Captain Yelena Stark knelt in the ashes of a dead man’s home and wished she’d been faster.

  “Damn these pigs,” Sergeant Stensen muttered, studying the marred remains of the farm’s inhabitants.

  Yelena nodded, cursing the monsters in her native tongue of Mayandon. Several strands of her bright red hair fell loose and forgotten across her face, veiling her fierce expression from the rest of her men. Her gloved fingers dug into the dying cinders, uncaring of the heat. Let the pain come. She deserved it.

  It had taken them nearly a full hour to collect all the parts of the corpses. After the grizzly work, they’d determined that four humans had lived here. Four humans she’d failed. Four citizens who’d been waiting, even praying, for her to show up. For someone to help.

  No one had come.

  And in their collection of the charred bones, she noticed that all of them bore teeth marks. Most of the larger bones had been cracked open to expose the marrow beneath. It filled her with equal measures of disgust, anger, and guilt.

  “When we find them, I’m going to make them burn for this. Burn for all of these damned massacres!” Stensen growled.

  Again, Yelena nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  They hadn’t been fast enough. She hadn’t been fast enough.

  Kneeling as she was in the charred debris, she made a promise to the dead farmers.

  “May your souls rest in Ardent’s light once we destroy the monsters who did this. I swear on my suit and sword that you will be avenged.” Yelena stared at the threadbare doll she’d found with the smallest of the corpses. “I will make this right.”

  She rose to her full height, Archimedes clinking against the red steel plates of her armor. To her endless shame, the greatsword strapped to her back had yet to taste the blood of these orcs.

  Her squad had been hunting them for three weeks now, and by the trails of blood they left, they’d returned to their elusive home in the shroud. She knew from hard experience that hunting them in the voidlands would not only be fruitless but extremely dangerous. Not to mention all of her knights were tired, saddle-sore, and in need of a strong drink.

  There was only so much death one could stomach before their bitterness and anguish grew to be unbearable, and she was no exception.

  Yelena swiveled on her heels and looked at her warriors. There were twelve total, including Stensen. Thirteen riders in all. Thirteen against a horde of murderous orcs. She would take these knights over an army any day of the week.

  They met her gaze, and she could see their clenched jaws, quivering fists, and even a few angry tears tracing thin lines against dirt-stained cheeks.

  “Today, we failed these people,” Captain Stark began, her voice stoic. “We are Ardent’s sword in this land, and today, his call for justice went unanswered.”

  Yelena carefully watched her squadron. She noticed the surprise at her words. The anger.

  Good. Let their fires burn again, even if my words are the kindling.

  “Today, we were not knights of the realm. We were selfish. Slow,” she continued in a clipped tone, meeting the eyes of anyone who dared.

  “What are ya getting at?!” Private Corvin was the first to argue. “We know we failed, cap’n. No need to rub our noses in it!”

  She wasn’t surprised. He was the easiest to rile up, she’d found. And with his words, he spoke what was on everyone’s mind.

  Yelena gave him a grateful nod, which only seemed to piss the knight off more. She spoke before he could ruin her momentum.

  “What I’m getting at is that this day, and all its mistakes, all its failures, is the last time it happens. Is that understood?!” Captain Stark shouted.

  “Yes, ma’am!” came the beleaguered response.

  “Will you allow a day like today to happen again?!” She pressed.

  “No, ma’am!”

  A little louder. A few more of her knights stood taller, a bit of their old fire returning.

  “Will you let another family die because you were too slow?!”

  “No, ma’am!”

  Louder.

  “Will you be strong?! For them?! For yourself?! For me?!” She yelled.

  At the same moment they bellowed their ‘Yes, ma’am!’, the crossbeam of the house split in two, sending sparks everywhere. Yelena used the momentum to her advantage.

  “Blood for the fallen!” she roared to her squad.

  “Blood for the free!” they all shouted back, raising fists and weapons alike into the smoky air.

  “Mount up, my warriors!” Captain Yelena Stark ordered. “We ride for Thistlebrush. We’ll clean up, train hard, and return for these bastards’ heads!”

  Every single knight—Corvin and Stensen included—whooped and hollered their approval. A grim smile broke the stoic mask across her features, and she gave her squad a nod. Sending one final prayer on behalf of the four dead farmers, Yelena swept from the ashes of their home, vowing again to never be this slow again.

  She was level 28—just two away from her class evolution. If she could just make it there, she’d have the stats and the renewed power to keep those vows.

  Just a little longer.

  If she played her cards right, their brief hiatus in Thistlebrush would also give her enough time to work on her other project.

  God, I hope I’m right about this.

  She hadn’t told anyone what she was planning, or what she found out in the shroud.

  Swinging her legs up and around her massive chestnut warhorse, she gently tapped the reins. “Come on, Gallant. Let’s go home.”

