The Siege of Andrassy (5)

The giants the demons had hauled in for siege work were a breed known as Hill Giants. They dwarfed even the Flame Giants, and their strength had grown in equal proportion — hide thick enough to shrug off a direct cannon hit without so much as a scratch, and vitality such that even a point-blank blast of Ruby's breath hadn't managed to put one down. Yet for all that overwhelming gap in raw power, they were classified as 3rd-tier monsters, same as the Flame Giants, for one simple reason: they moved so slowly that, in practice, they posed little real threat. That very blend of slow and strong was what had gotten them chosen as living siege engines.

And Rosrik had just disabled one of those living ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠siege engines with a single ballista shot.

"Give me another bolt, quick!" Rosrik bellowed.

"Y-yes, sir! Here it is!" Leo wheezed, dragging over the second harpoon.

There was no time to stand around gawking. Giants still remained in number, and the battlefield was carpeted with huge monsters nearly their equal besides.

The enemy had no intention of leaving Rosrik alone, either. A few more bolts flew, and flying monsters began swarming in from every direction.

"Y-Young Lord! They're coming from the sky!" Leo shrieked in terror.

"Kyaang!"

At the same instant, a black blur shot up into the air. Helcat beat its tiny wings and bravely rose to intercept.

The flying monsters were Ravenclaws — 6th-tier creatures about the size of an adult human, with pitch-black, filthy wings.

Watching Helcat fight them, I arrived at a discovery of grave importance.

...So you can tell friend from foe after all, huh.

When it had raked me with its claws, I'd honestly wondered whether the creature simply couldn't recognize its own master. But seeing it swing those claws in earnest now, it was clear it had been going easy on me this whole time. And its flying was no joke, either — it braked and accelerated at will in midair, and the Ravenclaws couldn't come anywhere close to matching its agility.

"Kyiiiik!"

Shredded Ravenclaws rained down like hail. Since the skies looked safe enough to leave in its claws for the moment, I turned my attention to the ground below the walls.

Beneath the ramparts was chaos incarnate. A battlefield that had begun as a one-sided rout had evened into a knife-edge stalemate once the demon nobles and their higher-tier monsters joined the fray.

Against the demon horde, our side had divided into three wings. The left was commanded by Marquis Legdar — until today, I had never known a man with one arm could fight like that.

"Been a while, you ugly bastards! Hahahaha!"

His Awoken Ability seemed tied to space itself; monsters that so much as brushed his blade vanished in whole chunks. His son Silva was cautiously stacking up kills in the second line, and true to the genius Legdar never tired of bragging about, the young man already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fought on par with a Senior Knight.

Barga held the center. With knights anchoring both flanks, he was driving the monsters back with infantry alone.

"Don't give an inch! Just hold, and we win this!"

He handled an army stitched together from half a dozen territories with astonishing skill. He was every inch the general my father had handpicked. The demons, meanwhile, possessed all the organizational unity of loose sand — each one individually stronger, yet struggling to crack the defensive line.

And the right wing belonged to...

"Stop that man!"

"Gwaaaargh!"

Kalman.

Seen from above, it was obvious: that man's Awoken Ability was the most broken of the lot. Wielding the Sure-Hit Sword — an ability that simply could not be defended against — he went about the field plucking the heads off demon nobles one by one. Robbed of their commanders, the monsters scattered in a terror-stricken rout. At this point it was getting hard to tell who exactly was the invader.

And last of all, Ruby had been left to play free — the beast ran riot through the very heart of the demon lines, answerable to no one.

At this rate, the western wall would be secured without trouble. The problem was the north. The northern wall had already come down, and monsters were pouring through the breach like an incoming tide.

"Blackie!" I called up to Helcat. "Guard these two until I'm back. You can do that, right?"

It was pouring everything it had into slaughtering Ravenclaws. But I saw it plain as day — the sidelong glances it kept sneaking my way.

It was several hours before the demons launched their full-scale offensive that Thalia received an urgent summons from Count Andrassy.

"You called for me, Count."

"There is one favor I would ask of you."

The Count's manner was unusually careful. In rank, Thalia was immeasurably his inferior — but she was also the closest confidante of Lord Iden, the leading claimant to the succession.

"Speak."

"I have received numerous reports of suspicious noises coming from the underground waterways. If my guess is right, the demons intend to move troops beneath the ground as well."

