“Hi, Mina,” said Delara, not bothering to ask how Mina knew her name. It turned out that when you won a bunch of national athletic events, lots of strangers would want to get very friendly with you, and often very quickly. Well, Delara didn’t mind that style of flirting at all—except they were about to go into battle and she really wasn’t in the mood right now. 

     Or, that’s what she would’ve said, except Mina was really, really cute and Delara found herself not wanting to scare her off, and it was the first time she’d felt like that in months, after her break-up with Sofia. 

     “Are you all set to go outside?” said Mina. “I can hardly wait. What do you think it’ll be like? I’ve heard there’s all sorts of weird stuff where we’re going. Like, it’s on the outskirts of the Varkathian Empire, right? Do you think it’ll be all weird and shadowy? Like, strange gloom creatures and plants? I wonder if there’ll be vampires. Wouldn’t that be wild?”

     “Yeah, that’d be crazy,” said Delara, as she took in Mina’s weapons and equipment: a shortbow slung around one shoulder, short blades at her belt, and twin bandoliers holding a bevy of grapefruit-sized black oil bombs.

     “But, you’re a Stalker, right?” said Delara, referring to one of the warrior-scouts who patrolled the outskirts of Amazonia’s borders. “Aren’t you used to seeing weird shit emerge from the elemental chaos, and all that?”

     “Yeah, but not from the Plane of Shadow,” said Mina. “And it’ll be outside our pocket dimension. We’ll actually be in the really real world. I wonder if it’ll feel different. Like, maybe the air smells strange or something. Or something else—something that’s weird about Amazonia, that none of us have ever noticed, because it’s normal here. And then, suddenly, we’re outside, and it’s like—whoa!”

     Well, this Mina sure liked to chatter, so engrossed in her musings that she wasn’t belting herself in like she was supposed to. Delara suppressed the urge to remind her. She’d found that she could be perceived as a stick-in-the-mud if she got on other people for following procedures and the like. 

     Instead, she said, “I dunno, I don’t remember my moms saying anything like that from when they went on their Wild Seed quest.”

     “Oh, yeah—that’s a good point,” said Mina. “Mine didn’t say anything about that either. So, you’re a Wildling too? What was your dad like? Did they tell you?”

     “My father was a knight,” said Delara. “An orc by the name of Benoit Levesque, whose family oversaw the manor of Meyobriar, in the kingdom of Kayaux, on the shardworld Bergisam.”

     “Wait, what?” said Rue, shifting her stocky dwarven frame in the cramped space of the stocks, her long braided reddish-brown sideburns spilling out from her helmet, as she took notice of the conversation for the first time. “That’s news to me. A knight? Did you know that shit, Cora?”

     “Are you kidding?” said Cora, whose helmet had holes cut into it to accommodate her devilkin horns. “Of course I knew. When we were kids, it was practically all she talked about. Knights this, princesses that, slaying dragons—she wouldn’t fucking shut up about it. She even made herself a suit of armor out of a bunch of scrap metal and leather, with a cracked cooking pot for a helmet.”

     Delara winced, but Mina made a noise that sounded like steam escaping a tea-kettle.

     “By the Goddess, that sounds so cute, I can hardly stand it,” she said. “Is there a picture? Please tell me there’s a picture.”

Cameras were expensive and rare bits of magical artifice that used illusion magic to permanently affix an image to a piece of paper. But, as it turned out, Clan Perone did have one, and it had been used to take a picture of her posing heroically in her junk armor, wooden sword raised high above her head. She’d been so pleased with herself at the time.

     “Wellll…” said Cora, smirking at them. “Now that you mention—Ow! Shit!”

     “Ah, it wasn’t worth taking a picture of,” said Delara, having landed a measured steel-toed kick on the unarmored side of Cora’s boot. “Nor remembering. Just some junk strung together. Nothing like what I’ve got now.”

     The Amazons’ hoplite armor wasn’t as grand as a knight’s full plate, but it provided near full-coverage while allowing for decent freedom of movement. It had segmented breast and back plates, pauldrons, greaves, and vambraces of steel, with a skirt made from strips of studded leather, and a full helm whose nose and cheekguards covered most of the face.

     “You like your armor?” said Mina. “Personally, I can’t stand mine. It’s hot and heavy and it gets in the way. I wish I could ditch it and fight in my normal clothes, like the Tuned. I even put in a request for it.”

