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Owner	Pose
Marigold	Eastern mountains of the Missur Peninsula, Etruria      In an encampment of Cecilia's irregulars.      Following Fae's rescue, the army has a thankfully restful week traveling south. Save for occasional scouting wyvern riders flying overhead- which makes everyone scramble for cover, but which thankfully never seem to notice Roy's army- there's no sign of hostiles.      Up into the soft switchbacks of the mossy Missurian mountains, erosion-smoothed by the very rain they steal from the desert, Cecilia starts to piece her army (once thousands) back together by the dozens, preparing them to march against Bern. News percolates down that Perceval's army is beginning to move against Galle too, who- with his back to the anvil of a reluctant 'ally' in General Douglas, and soon to be facing two hammers- must be growing desperate.      There's a cozy rhythm to it. Shanna and Thea pause their sibling-fussing to fly ahead to local villages, use their resistance bona fides to ask about sightings of local guerillas, and then direct Cecilia and the rest of the army there. Whenever she walks into a camp of her former men, they light up like their hearts have just started beating again, and she slips into serenely-concerned command.      A little fussing, a little healing from Lucius and Clarine (perhaps with coaching for Odette), a little re-armament with Roy's theft-bolstered supplies, a warm night together around the campfire sharing stories of brave resistance and comrades lost, and then she dispatches them north, to await their triumphant sweep against Bern together. Repeat again, warmly, in a couple of days.      This is the third time. An hour ago, the caravan found yet another hidden mountainside meadow where a few dozen of Cecilia's men are encamped; raggedy anima mages trying to keep their books dry like precious gunpowder, longbowmen turned subsistence hunters, and horsemen in various stages of horse deprivation. This squad still has their 'valkyrie'- an elite mounted healer in Cecilia's own vein, apparently- so they're in better health than their last two.      While the healers heal, the generals talk, the kids play, and everyone else rests their legs (and their mounts) after the steep hike, time passes pleasantly. Wind blows through the wildflowers of the little plateau's field, rustling the boughs of the stocky trees. Dense fluffy clouds drift not-so-far overhead, though you know they'll crash like waves against the taller mountains further west. And . . .      Sophia bursts from the wagon where she's been resting and screams.
Marigold	It's a strangled gasping sort of yell. She staggers back against the wagon's side after that initial lurch, clutching at her chest, slightly pale. People swarm around her in the next few moments, Igrene and Fae with the sharpest near-familial concern.      But she pushes free of them, trying to do... something. 'Anything' might be closer. Whatever imminent doom her prophetic gifts have foreseen, her hurriedly adjusting things, telling people to move 'there...!' or 'here, please...!', half-scrawling spell diagrams in the dirt, asking Lucius to heal or ward such-and-such person, and at one point just throwing a canvas sheet over Roy can't lift or even delay it.      By the time Shanna has hurriedly ushered new arrivals up from the nearest warpgate- a ten-minute scrabble up steep shrubby hillsides- even Cecilia's scruffy irregulars, deprived of context on her gifts, are starting to restlessly arm themselves in response to the catching dread.      "Sophia, what is it?"      "I don't know... I don't know...!"      "Oh, no. Fae, are there dragons nearby?      "Nnn-nnn."      "F-Father Lucius... Can you warp us all away from here...?"      "I'm afraid not. Perhaps two or three, I could--"      - - - -      Lord Roy is struck by something at about a hundred miles an hour.      If you happened to be looking up, you had about half the time you'd need to react to a dark peregrine-falcon-swooping shape breaking the clouds.      If you're not, your first stimulus is a noise like a gunshot as a wyvern skid-lithobrakes a dirt trench into the flowering meadow, and Roy- impaled on the snowflake spear Maltet through the chest, with a golden dragonslaying wound- writhes on the ground, too hurt to scream.      Galle.      The dreadful general's long hair swirls. For a split second, again, you might think him alone; then two dozen more heavily-armored wyvern-riding knights slam down slightly less daringly than him, peppering the meadow with their plunge-boosted javelins and drawing swords to form a defensive perimeter. From behind each knight's saddle, a slightly-rattled Bernish mage crisply dismounts, doubling their numbers.      Over the general havoc, you might just hear him say: "Get the weapons. Kill the generals. That's it."      BGM: https://youtu.be/YbX_3qCgtss
Trudy Grimm	No sooner has Trudy been informed that Sophia 'Saw Something' is she already on the move. Ever one to admit her talents in fortune-telling are lacking, the witch puts her faith in the abilities of others to do so at greater clarity.     She emerges from the local warpgate flanked by two much taller warriors. Her eyes dart first to the familiar towering hulk of the Black Knight. In a tense voice, she commands, "Go ahead of us, as fast as you can." Without a single utterance, the Knight crouches, then hurls himself up the mountainside in a great bound that leave a small crater in the meadowgrass where he had been standing. The witch glances aside at her other companion-- a similarly tall, burly warrior in traditional blue-trimmed Eastern armor, his face obscured by a blue oni mask, "Let's get moving."     The samurai leans down, offering his forearm for Trudy to climb into. Once she's situated, he's in motion, staying mostly at ground level compared to the Knight's great leaps.     As the Black Knight crests the ridge into the meadow under siege, he's already reaching back to grip the hilt of his great sword. One of those thrown javelins buries itself into his shoulder, erupting out through the armor of his opposing side near his hip. It's enough of an impact to throw his trajectory off and he lands heavily off-target, sword in hand. > <J-IC-Scene> Khosa says, "One of you get Roy out of there!"     Weapon lodged in his torso, the Black Knight wastes no time. His great blade swings down low at his side and he kicks off in a dash, digging a furrow with the leading edge in a charge straight for Galle and his wyvern. His head foot plants, his weight shifts, and the sword comes up towards rider in a vicious arc. There's so much force in it that the Knight can scarcely control it-- throwing his entire body into a spin, pivoting on his lead foot. The second time the blade comes around, he brings it to bear on the wyvern itself. Even if the edge isn't aligned-- even if it somehow doesn't break through scales-- there's more than enough force to stagger the beast if not outright tip it off its feet.     A few moments later, Trudy crests that same ridge, hopping out of the Samurai Archer's arms in the same instant he's reaching for his bow. His now-free hand already drawing an arrow the approximate size of a spear from the quiver at the small of his back.     "What a mess..."
Angela	Nonon steps out of the tent, wearing a new fit! She's wearing a chain and leather combo armor since she has lost access to the Gold Rush EGO. Whatever is going on at LobCorp (many of you know!) seems to mean that they don't want her taking out the EGO Gear for this side project anymore. The closer the project is to completion, the more cautious its managers are being. More impressively than the armor, is a double headed silver axe that she rests against her shoulder. "Ga ha ha ha! You think ambushing us is gonna keep us down! You're gonna have to do better than Oh Shit Roy!" That jars Nonon out of her posturing. She scowls at Galle for a moment and then runs towards him, aiming to grab the lance, largely to amke it difficult for him to just rip it through Roy in a coup de grace rather than trying to rip it out. Instead, she intends to use her hand as a brace against the weapon so one of the many other people going for Roy can pull him free. "You're a real 'screw you got mine' kinda guy, ain't you, Galle? Going after the kid...!" With her freehand, she draws out her pistol. "I may be a fighter but..." And plugs Roy with a healing bullet. This is bound to have a limited effect on Roy while he's still impaled but she just needs it to keep him going long enoguh for the others to step in and do their thing. Javelins glance off her armor or downright stab into her, but she intends to buy those few seconds she needs. "It's gonna hurt more becfore it hurts less, kid." She says without looking at him. "Be ready for that, you got a lot more you wanna seize with your own hands, yeah?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's own clairvoyance had been flickering. Disaster on a grand scale is hard to identify as a specific threshold, but this kept dipping into it. The destruction of the Lycian League and the termination of its efforts... that would be the end of this campaign, and the fulfillment of Zephiel's ambition. Awful visions kept bursting into Flamel's perception, and then awareness made them too uncertain to see. So he couldn't get any details. He couldn't get any gauge on what was about to happen.     He could ready up, though.     As Sophia arranged the stage, he arranged himself for the violence. The goggles, the drop pouches, everything. He's tightening the straps on some body-armor over his tactical jumpsuit around the time something zips into the radius of his clairvoyance -- and just as soon, before he can even think, it's in the middle. He isn't stuck by Galle, but it takes some straining to rip himself out of the trajectory of the other incoming strikes. There's glimmering bruises spreading from the near-impact shock and the strained maneuver, though. And some gritting teeth.     Dammit. *Dammit.* This is bad. They've got the perfect hit-and-run equipment, they've hit the main tactical leader dead-on, and their minds are hardened and focused on a particular topic and a particular objective. Even the wyverns look expertly-trained, and who knows what those mages have prepped. What can a psychonaut do here?     Focus on the mental game. And the mental game, it *all* centers on Roy. He tosses his sunglasses to one side and pulls heavy tactical goggles down. Then, he vanishes. Trudy's about to charge Galle with the black knight, and while Flamel knows that people like this in Elibe are capable of truly superhuman maneuvers, he knows that those movements are coded into pre-practiced motions and techniques, and that such techniques are hard to initiate or interrupt in response to changing numbers of targets. When Trudy's Black Knight charges, he's invisibly working on slipping between the circle, zipping behind them and flanking to Galle.     If the wyvern's foot is over Roy, lift it telekinetically. If javelin pins him, wait for it to be wrenched free. If Galle switches tactics, fire in every direction at once and pray that the ensuing strike is a less-than-instant death. And, importantly, never criticize Roy's big armor again. That was just Roy making a smart decision, or so he hopes.     If the plan works, he'll try to yank Roy away from the impact site with tremendous levitation-assisted speed, to where Odette can reach him. After all... he's going to need to telepathically link Roy to everyone else shortly.
