[center][h2]Anne Mayer[/h2][h3]Hillside Hamlet[/h3][/center]
Once she'd reached a suitably high vantage, Anne paused to take stock of the situation. She'd been ready for the worst, but thus far the battle seemed to be playing out entirely in their favor. Sanae and Mokou rained down destruction from above, while Fran tore into the horde from the flank and thinned out the numbers reaching the defensive line formed by the two strangers. The mercenaries appeared to be holding their own, the caravan was moving to safety, and Lewa, Joker, and Youmu had each made steady progress around the fringes, all closing in from different angles on the bulk of the enemy force.

The enemy, however, would not relent. They did not scatter or retreat, but pressed on with a seemingly mindless zeal, like a living tide pulled by some unseen natural force. At Rayne's warning, Anne's emerald eyes fixed upon the larger units, and the mass of dark projectiles that arced up from their direction.

"Not leaders. Artillery! Take them out first!"

The Knight Witch was already on it. Fast, versatile—and, as everyone was about to find out, [i]enormously[/i] destructive when she cut loose. She was ideal for handling issues as they cropped up, a trump card to counter whatever their foes might bring to bear.

That left one visible problem: the strays, still moving towards the hamlet unchecked by any defending forces. Winning this battle was one thing, but if a few creatures slipped through in the meantime... Just what kind of damage would they do?

It would be easiest if they never had to find out. With a deep breath, Anne kicked off from her position and raced down the hill, using her momentum to circle around the edges of the wider battle towards the settlement and its borders. It wasn't the same kind of explosive speed she'd shown back at the sparring session with the mercenaries: this was more like the sprinting pace of a regular soldier, only sustained without fail over a distance that would have left most gasping for breath. It would take a few seconds for her to get where she needed to be, but there would be no escape for her targets once she did.

As an amorphous monster crossed her path, the Knight finally drew her sword. Without slowing down, she sliced clean through it in a single one-handed strike and moved on before it had even finished dissipating. Two more loomed ahead, and two more swift flashes of her blade turned them into four. Using half of one disintegrating body as a foothold, she leaped to the side just as a ball of dark energy soared past and crashed down where she'd been a heartbeat before.

Without batting an eye, Anne pressed onward.

Her condition had improved somewhat after all the rest she'd had in Aventon, but she was still holding back, regulating her output to the bare minimum required for the task. Fortunately, the enemy here was slow. Even if their sheer numbers meant that some of them slipped through the killing field and approached the village proper, Anne would run each of them down and wipe them out before they could do any harm. Some fought back, flinging misshapen tendrils her way. Her sword was faster, carving through blackened slime with the same ease that it cut through the air. Creature after creature boiled away and vanished from existence, while the Knight beelined for the next one, and the next one, and the next.

[i]It's not exactly glamorous, being on clean-up duty... But I can handle this much without issue.[/i] As the last line of defense, she'd make sure that nothing at all got past.