Onine/Fiction003
The Flute
The chill winter night had skillfully taken hold around Palas, the tension in the air of the small kindom was high. The coughs of soldiers and the crackling of dozens and scores of small campfires echoed across the lake. Slanted tile rooves jutted out of the floodwater, the only evidence of there ever being a township surrounding the castle stronghold. There had never been a lake in Palas untill the Legion arrived with their engineers. Their commander was...unorthodox to say the least. A solitary raven perched on the spire of an old shrine. It waited. Waited for the bloodshed. The siege at present was a peaceful one, but it was only a matter of time...
The Legion command tent was empty at that hour, save for a single red-clad dragonblood officer. With intricate care the exalt retraced the new line of the shore on her campaign map with a slender graphite pen. She scratched her chin and moved one of the small markers. The light-foot archers stationed on Kang Peninsula would need to move, the floodwater would soon place them well out of range to be of any use.
It was an inspired strategy Akemi mused, to flood the valley untill it became an artificial lake and box the defenders in. Even now larger combat vessels were being sent up-river to Palas to aid in the planned assault. A naval assault miles from the sea - such artistry! Lookshy may have the capability of flying exalted shock troops into battle or smashing walls apart with siege artillery, but to Akemi such things were dull and thoughtlessly common. True battles were won through turning disadvantages into advantages through pure artistic inspiration.
As an officer she attempted to emulate the command style that was common to the Shogunate of old, commanders that respected and even grew to love their enemies in a detatched way. Deciphering an enemy was wholely half of the battle, fighting power itself was distant on the list. As a result she was competant with her Direlance, however not invincible. A true commander did not need to line-fight nor were they puppets. Tepet Akemi was a regal woman of high and noble dragonblooded breeding and was a decorated officer in the Legions up untill the campaign in the north. She had afterwards served a 'sentence' in the Vermillion Legion under the Roseblack. Akemi respected Ejava, though the two had butted heads on more than one occasion - they were both proud and stubborn women. Akemi did not like to be shackled to the task fighting disorganised pirates for paltry rewards. The offer Juno had placed in her hand offered fame, wealth and most of all challenging adversaries - Akemi leapt at the chance.
She appreciated her aquatic strategy for more than just tactics. The strategy had yielded a strange musical side-effect. Since the flooding of the surrounding farmlands a flute had keened its sweet mournful melody over the troops both friend and foe. Commander Akemi enjoyed the flute solo that had become a nightly event during the siege of Palas. Some of the soldiers believed the song a bad omen yet others welcomed the respite from the hardships of the makeshift military town that surrounded the Keep. As the haunting sound began Akemi looked up with a smile, her scarlet eyes twinkling.
Setting aside her maps Akemi wrapped a rose coloured robe over her tunic and collected a folding stool and a small leather case. Exiting the tent she walked down the hill and through the camp that the soldiers were beginning to call Palastown, a camp they now shared with a veritable menagerie of seabirds taking advantage of the new body of water. The camp seemed to slow under the flute's spell. Some soldiers ignored the melody of the lone flute, and some halted in their tasks to listen, craning their necks toward the darkened castle that sat like a squat overweight behemoth in the water. Akemi found her usual place on the bank closest to the wall of the castle and set down her stool under an oak. With the song in her ears she slipped off her sandles and let her toes knead the frost covered grass, the icicles steamed and sizzled at the touch of her skin. She opened the leather case carefully on her lap and filled the slender tobacco pipe. Akemi studied the song as she filled the pipe, the lilting swaying siren call was one of a lonely man searching for an equal, one that would intrigue him as he intrigued himself. An ego to match his. Every night she amused herself by coming up with a new theory behind the soloist, but this was one she favoured and kept returning to now and then. She found it strangely in line with her adversarial life. Akemi lit the tinder and held it to the end of the pipe.
Shrouded in the darkness of the rampart nearly half a mile away, white eyes immesurably superior to any man scanned Palastown hungrilly, the enormous power pierced the darkness of the Realm fortifications and viewed them as plain as day. When the eyes settled at last upon the dragonblooded Commander Akemi a deep voice chuckled with primal glee.. "Let there be war."
Shortly after the lone flute finished its song, Commander Tepet Akemi's body was discovered impaled by a barbed six foot long arrow.
