“Captain, an airship is approaching,” a soldier informed Raem who was surveying the land. They had arrived where he was told to go, but there was no sign of anyone or anything in the immediate vicinity. All he was seeing was grass.
“Captain, it’s dropping a message!”
It was a rolled up piece of paper with a rock attached to it so that it’d fall quickly to a designated spot. A soldier picked it up promptly and presented it to him at once. Skimming it over, his attention turned to the mountain nearby.
“We head over to the mountain. Supposedly, civilians are somewhere within.”
The paper had numerous pieces of information. He was informed that the invasion had begun with the Lux Fenchel and the Flissing moving out toward Keviel. Their expected arrival at the target was ten days. It was stated that it was optional for Raem to join up.
“What does it say?” Lara poked her face up to take a quick look at the letter from sideways, effectively barging into his chest. The height difference between them meant that she could barely read the letter from where she was.
“The civilians are holed up somewhere in the nearby mountain,” he replied calmly. “And the invasion has begun.”
“About damned time. We are becoming nobles soon, yeah?” She said with a giggle, but Raem’s face was dark.
“Raem?”
“I kind of … don’t want a change of scenery.”
“But -”
He interjected, “I know, I know, I said that I wanted to become a noble, but … I am very content where I am. Are you not…?”
The truth was that neither Raem nor Lara cared too much about nobility. As long as they were paid adequately, they didn’t have any complaints. The only reason that he declared to become a noble was that was the only way up for him. He was a bastard from the Fenchel family. Therefore, it was only logical that he sought nobility. However, as he matured, he realized that he didn’t practically care about it at all and he was happy where he was.
“I get what you mean,” she replied with her smile slowly receding from her face. “But you have to take it when it is given to you. Everyone around us will be moving on soon. We have to as well.”
Nestor and Rose would be moving to Keviel to start their lives anew. Cezary and Wiara would be moving on as well. Finally, Kamil would be crowned as a king soon. The days where the trio hunted down boars felt like a fever dream for him. Things were changing swiftly around them.
“You cannot stand still, Raem,” she added.
“I guess you are right,” he said sedately as he ripped off the paper into tens of pieces. “Whether I want to or not, I must move on.”
Karla, Raem’s mother, had decided that she would stay behind at the Fenchel manor as the head maid. He was saddened by her decision to leave behind, which made him extra skeptical about moving on.
“Have you decided on our last name?”
“I have thought about it and have come up with one.”
“Which is?”
“Lumilia.”
“That sounds like a girl’s name. Veto.”
Pouting subtly, he said, “You got a better idea?”
Folding her arms, she leaned against his body. “How about… Launce?”
“Launce?”
“Sounds sort of like lance, doesn’t it?”
“Sort of, I guess.”
“If I ever give you a girl, name her Lumilia.”
“Raem Launce…,” he mumbled and repeated. “Raem Launce…”
“And Lara Launce,” she said with a chuckle.
“I don’t know…”
“It is better than Raem Lumilia. I can guarantee that much. Your name sounds like a girl’s by the way,” she said with a greatly displeased look on her face.
“Well, I haven’t got a better idea, so I will go with yours.”
“Attaboy.”
The army eventually moved toward the nearby mountain. It was easy for them to realize that a large group of people had indeed traversed through due to an abundance of footsteps.
“It will be really easy to track them down,” Lara said while she was inspecting a specific footstep on the ground. “It’s fresh as well.”
Both Raem and Lara were once hunters, and tracking came naturally with the job.
“They ought to be starving,” one of the soldiers said.
There wasn’t much to eat in a forest or a mountain. Some sort of wildberries were the best they could hope for, which quite frankly would not be enough to satisfy the hunger of a grown man, let alone hundreds.
“We may not need to go up there even,” she responded. Inhaling deeply, she shouted. “HEEEEEEY! COME ON OUT! WE’VE GOT FOOD! WE AIN’T HERE TO KILL YA!”
Her high-pitched voice echoed through the sky for a moment. Although no one actually responded to her shout, there were some movements in the forest, an indication that the villagers hadn’t moved on at all. They had probably thought that staying still was the best choice and were proven right.
“THE WHITE-HAIRED GUY SENT US!” She continued to shout.
