Within the highest level of the Begnion Empire's reverent, black tower, a corpse began to rise. As it levitated back to its feet, its knees locked back into place. Muscle spasms coursed up starting at the feet. Its shoulders twitched, arms flailed, and then the fingers wriggled insanely. Life craned the head forward and then erect, where on its face the sinewy clumps of red flesh were rift above a layer of bone, exposed by three massive claw marks that reached ear to ear. Finally standing, the wreath of an intense flame of orange and red and white hair, the light-consuming-black dress that cloaked it, and the exposed parts of white bone and torn flesh about the body stabbed the soul with the powerful image of a demon.
Its eyes opened.
"It is futile," she said, "You cannot kill me."
Ike and the rest of his company watched with a mixture of cringed brows, awe-stricken faces, and half-hearted smurks as the marks on her face sealed back up.
"What's going on?" Ike said, "This is insane! We defeated her . . ."
"You defeated nothing. This is nothing at all out of the ordinary. Mortals cannot defeat the divine. It is not possible," returned a stoic Ashera.
This was bad. They didn't have the luxury of dragging out the battle. They were fighting a goddess. Not only that but the rest of the Greil Mercenaries and the other resistance fighters were still outside, fighting for their lives against Ashera's puppet-corpse army, fighting to give them this one chance at victory. Things were definitely grim.
Ike tightened his grip over his divine, orange blade, Ragnell. He looked left to a young man in an elaborate green-trimmed, white robe and gave a curt nod. Even amidst an impossible battle, Soren gave him an impassive look, glanced at the verdant book in his hand and nodded back. Ike then looked right to the flank on Ashera's left at a young man with a leaf-colored jacket-cape half-cut above the abs, and a large-buckle red belt hanging over his pants. Sothe caught his gaze, fanned his arm across the sheaths strapped over his pants and somehow wound up with five knives in between his fingers on each hand. It was do or die.
Soren opened his spellbook. A soft, green light and the intermittent crackle of lightning bolts emerged from the pages.
As this was happening, Ashera used her power to summon two fire-tail spirits, small-bucket-sized masses of wavering, red, barely-tangible light, behind Ike's left and right flanks.
The company formation was a standard pincer maneuver. Seventeen of them split into three groups around the enemy, with close-ranged fighters: Trueblades, Dragons, Hawks, Ravens, and Beasts on the front lines, long-range fighters: Sages and Snipers behind, then Healers and others in the rear. Where the fire spirits were, they threatened the rear line.
The fire spirit behind the left flank raced towards Rhys. Ike smurked. It was a good thing fire-tails weren't made with any common sense. However, on the right flank . . . .
-Sickling, emerald gusts whipped out of Soren's spellbook, funneling into massive veins of power that launched toward Ashera.
"Rexcalibur!" invoked Soren-
The fire spirit on the right flank advanced towards a human-sized, snow-white swan.
No! They're targeting the Herons!
The Herons were strictly for support, and in battle able to double the strength of any man or beast for seconds at a time through song. They were the weakest, most frail units in the company. An attack from one of Ashera's fire-tails and Reyson would be done for. Not only would he fall, the fire-tail's combustion would completely incinerate his body to ash. Battle was an unpredictable hell, but the golden rule for Ike was that he never lost one of his own.
Wind tugged at Ike's red-cape and pushed back his ocean hair. Soren's Rexcalibur spell whirled furiously, slicing the air; if Ike threw away this chance they might not get another.
The fire-tail's ruby core flared as its tails circled around it like a fan.
If I can finish off Ashera, the fire spirits will disappear. Ashera has to die now!
The winds quieted from sickling gust to whistling breeze.
Here goes!
It was chaos out here. Comets, wind torrents, forks of lightning, and anything else that could come out of a mage's book streaked over Oscar's head, scattering groups of golden-armor, enemy soldiers. As quick as the turn of a page, the red, green, and yellow light from these spells flashed over the battlefield and blasted apart clusters of enemies to weaken their battalion's assault. Dozens fell dead, but once dead they faded into nothingness, and rays of light shot softly upward only to descend behind the legions of the enemy flanks. Those still standing marched like machines to meet the first line of defense. "Not a single one through, men!" could be heard over the roar of the jungle cat laguz.
What was left of the enemy's first wave of golden soldiers squeezed into the bridge that led to Begnion's Tower of Guidance to meet a variegated wall of laguz beasts, and up-close fighters.
Soldiers in opulent robes and hugging red, ornate tomes worked their way to the front. The bloodiest crimson emerged when they opened their spellbooks.
Looks like you were right Soren: they did use fire.
A great, terrifying roar from the laguz resounded.
"That's the signal! Attack!"
Horsemen leaped over the laguz and charged. They spear-headed through the enemy, trampling, stabbing, slashing, and shooting down every unsuspecting mage.
