.
PROLOGUE
Destiny
July, year 2002 After the Dragons
A quiet sigh escaped Kaze's lips, muffled by the black cloth mask he wore. The ninja watched the duo of Nohrian guards slowly turn the corner and vanish down another hall. He closed his eyes and listened for a few seconds before dropping from the wooden beam on which he had perched, landing silently on the carpeted floor. He immediately tensed up, two shuriken flashing from his belt to each gloved hand. Nobody came. Still uncharacteristically anxious, he lodged one shuriken back on his belt, but kept the one in his right hand. He moved quickly down the hall, its black brick walls and patterned black and gold carpet dimly lit by torches placed every few meters along the left-hand wall. If the intelligence report was good, his target would be on the right, through a plain-looking wooden door.
Kaze's assignment was a search-and-rescue mission, called for by Queen Mikoto herself. He had been quick to volunteer when she announced her intent to return her son to Hoshido. He considered the young prince's capture a personal mistake, and he wanted redemption as much as justice. Her Majesty had been unsure if he was the right man for such an important mission—especially given the fact that, at fourteen, he wasn't really a man at all. Despite her doubts, she had decided that if King Sumeragi was still with them, he would trust Kaze to infiltrate the Nohrian capitol, recover the prince, and escape undetected. Kaze himself believed otherwise, but he pushed his thoughts away. They would only hinder his progress through Castle Krakenburg.
He came to the door. It hadn't taken quite as long as he'd expected to find. Though there were a few more patrols on this floor than the others, each had been rather chatty and inattentive, and avoiding them was nearly effortless.
Unwilling to rule out the possibility of a trap, he gripped his shuriken tighter as he tried to turn the knob. As expected, it instantly resisted. Looking left and right down the hall, Kaze knelt, set down the shuriken, and drew his lock-picking tools from their compartment on his belt. He'd always had something of a natural gift for lock-picking, which Princess Kamui liked to call "the Locktouch." In moments, the door was ready to welcome him with open arms. He secured the tools, grabbed his shuriken, tucked a strand of grayish-green back under his dark blue cap, and opened the door quickly, careful not to let it hit the wall.
The intel had not been good. A small girl, about the same age as the prince that Kaze sought, sat on her elegant ebony bed under the crimson blanket. Despite the late hour, she was still awake, reading a book by the light of a single candle. Her hair, colored a brilliant sky blue, came to the waist of her violet nightgown. She looked up from the page at him.
The intruder threw the door closed and sprinted across the room. The girl tried to scream, and was quickly silenced by the ninja's forceful hand. She fought with all her strength to break free, thrashing and squirming and desperately clawing at his hand. He held firm and wrapped his other arm around her from behind, holding both of hers in place. She continued to kick her legs beneath the covers, only lightly jostling the sturdy bedframe, until he climbed on top of her and laid his knee over her thighs. Still, her mind gripped by terror, she attempted to move any part of her body she could to shake him off, or to just make a little bit of noise. Several torturous minutes passed, and the man just kept holding her still, prohibiting her from pleading for her life.
Finally, as her energy left her and her instincts faded away, she understood she could do nothing to escape. He was too strong, and she was too little, too tired to keep resisting. Nobody was coming to help. She sobbed into his palm, her throat painfully tight and her cheeks slick with tears. The silver pendant she wore dug into her chest, pinned under his powerful arm. She looked pleadingly into the man's eyes, silently begging him to let her go.
The exposed part of Kaze's face glistened with a coat of sweat, which had soaked his mask and headband. 'What the hell can I do now?' he thought, his mind panicked and irrational. He was holding some little girl at shuriken-point in her own home. She thought he had come to kill her. 'How could Yukimura have gotten it this wrong?' She was supposed to be Corrin. He was supposed to have been asleep, easy to bind and gag. As soon as they were out, they would explain his true lineage—how he'd been taken, how King Garon had lied to him.
