Attack

Not for the first time, she found herself hating every aspect of this situation. Maybe her father more so because of his hand in placing her in it.

Who in the Gods' name ever thought this was a good idea? I am not a general. I am an herbalist.

Also thoughts she'd had more than once.

Save for the tiny little town down the slope, all was dark, so much so that if Katonah hadn't had her hand pressed against the rough bark of a nearby tree, she wouldn't have been able to tell which way was up and which was down. It had rained earlier in the day, and cold fingers of wind had pulled in a thick bank of clouds; they blocked out any stars and reduced the crescent moon to a faint smudge up above.

"Bad omen," Iseabail commented.

Katonah jumped — her large hooped earrings jangled eerily in the silence. "Gods, Old Mother, you scared me," she hissed. "I thought I told you to stay behind and tend to the wounded."

"Don't order me about, young lady. I'll do what I like. You are still my apprentice, you know." A glitter of a smile sparkled down near the ground. Iseabail was a lump of an old woman, her painfully wrinkled and crooked body covered by a massive bear-fur cloak. Outsiders often wondered how such a big attitude could be contained in such a wrinkled old figure, but that was part of the wise woman's charm. She was nearly a hundred years old, but still spoke and acted like someone half that age.

But Katonah couldn't enjoy the Old Mother's spunk tonight. The old woman's war paint reminded her only too clearly of the present situation: across her leathered cheeks was drawn a sharp white point that fanned out into two curved spears across either cheekbone. The same war paint was smudged across Katonah's face: a winged mountain, the Earth Tribe's international symbol that their ancestors felt was reminiscent of the Earth Dragon herself.

It was also a declaration of war, seeing as they were wearing it so brazenly in enemy territory.

Katonah turned back to the slope, gazing down at the town uneasily — it was mostly dark, save for the torches and braziers seated at street corners. "Tonight," she murmured, replying to the old woman's comment, "I wish I was."

"Wish you were what, lass? My apprentice?"

"Yes. How much simpler that would be."

Iseabail sighed. "Life isn't about simple, girl. And in the scheme of things, you should be honored. You're the first woman to lead the Earth Tribe into battle for many moons."

"Huh!" Katonah grunted. "Honored. I'm terrified!"

"You would be unbalanced if you weren't."

Katonah glared down at the holy woman. "You know exactly what I mean, Old Mother, and that isn't it. I'm training to be a holy woman. I have no military experience whatsoever. Asking me to lead the men into battle is akin to asking me to escort them to the abyss."

Iseabail's wrinkled mouth fell into a frown, and she pinched Katonah's arm. "Hush, child," she hissed. "Do you want to frighten the men?"

"They should be frightened! What if I—"

"No buts! No ifs! You've been given a job, lass, so do it and don't complain about it. You may not be trained in these matters, but no one can fault you if you do your best and go into battle with valor." Iseabail rearranged her bear-cloak more tightly around her — it wasn't that cold, but the bones of a woman nearly a century old were sensitive.

"Besides," she said, some of her cheer returning, "you may be riding at the forefront and shouting the orders, but we all know that you are General in name only. Ailig is taking care of most things, in terms of actual military authority."

She was right, but that didn't make Katonah feel any better. If anything, it made her feel like a nuisance. Why had her father sent her here if she really couldn't do anything? For experience, he'd told her. And moral support. Huh!

Thoughts of her father suddenly made her worry. "Any news from Father?" she asked anxiously.

"He's alive," Iseabail reassured her swiftly, "and moving in from the northeast. He's had a streak of good luck: three border towns in three days. And it seems that no one has caught wind of his conquest."

Katonah blinked in amazement. Three towns in three days! "You're certain of this?"

"He wasn't stuttering during the Communion," Iseabail replied with a small smile.

The jest failed in prizing a smile out of Katonah — instead, her mouth parted in awe at her father's feat. Yet she was not at all surprised — the green-haired, hulking beast of a man certainly hadn't been chosen to become laird of the Earth Tribe for his good looks. His strength and courage were the stuff of legends. But at the same time... Katonah shivered a little and pulled her fur piece tighter around her shoulders, suddenly as sensitive as Iseabail to the chill of the air. I fear that his ambition might one day get the better of him.

