The Eroded Plains caved in like a crust breaking; Carl’s soldiers were swallowed whole as the ground sank into a canyon and the torrent dragged all things downstream like torn reeds.
Carl Margrave rode a slab of rock skimming the canyon river, a lone raft on a black tide; the loss of ten thousand hit him like winter in the bones, and he kept muttering, “Impossible, impossible, this can’t be…”
Angus chanted to keep the rock afloat, his spell humming like a taut string, and he tossed a question like a stone into dark water, “I’ve never been here. Does anyone know where this river goes?”
Thirty-odd guards traded looks like lost geese in fog; no one knew where this canyon flow would end.
“If you don’t know, I’m flying off,” Angus said, his meaning sharp as a drawn knife. “I won’t die here with you.”
Reina, who had kept her head bowed like a wilted lily, finally lifted it. “The southeastern Agada Plain by Golden Bay City.”
“You sure?”
She nodded, voice low as distant thunder. “I’m sure. It’s much lower, a basin to this ridge. A nameless river comes out of a deep gorge there. We’re on that nameless vein.”
“Alright. Let’s hope you’re right.” Angus held the spell like a thread between fingers.
“R-report!” A guard on the rock stumbled over, panic fluttering like a startled sparrow. “George and the others caught up!”
Carl jolted as if struck by ice. “Impossible—how are they still on us!?”
A raft surged behind them, a wooden leaf on the flood; Lance and his men rode it, and their drift cut the water like a hawk stooping. At this pace, they’d be on them in moments.
Carl remembered Lance bragging to his face of caution; he’d taken it for bluff. Now his hopes were ash on the wind, regret grinding like grit between teeth. “Damn it, how much did they prepare? Did they already count on us running downriver!?”
Angus’s tone was cold as iron. “They’ve got a Grand Mage. What I can do, he can mirror. You didn’t think they’d be blind to our route, did you?”
“So all this was that Grand Mage’s whisper? I’ve provoked a Grand Mage!?” Carl raged, thunder breaking over his head.
Angus gave a dry laugh and shook his head. “Not that far.”
“Why?”
“Carl, is that likely? You’re overestimating yourself,” Angus said, voice flat as a millstone. “A Grand Mage stands where a Sky Knight stands—beyond the mundane, strength like a mountain. Their station rivals a duke; many Celestial Spirits don’t outrank them. With that, they hold half the city’s keys. If a Grand Mage found us an eyesore, would he need to skulk and scheme?”
“Then you mean?”
“He’s just on commission,” Angus sighed, like wind through a hollow reed.
“How is that possible!?”
“Don’t act surprised. Did you truly think that Lance was really exiled? Have you never wondered what plan sits behind the Iron Duke’s iron curtain?”
Carl gaped, mute as a statue in rain.
Light opened ahead like a crack of dawn. “I see an exit,” Angus said. “I’m speeding up. Hold tight!”
High Mage Angus poured power into the Light Skiff spell and layered Haste; the rock that had skimmed like a heron suddenly leapt, an arrow to the bright mouth ahead. Eyes adjusted like pupils at sunrise. They glanced back—and saw a waterfall’s throat.
Midair, Angus barked, “Jump ship! With me!” His shout cut like a bell in fog.
They obeyed, flinging themselves sideways like swallows off a branch. Gravity dragged like an anvil, but Featherfall gentled them like leaves in a slow wind; momentum carried them forward, and they touched down steady as cats.
The unenchanted rock hit earth and burst like a ripe gourd.
Reina stared at the shattered fragments, worry creeping like ivy; Carl, crow-voiced and gloating, said, “Look at that—they’ll smash to paste just the same!”
From that height, Carl wasn’t wrong; Lance’s raft slid from the lip like an oar blade, and a straight drop would splinter boat and bone like eggs on stone.
“No, not that simple!” Angus’s eyes widened, pupils pinpricks in shadow.
A baleful ward wrapped the raft like a dark cocoon; the catlike beast aboard had clearly cast some art, and the raft didn’t fall—it glided like a bat on night air.
