Scene Listing

||

Scene Schedule

||

Scene Schedule RSS

Owner	Pose
Marigold	COAST OF THE MISSUR PENINSULA, ETRURIA      Not far from an abandoned coastal fort.      It's been about a week since you boarded Klein's caravel back to civil-war-torn Etruria. It's been a few days since Echidna seized Armads and accepted its curse. It's been a day and a half since the Missur peninsula came into view; green forested lowlands with a gentle sandy beach, with occasional evidence of remote fishing villages. Further inland there are mountains, just visible for their immensity; and beyond those, you're told, is the inhospitable Nabata Desert, a barren expanse nearly the size of Lycia.      The air of Etruria does not taste sweeter the second time around. It's no longer a safe, friendly place. The Bern-backed coup, fed by steel and silver pillaged from the Western Isles, has imbued the innocent land with a new tension. When you land at a little sandy inlet to unpack your things- "We won't have to walk far," Klein promises- most of the army is tight-jawed. Clarine still won't act normally around Petra. Larum still can't look Echidna in the eye.      Still, imminent reunion with the loyalist Mage-General Cecilia keeps other spirits high, especially Roy's and Lilina's, her former pupils. This time there was room for the horses, and what people can't comfortably carry is loaded into Merlinus's wagons when they're reassembled.      While everyone navigates a hilly disused forest path- conveniently, there's a Warpgate not far off the way, for new arrivals to fall in from and for sea-wearied Elites to return home after they've settled in- Larum the spy(master)(?) rambles about her week-old gossip.      "I heard that right off the bat, the same day Roartz- that's Chancellor Roartz- took the king hostage and declared peace with Bern, Cecilia tried to march her army on the royal castle in Aquleia! Perceval and- um, Douglas, the other two Etrurian generals, drove her back. I heard a lot of people died then." She says that so casually, but Roy winces guiltily.      "Since then, it's just been attrition... I think they can't afford to let her agitate the people, so she's been stringing them all the way down Missur. I really wish Percy and Douglas would come to their senses! Just because King Mordred's hostage is no excuse to... oh, nevermind." She sighs, rubbing her own cheek exasperatedly, and the zeal for tactical minutiae goes out of her.      "Anyway. She's stretching their supply lines thin. Then she's probably going to make her stand at the abandoned coastal fort, so that's where we're heading. If we're lucky, we're in time to stand with her when--"
Marigold	It takes Larum a second longer to notice, but most of the two dozen colorful army-members have already stopped cold. Echidna grabs her by the arm to halt her. "Hey!! What's--" "Shhhh."      A trio of Bern's wyvern riders fly overhead, failing to spot you through the trees. And in the southern distance, past where the trees taper off into a clifftop seaside meadow, a red Bernish flag flies over the abandoned coastal fort.      A murmur passes through the army once the riders have gone, leaning against trees and conferring with each other. "Bern? Here?!" "Saint preserve us..." "Oh, no, Cecilia...!" "Roartz isn't wasting any time being a puppet." "Ghhh. Inside Etruria's borders..." "Maybe they've gotten here before her? "No, there's blood and weapons on the field. There was a fight."      So there are. It's hard to tell how much of the coast fort's crumbling is ancient and how much is recent battle, but the grassy field in front of it is stained and strewn with the days-old blood and fallen weapons of several hundred men, and in places the moss of the stone has been scorched away by blackening dragons'-breath. Even with the bodies cleaned away (which is more respectful than they ever were under Narcian), it's clear what Bern did here.      You're coming in on the tail end of some logistical process. A last few wagons of food and supplies are leaving the fort along with red-armored spearmen along tracks already wheel-chewed into mud, two heading southwest back along Missur's green coastal curve, and one heading due west towards the Nabatean Desert for some strange reason.      Atop the fort's battlements- and it really is a 'fort' rather than a 'castle', being a squat square stony two-story thing with a single watchtower and wooden front gate- stands Galle, third Wyvern General of Bern, impatiently watching his men conclude their work alongside his black wyvern steed.      "So we're too late," Roy breathes, almost collapsing against the trunk of a tree. That little tremble in his voice contains more despair than he's shown this entire campaign.      "You can't know that, Lord Roy," says Seneschal Merlinus, disembarking from his wagons to lay a steadying hand on Roy's shoulder. "Perhaps she's fled, or- or been taken prisoner. Besides... it pains me to say so, but we've nowhere else to turn. Where would we go? Back to the Western Isles?"      "There's no choice but to attack, then..." His despair lifts, but his exhaustion doesn't.      "Well... in my opinion, yes. And it's only a matter of time until they see our ship." He turns back to look at the assorted Elites, and grimace-smiles with the grasping hope of what he's asking. Rutger's already drawing her favorite sword, and Echidna counts soldiers under her breath while gripping the thunder-axe Armads.
Dysnomia	Dysnomia is handling being on a boat with two dread weapons forged to unmake beings like HER specifically better than she thought. Durban was...     ...Less bloodthirsty wasn't it. Exhausted? Resigned? Absolute? She shook her head, trying to clear the thoughts from her head. It didn't matter what he was--just what he did; not indiscriminately murder on contact. She just wished...     ...The League didn't think it was so...necessary.     "Since then, it's just been attrition... I think they can't afford to let her agitate the people, so she's been stringing them all the way down Missur."     "Correct." Dysnomia backed up Larum, finally speaking for the first time in hours. "If they are currently negotiating terms with Bern, they want to do so from a place of strength. Not in the midst of civil war, with their reign in question. So long as Cecilia's rebellion continues, their situation is precarious."     "What a terrible shame for them." Dysnomia's tone was a dry, almost smile.     It doesn't last.     "So we're too late,"     "You can't know that, Lord Roy,"     "She would be a valuable hostage," Dysnomia breathed, clenching, unclenching her hands. Trying not to think too much on what their tactical advantage to killing her on the spot. "And killing her would risk making her a martyr. It's...Worth a shot."     Dysnomia hears Merlinous' unasked question--and appreciates that it was unasked. Simply nodding in return, a plasma whip seethes to life in her hands. "We must act now. Where would she be held?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel makes sure to do a quick hop into the minds of those riders. He's not got a certain someone's ability to hitch a ride and hop between brains, but he *can* dip in to make sure that he knows: "They haven't seen us." And he glances to Roy, a bright and cheerful smile tugged slightly tense. "Killing her, at the height of Etrurian political turmoil, while they're already contending with tenuous relations with Etruria's coup... I can't think that'd be a good idea. Let's get in there. We'll find her in there, promise."     Can he promise that? Well, literally absolutely not, but it's what you say when someone's this stressed, and you promise something else when it doesn't go through. He does his best, though, to rummage in the minds of the flying folk for relevant data -- anything about the castle or Galle's state. And, intel or no, he sets off fast. Vanishing into invisibility, accelerating as fast as he can with levitation, and launching towards the castle, he tries to get in ahead of the others, sneak around and flank, and most importantly, get any info out of any vulnerable brains to Roy to drive the League fighters where they need to go. They have an element of surprise, one they won't keep long. No sense waiting.
Aidan Proudpick	Aidan arrives with Clarine, though he isn't sure what he should do to protect her at this point. This is firmly in Petra's 'girl stuff' territory and Aidan dares not tread into that territory, for fear of death. He can, at least, attempt to keep Clarine from falling over a boat again. Aidan is less tense this boat right, as no one but Petra has pointed a gun at him, leaving Aidan time to struggle through his reading, keep up his exercise, and relax. And hero worship over Echidna, the new hero of legend that makes his eyes sparkle as she does anything. If we're lucky, we're in time to stand with her when-- Aidan drums a claw against his front teeth as Larum goes on. Clack clack clack. The mantle of soldier hiding within the wardrobe of his mind makes a little whisper. "We still have to worry about them catching up, right? If they are stretched thin, we'd gotta keep biting down into them so they don't gather back u-" A whisper of wind from the air. Aidan is already up in a tree among the branches, bending around almost unnaturally to look at the wyverns(which he couldn't do if he was wearing plate). "Let's not go crazy, it could just be scouts! It doesn't MEAN there's a fight." "There's no choice but to attack, then..." He tries to put a smile on it, "You got us, Commander. Don't think too hard about it, if you think too hard about it, it'll crush you," he says from experience. He unslings the extra large shield from his back, tapping his head. To provide a proper example of how to think less, Aidan bounds forward in great leaps, pushing right towards the front gate. White wisps fill his mouth like bubbling dragon's flame before pushing out in a river. He uses his free hand, grasping the winds. Tendrils of white snake out from his lips to his fingers, to the air around them, pushing it outward, upward, winding like skeins on a mighty loom until they are wide arrow screens.
Khosa	Khosa was unable to be here while Armads was... dealt with, owing to being in Athas dealing with a cultist sect. (She did not share the details beyond that they were 'causing trouble', but the kind of trouble Khosa gets specifically called for tends to be the dangerous kind.) She didn't especially want to wield Armads herself, but she still feels like she should have been there for support, and is feeling mildly guilty for no reason that is really her fault for her absence when she hears Echidna has taken it up against some others' objections. Though, honestly, she understands it, too. People like Echidna (and like Khosa, for that matter) are almost certainly going to die by violence anyway; it only makes sense to make something of it first. Maybe she *should* have volunteered - except this isn't her land, Athas and Tyr is, and it's better for someone like Echidna to do it. Khosa arrived somewhat later than she heard the news, because chatter goes faster than travel around here; by warpgate, not by ship. She's started to carry weapons again, because even though she may be more skilled with her own body sometimes it helps; a pair of Athasian axes with stone heads polished dark and surprisingly sharp for something that's made out of stone in an X at the small of her back, the sort she could swing or throw equally well. "Better to seize the initiative while we've got it," Khosa says, perhaps bluntly agreeing with Merlinus in such a way that he doesn't *have* to ask her, at least not out loud. "They seized it when they took her, but if we act fast we can take it back and her along with it. Acting fast means they don't have time to change guards on her, or move her, or reinforce." She tilts her head left, then hard right, popping her neck. "At least this is the kind of fight I'm good at." Khosa pauses, shading her eyes as she scouts the wagons with eyes made sharp. Two along the coast, but one elsewhere, as Khosa looks toward the desert: "Why's a wagon going that way though?" she asks. "You never mentioned anything interesting out that way, and I don't *think* it's another country. Maybe we should run that down after."