"Entirely possible."

Thalia thought of the hole that had opened beneath the mausoleum at the ducal residence. If the Subterranean World could connect to anywhere, then there was no law of nature saying a county couldn't have holes of its own.

"Which is why I would have our army's greatest fighting force — your order — sweep the waterways. We must be prepared for enemy infiltration teams."

"Will you manage with us pulled from the surface battle?"

"We will hold, one way or another. If it becomes truly dire, I shall send a runner."

"Understood."

Thalia bowed to the Count and withdrew, gathered the Frost Knights waiting in reserve, and passed along the operation.

"The sewers? Ugh, I hate it." Shaka scrunched up her face in disgust. "There's a whole battlefield of monsters out there just begging to be killed, and we're the ones told to crawl into a drain like sewer rats."

"This is wartime, Second Squad Leader." Thalia's voice went razor-sharp. "No griping. Obey the order."

"Yeees, Vice-Commander."

Pouting all the while, Shaka fell in behind her all the same. Thalia entered the underground waterways of Andrassy County with twenty knights, Shaka among them.

The tunnels were well maintained and gave off no stench. The problem was their sheer size; searching every corner of that expanse would take far too long.

"We split into teams." Thalia unfurled the waterway map she had received from the combat engineers. "Shaka, take fifteen and sweep the left branch. I'll take the rest and check the right."

"How far do we go?"

"To the end," Thalia said flatly. "Every point marked on that map gets verified before you return."

"Fiiine. Understood."

Shaka answered in a deflated mumble and led her squad away.

"Let's move as well."

Thalia began feeling her way slowly down the opposite tunnel.

"Surely there's nothing down here after all?"

It had been over three hours since they had entered the dark, damp waterway. One of her knights voiced the question. In all that time they had found no sign of trouble whatsoever — the sole discovery a single bleached skeleton, of someone who seemed to have wandered these tunnels lost until starvation took them.

Flap-flap-flap.

Then, from deeper within the tunnel, a swarm of bats burst out in a shrieking flurry.

"What the hell is with these bats...!" The knights recoiled, flailing at the air.

"All of you, draw!" Thalia shouted, sensing something wrong.

"Gwaaaagh!"

Knights dropped where they stood, clutching their necks. Thalia cut down one of the diving bats — and the creature hissed out a wisp of smoke, transforming mid-fall into a knight in crimson armor. Its skin was so pallid it seemed to glow in the darkness, without a trace of blood in it.

The bats were gone now, everywhere and nowhere; only the corpse-pale knights remained. Thalia flicked a glance at her own people. Not one of them stirred — no breath, no pulse, no spark of life.

"...Grim Red." Thalia's lips parted. "Am I right?"

The knights curled their mouths into cruel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠smiles.

"Correct, human."

They were the Grim Red, the personal knight order of the demon Count Grimscale — infamous for the fact that every last member was a vampire.

"Today you will pay the price for assassinating our Count."

"...Pay?"

The vampire knight's elongated finger rose to point at the nape of Thalia's neck.

"You are going to become one of us. I do so want ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to watch that decent face of yours warp as it loses to the thirst for blood."

"How utterly absurd." Thalia's voice was low. "You stole my homeland."

Her violet eyes burned bright in the darkness.

"You murdered my parents. You devoured my brothers and sisters. And you dare speak to me of payment?"

"Lester, you say? Are you from Lester?" The vampire knight tilted his head. "How strange. I was quite certain we left no survivors."

"Is he not mistaken, though? I heard one bloodkin of House Lester was never accounted for—"

That was the moment Thalia chose. Her sword flashed out without warning, and the vampire crumbled to dust before he could finish the sentence.

"Do not kill her! Subdue her, whatever it takes!"

The vampires charged as one. Thalia spared her body nothing. If giving flesh meant breaking their bones, she would give the flesh gladly.

Shunk.

A slender rapier sank deep into her side. But the vampires paid dearly as well — one knight, run through the heart with perfect precision, burst into ash.

The brutal exchange ground on. Every minute of fighting added new wounds to Thalia's body, but the vampires were turning to ash one after another all the same.

Then her unstoppable advance met its wall: the commander of the Grim Red.

"...Magnificent," the commander marveled. "I simply must make you mine, wench."

"Shut your mouth."

