“Vengeance often just leaves you feeling empty… but often, just the satisfaction of getting a long overdue task finally done makes it worthwhile.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“We just took care of the last of them, Milady,” reported Baruk’s second in command, a half-goblin youth named Mika, to Aideen moments later. For all their bluster, the crusader charge against the heavy infantrymen formation ended up being a disaster as their own formation had been disrupted first by Aideen, then by the skeletal horde supporting the living infantrymen.

Not a single one of the knights that charged got away, though a few canceled their charge and turned around to flee instead when they saw what happened to their compatriots ahead. Since Aideen had no cavalry with her, there was nothing her detachment could do about those, so they just let them escape. In the end, the battle ended up costing the crusaders over four hundred knights, with some of them captured alive.

“Good work,” replied Aideen to the half-goblin. She noticed a sweltering bruise on the young commander’s cheek, as well as a few cuts that were still bleeding on his arms, so clearly the crusader knights hadn’t gone down without a fight. Those injuries were something Aideen could handle immediately however, so a quick touch from her caused them to vanish as if they had never been there. “How are our casualties?”

“A hundred and fifty-two injured, no deaths,” disclosed the half-goblin with pride in his voice. Actual combat deployments were pretty rare for the Lichdom army, so those chosen to take part in them were naturally proud to represent their nation. That he managed to take down over four hundred knights without a single death was indeed something worthy to boast about. “We have them grouped and sorted based on the severity of their injuries, and our healers are already working on those with lighter injuries, Milady.”

“Excellent,” noted Aideen. While normally the common practice was to ignore the lightly wounded in favor of treating the most heavily injured first, that was in a situation without a master healer present. With a healer of Aideen’s caliber, it was just more efficient to have the lesser healers focus on the light injuries while she herself handled all the heavy injuries by herself. “Bring me to them.”

“Right away, Milady,” said the young commander as he saluted to Aideen. He then noticed the unconscious body next to Aideen’s feet and turned to ask her. “This one still breathes, ma’am. What should we do with him?”

“Oh, right, he seemed important and for some reason had a look of hatred when he saw me, so I was curious about his identity,” replied Aideen almost off-handedly just as she turned to walk towards where the injured were. “I guess might as well get something out of him while we’re at it. Secure him and put him together with any other survivors you caught.

“Your will be done, Milady,” replied Mika.

“Have Veria make a push with the skeletons first. Your heavies should take a short rest while I heal up the wounded,” added Aideen as she walked towards the location where the wounded were laid down. She knelt by the infantryman who had the worst injury and laid her hand on him, causing his injuries to heal completely within moments. “Your men deserve the rest.”

“It shall be so, then,” nodded Mika with a grateful nod. Under his command the rest of the heavies quickly sat down where they stood, while a runner passed on the command to Veria, who together with her fellow necromancers, controlled their horde of skeletons to lead the charge towards the remaining crusaders in the city. Veria herself was in control of no less than two death knights, so it was not like the skeleton horde lacked heavy hitters anyway.

“Anything we could help with?” asked Celia as she came over with Kino from the side. The two had been mostly watching the battle, though they defended themselves when a couple foolish crusaders swerved towards them. Those crusaders met a quick and grisly end and served as examples on why the two of them were not to be messed with.

“You can help Veria out, if you don’t mind some workout,” replied Aideen without shifting her attention from the patients she was treating. Normally it would have taken hours for a single healer to deal with a hundred patients with injuries of varying seriousness, but a healer of Aideen’s caliber could take care of that in less than half an hour. “Not like either of you can help much with the healing here anyway.”

“Sure, then,” nodded Celia in agreement to Aideen’s words. Since the heavy infantry had some healers assigned to them, even the smaller injuries were easily taken care of via magical healing. Both Celia and Kino learned some of the more mundane ways of healing from Aideen, but that would have been of little use at the moment.

In contrast, adding their noticeable combat prowess to the skeleton horde would be a nasty surprise for the crusaders who now found themselves pincered between the Lichdom’s forces and the remaining Antemeian defenders, who redoubled their efforts when they saw help arrive.

The battlefield that resulted looked almost like a scene from a fairy tale. A group of knights and men-at-arms in pristine white clothing were fighting against a swarm of zombies, led by some abominations, on one side, while a horde of skeletons led by death knights pressed them from the other side.

Unlike the way the stories typically went, however, the undead were winning this battle, and quite decisively at that. The crusaders simply lacked the manpower to handle being pincered from the front and back at the same time, and even if they weren’t in a pincer, the forces from the Lichdom alone would have likely been enough to eradicate them to begin with.

Knights in white met their end, either under gigantic fists of putrefying flesh, weapons made out of bone, bolts of raw death magic, or other such means. On the side where Kino and Celia were aiding the frontlines, some knights fell after Celia cleaved through their bodies with her oversized weapon, but she was nothing compared to Kino beside her.

As every enemy that walked too close to Kino simply found part of their body gone before they could react.