Peeling the Onion

And upon that day the invader stepped from his ship onto the fields of Fregolo and strode to the gates of King Anguish’s castle. There, he bellowed with a mighty voice to speak with the king himself.

“Oh king,” he said, “know that though my numbers are small I yet have strength enough to knock down your walls, and should you defy me then many men will die this day. Allow me to enter into your castle and speak to you.”

And King Anguish said “I will not allow you to enter my castle, for I have been told that you are a man with no honor, who respects not the laws of hospitality.”

And the invader did laugh, and said, “No, I do not respect the laws of hospitality, but I did offer peace and was denied. Let none say that I did not seek the gentle path. I ask you then, if you have foes that I might strike down on your behalf to earn your trust and a seat at your table.”

And King Anguish said, “I will not set you against even the gravest of my foes, for to do so would tarnish my own honor with your honorlessness.”

Again the invader laughed, and said, “Very well, I do not care for honor and care less for those who cherish it. So instead I make a demand for the one thing that I desire of your castle, that you give to me the Lady Iseult into my care for a time. I will do no harm to her person, and will allow her to return one week hence if she so desires.”

And King Anguish said, “I will not allow you to take away my Queen, for I have been told that you are a man with no honor, who respects not the laws of chivalrous conduct with such a lady.”

And again the invader did laugh, and said, “No, I do not respect the laws of chivalrous conduct, for I find them tedious and uninspired. Thrice I have offered you the hand of friendship, oh King, and thrice have you thrown my friendship into my teeth. You will know my wroth.”

And then the invader did run forward and stuck down the gates of King Anguish’s castle with his own hand.

••••••••••

“Alright, fuck this,” the grotesquely fat man said, rolling his eyes. “I tried the easy way, jackass.”

Rose, in her spirit form, watched the whole exchange invisibly, and was mildly shocked by the speed with which Kusai shifted from making his demands to force. He dashed past the three red haired women and crashed bodily into the front gates of the castle, creating a great concave dent in the iron portcullis.

There was no art to it, no grace. To call it a shoulder tackle would be an insult to every football player who had perfected that technique. He simply barreled into the door and bounced off before regaining his footing and repeating the procedure. On the one hand he looked like an idiot. On the other hand, by all rights he should have reduced his bone structure to powder by this point so he was clearly quite durable.

It’s effectiveness could not be questioned, as the gates were already in the process of being opened by his blunt force. Rose only watched for a few seconds before winking away to where Echidna awaited orders with Rose’s spellbook in a leather satchel.

••••••••••

Less than half a mile away, Gil looked through his binoculars at the development and immediately shouted down to Hellawes that it was time to start the music.

A low, echoing whistle rang through the woods, and all around the two of them the shadows grew long and dark. Then around thirty men in full kit slowly rose from the ground. Each was more than six feet tall, bearing blank black shields and tabards over maille and armed with near identical wicked steel blades. All very intimidating.

They rushed out into the field, taking a position midway between the ship and the castle. They took their time, adopting their formation some distance away and preparing for a rather direct charge upon the airship with the title “Red Wings” emblazoned on its side.

Nimue had been rather dismissive of Hellawes’s work, rather plainly stating that sight and sound were the very most basic of senses to fool. Taste and smell were frequently not worth the effort, but by the Lady of the Lake’s estimate an illusory army that could not fool one’s sense of touch was barely worth preparing.

Gil respectfully disagreed, for while the blades of Hellawes’s soldiers couldn’t harm anyone, or even convince men they had been harmed, they could bait them out quite nicely. Kusai’s assault squad formed up ranks in a small huddle while their Player broke down the gate, hiding from arrows and boiling pitch beneath a shimmering dome that Rosa conjured. The ones on the ship, however, took a more active role.

Jaheira, the brunette on the ship, walked calmly to the side facing the phantom soldiers and lifted her hand. Then suddenly the grassy field that the soldiers stood upon erupted. The grasses wrapped around the ankles of the soldiers, or tried to, as by Hellawes’s direction the phantoms dove away, each and every one of them somehow managing to evade every single attempt to restrain them, or at least breaking away quickly and easily.

She yelled something over her shoulder, and while Gil couldn’t make it out it was easy to assume she was demanding backup from the T4 and T3 still below decks. Possibly any sensibly armed T2s if they were available.

The whole defense was rather slipshod, honestly. Just one more lookout would have been incredibly useful, and standard in any remotely professional outfit. They would have probably been able to catch the giant snake woman and group of armed and armored horsemen that burst out of the nearby forest and made a beeline for the Red Wings, for example.