Aidan Proudpick	Aidan was expecting an assault. A place he could set up all of his wind walls and lock down the Wyverns. He was not expecting, as anyone else did, an actual surprise ambush. But then, Aidan did realize that on defense, the Wyverns would be useless. Just... straight into the army like that. Not just at a fort, where they were a smaller number. Straight into the entire army. "WIND LIMIT!" Failing the villain training has only pushed at Aidan harder. To find that middle line between the burning heart and someone who can be a leader. Someone who can take responsibility. First thing's first. Stopping caring about doing the thing that might make everyone like him the most. Think he's the most useful. "Hey!" Aidan's voice is deeper, as if a change in VA. He is completely coated in wind, formed around him into a stark white suit of armor. It whirls and rushes, looking more like a suit of armor out from the cover of a fantasy novel, or the sort that of thing that people building data tables in books might imagine. Full plate, as the naming convention goes. With abs and biceps of wind. And something that might resemble a Kamen rider helmet if that person was trying to make sure it didn't look TOO much like a Kamen rider helmet out of shame. In the right hand is a steel shield, about the size Aegis was. His gait builds up into a full gallop out of the warp gate, actually getting down on all fours and leaping up onto a tree. Air moves, pushing from the top of his body downward, and the squirrel shaped bullet leaps out into the air, driven faster into the air towards Galle. He lands on the other side of the Black Knight, between Galle and the rest of the people trying to rescue Roy. "The sky is worth this, huh? Have some decency, picking people off from the sky?!" He spits what he expects to be the worst insult he can at Galle. "Coward!" A shield bearer stance, one leg forward, one back, shouldering all of his body weight against his shield. White wind explodes out of him and the shield, spreading out behind him in sweeping walls.
Khosa	It was lucky (for Khosa) that she was both relatively unoccupied, having been having a spirited day bargaining in Tyr's market, and close enough to a Warpgate that she could run it if she had to. Which, when Roy made it clear that Sophia had seen something - and seen it bad - she actually did; leaping off the stone bridge across the cracked channel it crossed over, leaping down into the channel and running along the market stalls there, and - eventually - ducking into the access to the Undertyr where only Templars were allowed to go. From there it's a hike down a subterranean path, including one of the tunnels Khosa doesn't like because it's a little small, a duck through, and into a new world. The net result is that Khosa makes it through the gate in good time, but unarmed. Unarmed, for her, does not mean unthreatening, even if she runs out into an ambush, which is pretty much exactly what happens. Damn, damn, *damn*, she thinks, pounding forward. One of the javelins misses her, clashing against a rock and breaking. Another one hits her, driving into her shoulder, and Khosa's reaction is to yank it right back out, checking to make sure it didn't splinter: now she isn't unarmed, though Khosa isn't actually much for polearms. Throwing things, though, is right up her alley. Her bloody shoulder already scabbing over with new flesh and scales, Khosa lets out a sharp whistle before flinging the javelin at the closest of the wyvern-riders. She doesn't sit idle to let it hit either, lowering her stance before charging forward, back-curling horns growing from her forehead as she rushes. Khosa said she was going to get Galle's attention, and apparently she's going to try to do that by sheer volume of roar and shapeshifting. Her body is covered over in scales by this point, black and red and buff brown, giving her a decidedly reptilian cast, and the roar she lets out could be mistaken for a dragon's - accompanied with a crackling bolt of unpleasantly green bioelectricity aimed at Galle from the flank as she charges in. Khosa isn't a dragon at all. Not a dragon, not a part-dragon, nothing. Nor is it dragon breath; it's her psionic electricity, though she's pretty sure Galle doesn't know what that is. But that won't stop her from pretending to be to draw attention to her and away from Roy - and having a lightning-breathing reptilian humanoid rushing you is a pretty good distraction even if that fails.
Desire Stars	Much needed rest is a luxury, Neon Kurama knows, in this world. Sat on a log and letting the fatigue of the hike pass, she startles, sheet white, when Sophia screams. She and Ace both arrive, Desire Drivers in hand, only to bear puzzled, concerned witness to her frantic prognostications. "Oh, no. Fae, are there dragons nearby?" "Nnn-nnn." "F-Father Lucius... Can you warp us all away from here...?" "I'm afraid not. Perhaps two or three, I could--"     "If she's that panicked, it's gotta be bad, and maybe even soon. An army? Magic? What could--"     Ace is looking up--an army doesn't move subtly, and he knows very little about how magic works. So 'up' was his guess, purely because he felt he'd be able to respond on time if it were wyverns or other fliers.     He made an error in judgment. He hadn't expected they'd send Galle.     "ROY!" Neon calls, thrown to the ground alongside Ace as the wyverns land.     One transformation sequence later, Kamen Rider Na-Go, back on her feet alongside Geats, strums a quick bar on the bladed, fretted Beat Axe, sending a cluster of sharp icicles towards the first among the enemy to try and approach or finish Roy off.     Geats, meanwhile, breaks into a sprint and works a semicircle around the escort, laying down suppressive fire as a smokescreen for his true intention. While the Magnum armor's wrist-mounted cannons pivot and track, he flicks his helmet briefly towards Galle, leveling the Magnum shooter and aiming down the sights for a shot at the strap which holds Maltet to his wrist. When he thinks he has it, Geats slides to lower his profile and hide himself in the meadow's grasses before adjusting his angle and pulling the trigger.
Odette Raskins	There's not enough hours in the day to make sure the army's in good fighting shape. Preparing medicine ahead of time or to be used immediately, acquiring supplies  to get that medicine put together at all, maintaining her gear, and even doing routine checkups takes enough time that it's a wonder Odette gets any sleep at all, but she manages it okay enough. She's even there to observe Lucius and Clarine at work while offering extra hands when appropriate, even if she does end up passed out by the fire within minutes of story time starting. By the third day, the EMT's back is kind of sore from bad sleeping posture, but at least she's not too tired. It'd be hard to tell, though, since she's still asleep when things start to happen once more, yelping and jostling awake at Sophia screaming. Jerking herself up into a sitting position, she groggily forces herself up onto her feet and staggers a bit while trying to piece together what's happening. There's no immediate escalation to violence, so she might have seen something. What it is, though, isn't clear until it happens. As Odette's turning around to join the mob arund Sophia, she hears that crash before she sees it, and the color drains from her face when she sees Galle running Roy through with that terrible spear of his. A second later, and the wyvern-riders reinforcing him blow Odette right off her feet as takes a glancing, yet still heavy slam of a lance sending her sprawling backwards into the dirt. "Ow, ow... R-Roy! Gotta get the-but that's..." Frozen with fear, the medic clutches her bag against her chest as she scurries backwards, stumbling at the aching and somewhat damp spot on her side as she gets some distance between herself and the strike force that just landed in the Lycian League's camp. She'll call it a tactical retreat in her head, though, since the distance does give her some precious seconds to sort out what she actually needs to do while jabbing a mild painkiller into her leg. Several of the gorup's warriors are engaging Galle and his men. Flamel's going to get Roy somewhere safer than right next to Galle. That means Odette's job is to make sure he survives. Simple enough, right? "No time for... Okay. ST, SA, DP, EP, O neg... TC. " She mutters, sounding like she's almost in a trance as she all but ignores the battle starting around her in order to get the right array of stuff together in her bag. Whether Flamel can get Roy somewhere she can reach him safely or if she has to resort to sprinting to the young lord even if he's still in the thick of it, Odette's already got her hands full and seems nigh blind to whatever danger's around. She slides over to where Roy ends up, pulling her gloves down with her teeth and letting the battle go ignored for a moment as she zeroes in on the treatment. First, an injector right in Roy's chest to keep him breathing and awake even with that dire wound. "Stay with us. You'll be fine, just breathe. Blink for me." Next, a pair of square patches, held in her teeth while she's jabbing him with medical cocktails. She moves one hand to Roy's mouth to make sure his tongue isn't in biting range of his teeth, then smushes one of the patches right on the wound itself. It stings like crazy, but it provides a massive and nearly irresponsible amount of drugs to both numb and heal those wounds while keeping all that blood in. If she has time to, Odette rolls Roy enough to get at his back, ready to slap the second on onto his back if Galle's spear went that far in with a lighter concentration of the same chemicals to make sure he doesn't bleed out from two both sides. "Count to five, deep breath, and then back on your feet."
