Marshal ca to a stop. It was so strange that the whole group took two more steps before realizing what was going on and stopping.
Glacielle and Octavia, who were reading sothing at the ti, moved ahead quietly to give them so space.
Marshal looked him right in the eye, and the professional mask ca off in a way that didn’t happen very often.
"My last Master," she said, "the commander I served in the Sunforge Legion..."
Lucian looked at her with a serious glance and thought. ’There it is...’
’Is it going to be so kind of a new lore coming from her? So far... she’s almost a perfect warrior with a fantastic story.’
’But it seems like I was wrong... every bikini warrior probably has their own miserable stories I need to look into.’
"The one I told Octavia about." She seed to be picking her words carefully, not because she was unsure of their aning but because she had been carrying them around for a long ti and wasn’t used to putting them down. "He saw as an asset..."
"Maybe the most valuable one in the legion, but still an asset." She looked at the road. "I loved him anyway... and for years."
"But when he died at Solen Pass, I realized he had never really seen as the woman I am... I’m just probably the strongest warrior he sees, and not as Kyrathiel."
Lucian didn’t say anything because, for him, it started to get complicated, and he didn’t want to choose a word that could be sensitive at so point. He had learned that this was what people usually needed from him in tis like these.
"I swore after that mont that I would never allow myself to care for soone who couldn’t see beyond my abilities." She spoke as if she had made a decision while in pain, which seed reasonable at the ti but perhaps not so much now. "I maintained that resolve for hundreds of years..."
’Here goes nothing...’ Lucian gulped. ’I had to use my gacha gar’s knowledge to choose the right word to open her heart even more.’
Lucian said, "I see you, Marshal."
He kept it simple because the simple version was true, and he didn’t want to make it sound like he was trying to convince her. "Well... not just as the commander of the Sunforge Legion, and also not just the SSS bikini warrior I summoned."
"After days of training and fighting with you... I could see Kyrathiel in the Marshal I respected."
It was a very special kind of quiet after that.
Marshal’s face changed quickly through several things, none of which she was able to hide very well. Then she stood very still and looked at him with sothing in her eyes that was older than any emotion he’d ever seen from her and much more fragile.
He thought that no one had called her that na in a long ti.
’Shit... that was a risky move I did there... I should not have called her real na that fast.’
’But... it is what it is! I have to face this situation like a real man who has been given a second chance at life!’
"You..." she began, but then she didn’t know what to say next.
For Kyrathiel, that was its own kind of statent.
Glacielle looked back over her shoulder and smiled at Lucian in a way that was warm, knowing, and free of the territorial edge that would have been there three days ago. Octavia made a small, joyful sound next to her that she probably thought no one could hear.
Octavia giggled. "My, my... our master is rather a brave man to just call her real na like that."
"Master sotis acts like that without thinking about it."
Without any fanfare, the system notification showed up at the edge of Lucian’s vision.
[Bond Level Increased: Marshal 4.5 to 5.0 Hearts.]
He ignored it and kept walking. Marshal walked next to him, and they didn’t say anything for a while, but the silence was different from before.
...
The chiras found them on the open plains eight miles away. This was the worst possible place for the fight to happen and the most likely place for Corvus to put a heavy assault unit.
Four of them flew in a loose circle about two hundred feet above the ground, their scaled undersides catching the light as they banked. Lucian saw the Corvus coordination pattern right away, which refers to the strategic arrangent and movent of their forces.
They weren’t just patrolling; they were also actively looking for the party, which ant they had been watching for them.
"Aerial plus ground on the dive," Marshal said, looking at the sa signs. "Probably magic resistance... At least fire and poison breath."
"Probably lightning too," Glacielle said as she watched the patterns of the wings. "That one on the right is leaving behind static."
There was no cover on the open plains, which could be a problem or an opportunity depending on how you used it. Lucian looked up at the sky, then down at the grass, and finally at his friends.
"Octavia, barrier do on my call."
"Yes, my dear master~!"
"Glacielle, we need them grounded before we can hurt them."
"Got it!"
"Marshal, you take aerial strikes when they dive and we’ve got wing coverage." He paused. "I’ll call the ti."
"Great planning, rookie."
The first phase was defensive and annoying, just like all defensive phases are. The chiras flew in circles and dove in order, breathing fire and poison and one very long arc of crackling lightning that hit Octavia’s do hard.
The barrier held, but the impact was clear. Lucian could feel a physical shudder moving through the water structure even though he was only partially synchronized with her.
"I can hold it," Octavia said.
She was doing what she always did when sothing was harder than she wanted to admit: she kept her voice steady, but the strain was clear in the way her shoulders were set.
"You don’t have to keep it forever," Lucian said. "Glacielle, the two on the left are staying lower on their passes."
"Next ti they dive, freeze their wings."
"Yes, Master," Glacielle said.
The two chiras made a wide turn and dived down again. Glacielle cast a wave of ice magic that hit both of them in mid-air, spreading its wings in a crystal sheet that locked their joints and sent them both into uncontrolled spirals.
They hit the ground hard, and one of them slid twenty feet and left a scar in the ground.
Octavia had a tentacle around the closest one before it finished sliding. She hit it hard against the ground once, and it stopped moving.
Marshal was already at the second, and Solar Execution was quick and thorough.
Two are down. The other chiras quickly adjusted by climbing higher and angling their dives more steeply to avoid the ice range.
Lucian watched them for two passes and understood what was going on. Now they were staying out of effective engagent range.
Every attack was coming almost straight down, too swiftly to stop in ti, and the barrier was taking damage that it couldn’t take forever.
He closely monitored the angles. He thought about the path, and then he thought about thirty feet of water pressure and fifty feet of vertical distance.
"Octavia," he said, "can you make a big water geyser that shoots straight up?"
For a mont, Octavia stared at him. "That would start sothing very powerful," she said, not disagreeing.
"Yeah," Lucian said. "I bet it would."
A short pause.
"Wait a minute..." Octavia then realized what he was trying to plan.
"Master," she said slowly, "are you saying I should launch YOU up there?!"
"Iyup! On the next dive," he said. "Timing has to be perfect."
She turned away from the sky and looked at him with the expression of soone who had been a military leader for a long ti and recognized an unusual call when she heard one. She didn’t say it was dumb.
She looked at the angle at which the chiras were coming and did so math, calculating the trajectory and timing needed for a successful maneuver.
"If you’re off by half a second, you miss completely and fall from fifty feet," she said.
"Then the timing will be right."
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