"Master?"
"I see it..."
"What should we do?"
"I’m going on ahead, you bring the ship down where we discussed."
And with that, Celestina leapt off the deck of the Sunchaser and landed on the nearby Golden Hawk, whipping its reins as she spurred it forward.
After watching his Master depart, Lucas turned his gaze back towards the city on the horizon, his eyes narrowing as an unnatural orange glow and trails of smoke rose up from the southernmost walls and district.
These weren’t braziers or torches ant to provide nightti illumination; it was an inferno.
Clearly, sothing had happened after Celestina left, sothing that had set a significant section of Herald City on fire.
.....
"Bring more buckets! We need to get the blaze under control! Quickly now!"
Staring at the chaotic scene before her, Sasha couldn’t help feeling a deep sense of frustration and exhaustion. The past 8 days had been the most hectic of her life by far, and today was undoubtedly the worst.
It had just been one thing after another; refugees, gangs, rchants, nobles, beasts, chaos...
Even when the day changed over, things didn’t settle down, with her grandmother suddenly taking off without a word of explanation, soaring into the sky in what seed like a desperate haste.
Sasha didn’t know what was going on, but as one of the people now sohow in-charge of Herald City, her workload had only continued to increase.
It seed that no matter how many tasks she ticked off her list, there were always more troubles needing her attention, and no matter how many crises she overca, there was always another that followed.
Even so, Sasha had truly thought that after the Beast Tide retreated, the greatest danger had passed for the night.
She could not have been more wrong.
.....
"I left for less than 3 hours, and everything’s literally on fire," Celestina, who had just touched down near the ruins of Herald City’s southernmost gate muttered aloud.
"Matriarch," Sasha, who was there supervising the firefighting efforts, bowed slightly, her eyes sowhat bloodshot either from crying, or plain old stress.
Scanning the scene before her, Celestina let out a sigh and asked while trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her head, "What happened?"
"Not 10 minutes after you left the city, an alarm sounded from the southern gate," Sasha reported tiredly, "We thought it was a stray pack of beasts that got separated from the earlier horde, so we sent 2 Battalions led by Commander Wallace as reinforcents, but soon after, we lost all contact with them."
Frowning deeply, Sasha paused for a mont, as if unwilling to continue her explanation.
Celestina also frowned when she heard Sasha’s words. She had made a sweep of the area from the air just now, scanning much of the southern part of Herald City with her Soul Sense, but she hadn’t detected Commander Lorr Wallace’s Life Aura during her investigation.
"Was he..."
"He died," Sasha nodded, clenching her fists tight as she continued, "They all died, the Battalion guarding the gate, the 2 Battalions we sent as reinforcents, and nearly 500 others from here to the eastern edge of the city. Another 2,000 were injured in the chaos that followed, and we’re still not done counting."
Needless to say, 800 deaths was an enormous loss, several tis more than even the losses Herald City had suffered during the Beast Tide earlier tonight.
However, Celestina wasn’t too surprised by these numbers, as she had already seen the chaos that had gripped the city from above. There was a literal path of destruction leading from the ruins of the southernmost gate, through one of the central marketplaces, over the river bridge, and out the eastern edge of the city.
Quite frankly, given the scale of the damage, Celestina was surprised the number of dead and injured wasn’t higher.
"Do we know what caused all this?" Celestina asked the all-important question.
Glancing over at the southern gate, which was now little more than a pile of scrap tal and splintered wood, Sasha reported grimly, "It was the Saberclaw Raptor pack we lost track of several days ago."
"I see," Celestina nodded, fully understanding just how Herald City’s defences had been so easily breached and its defenders overwheld.
The Saberclaw Alpha Celestina fought 5 days ago was a High-Rank Sixth Order Beast, one that was at least an even match for her despite its injuries. If such a monster, leading multiple Fifth Order subordinates, had attacked Herald City while she was away, there would have been nothing anyone could have done to stop them.
