Having already spent the entirety of the afternoon on his own, Timaeus of Valaoritis could safely say that he not expecting that anyone was going to bother this military captain just trying to get his men through these drills as quickly as he possibly could. Being the only man on the ground, beneath all the lieutenants and foot soldiers up on the ridge overlooking the wild and overgrown moor, it was not all that surprising that Timaeus was easily able to lose himself in his own thoughts. What else was he supposed to do after all while he waited through the tedious moments where his men were reloading their arrows and listening to whatever advice their unit leaders had to give from what they had seen from up above where Timaeus sat upon the antsy warhorse that wanted to move.

A gentle shooshing noise slipped from Timaeus’s lips as he patted the beast’s side, reminding it that there would be plenty of time to run later after the work was done. Tim was certain that Thrasos would at least enjoy the journey that it would take to rejoin the men up on the ridge. He could let the chestnut colored stallion run as fast as he wanted then. If not, well Timaeus was fairly certain that he could steal his elder brother Nicomedes away for a few hours after the Captain eventually returned home for dinner. The gods only knew that Nico would need the chance to escape all those stuffy meeting rooms and Senate halls.

Timaeus did not envy his brother’s position as Baron. After all, the twenty-one year old could not fathom how he would fare in Nico’s position with the world practically on his shoulders at such a young age. He had no idea how his own brother did it nowadays, but the middle Valaoritis son could see that it took a toll on the man. He was tired most days and he was no longer as keen to join Timaeus on his late excursions out of the Valaoritis home to stretch his legs. Normally Tim might have left him alone, calling his elder brother an old man before racing out the door, but he wouldn’t do that tonight. There would be no excuses that evening, no way to sneak out of this opportunity to race through the mountains of Colchis. No matter how much his brother tried to claim that he had a certain ache in his chest that made riding hard.

It was a load of horseshit if you asked Tim.

Though suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, there was a noise in the moor and it… seemed to know Timaeus? Hearing a voice call his name, Timaeus was shaken about his thoughts regarding the many trivial things that military captains had to deal with because it seemed to be that no one else seemed to be capable of handling them. Not that such things would matter anyway to the girl who had addressed him from amid the wild brush of the moor. That much was clear to the Valaoritis lord as he nudged his warhorse to turn and face none other than Essa of Drakos; the youngest of the Dragon’s brood.

Now Timaeus didn’t know the girl personally. That really wasn’t that unexpected as there was a considerable age gap between the two of them. She had been just a young child when Timaeus had left Colchis for the first time and four years later it seemed to be that she was first approaching the cusp between childhood and teenagedom. Given that Timaeus had now left those years behind as he was now past his second decade, it was fairly understandable that they would not have interacted with the girl. However, Timaeus certainly knew of her though. That was pretty much unavoidable due to the prominence of her family and the tragedy that surrounded her own house that had left her mother -- the first woman ever allowed into the senate as a voting member -- in charge of the entirety of the Drakos household. There had also been the countless non-court events that Timaeus had been present for that also had the littlest dragon in attendance.

That at least made it easier to place who the girl was when Timaeus caught sight of the wisp of a girl moving about in the weeds that were the same color as the amber and jade stones her family mined in the north. The Captain of the Men of the Heights could barely even see her among the wildflowers. After all, she just barely taller than them. In fact, if it wasn’t for the bright colors of her dress, standing out as the light breeze moved the wild grasses ever so slightly, Timaeus might have missed her entirely. Well, that and the enthusiastic waving made it a bit easier for Timaeus to spot the girl.

Now, Timaeus had no idea what Essa was expecting from the nobleman when she called out to him. Was it just a friendly greeting? A recognition of the presence of the other in this seemingly empty field? Or did she expect the twenty-one year old to engage in a conversation with the basically preteen girl? Timaeus did not know. He was not even going to pretend to pick apart the brain of this child who was in the field without so much as a guard with her. Not that he really had much of a chance to as a sense of sheer panic and terror gripped his chest, filling him with terrible dread as the military captain took note of the fact that the noble girl stood halfway between where he stood and his archers stood up along the ridgeline, hidden just out of their eyesight due to the harsh glare of the sun. The girl clearly had no idea that Timaeus had his archers stationed above them. Otherwise she certainly never would have stepped foot on this field of wildflowers -- let alone in front of Timaeus -- due to the sheer danger that his men posed. After all, this was one of the few training sessions that these men would get with the bow and arrow. They were not practicing for some kind of archery contest where they stood twenty meters away from a target that was level with their eyesight. These men were training for war. They were training to kill. Any arrows that came down from that ridge were not duds. They would not leave a dark bruise and small goose egg sized bump wherever it struck someone.