Petra Soroka	Petra know not to fuck around when it comes to future sight-- and, even if Sophia wasn't precognitive, she'd be worried about her *screaming* in fear. The rush up the hill is made heart-poundingly more aggravating every time she gets her foot caught in a root or slips on the slope, with the *indignity* of something as stupid as natural terrain possibly contributing to whatever terrible thing Sophia saw. She swears and rips her foot free from a root that entangled her boot, and the undercurrent of itching aura around her abruptly switches off, and for the rest of the climb, every footstep lands perfectly.     She doesn't have the state of mind to be a stabilizing presence for Sophia's panic, though. Being dirt-scraped and heavy breathing, wearing just a simple hoodie and jeans from sprinting out of a grocery trip, Petra's best agitated idea to help is basically just sticking six inches away from Sophia while she scurries around in panic and trying to help with whatever she's wildly doing. It's not until Lilian arrives that Petra has a better paradigm for helping besides shadowing Sophia and applying her own hands to back Sophia's up.     "Okay, well, er-- people need to-- spread out, like that? Or, wait, but you pushed Cecilia closer-- er, something's going to get Roy? Should I help hide-- or, cover? Or--"     In the second before Galle breaches the clouds, Petra gets her own shock of panic. She glances up, sharply inhales, and on pure instinct, draws her transteam gun and rushes Roy. "Roy--!!"     The precognitive flinch gives her just enough time to be ploughed into the dirt alongside Roy when Galle craters into the earth. Her gun flies away, down the hill, and even the indirect impact of Galle's landing is a hit hard enough to lose track of which way is up while she tumbles to a stop. She shakily pushes herself up to her knees, wind knocked out of her to prevent any more than a wheezed "Bitch--"     Petra staggers to her feet, and without the time to scrabble around for her gun, draws her compact mirror from her waist. She flips it open to the oddly iridescent mirror inside and shouts to Sophia before throwing the mirror onto the ground rather than pulling anything from it. "Sophia!! Who else is at the most risk?"     The mirror hits the ground and shatters, but the shards skittering away start to unfold, razor edges spilling out of razor edges like fractals limned with faint light. The glass that pours out unloads more and more glass, cocooning around Petra with near-invisible lines of breakage radiating throughout the entire structure of the Beauty of Ash as it lifts up onto two pointed legs.     The mech is twelve feet of translucent iridescent glass, sharp angles and facets on its chest, arms, head, and legs, all ending in points. Instead of a round humanoid head, the diamond hovering above its shoulders is a feral snout-shape swiveling back and forth, with telekinetic breakage for ears and one single eye visible in a crevice down the middle. It being glass, Petra is still voyeuristically visible in the chest as a frosted blur of color, but it's impossible to pick out any details about her.     The Beauty of Ash lowers onto all four pointed limbs and dashes forwards across the ground, tearing through growth and slamming to an instant stop in front of the bulk of the smaller wyverns, between them and the army. The inertia of the perfect stop ripples through it an instant later, ripping new pieces of breakage off as razor shards of hardlight that complete the charge into the wyverns, and after spraying through them, the shard come to a telekinetic halt and reverse course to slam back into place along the shattered lines in the Beauty of Ash's chest and shoulders.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine hides well the sort of agitation one gets from a looming threat. She has to, or she'd be openly agitated all the time. Still, she's visibly worried on the scramble upslope to the army's camp. It's not visible in her eyes - nothing is - but it shows in the lines on her face, the set of her jaw.     On arrival there isn't even time to figure out what's up with Sophia before the enemy assault begins in earnest. The corner of her mouth twitches as Galle's mount skids to a halt and the other Bernish riders' javelins rain from above. Drogrung shifts into a spear on Madeleine's back as the wyvern knights land flanking their general the huntress is *gone*. She moves low through the grasses of the meadow, in an all-fours scramble past the front line. The dust cloud she kicks up is nothing amongst the wyverns' wingbeats and the spray of shattered glass from - is that a mech? Who here owns a mech? That can be a 'later' question. The 'now' question is...     How does Madeleine want to attack the mages slipping from the wyverns' backs? She draws her spear and pounces on one, rising suddenly from the grass like a shark from water. An upward swipe of her spear also sprays forth a cloud of oily poison smoke extending in a narrow line angled to catch as many mages as possible, with the hope that the painful, blinding vapors will interfere with tome usage while she handles the nearest spellcasters in melee.
Lilian Rook	Hearing that Sophia won't even specify what she's so afraid of is all Lilian needs to mobilize into high gear. She knows for a fact that woman is the real deal, and she knows doubly well what it means for someone like her not to say: either stopping to explain will get someone killed, or it's all about to happen too much and too fast. The last time Lilian remembers being the same way was in that room with Zephiel and 'Iðunn'.     Leaving even her cloak behind, arriving with nothing more than her armour and her sword, Lilian is allowed a fleeting moment to think that she has made it ahead of the storm, then feels all the air empty from her lungs just before the onset of the urge to scream. Her blood freezes in the instant between Roy hitting the ground and Roy reacting to the blow. A dozen parallel histories where he lays dead on the grass like a broken rabbit halt their grim fast-forward in her mind's eye when he twitches, and are left on pause to cope with later. The familiar surge of cold adrenaline takes over from there. <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "He came here practically by himself. It's *only* him and the minimum escort necessary to keep our numbers occupied." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "This is the worst possible scenario."     She's early enough to catch the shower of javelins from the descending squadron, bu her body knows all the steps in the dance of fending them off by heart; Scáthach had drilled that much down into her bones. While her mind races to adjust to the new strategic situation, Lilian slams one javelin with with an over-the-shoulder swing pivoted from the hips and takes off ahead of a second and third, erratically stuttering her running to mismatch the distance from her velocity and violently shake her lead indicator.     Without Winter Crow, she is forced to hard-cast her attack magic as she runs. Wildly zigzagging through the cover of the camp, skipping ahead where she breaks line of sight, she manages a complete series of gestures and races out onto the field while firing over her own head for cover, sustaining an upwards rain of slicing bolts with one hand to ward the wyverns off her back for a short while. Leaving the crumbling spell far behind, she clears the downward side of the grassy slope and surfs the incline with her full grip on Night Mist, rocking her weight forward at the valley to overshoot the peak on the other side. Hurtling through the air towards Galle, Lilian arrives at the last piece of her strategy mere moments before contact.     §No time. I can't give orders unless they can hear me; and if I were him, I'd want me to waste as much time trying to organize the others as possible.§     'That's it.'     "--Ar Luas Lasrach--!"     Lilian's sidelong plunge towards Galle accelerates tenfold; the release of energy mangles together a visible physical shockwave with a magical one. The glint of her sword crunches into a long, perfect line, flashes dark, and collapses into a thunderous vacuum, mowing down grass beneath at ankle height.     §All I can do is come at him too hard to give him a straight shot at Roy.§
Dysnomia	Dysnomia emerges from the warpgate with all the trepidation of a thrown knife, less a person and more a shape, coiling and misty. She was line, sliding across the landscape, materializing at the edge of the camp and storming in, already tense by the time she'd crossed the threshold, scanning up, down, around.     In the end, it was Sophia she stood close to--a weather vane, screaming warning of an incoming storm. This was the kind of thing she was supposed to have been made for. This was supposed to be where she thrived, in these uncertain moments, filling the gaps no one else understood.     She should have been whispering advice to Marcus, or Merlinus. Even Roy. She imagined the folds of futures splayed out before her, potentialities and risks. A game where she knew the hands of every other player. Before they drew their cards. Before they knew what game they were playing.     But the future availed her nothing.     She shook, in rage, in helplessness, navigating blind in rough seas.     "I'm afraid not. Perhaps two or three, I could--"     A suggestion for how else they might reposition died in her throat, unvoiced, as a spear struck Roy through the chest. Reflexively, she took a step toward their general-- <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "I'll give him something else to point that spear at. Evacuate Roy." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Maltet? You're chasing death." <J-IC-Scene> Nonon says, "Mia maybe you focus on the ones without murder-you weapons eh? That's whatchamacallit tacticool thinking." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Look at that wound." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "It works on him." <J-IC-Scene> Khosa says, "Fuck that. *I'll* get his attention, I'm no dragon." <J-IC-Scene> Nonon says, "Kinda provin' the point here, imagine what it'd do to ''you''. <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, "G... Getting him! No time to... Oh geez, oh geez..." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia's teeth grates. "Copy."     Still, her head can't help but turn to the resonating echoes of the boy's pain, hand reaching toward an old wound with its own echoing ache.     If she couldn't engage Galle, then perhaps, she could try to divide his forces...     She took in a deep inhale--too deep for her little longs, a light flaring up, glowing through where her ribcage should have been. She breathed a violent line of violet plasma, arcing over the ground, trying to cut the group of landing riders and mages in two, leaving a steaming, molten, lighting-arcing earth between them, with Galle, Khosa and others engaging him on one side, and on the other...     Her hands warped into burning claws, too long for her hands, so long they dragged along the ground beside her, leaving scalded furrows in the earth. "You're not getting anyone else." She promised. Prayed it was true.
Marigold	Keeping the spear's tip lodged in Roy, Galle weaves his body around the haft interpose it against the Black Knight's first swing. His eyes narrow. The second swing isn't meant for him, though, and it slams his wyvern backwards a couple feet, roaring.      (Was that a thumbprint indentation on Maltet's haft? Where'd that come fr-- ohhh.)      Galle winds back for a second thrust at a bleary and bleeding Roy, who can barely raise his hand against it. Nonon and Odette's healing lets him just squeak out a little gasp. Then he's Flamel-yanked, and--      No. Flamel tries, but just as Roy's sliding away, Galle kicks off the wyvern to impale Roy again in the gut, making the lordling's back arch with agony. Clean through, it sizzles. Coolly, Galle plants his foot on the golden wound and readies to drag the spear clean up through Roy's body like a fish.      Petra's mech's shards hew through the line of his bodyguards to the left, shredding one wyvern outright and mangling two others. One fragment clips Galle's cheek and another embeds in his shoulder, joining one of Neon's icicles sticking in his arm. With an almost-glassy look, he doesn't flinch. But he does halt for a tiny fraction of a second.      Long enough for Lilian to slam into him when Maltet is a millimeter from Roy's aorta. Night Mist draws blood from his side where it's unarmored, and after skidding to a halt with his back foot braced against a tree, he hilt-locks it with Maltet and tries to twist the lock to slice into Lilian's neck. Khosa's electric breath washes over him, making him fumble it in the taser flinch; he weaves around to lash out at her draconic form instead, intent on fighting his way back to Roy.      "What did you expect," he breathes amid the flurry, face cool and voice cracklingly hot. His eyes rest on the flowing stream of the battle; not any one person. "Corner me. Bleed me dry. I'll just--"      "-do-"      Slash at the Black Knight's hip, trying to gouge off his leg. Galle knows better by now than to go for vitals.      "-it-"      Attempted thrown headshot at Aidan, counting on the walls to hew him in.      "-my-"      Reeling it back with the leather strap, smooth spin- Roy's staggering to his feet while holding his guts in from the second wound, and Galle tries to horizontal-swing decapitate him, narrowly glanced away by first Rutger and then Fir flickering briefly into the bodyguard-dense killzone.      "-self."      Vaulting off his cooperative wyvern's side, Galle sweeps Maltet with its flat, making the snowflake pattern whistle as air flows through it. Its directed blizzard-howl diffuses Mia's plasma-breath and Madeleine's poison smoke, like a shockwave extending from its slash. That carries through to hew down a half-dozen of Cecilia's men in varying stages of frostbitten-cut to instantly dead.      He catches it again, rears back, and hurls it with all his might right at Petra in the Beauty's 'cockpit'. That's when Ace finds his chance: the leather strap is just a leather strap, and it breaks when shot. Galle's eyes go wide, darting to Ace in an instant. Fatally exposed, he leaps out of formation to try and grab it again.
