Note: This chapter is a bit longer than the others before it were (actually it's twice as long), so strap in for a longer ride of almost 9,000 words! Again, there are lots of graphic images of death and violence, so please prepare for that, and understand that it is a prevailing theme throughout this story!
The criminals were called the Brilliant Bunch, much to the chagrin of anyone else that knew them. But as their name did (or didn't) imply, they caught on quickly as to what was happening. Of course, they knew about the gems in the cave, but they had no idea about their true nature. Nevertheless, they excavated what they could into as many carts and chests as possible. The dull, gray crystals lit up at once, and became multi-colored beacons of brilliance.
The higher-ups were astounded by this display. They asked around for answers, and it was then that they learned some of their Plegian allies saw a mark of Grima on each of the jewels, but they thought it to be normal so they didn't bother telling anyone.
"It doesn't matter now, anyway. Although I guess it means we can't sneak up on them in the walkways," one of the bandits said in a low tone. The original plan was to rely on the natural darkness of the cave to hide their assault, but the whole system lighting up like a firework meant they could no longer stick to that plan. There was a loud, simultaneous sigh of disappointment and fear. What were they supposed to do now that their original plan was foiled? They looked towards their leader for advice.
"Bring the scouts back in," he demanded. "We will regroup and think of something better, so long as those Shepherds don't get here in the inner sanctum. But how they got these jewels to light up is beyond me."
"The scouts are already back, sir." And as if on cue, several of the lackeys appeared before them. They nodded in respect to their leader, who simply crossed his arms and gave them a stony look. They took it as a sign to continue with their report. One of them bowed as far forward as his back would take him, and the other called out in a hesitant tone.
"Sir, it's the Shepherds. We overestimated how much time it would take for them to arrive. They're already here as we speak."
"What gave you that idea? Was it intuition or the fact that this place is lit up like a parade in Ylisse?" He barked at them, seemingly displeased with their obvious observation and the fact that his carefully constructed plan would have to be changed. They cringed at his sudden spike in anger, and he reveled in their fear and obedience. Still, his genuine curiosity got the better of him, and he asked what everyone was already thinking. "What's going on, anyway? Which one of you Plegian blokes made everything so sparkly?"
"None of us, sir. So that's why we know that the Shepherds are here. Rumor has it they have some Plegians on their side, even if their soldiers are mostly Ylissean." One of them scratched the back of their heads in thought. "Chrom's a fair guy, right? Guess it don't matter where the help's from as long as he gets it."
"Apparently," the leader agreed. "Well, that's fine by me. They're earlier than expected, but we can still take them on. We'll wait for them here. They'll have no idea who they're up against. The battle's already in our favor." A wide smile appeared on his face. "Besides, you know what our own forces have been up to. Even if we can't beat them, they'll lose for sure." He gave a knowing look in the direction of the ceilings, walls, and other surfaces as if something greater lay behind them. The other bandits gulped.
"Yes, of course, but I'm worried. Will we be okay with those...creations? Last thing we need is our arses blasted to bits in the chaos."
"Trust me, boys." He forgot his anger from before as he wrapped his arms around their necks lovingly. "We can't lose. The only way those Shepherds make it out of here is if they're ghosts to begin with, haha!"
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After an hour or so of winding down multiple walkways and chambers, the Shepherds knew they were close to their destination. Some of the torch holders were actually lit or barely snuffed out, and the further in they went, the more they realized that the gems in this particular area were already removed from their places in the walls and ceilings. None of the local cave life (which were mostly lizards, anyway) could have done this, so that could only mean one thing.
They were near the stronghold. More and more signs of life appeared, and the distinct smell of smoke wafted through the air. Miriel was eager to write down all the observations around her, and her books floated in the air magically as she simultaneously flipped through different pages and scribbled down notes in margins. Shortly after, she looked towards her fellow mage, Ricken.
"I trust you have come prepared. Preparedness is the happenstance of all things, and thus is the foundation of research itself. One cannot go into the field unarmed." She tapped one of the floating books along its smooth, untouched cover. "I purchased some new tomes recently. I hope your usual frugality hasn't failed you, Ricken."
"No, I'm armed." He reassured her with a curt nod. "I have three different Arcwind tomes, plus an Arcfire. I'm the best at casting wind spells, though, so I have more of those than the other stuff."
"I see. It's quite wise to stick to one's niche, especially in a situation where it's better to resort to tried and true methods, rather than to branch out experimentally. And you?" She asked Tharja and Henry, who were coincidentally walking beside each other. "I can't imagine that either of you would come without a dark tome or two."
"Two is right," Tharja confirmed. "I brought Waste and Flux with me. I enjoy their violence." She ran her fingers against the spine of the Waste spellbook, and the insignia glowed with eerie, violet light. "It will be quite entertaining, if nothing else."
"I'm good," Henry simply said. "You'll see what I mean when we're in there, blowing all their heads off!" He deliberately stepped on a stray branch, hoping the snapping sound would bring intimidation to his peers. Lissa jumped up, Ricken frowned, but Miriel was disappointingly unshaken. She just nodded at him.
