The Derick Fissure had once been a massive, unbroken mountain range, standing like a colossal stone wall across the northern frontier. For generations, it was a constant headache for travelers, a barrier so imposing that anyone journeying south was forced to undertake a grueling detour around its jagged peaks.
Years ago, however, a sudden Catastrophe had torn through the rock, blasting a massive gap directly through the center of the range. The path was now wide enough for an entire moving city to glide through with ease, making it the perfect bottleneck where the noble armies had gathered to halt Reunion's advance.
High on the ridges, imperial soldiers were busy assembling columns of heavy explosives. Due to intense political friction among certain high nobles in the capital, these regiments hadn't been permitted to bring their own landships into the valley, but the field commanders weren't overly concerned.
In their estimation, they were merely facing a collection of unrefined outcasts from the wilderness. The only true perils were the legendary flying beasts reported in earlier dispatches, along with the veteran infected guerrillas who marched among the host.
(Fumina: These people are from the noble's private armies, they've only heard news about Reunion, and the ones that fought against Reunion never made it back home, so it make sense that they wouldn't be afraid of Reunion like the Infected Patrols and Local Garrisons.)
Those guerrillas were, after all, soldiers formed under the training of Patriot himself. Even though the legendary captain was now infected and stood on the opposing side of the line, every soldier within the imperial ranks harbored a deep reverence for the old veteran.
And the finest way to demonstrate that reverence was to completely shatter his lines, step over the wreckage, and look down at him to say: Your era has passed, old man.
As their scouting parties trading minor blows with the vanguard, the massive silhouette of the moving city, flanked by the familiar iron bulk of the captured landship, finally rounded the canyon bend. Every soldier tightened their grip on their polearms, bracing for the clash.
With a thunderous roar from the vanguard warriors, the two armies collided head-on. Within a breath, the narrow canyon erupted with the deafening music of detonations as both sides threw their entire weight into crushing the opposition.
Through this opening chaos, Jeanne remained behind the front lines, helping the medical teams carry the wounded to safety. According to the strategy Talulah had laid out, the right moment for her to join the fray had not yet arrived.
As for when exactly that moment would be, the Draco leader had simply left the judgment to Jeanne's own intuition. This left the young saint a bit frustrated. My own judgment? Am I supposed to just guess based on a gut feeling?
By now, even Talulah had drawn her blade and charged straight into the vanguard of the assault. The situation on the valley floor was far from simple; despite their numbers, the raw combat experience of the defenders still outmatched the enthusiasm of the vanguard fighters.
It was clear that the high nobles were taking this campaign seriously. They genuinely intended to annihilate the movement before the iron hulls could escape the snowfields, or drive them back into the northern wastes so thoroughly that they would never dare show their faces again.
Yet, despite commanding a clear advantage in defensive positioning, the imperial soldiers weren't having an easy time of it, a truth clearly reflected by the volatile surges of fire arts illuminating the front line.
"These pests simply do not know when to yield!" Talulah shouted, unleashing her flame arts across the field without a shred of restraint. Wherever her inferno spread, enemy crossbolts and counter-spells were reduced to ash. She moved through the melee like a furious dragon, and the defenders quickly realized that the only way to stop her was to survive until her physical stamina was entirely spent.
She wasn't the only terror on the field. Across the central lane, Patriot led his heavy Shieldguards under the thunderous covering fire of the landship's main artillery, systematically clearing entire platoons of imperial infantry.
The veteran captain's armor and massive shield were already stained a deep crimson, and beneath his horned mask, his eyes burned with a terrifying scarlet light. The mere sight of his towering figure was enough to strike pure terror into the hearts of the common conscripts.
Nearby, FrostNova's Yeti Squad darted through the snowdrifts like winter spirits. Synchronizing their arts with the freezing air of the canyon, every strike left a trail of frozen statues in its wake, the blood of the fallen freezing solid before it could even touch the stones.
"We took every precaution before entering this canyon, yet I must admit, we still underestimated the sheer willpower of these infected," an imperial commander remarked quietly, staring out over the contested valley from his elevated command post.
He watched the grueling stalemate unfold for a long moment before turning to his staff to issue a calm, decisive order: "Alert the battery crews. Initiate a full bombardment across the enemy clusters."
The primary reason they had chosen this fissure for the ambush was the array of rapid-fire cannons securely anchored along the high ridges. These weapons, capable of delivering high-speed, devastating salvos, were their chosen defense against the rumored flying beasts—a hidden asset they hoped would turn the tide.