“That’s Lord Knell, Lara,” Raem warned.
“Like hell I care,” she retorted.
Isaac’s white hair was indeed rare, and perhaps rightfully so his hair color was all she remembered. Regardless, after she continued to shout her lungs out for a minute or two, a man in tattered clothes walked out of the forest and approached them. He looked famished and tired. His face was dirty, and his hair was a mess. A dirty beggar was the perfect description for him.
“Water…,” he said weakly. He looked like he was having a hard time moving about.
“Waterskin!” Raem barked, and a soldier dashed out and gave the man his waterskin, which he failed to handle properly and dropped it due to his badly shaking hands.
“Set up tents!” He barked out another command. “Get that man laid down and help him with his dehydration!” He glanced at Lara, and she nodded back. It was clear that the villagers were starving and may even be dying in the woods, meaning they may not be able to leave to reach them even if they wanted to.
“Men, follow me! We need to get those motherfuckers out of there!” She exclaimed as she dashed forward into the woods. Thus began the rescue operation, which took two entire days for the army to get everyone out because they weren’t exactly together and were very scattered out. They had been starving for days. The worst part was the lack of available clean water, which became the primary reason for deaths.
“We’ve rescued eight hundred fifty one people. Some of them seemed to have severe dysentery,” a soldier reported in Raem’s tent. Lara was standing next to him with both of her hands on her back. “We’ve also found over a hundred dead bodies.”
“That’s what you get for trying to survive on wildberries,” Lara remarked dryly.
“How is our own supply?” Raem asked.
“Our food supply is fine, but we will run low on water soon. The refugees need a lot of it.”
“Should we go back to Ceres or join up with the others?” Lara asked.
He wanted to join the siege of Keviel, but bringing a sizable number of refugees with them was just rude and improper.
“Alright, we head back to Ceres.”
“About that, Captain…,” the soldier scratched the side of his head. “Over half of them are unable to walk properly. We could carry them but we will be slow.”
“We ought to move,” Lara said. “Low on water. We’ve better move.”
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Raem nodded in agreement. “Prepare to move out. We are heading back to Ceres.”
It would be ten days worth of journey for them even in the best scenario. Since they’d be carrying wounded, it was going to take longer. Water, by nature, was heavy to carry. Therefore, the soldiers carried the absolute minimum required. Having hundreds of dehydrated men consuming water was going to spell a disaster if not reacted quickly enough. Thankfully, there was a trick to their survival. The region was well known for raining at night. They could craft a makeshift rain collector by modifying their tents. This would greatly alleviate the water shortage. Raem knew this because he was a local-born person. Under a different commander, they may have been forced to abandon the wounded.
When they arrived back in Ceres at last after twelve days of rather gruesome journey, another group of refugees had arrived in the city and had temporary tents around the city walls. It turned out that they were women and children of the men he had rescued. The villagers were finally reunited although, sadly, about half of the women had become widowed at this point.
“Welcome back,” Wiara said when her patrol team ran into his army. Because of the sudden influx of refugees, she had to run patrols frequently especially because they were mostly women and children.
“This brings back memories,” he replied with a distant look in his eyes. He had experienced chaos caused by refugees first hand when Laufeld was rapidly developing due to the introduction of airships. Frankly, the situation back in the time was far worse than this because there was no infrastructure and know-how to support them. Ceres had since learned how to handle refugees in a more appropriate way. In fact, it was probably the only city that knew how to handle the large influx of refugees. For example, the tents were located near the city walls to at least shelter them in some form because the tents themselves were fragile. Wiara’s frequent patrols were due to keep public order. Food was given out twice a day, in the noon and late afternoon because it was far better to sleep with a full belly. Like or not, the city knew how to handle refugees.
“By the way, Wiara, I would like to march out right away to join the invasion.”
“Oh? Well, I am sorry, but you may not.”
He sagged his shoulders. “I would like to have an audience with the Duke.”
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s over.”
He furrowed his eyebrows, failing to understand what she meant. “I beg your pardon?”
“Keviel has fallen. Well, it’s been set ablaze. Leonhard escaped with his airship, but our airships made short work of that.”
Shutting his eyes, he shook his head with his hand on his forehead. “... What?” He uttered eventually.
