Persue

The first thing Alexis felt was pain—in his back, in his pride, and in the damned joints of his knees from being tossed around like livestock.

The second was fury.

He emerged from the bundled rug on the horse's flank with an explosive curse, hair wild and sand clinging to his boots. 

The encampment at the fringe of the barren lands greeted him with dull silence, but a few nearby soldiers turned at his voice, wisely pretending not to hear the string of insults he launched at Hiral's name.

"Coward! Rope-wielding bastard!" Alexis hissed, shaking out his limbs. "Who does that? WHO—"

He was already storming toward the supply tents, planning to intercept one of the scouts and double back before Hiral could vanish like smoke again.

But then—

"General Alexis!"

A voice sharp and officious cut through his boiling thoughts.

A tall man in dusky colors stepped forward—Overseer John, in charge of diplomatic coordination with the eastern overseers left in the barren lands. 

His eyes carried apology, his hands held a stack of scrolls and a map marked with trading paths.

"Apologies, General, but we urgently require your attention. The southern nation's diplomats, who was sent here under the royal court's orders, demand immediate negotiation. They wish to establish a secure route through the barren lands to reach the tribal common grounds. They've… grown restless."

Alexis stared at him in disbelief. "You know I just got here right?"

Wen's expression didn't change. "Yes, sir. But seeing you are here means that the royal court has approved of our plea for you to handle the negotiation with the southern nation's delegates, right? For they trust your presence more than any other Ro official." A pause. "Also… we've exhausted our attempts at polite discourse."

Alexis groaned into his palms. "Of course you have."

Hours bled into days.

What should have been a straightforward negotiation devolved into a nightmare of etiquette breaches, misunderstood gestures, and vague tribal laws none of the Ro officials had bothered to learn.

The diplomats from the southern nations were patient but wary; the tribal intermediaries were proud and slow to trust. 

He listened. He deferred. He asked.

It took three full days to align both parties on shared terms, and when the final signature was given on the intertribal trade pact, Alexis was nearly too tired to celebrate. 

He stood in the shadow of the stone watchtower, gazing out toward the western horizon, where the sands blurred into memory.

"You planned this, didn't you, Hiral," he muttered aloud. "You sneaky bastard."

The news came as the desert winds changed.

A rider burst into camp. Clothes torn, lips cracked. 

"Jiral the envoy is dead. The house burned. Great discord in the royal court and the King demands your presence General."

Alexis froze.

He didn't ask questions. He didn't change clothes. He mounted a horse and rode off. 

By the time he reached the outer settlements, the air was already clear of any remnants of smoke.

The structure where Jiral had stayed—a nondescript diplomat's rest—was now a charred skeleton. 

Alexis dismounted and walked forward without a word. 

The guards saluted, but he ignored them. 

He knelt near the edge of the debris, brushing aside a layer of soot to reveal nothing useful. 

No body. No blood. No sign of forced entry.

But everything was too cleanly burned. Too precise.

Alexis didn't need to be told. It was a decoy. A calculated vanishing act.

Still… his throat felt tight.

He sank to a crouch, elbows on his knees, and laughed. It came out broken and breathless.

"You damn fool. You absolute bastard."

And yet, beneath the mockery was something dangerous. Something tender.

Worry.

Even if his mind knew the truth, even if the move was textbook Hiral… just hearing the possibility of Hiral's death had made something in Alexis clench. Made something panic.

He wiped a streak of ash across his cheek, staring into the wreckage with a bitter twist of the lips.

"I shouldn't care. I shouldn't care this much."

But he did.

He remembered the pressure of Hiral's knee on his back. The warmth of the brazier. The quiet challenge in Hiral's voice when he said, "Let's share the heat."

Too late. He'd already stepped too deep.

Alexis stood slowly, brushing soot from his coat, and whispered to no one:

"There's no future in this. Not for men like us. Not from opposing thrones."

The next day, a sealed letter came. The King's personal summons.

A soldier handed it to him with a grave look. Alexis opened it, eyes scanning swiftly.

"You are to make haste and join the expeditionary forces. The island shall not remain untamed. I trust you, nephew, to lead the crown to final victory."

Alexis crushed the letter in his fist, gaze distant.

"So that's it, then," he said to himself. "You stirred the pot again, Hiral."

