Upheaval

— Hard.

Merea was orbiting the dragons at high speed, jabbing white-lightning checks into them on every move-start, and noticing, with each strike, just how solid the scales were.

— Have to hit much harder.

The dragons, attention split toward Elma's column running east, were moving in a half-committed way. Whether the indecision belonged to the dragons themselves or to the dragoons issuing orders, Merea couldn't yet tell.

That state was, for him, half-good and half-bad.

— Look this way.

Ideally he wanted to finish the dragons here. But if he showed an opening, two of them might break loose as decoys for the third — and a third running freely toward the column was the catastrophe he could not allow.

Not even one slipping past.

— Come on. Eyes here.

He was waiting for one specific window.

His read was: when all three dragons turned full-attention onto him, the moment they decided deal with this fly first — that decision would briefly cancel the use the others as decoys option in their heads.

In the seconds that opened up there —

— I land it.

"You annoying little—!"

— a voice from inside one of the dragoons' helms reached him. Muffled by the full-face black plate but plainly furious.

— Almost.

He kept skimming as obnoxiously close as he could and waited.

— Come on.

Then: after another head-strike from him — the dragon to the right of the struck one turned its eyes onto him.

Not on Elma's column. On him.

— There.

A low boom in the air a moment later. A red-black trunk whipped in from the right edge of his vision — at a velocity that ripped the air around it.

The dragon's tail.

Merea was airborne.

"Buzzing in my face this whole time—! If you want to die so badly, die first!"

The right dragon's dragoon, snapping to anger, shouted it as the tail closed to within a couple of metres of him.

— Drop.

Merea moved. Less flapping than detonation — a burst of wind off his back and the body kicked downward.

The death-scythe of the dragon's tail passed just over him. He didn't watch it. Already mid-descent he was scanning the other two dragons —

— There.

The dragoons had — Merea had not missed it — been tapping the napes of their dragons in unmistakable hand-signals.

In the next beat, as if cued — the eyes of all three dragons fixed on him.

He had been waiting for that.

He moved without any hesitation. From the dive he tuned the landing-point with small flicks of his wind-wings; from the flitting fly mode he switched, in one motion, into a clean straight line and put down at the foot of one dragon.

At the same time —

"Spell-formula deploying—"

He took an unfamiliar stance.

— Left-side draw.

The body angle of someone about to draw a sword from a sheath at his left hip.

He carried no weapon. For a moment, anyone watching might have seen a sheath there.

He held the pre-draw stance, one beat. The wings of wind faded; the white lightning faded.

Then —

"〈The Resplendent Sword of the Water God (Seura Euras)〉."

— something else.

In the right hand at his left hip, a long sword of shimmering blue manifested.

Single-edged, slim, three of his bodies in length — long-bladed, with small luminous bubbles drifting inside the body of the blade.

A water-sword, wrapped in a soft blue light.

Then —

"First strike—"

— in the smallest unit of time, swung.

A draw-cut — iai. Blue light danced through the space; an after-image traced the line of the cut.

The blue passed through the dragon's leg.

"—"

A scream.

A dragon's leg — opened on a cut of unsettlingly clean geometry — fell.

The huge body, robbed of one support, tipped sideways.

Merea didn't stop. Before the falling dragon hit ground, he was already sprinting toward the second.

The dragoons hadn't even processed what had happened. But the second dragon — sensing through the bond that its companion had been wounded somehow, sensing that the source of that wound was now closing on it — had picked it up.

Natural enemy.

The animal in the dragon read Merea, on instinct, exactly that way.

---

He resummoned the blade as he ran.

Mid-sprint he saw the second dragon throwing its right foreleg and tail, trying to keep him from getting under its body.

A sweep.

He slipped the sweep with margin so fine it could be called graceful — and on the pass —

"Second strike—"

— he swung.

A second dragon's scream.

A small crack in his head — he ignored it and kept moving.

The third dragon was still standing.

When he turned to it, the third — and the dragoon on it — had read the situation. They had broken eye contact with him and were turning to run toward Elma's column.

Merea's run-start and the dragon's prepare-to-leap lowered stance happened at almost the same instant.

— Not letting you—!

