c/w: graphic depictions of violence
What most didn't understand was that Myrddin wasn't just a bridge. Sure, when people talked about it, that's what they meant, but there was city on either side. City to fight through, ground to cover.
"Their main fortifications are on the bridge itself," Lorenz said to his soldiers. His. He'd commanded at Garreg Mach five years ago, but those had been Church forces. These were Riegan, his people.
Goddess, he really thought of them as his own people, didn't he? It should have bothered him, but it didn't in the slightest.
"Judith has us cutting forward as far and quickly as we can. We meet in the middle with the Gloucester soldiers, then assault the bridge."
He looked at the people who had their eyes locked on him. These weren't rookies, it was battle hardened veterans that nodded back.
"Thank you, for accepting me as your commander," he said to them. "I know I am not Duke Riegan, but I will lead you as if you are my own."
"We know," said a young woman in the front.
He smiled. "Then let's begin." Gripping his lance tightly, he shouted, "Advance!"
"You know what they call her? Hilda 'Dragonslayer'. I heard she killed three aerial demonic beasts herself at Garreg Mach."
"One she jumped off the Goddess Tower to kill!"
"She's Lord Holst's sister for sure."
She paid the whispering soldiers behind her no mind. Hilda's eyes were focused on the river, staying under the cover of the morning fog. Her boat, with three others behind hers, quietly neared the bridge while Lorenz waged war on the front lines.
A hand rested on her shoulder. "Dragonslayer," Judith said, her smirk teasing. "That's a story I need to hear."
Hilda managed to roll her eyes amidst building nerves. "It's not much of a story. Did some stupid things, they happened to work."
Judith laughed silently. "Funny, I say the same about being the Hero of Daphnel."
Quiet resumed as they got to one of the bridge's struts. Hands passed grappling hooks to Hilda and Judith. The fog had, it seemed, completely covered their advance.
"May the Goddess be with you," Judith said, giving Hilda a hug from the side.
"See you on the other side," Hilda replied.
Both flung their hooks up the bridge, the metal tines latching into the stone. The rest of the boats pulled up at different parts of the bridge and did the same.
Arm over arm, Hilda climbed the rope. The strain of her light armor and axe on her body sapped rapidly at her strength, but she persisted. Judith made better time than her, less weighed down by gear. Behind both women, their teams followed.
As Hilda crested the side, a body already hit the ground. Judith removed her rapier from an imperial before they could raise alarm.
"Good luck," Judith said before turning around. She crouched, making her way forward past various boxes for cover. They'd scouted the bridge on wyvernback, picking their infiltration points with stealth in mind. Judith's target was a ballista on the bridge.
Hilda's was a bit different.
Her team was handpicked, soldiers from all reaches of the Alliance, the best of the best. While Hilda normally would have chosen people like Raphael or Claude to have her back, these would do.
She ducked behind a crate, the last obfuscation between her and the quarry. Biting her lip, she swore silently, a sentiment echoed quietly by her team.
The demonic beast was no dragon, not this time. Nor was it the mass-produced quadrupedal beast that the Empire fielded regularly.
This thing, this Goliath, was a bipedal hulking monstrosity. Bulging muscles beneath dark flesh rippled and it sat, waiting, at the front of the bridge. The Goliath stared forward at the conflict through its metal mask which came to a sharpened point. It did not move, it did not react. It stood stalwart, controlled, as the Alliance army began to cut a swath through the city of Myrddin.
"We have to kill that?" muttered one of her soldiers. He was a younger man, experienced, but nervous.
Hilda privately shared the feeling. "We are going to kill that." If only she felt as confident as she sounded.
The man nodded. "Dragonslayer." The other members of the team echoed the word. "Dragonslayer."
She removed the silver axe from her back and whispered a prayer to the Goddess. Hilda stood up and approached hell's spawn.
