Hikaru: Argh … I got new wires for my braces … so now my teeth ache …
--
Leneth had been doing a lot of thinking lately as he and Alain neared Izoold by way of the Ossa Trail. Sheltered little shinobi he was, Leneth still couldn't fully comprehend the impact of this war, or the severity of their mission. It was just too hard, the most he'd had to deal with before now was training in the village and a few monster fights of late.
He'd learned quickly that actual battles never went as well as training did, and Alain had been covering for him every time Leneth had slipped up, and much to Leneth's dismay, was often, too often for a person raised in New Mizuho.
He wouldn't admit it in front of Alain (who, as a co-leader alongside his father of the Iselia militia, had seen many real battles and come through nearly unscathed), but Leneth was apprehensive of passing through the battle zone if battle were joined by the time they reached Izoold, or if they were forced to fight something—anything, really—here in the Ossa Trail.
They were descending down the trail now, but the footing was still poor—loose rocks littered the path with the occasional tree root jutting out of the side of the steep hill. Luckily they hadn't had to fight anything yet, but as Kratos used to tell Leneth and Liath: "expect the unexpected."
Leneth found he wasn't very good at expecting the unexpected; the attack on New Mizuho was a prime example of that.
Leneth's heart pounded in his chest as he and Alain emerged from the mountainous terrain of the Ossa Trail, the rocky landscape giving way to a series of rolling green hills crowned by the magnificent blue seas on the horizon. Even so far away Leneth could spot the grouping of buildings that was Izoold on the coast.
He couldn't see any ships on the ocean now, but if they ventured closer they probably would be able to.
"It's quiet," Alain whispered, surveying the horizon.
Leneth nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak. That it was so quiet meant that battle on the waters had not started yet—and there was no way right now for them to see how long it would last.
Alain shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked about; there were clumps of forest around the foot of the hills, but he could still see the land bridge from here. That bridge was the only way they could reach Luin, and if they were caught here …
"Yeah," Alain said, "we'll have to hug these hills here and swiftly but steadily make our way to the land bridge. If battle is joined, it'll be on the water. We should stay away from the ocean, if a shell from one of those magitech ships hits us, we're goners."
Leneth nodded again resolutely. Alain gave him a look.
"Are you all right?" he asked. "I mean, if it's about what I said yesterday—"
Leneth cut him off.
"You don't have to apologize. You're right, we can't afford to get caught no matter what the reason. If Tethe'alla's ships are that much better than ours, then … Izoold probably wouldn't last long even if we helped … "
Whatever help two lone teenagers could give.
Alain worked his jaw but couldn't think of anything else to say—he'd noticed the look in Leneth's eye as he had spoken … he'd never seen Leneth look like that before.
They set off at a swift half-jog—if they were seen outright fleeing the potential war zone, there was no guarantee the locals would let them go freely. After all, Izoold had no opportunities to warn any other Sylvarant locations of the oncoming fleet, so no one else in Sylvarant was supposed to know of the attack, and Leneth and Alain certainly were not native inhabitants of Izoold.
They'd know something was up.
They'd made a good distance from the exit of the Ossa Trail when the first shell hit.
The earth gave a mighty shudder and a deafening roar ripped across the land; Leneth and Alain lost their footing and fell to the ground.
Leneth blinked, his ears ringing, his vision swimming. He felt his arm being pulled at; Alain was shouting something but he couldn't quite tell what it was. Leneth was yanked to his feet and he was steered to look at the village of Izoold.
Part of the port was up in flames.
"By the Spirits," Leneth whispered.
"Not just that," Alain said, pointing a little further down the coast, "Look!"
A battleship had moved from the main fleet down the coast, after a while it anchored. Lifeboats sailed from their mother ship, berthed on the beaches. Ground armed forces massed on the beach and charged toward Izoold.
Leneth shielded his eyes from a great blast of light as Tethe'allan battleships fired the next round of magitech cannon fire. The ground shuddered beneath their feet, but they managed not to fall.
"From the sea and the land." Leneth muttered, "those bastards!"
"We'll get caught up in their invasion if we don't go now." Alain urged, already beginning to head off again toward the land bridge.
Leneth followed without question—he wanted to do something to help, but in the face of this invasion … it looked like nothing he could combat even if he were with the vanguard.
As he and Alain fled for their lives across the rolling grassland overshadowed by impending doom, Leneth found himself thinking—he knew his parents and Kratos had been involved in battles of a sort, if not a downright war of some kind. Had they felt this hopeless terror Leneth felt now? Had they run or stayed?
All Leneth knew was that he was absolutely terrified and wanted nothing more than to get out of here as soon as possible.