"Very well. Let's do our best to be efficient, more than anything."
"Yes, let's!" Anna added on. "I see light up ahead. Torch light, and you can hear them talking, too." She was right, because in the short distance up ahead, they could hear a quiet gaggle of chatter, as well as the unmistakable sound of metal clanking against metal. Only one chamber remained ahead of them, and they knew the noises of battle readiness better than anyone else. Blades were sharpened and bowstrings were taut, and they could only imagine the amount of physically-set enemies that awaited them in the last, unknown room.
Lissa looked to Maribelle with a determined stare, and the two girls nodded at each other as they fell back into formation—at the rear of the party. Gaius and Anna wordlessly strutted ahead to the front, swords at the ready for the sneak assault they had planned. In between the front and rear guard were the four mages: Ricken, Miriel, Henry, and Tharja. They were a mix of emotions, everything from sad to excited. Henry was some unintelligible combination of excitement and emptiness. His feeble heart started beating faster, as he could taste the spray of blood and hear the screams of agony already. He was so, so, so ready for carnage. He felt this yearning in his bones and he knew he had to feed it.
He knew his heart needed more blackening.
The euphoria was so strong that he almost missed his cue, and had to sprint to keep up with the rest of his group. Near the entrance to the furthermost chamber, Henry saw everything. He saw a multitude of bandits gearing up for a fight. He saw metal carts filled to the brim with the cave's natural minerals. He saw chests of gold and other stolen riches piled in the back in a large, intimidating, but inviting heap.
He saw it all.
Once Anna gave the signal, everyone took their proper battle stances, and within that moment she and Gaius rushed into the fray, taking them all by surprise. Henry waited for the first scream to resound before he opened his tome, stepped into the chamber, and blasted the first stranger he could see with his Flux tome. They screamed as they were unarmed at the moment, and fell to their death in a haze—a dark shroud of magic and despair enveloping their body whole. The moment the first drop of blood was shed, the rest of the enemies became aware of the ambush, and armed themselves as quickly as possible.
This is good, he thought happily to himself. No matter what they do, they're all easy targets. I want them to bleed out for me. Go ahead, do your best to fight me. I'll make sure that you bleed, bleed, bleed.
He had to be careful, though. Half the fight was murder but the rest of it was protecting his comrades. He gave whoever was near him a reassuring smile that yes, he would do his best to protect them, and no, he wouldn't ever think of turning his back on them. Not now, and certainly not ever. He made this sentiment clear as he called out to the opposition with a hazy smile and murky cackle. "Hey, no need to be so serious! Let's see those smiles!"
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The fight started off incredibly well for the Shepherds. Anna and Gaius were right when they surmised their sudden appearance would catch the others off guard. Half of the enemies they dispatched were practically unarmed or unprepared for proper battle, to begin with. This mistake costed them greatly, as the two redheads were like dual tornadoes of unending destruction.
They were as light fingered as they had ever been, too. Both of the thieves had large but empty burlap sacks hanging over their backs. The fabric begged to be filled with all sorts of stolen goods, so they appeased its appetite. They threw anything they could inside of there. Robin mastered a certain spell that allowed the bags to be weightless, despite the amount of treasure that was placed inside. It would come in handy with collection, especially since the convoy wagons wouldn't be sent until they met back at the rendezvous point in the woods. Before then, anything that the thieves couldn't easily fit into their sleeves or pockets would go into those bags, instead.
It was so easy, they almost felt bad. They practically danced around the enemies, fluidly scraping through the spaces that the fighters' large bodies left for them. They focused on pilfering as much of the stolen bounty as they could before engaging in combat. But once they did fight, they made sure to showcase their different styles of combat.
Anna was more graceful and whimsical. She had more experience than Gaius did, first of all, but her favorite Levin Sword flitted in the air, almost like it had wings—and it was as if she had no bones in her body, either, because she moved so effortlessly. When the enemies weren't expecting it, she fired off magical thunderbolts from the blade's jagged edge, which were just as lethal as the act of burying the blade in their chests, as well. She could afford to show off more, and so she played with her enemies in the most dangerous game possible. She jumped on their shoulders, leaped from their heads, and blasted their limbs off all in the same motion. Oh, she loved being a trickster. It satisfied that sadistic side of hers, one that demanded entertainment as much as it demanded bloodshed. She received both in the same fell swoop.
The biggest challenge she had on her own was facing a meaty man of a berserker, who nearly cut her head off with his domineering ax. The weapon itself was bigger than her entire body, and she vaguely wondered how he was able to hold it in the air so easily. Nevertheless, she tried not to worry about too much as she dodged each blundering hit after another. When she finally got bored of evading, she aimed her sword at his chest and fired two powerful bolts of electricity at him.
They struck him directly, and he stuttered and seized up before falling to the ground like a fish out of water. He ran out of air soon enough, and remained limp and heavy at her feet. Oh well, she thought simply. That's just how business goes. She tiptoed over his corpse to set upon her next victim, and then the next after that.
