"What is it that you are doing?" Chinua asked, looking across the table at Hye. Her eyes drifted over the clutter of crudely carved wooden toys scattered all over the workspace between them.
"I wonder?" Hye mused softly. He looked up at Chinua for a brief moment, offering a distracted smile before refocusing entirely on the project in his large, calloused hands. He picked up a slender bamboo stick, carefully spreading a thick layer of sticky rice paste along its length. "I wonder if we could achieve something that people only talk about in legends."
"What kind of legend?"
"Many years ago, the twenty thousand strong soldiers defending Nue-Li fell because the Wallidom warriors achieved the impossible," Hye said, grabbing a sheet of thin rice paper and meticulously pressing it down onto the sticky bamboo frame. "They had their warriors fly across the sky, striking the Ginmiao soldiers directly on the city walls. That is exactly how they took over Nue-Li back then."
Chinua picked up a miniature toy ballista, turning it over in her fingers thoughtfully. "You read about this?"
"Nope."
"Then you have seen it?"
"Nope."
"So," Chinua teased, a small, rare smirk playing on her lips, "you are telling me you want a giant kite to carry a person to their death."
"Hey—" Hye looked up, pointing a sticky, paste-covered finger at her in mock outrage. "One day, when you see my genius crafts carrying your warriors soaring across the sky, conquering the impossible, you are not allowed to take a single ounce of credit for it."
The comforting image of her youth, sitting and chattering freely inside the absolute safety of the Eastern Military camp, slowly began to fade away. The warm, golden sunlight of the past dissolved into the cold, harsh reality of the present as the sharp, screeching cry of a lyrebird echoed in the distance.
Chinua's eyes snapped open, a dark grin tugging at the corner of her lips.
It was more than just a single echo. From high above, hidden in the pitch-black clouds, the cries began to multiply—one, three, ten, a chorus of mimicking lyrebirds cutting through the freezing mountain wind. To an unsuspecting sentry, it sounded like a flock of disturbed birds nesting in the peaks. But to Chinua, it was the unmistakable, layered harmony of her elite women soldiers. They were directly over the drop zone. They were ready to pull the trigger on the assault.
The peaceful memory vanished completely, replaced by the lethal, thunderous focus of the present.
Chinua blinked, the memory vanishing into the shadows. She was back at the foot of the mountain pass.
Lifting her right arm, she raised her iron fist high into the air. Before her, a massive line of Hmagol's best archers instantly snapped to attention, their bows unslung. Heavy wooden boxes filled to the brim with specialized, oil-soaked arrows were dropped with a low, synchronized thud in front of them.
With a single, unified motion, the archers stabbed their unlit torches into the dirt at their feet. The flame-tipped wood stood ready, waiting only for her final signal to ignite the night and bring Mopia Gate to its knees.
High above in the midnight sky, the one hundred kites spread out, claiming a massive territory across the heavens. They began a steep, coordinated dive toward the unsuspecting mountain fortress. Gripping their sharp blades in their right hands, the elite women sliced deep punctures into the heavy leather bladders tied along the right side of the bamboo structures. Instantly switching the blades to their left hands, they repeated the motion on the opposite side. With the bladders punctured, they adjusted their course, banking hard toward the far east where the occasional glint of a stray firefly told them exactly where their primary drop point lay.
A heavy rain of volatile oil began to mist down across the entirety of the Mopia Gate. In the dead of night, most of the garrison soldiers were either asleep inside their canvas tents or tightly huddled under covered wooden barriers, completely unaware that death had already come knocking at their door.
Inside one of the towering wooden watchtowers just behind the perimeter fences, a squad of young Paayasian night-watchers sat in the dark. Their eyes scanned the pitch-black valley below, waiting for any sign of a stealth attack. Suddenly, a strange, rhythmic pattering sound began to echo against the dry straw roof above them, drawing their eyes upward.
