“Lucy, Elyss and the others are back.”

Lucienne blinked in surprise when Ariel’s face suddenly popped into her vision. “Ah? Oh, okay.” Reluctantly, she got up and turned to face the returning members. 

Elyss bounded over first, sending light tremors through the ground with each step, followed by Camilla and Kagriss in the air. 

Camilla’s landing threw up a cloud of dust when she retracted her wings halfway down. Kagriss was a lot more elegant in comparison, slowly descending using her magic until she was firmly on the ground, still a step behind Camilla. 

The way they landed fit them so well; one was direct and seeked the fastest way toward their goal with only minor allowances for detours, while the other seemed to lack emotions entirely and dedicated her entire existence serving the former. Even before, Camilla only needed to say the word and Kagriss was completely willing to remove Lucienne from battle.

Was it the wrong decision?

Not really. It was with her best interests in mind since at that point her presence was more a liability than an asset with her injuries. Lucienne knew she shouldn’t hold it against anyone, but she couldn’t help but feel robbed of her victory and a proper place.

“How did it go after I was gone?” she asked.

Camilla waved at her. “It wasn’t that difficult afterwards. With Elyss there, the mole king couldn’t do anything and it was just an oversized mole that had a bit more armor and sharper claws. Well, Elyss could probably give you a more detailed answer. I took care of the regular ones instead,” she said. Lucienne grimaced, but Camilla didn’t seem to see it and continued on as if nothing happened. “Kagriss was really helpful for that.”

“I see…”

It was depressing to know that Camilla found easy what she couldn’t do at all. Worse when it was with Kagriss’s help, because she had the help as well. Yet, she couldn’t kill a single beast. 

A suspicion snuck into her mind, although she quickly chased it away, dismissing it as preposterous. Had Kagriss not been doing her best on purpose? 

That didn’t make sense since there was nothing in it for Kagriss. Kagriss gained nothing by making her look bad, which unfortunately meant the difference lies with herself and Camilla. In the end, she was just weaker—an inexperienced, newly ordained templar to Camilla’s position at the top of the Order…an ordinary vampire to Camilla’s status as a lord.

It was just a battle and there was no reason for her to be so frustrated, yet she just wanted to go back and spend some time in the city with Ariel and Sariel. The way they acted so innocently and naively was so calming.

Camilla continued on. “…however a large part of it was thanks to you. I thought it’d be a hard fight, but you managed to wear down the beasts over on your side so it wasn’t that hard to clean them up. Good work.”

“Thanks…” Lucienne gave her a half-smile just so Camilla wouldn’t suspect anything. She felt Kagriss’s gaze on her, but Lucienne paid the lich no heed.

Although what Camilla said was a compliment, Lucienne didn’t feel happy at all. It felt like a consolation prize. If they were so weak, why not let her stay? No…what was wrong with her. Why was she getting upset over something petty like this? 

Lucienne palmed her face as if waking herself up. The others stared at her. 

“Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing. I was just tired and getting sleepy,” she said, and then regretted it. So much for proving that she was still capable of fighting. Why did she have to say that she was tired? Oh well, too late to take it back.

But she did feel a bit better after that, like someone gave her a mental reset, clearing out some smoke from her head. 

She wasn’t robbed of anything. It’s just her own mind at work, making a mountain out of a molehill. “Please continue,” she said, nodding toward Camilla. Her eyes were wide open now, focused.

Camilla blinked in surprise. “Should we go back and rest first? I was thinking of having a review of what we did or should have done while the battle is still fresh on our minds, but if you’re tired.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Well, if you say so. Do add on if you have something to say… Let’s start at the beginning. I think despite the difficulty of our battle, it wasn’t a bad choice. However, we did cut it a bit close at times.”

Lucienne felt the gazes of the other three on her and her skin burned from the stares. “Well, it turned out fine in the end so isn’t it okay?” 

