After the shot, the entire field in front of the mountain went silent. Firre lowered his gunblade, his eyes still looking down on the body he just shot through. The briefly surge of hatred faded, and though he wasn't going to start regretting it - by Gods no - it did leave him with a more contemplative stare. It's unfortunate that it had to come to this. Yet, he made the active decision to make this world a worse place, perhaps even numerous times, and he was aware of what he had done.
The reactions of everyone else around him differed. The two Rangers who were tasked with holding Velinn dropped his body to the ground in shock as soon as they heard the roar of the bullet. Firre was a precise shot, even when firing from one hand with a gunblade, so neither of them were in any risk of dying themselves, but it was a jolt in the arm regardless. Behind the prince, the reactions of the Rangers tagging along ranged to quick acceptance of the execution to surprise and concern, whereas the freed Faunus... were not even sure what to think. Truth be told, their expectations for humans were so low they could have never anticipated someone being so radically on their side.
"That's... a bit much..." Yche muttered under her breath. Her mind was conflicted - unease about the execution mashed and clashed with the agreement that, ultimately, Velinn deserved it at least a little. If what she had seen in the short time she's been here, and what she's heard of the House of Trade ever since she moved to Vale, was telling of the businessman's life, then even moreso...
Ashen wasn't moved, she folded her arms and glanced off to the side after the deed was done.
Firre readied to sheathe his sword, already thinking of what they should do and where they should go next, when a furious yell reached him:
"FIRRE!"
It was Reza, and she was marching up to the prince with an irate glare.
"What the hell were you thinking just now? You killed him! Right in front of us!"
Firre stopped, then let out a breath and shoved his sword back into its sheath, with a loud clang. No hard feelings. What happened was not an easy sight - not even for him - so he had to explain his line of thought.
"I told you how much of a criminal he was," he answered - unlike Reza, his voice was calm. "And a traitor. Conspiring with Mistral is as close as it gets, and when you couple that with wanton torture of hundreds of lives, there's no other choice left for him. Trust me, Reza, I did not make this decision lightly - I did not want it to come to this."
"Oh, I sure could have guessed that when you marched out of the cave with a sword at hand and immediately shot through that damned man's chest like it was not your business," Reza answered back, keeping her voice up. She stopped in front of the taller Firre with her hands on her hips. "If you are so certain that Velinn only deserved the death penalty, and that the evidence in his favor is so great, then that's what we have courts for!"
"Sure, we have them - until someone as rich and powerful as Velinn bribes his way through the system and is left with a slap on the wrist. That's what always happens, and that's why people like us are needed - to correct these wrongs where the system fails."
Hearing those words, Reza had to take a pause. Granted, it wasn't like she had never worked outside of the system herself, even discounting how she managed to end up in Vale and in Lantern Academy in the first place - they were, for lack of a better word, vigilantes, and from what she had heard Firre told them, the Rangers and the Vale Council were frustrated with them somewhat. But I could have never imagined that he interpreted it like... this.
She had to concede that she didn't know Firre that well. For a second, her eyes settled on Ashen. It didn't seem like she was affected by the prince's move much, if at all - whether it was because she knew him better than either her or Yche, or for some other reason. Was she... aware it would come to this?
Firre's claim still lingered in the air. "That's... not how you should reform the justice system, Firre..." Reza muttered, then exhaled. She turned her attention to Aprica - his report, about the Mistralian colonists in arms in the town square, still lingered on her mind, even if she was distracted by the... incident. "We're done for now. Stay here, and keep those... - freed slaves, I assume? - safe, we'll settle this question when I come back. I want a group of five to come with me, we might need some muscle."
Besides Aprica, her finger absentmindedly pointed at four other officers - Ereb, Ashuva, Emmerich and Auster - and then at the motorcycles behind them. They all answered with quick hand salutes and hopped on. The rest - including Firre, Ashen and Yche - were left to watch them depart with a roar of their engines.
