Seraxa Moon had arrived and the Divine of Fire wasted no time asserting her dominance over her icy twin Qoryxa. Norali, in collusion with Seraxa, cast her sunlight, scorching the earth below. Balbaraq, ever the prankster, knew that he could not match Seraxa’s heat nor Norali’s brilliance; he offered no clouds to shield humanity from the light and the heat.

  Allison’s journey would’ve been far more comfortable if any of the Divine Scions had restricted Seraxa’s freedom. Zafrir lacked the power to push the slightest breeze her way. Celegana made the forest so dense that wind was locked away and humidity was oppressive. Yet, the trees were not so high along the road to be leafy parasols against Norali’s brightness. Dalis could’ve cried for humanity’s sweltering, sending showers of her cooling tears down upon Allison. Alas, Dalis did not appear to care for the suffering of others. Even Ovidon, the Builder, bore some of the blame for erecting this trade route through the Maypine Forest toward the kingdom’s capital.

  Though, truth be told, Gidi and Zamael may have been at the core of the problem. Without the war and the corruption of the spirit, this trip would’ve been unnecessary. On the other hand, the reason Allison needed to follow this road was because she adhered to Leverith. Finally, any of these could’ve changed should Meladon, the Divine King, chosen to command it otherwise.

  Allison adjusted her satin dress in a futile attempt to release some of the heat that held her captive. The rich maroon color—the signature hue of the Eckhard family—stored warmth like curves in a corset. With a chill along her spine, Alexia felt the eyes upon “Allison’s” corset. She yearned for the loose blue robes that kept her cool and concealed. This tight dress and the amethyst necklace accentuating and advertising her shape were not her.

  Yet she needed to be a highborn lady with a highborn lady’s figure. Thus, she had chosen to be descended of Sir Eck the Hard, the man who decided to brave the deadliness of the Sinful Steppe and mine Leveria’s greatest known source of meladonite. She was a distant relative of the legendary cognitive-affectomancer Maddeck Eckhard, a hero who followed his heart even when it led others to brand him as an anathema. She was daughter of Sir Timmeck Eckhard, a true friend who died defending a dream of peace.

  If she had to be someone else for a time, who better than Allison Eckhard? If only Allison didn’t need to wear tight dresses and shiny jewels.

  But she did. She knew enough about the world, personally having experienced it for eighteen years. Whether common or high, gazes fixated on the bodies of women. That pressure only went up the higher the woman’s family was in society. Alexia knew the way it pressed on her, and how it pressed exponentially harder on her best friend Princess Azurianna. For a woman like Allison Eckhard, who she was as a person would always be secondary. Alexia would never be comfortable with this but her culture appraised her worth upon the four b’s of bone structure, blemishes, body mass, and breast size.

  Perhaps she should be grateful that her worth was judged to be in the highest echelon. She was one of few highborn ladies that never went days without eating, forcing herself to vomit, spending angles applying cosmetics, risking dangerous surgeries or drinking experimental tonics to alter her appearance. Leverian society deemed her a worthy woman and made her life easier. It just wasn’t fair.

  All people were worth being valued, worth being loved. The only thing that should matter was how that person made you feel when you were with them. Did they make you smile? Did they make you laugh? Did they make you feel like you mattered? Did they help you love yourself and want to experience life? Did they share your tears and fears when you were hurting or scared? Did they celebrate your joys and accomplishments? Did they love you no matter what and do their best to show it?

  Life was lived inside of a body but life was about so much more than that body and what a man could do with it physically. The body was a temple and the spirit inside that temple was what really mattered. She had found that sometimes the greatest wisdom or beauty could be found within temples that would be ignored for their lack of sight appeal. Likewise, the most polished and extravagant temples could be holding toxicity within them.

  Life was about the spirit and the truth was Leverians had long mistaken the body for the spirit, especially for highborn women. Alexia hated it. She hated the way women were made to feel for things they had limited to no control over. She hated the way that millions of women over the millennia had looked at themselves and felt unworthy. She hated the everlasting self-consciousness. And she hated the way eyes were drawn to her like an alfur to honey.

  Azi often said that boys at the Arcanium were so focused on the mountain tops and the narrow pass that many of those cockbrains would only narrowly pass through the mountain of coursework.

  Alexia sighed, longing to see her best friend again then felt a pang of guilt for her hypocrisy as she remembered herself admiring her friend’s mountainous physique and the many longing fantasies she had throughout her life that were branded anathema. That was just one of the many secrets Alexia kept to herself, and right now it helped her feel kinship with Allison’s inverted ancestor Maddeck who was forced from the kingdom for loving men despite being the exact type of person that made the people around him feel special and cared for.

