Bear In Snowfall
"[Frost Bloom]."
The explosion of ice shards tore outward in a devastating, spherical shockwave. Hundreds of jagged icicles, each sharp enough to slice through tempered steel, ripped through the snowy clearing.
Alexei didn't flinch. He shrugged off the frost lodging in his fur-lined shoulder guard, snapping several jagged spikes clean off with a single flex of his massive shoulder muscles. With a feral roar, he hurled one of his heavy cleavers straight at Victoria.
The spinning axe cut a violent path through the freezing mist, its heavy iron head screaming toward her face.
Victoria barely twitched. With effortless grace, she brought her longsword up. A bright shower of sparks echoed sharply through the clearing as steel met steel. The sheer kinetic force of the throw forced her sword arm back a few inches, her sabatons sliding slightly against the freezing ground.
It was exactly the opening Alexei had banked on.
He closed the distance horrifyingly fast. Exploiting the split second her blade was occupied, he launched his massive bulk into the air, bringing his remaining axe down in a thunderous, two-handed overhead cleave meant to split her from crown to groin.
"Die!"
Victoria pivoted, gracefully evading the descent. The axe head buried itself deep into the frozen earth where she had stood a fraction of a second prior, shattering the ground and sending frozen chunks of dirt and ice flying like shrapnel.
Flowing like water, she smoothly pivoted on her heel and drove her longsword toward Alexei's flank in a lethal horizontal slash. But Alexei had anticipated the counter. He snapped the stout wooden haft of his axe upward, catching the flat of her blade with a dull clatter. He twisted his grip, attempting to wrench the weapon from her fingers, but Victoria had already disengaged, sliding backward across the snow, well out of reach.
"Hmm. Fascinating," Victoria murmured, a cold smirk playing upon her lips. "A very impressive physical power."
She was holding back. This brute wasn't some easily disposable rabble. His raw strength rivaled high-tier enhancement magic, and his burst speed defied his immense bulk. He's a commander, right? Victoria's mind raced with tactical calculations. If I capture him... his intel will prove invaluable. A distinguished military achievement to claim entirely for myself.
"[Glacial Whip]."
With a flick of her wrist, she slashed the air. A long, flexible tendril of condensed frost materialized from the tip of her sword, lashing out like a striking serpent.
Alexei threw himself to the side. The whip cracked against a towering pine, instantly freezing its bark and wood into brittle glass upon contact. He yanked his buried axe free from the frozen dirt, hefting it alongside a smaller throwing axe unhooked from his belt.
"Is that all you got, Lady Knight!?" Alexei roared.
He charged again, weaving in erratic, zig-zagging bounds. He closed the gap while gathering brutal momentum to deliver a crushing blow.
"Not yet. I just wanna see your limit, boy," Victoria chuckled.
She met his charge with immaculate deflection. Every time Alexei swung, she shifted just an inch outside his reach, letting his own momentum overextend him before redirecting the lethal arc with precise, angled parries.
"Tch! You're infuriating!" Alexei roared again, swinging his heavier axe in an upward arc.
He's relentless, Victoria observed, leaning back just enough to let the whistling blade graze her breastplate. Despite her magical superiority, engaging an enraged Varyag in sustained close-quarters combat was exhausting. His blows struck with the weight of falling boulders; even parrying sent numbing vibrations rattling through the bones of her arms. The repetitive shock was beginning to ache deep in her wrists.
She needed to wear him down—weaken him just enough to initiate a complete freeze.
"[Piercing Hail]."
Victoria thrust her left hand forward. Dozens of needle-sharp ice projectiles formed in the air, launching themselves at Alexei in a lethal, high-velocity volley.
Alexei didn't even bother to dodge. He bellowed, his chest swelling as he invoked the first stage of his Totem Awakening. Thick, coarse brown fur rapidly sprouted along his forearms and jawline. His musculature surged, tearing through the heavy fabric of his tunic.
