Disclaimer: I don't own Bravely Default, all rights to the owners.
Tiz has issues.
Fire flares from his free hand. It streaks towards the soldier of the Black Blades and splashes across his chest, setting him aflame. The heat of the mines is nothing compared to the magical barrage Tiz unleashes down the tunnels.
It's not often Tiz slips heavily into the black magic side of his usual Red Mage spells. He's much more of a healer most of the time, with only the occasional offensive spell to provide cover. Today, however, is a special case. Today, Tiz has a vendetta.
"You're safe now, get to the entrance." Tiz calls to the children cowering behind one of the mine carts. The two boys, one blond and one brunette, peek out from the cart and, seeing no Black Blade in sight, profusely thank the group before fleeing to the entrance as instructed.
"Eight more, right?" Ringabel asks. He brings up the back of the group, bow in hand. The wolf mask of the Ranger's outfit hangs off the back of his neck. It's far too hot to put it on, and even the furs of the vest are a bit too warm for him. He stands a bit offset from the rest of the group, keeping an eye on the other paths around them in case of ambush.
"Yes." Agnès confirms. Her White Mage uniform thankfully has less heavy fabric than that of the Ranger, though the sheer heat of the lower mines still brings sweat to her brow. "Eight more."
"Right…" Edea says. She stomps forward in Knight armor, protected from the heat by a flame charm (and for good reason; she'd boil alive without it), but a certain lack of energy is visible in her movements. Running around and fighting in full plate is exhausting, and while she's not down yet Edea only has so much energy.
While she might not be the one to say she's tired, Ringabel has no such qualms about pointing it out. "Perhaps we might stop for a moment, good Shepherd? My dear Edea-"
"I'm not your 'dear' anything." Edea grumbles.
"-is looking a bit tired, and I think the rest of us could use a chilling mist. You're looking rather hot under the collar yourself Tiz, in a literal sense I mean."
"We don't have time to rest." Tiz insists. His grip on his sword is one of white knuckles and fervent purpose, and he points that sword to the next hallway. "There are still eight kids who need our help."
"And we'll have none to offer if we're dead." Ringabel responds. "I'm not asking for long. A minute, most."
"Those kids don't have a minute."
"I think they do." Ringabel says. "Tiz, you've worked fields as a child. Are you seriously telling me that one minute more or less would have been life or death?"
"Working fields and mine work are two different things." Tiz insists.
"Quite, but not so different than a minute more or less will matter." Ringabel insists. "And again, we must be alive to help them. It wouldn't do for us to die in battle before we finish our job."
"I don't usually say this, but I agree with Ringabel." Edea says. "And not just because I'm tired. He's just right. We've been fighting and running for an hour. We need to take a minute. You can't tell me you aren't starting to run out of mana Tiz, you've been slinging way more spells than Agnès and even she's looking a bit shaky."
That gives Tiz pause. He hadn't noticed Agnès' tiredness, and now that he's looking he can in fact see heavy breathing and a faltering stance.
"I…" Tiz glances to the next hallway again, and his vision swims for a second as a brief flash of vertigo comes over him. Maybe he has been casting too much in too short a time. "Fine. One minute."
Everyone else takes a moment to sit, pulling out waterskins and ethers and potions. Tiz sips his own drinks, but refuses to sit. He stands, sword in hand and the tip tapping the stone floor, looking ahead and straining his ears to listen.
He doesn't know what he expects to hear. What meets him is the faint clanging of work with metal pickaxes, occasional orders being barked, and the creak of large minecarts being moved. There's no screaming children, no desperate cries, no life slipping out of his grasp as he stands here resting.
Reluctantly, Tiz goes to one knee, unwilling to fully sit down but acknowledging he has to rest a moment.
Behind him, unseen, his three companions share a concerned look. "Intense" is not usually a word that describes the shepherd, but today he embodies that term fully. It's… unnerving, worrying even, for the boy who is usually the calmest and most generically rational of the group to abruptly become the most headstrong and reckless.
Edea and Ringabel both turn their heads to Agnès, urging her to ask, but the vestal shakes her head. "Later." She mouths. This isn't the time.
The minute, a few minutes actually, comes to an end all too quickly. Tiz pushes himself up with renewed urgent energy, fire already dancing around his free hand again. Despite his lack of armor he still takes point, too impatient to wait for Edea to lumber ahead of him.
