Blossoms & Brassfire

EVERY GARDEN bed was a collapsible bulwark.

Every greenhouse hid mobile armored units.

And every corner and flanking tower provided artillery of brass and gears.

For even the Rudbeckia Apothecary wasn’t safe from the threat of soul feeders.

All too suddenly, the veil on the old bastion was lifted once more to face a threat the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the first century AKD. It shifted the sanctified institution from a calm bunker of flowers and elixirs into a synchronized war-machine of clockwork and burgeoning mana.

The first scream rolled across the vast fields before dawn—thin, reedy, and unmistakably inhuman. By the time the sun’s first band of light cut over the eastern orchards, there were smokestacks unleashing the soul feeders in large quantities.

The apothecary sisters mobilized with synchronized resolve. To outsiders, they might appear delicate, but their grace disguised a lethal mastery of concoctions, catalysts, and combat rites. Their gowns of burgundy or white swayed, and their corsets trimmed their slim and elegant silhouettes. Transparent veils fluttered behind them, pinned under top hats that had the gold-petaled rudbeckia adorning the brim.

Each position these maidens took during this battle often reflected the mark they bore on their hands.

The soul feeders swarmed the fields, moving like emaciated silhouettes torn from shadow that brought a plague-like cloud of ashes.

The vibrant flowers were stained.

Hundreds rushed ahead, but were met with a shimmering fog of amber, which slowed their pursuit at first, then immobilized them completely.

The defense grid was activated from the lower chambers of the Rudbeckia Apothecary, thanks to the Bishop-class sisters of the Prayer Ward. They were on their knees, heads lowered, supplicating for the protection of the God-King to reinforce it.

Clustered, the soul feeders were targets for the apothecary’s artillery.

The two front towers groaned as its internal gears engaged. Great cogs turned to rotate and level the barrels extending from the turrets until they pointed at the halted horde.

One of the Rook-class apothecary sisters braced herself at the firing platform, boots locking into the inlaid runic track. She pressed her right marked hand to the conduit ring, which glowed an intense blue. Mana surged from her core into the cannon, lighting its engravings in a rising hum.

BOOM!

A streak of metallic-blue light tore across the field, spiraling like a comet of engineered precision. It hit the ground in the midst of the horde, then blossomed like a water lily to disintegrate the soul feeders. A second shot of green from another sister followed before the dust even settled, each blast thinning the swarm in disciplined, devastating volleys.

A tremor suddenly rippled through the defense grid.

“Concentrate, my sisters!” Director Clarisse ordered the others praying alongside her in the apothecary’s lower chamber. She squeezed her hands together; her voice shook with strain. “Oh, God-King, hear our prayers!”

The next pulse hit harder.

More soul feeders swarmed from the ruptured smokestacks spewing in the distance. Their wispy bodies flickered like candle flames caught in a gale, limbs stretching and dissolving as they hurled themselves at the amber barrier. Their shrieks scraped against the mind more than the ears that even the elixirists stationed at the parapets and curtain walls flinched at the sound.

Across these fortifications, the Pawn-class sisters were armed with long-barreled hand cannons for greater range. They fired colored streaks of their mana type to decimate the incoming waves of soul feeders. When they needed to replenish their mana with a potion, the Bishops in the parapets fired their spells in double-time. More volleys of a diverse color scheme were cast from their wands, sweeping numerous clusters before they could encroach onto the wall’s last line of defense.

This regiment of Rooks stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the apothecary’s moat. With tower shields in their hands, they empowered their chronarms with enough mana all the way around the fortress.

The sound of ballistic weapons from the towers and the battlements between them thundered with magic and metal. Each impact carved radiant wounds into the dark mass, but their numbers continued to stretch and darken the once viridescent and ripe fields.

There were ground units mixed into the fray. Among the burgundy-colored elixirists were the florakin, dressed in their gray or tan kirtles. These women were the primary caretakers of the fields, and they fought just as fiercely as their colleagues.

Emerging from beneath the greenhouses rolled the apothecary’s mobile artillery: Shellbacks. These squat, armored machines were shaped like plated tortoises with a reinforced chassis and pivoting turrets. Each one fired with metronomic precision, their inner gear-stacks turning in orderly ticks as coiled springs hammered the firing chambers again and again. Inside each shellback, two florakin braced themselves. One steered with foot-pedals that clanked like the steps of a giant clock, while the gunner above channeled mana into the turret’s rotating core.

A burst of luminous shrapnel swept a soul feeder cluster aside, flattening shrubbery and smashing several rows of ripe blossoms in the process.

The machines advanced through the orchards like lumbering beasts, carving lines of radiant destruction through the enemy.

It was a cluster of chaos with no end in sight.

At one point during the battle-ladened day, clusters of soul feeders retreated towards the center fields, where another ground unit was holding their own. But when the soul feeders were thrown about, making enough room for a visible clearing, there was only one sister who was left standing.

Henrietta Lan’Marya, a senior elixirist from the Concoction Ward, swept through the soul feeders in large quantities. Her transparent armor shimmered like molten topaz and burned with a golden inner fire that outlined her frilly silhouette. The manatech wasn’t her own, but an engagement present from someone she was anticipating to see again.

It was beautiful, eerie, and unmistakably lethal as she channeled her fire magic through the armor to heat up the immediate area around her. While she remained cool, the otherworldly specters melted, their remains an ooze that evaporated into the air. She then pranced and skipped through the fields, her long wavy brown hair flowing gracefully as more and more soul feeders were burnt to cinders. It was like she was dancing with death amid the chaos, soon revealing her Rook-class chronarm: a burgundy parasol with the same kind of black frills as her dress.

On the second rotation in her hand, it transformed, frills splitting to reveal the hidden barrels beneath.

Henrietta cocked her minigun with a sharp grin—a grin so sharp it was enough to make her sistren tremble. Her monocle glimmered over her right lavender-colored eye as the soul feeders darted towards her. “My, oh my,” she purred. “Looks like we need to tidy the garden.” She squeezed the trigger, and the gun umbrella roared to life.

It spun with mechanical grace as a torrent of fiery red mana-fed rounds shredded the closest swarm into shrieking vapor.

Her manic laughter carried across the field with a distinctness that prompted fear, while also inspiring hope.

The minigun made a clearing, allowing some scattered units to be relieved of the pressure.

“Sisters, advance!” the senior elixirist commanded between bursts. “The day is still young and so is our courage!”

They were emboldened by her remark and cast a series of colorful rounds that detonated in Henrietta’s wake. Another followed with a volley from their muskets. Shellbacks howled, unleashing torrents of artillery that continued bursting through the swarm, clearing the apothecary grounds more noticeably this time.

Meanwhile, Henrietta danced deeper into the fray, fearless, trailing the yellow glow of her armor like a comet-tail of burning light. She intoned in a low, singsong murmur, “Tulips are white, clovers are green. I count the days ‘til my beloved is seen!”