Saorise did not watch as Peter was again rejected by the Sword of Excavor. She had watched him enough to know that the Victory that Excavor was looking for was not so simple. Did she view Peter as lesser for not understanding? Surprisingly, no. Peter was intelligent, strong and ambitious. They were all powerful traits. Traits that had yet to be challenged or broken. She, despite her efforts, was not his equal in this. She could challenge him, but not as an enemy. And an enemy was what he needed now. Specifically, an enemy that could not be tricked or over-powered.

Filled with the knowledge of the Soul Realm, Saorise willed herself to be conscious even in her dreams. Rather than the cave she's been in before, she found herself floating high above the East's endless forests.

A cloudless night sky high above the tree tops instantly captured her, and for the briefest moment she was utterly mesmerised by its beauty.

The wind passed her, heading West, and like that her mind snapped to the task at hand. Saorise willed the wind to carry her away from the home she had always known.

She flew West, in the distance spotting the end of the green and lush forests that were her home. Then, it was not trees that filled the land beneath her, but endless grassy plains spotted with villages, towns, farms, and even a city of two. There were forests, but none were as vast as her home, none as wild or connected to Leisha. There was a disconnect there. Like the trees, the land, even the people and animals could not think for themselves, or if they did, they were unclear, meek, or fearful.

To Saorise, Wendolan looked pretty, but it felt as cold as the cave where Excavor's sword awaited.

The towering capital of Wesenhall was like a dark shadow on the horizon. The royal palace on the northern side with spires reaching imposingly towards the sky. The city beneath large enough to house over a million people. Saorise's eyes were drawn to the south-east of the city though where a lonely abandoned manor stood, overgrown and wild. She could not help but smile as the wind swirled towards it beneath her. Yes, this would be her home here, the only place even remotely fitting for Leisha's Warrior.

The wind did not pause in its duty to ferry her though, it kept taking her west, over more farms and cities until the grasslands became hills, then mountains.

It was here that she found two great armies on either side of a great fortress wall between two mountains. The only passable space between the Western Merchant Alliance and Wendolan.

Saorise had had very few dealings with the Western Merchant Alliance. They had rose to power several centuries before when they’d grown tired of the Wendolan’s Royal Family’s exorbitant taxes. The Merchants there, rich from their mineral veins in their mountainous land, had declared themselves independent, and had sealed off the only path through the mountains from Wendolan with a great rock slide in the Western Pass.

The Wendolan King had been enraged, but his concubines had been smart.

The West, despite their will for independence, had little in the way of farmable land. Wendolan on the other hand had an over-abundance. The Wendolan King of the time, with a whisper or two from his concubines, had built Westhaven Fortress at the Wendolan end of the pass, then, when they’d finished, they’d built another Fortress, Broken Ledge Fortress, just a kilometre from the rock-like landslide.

By the time they were finished, the West were starving, and too prideful to start removing the rocks, they’d gone to Clarisse. Always up for a profit, Clarisse had been even worse than Wendolan in the prices in charged for tax and trade.

Finally, the Western Merchants had come crawling back, only for the Wendolan King to refuse them.

If the Merchants wanted Trade, then Wendolan would Trade…but only on Wendolan’s terms.

The Merchant Alliance had taken two centuries to work itself slowly out of the noose it had strung around it’s own neck, building it’s own independence from the ground up.

Now, the fruits of it’s efforts, an army that dwarfed the Wendolan one. That expanded through the pass and out to the overrun Broken Ridge Fortress.

The Wendolans had not been entirely stupid. They’d retreated to the more defendable position. Westhaven was three times larger and it’s wall five times thicker than the one at Broken Ridge. It had never been breached, and it seemed to Saorise that the Wendolan forces were relying on that.

Saorise felt herself descend over the army of the Merchants, and all around she saw the symbols of the three great merchant families combined into one, the hammer, the sickle, and the sword.

United. No wonder the armies here were so expansive. The Merchant Alliance was called an alliance, but the three great families had been in struggles for power within it since it’s inception. Something had brought them together now after so long, or perhaps someone.

Was there another God’s Warrior among this army?

But even as Saorise though it, she found herself drawn not to the army, but to the mountainside high above it. There, she found a small cave, lonely and partially hidden by foliage. If not for the small glow from within from firelight, Saorise would have indeed thought it was empty and questioned why she was here.

Saorise felt her feet touch the cold stone, not quite as cold as she expected. She stepped forward, but even as she did she realised that her feet touching the ground was a mistake. Something had sensed her, and it was coming, fast.

Curious still, Saorise hurried inside the cave, pausing as a turn to find a girl, no more than twelve, laying among furs beside the firelight. There, in the shadows of the wall, a wooden flute with intricate and ancient carvings upon it in his hand, a man of younger appearance stepped forward, his eyes fathomless as he cast them on Saorise.

“Go, before you bring them here to her”.

Saorise needed no other warning, with a last glimpse at the little black-haired girl on the ground, Saorise turned and fled back out of the cave, leaping up into the night sky as a great black shadow swept up from below and reached out.

Saorise turned, summoning her bow with her mind and drawing the bow strong back.

“You are not welcome here”.

The arrow split the air, and as the darkness reared up to swallow her, Saorise was sure she heard it scream.