And ambitious he was. He had to be, to declare war on Nohr.

"Iseabail," Katonah said, "are you...do you think we should be doing this?"

It was a question she'd asked many times before — first to her father, then many, many times to the old holy woman. Tormod had stepped onto the warpath only months ago, but Katonah could still not wrap her mind around the idea of a small clan such as themselves taking the fight to an entire nation, even when Iseabail kept reminding her of the justification of the war:

"They pushed first, lass. Hunting grounds. Bah. They know how much we rely on the moorland caribou, and yet..." She shook her wizened head. "We've lived under the thumb of Nohr for centuries," the wise woman continued after a moment. "It's about time they let us grow up."

(/\)

The delay had been for the moon and for the wounded.

Every member of the Earth Tribe had excellent night vision, but it was usually aided in part by the presence of the moon or stars. But tonight, there was none of either; the cloud cover was thick and, as far as Katonah could tell, stretched from horizon to horizon.

There was nothing left to do about the wounded either. The previous battle, conquest of a border town for food and supplies, had left seventy-five of Katonah's two hundred wounded, with the injuries spanning from minor sprains to stab wounds to even a mild heart attack from one of the tribe's older veteran warriors. It had taken nearly half of the medical supplies to treat all of them, and had nearly doubled the strain on Katonah, as she was a nurse as well as acting general.

Though Katonah would have loved to put off the impending confrontation, using the wounded as an excuse, she knew that she could wait no longer — the sun would soon be rising on the other side of the mountains, and, five hundred miles away, her father was no doubt dismantling another Nohrian border town. They had to strike now, while they still had the darkness hiding their tents and their bands of warriors from the sleepy town nestled down in the hills.

So, after repeating the different emergency escape routes to the assembled soldiers and giving the wounded one last check-up, Katonah gathered seventy of her soldiers around her and they marched for the moorland hilltops. Iseabail kissed her hand and wished her luck before she left, but Katonah barely felt it. Anxiety stiffened her muscles and made her head swim, and she could barely make one foot step in front of the other. Memory of the last battle's chaos and bloodshed made her calves threaten to lock up on her.

Someone squeezed her shoulder: Ailig, the general behind the general. "Don't worry, princess," he said. "This is going to go much more smoothly than the last battle."

Katonah nodded woodenly, hoping that he wouldn't see the rising anxiety in her eyes. They'd taken three towns so far, and it was getting harder and harder, when taking one, to hide her cowardice. Something her father, who despised cravens, may have been trying to shock out of her with the trauma of war.

They reached the hills. The path was steep and muddy from the earlier rain, but none of them minded the cold sludge as they made their way downward — some of them smeared their faces with it, though they needed no further camouflage: their earth-colored hair and dark furs already helped them meld with the surrounding moorland landscape, and the swishing grass hid the sound of their approach.

The town was silent and empty when they finally stepped through the threshold, onto the main thoroughfare. Katonah felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise—like the last two towns she'd conquered, this place felt cold, isolated, and alien. The cobblestones passing underneath her bare feet were freezing, completely devoid of life. The shapes of the buildings were all wrong, sharp and unnatural, and the way they rose around them was disturbing, as if the town was trying to compete with the sky. The scent of heather and moorland faded under smells that Katonah had come to identify as leather, food, and smoke — the latter made her tense, as wildfires were a very serious and terrifying occurrence in Earth Tribe territory.

It was stunning how alien this world was, compared to the humble, simple homes of the Earth Tribe, made of wood and mud, nestled by the natural curves of the moorland and tundra. Katonah couldn't understand why people would build a town like this—one of stone and sharp angles that deliberately cut into the earth, disrespected its natural geography. Didn't they know that it was an affront to the gods?

"Princess Katonah." Ailig's voice brought her out of her brooding. She blinked, drawing his face back into focus. They were crouched in shadow, at the edge of a giant expanse of flat stone rimmed by tall, squarish abodes. One stood out from the rest — it was a massive piece of stonework, with two corrugated trunks of marble seeming to hold up the elegantly sloping roof.

Katonah straightened. "Is that...?"

"I believe it is," Ailig replied. "The home of this town's laird. Just like in the last town."

