Before the Sun Rises

Morale in camp was low, Hazel observed.

An already measly thousand soldiers had whittled down to only hundreds in a matter of a few weeks, largely in part due to rising desertion rates when the food began to run low. It was evident that their army had been wholly unprepared for a drawn-out battle. Each day, the sun rose to less men than the last, and those who stayed wore grim expressions on thin faces.

The lone girl couldn’t help but sigh into the night. For all she could do, she knew that little could be done for broken spirits.

In an attempt to rid herself of the gloomy atmosphere which clung uncomfortably to her skin, Hazel shook her head and set off towards the medical tent. After all, she thought, time spent sulking could instead be used to prepare for the battle tomorrow.

The usual morose silence was temporarily replaced by the soft crunch of twigs and leaves underneath Hazel’s bare feet as she walked. Braziers on the way produced an eerie light, casting shifty shadows that could almost be mistaken for people. Enemies or deserters, Hazel didn’t know which.

Waving aside the flaps of her tent, Hazel stepped once again into the sea of battered bodies which lay on the bare ground, the injured too numerous to provide bedrolls for each weary head.

The girl stopped briefly to crouch, her knees barely touching the ground. Picking up a rag, she wrung it out in a bucket of cold water nearby and carefully wiped the sweat and grime from the faces of the men laid before her. Some groaned and fidgeted, uncomfortable, but most were too out of it to feel any pain, thankfully.

It would be forgiven if, at first, one looked at this scene and wondered how it ended up like this, when magic of all things existed; the idea of magic seemed to elicit a sense of childlike wonder in most of humanity, after all. In reality, magic was not a cure all with no consequence. Healing magic, in particular, only sped up the body’s natural healing process to close wounds, but left the recipient with incredible fatigue if healed too often this way. It’s been the folly of several headstrong warriors to depend too much on a magical healer only to shortly collapse and get themselves killed.

The number of incapacitated and remaining men made one thing clear to Hazel: Nothing short of a miracle could win them this war, not with men already so defeated. So she instead focused her efforts on the one thing she could do—make sure as many of these men as possible got to see their families again.

The healer swiftly got to work on her mortar and pestle. While Hazel was more than well acquainted with healing spells, she simply didn’t have the raw potential for magic her pure-blooded cousins did; instead, she chose to supplement her healing magic with alchemic concoctions.

So caught up in her thoughts, Hazel had failed to notice the extra body that had entered her tent.

A stern, if somewhat amused, clearing of the throat made Hazel’s body jerk almost involuntarily, and she had to stop herself from accidentally dumping all of her hard work directly onto her lap. A huff and quick turn of her head revealed the culprit to be not only the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, but her superior, general of the army, and childhood friend, Avis.

The woman, with a practiced motion, stifled a giggle with the back of her hand, as if it weren’t befitting for her face to contort in such ways.

“You should really pay more attention to your surroundings, Hazelnut. If it had been the enemy…”

Avis softly bumped the top of her friend’s head with a closed fit to demonstrate her point. From a glance, the two likely looked like a superior chastising their subordinate, but the woman’s mirth was betrayed by the gentle way her shoulders shook with silent laughter. If she were ever ordained to hear it, Hazel wondered what that laughter would sound like.

The healer smoothed her tousled hair and relaxed her shoulders in an attempt to look less like a brooding teenager.

“Don’t you have men to look after? If you’re away for too long, we may not have an army by daybreak.”

“About that,” Avis replied before gracefully plopping herself down on Hazel’s cot in the corner. The young woman clasped her hands together and gave a soft, but measured smile. “You should consider fleeing camp before sunrise, as well.”