Vayra took one more breath to compose herself. She began her cycling pattern, pushing mana and Arcara around her body and preparing herself to use magical techniques, then sprinted out of the woods.
The fields beyond the edge of the forest rose and fell gently. The low points were filled with marshes and reeds, and the high tops laden with windswept stalks.
She came to the top of an especially tall hillock, and stumbled to a halt. Beyond, just down the other side of the slope, she found the source of the smoke. The battle.
In the wet, muddy lowlands between a couple hills, lines of blue and red clashed. A wall of Velaydian Redmarines marched forward, unrelenting, driven by a cheery piccolo trill that seemed completely unfit for the brutality on display.
Vayra couldn’t tell what had happened or how the battle had started, but bodies of marines and bluecoats alike had been strewn across the fields. Muskets still cracked, but most of the fighting now was bayonet on bayonet, with the occasional barrage of cannonfire. The moment Vayra took a step down the slope, a deep boom penetrated her chest, and bouquets of smoke bloomed from the slope of a nearby hill. The shots ripped through the ranks of bluecoats, scattering their ranks.
A man on a horse rode behind the ranks of the bluecoats, and he shouted something that Vayra couldn’t make out. She didn’t need to make out the order, though. The rider was a messenger, and surely, he carried news about the fate of Nalla—whether he knew that she had been killed, he must have known that she was ambushed on her way to this battle.
The Elderworld lines had thinned too much, and their God-heir commander wasn’t coming to help.
Slowly, the bluecoat line disintegrated. Those who could turn away did. They ran back across the fields, fleeing north.
Vayra squinted through the smoke. On the horizon, to the north, she spotted a dark mound. If she hadn’t known better, she might have said it was a mountain. Her first day on Ramesworld, she had made that mistake, but not today. It was the city of Leansfield. No lights glimmered on its tightly-packed towers or shone in the streets, and it was entirely silent. They almost had it liberated.
Vayra ran as fast as she could down the slope. As she half-sprinted-half-stumbled, she located a set of officers in red coats, who stood back from the battle at a safe distance.
“Commander!” she called. “Commander!”
One of the red-coated officers turned about to face her. If it wasn’t for his scars and eyepatch, she wouldn’t have been able to tell how old he was—he wore a thick wrap around his neck and a powdered wig that covered the sides of his head. When he saw her, he dipped his head. “Mediator Vayra. Were you successful?”
Vayra rubbed her shoulder. “I took care of Nalla.”
“Then we have a clear shot to Leansfield,” he said sternly, and motioned towards the officer to his left. The officer, wearing a brass cavalry helmet, jogged off to one of his attendants, who provided him a horse.
A week ago, when Vayra had arrived at Ramesworld, she had met Commander Kochrann. He was one of the many commanders responsible for the planet’s defense against the Elderworld incursions, but no matter how vast his armies were, there was little they could do against a God-heir.
“The cavalry is on their way to the city,” Kochrann told her. “They’ll clear the way for us. We’ll send those bluecoats back where they came from.”
“I was thinking you might need more help here,” Vayra told him.
“We’re not done yet,” said Kochrann. “I’m sure we’ll find plenty of bluecoats holed up in the city.”
Vayra looked back at the silhouette of Leansfield. As far as she knew (which wasn’t a whole lot) there were still plenty of innocent civilians sheltering in the city. The faster they kicked the bluecoats out, the better the city would fare.
“Can I borrow a horse?” Vayra asked. “I won’t be much good standing back here.”
“For the Mediator?” Kochrann nodded. “Certainly, ma’am.” He looked over his shoulder and beckoned over a couple men who held the reins of a saddled stallion. “He’ll bear you well and fast, that much is certain.”
Vayra climbed up into the horse’s saddle. It had dark fur and a mottled mane, and its lean muscles tensed, ready to run.
She’d only ridden a horse a few times before, but Velaydian horses were well trained and brave, and she wouldn’t have to do much work to keep it in line. She grabbed its reins and prepared to ride off, but before she could spur the creature into action, Commander Kochrann tapped her leg. “There’ll be a debriefing afterwards. Sector commanders, governors and lords, and anyone else they deemed important. It’d be wise for you to attend.”
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“I’ll be there,” Vayra told him. She almost added, If there’s nothing else I need to be doing, but she doubted there would be anything more important.
‘Than this kind of meeting?’ Phasoné interjected. ‘Certainly not, Vayra. You’ve defeated the God-heir, and now they’ll probably re-assign you, or have another mission. And hopefully, something to help your advancement.’
“Yeah, yeah,” she whispered. “I’m working on it, and I’m…just being…I dunno.” She had hoped that, when they pushed the bluecoats back past Leansfield, there would be time to rest—and to see the city a little. “I guess we just have to push the bluecoats out a little faster, then.”
