The Grand Catastrophe

…

You know, if one were to ask Neia what she thought of tonight, she would say that it’s quite an abnormal night. After all, if someone told her a week ago that she was supposed to be in the same room as Lady Calvaria and Paladin Remedios Custodio, she would have brushed them off. Now, as she stood in the same room as them, and watched as Remedios simply glared at the other woman, while she herself looked confused, she couldn't help but be exasperated.

“I was wondering, what you do about the tracks in front of the cave?” Calvaria asked, and the paladin flinched at the realization.

“We haven’t really fixed that problem. Though, we haven’t really had to remove the tracks out front since the whole start of this war,” Queen Calca said, and Calvaria tilted her head.

“Forgive me for sounding a tad unsavory for this comparison. If you had an infestation of some kind, like rats, would you kill them all as you see them? No you would not. You would track them back home, or look for where they are, and smash them all as they all come home. Those tracks, and the light from the cave mouth, simply are indicators of such a thing,” the Champion said.

Calca wilted a tad bit, and Calvaria just seemed more put off by the way her own words affected the woman. Kelart then started the conversation again. Her tone clear. The discussion continued on from where it had been.

“Now that we know that, we can continue on to what we were going to do. We don’t need this cave anymore. In fact, we’ve scouted out a city that’s been under siege for the longest time, and has been set to survive even longer,” she said, and gestured to the map her hands lay on.

…

Shizu looked at the object of her thoughts, Neia Baraja. The girl was what one could call sharp looking. Her hair was short, her eyes were angled but cute looking, and the girl had better senses than even some demi-humans adapted to such things. She was cute, at least to Shizu herself.

Shizu didn’t really know what to think. The other girl had only been sent here to show them around before they slew the demoness , or at least from their perspective. Shizu was the kind of person to notice things before many others, and hit home with a kind of honestness that made one blink. She was a bit Autistic in that way, though not truly.

Neia, meanwhile, saw things that no one else saw, and simply didn’t speak about it until she was asked. It was a strange thing to the little Automaton. She was rather friendly as well. In the end, she really wanted Neia in a way that wasn’t truly romantic or sexual, like how her maker had explained it.

Did she just want to be her friend? That might be it. After all, her master had told her all the time about the other supreme ones. This might be it.

“What’s the battle plan?” was all she asked as she wasn’t in on the strategy meeting.

“Oh, it’s nothing special. We sent over a messenger to make sure the city was fine. Now, after getting the OK back, we’re counter sieging their siege,” Neia explained as the 3rd tier angels stormed the demi-human soldiers that swarmed the outside of the walls.

Neia’s own team only had about a hundred or so men, but some of them, those that had become priests. So in the end, they could summon many more warriors if need be. It was actually somewhat shocking how well they managed to dive in and disrupt the outside and inner part of the army that crowded around the outer part of the wall.

The army itself was many numbered, about 1,450 if she was counting them right. With only the numbers that they have here, they will fail. Or they may not, after all, her Lady may yet take to the fight if she feels like it. Shizu isn’t truly sure. She knows that she can never understand Lady Momonga. She was made to understand and remember things. One of the very few things that she can’t ever truly understand in full, is Her Goddess.

“Shizu,” Calvaria calls out, “what do you make of the strategy?” she asked.

“They will fail. Their center is strong with the paladin captain, the head priestess, and the Holy Queen. They leave their sides exposed. If they had the cavalry take the sides and peel off in skirmisher attacks, then they would win. If they lead a frontal attack, then they get boxed in and die,” then she blinked as Neia looked at her with trepidation.

“Should we go and help them?” Neia started, “if they fail, we all fail,” she concludes, and her Lady laughs lightly.

“They are going for their king. The only reason the entire army holds, is by his word and the strength that backs it up. If they kill him, then the army scatters, and they flee,” she intones, and Shizu and Neia look down at the fighting.

It is true. There, in the center of the fighting, Remedios is fighting some massive goat man. From what she recalls, he is called a Bafolk. They are bipedal goat people. They can scale walls, which would explain why the fighting was so difficult.

Though, it also appeared as though the people of the city had figured out how to make them stop. With little outcroppings that held magic ornaments bolted to them on the outsides of the walls. These devices sent out different lightning magic and made the environment impossible to pass through.

“The walls,” she simply said, and the others looked up at the walls.

Calvaria nodded her head in understanding, and muttered some things under her breath, and Neia moved on from them, and started reaching for her bow as she watched the paladin Captain fight. A little nervous tick went through Shizu. She didn’t want to see Neia hurt. She blinked in realization.

“Are we fighting?” she asked instead as she reached for her gun slung over her back.

“If it comes to it, and the Bafolk manage to push up here,” her Goddess said instead.

She watched, in a coldish type of curiosity, as Remedios charged in with a thrust, and speared the massive Bafolk king in the chest as his armor crumpled under the blow. Or, that was what would happen if he didn't dodge at the last second.

She was knocked back. It took a second for her to right herself, but she would get that chance, as Neia knocked an arrow, no one stopped her, and loosed an arrow through the air. The bow itself, enchanted with anti-anti-projectile enchants, passed through his head and out the back.

Neia blinked at what she had done, the realization hitting a bit slowly. Shizu herself looked from the now corpse, to her friend, and spoke. Her tone was flat as always, but she did smile a little at the lovely blush on her face.

“That was cool Neia, you’re cute when you’re cool,” she said truthfully.

…