Alea Triscan
From the top of the Wall the scenery was... not promising in the slightest.
The wind screamed across the battlements of the Wall, a mournful dirge that whipped my white hair across my face and tugged at the pristine white fabric of my Lance uniform.
It carried the scent of damp stone, scorched earth from crackling defensive barriers far below, and something else—something foul and primal, like rotting meat and corrupted earth.
It was the breath of the enemy.
To my right, a bastion of glacial calm, stood Lance Varay Aurae. Her presence was a silent anchor, the air around her shimmering with perfectly controlled ice magic.
Beside her, Lance Bairon Wykes crackled with restless energy, lightning dancing faintly around his clenched fists, his gaze fixed on the approaching storm with a familiar, burning intensity.
To my left, Lance Mica Earthborn radiated a grounded, earthy solidity, though her usual gruff humor was absent, replaced by grim focus. And beside her, an island of coldness and fury amidst the seasoned Lances, stood Grey.
Sylvie, his vulpine bond, was a tense white spot on his shoulder, her eyes like chips of gold scanning the horizon.
We stood at the precipice, the five strongest warriors Dicathen could muster upon this monstrous fortification—the bulwark of our continent—silhouetted against a sky bruised blue and grey by the Wall's immense shadow.
Below us, stretching towards the now corrupted heart of the Beast Glades, was a sight that chilled the blood in my veins.
It wasn't the Alacryan army yet, they weren't yet in sight; it was a living, roiling tide of nightmare.
Hundreds, perhaps a thousand corrupted mana beasts surged forward, a grotesque tapestry of twisted forms—wolves with spines of jagged bone, bears oozing viscous shadow, scaled things that scuttled with too many legs, reptiles, mammals, strange fish looking creatures, their roars and shrieks merging into a cacophony that vibrated in my chest.
Somewhere behind them, disciplined, unseen and silent as death, marched the Alacryan legions. Rank upon rank of soldiers in dark, segmented armor, their insignias glinting dully, their spears like a forest of blackened steel catching the sickly light. The sheer scale of it was humbling, an humbling weight pressing down.
My fingers tightened on Roseguard. The Acclorite blade that finally sprouted, gifted by Prince Corvis, felt alive in my grasp. The silver metal, veined with crimson like unmovable fire frozen in the metal of the blade, thrummed with a low resonance against my palm.
The rose engraved on the guard, delicate yet defiant, was a constant reminder of his faith, his belief that I could rise above the shadows of my kind of reclusive past. Roseguard. The name had come to me as naturally as breathing when I first held it, a promise etched in steel.
To be a Lance was to stand as a bulwark, to meet the darkness head-on without flinching.
But beneath the resolve, a cold, selfish fear coiled in my gut—a fear not of death, but of never seeing his face again. Never witnessing the spark of genius in those keen eyes, never hearing his quiet voice commend my strength.
Would Varay, stoic as ice, feel a similar pang? Would Bairon, driven by duty and pride? I shoved the thought away. Fear was a luxury we couldn't afford. Only the battle mattered. Only survival.
"Mica sure has never seen something like this in all her life," Lance Mica muttered, her voice rough yet still childish like her usual tone, echoing my own sense of overwhelming dread. Her gaze swept the monstrous tide.
My enhanced senses, freed by Prince Corvis's intervention from the seal that had bound my core, painted a horrifyingly detailed picture.
I could perceive distinct mana signatures within the horde—pockets of seething corruption, flares of alien power from Alacryan mages woven into the ranks, and one… one signature that burned like a star, radiating malice and overwhelming power, still distant but drawing inexorably closer.
That must have been Dragoth.
"It is a common tactic of the Alacryans," Varay stated, her voice like wind over frozen lake. She drew her own Acclorite blade, Snowpierce. It flashed in the gloom, a shard of eternal winter, its blade a flawless, elegant spike of glacial blue, the guard an intricate snowflake wrought in silver and steel. Its very presence dropped the temperature around her fractionally.
"I wonder, however, how a Scythe fights." Her calm inquiry held an undercurrent of steely anticipation.
