Darkness was like a concealing cloak, black background to conceal one garbed in black clothing. Silence meant life when one stood among the enemy.
Or when one crouched, as was the case for Corvin. He had fought for this chance; now that the renovations he and Cid had been working on were almost complete, there wasn’t much left for him to do. At least, not as an engineer. As a warrior...well, that was the thing, wasn’t it? This was what he had trained for, for so long now. But now that he stood in the darkness, waiting...he wasn’t sure he was ready. I am no swordsman...just someone who’s good with knives. And machines.
Bahamut had followed the enemy, or at least one branch of them, to this valley in the very heart of the mountains between Baron and Mist. There was no way to tell where the other group had gone, but that was a worry for later. Once the enemy stopped, Cecil had turned Vashin loose on them, in the hopes that maybe, the wizard and Caller’s powerful magic of the mind would be sufficient to break the control that a still-unknown mind held over these people.
Vashin had failed.
And so here they were. The King had had no choice; it would be war without quarter. There could be no reasoning with men not of their own minds.
Them or us, Corvin thought.
It was nearly midnight, now, and there was very little in the way of noise. That would soon change. The Eblani were the crux of this operation. This was not a fight for honor. It was a fight to win. Most of the enemy army were mindless; but Porom had discovered in the last battle that some were not. And those that retained at least a part of themselves, or in some cases all of themselves, served as officers. They were targets. Eblani targets. Ninjas were at home in the darkness, worked best in the night. Without leaders, it was hoped that the enemy would soon fall.
It wasn’t, perhaps, the most honorable of missions. But honorable combat was a thing for people like Cecil, or Kain, Paladins of the Light. The Eblani were trained to do what was necessary.
Corvin wasn’t the only one to be skulking through the middle of this encampment; one hundred others from among the best of the Eblani ninjas resided in the midst of the enemy this night, including his sister. Only thirty had specific targets, though. The rest were to secure an exit, and provide safety in numbers.
Once it was done, two contingents of Dragoons would attack, one from each side, under the command of Kain and Velerin, respectively. They would split the enemy in half, one half of which would find themselves suddenly surrounded on all sides as Cecil and Edward led the pikemen into battle. Archers and wizards were providing support from the rising mountains around them.
The second half of the enemy would be victims of Bahamut’s fire. Corvin didn’t think he’d enjoy being in their shoes; he’d never seen Bahamut unleash his power before, as the great dragon normally lived far away, at some place called the Lunar Moon. Whatever that was. But he’d heard stories of the Crystal Wars, and in them Bahamut was named as an enemy like no other, a dragon that could take on the largest of armies with nothing but teeth, claws, and fire to aid him.
Corvin couldn’t wait to see it.
He had nearly reached the command tents, now. His swords were still sheathed; he preferred to use a dagger, for now. There were a few weapons hidden among his clothing that he hoped would prove...useful. And there was always Jurgander to help him if things went wrong; Jur was a friend, and Corvin believed he would come if Called. In short, Corvin was ready. Or at least, as ready as he would ever be. This was his first battle, after all. He had fought monsters before, in the caves of Eblan. But not humans.
A moment's worry struck him as his thoughts drifted toward Ophelia's outburst the day before. He forced it down. Even she had enjoyed it, until she was forced to kill one of her own.
He approached the tents from the rear. Apparently no one had thought to put guards back here. He found his own target tent, third from the right, stood by it, and glanced around. He saw figures moving in the darkness, almost invisible. Eblani. He wasn’t alone in this mission, and the thought comforted him. One shadow barely a few feet away, he could recognize as his partner, a tall man by the name of Allere. They were ready. Corvin drew his dagger across the tent fabric, parting it. The knife was sharp enough that there was no sound of ripping. A slight movement, and he was inside.
It was dark, but he could see. The lone occupant, an officer he didn’t know the name of, could be seen asleep under a blanket, on a simple pallet. He couldn’t see the man’s face, it was hidden beneath the blanket. All the better; Corvin was in no way comfortable with this. This wasn’t a battle for honor, though. He did what he must. What he’d volunteered to do, of course, but still....
Fortunately, it was his job only to watch out for them, not to do the deed itself. He heard Allere coming through the rear wall of the tent, audible only because of the whisper of the tent fabric shifting. Corvin worked his way forward in the darkness, looking for a vantage point, a view out the front of the tent. He trusted Allere to get his job done; Corvin would do his own.
Outside, he could see guards clearly. The two of them wouldn’t be getting away without a fight. A fierce one.
He heard a dull thunk behind him; presumably Allere burying one of his own swords in the officer’s chest. Corvin’s heart beat faster; battle was in his blood, and men dying in the night brought it out of him. His mind held a mixture of anticipation and fear.