Gaius, on the other hand, was far more straightforward. While he played around with his enemies as well as Anna did, he preferred getting straight to business. He dodged what needed to be dodged, and attacked what needed to be attacked. He wasn't nearly as cruel as she was, either, and this showed when he tried to incapacitate the enemies before overtly killing them. If they were too resistant to his methods, however, he had no choice but to dispatch them, since they rarely backed down from such a deadly matchup in the first place. At least, in that regard, he was very gracious and gave them the swiftest end he could.
Sadly, these brutes were rather high in defense so it took quite some time to cut them down. Many of them were half-butchered messes by the time they finally succumbed to the finality of death. Of course, part of Gaius always felt bad about this, but mostly he was exasperated. "I told you to give it up while you were ahead," he said to one mercenary as he buried his blade in her chest. "Shoulda listened to me, huh?"
Still, his style of fighting complemented Anna's own technique quite well, and that was very fortunate, because they needed their combined forces to take down the next opponent. They were up against none other than the leader of this ragtag troop himself (The Brilliant Bunch, or so they announced before valiantly facing them in battle and sorely losing), a berserker with beady black eyes and oily black hair. He was at least seven feet tall, with an impressive bulk to match to his height. He heaved axes and swords all at once, and seemed to wonder which weapon would be best to kill his opponents with.
"I've decided that I'm axing your head off first and I'm slicing him in half." He pointed at Anna, then Gaius respectively, the ends of his weapons gleaming sharply. Such a threat would have scared off anyone else, but these were highly seasoned thieves that he was dealing with. They weren't afraid of him in the least, and they almost felt guilty for that. It took all the willpower in both of them to resist laughing at him right then and there.
"We'll see about that, Big Guy." Anna taunted him in a sweet voice, and wagged her finger in his face. "Don't you know? Some swords are way better than others. The best swords are the ones that do this." She pushed him back with two electric bolts of the Levin Sword, and smiled as he stumbled precariously. However, he quickly regained himself—sloughing off the discomfort of the magical attack—and countered her wide grin with one of his own.
"Not bad, sweetheart. Such a shame that you can't do more." He threw one of his axes at Anna, and she barely dodged it without it taking the top of her head off. Gaius flinched inwardly, but controlled himself before giving in to his impulses. Instead of faltering, he helped her stand up, and covered her as he threw several daggers at his opponent.
The slim blades placed themselves neatly in his elbows, and he screamed at their discomfort. While it was easy to pull them out, Gaius' corkscrew technique (or so he called it) embedded the knives in such a way that they couldn't be removed with ruining the condition of the arm in general. But the berserker attempted to tear them out, anyway—twisting the meat, destroying the sinew, and spewing more blood as a result.
Anna didn't show him any mercy as she attacked a second time, flashes of light arcing out of the enchanted sword and hitting him squarely in the chest. He howled in pain, and she relished in his misery. "What's wrong? Is this more than you bargained for?"
"Cowards!" he hollered at them, deep voice bellowing painfully into the air. "Half wits! Dastards! Fuckin' cowards! Fight me one-on-one, why don't you?"
"Idiot," Gaius scolded him. "It's your fault for underestimating us. What kind of leader are you? Well, don't answer that, 'cause I know what kind you'll be." A devious smirk crossed his face, and he concealed several throwing knives between his knuckles. The enemy suspected nothing as he continued on with his taunts. "A dead one."
It was a precious second in time where Gaius' actions followed his words immediately. He threw his arm forward, and extended his hand so that the throwing knives could be forcefully launched out from in between his fingers. They shot forward as straight and true as an arrow, and stuck themselves in the worst place possible.
Those silvery blades, thin but sharply precise, lodged themselves right in the berserker's eyes. The man screamed—the noise so unholy that if Libra were here, he'd pray for him—and fell backward with a pathetic stagger. Even though he bled so profusely, he seemed unable to die, as he sat there and howled for forgiveness. Anna gave a rare act of mercy as she jumped into the air, and shot him with the full force blow of her magic sword.
Within seconds, the man keeled over: dead. But just before he gave into the treacherous lulls of death, he cried out: "They've...won…! Do it, now…!"
But his words fell on deaf ears as Anna and Gaius quickly stole back the goods he sacrificed his life to protect. Gilded chests full of silver and gold, priceless jewels cut into shapes on necklaces and bracelets, and even decorated goblets and picture frames! It was a dream come true, and the two of them would have been distracted by their innate greed, were it not for the righteous outbursts of the enemies in front of them.
Maybe it was because they took down their leader, but it was much easier to defeat those enemies as they came. When they had time to take a short break amidst all the fighting, Anna looked to Gaius and smiled at him, crimson eyes sparkling with delight. He noticed her elation and matched it for his own. "That was sweet," he praised, holding his fist out to her in anticipation.
She quickly bumped her own fist against it, and nodded in agreement. "Definitely."
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On the mages' side of the cave (the near opposite of where Anna and Gaius were), things were going just as well, if not a little bit slower. It seemed that the enemies closest to the entrance were the least battle-ready, for some stupid reason, and they fell in seconds' time as they were virtually unarmed. Those that were ready for combat still met similar fates as their weakness to magic was more than just a rumor.
