The tension was palpable, the very air felt as though it were a string pulled taut with no intention of stopping. When it looked as though there would be no reply to his challenge, far-off wings answered. Any Galatea worth his salt would know they weren't from a pegasus, but the suspense didn't linger long regardless - the proverbial string snapped as soon as the wyvern burst through the fog, throwing the once-quiet scene into chaos. Auberon exploded into the beginnings of evasive action, but it proved unnecessary as the beast was promptly sent off-course by a flurry of attacks from his comrades.
Admittedly, that wasn't a development Auberon had expected or even considered. If they had the resources to field a wyvern, they certainly needed a larger support network than a single town. Should they bring such resources to bear against a mere class of young nobility, they could be overrun as soon as the heretics formed up properly.
His feet planted themselves again in preparation for another attack when his gaze was drawn by a voice that finally deigned to respond to his challenge - incorrectly, might he add. The entire farce collapsed with only a sentence. The cause of these heretics had sounded flimsy from the start, but to respond with such shameless greed suggested there was never any doctrinal dispute to begin with. He might've believed that the man was merely a mercenary hired by the apostates had the second bandit not been the spitting image of a dead man. The Church had been lured here deliberately for the same motive they'd been lured to Luin.
At first, Auberon briefly thought he was hallucinating. Unless the faithless all looked alike, that man had to be related to the bandit leader they'd felled, which suggested these were of the selfsame group. It took only a moment of deliberation for Auberon to realize he didn't care. All this connection meant to him now was that he had no reason to give quarter. Jorah's call went ignored - he evidently thought the blond was in trouble, but Auberon was of a decidedly different mind. Eyepatch had answered his challenge, which meant he would be afforded priority in the order of combat, as was custom, but a chance to make up for his mistakes in Luin was too good to pass up. He'd kill them both; surely there would be plenty more for the rest of the advance unit once the fighting drew reinforcements.
"You'll be able to ask the Goddess for a set in person in a moment," Auberon snarled, casting aside the honor of his proposed duel for raw aggression in the face of his opposition. Better to finish this quickly, lest he be tag-teamed by the honorless curs. He charged without hesitation, careful to keep both men in his field of view, and feinted a wide cut past the eyepatched bandit's chest. He pretended to overswing for only an instant before righting his axe and thrusting the spike at the top toward the man's blind side. From there, he rocked his weight backward and circled away, hoping to keep Eyepatch between himself and the Luin lookalike before they had a chance to react or take an advantageous formation.
He was going to throw up.
They all wrote him off like a worrisome craven, drowning out his very valid points with nonsense sermons and uninspired speechcraft that took a few too many lines from an Imperial Palace tutor. Funny how they didn't have any more ecclesiastical words of wisdom when the world around them erupted into flame. Rudolf flinched, partially from the brightness and partially from the shock, though when he opened his eyes again, he wished he hadn't. The ground was littered with a veritable sea of discarded arrows, charred from the magical onslaught and left to fall after Kaira's barrier no longer stood to support them. Yet even that sight was preferrable to looking skyward; the fog had briefly cleared, likely by virtue of the howling gale he'd heard conjured while his eyes were clenched shut, revealing the full might of their opposition.
It was - somehow - worse than Rudolf feared. He was promised a ramshackle band of upstart ideologues, not a well-rounded enemy force. If they tried to retreat from the mostly-stationary mages, they'd be outmaneuvered by the pegasi. They couldn't simply push through the enemy lines since they were at a disadvantageous elevation and the mages would cook them alive while they made for the rooftops, to say nothing of any ground-based reinforcements that hadn't revealed themselves yet. Beyond that, the tactical side of his brain refused to cooperate. It was drowned beneath an overwhelming flood of anxiety, a twisting in his stomach and instinctive panic in his mind that supplied no logical plan, no brilliant means of escape; not even animalistic fervor to lash out mindlessly at the threat. Only the petulant desires of a child - Rudolf simply wanted to be anywhere but here. He didn't care how. He didn't care if it was possible. He wanted out. The fog rolled back in preternaturally quick, all but confirming it wasn't natural weather, and Rudolf knew the choice he had to make. He'd run, leave the Crown Prince for dead and be stripped of all his future titles for bringing such monumental shame to House Bergliez in doing so. An elegant solution to all his problems, delivered to him on a silver platter; he got to live
and shirk all of his responsibilities for the mere cost of his pride and a handful of human lives. How ironic that the bitter calculus of war in which he'd been taught would become such a boon in avoiding any relation to conflict for the rest of his life here. All the more proof that the circumstances of his birth had damned him from the start; a general needed the unwavering resolution of Saint Cichol, not the blood of duplicitious Noa.
