[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/9SpAqdN.png[/img] [b][h3]R E L O U S E[/h3][/b] [/center] [hr] [center][h3]A F T E R M A T H[/h3][/center] Osanna shoved through the city gate in a tide of bodies. Armored forms jostled her broken arm, elbowed her sides, and pushed her into other soldiers in their haste to answer the call. Many were wounded, and their screams tainted the night, the smell of blood and shit and vomit heavy in the air. For a Black Rezaindian, death was usually a tidy thing. Osanna slipped open locked doors in the darkest hours, dealing in poison and quick-slit throats. She left bodies slumped over desks or in their cups or curled beneath a crimson blanket in their beds. The judgment of Echeran was swift but not cruel. By contrast, this war was filthy. When she was finally through, Osanna stumbled through muddy streets until she found a wall to lean on, pressing her shoulders against cool stone, the squelch and slick of mud beneath her feet. Her hip throbbed with the trickle of blood she’d not been able to stem one-handed. Her collar and left arm ached unless they were jostled and then lit up with fiery pain. She needed care, needed to get to a mender. The makeshift tents for the wounded smelled worse than the stampede of soldiers filtering through the gate. A miasma of pain and rot tainted the air like poison, and Osanna gagged as she was pushed into a cot. Time passed in strange leaps and jolts. The figure of a soft-faced boy in a giant’s armor swam beneath her eyelids, and the man in the cot nearest her died gasping, blood gurgling from his lips. And then, the miasma began to lift. Two women moved through the tent, laying their hands on the ill. Osanna looked up into the eyes of a sharp-faced Yasoi lady, and her bones began to knit together. [hr] [center][h3]M O R N I N G[/h3][/center] “Osanna.” Osanna opened her eyes to sun-lit canvas, the warmth of late morning heating Dame Sabine Dupont’s tent. The lady sat within arm’s reach, pulling a tunic down over pale skin and reaching up to tie back red hair. Osanna yawned and scrubbed at her face, trying to rub away the beginnings of a headache. Her mouth was parched. [color=000000][b]“What are you doing that for?” [/b][/color]Osanna couldn’t imagine that the Parrench army was leaving already. They needed time to recoup their losses and recover from their wounds, and there was the small matter of the Eskandr army outside the walls. She hooked a finger in the hem of Dame Sabine’s leggings, only to be swatted away. [b]“You need to dress too. The king has called for us both to meet him at the red table, though unfortunately not at the same time. It seems we’re needed for two different reprisals.”[/b] [color=000000][b]“Whatever will I do without you around to sweep me off the battlefield?”[/b][/color] Sabine rolled her eyes. [b]“I suggest you keep a better hold on your horse.”[/b] Osanna groaned again and sank back into the bedroll. [color=000000][b]“I don’t suppose there’s any chance she made it back within the walls before they closed.”[/b][/color] [b]“You might be surprised. Horses tend to return to the nearest source of food, and you lost her at the beginning of the battle. Now up, oh battler of Nashorns.”[/b] [color=000000][b]“You still don’t believe me, then?”[/b][/color] [b]“I’m starting to— begrudgingly. I overheard soldiers talking today about the little nun who took on the giant. Though you’re not [i]that[/i] small. It’s still up in the air.” [/b] [color=000000][b]“Hah hah.”[/b][/color] Osanna pulled on her trousers and buttoned her sword belt over them. [color=000000][b]“I’ll show you little if you meet me on the sparring field.”[/b][/color] [b]“I’d rather meet you back here if we don’t get shipped off today. Go, or you’ll be late."[/b] [hr] [center][h3]T H E R E D T A B L E[/h3][/center] Osanna met Arcel’s gaze as he looked briefly at her and glanced around the round table, her eyes lingering briefly on a pale girl with green hair and an older man in Rezaindian robes that she had not seen before. It wasn’t clear what his order was— Red, maybe? Unless he was here to care for the dead. She listened to Arcel’s speech dutifully enough, but in the end, it did not matter much to her whether he sent her to steal into the Eskandr camps or to slip, wraith-like, through their halls. The archbishop had been clear—Osanna was to treat the king like a superior in the church, and it did not change much to have the order come from an abbot or a bishop or a monarch. It was the same job, and she’d always enjoyed doing it well. Osanna sat back in her seat. [color=000000][b]“When do we start?”[/b][/color]