Things went poorly for Calerus’ people from the instant that Ursus’ ambush was set off. For all their caution, they were still taken almost completely by surprise, and it cost them dearly. The giants alone ripped hundreds of Calerus’ knights, men-at-arms, and levies apart—especially the levies, for they weren’t trained all that well.

To many, it made a lot of sense why the thousands that had pursued Ursus ahead of them had been so handily slaughtered, for the same was happening to them. They just didn’t have the space to reform their lines, and so Ursus’ warriors rampaged through them without much to check their progress. Every time a powerful mage tried, a stone giant would appear and almost invariably kill them.

All of this by itself would’ve profoundly affected Calerus, for while he did not love his people, he didn’t hate them either. But it was the water mage’s death that truly laid Calerus low.

After his horse was killed out from under him, Calerus had risen back to his feet and prepared to meet Ursus’ charge. Ursus himself wasn’t too far away, and neither were those that followed him. Those were the targets that Calerus chose.

Unfortunately, Ursus’ people didn’t choose him, instead attacking a part of the line that was closer to them. Ursus himself killed one of Calerus’ top knights so quickly he made it look easy, but Calerus himself was too busy fighting a giant with blue streaks along its stone body to notice.

But the water mage noticed, and he’d shouted to his older lover, “I have some business to settle! I’ll be right back!”

“Wait!” Calerus shouted after him. He’d have run after the younger man, but the blue-tinted giant pressed in during his moment of distraction, and it was all Calerus could do to avoid its enormous limbs, let alone the spikes that constantly burst from the ground or the fissures that frequently opened beneath him, threatening to swallow him whole.

The Count was barely able to leap to safety, barely dodging a swipe from one of the blue-tinted giant’s massive hands. At this point, Calerus had long since called his sword back into his soul realm, replacing it with a heavy single-bladed great ax. It wasn’t the best weapon for fighting something like a stone giant, but he had no crushing weapons and it was better than a sword or spear.

The blue giant swung at him again, and Calerus leaped into the air, using his sixth-tier strength to easily clear the height of the giant. The rocky arm missed, and Calerus came down on the giant’s elbow ax first.

This didn’t do too much damage to the giant to Calerus’ eyes, but the arm had been decently cracked, and the giant pulled away as if it had been badly hurt. Trying to press his advantage, Calerus lunged forward, raising his ax for another swing at one of the giant’s legs, but a wall of stone spikes erupting from the ground barred his way and forced him back.

As Calerus prepared to jump over the spikes, he took the opportunity to check in on the water mage, and what he saw froze him in place.

He saw the barbarian standing before his lover, blade buried in the water mage’s torso, lightning crackling all around him. A moment later, Ursus pulled his blade from the water mage’s chest, and the water mage fell, his armor charred black from their battle.

In an instant, all of Calerus’ killing intent faded as despair settled over his mind. All desire to continue his duel with the stone giant vanished as the water mage’s body hit the forest floor, sinking half an inch into the mud between the tree roots. Fortunately for Calerus, it seemed that his blow to the stone giant had been far more effective than he’d thought, for it didn’t try to exploit his inattentiveness and moved on to easier prey.

This was less fortunate for Calerus and the water mage’s retainers, but for the moment, Calerus had the space he needed to struggle over to where the water mage fell. Ursus had moved on, joining the rest of his people in their slaughter of Calerus’ unprepared forces, leaving the Count almost miraculously alone as he fell to his knees at the water mage’s side.

The water mage was dead. There was no changing that, no denying it, but it was such a surreal thing that Calerus could do nothing but kneel there, staring at the water mage’s corpse. Nothing else seemed to matter.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably less than a minute, one of Calerus’ subordinates, a fifth-tier knight, appeared at the nobleman’s shoulder.

“My Lord! We must retreat and regroup!” the knight shouted, kneeling at Calerus’ side.

“… Huh…?” Calerus asked, momentarily confused.

