Beneath the dim red sky they marched.
Before long Alexander and the survivors of Venus stood at the peak of the cliffside overlooking the battlefield.
The menace of the encroaching Wyverns, each one flapping their wings fast in flight, caught the Lord Consort’s sight.
The ocean facing cliffs were host now to a company consisting of three groups set to meet those monsters.
First there were the Archers of Apollo, led by the oldest of Jupiter’s Generals, old, wise and gray Aegis.
Secondly there were the Dragon Slayer Corps of Jupiter, who practiced the same skills that befit that name.
The third group went without saying, as it was his own.
The scant remaining forces of Venus who, thanks to the Princess’, Lucretia’s, intervention, now shared the Dragonslayer techniques with the men of Jupiter’s corps.
Yet they were armed as well with the sensory techniques of Saturn, for Alexander, as their own mentor, had chosen to bequeath them.
This advantage was one they were ordered to use so that the men of Apollo could better manage to shoot down their foes.
The Lord Consort took in the ocean breeze, and then he came to the side of the old and wizened Aegis.
The General of Jupiter greeted him with a nod and a smile.
He was taciturn and reserved, speaking shortly, which was only right given the hour of battle set to befall them.
“Here I thought you’d take your woman and run,” He said, though only in jest.
“She would divorce me if I dared,” The Lord Consort said in turn
“Plenty of your ilk have fled already,” Said Gaius, “They should be thankful that even our Kingdom isn’t so plagued by nonsense as to send a pregnant woman to war.”
His unspoken meaning was evident enough, that being that the nation was still absurd enough to send a woman who wasn’t pregnant to war.
Both of the other two men grasped that much with a sobering ease, as did The Women of Venus, but unlike the boys they didn’t take his mind in any good humor.
That said they did not protest, indeed some gave nods of begrudging affirmation to his words.
They did not want to be here anymore than he would have it, truth be told.
“On that note, Master Gaius, thank you for helping us find shelter for those same women, they’d have nowhere to go were it not for that,” Noted Alexander.
Gaius said nothing in answer, he just snickered.
What again confused his surroundings, however, was that the women who stayed seemed to find his reaction in good humor.
There were some of them, as a matter of fact, who kept it to themselves that his behavior was adorable in their own minds.
With that much said, Aegis clapped a palm down upon each man’s shoulder once again.
“Ready for a spot of revenge?” Asked the old general.
Alexander said nothing, he merely glared into the abyss of black wings bearing down from the high off sky.
His Ash escaped him, a membranous aura flowed over every man and woman.
This much anyone could do, but even Gaius had to regard well what happened next.
Alexander’s Ash thinned, it thinned to the point nobody else could feel it anymore.
That allowed it to reach the enemy’s lines despite the absurdity of the distance, and it let them all appreciate how hard it’d be to avoid his awareness.
He could sense everything happening throughout the perimeter, and as if that was not enough, from among the two hundred women of Venus he’d brought with him a good half began to use the exact same skill.
The old general’s eye gleamed at that moment.
He turned to face one of his own lieutenants, and whispered,
“Do you remember the plan?”
“Yes,” The soldier replied.
“Good,” Said the general, and then his own men began to draw their bowstrings back.
They teamed up with Alexander’s apprentices to shoot the beasts down from absurdly far away.
Saturn’s legendary sensory prowess and Apollo’s devastatingly destructive arrows of Ash made for a perfect marriage of talents.
Wyvern’s fell like flightless birds before a sea of arrows.
Only after a few minutes of this did Alexander give a whisper of contentment.
His companion’s knew then that he had found the man that he was looking for: The Sapphire Dragon, and more specifically its rider.
This was the beast who had assailed Venus’ survivors at the end of the city’s destruction that year, this was the dreaded Blue Dragon, Dahaka.
“Very good, my boy,” Said Aegis.
He too recognised that fiend, would that he could only forget it. “You, Gaius and myself shall work to bring that devil to the earth, let the others to their battle’s, our prey is the worst!”
Revenge burning in their breasts both he and Alexander acknowledged the dragon while Gaius stood in silence.
The Commander shot a glance towards his own men as the hundred women of Venus who’d yet to make their move summoned lances and chains to match their own.
The Dragon Slayer techniques, the very same that the Princess passed down, made their debut upon the gory twilight scenery.
His heart, in truth, was still not reconciled to seeing the skills of his ilk being wielded so well by outsiders, but he had to admit it was a godsend given the circumstances.
He observed them as they set to work, and then he stood in silence as one women broke off from the bunch, after which she approached him and bowed her head before him.
“Greetings, Master Gaius,” Said the woman.
He glanced towards her, his frown full of discontent, but she either did not notice or she didn’t really care.
He took in her image within an instance.
This maiden stood a small rank above the rest, for Gold Class strength she did possess, in fact she was close to the dividing line that marked one a Platinum Class, not quite as close as Rusalka, but close enough to compare.
Her hair was long and flowing, blonde in color, and she had a very mature, if callous, demeanor. Her skin was milky white in shade, and she possessed long black eyelashes which, true to form, only emphasized her unnatural natural beauty.
Her uniform marked her as one of Venus’ born elite, but she wasn’t so normal by even that measure.
