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<i><span style="font-family:Amaranth"><span style="font-size: 18px">...Back in a time of purity and simplicity...<br/>
</span></span></i>​</div><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 15px">"Ehehe! Wait up for me!" Scampers through the brightly colored flowers and soft, green grass caused rustles to bounce here and there. Nature spread on as far as the eye could see, expensive and exotic flowers as well as gorgeous trees all landscaped to look absolutely beautiful. This was just one extension of wealth from royalty, the castle gardens of the Phoenix capital: Iorith. That could matter less though... the impurity of wealth, separation of classes, even the quality of the nature around them could matter less. That wasn't the focus right now... and it wouldn't be their focus for a while. Short, scarlet hair followed behind the girl who chased after the boy in front of her.<br/>
<br/>
"O-Okay time out... this isn't haah... fair... your legs are bigger than mine!" She'd whine a little despite the height difference only being about an inch between the two kids who hadn't even been in the world for a decade now. "Let's rest, okay? We have more time than usual today, father said the meeting would go on for a while." Of course, the boy's presence here meant that it was a bigger than usual, two kings of two tense nations usually didn't spell much good for diplomacy if they were forced to meet every few weeks to make a resolution.<br/>
<br/>
Slowly yet awfully gorgeously, she wove a flower crown of white and yellow flowers, one for him and one for her. With that bright, gorgeous smile of hers that radiated childlike charm... she'd present his to him with that familiar, "I love you!" before shifting her own on top of her head. Their days went on like that again... and again... yet it'd stop on that day. She'd always remind him every day, he had to marry her so that their fathers would stop quarelling, so they could play freely without needing to worry about complicated things.<br/>
<br/>
...If only it were that easy.<br/>
</span></span><br/><div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family:Amaranth"><span style="font-size: 18px"><i>...Thirteen Years Later...</i></span><br/>
</span>​</div><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 15px">Mountains and piles of charts, graphs, and maps accumulated on the wooden table. Looming over them was a distinctly female figure. Although her skin was pale and untouched, absolutely beautiful in a sense... she was adorned in chainmail and a curaiss over that to pull back most of her feminine charm. Her sharp red eyes flicked from one piece of information to the next... to the next... to the next... it was just a process of that. It'd been like that for almost ten years now, when she stepped forward to lead her nation's armies at the stupidly young age of 12. Never once had she lost a chess match in her nation to anyone, never once had she pressed her army into a battle they couldn't win. It was all just a series of retreating and pushing back, </span>guerrilla<span style="font-size: 15px"> warfare... kiting the obscenely large enemy force until they were at a point where they could no longer win even if their forces outnumbered 3-1 or even 10-1.<br/>
<br/>
At the conclusive Battle of the Frontier, seven years prior, the Phoenix faction had entirely pushed out the conquest of the Ice Draconic opponents they faced... and for seven years after, they fought a purely defensive battle. Any attempts to encroach on the Phoenix' territory were met with a retreat, then a flank... and then it was a bloodbath. The Phoenix princess had not only become their saving tactician, she was a national hero and an idol... dubbed the Impenetrable Flame and the border between the two nations adequately named, the Wall of Furnaces. Armies sent in were just devoured by the flames after all... and now another decisive battle may well have been coming. A small skirmish on the Eastern end. Purposefully, there was a gap in her defensive system to allow people to sneak in... and in this, she hoped to milk information out of potential spies yet she couldn't be too obvious. A huge army waiting at the entry point was a dead giveaway, so she knew to pace herself and to fool her enemy properly.<br/>
<br/>
"Princess Nidae! The dispatch is ready, we've prepared you a horse and ten of our finest warriors and mages to accompany you!" With a firm, solid salute a towering man would relay the information and then... the girl would turn on her heel before leaving the tent. If she won this incoming battle and captured the right people, the war could've ended a few months from then.<br/>
<br/>
---<br/>
<br/>
The ride would take a few hours through the charred, destroyed forests on the border of the phoenix homeland. Wars had completely ravaged the beautiful wildlife and the phoenixes were to blame for a lot of it. Their power was just pure destruction when manifested in a public place after all...<br/>
<br/>
"Get into position, we've left behind our five best shooters for long-range artillery magic. I want those best at close quarters combat and disarming to hide at the foot of this path, out of view. The rest of us will wait on the path itself." She glanced left and right to the person on either side of her before her attention shifted upwards to the charred path and she waited patiently. Her scouts confirmed their route moments before so they'd only be able to take this path. If possible, she wanted this to be bloodless... yet she was more than ready to kill all of them if they were hellbent on not giving up any information. The question just remained as to who exactly the Draconic Ice faction would send in through the gap in her defenses... surely it was someone good at combat?<br/>
</span></span><br/><a class="username" data-user-id="48" data-username="@Elle" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" href="https://blackdahliaroleplaying.com/members/48/">@Elle</a>