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Owner	Pose
Marigold	Lycia, March of Laus, beyond the River Tuscana      Not far from Castle Laus      The journey so far has been peaceful, for those tagging along. Villages have been sedately pleasant. Lugh has been working himself hard on Psychonauts duty, maybe a little too hard, and muttering about 'emotional baggage tags'. Dieck and Hector have both been trying to instruct Ru Li Cheng in combat, though neither knows much about unarmed styles; the former has a lot to teach about how superhuman durability lets one exploit openings for counterattack, while the latter is instructive in the skilled application of egregious force, though he sometimes forgets Ru Li doesn't have his mass or reach.      A well-worn dirt trail leads past a small bridged river and under magificent shading old-growth trees, which rustle in the cool temperate breeze. Roy walks alongside the supply wagons, looking less-worn-than-before thanks to his new boots, and chatting distantly with Wolt. The horsemen are at the fore, Shanna included (albeit grounded for now). Chad is out scouting ahead as the sneakiest of the bunch, and most of the other foot-soldiers are either walking behind or riding in the wagons with Guinivere to rest their legs.      Hector, tragically, doesn't get those breaks, because he won't fit.      "... used to be the weapon of Roland, 'the Little Knight' they called him. The Marquesses of Ostia are his directest descendants- ha, not that you'd know to look at me! Now Lilina, she's a tiny treasure, but sometimes I wonder if..." "Someone's coming!" Roy blurts out. His hand reaches for the rapier at his hip.      "Easy, Lord Roy. It's only one horse," Merlinus says, after a second of listening to the galloping around the bend. "Oh. Forgive me, Lord Hector. Then who...?"      The trees give up their answer a second later. A golden-haired young woman, looking disheveled for her luxurious clothes, rides around the bend on an exhausted-looking horse and brings it up short in visible surprise.      "Excuse me!! Who do you think you all are, blocking my path??" "Wh-- the Pheraean army! Who do you think you are, speaking that way?" Merlinus startles back. The young lady just sighs in relief and slides down from her horse, then nearly falls over. "Oh, wonderful. Then you're all the protectors of Lady Clarine of Etruria, now! I hope you'll discharge your duties adequately!"      In the distance there's a faint but terrible commotion. It sounds, to those with sharper hearing, like a lot of very armed and very agitated men. In the far distance, one might spot a single wyvern in the sky, heading back east.      "Oh, go to hell, Erik," groans Hector.
Flamel Parsons	"Woah-- 'Lady Clarine of Etruria'? Hang on, Etruria's part of our plan! Don't turn her down!" Flamel calls out, serving his surveillance van to one side and leaning out of the open window. He kicks the door open and scampers towards her. Did you know he can scamper? He's adjusting his sunglasses when he gets near her, all bright smiles.     "Hi! Flamel Parsons, acolyte of a vague yet ominous order. You're an Etrurian noble? We can cooperate some, definitely!" He peers behind her, to the east, squinting and trying to puzzle out what that commotion is. "Wait-- what's going on over there?" He plants two fingers on a temple and tunes up some telepathy, trying to access Chad's mind at a distance. His brain projects flickering sketches of the environment, and Chad's scouting paths through them if he'll allow it. "Chad? Is there something up ahead? What's going on?"     One way or another, he recognizes it's a good idea to push forward. But he does it stealthily. Starting to fade into invisibility, he says, "I'm gonna get a head-start on that protection, especially if there's Bernish forces up there!" If he can do some early infiltration, it'll mean a lot of advantage for when they have to start protecting Clarine! So, invisibly, he sets off at a levitation-powered high speed.
Trudy Grimm	Trudy does not ride in the wagons-- but she doesn't walk, either. The Black Knight has been called to serve once again; his greatsword resting on his right shoulder, while his left arm is curled in such a way that the witch uses it as a seat. His absurd height makes this a simple affair, as does his tireless undead stamina.     She listens intently as Hector talks about historical figures and legendary artifacts. His comment about little knights being his ancestors gets a light laugh from the witch, which cuts off when Roy sounds out.     "Mmm?" The woman who trades words with Merlinus is worth a closer look, Trudy tapping her chin thoughtfully. Above and behind her shoulder, the Black Knight's helmet lets out a soft metallic grinding noise as it turns to face the lady as well.     "Lady Clarine of Etruria? Well met. Trudy Grimm, a humble witch. And--" She gestures upward, "My bodyguard, the Black Knight." He's already turning his attention away from Clarine, though, fixing his eyeless gaze into the distance. Without a word, he releases Trudy to the ground, pacing for the front of the formation. The faint creak of his gauntlets hints at a tightening grip on his colossal blade as he steps past Clarine and her horse.     "Of course you are more than welcome to join us. Our encounter is actually quite fortunate. Ah--" Trudy claps her hands together with the faint clattering of beads and charms, "What, pray tell, happened? You seem to be on the run, Lady Clarine. Would you like to ride in one of the wagons?"
Desire Stars	Neon peeks ahead at the commotion from the cover of the wagon, craning her neck to see. "'Lady Clarine...' of Etruria?" Her brow knits together in a moment of confusion, as she dips back into the wagon. "Do you know anything about her, Lady Guinivere? What would she be doing all the way out--wait, do you hear that?" She reaches for her Desire Driver, just in case.      Neon hops out of the wagon in time to see Ace introducing himself to Clarine. "Ace Ukiyo," he says. "You could do a lot worse for 'protectors.' I never settle for just 'adequate.'"      Neon rolls her eyes.      "But I do have to ask what happened to the ones you would've left with--unless Etruria is fine sending VIPs on long journeys alone. You either came a long way," says Ace, nodding towards the exhausted-looking horse, "Put the horse through its paces, or both. Couldn't help noticing your dismount was a little shaky, too."
Angela	Ceri has returned to help. She's still in the chair but she has been undergoing her rehab sessions with gusto--it's still maybe a bit dangerous TO that rehab to be out on the field, but Ceri gave her word to assist with this endeavor and isn't going to hold back from a potential ambush where every single warrior in fighting shape may be the difference between an utter rout or not. "Heading back to Bern..." Tennant asides to Ceri. "You think letting it go could be a problem?" Ceri whispers to the Records Captain. "Could be." Tennant says. "Bit of a gamble either way." Ceri hesitates and then nods. Tennant takes this as a cue to clamber up an old tree, taking aim with the EGO Rifle Magic Bullet. They lick their finger, stick it into the air--getting a feel for the wind. These gestures are less important for aiming (as Magic Bullet helps with aiming) but does help Tennant keep the rifle steady, little rituals like that. They squint their eyes and pull the trigger. The bullet flashes out of the rifle, a miniature portal forming in front of it-- --before a second portal opens up near that departing Wyvern and the bullet blasts out of that portal towards Tennant's target--the Wyvern itself. Even Magic Bullet can't do a called shot from this distance but Tennant figures this kind of hassling of enemy forces will at least unnerve them. Ceri can't really stealth in the chair but does draw not her rapier but her EGO: Sanguine Desire, into her hands. For this kind of battle, an axe is a much better choice. This isn't a duel. "What does Erik look like?" Ceri asks Hector. "If we see 'em we can focus our fire."
Aidan Proudpick	Riding on TOP of the wagon is Aidan. Aidan has a new set of armor. Armor is a loose term, as he has gone for the 'traditional beast man' set up. Chestplate(that only covers his rib cage), arm guards and shinguards. He has one leg out over the edge of the wagon, the other up against his chest, bouncing his foot erratically. He listens quietly to Hector go on, smiling as he does so. Despite his languid pose, Aidan's eyes are alert, watching the trees, leaning back every so often to try and pick something else up with his ears. "It can't be black and white, right?" Aidan frowns, "There's gotta be something we can do. No one is EVIL, like Mister Parsons said. Everyone has reasons for what they do." His tail twitches back and forth, irritable as he tries to think of something. "People always have compassion," he says, thinking of Petra, "You just have to find out what it is." A twitch of an ear. Aidan is up onto his feet in an instant. A horse. And then... They are coming to US. A bright grin forms on Aidan's face. Finally. Some time to shine. He puffs out his chest, breathing in a deep lung full of air. A spread of his fingers and palms flat. What is just a minor rushing of air over his lips turns into a sudden gale like force that takes the shape of two wind walls. A funnel, leading towards their forces, giving them a proper Battle of Thermopylae battle ground.
Blemishine	In order to get the leave to travel along with the Lycian army rather than only show up when needed, Maria had to spin quite the tale to her aunt. Worrywart that she is, there's no way she'd be able to spend extended periods away with a ragtag group fighting a continent-conquering empire! She has to check in regularly, come to see her if she needs anything, and make a vehement promise not to get herself hurt. That last one was difficult to do, all things considered, but she /does/ have no intention of falling in Elibe!     And that means she's been able to ford the path alongside the others, and also make good on that deal with Marcus to help maintain their weapons. Even without access to a regular forge, she's good at working with what she has, and occasionally spends too /much/ time poring over armaments, their balance, and their make. She's really set on getting that javelin just right for Shanna! And it's also no wonder she's been listening intently to Hector's story about Roland.     She may or may have asked about not only Durandal, but also Armads at length.     Right now though, they have a problem. "Etruria?" Wait a moment. "What's an Etrurian noble doing in Laus...?" It's more of a thought to herself than anything else, but spoken aloud nonetheless. And after a moment, she hurries towards her, offering to help support her after she dismounts. It's not hard to pick up on the disappearing wyvern, or the sounds of what can only be impending soldiers.     "Ah... you're being chased, aren't you, Lady Clarine? I think we might have a mutual foe here. Please do take cover, you look like you've run yourself /and/ your mount ragged!"     For her part, it seems like she's going to have to get ready to for an impending scuffle, shield in hand and sword at the ready. She asides back towards Hector, with a sympathetic smile. "Timing, right?"
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru is here, of course. She's been all over the place. She hung around with Lugh for a while, but she clearly doesn't know anything about the Psychonauts training and provides no useful advice. Then she watched Dieck and Hector try to train Ru Li, and tried not to giggle because she doesn't know a damn thing about unarmed combat and barely comes to Dieck or Hector's chest; any of them (including Ru Li) could pick her up and throw her without any work at all, if they managed to actually get their hands on her. She spent some time scouting ahead, too. Shinmyoumaru has been very careful not to let any of the locals know about her secret, but once she's out of sight of the wagons she has never been spotted until she comes back, so she must be doing *something* right. But right now she is sitting on top of the wagon. It's fine. Shinmyoumaru doesn't weigh a whole lot, even when she is four feet tall, and it lets her listen in while staying out of the way. She was a little grumpy with some of the things Hector said where she could hear it but decided rather than take it out on him, she was going to do something useful. (She was also grumpy that she had to share her spot with Aidan.) It looks like she's doing some kind of embroidery on one of the ornate obi she owns. So she's not actually watching when someone approaches. Her head perks when she hears the horse before she sees it, and - tucking the needle just so, setting the entire obi into a bag - she pops back to her feet, reaching behind her for the bowl she was using as a backrest. "Eh?" she asks, followed by a more drawn-out, "Eeeeh?" as Clarine speaks up. Shinmyoumaru half-vaults, half-tumbles backwards into her bowl, popping her head and upper body out a moment later as she rotates right way up. "Hold this!" she calls, tossing the sewing and embroidery bag gently into the back of the wagon, where it lands on a bunch of supplies with a gentle 'plomf'. Then Shinmyoumaru pushes her bowl forward, pulling ahead of the wagon. She waves both arms to get Clarine's attention. "You can come back here!" she offers, because clearly with the wagons is safer than anywhere else, and the group has arranged themselves to protect her anyway. "What *happened*?"
