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They'd received word that the Glaive were coming back from their most recent raid with sensitive and important information, and so Cor had gone out to meet them personally, to help provide escort back from the forward bases into more secure territory. He hadn't expected to find resistance before he'd even gotten there.
The Niff patrols had been easy enough to deal with -- even if the fact that they were behind Lucian lines was very concerning -- but they had delayed his progress. On top of that, apparently the glaive were early, because by the time he got to the base he'd intended to meet them at they were already in pitched battle. From what he could tell, it had likely been going on for a good while at this point, at least half an hour if he was any judge, as both sides had found or made fairly entrenched positions, and the scattered remains of downed dropships cluttered the landscape, their home ship long out of sight.
Cor cursed mentally, not wasting the breath he needed for running as he dashed from the van for the fourth time that day. He'd intended to beat the Glaive to the base by a full day so he could prepare the site, and now not only was he somehow late, he was walking into what looked like Ramuh having a temper tantrum. He tried to raise Drautos one last time, but just like every time he'd tried over the past hour, he got nothing but static.
Cor switched to the base line instead, hoping to get some sort of intel. It was jammed as well, but the base's signal was stronger and so he'd been able to catch a few words here or there. Lt. Aurelia, matching him stride for stride, called a quick "Marshall!" before he could hear more than what was likely "glaive" through the staticky signal. He slowed his pace so she could report, and she took the chance to stop fully. Reluctantly, knowing how crucial time was at the moment, he stopped as well, keeping his hand on his hilt.
"I think there's a second front," she informed him quickly. "I keep hearing something about the south side of the base from the Guard lines. That might explain the lack of formation work in the battle earlier."
They'd wondered about that as they'd come closer. The road they'd come in on had been higher than the battlefield, so they could see the movement of troops there but not the base itself, and nothing on their side had looked like Crownsguard maneuvers or weapons were being used. At least that meant that the garrison wasn't all wiped out or too cowardly to try to help the glaives, both of which he'd feared. It did present several other problems, however.
"You take the rest of them through the base and reinforce the garrison, then," Cor ordered, pointing back toward the vans. The road they'd been on lead up to the base, but it had been faster to go off-road to reach the battlefield. At least the visible one. "I'll help the glaives hold the line until you can round up the rest of the troops."
"Aye, sir," she said, saluting quickly, then sprinting back the way they'd come almost before she'd risen from her half-bow.
Cor left the rest of it in her hands, and continued his way down the slope into the broad valley.
The remains of the cluster of buildings that the glaives were fighting among -- an old village supporting the fort that had flooded out a few decades ago, if he recalled correctly -- were getting more and more crowded as the glaives fell back. The MTs had clearly been greatly reduced in number, but there were still enough of them to pin down their flagging human enemy.
Motion caught his eye below him as a glaive switched directions and dashed toward the outer buildings -- or what was left of them -- followed by the rest of their unit in a loose clump. Cor saw the cluster of glaives the leader seemed to be aiming toward dismissed them. He'd never get there to help in time, and they had plenty of glaives. Instead, he looked to where they had come from, to see if there was a fight there he could join.
Cor was slightly shocked to see Drautos himself there, yelling into his earpiece in a courtyard in front of one of the more intact buildings. It made sense for him to be here -- of course he would support his soldiers if he saw them threatened -- but Cor hadn't seen him actually fighting in a long time, the burden of command and need to stay on top of things rather than wade into the front lines had always seemed to sit less heavily on him than on Cor. Thankfully, whatever had jammed the Guard's equipment apparently wasn't bothering the Glaive as much, at least not anymore, though that had likely been what had lured him out. A quick evaluation showed that Drautos's western flank was vulnerable at the moment, though, so Cor angled his path in that direction to support him. He should be able to come down behind them pretty easily.
A patch of leaves he hadn't noticed while studying the battlefield slid under his feet. Cor regained his balance with on the next step, but by the time he had looked back at Drautos, a glaive had appeared in the gap. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. Cor slowed down slightly to better control his descent, and as he glanced back noticed a glint of metal in the woods around his level.
Something about it felt wrong, and he realized what it was a moment later as a banner unfurled. Cor slid to a stop and slashed out at the MT ambush, following slow enough behind the damage from the attack that he was able to see the Bannerman fall before he was among the rest of the squad.