Kaze nearly teared up himself, realizing that he wouldn't rescue the prince tonight, but he forced himself to calm down. He returned his attention to the issue at hand, a bawling child caught tightly in his grasp. "Hey, hey," he gasped. "Please, be quiet. Please, just..." The child sobbed harder. Kaze let his shuriken fall to the floor. Leaning down toward where his hand clutched her wrist to her body, he awkwardly pulled his mask down, revealing his face. "Please, I'm not going to hurt you, alright? You're safe. Look at me. Look—I'm just a kid, just like you, alright? Please."
The girl kept crying, but her tears slowed, if only marginally. Though it didn't outright pacify her, the age of her attacker clearly intrigued her.
A tiny squeak emitted from the opposite corner of the room—the door had opened. Kaze reached for his shuriken, but heard the figure in the doorway whisper, "Hold it!" Kaze looked up.
"Saizo?" Indeed, Kaze's non-identical twin brother, Saizo, had arrived. They were behind schedule.
"Kaze, who the hell is that?!" the ninja questioned.
"I...I don't know!"
Saizo turned around and glanced down the hall both ways. "Well, the explosives are set. We need to leave." He eyed the child. Whoever she was, she was important enough that General Yukimura's informant had mistaken her chambers for Corrin's. "Take her with us," he commanded.
Kaze took a moment to process that. "Saizo, we can't just kidnap a kid!"
"Of course we can," Saizo responded coolly. "That was our original mission, wasn't it?"
"That's not the same at—!"
"Listen!" Saizo hissed. "Queen Mikoto might be able to arrange a prisoner exchange with King Garon. This kid's got to be someone important, right?"
"I…" Kaze faltered.
"Yes, she is! Now come on, we need to go!" Saizo looked at the girl, pulling down his mask and offering an unconvincing half-smile. "You'll be home again before you know it, and you'll help us get someone else back to their home. Alright?" Without waiting for a response, he exited to the hallway.
Kaze turned to face the girl. His brother had a good point. Garon had been unwilling to hold any legitimate negotiations since the murder of King Sumeragi, which meant that for years, Corrin's return to Hoshido via diplomacy had been entirely out of the question. But if this kid was important to the Nohrian king, everything might change. In any case, he couldn't bear to face Queen Mikoto empty-handed...whatever the alternative.
"We're going to take you on a little trip," he said, smiling weakly. "Alright? You'll see beautiful places and wonderful people, and you'll be home in no time at all, okay?" She cried. Kaze groaned, hating himself for what he was about to do.
He grabbed a small roll of gauze off his belt and sliced a long piece off clumsily. He hastily tied it around her head, knotting it in her mouth. Her sobs and screams were significantly louder, but still muffled. He dragged her out of her bed and hoisted her over his left shoulder. With his grip on her much weaker than before, she resumed her thrashing, but he'd be able to hold on. He grabbed his shuriken, pulled up his mask, and bolted after his brother.
Saizo was just outside. Wordlessly, the two headed for the window they had rappelled up to when they entered Castle Krakenburg, three floors below their current location. Their footfalls made little sound, smothered by the cloth wraps they wore in place of shoes.
A distant boom resonated through the palace—the bomb Saizo had prepared on the opposite side of the building, just powerful enough to grab some people's attention. That might have been the riskiest part of their plan. It meant they were less likely to see multiple patrols in this direction, but nearly guaranteed they'd run into at least one. Hopefully, any guards on this side would have taken the stairs down to the floor that had been struck, rather than cutting straight across.
They rounded one corner, then another, before coming to an open door that entered into a stairwell, in the middle of a three-way intersection of hallways. The twins knelt by either side of the door, with Saizo drawing a thirty-centimeter tanto blade. Kaze laid their captive onto the floor and once more knelt on top of her, uncomfortably conscious of the fact that her gown was soaked around her thighs. He placed a hand over her mouth and drew a smaller kunai.
