The way of the cowards - when it came to the decision whether to chicken out of the battle or not, neither Korra nor Stella had the stomach for it. Just thinking about it had eaten away at their consciences. No doubt what Traiana had told them played its part in their decision. But they took time off no less.
To leave all worries behind for a while was simply what they needed.
Meeting the man who had been lost in this echo of the past for eight years, on the other hand, was the impulse that poured new resolve into their hearts. There had never been any doubt in their minds that they had to get out of here, out of this space-time mana generator that powered all the Fallen’s Cry. Now, however, a new drive urged them on. Not to end up like the man, clinging to a single memory.
Stella did wonder, though, what her memory would be, what she would cling to, if she would cling to anything at all. Her mother and father? Her brother and sister? Sad as it was, neither of them seemed to be as close to her heart as that Elaine to his. Even sadder, she didn’t have a sweetheart, a lover, from whom she would now be separated. Stella’s passion was her work.
And so it seemed she would either disappear the moment she lost it, or wander the woods trying to do her duty. Neither sounded too appealing.
Thus, Stella found herself back in the Pit, trying to prove to High Commander Ronnu that they were meant to be on the battlefield, training with her three mentors and marching into battle.
***
“Listen up!” roared the Grand Commander of the Rosicrucian Knights, sweeping his eyes over all the regiments under his command. Nearly four thousand men and women. That included Stella and Korra. Not a number that startled her, not really. After all, the city guards in Castiana numbered close to a thousand. And that was a rather small number for a city of 170,000 inhabitants. If you counted the Seekers and the Companies . . . Captain Rayden had her respect for managing to keep the city safe.
Nevertheless, once her mother had taken her to Wagonbrei for a parade, there were easily twenty thousand city guards and soldiers marching through the city.
“Fucking Eleaden and its beasts have sent everything they have against our lines! They are holding for now, but it may not last long. So I’ll be brief. The Rosicrucian Order is to reinforce the Wesmack Valley section of the front. We’re the backup - if we fall, the front will be breached.”
With that heavy reminder, he straightened and pressed a fist to his heart. The rest of the knights did the same, and Stella followed suit. She may not have remembered the words to their strange motto, but she had been taught that it was rude not to show respect.
“To face the enemy is to face the world’s hate.”
“We march to war so we can go back to those lying there in wait.” A chorus of four thousand answered him.
“To sink blades into the hearts of our foes is to sow peace in the hearts of our beloved.”
“We shed our blood, so that our loved ones will not have to.”
As Stella remembered from the last time, the chanting of the knights was more out of sync. The words of some did not even match the words of the others. Not to mention, it didn’t rhyme very well as a whole. The reason was essentially quite simple.
From what she had learned, it was customary in the Rosicrucian Order for the new Grand Commander to bring something fresh to the rhyme. Sometimes it was just a word, sometimes a whole phrase that didn’t quite fit with the rest.
In the end, it wasn’t what you said that mattered, but what you felt when you said it. And Stella liked that.
“Rosicrucians, do your duty - and come back!” the Grand Commander finished his strange speech, and while the gravity of the moment had weighed on her last time, she found herself standing with more ease and confidence now.
“Seventh, forward!” Ronnu shouted along with the other High Commanders, each addressing their respective regiments. Following that, individual Knight Commanders motioned to their respective units. So did Pom Nilzibarge, the man Stella and Korra were assigned to, the man who reminded her of Lieutenant Rhys. Maybe it was the way he was built as a [Guardian], his armor, or the austerity of his speech, but he and Captain Rayden’s lieutenant had a lot in common.
Thoughts of one of her favorite lieutenants were pushed aside as they marched up the hill, and she caught a glimpse of the horror below.
The battlefield.
The noise, the magic, the stench of death, and who knew what else made Stella wonder if this was what the battlefields where Captain Rayden led her men against the mind mages looked like. One thing she was sure of, though. Those battlefields weren’t that massive. Compared to the Mind Wars, this was on a whole other level. Just the part of the 3rd Army that was in this echo was enough to take on the entire Sahal. And that was just a part of an army out of many.
“Nothing can prepare you for this,” Geran remarked, patting Korra on the shoulder. And he was right. Stella thought she was ready, that she had seen what the two of them were getting into, and it still took her breath away. It was terrifying - and glorious at the same time.
The march turned to a trot.
The entire line of reinforcements broke into a run: tens of thousands of men and women, hundreds of thousands of knights, and probably more. Once again, Stella found herself in an ecstatic haze, trembling with the exhilaration that gave her goosebumps.
She was participating in one of the battles she had read about since she was a little girl. A childhood dream come true. But there was more to these dreams than the silver lining. Battles weren’t just about epic victories by heroes and living happily ever after.
Beneath the excitement lay a deep-seated fear. People were dying down there.
Heck, she died down there herself.