Fallen, the mages' dead bodies faded away and then vanished with upward beams of amber light; a rain of light then immediately fell over the horizon of the enemy flanks. They would be seen again.
This certainly is crazy. We kill them and they just come back.
Despite the impossibility of victory, Oscar breathed with a rich excitement.
Geoffrey lead the assault. Oscar marveled at the menace of his strength as at that moment furious branches of electricity arching above reflected magnificently on his emerald-tinted-platinum armor, a spectacle made more intense by what Oscar knew of the man's background. There just wasn't anything more inspiring than a man who worked his way up from bottom to being the commander of the Crimean Royal Knights. Looking at him, none could have guessed that a man his age could demand so much respect, and perhaps that fact made him that much more fearsome. He was a supremely skilled warrior and like all the others ready to lay down their lives on this bridge, he rested on the cusp of greatness. To fight with such men, for so noble a cause impressed the tranquility of absolute contentment on the deepest level of Oscar's soul. If need be, he was ready to die.
"The enemy's line is broken. Kill all the ones left on the bridge!" Geoffrey yelled before drawing his armorslayer and decapitating a hulking sentinel.
A shade of red armor over an equine brown jetted past Oscar; Kieran dove in first, He made sure Oscar saw this, and as soon as he felt Oscar was watching, Kieran impaled a chest-plated swordmaster with his javelin, then equipped his silver lance and annihilated an axe general with a critical hit through the heart. Turning back, the look on his face said, "Top that."
Oscar leaned into his horse, whirling his lance with both hands seemingly effortlessly.
This was a ploy he had once theorized when out of sheer curiosity he trained with Volke once. "You're dead," Volke told him, holding a knife to his throat "Luckily you did manage to kill my coat. Admirable," he incited, "Deception. That is why you lost. Give people a reason to believe in a lie and their lives are yours to extinguish," Then he cut free a hefty sac hanging on Oscar's hip and let it fall into his hand. "My fee for the training and the advice; consider your life . . . complementary."
A reason to believe in a lie . . . This is the highest quality lance. A highly dense metal composes the steel-hue bar and beryl-colored point. Finely thin, serrated edges, also, lay at the blade itself. But it's the weight that matteres. Spinning it like this who would believe its actually a 65 pound beam of death?
To make killing a man as easy as wishing for it, that's why it was called the Wishblade.
Oscar shot into the ruck of soldiers, spinning his lance to a whistling velocity. A heaving sentinel raised his sword to catch Oscar's Wishblade. With a crash, the sword shattered in the sentinel's hands as the Wishblade cut a black hole-flesh, and bone, and metal yeilding as one and the same-from the top of the shoulder to the lowest rib.
With only the effort of spinning his lance, Oscar cleaved through seven more stragglers around the red-armored Kieran. When at once the bodies toppled over, they vanished to mystical light. Oscar turned his squinted glanced to Kieran and smiled the most gentle smile.
Maybe next time Kieran.
"The next wave is advancing! Paladins fall back!" ordered Geoffrey, using all the power of his voice to speak over the explosive volley of magic.
The pack of laguz advanced; so did the melee fighters.
As Oscar retreated, a sentinel barred his way and another started to approach him from the left, which being right-handed worked to his disadvantage.
He lunged on the first one immediately.
Oscar quickly retracted his Wishblade lance, splaying chunks of gold armor and blood on the limestone blocks of the bridge, then fanned his lance around over his head with both hands. He reacted to a blur in the corner of his eye, swiveled his head to a small degree, hearing the echoing slice of a silver lance's point, and buried his Wishblade into the slit on the other general's helmet. Before Oscar could free his weapon, two more soldiers in loose garments that ran to their feet, swords tightly clenched in one hand, Trueblades, approached him and his horse from behind.
Trueblades always managed the first strike with invaluable vantage. To devote all of their focus on a single strike characterized their best defense against their lack of armor and relatively frail constitutions. One strike from a Trueblade almost always spelled the end.
They poised for attack.
Oscar kicked his magnificently muscular mare. Agitated, its legs snapped up and bashed the swordsmasters in the face with its steel-printed hooves.
There's no enemy vantage in a surprise attack.
The trueblades vanished in thanked his on-horse-back defense training he received during his short term as a Crimean Knight and continued on.
The laguz pounced on the few enemy that were left, tearing torsos with knife-sized claws and shredding armor with vorpal fangs. The melee fighters cleaned up with earth-splitting strikes to the head. All of this happened before the third volley crashed on the ground.
However, there had been something which Oscar couldn't shake off his mind. It was nothing really, but then again he'd never been wrong before. An intuition, it was.
In front of him, the Tower of Guidance lay engulfed in gold light, its opaque architecture transformed to a sun-like beacon. It was a sign of Ashera's power. Up until now light from the tower had been shining over the battlefield in a soft blanket. However, looking at it now, Oscar had to shade his eyes.
Was Ashera's spell getting stronger?