The Massacre Zone

Rain poured over the plain in unending torrents and soaked Lucina's cape. Horses neighed, and their nervous prancing aided the tension every last one of the rebels felt in their muscles. They huddled around in silence, a few fidgeted with their weapons, and the rest stared ahead with a mixture of grim determination and fear.

Beyond a thousand-yard strip of barren land and a moat waited the red sandstone walls of Lycia. From where Lucina stood beside her horse, in the shadow of the last tree line, the city's defenses more than delivered on their reputation as insurmountable obstacles. The Empire had done well to forbid fields or farmhouses, anything that could provide an enemy with cover in a thousand-yard radius around the walls. The massacre zone, as a handful of Roy's knights liked to call it, provided the archers on Lycia's battlement with a generous opportunity to mow down an advancing army. Then came the moat, the first of three between Lucina and the royal palace. And finally the wall itself.

A two-story monstrosity of smooth stone against which the rain squalls splashed without success. Impossible to climb.

A single bridge crossed the moat and led towards the northern gates, likewise fortified through arrow slits and a portcullis that could withstand the force of an army. An army Lucina didn't have.

Still, despite the storm-clouded sky, the situation could have looked bleaker.

As her scouts had reported, the bulk of Roy's army awaited her arrival near the southern gates, where the river from Aurelis and the Copper Mountains flowed into the moat. A hundred-men cavalry supported by five times as many foot soldiers stood in formation and let the rain wash away their fighting spirits.

Roy could have mobilized ten times as many troops. But either he knew of the small number of fighters under Lucina's command, or he didn't want to loosen his grip on his other territories.

Whichever the case, Lycia's northern gates only called a handful of guards on the battlements its own, and they paced between the merlons with the bored shuffle of routine. Defeating them was the key to victory. Once inside the city, Roy's surplus in numbers wouldn't matter anymore, not when the rebels advanced quickly.

Lucina glanced at the sky, but she failed to spot anything amidst the angry storm clouds. She had gone over the plan with Ike many times; no reason to falter now. Still, when she swung herself into the saddle, her breath stuttered.

Gregor guided his horse to her side. "Quite the view, isn't it? Didn't think I would see these walls again in my lifetime. Didn't think I'd ever want to."

"You travelled to Lycia before the war?" Lucina asked. "As one of my father's knights?"

Gregor laughed. "King Marth didn't bother with status and the length of your family tree, but even he'd think twice before calling me a knight. I only swung my sword to ensure the next meal in my stomach until he showed me a better reason to fight. No, Lycia was a mercenary job for me. Eliwood had a nice stack of coin to offer, but it wasn't the kind of business you'd tell your neighbors about."

"I didn't know…"

Lucina fell silent. The walls of Lycia captured her gaze once more, and she felt smaller still, hopelessly outmatched. Her fingers buried themselves into the leather reins, a terrible faux pas for any self-respecting rider. Gregor noticed.

"It's only natural to be nervous," he said. "I've been in this business for almost as long as I can remember, and I still catch a dry taste in my mouth at a sight like this. But you're in control. Not your fear. Count to ten and breathe."

Lucina did as Gregor suggested. Her heartbeat normalized. The cramp in her left shoulder vanished.

"Better?" Gregor asked.

Lucina smiled. "Yes, thank you."

"Always glad to help. Cordelia learned the same lesson from me, and now she handles it better than I do." He laughed this kind of laugh that trickles away before it can take full shape. Lucina felt better regardless.

Gregor fell back in line next to Soren. Both were drenched in rainwater but ready to ride out to death and victory. Upon a gesture from Lucina, the rest of the rebels mounted, and while she had lost count of all the names and faces, each one of them looked at her with absolute determination and absolute confidence in her.

They waited for the sign.

For several long seconds, nothing happened. Only the wind howled as it shook the many Pheraen flags on the battlements.

Then, Cherche's wyvern dashed out of the clouds where it had circled and knocked the first quartette of Pheraen soldiers from the barbican on the gate's righthand side. Its bloodthirsty shriek called the defenders to action in an instance. They abandoned their posts in utter disarray and hurried to encircle the foreign wyvern that sat on their barbican like a massive grey crow among redbreasts.