"As soon as we found out what we were being attacked by, everyone was ordered to fall back and to not engage," Sasha said somberly, "We agreed that any attempt to stop the raptors would only result in more casualties, so all our forces retreated and just let them pass."
"Fortunately," Sasha continued in a wry tone, "It seed those beasts weren’t interested in fighting or feeding and only killed when their path was obstructed sohow. If they weren’t so intent on moving east, the casualties would have been much, much higher."
It seed like an odd thing to take comfort in knowing ’only’ 800 people had died when the Saberclaw Raptors attacked the city, but given the presence of a Sixth Order beast, it was the harsh but undeniable truth.
"You made the right call," Celestina reached out and held her young granddaughter’s trembling shoulder, "Even if I had been here, I would have made the sa decision."
Seeing her words not really sink in, Celestina knew that her granddaughter would need ti to co to terms with what had happened tonight. Sasha was by no ans a naïve little girl who had not experienced death and destruction, but she also wasn’t a hardened military leader and couldn’t be expected to be alright with sacrificing so many, even if that had resulted in a more lives being saved.
After a few minutes of silence, Sasha seed to compose herself sowhat and finally asked, "Grandmother, why did you suddenly rush off earlier?"
Sasha tried to sound as calm as possible, but the note of bla in her tone was impossible to miss.
Knowing this was a normal reaction, Celestina didn’t take offence, but she also didn’t reply imdiately for obvious reasons.
Sasha was already having difficult processing what had taken place in Herald City, so telling her that Redwood Town had suffered an even bigger disaster, and that her husband and best friends were now lost sowhere on the other side of the Cerulean Ocean definitely wasn’t going to make her feel any better.
Still, there was absolutely no way to hide such a shocking truth, so Celestina let out another sigh and began re-telling the story that Lucas had told her earlier tonight.
.....
"ERIS!"
"MOM!"
On one of the eastern city docks, Sasha and Eris embraced each other tightly, tears streaming down both of their faces.
Eris had been putting on a brave face ever since the Sunchaser left Redwood Town, but once she felt her mother’s arms around her, she couldn’t hold back anymore and all the suppressed fear, anxiety, and sadness she had been pressing down erupted.
As for Sasha, the mont she heard from Celestina about the catastrophe which had struck Redwood Town, she jumped onto her horse and rode hard through the city to reach the docks.
She had thought her emotions had been stretched as far as they could be already tonight, but when she found out that Charles, Drake, and Anna were gone, and that her daughter had again been a hair’s breadth away from perishing, Sasha realized that no matter how much one thinks they’ve lost, there was always more they could lose.
It was several minutes before Sasha was willing to let Eris go, stepping back so that she could perform a thorough inspection of her daughter to ensure she wasn’t injured in any way.
Only after going over her from head to toe several tis did Sasha feel sowhat satisfied and finally turned to the other 2 children who were waiting patiently nearby.
Grabbing both Lucas and Christina, Sasha burst into tears once more, hugging them both as she thanked them for simply being alive.
Tina, who wasn’t expecting such an outburst, found her own eyes becoming sowhat moist. The stress from tonight, and the pain from all the losses she had been forced to witness were finally catching up with the young princess, causing her to embrace her Sworn Sister’s mother and sob quietly.
It was a purely emotional response, one that didn’t quite make sense to Christina, but right now, feeling familial warmth and comfort was sothing she longed for far more than she originally realized.
Lucas, for his part, remained sowhat calm. It wasn’t that he wasn’t also feeling all the grief, sadness, and relief that Sasha, Eris, and Tina were, it was just that he felt he had to hold it in and be strong.
He was going to make everything right again.
His Big Sister Eris’ arm, his lost family, his destroyed ho, everything, and until he did so, Lucas felt he didn’t have ti to be sad or to cry.
He had work to do, work that only he could do, so the sooner he got to it, the better.
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