"Shit!" Dorothea yelled as a crossbow bolt tore into a bust of Ordelia. Stone fragments showered her and she dove to the floor, hiding behind the display.
Another bolt came from the end of the hallway, catching one of her agents in the sternum. He fell, unmoving.
They'd made it so close to the master bedroom, where the Ordelias were being kept. Just down the hall were the dual doors, their destination. And in between, a dozen guards, out numbering them two to one.
Dorothea whispered a quick prayer for Mercedes and reached around the pedestal the bust sat on and hurled a bolt of lightning down the regal hallway.
It collided with a door one of the guards had opened for cover, blasting it off its hinges. The guard, a young woman, fell down but scrambled up unharmed.
"This is suicide!" shouted one of her agents, Leland, as the crossbow bolts came in force. His position mirrored her on the other side of the hallway. And he wasn't wrong, if they got surrounded then that would be the end of them.
"Buy me time!" Dorothea shrieked, turning her attention to her hands as they began to weave magic. She didn't look up at the warbled scream as one of her other agents fell further down the hall. That left her, Leland, and two more.
"How much?" Leland flicked a gust of wind down the hall.
"As much as possible!" she answered. Before her, an orb of lightning formed. A second of five began to coalesce.
"Fuck!" Leland shouted, making rapid movements with his hands. Peeking out of cover, he threw a tempest down the hall. The hail of bolts lessened for a moment.
The second orb finished. She moved to the third.
Leland rolled into the center of the hallway in the lull. A ball of fire answered him, deflected at the last moment with a gust of wind. His rebuke took shape in an icicle, flung at the mage.
Three orbs. Two more.
He hit the mage, ice-knife through their eye, but it didn't stop three crossbow bolts sprouting from Leland's chest.
Four.
Leland toppled over, dead before hitting the ground. His head fell to her side, vacant eyes still losing light as they watched her.
Five.
"Fall in!" Dorothea shouted, standing up with the five balls of lightning sizzling around her. The smell of ozone blanketed the hallway. Her right hand was aloft, all five positioned equidistant in front of her.
The first bolt came. Lightning shot from her shield formed from the orbs and lanced the metal pointed projectile, knocking it from the air.
A woman behind Dorothea feathered an arrow into the guard who had fired with her shortbow. Angela knocked another arrow.
A second bolt flew. A third. Both found no purchase on her, blasted out of the air by magic. Slowly, Dorothea began to walk forward, one step at a time. Sweat poured down her face, holding five simultaneous spells at once.
Angela delivered death to another while the other agent, Emer, combusted another in a scorch.
Three more bodies fell and Dorothea was halfway down the hall.
"All at once!" a voice from the enemy ordered. "On three! One, tw—"
His plan would have worked if Emer hadn't chosen that moment to cast a ragnarok in the center of the hall. It hit none of them, but detonated in cacophony.
Confused, the soldiers fired, dyssynchronous. Arrows met Dorothea's shield of lightning and were batted away like flies.
Angela picked another off. Only five remained.
Wracked with tremors, both of Dorothea's hands extended and the orbs of lightning moved forward until they were interposed between both sides.
A brave, or perhaps idiotic, woman stepped out of cover, holding her crossbow up. She fired just as Dorothea triggered the orbs.
The hellstorm erupted, disintegrating the crossbow bolt that had been fired. The resulting shockwave knocked Dorothea and the other two off their feet.
Her ears ringing, Dorothea stumbled to her feet. Her voice was muffled, distant. "We here?"
"Goddessdamn," Angela answered. Dorothea could see blood trickling from one of her ears.
"Emer?" Dorothea said, mind unfocused still.
The woman pushed Dorothea out of the way as a crossbow bolt struck where would have been her heart. Instead, it buried itself into Emer's back.
Like a whipcrack, Dorothea flung her arm out towards the sole survivor of her magic. A lightning bolt emerged, flame joining it as Dorothea compressed the elements together in an isolated instant of time.
