Sidon led the Rising Sun Company up Ploymus Mountain. "Are you sure you should be coming with us?" Ingrid asked.
Sidon nodded. "This Lynel has killed many of my good friends. I will see it dead."
This lynel, it would seem, was a particularly vicious one. This worried Link. While he had never actually spoken with a Lynel—they were not known to speak Hyrulean—he knew them to be intelligent creatures. They were territorial, to be sure, but also fair. If someone ended up in their territory by accident, they would usually give warning, and only attack when that warning was ignored. Not so with this one, based on what Link had been told.
"I think we're getting close," Ashe said, pointing out a couple of shock arrows embedded into nearby trees.
Raphael was the first to hear the crackling noise. "Look out!" He saw the shock arrow flying toward Sidon, and blocked it with his Bokoblin-made shield.
Everyone's eyes were drawn to the hostile archer. It was certainly the Lynel. It had the lower body of a mighty war horse, the torso of a man, the head of a lion, and the horns of a goat. Its skin was grey, and it's mane was red. It carried a steel bow that no human without a Crest would even be able to draw, and on its back was a lance with a curved blade on the end.
"Archers, take it down!" Claude shouted, nocking an arrow. Link, Bernadetta, Petra, Ignatz, Ashe, and Cyril did the same, and they all fired at the Lynel.
The arrows barely seemed to faze it, and it tried shooting again, this time aiming for Claude. However, Hilda blocked that shot with her shield. The Lynel didn't seem bothered by its failure, and simply exchanged its bow for the lance on its back. Aiming the lance at Claude, it charged.
Sidon rushed past Claude and batted the lance aside with one trident, while he aimed the other at the Lynel's abdomen. The momentum of the Lynel did drive the opints of the trident partially into its abdomen, but it didn't seem fazed. Instead, it drew a shock arrow out of its quiver and slammed it into Sidon's trident. The shock stunned Sidon and forced him to let go, and the Lynel prepared to impale him on its lance.
At the very last second, Flayn cast Rescue, teleporting Sidon away from the Lynel.
Hilda, meanwhile, swung her axe at the Lynel's neck. The Lynel dodged out of the way, but only barely, and the axe shore off part of its mane. This seemed to make the Lynel very angry. It punched Hilda in the stomach, sending her flying.
Fear gripped the others as they realized this would be a lot herder than they thought.
Raphael tried slashing at the Lynel with the Yiga Blademaster's sword. The Lynel simply caught the blade in its left hand and broke it in half. Meanwhile, Ingrid tried stabbing it from the side, but it turned and kicked her with its back legs, sending her tumbling.
Dorothea cast Heal on Ingrid, then cast Thunder at the Lynel. It didn't have much of an effect beyond catching the Lynel's attention, and the Lynel drove the butt of its lance into her solar plexus.
Edelgard then attacked with her two-handed sword, cutting the shaft of the lance in half. The Lynel tossed the now-useless lance aside and jumped back, firing a shock arrow directly at Edelgard, scoring a hit. Edelgard collapsed to the ground.
Flayn was having a hard time getting all of the injured away from the Lynel, and it didn't seem like the rate of injuries was going to let up even now that the Lynel had lost its lance. Lysithea tried using the spell she had used against the Lizalfos during the Blood Moon, Dark Spikes T. The exploding lances of dark energy hit the Lynel, and seemed to actually injure the beast, but it retaliated with a shock arrow, which hit the small girl directly. Annette tried distracting the Lynel with Fire to the face while Ingrid and Felix attacked it from either side. However, the Lynel charged forward and shoulder-bashed Annette into a tree, nearly crushing the poor girl before Flayn saved her.
The Lynel then fired two shock arrows with one shot, hitting both Felix and Ingrid. Dimitri and Link both attacked the Lynel at once, with Link managing to cut the Lynel's bowstring, but it dropped the bow and picked up Ingrid's spear, then drove it through Link's shoulder. Dimitri slashed out one of the Lynel's eyes, but the Lynel broke his spear and started beating hm mercilessly. Dedue tried to behead the Lynel with his axe, but the Lynel stabbed him with Ingrid's spear as well.
Lorenz stabbed the Lynel with a Zora spear that he had purchased, but the Lynel wasn't much fazed by that either, and it stabbed him in the arm with a shock arrow. Leonie tried shooting an arrow at its face, but the Lynel blocked with its arm and started inhaling large amounts of air.
Hubert saw his chance and cast a Miasma spell into the Lynel's face. This set the Lynel coughing, expelling smoke and Miasma from its lungs. Angrily, it picked up Lorenz and threw him at Hubert.
Ferdinand tried attacking the Lynel with Sidon's dropped trident, and did manage to draw blood, but not much more than that. The Lynel backhanded him, and then punched Caspar when the diminutive boy's axe caught the Lynel's elbow.
In the Lynel's distraction, Petra mounted the Lynel like a horse and began stabbing it from behind. The Lynel tried to get her off of its back, eventually succeeding and trying to trample her. Flayn manage to get Petra out from underneath its hooves, but only after the Lynel had broken several of her bones.
Over time, the Lynel kept injuring the others badly enough to take them out of the fight. Sylvain, Ignatz, Claude, Monica, Cyril, Bernadetta, Hubert, Leonie, Ashe. No matter how many blows they landed, it wasn't enough. The Lynel was slowing down, and maybe would eventually die from its wounds, but not before it killed them all.
Eventually, the Lynel ran out of enemies to fight and set its sights on the only targets left: the healers and the injured that Flayn had Rescued. Flayn, Linhardt, Mercedes, and Marianne all threw spells at the Lynel to try to defeat it, but nothing worked. The Lynel started to charge Flayn, intent on ending her life.
However, it turned out that Link wasn't injured enough to stop him. He picked up Ignatz's sword and ran toward the Lynel, impaling its skull. Unfortunately, the Lynel didn't stop even as it was dying, and Flayn had to cast Rescue one more time to stop it from trampling him. She raised a magic barrier in front of her to protect the injured, even though she knew the Lynel would probably break through the barrier and crush her before it died.
But at the last second, Linhardt used his Mini-Slate's Stasis function on the Lynel. Dedue crashed into the Lynel from the side, and started beating it with his axe. By the time Stasis ran out, the Lynel's trajectory was impacted enough to miss Flayn and the injured entirely, and it crashed into a tree, where it finally perished.
Exhausted and still injured, Dedue fell to his knees, and Flayn began to finish healing him. Somehow, they had beaten the Lynel, and they were all still alive.