"Is it raining already?" one soldier murmured, instinctively reaching out to grip his dry robe hanging on his right.
"We knew a storm was expected. It's been hot and humid for the past three days," another soldier replied, stepping out of the wooden shelter into the open night air. He paused, looking down at his boots, then turned back toward the others still sitting inside the tower. "Hey... the dirt down there is bone dry."
Confused, he looked across the compound toward the next sentry post standing twenty yards away. Seeing the silhouettes of the guards awake over there, he called out, his voice cutting through the heavy, stagnant air. "Hey!"
"What?" a distant voice echoed back.
"Did it rain over there?" he asked.
"No!"
The young guard turned around, intending to step back into the safety of the watchtower, but his right foot suddenly lost traction. He skidded across the platform, barely catching his balance on the railing. Catching his breath, he bent down and noticed strange, shimmering puddles reflecting the faint moonlight on the wooden floorboards. He stretched out his hand, dipping his fingers into the slick liquid. He brought it to his nose.
It wasn't water. It was oil.
Panic seizing his chest, he stood up to scream a warning to the entire camp, but the words caught violently in his throat. His body froze solid.
Through the darkness of the mountain pass, a massive, roaring wave of flaming arrows was heading straight toward them, turning the night sky into a canopy of absolute fire.
"Get down!" he shrieked, his voice fracturing as it echoed uselessly into the burning night.
Sprinting away from the collapsing, engulfed watchtowers, Khair and her nine Magoli shadow soldiers ran hard toward the far eastern side of the compound, heading straight for the Mopia Gate training grounds. As they moved through the smoke, they occasionally ripped open their leather pouches, deliberately releasing small bursts of fireflies into the air to ensure the vanguard soaring above knew exactly where to execute their descent. In the middle of the exploding chaos, none of the garrison guards paid them any mind—to the panicked Paayasians, they looked like nothing more than terrified, fleeing civilians desperately trying to escape the spreading inferno.
They rushed right past frantic lines of Paayasian soldiers who were sprinting blindly toward the front gates to defend the perimeter. Moving with practiced, lethal precision, the ten shadow soldiers snatched up dropped torches from the ground as they breached the wide edge of the training fields.
High above, the one hundred airborne warriors transitioned their bodies into a vertical stance, executing a sharp, purposeful stall to flare their canvas wings mid-air. As they swept low over the roaring watchtowers, they deliberately ignited the empty, oil-soaked bladders hanging from the sides of their gliders. The sudden burst of fire consuming the canvas wings acted as an immediate airbrake, dragging violently against the wind and slowing their landing speed to a controlled, heavy drop.
With a flash of their knives, they sliced the cords securing their thick bamboo direction poles, ripping them away to use as blunt-force weapons. Then, they leaped.
One by one, they slammed onto the roofs of the garrison buildings, leaving their burning, abandoned kites to crash heavily onto the tents and officer quarters below, trapping the high-ranking Paayasian command in a sea of descending fire.
As the agonizing screams of the burning Paayasian soldiers rang out behind them, the one hundred and ten women turned their backs on the chaos and ran full speed toward the dark, jagged mountain cliff.
Using the roaring inferno of the camp as their only light in the pitch black, Khair and her nine shadow soldiers didn't hesitate. They sprinted to the absolute edge and jammed their thick bamboo poles violently down into the narrow crevices of the cliff face. Gripping the smooth wood with both hands, they threw their bodies over the precipice, sliding down the poles with practiced ease to land safely on a hidden lower ledge.
Behind them, the rest of the airborne unit followed in seamless, rapid succession. Moving like a pack of hunting mountain cats, the one hundred and ten women began a breakneck descent down the vertical mountainside, using nothing but the bamboo poles in their hands to vault, slide, and balance across the deadly rock formations. They vanished into the shadows of the lower peaks, leaving a fortress of ash and fire in their wake.