Cor made short work of the MTs, disarming them quickly and then backing up a step to slice through their cores all in one strike, careful to avoid any secondary explosions that might follow. He scanned the hillside for any other ambushers but didn't see any obvious signs. It was time to move on.
He'd just embarked on a sort of zig-zag route down the hillside -- half to better survey the territory and half to keep his own footing as the drop became steeper -- when there was an odd sort of noise behind him, not the explosion he'd been expecting but still odd, almost like hissing. Cor made a mental note of it but continued down slope.
When he'd turned back enough to have a clearer shot of where Drautos had been standing guard over the glaive wounded, Cor had a moment of confusion when he didn't see the man. A quick survey of the field showed the lone glaive who'd reinforced the western flank holding back a wall of gunfire with an impressively sturdy shield, one that surely couldn't last, but no sign of their Captain.
As he got close enough, Cor finally realized that the hunched figure in the middle of the courtyard he'd previously missed was not wearing the red of blood but the darker shade of Drautos's uniform.
Somehow, while he'd been being cautious, Titus Drautos had fallen.
His first instinct was to run to the man's side. Drautos was an old friend, and the leader of the Glaive. He was a clear priority.
Then reason stepped in. Drautos was at the fallback position for the glaives. They could take care of him. But only one glaive was guarding the western flank, and he couldn't hold forever.
Cor couldn't pull up a shield, but he could thin the ranks. An impressive barrage of fireballs from the defending glaive helped his prospective workload, but it seemed the majority of the remaining MTs were focusing on that weak point, or distracted by the few remaining pockets of resistance.
Cor came down behind the next wave, as the lone glaive raised another shield somehow. Two powerful slices angled upwards from his crouch took care of the MTs without adding to the glaive's onslaught, and then he was jogging back toward the shine of the shield.
"My comm's no good. Where do you need my help?"
The glaive hesitated for a moment, not responding. Cor was just about to repeat himself when they called back, "Can you get reinforcements from the base?"
Cor grimaced. Of course they asked for one of the things he couldn't do.
He walked a bit closer so he wasn't shouting the next bit of information to the whole battlefield. "They're tied up with a secondary assault. I sent my people to help them handle this and then head our way. In the meantime, I can help evac your people here or strike out at a central command if you've noticed one. What do you need?"
"We need to evac the wounded. If we can get them to safety, the rest of us can mop up here," the glaive replied after thinking it over for a moment. Cor found himself warming toward the unknown glaive -- their response was slow enough that they'd likely actually considered their comments, but fast enough that Cor's time wasn't being wasted. Cor certainly wouldn't remember it if he asked for their name now, so he'd have to ask Drautos the glaive's name later; and Drautos would be alive to answer later. He would.
"Will do. Priorities?"
The glaive pointed behind Cor, toward where the backup had run off earlier. That made as much sense as anything else, so he nodded in acknowledgement and headed that way.
The squad of glaives there were fighting back, for the most part, which sped things up. Sheltered near the wall they were formed up next two were a group of younger glaives with wide eyes and backpacks full of equipment. One of the unencumbered glaives was leaning over another figure, and Cor headed there, figuring they must be the sticking point in the rest of the group moving out.
"My mate, he's my mate," they said when Cor stopped next to them. "I saw the wall fall, I saw--" They cut themselves off, but Cor got the idea clearly enough. That explained the desertion of their post, then. But no one seemed injured now.
“Did you know before this?” Cor asked. That was poor planning on Drautos’s part if it was known, but battlefields, especially ambushes, didn’t always go to plan, as he well knew.
“We’d just matched yesterday. Yesterday, and already…” the deserter said, still clearly reliving seeing their soulmate die before they looped back to the moment they were able to fix it. Cor wished they’d somehow looped back a little further, in order to not leave their position so wide open when they acted, but who was he to command the Astrals’ plans?
“We still have one loop left,” the mate, who had been silent until now soothed the deserter. “And you saved me this time. Unless…”
“No,” the deserter said quickly, straightening up. “It just took the one loop. We still have another.” Both of them let their hands drift to their thighs, where presumably their marks were. Cor resisted wrinkling his nose. That was an awkward place to check. He was very grateful all over again that the shadow that promised he had a match somewhere was on his forearm.