They looked out into the halls behind them and listened intently. Kaze faintly heard a man's shouting echo within the stairwell, but it seemed to be getting further away. Their floor had gone silent shortly after the explosion, and they could only assume the guards had gathered near the opposite staircase, where the bomb had gone off. Saizo lightly slapped his palm twice against the wall and stood, slipping through the door and slowly tiptoeing up the stairs. Kaze sheathed his knife and propped the girl up against the wall, keeping her mouth covered. He watched as Saizo peered up the stairs, then retreated confidently to their floor and began slowly making his way down. His twin rounded the corner and disappeared, and Kaze began frantically glancing between the halls and the stairs. After almost five minutes, long enough for Kaze's anxiety to peak, his brother finally returned and motioned for him to follow.
Kaze raised the child onto his shoulder once more, sparking yet another round of renewed protests. He grabbed her legs with his right arm and started walking. Getting down the polished stone steps with a violent burden and essentially just socks on his feet proved difficult, but he wouldn't allow such a trivial matter as descending stairs to ruin the mission. He picked up his pace as he rounded the corner.
"We're clear!" Saizo rasped excitedly, standing in the doorway on the lower level. "Come on!"
With a surge of relief, Kaze rushed down the next few flights, following his brother into the hallway. A short way to the right, he found the window they'd used to enter. It was designed to swing open, and smashing the hinges on the outside had allowed them to easily remove the whole glass pane from its place in the wall, and putting it back had been even simpler. From this side, it looked just the same as before they'd knocked it out. Saizo unhinged the lock and pulled the pane into his arms. On the other side, the grappling hook they'd used to access the window clung precariously to the narrow ledge. Beyond that, the lights of Windmire shone through an empty void.
Saizo grabbed the heavy hook and lodged it more securely on the window sill. He ushered his brother down the attached rope first.
The girl was still kicking and screaming. "Hey, hold on tight!" Kaze ordered at full speaking volume. He maneuvered himself and his charge over the sill and into the cool night air, and grabbed the rope with his free hand as he started to slide the twenty meters to the ground. He gripped the rope as tightly as he could, holding it between his feet to try and slow their descent. He hit the ground hard, throwing his momentum forward and sprinting to keep his balance, and to keep his prisoner on his shoulder. Saizo was just behind him. They were now on a long, wide, and totally exposed bridge that spanned a hundred meters from the castle to the city. Kaze was exhausted, but he had a long way to go before he could stop.
"What took you so long?" asked a third ninja, emerging from the castle's shadow. Takahiro, a man in his twenties, had entered the city with the twins, but stayed behind to guard their escape route while they rescued the prince. He was also ready to climb inside and aid them if the alarm was raised. His eyes widened. "By the gods, who is that?!"
"Didn't...find..." Kaze panted. "Don't know...who..."
"Here, Kaze," Saizo said impatiently. "Let me carry her." Offering an apologetic look to their hostage, Kaze handed her to his brother. Shouldering the ever-uncooperative girl and turning to Takahiro, Saizo said, "Mikoto can arrange a trade with Garon; this girl for her son. This way, the mission succeeds."
Takahiro looked in all directions for hostiles before considering their options. He needed to know who this girl was, and where she had been when the twins found her. But at the moment, he had no time to ask. Saizo's bomb would have worn out its use as a diversion by now. The alarm must have already been raised. Guards would be upon them in moments.
The older ninja groaned angrily and ushered his companions forward. "Fine, fine! Now go! We need to get out of here immediately!"
The trio crossed the bridge as quickly as possible. Takahiro wanted to carry the child and speed things along, but he needed to be ready to stick a shuriken or katana into any soldiers that tried to stop them. It would be hard to hide in Windmire with a noisy, wriggling sack of flesh slung over one of their shoulders.
Reaching the end of the bridge and getting out of the open was a relief, but was hardly the end of their trial. They needed to reach the extraction point fast, backtracking through the vertically stacked maze that was the Inner City of Windmire. The haphazard mix of shops and slums was densely packed into the sides of the colossal chasm that housed Castle Krakenburg.
They slipped into every alleyway and side street they could, slowing their progress through the city to an excruciating crawl. The alternative was facing down the countless Nohrian troops appearing seemingly from nowhere and gathering in the main streets. Spurred on by the alarm bells beginning to ring throughout the city, they ran until, finally, they saw the point on the outer wall where they had entered the Inner City. A simple iron cage elevator sat against the wall, powered by a complex gear system that ran beneath the city. Takahiro cut in front of the twins at the mouth of the last alley, which opened out into a wide, empty plaza. There were a few soldiers about, but all of them were making their way toward the castle, and some were struggling to get their armor on straight.
