Artemis
The road was starting to feel long and arduous, boots crunching in steady rhythm, amor thudding with each step, breath rasped through tired lungs. Midday heat clung to us in heavy layers. No one talked anymore. Even Viola and Aeris walked in silence, their steps slow and stubborn.
I kept close to the center of the formation. Not because anyone told me to, but because it made things easier. Easier to watch everyone. Easier to look tired without inviting questions. And most of all, easier to think.
And I’d done a great deal of thinking since the fork in the road.
I replayed the moment the Magister called for the Ashpire Stone. How he split the company. How he chose which soldiers to weaken, and which ones to keep. The way his eyes sharpened when I stepped forward.
This hadn’t been improvisation.
He had weakened us twice before noon, and none of it had been chance.
The Magister drained men he could afford to drain and protected the ones he actually valued. He made sure the platoon marching with him stayed strong, disciplined, and well rested.
As for me… he made certain I went last. Made certain I faced three soldiers instead of one. Three chances to strip me down past exhaustion and see what I looked like underneath.
Whatever he’d been testing, he’d gotten his answer.
And the rest? He’d ensured a company of conscripts too tired to think of revolt. Too drained to run. Too beaten to attempt anything clever while marching behind the strongest men he kept.
All of it orchestrated. Almost admirable, if it weren’t so damned effective.
The matches themselves played out just as predictably.
After Rusk went down, the second man was stronger, sturdy enough to last longer. I let a hint of strain slip, drew a harder breath through my teeth. Enough to show fatigue and to sell the drain was catching up to me.
The real performance came with the third.
By then, the Stone truly did sink its teeth into me. A burning ache resonated deep within my core. I could have held steady, could have kept my expression flat and my breathing even, but that wasn’t the result the Magister was looking for.
So I let my shoulders sag a fraction. Let my grip falter and my breath stutter.
It was just enough to sell him the version of me he wanted: strong enough to impress, but not strong enough to worry him.
The ache beneath my skin was real by then.
But the rest?
All performance.
The other platoon didn’t look much better than we did by the time the Magister dismissed them. Lieutenants Kerran and Varin gathered their men and turned down the southern road, pale-faced soldiers dragging their boots through the dust as they marched beside the Ashpire Stone.
Relief edged through me as I saw the Stone leave with them. With it went the Magister’s ability to bleed us any further.
There was no more time for waiting. Not after today.
The Magister had convinced himself he’d hollowed us out enough to keep us obedient. Convinced that exhaustion had chained us to his march, leaving no strength to try anything clever.
Which made this the perfect time.
We stopped only once after that, long enough for the Magister to water the horses. I’d wondered briefly whether losing the Ashpire Stone would slow him down.
It didn’t.
When we reached the first village not long after, he pulled a man aside and spoke to him alone. A quiet question. Then another. And another. One by one, until he finally had his men drag every villager from their homes and into the center square.
When he posed the question again, this time out in the open for everyone to hear, he stopped pretending it was small talk.
He laid their answers out like mismatched cards on a table. The question was simple: How many Casters lived here?
That was when the real interrogation began.
I watched him work, how he let silence do half the talking, how his gaze settled on the one who stuttered or couldn’t quite meet his eye. When he circled back to earlier details just to watch someone trip on the lie they’d already forgotten.
No yelling.
No threats.
No Stone.
Just a man who stitched inconsistencies together faster than most people could speak them.
It took longer than it would have with the Ashpire Stone, but it didn’t seem to bother him. By the time he was finished, two new Casters stood among our ranks: a young man whose shaking hands betrayed him, and a woman in her twenties whose silence finally cracked beneath the weight of the Magister’s attention.
Only then did I understand why he’d let the other platoon keep the Stone.
The man hardly needed it.
We left the village with two more frightened recruits trailing behind us, and the Magister looked no more tired for the effort.
We marched until the sun dipped low and the road narrowed into a strip of dust and shadow. At last, he called a halt in a broad patch of open ground, deeper in the woods, well off the main trail.
The soldiers moved the instant the Magister lifted a hand. They seemed to understand the shape of his intent before he ever spoke it.
Bedrolls were in a loose crescent following the curve of the clearing, while tents went up along the outer rise. More canvas than before. With half the company gone, the higher ranks claimed the extra space without hesitation. Some of the senior soldiers ducked inside after supper. Others lingered near the flaps, muttering quietly, sharpening blades, stripping off gauntlets.
The conscripts had no such luxury.
Thames flicked a hand toward the center of the clearing and the new recruits nearly collapsed where he pointed. Viola sank to her knees, while Aeris dropped beside her with a groan that barely counted as a sound.