Marigold	What's happening with the bulk of his forces, even apart from the Elites, is as fast-paced as a withering gunfight. Cecilia's mage-soldiers are well-trained, but they're off-guard. The Bernish ones, seize the initiative with a one-two flurry of alternating rank fire, steady pounding rhythm of angled-from-above splashing fireballs that set the meadow and surrounding woods aflame. One pulverizes Merlinus's lead wagon, scattering its panicked horses.      Alternating like that, they're relentless; a dozen artillery-like fireballs every two seconds, opportunistically targeted at the greatest concentration of force. Up close, the mages are soft targets, as Maddie finds- but the wyvern knights are there to protect them, armed and hardened men with gleaming spears to punish anyone on approach, fighting side-by-side with their scale-armored beasts.      Roy's army tries to join in the assault, but they're disorganized. Without a solid opening, Rutger can't break the spear wall, managing only to gouge a wyvern with Durandal. Echidna charges in and locks weapons with a rider, bullying them with a headbutt and knee to the gut- not fast enough. Grinding attrition. "Come on, Galle! Where's my duel!" Cecilia cries while rushing to Roy's side with her horse, but she knows he's not the prideful type.      The real strategy soon becomes apparent. Every few seconds there's a pulse of light around one of the wyverns or riders, and their wounds simply vanish- Galle included. Save for the one wyvern and couple of soldiers who've been killed outright, zero progress is being made. It's easy to miss the source, though: those dozen wyverns still circling overhead. Every time there's a pulse, it's matched by a distant gleam from one of them.      "They've got healers up there!!" Klein yells, drawing back his great bow. He tags one of the circling fliers, and Lucius finishes that one with a great beam of light, but they're both forced to duck behind one of the few non-burning trees a second later by a targeted retaliatiory volley of javelins.
Angela	Nonon continues gradually piling up wounds across her body. Even before gaining Gold Rush, she was a tough pirate who just would never stay down, defied death again and again. Is this the moment, she wonders. There is only one person she'll obey a 'retreat' order from and it's not Cecilia or Aidan. Galle doesn't seem to be interested in chatting it out and the only other weapon at her disposal is the axe. And she has no real backup. Flame smoulders across her body. If Cecilia isn't going to get her duel... She slides a foot back. She doesn't know what orders Lilian are going to give yet and while they are discussing it, the fight's still happening. She can't wait to hear what Lilian has to say this time. But she knows what Ceri's example to follow would be. "Barely any reason to hurt him just yet..." She murmurs to herself as she runs towards Galle, gradually picking up speed. She intentionally leaves an opening along her left arm. She tries not to make it TOO inviting to be obvious, but she leaves it just open enough as she raises her axe up into a cleaving motion as if she's about to bring it down if not for that axe. But it's a feint! Nonon drops that gleaming shiny new cool silver axe and aims to wrap her arm aronud Galle and crush his body close to hers, hoping to pin him there for at least a while. Gotta buy time for the strategy, she thinks. Lilian will know what to do. Or Cecilia, failing that. She doesn't need to win, she just needs to slow Galle down--and that's better than hurting him when he's got a small army of healers up above ready to fix up anything she can do to him sort of cleaving his head off and she has no allusions of being able to get past this guy's defenses that easily. "Hurry up and decide on somethin'! I'm getting sleepy, GA HA HA!" She jokes.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel freezes, blood running cold. Almost killed Roy trying to pull him free. He can't afford to lose Roy. If Roy dies here, the hope for his regime-change project, the hope for Lycia, maybe the hope for all of Elibe, dies with him. And that's disaster, the kind his clairvoyance spikes hard in the presence of.     It's enough of a moment for him to be subjected to more than just disasterous visions. He suffers violent lance-strikes, painful impacts. On reflex, his body generates invisibility and barriers -- invisibility that doesn't help when no space exists that is not impaled and no barrier exists that can stop an immovable object. Frosted, bruised, lanced -- it's all too much. Painful. Agonizing. One of his tactical goggle lenses breaks, and much of his body armor is battered, full of shattered plates now since he lacks much personal skill with all that. But his focus is still there, his will is still there, so he manages to get some distance, glide in levitation around the field.     Another go. Another. Pull Roy out. Pull Roy out. "Options weighed -- going to do something awful. Odette, get distance. I *need* you for this next part." He manages to tensely mutter.     He whispers, to nobody in particular: "Don't forgive me for this later, Roy. Here goes." And he dives back in. Galle, in the midst of all of this, will be doing much the same as he was before. Ultraviolence beyond Flamel's ability to evade or manipulate. But Roy is targeted so ruthlessly... He locks onto the boy, targetting him above all else. Get Roy out. Get Roy OUT.     No matter what it takes.     He disengages invisibility, blasting Galle with beams and translucent-handed strikes. And with one of those massive hands, he grabs Roy and pulls. And if his blood runs cold, if he sees the visions of a dark future emerging from Roy's death... then he simply keeps pulling. "He's not immortal." "Unless you can take out all of those healers, he is."     Flamel Parsons, yet again, chooses the path of least resistance and most agony in suffering youngsters. Perhaps that's just getting too common these days. That's all to say: If Galle tries to halt Flamel's extraction by making it impossible without killing Roy, Flamel is just going to endure Roy dying during the extraction, and get his body to Odette immediately as he retreats.     He's not that cruel though. In all that chaos, he links his telepathic connection to Roy, and spreads it to the Lycian forces nearby. A useful means for Roy to take command in all this disaster, even if he's dying.
Aidan Proudpick	At some point, perhaps ten, a dozen years from now, future Aidan will be upset at past Aidan for using the wind armor. Pushing your body beyond what it normally does by forcing it around with magic isn't going to be good on his joints. But, that's a problem for Future Aidan to worry about. Assuming Future Aidan even exists. Aidan would very much like to GET to Future Aidan. He still has to become Emperor, after all. The steel shield lifts up, angled perfectly to drive Maltet away from his face. It slides across the shield, sparks tearing free and showering over the white armor. For one brief moment, Aidan glances over at Petra, eyes wide as he sees the Beauty of Ash. Of course, her personal quest with the mech isn't known to him, so it is just a particularly impressive form of assault. EXTREMELY Impressive. The spear pulls back. Air suddenly parts, showing Aidan's face, his wide eyed surprise. The spear drags backwards, snagging at his should. In his mind, it might make a cool blooded scar. There is a fleeting moment of that. Right before it drags flesh and meat from bone. Aidan drops his shield as his fingers go numb. Fur, meat, blood go back with the spear as a massive furrow is drug through his shoulder, from his scapula up to his front. Blood mixes with the wind, turning it a lovely rosy pink as spots fill back in. Aidan screams out in pain, staggering away from his fallen shield. The eyeless featureless face of Aidan's wind armor looks at Galle, judging between teeth clenched and straining breaths. "Ha...ha..." He grabs the shield in his other hand. "Not... gonna let you take them." He forces it back onto his hand, using the wind to force his fingers around it, locking them in place. His pained breathing slows, long 'haaa's of breath as he gathers himself up. Nonon's grab gives him the perfect single moment to act. With the other hand, Aidan 'grabs' the air. It responds to him, white wisps of wind simply coming to him. He shapes them, a quick fluid motion. Then, holding it in front of him, he lets out a comically loud blowing. Like one might blow a dandelion, or like Popeye might propel himself on a raft. An explosion of wind fills the air over Galle. One second, the wind is calm, the next second, hurricane force gales fill the sky.
Desire Stars	*If he came here to secure the weapons and returned with less, that would be considered unacceptable. So--* Fatally exposed, he leaps out of formation to try and grab it again.     *--yeah. Just like I thought.* They've got healers up there!!     *Damn. Then all that did was get us a few seconds free of him. No point in taking a followup if it'll be gone in seconds. But...*     Na-Go is battered by the fireballs; Geats makes it through unscathed only because of his prone position, which he gives up immediately upon seeing Galle overextend.                       SECRET MISSION CLEAR - Disarm Galle                           Geats scoops up the DGP dropbox without even looking at it, breaking into a sprint through harrowing explosions and twisting his Desire Driver with his free hand.                                    REVOLVE ON                                       The Magnum armor shifts to his legs, just in time for him to make a dive across the meadow. The ankle cannons fire, covering his blind spot. But he's not headed for Galle. His pistol isn't even pointed in the wyvern rider's direction. It's pointed at Maltet.     A few triggerpulls hit the ground near the spear, the explosions shoving it just far enough for there to be a contest between them. He lands, rolls, and gets one hand on the spear.     Na-Go, meanwhile, starts up a melody with the Beat Axe, filling her allies with strength and improved reaction speed to deal with the bombardment. The melody is clumsy and galloping due to her constant running for cover, but it's effective--and with her fingers already on the frets, it's simple to weave in attacks between the anthem. Musical leger lines wind through the meadow, and where they don't empower Roy's army, they spit bolts of lightning upwards at the healers.