Odette Raskins	The tension surrounding the return to Etruria is something that Odette doesn't really know how to dispel. Maybe it can't be, with so many surrounding circumstances already demanding plenty of mental bandwidth to begin with. She's worried about Cecilia, she's worried about Echidna, she's worried about Roy, she's worried about getting anyone home safely by the time this is all over, and... She still doesn't feel like she's made much progress in her magical training. She's certainly tried, of course, but further training is going to have to wait now that everyone's back on the move again. She's dressed in her usual uniform, of course, although the Bernish army's willingness to swing at anyone and everyone does make her wonder if she should invest in something more drab mundane looking to avoid drawing attention to herself. "Are supply lines that important? IF they have extra sky or sea routes, I can't see it being that big of a deal..." She comments to Larum, clearly forgetting that spaceships and airships don't actually exist here. Ducking down when Echidna warns everyone about the wyvern riders, the EMT refrains from squeaking on reflex, keeping her head and gaze down until she hears voices again. She still can't get her voice to work right when she sees the days-old aftermath, either, "M.. Miss Mia and Mister Parsons are right, yeah. Making a martyr out of her would just lead to more fighting and death, and I don't-" She stops abruptly, letting out an uncomfortable noise as another possibility comes to mind. "But maybe that's what Zephiel-" Another stop, and she doesn't finish vocalizing that thought even though the anxious look on her face makes it clear she's come to a worse conclusion. Wouldn't a civil war be ideal for destroying everything, anyway? She just has to keep some hope alive in her heart that the risk of Cecilia being a martyr would be far greater to Bern than that. "So... I-I guess we just need to get in there and... Are we trying to just push them back to get to Cecilia, or wipe them out before they can recover?" She asks Roy, approaching him with drinking bottle full of some kind of violently pink solution in it. She opens it carefully with her jacket to suppress the light fizzing noise that comes from being closed up in a bottle for so long, sips a good third of it at once, then shivers before offering it to him. "Energy drink. It won't help your coordination, but it'll help keep you going until we can rest again."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	THEN     Madeleine spent the last few days of the ocean voyage trying her best to sulkily avoid Echidna while pretending to not be doing so. Whenever the new wielder of Armads is on deck, Madeleine found a reason to be somewhere else. This led to her even making herself useful at times, taking inventory of supplies in the hold or helping cook in the galley. She's by no means an expert at either, but she can at least follow instructions.     She's also done some thinking. *Is* she insufficiently committed to the war effort? *Does* she have a moral responsibility to stop Bern, more so than any of the sector's numerous Elites who don't concern themselves whatsoever with the fate of Elibe? Has she, by exchanging letters with the ruinous King of Bern, coaxed herself into a state of detachment from the reality of lives on the line? This is not a battle of ideas, but of men and dragons. Serious stuff, that maybe she hasn't been taking seriously enough. NOW     As the Elites break from the treeline, Madeleine fires a few high, arcing shots with her bow before joining the assault. As the arrows come down, scattered here and there around the fort by the wind, they burst into clouds of oily smoke that stings the eyes and throat. Hopefully this will prove enough of a hazard to arranging in massed formations that the soldiers have to fight on something closer to the Elites' terms, diminishing the advantage of numbers.
Petra Soroka	The worse parts of being on an isolated boat for a week rear their heads, after Petra inadvertently bullies Clarine into an awakening of her political lesbianism. For the earlier leg of the journey, Petra had thought there was basically nothing better than being in an enclosed-but-mobile space with people she mostly likes, forced to exist in communal spaces and doing communal tasks for a collective experience, where none of them are able to run away from her; but now, she's in the unenviable position of maybe wishing she had a bit *more* space, actually.     She can't even be *mad* at Clarine, really. She respects the hustle. Running away from home and becoming a lesbian to spite the shitty oppressive atmosphere you've existed in until now is something Petra has a begrudging and personal sympathy for, so really, even though it's awkward to be in the position that she's in, and she's still kind of confused about the whole sequence of events, she *has* to support Clarine's ideological warfare tactics.     ... But does she have to be so *weird* about it?     Ratbot surveillance gives Petra the eyes needed to carefully construct her schedule around *not* being subjected to questions about how lesbians 'do that sort of thing, with each other', for the last couple days of the trip. Petra doesn't even know how she'd *answer* that sort of question, considering how little her personal experience and cultural knowledge actually line up on the subject. Lilian might feel deeply vindicated by seeing Petra harried and hiding around a corner away from the terrible thing she's wrought.     So Petra is grateful to get off of the ship, and get back to normal things, like war and dragonslaying. She's gotten into the habit of packing and unpacking all of her things manually, so she doesn't feel left out while everyone else is fussing with bags, but once the collective luggage-event is complete, she just stows her suitcase away in the reflection of a nearby lake anyways. "I really wish Percy and Douglas would come to their senses! Just because King Mordred's hostage is no excuse to... oh, nevermind."     "Honestly, it's embarrassing, right? Cecilia's such a badass. I mean, like, clearly they're not willing to murder the king just because one general's defected, so that kind of takes the wind out of the whole threat, right? And so what if they do? Then they lose hold on the whole country, and some random old dude is dead. Who cares. Grow some balls."     "For real." While marching along and chattering with Larum, Petra keeps stopping to stretch out her whole body and get the wiggles off the long trip out, before scuttling back up to rejoin the conversation. "I've met loser royalty so many times that I feel like it barely matters anymore. If you're a loser then being royalty makes you lamer. If you're cool, then being royalty makes you cooler. It's not some generally cool thing."
Petra Soroka	"So we're too late,"     Petra is, for whatever reason, heavily resistant to the grind of entropy that the long war campaign fosters. In part, it's because she's got a lot of other things going on, unlike the Lycian army themselves, but even being present for battle after battle, the scene of death and dragonfire stretching out on the field in front of her, she can't really feel *exhausted*. Maybe a little chagrined and petulant, that after a long trip looking forwards to almost having a leg up on Bern, that they'd show up and be thrust right into the same old cycle all over again.     Death doesn't get to her, but the living do. When Roy's voice trembles like that, the pang Petra feels in her chest takes her breath away for a moment. Morphmetal coils out of the bottle on her hip, orbiting her before melding onto her arm, battle-ready. When she clenches her fist, the Silver around it cracks with the pressure and then liquidates again, like a non-newtonian fluid.     "Okay, well, we'll go figure it out. There's nothing for us to do now but figure out what's happened, and then after that, we'll know. Maybe we can't save her at this point, but we should at least act like we can, and do everything possible as if she's in there somewhere."
Angela	Shajo and Nonon are lending a hand again together. Shajo is giving Larum concerned looks but since a battle is about to start, it feels weird to broach the subject especially with Nonon enthusiastically supported Echidna's decision about as enthusiastically as anybody could support Echidna's decision. Frankly, if he didn't think that Echidna hadn't made her decision well before Nonon spoke up--he'd even say she encouraged it. "Pretty impressed you can keep all this strategy and politicking straight," Shajo asides to Larum but then he stalls for a moment, looking full on at her. "...Sorry that Nonon spoke up like that before. She's like that and I gotta admit that sometimes it's hard since she doesn't always get tact. But when you love someone you gotta accept their best qualities even when it's frightening." He is probably not really just talking about Nonon there but he leaves it at that. Soon there will be violence and he readies EGO Weapon Smile in his hands, taking a slow breath in and letting it out--soon as he sees that flag. "This'll be a big one, Nonon. Don't know why Hokma pulled Tennant back but we'll have to carry for Ceri too today." "Well that'll be easy," Nonon says obliviously. "I'm real good at carrying. And we've got Echidna!" Her gaze flits towards Galle. An enemy she wasn't able to BEAT even with Shajo rankles at her especially since she doesn't actually want to harm him but he also is so badass that it's tough to go easy on him too. "Though that might be a problem. I think I like Melady, Shajo, what do I do?" Shajo doesn't usually get asked this question. "...We have to fight as hard as we can. If we need to, we've got healing bullets." Nonon seems relieved. And naturally, when the fighting begins... She's going to run straight towards Galle, punching anyone who gets in her way while Shajo protects her from behind. "GALLE! REMATCH! COME ON MAAAN!" She shouts. "I'm still BLUEBALLED from last time! Show me how good the sky's to ya!" "Nonon, I can only be thrown so high up..." Shajo murmurs. "We'll see about that!"
Desire Stars	Ace and Neon share a look as they trail behind Larum. Neon, spotting Roy's guilty expression, places a hand on his shoulder and gently shakes her head.     Three wyvern's shadows cross over the DGP riders. Neon stifles a gasp, Ace presses his back against a tree, both holding Drivers in hand for a tense moment, before it becomes evident that the party hasn't been spotted. No, there's blood and weapons on the field. There was a fight.     "It won't be the last." Ace says, pushing off of the tree to resume the trek. His thumb presses into the rectangular driver, while the opposite hand's thumb turns the cylinder of the revolver-themed Magnum Buckle. Well... in my opinion, yes. And it's only a matter of time until they see our ship.     "That settles it. Ace, let's transform--maybe a little away from the others so we don't give them away?"     Ace sets his jaw and nods. "Yeah. If nothing else, we can disrupt the logistics a little."     The two of them break perpendicular to the rest of the group, each attaching their Desire Drivers; Neon with the support and crowd-control oriented Beat Buckle, and Ace with the precision marksmanship of the Magnum Buckle.     One poorly mixed transformation sequence later...     "Let's start with a distraction. Rush the soldiers moving those carts. I'll cover you from here," says the fox-themed Kamen Rider Geats, taking a knee and shouldering the rifle-mode MAGNUM SHOOTER.     Kamen Rider Na-Go's cat-themed helmet bobs twice in understanding. "Got it!"     Na-Go sprints out into the open, the bladed flying-v guitar BEAT AXE held firmly in her hands as she lets out a battle cry. Before she's in melee range proper, she swings, sending a crescent of bitter, freezing cold towards the soldiers guarding the cart.     Just as he said he would, Geats covers her from long range with pinpoint blasts from his laser rifle.
Hamada Haru	A locust-themed masked figure in brown armor had appeared in the forest relatively abruptly-- and relatively easy to miss. The theme of his armor gave him some effective camouflage within the trees, provided no one was looking too closely-- which of course some people probably were, and the man wasn't actually trying to remain undetected exactly. His demeanor the whole while was withdrawn but friendly enough if approached-- he didn't have a lot to say, indicating to any inquirers that he was here to look after somebody for a short while. Exactly who, he wouldn't say, except that it was a friend of assembled. Dynamic Era obviously didn't have a strong idea of what was going on, or a reason to be hostile to anybody in particular-- though apart from the armor he also appeared relatively unarmed. Which wasn't saying much, even in a place like this. Sometimes magic people just wear heavy armor, after all. His understanding increases steadily with the passage of wyverns overhead, and the reactions to the sights beyond the forest. Haru doesn't weigh in-- he doesn't know the battle that has been fought, or is soon to be fought. Behind his helmet the blood on the field draws a frown, but no outwardly visible reaction. He doesn't really think very highly of being involved in a 'war', though it would hardly be the first time and he doubted it would be the last. It's Petra that he ends up observing, distantly, for a short while before he ends up meandering off to go looking for the people he's here for in particular. It's mostly because he knows that she is, in her own way, the kind of person who takes notes -- or at least remembers vividly -- so whatever she's talking about probably isn't completely irrelevant to take in. That mostly brings the pieces together. Dynamic Era nods at Petra in acknowledgment as he moves on. He ends up being a little late. Ace and Neon are moving pretty decisively-- he comes up parallel with Kamen Rider Geats as the more experienced rider lays in with weapons fire, walking right on past him-- And leaving a duplicate that takes up position next to him with its transteam gun while his original self joins Na-Go. The original Dynamic Era brandishes a gunblade and guards Na-Go's left side, while the second picks a target separate from Geats and tries to lay enough fire on the field to cause some hesitation. "You seem to have acclimated," both Dynamic Eras observe.