Odette Raskins	As always since all this business in Lycia began, Odette's traveling with the growing army of both locals and Elites from the outside world. She's listening aptly to Hector's stories this time, absorbing what she can of Roland's history and hanging onto his every word about Roland and his lineage. Naturally, she's staring at Hector blankly when he points out his own appearance. "You don't look all that little at all... Were you even beefier back in the day?" She asks, sounding rather awed at her mental image of what Hector might have looked like back then. Her attention is soon diverted by hearing and seeing an unfamiliar face coming right at the group, straightening up with a briefly startled hitch in her throat before getting confused by what the golden-haired woman is saying. "P-protectors? Discharge...? Wait, are we getting fired?!" A beat, and then she gets a confused look on her face instead. "But we were never hired..." Odette hears vague noises in the distance, and she sees the wyvern up high, and everything becomes slightly clearer as Hector speaks up again. "Is that...? Um. U-up there. Was that his?" She asks while looking from Hector to Clarine, then catches onto what Flamel's doing and dips into a quick bow. "Oh! I'm Odette, medic... Er. Field medic, yeah. W-we're here to help, too, miss.. Uh. L-Lady Clarine! I'll..." She inhales deeply, secures her bag across her shoulder and grabs onto the upper handles to steady it, then starts jogging towards the noise. "I'll get the wounded out of there! Y-yeah, if there's..." She pauses, then doubles back briefly to try and get a little more information from Clarine. "Who's fighting in there, anyway? Are there any evacuation routes that we can lead the townspeople or... Whoever else's hurt out from?"
Kayoko Kirenai	Kayoko is here alone, this time. Not that she and Meika ever exactly arrived 'together', but they arrived sort of adjacently, at least, so the absence of her Cobalt's red counterpart today is strikingly notable. She doesn't seek out Chad or Lugh to say anything to them about it, despite knowing that they were friendly with Meika-- why should I? She barely had enough transformations left to be a little useful for the very beginning part. She didn't earn any consideration I don't also get, especially not when I'll actually be helping for the rest of the time-- and she looks entirely unbothered by her sister not being present.     At first, given that there's no guarantee that Marquess Erik will be betraying them, Kayoko doesn't show up combat-capable for the travel. Surely he'll be reasonable, and he'll want to fight for the *good* side, because this is an actual important matter of life and death! At worst, he'll be uncertain about whether they can win, but a little talk should convince him easily. He's a Marquess, so he's supposed to be smart like that.     Not being transformed means that Kayoko is showing up in a similar dress to what she wore before, like she's cosplaying as a fantasy anime character that doesn't exist. It only takes a short time of serious walking to realize that the boots she actually purchased for real rather than creating aren't meant for travel at all, and she didn't even break them in before coming through the warpgate. So, awkwardly, before there's any particular threat, Kayoko has to take out her polaroid camera, snap a picture of the party, and step through it with a flash to become Chevalier Cobalt.     Knightly in shining armor as she is once transformed, though, Cobalt's role-filling instincts take over when Clarine stumbles off of her horse. Without a thought, she rushes over to give her a hand standing, elbow out for her to support herself on in the gap between strangely non-clattery gauntlets and breastplate.     "Lady Clarine! Are you alright? Are you being pursued? By whom?" Long before they're properly in sight, Kayoko looks through the forest to check what colors are on the distantly audible army. "I am-- I am Chevalier Cobalt, knight of the Holy Refulgence. Y-you can count on me to keep you safe!"     In addition to looking through the ranks of the approaching soldiers, Kayoko's gaze turns up to the wyvernrider in the sky-- does it seem like they were searching for the Pheraean army's position, and are going back to report it to the ambushing army? If so, Kayoko launches a volley of arrows, illusory, towards the wyvern, seeming to come from a slightly different position from where the army is in reality. She's attempting to force them to dive rather than rejoin with their allies, and potentially tricking them into thinking the army is larger than it is-- she paid attention when Shanna talked about the weaknesses of riding pegasi! "If we see 'em we can focus our fire."     Kayoko frowns at Ceri. "That's horrible. We should avoid killing anyone at all. If we can show we're strong enough to win, then of course Marquess Erik will listen to reason."
Lilian Rook	Lilian is completely shameless about riding wagonback, claiming it's obviously the correct place for a lady of her refined nature-- for about thirty minutes, after which she grows bored and uncomfortable, and gives up the bit and reveals that she does kind of just casually walk everywhere no one is driving her.     'Woah-- 'Lady Clarine of Etruria'? Hang on, Etruria's part of our plan! Don't turn her down!'     "Thank goodness someone is good with names for once." Lilian sighs, and unusually, it is lighthearted relief. 'Acolyte of a vague yet ominous order' gets a tiny smile from her.     Weaving past the pileup of Otherworlders and Lycians stopped on the road, Lilian airily says to no one in particular "There's such a nice balance of faces to see here. Usually it ends up being all one way or the other." without explaining a single thing about what she means.     Actually arriving at the front of the caravan, Lilian casually rolls her hand from her shoulder to the back of her neck to free her hair from her trail cloak, and replies to Clarine,     'Then you're all the protectors of Lady Clarine of Etruria, now! I hope you'll discharge your duties adequately!'     "I humbly accept your gracious offer of adequate compensation."     The words are effortless. Lilian brushes past Clarine as if she and her had only waved to each other on the road. Where normally that sort of phrase would be exhaustedly barbed, like this,it sounds only a short distance from coy. It's adulterated by her hand gently finding the hilt of her sword.     "How many in your escort? Should I need to count them." Lilian asks shortly before she proceeds even beyond the outer reaches of what could still be called the caravan, picking up the pace directly towards the sound of commotion.
Dysnomia	Walking near the front of the group, at a brisk walk, until the dot of a wyvern cutting through the air came into view. Dysnomia came to a dead stop, squinting at the horizon. Her laugh was low, ending with a spit into the dirt. It was too far to see...For most eyes, anyway. But Mia still breathed, "Narcian."     "I humbly accept your gracious offer of adequate compensation."     It bouyed Dysnomia's mood somewhat, to see the Dame Commander turn the young woman's assumption of subservience into an admission of a weakness, and a favor to be collected later. "And just who are you pursued by?" Mia asked Clarine, seriously, already anticipating the answer. "Tell us what you can. While we have time." Her eyes have already left Clarine, staring back down the path she had come by.
Marigold	"A witch? Then what's a knight doing serving a commoner like you? He should be with me instead," Clarine says. She barely seems to notice Kayoko's help at all, or rather, takes 'a knight assisting her' as being as natural as 'a chair holding her weight'. It's simply taken matter-of-fact, and then she peels away to sit in the wagons with only a trailing hand across the shoulders as thanks.      Guinivere eyes her with smiling bafflement- even the princess of Bern doesn't behave this way. She confides in Shinmyoumaru and Ace: "Oh, it's been terrible! And very confusing. I ran away to look for my brother. Erik was going to give me to that lecherous Bern has-been general you know. And then a strange man set me free, and said something about hating Bern..."      "I wonder if I'll see him again," she murmurs, index-finger-against-cheek. "He'd make a good bodyguard. What a pretty face..."      "Forgive me," Guinivere says to Neon, "but I've never heard of a Lady Clarine. She must be of a minor house." "I beg your pardon??" "Hey, wait. Your brother," Dieck says, coming up alongside. "He go by Klein?" "Yes! So you've seen him??" "Not in years."      "Hm?" Clarine says to Odette, like she's surprised to be addressed. Then, casually smiling: "Oh, no-one's fighting. They're after me, you see." "You mean, you led them straight to us," Roy says with no particular feeling but a trace of annoyance. "Well, yes! So you can nobly defeat them! You're welcome!" "But you didn't know we were here..."      Kayoko's peering up at the wyvern can discern a familiar rider- it's Narcian again, with a distinct red mark on his face like he's recently been open-palm slapped. She gets to see the delicious look of panic on his face, too, when Tennant's bullet hits his mount and he sees the illusionary arrows; the mount nearly bucks him off and dives behind the nearby mountains. Poor guy.      Kayoko and Flamel also confirm the worst, just before Clarine can describe her pursuers herself. The forest edge isn't far ahead; out in the flowery meadow beyond are a half-dozen mounted and armored knights with lances in Lycian blue, and behind them a handful of unarmored horse archers in unfamiliar woven garb.      They all immediately come up short when they see Aidan's wind-wall, clearly not expecting armed resistance, let alone supernatural. The horse archers blindly fire a high volley into the forest- 'blindly', but their aim proves shockingly good. Archers up on craggy hills to either flank of the meadow open fire on their signal too.      Only the wagons' presciently toughened roof keeps arrows from perforating Guinivere, Clarine, and Merlinus. Shanna goads her pegasus into the air, then immediately has to swoop back down as arrows whistle past her. A couple of the horses bray, already stuck, and Hector reflexively tries to cover himself with an axe before Dieck intercedes with his body to spare him the curse. "What are you--" "Ghh- put that thing down. You'll get yourself killed."      Across the long meadow, past two more squads of cavaliers, is a castle; and even with unenhanced vision, it isn't hard to pick out the silhouette of a heavily-armored man standing at the castle gate. Disgruntled, Hector points through the trees just before falling back: "Marquess Erik? He looks like that."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel has to take cover a couple of times, pressing up against the backsides of trees and covering his head up with his arms as arrows rain down. Even as an invisible guy, it's harrying! But he gets through it without too much damage, clenches both hands (sans index and middle), plants fingers on his palms, and gets to work.     A majority of the forces are horse archers! He's not exactly Compton Boole, but he's got some ways to deal with horse archers. A large number of humans have a kind of mob mentality that makes it hard to turn around their allegiance by default, but a large number of horses have a herd mentality, which is easier to deal with. Once he gets some cover and gets some decent flanking by working his way along the base of the craggy hills, he starts to work on invading minds.     Not the minds of the archers. The minds of the horses! Every horse has a hidden core of unbreakable malice that can be activate by loud noises, oblivious children, or any reflective surface. Flamel need only reach into their mind and activate this hidden equine evil, and an infectious surge of horses tossing their riders or kicking their allies should disrupt the incoming fire before a second volley starts up. He can't do much for the flankers on the hills, but this should hopefully make it a lot easier to start the push to the castle!
Aidan Proudpick	It's a WHOLE wagon top. Aidan isn't THAT big. Well, his tail is big, probably taking up a good section of the wagon top around Shinmyoumaru. His tail may have declared war on her. Aidan watches Lilian quietly, muttering to himself as she strolls right out and starts talking about making people into cheerleaders. "Kale wears the sluttiest shirt and shorts every damn day," he rambles darkly to himself. "That's horrible. We should avoid killing anyone at all. If we can show we're strong enough to win, then of course Marquess Erik will listen to reason." "Exactly! We just have to push them hard!" His hands spread out again, letting loose a breath that puts up a wall in front of the wagon. Each arrow that sails towards the wagon suddenly hits the wind wall and slows down rapidly, entering the other side in only a lurch. Arrowtips barely thunk into the wagon top around him. Unfortunately, protecting the wagon means the arrows zoom right towards Aidan's upper section. One hits his chest plate, making Aidan ring out with a merry "Hah!" as it bounces off harmless. "I told you i-FUCK!" White hot pain rips through Aidan's arm as an arrow flashes by him. The tip takes out a small chunk of flesh at his shoulder. Just enough to bleed and cause pain. The squirrel hurriedly ducks behind the wall. Just about to fling himself forward, Flamel calls for defense of Hector. Incredibly eager to show he can follow orders, Aidan pulls his rifle from his back. He snaps a steel clip in, kneeling down behind the wind wall to use it as cover. He grits his teeth against the pain, especially from the recoil of the gun slamming the wound with every shot. He fires short harrying bursts up at the ridges, not seeming to care much about missing, just about keeping the number of arrows down.
Dysnomia	"That's horrible. We should avoid killing anyone at all. If we can show we're strong enough to win, then of course Marquess Erik will listen to reason."     "You're not familiar with these sorts of military men." Mia said, matter-of-fact. "He's attempted to ally with Bern. Coming back to us now would risk his punishment--and ensure his humiliation. I'd imagine any loss of life would be acceptable to him, except perhaps his own."     Dysnomia leaps into the air, beginning to fly after the others in their rush for the battle. And for her trouble, she runs into a rain of arrows. With a snarl, she raised her arm--barely more than a pscyological defense. She felt points falling against her hard, struggling to break the skin. Some even scrapped through.     But, with the possibility of Marcus of the horse-knight valiantly stepping in to take the blows again, Dysnomia did her best evasive action, flittered too and fro among the trees, while a smell like an angry stormcloud followed in her wake, an energy in the air that made hairs stand on end.     Electricity coiled and hissed in her hand, congealing into a javelin of straight-violet plasma, released from her hand in a throw into the middle of the horse archers. And then another. And another. Every time she ducked from one tree to another there was another streak of violet cutting through the air.     Each landed with a sound like a thunderclap, sizzling electrical burns and the raw heat of expanding plasma, like a one-woman artillery barrage.