When the smoke cleared, the guard's chest was ruptured open, like a meteor had found its mark in him.
"Sothis," Angela muttered. "Dorothea, you ain't some regular mage. How the hell are you doing that?"
She said nothing, walking forward through her carnage to the doors. Resting a hand on the handles, she opened them.
The room was empty.
Claude was on his feet as soon as he heard the noise from the hallway. Eyes narrowed, he carefully picked up the knife he always kept on his desk.
He crept to the door and eased it open. Checking his surroundings, he looked down the hallway. A good thirty feet down, in the light of the full moon through the window, Ferdinand lay in a pool of blood.
Above him, stood Petra, silver sword dripping blood. She turned, seeing him.
Petra wore black, a sleeveless skintight top with pants the same color. There was no adornment to it, no frill or filigree. It was a killing outfit. She wore her hair in a thick, single braid down her back.
"Claude," she breathed, voice less accented than he remembered.
"Did you kill him?" he asked, eyes on Ferdinand, his friend.
"I have orders to kill the traitor," she said, Fódlanic far more practiced and even. Ferdinand groaned, still alive. "But the orders I have to kill you are the priority." Petra pointed her fine silver sword towards him.
Claude stilled.
Slowly, she walked forward. Petra cut a leering figure in the moon, the stellar rays of light glinting on her blade.
"Our alliance means nothing to you?" he tried to reason. "I thought we were allies. Friends."
Her walk remained uninterrupted. "Things have changed." Petra brought the sword up in both hands as she approached to strike.
The knife shook in his hand. This wasn't a fight he could win. "And the rest of us? Dorothea? Ferdinand? Ignatz?"
A hitch in her step manifested and she growled. Like a predator, she bent low to the ground, about to attack.
"Petra."
Her face contorted in pain at hearing Shamir's voice behind her, down the hall. "Shamir, don't do this," she begged, not turning around.
A hiss of steel. Shamir unsheathed a sword, something Claude wasn't aware she knew how to wield. Or maybe she didn't. On closer examination, it was Ferdinand's blade.
"I'll kill you," Petra said. It wasn't a threat—it was a statement of fact, a diagnosis of their skill disparity.
Though her face was veiled by darkness, enough light revealed to show a sadness to her expression. "I know. But atonement doesn't let us pick our battles."
Petra swore loudly in her native tongue before spinning like a tornado, engaging Shamir in combat.
Judith had earned the name Hero of Daphnel in a border war between Alliance and Kingdom. Historians claimed war was an exaggeration to call it, but Judith would disagree. For three straight months, Judith held Castle Daphnel through hell while the Alliance and Kingdom tried diplomacy. The affair was a complicated one, fraught with turmoil between Daphnel and Galatea that coincided with the death of King Lambert.
She hadn't been a part of the proceedings. Galatean forces assaulted her city and laid siege to her home. She had been a prisoner in her own home to foreign invaders. And they had not been kind. Her soldiers were slaughtered day after day. But she stood firm, holding the castle with as few as twelve other soldiers by the end.
In her eyes, it had been a failure. So many of her people lay dead, soldier and civilian alike. But the Alliance praised her, pinned medals on her uniform, and called her Hero. Duke Silas von Riegan had congratulated her on not giving the Galateans an inch of the border.
Luck, she tried to say, only good fortune that they managed to hold so long. The rest dismissed it as being humble.
Each time she walked into battle, soldiers looked up to her. And each time, she knew some wouldn't come back because of her.
Judith was reminded of this for every death she saw, as three men disintegrated in a ball of fire.
"Focus the mages!" Judith screamed as she continued to press forward on the bridge. Barely fifty warriors were at her back, and they were getting picked off fast. But they were close to the target.
It was a grand, magical ballista, the latest from Hanneman himself. The bolts it launched were charged with energy that detonated on impact. They'd been harrying their soldiers all morning.
