell that Jak might know to take out bloodstains, just like that?” I ask, looking at Bret, sitting on his sofa.

“I wouldn’t know any.” Bret says simply. “I can’t use any magick, as you may recall.”

“I meant Jak… maybe there’s something he could do…”

“If you think so, stop scrubbin’ at your dress and wait for the morning,” Bret suggests.

“She won’t be able to go back to work if Jak can’t help then.” Ela says as she rubs at my dress, sloshing water around, accompanied by the grating noises that the washboard makes.

“Oh, is that truly the reason why you’re trying to remove the stains?” Bret grumbles, leaning back with his arms spread. “Did you think about whether Bryant would let you come back into the café after getting him severely injured, nearly killed, and all for the sake of your own security? Not to mention getting yourself and every one of his maids raped and most likely killed. Phaw… I think not.”

Pursing my lips, I nod. “Asking him to come along seemed the best way to avoid trouble with Carl, but…”

“But it didn’t go well, right, your highness?”

“Don’t call me that, Bret.” I scowl. “You didn’t believe any of what…”

Bret cuts me off angrily. “I believe what Jak said—to a point. I don’t think an old dodder like him could throw me around with such ease… didn’t believe.” Bret looks at me with a firm eye. “That aside, heroes and travelers from another world… bah!” He throws an arm out as though he’s throwing a chessboard’s pieces onto the floor after a poorly played game. “It’s all fucking—nonsense! What I can sink my teeth into, what of it all that I can wrap my damned mind around is only one part: your being a princess.” Bret barks a laugh. 

“You look it. Otherwise, it’s all fucking malarkey.”