A fair waring, this chapter veers to the m rating potentially due to violent imagery. It should be the darkest the story goes.


Mia looked up into the eyes of her killer, everything else around her fading in to numbness. She couldn't hear anything besides the frightened beat of her own heart, the breath that escaped her lungs in ragged gasps, and that of her opponent. She could almost feel the satisfied smirk the Huntress was wearing under her helmet. She glared defiantly, but even she admitted that it looked like a foolish thing.

"Child, you have lost." Besides any derogatory term for women, child was the insult that Mia despised the most. She would have voiced her objectio

n, were it not for the fact blood filled her mouth. "Now there is only one thing left to do for you." Mia screwed her eyes shut as she waited for the killing blow. "I must honor you."

Mia opened her eyes and though they were foggy, she could see that other monsters were surrounding her with their backs turned to her. "You are a tough fighter, and for that I will make sure that you accompany me to every slaughter I attend. Your skin will be my tabard and will herald my arrival to the battlefield while your head will be placed upon my banner!"

That same knife that caused the wound upon her stomach now hovered over the wound, as if looking for the perfect place to start stripping the skin from her flesh. It found an open point and painfully the dagger prodded the wound, satisfaction taken from the moan of pain that escaped her lips. "Do not worry, you will die soon. However, I am afraid that you will be aware for most of it. They tend to black out once their entire torso has been relieved of their skin."

And with that, the pain began again with fresh intensity. Despite her best attempts not to give the Huntress any satisfaction, Mia threw open her mouth and wailed.


When that scream shattered all other sounds in the vicinity, no one fought with a greater disregard for safety like the commander of the Greil Mercenaries. Some would later speak it was as if an avatar of blood and anger made manifest. Others would say that she fought with the rage and skill of a demon, cleaving enemies from head to toe with ferocity.

However, even these descriptions failed to do such a scene justice.

When she heard that cry of pain from the young swordswoman she saw as the daughter she could never have, Titania flew into a rage. She was currently holding off a few murderers who were using this chaos as a way to ransack the city as it fell. But when she heard that, her defensive posture quickly changed to a berserker fueled aggressive one.

She hacked the first one in half, bisecting through the rib gage under the arms, adding his blood to the tarn that had formed around them. She blocked an incoming strike with her axe head and brained the next one with a simple stoke of her axe. The third tried to run, but Titania removed the need for his legs. To silence his mewling, she took his head a second later.

She focused her sights on the cohort that surrounded The Huntress. Each of them bore battle damage and wore it as if it was a badge of honor, signaling them as a warrior without any peer. Titania did not care, she would cut through them all. "Make sure that none interfere with my work, soldiers. I want to make sure that this hide is extracted perfectly." The Huntress spoke calmly, while the sound of peeling skin with Mia's cry of pain complimenting the sound of connective tissue being cut permeated the air.

"One or a thousand, Urvan will see to it that you all are nothing but dust in the wind." Titania coldly responded, and lashed out. She was so wrapped up in her anger that she didn't notice Ilyana and Rhys coming to her aid, offering their skills with magic and the divine to aid her.

Two flayed ones stepped out of formation to engage her. Both of them had mighty weapons that were like her axe, powerful but slow. A mighty war hammer that crackled with eldritch power and a great sword imbued with several runes that pulsated with a heartbeat. Not only them, but the hairless beast heeded its mistress's calling and prowled at the edge of the shadows.

The moment of doubt passed, and instantly Titiania unleashed her fury against them. She swung in low with the axe, but it was blocked with the great sword effortlessly. The war hammer was brought down, the slow weapon easy to avoid but the concussion that shook the ground set her off balance. Ilyana responded with a bolt of azure lightning, striking the two soldiers with arcane power.

Coils of electricity enveloped them, but even that could only slow them, not kill. They struck out with their weapons, forcing Titania, Ilyana, and Rhys to go on the defensive. Rhys channeled all of his energy into casting wards of protection that would absorb most of the kinetic energy on the strikes that would eventually find their place on the redhead paladin and the petite mage. It was taxing him but it was also keeping his companions alive.

One made a mistake when it brought the great sword crashing down unto the stone next to Ilyana and buried itself in the street. The thing tugged on the blade, trying to dislodge it, but to no avail. Ilyana channeled all of her power to hold on the helmet. Using her body as a conductor, she channeled raw arcane power through to her opponent. Overwhelmed by the volatile energy, the thing convulsed and eventually turned to sludge. Normal steel and flesh becoming multicolored glowing glop that radiated heat and an awful odor.

Titania caught her break when she pressed the advantage of her cutting weapon against that of the blunt hammer. She feigned several attacks and slowly baited the soldier into a trap. She found her opportunity and thrusted her axe forward, nailing the creature right in the center of the chest, and then twisting the weapon to cleave open the armor. Staggering the creature tried one last strike but was easily dispatched.

Titania was about to turn her attention to the Huntress when she was blindsided by a force of pure muscle. She barely had time to register what was happening before she felt teeth puncture her armored gauntlets, piercing flesh and cutting bone. Dagger like claws slashed her face, drawing blood and a wordless cry of pain.

