24 I'd rather fight a Dragon

The night passed quickly without any further incidents. Myra hoped that the enemy would soon retreat, hoped that she would have scared them enough for them to leave and not come back again.

Did she make an empty threat? Would she really be able to kill the enemy?

It was easy enough to kill a wild beast that did not possess enough intelligence to talk or express itself in a way one might understand. It was also different to hunt some animal in order to eat and survive. Killing others in a war or some other fight however, was an experience that unexpectedly horrified the young girl all of a sudden.

She might be able to take on the appearance of a woman, might have some hidden memories of an ancient being, but in the end, her vivid memories, the life she really experienced did not even exceed 10 years. She was not yet 15 years old and was basically born as a 5 year old child. She had never been part of such a slaughter.

'How am I supposed to make a difference here? All I can do is kill them or hurt them. What point is there even to all this power? It's totally useless!'

Then early in the morning, the thing she feared the most happened.

"Enemy Attack! The enemy is back!"

The enemy army was marching against the fortress, with the mages at the very back, as if they feared that Myra would fulfill her promise that she threatened them with yesterday.

What shocked Myra though, were all the civilians in front of the enemy army.

"What are they doing?" she asked one of the soldiers standing next to her, pointing at the group of haggard looking people with not much more than rags as clothes.

"Probably emptied some of 'em surrounding villages of theirs to use as meat shields." The soldier replied to her question nonchalantly, as if this were nothing new. "You see 'twill make some of them newbies nervous. Makes their aim go wrong if they have to get rid of the villagefolk first if they want to shoot the soldiers behind 'em. Doesn't cost 'em anything much to pick those up. Those commoners breed like rabbits anyways."

There were many things that Myra expected to be different from her romantic stories about heroes, many things she would have expected to happen in a war that were bloody and not at all nice to see. However she would have never believed that there would be so many atrocities to be found in this world.

Before the enemy army was even in shooting range, before anyone could give any commands, Myra was already in the air and like a bolt of lightning she was approaching the enemy at an insane speed.

The mages were finally starting to react when they already found their defenses broken. The blades of Myra's polearm were drenched in blood after barely a second had passed since she started to fight them. Two of the five enemy mages were already dead and before the regular soldiers and commanders had the chance to retaliate, the other three died as well. There were no screams, no noises of weapons clanging against any defense, it was as if at one point their mages were still alive and a moment later, all that remained were their corpses and a lot of blood. How easy it seemed to kill them, they didn't even get the time to scream.

Seeing what those soldiers had done to the villagers and being told what they wanted to use them for, something inside Myra's mind snapped. Those sheltered moral principles and her childlike innocence seemed to show her a reality so different from the reality she was facing now. Was it all just a dream she had made up on her own? An illusion that she lived to find happiness?

She did not even notice when the earth under the enemy army swallowed all of the soldiers, reacting to her emotions and finding an outlet by making all those thousands of soldiers disappear like a nightmare that would just go away when you wake up.

The only thing that remained was a group of scared and confused villagers and Myra standing there as if in a trance.

She did not remember how long she stood there, she just remembered that at some point she returned to the fortress and without a word returned to her room again. Maybe she could just go to sleep and when she woke up it would all turn out to be different. Just a bad dream. She suddenly missed Aaron's hugs like never before.

--

When Myra woke up again it was already close to noon, with the sun high up in the sky. She did her best to make herself presentable before looking for Jaros.

They did not exchange a lot of words, a few pleasantries before Myra told him that she would leave the fortress and take care of some other things. He seemed happy for some reason, as if looking at some kind of monster that might target him next. A few more pleasantries and goodbyes were traded and then she was already flying through the clouds again on her way back.

She didn't even remember exactly what was said, all she could think of was to return, to go back and continue her peaceful life. Maybe she would find ways to defend her people differently in the future. After a good night's sleep the world looked a lot brighter than it did the day before, when she went to bed in despair of what had happened.

In the end, all those heroic books and stories suddenly turned a little dull, but Myra still had to move on. She had a loving family, some good friends and she still wanted to explore the world with Aaron. The world would surely not only have its dark sides.