None of us bothered with decorum. We fell where we stood, bedrolls snapping open with dull thuds of fabric as bodies slumped into loose, uneven rows.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
No orders were needed.
Exhaustion did the rest.
Thames didn’t even look at us afterward. We were no threat. Not tonight.
A few of the conscripts, myself included, were pulled aside to help raise the Magister’s tent. It was larger than the rest, heavier canvas with reinforced seams. Thames handed out stakes with quick gestures, and we drove them into the ground in practiced rhythm. I took one corner without comment, matching the motions of the men beside me.
That was when I heard it.
The Magister stood just behind Thames, speaking low. “…then we’ll meet the transport at first light. The Bastion wants the new conscripts processed before month’s end.”
Thames murmured his acknowledgement. No one else reacted – most were too tired to catch words half-swallowed by canvas and dusk.
By the time the tent stood fully upright, the Magister stepped inside without ceremony, vanishing behind the flap as if sleep had already taken him.
I returned to my bedroll near the edge of the trees. Close enough to blend in. Far enough I wouldn’t brush against anyone beside me.
My thoughts circled back to what he’d said – transport at first light. I didn’t know how many soldiers would be escorting it. Didn’t know if they’d pack us into cages or chain us inside a reinforced wagon meant for Casters.
But I knew one thing with absolute clarity.
If I waited until morning, I wouldn’t be running through forests and shadow.
I’d be running behind iron.
I stayed still a long while, listening to the camp settle. One by one, the low murmurs faded, replaced by the dull shifts of exhausted bodies and the occasional crack of cooling embers. Someone snored.
Beyond that, the clearing went still.
I waited.
Time stretched, unspooling in slow, steady breaths. Long enough for the fist watch to make their rotation. Long enough for the worst of the day’s aches to loosen beneath the quiet pulse of my Healing. I coaxed it through my limbs, just enough to restore, but not enough to draw attention. My arms stopped throbbing. The lingering pain from the trial faded. Even the ache in my core ebbed as the last remnants of the Stone melted away and my regeneration caught up with itself.
Viola lay curled on her side, arms tucked close, her breathing shallow but even. Aeris had rolled half off his bedroll, one leg crooked awkwardly in the dirt. The others were little more than shapes draped in blankets, too tired to dream, let alone stir.
Leaving them twisted something low in my gut.
They weren’t fighters, not truly. Not in the way their country demanded. And The Bastion wouldn’t turn them into soldiers. It would turn them into something worse. Tools and weapons, broken in the way the Triarchy preferred.
But there was no world where I could take them with me tonight. No world where they could keep pace.
If I stayed, we’d all end up behind iron. And the promise I made Celeste would die before I ever had the chance to keep it.
I wasn’t going to fail her.
So I waited until the night reached its deepest fold, and propped myself slowly onto one elbow.
Only two patrolmen were awake.
One traced the eastern arc, boots brushing the dirt in a steady, predictable rhythm. The other walked the western line, a darker silhouette passing between the low fire and the edge of the forest’s every few minutes. Their routes never overlapped. They never looked inward. Soldiers on duty because duty demanded it, not because they expected trouble.
Everyone else slept.
I eased the blanket back, careful not to let the fabric drag. The smallest sound carried too cleanly in a clearing like this. I shifted my weight onto my hands first, then to my knees.
The conscripts closest to me didn’t stir. Viola breathed in slow, shallow pulls. Aeris twitched once, mumbling something half-formed before sinking deeper into sleep. The others lay scattered in their bedrolls, unaware of what waited for them – better dreams than reality, at least.
I rose into a crouch and waited, listening for any change in the patrolmen’s rhythm. The eastern one still dragged the toe of his boot on every fifth step and the western one still paused at the fire, warming himself before turning back down the same path.
Comfortably predictable.
I slipped between the nearest bedrolls, arms tucked, balance low. Leaves and loose twigs littered the clearing, but I placed each step on bare patches of soil, shifting my weight with care. I didn’t risk running out of here with Wind at my back. A single curl of air would brush canvas or stir the fire and undo everything.
Aeris shifted again behind me.
I froze.
The sound was small, only fabric rubbing against itself, but it lingered long enough to draw my teeth together as tension spiked.
Then nothing.
The camp breathed on.
I continued, angling toward the darker stretch of forest northwest of the clearing. The patrols’ arcs didn’t meet there, and firelight didn’t reach that far. The trees stood thickest in that direction. Deepest shadows and cleanest cover.
The Magister’s tent loomed somewhere behind me, a darker blot within the dark, but no light stirred inside. No movement. No sound. If he was awake, he hid it well.
I slipped past the last bedroll, then the last tent, and finally crossed the first line of trees. The air cooled as the canopy swallowed me, the crackle of dying fires fading into the muffled hush of pine and leaf.
