The initial shock of the ambush did not last for nearly as long as she could have hoped for, as the rearguard of the Endolans understood their situations and dug their heels to the ground and begun to slow the charge, tying down the Academy’s units in a bloody melee.
They would not break from such an assault, Celica believed. It was not a compliment, or a sign of grudging respect to their foe, but rather a tactical observation. They would not break because the option to do so was simply not present. On the front of the Endolan army was the main body of their own forces, guarding the Academy, and the rear had been engaged by the ambush groups. The walls of the valley faced the armies on either side, and even for beasts and fables of their caliber, a retreat up those steep hills would likely prove costly for any ground bound units that attempted it.
That might give someone an idea as to their Commander’s aim for the battle. None would be spared. The Endolans had somehow walked into the jaws of a beast that threatened to swallow them all. For all that, the Endolans fought like cornered animals, and a part of Celica found itself wondering if the Academy’s forces would choke on their prey before it died.
She had managed to survive as the battle grew fiercer, letting the Titans draw attention away from herself and hiding in their shadows as she poached for unaware enemies. Enemy Titans were beyond her scope. She mainly searched for vulnerable Fae and Demons. Those she could she finished before they became aware of her attention, and many were claimed by sudden shards of ice or freezing bullets distracting them from a skirmish against another Shifter. She had so far managed to either kill or disengage from all those who chose to target her with minimal injury.
It might have been why it seemed vexing that her closest brush with death had been an almost random explosion behind her. Chances are she could blame it on a Fae. There had been a flash, and the hellish heat that scoured her back turned her vision white for a brief second. The blast had blown her away, and the landing had been poor, which likely accounted for all of the muck on her, but it was hardly her fault if all the blood shed in their surroundings had turned the valley floor into mud.
At least her back did not burn any more. She could scarcely feel anything back there, but that was likely for the best. This was not a place where she could hold pain in high regard. She counted herself lucky. Everything inside the blast had been vaporized.
Panic had set in, grown tired, and left again, taking the part of her reasoning that concerned itself with anything but the surface analysis of a current situation. It was just as well. She instinctively knew that there was nothing to be gained by thinking to deeply on anything beyond her role and survival, though with the sounds of clashing weapons, screams and explosions, and the sight of guts, bile and blood around her, her instincts seemed to be doing little more than stating the obvious. The result was the kind of cold fear that managed to set everything around oneself in a pristine clarity that did away with the troubling details.
Training taught it was better to be cold than to be frozen.
For the time being, Celica remained hidden behind one of the golem brothers and a few scattered Demons from the group she had dropped down with. She had already lost sight of one of them, along with the chimera she had ridden down to the valley floor, though she did not know whether they had simply moved out of sight or if they had fallen to the enemy. She did not think much of it. At worst, it meant less bodies to hide behind.
Instead she continued scanning for opportunities and dangers. Their Titans drew most of the enemy focus on the front line, but those like-minded Demons or Fae on the enemy’s side that chose to tip the scales of the front lines rather than joining it were what worried her most. If the next random explosion did not miss her, she at least wanted to see it coming.
A depressing thought, quickly abandoned when she caught sight of a small ball of fur crashing against the golem. Something of that size could not do so much as scratch a dent in the Titan’s armor, and since no explosions or flashes of lightning had suddenly appeared from the impact, she dismissed it as unimportant, soon to be snapped like a twig.
She saw her error at the same time she realized the thing was only small compared to the Titan it was using as a jumping board.
Celica backpedaled, and a set of claws flashed in front of her, close enough to feel the trailing wind.
Another step back. The beast had landed on all fours, a veritable mountain of fur, muscle and glinting teeth. She had a particularly good view of those as the monster’s wolfish snarl came to about her own eye-level. Celica had leapt back reflexively, dodging the first blow, but the creature moved with her, its arm swinging again into a vicious back hand. Another step. The blow grazed her hip, but still managed to send her flying. For a weightless moment, she couldn’t help appreciating the fact that if the strike had hit her directly, her pelvis would have been all but shattered.
She landed painfully, the nerves on her back sending out a scream of agony into her brain. A part of her told her that was probably a good thing, but she largely preferred it when she could not feel the pain. She rolled to her feet and prepared to leap back, knowing it to be too late. A large shadow loomed over her, the monster rearing on its back legs, one arm raised to strike her down.
What was it she had been thinking moments ago? About wanting to see her death coming? If she had to admit to any regrets, the first one that came to mind was thinking something so idiotic.
