Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Red River

A/N: I've been absolutely blown away by the response to this fic. Especially those of you who have never even read Red River/Anatolia Story - it's so, so flattering that you guys think this story is worth a read anyway. Thank you so much for the unwavering support!

So here is the next chapter of Divine Intervention! Sorry for the wait!

Hariel took a long, deep gulp of the red wine, straight from the bottle.

It was a little strong and crude compared to the wines she was used to, but that was exactly what she needed right then. Actually, she wished she had something stronger on her – a good firewhiskey would hit the spot.

She was on her third bottle. None of them were from the basket the boy's family had given her, no, that bottle was hidden away at the very, very back of her house, where all the other things she never wanted to look at ever again stayed. The bottles she had gone through were all wine she had bought at the market, blissfully free of any occurrences stranger than a fearfully quivering merchant.

Hariel was a bit of a heavy weight, something about her magic accelerating the purification of what it deemed as poison, which she had always counted as a good thing, but right now, she really, really wished to get roaring drunk as fast as witchly possible. She was a good portion of the way there already, but she just really needed to not think right now.

No, drinking was not a good way of coping with things. No, she didn't particularly care at the moment, thank you.

Yesterday had been… unique. Which was saying something, considering all the crazy experiences she'd had throughout her life.

Yesterday she had expected a firm, if incomprehensible, scolding from the parents of the boy she had foolishly given a dagger to, as was their right.

Instead, she was gifted with wine, fruit, and pastries.

Oh, and let's not forget the human head.

Now, Hariel had received exotic gifts before, ranging from dragon's blood wine to a ring that could take her to the Atlantis, among other things (amazing experience, actually, the merpeople there were much more polite than the ones in Hogwarts's lake). She had even received severed heads from other species; the giants had gifted her with twelve ox heads once, and Neville had given her Nagini's head as a pleasant souvenir (She had told him he could keep it. He earned that snakehead).

But this was… new.

No one had ever given her a human head before.

She had never wanted a human head before.

Most importantly, she still didn't want a human head.

But there it was, still in the basket it had been gifted to her in, lovingly settled in red and golden cloth, sitting on her beautiful mahogany coffee table that she'd never be able to look at the same way again.

Oh, Merlin. She hoped none of the blood leaked through. Mahogany stained easily.

She wondered, with no little amount of idle hysteria, if this village was where the expression "I want her head in a basket" came from.

It was such an ugly head, too. Apart from its dull, dead eyes that seemed to follow her wherever she went in the room, the head also possessed a gnarly, messy beard and a misshapen nose.

Looking at it, Hariel felt deeply unsettled.

Oh, it wasn't because she had a severed human head in her living room – sure, it didn't match the classic décor she was going for, and she'd be mad if the blood stained her mahogany coffee table, but she'd seen worse things and not flinched.

(Gone unspoken was that the first time she had seen a severed head, it had been rotting and putrid on the battlefield, and maggots had been feasting on it for at least three days before she and her party had come upon it. She had lasted barely a minute before running to the nearest tree and losing that morning's breakfast, and quite possibly the previous day's dinner. After that, she had only vomited out of horror two more times, although the horrors had in no way ceased. She would have starved half to death had she thrown up at every gory horror she encountered during the war.)

No, what deeply unsettled Hariel was what the head represented.

For one, it was the transformation of a child into a killer.

For two, it was the reminder that she had aided in turning that child into a killer.

For three, it was that the head proved that slavery still existed.

Yesterday, after registering that there was a severed head in the basket the boy was presenting her with, Hariel had wasted no time. She had grabbed the back of the bowing fifteen-year-old boy's head and forced him to look her in the eye, deep brown to electric green. Without the slightest hesitation, she had invaded his mind.

Usually, she was morally opposed to using Legillimency when not at war, especially on muggles who had little defense for such things.

But she had just received a human head from a fifteen-year-old child. Exceptions were made.

Delving into his mind had been easy, if slightly disorienting. She had been assaulted by the young boy's thoughts, all in that language she didn't know.

It didn't matter. She didn't have to speak the language to know what happened.

Thankfully, the memory was recent and as such easily found. It hardly took two seconds, and this was considering Hariel wasn't extraordinarily skilled in Legillimency (to Snape's utter exasperation. But then, when wasn't Snape exasperated with her?)

