The Storm King

After eleven days of hard training, the Snow Lions were ready. It had been almost a month of living out in the caves, and though they had no intentions of leaving the gorge and returning to their tower anytime soon, they still wanted their weekends in the capital back.

And they wanted revenge on the Deathbringers. Revenge motivated some of the Snow Lions even more than the prospect of spending time in the city. Henry and Charles were not among those people, as they were far more interested in the capital than in revenge. Leon had watched with some concern as they, and several others to a lesser extent, started going stir-crazy after having been cooped up in those caves for so long.

And so, the three third-tier trainees had decided upon their plan of attack. Unlike when the Deathbringers attacked them, they wouldn’t wait for their foe to start leaving their tower during the weekend, and then take apart their unprepared trainees piecemeal. Instead, they needed to prove that they weren’t the pushovers that the other units were saying they were. Still, they didn’t want to give their rival unit too many concessions, and so decided to launch their assault just after midnight.

“It’s fuckin’ time. Let’s do this. Break those damned Deathbringers. Bring fuckin’ death to them, then find some ladies in the capital,” muttered a frustrated Henry.

His words fell into the ears of an agreeable Charles. “Absolutely. Get our fuckin’ banner back, then get back to the city. Think I might kill any Deathbringers in my way…”

“Don’t go too overboard,” Leon warned. “I want this done quickly and quietly. Emphasis on quietly. All we need to do is stun any Deathbringers on the first floor, grab both banners, then leave. Easy as that.”

“Let’s get this done. I’m sick of being stuck in this damned gorge,” complained Henry. And he was in luck because not even five minutes later, Leon was joined at the front of the trainees by Castor and Alphonsus, both of whom looked absolutely ready and willing to seize back their banner.

“ARE YOU ALL READY?!” shouted Castor to the assembled unit.

“Fuck yes!” one first-tier trainee roared.

“Yeah!” another thundered.

“We’re going to gut those bastards!” a third screamed.

Many more added their voices to the growing cacophony, showing the third-tier trainees that their unit was hyped to get going.

Encouraged by the shouts of support from the first-tier trainees, Castor took a deep breath and spread his arms as he faced the Snow Lions.

“THOSE DEATHBRINGERS HUMILIATED US AND STOLE OUR BANNER! LET’S GO DO THE SAME TO THEM!” He didn’t intend to keep his speech so short, but he did anyway—mostly because he could tell that despite his words working up the first-tier trainees, not only were Leon and Alphonsus silently staring at the back of his head, but the response from the second-tier trainees was significantly more subdued. He cut himself off just as he got going with a faintly embarrassed, “FOLLOW ME!” and turned around to lead the Snow Lions out of the gorge.

The three Instructors stoically watched from the top of the gorge. They wouldn’t interfere in the coming battle, but they would stick to the Snow Lions like a shadow and watch their progress, making sure that anyone who was injured during the operation was taken care of and that the Snow Lions didn’t take things too far.

The second-tier trainees quickly dispersed among the first-tier trainees, wrangling them into something that resembled a marching formation. They moved through the forest in two columns, with the second-tier trainees making sure they were kept staggered from each other. The second-tier trainees also made damn sure to keep everyone quiet, to ensure they remained undetected as they approached their target.

They arrived at their staging point earlier than they had planned, so the third-tier trainees had them stop and wait for a while, hidden in the forest about a quarter mile away from the Deathbringer tower. Leon then took his squad and ranged far enough ahead to see the door to the tower, but he advanced no further, sticking to the shadows of the forest. There were still a few lights shining through the tower windows, though, so they resolved to wait just a little longer.

After almost an hour of the Snow Lions almost obsessively checking and re-checking their weapons and armor to pass the time, the final light in the tower’s windows went out and Leon sent Alain back to report to Castor.

As soon as he received the message, Castor waited just a few more minutes and got everyone on their feet and moving. They rapidly approached the Deathbringers’ tower, but Castor held them up at the tree line. The Snow Lions were still well concealed there, only a couple hundred feet from the tower; plenty close enough for the entire unit to sprint there in less than a minute.

Leon had already set out. He and his entire squad were huddled around the door, testing to see if they could open it. To his pleasant surprise, Leon found that he could push it open with no problems; the Deathbringers had neglected to secure their front door with either lock or guard.

This didn’t surprise Leon. The Snow Lions had been missing for weeks and none of the other units had started to fight in earnest, so the Deathbringers had probably felt there was no need to lock the doors. Plus, the locks on the front door of the towers were deliberately terrible. The Knight Academy administrators wanted those locks to slow down potential attackers rather than keep them out entirely. Had the door been properly secured, Leon still could’ve opened it, but he would’ve had to do so in a way that would alert the entire tower.

The locks on the bedrooms were the real deal though. Since the bedrooms were where the trainees would store their personal items, they were required to have robust locks.

Leon waved to Castor from the open door and silently led his squad inside to secure the entrance hallway. Castor and rest of the Snow Lions emerged from the tree line and sprinted as quietly as they could to the open door.

From there, the squads proceeded without talking. They had practiced this half a dozen times in their own tower over the past week and a half, so they were all well aware of exactly what they had to do. It had been correctly assumed that the Deathbringers would feel secure enough to leave their bedrooms unlocked, and as they entered the tower, four squads split up into eight teams to seize the first floor of the tower.

Ideally, the Snow Lions wouldn’t have to go further than that. They could just leave the rest of the tower sleeping in blissful ignorance after stealing the banners, but both Leon and Castor felt that it was necessary to stun the already-sleeping Deathbringers on the first floor to keep them from waking up during their raid.

