Myra watched as her friend attempted to draw a map of Kallias and ended up with a strange multitude of inky lines.

"Jasper," she interrupted. "Jasper, let me do this for you."

"I've almost got the hang of it now..." he told her, then bumped the table and made his pencil draw a line from Kallias to Asriel to Miras, up to the Northernmost Land and back down to Isthmus.

"Jasper."

"I was born for cartography," he reassured her, before misspelling Crimsith and crossing it out.

"Jasper."

"Fine," he said and handed her the pencil. "So Crimsith is on the very, very west of the north. Most northwest point in the country...juts out a bit, so it's sort of a peninsula. Kazimiar is nearby...a bit to the right...a bit more. Karone is really, really east, and just a bit off from the sea. We still call it a coastal because it's more coastal than it is Midlands, but it's two hours walk from the sea. But don't bother with Karone."

"I'll be making these decisions myself," Myra countered. "Viktoria and I can decide where to go, and you're just here to inform."

"Right. But trust me, you really don't want to go to Karone, or need to. Now, Cobalt-"

"Do they all start with c or k?"

"Basically, yeah. So Cobalt is maybe three-quarters of the way between Kazimiar and the Isthmus. Closest to the Isthmus. Those are the coastal cities."

"And the Midlands?"

"Send a group of three valkyries for the whole thing," he shrugged. "You know, the newbies. The Midlands are made of groups of nomads who Medea insisted found their own villages. They aren't at all formidable or important on their own.

"The South is...well, the rebellion can handle the South. A quarter there are insurgents, another half are related to insurgents and the remaining ones would very much like an insurgent in the family, because having them is a very great honour. The only problem with the South is that they're a little stupid."

"This is not a joke, Jasper." Myra reprimanded. "This is a war campaign."

"You wanted the truth about Kallias and Kallians. I gave you it. The Southern Kallians do not have much going on up here." He pointed to his head.

"And yet they are the greatest supporters of your rebellion," Myra remarked drily.

"Supporting my rebellion used to demand extreme idiocy and a lot of optimism. The South fits both categories just fine."

"So, let's say you are a general. How do we march?'

"You go to Cobalt first. It's close to the Isthmus and taking it will mean cutting off the trading centre of the country. Afterwards, you go to Kazimiar and then to Crimsith."

"Why Kazimiar? Cobalt has money, Crimsith is the capital, but why Kazimiar?"

"It's the city of frivolities, really. Fireworks, artists, food...it also has a lot of scholars. There's a lot of nobles that spend their time in Kazimiar, especially if they aren't close in the court. It's easier to take than Cobalt or Crimsith-the fortifications are hardly there. And it's right on the way, too. With good pizza."

"I'd rather not base my war campaign on 'good pizza.'"

"I've been all over Kallias the past two years...Karone to Callis to Cyrus in the South...so I know a great place for pizza. I could show you it."

"Jasper."

"Right. Kazimiar also has a symbolic value I suppose. It's where Tarua Teris used to be-or so the legend says."

"Tarua Teris?"

"Yeah. It's part of a legend-a nursery rhyme, really, for insurgent and insurgent sympathisers' children. They say, thirty years ago, there was a great city, where a good Chancellor ruled. That he wasn't like the other warlords-he was benevolent and really wanted to make a difference. Then the Empress swept in and destroyed the city. It's just a tale, really, but a few people believe in it and claiming Kazimiar in the dead Chancellor's name will help people see that the valkyries truly are bringing the rebellion to the throne."

"I'll consider it," Myra conceded. "But why skip Karone? It's not well fortified."

"Because the people there will cook up trouble," Jasper said, a hint of dread in his voice. "The Karoneese always manage to stir up trouble, and they'll bring up great trouble for you indeed."

"Another rebellious city?"

"If only they were. The Karoneese are only looking out for themselves, Myra. Pickpockets are the best of them-the rest are even more devious. They invent new forms of criminal activity every second week. I admire them, but one most admire them from a distance-a safe distance, Myra. With one's hands on one's pockets at all times."

"I think we can deal with a few burglaries."

"No, no you cannot. The Karoneese are not an enemy you can defeat, Myra. When one sights them, one most hide in a cave until they are gone. Long gone."

"Funny. I feel the same with you."

"Ha ha. Karone has no value-symbolic or not. Wipe out the Coastal Cities-Cobalt, Crimsith and Kazimiar at least-and kill the Empress, and the rebellion can bring the South to heel and get the Midlands to agree with them. Karone will come along eventually."

"What will you be doing? Getting Karone in line?"

"Shade harbour me," he prayed. "I suppose I will fit in somewhere. I'm an alright hand with a bow..."

"You don't give yourself enough credit."

"...so, I'll find a place based on that."

"You always want to be a soldier?"

"What else is there? I've never had much of an education...I can read and write and count to ten, but little more than that. Besides, I think it must be my fate...to guard the rebels who I once failed so bitterly."

