Finn brought Mia with him to the command room, which was currently the safest place in the fortress.
“Princeeeeess!” Arcadia wailed the moment he spotted her. “I’m so glad you’re safe!” He turned to the others in the room and snapped, “Hurry and prepare a seat for her.”
The other soldiers and staff present were busy with other matters, but they obeyed his command despite the inconvenience.
Brave ignored Arcadia’s ridiculous antics. “Partner, Arroganz is almost at the reactor,” he told Finn. “Our allies must either be dead or preoccupied, because they haven’t been able to halt him. We’ll be in big trouble if we don’t step in and stop this.”
Finn clenched his fists. “So that’s what’s going on.” His face hardened, at least until Mia threw herself at him and clung to him. “Mia?” He blinked at her. As soon as he realized she was trembling, he wrapped his arms around her.
“Sir Knight, I beg you. Please, please…come back to me. Don’t leave me alone!” Tears formed wet trails down her cheeks.
“It’ll be all right. I promise I’ll come back to you,” Finn said gently.
“Really? You mean it?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “Please wait here for me.”
“This is the safest place for you,” Brave threw in. “As long as you’re here, Partner can fight without holding anything back.” He was doing his best to keep up a cheerful facade, hoping to ease her fears.
Mia’s dewy eyes darted to Brave. “You’d better come back safe too, Bravey. I’d be devastated to lose you.”
“You got it! But, uh, could you stop with the whole ‘Bravey’ thing? No one calls me by my real name. Even Partner calls me ‘Kurosuke.’” Brave pouted.
Finn chuckled. “It fits you, doesn’t it, Kurosuke?”
Mia grinned. “I think ‘Bravey’ is an adorable nickname.”
“Neither of you have any sense,” said Brave.
It comforted Mia to banter the same way they always did. She finally let go of Finn and stepped back, clapping her hands together as if in prayer. Staring up at him, she said, “May you be victorious, Sir Knight.”
He smiled back at her. “I will be.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The situation outside Arcadia was developing as well.
“Lord Loic, please fall back!”
Loic’s Armor was a wreck, and his allies were trying their best to stop him from battling further, but he was still fighting monsters and enemy Armors alike.
“What good would it do to pull out now?!” he shouted back at his men. He was the one leading the Republic’s forces on the field, making him the center their army revolved around. He feared everything would crumble if he withdrew now. “I have to hold out for milady’s sake as well. And besides her, the archduke has saved me countless times. I can’t fail them.”
Loic owed Leon a substantial debt for all his help, and he intended to pay it back.
Despite his determination, his Armor refused to keep up. Its joints creaking in protest, it began falling to pieces right there in the air. The engine on its back went up in flames.
“Why now?!” Loic cried.
This time, his allies forced him to retreat.
“Fall back, Lord Loic!”
“Contact Lord Albergue, quickly!”
“Please don’t endanger yourself recklessly!”
They were all admonishing him. As reluctant as he was to heed their wishes, he was relieved to see the rest of his men still fighting tooth and nail without him when he looked out at the battlefield. See? If you try, you guys are tough enough to pull it off.
✦ ✦ ✦
From the bridge of House Fanoss’s battleship, Hertrude monitored the intense battle between the two forces.
“I am impressed by how well the Republic forces are holding out, given their overreliance on their crests,” she said.
“We will soon reach our limit as well, Lady Hertrude,” the ship’s captain responded. “But Holfort’s rear guard moved here, to the front lines, so we should be able to withdraw without issue.”
Gilbert and the ships under his command having joined them had significantly lightened the front lines’ load. Still, they were far from able to let their guard down.
“No,” Hertrude said firmly. “I will not allow us to withdraw, no matter what.”
“But—”
“Besides, retreating would do us no good.” This is a battle for our very lives.
She didn’t get to say that last bit aloud. There was a visible change in Arcadia’s fortress; it was powering up its main cannon to fire on them again.
“The enemy’s about to attack!” bellowed one of the soldiers on board.
Hertrude closed her eyes for a moment. She figured this would probably be the end. Then she spotted a white blur whiz past them.
“That ship!” she gasped. She would’ve known its single horn anywhere—the Licorne!
On each side of the vessel were the last two remaining spaceships old humanity had left behind, the ones the AIs had adapted into specialized shields to combat Arcadia’s main cannon. They proved unable to completely block the cannon’s incoming attacks, so the Licorne pulled out in front, deploying a magic shield in the form of a curtain of light.
Staring at the Licorne, Hertrude shrugged. “You’ve come up with a ship even more daunting than the royal family’s.”
The royal family’s ship had proven a formidable force in the war with the former Principality, but it was nothing compared to the Licorne, which Hertrude was even less inclined to pit herself against. She was lucky that they were on the same side and that the Licorne was defending them against Arcadia’s deadly blasts.
“I expect you all to fight with everything you have out there,” Hertrude shouted at her men. “Make sure everyone remembers the name Fanoss!”
There were many reasons her house needed to pull its weight in this battle. Foremost among them was that doing so would ensure her dukedom’s future prominence. That was why she couldn’t easily order a retreat, knowing all that was at stake. But she also had a personal reason to insist on keeping her men out there.
Even now, I can’t bring myself to leave our saint, Marie, hanging.