Alitia: Hellfire and Blizzard

VII: A Call to Defend

Helena was ready. 

She didn't know if she would have said that she was as prepared as she would have liked to be for the coming battle against the forces of Pyre, but she at least knew that she was as ready as she could have been. The army marching toward Ailtia wasn't going to hold back just because Helena wasn't prepared, and she wasn't going to let herself be caught by surprise so easily either. As long as the safety of her school was on the line, Helena was going to find a way to make sure she won this battle. It was the least she could do for everyone she cared about within Alitia's walls. 

Helena's hands shook even after she had transformed into her Illunae form. Tanith stood at her side in her new form too, and she cast Helena a weak, fragile smile. "Are you ready for this?" Tanith asked. Her hands were shaking too, but she was doing her best to hide it. Tanith hadn't been given much time to practice with her new magic after the fight that first helped her to hit the second level of power in the first place, and Helena could see that anxiety written all over her face. 

Helena didn't comment on it though. She shrugged and conjured a few spheres of fire to either hand. "I'm not going to let them take over the school," Helena told Tanith instead of actually responding to her question. Perhaps it was in poor practice to go around the question like that, but Helena couldn't bring herself to care. There was too much on the line for her to lose herself to her nerves. The battle wasn't going to win itself, and Helena needed to focus on it above all else. 

Tanith understood what Helena was trying to get at, and she nodded stiffly before forcing herself to look back out at the horizon. The school's grounds were dotted with students across all levels of magic, though Helena and Tanith remained the only two who had reached the Illunae level out of the second-year class. The others who stood in their Illunae forms were from the third-year class, and they hadn't yet reached their final Inlustris level. Helena could only hope that the varying magical levels found throughout the student body would be enough when their powers were all combined. She didn't know what she would do if they were doomed to lose the battle at hand. 

Zylphia stood at the front of the battlefield in her own Inlustris form. She was trying to see if Brynn was among the enemy ranks, but if the queen of Pyre wasn't there, then she was simply going to unleash her power upon all the soldiers who tried to break through the front gates of Alitia. Zylphia would not tolerate anyone threatening her school, and she was more than happy to make an example of the Pyre soldiers if that was what it took. They wouldn't know what they had gotten into until it was too late. 

"I don't see her," Tanith murmured as she looked out over the battlefield below. She and Helena were standing on the ramparts near the top of Alitia, giving them the perfect advantage of height. They could easily fight from a long range, and as such, they could be used as the perfect overhead assailants. The forces of Pyre wouldn't be able to break through to the school if they couldn't escape the barrage of magic coming at them from above, after all. 

"I don't either," Helena frowned. She admittedly didn't know what Brynn Ardent looked like, but she had fought enough armies to figure out when a commander was among the enemy forces or not. The army was trying to take Alitia, but they weren't following the commands of any one person in order to do it. Helena could feel her energy vibrating beneath her skin anyway. She needed to fight and finish this as soon as possible for the sake of her school. She had been absent during the battle on Etruna, but she wouldn't miss out on defending a place she cared about this time. She would make sure of it. 

Tanith pressed her lips together in a thin line and watched as the army drew ever nearer. Sure enough, their earlier observations about Brynn not being there continued to ring true. Helena was beyond relieved for that, but she also knew that she couldn't really lose track of herself in her glee. If Brynn wasn't at Alitia, then that probably meant she was at one of the other schools. If Helena had to guess, she would have said that Brynn had gone to Sacred Heart because of her history with the headmistress. That kept Helena and Carys safe from the foreign power that sought their deaths, but it wouldn't last for long. Minerva was shouldering the brunt of the danger for them, and Helena hoped with everything she had that it would be enough.