"Dragoth is a barbarian when fighting and a clown in everything else," Grey spat, his eyes fixed on that terrifying signature approaching. His voice was laced with a venomous hatred that felt deeply personal.
Mica snorted, trying to inject levity into the suffocating tension. "Oh, does the mysterious Alacryan boy know about his compatriot?" Her tone was teasing, but it landed like a dropped anvil.
Grey's head snapped towards her, his eyes flashing with dangerous light. Sylvie let out a low growl that despite her tiny appearance felt deeply intimidating.
"It won't be much longer until the horde of mana beasts is here and with that the enemy's army," Bairon interjected sharply, his gaze never leaving the approaching storm, lightning flickering more insistently around his knuckles.
"And with that, the Scythe." He emphasized the title, the word heavy with mythic dread. "It's going to be a problematic fight." He turned his piercing gaze fully on Grey. "State your plan, boy. Quickly."
Grey met his glare without flinching. "Me and Sylvie will take on Dragoth directly. You four handle the Alacryan army and any other powerful individuals they might have hidden. Agrona doesn't send just one dog, even if it's a big one. He likes layers in his twisted plans."
His voice was flat, commanding, brooking no argument. "I can defeat Dragoth, but only if it's a direct fight. He's stronger than any of you. I need a clear duel."
Bairon's face flushed with indignation. "Who do you think you are to be giving orders to Lances?" The air crackled with his barely restrained power. The animosity between them was a live wire, a dangerous distraction on the brink of annihilation.
"Lord Aldir tasked you with leading the confrontation against the Scythe," Varay stated coolly, stepping smoothly between the brewing storm. Her glacial eyes held Grey's.
"That directive stands. I won't complain about the chain of command. But I would appreciate understanding the reasoning behind isolating the strongest enemy." Her tone was respectful but firm, the voice of a seasoned commander assessing a risky strategy.
"Are we Lances now some kind of cleaners?" Mica grumbled, shifting her weight, her knuckles white on the haft of her massive warhammer.
I found my voice, trying to pierce the tension with a sliver of pragmatism. "We are still going to fight an army, Lance Mica," I said, forcing a steadiness I didn't entirely feel. "I don't think that's the role of a cleaner. More like… holding back a flood while the dam is repaired."
My gaze swept the terrifying sea of foes below. "Moreover, Lance Varay is right. We aren't sure Dragoth is the only apex predator in that wave." The thought of multiple Retainers, or worse, sent a fresh chill down my spine.
"The battle commences now," Bairon growled, his voice cutting through the discussion. The leading edge of the corrupted beast horde was mere minutes from crashing against the lower defenses. Their roars were deafening now, a physical assault on the senses. He turned his glare back on Grey. "Can you at least fly, or will you expect us to carry you to this vaunted duel?"
A faint, almost predatory smile touched Grey's lips. "In more ways than one." As he spoke, Sylvie on his shoulder was engulfed in a blinding surge of violet-tinged aether. The light expanded, coalesced, and shifted.
Where Grey had stood beside Mica, there now loomed a creature of majesty and power. A dragon.
Sleek, black-scaled, radiating ancient, predatory might, horns like obsidian spears curving from its majestic head. Grey sat astride its neck, transformed from a determined youth into a figure of terrifying, mythic authority.
The dragon's wings, vast membranes of darkness, stretched wide, catching the turbulent wind.
"What a show-off," Mica muttered, though her eyes were wide with awe and a flicker of unease.
"There's no time for commentary!" Varay's voice cracked like a whip. She lifted effortlessly into the air, a specter of ice and steel, Snowpierce gleaming in her hand.
"You know your roles! The troops hold the Wall against the beasts! We break the army! Grey handles the Scythe! Communications on the designated channel!" She tapped the small, practical radio earpiece we all wore, a technological marvel born of Prince Corvis's relentless innovation.
"Move!"
Bairon erupted upwards in a crackle of pure lightning, a human thunderbolt. Mica simply stepped off the battlement, plummeting before gravity stopped working on her making her fly. I took a final, deep, shuddering breath, the acrid wind filling my lungs.
