A very brief shout out in this chapter goes to Cosmic Sky, who reminded me a few weeks ago that I would be an idiot not to have at least a brief interaction between the vassals of the Blue Lions and Black Eagles houses before the inevitable time skip.

Spoilers for that happening in this chapter I suppose... But it's fine.

We're fine.

One of the Demonic Beasts laying siege to the eastern side of the town plummets from the sky with a blood-curdling screech as its right wing is shredded by Lysithea's blast of angelic light. When it crashes to the ground, its other wing — clothed in the same bile-black bandages as the rest of its grotesquely malformed figure — runs through an abandoned storefront and immediately reduces the front of the building to rubble.

While the combined force of the collapsed monster and toppled structure create a quake and a dust cloud that encumbers everything within a mile, Hilda and Dedue are seemingly unperturbed.

The beast's face was covered by a yellowed stone mask with the façade of a wise sage, vastly contrasting the monstrous gaze underneath. A beak reminiscent of a plague doctor's mask protrudes, extending the reach of its splayed out neck as it lay dazed on the ground.

As the two axe-wielding students make their way past the point where the end of the beak cracks into the earth, they race along either side of the smooth stone fixture. Hilda slows her stride and gives Dedue time to reach the main part of the mask, where he immediately draws his silvery weapon back and slams its sharp edge into the cheek underneath the wise sage's closed eyes. A few cracks run up the mask, but the creature underneath has no response beyond its squirming to try and stand again.

Thanks to the Blue Lions' previous skirmishes with the Demonic Beasts, it was well known that their sources of life were the Crest Stones buried in their foreheads. That fact was clearly not lost on the Adrestian Empire given their efforts to cover the weak points with masks, but the knowledge was also spread to members of the other houses at Garreg Mach.

Thus, Hilda knew exactly what their goal was the moment Dedue prompted this team attack. Once his strike weakens the covering mask, Hilda rears her own weapon back over her shoulder. The red gem in the center of her Freikugel — the Heroes Relic of house Goneril — bathes its user and the nearby smooth yellow stone in a bright scarlet glow. That glow quickly erupts into black-and-red flames that envelop the spiked fan of bones serving as the weapon's blade.

The pink-haired girl grunts at the strain of lifting the axe over her shoulder again and swinging it toward the beast's mask. She cries, "Apocalyptic Flame!" as it connects.

Freikugel's serrated blade bores into the mask, and red veins begin to web around the impact site underneath the surface of the stone. Those veins continue to spread across the mask, eventually joining with the comparatively light fractures left by Dedue's attack. Then, in an instant, flames burst out onto the surface from every illuminated spot and the mask cracks to pieces. Every piece of stone practically disintegrates in the magical fires of the Heroes Relic.

This attack leaves the Demonic Beast reeling, and it writhes against the ground with its fleshy face exposed and bubbling with third-degree burns. Both the axe-wielders back away to avoid getting crushed as its body knocks into more of the surrounding structures and creates a larger ring of debris.

The beast's pain is brought to an immediate, sudden end as a deftly aimed arrow shatters the exposed Crest Stone in its forehead. Once the creature falls limp and begins to slowly revert back to its original human form, Hilda looks up to find her House Leader Claude offering thumbs up from the roof of a nearby building. She grins and flips her left ponytail back over her shoulder before holding up her smoldering weapon as a sort of 'thank you' gesture. Lysithea joins Hilda and offers her own wave up to the scraggly-haired boy in the bee-colored attire.

However, Dedue's attention is still focused on the decaying beast — or rather, what he could see around its gnarled form once the mass has faded away.

Hubert stood at the town's eastern entrance chokepoint, lobbing deathly blasts of energy at anyone beyond its walls with a carefree malice.

The Church of Seiros planned to bring in reinforcements from the east and west to surround Edelgard's army, but even the best-laid plans had to succeed in the face of an opposing strategy.

The sniper Shamir had been chosen to lead the eastern flank before the battle commenced, but her arrows were rendered useless by the sheer force of Hubert's magic that blew his slimy, slicked-up hair back each time it was cast.

