Ch. 37: Markers and Moving

"Damn it!"

"That cowardly princess!" The Princess haters were cursing loudly as the large, doglike beasts known as Markers bore down on them. They'd intended to test the 'Princess's' strength by luring the Markers to her, then letting her fight it out. Unfortunately for them, Rosy'd gotten so annoyed by them that she'd simply abandoned them the moment that they ruined the element of surprise.

With her superior skill, they'd barely been capable of realizing that she had vanished. Even the 'Prince' that she was supposedly in love with had disappeared like a ghost. Instead of them stabbing her in the back the moment that she inevitably dropped her guard while dealing with the beasts, they were on track to being completely wiped out, and they knew it, as little as they wanted to admit it.

The leader of the 'Princess Haters' was a man named Jaque. He'd been a guard in a Resistance camp to the far north shortly after a horrible battle known as the 'Massacre of Nighthaven.' The massacre had originally been caused by a bad decision made by the Fraeguard commander at the time, Rosemary 'Rose Princess' Hecate herself. It was suspected that she did this intentionally, but either way, she'd marched her entire company, a force of several tens of thousands, right into a trap. They'd been wiped out, but she hadn't stopped fighting. Only a few hundred people ended up surviving that battle, almost entirely deserters from one army or the other. It'd been an unprecedented bloodbath.

The young, nearly dead, Rosy had been captured by the Resistance in the area at the time. She'd been subjected to torture in an effort to force her to spill her father's secrets, but the girl had taken everything that they'd dished out without a single complaint. Physical torture was almost completely ineffective against someone who never feared pain, after all.

After two months of this, Jaque and his wife at the time had finally taken their turn at guarding Rosy's tent... when she decided to walk right out of it. 

She'd slaughtered dozens during her escape, including Jaque's wife. He hadn't been able to do a thing at the time. In that carriage, he'd tortured her for revenge, but it hadn't been enough for him. He craved more. He wanted to kill her himself, and he was very vocal about his intent.

Now, that was backfiring on him. No matter how deserved his hatred of her was, Jaque couldn't kill a Marker on his own, and even with an even five on five advantage, his squad of 'Princess Haters' were at a huge disadvantage against the beasts.

The leading Marker chose Jaque to pounce on, while each of his nearby companions got their own large beast. It snapped its jaws at him and he desperately blocked it with his sword, but the beast simply ripped the blade right out of his hands, spat it out onto the ground nearby, and bit his arm instead. He could feel the tendons in his arm being sliced right through by the beast's teeth, and he screamed in pain.

Seeing the carriage idiot get 'bitten once' just like she'd decided to allow, Rosy sprung into action. She just wanted to teach them a lesson. Letting them die when she could save them easily would only lower the trust that they'd begun to work hard to attain, after all. These idiots weren't worth that type of setback.

The first thing she did was use her element of surprise to stab the Marker that was biting the carriage idiot right in one of the arteries in its neck. Spurting blood, it slowly lost its strength before dying, confused and weak. Meanwhile, Adrian was using his Whiteblood sword to stab at the hide of another Marker that had been too focused on snarling at one of the other 'Princess Haters' to realize that there was someone behind it. Unfortunately, Rosy could immediately tell that he'd failed to hit anything vital.

"Adrian!" She shouted. Thanks to their bond, that shout told Adrian exactly what she'd wanted him to know without extended conversation, and he pulled himself back before the beast's teeth clamped down on his chest. 

The fight wasn't much of a fight after that. Adrian wasn't skilled enough to take out multiple Markers at a time, but he was, in fact, skilled enough to at least keep three of them occupied at the same time. Combining that with the fact that their blood bond made sharing information in the heat of battle incredibly smooth, they were able to share the 'aggro' between the beasts with ease, leading them around by the nose while Rosy easily focused on delivering final blows one at a time. 

In less than two minutes, all four of the surviving Markers had been taken out by single powerful stabs, thanks to Rosy and Adrian's incredible coordination in battle. Meanwhile, the ten people who were in charge of managing the Markers, as well as the four 'Princess Haters' who were still conscious and unharmed to a degree. were all scared out of their minds. 

"We can't let you escape!" Rosy shouted, giving chase as the Marker handlers began to run away in all directions. Since they were part of a team that relied on huge beasts to battle for them, the individuals involved in the team weren't exactly highly trained warriors.

As one of them began to run full-tilt away from the battle, Rosy flashed her sword, pushing her magic through the gem at the end of it in order to utilize the Void magic inside of it to enhance her magic's power. Then, she shot a magic bolt from her free hand using the enhanced magic, blowing a hole in the running man's chest from behind. 

Seeing Rosy's frightening magic power in real life, most of the tracking team froze still. They knew that they weren't a match for that kind of power. If they ran, they'd just die meaninglessly. If they stayed, the resistance might be lenient and simply capture them. It was an obvious choice.