Captain Anwyn Edris steadied her rifle as she crossed the marble hallways. Her breath coldly rebounded off the steel faceplate of her helmet. Nine years of fighting had lead to this moment. Nine years of brutal warfare the likes of which the world had never seen before.
Anwyn took the Queen's shilling at the start of the war's second year, and as a result had been there for most of it. She had been there when Pisceran troops first made landfall on the continent. She had been there when the Naraban Republic was liberated from occupation. And now she was here, the Kraslan Empire pushed back to Telaregrad, their very capital. Now she was here in the Imperial Palace, searching room by room for the Kraslan Tsarina herself. Soon, the war would be over. Soon, she could go home.
Most nations would have surrendered long ago, but Kraslan Doctrine wouldn't allow that. One of the many backwards goddesses the Kraslans worship demanded three simple rules: "Death above dishonor, Freedom above Life, Afterlife above the world". The empire was always going to fight to the bitter end, and now they were here. Anwyn still remembered the trail of destruction the Kraslans left behind as they retreated out of Naraba and then deeper into their home nation. It was four years ago that Anwyn and her unit had arrived at the remains of Madralin. Naraba's former third largest city rained in liquid fire. The smell stuck with her even now. Almost every unit had some story of arriving at a location expecting a battle only to find the aftermath of a massacre, though Anwyn struggled to imagine a sight that could be worse than the melted flesh she saw inflicted on civilians that day.
After breaching the palace, the squad's goal was simple: fan out through the palace searching for Tsarina Anastasia and her two general daughters. All three of them would be aiming for death in battle while the city burned around them. Command knew this, the orders to "Capture them alive, if possible" were simply a formality. Likely, there was no plan for what to do with them in the event they did surrender.
The Squad had been peeling away from each other bit by bit, to search down the seemingly endless marble hallways of the Imperial Palace, or to guard off potential escape routes their targets might use. Anwyn looked to her right, at her sister in arms. Every standard issue Pisceran Royal Army helmet was affixed with a metal faceplate. Anwyn remembered what they looked like in peace time. Shaped to look like the face of a warrior of old legend, and decorated in intricate metallic green patters. After nine years of war, the designs had become progressively more utilitarian. Captain Anwyn Edris's helmet at least was still shaped into a face with lips and a nose, even if the excessive detailing was forgone. The corporal standing next to her, Olwina Gwynn, on the other hand, had a faceplate that was little more than a curved sheet of steel with eye holes.
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As the remaining women reached the end of the East Wing hallway, and made their way up onto the upper floor Anwyn made her split from the group. The staircase split in two directions into two separate hallways that ran back down the east wing back to the Palace's Center, where with any luck the squad would be reunited with the group that went down the west wing.
"You two, take the South corridor. I'll go down the north. Radio if you make contact with the others."
Corporal Gwynn nodded in response, and the squad split once more.
Now alone, with her thoughts, Anwyn finally took in her surroundings. The opulence of it all astounded her. The stark white marble floor, the Kraslan Imperial purple walls lined with gold trimmings. This hallway was lined with portraits of various members of the Kraslanova Imperial Family going back centuries. At least, Anwyn assumed they were members of the imperial family from the fact that the Kraslan Imperial Arms was displayed above each portrait. A Golden, Sleeping dragon atop a field of Purple. She had been on enough battlefield where her enemies flew that banner to recognise it instantly. Usually it meant the Kraslan forces were being commanded directly by either Princess Katarina or Princess Charlotte. Where that symbol was, the Kraslanovas soon followed.
It was the fourth room that she entered in this corridor where she finally encountered something other than the echoes of Artillery and gunfire in the distance. She opened the oak door to be met with two imperial guards, clad in the same purple as walls.
Luckily for her, the pair were just as taken by surprise as she was. Before they could react, she shot her rifle into the first guard, knocking her dead on the spot. She tried to fix the second with her bayonet, but there was a clash of steel as the guard parried with her sword, the maneuvered to make her own strike. Anwyn was forced to take a few steps back out of the room, trying to create just a little more distance between herself and the guard. A rifle rarely beats a sword at such close quarters. She readied the bolt on her rifle and took her second shot. It landed in the guard's shoulder, giving her a brief moment to charge her bayonet into the woman's stomach.
Anwyn was no stranger to killing. She had, after all, been fighting this war for half of her adult life. That didn't mean she enjoyed the act, however. She pulled her bayonet out of the dark haired woman's abdomen, and looked up. If the One Goddess was watching over her, she prayed that this truly would be the end of the war.
She looked around. In the struggle she didn't even have time to process what this room was. A small antechamber, with another room just beyond. Like the other rooms in this hallway, probably a bedroom. Though the fact this one was guarded, probably meant unlike the others, this one wasn't empty.
Anwyn readied the bolt on her rifle once more, took a deep breath then kicked open the door. She trained her rifle forward, expecting to be met with the bullet or blade of one of her three targets.
Instead, sitting on the floor, was a young dark haired boy, about 12 years old and clad in a pale purple silk nightgown. His bright green eyes stared down the barrel of her rifle in sheer terror.