Echidna surged forward, ahead of the horsemen, swinging a massive purple blade through the air. The Astral Sword was a mediocre blade at best, outside of the supernaturally enhanced cutting edge itself. It was, however, an excellent club for someone strong enough to swing it. Her primary objective, the thing she was to go so far as to risk death over, was chopping down the masts of the ship and wrecking the engine. Anything less would just be a consolation prize at best.

Jaheira heard galloping hooves; despite the lack of warning, and that was enough for her to escalate. She turned, and after a quick chant, two massive bulbs burst from the ground, blooming into flowers that contained a pair of fully grown grizzly bears. The bears promptly charged at Echidna. In total mass they were quite small compared to her, but given how her body was built it still had much the same effect as being attacked by a pair of large dogs.

At minimum, she was in no position to simply slither past them and close the last dozen feet. Not without inviting the bears to tear into her flank. Instinct took over, and Echidna reared back to spray her acidic breath weapon into the bears’ faces. She pretty quickly remembered that she had a weapon and smashed the blinded bears after doing so; one had its back shattered by the flat of the blade, and the other was easily bisected almost by accident. The astral sword, backed by Echidna’s inhuman strength, cut through flesh and bone like so much seafoam.

Unfortunately, by the time the first bear died, another four blooms rose from the ground to release vicious wolves the size of warhorses that rushed out to meet Breuse’s men in battle.

“No, you idiots!” The black knight yelled. “She’s an enchantress! You lads keep the wolves off us. The rest of you, keep moving! Especially you, you overgrown lizard!”

He had already put together the enemy’s plan, despite never encountering this sort of magic before. Or perhaps he was just thinking that they should finish before the enchantress called in more furry reinforcements, like the five lionesses newly latched onto Echidna.

A strangled cry from one of his men dragged down off their horse killed Breuse’s hope that the beasts were only illusions. It didn’t change the tactical shape of the battle at all, however. If anything, the presence of real teeth just made him want to finish up even more.

••••••••••

Cindy looked up from her work, and sighed. She could hear Jaheira makin a racket upstairs, and unfortunately she was the only one in any state to answer without help. She didn’t like getting her hands dirty, but there was no way Kusai would accept basic preventative maintenance as an excuse for staying out of things if anything went wrong.

She needed to help finish the mission if she could. It was a rule. She couldn’t break the rules.

Cindy left the blazing hot engine room and pulled on her jacket. This place they were at was cold, damp, and generally unpleasant by her reckonin. She averted her eyes as she rushed past the room full of bound “new girls,” most of whom were still in the crying stage. It wasn’t much consolation, but at least this time not a ton of them were actually fighting it. It was always worst for the fiery ones.

Stoic acceptance seemed like the best way, from what Cindy had seen, and she tried to tell the girls that. O’course, that just sounded like what you’d expect some crazy cult in the hills to say, so it wasn’t a mystery that most of the girls ignored her. She was glad she’d never gone through any of that recruitment mess; she’d been traded for a while back.

The locals who had actually been inducted weren’t any use, either, not for this. They were all huddled together, terrified. None of them had any combat experience to speak of. One of ‘em was a doctor or something; she might get a real job. The rest would be thrown into administration as assistants, doled out to Kusai’s men, or traded away for someone like Cindy that Shuuzou couldn’t get by his normal methods.

Cindy opened the door into the master’s cabin, and as expected Opal wasn’t even standin’ yet. She had that dazed, blissed out look most of the girls had after Kusai gave them a good seeing to, and she probably couldn’t even walk a straight line if she did stand up. Right before a battle, too.

Cindy didn’t see the appeal. She’d sleep with the guy if ordered to, but she was pretty sure she’d never actually enjoyed it. He was far too strong, didn’t really moderate himself in the slightest, and Cindy was fairly sure he was at best hypothetically aware that women had preferences of their own beyond getting railed.

At least she didn’t have to do it very often, since she wasn’t half as good at faking enjoyment as the other denizen of the room. Marion had been a world famous dancer and high class escort, spoils of a former raid, and she was gorgeous. A red skinned redhead with large curling black horns and a body that combined motherly curves and the kind of ageless body you get from species that can live a few centuries. Apparently Kusai had actually been there for Marion’s daughter and her friends, but they’d all been too expensive to “win” with his normal “strategy.”

“Hey, Marion, can you help me get her onto the deck?” Cindy said, “If Jaheira fixes her up, she’ll be a lot more help than either of us.”

“Of course,” Marion said, steeling herself.

The poor woman hated going outside. Severe agoraphobia, apparently, even before Kusai came into her life. Nevertheless, she took one of Opal’s arms over her shoulders and the three women rushed up to the deck. Cindy remembered to grab Opal’s staff along the way. She’d need that.