Katonah felt some of her anxiety slip away. What a relief! They'd had to fight to get to the town's laird last time, which was why fifty of them were still recovering back at camp. Perhaps, if they tread lightly, they could seize this town without having to spill a drop of blood.

"Right," Ailig said. "Scouts?"

Four men in dark furs headed out in completely different directions, investigating the immediate area. They returned a minute later with nothing to report — nothing but a few stray dogs out.

"Okay, let's move," Ailig said. "The Princess and I will take the laird's home. The rest of you guard the entrance."

The front door was locked, but not so for one of the upper windows — the outer screen was down, but when Ailig pushed upward, it gave, sliding noiselessly up to its maximum. Once he was in, three other warriors followed. Katonah came in last, pulled upward by two of them.

She landed in a room, one more uncomfortably large than she was used to. It was filled with an assortment of furniture — chairs to sit in and a table to put things on, though she couldn't imagine why a separate room had been built to house such insignificant things. The floor was soft, carpeted by furs; Katonah had never seen animals with fur so brightly colored, or with such complex patterns. She wondered where the laird had gotten them from.

Ailig put a finger to his lips and then led them forward, through a doorway and into the adjoining corridor. It was narrow, the walls rigid and white — immediately, Katonah began to feel claustrophobic. Three more doorways lined the walls, and as they passed, Ailig opened each, peering inside, looking for their quarry. One contained another room filled with chairs and tables. Another, massive cupboards filled end to end with leafs of parchment folded between leather covers — books. The last held a massive fluffy thing, guarded by iron posts, almost like trees. A bed. Katonah shook her head a little as they crawled past the empty bedroom. Imagine. A separate room for the sleeping area!

There was one last door, sitting at the end of the hallway. This one was firmly shut. But when Ailig tried the knob, it opened easily. Ailig peered inside, then turned back, eyes wide with excitement. Katonah felt her stomach fold in on itself as he nodded and said soundlessly, He's here.

Behind her, the three other warriors drew their weapons: two knives and one short sword. Fumbling a little, Katonah retrieved her own weapon from one of the folds in her fur skirt: a small dagger, a gift from her father before he'd departed for northeastern Nohr, folded neatly in squirrel hide. She unwrapped it and held it as he'd shown her: by the tightly wrapped hilt, tip downward. Ailig scooted backwards for her and nodded: Do the honors.

She wanted to scowl at him, at this stupid formality. As the acting general, it was her obligation to subdue the laird of each town and ask for their surrender. She wished that Ailig would just disobey her father's orders and do it himself. She hated holding blades up to the throats of innocent men.

Straightening, Katonah stepped forward, her knuckles turning white around the dagger. She pushed open the door, and it turned inward with barely a creak. Her first step was met with a protest from the floor, but her second was quiet as the grave: another brightly colored fur carpeted the wood, muffling her footsteps as she slowly eased into the room. Another bedroom, she saw — in the faint candlelight, coming from a large wick on the nearby table, she saw the bed, a fluffy monstrosity that resembled a cloud more than something to sleep on. Its bulk was shrouded in shadows, and the blankets, thick and satiny, were pulled back. Someone was about to go to sleep.

That someone stood a little ways away, beside another table holding a large bucket filled with water. It was a man, a small, thin man, old by the way he hunched and by the way he trembled. Katonah's tongue soured at the thought of grabbing him and putting a knife at his throat, but she swallowed her doubt — the sooner she did it, the sooner she wouldn't have to do any more of it.

Katonah crouched slightly, preparing to sneak closer, when the old man suddenly said, "P-please. Don't hurt me."

Katonah froze. What was this? How had he known she was there? She lost her breath. Had he known she was coming? It couldn't be. An old man that age from the Earth Tribe might have senses that heightened, but from what she'd seen of this war so far, the regular citizenry of Nohr were secure in their addled senses. So how does he—

"Please," the old man said. "Hurry. Hurry before she hurts me!"

She? His words puzzled Katonah. Does he mean me?

"Relax, Mayor Grant." Another voice rose from behind Katonah, and she spun so fast that she nearly lost her balance. "We must allow for an element of theatricality."