Desire Stars	Oh, no-one's fighting. They're after me, you see. You mean, you led them straight to us.     "Are you serious?! What's the matter with you?" Neon stamps her foot.     "I wouldn't be complaining, if I were you. You don't want to set a bad example for your student, do you?" Ace asks, with his usual smug smile, nodding upwards towards Shanna as she takes to the sky.     "W-who told you that?!"     The braying of a struck horse cuts the banter short, as both Ace and Neon procure their Desire Drivers.     "Aaah! Henshin!" Neon hits the dirt, hurriedly slotting the little buckle into the side of her belt, a near miss from an arrow eliciting a startled yelp. With her head protected by the gnarled roots of a partially-tipped tree, she transforms. Her armor is mostly matte black, save for a silver harness with a small breastplate bearing a cameo of her equipped Buckle. The propeller itself appears in her right hand, and her cat-themed helmet dips towards it as she utters a relieved sigh. "Shanna," she asks, hastily moving to put her back against a more sturdy-looking tree, "What do we do? If I take off towards them, they'll get me, too--and I can't close the distance on foot with them that high up."     Ace, meanwhile, looks like someone accustomed to this sort of situation. There's no startlement or fear on his face--but there is a kind of determination utterly at odds with his earlier teasing. His own evasion is a nimble roll, the Magnum Buckle inserted in one fluid motion with his rise to his feet. Kamen Rider Geats is a fox to Na-Go's cat, white and red in the coloration of his themed helmet, which is matched by the white and red full breastplate-and-bracer suite provided by the equipped Buckle. Also provided is the helpfully announced MAGNUM SHOOTER--a high-powered laser pistol with a scope attachment.     "Not a bad idea," says Geats, with a nod towards Tennant. He pulls the barrel on the pistol, transforming it into an also-announced RIFLE. Running up the trunk of one tree, he kicks off, sailing backwards through the air on a course for the branches of another. Arrows fly towards him, and a quick pair of trigger pulls blast them off-course. Sat on a sturdy branch, he scopes in, using his vantage point to get a bead on the hilltop archers. Trigger pulls send hot white lasers racing for weapons and wrists.
Trudy Grimm	> "A witch? Then what's a knight doing serving a commoner like you? He should be with me instead."     "Ahaha~," Trudy rewards Clarine's comment on the Black Knight with a bright eyes-closed laugh, "I'm afraid that wouldn't be possible. He's sworn an oath, you see." Eyes opening at last, she leans closer conspiratorially just as Clarine boards the wagon, "You know how knights are about oaths." --     In the wagon with the other non-fighters is Grimnir, sitting near the back so that the smoke of his pipe drifts out and away from everyone else. His single eye focuses on Clarine for a moment as she explains her situation, then closes. With a weary sigh, he taps charred leavings out of the pipe, "Ahh, it's always something or another in these lands, isn't it? But we were suspecting something from such uncertain loyalties as Marquess Erik, so I suppose this isn't too surprising."     As he packs his pipe with something fresh, the sage gestures with it, "Lady Clarine; the man who helped you. Could you tell us more about him? A great many have reasons to hate Bern at the moment, you see, so a little more might help us locate your prospective guardsman." --     Outside; Trudy's proximity to Hector has her working out ways to keep him safe without having to join the fight himself; Dieck solves that problem for her, and in so doing keeps her largely unharried as well. Plucking an erstwile arrow from her sleeve, she gestures with it, "Many thanks, mister Dieck! Please keep our wise Knight safe."     At the front of the column, the Black Knight hefts his greatsword up, presenting the flat of the blade as a great shield. It's not wide enough to protect his entire body and, in truth, arrows bite into the armor in several places on his shoulders and sides. This doesn't slow him down much. His advance halts though when his modest shadow suddenly grows pitch black. > "Marquess Erik? He looks like that."     "Much obliged, my knowledgable comrade." It's the last thing Trudy says before her shadow grows pitch black. At the same time, both the witch and the Black Knight sink out of sight.     In the same instant, the shadow cast by Erik himself darkens. First to emerge from it is the armored gauntlets of the Black Knight, hauling himself out; then reaching down and drawing his greatsword free. Lifting the weapon, he places it over his shoulder, glowering down on the armored Marquess with the faintly glowing green eyes behind his armored visor.     Behind him, Trudy emerges as well, already hefting up the Grimoire in one hand, "Would you be the Marquess of these lands? Lord Erik? Ahaha, I'd very much like to speak with you, sir. Though first, if you don't mind calling off your forces..." Her free hand lifts, tracing green light into the air until she has drawn the Death Rune. Eiwaz floats above her palm as she continues, "That would please me greatly, you see."
Angela	Tennant says, "Aaandd... Got 'em! I think and--" They squint as they see get a faint glimpse of the wyvern ducking behind the mountains through the rifle's sightline. "Well I can't shoot through mountains." They think for a moment. "...Or can I?" They take aim with the rifle, take another shot-- --and are immediately forced to leap out of the tree when the bullet spins back around for them, punching through the tree where they were moments before. "Can't shoot through motions." Hokma tries to turn a laugh into a cough on his pad. "Oh that's funny huh..." Tennant complains and lays on the floor for a moment. An arrow predictably gets them in the arrow a moment later. Has anyone ever suffered as much as poor Tennant? While this keeps Tennant from taking another shot at anybody for the moment, Ceri rolls behind some Tree-cover as a trio of arrows slam into the trunk. She gives one singular nod before sending a message to Tennant on the Babble channel pointing out this particular target out to them. Tennant rolls up into a crouch and starts taking aim but it's pretty loose for now. They're going to need a moment before they can fire again--hopefully Erik doesn't duck out of view before then. ''Exactly! WE just have to push them hard!'' Ceri exhales out a low sigh. Would be nice, sure but... She can't rush out into the open, she's not that crazy while her mobility is still limited. Instead, she takes time moving between cover. She can't exactly force a corrosion--her emotional state is too chill for her to do anything but try and slam her chair into the side of a horse when one rides by and try and get at the rider with her axe. She's really counting on Tennant to pin down Erik. Tennant smiles at Geats and asides to him, "Love the fox theme. Don't go too easy on Yuri just 'cause she's cute--uh but for now... Can you help steady my aim? Wanna get a good shot at their leader but I took a hit to the arm."
Lilian Rook	'Then what's a knight doing serving a commoner like you? He should be with me instead'     "You know how men are." says Lilian. Her shoulders shrug beneath her cloak in such a way that implies she expects Clarine to know perfectly well what she means.     'Erik was going to give me to that lecherous Bern has-been general you know'     Lilian pauses mid-stride. "You're joking." Hurriedly, she glances up at the wyvern rider-- just now diving out of sight-- and watches agog at his hasty disappearance. It takes her entire seconds to get over the man's sheer shamelessness. Lilian purses her lips in thought, conflicted as to whether to hate him or silently praise him for his hustle. "You could do better for a bodyguard, Lady Clarine. That one has already fled from a challenge I've issued him."     Before she advances much further, the horses cross the edge of the meadow, and Lilian shifts herself in front of Clarine's back. Her hand remains planted on her sword only for the sight of Lycian blue, but as she raises her voice to say "Hold. We are--", the sight of what she can only interpret as foreign forces bids her pause.     She draws her weapon in time with the creaking of bowstrings. Her cloak billows out to her right with the extension of her arm. Dust swirls up from the road beneath the path of her sword, and a half-circle smear of jet black flings two sparking arrows into the woods; a third is split in half by a twisting extension to the motion, and her sword coming back down bats a fourth projectile into the ground by her feet.     §If they have to arc them that high, then I can just memorize where they are before they start falling. There's plenty of time to react. They'll fire straight on the next volley, when Proudpick welches. So . . .§     Lilian looks back over her shoulder, through the kinetic settling of her hair. Her eyes flash to the caravan, but Roy in particular. "Have Lucius see to Dieck immediately, and let both of them keep Hector down. I'll leave the rest in your hands." she says. In some subtle way, it sounds different than the cold, military professionalism she always defaults to under the stress of crowds and weapons. Firm, still, perhaps even 'precise', but possessed of a certain kind of resonant clarity that's always lacking.     Lilian vanishes in spray of earth and a violent downdraft. To one side, up on the hill, an archer's bow tumbles in two different direction before his eyes register the dark shape alighting on the craggy edge. Lilian's boots scrape and twist the grass as she lands, and a sharp middle kick hurls an archer away by the impact to his chest. Her gaze clearly fixates on his livery for an instant. Her black blade flashes out. Gravel spits back out over the rise and she crashes into another archer in the opposite direction.     §They'll struggle the most being flanked. If these are Lycian men, then all they'll need for the moment is a little dissuasion. They can atone for it by fighting Bern.§     It takes a few terrifying seconds to realize that Lilian-- weaving between archers and slashing as she goes-- is exclusively aiming for the bows and quivers themselves.
Odette Raskins	"There's such a nice balance of faces to see here. Usually it ends up being all one way or the other." Odette can figure this one out. She looks around, at the Lycians, the non-Lycians... Is it a combat experience thing? No, then there should be a far more grizzled-looking veterans. Is it a wardrobe thing? No, then Lilian wouldn't have mentioned faces. She's not figuring this one out. Not yet, maybe not even later. She does, however, take a moment to just eyeball everyone's outfits in how wildly different they are. She's still just as excited by Kayoko's transformation into Chevalier Cobalt as ever, and Lilian's travel cloak still has her wondering about getting her own cool cape someday. Blemishine's classic sword and shield has her craning her neck to study their designs, too, to compare them to what she's seen in her shows, and Ace and Neon... Of course she's going to get excited by their Kamen Rider transformations and their cat-fox dynamic. There's no way she couldn't get hyped up at seeing and hearing all that. "Oh, no-one's fighting. They're after me, you see." "You mean, you led them straight to us," "Wait wait wait. So you're a... Runaway princess?" Odette's eyes light up as she comes to that realization, looking quite excited in that 'it's just like in my stories' kind of way before quickly clearing her throat and trying to look a little more focused and serious. "Th.. That's neat. Um. I don't know a lot about fighting, but I can make sure they don't die after we stop them from chasing you into... Us." She affirms, sounding rather similar to Roy in tone at that exact moment. "I wonder if I'll see him again," "He'd make a good bodyguard. What a pretty face..." Clarine's idle comments have Odette's thoughts wandering again, although... No, Lucius isn't here, and he doesn't strike her as the bodyguarding-type. She really wants to ask Clarine about what she meant by strange, too, but she'll have to leave that for later as arrows start to rain from the sky. Going wide-eyed as they start hitting the ground around her, Odette jumps and jukes around entirely on reflex and instinct. She lets out sharp little yelps each time an arrow punches into the ground near her, knocks against the wagon's roof nearby, and a panicked swing of her bag upwards just narrowly keeps one arrow from coming right through her face. "Th-th-there's medics here! A-aren't there rules about this kind of thing?!" She shouts towards horse archers in the distance, moreso out of frustration rather than expecting them to actually hear her. With no real means of doing anything to the archers from this distance, Odette instead turns her attention to Dieck, having noticed him shielding Hector moments ago. Odette closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then unzips her duffel bag in one smooth movement. "Do we have any other shields?" She takes out a roll of medicated gauze, shaking it out with one hand to let it unfurl. "The wagon looked sturdy enough, but if the horses can't advance..." She starts slapping it over Dieck's arrow wounds and slicing off pieces from the main roll, just scurrying all around him to try and keep him as fit for body-shielding as possible. "If we can push it, we can use it as cover!" She suggests, digging into her bag for several corked bottles full of a cloudy white substance. "If we can split their attention... Uh. S-something'll work out, I bet!" And then she just starts running forward Running, mostly, while counting on her flashier allies to draw attention away from the EMT just carrying a bunch of bottles. Once she's close enough, she start whipping those bottles at the armored knights, using their tough armor to shatter the bottles on impact and not actually do much to the armor besides dousing them in a strong smelling oil that practically screams flammability.