He looked to the south, where jungle winds met ocean storms. Where trouble always brewed—and where, just maybe, Hiral waited.

He sighed. Straightened his shoulders.

"If I go… I'll find you again, won't I?"

He offered the empty salute the king would expect—sharp and hollow—and turned toward his soldiers and made preparations to leave for the conquest.

****

The sea greeted Alexis with a growl.

Storm-tossed, jagged, and shifting with unpredictable currents, the waters surrounding the island weren't simply dangerous—they were deliberately hostile. 

As though the island itself refused to be reached.

Alexis stood at the prow of the command vessel, cloak snapping in the brine-soaked wind. 

Before him, dark reefs bared their teeth like predators beneath the churning tide. 

Their charts, outdated. The routes, riddled with whirlpools and wind shears.

"No sane captain would attempt it," muttered Captain Ralph, the naval overseer beside him.

Alexis barely glanced at him. "Good thing I'm not sane, then."

****

What followed was three months of trial, error, and invention.

Alexis grounded the first ship on the third day.

By the seventh, another had nearly capsized from an unexpected gust near the Devil's Teeth—a cluster of spires half-submerged in foam.

He spent nights poring over maps, days sketching hull adjustments with shipwrights. 

Reinforced keels, pivoting sails, and a new "breath rig" system that used flexible joints to absorb the battering of rogue waves. 

They shortened the masts to lower wind drag, wrapped the sides in flexwood stolen from Ro's secret vaults—wood that bent but didn't break.

Each test was followed by failure. Then refinement. Then another try.

Each risk paid for in sweat and sleeplessness.

And yet, he pressed on.

By the time the experimental ships were seaworthy, Alexis had lost six men to fatigue, three to sea-fever, and one to a shark bite. 

Most of his commanders had protested the prolonged delay, but Alexis only snapped once:

"I'd rather take three months preparing than lose three hundred men in three minutes."

The sea did not forgive arrogance. 

When they finally set sail in the early dawn of the fourth month, the silence was reverent.

The ships cut the waters in cautious precision, weaving through a channel Alexis had charted himself. 

He stood on the upper deck, jaw tense as his eyes traced every current shift.

And it worked.

The tide churned and clawed—but did not swallow.

Until the vomiting started.

Within the hour, half his soldiers were heaving over the rails, some barely able to stand.

"Land-bound fools," Alexis muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're soldiers, not soft-palmed nobles—why are you dying from motion?"

Still, he tended to them. Ordered stews of rice and ginger. Made the medics distill seaberry oil to help ease their nausea. 

Even lent out the seafaring rings he'd worn on his own first voyage—rings that pressed against pressure points and eased sickness slightly.

It was miserable. Slow. Maddening.

And yet…

His anticipation only grew.

On the sixth day, they spotted land—not the island, but one of its silent children. A jagged crescent of rock and green, uninhabited but for wind and birds.

Alexis ordered the ships to anchor and led the first party ashore. The moment his boots hit solid ground, he exhaled—not in relief, but in readiness.

They set up camp. Unloaded fresh water. Let the seasick soldiers touch grass and stabilize their senses. Laughter and song returned in cautious fragments.

But Alexis?

He stood apart, on a cliff's edge overlooking the main island still shrouded in mist across the waves.

It rose like a myth—dark forests curled around mountain ridges, waterfalls spilling like silver veins down green throats. 

Stormclouds constantly shifted above it, never letting full light shine through.

And somewhere in there… was Hiral.

The man who taught him to listen.

The man who made battles feel like chess with poetry as its pieces for every move hides within another thing beneath its surface.

Alexis leaned on his sword hilt, helplessly smiling to himself.

"What are you planning now, Hiral?" he murmured. "False trails? Poison roots? Collapsing cliffs?"

His smile faded slightly. "More rugs and ropes?"

The wind answered only with the scent of rain and salt. Alexis closed his eyes for a moment, letting it pass over him.

He should be angry. He should be focused on the conquest, the mission, the expectations.

But instead…

He felt that dangerous thrill again whenever Hiral was involved.

A frustration that twisted into hunger. A dance neither of them could seem to quit.

"You've made me a fool, Hiral," Alexis whispered. "But damn me if I don't walk straight into your web anyway."

The clouds shifted over the island.

And Alexis began preparations for the landing—knowing every step forward might bring him closer to ruin.