There was a muffled curse behind him. "You’d better take a look at this, Corvin," a hoarse whisper demanded. He turned.
There was no body on the pallet. What he had thought was a person, hidden beneath blankets, was now revealed to be no more than a wooden dummy.
Something was wrong.
Corvin had very little time to think before things went straight to hell. But his last coherent thought was: They knew we were coming.
That was all, before the guards outside suddenly spun and rushed the tent, shouting to rouse their fellows. Training took over: Escape momentarily, use the darkness against them, draw them out, strike, draw back, strike again. Corvin saw Allere slip out through the slit in the tent wall, and followed. Once outside, he waited at the hole.
"Where’d they go?" a rough voice was heard from the tent.
"I don’t know...look around, they could have cut a hole."
That was enough. Corvin moved his hand down to a pouch at his belt, and opened it. From it he drew what had been a perfectly normal small wine bottle.
It wasn’t normal anymore. When he hurled it through the crack and dove for the ground, there was a small explosion of thunder and fire. No one, he reflected, would be stepping out of there anytime soon.
By now, there was a small commotion, and nearby troops woke at the sound. Corvin, apparently, had been lucky; looking to each side, he saw that only about twenty of the thirty Eblani that had gone into the tents, had come out.
On the other hand, there were certainly more than thirty out there. One hundred would be hidden in various places among the camp, ready to come when commanded. As Corvin watched, one of Edge’s lieutenants, who had led this mission, gave that command. A ball of fire leapt from the man’s hands, skyward, visible for miles.
It was too early. They were supposed to be done with it before the signal went out. But it was necessary; they had failed, Corvin realized, but through no fault of their own. Now all that could be done was to start the battle at large.
The ground around them suddenly became awash with darkened figures, as a hundred Eblani ninjas emerged from the shadows in the darkness behind the tents. They had been drawn from Edge’s escort; They were among the best of the best. The men that came to fight, those who had just woken, were cut down by other men, men they did not see. That was how the Eblani fought; dust carried by silent air, shadows, insubstantial, but with teeth that could rend. They dispersed among the enemy tents, drifting, drifting, moving in to strike. And then vanishing again. This was what Corvin had trained for, to be but one more leaf on a darkened wind. He heard noise in the distance, screams of men both friendly and antagonistic, as Kain and Velerin led the Dragoons in to battle. They had seen the signal. The enemy, caught flat-footed as men that used the air itself as their ally attacked in the night, were split in two. From the other direction, Corvin heard the steady beat of running chocobos as Cecil and Edward joined in, the new cavalry leading the charge. Corvin was close enough to that edge of the battle to see as the beasts, now themselves armored, bore down on the weaker forces that were still groggy from sleep. He felt a surge of pride as they ran down the enemy, satisfaction that his idea had worked so well.
His attention was pulled away as some sixth instinct made him dive and roll to one side. A curved scimitar passed inches away from his head. But when his opponent turned to come after him again, he was gone.
Or perhaps not. Surprise flashed across the man’s face as Corvin ran him through from behind. It was his first clean kill.
Strange, he thought as he looked down, strange how easy it had been. Strange that he felt a peculiar mixture now of pride and regret. But he didn’t let it worry him for long; abstract thought was more than dangerous. He committed himself back to the battle, again assuming the guise of a shadow. He worked his way toward the Dragoons; Bahamut would be in that direction, and he wanted to see the legendary fire.
Something drifted down on to his shoulder softly; he wouldn’t have noticed it if not for the fact that he was out of the immediate fight, clear of adversaries for a moment. He picked it off his shoulder, and brought his hand up to look.
Snow? In the middle of spring?
Impossible.
He looked at it another moment, then realized that it wasn’t exactly snow, it was more like...frost. Corvin looked up, wondering where it had fallen from.
At first, he thought that what he was looking at was an airship; but no, it was too small for that. It was a dragon, he thought. But there were two distinct people on its back. Dragons never let humans ride them; no Summoned Beast did, either.
Corvin squinted. He could swear he recognized one of them, at least...something in the build, but he couldn’t quite name it. And why would anyone he knew be riding a dragon? The only dragon he knew of was Bahamut, and he was taking part in the battle.
He heard a step behind him, and thought vanished once again. He spun and struck out with his sword, but it was blocked. It took a moment to realize that he wasn’t facing an enemy; the man across from him wore the slightly archaic armor of a Dragoon, tinted red. Corvin grinned momentarily. Velerin. Part of Velerin’s face was concealed behind the frontpiece of his helmet; it stretched down to just above his nose, with holes for his eyes. But Corvin didn’t need to see his face to know who it was. The color of the armor told him that much.
