The sheer wind of Miina's hurricane blade made it near-impossible for the dragons to stay aloft for long, forcing them to stay grounded and vulnerable for the time being. Galahad and his halberd came screeching down from the sky, the velocity of his dive breaking through the red mage's winds and planting the tip of the halberd straight into the throat of the pack's leader.

Blighted as they were, the dragons still possessed enough animal instinct to understand the death of a packmate, and howled in fury, the two closest rearing back to ready gouts of flame from their mouths. But that was literally cut short as Izayoi blurred into motion, reappearing in front of one dragon to slash its throat open before the collective fire of a half dozen gunshots crashed into the skull of the other, both dragons crumpling to the dirt.

Further incensed, the remaining dragons lunged with flame on the tips of their mouths, unleashing three streams of fire that forced Izayoi to fall back, the flames rushing towards Galahad next, as if attempting to box in him. Two more came lumbering towards Miina, having recognized the source of the wind that was keeping them on foot.

All the while, a figure further up the mountain watched the events below, wisps of sickly green aether at their fingertips.

___



One dog sniffed the air, and began barking incessantly. The rest followed.

"They've got a scent!"

"Must be nearby, I can hardly keep them on the leash-" That particular Valheimr was cut off by the hound he was handling managing to lunge forward with enough force to loosen its master's grip on its leash, letting it free to charge forward. Straight up the hill.

The raid captain swore furiously under her breath, signing for the the rest of her men and the Kirins to ready up. It was evident what she was going to do: engage while they still had the advantage of the high ground, before the Valheimr could make their way up the slope.

With scant few moments before the jig was up regardless, one of the raiders poked his head up over the ridge, sighted the charging hound before the Valheimr could get a handle on what they were seeing, and opened fire.

"AMBUSH!"

"Open fire! For Skael!"

With two dragons now approaching her, there was no way that Miina could keep the suppressing gale up. She'd be forced to keep dodging at best until they could be put down and that would only increase the complexity massively, if she even had the attention to spare. It had served its main purpose; it wasn't three against a swarm of flying blighted hellbeasts free to strafe them constantly with fire or lightning or some strange blighted alternative.

It had to be dropped.

The redhead licked her lips, only having moments to run through some sort of plan. Just abandon it to dissipate and fall back on standard spells? That would be insufficient, her repertoire simply didn't have the immediate firepower to deal with two dragons. It basically needed Izayoi or Galahad to intervene and they had their own problems. Miina couldn't engage in melee in any capacity against people, so dragons were even further out of the question.

Miina could haste herself and dodge, sneaking in spells here and there. Make it a battle of attrition, maybe drop one of them before the others were done. It was simple; it was safe; it was something she'd demonstrated plenty of times before.

Ears folded back and body lowered, Miina prepared to dispel the vortex but—

She was still actively maintaining it. She still controlled it, and it wasn't destabilised entirely of its own accord yet. She could use it instead.

Tighter, tighter, tighter; pull in the spiral and rein it back in, back towards her. Focus the wind as tight as she dared, until it threatened to pull her from her near-crouch and the dragons were upon her. No longer a hurricane, more a shrieking extension of her sword, swung to intersect with the monsters.

A feral grin split her face. Just enough time to swing, then to throw herself aside and watch what it did.

Would this just knock them about? Or was it strong enough to tear into the blighted monsters? How could wings meant to catch the wind fare against against the entire force of a storm?

He had gotten maybe thirty meters into the bush when the first crack of the rifles sounded, and nearly bit his own tongue off when his teeth, naturally, ground against eachother in an a frustrated, helpless seethe against it all. Damned good-for-nothing threadweaver of fate! This was why he never asked Ithar for anything!¹

A small tuft of white powder rose as Rudolf ground his heels into the earth beneath, wrenching his path of egress around to the left, muttering a few other untargeted invectives to those whose will he ostensibly meant to defend— even if the bubble had in the end popped early, there was still a sound use case for the previous idea. The rising voices of the Skaellish outriders engaging the search party were directly behind him still, meaning that the Valheimr were, more or less, going to be entangled in the original net they'd set up— hindsight being what it was, this would be a lot simpler if he'd just held position to begin with. Blunder. Careless.

