Author's Note: And what I tried to insure would not happen ended up taking place. I'm sorry for the wait, a lot of stuff piled up in a distressingly short amount of time, and I had to sort things out there. The upload rate might end up taking another hit as I sort through things, but I'll try to keep it as fast as possible. Beyond that, huge thanks to those who review. You keep up my excitement for writing this thing, and it's always nice to find them.
I don't own Fire Emblem or its characters.
Chapter 3
Rubiripe Harbor was a bustling port town in the heat of day. Ships lined up, unloading goods from all corners of Plegia and beyond, stores hawking wares from across the kingdom, and people set to work, running or supporting the many enterprises that made their home there. However, it's traffic wasn't so immense that it continued late into the night. When the sun started to set on the beautiful bay, people quickly said their goodbyes and made their way home. Some lingered to view the glimmering sunset on the ocean ripples, but most had homes to get back to, and other duties they have to fulfill. And among the few people remaining on the lower terraces, was a cloaked pair.
"Okay, we're in. Now what, oh masterful tactician?"
Giving a slight "Hmm" at the word, Kris smiles. "Tactician, huh? I kind of like the sound of that." Maggot grumbles in response.
Their entry into the town had been fairly uneventful. They'd forgone a seaward approach, and simply traveled on the country roads. The guard at the city gates wasn't exactly unwelcoming, and had let them in without incident.
"He should be expecting the rendezvous soon. If you don't have anything, Zanth will be coming in without our signal. And I most sincerely doubt he will be happy."
Frowning slightly, Kris fingers a few pouches she has in the folds of her cloak. "I'm ready...or as ready as we'll ever be. I prepared a few tricks before we left...hopefully, it'll be enough to get us through." Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she continues. "You know what we're doing...Maggot." Kris says, as she picks up a rather heavy bucket, filled with a thick, black liquid. She still wasn't sure if it was okay to call him that. The other pirates seemed to call him by that name on a consistent basis, and while he didn't seem to enjoy it, he hadn't been quick to put forward a different name. He doesn't voice any opposition to her using it.
Maggot takes another bucket, and heads off. Kris lifts hers with a grunt, and takes it to the nearest staircase. Slathering the thick mess over the stone, and leaving one of her pouches next to it, Kris heads on through, careful not to get any on her feet. Doing the same to the next one, she continues without incident, the messy glop seeming to bubble on the still-hot stones.
However, before she can reach the third and final staircase of the terrace, she encounters a guard. Cursing inwardly as she approaches, she tries to consider her options.
"...Miss? Might I ask what you're still doing out? That's a lot of tar you've got there..."
Kris can feel her heart sink. Tar was a common enough substance on the docks, enough that she was fairly easily able to get refills after lining the first two staircases. It was used rather frequently to caulk seafaring vessels, as well as to help line rooftops to keep rain from leaking in. However, she was indeed carrying a rather conspicuous amount...enough to use the flammable petroleum like she intended. However...she knew that the easiest way to do something illegal was to pretend you had every right to do it.
"What's the problem, sir? I'm just bringing this pitch up to fix my roof. Gonna have to patch up the thatching, I feel a storm coming."
The soldier considers briefly. "I don't reckon I've seen you around before. What's your name?"
Kris hesitates, and curses herself inwardly for doing so. In this situation, there wasn't any reason to withhold the truth. It wasn't like she was planning on staying... "Kris, sir. Please, may I be on my way?"
The town guard grabs her hand, causing the bucket to drop. "I don't think so, 'Kris.' You're coming with..."
His voice trails off, as his gesture gives him a free view of the mark on her hand. "You're..." me manages to get out, before Kris shoots a fireball from her free hand, grazing his face and delivering harsh burns. All he manages to voice is a pained cry, before he slumps on the ground.
Dusting herself off quickly, Kris grabs up the bucket. Some had spilled out, though thankfully, more than half managed to stay inside. "Not as much as I hoped for...but it'll have to be enough." She can tell instantly that after that cry, she won't have enough time to go refill it. Even as she speaks, soldiers begin to flow out of the fort, though she has enough time to prime the final staircase before they get anywhere near her. She also spares a moment to grab the guardsman's sword. She feels her magic might not prove sufficient...and for some reason or another, she feels she can wield it effectively.
As the soldiers cross the beachfront terrace, they look up at her, and see the fallen soldier. Several soldiers look positively green, and look like they want to throw up. Others have more common reactions. "Let's get that bitch, men! Yah!" Their cries seem to blend together as they all charge up the staircase.
