The Vizugmonian fortifications were built on a small rise and all of the trees around had been cut down and turned into poles for the palisade. The campsite was large enough to hold nearly three thousand men, Yuriko thought, but how far she was from them, she couldn’t really make out the details. They built a few dozen paces from the road, and the earth around them was bare.

‘Was that hill there before?’ Yuriko wondered. No, that looked new. So they built up a rise in the past day? If she squinted, she could see several warriors glowing with Animus as they worked on digging trenches.

Even as she watched, a wooden platform rose up behind the palisade, as if someone just picked it up from the ground and got it erect. Guide ropes were thrown towards the walls and secured. Someone was on top, looking around. Yuriko focused and saw that it was a catkin, a Kutin full breed like Masa’s teammate. The Kutin looked in her direction and Yuriko saw him jump in surprise. He pointed at her, screamed something and suddenly the entire camp looked like a kicked over anthill.

Warriors outside ran into the trenches, crossbows poking out. Hundreds manned the walls and a bird flew from the camp and headed to the west.

“Well, that stirred them up,” Yuriko muttered.

She backtracked and jumped to the ground, and ran back towards the isthmus. A cohort waited for her a few hundred paces in. They saluted by knuckling their foreheads when she arrived.

“I suppose they saw you, Elder?” Akko asked with a wry smile.

“Yes.” Yuriko shrugged. “They’ve built up.”

“As expected.” Akko grunted. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Let’s move.” She said to the rest of the cohort.

While Yuriko would have been fine waiting it out, Otlaca had been insistent that they defeat the advance forces as soon as possible. She and Akko’s Talon, the official designation for a hundred man unit, were to be placed in a flanking position. The rest of their forces would assault the cats in an hour.

That the Vizugmonians saw her was of no matter since there was no hiding five thousand warriors approaching.

They headed southwest until they were directly south of the camp. Irseso’s group would head north and assault from there, while Otlaca would come from the east.

“Cautious assault,” Otlaca had said. “We must defeat them without losing too many warriors. That means we Elders must lead with our troops in support. The Vizugmon advance doesn’t have Elders with them. The only way they hoped to defeat Elder Yuriko was through numbers. But now, we have the numbers on our side.”

So it was that an hour later, Yuriko and Akko’s Talon stood not a hundred paces from the southern trenches. They didn’t encounter any roving patrols, much to the lizard woman’s regret.

She could see Otlaca’s group coming up from the east. The Elder snake-kin walked ahead of the army. He looked at Yuriko, then to the north before he started to speak. His Animus formed into a four-headed serpent. His words were amplified by the snake heads.

“Warriors of Vizugmon! You trespass in our land, you kill our people and now you dare block out roads! Surrender or face the consequences of your actions!” Otlaca continued in the same vein, his voice drowned out the sound of the winds, the pitter-patter of the rain, and whatever the feline-kin tried to shout back.

Weren’t his people the one who first started capturing the cats under the Labyrinth? Damien noted lazily, And he’s not letting them speak back either. Are you sure you’re backing the right team here, kid? Hehehe, not that it matters much.

‘They killed women and defenceless children, Damien.’

Are you sure it was them?

‘I…’

No, of course, you’re not. You didn’t catch them in the act, though they did attack us unprovoked. That offence, more than anything else, gives you just cause to retaliate. So, fight without guilt, young one, there is no use hesitating in the middle of battle.

‘I…I suppose you’re right.’

Of course, I am. Kill them.

Yuriko shook her head as Damien’s words faded away. The pattern to create her sunblade coalesced almost without thought. The brilliant beam of Radiant light made Otlaca pause and lose the vein of his tirade.

“Ahem,” He coughed, “since you won’t surrender, prepare for battle!”

The only answer to Otlaca’s speech was a crossbow bolt that one of the materialised snake heads snapped out of the air, and a stone that came flying from behind the palisade. That one was the size of Yuriko’s head and it fell behind the Elder and struck someone’s shield.

“Attack!” Otlaca roared.

The four-headed serpent behind him started to grow larger until it towered over everything, even the five pace high walls atop the rise. The serpent heads grew more solid until they looked as real as the Seven-Headed Serpent King she slew in the Labyrinth. All four heads drew a deep breath, then unleashed a fusillade of energy blasts, fire, cold, lightning, and a purple coloured gas that Yuriko knew to be acidic venom.

The blasts hit the walls and blew a hole through them several paces wide, while the venom pooled into the ground. Any of the felinekin that even touched the cloud had their faces suddenly turn green and they collapsed.

Otlaca’s four-headed serpent faded back to its usual size and the Elder snakekin staggered back. He gestured sharply and several squares of troops advanced, wooden shields held in front and over their heads.

The response from the walls was a rain of crossbow bolts and stones. Several ranks of crossbowmen on the Lucentian side retaliated, but most of the bolts struck the walls. Several reptilians fell to their knees as the arrows took their toll. Some unlucky few got skewered in the eye by a bolt and died nearly instantly. The survivors were dragged backwards by their comrades.

Yuriko could see someone flying in the north. Elder Irseso, she assumed. From where she was, Yuriko could only make out a silhouette and she didn’t want to waste the Animus to check. Either way, the other Elder rained arrows of something greenish on the north walls, and from behind her, her own troops added their attacks.

