~Chapter 177~ Part 3
"Literally?"
Judy's stumped question made the tension deflate a tad. It also made me want to facepalm, but that would've interrupted the mana-circulation, so I only balled up my fist and responded as calmly as I could.
"How could that even be metaphorical?!"
The lag in the communications wasn't getting any better, and it took her a while to let out a hum and tap her party glasses.
"Eagle's Nest to Eurasian Kestrel. We have reports of golems in the sewers, over."
Since she was talking to Josh, I Far Glanced at the battlefield down in the square, and I couldn't help but wonder what the point of that was when said golems were already digging their way out of the pavement.
"Chief? Eurasian Kestrel is asking how many are there?"
"Is that Josh?" That was a pointless question, so I quickly amended my response, "Six or seven. I didn't have the time to count them, but that's just the tip of the iceberg!"
"Six or seven, and also an iceberg," Judy relayed my words, only to catch herself and flatly add, "Strike out the last bit, Eurasian Kestrel. That one was metaphorical. Eagle's Nest, out."
While she was briefing the group, I continued to rapidly switch my point of view around. Using a combination of magic and brute force, the golems broke through to the surface, and right behind them, I could see an assortment of familiar muscle-magi joining the fray. Their brawny upper bodies were only covered in black tank tops at most, while others opted to go entirely shirtless, yet for some reason, all of them wore short white capes, cowls, and cloth face masks that not only hid their identities but also gave them a rather striking silhouette. Surrounded by floating debris crackling with eldritch energies in the aftermath of whatever spell they used to bore the yawning hole, their entrance was surprisingly dramatic.
"For Restoration!"
Their war-cry, on the other hand, was pretty lame, so things balanced out. There were about a dozen of them, and as they advanced past the comparatively lumbering golems, the magi in the square rallied at once. While they were pressed hard by Josh and the others, as soon as the tide turned in their favour, they raised their staves, wands, and other assorted casting implements in defiance.
"For Sophia!"
Their battle-cry was a little better, though considering that said 'Sophia' was just a different name for the ancient Celestial AI inside the class rep's head, their enthusiasm was still a bit misplaced. But speaking of her, the sudden appearance of the reinforcements forced Josh, Elly, and Zihao to fall back towards the café where Ammy was taking shelter along with Michael and Angie, and despite the dire situation, she didn't seem particularly panicked. If anything…
"Can I start casting spells now?"
"Honey-bunch, please. I understand you're impatient, but wait for the signal," Mike chided her while holding her hand.
"You guys are cute, but I could really use some help here!" Angie called out from the front, and as soon as she turned around, a stray magic missile flew past their heads and hit the coffee press in the back of the establishment. "Ah, that's not good!"
The Celestial girl started frantically humming again, and the broken windows were covered in a wavering, semi-transparent film that deflected the thin yellow magical beam attack coming their way.
"I-I'm here! I'll help!" Mike dashed over and slid to a halt next to Angie, and the two of them began to sing in tandem, reinforcing the makeshift ward protecting the insides of the café against magical projectiles, which… actually made me pause.
I didn't have the time to think it through before, but back in Ottawa, the muscle-mages were the only offensive combatants we ran into, so where did all of these spell-slingers come from? Or rather, 'were coming from', as more and more magi emerged from the sewers through the hole in the pavement. The golems were also starting to move in earnest, but…
"Haha! Like, come and get some!"
Just as I was starting to get worried, Sahi burst into the scene. She was flying (or at the very least leaping) through the air, fist raised high before she decked the nearest golem in its head-equivalent with a haymaker punch. Of course, the one doing the clobbering wasn't her, but one of the transparent magical hand constructs mimicking her actions.
The golem staggered back, but didn't fall, and this intermezzo also drew the attention of the spell-slinging mages. In the blink of an eye, she was suddenly in the crossfire of a smorgasbord of mystical projectiles. Wind blades from the left, fire bolt from the right, and there was even a strangely pink lightning bolt thrown into the mix.
She wasn't alone though, and before any of them could reach her, Pascal burst into the scene with a collection of individually controlled hexagonal barrier plates. They looked like a smaller version of the spell used by Lord Gulliver, but before I could take a closer look, the flash of magic impacting on magic forced me to avert my eyes, just in time to catch Elly literally picking up one of the muscle magi and throwing him against a group of ranged spellcasters.