Leneth stumbled as the earth resonated powerfully with another shower of cannon fire from Tethe'alla's magitech battleships but he managed to regain his footing in due time, breath coming in short gasps as he ran.
Alain wasn't doing much better—in fact, he probably had it worse than Leneth, seeing how he hadn't the kind of endurance a Mizuhon would be trained to have—though Leneth was starting to admit his endurance wouldn't last much longer—and he carried extra gear, what with his bow and quiver of arrows in addition to his short sword.
A shadow hovered over them.
"Watch out!" Leneth shouted, tackling Alain to the ground.
Hot breath seared his neck and Leneth instinctively threw his arms over his head---he looked up when it had passed—and his jaw dropped.
Dragons.
A whole squadron of dragons, and by the looks of their riders and the standard attached to their harnesses, they were a part of the Tethe'allan army.
Leneth grabbed Alain and helped him to his feet. Alain gaped as he fumbled for his bow.
"How in the hell did Tethe'alla get dragons?' Leneth screeched as he flailed his arms—he had no ranged weapons that would work effectively against dragons, let alone trained military dragons in flight.
Alain strung his bow, nocking it with an arrow. Pulling the string taut, he aimed as the squadron—numbering five in all—made a long arc in the sky and turned back toward their designated prey.
"Dragons are notoriously hard to tame and train for battle without harming their handlers and allies," Alain explained as his target—the flight lead in the center—began to swoop lower toward the ground, "so these are the very best Tethe'alla has to offer—they're usually used for reconnaissance operations or as an extra arm in wearing down the enemy."
Or else to reach an otherwise unattainable target.
Alain knew his mistake then—he should never have sought out Frio in the first place. Because of angel's sight, Frio had now known Alain's mana signature trail, and from what he said the day before, he knew they carried a fragment of the Eternal Sword.
"Duck!" Alain shouted to Leneth as he let his arrow fly.
Leneth threw himself to the ground, hands over his head.
Alain ducked on his knees, eyes still fixed on the dragons. They swooped over, one by one, all trying to snip or breathe fire at them but missing in succession each time.
Alain stood up straight again, and noticed that his arrow hadn't quite hit his mark—he was aiming for the lead dragon's eye—but it was enough to irritate the lead dragon into disorienting its formation. Its handler was trying amidst huge beating wings to regain control of his mount, but the dragon swerved and the rider fell to the ground.
Leneth winced as the rider landed with a rather audible crunch of bones and armor.
But even with the death of their flight lead, the other riders of the squadron would not be so easily deterred. They regrouped quickly, leaving the rider-less lead dragon to meander about the skies on its own.
Alain frowned, nocked multiple arrows to his bow. He gathered mana from around him, incorporated them into his arrows, just as he had in preparation for the strike arte he had used on Leneth during that training day. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Alain unleashed the first arrow, an Ice Fang that glittered in the sunlight as it buried itself between the scales of one of the flanking dragons. The dragon roared, sparks of flame spewing from its jaws; the arrow broke off in its neck. The rider cursed, steering his dragon—but to no avail. Both dragon and rider crashed on the grasslands not three body's lengths away.
Leneth had screamed when the dragon and rider had hit the ground. From that height and the sickeningly loud crunch of bones and the screams of the rider, at least the rider must be dead.
Alain couldn't concentrate on Leneth; he had three more riders to worry about. He doubted he could keep up this pace for long before the riders lost patience with him and decided to outright dive bomb them or some other such thing.
The next designated flight lead seemed to have a much more apt head on his shoulders than his two comrades had. He hand-signaled to his remaining two comrades, and they dispersed.
Alain's jaw dropped; the dragons had split three ways and were all at once converging on him and Leneth in a steep dive at lunatic speeds. The flew into the sun so as not to be seen by their prey down below, and Alain heard the whooshing of the wind against the dragons' wings as they dived.
Flame sparked at the dragons' mouths.
"Oh, dammit, dammit, dammit!" Alain bit down on his lip, his grip on his bow shaky; he could barely keep his arrow nocked.
Leneth plunged a hand into his item bag, withdrawing a closed fist. He put his fist to his mouth, clenched something between his teeth, tore his fist from it, and dashed up to Alain.
Leneth threw it as the first rider came swooping down low enough.
Once more Alain found himself thrown to the ground by Leneth; he sensed an explosion of mana and heard the rider howling with agonizing pain.
Leneth leapt to his feet, grabbed another of the hand grenades.
"What the hell was that?" Alain yelled as Leneth watched the remaining riders abruptly stop diving. The dragons beat their wings and gained altitude, flying close together—the riders looked to be consulting one another on what to do next.
