Necromancer's Descent

53 - Seidrspir

Anneliese's Point of View

"Your highness Anneliese"

I'm greeted by a flower garden of beautiful young ladies, each and everyone a powerful lady, and my playmates since childhood. As they bow their gowns and uniforms shimmer beautifully in the sun.

Spring has truly arrived, finally. In so many ways.

"You may rise."

I smile to them, and they smile back, as we sit down at the tea party.

One may think me a strickler for sticking to etiquette, but there's something beautiful in it too, and the formalities drop the moment we sit down at the table together.

"Your highness, how is the war going?"

Mari**** speaks up. She's worried about her older brother on the front line, impatient to join him there. That said, the probability that he survives is as it always has been near zero. Though, I hear that for some, they'd feel better fighting along their dear ones, than to wait until they are of age.

I'm always the bearer of bad news when it comes to this topic, but today specifically, I have good news.

"It is going well. The army has managed to scrape out two general cores, Masphellius the master of sailing and Akakius the master of fire. Their cores have safely reached the southlands."

Gaps of joy and relief spread from the good news.

"Did the new saintess help?"

Someone asks curiously. I vaguely notice a couple of the others twitch as she's mentioned.

"She helped with Akakius, and thanks to her, our losses have been much lower than we had worried."

This is true. However, she seems to have issues with the shepherds. She insisted very strongly she didn't want help from them, even to the point they were losing and she was running out of mana. Thankfully the shepherds didn't listen once they saw the battle take a turn for the worse, and as expected their participation made a huge difference. It always does. Even then she still ended up arguing with them over leaving a girl there. One that had been close to the saintess. It took for the girl herself to scold the priestess, before she let them take her home.

It's a problem.

Her attitude might rub off. Without the shepherds we would lose the war almost immediately. The demons aren't that easy to deal with.

Thankfully the shepheards have immense patience.

"Uhm... Anneliese... that saintess... I saw her hold hands with his highness..."

Eh?

The scenery flickers around me, a red crack appears in front of my eyes, swallows everything... and everything suddenly silent and back again. Then it is as if resumes.

"The cookies today are really delicious, Anneliese, where did you get them."

I feel disoriented for a moment.

How did we go from war talk to sweets?

I smile warmly.