Hariel had watched events unfold with a single-minded intensity she hadn't felt since she had cut Voldemort's head off, an image that now eerily reminded her of what the basket in front of her so lovingly held.

What she had found utterly repulsed her, even more than being gifted a human head had.

Before her eyes, the makings of a tragedy had played out.

.

.

.

It was a sunny, lazy day, and the boy was playing with his siblings, the little boy and the two little girls, in the same meadow Hariel had first found them in. The girls were making flower crowns, picking up the colorful blossoms that littered the meadow with a curious reverence, and giggling as they used them to create makeshift jewelry. The little boy was dragged into it, thrashing and screaming, and soon was completely covered in yellow, pink, white, and blue flowers. He sat beside them making disgusted faces and voicing loud protests, but it could not hide the joyful and fascinated gleam in his eyes as he too admired the brightly colored blooms. Meanwhile, the older boy watched amusedly, he himself twirling a vibrant blue flower in his hand.

It was through the younger children's repeated cries for the fifteen-year-old boy to come join that Hariel learned his name was Tarhunda. It was the first villager name she learned.

That felt oddly right to Hariel.

As time passed, more of the village children joined the four, along with some of the women, most of the latter either very old or very young. Hariel presumed that the more able-bodied women, along with the men, were working the fields or hunting, while the older and more fragile were sent to care for the young.

The children were laughing gaily as they played games that only children could understand, the older women watching contentedly from their spot under the shade, sharing village gossip with each other. It was an idyllic scene, and one that, at the beginning, Hariel resented perhaps a little. The witch had never seen the villagers so calm and peaceful in her presence. She wondered, not for the first time, whether their fear of her was more than pure xenophobia.

Hariel dismissed the thought. Now was not the time for such things. She had invaded the boy's mind for a reason, and it was not to resent the villagers for their fear.

She returned to watching the children shriek in glee at being chased around. The boy she had given the dagger to – Tarhunda, she reminded herself - was now chasing an entire hoard of little boys and girls, emitting playful growls. Two others who looked approximately his age, a boy and a girl, also did the same.

It was as the little girl, sister to Tarhunda, gave a particularly loud gleeful shriek that it happened.

Men surged from the sands of the desert, like demons from a mist, gleaming swords in their hands and armor on their large chests. Long, matted beards covered the bottom of their faces, the only skin visible brown and coarse, no doubt from their time in the desert. They all wore different colored cloaks that shielded them from the sun, yet on the sleeve of each one was an identical symbol, an innocent-looking red hoof, which gave their clothes the appearance of a uniform.

It was to this symbol, Hariel noticed, Tarhunda's eyes kept going back to, and to this symbol his bronzed skin became pale.

The intruders approached the older women and children with cruel smirks and a vicious gleam in their eyes. One of them, a huge monster of a man with a confident gait and a large mace strapped to his back to go with the sword in his hand, obviously the leader of the gang, started talking to the crowd, who was held captive in fear.

He loomed over the villagers, and even over the other men with him, standing at more than six feet. He had long, matted black hair, deep-set eyes so dark they appeared black, and a vicious-looking tattoo that ran along the side of his bulky left arm. He also had a crooked nose, as though it had been broken one too many times, yet carried himself with such a constant promise of violence that it left no doubt in anyone's mind that those that had broken it had suffered far worse than a broken nose at his hands.

His voice was harsh and guttural as he spoke to the frozen villagers, and it grated on the witch's ears, even listening to it through another's mind.

Hariel could not understand the words, but the tone was threatening enough for her to not need to.

Obey or Die.

If not the tone, then the stricken, fearful expressions of the villagers would have clued her in.

There was a palpable sense of terror in the air, surpassing even that of when Hariel had first woken up to the handful of villagers tremulously holding spears in their hands.

This was not the vague, confused fear that had confronted Hariel her first day in this village, it was the terror that comes when one knows exactly what will happen, each horrifying detail, and dreads it with every ounce of their being.

It was not confronting an unknown entity and fearing the worst, but being faced with a familiar one and knowing the worst is exactly what will happen.

Hariel wondered why none of the villagers were running – they all seemed terrified enough - until she saw a little boy who could not possibly be more than six in one of the men's arms, clearly struggling not to cry and failing as a sword was held to his tiny throat.

A woman, presumably his mother, stood by, watching her son and the sword pointed at his throat with single-minded intensity, as though if she blinked for a second her son's life would disappear, his body motionless at her feet.

