Chapter 39

Lloyd and his friends were waiting the ten minutes to give Raine time to cause more chaos. Lloyd took to pacing back and forth, and Ribs waited quietly as only a dead man could. Sheena watched the both of them, but broke it off when Zelos sat by her. "Are you ready?" he asked. Sheena noticed his hands shook a little.

"Yeah. Are you?"

"I don't know. I really hope they're all right now."

Raine and her group landed on the slope and hurriedly put the Rheairds away. Elpida flew up to take a look. "I see the pens," she called as she came down. "There's a lot of them, but I think we can just open the pens and have them come up here, and we'll hold off any pursuit."

Presea unslung her axe. "Are we ready?"

A series of horrible crunching sounds announced Athan popping his knuckle. "Yes," he said with some satisfaction.

Athan led as they went down the slope, towards the corrals that had been constructed to keep the hosts in one place. Naturally, Athan was the first to spot the guards. They were professionals, and hadn't run towards the noise, but stayed back to keep an eye on the pens. Athan pulled up short, and the others caught up. After a moment of unspoken communion, they attacked.

The five guards were confronted with a man and two girls coming at them. Their confusion was not alleviated by the man having no weapons, and the pink-haired girl having a huge axe, and the purple-haired girl zipping across the ground supported by a pair of silver-white transparent wings.

To Athan's irritation, the guards did exactly what they were supposed to do. Three got ready to meet Athan, Elpida, and Presea, while the remaining two fell back and began clanging a bell loudly.

Athan was on one then, and had to duck a sword swipe. The monk went under the arm, then came up with his elbow leading, and the guard's jaws clicked together sharply.

Elpida did a cut-wheel-cut-thrust routine that her opponent manage to wiggle around, getting only a singe on his shoulder. He waded in close, trying to use his size advantage to push Elpida down.

She wasn't having any of it, though, and zipped backwards a few feet, bringing one of her burning swords around in a horizontal swipe.

He broke and wheeled around, pivoting on his back foot to swing himself out of reach of her sword. He continued the spin, swinging himself back into reach of her, right behind her left arm.

Elpida panicked for a moment and crossed her right hand under her left as he came in close.

The man blinked, and looked down at the hole burned through his breastplate, his stomach, and his spine. The sickening smell of burning meat was strong. He looked back up at her with almost pleading eyes, and she had mercy and killed him.

Presea wwas fighting a fellow axe wielder, and the massive cuts of each clanged off the other's parry. The quality of Presea's Gaia Cleaver was showing, though, as his axe chipped badly each time they made contact.

The man was good, though. He launched a crossing diagonal cut, and then made as if to complete the spin and give another swing from the same direction—but he gritted his teeth and painfully managed to twist his hips hard enough to reverse the axe's momentum in a skillful feint.

Presea was better. She'd dodged around the first cut and when the axe was again coming at her swung at it with all her might.

The hard edge of her massive axe didn't even get nicked when it broke the man's axe with a deafening crack and jolt. Presea planted her feet and continued her swing and turned it into a powerful horizontal spin. The axe edge caught the big man in the side, biting a crease into his armor, and carried him around, and around, and around.

Presea turned the spin into a jump, and arced her axe over head, smashing it—and the man hung on it—into the ground, breaking him off of her weapon.

She had no rest, though, because one of the bellringers was right behind her, swinging his sword, and the first she knew of it was it hitting her side. Presea moved with the hit, jumping up and to the side and spinning to bring her axe around in a wicked whooshing cut. The guard's body shattered as the axe hit his shoulder.

Raine was coming down now, and it only took her a moment to give Presea a quick pick-me-up.

Athan and Elpida were trying to close in on the last guard. No longer ringing the bell, the man sought to get around the pair and make a run for it. Out of desperation, he threw his sword at Athan and didn't even watch the monk twist out of the way of it. Instead, he tried to go around the other side. He stumbled, recovered, and legged it away.

He didn't get far, though, before an arrow of light burned into his neck.
Raine lifted the gate on the corral and swung it out. "Hurry! We're freeing you!"

Most started towards the gate, but one with an ugly scar on the right side of his face moved to block them. "They won't beat Brighton! It'll be better if we don't try to escape!"

Athan came up. "You don't have time for this. Those who want to come, follow me up the mountain!"

Now the prisoners were moving. The objector weighed his chances, and then he went to the back of the pen. Presea and Elpida were already opening the gates on the other pens, and a stream of hundreds of people was hustling along after the monk. Presea, Raine, and Elpida brought up the rear.

And no one noticed the scarred man staying behind.