  Alexia adjusted the extravagant gown for the thousandth time in the last five days. The humidity along the Forest Road made the fabric stick to her skin and itch fiercely. Yet if she wore her concealing, yet otherwise revealing, robes she might as well forget about her plans.

  The highborn lady ran a hand along her cloak. It was silver velvet with the charging bull of Eckhard stitched in rich maroon. Seraxa had seen to it that Allison couldn’t wear her long cloak in the heat without being cooked like a nacobon. Alexia didn’t mind; the velvet felt soothing against the tips of her fingers and the cloak was acting precisely as the plan required. She felt the hard object concealed beneath it and smiled. If her best friend could see her now, her heckling would be legendary.

  Alexia shook her head to stay in the right mindset. I am Allison Eckhard, daughter of Sir Timmeck Eckhard, traveling Sapphirica to do whatever it is that lordlings do.

  Alexia distracted herself by twirling the pyrite rings on several of her fingers. It was not that Allison lacked the ability to acquire true gold. A golden ring would’ve made her plan fail. The pyrite, however, could still draw a bandit’s attention easily enough. The dress, the cloak, the rings, the necklace, the accentuation of beauty, these were the trap. A well-polished, poorly defended highborn lady was just as alluring to forest bandits as an impoverished and alone young woman was to crooked gatekeeps. If she traveled where bandits lurked, they would attack.

  Yet the plans of mortals meant naught to the Divine Thirteen. Plans were like arrows. The archer could spend days preparing the bow and the arrow for the task, then aim with the greatest precision, and the Divine would merely blow the arrow astray with a gust of wind. She had learned that in Mirrevar and in Ferrickton. Like an arrow, my plans are nothing to the Divine. How will my plans go awry this time? What wind will the Divine Thirteen blow my way today?

  Laden with worries of what could go wrong, her body too exposed to both eyes and arrows, Alexia kept reminding herself why she did this. She needed to eliminate these bandits for the Pinarus to secure Mirrevar. She was headed in the right direction, albeit by a much slower and less pleasant path. These bandits weren’t like the people of Ferrickton. This arrow needed to be loosed and who better than her?

  But the worst part of her disguise was that she wasn’t the only one in danger. She couldn’t look at the members of Calden’s Caravan without feeling like she was sacrificing the sheep to slay the wolf.

  Had Calden been a highborn woman, each day he would struggle to feel good enough. Alas, Calden was a lowborn man and his worth wasn’t judged in the aesthetics of his body but rather the amount of work his body could perform. Calden had the overbite and hair of a beaver but he was built with broad shoulders and thick muscles. Ironically, his cargo consisted of three wagons carrying wood-related resources and products from Maypine. After Allison had been rejected by one caravan that refused to escort her “pampered arse” and sought after by one caravan that seemed more likely to do things to her pampered arse, she had been fortunate enough to find Calden because Calden measured well on Alexia’s scales. He took care of people who wouldn’t survive on their own and treated them like family. The affable and earnest caravan leader offered to escort her if she would sing songs along the road. Allison Eckhard had gladly obliged even though Alexia was nervous about singing in front of others.

  While Calden drove the first wagon in the caravan, his brother Jonah led the second. Jonah had the same beavery look as his brother, and took particular pride in his beard. The brothers shouted back and forth at each other constantly, picking and prodding at each other at every bump in the road while the rest of the group laughed.

  Jonah’s son, also named Jonah, drove the third wagon. Young Jonah was already covered in hair with teeth protruding from his mouth when he smiled. He smiled a lot at Allison but averted his eyes when she looked his way.

  The final three members of the caravan were orphans on the edge of eighteen. Riding in the back of Jonah the Elder’s wagon was one of the tallest men she’d ever seen. Esrak was nearly as tall as Zander. Yet comparing Esrak to Zander was like comparing an ostrich to a dragon. Esrak was lanky and all his definition was in his calf muscles—which were quite formidable. His light hair was balding despite being in the prime of his youth and beneath it was a constant snarky grin as if he alone knew the world was a joke and everyone else was a fool. Though he performed his roles in the caravan without assistance, the medicans in the Arcanium would label him a halfwit.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Temos was a stocky bull of a man who would’ve received several labels from the medicans. Few emotions ever showed on a square face and even fewer words left his lips. With the exception of singing along with her, Alexia doubted he’d said more than ten words. When he did speak, she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Despite his broad build, impassive expression, and the giant battleaxe he carried, Temos was a source of steady warmth in the back of Calden’s wagon.

  Then there was Byron. Byron or “Bam” looked like a twig in the forest yet he talked as if he were bigger than a redwood sequoia. Bam and his sword were just as storied as Linus and his staff—if Bam was to be believed. Allison often chose to ride farther up the caravan to not be besieged by Bam’s legendary deeds from the back of Jonah the Younger’s wagon. Alas, the wagons were so close that Bam’s big voice could reach Calden at the head of the procession.

