[h2][center]Esther von Degraff[/center][/h2]
[hr]
Finally, the attack was over, with no casualties at all in their side, including the scout who only fell unconscious, not dead thankfully. Esther looked around with her characteristic bright smile as she saw everyone gather. She was glad that even though they were ambushed, they managed to come out unscathed.

Her smile didn't disappear as the captain gave her after-battle briefing, as she praised them for surviving their first battle. She was certainly proud of herself, as she had always thought she would run away or at least paralyzed in fear when she entered real combat. But today, she had proven to herself that she was capable of fighting just like the other cadets.

Her smile disappeared however when Althea sourly scolded her for her late arrival.

"I-I'm sorry!" she quickly apologized to the medic after the captain finished talking to her. "I-I was occupied with protecting the others you see!" Her eyes started to water. She really didn't want to disappoint her team mates. It's similar to how she didn't want to disappoint her grandfather, which was why she went to the academy in the first place. For all her cheerful personality, she actually had quite a low self-esteem inside.

She brought her lowered gaze back up, only to see that Althea wasn't really paying attention to her as she was occupied with the book on her hand. It seemed that the medic didn't really care that much about her blunder, which brightened her up somewhat. Curious, she got closer to her and took a peek at the book herself.

It seemed to be a journal of some sorts, the journal of the wounded scout it seemed. His name was Wagnil, and at first it was just some field reports that Althea quickly flipped over. But then, she flipped over to the page with a sketch of some soldiers. And they looked eerily similar to the soldiers they just defeated. So this poor man had seen this coming and was coming to warn them about the ambush? But in the sketch, they seemed to be guarding a coach and heading to Orello so he didn't know they were coming for them?  After that, Althea flipped over some more pages about Wagnil rambling about their suspicious movements until she got to a page where he stated the conversation that he overheard from them, something about the special cargo they were guarding and how easy it was to get. And after that, some more scrawls that she couldn't make any sense whatsoever.

...No good... she's not good at deciphering this kind of stuff... her head started to ache when she put her mind into thinking about it...

"U-um, I-I'll go look around now!" she hastily declared to the medic before departing. She didn't want to be asked on what she thought by either her or the Captain on the journal, as she would just embarrass herself with just how shallow her analysis must be. So she decided she would do the Captain's orders to burn their unneeded equipment as she said they needed to leave no trace of their existence.

She headed straight to her tent, and sorting through her backpack, she found her spare dresses and undergarments. She had a thought of burning them as one of the "unnecessary" things they were supposed to discard but she quickly dismissed the thoughts. They were certainly essential, as she couldn't imagine herself wearing the same clothes for a prolonged period, especially with how dirty and sweaty they tend to get. So she looked around once more. Water bottle? Necessary. A box of cookies? Necessary for extra rations. Her secret mini-teddybear? Can't go to sleep without it.

In the end, she thought everything was essential so she ended up discarding not a single thing.

After that, she quickly headed back outside to do the captain's other order; searching the enemy for any intelligence or identification they could find.

This was no easy task for Esther either as when she got close to one of the enemy corpses, she quickly became squeamish at the thought of sorting through it. However, the captain's orders were absolute. That was one of the first things they drilled into her head when she first joined the academy. So she just had to be brave and tough herself up.

...In the end however, her efforts were in vain. None of them had any identification with them. They only had a similar tattoo on their lower necks, a really suspicious-looking tattoo of a snake curled around a dagger. She also noticed that they didn't all look like the Grand Duchy's people. One of the bodies she inspected looked like it belonged to an Alliance citizen. What's up with that?

Well, no matter. Her job was only to report her findings to the captain. Let her do all the thinking.

"Reporting in, Madam! The enemy didn't carry any identification with them! But they all have similar tattoos on their necks! A-and some of them looked like they came from the Alliance!" she shouted while giving a salute once she returned back to the captain.

[@KoL][@DracoLunaris]