Katonah's eyes moved so fast, desperately searching for whoever had spoken, that, for a second, her vision blurred and she couldn't make sense of anything. Then, the shadows began to come into focus, began to make sense, and she saw someone sitting in the far corner of the room, atop one of the tables, legs crossed. It was a woman, a disturbingly voluptuous specimen that Katonah had somehow not seen when she'd entered the room. She was darkly dressed, outfitted in a rigid corset of black plate armor that gave way to a sheer skirt of silk; it dropped neatly over toned legs sheathed in deadly black, heeled boots. But her hair was utterly bizarre in color: a bright orchid mass of waves that spilled down her waist, framing two darkly wicked eyes and a mouth tipped up in an evil sort of smile. In all, if a black widow were ever to choose a human manifestation, then this woman was a prime candidate.

The woman moved, breaking Katonah out of her stunned state — she immediately backed up, but didn't get far before bumping into the wall. The woman placed a hand on her hip, lips pursed.

"Don't run," she said, sounding slightly annoyed. "There's no point in fleeing now, is there? You're here. I'm here. And I'd hate to have to cut that pretty head — in a grungy sort of way — off of your shoulders before we had a proper chance to talk."

Katonah couldn't tell whether or not the woman was joking — the purple-haired witch was still smiling, and there was something of a cold glint in her eye, as if she knew that she actually had the capacity to follow through with her threat. Distract her. Quickly. She was inviting the aforementioned decapitation otherwise.

"I am Katonah, general of the Earth Tribe's armies," she said. Her voice was hoarse — shock at the woman's sudden appearance was to thank for that. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

The woman's eyes lit up and she clapped. "Oh, finally! Xander was right, this venture did pay off! Well, Katonah, on behalf of the royal court of Nohr, it is good to finally meet our worst enemy."

(/\)

If Katonah felt that she was in trouble before, she now had the horrible sense that her very life was at stake. The purple-haired witch's words, joviality aside, made a bolt of horror slide down the Earth Tribe princess's spine — Something's not right. Was she expecting us? Is this a trap?

As if on cue, the woman gave two hard stomps of her feet — her boots seemed to rattle the floorboards, and Katonah felt as though the entire building rumbled beneath her bare feet. Two seconds later, an otherworldly keen shattered the air outside, more piercing than the shriek of a hunting falcon. Katonah flinched, trying to smother the urge to duck and hide.

"W-what...what was that?" she demanded. Fright animated her lips. "What have you done?"

"Oh, that?" The woman pointed up towards the ceiling, smile still in place. "Just my wyvern. Giving the signal."

Signal! It was a trap. Katonah barely had time to register her own horror before a cacophony of noise came thundering from outside — by the sound of it, all hell had broken loose down in the streets. What in the gods' name is going on?

Ailig burst into the room, grabbing Katonah by the shoulder, reeling her backwards. "Princess, we have to get out of here! Now!"

"Sorry," the purple-haired witch said, taking an ominous step forward. "Your window of escape has long since closed, Earth Tribe."

Katonah had not noticed before, but a weapon hung from a belt loop at the woman's side: a hand-axe, the curved blades wickedly sharp. The woman unstrapped the weapon and twirled it expertly over one wrist.

Ailig flung Katonah at the three other tribe warriors. "Go!" he roared, turning fully to face the woman, hand on his short sword. "Get her out of here before—"

He tapered off into a choking gurgle as a red line appeared through his neck, spreading from one end of his throat to the other — a second later, his head toppled to the floor, accompanied by a wash of blood.

Katonah watched his body fall into two pieces, for a moment not comprehending what she was seeing. A horrible pressure built up inside her skull as the truth, as if from far away, worked its way towards her, into full comprehension: he's dead. He just died. Dead when three seconds earlier, he'd been alive, breathing, concerned for her safety.

Now he was gone.

Now she screamed.

The woman smiled behind Ailig's headless body, which collapsed to the floor. She flicked a drop of blood off of her axe and stepped around the corpse. "Who's next?" she asked.

The Earth Tribe warriors took off running, dragging a stunned Katonah between them. Ailig... No... No, no, no, no...

Don't worry, princess. This is going to go much more smoothly than the last battle.

Memories of his kind smile made her want to vomit.

The whizz of the hand-axe woke her up — it sliced above the top of her head before twisting around like a boomerang and returning to its master, who followed them down the hall at a leisurely pace. Wake up! She snapped at herself; she struggled to focus, slapping her cheeks once or twice. Focus! Mourn Ailig later! Get the living out first!