Only one soldier remained at the gate. A lousy protection for the massive wheels that opened the portcullis.

Lucina straightened in her stirrups and looked down the line of her followers. They no longer needed a poetic motivational speech. Everyone knew what they stood to win.

"The Pheraen Empire has had its way for long enough," Lucina shouted, and her horse threw its head back as though it could not wait to gallop into battle. "Let's hit them where it hurts."

The assembly sounded its battle cry, and the moment Lucina spurred her horse for the gates, all eighty odd rebels charged. The barren massacre zone disappeared in a mess of mud splashes and hooves.

Two hundred yards less.

A first attentive Pheraen soldier shouted a warning at his comrades, but Cherche and her wyvern still ruled the battlements, and a swipe from the thorned tail sent the man over the wall.

Five hundred yards less. The wall grew bigger until its bulky shape took up Lucina's entire field of view. Halfway across the massacre zone, the Lorca archers under Rath's and Virion's leadership took aim. Their arrows pierced armor plates and chainmail and increased the panic on the battlements. Retaliatory volleys came hesitant at best.

But none of that mattered if the gate remained closed.

Lucina searched up and down the battlement. Come on, Frederick, come on.

The massive iron portcullis grew larger still. Soon the angle would prevent her from observing what events transpired on top of the wall, and unless the gate opened beforehand, her little cavalry would break at Lycia's border like waves on Terra's cliffside.

Only one hundred yards remained.

Come on, Frederick.

Then, he emerged out of the barbican to the left, flanked by the two Pheraens Lucina had recruited at Eltrys and with whom he had entered the capital two hours ago. So, he had made it. The guards at the southern gate had bought into his disguise as a Pheraen soldier who had fled Aurelis.

Lucina breathed more easily.

Frederick knocked the guard at the opening mechanism from his feet and lunged at the man-sized wheel. The portcullis rose out of its notches under the clatter of chains and the cheers from the rebels.

Lucina spurred her horse. In three more strides, she would reach the bridge across the moat. It looked like Ike had worried about complications too much. The element of surprise had sufficed in turning the tides against the almighty enemy, and all of Roy's best knights stumbled around on the wrong side of the city.

Blinded by the rain.

A cry sounded from above the walls, louder than any roar of thunder. Lucina's horse reeled. The rebel advance halted before the bridge, every rider immobilized by this cry.

The sound of despair. The herald of the end.

Winds slashed through the rows on the battlements, flung people like match figures, and from behind the wall, a pair of massive black wings emerged. With them, they carried a wyvern. The creature dwarfed Cherche's companion, its jaw bones could sever her neck with one bite. It shrieked, shrill and bloodthirsty, and several horses left and right of Lucina threw their masters.

The black wyvern bared its fangs as though it relished the panicked screams of the animals below. And on its shoulders, between the leather wings, throned Galle.

Roy's supreme general.

His single dark eye assessed the situation with the usual grimness until his glare came to rest on Lucina. The slightest grin twitched at the corner of his lips before he raised his mace.

And behind him, in a burst of feathers and rain water, the elite of Roy's aerial forces entered the fray:

The Pegasus Knights of Talys.

A situation that had looked promising devolved into a disaster from one moment to the next. Galle's wyvern stooped, and his claws sunk into the battlements and the opening mechanism above the gate; Lucina couldn't see Frederick anymore. The wooden wheel burst, and the portcullis dropped back into place.

Dust and rubble and splinters flew high above the walls.

Lucina couldn't tear her eyes from the crumbling crenelations. Any order to her other comrades died in her throat. She couldn't breathe, smelled blood, wanted to scream, but found no voice.

Frederick…

The Pegasus Knights descended and encircled the small rebel army. Someone, a limp body, crashed into the mud. Cordelia cursed or cried; Lucina only heard her blood roaring in her ears, barely felt the rain whipping her face.

Minerva, Cherche's wyvern, screeched and rushed with shining claws towards Galle. But the black wyvern wrestled down its smaller counterpart with terrifying ease. Hot blood splashed against the stones of the barbican when Galle's wyvern drove its teeth into Minerva's shoulder.