“The retinue is falling apart, my Lord!” the knight shouted in a pleading tone. “We have no answer to the giants! If we do not retreat, then we will all die here!”

Numbly, Calerus began to look around. He was vaguely aware that, with the fall of his sixth-tier subordinate and the water mage, his side had precious few sixth-tier mages left. As a result, Ursus’ giants were tearing through his people with abandon.

The loss of the water mage was crushing, but Calerus was a powerful noble, and he was more than a century old. He pulled himself together, picked up the water mage’s body, and told his knight, “Sound the horn, we’re falling back.”

—

Leon stared in amazement as the Octavian forces began to withdraw following a loud horn blast. It was almost surreal, seeing so many people fleeing from so few. He had half a mind to order the stone giants to stop the retreat, but he refrained. He doubted they’d be able to create a ravine in the earth big enough to stop the enemy mages from passing in time to make much of a difference, and besides, even with all the casualties they had taken, the Octavian troops were still numerically superior, and he wasn’t keen on putting their backs against a wall and forcing a decisive confrontation.

They’d done enough, it was best to let the enemy retreat. They needed to regroup, get a good accounting of their casualties, and then start planning a new strike.

Or try and get in contact with August. That was something Leon knew he should be trying to do, but it was a difficult thing to prioritize when his enemy was closer.

“Hold!” Leon shouted as his people began to make moves indicating they would like to give chase. “Stay here! Don’t pursue!”

His order was relayed to the senior knights and Barons, and they—reluctantly, in many cases—complied.

“Grab our dead and injured!” Leon continued. “They’ll be back once they regroup, so let’s get moving!”

Again, it didn’t make him the most popular commander, but the troops obeyed, gathering the dead and injured as quickly as they were able.

Leon, meanwhile, began wandering the battlefield with Anzu at his side, both surveying it and leaving a few surprises beneath the corpses of the Octavian troops. When the enemy unit returned for their dead, they’d be adding a few more to that number despite Leon’s unit hopefully being long gone by then.

“Sir!” Alix called out as she quickly caught up with him about fifteen minutes after he gave his orders. She had the look of someone there with purpose, not just to be there for him if he needed to relay additional orders.

“What is it?” Leon asked, noticing her slightly harried look.

“We’ve taken a great many prisoners and the Barons have started arguing over what’s to be done with them,” Alix answered.

Leon rolled his eyes, then turned in the direction of the nobles in question. Indeed, all five Barons and most of the senior knights had gathered close to the center of the battlefield, within which were hundreds, perhaps as many as fifteen hundred, of Octavian warriors who had been too injured to flee with their comrades.

“All right, I’ll deal with it,” Leon growled as he hopped onto Anzu’s back. With only a quick verbal command, Anzu trotted on over, easily pushing through the small crowd that surrounded the prisoners. “What is this?” he demanded of anyone who would answer.

Gellius was the first to respond, and Leon was easily able to see why: the man was fired up about something, with his face flushed with anger and passion, his arms wildly gesticulating, and a hint of killing intent still in his aura despite the battle being over.

“Sir… Ursus,” the Baron said, hesitating long enough that Leon was certain he wanted to say something else, something probably more demeaning and insulting, than his name, “we were just discussing how to treat these prisoners…”

Without wasting a beat or waiting for anyone else to speak, Leon asked the crowd, “And what’s everyone’s opinions on the matter?”

His golden eyes scanned the crowd, seeing little but anger and bloodlust on the faces of the senior knights. Adding to that was the amount of killing intent he felt from them—not even close to what had filled the air during the battle, but more than noticeable now that the battle was over. Leon felt like he already knew what most of the knights in his unit wanted to do, and he couldn’t say he disagreed.

“Many of these people are nobles,” Orientis explained, “we should take them prisoner and ransom them back to their families!”

“I say kill them here! They’re traitors and enemies!” Gellius roared, suddenly tempting Leon to reexamine his stance to avoid agreeing with the man.