  The horse, to his credit, chuffed his approval and began to steer them back in the direction of Thistlebrush.

  It didn’t take them long to get back to the Northern gate of the city. They passed quite a few wagons and even a few caravans on their way. All of them were polite enough—or, perhaps, intimidated enough—to veer off to the side of the cobblestone road to let the thirteen of them pass.

  The captain gave them all respectful nods, though many studied her with suspicion written plainly across their eyes. A few even had the gall to spit on the ground after she’d passed. That was fine. She knew what kind of figure she struck.

  She was Mayandon. Everyone knew the signs. If her insanely hefty greatsword wasn’t a dead giveaway, her long legs and red hair were. Yelena was accustomed to the lewd glances and distrustful comments.

  That was fine. She’d prove them all right to fear the Mayandon, even if she was the last one alive.

  Once I find it, I’ll show them all, Yelena reminded herself, her grip tightening on the saddle’s pommel. It’s got to be somewhere in that strange city.

  Unbidden, her gaze swept to the subject of her thoughts. Between the shroud and Thistlebrush proper, the Titanhold slums loomed. Its uneven rooftops were barely visible from her current viewpoint, but it was what was hidden just beyond that drew her desires. The grand ruins of Titanhold itself.

  She would find it, no matter what. She would find the device that could awaken her bloodline.

  Captain Stark straightened her spine as her squad approached the gates.

  “Skewer a few pigs for us, ey, Cap’n?” the guard at the gate asked, his rural accent stronger than the drink he was hiding behind his back.

  She quickly noted the two red lines marked on the left side of his chestplate, just over his heart.

  “Open the gates, corporal,” Stark commanded in her best captain's voice.

  She could practically hear the urgent, but slight, shake of Sergeant Stensen’s head behind her. The corporal mouthed an ‘oh’ that left nothing to the imagination, but soon relayed her orders. Yelena rolled her eyes.

  Almost out of habit, she counted how many guards were present at this gate, and which appeared to be inebriated. When she completed her mental tally, she made a note to ensure Corvin didn’t intermingle with these fools. He was still too new and impressionable. The rest of her knights knew her ways, and she’d gone to great lengths to earn their trust. She didn’t have his, but would make sure to change that in the coming weeks.

  When she reached level 30 and had them all covered in their prey’s blood, she would guarantee their loyalty. She will have kept her promise for vengeance and proved herself a capable leader.

  Together, the thirteen of them trotted southward through the city, toward the center of town where their headquarters were. This northern section of the town was, by far, the most opulent. Though few nobles chose to stay this far away from the relative safety of the heartlands, they did live here, and Yelena counted each of their estates as she passed them.

  The most gaudy of all the mansions, however, was the mayor’s. The Vaskir estate was rimmed with an iron fence tipped with quite the nasty combination of spearheads and runes. She could only guess as to how many wards and traps their defenses possessed.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Yelena scrunched her nose up at the thought of the Vaskirs. From her time at the Crimson Imperial Academy, she knew that the Vaskirs were far from the highest-ranking nobles in town. Yet, despite their comparatively low birth, their current patriarch was remarkably well-connected. It must have been through one of those connections that landed him his role as Thistlebrush’s mayor.

  “Here we are, boy,” Yelena whispered to Gallant, letting the powerful steed navigate across the rim of the vast town square.

  When they entered the red knight’s black stone compound, she could immediately tell something was off. Sure, the wards around the fortress prevented anyone from clearly hearing anything inside, but even before she traversed across the threshold, she could tell. Too many people were running about, many of them either carrying stretchers or on top of them.

  Gallant stepped across the invisible line, and sound roared into her highly tuned ears. Her perception stat immediately went to work compensating for the influx, and she eventually could parse through bits of the shouted dialogue.

  “Need three more healing potions! The good stuff!”

  “Damn pigs! They ambushed us! They were everywhere! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”

  “...Flakerash. I saw him with me own damn eyes! Don’t give me that look. I’m not hallucinatin’. It was him! I swear on me mother’s tomb!”

  Captain Stark took it all in less than three heartbeats.

  “Sergeant, see to it our squad stables our horses. I’m going to the commander to see if the border guards need our assistance,” Yelena ordered.

  “But, ma’am,” Stensen started, but the moment he saw the raw ferocity in her gaze, he backed down. “Yes, Captain. I’ll make sure they stable Gallant too, and have a few of the squires fetch extra feed for each of the horses. We’ll be in our barracks on standby until you say otherwise.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Yelena replied with a grateful nod.

  She dismounted, careful to keep Archimedes’ long tip away from clipping the stallion’s hide as she did. With long strides, she moved through the storm of bodies toward the compound’s central building. People instinctively shifted out of her way. That was what you did when a six-foot-tall knight in glimmering red armor and a massive sword walked toward you.

