Everyone Loses

Marci's last fight against a force on gryphons had been bad. Brutal, chaotic, and ending with an immense betrayal from someone she had regarded as one of her closest friends.

It wasn't as bad as the second, far larger gryphon attack, however.

Things began with a charge, the gryphons racing towards her, Marci and her bodyguards retreating back and upward. Behind them, the fairy squadrons peeled off at dozens of acute angles, their mages conjuring tail winds as they moved to flank the far more sluggish and less well-trained gryphon riders and giving the cannons free reign to fire.

The Shardfort's weaponry opened up as soon as the enemies entered range, shells hurtling forward and exploding in mid-air, blasting men and women from their saddles or killing them outright. Smoke filled the clear blue sky as a barrage of spells added to the madness, fired down from fairy units flying high above the charging gryphons.

The southerners conjured shields from the worrying number of mages they had, which protected them a little. One group of gryphons broke off, rising to try and engage the fairies, firing muskets and crossbows. For the most part, they hit empty space as the fairies blitzed higher.

For the most part.

Marci spotted, and felt a few fairies fall from the sky. Some alive, and who would perhaps be saved by the slow-fall enchantments on their armour designed to kick in at a hundred feet, others dead outright. Marci notified the small squadron of fairy healers, flying the white dove on a red field to denote medics, of their locations, and then turned her attention back to the fight.

She had become more accustomed to being a Shardkeeper since the last battle, more used to splitting her attention, and carrying on simultaneous conversations—albeit with measurably less finesse proportional to her attention. She still intended on fighting directly, and came to a stop behind several ranks of demons on the battlements to conjure a shield—something she could sustain without much thought, just power.

At the same time she possessed a few of the quite creepy arachnoid-demon aides, back in the heart of the Dreadfort where Olaf, Rafferty, Saoirse and several fairy officers—not Jean, who was commanding from the front—were gathered around a three dimensional map of the valley. The kobolds had had great fun making the map, and it now dominated the large table in her library. With their many limbs and little wooden cues, Marci began relaying what she was perceiving. Pushing and pulling tiny enchanted tokens around with the demon's arms to reflect what she was seeing and feeling with her two thousand odd connections.

Her advisers began offering suggestions, and the majority of Marci's attention turned to issuing orders, observing her soldiers, updating the map, considering contradictory advice, and making judgements. Even when the front of the gryphon force, battered and bleeding and burning from the barrage and the fairy harassment reached the battlements where Marci was, it all felt strangely… remote. Unreal. Yes, her body was there, but her body was just one of many—unique in that it had no mind of its own and could channel more mana than any of the others, but not really… her with the same force that it had always been before.

That was deeply, existentially worrying, but Marci didn't have time to worry about her slipping feymanity. She had a battle to win, with as few casualties as possible, on both sides.

It became rapidly apparent to her that her fairies were by far and away the best soldiers in the battle. They were clad in well-made armour, wielded a mix of modern muskets and older enchanted fairy-lances, almost all had been soldiers in the last war against the Shardkeepers, and most had been drilling aerial combat for centuries. The Eladraine military might have been hampered by the command hierarchy being largely based on blood, but the rank-and-file fairies-at-arms were better trained and equipped than just about any equivalent force in the Middle Realms.

More than that, Landwalkers were not instinctively used to operating in three dimensions, and even the better trained of the gryphon riders struggled to keep track of the acute vectors of attack and conjured headwinds and tailwinds from the fairy wizards who hemmed and battered and harried at them, sending men and women and gryphons tumbling from the sky.

On the battlements, things were more even, and Marci had to dispatch some of the reinforcements that she was holding centrally as she was forced off the far northern battlement which was on the far side from where the gryphons had charged. There the fight turned to close quarters in the entrance-hallway, demonic musketeers blasting down from the upper mezzanine as Marci's unfeeling legion of undead formed a wall of steel and pikes that the southerners tried and failed to breach.

Perhaps those fighting inside thought that they were close to defeating her, but Marci knew exactly how many traps and reserve forces she had, and knew that at current rates of casualties, and due to the fact that the Southerner's rear-guard of gryphons still trying to contest the air was getting decimated by her fairy legion, that this battle was already as good as decided. Without the ability to control the skies and without overwhelming numbers, they had no chance of getting near her Shard.

"Surrender, and I will allow your forces to depart," said Marci, speaking through the mouth of every demon near to where the Baron and his bodyguards were trying to take the eastern battlements. "I have no desire for this battle."

"Hells take you, Shardkeeper!" roared the Baron, sweeping his longsword and battering through the defences of a pit fiend and moving to run her through. "You fiend! You abomination!"