The ninja smirked. Raising the alarm hadn't magically informed the soldiers of their position. Of course, they would still certainly be set upon shortly, but a few crucial seconds were all they needed. He motioned for the others to follow him, and they sprinted across the plaza and into the lift.
"Hey! Stop!" a gruff voice called out from their right side, piercing clearly through the chaotic night and ringing in the Hoshidans' ears.
Takahiro stepped to his right and turned around without breaking stride. "Run!" he demanded of his young companions. Drawing the katana hung across the left side of his back, he faced the source of the voice. Two Nohrian soldiers were rushing toward him, one holding a spear and the other raising a broadsword. They seemed to have come from another alley just behind them, though that hardly mattered anymore. All the ninja could afford to worry about was silencing them before they could alert anyone else.
Takahiro unhooked a shuriken on his belt and flung it at the spear-wielder. The motion was quick, but at their current range it was plainly telegraphed. The man held his arms up in front of his face and kept running, tensing as he felt the projectile make contact with his breast plate and dig itself in, but resuming his pace shortly upon realizing that it hadn't pierced his skin.
The other soldier's grip tightened around the hilt of his blade as he neared a striking distance to the intruder. Before the man could come to a stop, Takahiro lunged suddenly, dropping his head and shoulders level with his opponent's chest. He knew as he lashed out at the soldier's waist that the shuriken had bought him only a fraction of a second before the spear would come seeking his body. His katana found the small gap between his enemy's steel torso armor and the thick leather pad beneath the man's loose pants. The blade cut upward through a thin layer of flesh and into bone, eliciting a startled yelp from the soldier and prompting him to swing quickly and clumsily at Takahiro. The ninja yanked the blade out, disrupting the man's counterattack, and battered his sword aside. He then drove his foot into the back of the injured soldier's knee, throwing his weight behind the blow to send them both stumbling forward.
Takahiro curled his body and allowed himself to fall to the ground, rotating one hundred eighty degrees while still in the air and using his momentum to roll backward immediately after landing. He was back on his feet in the blink of an eye, which had been nearly enough time to be skewered by the dastard sprinting toward him with a spear leveled at his stomach. Takahiro wrapped both hands around the hilt of his katana and held it by his waist, its blade pointed skyward. He drove the weapon into his opponent's with the full force of his body, turning his body and pushing off as he made contact to distance himself from the spear's broad, thirty centimeter-long head.
In the same instant that the spear head cut the fabric of his tunic, Takahiro raised his left knee level with his shoulder and planted his foot on the handle of his opponent's weapon. Using his momentum from the parry, the ninja kicked his other leg around behind him as he jumped straight up off of the spear. He held his hands as low as he could, leveling his katana at the soldier's neck just as the blade reached his body. Steel tore through cloth and flesh alike, and the spear handle met the ground not a moment after Takahiro's feet, the soldier's hands gone for the more enticing task of clutching his bleeding throat.
The ninja placed his left hand against the smooth stone floor to brace himself, taking a moment to recover from the spin and size up his remaining enemy. The broadsword soldier had returned to his feet and was in the midst of a low, lunging swing. Takahiro struck hard at the blade from his crouching position, knocking the sword away but throwing him off balance. He stumbled while rising to his full height, nearly losing his grip on his katana as he hastily parried another blow. He managed to get his left hand back on his weapon to deflect a third attack, and then a fourth, and a fifth. The ringing of clashing steel echoed through the streets in a metallic cacophony, as if an alarm bell were ringing above their heads. The Hoshidan figured that the real alarm bells elsewhere in the city might mask his struggle for a time, but he'd been in this place too long already. He needed to rejoin the twins immediately.
The attacker swept at Takahiro's legs, recovering easily from the ninja's unsteady defense and raising his arms to strike down at his head. Takahiro prepared to guard himself, but instead of meeting his opponent with force, he bid his arms relax as the blades met once more. He squatted down, keeping his feet planted firmly on the ground even as both swords seemed to be racing directly toward his face.