The ice needles struck him with sickening thuds. They impaled flesh and muscle, drawing crimson blood that steamed vividly against the freezing mountain air. Yet he didn't falter. Disregarding the agony, he drove straight through the frozen squall with terrifying momentum.
"You can't stop me!" Alexei bellowed, hurling the smaller throwing axe.
Victoria deflected the projectile with an easy turn of her blade, but the distraction was all he needed. Alexei was suddenly right in front of her, his remaining war axe sweeping outward in a devastating, horizontal executioner's arc.
She barely had time to react. She brought her sword up in a desperate, two-handed block.
CLANG!
The impact was cataclysmic. The sheer concussive force hurled Victoria backward, her boots carving deep trenches through the snow. Her blade vibrated violently in her grip, a hairline fracture spidering near the crossguard. She gasped, the breath knocked completely from her lungs by the sheer shockwave.
Had her innate defensive wards not reinforced her physical frame, that single strike would have shattered both her arms to splinters.
"Well, seems like we need to be a bit... serious, don't you think, boy?" Victoria's lip curled into an annoyed sneer and drove the pommel of her sword against the earth.
"[Frozen Sanctuary]."
A massive dome of jagged, solid ice erupted from the permafrost, encasing her in an impenetrable bunker of crystalline armor. Alexei's follow-up strike crashed squarely against the surface, his axe rebounding off the thick frost with a hollow thud.
"Hiding won't save you!" Alexei yelled, raining savage blows against the dome. Chips of diamond-hard ice flew in every direction, but the structure remained unyielding.
Within the dome, Victoria took a few precious seconds to steady her ragged breath and restore her composure. He is extremely dangerous in close combat, she deduced coldly. She could eliminate him outright by invoking high-tier annihilation magic, but that would defeat the purpose. A dead brute brought no military prestige or intelligence. She needed him alive, subdued, and broken.
She pressed her palm against the inner wall of the dome.
"Then let us change the environment."
"[Absolute Zero Domain]."
A deep, cerulean pulse rippled outward from the dome, bleeding into the earth. The ambient temperature in the clearing plummeted instantly. Falling snow stopped mid-descent, freezing in place into floating, suspended crystals. The very air brittle, cracking with dry frost.
Alexei froze his assault, his breath billowing in dense, choking clouds. The cold was unnatural—far sharper and more predatory than any winter natural to the northern tundras. Even his beast blood and inner furnace struggled against the sudden chill. His joints began to seize, an agonizing lethargy creeping through his limbs.
Then, with a loud crack, the ice dome shattered from within, blasting icy debris outward. Victoria emerged from the mist, her fractured longsword wreathed in a terrifying azure luminescence.
"Your strength is admirable, but flesh and blood always freeze."
She surged forward, abandoning defense for precision suppression. Aiming not to kill, but to incapacitate as her blade flickered with blinding speed, carving trails of freezing mist that crystallized instantly upon contact.
Alexei swung his axe, but his movements were noticeably sluggish, his muscles fighting the numbing frost settling into his veins. Victoria stepped effortlessly inside his reach.
"[Frostbite Bind]."
She slashed low, her steel skimming across the thick leather of his left boot. The sorcery detonated on impact. A dense pillar of rime surged upward from the soil, encasing his left leg entirely up to the knee and anchoring him immovably to the earth.
"Gah!" Alexei grunted, straining furiously against the ice, but the binding held firm.
Before he could compensate, Victoria vanished into a blue blur, reappearing at his flank. Her sword struck the haft of his remaining axe right below his fingers. The frost raced along the wood, welding his gauntlet to the weapon before creeping up his forearm, locking his entire right side into a solid block of rime.
He was neutralized. One leg bolted to the ground, his weapon arm sealed in ice.
"Damn youuu!!" he bellowed in impotent fury, writhing against the magical restraints. Cracks appeared across the ice, but the bonds held.
Victoria took three measured paces back. Her breathing remained composed, a triumphant smirk gracing her lips as she casually sheathed her blade.
"You fought valiantly," she said. "However, your capture will serve Albion—and myself—very well."
