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It was a good thing only the advance unit was expected to ride to Magdred Way on horseback; not only had Lienna never put a foot in a stirrup in her life, but by the way the carriage horses fussed when she passed them to board (not to mention pretty much every other animal she’d encountered in her life), she would probably have gotten half the unit killed or injured when she sent their mounts bolting at the sight of her. 

It was hardly the most relevant thought as she stepped down from the carriage at Magdred, but it was the first one that came to mind which didn’t feature gruesome memories of the last time she’d been forced to fight in the fog. The situation at Magdred was too similar for comfort: a now-empty carriage, an unnatural fog, and a foreboding sense that whatever was to come would not go according to plan. 

[color=b300b3]"We're walking into a trap."[/color]

Rudolf’s voice from somewhere off to her side startled Lienna, but he stated the obvious. The mist was definitely unnatural (granted, she wasn’t entirely sure why she was so certain about that), not to mention the temperature – wasn’t it supposed to get [i]warmer[/i] as you descended a mountain? There was definitely something else going on here. After all, the last time she conjured a fog, it was to set up an ambush. Contrary to Rudolf’s opinion, why would this be any different?

Rudolf’s rattled off theories went over Lienna’s head for the most part, but his voice in the fog was a reminder of one key difference between here and Luin: this time, she had more than a brooding princess on her side. The thought wasn’t much comfort – with the exception of Tomai, who was bound to their protection, and maybe Clarissa, who seemed noble and foolish enough to stick her neck out for any comrade in danger, Lienna didn’t trust a single soul among her unit to protect her – but at the very least, a few more bodies between her and approaching death would probably open up an opportunity to escape if things got ugly. 

Still, the fog had a way of messing with her senses. Unsure if the figures in the mist were allies, enemies, or her own mind playing tricks on her, Lienna chose simply not to look at them, focusing instead on adjusting her sleeves. The heavy black robes she’d been given served an adequate distraction for the moment; the thick fabric hung poorly on her frame, never sitting quite right and restricting her movement. She’d been told they had some defensive capability and would help enhance her magic, but seeing as she’d only just gotten used to the stiff fit of her school uniform, the added weight and mass of the robes felt more like a death shroud than something meant to protect her. 

But she could only focus on ill-fitting robes for so long, and as they stood in the mist, Lienna got more uneasy by the second. It was nearly impossible to stop her eyes from darting around at the fog, imagining brigands in strange garb bursting through at any moment to finish what they started back in Him—no, [i]Luin[/i]. Ha. Lienna might have cracked a smile at the dark irony of that thought if she wasn’t so on edge. What a joke; her life was so defined by danger that her encounters were starting to bleed together. 

[color=baa7c7]“Let’s just get moving and be done with this quickly,”[/color] she suggested, still suspiciously eyeing the fog. 

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