  “She’s back,” a few squires and privates whispered, but her keen senses easily picked them up.

  Yelena almost turned to give them her best glare, but she glimpsed a few of the older boys nudging their friends and frantically shaking their heads.

  Good.

  Her reputation was finally preceding her.

  Still, she heard a few muttered curses followed by the word ‘rust.’

  Her leather gloves creaked as her hands formed fists. But she strode ever onward. She had a job to do.

  Yelena marched inside and quickly took the stairs up to the third floor of the building, passing a slew of runners, scribes, and knights on her way. Most got out of the way, though a few cursed as they nearly tripped on Archimedes’ long reach.

  When she reached Commander Booth’s double doors, she could already hear the screaming. Nevertheless, she gave the Major a crisp salute as she waited to be addressed at the door’s threshold.

  “That’s not what happened, Booth!” Lieutenant Commander Derrick was slurring.

  “Then tell me what happened, Derrick, or so help me, I will throw you out of my Ardent-damned window and give your position to sobbing Sathem over there!” Booth shouted back, every word laced with his usual sarcasm.

  Today, however, her commanding officer’s tone was filled with a second emotion.

  Rage.

  “I’m telling you, that damned runt was in on it,” Derrick said, shoving the healer, Barnaby, away from addressing his many wounds.

  Just how bad was the attack if even Derrick’s considerable constitution isn’t keeping up with the damage? Yelena wondered.

  “He must’ve made a deal with Flakerash, or some other pig bastard. I don’t know, Booth. All I know was that me and mine went to go and check on some screaming we heard through the shroud, found him, then all hell broke loose,” Derrick explained, his vowels elongated by whatever pain medication Barnaby had given him.

  Yelena remained by the threshold, the salute of her closed right fist over her heart steady and unchanged in spite of the heated argument.

  Booth pinched the bridge of his nose, his oily hair falling to one side of his aging face. “Flakerash. How stupid do you think I am? A void’s damned runt magically got into contact with the orc general. Just like that. That’s the story you’re going with?”

  “He was there, Booth! I swear it! I swear it on all the booze and whores in the whole wide world! I don’t know how, or why, but I lost all my knights to him and his horde.” Derrick leaned forward, his various cuts bleeding at the sudden movement.

  To his side, Yelena heard the healer curse softly, but began reapplying some sort of salve to Derrick’s chest. The lieutenant commander swatted Barnaby away.

  So, I take it the dilemma has passed. Otherwise, neither of these men would be up here arguing what happened. Probably.

  Shockingly, the more she listened to Derrick, the more she reluctantly began to believe him. At least, that he believed what he was saying. She knew how devilish of a liar the man could be when he wanted to, but none of the usual slipperiness had entered his voice. But, if anything, his current earnestness was his downfall.

  If you always act like an honorless snake, no one believes you when you try to act the dragon, Yelena privately recited.

  It had been a horribly cumbersome scroll to translate, but Ardent above did it have some scathing proverbs like that one.

  “It’s all true, Commander,” Sathem moaned, face covered by his meaty hands. “Lori… Lori and I almost caught the rat bastard! We rushed to catch him after Derrick told us to, but he gave us the slip, he did! We only caughts up with him at some tiny hole in the walls, but he…”

  Sathem sobbed again, and Yelena began to grasp why.

  Lori’s dead, she realized.

  There was simply no other explanation. Lori, who had made Yelena’s life a living hell these past months, would’ve never let a lowborn like Sathem give a report in her stead. If she’d merely been injured, she would’ve told him to break protocol and wait for her to do it. And given Sathem’s unhealthy fixation with the brawler-classed woman, he would have.

  Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later.

  “He wasn’t alone. The… The spider was with him. Helping him escape, she was! But my Lori, she… I…” Sathem let out another wheezing sob.

  “Well, spit it out, sergeant! I haven’t got time for your damned moaning and crying!” Booth roared into the much larger man’s face.

  The vitriol seemed to shake Sathem to his core. He sputtered to a stop, looking up at the shorter man with poorly veiled betrayal written across his face. Yelena watched on, half-hoping the massive brute would swing on the highest-ranking officer in town.

  He didn’t.

  All the fight seemed to deflate from the big man, and he slumped into a wooden chair.

  “I caught the spider with one of the harpoons. Lori helped me kill her, but the bitch returned the favor. The runt we was huntin’ slipped through the Spider’s tunnel. I tried to catch him with my roots, but–”

  Sathem never saw the punch coming. One second, Major Booth was standing a few feet away from him, shock and fury gathering behind his eyes like a storm. The next, his fist was crashing into the lower-leveled knight’s jaw with the force of an avalanche.