It was reality.
Their saving grace would be fighting against Ricken. The boy preferred Arcwind and wind-based spells more than anything, because they were less violent in nature and would allow him to blow enemies away, or peacefully incapacitate them. If that happened, then he would save them the trouble of going against his far more merciless allies. Before, he didn't think twice about murdering someone else to save his own skin, but when he started regarded the enemies more humanly, he tried his best to make things a little less gruesome here and there. Of course, there were some instances where death couldn't be avoided, and Ricken gritted his teeth and muttered a sincere apology before ending the lives of any stubbornly violent enemies ahead.
But of the four mages gathered there, he was definitely the one who enemies could actually survive against, once initial blows were exchanged.
Otherwise, the other mages were quite brutal. Miriel preferred fire and lightning, and was quite satisfied when some uncouth fighter collapsed to a burning crisp, or a scheming archer received cardiac arrest from an electric shock before dying. While the woman herself was not particularly sadistic or mean, she felt as if life was precious and by pitting her own life against theirs, she had to honorably fight them with as much strength as possible.
These asinine knaves deserve this for their incompetence and more, she thought harshly to herself. One hand held open a spellbook, while the other moved to adjust the position of her frames—those that continued to be dislodged from the sheer force of her spellcasting. She couldn't dwell too long on it, though, as she had a formation to keep up. She flanked the right side of the entrance, with Tharja to her left and Maribelle some several feet behind her. Any break in the line would be disastrous, so her wits were sharper than usual.
Tharja herself was rather quiet, except for some cruel jests she saved for her enemies. Whenever she was particularly annoyed, however, she became louder and emboldened—even going as far as to laugh in the face of all the death she caused. She didn't hesitate to drown a mercenary in their own spurting blood, or to cast an illusion that would make one enemy attack his comrades out of confusion. It was a rather impressive show, if not slightly barbaric.
Next to Tharja was Ricken, and next to Ricken was Henry himself. He stood to the far left side, and was only several feet in front of Lissa, who worked hard behind the scenes as a healer to any of the four offensive magic users. Now, he wasn't intimidated by her presence or anyone else's, just as he wasn't too terribly devoted to the Shepherds' cause to begin with. He didn't really care if it was Chrom he was fighting for (because he knew he could kill that prince so easily if he wanted to), but it was because of friends like Ricken and the others that made him feel grateful and inspired. He never once felt this way when serving in the Plegian army, and it wasn't because of the dark and dreary surroundings, either.
Before his enlistment in the Shepherds, Henry didn't have any friends to call his own. And he wasn't sure if the others viewed him the same way, but there was a sort of brimming warmth and confidence that arose from being around the same people so often. He watched their backs, and they watched his, and there was something reassuring and almost comforting about that. Although he didn't know what to call such emotions, right now, Henry felt elated.
He switched between his gruesome dark spells (one which even managed to make a man implode on himself, somehow), and his less-dark-but-still-violent normal spells, like Arcfire and Arcthunder. Just as Henry set another offender aflame and laughed at his burning corpse, he shouted out to Ricken: "And that's lucky number thirteen! These dastards just keep on coming, huh?"
"Jeez, you keep count of your kills? I mean, sometimes I do that too, so I can write back to my folks at home about how intense the battles were, but I'd never try to tally it up for fun like that." Ricken''s countenance fell, and it remained that way as he blew another enemy far away from their formation with a blast of Arcwind. "There's, what, fifty of them in here? And you already took down thirteen out of that fifty? That's a lot for just one person."
"Statistically speaking," Miriel piped up, "it's close to the average. Fifty people divided by the six of us offensive units is an uneven division, at best, but if that is the case, then each of us should have eradicated at least eight enemies to be warranted as efficient. Since Henry is doing so well, it probably means that one of us is lacking in numbers."
"That's not going to be me," Tharja muttered, and aimed her next spell at an oncoming thief. It was her beloved Waste tome, and she watched as the enemy before her became an unidentifiable blob of flesh and clothing that unraveled beneath a shroud of black-violet fog. Satisfied with her work, she repeated a single number beneath her breath, maniacally so. "Nine, nine, nine. I've killed nine." Then a frown appeared on her face. She asked herself—more loudly this time—if nine was enough. Hopefully it was, as the number of enemies in relation to the number of Shepherds was lowering steadily. There wouldn't be many people left to add to her kill count.
The last enemy that the mage line faced was another male berserker. He seemed like the kind of guy to be a right hand man, and based on the look of fury and indignation on his face, Henry guessed that was exactly the case. The spurned second-in-command aimed for Henry in particular, and with a wild look in his pitifully scorned eyes, he raised a silvery ax in the air above him.
"Die, Plegian scum!"
"I haven't heard that one before!" Henry quipped, chuckling madly out of amusement. His snarky words only worked to further incite the enemy's anger, however, and the berserker came hurtling at him like a bull seeing red. But Henry anticipated the enemy's moves all the same, so he prepared himself for the upcoming attack. With a bit of a flourish, Henry moved to his right in order to dodge what he believed to be an attack in the other direction—that of his left.