The moment they stopped, a mere millimeter from his skin, he exploded upward, putting his might behind his right hand and reaching out with his left for the handle for the broadsword. His fingers closed over the startled soldier's and squeezed tightly. Takahiro charged forward, shoving the other man and pushing both swords to the left and right erratically. The pair groaned, their muscles beginning to ache as they wrestled for the weapons. The soldier kicked out suddenly at Takahiro's shin with his uninjured leg, which was exactly what the ninja had hoped for. Keeping his focus on the blades pushing toward his head, he sidestepped the clumsy attack, using his momentum to drive a roundhouse kick into the back of his opponent's leg. The soldier collapsed, his strength failing him just long enough for Takahiro to pull back his katana while holding strong to the man's sword hand. A moment later, the Hoshidan's blade pierced through the soldier's upper thigh, and he cried out in pain as his grip faltered and his sword fell from his grasp.
Leaving his katana protruding from his enemy's leg, Takahiro jabbed his fingers into the man's eyes, causing him to reel back. He followed up with a swift straight kick to the man's head, knocking him onto his back. The ninja retrieved the sword from the road and returned it to its owner, driving the blade into his hip opposite the katana and eliciting another agonizingly loud scream. The ninja knelt on the man's chest and placed a hand over his face, panting as he quickly drew his tanto blade. Holding the knife upside-down, Takahiro cut his enemy's throat from right to left and from top to bottom, ensuring that he wouldn't be making noise for much longer.
Leaving the living corpse writing on the ground, Takahiro wrenched his katana from its soft, bloody resting place and sprinted toward the lift. The cage was just beginning to rise, the mechanism emitting a metallic roar. The twins were still standing inside, their captive held between them.
A woman's shriek stung in Takahiro's ears as he ran, but he dared not look back. He leapt toward the cage and caught the edge with both hands, sliding his weapons across the floor and pulling himself up. With the metal rocking beneath his feet, Kaze pulled the door of the cage shut. Out in the street he saw the source of the shriek stumbling in a panic, wailing at a few guards who were near enough to see her.
"On the floor, now!" Takahiro instructed. He laid down on his back, flattening himself as much as possible. Kaze followed his example, as did Saizo, who set the girl on the floor beside them and quickly placed his arm and leg over hers to keep her still.
"Why exactly…are we doing this?" he inquired, panting.
"Hopefully, buying time. If we're not seen immediately, they might not rush wyverns out to this elevator."
"…Hopefully?" Kaze repeated, his voice cracking.
His companions said nothing. The cage continued to rise, and the sounds of grinding metal nearly drowned out their prisoner's sobs.
The girl craned her neck to take one last look at her home through the bars of the cage. As the base of Castle Krakenburg slowly came into view, she thought she caught a brief glimpse of a black and white shape far below, moving from the front gates surrounded by soldiers—her father, King Garon. Her sore, red eyes refused to shed another tear, so she watched quietly as the subterranean palace slowly shrank away and was obscured once more by the floor of the lift.
She looked down her body at her mother's pendant, still resting atop the bruise it had left on her chest. The polished metal reflected the flicker of braziers as the lift ascended, and the little sapphire set in the center twinkled in the torchlight.
'Mother,' she thought. 'Please… Don't let them hurt me.' She coughed into Saizo's hand, her throat dry and scratchy. Please…'
As they neared the end of their ride, Takahiro dared to stand, with the younger boys following shortly. The lift entered into an enclosed space, coming to a stop within the fortress that ringed the Inner City. Just beside the shaft, two female ninja stood at the elevator's controls. Behind them, three unconscious Nohrian guards sat slumped on the floor, gagged and bound together. One soldier had suffered a nasty wound to the back of the head which had since bled through his bandage, while the others had been asphyxiated.
"What in the hell are you asses doing with a girl?!" the younger, black-haired ninja demanded upon seeing the recovery team's captive. She was one year older than the twins, and for the most part she was their friend. She was also Prince Ryoma's retainer alongside Saizo.
