"This was back when Emperor Trudemius was on the throne. I was twelve at the time. You know how I was living in a plantation near the Imperial palace, right? And how the war had just started, and most of the people were still in chains, and there was barely a spark of hope for victory but we kindled that spark anyways, right?" They speak slowly, imbuing each word with meaning. The moon shines softly on their face. 

"Yeah." I look at them with wide eyes. 

"Right so I was still part of the war effort despite not being part of the war. I helped make medicine to be snuggled to the troops, right? Well, one day I received a strange request. 

"I won't tell you what her name was. I don't even know. She was beautiful though. She was unfortunately a slave at the Emperor's palace. It was horrible. One of her jobs, among others, was to buy food for the Emperor's intricate feasts. She could never sneak anything in or out of the castle though, since they checked her very thoroughly once she got back." 

Oh. Oh. Oh shit. 

"And then what?" My voice betrays my tiredness. But it is also full of curiosity. I want to hear more. 

"She came to me in secret. We hid up in the roof of the barn. She told me that she needed the powder from the archenji plant. And a lot of it. You know what that is, right?" 

"I might. I'm not good at remembering every herb ever like you are. Isn't it like a poison?" 

"It is. And a very powerful poison too. A very small amount of it would be able to kill a person. But it takes a week to act. You could chug litres of concentrated archenji tea and still not feel anything. Until approximately a week after you ingested it. Then you would die. Painfully. There is no known cure. The Empire didn't know about the plant existing. There are a lot of plants they don't know about. Which is poetic and part of the reason I'm drawn to medicine.

"Anyways, she told me her plan. She would come to the village in the morning the day before a great feast day. She would drink as much archenji tea as she could. And then she would go back. And they would detect nothing remiss about her. They would think she smuggled nothing. Then she would begin cooking for the feast, along with the other servants. Except, she would pour her blood into the wine. Not enough that it's detectable but enough that it's there. And she'd mix it into the sauces. And she'd drip it into the gravy. And she'd bake it into the bread. She'd die in a few days. But then so would the Emperor. And all his highest officials. And their families. The elite of the entire Empire would be dead. If things went according to plan." 

I'm astonished at her bravery. How. Why? She was willing to risk so much, willing to risk it all, for her people. That was selfless. She signed her own death warrant and she didn't care. 

"Issenne?" 

"Yes?" 

"Did you agree to the plan? I ... I know a lot of people who would disagree with you for letting a young woman die. They believe death is only for the battlefield or for old age." 

"Many people believe that the only honourable way of sacrificing your life is on the battlefield. They do not realize that when we are at war, the battlefield is constantly all around us. They do not realize that in these days, life is war. And any time you die for your people, any time you die so that they might see a modicum of victory, you die on the battlefield.

"I haven't told anyone this part of the story. Many would react badly. But I'm telling you because there is a very important lesson in all of this."

"What's the lesson?" 

"I promise I'll get to it. Anyways I wasn't on board with her plan at first. It was too risky, I thought. I told her, that nobody had tried anything like this before. We didn't know if it would work or not. We didn't even know when and for how long the poison was stored in the blood. We only knew that there was a chance she could succeed. And no idea how slim or wide that chance was. We only knew that it was definite that she would die. I told her not to.

"But she looked at me. And her eyes were darker than the deepest night. And deeper than the darkest pool of water. And she said, that she might as well be dead anyways. Because to not be free, to be exploited and abused and held under by the Emperor and his cronies, it was worse than death. She said that the knowledge that she stood up, the knowledge that she rebelled, that in and of itself was worth life. It was worth more than a life lived under chains. Even if she didn't succeed in her assassination attempt she would die trying. And I saw the determination behind her eyes. I saw the rage and desperation behind her voice. And I felt the unwavering love, the incomprehensible bravery, the overwhelming destiny that was within that request. And I told her that I'd get her what I needed.

"I did get the message out to the warriors and the supporters on the warfronts that an assassin would kill the Emperor and his cronies sometime after the festival. I told the messenger that I did not know whether they would succeed but a spy should be sent to see if there was confusion and chaos in the palace. 

"I spent the next few months going out into the grassfields and the marshes, deep where nobody could see me. And I gathered dry leaves from all the archenji plants I found. And I crumbled them into powder. I stored it in secret in a hole in the ground under my hut. And I waited until the day of reckoning. I woke up in the middle of the night, long before the day began. I dug out the bag of powder. There was enough to make two meals out of it. I made tea with it, making the tea more and more and more concentrated until it was thicker than whole milk. Have you ever had whole milk?" 