“Well, I understand your confusion. Yeah, it ended really quickly.”
Apparently, Cezary’s exploding bombs were more than successful. They literally blew the city apart, setting the city ablaze in a matter of minutes. Nobody in the city knew how to respond to such craziness, and Leonhard chose to escape with his airship while he could still. However, given the fact that it was a very old version of airship, it was swiftly caught up and was shot down. His airship crashed hard onto the ground, and his death was confirmed after soldiers rushed into the crash site and beheaded him. He had a broken leg and was unable to put up any resistance. Under normal circumstances, the city would have been under siege, which could potentially last months. It looked like city walls would no longer provide any meaningful protection. Time was surely changing.
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……………..
“Why have they not returned yet?!”
Leonhard exclaimed with a very frustrated voice in his throne, tapping his index finger at the armrest. He had sent an army of two thousand men after Isaac but hadn’t heard anything from them in ten days. If everything went as planned, they should have returned by now. Alas, there was complete radio silence which worried him to no end. Biting his thumbnails, he stood up and was walking back and forth in his throne room. It was a habit he was told to abandon; he never did. He was told so because he bit his nails when he was extremely nervous. Announcing to everyone that he was nervous was the last thing someone of his position needed to do.
“Fucking hell!” He muttered loudly. Something needed to be done, he felt. And there was only one option he could take at the moment. He had to use an airship to find out whatever was happening out there quickly. There was just one problem, however. There was a severe shortage of wind crystals in the city that only one airship could be operated and it could fly only once. Once activated, an elemental crystal could not be stopped until fully depleted. And Keviel had only one single wind crystal left; it was that dire.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
He had to make a choice which he hated to do. His father would always crucify him when he failed to make choices quickly, and his mother would protect him from his mean father. In the end, decision making had become one of his many weak points. His attention moved to a bell in a corner, which he approached and pulled a string connected to it. As the bell rang, a maid entered the throne chamber at once.
“Yes, Milord?”
“Bring me wine!”
“Certainly.”
He chose not to use the airship because it was deemed as a way to escape the city, should it fall under a siege.
“They will return,” he mumbled, nervously walking in a circle. “They will return…”
Spoiler alert: They never did. The army commander was afraid of punishment because he had lost one third of the army against a peasant army, and he simply dismissed his men and fled elsewhere. The dismissed men did not return to Keviel, either, since they knew they could be punished. This unfortunate chain of events left Leonhard completely in the dark about what was going to occur because he was so preoccupied about their return that he had completely forgotten to watch out for any potential movements from Ceres. Only when the invasion army was within visual range from watchtowers of the city, had he been informed about the attack.
“WHAT?!” He managed not to fall out of his throne but spilled his wine.
“It is true, Milord!” A soldier on a knee reported urgently. “They are at least ten thousand strong and are spreading out to surround the city!”
Leonhard panicked, hard. His mind became blank, and he was sweating like a waterfall. There were three thousand men in the city, and they were enough to defend the place as long as food supply lasted. The problem was the lack of allies to help him lift the siege; he had none. He knew he had to do something.
“I, I will surrender!” He exclaimed with a desperate smile on his face. He thought that it was a brilliant idea. He was going to surrender anyway or at least he thought he did. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore at this point. He had been on a drunken run for days to calm his nervousness.
“Surrender?” The guard repeated with a question mark, thinking his lord was being foolish.
“Yes, surrender! Send a messenger now! I shall surrender!”
The guard looked skeptical or actually rather amused. Leonhard was given a chance to surrender before which he duly ignored. Anyone with an ounce of brain or at least sober would know that surrender was probably not an option anymore. But there was no need to spark his ire by speaking up, thus the guard nodded affirmatively and simply left his chamber. He never bothered to send a messenger to surrender however. By the time he woke up from being drunk, the enemy army led by Edmund Fenchel had already surrounded the city and he found this out when he entered a balcony to get some fresh air.
“WHAT?! WHAT IS GOING ON?!”
He had surrendered, so it should have been all over. He should have been left alone. Or so he thought. The reality was that, even if he surrendered, he would have been executed, but his family would be spared at least. Of course, he wasn’t interested in his own family at the moment.
