Alexia flung the silver and maroon cloak bearing the charging bull of Eckhard into the air and retrieved her staff. Her emotions became sharper as Calden fell to his knees, wheezing. Jonah the Elder screamed his brother’s name and Bam shouted “Bandits!” Blood trickled slowly down Calden’s chest and ejected from him as he gasped for air.

  Alexia concentrated on saving him. This was a man who was willing to die to protect her dreams, a man who loved her and her cause. His eyes were on her, full of recognition. She needed to heal his wound before it was too late.

  Her focus broke with the twang of arrows whooshing toward them. Alexia called for Zafrir, forming the spell she’d been preparing for the past several days.

  A wall of wind circled the caravan, roaring into existence. The Ring of Peace glowed green on her finger as the chaos fueled her attunement to Zafrir. Arrows shattered against the howling wind. Shrapnel rebounded into the forest, eliciting screams of pain and fear.

  “Wizard! Scatter!”

  Alexia felt a vengeful, protective anger welling in her. Rather than fight it, she fused her focus between Zafrir and Balbaraq, welding the powers together. The wind rushed into the woods, launching debris and lightning bolts where the bandits hid on the south side of the road. She channeled divine energy until the wind spiraled into a mighty cyclone. Trees were uprooted, thrown wildly about. Lightning slammed into the ground, thundering amidst the roaring of the cyclone. Tree trunks creaked and snapped, whirling through the air.

  The cyclone tore bandits from the ground, flinging them through the air. Trees smashed into bodies, raining blood and bone. Bows, swords, and shields swirled like leaves parted from their branches. Swords collided with flesh and tree, adding to the din and the death. Tree smashed into tree, splintering wood, causing explosions of bark and dirt. Branches whipped against bandits; one bandit’s upper torso went skyward where one such branch rent the body in two at the waist. The wind was painted red by clouds of blood spraying through the air. Thousands of leaves flew in as many directions, pine needles shot forth like tiny arrowheads piercing trees and bandits alike. A lone redwood sequoia held strong to its roots as arbors and robbers alike were annihilated between its enduring strength and the ferocity of Alexia’s windstorm. Through the carnage, Alexia felt a distant pull, drawing her attention back to where her heart wanted it to be.

  Calden, Alexia thought, knowing her time to save his life was limited.

  The lightning stopped and the wind stilled as she released Balbaraq and Zafrir. Alexia reached for Leverith’s spirit, her memory drawn to the devotion Calden had expressed toward her mere degrees ago.

  Bandits caught in the cyclone fell to the ground. Alexia doubted many had survived. Temos, Esrak, and Bam charged in to fell those who tried to rise. Alexia couldn’t focus on that right now, though the nagging need to have one survivor to interrogate pulled on the edge of her mind.

  She couldn’t prioritize that now. Alexia aimed her staff at Calden when bowstrings twanged once more. She spun, conjuring a wind shield around herself. Several arrows bound for her were deflected, one of them redirecting into flesh with a loud thump.

  Jonah the Elder gripped at the shaft lodged in his arm. His son crashed to the ground with a cry, an arrow jutting out of his knee.

  Angry at the bandits, even angrier with herself, Alexia focused on the north side of the road. She should’ve known bandits would hit from both sides. More people would die now for her mistakes.

  Her distraction cost her even more as the mistakes piled atop each other. Several arrows collided into her wind shield, another one hitting Jonah the Younger’s shoulder. His cries were a knife to her heart, as her eyes shifted toward Calden and twisted the knife.

  Calden rolled to his side, rich-red oxygenated blood pooling beneath him, mixing with the pine needles and twigs of the forest trail. “Stop them,” he croaked. He weakly pointed into the forest.

  Alexia took a step toward him. “You need my help!”

  “Alexia. Go!” he yowled, bubbling blood spurting from the entry wound in his chest. A lung shot. His time was short. She saw a flash of another man telling her to go as the mob closed in.

  “Now!” he rasped.

  “I’ll come back! I will save you!” she promised.

  A lie, she knew. Yet she needed to say it to give herself the strength to go. Her mind knew that the whole caravan would die if she didn’t finish the bandits off but she still couldn’t justify leaving him without falsifying hope that it wasn’t the end. She knew what she did to herself, knew it was all a mirage like the millions of daydreams that carried her through her shy childhood. Still, she was tired of people dying on her, tired of not being good enough.

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  She twisted that self-loathing into divine wrath. The sky above grew dark as she channeled Balbaraq. Lightning crackled in the air.