As the leader's speech - composed of threats and orders, Hariel was sure – finished, a few of the children started screaming and running away.

Children were not faster than grown men, even those weighed down by armor and weapons, however, and they were soon brutally dragged back, sporting black eyes and bloody mouths.

Some of the women were hugging their children close to their bodies, whispering comforting words in soothing tones, smiling lovingly at their daughters and sons even as they trembled in obvious terror.

Hariel had never seen such strength in a smile.

The men walked around, grabbing the women and children roughly and tying them with ropes. To Hariel's utter horror, they chained them with metal that would doubtless rub their skin raw, the metal tightening at the wrists and at the neck, like collars on animals.

The women stood passively as the men made their rounds, softly urging their children to do the same. Hariel felt anger at their automatic submission, but quickly beat down the emotion. Did the women truly have a choice? Should they fight back, their children would be massacred. They could not possibly flee the men; their children would slow them down. Screaming would only anger their capturers, and condemn the able-bodied men and women of the village who came rushing in to death, as none of the villagers were warriors, only hunters and farmers.

Tarhunda himself protectively held his siblings in his arms, soft sobs muffled against his tunic.

Tarhunda tried to hide it, but he, too, was choking back on his tears.

It was as the chains were fastened around Tarhunda's youngest sister's wrists, tightened painfully around her little throat eliciting a small, vulnerable whimper, that Hariel felt all-consuming fury.

Rage rose within her like a beast awoken from slumber, magic concentrating at her fingertips and crackling around her hands. Deep green eyes turned a glowing Avada Kedavra green and red hair moved, as though possessing a will of its own, in reaction to the power condensed around her.

Hariel trembled with the potential for violence, a readied bow a finger twitch away from releasing its arrow.

No rage or power would affect the scene before her, however. All of this had already happened, and there was nothing Hariel could do about it.

All she could do was watch the memory play out.

She had never felt so impotent.

Hariel watched as the women and children walked, chained, through the sand until they eventually found the slavers' horses. Presumably, they had made the trek to the meadow by foot, so as to not warn the villagers of their arrival through the dust the horses would have inevitably created.

Crudely attached to the horses with a thick, coarse rope, like cattle to a cart, or a dog to a pole while its owner goes buy something from a store, were haggard-looking men and women, boys and girls, all filthy and emaciated, with cuffs on their hands and collars on their necks.

Their hair was covered in grime and sand, so that its original color could not be determined with just a look. They wore rags even dirtier than their hair, covered in brown and what looked like dark red, along with cloaks of deep sorrow.

The resigned despair in their eyes would haunt Hariel for weeks.

The captured villagers trembled at the sight of these new people perhaps even more than they had trembled at the sight of the men who had captured them, for surely what they looked at was their imminent future, and it was a horrible, dreadful thing.

Some of the women of the village started praying, hands clasped together and fingers tightly shut, but the men – who could only be slavers, Hariel thought in disgust – swiftly slapped them, keeping them from their worship.

Finally, the slavers attached the chains of the villagers to that of those who had previously been captured, mounted their horses and started the voyage through the desert.

Tarhunda looked around him at the defeated faces of his fellow villagers, the people he had grown up with. He seemed particularly transfixed by the trembling forms of his younger siblings who were separated rom him by two other captives, and who struggled to keep up and tripped over their chains.

Hariel watched as the boy's face shut down into a matching expression of resigned despair, before seemingly lighting up, eyes gleaming in the way they did only when one possessed some sort of mad hope in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

Tarhunda discretely reached under his tunic, silently patting himself a bit with the smallest possible movements before apparently finding what he was looking for, a desperate, hopeful grin covering his face.

Slowly, he moved his hand back out and resumed walking with the others, all of them in an organized line, looking, for all intents and purposes, exactly as the other captives.

Yet, if one were to look closer, as Hariel did, they would find his steps had more energy, his head had a defiant tilt to it, and his eyes, instead of acceptance, almost glowed with a steadfast conviction.

He looked like a boy with a plan.

Hariel dearly hoped it was a good one.

Hours passed, and the slavers and captives kept walking until night was upon them. A small fire was created, and the slavers, after securing their captives, sat down on the sandy ground and poured themselves ale, laughing and leering at some of the village women.