How hard that was to do when she knew that Ailig's body was left in the room at the end of the hall.

They reached the room they'd come in. The window was still open, filtering in the chaotic clamor coming from outside. A warrior swung out and down into the darkness, making sure it was clear, before calling up to Katonah and the others. The second warrior went down, and she followed, struggling to focus on the here-and-now instead of the image of Ailig's body lying in a pool of its own blood back in the hallway.

When her feet hit the pavement, she found that the stone square that had been empty three minutes ago was now swarming with kicking, screaming, slashing, stabbing, bleeding soldiers, fighting like bloodthirsty hounds from the pit. Katonah was horrified to see that many of them, many, many of them, were outfitted in suits of black plate armor, wielding professionally crafted swords and lances. They were hacking and slashing at her warriors, who were virtually outnumbered two to one.

The Nohrian Watch! Katonah covered her mouth in despair, wishing that this was all a horrible dream. Because only in her dreams could her luck be this horribly, painfully bad. After all, who would have thought that this big of a contingent of Nohr's civilian police would be placed in a town this small? And I led my warriors right to them. My tribesmen, my family...I led them straight into the lion's den!

"Princess!" An Earth Tribe warrior leapt in front of her, blocking a slash from a sneaking Nohrian knight that would that run Katonah through. Growling, the warrior flung the knight away and then turned to Katonah, eyes wild, face streaked with blood. "Princess, we have to retreat! We're outnumbered, and too many of us are wounded to pull through!"

"Y-yes." Katonah could barely get the words out she was so terrified. "Y-yes! Retreat. Retreat back to the hills!"

"Retreat!" The Earth Tribe warrior took up her cry. "Retreat! Retreat!"

The Earth Tribe warriors immediately began to disengage from combat, parrying and slipping away from their opponents. But still more fell. Katonah watched in blatant horror as an older warrior was stabbed in the back and born down to the ground. Yet another had his arm severed by a wayward blade — he fell to the ground, shrieking, and a Nohrian wearing a skull-shaped helmet drove his lance through the man's chest.

And then, Katonah was swept up in the tide of fleeing tribe warriors, stumbling and nearly tripping over herself as she struggled to keep her balance. The cobblestone path twisted this way and that, and, for a scary second, the adrenaline and terror stole her sense, and Katonah felt as though she'd be trapped in this unnatural stone place forever, never again to feel the wind twist through her air or feel the earth beneath her feet.

But then, the stone way ended, yielding to the familiar, peaty scent of moorland grass and heather. But then she saw something that stole her rising hope away.

"N-no!" The word came out as a garble cry as she spotted the billowing mass of smoke rising in the distance. Flames danced above the treetops, darkening the already shadowy sky and throwing the agonized silhouettes of burning trees into sharp relief. Her eyes followed the adjoining ridge, where she saw a line of Nohrian knights on horseback calmly making their way up towards the trees. They held tomes, magical books, in their hands, and casually tossed fireballs in between the burning branches, eliciting small explosions and bursts of fire. Katonah could hear fearful screams under the sound of burning woodland.

The camp! The wounded! Iseabail!

"Hurry!" she cried, grabbing on to the nearest warrior and dragging him forward. "We have to help them! We have to—"

A piercing shriek, that of a large predator, sent a bolt of paralysis down her spine — Katonah scanned the sky wildly, looking for a source, and ducked as a massive black beast whipped overhead, its tail streaking behind like a wayward harpoon. Its leathery wings brought it smoothly around, silhouetting its rigid black scales, long neck, and fiendishly sharp fangs against the burning trees behind it. A wyvern! And on its back...

"Oh!" Katonah gasped.

"Yes," the purple-haired witch said with a wicked smile. "Me, darling." The procession of Earth Tribe warriors froze as the woman's black wyvern hovered in front of them.

"What have you done?" Katonah cried.

The woman put her head on one side. "Only what you deserve, sweetie. I'm afraid that Nohr has enough to deal with at the moment without the Earth Tribe butting in to complicate things. You and your pack of savages didn't seem to take kindly to diplomatic means of solving your problems, so the king gave the go-ahead for a little bang-and-burn." She grinned. "It was about time, too. Now be a doll and...surrender!"

