Gemini 25.
They felt the sunlight on their skin, as the army marched through a clover field.
The field was thousands of yards large, and seemingly never ending.
"What the hell is wrong with this place," grumbled one of the fifth hundred men walking through the clover field. "is it some kind of witchcraft?"
Said question was aimed at the witch at the tail of the row of green clothed soldiers, albeit he didn't address her directly.
Irene Ostrich Forwound cleared her throat as she spoke up, "I'm mostly certain that this isn't the effect of magic. Unless it is some new, unprecedented form of Boundary Field."
"So you have no idea what's happening either way? What a useless witch" he said.
"Kh..." Forwound scrunched her eyebrows, but didn't reply back.
A soft hand was placed on her shoulder. It was the hand of the queen.
"Irene, raise a Boundary Field for us and try to search any signals of a possible threat."
"Ye-yes, my queen!"
"The rest of you, stay alert and leave your weapons ready," Leta the Third stood in the middle of the army, as they paid close attention to their surroundings.
Silence...
Nothing but a deafening silence around the whole clover field.
Rosé's army would never go against the queen's order, but it really didn't look like there was any menace right now.
It was so quiet that one could hear their own breaths.
Leta the Third moved her hand, swiftly grabbing the metal tube at her waist.
A red trail of light was made as the plasma blade moved at impressive speeds.
"Gh—aaaaaahhhhhhhh!!" a man shouted out, both of his arms falling right in front of him.
He didn't even bleed.
And with the next swing of the queen's arm, the man's sorry yelps stopped.
Her voice raised, "Surrender right this moment and I shall be merciful enough to *think* about not ceasing your pitiful lives."
A person stood up from within the clovers, a few feet apart from the girl. They were about five foot ten tall, and their body were covered by some kind of white, plastic armor and their hand guarded by a helmet, white like the armor.
It wasn't really possible to say if it was a man or a woman, except for their high pitched, feminine voice: "Great joke, brat. But don't get overconfident. We have your men in target."
The masked woman was probably into her thirties.
She took some sort of weapon from the holster in her back and pointed straight at the queen of Rosé.
And she pulled the trigger.
Leta's eyes squinted in surprise as the red, plasma projectile came to her faster than any arrow ever could.
"...!!" nobody had time even to scream.
But that was nothing for the young queen.
She swung her hand sideways, as if to blow away a fly with a racket. The red plasma beam was shot diagonally, up to the clouds.
"Fire!" the woman yelled out.
Rosé's Army recoiled a bit, and then the archers stepped forward to shoot back at the enemy.
Astarte didn't even move. She stood there, swinging her lightsaber with impressive speeds.
Each time a plasma beam came at her, it was either reflected away or back at the enemy's soldiers.
Without moving her head, Leta the Third peeked back at her men.
A few of them had arrows stuck on their heads, arms or torso and others were simply knocked down as if they had been punched—not even a single scratch on them.
(So that's what that weird weapon is doing? It doesn't burn like a lightsaber, it just knocks them out? ...No, they're already dead.)
About dozen of her men were already killed, and just a few injured. Dile Lionguard was leading the shielding group to protect the army, as they tried to step back and leave the clover field.
It was useless, as they couldn't go to neither direction without being showered with plasma and arrows.
Irene Ostrich Forwound was still trying to figure out how to break out of the clover field, and seemed focused in her task as she read one of her books.
(I'll have to gain as much time as possible,) the queen thought.
Astarte Igvar lowered her center of gravity and tightened grip on the lightsaber.
"Don't you dare think that killing my men will be unanswered. I'm bringing you down to hell," and after saying that, she took a huge leap forward.
She lunged straight at the woman, like a missile, cutting off the dozen feet of distance in one movement.
"...!?" the woman, with barely no time to react, ducked low to avoid the tip of the red light aiming at the center of her skull.
From that position, she could easily back away rapidly and regain a better range to fire against that kid. But then she could risk the girl being able to reflect and deflect the plasma beams again.
This one was the best chance to finish that brat queen once and for all.
Pointing her gun up, she pulled the trigger just a few inches of the young girl.
Still, that was nothing for the queen's inhumane reflexes.
"Unpphh," Leta Astarte Igvar de Rosé deflected the plasma blast and then swung her weapon against the woman's own weapon.
"Oww!!?" she shouted out as the charred gun's barrel fell on her lap. "Crap! Wait—!!"
The woman was cut off midsentence. Quite literally.
Her cross-section was swiftly separated. So her upper half just fell like a tree trunk.
The woman in her thirties made a "Huweegghh..." sound as she died, then never spoke anything again.
"..."
Both armies were horrified. That girl could kill anything with such ease.
If it was a steel sword, it would still require some level of strength to be able to decapitate a person. But she could do it with just a flick of her wrist, as long as she had that glowing red weapon.
And on top of it all, it wasn't just the lightsaber—the girl was a true beast.
Her speed and reflexes were unmatched. Truly a superhuman being.
The young girl's skills, physical attributes and presence alone overwhelmed the enemy troops with a feeling of dread.
