Dark Mist: A Lily's way

Does your young heart choose between love, or duty?

*Thump*

*Thump*

*Thump*

The sound of bodies roughly impacting the ground echoed throughout the clearing where the Tenth Army's training was held. Unlike the Demon Lord's other armies, the Tenth Army's commander- or more accurately, commanders- are more personally invested in training the soldiers.

The troops endure incredibly strenuous conditioning drills constructed by the Tenth Army Commander to raise their stats, resistances, and magical ability. After completing the drills, they spar to sharpen their skills in CQC, a martial art that mixes hand-to-hand combat with knife fighting. The main purpose of CQC was to disarm and disable an enemy combatant in a series of grabs, chokeholds, strikes, and throws, making the martial art extremely effective against anyone not well-versed in magic.

The Tenth Army Vice-Commander was the third generation practitioner of the martial art and before she implemented CQC into the Tenth Army's training regiment, was one of the two people in the world to employ the elusive fighting style.

"Switch!" The feminine, yet flinty voice of the Tenth Army Vice-Commander rang out alongside a loud clap. "Take your partners' knives and swap positions."

All of the fighters nodded at the Vice-Commander's order and gave their partner their wooden knives before they resumed sparring.

From an onlooker's perspective, it would be quite a strange scene. Even with the sounds of scuffles, light grunts of pain, and the dull sound of punches and kicks landing, it was almost completely silent. Even more unsettling than the silence, was the fact that all of the soldiers have ghostly pale skin and blood-red eyes, traits that make them appear eerily similar to the Tenth Army Commander Shiraori.

The Tenth Army Commander was a mysterious individual. Standing at a height of a hundred seventy centimeters (5 ft 7 in), she was above average height for a woman. She wore her long silver hair in a loose braid starting from the base of her neck and was garbed in a white low-cut dress with large sleeves and a hood. The Tenth Army Commander's skin could only be described as porcelain white and she wears light-silver boots. Her ruby-red eyes remained almost permanently closed and the albino rarely spoke in anything beyond incomplete phrases. That's not to say she's illiterate, she just doesn't find it necessary to speak more than what's needed.

Standing next to the mysterious Tenth Army Commander was the more outgoing Tenth Army Vice-Commander, Mirei. Like Shiraori, Mirei has light hair and is also clad in pastel colors. But unlike the Tenth Army Commander's silver strands, The blonde's hair was a more light beige color ending in magenta tips. The samurai wore an open bleached cream jacket with a mauve t-shirt underneath. Along with the jacket and undershirt, the Tenth Army Vice-Commander wore a pair of slightly baggy khaki pants alongside black tactical boots.

At a hundred and sixty-three centimeters (5 ft 4 in), the Vice-Commander's stature was a full head shorter than her Commander. But, the most striking feature about the dragon was not her piercing lilac eyes but the two crystal-blue wings that protruded from her lower back.

Mirei's two wings had been the subject of much gossip and many rumors among the servants ever since she had arrived at the Demon Lord's estate. Some say the Vice-Commander was a rare type of Dragon because of her other draconic features like her tail and patches of scales elsewhere on her body. Others say she's an angel descended from the heavens above because of her almost otherworldly beauty and wings. The swordswoman has never denied nor ever confirmed any of these rumors, which only further fueled the gossip.

"So, Hiiro," Mirei telepathically said out of the blue. "About our plan with the current Hero... I don't think I'm able to carry it out anymore."

The albino turned to face her Vice-Commander and tilted her head, silently beckoning her second-in-command to continue. Mirei spared a quick glance at Shiraori's closed-eye expression and focused her attention on a small patch of red lilies growing in the distance.