Velerin pulled off his helmet. "At ease, Corvin," he said, grinning. "You’re in the clear for now.
Corvin looked around quickly, and saw that he was right. This section of the dragoon line was set up in a porcupine formation, a hollow square of men with each man’s spear pointed outward. Somehow, without realizing it, Corvin had found his way inside. There were about a hundred and fifty men in the square, and another fifty backing them up. Those were ready to leap to the offensive at a command, over the heads of their comrades if necessary. Corvin had seen them practice before; he knew they could leap much, much higher than a man’s height, even in all that armor. It wouldn’t be a problem to hurl themselves into the fray.
Porom had apparently come with this group, and was now standing slightly behind Velerin. Why she was here, Corvin didn’t know; he would have expected her to be with her brother, and Palom was with the standard infantry. Perhaps she had thought her own talents of more use out here. Corvin knew how that felt.
Before he knew it, she was at his side, examining him. "Are you all right?" she demanded.
For a moment Corvin meant to tell her that yes, he was fine, untouched even. But then he realized that that wasn’t the case. He had a large gash just above his left eye, and another long one down his leg. In the heat of battle he hadn’t even noticed.
Porom started chanting over him, preparing the healing. Corvin wondered what it was like; he had never felt the touch of magic before, aside from his own magic, the magic of the Caller. Or had he? Some forgotten memory tugged at him. But no; he couldn’t remember. Even if he had felt magic before, it would still be something new for him. He didn’t have long to wait; this spell was a short one, because his wounds were not very severe. He gasped sharply as a cold wind flowed through his body, cold as ice, yet it felt...pleasant. Like a cold breeze in the middle of a blistering summer day.
It was finished quickly, and a quick self-inspection showed that his wounds were gone, without any trace but small, dead-white scars that would vanish within the week. Porom didn’t wait to see how he was; she could tell that her spell had done its work, so she moved on. Corvin wasn’t the only one among the wounded.
He watched as she left, Velerin for some reason following. She stepped over to a fallen dragoon, one whose midsection had nearly been cut in two. Corvin saw her shake her head, and move on. Another man with a massive wound across his shoulder and chest, that Corvin himself would have declared beyond saving, left with a sprightly step after Porom’s ministrations. Corvin shook his head in wonder.
He noticed something, though, when she stood up from her work. She swayed. He got the sudden impression of a tree on the verge of falling, and he realized something. She was tired, desperately so. This drained her as much as the fighting drained anyone else. Velerin had to support her with one arm as she moved on to the next fallen man.
A flash lit the area around him, one of several he had seen so far, illuminating the night. Bahamut’s fire. Corvin made his way to the side of the line nearest Bahamut, looking for a view. The men on this side of the porcupine were not fighting; there was no one to fight. Corvin guessed that most of the enemy had either gone to meet the greater threat, or fled.
The first possibility turned out to be the correct one when he finally caught a good view; men surrounded Bahamut by the hundreds. And yet the dragon still stood in the face of it, despite being outnumbered several hundred times over. Every man who rushed up to him died at his claws, or his teeth, or on occasion had their body wrecked by one massive sweep of Bahamut’s tail. The tail was shorter than it ought to have been...as Corvin understood it, part of it had been slashed off in some battle from before he was born...but it was long enough. Bahamut raged through his opposition like a god of death.
Corvin watched with anticipation, almost, when Bahamut opened his mouth, seeming almost to drool liquid fire. The burst that came forth was nothing short of blinding, an inferno, a blaze that no human technology or even magic could hope to create. Billowing fire spewed forth, and when it cleared, his opponents were simply...gone. Vanished. Incinerated.
And yet more came forward, despite the fact that their efforts were so obviously suicidal. Corvin couldn’t understand it. Or perhaps he could; these men were not their own masters. They rushed into a fight that they knew they could not win, because they had no choice.
It was roughly half an hour before the battle ended, but Corvin didn’t go back into the fight again. He had penetrated the midst of an enemy encampment and he had fought his way back out. It was enough for one day, and he took pride in it; it proved that, yes, he was worthy to be an Eblani ninja. Corvin had never been spectacular with a sword, far from it, but for the first time he didn’t see that as an obstacle. He knew he would never be a blademaster, never match his father or his sister, but it didn’t matter, he no longer felt the need to compare himself to them. It was a relieving feeling.
He remembered Ophelia wishing him luck, when he had left the main portion of the army. At the time, he had thought he needed it. But now he didn’t; he knew he could trust his skill, trust his training...trust himself. Somewhere, among blood and war, he had found his own peace.