Greyson had gone numb to the cold as the wind ripped through his hair. His wide-open eyes felt as if they would freeze over in the cold, yet he could not take his gaze away from the sight before him. Framed, like something straight out of a novel. An entire village wiped off the map, countless lives lost, simply for the gain of the enemy.
"...Holy shit, dude..." Rusty remarked.
An alpha beowolf in the village below turned its head to the horrified group on the hill. It howled, and the entire pack abandoned the village to tear up the hillside.
Twilight Crusade's terror and disbelief replaced itself with anxious focus on the approaching creatures. Azure, Raven, and Dustyn picked off several grimm with their ranged weapons as the beasts advanced. More gunfire erupted as they ran within range of Greyson and Pierce. The alpha beowolf jumped at Greyson. He dodged to the side, sending up a cloud of snow. With Nimbus, he slashed across the pack leader's side. With Blitz, he blew off the upper half of its head.
Ezelia cleaved a beowolf down the middle, and Dustyn hopped in to protect her, seeing her pause for a second to investigate the mess she had left of the unfortunate creature. The beowolf chomped down on the middle of Boomstick, and tried to shake the weapon from its opponents hands.
"Babe!? A little help!?" Dustyn called, looking over his shoulder frantically.
"Huh? Oh, I gotcha!" Ezelia casually responded. With a grin, she let the beowolf meet the same fate as its packmate.
Pierce and Ember ran down the hill toward the approaching beowolves as quickly as their coats, the ravaging winds, and the deep snow, would allow. Pierce disappeared into a cloud of black smoke to evade the savage bite of a beowolf. He reappeared over its neck, and pulled his blades past each other to decapitate the monster. He kicked the body out from under him and backflipped over a second one he heard approaching from behind. A spray of bullets from Spade, and a flurry of steel from Ember, secured the grimm's fate. Once he hit the ground, Pierce quickly finished off four more beowolves. Ember helped, as well as slashing through a pair of creeps that worked their way into the horde.
Alexandra was having a much tougher time dealing with the oncoming grimm. She managed, without Crown Jewel, to send a jagged spire of ice through one creep, but that was her single achievement. A beowolf jumped toward her, gleaming claws swishing through the air toward their target. Taking a deep breath, Alexandra imagined Kita's blade instead.
"The moment I fear my enemy is the moment I've lost."
Alexandra turned toward the attack, bringing the White Fang cutlass across her body. The beowolf screeched as its severed arm sunk into the snow behind Alexandra. Her brief moment of personal celebration was interrupted by the beowolf's crimson jaws opening wider than her head, charging forward viciously.
Alexandra shrieked as she struck upward. The bite was interrupted by a blade to the jaw, but Alexandra too stumbled backward. A stray crag caught her ankle, and she began a painful reverse somersault down the steep, craggy, hill. The creature of grimm she fought before took to all fours as it followed her, drooling like a predator closing in on prey.
Alexandra's eyes closed, and her body tensed as she braced for the beast's jaws. Yet, all she heard was a blade slicing deep into flesh.
Kita had forced Kenakuma into the beast's lower back, until only the handle stuck behind it. She twisted until the blade faced upward, and tore it toward the sky. Kenakuma exited through the beast's right shoulder, and Kita yelled as she brought her blade across its body once more, leaving the creature in thirds at her feet. She sheathed her weapon.
"Whoa, you... destroyed that thing," Alexandra marvelled.
"I wished to make sure it was dead," Kita replied.
Alexandra smiled. "Well, thanks," she said. "Really, we don't deserve someone like you, always going around and saving people."
"That's all of them!" Greyson declared. "We need to look for survivors!"
Greyson carefully but quickly hiked down the slope, into the destroyed village below. The landscape was hellish, like something from a nightmare. The odors of blood and smoke swirled on the blustery winds as Greyson made his way down the now eerily silent streets.
"I feel like I'm going to be sick..." Azure said. "They're all... murdered."
"The Shrouded Fox knew of this place," Kita stated. "It was said to be a warrior village, full of strong huntsmen. Even we knew to never challenge them.
Greyson's gaze swept in front of him, to the bodies and weapons littering the streets. Several huts had what appeared to be stray bullets lodged in them. He knelt next to a body of a man, who lay facing away from him. With a shaking hand, Greyson grabbed its shoulder and pulled until its empty gaze trained on the white sky above.
Greyson pulled back in disgust, barely suppressing a scream of horror.
