Tazagantha

Tazagantha ran through fire to deliver her message.

Brave the Bull's task force was dying in the Great Lowlands. Oridum Graybrow's magic had turned the battlefield into an inferno. Valleys boiled, stone melted, and soldiers burned where they stood. The joint Ferexian-Incaendium force was outnumbered, outmatched, and being systematically destroyed.

Brave needed reinforcements. So he chose a runner, someone fast enough to slip through Oridum's lines. Someone expendable.

He chose the redhair minotaur Taz, a private conscripted from a farming settlement who'd only just finished basic training before being thrown into combat. She'd lost her entire squad and watched her friends burn alive in Oridum's firestorms.

Brave gave her the message, a sealed dispatch case, and her orders. "Run east. Don't stop until you reach Miterstedt. Tell them to send everything they can."

Taz ran.

She ran through valleys choked with ash, past corpses twisted by heat, through firestorms that scorched her uniform and burned her hide. She abandoned her pack when exhaustion threatened to drop her and kept only her crossbow, her breastplate, and the dispatch case. For three days, she ran without sleep, stopping only to drink from ash-choked streams and cram handfuls of half-burnt grass into her mouth.

When she reached Miterstedt, she collapsed at the gates. Sentries dragged her to the Ministry of Peace. She handed them the dispatch case, hands shaking so badly she could barely grip it.

The High Warlord read Brave's message. He convened his generals. They mobilized reinforcements.

Taz tried to go to the infirmary, but the officer with her shook his head. "You're returning with the column. Orders."

Something in Taz's eyes went flat.

She started laughing. Quiet at first, then louder. The officer stepped back.

"Of course," Taz said, her voice steady and too bright. "Of course I'm going back. Why wouldn't I go back? It's beautiful there. Did you know fire makes music? When it eats people, I mean. They scream in harmony."

"Private—"

"Sergeant Thom sang the highest notes. He tried to put himself out by rolling, but the ground was on fire too, so he just rolled and rolled and sang and sang." She smiled. "I should've helped him. But I had orders, you know, and orders are orders."

The officer gestured to the sentries. "Get her to—"

"I'm fine." Taz checked her crossbow and loaded a bolt. "Better than fine. We're all going to burn." She looked at the officer with that same flat expression, still smiling. "You'll burn too. Maybe not today. But Oridum's fire reaches everywhere. I've seen it."

She marched to join the column, singing and laughing. The other soldiers gave her space.

At night, she sits by the fire and talks to herself. Sometimes she throws her head back and laughs. She's marching west with her crossbow ready and her breastplate dented and scorched but still strapped on.

The column's officers watch her warily, but orders are orders, and the Ministry needs every body it can get.

Even the broken ones.