The Far March did not follow Elowen when she left.
She rode out before dawn with a small delegation—six riders in total. Two knights she trusted with her life, a mage trained in warding against miasma, a standard-bearer carrying no banner, and a courier whose sole duty was to return home if she did not.
No army.
No parade.
If the road was dangerous, she would face it as she always had—at the front.
Her horse was a tall, broad-chested destrier, ash-grey with black mane, bred for war rather than ceremony. The great sword was bound across her back in a reinforced leather harness, its weight shifting with every step of the horse. Even mounted, she could feel it—an ever-present reminder of who she was and what she carried.
The land changed quickly once they passed beyond the Far March borders.
Burned fields gave way to scarred plains. Villages stood half-fortified, watchtowers rising where none had existed before. The world had learned to expect invasion—not from armies, but from the sky itself.
And everywhere they stopped—
People knew the name.
Not hers.
Theirs.
At the first crossroads, they encountered a caravan reinforcing its wagons with iron plating. Elowen dismounted, offering a gold coin to an old trader whose hands shook as he hammered a brace into place.
"Red Flags?" he said immediately when she asked for direction. His eyes lit with something close to relief. "You're heading the right way, my lady. Follow the river south until the watchtowers change colour."
"Colour?" she asked.
"Red," he said simply. "You'll know."
They pressed on.
By midday, they reached a farming settlement fortified with crude walls and sharpened stakes. Children peeked from behind stone. Militia watched nervously from rooftops.
When Elowen asked again, the answer came with enthusiasm.
"The Red Flags Battalion?" a young guard said, eyes wide. "Everyone knows them."
He pointed eastward.
"You see those towers yet? Tall ones. Painted red all the way up. They say dragons perch on them sometimes. Real ones."
"Dragons," her knight murmured sceptically.
The guard nodded fiercely. "Not wild. Not mad. Bound to them."
Another villager joined in, breathless.
"They say the Prince of Death commands them. That he walks battlefields like a judge, and the dead listen."
"And his wife," a woman added quickly. "The Queen of Death. She doesn't shout. She doesn't threaten. She just arrives—and battles end."
Elowen listened in silence.
"Don't forget the Death Whip," someone else said. "Cracks the air itself apart. Monsters flee when they hear it."
"And the Goblin Slayer," a boy blurted out, excitement overriding fear. "She's blind! But she sees everything!"
They spoke of them like legends.
Like saints.
Elowen mounted her horse again without comment, leaving gold coins behind—not as payment, but gratitude.
The road stretched on.
Days passed.
The further they travelled, the more the land bore signs of Red Flags influence. Roads were maintained. Patrol markers carved into stone warned of protected territory. Supply caches stood openly, untouched.
And then they saw them.
The towers.
Tall structures of stone and steel, rising from hills and crossroads alike. Each one flew long crimson banners that snapped sharply in the wind, visible from miles away. The red was not decorative.
It was deliberate.
A warning.
A promise.
Every time Elowen asked for confirmation, people spoke faster, louder, with awe edging into reverence.
"They saved us."
"They didn't retreat."
"They burned the portals shut."
"They killed a dragon—and chained another."
"They don't lose."
Elowen felt something unfamiliar twist in her chest.
Not jealousy.
Expectation.
The road did not grow safer.
On the fifth night, rebels struck.
They were not portal-spawned beasts, but men—ragged, desperate, armed with stolen steel. Former soldiers, perhaps. Broken survivors who had decided that the world owed them something.
They attacked at dusk, when the sun bled red across the horizon.
Arrows hissed from the trees.
"Ambush!" her knight shouted.
Elowen was already moving.
She kicked her horse forward, drawing the great sword in one fluid motion. The blade cleared its harness with a deep metallic hum that froze the attackers for half a heartbeat.
That was enough.
She swung once.
The arc was wide.
Controlled.
The blade struck the ground between two charging rebels—and the force travelled outward. One man was split cleanly in half. Another was hurled backward, ribs collapsing inward as if struck by a siege hammer.
The rest faltered.
Elowen advanced, boots steady, sword rising again.
"Leave," she said calmly.
They did not.
She swung a second time.
The road ran red.
By the time the last rebel fled into the trees, the fight was over. Her soldiers stared—not at the dead—but at her blade, now wet with blood that steamed faintly in the cooling air.
She wiped it clean and re-sheathed it without ceremony.
They rode on.
More ambushes came.
Each ended the same way.
One swing.
Silence.
By the seventh day, they no longer tried to hide.
People approached openly. Merchants. Refugees. Soldiers from fallen banners. They asked questions, offered food, directions, stories.
And always—
The Red Flags.
"They say the Prince of Death stood against a portal alone."
"They say the Queen of Death commands monsters like soldiers."
"They say the Goblin Slayer feeds generals to wolves."
Each story grew larger than the last.
Elowen gave gold freely. Not as bribery, but respect.
Information flowed like a river.
"The city lies beyond the next ridge."
"You'll see the banners first."
"They fly higher than any wall."
On the tenth morning, Elowen crested a hill.
And stopped.
Before her, the land opened into a vast basin. At its center rose a city unlike any she had seen—walls layered, towers bristling, crimson banners flying in disciplined rows. Red Flags towers dotted the surrounding territory like sentinels, connected by roads and watchfires.
Above the city—
Something massive shifted.
A shadow passed over the walls.
A roar—not wild, but controlled—rolled across the land.
Her horse stamped nervously.
Elowen did not look away.
"So the stories were true," one of her knights whispered.
She rested a hand on the hilt of her great sword.
"Good," she said quietly.
The road had been long.
The danger real.
But now—
She had reached the banner that did not fall.
And soon, she would meet the ones the world already feared.