Meanwhile, the captives shivered, huddling together. The night in the desert was cold, after all, and they were far from the fire the slavers had lit.

Noticing the slavers' distraction, Tarhunda turned his body away from his capturers and once again discretely reached a hand under his tunic, before slowly pulling it out again.

This time his hand was not empty.

Instead, bronze fingers tightly clutched a dagger.

The same dagger Hariel had given him.

The woman behind Tarhunda saw this, and whispered viciously at him, sneaking nervous glances at the still laughing slavers.

Tarhunda was calm in the face of her anger, impressively so for a fifteen-year-old, Hariel thought. He spoke to her with no small measure of obvious nerves, but with steely determination uncharacteristic of one so young.

The village woman looked at him skeptically, but there was a sheen of desperate hope in her eyes, and Hariel couldn't blame her, for even the most unlikely of plans meant a small chance against a lifetime of servitude.

Discretely, the woman positioned herself so that she stood between the slavers' gaze and Tarhunda.

Tarhunda looked at her, and she nodded, face set in grim resolve. She discretely spoke to a few of the other men and women surrounding them, sneaking furtive glances at the slavers, for they did not like it when their captives spoke for too long, and soon there were five women and men shielding Tarhunda from view.

Tarhunda, for his part, clutched the dagger desperately. He closed his eyes and held the dagger to his chest, lips moving in silent prayer.

The prayer seemed to settle his nerves for, with a last reverent word, Tarhunda's face turned to the moon, eyes glinting with renewed determination.

Swiftly, Tarhunda took the dagger and started working on the ropes that tied him to the other captives. Or, at least, he would have started working on them had the dagger not cut through the rope like a knife through butter.

Tarhunda stopped and stared at the rope in open-mouthed shock, not quite believing what had just happened.

Quickly, he moved on to the next rope, which was cut through just as easily.

In a state of still continued suspended disbelief, he moved this time to the metal chains and the manacles around his wrists, pressing the dagger to cut them, only for this, too, to be cut as easily as the rope.

Tarhunda grinned viciously.

After cutting through all of his bindings, Tarhunda discretely cut off the bindings of the five captives who were shielding him from view. They, too, watched as Tarhunda easily cut through thick rope and metal in seeming stupefied awe.

Tarhunda then told them something that had their eyes light up, shining no longer with mad hope at a desperate and ill-thought plan, but with growing faith that they would escape successfully.

As each person was freed, they looked to the moon and whispered to it reverently.

The moon was silent in answer, merely glowing benevolently.

The freed captives stayed their place so as to not arouse suspicion, but swiftly spread the word to the others so that they were not surprised when Tarhunda came.

And Tarhunda did come. Working with the light of the moon, sneaking through the night's darkness, he reached every captive and with swift cuts of his dagger he freed them from the rope and metal bindings alike that branded them slaves.

The children were more difficult to manage, but even they understood the need for silence and discretion. With the help of the adult captives around them, the children stayed calm and silent as Tarhunda cut through their restraints.

Yet would this be enough? The captives far outnumbered the slavers, yet they were weighed down by children and some elderly. They had little in the way of weapons, and the people were tired and exhausted.

But there was a feverish desperation, a mad hope that would surely drive them to victory.

No one fought harder and more savagely than desperate men.

As Tarhunda thought of his next set of actions, a small woman with hazel eyes, one of those that shielded him from the slavers' view, tapped him on the back. Discretely she pointed a small, dirty finger to the other side of the fire, where weapons were piled together in a heap.

Nodding, Tarhunda slowly made his way through shadow towards the weapons, crouching low and using the hills of sand for cover, every moment that passed one closer to victory, yet also closer to discovery and a painful death.

Tarhunda need not have worried. The boy moved silently through the night, as though darkness itself was shielding him. None of the slavers stirred, too caught up in their ale and their laughter to worry about shadows that moved not when they should.

Tarhunda made several trips back and forth, each step feeling like it might be his last. At last, he judged his fellow captives to be sufficiently armed.

The discussion of the battle plan was hurried and swift – any moment the slavers could look at them and punish them for speaking to each other, or they might look too hard and find out that all the bindings had been cut through.

Sooner than Tarhunda could rightfully process, he and five of the adult captives silently moved towards the fire where the slavers drank, distracted. Using the sand dunes and the shadows for cover, they positioned themselves, still hidden, close to their targets.