     “Really?” said Delara. It was true that the Tuned fought in their normal robes, but the Tuned were elite warriors who’d undergone extreme training since early childhood, and could use their spiritual energy to channel the forces of the elemental chaos. At age 6, Delara had actually passed the aptitude exam to join their ranks, though her score hadn’t been outstanding. She’d declined though, as the ability to punch fire and kick ice hadn’t been attractive enough to justify shaving her head and leaving her clan home forever. Plus, being a regular hoplite just seemed more knightly.

     The test proctor, Abbess Chanlina, nodded sagely at her decision, but she’d spotted something in Delara, and took her aside for some special training, that ended up changing her life. As a young child, Delara had been subject to frequent, volcanic temper tantrums. People said it was her orc blood (never mind that her sister Lyra had that exact same orc blood and none of the rage) but, whatever it was, Abbess Chanlina held the key to mastering it. Rather than suppressing your emotions, you channeled them into positive energy. Over the years, the focus exercises Delara learned that day had become so ingrained that they were practically instinct, and she’d used that focus to carry her to national championship titles.

     “Yeah,” said Mina. “They said I could toss my armor if I could catch an arrow. I almost got it, too. I definitely would’ve caught a second one, but they were like, ‘nope, you fail.’ Which sucks, by the way. The bruise on my tit still hasn’t faded.”

Yikes. Even with a blunt, padded practice arrow, that had to sting.

     “I’d say that’s for the best,” said Cora. “You wouldn’t get a do-over in a real battle.”

     “Ugh, that’s what they said,” said Mina, scowling. “But, enough about me—I wanna hear more about Delara’s dad. Like, Benoit Levesque—that’s not a name I’d expect for an orc.”

     “Well, it was his name,” said Delara, a bit tersely.

     “Oh, I just thought there might be a interesting story behind it, is all.”

     “Actually, yeah,” said Delara, letting out a breath. “There was a war between orcs and humans on Bergisam, and my great-grandfather was the head of tribe that opted to switch sides in exchange for land and a title and a coat of arms.”

     “Code of what?” said Rue.

     “It’s that thing she has on her armband and never takes off, ever,” said Cora. “Really, are you just noticing this now?”

     “Oh, that thing,” said Rue. “Sure, I noticed it—I just thought it was decoration, like one of her lovers gave it to her or something.”

     “Ooh, let me see,” said Mina, and Delara turned her right arm and tugged at the well-worn charcoal grey cloth band around her bicep. On it was an emblem, the Levesque coat of arms, shaped like a knight’s shield, flat on the top and pointed at the bottom, a gold stag rampant on a black field, with a red bend sinister, a band of color going from top left (from the perspective of a shieldbearer) to bottom right, with two different white symbols flanking the stag’s head.

     “What’s it mean?” said Mina.

     “Oh, now you’ve done it,” groaned Cora. “Prepare for a heraldry lecture. Hope you didn’t have other plans for the next hour.”

     “Well, she asked,” said Delara. “And of course we have plans, but it won’t take long to explain.”

     “Yeah, I asked, because it looks cool,” said Mina turning her nose up at Cora.

     “Right, Thanks. So—the yellow stag is a symbol of the forest god Cern,” said Delara, deliberately avoiding using the heraldic color names like sable and or, lest she be teased into oblivion by Cora and Rue. “Also, it means that I won’t fight unless provoked. The red band means I’m illegitimate—“

     “Hey, you look pretty legitimate to me,” said Mina.

     “It’s fine,” said Delara. “It just means my father didn’t marry my birth-mom. And that I don’t get to claim any lands or title—which is fine. What would I do with them anyway? It’s a pretty normal thing for knights, I think. I mean, they wouldn’t have a symbol for it otherwise.”

     “Okay,” said Mina, still looking a bit offended. “What are those white things?”

     “The crossed circle at the right is the symbol of Kayaux, and the circle with the swoosh under it is the Closed Eye of Kwargun, an orc god. Closed because Kwargun is a sleeping god, but supposedly he’s still watching over us anyway. Not actually sure how that’s supposed to work.”