"Your mistake."
Victoria's smirk dissolved the instant the crystalline prison around Alexei's leg began to shriek under immense pressure.
CRACK! CRACK!
The splintering echoed like thunder across the clearing. Alexei ceased his frantic struggling. He lowered his head, drawing in deep, ragged breaths that sounded like bellows in a forge. The veins along his neck and brow bulged into angry, blackened cords. Reaching past the boundaries of reason, he dragged the primal depths of his bloodline to the surface, shattering the barrier of a mere Totem Awakening to unleash the Varyag shapeshifting arts in their absolute entirety.
The ice exploded into powder.
A kinetic shockwave of expanding muscle and raw mana blew Victoria's bindings apart. Alexei's skeleton shifted with sickening snaps and pops. His stature expanded upward, dwarfing his former human size until he stood towering at over four meters tall. The brown fur along his skin thickened, bleaching into a pristine, blinding white hide. His face elongated into a monstrous snout lined with serrated fangs as large as combat daggers.
He dropped his frozen axe. He had no use for forged iron anymore as he now is a fully manifested Brutebear—the apex terror of the northern wilds.
"ROOOOAAAAARRRRRR!!!"
Victoria recoiled, instinctively drawing her longsword.
Alexei gave her no room to breathe as he lunged with terrifying speed, the clearing shaking beneath the thunderous impact of his massive paws. He swung a clawed limb in an arc capable of decapitating a siege engine.
"[Glacial Aegis!]"
Victoria thrust her left gauntlet forward, conjuring a wall of reinforced ice three feet thick.
Alexei's paw collided with the barrier. The magical ice held for a microsecond before disintegrating into dust. The devastating momentum of the swipe clipped her left pauldron. The impact flung her through the air like a discarded doll, smashing her straight through the trunk of a pine tree before she skidded roughly across the snowy dirt.
"Gahh! Hah... Hah... Hah..."
She spat a mouthful of blood, her left arm hanging limp and unresponsive. Her haughty pride shattered. Direct combat with this monstrosity was suicide; her objective instantly shifted from capture to raw survival.
For the next fifteen minutes, the woodland turned into a slaughterhouse of splintered timber and cratered earth.
Alexei was a rampaging calamity. He obliterated boulder clusters and tore ancient trees out by their roots just to close the distance. Victoria abandoned offensive spells entirely. She fled, conjuring angled ice slicks to slide out of reach and throwing up dozens of fragile barriers solely to redirect the kinetic force of his onslaught.
Even so, the carnage caught up to her. A glancing blow from his sweeping claws crushed the left side of her breastplate, fracturing ribs. She gasped through agonizing breaths, burning mana on [Frost Step] to blink her position every time those dagger-filled jaws snapped down on the empty air where her skull had rested a heartbeat before.
Yet she watched him closely. His swings were turning wide, heavy, and disorganized. The ancient transformation was burning through his lifeforce like oil on a bonfire. She only had to endure until the flame consumed itself.
At the fifteen-minute mark, Alexei vaulted into the air for a final, crushing bite. Mid-leap, his primal roar degraded into a wet, agonizing cough.
His massive frame plummeted into the drift. The blinding white pelt shrank and receded beneath his flesh. His skeletal frame contracted with violent spasms, collapsing him back into his human form. He crashed into the freezing soil bare-chested, gasping, and utterly spent. Every muscle in his body convulsed, yet through pure stubborn spite, he managed to push himself to his knees.
Twenty yards away, Victoria leaned heavily on her cracked sword, panting through blood-stained lips. Crimson trickled steadily down her chin, staining her torn blue tabard. Her armor was dented, scored, and caved in along her ribs.
She forced herself upright, schooling her breathing into cold military discipline, and limped toward him.
"Hah... Hah... Hah... I lost," he forced out between ragged breaths.
"Continuing the fight is pointless..." Victoria said as she stopped a few feet away, her fractured sword held loosely at her side.
"Cut the chatter and get on with it!" Alexei yelled.
