Chapter One
Smokescreen
Daiya poured over sheets of parchment as the candle on her plain wooden desk waved back and forth with each and every breath she took. Her eyes were sore and itchy and she had ink stains all over her fingers and palms, and sadly her day was only half over. She still had over three dozen requests and orders to go over and sign, not to mention tending to the people under her direct command and then taking her Dragoon Knights out for a patrol along the border to make sure no military personnel were trying to sneak into Alysia.
There was so much work to be done each and every day, but to be completely honest Daiya wouldn't have it any other way. Not right now at least. Keeping busy was good for her, and thankfully that wasn't hard to get at all. She was able to keep her mind on the really important things, and off of the stuff that wasn't as important. Or at least the stuff that wasn't important to the world. They were still very important to her, but for more selfish reasons than she would normally admit to.
Pushing those thoughts from her mind so she didn't get bogged down in the emotions she really didn't like feeling, Daiya resumed her reading and sighed softly to herself. This was the fifteenth supply request she had gone over since she had woken up early that morning and it was starting to get tedious, but it was something she knew she had to push through. The troops needed to get the supplies they required in a timely fashion, and making sure that happened was one of Daiya's more important duties. The lives of many men and women depended on her and she refused to let them down because the work was tedious.
Seeing that this request wasn't asking for anything special or hard to obtain and transport, Daiya quickly signed the form with her royal seal and then placed it on top of the pile she had already finished up to that point. The pile was growing larger with each passing moment, but sadly the other pile, the incoming pile, didn't seem to be getting any smaller. And when it finally did start to get smaller she knew that when she woke up the next morning it would be back to the size it was now, or maybe even larger if she was unlucky enough.
The bad thing was that it wasn't even supposed to be like this. Not entirely at least. Daiya didn't have all that much experience when it came to leading battalions like this, but it was something she had to do. It wasn't just because her father preferred that she stayed back from the fighting either; because that wasn't entirely the case with her leading patrols around enemy held lands each and every night. No, Daiya had put herself in this position; one where she could keep on top of everything and yet still remain in an active combat role at the same time.
Being embroiled in a war that spanned the entire continent was a terrible thing to deal with, yet in comparison to the real threat lurking in the shadows it was more of a minor annoyance than anything else. The man that had been known as the Demon King throughout history, the man that had nearly destroyed all of civilization almost two thousand years ago was back, and only a handful of people knew about it or the real threat that he posed to the world. And it was that very knowledge that had Daiya where she was and doing what she was doing, instead of back at Castle Islan with her husband where she truly wanted to be.