Merea understood that bare-flesh sprint wasn't going to catch a leaping land dragon.

He cut off the third sword-summon mid-call and switched his formula.

A clap.

Not for show. White lightning came up.

A second clap. Wind-wings.

He layered the fastest combined formula in his repertoire onto his body and kicked off.

---

In short order, Merea bisected two of the three dragons' legs and, with that, neutralised their mobility entirely. Land-dragon scales — said to be near-impossible for an ordinary edge to scratch — yielded under those two cuts as if to butter.

Even in describing what he had done, the sentence read as a joke. Merea was, even then, not satisfied.

That whole sequence had, however, made one weakness of his clearly visible.

Anyone with a sharp enough read would have caught it.

Even if you saw it, the reflex would be what could anyone do about that? — but for one specific man, that was not the case.

That man was, at this moment, still far from the engagement. Tens of minutes by the fastest horse, possibly.

But he was, certainly, getting closer to the engagement.

As if the smell of a battlefield were drawing him in. At a speed not yet possible to credit.

— He hadn't yet come into view.

---

Aiz, clinging to Elma's back, had pushed her normal sight entirely out of consciousness.

What was running in her mind was the bird's-eye-view of the 〈Magic Eyes of the Heavenly Demon〉.

"Right…!"

"Next?!"

"Now diagonally left! Cut through!"

Where they were was hell.

Enemy on every side.

The line had collided with the cavalry.

If Aiz had been using ordinary sight, she would have frozen. The horses — friendly and enemy both — were that close to each other.

The contact had favoured the column initially. The Mūzeg unit that had used acceleration-spells to close had a small fold in its formation right at the head. Mūzeg, however, had clearly known that closing in would mean a slightly broken formation and pressed in regardless, killing-intent on, spears braced.

The Demon Lords met it head-on.

The formula-wielders among them clustered toward the cavalry-attack vector, lifting layered formula like a wall and pushing the cavalry back. Mūzeg's numbers were many times the column's; even so, the Demon Lords held.

Not a single unified spell-corps; but a band of high-tier individual practitioners, packed dense, pouring layered formula at point-blank — that was, at minimum, enough to break the first charge.

The cavalry-waves kept coming. The column kept moving forward.

The pressure-point was the head of the column.

Elma's position.

Not full melee, but Mūzeg cavalry was getting in front of her too. The Demon Lord party moved as a prow through the line; whoever ran at the prow had to cut the way open.

That role wasn't on the formula-walls at the flanks. It was Elma.

"— !"

Watching the prow through the Heavenly Demon's eyes —

— Astonishing.

Aiz couldn't help taking it in.

The 〈Sword Emperor〉 Elma's mounted combat was of another order. The 〈Demonic Sword Krishra〉 in motion — cutting precisely the necessary enemies and only those. Spears were long-reach weapons; she took none of it.

The blade-pressure was such that the space itself read as cut. Spear-shafts coming at her got knocked aside without exception.

And — she was protecting Aiz on top of it.

"If you don't want to be rust on this blade — get out of the way!"

A war-god's bellow. Coercion and rally in one voice.

From behind, Salman's voice and the others' carried in.

"Just a little—!"

Aiz, in the bird's-eye, confirmed the rest of the column was still intact.

Salman, leaning out from his saddle, was driving fists wrapped in strange purple particles into Mūzeg cavalrymen. Marisa, with acrobatic motion, was slipping short blades into the gaps in Mūzeg armour.

Aiz had known the two were not ordinary. Seeing it in motion at point-blank still left an impression.

What was contributing more quietly than expected: Zaido's horses. Swift and trained for war. They had spooked at the dragons earlier, but hadn't run; on the field they didn't flinch. They were, in fact, body-checking enemy horses. Showing the brute version of the strength their riders showed elsewhere.

Some of them had taken wounds. But they hadn't dropped. If a horse drops, the rider dies. They seemed to grasp it. A near-visible aura of resolve was on them as they tried, with their riders, to break the line.

"Just a little more…!"

She felt the breakthrough getting close. Ten more seconds and the horses make it through.

— Yes.

But —

A moment of attention-slip.

Aiz, eyes fatigued from sustaining the Heavenly Demon's vision, blinked once. Through the entire run she hadn't blinked, on willpower alone; the body insisted.

