The Lorelei River

Hygiene was a luxury Krysta deliberately withheld from her men, one more minor cruelty in a long litany that defined their existence. They were bound to an unforgiving cycle of martial drills that consumed their days and nights, demanding absolute concentration on the sparest caloric intake necessary for survival. A momentary lapse of focus during these exercises invited a throwing knife to sing past an ear—or, for the truly unfortunate, to bury itself in an eye. A number of the soldiers were, in fact, blind, yet their instincts had been honed to a preternatural sharpness, their bodies always knowing the direction of the enemy.

The cadence of their lives was one of brutal simplicity: they fought, they ate, and they repeated the process. They were not collaborators in Krysta’s grand ambitions, but rather instruments, their waking and sleeping hours dedicated to a single, all-consuming purpose: to serve her every whim. They possessed no free will, no expectation of privacy, no concept of leisure. It was surprising, then, that they were granted a solitary indulgence, though perhaps not so shocking when one considered its origin: their master’s profound and calculated disregard for their personhood. In Krysta’s eyes, they were not men. They were not even human. They were machines to be oiled with sustenance and fueled by fear, destined for the scrap heap on a day of her choosing.

And so, while on duty, they were permitted to speak.

As long as their words did not reach Krysta’s ears, no harm was done if a man chose to speculate on the precise curve of her breasts or to imagine the scent of her skin. One soldier even swore he had actually seen them, claiming with great authority that one was, quite alluringly, a fraction larger than its twin. The man was, however, a known and prolific fabricator, and his hypothesis was summarily dismissed by the others.

On this particular night, their conjectures had shifted to the formidable young woman they had taken captive earlier in the day. Even with her magic shackled, she had managed to kill two of their own with nothing more than her bare hands. This fact alone sent a ripple of cruel anticipation through the forty-eight men who remained. She had thus far resisted their torments, but the next phase of their interrogation would involve carving up her pretty little face. That, they surmised, would be a far more difficult thing for her to endure in silence.

For some, however—those who had been with Krysta from the very beginning—the woman’s presence stirred a viper’s nest of unwelcome memories.

“Remember Grimshaw?” one might murmur to another as they passed in the torchlit corridors.

The other would offer a curt, affirmative nod in reply. “Remember his poor village lover? And the way all that concluded?”

They knew the story by heart, having rehearsed it within the private theater of their minds a thousand times over. The captive girl, who hailed from a village near the Ignis Clan’s territory, served as a constant, painful reminder. It was good to remember. Krysta had taught them that. To remember was to never forget the sting of betrayal, to fully appreciate the true measure of the wrongs that had been done to you. It only served to sweeten the eventual revenge. In the end, all scores would be settled, down to the final decimal point.

Grimshaw’s loss had been a particularly sharp blow. He had been the biggest among them, the loudest, the most abrasive. If they ever laid eyes on the dead bastard again, they’d tear him a new one.

“Well, now!” a voice boomed, crashing into the tense quiet of their headquarters as a traitor from the Ignis Clan strode in, his hands wreathed in living flame. The consensus among the men was immediate and unspoken: he was an arrogant prick.

It was the girl who trailed in his wake, however, that truly captured their attention, dozens of pairs of eyes methodically tracing the lines of her slender frame.

“Ahem.” She cleared her throat. “We are here to see Krysta.”

“Krysta’s training.”

“Well, we have all day,” the fire-wielder replied with an easy smile, though the men offered him no warmth in return. “Do you mind if I join you? That chair looks rather comfortable.”

Forty-odd men shot him a look of pure, unadulterated contempt.

“The name’s Jiro,” the man offered, though no one had inquired. “It appears I’ve walked in on a fascinating story. Care to share?”

It was a grim reality of their existence that sometimes even the smallest comforts had to be sacrificed. The men all shook their heads in unison. Thom’s voice, a rough, gravelly thing, spoke for them all. “No one here has any desire to talk to you.”

Jiro was undeterred. “Look, it is going to be a long wait. I am bored, and I am in the mood for a good story. Am I making myself clear?”

A conjured flame that licked fifty feet into the air, hovering dangerously close to the warehouse’s wooden rafters, was sufficient to persuade them.

“Fine,” Thom conceded, his face a mask of profound irritation. “But do not think for a moment that this makes you one of us, Ignis Clan spawn.”

“‘Ignis Clan spawn,’” Jiro echoed, a smirk playing on his lips. “Oh, I am so deeply offended.”

You should be, the men thought as one. It is a curse upon your entire line. The fact that you are not offended only proves you possess no honor, no loyalty. We do not want you here. Why did you come?

Jiro let out a small, theatrical yawn. “Could you please get on with it? Hana and I have not slept in days. We are desperate for some form of entertainment. My god, you are a dull-looking lot. Anyway, where were we?”