With coordination born of single, unified purpose, Tarhunda and the five adult captives all struck at the same time. Tarhunda watched as his dagger sunk easily through metal armor and pierced the slavers' heart, instantly killing him. Along with his victim, three other slavers died.

With a furious roar, the leader of the slavers stood, drink forgotten on the sandy floor. The captive assigned to him had missed, and now lay bleeding behind the leader. The other slavers, a little more than ten of them, advanced upon the Tarhunda and the five captives threateningly. They still had the swords and maces they kept on their person, despite all the weapons Tarhunda had taken from the pile.

As the slavers charged at the six captives that had somehow broken free from their bindings, they were shocked to find all the rest of their adult captives, thirty or forty of them, all brandishing weapons that looked very familiar, rise in defense of Tarhunda and the other five.

It was difficult to say when the battle started, for to Tarhunda it seemed that they were in the middle of it before it had even begun. Tarhunda fell more than one man using his dagger, the frenzy of battle overtaking him so that he gave the killing of his fellow humans no thought, repeatedly victorious despite his nonexistent training for no sword or armor could defend against his dagger.

But the weapon does not make the man, and Tarhunda's lack of knowledge on the ways of the warrior eventually had to catch up to him.

So when the leader came, hulking over Tarhunda like a stone giant, the fifteen-year-old boy could not help but feel fear.

Fear did not mean a lack of bravery, however, and Tarhunda steeled himself for battle.

The leader wasted no time upon approaching Tarhunda, and swept at him with his mace, gutturally snarling in rage – whether at the unexpected uprising or at the loss of his men, it was unclear - yet Tarhunda swiftly dodged his many blows.

Tarhunda started talking to the leader in the language that Hariel could not understand, distracting him with his words.

The tactic obviously worked, as the leader was distracted enough for Tarhunda to shove the dagger through the man's knee, cutting through it as easily as he had cut through the ropes and metal. The giant fell to his knees, and Tarhunda could swear the very ground shook at his fall. Even on his knees, as it were, the leader was as tall as Tarhunda was standing.

The giant dropped his mace at the unexpected pain, howling in shocked agony, not having possibly imagined a dagger could cause such grievous injury.

Unfortunately for Tarhunda, the giant still had his sword.

Tarhunda didn't even see the giant unsheathe it. The metal cut swiftly through the air. Tarhunda somehow managed to dodge the worst of it, but the tip of the blade still cut through skin, cutting straight from the top of his forehead to the middle of his cheek, straight through his left eye.

Tarhunda had never felt this sort of pain before. Blood gushed from his cut, leaving the entire left half of his face covered in red.

The boy did not drop his dagger through the pain, however, instinctually knowing that the small weapon was the only thing that stood between him and the jaws of death. As the giant prepared his sword once more to drop a finishing blow on Tarhunda, the boy used the opportunity to get closer to the man.

The sword slashed and the dagger cut.

Both figures stood still as stone, a moment of suspension in the air as though the night itself was anticipating the outcome of this fight between a giant and a boy, until one of them fell.

Tarhunda stood impassively as he watched the giant's body crumple to the floor. He retrieved his dagger from the giant's neck, with it, somehow dislodging the body's head entirely from its torso.

With a victorious roar, Tarhunda grabbed the head of the giant by his dark, matted hair and raised it high, and in that moment, with the moon shining behind him, he looked no longer a fifteen-year-old farmer's boy, but a proud warrior howling in victory.

At the sound, all eyes turned to Tarhunda and his bloody prize. The battle felt silent in shock. The slavers could not believe their leader, the great brutal giant, was dead.

The captives savagely took advantage of the slavers' shock, and soon all the slavers lay dead or dying on the sand, the previous white-gold of the dunes having now been stained a dark red with blood.

It was a beautiful sight in a way, a dark painting by a talented, if perturbed, artist. The sand dunes stretched for miles and miles on all sides, like an endless sea of gold, visible only by the grace of the moonlight. A full moon shown down on them, illuminating the patches of red and the bloody bodies they originated from. Standing before it all were the now freed captives, with matted hair, emaciated bodies, clad only in dirty rags and shivering as the adrenaline slowly left them, staring at their capturers as they lay dead before them.

It could not be certain who started it, but suddenly the freed men and women started shouting in victory, dancing in celebration, congregating around Tarhunda and his mighty dagger.

