The Call to War

Chapter 2

"I could have handled them," Tess commented as she finished off the two she was fighting, while the other two hung motionless after being choked out by the vines.

"I know, but friends stick together," Claire replied with a smile as she pushed her blade a little harder against the man's throat.

Theo then came up and grabbed him by the back of the head and forced him to the ground face first. "We are fighting a war here and you're talking about harming one of our own? You disgust me, and don't deserve to fight alongside our people"

Theo was about to slam him even harder into the ground, but was stopped by Claire. "No Theo. As much as I would like to see scum like him suffer, we aren't executioners. Him and his men need to be turned in to the captain."

"What? So he can just let them back into the fight?" Theo scoffed.

"The captain won't do that," Tess said walking up. "If anything were to happen to me the council and my grandfather would be searching for answers. The captain would probably be executed if he allowed these guys to just get off the hook."

The eight men were taken away later that day by Dicathen soldiers, and were never seen again. The captain took the opportunity to inform everyone why they were arrested, without mentioning Tess, and that that behavior would not be tolerated.

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Tess sat down by the fire next to Claire with the rest of their teams. On the other side of Claire was Theo, who looked like he was staring into the fire like he wanted to fight it, but was actually watching Darvus, the ax wielding augmenter on Tess' team. He was lazily lying on the ground looking bored out of his mind. This behavior was constant for him, when he wasn't fighting or trying to flirt with girls, and ultimately got on Theo's nerves. Caria, the mousy gauntlet wielding augmenter also on Tess' team was beside him eating some dried fruit while watching Theo to make sure he did not attack her crush while he wasn't looking. Despite Theo's dislike of Darvus, he and Caria got along rather well, as they both had similar fighting styles and were able to learn from one another. Claire and Tess had gotten the closest to Caria, mostly due to being the only girls. Claire had become closer as she had seen Caria as a kindred spirit, as they both suffered from a longing to be loved by guys who didn't seem to notice their love.

Next came Stannard, a ranged augmenter on Tess' team, who fired beast cores containing powerful spells that he launched from a crossbow looking contraption. Beside him was another member from Claire's team, Thomas, who was watching Stannard clean his weapon. He was a war hammer wielding augmenter, but had a true passion for inventions, but due to his family, was forced to study combat instead of artifacting. Next on Claire's team came Jerry, who was a quick striking augmenter with his twin daggers. He was considered a goofball and joker, as he often enjoyed playing harmless pranks on people, but his favorite target was Thomas due to his over the top reactions.

"Enjoy your nap?" Caria, the teammate who woke Tess up asked her.

Tess didn't respond, but instead stared into the fire while messing with the leaf charm on the necklace that Arthur gave her.

"Tess?" Caria said in concern, getting some of the others attention on her too.

"Hmm?!" Tess replied, finally noticing people were talking to her.

"Are you ok?" Claire asked.

"Mhm," Tess replied and stared back into the fire.

Claire sighed as she saw Tess messing with the charm. "The dream again?"

Tess closed her eyes and nodded. Claire wrapped her arm around her as Caria moved to her opposite side to do the same. Everyone was looking concerned, as Tess usually didn't look like anything could make her look like this, and none of them knew anything about a dream. In fact Claire and Caria were the only two she even confided to about it, and only after several times of the dream repeating itself, making her relive the last time she had seen Arthur.