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A eerie calm settled over the entire village of Gunma, its streets, once thronged with life now stood empty. Gone were the food vendors and the women in their bright clothes selling hand made goods from carts and baskets. Gone were the children who played amongst the crowds with their games and laughter. Gone were the stores with their windows of fine clothing or delicacies. Gone were the brave Gunma fishermen of yesterday, as today they stood proud and tall in defense of their homeland-a wall of living, breathing flesh and blood.

Deo stood at its forefront, Elden bronze gripped in his right hand, oak shield white-knuckled in his left, and Ionian grade leather expertly strapped to his torso. Three years of rigorous training had readied him for this moment. The winters spent cutting through leather dummies, spent drilling the jaded ideologies of combat and leadership into his psyche, spent growing up without his fathers guidance, all for this very moment; yet the gravity of the situation never sunk in. Nothing could prepare one for what was soon to take place.

Behind Deo, menfolk stood in formation, four rows, all they had, their eyes trained on the road to see how many the Axim would send. Many who were to fight today lacked the ability to even hold a blade properly, nonetheless fight. A lucky few wore thick leather armour, the rest only sweaters of wool. As the Gunma wall before them began to collapse, they heard the boots long before they saw the mass of uniformed bodies led by a bearing flag. Every face had blanched and thoughts fled to the village in which the order to evacuate was in enactment. 

Akio stepped forward, placing himself next to his  Devari. "The villagers have been evacuated, Devari." he relayed. 

Deo blew a breath out his nose, peace settling over him. [color=Brown]"What of Toho?"[/color] 

"He has set off with Militamen in tow, but they are ready, which means…" Akio trailed off turning to Deo, his eyes glassy, fear had overtaken him, fear of what was to come. 

A bitter wind swept the hillside and the ground slick with ice. This was never a battle they could win, only a sacrifice to buy time. Deo himself felt the creeping of dread up his spine, so much so that he himself began to tremble. Stepping forward, he steeled himself for what was to come next. Raising his sword him into the air, he gazed at the enemy line, their uniformity and sheer numbers a sight to behold.

Screaming into the air, Deo charged, and all fell in step, the cadiance of crunching snow shattering the silence of the battle field. Without missing a beat the Axim themselves fell suite.

The two shield walls collided with a crack of bronze and wood, and Deo held his shield high and felt the impact of a spear point snap against the wooden frame, and he felt the weight of men pushing in from the front as well as at his back, curses and screams and metal raking against wood and the crunching of flesh, and he saw the feet of his enemies digging into the earth, and overhead, he heard the whooshing of spears being thrown into the deeper ranks of the his lines. He felt the Gunma wall falter as the fighting shifted to the left, and he saw a break in the line and lunged forward with his shield, the impact sending a burst of pain up his right arm, but the pain disappeared quickly, and he stabbed to his left with the point of his short sword, and the bronze tip ripped into flesh and bone, and a soldier fell to the ground at his feet. He stepped over the fallen body and attacked the next man who tried to fill the gap, and stabbing over his shield, his blade caught the man in the throat, spraying blood, a fine mist, warm and bright red, and the man grabbed at the bronze edge stuck in his neck. Deo ripped the sword free, another gush of blood, the man’s face pale and eyes wide, hands grasping at the wound as he fell to his knees choking and gurgling on his own blood.

Deo pushed forward, leading a squad into the hole ripped in the Axim defense. Battle left little to think about, action became the law of the land; a doctrine pounded into his psyche from day one. As was such, each step he took forward was made pragmatically, with much regard to the lives of those who followed him. 

Shield raised, he pounded against the retreating line, breaking the Axim formation. He barely registered the soot that filled the air, more or less focusing on the only advantage he had left. Thrusting his spear forward, an Axim soldier managed to gaze Deo's side, bronze slicing through leather and flesh before  stabbing an Ionian behind him. Ignoring the burning pain and his screaming comrade, Deo shield-locked the Axim with the edge of his own, yanked back, and thrust his blade forward into his neck, blood bursting from his gullet.

Another attempted to fill the gapping gap, but Deo swept his shield left, taking another Axim spear thrust and lunged forward, letting the bastard run onto his sword point. He felt the impact run up his arm as the tip punctured his belly muscles, with all to little familiarity he twisted the blade out, ripping it up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle, and guts; blood warming his cold hand, and he screamed, blood breath in his face, without hesitation he punched him down with the shield’s boss, stamped on his groin, and killed him with his blades tip to the throat. A second man on his right began beating at his opponents shield with an ax, a Gunma Militiaman, no older that seventeen by the looks of it, but he had little time to worry about his well-being as suddenly the screams grew uncharacteristically loud.

Deo prayed as he played coy to another Axim spear strike, playing his chances of survival on an grumpy old man and a strike force of fishermen to flank the living hell out of the ever folding Axim line. Laying himself bare, Deo relinquished his psyche to the throws of battle. As was such, every scene and sensation was burned into his brain as time seemed to accelerate, his body falling into routine. Sweat stung his eyes like tiny vipers, dripping down from his gore sprayed face. All around was nothing but a whirlwind of chaos and violence, a blur of color and vicious motion. His parched, panting tongue collected the dust choked air which intermixed with the bitterness of bronze. Deafening, blood pounded in the ears, drumming to a ferocious beat inside his helmet. The sound was barely enough to obscure the cries of men, the screams of injured beasts, and the thunder of bronze striking bronze. Pain from a dozen wounds barely registered, being drowned out by the heightened, throbbing ache from the shacking hand which trembled on the right side with a shield. Above the lower scent of sweat was the acidic smell of all pervasive fear, carried aloft from clashing bodies that howled amidst a sea of scarlet liquid which drained from friend and foe alike, to soak a once vibrant field of white.

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The clangor of swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The pale bleak sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay in heaps.

The battlefield lay quiet, for it was now a graveyard of the unburied. Their corpses lay among the buttercups and forget-me-nots. The sun still shone and the wind still blew, but somewhere mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters waited in vain. These men that were once boys who played in the yard with sticks and laughed at each other's silly tales were now meat for the birds. Their eyes were as immobile as their limbs. Their souls had long departed to the celestial planes to walk with the ancestors. The battle was lost, the enemy had won. Now they camped a mile away to plan the ransacking of the town itself.

Deo kneeled in the middle of it all, unmoving. So heavily it weigh on his conscious, all the lives of those who lay before him fell upon his shoulders. The Devari recounted the horrors of war as the stench of urine suddenly lacked its potency. So quickly had the Ionian line fell to the Axim's might, its right side collapsing completely for the enemy to take advantage of and flank. But Toho's timing made way for the counter flank, sandwiching the Axim flank, a small victory, but short lived as numbers suddenly poured in, countering the Ionian flank and annihilating it. From that point, moral collapse, as only few Ionians remained. With that, the Axim left, leaving the survivors to think on thier folly. 

Deo's failure stood as a disgrace to his pride, and an endless nightmare to his psyche.

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Posts like these are harder to right, spent like two weeks on that battle part, in which I got lazy, this whole thing is lazy in general. Changed Deo's look though, that's nice,

So, not much here, just recounting the Battle of Gunma to you in which Deo gets wrecked and ends up catatonic in the end. Not much really. 
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