**Pherenike: Episode 1**
**Chapter 1. The Knife in the Water**
It seemed a long instant, or perhaps a very brief eternity.
Arrows that had, in an instant, covered the entire sky in blackness soon poured down to the ground all at once like rain. Within the pale mist, the howls of soldiers began to reach her like the cries of beasts in a slaughterhouse.
It was around the time that the sun of Lord Apollo rose as it had the day before, through the mist that the dawn goddess Eos had left behind in the west of the Paliuron Mountains.
The sun heralding morning cast a hazy light upon the encampment of the Phaethusa army, caught in a surprise attack.
Everything was reduced to devastation in an instant.
The sounds of flesh bursting, horrible screams, footsteps dashing in every direction, the clash of weapons, collapsed tents, and the smell of blood carried on the damp wind.
Voices calling out to the gods.
In the very midst of it all, there was a woman standing still and looking up at the sky, as though not a single arrow would ever touch her.
The woman slowly lowered her head, removing the red veil over her hair. She wore a black chiton* and had pale platinum hair like the sunlight seen beyond the mist.
\* Chiton: A basic garment of ancient Greece
Having briefly looked down at the soldier who had died instantly just two steps ahead, she slowly bent her body.
The woman's elegant hand pulled out without hesitation the arrow that had pierced the dead soldier's forehead. Then she caressed the arrow's fletching indifferently.
"Kybelaune! Kybelaune!"
"Kybelaune, you must go to the sanctuary at once! Hurry! Lord Phaethusa, your husband—"
Blue fletching on the arrow. The mark of the Nikandros army.
The Regent's. That of First Prince Aktor Nikandros Pellagon.
People who should not be here had come. Breaking through the Phaethusa army that had blockaded the capital, crossing the rugged Paliuron mountain range.
Just beyond this forest.
It meant the defeat of Second Prince Deucalion, who had surrounded her half-brother and father.
The forces the Second Prince had stubbornly left behind on the western side of the mountain range had been unable from the start to turn the tide of the shattered battle.
Because they had been nothing more than a measure to safely evacuate his wife beyond the borders again in the final moment, when nothing could be undone.
And when it became impossible even to leave the kingdom like this, he had told her to find the sanctuary of the Four Goddesses.
At the last, the very last.
The woman slowly withdrew the light flickering at her fingertips. Healing Deucalion's soldiers now had no meaning. It would only make them suffer the same pain twice.
The First Prince's archers had already annihilated those beyond the forest even through the mist.
A single arrow requires an archer's eye, but in loosing thousands of arrows, in truth no one's eye is needed. So long as there is a certain direction in which to draw the bowstring.
And once that sun rises a bit higher, the mist in the forest will gradually disappear.
Their eyes will grow keen, and the places for these people to hide will vanish.
"Run. Don't mind me."
"Kybelaune, your husband said to wait for him at the Sanctuary of Kallike in case of emergency. You know this. The war has only turned slightly unfavorable. You must not be captured by them."
"You're noisy, so go."
Instead, she began walking toward the direction from which the arrows had come.
A man draped in a green chlamys* hurriedly chased after the woman.
\* Chlamys: A short cloak of ancient Greece
"Kybelaune, Kybelaune! Damn it, Lady Pherenike!"
"You can still escape even now, Dexicos."
"So can you."
"Unlike you, I'm slow on my feet. It's just that I don't die easily. But you will die here soon."
"I will count to five. Please, come here."
How impious.
"Get lost before I count to five. Before I borrow the mouth of Goddess Kybellare and curse your parents."
Dexicos's face contorted all at once at Pherenike's indifferent reply.
"Damn it, you really mustn't curse them. I don't know about my father, but our mother must live a long life. Please go to the sanctuary."
"..."
"Lord Phaethusa—your beloved Deucalion—borrows this servant's mouth to beg you. Please."
"I see. So you babble lies, saying that if I wait obediently at the sanctuary, he will come to see me."
"..."
"I don't listen to lies."
"For now, you must stay safe. Otherwise, there is no next time."
"There is no next time for us already, Dexicos."
Impious as it was, Deucalion's shadow, who had glared at her quietly, finally gripped his spear and charged forward. She, too, knew he was of a temperament that preferred death to flight.
Even if she had said she would go to the sanctuary, he would have remained here to buy time. Dexicos had been Deucalion's loyal servant since childhood.
And because of that, he would soon die.
Like her Deucalion.
'Deucalion.'
Pherenike crossed the forest quickly, whispering her husband's name inside her mouth over and over again. Deucalion. Deucalion. Deucalion...
The name brought no answer.
She gritted her teeth and called his name again. This time out loud.
"Deucalion Phaethusa Pellagon."
Only then did the sound of his heart reach her, small and faint, as if answering her. Yet it was a sound devoid of any vitality.
The vague noise unique to one standing at the boundary between life and death.
Having heard the sound of the name countless times, Pherenike knew what it meant. Deucalion had already drifted far from life.
Dead, or alive but dying.