----------------

Myra did not know what she had expected Cobalt to look like. From Jasper's descriptions the Kallian Empire was impoverished and boiling hot with the exception of the four coastal cities, which were well enough off, warm in winter and quite warm in summer. Cobalt, he said, was the busiest of all the cities, bursting full of people and clouded with smoke.

The skies certainly seemed rather grey and overcast, with wafts of smoke in the air. But wartime had transformed this place quite clearly and Jasper seemed to notice it, too, wondering if this was the place he had visited during a time of peace.

The fortifications were tall and imposing; huge, great slabs of stone seemed to be shooting from the ground. The city was almost deserted, and guards patrolled from the walls. All of the preparations for war seemed to come from nowhere, Jasper had said in shock. Myra thought, privately, that the Empress must have known that of all her cities, this one was certain to come under siege. The valkyries did their best to surround the sprawling city, but the elves ended up closing the gaps.

Myra and Viktoria stood tall as the messenger from the city came. He was trembling with fear as he watched the warriors and his voice was shaking.

"We demand Cobalt surrender," Myra told him even though they already knew what she was going to say. "Do not worry about the Empress. It is our mercy and justice that you are facing now, and your people should feel they can choose whether they would yield to us sooner or later."

"They have sent me to tell you that they will not yield," the man croaked.

"Do they fear the Empress?" Viktoria scoffed. "She can neither save nor doom the people of Cobalt, now. Where is she, with her magic? Her armies are gone, her courage is naught, and only we are left."

"I cannot answer for them. I am only here to deliver my message."

"Very well then. Tell your people that they have brought about their own doom," Diaz hissed at him. "We shall be at your gates with wrath of Dragon and Gryphon."

"They must know they cannot win this fight," Calais puzzled.

"They hope the Empress might save them. She keeps them in order with fear of the valkyries and elves, and so they think of you the same as doom. Your names are synonymous with death." Jasper put in. "You will break down the city walls before they surrender, for they think that yielding will give them no mercy."

"Then they are fools," Viktoria scoffed.

"They are spoon-fed propaganda and drink in fear with every meal, live with death haunting them and their ruler's wrath ever hanging over them." Jasper argued. "Such lives would make us all fools in the face of our fears."

Viktoria and Myra were silent. This was partly the fault of their predecessors, for abandoning humanity so and they felt they had real right to comment. ---------------

They gave Cobalt a day to reconsider their allegiance to the Empress and their refusal to yield to the valkyries at their doors. Then, as midnight struck and night hung over the city, the wyverns took to the skies.

The valkyries could see better than humans in the dark, so were not bothered by the night. The wyverns had troubles, but both rider and steed were trained so that a valkyrie could guide them well through the night. And when it all began well and truly, the firelight would be enough to make up for the moonless, starless night.

No walls were too tall for the wyverns and gryphons of the skies as they flew over the fortifications, cannons lunging for them like a god's wrathful reach of prey. A few tumbled to the ground below, beautiful steeds crushed by rock and gravity.

The wyverns lit up the night with fire that scorched the city and the gryphons lunged lower to the earth. Cannonballs and crossbow bolts all sought their hearts as they burned through the city and weaved through high towers.

The wind was in Myra's hair and the heat on her face from fire. Ruby let out a war-cry beside her as the towers of Cobalt were scorched. The city was burning so brightly that it hurt her eyes. The sprawling expanse of buildings lit up the night with their blazing fire and swift dark shapes darted through the high-reaching factories and skyscrapers like slivers of darkest night.

Myra and Ruby at last neared the great stone walls and let loose fire and arrows at the sentries standing there, armed with crossbows and cannons. The stone refused to scorch but the guards burned easily. They both withstood a hail of arrows with the aid of thick wyvern skin until a piercing wail seemed to split through the night and Myra's ears.

Caelia whirled to behold the bolt buried in Ruby's wyvern's neck. The poor creature screeched and struggled, its wings beating rapidly as its life faded away.

Caelia cut through the air to reach for the wyvern, but missed narrowly, her claws grasping air. Myra reached for Ruby and Ruby stretched her hand to reach her but fell short.Caelia shot straight down, her body vertical to squeeze in between the buildings. The Rider General steadied herself on the plummeting wyvern and reachers anew for her Heir's hand. Myra slid down until she was held by Caelia's claws alone and yelled to her:

"Jump!" Ruby leapt, her arms outstretched and reached, straining for her Heir's palm. Myra felt the brief touch of her sweating hand and screamed as it plummeted.

Cannonballs hounded her with relentless fury as Caelia climbed with desperate fever, barely missing the maze of burning buildings around them to climb higher and higher into the sky. Myra's heart shredded as she heard Ruby's broken cries amid the colour. She whirled her head, despite the dangers, and saw the general fall to the ground, dead.

"She was brave until the end," she whispered to the night sky, to the world, to the gods who would receive her.

The two, wyvern and rider, looked down to behold the wall that the Cobaltin had put so much stock and belief in. Great holes were gouged out by gryphon claw and the city it circled was blazing wildly. Yet it seemed the only thing that either general or steed could see was the crumpled body on the floor of the burning metropolis.

