Chapter Text
Two storms crashed against Rhalgr’s Reach. One was overhead, all dark clouds and rain and booming thunder. It drowned the sands and old paths beneath their feet, obscured their vision, and muffled the moans of the dying. Briony gritted her teeth and urged her aching limbs forward towards the storm awaiting them anon:
The Garlean host.
“We have to hurry!” Wyrm shouted from somewhere behind — no, beside her. It took a moment to make out his silhouette through the rain, even with the pale light of his eyes.
He wasn’t struggling as much as she was against the wind and downpour; Briony supposed all that training in Coerthas wasn’t for nothing. Their chances would be better with him at a vantage point, anyway.
“…Go on ahead,” she replied, frustrated only with herself for not being nearly as hardy. “We’ll catch up with you soon!”
He nodded, but she could sense his hesitation. There was no way of knowing what they would find, who would be alive or dead. It would be unfair to ask him to wait, and it would be unfair to ask him not to act until she and Alphinaud arrived. Sending Wyrm alone could very well have meant sending him into a death trap.
Not that he would have been worried for his own sake. She tried to do the arithmetic of how many Imperials it would take to subdue him and quickly gave up, and pinned her hopes on there being less than a hundred who had marched on the Reach.
She heard him break into a sprint before he was gone entirely from sight and sound. She reached out blindly for Alphinaud’s shoulder and squeezed it, already trying to strategize; the boy had seen battle, but not war – wars of man against man, at least. She wondered what would have helped her to hear before Cartenau and fell short.
A great leader would say something to bolster morale and courage. A mother would express her pride and love, and a wish for her child to come home safely. A comrade might crack a joke, a glib remark to ease the fear and tension. But from Briony to Alphinaud, from one healer to another, she could only pass on instructions.
“...We’ll need to secure the area first,” she told him. “Help those where the fighting is thickest. If need be, we can split up, and you will find the other Scions. Support them however needed.” She made her voice carry over the storm, though it still sounded as though it came from someone else entirely. “We repel the attack – or we flee. Either way, we take control of the field before we see to the wounded. Understand?”
Alphinaud nodded. She couldn’t make out his expression, but could feel he took her words seriously. “I’ll follow you,” was all he said.
Then they crested the hill and saw the battlefield below.
Rhalgr’s Reach was supposed to have been a sanctuary. Now, it was a cacophony of metal and thundering death. The stubborn lights of their torches still flickered under the wind and rain, pinpointing her gaze to all the myriad battles-within-the-battle. She’d told Alphinaud to focus on finding the Scions, but it would be foolish not to expect them to be in the thick of the fighting – she scanned for Lyse and Y’shtola’s bright colors and stumbled down the slope once she spotted them.
She and Alphinaud fought their way clumsily to their comrades, tossing half-baked spells and shielding themselves from stay shots and arrows. More than one projectile grazed skin or armor in their haste. It was not a pretty sight, but neither was the chaos around them.
“What took you so long?” Lyse quipped behind a breathless laugh. “No – don’t mind me, see to Y’shtola. She’s badly hurt.”
Alphinaud hurried to her side while Briony paused to cut Lyse free from her bonds. “We found some of the wounded on our way,” she told Lyse quietly, “That was a good call.”
Lyse nodded, in what Briony suspected to be more in gratitude than agreement. She could see now that the Reach was lost. Trying to shelter their non-combatants would only have gotten them killed.
Briony heard the crown prince’s heavy footfalls before she saw him. She looked up to see the silhouette of a devil framed against the smoke darkened skies, his armor gleaming in flashes of lighting. The false face that decorated the front of his helm regarded them with a cold apathy that chilled her to the bone.
“Your friends were a disappointment,” he declared, blade in hand now with one smooth motion. “But you… you will entertain me, will you not?”
Briony seized her planisphere and got to her feet. She scanned the horizon for any hint of Wyrm’s armor, but the smoke was still too thick.
So she smiled and outstretched a hand crackling with arcane energy. “Oh, I’ll do more than that.”
The crown prince sprang towards her at frightening speed, but she had been expecting that, and neatly side-stepped the first blow. Her malefic spells scorched his armor following each swing of his blade until he moved too quickly for her eyes to follow, and it was all Briony could do to bring up a shield to stop a downwards strike that she was fairly certain had enough force to cleave her arm from her body.
With one palm braced upwards under her celestial shield, the heat against her skin began to burn and blister; she let her planisphere fall and braced both hands against his strike. It would not last. She would not last – but she knew she hadn’t needed to hold out for long.
There was a flash of light as blinding as any bolt of thunder; then an awful screeching, tearing sound of pulverized metal. The pressure against her shield and hands eased, and Briony stumbled back to see a cauterized hole in the crown prince’s armor and his blade locked against Wyrm’s lance.
They traded a series of blows with alarming speed and precision, blade against blade, matching ferocity with cold discipline. Briony retrieved her weapon and shielded her comrade from the crown prince’s sword, healed the wounds left by his corrosive magic, until their enemy took notice and sprang towards her again, streams of biting wind dancing along his blade.
Though his sword missed, his magic caught her – but not before she planted an Earthly Star into the gap in his armor.
Knocked to a knee, her ears ringing from the buffeting wind, she could only watch as Zenos drove his blade, burning red as sunset and bright with malevolence, through Wyrm’s chest.
She didn’t think about what to do next. She didn’t need to. Her fist clenched of its own accord and made the Earthly Star shatter, driving celestial barbs into the wound that would have already killed an ordinary man.
Wyrm slumped to the ground; Zenos staggered. Blood was already beginning to pool beneath their bodies.
Briony reached out a hand towards Wyrm with one last spell to stabilize her old friend. She saw Zenos ready his blade and knew she did not have enough aether for another shield. She merely held up her arm and felt two things: the healing spell leaving her fingertips, and the Imperial blade cutting her to the bone.
She fell. The crown prince walked away.
Before her vision faded, she watched numbly as the fires spread to her cards that lay scattered across the sands, and enveloped them until all that was left were piles of ash.