The streets of Demacia were littered with corpses, but mostly ones belonging to soldiers and guards. Judging by the lack of noise, it was safe to assume that King Jarvan III had managed to get the majority of the citizens out of harm's way prior to the assault.
Garen looked up at the darkening sky and saw the blue bird that always managed to show its face near trouble and conflict: but that time, it swooped down towards him.
"Watch out!" Garen yelled to his allies. Prince Jarvan IV turned to see what his comrade was yelling about, and swiftly shifted himself in front of, and facing, Garen as a sign that the bird was not hostile.
"We can trust her, she is Demacian," the Prince told him.
"The bird is Demacian?" Garen asked while relaxing his pose. Jarvan chuckled in response.
"Well, yes. That is a Demacian eagle, long thought to be extinct. But its rider is the one I am talking about right now." The larger Demacia looked over his prince's shoulder and examined the bird more closely. As it approached, he clearly saw the woman riding it: she was also dressed in blue feathers and kept herself fairly flat against the large bird's back.
"Quinn!" Jarvan yelled out.
"JARVAAAN!" she shouted in response. The instant Valor got within ten feet of the group, Quinn launched herself off of the bird's back and onto the Prince with a mighty bear hug. The prince ruffled her hair and she buried her face into the man's shoulder.
"What is happening Quinn?" he asked of his soldier.
"Noxus…" she muttered into the man's clothing.
"Damn them…" he replied. "How far did they get?"
"They… they got him…"
"Him?" Garen interrupted. "The King?" Quinn did not reply but kept her face towards her prince. The lack of response was enough of an answer for Garen. "How the hell are you standing here now if they took the King's life? What kind of sold…" Garen's scolding was sharply cut off by a solid punch to the chest from Jarvan.
"Enough. I would rather fewer lives be lost in the struggle, than for an entire army AND the King dead."
"But your father…" Garen stammered, embarrassed that he took aggressive action that his Prince did not support.
"I know. We can mourn later. Right now, we know our duty. We must retake the castle. Quinn, are you injured? Can you fight?"
"Yes milord," she replied.
"Excellent. Let us move onward. Shyvana, Garen, on me up front. Quinn, see to the skies and watch the flank. Xin Zhao, make sure the cold one doesn't do anything stupid."
"The hell you calling…" Sejuani began before she was cut off by Xin Zhao's "Yes sir".
Quinn let go of the Prince and shifted towards the back of the group, while Garen and Shyvana moved towards the front. A noticeable shoulder-driven shove was given to Quinn by the half dragon as she moved forward, but the action was left fairly ignored by the squad.
They progressed through the streets and tried to keep their focus forward instead of around them. There was a bounty of gnarly sights to see, and the thought of having to clean the mess up at a later time was cruel, but the party kept their gaze to the horizon and pressed onwards towards the city's castle.
The group walked towards the palace in almost complete silence. None of them knew how to react to the series of events that they had just endured, but they all knew that they had plenty ahead of them.
As Noxian forces started to come into view, they sought to break line of sight from their enemy. Jarvan nodded to Quinn and she shuffled out of her cover and into the night's veil. Garen sat behind a rather large bush and watched the Noxian troops who seemed to be more focused on meandering about than guarding any sort of position. One of the men's bodies fell limp and before it had managed to fall to the ground, a sharp crack rung out to compliment the bolt that found its way into another guard's neck. The swift assassinations persisted as the party moved forward, one cover to the next. Quinn was clearly a very useful asset to the Demacian forces, and it surprised Garen that he had hardly heard of the woman before. He remembered at one time that she had requested pursuit of a Noxian assassin be taken in a different route than the one he planned to lead his Dauntless Vanguard through, but he had ignored her suggestion and gone with his orders. Other than that one event, he had hardly interacted with Quinn. They were both members of the Demacian military, but acted in very different parts of it.
The process repeated itself until all of the stray guards outside of the castle itself had been taken down. Once the gates were in view, the group rendezvoused behind a house with a clear view of their enemy.
"Nice work out there Quinn, not a single guard was alerted," Jarvan told her. She blushed lightly and turned her face away from the Prince.