Leneth opened his hand, and Alain saw a red sphere with a metal pin embedded in its short neck.
"I brought mana grenades," Leneth explained. "From New Mizuho. There are three kinds—Flameburst bombs, the red ones, Snowmelt bombs, blue ones, and yellow ones are Spark bombs. They're infused with potent amounts of their namesake mana and explode when their pins are pulled."
Alain, still lying flat on his back, hadn't moved. Leneth's voice was calm, but his hands and arms were shaking uncontrollably. And his eyes—they were brimming.
"I … never expected to have to use them like this." Leneth finished quietly.
Alain didn't address him further—he'd been like that during his first real battles with the Iselian vanguard, and even now, was he so different? If it weren't for Leneth, he probably would have died.
Alain pointedly ignored the corpses of the latest newly killed dragon and its rider, their wounds from the Flameburst bomb stinking and gushing blood.
He looked skywards—the riders were meandering about the skies above them in circles, well beyond their reach for even one of Alain's arrows. They weren't attacking, but they weren't retreating, either. It seemed they deigned to follow Alain and Leneth should they stray from the battle zone.
Speaking of—Alain looked over his shoulder.
Tethe'allan battleships still fired upon the quickly fading Sylvarantian fleet, the debris of ships blown to bits landing on the docks and even on the beach and some houses. The ground armed Tethe'allan forces set up lines around the city gates—they were holding a siege while their ships disposed of the enemy ships.
"This is bad," Alain whispered, biting his lip again.
Leneth followed his gaze and his lips parted.
"There are so many soldiers … there's no way we could outrun them!" Leneth muttered.
Alain nodded, craning his neck again: the riders still circled around them, like vultures over carrion. At this rate their allies would see the riders, and the troops would come and take Leneth and Alain as prisoners of war, and it wouldn't be long before Frio got wind of it.
"We just have to keep moving," Alain said, slinging his bow over his shoulder.
Leneth stared, first at Alain, and then at the dragon riders circling above them.
Alain caught the gaze.
"They'll follow us and see we're headed for Luin, yes. But they're not stupid enough to attack us head on, not after what just happened to their comrades. C'mon."
Leneth absently nodded as he and Alain began at a brisk jogging pace toward the land bridge, the shudders of the earth as a result of cannon fire weaker with distance but no less harder to swallow.
Leneth's limbs were shaking, his breath rattling in his throat. He could hardly believe he had just killed a dragon and its rider back there. It was to save himself and Alain, yes, but the prospect was scary. What was scarier other than the fact that he killed them was that they would have killed Leneth if he had not killed them first.
Granted, he doubted he'd be forgiving any Tethe'allans anytime soon, but still …
Just as Alain said, the remaining dragon riders followed them at a distance in the skies. One of them flew off toward Izoold, presumably to report to their head honcho that two stray Sylvarantians were going for Luin and warn the rest of Sylvarant of the attack on Izoold.
The last rider kept following them.
At last, when the sun began to dip into late afternoon, they had reached the land bridge.
The ocean lapped up on either side of it as Leneth and Alain crossed, their pace slowed to a swift, constant walk now that they were out of immediate danger and the war zone. Leneth's ears still rang with the cannon fire, and his body still trembled from the battle.
They were in an expanse of frighteningly open grassland when night fell.
"I wonder how many people died today," Leneth muttered as he and Alain set up camp, the fire in the center of their area throwing splayed shadows.
"Plenty," Alain said, setting up his bedroll. "Plenty Sylvarantian, plenty Tethe'allan. Probably in not the most humane way possible."
Leneth shuddered as he thought of his mana hand grenades. He was sure he'd blown off one of the dragon's limbs, certainly one of the rider's as well. He hadn't bothered to look; it was too much.
"If we stayed …" Leneth said quietly, "we would've been killed, too."
Alain didn't reply, and by that Leneth knew he spoke the truth. If they had died, not only would they have caused their parents and siblings immense grief, they would have let a piece of the Eternal Sword into enemy hands.
The way Leneth had protested not going after Frio just a few days prior had seemed so ignorant and childish now.
"I don't see the rider anywhere," Leneth said, looking skyward. Alain scanned the skies along with the horizon.
"Even the rider would need a place to crash," Alain grinned, "figuratively speaking."
That coaxed a small smile from Leneth.
For the rest of the night, lying insomniac by the fire, staring at the sky, Leneth dwelled on how his parents had wanted him and Liath to live a "normal" life free of the ravages of the world's intrigues. At the time Kratos had told him this, he hadn't quite believed it, nor had he understood.
Leneth began to think that he might understand some small measure of what his parents feared.