Fearless (A Mulan Retelling)

Chapter Four

"Aye," Renna agreed. A moment passed. An idea popped into the woman's mind. "Wait a minute, maybe that's not all we can do. What if we could send someone more capable that ourselves to the army camp with her to protect her."

Elliot just looked over at Renna. "Like who?"

"Oh yes," Renna whispered, mainly to herself. And then, to Elliot, "I knew there was a reason I ran into him yesterday in town. The gods must have sent him in my path for this reason. Elliot, I ran into the Vorantis boy yesterday when I was shopping -he's visiting Eda this week. We might could get him to go."

Renna and Elliot exchanged glances without smiling. Kayde Vorantis was the son of a family friend that had joined the ranks of some idealistic mercenary group when he was a child. He was a generous person by all accounts, by Renna had no idea if he'd agree to do something so vast, and more importantly, so illegal. And if he did agree, well, there was still no guarantee that even he would be able to keep her alive.

"Should we go see him?" Renna asked, "Ask him if he'd do us the favor? He seems to like Iris well enough from the few times he's spoken to her."

"Perhaps," Elliot replied, rubbing his chin.

In Eldia, there were many who had chosen to join the ranks of the Remorda Guardians -an elite set of combatants heavily trained for missions such as these. By all accounts, the order was founded to protect innocent lives. Kayde was one of those men, taught for years how to fight --taught for years how to protect others and hone his mind in all situations.

"It's worth a try," Renna convinced him. "Hopefully he will go... for Iris. He knows Iris."

"Yes. Go talk to him." Her father was grave.

"I will go see him this very moment." Renna gathered her skirt in her hands, "Let me get on some shoes." In that moment, Iris's aunt was doing her best to convince herself that Kayde would be able to help. She was about to take off running to where the Vorantis family lived, but was caught by a firm grip on her shoulder.

"Let us pray first," Elliot said, meeting her arms.

And they did.

----

Four days later, Gretchen galloped forward at a decent pace, but Iris could tell the poor mare was tired from multiple days of fast travel. By now Iris's legs were long worn out from many rough hours of riding -and she could feel the blisters stabbing at the inside of her thighs. Even so, Iris did her best not to grimace at the pain. It was mainly out of principle, for Iris knew that where she was headed, she'd have to learn to be resilient if she wanted to live. She also knew that if she was late, she would certainly be punished as anyone else. Therefore, she kept her pace.

Iris was pulled from her thoughts when Gretchen galloped over a large rock, which shifted the girl quickly and painfully in the saddle. Iris's composure broke for a moment, and she cursed under her breath. She had to clench her teeth to conceal a scream when the horse jerked again, surely ripping open the sores on her legs. For a moment, Iris could swear she felt her thighs start to bleed.

After a moment, the pain contained itself back into something a little more bearable. After Iris settled again, Iris pulled out the draft note and gazed at the map drawn on the back. By this account, she was still about two days away from her destination. She was thankful, however, because it might have been another four days had she not kept to her fast pace. And if she pushed a little bit harder, she could get a really good rest in whenever she felt it necessary -probably soon with how bad Iris was hurting.

Not only had this whole trip been hard on her body, it'd been hard on her mind too. Over the course of the journey, she'd had to change who she was entirely. She's lost her name, as she now was Ingred Gwenneth -the only son of Elliot and Irila. And also, she'd had to force herself to become stronger than she felt she was -had to accept that she couldn't cower in the face of fear. Iris had lost her hair, she'd lost her femininity, and depending on what the future had in store, she risked even losing her life.