Tears of joy, so different from the tears they had shed not hours ago, ran down their faces. Children leapt into the arms of their parents, strangers embraced each other in overwhelmed relief, fellow warriors laughed with each other in instant camaraderie.

Tarhunda smiled at the sight, and soon he, too, was swept up in the cheers and the dancing.

And so they celebrated until the Sun rose from the east.

.

.

.

Hariel had quickly broken the mental connection after that, merely ascertaining that the rest of the villagers had made it back safely to the village, and that the other captives were on their way back to their homes.

The rest of the day had passed in something of a blur, but Hariel vaguely remembered nodding to Tarhunda, picking up her two newly gifted baskets and heading back inside.

Why did they give me the head?

Although not most pressing – there were slavers running about in the 21st century! Sure, she knew they existed, but to be confronted with them so obviously! She just sort of expected them to live in the darkness, in the recesses of the world, working in shadow, not to just stroll up in broad daylight and kidnap a whole village-full of children! Merlin's beard, if Hariel thought about it too long she was going to throw up – it was the question that wouldn't leave her.

All of the rest of Tarhunda's actions made sense to Hariel. She understood why he had killed the slavers, understood why he had decapitated the leader (she had done the same to Voldemort, there was no judgment there), even understood why he might feel inclined to keep the head for himself to show his village the beast of a man he had defeated.

What she did not understand was why he had given it to her.

Was this yet another of their customs she didn't understand? Was it some strange thank you gift for giving him the dagger that had liberated him and the others?

It was the only possible explanation that came to her.

She really, really wished she had learned that translation spell.

Merlin's beard, what on Earth am I supposed to do with a human head?

It certainly wasn't going to just stay on her mahogany table.

The question of the human head on her coffee table wasn't even the issue she was most worried about, however.

(And didn't that just sum up her life nicely?)

More importantly than why the boy had chosen to give her the decapitated head of his captor, was why Hariel herself had felt compelled to give the boy a magical dagger.

At the time, she had chalked it up to instinct, but her instincts had never quite behaved that way before. She had followed her instincts when they told her to duck in battle, had followed them to discover a secret Death Eater in the midst of her troops, had followed them when they told her that the enemy army would attack the Western front and not the Eastern.

But all of those instances had to do solely with her. Hariel had just figured it was a product of being in so many battles, a sort of sixth sense as to how the war would flow.

Sometimes, her instincts would urge her to check up on a friend, only to find them being attacked minutes later, or to bring an extra healing potion on her way out, only to find someone dear to her heart severely injured.

But these were all people close to her, extensions of herself. Never had her instincts reacted so for a complete stranger like that boy was.

Was this a newly developed power of divination?

Hariel cringed at the word. To her, divination was still a fluke. Sure, there were prophecies (that had been rubbed in her face most violently), but the whole seeing into the future through tea or a crystal ball or whatnot in an inhale-at-your-own-risk incensed room had never held much stock with her.

It was the reason she had taken Ancient Runes instead. She just didn't believe in divination. Trelawney with her constant premonitions of Hariel's death (even though Hariel wasn't even in her class) and Hariel's supposed encounter with the "light" (whatever that meant)certainly hadn't helped that impression.

But then, how to describe her compulsion to give a dagger of all things to a fifteen-year-old boy? Under a clear state of mind she would never give weapons to children outside of war.

(During war it was different. She had, after all, formed a small army during her fifth year composed of fourteen to seventeen year old students.

At the time the options had been learning how to fight or torture and death.)

Especially a magical weapon, however small and simple, to a muggle boy. So what had possessed her to do so?

Was she under some sort of influence? Was it her magic, instinctively foreseeing future events, and compelling her to act accordingly?

Hariel groaned. This was all giving her a headache.

She needed more wine.

Looking at the head on her mahogany coffee table again, Hariel nodded.

A lot more wine.

.

.

.

"What did you say?"

Prince Kail's voice was low and steady, imbued with the aristocratic tone he and the rest of the royal family spoke with, but despite all his training he could not help the disbelief that tinged it.

"It is as you heard, Your Highness." The black-haired man kneeling in front of him, one of his most trusted commanders and the one whom he had sent to scout the so-called newest deity, repeated, "The rumors speak truth. There is a great beauty in a small village near the empire's borders. She brings life to the lands through crops, rain, and animals. She lives away from the village in a small white hut located in a clearing in the local forest, surrounded by the largest fruit and most majestic of flowers. She hunts at night, covered by shadows, as the moon gazes upon her jealously."