He was wrong. He jumped right into the direction of the attack, and everyone bore witness to this harrowing mistake. That stupid grin of his was still evident, but it did manage to falter significantly. The sudden excitement caused his mind to ignore whatever fake expression he was making, as the imagined sight of blood and guts flashed through his vision and overpowered any other thought process available.
Then it hit. The blade of the ax slashed into Henry's left shoulder, slicing through the thin clothing and cutting into the skin and muscle that lay underneath that. It was a decisive attack, for sure, and the spray of blood that resulted from the contact flew out in a decided line—staining the attacker and the attacked in equal spatter marks.
Lissa screamed frantically, because this intruder was so close to her, now. If Henry managed to fall in this moment, then he would leave their formation wide open for the likes of him to get through.
She would be done for.
Painfully enough, the berserker removed his ax from the injured shoulder, and he raised it skyward in a second attempt to slice Henry's head open. Because of the overwhelming agony that surged through his body, Henry was too distracted to counterattack, and he simply stumbled backward out of disbelief.
Something miraculous happened just then.
A large, crackling beam of lightning shot forth, and struck the attacker in the head—right through his temples and into his skull. The force of the shock and electricity itself seemed to cook whatever loose meat it found in there, and a sickening sizzling sound was heard by all. Then his eyes rolled backward, his tongue hung loosely from his mouth, and his nose exploded with gushing streams of blood—as did his ears—and finally, that gruesome sight disappeared as the man keeled over backward and fell limply on the ground.
Dead.
Henry looked for the source of a life-saving attack, and remained speechless as he saw Miriel's hand raised in the air, with a page of Katarina's Bolt falling out from her tome. Her body shook visibly as the attack was dealt impulsively, and the success of which remained a mystery until she actually went and did it. But seeing the desired effect—Henry saved, his attacker killed—calmed her down, and she breathed in deeply as her back straightened and breath steadied.
Everyone was silent. Lissa wordlessly ran to Henry's side at this time, and began to heal the deep cut that was left in his shoulder. She pointed her shiny staff at the injured area, and muttered a few healing words under her breath. The effects were immediate as the staff glowed a soft, golden color, and Henry's gash began to close. All that remained was dried blood, and the lingering pain. Even though it hurt to pretend like it was nothing, Henry shoved aside his bitter feelings of hatred towards pain, and tried to appear grateful.
It was quiet for some time, because they realized that they just defeated the last enemy in their sights. They were safe, now, and allowed to take a break from the heavy pace of combat. Everyone moved at once, and swarmed around Henry like a descending flock of birds. Even Maribelle, who was usually disgusted by Henry as a whole, seemed concerned for him. "Henry, are you alright? That was quite a nasty blow you received."
"It was," Ricken assented, reaching out to place his own hand over Henry's trembling fingers. He rubbed at the bony knuckles with a gentle touch before saying: "I didn't see that coming. I should have acted faster, too. Sorry."
"Do not take this as a moment of regret," Miriel, the hero of the moment, suddenly said. "It is a learning lesson. You can't always predict what an enemy will do, at least not on your own. It was smart thinking of you, to move towards Ricken's direction, since a normal brute would think of hitting away from another potential opponent. Still, you fought someone that was much more experienced than you were, so you are not to blame." She said all of this in a highly calculative tone, but everyone knew this was the closest thing to comfort that Miriel could provide.
It humored Henry nonetheless, who gave a dismissive wave of hand and grinned widely at everyone's bright and smiling faces, despite the pain that ate at him and threatened to pierce through his heart.
"Oh, you guys! You flatter me! If you don't stop right now, I'll drop dead just like that guy wanted me to, haha!"
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The battle was over. Everyone that wasn't a Shepherd was either dead or incapacitated, with little difference in between. Gaius had the honor of dealing with the very last enemy, and perhaps it was the fatigue settling in, but he was more merciful in dealing with them than usual.
The last bandit standing of The Brilliant Bunch was a young, female myrmidon. Gaius wasn't necessarily soft on her simply because she was a girl—and especially since he killed a good amount of females in the past moments, already—but because he was more tired than anything, and the youthful look on her face made his stomach churn. She was too young to be caught up in this shitty situation. She had much more to live for than this. So instead of outright killing her, he decided to punch her in the face, hoping the force of impact would knock her out. When she laid unresponsive on the cold ground, he chalked it up to a success and regrouped with the others.
They all stood in awe of the literal mountain of treasure laid before them. Anna was quick on her feet and threw as many of the goods as she could into the enchanted convoy bag, thinking to herself about how impressed Robin would be with their work. "Listen, you guys, don't worry about not being able to carry everything. Robin said we could fill up our bags, but the extraction team will come by later, and those guys will deal with the rest."
"Like I would even worry in the first place. I'm just trying to milk this place for what it's worth," Gaius insisted. "But, yeah, sounds all good to me. It's been a while since I've cut through a proper mob like that one."