She stood straight, clapped her heels together, and then introduced herself with a palm against her breast,
“My name is Irene. I am the designated commander of this group you see before you. According to my Lord Consort’s command, I place myself under your leadership.”
Gaius couldn’t help but sigh in frustration.
he glowered towards Alexander, but the Lord Consort offered him nothing, not even a glance, in reply.
The commander was swift to dismiss his distaste over the affair however, but that didn’t mean he’d let it go just as easily once the war was done.
He did not have the time, nor the freedom, to criticize nor decline at this crucial time.
“Lady Irene,” He said, his tone cold and his back turned to her, “Tell me, do you enjoy showing off my kinsmen’s ancestral practices in front of my eyes?”
The woman said nothing, she only smiled.
What could she really say anyway?
The matter of spreading those techniques far and wide, even beyond the hands of Venus’ kin, was her Lady’s scheme, not her own.
Indeed by now the skills should’ve spread all throughout the camp, but it had nothing to do with her.
“May I speak plainly?” She asked him.
The man sneered, but he did not deny her.
After that, however, her cold eyes half opened.
They were halfway gray in color, blind and useless to any other.
He realised then, to a sudden chill, that he could not sense her Ash.
From the very beginning she was using the skills of Alexander to perceive him and all else around her, there was no other answer.
“Our Lady had her reasons, I’ll not speak ill of them, whatever consequences come of her choice, she will gladly bear them. What concerns me is only this,” She conjured a lance, a long weapon well suited to striking dead a dragon’s hide.
The thing shone with a violet hue, and then it was clad in an ominous chain.
These were the Dragon Slayer Arts perfected by Jupiter, arts meant to bind and kill their most hated foe’s greatest asset.
“Had Jupiter formed a national force employing this ability to begin with, the prior wars with Nidhogg would not have been lost.”
“You have a lot of daring,” He said, but she shot him a glare and kept smiling all the while.
“You said I could speak plainly?” The man crossed his arms at that, but it worked, so he bid to bear her next critical words.
He did indeed give her his leave to speak her mind, he couldn’t argue that this time.
“We keep our skills secret in case we need to fight our neighbors. Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Mars…we all do this. I’ll not say anymore on that matter, only that the lack of unity between our city states has left us unguarded toward a foreign aggressor. We should have, at the very least, spread techniques meant to slay Dragons, who are enemies outside our nation shared by all the city states, with absolute impunity.”
From start to finish Gaius didn’t speak a word against her.
When he gave the matter a little thought, in truth, he thought that her criticisms weren’t necessarily in the wrong.
Perhaps that was why his Master and the Princess both did what they did, perhaps that’s why Rusalka got away with it too?
“Be at ease,” He finally relented and begrudgingly said, “I understand the circumstances are quite pressing on this occasion. My Lord hasn’t charged your Lady for the trespass, and so there is little else for me to say.”
Irene smiled back at him. Her silence irked him, and so he prodded her again, “Is there anything else?”
“No, Lord Gaius, nothing at all,” Her faux play of a polite demeanor returned.
She stopped speaking her mind with freedom now that the subject was past.
The Commander scoffed, if nothing else he had to give a compliment to her bravery.
“Forgive me, Lord Gaius, it was not my intent to earn your ire,” Said the half blind maiden.
Gaius shrugged his shoulders and asked her,
“Then did you want my accolades instead? Praise for speaking so boldly?”
“I would not be so presumptuous,” She said, but he wasn’t going to believe that now.
He started mulling over something, but now was not the time.
The Wyverns had finally arrived and the bombs clenched in their claws fell as their wings cut heavy upon the wind.
Gaius watched as Aegis waved his shroud.
One the General made his move, a mighty barrier leapt into being to catch and slaughter the first wave of fiends.
Irene’s eyes lit up halfway bright.
She had seen The General’s barriers in action back in Venus City.
She knew that they were layered, and the first ones always shattered.
The third onwards, however, rarely got even a knick.
They weren’t just defensive tools too, as the fifth, sixth, seventh and all that followed among his shields acted like a hook and then a battering ram to strike against the foes caught in their snare.
The men of Apollo then readied their bows.
All along the cliffs, not just this one alone, the ilk of Venus and Apollo began to show themselves and shoot the devils down.
Gaius’ eye turned only then to where the blue dragon bellowed.
The beast came closing in upon him from across the vast open sea.
The Commander, Gaius, stepped forth, and a shell of scales began to cover his hide.
The Dragon Slayer Techniques consisted of different means divided by Class.
The Bronze Class were only given instructions on how to refine weapons and armor from metals that dragons despised.
The Silver Class meanwhile were taught how to manifest the basic structure of a Gleipnir Chain that could be used to bind the beasts to the ground.
Only the Gold Class could manifest the Ascalon Spears and the proper Gleipnir chains that made Irine marvel at Gaius from the back.
She herself was familiar with holding such a pair of weapons in hand, and yet these did not even meet the heels of art this man employed.
This Platinum Class power, where by bathing in the blood of a Dragon and taking on its traits, a man could form a hide of scales not unlike the beast’s own, set the gleam in her eyes to a striking extreme.
