Lights begin to shine in the distance. The enemy rail units are getting set up. Around me, my allies do the same. Dozens of voices call, "Full Release," the glare beyond daylight filling the field, as their gears and numerous, huge halos of light form around them. They begin to summon their armaments - cloaks of fire from Aura, Oculus, and a variety of weapons and shields, while the whole formation continues on its forward march.
I watch the far side of the field closely, shifting heavily toward air mana, ready to call out if they begin summoning ranged weapons to attack us. When they do, it's nowhere near enough to call it an effort of their whole force. Probably just the favored weapon of those particular enemy rail units. It's hard so far out, but I manage to take note of their hair colors at least. They trained us to do this so we could report on the enemies after battles, but I don't report after battles... Oh well, it'll still be useful to know for myself at least. I shrug that off too, and continue to watch for any coming dangers.
When the other side mimics us, forming into a single long battle line and pressing forward to engage us in the middle of the field, I swallow nervously again. An evenly matched battle like this could go longer and be a lot more dangerous than the quick hit and run type battles before. From last time, I already know how bad the handlers' vision of the actual battlefield is, for figuring out when to tell us to retreat. In a close battle like this, they may not be able to tell how it's going at all...
My attention is returns when I see the couple archers drawing back their bows. "Incoming fire! seven archers!" I call loudly, to bring it to everyone's attention.
I twitch and send a glance sideways. Our formation is five deep, and about twenty across. At five meters or so between us, the furthest ally rail units should still be able to hear me. Shaking my head and returning my attention ahead again, I check the enemies. Based on where they're aiming... "Far left, center left, center right, be prepared!" I call their targets out. Then I cut down my air mana. I'll have to make it in short bursts, it's too hard to focus otherwise.
The rail units in the places I called summon reflecting shields for overhead cover. When the enemies fire, I can barely see the blurring arrows as they fly in, but the loud kang and the shattering shields make it obvious when they land.
I call a few more shots as they poke at different parts of our formation, so we shrug them off without effort. While our two groups close ground slowly but surely, our confrontation in the center of the dead field looms over me, to the point I need to reduce some of my lightning mana too, to keep from the fear from overwhelming me. But I hold it together for now.
Among our own forces, only three of our rail units are particularly proficient with bows. Probably because they never bring us outside, I complain to myself. Those three return fire at our enemies, who shield themselves similarly, but not as well, and I spot a few shots land. They're only wounding hits, but it still costs our enemies mana to heal, which takes much more mana than simply firing a bow. While the bows themselves cost a good chunk of mana, creating the arrows is supposed to be pretty cheap.
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When the gap between our front lines shrinks down to below fifty meters, our ranged poking picks up, with throwing weapons and ranged spells crossing between the lines. Our first rank summon more shields, and a few of our own rail units fire back. I can't help smiling a bit when I see Effy's huge wall of floating shields, protecting the whole center of our formation on her own. I keep a close eye out for cracks in her defenses, but there are none. She really is the best shielder we have, especially now that she has so much mana to work with.
Our advance continues. I continue to feed mana into Catherine regularly. I still have no idea how powerful the effects are, since the sword only affects my allies, not me. I keep tightening and loosening my grip, trying to keep my nerves under control as the last of the distance vanishes, and our front lines meet.
The sounds of battle erupt louder ahead, the units in the front clashing. In middle like I am, I'm mainly for ranged support at the moment, but without a working divine gear, there's nothing much I can actually do besides holding onto Catherine, to empower the allies around me.
I swallow hard, eyes scanning back and forth. Our spread formation means that enemies can try pushing through the gaps, toward our center. It's the second and third lines' job to keep that from happening, collapsing in on any enemies that try. I spot a few here and there, but our allies respond immediately, three or four of the closest units rushing them, so they're forced to retreat back to their own allies. We don't have any orders to try the same against them, we're fighting more defensively here.
Then my eye catches on the enemies' side, directly past Effy. They're more concentrated there, five or six of them standing too close together, directly behind their front line. Others spot them too, immediately throwing explosive spells at the cluster. They have to summon shields around themselves as they're bombarded with a explosive bursts, balls of fire, and to my right, someone uses Archema. It sweeps a ray of light down from above, tracing out a large circle on the ground around the group. As soon as the circle is complete, the spell blasts down on them with waves of burning heat. The barrage tears through their floating shields one after another.