  The bandits scattered, splintering into several groups as they crashed north into the depths of the forest. They were wicked. Servants of Zamael with no hope of ever returning to Leverith’s path. Maleon’s lesson was etched deep into her soul: not everyone could be saved. But if these monsters were slain, the people of Calden’s Caravan and a multitude of future victims could be saved. Justice could be delivered to those she was too late for. Her emotions grew so large until she felt the sky rumbling into her body, threatening to overflow her with sadness, with vengeance, with the desire to protect, and with self-loathing. She fused her feelings with a focus and let it go with a roar, “Ful—

  “Jonah!” cried a father to his son.

  “—mine!”

  Lightning streaked through the forest, pursing Alexia’s prey. She couldn’t follow it to its destination. Her head snapped toward the Jonahs. The boy crawled away from a barrel-chested man wielding a woodsman’s axe. The father rushed to his son’s protection, trying to tackle the axeman while an arrow was still pinned in his shoulder.

  The bandit swung his axe, cleaving it through Jonah the Elder’s gut. He yanked his axe free and kicked Jonah to the ground.

  His son crawled, blood trailing behind him. He hid behind a wagon. Alexia lost sight of him as the bandit rounded the back of the wagon, axe raised. She dashed down the length of the caravan, screaming Jonah’s name as an arrow whistled past her.

  The axe met metal as Bam deflected it with his sword. Alexia tried to prepare her spell but couldn’t get a clean target as Bam and the bandit shifted. Bam ended positioned between Alexia and the bandit. She twisted, trying to find any angle. Another arrow whizzed past her head, hitting the wagon.

  Bam swung his blade. Weak as he was, the powerful bandit knocked the sword out of Bam’s hands. He slapped Bam in the face, gripped him by the neck, and slammed him into the ground. He lifted the axe once more.

  Two shots were made. One by arrow and one by staff. Alexia cried out, losing focus as she staggered forward, stumbling to a knee.

  The arrow pierced through her back and protruded out her chest. Too high to have hit the vitals. Her mind analyzed the wound without intention.

  She pushed it aside, focusing on the bandit. Her lightning blast blew him off his feet, burning into his chest.

  She forced herself to move through the pain, knowing the battle wasn’t over yet. Esrak’s spear deflected a blade intended for her. He dueled the bandit as Alexia ripped the arrow through her and closed the wound with a quick channeling of Leverith.

  In the three turns she spared to stabilize herself, the duel was done. The bandit slashed Esrak across the stomach. The lanky orphan fell as the bandit pointed his blade toward her.

  He didn’t reach her. With a roar, rage burst within her and the bandit’s breastplate caught on fire, cooking the man within it.

  One last bandit, a man holding a bow, turned into the forest and ran. Temos pursued with his big axe.

  This was the man who shot her. Perhaps his arrows had hit several others in the caravan. She passed judgment on him, calling on Qoryxa. The air grew even hotter as she extracted whatever essence of divine energy the Goddess of Ice provided on a day such as this. Her inner eye envisioned the spear that would end this battle.

  Seeing the ice forming in front of her, the bandit threw his bow to the side, crashed to his knees, and raised his hands. “I yield!”

  Alexia shifted her staff at the last moment. The icicle shot into a tree several feet above the bandit’s head. The tree fell backward, leaning into a strong neighbor.

  Temos, holding his bloody axe in both hands, looked to Alexia for guidance. The bandit prostrated himself. “They would’ve killed me if I didn’t! ‘Ave mercy!”

  She felt as if the angleglass of Calden’s life was probably empty but the bandit looked pitiful with his tattered clothes and pleading lachrymose eyes. He looked like a human being and not some monster with a heart of darkness.

  Two voices battled inside of her as she pointed her staff at the kneeling man. The voice of the woman who had lost her innocence warned her not to trust this man and the voice of the girl who dreamt of peace implored her not to be Zamael’s executioner.

  Alexia tried to find a compromise. She needed a bandit survivor to guide her to their camp. She lowered her staff, trying to find the right words to say. She was never given a chance to find them.

  Grinning, the bandit lunged forward as if launched from a loaded spring. He drew a hidden knife from his sleeve.

  She reacted. Too slowly. Her staff caught the bandit’s arm, forcing it astray. Alas, the dagger pointed toward her heart sliced instead into the side of her chest. In her pain, she dropped Aurora, her eyes following the knife as it sliced toward her. She stumbled back, falling, narrowly evading the killing slash. The bandit lifted the blade for the final cut. It fell, weakly from his grasp as he lurched forward.

  He stumbled a few steps, crashing atop her with Temos’s axe planted in his back.

  Temos hefted the corpse free of her, mumbling incoherencies. Then he helped her to her feet. This boy, an orphan with half of a tongue, saved her life.

  Thanking him, Alexia retrieved Aurora and rushed to salvage whatever life she could from the carnage of the ambush.

  Character Portraits - The Dreamers of Peace | Royal Road