Or the Fates had decided to cut his thread.
Deucalion had already been defeated in the capital. With that, everything was over.
Pherenike tossed away the arrow in her hand and laughed fiercely. She did not concern herself with the blind arrows continuing to fly toward her head.
Soon, a faint swarm of light rising from Pherenike's body caused white flames to erupt on the arrows raining down upon her. As though burning them away from the very tips.
Such things had been unable to harm her since some time ago. Even if someone were to strike her head with a stone right now, or pierce her belly with a blade, it would be of no use.
The malice of others could never harm her in the slightest. It merely wounded the hand of the one holding the sword and damaged the weapon.
Because she was the Kybelaune of the goddess.
Kybelaune. The one chosen by the Goddess Kybellare. A woman called not "servant of the goddess" but "daughter of the goddess." And thus the most sacred human in the kingdom.
She was the one who had caused the goddess's mark to bloom for the first time in exactly one hundred and thirty years. All priests of Kybellare had engraved the goddess's mark as tattoos upon themselves, but upon her body, which had never been tattooed, there had always been a mark that shone of its own accord.
She was different from the previous Kybelaunes, who had been picked out like ornaments from among numerous priestesses by a single powerful human. Unlike those chosen by mere humans, Pherenike was the real one whom the god had personally chosen.
The proof was the faint light that still protected her, even though she was no different from a beaten dog.
A thing the god left for the one she cherished. The sacred armor of the goddess.
Yes, the goddess still protected her. From all harm of the outside world, so that she could not obtain even the smallest scratch.
But her life had ended with this.
Her Deucalion would die. Her father who had led private troops south from the north of the capital would also die.
Deucalion's mother who had raised her personally as well. Deucalion's friends and her own friends too.
Everything surrounding Pherenike's life would die so very futilely. All except her alone.
Pherenike knew what remained of her life.
Kings who feared the sin of killing the god's servant, or of personally murdering their own kin, often made use of a different kind of "merciful" punishment.
Putting out the sinner's two eyes and making them live out their lives in a windowless garret. Making it impossible for them to know light or wind even by sound.
Pherenike suddenly burst into laughter. Of course, the Regent was a man far removed from such petty fears, and he did not fear some feeble woman who could simply be locked in a room like livestock.
If he could not gouge out her eyes, he need only bind her hands and feet and cover her eyes so that she could not see light for the rest of her life.
Simply because no one could kill her, that is what would become of her.
"As expected, you are not dead."
"..."
"Pherenike of Basileios. I know not where you were heading, but His Excellency the Regent has ordered that you be escorted safely to Lyke."
The cavalryman who had called her by the name of a mere nobleman's daughter—neither daughter of the goddess nor wife of Second Prince Deucalion—signaled to his subordinates.
The cavalrymen of Nikandros mounted on warhorses surrounded her in a circle.
"You drove all of Nikandros's archers into the forest where I was, turned it into a beehive with thousands of arrows, and now Aktor Nikandros says he wants me escorted safely."
“What could possibly be the problem? After all, you are a bizarre woman who would not die even if one stabbed you all over with a blade. Only Phaetusa’s insects would die in your stead.”
“…….”
“Once we cleaned the place thoroughly according to His Highness the Regent’s command, were we not able to find you and bring you in this easily? Such mercy, that the Regent would show such consideration even for a woman whose engagement to him was broken off long ago….”
“Get down.”
“Pardon?”
“I was on my way to Lyke anyway. I will go to the royal capital, as that man Aktor said, so get off your horse.”
“His Highness the First Prince is the Regent of Eudokia, acting in His Majesty’s stead, and the lord of Nikandros. Do not dare take His Highness’s name so carelessly into that mouth of yours…….”
Pherenike approached the cavalryman’s horse, uttered a brief apology in the language of the goddess, and kicked the horse’s leg hard.
“You damned—!”
Startled by her kick, the warhorse reared high on its forelegs and sent its master tumbling miserably to the ground.
But when Pherenike held out her hand and let a little light flow from it, the horse, quickly forgetting its pain, docilely obeyed her.
It was brainwashing—an abuse, in a small way, of the healing Authority, “Althea,” to command a beast as she wished.
It would not last long, however. She had not seen the beast’s blood.
Before mounting the warhorse, Pherenike briefly touched the ring Deucalion had put on her finger two years ago.
The day they had married in a land of foreigners, beneath a wandering tent.
In truth, it would be fine even if you were dead.
So long as I could have your corpse, even for a very short while.
Deucalion was everything to her. He had been so for a very long time. From the moment she was born into this world, they had been destined to belong to each other.
He was the most natural thing in her world, and he was her breath. To her, who had no siblings, he had become her only sibling, and he was the only man her body knew. He was the thing she had loved most since birth.
Pherenike had no intention of losing him.
Even if the price was losing herself.
As though it could not even see its own master sprawled on the ground, the warhorse, bearing the strange woman as if she were its true rider, soon broke into a gallop.
Toward Lyke.