The Zimya ball was beautiful, all bright lights and amazingly styled men and women. It was held in a wide room, near-impossibly vast, and incredibly pristine. The marbled floor reflected Navtej’s features back at him, the music was like honey to his ears, and the snacks—well the snacks were the best part.

  Navtej reached for another cake and found his plate empty. He’d finished it—now that was unfortunate—it was no matter though, he planned to swiftly rectify the situation with a quickness.

  Navetj was on his feet a moment later, and began making his way across the floor. He slid in between dancing men and women, and finally found himself in front of what he had begun calling the table of delight.

  It had earned that name after providing a nigh-infinite number of sweets, cakes, berries, and more upon it, and seeming to be restocked with even more each time he returned.

  The table did not disappoint this time either. Navtej raised a plate, placed a lovely chocolate cake onto it and complimented it with bright berries next to them. He was about to reach for sweets when a hand came down harshly upon his shoulder.

  It dragged him away from the table roughly, and when Navtej turned, he saw a waiter with hot eyes glaring down at him. “Just what do you think you’re doing boy? The complementaries are for guests. How the fuck did you even get in here?” The man looked at Navtej as if he were disgusted to even be in the same room as him, much less touching him. Navtej had long since figured out why that was—the Putesh weren’t liked here, and that was putting it lightly.

  “I—”

  “—you know what, it doesn’t fucking matter, you’re coming with me,” the waiter had a hand wrapped around Navtej’s arm and was dragging him now.

  Navtej stumbled forwards and spoke. “I’m Volkov’s son!” he snapped.

  At that the man turned around, paused in hesitation, looked at the quality of Navtej’s suit, and decided that he was telling the truth. Dread settled into the waiter now. He swallowed. “Of course, I see, my apologies, sir, I—”

  Navtej tuned him out, storming past the man and heading back to the table. There, he picked out a few more items, all while wondering why Father had brought him to this country in the first place. Was it to harden him? To show him the depravity of his people so that he may not be surprised when he saw it in the future? That sounded very much like a Father thing to do. What the great General Volkov seemed to be missing was that Navtej had absolutely no business being in this country in the future. When the time was right, he would go back home and live a life as a teacher.

  His terrible mood was soon interrupted by a curiosity, one that seemed to draw the eyes of all in the room. Navtej followed their gazes and found that it settled on a few new arrivals. Two of them were men of the uniform, dressed in polished and nearly glowing reds and greys.

  The real source of attention however was the person they both appeared to be chaperoning—a young girl, around Navtej’s age but infinitely more beautiful. Her noble-black hair was studded with glowing jewels, her red dress as elegant and smooth as the feathers of a great peacock. He was certain she was the daughter of some Major Governor, perhaps a foreign noble, or something grander all together. Officials whispered curiously amongst themselves as she made her way across the ballroom, so awed was he that only after several long seconds of staring did Navtej finally realize that he did actually recognise the girl.

  “Ksenija?”

  ###

  The Duke was bald, blue eyed, and dressed in the bright yellows of the Voin Empire. He was sat in Governor Kudrin’s office, eagerly helping himself to a tray of meat, chickens and spices with his bare hands.

  Sasha, Semyonov, and Kudrin waited silently—the latter sitting while the former pair stood.

  In-between licking the grease and spices from his fingers, the duke began speaking. “I am going to take your city, rape your men, stake your women, drown your children, and burn your cultural touchstones.” He picked up a hefty chicken leg, tore a chunk out of it, chewed, swallowed, drank a cup of water, and finally set his eyes on the Governor. “Are these terms acceptable to you?” he asked casually, like a man inquiring of the time.

  Kudrin glared at him, first with hate, then with caution, and finally with frustration. “Duke, I arranged a parley because I was hoping that we might be able to come to a reasonable compromise.” He tried to reason.

  The Duke laughed loudly, violently, and spontaneously. Bits of half-eaten meat went flying from his mouth. His head fell back, and he held his chest as if almost in pain. “Compromise, he wants compromise! Mirezh’s gills, you’re funny!”

  He wagged a playful finger at the Governor who seemed less than pleased by the response he had gotten.

  Duke Ludwig’s laughing slowly fell, but an amused grin remained in its wake. “I believe we’re done here,” he got to his feet suddenly, made his way for the door, set his eyes on Semyonov, hesitated, halted, then grinned at the Governor's son. “You…” he wagged a finger at him with an anticipation in his eyes. “You, I will enjoy the raping of.”

  Sasha saw the colour drain from Semyonov’s face—it was probably his first time being threatened with such a thing. Poor lad.

  Ludwig scoffed, made his way out of the office and slammed the door harshly in his wake.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Sasha set her eyes on Kudrin and saw that the Governor’s steel had bent somewhat after his confrontation with Ludwig. His hand trembled—slightly, almost unnoticeably, but Sasha had seen enough men with the shivers to recognise it even in this one. “Get to your posts—” he said, voice a whisper. Kudrin rolled his neck a fraction and cleared his throat. “Get to your posts, ready the men for war, and get me the King and Lyubushkina.”

  Sasha nodded, spared a glance at Semyonov to see him shaken—because of the threat or because he was a son seeing his father scared, she could not say—and headed for the King’s quarters.

  The walk to the quarters was quick. Sasha readied herself for what state she might find the monarch in, but what she had never expected to find when she opened the door was an empty room. No King, not even a trace.

  ###

  Sasha looked down at the army below and felt the breath catch in her throat. She was standing on the walls of Snegovetska—behind her was the city, in front of her was an army that wanted to burn it to the ground. It was a sea of yellow, and malice and hate.