****

The fire crackled low in the camp behind him, its warmth barely reaching where Alexis stood on the ledge above the shoreline. 

The moon hung thin and sharp in the sky—more blade than light—and the sea below glittered with its fractured reflection.

Beside him, a younger soldier shifted uncomfortably, still pale from the voyage.

"You're barely upright," Alexis muttered without looking. "Go lie down before you fall into the fire."

"But, General—"

"That's an order, not a suggestion."

The soldier stiffened, then saluted with weary gratitude and trudged back toward the tents.

Alexis remained. Alone now, his gaze swept the horizon.

Still. Quiet. Except...

A sliver of motion.

There—cutting across the distant dark like a ghost—a small boat, barely more than a shadow skimming the waves. 

No sail. No sound. Just sleek, deliberate movement heading for the opposite side of the island.

His breath hitched.

His first thought: A scout.

His second: It might be him.

A slow grin crawled onto his face as he turned and sprinted, every step down the rocky slope quiet but alive with electric anticipation.

Could it be?

Hiral?

He reached the shore, boots quiet on the soft sand, and scanned the waves.

Nothing.

The ocean rolled gently under the moon, indifferent to his searching.

His grin faltered.

He narrowed his eyes, scanning again—this time more methodically. He stalked up and down the shoreline, searching for footprints, drag marks, a tied rope, even a damp indentation in the sand.

Nothing.

Again.

Still nothing.

Frustration nipped at the edges of his thoughts.

He searched a third time, crouching low, brushing aside kelp, checking under stones and driftwood.

And still—nothing.

"Damn it..." he whispered. Did I imagine it?

His instincts—well-trained, sharp as ever—insisted no. Something was here. Someone was.

But they were gone now, like smoke through fingers.

He stood straight, dusted off his gloves, and turned back toward camp.

That was when he heard it—

Shouting.

Panic.

"The water stores—!"

He broke into a sprint.

The camp was a mess.

Two barrels of fresh water lay on their sides, dark mud drinking what clean liquid it could. Another had a knife hole so precise.

Soldiers scrambled. Some shouted, others tried to patch the leak or scoop what they could. The medic barked orders to save the ration packs that had soaked through.

Alexis's eyes immediately darted toward the ledge above—where he had been standing only minutes before.

And there—

A figure.

Shawl drawn over his head. Face obscured.

But the posture. The stance. The stillness.

Alexis's heart skipped.

"Hiral," he hissed.

The figure turned. Just enough for Alexis to see the faintest glint of deep, mesmerizing black eyes under the shawl.

Then, in an instant, he was gone.

Alexis bolted up the slope, pushing his body harder than ever—but he reached the top and found nothing but wind and night. 

No prints. No rustling. Just absence, as deliberate as the hole in the water barrel.

He stared out into the night, chest heaving, jaw clenched.

"Damn it, Hiral... you're playing with me now."

He let the silence settle before descending.

Back at camp, the mess had been partially cleaned. Supplies re-counted. Damage assessed. His men looked to him, some hopeful, most uneasy.

He gathered them near the fire, his voice clipped but firm.

"We no longer have the water to support everyone."

A wave of protest.

"But General—"

"We can collect more!"

"We're close to the island—"

Alexis raised a hand.

"I'm not risking the mission with men who can't stand upright on deck," he said. "Those still seasick will return on the third ship. You'll be ferried back to the crescent isle. Wait for further orders. This is not a punishment—it's strategy."

"But, sir—!"

"I will not argue this. I need seaworthy soldiers. Not bodies who'll vomit at the first swell or freeze the moment steel touches sand."

The silence after that was heavy. Bitter. But none defied him.

The next morning, he oversaw the separation himself. The seasick looked ashamed. Some tried to hide their relief. Others glared in quiet resentment.

But Alexis didn't flinch. He couldn't.

Not when he knew who they were up against.

As the third ship cast off back toward the crescent isle, Alexis stood at the edge of the camp once more.

The wind pulled at his cloak. The waves hissed low against the shore.

Somewhere out there was a man with sharp eyes and sharper intentions. A man who'd already slipped past their camp unnoticed. Who watched him even now like a ghost between trees.

Alexis smiled faintly to himself.

He turned toward the center of the island.

"Just wait and see, Hiral. I'll make sure you won't escape me next time."

Time to advance.