Of course it does. It is one thing for Redana to fight a duel, where she can shine, where she burns with fury. It is another thing for her to pay for each swing with the deaths of her shining-feathered soldiers, her comrades-in-arms chanting the name of their beauty, and the swelling mouse-servitors who fling themselves at owls with fury. And Redana is not ruthless enough to spend the lives of her [i]lessers[/i] for her own advantage. She never has been.

So she dives into the Kaeri, and her hammer is a great long-hafted sword that she swings about her with the muscles of an Olympian. If she will be surrounded by blood, it will be the blood of nightmares; if Sagakhan is willing to kill everyone standing around Redana, then let Redana be surrounded by the shadows of owls.

It is incredibly dangerous. Impossibly so. And yet, in the midst of it all—

A battlecrab lurches unsteadily. It was half-crushed underneath a heavy footfall, and all it knows is that it is in pain, that it is missing its mightiest pincer, that it is going to die hurt and confused and ignored by everything around it, save for a moment’s irritation from one of the Kaeri. And yet it still drags itself forwards, furious, snipping at the air defiantly.

And the Shepherdess clears space all around her with a swing that rips apart these silent killers, flips away from the fall of Sagakhan’s thunderbolt of a tail (one which would crush her instantly, were it to fall on her head, and that be the end of all this striving), and scoops up the crab, letting it cling to one shoulder as she keeps moving. 

You are seen, even the smallest of you. You are important, even the smallest of you. You do not die here while the Shepherdess still has strength within her. And if she will do this for an injured crab, a hurt and confused animal, do you think she will do any less for the hearts and souls that believe in her?

It is impossible for her to win, unless something changes, doubly so now that her enemy has become great and terrible, the greatest of monsters, but the Shepherdess does not give up. This is the heart that saw the skies and dreamed of a world where anything could happen, where adventure was real, where she could be free with the girl who meant the most to her.

And she will never give up hope, even here in the dark, beneath Sagakhan’s shadow, using every trick she has just to stop more of her subjects from dying. She burns like a white flame in the deepest night, and though she flickers, she will not go out.

[Redana rolls a [b]9[/b] to Overcome; she protects her army from Sagakhan, but only temporarily (and clears Grace in the process)]