----------------

They withdrew at dawn and burned a message into the grassland between Cobalt and the sea:

YIELD, OR THE CITY WILL BURN ANEW TOMORROW NIGHT.

Cobalt, scorched black and dotted with ruined buildings, still did yield. The great gouges of the wall were more stark and painful than they had been the night before, and still its people would not surrender.

Soon it would not matter if they opened the drawbridge because the walls would be crumbled for their armies to march through.

Viktoria came up behind her as she surveyed the broken city, already informed of Ruby's death.

"Fire seems to be the way all Kallians fall," she said sadly. "Oh, Myra, why does it have to be this way? I hate it-I hate it all, this horrible, brutal war campaign. I'm not much of a War Queen, am I?

"But when I looked into the eyes of one of the soldiers-he was falling, Myra, into the flame-and something in me shredded. They're not like the elves-they didn't want this war. Now I've meet Jasper I can't pretend they're faceless anymore.It makes me remember the last gasping, bloody breaths of the God-Born war-they're starting to call the war of thirty years ago that now-all that death. To think that six hundred thousand were marching on that plain and then not..."

"All their lives just gone, like cut string." Myra said faintly. "I suppose, my friend, we're hardly good War Queens and War Heirs for saying and feeling all this about war."

"I think we'd be terrible War Queens if we didn't feel this way," Viktoria said. "But Myra, it haunts me. All of them, just gone...and they didn't choose this war. They were conscripted at just fifteen and then they were dead. They must have families that mourn them."

"And to think, Jasper might have been amongst them if the war had been a mere few months earlier." Myra said, shaking. "That's what I can't stop thinking about. I might have killed him, Viktoria..."

They sat in solemn silence after that, watching the plain and the lapping of the Asrieli sea, a quiet, lonely testimony to the hundreds of thousands lost during the Days of the Vultures. It might have been the first time that a person of one race had ever mourned for a member of another, but they mourned no less.

---------------

Jasper

Cobalt was not yet in ruins. If the valkyries had willed it, then the city would lie scorched and crumbled. But they did not want it in ruins yet, because their allies were destined to take it one day.

Destroying the cities that would one day end up in your allies' hands was not polite, nor was it overly clever.

Despite all of this, Cobalt still blatantly showed the shower of flame that had besieged it for three nights. The highest reaching skyscrapers had been whittled down and bore black marks where they were not burned to nothing. The poorer districts (if, indeed, anyone in Cobalt could be considered very poor) with smaller, less ambitious houses bore less signs of destruction, but bore them, nonetheless. Ruins were left where there had once townhouses and the garden that Cobalt had been famed for was scorched, trees burnt to dust and corpses of flowers lying forgotten.

Jasper felt a sudden pang of sorrow. He was Midlands, born and bred, and had previously felt very little sympathy for the Cobaltins and indeed, all of the Coasters. They were the obedient pets of the Empress, the unsympathetic wealthy who had won their positions with rebel blood-Midland and Southerner blood.

But they were Kallians, weren't they?

Before the Crimson Era, as it was so called, they had likely suffered under the Warlords and the desert. Or had been those Warlords, but that couldn't be alllof them. They had families, too, that they had probably gone to Cobalt to provide for. As much as Jasper tried to deny it, they were his people. And more than that:

They were people.

He realised that someone was behind him and he turned with a start, almost slipping down the hill he had been observing the city from. Someone behind him snorted.

"Myra?" he asked, his voice a little squeakier with surprise than he would have liked. "How long

were you standing there?"

"A few minutes," she replied. "I took Stealth when I was training. It was harder then-we had to fool valkyries and their senses."

A silence descended as valkyrie and human stared out at the scorched city.

"You must hate me," Myra said suddenly, as though the words had been held down and been bursting to break through, like the pain in your lungs when you couldn't breathe. "If you didn't hate me for the Days of the Vultures, then you must hate me now."

"Myra," he shook his head. "I don't hate you."

"Look at that city," she demanded. "I burned it last night, and the night before and the night before that. Tonight, I shall rise with the stars and burn it again. Those are your people, trapped within walls and armies. Those are are your people, trapped as they burn."

"I don't hate you," he said quietly. "I couldn't hate you. You're Myra."

"What does that mean?"

"That means that you forgave me for my cowardice before I could forgive myself. That means you burn the city by the nights and spend your days hating that you have to. That means that when you laugh, it sounds so wild and alive. That means that when you smile, I can't help but smile back. That means that I couldn't hate you if I tried. And believe me, I tried so hard to hate you. To never trust you. When I first met you, Myra, I hated you with all the loathing and the fear of my people.

But I think I see now, that we were never so divided, so black and white as all the stories tell us. Because how can we be so divided, so black and white, if you are my friend?"

They sat in perfect silence in an imperfect world, their eyes opened to the truth: they were not divided and never had been.

This is a longer chapter than usual. Do you like this sort of length? And what do you think of Myra and Jasper's budding friendship?