The arm fell. And thudded limply against the ground, blood pooling underneath it. The beast let out a bloodcurdling scream, red liquid flowing unimpeded from the wound where an arm would normally be. Without wasting a beat, Celica moved away, distancing herself from the enemy. The thing made no move to follow. Instead, it directed a furious glare towards the sky.
Following the thing’s gaze, Celica caught sight of a winged figure flying away. The sword it carried, visibly reddened despite the distance, suggested a Valkyrie. As they watched, the winged woman made a narrow turn, dropping down on the wolf beast once more. That was a mistake. Wounded or not, the enemy had ample warning now.
As the woman dove, the beast turned slightly, avoiding the lunge made with the sword, and threw out its remaining limb. The beast’s large, clawed hand grasped at the figure breastplate, stopping the woman’s dive in its tracks. The woman’s wings and limbs whipped forward like a rubber band, shocked limp as the Valkyrie’s momentum caught up with her sudden stop, and without wasting a beat the monster slammed her down with all of its weight in a maneuver that reminded Celica of a wrestler’s chokeslam.
Celica had little wish to wait until the monster had concluded its business with the Valkyrie.
Not sooner had the beast slammed the woman down into the ground that a wall of freezing air crashed against its exposed side. The beast reared and staggered, trying to both regain its balance and turn to face the new threat at the same time. Celica closed the gap between them in the blink of an eye. Dropping into a familiar stance, she drew one leg close to her body, drawing herself taut like a bow’s string, and whipped out her leg in a high side kick. The blow struck the monster on its stomach, the impact managing to lift it slightly from the ground. No matter how strong, without any means of moving in the air, the beast was nothing but a target. A heavy target, at that, but that only meant she had to pour more power into the next spell. The blast of wind followed from her kick as though coaxed out by the blow itself, and it launched the monster several yards away, close to the main frontline.
The thing rolled with the impact as it crashed on the valley floor, the claws in its remaining arm tearing a gouge through the earth as it forced itself to a stop. Celica’s guns added their voice to the commotion, and the beast looked up to the ice crystals that had formed on the ground before it. It was the last thing it saw. The crystals shivered and exploded, sending sharp icicles towards the monster’s upper body and face. It let out a bestial scream as shards if ice dug into its eyes and mouth and drew back on two legs, its one remaining arm covering its face, though the gesture came too late. It howled and blindly stumbled until one of the roaming Titans took notice of it. The giant picked it up, almost casually bent its back at an unnatural angle, and threw the limp body back towards the Endolan mob.
It reminded her eerily of someone discarding a can of soda.
Celica heard a metallic clang directly behind her and turned around, guns held like bared fangs. The Valkyrie knelt down in the crater left behind by her impact, breathing shallowly as she worked on unfastening her armor’s breastplate. The metal sunk inwards in the shape of the dead monster’s hand, restricting the woman’s breathing. Celica noted that it was the same Valkyrie she had been grouped with at the start of the battle. Reasonably sure she would not get knifed while she was not looking, Celica crouched by the woman, trying to make a smaller target of herself. Staying close to the Valkyrie while she was vulnerable was as good an excuse as any to catch her breath.
With deft fingers, the clasps came undone and the front of the breastplate fell to the ground. The woman coughed, took a deep, pained breath, and then proceeded to stand up. Celica followed suit, glancing at the Valkyrie’s face as she did. There was something about her expression that made it seem as though she was not entirely there – not entirely aware of her surroundings. Or perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that there was too much to be aware of at once, and the excess simply overflowed. Overwhelmed. The woman certainly looked overwhelmed.
Celica wondered if she had the same expression on her face. Probably. Cold and overwhelmed, that was her, but better to be cold than broken.
There was a tingling sensation at the base of her neck as a gruff, accented voice that brought to mind tusks and gray scales. The Endolans are starting to push to isolate our Titans. Titans, fall back if they your support is cut off, they have nowhere to go but through you. Squad Demons, hold their Demons off, don’t let our Titans get surrounded. After a moment, in a way that made her wonder if the squad sergeant was addressing her specifically, he added, we can’t afford to hang back anymore.
A flap of wings and a gust of wind announced the Valkyrie’s departure, and Celica found herself without an excuse to sit still amidst the mayhem. She could tell as their orders began to roll down to each of their squads as the fighting in the frontline intensified, Demons jumping in to support their Titans, and other Shifters coming in from areas where the fighting was more manageable.