"Once."

"I've only had it once as well. But you remember how thick it is, right? How milk from powder doesn't do it justice. Well the tea was thicker than that. And it was blood red. I filled my entire water skin with it. I was almost tempted to taste a bit of it. Just to see how it tasted. But I didn't. Obviously. 

"I waited for her to come, at the agreed-upon spot near the tree at the edge of the fields. She came an hour before dawn. And we hugged. She had tears and power in her eyes. I gave her breakfast. And it was a good breakfast. Rice, potatoes, carrots, cabbage leaves, and even an onion and a radish, all boiled together. I gave her a lot. She would be dead soon. I didn't know why I was feeding her so well. But I was. Maybe it was a waste. I don't know. We sat there eating together in the light of pre-dawn. The air was so strange. Like we were in a different world. The dawn was just threading the tips of its electric blue fingers through the black of the night sky when she sat down with my water skin in her hands. She sat leaning back on me and I hugged her, stroking her hair and quietly singing to her. Songs of sadness. Songs of loss. Songs of freedom. Songs of love. Songs of hope. In a few minutes it was over. She stood up, and she walked to the market. And as the sky finally turned its shade of daytime blue, she was long gone. Forever.

"I prayed every spare chance I got that her plan worked. 

"And you know the rest." 

I do know the rest. It's common knowledge. Some anonymous assassin had taken out the Emperor, the entire government and most major generals. In the chaos and confusion that reigned amongst the Imperial troops, we struck. Our troops overwhelmed them. For months we overwhelmed them. Despite them having superior technology and training. And we gained so much ground. Millions of slaves were able to flee to the warfront. Including Issie. I remember meeting her that night when I was four years old and she was a frightened-eyed girl that looked so big to me.

The war is going better now, than it was all the way in the beginning. It's still not going well. Not at all. A new emperor is on the throne. New generals in the meeting rooms. But it's going better. We took the chance we got and made the most out of it. We have a chance of victory. 

That story is horrific. It's horrific but it's still powerful. It's disturbing but ... but there's something about it. That gives me strength and I don't know how. I'm not quite sure how it's supposed to make me feel better though. 

"Oh my god," I say. 

"Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you though?" 

"Not really." 

"Okay that's understandable. I was being rather cryptic. You have to remember though, she was a slave in the heart of the Imperial palace during a time when the war was just started. She had nothing. No power. Less power than anyone. She was in the heart of the Empire. She couldn't even dream of escaping. Because if she escaped they would kill her loved ones. She didn't have a huge network of people supporting her work like we do. She didn't have the time that we have to pour into the war effort. She didn't have any power. And yet she still had so much power anyways. She was one slave against the combined forces of the entire Empire's government, their guards, everything. And all she had was spirit, faith, hope, and pure rage. She used what she had anyways. She used what she had and some could say she singlehandedly turned the tide of the war. She didn't, she did get so much help from many people. But still, she had less help than you and I do. She didn't even know if her plan would work. She just had hope and rage and the will to make things better.

"And she did it. She succeeded. Despite the fact that all the odds were against her she succeeded. And guess what? That just means that the odds don't mean anything. Sure it looks like we're not powerful. Sure it seems like we can't do anything of substance. When you compare us to the might of the Empire. But looks are often deceiving. What counts is your spirit. What counts is your rage. Your love. Your will to fight. What counts is the choices you make, and the fact that you want change more than anything. And I've seen you Charlotte. You do. You yearn for it. I long for the day when you can find what true and complete freedom is. But until then know. That you are enough. You are a warrior from your very soul. And you can bring them down. We can bring them down." 

"Issenne?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Thank you. And ... did you ever tell anyone else? About what happened with that girl?"

"No I didn't. I don't think I ever will. They wouldn't understand." 

"Can you tell Anthem? She needs it. Probably more than me."

"Yes Anthem needs to know. We both know how stubborn she is though."

"Where is she anyways?"

"I'm fucked if I know. You know how she has a habit of disappearing. She might not even be in the camp she might have gone off into the fields."

"She'd make a good spy."

Honestly, she would. It's past bedtime now. Come sleep."

"Give me a few more minutes I need to think."

"Do you feel better?"

"Yeah."