There were a few Deathbringers who were still awake when the Snow Lions’ raid began. There were only two or three on the first floor, though, all of whom were swiftly dispatched by the Snow Lions in short order. Five minutes after Leon had opened their inner door, half of the Deathbringers’ first-tier trainees had been taken out of commission.

Leon himself led his squad into the first-tier common room alongside the other five squads who weren’t securing the floor. Upon seeing the room devoid of other life and both banners in the shrine, most of the Snow Lions couldn’t help but smile. A few of them even had to stifle their cries of excitement.

The second-tier mages wrangled the first-tier trainees together to get into their planned positions. Two squads of their best archers faced the stairs and knelt, nocking an arrow at the same time. Anyone who appeared at the foot of the stairs would be in for a bad time. Three more squads were right behind them with swords drawn, ready to push past and engage anyone who might hypothetically get past the arrow barrage, with both Leon and Alphonsus keeping an eye on one of the two stairways.

Castor, meanwhile, went to work getting the banners out of the shrine. Unfortunately, just as the Snow Lion undid the first lock, every magic lantern in the tower turned on as bright as they were capable of and the shrine itself sent a high-pitched whistle through the entire tower.

“Shit,” muttered Leon. His sentiment was shared among the other Snow Lions, all of whom knew that they had tripped some kind of alarm.

“We need to hurry it up, we’re down to minutes here,” said Castor. He was absolutely correct, the alarm sound from the shrine had died down after five seconds, but it—combined with the sudden extremely bright lights—had woken the entire tower. After only fifteen seconds, the third-tier Snow Lions could hear some of the Deathbringers start getting up to investigate what had just happened.

“Castor?” Leon whispered.

“Just a few more…” answered Castor.

“… from downstairs…” The Snow Lions could hear the Deathbringers from the second floor walking to the stairs. It hadn’t been enough time for them to don their armor, but they were almost certainly armed with their training weapons.

About ten seconds later, the first awake Deathbringer stepped out from the stairs and was immediately stunned by an arrow to the chest, courtesy of Obellius, one of the trainees that Leon had been using in his squad during training.

“Good shot,” Leon said appreciatively.

“Thanks,” Obellius said back. They weren’t too bothered with whispering anymore, since as soon as the arrow found its mark, one of the Deathbringers further up the stairs paled started shouting about the tower being under attack.

Fortunately, that was also the moment that the two banners within the central shrine finally came loose.

“Got them!” shouted Castor, grabbing the banners. “We’re leaving!”

Immediately, Leon and Alphonsus ran forward to block anyone from coming down the stairs while the rest of the Snow Lions ran past them back into the entrance hall.

Less than a minute later, two second-tier Deathbringers appeared at the top of each stairway and made eye contact with Leon and Alphonsus. Leon smiled and raised his training sword in an obvious challenge while Alphonsus simply glared up at the Deathbringers.

“Come on!” shouted Castor from the entrance hall. The rest of the squads had already made their way out, so Leon and Alphonsus were the only two Snow Lions left in the tower. They responded without delay, but Leon was a little disappointed he didn’t get the fight he had been looking forward to.

Seeing the two third-tier mages run, the second-tier Deathbringers hurtled down the stairs in pursuit. However, as soon as they turned from the common room into the entrance hall, they were faced with a Snow Lion archer squad, which let their nocked arrows fly. All ten arrows found their targets, knocking the four Deathbringers unconscious instantly. The Snow Lions then made a break for the tree line.

“Hold on!” shouted Leon as soon as they made it.

“What are you doing?!” shouted both Castor and Alphonsus.

“Showing them exactly who did this,” Leon said, smiling at Alphonsus. “Have everyone get out their bows and form a firing line. We can spare one or two salvos.”

Alphonsus couldn’t help but smile and look to Castor with expectation.

“… Sure, why not…” Castor said, hesitating a little at the change of plan.

Leon laughed and shouted in excitement at being able to show off what the Snow Lions could do. It was fortunate that the four second-tier Deathbringers who’d been shot into unconsciousness in the entrance hall gave the rest of them pause because it took another minute or so for the Snow Lions’ second-tier trainees to get the unit into position and ready at the tree line.

Gaius, Linus, and Actaeon ran into the entrance hall just as the last Snow Lion was getting into position. They were a little confused, but after coming all the way downstairs and seeing the empty shrine, they knew exactly what had happened.

And they quickly came face-to-face with those who had stolen the banners when they emerged from the tower and saw a calm and serious Castor, a cheekily grinning Leon, and a smug Alphonsus looking back at them from the tree line.

“Loose!” shouted Castor as soon as the three third-tier Deathbringers were seen. At his shout, one hundred bows loosed their arrows at their unarmored opponents. Linus and Actaeon both tried to turn around and flee back inside, but they were blocked by the rest of their unit as they ignorantly tried to push outside. Gaius, on the other hand, just watched the Snow Lions, and especially Leon, with bitter resignation.

The arrows pelted the Deathbringers at the entrance of their tower, and all three third-tier Deathbringers, along with a handful of others behind them, were stunned into unconsciousness.

Those Deathbringers who weren’t caught in the fusillade hurriedly pulled back into their tower to get their armor, but it was almost ten minutes before anyone stuck their head out the door, and by then, the Snow Lions were long gone. A few Deathbringers had watched them leave from the windows, but that wouldn’t do them much good as the Snow Lions ran back to their tower before running back to their camp in the mountains. They didn’t want to give any Deathbringers clues about where they had set up camp by showing the direction it was in, after all.

The Snow Lions made it all the way back to their caves in the gorge without incident and barely able to contain their excitement. Even the normally stoic and professional Instructors were affected by this celebratory atmosphere and had to wait a few minutes for their faces to stop proudly smiling and drop back into their usual stern and serious expressions so they could join their trainees.