As she let the troops run past her, her eyes fixed on the fighting before her, a shadow suddenly loomed over her. She sucked a breath and ducked. Something sharp grazed her left shoulder just as a powerful grip closed around her right, pulling her up in a painful jolt. A flap of wings directly above her and the sight of colorful feathers at the corner of her eyes had her looking up to see what had snatched her from the ground.
Avian claws wrapped her shoulder in a vice grip, transitioning smoothly into all too human legs. The body of the creature from knee to head was that of a woman, with the sole exception of feather covered arms that had taken the shape of wings. Celica’s sight was drawn to the harpy’s other claw as it drew back, and she brought up her arm just in time to prevent her skull from being torn open. The talon skittered against her arm’s hard surface and she batted it away before pointing her gun upwards and opening fire on the flying woman. Ice began to cover the surface which the bullets struck, but another slash of the harpy’s talons had Celica covering her face in an attempt to keep her eyes from being gouged out. As she tried to defend herself, the woman’s claw managed to wrap around her arm, momentarily immobilizing her.
Celica gritted her teeth, trying to free herself from the thing’s grip, but she had nothing to brace herself against or use as leverage, her lower body swinging uselessly with her struggles. Gritting her teeth, she prepared a simply spell. She quickly released the power, and a sharp edge formed along the side of her left arm, from wrist to elbow. Taking her chance, she violently jerked her imprisoned arm, seeing a satisfying shade of red gleam as the blade sliced into the harpy’s grip.
She had no time to celebrate the small victory. With the onset of pain, the creature let out a single, piercing shriek. Celica felt something wet in her ears, and her eyes fluttered as a wave of nausea suddenly hit her. By the time she had regained awareness herself, the earth was rising up to meet her. A startled scream escaped Celica’s throat.
Rather than a young woman smashing the ground, however, a body of mist fell where she would have. It spread, roiling away as if flattened by the drop before suddenly stopping. The mist began to draw back to its center, quickly gathering into the form of a woman on her knees.
Celica looked up, head pounding, her face covered in cold sweat as she tried to figure out where the harpy had dropped her. There was an irritating, keening sound ringing in her ears, and the few sounds that managed to get through it felt muted, as if coming from far away. Still, there was fighting all around her. Too many Endolan marks in monsters’ limbs, too few bodies between her and them.
There was an explosion not too far from her and she drew one arm across her face to stave off the light and dust picked up by the shockwave. As the wind died down, something sent a jolt down the arm protecting her eyes. She blinked and turned the limb around, taking notice of a crystalline shard jutting from the icy limb’s wrist. Something told her she was lucky it was not jutting out of her forehead. Something else told her she could not expect it to be the only projectile aimed her way. She threw herself to the side and three more icicles impaled themselves on the space she had been occupying moments ago.
Looking up, she caught sight of a woman glaring in her direction. She took her appearance in at a glance. Dark clothes, a thrusting sword in her right hand. A sharp face, amber eyes like a predator’s, hair brilliantly white with a vague hint of blue to it. From the shoulder down, her left arm was made of a crystal forming a shape resembling a plate gauntlet. The only reason she could tell it was not actual armor was that it was clear enough for her to see right through it. Celica did not need to get any closer to realize it was made entirely of ice, though unlike her own arms, which were hard to see through and defined by the pseudo-gauntlets’ sharp edges, this woman’s was clear and smooth. She did not need to see the icicles hovering menacingly behind the woman to know she had run into one of her own.
Celica sucked in a breath and prepared to form a barrier. She was in a bad situation. Even before considering the chaos going on all around her, ambushing Shifters was one thing. Directly confronting a Shifter with her own compatibility, one who was probably stronger and more experienced than her was wholly another.
She considered retreat, but only for a moment. In her current position, she could not tell which way their forces were, and she did not trust herself not to run deeper into the enemy army. She somehow doubted she could just show this woman her back without getting speared regardless. The thought of dissolving into mist and leaving the battlefield occurred to her, but that was hardly a safe option either. If she ran into an explosion, or a strong blast of wind, things that existed in abundance in the valley floor, she might very well scatter far beyond what she could hope to reconstruct.