She patted her wyvern's neck, and it shrieked down at them, releasing a stream of fire down onto the moorland. Katonah shielded her eyes as the earth around them was blasted with heat and flame — the grass instantly caught, and within seconds they were surrounded by an inferno that seemed to stretch up towards the sky.

"Back!" Katonah shrieked. "Back into the town!"

"Milady, we can't!" a warrior cried. "They're pushing at us from behind!"

What? Katonah squinted through the dust and fire and could just make out a dark line of Nohrian knights coming up the path from the town, shouting war cries as they gained on the vulnerable tribesmen. Cowards! Dishonorable blackguards! Didn't they know how to let an enemy go when they were defeated?

"Princess!" A warrior to her left, a woman, grabbed her arm. Her eyes were murky with fear. "W-what do we do?"

Katonah opened her mouth, but the witch and her wyvern suddenly circled overhead again, the beast blasting fire and smoke down on the tribe warriors. They were forced together in a tight, vulnerable clump, easy targets from any direction. Katonah looked at the approaching Nohrian warriors, at the flames, at the smoke churning in the distance, where their camp was smoldering in the trees. Despair seized her, choking and all-consuming. Tears leaked down her cheeks in two thick streams, and suddenly, she just wanted to collapse and scream. And as the woman and her wyvern passed again, so close that they buffeted the air, she did fall — she collapsed to her knees and bowed her head, utterly defeated.

Earth Dragon, she thought helplessly. She had prayed to their god before, the Matron of the Lost, but never this hard, never this devastatingly, with sure death circling them on all sides. But she did not know what else to do. Ailig was dead, her camp was in flames, the enemy was approaching, and her father, the one person who might have been able to get them out of this mess, was far, far away, oblivious to the catastrophe she'd led them all into.

So she cried out for the Earth Dragon, screamed for her help, her mercy. She screamed with all of her heart for something, anything, that would help her, help her people. 

Help me. Help me, please! I don't know what to do!

The wyvern continued to scream overhead, and all around them, the flames continued to roar. But as Katonah cried out for the help of the Earth Dragon, she suddenly noticed something.

There.

It wasn't a word so much as it was a bolt of intuition, a jarring gut-wrench guiding her attention to something nearby, something unseen. Katonah twisted around, instinctively looking some ways up the hill. She could feel it where she touched the burning ground — in her feet, her hands, her knees, her legs. Something was there, up the hill, buried somewhere beneath the topsoil. Something that would save her and her tribe.

"Here!" Katonah scrambled to her feet and plunged wildly into the inferno. "Here! Up here!"

"Princess, wait!" a warrior shouted. "It's too dangerous! Princess!"

"Follow me!" Katonah shrieked. "It's up here!"

She didn't know if they followed, and didn't wait to find out. Shielding her eyes, she plowed through the fire, following that voice in her head, that heavy-set instinct that had her stomach coiled in a corkscrew. She felt her furs catch fire, smelled smoke from her smoldering hair, felt the agony of slowly spreading burns on her flesh. But she forged on, refusing to stop, refusing to slow down. The wyvern shrieked close by, and she heard the woman shout something down at her, but Katonah didn't listen. She focused on her feet, her two contacts with the earth, and felt strength course through them even as they began to blacken with burns. Almost there, almost there...

The strength increased as she got closer, the burn of power in her legs intensifying until they ached with a deep-set heat and she knew that she had arrived at the spot. She fell to her knees, her entire body screaming with fiery pain, but she pushed it to the back of her mind. In sheer desperation, she fell upon the soil, digging in a wild, heated fervor, looking for something, anything. Earth Dragon, please, you led me here...help me. Help me!

Nothing was there. Nothing but soil, roots, and more soil.

But Katonah didn't despair, because her gut gave another painful wrench, and then she knew exactly what she needed to do. Without hesitating, she plunged her hand into the earth, worming her fingers deep into the soil.

And there it was. She had no idea of what it was, but it was there, cool and soothing, pulsing up her arm, into her body, reverberating to her very core and back. She felt it synchronize with her, felt it speak. It asked her what she wanted. Save my tribe, she told it. Help us! Are you prepared to pay the price? it asked. Yes, she told it. Anything. Anything! Just save them, please!