“It turned out okay this time, but things went wrong, you could have died. Although, I suppose we had the option of retreating now, but if we played our cards wrong, that could have put the settlement in danger.”

Although Lucienne had mostly turned calm, something snapped in her then when she heard Camilla mention that she might have died. That they might have jeopardized the mission because of her weakness.

It was almost like she was the one to blame for this.

“What, so I’m the one who’s at fault for this?” she protested. “There were two other options. It’s not like I said ‘this is the one’ and wouldn’t accept any other!”

“No, I’m not saying that…”

“Besides, all I did was choose a few of the possible ones. You’re our leader so the person with the ultimate voice was you. You made the final decision!”

Camilla looked troubled with her scrunched up brows, but Lucienne was troubled too. Why should she take the blame for this?

“Lucienne, listen…”

“What?”

“What you’re saying is true. Even if I didn’t have the rest of you do proper research about this mission, I should’ve done it first.” Camilla was completely calm as she spoke.

It was infuriating, making it seem as if Lucienne was getting worked up over nothing. But nonetheless, guilt rose up from Lucienne’s stomach, threatening to escape out her mouth. It felt like she was making a big deal out of nothing.

“Y-you also came up with the plan that we were supposed to follow…”

“That’s my fault as well because we didn’t have enough information. I didn’t think that Elyss would have that much trouble with the mole king since I didn’t know about the field created when two mana beasts fought. Elyss?”

Elyss lazily raised her head, blinking slowly. Even though Elyss was being blamed as well, she showed so sign of any dissatisfaction. 

“Yeah… It’s been so long since I fought something strong enough that I forgot. The difference came from the queens. They have much better control over mana than I expected from mana beasts of their caliber, and there are a lot of them. If it was just the king, that field wouldn’t have been created.” Elyss said. “Sorry about that.”

“Wait a minute, what field?” Lucienne asked.

Elyss opened one eye and looked at her with the condescending gaze one uses to look at idiots. “All mana beasts have impressive control over mana, but the more powerful, the stronger that control is.”

“Yeah…” 

The lion sighed. “That control affects all mana around them. So what happens if two powerful mana beasts each try to wrest control of the same mana? That mana gets churned up so much that no magic can be cast in the vicinity except mana that’s literally inside the body.”

In hindsight, that was an obvious conclusion to arrive at, but Lucienne was in no shape to make it. She took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind again. “But why doesn’t that field manifest around a single beast?”

“There’s no reason it can’t if the beast wants to...” Elyss opened her eyes that glowed with power.

A tingle ran down Lucienne’s spine as she felt the raw mana in the air move toward Elyss the same way it did when Elyss prepared to cast a huge magic, but instead of entering a spell structure, the mana twisted and turned in erratic ways. When Lucienne tried to create a holy flame on the palm of her hand, the fragile spell tore apart and the mana she put into it disappeared, melded back into the maelstrom of mana around her.

Having made her point, Elyss released the mana, returning them to their original paths. “But it takes so much concentration to do it on purpose. It’s more effective to just cast my own spells, you know? But when two beasts clash, that becomes a side effect.”

“I see.”  That was something new that she learned.

Camilla coughed then. “We’re getting a bit off topic. Because we didn’t have that information, our plan of having Elyss dispatch the king didn’t work. Additionally, we underestimated just how difficult fighting so many moles at once would be. It was fine for me since I could simply fly out of reach for most of them, but for Lucienne…”

The conversation turned to her again. “I get it. I’m weak, right?” Lucienne growled. “I’m sorry for that.”

“No, I’m not saying that. You’re still very effective, but I put too much on you. That is my fault as well.”

“So in the end, I’m not to blame, right?”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“So what’s the point of this?”

Camilla frowned. “Lucienne, this is a discussion about the battle, not a place to point fingers. The discussion is the point. About what we did right and what we did wrong, about what we can do better.”