The whole group rushes forward under heavy fire, joining with the couple at their front, heading straight for Effy. She clearly sees them coming and reinforces her own barriers. She has Metallica floating at her side, and the shields she's summoning - I can tell from the stars on them - they're the ones she combined twice. They should be much stronger than the normal ones.
That proves even more true than I thought, when the whole group, now eight strong, spear charge straight into the overlapping shield wall. The shields shatter layer by layer, but the enemy force barely make a dent before they run out of momentum. Another barrage falls on them from our middle ranks, and they're forced to back off a step to avoid the fire.
While most throw up shields again, one of the rail units pulls out Lu In and charges. Effy spots the massive, explosive spear, her hands flailing as she spins her shields out in swirling patterns complex enough to make me wonder how she manages it all. The movement is all so fast, my eyes just barely follow it thanks to the effects of her super powered Lilia, and all my air mana.
Effy throws her shields aside just in time for the enemy to dive through the gap she creates, all of the floating shields swinging around behind her. At the same time, the ground beneath her lights, and Aegis appears in her hand with a brilliant flash.
With her entire body leaning into it, and she takes the spear thrust head on. The shuddering boom sweeps the field when they collide, with crackles of lightning and heavy bursts of wind rushing past Effy. She's staggered just a step back, stone shattering beneath her feet. Walls of metallic debris blast out all around her, but her shields, now behind her, block them from tearing through the rest of our formation. Much of it is destroyed in the process though.
I take a half step forward, wanting to go and help her, but I know I shouldn't. Not only is that not my place in battle, but Effy's strong. She's the most powerful rail unit we have. But still... I shake myself and force my attention to the rest of the battle. I can't let myself be so wrapped up in Effy's situation that I lose sight of everything else.
Thankfully, a glance to either side shows that on the outer edges, things stand in a stalemate, both allies and enemies striking back and forth, looking for an opening but not finding one yet, so neither side accomplishes much. A few units on either side take small hits, but that just means they fall back, with one from the rear moving up to replace it.
Eyes forward again, Effy is holding her ground, taking two more big hits from Lu In, only giving up a few steps of ground each time. The huge spear is already starting to fall apart from the force of its own attacks. The rail unit using has to dismiss the monstrously heavy weapon to regain the mobility it needs to back up, into the tight group that's still getting pounded on, ranged spells rolling over their shields.
Eyes narrowed, I see it say something, but it doesn't summon an armament this time. And the way the other rail units in the group look straight at Effy, they must be coming up with something to try beating her...
"Come on, Effy..." I mutter, jaw clenched as she summons Bastion around her, alongside defensive Tian axes she slams down into the ground at her sides, and another shimmering glow forms around her, though I can't make out exactly which armament it is.
When a bright red dot appears right near the enemy group, they leap back, before it erupts into a ball of fire. Then they burst forward again, ducking a couple spells, while calling out another series of armaments. Effy goes into a wide stance, shoulders and hips set, with shield in hand, as all eight close on her. A wave of her hand, and another swarm of interlocking shields forms before her.
Their front-runner hits it with another Lu In spear, blowing a hole straight through. The hit is so heavy it staggers itself back and takes a hit from a spell in the process. But the rest rush through the gap it creates.
The first charges with the Kon spear, which she parries away, using her shield to cover her eyes from the blinding flash it sends out on impact. She doesn't budge at all, pushing back and flinging away the attacker in one move. But while she has her shield up, another enemy leaps over the staggering spear user, huge hammer lifted overhead. Effy spots it a moment late, but manages to shift her shield to block anyway. The heavy blow sends her sliding back though, since she wasn't braced for it.
While her feet skid, four more move in, swooping around to hit her from the sides. Two get caught by the units on either side of Effy, but the other two come straight at her. She's still on her back foot when they swing with large hammer-axe weapons. I don't have the time to identify them, because they're already on top of her.
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I want to close my eyes, but can't. The hammers come in, and my breath catches.
There's a flash. Even completely off balance, Effy flings her arms to either side, summoning huge tower shields straight out of the halos at her shoulders. Her arms barely brace against them when the hammers hit, pinning her in between.
With sharp cracks, the lightning blasts out in every direction, bombarding Effy, the surrounding ground, and even the enemies holding them. She freezes up, bolts streaking and zapping off of her in every direction. Her whole form shakes and jolts, and she stumbles, knees nearly buckling.
With Effy's stance broken, the two in front fall away to either side, and the final enemy rail unit flies in. Rather than using a weapon, it ducks low, and I catch its shout, even over the chaos of battle. "Gaea!" With a huge upward sweep of its arm, a giant spear of solid stone bursts from the ground, plunging straight into Effy.
