It sometimes needs,

The simplicity of a name.

For your world to be claimed.

Birth, Janis the White.

Nay checked her loot.

It had taken her two hours to lose the Virnyl guards. They were unable to come closer to her without her being aware of it, and she had avoided each one of their attempts to catch her. In the end, after many back-and-forths, her fresh tracks had lost themselves in her old ones, and she managed to shake them off completely.

She had gone back to her spot on the hill where she could surveil the road. She stood there patiently, feeling a bit cold as she did not dare make a fire. She was waiting there for now, but fortunately, the sun was warming her up and drying her drenched clothes.

Quar Birrebus’ belt was heavy. It had not only a series of beautiful daggers that would replace Nay’s broken one, but the sword was better than her own too. It was slightly too heavy for her though. Moreover, there was a pouch she hadn’t spotted when taking the belt that contained a large quantity of gold. As her own funds were running low, this was good news.

She took two of the daggers to add them to her belt and picked up the pouch and put in inside her backpack. She didn’t really know what to do with the rest of the items on the belt, and so decided to just let it stay on the floor for now.

Nay took a bite out of a piece of smoked meat. It was too salty, and even bitter. Nay had the desire to spit it out but forced herself to eat. She had bought her rations at a tavern on the road a few days back, the cook inside of her wanted to go back there to have a chat with the one responsible for this abomination.

She looked upon the road. Her pursuers had fallen back to the checkpoint since she had lost them. They had entered one of the tents used by the soldiers and had not left it since. They were almost certainly talking about what had happened, and what their next move would be.

The young Legio had no idea what they would decide. They were tired, most likely furious. But the ease at which she managed to enter their camp was undeniable. If she had wanted to, Quar Birrebus would be dead right now, and they knew that. With a bit of luck, this would be enough to convince them to wait for backup.

Her clothes were finally dry when the tent’s door opened. A young soldier carrying what seemed to be a letter ran towards the closest watchtower.

Nay smiled. This was a message carried by flying Hivere, and it meant that they were asking for some backup. The young Legio looked at the belt on the floor. Letting such beautiful craftmanship there broke her heart, but she had no time to get used to a new blade. She sighed and decided to only take two more knives from the belt. She left the rest to rust. This was all she could take.

She got up and began walking away from the checkpoint. She was in no hurry to adventure in the forest on her own. A sprained ankle would ruin her chances to reach the capital.

So, with a slow and careful step, the young Legio entered the darkness of the ambient vegetation.

Days passed, and Nay had reached a new conclusion. The frequency of checkpoints was too high. Such an organisation, just to slow her down by forcing her to go around the relatively easily bypassed checkpoints? It made no sense. Nay was currently gazing upon the second blocked road she had reached in the same day.

It was much more resembling a…

Nay felt a dark expression appear on her face.

“They are deploying the army.” She said out loud. If you thought about it at first, it was not logical. Why deploy troops in the middle of the Imperatrix’ land? But if you considered what was happening in Gite, it suddenly made sense. Did the Imperatrix expect the angel to go to Leïn? It was reasonable.

This was another reason for Nay not to use her power. Bringing the malefic creature to the most heavily populated area in the world was the last of her wishes.

The young Legio looked towards the coniferous woods to the north. They were dreary, and she had no desire to trudge through those muddy swamps. She finally decided to wait for a large convoy, to catch a ride as a stowaway. One arrived half an hour later. Slipping past the guards’ quite lax attention, she entered the last caravan of the convoy. It was full of chests on top of each other, clothes roughly thrown on top and some other packages seemingly made in quite a hurry. Those people were fleeing. Nobles or Bourgeois, considering the luxurious carriage at the front of the convoy and the quality of the clothes she was currently examining. Nay decided to sit on top of one pile of those clothing, making herself comfortable and waited for the convoy to cross the checkpoint.

She felt anxious, but quickly realized they were not even going to be stopped by the soldiers. They were not interested in them at all.

The familiar rhythm of the Yae’s cradled her. Nay removed her shoes, the blisters at her feet had burst for the second time now, and she grimaced when she saw the blood permeating her socks.

The burning pain only strengthened her fatigue, and, despite her efforts, she quickly fell asleep.

She woke up four hours later. The night was almost upon them and the vehicles were stopping.

Nay swore and put her shoes and backpack back on in a hurry. She could feel a guard coming closer, and she needed to be gone already.

She jumped out of the caravan, now completely at a standstill. As the guard emerged for her left, she hid behind the large wooden wheel on her right. She continued moving forwards, trying to make no noise, and hiding her figure by crouching, as the guard was going to continue his patrol her way. She touched the Yae’s neckline as she passed in front of him, trying to look the least threatening as possible. Fortunately, the large animal did not seem bothered by being overtaken like that.