"Uh, "settle this question"?" Yche repeated Reza's words after a second of uncomfortable silence. Her confused inquiry was left unanswered. After a defeated sigh, Firre turned his attention to the Faunus. Perhaps he could have said, or done, some things differently, but it was pointless to dwell on the past now.
"We need you all to get patched up, and quickly. Sadly, our healer has just drove off, but we can at least figure out how to feed all of you and give you temporary shelter." His eyes briefly turned to the sky. "The weather's clear, good. That makes things easier."
"And just stay calm, everyone!" Ashen joined him. Her familiar chirpy attitude returned as if it had never gone anywhere in the first place. "You don't want to attract Grimm here, do you?"
The mention of the Grimm got occasional chatter to die down and the attention of the Faunus to focus squarely on her. As insane as it was to think, it was almost relieving that anyone could understand her if she mentioned the Grimm. Wealthy or poor, human or Faunus, free or enslaved - they all knew that it's best to avoid giving in to fear, worry or anything else negative that was nagging them at the back of their mind, lest they attract those ravenous creatures. A few of the older and more exhausted Faunus sat down on the cold earth, taking the time to rest. Firre went down to one knee, staring one of the older Faunus in the eyes, and asked:
"Do any of you happen to know the layout of the mine? Specifically, the employees' offices? We need to know where their food storage is."
"Right," Yche joined in. "They should have not just rations stored for the people they had enslaved, but food for all of the employees and a large enough reserve to last, too. Since the supply lines between here and Vale are still too sparse, they probably rely on those rations to keep everyone fed until the next train from the capital."
"That's what I was thinking, yeah. And it'll be best to bring some reserves with us just in case we can't bring everyone here back to Vale here and now."
The old timer he was in front of did not offer an answer, but another aged Faunus, with a stubble, slightly grayed hair and a set of pig ears, said:
"Most of us have been around the entire complex once or twice. The ones who caused more trouble more often than others, though rarely on our free will. One of the kids in the back should show you the way - but the food cellars have always been strictly guarded..."
"That won't be a problem anymore," Firre answered and stood up. Chances are, any remaining guards have evacuated by now, and if they haven't, they're just going to surrender. "Then it's settled - that's what we'll all be eating today."
Running past coarse, dry, near-lifeless earth and leaping past boulders dulled by the common high winds, Silva hurried across the side of the mountain, searching for a safe route to descend back to Sumire without being noticed by the Rangers and Faunus along the mountain's base. She had witnessed what happened there, watching from up above in hiding - and, much like seemingly everyone else, it had shocked her.
Not in the same way that the blonde commander was, though.
What is that prince's deal? What is he, some kind of... anarchist? What he had said after executing that disgusting bastard... it made sense to her. It was something she could imagine saying herself to justify their quest for Faunus liberation. But... but it came out of the mouth of a human! Why would a human be so vehement in seeking justice, even bloody justice against someone who mistreated Faunus? Wouldn't it make much more sense for a human to look after their own kind, fight for their interests, rather than that of a people they have long oppressed?
And it wasn't even any human, either. It was a prince, the son of this Kingdom's ruler - their perspective on life must be even more distant. Shouldn't... shouldn't he have protected that businessman, then? The rich and powerful are what keep every regime afloat, and keeping them on their side is what all rulers do...
...Whatever.
It was getting increasingly difficult to square her experience with her preconceptions, so, Silva simply ran away from what she saw and mentally put it aside. She found a hiking trail leading downwards, towards the town, and then pulled out her water bottle - as soon as she popped the lid open, the water inside rushed out and collected below her, turning the dirt underneath into mud. Sliding on it, she speedily went down the slope of the mountain, brushing past and leaping over rocks and bushes before finally taking to the sky with a high leap.
Wind whipped past, faster and faster. Silva's hands caught the branch of a tree towering far above the nearby buildings, she spun on it a few times, then threw herself forward.