It was beginning to look like an impossible task. But Judith persisted, her rapier skirting around the armor of an imperial and finding flesh between the plates. As fast as she'd stuck him, she moved onto the next. An artery in his heart had been severed, he didn't know he was dead yet.
"Reinforcements!" screamed an Alliance woman.
Judith swore, but didn't let up. She cut down one, two, three more and covered the short distance to the ballista. But she'd pushed too fast into the center of the bridge where it had been assembled. She was surrounded on all sides.
"My, my, well if this isn't icing on the cake," cackled a familiar voice.
"Acheron," Judith growled, stepping closer to the ballista if only for a bit of cover for her back. Its operator was dead or missing, neither of which concerned her. She held her blade aloft.
The mustached man slowly strolled forward, letting his turncoat Alliance soldiers do battle with Judith's. "A daring move, too bad it was expected. Still, I'll applaud your bravery."
Judith glanced at the ballista.
Magic flared in his hands, surrounding soldiers taking a wary step back. Idle gusts of wind blew her ponytail.
"Last words?" he asked dramatically, making a show of looking around for any of her allies. "Seems you led your people to death. Again."
"Fuck you, Gloucester dog," Judith said. Grabbing the handles of the ballista, she pushed it as hard as she could until it faced the ground. Acheron opened his mouth to speak as his eyes widened with horror.
"Burn in hell," Judith snarled.
Judith fired the explosive bolt at the ground, the concussive blast catching them all.
Raphael roared in rage, his bellow turning heads around his proximity. A blade had pierced his shoulder from a Gloucester soldier. Judith had the presence of mind to send some trusted people with him, but they were quickly outnumbered.
He huffed, backing away with his dozen or so people who were left, their backs pressed up against a small house. The Gloucester army in its near entirety pushed down against them, hammer to the anvil that was the house.
"No quarter!" shouted Raphael, smashing his gauntlets together in a flurry of sparks. "No quarter!"
The enemy paused, wary of this titan who resisted even with a blade sticking out from his shoulder. A brave soul stepped forward, axe in hand.
It wasn't even a challenge like Caspar had been. The tines of his claws smashed through armor, breaking several of the man's ribs. His second fist clocked their head, dead.
"Who's next?" Raphael shouted, seeing red. He wouldn't fall here, not to these people, not while Maya waited for him. As he moved his arm, he could feel the blade in the shoulder cut deeper. With a quick glance to his lieutenant, the man grabbed the hilt and removed it from his back. The geyser of blood that came with was torrential.
Raphael didn't scream. He grunted, but showed no fear in the eyes of death as half a foot of steel was pulled from him.
Or so it looked to the Gloucester forces that pressed down upon him. Where his wound was, tendrils of flesh began to knit back together, the flow of blood ceasing. The delicate hand of a physic spell was familiar to him.
"Marianne," he breathed, a rumbled of a chuckle coming from deep within. "Goddess bless you."
Sure enough, distant sounds of conflict were a sign that she'd begun making her way to him with Edmund soldiers. Grinning, Raphael smashed the gauntlets together with renewed vigor.
"Alright, who wants some?"
Their best wasn't good enough.
Hilda's team was scattered and dead before the Goliath, its titanic form looming before her. Bloody fists brushed away the bodies of Alliance and Empire alike, the creature showing no compassion after she'd killed its pilot.
Those Goddessdamn bracelets, but she was still familiar with them. Familiar with what happened when their wearer died.
"Alright, you bastard," Hilda muttered, holding a bloody axe in her hands. Her silver one had been lost during the scuffle and she'd scavenged a steel one. The new weight was comforting.
Above them, wyverns and pegasi collided in the sky. The Empire's general was a dominating force in aerial combat and Ladislava forced Alliance riders to focus on her.
Which meant no aerial support for Hilda.
Beneath the metal mask, the Goliath screeched. A higher-pitched wail than she expected, but no less ear shattering. Her hand flew to her temple, head pounding with the shockwave.