With an agonized shriek both Cherche and her wyvern dropped from the wall into the muddy moat bank below.

Lucina struggled to stay in the saddle.

Three or four dozen spears of Pegasus Knights pushed her rebellion into a shrinking circle. Their blank, lifeless faces revealed nothing. No number of pleas or promises from Lucina would shake them, and if Roy had ordered them to lay waste to their home island, they would nevertheless obey and follow the tension of their shackles.

Galle's wyvern landed in front of the defenseless rebels. It hissed with relish as it stalked towards Minerva and pressed a paw on the tangled wings of its prize.

Lucina stared at the sky. Had Naga guided her this far only to send all these people into a battle they couldn't win? Was this the moment where she would join her father as a failed champion?

Lucina's eyes darted back and forth across the cloud ceiling. But nothing moved there to jump to her aid this time.


Tiki growled, and Ike struggled to maintain his balance on the dragon's back when she leaned into another angry air current. This was why he had never accepted Cherche's offers to fly with Minerva. If he had wanted to die, he knew better ways to throw his life away than to take a ride on a winged, oversized reptile during a thunderstorm.

The fact that Tiki's dragon form measured three times Minerva's length didn't exactly silence his concerns.

Then again, without the adrenalin overflowing his systems, Ike would have frozen to death in these biting winds by now.

He buried his numb fingers deeper into the furrows between Tiki's scales and rubbed the water from his brows with his other hand in an attempt to see past the rain curtains. Beyond Tiki's neck and through a rift in the clouds, he could make out the bulky shape of Lycia's palace far below. Somewhere within the amalgamation of towers and turrets waited King Roy. Never before had Ike been this close to achieving his goal, he already tasted the bloodstained justice for Tellius on his lips.

"Any chance we can go faster?" he shouted to make himself heard over the rain.

For an answer, Tiki flapped her wings and pushed towards the palace with renewed vigor. Enough for Ike to regret his words as he slipped half a foot down her back. If only Tiki had allowed them to equip her with a saddle. But to even make such a suggestion struck a deep wound into any Manakete's pride, so Ike could call himself lucky Tiki hadn't dropped him as soon as she had risen into the rain-lashed sky.

Damn Lucina for picking him as the Manakete's partner. She had said that he, as the strongest fighter in their party, suited the position the best. Well, flattery wouldn't win her any favors. Ike cared about killing the king in his sandstone palace and nothing else.

Thanks to the pace Tiki was darting through the clouds, he would set foot onto the balcony adjourning Roy's throne room in a matter of moments. And how long he had waited. Not anymore.

Ragnell's blank steel pressed against his back and flared with anticipation.

But in the moment before he reached out his hand to seize the triumph he had sought since he had been seven, Ike threw a look at the ground below.

The sight spelled disaster. A troop of Pegasus Knights had cut off Lucina and her fellow rebels from the open plain, and soon the enemy's spears would strike for more than air. A colossal wyvern crouched in front of the wall. It hunched over Minerva's tangled body and tensed its muscles to leap into the fray where it would shred horse and rider, armor and flesh.

No escape.

Ike had warned Lucina that the Empire hid an ace in their sleeve, that even if the position of their troops suggested unawareness, a report from the escaped soldier at Eltrys could have found its way into Roy's ear.

She had looked up at him, and with terrifying conviction she had said, "That's why I need you and Tiki to stay behind. Should anything happen, you two will be our secret triumph."

Ike forced his eyes away from the tragedy unfolding itself in the shadow of Lycia's wall and back to the palace. So close. He could make it. Most of the guards would have their hands full with the slaughter at the gate, and Ike might even slip into the throne room and confront Roy without delay.

The king would finally fall. After all these years and all the dead comrades Ike had burned and buried along the way, the head of the Empire would roll.

Ike only needed to stay silent and keep his eyes on the palace.

Lucina was a means to an end, nothing more. She had provided Ike with this opportunity to strike, and now the time had come to ban her out of his thoughts. Yes, she would die today, regardless of whether or not Ike relieved Roy of his head. And the same fate awaited the other rebels on the field outside the capital: Titania, Soren, Cherche, Cordelia.

