Alitia: Hellfire and Blizzard

VIII: Let the World Cave In

It never seemed to end. 

Luce had been on the front lines of the battle against the forces of Pyre ever since the fight began. She knew how to handle herself in a major fight like this, and she had learned from experience many times how a person was meant to win in a battle of this nature. Even so, none of that knowledge seemed to help her here. No matter what Luce did to try and work away at the numbers of the enemy army, there was always someone new there to fill the gap she had just opened in her opponent's ranks. There was no easy way to take the upper hand as long as there were more soldiers than she could ever hope to count. It didn't matter how skilled the students of Alitia were as long as there were too many soldiers there for them to be able to handle. Brynn was trying to wear them all down so she could take Alitia without too much of a fight. That had to be the reason for all of this. She knew that if she exhausted her foes, then it would be easy for her to take over the Millennium Six and then start exerting that pressure elsewhere. 

Knowing what Brynn's plan was didn't make fighting off the hordes of soldiers any easier though. Luce had been doing her best to keep her composure, but she could feel her grip on the battle starting to slip. She was getting tired, and she had no idea what she was meant to do about it. There were just too many Pyre soldiers for her to even think of winning the battle... But she had to find some way to win. She couldn't let Brynn take control of the Millennium Six. Luce didn't know what would happen if an outside power got control of the school, but she didn't want to think about it either. If she stayed focused, she would be able to come closer to victory. That was all that mattered. 

As Luce slashed her blade in the widest arcs she could stand, she tried to think of a way to end this battle without the need for such haphazard swings. The army of Pyre had to be led by some commander, and Luce was certain that defeating them would finally end this mess... But what chance did any of them stand against Brynn? Luce didn't even know if the queen was there personally, but she felt as if she just had to be. There was no way Brynn would sent out a battalion this large without coming to oversee their progress. Luce didn't know if that should have been a good thing or not. On one hand, this would have been an easy way to end the war, but that all relied on the Millennium Six winning, and the schools seemed to be losing their battles against the soldiers that were coming ever closer to them as the minutes crawled by. 

Over the course of the last week, Luce had learned a lot more about Pyre than she had ever wanted to. The planet was heavily influenced by its military, and the best way to get anywhere was to become a strong soldier recognized by the crown. That would set a person for life, but it was much easier said than done because of the circumstances that came with being noticed and brought into the light. Luce knew some must have found it liberating, but she knew there had to be even more people who felt trapped by such horrible situations. Surely not everyone on Pyre wanted to fight in a war like this, but they had no choice because of the ways in which their planet operated. Service may not have been mandatory, but it may as well have been as long as there were so many ways a person could fail without choosing to fight in the name of their queen. 

Luce bitterly thought that it made perfect sense that Pyre had been established as an offshoot of Etruna. Half of the royal line of Etruna had gotten sick of just standing around and waiting for one of their own to be named as the strongest, and so, during a string of ice rulers, they left to form their own nation. The new Pyre empire had taken over an otherwise desolate planet, forcing it to bear life with their natural magic. From there, Pyre began to focus only on subjugating other worlds, determined to prove itself as the superior to its sister realm. These days, Etruna and Pyre didn't have much in common other than the fact that history seemed determined to repeat itself. Once again, Etruna was caught in a string of ice mage rulers, and the people of Pyre had only been shown that they were right to leave their home behind.