"The intel was bad, Kagero," Kaze managed, still gasping for breath. Takahiro spoke to the other adult with a tone of frightening urgency. The shouting of soldiers could now be heard from the bottom of the wall. "I think she's a princess. We can arrange a prisoner exchange—"
"Oh, gods damn it." Kagero turned to Saizo. "This was your idea, wasn't it? Put her through hell because it might help us get the prince back?"
Saizo responded by handing the girl to Kagero. He panted heavily. "Look, it doesn't matter now. We need to get the hell out of here. The kinshi knights are waiting."
Kagero felt like screaming, but instead turned her attention to the child. "Gods, I'm so sorry, sweetie. This will be over soon, and you'll have a change of clothes and—"
"Fine, let's go," the older woman snapped at Takahiro. She faced the teenagers and repeated, "Go!"
"But Mei—"
"Now!"
The twins needed no more convincing and took off, with Saizo grabbing Kagero's arm to pull her along. Takahiro and Mei took up the rear as the party set out, jogging at a pace too slow to be comforting.
The party left the fortress heading northwest, shortly entering the massive agricultural district of the Outer City. By now, the ninja knew that wyverns and cavalry would be receiving orders to deploy and sweep the region, eyes and ears vigilant for any sign of the intruders and their hostage.
Azura changed hands twice during her captors' two kilometer run to the center of a large, flat wheat field.Despite her terror, she couldn't help but be mystified as the air around them appeared to shimmer, and then several giant, brilliantly white birds suddenly came into view among the yellow stalks. Hoshidan soldiers sat astride the beasts, and two men in odd, poofy white outfits were waving objects in the air and sweating. One held a blue stick with paper streamers and a fan on the end, and the other held some pieces of paper. She realized that they must be magicians, and that the air was shimmering because of them.
'C-Could we be...invisible?!' she thought. She knew people could use magic in different ways, but she'd never heard nor thought of anything so incredible as hiding oneself in plain sight. Yet her bewilderment was followed at the heels by a heartbreaking realization: if nobody could see her...
'Nobody can save me.'
Kagero noticed the girl's eyes begin to water anew. "What the hell happened in there, Saizo?" she demanded.
"I'll tell you in Shirasagi," he said, prompting an exasperated groan from his partner.
There were eight kinshi birds in total, each meant to carry their rider and one additional person—the five ninja, their captive, and the two magically inclined onmyoji who were beginning to pale from the effort of maintaining their crude invisibility field. The method of generating such a phenomenon had been devised just a few months before in the Hoshidan capital of Shirasagi, and had first been successfully tested mere weeks before the current operation's execution. A minimum of two people was necessary to make it work, with one using a Rod of Silence and the other casting a diffused spell from a scroll of the Snake. The result was a cloud of particles that hid those inside, though a distorted, bubbling dome remained, as if reality itself was melting away in a contained area.
One kinshi rider took the girl with only a brief, bewildered pause, and the team mounted up, buckled into their saddles, and took to the skies. Their cover remained, but with wyverns in the air, it wouldn't be long before they were noticed. In any case, the onmyoji couldn't maintain the spell for long. The duo's record was only thirty minutes on the ground, and even less while airborne.
They had approached the city from the far north, where Nohrian surveillance was most limited. Maps obtained from Nohrian merchants had provided the positions of the scattered few watchtowers in the mountains, which the Hoshidans had either avoided entirely or passed while invisible. The trip had been long and consistently cold, but staging their operation in the middle of summer had allowed the kinshi birds to tolerate the often-frigid peaks.
"To the north!" Takahiro ordered. "Everyone watch your backs. The Nohrians won't leave us alone for long!"
"How far to our backup?" Kaze asked the rider seated in front of him.
"Once we clear the city, it'll be just a couple of kilometers," the woman replied. "They should just beat any scouts who might've seen them approaching." Though the lack of moonlight left them in near-pitch-darkness, he could tell she had blue hair. By her voice, he figured she was in her early twenties. "Name's Reina, by the way."
