I lived over two hundred years. Two hundred years full of torturing others, journeying a mostly barren landscape, and more than once, running after a few dumb souls who were quite scared of me. During this fun time, I haven’t seen this amount of stupidity I saw while others played different card games. Poker, Wizard, Spicey, the soldiers played everything I could have asked for. I only played with a few more groups after the first one, but oh my. It was most definitely an eye-opener. They were probably trained to be good soldiers who didn’t ask questions and while I would need some people who behaved like this as cannon fodder, I also needed those that could think on their own. After all, my goal wasn’t to direct each and every single one myself, but to tell someone what has to be done and nag if it doesn’t work out properly.

Sadly, I didn’t find the type of person I was looking for. There were no openly cruel soldiers around who could play a few mind games with me. I always knew what they were thinking, could see the glee in their eyes when they were winning and honestly never needed to lose if I was trying to win. But I still tried, obviously, at least until it was already late at night when I couldn’t find any more groups and was forced to wander around the camp aimlessly.

Interestingly enough, there were no guards here, a fairly reckless approach to security, but also quite beneficial as I could go anywhere I wanted. Nobody asked who I was, nor why there was a teenager wandering around, even when someone spotted me. I didn’t really understand why, until I approached an area with better tents in different colours and family emblems imprinted on the tent pane.

This was the area where the knights, the so-called elite troop of the Worchester Kingdom resided. Hailed as fierce warriors and loyal to the crown, they had quite the reputation. And yet, I immediately disliked them as soon as I noticed a boy ageing around fourteen years sitting in front of a tent, waiting in the cold, scary night. The red-haired rascal was wrapped in a thin, black blanket, covering his shoulders completely. I could only see his durable, muddy shoes and his shivering head sticking out of the cloth. I immediately started to rub my arms as I saw him in an attempt to look cold as well and knelt down near his campfire.

“Hey there.” I felt quite bad for him, especially as I heard moaning from inside the tent. It was obviously quite cruel why he wasn’t inside the warm tent and slept. I mean, even if he was allowed to, I doubted anyone would enter, even when they were forced to.

If I ever felt empathy to anyone, then it was to children. I probably had to thank Aska for that or this stupid seed of life and my messed up emotions that came with it. In any case, I chose to be as friendly as possible to him but didn’t listen to all my feelings as I wanted to stab this boy´s mentor very badly. How could he leave this child alone in the cold …

“Uhm … hi?” He said. Just like the others before him, he was curious about me. A pale girl walking around in a white dress inside an army camp wasn’t that commonplace after all.

“What´s your name?” His corners of the mouth went downwards as I asked my first question. All in all, he seemed fairly unhappy, but I couldn’t understand his problem at all. It was fairly standard to introduce yourself after all. As such, I was a bit curious about his unhappiness, at least until he actually told me his name.

“Kamachakyatamakyan.” He must have had very, very cruel name givers.

“Ahhhh.” I probably should have given him my name at this point, but this weird name drove me crazy. His complexion turned a lot worse as I failed to react appropriately. He probably had seen worse reactions though, so I wasn’t too worried that he would dislike me because of that.

“What about you?” he said while ignoring a very obvious moan that came from the inside. How many women were inside? I already counted three voices in this tent that seemed to be fit for two. A bit disgusted, I glanced towards the tent as the pane moved a bit.

“Oh, my name is Lucinda. Is your teacher inside there?” I pointed towards the tent whose pane was dangerously stretched out at this exact second. I averted my gaze, already fearing the worst that could happen which was probably an avalanche of naked humans tumbling out of the tent.

“Are you one of them?” I was quite offended by his question, although I could understand where he was coming from. Nobody was going around at that time anymore, except probably those who offered a very special service.

“One of who?” I said as if I was fully oblivious and returned to look at the boy as the humans inside finally managed to stop destroying the tent.

“Whores.” Finally, I understood where I was for real. If even this teenager in front of me knew what's going on, there was absolutely no reason to think this incident was uncommon. As I stepped to the side and listened to the snoring of a woman in another tent, I concluded that this wasn’t an elite camp at all. Rather, it was a place where whores earned their pocket money.

While these were probably knights in name, most of them would have brought themselves into a higher position and just took squires because they were useful. Due to child labour not being my thing at all, I began to hate every single one of them, even when it was unlikely that all of them were black sheep. But even then, the reputation of the knight corps was certainly good, so I didn’t doubt their overall fighting prowess, at least in comparison to the regular conscripted soldier who was in the army for the quick money.

“Do I look like a whore?” I resumed our conversation as I went back towards him and spotted a rather interesting board game. A board, full of brown and white squares was certainly rare to see in this place as it was quite hard to carry around. And yet, it still laid beside him with a strangely damaged surface.

“No.” Thank you, whose name I completely forgot for not putting me inside the same category as humans who sell their body. Although I did that as well in the past … in any case, I searched for the chess pieces, but couldn’t find any at first glance.

“Precisely! How about we play a round of chess while we chat?” I pointed towards the chessboard and held my hopes rather high. Maybe I would find an intellectual here in an unforeseen space. Even when he was a child, I didn’t mind taking him under my wing. I already imagined all the possibilities of training him as he answered.

“Chess? Oh … that’s a cutting board.” Why was I even trying? Or more importantly, why did fate play such a cruel trick on me? A freaking cutting board disguised as a chessboard in a place like this was definitely out of the ordinary. My dreams were destroyed with just a few words. I could try to play other games with him though.

“That’s … disappointing. Any other games?”  He nodded as I asked him but looked away shortly afterwards. What was it this time? Were the cards used to start a fire or what?

“We do have some … but …” He pointed behind him towards the tent. I was done for. Even when he would retrieve the game right now, I wouldn’t glance at it, let alone touch it. To high was the risk of forced self-mutilation for such little reward. I gave up on recruiting him right away. It just wasn’t meant to be. Instead of playing any games and testing his skills, I sat down in front of him and gazed towards the stars while trying to ignore everything except the boy.

“How often is your teacher … you know?” I asked concerned.

“Every night. It is not just mine … the broad majority of noble knights chose to get these services … even the upper echelons are inviting them every night.” He said while I already thought about the implications. Spies, not to talk about STDs would have it fairly easy here, but that was already obvious after I saw no guards inside the camp. The professionalism an army should have was also impacted by this as the humans in charge would be quite tired each and every day, which also added to the already high danger of surprise attacks. In short, discipline was low, moral volatile and the chain of command could be absent at night. To conclude, it was the perfect playing ground for me.

“The upper echelons? Even the duke?” He paled as I asked that and swiftly looked around. I doubted he could see much, but he nonetheless seemed a little relieved after he didn’t notice anyone else.

“I don’t want to get into trouble.” I smiled as soon as he finished speaking. Nobody wanted to get into trouble, not even I. And yet, it always followed me wherever I went. Strange …

“I can assure you that your secret is safe with me.” He still shook his head and didn’t utter a word as I stared at him. “Can you at least tell me where the duke´s tent is?” If he wasn’t willing to tell me anything, I just needed to find it out on my own. He took his time to decide while I stared him down with a stern gaze. In the end, he did point to his right rather reluctantly. “Thank you very much. Oh, if you want to meet me tomorrow, head to the fire. Take some friends with you, it is going to be fun.”