"You two were quite impressive in your agility," Miriel commended them. "You managed to come out of this conflict in an almost unscathed condition. Not to mention that you dispatched many of our enemies without the assistance of our healers. And the only major injuries our side sustained were on Henry's account."
As if she spoke some magic words, Gaius immediately glanced towards Henry, with unmistakable worry etched in his green eyes. Junior got hit? That's an unlucky dastard if I've ever seen one. Gaius kept staring at him, almost feeling compelled to do so, as if some new injury would appear on Henry's body if he looked away.
When Henry turned to glance at Gaius, the thief was already staring elsewhere. But the dark mage laughed, and it was as if he knew everything and anything that transpired in those few moments. That wasn't the case, but there was some sweet satisfaction to be had in haunting one's thoughts to the point of worry. He reveled in the idea of haunting Gaius' thoughts, so to speak.
"Oh, brother! I scored the highest in kills today, I think." Henry boasted, as if being the most murderous one of the bunch was something to be happy about. "Still, I wish I got a chance to off the dastard that hit me, though." There was a deep agitation heard in the cheery lilts of his voice, but it wasn't as sinister as Henry was known for being. Ultimately, vengeance was important, but what was dead was dead and there was no killing something twice. Unless it was a Risen, of course, but there were no Risen to be seen here. No, they managed to kill regular, normal, human people without too many worries. That, in Henry's mind, was quite impressive.
"You'd get more kills if you were more than just a dark mage," Tharja pointed out. "We've both shown our potential to be better. We should consider becoming something greater. What say to you of becoming a sorcerer?" A fiendish smile graced her features, and she placed one hand precariously on her pronounced hip. "We deserve it, after today."
"I've always wanted to be better at what I'm already super good at~" Henry agreed. "I don't see why we shouldn't try! Maybe Robin will give us the seal of approval, haha. The master seal of approval." He laughed at his own joke, knowing fully well that Robin would allow any of the Shepherds to unlock their own potential on their own accord. Still, the soldiers usually sought out Robin's opinion, and the tactician always assisted them in achieving a higher state of being.
Literally and figuratively.
"We could all do that!" Lissa called out from her spot atop the gold pile. She was balancing a silver crown on top of her pretty blonde head, arms spread wide as she tiptoed over the mounds of coins beneath her feet. "We deserve a promotion, right? Maybe some rest and a nice visit to some hot springs, too..."
"My dear, we could certainly indulge. War is a tough time without some luxuries to pamper ourselves with!" Maribelle seemed keen on the idea, too, and turned to Ricken with veritable excitement. "Ricken, I seem to recall that your family still owns one of those resorts in the countryside. If it's still standing after today, we ought to look into it, don't you think?"
"I'm not going back until this war's finished," Ricken insisted. "Besides, we should probably focus on the now. We need to think about clearing the bodies, taking this gold back, and heading towards the rendezvous point so the convoy wagons can get over here." He seemed worried for some reason, and looked around the room as if there was still a hidden threat they should be focused on dealing with. "What if there are reinforcements lying in wait, somewhere? That would be pretty troublesome, huh?"
"In that case, less talking and more moving!" Anna shouted, looking up from the gold chests she just unlocked. "There's all sorts of weapons in here, too. We better get this stuff out before someone comes and arms themselves. Or better yet, before someone comes along with their friends and forms a new group, like The Brilliant Bunch." A coy smile appeared on her face before she broke out into hysterical laughter. "Seriously, what a joke! This was the least brilliant bunch I'd ever met. I think a group of six-year-olds with kitchen knives would have been just as dangerous."
Miriel frowned, and said: "It does not do well to speak of the dead, even if some of them aren't quite dead just yet. I think a few here and there are simply unconscious, too, so we'd best further along the process with haste."
The Shepherds were distracted with their rewards among other things, and failed to see Miriel's argument more clearly. Not everyone was knocked out and shoved away from the Shepherds, and this showed itself as a single body in the distance moved righteously towards their goal. It just so happened to be the female myrmidon that Gaius had spared earlier—the girl that he assumed had been incapacitated from the punch he gave her.
While slightly concussed and badly beaten otherwise, the girl still had some fight left in her. But in contrast to Gaius' expectations, she didn't have any dreams or aspirations outside of the defeated comrades beside her. This life of crime and thievery was the only one she knew, although now that everyone she loved was either dead or defeated, it seemed as if her life had come to an end. Yet she still had one small part left to play: she still had to activate the secret weapon that had been referred to as the thing to "truly end the Shepherds". She knew this mechanism well, and she was aware that by enacting it, she would surely end her own life, too.
But she didn't care anymore. Her father—their leader—was gone. Her friends and family had perished. Although a select few individuals remained alive but unconscious, they wouldn't survive past arrest, considering the length of their criminal records and filthy history. The Shepherds were always praised as heroes, but right now, they sounded as sadistic and pathetic as the rest of the world did. They even relished and cheered over the mass destruction they caused, but since they were the "good guys", they felt entitled in doing so. As long as they killed off all the "bad guys", then they could never be touched. She hated this reality with all of her heart—she hated this feeling of uselessness, like her whole life up to now had been for nothing.