The scout's head looked up from the ground so that he could look his liege in the eyes. Kail had never seen such faith in the man's steely grey orbs, the man's words ringing through the room with the strength of his belief.

"And she is a goddess."

Kail looked at the man kneeling at his feet, almost tempted to ask him to repeat it a third time, for surely he had heard wrong. There was no way his scout had said the woman he was investigating was a goddess.

Were it another man who had said so, the prince would not have been so surprised. But this man was one whose council he trusted, who was levelheaded and rational to a fault, whose tactics in battle had bested men twice his age.

He also hated fake gods with a fiery passion that rivalled Kail's own. In fact, the man had asked to be assigned watch over the fraudulent woman, wanting to ensure she was not inflicting undue suffering on the villagers she had duped into worshipping her, to contribute somehow to the woman's swift punishment. It was why Kail had sent him to gather information on the charlatan, because he had been so sure the man wouldn't be ensnared in her trap – the possibility hadn't even crossed his mind.

"You were by my side when we happened upon the pretend god who chose a 10-year old girl as but one of his victims a handful of summers ago. It is why I allowed you this mission despite it being beneath your station, for I know that you, too, feel strongly about false deities and the horrors they inflict on the innocent," Kail's eyes were trained upon his scout's face, yet he detected, with growing disbelief, not a hint of doubt in the man's countenance. That shouldn't be possible. Somehow, someway, the blasted woman had managed to deceive one of his most competent commanders! Kail felt renewed fury curl in his stomach for this wretched woman, so much so that he could not keep the hard edge of his voice from his next words, "What lies has she fed you that have twisted your mind so? Tell me, so that I may convince you otherwise!"

The black-haired man remained calm under the pressure of his prince's mounting agitation. "None, Your Highness, for I have not had the honor of hearing her voice."

"I have heard enough," Kail spoke, raising his hand to silence the man before him. Truly, if he heard one of his trusted men speak in such a reverent tone of the mortal woman again, he was certain he would do something he'd regret. "You may leave. Thank you for your service."

"Of course, Your Highness." The black-haired man stood to his not inconsiderable height, bowed, and swept out of the room. He had been on the road for days, and was eager for a night's rest in his bed.

Kail forced himself to relax. It was unlike him to be so agitated. He usually carried himself with teasing affability in his day-to-day affairs, and calm authority in matters pertaining to the empire. He was not quick to anger, always sure of himself and practically impervious to what others said about him.

(Had he not been, then surely his stepmother, the Queen, the Tawannana, would have been disposed of long ago.)

Yet this fake goddess with her delusions of grandeur and her scheming prowess that succeeded in deceiving one of his most trusted men managed to evoke such instant loathing from him. He did not think he had ever detested a person he had not even met with such fierceness before.

"Ilbani," Prince Kail barked, and a man with long hair tied up in a simple fashion and a strict mien stepped forward from the shadows. "Inform the others. We move at dawn."

Kail would protect the empire and his people. The deceiving woman had better prepare herself.

"It's about time I met this so called goddess."

A/N: Freakin' Tarhunda who was supposed to be just a 2-minute excerpt and suddenly took over the entire chapter. See if I give him any screen time again. I hope that legilimency probe memory wasn't too long and boring – it certainly felt super long to me!

Cookies go to Greatazuredragon, bootskitty328, Sierrafalls, Itachiisgod2019, Madcapy, Raven Nightlance, BlizzardDragon, marlastiano, Zee, Lilypad1820, Snickering Fox, Tech-cha, Roningirlkisa, ntokozo, The Shadows Mistress, Rising Fandoms, SleepyMangaHead, 2000kate, wolfiesilvestar, SilverStarWaters, andLunaSunFlowerLily for correctly guessing whose head was in the basket!

Honorable mentions go to Blitza, Nela Night, FANactic Writer, Yumi014, Kairenayui, bella cullen the original,Jully Reed, Magic Night Star Mage, salsas100, Jade Celandine, animemangaobsessed, hellfire45, angeldunn1993, Winterlover6, and Unwanted Hero for getting the general situation but not getting "slaver".

I'm going to have to make these harder. In other news, only five people have correctly gotten the name of the man Hariel saved so far!