“Cherry,” the girl corrected him quietly. “So you could steal the—”

“Shut up!” Jiro snapped, his cheerful facade vanishing in an instant. It was abundantly clear that he harbored a secret he had no intention of sharing. His voice, now sharp as a whip-crack, echoed off the stone walls, surely reaching the closed doors of Krysta’s private chambers. “Now, tell me a story!”

The men were not impressed by his volume, but Thom began to comply nonetheless. Perhaps it was the ingrained habit of obedience that moved him, but it was more likely that they simply wished to be rid of the man’s odious presence as quickly as possible.

“We were speaking of Grimshaw,” Thom said, his tone sharp. “I am certain you have heard of him where you are from. It is time we put the rumors to rest.”

Jiro nodded, gesturing for him to proceed.

“Grimshaw was our most infamous member. He inflicted pain on young women simply to prove that he cared for no one and nothing. And he was always hungry for the next fight.”

“Oh,” the girl, Hana, said softly. “Did he never… like any of them?”

“It is funny you should ask that,” Thom replied, making no effort to sound amused. “He did fall for one. But we will get to that part of the story. You wanted a story, did you not?”

Jiro stretched and leaned back in his chair, an unwelcome guest in their circle. “By all means. Entertain me.”

“There were sixty-two of us, once,” Thom began, a flicker of something akin to nostalgia in his voice. “But I suppose you do not survive in this life if you are not the strongest. Grimshaw killed for sport. He reveled in the conquest. But he had never encountered a victim who did not scream for him. One who would simply look at him with big, brown eyes filled with disappointment instead of hatred. The girl he fell for… she was different. He said her cooking was atrocious.”

Thom paused, shading his eyes for a moment as if lost in the memory before he continued.

“I do not believe anyone else could have done it. Not a single one of us. Betray Krysta?” He scoffed at the very notion. “You might as well ask us to sever our own limbs. But Grimshaw… he never cared about any of that. He was only ever in it for the thrill of the chase. And when he found a woman who gave him a better one, he left.”

“How did he fall for her?” the girl asked.

Thom fought the urge to deliver a sharp retort. It was not the point of the story. She was young; she would learn.

“We were on a raid, as was our custom. Claiming more territory, asserting our dominance in the north. We succeeded, of course. But there was a smaller, secondary objective, one known to only a select few of us. A nearby village had defied our authority. Krysta’s orders were to crush them—down to the last infant—and, naturally, to rape the women in order to break their spirit.”

Thom derived a certain grim satisfaction from the flicker of horror that crossed the girl’s face. Ordinary women like her were a world away from their master. Krysta viewed rape as a calculated, humiliating tactic, entirely divorced from any emotion. It was, in its own way, a remarkable thing. Especially when one considered Krysta’s own history of violation.

“What we did not realize,” he went on, “was that the village was protected by a small, motley group of which no one had ever heard. The Earthen Bands, I believe they called themselves?” He looked to the others for confirmation.

“The Earthen Bands,” Pieter sneered from the shadows.

Thom gave the man a curt nod. “That was it. They used illusions to make it appear as if there were more of them than there actually were. In reality, there were only five. We dispatched them easily enough.” He took a deep breath. “As it happened, we killed the woman’s brother. She came to confront us. Her eyes were blazing. Just an ordinary, muddy brown, but so full of purpose. And to our utter astonishment, she possessed no power of her own.”

“Think of it. A helpless human girl, facing down an army of sixty men, demanding to know why we had slaughtered her brother.” Thom laughed, in spite of himself. “She made us look like fools.”

“And for Grimshaw, it was instantaneous. Though we could not have known it at the time. Love at first sight.” He snorted. “To us, he had always been the rogue brother. The crazy one.”

“The one you are always expecting to burn the whole place down,” Jiro muttered under his breath.

Thom shot him a glare, but Jiro’s gaze was distant, lost in a thought of his own. “You could say that, figuratively speaking. He could not wield fire, of course. The rest of us were cut from the same cloth—dependable, predictable. Grimshaw… Grimshaw just burned himself out.”

“So what happened?” the girl asked. Thom had the distinct impression that she was far more invested in the story than she was letting on. She blinked rapidly, her lashes falling heavy, her muscles coiled with a tension that had not been there before. She watched him with a secret, piercing attentiveness.

“Do you know the feeling?” The question escaped Thom’s lips before he could stop it. He scowled, annoyed at his own uncharacteristic lapse in composure.

“A long time ago,” the girl answered, and her candor surprised him. “It does not matter anymore. But it still aches, like an old scar.”

“My scars do not ache,” Jiro interjected, but then fell silent as he glanced at his companion’s face. “Perhaps you would feel better if you talked about it.”

The girl’s bright, brittle smile returned. “One story at a time, right?”