Dz'oan Arclight, Defender of Life

Lifting the Siege

Dz’oan blinked away her tears for what felt like the hundredth time even as the laughing voices of the guards reached through the vent grates set into the thick door warding her small, dirty cell.  A high window, well out of reach of her short lekun arms, let in the barest trickle of light.  Yet, well adapted to the gloomy conditions of Gaulisel’s swampy environment, it was enough to see the rest of her cell.  Which wasn’t much.

It was a basic cube, three metres by three metres wide and three high.  Against one wall was a wooden bench, which she now occupied.  It was dirty and dank, far from the green growing things of the swamp.  And it had been her home for nearly two weeks now.

“Ready to admit you’re insane yet, little spy?”  The hard human voice of Coutillard, her guard these past 14 days, hissed through the vent’s gray metal grill.

“That the voices were just imagined excuses to justify your homicidal killing of human and ni’vaani patriots?”

“I will not, cannot deny the truth.  And I would say I am as sane as you, Coutillard.”  She quickly bit back, anger, for the moment, pushing the fear, misery and uncertainty aside.

“Except I have my reservations about your sanity.”

“Bah!”  Coutillard responded with a kick to the door.  “Sharp tongued as always, you lekun bitch.  You’ll regret your spirit soon enough, spy.  Even now the prefect gathers magistrates to begin your trial.  And then you will join the other lekun swinging from the gallows for your treachery.”

“Treachery?”  Dz’oan fairly spat, feeling her enhancements coming back online with her growing rage.  “Who in this conversation betrayed their world by siding with the enemy?  Betrayed their own brothers and sisters?”  The metal holding her manacles together whined in protest as she suddenly pulled her wrists apart, the surge of strength nearly snapping the handcuffs in two despite being forged from reinforced titanium.

“Burgundian pig; the ancients were right in granting me the power to cut your yellow hearts from your chests.  You are worse than useless, backstabbing filth eaters the lot of you.”

“Little swamp bug.”  Coutillard growled, a jangling sound telling of his efforts to find his keys.  “I’m going to come in there and shut that insulting mouth of yours.”

Dz’oan smiled tightly at that.  If her abilities gave her the power to bring down veteran ni’vaani warriors in full power armor, they would more than handle some fat Burgundian jailor.  In his arrogance, Coutillard, like others before him, saw himself as her better.  She would have no trouble at all with teaching him the error of his ways.

Like she had no problem attacking the Burgundians that besieged Orleans what seemed like forever ago, though it was less than three months.

“Are you certain this will work?”  The commander of the Armagnacian detachment sent to lift the siege of the vital Armagnacian stronghold had asked over his shoulder.  Like many field officers that had managed to survive the last decade out in the swamps and away from ni’vaani forces, he was young, yet resourceful, determined and gifted as a soldier.

Yet, when given the dauphin’s plan of attack upon Dz’oan’s arrival, he had been skeptical to the point of questioning her command.  No human wanted a lekun to tell them how to fight.  After all, it’s not like the Lekun did anything to resist them when they arrived just under 500 years ago.  Nor did they resist the Ni’vaan when they landed 490 years later.  So how would a lekun girl know what to do to lift a siege?

And, in that moment when she was forced to examine her own martial capabilities, Dz’oan had to admit that she knew nothing.  Nothing about combat, nothing about strategy and tactics; nothing!