Blemishine	"You're familiar with her brother, Mister Dieck...?" Blemishine has some natural curiosity to be sated at this fortuitious meeting, but that'll have to wait. She is, for better or worse, neither terribly surprised nor bothered at the moment by Clarine's snooty personality - mostly because it's difficult to get that upset at someone who's currently getting chased down by a small army for the heinous crime of not getting pawned off to Narcian.     She watches his wyvern dip behind the mountains. He kind of is a poor guy.     But it's about to be poor them, given she can see the glint of approaching arrowheads even before she focuses on the archers themselves. Dieck covers for Hector, and Blemishine isn't too far, given she rushes to the defense of several of the wagon horses, shield up and angled just right to let projectiles harmlessly deflect off. "Ah--! As much as I really, really hate to say it, Lord Hector--" She casts a glance his way, in implicit agreement with Dieck. "No axes! Really. We can't have Marquess Erik of all people being responsible for that, can we?"     Taking a deep breath, she focuses forward again. So that's Erik at the gates... if we get to him, this should end. Still, if we push up with only that in mind, the caravan will be at risk. I'm not sure I can get to the ambush archers, but if it's clearing a safe way ahead through a field...!     When Blemishine sprints, she really /sprints/. A full-ahead that carries her out of the treeline at a pace well on par with the mounted cavalry on the battlefield, charging into the meadow to meet the incoming Lycian knights head-on. Like jousting! Only she uses a sword, not a lance. And she doesn't have a horse - she is the horse. That doesn't mean she's at a disadvantage at all, though.     In fact, she's perfect for taking them head-on, seeing exactly where their lances will try and run through her armor, and then dart in to rend her blade across the riders' sides. With each cut, the edge of her weapon briefly shines with radiant light - an offensive application of her light-based Arts maintained just long enough to let her cut through their armor as if it wasn't there at all, and strike forcefully enough to threaten to dismount them.     It'll hurt plenty, but no fatal strokes here! She can afford just disabling them for now.
Kayoko Kirenai	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "If you want to be certain that no one dies then you'll let me fight alone." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Something really should be done about that wyvern scout, however."     After being reassured that Lilian is not, actually, telling Kayoko that she shouldn't be fighting, Kayoko lets out a tense breath she didn't realize she was holding. Being invisibly taken for granted as support by Clarine pulls up complicated feelings in Kayoko, and she lingers by the snotty noble for long enough to respond to her explanation, feeling just a *little* bit needy about being acknowledged.     "He was going to turn you over to *Narcian*?! That's terrible, of *all* people." Sympathy noises! "Well, you don't need to worry, Lady Clarine. We've defeated Narcian once already, so he won't ever be getting his hands on you." This might be slightly overstepping her place, but Kayoko ventures a question, rather than just responses. "Is your brother part of an army? Or is he away for another reason?"     Narcian isn't allowed to just fly away without a parting shot. If there was any doubt as to who was currently mixed into the Pheraean army, it's dispelled when sunlit skies flash brighter for a moment, intensifying through an invisible lens into a ray that strikes Narcian on his wyvern *physically*. The glittering gold-mote glow that sticks to him even after the light fades back to normal means his attempts to escape the battle might not be as easy as he hopes, even on wyvernback-- though it's not like Kayoko herself has any means or inclination to follow him.     Distracted by petty abuse to Narcian, Kayoko is dead center in the storm of arrows coming down despite her capacity to see where they're aimed long before they land. She's forced to materialize her shining shield and hold it above her head, wings of light flaring out from either side to block most of the arrows before the impacts make them flicker away. This does, at least, have the side effect of being a light-show of protecting the wagons too, though. "I'd imagine any loss of life would be acceptable to him, except perhaps his own."     Cobalt glares at Dysnomia, eyes narrowing through her headgear. "Then we just have to make it not his *choice*, don't we? What's the point of any of this if we end up killing Lycian soldiers?"     Until she has a moment to recollect herself through the hail of arrows, Kayoko can't focus on countering the archers' offense with her own. Instead, she tries to buy reprieve by scattering their fire, with illusory Shannas to bait arrows away from both the pegasus rider herself, and away from the center of the army as a whole. Glints of light flash in their eyes as they try to aim, staring into the sun no matter what direction they face.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	It doesn't matter how big Aidan's tail is; Shinmyoumaru considers the roof her place, because usually nobody else wants it. "The has-been general?" Shinmyoumaru asks, because she joined the group *after* they'd already met Narcian and doesn't actually know him as anything but a name. "But you ran away to look for your brother when someone helped you get free..." That part she understands. Having already decided to fight - and not just her - Shinmyoumaru is less conflicted about - well, conflict. She rises up on her bowl slightly, calling down to Clarine, "Well, if we're your protectors than you have to listen to us. So stay here and we'll make sure they don't - " Arrows start to fall. Shinmyoumaru's response is immediate; she ducks her head slightly, using the lid of her bowl, normally worn as a broad hat, like a round shield. This actually works pretty well! An arrow hits it and shatters, driving her back a good yard, but the second one hits low on the bowl itself... and when *it* splinters, the splintered shaft goes upward, slipping underneath the shield and catching Shinmyoumaru across the upper arm. This hurts. A lot, if Shinmyoumaru is being honest; it's not very deep but it's the first time she's been really shot by something that isn't danmaku. Even if the arrowhead didn't connect. Her eyes water, but she focuses, staring right at the archers. "Be right back," she promises, and then accelerates toward the left side of flanking archers. It turns out Shinmyoumaru has a similar idea to Lilian, if different in the precise details. She goes in low, her needle held more like a sword than a spear, and as she flies down the line she accelerates. She's *fast* - and her needle snakes out toward legs and arms rather than anything more vital. Some of them are going to be poked by the needle. But the primary effect is that she's 'sewing' a 'stitch' of shining blue-white energy, tangling them, tying arms to sides, quivers closed, and boots to the ground itself. It would leave them open for a follow-up strike, but all she does is create a line of chaos and make it increasingly difficult to shoot back as she zips erratically this way and that. Especially at her, given she stays in real close to the archers.
Marigold	"Hm? Oh, he had long brown hair. A Sacaen tabard, but he looked Bernish? And he needed a lot of work, but those cheekbones... that delicate jaw..." Clarine is useless to Grimnir besides that. Only the subject of her brother interrupts her: "Oh, yes! Klein's the greatest archer in Etruria! He might even become a general someday! I heard he got a special assignment, but nobody would tell me where." Because she'd run away. Just like she actually did. "I figured it was in Lycia, but..." She sighs, now less certain.      Trudy has the satisfaction, when she emerges directly behind the heavily-armored Marquess Erik on his castle's drawbridge, of seeing the mustachioed traitor scramble backwards and nearly fall into his own moat. "You--?!" he chokes out in a startled rage.      The satisfaction doesn't last long. A lock of long brown hair flutters in Trudy's peripheral vision in the same millisecond that a cool steel edge presses against her throat; she couldn't even hear them steal up from behind. Erik relaxes: "Oh, Rutger. It took you long enough. Tell that girl's brute to stand down." ". . ."      Hector (grudgingly), Dieck (warily), and Lucius (serenely) all take Lilian's advice and pull back for the moment. The horse archers are remarkably not-at-all-eager to fight to the death; they first try to pull back and get distance from their attackers, and then when they're pummeled further by Dysnomia- and by Lugh surprisingly, hurling a fireball from the treeline to ignite some of the Odette-splashed cavaliers too- they drop their weapons, dismount, and put their hands up in a practiced and only moderately-sheepish show of surrender. They're more than likely mercenaries, clad in strange orange-tan geometrically-bordered liveries as they are.      The armored knights are less martially impressive but more devoted; the ones that manage to stay seated despite Flamel's provocation have to be locked in combat, with Marcus in particular trying to challenge two of them. Chad finally makes an appearance to pounce on a deadlocked knight and slit their horse's neck, before hastily withdrawing to stick by... Kayoko?      "I don't know! Shanna says to Neon in a tizzy while they shelter together. "Aren't you supposed to be my teacher! We should be above arrow-height, but we couldn't take off, so- ughhh, I think we're useless until they get broken up?" But fortunately that doesn't take long. The archers on one hill are suppressed or 'stitched up', those on the other are sundered by Lilian, and the few who still dare to take potshots are distracted by Kayoko's decoys. Seeing those, Shanna gasps in delight and nudges her pegasus to zip off.      Someone should probably tell her not to kill too many Lycians.      With the horse-archers dealt with and the projectiles in the air diminished, the infantrymen finally feel safe sallying forth; Roy, Dieck's rowdies, and Wolt form a tight unit with Lance and Alen to try and repel the first group of flanking cavaliers converging. That still leaves the Elites to repel the other side of the pincer-formation lance charge, or press through to the castle.
Desire Stars	Can you help steady my aim? Wanna get a good shot at their leader but I took a hit to the arm.     "Me? Not Odette? If it wasn't for that comment about Yuri, I'd have an assumption to make," Geats teases. "Maybe I still do." He pushes off from his perch, sliding gracefully down the trunk of the tree, and makes a break for the wagons.     Once, long ago, there lived a frontier surgeon by the name of Chase Wallace. Arrow wounds were more common in those days--and they tended to require special implements. A quick rummage through one of the supply wagons finds none of them--but there *is* a supply of bottled curatives.     "Catch it with your good hand," Geats calls to Tennant, before making an underhand toss and running up the trunk of their perch. Joining them on the same tree, Geats points through the treeline. "Heads up," he lies. "Looks like more of those shadows from Araphen." When Tennant looks, Geats reaches over and twists the arrow gently--that much, he can do, to see if it's penetrated bone or not. If it has, the arrow is unfortunately yanked out backwards. Otherwise, it's pushed through the other end of the wound.     With the deed done, Geats makes a little sign of a fox's head with his hand. "Foxes are known for playing tricks," he says. "Drink that up. It should close the wound. And go see Odette after, to make sure I didn't leave any fragments."     Neon is just as relieved as Shanna is to find that she can take off, but nowhere near as delighted. Squeezing the handle on the propeller, she takes flight alongside her.     "W-wait," she says, swooping down to make a kick aimed at the legs of one of the soldiers. The propeller intercepts Shanna's weapon before it reaches the downed opponent. "There are Lycians here! We need numbers if we're going to stop Zephiel, remember?"     Geats, meanwhile, covers the now-healed Tennant, focusing in on the other side of the charge. Much as he had before, his shots are nonlethal, aiming for weapons and the hands that hold them--or for footing, in the case of particularly stubborn soldiers.
Flamel Parsons	It's open-field warfare, but you know, invisibility doesn't always help that much here! He's gonna get *trampled!* He winds up having to dive and tumble out of the way of the pincer attacks, reaching out with telekinesis to yoink the hooves out from under the horses. How else can he help repel?     Well, fundamentals, how else? He may be a spy primarily, but he can deal with open-field warfare in his own way. He scrambles to his feet with a pk-assisted roll, dispells his invisibility to free up some psychic energy... He's between waves of flanking cavaliers, so he can start to slowly levitate up and into the air. His psychic blast charges, shining dirt and stone lifting with him in a slow swirl. His head emits a high-pitched whine like a flywheel accelerating, rattled like a stone in a rock tumbler, and then unleashes a torrent of psychic energy blasts! He's venting what little aggression he has in pinpoint beams, precision-targeted like some kind of smart-gun, designed to slam into the chest and shock the brain with a will-breaking impact. These days, he doesn't have much aggression, but no amount of that is as valuable as knowing precisely how to use it productively.     "Quick! Lugh!" He calls out, surging back to him. "Your targeting is *great!* I have an idea!" As he surges back towards the boy's position, he gets a solid grip on his mentality... And makes an offer. "Help me out here!" He wants to quickly bring them into someone's mind! *Shanna's?* Even hopping to Neon sometimes? Sticking to the mental outskirts, these two should be able to bounce between the brains and coordinate a powerful set of aerial maneuvers, using Lugh's highly effective ranged targeting to boost their mental awareness of the threats and where they'll be screened by fire. "Keep the fireballs up, and use them to screen the aerial attackers! We need to make sure they don't have to get needlessly lethal with the Lycian forces!"