     “That’s really cool,” said Mina. “It’s really great that your dad took the time to teach your moms all that stuff before heading back to man’s world. It shows that he really cared enough to give his kids something to remember him by. What else did they tell you about him? Was he, like, super handsome? I think he’d have to be, considering how you turned out.”

     “Ah, thank you,” said Delara, trying to ignore the snickering from Cora and Rue. Growing up, she’d frequently been picked on for being a “tusked brute-face,” but nowadays, people seemed to have the exact opposite opinion about her appearance. Her moms said she’d grown into her looks.

     “My moms said my father was very handsome, and also very polite—charmingly so. He could sing and play the lute. When my moms met him on the roadside, he spontaneously composed a ballad to their beauty. They were so impressed that they dragged him off his horse, pried his armor off, and took turns mounting him, right then and there. He said he found their directness refreshing, but his poor squire was mortified. She actually got invited along for the Festival of Seeding, but spent the entire time in her guest tent, sulking. In retrospect, I kinda feel bad for her.”

     “Oh, but does that mean you can sing, too?” said Mina.

     “No, my sister Lyra got all the musical talent,” said Delara. “But enough about me. What about your father? Was he catkin as well?”

     “No, I got that from my mom,” said Mina. “My dad’s name was Lek. No last name. He was a farmer. He grew rice. My moms said he was a really good listener.”

     “Ah,” said Delara, “Well… that sounds, uh…”

     “Dull,” said Mina. “Though, as I think about it, he might’ve been pretty smart. I mean, these are my moms he was dealing with. If you’re not going to get a word in edgewise anyways, why bother trying? Just smile and nod and enjoy all the sex. But that’s just a bunch of guesswork on my part.”

     “I’m sure you’re right,” said Delara. “And was there anything else? Was he really cute, or did you get that from your mom as well?”

Whoops. That just popped out. Cora and Rue smirked, and Delara dreaded the ribbing that was surely coming, but Mina’s face lit up like the sun, so maybe it wasn’t all bad.

     “Oh, it’s probably a bit of both, I guess,” she said. “And, I guess I’m glad they picked my dad. I mean, if they hadn’t I wouldn’t be here. I dunno, if I ever got the chance to go on a Wild Seed quest, I think I’d definitely want to pick someone more interesting, so my daughters would have a cool story to remember, like—”

     “Form up, form up,” called out Lance Commander Eza clan Gunawan, rapping the hilt of her sheathed sword on the exposed metal portions of the stock bars, as she paced down the length of the seed lance on her final inspection, occasionally stopping to speak with the waiting soldiers. Delara and the other Amazons straightened up and stared straight forward, in the best approximation of ‘attention’ they could manage while belted in with their equipment.

     “Hoplite Cora clan Lagos, Hull-Bearer Rue clan Hagen, Hoplite Delara clan Perone, and…” Commander Eza narrowed her eyes. “Stalker Mina clan Ukawa, is there some reason you are not properly secured to the stocks?”

     “Uh, no sir,” said Mina, fumbling with her belt. “Strapping in now, sir.”

     “Sir, I think she got a bit distracted, what with being placed right across from her sports idol,” said Rue, a bit too innocently.

     “Hull-Bearer Rue, did I ask you for your opinion?”

     “No sir,” said Rue, stiffening a bit. “Shutting up, sir.”

     “And you, Stalker Mina, need to be a lot more focused,” said Commander Eza. “We are minutes away from heading into battle. Do you know what happens to Amazons who get distracted on the battlefield?”

     “They uhhh… get killed, sir?” said Mina.

     “Half-correct, Stalker Mina,” said Commander Eza. “Because, not only do you get yourself killed, you get the other Amazons around you killed, too. An army only works when every single soldier can trust that the woman next to her is paying attention and doing her duty properly. So that, right there, is the last distraction you will allow yourself. Am I making myself perfectly clear, Stalker?”

     “Yes sir,” said Mina, her cat ears drooping.

     “What was that, Stalker?”

     “SIR YES SIR!”

     “Better,” said Commander Eza, before turning to Delara. 

     “Hoplite Delara clan Perone, you’ve got an impressive list of achievements to your name. But this is your first real battle, correct?”

     “Yes, sir,” said Delara. The Amazon army’s last major raid had been five years ago, and she’d been seventeen at the time, one year shy of being allowed to fight for real, despite the fact that her skills often outshone warriors ten years her senior.