Lilian Rook	"I'd expect at least this much of General Cecilia. If their lines are thin enough, it'd be the perfect opportunity for a force like ours to collapse them."     Lilian is grateful to be off the ship. Not because the ride sucked, but because it was so relaxed that all she could do was try and fail not to think about the same thing that occupies all her other free moments. Doubling her usual training, hounding Roy and Marcus and Merlinus with strategy games, showing Rutger a thing or two about punching someone out, making her workouts a competition with Dieck, and frequently spending hours talking to Lucius every other time she asks to be healed from mysterious injuries; even that only goes so far. And there are limits to both Petra's mortal endurance and how much she can find opportunities to harass Aidan and Dysnomia.     "Still. I can't say I know her well, but if half of what I've heard is true, she should easily be equal to two generals of lesser stock, so I can only conclude that Bern is already intervening. This sort of precariously balanced situation is exactly where a precise application of force at a small scale can turn history, so we should be more careful than usual about running off half-cocked. I'd like to collect Lord Roy and Lilina, Echidna, Mar--"     Even Lilian has to swallow her dread. Her heart drops like a rock at the sight of Bernish riders, then something hot and churning rises in its place, indelibly associated with the sight of wyverns. Squeezing her hands into fists until she feels the twitching of muscle and humming of nerve die down from compelling her into action, she tries her best to believe the words she says next, though she fears she may take them for granted.     'So we're too late'     'You can't know that, Lord Roy'     "We should have been too late for Lucius, too late for Hector, even too late for Sue and Echidna and Bartr. But we've stayed neck and neck with Bern by pushing all this way, without slowing down. We aren't going to be too late this time either. If we try just a little harder, a little faster, we might get ahead of them next."     §You're too young for this, Roy, but I was too. It's in my nature to push against my limits; more than this. I'll be here for you when you finally have the courage to push the others further too.§     Even so, Lilian knows that Galle isn't something so easy to overcome. From the moment she spots him, she vividly recalls the last time they had locked eyes, and his parting words that had weighed on her ever since. He isn't something that she can leave anyone but possibly Echidna to handle, and she expects his grip to be far more tenacious than Narcian's.     Removing her cloak and throwing it to Petra, Lilian examines her right hand for the two-hundredth time, flexes each armoured digit and rolls her wrist to hear the reassuring tick-click of each fine plate, and then draws and arms her weapon. From the trees, far away, they won't notice a difference between Winter Crow and actual magic, so she opens up with a liberal barrage of alchemical bullets that streak hundreds of feet skyward and explode into magical fireballs. She harasses the riders with the equivalent of flak fire until the bottom of one ammo stack of amalgam, and then races to the front lines to get ahead of the laggards in the assault, drawing her sword instead.     "Zephiel ordered you back once, General Galle! What about this time? What is Cecilia worth to you?!"
Trudy Grimm	Trudy has precious little worth offloading, the way she stores things. All Grimnir has is a small satchel which he accepts and shoves in under the ratty traveling overcoat he wears all the time. He has no trouble finding himself a place amongst Merlinius' caravan, as usual, puffing away on his pipe in contemplation, lost in thought amidst the creaking of wagon wheels and the noises of the livestock.     Trudy's seat of choice is the curled forearm of the Black Knight, who walks tirelessly ahead of the infantry column. Calls for quiet prompts him to stop, with the witch shielding her eyes to peer up through the trees. Wyrm riders. Eyes closing, Trudy lets out a soft, tired sigh. Lowering her right hand, the left is already pulling up her Grimoire, its buckle unfastening on its own. She hesitates, holding the cover closed with her thumb.     "I am a little tired of this," she mutters, "But what other choice do we have?" Contrary to Lilian's assessment, the witch can't shake how it always feels like Bern is working from a huge advantage. It always feels like they're on the back foot, with little option but to keep pushing into it.     After that hesitation, she shifts her thumb and allows Malice to open. The jittery silver-blue rune of Air, Hagalaz, manifests above its seemingly blank pages. Gripping the symbol in her free hand, Trudy twists it, corrupting the blue with dripping orange-red. In the air, a runic circle expands in the flight path of the wyvern patrol; anyone who flies through it risks the Curse of Blindness, man and wyrm alike. A horrendous danger while flying.     Lilian steps forward to shout at Galle directly. The witch pauses, then jumps down from her seat to stride up to stand in Lilian's support; behind and to her right. In a similar place to her left, the Black Knight comes to a stop and plants the tip of his sword in the ground by his feet. Once the Black Knight has planted his sword, Trudy closes her tome with a soft thump.     Trudy doubts she has the right words for this; but her presence may yet provide some form of weight to what Lilian has to say, at least.
Marigold	"Pretty impressed you can keep all this strategy and politicking straight..."      Though the wind's been taken out of her sails now, Larum winks. "Thanks! I did grow up around nobles and officers, you know!" He didn't know. She and that maybe-blind bard Elffin have surprisingly lofty pasts, for guerillas.      Then he keeps talking, and she smiles to accept his apology, then slumps. "It is frightening. I just wish she'd think about... oh, nevermind."      People do ask about Haru, notably a sharp-eyed horse-archer woman, but she just nods knowingly and takes his explanation in stride. "Good luck, then." It's probably an easy guess that the people in odd sleek armor are together somehow.      Larum and Lilina both brightly nod along with Petra's description of Cecilia as a 'badass'. Elffin, though, leans into frame when she talks about the king being 'loser royalty': "King Mordred is, I'm afraid, quite infirm with grief after the death of his son. It's not his fault."      Neon... places a hand on his shoulder and gently shakes her head.      Roy startles a little, looks back, and smiles just slightly less guiltily. "I know it's not my fault. But..." But.      "We'll find her in there, promise."      "You promise?" The tender-eyed way Roy says that could give most people a stab of guilt. Despite everything, he is a child.      "Where would she be held?"      "It's not a big fort," says Merlinus, shaking his head. "Somewhere in there. Probably somewhere windowless, since she's a resourceful mage. Interior, or maybe it has a basement..."      "Why's a wagon going that way though?"      "It beats me," the seneschal mutters, tilting his head towards Khosa for a moment. "You couldn't pay me to drive through that desert. And that's saying something!"      "Are we trying to just push them back to get to Cecilia, or..."      Roy takes a deep deep breath while drawing his simple sword. He glances at Merlinus, but Merlinus just lifts his eyebrows. "Cecilia is the first priority. There isn't much worth in the fort itself."      He eyes Odette's drink, obviously thinks about objecting to favoritism, then chugs it after a sheepish smile.      Flamel's infiltration faces one significant barrier: the fort's sheer simplicity. In another world it might be called 'brutalist'. Unless he can squeeze through an arrowslit or scale a sheer watchtower that big wooden front door is the only way in, and invisible or not, he'll have a hard time opening it unnoticed. But from assorted guards glimpsed through arrowslits and along what's left of the outer wall, he can glean:      Cecilia is captive here, having been defeated in single combat. She's kept in a room in the fort's cellar. They were planning to have Galle fly her back to the capital later today, along with someone else.
Marigold	Bern's spearmen are about as much of a threat as ever- which is to say, individually they crumple to a couple hits, but in bristling formation they're nothing to play with. There's at least several dozen here, which would be dreadful work if they were all allowed to pull together...      So it's a good thing they aren't. Madeleine's noxious-cloud-arrows send the ones patrolling the fortress scrambling for fresh air, and Neon and Ace suppress and scatter the ones by one of the carts. She can clear out one cart with some good smashing and freezing- Roy joins in, too, though he has his hands full wrestling with a single soldier on the ground before prying their spear away.      After ducking for cover behind their wagons, the soldiers at the other two have time to hurl javelins at anyone nearby and form up into a dense formation three ranks deep.      The wyvern riders break formation in a panic when Lilian opens fire on them; Lucius doubles up with a couple of aimed-to-narrowly-miss light beams and Klein is ruder with his great bow, and Shanna and Thea, the army's now-two pegasus riders, saddle up- "Behind me." "You're still not in charge!"- and zip into the sky to gang up on an isolated wyvern. One of the other two careens off to the side, struggling to fly while Trudy-blinded.      The soldiers on the fort's crumbled outer wall- the ones not choking on smoke- hurl javelins at the approaching core of Roy's army, too, but they're buffeted aside by Aidan's wind-walls. Rutger is already sprinting up near-sheer stone to make messy work of dazed walltop troops, with Fir not far behind; Sue and Sin are circling the cart spearmen like sharks while taking potshots, and Echidna, a bit slower, is in handaxe-hurling range of the fort.      There's just Galle unaccounted-for, but last time he had Melady, Narcian, and half the Bernish army at his back. What does he have this time?      His new spear gleams as he unslings it from his back.         _______________________________              GALLE THE AZURE RIDER               THIRD WYVERN GENERAL OF BERN              AND WIELDER OF MALTET
Marigold	It's beautiful in an awful, silvery, too-bright way, like blinding sunlight on snow. Eerily simple, all one piece of metal, except between handle and blade is a metal 'snowflake' as if the blade were an aberration of the snowflake's symmetry.      He swings it wide, and either through heroic force or innate magic it makes a wintry gale that clashes against Aidan's wind-walls. That lets some of the walltop soldiers' javelins slip through, peppering Roy's army and anyone with them; Echidna swats one aside with Armads' flat, cursing under her breath.      "What is Cecilia worth to you?!"      "They'll hang her for spectacle," he calls down, while getting into his wyvern saddle with a practiced care. "I don't like spectacle. But I don't fear you."      "GALLE! REMATCH! COME ON MAAAN!"      His eyes narrow slightly. But only slightly. A ghastly sort of man, to be so close to 'dead neutral' about life-and-death struggles.      Galle's wyvern takes off with a powerful beat of its wings, briefly climbs, and then swoops down to twenty or thirty feet over the army and the carts. In passing, he hurls that awful spear and uses its leather strap to sweep it across the crowd, lashing back and forth with the dexterity of a string-toy before reeling it back to his hand for another throw. It freezes flesh to leave awful bloodless wounds and might even shatter a person apart.      He isn't, it seems, keen on getting within melee range regardless of Nonon's taunting. But he isn't keeping a close eye on the fort.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine grits her teeth as she ducks under a sweep of Galle's new spear. She isn't keen on letting Drogrung clash with a dragon-slaying divine weapon again, so instead she falls back and takes aim with her bow. Her eye lingers on Galle for a moment. She wonders if he knows Melady was in the hands of the Etrurian coup, or if he even cares where she is anymore.     After a moment's deliberation she sets her sights a little lower. A flurry of poisoned arrows rush through the sky toward his wyvern. At this short a range there may not be time enough for Galle to see the shots coming and protect his mount, and though the venom will not kill, painful spasms could still ground the creature and cut Galle's options from three dimensions to two.