But they had known the risk. To trade their lives for the freedom of Archanea, was that not the essence of any rebel's goal? Didn't Ike have the obligation to continue the mission and kill Roy for their sake?

No sacrifice cripples the determined man.

Ike glared at the palace, which grew larger the longer he contemplated. Then back over his shoulder to the gate.

He swallowed a lungful of cold air.

Then, he leaned forward and pressed his left heel into Tiki's side. "Change of plan. Circle back to the gate. We need to get rid of a wyvern first before we can deal with the king."

Tiki sounded her okay with a roar and, after a sharp left turn, bolted towards the northern city wall. The distance shrunk under the mighty flaps of her wings. All heads on the battlefield turned skywards when Tiki broke through the clouds like a divine sunray after a stormy night. Her battle cry caused several Pegasi to abandon formation, and in the chaos that ensued, the rebels heaved a sigh of relief.

The black imperial wyvern hissed and kicked from the ground to tackle the new threat. But before the two reptiles engaged, Ike directed Tiki into a low-altitude flight, headed straight for the gate. The dragon tail clipped several chimneys from the buildings below them. Shingles hailed onto the cobblestone street, and the screams of unsuspecting civilians rang in Ike's ears.

He stayed course.

In an explosion of bricks and dragon scales, Tiki rammed into the archway above the gate. Her four paws ripped the battlement straight from the neighboring stone structure, and debris plummeted into the moat. The portcullis fell flat out of its anchoring.

The path into the capital stood open.

Ike allowed himself a glance at the line of rebel fighters, which slowly awoke from its shock and reformed. Lucina rode at the front, and although several hundred yards and uncounted rain drops separated them, he thought to see this strange, unreadable smile on her lips.

Ike should regret his decision to return by now. Any thought on his father or Tellius' spruce forests should curl his stomach with unease and a reminder of the chance he had let pass.

But he didn't regret.

With a decisive motion that had never felt this certain, Ike drew Ragnell and faced off against the black wyvern.


The moment Ike and Tiki had crashed through the gate, Lucina had spurred her horse. The brief joy over their arrival faded in the cold of the rain, and instead her attention circled back to the battlements, where a massive hole now gaped thanks to Tiki's efforts.

Still no signs of Frederick.

Lucina buried her heels into her horse's flanks and mercilessly drove the animal across the bridge and into the mess of archway debris. Her escort, Gregor and Soren, fell back, but she couldn't care less about the battle plan she and Ike had developed, not when Frederick might bleed out under a mountain of bricks.

On the other side of the former gate, a half-destroyed set of stone steps led up to the battlements. Lucina paid the familiar line of residential dwellings and the panicked shouts of civilians no heed and galloped up the gentle stairway.

On the last step, however, her horse tripped. Lucina sailed out of the saddle and eased the impact with a roll. Her new armor did its part in protecting her bones. The air escaped her lungs regardless, and in combination with the dull aching in her left shoulder, she needed a moment to reclaim her senses. By then, her horse had fled out of sight.

Nothing moved on the battlement. The Pheraen guards had either vacated the area, or they had joined the fight on the plain below.

Lucina flinched when a roar shook the air. Above the muddy, churned-up ground of the massacre zone, Tiki and Galle's wyvern clawed at each other's throats. Their teeth flashed, their fangs sliced through the wings of the other, and thick drops of reptile blood rained onto the riders below.

Although Tiki outclassed her opponent in terms of size and muscle strength, the wyvern remained too close at her neck for her to make use of the force behind her jaws. And a quintet of Pegasus riders ascended to aid their Pheraen general.

Ike might fend of one or two of them but not all. Especially if Galle's morning star continued to chip away at his defenses.

But as much as Lucina wished to help Ike and needed to stop Galle, Frederick counted on her. She couldn't lose him, not he who had followed half a step behind her all these years, who had looked at her with awe before anyone else did. She had to repay his endless trust and all the times he had saved her. At least this once.