“We are not savages!” Marcus shouted, his voice quieting all the others despite the difference in power. “These men and women have surrendered! Are we beasts who kill our enemies without thought? Or are we thinking, feeling people?! Who have the capacity for mercy and empathy?!”

The young nobleman’s eyes traveled around, reaching every knight and Baron present who seemed even remotely likely to call for the execution of the prisoners and staring at them accusingly, shaming them into silence. Finally, his eyes landed upon Leon, who just watched with the barest hint of an amused smile on his face.

No one else spoke for an almost painfully long moment, and soon enough all eyes were turned in Leon’s direction, waiting for his decision. He didn’t last long in such an awkward position, and so slid out of Anzu’s saddle and strode over to where the Barons and the other important people in the unit had gathered, including Marcus, Alcander, and Valeria.

As he walked, he could feel more than just the eyes of his people on him; those Octavian prisoners stared at him with both hope and dread, knowing that their fates rested in his hands. Leon noticed more dread than hope, though, and he remembered the Duke of Lentia mentioning that people had been talking about him after his actions with the giants a month before. He had the feeling that these people knew who he was and figured that they were going to die, for he was a barbarian, barely above an animal in their eyes.

Or maybe he was just being cynical and letting his preconceptions go to his head.

‘Hardly matters at this point, I suppose…’ Leon thought to himself.

It took him a minute to reach the others, and in that time, no one else offered their opinions. It took him a bit by surprise, but he figured that since Marcus had made his opinion known, none of the other nobles were going to go against him, not over something so relatively trivial.

Everyone waited with bated breath, many expecting Leon to make some speech that might justify the tension that his walk over had built up. However, when he arrived, Leon simply said, “Let them go.”

He could practically feel the relief in the air as the prisoners relaxed, while he could also feel the angry stares of many in the crowd surrounding them.

“Are you sure, Sir?” Valeria asked, clearly picking up on the same anger that Leon had.

“We haven’t the resources to hold them for ransom, and I can grudgingly admit that Sir Marcus is correct, we’re not animals,” he said, eliciting a nod of acknowledgment and gratitude from Marcus and, strangely enough given his usual attitude, Alcander. Even Baroness Orientis looked somewhat grateful for his decision. “We’re not killing them, and we won’t keep them as prisoners. We’ll let them go. If they can’t leave of their own accord, then we’ll leave them here for their people to find.”

“What about medical attention to those who need it?” Alix asked, her eyes shining with both hope and trepidation.

“If we can spare the supplies, then give them. If not, don’t bother,” Leon said. “We don’t have much time, anyway, how’s the collection of our own casualties going?”

“We should be ready to leave in the next few minutes,” Valeria reported.

“Then it hardly matters,” Leon muttered, glancing back at the prisoners. “Let’s see if we can speed this up, I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

—

It took Calerus’ people a quarter of an hour to get the unit back under control from their hasty retreat. A rough headcount put them at eight thousand remaining, which wasn’t that bad considering that they had started with something like twelve to thirteen thousand, including all those who weren’t in Calerus’ retinue.

But that still left them with horrendous casualties from the ambush, and though Calerus would mourn all of his knights, none quite matched the loss of the water mage in his arms. His handsome face had been burned and torn apart by Ursus’ lightning, his armor destroyed, his body broken and battered.

Calerus maintained his noble demeanor as much as he was able, but he emanated a terrifying amount of killing intent, and his eyes frequently turned back toward those dark acres of forest where they had lost so many.

“Halt!” he shouted. His remaining knights repeated his order up and down the line, and over the next few minutes, the entire unit slowly came to a halt and reformed. It took a few moments for them to get back into a battle line and for Calerus’ senior knights to look back to him for further orders. His adjutants, meanwhile, waited at his side to relay his orders to those knights.

After a few moments of silence, one adjutant hesitantly asked Calerus, “… Your orders, my Lord?”

“Burn it,” Calerus growled, staring back at the forest. “All of it. Burn it all down, send those rats and savages to meet their Ancestors in whatever hell they languish in!”