She tightened her legs against the horse’s flanks, and it sprinted off. She guided it around the edge of the battlefield, dodging bodies and debris, then navigated through the center of the field cannon cluster.
As she passed through, a group of gunners seemed to recognize her—or they put the clues together. They waved and smiled, and she wasn’t sure how to process the information. Other than stress, of course. They had the Mediator on their side, and she couldn’t let them down.
She shook her head and scrunched her eyebrows, and blazed past the battlefield as fast as she could. She’d never been concerned about what people thought of her before. Less than a month ago, she had only been worried about saving her brother. Now…there were so many people who knew about her.
As she entered the open fields, she fixed her gaze firmly on Leansfield. A sigh broke her lips, interrupting her cycling pattern, and she couldn’t help but feel a pang of sorrow.
‘You’ll get your chance to see the galaxy, Vayra,’ Phasoné assured her. ‘Or you’ll see something, at least. Well, you are seeing it.’
“I’m seeing destruction and carnage,” Vayra whispered back.
‘You’ll get used to it. Better than being stuck on Decathe your whole life?’
She offered a faint smile, even if she knew Phasoné couldn’t see it. “Marginally.”
‘Well, that’s something.’
As she rode towards Leansfield, slowly, the sight changed. She was sure there wasn’t a sunrise, but it almost looked as though the sun was climbing up behind the city. Orange light glimmered on the windows and…flickered in the distant streets, illuminating the gaps between buildings and towers. The entire city looked like a massive glowing ember.
Smoke poured out from more than just the chimneys. It billowed high up into the sky, a gray column barely visible against the night blackness.
Vayra’s stomach lurched. “Fire!”
‘They’re burning it…’
She tried to urge her horse to run faster, but it was already sprinting. The hillocks faded, and across the plains, she spotted a road. She guided the horse over to it. The stallion leapt over a fence and landed on the trodden path, its hooves skittering for just a moment. On the worn-down mud, it could run much faster.
By the time she reached the city outskirts, flames scoured everything ahead of her. A tower crumbled in the distance, plummeting into the street, and it was met with a chorus of shrieks.
Silhouettes dumped buckets of water on the flames, but there weren’t enough of them. Those who did escape into the streets found themselves at the mercy of waiting bluecoats.
The path turned into a paved road, and Vayra rode along it as fast as she could. Ahead, she spotted Velaydian cavalry charging through the streets, blasting bluecoats with muskets or hacking at them with sabers. Vayra plowed through one of the Elderworld infantrymen, and flung another into the flames with a Starlight Palm.
‘Remember, Vayra, your half-phoenix skin might be immune to the heat, but I’m not,’ Phasoné said. ‘Don’t get too close to the flames, or I’ll start to blister up.’
“I’ll do what I can!”
She rode through the streets, trying to stick to the broadest corridors where she wouldn’t have to brave a valley of flames, but that didn’t keep her safe from the crumbling towers or scurrying bluecoats.
She tried to deal with as many of the bluecoats as she could, but most were already retreating from the city. Her blasts of starlight (and, after a few minutes, she conjured her scythe) were just more incentive for them to run from the destruction they’d caused.
When she couldn’t find any more bluecoats, she took to a new purpose: protecting what she could. A tall wooden tower collapsed towards her and a cluster of civilians. She poured a shield of starlight into the roof of the house, guarding it from the mass of the tower and holding it together. Barely. It drove her to her knees, and she spent the next minute panting, trying to get back into a cycling pattern that would help her.
The night continued in a haze of smoke and sparks and flame. She protected what she could, barely thinking about anything or anyone she saw—just doing her best to stay alive, and hopefully keep others alive. At some point in the chaos, her horse ran away, and she let it. There was no point hurting it, or letting it be burnt alive.
After another hour, she was almost out of mana. Her mouth was parched—depleting her mana so low dehydrated her, as it would for any God-heir—and her body ached, and Phasoné complained about the heat. Vayra retreated back into the fields to the south of the city, and stood, watching the flames burn down to embers and ashes.
She shut her eyes, first in disappointment, then in frustration. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Calling on the last dregs of mana in Vayra’s body, Phasoné spoke to her: ‘We tried, Vayra, but this is war.’
“And it’s my job to put an end to it, isn’t it? If I ever want to see the galaxy as it should be, I need to defeat the Elderworlds.”
‘Yes, you will.’
“I’ll have to do it as quickly as possible. At some point, I’ll have to face Karmion, and that means I can’t just…stay stuck at Quartermaster like this. Stuck without the Mediator Form, everything.” She paused, then fell back onto her hands. “We need a teacher…someone who can help raise us up. That’s what we need.”