Part One Hundred One — Eris’s Account, Part One

What follows is Eris's own telling, given to me that evening, as close to her exact words as I could manage to carry forward.

　We saw them first as a smudge on the horizon — too large, too organized to be anything but exactly what we'd been preparing for.

　Two thousand soldiers, six hundred mages, banners bright against a gray morning sky.

"They're confident," Elaine said, studying the formation through careful, measured attention. "Overconfident, I'd wager, given how little resistance they're clearly expecting."

Good. Let them stay confident. Confidence makes people careless.

　We'd positioned ourselves along a natural rise, defensible terrain Elaine had scouted weeks earlier, our own forces considerably smaller in raw number but built entirely differently than what was marching toward us.

　Elva, Celica, and Luke took the front line, exactly as we'd trained for — precise, coordinated, each covering the others' gaps with the kind of instinct that only comes from real, hard-won practice.

"Remember," I told them, one final time before the armies actually met, "you're not trying to match their numbers. You're trying to make each of yours worth ten of theirs."

"Understood," Luke said, already settling into his stance.

"Seven, Eight, Nine, ready," Celica added, using the codenames with a kind of pride that had grown into something real over the months of training.

They're ready. Genuinely ready, in a way I don't think even they fully understood until this exact moment.

　The first clash came fast and loud, mages on Ashford's side throwing volleys of ordinary spellwork that our own defenses met with practiced ease.

　Elaine's archers picked off the mage lines with devastating precision, each shot finding gaps in formation that untrained eyes would never have spotted.

　I fought near the center, my own blade meeting soldier after soldier with the confidence that months of Elaine's teaching, Kai's belief in me, and my own hard-won control had built, piece by piece, since the day I'd woken blind and broken in a mansion's underground chamber.

I'm not that girl anymore.

Every single one of you underestimating me right now is about to learn exactly how wrong that assumption actually is.

　Ace moved through the battlefield like something out of an old story — full Aetherion form, terror rippling outward from him in a wave that broke entire formations before blades ever crossed.

　I heard, more than once, soldiers simply turning and running the moment they got a proper look at him.

Smart choice, honestly. I wouldn't want to fight him either.

　The dwarven-forged weapons Borga's people had supplied made an immediate, undeniable difference — blades that held their edge through exchange after exchange, armor that turned aside strikes that should have found their mark against lesser craft.

"Your people build well," I told Borga's eldest son, fighting near me, watching his own dwarven axe cleave through an enemy shield like it was made of paper.

"We build to last," he said, grim satisfaction in the words. "Glad it's finally proving useful for something other than mining."

　The mages broke first, their coordinated spellwork simply unable to withstand Elaine's precise, targeted counters — each fallen mage taking a piece of Ashford's overall coordination down with them, until what had started as an organized assault began fragmenting into something considerably more chaotic.

There it is.

The moment an army stops being an army and starts being a crowd of individuals, each realizing, separately, that this fight isn't going the way anyone promised them it would.

　I caught sight of Ignivar, some distance off, watching the whole engagement with the same unhurried, faintly bored patience he brought to most things.

"You could help," I called to him, mid-exchange, genuinely a little annoyed.

"You're managing fine without me," he called back, entirely unmoved. "I'd rather not waste the effort on something this straightforward."

Typical.