The fear was still there, a cold knot in my stomach—the fear of failing him, of not returning. But beneath it, forged in the fires of his trust and the steel of Roseguard, burned a fierce determination. I pushed off the stone, the wind rushing past me as I soared into the chaotic sky.
Prince Corvis had spent his life preparing for this war, fighting for Dicathen, believing in me when few others did. Today, I would prove that belief was not misplaced. Today, Roseguard would bloom amidst the carnage.
Victory wasn't assured, survival was a desperate gamble, but I would fight with everything I had, for Dicathen, and for the prince who gave me back my purpose.
The tide of darkness met the Wall, and the Lances descended to meet it.
———
The wind tore at my face, thick with the stench of charred earth, ozone, and the coppery tang of fresh blood from both monsters and people alike.
Below, the battlefield unfolded like a scene from a fevered nightmare—a complex of rolling hills a classic scenery in these parts of the Beast Glades once perhaps verdant slopes, now reduced to a desolate, scarred landscape.
Great swathes were blackened and smoldering, grass incinerated down to the roots by errant fireballs or searing lightning.
Other patches were churned into muddy morasses by the trampling of hundreds of boots and claws, slick with gore and treacherous underfoot.
Jagged craters pockmarked the terrain, testament to powerful spells, their edges still steaming.
"Alea, a division is flanking north! Prevent them from attacking our rearguard!" Lance Varay's voice crackled with urgent clarity through the radio earpiece, a lifeline of command amidst the chaos.
I was already banking hard, Roseguard humming in my grip. The Wall itself was a distant, brooding presence now, its shadow falling long over the valley entrance it guarded.
But here, on these scarred hills just after the Grand Mountains, the Alacryans sought to outflank it, to spill like poison over the slopes and into Sapin's vulnerable heart.
Failure here meant the Wall besieged from within and without. Below, a desperate skirmish raged.
A detachment of the Bulwark Division, grim-faced and outnumbered, was locked in brutal combat with the Alacryan flanking force.
While the main horde of corrupted beasts still battered the Wall's base, these Alacryans commanded their own contingent of horrors—snarling, shadow-wreathed wolves and hulking, tusked creatures dripping ichor—pressing our soldiers relentlessly.
Hope was a fragile thing on these scorched hills. I saw it flicker in the eyes of our soldiers as they parried desperate blows, heard the ragged gasps of exertion, the cries of the wounded. The Alacryan advance was a grinding, relentless press.
Enough.
I aimed my descent not for the periphery, but for the heart of the Alacryan surge. The impact shook the ground, sending clods of burnt earth flying. Before the nearest Alacryan soldiers could react, I drove Roseguard deep into the ravaged soil. Not just a thrust, but a commandto the mana inside my core.
A surge of power, pure and fierce, channeled through the blade made from my own body and gifted by the one who believed I could wield it. The ground bloomed.
Not only with life, but with prosperity. A shockwave of razor-sharp crimson thorns and ethereal, glowing roses erupted in a wide radius around me like a crown of red flowers.
However they weren't gentle as flowers; they were weapons born of my will and Roseguard's power.
Alacryan shields splintered, armor was pierced with sickening crunches, corrupted beasts shrieked as thorns found gaps in their corrupted hides. A circle of carnage and stunned silence bloomed where I stood. Their own magic couldn't withstand my attack.
"I have never felt so powerful in my whole life..." The whisper escaped me, almost lost in the sudden lull. There was no strain, no drain of energies—only the exhilarating, terrifying flow of power through Roseguard and into the world.
It felt right. It felt like the strength Prince Corvis had always seen within me, finally fully realized.
"A LANCE!" The cry went up, a ragged chorus from both sides. From the Alacryans, it was a shout of raw terror, eyes wide with the realization that a living weapon had landed among them.
From the Dicathians, it was a roar of renewed hope, a desperate surge of adrenaline.
"For Dicathen! For our homes! Follow the General!" Their rallying cry echoed across the scorched hills, momentarily drowning out the enemy's snarls.
The battle snapped back with redoubled fury. Our soldiers, galvanized, pushed back with desperate courage. I became a whirlwind. Augmenting my body with mana, I blurred across the treacherous ground.