Tiz doesn't bother to wait for the next Black Blade soldier to notice him. He slings Fira without hesitation, and when that doesn't deal with his target he runs the man through with his sword.
He would have gotten a spear to the head if it weren't for Ringabel's quick shooting, and it's only thanks to Edea's shield that the two swordsmen Tiz didn't notice don't stab him in the side.
Wind rushes down the hallway at the group's back, courtesy of Agnès, and blows dust and debris into the eyes of their attackers. Tiz capitalizes and lunges forward. He bestows fire on his blade and slashes away at the Black Blades.
His attack nets him two kills, but also a shoulder wound from the spearman. Agnès deals with that quickly via Cure, and Tiz rounds on their last foe only to find Ringabel has shot the man dead in the intervening time.
For a brief moment Tiz meets Ringabel's eye, and he can see a frown on his face and his mouth opening to say something, so Tiz turns away before he can speak and instead approaches the pair of children hiding behind a crate to give them the usual reassurances and directions.
He makes sure not to look at Ringabel as he shoos the children out. That only helps so much though, because Agnès is fully willing to give him a worried look as well.
"Tiz…" She says.
"We need to keep moving." Tiz insists, already pushing towards the next hallway. "Come on."
Edea's words aren't so easily stifled. "Stop rushing ahead Tiz! You're being reckless."
For a brief, angry moment Tiz wants to remind her of all the times she's done just that, but he bites his tongue. His friends don't deserve his ire. Instead he nods and murmurs a halfhearted promise to be more careful, and then urges everyone to please hurry up already.
Tiz restrains himself in the next fight, allowing Edea to slowly lumber forward in her armor, wasting precious time the children might not have, hurry up Edea we have to move quicker or they're going to slip out of our grasp.
Battle brings a sense of progress, of doing something worthwhile. Stuck behind Edea, Tiz lashes out with Fira, bathing the Black Blades in red flame and cranking up the heat of the tunnels even more.
The Black Blades die to flames and Edea's spear, and Tiz nods grimly. He's doing good here.
No one is slipping away from him this time.
"Four more." Ringabel says, nudging the kids back towards the entrance. "Almost done."
The next fight goes much the same as the last one. Tiz allows Edea to take point, and they safely (relatively speaking) clear the tunnel. The last group is a bit more problematic.
Four swordsmen, two spearmen, two axemen. The group is outnumbered two-to-one.
They don't have any element of surprise this time. The Black Blades finally figured out that they were being picked off, and all the rest of them are now sitting here, guarding the last two children, knowing that the group would come.
The problem is that the kids are in front of the Black Blades.
"You… you call yourself Black Blades!?" Edea shouts down the hallway. "You work under Master Kamiizumi! There's no way he would approve of this!"
The Black Blades don't answer, they just raise their weapons.
The two sides are at a standoff. The group can't move forward or shoot because of the kids, and the Black Blades can't do anything because they don't have ranged weapons.
The kids glance fretfully, fearfully, between the two groups, waiting for something to happen. Their dirty hands clutch at their sleeves and each other, hoping to find some measure of comfort.
"Well?" Edea barks to the Black Blades after a moment. "What are you going to do? You're in a dead end. I promise if you surrender we'll let you live."
"You're outnumbered." One of the Blades snaps back. "You should be surrendering."
"If you're so certain you'll win, why are you hiding behind children then?" Edea retorts. "Come on out!"
"Put down your weapons and we will." Another Blade says.
"Unacceptable." Agnès says. "Stop this foolishness, please. No harm need come to anyone."
"As if we'd listen to a witch." The first Blade scoffs. "If you want these kids to stay alive, you're going to back waaay off, and we're going to take them up with us to the entrance."
"Unacceptable." Agnès repeats, but with less conviction.
"What choice do we have?" Ringabel says quietly, so only his companions can hear. "The lives of the children come first."
Tiz clenches his fist so hard his nails draw blood from his palm. He can't let these kids slip away from him, but… but Ringabel is right. They don't really have a choice. Reluctantly, Tiz nudges Edea back, and the girl bares her teeth in frustration but complies. As the group slowly inches backwards, the Blades slowly move up the hall, pushing the kids in front of them.
Eventually they move far enough back that the Black Blades come to a split in the path, and they start backing down it.
Tiz moves to follow, so they can keep the Blades in sight, but Ringabel stops him.