Trudy Grimm	The Black Knight is relentless, but he needs all of his limbs to keep the pressure going. Galle's attempt at dismembering him is noted-- acted upon. Maltet crashes against the Knight's greatblade. The icy bite of the legendary spear rings unnaturally against aging steel. The force of the blow is enough to slam the sword against the Black Knight's hip but, mercifully, keep the spear's blade from severing the limb entirely.     He pushes back against it as he re-asserts his presence in the fight, though Galle has already gone after the next in his tirade. Free hand raising, the Black Knight slams his fist against his own chestplate once, twice-- causing steel to ring and chainmail to rattle and clatter.     You aren't done with me yet. he seems to say, Finish what you started.     As he does so, his shadow expands outward. By the time he's leaping back into the fray, skeletons surge out of the void-darkened ground, armed with spears and maces and shields. The Knight himself sweeps his greatsword down in an arc that, should it miss, only serves to transfer his momentum further forward with his shoulder; wheeling as he moves to yank the blade free and bring it down at more of an angle for a broad sweep. Backing him up, a rapidly growing undead army threatening to overwhelm him and every Bernish soldier around him.     On the ridge, the Blue Samurai nocks a spear-sized arrow and shifts his stance. With enormous force he slams his back foot down and assumes the Kyudo posture, hoisting bow and arrow up overhead. As he draws his arms down, he draws them apart, drawing his yumi to full in one seemingly effortless motion. He holds that position, aiming high into the formation of wyvern riders.     Once he has determined one of their passengers is about to cast his healing spell, the Samurai looses his arrow direct for the caster's heart. No sooner has he recovered from letting his arrow fly is he drawing a fresh one, his bow creaking as he already searches for his next target.     Beside him, Trudy holds out the Grimoire in both hands, focusing through Eiwaz-- the Death Rune-- to reinforce the Black Knight.
Lilian Rook	§!! Too fucking close!§     Lilian's contact with Galle leaves her the winner in handling its force by only the slightest of margins. The impact is so severe she can only leverage her sword far enough for a flesh wound by the time she goes flying off at cross-angles from Galle's backward skid. She hits the ground backwards and rolls on purpose, leaping up to her feet to bleed off momentum and throwing out a burner flare of flight magic just before Night Mist loses contact with Maltet, driving Galle backward until he stops the both of them using the tree.     §That movement-- He's adapted to Flamel? That likely means he's adapted to most of the rest our forces as well! How many of ours could even handle him before Maltet?! We-- !!!§     The catch of steel on steel runs from Lilian's fingers to her ears like lightning and summons a surge of counter-action a sixteenth-note behind. Lilian grits her teeth at the strain on her wrist, then stops the hilt displacement by slamming one hand to the flat of her sword near the end, sharply turning her heel out and throwing her shoulder and elbow into pivoting her sword around the haft of the spear and catching the bladed tip against her crossguard by a fraction of an instant. Holding her breath with the point an inch from her neck, Lilian shuffles one hand down to the pommel and slides the other from the blade to the hilt, heaves upwards from the knees, and ducks under Maltet, coming at Galle from the waist with a spinning slash that he breaks from to avoid the electric breath weapon. Night Mist embeds into the tree.     §What's the point of gathering up the Divine Weapons if we're still fighting with all of this dead weight?! I knew this was a mistake!§     Lilian vanishes from ground zero of two fireballs in the next instant, leaving only the blazing tree behind. She reaches partway for runestones she doesn't have. Her hand drifts clockwise to the grenades she doesn't either, and she swears in the breath between braking against the ground and bleeding off spiral velocity through the other side of the snowflake barrage. The frost on her armour steams, appearing to corrode rather than melt.     §Why don't you understand that you can't fight him?! How can you not comprehend that you're outclassed?! Isn't 'trusting your friends' what you're supposed to be good for?! Don't do this again!§     Lilian tosses Night Mist into the air above her, hanging mid-flight to-- fire a fully completed spell circle at the mages' vanguard, slicing a lethal high-intensity beam across the organized rank, turned switchback just before it runs out of energy. She catches Night Mist in her extended palm behind her back, and spins around with counter-arcs of magic to dive away from a javelin and be flying the opposite way.
Odette Raskins	Of course it couldn't be that easy. It takes all of Odette's focus just to get Roy some of those doses, some of those injections, just enough to keep him alive and awake. Surely, he must be hating her right now, and especially when Galle puts another hole through his gut. There's no time for her to simper and cower about that, though, as the sight of all that blood and the lordling holding his insides in tells the EMT that she hasn't come anywhere close to finishing her job. Even though she's not Galle's direct target, however, Odette still gets thrown about by the wake of his devastating swings and the blizzard-like slashes that follow. Another pained yelp escapes the EMT, but the usual panicking tone isn't quite there even as she tumbles to the ground with another painful thump on dirt. She tries to hurry back onto her feet, lands right on her face a second later, then notices the icy slashes along her leg where her traveling boots aren't nearly enough to protect her. Frostbite? Maybe, but she can force it to function well enough for now. She pulls another injector out of her bag, pulls the cap off with her teeth, and stabs it into her leg in one quick motion before pulling herself right back up and stumbling again just short of actually falling over in pain. She'll have time to deal with the side-effects later, but for now? Roy's still in danger, and she already has her hands back in her bag to dig through her stash once again. She had heard the sizzling from Maltet when it struck Roy this time, and the icy waves sent out by the spear tell her that it's not just plain cuts and bruises she has to deal with here. No, there's going to be heat and ice burns to potentially deal with here, necessitating a change in treatment. <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Options weighed -- going to do something awful. Odette, get distance. I *need* you for this next part." <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, sounding way stiffer and both more and less focused than usual "Mhm. Second course, ready." Odette pulls out two more sets of bandages in one hand, but she doesn't run towards Roy. No, Flamel's got some kind of plan, and she's counting on him to make it work. As she sees him putting his all into trying to pull Roy out, however, she starts to realize what he might be going for. That way of pulling, of handling someone is not the way to get someone out safely or without making their injuries worse. That's Flamel trying to recover Roy at all, like he's trying to bring someone in for emergency resuscitation at best. There's a brief moment where Odette grimaces uncomfortably, like she's starting to realize how messed up things have gotten, but it only lasts for a moment before she refocuses on what needs to happen. Roy needs to be recovered, and that means she needs to stay far enough away to follow through on Flamel's plan. That also means she needs to help make sure Galle doesn't get his hands on Maltet again, especially in that opening Geats created by breaking that strap. Odette's other hand comes out of the bag with a scalpel, spun once just to make sure her fingers are still working right (they are). Standard-issue, keenly sharpened, perfect for surgery, but probably not thick or heavy enough to really be more than a nuisance to a warrior. The EMT lowers the scalpel behind herself briefly, then whips it forward with a quick snap at the end to make sure it gets a good spin as it curves upwards towards Galle. It swings upwards at the last second, but... The way it's coming up is far too shallow to get lodged in anything. Instead of just trying to lodge it in Galle's face or eye, she's instead aimed her throw above his eyes, trying to slice right through that headband and open up the specific spot on his forehead pro-wrestles often target for maximum blood flow and blinding potential. Only after the throw does she start moving in to try and get to where Flamel's trying to get Roy to her, still keeping some distance while being close enough to sprint over at a moment's notice.
Petra Soroka	The Beauty of Ash moves just above the ground as if on an invisible layer of ice, tearing through shrubs and turning trees into splinters on contact, but leaving the ground immaculately untouched except when its four feet dig tiny points into the ground when changing direction. When lesser wyvern riders try and take swings at it, its shoulder joint preemptively explodes into a burst of glass for their sword to pass right through, before collapsing back inwards with a clink-snap. As fast as the mech moves, the zone she's patrolling is wider than she can cover alone, and pouncing at one wyvern rider with two pointed arms gives time for another to slip past to the wagons.     The Beauty of Ash rears upright, eye swiveling around to assess where to go next, when Maltet pierces straight through its chest. Glass explodes outwards from the entry and exit point, then freezes in space, moving along with the Beauty of Ash like a bullet impact in photographic frozen time. For the first time, through the little window punched through the mech, Petra's flinching can be seen, and the mech shudders like creaking ice, before that at least gets patched over. <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Sophia says, "The-- the people in most danger are, um..." <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Sophia takes a deep, deep breath. <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Sophia says, "Lord Roy, Cecilia and Klein, and... oh, no, Fae..."     Evidently, Petra can't speak from or through the mech, because the panic readable in how the Beauty of Ash's head snaps towards Sophia *should* be accompanied by a gasp of horror. Instead, it darts away on all fours, silent except for the air moving and the tinkling sound of shredded hardlight folding back into place. Hunting for Fae, to make sure she's never put at risk of fire from Maltet especially, the realization of how limiting being silent in this situation is hits her, and its eye lands on Lilian.     She hesitates for just a moment, before a surge of psychic energy swells up around the mech, like subsurface tension even to people who can't directly perceive it, and then the swell collapses, fallen through the surface of the world and evaporated into the vacuum. For a moment, Lilian alone has a dizzying sense that's different-but-familiar, the toyetic meaninglessness and barren absence-of-spark in the world around her-- different only because they're all still *moving*.     A burst of psychic static washes off of Petra to everyone around her, then, telepathically projected,     §Um. I'll make sure Fae's safe, and then I'll try something on the healers. I don't know how much of an opportunity it'll give, but it'll give *something*.§     Without knowing where Fae is exactly, Petra sends out borrowed telepathic pings like a frantically-trying-to-stay-steady voice. The Beauty of Ash's movements are jittery and rapid, charging with hummingbird precision and multiple tons of weight to bowl over a wyvern rider by impact-force alone, then spearing the wyvern and standing up to hurl it away.     §Fae? Fae?! Where are you? I promise, um-- that I'm friend shaped! It's Petra!§
Petra Soroka	Once she knows Fae is secure, the Beauty of Ash comes to a halt, straightening upwards again. Inside the cockpit, Petra swallows, the proprioreceptive difference between herself and the Beauty of Ash fading back into perception for a moment. There's only one part of the Beauty of Ash actually designed to *be* used in real combat, as effective as she's finding it to be now, and because of that, it's the only body part Petra isn't wholly familiar with.     The Beauty of Ash raises up one arm, glow building inside the mid-forearm of the glass. The breath of anticipation before it fires feels like it should be followed by some deafening sound and flash of cannonfire, but instead the blinding streak of light is only accompanied by the soft tinkling of the glass hand-point ahead bursting. Aimed right at the center of the healer wyvernriders is a psychic cavitation so sudden and violent that the ego momentarily evaporates along with it, along with all sense of coordination, intent, and sense of 'wholeness'.     The tops of trees where they trace out the edge of the radius turn into pure crystalline hardlight, iridescent like the Beauty of Ash itself. After the cannon fires, the secondary, louder explosion is of all of those treetops shattering at once into a storm of glass telekinetically swarming the healers.