"Kaze."
The cloaking effect began to fizzle out around them, and the air beyond grew clearer. Only a few dim lights dotted the top of Krakenburg's outer wall, but the cover of darkness couldn't protect them for long against the eyes of every soldier in the city. Kaze's grip on the saddle tightened.
"Alright, Kaze. Let me know when to break out my fancy flying."
Despite the whipping wind produced by the birds' speed, the trip around the immense expanse of the circular city felt torturously slow. Every second that it took to make their way from the western edge to the eastern was one more opportunity for a tired, panicked Nohrian soldier to spot the airborne procession. Nevertheless, they did make it to the northernmost part of the Outer Wall without incident.
As they flew past and finally began to distance themselves from Windmire, Kaze craned his head to look behind them, only to spot the dark wings of Nohrian wyverns rising from the Inner City and headed in their direction. "Uh, it's time for the 'fancy flying,' ma'am."
Reina followed his gaze. "Ha! Very well, then." She drew her bow and nocked an arrow. "You handy with a shuriken?"
He nervously rubbed the palm-sized projectiles in his hand. "I haven't had any practice against wyverns."
"Now's as good a time as any."
The other Hoshidans drew their weapons, and Kaze realized to his horror that he and Reina were lagging noticeably behind. That would make them the first target. He swallowed and watched as the enemy advanced.
A malig knight threw a fireball from atop his black dragon. It blazed white-hot against the empty sky, fizzling out several meters behind its target.
Reina grinned. "Nice shot, bitch," she whispered, drawing back her bowstring and letting an arrow fly.
The Nohrian couldn't see the missile, so he took a guess and climbed up and to the left. The arrow just missed his mount's wing, but a moment later, a shuriken found its mark in the thin appendage. The knight struggled to keep the beast under control and started losing ground on his adversaries.
"Good throw, kid!" Reina remarked as she kicked her bird into a dive, dodging a brilliant yellow burst of thunder magic. She loosed another arrow, which planted itself in the nearest wyvern's neck. Another dragon was struck by shuriken from Saizo and Kagero. One rider clutched his chest, in which Takahiro's kunai had stuck, while another deflected Mei's with his axe.
Kaze flung another shuriken, but was knocked off target when Reina's kinshi suddenly cut to the right. A bead of sweat dripped down his forehead and blew away in the cold wind. "They're still gaining, ma'am!"
"How close?" she queried.
"Closest one's about fifteen meters back. Standard rider. He's got a couple of hand axes left."
"Keep the heat on him. I'm watching the MK on the left." She gasped and pulled up hard on the reins, climbing several meters to avoid the miniature hailstorm conjured by her mark's Fimbulvetr tome. "Yeesh. Speaking of."
The rider with the axes raised his arm to hurl one. "Roll right!" Kaze shouted, clinging tight to the beast as it maneuvered under Reina's command. Harness or no, he wasn't thrilled to be upside-down in the air for any amount of time. The axe falling uselessly to the ground offered some consolidation, but not for long. "He's easily within ten meters, now."
Reina pulled farther to the right, breaking formation with the other kinshi knights. "New plan," she said calmly. "You hit the MK. I've got this guy." She fired an arrow, muttering a curse as it bounced off the soldier's large cavalry axe. "Things might get bumpy," she added, shouldering her bow in favor of her steel naginata.
The wyvern rider drew closer until he was beside them, at which point Reina thrust her weapon in a preemptive stab. He knocked it away and took a short swing at her mount, forcing her to draw back sharply. The malig knight took the opportunity to prepare a magic attack, but was forced to redirect it toward an incoming shuriken from Kaze. The condensed ice spell and the bladed star met in midair, with the former bursting apart and the latter spinning away through the sky.
The rider with the axe made another pass, and Reina struggled to knock his heavy blade away. She kicked her bird into a brief dive and tried to stab her enemy's wyvern, but he climbed out of her reach. Immediately, the Nohrian dove back at them, bringing his axe around in a wide arc. Kaze hit the dragon with a shuriken, but it was too late to stop the assault. Reina gripped her naginata low and swung it around her body, trying to match her opponent's force. He easily overpowered her when their weapons clashed, and while she managed to prevent him from hitting her or her mount, she partially lost her grip on her own. The back of her blade careened into its wielder's face, leaving a long, diagonal gash from the corner of her forehead to the edge of her cheek.