From above, the expanse of Sumire unfolded before her eyes. The gathering crowds in the town centre, standing off against one another with merely a narrow gap separating them, were plain to see as well.
Doesn't seem like it's deescalating, either... Silva dove down - by the time she reached the ground, a street in between a few residential buildings, she was falling down at breakneck speeds. Were the area not deserted by everyone leaving for the square prior, the loud thud would have certainly startled quite a few.
Once she stopped in a roll, the Faunus girl tapped on her face - good, the cloth she tied over her face was still on, the immense speed hadn't ripped it off. She will still need it. After the inspection, she made her way towards the source of distant yelling, shouting and rumbling, onto the rooftop and then from the top of one house to another. Just like she saw from above, everything was concentrated in the town's main square - it seemed as if the entire town was gathering there.
On one side, from the south, mobs of Valeans gathered, everyone from shopkeepers and teachers in the local school to numerous workers - lumberjacks, farmers, builders, mechanics, and so on. Numerous teenagers or even children were among them, attracted by the commotion - some of them even had weapons with them. Must be training to enroll in one of those academies... and keeping their town safe from Grimm in the meantime. Those overdesigned scythes, gun-swords and muskets had to get trained on other people now, though.
The other side of the square, filled with Mistralian colonists, was a lot drabber and more monotone. Mistral was always known as the most varied and the most cultured of all the kingdoms - after all, it encompassed an entire continent, its plethora of different cultures, traditions, styles, arts, not to mention the enormous wealth needed to pay for it all. The same people who believed that were equally baffled by Mistral's recent decision to embrace Mantle's ideology of emotion suppression in order to keep negative emotions that attract Grimm away. Yet, those who were more familiar with the eastern kingdom knew that it was all a mirage, an illusion. A narrow immensely wealthy elite could wear clothes of pure gold every day if they wanted to, whereas the enormous mass of humans and Faunus under them suffered. Elite Mistralians were the most fashionable, commoner Mistralians - the most treacherous of all folk.
Was it any surprise, then, that their citizens here could only afford, or rather, were only allowed bland gray clothing? It inspired no emotion or inspiration, after all - and that's what Mantle's ideology was all about. Cr at least a pale replica of it.
A team of Rangers were pushing their way through the Valean crowd, excusing themselves and questioning individuals along the way.
"Excuse me! Excuse me!" Reza yelled at the front, her arm splayed forward to push people aside. Scanning through the dozens of heads around them, she noticed one of the officers whom she had ordered to Sumire - and began making her way towards him. "Officer Anti-Arcturus! What is going on here?"
"There's the Valean Rangers!" a man with dark blue hair standing in front of the Mistralian crowd shouted and pointed to Reza, immediately inciting rumblings and other shouts amongst the ranks of his countrymen. He stood before the gray mass of people with a peer, who appeared ever so slightly younger - their similar hair colors, faces and hair styles indicated that they were brothers.
"Vale's been plotting to kick us out and throw us into the Grimm ever since we first settled here, and do you think they're doing an occupation of this town for any other reason? They're here to disarm us and then expel us into the wilderness!"
Even more shouts and yells followed. Several weapons were raised among the crowd - muskets, swords and even more complicated equipment alike. Reza pushed herself out from the crowd and into the small empty gap between the two groups. They have armed warriors too, then... this might get ugly if we don't resolve this quick.
"Excuse me! This is not a military occupation, we were just informed that-"
One of the two brothers, the older one who was the first to yell, pointed to her and then crossed his arms. "Don't bother, we were told everything! We had a witness who reported everything that happened in the mines."
"Yeah. Looks like your King wasn't too happy with how the people in this town have been working together in the Sumire Mines and so sent you, and his son, to take it over!"
"We were ordered no such thing!" Reza shouted back, briefly losing her cool. "We were informed that the mine was under attack!"
"Yeah it was - by your prince!"
