Lystra hadn't left her work in days, save walks around the compound. Even now she ate at a small metal table to the left of the console that had now taken up the whole of her life. She forced herself to eat, not looking at the meal really because it was pretty lavish all things considered. Here she was eating well and living well while her people suffered. Drax came back with stories. There were small victories here and there, but the best they did was buy her people time. The collapse was inevitable. She had seen the burned out villages and seen the dead and broken with her own eyes in her rare getaways from this place. It was so an ordeal for her that it was only with the help of Drax's spellcasting that she could sleep at all.
Her people needed her and she was dawdling with her good meal. But she was no good to them collapsed in a heap, and she may as well use that time productively while she was essentially slaved to that machine, trying to understand it and learn to speak to it, then get it to do what she commanded. It was maddening. Things would progress rapidly, then grind to a halt with no hint of where to go from there, only to find out later that a single symbol in the wrong place was the culprit. It felt like one step forward and three steps back as she tried to write the machine's language and then just wait to see what came of it.
A series of tones snapped her from her melancholy, particularly in that they were the sounds of a positive result. She practically leaped from her table to settle into the high-backed chair before the terminal to begin typing to it. She was quite quick with the odd alphabet. There were indications early on that she could eventually speak to the machine, but she dismissed it almost immediately. It would be next to impossible to get her point across in the long dead language. Indeed, it just begged for disaster, so the written bits of the machine language it would be. She let the system scroll its figures before her and she smiled. It was giving her information that she understood and that told her that the systems were coming slowly to life to life.
She waited for the scrolling text to finally stop and waited for a prompt before entering,
CMD:L1diag.ex
and waited anxiously. She even spared herself a muttered prayer, not for herself, but for all the people that were suffering, dying and depending upon her to save them. Seconds ticked as the machine before her conversed with the one far above her in ways she seemed to grasp far better than Drax or her father.
We each have our gifts.
L1diag.ex-ing...
She put her palms together and finally remembered to breathe.
Luck, too.
Lystra could finally give her people hope.
***
Neral left home later that evening to check on the progress of getting the company ready to ride. Making her way through the armory and stables she saw that provisions were being loaded to the pack with the usual sounds of objecting horses and the various supply specialists making sure that nothing was missed or double packed. The officers and enlisted performing those tasks gave her nods in salute as a matter of course, as their hands were usually full in one way or other. Otherwise they went about their business unless she spoke to them because that was her wish. Outfitting an army was the most important part of even having one and she had no interest in everything stopping so they could salute and grovel at her feet as some of her predecessors had. The gesture of respect that she wanted from them was for everything to be as it should be before she set out. Dion would be there somewhere, she knew, and it brought her comfort.
She walked through the barracks to find the men and women commiserating, occasionally raucously as they vented tension and prepared themselves, some physically by exercising with one rather sculpted dark-skinned woman doing pull-ups with the metal bars that protruded above the door for just that purpose.
Kaled.
The name popped into Neral's head unbidden. The white linens she wore bore hints of sweat and her arms and legs glistened from it. She remained feminine even though Neral suspected she was stronger than some of the men, two fine specimens of which were apparently competing with one another seeing who could manage the most push-ups.
Some were more contemplative, talking to one another at their bunks, wondering what they would find or talking about the revenge that would be meted out to the bandits. Others simply oiled their bows, sharpened their blades, and readied their equipment silently as islands unto themselves. She remembered her days in the barracks and remembered she was more the quiet talker or island. She was so focused on pushing ahead and making her House proud she came off as cold to many back in the day, but she forged deep friendships with those that had the will to put the time in.
One of the men saw her and did a double take as he didn't immediately recognize her in more civilian clothing, in this case a long charcoal skirt, pristine white blouse, and matching vest with gold buttons. Her rank insignia rested on the right side, mostly inconspicuously. "General Jaye."
She raised her voice to be heard over the rustle of soldiers jumping to attention, "As you were." She waved them off. "I just wanted to see that you are on the path to ready."
The response reverberated throughout the room and rattled the windows. "Yes, General!"
"Excellent. Carry on."
She left them be and, almost without thinking of it, made her way through the streets and to the castle. White Guard soldiers saluted throughout and she engaged them now and then as she made her way to the queen's inner chambers. She could see and took note of all the ways security had been enhanced. One of the new handmaidens moved very normally, but there was military in her eyes. But that was not the queen's servant that rushed forward to get ahead enough to gently tap the knocker three times to the door. This one looked like a shout would make her vanish.
"Yes?"
"General Neral Jaye to see you, Majesty."
Neral put her chin to her chest to quell her amusement at the formality.
"Enter."
The young girl opened the door quickly fearful that she'd actually offended and was somewhat shocked to find the queen already in a long, black nightgown of the finest silk. Lace adorned the bottom just above the ankles and the cleavage. Neral thought that everything she wore seemed more revealing because the queen was plump and that extra thickness seemed necessary to hold up a rather substantial bustline. Her hair was combed straight and her lips carried a sheen with the fire, as she simply felt wrong going completely without makeup.
The young hand maiden was clearly at a loss. "Do you...might you... wish to change, Majesty"
Evaline waved it away, looking at Neral as she made her way to the liqueur sort of enjoying the new maiden taken so off balance. She had much to learn about life in the royal house. "If it mattered officially she would have sent word ahead. Since she's here otherwise, and in plain dress, it doesn't, and our good general doesn't care that I'm not wrapped up in pomp for her or anyone else's benefit, do you, Neral?"
Nowhere on her person were any trappings of her position and that was all the message that was needed as she stepped to the middle of the room, "Not at all, Evie. In fact, I have no earthly idea how you keep sanity with the endless fussing. I'd drive my dagger through my eye the first time I heard them arguing about how best to pile my hair."
"We can't all spend our lives as muck-swimmers while we look for people to stab, can we Bootsie?" She looked to the doe-eyed maiden who was now at a complete loss at the lack of what she saw as even loose civility as Evaline spoke. "Ankle boots, thigh boots, hard leather, soft leather, suede; since I've known her she's always seemed three pairs away from needing a new manor to store them all."