Unfortunately, before the legendary winged monsters had even made an appearance, the pressure on the infantry lines had already forced them to reveal their hand.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The moment the rapid-fire batteries commenced their barrage, the veteran Shieldguards reacted with pure instinct. Sensing the incoming ordnance from the high ridges, they raised their heavy bulwarks in unison, utilizing their defensive arts and physical endurance to weather the iron storm.
The exact moment the canyon walls echoed with the roar of the hidden artillery, Jeanne's inner intuition flared with a sharp warning. The hour had arrived; if she delayed any longer, the warriors at the front would suffer catastrophic losses.
"Let's move, Fafnir! It's our turn to join the fray!"
Jeanne raised her standard high, her other hand clasping the fingers of the youngster who had been waiting eagerly for the signal. Deep beneath the heavy drifts, the massive earth-bound drakes received her silent command.
Instantly, the colossal creatures that Jeanne had carefully tunneled into the earth the previous evening erupted from the snowbeds. Using their massive, scale-clad bodies, they created a living shield, perfectly intercepting the descending artillery shells and sparing countless exposed soldiers from a sudden end.
With their emergence, the flow of the battle shifted entirely. Although the heavy explosive rounds could inflict visible scores upon the drakes' thick hides, the creatures possessed far too much raw endurance to be halted by a simple barrage.
"Ah, so you've finally decided the stage belongs to you..." Talulah murmured to herself, glancing back as a massive drake positioned itself to shield her flank from a stray blast.
Turning back to her units, the leader raised her voice to a shout: "All squads, execute a tactical withdrawal through the lower trenches! Fall back immediately!"
The nature of the battlefield had changed; it was time for the infantry to clear the lanes and let the great beasts manage the high ground. Under the protective canopy of the colossal reptiles, the frontline squads smoothly retreated into pre-dug tunnels, slipping away toward the rear of the valley.
The sudden retreat left the imperial soldiers feeling thoroughly cheated. To fight with such ferocity only to have the enemy vanish into the earth felt like a slap in the face. If they permitted the vanguard to slip away so easily, it would be an absolute embarrassment to the regiment.
But before the officers could organize a pursuit, a sudden weight settled over the canyon. Every man on the field felt a tightening in his chest, as though an invisible hand had gripped his heart, choking the very breath from his lungs.
A vast, shadow-like canopy was sweeping over the mountain ridges—a dark cloud of winged forms blotting out the winter sun. In that terrifying instant, every soldier realized that the legendary masters of the sky had arrived.
The artillery crews on the ridges panicked, their barrels wavering between the drakes tearing through the valley floor and the airborne swarm descending from the clouds. Both targets presented an immense threat, and their fire could only cover one sector at a time.
"Focus all batteries on the sky!" the regiment commander bellowed, staring in horror at the wyverns circling the peaks. "The beasts on the ground cannot scale these cliffs immediately, but if those flying monsters descend upon our positions, we are finished!"
Within seconds, lines of bright tracer fire zipped skyward, a reverse rain of iron tearing into the clouds to meet Jeanne's wyvern flight head-on.
The agile wyverns managed to weave through the majority of the incoming salvos, but the sheer volume of fire was immense, and several heavy shells found their mark, tearing deep wounds into leathery wings. Jeanne herself was startled by the destructive output of these imperial batteries.
One unfortunate wyvern caught the full force of five consecutive explosive rounds. Unable to sustain such severe trauma, its strength failed, and it plummeted toward the valley floor like a bird with a broken wing.
The sight of the beast falling injected a frantic surge of adrenaline into the defenders. It proved their weapons could harm these mythical creatures; they weren't invincible gods.
"While it pains me to dampen your newfound confidence, a barrage of this caliber will not alter the outcome of this day," Jeanne murmured, her voice carrying across the wind as she looked up at the high ridges. "Awaken, Fafnir!"
In response to her guardian's call, the young child shook off the human glamour that shrouded her true form.
In the subsequent breath, an overwhelming, suffocating pressure dropped over the entire mountain range, and every soul in the valley looked up to witness a sight of pure, iron-gray despair.
A colossal entity, carrying the terrifying weight of a living Catastrophe, blotted out the sky. Cold, ancient, and entirely detached eyes looked down upon the tiny soldiers below, as though the god of death itself had descended upon the snowfields.