A monstrous Hades Serpent—usually an AA-class mana beast now even stronger due to the corruption in its body—controlled by an Alacryan mage, lunged from the ranks, its twin heads hissing, dripping venom that sizzled on the burnt grass, its miasmatic aura making the air thick and foul.
One head, jaws wide enough to swallow a horse whole, snapped towards me, jagged fangs like shards of obsidian gleaming.
No hesitation. A single, fluid and crimson arc of Roseguard. The blade sang, cleaving through scale, bone, and corrupted flesh. The severed head thudded to the scorched earth, venom spraying.
Using the momentum, I launched myself, a silver and crimson streak, landing atop the remaining head before it could recoil. My free hand snapped forward, mana coalescing into a single, vicious thorn as long as my forearm.
I drove it downwards with the force of a ballista bolt, piercing through the serpent's skull with a wet crunch. The colossal body convulsed once, then collapsed, shaking the ground.
"REGROUP! PUSH THEM BACK! FOR DICATHEN!" My voice, amplified by mana and command, cut through the din. I saw the lines solidify, our soldiers digging in, using the ruined landscape—a crater wall here, a slope there—for cover, fighting with renewed ferocity and conviction.
"Lance Triscan!" The voice came from above. A woman, her face smudged with soot but eyes sharp, descended on a magnificent Flare Hawk, its feathers blazing with controlled heat. The captain of this tethered battalion. She landed swiftly beside me, the hawk's heat a welcome counterpoint to the battlefield's chill.
I parried a spear thrust from a snarling Alacryan soldier without breaking eye contact. "Report, Captain. The situation?"
"Your arrival turned the tide, Lance!" she shouted over the clash of steel. "We were buckling, but we're holding! However we just received orders, from Prince Cor— from the Vice Commander himself. Immediate tactical retreat."
Retreat? After this? On the cusp of holding them? "Why?" I demanded, cutting down another attacker who dared get too close.
"The vanguard scouts reported something… horrific further north. An enemy mage, tearing through our forward pickets. Melting stone, dissolving steel… a deviant magic perhaps, acidic beyond anything we've seen. The Vice Commander identified it immediately. He believes it's one of the Retainers, Jagrette Vritra. She's carving a path straight towards our main reinforcement route."
Ice flooded my veins despite the heat of battle and the Flare Hawk. A Retainer. Not just a powerful mage, but one of the enemy's chosen executioners. Jagrette.
Prince Corvis's knowledge, gleaned from gods-knew-where, was rarely wrong. If she broke through, the entire flank would collapse, the retreating Bulwark soldiers would be slaughtered, and Sapin would be laid bare.
So she's probably coming here, I thought, the implications crashing down. This small victory on this hill meant nothing if that Retainer succeeded.
The Captain watched me, waiting for orders, the fate of her soldiers in her eyes.
Recklessness warred with duty. Sending soldiers against a Retainer was a death sentence. Calling for another Lance would take precious minutes we didn't have. The power of Roseguard hummed in my hand, a reminder of the trust placed in me.
Prince Corvis would charge headlong into such danger, driven by necessity and his terrifying sense of responsibility. But I was a Lance. His Lance. This was my duty.
"Captain," I said, my voice cutting through the noise with cold certainty. "Execute the Vice Commander's retreat order. Get your men out. Now. Signal the Council." I met her gaze, seeing the dawning understanding, the fear. "Inform them… Lance Alea is engaging the enemy Retainer."
Before she could protest, before doubt could cloud my resolve, I turned. Roseguard glowed crimson in my fist, a beacon against the desolate, scorched hills. I focused my senses, pushing past the cacophony of the immediate battle, searching for the strongest mana signature. North. A seething, acidic void moving relentlessly through the smoke and ruin.
Ignoring the shouts, ignoring the press of battle still swirling around the edges of my awareness, I launched myself forward.
The destroyed earth blurred beneath me as I carved a green and crimson path through the Alacryan ranks. Roseguard sang in my hand, a silver-and-scarlet streak that parted armor and shadow-touched flesh with equal ease.