"I...I surrender..." one of them said, dropping his bow.
And then another one, and so on.
Most of them kneeled on the clover field, hands up. A dozen just did their best to remain hid and run away without drawing attention.
But a few of the stupider ones still pulled their weapons out to keep fighting.
And just as expected, they perished to the queen's saber.
*
Half an hour later, Lionguard and a few others were done capturing the soldiers. Trapping them with ropes, so they. couldn't escape.
"Are you done yet?" the queen, sat down and playing with a clover, uninterestedly asked the witch.
It looked like she was fine playing there with the clovers, albeit she remained quite expressionless.
"Ah, yes my queen. Just one minute, please,"
Forwound took a thin bottle from her bag and threw it up. The bottle broke as it impacted against the ground.
A green mist spreads itself around the field of clovers.
"This isn't some new Boundary Field at all. What they did was set up an illusionary pollen on the clovers, that messed up with our senses. In other words, we were running circles all this time, making the clover field seem like a never ending place. I threw in a fairy mist, it'll distill the pollen and we'll be able to move normally in a few minutes," Irene explained, with a smug expression that annoyed most of the soldiers.
Some of them whistled at her knowledge.
"Good work, Irene. I'm a little tired, so I'm going to take a nap," the queen lay down on the clovers, chest up, her hands serving as a pillow. "Wake me up once we're set to go."
"As you wish, Your Majesty," Sir Dile Lionguard bowed his head.
With that, the queen closed her eyes and drove asleep really fast. Her chest went up and down with each breath.
The knight turned to the witch, "How long will it take, exactly?"
"I suspect ten or fifteen minutes," answered, as she prepared some other magic potions with mixtures.
Dile nodded in silence, as he eyed the dead men, his comrades, for a moment before looking back at the girl.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"I'm fine. Usually they don't target a witch like me when someone like our queen is right in front of them," she simply answered.
"No, I meant... Actually, forget it."
"..." Irene Ostrich Forwound turned to look up at him. "This is way more scary than I initially thought it'd be. None of them were my friends, but to see the faces that I've grown used to... just disappearing... it's really scary, not gonna lie. I feel like I could be next and no one would care, except for maybe our queen, but she doesn't count. But... the worst part? I'm growing used to it. I feel like it'd be way better if I just... left... you know what I mean? That's what is really scary to me."
They both stared at each other quietly.
Once again, Dile Lionguard was reminded that the witch right in front of him, was not a little girl anymore.
For whatever reason, he always felt compelled to defend her. In his eyes, Irene was just a 13-year-old kid. But she, herself, didn't see it that way.
She was a witch. *And* a soldier.
"Yeah... It scares me too." was what Dile could reply.
...
Gemini 25, at midnight.
"Finally we're outta damn clover field!!" a young man in green camo shot his hands up, he was exhausted from all the walk but still happy.
Now that the clover field was over, they went into a dense, jungle-like forest. There were a lot of spider nets around, too.
"Shut up and clean the way, Boffoy. We can't let these filthy little creatures get even *close* to our precious queen!" a taller man said.
The rest of the army was camping just outside that forest.
Rosé's plan was to go in the next day and secure that forest, then prepare the battlefield for when Uva's army got to them again.
That way maybe they could diminish the casualties on their side.
And these two, Boffoy and Amorin, were the best scouters of Rosé. They were also really good at tactical planning.
So the queen thought that sending them in, with a group of 8, would be enough to have everything done before morning.
"...elp...e..."
Boffoy suddenly stopped and looked back in Amorin's direction.
"...? What?" Amaronin raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean 'what?' my man? You said something there."
"Huh? No, no one said anything," Amorin sighed and walked past Boffoy as he slapped the boy on the shoulder. "Come on, stop joking around."
The rest passed by him too.
"A-ah... None of you heard that? It looked like someone was... I don't know, asking for help, maybe?"
"No, man." "Nuh-uh." "I heard nothing." "Come on, Boffoy. Stop messing around, I didn't even want to be here, man. I hope we can get a break for at least a day or two."
Eventually they left him behind.
"..."
Boffoy tried to look around the bushes and trees, but really, there was nothing there.
Chirping from crickets and the sound of snakes crawling around was all he could hear.
So he decided to just ignore it.
Boffoy chuckled at himself.
"Guess that's what stress does to your brains when you're battling day and night," and so, he turned to go after the torches of his comrades.
But he couldn't see them anymore.
(Damned forest,) he cursed in his heart.
Fortunately, Boffoy would still be able to seek them by searching for their footprints and the likes.
They probably would scold him for getting left behind, though.
"What a bother."
"Boffoy... Stop joking around. Don't drag us down." he heard Amorin's voice, a little more aggressive than normal, but that's how he was.
He could see a torch a few yards ahead.
"Sorry! I'm going!" Boffoy ran at him, with a little smile on his face. "Did you come back to get me, Amorin? I'm not going to... Amorin?"
Boffoy looked around. There was nothing there.
No torch, no Amorin.
Just the chirping of crickets.
And then there was nothing left for him to see.