  She’d faced Voin after Voin, after Voin but had rarely set her eyes upon a mass of enemies as numerous as this with such an absence of reinforcements on her side. Bigger armies certainly existed, but Sasha saw them only along horizon-spanning trenchworks, not compressed towards a single point like this. It was the difference between a river and a tsunami. That was far from the worst of it, still.

  Though most likely hid their pins in order to keep themselves from being targeted as Sorcerers, Sasha knew that one out of every hundred of them was a Disciple. That was the ratio for most militaries and she saw no reason that might change today. It hadn’t before, and it wouldn’t when she needed it to the most.

  That was just how war worked.

  There was the wind, there was the snow, there was ice, and only time separating it all from violence.

  “Where’s the King?” Sasha heard a voice ask. She turned to see a concerned Semyonov approaching her.

  Sasha decided she might as well rip the bandaid off now. “I can’t find him.”

  “What?” His eyes shot open. “You can’t find—what the fuck do you mean you can’t find him?”

  Sasha stayed calm because the alternative would surely get them all killed. “He was absent from the room when I got there. As far as I know he could be anywhere.”

  She knew Semyonov well enough to be confident he wouldn’t break under the news. “I…Okay… Shit,” he nodded, almost beginning to calm before wincing at what seemed to be a recollection. “We’ve heard nothing from Lyubushkina as well.”

  Sasha grit her teeth at the update she might as well have been stabbed from how her body almost seemed to seize up. She nodded. “I see. Shit.” That was it then. The Duke and his army, the Duke and sixty thousand men supported by six hundred Sorcerers, were roughly equal entities. Without the King and Lyubishkina to handle the former, Sasha and the city’s forces would be facing twice the enemy they’d been planned to.

  “Do you think we’re being fucked here?” Semyonov asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sasha answered. I hope not. Long hope. She drew in a breath. “Get the Mages in position, the gunners as well. They’ll be charging soon and we can’t do anything to change that, so we stick to the plan.” The plan in question was creating a bottleneck at the gate, letting magically-reinforced architecture force an assault there, burning through the enemy enmasse and leaving it to the King and Lyubushkina to handle Ludwig.

  Needless to say, that plan was as dead as one of Ludwig’s drowned children now that the two individuals needed to finish it off were missing, and Semyonov knew that. He likely also knew that he could not think of a better plan, so he nodded to Sasha, slid his gloves on, leapt off the wall and let the sound of his boots hitting the mud seconds later tell her he’d landed.

  It did not take long for Bessmertnyy soldiers to position themselves. Several Mages stood by her side, gloves on the tip of their fingers, ready to be put on at a moment’s notice, and eyes set ahead at the amber death below.

  Sasha waited, and waited, and waited, and when the sun had begun dipping underneath the horizon, and the clouds began to darken the sky, the Voin came.

  They came Sorcerer-first, sprinting across the snow with a viciousness and racing straight for the wall. Faster than men, slower than horses, deadlier than anything else.

  Sasha heard the roar of machine gun fire as gunners set their rage upon the magicking enemy. Their bullets met skin and bounced off for the most part, only managing to stagger and bruise the weakest of Sorcerers—just like they would a Mage.

  No fear settled into Sasha, she’d seen it all before, both from the side of the attacker and the attacked. That she was in the latter group today just meant that fate had flipped its coin one way this time. And she would make the best of what had been given to her. Or die trying.

  She slid her gloves on. “Smite!” She roared, and did not hear her voice, but that of dozens of Mages roaring by her side. She raised her hands to the sky, saw the clouds split open in a myriad of ways, few slits were orange—for the Disciples of Gnev like her, others white, most grey. From all, magic descended.

  They fell on the approaching Sorcerers like locusts upon the damned. Rending earth, and splitting stone and crushing the weak under the mass of magic in a cloud of dust and dirt. The ground shook, like a great beast had fallen upon it.

  A ‘storm’ was the colloquial name for it—a massive synchronization of several Mage’s Smite to bring down cataclysm upon the enemy. Humanity had yet to produce artillery batteries able to match such an event, and it was a way to weed out the weakest of Disciples from the mass. But only the weakest.

  The Sorcerers shot out of the cloud like bullets, thin wisps of smoke clinging to their form as they tore through the air. Some were bloodied, the middling ones, while others unhurt entirely as they stepped over the mangled forms of pettier casters. All stretched their palms out—hands adorned with five rings apiece that Sasha could not see from this height but knew were there—and shot out a blinding myriad of deathly colours at the gate.

  The gate gave in at once, folding under the might of Sorcerous wrath and splintering into shards of metallic projectiles.

  Next came the infiltration, Sasha watched from above as they funnelled through the gates, while a few others attempted to break through the thick walls with their magic, and found the mass more resistant than they clearly would have hoped.

  The Majority of the fighting was from the breach however, and Sasha saw the chaos below in all its madness. Mage and Sorcerer clashed with bright projectiles, burning the air and leaving only one standing at the end of their exchanges. Those at the back of the attackers’ ranks were pelted by howitzers, wounded by near-misses or mangled by hits.

  Mundane soldiers followed in after the Sorcerers with spitting guns and beady eyes.

  For every three Voin Sorceres that were killed, one Mage fell. That was as good as Sasha could have hoped for the bottleneck. But sooner or later, the Duke would arrive, and it would all go to shit. She couldn’t prevent that, all she could do was make sure they were in the best position to handle the shit storm when it came.

  Sasha took in a deep breath, leapt from the rampart, and descended into the sea of bullets, magic and blood.