NELNIFA CORLEDIA has a weak voice. When outrage sparks because of her mistake, she diverts the attention to the real problem: the truth to why their territory is poor. This takes Nelnifa to fishing ports, weaving districts, and back to the very plac...
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Nelnifa yelped, ducking and covering her head, narrowly missing the blade poised to maim her. Where did this soldier come from? It's the middle of nowhere! The black cloth covering the soldier's entire form looked out of place with the warm beige and blue around them. It made them stick out of the background so why in Umazure was Nelnifa having trouble?
The soldier leaped towards her, their blade poised to strike once again. Nelnifa fell to her rear and scrambled backwards, like a defective cata-cata. The blade slashed the space where her neck had just been. Her throat constricted. Never in her whole life did she think she was about to be killed in a nameless shore in Aresving. Then again, she hadn't thought she'd see stone markers eat whole carts before too.
Her magic blazed to the surface just as the soldier struck forward once more. She gritted her teeth and called to the ocean. Nothing answered her but a weak sputter. What the—
With a cry, she scooped the sand with her hands and flung it into the soldier's face. They lurched forward with a strangled cry, their voice sounded heavily masculine. Nelnifa pushed her shaking legs upright and ran.
They wouldn't pursue her if she got far away from the markers, right?
Wrong. Even when she was notches farther from the line of gray stone, the air shifted in front of her. The man stepped out of the pocket of shimmering air. Black colored Nelnifa's periphery. She brought her arm up just in time to catch a wild strike against it. With a cry, she fell into the ground. Her muscles throbbed from where she blocked the man. Had it hit where he intended it to, Nelnifa might not even be conscious now.
Come on. Think. There has to be something she could do to survive. It's just one man. She could do this.
She was about to reach out for more sand when a dagger embedded itself on the spot where her hand was going. The blade glinted ominously against the bright sunlight. Okay. She couldn't do this.
The man, seeing as she was cornered—with literally zero corners around, how pathetic was that?—lunged forward, another dagger in hand. Nelnifa whimpered and tucked her head in her arms. She was pathetic. She didn't even bring the dagger she owned but barely knew how to use. It simply didn't occur to her that her life would be flashing in front of her eyes this instant. She should just accept her fate.
She shut her eyes and waited for pain to befall her.
A loud clang echoed in her ears past the darkness in her vision. No pain came. Instead, a haughty but familiar voice bled through the silence. "Don't give up that easily, Princess," Marshal Ilphas said. "It doesn't suit you."
Nelnifa's eyes snapped open. The black-clad man lay at his feet not a few inches away, unmoving. What...
Did he just save her?
"Get up," he jerked his chin at her. He had drawn his own blade—a striking sky blue against all the beige around them. Even his hair started blending with the sand. "Here they come."