Odette Raskins	With the cavaliers doused in napalm, Odette puts on a brave face and widens her stance with her arms held out a bit. It's clearly in an attempt to try and look more intimidating by looking larger, but that brief moment of false bravado turns into genuine panic when Lugh's fireball ignites those same knights. "Oh sh...! H-hold on, I got something for this!" That most certainly wasn't supposed to happen, and she knows she has only a little time to act. Shoving both hands into her bag shakily, Odette yanks out a pair of bottles connected by a tube with a pin jammed into it. The flanking cavaliers go completely ignored in that moment, howeverm with her focus already occupied with trying to put out all those burning soldiers at once. Odette only has enough time to remove the pin and chuck the tube'd bottles at the burning knights before suddenly feeling something crashing into her from the side. Whether it's through sheer luck or through the slightest twist at seeing something from the corner of her vision, the EMT just barely avoids getting impaled outright when the lance hits her and cracks... Something? Something bad, most likely, and she lets out a pained horking noise as she's taken right off her feet from the impact. Instead of dropping right off the lance, however, Odette latches onto it instead, mostly out of a cowering instinct rather than actively trying to take the cavalier down. Regardless of intent, she paradoxically clings to the weapon like she's trying not to fall off of it while also kicks at the flanking cavalier and their hand to try and get them to drop her at the same time. Her landing won't be particularly graceful, of course, and she's more than likely just going to land in a crumpled heap within the next few seconds. The bottle she threw at those mercenaries she accidentally helped ignite, meanwhile, erupts in a massive spray of foam (and broken glass, to a lesser extent), quickly suffocating the flames around them and cooling them off a bit in the process.
Aidan Proudpick	Every PART of Aidan is eager to push up to Erik, to rush to him, to start shouting. He has to grit his teeth, bite down, strain with all his might not to immediately throw himself and start shouting something about honor and heart. He's rearguard. And like HELL he's going to let Lilian see him fuck that up. Or Dieck. Or anyone! He's rearguard. He's a defender. A protector. He snaps a new clip into the gun before it goes on his back. He'll be the best damn rearguard. A javelin slides down the bottom of his chest plate, missing his lungs. "Ha-" And it slides through the side of his middle, cutting a line through fur and flesh. Another flesh wound, but one that sears with more pain. "Dammit, how does he get away with this," Aidan mutters again. He stands upward to his full height again, lifting both hands upward. Rocks and bad terrain, huh. Perfect. Let everyone else take care of Erik. He's not going a stupid cheerleader. <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "This... kind of stinks! Augh! Invisibility doesn't help me when they charge like this, I'm gonna get trampled or something!" He can't do three skeins of wind like Kale. But he can do one. His fingers wrap around nothing and pull. A line of white air appears as Aidan pulls it down around him. He shapes it around his other wrist, like a baker pulling dough. It becomes a double line that Aidan grabs between gloved fingers. Aidan pushes both hands out with a loud "HAH!" expelling all of his breath at once. A shockwave of white bursts out from him, and two knee high walls rush out from either side of the army, plowing towards the horses! This probably isn't the most non-lethal attack, given that horses are simply one act away from being brutal killing machines, but it's the best he can do to clear quickly!
Lilian Rook	'And he needed a lot of work, but those cheekbones... that delicate jaw...'     §Beg pardon? She meant the other-- That's not Narcian, so who is she talking about? Why is she talking about him like that, actually?§     Lilian feels goosebumps crawl up the back of her neck.     §No, this woman is actually dangerous. I don't know why, but I trust my instincts.§     'You--?!'     Ah. That probably wasn't a good idea. Commanders don't typically stand out on the battlefield without a retinue. Lilian hacks apart the last bow she can reach into neat quarters, string and all, and casts her attention down from the rise. The three men she'd asked the cooperation of are-- complying marvellously. For an instant, Lilian is caught up in the magic of it. Roy has even gathered his own men and used the opening to plough forward. The feeling that these people may be unconditionally trustworthy makes something hot briefly quiver between her heart and her throat. But Erik--     Trudy--     Whoever that is.     The knights close in from the other flank, but Lilian weighs the disproportionate shift in competing forces, given the immediate surrender of the horse archers backing them up, and decides that a matching number of Elites should hold out for now. Staring them down for only a moment, her eyes glaze right past them, her black-gauntleted fingers idly toss her hair, and she vanishes on the spot again.     'Oh, Rutger. It took you long enough. Tell that girl's brute to stand down.'     A flagstone cracks before Erik. A green-black cloak billows through his vision. A shallow split opens in the stone where Night Mist grazes it, flicked upward to hold parallel with Lilian's sight line. In an eyeblink, she is now stood beside and just ahead of Erik, facing him only with her hairpin and the flat of her sword. Her blade is pointed past his head, at 'Rutger', a trivially short lunge away. Though Trudy is between them, the apparent ease with which she was arrested leads Lilian to gamble on something in particular.     §You're skilled, aren't you? You recognize the position you're in. If you slit her throat, I can skewer you in the same instant. If you defend against me instead, she can slip away. If Erik tries to get involved, I have the stance and quarter to decapitate him with a void step. What do your instincts say? Do you press the offensive on me and leave Trudy to Erik? Do you abandon her and protect your liege instead? Do you let him hurl himself on my sword to create an opening? Show me what sort of swordsman you are.§     "You as well, Marquess Erik. I think you've done quite enough already." says Lilian. The fact she only has eyes for 'his brute' is only easy to misinterpret for those inexperienced in battle. "However rattled by Bern you are, I'd advise you go no further than this. I don't take you as the sort to die for the cause."
Angela	Ceri isn't going to be able to make it to the Castle with her mobility but she rolls on along to try and head off the other pincer formation before it crushes her allies. Hopefully she won't be alone. She'd prefer to get through her recovery plan before taking another beating, focusing on defending with Sanguine Desire in the moment. ''Me? Not Odette?'' "You're the one talking to me." Tennant says. "'Sides, I only need to get one good shot off ideally! I can get a new arm back home." They catch the curative with their uninjured arm and-- PUSH! "ARgghh!!" Tennant says, "Thanks..." Tennant manages, sweating. "For distracting me. ... You're actually a good guy huh?" Their eyes sparkle. "Trickster with a heart of gold..." Oh no. They down the curative and exhales slowly. "Right, I'l check with her. Probably best, I saw in a movie someone got real hurt bad from an arrow hit and they didn't makei t." They take aim, this time at the Marquess Erik. "Alright... Just be careful here..." BABBLE TENNANT: I do not aim with my hand. They who aim with their hand has forgotten the face of their father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand. They who shoot with their hand-- CERI: Tennant I swear if you're quoting a movie to try and be cool right now I'm going to chop you with my axe myself. TENNANT: IKILLWITHMYHEARTANDFIRING! Tennant pulls the trigger. Like before, a series of portals open up between Tennant and the target. Unlike before, the bullet punches through the portal at such a speed it leaves a trail of flames as the bullet pops out a portal near the Marquess and attempts to just plow right into him.
Blemishine	Oh, yes! Klein's the greatest archer in Etruria! He might even become a general someday! I heard he got a special assignment, but nobody would tell me where. I figured it was in Lycia, but...     "A special assignment...? Is that why you came all this way, Lady Clarine? Just to look for him?" The thought seems to simultaneously flabbergast and intrigue Blemishine. Did she have an escort at some point, or did she come all this way on her own? Huh... well, first thing's first...     ...     Out in the meadow, joined by Roy's retinue, there's a definite feeling that they'll be able to repel the horsemen in the field - although that doesn't necessarily make it easy. She considers that it's possible to push on towards Castle Laus now... but that would leave the Lycians to suffer the worst of the two-pronged attack, and she can't have that!     Well, that, and escaping from it isn't exactly that easy either. The blonde knight stands her ground-- if anything, she pushes ahead towards their end of the flanking riders, just to make herself a more tempting target. Her one-handed grip on her sword transitions to a two-handed one, raising it high overhead as the guard glints--     And brings it down in a downward slash through the air, choosing then to unleash the frankly excessive amount of light she was channeling into it and through it. Released straight ahead is an ultimately harmless but nevertheless /incredibly/ blinding, focused burst of radiance, catching every cavalryman in front of her in the equivalent of a few seconds of staring directly at the sun.     Any cavalier coming directly at her is going to be at risk of losing their eyesight for the next minute or three, but even if they have the reflexes to avoid that, their steeds are certainly going to be going through it. It's the most non-lethal option she can think of that also stops ensuing mass trampling! Probably!
Kayoko Kirenai	The archers all surrendering is exactly how Kayoko envisioned it. Overwhelmed by (mostly) nonlethal force, they understood what was best for them and put down their arms! Now all that's left is to do the same with the knights, possibly by just convincing their lord to call them off. Knights don't get scared, you see, unlike mercenaries, so they can't just be threatened.     Chad sheltering by her makes Kayoko feel a small spike of vindication, and a considerably larger spike of the need to appear confident and competent. She grinds her sabatons into the dirt, wheeling around to face the charging cavalry like she has absolutely no intention of retreating from them. "Oh! That's smart, Chad! The horses are their weak points, and we can take them out without actually hurting anybody!"     Kayoko's earlier nerves around horses don't seem to extend to any kind of respect for the animals, apparently. When saying that she hoped for as little bloodshed as possible, she implicitly only considered human blood; the horses are fair game. She swings her sword in a flat arc in front of her, conjuring up a fan of golden light replicas of the blade, which all launch towards the mounts of the knights coming towards her. Each one connects with throats or knees, impacting with hammerblow blunt force rather than slicing, but hard enough to disable if not outright kill them.     The ones that still get close have their weapons caught against her shield, stopping cold as if they swung them into a solid wall rather than merely a girl in armor. Still, being girl-height versus a mounted knight is a terrible place to be, even if the initial charge is shrugged off, and Kayoko addresses the problem by drawing a beam of light up underneath the horse's belly, hitting its gut hard enough to briefly lift it up off the ground, and dismounting the knight on its back.     Sword drawn and pointed down at the fallen knight, Chevalier Cobalt grinds a heel into his wrist to force him to let go of his weapon. "Surrender. Now." That looked cool, right? She definitely looked reliable right there.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	"Good, stay there!" Shinmyoumaru calls back at Clarine, and the others under cover. She can keep them safe if they stay out of trouble! Probably. Hopefully? Shinmyoumaru makes a face at some of the archers as she zips past, pulling up with the end of the line still attached to her needle - and *yanks*, just to make sure they stay off balance when she flies past. As long as they can't or won't fight (surrendering is fine) she has done what she set out to do! The thread snaps at the needle with a flash of sparkles, but that's fine; the part they're tangled with remains intact. Shinmyoumaru calls, "Hey, Kamen Rider!" as she spots Neon escorting Shanna. She waves with her non-needle-holding hand, more in greeting than any desire to get her attention, because she didn't get a chance earlier. She spots Lugh lobbing fireballs, too, and approves - she didn't know he was good at fire. She has more urgent things to do right now. Such as, cavalry. She's not alone, at least. Shinmyoumaru has never fought cavalry in her life. They're big, and they're going to run her over and use their weight - but to Shinmyoumaru, everyone is big, everyone is using their weight, and it's just a matter of scale. Scale... Shinmyoumaru pulls out her Miracle Mallet and smacks herself on the side of the head with it, hard enough to feel it but not hard enough to hurt. She ends up making a face best described as >.< anyway. "Be a giant!" Shinmyoumaru - and her bowl - grow and grow, coming close to tripling her height - nearly ten feet tall, with a bowl and spear to scale. The horses can't trample her now, and the bowl functions as a barrier for lances; it's been enchanted, reinforced, and so though they can chip at it it takes some time to actually break through. Shinmyoumaru simply tries to plow right through the crowd of cavalry. She spins her entire bowl as she does, 'spraying' almost liquid blue energy upwards as if it was spinning in a river; it's more bowling over than anything else, but Shinmyoumaru doesn't really realize how dangerous being knocked over is to a horse, because her experience with them is so limited. At least the riders are likely to be relatively okay...? She's accelerating, rapidly, toward the castle as she blasts through the cavalry line. Unfortunately for her, she can't hold herself at this size for long, and she starts to bleed it off pretty quickly, descending right back down to four feet... and further, as her more natural size of only a few centimeters reasserts itself. She fixes *that* with another Mallet-bat, but she can't get bigger than four feet this time.
Dysnomia	As the archers cleared, Dysnomia's eyes scanned over the battlefield, snagging on Marcus. Muttering something incoherent, she rushed forward out of the treeline, taking advantage of the break in ranged fire to swoop over the battlefield in a mad rush, plasma arcing in her hands in the shape of a blade as long as Dysnomia was tall, grimacing as she was struck on the way--But I can take it.     But, made of plasma or not, that blade was just too long to use effectively on people. It was too large, too clunky. It was, however, ideal for horses.     Coming in from the side, Dysnomia flew by, blade outstretched, cleaving right through one of the knights' horses squared up against Marcus. "Two on one?" She groused to Marcus, scowling. "What happened to 'no unnecessary risks?' You're not dying on us, old man." The way she hissed it, it almost sounded like a threat, as she squared up by Marcus' side.     When knights tried to cut him off from a flank, Dysnomia was there, blade in hand, to tear through their mounts and send them sprawling to the ground under their own screaming horses. Thoughtlessly, she found herself leaving Marcus to cover her blind spots, advancing toward the castle as they covered each other's backs.
