God of Eyes

Raine did not want to be a soldier. For much of her childhood, she was defined by the death of her parents, by being a homeless orphan, by being a thief and a tramp. She had killed, usually only people who were trying to make her even more of a victim than she already was... but once or twice, to get away with things. She wasn't proud of it; she hated being a murderer, and she hated that she got caught at it--and then accused of another unrelated murder, but the one was enough to condemn her, so she didn't press the point.

Guard Captain Bard, of course, didn't care whether or not she hated killing. If anything, he was relieved. He threw her in the pool of recruits and punished her whenever she tried to escape, which was often enough. Raine eventually, begrudgingly, eased off her resistance and just did the exercises, and by the time they shipped out, she had mostly fallen in line.

Tammy was a big part of that. The two were part of the same squad, and whenever they would exercise, they ended up next to one another. Tammy had an infectious enthusiasm and optimism that Raine honestly just couldn't understand. By her own admission, Tammy was a drunkard, a layabout who had run up debts that she could never repay, and she had tried unsuccessfully to seduce a number of different men in order to get their help with her financial burden.

By all rights, she should have nothing to be optimistic about; in her shoes, Raine would have run away from it all. But Tammy went back to the same bar again and again, racked up her debt, got into fistfights and arguments... and eventually got recruited by Bard. Her debts weren't cleared, she got no pay because it all went to those debts, she might die... at best, Raine thought, being part of the army meant that she would have steady meals through this crisis. It didn't do much else for her.

But she smiled. When Bard had run them around the town until they collapsed from exhaustion, in between pained gasps for air, Tammy had smiled.

She was probably the only reason Raine made it through training. Tammy was just as out of shape, just as beaten down by life, had as many reasons to give up as Raine did. But when she was challenged, instead of cringing and cowering, she stood defiant.

Raine wasn't sure how she knew which grave was Tammy's, but she found herself feeling certain. And, strangely, the quartermaster was there, sitting by the grave like Tammy was an old friend. When he looked back, there was a deep, morose look of sorrow on his face, as though he too felt that something irreplaceable had been lost. It didn't make a lot of sense, but... Tammy was like that, wasn't she?

Still, it was just too strange, and Raine had to ask. "How do you know which is which?" she asked, hoping for any insight, anything that could ground her, keep her going, keep her from getting lost in her grief.

The demon quartermaster, who had known immediately whenever any food went missing, just gave her a grin, one entirely too much like Tammy's, and said, "I just felt it. Can't you?" And then, without another word, he walked away.

As Raine sat next to the grave of her only friend, she couldn't stop those words from running constantly through her head on repeat. Can't you feel it? Can't you? Can't you? What was she supposed to feel? What was she supposed to know? Her eyes filled with tears, her head filled with snot, and she cried over the dead and buried corpse that might not even have been her friend... but she felt it was, knew it was.

Raine did know something, feel something. Something guiding her, something undeniable. That evening when she heard that the enemy had moved into position across the river, she felt an urge to just leave, to scout the enemy base, to do something useful.

So she did. If she could trust her feelings to lead her to the one grave that mattered, she would trust those feelings to lead her to her own grave, wherever it may be. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps years from now. If she couldn't trust her feelings, then she had cried over a stranger, while her real friend was somewhere else. If she couldn't trust her feelings...

If her feelings were wrong, maybe Tammy wasn't watching over her. And that was... too much. It wasn't until she had that thought that Raine realized that she did feel a presence, a warmth she had only known from Tammy, a warmth that should have been gone now that she was dead.

So that the warmth wouldn't go away, so that she could live in what might be self-delusion, Raine chose to believe that Tammy was there, guiding her to get revenge. She snuck out some supplies--fire arrows, ignition liquid, firestarters, and other similar things--and ran off into the darkness.

Somehow, long after the sun should have gone down, Raine found her eyes unfazed by the darkness. Somehow, she had instincts. She should wait, because someone was looking--she could feel their Eyes. She should move, now--stop here, wait. Things caught her eyes that she would never have noticed, because she was a poor thief and a worse scout; a branch that she might have stepped on, a person finishing their conversation and starting to turn back towards her. She was more aware than she had ever been.

Still, she didn't dare take action. They were too on-guard.

She circled the enemy camp warily, trying to find any way to do damage. Like the Belman army, they piled most of their supplies towards the back, although they had two full companies guarding them; having just attacked the enemy's rear, Raine suspected they wouldn't be fool enough to leave their own unguarded. As such, it wouldn't be easy to attack them. Even fire arrows, although she could loft one or two at the crates and barrels from here, would definitely not do enough damage to make things worthwhile.

As the night wore on, Raine realized that she could kind of sense several important people. Those tents had to be the generals, although she had no idea why she thought that. Over there was a powerful mage, but he was not on his guard--and not yet asleep. The commander of the rearguard forces was pacing restlessly, as though he sensed her out there, but he did not trust his feelings, not the way she did.

In the dark of the night, Raine made a plan.

The first thing she must do was kill the mage. If she could do that, if she could sneak deep into the enemy camp and knife him, then she could set the enemy supplies on fire. Even if the mage was not a fire wizard, there were too many ways for someone with magic to save the supplies--wind, water, fire, earth, anything really, she suspected. And if he was found dead, well, nobody in their army would feel safe.

So she snuck to the edge of camp closest to him and waited until she got the sense that he was asleep--again, not questioning how she knew, just trusting. Then, slowly, she crept through, her entire focus on that sense deep inside of her, the one that told her when someone was looking her way. As long as she didn't move when someone was looking, she would be okay.

It was slow, agonizingly slow, but she got to the tent, slipped in, and slit the mage's throat, gagging him with his own spare clothes so he could not make a sound. Then... on an instinct, almost a whim, she picked up a piece of parchment from the table, not even bothering to look at it, and slipped it into her pack, before slipping outside and slowly, all too slowly, working her way back out of camp.

Then she circled the camp once more, aware that the rearguard commander had drifted off as well, but posted extra guards. She smiled, feeling thrilled--no more was she like the old Raine, backing down from a challenge. No, they had raised the difficulty on her, but she pushed straight through, and inch by inch, over the course of an hour, crossed the few hundred feet between the edge of camp and the supplies.

Dawn was coming. The sky was only just starting to lighten, but she knew it was now or never. Everything she'd brought that would burn, she distributed across several wagons and stacks of supplies. Only when they were all in place and the false dawn approached did she light one, then the next, then the next, then immediately started off into the grass.

It took longer than it should have for people to notice. Perhaps the guards confused the new fires with the campfires, or the light for the lightening sky. Perhaps they thought their own quartermaster was doing inspections on the supplies with a torch. But it wasn't nearly long enough before the first shouts of fire were heard.

After that, Raine could hear nothing except the beating of her heart, and she focused all her will on that one question: was anyone looking?

For long moments, the answer was no, but then yes; of course they would look for any sign of the saboteur. But then, suddenly, all eyes went back to the fire, as not enough people were awake yet to both stand guard and also save the food.

As soon as she felt that, she leaped to her feet and made a mad dash to cover. And once she had cover, she turned back south and kept going, not willing to stop until she could cross the river and be safely back among her own people.

They would never understand why she had attacked. They might not even know for sure that it was one of the Belmans. Maybe they would assume they had a traitor. But for Raine, all she felt was a certainty that this was payback. They had taken the only light from this world that she had; now, she had gotten even.

As she did cross the river, though, she felt one pair of eyes watching her, one pair among both armies. One pair that seemed to lock on to her instantly, that could have found her in waist-high grass if she were flat on her stomach. Then, as though pleased, those eyes turned away.