It asked her to become one with it, and she did, pulling it into her, feeling it heat her core like a horrid chest cold. It turned her veins green, pulled them to the surface of her skin until it looked as though she was interlaced with roots; it made her eyes flash with emerald fire. She screamed as it burned her, burned her body and her soul, and then thrust it back into the earth, returning it to its original domain.

The ground shook violently — the sound was thunderous, like the roar of the Earth Dragon herself. All other noise was drowned out beneath it. Katonah, her entire body aching, her vision blurred, her hearing addled, hugged the ground, wondering what was happening. But then she knew, because a part of her was still fused with it, and it knew exactly what was happening.

"Hurry!" she croaked — her voice was scratchy and incredibly weak. "Hurry!" she tried again, calling to her tribesmen. "Hurry, please!"

By some miracle, they heard her — one by one, they slogged through the inferno towards her, gathered around where she lay on the ground, hand plunged into the earth.

"Princess, what are you doing?" a man cried. "What's happened to you?"

"G-get down," Katonah rasped.

By this time, the Nohrian knights were nearly upon them — their armor and weapons clanged as they galloped up the path towards the Earth Tribe, clearly excited at the prospect of finishing what they'd started.

But yards before they overwhelmed them, the earth's shaking intensified, became so severe that a fissure actually ripped across the hillside, ancient slabs of stone and soil snapping apart like so much bark. The Nohrian knights were stopped in their tracks as the breaking of rock and stone made the horses rear and the foot soldiers reel back in alarm. The earth groaned, seemingly in pain, as the fissure widened, a black, deep gap opening up between the Earth Tribe and their enemies. An earth shattering crash nearly punctured Katonah's eardrums as the Nohrian side of the fissure suddenly plunged downward — soldiers screamed as they were jolted off of their feet, landing in painful and awkward positions.

When the rumbling finally faded, three long minutes later, there was a twenty-foot vertical shelf separating the Earth Tribe from the Nohrians.

"Great Gods above," a warrior gasped. "The Earth Dragon...the Earth Dragon's saved us!"

"No, it was the princess!" another cried. "She summoned the Earth Dragon's power!"

Fireballs suddenly arced overhead — blearily, Katonah saw that though they'd escaped half of the enemy, the other half was still very much on the field, particularly the spell-casting Nohrians that had diverted from the camp and were now hurling magic at them.

"Blast it," a warrior cried. "Grab the princess! We must make it to the escape route!"

"No!" Katonah coughed — wiping at her lips, she was stunned to see the back of her hand come away red. "No. Leave me. Run, and help as m-many of the wounded as you can."

"Princess, you can't mean that!" another tribesman said. "We cannot leave you behind! Your father—"

"Damn my father!" Katonah choked. "I've given you an order! I am the general! Obey me!"

More fireballs flew overhead, setting patches of grass on fire. Several of the Earth Tribe spun and fled into the trees. But the bulk of them rallied around Katonah, forming a protective ring around her body.

"What are you doing?" Katonah cried — blood eked out between her lips, dripping down her chin. "Y-you'll be killed!"

"You are our princess, and we will defend you," an Earth Tribe warrior said.

"We do not fear death," said another. "The Earth Dragon will bear our bodies into the earth when we pass."

Katonah felt herself begin to despair again as the Nohrian soldiers moved ever closer, hands boiling with fire magic. Her warriors stood impassively before her, armed with daggers and swords, weapons that would have absolutely no effect on spells cast from afar. She turned to her hand, which was still immersed in the soil. She refused to watch any more of them die on this horrible night.

Help me, she cried to it. Help my warriors! Kill them! Kill the Nohrians and protect my tribesmen, please!

Are you prepared to pay the price? it asked her.

Yes! Anything! Do it!

As you wish.

But this time, instead of sending its power up into her, a bolt of ice-cold pain lanced through Katonah's chest, like the pointed end of a frozen spear. It hit her deep, deeper than she could fathom — she felt as though she'd taken a blow to the soul. But before she could cry out or even gasp, she lost all sensation of her body and time, and she fell into a black, senseless void.

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Happy Valentine's Day! I woke up today with a headache. DX