The Final Line of Defense

Ura watched Anna’s prediction come true. The ground trembled with the distant, thunderous steps of the Ruinhorn, and the knights were abandoning the outer walls, ignoring the chain of command, and fleeing in a desperate stream towards one building: the central keep, the fortress within the fortress that housed the Hiraeth Cell. The place Zebril had called indestructible.

She’s on the rooftop, looking down.

“How many can this place even contain…?” Ura mused to herself. 

Behind her, two figures were bound tightly in shimmering, green magical vines. 

Olomyar and Baltram, both pale with pain and blood loss, their legs now ending in cauterized stumps below the knee.

Getting no answer, Ura turned, “I said,” she repeated, “how many can this building contain?”

Baltram was only capable of a low, agonized moan. It was Olomyar who answered.

“The… the central keep…” he choked out, glaring at her with pure hatred. “The foundation is a kilometer deep. The walls… reinforced with Orivaneia’s first magic. It can… it can hold five thousand. Comfortably.” Even broken and defeated, he couldn’t resist a final, spiteful barb. “More than enough to weather this storm… and to hold a trial for all you traitors when this is over.”

Ura just smiled, a slow, chilling expression, and turned back to watch the last of the knights scramble inside their “unbreakable” sanctuary.

“Aren’t you all knights?” she asked, her voice a flat, curious monotone. “Why aren’t you out there, helping the frontline? Why aren’t you trying to defeat that thing?” She gestured with her staff towards the colossal, burning form of the Ruinhorn, which was now clearly visible over the city walls.

Olomyar, despite the agony from his severed legs, let out a dry, rasping laugh.

“Help the frontline? My dear, naive girl, you misunderstand,” he sneered. “The frontline is already lost. This keep, this unbreakable fortress, is the frontline now.” He looked at the fleeing soldiers with approval.

“The duty of a true leader is to protect the heart of the kingdom. The command structure. The continuity of government. Not to die pointlessly defending thatched roofs and commoners that are already forfeit. A good general knows when to cut his losses and preserve his most valuable assets.”

Ura stared, disgusted.

“There is no hope for Frola as it is,” Olomyar continued. “This… cleansing… is necessary. The weak will be culled. The city will fall, yes. But from its ashes, a new, stronger Minilon will rise. One with a more… decisive leadership.”

Ura sighed, turning away from him. 

She wondered how these two knights could still radiate such arrogance. “And where is your Captain? Where is Destrian? Is he also hiding in this hole with the rest of you cowards?”

Olomyar’s smile widened, a look of pure, triumphant malice. “Destrian? Oh, the old Titan King had a… fundamental disagreement with my pragmatic approach to this crisis,” he said, his voice a triumphant purr.

“He was a sentimental old fool who was unwilling to make the hard choices for the future of this kingdom. I dealt with him.” Ura’s head snapped back towards him, her green eyes wide with shock.

“He refused to support me,” Olomyar finished, “So I killed him.”

The witch stared, her logical mind struggling to process the sheer, self-destructive insanity of it all. The betrayal, the cowardice disguised as strategy, the murder of their strongest warrior in the face of an apocalypse… she honestly couldn’t understand their logic at all.

The first of the freed slaves began to emerge from the grand, iron-gated entrance of the ‘Royal Department of Geological Survey,’ blinking in the bloody light of the dawn.

Standing as unflinching sentinels before the gate were “Saint Serenya” and the towering beastkin guardian. Bella were waiting while Gaspard, a mountain of silent, tiger-striped power in his formal suit, stood at her side.

Then there was a shake in the earth. As the ruinhorn gets closer, Gaspard already acted to be Bella's living shield.

However, the enormous beast appeared to be oblivious to them. The ruinhorn went pass them.

Gaspard relaxed his stance, his gaze following the monster’s destructive path. “It ignored us,” he stated, his voice a low, steady rumble. “I think its target is the castle.”

Bella watched the beast go, then turned her attention back to the many dark beings emerging from the mine. “So be it,” she said, “Let the King and his knights deal with Yarte’s pet. Our duty is here.”

She looked at the thousands upon thousands of souls that still needed to be evacuated, a task that would take hours.

“This makes our task simpler,” she declared to Gaspard. “Getting everyone out, though it will take a long time, will definitely be possible.”

The evacuation was a slow, steady river of freed souls, their faces a mixture of dazed hope and ingrained fear. But from the direction of the castle, a new sound arose—a wet, tearing noise on a massive scale, followed by a wave of thousand screams that were silenced as one.

Gaspard watched, his face a grim mask of stone as the Ruinhorn, in a single, sweeping pass of its corrupting horn, scythed through the city’s main pedestrian thoroughfare.

“My lady…” the tiger beastkin rumbled, “The humans… you don’t…” He couldn’t finish. He turned to Bella, whose expression had not changed.

“Why don’t you care about them?”

Bella simply smiled, “I never said I sided with the humans, Gaspard,” she said softly. “I’m not a human, after all. And it's not realistic to save everyone, we will save what we can save now."