“Is anyone hurt, or can we move out?” he said, trying to get things back on track. There were all clears all around, and so Cor urged them all to their feet and to head back to rejoin the rest, feeling like he was herding small children again. Thankfully there were enough of them that no MTs or other nasty surprises lept out at them as they crossed, but Cor didn’t let down his guard.
The glaive holding up the western flank didn't have the shield up anymore by the time they got back -- which was good, as Cor would have had serious questions about their ability to do much else for the next several days, and the wisdom of trusting someone so reckless with limited resources such as magic, or else what their exact parentage was -- but was keeping a good watch, alert and ready to move but not wasting unnecessary energy. Clearly they were a veteran, as Cor had guessed.
As their newfound backup settled back into their guard positions, the glaive he'd spoken to before -- he'd call them Ribbon, for lack of a better term, for now, but he really should ask Drautos their name -- leveled a glare on the deserter that could have rivaled Ramuh's stormclouds before he continued scanning for enemy forces. "What the fuck, Caritas?" Ribbon hissed.
"He's my mate!" the deserter, presumably Caritas, defended, still not letting said mate go. "I saw the wall fall, I couldn't do nothing!"
Ribbon made a face, but gestured the pair inside. The set of their shoulder suggested their anger wasn't fully appeased, and Cor turned away to hide his smirk. While he sympathized with Cartias, and he was glad the glaive's loop had saved the pair heartache, he didn't envy them the punishment they'd honestly earned.
"Where next?" he asked, when he was sure his voice and face were under control. He didn't need to make enemies among the glaive by laughing at one's prospective punishment, however deserved.
Ribbon pointed out the next group, and Cor mentally mapped out the best way to approach them to meet the MTs between them on his own turn, settling back into the mindset of the battlefield and shaking off the unexpected camaraderie.
The rest of the evacuations were quicker. As more and more glaives gathered in the area Drautos had chosen -- and it was a horribly visible and impractical spot, quite unlike the man, but Cor was working with what he'd been given, as Drautos likely had as well -- they secured their own perimeter and drew the attention of the remaining MTs, which made it easier for Cor to take them out quickly and without coming under much fire himself.
Even better, by the time they finished mopping up here, the jamming cut out and he could check in with the rest of his troops, who had just finished up their own battle.
Excellent. Now to get the glaives in, and make sure Drautos didn't die to something as simple as this, just in sight of the walls of a Lucian base.
Cor directed the garrison to send a detachment to escort the glaives in -- with the dropships it was easy for Niflheim to send another wave with little warning, and he wanted as much strength of arms as he could get -- while the rest kept the base secure. Then he returned to Ribbon to update the Glaives and check on Drautos.
"The second front has been defeated for now, and we should have an escort soon enough. Are the wounded stable enough for transport?" he asked, body already turned toward the mostly intact house where the wounded had been gathered.
Cor spotted movement out of the corner of his eye and turned back to Ribbon, ready to catch them if they fell, then relaxed as he realized they were just signing something to one of the medics. The medic gave a thumbs up, and Ribbon turned back to him. "They should be good to move," they reported, clearly trying for a professional crispness but mostly sounding exhuasted. Understandably so. Drautos was down and Cor had seen the amount of firepower the glaive had been throwing around. Honestly, he was surprised they were still on their feet.
"Lieutenant Occhio is the medic in charge, your people can coordinate with her," Ribbon continued, sounding more awake as they kept talking. Another signed exchange with the medic, and then Ribbon turned back with a grin that lit up their whole face.
It took a second to process what the glaive said had been thanks, as distracting as that smile was. It felt like the most real thing Cor had seen since he got here. "I'll round up my people and head to the base once they're all accounted for," Ribbon finished, trying to plaster a more professional tone and expression over that smile. Cor almost told them not to but strangled the impulse before it got further than his throat.
Apparently the glaive wasn't the only one being played by battlefield emotions. Cor needed to take the field more often if the adrenaline was hitting him like this.
He nodded to Ribbon in acknowledgement and then headed in to meet with the medic.