The shadows of the forest had grown longer still in those tense pair of minutes. True to his evasion plan, now they were deep and broad enough to dive into— and dive he did, flitting between the trees as he drew a long arc around the circumference of the hill, an eventide shade of the woods. Fundamentally, the best thing he could now do would be changing direction in this manner; where he had meant to pop up behind the other Kirins and rejoin the group properly once he'd thrown off any tails, now he would wing around behind the mass of the ill-fated blackhelms, swords drawn, and split their guard if not outright wall off their retreat from the ambush.

Sink through, spring out. Sink through, spring out.

There was a rhythmic element to it, when you tabled the arcane conundrum of melting away into darkness while retaining your sense of self-distinction. Magic was rarely ever considered so physical in Edren², not beyond applications of materia— but as he pulled his arc tighter, faster, changing dozens of meters down into doubles at a time, Rudolf almost felt more a bounding animal, closing in on prey, than any manner of mage as they were known by most of his country. He almost felt he understood Miina a little better, in some uncertain way, tying together the familiar martial conditioning with the esoteric whims and means of magecraft. Something about the unity of opposites? It'd tickle him to keep finding ways to push the alchemy metaphor.

Or maybe the Rakshasa, to speak of man mantling a hunting tiger...³

"For Skael!" a voice sounded out, as he appeared between the ring of pines just beyond the treeline. Even if the swordsman's relationship with the god of fortune had clearly cratered to the point he half-believed this boondoggle was somehow his own doing, at least Ilias's winds still guided him true.

His knife freed itself from the beltline, Anders' greatsword from the back. Bursting forth from the trees, Rudolf's flanking arc had taken him to the far side of the ridge, instantly sighting them all— panicked, under the hail of fire from the raiders, desperately trying to regain their bearing on the situation. It was an honestly very familiar sight; were they not so by necessity at odds, Rudolf figured he and his empathy'd have no great trouble feeling sorry for them.

But by that same measure, if he hated surprises this much, it stood to reason that they would too.

"Solitude! Balmung!" he bellowed, answering the rallying cry and announcing himself as he surged into the back ranks and set his swords loose, a one-man arm of the sudden pincer envelopment.

---

---

• _{1. : )}
• _{2. I'm not kidding when I say it, yov need to retvrn. This is a terrible state of affairs to have let things reduce to. There were Gods walking among you people once, you know that?}
• _{3. Don't let the furries hear about this one. Skirting the line with this upjumped jaguar warrior shit as the Sagramori are, a legend about an actual evil tiger guy eating the weak and the excommunicado is going to be, I ask no forgiveness in saying it, catnip to them.}

---

While Dragoon armor was, in a way made to resist attacks from dragons, he certainly wouldn't be resisting the flaming breaths of three dragons. Blighted or unblighted, he was liable to get cooked alive in his armor if he didn't immediately catch flame. He caught a rapidly closing gap of air as the flames closed in around him and dove through it, flame heating his armor to a temperature a bit more toasty than comfortable, and the edges of his sash burning for good measure. He could feel a few blisters from the heated armor against his body already starting to form, but ignored it for now. He had bigger issues.

Miina had drawn back the vortex to fend off a pair of dragons going for her. He certainly didn't blame her for it- defending oneself was necessary, but that left them with three, unhappy, no longer grounded dragons. He looked at the dragons. The dragons looked back at him. Then at each other. One of them beat its wings. Then a second.

"Oh no you don't." Galahad grunted as he ran forward and leaped, throwing his halberd down into the wing leather of the third dragon still on the ground, to pin it down there. Instead of going straight up, he dove straight at the first dragon, its maw opening up to loose a breath of blighted fire. Galahad's arm found the dragon's neck as he grabbed and vaulted himself onto the back of its neck, grabbing its head horns as he jerked the head to face the second airborn dragon just as the gout of fire loosed from its maw.