The words struck, suddenly, everything made sense. 

He had pledged his loyalty to a Saint; he now realized he was serving something else. 

He want to ask something but before he could say it, a voice cut through the murmuring crowd.

“Bella…? Is that you…?”

A man with the same blonde hair and piercing pink eyes as Bella, stumbled out of the mine’s entrance.

Bella’s serene composure crumbled. Tears welled in her eyes. “Papa…” rushing to him, taking his frail hands in hers. “Where’s uncle?”

Her father looked back towards the dark maw of the mine, his expression weary. “He will come out. Sooner or later…”

“Gaspard, make sure the portal to the temple is still safe. We will treat the broken one there.”

Gaspard understood. He turned his attention back to the evacuees. “Everyone! If you’re having trouble breathing or walking, please go here!”

Many were broken and entered, but some, the ones who had been captured more recently, still had a fire in their eyes. A new wave of Morvanium beasts, drawn by the Ruinhorn’s chaos, could be seen swarming in the distance.

“And everyone who still has the strength!” Gaspard’s voice boomed over the crowd again. He pointed to a nearby, abandoned barracks supply wagon, its doors hanging open. “Grab a weapon! There are more of Yarte’s monsters coming this way. We have to deal with them!”

A panicked cry rose from the crowd. “Fight?! Why? We were just saved!”

Gaspard’s expression was hard as iron. “You can flee, you can rest in the temple,” he roared, his voice silencing the dissent, “but if no one help, everyone will still be hunted, either by these monsters or by the human knights who enslaved you! That corruption out there,” he pointed, “if it touches you, it may give you strength, but it will steal your mind!”

He looked out at the sea of faces, “Many of us have family, many of us disappeared without telling them anything. Are they not worth fighting for? Are you not worth fighting for?!” He let the question hang in the air.

“You can die on your knees with the bruises of being a slave, or you can stand and fight with the bruises of war! Today, you are no longer property! Today, you are warriors! Choose your enemy!”

A flame was sparked in the emptied-out spirits of the emancipated slaves by Gaspard's powerful word. A fire of defiance ignited in the eyes of some, but many were still too crushed by centuries of captivity to do anything except cry.

They started to approach the supply wagon one by one, then by the dozen.

Nuns from the temple emerged from the portal as if called by this act of bravery. They started to circulate among the most vulnerable evacuees, providing them with words of consolation, water, and healing salves.

The air was suddenly filled with a cry of frantic, pure hope.

Then another voice came, “Lady Serenya!!”

It was Jarce. He led a column of what seemed to be the Minilon barracks' remaining hundred devoted knights. When they saw their Saint, standing resolutely before the mine's entrance, their spirits rose despite their broken armor and blood and soot-smudged faces.

He was accompanied by Apu, who was holding his bow solidly now and had the look of a seasoned archer rather than a terrified squire, and Zebril also.

“We broke through Olomyar’s lines! We must protect this position at all costs!”

Bella’s face was a mask of calm authority, her brief moment of emotional vulnerability with her father now locked away. “Knights, report,” she commanded. “What of the barracks?”

It was Zebril who answered. “It’s gone, my lady,” she said, her voice a low, defeated rasp. “The Ruinhorn’s corruption spread too fast. What it didn’t rot, the portal-spawned monsters that followed in its wake burnt down. The entire barracks has been overtaken…”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “The only thing still standing is the central keep, the high-end prison. The Power Conduit’s holy field is holding the corruption at bay. Olomyar, Baltram, and the many knights and corrupt nobles loyal to them have sealed themselves inside. They have abandoned the city to save themselves.”

Bella listened, her expression hardening. The board had changed yet again. The barracks was lost. Her evacuation point was now the last bastion of the loyalist forces in the entire city.

“Then this is our line,” she declared, her voice ringing with a power that commanded the attention of every knight, every nun, and every freed dark being. “We are defending the last remnant of the Minilon Knights and the future of this city.”

She looked at Jarce and Zebril, “Organize your men. Form a defensive perimeter around this entrance. Gaspard, integrate our volunteers into the line.”

“We will make our stand here.”

The adrenaline from the unachievable triumph slowly subsided in the mine, and Anna started to realize the full cost of the night. A fatigue that was heavier than the mountain above swept over her, bone-deep. 

Now leaking down even into these suffocating depths, the dim, indirect light of the genuine dawn felt like a tangible burden on her vampire body.

“Ugh…” she groaned, her legs buckling beneath her. “The sun has risen…”

Her vision swam, the cavern blurring into a swirl of pale Glimmerstone light and concerned faces.

“Anna!” Nima and Maren cried out in a panic.

It was Helartha who caught her. The tall, elegant dark elf moved with a swift, sure grace, catching Anna before she could hit the ground. She looked down at the pale, exhausted face of the girl who had just handed her back a future she thought was lost forever.

“Thank you, Anna…” Helartha whispered.

Anna looked up at her, a weak, wry chuckle escaping her lips before her eyes finally rolled back and she fell completely into a deep, profound sleep.