[center][color=red]The Black Glacier, Lanostran Frontier[/color][/center][hr]



The black ice that surrounded the Glacier spread like tendrils of ink across the stark white frost of the Lanostran frontier. That shadowed frost, ever shifting in slow cascades, had already begun to claim the remains of the conscripts. There would be no collecting their bodies once this was done, Elisheva thought sadly. They belonged to [i]it[/i] now. 

Some distance in front of them, the Glacier enshrouded the horizon like a massive wall of shadow. One could glimpse the Glacier from the walls of Sapharan, running like a black artery across the western frontier, but to see it up close was something else entirely. To gaze upon it up close, to walk beneath its shadow, you immediately realized just what you were staring at-- a myth made manifest, a vestigial Remnant of the Ice Titan. Elisheva had glimpsed it the night before, but seeing it in daylight, with the low sun flashing across its mirrored surface and the azure veins pulsing across it in their phantom light, she couldn't help but feel a breathless wonder at its terror and glory. She stole a glance at the Lanostran inquistors. Each was calm, ready. The Glacier held no more marvel for them.

Father Galahad and Mother Astraea took up the front with a line of riflemen behind them, while Cillian and Mother Tatiana headed the middle squadron. Elisheva marched on the right flank, her own squad of conscripts at her back. All was silent but for the sound of their boots crunching in the snow and the low hum of Cillian's protective aegis resonating in their ears. Even ensconced within it, Elisheva was still shivering beneath her layers.

As they neared the shallow ridge that would lead them to their attack position, they spotted a lone structure a short distance from the Glacier itself. It was a squat building surrounded by bulwarks and machine gun turrets. A destroyed radio tower lay toppled on the ice near it. 

"The T'saraen research garrison. We are near the demons' attack perimeter. If we advance from here, we should expect them to take flight and rain down on us," Elisheva said to Galahad.

The blonde-haired inquisitor turned his head and nodded. A moment later, they continued their advance.

One step was all it took. 

The three seraphs sitting on their ice thrones turned their heads and stared directly at the inquisitors. Even from the far distance, Elisheva could feel their eyes upon her. 

The sound of shearing ice began to fill their ears. The seraphs' wings, thin and translucent but sharper than any blade, began to flutter in blindingly fast rotations, their movements blurring the air around them. In an instant the demons took flight and began to canvass the sky above, the sheer number of them swarming together, blocking the sun. The ice and snow darkening beneath them, the conscripts raised their rifles to the cloud of buzzing ice that hung over them.

"N-No... There's so many of them..."

"We can't defeat them all..."

Elisheva drew the twin blades from the scabbards that hung across her back and immediately jumped on the high ridge. 

"I will hear none of that talk! Focus! Conserve your ammunition and only fire when you have a clear angle!" she pointed her blades at the swarm and screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice cutting through the strange cacophonous shearing sound of the demons' wings. 

Beneath her, Galahad and Astraea were making their way further up the trench, while Cillian and Tatiana situated themselves at the rear, yelling orders at their own rifle squad. As the riflemen began to fire, Elisheva concentrated.

She closed her eyes, the ether coursing through her catalyst. When she opened them, her red eye was glowing bright.

At once, an armory of crimson spellblades, ghostly and translucent, spawned in the air around her, floating in place for a moment before rotating rapidly in a blurred circle of scarlet light. The circle of spellblades began to stretch out in a vast diameter around her and titled so that their blades pointed skyward.

"Die," she whispered, her blazing red eye aimed at the swarm, and with that, each of the blades shot forth into the air, cutting through the sky until they pierced and slashed through several demons, causing them to fall to the ground in ruined heaps of broken ice. The demons would soon take to the ground, Galahad had predicted, and thus she had to destroy as many of them with this opening salvo as she could. The etherblades danced through the swarm, making quick work of the demons while Galahad's spells shot forth from the trench and caused devastating damage to them.

 With an inhuman quickness the swarm began to split into three smaller columns and the demons began to fly toward the ground in an attempt to attack from both sides of the trench.

"They're coming down here!" a conscript yelled in horror.

"Steady, soldier! Keep firing and don't let up!"

[center]***[/center]

 Cillian and Tatiana stood shoulder-to-shoulder near the entrance to the trench, both of them providing focused support fire. When it began to split into three, they knew. 

With Elisheva remaining on the ridge and keeping the demons from attacking directly from above, It would fall to Galahad, Astraea, Tatiana and himself to meet the demons as they advanced into the trench. They could not fail in halting the advance. One of the demons alone could tear through an entire squad of soldiers with its wings. 

"Whatever you do, don't let those things near you," he told Tatiana with a nervous smile, patting his still-healing wound.


In the sky above, a column of demons began to arc its way toward the entrance to the trench, where Elisheva's spellblades could not reach them.

"Mother Tatiana, I think the time is nearing for us to make use of your friend. Just give me a few seconds," Cillian said to her, his eyes focused on the column of demons as the terrifying buzzing sound of their wings grew closer and closer.

"R-Reverence, what do we do?" a conscript called out, her face pale as frost.

"Hold your fire."

Cillian reached into his inquisitor's coat and pulled out what appeared to be a fistful of small round grains. He then tossed them at the entrance of the trench.

The sound of the demons' wings intensified to a loud crescendo. Cillian could see them now, flying level with the ground, their bladed wings skimming the blackened ice. Cillian could glimpse their strange human-like faces, carved from ice, their eyes hollow black slits. There were at least two dozen of them, each of them soaring rapidly toward the front entrance.

Cillian braced himself. He held up his hand. At any second the demons would reach their position. He concentrated. His eyes, a dark gold, began to flash the color of the sun. The ether in his catalyst made it tremble violently. He could feel the light searing of the ether's sorcery burning in his fingertips. 

The instant the demons crossed the threshold, a thick bramble of crimson thorns erupted from the ice beneath them, trapping the demons in place. The thorns grew and spread and tangled all across the entrance of the trench and then spread to the gap between the trench and the ridge, sealing shut the space directly above Cillian, Tatiana and their firing squad. The demons struggled to free themselves, their razor sharp wings struggling to move against the density of the thorns. Those not caught in Cillian's trap made their way to the sealed ceiling and began to try to cut their way through.

"Their wings are sharp, it will not hold them back forever, but it will give us time. We must pick off the trapped demons while we can, but when they break through..."

Cillian glanced at Tatiana and met her eyes.

"It will fall to you to protect us, Tatiana."