“.... What?” Clenching his eyes, he saw something approaching the city from the clouded sky which had yet to fully clear after the Dragon was recently defeated. “What is that…?” It didn’t take long for him to realize that they were a group of airships.
“Airships? Those look quite different…”
The latest airships had a streamlined shape, looking more like a sardine in shape. They were far superior in mobility and agility.
“It’s… coming here?!” He took a step back with sudden anxiety striking from within. Before he could do anything, the airships were already atop of the city and were dropping something. Having no clue what they were, all he could do was watch them fall and create massive balls of explosions upon impact. He could feel waves of heated air hitting him as numerous explosions set fire on everything where it fell.
“WHAT IS GOING ON?! WHAT IS GOING ON?!”
The man had absolutely no clue as to what was happening. He was shock-shelled, flabbergasted, and more importantly afraid, afraid of the unknown. He took a few steps backwards and fell to the ground. Unable to comprehend what was happening, he eventually peed on his pants. At this point, the whole city was ablaze with people running around like headless chickens trying to put out the inferno to no avail. The fire was simply too intense to be put out with just baskets of water here and there. They stood no chance.
“I…, I, I,” Leonhard stammered badly. “I, I, h, have t, to get o, outta h, here!”
For once, he was correct. However, his execution left much to be desired because he escaped alone. Yes, alone. He grabbed the only wind crystal and ran to an airship that was parked in the back garden of the castle and then simply took off alone, leaving his entire family at mercy of the invading force.
“Come on! Come on!” He was handling the control wheel fanatically as his airship took off slowly. Cracking from burning woods and people’s screams were overwhelming to his senses. When the airship was fully airborne and high enough, he could see the carnage. The whole city, bar the castle, was literally on fire. The heat was also very intense, and he felt as if he was in a sauna. Oblivious to the fact that he had left his wives and children behind, he piloted his airship toward the city of Buoon, the last city left for the Holy kingdom of Rem. He had been communicating with them for a while and made sure that the city was standing. They had some sort of a holy relic apparently, which was helping them fend off monsters, and he had already paid for a nice mansion and had been transferring some of his personal wealth. He was set for decades if he could make it there.
image [https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/3096/e4QCti.png]
It was at this moment that he realized that he had forgotten about his family. Clicking his tongue, he muttered.
“So what. I can always find more bitches to fuck and make more kids.”
Again, he wasn’t wrong although it showed how little he cared for his family or anything else for that matter. When his airship was a short distance away from burning Keviel, he finally released a long sigh of relief, thinking he was in the clear. Locking the wheel in front of him, he massaged his shoulders and cracked fingers.
“Good job,” he comforted himself in a job well done, in his mind at least. His peaceful moment did not last long, however, when the airship shook hard, and he lost his balance.
“WHAT?!”
A giant arrow from a ballista had struck his airship, puncturing a hole in the rear of the ship. Looking behind, he saw several airships closing by fast. He had to fly faster, but that was not possible with his airship. Besides, there was only one wind crystal in its tank. Before he could do anything, he heard a small bang from above. Looking up, he saw a giant gaping hole on the balloon. Another shot was made, and there was another gaping hole. His airship was losing both speed and altitude. In fact, it was nose-diving to the ground.
“WOAH, WOAH!”
Holding onto the podium with the control wheel for dear life, he screamed his lungs out as his airship crashed hard onto the ground. He was launched away from the ship and broke his leg in the process. He was around twenty meters away from the crashed airship, holding his left leg.
“My leg! Myyyy legggggg!” He screamed in pain while wigging. Amid excruciating pain, he could see that an enemy airship was making a swift landing, and a dozen of armed soldiers poured out. They were running directly toward him. He fanatically searched for his sword; he didn’t bring any. One of the enemy soldiers pointed his sword in his direction and shouted while running toward him.
“GET HIM! GET HIS HEAD! We are going to feast when we get back home!”
“Roasted boars, here we come!” Another soldier replied with glee.
“WAIT!” He shouted at them while fanatically dragging himself backwards. “Negotiate! Let’s negotiate! I have money!”
A soldier slashed at his neck while telling him, “Too late for that, motherfucker!”
And that was the end of Leonhard Egra.