Kris doubles back from the staircase, then waits until several soldiers begin their ascent. Once she's sure it's the opportune moment, she shoots a fireball...not at any of the men, but at the pouch she left close to the staircase. The oil inside the pouch explodes, and ignites the tar, causing the several men who braved the staircase to burst into flames, quickly consuming them in the inferno.
The men start falling back, and move towards the other staircases, hoping to make their ascent there. They're generally more careful than they were back at the first one, hoping not to catch themselves in a blast. Their care is rewarded, as when Kris shoots another fireball at the staircase, only an unlucky few who found their feet stuck in the glop were caught in the flame. After that spectacle, they outright ignored the final staircase, and retreated back to the fort.
Sparing one fireball to ignite the last stairwell, Kris begins to harass the retreating men with a barrage of elemental magic. She didn't know when she was going to be able to restock on magic tomes, so she decided to save the numerous applications fireballs could have for later, mostly using cutting wind magic. However, as she focused on the retreating men, she missed a formation of guardsmen with throwing axes, and pays for it when one strikes her on her flank.
Dipping low to the ground and clutching her injury, Kris breathes heavily. "Ahh...I...I misread the situation." she groans to herself, trying to make herself a difficult target as she reaches back into the folds of her cloak. "Got...got careless." Pulling out a vulnerary, she begins to unseal the lid on the enchanted medicine. However, before she can bring the cup to her lips, her wounds begin to stitch themselves up on their own accord.
"Well, that was certainly a stupid thing to do." Maggot laughs, healing stave in hand. "Still, kept that axe away from me, so go ahead and do it again!"
Kris rolls her eyes at him, but smiles once she finishes standing back up. "Good to see you too.
Mood darkening, Maggot looks out to sea, impatience clear on his face. "Well, you might as well do a bit more of it, if you want. If Zanth and his lackeys don't hurry up, neither of us will be alive to see anything for very much longer."
The ill news comes as a surprise to Kris. "They...they should be here any moment now. The fires were supposed to be the signal..." Thinking things through, Kris shakes her head. "We have to buy them more time, then, we can't give up hope. The guards will be bringing up ladders, we have to delay them as long as possible."
Without a clear sign of assent, Maggot goes off on his own again. Finding a ladder being placed, he waits until the first man gets to the top, before stabbing them in the head, and pushing the ladder down with a kick. However, as he does so, he presents a clear target, and a javelin strikes his cloak, narrowly missing his body. However, momentum still pulls him down to the ground with a thud.
"Well...that's about enough of that." he mutters, winded, but uninjured in everything besides his pride. He barely felt that...he didn't exactly have much of it to go around.
Standing back up, Maggot reaches down to his belt, and pulls up a wickedly curved golden blade. So curved, and made of such a soft metal, that any rational observer would find it laughably ineffective in any real fight. And if it was intended to be a cutting weapon, then they would be perfectly correct.
Holding his Levin Sword aloft, Maggot calls down a bolt of lightning, then another, then another. To the soldiers, unused to such a weapon, it must have seemed like divine punishment as the lightning struck down the men with tomahawks and javelins.
"Dance for me, worms! Hahaha!" Maggot crows, as the men fall to the lightning, and the remaining men run for the hills.
"You damned cowards! I'll have you all whipped 'til you're raw!" a man in heavy armor, sitting upon a horse calls. He proceeds to hurl harsher expletives as he raises a hurling spear at him.
Maggot laughs, cruelty clear in his voice. "Ah, so you're the leader then. Exeunt!" Another bolt of lightning descends upon the commander, piercing through his heavy armor effortlessly, striking him dead.
He was ecstatic. It had been so damn long since people had treated him as something to be feared, someone to be respected. He had lived as a gutter rat for most of his life, until opportunity allowed him to make something greater of himself...and he had taken back to the old way of life far more easily than he'd have liked. But this...this was like he was his old self again...
And it was all thanks to Kris. Her and her strategy.
Maggot considers that for a moment, before getting jolted out of his reflection by the lady herself calling him. Looking back in her direction, he lets out a curse. One of the three staircases to the third terrace had been lit as well, his own handiwork.
"You got that one, good. Did you get the other two?" Kris asks, panting slightly. She was visibly tiring.
With a groan, Maggot nods. "Yes, but we haven't time. We'd be better off just jumping now...the lowest terrace's men got themselves thinned up nicely." The sounds of fighting pick up again, and Maggot let's out a crow of laughter. "And the cavalry's come! Let's join up with them, eh?"