"It was… nothing…" she stammered. Jarvan laughed in response and turned to face the rest of his soldiers.
"Now, we won't be able to slip into the castle the way we did through the city: nor do we want to. The idea here is to clear out all remaining Noxians, and dethrone whatever scourge decided that their pitiful mug held the right to sit upon it. It would be best to allow Garen and me to lead the assault." Jarvan paused as he tossed a sword Garen's way. His lack of weaponry seemed to be a characteristic by that point in time. "We will take to the sides of the gates and execute the guards simultaneously. As they fall, Quinn can shoot any immediate reinforcements who attempt to rush out of the entrance. Once they have ceased to flow out, Garen and I will push into the castle, and the rest of you will follow, maintaining the positions I spoke of earlier. Understood?" Everyone nodded or grunted in approval and the squad set out to siege the castle.
Garen slipped around to the right as Jarvan moved left, and they converged upon the guards at the same time. Garen performed one quick slash across the man's backside while Jarvan thrust his entire lance through his target. Their yells of pain attracted the inside soldiers, just as Jarvan had predicted, and Quinn crouched down to take aim. Her arrows tore into the throats of each guard as they filed out to see what the commotion was. Five dead guards later, the squad paused to see what else was on the way. Once they could safely determine that there were no more immediate threats, they traveled into the castle and prepared for an ambush. To their surprise, nothing came. Apparently, not a single guard thought to go warn the rest of the soldiers inside before rushing out. Noxus may not have had the most intelligent men at its disposal.
They pushed through the hallways and swiftly executed the few stray guards that littered them until they came to the throne room.
"Is it not odd that they seem so poorly protected? They managed to defeat our soldiers… Surely there must be more of a threat at foot," Xin Zhao wondered aloud.
"Clearly our soldiers fought valiantly and fended off the majority of the Noxians! No doubt that a large portion of the survivors fled with their tails between their legs!" Jarvan announced.
"You are a fool. Noxians do not flee the battlefield, Jarvan," Sejuani scoffed.
"Bah, who asked you anyways," he replied. In an attempt to prevent an internal fight from breaking out, Garen slammed on the throne room door with his sword. The blow splintered its frame, but did not push the door itself down.
"Barricaded," Garen stated. Jarvan nodded and got in line to assist Garen in pushing down the obstacle. A few hefty heaves later, the wood exploded open and the two nearly tripped over the clutter of bodies in the way. The two recuperated as quickly as they could and noticed that the room about them was filled with Noxian troops. Two men stood on either side of Garen and Jarvan and took mighty swings as if they had been lying on chopping blocks.
"Idiots…" Sejuani breathed. Within an instant, the Demacians brought their respective weapons across their chests and above each other's heads. In turn, Garen managed to block the blow towards Jarvan's head, and Jarvan the one towards Garen's. With a united thrust, they pushed their opponent's weapons away and used the momentum to lop of the Noxian's heads.
"You have never seen them combat, have you?" Xin Zhao smirked in response to Sejuani and charged in behind them. "For the King!" the old man shouted as he entered the fray. Quinn acted quickly and gathered what crossbow bolts she had while loading them and taking aim at any ranged weapon wielding opponents in the room. Shyvana lunged onto the field with Xin Zhao and landed fairly close to Jarvan, but in dragon form. A quick breath of fire cut off a large chunk of the Noxian soldiers from the main squad and allowed for them to focus more on individual battles. Once Jarvan and Garen had gotten to their feet, the Prince nodded at the dragon to indicate that she had acted well, and ought to keep it up, while the rest fought of the second portion of the army. Xin Zhao had already set himself to work skewering soldier after soldier and tossing them into one another. His fighting style was swift and precise, but with the brutality of a mad man's. Perhaps that was the only way to fight when one became as old as he was.
Sejuani stayed primarily in the back of the fight, using a large axe that she had found lying on the ground. She was mostly armored and was capable of deflecting the stray attacks against her while keeping up her standard aggression in combat. Garen attempted to keep a close eye on her, fully aware of the critical recovering condition she was still in from the fight the day before, but stayed fairly distracted by the massive amount of soldiers he was fending off himself.
