“Coming! They are coming, hold your ground!”
After having detected the Latilian attackers, the defenders are throwing every man they could call over to stop the storm from reaching the duke. Their efforts however, turned into nothing but trembling screams:
“All men, regroup and form a shield wall! We must stop the Latilians before they come to the main hall-”
The sentence was cut short as a massive black greatsword flew and pierced through the shield wall of the Elestovakians, followed by a volley of matchlock’s bullets while the guards were in disarray. Bullets rain down upon the now loosened line, penetrating deep behind the wall of shade, spraying blood as they tear off layers of skins of those who got caught in the fire. The devastating combination of destruction killed a dozen and injured many more and effectively decimating the line of defense. With that, Latilian professional marines under the guidance of the Archduchess, advanced forward:
“Do not let them rest, charge at will. I will take the lead”-saying Lily, reloading her gun for the next round.
“Your Grace, we have more problems ahead, the wall troops are entering the castle.”
“Then I will destroy them.”
More Elestovakians are coming, this time actual soldiers, armed with bows and pikes, but that is nothing but a minor inconvenience compared to anything previous. Launching herself forward and taking back the sword to her inventory, Lily smashes into the chaotic Elestovakians and welds. Using its massive kinetic energy given, the blade easily slices through its victims’s flesh and bones, giving them an instant and painful death, along with a trait of blood subsequently around Lily:
“Goddamn…”
The Archduchess’s killing glances pierced through the bloody mist.
It was not exactly violence, in fact, it was very much neutral, the Archduchess simply wants to make her way to the duke and takes him down, the Elestovakians here make her have to go brutal.
Though, that neutral glance makes that woman even scarier.
In fear, plus not knowing how to address Lily, the guards uttered a nickname for the Archduchess, based on her surrounding aura:
“The Vampire Knight! The Bloody Fog- No, The Red Mist!”
Lily swings her blade upon the pikemen that were about to approach her. A cloud of red blood soon surrounds the sword and its welder.
“The Red Mist has destroyed the pioneers! They are coming! The foot troops!”
The Marines running after the Red Mist Archduchess unleash their blades onto the vulnerable archers. Caught while still building a line, the bowmen had no chance to pull the arrows nor draw out their melee arms to fight back and thus, they were overwhelmed. The full frontal assault thrusts against the forming wall, allowing even more Latilians to swarm in and killing Elestovakian troops. They raise their daggers against the archers, turning the leather armors of their target into blood. Again, and again:
“Open fire!”
On the other end of the Latilian line, the swordsmen and gunners have brought down minor ambushes from their back. And they step back. Having entirely focused on the front, the back is gradually retreating with discipline, but they did not miss their chance to inflict casualties on the defenders. Castle guards are their only enemies, they are not as troublesome. Ten minutes into combat, on this side alone more than half a hundred corpses are on the ground, just three being Latilians. The Elestovakians do not have heavy armed men available on this front, they were easily defeated by row and row of matchlocks. The Latilians meanwhile don’t have to fight with those unfavourite unreliable matchlocks for long:
“Crossbow! Crossbow!”
The Marines, now armed with crossbows taken from a captured armory, on both ends, are killing the enemies with ease. Though not as powerful as Ganeoese crossbows as they are smaller, having no leg-pull handle and fire at a smaller rate, Elestovakian crossbows are still powerful enough to land a decisive hit into armored troops:
“Agh! I got hit!”
Back to the front, where Lily is unleashing her wrath of rampage. Even with armored reinforcements from the wall, things are not better at the slightest for the defenders:
“Move back, the Red Mist!”
“The Red Mist is com-”
The bloody black sword suddenly arrives on one of the armored soldiers’ chest, before his face is trampled on as the Archduchess lands on it to swing her newly founded sword from the armory. The white blade swept its exceeded violence into heads and chests of the rest of the vanguards, killing every in an instant.
“Hah.”
Taking a moment to restore her vision after the red trails of blood following is gone, Lily takes back the ceramic sword and throws the body that was stuck onto it into the remaining swordsmen:
“Fu- Agh! Hah!”