---

It seemed nothing ever went right going up against these barbarians, be it by whatever unholy machinations they came up with, or as it was in this case, by fate. Reconnaissance in force it was. The Skaelan fireteam opened up nearly as one at their captain’s command, who was filling the role that Éliane was typically used to. In that regard, she did little else but to reiterate that, and she found herself realizing that she was almost in the position of political officer now, in a spot just a little further back of her force trying to see or root out if any of the good Skaelans on her side were actually enemies of the state.

It was a cheerful thought.

Nonetheless, Éliane’s own rifle joined the fusillade as she worked the bolt, cracking out several shots into the charging Valheimians. From the corner of her eye, she also saw Rudolf maneuvering into place before engaging. Approving of the move, she gave a different command. “Friendly left! Watch your fire!”

Pausing from firing to lob an explosive down the hill, she added to the rallying cry with “Skael never falters!” as she planted another shot center mass into another barbarian invader.

---

He wasn't entirely certain if 'a hunting party trying to find Miina's brother' entirely fit with worse or not, but he was almost insulted that the thing making it all go wrong right at the start wasn't even related to their current mission. He had pulled Chisato along with him off to the side, able to easily observe what was going on without getting caught in any crossfire, purely on the hope that there might be some way to turn it around to their gain. Instead—

Shots rang out as the Skaeller force opened fire on the shocked Valheimer hunting party, one of the hounds dropping to the snow in a heap. As much as he would have preferred that everything stayed completely quiet, as with everything, the best-case scenario was an impossibility—and now they had to make sure the hunting party wouldn't be able to call back in to whichever of the forward bases they were operating from. Furthermore, if he had to guess, it would leave them on a yet-more truncated timetable; even without the assumption of foul play, if a single party like this was confident enough to range so apparently far away from their bases, then either they were absolute fools or the invaders were plenty comfortable with their current surroundings. Assuming the worst, then, it would stand to reason that if there was no contact at all a search party may go out to determine what happened, on higher guard than the first.

Which would, of course, give them plenty of opportunity to cross paths with a small force of Skaeller raiders.

"Chisato, let's help them mop this mess up quickly," he grumbled. "Take down anybody you see with a radio first, we don't want their handlers getting wind of this yet." Pistol drawn, he sprinted towards where Rudolf had just announced himself, before rising over the ridge and firing at whichever of the closest few invaders looked to be carrying the most gear.

"Very well."

This is, after all, what I wanted to do in the first place. There is no reason to hesitate when I was ready to kill Valheim's dogs from the very beginning.

I tilt my body forward, one hand sliding to the hilt of my blade---

And then I throw myself towards the patrol.

It's trivial. It's simple. There's no way that they're prepared enough for another angle of attack when they've already been ambushed. They clearly were not pursuing our patrol, and thus they are not prepared for us as opponents.

I will take full advantage of this.

But first, I need to locate the radio.

As the figures of the Valheim dogs loom closer in the darkness, my eyes rush over their forms. I have to take in their equipment as quickly as possible, to register my target before he can understand what is occurring.

Sword. Rifle. Dagger. None of those weapons are what I am looking for.

---There. The black object gripped in one gloved hand, raising towards the soldier's mouth.

He is within reach. A few paces away.

My legs tighten as I hurl myself forward. I won't allow him to contact any reinforcements.

He opens his mouth as I reach him. His eyes shift, I can see his gaze coming to rest on my form.

He was not likely prepared to be attacked so immediately. Near the center of their formation, even in the chaos of an ambush, he likely believed he had a moment to contact his allies.

My sword descends, and in a stream of crimson his hand is parted from his wrist, carrying his communications device with it.

I do not allow him to scream.

Izayoi's blade tore through the dragons that Galahad distracted, Blighted blood spurting from severed heads and wings. The dragoon's efforts had made them easy meat, and they didn't have much time left. Miina's hurricane blade shredded the remaining dragons' wings, grounding them if not leaving one writhing in pain, completely disabled. The remaining two forced themselves up to their feet, preparing to charge Miina...

...When a beam of lightning tore through the duo, piercing through their chests. The dragons fell silently, dead before they hit the ground. A black blade crashed into the remainder, ripping them to pieces in moments. When the dust settled, General Garland stood alone, planting his great cleaver into the earth as he raised his hands in a gesture of...peace?

"Stay your blades, Warriors of Light. Consider that effort just now to be an effort of good faith on my part."