Suddenly, the woman looked away from her, and Celica caught sight of a figure that had suddenly appeared besides her enemy. Daggers lashed out like a pair of fangs, but the woman was fast, and managed to deflect the attacks using both her sword and armored arm. Celica immediately recognized the figure as the other Yuiki-anesa in her squad. Celica sensed her opportunity, and redirected the power she had been hoarding into the icicles floating behind the woman. Using ice in a duel between Shifters of their kind was always a dangerous proposition, for the simple fact that for every weapon one created, one was handing their enemy another tool to kill them with. If she could only wrest control of the spears away from the enemy, she could use them to kill the woman and regroup with her own forces.
Her foe pre-empted her. Just as her magic touched them, the icicles dissipated into a fine mist. With the element of surprise gone, she rounded on her attacker. The girl drew back, trying to use her knives to parry the jabs from the woman’s sword. The enemy was too fast, and almost immediately one of the knives flew out of her grip. The woman drew her arm back, and with a fencer’s technique lunged forward with her whole body, sword arm outstretched in a jab aimed for the girl’s chest. Celica fired at the ground between them, jagged crystal appearing where the woman’s front feet would land. She shifted her balance at the last minute, managing to only suffer a cut on the side of her leg rather than goring her foot, but it was enough for the girl to step out of the way.
Almost too quick to see, the girl produced another knife from her vest and lunged forward. Celica aimed her gun at the woman, hoping to offer enough of a distraction for the girl to kill her foe, but she had to duck out of the way as the crystal her last round had produced suddenly shot out towards her. By the time she managed to raise her weapon again, the woman had circled around, placing the girl between her and Celica.
A heavy impact blew the girl back. Celica stepped to the side to let her fly past and raised her right arm, but the woman had closed the distance between them in a flash. The woman’s sword slipped between her finger and the trigger and pushed her arm away as she fired. The bullet harmlessly whizzed past the woman’s head as she swept the sword up and in a circle, its point grating against Celica’s armored palm. She gritted her teeth and loosened her grip on the pistol. The point of the sword scratched her belly as she drew away, her gun flying off into the fighting beyond, but at least her entrails were not spilling out of her. The woman rotated her torso with the motion, and Celica began to duck down, expecting a punch to follow the slash, but instead of following through with the blow, her enemy’s open hand paused in front of her.
A sudden wall of air slammed against her and she was lifted cleanly off the ground. She crashed down with a jarring impact, barely managing to roll into a kneeling position. No sooner had she landed than a large spike, several times larger than her impaled itself on the ground in front of her. Her eyes traveled up the spike, seeing it connect to a long, spidery limb. Another glance told her its seven siblings were spaced all around her. The ground shook and her eyes widened. She didn’t bother standing up, instead scrambling on all fours to get out of the way as the spider Titan’s legs fell and rose around her. Heavier, intermittent tremors told her that there was another giant very close, probably engaging the spider.
No sooner had she extracted herself from under the spider than one of the Demons around it rushed her. A man, swinging a heavy sword, all the confirmation she needed to know the Yuki-Onna had not followed up on her. She saw him coming, but in her hurry to stand up and out of the away, she felt the blade bite into her left thigh.
Something cool and wet began to seep out of the wound and she hissed at the pain, wobbling slightly as she ducked under another swing. The swordsman stepped closer and drew both arms to one side, readying a sideways slash with the heavy blade.
Celica did not retreat. Long, sharp object or not, backing off further was only an option if she did not mind being trampled by a giant arachnid. She stepped forward instead, inside the range of the enemy’s weapon, and struck the swordsman’s shoulder with her own just before the man swung. The blow lost its momentum as Celica used her good leg to push her body’s weight against the man. The attack came at the same time as the defense. Her left arm wrapped around the man’s, holding them in place as her right hand darted forward. Outstretched claws pierced the man’s throat like wet tissue and withdrew just as fast, trailing a trickle of red. She did not relent as the man tried to draw back, holding the soldier’s weapon in place as she twisted her torso, throwing out her right elbow against the man’s face. The blow struck the man’s eye, and Celica continued the motion, reaching back towards the soldier’s sword. Her armored hand closed on the blade and twisted, easily dislodging it from the Shifter’s weakened grasp. Celica loosened her grip on his arms and he recoiled, hands reaching towards his neck in a futile gesture. His mouth moved, but no sounds reached Celica’s ears. She briefly wondered whether she should blame that on her damaged hearing or the man’s torn throat before stepping in, bringing the sword by the blade onto the man’s skull. The crossguard struck the man’s temple with a jarring impact and he crumbled limply.