With the swordsmen in confusion, the Archduchess throws the white sword at them, killing one then jumps forward and brutally smashes her fists in the middle of the shields, breaking them at once and leaving the rest to be eliminated by crossbow arrows. Elestovakian men fall after another, a dozen at a time. The floor bathes in red, as the bloody mist sweeps through the hall. Suddenly, a dash:
Bang!
Lily rams herself into a wooden door blocking between her army and the main hall. The Marines behind swarm in, they raise the crossbow on their chest’s level and discharge.
**
“Vitta 1 to Belisari, the number of defenders is dwindling on the wall. They are coming to the castle.”
Over Voyage, the flier monitors detected unusual movements. Elestovakian troops from their position on the wall are retreating. As they dispatch with their arms, a worrying look can be seen on their face, even fear. This is abnormal, no army being besieged would risk withdrawing their troops on the wall on the very first day of combat without replacement. However, Belisari has already figured it out what is happening:
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“Liliya and her team were detected, before they captured Gelime.”
He says, face displays a certain worryness. Aurora sees it and empathizes, having your best friend trapped is worrying, and herself also concerned for Lily too. They are not that close in terms of friendship, but Lily is still a reliable companion for Aurora.
Gerald, the man who coincidentally standing close to them and heard the conversation on the other hand, concerns more about the mess they have to clean up after liberating the castle, and he thinks Belisari is thinking of the same. Lily? She needs no care, but having an entire mini genocide in the Voyage castle is not a good way to not traumatize the population. This time he is right.
“Whatever it is, we must support Liliya.”
The prince turns around-”Alright, we will hit their mental stability with another strike. Take your time, Aurora.”
“I’m already finished.”
Striking the flint against steel, the Doctor of War lit up her so-called “rocket orchestra”, named by its own creator with her creative mind, an instrument created by combining rocket propellers of many Husaria together into one, a solution for the lack of siege engines:
“Ready set, launch!”
From the head, Aurora’s orchestra dashes a rocket at a guard tower. The projectile flies steady toward its appointed direction. An explosion soon followed, knocking down the weak structure of the tower and every men inside, as they fall like calmness of every Elestovakian soldiers who witnessed what happened:
“What was that? Lightning? Sound like one”-an unknown man says in tremble, trying to give out an explanation-”But the sky is clear?”
“In that case, gunpowder exploded.”
“We have no gunner in this city, why do we even have gunpowder? That must came from the Latilians-”
Bang!
Even more explosions. In just a minute, one by one, most archer positions near the gate were hit. They either crumbled or their men were thrown out of their standing points. At this moment, words of the last man who said must be true:
“What is that thing!?”
Chaos let loose among the rank of the Elestovakians. Besieged by ten thousand troops, the enemies are rampaging inside their very headquarters and mysterious explosions that came out from the besieging force and took down their guards, all of that can drive any soldier insane. The Elestovakians, famously known for their indoctrination even when fighting a larger army, upon being attacked by unknown forces from the unknown, their discipline collapsed. It was the archers on remaining towers who first abandoned their ground, simultaneously followed by bowmen and pikemen along the wall, but that was a terrible mistake as it allowed combat fliers to sweep in at low altitude. A scout flier, precisely coordinating positions of the defending troops, orders his allies:
“Shoot!”
At the moment the Elestovakians are in disorder, Latilian ranged units release their missiles onto the city within the war. They hope to somewhat thinner the line behind the gates.
“AGHH!!!!!”
As the projectiles land, screams can be heard from this side of the war, not one of calling command, but one in pain-“Mobius, how are the defenders?”-Belisari questions as he hears the screams. To answer, the flier called Mobius decrease her attitude for a closer overview:
“I can see they are heavily damaged. No, they are routing. Squadron Leader Mobius to Squadron Leader Trigger, commence aerial assault.”
