Chapter 105: A Hundred Thousand Banners

"If you’re late, those thousands of Gargoyles will come down from above and drag us out of the refugee tents, the same way the Dusk Feathers did."

Lucian caught the words from where he stood and moved before he’d decided to, pushing out through the tent flap to hear the soldier directly, close enough now to see how badly the man was shaking.

The soldier told it haltingly. When Korven’s fortress had first come under attack along its wall, the Dusk Feathers hadn’t simply torn into the defenders. They’d descended from above, snatching up the city’s own people and carrying them off into the sky.

"The Dusk Feathers carried people off? What about the Pillar Rune barrier along the walls, the one House Pneuma built? Was it not active?"

Lucian’s question carried an edge of disbelief.

A Pillar Rune was a hollow medium, a vessel into which a specially prepared Rune seed could be embedded to serve some defined function, like projecting a shield across a set range.

House Pneuma had installed them along Korven’s walls, hidden magical pillars sunk into the stonework at carefully chosen points.

Once awakened, those pillars joined their individual fields into one vast barrier, wrapping the entire city in a protective dome, shielding it from above and from the front, depending on the angle each pillar projected.

By Flemming’s own reckoning, that barrier should have held easily against the kinds of Dark Beast reported at Korven, especially the Dusk Feathers, which were hardly the strongest of the lot.

The soldier nodded, forcing his words through a hoarse, wet rasp.

"It worked, sir. The barrier held the whole wall, top to bottom. But it didn’t last."

"Cough... It only held for the last few days. Then it died, all at once, right after the Gloom Rat came up through the ground, crawling into the city before anyone could react."

He broke into another coughing fit mid-sentence, and Cardinal Hugo knelt beside him at once, laying a glowing hand over the man’s chest, a faint thread of healing mana unspooling into him to ease the clotted flow of blood and mana both, coaxing him back toward a steadier consciousness so he could keep speaking.

The soldier refused to stop. Even as Hugo worked, he pushed on, telling them that one of the barrier’s Runes, along one stretch of wall, had been destroyed from beneath by the Gloom Rat tunneling up through the earth, a stretch of the city where the underground had no Rune protection at all.

Then, a heartbeat later, his eyes rolled back and he went slack, collapsing from sheer exhaustion, everything he’d carried across the miles finally spent.

Flemming’s fists closed so tightly his knuckles cracked, the heat of his rage visibly rising off the crown of his head. The Gloom Rat he’d been so wary of had already acted, long before he’d finished preparing to hunt it down.

CRASH.

A chair in the tent shattered under his boot, splintering into pieces across the floor, his eyes gone a deep, furious red, a man already halfway to a battlefield that hadn’t opened yet.

He stalked across the tent, ripping a heavy war cloak from its hook in the corner and swinging it around his shoulders, his gaze fixed on whatever lay beyond the tent flap.

"Get the Versys and Pneuma representatives up here now. We’re moving on Korven."

He barked it at one of the guards posted outside, a command that rippled out through the whole camp, setting every unit currently assembled into motion at once. The representatives of both houses commanded specialized units uniquely suited to the plan he was already assembling in his head.

He turned to Jeanne next.

"I’m sorry, Jeanne. You’ve barely arrived, and I’m asking you to move out again already."

Jeanne only nodded, though the look in her eyes said she’d been ready since the moment she’d stepped off her horse. She turned to Captain Ulrich at once, ordering him to consolidate every Sarnel soldier gathered here, tens of thousands strong, into formation for the assault.

Ulrich straightened, chest out, bowing his head in sharp affirmation, and Elder Tervis fell in beside him, the two of them already running to see it done.

Flemming took a few steps toward the exit before his gaze landed on Hugo.

"Is Saintess Rosaria truly not coming to help this city, Cardinal Hugo?"

Hugo closed his eyes, nodding quietly, his voice gentle.

Flemming had been counting on her. Of the two Saintesses the empire had produced, Rosaria had been known long before Lumina ever was, and the gap in their ages ran wide.