Just before she's impaled on the spear larger around than her entire torso, a burning blue-white light flares, out, shredding the rock away on impact. It's Wyne, the most powerful last-resort shield armament we have. The blaze of light traces half of a sphere around Effy, tearing apart the earth spear that rushes toward her in an instant. But that still isn't enough.
It's so fast, and so powerful, that the melting stone still crashes into Effy's gut. It flings her backward through the air. But thanks to the shield, it's not enough to take her down. She lands on her feet, then stumbles and over rolls backward while trying to kill her momentum. Without a thought, I rush to the side, so she slams right into me. I do my best to help, even though I'm too small, and we both end up going down.
We shoot back up to our feet, but the enemies already broke the center of our formation. The allies who stood at her sides and back are already falling back, trying to keep the enemies from pushing through and flanking us. I have Effy on my shoulder, leaning heavily. One glance tells me that most of her ribs are crushed. The rapid, random thrashing of her muscles under her robe, show she hasn't recovered from that lightning either.
I shove Effy hard - an automatic reflex before I've even recognized the threat. It's just enough that the Longinus spear thrown at her head at her grazes her shoulder instead, a second one ripping a chunk out of my right arm. My teeth grind, but I stay on my feet, spotting the next attacker coming in.
Most of the ones that pushed through our front got held up by the reserves that hit them from the sides, but two made it past, coming right for us. Effy throws her jerky hands out, coughing up blood as she calls for more shields, her breath a wheeze of air. Her protective armaments are the only thing keeping her standing.
"Heal!" I command her, stepping in front, like I'm somehow going to protect her for the few crucial moments she needs.
She doesn't argue. "Kainen!" she grunts, calling on our most powerful, and by far least efficient healing spell. I don't even want to imagine how much mana it chews through to heal her. In the meantime, there are enemies that I have to deal with... somehow. One throws a big attack to blow a hole through Effy's shields before taking a hit in the side. The other ducks a spear and covers the last of the ground between us. Even as I am now, I can barely follow their absurdly fast movements up close like this.
The enemy that comes is one of the ones with that lightning spewing hammer-axe. Ukkono, that was the one, I finally remember. I lock eyes on the incoming rail unit, heart hammering and brain screaming. There's no way I can do this! But I have to anyway!
The enemy raises its weapon, and seeing the rounded axe head ready to come down on me, I remember what we learned all at once. While the hammer fires lightning everywhere, the axe side is weaker, but much more directed.
My feet slide, stance wide, and I dump my mana into Catherine, the sword almost pulsing in my hand with the renewed power. I draw from my well, the mana swirling within me. It rushes through a conversion, into earth, for as much strength as possible.
I overdraw, my whole barrier straining, and I raise the sword in my hand, bracing it with my other hand.
The axe falls.
The blow lands on the flat of my blade. The enemy rail unit is too fast, I can't move to parry or try to redirect it. All I can do is take the full weight of the blow. The only reason the Catherine sword survives is because it's basically indestructible. With upward of ten earth mana and Effy's overpowered Lilia reinforcing my strength, my arms don't. I feel my bones breaking, head going white with pain. My whole body supports the effort, and it feels like muscles and bones everywhere else begin to shred apart too. But unbelievably, the falling axe halts.
There's a tiny instant of disbelief, that despite the horrible injuries I took for it, I actually managed to block one blow from a rail unit. But there's no time to celebrate. The blow triggers the explosive lightning from the axe head, raining on me from all sides.
I don't have time to manually control my mana. No time to grab it and start converting, or to get it to move to all the different places I need it, all at once. Instead, I fling my entire will at commanding it. I tell it to convert and go to all parts of my body to deflect the lightning. And my months of meditation and mana training finally pay off.
A decent chunk of my mana actually follows my command, rushing and swirling in a complex dance through my body, passing through my alba-durite disks at my back, and flowing out to where I need it. The rest scatters randomly, but what I do manage is enough. Or mostly enough anyway, when I add in the mana I can control manually in the time I have. With my focus on simply keeping it all moving and filling in the gaps, the lightning mana zips around, catching the dozens of lightning bolts that streak from the axe, into me, and redirect them safely down into the ground.
If the thing in front of me could feel, I swear it would be surprised that a barrage of lightning has no effect on me.
The whole process, so frantic and desperate, is over in moments, and I'm slammed with both the pain of my injuries, and the scream of my barrier from overdrawing my mana again. No time to deal with that, I frantically convert to fire while forcing my torn up body forward. I thrust my right hand out toward the rail unit while it raises its weapon for another blow. One I have no way of blocking this time. So I have push it back instead.