Where my blade couldn't immediately reach the Alacryans, vines thicker than a man's arm erupted from the scorched soil at my command, tangling legs, snaring beasts, creating thorny barriers that bought precious seconds for the retreating Bulwark soldiers.
Their desperate flight was a ragged pulse against the roar of battle, a rhythm I fought to protect.
Flying low, the acrid stench of burnt grass and spilled life filled my nostrils, but soon, a new horror overwhelmed it.
Ahead, the landscape itself seemed diseased. Scattered across the blackened, cratered hills were shapes that had once been Dicathian soldiers. Not fallen, but… dissolved. Armor lay in misshapen, half-melted puddles, steaming faintly. Flesh and bone were reduced to grotesque, liquefied stains soaking into the ashen earth.
The sheer violation of their bodies, the utter eradication of human form, hit me like a physical blow, a cold nausea warring with the heat of battle fury. Jagrette Vritra. The name was a curse on my lips.
Alacryan soldiers shrank back as I surged forward, their fear palpable. None dared intercept the Lance blazing towards their monstrous champion—or one of. It was a small mercy, a pocket of dread I used to gather my fraying resolve.
Then, I saw her.
She stood atop a slight rise, untouched by the surrounding devastation, a stark silhouette against the smoke-choked sky. Tall, unnaturally thin, her skin a sickly parchment white beneath a creepy doll-like ceramic mask.
Twin black ponytails snaked down her back, and a single, small horn protruded from her forehead. She was gesturing languidly to a cluster of terrified Alacryan soldiers, calling them "pets" in a voice that was both lilting and utterly devoid of warmth. The chill that raced down my spine had nothing to do with the wind.
Our eyes met across the desolation. Masked voids met my own, and a shiver of pure revulsion ran through me. Were all Vritra-blooded so… wrong?
"Oh?" Her voice cut through the din, curious, almost playful. "What a peculiar creature. Are you an elf?"
The casual detachment in her tone, surveying me like a specimen while standing amidst the melted remains of my countrymen, ignited a cold rage deep within my core. Her masked gaze swept over me, lingering on Roseguard.
"You must be a Lance, right? Good, good." The playful lilt vanished, replaced by a venomous hiss. "Killing you will finally earn me that Scythe's place!"
The air around her warped. An acrid, eye-watering stench—sharper than burning metal, fouler than decay—assaulted my senses. Instinct screamed. No time for strategy, only reaction. My arm snapped back, then forward in a single, fluid motion. Not a throw, but a launch.
Roseguard streaked through the corrupted air like a comet, trailing a thick, vibrant vine that remained tethered firmly to my wrist, humming with channeled mana.
Jagrette raised a pale, almost delicate hand. From her fingertips, a viscous, emerald-green fluid dripped, sizzling violently where it struck the already ruined ground, sending plumes of corrosive vapor into the air.
She aimed to intercept the blade, to reduce Prince Corvis' gift to molten slag. My grip tightened on the vine, pouring my will, my mana, my defiance down its length and into the heart of Roseguard.
The blade met the stream of acid.
Instead of melting, Roseguard flared. The crimson veins within the silver metal ignited with an inner fire—not fire magic of course given my elven nature, it was something similar to poison, red rose poison.
With a sound like tearing silk, the blade cleaved through the corrosive stream as if it were mere water. Jagrette's masked head jerked back in genuine shock.
"Agh!" A guttural sound of surprise and pain escaped her. "What is this sword?!" Her disbelief was a fleeting victory.
She twisted with serpentine speed, trying to slap the blade aside, to disarm me. But Roseguard was perfectly controlled in my hands. With a sharp mental command and a yank of the vine, the blade reversed its momentum, snapping back through the air towards my waiting hand like a loyal hound.
My fingers closed around the familiar, humming hilt. The rose on the guard seemed to pulse. I leveled the point at the Retainer, the coldness in my voice a stark contrast to the fire in my veins.
"If you are going to act so cocky," I stated, the words slicing through the corrosive haze, "you are just going to die, Retainer." The battlefield narrowed to her masked horror and the unwavering point of my blade.