Trudy Grimm	"Sacaen tabard with a Bernish look to him, hmm?" Grimnir strokes his beard, then reaches inside his traveler's clothes. Producing a match, he busies himself lighting his pipe's contents, "Probably a mercenary, then..." --     Erik starts, twirls, fumbles at the surprise of suddenly having a witch in his vicinity. The neutral look on Trudy's face splits into a sharp-toothed smile, her eyes faintly glowing in the shadow cast by the castle gates. It's a short-lived one, once she finds a knife to her neck.     In the same instant that her smile disappears, Lilian Rook fills her vision in that flash of merciless majesty and grace. The witch sucks in a breath when she finds Night Mist aimed (not quite) at her. The arrival is so sudden, so shocking, and so utterly precisely planned that it's undeniable who has achieved it.     The Black Knight only stands down in the context of stepping aside-- to not block Lilian's ability to directly threaten Rutger. The faint grinding of his helmet rotating on the armor guarding his collarbone accompanies the shift in his own gaze towards the man behind the witch. The greatsword hauls itself off his shoulder, twisting around until he can rest the tip against the Marquess' armor right where the helmet meets the pauldron. In a single smooth motion he could skewer the man in a way that'd make Vlad Dracul proud.     "--Ah--ahaha... What a surprise..! My apologies for causing you trouble, Dame Commander," She won't use names in the presence of the enemy. A lesson learned from before, "Your arrival is, as ever, perfectly timed."     "Now then... Ah..." Keeping herself steady while trying to lean away from the blade at her neck, Trudy fixes her eyes on Erik, "...Shall we have a civilized conversation?"
Marigold	"O-okay! Right! Of course I knew that!" Shanna babbles to Neon, sheepishly apologetic. Her lance withdraws from menacing the downed knight's face, and she waves to them and beams: "I'm sorry for almost killing you, Mr. Knight! Um, I hope you'll still defend your country from Bern! Ahaha." She steals a look at Neon, like she's searching for approval of her mercy being 'good enough', and then winks childishly before swooping back up into the sky for more prey. That girl...      Fortunately, she's getting an assist from Lugh and Flamel. "Um, of course, Mr. Parsons!" Lugh says, stowing his red spellbook under one arm. He's still an amateur at all this mind-dive stuff, but everyone knows you've got to train your rookie units in the earlygame!      This is a kind of warfare Lycia hasn't properly seen before: psychically coordinated, supported with foreign disabling magics, disjointed by teleportation, driven by wildly above-curve superhuman ability. Pherae adapts. Laus doesn't. The cavalry starts to break, both physically and in discipline.      "Yeah? First time," Chad admits to Kayoko freely, adjusting his grip on the horse-blood-smeared knife. "Glad it worked." For such a grouchy and withdrawn kid, he's surprisingly cunning at working with 'a more magical heavy-hitting younger-sibling figure'; he stays ahead of her but out of her lines of fire, matador-ing the knights with a worrying lack of self-preservation. When she unhorses one, he joins in the demand for surrender, putting his knife to their neck: "Do it. Or I'll cut your throat." The knight hastily nods and drops his spear, looking absolutely aghast. Chad smiles sideways at her.      "Tch. You saved me, didn't you?" Marcus says to Mia, when she pitches in with his two-on-one. "Relying on allies isn't weakness, young lady. Or we'd settle everything with a duel." There's no further guff from him when he naturally adopts the rule of covering her back, though- even though he definitely consciously notices, and lets her cover his.      With Laus's forces now in general disarray, that opens the path to the castle across the meadow. But unfortunately . . .
Marigold	"Another one?!" Erik barks, beset by teleporting women. But even with her back turned to him, Lilian's presence makes him aware he shouldn't take a swing. Instead he holds his spear defensively and starts edging towards the castle. "Rutger, what are you waiting for?! Kill them!"      'Rutger' stares into Lilian's eyes, taking her measure. Their voice is rough-but-soft, underused. ". . . You wouldn't. Those aren't the eyes of a--" They're still staring when they see Tennant's muzzle-flash reflected in her pupils.      TING, and the flaming bullet deflects off Rutger's sword inches from Erik's head, leaving their sleeve scorched. Seemingly all at once, in the same motion, they kick the Black Knight's sword-hand away from Erik's throat, follow-through on the deflecting swipe to cut across Trudy's chest, and impale their own forearm on Lilian's blade between ulna and radius to keep her from attacking Erik. In the next saccade of the eye they're forcing Lilian to disengage by swinging their sword at her arms while it's still buried in theirs.      The seconds after that are like a blizzard, like a dream. They must be doing ordinary swordsmanship, but their body is faster than the mind; it only registers as elegant flickers of red cloth and whickering arcs of sunlight-glinting death that threaten to intersect the body, less like the movements of a human being and more like a local phenomenon. The word 'afterimages' finally makes sense; glimpses of them crouching low, backflipping, twisting with a follow-through, are just disjointed vignettes unmoored from time or space.      Erik, of course, takes the chance to flee into the courtyard of his castle beyond.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's levitating approach pushes forward at tremendous speed after the rest has been dealt with, but he's stopped the same way the others are. He's *soooo* confident when he approaches the Rutger encounter, flicking into invisibility and then surging towards Erik to try to start scouting his mind. Then, when the duelist comes at him, he shifts to try to engage them with simple telekinesis.     Bad call.     A deep gash slams through his arm as he tries a simple telekinetis gesture on something that turns out to be nothing, a phantasmal image of where they were milliseconds ago, with Rutger's movements being so fast that he didn't realize he was at risk despite the invisibility. It knocks him back into visual range, and he yelps with pain. He tries to get ahold of the duelist's mind through telepathic reading, instinctively reverting to a psychic approach for what he can't predict visually. It's not much better; Rutger, whoever this is, isn't executing predictable katas, they're literally devising battle strategies faster than Flamel can read them. "Ack-- ghhh-- hey! I'm trying to pull the Lycians together here! Why's someone like *this* backing someone like...?!"     He stumbles, caught completely off-guard by another deep gash on his shoulder. Both are spilling bright white light. His eyes flash back and forth behind his sunglasses, unable to keep up. By the time psychic senses tell him where Rutger is, they're already somewhere else. Faster than thought. Well, fine. If a multiple-angle combat strategy is what they're dealing with, it's what Flamel Parsons has to respect.     Straining his telekinesis to its limit, he summons a dozen floating telekinetic hands into being around him, and encases himself in a dense, powerful sphere of protective energy. "Nnnnh! We're *not* the ones you should be fighting! Bern are the ones tearing this whole continent apart! Why would you put all this skill to work on making it harder for innocent people to get by?!" He begins huge swipes, grabs, chops, palm-strikes, and slams at many angles at once, a desperate best-he-can-do effort to keep up with the storm of strikes. Denied his telepathic measures, he has to resort to modestly helpless shouting and psychokinetic flailing.
Trudy Grimm	With a clang of steel, the Black Knight's aim is thrown off just enough that, when he thrusts downward, his sword skips off Erik's armor and drives point-first into the stonework instead of his enticingly stabbable organs. Immediately, the Knight wrenches his weapon free, whirls, and gives chase to the fleeing noble. His great height gives him a long stride-- almost matching a run while only walking with purpose.     As he enters the courtyard itself, the Black Knight lowers his sword until the tip touches the cobblestone pavers, dragging alongside him with a distinctive, bone-grating sound that follows in time to the faint rattle of his armor with each heavy step. --     Trudy, meanwhile, falls back from the slash in a spray of crimson and a shout. The rune hovering ominously above her hand dissipates finally and the Grimoire slips from her hand as she drops. When it comes to rest a few paces away, it's closed itself already. The witch grimaces, examining the blood now on her hands. The wound wound up being shallower than it could have been. Enough to be thankful for. Green eyes lift to the fight unfolding between two practiced swordfighters.     Fast. I have to slow them down-- Her eyes shoot to the Grimoire, then back to the clash, No time for curses. Might catch Lilian in it anyway. So...     She fixates on the one thing that is, without a doubt, just as fast as Rutger: Rutger's shadow. It deepens subtly at first, soon assuming a pitch that Lilian should recognize. Trudy has, after all, done this sort of trick plenty of times around the Dame Commander.     When she spots an opportunity, a skeletal hand shoots out of the void-pitch shadow Rutger casts, snatching at their ankle. It's soon followed by another, clawing at the other leg. They can be easily severed by breaking or cutting the armbones-- but the severed hands just start crawling up the warrior's legs like spiders while more arms grab at anything within reach of their shadow; arms or legs, clothing, the sword itself, whatever they can get to. Serving as a hinderance if ignored and a distraction if dealt with, the exact sort of edge someone as talented as Lilian Rook can capitalize on.
Desire Stars	You're actually a good guy huh? Trickster with a heart of gold...     Someone like Buffa would say 'I only did it to stop you complaining.' It's transparently compassionate, by virtue of clumsy, amateur obfuscation. Instead, Geats says "It's points towards another Buckle," which is a much more convincing lie, owing to its verifiable factual truth. The Spider Phone on his person jingles with an audible SECRET MISSION CLEAR.     "<Thankyou,>" he says in cloyingly smug English.     His isn't the only one to go off, though!     Shinmyoumaru's Spider Phone also vibrates with the same notification, once she's her 'normal' size again. The Secret Mission she's given credit for clearing is 'break a cavalry charge.' There's an Armed Buckle on her person, not unlike Neon's--though hers is more self-evidently a weapon of some sort. It's orange and looks like a spiked ball.     Na-Go gives Shanna a thumbs-up with her free hand and a fervent bob of her helmet. She's never really been in the business of okaying displays of mercy, and secretly hopes that this is sufficient approval to encourage further displays. "O-oh," she says, as Shanna takes off again. The rider lightly taps the downed soldier with her weapon. "Please wait here for Lord Roy! T-thanks!" Lifting the helicopter, she follows in Shanna's wake, not just to keep an eye on her, but to pick up some best practices for flying by watching how Shanna handles her pegasus.     Geats, on the other hand, utters a low whistle at Rutger's swordplay. "No," he asides to Tennant, following the Agent's remark over the radio. "They're still there. I've never seen bladework that fast. Don't fire on them--you might hit Lilian or Trudy."     "The chains on the drawbridge, though... I don't want them raising it. Can you hit those?" He's certain they can--just communicating his plan. Meanwhile, he shoulders the Magnum Shooter and peers into the scope, crosshairs finding the presently wound-up chains to the castle's portcullis. A triggerpull, a quick sweep rightward, and a second one, sends the metal latticework crashing down, preventing Erik's flight.
Angela	"Did I get 'em?" Tennant says, squinting. "I don't see 'em anymore." They pale. "Wait did I kill TRudy did I?" They send a call out but don't get an immediate answer. "Ace... I... I think I killed Trudy." Despite being pretty casual about putting Trudy in danger they actually are pretty worried about it. ''It's points towards another Buckle.'' Tennant blinks, confused--does the game count in THIS world too? Then the Spider Phone indicates a SECRET MISSION got cleared. "Hot damn... A trickster with a heart of gold...with spice!" They hop up to their feet. "Too bad Yuri's not here. Though that buckl saved her life from Punishing Bird from what I've heard..." ''No. The're still there. I've never seen bladework that fast. Don't fire on them--you might hit Lilian or Trudy.'' "I probably would," Tennant says, relieved that Trudy isn't dead after all. "Well, sure. I think I can manage that! If we can't pop his head off, at least we can stop him from escaping." They take their aim as well--aiming towards the other portuculis chain, firing off another blast at Ace's behest. It's only fair. They're teammates now. Sorry Yuri! Ace is famous!