"What, Ringabel?" Tiz hisses.
The man raises an eyebrow at Tiz's tone, but pushes on. "We can loop around and cut them off. There's another path, remember."
Tiz blinks. No, he didn't remember. "Oh, uh, okay. Let's go."
"Two of us should stay here and follow from behind, in case they try to reposition the kids to the front." Edea says. "I'll stay. I'm too heavy in my armor anyways."
"I shall stay too, in order to protect my dear Edea." Ringabel proclaims.
"For the last time Ringabel…" Edea grumbles.
"Then we shall go around." Agnès says. "Right Tiz?"
"Right." Tiz nods. "Don't get caught you two."
"We shall endeavor to do just that." Ringabel promises.
With that, Tiz takes off at a dead sprint down the hallway, hell-bent on making way around before the Blades get anywhere close to the stairway to the next level. Hot air rushes past his face as he moves, and the light level constantly shifts as he passes lantern after lantern.
Tiz's heart is pounding so loudly in his ears he almost doesn't hear Agnès calling out to him, begging him to please slow down just a little bit.
But hear he does. So he reduces his speed to a brisk jog to let Agnès keep up. "Sorry Agnès."
"It… is fine." Agnès pants. "But you seem to be in quite the hurry today."
"Kids are in danger Agnès." Tiz says.
"I know. But today you are… reckless, intense, not yourself." Agnès whispers.
"Am I?"
"Maybe. The circumstances are rather sickening." Agnès admits. "But we've been in similarly intense circumstances before, and you've not acted like this."
"I have to save them, Agnès."
"I know, of course. We have to save them."
"I- yes, we can't fail again."
"Again?"
"We can't fail." Tiz repeats, not at all in the mood to explain what 'again' means in this context. "Now get ready, I think we've made it around."
Agnès nods and puts a hand on his back, pushing a Regen and a Haste spell into his body. "Ready."
Tiz lights his sword on fire again. "So am I. Let's go."
The shepherd charges around the corner at a dead sprint, determined not to give the Black Blades even the slightest chance to reposition the kids. Fira flares from his free hand for a second before he's in range to start hacking with his sword. Slicing winds accompany his charge, courtesy of Agnès.
Still, it's a two on eight fight for the moment, and Tiz doesn't have heavy armor. Swords and spears and axes find their way to his skin, but rather than backpedaling Tiz keeps hacking away. He wields his sword like an axe to branches, cutting away everything between him and the children. It's only when his chest meets the point of a spear and Agnès slams a Cura spell into him that he realizes Agnès was right, and he is being reckless, and Tiz then uses the lingering effects of Haste to disengage for a moment and get healed.
Thankfully Edea and Ringabel aren't passive. They heard the fighting and rushed in, and when Tiz looks past all the angry soldiers he can see two little boys hiding behind Ringabel and his bow, and the haze of desperate focus lifts enough for Tiz to properly take in the battle and think for a moment.
Fire curls in his fingers again, but this time Tiz uses it differently. He splashes a line of it down the hall, splitting the Black Blades' force in half and stopping Edea from getting swarmed.
With another Haste spell from Agnès applied to his back, Tiz raises his sword and returns to the fight. He dances at the edge of the battle this time, slipping under a spearpoint and slicing his flaming blade across the man's face, and then lending more cover fire to Edea again. The girl has waded straight into the middle of the battle, making full use of her heavy armor.
For all their numbers, once the battle is actually underway it is quickly clear the Black Blades can't stand up to the group. They can't match the storm of magic from Agnès and Tiz, nor Edea's superior armor, nor Ringabel's constant stream of arrows. Hemmed in from both sides, the Black Blades are quickly torn apart by fire and metal.
With the last of the Black Blades burning in a heap on the floor, Tiz finally allows the tip of his sword to fall to the ground. He's breathing heavily, much more than he would have expected, and he almost falls when he takes a step forward and needs to lean against the wall for a moment.
The adrenaline is leaving his system all at once, and the exhaustion of it hits him like a bull, but Tiz feels clam, fulfilled. He did it. He didn't fail again.
It's a bitter pill to swallow a few minutes later when one of the kids mentions that a new boy, Egil, is not at all safe, having been taken to the Starkfort earlier that day.
Poor Tiz. He is not okay. He pretends to be, but he isn't.