Kris shakes her head, and breaks off in a run. Lighting the second staircase, she doesn't hesitate for a moment before continuing her race to the last stairwell. "No...I have to get the fires lit! Otherwise...the people..."
Shock is clear on his face as he runs up to her. "You...you're risking your life, pointlessly, I might add, for a bunch of people that would gut you as soon as greet you? How...disgustingly noble. May I vomit now?" He hasn't seen a display that even vaguely resembled this one since...since his position was quite different. A look of exhaustion crosses his face. "Can't you just do the sensible thing for once?"
Kris just points down at the pirate gang, who had since finished cleaning up what was left of the forward outpost. "Go ahead...I'll catch up."
Maggot spits on the ground, shaking his head vehemently. "And then get myself executed for cowardice. No thanks."
"Then keep up!" Kris calls behind her, not slowing down.
Snarling in annoyance, Maggot follows her until they approach the last staircase. Unlike the others, this one has soldiers fully arrayed beneath it, ready to defend the portal. Kris shoots a fireball to ignite it, but enough men are beneath it that it's more a gesture than anything else...no men were currently on the staircase to get caught in the blast.
One of the men, obviously the leader, in heavy, ornate armor, addresses Kris. "You know, I kind of expected someone a bit more threatening when I look at all this trouble. I'm thinking I'll toss you alive on one of your own damn fires...see if you like having a taste of your own medicine! And I know damn well that you won't stay alive long in General Varth's city...My city! Men! Take her down!"
With a war cry, the assembled soldiers charge at Kris. Despite her efforts to ready a tome, the men are too quick to close the distance. Kris readies her sword to parry a blow against her. As she moves to block the axe-men's strike, her sword almost moves of its own volition, parrying the axe in such a way that her blade lodges itself between the axe head and the handle. With a good yank, the axe goes flying out of the man's hands, and she follows through with a stab through his gut.
Maggot, meanwhile, is back to fighting with his knife, and seems to step right through a man, a step on his foot to distract him, an elbow to the gut to get him on his knees, and a fatal blow to wrap things up. However, by the time he does so, the General himself has moved in, lance thrusting at to this, she blocks the haft with the flat of her blade, and slides in close, tome at the ready this time. Blasting him with a harsh gale from close range, the wind magic rips through his armor. "Now!" she calls, and Maggot obliges, Levin Sword striking the general with a blast of lightning.
The remaining men, go into a frenzy. Maggot takes one look at the situation, and pulls Kris away, and off the terrace ledge. Kris, surprised and resisting, can still tell that a haphazard fall could easily result in serious injury, so she jumps down with land with a loud thud, the fall almost twenty feet tall. If they'd been any less careful, or wearing any heavy armor, they'd have been sprawled out in pain on the ground.
"Now what did you go and do that for?" Kris shouts at him. The men were still up there, and they were still a threat.
Maggot just shrugs. "You got your staircases lit, and they were starting to surround us." Sarcasm begins to drip off his mouth as he continues. "Surely your great analytical mind could tell you what the best thing to do in that situation was."
Kris sighs. "I'd have rather finished them and checked on the fire's strength, but you're probably right. In any case...thanks. Let's meet up with the crew.
General Varth manages to get back to his feet, obviously unsteady. The lightning bolt hadn't been enough to finish him after all...but it was close.
"Come on, men, what are you doing! Quit lollygagging, and get her!"
Some men follow his order immediately, and wind up groaning in pain on the ground as their armor drags them to painful falls. The remaining armored soldiers on top, obviously unwilling to go.
The lightly armored axe-men, though, manage to make the landing about as well as Kris and Maggot. However, when they start moving, they're greeted by a horde of excited pirates, with Zanth leading them.
"Yar har! Turns out that lass was a good find after all! Let's pick off the stragglers, and help ourselves to the ships!"
The remaining guardsmen were rather quickly taken out, and the pirates were not quick to leave. However, Kris' fires accomplished their second objective admirably. As well as keeping the Plegian forces away...they also limited the raid to the lowest level. And while a ton of goods were stolen from the shops and merchant ships, the residential district remained untouched.
Throughout this time, though, the full force of the Plegian garrison started to assemble itself, and they started setting up ladders down. Instead of trying to hold off against them, Zanth calls for a retreat.
"We've got what we came for, men! Let's set sail for the Sea-King's Throne! We've got a lot of loot to parcel out, so I reckon we have our work cut out for us!"
After a hasty loading by the crew, Zanth and his crew, Maggot and Kris included, set off from Rubiripe Harbor, leaving behind a gruesome spectacle for the townsfolk of Rubiripe to clean up.