Her focus on the Yae was stripped away by someone else’s Rreico. There were three people in the caravan in front of her, but she could feel that one of them had spotted her. Which was not possible as the curtains of the vehicle were closed, and she had made no sound.

Nay saw a little head and a pair of hands emerge from under the cloth curtain.

“Who are you?” Asked the little boy. Nay lost a few seconds thinking that this kid with brown hair had to be the same age as Lisana.

Then, her senses told her about something much more surprising.

“Why are you shining?” he asked.

His Rreico was hovering outside of his body. This boy would become a mage in the future, and even without his powers, he had to have noticed Nay’s, even if contained.

Her training was still lacking, it seemed.

Not really knowing what else to do. Nay shrugged her shoulders, gave him a big smile, then ran away.

She caught her breath once far away enough from the convoy. When she raised her head, she paused. The sinuous road, usually surrounded by trees or hills, was now opening to the colours of the rising sun. In front of her, the road was descending upon a gigantic valley littered with rivers, and at its centre stood a city that went beyond her understanding. Gite and Makaka? They were rural villages in comparison. The city was miles in size, surrounding four large rivers and an actual mountain completely. Nay was aware that eighty per cent of the kingdom’s population was supposedly living in the capital and its surroundings, but she had no frame of mind to visualise such a number. Now that she was actually seeing it, it felt even harder to imagine.

The view was sumptuous, the buildings seemed all made of stane. Nay wasn’t seeing any slums to the side of the city like Makaka. She saw farmer houses with shimmering roofs and quaint churches in the middle. What hadn’t been taken by the city was covered in fields and pastures, some the size of Gite itself.

At the flank of what Nay guessed was Zenith mountain, a two-mile high mountain top, stood the Imperatrix’ palace. Unexpectedly, it wasn’t a building covered in gold or precious stones, in fact, it looked like it was constructed with the same stones as most of the other houses of the city. What demarked it from everything else was its unbelievable architecture. It was nicknamed the green dragon, and Nay now understood why. It was built on the mountain’s flank, and because of that, it felt like it was a mile high. Its numerous towers, hanging gardens and bright lighthouses, gave the building the aspect of a dragon taking off. What would have been the beast’s head was the Imperatrix’s quarters. Even from here, Nay could see the cable car linking the almost sacred quarters to the rest of the palace.

Fredere had told her the stories many times, and she herself had read about this place a lot in her favourite tales about Victoria the Imperatrix’s jewel. There was only one way to enter the Imperatrix’s quarters, and this diagonal lift, one of the many scientific breakthroughs given by the Sage-Brothers of Adienha, was that only possibility. It was not really to protect the Imperatrix, as most of the time she was in the administrative portion of the palace or visiting the city, the reason was more symbolic. Very few were the individuals able to boast to have seen the insides of Her rooms.

It took half an hour for Nay to detach herself from the extraordinary view in front of her eyes. When the night had finally fallen, the city had lit up like fireworks, as if by magic, and Nay had had to sit down to admire the spectacle.

She made camp unreasonably close to the road, taking the extra risk just to continue admiring the city as she rested.

This peerless immensity still had a bitter aftertaste. It seemed even more obvious now that the young woman would never be found if she reached Leïn, but wasn’t that also the case for her family? How would she manage to find Lisana and Ra’fa there?

The next day, she was pleasantly surprised to notice that there were no more checkpoints. The road had grown massively in size, and the travellers, caravans, merchants, had doubled in number. Nay still did not like the crowd, but at least it helped her pass unnoticed.

This though, meant that her Rreico was not as useful as before. She could not extend her senses as far as before, as it brought terrible headaches if she tried. The amount of information was unbearable.

After a few hours travelling down the road, she felt something grip her stomach. An atrocious Rreico, something she had no way of defining, was blocking her path to the city. Nobody else seemed aware of this.

“Am I going crazy, again?” She whispered out loud, trying to calm her nerves with sarcasm. Usually, when she felt something like that, no one around her was alive. Lost in thought, she almost crashed into a young farmer.

“Hey! Be careful where you walk!” He said with a perfect imperial accent.

“I’m so sorry!” She hurriedly apologized. But he was not paying any attention to her anymore. He was solely focused on the young woman accompanying him. Cute with a sunny smile, it made Nay reminisce painfully about her younger sister.

Obviously, whatever this Rreico was, it had not wiped all the living things around.

Nay decided to carry on towards the rhythm of life. As she came closer, she realized it was coming from a watchtower ten or so yards away from the road.