Rosaria, though still young, carried a far steadier hand, and had a seasoned instinct for situations like this one. Her experience alone was precisely what Flemming had hoped to lean on against the Dark Beasts.

"It isn’t that Saintess Rosaria doesn’t want to come, Flemming. It’s the Oracle’s own order."

Flemming exhaled slowly, the hope in his chest deflating. If the Oracle herself had forbidden it, there was no real chance of Rosaria arriving unless the Oracle changed her own mind.

"A damn shame. It was that tracking ability in Saintess Rosaria’s Grimoire I was really counting on."

"And does this city really have to burn first before they’ll lift a finger?"

He stepped out of the tent, eyes tracking upward to a sky already beginning to cloud over again, gray gathering along the horizon.

Something tugged at the edge of his cloak.

"If you’d permit it, Sir Flemming, I’d like to help. I haven’t taken the title of Saintess yet, and my abilities aren’t at that level, but I can at least be of some use to this army."

Eleonor stood there, asking to be allowed onto the front line.

Flemming’s first instinct was to refuse. Her status as a citizen of Rippledale made her a liability of the worst kind. If she were hurt out there, or worse, the fallout could spiral into something that sparked open war with her homeland.

"Take her, Flemming." Hugo’s voice came quiet, steady, from just beside him. "The Oracle’s vision has never once been wrong."

"Is her being here part of the Oracle’s own vision, then? The thing that’s supposed to save Korven?"

Flemming murmured the question to himself, studying Eleonor again. It wasn’t impossible. Whatever abilities she hadn’t yet shown were likely just as striking as the ones she already had, and the Oracle clearly trusted her for a reason.

"Very well, miss. But I can’t guarantee your safety out there. If it turns dangerous, my only advice is to withdraw and save yourself."

"Don’t worry about me, Sir Flemming. My group and I can look after ourselves."

Flemming kept walking, Jeanne and Lucian falling in behind him toward the forward command post.

Eleonor, her request granted, turned to Luis and Arnold.

"Bring out the Domain Pouch. The one with all the potions. We’re giving them out to the Bravenheart soldiers."

If anyone fell wounded or ran dry of mana, they could recover instantly, without needing a priest or physician waiting in the rear tents.

"Miss, are you serious about handing all of these out? If your mother finds out, you might escape a scolding, but the rest of us won’t."

"Don’t be so stiff. Look at this. If we bring back enough samples, Mother won’t be angry at all."

Arnold balked at first, though the quantity they carried was genuinely enormous, but his objection faded the moment Eleonor pulled something from her back pocket, a small glass sample bottle, filled with fine gray dust, the remains of a Gargoyle’s body.

He turned the little bottle over in his hand, and understanding settled over his face. If they brought enough of these back to her mother, it might be the saving solution to everything. And if the rumors were true, if this really was connected to the Crimson clan, then any sample tied to them would be worth more than every single potion they were about to hand out, many times over.

On Lucian’s side of the camp, the scale of what stood in front of him was almost impossible to take in.

A hundred thousand soldiers, drawn from every corner of Bravenheart’s military, stood in ranked, shifting lines across the churned mud, each unit carrying its own banner, a forest of cloth and pole snapping in the rising wind.

Three Seven Pillar banners stood at the very front, set apart from the empire’s own main forces: Sarnel, Versys, and Pneuma.

From where he stood, Lucian could clearly see Jeanne, deep in last-minute discussion with the other Pillar representatives and General Flemming, going over the situation one final time and the plan they were about to carry out.

After a few more minutes, every unit moved at once, forming up into assault positions, soldiers swinging up onto the horses prepared beside them, the camp’s earlier tension condensing into something sharp and ready.

Jeanne mounted her own horse and extended a hand down to Lucian, an unspoken invitation to climb up behind her and ride with her.

But Lucian didn’t take it. It wasn’t that he doubted his sister’s offer. Something else was occupying his mind.

"What’s wrong, Lucian? Hurry up and get on. The army’s about to move out for Korven’s fortress."