Lilian Rook	'What did you expect'     "Better!"     Lilian catches the instant Galle is focused on retrieving Maltet almost by accident. The thoughts that rush to the front of her mind like boiling blood are channeled directly at him, without a moment's hesitation; something that overflows the thudding of Lilian's heart and drizzles like rain against the steel sides of his resolve.     Galle, head bandaged, right arm in a sling, awkwardly leaning away from the arms of Melady wrapped around him, face in the crook of his neck, her shoulders shaking. Guinivere has her hand on her, and mouths something inaudible. Clarine hangs off Klein's neck, red-faced and chattering. Lucius is redrawing the pages he used, Chad and Lugh lounging in his lap and pretending not to watch. Rutger, Dieck, Fir, Echidna, looking just as worse for wear as he is, blocking Shana from getting near the wyvern as Thea tries to drag her away. Roy with his sheepish lordling smile, walking with Merlinus aid, being sassed by Lilina while Cecilia watches wistfully.     "You can do better!" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) General Cecilia says, "We should run." <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) General Cecilia says, "I really, genuinely, truly think we should run." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "What's your strategy for after they consolidate this position, General?" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) General Cecilia says, "Abandon this position and regroup north. Cut off his supply lines if he hasn't retreated, and then move on the capital as planned." <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) General Cecilia says, "He knows he's strategically cornered so he's overextended to try and finish us off before he pulls out."     Lilian looks to Petra, then Nonon, and hisses through her teeth. Even if she says nothing, she'll confirm or deny Cecilia implicitly.     "--Seascann Ceilte--!"     Lilian's airborne trajectory corkscrews wildly with a handful of misty steps against thin air, painting a ghost trail around Galle's wyvern and throwing a handful of passing strikes whilst winding around its tail and talons.     "--Fáinne Fí!"     Her path instantly cuts vertical into a sharp crash landing amongst the escort's ranks, the rapid multifold spiral of her sword throwing out overlapping ripples of sub-slashes in vacuum scatter.     "Get Fae out of here!" Lilian finally shouts above the mayhem, cutting through her reluctance with the most sharply inarguable priority she can think of! "Take the injured and cover the Lycians! If you can't keep up with Galle then you're worthless to me!"     §Once the injured and noncombatants are out, you're staying with me for as long we have to be here. Your job is to shield our VIPs with your life and do something about his entire backup brigade while the extras hurl themselves at him. Parsons, Roy, Lucius, Sophia, bare minimum in addition to the aforementioned.§     §Fuck this up and I'll kill you. I can count the number of people I can rely on here with one hand, and somehow you're on it.§
Madeleine Cadrasteia	The wyvern knights set to work interfering with Madeleine's strike on the enemy back-lines. Mounted warriors aren't the huntress's enemy of choice - but large beasts certainly are. She ducks under a wyvern, too close for it to easily bite her, thrusting down and to the side to cut ankle tendons as she slips beneath its opposite wing. She's genuinely surprised when it stays on its feet, before the wyvern-mounted healers make their presence known with a volley of javelins from above. She winces as a single sweep of Maltet clears away a whole squad of Cecilia's foot soldiers, not to mention her poison clouds.     This isn't good.     <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Sophia says, "The-- the people in most danger are, um..."     <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Sophia takes a deep, deep breath.     <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Sophia says, "Lord Roy, Cecilia and Klein, and... oh, no, Fae..."     A fighting retreat is discussed, and either way something has to be done about that rain of fireballs. The only good thing about all this chaos is Madeleine is free to slip out of any given observer's sight while the fighting persists. The huntress scurries back, avoiding stray wyvern jaws and javelins as she goes, until there is sufficient opening for her to play one more trick before she leaves.     ---     The names given to Madeleine's home by the enemies of her people - nowhere, the void, the Is-Not - range between misnomer and propaganda. There are things and places there - not-things and not-places, if you believe the gods, but many Excrucians dispense with that assigned terminology in favor of affording their homelands a proper dignity. It is said at times that in those lands lie one of any thing which has ever been dreamt, or which ever will be. One of these places, intimately familiar to Madeleine, is the labyrinth. Not simply a labyrinth, but *the* labyrinth, the blueprint, the prototype, the original from which all other mazes of that world conceptually flow. It is said, at times, that if you get lost enough in a building of any sort you can stumble into its halls in the Is-Not, from which you may never emerge again.     ---     Madeleine carries a piece of this labyrinth in her heart, and it is this piece which she now calls forth. A great wall of ice rises across the plateau, starting from opposite edges of the rim and growing to fuse together in the middle just as the last stragglers of Roy's army clear its footprint. Moments later another wall rises beyond it, a few paces closer to Madeleine, and then another, Madeleine walking steadily backward as the walls rise. A wind-tossed javelin embeds itself in her shoulder; she shakes from the impact, but otherwise ignores the wound as if in a trance, blood trickling down her shoulder. Each wall links to the last with numerous doorways leading, usually, to dead ends a row or two later. There is but one true path, through which any man on foot must pass, at the end of which waits the huntress.     Unless, sadly, you have an ample supply of fireballs. The burning spell-projectiles crash into the first wall, reducing it to a crumbled working of slick ice. Another volley will destroy what remains, and then the one after will be exposed. What Madeleine will do when the last wall falls and the army is upon her, she decides, is a 'later' problem. Even if 'later' is only four minutes from now... it just might be enough time.
Khosa	Khosa may not be a dragon, but that doesn't mean Maltet - and especially Galle, it's nothing without its wielder - is not a threat to her. It just means it probably won't kill her as quickly. She's counting on that. Better her than Dysnomia, or Roy, or especially any of the other dragons; Sophia, or Fae, who shouldn't be made to fight at all. So when he lashes back at her, Khosa reaches for it, gripping behind the head of the spear. She can't stop it; it drives into her, cutting through scales like they were barely there - but stopped by a layer of thick chitin plating she's putting on beneath it, the scales peeling off like a shedding snakeskin. Ice spreads across the chitin, and presumably under it too. Taking advantage of the closeness, Khosa yanks on the spear even as she feels the burning cold of the weapon against her palms, trying to pull Galle off-balance and drive her forehead directly into his. He's got armour, but all the fancy metal plate in the world won't help you avoid a head impact if you don't have a helmet - and Khosa is accustomed to her hard head coming out the victor in this kind of competition. She can't hold him for long - he's mounted, she's not, her hands are too numb to climb on, and his wyvern can pull him away from her, but if he's rattled even for a moment, that's enough for her. Khosa drops back down afterwards, shaking her hands once and smoothing out the blisters and the cold damage in her hands, feeling a rush of phantom warmth as feeling comes back to her fingertips. The presence of the Beauty of Ash is surprising - Khosa has never seen Petra with it before, didn't even know it existed - but in the moment her intense dislike for Petra wars with being (however accidentally or tangentially) saved by the mech's assault, and Khosa's sense of honour means she's going to have to thank Petra for that later, *dammit*. But she's still in the middle of a battlefield. This isn't the kind of battlefield Khosa is familiar with, especially, except from what she's picked up in this world; from what she's used to, the troops are too organized (and organized differently), the mages too standardized (and not a dozen psychics doing whatever mental tricks their particular mind attunes them with), and the healers too... Well, constant. No laying on of hands here; no slow entreaties to the elemental forces of Water or Soil. A fireball hits her, then another, washing over her now-chitinous armour with less effect than spears and swords have managed; some of the plates char but none of them crack under the heat. And as the retreat is called - "This way!" Khosa runs in a lope, using both legs and one knuckle from her now-oversized arms, with almost shield-like plates covering her lower arm and down to her knuckles, giving her a kind of gorilla-like appearance. Rather than continuing to beat on Galle, she's switched herself to guiding, to making sure Roy's soldiers get out; covering them if she has to with her enormous shield-arms, smashing through wyvern riders and mages if they're in the way because even if they get healed, smashing them down keeps them busy for just long enough. And while she's doing this, she's mentally reaching out toward the healers. Up there, she can't reach them with fist or electricity; she *might* be able to hit one with a rock, if she had a good throwing rock, which she doesn't. But she can contact them, one after another, the feather touches of telepathic linkages - - which turn into the psychic equivalent of a flashbang, a chaotic mass of sensory impressions. Flashes of light, inhuman noises, even strange smells and the phantom sense of being touched, prodded, stabbed. None of it is real, but if she can help Trudy break their concentration, it's worth doing.