Yet as Rudolf looked around for his avenue of escape, he couldn't follow through. Callan or Kyle or whatever his name was looked just about how the crimson-eyed boy felt. The same primal terror that gripped Rudolf likely found similar purchase inside the Faerghian's head, yet his wish would be denied by the same divine providence that would grant Rudolf's; the privilege of not having been born invisible to the world. From the comfort of safety, detached from the realities of a life and death situation, Rudolf would've bitterly laughed at the idea of his miserable Crest finally paying dividends on his suffering while those that had endlessly ignored him were punished. But in the moment, there wasn't any satisfaction. His heart ached for his classmates, even Veronica. His father once said a general sought victory because it was his duty; a duty to himself to strive for glory, a duty to his liege to provide spoils and service, and a duty to his men to see as many of them home at the end of the campaign as he could. Rudolf was no general, had no appetite for glory and no liege he cared to gratify, but that last duty weighed on him all the same.
Rudolf finally started thinking again when the swords cut through the mist. Five mages and two archers could make short work of pegasi, and the footsoldiers relied on the fog to retreat into. The heretic mages were the backbone of their formation. Since torching the town and forcing the rooftop mages to come down likely wasn't an option, his only other recourse was go up there. With the people that wanted to kill him. Alone.
"I'll- I'll be back," Rudolf breathlessly muttered, more to himself than anyone around him. He
would be back.
Rather than dwell on what he planned to do, the boy slipped away into the fog. None of the charging swordsmen spared him a passing glance in the conflict, fleeting shadow that he was, though he hugged the wall of the nearest building for good measure as he advanced further past the enemy lines. Once in position, Rudolf hesitated a moment to ensure no pursuers would shamble out of the mist after him, then hefted himself atop a nearby barrel. From there, he warily stood, mindful of his balance, and grabbed onto the eave of the roof. Now came the hard part - actually getting himself up. Biting down on his lip for dear life to silence any grunts of exertion that might give him away, the dark-haired boy managed to pull himself up enough to see over the edge. His quarry stood overlooking the battle below as he had when Rudolf last saw him, utterly oblivious to the intruder in his midst. His hand extended of its own volition, magic numbing his fingertips for the briefest of moments before he limply withdrew his arm.
A more confident mage would've taken the shot. His enemy had been caught unaware and his escape was already in sight - simply drop off the roof and run. But whatever warrior might've been buried within him was drowned out by the cacophany of things that could go wrong. the heretic was a stronger mage, he could have a ward up for just such a contingency, the spell might fail, Rudolf might miss, the heretic could get lucky and duck at just the right moment. Rudolf's body felt less and less his own with each thought as he worked himself into a riskier and riskier situation by climbing fully up onto the roof. A hand wrapped around the hilt of his shortsword, more numb now than it had been when his fingers thrummed with dark magic just moments prior. It cleared the scabbard meticulously, noiselessly. The edges of his vision grew dim; everything faded into the fog except the unguarded back of the man in front of him. Rudolf braced his hand at the base of the pommel and thrusted with all his weight.
The comfortably uncomfortable dissociation spiraled back to lucidity in that moment. A yelp of agony. Something wet landed on him. The sword slipped from his shaking fingers as the body fell, still embedded in the mage's ribs. The half-digested remains of his breakfast forced itself up his throat and cleared his lips in one heave before Rudolf's legs gave out from under him and he collapsed to his knees. Terrified tears pooled at the corners of his eyes just as blood pooled underneath him, but the wetness of the tears just felt like more
blood and he needed to move his head to look at his surroundings and not at the
blood but it was all his trembling arms could do to keep him from dropping face first into the
blood and he just wanted to go home where there wasn't any
blood.
To an observer, it was a sorry sight; a boy, black robes newly stained scarlet, knelt in a pool of bodily fluids and hacking up another spurt of bile rather than rejoining the fight. He was easy prey, not that Rudolf even registered such, or anything outside his own head at the moment.
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