“Hold here,” she commanded. “Cover me.”

The Vizugmonians were focused on the east and north, leaving few to watch her side. It would be their undoing.

She flared her Anima and ran, picking up speed as dust, dirt, and gravel sprayed from where she stomped the ground. A few bolts flew her way, but it was easy enough to swat them off the air. In a few seconds, she leapt over the first trench, finding the bottom empty. Why did they bother here?

When she reached the wall, she jumped up, stabbed her sunblade into the wood and used it as a lever to fling herself up. She left the weapon embedded into the palisade, and already, smoke rose from where it stabbed into the wood.

As with the palisade back in the middle of the isthmus, this one had a walkway platform behind where crossbowmen could stand and shoot. It was half a pace wide and didn’t have railings on the other side. There was also a smattering of warriors on the platform, but the majority were hunkered down on the ground. Her arrival caused all of them to look at her. After a frozen moment, she dove into the nearest formation, fists swinging.

Her fist collided with a lionman’s shield. It split and cracked, falling into two pieces and revealed the man’s surprised expression which rapidly turned to fear. His comrades swung their poleaxes at her. She ducked under them, grabbed one and yanked.

The tigerman didn’t let go. Yuriko backed up and swung the polearm around, while the other screamed as he flapped around like a banner. Then she smashed him against another warrior. That made him let go. Ah, but it also broke the bottom bit off the weapon. Boo.

Oh, it suddenly became just the right size for her!

She flipped the weapon around and used it to create a safe zone around her. More than once, she caught a warrior and smashed him aside. She didn’t channel any Animus along the weapon, though a little bit leaked out from her sword dance. She had compressed her Anima down to an inch, and any crossbow bolt that struck her just bounced off. Even those with Animus investment didn’t do more than make her Shell ripple.

“Fire!”

A panicked yell, and when she glanced back, a good portion of the palisade was in flames. She swatted another lion man out of her way, flung the poleaxe like a javelin and impaled someone through the gut. Then she held out her hand and called for her sunblade.

A beam of light came from the wall. It pierced through one of the catkin in the way. He dropped to the ground with a hole in his chest. The sunblade landed on her palm, and as soon as it did, a pulse of Radiant force emerged and pushed everyone within five paces of her back a step.

A single slash with the weapon cleaved through leather and steel. A blast of coppery steam came from the wounds even as the body fell. She could feel their fear, palpable in the air. Every step she took was one they retreated from. Weapons, polearms and sidearms, fell from nerveless fingers.

“Leave,” she said simply.

The formation broke. They ran away from her, but towards the other two armies. They trampled those who had been too far from her to engage. Within moments, there was a clear space nearly ten paces wide around her.

Which, on second thought, was a mistake.

Crossbow bolts flew towards her, a veritable wall of pointy things.

“Fallen Sun!” she swore as she spun her weapon in a circle, even as she leapt to the side.

Wave after wave of crossbow bolts headed her way. There were nearly ten times as many warriors as the ones who had ambushed her on her way to Viterra, and the resulting projectiles cast a large shadow over her.

“Get closer!” she yelled to herself as the bolts bounced off her Shell.

There was no way she could knock everything off the air, not when she only had a single weapon on her. She could summon Fri’Avgi. The Anima Telum was wide enough that she could hide behind her blade.

No. There was no need to expose her greatest weapon. Not for anything less than a Chaos Lord.

Between one volley and the next, and probably since they focused too much on her and left the other sides unguarded, she managed to close in on another formation. However, that one quickly broke and fled, and she wasn’t of a mind to cut down fleeing men and women, not when most of them had discarded their weapons and shields. Still, that left her with a quandary.

Boom!

The solution was Otlaca’s forces storming in. They knocked down the weakened palisade, and the entire camp changed from a defensible place to a trap.

Yuriko stopped attacking as soon as Otlaca and Irseso’s forces entered the fort. She retreated back to where she entered, though the palisade there was burning something fierce. The intermittent rain had started to dampen the blaze though.

Er, she couldn’t do anything about the fire anyway.

Ah, there was another gate on the western side. But less than a fourth of the enemy group managed to escape. The rest were slaughtered.

The Lucentian’s faces were twisted in rage, and they cut down even those who knelt on the ground with their hands raised in the air. They roared and screamed, and laughed. Oh, their laughter. It held a mocking rage that grated on Yuriko’s ears.

Otlaca wasn’t anywhere inside, and neither was Irseso. She could see the female lizardkin buzzing about in the air. She watched the other, vaguely wishing her Anima or Facet would let her take to the air. Ah, but she could already glide, so that was something. She just needed to work out how to fly.

“No!” Irseso’s shriek cut through the din of battle. Yuriko looked at the Elder and saw her looking to the west. Animus flooded her eyesight, and she could see the Elder’s face twist in rage and fear.

A premonition of danger. Yuriko ran towards the western wall and leapt up to the platform. What she saw nearly made her eyes pop out of her face.

To the west, what must have been a league away, the land undulated as though it were the sea. And she could see an army on the crest of that wave, moving towards them with speed that beggared belief.

Vizugmon’s reinforcements had arrived.