Angela	"--Yeah we'll chat more later." Shajo says before the battle is joined. A javelin slams into his shoulder and with a scowl he rips it out. He starts to toss it aside when he has a thought and runs to catch up with Nonoon. "Yeah that's right! Come at me, Galle!" Nonon shouts moments, grinning wide as he starts swooping in--wholly expecting Galle to close into melee so she can punch the wyvern in the snout...but he doesn't! Instead he stays well out of range of her fists and glances across her arm. "C'mon it'll take more than that---hhhuuuh??" Nonon's arm THUNKS to the floor as ice surrounds her left arm and saps it of strength. He is forced down to a crouch from that singular strike. "Why you....! That's cheap...! I'll fight the both of ya, just get down here and punch me in the face...!" Shajo passes by, handing Nonon a javelin and two more he's managed to pick up along the way. "Try this, gonna move on ahead." He murmurs, continuing his run towards the fortress. They might just execute Cecilia early if they let this battle last too long. Nonon hefts up one of the javelins and and then YUUUUCKS it at Galle's wyvern with all her strength, but she's a bit of a sitting target since her other arm is feeling so heavy...
Dysnomia	Dysnomia is momentarily, braced to join the frail against Galle, to repay him for the spear he'd planted in her back in Ostia--When she hears Marcus call out to her. Her eyes slide to the unearthly blade in his hand with dread realization.     "Somewhere in there. Probably somewhere windowless, since she's a resourceful mage. Interior, or maybe it has a basement..."     "Got a position! *She's alive!* Cellar in the fort, might have a plus one!"     Dysnomia turns toward the fort. Pauses, long enough to meet Roy's eyes. "We're getting her back." She said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. It seemed absurd, now, to think this boy was leading them. "I'll make it so."     And then, she was off.     When she wanted to be, Dysnomia could be FAST. She was a weightless blur, like gravity was less a constant to be constantly aware of and more a dial, to be adjusted at her leisure. She vaulted away from Galle, following Parsons' directions, toward a stretch of fortress wall.     For her, at least, arrowslits were more than enough to let her through. She leapt, full strength, toward the wall. But where she should have splattered against it, she just dissolved into smoke, filtering effortlessly through the gaps, to rematerialize on the other side--     --Where the whip was already in her hand, lashing about her at any of the surrouding Bernish guards, before taking off and an unearthly sprint toward the cellar, routinely checking in with Flamel to assure her path.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's maneuvering leaves him struggling to evade sweeping motions and cryomantic magic. In this case, there's *nothing* to do for Flamel besides focus on dodging. He can't get into the fort!! "Auuuhhhhh, where's *anything* to work with here?! No giant gears, no external decorations to navigate around -- how do these people *live*?! I need some way to get inside, some other opening..." Flamel is running into the same problems that paralyzed, uh, a lot of attacking forces for most of the pre-industrial eras of humankind.     Even trying to shimmy past guards at the entrance, he's paralyzed by the simplicity, which leaves him having to circle around to the crowd to re-maneuver. Only once he gets a good lock on someone's brain does he shout his alert that Cecilia's in that cellar, and where it's nearest to. What can Mia do? Maybe she'll smash down a wall! Flamel gets a running start to follow her...     Aaaaand skids and bonks the wall when she mist-forms through an arrow-slit. Embarrassed, he lies on his back for a few seconds, heaving a sigh. Then, rolling to one side in a panic, vanishing into invisibility. "Ahh, crap crap crap!" A wave of frost freezes the grass behind him in a perfect impression of his prone, annoyed body, still straightening back out.
Odette Raskins	"We should have been too late for . . ." "If we try just a little harder, a little faster, we might get ahead of them next." Even though those words were meant for Roy, Odette finds herself going wide-eyed for a moment ass he stares at the floor in shock. How could she have let herself lose herat and come to such a terrible conclusion like she did? Of course Cecilia's alive. Of course they'll make it. She just needs to be faster, keep going faster, and keep up with everyone else charging on ahead. The EMT takes a deep breath as she holds her hands out to her sides, then slaps her cheeks loudly to snap herself out of that funk from before. ".... Thanks, Dame Commander Rook. I needed that." She doesn't elaborate on why, but she's looking mentally better than she did a moment ago. Physically, her cheeks are starting to turn red from where she slapped herself. "Cecilia is the first priority." "Oh, good. Then we can just escape once we get her." Breathing a light sigh of relief, Odette smiles a little more when Roy accepts the drink. She's a little surprised he can even chug the stuff, too, but makes a mental note to bring more of it along next time. Wait. Would that stunt his growth? Only time will tell, perhaps. As Flamel confirms that Cecilia's alive inside, Odette has more reason than ever to hurry towards the fort. She has to hang back a bit first as the first wave of combatants crash against each other, letting her more combat-ready companions take down those spearmen and fliers alike. Once she sees her chance, she starts sprinting at the walls, slowing down only momentarily when she sees that beautifully terrible weapon in Galle's hands. That momentary distraction is enough for her to lose track of the javelins actually breaking through, squeaking as she twirls around to just narrowly avoid getting one of those projectiles embedded in her face. It still leaves a painful slice across her cheek and ear as it whizzes by, however, and it's jarring enough that she trips over one of the fallen spearmen and stumble-sprints forward complete with arm flailing and pushing off the ground to regain her balance and keep her momentum carrying her forward. As she gets her bearings again, however, Odette looks up just in time to see Galle coming down with his wyvern and that chilling spear coming down towards her and everyone. Squealing again in terror, she dips forward and once again barely avoids getting her head taken off as that spear whips right over her. It still catches part of her bag, however, slicing one of the compartments open and sending some bottles and tools right into the air. "Crap! That's the...!" Wait. She can work with these, can't she? Identifying the bottles by color alone, she snatches and whips two of the powder-filledbottles at those wall-slits. The bottles aren't nearly thin enough to make it through those wall slits, of course, but they don't need to. All she needs is for them to shatter and release their 'payload' inside, scattering the equivalent of concentrated pepper spray right into the battlements. She takes another couple of seconds to collect the rest of her fallen stuff, then goes back to rushing for the fort's entrance while the defenders and Galle are (ideally) occupied.
Aidan Proudpick	Wind magic meets wind magic. The wall shudders as it the mighty weapon dives through it. Lines of icy blue wind unravel the skeins of white. Yawning holes that allow javelins to fly through. "Wind magic..." He hasn't gotten to test his mettle against wind magic in a while. That moment of glee, that moment of a heroic duel, wind against wind, is stopped COLD by the lance ripping through the soldiers, watching icy wounds cut open. A short hop backwards keeps the lance just out of range, the icy blade sliding just in front of his nose, icy frost cutting up the sides of his face. "Hey! Afraid to take on the big elites?! She told you to come on down here!" The shield slams into the ground, making a simple sort of chest high wall for Aidan to work with. From behind it, Aidan grits his teeth, fingers spread out into the air. Frosty wisps of magic trail and his fingers snag on one, grasping the blue line. The stoic look of concentration turns into a teeth clenching seethe of pain as icy magic works through his gloved fingers. He yanks on it, pulling it down to make his own. "Mine!" Again, another grab, letting the ice freeze and stiffen his fingers. "Mine!" The pain one feels not just as flesh freezes, but the true pain of warm blood unfreezing that flesh in the first place, isn't unknown to a victorian orphan. A twist. A knot. Like someone practiced in the making of Chalah. A final thrust forward. The wind magic spreads out into a swarm of icy wind darts, blue wind swirling into tiny slivers before they rush at the broken wall.
Hamada Haru	"Going to go erase some inconvenient structural components," Dynamic Era #2 asides to Ace, toggling his gun as he does so and speaking into it. "Deletion protocol, metal." This particular iteration of Haru sprints ahead, going full ghost to pass straight through the backs of Era #1 and Na-Go, as well as the soldiers they're fighting ahead. There was a time, he reflects to himself, when he did this particularly for copper on a modern construction that used it for water piping. The result had been a summarily ruined modern building. He wasn't about to delete a fortress out from under its defenders; that was too murderous for him, and they had people inside besides that. Nevertheless, from the description that Marcus just gave him, deleting all of the metal hardware out of the place would be a serious problem. Might also get rid of a bunch of armor and armaments if he was lucky. The second Dynamic Era reaches the wall and turns solid again, extending his transteam gun in a wide arc that sprays not the characteristic steam of the device but a swarm of tiny metallic locusts that fans out into a truly enormous swarm. The buzz that passes above the surroundings is probably audible for a disturbingly long time-- thankfully, unlike ordinary locusts, these aren't here to cause a famine. They do however sweep through the fort in a cloud, rapidly disassembling anything made of metal that they can get anywhere near -- and not respecting doors or portals as they do, appearing to be every bit as capable of becoming ghostly-intangible as Dynamic Era -- before depositing the raw material in bar form a few steps away from the thing itself. Haru is pretty sure these people have resource problems enough that he shouldn't be removing things from their environment entirely. Immediately after this, Dynamic Era #2 is caught in one of the numerous throws of Galle's ice-wreathed javelin, sparks dancing off of his shoulder as he tumbles off to the side and rises again with a distinctly frosted and stiff joint and barely-mobile hand. Rather than just trying to use it anyway, Era #2 swaps his transteam gun from his right hand to his left.
Trudy Grimm	She only got one of the airborne trio, but that'll have to do. Galle dives down, spear extending on a strap. The Black Knight interposes himself between the wyvern rider and both Trudy and Lilian and uses the flat of his greatsword to direct the freezing spear away from them both. Each impact frosts over the metal of his weapon and even his gauntlets and chestplate, though-- the undead warrior is hardly going to care so much about that as someone still alive.     He lurches forward, the joints of his hands cracking as he adjusts his grip and remains near the witch and the knight for guardian duties.     Protected as she is, Trudy flips the Grimoire open once again. This time the rune that flickers to live above its pages is Peorth, the rune of the Hearth. Pushing it into the earth at her feet, Trudy casts a wider net across Roy's forces. Biting chill is met with cozy warmth. Hot stew and a warm blanket. Winter's unforgiving chill finding opposition in the sensations if steaming cocoa and the company of a loved one. Even in winter, there is warmth; and that is the power humans of the deep north ascribe to the Hearth.     As this biting chill is fought back against through protective and reactive magics, the Black Knight tenses his stance, keeping his sword at the read for Galle to make another pass. Whatever he's planning, the Wyvern General has his full and silent attention now.
