This particular chapter was getting pretty long, so I decided to split it in two.
"You are not taking part in this battle, Cyril, and that's final," Rhea insisted.
"But I want to help!" Cyril whined.
Ignoring him, she turned to Indech, who was keeping an eye on the enemy defenses. "That is a lot of Demonic Beasts."
"Too many?" she asked.
"For me? No," Indech replied. "It doesn't matter how many Demonic Beasts attack me; they won't get past my defenses. But I don't think Macuil and I can keep them all away from the army."
"I will face them with you, then," Rhea offered. "It has been a long time since I was able to go all-out."
"Truth be told, that is a bit more concerning," Indech said, pointing at the legion of Agarthan soldiers.
"They are only soldiers," Seteth said.
"No, they are not. They are wights," Indech informed her. "We might have guessed that the enemy had necromancers at their disposal, but there are a lot of wights."
"Oh. That isn't good," Seteth
"Necromancy," Macuil spat. "Such sorcery is a blight upon the world."
"The wights, though. They can still be killed, right?" Cyril asked.
"They can. Powerful enough blessed or cursed weapons will do. Light magic will also end the creatures. Fire will serve. Natural or magically created, it will end a wight easily. Enough force will also do the job, but wights are stronger and faster than the living, so use of such is impractical. And a magical barrier between the wights and their necromancer will cause them to collapse as would a puppet with its strings cut," Seteth informed him. "All of that is assuming the army does not try to flee as soon as they realize what they are facing."
"Then we gotta take out those necromancers," Cyril said, lifting his axe.
"Once again, you are not taking part in this battle," Rhea insisted.
"But I can't just stand back and let everyone else fight!" Cyril protested.
"No one is doubting your courage-" began Seteth.
"I can handle this," Rhea assured her nephew. "Cyril, I do not want you taking the field because I have a more important job for you to do. I need you to protect Leraye." She directed him to the baby's bed. "It is possible that Nemesis's agents might try to harm her. I need you to protect her."
Cyril nodded. "I will. I'll protect her with my life."
Rhea smiled. "Thank you, Cyril."
"Remember, we have to take out the necromancers at any cost," Byleth reminded the others under his command. "If we don't take them out, it doesn't matter how many of these wights we kill. They'll just keep coming."
With varying degrees of enthusiasm (Byleth noted that Lysithea and Ashe especially appeared to be ready to jump out of their skin) everyone in the advance force acknowledged his words.
At that, the armies charged, man meeting monster in battle. Fire and light cut down wights by the dozens as they charged toward the army, but they just kept coming. And when the mutants, green goliaths stronger than any man, reached the defensive line, they would wreak havoc on the soldiers before being put down. The defensive line didn't break, but there were a few close calls. Certainly, it would not have held if not for the Church golems protecting it, keeping the bulk of the enemy from surrounding the contingent.
A veritable army of Demonic Beasts had tried to flank them from the north, but had been cut off by the appearance of the Immaculate One, the Immovable, and the Wind Caller. And unlike when they had gotten lucky at Garreg Mach, this time the divine dragons were prepared. Not one of the Beasts that tried to attack the dragons survived long enough to do real damage. Few managed to get past them even among those that didn't try to attack, and almost none made it past without injury.
The sight of the dragons was somewhat intimidating to the Adrestian and Almyran soldiers. But among the soldiers of Garreg Mach, Faerghus, and Leicester, the presence of the divine dragons of legend striking down their enemies was taken as a sign that the Goddess was with them, and they fought all the harder.
While the main army held the line, Byleth and the others began pressing toward the necromancers. It wasn't just him and the students and faculty this time; the armies of the five involved nations (six if you counted Abyss) all contributed soldiers to the effort.
Despite their best efforts to swarm the group, the wights weren't having an easy time of it. Blasts of fire and bursts of light, arrows from Failnaught, the Tathlum Bow, and the Inexhaustible, and strikes from the Arrow of Indra's lightning cut them down with ease. And while some did get close, most of them were dispatched by a Relic, a Sacred Weapon, or a blessed weapon before they could do any damage. Not all of them, though, as several knights died at the hands of the reanimated corpses. The mutants were harder to kill, and several of them managed to do an unfortunate amount of damage before they died.
The group had almost reached the necromancers when the fire and light magic stopped working on the undead. "I think these guys are a little different," Raphael noted.
"These aren't wights, they're revenants!" Hanneman informed the group. "They're like Nemesis! They're stronger, faster, and capable of independent thought! Most ways of killing wights won't work on them!"
Hilda smashed a revenant's skull with Freikugel. "Looks like they can still die!"
Unfortunately, killing revenants wasn't nearly as easy as killing wights, and the advance squad looked like they would be overwhelmed. That is, until one of the necromancers, a very old man, saw Hubert with the Arrow of Indra. "That spear! That's my son's spear!"
One of his peers, a fat, middle-aged Agarthan man with mutton chops, protested. "Quintus! Get back here!"
Quintus ignored him and rushed out to attack Hubert, throwing a Death Γ spell. Hubert didn't bother shielding, instead using a blast of force to place a revenant in the path of the spell.
"You can't defend yourself from me!" Quintus shouted, as he tried to bring a Meteor spell down on Hubert's head. Hubert didn't even flinch, and he used the lightning from the Arrow to shatter the Meteor.
Spells from other spellcasters were hitting Quintus's wards, but they seemed to have no effect. Quintus conjured a wave of blue fire, and threw it. "Burn!"
"Linhardt, now!" Hubert shouted, and Linhardt stepped in front of him, creating a vortex of wind that caught Quintus's flames and redirected them back at the necromancer. And unlike the other spells, this one burned through Quintus's wards as if they weren't there.
Dorothea looked at Linhardt with shock. "Where did you learn that?"
"Concentrate! We have an opening!" Catherine shouted, as Thunderbrand cut through two more undead. Indeed, without Quintus, the three necromancers (the fat man, an Agarthan woman who seemed to be in her fifties or sixties, and a mutant) couldn't keep up the tide of undead warriors holding them back. The revenants, as well as the six Knights of Styx who were guarding them, were all slain, quickly followed by the three necromancers themselves.
Across the battlefield, around half of the wights fell over, the magic keeping them animated gone. The other half kept fighting, but the army of the living began to press forward.
"There are still more!" Claude stated, and the group pressed towards the large cave that they guessed was where the main gate to Shambhala was hidden. As they got closer, giant spiders began to attack. Still, the advance force pressed through them, until they almost reached the cave mouth.
There, the remaining fifteen Stygians, along with several more mutants, spiders, and undead, were ready to engage them. Even among the Stygians, however, two were especially notable.
One was a giant, at least four meters tall and probably even taller. His body was covered in fur, and in the absence of any armor that would fit, he had covered himself with mud and gravel.
The other was unnaturally pale, and had dark eyes. But even despite the changes, Edelgard and Dimitri recognized her instantly.
Edelgard's voice dropped to a whisper. "Mother?"