The report was bad, but better than it could have been. About half the glaives here were still fit to fight, and most of the wounded were in good enough shape to walk back under their own power. Of those who couldn’t, most were unconscious from overuse of magic and the resulting damage that caused in non-Royal bodies. Drautos was apparently one of the latter, though there was much speculation on what had actually caused his exhaustion as he apparently hadn’t been able to get too involved in the fight before he fell. The current theory seemed to be he’d maintained some sort of shield around the back of the building, because he’d seemed to get worse as he was being patched up rather than recovering his magic as he rested, if gossip was to be beleived.
Cor made the call to save as many glaives as they could and send back the majority of the healthy and walking wounded in the first wave, along with the Guard reinforcements that had come. Best to get them secured and a chance to rest, so there still would be a Kingsglaive if something went wrong and there was another ambush. He kept back the unit with the soulmate and had them stationed as lookouts and ready to cast shield as needed as he remained to be the last line of defense to the wounded glaives. Then when the guards returned with stretchers and enough supplies to stabilize the remaining 7 wounded, he walked them back to base himself.
There was just enough light left in the sky by then to make his final trip out to gather the dead not completely crazy, and they worked quickly enough to find nearly everyone the medic had said was missing before the sun set, but it still rankled to return with one glaive MIA, likely dead somewhere and maybe daemon fodder. But Cor had responsibilities for those under him, and so he reluctantly returned to base for the evening.
His third stop, after checking in with the base commander and the morgue, was the infirmary and Drautos.
Thankfully the man was awake and in his own room, so Cor didn’t even have to feel guilty yelling at him.
“What, by all the Stars of Glory, happened out there?” he hissed as soon as the door was closed.
“You were late,” Drautos said flatly, barely deigning to look up from the study if the window.
“You were early,” Cor corrected him, folding his arms over his chest. "Your report claimed you wouldn't be leaving until tomorrow."
"No," Drautos said slowly, sitting up, deliberate antagonism melting away into the familiar concentration that had earned him his rank and reputation. "I sent back that today would be the day. Double check."
Cor resisted the urge to defend himself and pulled up his folder for the glaives from Regis's storage space. The paper he wanted was on top, and he held it out for Drautos's inspection. The man peered at it closely before cursing softly under his breath, his natural accent slipping through in a way Cor hadn't heard from him in years.
"I'll look into the chain of communication for it as soon as we get back," he promised before Drautos could say anything.
"Or the mistake could be on our end. This was a bad one," Drautos admitted reluctantly.
"There have been too many mistakes for accidents to account for them all," Cor said grimly, looking over Drautos to the far wall, very grateful there were no witnesses to the conversation they'd all been avoiding. "Something is wrong. I will look into it."
Drautos nodded grimly, but said no more.
"The glaive who wears the ribbons -- I didn't catch their name,"--Drautos smirked at him, very aware of his weakness with names, but Cor ignore the injured man like the adult he was--"did a good job rallying the defense while you were down and things went sideways."
Drautos leaned back and arched an eyebrow.
"Apparently one of your glaives looped, and abandoned their position to get to their mate."
"Ah," Drautos said, straightening up. "But still."
"But still," Cor agreed. "But your glaive took up the slack well. Held the entire western flank by themselves and then coordinated my work and the evac." That Cor had let himself be commanded by the glaive, even if they had been the one with eyes on the ground and knowledge of the rest of the glaives there, said all that he needed to about his regard for them. "You should lean on people like that, so this doesn't happen again."
Drautos stared at him flatly again. "Thank you for the unsolicited advice in leading my people, Leonis."
Cor just smirked, grateful the man seemed to be back to himself. "You should take advice from your elders; it's how you grow."
"Elders?" Drautos all but squawked. "You, but--" he sputtered, and Cor let himself grin darkly at the man before turning to leave.
"Take care of yourself, and them, Drautos. We need you to stay alive. We'll talk later." And before Drautos could pull himself together enough to reply, Cor was out the door.
As he turned away to go see to how all the extra troops, both glaive and guard, were settling in and being accommodated, he caught a glimpse of purple out of the corner of his eye. Ribbon was here, likely to check on their Captain. Cor almost stopped to talk to them, to thank them for the heroic effort they'd pulled off today that had helped carry the day, for working so well with him, but he shook off the impulse and the memory of their smile. He wasn't going to interact with them again until he could get his focus straight. Drautos would likely pass along his praise, and he could write something up in his report so Regis knew to keep an eye on them. But Cor would not give into his curiosity. He had better control than that.
And far too much to do.