Quinn nailed another Noxian in the throat with her crossbow and felt for another bolt, but noticed she had run out. The amount of soldier she had shot in that day was more than she had expected to ever encounter before getting a chance to reload. Valor, who had be primarily floating about and calling out the locations of enemy troops, made his way back to Quinn as soon as he noticed the lack of arrows parading the skies. By her side, he fought with his talons and beak to kill the Noxians that managed to break Jarvan, Garen, and Xin Zhao's defensive line. Unfortunately, that meant any remaining archers or mages among the enemy forces were to be left unattended to.
A stray soldier fought his way towards Jarvan and attempted to pierce his armor from behind when he swung about and smashed the man's skull in with his lance. Noticing the peculiarity of being assaulted from behind, he called out to Shyvana.
"Shyvana! How are you holding up?!" Jarvan shouted. He did not get a response and he shifted himself behind Garen to allow for a clear view of the scene while knowing his backside was protected. He saw that the mighty half dragon was still faring quite well, but a number of arrows stuck from her neck. The wounds had begun to affect her ability to maintain the wall of fire and she was forced to start fighting with nothing more than her claws and teeth, with an occasional fireball shot.
Jarvan tapped Garen's shoulder to indicate his leave and the Prince sprinted over to Shyvana's side. With his presence, the defensive line got back up to the quality it had been, but Garen was now forced to hold alone. The lack of a body allowed for more men to stroll past Garen and attempt to assault Sejuani and Quinn in the backline. Once Sejuani had gotten herself into a one on four, with a spirit of fire raging in her battleborn eyes, Garen knew that he had to intervene before she joined the enemies as a corpse on the floor.
He turned to assist her, and Xin Zhao took a mighty rotational swing of his spear in a circumference about himself, propelling a massive amount of enemies against the back wall of the room like ragdolls. The movement was enough of a stall for Garen to make his way to Sejuani's side. Garen leapt at the backside of a man fighting her and drove his sword straight down his torso. Unsheathing his weapon from the limp body, he swung his sword around with the momentum and sliced through the side of another Noxian. Two more remained against Sejuani, but Garen had done all that he could with his surprise lunge. One of the men held a mighty axe and was armored quite well in comparison to the others: perhaps the general of the army. His short black hair was almost as smug as the look upon his face as he cut his axe into the Noxian besides him. The act confused Garen until he realized that the man had just quite brutally decided to force a two against one.
Garen charged at the man just to be swept aside by a quick blow brought out with the flat side of his weapon. He recovered quickly but realized that he was not the man's primary target: Sejuani was. He did what he could to get to her side but the actions were not fast enough. Sejuani's axe clashed with his and a quick contortion of the wrist yanked the weapon from her hand and to the floor. A grin eroded over his face as he leapt straight upwards into the air with the intention of landing a gravity-assisted blow onto Sejuani below him. Holding his sword long ways in both of his hands, Garen met the brute, in front of Sejuani, and took the full force of his axe within the Demacian metal he held. The sword bent through and let the axe force a blow straight to Garen's chest. The splintering of ribs echoed throughout the seemingly silent chamber.
Garen saw many of his allies shift their attention to the battle he was carrying on, but was unable to show his wellbeing in response. Sejuani had managed to scramble backwards after Garen had tanked the blow, but the shock left him on the ground. He rolled to his knees and placed his hands to the floor but knew it was too late to be able to stand up. The Noxian placed the bloody axe to Garen's neck, allowing his own blood to leak onto his skin and send a chill straight to the core of his soul. The man began to raise his axe, preparing to execute Garen. The last glance Garen took around the room was enough to insure that not a single one of his allies were within distance to assist him. Perhaps not everyone was meant to make it out of that throne room.
"GAREN! NO!" Sejuani shouted. A small crackle was heard in her voice. Garen closed his eyes in acknowledgement that he had finally shown the woman just what true strength was. The sacrifice had provoked that emotion she refused to believe existed: sadness. A swish of sliced air rang out as the axe fell towards Garen's neck. The accompanying sound was a loud crack and a thud as the axe hit the ground, having split nothing more than the throne room floor itself. The Noxian blinked twice to make sure that he was not hallucinating, as his target had disappeared into thin air itself.