Marci snarled and took control of the pit fiend's body, forcing mana through her very un-magically-attuned body and summoning a shield around her that turned the sword aside.

'Thank-you, Dark Lady!' thought the pit fiend as she retreated, covered by her fellows.

"Do not be a fool!" said Marci, a hundred voices washing over the battlements. "You have already lost the sky, and you cannot breach my defences. Surrender, and every single man and woman will be allowed to leave. I will even let you take your gryphons, and assist you in transporting the injured."

It was an unbelievably generous offer; so generous, in fact, that the demons who understood enough Altish to make it out were confused. The other Shardkeeper, whichever controlled the elf commander, and all the other spies no doubt scattered amongst their ranks, would also be confused—and likely suspicious, but Marci, the whole world could not afford for this to be a fight to the death—even if the nature of Shardfort combat seemed to lend it to such fights for anyone without their own wings.

But, for whatever reason, the Baron would not back down, even when he took a leg wound and had to stumble back for healing beneath the barriers his forces had conjured at the edges of the battlements, and which were now being strafed by fairies and winged demons who had more or less established total aerial superiority. Perhaps it was ego, or perhaps he truly didn't understand how badly things were going for him—he wasn't able to see an overview of the entire battle as she could, after all. Whatever the reason, she could not permit this farce to continue.

"They aren't backing down," said Marci, speaking through the arachnoids—a deeply disturbing experience, given the mandibles. "I need options, how do I get them to break and flee?"

"We are winning, Dark Lady—" began Rafferty.

"That isn't what I asked!" snapped Marci. "I do not wish for this to be a slaughter."

"If the Baron doesn't want to retreat, then break their chain of command," said Olaf after a moment. "If the Baron is the one keeping them together, then take him out. You might not get them all to rout, but you might be able to get some."

"We can bolster our forces onto the eastern side of the fortress," said Rafferty, gesturing to the suspended model of the Dreadfort.

"No, I'll handle it," said Marci.

Outside, in her true body, Marci darted upwards, bringing her fairy knight bodyguards with her as she flew up and over, down over the edge of the pyramid towards the battlements where the Baron was hunkered down behind shields. Her focus sharpened, and magic surged from her Shard into her body. Crackling purple light appeared in her hands as she made straight for the Baron.

He saw her coming—or, perhaps, he saw Müller's Null Sun: a massive purple, singularity-like orb that coalesced over the course of almost ten seconds and then jumped from her fingers and rammed straight down and into the barrier he was sheltering beneath. The terrible, overwhelmingly powerful spell stalled for a moment against the shield as the mages struggled to resist its power, but then Marci threw a second, and third, and forth instance of the spell—more than even a core of wizards could hope to cast in quick succession, and which diminished even her Shard's massive reserves by a full quarter.

The enemy wizards struggled to contain the overwhelming destructive power, but there weren't enough of them, or they weren't good enough, because the barrier shattered and the four orbs ploughed forward. A moment later the Baron, the troops around him, and a large section of the battlements vanished as the Null Suns careened forwards, ripping through enchanted armour and magical shields and even a large section of the warded battlement rock before it finally lost cohesion and dispersed into crackling purple lightning.

"YOUR COMMANDER IS DEAD!" screamed Marci through every demon and fairy mouth she had. "SURRENDER, OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE SAME FATE! I WILL ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE PEACEABLY!"

Her words did not end the battle. But on the eastern battlements those soldiers who had seen what Marci had just done wavered and then broke. A few rushed back for their gryphons which were landed near the edge of the wide battlements. They vaulted into the saddle, taking off back southwards.

Marci let them go, and some of those still attempting to contest the skies who joined the retreat, even as she cursed and swore at the remainders who stubbornly fought on for five, ten, fifteen minutes more before, hundreds of deaths later, they finally got the message.

The battle, which had started with the roar of trumpets and the piercing notes of tin whistles spluttered out, leaving behind blood-soaked battlements with prisoners being shackled and led away, medics swarming to try and save the dying, and a valley floor far below littered with bodies.

She might have 'won' on paper, but this had been both a farcical tragedy, and an immense strategic loss. Sure, that southern army clearly couldn't actually take out a Shardfort in an open fight, but used more wisely, and more defensively, those troops, who were probably some of the best in the South, could have been an integral part in trying to stop the other Shardkeepers. But now they couldn't, because they were dead, captured, or scattered to the wind.

"Stupid," said Marci, recentring herself on her own body and looking down at the destruction with anger, sorrow, and self-hatred. "Fucking stupid!"