Ronnu’s presence swept over the Seventh, and Stella’s heart skipped a beat. As oppressive as the presence of such powerful people could be, she couldn’t help but feel proud to fight alongside them, to have their attention, to talk to them. Petty, sure. There was no ass-kissing involved, though. Just her heartfelt admiration.
While Korra ran beside her, growling in displeasure, Stella joined the other knights in their war cry.
They passed massive machines, magic cannons, powered by hundreds of mages. Impressive machinery, probably like every tool Stella had seen in this era. Yet it made her wonder, wonder why they didn’t have something more powerful here. A machine powered by a core similar to the one they were in.
Stella herself had to admit that the idea was rather ridiculous, but on the other hand, they had built twenty-six of those space-time mana generators all over Eleaden. If they had the knowledge and resources to build such a device, then . . . there was obviously more to it than met the eye.
Perhaps it was the amount of resources required to build the labyrinths that the army could not have been better equipped. Or what it took to build these generators could not be replicated on a smaller scale. However, whatever the reason, she refused to believe that the people of this era did not have the knowledge to build something less ambitious, yet . . .
Space-time memory.
‘Fuck! How could I not have thought of this before?’ Stella almost facepalmed herself. Traiana told them that this was her nightmare, her memory that was running this echo. The generator needed a strong memory to run, a powerful link in time - and space.
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That meant only one thing. Down there were the plains where Castiana would lie in the future. Where the Fallen’s Cry was to be built.
‘Shit! They haven’t even started building yet!’
Logical, though. The right moment hasn’t come yet.
Traiana’s Cry.
Her cry, a victory bought with the lives of many.
The humans managed to hold this position long enough to build a labyrinth here. It gave this battle a whole new taste, making it more important than Stella had ever thought.
By the time she pulled her mind out of the morass of her thoughts, they had long since passed the healers and were just passing the archers. Glancing to her right, a little behind her, past the men and women with bows in their hands and the memory of Harper, her squadmate, her eyes fell on the mountain range she and Korra had come down from.
‘Of course, that’s the Granora Mountain Range. How could I not notice that?!’
The place where they found themselves wounded at the beginning of each cycle was the mountain range under which the Esulmor Woods lay in their time. Now that she knew, the resemblance to the peaks she had been seeing on the horizon since she was a little girl was unmistakable. A little different, sure, but unmistakable. The same was true for the Granora Highlands, aka the Little Granora Mountain Range, south of Castiana, now to her left. The rocky peaks were higher than in her memories, but she knew them, too.
Of course, not everything was the same. For instance, she didn’t remember the hills that connected the two mountain ranges she was now rushing down. Even the rivers didn’t flow where they should, but . . . this was where she would be/was born thousands of years later.
Stella only broke out of her daze when they reached the magi line. Thoughts of Meneur, who quite likely saved her and Korra’s lives with the little notebook he pushed into her hands, broke through the shock of the realization of where they were actually fighting.
“Here we go,” Geran remarked, shaking his head. “Do you feel that, kid? That’s Eleaden.”
This time the pressure in her mind didn’t take Korra by surprise, and neither did Stella. Perhaps not as strongly as the shifters, but she too was aware of the slight strain on her mind.
“I do,” her friend nodded knowingly, shaking off whatever hold Eleaden was trying to yawn over her.
Artillery fire followed, as did the fall of the mighty beast, sending tremors through the ground that lifted Stella off her feet.
“Heads up!” Ronnu shouted, and what followed was a shower of feathers, blood, and dead beasts that tried to swoop down on them from the sky.
“1!” the Grand Commander roared. “That drake thing! 2nd - the feathered tiger! 3rd . . . you help the Arstvil Order with the rhino! 4th . . .!” and so on. “7th, the octopus-like thing! 8th and 9th . . . !”
“On it, sir,” Ronnu nodded at the orders of the man, who paid no further heed to her. His job was to coordinate the whole wing of this order; Ronnu’s was to do as he said.
“Okay, guys, this is it! Quick and clean, no messing around! Watch your backs; no dying!” she said, emphasizing the last word. “I’ll take the big one, you take the little ones!”
Stella held her breath for a few heartbeats. This was it. They were back. Only a few hundred meters from where they had died.
“Time to shift!” Geran noted, and like the other shifters, he began to transform. Korra too. Unlike in her first charge, she managed to do it without bumping into Stella, having practiced shifting on the fly.
“Follow me!” Nilzibarge bellowed, as did other Knight Commanders, and the Seventh had split up. Each unit headed for different targets, different sections of the octopus horde to take care of.
And then, like last time, there was Ronnu. The woman took off like lightning, slamming into the massive octopus thing that was trying to break through the lines with a force that sent shockwaves from the impact and threw the beast back a few meters. There on the ground, it roared in pain and rage, the pressure on Stella’s mind intensifying.
Ronnu cut off one of its tentacles.
The beast roared again, and the pressure on her body reached a new peak.