  Alexia caressed the velvet cloak, feeling Sunfire and Aurora underneath. When she wasn’t singing, or being beset by Bam’s stories, she spent most of her time replaying her plan in her mind and preparing her mental focuses for the spells she would need when the trap was sprung. She’d spent several days as a guest at the Pinnacle, not leaving until Sentinels were bound for Mirrevar and her plan was solidified.

  With Falen Pinarus’s assistance, she had concluded that these bandits had a predictable pattern over the past several seasons. They started with raids near Maypine then progressively moved outward until they started near Maypine again, masterfully avoiding Sentinel rangers. The cycle had already been chronicled three times. Based on the most recent encounters and current Sentinel activity, Alexia anticipated she would be attacked closer to the edge of the Maypine Forest; a destination they were now within reach of.

  She inhaled, held, and exhaled but her breathing was restricted by the corset. Alexia wondered whether Lady Allison would pout or bear this with dignity.

  “Lady Allison!” Bam yelled, climbing on the lumber pile in the back of the caravan. “Did I tell ye about the time I killed a feral couerl?”

  “You have not,” she answered, channeling Queen Hellena’s sugary voice of passive-aggressive politeness.

  “Awesome!” Bam continued, oblivious to Allison’s true predisposition toward the tall tale. “We’d logged the entire day before. My muscles were tight and hard— like iron.” Bam flexed his biceps. Allison couldn’t detect a change in definition.

  “So, I grab my sword and I says to these boys, ‘I need to loosen up with a hunt.’ They said, ‘Try not to kill anything too weak.’”

  Calden and the Jonahs chuckled. Temos shook his head and Esrak smiled on. Alexia didn’t know what Allison Eckhard would say to that.

  “So, I stroll into the woods with my sword danglin’ from my fingers all graceful and such.” Bam rolled an iron iota between his fingertips. It slipped out of his hand and fell in the wagon. Pretending it didn’t happen, he continued, “I could feel my body relaxin’ from the good stretch o’ the walk and the scent o’ the air. I walk for a couple o’ leagues, just stretchin’ and loosenin’.”

  Bam leaned forward. “All of a sudden, I get this feelin’,” Bam dramatically changed the tone of his voice as if he were telling a spooky story to a group of children at a bonfire. “I get this feelin’ that I ain’t alone in the woods. BAM!”

  Alexia jumped, still not used to Bam’s bamming. If the bandits were near, they’d have heard that for certain. She placed her hand on her cloak, feeling the staff concealed beneath. Her eyes and ears were attuned to any movement or sound along the road’s edge and she only partially followed Bam’s story.

  Bam spoke rapidly, slurring his words together in his excitement. “The couerl leapt at me from behind. I turned with amazing speed and like a flash of lightning I slash across my body and slit its throat. He stopped dead, inch from my face.” Bam gestured his concept of an inch, the space between his finger and thumb about three inches wide. Alexia wasn’t surprised he exaggerated that. She’d heard stories about men and their mythical inches. Bam had his own special scale of exaggeration.

  “Bam?” Calden said with a false air of awe. “Was that the day ye came back with that big squirrel?” The Jonahs chortled. Allison kept her face clear of laughter but Alexia’s chest was heaving as silent waves of laughter fluttered inside her.

  Bam looked intense, his eyes peering into the woods. “I mighta bagged a squirrel tha’ day too. No beastie’s too small for BAM! I left the couerl as an offerin’ to the Divine. That’s the way o’ the godly man.” He arrogantly nodded at Allison. She covered her mouth and giggled. Even if his tales were taller than the Divincor, Alexia was amused by them. Allison Eckhard had to be prissier.

  “That was a…fascinating tale, Bam,” Allison said with a complete lack of passion.

  “Big Byron could single-handedly take out the entire Ruby army in Mirrevar,” Esrak said, his usual snarky grin running across his long face.

  Bam tilted his head. “At least half o’ them. Figured I’d stay with ye though. Ye’d be lost without Bam if ye got raided by them bandits.”

  “Bam could probably end the war and bring peace without the help of the Great Wizard,” Esrak said.

  Calden sighed. He looked back at the others solemn and severe. “The Great Wizard can deliver peace.”

  Alexia listened in. This wasn’t the first time she was mentioned during the journey. But Calden’s tone was more somber than before.