It was exactly the fuel needed for the fire to burn so intensely and brightly, so that nothing but ash would lay in its wake.
She grunted as she moved, but tried her best to conceal the pained noises escaping her mouth. Just a few more seconds, and the pain would all disappear. She will have died fighting, and died trying to end a group of people so self-righteous that they think themselves above others. These Shepherds proved themselves to be nothing more than a make-believe hero brigade, who think they're above life, death and everything else in between. It disgusted her to know them as she did, but that animosity started to fade under the realization that, very soon, she wouldn't know anything anymore.
This is it, she thought. Here goes nothing. She sat up, laboriously breathing and holding her side in pain, and placed her hand on a switch that would activate everything at once. She gathered her breath, and then screamed as loudly as she could. She screamed until her chest would explode into torn bits. She screamed until blood from her torn vocal cords would spew out through her teeth. She screamed until her soul left her body, and her heart detached from her mind in one loud, desperate, and hateful declaration.
"Go to hell, Shepherds!"
The Shepherds in question turned around all at once, overtaken by a mixture of surprise, bewilderment, and fear. They watched helplessly as the girl—the very same girl that Gaius decided to spare—used the last of her strength to activate a switch within the ground. She laughed quietly as she did so, and slumped down weakly, accepting her fate once and for all.
The room changed within seconds. Bright lights appeared overhead, and the walls crumbled and shook. A deafening noise resounded, and the Shepherds all covered their ears in strained motion. The mounds of gold coins and treasures wobbled and shook, and Lissa flew off her place at the top. Luckily, Maribelle caught her, although the action was clumsy and the two of them nearly tripped over themselves. But that wasn't the least of it, because the walls started to cave in on themselves. Blasts of rock and dirt shot out from their places in the walls and under the floors, and debris flew in haphazard directions.
They scrambled madly for escape.
Anna and Gaius stuffed a few more items into their sacks, before they abandoned the rest of the treasure as they ran with the others towards the exit. All eight of them were still in one piece, and they were sure that once they left the room, all would be well again.
They were wrong.
It was as if the whole cave fell apart. There was a constant string of explosions going off above and around them, which caused the jewels and rocks to be dislodged from their places in the ceiling, floor, and walls. Some of these objects shattered into smaller, sharper fragments, while others became blunt projectiles that threatened the safety of the runaway Shepherds. Their screams coupled with the din of the chaos around them, and together it all formed a single, disharmonious chorus of disparage and fear.
They underestimated those guys all along. This mechanism was the birth between scientific innovation and magical means. Of course, it wasn't unheard of for things to randomly combust or explode, and many mages tried their hands at reactive magical spells. But on this level, these traps were able to tear up their surroundings, and destroy the foundation of the cave without so much as a protest. With an awful realization, the Shepherds understood that they played into their enemies' hands this entire time.
This was exactly what they wanted to happen. If they couldn't stop the Shepherds in combat, then they could certainly bury them in the same grave as their own.
And they almost achieved their goal, multiple times over. Every time the eight of them reached another opening, the structure fell apart and blocked their path with falling debris, so they had to run screaming in another direction. They ran, jumped, climbed, and dodged so much, it took a heavy toll on them. Not even Frederick's Fanatical Fitness Hour was as strenuous as this, and up until now, Henry thought that training session was the most tiring and demanding thing he had been through in his life!
Oh, he'd give up quite a bit if he could suddenly teleport back to the camp right now. It wasn't just him, either. They would all rather be there than here, because here felt less like a cave and more like the bottom of a canyon in the middle of a rockslide, where dirt and rocks fell down endlessly in violent streams of uncontrollable danger. Here was a place where they could die, and it wouldn't even be from some honorable battle like most people imagined. The ends of their lives would be met in some unknown cave in border territory, crushed by giant rocks and suffocated by the dusty air.
It sucked.
At last, they reached a fork in the road, and for once, both paths were unobscured by their crumbling surroundings. They finally had time to catch their breath, although the air was smoke-filled and dusty, leaving them more strained for oxygen than before. The crossroads only made them hesitant to move, although perhaps that was the force of exhaustion catching up to them at once.
Then, as if on cue, all eight voices spoke over each other in the most chaotic way possible.
"Let's go right!" Anna screamed, but could not be heard over the deafening noise. "Right!"
"Left!" Gaius yelled, while also shielding Lissa and Maribelle underneath his arm, in an attempt to protect them from the falling debris. "Gods dammit, just move! It doesn't matter which way we go!"
Miriel, who still found time to scribble in her notebook, called out over the others with a frantic voice. "I think we should also go left, because I remember—"
"Everyone, watch out!" Ricken screeched, before taking cover underneath a sturdy ledge.