“Do not falter!” Nilzibarge roared, and his presence stood up to the beast’s, as did his shield against the attack of his weaker octopus cousin. The battle was once again in full swing. Knights, be they swordsmen, spearmen, aura warriors, or shifters, rushed at the beast with fearless roars.
Stella’s eyes darted to Korra.
“Don’t you dare!” her friend growled, moving her tail away from her. Last cycle, as they lay under a cloudy sky, rain falling on them, Korra confided that the way she grabbed her tail was bloody painful.
Stella managed to flash her a grin before she sliced the little octopus that had lunged at her face in half. Having her brain fry under those tentacles was bad enough to experience once.
Knowing what was coming, she and Korra quickly moved away and sliced through three more small octopuses.
“Watch out!” The Knight Commander’s roar broke through the air, and in the next instant, heat rays from the suction cups of the octopus he and the senior knights were facing dug into the ground a hair’s breadth away.
‘Were we wrong?’ The thought flashed through her mind while she could still feel the heat of the ray on her exposed skin. To ponder what had happened for too long, however, would be a mistake. They learned long ago that when they interacted with the past, they would inevitably be met with inconsistencies.
“Here they come,” Korra said, ready beside Stella, her fur smoking as a horde of octopuses charged at them.
Pushing away any lingering doubts about their decision to face the battle head-on, Stella gripped her swords tighter and cut off the first tentacle that tried to burn her body. Not the best tactic against the beasts. That was simply to dismember their otherwise poorly protected bodies. But to reach them, one had to go through their tentacles, which they used skillfully to defend themselves. If one cut off enough of them, the octopus became defenseless.
Once she got into the rhythm, it wasn’t that hard.
It was Korra who had a tougher time with the beasts. Without a way to cut off their tentacles, she could only bite or rip them off. And the way the beasts swarmed her, there was no way she could get rid of enough of them in time. One by one, they latched onto her cold, mane-covered body. That was where Stella came in, slicing through those octopuses with tentacles busy frying her friend with ease.
In a sense, Korra did her job as a squad tank while Stella buffed her with auras and took over Freyde’s role as front-line fighter. Squad Four. She didn’t think she’d ever miss fighting alongside them, but she did. Those were simple skirmishes with a few beasts. Not this mess, where one hesitation meant an octopus latched onto your body.
“Korra!” Stella shouted when the time came, her attention half-focused on the octopus that had caused their death last time.
“I know,” her friend growled back, mouth full. Traiana kindly pointed the beast - their killer - out to them.
It took longer than Stella remembered, or so it seemed to her, but eventually the beast of at least level 400 lifted one of its tentacles. The suction cups heated up, and a beam of hot - well, she wasn’t exactly sure what, magic, most likely - shot out of them.
The heat ray dug into the ground some distance from where they fought.
Death was robbed of two of its clients. Yet instead of relief, unease gripped her heart. This was as far as they went, and from here on, it was uncharted territory. An unknown, filled with slashing and chopping, with the stench of burnt fish and doubt.
‘Is what we’re doing here even worth it?’ There were thousands of knights all over the battlefield, much stronger knights than the two of them. They’d already killed dozens of beasts, but in the grand scheme of things, it was just a fart in the field. Nothing anyone would notice.
Her heart aching for more, she took out her frustration on the beasts.
“Below us!” Korra growled, alarmed as she spat out pieces of octopus from her mouth. “Something is moving through the ground below us!”
“Earthworms!” a knight shouted somewhere in the chaos, and in many places on the battlefield, the heads of worms popped out of the ground. One where Stella had stood a few heartbeats ago. A mouth full of several rows of teeth looked strong enough to chew through even her armor.
A heat ray fell to her right. Two more worms tried to drag her down into the depths of Eleaden.
Jealousy stung her heart. Even though she had to wade through the body-fluid-covered ground, barefoot Korra had a clear advantage in detecting the earthworms. Back in Castiana, she thought it was a silly quirk of hers that the city guards had picked up on as a joke, something unworthy of them. Now she regretted having boots on.
While Stella struggled to know when the worm would attack next, paying most of her attention to the ground, Korra seemed to move between their attacks with unusual ease. To her friend’s credit, the fights against the Crystal Rat had taught her a hard lesson in that regard.
Tentacle, tentacle, sidestep, worm’s head, tentacle, octopus on Korra’s back, tentacle, worm’s head - and another.
‘Shit!’ Too slow.
The beast bit her foot.
Stella was wrong. The boots she was given were more sturdy than she gave them credit for. But that was the end of the good news.
The worm, gnawing up to the calf of her leg, pulled down, and she dropped to her knee. Recalling Korra’s description of the horrors of being buried alive in the ground, she dropped everything and, with desperation in her eyes, plunged both swords into the worm.
Death caught up with Stella in the very next beat.
It wasn’t the tons of dirt she died under, the hundreds of teeth that tore her to pieces, or the horde of beasts that took a chance and swarmed her. A tentacle of the octopus Ronnu fought crushed her.