The commander slipped beyond the mist's reach without any visible effort. Thalia chased him down, blade crashing against blade.

"I have no flesh to give the likes of you."

Sword-qi met sword-qi in a fury of sparks. Thalia was fencing an even match against a cursed being that had lived for hundreds — perhaps thousands — of years.

But the commander was not her only enemy. Bleeding from a dozen cuts, hopelessly outmatched, Thalia felt death settle over her. They say that at the end, your past unfolds before your eyes — and what rose in hers was not her parents, nor her siblings, but the face of one foolish man.

Not yet.

Thalia regripped her sword.

It is not over yet.

"So you could not bring yourself to abandon hope." The commander sneered as Thalia's eyes flicked toward the tunnel entrance. "Then spare yourself the pain, and accept your fate with grace."

"Enough yapping. Come and take me."

Thalia spat a mouthful of blood-flecked spittle. Every breath wheezed out of her ruined lung with a thin, leaking hiss.

She clenched her teeth and wrung her soul out to its final drop. The power sleeping in her blade swelled into a towering blaze, lighting the tunnel bright as noon.

"No... it cannot be...?" The commander's voice shook. "Do not tell me you are—!"

Thalia swung her sword in a single horizontal arc. Pure, undiluted destruction swept the tunnel from end to end. The vampires were erased from existence without even time to scream.

The moment the sword-qi left her blade, a crushing weakness flooded in. She could see the commander's descending sword plain as day — and her body simply would not answer.

Just a little more.

She swung for the commander's neck. But the blade dragged, slow as syrup, carrying not even a wisp of sword-qi.

Just a little strength. Please.

Cold metal tore through her abdomen. She tried to raise her sword; her fingers would not close. The pain stripped everything away — the sword-qi, the Awoken Ability, all of it.

"...Damn you, bitch." The commander wiped the blood from his mouth, fangs glinting in the dark. "Since it has come to this, I shall content myself with taking you."

He seized Thalia by her violet hair and hauled her upward, baring her neck.

"Consider it an honor to join the ranks of the True Blood."

The commander's jaws stretched wide. And then — a splashing from deep within the waterway. Something was tearing across the water at full speed.

"One of our monsters, then." The commander laughed. It was not a sound a human made — it was the laugh of a four-legged beast. "The surface should be finished by now. Which is exactly why I told you to abandon hope."

His grip tightened on her hair. In that instant, a massive four-legged shape erupted out of the darkness. There was no time to react — not even for a vampire.

"Gahk—!"

The beast's jaws closed around the commander's throat — the same throat that had been descending toward Thalia — and shook him like a toy before flinging him away with brutal force.

"W-wait! Stop! We are on the same side!"

The commander screamed in desperation, eyes bulging. The beast did not listen at all. For a long, long while, hideous screams echoed through the tunnel.

When the commander at last crumbled into dust, the beast melted back into its true form.

"...Senior."

Thalia smiled, faint as breath. Vitten swept her into his arms without a word, and the instant he did, she felt the arm beneath her grow damp. She was bleeding so heavily that being alive felt like a miracle.

"Hold on. I'll have you to Master in no time." He turned and sprinted back the way he had come.

"Senior."

"Save your breath."

"Anyone who saw us would get the wrong idea."

With his transformation undone, Vitten was standing there in nothing at all, and he yelped in flustered alarm.

"Quiet, you burst bunch of grapes!"

Grape Bunch — Thalia's childhood nickname. Drowsiness was crashing over her now. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had held her like this.

"What happened on the surface?"

"I'll tell you everything later. For now, all you need to know is that Lord Iden was absolutely unbelievable."

Through drooping lashes, she watched his profile. The man's gaze, hard with resolve, stayed fixed on the path ahead.

"And stop trying to talk. You're scrambling my head — I'll lose the way."

"How did you find me?"

They had walked three hours deep into the waterways. No map alone could have led anyone here.

"Your scent."

Vitten answered without thinking — then heard exactly how that could be taken. Flushing scarlet, he scrambled to clarify.

"Not that kind of scent! Your necklace, I meant!"

At Thalia's throat hung a small embroidered pouch — a good-luck charm she'd bought at a market for five barts.

"I tucked a sachet of fragrance inside it. Just in case you ever had a day as wretched as this one."

"...I never said a word, Senior."

Thalia closed her eyes, and smiled.