The only reason my attack comes out first, is because all I have to do is extend a hand, while it has a huge axe to swing. Even then, the massive blade nearly reaches my forehead. But I barely make it. I release a burst of special fire mana. I use the best of my control to direct it outward and away this time, so I don't burn myself like in the last battle.
It doesn't work. The fire is just so much. I probably didn't think it through as much as I should have. Even though it's just a portion of the special fire I'm holding, I shoved fifty mana inside earlier. Even aimed away, the eruption of blazing heat is so powerful, the sleeve of my robe ignites instantly, my whole arm jerks back on reflex. I stumble away a step, clenching my arm to myself in an effort to smother the flames. My overdrawn fire mana saves me from the worst of it, but I still feel burns stretching all the way up my arm from the blast. Then my whole body wavers. I nearly black out when a horrible throb rips through my head after pushing myself too hard to control that mana. It was just for a moment though...
One hand to my head and vision swimming, my back hits Effy, while the enemy leaps away in retreat, its whole front covered in horrible burns. It loses its footing when it lands and falls on its butt. But it's not done, apparently. With a flick of its hand, it summons a series of flying knives. I stumble and weave, hands raised protectively, taking hits, frantic mana conversion to lightning and air barely allowing me to avoid anything too vital, even though I can't see straight.
Then Effy grunts behind me when one hits her, reminding me that I'm not the only one it's aiming for. With a sweep of my hand, I create a rushing gust of special air mana, placing it in an arc upward and to the sides, just in time for a few more knives to come in, and be harmlessly blown away by the powerful wall of wind. That buys just enough time for our allies to close in and draw the injured enemy's attention off of us, forcing it back.
"Calad." It hasn't even been a tick, but apparently Effy's healed enough, that she draws out the healing staff, stepping in front and summoning another wall of shields as she heals me this time. The numerous bleeding wounds across my arms and legs close, and I can feel the snap of my broken bones mending. The entire time, Effy stalks forward, one hand on my back to keep me with her.
The enemies are starting to fall back now. Since they couldn't fully push through our center, the reserves hit them on their flanks, and their clustered up grouping opened them up to a lot of wider area attacks. Two fallen, bleeding bodies in Bromunst's strange, skin tight clothing show that they lost a few of their numbers when they were pushed back.
Having lost a few units already, the enemies are falling back, trying to disengage. I don't hear their whistle, but I see its effect, when their whole force turns their attention as one, toward some position on the other side of the valley. It's just for a moment, before their focus returns to us. They work to break away, retreating from the field while our allies throw attacks after them. We don't chase though, the handlers taught us not to.
Once the enemies have put space between us, I sigh, the strength in my legs giving out. I fall down on my butt. With a grunt, I shove my mana down into my well. I didn't overdraw too much, so it isn't cripplingly painful, but my barrier does not feel good right now...
"Aria, are you alright?" Effy asks quietly, looking me over again. She healed the worst of my injuries, and she's clearly considering doing more, but when we glance at her gear, she's all the way down near fifteen thousand mana. She burned through over thirty three thousand this time. Most of that probably came from using Wyne and Kainen, to save her from that fatal blow and then heal her injuries after. Those are not armaments a normal rail unit can afford to use, it's really good I gave her so much mana...
"I'm fine," I respond, trying to ease her concern, since she shouldn't go through any more mana just to heal me. I can mostly move on my own, I should be fine. "Ugh," I groan anyway when I push myself back up to my feet. "Well, I have to get out of here," I tell her, just in time for our handlers to sound our retreat whistle.
We both look off into the mountains, and Hilde eyes the handlers from above at the same time. Then we turn back to each other, and Effy simply says, "Ok." Then adds, "Dismiss," her divine gear and all the glowing halos vanishing.
With a smirk up at her, I gesture to the glowing Lilia mark that didn't disappear like her other armaments. It's still floating above my chest, though my hand passes through it. My look reminds her that I can still feel her emotions. I can feel her disappointment. That has her glancing away awkwardly, blushing ever so slightly.
"Don't worry, we'll still see each other," I tell her. "I haven't figured out exactly how I want to do it, but I do want to talk more often."
Her heart instantly lights up with joy. "I'd like that."
I nod. "Well, I'll see you again soon, bye for now."
"Bye, Aria."
With that, I limp quickly away, searching for the particular large rock where I set my basket.