“But…” 

“I made many mistakes, Lucienne.” Camilla cut her off. “We should have retreated once the plan didn’t work and made a new one, but I didn’t give the order. That was my bad. Luckily, Elyss managed to salvage it before things got too bad, and that was something she did right. But what could you have done better? Hm?”

Her eyes suddenly hardened and Lucienne shrank back, suddenly unsure of herself. She had been the one throwing blame around, especially on Camilla. She was being defensive, but she didn’t want to admit it. Not right now… 

But what could she have done better?

Nothing, is what she wanted to say, but did she really do everything perfectly? Obviously not. Perhaps she fought to the best of her ability, but that was not enough. Tactical decisions made in the middle of battle were important too. 

Thinking back, she really did make some mistakes. The decisions had seemed correct at the time, but now, Lucienne realized that those decisions she made led directly to her predicament. 

When she fought the moles, she had been doing her best to kill moles, because that was her role in the plan they agreed on. Even when she dodged and avoided the moles’ counter attacks, she had dedicated most of her attention to somehow striking a final blow. She had chased that blow, even when the mole retreated to the back of the ranks. 

As a result, she stayed too long in the midst of the fighting. Slowly but surely, the encirclement closed around her until except for the mist that Kagriss laid behind her to keep her rear covered, she was surrounded on all sides by the moles. She threw away the chance with her very own hands by staying and fighting, overcommitting to a single kill, instead of picking her battles and thinking in the long term.

Although Lucienne knew what she did wrong, she bit her lips and remained silent. She couldn’t say anything with Kagriss and Camilla both staring at her. One was the person who watched her dig herself deeper into a hole, and the other was the one she hounded for blaming when it was mostly her own delusions.

She couldn’t say it; she didn’t want to admit that she was wrong, so she looked down at the ground. 

Had she always been like this…this petty? A feeling that she had never felt before, a feeling of wishing to be above Camilla, and she had noticed it only now. And there was something else buried underneath it. Resentment.

Resentment that Camille was so flowed when she admired her all her life before this. Where was Carmen the legendary commander respected by the entire Order? Instead, she got Camilla.

The pristine, glowing silhouette that Camilla had in her mind collapsed into a shadow of its former self, sullied by imperfects. Carelessness. Haughtiness. Lacking the dignity and authority of a lord and commander. Most of all, without the tenderness and closeness toward children that she expected the most stalwart defender of humanity, even if it was formerly, to have.

With a pause, Lucienne realized where everything had gone wrong.

Camilla as she imagined her never existed. The image in her mind was her ideal and when she realized that the real Camilla didn’t reach that ideal, she resented her for it.

Lucienne lowered her gaze, the apology at her lips, yet she was unable to spit them out. Her face turned red as everything she did and said that day returned to her. 

From the edges of her vision, she spotted Kagriss tap Camilla on the shoulder and whisper something into her ear. Camilla said something back and then stood up. “I think that’s enough for today. I intended to go over this twice, once when the battle is still fresh, and once when minds have cooled down. Let’s go back, shall we? Before it gets too dark.”

Relief flooded over Lucienne. The silence from before almost felt like she was required to answer. The pressure on her was immense.

Perhaps the run back to Dianene will clear her mind further, allow her to get her thoughts in order, and let her prepare to face Camilla again after all this.

——

Camilla and Kagriss rarely separated, but when Lucienne put Ariel and Sariel to bed and then knocked on the door to Camilla and Kagriss’s room, it was Kagriss who opened it. The lich was strangely well dressed, wearing a midnight black dress that outlined her curves well. She paused at the entrance and took a long glance at Lucienne, who shifted awkwardly under her gaze.

Compared to her, Lucienne looked a lot worse, wearing just a normal tanned, long sleeved shirt made of cotton and plain leather pants that screamed of practicality and a lack of fashion sense. 

“Camilla is waiting inside,” the lich finally said and left without another word.

It was just four words but it was a thousand training weights had been dropped on Lucienne all at once and she felt like she was standing in front of her old instructor’s room after their day of training when she did something wrong.