The blink itself was not the cause of what came next.

But when she opened her eyes and reactivated the bird's-eye, the curtain on a tragedy was already up.

"Eh—"

In her field of view, separated from the column, surrounded by Mūzeg infantry on every side —

— Salman.

Behind her, screams.

"Wait! Sa-al!" "Big brother!!"

The twins.

She placed it.

The twins were on a horse. Salman wasn't.

The unusually large horse the three of them had been sharing was still under the twins. They were still on it, still throwing formulae. Salman wasn't on it any more.

He had, almost certainly, gotten off on purpose.

If he had simply fallen, the twins would have gone with him. The horse the twins were on showed only minor wounds; the twins were unharmed.

Which meant —

— Same as Merea-kun…!

— he had used himself as bait.

---

"— I've gone and done it. Acted unlike myself, even."

Salman was surrounded by Mūzeg infantry.

Purple particles, smoke-like, were rising off both fists. He was projecting do not approach as hard as he could. Even Salman didn't think he was getting out of this alone.

By that bluff alone, he had so far kept the spears at a hover. Frankly — he was a little surprised the bluff was working at all.

"Aaah… is this — the 〈Magic Fists〉? Ah. Right. Lineage-bound Demon Lord power tends to be hard to extract — the kind that's tied to the body. So Mūzeg wants the magic fists, but you don't actually know how to get them out of me, do you."

He didn't know whether the read was right. Saying it aloud, however, sent a small stiffening through the surrounding infantry. He'd evidently hit something close.

"Friendly tip. If you mishandle the extraction, the magic fists lose efficacy."

His life was, by any honest count, in the wind.

Even so — the abstract bluff was buying time. As long as a body of the cavalry was fixated on him, the other side — the column — was that much lighter.

— I'll claw at this all the way to the end.

A real resolve coming off the body.

"— If you actually want my magic fists, get a compatible user."

A wry little smile, a shrug.

"Hah. If they don't work, fine. Better than letting you go."

A black-armoured officer stepped out of the line. Distorted-by-helm voice with a thread of mockery in it. The spear-tip he levelled at Salman, however, was held by hands that gave nothing — a competent operator. He mocked but didn't underestimate.

Salman read the level, sighed.

"That so. — Then the word for what you do is hunting, after all. The Three Kingdoms — who came over with their heads down and asked please lend us your strength — were better."

"And in the doing, the Three Kingdoms still let Demon Lords die. — No difference. Dead is dead."

"No. That's wrong. You're only looking at the result. From us Demon Lords' side — the process matters. Difference is the word for what's there. — You wouldn't get it, on that side."

Even as he shrugged it off, the heat in him was rising. The next words came up under that pressure.

"Don't be so confident that result and rationality explain everything."

"Hah. I don't get you, no. — And I don't need to. The relation between us and you isn't going to flip."

"Arrogance. Nothing is permanent."

And I'd flip it myself, if I had the chance, he wanted to say.

He couldn't. Probably he was going to die here. The thought caught the line before it left him.

"…Hh. Was a time I wouldn't have stopped there. I've gone soft on the edges. — Well. In that case—"

He saw, in his head, the figure of one specific man. The line he couldn't carry; the wish behind the line — perhaps that man could carry it for him.

— Asking him for one more thing, even at the end. — Sorry, Merea. The pile on your shoulders just got heavier.

A last selfishness. He wanted to leave the line in the world somehow. He himself couldn't promise to change it.

"It might not be — bad — for our master to change it for us."

He looked up at the sky.

He couldn't see Merea past the surrounding bodies. Couldn't see Elma's column. Couldn't see the twins. He chose not to look at the Mūzeg faces around him. The sky.

— Then —

"Right. Die. — If His Highness Serius had got here in time, I'd have left you alive. He hasn't."

"Come on. Wait a beat. He'll be here in another minute."

"Stalling's done, Demon Lord."

"Don't call me that. Hearing that word out of your mouth makes me furious.

"The only mouths allowed to call me that — are the others' on my side—!!"

A final furious shout. A war-cry from someone who had accepted the next moment.

He stepped forward. Of his own volition. Toward a wall of spears.

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