EDIT: Today I beat Astebreed on Normal, finally (turns out one must not only make prodigious use of the EX attack, but also of the Dash attack to avoid those pesky red lasers), and then I was so pumped that I ran for a whole kilometre in two sections. : D
Chapter 6: Siblings Abroad Chapter 8: Vortex of Strategy
Chapter 7: The Black Shadow
Kent slipped off his horse and pressed his back to the wall. Sain was on the other side of the entrance. Both knights had their swords in hand, and were only waiting for Ceniro’s signal to slip inside to begin their attack.
Lyn’s Legion had found where Eliwood had rescued Ninian; the bodies of her kidnappers were still lying in the road not far from the fortress they had captured. However, none of them had a ring with them. Matthew, Wil, and Florina had set off, tracking the two men whose tracks led away from the scene of battle.
The companions had been led to a low building in the middle of the forest with no windows and only one door. There was nothing for it but to attack directly. To make matters more uncomfortable, it had begun to rain.
Ceniro took a deep breath. “Let’s go!”
The two knights ran in, followed closely by Lyn and Dorcas, and Rath and Wil close behind them. Almost immediately, they were confronted by men in black leather armour. “Who are you and what do you want!”
“Intruders, we have intruders!” yelled another.
“We’ve come for the girl’s ring,” Lyn said. “But I’m pretty sure you’re not just going to hand it over!”
“Here you all are now,” said a man, tall and strong, and wearing a red cloak over his armour. “I knew the ring would lead you to bring the children to me. Hand them over and I’ll allow you to leave with your lives!”
Lyn huffed. “How cowardly do you think I am!? If you won’t give it up, then the time for talking is over!”
“Lucius!” Ceniro cried, and the first chamber of the hideout erupted into a storm of chaos. Ceniro had a tough job just seeing everything, and keeping Ninian and Nils and Serra out of the way of the swords and arrows. Florina and Matthew were helping to guard them, but both Ninian and Nils looked terrified and horrified, and Ceniro couldn’t blame them – they were far closer to the action than he wanted them to be. They were far closer to the action than he wanted to be himself, frankly, and the violence in the hall was of a level he hadn’t seen before.
He had to keep it together. Not even for Ninian and Nils’ sake, but for his own sake, he had to focus, to ignore the pain and death swirling around him and cold-bloodedly organize his forces in the best match-ups against their enemies.
Cold-blooded he couldn’t do. He never could, even in practice, but he could ensure that his own side lived.
The commander on the other side, the one with the red cloak, wasn’t a bad tactician himself. That was to say, he actually understood tactics, unlike almost every foe Ceniro had faced since he had met Lyn – the assassin strike force in Araphen aside.
But while Ceniro’s friends were outnumbered, they were better than their enemies, and they were pressing them back into the corridors of the maze-like stronghold. And Ceniro thought he was probably better than the enemy commander.
Then Florina screamed, a hysterical, panicked scream, and Ceniro saw that the enemy had archers. He frowned in worry. He didn’t have any people with very strong armour. They were near Kent and Sain, who had more armour than the rest of them; hopefully it would be enough. “Erk! Lyn! Get the archers now!”
And from his right, a bolt of lightning flashed down the corridor, and before he recognized its brightness, he lost a moment in time as every nerve in his body crackled with pain and energy. In the part of his head still thinking, he gave a useless curse. There had been a mage hiding down the hall, or more than one. Not good. “F-Flor…”
Someone was helping him up from the ground, even as his limbs gave a final uncontrollable spasm. His legs were shaking, and it didn’t stop even as Serra’s healing magic lit up around him. Lyn was the one helping him up. “Ceniro! Are you all right!?”
“I-I’m f-f-fine. F-f-florina, get the mage! Nils, help her!” Another bolt of lightning struck Lucius and the monk fell to the floor too, joined by Wil, and on the other side of the room, Sain had an arrow in his left arm, although the archers were now charred bodies on the floor. Sain would be all right. Ceniro ran to Lucius to check on him, and breathed a large sigh of relief. The monk was still alive, and Wil was twitching entirely too much to be dead.
