Pleiades Over the Shepherd

Fantasia for Saber and Four Blades

Disclaimer: I do not own any 7DS characters or settings. (But if Netmarble doesn't move the Grand Cross game in this direction, I'm going to throw a fit.)

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The once-captain of The Pleiades of the Azure Sky stood on the hilltop, staring back at the distant walls surrounding Liones, himself surrounded by memories. Her scent. Her laugh. Her confidence in her own beauty. Her energy to share that beauty in their quiet moments between assignments. Even now he could imagine her figure as she walked deliberately toward him, loosening the tie of her robe, letting it fall from her shoulders, slipping it past her breasts, her waist, her hips.

His longing for her shifted like a tide, sometimes diminished, sometimes pulling at his heart with such pain that he could barely breath. But always there. This many months later, he was beginning to wonder if it would cost him his sanity. Or the lives of his soldiers.

A gust of wind carried the sounds of fighting. Men shouting. The clash of steel. But even those sounds trailed behind the surge of unfamiliar, magical power rippling outward from the battle.

None of the men in his squad wielded that kind of power. None of them would be able to stand against it.

* * *

She watched as the four soldiers moved warily into place around her. Their strange armor clearly marked them as more of her assigned targets, and for the first few moments, she had hoped they might be a challenge worth exercising her fullest strength. But the initial clash disproved that possibility. These holy knights merely meant another chore to finish.

They were ready. The one at her back charged.

She sprinted at him too. Then sprang over his head with a flip and twist. Passing by him, she slashed one curved dagger across the exposed back of his neck. Landing with perfect balance, she hurled those daggers at the other two knights closest to her.

The blades clanged against their armor and splashed away into nothing, leaving the knights unharmed, but distracted and worried.

At least they possessed that much insight. Their worry was well founded because the poison would affect them almost immediately. Even as she leaped toward them, it slowed their reactions and began sapping their strength. Reaching overhead as she descended on the first target, one of the katanas hovering beside her slipped into her hand. She followed the biological hazard's effects with an elegant melody of bladework that would finish this target.

The others rushed in, thinking she was distracted.

Was this all her assignment included? Felling trees like a common woodchopper? She slid away from one knight's well-practiced, but ill-fitted attack. Didn't he recognize that in this terrain, too many low shrubs and sizable rocks made it foolish to throw all one's strength into a blow. She slashed three times as he stumbled past. Then he collapsed. Was this truly all her supervisor meant for her to accomplish?

Moments later, the low, grassy hills were silent again except for the breeze. The stillness made it easy to discern the arrival of another target. She settled her daggers into place at the small of her back, leaving the katanas to drift in the air beside her. Then she casually turned to face the newcomer.

Hmnnn. Perhaps not a target after all. His clothing seemed more like a townsperson, with a simple jacket, scarf, and trousers. To say nothing of the eyeglasses he wore. On the other hand, he wore a sword and his close-cropped hair had something of a military feel. And his eyes. 

He watched her with intelligence, experience, and understanding. She could feel him measuring her, and that awareness brought something new. A mild flutter in her abdomen. What in the world did that signify? Had one of the knights actually cut her? She reviewed the skirmish in her mind and knew that wasn't the case. But if not the result of combat, then where did this slightly enjoyable sensation come from?