If even a single arrow hit Essa, it would kill her.

That was pretty much a given to Timaeus. After all, Essa was a tiny wisp of a thing, there was no way that she would have the constitution that was needed to overcome the terrible wound that an arrow left behind. If she didn’t bleed out in this field, she would likely die an agonizing death at home, writhing in pain before her body finally gave out. That was horrifying enough on its own, but then Timaeus also considered how bad things would be if this unfortunate event came to pass. First and foremost, Princess Tythra would want his head on a pike. She would likely get it too given the power she wielded over the senate. Even though it would have been entirely a tragic accident, Timaeus knew that it would leave his family inside of a deep hole they would likely never crawl out of again. After all, one did not merely recover from letting a thirteen year old girl die a soldier’s death on their watch. That was one of those things you were rightly turned out of society for with no exceptions.

These things were vaguely on his mind as Timaeus recognized how dangerous the unfolding situation was for young Essa. None of them were truly at the forefront though as a burst of adrenaline shot through his body, spurring him to kick Thrasos in his side and urge him forward at full speed, racing towards the girl with the utmost urgency that this moment required. The fear that was striking his heart was clear on his face as one arm wove wildly above his head, desperately trying to signal to the lieutenants that were too far away to hear the bellows that came from the top of his lungs. “Hold your fire!!! Zeus’s ballsack, hold your fire!!” The scene would have been comical if there wasn’t a real danger attached to it. After all, Timaeus’s frantic signaling to the men that were not likely to react in time almost seemed to be some sort of response to Essa’s own wave earlier. However, this was no laughing matter.

Not when Timaeus could already hear the first arrow whizzing through the air.

Knowing that his attempts to rescind his earlier order to fire at will, Timaeus brought his arm down and lowered his body to be even with Thrasos’s neck as he kicked the horse again, urging it to close the gap between them and Essa as quickly as possible. It was more than likely that by now, the sweet and innocent girl had taken note of the situation and understood that she was in some sort of terrible danger. She might have turned and tried to run in the face of being chased down by a man who was practically a stranger on top of a war horse, but even if she chose this course of action, she was not going to be able to outrun the powerful gait of Thrasos.

Within a few precious seconds, the Eubocriina was almost neck in neck with the girl. The overheard whizzing of arrows was more apparent as Timaeus clutched onto the reins with one of his left hand, letting the right go so that he might lean over the side of his horse. It was clear that his plan was to catch the girl and safely whisk her away from the threat of the arrows with help from the powerful horse. However, that would depend on two of them not toppling to the ground when his arm practically slammed into the petite teen. In the blink of an eye, Timaeus could feel his arm making contact with her waist and the military captain tried to clutch his arm around her tight enough that he might haul her up and behind him on the grand steed.

However, there was no guarantee that this plan would work. The girl was no soldier after all. Her body was not a well-oiled machine that was designed to take a battering like Timaeus’s was. She could very easily slip from his grasp or her skirts might be too contrasting to allow for her to be swung over the horse. It could be that Timaeus could not hold her weight and both would topple into the grass, hidden from the view of a volley of arrows coming directly their way. Needless to say, there were a thousand ways that this could go wrong and only a handful of ways that this could work with the both of them escaping this terrifying situation unscathed. The odds were clearly stacked against them, but that didn’t mean that Timaeus wasn’t going to at least try to do everything in his power to make sure that this young girl was not turned into a pincushion on his watch. Even if it meant that he took the arrows for her, laying down his own life without a second thought. He would happily do that if it meant that Essa got out of this alright.

Timaeus could only pray to whatever god could possibly be listening that it would not have to come to this. But would they bother to listen to one careless captain who had clearly been stupid enough to not check the field before telling his archers that they were free to fire at will? Or would his stupid mistake be the death of both of them on this cruelly beautiful day?