I didn’t let myself breathe fully yet. Not until I put twenty more paces between myself and the clearing. Only then did I risk straightening to full height.
I let out a quiet exhale.
Far enough.
I angled my shoulders, and kicked off the earth in a sudden burst of speed. Not full Wind, not yet. Just enough to carry me fast and silent through the undergrowth.
For a single breath, freedom felt real. Close. Within reach.
Then the ground beneath my feet shifted.
It was subtle at first – a tremor rolling beneath the soil. Then the ground bucked hard enough to stagger me. I jolted back on instinct, boots scraping over pine needles as the forest floor heaved like something alive.
A deep, splitting crack tore through the quiet.
And then, the earth rose.
A wall of packed dirt and stone surged upward in front of me, climbing higher until it towered twice my height. I stumbled back just as the second wall ripped upward to my right, then a third to my left – each one sealing off the trees in clean, merciless angles.
I spun toward the only opening left.
Back toward the clearing.
That was when I saw the glint.
A scatter of pale blue shimmer cut through the darkness, sharp and cold, rushing toward me in a tight, deadly cluster.
Ice shards.
Dozens of them. Too many to dodge and too fast to outrun.
Fire surged up my arms, heat exploding from my fingers in a bright, consuming torrent. My shoulders screamed in protest, the lingering drag of the Stone’s drain and last night’s beating burning under the Cast, but I pushed through it.
The blast wasn’t wide, but it didn’t need to be.
It met the shards midair and swallowed them whole. Ice hissed into steam, bursting apart in a cloud of vapor that flared briefly with the red-glow of my Casting.
The fire lit everything.
For a moment, the forest burned in color, trees, smoke, rising stone—
—and then the silhouettes snapped into focus.
Six soldiers stood around me.
Not stumbling from sleep.
Not winded from an attempt to catch up.
Not surprised in the slightest.
They were already in position. Spread evenly along the edges of the boxed clearing. Weapons drawn. Stances set. Watching me.
Waiting for me.
As the last remnants of firelight faded, the fight began.
The ground shifted again, subtle, a quick softening beneath my boots. An Earth Caster trying to seize my ankles in mud. I sprang back instantly, weight snapping upward before the soil could take hold. My boots cleared the slick patch just as it cinched tight, grasping at air instead of me.
I landed in a crouch—
—and a streak of orange tore toward me.
I answered with Fire in the same breath, no restraint. Fire was all they’d seen from me so far, and I didn’t know how much they knew – but this wasn’t the moment to give anything else away.
Power roared through my arms, a surge that met the soldier’s Casting in a brilliant collision of heat and color.
For a second, the two streams pressed against each other.
Then mine broke through.
Heat ripped across the clearing, but I cut the Cast hard at the last instant, forcing the blast to shear sideways instead of driving straight through him. Even so, the edge of it caught him square in the chest. Fire climbed his cloak in a hungry rush before he hit the mud with a strangled scream.
He rolled, trying to smother the flames, but they’d already bitten deep. The smell of scorched cloth and singed flesh drifted up as he curled onto his side, coughing.
Something shifted at the edge of the walls.
A flare of pale blue lit the dark.
I didn’t hesitate. Fire leapt from my hands in a violent arc, swallowing the shards as they formed. Steam burst outward in a sharp hiss, fogging the air between us.
But the moment the last shard evaporated, the Earth answered.
A barrage of stones shot toward me, fists of dirt and rock hurled with brutal speed. Too many to dodge. Too close to block.
I didn’t think.
Wind erupted out of me in a single, explosive burst.
The force slammed into the oncoming rocks, knocking them off their trajectory. They spun sideways in midair, skidding past me to smash harmlessly into the earthen wall. Dust and leaves whipped into a frantic spiral, tugged upward by the sudden shift in pressure. The nearest trees bowed, branches groaning under the force.
Every soldier saw it.
The Wind faded as quickly as it had come, but the damage was done. There was no hiding it now.
The ring of soldiers tightened.
Dust settled slowly from the blast I’d unleashed. The walls of earth loomed on all sides, shadowed and unmoving. The night felt too still, as though the forest itself were holding its breath, waiting to see what I’d do next.
Footsteps approached through the dark.
Unhurried. Unbothered.
As though the chaos of the night meant nothing at all.
The soldiers didn’t look toward the sound; they didn’t need to. Their formation simply shifted, opening a clean path through the ring.
The Magister emerged from the shadows like he’d been walking toward this moment all night. Not cloaked now – but armored.
He stopped only a few paces from me.
“I knew I’d draw it out of you eventually.”
Did the ambush feel earned based on the buildup so far?
