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Artemisia de Chauret

Artemisia, of course, didn’t lack the self-awareness to know that riding into the ruins on horseback was an impracticality near short of a folly. Nearby adventurers didn’t hesitate to call her out on it either, but she knew that leaving her horse behind to graze on the fields was tantamount to letting it be stolen. Bringing it into the cramped but still sufficient ruins was manageable, although at the acceptable expense of the comfort of her fellow adventurers. To her, it was just like riding through the throngs of a very crowded city boulevard. Perhaps, in the ancient past, there were similar scenes in this city. 

She had been making slow, but steady enough progress towards the center of the city when things began to develop. 

Of course, she had been aware of the generally precarious balance that existed here. The Imperial Army was here, and so were elements of the Palagrian military, among those of several other countries. The presence of that many unaffiliated militaries, together with the fickle nature of the mercenaries and adventurers that were also present, meant that the ruins right now were a downright powder keg. She had not, however, ever imagined that the situation would deteriorate to the point where things developed into an outright melee. 

As a noblewoman, for a moment, she was outraged to witness the Imperial Commander cut down in such a manner, but those emotions had quickly been replaced by an urgency to leave the second the second she saw the imperial response and the subsequent chaos and bloodbath. 

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” she muttered under her breath, watching the imperial advance. She tugged on her horse’s reigns to turn and leave.

However, being mounted on a horse in the middle of a crowd that was quickly turning unruly meant that it was difficult to leave, and it could even turn her into a natural target for both sides. As she tried to clear her way of the surging adventurers, she ran through the scenarios of how she could come out of this situation in one piece.

She still dressed like a noble, and carried herself like one. As a member of the aristocracy, there were certain proprieties of war that she could rely on. For example, on the battlefield, it was considered distasteful to outright kill an officer of war –an atrocity of which she had just witnessed, in fact—as it was to end the life of a man with noble blood. If she could bank on her appearance to get captured instead of slaughtered, she knew the magic words that herself and many of her peers had memorized for times of war; for her, it went something along the lines of ‘I am the Marquess of Estiegnac. Spare my life and there will be a handsome ransom.’ 

But how much magic could those words work on this battlefield? It could only be reliably used if she wasn’t struck down to begin with, and only if captured by an actual military, and not the murdering adventurers she had just witnessed. Even if it was a military, it would likely be the empire in this case, and as a powerless noble of an equally powerless kingdom, she didn’t place much confidence in them valuing her life much, either. If she wasn’t ransomed, the best she could probably ask for was the noble privilege of a formal execution by beheading rather than being strung up like a common criminal. For once in her life, there was a type of magic that Artemisia did not place much confidence on relying upon.

No, the only obvious solution was to somehow fight her way out to a safer area. Drawing her sword, she casted the most powerful shielding spell she could manage. In a battle as large as this, a stray spell, slash, or explosion would end her life in an instant, and if her horse went down beneath her, she could expect a similar result but in a longer and more agonizing path. The stronger the barrier between her and that eventuality the better. Spurring her steed into a gallop, she charged through the crowd of adventurers, looking for any possible avenue of escape. Just as Artemisia feared she’d lose her momentum, her eyes locked onto what appeared to be an open alleyway that had enough room to fit a mounted person. She made a beeline towards it...

And found that two others had the same thought. Artemisia looked down at the two from up above. She would have thought the two were together had it not appeared the two had just collided with each other; they both wore clothes that gave them an appearance of a higher upbringing. If they were adventurers, it looked like they would, at the very least, be more reliable than the murderous mob just outside. More reliable in getting out of this place alive than if she were to try to continue doing it alone, at least.

She butted into their conversation. “You two seem... reliable. I’d like to assume the both of you are interested in getting out of here alive? Because I certainly would be.”
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