“Hold positions,” Ceniro called. It was no time to go advancing until they’d reconsolidated their current area. They needed to give Serra time to get to everyone.
“I am not unreasonable,” called the enemy commander from the shadows farther back in the corridors. “Surrender and your lives will be spared.”
“Not interested!” Lyn yelled, dodging another lightning bolt. Was Florina having trouble?
“Rath, back Florina up!” he ordered. “Lucius, are you feeling all right now? Take a moment if you need it.” His legs were finally beginning to obey him again.
“We’ve got this!” Lyn reassured them. “Keep it up!”
The lightning bolts stopped, and Serra was catching up with the wounded, aided by Nils’ flute. “Two groups! Kent, take Lyn, Rath, Erk, and Matthew, and head right! Sain, take Florina, Wil, Lucius, and Dorcas and head left! Serra, Ninian, follow Kent. Nils, you’re with me!” It was time to press into the depths of the stronghold.
“Sure are a lot more enemies than we expected, huh?” Sain called back to him.
“They are remarkably well-organized,” Ceniro replied. “Watch the door on your left!”
They were met with lance-men around the next bend, six of them, three ranks deep, and they planted their feet with a defiant roar, shaking their spearpoints at Sain. “Dorcas, take point! Wil, Lucius, back him up!”
He hated not being able to actually fight. If only he was stronger physically, and if he was brave enough to – to take a life to defend his friends, he could be helping out instead of watching as one axeman took on two lances at a time. The corridor made for a natural shooting gallery, but Wil’s arrows were not as accurate as usual, and the archer hissed in frustration. Fortunately for Dorcas, Lucius’s light magic was more accurate, and made his job easier.
Ceniro wondered how the other group was doing, but that was why he had put Kent and Lyn at the head of it and put Serra at the back of it. They would survive.
Once clear of the lancers, they took a right turn and found themselves facing Kent’s group. The corridors had joined again and there was only one way forward.
“How’d it go, partner?” Sain greeted his friend cheerfully.
“All opposition was neutralized,” Kent said. “No losses.”
“We’re almost at the end, right?” Serra asked. “This is tiring!”
“Not sure,” Ceniro said. “Should be. Matthew, what’s the next room look like?”
“Couple swordsmen. Beyond that…” Matthew leaned past the doorway for the briefest of moments. “I think that leader is there… and maybe a shaman as well.”
“Not good,” Ceniro said. “There’s hardly any room to really dodge in here. Let’s take on the swordsmen first!”
The swordsmen fought hard, cursing at them, but even as Ceniro’s group pushed them back against the back wall, black spots appeared on the floor and the walls, and tendrils of black magic sprang from them and whipped around. Black spheres appeared in the air, and the group jumped for safety – which was distracting them from the swordsmen. “Erk, focus down the end of the swordsmen’s line! Florina, Lyn, take Lucius to deal with that shaman! Rath, Wil, you too!” At least now they outnumbered the enemy… but that wasn’t the point. Getting everyone out alive was the point.
As if the enemy commander wasn’t going to let them get to the shaman without a fight. He sprang forward, charging at Lyn, using his greater weight to push her back. On her side, she let him, giving way before him before sliding to the side to counterattack from a new angle.
But Lyn was getting tired, and her dazzling speed was beginning to falter. Ceniro wanted to pull her back, but everyone else was tired as well, and the enemy was still fresh. “Come on, Lyn… you can do it.”
Lyn gritted her teeth, revealing them in a soundless snarl, and attacked again – faster than he had seen her do before. The enemy was disarmed, his sword flying away and falling to the floor with a loud clang, and he fell to his knees, clutching his bleeding hand. Lyn drew back her sword, ready to strike, but refrained. “Give us the ring! And promise us you will never hunt these children again!”
All emotion drained from the enemy’s face. “The punishment for failure… is death…” Before even Lyn could stop him, he raised a small bottle to his lips with his good hand and drank. Sain jumped forward to grab him, but even as he did so, the bottle fell and smashed on the floor, and he slumped forward.
Silence fell, the only sound being the heavy breathing of the companions and the awful noise of dripping things. Ceniro shivered and pulled his cloak a little closer around himself.
