Chapter Text
A Leyndell knight is the first to die.
There is no warning sound, no fanfare. Just a faint purple flash on the horizon—and the knight, and his horse, are simply no longer describable as such. Bits of them blast apart in a discordant splatter of rent flesh and golden shrapnel that shreds and stains all around. The “arrow” that erased him strikes the earth with such force that it knocks all his armored fellows off their feet, throwing a huge plume of sand into the darkening sky. The sound follows after, a bellowing roar as if the air itself has felt the pain of the violence. The wind whips through Melina’s hair and cloak, carrying the hot smell of viscera and rotten earth.
The sky above is purple-black with stars. All around the riders hunch in silent tension, eyes strained forward. In the distance, under the dark, a point of violet light glints again.
Melina pulls Torrent’s reigns sharply as another bolt cores through the formation. Another Tarnished, to her left, vanishes along with his horse, both rendered into chunks by the impact. The wind nearly hurls Melina from Torrent’s back, but she hunkers down and kicks him onward, and the whole host surges with her. With a jumble of a dozen distinct battle cries, the ad-hoc cavalry charges forth across the plain. Behind them, the rest of the host—those without mounts—quickly fall behind.
And on the hill ahead sits great Radahn, a pebble on the sill of the horizon, growing larger with each gallop the horses take. If he is concerned by their approach, there is no sign of it within his bearing as, with a great unbroken gesture, he sweeps a cast-off spear from the ground and nocks it in his bow. Melina readies herself to weave again—but instead of aiming at the oncoming warriors, Radahn turns his aim towards the sky.
Then, something odd. With only the faintest hint of a flicker, a mirror appears above Radahn. It is a hazy disc floating in the air. The arrow, the bow, and him all lie within it, reflected. Before Melina can even begin to understand what she is seeing, Radahn lets loose his mighty arrow, and the him across that pane of aether answers in kind. The two points soar towards one another in a finger-snap, and meet at the boundary line.
But when the arrows touch, it is not iron that strikes and splinters. Instead, the very mirror cracks—and then the cracks spread beyond that vision, and with a horrible crunch that vibrates the air all around, the sky itself shatters into a thousand glassy shards. A thousand times reflected is the General, and so his arrow.
The world is terribly silent. Terribly still.
The arrow, undeterred, slips across the glassy surface of the shattered mirror like into the depths of a pond--and those thousand mirrored phantoms slip across in equal kind.
And charged with the fission-light of shorn reality, a thousand arrows fall upon the host.
Close beside her, a tarnished is struck, an arrow intersecting vertically with his body. His head stove and obliterated, the rest of him, and horse below, first hollow and then burst their seams like a rotten barrel of fruit, splattering Melina’s left flank.
Melina yelps in her shock, trying to veer away from the sudden sensation of being hit with hot, sticky mulch—but there’s no room to maneuver. The cavalry are packed together, the horses flank-to-flank, and all around, many more among them share her neighbor’s fate. Fountains of blood and metal and sand erupt everywhere, the blasts intercut with the shrieks and shouts of the more fortunate, and Melina is acutely aware in her wide-eyed terror that she is at the mercy of chance and nothing else.
It shakes her down to the raw core of her being. For all that Godrick may have been powerful, Melina had known the power of muscle and iron. That kind of force she'd faced before, and learned how to subvert with speed and subtlety.
But this is not some common archer's trick, nor do the forces at play resemble anything of sorcery or incantation as she knows them. Even in her little knowledge of gravity magick, she knows that this is something so far beyond it as to mock the comparison.
Were she on foot, perhaps animal instinct might have turned her back to the monster. But Torrent is beneath her, and his resolve is sterner stuff than hers. She still has the momentary instinct to leap from his back and take cover—but then she feels an impact on her shoulder, slamming firmly against the silver Carian shield strapped across her spine.
Blaidd’s hand, extended across the distance between their horses. He does not look at her, nor attempt to speak through the whipping wind, but his bared teeth, and clenched fist around his reins tell of his own tension. His reinforcement steadies her, and Melina rights the ship of her courage and curls low atop Torrent’s back, thanking him and urging him onward. Out from her sheath, she slips her Calling Blade, and feels its power crackle through her knucklebones.
She glances up, at the distorted space Radahn's magick had made. Through the fading mirrors, another Melina stares back, a picture of terror. She is identical in every respect—save that her left eye is open, and her right closed. Her blade is not yet out of its sheath.
The one below looks forward, grips her blade, and urges Torrent on.
The general does not use that trick with the sky again—instead, he nocks and looses spear after spear after spear, each imbued with the warping power of gravitation, sent surging through the ranks of the cavalry. Riders are blown from their horses by mere proximity, tumbling to the sand in piles of limbs and armor. Those struck clean on do not experience anything at all.
There is only one exception to this. As the host nears the apex of the hill, the General’s full size becoming apparent for the first time, one of the Redmane Knights breaks from their formation. Alone, she charges forward, unslinging a great curved sword and hollering a challenge at the top of her lungs. The General’s arrow snaps out in a hiss of cosmic lightning—and the knightess whips her blade up and catches it on the edge, a spark of her own purple thunder snapping against it and sending the huge spear spinning off into the sky. The impact nearly staggers her horse, and strikes her so bodily that her helmet is ripped clean off—revealing a mane of black hair that cascades from a proud, dark brow.
The woman rights herself, and raises her sword—not to rally her men, but towards the General himself. “Face me, my lord!” she roars.
Beside Melina, Blaidd turns his head up and howls at the sky, then kicks forward into a last desperate dash. Melina, and all the rest, surge after.
The distance melts. The General casts aside his bow—the gnarled wood, more trunk than branch, kicks up a mountain of sand as it falls—and draws two colossal curving blades, inlaid with gold and violet glintstone.
And then, at last, they’re on him.