Reza paused. Velinn told her that it was Mistralian forces, specifically an Invulnerable, who were plotting to attack and kidnap Firre during his visit to the mine, but judging by how Firre... acted when he marched out of the cave, she wasn't sure whether that was the whole story. Gods... damn it, Firre...
"Where is your "witness"?"
The younger brother laughed. "If you are planning to destroy evidence, then don't bother. He is not here."
After one last look down at the scene, Silva turned away and then carefully crawled down from the rooftop. A few people glance at her for a second once she dropped down to the ground, but didn't really pay her mind - with so many people with Aura abilities running around today, one or another jumping down from the sky was getting increasingly usual. Good. Silva stepped into the crowd, but kept herself at the back, watching the scene through the gaps in between people's heads and shoulders. Her hand rubbed on the grip of the pistol she pilfered in the mine, now attached to her belt.
"How am I supposed to take this witness for granted if I cannot-" Reza was about to shout back at the two brothers, only to suddenly halt. Words got stuck in her throat. She was no longer staring at both of them - no, her eyes were looking ever so slightly above her heads, to the sky.
"Uh... Commander?" Anti-Arcturus asked.
Rising from above the mountainous horizon from the north, emerging from the clouds. Reza could see a speck in the sky. Then another, popping up beside it. Then another, and another, all in a dim line of gray and black. That's... That can only be...
No, not Mantle...
"-okay, we will withdraw from Sumire at haste. Would this be enough to get everyone to stand down?" Reza said as soon as she snapped out - the sudden shift in her tone catching both of the brothers off-guard. Still, the elder one was not ready to let her go just yet.
"Really now? And how are we supposed to be certain that nothing like this will repeat again?"
"I... well..."
"Vale has caused Mistral a lot of grief these past years, you know," the younger brother added. "What we've seen here today was merely the last straw. All of your blockages to settlement, ordering beasts to be set free, and restrictions on everything - one of my friends over there had to go through two years of fighting just to be able to sell Mistralian goods here, you know."
"And that mine should be ours!"
The elder brother's demand was followed by triumphant yells and raised weaponry. "It's Mistralians who dug it out, and Mistralian tools that are being worked there! How about those damn Rangers leave its premises and hand it over to a hardworking Mistralian businessman?!"
Reza had her hands splayed as a gesture to try to get emotions calming down. "Look, look... we can negotiate on this..." Right as she was about to continue, however, a scream from behind her overtook her voice.
"We can't negotiate with these slavers!" It was a teenage boy with a halberd that had a gun attached to its grip, raising it and moving dozens of other Valeans to shout in anger. "Officer, did you not hear what they're demanding? This is what we've seen a thousand times in the past few years - Mistralians or Mantleans settling on our soil, demanding everything that we have, pushing us out, and then claiming yet another town for their empires! After Sumire, only Vale remains!"
"What, you are too lazy to work yourselves and then blame us when someone thriftier comes around?!" a voice from the Mistralian side shouted back at the claim. The situation was starting to escalate, and it was starting to slip out of Reza's control. Raising her voice as loud as she could, the Ranger yelled:
"Stand down! I repeat, stand down! I am simply trying to get everyone to stand down!"
It all felt so... volatile, and she hated it. Between the utterly unreasonable demands by the two Mistralian leaders which may as well have amounted to kissing their boots, the fired up Valeans who believed that they are defending their land, and a Mantlean fleet coming closer and closer to the village... it was a million different factors and the weight of every single one was crushing her shoulders. Reza kept turning from one side to another, shouting more and more, all while her heart was starting to beat frantically, her voice was starting to crack, and...
And then it all fell.
Silva, too, sensed that the situation in the town square was reaching a breaking point. During Reza's loud scream, she slowly pulled out her pistol. Everyone in front of her was too fired up to even notice her - and considering that half of the crowd already had weapons at the ready, it wasn't like she would have stood out much. Miss Glaesa told her to start a war today. She couldn't get any closer than this.