Dysnomia	Shit. Shit. Shit... She feels the lance of pain from Roy, so intense her head yanks to the side, mirrored agony enough to set her off kilter--and open to a bombardment of fire.     She splattered, pulled back together. Splattered, pulled back together. Splattered, pulled back together, washed away in waves upon waves of fire. Splattered gunk dragged itself back together again and again, until at the end, Dysnomia was on her knees, close enough to 'falling' that the mages found other targets to turn their wrath on.     You should have been able to stop this. She seethed. Failing the instant it really matters. Like always. Worthless. Her head turned up. The moment their tactics were made clear, Dysnomia's eyes flashed, her gaze wandering up. Following the flashes of light to their places in the sky. Her mouth curled into an ugly rictus.     Her body dissolved, rising like mist over the field, a long serpentine shape, like a too-dense smoke signal, moving too fast, and too unnaturally. The shape that was Dysnomia flew beneath them and began, once more, to glow.     There was a downside, it turned out, to hiding in the sky. And it was that there wasn't any collateral for anyone to worry about in the background.     Her maw opened wide, visible, suddenly, against her featureless body, baring obsidian mouth, and a throat burning with light. Arcing power shot from her mouth, cutting upward into the sky, like lightning in reverse. She painted the sky in violet, chasing down wyvern after wyvern after wyvern.     'Burn down their support unit,' the Dame Commander had said.     That, at the very least, at the very LEAST, Dysnomia could do.
Marigold	Ace's read on Galle's situation is right. He came here to seize the weapons- leaving without Maltet is unacceptable. When Maltet's blasted away from the Beauty, his teeth grit, just faintly audible under the wash of battle.      Diving through the smoke, he comes up gripping the head end just behind the snowflake-blade; Ace grips the haft. Only one thing is more important than that: Roy. Sparing a hand from the spear-struggle, he tries to legsweep Ace while whistling and snap-throwing a discarded javelin with his left.      Cecilia, still supporting the limping lordling, hisses and cuts it out of the air with a magical wind blade. She realizes her mistake in the same instant, tunnel-visioned:      Galle's wyvern hears the whistle and chomps Roy from her blind spot. Teeth as long as fingers dig into him. What little breath he'd been able to draw leaves him. "ROY!! No--!! Auuuuughh!"      Flamel telekinetically pulls Roy free. The teeth cut too deeply. He screams, and the blood all races out of him nearly in a second, just like Hector. And just like Hector, his pale and pulseless body is delivered into Odette's hands behind a tree downhill.      It's true that the brain maintains consciousness for a window after exsanguination. 'Telepathically linking Roy to everyone' is something Flamel is very able to do. Unfortunately, a near-death teenager isn't the best source of tactical acumen. His thoughts come through feebly, in lapping waves, almost buried under soft blackout synaptic static.      *--urts. it . . . hur--*      "Roy?! Is that you?!" Cecilia, still too shocked for grief, whips around to look for the 'voice'.      *run. please . . . run. s- s--*      "Auuhh- don't you d-dare apologize, young man!"      *--orry.*      That's enough to get Roy's army doing their best to draw together for something like an organized retreat. Shanna, flying low below the canopy, starts to lead the way towards the warpgate. Poor Merlinus, cowering behind the remains of his cozy little campfire, has to be rescued by Marcus on horseback.      And Fae. Petra finds her next to a burning wagon, desperately trying to use her feeble strength to get her dragonstone out from a piece of cracked lumber pinning it down. It's easy for Petra to retrieve. The poor girl looks up at her with big wet-shiny eyes, first at the Beauty's sole eye, and then at her hazy outline in the chest. "Peh-etra?" she sniffles, and then makes a soft 'oup-!' if she's picked up.      "Big Petra... is everyone else okay? Fae's really scared. Fae couldn't even help..."      Petra and Khosa stun the healers for several long moments- a couple of the wyverns nearly crash, in the process, especially those wounded by the shards- and Trudy's samurai clips down the first ones to recover.      The look on Cecilia's face during all this is hard to read. Pale. Wide-eyed. Stiff. Jaw clenched. The moment her thoughts snap away from Roy, her treasured pupil who lays dying or dead, she whips around on her heel and barks to her irregulars. "Cavalry with the wounded! Valkyrie on the lame first, Mend! Lightning, fliers, cast! Fire, smokescreen, cast! Now full evacuation! Follow the shapeshifter!" Khosa, she assumes, has a way through Maddie's icy labyrinth.      Her orders drop a few more, massed lightning attacks intersecting with Na-Go's, along with turning the field into a smoking hell. Lower visibility favors you, but it still isn't fun.
Marigold	Concussed by Khosa, battered by Flamel, scored across his back by the Black Knight's heavy blow, bleeding from Odette's cheeky little toss, and now wrestling with Nonon and Ace both, the cords in Galle's neck stand out. The healing pulses he expects don't come, and he looks upwards at the circling wyverns- now fewer in number- only to wince.      His accompanying wyvern knights- the number who aren't tied up with Trudy's undead, at least- will crash against Nonon's back and stab her until she lets go. Still recognizing Galle as its rightful wielder, Maltet starts to freeze Ace's hands while leaving his warm. But for the moment- for the moment-      "You can do better!"      Galle turns from his teeth-gritting struggle to hiss something at Lilian. He doesn't. His mouth stays open. That gentle, warm, appealing future washes over his cold soul. It aches. She can see it in his eyes that it aches, like frostbite thawing. The pins and needles of dead veins, however briefly, stirring back to life.      He can't say yes to that future. He won't. But his diaphragm heaves, for a moment, as he tries and fails to say 'no'. The effort of it wracks his whole body. It's a way Rutger might have looked, once. Even the noise of her and Echidna helping Trudy's undead fend off the grounded wyvern riders can't draw his gaze away from Lilian. It's as though he's begging her for another glimpse of the thing he can never have.      "Here's your duel, you pitiful bastard."      History will record those words as the first accompanying incantation of Forblaze in the modern day.      Cecilia stands with hand outstretched, other hand holding the tome and hugging Sophia. Her face is lit by the red light of the dense glowing sigil her fingers have exactingly traced.      The first meteor-like near-vertical fiery impact is exactly aimed to just miss Nonon and Ace while slamming directly into Galle. In the blinding light and stinging heat, it's hard to see exactly what happens, but Ace can feel something break in his grip. The great pulse of cold that follows Maltet's cracking is overriden in a second by the greater wash of Forblaze over the mountain.      The evacuues get to see its projectiles soaring overhead before impacting behind them. For this battle- narrow, tall, and filled with draconic targets- it's perfect. At least angled away from Roy and the retreating forces at Cecilia's back, it's otherwise ruthlessly indiscriminate, scorching gold the wing-membranes of wyverns even by proximity. This place will be black.      On the horizon you might glimpse the dark flying dots of wyvern reinforcements. But the warpgate is in sight now. They can make it. You can make it.
Trudy Grimm	Chaos and disarray are the goal Trudy had in mind. She snaps the Grimoire shut and releases it; the book's buckle fastens on its own as it drops to hang by its strap near her hip. Her hand lifts, now free, with two fingers extended, "That's about all I can accomplish. Like Lilian said-- let's give her room to work."     The witch and the samurai on the ridge sink into their shadows.     Afield in the melee, the Black Knight sweeps a leg back in recovery from chaining power attacks meant to leverage his strength and the weight of his weapon, just barely keeping the tip of his blade from slamming into the ground again. He lurches it back up in a backslash arc, hoisting the greatblade over his head and grasping the hilt with both hands while Ace and Galle wrestle for control of Maltet. It's obvious that he intends to force Galle to either let go or otherwise lose an arm--     --When the Black Knight suddenly drops into his shadow as if the ground at his feet simply stopped existing. He even makes a shocked sound as he falls that almost, almost sounds like NO.     It is only Trudy who appears from the shadows of the trees near the warpgate itself, singed and smoldering but still standing. After briefly checking her limbs are still attached, the witch immediately sets in on directing the retreating forces.     Her impact on the battlefield isn't entirely removed, though. Trudy just left all those skeletons there to continue gumming up the works for the Bernish pursuit.
Odette Raskins	No, this is still too much damage. At this point, Odette's not looking at triage, but recovery and resuscitation. Another terrified shudder shakes her for a moment as she sees all that blood coming out of Roy, and the wyvern right on him, and Cecilia's voice coming out in that heart wrenching way. Hearing his voice in her head just makes it worse, and the EMT can barely resist the urge to just wrench her headset off like that would actually stop her from hearing any of that. Once she has his body, however, she has no choice but to focus on the work. As long as she can do that, she can worry about anything else later. This is a bad place for surgery, for starters, but she doesn't have a stretcher to pull him out with. All she has is body bags, but that's perfect because she doesn't have any other way to make sure everything in him stays with him during their escape from this entire mess. There's not even time to bandage him up properly, only to inject him with one more dosage of painkillers and sedatives. "D.. Don't worry, Roy. You'll be fine. Just a quick nap, and you'll be good as new." She speaks aloud, not even fully sure if he's still conscious or alive at that point, but she does so anyway. She'll need to replace all that blood soon, but the orders to retreat come forth, and Odette spends only a little more time securing Roy inside the bag that feels both too large and too small for him. It's time to go, and she drags him along at an awkward sprint. She hears the crack of Forblaze being invoked, and she glances back for only a moment before double-timing it back towards the warp gate. She can't revive Roy if she's dead and he's burnt to a crisp, after all, and this is no place to be doing surgery.