Celica let the sword fall from her hand and stared at the collapsed body, using the earned reprieve to steady her rough breathing. After a moment, she looked up, a part of her surprised that nothing had seen it fit to try and kill her in the last couple of heartbeats, and caught sight of a pair of familiar bodies amidst the mayhem. A pair of daggers and a rapier-like blade dancing around each other, it seemed as though after being blasted away, the Yuki-Onnas had resumed their duel, though perhaps calling it such was being generous. The Endolan woman was simply too swift, and had forced the girl to fight almost completely defensively, leaving her completely occupied avoiding the flurry of thrusts and slashes aimed her way, the few weak attempts she made to fight back brushed off with an almost contemptuous ease. It was likely this backpedaling that had brought the pair back into Celica’s view.
One thing was clear. The girl was hopelessly outmatched on her own. So Celica raised her remaining pistol, took aim at the woman and pressed the trigger, hoping to offer a moment of distraction. She felt no recoil. Celica swore, dropping the expended magazine as she produced a replacement from her pockets.
There was a small but noticeable shift in the fight in front of her. So far, the girl had been able to avoid the brunt of the woman’s attacks, either parrying them or taking small cuts on the outside of her arms, but, as if deciding to end it, suddenly one of the woman’s thrusts slid from one of the daggers and dug into the girl’s hand. It twisted, and a dagger flew off, a thumb still attached to the handle.
Celica slapped the new magazine into her handgun. The girl let out a pained cry. The woman lunged forward, sword inexorably streaking towards the girl’s heart. Celica pulled back the pistol’s slide. The sword bore itself down to its hilt on the girl’s chest, then slid out as the woman kicked the body away from her. Celica aimed the weapon at the enemy and opened fire.
She had not even looked to check the kind of ammunition. The round struck the woman’s armored shoulder, but instead of crystal sprouting from impact, the bullet shattered against the hard surface, sending metal flying outward. The woman shielded her face from the shrapnel. Celica fired again, but her bullet struck a thick sheet of ice that had formed in front of the woman.
She should have taken the chance to retreat then. Sneak away and find the rest of the ambush parties while her enemy was hunkered behind a barrier, covering their faces. The girl with the daggers had died already, and Celica could only hope to save herself at that point. She had no chance against the woman in a fair fight. Then, she noticed the film of ice that had covered the metal shrapnel that remained from her bullets. It did not have to be fair.
That was enough for her to stride forward. The cut in her leg was barely a detriment to the Demon’s mobility as she repeatedly fired against the ice barrier, hoping to pin the Endolan behind it as she approached. She was almost directly in front of the barrier when her gun clicked empty.
They both noticed the change.
The woman vaulted from behind her cover, leading with a thrust levelled at Celica’s stomach. This was what she had been waiting for, and as the woman abandoned her cover, Celica used her gun to parry the sword, barely managing to divert it from vital organs. She hissed as she felt the tip of the blade cut against skin and muscle and grate against the side of her ribs on its way past, but forced herself to ignore the pain while she reached into the little shard of winter inside of her. Celica sent a whisper of power down to the ice encased shrapnel surrounding them, and the shards shot out from the ground like shotgun pellets, burying themselves into the woman’s legs and sides. For once, it was the woman’s face that contorted in pain, and Celica took the chance to step in even closer, impairing the sword’s range.
The woman drew her crystalline arm back before snapping it forward. Celica grabbed onto the armor’s wrist with her free claw and pushed it aside just as the magic escaped its focus. The vacuum left behind by the powerful gale whipped at her hair as the blast of wind passed by her. It was the same as it had been before. The enemy gets too close, you blast them away.
Celica pulled on the arm she had ensnared, and as the woman tumbled forward, she struck a headbutt against the woman’s nose. She felt it give way, noticed the red spilling out of it as the woman recoiled and she stepped in, claws raised to tear out the woman’s throat.
The razor tips of her fingers dug into the woman’s skin, but they found no resistance. Her breath caught on her throat as white fog filled her vision. She had missed her chance, and the mist stuck close to her in a dense fog, preventing her from properly seeing the battle around her.
All the warning she had was the appearance of a large shadow. Celica barely had time to cross her arms in front of her in a warding gesture before what at that moment she could only describe as a brick wall slammed into her.
Celica sailed through the air in an arch and crashed several yards away, her unconscious form limply coming to a stop as it crashed against one of the large corpses littering the battlefield.