"No. I won't kill you, boy." Victoria managed to steady her breath, then looked straight to Alexei. "As the enemy's commander, the intel in your head is more valuable than your life."
"Huh? What?" Alexei looked up. He thought that she will kill him. But...
"Surrender now, I have no intention—"
"Dream on! A Varyag warrior will never be taken hostage!"
Alexei scooped up a handful of frozen dirt and gravel, hurling it directly into her face.
"Wha— Hey!"
The blinding spray broke her focus. In that split-second opening, Alexei ignored the excruciating fire screaming in his torn muscles, scrambled to his feet, and bolted toward the steep ravine bordering the cliffside.
She immediately ran to intercept him, but he was infuriatingly agile, slipping through the trees like an elusive shadow despite his severe exhaustion.
"He's really got a death wish, eh? There's a cliff right here..." She murmured as she stopped and looked around. "That brat... Well, he's still a boy after all. But I have to take you back."
Alexei slumped against the coarse bark of a massive pine, sliding down until his boots settled into the snowy roots. His bare chest heaved in ragged gasps. Breathing felt like inhaling crushed glass, and violent tremors racked his frame from the backlash of pushing the Old Blood far beyond its limit.
He was lucky. He knew it. Throwing dirt like an undisciplined street urchin and running away lacked the dignity expected of a northern warrior. He had survived, but the bitter taste of defeat burned hotter than the freezing gale biting his exposed skin.
"Aunt Hilda is going to skin me alive," Alexei grumbled to himself, resting his bruised forehead against his knees. "She's going to string me up by my ankles and ship me straight back to Nosgorod. 'Not ready for the Vanguard', she'll say. 'Too arrogant'."
He lifted his hands, staring at his trembling fingers. Yet beneath the exhaustion, a quiet flame of satisfaction flickered.
"Still... I did it," he whispered, clenching his fists until his knuckles popped. "The full Brutebear. The Old Blood actually answered."
Until today, he had only managed partial shifts—sprouting claws, strengthening his jaw, hardening muscle. But pushed to the edge of the grave by that frost witch, the cage had shattered. He had walked as the apex beast. Brief as the awakening was, the ancient power had flowed through him.
"I just need to master the stamina drain," Alexei muttered, rubbing his bare arms to stave off frostbite. "Next time we meet, I'll snap her little ice tricks in half. Just need to catch my breath and loop around the southern ridge to find Vsevolod—"
"Loop around the southern ridge, hm? A solid tactical retreat."
Alexei flinched violently. He kicked up a cloud of snow, scrambling backward on all fours as his heart slammed against his ribs.
Victoria stood barely three paces away. She leaned casually against an adjacent pine trunk, arms crossed over her battered, dented breastplate. Her silver-white hair caught the pale moonlight, her blue tabard swaying in the chill mountain wind. Blood still dried on her chin, but her cold azure eyes pinned him with unsettling calm.
"How did you—" Alexei stammered, frantically looking around for his discarded weapons before grimly remembering they were back in the first clearing.
"Good evening, boy. As of this moment, you're my prisoner. I can't let you escape."
"As if I'd ever be caught! Just try and keep up if you can!" He kicked off against the tree roots and bolted down the opposite slope.
"Oh, come on!" Victoria groaned, dragging a gauntleted palm across her face. She pushed off the tree with an irritated sigh. "Is he really going to make me chase him through the woods like a disgruntled hound? Fine. If he wants to play tag in the snow, we play."
Is he really a commander? She thought as she let out a small sigh, walking briskly. No, the real commander must be the big guy with an axe...
Yet his trail abruptly vanished within a sparse copse of spruce.
"He should be around here, that boy..."
"Take this!" Alexei roared, stepping from behind a snowbank and hurling a jagged rock directly at her face.
She side-stepped with a flick of her head, the stone whizzing harmlessly past her ear.
"An ambush? Clever boy," she said, effortlessly dodging a second hurled rock. "Albeit a useless ploy against an enemy you cannot overcome."
