Blade(Part 1): Dawn

Chapter 33: Shala

Shala, Mai, and Fireteam Ivory cut through every Skaolan soldier in their path as they made their way to the southern courtyard of the Celestial Sword. Dameon covered their advance with lightning arrows from his bow from the top of the walls. Shala noticed him cutting down Skaolans himself, either with his cutlass, or with the bracer blades she gave him. There must have been hundreds of them fighting against the Guardians, all fighting to kill every last one. It was no surprise to Shala that Skaola's King would want to do that in the first place. The Guardians were protectors of the innocent, who in the eyes of Aziz, were enemies. Shala felt a few of the Guardians' lights go out during the attack. They were people she knew for five years, people she trained with, and people she fought with. Skaola would pay for shedding their blood. The darkness that the Skaolans brought with them began to grow stronger as Shala and her friends reached the southern courtyard, and they charged into the army that attacked them with all their force. The new rectangular shields and black spears that the Skaolans brought with them did little to protect them from the Guardians' radiant aura blades. Shala swung her hook swords wildly, cutting straight through the Skaolans' shields and armor. She dodged a thrust from a black spear before warping behind its wielder and sinking the stabbing blades of her hook swords into his back. She then found herself surrounded by a dozen Skaolan spearmen, while a few of them still carried a khopesh. Shala connected her two hook swords at the curved ends, doubling the range of a swing, then raised them above her head and whirled them around herself. She took the heads of the Skaolan swordsmen and a few of the spearmen that didn't step backward before the blades struck them. The Guardian then warped behind the three remaining spearmen and stabbed the stabbing blades of her hook swords into each of their heads.

"Shala!" Dameon suddenly shouted. An Undying was behind her, raising a giant, black mace over her head, and a lightning arrow from Dameon's bow struck him and killed him before he could bring the weapon down. Shala stepped back from his corpse, then gave Dameon a playful punch to the shoulder as he walked up next to her.

"Thanks," she said. Mai, Captain Roberts, and the rest of Fireteam Ivory cleared the courtyard, but there was still a darkness hanging over the the Celestial Sword.

"Where's the Shadow?" Captain Roberts wondered. Suddenly, another explosion erupted from the breach in the wall. A giant mechanical monster called a 'cyclops' that stood on two legs came stomping through the breach.

"Oh, come on!" Dameon complained. The war machine was supported by two giant legs, and had arms that held cannons and machine guns on both of them. On each shoulder was a pod holding a dozen small missiles. It was a heavily armed fighting machine that could easily bring down the entire fortress in a single volley of its missiles, or even a few shots from its cannons. The machine gave off an aura of darkness that was more powerful than anything Shala had ever felt, but it shadowed a second, weaker power. That one must have been the Shadow of the Abyss, and they must have been controlling it. Suddenly, a missile fired from one of the pods on its shoulders. It flew straight for Fireteam Ivory while they were together.

"Scatter!" Captain Roberts shouted. The Guardian squad dispersed, spreading out just before the missile crashed against the ground, erupting an explosion that would have killed the entire team, even with their aura shields. A cloud of smoke formed where the missile struck, and Dameon formed a fire arrow in his bow, loosing it right at the Skaolan war machine. The flaming projectile exploded against the vehicle, then Shala rushed at it with all her strength while it was staggering backward, her hook swords behind her. Just as it regained its footing, Shala stabbed the curved ends of her blades into its metal plating and flung herself upward before sinking the stabbing blades into it as she came down. She struggled to keep her grip on her aura blades as the giant machine took a step forward, but she reached above each stab into the metal and pulled herself up, all the way to the shoulder. Both missile pods had wide power cables connecting them to its back, which also had cables that went to the arms and legs. Shala kept her balance, leaning forward to see what all of the cables were connecting to. It was a large, metal box with a red, glowing spot on it. It must have been the power source. Shala warped to where she stood on the metal box, then cut the cables that led to the missile pods with her aura blades. As she jumped down, she severed the cables that connected the power source to the arms and legs. As Shala landed behind it, the entire machine fell forward, crashing to the ground.