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."

Nelnifa groaned as she straightened. Her muscles quivered but she forced them to still and her heart to stop making her lungs gasp for air when it could breathe the normal way. "Ilphas," she rasped. "What are you doing here?"

"That's 'Marshal' Ilphas for you, Princess," he said, his eyes already scanning the scene developing before them. Nelnifa spotted more and more pockets of air shimmering. Not a moment too soon, more black-clad figures stepped out and regarded them. "Don't let the battlefield force you to lose your manners."

"If I ever lost them, Marshal," Nelnifa said through gritted teeth. "I'll let you know."

The Marshal pressed his back against her as the black-clad soldiers began circling them. "Watch my back and I'll watch yours," he said.

Nelnifa whirled to him. "Wait, what are you—"

She was cut-off when Ilphas lurched forward to meet the first blade aimed at him. Her eyes widened when she watched Ilphas weave deftly among three or four soldiers attacking him from all sides. He twisted and swung, metal clanging against metal ringing in the air. A shadow fell over Nelnifa. She whirled just in time to step out of a soldier's way, their sword slashing for her.

What could she do here? She had no weapon. No knowledge or practice on how to take down a grown fairy. Were these people even fairies? What if they happened to be humans? Or half-bloods? Nelnifa clicked her tongue.

Magic.

She had magic, didn't she? Then again, her synnavaim wouldn't answer her with them being so far away from the endless source of their power. What else could she use?

Her eyes widened. Of course.

Water didn't need to come from the ocean. It's everywhere. In plants, in the soil, and of course...inside the form.

Just as another sword slashed towards her, she let her magic flare wide, latching on to the first sign of water it could detect. Threads of her magic wrapped around the soldier's veins and muscles. When she pulled at them, the soldier's movements stalled to a halt. Her breath rattled in her ears as she held her magic against the squirming soldi who was eager to break out of her influence. Then, a sword's pommel flashed behind the soldier and a lump of black crashed to the ground, its thud muffled by the thick carpet of sand.

"Nice thinking, Princess," Ilphas said, waving his sword around, catching blow after blow with expert twirls and precise movements. "I'll lead them to you. Work your magic."

Nelnifa gave him a brief nod but she doubted he saw it when he already had his back turned. Her magic flared underneath her skin, hungry and wild after being submerged for so long. Water sprites barely use their magic for anything else, really.

Just like before, she gripped the soldiers' water in their systems and bent them to her will. Most of them were stuck fighting her control so much they didn't notice Ilphas creeping towards them. At one point, Ilphas took a blow to the gut just to knock the one in Nelnifa's grasp out. She gasped his name out to which he replied with a strained tone, "Just keep them occupied, Princess. I'm fine."

Soon, a pile of black-clad people lay unconscious around them. Nelnifa's chest heaved as her magic retreated back to her system, spent and cold. Sweat dripped down the side of her face. Her arms felt unnaturally heavy and she doubted she could walk the rest of the way home.

"Hey, don't pass out on me," Ilphas's voice bled into Nelnifa's ears. It immediately drove all the exhaustion from her veins.

"What are you doing here?" she pushed past him and marched forward with not a single destination in mind. He had to jog to catch up to her. Ha, right by him. "You should have stayed in hiding. You'd be arrested because I'll report you myself."

Marshal Ilphas glanced behind him, ensuring the soldiers weren't up to chase them down again. "Arrested for what?"

Nelnifa rolled her eyes. "Don't play dumb with me," she said. "I know you burned the palace down."

The Marshal clicked his tongue. "Not all of it," he muttered under his breath. He didn't seem older than one of Nelnifa's brothers as he did that. Then again, with fairies' lasting youth, it'd be impossible to tell if Ilphas was a year older than her or a hundred. "Who would be doing the arresting?"

"The Potentate, of course," Nelnifa blew an exasperated breath as she slogged through the sand. More and more particles stuck against her soles and her trousers. Let them. She had to get home as soon as possible. This criminal, despite saving her, had to pay for his crimes.

"That's funny," Ilphas said, his tone playful rather than worried. She turned to him to find him smirking. Worse, he had caught up to her and had begun walking casually despite her brisk paces. "He's the same person who told me to do it in the first place."

Nelnifa paused then whirled to him. "What?"

Marshal Ilphas rolled his shoulders. His sword, sheathed once more by his belt, clinked against his leg. "Didn't you hear it the first time?" he said. "The Potentate ordered me to set fire to the manor that day."

What nonsense in Umtir's name was this idiot talking about? "My father would never order such a thing," Nelnifa said, narrowing her eyes. Ilphas could have been lying.

"But he did," the Marshal brushed his hand over his hair, disturbing the sand particles that might have sat in it.

Nelnifa scoffed. "But why?"

"He didn't want you to go around digging the reason why Desara was poor," Ilphas said. "He knew you'd find your way towards the people inside the stone markers and he didn't want you to go along blindly. But it looks like you did it, anyway."

She blinked. "So all this time..." her voice died down. All this time, her father and his court knew about the people in the stone markers and none of them did anything about it? Why? Desara could have been a little bit prosperous if they worked on removing the parasites a few years ago. Why would they hold back and let them fester for too long?

"We know nothing about them, we have no standing army, and our economy needed more work than chasing down an organization that could be stronger than us," Ilphas interjected through Nelnifa's thoughts. "It's best to work on this in the shadows and as wisely as we can. We cannot risk angering them and attacking us."

Nelnifa looked back behind her. They're too far away from the stone markers now. "Will this incident not induce that reaction?"

To her relief, Ilphas shook his head. "Not so much so long as we keep our mouths shut," he said. "Let's do that, shall we?"

Nelnifa shook her head, a plan already forming in her mind. It wasn't Desara's fault that Lanteglos had their hands around their territory. It's the people inside those rocks. This time, she faced Marshal Ilphas fully.

"We've been keeping our mouths shut for a long time, haven't we?" she said. "I think it's time we tell the people what is really going on. We need them to have a new enemy that's not Lanteglos."

Uncertainty danced in Ilphas's eyes. "But, Princess—"

"Schedule a conference with the people as soon as you can," Nelnifa said, her tone bordering on commanding. It was a tone she had never dreamt of using all her life. She turned to find Ilphas mounting another opposition. "And I'm not ordering you as some girl from the Weaver's Circle. I'm saying this to you as the next Potentate in line."

Without much words left to express, Marshal Ilphas ducked his head and their walk home continued with a kind of silence Nelnifa hadn't imagined she would share with him. For once, it was comfortable.