"You persistent, blasted knight!" he grumbled in annoyance.
"There's no escape for you," she said, closing the distance with measured, predatory steps.
"A clingy girl isn't popular in Varyag, you know!"
"What?" Victoria paused for a fraction of a second, baffled by the ridiculous remark. "Did you seriously just say that?"
Alexei capitalized on the hesitation instantly, vaulting over a fallen log and sliding down a steep gully. Victoria let out a long, weary breath.
"He's fast and annoying."
Their absurd game dragged on for nearly an hour across the frozen ridge. Alexei used every trick of woodland survival he possessed—scrambling along the rims of icy gorges, plunging through dense briar patches, and even completely burying himself beneath a drift in a clumsy attempt at camouflage.
Victoria simply tracked the disturbed snow. She refused to waste mana, patiently allowing the freezing elements to bleed the final dregs of his adrenaline dry.
Finally, Alexei's boots struck sheer rock instead of packed powder. He stumbled onto an open plateau, his lungs burning and his vision swimming with dark spots. He wiped a hand across his freezing face, glancing wildly about the edge.
There should be that small and hidden path to go back... Where is it—
"Awooooooooooo!"
"Awoooooooooooooo!"
A chorus of guttural howls shattered the mountain silence.
"What was that?" Alexei muttered, stumbling back from the cliff's precipice. He squinted into the gloomy brush lining the gorge.
A series of menacing growls vibrated through the frozen scrub. Pairs of predatory, amber eyes flared to life among the shadows.
"Winter Hounds..." he whispered.
A pack of Ardenian Winter Hounds—monstrous beasts with coarse white coats and jaws engineered to crush caribou bone with ease. He had blundered right into their hunting territory. Naturally adapted to the cold, they hunted with lethal pack coordination. To their ravenous eyes, an exhausted, half-naked warrior cornered against a chasm was nothing more than easy prey.
The alpha hound, a scarred brute missing an eye, stepped into the open. It bared dripping fangs and released a low, blood-chilling bark.
The pack charged.
"Damn it!" Alexei yelled, backing up until his heels touched empty air over the drop. He had no axes. He lacked the energy to call upon even a trace of the Old Blood. Squaring his shoulders, he raised his bare, bleeding fists. "Come on then! I'm not afraid of overgrown mutts!"
The alpha leapt, jaws spread wide for his throat.
SHING!
A radiant burst of azure magic illuminated the plateau. A wall of solid ice erupted from the permafrost inches from Alexei's chest. The alpha crashed skull-first into the barrier with a sickening crunch, tumbling backward into the dirt, whimpering in dazed agony.
Alexei lowered his fists, blinking in shock. He glanced sideways.
Victoria walked out from the treeline, her left hand delicately raised, fingers radiating pale blue frost.
"Honestly, if you fall off that cliff or get ripped apart by wild dogs, my superiors are going to ask incredibly annoying questions regarding my prisoner retrieval methods," Victoria said, her cool voice cutting cleanly through the growling wolves.
"Khh! It's because of you, you blasted hag!"
"Whatever. Stay still! [Frost Bind]!"
She gestured sharply, and a crystalline pillar of ice immediately locked Alexei's limbs securely in place.
"Now then..."
Her icy gaze turned toward the remaining beasts.
Trapped within his frosted cage, Alexei grit his teeth, the chill biting into his bare flesh. He could only roll his eyes, watching the pale blue luminescence of Victoria's magic dance across the snow.
Three hounds lunged at her simultaneously. Without looking, she stamped her heel; a jagged spire of frost erupted beneath the first wolf, impaling it through the gut and flash-freezing the beast before it hit the ground. When the other two flanked her, she glided backward, her cracked sword tracing an arc of super-cooled mist. The frost locked their paws to the stone, allowing her to dispatch both with two merciless, blinding thrusts.
Within moments, six hounds lay dead or frozen solid. The battered alpha whimpered, pinned its ears back against its skull, and bolted into the dark, the remnants of the pack scattering behind it.