••••••••••

“The people in the ship seem to be responding, but I don’t really know what their plan is.” The blackout drunk man tied to the tree next to Gil said, Rose’s words slurring out of the borrowed mouth. “A modern looking mechanic and some kind of demonic courtesan are taking someone up to the deck.”

“Shit… try to yell in Echidna’s ear?” Gil said. “She’s there to fuck up the ship, grab someone to interrogate if the opportunity arises, and leave. Sitting around to kill blinded wildlife really isn’t part of that arrangement.”

He’d seen the sword cut through the bear like hot cheese. He was pretty sure that Echidna could do some serious damage to the ship if she closed in on the ship. She just needed to actually get close enough.

At least the phantom army was still, at least sort of, doing its job. The sorceress, maybe some kind of Druid, on the ship had thrown a bunch of vines and a pack of wild dogs at the problem and kept checking over her shoulder. Any time she spent on the phantoms was time she wasn’t dealing with real threats.

The phantoms vanished. Gil looked down at where Hellawes and her bodyguard detail had been huddled in the underbrush. A woman, labeled Hinata Hyuuga (T5) had somehow appeared in the midst of them, moving slightly faster than Gil’s eyes could easily track, and already disassembling the two men who had been on watch. Her hands glowed faintly, jabbing into vulnerable points on the two men. Hellawes herself was facedown on the ground.

She must have been invisible, or at least exceptionally sneaky, to get in this close. Any sign of her would have put up the beacon and let anyone on Gil’s side see her floating name written in orange flames.

Of fucking course Kusai had a T5 assassin on staff, presumably one who tracked the source of the phantoms somehow. Gil had expected the missing T5 to show up somewhere, but he’d assumed she’d be more likely to be assisting the actual battle, or the defense of the ship more directly.

Gil cursed under his breath and fired off a bolt of lightning. The blue haired woman dodged it without even looking up, which told Gil something important. She could avoid a projectile that moved at the speed of light. That meant she wasn’t dodging the lightning, she was dodging his aim, despite not even glancing at him. She knew exactly where he was and what he was doing, or else had some kind of danger sense.

The two bandits lasted seconds against the woman, who then surprised Gil by not turning her impassive face to look up at him. Even as she jerked out of the way of another bolt of lightning, she oriented herself towards the heavy underbrush where Rose’s unconscious body was hidden quite well under a pile of mud and leaves. She looked between Rose and Gil for a few moments, deciding which enemy to leave at her back. It seemed that she decided Gil was the one she could afford to ignore for the moment, rather than the one with entirely unknown abilities.

Gil was too high up in the tree. By all rights the ability to fire bolts of lightning from a sniper position should have been more than sufficient for most enemies, even into T5, but clearly against this woman it was not. Rose was still in the area. She’d probably need to fight the woman herself with a bit of fire support.

Hellawes moved quickly, rolling onto her back and sitting up. She pulled a balm out of her bag, applied it to her lips in less than a second, and called out to the woman.

“Hinata!” She yelled, “Stop!”

The blue haired woman looked over her shoulder mildly surprised to hear her name, and then a blush spread across her cheeks. Her lips parted slightly. Even Gil got an uncomfortable erection looking down at the necromancer, and he was pretty sure he knew why. Rose was pushing her lust inducing power to its limits. Neither of them knew exactly what the limits actually were, but Gil sincerely doubted that an avowed enemy would be eating out of Rose’s hand for long. He lined up a lightning bolt, hoping to hit the woman while she was distracted, but then she lunged across the clearing before he was sure of his aim.

Hinata rushed over to Hellawes and kissed her, grabbing at her breasts, thighs, and more. She was overcome with unfathomable lust for just long enough to stop thinking. Then she drew back, and Gil could see that her lips were rapidly changing colors. Blacks, tans, and reds, the color of rapid necrosis.

Hinata’s strange, pupilless lavender eyes widened. She no doubt felt the rot starting in her face and realized that it was spreading. She ran, pivoting and dashing away with the speed of an arrow, towards what Gil could only imagine was Kusai’s best healer.

Gil didn’t want to be here when she got back, so he started firing off healing spells. Hopefully at least one of these jackasses would be in good enough shape to help him get the rest of the girls to the Evac point. At minimum, they had a much better look at what Kusai’s team could do.

“Rose, watch the main assault team.” Gil said to the air. “We need that intel, and it’s very possible that Nimue is more exposed than we thought.”

After all, Nimue wasn’t technically in Gil’s retinue yet, but Hinata had already shown that she didn’t necessarily need a floating blue label to find Gil’s team.