     “Well, don’t worry. Just remember your training, listen to the war dancers, and you’ll get your Blood Stripe for sure.”

     “Sir,” said Delara. “I’ll do my duty, sir.”

     “Oh, I expect you’ll do more than that, Hoplite Delara,” said Commander Eza, cracking a smile for the first time. “I saw your final long-stick match at Nationals. Hell of a thing. I’ve kept my eye on your progress for a while. I expect you’ve got a long, bright future with the Amazon army. Just keep your head up, and remember your training.”

     “Yes, sir,” said Delara, trying to hide her embarrassment. Man, Cora and Rue were going to have a field day with all this shit.

     “And, as for you,” said Commander Eza, turning back to face Mina. “And I’d like to remind you, again, that orders are not suggestions. No matter how talented you think you are, or whatever results you think you might get by following your own initiative, don’t. You follow the war dance, and you stay out of trouble. Understood?”

     “Yes… sir?” said Mina, unable to keep a twinge of confusion off her face.

     “Is there a problem, Stalker?”

     “Nossir!”

     “No, Stalker Mina, I need to make absolutely sure you understand what’s going on here. If you have a question, I want to hear it.”

     “Well… sir,” said Mina, her eyes darting about, “You just told me to stay out of trouble, sir—but I’m about to head into a battlefield where a whole bunch of people are going to try to kill me, so I’m a bit confused on how I’m supposed to—“

     “Stalker Mina!” barked Commander Eza, while Delara only barely managed to suppress her laughter, turning it into a cough instead. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed both Cora and Rue had identical expressions of faux seriousness, lips pressed into thin lines to prevent any signs of mirth from escaping.

     “Sir!” said Mina, looking genuinely terrified.

     “Are you trying to be cute with me, Stalker?”

     “Nossir!”

     “Because I can toss you out of this Lance, and we can go into this battle one stalker down.”

     “No sir,” said Mina. “I will not be cute, sir!”

     Well, that was a lie, thought Delara. She didn’t see how it was possible for Mina to not be cute, no matter what she did. Comander Eza clan Gunawan, however, looked entirely unimpressed with Mina, glaring at her for a solid minute before relenting.

     “Don’t make me regret sending you into battle, Stalker.”

     “You won’t sir,” said Mina. “Thank you, sir.”

     Lance Commander Eza just turned her back and continued down the lance. Delara, Cora, and Rue managed to wait until she was out of earshot before bursting out into nervous giggles.

     “Hey, I really wasn’t trying to be sassy,” complained Mina. “That was just a really confusing order.”

     Of course, that just made everyone laugh harder, which infected Mina, too, despite her protests.

     “But, listen,” said Mina, focusing her big, liquid eyes on Delara, “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea from all that stuff Commander Eza was saying. Like, I’m some kind of fuck-up or something. It’s just that crazy things happen when you’re patrolling the borders. Really weird shit, like stuff your orders couldn’t possibly account for, and you just have to wing it, y’know.”

     “I see,” said Delara, though she had to wonder. Every member of the Stalker corps would have to deal with chaos near the border, and she suspected that most of them weren’t getting reprimanded like Mina was.

     “Do you, though?” said Rue, wryly. “Miss ’by-the-book, one-hundred-twenty-percent effort at all times?’”

     “Oh, that’s admirable, though,” said Mina. “Though, it does make you a bit hard to approach. Every time I’m back from deployment, I see you out on the training field, and you’re so intense and focused, and I don’t want to interrupt, but when I come back later, you’ve disappeared and no one knows where you are.”

     “Yeah, that’s a good point, actually,” said Cora. “Where have you been disappearing to? You and Sofia are splits, so it’s not like she can still bite your head off every time another woman looks in your direction.”

     “I‘ve been taking some me time,” said Delara, with a sigh. 

     “Which means what, exactly?” said Cora.

     “Resting in a privacy hut, reading,” said Delara. “And I’ve been studying elvish.”

     “Nerrrd!” said Rue. 

     “And it hasn’t been awkward, still going to the library that much?” said Cora.

     “Lyra has been getting my books for me, most of the time,” said Delara.

     “Okay,” said Mina, looking from Delara to Cora and back again. “I feel like I’m missing some context here.” 

     “Delara was dating a librarian for a good five months,” said Cora. “Her name was Sofia. She wanted to be exclusive.”