Then she was violently thrown aside, landing without any form of grace as her jaw was almost dislocated in the tumble. While she pulled her face out of the blood that covered the street, she heard a crack of thunder and two more cries. She spat the blood pooling in her mouth out and muttered a string of curses, gripping the haft of her axe as she did so.

Bloodied and bruised, Titania rose to her feet and tried her hardest to hold on to the axe as she looked down the beast. Bloodied drool fell between great incisors, the droplets falling into the mixture of life fluid beneath them. She struggled to control her breath, trying to show that she felt no fear at the monster that stood before her.

It growled, and was strong enough in that tone to keep Ilyana and Rhys from attempting to strike it. Titania's wounded arm was a testament to the strength this beast carried, crumpling fine steel as if it was paper. "Alright, let's get this over with." Titania whispered to herself, and the beast leapt at her with jaws agape. Despite her best attempt, Titania held the axe with the spear point out front and she screwed her eyes shut as she awaited the teeth around her throat.

It never came.

She heard a grunt of effort and a muffled growl. She slowly opened her eyes and saw the white cloaked figure, the same one Mia was intent on following before the chaos started, standing between her and the beast. A sword was driven into the ground between them, and both of the man's hands were holding the mouth of the creature shut.

When it looked like the beast would escape the white cloak brought back a gauntleted hand and struck the beast on one of its canine's. The blow was powerful, enough to cause the tooth to crack and break from the jaw. The stranger picked up the tooth and, after figuring a grip on the thing, drove it through the left eye socket.

The cry of pain was satisfying to hear, and was enough to cause the Huntress to stop her flaying. She pushed through her armored protection. Before she could curse, another cloaked stranger, dressed in stained black and a sword glowing as green as his eyes, decapitated the beast with one fell swing of his sword. The skin, muscle, and bone parted easily before the energized edge of the blade. There was a torrent of black blood, polluting the red that washed all around them.

"Archers, fire!" The white cloaked stranger commanded with a voice that radiated years of command and authority. A volley of arrows and bolts flew by Titania's head, finding their mark on the armor of the monsters. It was an annoyance more than anything, but a distraction none of the less. "Guardsmen, form up lines. Here stands your first stepping stone to reclaiming your city."

Titania looked behind her and saw roughly a hundred of the city guard, beleaguered but willing, to raise their spears, swords, and shield in a ten by ten grid. She felt as if she was about to collapse out of weakness, but suddenly felt a warm power envelop her. Rhys, using the last of his energy while Ilyana guarded him from any chance attack, eased the pain from her body. He could not heal her from all of the wounds, but he could dull them to give her enough strength to rescue Mia.

Another woman came to where Titania, hair as long as her own and white as hoarfrost. A long silver sword in her hands, and a passive reassuring smile on her aged frame. This new comer looked at the Huntress and glowered. She spoke a few syllables in an unknown tongue, and the Huntress responded with similar tone.

No more words were spoken, none would need to be. A few riders rushed in to defend their mistress, but Titania knew that they would not succeed. She would rush in, save Mia, and if the Huntress made the mistake of standing to fight, she would kill her.

The call was given and they charged the lines. The silver haired stranger was fast, faster than a woman many years younger. Silver bastard sword in hand, she charged the Huntress with the grace of a midsummer night winds. The two met with a doleful clang of their swords, while the two cloaked figures with the rest of the guardsmen engaged the remaining cohort of the soldiers.

Titania herself wanted to join the fight, to swing her axe in anger and to maybe kill a few of these damnable creatures herself. But even if she was not in such a wounded state, her pride would be her Mia's undoing, who may be hanging on by a thread to this mortal coil. Titania cared little for her life much anymore, she had seen and caused more death and sorrow than any five men at arms should. She could let Mia die with her, she would made sure that she would be taken to safety.

With the flayed ones preoccupied with the soldiers around her, Titania found it easy to slip through the gaps in the ranks. Mia laied in the pond of blood with Alondite not far from her, her stomach bleeding from the long slice. Upon closer inspection, there was no strips of skin missing or massive arteries sliced. It was clear that the Huntress wanted a whole hide, and to keep Mia alive for a long time while doing it.

Titania swooped down and picked up the wounded fighter with one arm and Alondite in the other. She affixed the sword to her back and carried Mia like an infant, tightly and with the care of the mother. By now a few of the flayed ones had realized she was there, but the two cloaked figures of black and white intercepted their blows that surely would have split Titania's skull open. "It is not safe for you here, milady." The black cloaked one said with a thick northern Crimean accent. "Take her and yourself to the Temple Quarter, it is safe and your wounds will be taken care of."