The young Legio hesitated. Should she avoid this guard post? She had passed next to similar watchtowers dozens of times before. They did not control or inspect travellers; they were there to prevent banditry and accidents from happening.

She felt the familiar Rreico too late.

“Nay, daughter of Marke, you are under arrest for accessory to the murder of Commandare Redrick Darkstar, fleeing justice, refusing to come forwards to give testimony to a crime, and thievery of military equipment.”

The voice was powerful and cold. The young Legio instantly turned around to face Quar Birrebus. She wasn’t the only one, as everyone around her did the same, surprised by the decorated soldier.

The Commandare’s right hand continued.

“Get out of here! As acting Commandare, if you don’t scram, I’ll put you behind bars for a month.”

But the travellers were not sure what was happening, and some stayed there, looking confused. Nay looked behind her, ready to use the confusion to flee, but a dozen soldiers were coming from the guard post to cut off her escape.

“Biach.”

She heard the Virnyl guard unsheathe a sword. This had the immediate effect of making everyone around panic and leave in a hurry. Despite the chaos, Nay felt Quar Birrebus’ gaze fixed on her back. The strange Rreico had been a distraction, that was now clear, but how? Nay had to find out, she could not let any intel about the Rreico slip by.

No, she rectified herself. First, she needed to get out of here alive.

The armed man stood eight yards or so away from her. The road was emptying, and the young Legio could clearly see that she was getting surrounded. But those soldiers…they were simple village guards, not experienced fighters. Nay could see that through their formation, their weapons. Some of them were fat!

Nay put her hand on her sword’s handle but did not unsheathe it yet. The guards were putting quite some distance between them and her, which was without a doubt the result of the acting Commandare’s orders. Nay felt that they didn’t understand why, and some were openly ridiculing her.

“Lay down your weapons, Nay. Mine as well.” Quar commanded.

Nay did no such thing. “Where are the others?” She asked.

The Virnyl guard gave her a furious look, but answered, nonetheless.

“Gite needed them.”

“Lacking men?”

“Mh, mh.” He said, laconic.

A guard, a woman, to Nay’s surprise, interrupted them.

“Sir? Shouldn’t we arrest her?”

Quar Birrebus cut her off harshly.

“Stay there. Do not come closer. You are there to slow her down if she tries to flee, and that is all.”

“But…”

“STAY THERE!”

“Yes sir.”

The Commandare’s right-hand man took a step closer. Slowly, calculated.

Nay sighed.

“How did you catch me unaware?”

She spotted what seemed to be the mirage of a smile on the Virnyl guard’s face.

“I won’t answer that question. You are not an apprentice anymore.”

Nay closed her eyes and took one long breath. Her opponent used the opportunity to come closer, once more. She knew perfectly well what he was doing.

“What will you do if I surrender?”

“We’ll bring you back to Gite and you will be judged.”

“Looking at you, it doesn’t seem like I’ll avoid the death penalty.”

Nay felt his Rreico falter a very short instant.

“In other circumstances, your execution would not even have been considered, prison maybe.” He spoke more than usual, maybe showing his own restlessness about this decision. “I would have personally asked for servitude in the army. Under our orders. The Commandare himself acknowledged your talent, throwing that away is not in our best interest.”

“You want me dead.” Nay countered.

“Absolutely. I know without a doubt you are responsible, even indirectly, of Redrick’s death. You’re the only one he would have lowered his guard for. You were clearly his favourite. But my desires and what has to be done are two completely different things.”

Yes, Nay understood perfectly what he meant by that. She was responsible for the death of the man he respected the most, and he hated her. But Quar Birrebus wasn’t a man driven by emotions. He was cold and conniving. He would never have let his anger get the better of him.

“Why did you send Trinne to the plateau, then?”

“It was a necessity. The city is on the verge of exploding. Most of our ruling class, noble or bourgeois, are dead or missing. Putting the blame on the Duke’s daughter was the solution we found to appease the masses.”

“And you’re going to do the same thing about me?”

The Virnyl guard did not say anything back to her. As way of answering, he took one more step in her direction.

“I see.” Said the young Legio. Slowly, she unsheathed her sword and grabbed the dagger behind her back.

“Don’t do this, Nay. I want you alive for the trial.” Said Quar Birrebus.

Nay shook her head left and right.

“I cannot do that. My choice goes beyond you or even myself.”

Quar Birrebus recognized her resolve, and his expression hardened.

Nay felt the Rreico around her. The evil Rreico permeating through the watchtower, the confused and anxious rhythms coming from the guards surrounding her…and finally, the tranquil rhythm of life, lacking any apparent hatred and anger, of the man she had never managed to beat in combat.