She was immediately beset by two golems after that, forcing her to retreat and regroup with Josh and Zihao, who were also being pushed back towards the café where Ammy and company were hiding.
That didn't look good, but I couldn't help but have this nagging feeling that something was off. Following my gut, I returned to Judy's side.
"Chief, are you still here?"
Either my timing was great, or she kept asking that while I was away. In either case, I hurriedly told her, "Yes, I'm here. I just checked on the others."
Five or so seconds later, my girlfriend let out a soft breath.
"Good. The golems weren't part of the plan, but it's not the end of the world. Have you found anything else?"
"No, I haven't, but whatever your plan is, you should tell the guys to stop holding back."
"Not yet," came the belated answer.
Ha! I knew it! The reason this whole situation felt off was because Josh and the others weren't going all out. Except maybe for Zihao, considering he blew up the fountain and everything, but the rest were definitely pulling their punches and fighting rather conservatively.
"Are you waiting for the Ordo Draconis and the Praetorian Guards to break up the fight?"
"I see you've been keeping tabs on us," Judy noted a tad grumpily and glared to her left. I wasn't there, but it was certainly meant for me all the same. "You should've contacted us earlier."
"I would've, if I could, but that's not important. Listen, I'm not one hundred percent up to date with your plan, but those muscle mages are bad news. Either take them down ASAP, or avoid them at all costs."
"Don't worry, Chief. Draconians are inherently resistant to getting their Astral Bodies affected by outside forces, so they should be able to handle them."
"Was that also part of the plan…? Never mind. Listen, you've seen what getting hit by those guys did to Ambrose. We're in the finale; we can't have any of our main characters end up bedridden for the final stretch!"
Judy eventually nodded along and put a hand on the frame of her glasses again.
"Fine. I'll tell them to focus on the Magi from the Ottawa School of Restoration and be careful, and—"
Before she could finish what she was saying, there was a sudden flash of light down in the square, and my dear assistant focused all her attention there.
"Eagle's Nest to Birds of Prey. Stay alert. The Sparrows flew in earlier than expected. I repeat, the Sparrows are here already. Eagle's Nest, over."
"Sparrows? What the heck are…?"
My words trailed off when I inspected the battlefield and noticed a bunch of small, oval portals hovering mid-air over the ruined fountain. From those emerged dozens upon dozens of winged soldiers wearing the familiar hoplite-adjacent gear of the Celestial military.
Eminently stumped by this development, I shifted my Far Sight over to take a closer look, just in time to hear the helmeted man in the lead roaring, "True Sons and Daughters of Elysium! We must aid Deus, hallowed be his name, in his true resurrection today! Show no mercy to these fools and their false idol!"
"Betrayal!" A magi boomed back from the ground and levelled his staff at the Celestials emerging from their portals. "We expected nothing less for your wretched kind! Magi of the Assembly, attack!"
For the next minute or so, I couldn't help but gawk at the rapidly developing Mêlée à Trois between the Celestials, the Magi, and our group trying their best to navigate the mess. It was only when I saw Josh tank a hit from one of the golems and then yell, "Hold tight! It isn't time yet!" that I was jolted out of my stupor, and I returned my point of view to Judy's side.
"Dormouse? Care to explain what the hell is going on down there?"
"I'd love to, but this is a crucial part of the operation and I must focus." She paused for a second and suddenly barked, "European Honey Buzzard, this is Eagle's Nest. A golem is approaching the Secretary Bird from the west. Intercept it, and then continue to reduce the effective combat power of the Hamsters by twenty percent, over." She cut the connection with a grunt and glanced to the side as he said, "I can't pay attention to two things at once. Penelope, Neige? Can you explain the plan to the Chief?"
"W-Wait! Brother can hear us?" Penny exclaimed in shock, while Snowy only nodded and glanced around.
"Um… Should we talk to your artifact?"
"No, the Chief can understand you if you just…"
"Tell them to talk in the direction of that chimney over there," I chimed in, and after the obligatory lag, Judy let out another soft hum.
"If you speak in that direction, then he can hear you."
"Really?" My knightly sister immediately turned towards the nearest chimney, where my point of view was hovering, and words started gushing from her like a river. "Brother! Are you all right? Are you eating well? Did you really get captured on purpose? You shouldn't have scared us like that! Did you at least get in a good hit on that Bel bastard? When are you coming back? And…"
"Penny…" Snowy put a hand on her shoulder and shook her a bit. "Leo can hear us, but he can't answer."