“I-I don’t know… what to say,” Lyn said.
“Check if he had the ring?” Matthew said. “Allow me.” After a few moments, he pulled the ring from the man’s pocket and handed it to Ninian. “Your ring, my dear young lady.”
Ninian looked a bit stunned. “He really had it… You really found it!”
“Let’s get outside,” Lyn said. “It might be wet and cold out there, but better than being in here with all this death.”
“That sounds like the best plan yet!” Serra said. “It’s quite awful in here. Will anyone hold their cloak over my head? I don’t want to get wet! It’s not proper!”
“Those were no ordinary bandits, or even ordinary mercenaries,” Kent said softly to Ceniro as they left. “They were far too well trained, and the leader knew how to fight. I fear they might be part of a larger group.”
“I think you might be right,” Ceniro said. “And he said ‘the punishment for failure is death’. I wonder who he was, and who his boss is, and what they plan to do with Nils and Ninian. And if we can stop them.”
“I think that your idea was a good one,” Lyn said to Nils as they exited the building. “I promise you, you’ll be safe as long as you’re with us. Between my sword, Ceniro’s direction, and the strength of our friends, everything will be fine.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Ninian said, touching the ring on her finger. “You went through all that just to restore this to me… I will never forget your kindness and courage, never. All of you… Thank you.”
“Anything for a maiden,” Sain said, smiling cheerfully as he remounted his horse.
“We like helping people, basically,” Wil said. “Ick, it’s so wet out! I vote we don’t go too much farther today.”
Two days later, they were on the edge of Caelin territory, overlooking fertile fields of grain and other crops. A couple small villages dotted the hills nearby, and the weather had cleared up.
Lyn was looking backwards, as wasn’t unusual for her. “Wow, Ceniro, the mountains are really far away now! We met on the other side of those…”
“It’s been a while since then,” Ceniro agreed, wishing he could say something more interesting. “I never thought my journey would take the direction it did… but I suppose it’s double that for you, since it’s your whole life.”
She laughed and agreed. Seeing her laugh… her face lighting up like that, her blue eyes squeezing at the corners, her lips curving, hearing her laugh… Even if she was worrying about many other things, even if he was worrying about other things, he could forget it all for a moment in watching her laugh. And of course he had to laugh himself, mirroring her.
He had no idea why she had laughed, but he hoped he could do that again at some point.
“We’re not a day’s journey from the village of Coril,” Sain announced happily. “I don’t know if Kent will allow us to visit on this journey, but as soon as you’ve met your grandfather, you should definitely come and visit! I think you and the lovely Salir will get along famously. Right, Kent?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Kent said calmly. “In any case, it’s still three days from Castle Caelin. But now I know the area better, and I know where we will be staying tonight.”
“Ooh, is it the inn at Gramsend?” Sain asked. “Gramsend is not bad.”
“Gramsend, or we might even make it to Trenton Ford…”
“Listen to them,” Lyn said fondly to Ceniro. “They’re both so excited.”
“Aren’t you excited, Lyn?” Florina asked. “Only three days until you meet your grandfather!”
“I suppose I am,” Lyn said. “I… don’t really want to think about it, even, it’s… too exciting.”
“I’m more worried about Lundren, anyway,” Kent said, re-entering the conversation. “I feel he should have done something else by now… The closer we get to Castle Caelin, the more likely Lord Hausen will learn of his attempts on your life and shut him down.”
“We have no real proof that will stand up in court of his assassination attempts, but… Lady Lyn, I believe your grandfather will trust your word if you were to tell him of his brother’s misdeeds against you,” Sain added.
“I’ll think about it,” Lyn said. “For now, let’s keep going. I want to see all those villages you were talking about, all right?”
“Right you are!” Sain cried, grinning.
“Ah!” Ninian cried, as Lyn stepped out boldly in front of the others. “Lady Lyn, don’t go another step!”
“What- what is it-” Lyn began.
Ceniro flung himself in front of her, having spotted the sharp tip of a ballista pointed in their direction from the south-east, and braced himself for impact.