"Oh? 'Tis hardly been a day since we've fought. And now you wish to parlay?" Izayoi snarled, pacing around the Valheimr general. Who looked to be in much better condition. Either he had a second set of armor, or it was repaired extremely quickly. His helmet tilted in what seemed to be amusement, his tone wry.

"Come, now. It took your entire number to face me on even terms, and here you are at half strength. I hold the cards here, General." The helmet's yellow gaze tilted to regard Miina, and then Galahad.

"I've come to believe we share a common enemy within Solitude. I wish to negotiate with both you and whatever of Skael's leadership they wish to risk. For the time being, I consent to being your prisoner." Which he seemed entirely and likely justifiably unconcerned with. Magic alone meant that it was impossible to disarm him fully. "Land us outside of Falcon's Nest, for the peace of mind of however many of the Seven have survived." He knew, clearly.

Izayoi frowned at the demands disguised as surrender, but held her peace, instead looking to Galahad. Meanwhile, Garland spoke one last time.

"In order to convey how dire this situation is, I will even surrender some of my information freely right now." He looked dead in the eyes of all three Kirins, his tone grave.

___



The ambush was perfect. The Valheimr patrol had been expecting a lone runner, not an entire skirmisher squadron backed by hardened warriors from afar. They fell to a man, Chisato's quick disabling of the commsman halting any ability they had to call for help from long range. As the last of the hounds were felled by a concentrated volley of fire, silence reigned over the snowy expanse for a moment.

And only a moment, as a pair of crimson tufts of fur peeked out from the trees.

"Woah, don't shoot, don't shoot! I'm not one of them!" A voice cried out, tinged with stress and exhaustion. A redhaired and furred mystrel slowly made his way down from the tallest tree in the area. Once he made it to solid ground, the similarities to Miina were more than apparent.

"Skaelers? Oh, thank the gods. As long as you're not Valheimr, I'll take it. Listen, it's been hell for a week now. You've got no idea what it took to get out of that city and past the blackhelms' quarantine. Get me the hell out of here, please. I'll take to whatever superiors you want, they need to know anyway. You've got to tell them:"

___

From miles on miles away, two voices spoke the same words at coincidentally the exact same time.

"Solitude is a city of the dead now."

Oh, that was even better than she expected – perhaps not easily repeatable, but it could disable dragons, and if they were grounded and wounded that left her plenty more options. Even if they were charging her, they had exposed injuries, and suddenly the size and thick hide didn't mean anywhere near as much—

Or someone else could come in and do it for her. With far more force than Miina could quite imagine herself bringing to bear. That was…

"I d-didn't need the help," the mystral sighed, straightening, "Th-There was something… n-nevermind."

What tension remained in Miina's body drained as the general called for peace. Strange tack for one of the invaders to be taking, even if he was telling the truth. The Kirins in general had spent months fighting Valheim at every turn, damaging their hold on the main occupation, thwarting another conquest attempt, and generally running into their turncoat at every corner. The amount of resources wasted on the half dozen of them alone generally demanded retribution, even before counting the cost of their interference.

Garland was right, though; the fight wasn't in their favour. Izayoi and Galahad might be able to keep him busy in combat, if he hadn't healed up just as much as they had, but she would be their only ranged support. There was more versatility in magic than gunfire, but she had much less force than a sudden cannon, and he was a mage too. Fighting for long enough to make an escape was completely doable, but a victory? Well… not one where everyone was alive and whole, she'd predict.

Besides, this wasn't really personal for her. Even the Blight was just something that was… there. Well, she cared a little that Izayoi did find it personal, but…

If Valheim was going to stay out of her way or actually help for the time being, then Miina was perfectly fine with it. Doubly in this case; what he was promising was much more interesting than just another fight to the death against an enemy commander. As was, honestly, being able to work with Garland for any length of time and study what he did; other mages were always so useful. Even ones buried in more armour than she could lift.

"D-Dead? Mmm… all k-killed, or not staying dead?" she asked, tilting her head. Was that even possible? Well, maybe; if it was happening then it had to be possible, and the question was 'how' and also 'can I go see?'.