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Ramming through the soldiers, Shinmyoumaru readjusts herself to her usual-for-here four feet tall when her phone rings. "Aah I can't take a call!" she yells into the void, before realizing that it's the Spider Phone and there's only one kind of message that makes *that* noise. She surreptiously checks it mid-flight, beaming at nothing before putting it away again... along with the Armed Buckle. She wants to hold it up and look at it, and be proud of her accomplishment; right now it's just shoved in her robe so she can't lose it before she does. When she finally gets to the castle, she is presented with a tableau she finds confusing. Rutger has a sword literally through their arm, but it doesn't actually appear to be slowing them down at all. They're trying to push Lilian back - Shinmyoumaru starts to dive in, has a momentary flash of intuition, and ducks her head down behind her hat-like lid, bracing it with her free hand. That turns out to save her from the first strike from Rutger. Shinmyoumaru straightens up afterwards so she can strike back, but she can't find any *time* to. It is a testament to the skills she's practiced that she manages to keep him off her, deflecting several strikes with her 'shield' or her needle. Every time a blade hits that needle, it bends - but it never breaks. But she can't quite get through, and eventually Rutger does strike her, or at least her bowl; a bone-rattling blow to its side, and that only because she tilted the bowl up in that direction. It knocks Shinmyoumaru out of the bowl entirely, sending her smashing into a rock before tumbling across rocky ground. Outside of it, she really does look small. Shinmyoumaru still gets up, a little wobbly but still upright. "So fast...!" She can't go that fast. But there's something else she can do. First, she can speak, because something has just occured to her: "Hey! Did you let Lady Clarine out...?" She asks right in front of Erik!! But she remembers what Clarine told her on her way out. Shinmyoumaru concentrates, taking just a moment before she's attacked again, and then pulses out a rainbow wave of slow-moving kunai-shaped danmaku. Then another - and she's suddenly flanked by a pair of additional Shinmyoumarus, about eight feet out in either direction. These two are faintly translucent and weirdly colour-shifted toward yellow (on her left) and green (on her right), like they were being seen through coloured glass. They too begin to pulse slow-moving danmaku, though those are two-foot spheres of energy bereft of fancy shape. She stops her own attack afterwards, though the two flanking continue their slow pulses, floating in midair and swinging their feet like they were totally casual about this. Shinmyoumaru isn't likely to actually hit Rutger with slow shots... or anyone, really. They're just too fast for danmaku this speed. But they chew up a *lot* of space, and make it harder to find places to stand and moments to be. And into this she pulls back her needle, holding it back, back - "Now!" And she thrusts, a shining spear of light building on it to extend its reach a good ten feet and make up for Shinmyoumaru's diminuitive size - a child's reach just won't do here.
Odette Raskins	Luckily for Odette, staying low to the ground (which was totally a tactical decision and not because she's still in excruciating pain) gives her ample time to survey the battlefield and see just how well the combined forces of Pherae and outsiders works in comparison to the more rigid tactics of Laus. As she dresses her own wounds with only a modest amount of screaming, she watches that little talk between Mia and Marcus, unable to help herself from cracking a little smile at the sight. Too bad she can't actually hear them over there. Nevertheless, she does hear Erik shouting at Rutger, and she goes wide-eyed once again at their display of self-sacrificing swordplay just to keep Lilian's weapon bound long enough and Trudy's knight back long enough for the Marquess to make his escape. She starts to get up to give chase, but quickly reconsiders when she sees Rutger's dizzying display of swordsmanship. Even though she can see everything they're doing from a distance, she can't actually make sense of any of it. Worse still, seeing all those afterimages slicing every which way has her starting to freak out again, and she dives for cover out of pure instinct while hiding beneath one of the fallen horses courtesy of Blemishine's flashing shield and Cobalt's and Chad's cavalry-dismounting stratgem. It doesn't even occur to her that Rutger might be a little too far away for her to even be in their slashing range, but she's certainly not about to test that theory while they're still moving too fast for her to follow. Instead, Odette peeks out from behind the horse to make sure the coast is clear, and then she books it in Erik's direction. With Geats And Tennant aiming at the portcullis' chains to cut off his escape from one side, Odette focuses her efforts on the Marquess himself. Out comes another glass bottle, and she lobs it high overhead, well past Erik to hit the ground directly in front of him and break on impact. There's nothing actually inside the bottle, but the implied threat of her potentially throwing something worse straight at him is what she's actually going for. "M-Marquess Erik! Please, call off your troops, and listen to us instead of continuing all this... Uh. This! There's been a..." Odette holds a hand up, panting heavily and hunching over with a hand on her knee and the other braced against her gut like she's still in pain. She holds up a hand to signal a wait, then finally stands back up several seconds later. "... A-a big mistake! Nobody else has to get hurt or die today, okay? Just... Settle down, so we can get this figured out."
Blemishine	With the cavalrymen scattered, Blemishine allows herself a relieved sigh, glancing afield to check on everyone. Roy's ensemble, Shanna and Neon in the sky, the rest of the Elites... she spares a smile only to herself, at the sight of Marcus and Dysnomia fighting the way they are. The scan of the battlefield has a lot more dead steeds than she'd have really liked, but... well, if it had to be them or their knights. She hopes that it won't be too bad to replace them when slash if they get Laus' forces on their side.     To get that far, though, they'll need to take care of Marquess Erik. With how clear the meadow is, she can finally cast her focus back towards the castle... and see that quite a bit is going on there. Oh dear. Now that she can get a somewhat better look at who they're all in a standoff with...     ...but to get an actual look, and to also help capture Erik, that means getting closer. That means getting in range of that masterful swordplay. Even on the approach, she's trying to follow it. It's not supernatural, at least the way any of them would call it such. In fact, as far as she's seen thus far, the bladework in Elibe is very grounded.     But this is something else. Even her eyes, exceptional as hey are. are having trouble with it. Is this a result of training...? A particular style? Both? No, it has to be both! It's not just that there's no armor slowing them down, everything about those movements make it almost impossible to keep track, let alone land a clean hit!     The moment she's within distance, Blemishine is instantly on the defensive - shield up a split-second too slow to avoid a gash ripping through armor and tearing into her upper arm, then a shift of her body not coming fast enough to avoid her side having one-- no, two rends cut into it. She has to focus fully on protecting herself to ensure she doesn't slip up and take a really dangerous blow. But...     So she doesn't go for the fool's errand of following the sword. Instead, her attention goes to those fleeting, barely-there afterimages, to glean something else. He had long brown hair. A Sacaen tabard, but he looked Bernish? And he needed a lot of work, but those cheekbones... that delicate jaw... ...Then if I had to guess...!     The next ghost of a ghost of a slice is undodgable. She doesn't try. Blemishine pushes /into it/, bracing a shoulder so that the steel bites even deeper as it draws blood. More than it should have been expected to. Enough to just maybe slow the owner down, even for a moment. Did she draw a page out of their book, with the arm? Wincing through the pain of doing so with a strained, small smile, the knight's voice murmurs out in the moment of contact.     "If you're the one-- who helped Lady Clarine escape... eheh, then I don't think we're actually on opposing sides...!"     And well, if this also slows Rutger down enough for any decisive hits, more the better?
Kayoko Kirenai	It's easy to see how much Kayoko lights up-- emotionally, not literally, despite the latter being much more common for her than the former-- when praised and given backup by Chad. She's not even inclined to be horrified at his threat to kill the knight, not with how effective it is at coaxing the surrender out of him, and a smile spreads across her face in return at him, without her typical habit of smoothing out any emoting she does.     Kayoko takes a step back from the disarmed knight, not thinking to actually kick his weapon out of reach or anything like that, and lowers her sword. Surveying the rapidly clearing battlefield with a hand on her hip, Kayoko makes a triumphant hmph at Chad. "That's right. We get it done, don't we?"     The expression falls away from her face in the next moment, in the short calm between cleaning up the knights and engaging Rutger. When Kayoko comes to a stop and grips her biceps, it's as though 'Chevalier Cobalt' loses four inches of height all at once. "Um, also. I probably ought to let you know. Meika isn't going to be coming back, anymore. She's okay. She's just not coming back here, because she can't. So... well... you can count on Chevalier Cobalt for the both of us. I won't be leaving."     Abruptly, like being struck by lightning, Kayoko realizes that might not be true. It's less than a year until her eighteenth birthday, and wars last longer than a year all the time, don't they? Something impossibly far suddenly seems terrifyingly close, and Kayoko's breath catches. She flickers and her posture is normal again, and her expression is defiantly confident. "Rutger, what are you waiting for?! Kill them!"     At first, Kayoko has no doubt that a singleswordsman can be fended off by this many Elites, and the Dame Commander no less. She's not nearly savvy enough to keep her attention on Erik when Rutger impales themselves on Lilian's sword, though, and she immediately rushes in once they display the capacity to potentially do more than 'fend off'.     "*Stop*!! Aren't you the one who helped Lady Clarine escape?! What are you doing *fighting* for *him*!"     She's not skilled, attentive, or fast enough to do much more than get near enough to the action to make herself a valid target, and then attempt to block Rutger's attack with her own sword. If she manages to, then her response isn't to try to catch them with a return strike at the speed he's moving; instead, her sword glows with a pulse of radiant light, motes flowing off of it at the point of contact with Rutger's sword, pouring onto them and clinging no matter how fast he moves, to help others keep an eye on their position more easily.
Lilian Rook	'Rutger, what are you waiting for?! Kill them!'     "I warned you, Erik." Lilian says. Steely, yet with little enough detachment to be able to be disappointed. "You've badly misread your situation. What use would you even be to Bern."     '. . . You wouldn't. Those aren't the eyes of a--'     Lilian stares back. The exchange of glares doesn't faze her any more than it does Rutger, but her face twitches faintly at the sound of direly disused vocal cords. Her teeth clench. "Don't mistake me for a good person." she whispers back.     There are multiple means by which Lilian stays ahead of pace in combat, but this close, focused on just one person, she is overwhelmingly tuned into intent expressed in surface thoughts, center of gravity, microscopic motion, and the skein of psychic emotion. Tennant fires from outside her line of sight, outside her range, and without Rutger knowing until the last instant, leaving Lilian reacting with only single digit miliseconds of advance.     Rutger's blade flickers out to catch the bullet, and Lilian subtly shifts her grip from thrusting to cutting.     Rutger's boot snaps out to deflect the Black Knight's arm, and Lilian pivots pommel and hilt, forearm over wrist, to cut down into their extended leg.     Rutger's arm swings out to catch Night Mist's point through the back, and Lilian hesitates at the surprise feedback of deflecting from bone.     Rutger slashes across Trudy's chest, and Lilian tightens control of her sword again, starting to twist their arm with the leverage rather than try to remove it.     Rutger's sword flickers back to Lilian, a hair too slow to turn them from Trudy, and for the first time in a long while, purpose outweighs very old panic.     Lilian releases Night Mist, and Rutger cuts the edge of her cloak.     Lilian rocks back from the sudden release, on the verge falling, then brings her open hands close in, plants her rear heel, and sharply twists into the motion, sending a pivot kick arcing up at Rutger's head so fast that the air pops.     Lilian presumes Rutger's inevitable defense; sensibly with the unencumbered arm; and her hand rockets out to grasp Night Mist by the hilt.     Lilian pushes back off Rutger's block with her leg, and pulls her weapon with the combined torque of both motions.     The air between them explodes in multiple places, with a sound and flash like gunfire. Lilian's cloak blows back away from her armour, and her sword smokes in the dozen places she'd just made contact. Lilian breathes sharply as Rutger backs up, fogging the flat of her blade pressed nearly to her chest.     Fully equipped, she's heavier than Rutger is, and so she doesn't shift far, but she's forced into the defensive by the sheer disparity in speed. Lilian fends them off by using the greater length of her weapon to extend the area she can parry, but that leaves her unable to bind or press. She has no opening to counter before Rutger begins attacking the entire Elite brigade at once. On the periphery of her racing thoughts, a recent memory comes and goes from Lilian's mind.
Dysnomia	As the army scatters, and the way is clear, Dysnomia approaches the castle with the rest, flowering over to see the confrontation with Erik...     ...But Erik quickly fell from her mind, as she witnesses a clash of peerless blades.     Violence was a churning engine. Relentless, endless, power grinding lives into past. Artless power, pummeling souls into submission. It didn't equip her for what she was seeing here, an elegant shimmer of blades and light, flickering afterimages, perfect little twists, gestures, glints of gold in the light.     Rutger and Lilian clashed, and it was like see competing masters in their craft, edges and talents refined to something lethal and beautiful. Her breath caught in her throat, as their swordplay flowed in one continous, beautiful movement, back and forth, leaving Mia too caught up in the beauty of it all to do more than stare.
