“Some people just refuse to see the writing on the wall even when their faces were being ground to paste on it, for some reason.” - Saying attributed to Xaliburnus the Conqueror, First Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.

Erycea quietly stalked the ruins that had once been home to many, her figure low to the ground as she moved on all fours, not for speed – although she does run much faster on all fours than on two legs – but for stability and silence. In rugged terrain like the ruins, it was just so much easier to maintain her silence while moving when she did it that way.

Much like her father, she left the palms of her hands and the pads of her feet uncovered. Their kind had soft but flexible paw pads, which were far more resilient than its soft looks would have suggested, and allowed them to walk through most kinds of terrain with equal ease. Together with her long, luxuriously furred tail, they helped her navigate the ruins silently while keeping her balance with ease.

She slipped from shadow to shadow like a ghost, despite it being broad daylight. Her spotted white fur and the brown fabric coating of her armor does allow her to blend into the ruins pretty well, though. It was perhaps unnecessary caution, since her target didn’t seem to even realize that he was in mortal danger, but she did it regardless.

One of her father’s teachings, namely never to take it easy just because the other side looked incompetent.

While oftentimes such a look of incompetence was due to actual incompetence, the times when they were feigned, as lure to a trap, could not be discounted, and as such Reinhardt had lectured Erycea well on the need to never take an opponent lightly. They should always do their best, even against opponents that looked like easy pickings, and not hold anything back.

It was for that reason that Erycea spent ten minutes painstakingly crawling through the ruins while making sure she remained out of sight – even most of the spectators above could only barely notice her passage, and only those who specifically kept an eye on her, at that – until she was perched in a position to the side, near one of the young knights who were still oblivious to her presence.

Then she waited as she kept a count in her mind. The three of them had agreed to strike in unison, at fifteen minutes after they left the meeting spot, so she waited until the promised moment, quietly lurking in the darkness of the ruined building’s second story, all while keeping an eye on her target and his surroundings at all times.

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When the time came, she struck like lightning, a vicious pounce from above where she used the force of the drop to drive the spike-like end at the tip of her truncheon through her target’s flesh, the weapons entering on both sides of the base of his neck and piercing deep into the young knight’s heart and lungs before he even knew what happened to him.

At roughly the same moment, Gustav leapt out from behind a building and struck another of the young knights. That knight managed to react and turn around, only to find himself on the receiving end of a metal cudgel as thick around as a human thigh. Despite the young knight’s attempt to block the blow, it was for naught as he ended up as a crumpled, misshapen heap, his body crushed between his own shield and the ground, the force of the blow far too much for him to handle.

Valeria took care of her target more quietly, as she struck the surprised knight right in his mouth with her spear when the youth saw her and was about to yell out a warning. Her spear was faster than his voice, so all he managed was a bloody gurgle as the spear pierced through the back of his mouth, through the base of his skull, and out the back of his head.

By the time the young knight – the commander of the opposing team – near the flag realized what happened, he was surrounded from three directions by Erycea’s team.

“So then, knight wannabe, are you going to kneel and ask for your precious little life or are you going to man up and pretend that that sword you carry isn’t just something to wave around to compensate for your tiny prick?” asked Erycea, partly to see if the young knight would see sense and not waste his life, and partly to provoke him to anger if he was foolish enough to fight.

An angry enemy was always easier to deal with than one who kept their calm, after all.

Rather expectedly, the young knight’s face distorted as he pointed at Erycea and yelled out some words she didn’t get – Erycea had said her words in common, but the young knight had replied in a local dialect, which was different enough than the Imperial language she knew of to be difficult to understand – other than some words that likely called her a whore, animal, and the likes.

Again, pretty much as she expected.

Just as expected was for the young knight to rush at her with his sword held high in preparation for a vicious downward slash and his shield held in front of his body. Erycea never gave him any chance to strike, as she rushed him in return, the metal truncheon in her left hand striking towards the young knight’s upraised arm.

He had not expected that she was aiming for his hand, and the truncheon simply crushed the knight’s fingers against the hilt of his own sword, the gauntlet he wore crumpled before the bone-shattering blow, and he opened his mouth to yell in pain even as the sword fell off his grip. His pained yell was cut short into incomprehensible noises when Erycea’s second truncheon whipped past and directly tore his lower jaw off his skull, however.

As grotesque as the injury looked, it wasn’t fatal, though unless the knight met with a powerful healer he would be reduced to eating only liquid food for the rest of his days. Not that he had to worry about that, as Erycea brought her left-hand truncheon whipping towards the same spot, the blow tearing the rest of the knight’s head off his neck crudely, the severed head rolling to the dusty ground while leaving a streak of blood behind it.