Flower of Steel

I turned to my cousins after hearing those words. Even if they were skilled with swords, they were just kids. Even if Daisy was strong, she was all alone. We needed help. “Let’s go to the knight’s camp first.”

***

Daisy, the twins, and I immediately escaped from the mansion. The mansion was already in chaos, and there were a few dead workers here and there. As these intruders were assassins, those dead people were probably unlucky victims who happened to be awake at such late hours. It was a terrible sight to see. We turned away from their bodies, heartbroken.

Training made a loud noise, so the knight’s camp was located further away from the mansion. While we silently headed for the camp in agitation, I heard another scream from a distance. Someone probably woke up only to find bodies. It was evident that all of the people at the mansion were going to be killed by assassins at this rate. My mind began racing, but I tried to keep cool. If I made the wrong decision, it was going to endanger even my cousins’ lives.

I silently rubbed my cousin’s shoulder, who was heartbroken by the death of their family workers. You have to survive. All we can do is to survive to avenge their death. I spoke to myself words that I wanted to relay to my cousins as I hurried to my place silently.

Soon, we were at the camp, but the sight that unfolded made my body shake. About seven knights were going against about ten assassins. It seems the rest of the assassins were searching through the mansion. If it weren’t for these knights trying their best to hold them off, their lives would have been in trouble.

“We have to go for the leader.”

The best way to finish chess when the power balance is weighing on my enemy is to remove the most threatening piece from the opponent to make them lose the will to fight, or grab the most powerful being as a hostage, just like doing a checkmate. I scanned each assassin. The most threatening piece was of course the most powerful piece, the queen. The king can be forced to surrender with a checkmate but could never be killed.

The number of intruders currently is the size of a regular assassin’s squadron. There must be a king or queen among them. I looked closely and found a gray-haired man who wasn’t wearing a mask, looking bored as he leaned himself by the tree and watched the knights and assassins fight. He had a scorpion tattoo on his wrist.

‘That tattoo… It was on the man that Lumi fought earlier.’

I can assume that man was an important figure who worked under the man I saw at the theater. That man said the man with a tattoo on the wrist was the Assistant Guild Master, so he probably is of the same or similar rank.

“We have to get rid of him,” I said as I pointed it out, and Lumi looked determined. But I was planning to order Daisy to fight instead of my cousin, so I ignored her. I wasn’t sure of her skills yet.

“Daisy, can you kill him?”

Daisy shook her head at my question, “I can’t say for sure, milady. He’s about as strong as me.”

Daisy’s words made me sigh. But she was the only solution to get through this mess, so I had to make a decision. “I’m counting on you.”

Daisy nodded in response. She then silently took out a crossbow and aimed at the man. That’s when the man immediately turned to the bush where we were hiding. The man looked in our direction with a curious look until he saw a rabbit jumping out of it and lost interest, only to return back to watching the fight.