Carl went slack, breath leaking like wind from a bellows. “Let’s run.”
“Run? To where?” Angus’s voice flared like sparks in dry grass. “With that phantom beast from the report, we won’t outrun a net.”
Reina had been sunk in gloom like a stone in deep water. As the raft closed, her gaze hardened, a blade kissed by frost. “If we can’t flee,” she said, “then we fight.”
Fulin, wearing Lance’s face, was first off the raft; he looked over Carl’s people, Sirius Sword in hand, voice like cold rain. “I told you you’d lost. Surrender.”
His men leapt after him; twenty in all, elites with wolf-quick feet, including Jeremy, who rode the borrowed momentum and stalked forward like a boar with tusks bared.
Jeremy remembered the debt still unpaid. He glared at Carl and hissed, a snake in dry grass. “Heh! Carl, your dogs cut three tendons in my left hand. When blades sing, don’t let me catch you, ya hear?”
Seeing his ground so bleak that even a lowborn dared bark, Carl’s teeth ground like grit. “A mere mercenary!”
Bound by a hired knight’s duty, Reina stepped in, a wind-wall before a flame; Jeremy had the sense to back off.
Reina took two more steps, the cold light of her sword like winter on steel. “Lance, Carl is defeated. By the kingdom’s constitution, you have to let him go. What are you after?”
“That only applies to prisoners of war,” Fulin-as-Lance spread his hands, innocence like a mask. “But now? Battle isn’t over. For the law to bite, Carl must be captured. To honor the law, and to keep Golden Bay City calm, I have to take Carl Margrave.”
His grip on the Sirius Sword tightened, the hilt cold as hoarfrost. “So, can you step aside?”
“No. I can’t.” Her voice was a stone in a stream.
“Why? You’re a hired knight, not a sworn one. You don’t owe him your life.” Fulin’s heart darkened like a candle under a cupped hand. “Is Carl someone important to you?”
“No, it’s not that!” Her denial scattered like startled birds.
“Enough!” A storm rose in Fulin’s chest, and Lance’s command cracked like thunder. “All of you—seize Carl Elmont. Move!”
As twenty elites split and rushed like a flood around a rock, Reina panicked and raised her sword like a dam. “Stop!”
If they didn’t stop, Reina would strike, and Carl would bolt with the High Mage’s wind at his back; that would turn Fulin’s long weaving to mist. She refused to let the loom snap.
So Lance struck first. “Eyes up!”
The word cracked—and his blade flashed. He lunged, drew, and the steel rang like lightning on a bell, smashing into Reina’s sword. She held her ground like a rooted pine, but a notch bit into her blade, proof of a strike swift as a falcon.
Reina’s eyes flew wide, ice breaking on a river. “Lance, what are you doing!”
“Guarding the peace of Golden Bay City,” Lance said, calm as a stone in rain.
Reina’s gaze turned sorrowful, leaves drifting in late autumn. “Lance, you’ve changed.”
“Changed how?” Lance asked, stepping back like a tide drawing off sand.
“Colder. Eyes on only yourself. Working harder and harder. You’re becoming someone I don’t know… like you don’t need me anymore,” Reina said, her look a blade in her own heart. “Seven years ago, it was my fault. To this day, I can’t forgive the self who made you so ruined.”
She finished—and ignited her Battle Aura.
Her fire wasn’t like Lance’s blaze; it didn’t explode, it grew. It rose like a rose from a thorny stem, and her willowy form twined with translucent vines; pale green coils climbed her faint red skirt-armor like spring over brick.
That was the flow of Battle Aura, a river taking a shape. It wrapped her shoulders and limbs, ran to her hands, and gathered on her sword. The blade bloomed into a violet rose—beauty wearing a melancholy veil, sweet as honeyed wine and deadly as hemlock.
“Forgive me, Lance,” Reina said, darkness seeping through her voice like ink in water. “Maybe for seven years you never forgave me. I don’t need your forgiveness. I only need you—even if I have to use rough, thorny means to make sure you never leave me again.”