She trained her weapon on the centre of the square, aiming past dozens of Valeans in front of her.
For liberation.
Bang. Both crowds instantly stopped. What was previously a loud cacophony of yells, screams, shouts and chatter turned as silent as a graveyard.
"Abel!" the elder cried out in terror, grabbing his brother's limp body in mid fall. The Dust blast easily punched through Abel's weak Aura and then through his lung - as soon as his brother caught his body, he realized that there was nothing left to save. For a second, the horror of the attack got the Mistralian crowd to take a step back. With her hands shaking, Reza turned around, towards the source of the shot. There, a masked woman dressed in Sumire Mine guard uniform had already dropped her weapon and was running away with superhuman speeds.
"Cain... what do we do now...?" a bearded Mistralian warrior asked the grieving elder brother. Peeling his eyes off his brother's corpse for a second, Cain screamed with an agonized voice:
"They did it! The Valeans did it! They're here to kill us! FIGHT BACK!"
Reza barely managed to shout back a frantic "WAIT!" before the first volleys fired. Dozens of furious Valean warriors ran past her, clashing with the colonists they thought of as neighbours mere hours ago. Screams, yells, grunts and the loud clang of steel filled the air.
Forcing herself through despair that wanted her to crawl into the nearest hiding place and vanish, Reza shook away her thoughts and yelled to the other Rangers.
"Subdue as many people as you can! Get these gods damned idiots to stop! Don't kill anyone unless you have no other choice!"
Then, she ran after that mysterious woman. Something about her seemed ever so slightly familiar, but with only a glimpse on her, she could not make any guesses, much less draw conclusions. The chase took her to the rooftops - she leapt from one small, low, quaint wooden colonial house to another, keeping her eyes on the speck in the distance and inching closer and closer.
"Get back here!" Reza yelled. The woman glanced back to her - though it was almost impossible to tell when all of her head except the eyes were covered in cloth - and then hastened her pace. The gap between them began to widen again. She's trained in using Aura, for sure. A foreign agent? Some sort of... insane radical who wanted to start a war? Reza's mind went haywire with the theories, yet she could answer it with nothing but guesses.
From her backpack, the Ranger pulled out two Rock Dust arrows, loaded them in her crossbow and fired. Both flew past the mysterious woman and summoned two tall walls in an L-shape in her path. Hardly an impassable obstacle, but with such speeds, even a second of pause should be enough for her to close the distance.
"Halt!" Reza yelled and leapt. The mysterious woman leapt too - straight at the wall, then bounced off it. Before the Ranger could even realize, the woman met her in mid-air and wrapped both her legs around her waist. A painful slam into the ground followed. After spinning in the air and smashing Reza down, the assassin hopped off her and ran.
Agh...
Pain... loads of pain... Not just physical, either.
Slowly approaching Sumire from above, a gigantic airship floated across the skies of the Frontier. Huge crystals of Gravity Dust were embedded into a wide, bleached white metallic structure from below, all while three sets of "wings" on each side waved forward and backward like flagella, oaring at a human's running pace. Dozens of smaller airships surrounded it from every side, each one just as slow as the mothership and outfitted for specialized tasks, be it transport or bombardment. Nobody said that air travel was fast - in fact, compared to land transport or ships, it was the slowest of the three by far - however, it offered a sense of safety that journeying through a Grimm-infested surface could not. As long as you brought a large enough gun to punch through the occasional Nevermores, you could safely transport an entire army across large distances without worrying about losing valuable troops to attrition.
The inside of the mothership was white, gray, cold and clinical. Officers dressed in bright white overalls, reinforced with armor plates that made them appear almost like white knights, moved from one room to another, silently, carrying papers, reports and notices. Only the noxious monotone hum of the ship's engine, occasionally broken by footsteps in near-perfect sync to one another, could echo through the halls.