Khosa	Khosa deliberately hung back with the main forces, because... Well, Khosa doesn't really do 'infiltration' very well. Charging the gates and battering them down, sure, she can do that. A display of force and power? Sure! But sneaking in to rescue someone *without* fighting absolutely everybody between her and them is - she can do it, but there are better people at it, some of them are here, and she doesn't want to get in their way. But resisting the counterattack? That she can do. Khosa catches one of the javelins in her hand and another one with her shoulder, where it sticks for a moment before being pushed out, landing on the ground. She gives a slightly toothy grin at the formation and begins to advance, slowly, with the kind of heavy impenetrability you get from armoured generals. Javelins have about as much effect, individually. Some of them bounce. It requires focus fire to do significant damage to her. And by the time they figure this out, she stomps the ground, sending a telekinetic wave forward along the surface. It's aimed forward, toward the blocky formation, and feels like the ground was a drum someone just bounced; it doesn't do damage so much as bounce them upward a few inches, though the landing is pretty bad for ankles if you don't expect it, and likely to send them staggering into each other or tumbling. She'd follow it up, but that's when Galle makes his appearance. "Oh come on! You are literally riding a wyvern! I thought it killed those too!!" Khosa makes her objections known, loudly, as another javelin hits her with more effect than the previous; this one she has to yank out by hand, snapping the wood in her grip. And *then* she has to handle the ice. Dealing with one kind of attack is easier for Khosa than a whole bunch at once; she's healing the cuts and piercings easily enough but cold digs in, requiring a different kind of attention from her regenerative psychometabolism. Part of her arm goes spotty-pale (well, pale for her, which is not actually very pale) before she floods it with energy, forcing the blood to move, which causes some of the wounds she'd already treated to begin to bleed a second time. She's not invincible. She's just hard to hurt without a sustained effort, apparently. Khosa rears back, scooping both of her axes, and throws them simultaneously upward at Galle. They're aimed well, but not so well he can't evade. But that's fine; the real attack is the bioelectric blast she sends after it, strange green electricity pulling itself from her flesh, down to her fingertips, and out. The blast doesn't hit Galle either. It hits the hafts of each of the axes, traveling up them to the stone heads, heating them up - and then causing them to detonate as the wooden hafts burst within them, spraying shattered white-hot stone shrapnel in a rough cone in the direction the axes were travelling. She's trying to force him to land as much as anything else. Shredded wings don't hold wyverns in the air, after all - but given how much all the riders she's met here like their favourite mounts, she expects him to protect the mount, which *also* will force him downwards. It's win-win as far as she's concerned.
Petra Soroka	"King Mordred is, I'm afraid, quite infirm with grief after the death of his son. It's not his fault."     Petra narrows her eyes doubtfully at that, but doesn't outwardly protest. Just because it'd be in bad taste, though. In her opinion, she doesn't know who he is or who his son is, so he has no excuse for curling up and being miserable after something like that, especially since it's making him a problem for people she *does* care about. He could at *least* kill himself if he's that unhappy, and take out Bern's hostage to make things easier for the army.     Petra catches Lilian's cloak as second nature, and folds it over her arm to get it small enough that the reflective surface of her morphmetal gauntlet can fit it for storage. In return, she pulls Pillar of Creation out of the palm of her gauntlet, Qetra's hand helping feed the shaft into her grip before retreating back inside the mirror, brandishing the black glass EGO spear as Galle takes flight with his. There's some time for her to whine and moan in the radio about 'rightful wielders' and 'the perversion of ancient dragonkilling weapons being used to perpetuate a vicarious genocide on behalf of their old enemy', but with the news that Cecilia *is* alive in there, she can't sit around long.     The way Petra sees it, there's only two goals to fighting here: rescuing Cecilia, and not dying. The tactical applications of this random fort in fuckoff nowhere are essentially none, and if there were any, then Petra still couldn't bring herself to care without being told, because there's no sympathetic citystate or nation or bundle of enslaved rightful rulers or so on inside of it, so it functions solely as an obstacle in her mind, rather than a goal. And so does the open field with the Bernish soldiers and Galle's overwatch between her and the fortress, but she's got to get through it somehow.     "Hey, how the fuck did you get that! Why's it even cool with you using it, with your dragons and all?!" Petra's offense at the natural narrative order of things is shouted up at Galle, while her best response to his spear techniques is a pale imitation of her own. Morphmetal drains down her fingers and around the haft of Pillar of Creation, allowing a rippling tendril 'arm' to to extend her reach much like his ribbons. Morphmetal pseudoconsciousness twitches her spear for microadjustments mid-arc, inerring but much less nimble mimicry to puncture a path through the spearmen for Petra to approach the fort.     When Petra bounds back to narrowly slip by a Bernish spear jab, the morphmetal tendrils extending off her fingers like puppet strings thin to bridge the extra distance, and Galle's icy spear whips by at that moment of weakness. Rather than cutting through the semifluid metal properly, Maltet sparks off and freezes it instead, causing shattered splinters of morphmetal to spray out from the hit and nick Petra across the arm and chest before re-melting into droplets resting on the trampled grass. In return, Petra raises up her transteam gun and clicks the trigger, causing all the disparate Silver scattered around the battlefield to zip back into the magazine-bottle on the bottom, and the attached EGO spear in its grip to snap into her other hand. "Vaporize."     When the cloud of black smoke explodes off of Petra, and she's left in her Sting Silver armor, she barrels into the now-hingeless door with her shoulder, only shortly behind the locust cloud.
Flamel Parsons	Alright. So, generally-speaking, Flamel Parsons is a spy. And, as a matter of pride, spies like to sneak around. When they get into places, they tend to not specifically pick the route that would be taken by a direct attacker. But in this case, there literally *is* no other route. This building, for all its floor-plan square-footage, has a grand total of one way to get inside and there's a lot of guys there. So, fine: Flamel joins with the folks heading towards the main entrance, and then demonstrates why he doesn't usually do things directly but *technically can*.     It's the hands.     The sheer number of telekinetic hands that are throwing aside supplies-in-transit, obstructing doors, or *entire people*, is actually distressing. Those with a phobia of too many hands and too much grabbing need not apply and in fact need look away; the psychic nature of the many digits and many palms makes it clear at all times that they come from the same source and that there should not be as many as there are. That's to say nothing about the various beams and lasers that get involved as well, though lasers are one of the rarer points of distress. He's a spy and an infiltrator mostly out of a more psychological necessity, but he's far from lacking the ability to push through brute-force-style.
Desire Stars	You seem to have acclimated.     "Hoh?" His distinctive amused-interest noise. One can practically imagine the smirk. "Thanks for noticing, Era-senpai."     Na-Go, meanwhile, responds to 'her' Era, once the soldiers near the cart are handled: "I wish I didn't have to... but I do, and I haven't forgotten what you taught me. Thank you."     She proves it, too, moments later, when the javelins start to fly. The flat of the Beat Axe splinters a javelin, the force of the throw driving her slightly back across the embattled ground. Digging her heel in, she advances with one foor and swings hip to shoulder, incinerating another with a curtain of roiling flame to the tune of a distorted shriek from the guitar.     No longer fresh-faced though she might be, Na-Go is nowhere near Galle's equal in that regard. Her swkward dive to avoid his swooping attack saves her from being completely frozen over, but sparks still fly from where the swung spear rakes across her leg as she slides under the cart.     After he passes, she crawls out from beneath, favoring her leg, to clumsily hurl a return fireball at the three-rank formation, the projectile exploding on contact with the first solid substance.     Geats, meanwhile, tracks Galle, the wyvern rider's form translating in and out of his scope as the rifle's muzzle traces a patient, methodical trajectory. The crosshairs find him, then crawl from the rider's chest to his shoulder, then along his arm, down to his hand.      *It's not really a javelin, but he's using the strap to throw it like one. Could I shoot the strap when he throws it? Maybe I *could*, but he isn't stupid. If I miss, that's the only chance he'll give me.*     The crosshairs retreat back up Galle's arm.     *No... better to pick something a little easier to hit, without being so obvious as 'shooting the wyvern's wing.' He's a master rider. Probably handled plenty of young archers who thought the same thing. How is he throwing it?*     Geats looks for where Galle's hand rests on the spear for those artful flicks, lowering the rifle once the officer's weapon lashes outwards to see all of his body at once; how his upper body is held, where his weight rests, what parts of his arm tense and release for the swing.     *Exactly the form I'd expect from someone of his experience. Flat in the hand, arm back and straight, twist at the waist, release the thumb and forefinger.*     The sights hover for a weighty moment over Galle's fingers, as the sky overhead forms a dizzying backdrop in the sweeping scope.     *There? No. Not quite. ...he could switch to the other arm pretty easily and still control the wyvern. Further up.*     Geats waits for Galle to make another wind-up with Maltet, then slides the scope up to catch Galle's elbow in his sights. Three red lances of light race from the Magnum Shooter to the wyvern rider's inner elbow.
Lilian Rook	'King Mordred is, I'm afraid, quite infirm with grief after the death of his son. It's not his fault.'     "I was raised to understand that a king doesn't have time for grief." says Lilian. Cold, but without contempt. "The more that everyone depends upon you, the less you have time for your feelings."     . . . . . .     'They'll hang her for spectacle'     "Then everyone else this country is a pack of savages, and the people of Bern are no better than King Zephiel thinks they are."     Lilian wasn't relying on Aidan's wind wall in the first place; not because she expected it to fail, but because she refuses to. The javelins that scatter down around her in the right places to be threatening are things that she weaves around by reflex while tracking their arc in the top of her vision. The wall of icy wind that blows down the group's only real defense against them causes her to slow and brace her stinging eyes behind her arm, and then forces her to fend off the two that blow her way, one ringing crash like steel on glass after the other.     'I don't like spectacle. But I don't fear you.'     "I know well that all you care about is the sky, General."     Lilian hadn't failed to notice Durandal, nor the Fire Emblem, so it's hardly possible for her to miss Maltet. The aura of the weapon is overpowering enough, but what it means occupies her more than the newly increased threat. "It's because of of it that Zephiel sees you as a perfect tool to carry out his truth, isn't it? Or does that spear in your hand not mean anything?!"     Lilian flickers side to side between two roving sweeps of Maltet, then rolls underneath the angle of a third. Picking up speed, she runs towards the back wall of the fortress at an increasingly unreasonable tilt. Maltet whiplashes back, and Lilian turns and leaps to put herself behind Night Mist and off the ground, catching the haft just below the blade on the flat of her sword.     Launched away from the blow, Lilian spins backward to catch the fortress wall with her feet, and absorbs the impact through both her legs and a burst of propulsion magic. She denies gravity before it can take hold, redirecting herself upward and kicking down against the corner of the roof where she passes, using it to gain a burst more speed and leaving only a black crackle behind.     A hundred feet into the air, she feels her arms cramp and slow. Her eye catches on the sunlight glinting off the coating of rime on Night Mist. Then Lilian realizes she can barely feel her hands, and her heart slams into her ribs. Galle swoops right by her, and Lilian's attempt at magic cracks and falls apart from the shaking of her frozen fingers. She has to land again, on the roof, amidst a small group of javeliners that she clears from around her with a pair of hewing arcs around her and tackling through them when they flinch back.     "And I know the only thing you're afraid of is touching the ground!" Lilian shouts after Galle as she accelerates back towards the building edge and takes off again. It's not safe to approach the wyvern from behind, and neither of them in a straight line-- she knows that from last time-- so halfway through her shot, she falls from above instead. Galle can block her, but absorbing a fraction of her momentum should upset the wyvern's flight; and hurt her frostbitten arms.
Lilian Rook	"Hanging is the fate of traitors, Galle; not people like her, and not even people like you. For someone who swears there's only one place he can be, you're certainly starting to look gilded and comfortable, General!"     Lilian sidesteps her own landing to avoid being caught in fall, then clenches her shaking hands and stabs one wrist with the other's fingers and a crackling point of distortion, doing an hour's natural thawing in a second. Her fingers burn, but the throbbing is better than the numbness.     "If any other king offered you wings; if anyone else could show you how to fly; would you even take it? Cecilia is the only one who hasn't betrayed Etruria, but can you even betray Bern? Are you loyal to the crown or the sky, Galle?"