She watched them flee, then turned back toward Alexei. Her blue tabard was now further spattered with wolf blood. She approached his icy prison, tapping the frozen surface once with the flat of her blade. The binding shattered into mist, leaving Alexei shivering violently as he collapsed to his knees.
"Hah... Hah... Thought I was going to be a Hound's dinner..."
"Now then..." Victoria murmured, wiping a drop of wolf blood from her cheek with the back of her gauntlet. "Let's be reasonable, boy. This wearying game of cat and mouse is at a close."
"Damn it!" Alexei grumbled as Victoria produced a length of enchanted rope and swiftly bound his arms behind him.
A small bonfire crackled warmly beneath the sheltering canopy of pine boughs, casting orange embers against the drifting snowfall. A short distance away, Victoria knelt beside a fresh snowbank. She had set her chipped sword aside, methodically scrubbing dirt, soot, and wolf blood from her porcelain skin with a handful of clean snow. The flickering firelight accentuated the harsh gouges along her breastplate and her tattered blue tabard, yet her posture remained upright—a portrait of rigid, imperial composure.
Alexei sat propped against a thick pine trunk, his wrists bound tightly by freezing cord. His cloak had been destroyed during his awakening, leaving his scarred, muscular torso bare to the biting Ardenian cold. Only the radiant heat from the bonfire kept his shivering body from succumbing to frostbite.
"Damn you, Knight! Today you've bested me, I concede! If you want to kill me, just do it!" he yelled across the flames. "But you should know... I will never betray my allies! This is the creed of the Varyag warriors!"
Victoria's gaze drifted to him. She rose smoothly, taking up her sword, and crossed the small camp toward him.
"Well, if you insist..." She leveled the cracked tip of her steel straight at his throat.
"W-wait!"
Alexei squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the cold thrust. The blade whistled through the air—but no steel pierced his flesh.
Snip.
The heavy ropes binding his wrists fell away in cleanly severed loops.
"Huh?" Alexei sat dumbfounded, staring at his freed hands. He had expected an execution, or at least a brutal interrogation. Didn't she capture him to squeeze military secrets from him?
"Just kidding. After all, you're my ticket to glory," she said, turning her back on him to walk toward the fire. "Save your energy. Interrogation requires energy, after all."
"You... Aren't you afraid I'll ambush you?"
"Wanna give it a try?" she said with a faint, amused smirk, tending the flames without sparing him another glance.
Damn it! I can't beat her. This hag is insanely strong... Alexei thought, rubbing his bruised wrists. I have to act compliant to lower her guard... And then, find a chance to escape.
His stomach rumbled violently. He glanced toward the slaughtered hounds lying at the edge of the clearing. I need energy, huh?
"Hey, pass me a knife, I'm gonna skin these hounds' meat."
Victoria raised an eyebrow. "You intend to cook them?"
"Huh? Obviously! Just because I'm a Werebear doesn't mean I eat them raw! They might taste bad, but hey, meat is meat!"
She chuckled softly, drawing a hunting knife from her thigh sheath and tossing it hilt-first into the snow before him. Alexei caught it easily. He set to work on the nearest beast, his large hands moving with the practiced efficiency of a hunter who had dressed game since childhood—a skill passed down through generations of Varyags.
"Skinning, gutting, cleaning. It's what you do after a hunt," Alexei muttered, more to himself than to her. He carved thick cuts from the haunches, discarding the entrails into the snowdrifts. Whittling several green pine branches into skewers, he propped the meat over the dancing flames.
Soon, sizzling fat dripped onto the embers with a savory hiss. Once roasted, Alexei tore into his own portion with ravenous bites, pulling another skewer free to hold out toward Victoria.
"Take it," Alexei offered. "You need energy too."
"My thanks," she accepted the skewer from his hand and took a dainty bite, chewing slowly, seemingly analyzing the flavor. "Tough, gamey. It lacks proper seasoning."
"Well, what do you expect?" Alexei tore through the dense meat like a starved wolf. His transformation had drained his reserves so completely he could have devoured the pack whole.