In the front of the ship, a wide circular hall served as the entire fleet's control room. Primitive counting machines were used to calculate the distance to their target as well as the planned trajectories, the sound of fingers tapping away against their metal buttons forming most of the room's background noise. A whole corps of statisticians used various devices to measure their speed, direction, the conditions outside of their sanitary halls and the situation on the surface, and sending reports from one to another in order to constantly make new updates. Another officer, holding a stack of reports, was approaching a seat in the very centre of the room, overseeing the hall around it.
On the seat sat a woman in a white uniform with shoulder pads, her eyes locked on the clouds slowly passing the mothership by, unflinching. Her blonde hair was tied into a bun. Both of her arms were placed on the armrests of the captain's chair.
"General Betula," the officer approaching her stated and bowed. She moved her eyes to his direction, but not much more.
"Yes?"
"We have finally managed to make contact with Argo Nikos. He has not captured the Prince of Vale, but if his testimony is correct, it appears that unexpected developments are taking place in the town of Sumire."
For a second, the General watched the passing clouds.
"How so?"
"Attempts to make contact with Velinn Flare were met with failure, and observation of the approaches of the Sumire mountain range, where the Sumire Mines are known to be located, indicates that transport ship 3301, which was leased to him for the purpose of escape, has been downed. The Statistician Corps reports that the likelihood of his death or capture is at 94 percent."
Hearing the report, she struck a faint frown, before erasing it in order to return to the mandated neutral expression.
"Is that all?" she asked. The officer shuffled his papers and continued:
"At the same time, observations report ongoing violence in Sumire itself - large rapidly moving concentrations of humans have been recorded, as well as tremors, explosions and gunfire. Argo Nikos has confirmed this. With this in mind, the Statisticians report a 100 percent likelihood of large-scale violence between the Valean and Mistralian populations of the colony, as well as a 94 percent likelihood that the Valean Rangers are currently deployed in Sumire and their presence was relevant to the outbreak of violence."
General Betula's fingers tapped on the armrest out of impatience. The situation appears to be going haywire. This is not what Velinn had promised to her... this is not what She had told her this would be like. At the same time... if Vale has moved its forces here, it means that they have the opportunity to destroy Vale's Frontier defenses here and present all three kingdoms a fait accompli. In a way, firefights between Valean and Mistralian forces on the ground means that war has already begun, and Mantle's treaty of friendship with Mistral does state in clear, bold letters that Mantlean forces must come to Mistral's aid in war...
"I request an analysis on the likelihood that Valean forces are privy to our plan to capture the Prince of Vale."
The officer nodded. "Understood, at once, General."
The woman rested her chin on her fingers after he departed, immersing herself in thought. And what is Oz's role in all of this...? Is he already aware and so did he deploy his underlings to follow his child? If he is, then surely he would have moved against Jurata already... but he can't be such a fraud as to be unaware of what She is doing, either.
"General Betula, the Statisticians report that the likelihood of your inquiry is 65%."
"Tsk, that is too high."
We will have to work with the assumption that Vale has turned hostile to our alliance, and will use military force against us if we do not... Good. We can end this masquerade for good.
"I request a bombardment of enemy positions in Sumire. We will do a decapitating blow and shatter the Valean Ranger Corps here, and then occupy the town."
The order got her subordinate to pause for a second, but, after breaking down his hesitation, he pulled out a notepad and began writing the order down.
"General, our observations report that the clashes in Sumire are taking place on the streets with presumably large numbers of non-combatants, most of whom appear to be uninvolved in the fighting. It will be difficult to identify the locations of Valean forces in such conditions, especially from our distance."
She did not hesitate in her answer. "If there is no other option, then fire upon the crowds as well. Indiscriminate bombardment will break their morale and make it impossible for the Rangers to pose any resistance."
"...Understood."
Calm, rhythmic taps against the metallic floor once again rang across the nauseatingly silent innards of the mothership.
"...Agh!"