Hamada Haru	Something about what Na-Go says seems to bother Dynamic Era Prime. He sweeps a burst of intangibility-inducing steam across the battlefield, momentarily rendering immaterial whatever happens to charge into it unwarily and briefly producing a wall of effective-cover for Na-Go. He seems less concerned about the battlefield conditions after that, following Na-Go from cover back out into the open, toggling his transteam gun to a DELETION PROTOCOL: ICE and spraying Na-Go casually to get rid of the surface freezing at least. It won't do anything to immediately raise her temperature, but it's better than remaining persistently under the status effect. "If you don't want to be a Kamen Rider, don't be," he advises. The second Dynamic Era retreats to Ace's position, holstering his transteam gun and investigating his own frozen limb. He comments, "'Era-senpai', is it... I think you're one of your bunch that doesn't need that so much. But alright, if that's how you want to look at it."
Desire Stars	If you don't want to be a Kamen Rider, don't be.     Na-Go utters a sharp sigh of relief after Era deletes the ice. "I do," she says, almost desperately eager. "It's just... hard. Seeing all of this so often. But it isn't going to go away unless someone makes it go away. So..." 'Era-senpai', is it...     Geats makes an amused 'hmh' at Era. "I was teasing you," he admits. "I didn't think you'd actually go along with it. Guess having Petra around to stamp her feet at stuff like that has spoiled me."
Marigold	"We're getting her back. I'll make it so."      Roy's still breathing hard from subduing the soldier he's currently holding at (their own) spearpoint, but he finds a moment to smile- still sadness-tinged- back at Mia. Then she's off.      The most immediately obvious effect of Haru's sabotage is the great wooden front door groaning and becoming Petra-slammable with the loss of its hinges, exposing the old fort's interior. But it smooths Mia, Petra, and Flamel's path inside too- the Bernish soldiers that remain inside are busy trying not to let locusts eat their weapons or only have spearpointless sticks to menace with while choking on Odette's pepper-spray, all the interior doors have fallen off their nonexistent hinges too, and somewhere a candle falling out of its now-vanished holder has started a panic with a small fire.      Effectively shoving-and-lashing through the disarmed and panicky troops, little luckier than the pepper-sprayed and icicle-stabbed ones outside, it doesn't take long to find the stairs down to the cellar. It's dark down there, and unpleasantly chilly-and-humid, and barrels of wine that have had their metal straps vanish are now oozing all over the floor, and there might have been metal-barred cells once but now the bars are gone creating disorienting alcoves, and--      "Stop. Don't... move, please."      It's a soft, unfamiliar, almost trembly young woman's voice. A second later, a light source ignites: an ominous purple flame, illuminating the girl who holds it with the menace of a loaded gun. She looks remarkably like Zephiel's companion Iðunn, even down to her strange robes (though hers are ragged-edged).      A dark magic tome is clutched in her other hand, the only weapon here not to contain an ounce of metal. But she's the only thing left standing between you and Cecilia.
Marigold	Lucius and Clarine have to scramble to cover the Galle-inflicted casualties with their healing staves: Lance the horseman down with a nasty frostbite gouge to the thigh, Chad clutching his gut on the ground and tensely trying to insist he's fine, Dieck still standing after a stab through the shoulder. It's hard to imagine this being sustainable without them.      Trudy's warming rune doubles the speed of their work by reversing the frostbite, letting at least Dieck return to the fray; he claps her on the shoulder as hasty thanks, maybe a little too hard for someone wizard-skinny.      Wyverns are naturally armored, but not quite bulletproof, and Madeleine's arrows and Nonon's javelin test that sorely. It cants to the side and shrieks as it's pelted, almost spilling Galle off; he adjusts admirably, but then in the middle of straining to steer with one hand and hold off Lilian's crashing blow with Maltet in the other, its wings spasm from the venom. It plummets, and Khosa's axes burst to shred its wing-membranes just as it struggles to reverse its dive, and so it slams into the ground just behind Roy's army.      Galle himself lands gracefully on his feet half a second later, just as the boarishly irate reptile is starting to crawl back upright too. He gets off one more throw-whipcrack-sweep to clear space- but his eyes are on those near him, and his troops are thinned enough that when he winds back for another throw, Ace shoots him in the throwing arm and makes him stagger with a grunt of pain. Glaring at the beams' source, Galle shifts to obstruct Ace's aim behind a ruined wagon and shifts Maltet to his other hand. That's one option cut off now.      When Dieck and Rutger make a team assault, though- Dieck harrying the wyvern and Rutger flickering close for a killing blow on Galle- he proves that he's ambidextrous enough to still fend them off. One-two-three-four quick ice-clinking blade-clashes are enough to numb Rutger's arm, though not lastingly damaged (thanks Trudy!), and then they retreat with a close-in kick (thanks Lilian!) to Galle's ribs.
Marigold	"Then everyone else this country is a pack of savages"      "Hm."      "If any other king offered you wings; if anyone else could show you how to fly; would you even take it?"      "No," he says without hesitation, then coughs and resets to a ready stance despite the hot blood trickling from his arm. "It doesn't matter who could give me the sky. Or who would, now that they fear me. Only who did when I was weak. If you can't grasp that, don't waste air."      But she more than likely can.      "Oh come on! You are literally riding a wyvern! I thought it killed those too!!"      Galle has only one thing to say on the legitimacy of him wielding one of the Divine Weapons:      "Barigan the knight rode a horse."      He seems to think that explains everything; or at least, he's uninterested in explaining to anyone who doesn't grasp it.      Anyone else trying to take advantage of Galle's grounded state faces the same hedge Rutger and Dieck did: the wyvern's tough hide, protective instincts, and snapping jaws make it hard to out-reach or brute-overwhelm him, Maltet's frostbite effect makes sustained close-in combat hard to maintain (though a fair bit easier now with Peorth's protection), and his skill even with one arm wounded makes him hard to out-finesse. Na-Go's fireball promises to thin out his ground support, but then he whistles, and it's his wyvern that lunges to take the attack on its side instead of the spearmen, still snapping but worse for wear. In turn, they keep the bulk of Roy's troops from overwhelming him.      For whatever reason, though, he's certainly not making as much of an effort to stop Cecilia's rescue as he could be.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine stalks a wide circle around Galle, firing potshots at the wyvern to keep it poisoned. "What's Zephiel promised you, anyway? Half a kingdom? All the wyverns you could ride?" A pause. Her stare hardens. "Melady?" She breathes out a cloud of vapor and guides it with a motion of her free hand into one of her ice-wolves, then another, and the pack spreads out, fending off attempts by Bernish soldiers to interfere. "You saw what happened with Narcian. When he no longer has need of you, you'll be disposed of. Do you really expect a happy retirement after this is through?"
Trudy Grimm	A clap on the shoulder from Dieck might be too much for a wizard-skinny witch, but Trudy isn't born of such fragile stock. As the sort of woman who cavorts with adventurers Hector's size or more, she withstands the burly mercenary's thanks with aplomb; giving him a sharp-toothed smile in response.     The others, bolstered by the Rune of the Hearth, do their best work together in bringing Galle to the ground, though his wyrm is still very much alive. The witch lifts her free hand and gestures. The shadow cast by the beast darkens. Beside her, the Black Knight hefts his blade, mist still swirling off his gauntlets when he suddenly drops into his shadow as if the ground had just disappeared beneath him.     A split-second later, the massive Black Knight erupts out of the wyvern's shadow right in Galle's face, behind the protective barrier provided by the beast's large and armored body. He concludes his leap by bringing his greatsword down in a broad, heavy arc that rings its steel against the ground. There isn't even a moment of recovery before he's hurling his body forward, shoulder-first, straight for the center of the Wyvern-General's chestplate.     In this smooth train of motions, the Knight's grip on his greatsword shifts to one hand. The other reaches for the haft of Maltet, whether to hinder his ability to use it or try to claim it is unclear. The towering warrior says nothing, not even grunting with exertion, only the sickly green glow of pinprick eyes behind the visor of his helmet indicate the armor is even inhabited in the first place.
Dysnomia	The soft sound of Flamel hitting the wall behind Dysnomia makes her pause, turning about...Giving space for a spearman to thrust at her back--     --But all Dysnomia feels is a sharp poke. When she turns around, she sees a soldier, in dissolving armor, staring at the locust-writhed point...Or rather, LACK of a point...In horror. She snarls with something close to frustration, as these enemy combatants became something far more fragile and helpless and suddenly NOT something safe for her to take her anger out on. Mist writhed and shoved disoriented Bernish soldiers against the fort walls as she stalked through the halls.     Joined up with the other intruders as closed on the cellar--grimacing briefly in remembrance as her eyes fall on Flamel, considering whether it might have been better to breathe a molten hole in the fort's side.     Then she thought of the Look that Sue had given her, while she'd wrestled the red dragon down. Of 'why do you tolerate the Enemy?' Of Durandel.     Dysnomia averted her eyes. Thought on it no more.     "Stop. Don't... move, please."     It's the trembling in her voice that brings Dysnomia pause. But not much. "We're getting her out of here, one way or another." She growled, threat implicit. "Are you going to be a problem?"
Khosa	"And I bet he did it without wielding a horse-killing lance!" Khosa doesn't actually know who Barigan was, though, so perhaps he did. (One day she'll sit down and read through the legends around here, in her copious free time between battles and other actions and time spent in other worlds entirely.) Khosa's first instinct is to take advantage of the fact that they've grounded him, but it's obvious it's not quite as easy as that; unlike some of the riders she's fought before, Galle is skilled on foot and his wyvern is perfectly capable of defending itself grounded. But Echidna wants an opening... Khosa lumbers forward, making it look like she's the big slow brute that you might guess she is - but then she accelerates. Some subtle changes to her legs give her a springier gait that sends her forward faster than a run, almost as fast as a horse as she whips around to the side of the wyvern, then behind, and - Well. Khosa tried this stunt against the dragon, and it barely worked; it was just too big for her to do it to. But Galle's wyvern is quite a bit smaller. So what she does is attempt to grab it by the tail, twist, and pull - pull hard enough for her to lift one of the legs off the ground and get under *that*, carrying it across her broad shoulders and back with a roar. It will get her clawed; she knows it will get her clawed, she's already reinforcing her back with a chitinous carapace, giving her a hunched silhouette but making it harder to drive a claw downward and into her flesh. With another roar, cut off slightly into a grunt, Khosa pushes her psychometabolism further. Her body flushes, visibly, and her muscles stand out as she bears the wyvern's weight, pulling it back so that it cannot lunge forward and protect Galle with jaws and its own body, dragging step by stomping step. She knows it won't last long. She can't bear it indefinitely - not because of the weight, she can wrestle titans, but because she needs to be on the *ground* to get leverage. If it leaps to take off, she can try dragging it down, but if it actually gets airborne with her there's not a lot she can do but hang on. But for a few moments? She gives herself good odds - and when those moments are done, she can pivot and drive the wyvern into the ground.