Mina’s eyebrows went up, and Rue whistled.

     “You’re shitting me,” she said.

     Delara let out another sigh, and shrugged.

     “It was six months,” she said. “And I thought it would be okay.”

     Among the Amazons, it was normal to declare one’s undying love and devotion to another woman, and become bond-mates. But it was unusual to expect one’s partner to be able to fulfill every possible sexual desire within the relationship, though some bond-mates were that compatible. Dalliances outside the bond were considered normal and healthy, as well as expanding the bond to share lovers between the pair. All sorts of combinations were possible. Delara’s moms were currently one half of a quartet, which had been stable for the past five years.

     Strict monogamy, on the other hand, had been the expectation in all the tales of knights and ladies that Delara had grown up reading, and it held a certain romantic appeal. Plus, by that point Delara had discovered that, when someone as popular as she’d become said yes to every agreeable, attractive suitor, one could start to lose track of which women she’d fucked and which ones she hadn’t. And that didn’t feel good. Certainly not very knightly.

     And Sofia was very different from the other women she’d been with. Shy, quiet, pretty and pale, gazing out at the world through a curtain of strawberry blonde hair, she’d been the first woman Delara had to ask out, rather than the other way around. 

     The situation had put Delara in a conundrum—she who’d gone from ugly duckling to superstar hottie seemingly overnight. The brazen come-ons she was used to receiving came from a place of intense competition, and she was sure they wouldn’t work on her intended sweetie—in fact, coming out of the mouth of a hulking half-orc, they might be terrifying. 

     And so, she’d used the only other model available to her. Delara approached Sofia as a knight, took her hand, bowed, kissed her knuckles, and asked her if she’d do her the great honor of accompanying her on a moonlight stroll that evening. 

     At first Delara thought she’d failed, hearing no response—but when she looked up to catch Sofia’s eyes, wide as saucers, she also saw her nod yes, and that was all she needed. Her heart had felt like it might explode from joy. Their nighttime stroll had been magical. Sofia turned out to be gentle, kind, and witty, once she’d loosened up a bit. Delara hadn’t hesitated to pledge her faithfulness when Sofia asked it of her. 

     And things went really well, for a time. Delara never violated her vow once, never even came close. The problem was that it didn’t matter, because it turned out that Sofia was deeply insecure, and that insecurity festered into jealousy, which led to accusations of infidelity. And no amount of reassurances were ever enough. Delara had even taken to isolating herself as much as possible, staying alone and indoors when she wasn’t fulfilling her duties, in the hopes that this might buy her some peace, but that still didn’t work. 

     What was more, Sofia’s idea of sex was all gentle caresses and cuddling, and Delara was actually a very agressive top. Of course, she could control herself to accomodate her partner, but she’d hoped that Sofia might loosen up and get a bit more adventurous over time. But that didn’t happen, and the strain of constantly holding herself back wore on her. In a normal Amazon relationship, this problem was easily solved—go find a side partner who’d relish a good, hard spanking, then happily return to your main partner for cuddles. But that solution was denied to her, and, day by day, Delara began to feel like she was slowly suffocating.

     Sofia didn’t take their breakup well. Among other things, she told Delara that all her favorite stories were a bunch of lies. In real life, knights weren’t heroes—they were more like gangsters, shaking down the peasantry for protection money. In warfare, they’d rape, pillage, and murder just like any common bandit. A knight who defeated another knight in battle would routinely take his opponent’s woman as spoils and rape her. Also, anytime a peasant couple got married, their knight overseer would come and rape the bride on her wedding night. She said their were actual laws allowing this.

     Delara was shaken by this, which of course was the point. Even though Sofia was being vindictive, she wasn’t the sort of person to just make things up. Of course, that didn’t mean these tales were true, just that she’d heard or read them somewhere and believed them. But Delara didn’t know her sources, and was honestly afraid to check this out for herself. Who knew what she might find. 

     “Hey, Delara. You okay?” said Mina.

     “Ah, yes. I’m fine,” said Delara, realizing that she’d been spacing out. “Pre-battle jitters. I get quiet when I’m nervous.”

     “When I get nervous, I talk a lot,” said Mina, who was then cut off by a cry from the wardancers. Everyone was loaded and the seed lances were ready to launch.