His sinister laugh reverberates as he idly chastises the stalled churchgoers, but is cut off by a pained cry from behind as the soldier guarding his back was thrown asunder by a weighty slice from Dedue's axe. The dark mage quickly turns toward the new threat and hops back, just out of reach of a second swing.

"Ah, the Duscur." Hubert disdainfully remarks as he fires off a quick burst of pitch-black energy.

Dedue catches the brunt of the attack with his shield, which makes him skid backward along the cracked floor.

"I will hear no slights against my people from the lapdog of their oppressor."

His response is accompanied by a swift thrust of his shield off to the side, casting the remainder of Hubert's magical energy off with it. Dedue uses that motion to start a sprint, and even in the heavily armored garb he's able to quickly close the gap.

Hubert once again avoids damage to anything but the hem of his black robe as he jumps out of the way, laughing.

"That's quite a statement coming from the only man so eager to let himself be chained by a rabid boar," Hubert says with a jovial tone that leaves Dedue snarling as he tugs his axe blade out of the floor. "As if your nationality didn't make you enough of a mutt, you seem almost too willing to drive the point home."

The dark mage throws out another blackened fireball with a leaned back posture; cocky in the face of an opponent he clearly underestimates.

His hubris is rectified when Dedue slices the magical attack in half, sending its bisected halves around his body to smolder into puffs of ash. He follows through with a shield charge that knocks the wind out of Hubert and sends him stumbling back.

Hubert then bluntly cries out in pain as Dedue swings again, slicing through his robe and forcing the mage to kneel on his gashed leg.

"His Highness fights for virtuous causes, for truth and for equality." Dedue remarks callously as he takes a slow hop away from Hubert to ready his shield for any retaliatory attacks. "Your master is a scheming, manipulative murderer. She aligns herself with creatures who are an affront to the Gods themselves, and she will be stopped."

Hubert looks up at his now-towering opponent with a snarl exasperated by his widened, lime-colored eyes — typically obscured by a cautious squint and a mask of hair over his right eye.

But once Dedue finishes his heroic speech, the man's entire expression shifts into a cruel smile as he laughs.

"And tell me you Duscur mutt, would you jump through any hoop in the name of Dimitri's crusade?" He slowly gets to his feet, trying hard not to let the pain in his leg show through. "If he ordered you to kill every man, woman and child in the Adrestian Empire in the name of this so-called virtue, would you ask 'how soon'?"

Dedue hides most of his face behind his shield, but his bright blue eyes remain true over top of it.

"If it were his desire. Without hesitation."

Hubert's smile fades as he rolls his head to the left and cracks his neck.

"Perhaps we are not so different after all then," he says with a shrug. "It's just too bad you've chosen to side with as wretched an establishment as the Church of Seiros."

Both man's attentions are pulled to the skies over the city as a vicious crack of lightning cuts through it. The red-and-black clouds of a Ruined Sky conjured by Sylvain's Lance of Ruin scars the otherwise clear sky, forming a divide between a lone white flier and a party of green wyverns. One of those wyverns plummets from the air, casting a trail of smoke in its wake.

"Despicable," Hubert hisses before he spits on the ground. "You dare speak to me about affronts to any deity while your ilk uses the wretched tools of our true enemy."

Dedue turns back to face Hubert right when the mage casts a more potent dark spell: Death, a swirling blend of dark clouds and venomous purple light that continually reforms itself while flying at its target.

The effects create a cackling skull shape just before slamming into Dedue's shield and sending him skidding backward again. This time the energy is potent enough to keep a steady speed, which forces Dedue to fall back on his rear before it fully dissipates.

Hubert snickers as he shakes off his hand before crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"As if a brute like you could ever stand a chance against a true-blooded heir of House Vestra." He raises his right hand again, and it crackles with more dark magic. "Perhaps I'll crush you inside of that armor like a tin can. Then at least there will be something to identify your corpse."

An arrow flies in from the east just before Hubert can let anything loose, scraping against the top of his hand. The dark mage cries out as he looks over his shoulder to find Shamir with her bow raised at the entryway.

"You're messing with the wrong man, Hubert." Shamir narrows her eyes, voice steady and calm.

"Damn," he hisses while clutching his hand. "Now I have to deal with the Dagda girl too. This just got complicated…"