When they got to the burning town, they were greeted with a gruesome sight. At the entrance to the town, there were several bodies hanging from the front gate and the nearby trees, as well as severed heads on pikes, a large, dying bonfire with several charred corpses within, and over a dozen people tied to crosses.
Choking down her disgust, Flayn realized that a few of the victims were wearing uniforms of Nemesis's army, and one of the men being crucified was an Agarthan. There were also some wearing Adrestian uniforms, so it was unlikely this was the work of an extremist Adrestian soldier. Had Nemesis or one of his generals wiped out the town, and also decided to kill any objectors along with the townsfolk?
"Well, well, well. To think we might have missed each other! Your timing is impeccable, Cethleann," a hateful, mocking voice spoke.
The speaker was a middle-aged man with pallid skin and pale blond hair, with a vicious, bloodthirsty grin and cold, cruel, ice-blue eyes. Around him were a dozen soldiers in red-and-white uniforms, and more men came from the sides and from behind the Company, surrounding them. The man was older than Flayn had ever seen him, but she would recognize him anywhere. "Merrett Riegan," she spat. "I should have recognized your hand in this atrocity."
"Wait, that's Merrett Riegan?" Hilda asked.
"In the flesh," Riegan confirmed.
Claude decided to fish for information. "So, before we start fighting, do you mind telling us exactly what happened here?"
"Oh, why not?" Riegan said. "You're all going to die anyway. Who knows, perhaps I'll even let one of you live, to carry the news back to Lycaon."
He sneered. "This town of degenerates attempted to remain neutral in this war, so that they could cater to the soldiers of both the Adrestians and the Kingdom of Liberation, to allow them to indulge their base impulses away from their superiors. They refused to stand for anything, and I easily exploited their disloyalty. I offered the town a pittance to set a trap for the Adrestian and Liberation soldiers. And I sprang it around the town."
He let out a mocking laugh. "I brought sixty men, to pacify the town of almost two hundred. Do you know how many fought back? Five. Five of them tried to defend their homes while the rest stood by, paralyzed by cowardice.
"I said that, since five had fought for their lives, five would be spared. The fate of each prisoner was chosen by lottery. One by one, they all met their deaths, save for the five lucky winners. You'll find them nursing their broken bones in the mayor's house." He pointed over his shoulder at the house behind him. "I don't doubt they'll run out of food they can scavenge from the remains of the town before they heal enough to make it to some other village or be saved. Perhaps they'll starve, or perhaps they'll kill and eat each other." He snickered at that. "Such is the proper fate of fence-sitters and degenerates. Lycaon and Nemesis may tolerate them, but the Order of Iron does not."
"The only degenerates I see here are you and your men," Dimitri snarled, drawing Recompense of the Fallen and cutting down one of Riegan's men in a single blow.
Instantly, Riegan's face turned sour, the arrogance melting away. Seconds later, dozens of attack dogs attacked the Company, followed by the men. Their magic attacks were significantly more powerful than those of the average mage, but as strong as they had gotten in Hyrule, it made little difference. Soon, the dogs and men were all dead. However, there was no sign of Riegan.
"Where did he go?" Raphael asked. "Did someone cut off his head and I just don't recognize his body?"
"I think he warped away when he realized the rest of us aside from Flayn wouldn't die as easily as defenseless villagers," Lorenz answered.
"So...what now?" Leonie asked.
"I'll tell you what we do now," Flayn said. "These people on the crosses aren't dead yet. We can still save them."
Removing the dying people from the crosses was very difficult. They were in terrible shape, at the point where without using healing spells, they all would have died quickly upon being removed from them. But somehow, they did manage to remove them without any of them dying.
"Are you sure you want to save this one?" Linhardt asked, as they got to one of the victims. "He's one of Nemesis's men."
"I don't care," Flayn said. "He might have been an enemy before, but no one deserves this."
Eventually, the Company had saved all of the men on the crosses, and had healed the five survivors' broken limbs. Once they were all recovering, the Company left them alone to rest, as they contemplated the implications that in this timeline, a third faction had formed.
After the Rising Sun Company left them, four of Nemesis's soldiers and one Agarthan soldier contemplated what had just happened. One of the humans had been one of the five who had been "spared" by Riegan, her previously-broken leg aside. The other four had nearly died on crosses.
"She just saved our lives," one of the humans, a young woman with short, black hair, who went by the name of Liliana. "Saint Cethleann, a woman that I thought, I knew was a monster...she just saved us when she had no obligation to."
The other woman present, the one who had been "spared," a pink-haired, comparatively older woman named Hana, lit a pipe and started smoking. "She doesn't live up to Nemesis's propaganda."
The Agarthan man, a thin man with gray, wavy hair and a beard named Andreas, shrugged and shook his head. "Not many Agarthans would do what she did if the situation were reversed. Maybe the Turncoat, but that's about all." He sighed. "Going back to fighting them after this won't be easy."
"Who says we have to?" said the unit's captain, a tall, naturally white-haired man named Paul, causing the other four to stare at him. "Everything Nemesis has ever said about Cethleann or the Nabateans has painted them as inhuman monsters. But she showed us mercy when it would have been easier to leave us to die. Tell me, if Nemesis or one of the Elites, or one of your freaky commanders, Andreas, had shown up, do you think they would have bothered taking us off those crosses? To save us or to bring our bodies back for a proper burial?" When none of them answered, he continued. "If our enemy is willing to show us more compassion than our own leaders would, then clearly we've been fighting for the wrong side." He tore the emblem of the Crest of Flames off of his shirt. "From now on, I'm a proud soldier of Adrestia."
"Honestly, Nemesis would probably have us all flogged for not trying to kill her the moment her back was turned, even after she saved us," Hana mused, as she tore the Crest of Flames patch from her sleeve. "I'll take my chances serving Lycaon."
"Well, command isn't gonna like it," said the fifth man, a pink-haired man named Thomas. "But you know what? I don't think I give a damn anymore." He and Liliana all followed suit in removing the emblem from their clothing.
Andreas stayed silent for several seconds as he grappled with the generations' worth of animosity. Eventually, he snarled. "Fuck it! Fuck Riegan, fuck the Order of Iron, fuck Nemesis, fuck the Elites, fuck Thales, fuck Nicodemus, fuck the old Agarthan Empire and the new one, but most of all? Fuck. Epimenides." He spat on the floor. "If the dragons can accept one turncoat, they can accept two! As long as I live, I will never fight for Epimenides again!"
With that, five soldiers set themselves against their former leaders. Hours later, Adrestian forces arrived in the ruined town, and as soon as the five of them had recovered fully, they all enthusiastically enlisted in the Adrestian army.