Only splintered pieces of wood remained where the portcullis' opening mechanism had stood; Tiki had shredded both the gears and pulleys alongside the top of the archway. If Frederick had survived the initial attack from Galle, the follow-up strike might have still killed him.

No, Lucina didn't dare to think about this scenario.

She slipped on the wet stone in her attempts to search the debris below for signs of life. Not a body. No, Frederick wouldn't leave her like this, he had sworn to stand beside her too many times to die here.

Her heart beat in her ribcage without rhythm, and Lucina could barely see past the white fireworks of panic exploding in her field of vision. She couldn't lose him.

She couldn't lose anyone else.

Her father lay dead who knew where amidst the ruins of the Glass Fortress, Roy wanted her head, who else could Lucina hold onto but the small circle of rebels under her command? Were they not the reason why she fought? And if this reason suffocated in the mud of the massacre zone or bled out under the bricks of Lycia's wall, what else could keep her going?

"FREDERICK!" Lucina's voice bounced off the ruins. If the Pheraen knights heard her, so be it.

For several long moments, only the splashing of rain answered.

Then, a grinding of stone and a voice that called her name. Lucina looked up, and there, on the other side of the hole in the battlements, beaten and rain-soaked but without a doubt alive, stood Frederick. He leaned against the nearest merlon for support and dragged one foot behind him, but even that failed to taint Lucina's relief.

He was still here, with her.

"Why are you here? Lucina…" Frederick stumbled forward. "You need to continue with the plan, I beg you."

"I'm here to save you, old man," Lucina said. She moved closer to the edge and looked for a way to get across to Frederick.

"You shouldn't stay in the open for my sake. Please, advance to the palace. I will join you shortly."

"You're wounded. I'm not leaving you here so that the next Pheraen knight can finish you off."

Lucina climbed onto a half-destroyed merlon. Perhaps four yards of nothing separated her from the other side. A risky jump, especially in armor, but she could make it.

"The others are depending on your success. You owe it to them to think of yourself before you think of me," Frederick pleaded.

Lucina gave no reply and instead focused on the slippery stone beneath her boots. The merlon only offered minimal space for a run-up. She steadied herself for the jump.

But before she took the first step, a pained roar split the air to her right, and Lucina lost balance. Galle's wyvern had landed a critical bite into one of Tiki's wings. She was rapidly losing altitude and spiraled towards the ground, followed by two spear-wielding Pegasus Knights. Lucina couldn't make out Ike in the tangle of wings and dragon limbs, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the tumbling Manakete either.

Frederick shouted her name; a warning. She needed a moment to regain control over her muscles, and only then did her ears pick up on the characteristic flap-flap of wings. And the sound was close.

Galle's wyvern descended until its leather wings filled the space between Lucina and Frederick. Dragon blood dripped from its snout. The stank of dead meat and a recent feast that streamed out of its maw overwhelmed her.

Lucina stumbled backwards. But a display of weakness would bring about her undoing. Too many eyes rested on her, always, and she would only lead her rebels to victory if she inspired in them the confidence to win.

She needed to hold her head high.

And so, although her hand trembled, Lucina unsheathed Falchion.

"Get out of here, Frederick," she shouted. "Regroup and lead as many men as you can to the palace. Let me be your shield this once."

"Lucina…"

"That's an order!"

Galle's single eye looked down at Lucina, studied her, and searched for clues that revealed how much her fighting style had improved since she had quit Roy's knights. What he found didn't seem to impress him.

Without the slightest shift in expression, Galle jumped from his wyvern and landed on the battlement in front of Lucina. A snap of his finger, and his wyvern took to the sky in pursuit of Tiki.

"It is time this children's theater comes to its foreseeable end," Galle said.

In his left hand, he spun a heavy iron morning star, and with the other one he freed the mace from his back. His stance and the air of sureness around him alone distinguished him as one of the most accomplished fighters in the Pheraen Empire, a supreme general worthy of his name, and an undefeatable opponent for one sword alone.

Lucina bit into the inside of her cheek and steeled her grip around Falchion.

Just as the first blow collided with the blade.


Notes: The great battle is upon us! It's been a while since the last action scene, so I hope it was worth the wait. What do you think so far?