Lilian Rook	<B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "I usually encounter the Elites here on large jobs with several moving parts, roughly pointed at the same enemy, throwing out every power and bit of equipment they feel like and crushing the problem under sheer weight of parallel force." <B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "So I wonder if . . . anyone ever meets . . . has met, an opponent that made them 'want to win'."     "You didn't have to sacrifice your body. You're too good of a swordsman to need to." Lilian says, flicking fresh blood onto the flagstones. "Take better care of it." Grasping by the brooch, Lilians casts off her cloak with one arm, fully baring her armour as a tactical fact; despite how unusual it is, she intuits it should at least force Rutger to alter their approach. She holds her sword high enough to invite attack, while clearly threatening a dangerous reprisal. Her eyes flick back and forth enough between their afterimages fast enough for minute light smears.     But what she actually responds to is the instant she senses Rutger's pre-intent to attack, and her swiftest downward swing is only just fast enough to cross blades; well short of striking flesh, but finally able to apply her full strength behind a heavy blow from a much larger sword. Night Mist rebounds off the stone and leaves behind an explosion of gravel and dust. Lilian advances into the same clash in the same instant with a rising cut at Rutger's wrists, and then lunges after them in the brief instant she has the momentum.     Her pursuit is nothing so elegant as a blizzard, and nothing so ethereal as a dream; but for every three of Rutger that seem to exist at once, there are two of Lilian. She flickers from place to place amidst the sound of thunder and the explosive crack of superhuman steel on steel, as if she were black lightning arcing within the clouds of phantoms that are Rutger. Fiery sparks and earthen shrapnel swirl in her place as she leaves. Ribbons of red light trace around the the lingering gleam of sunlight off steel, marking the path of both blades a fraction of a second behind reality. The ground spontaneously glows, smokes, and fades, here and there, as Lilian pushes herself further.     The skeletal hands are worth taking a shot on; if it works, then it's simply Rutger being unable to handle so many enemies at once, but too fast to see is the fact that she never seems to attack Rutger at the same time they strike someone else; even when their flank is open in the moment.     Where her sword can actually make contact, though, the laceration carries the same molten glow as back at Castle Araphen; bloody and searing painful, yet unable to actually sever limb from limb. Where it can't, Lilian takes the barest opening to snag hold of an arm, clothing, anything she can, and threaten to take Rutger to ground, braced for a the high velocity impact and roll in exchange for taking the fight to somewhere more natural to her style of swordsmanship than theirs.
Marigold	Meika isn't coming back anymore.      The collar of Chad's oversized cloak 'smooths out' his expression too, hiding his mouth. "Huh. That's news to me," he lies, and stomps on the knight's spear to crush its haft, for reasons that definitely aren't broody frustration. "... I was a good team with her. Felt nice, having her look out for me," he lies again. "Think we can be a team too?"      Marquess Erik is mere feet from his castle's inner keep when the grate slams down in front of him and the bottle smashes nearby. The noise he makes of consternated fright is something else. Pivoting, he raises his spear against the ominously encroaching Black Knight and swallows when he sees the drawbridge chains shot out. "You, you fool! Bern's power is absolute- whatever you want, you'll get it better from us! Money? Power? ... Rutger, where are you?? RUTGER?!"      Annoyingly, he's a competent spearfighter and well-equipped. With his back against the wall Erik might put up a halfway decent fight.
Marigold	When Shinmyoumaru's projectiles and Trudy's hands crowd in, and Lilian finally presses Rutger a little too hard with that shining needle about to pierce their shoulder., one cut out of the ongoing blizzard of a hundred slices the wooden drawbridge in half. Its collapse threatens to send everyone spilling into the water.      Rutger themselves lands on the courtyard side of the moat, seems to flick out of vision one more time, and- with the air's disturbances rippling the water's surface as the only warning- flicks next to everyone in sequence. No, more properly, it feels like 'simultaneously' that a clean glittering brushstroke tries to plunge down Lilian's gorget, draw across Odette's belly, slip under the lower edge of Blemishine's breastplate, stab from the retinal blindzone of Flamel's eye, and finish what it started at Trudy's throat.      Finally Rutger snaps back to a blade-lowered ready stance at the water's edge and exhale, as if that were all one smooth rehearsed kata, and only then does the part of their brain that can process sounds into words seem to groggily switch back on through the haze of pain-numbing adrenaline.      Straw-rough hair, baggy tabard, underslept face: now that you see them at rest, they look both more and less frightening. The fire in their eyes wears their body poorly.      "You didn't have to sacrifice your body."      ". . . Don't presume," they say first.      "Aren't you the one who helped Lady Clarine escape?!"      "Bern are the ones tearing this whole continent apart!"      "I don't think we're actually on opposing sides...!"      Those pleas, somehow, didn't register as urgently to their subconscious mind. But when they hit, Rutger warily shifts. "I wasn't just going to leave her to that monster," they say, both self-conscious and defensively assertive that they'd feel for Clarine. "... Are you claiming to be enemies of Bern?"      Rutger looks Bernish, or so Clarine had said. But that gives them pause rather than egging them on.      "I-it's true!" says a familiar and out-of-breath voice. Clarine bends over, hands on her knees, at the edge of earshot. "I've spoken with this Roy fellow, and-" "I told you to run." "Yes, and you left me unprotected! What kind of a gentlema--" "Shut up."      Roy himself, now that the cavaliers have been dealt with, isn't far behind. "It's true. We don't intend to just surrender to them. Am I to take it that you have some kind of grudge against Bern? Whatever your employer told you, I'm sure you can see now that it was a lie."      ". . ." "Rutger! Don't listen to them! They're--" comes a strained voice from further in the courtyard.      Rutger flicks away, and a wet splash follows, and it takes them a minute to emerge again, tabard stained a slightly different hue.      "So I do get him as my bodyguard after all..." Clarine sighs dreamily. Roy examines her as if she were perhaps an exotic kind of toad, but he's mostly preoccupied with shaky relief.
Trudy Grimm	The Black Knight does not stop pursuing Erik, even when the lord is cornered and whirls on him with fairly competent spear-handling. His defense is haphazard, but not out of lack of training. Rather, the way he slaps the spearhead away from himself feels more like annoyance. Like he doesn't seem to think the Marquess is worth defending against in the first place.     Finally, the Black Knight seems to get sick of this and presses forward right into one of Erik's attacks. The spear punches into his breastplate with a rewarding noise. Such was the Knight's lunge that it even erupts from his back in a spray of bone, but a distinct lack of blood or viscera. He jolts to a stop, just long enough to suggest he's been defeated. And then he lurches forward again. The spear's haft screeches against his armor as he presses himself down along its length, leaning horridly close to the Marquess' face.     The Black Knight lingers like that, relishing in the man's clear terror. And then-- through no action of the Knight's own, the noble erupts in a fountain of blood and collapses. The Knight pauses, staring at this. In what could only be frustration, he gives the carcass a swift kick before he turns away from it, stalking back towards his mistress with Erik's spear still run completely through his chest. --     Doing her best to slow Rutger down, Trudy is still able to scramble back along the floor and reclaim the Grimoire, then keeps going, drawing herself away from the drawbridge when the chain is broken. Clutching the tome to her chest, her eyes flit after the swordfighter to keep up the pressure of horrid clinging hands.     She has only a split second of warning to guard her throat. It comes in the form of balling up, protecting her torso and neck with the book in her arms. The thrust doesn't pierce its ensorcelled pages; but the force is enough to send the witch sprawling regardless. Bouncing once, she lets out a shout and slides to a stop on her side at the end of a bloody trail from her chest wound. But at least her head is still attached.     "Ugh..." Trudy is still breathing! "How many ribs did I break this time..." Oh. Breathing hurts.
Lilian Rook	Rutger's sword getting that close to Lilian's throat is the most genuinely alarmed she's felt in combat in longer than she can remember at present. A shot of panic injects itself into causality as flux, softly molten in that moment. The ice cold adrenaline circulated by the hammering of her heartbeat pulls her away from an instantaneous retreat and drags her fully into the orbit of singleminded focus.     Lilian braces her toe to the ground and throws her head forward. The bifurcated circlet around her head reaches steel just before her skin, clanging loudly on metallic black antler. The risky and slightly desperate headbutt, drives the lethal stroke away, and leves Lilian just enough space to throw a pommel blow at Rutger behind it, settling for a heavy blunt strike where maneuvering the blade would be too slow. By the time they separate, Lilian is breathing harder than they are, but has the spirit in her to flick sweat and a droplet of blood from her brow with her fingers. By contrast, as her gaze reassesses Rutger . . .     '. . . Don't presume'     "You'll regret it later." Lilian says. Her voice uses the entire range between a dismissal, a question, a reaffirmation, rejection, worry, and a meaningful glance. "Thank you for thinking of Lady Clarine. I hope you don't find it insulting if I say that I feel the same way about you; that I'd rather not leave you to this and them."     Lilian stiffens minutely as Clarine comes running. Never one to appreciate vulnerable people throwing themselves into danger to blurt out just the right words of sincerity at just the right time, her stance shifts slightly to account for the need to protect her. Some of her usual tension; her immersive affect of wary distance and reservation; begins to bleed back into her, but not fast enough to outpace her rapidly mounting impatience with--     'Yes, and you left me unprotected! What kind of a gentlema--'     "Stop talking." Lilian gasps, goosebumps freshly returned. A heartbeat passes, and her eyes suddenly widen in delay. Her gaze just now just barely averts Rutger's, visibly teetering on the edge of some dread comprehension. Her fingers squeeze the hilt as Rutger vanishes, her breath hitches-- and then her shoulders actually release with tension when they come right back, despite the reek of fresh death.     "I suppose that's an excruciatingly clear answer." says Lilian, gradually allowing herself to lower her sword.     'So I do get him as my bodyguard after all...'     "My apologies, Lady Clarine, but I think none of us have the authority to decide that, and--" Lilian clicks her teeth together and pushes past something unpleasant. "Rutger doesn't seem enthused to me. Learning to separate acts of conscience from acts of affection is an important skill in your work." Finally, Lilian lets her stance slip the rest of the way, and stands up with her normal poise. She glances sideways from Rutger to find her dropped cloak with terribly convenient timing. "And if I may, the 'work' Rutger needs first is a bath, a meal, and eight hours of sleep. I have a few things in my pack I don't mind sharing. Perhaps you'll reevaluate your intentions afterwards."
Flamel Parsons	The blade slams cleanly through the sphere of energy at the moment Flamel least expects it. The whole thing shatters, blasting apart into particles that disperse widely. "HRK!" He stumbles, gasps, and clutches at a harsh wound carved in his side, something that took *effort* to keep away from vitals! It leaves him stumbling and staggering back, falling on his back and keeping pressure on the gleaming white light spilling out. Nothing lethal, but nothing to sneeze at, and enough to keep him out of the fight unless he wants to endure even worse.     But some amount of what got said has gotten through. Despite the fact that he couldn't get into Rutger's mind, his words have contributed to getting through to them. He watches what comes next with some intense interest. Interrupting Roy right now would be a bad idea, because somehow, some way, Roy's brand of earnest honesty is cutting through all kinds of barriers. Flamel can hardly believe it when Rutger turns on their employer, and his psychic senses turn to the fresh colors and confirm their tremendous meaning.     "...Alright. Lugh. Let's... get this data to the surrendered Lycian troops here." He mutters, casting the words at a greater distance telepathically. "We've got some work to do smoothing things over. Roy's done the heaviest lifting of helping everyone understand everything, but we need to spread that out." He groans a little, laughing good-naturedly. "I need to see one of those healers anyway."     He picks himself up, keeping pressure on the wound and observing the followup. He rambles to himself as he observes Lilian's defense of Rutger, and demands for good treatment for them, "How does he *move* like that? I know there was nothing like Type Black that time. I can't imagine doing all that, and he's doing all that *without getting all that hair in his face*..." Flamel is still seemingly unable to grasp their mind, maybe. He pulls back for now to go convene with Lugh and get this all figured out.
Lilian Rook	'How does he *move* like that? I know there was nothing like Type Black that time.'     "You would be shocked what human beings can become, if they dedicate enough time and sweat and heart to it." Lilian says. "I regret what I said earlier. I'm not certain I could have ended this with no one dying." she sighs. She doesn't sound upset, though. "There are so many things to see here . . . This world really is exactly what I needed, if I can meet people like this here."     'and he's doing all that *without getting all that hair in his face*'     "Rutger's hair is fine." Lilian says defensively. She sets to fiddling with her (long) hair with an awkward look on her face.