The Storyteller (THE LEGENDS OF AARYAH #1)

TALE TWO OF CHANGE - Squad Trinity

The Protectors had made camp very early that morning so that they could get to Liberal City later in the night. Most probably, they would have arrived from patrol with golden news. Golden, but terrible.

The Third Division of the Army of Justice was marching. And that could mean one thing only: as soon as they' arrived at the Oasis, another battle would start, people would die, villages would be burnt down.

Of course, they wanted to prevent that the Oasis wasn't ready for battle and it was highly possible that they would have been able to do so, too. After all, they had already been able to alert some of the villages and cities at the borders on their way to Liberal City. Word would have spread soon.

Squad Trinity wanted exactly that. That way, the Oasis of Yash was going to focus on an external risk too big to be ignored to even think someone had already entered their territories.

Barin had seen what panic did to people. The thought of another battle would have killed the people and therefore, encouraged riots no matter the stolen war plans and no matter the high hopes of the Giano and his Council. Because people were scared, they felt impotent. And when someone feels impotent, they either try it all to change that or they keep hiding in fear.

It was nearly impossible for the Council to have already organized a counterattack too. That was making people feel even more desperate. Even if they had organized that, they didn't expect an attack for sure. Xemelie had decided not to wait for Lady Zeke's authorization to attack: it would have cost them too much time and she was also sure Zeke wouldn't have let them do it. To the Sultan, it would have been too risky - she needed men to protect her cities and her person -; to Xemelie, such an idea was too self-centered. You'll never win a war if you don't accept to take risks every once in a while. And the Army of Justice had already waited for too long. It was time for them to start thinking with their own heads.

Besides, information for an internal attack couldn't even be found in the war plans because it wasn't how things were originally supposed to proceed. Until that very moment. That had been Xemelie's last-minute idea. And it was pure genius. They either got the plans back or they stopped them from studying them. And attacking was the answer.

Whilst the Yashiv Protectors had been too concentrated on the Third Division, a little section of it, just one squad of about fifteen people, had been proceeding on a different route all that time. Right at that moment, those soldiers had probably made camp some kilometers east, hidden in the forest, unnoticeable and wary of every risk, silent.

Part of Squad Frejn was Squad Trinity, composed by Marshal Assassin Xemelie and the only two people she considered to be suitable for the mission, a Grand Lieutenant Assassin, her own leader in action back when she was just a recruit, and Patriot Executioner Barin Morden.

The small group of Protectors wasn't aware to have been followed by them, of course. Xemelie had let them do their job: battle was inevitable, after all, and it didn't really matter whether they got to know about it sooner or later, so she let them report everything to the cities. Sooner or later, they would have noticed anyway.

"What's important is that they're going to lead us right to their beloved Angel," the Marshal Assassin stated when Barin, back in Kashej, had told her about the Angel. She was the surprise element of the Republic of Yash. Probably the key behind the stolen plans too.

Barin quickly glanced at the Grand Lieutenant Assassin before him. Xavier Lilac seemed to be on his late thirties. He was a tall, black High One under demonic influence. That meant he wasn't born with magical abilities, but had made a Blood Pact with a Pure or a Half-Blood Demon in order to gain such powers.

The Demon now lived in him - that was the reason why the High One could use magic - but could come out and kill the Human anytime, basically, with the excuse that they didn't think the Blood Path was being honored by the Human counterpart. Most of the time, when that happened, the Demon ended up killing the Human either because they didn't respect the Path for real or simply because this way they could take for them the power the Human had been able to gain thanks to the Demon's magical abilities. Demons usually abused their power and the favoritism of the Blood Pact towards their own needs, but everyone and the Djimanatá always turned the other way around and pretended nothing like that had ever actually happened.