"Ah… R-Right. So…" She glanced left and right, and then by complete coincidence, she looked right at my disembodied POV. "Are we… supposed to explain the plan?"
"That's what Judy said, so… um… I think we should start at the beginning." Snowy took a deep breath and also looked in my direction, her lips set in a thin line and her eyes focused on… the air between her and the chimney, I suppose? Anyhow, she began her explanation with, "We came up with the plan together with Sir Percival. It's based on manipulating and exploiting the mutual antipathy between our enemies to draw them into a ploy and allow them to destroy themselves."
"I-I don't get all the small details, but…" Penny showed three fingers and waved them in my direction. "You see, we had arch-mage Marzanna and her people. They reeeally hate Celestials, but some of the other Magi on the island hate them too." She bent a finger and pointed at the second one. "They were unhappy about the truce you arranged with Elysium, but they couldn't speak up because of the teachers… I-I mean, the other arch-mages here, so they've been just scheming in the shadows like knaves!"
"There's also a radical group of Celestials who don't like you," Snowy added on, and Penny repeatedly gestured towards her last extended finger. "Um… I mean, they don't like 'Polemos', and they want to have Deus back in Elysium, and they've also been causing trouble lately."
"And then Uncle Percy gave us a big advice!" My other sister balled up her fists and grinned in my direction. "He said a good plan never just accomplishes one thing, so we put our heads together and came up with this idea!"
She spread her arms to the sides as if presenting the whole scenery, and her act was punctuated by a loud explosion and the façade of one of the buildings by the square crumbling apart. Holy crap, that looked dangerous. My sisters didn't find it alarming and continued with the one-sided conversation without sparing it a single glance.
"Tajana helped us too, and Penny was crucial to discovering Lord Marzanna's plans." Snowy pointed at my (currently quite smug) other sister and told me about her escapades, and their meeting afterwards. Skipping that, we soon reached the meat of the explanation. "Following that, we faked correspondence between the three factions and convinced them that the others were reaching out to them, looking to cooperate."
"Setting up the dissenter magi with that Marzanna woman was the easy part, but getting them involved with the Celestials was trickier," Penny chimed. She crossed her arms and exhaled a shallow sigh. "When Uncle Percy first told me the plan, I thought it would never in a million years work, but it somehow did!"
"He said that Marzanna's hatred for the Celestials makes her predictable, so we sent her a letter in the name of the Celestial dissidents."
"Sir Arpachshad wrote it," Penny noted on the side, with Snowy nodding along.
"Marzanna would normally never work with them, but we fed them information to make her believe that she could take advantage of them and then discard them and have them take the blame. We did the same with those Celestials as well."
"Originally, we also wanted to bait some of the Draconian families who were against the formation of the Draconic Federation into the conflict, and hit four birds with one stone… but we didn't have the time to get them involved."
Penny sounded rather crestfallen about that, while my Abyssal sister remained professional. As for me, I was mostly just flabbergasted by the scale of this whole thing.
"So, to summarize, we tricked the Magi in the School sympathizing with Lord Marzanna to show their teeth, we tricked Lord Marzanna into believing that she could take advantage of the desperate Celestials and then stab them in the back later, while at the same time we tricked the Celestials into believing that they could exploit the desperate Magi and then stab them in the back instead."
"But that's not all!" Penny exclaimed with glee, practically hopping in place. "There's still the last part! You see, we need that Marzanna woman to show up in person, so that she can incriminate herself! Uncle Percy said the easiest way to do that is by preparing a stalemate like this! If it looked like the Celestials had the advantage, she would cut her losses, and if it looked like the Magi had the advantage, she would have no reason to appear, but if things got dragged out, she would inevitably get impatient and show herself to tip the scale!"
"Of course, we didn't expect the golems, b-but Judy said it's fine, so… it should be fine?" That last bit didn't sound too convincing, and it was followed up by a long and strained silence that only popped when Snowy turned to my girlfriend at the edge of the roof. "Did… Leo hear everything?"
"Please tell them I did, and that I'm not happy that you're just straight up following Percival's lead like that."
A few seconds later, Judy turned to the girls and flatly stated, "He says he heard you loud and clear, and that he's very impressed and proud of you."
"Really?"
Penny's face lit up, Snowy became bashful, and as for me, I could feel the corner of my eye twitch.