With a deep breath to calm herself, she walked inside and closed the door behind her.

Last time she was too stressed about Ariel and Sariel but this time she didn’t actually want to talk, so her eyes wandered, falling everywhere except for Camilla. Unfortunately, the room was plain with a drab drawer, a working desk and chair, and a single bed in the corner. The only thing that was even slightly eye-catching was Camilla. She was sitting at the desk looking over some papers, holding a monocle over her eyes. 

A red mark stood out on the snow white skin of her neck and a flush reddened her face. So even Camilla as she was now can look mature.

Camilla turned and put the monocle down when Lucienne entered.

“I didn’t know you had a bad eye,” Lucienne said, trying to relieve the tension that held her body taut.

“My eye is fine. I’m using this because I find it interesting. Did you know that in high vampire society, fashion is extremely important because everyone looks the same? It’s a test of creativity and wealth to piece together a unique, luxurious, and aesthetically pleasing outfit.”

Lucienne shook her head. She was just a normal vampire after all. Better than a thrall, worse than a lord. High vampire society was a reality she probably won’t ever be a part of. Despite how Camilla acted, she will, eventually.

Even if Camilla looked nothing like the ideal that Lucienne had in mind. Apologizing for holding onto that ideal and trying to push it onto the real person was a major reason why she was here today. 

Standing halfway between Camilla and the door, Lucienne straightened and looked Camilla in the eyes before putting a hand over her heart for sincerity. “I’m really sorry…”

“I’ll accept that apology, although it wasn’t really needed. It happens.”

Lucienne blinked. “You know what I’m talking about?”

“I think so. Kagriss told me that I didn’t meet your expectations.”

Lucienne sighed and stared at her feet. Kagriss really was perceptive. Lucienne often felt Kagriss’s gaze on her, and it was almost always unsettling, like Kagriss could see straight into her heart. She could hide nothing.

“I guess that makes it easier if you already know.”

“So she was right?”

“Mhm.”

A look of pride flashed across Camilla’s face, pride for Kagriss. Then, she dropped a bombshell. “So what will you do now? If your feelings about me are irreconcilable, I won’t keep you if you don’t want to stay.”

“Are you kicking me out of the party?” Lucienne gasped. Things were moving faster than she could keep up with, but on the other hand, wasn’t this precisely the kind of talk she was hoping to have coming here? A talk about her future. She managed to regain her cool. 

“Of course not. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to feel obligated to stay. I’m not the kind of person you think I am, but I don’t plan on changing. I live for myself and our values are different after all.”

Although Lucienne wanted to ask if Camilla could really bear for her to leave, she realized how stupid of a question it was. When considering the things that Camilla had done for her versus the other way around, the scales were completely tipped in Camilla’s favor, having freed her from the Templar Order. Camilla did not need her.

But, the words that Camilla had said when they first left Moltrost weighed heavily on her.

At that time, Camilla asked if she could really trust someone who left their original organization to be loyal, and Lucienne had said yes. But now, abandoning her benefactor was a distinct possibility.

Lucienne didn’t want to be disloyal. Surely she could just change her views about Camilla, and everything could return to how it was before this mess.

As all that ran through her mind in silence, Camilla returned to her paperwork for the Hunter’s Guild. It was a report that Camilla had to make for the guild’s records. 

Camilla was diligent, yes, but she also had a drive that made her a bit single minded when it came to achieving a goal. That single mindedness made her unsociable at times. Lucienne realized that even though she was still here, Camilla had already put her second in importance to her own present task since their talk was over…

…just like the twins she picked up was secondary to almost everything else. Whatever happened to them was fine as long as they remained safe.

This party under Camilla wasn’t for her. Had Lucienne not encountered the twins, perhaps she might have realized this, but when something she cared about was neglected by her leader, then she didn’t want to stay. 

Unfortunately, it looks like she was wrong. It turns out she was disloyal after all.