The air warped around them. The smoke and static in the air intensified, drying their throats and turning their breaths into pain, as the cave shook all around, almost as if the caves themselves were also in pain. But they realized soon enough that there was an explosion happening right above them, and there was no time to try and escape. All they could was take cover, like Ricken suggested they do. And things became so tremendously loud, that it was actually quiet for a moment. The noise had grown so unbearable, that their brains became physically unable to process it, and resorted to blocking out the noise instead of trying to understand it.
Stunned by the sudden speed and simultaneous slowness that the world seemed to be moving at, Henry felt someone drag him down, and together they hid beneath something as their world toppled over in front of them. He knew that in this situation, it would be better to stay silent, remain unmoving, and keep covered. He knew that he should keep his eyes closed, because he could witness something ugly—someone getting crushed to death, for example—but he was never good at restraining himself. At least, not on his own.
Henry opened his eyes, and widely, at that.
He didn't see anyone get crushed (yet), but he did watch as rubble from the ceiling—and some grassy dirt from the outer slope of the cave's rooftops, something he remembered seeing when they first came to the stronghold earlier in the day—piled downward, almost into a perfect wall formation. They were at a crossroads, although this dual pathway was quite wide, and big enough to be split into two different rooms. Of course, Henry understood at once that their group was being divided before his eyes, as each rock that piled over each other fell into place perfectly. It was as if there was a brick and cement wall between them, building itself up one by one, instead of a crude wall forming because of the naturally fallen boulders and dirt.
There was a small field of vision to the other side of this massive wall, and Henry could make out someone staring at him through the hole, wearing the same desperate look on their face as he was.
It was Gaius.
They hated each other up to this point. They constantly fought over big things or small (mostly small, but somehow those little arguments got out of hand, anyway), and made life much more difficult for each other than it should have been. Yet, despite the negativity that prevailed through their shared history, they both managed to retain genuine interest in one another. It was the natural intrigue that came along with being in a war like theirs, they supposed, because otherwise they would have never bothered in messing around with each other like they did. Either that, or they were actually getting used to each other with the passing days. Regardless of the emotions between them, one thing was for sure.
Things were changing. Perhaps it was the fear and adrenaline of their situation that let them put their differences aside—at least for this short moment in time. Perhaps it was their inner morality, that urged them to be aware of their lives flashing before their eyes. Perhaps it was the sacred feeling of being vulnerable around another person, and knowing that person was also vulnerable around you.
They stared at each other in this fleeting instant.
Their expressions were like night and day. Henry smiled—the only thing he apparently knew how to express—although the corners of his lips quivered fearfully, and a sinister gleam settled itself in the dark lavenders of his irises (the first time he revealed his eyes to Gaius, of all people. He wasn't sure if he wanted it to be the last or not). If he seemed frail before, he was completely fragile now, and weakly raised out a hand to gesture towards Gaius. If he could, he would grab the other's hand and let him know that he never expected this to happen. He would reach out, and let him know that he would take back everything—their stupid fights, their physical violence, their childish game they kept alive until now—if it meant that they could get out of this safely.
Gaius, on the other hand, grimaced. His face contorted desperately, such that Henry was in disbelief that this was the same Gaius who was grinning and excited to get his stealing game on with Anna, earlier. The Gaius right now seemed different than back then, because he looked so helpless and lost. His usually cool exterior (and his usually hot anger) was nowhere to be found. He needed guidance, for once, although he knew that Henry wasn't the right person to be guiding him. He knew that Henry couldn't do anything to lessen those incredibly burdened eyes of his—those beautifully deep, green eyes that shook and trembled like the earth above and below them. Still, he reached out for him, too, as if doing so would mean anything when it clearly didn't. Against all reasoning, Gaius matched Henry's desperation for his own, and cried out to him through the dusty air.
"Henry!"
It was too late for him to respond. The wall closed up completely, covering up the small opening in the formation that Henry and Gaius used to communicate to each other with. The deafening roars from before died down, now, and there was nothing but the sounds of sifting dirt and laborious breaths to be heard. It was as if the wall between the two different groups had always existed there, because the boundary stood so strong and tall, it was almost useless in thinking it had ever been otherwise.
Henry's heart sank from the weight of it all, and he sprawled out on the hard, cold, and uncomfortable ground in defeat. At best, things were bad. But at worst, things were abysmal and they were all probably doomed. If they weren't, then they were still pretty roughed up, if Henry's own injuries said anything about their general state of being. He had shards in his skin, dirt in his hair, and dust in his eyes—plus some blood on his cheek from the fight he had earlier. Some part of him secretly wished that he got crushed under the rocks, instead, but then another part of him quietly sighed in relief, because he wasn't dead. If he died, then he would have never heard Gaius say his real name, for once.
And, for reasons unknown, he felt sort of happy about knowing that. He was glad to be alive, maybe, the realization of which made his smile stretch widely, and the ends of his lips reached just a bit further than usual.
This time, he knew why his smile formed, and it wasn't because of his past trauma or emotional incompleteness. Maybe, just maybe, he smiled because of the revelation between him and Gaius just now. And maybe, just maybe, they would live to see another day, and this would be something that they could talk about for years to come. That maybe, just maybe—they were starting to actually care for each other.
Maybe.