A Dance Of Crowns & Thrones | Book I

Chapter 9 | "What Did You Expect To See?"

"Let's go," Matthew nodded, exiting the room.

With the simple command, he entered the halls proceeding into the open hangar where the elite soldiers were already gearing up, ready to depart.

Jesse, Toni, and Richie walked straight past him, each in command of their own units, waiting to take orders.

Matthew remarked to the first soldier he needed to speak to, "Jasmine."

Walking towards her, the bright pink-haired soldier nodded, meeting him halfway. Though she was very petite, the tiny pocket rocket, if he had ever known someone to be, was indeed one of his fiercer soldiers.

She may not look the part, but she dressed and presented herself very well that he would forget, at times, the type of assassin she could be. Regardless, Jasmine could handle the battlefield, and her skills were parallel to none in her class.

She attended the Academy, specifically Isadora's base, for as long as they had. She was transferred from an onboarding orphanage when the war first consumed them, remaining with Isadora's elite ever since.

"Units are ready to go," she acknowledged in the carefree tone she almost always sported. "We have everyone geared and ready to go upon departure. They have been updated to expect Reapers, Hyports, our normal class three monsters and the potential threat of our enemies portraying as civilians."

Matthew nodded; what he favoured most with her, above anything, was that she was an animal when it came to the war game trials they held every year. One of the highest-ranking soldiers, and this had been where she shone the most. This was the exact environment she thrived in.

"I spoke with Medic," Mya comes alongside Jasmine and Matthew. She was another brilliant mind that transferred from an orphanage to the Academy's elite. Unlike the children, teenagers, and adults who had made their way to the bases and studied to become a soldier, the dark raven-haired brunette was unlike any other in her field regarding neurosurgery and medical research.

She was educated enough to gain her accreditation while also enduring the regimented regimes required as a soldier. She, like Jasmine, and hundreds of others, first came when the Academy was just a refuge orphanage, and when they slowly turned it into the Academy it's known for today, Mya began to learn the medical field from the onsite surgeons.

After a few turbulent years, her next goal saw her studying at Isadora's base for the next two years before completing her courses meant being able to move to the Pincers base permanently. One of the first few bases built for the medical Academy and encouraged those that wanted to further study in the field.

"We've set up Pinchers to take the main flux. Gertrude is overseeing Hyacinth and Knox south of us. Richard went west to look after Mariupol and Waterside Karlstad. We agreed to disburse the medical team from those bases through the towns."

Matthew nodded again. He caught sight of Sawyer, the taller man than any of the soldiers around him and the most obvious amongst the crowd with his bald head and long tidied beard, often complaining of the upkeep.

He moved shortly to Isadora's base after being kicked out of several orphanages when he was younger and never had been able to find an outlet for the rage that consumed him.

Many soldiers that lived at the Academy turned out how Sawyer had. Even if it had given them the stability they were seeking since the loss of their families, it hadn't meant that Matthew didn't have to look out for red flags in their mannerisms.

Making sure certain events that they were assigned to didn't trigger any of their PTSD, even if their onsite psychologists cleared them. He understood, far more than anyone, that it had been a healing process for most soldiers. It was rewarding to see that people like Sawyer were one of the good ones who managed to work through their grief and rage from the war that crippled them as kids.