Petra Soroka	In the lingering remnants of Dynamic Era's locust swarm, Petra wonders if she's somehow failing some arbitrary metric as a Kamen Rider by not leaning more into her suit's bee theme. Ace is, of course, really suited to being a fox; Neon's cat thing makes sense; Ace's boyfriend is dumb enough for bull horns; but Petra isn't particularly bee-ish. Her morphmetal flechettes *do* kind of swarm and sting, at least, but she's missing any sort of personality resonance, right?     After all, what do bees even do? They do brainless little tasks, and then they fuck and die for their queen, so--     Petra is content with Sting Silver's bee theme for now. This isn't the time to think about such things.     Being battered on by panicking soldiers whose weapons are already broken enough to not even manage to draw sparks off of Petra's armor is about as villain-coded as Sting Silver has ever been, ironically in the middle of a rescue operation. The dully glowing yellow hexcomb eyes set in the mostly black mask don't give any clue to her expression as she grabs a soldier's spear-stick as they lunge at her, yanking them closer off-balance, and then backhanding them aside with her gauntlet.     Once she's out of Galle's reach, though, and the soliders are already flailing from Odette's pepper spray and half-disarmed, there's practically no reason to stay suited up anymore. Petra throws her last victim aside and hurries down the cellar stairs, and her suit vanishes midway down in a flash of light and smoke, which turns out to be a terrible idea. The night vision she'd built up by adjusting to the cellar is flashbanged away by her own detransformation, leaving her squinting and blind when she reaches the room with Cecilia, transteam gripped warily but without any idea where would be safe or useful to aim it. "Stop. Don't... move, please."     Petra freezes, acquiescing to the command even with how softly it's spoken. The image that flashes into her mind is a nervous gunman in the dark, and when the woman's tome flares to life, she's vindicated in everything but the period-appropriate aesthetics. Petra doesn't loosen her grip on the gun, but it stays down by her side as she sizes up the girl. Having not ever seen Iðunn any closer than 'across a battlefield', there's no conclusions she can draw there, but she can estimate from other things.     "Hey, uh..." Automatically matching the tentative tone either makes Petra seem nonthreatening, or like a wimpy bitch pleading at gunpoint. "The fort's pretty much already cleared out. There's no real way you're keeping Cecilia, not with all of us against you. So, um... you also don't move?"     "Like, uh, Galle outside was just saying about how her only point as a prisoner is to get executed publicly. That's not *really* worth a fight, I think, unless you're a real sicko about public executions."
Odette Raskins	With the door taken off its hinges, Odette sees a clear-ish path inside! The soldiers are still an ever present threat, but they do seem to be somewhat preoccupied with Haru's strange cloudof stuff. "G.. Good thinking, Mister...!" She calls out as she rebalances her bag on her arm, keeping the hole higher up so stuff doesn't spill out as she keeps running. She knows for a fact she's met this Rider before, but his name... She's drawing a blank on that right now. "Um. Mister Rider!" Sprinting into the fort proper, Odette takes advantage of the chaos to just keep running, slipping around the panicked soldiers as best she can if she can't just avoid them. "Just... Get out of the castle and go home! Nobody has to get hurt if you leave while you still can!" She shouts in half-pleading, half-warning while trying to glare at the soldiers she rushes by as threateningly as possible (not very). Those that actually try to swing at her even with their weapons gone are given a wider berth, of course, but she's bound to get clipped by a fist or three on the way to the cellar. Nevertheless, Odette still makes it into the colder cellar area, only taking a brief moment to pop some painkillers before she notices all the wine spreading along the floor. Wary of the potential fire hazard that might present, she gingerly steps further in and stops upon hearing an unfamiliar voice. More worrying is the purple flame coming up besides the source of the voice. That's enough to get a startled yelp from Odette along with the EMT raising her hands hastily to show that she's not armed. "C.. Careful! Don't drop that, or the..." She gestures at the wine with her head, visibly terrified at what the Iðunn-esque girl might do with that flame. Dysnomia's implied threat and Petra's somewhat more obvious intimidation tactic gets her breath to hitch for a moment, too, and she shakes her head quickly at robed girl like she's trying to warn her away from testing either of them. Noticing the similarities at that moment and the state of her robes, however, Odette taps on her visor to try and get a better read on both her and Cecilia, to see if either of them are injured. "W-we're just here to get her out of here. And... If anyone's hurt, I can treat them! Y-you, too, if... If we can just all settle down, okay?"
Desire Stars	It doesn't matter who could give me the sky. Or who would, now that they fear me. Only who did when I was weak. If you can't grasp that, don't waste air.     "Except you're wasting it right now, acting like the sky is the only thing that ever mattered to you!" Na-Go hurls at Galle, on the heels of a ray of fire from the head of the Beat Axe. "You told us, the last time we fought, to stop trying to take Melady from you. *Then,* when she said her heart led her to Lycia, with Guinivere, you told her to start by killing you."     An anthem rises up from the weapon as she shifts her grip to hold it more like the instrument it also is, the subwoofers on her armor bouncing to the beat she supplies. Everyone swarming Galle suddenly finds their battle fatigue less insurmountable, their swings more true and spirited.     "Anyone could see how much you both mean to each other. How you looked when she left, and--and!! How *she* looked, sitting at a banquet *without* you. So why are you acting like only Bern was ever there for you, when it might be *them* that finally 'takes her from you?!'"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel freezes in place. His eyes lock onto the robes and the book. He knows: If he takes a shot at this psychic landscape, there's *risks*, and she's likely to respond violently. So, he has to call on an older skill of mentalists. An ancient tactic that any telepath has to use when his telepathy suddenly fails. A skill natural to any spy, as well.     Bullshit.     "Woah! You're pushing yourself pretty hard, to be holding a weapon like that." Flamel says, still staying totally still. "But! Even though I'm a psychic, I don't *think* I need to get into your brain to know that sound of voice. That's the tone of voice of," He breaks his freezing to gesture broadly and smile. "Someone who's already decided to look for an opportunity to stop doing something bad! Right?"     His smile is wide. His voice is friendly. His eyes are... completely hidden behind the sunglasses, but they're *probably* kind, right? He puts his hands together. "Look, *this* is that opportunity, trust me. I bet," He waves one index finger thoughtfully. "It was probably a few months ago that you made that soft-call, right? When the coups and betrayals started happening, I mean. Well, here's the moment! Look, let me tell you about Roy."     If she doesn't blast him to death instantly, he wanders over to put a hand on her shoulder and gesture out the door. "Roy's our boy. He's kind, and sincere, and he's *really* getting a lot of people to work together and get the world fixed. And-- emphatically, I don't mean Zephiel's 'destroy the world in the infinite crucible of absolute strength-contest violence.' I mean, primarily, fighting guys who keep do death-camp slavery, or saving villages from burning. You like saving towns from being burned down, or rescuing innocent people from torture-labor, or saving the world, right?"     He shifts his voice a lot as well, into an even more sincere tone. "Listen: I'm gonna come clean with you here. I mostly want to get to know you as a person, because *that* looks like dark magic and I need to learn a lot. *But* I think you should get a lot of nice things too. You know?"     Flamel is cold-reading. She said literally *four* words to him. God help us, he's doing the best he can.
Lilian Rook	'It doesn't matter who could give me the sky. Or who would, now that they fear me.'     Lilian can land, recover, force the feeling back into her arms, and ready her guard against Galle again, now dragged to ground where she can better fight him, but she can't ignore the echo in the back of her mind. Though she watches him closely for openings, Lilian's approach is stopped after the first step. Her breath catches. Something aches behind her eyes.     'And now that I've decided to at least have what I want, you're trying to run it back because you're afraid! That just proves all along that I was right you bastards!'     "That being so . . ." Lilian breathes through her teeth, trying to quash the feeling that weakens her sword hand, and hammer it deep down somewhere it won't spring up again.     'Only who did when I was weak. If you can't grasp that, don't waste air.'     "Is there any point in taking up arms to crush the people who never knew?" says Lilian, and then grits her teeth, because despite trying to swallow the words, it came out as a real question. "Can it really be true that out of everyone Bern has made suffer, not one of them would have done the same as Zephiel, if only you'd ever met? If you never even think about that, then isn't this all just patriotism by another name?"     'Well if they won't, I will! I'll blame you for this! This is your fault, not mine!'     "How does that not weigh on you? Why doesn't Melady? Do you have any idea what you mean to her?"
Hamada Haru	"It doesn't go away," Dynamic Era says, bleakly. "Sometimes it stops being your responsibility in particular, but it never goes away. The first Kamen Rider of our era was an experiment of Imperial Japan and remnants of Nazi Germany. The first Kamen Rider that we know of was from a pre-Mesopotamian civilization that had a certain amount of interest in alchemy. His belt utilized the essence of created beings in order to transform him. The consequences of his misconduct is still present in the world today." "That's why I think a wish is fair compensation." The second iteration of Dynamic Era shrugs at Geats. "Sorry... it has to really rile me up for me to get like that, and usually the solution isn't words. Right now..." His gaze turns across the battlefield again. Galle is 'down' -- which is to say that he's no longer mounted on the back of a wyvern. Haru isn't entirely certain what it takes to kill a wyvern, or to keep it restrained, but from the looks of things he'd guess it has the same sorts of limits one would expect of any very large animal. The second Dynamic Era toggles his transteam gun. For that matter, that limitation applies to Galle as well-- and all things being equal, he'd prefer if Kamen Riders weren't party to somebody getting hacked to death on a battlefield more than was absolutely necessary. "Creation Protocol: Pit." The swarm of nanomachine locusts, having performed the task of getting rid of the metal, go about the task of beginning to slope the area of the battlefield Galle and his Wyvern are in into a stubby plateau separated from the surroundings by a widening pit-- at first the hazard that's being sculpted into the landscape is barely a nuisance, and the mound of material that's coming out of the earth and being piled up nearby is as little concern as a small hole dug in the sand of a beach. It's only a few moments, though, before the sculpted pit surrounding the plateau grows to a meter wide-- and then five, and soon enough ten. A toggle midway through the process sees the redistributed material being turned into a compacted dirt-and-stone wall that rises above the pit, steadily turning a maybe-accomplishable-by-a-middling-superhuman jump into a truly daunting jump-and-climb along a wall that is stable enough... but dubious to test.