Brutal burns had scorched much of the man's face and torso, burning his clothes off his body. The stench of smoke and decay filled Greyson's nostrils. He stood, facing away from the corpse and wishing, from the bottom of his heart, he could forget the nightmare he had just seen.
Raven, who had gone with Rusty to follow Alexandra down a sidestreet, ran up to Greyson, Azure, and Kita. "O-Over, d-down that street!" she frantically stated. "A-Alexandra found something!"
Just then, the metal head of a cord fastened itself to the building next to Greyson and Azure. Pierce grappled from the sidestreet he scanned with Ember, and landed next to the four. "We found someone alive, but just barely," he reported. "Hurry up, I don't think he'll be able to talk much longer."
"Azure. You take Raven back to Alexandra. I'll go with Kita and Pierce," Greyson commanded. Without another word, he followed Pierce's lead.
After a minute or so, he rounded a corner to see a man crumpled against a smoldering hut, spear by his side. He clutched his stomach as blood leaked through his fingers with every ragged breath.
"Who did this?" Greyson asked vehemently. "Can you tell us what they looked like?"
"There were... only three of them," the dying man reported. "We tried our best to fight them off, but... it- it didn't matter. The one who did this to me, he dressed in red. Brown hair, glasses. I-I tried to fight him, but I couldn't scratch him. His lance and shield, they were too big. Too well-wielded."
Greyson sighed. Deep down, he knew from the second he saw his flag waving falsely in the wind, Vladimir was the one behind these attacks. But still. Hearing it, knowing he was in part responsible for the destruction of the village, made Greyson sick to his stomach.
"When he killed, it's like... I saw my families souls, their auras... being sucked into him. Into th-that... wretched heart of his," the villager struggled. "Don't... don't challenge him."
"He absorbed their souls?" Greyson repeated.
The villager had drawn his last breath.
With a deep breath, Greyson stood. "If Vladimir can absorb souls, we should assume they make him stronger. Especially since these are the souls of a village the Shrouded Fox knows not to fight," he stated.
"When we fought him, back at the Garnetts' place," Pierce began. "You said it felt like he had more aura than before, right?"
"Right," Greyson recalled. "Which means, this wasn't the first time he's killed."
"And it won't be the last," Ember grimly added.
Ten minutes of village searching turned up no more survivors. Twilight Crusade met in the middle, just under their flag. Alexandra found traces of earth and ice dust, the triangular, gem-like patterns signature of Crown Jewel.
"I think there's something I should do..." Rusty commented, voice tinged with irritation. He climbed the hut before him, and wrapped his hands around the pole that held Twilight Crusade's flag. A thick steam arose from them, and Rusty ripped the oxidized metal from where it sat. He threw the flag to the dirt.
Meanwhile, Greyson tried several times to call any form of emergency services. Yet, it seemed no CCTS tower reached this far North of Mistral.
"This is... just like what happened to the Inyan..." Alexandra weakly lamented, sitting limply in the snow. Tears leaked from her eyes. "But, Crown Jewel is being used to kill. I should have protected it. This is my fault, isn't it?"
"It's not," Greyson assured. "You did everything in your power to keep it away from her. Now, we have to do everything in our power to get Crown Jewel back."
"We must warn other villages!" Kita implored. "There are many in the area, and the Shrouded Fox is a days' walk North!"
"We should let the military, or someone know," Ember suggested. "It wouldn't be the best idea to be flying around burning villages with our flag popping up all over the place."
"Let's get back to the ship, and warn the nearest villages. And let's get to the Shrouded Fox," Greyson said. "But Ember's right. We need to let someone know this isn't us."
Twilight Crusade trudged back up the hill, and to their airship. The winds had calmed some, but the air was still dangerously cold, bringing a consistent snowfall. After a few minutes of clearing snow from the airship's windshield and engines, Greyson lifted the ship into the sky. As he began to fly North, Greyson squinted in confusion at the radar screen. Two dots, evenly spaced, approached from the East.
Clearing the crest of a hill a mile away, a Mistrali air force pilot looked deeply into the holographic screen between him and his copilot. The screen zoomed in, clearly displaying Twilight Crusade's symbol.
"Run the analysis between this and the flag," the pilot ordered. "I'll try and get closer."
"Yes sir," his copilot confirmed. With several seconds of silence, the pilot accelerated toward Twilight Crusade's ship. "...It's a match."
The pilot poked at his scroll, and cleared his throat.
"Command, this is Lieutenant Gatlin, Northern Squad 3. We've confirmed the target. Permission to fire?"
"Permission granted."