As she recovered, the Goliath smashed one of its gauntleted fists into the ground where she stood. And that would have been the end of her, were it not for the explosion on the other side of the bridge that threw the beast off its rhythm.
Judith. Hilda offered a prayer to any deity that watched and ran forward. As the fist of the giant pulled back, she smashed the blade of her axe into its hide.
The crescent blade barely bit through, drawing no blood. The Goliath growled, sweeping its hand across the ground to knock her off her feet.
Hilda held up her axe and took the brunt of the attack. The wide head of her weapon protected her from the force, but her feet still slid across the stone bridge as she was carried with.
Roaring, the Goliath pulled its hand back. Hilda glanced at her axe, handle warped beyond use. She looked up at the punch that was flying her way.
"Fuck."
Forgoing the weapon, Hilda made a leap of faith to the side, saving herself from the brunt of the blow. But there was nothing to stop a chunk of rubble hitting her in the side, landing atop her.
Dazed, she watched the Goliath roar with victory, basking in the moment. How human, she thought as it lumbered closer.
And so ended Hilda Valentine Goneril, she thought, as the fist drew back again. Hilda pushed on the rock that partially covered her, tired muscles gasping in pain as she failed to move it.
The fist never fell. Instead, a cry of pain—or surprise—from the best refocused her attention on it. A lance stuck out of its shoulder, the Goliath looking at wherever it had come from.
Hilda roared, feeling the power of her Crest through her as she pushed the rubble off of her. Nothing seemed to be broken.
Pure reflex caught the axe that was tossed to her, a silver one she'd lost on the battlefield minutes before.
"In over your head?" Lorenz asked, walking up beside her, another lance in his hands. Glyphs were inscribed down the shaft, pulsating soft red light.
She grinned. "What took you so long?"
"The army between you and I," Lorenz chuckled, eyes watching the beast. The Goliath hadn't acted yet, sizing them up as a predator would. For a moment, both children of the Alliance stared down a god without a hint of fear as the world went to hell around them.
"Appreciate the assist, but get going," Hilda said. "Judith is getting overrun." She rolled her shoulders a few times, adjusting to the weight of her weapon.
Lorenz swore. "Be safe, Hilda." He took off, running to where the explosion had been.
The Goliath made to attack him, but Hilda let out a battle cry, closing the distance. Silver met flesh on its leg, biting deeper as the power of the Goneril line burned through her.
"You're mine, beastie," she growled, backpedaling out of its retribution. If the monster was too tough where she could reach, then that just meant she had to where she couldn't.
A plan formed, a familiar plan. All creatures had weak points on their head. Hilda ran, away from the Goliath, praying desperately that it would work.
The Goliath surged forward with frightening speed, throwing a wild haymaker at her. But Hilda was too fast with her Crest's aid, escaping from the bombardment of flesh and stone. She reached the edge of the bridge and glanced up. A smile curled on her lips.
Hilda jumped off the bridge.
Freefalling for exactly three seconds, the wind was knocked out of her as a pegasus caught her. Grinning, she glanced at the rider and lost the thanks she'd been about to say.
Flayn looked back at her, shocked.
No time. "Get me to its head!" Hilda ordered. She pulled herself onto the winged horse, poised at the ready.
"Right!" Flayn yelped, tugging the reins hard. Her pegasus pulled them up into a sharp ascent, running parallel to the Goliath as it looked over the edge of the bridge at them.
Its growl crescendoed into a roar, but Flayn's mount was too quick. It avoided a strike, hugging close to the beast. With a practiced strike, Flayn stuck her lance into the less protected stomach, letting the tip of the spear cut a shallow line up the Goliath as they ascended.
As they reached its apex, the ghastly eyes looked through its mask. Unfettered, tormented rage stared out. "Now?" Flayn shouted as they crested the head.