--

No one seemed to have noticed her absence. When she returned to the academy and the first thing she did was rush into Aaron's arms in the middle of the central square, as if she didn't see him for a year, everyone just stared at them.

Aaron already wanted to make a joke about her wild behavior when he noticed the tears in her eyes.

"Hey, Myra, what is wrong? Did something happen while we were at the tournament?"

Myra shook her head. "No, I just missed you."

For a while they just stood there like that, ignoring all the stares of the students and the world around them. Finally Myra calmed down somewhat.

"Let's go grab some food! It's already late, we might miss lunch otherwise." Myra would never miss lunch and dinner times. When you grow up in a little village, having enough food is great, but having such exceptional food like they would get at the academy was a luxury that she never had before.

"Sure, why not, but I don't want to eat all those vegetables!" Aaron joked.

"You have to eat your veggies! They are important and very healthy and really tasty too!" it did not take a lot of effort to get Myra all riled up in defense of those precious vegetables. Aaron just grinned, having successfully brought a smile to her face and stopped arguing about it.

"Alright, you win. You don't have to eat your veggies, … but would you eat them for me?" was the outcome last time they discussed this specific topic and even though he won the argument … like so many others before … in the end he still had to eat those vegetables in order to make her happy.

"Aaron, say would it be a problem if I were no princess?" Myra once again stuffed herself with food once they arrived at the food court, she just seemed to be unusually quiet today and bringing up topics she never brought up before.

"Why should that be a problem? I wasn't even aware that you are a princess before Alyn told me about it and you always said you are no princess."

His answer made Myra happy. "You know, I was born in Luminos and I have a brother at another academy. I would really like to visit him, but with everyone thinking I'm a princess from another empire I don't want to drag him into all of my problems."

"Oh, that's fine, I'm sure we can figure out a way to just visit him as a friend and give him some information ahead of time to prevent him from saying anything wrong and make himself a target."

"Mhm, that sounds good." For a while Myra was rather quiet, obviously thinking about something. "Say Aaron, what if I'm not from Gaia?"

"Not from Gaia?" There was a slight pause. These topics really started to become ... odd. "Didn't you say you were born in Luminos? You mean, not from this world? Does that mean you are some angelic being that came just for me?" now Aaron was definitely looking smug. Smug and curious, but mostly smug.

"Pfff ..." for a moment Myra had to make sure the food would end up in her stomach and not sprayed all over Aaron due to a fit of laughter. "Now that totally sounds like something Nell might say. Did you pick up some bad habits like flirting from him?"

"Me, why would I? I was always good at flirting with girls, just never found any I liked."

Myra just nodded, returning to the earlier topic before their conversation would get even more derailed.

"Yes, not from this world. I can't remember who I was before, but I made a new body here and then started somewhat of a new life when I was five."

"Don't worry about it. You've always been mysterious and no matter where you come from or who you have been in the past, it doesn't matter to me, unless you want it to." Aaron did not really know if she was really from a different world, but at least she seemed honest about it and seemed to believe she was from somewhere else.

After what he had seen her accomplish, even if she told him that she was a goddess he would not really doubt it at all. In the end, Myra was still Myra and most of all he was happy that she wanted to tell him the truth, no matter what that truth really was all about.

Feeling like it was a really good time to come clean with all of her hidden secrets Myra brought up the next topic right away.

"I was also not in the academy yesterday and visited a warzone under the disguise of my sister."

She did not exactly look guilty and Aaron already wanted to scold her, but when he saw her sad look and remembered the time when she came back not too long ago, he suddenly understood that something bad must have happened.

"You didn't get hurt did you?" Aaron's question made Myra shake her head.

"Want to talk about what happened?" again Myra shook her head. "Maybe later, in some days. For now I'd rather want to forget about it for a while."

"Please at least let me know the next time. No matter how silly it seems to you, at least I want to know what you are up to." this time Myra nodded, feeling rather guilty about the whole situation.

"Since you were not an obedient student yesterday, this afternoon you have to cheer me on, so I can win us a prize in the tournament!"