"Agh!" she yelped. "Gods-damned...!"
"Watch out!" Kaze called, tossing another shuriken at the malig knight and groaning when it missed its target. He only had a few left.
Reina stared down the rider who had injured her. He was preparing to make another pass, but this time, she would be ready. As a trickle of blood from her wound passed over her lips, they twitched upward in an unsettling grin.
She charged toward him. The rider, caught off guard, spurred his mount toward her a moment later. As he positioned to swing his axe, she let go of her naginata with her left hand and held it up with her right. "Hang on!" she yelled to her companion. Just before the two beasts collided, she tilted her head back and thrust her weapon forward while grabbing the handle of his with her free hand. His blade cut into her face, but missed her eyes and didn't go deep enough to do any real damage. Her blade, meanwhile, impaled the Nohrian through the stomach.
Both combatants dropped their weapons when the bird and dragon smashed into each other, with the axe plummeting to the ground and the naginata jerking about in the man's gut. He screamed in agony and attempted to pull it out of him, but his hands were trembling, and his face was turning white. Reina watched him as he slowly lost consciousness and slumped forward onto the wyvern's neck.
Snapping from her trance, she hurriedly comforted her kinshi. "You're alright," she gasped. "Fly strai—ack!" She spit out a mouthful of her own blood. Some of it was also leaking into her eyes, and she tried to wipe it away before drawing her bow once more.
"Are you alright, ma'am?!" Kaze demanded.
"Sure, kid!" she replied with a chuckle. She turned around—her face bearing two near-identical gashes in an X-shape, intersecting on the bridge of her nose. "Never better!"
"Oh," he murmured. "O-Okay." He looked behind him and readied a shuriken, but saw that the malig knight was backing off. Glancing ahead once more, he discovered the reason: Hoshidan reinforcements had arrived. Dozens of kinshi knights, all armed with bows, were approaching fast from the east, far outnumbering the wyverns immediately in pursuit. Accompanying them were a handful of falcon knights, combat medics mounted on falicorns, a variety of pegasus with a single pointed horn in the center of their heads.
"Ha! Score one for Hoshido!" Reina declared triumphantly. "It'll take too long for the brunt of their forces to get here." She playfully punched her ninja passenger in the shoulder. "Mission accomplished, Kaze!" She leaned forward and pet her bird. "And of course, you're amazing as always! Aren't you, Kougou!"
Kaze chuckled halfheartedly. "Thanks," he said quietly. His eyes scanned the air. Miraculously, it seemed that everyone had survived, and thanks to the falcon knights' magical healing rods, they'd be able to keep flying until they were well out of range of Windmire's fliers. From the looks of it, Nohr didn't seek to pursue them further. Satisfied that, at the very least, he hadn't gotten anyone killed, Kaze watched the girl he'd kidnapped wave a falcon knight away. "Who do you think she is?" he asked Reina.
"Hmm...Princess Camilla?" she mused. "No, she looks too young."
He swallowed, a lump forming in his throat. "Gods, I hope she's not some random noble."
"I don't think so, kid. And anyway, you did your job. That's what matters."
The ninja didn't respond to this. He assured himself that she and Saizo must be right, and that the girl would be the key to finally recovering Prince Corrin. He didn't take his eyes off the girl until he noticed her start to nod off, and began to feel tired himself. "Er, Miss Reina, would you mind if I lay on your shoulder?"
The knight laughed. "Can't promise I won't shake you off in an hour, but sure. You've earned it."
"Thanks,"' he murmured, leaning forward and resting his forehead on her. He continued to watch the hostage, but she had already allowed sleep to take ahold of her as she was carried away through the darkness. Princess Azura of Nohr had no tears left to shed that night.
Eventually, Kaze's eyes closed on their own, as if to assure him that he had earned his rest at last.