THE JUNGLES OF the North were unlike anything Serien had ever seen before. The Southern forests were tall timbers with a few low shrubs and trees but mostly a carpet of twigs and leaves covered the ground. The North was a dense and oppressive contrast. Bushes and trees closed in at every level, vines as thick as her arm spider webbed across the branches high above.

The ceiling the trees created was deep, and everything was cast in a hazy green shade. Despite the fact that it was the middle of winter, the humidity in the air instantly made it a little too warm for the amount of armor she wore.

The terrain slowed them, and everyone had been deathly silent from the moment they entered the forest. It was an abrupt line in the sand of the Western Waste. A clear marker created by burnt and cut down trees where the Empire ended. It was strange to think of herself as no longer being in the Solaris Empire.

With a step, the world she had always known ended.

But it hadn’t just been one step. It’d been countless steps that had taken her here, and they’d all begun with a rainy night and an injured prince. Not all the steps had been made with confidence, and some had led her to pitfalls, but she was strangely glad she had made them.

Now, however, she didn’t know where her feet would take her. Serien stood a stone’s throw from the Emperor and fake Windwalker. She glanced at the man from the corners of her eyes. He rode confidently atop his War-strider, but his shoulders betrayed him. Despite his age he was attentive, alert, mindful of every place a threat could appear.

War was his arena, his art, and his legacy. He had laid siege to an entire continent and swept it under his banner in one lifetime. Serien turned forward again before he had a chance to see her attention. She wished an attack would come. She wanted to see this man at work with her own eyes.

But the day was uneventful, and by the time night fell there had been no attacks. They slept under fallen trees and huddled beneath brush. There were no fires or jovial discussions. There weren’t even tents set up. Serien made herself small underneath a sapling, pulling moss around her. The nights outside had prepared her for this. She hardened herself and stayed the tears for one more hour, then the next hour, and the hour after.

By the third day she had yet to cry. Her emotions toward the Emperor and his switch were beginning to cool and mimic those of her feelings toward the Head of Senate, Egmun. She had seen it as Vhalla, and now as Serien, the actions of men who wanted to break her.

Unfortunately for them, one couldn’t break what was already broken.