Chapter 36: In Marching Order
— Rolling back the clock.
Amani paced between the same two points on one side of the warehouse. Jiraya had been leaning on the wall and watching her do this for the past ten minutes; sometimes she glanced at the door whenever someone came in or out, and sometimes at the Order’s priestess who anxiously sat upon a chair under the statue of Lumina.
It was like this for the next five minutes.
“Priestess, why don’t you sit?” Jiraya said.
“I’ll feel worse,” Amani replied. “The priestess over there looks worse than me, see?”
By coincidence, Cecilia stood up and approached the two. Although she was content to sit still and wait for a reply from her would-be reinforcements, she thought that there might be something worthwhile she could do, like exchanging information with her new allies.
“Maybe she heard you,” Jiraya remarked. Amani spared him a glance, then looked towards the priestess.
“Hello again,” Cecilia greeted. “I thought I should ask a question.”
“How about a question for a question?” Amani said.
“Of course. Firstly, concerning your self-defense, do we have to worry about you?”
“I’m not a physical fighter” — Amani’s ears twitched towards her guard — “but he is. And you?”
“I’m not a physical fighter.” Cecilia shook her head with some amusement in returning Amani’s words. “I’m surrounded by them, however. Then, next question ... or rather, a request. Can we leave dismantling the spell circle to you?”
Amani readily nodded. Large spell formations took a large investment to set up, and in a battle setting, this meant that there were usually “gifts” built into the spell formation for anyone who wanted to sabotage it. It was a no-brainer that someone familiar with the spell formation should be the one to dismantle it.
“Why not blast it?” Amani followed up. Blowing up the spell formation was also a safe option. Fighting indoors against an enemy who used the kind of magic that they did sounded like it would easily kill hundreds more of the Order’s soldiers.
Instead, offensive feelings welled up in Cecilia’s chest — but she shouldn’t expect someone from the Aranai to know about religious feelings.
She breathed deeply before answering. “We would like to minimize damage to the cathedral.” She paused. “Why would you suggest such a thing?”
“The cathedral may be important, but ... it’s just a building, isn’t it?”
Cecilia gave herself pause before replying. “It is not. Please refrain from suggesting such a thing to any adherent of the Order.”
Her tone gave Amani pause. “Sorry.”
Amani’s tone made Cecilia’s heart drop. Although the child in front of her carried an air of a true priestess — and one of Ravena at that — she was still more of a child in her eyes.
“Answer me this, instead,” Cecilia said, hoping to leave behind a better last impression. “You seemed impatient to leave earlier. Is Jon Fuze such an important person to you?”
Amani wasn’t sure how to answer it. “He is my — our benefector,” she replied. That much was true, yes, but... “And he has made a promise to me” — but was that all? “I look up to him.” Is that really all?
She felt no love ... but, perhaps, it was an “affinity,” like the man could be someone she could trust in and learn from. There was a hidden depth in his life and experiences that she couldn’t quite put a thumb on, but at the very least, he might be the one who was closest to understanding the path that she was taking.
In the end, she was ... she was afraid. She hadn’t admitted it to herself before, but she was afraid of the path before her. She had gone through much already, but the pain of surviving day-by-day was not the same as the pain of trying to reach for something: to taste defeat day-after-day in the pursuit of a murky vision of the future.
To have someone to watch her, teach her, help her if she needed it — she had never had that in a while.
She looked at the priestess. She wanted to curse her for leading her to a train of thought that led to her finally admitting to herself that she had placed such a selfish hope on someone she didn’t know very well — and at this kind of timing, when that very same man’s soul was about to be condemned to oblivion by a twisted performance of her own family’s death magic.
All Cecilia saw, however, were bitter eyes directed right her way. Huh, did I do something? What did I do? What is it this time? Nice going, Cecilia — upsetting a child twice in quick succession!
The sound of marching boots and commanders halting their units echoed outside, interrupting their little exchange. The Order’s knight captain, along with a retinue of gold-gilded knights, marched into the warehouse. Some of them slowed down to gawk at the remains of the carnage, much of which hadn’t been cleaned up yet — just respectfully covered up.
The knight captain stopped before Cecilia and bowed. “Priestess, two scout rifle companies and 53 knights have come to your aid. Another scout rifle company is moving directly towards Saintess Abel Cathedral, as it is closer to them.”
What? Cecilia took on an urgent tone. “Dispatch a messenger and tell that company to await strictly outside the cathedral grounds. The enemy is strong enough to annihilate them if they rush in blindly.”
The captain had seen the carnage here, and also elsewhere. He had passed through several checkpoints that had been massacred and desecrated, people piled up like cattle to be buried in mass graves. “Right away. They’ll know it.”
As the captain marched back out of the warehouse, Cecilia turned to face her allies. “We’re going.”
Amani nodded. Jiraya pushed his back off the wall.
Outside, lines of green and gray-garbed riflemen crouched by the sides of the wide road, while a neat formation of silver-armored knights formed up in the center. There were other squads of riflemen patrolling up and down the road, pointing bright magic lanterns at the roofline and into dark alleys.
The knight captain was gathered together with a mixture of knights and rifle captains and lieutenants. All at once, they stood straight and saluted, before turning right round and briskly walked to rejoin their respective units, shouting their orders all the while.
“Second Company! Form up!”
“Third Company!” —
There was a twack and a gurgle. The lieutenant who’d been with the man shouted “Captain!” before drawing out a pistol and firing a shot before anyone even realized what was going on.
When heads finally turned their way, they saw a shadow dissolving into thin air — and a wooden stake impaling the captain through his back, leaving him dead on the ground.
Amani was staring at his body from afar when the sound of clashing blades rang beside her ear. She stumbled forwards and turned around, a card in hand, and just in time: Jiraya had stabbed into a shadow’s chest with one sword, stepping outside of its counterattack.
There was a second shadow, however, and it was going to cut down with a sword from his side where Jiraya wasn’t paying attention. Amani flicked the card without thinking, hitting the shadow, causing it to lose its grip on its sword, which flew overhead of Jiraya instead of straight at him.
Within the span of seconds, both attackers were dead, and they were still alive.
While Jiraya scanned the surroundings, Amani checked the Order’s priestess. She was just a few steps ahead of them, but she was standing still, shocked at how fast everything had happened.
“Priestess?” Amani called out.
Cecilia looked at her for a second, then back at the piles of clothes. She didn’t think the enemy would be so brazen as to attack them immediately after suffering such a major loss in numbers as a while ago … but this was war, after all. “Do they not feel fear?” she finally asked.
“They have less freedom than slaves, and there will be more.” Amani paused. Every second they spent here was a second wasted in saving Jon. “We need to move faster.”
Cecilia saw the same bitterness in Amani’s eyes, but now it was clear that it wasn’t anything directed at her … and it hit differently: Cecilia was heading there to cleanse the men who thought to use the cathedral for their own ends, while Amani was heading there to save someone’s life. Between the two of them, who had the purer intent? “Of course,” was all she could reply.