The two men then lashed out at the flayed ones with such similarity, Titania was almost certain that they were brothers. They pushed the creatures aside and made a passage for her into their lines. Titania nodded her appreciation, hoping to meet them again to repay them fully, and rushed past them. She wasn't completely helpless, she shouldered a flayed one into the awaiting pikes of a few guardsmen who quickly turned the monster into eldritch sparks.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the fight between the Huntress and the white haired stranger. It was beautiful, each one of them were almost in a trance with swords moving so fast that they were almost steel colored blurs. Each of their blows were blocked and the return stroke was parried in turn, it was a fight that seemed more like a dance with death then a fight between two opponents.

However, the stranger looked over and saw Titania. For the briefest of moments, time itself willingly stopped. Titania locked eyes with the woman, whose dark eyes were slowly looking down to Mia in her arms. Titania looked to Mia, who was still wheezing a breath, then back to the stranger. Titania saw her mouth a single word.

She knew what that word was, and she felt a chill run down her spine.

Then time resumed, and the silver haired stranger returned to the fight to be violently knocked aside by an enraged huntress, jewels of viridian fire escaping her eye slits of the armor.

"Enough of this. It seems I will not be able to get a fair challenge from this pathetic child without some interloper interfering with our fight. You, scarlet wench," she pointed to Titania, who had Mia clutched in her arms and melting into the guardsmen, "when she lives, and I know that she will, tell her to come to the mountains. I will line a path of blood and corpses to make sure she finds me."

With that said, she channeled a pool of dark magic, summoning bone and flesh to take the familiar shape of a horse. Flesh knitted together with tendons and skin slid over the meat in a motley assortment of pigments before it turned into an identical set of skin with bleached coat. The metamorphous was over in a scant few seconds, and the Huntress was upon the new mount that was identical to her old one. Her few remaining riders rode away with her, and the Guard gave their chase.

Titania wanted to chase them, but knew that Mia needed to see help. She hoped to the goddess that she would not be too late.


With one final strike, Agatha finished off the dismounted rider with a downward thrust through the heart, or at least where it should have been. Wisps of dark blue and green energy dissipated around the blade, and in a few moments there was no remains of the foe. All around them the battle damage was significant, houses were burning, torn down, or were nothing more than piles of ash. The city guard had begun to rally (perhaps due in no small part to their rescuing of various pockets of resistance to a unified fighting force), and while the cost would be high, they began to push back the interlopers. There would be many buried or cremated in the coming days. Many tears would be shed and answers would be demanded.

But the residents of Dunkirk would rebuild, they would endure as the people of Crimea have for centuries.

Ludveck slid his sword back in the sheath as Caliban did a post combat ritual of thanking his ancestors for lending them the strength at arms to survive this encounter with the aspects of death. He hobbled over to Agatha, a mace strike to his side sending shots of pain through his body as it moved, who placed the sword back in the wooden stock to reform her walking staff. "You seek these creatures out?" Her voice displayed a cold and clinical tone, it lacked any emotion either of the men expected from someone who had faced these things down and bested them.

"In a sense." Ludveck explained as he wiped a strand of blood from his forehead. The cut was deep, any deeper and bone would have been exposed. He needed to be more careful. "We have fought these things, though we lack a proper name for them. We-"

"Calligans." Agatha interrupted him as she surveyed the scene destruction that was all around them. "They are called calligans, and I thought they were destroyed centuries ago. I had every right to assume that. I had seen them humbled and shattered… I only know of eight that survived and they were dead ones walking. No way they could survive for this long and avoid our eyes…" Her voice drifted off to the point where she was whispering to herself.

"Calligans? Never heard of them." Caliban responded as he rose to his feet with his sword placed back in the sheath on his back.

"They were meant to be forgotten. Every record of them stricken from the books of Begnion and the laguz would no longer speak of them in their oral traditions." Agatha said as she shook her head, dispelling a bitter memory. "You fight them? You seek to remove the head of these resurgent monsters from their shoulders?"

Ludveck responded, teeth clenched hard in pain as he did so. "We would, but that has been left to another. We are to head south, to the bogs where we believe answers to why they have reemerged await us."

"Where you believe the answers are. I am skeptical on what exactly we will fine there." Caliban responded.

There were no words spoken for a while, and all around them the fires began to smolder as another storm began to form above their heads. Rain droplets washed down over their armor, cleansing them of the blood that covered their armor and stifling the smoke that filled the air all around them. Despite the better part of him, Ludveck raised his head and felt the cold rain wash his face. He licked his chapped lips, tasting perhaps the purest water in his life. It was cold, clean, and sharp; all around them the stains of the battle were beginning to wash away, or at the very least dull.

Ludveck took in a breath of fresh air and another taste of the water. When he brought his face down again, Agatha spoke. "Then even if it is a scarce lead, it is one we must follow."

"Agatha, I-" Caliban was about to speak more, but Agatha silenced him with a shsh.

"I will accompany you, no one alive knows more about these things than I do. And if you object, that is your own opinion, but considering the needs of the continent it is moot." She softened and laid a hand on Caliban's shoulder. "I know that you are afraid for my safety, but I will be alright. Now, enough delays. We ride for the south."

Instantly she took off to the stables, with Ludveck and Caliban not far behind her.