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BACK TO NEXUS With the screams of her comrades hanging in the air, the wet of blood across every single sense and the leather of her horse’s reins a nothing in her hand, Corporal Mijaal caught a glimpse of another knight still bound to their mount amidst it all. Between the spears of Keprad-men and tucked alongside the flail of limbs attached to bodies cut too deep to function, a rider wrapped in white sat upon a horse dressed the same. A whirl of fabric down to the beast’s feathered ankles, dirtied by only blood where it caught upon the ground. In the rider’s hands, a scythe. The pair, in the five seconds that Mijaal could see them, danced. A delicate, trotting thing, a series of spiraling steps which left them untouched yet intertwined with the slaughter spilling out at Mijaal’s feet. Her halberd a dead weight in her hand, her mind a red wash of terror. They could not match the brutality of Keprad. Each step of the pale horse was deliberate, and each wide swing of the scythe came at the exact moment of a comrade’s death. An arc snapped to a stop by their other hand before the shining silver could bite- a soldier left to bleed upon the ground until they were trampled underfoot. A Keprad-man entirely ignored, even with blade buried in their gut- what else could Mijaal think of that sight? That single moment where the light caught upon the sheets of Death and fractaled out into a rainbow all about it, a shadow of light cast upon the single worst tactical maneuver of Haal- what could she think of that man not killed? Haal would not survive this invasion. That soldier would be dragged from the conflict and treated- there would be no reinforcements to burn through the tents of their field hospital, no sudden surge forth by the comrades still living. No survival. The entire overhead of commanding officers ranked higher than Mijaal dead in the dirt, and the engagement could not yet be classified as a rout. No Haal-men had fled. To the last man. All with arms linked together, they would either live to drive Keprad off, or they would die and not bear the shame of witnessing their failure. None had fled, but Death’s scythe glimmered with the blood of Mijaal’s home. Death danced among her comrades and spared none- a life not taken in the moment was just a life to be drawn from the body, slow and deliberate as a bleed-out. The shroud of the horse fluttered out as it tossed its head with each new step, perfectly executed and with hooves planted solidly, and Mijaal saw the shine of a single red eye beyond it. Glossy and half-closed, a demure grace to it which only came with repetition ad infinitum. Death leaned into its mount’s lead, scythe dragged up from the mud to prepare for another swing, and Mijaal saw the same eye from beyond its own veil. She had been positioned at the back of the formation. Among her fellow commanding officers, sat astride the right of Captain Fapreisau and prepared to issue commands with the rest of them. Let her voice ring out, brilliant and bright in the morning air, and bring about the death of Keprad. Show them Haal-courtesy. As young as she was, ill-experienced and promoted solely by virtue of Fapreisau’s interest and his own influence keeping questions quiet, she had a sterling conviction in her ability. It had been a spear through Fapreisau’s throat, then an arrow in Lieutenant Oglea’s eye. Mijaal had screamed when Fapreisau’s body crashed into her own, thrown from his horse by the force of the spear, and she had shoved him to the ground without thought to land upon Oglea. When she took up the reins of Lacewing to wheel her away from immediate danger, the squeal of horseshoes upon polished breastplate. Her horse slipped upon the corpses of her commanding officers. Mijaal crashed to the ground- embraced by the mud of a rain two days before- and pushed herself up, upon elbows and the wings of adrenaline, into an alien world. So quickly it had all gone to hell- how had it happened so quickly? Already blood in the mud, at the back of her mouth, and caught up in the joints of her gauntlets. She had forced herself up, then dragged Lacewing to her own four hooves to carry forth the grim task. When Mijaal opened her mouth to issue orders, nothing but pain entered her throat. When she reached for that critical, cold analysis which Fapreisau had spoken of so much, all she could look upon the conflict with was disbelief and fear. At the crash of metal-upon-metal, then the squelch of metal-within-meat of her first swings at a Keprad-man, an intense nausea. The soldiers of Haal had not been called to war for Mijaal’s entire life. What she had to fall back upon were training exercises, mock-engagements, and the poor mentoring of Captain Fapreisau. (Mijaal was raised by her grandmother, and her grandmother was a seamstress. Not even a groundwork of hunting and the gore of field-dressing to retreat to. Each strike was a new experience, an entirely alien sight- each part of a body split in a different way, the speed of the swing and the angle of the blade cutting open meat to a new sight. A new sound to tear from the gut. Beneath her, Lacewing brayed and screamed at the same exact pitch as the horses collapsed to the ground, a tenor of terror which harmonized with the sounds echoing within Mijaal’s own helmet.) Mijaal had drawn back to cast a better eye over the combat, and then she saw Death dancing. Five seconds stood still, watching the fabrics follow every motion with the drawn-out drag of something underwater and squinting against the refractal halo it cast as the sun bore down. Those four red eyes, each tear line reflecting seven brilliant shades, as they swept over the slaughter with a practiced observation. At the end of the fifth second, the cold and animal terror which bit when they locked upon her. Mijaal did not think- she was an animal possessed, a thing of pulling tendons and tensing muscles and nothing else- and she did not look back. Muscle memory alone had her slipping her halberd back into its saddle-sheath. A jerk of the reins had Lacewing rearing up and wheeling about in a hasty about-face, and a dig of the heels had her tensing up underneath Mijaal for only a moment before snapping forth. A spring released, a machine with a single purpose. Fifteen great strides, a pull-up of the reins, and Lacewing leapt into the air. Mijaal was thrown forward by the sloppy takeoff, and she dropped the reins so she could wrap both arms around her horse’s neck. Bury her helmet, sharp edges, ridged mandibles, and cold metal all, in the mane cut short. She cast aside every single lesson taught on the proper riding form- how to sit in order to not strain the wings, how to distribute weight to prevent over-adjustment which would further strain an animal not really meant to fly with more weight than its own- and she shut her eyes to all of reality but the muscles flexing beneath her and the pressure of meat still alive underneath her hands. Beneath the both of them, spiraling away with rapid speed and hazing into the unreality which sheer distance could bring, the dying struggle of the men of Haal. The rhythm Death tapped out in its whirling dance, each hoof set upon the earth ringing as clear as metal upon glass despite the mud truly under-hoof. Now, it would be written as a rout. |