Desire Stars	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Inflict as much damage to his support unit as you can, then evacuate the field. I'm the only one here who can exfiltrate no matter what; you're not leaving after I leave." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Parsons, Petra, Nonon, Ace. Cooperate with the Lycian veteran fighting core. Anyone with a Divine Weapon stays. Lucius; I'm going to ask that you keep that staff handy."     "Got it." "Okay!"     Na-Go does as she's asked, shifting her focus from support-offense to a fading all-in offense. Alternating her focus between the healers and the artillerist mages, she uses lightning for the former and icicles for the latter, while using the Beat Axe's reach and the trees to ward off anyone that might try to pursue on foot.     When it comes to fighting with a spear, Geats is competent, but no match for Galle. When it comes to fighting *over* one, he falls upon his experience fighting with his hands, instead. In that regard, he fights like someone much, much older than he appears to be.     Galle's sweep is interdicted by Geats' opposite leg, a straight kick followed by a counterattack wherein he slides the hand gripping Maltet up the haft to elbow him with the opposite hand. The DGP dropbox falls from the crook of his arm, but he bounces it above his and Galle's heads as if it were a soccer ball, shooting it open with a noise that's all but deafening with the pistol that close to Galle's ear.     Hand still tightly gripping the haft, he leaps over Galle to force him to either turn around (and thus away from Roy) or fight with an arm behind his back, catching the falling Buckle as he does. He lands just as Galle is struck by the fiery impact of Forblaze.     The metallic red Boost Buckle in one hand and the splintered blunt half of Maltet in the other, Geats turns his red lenses to the horizon. "Better than we could have hoped for, all things considered. Time to call it a day." He tosses the splintered half in the air, catches it, then inserts the Boost Buckle and turns the accelerator.                                    BOOSTRIKER                                       A red superbike appears beside him, dropped from the same blue-voxel wash as the box the Buckle had arrived in. He sits astride it, turns the ignition and throttles down on the accelerator, kicking up a spray of dirt and grass. As Lilian had asked, he stays with the veterans, working an erratic semicircle and weaving through the trees at breakneck speed. Having moved from foot marksman to 'mounted,' he's quick to assist anyone in trouble on their way out with fishtails, kicks, trick shots from the Magnum Shooter or even gouts of flame from the annealed metal exhausts of the Boostriker, until Roy's forces have pulled back such that retreat through the gate is all that's left to do.
Lilian Rook	"ROY!!!" Lilian screams.     §Don't think about the pain! We're already on the move! You have to get to us from there! Focus on that!§     §You all had one job! You had to protect one life most of all! Don't make it my fault for fighting to give you a chance! Not again! How dare you be that weak!§     As Cecilia rouses the troops, Lilian is already charging back into the front. Sword held tight, center low, picking up nothing but speed on a dead heat right into the enemy formation, her armour pings from internal strain. Redoubled power flows through each thudding step and surges through the lines of her blade; both are thrown into a head-on assault that fits the definition of overextending and unsustainable pace. For a little while, the grass ripples flat in the meadow, and the ground rumbles.     'Lightning, fliers, cast!'     "Tormáil in Aghaidh na Haille!"     Fire, smokescreen, cast!'     "Dóiteáin Fiáin Bhí Seilg!!"     'Now full evacuation! Follow the shapeshifter!'     "Céad Chogadh Bláthanna!!!"     Smoking from causal friction, coated in sweat-slicked ash thrown off from magical fires, Lilian turns on Galle and gathers up her breath to try and find a direct opening on him-- and finds the vision that had irrepressibly escaped her still lingers with him seconds later.     Frozen and agog, Lilian stares back into his eyes. Mouth open, her lip twitchs, then halts, then twists into bitterly vicarious frustration.     "How many chances do you need, General? Either get out of your own way, or die wondering what might have been, but don't act like you're waiting for me! You're not so helpless that you need saving!"     She hadn't meant it to stall for anything. Every last word was nothing more than an honest outpouring of her feelings at the time. Lilian will have to process what happens next later; that it was the right decision, and that 'pitiful bastard' couldn't be any more true, yet it leaves a bad taste in her mouth anyways. Forblaze doesn't give her room to think, nor room to argue. Jumping back as close as she can stay to search through the smoke for a few seconds longer, Lilian looks skyward to the sight of reinforcements, holds her breath and flickers out to join the rear guard.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel achieves what he was after. A dying teenage boy is in his arms, and soon in Odette's care. He's done it again: A better future, carved straight through the deepest wellbeing of the young, the vulnerable, the burdened. The guilt of that will hit sometime after the counterattack, and be appropriately dysfunctionally misprocessed. For now, he has defense to work. Like Lilian ordered, he has to cover the retreat, and leave shortly before the divine-weapon holders.     The one good eye on his goggles flickers when the impact shockwave of Forblaze strikes. Rescue, of sorts, complete. Now: Draw attention. Disrupt pursuit. Wage a fighting retreat. Survive. He seeps into Roy's telepathic link, riding the waves of command.     Lances and fireballs slam where he flicked out of visibility moments ago. Within the clouds of dust that the impact kicked up, visions of him flutter, and he emits blast after heavy blast, disappearing afterwards and using his light knowledge of Madeleine's mind to navigate the labyrinth with familiarity to evade counterattacks. Levitating to accelerate to unbelievable speed, he rushes so, so fast, and pushes to work alongside Khosa and Petra with agonizing boosts of aggression energy and confusion-explosives, using hollowed-out or confused healers as relays for massive detonations of sickly-green airburst confusion energy.     The Black Knight's vanishing leaves him with another opportunity: Appear where the Knight vanished, as if a tactical double-false feint, striking in intense melee on anyone advancing there. It's a strategy he starts deploying in moments where Lucius has yanked the fighters out. And always, always, some distance from Galle. When Dysnomia performs her airlifts, he'll be found riding along just long enough to drift off and away, intercepting incoming shots with his personal barrier and dropping onto foes from above -- typically coordinating to make sure he's always dropping on the wyvern knights who would otherwise cover Na-Go's targets, and when it's time to move fast, he can latch onto Geats' bike, holding on from behind with a telekinetic grip and sort of levitation-waterskiing as he does his own ranged blasts. After all, what half-decent secret agent can't shoot while skiing?     He knows the mind of everyone leaving. He tracks them, telepathically, clairvoyantly. He pushes mental stimulation through Roy's mind, forcing it into expressive focus. He demands nothing but effective retreat, a tremendous, agonizing demand. Later, Lilian will probably yell at him -- he risked the hopes of Elibe, a land she deeply cares for. Roy will undoubtedly feel a whole lot less comfortable around him, for obvious reasons. He might even wind up being one of the few people Odette articulates a strong dislike for, using her like a tool to allow himself to cut someone's neck alongside the gordian knot.     He will accept neither forgiveness nor criticism.
Petra Soroka	"Big Petra... is everyone else okay? Fae's really scared. Fae couldn't even help..."     For all of the sharp edges and jagged cuts of the Beauty of Ash, when it scoops Fae up into a hug, it's shockingly gentle. Careful, expert maneuvering keeps the pointed ends away from Fae, cupping her in its elbows against the smoother pane of its chest. Far from being cold and unyielding like glass would be expected to be, the Beauty of Ash is heated like the hood of an old car, or like a blanket straight out of the dryer.     §Hey, hey, it'll be okay. Fae gets to protect other people when she's big, right? Right now Petra's big, so I'm protecting you, and you don't need to worry about that.§     The Petra-blur in its core shifts, posture unreadable through the frosted refraction, but a hand-sized spot of the Beauty of Ash's chest pressed up to Fae grows warmer. What was a ten minute walk to the warpgate is barely a fraction in the Beauty of Ash, but distractions from the wyverns keep forcing her to make hairpin turns or intercept a thrown spear with a downpour of telekinetic shrapnel from the ambient glass storm. Her telepathy isn't interrupted by needing to focus on breathing for combat, but the bursts of fuzzing static feel like gasps each time she clashes with one of Galle's men.     §You don't need to-- worry. Everyone'll be alright, because you've got Lilian, Cecilia, and me here, and so-- so many other people too.§     The Beauty of Ash plummets down from camp-height all the way to the warpgate at the base of the hill, wind rushing then coming to a silent ballet stop on its two feet. She lowers Fae down to the ground with the telepathic impression of 'hup!', dragonstone and a fittingly slightly singed Wildfire to go with her through the gate. §Alright, Fae, there *is* totally a mission that only you can do. Roy's gonna be a bit hurt after this, and it'll help a lot if he can see how brave you're being, and it'll help him get better faster too. So when you go through that gate there, there's going to be lots of surprising things, but they don't have to be scary things, okay? Good luck, be brave.§     Thankfully, she wasn't paying enough attention to Flamel and Odette's side of things to know that the bodybag that Odette is hauling has Roy in it, only knowing that he's been *extracted*. That'll fuck *her* up some, to say nothing of Fae. §Once the injured and noncombatants are out, you're staying with me for as long we have to be here.§     §!§     The mental impulse that Petra directs at Lilian from the Beauty of Ash feels like the telepathic equivalent to a salute, uncontroversial acknowledgement along with the information that Fae's safe. She lands in two pairs of clicks from the sky, on all fours right behind Lilian, and then the Beauty of Ash rockets off again, faster than the impacts from Forblaze. Stragglers from the army are protected by the splintering pounces of the mech slamming full-bodied into any wyverns pursuing them, the telekinetic shrapnel barely having time to partly reconstitute before wheeling around to shred their next target.     Soot from Forblaze's annihilation of the forest coats the disparate shards of the Beauty of Ash and settles in the cracks when it pulls its limbs back together. Black and grey outlines around every irregular, tiny break-point turns the mech nearly opaque, and once she's ravaged Galle's support troops as much as she has the opportunity to, the mech slides to a stop on the top of the slope leading down to the warpgate. Like a dog shaking off the rain, the Beauty of Ash shatters along every single fracture with the crunch of a spine stretching, and each fragment shudders individually in a ripple along its length to shrug the soot off. It snaps back together, and after a glance at Lilian, dives downhill to be among the last leaving.