"That wasn't what I said, but…" A soft grunt escaped my lips, and I chose to pick my battles wisely. "Never mind. If I get this right, your plan is to pull Marzanna into the open, and then what?"
Instead of answering, Judy kept focusing on the chaotic battle on the ground. When she remained silent, I was almost starting to be worried that the connection was cut again, but then she stated, "Don't worry, Chief. We've got this," before tapping on her artifact again and shifting into a more professional tone. "Eagle's Nest to the Birds of Prey. The Moose is on the way. I repeat, the Moose entered the operation zone. ETA is ten seconds. Prepare for impact, over."
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that 'Moose' in this case wasn't referring to our metalhead Celestial Hub moderator, but by then, the question became moot when a blinding flash erupted from the center of the square and a familiar old lady shifted into the Purple Zone, holding her staff high over her head.
"I'll take a closer look. I'll be right back," I told Judy as I shifted my point of view over, just in time to catch Marzanna shooting a Celestial right out of the sky.
The man plummeted to the ground like a sack of potatoes, but while he fell from something like four storeys high, he groggily got back to his feet… only to be then backhanded by a passing golem. And yet, despite all that, he was still on one piece. I was glad to see that a certain Abyssal noble's death didn't suddenly make every battle visceral and gory, but damn, that should've killed a person three times over. Yay for innate Barriers, I suppose?
Meanwhile, the dishevelled arch-mage twirled her staff over her head and roared, "Ignore the wretched Elysian scum! Secure the girl and get back in the tunnels!"
Oh? So the reinforcements from the Ottawa school didn't just pop out of the sewers for the sake of a dynamic entry, but because it was supposed to be their escape route? Made sense, I supposed. If they entered the sewers in the Purple Zone, and then shifted back to realspace, where the street wasn't gouged out, it would've let them easily get away. Unless someone did the same to follow after them, of course, but I guess they planned to nab Ammy and beat up the Celestial 'reinforcements', and they weren't expecting a drawn-out battle.
Actually, on second thought, what was the contribution of these 'Celestial dissenters' again? Maybe they were the ones who smuggled the Golems onto the island, I reckoned, but before I could get lost in theorising, Marzanna was forced to retreat a few steps back by the gang, fittingly, ganging up on her. Not all of them; only Josh, Angie, Elly, and, surprisingly enough, Ammy joined the fray.
At a glance, Sahi and Pascal were still hunting golems, while Zihao was locked in battle with a group of muscle-magi. Maybe Judy sent him there, deeming that it wouldn't be that big of a deal if he got hit by one of those disabling Restoration spells, I wondered. As for Mike, he… was still hiding in the café. Figures.
"Imbeciles!" Marzanna boomed and tapped the end of her staff against the ground. "Don't you understand the situation you're in?!" She pointed at Ammy with her free hand. "You, girl! You're Endymonion's granddaughter, aren't you? Come with me, and your foolish companions may yet be spared!"
"Excuse me, lady, but you're the one who doesn't seem to grasp the situation yet," Josh responded first, and with an unusually cocky grin plastered on his face. He tapped the flat of his sword against his shield and declared, "We've got you right where we want you!"
"Such insolence!" Marzanna pointed her staff at the group and bellowed, "Do you not understand who you're facing right now?!"
"Do you?" Josh asked back, still sounding just a tad overconfident, but then he blinked at glanced over his shoulder. "Hey, Ammy? Judy says the cavalry's on the way. We can go all out now."
"Finally!"
As giddy as I'd ever heard her, the class rep's face lit up with glee, and she clapped her hands in front of her chest. The golden eye symbol on her forehead sprang to life at once, and with a flash of brilliant light, it disintegrated her clothes. It was the world's shortest magical girl transformation, because a blink of an eye later, Ammy was standing there in the same pose, except this time wearing a billowing green robe and a fancy wizard hat with a huge brim. Which, in retrospect, explained why she wasn't wearing her Magiformer.
Mana surged around them, and the combatants on the square retreated away from the epicenter. Some did so calmly. Others ran like they were chased by the devil. I didn't know if it was some mystical pressure, instinct, or some mild narrative influence at play, but the result was the same: with the small fry out of the way, nothing was stopping the gang from challenging the arch-mage in a straightforward battle. There was only one question remaining…
"… Goddammit. How come my plans never go this smoothly?"