Chapter 107: Luna warriors
Blood painted the snow crimson as the battle erupted across the vast courtyard. The pristine white ground disappeared beneath churning mud, gore, and the trampling of hundreds of feet as Luna’s forces collided with the combined armies of Moonlight and Thornvale.
A Thornvale warrior screamed as three black-robed attackers overwhelmed her, their blades finding gaps in her armor with practiced precision. The first knife punctured her throat, silencing her cry to a wet gurgle. The second weapon slid between her ribs, twisting savagely to rupture her lung. The third plunged into her groin, severing the femoral artery. She collapsed to her knees in the bloodstained snow, eyes wide with the shock of her own mortality as her lifeblood pumped out in rhythmic spurts.
Queen Elena didn’t hesitate. The ground beneath her feet trembled in response to her rage, then erupted upward. Spears of stone shot through the snow, impaling two of the assassins where they stood. The first took a spike through her jaw, the jagged point erupting from the top of her skull in a fountain of brain matter and bone fragments. The second caught a stone lance through her abdomen, the force lifting her off her feet as her intestines slid down the blood-slicked projection.
"For Thornvale!" Elena roared, mud and snow spraying from her boots as she charged forward. Her earth-blade manifested in her grip, its edge crystalline and deadly. A black-robed warrior moved to intercept her, sword raised defensively. Elena didn’t slow—she ducked the sweeping blade and drove her shoulder into her opponent’s midsection. As the warrior doubled over, Elena’s earth-blade slashed upward, splitting her from groin to sternum. Steaming entrails spilled into the snow, the warrior’s hands scrambling uselessly to gather them back as she collapsed.
Twenty paces away, Queen Elysia commanded the very air itself. Her arms swept in elegant arcs, generating cutting winds that sliced through enemy ranks with surgical precision. Three warriors charging her position suddenly staggered, blood erupting from their necks as invisible air-blades severed their arteries. They dropped to the ground, fingers clawing at their own throats as they drowned in their blood, eyes bulging with panic.
A fourth attacker leapt at Elysia from behind, blade aimed at the queen’s exposed back. Without turning, Elysia clenched her fist. The air in the attacker’s lungs compressed violently, then expanded. Her chest cavity burst outward, ribs splintering through skin and armor in a grotesque display as her lungs ruptured. She hit the snow face-first, twitching as death claimed her.
"Protect the flanks!" Elysia commanded, her voice carrying over the din of battle despite its calm tone. She gestured sharply, and gusts of wind solidified into near-visible barriers, deflecting a volley of arrows aimed at her forces. One projectile slipped through, burying itself in a water-wielder’s eye socket. The warrior dropped without a sound, her body convulsing briefly before going still.
The battle spread across the courtyard like a living entity, pockets of intense violence erupting wherever the opposing forces met. A Moonlight warrior found herself surrounded by five attackers. Rather than retreat, she extended both hands outward, water drawn from the snow itself forming into razor-sharp discs that spun with increasing speed. She released them in a circular pattern, the water-discs slicing through armor, flesh and bone. One attacker lost her arm at the elbow, the limb spinning away as arterial spray painted a crimson arc across the white ground. Another’s face disappeared entirely, the water-disc taking everything from the jaw upward.
Three earth-wielders worked in coordinated attack, using their combined power to create a rippling wave through the frozen ground. The wave lifted, carrying snow, rock and soil forward like a miniature avalanche. As it crashed into a group of black-robed warriors, the earth-wielders clenched their fists simultaneously. The ground beneath the enemy liquefied momentarily, then hardened again with lightning speed. Twenty warriors were caught mid-movement, their legs and lower bodies entombed in suddenly solid earth. Their screams pierced the air as the three earth-wielders advanced methodically, executing each immobilized victim with quick, efficient blade-strokes across exposed throats.