The Iron Maiden

Chapter 1

There was a girl named Fleur Azrail who lives at a small village with her father and mother. They live a simple life, away from the kingdom, away from the corrupt ways of the religious sect, away from the flames of war.

But even peaceful days had an end and it arrived in a formed of letter, a letter from the kingdom's capital. Fleur's seemingly normal father was in fact was once the commander of the Kingdom's army, ordered by the King to lead their army. Without a way out, a saddened expression entered his visage. Her father cannot break the order of the King, less their family got executed. A sad smile, a bitter goodbye, the finality of the happy days are over, with her father's back walked away from their home, Fleur's mother can only pray and hope for the safety returned of her father with tears in her eyes.

Fleur, with also tears in her eyes, muttered her goodbyes to her father, to her mentor. She needs to steel herself, resolved to protect the family that her father left. A promised of a life time, she would saw to it.

Days had passed, no news reached them as to what happened to her father. Everyday, they pray and hope for him. Fleur continued to poured herself to the books and the papers about the art of life and wars that her father wrote for her lessons.

One day, a letter arrived on their home, the royal family crest sealed upon the letter. The terrible news of her father's demised from the hands of the Knight's of the Holy Order from the battle front contained the letter and a bag of golden coins. A condolences coming from the royal family to their family as to her father's fall during the war, his body sent to them beyond recognition. Rage filled Fleur's heart, a flame of hatred danced to her eyes.

Unacceptable, was the only word echoing to her mind. Was that her father's life worth? Her father's sacrificed for the kingdom? For the citizen's peace? A charred corpse and a bag of coin?! A seething rage boiled over her. Beside her, her mother's wailed broke her heart. Closing her eyes, she can only cry, there's nothing she can do but consoled her crying mother. it's only the two of them from now on, the man her mother loves, Fleur's father was dead.

And then, a year after that, her mother died of a broken heart leaving her on this cruel world alone, the promised she carved to her being turned into ashes, how could it not when death was the one who claimed her mother?

Dead, Fleur felt dead inside. Her emotions, her hatred are buried along the corpse of her parents ten feet under.

Another years had passed after that, Fleur was a young adult woman now who works as a soldier, for she was a prisoner of war because their village was conquered by the neighboring kingdom, a kingdom whom needed abled bodies to throw at the machinations of war.

It was a small kingdom, the Altera Kingdom. A neighboring country of one of the biggest Kingdom; Lemuria, the kingdom where she's born with and the kingdom she resented when she was a child. Working as a soldier despite being a woman had it's ups and downs; women in the army sector were always tormented by the commanding officer, often they were belittled, and to be criticized by their choice that they didn't even choose, nothing was easy for Fleur's life after the death of her parents. She doesn't even know what's it like to be a young woman, to be in love, be love by a man and that her emotions was long forgotten by the training she'd gone through by the army's regime.

She only knew war; war is the only thing she was sure she keep doing these days after the olden days of being free, of being happy are long gone. She fought, she kills and for all of the blood that tainted her hands and her sword, she knew that there's no salvation for such a wrecked living woman liked her.

So in order to remained sane, despite the callousness of what thought she'd arrived with, to the point of becoming a monster; killing is what makes her continued living on this world.

---

The sky was clear with an occasional cloud passing by, a peacefully scenic to the eyes of the onlookers yet you cannot say the same thing down the land.

What would you saw would be hell.

A war of two armies was happening just outside of the Carrione Kingdom's capital city, a place that would be found between Lemuria and Altera Kingdom. The neighboring kingdom; Altera intends to conquer the kingdom to expand their small territory again.

Altera was once a small kingdom, but it slowly getting larger as it conquer small neighboring kingdoms.

A glazed focused harden cold steel gray eyes stared with intent at what it considered as a walking dead men, the soldiers from the kingdom of Carrione. Slightly muscular arms covered with steely armor shook with anticipation as the double edge sword it holds continued to cut every each of these walking dead men into truly dead men. Of how the blood of these men splattered across the breastplate to the fauld covered the body of the one who slayed them, even these men with their masterfully swordmanship, could never stopped the macabre works that this person had done out of them.

And this person was none other than Fleur Azrail, a woman.

How incredulous that this person was a woman and how capable she was in the arts of killing people! Inconceivable and yet here the woman was, piling their bodies into a hill of death, blood she spilled become the river that colored this battlefield, the smell of sweet metallic iron yet it takes a vile pungence that smother the senses of those who don't have the stomach for it. It was acidic, festering and raw.

The woman advanced again towards the remaining Carrione soldiers with the Alteran soldiers behind her, but this woman was the most dangerous out of the Alteran army.

Terror gripped the Carrione soldiers and death was imminent.

"KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL." the woman murmured emotionlessly yet she ferociously killed them all, butchering them one by one with abandoned.

A different kind of animal. A beast more than a human, a wolf than a woman, that's what Fleur Azrail's nature is.

The end of the battle was anticlimactic.

At the foot of the hill of dead corpse, the woman who along with her other Alteran soldiers who carried the massacre of Carrione soldiers, sat in somber holding her armored helmet as her fellow soldier chanted the named of their motherland.

"ALTERA! ALTERA! ALTERA! ALTERA! ALTERA!" The soldiers chanted out of what expected to them after a victory on war, a thing that done nothing good to them and only those in chain of command whom benefited from this victory.

And thus the war is over, a crashing defeat to Carrione Kingdom.