Reza pulled her face off the ground in a jolt. For a few seconds, she hugged the earth, unwilling to move, but what has still remained of her sense of duty forced her to rise back to her feet. Not much time has passed yet, but... it felt as if everything had changed.
Screams, yells and shouts, unending. The crackling of rifles and the thunder of muskets, ringing at the back of her mind. Fire... Fire was spreading, from one house to another. At least one person in the clashes that were taking place throughout the entire city must have some sort of fire or heat semblance, then...
Suddenly, people began running past her in droves. They weren't armed - they were merely inhabitants of Sumire, Valean from the looks of it, who arrived to the town square to see what the fuss was about and were now fleeing for their lives. The sight got Reza to snap back and frantically look around.
"Commander! Commander!" a panicked voice called out to her from behind and got her to turn around. It was Aprica - he was dragging another Ranger by the shoulders, leaving a trail of blood in their path. The casualty seemed to still be alive, but was severely wounded - her aura was broken and bullet rounds had punched through her chest and left shin. Aprica was hardly better - he could still stand, but his shoulder was bleeding, so, pulling his comrade over his back was not an option. "We... they fired upon us... The others are still there... fighting back... but... we have sustained casualties..."
"Oh gods, oh no..." Reza mumbled under her breath as she ran up to the fellow Ranger, then placed her hand on his shoulder. A hum and an Aura glow followed, and soon, Aprica stretched his arm - it was good as new. "Give her to me, too. Get to the mine approaches, as soon as possible, and bring the civilians there. Worst comes to worst, we'll hold out in the caverns."
"Got it!" Aprica answered and then ran to the fleeing civilians, yelling. "Everyone! Come with me!"
Reza went down on one knee and began healing the wounded Ranger next. "I'm sorry... I was entrusted with your lives, and I failed on the first day. But... I can at least make sure that..."
A distinct, familiar screeching sound reached her ears, the sound of something falling, and fast. Wait... That sounds like...
Suddenly, an artillery shell struck one of the buildings by the street with a powerful crash and equally tremendous explosion, enhanced by a Combustion Dust warhead, which tore through everything in its surroundings. Reza was thrown away by the shockwave before she even realized what was going on and slammed into the wall of a building on the other side of the street - her Aura broke, and she slumped to the ground. Bits and pieces of cement, gravel and asphalt which were thrown to the air now descended down like a rain, pelting over a dozen bodies. If she could even find the wounded person she was about to heal up, Reza was not confident in their survival.
Forcing herself through the pain, letting out frantic, panicked, shaken breaths, she pulled herself back to her feet and raised her eyes above the newly created hellscape. The Mantlean fleet... It was even closer than before, and its cannons were firing. Soon, a second shell hit, hitting the other side of town, but with enough force that Reza could still feel the vibration from the impact. A third and fourth followed...
It was unmistakable now. The first shells of war have fallen - and, much like she feared all this time... it was them who caused all this. The four of them.
"No... no..."
Reza ran. Behind her, two more shells fell, decimating entire buildings and almost throwing her off balance with their shockwaves. Whoever was still alive was fleeing much like her - and now, they didn't even need to be told to be running in the mountains' direction.
Mantlean airborne artillery must have noticed the ongoing retreat. Suddenly, a shell fell right in her path, tearing through the street and collapsing two houses onto it - had she made even two more steps forward prior, she was certain she'd already be dead. In her condition, any direct hit would finish her off.
What was worse, the blast cut the street off, and she was certain that more shells were coming. Running through the houses would be suicide, any stray shell would bury her alive, and crawling over the pile of debris would-
"Rezzy!"
Two arms suddenly caught Reza from above and swept her up. The catch got her to briefly close her eyes, but once she opened them up, she saw that she was well above the surface, flying towards the Sumire Mines.
"Hold on tight," Ashen muttered, keeping her eyes focused on their landing site. And so, Reza did. She wrapped her arms around her friend and held on for dear life.