"Urkh— Kh! Choking! I'm choking!"
"Need some water?" She produced a small leather waterskin from her belt.
Alexei snatched it instantly, guzzling the contents down with greedy swallows.
"Hah! Ah..." He wiped his chin with his forearm. "I almost choked to death!"
"Boy, are you really a soldier?" Victoria asked, her eyes filled with genuine confusion.
"Huh? I'm a mercenary, not a soldier in the sense of formally trained," Alexei said. "And I never took you for a knight either."
"Why's that?"
"Well, usually, they spout nonsense like 'justice' or 'honor' all day long. Why didn't you speak up?"
Victoria let out a long, weary sigh. "I came here for military accolades."
"Just that?"
"Just that."
"So direct...."
"What? Disappointed?"
"And here I thought you were different from the rest."
Victoria dismissed his commentary and instead focused on the thoughts swirling in her mind.
"Aren't you guys also fighting for bounties?"
"We're not like those mercs!" Alexei said, crossing his arms with an offended scowl. "Choose your allies first, then talk payment. That's also part of the Varyag warriors' creed."
"Hm, I see... Boring dogma."
"You...." Alexei's brow twitched violently. "Someone like you who is obsessed with status and power... wouldn't understand!"
"Aren't status and power also important?"
Alexei shook his head, turning his broad back toward her. "To us Silver Wolves... Power determines everything! Whether ally or foe, we respect the strong!" He let out an irritated huff. "Forget it. Talking to you is just like talking to a wall. You wouldn't understand."
Victoria looked at his broad, heavily scarred shoulders illuminated by the dying embers.
"Yes, of course. After all, all I wanted was military glory..."
She drew her cracked sword from its scabbard with a faint rasp.
"...but you... As a captive, shouldn't leave your back exposed."
Before Alexei could process the warning, the flat of her heavy blade slammed into the nape of his neck. His eyes rolled back instantly, and he collapsed face-first into the snow, unconscious.
She lowered the blade, looking down at his sprawling frame.
"The Varyags he mentioned..." She turned her back from his unconscious body. "Might be a good place for me."
Her head lowered, her expression darkening as memories of the court surfaced.
"Compared to my current place... The Council of Knights, controlled by crooked degenerates like Whisley..."
A bitter memory surfaced of Knight Commander Whisley earlier—screeching like a frightened cur, shouting empty excuses about 'tactical redeployment' while digging his spurs into his warhorse to flee the battlefield, abandoning his own men in the snow. She had walked past him, sneering at how utterly pathetic he was. Yet it was cowards like him who held sway in the capital.
"I've been ostracized and slandered, merely because I refuse to get along with them..."
Her knuckles whitened against her grip.
"Those vermin... They'll only lead Albion into the abyss!"
She looked up at the vast, uncaring winter sky, watching the cold stars burn through the falling snow.
"That's exactly why... I need military achievements. To prove my mettle and climb to greater heights."
A cold, resolute breath escaped her lips.
"Since I've chosen this path... Even if I'm alone, one day... I'll restore the Albion Empire to its rightful glory."
She looked back down at Alexei. He was no commander—just an unruly, loud-mouthed mercenary boy fighting for pride, not politics. Handing him over to corrupt fools like Whisley would only turn him into fodder for their sordid games.
"Now, as for the unsatisfactory military achievements..."
With a faint smirk, she turned on her heel and vanished into the snowstorm alone.
"Gah! Hah... Hah..."
Alexei jolted awake with a start. The bonfire had long since burned down to cold gray ash. The morning sunlight stabbed against his eyes, accompanied by a throbbing, miserable ache pounding at the base of his skull.
He sat up and looked around the desolate clearing. The dead hounds were half-buried in fresh powder. Victoria was nowhere in sight.
"Hah... I'll never understand girls."
He sighed, pushing himself up onto stiff legs, and set out through the white expanse toward the fortress where his aunt was undoubtedly waiting for his report.