  The sergeant flew horizontally through the room and crashed into the stone wall near Yelena, denting the reinforced rock. He groaned and sank to the floor.

  It was only then that Booth appeared to notice Yelena’s standing there, crisp salute and all.

  “Oh.”

  That was it. That was her commanding officer’s only response to seeing her after three weeks away, hunting through the wilds on his whim. She fought to keep her expression neutral, but she was just so damned tired. Three weeks of horror. Of sleepless nights and countless hours in the saddle, eating nothing but cold rations the entire time.

  “What’s the rustbitch doing here?” Derrick asked, ignoring her entirely.

  She bristled at the insult, but just barely managed to keep from stabbing the officer through the throat with Archimedes.

  “At ease, Captain Stark. I’ll take your report in one damned moment. I need to deal with these children first,” Booth said, also ignoring Derrick’s blatant disrespect for a fellow knight.

  Honorless snake, Yelena thought as she turned her gaze from Derrick to her commanding officer.

  Booth strode over to where Sathem lay dazed, each stomp of his boots sounding like the angry verdict of some forgotten god.

  “Sergeant Sathem, for misappropriating one of the harpoons reserved for enemy elites, and for getting your partner killed by your weakness, I charge you with three lashes and the next fortnight of sewage and fish market patrols,” Booth declared, his voice iron.

  “And me? Are you going to give me lashes with that weak wrist of yours?” Derrick teased, his words practically illegible through the slur.

  “Sorry, Commander. He wouldn’t take any of the healing potions I–” Barnaby started, but Booth raised a hand to cut him off.

  Wait, why would Derrick refuse healing potions? Yelena wondered. Then it struck her, and her opinion of the man lowered even further, if that was even possible. He wanted to appear wounded so that Booth wouldn’t punish him as severely.

  Her lips curled up in disgust at the underhanded move.

  “You say a bonepicker caused the death of your squad?” Booth said. “Did you at least inspect him before his master plan killed several nobles? Nobles, that I might remind your dumb ass, I’m going to have to explain to Mayor Vaskir why they won’t be joining us for dinner this evening?”

  Derrick grimaced, looking truly pained for the first time since Yelena had arrived at Booth’s office.

  “No,” the lieutenant commander finally admitted.

  “And you?” Booth whispered, pointing a finger at Sathem’s chest.

  The man shook his head vigorously, still clutching his jaw.

  “Like I said. Children.” Booth sighed.

  “But he was tall and had brown hair and cheap clothes! He also spoke with an accent I’d never heard before. Might be from one of the inner cities,” Derrick added quickly.

  “That’s right!” Sathem agreed, though she could barely understand him through his injury. “And he was barefoot last I saw him!”

  Yelena watched Barnaby stiffen by Derrick’s side. None of the other men in the room noticed, but her keen eyes didn’t miss the tightening of the healer’s shoulders, and how he immediately started to look everywhere but at the Commander.

  He knows something. She considered forcing the issue, but decided against it. Nothing was worse than having a healer as powerful as Barnaby on her bad side. Still, she filed this information away for later.

  “Fine,” Booth said with finality. “Stark, post a reward in all the usual places for any information about our elusive runt. Brown hair. Tall. Barefoot. I doubt we’ll get anything helpful, as that describes every whore and her son from here to Thurnfeld, but at least the Mayor will be glad we’re doing something about this idiotic storm you put us in, Derrick, you’re hereby banned from the Vaskir Estate for one week.”

  “What?!” Derrick shouted indignantly.

  That's it? Sathem gets lashes, and Derrick can't go to fancy dinners? What sort of justice is this?!

  “Yes, sir. I’ll see it done,” she responded crisply, smoothly speaking over the wounded lieutenant commander.

  Booth rolled his eyes, but waved at Derrick and Sathem. “You two are dismissed. Stark, give me the report on your hunt.”

  Slowly, the two men, silently followed by Barnaby, slipped out of the office. Derrick shoulder-checked her on the way out.

  “Good luck, rustbitch. I warmed him up for you,” Derrick whispered hotly into her ear as he passed.

  She didn’t justify that with a response.

  Instead, she slid into the office with a warrior’s grace and gave her report. It was quick, concise, and professional—everything she’d striven to be since joining the red knights. Booth couldn’t have cared less if he’d been dead.

  In the end, Booth had reprimanded her failure with gate duty for the next week. The only true sting was the lack of off-duty time for her and her entire squad. That was going to be tough. She’d have to delay her investigations into Titanhold for later, and dip into her savings to buy everyone drinks that night.

  That was fine. It was annoying, but it was fine.

  Still, as she left the commander’s office, she had to wonder.

  Just who in the hell could slip past a horde of orcs, get help from the Spider, and then evade capture by two fully fledged knights?

  Whoever he was, Yelena prayed they never crossed paths.