The battle that afternoon had been fierce and colossal, and plumes of smoke still rose from the tattered dunes, from craters where the remnants of magical fire still smoldered. The Rajagheeni sultan had requested aid from the nearby human settlement of Oasis, hoping that his allies' meager contribution to his city's defense could somehow rout the imperials...
...and it did. The few human knights, footmen, archers, and magi had fought well alongside the fearsome Rajagheen, and as the latter cut a swath through the attacking imperials, the human forces made coordinated attacks on the enemy's flanks. The Imperialistic Yifu had found their over reliance on gunpowder weapons and rigid formations to be their downfall, and they found their ranks swept over by a tide of dervishes and metal.
The battle had not been without its close calls however... for Ravi remembered one of them quite vividly. Ravi was one of the Rajagheen entrusted with guarding Elizabeth, a human emissary and star field commander despite the fact that she was barley twenty years of age. The two had grown quite close over the many months as Ravi, one of the sultan's famed "desert wind" elite warriors, had served as one of Elizabeth's bodyguards under the sultan's wish. He had also gotten to know another one of Elizabeth's foreign bodyguards quite well, a huntress named Coilla who hailed from the Galadon jungles. All three of them had been warriors in a sense, but Coilla and Ravi had possessed the most experience by far, and they had stayed awake late many a night sharing stories of adventure and becoming close in many ways. These three individuals had formed a nearly inseparable friendship, and that friendship had almost been cut short in one battle.
Elizabeth and her royal guard had been fighting alongside one of the Rajagheen warbands in order to bolster moral among the central forces. But the Yifu decided that they would crush their enemy's moral by slaying the human emissary and her prestigious guardians. The Yifu had attempted to rush Elizabeth's chariot with a mass of warriors wielding polearms, but Ravi hurled a fiery grenade into their midst and then rushed in, his four arms cutting the enemy to ribbons in their confusion. One warrior that had enough wits about him attempted to dart past Ravi's imposing form, but the Rajagheen caught him by the back, lifted him over his head, and smashed the Yifu headfirst into the sand. Perhaps it was the speed and force of the maneuver, perhaps it was the pointy helmets and smooth armor that the Yifu wore, but the hapless soldier found himself stuck upside down in the sand buried up to his knees.
Ravi's show of berserker force and skill was a deterrent to the other Yifu who were lining up and debating a second charge, but Ravi had failed to see the more serious threat that had appeared. A lone Yifu marksman had climbed a dune nearby, looking bedraggled in his weathered leather scout uniform, yet at the same time determined. If Coilla hadn't by chance looked away from the fight she was engaged in, the emissary may have drawn her last breath that day. Coilla did a double take as she realized what the rifle-wielding scout was intending to do. She glanced quickly, desperately, to see if anyone else had noticed, but Ravi was currently holding off a mass of Yifu swordsmen and pike men, and neither the other royal guards or the Rajagheen warriors had any hope of stopping the shooter.
Coilla glanced back at her attacker just in time and she dodged to the side of incoming sword thrust, slashing her kama viciously through one of the gaps in the Yifu's chest plating. She didn't waste a moment more fighting the Yifu swordsmen, instead she simply darted away with an inhuman quickness that baffled her assailants. She ran full tilt across the sand, throwing the whole of her strength into fighting the sand's hindering influence. The scout noticed her charging across the dunes, and he hastened to load his rifle. Coilla was running with all her strength, yet her soul was stung and tortured by the knowledge that she could not possibly make it in time. So as she ran she pulled one of the javelins from the quiver on her back, and without letting up her charge she made a single, concentrated, desperate throw. She put all the rage and fear of that moment into her weapon, vowing it to strike her target and save her friend's life, no matter how far it must fly to do so. And with a powerful throw, the Javelin sped into the air.
The scout raised his rifle to his shoulder... the javelin sailed towards him... the Yifu furrowed his brow with concentration, focusing down the long barrel on his mark... the javelin ended its arc, piercing through the chest of the scout and protruding through the other side in one fast and violent motion. The scout yelped out in surprised agony pulled the trigger even as his rifle was jerked to the side. The boom of his rifle was a mere whisper compared to the howling blast of the explosive round, which blasted a crater in one of the large sweeping dunes in the distance.
Ravi had looked up when he heard Coilla's screams of defiance upon hurling her javelin, and so he had seen the whole scene. His own feelings of gut-wrenching desperation and angry helplessness had been compressed into the few seconds of time between realizing what the shooter was planning and seeing the marksman killed before he could end the emissary's life. Ravi looked with concern back towards Elizabeth, his commander and friend, and saw that she was looking slightly pale from the shock of realizing just how narrowly her life had been saved. She was indeed shaken, but she pulled herself back together out of duty to her positions as both a field commander and a foreign ambassador for her people. She rose up from the sitting position in her chariot and strode forward to its front, issuing a call to her guard and the other forces of the Rajagheen/human coalition.
"Give them no quarter; drive the imperials from this desert with the fury of a tempest."
Coilla turned to face the soldiers she had been fighting; they had been pursuing her across the sand with determination until they had seen her dispose of the marksman with such fury... now they were not so sure if their superior numbers would make any difference...
The Yifu had indeed possessed superior numbers, the three friends noted as they reflected on the vast scale of the battle of the battle in which they had played a part. Coilla, Ravi, and Elizabeth all stood on one of the many balconies of the Sultan's tower, breathing in the warm night air and gazing out at the desert battlefield outside of the city walls. If the Yifu had brought one of their empire's airships to bear then perhaps the beautiful city would not still be standing; no one was sure as to why the imperials had not done so, perhaps the fates had simply sought to spare the city that day.
The fates spared so many of us this day
thought Elizabeth as she remembered her own brush with obliteration. It was now sinking in just how close she had come to losing her life, just how close all three of them had come to losing each other. She turned her head towards her two bodyguards, and as they looked back at her it was evident that they too were dwelling on the fact or her mortality. None of them had been in such a fierce battle together, and none of them had considered that they might lose each other.
Ravi stood looking at Elizabeth, waiting for her to speak yet already knowing generally what she would say. He figured that she was only now losing that teenage sense of invincibility, coming to grips for the first time with the fragility of life. He rested his lower arms on the balcony, while one of his upper arms lay on the shoulders of Coilla, who leaned back slightly against Ravi's tall form with her arms crossed over her chest. Coilla smiled at her hesitant friend, and gestured for Elizabeth to come closer. Elizabeth smiled a bit and walked to Coilla, who put her arms around the young Emissary in a comforting hug.
"I know dear" Coilla said, "we all got a bit of a scare today."
Coilla tightened her embrace around Elizabeth and Ravi reached down and placed a hand lovingly upon her head. Elizabeth had never imagined that she might come so close to death, but at least in her guardians' embrace she once again felt secure.
"I just... I always thought that I would have all the time in the world. I started to take it for granted that we'd all be together from now on, like comrades, or...."
Ravi brushed her blonde hair with his large hand.
"And we will," he said, "I think the fates have plans for us. They took the time to bring us together and I believe they will keep us together for years to come."
Elizabeth bent back to look up at Ravi, taking in his calm wide eyes, the black hair in a ponytail on his head, his strong cheeks... his soft lips...
Elizabeth moved her lips a bit unconsciously as she gazed up at Ravi, and he could tell what she was thinking. Without saying a word he slowly bent down... and kissed her.