  “I’ve been living in fear o’ war all my life,” Calden said. “I served in Ezekiel’s army when I was like y’all. It’s so easy to see the Ruby as monsters. They killed my pa and I wanted to kill their boys. That’s the trap. Ye go on believin’ yer in the right when yer not. What ye don’ see until it happens is that when the blades’r drawn, yer worst side comes out. Me an’ my squad raided a farm and we killed their boys. We didn’ stop there. They slaughter our men an’ we rape their women. They loot our villages an’ we burn their farms. They kill our elders an’ we kill their kids!” Calden shook his head. “Best day o’ my life was when my first conscription ended. Worst was when the second started. I can git why some turn to desertion and banditry instead of goin’ to the disputed lands.”

  Esrak cackled. “Gidi’s Greatsword! How hard can it be to not rape women?”

  “Easy for you, Es,” Bam said. “You like boys.” Bam grinned like he’d completely outwitted his companion. Though, in truth, Esrak was the only one she never caught stealing glances at her body. Even Temos kept his eyes on her bodice whenever he had the chance.

  “You wouldn’t need to rape women, Bam, because they’d be busy rapin’ you,” Esrak said, cackling some more, his spear bouncing up and down in his grip.

  Calden shook his head at them. “Quit being divinedamned fools! You ever hold a dying friend’s hand until the soul escapes him? How about kill a man while their child watches?”

  Without thinking, Alexia nodded. Timmeck. Barnett and Allison.

  She realized what she did and her mouth fell open in horror. Calden stared at her for several long turns. Esrak’s smile had faded and even Bam shook his head.

  “It’s worse’n any physical pain,” Calden said. “Feels like your soul is rotten, like you’re no good. Then you spend the rest o’ yer life wondering why you live an’ he’s dead.”

  Calden halted the caravan. “The Great Wizard sees the truth.” He gazed at Alexia. “I’d proudly serve her. I hate war, an’ I never wanna go back ... but she tempted me to head to Mirrevar. I don’ have much but I’d give my life for that young woman and her dream.”

  Alexia started to cry. Only Calden seemed to notice.

  “Well said, brother.” Jonah swung his head around, looking at them all in turn. “Alexia Bluerose is Leverith’s answer to centuries of prayer by folk like us. For once, somebody cares enough to break the divinedamned cycle that leaves us broken, irredeemable men. Maybe, just maybe, you four won’t have to be scarred and scared your whole lives.” His voice broke when he finished. “I’d die for that.”

  Calden nodded, his gaze still on Alexia. “Well said, brother.”

  Esrak, Temos, Jonah the Younger, and Bam all lowered their eyes.

  “Ayweshairs semmut aydo terrelper,” Temos said, stone-faced except for the twinkle in his eye.

  “I should’ve gone to Mirrevar,” Esrak said. For the first time in five days, his expression was as serious as any in the party.

  “Perhaps there is something we can all do,” Allison interjected.

  “What ken we do?” Jonah the Younger asked with wide eyes.

  Alexia trembled. Someday it would be easier to speak to others about her dream. Until then, she just had to brave the fear that they’d cut it down, call her simple or uncharismatic. Yet, she felt them already there with her, sharing that dream. Calden nodded to her.

  “Alexia needs you just as much as you need her,” she said. “Believe in yourselves. Believe in your ability to make a difference. Even if it seems small, it is not. To her, it means everything.” Alexia sucked her lips into her mouth and tried to mask her true self but tears started leaking from the edges of her eyes. “Alexia will fail if she has to do this alone.”

  Jonah the Younger bobbed his head. “I can do that.”

  “Aye,” Esrak added.

  “Ay,” sounded Temos.

  Bam shrugged. “Bam can do that too.”

  Calden smiled. “Hope’s not lost on you boys.”

  Jonah the Older laughed. “Not completely at least!”

  They settled along the roadside for lunch. The two Jonahs talked from the back of the caravan, keeping a watch for bandits from the rear. Temos sang incoherently as he cooked. Bam boasted that he would be the sworn sword of Alexia Bluerose and began detailing his future feats as though they had already happened.

  Esrak watched the fore but he couldn’t resist tossing a barb at Bam. “She’s got bigger enemies than squirrels, Bam. She doesn’t need you shoutin’ ‘BAM!’ round her at all angles. Ye’d be more likely to give her a heart attack than save her life.”

  Alexia laughed, loudly.

  “Sorry, Bam,” Allison said. “You startle me every time you do that.”

  “Yeah, well...the Great Wizard’s probably a little harder than you, Lady Allison. She can take THE BAM!”

  Alexia laughed again. Bam smiled back at her, very pleased with himself.

  The Divine Thirteen care not for the best laid plans of mortals, let alone for things like laughter and smiles. As Allison laughed, Alexia heard a sound in the woods, felt a disturbance in the wind. She saw the arrow fly astray.

  Like an arrow, my plans are nothing to the Divine.

  Calden stumbled, the arrow puncturing his chest.

  Lady Allison Eckhard faded away like a dream. A bandit’s nightmare took her place.