"Gravity!" Hilda managed to respond over the wind.
Flayn understood, her pegasus flying even higher. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty. When she realized the extent of Hilda's plan, she screamed, "You'll die!"
With a dark grin, Hilda said, "No, it will." She jumped from the pegasus.
From the height, she could see the Alliance army fighting on Alliance soil against the Empire. And on the opposite side of the bridge, she watched an army of white fighting the Empire on the opposite side. Not understanding, but smirking nonetheless, she turned her attention away from what she'd learn was the Coalition army.
The Goliath looked straight up at her and she tilted her shoulder to redirect the fall. Avoiding the mask's defenses, she set her eyes on the throat, unprotected at this angle.
Wind tore through her as she picked up speed. The Goliath tried to bring an arm up to stop her, but it was far too slow.
At terminal velocity, Hilda's axe lacerated the beast's throat.
The axe's head made it two feet into the flesh before breaking. The force of the impact went first into her arms, shattering the shoulder of the arm that held most of the axe's weight. But it succeeded in slowing her.
A shower of ichor bathed her, maroon blood blinding her as she continued to the ground. Her impact was the most painful thing she'd ever experienced.
Sight wasn't needed to know that the following crash was the dead Goliath.
Her wounds began to close immediately as Flayn took action. With a triumphant inhale of breath, Hilda let unconsciousness take her.
Petra danced back after the initial clash of swords.
Shamir flexed her arms a few times in an effort to warm her muscles up. She held Ferdinand's sword up, a slim duelist's blade made for dexterity rather than strength.
The woman of Brigid began to prowl back and forth like a caged lion, her attention fully focused on Shamir. But she did not engage.
"Just go, Petra," Shamir pled.
"If I go back empty handed, Brigid is finished," Petra snarled. Back and forth.
"You have Gloucester's death," Claude said, slowly backing away.
"Gloucester was a mistake," Petra said. Turning back to look at Claude, she saw him retreating. Her legs tensed, a prelude to action.
Shamir swore and leapt into the fray.
Petra almost seemed to expect it, her silver blade meeting Shamir's. She pushed forward, putting Shamir on the back foot while she weathered the tempest.
"Back. Down." Petra grunted as she pulled away for a moment before committing to a lateral slice.
Shamir blocked it and didn't respond. Sweeping a foot out, she hooked it behind Petra's to trip her on a backpedal. But the assassin had been taught the very trick by Shamir, knowing to kick forward. Boot met knee and Shamir gasped in pain.
"Back down!" Petra repeated, scoring a thin cut across Shamir's chest as the knight tried to roll away. "I have no orders to kill you!"
Ferdinand's blade hissed forward in a one-handed strike, which Petra blocked. But Shamir's other hand hit Petra in the stomach, hard. A trick courtesy of Catherine.
"Shouldn't have gone after my friends then," Shamir spat.
Furious, Petra recovered and began to rain blow after blow on Shamir's defenses. "I looked up to you!" Silver met silver. "I trusted you!" Another strike slid down Shamir's sword, sparks giving more color to Petra's anger. "You and Catherine were like parents to me!" Shamir's defenses faltered.
Petra snuck a diagonal slice through Shamir's guard and buried her blade two inches into her abdomen. Shamir gasped in pain.
Petra snarled. "You left me to them." A heartbeat, then, "Some family you are."
The fight left Shamir and Petra kicked her in the chest, knocking her off her blade. The archer fell to the ground near Ferdinand, not strong enough to mount a stand.
Shamir looked up at Petra standing over her. Tears were in the woman's eyes, both rage and agony fighting for control in her.
"They're my family too," Shamir murmured.
Petra's eyes hardened and she smashed a boot onto Shamir's face.
Author Notes: You know what's better than an update? A double update. Second half goes up tomorrow.
Editing Notes:
7/26/2021: Minor grammar adjustments.
1/7/2022: Minor grammar adjustments.