“Roger Roger”-Trigger replies to Mobius’s message. Drawing out a dozen grenades from his waist, the squadron leader drops them onto the retreating men, followed by every other combat flier above the city. The bombing resulted in a storm of fire as those grenades ignited and shattered into flaming hot metal pieces and ravaged between Elestovakians ranks…The fire from the grenade took no time to finally break the sanity of the Elestovakians. They run without needing to know where to run, men step over each other in panic. There can’t be any better opportunity than this if they want to breach the line. With that in mind, another squadron leader calls for the prince:
“Now are chances, do it, Your Highness.”
Needless to say, “It” is a full frontal assault.
“Brilliant. Sir Gerald, may you take the honor?”
For ones who don’t not know, Belisari is asking for Gerald to signal the wall assault, but the knight declines politely:
“I do want to, but I am old. This time I will step back.”
“Okay then, give me your tuba.”
Being given the horn war tuba from the knight, Belisari holds its handle upward, facing the wooden gate. The prince takes a deep breath, then:
Oompahhhh!
The tuba sings in a deafening song that echoes across the open field. For the Elestovakians, that song equaled nothing but death, as when the sound of horn ended, the Latilians light shielded swordsmen lines comefor toward the wall where they were hiding behind.
“They cannot hold it. Take them down, men.”
“We will recapture Voyage.”
The prince and the old knight charge with their men. Belisari with his marine and light infantry jumps on the wall and climbs. The wall was made out of soil, it was slippery, but can be climbed over as his feet can dig holes into the wall and firmly fix his standing point.
On his flanks, the swordsmen already got on the top of the wall, and are jumping down onto the Elestovakians.
**
“You lose.”
From the Duke’s office, on the highest floor of the Voyage castle excluding the high tower, Lily, puffing clouds of cigarette smoke from her mouth, is holding the duke within her strike range.
In front of her, a bondaged Gelime is being forced to watch his Elestovakian line collapse under the weight of the Latilians. When the gate was forcibly opened by light infantry that climbed the wall and unlocked it from behind, the Latilian army went full on violence. His Guard Corp, while fleeing are being slaughtered mercilessly, Winged Husaria charging from the main gate axing the Elestovakians down, or they being targeted by Cathedraller musketeers on the wall. No hope. He lost the castle, and now his troops lost the gate, it will just be a matter of time before the Latilians banner enter Voyage:
“Goddammit”-Gelime speaks with anger-”My city…my city fell…You know this is worthless right? An Elestovakian Army will come here and reclaim Nova Voiaiologos again, you will not succeed in holding my city.”
Lily turns her face down, glaring at the degraded Duke. Her eye lies an anger even fiercer than Gelime’s:
“Who’s city? Even if you call it Nova Voiaiologos (New Voyage), the “Voiaiologos” (Voyage) is still there. Coincidentally, my name is Lily Sobieski Voyage, so this city is actually mine, I only took it back from you and your Empire.”
Saying that, puffing a smoke into the defeated Duke, Lily picks up her black sword from the side and points it at Gelime:
“And also, the fire you set on the tower yesterday was to alert other scouts to call for garrisons in the region to send reinforcements, right? When they see the fire they will hurriedly return to the nearest Elestovakian camps to alert the men there. But before they did that, our flier squadrons had stopped them.”
While saying, unknown when, a flier has landed on the balcony with her duel pistols emptied, a certain librarian named Angela:
“Your Grace. Our squadron had cleared all of them.”
She says, then the flier woman throws out a bag that contains insignias of every close in scout group, each one of them stained by a bit of blood, the result of fighting against the fliers and being killed. Angela and her team eliminated all communication lines from the city to allies and thus, the duke’s call for relief was left unheard. Acknowledging that, Gelime was speechless, while Lily carves a satisfying smile:
“They will not know that Voyage has fallen, they will not gather. We will come for them, one by one, they will be conquered just like this city. Let’s see how your Elestovakians will take Voyage from us again.”
“Hah?!”
The now former Duke looks down to the floor, admitting his defeat. Voyage has been captured.