Marigold	"What's Zephiel promised you, anyway?"      Madeleine doesn't even have to finish her goading. That alone- the assumption that he must have been promised something- colors Galle's sharply neutral expression with disgust. Maybe that affects his target priority; maybe it's just the ice wolves. He overextends to try to one-armed lunge-and-thrust at her with Maltet past his soldiers, and then--      Just barely pivots, bringing up Maltet to avoid being bisected by the Black Knight. Even blocking the strike drives him to one knee; his arm ought to be jarring-numb, but he still slices Maltet across the Black Knight's throat (how is Galle supposed to know he doesn't bleed or breathe?) before being body-checked backwards too.      He can't rationally explain the Knight's undead nature, but his subconscious mind has already accepted in an instant that flesh wounds won't work here. Another flash of the snowflake-blade after reeling threatens to cut off the Black Knight's main hand at the wrist, but now Galle's badly out of position...      Galle's wyvern, wing-shredded past easy flight, has few options for escaping Khosa's grip. It rakes at her, just like she'd expected; its tail lashes, still keeping other enemies at bay; its long neck cranes around, trying to rip at her with those brutish jaws- but as long as she can handle that, she can keep it there. Galle, currently locked in the heroic effort of trying to wrench Maltet away from the Black Knight's grip, isn't urgently driven to free it. It's still serving its purpose of blocker and threat-zone, as far as he's concerned.      "And I bet he did it without wielding a horse-killing lance!"      A soft scorn-noise escapes him amid the grunts of effort. He must've meant something else.      "Is there any point in taking up arms to crush the people who never knew?"      "I don't owe might-have-beens, he grunts through his exertion. "I'm not special. If others are kind, they have their own Galles." He isn't as strong as the Black Knight, but he's unaffected by Maltet's embrittling chill, while Trudy's warming rune can only slow the crawl of frost up the Black Knight's arms and the groaning of embrittled metal and bone. A moment or two longer like this--      "Why doesn't Melady? Do you have any idea what you mean to her?"      "Khhhh--" For a split second, he falters in the spear tug-of-war.      "Anyone could see how much you both mean to each other."      His teeth grit. Even though he has endurance left, his hands tremble.      "How you looked when she left, and--and!! How *she* looked, sitting at a banquet *without* you."      That hurts. Still straining, he turns his face away from Neon in shame.      "... when it might be *them* that finally 'takes her from you?!'"      "Shut up. That won't happen-- I won't let--"
Marigold	Echidna had asked for a distraction. With brutal efficiency, she decides now is the perfect time. Galle is still treating his grappled wyvern as a solid obstacle; she's still sixty feet away, but wrestling with the Black Knight, he's in the perfect position.      "Hah!!" Armads, the Thunder Axe, a weapon made for a colossus, soars through the air like a hurled caber, smoothly cuts the wyvern in half along a glowing golden plane without even slowing, and then slams into Galle from the side with a meaty crunch. He's flung fifteen feet by the sheer impact, skidding to a halt at the edge of Haru's terraformed plateau.      Gasping in pain, he lays there on his side for a moment. Then- "Aaaaagh!"- he roars in adrenaline-fueled exertion, jerks Maltet from the Dark Knight's grasp by its leather throwing-strap, and uses it like a cane to push himself back to standing. Wounded, isolated from the remaining Bernish soldiers by the pit-terraforming, surrounded and demoralized, it's impossible to see a way he could win. He knows it too.      "My duty's done," Galle rasps. "Take what you came for." The adrenaline coursing through his body lets him forget his Geats-wounded arm for a moment. He draws back the Blizzard Spear for one more throw... up? Towards the Trudy-blinded wyvern still circling overhead. It pierces a saddlebag perfectly, and the javelin-leash snaps taut and whisks him away, just before he swings up onto its back. A blinded wyvern can't fight, but with a seeing rider, it can fly.      The Bernish soldiers nearer Roy's army start laying down their arms, while those further away are more likely to take their chances on fleeing. It's up to you whether or not to pursue, but few of the locals like the idea.
Marigold	Down in the fort's basement . . .      "Someone who's already decided to look for an opportunity to stop doing something bad!"      "Um... ah..." Flamel doesn't get blasted to death instantly! But he's scoring a lot of psychological near-misses; enough that she neither latches on nor shuts him down, but just starts looking more and more bewildered as he keeps talking. "I'm sorry, I don't..."      "... unless you're a real sicko about public executions."      "I'm...! I'm not a 'sicko'...!" the girl feebly protests. The flame in her hand glows a little brighter. "I don't... care, how many of you, I won't..."      "We're getting her out of here, one way or another."      "Where are you taking her? Who... who are you...? I- I don't recognize..." Her eyes sort of fail to focus on Mia for a moment, and there's something 'off' about them, but in the dim light it's hard to tell for certain.      Fortunately, just as Flamel's hand on her shoulder is making her flinch and point the flame at his face--      "Sophia. If they're with Roy, they're- they're friends. Oh, what a relief, I recognize some of you." "Ah... Cecilia... you shouldn't be standing..."      Dead woman walking. Cecilia, leaning on the masonry corner of what must have been her (and Sophia's?) cell before Haru disintegrated the bars, looks like she should be in a hospital bed on several monitors. Strips of purple cloth torn from Sophia's robes cover her wounds- a cut on her leg that must have downed her, more on her arms from fighting back, and the finishing blow that left a cut from her nose all the way down to her hip. Old blood paints her clothes, and new blood seeps through the bandages with the effort of staying upright. Sophia rushes to her side to keep her steady, turning her palm upright to use the purple flame as light instead of a weapon.      "Goodness, I've never been happier to see a friendly face. I would like a healer, if you all don't mind," Cecilia weakly jokes. "This extraordinary young woman has been doing her best for me, but..." "I'm sorry..." "No, don't be! And- I have urgent news for Roy. About Bern's plans, and the nature of our new friend."      Oh. That's what's wrong with this girl's eyes. When she brings the flame close enough to her face, her pupils constrict to slits.
Trudy Grimm	The Black Knight has no intention of letting go. He shifts his feet, keeping himself balanced, not quite able to reach Galle with his sword while keeping the spear itself under control. The cold digs at his hand and arm. Frozen slashes across his chest and throat glitter with the frozen marks of direct hits. He does not bleed, or breathe, or relent.     When Armads strikes and Galle is flung away by its mighty impact, the Black Knight rears back and thrusts his hand aloft, the legendary spear firm in his grasp. His sword, barely held now by a hand that has lost several fingers in the wrestling match for the snowflake spear, is released, dropping to the ground with a clatter.     For the first time since anyone has met the Black Knight, he makes a sound: A haunting, rhythmic, grating rasp of a laugh from lungs that haven't functioned in far too long. It doesn't last. The unnerving sound ends suddenly when Maltet is wrenched from his grasp. When Galle gets his hands back on it, he finds the Black Knight's hand is also still on it-- though no longer attached to the rest of the Black Knight's arm.     The towering warrior crouches, collecting his sword in his left hand. His helmet tilts back, watching the rapidly diminishing speck of the fleeing, cursed wyvern. When he can no longer see it, his gaze turns downwards and he raises the stump of his right wrist. Soundlessly, his shoulders rise, then fall slowly in a silent sigh of disappointment.     Trudy doesn't move from where she'd been standing this whole time. With the soldiers mostly under control and the Wyvern General now retreating, though, she shifts her posture to support the Grimoire with both hands and put more of her focus into the cozy, comforting warmth of the Hearth Rune.     "So they do have hearts out in Bern, eh?" Grimnir observes from his safe perch near Merlinus' caravan. Clasping his pipe between his teeth, the old sage closes his single eye, murmuring, "Even the most stalwart man cannot be truly an island. Kept in good supply of sanity and stability by the thin but unbreakable threads of the bonds he has forged. Ahh... It would make for a good story, wouldn't it? Heh heh..."
Odette Raskins	"I'm...! I'm not a 'sicko'...!" "I- I don't recognize..." Odette's hunch that she couldn't put into words was right: This girl's desperate, but not to kill people or keep anyone from Cecilia. No, she's the plus one Flamel mentioned, and that realization (along with Cecilia calming Sophia down) has the EMT visibly relaxing as she lets her arms down and rests them over her medical bag. "Thank goodness.. Ah. E-everyone's outside fighting back the Bern... Berns? A-anyway. Let's get..." Trailing off as she approaches the pair, Odette frowns lightly when she sees the extent of Cecilia's wounds. It could be much worse without the makeshift bandages made from Sophia's clothes, at least, and that effort doesn't go unnoticed. Stopping by Sophia, Odette gives her an encouraging, if still somewhat harried smile. "You did good with what you had. I-I'll take it from here, okay? Just keep that ball up because.. Um." She's still worried about all that wine exploding. The slit pupils, meanwhile, don't even get a second glance from the EMT. Taking things from here, of course, has to start with actually being able to get Cecilia out of here without just letting her bleed out trying to move her. Setting her bag down on the floor, Odette takes out a thin black... Tarp? And lays it out on the ground before gesturing at Cecilia to lay down. "Won't be more than a few minutes, and then you should be able to move a little easier than.. Er. Like now. And... Can someone get me some spears? O-or just some long sticks." Although it's not necessary for Cecilia to do so, lying down would make the rest of the treatment easier: Replacing those torn-clothes bandages with medicated ones, taping a blood pack to her arm and jabbing the attached needle in to get get some fresh blood moving, and even covering up some of the other gashes with more bandages. "We'll get the rest taken care of once we're out of here, okay? Then we can catch up on everything else after." If any spears/longer sticks are forthcoming, meanwhile, Odette does a little improvising tying the body bag to the sticks on each end, fashioning it into a makeshift stretcher so she can conscript someone to get the back end for safely transporting Cecilia out of the cellar.
Flamel Parsons	"Oh, she works for *you!*" Flamel snaps his fingers. "Sorry, I'm used to people with this outfit having problematic minds to look at, I couldn't scan your allegiance." He approaches Cecilia. "We've got a *great* medic here, get yourself sorted!" He leans in again, as if imparting a secret. "I've seen her bring back a death-curse guy, so you're in laws-of-nature-violating hands! Really amazing stuff!"     Pulling back, he puts a finger to his temple as if checking a radio. "All good? Oh, great!" Cheerfully, he returns to the present conversation. "The man flying around upstairs experienced massive despair and internal conflict, which I think means we've managed to pull another one out. Let's make sure we either get moving or get some hinges back on the doors before Bern gets back, otherwise we'll have more trouble. While you're in the middle of resting and recovering, too, which is just awful! Welcome onboard, Cecilia, let's get you to Roy so you two can collaborate."
Lilian Rook	'I don't owe might-have-beens. I'm not special. If others are kind, they have their own Galles.'     Lilian hadn't known what she'd expected. She couldn't even tell whether the choice to reach out like that was because she desperately didn't wanted to make Melady, didn't want to be a part of Galle being killed, wanted that thorn to lodge in him like it did her, or because she wanted to know if there was an answer. The fact that this man could still justify it doesn't shock her, but the terrible simplicity of the words cut away so much mystery and indecision that it feels like an injury.     It leaves her frozen in place. Lilian says "I wish I hadn't heard that.", dredged up from somewhere deep enough to hurt.     'Shut up. That won't happen-- I won't let--'     "But that is already happening. You aren't stupid, so don't pretend you can't feel her slipping from your grasp, Galle." Lilian says, steeling herself. "You don't lose people all at once; they slip away from you bit by bit, from a hundred hurts that you never healed. Every day she has to choose Guinivere over you, and it hurts her, and it's because you made her. However important Bern is to you, you're already choosing it, and you can't have both."     'My duty's done. Take what you came for.'     "I hope you come to mean that. If I were you, I would never have let her out of my sight."