Land of the Blades

25. Erosion

The rain of arrows hit Shirou's shield and bounced off or broke into pieces, to the relief of everyone under its protection. Sensei started walking away from the rest of us and into the danger, as if he didn't care about it. I knew he was unbreakable, but that was still too dangerous, so I instinctively followed him, covering both of us with my alloy. The Lunarians, however, were too focused on shooting to where the others were to pay attention to us. I stayed close to him even then, I was going to take that opportunity to look at him closely and very carefully, and figure his true intentions.

Before Shirou arrived, Sensei had been the only one of us who could do a ranged attack, he was able to dissipate multiple Lunarian's vessels with just some movements from his hands. The old innocent and fool me had never even questioned how he was able to do so, it was just something that was within his abilities. The new me, however, couldn't tolerate not knowing. I started theorizing how he could do it and came out with a lot of possible explanations, from him being able to control the wind to some sort of magic. What I found that day was that his methods were rather mundane. He had tried to hid it from me, but I was still able to see him cracking some really small shards out of his own arms, ready to throw them against the Lunarians as a cloud of sharp dust.

—S-Sensei, all this time, have you been...

He stopped me, putting his finger against his lips.

—We'll talk about it later —he said, as he opened the palm of his hand, and the shards were carried away by the wind.

The cloud went directly against the Lunarian's vessels, but the floating ships blocked it, suffering only barely noticeable damage. Their wood-like hulls were definitively more resistant than the fluffy texture of the Sunspots.

—You two, come back here!—Caster yelled from below the shield, her voice was so commanding not even Sensei opposed—, Rider is about to use her main attack, Phos, use your alloy to reinforce Shero's shield, everyone else get as close to the ground as possible!

I made several "support post" with my alloy between the shield and the ground, Shirou added another layer to it, and even Sensei helped by holding it with his own hands, though he stopped anyone else from doing it to.

Just then, the shield was hit with beams of energy and cannonballs that were being shot from the floating ships. Every impact made the shield vibrate and that was transmitted to my alloy, almost making me break into pieces. The sheer force of the attack was enough to sink Sensei's feet into the ground a couple of inches, and I'm pretty sure that if he hadn't been holding it, the attack might have squashed us all without having to break the shield. That being said, the barrage had been strong enough to break three of the four layers.

When the attack stopped, the shield disintegrated instantly. Shirou looked exhausted after holding it for that long, yet he still tried to create a new one immediately afterwards. I went ahead before he could and protected everyone with my still vibrating alloy.

—Thanks, Phos, but that won't hold against Rider's attack —Shirou said trying to take over, but Caster stopped him and told him to regain his breath.

—Rider can't use that barrage so frequently, each of her cannons has a different cool down time, so she needs to wait at least two minutes to attack us with everything she has again. Before that happens, everyone has to disperse so she is forced to use them separately. Keep moving so that she can't aim, even one cannonball can blew you to pieces. Dispose of the Lunarian's archers if you can. Phos and Sensei, I'll leave you those two big ones. Shero, come with me, we'll deal with Rider.

Caster said all of that with a very imposing voice, and everyone was already moving before I could react. I wasn't entirely sure of leaving Shirou go with her alone to where the main enemy was, moreover when Shirou could probably destroy those ship from the ground, But without Caster's intervention, the Lunarians would have captured all of us already, so I decided to trust her this time.