As the fire began to rapidly spread across the Mopia Gate, the sentries in the watchtowers scrambled to climb down while a relentless, nonstop barrage of flaming arrows continued to rain down from the dark sky. The combination of the oil and the bone-dry weather from the past few days created a perfect nightmare; the inferno devoured the canvas tents and straw roofs in mere minutes.
"Captain!" a soldier cried out, breathlessly rushing toward Yongyee through the thick smoke. "Everything is on fire; we can't get to the reservoir! We've run out of water!"
A grim, bitter grin pulled at Yongyee's lips as he watched the flames spread far faster than his men could ever hope to suppress. He knew with brutal certainty that if they didn't flee immediately, their chances of escaping this mountain alive would drop to absolute zero.
He looked around at his panicked men who were frantically grabbing unburned weapons and supplies. He knew that if his king—if Es Ke—learned of this retreat, his head would be placed squarely on the chopping block. But he also knew that if he stayed here and died, there would be no second chance for redemption.
Closing his eyes, he made the hardest decision of his military career.
"Abandon the post!" Yongyee shouted, his voice straining over the deafening roar of the fire. "Bring anything that hasn't caught fire yet!" He waved his hand fiercely, signaling the retreat.
He threw himself onto his horse and galloped down the mountain pass alongside his top elite unit leaders and personal guard, leaving a rearguard of ordinary soldiers behind to frantically salvage what weapons and food they could.
But the moment the remaining Paayasian soldiers realized Yongyee had already abandoned them, all discipline collapsed. They dropped everything, grabbing only the handles of the wagons already laden with food and weapons. Five hundred terrified Paayasian soldiers began a chaotic, mass exodus down the mountain pass.
They were rushing down the trail, fleeing for their lives, when the dark tree line suddenly erupted.
Arrows flew out from the left and the right with lethal precision, instantly cutting down the men who were wheeling the supply wagons down the slope. The ambush shattered what little resolve the Paayasian soldiers had left. The frightened crowd scattered wildly across the pass; some broke rank and rushed blindly into the deep woods, others spurred their mounts and ran down the road toward Ngabo, and the rest were cut down where they stood.
Stepping out from the shadows of the trees and massive boulders at the foot of the mountain pass, Khair looked down at the dead soldiers littering the ground. She glanced up toward the billowing dust trail left by the survivors in the distance, her lips curving into a sharp, victorious smile.
"Gather all the supplies," Khair commanded her women, looking up at the heavy, gathering clouds swirling overhead. "And wait for the rain."
On the opposite side of the mountain, Chinua and Hye stood side by side, watching the distant inferno of Mopia Gate. The bright, roaring orange flames pierced the night sky like a colossal torch—a terrifying beacon of destruction that even their enemies would be able to see from leagues away.
"Sending this kind of message is a bit cruel, don't you think?" Hye said, raising his brows at Chinua as the warm orange glow reflected off her polished armor.
Chinua turned to look at him, her expression deadpan. "If I am cruel, then you are heartless. After all, you built the things."
She turned around, facing the long lines of her waiting archers. She looked back at Hye one more time, and a soft, genuine smile finally spread across her face. "The credit is yours; I admit defeat. Your genius crafts truly conquered the sky."
She began walking away, but as she did, she raised her chin high, projecting her voice so the entire vanguard could hear her. "However! If it does not rain tomorrow to wash away the ash, Sir Hye will be on kitchen duty until we take Ngabo!"
The heavy, tense silence of the army instantly shattered. The soldiers erupted into a massive wave of roaring laughter and high-spirited cheering, the sudden burst of joy lifting the grim, suffocating weight of the night.
Chinua walked back toward her command tent, leaving the laughter behind. But deep inside the quiet, hollow chambers of her heart, her inner voice hardened, turning icy and fierce:
See the fire I have lit to clear our way, Es Ke. Hear the laughter of my soldiers. Because when we finally reach your gates, our faces will be the last thing you see, and our battle cries will be the last thing you ever hear.