Ion Cáel May 23rd,20XX

“The target was spotted at the edge of the second district, sir. At the speed we’re going at now, we should be able to reach her in five minutes.”

“How many people does she have around her?”

“Around thirty soldiers and seven official’s sir.”

“Hm, how powerful are those officials?”

“It would take about two of their soldiers to deal with one of ours, sir. but they seem experienced in working in a group, it would be difficult to isolate them on the battlefield."

“Looks like she’d prepared for a fight then.”

The wind carried large particles of dust and debris into my face as I ran with my soldiers, but I didn’t let it bother me too much.

I didn’t know much about Aies, having met him not too long ago, but if he was anything like myself or even worse, like Theodulus, then I knew he was going to go after Rubella. Going by the message my grandfather had sent me on Theodulus’s behalf, they thought the same thing.

My orders were relatively simple, I just had to deal with her before Aies got there and used his magic. He had just merged his two powers, and while I was no expert on cases like his, I knew that fairy and goblin powers were practically opposite of each other. Even using magic in the same vicinity as a fairy was enough to make me uncomfortable, so I couldn’t imagine the imbalance in him right now.

The merge was only the first part, the next was assimilation and that would take time, time that he didn’t seem willing to give.

His fiancée was in charge of keeping him away but none of us actually expected her to last for that long. From the many, many stories Aies had told me of her, as well as the few minutes I had seen her interact with Aies I could tell she couldn’t bear to say no to him more than thrice.

At most she could buy time so it was up to me to get rid of the old hag before my cousin came down to hurt himself.

I smelled her before I saw her, the toxic scent of decay and potent magic that tried to stop the decay. It wasn’t an uncommon smell for an old hag like herself, but it was so much stronger on her than others, probably from attempting to preserve her youth rather than just lengthen her lifespan.

“Attack at full force and don’t worry about who gets who. Our priority is her extermination. There is no glory to be had in this.”

Although I had trained them well, the excitement of sharing a battlefield with both my grandfather and Theodulus had made my soldiers giddy. They were eager to prove themselves to the old guys and tended to act more recklessly in their attacks, but to pick and choose between targets. Normally I would have let them go wild with their ambitions but we couldn’t afford that right now.

My soldiers reached the scene before I did and launched a full-scale attack. I only had about thirty soldiers in total and fifteen who were with me. I’d sent out a call to the others, but they would take time to get here, and I couldn’t afford to send off any of the few soldiers that I had left.

My group hadn’t suffered any fatal casualties as of yet, and I was unwilling to change that.

The old hag screamed in fury as she realized she was being ambushed and cast a wide range spell, sending out wave after wave of energy-draining spells, and restraining curses. The witches around her supported her by offering up their magic to her, and in more difficult cases would use their bodies as shields to protect her.

They smelled repulsive. A different sort of repulsive than Rubella though. Less abrasive and more pathetic. a few of them were under mind control spells, but the vast majority of them retained their free will.

“Ion! You- I knew there was something off about you!”

I dodged a spell and dove toward her but she had taken off into the air before I could land damage. I grasped at the hem of her dress and tried to climb up her clothes onto the broom but she reinforced her boot and kicked me off her and onto the ground.

It hurt.

Right now she was angry but too composed for the fight to be easy. Under other circumstances, I would probably have tried to goad her into an angry fit, but I didn’t have time for that.

I dashed toward one of my soldiers and used his shoulders to launch myself into the air and toward Rubella, but once again I was shot out of the air by a powerful blast of magic. She must have been flustered though as she hadn’t structured it into a spell or a curse.

Unlike my old man and Theodulus, I didn’t have a partner I trusted, so I couldn’t fight the witches as efficiently as they could. And although they were holding back their strength for the sake of having more fun, I felt like even at my strongest I wouldn’t be able to take her down on my own.

Jokes aside, she had managed to become the head of the witches and taking her any less seriously could be fatal.

From her position in the air five of the many witches that surrounded her flew up to protect her and she began a complex spell.

“Don’t let her finish that!”

I yelled out my orders but they were somewhat redundant. Of course, we all knew that we needed to stop her before she could complete, but words had always been easier than actions.

We arranged ourselves into teams of twos and began to launch each other into the air, while the other half stayed to deal with the witches on the ground, but we had already been outnumbered in the first place, dividing our forces only exaggerated the dangers.

Before I let myself be launched into the air I yelled down to my soldiers.

“Priority is on Rubella! Use lethal force if possible for the others!”

We were outnumbered and everyone here knew it and the longer the fight drew out the more they would recover from the blast of magic from earlier. We needed reinforcements, but I couldn’t for the life of me imagine from where. My forces were scattered and even if we had been together, we would still have been outnumbered.

I kicked the witch that hovered in front of Rubella unconscious and used her Broom as leverage to jump toward Rubella, but she had a magic barrier in front of her. I drew out my dagger and cut my arm with it, coating it in my blood before slashing through the old hag.

I would probably have to take a curse to the face but it would be worth it if I could get her to abandon the spell she was currently working on.

Another witch managed to fend off the goblins that attacked him and spun around on his broom. the tip of his wand glowed a violent red as he prepared a vicious spell.

I tried my best to dodge it but I couldn't fly, and there was nothing to use as a brace to push myself away.

The curse was a few inches away from me when i felt myself getting tackled away from its aim by one of my soldiers.

I heard him grunt as it hit his leg and suddenly felt him become heavier as we barreled back onto the ground. his body turned a sickly red colour and he began to hack and cough out locusts.

He wasn't dead, but he was in no condition to fight.

Rubella finished her spell with a bang and held out her arm.

the ink shape of a vulture slowly peeled itself off her skin and began to expand, larger and larger until it became a colossus and its repulsive head brushed against the clouds.

It let out a shriek, arching out its neck and head and the sound burrowed into our ears, stunning us.

I felt whatever little hope I'd had of defeating her quickly drizzle down and drain away. Right now our objective was to survive.

Besides the freaking queen of the fairies and emp0erior of the goblins were here for goodness sake. they definitely would t ignore her now that she had made her location so clear.

I put up an arm to prepare my soldiers for retreat when a purple and blue blur suddenly shot down from the sky and similarly to Rubella's vulture, began to grow.

a purple snake, with bright blue eyes and iridescent scales, grew up to the size of a vulture and hissed at it, spitting venom and wrapping itself around the bird.

I looked into the direction of where it had come from and saw a familiar red-headed witch dive-bombing rubella with spells.

Rubella dodged as best she could, but it was clear that the large summoning spell had drawn out a lot of energy from her.

Another group of witches appeared shortly after Sparrow and flew down to us, picking up the injured goblins and fighting against Rubella's witches.

Seeing that the situation on the ground was mostly taken care of, I used a tree as a vault and landed on the broom of a witch with red hair and an annoying face.

"Take me up there. I can't let someone else finish the fight I started."