Chapter 40: Liam's POV

We got here! Chapter 40! I had originally only planned to do like 30, but whatever lol. Also sorry for the two week wait, these chapters are getting increasingly hard to write. Anyway, here we go!

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My heart thumped in my chest so loud I almost didn't hear the drums. By the way everyone bristled, I thought for sure they could hear it, but then I realized that the banging everyone was hearing was different to the one clanging in my head. I swallow thickly, trying to force my body to stop shaking. After all, there's no reason to fear death. I'd be going up with Kismed, anyway. Right? The only thing to fear was the pain. The blinding, agonizing pain that went along with it...

I shake my head to clear the thought. That's the last thing I need to be thinking about right now. I take a deep breath, trying desperately to calm myself enough to focus. The only thing that matters right now is winning this battle. For Sage. For New Eladea. It doesn't matter what happens to me, only that we get back what we've lost, and that we get justice.

I listen to the sounds of nervous shuffling, people whispering, animals stomping and huffing, dragons grumbling under their breath. Tension hovers over our small army like a weighted blanket, heavy on everyone's shoulders. It left us feeling breathless and anxious, wanting the battle just to start already.

The sword in my hand that had been gifted to me by a blacksmith feels awkward in my palm. It isn't balanced to my grip, and is incredibly flashy. It's obviously made for royalty. A queen. Not me. It doesn't belong in my hands, yet here I am, preparing to use it to cause pain.

At least it won't be killing anyone. Well, maybe one person, but I refuse to feel guilty about that.

Just as I think this unbearable silence will carry on forever, the sound of hundreds of men letting out their battle cries echo in the valley. Ivar's army charges forward, weapons held high, their pace measured to stay neatly in their ranks.

They're too far out. We'll lose our advantage if we rush now. I think. I raise my closed fist, signaling to my own army to hold. I clench my hand tighter around my weapon, shifting uncomfortably in the flimsy yet heavy leather armor the people had forced me to wear. I glance upwards and recite the prayer that had been circling in my head for the past few hours.

Fates and Goddesses, I pray for you to have mercy on me and my people. Please see us through to the end, the end you have promised to us. Please.

And then I lower my fist, pointing forward without a word.

Elric's team of animals shoot forward immediately, sprinting past me with the speed no human can possess. Rats, cats, wolves, Justice the horse and many others flying by. Then there's the battle cry of the humans as they start their charge forward. I'm able to hear Renate's loud "For Eladea!" Cry above the chaos as his team advances too.

I take a deep breath, glancing upwards as the dragons take to the air, then backwards to the medics laying in wait. I catch Reid's eye, his surprisingly calm expression meeting mine as he stands confidently in front of his platoon. His eyebrows fall a bit and a silent understanding passes between us.

I study his red irises, his ghostly pale skin almost glowing in the gloomy light and his white hair being thrown about in the steady wind. I grip my sword tighter, his soft eyes calming something in me, before I turn, reenergized.

I raise my sword and repeat Ren's battle cry. "For Eladea!" I scream, before breaking out into a run with the last of the stragglers from my army.

I break to the side as soon as I see the pileup in the middle of the armies. The edges are spread more thin, an obvious weak point. I duck as a column of fire explodes from the sky, cutting off the enemy's advancement to the left.

Huffing, I leap over a smoldering tuft of grass into the fray. I barely have time to clear my eyes of the putrid smoke before I'm locking blades with a man clad in black armor. Not having the arm strength of an experienced fighter, I'm pushed backwards. I feel the heat of the still burning brush against my back, singing the edges of my ponytail. I grit my teeth and shove him forward with all of my weight. The man stumbles, and I take a moment to catch my breath.

Then he's on me again, a murderous glint in his eyes that I hadn't seen from any of the other knights. I parry his strike and parry again, shuffling my feet the way I had seen Kate do a hundred times.

Really wish you would have given me those fighting lessons now. I think to myself as I dodge another attack, dancing around behind him. I duck to dodge the butt of his sword but I'm too slow, resulting in my skull being knocked by the handle. I cradle my head, stumbling away from the man.

Come on, Liam! Get it together! I scold myself. Blinking to clear the fog from my head, I sidestep him, acting like I'm going for his left. Instead, I quickly change to the right, using his larger frame to my advantage, and slice my sword at his knee. He cries out, hands automatically going to his wound. I kick at his other knee as hard as I can. It doesn't do much, but throws him off balance enough for me to knock his chin with my sword the same way he did with me.

He crashes to the ground noisily, but it's quickly drowned out by the chaos around me. My breath is labored as I cradle my throbbing head, trying to shake the pain away. I calm my racing heart and rush forward, jumping over downed bodies to latch onto a woman's back, knocking her in the head as hard as I can. She falls and I push her limp body into her comrade. This knocks him off balance and he stumbles, getting taken off guard by one of my men and they both fall to the ground unconscious.

"Nice one, your majesty!" My man calls, turning to fight off another dark knight.

"Don't call me that!" I yell back, turning to fight my own enemy.

I find the less I think about it, the easier the fighting gets. I let my instincts carry me, my conscious mind taking the back seat. The next part of the battle blurs together. Block, duck, stab, swipe, duck, block, knock out. Over and over again I take down person after person. I don't feel the punches that land on my body, or the kicks or even that one time a knight managed to cut open my bicep. Over and over again. Block, duck, stab, swipe, duck, block, knock out.

Time flies by in a blur, sun moving across the cloudy sky as my body falls into a rhythm that carries me across the battlefield. Bodies morph together, hours feel like minutes, my consciousness registering almost none of it.

The only thing that snaps me out of my trance is when I turn to take down my next opponent only to realize there is none. I look around, confused, my adrenaline draining from my thumping heart. I suddenly register how tired I am. All of my wounds become known to me and the pain rushes in at once. I wince, stumbling as I glance around the thinning battlefield. The main battle had moved closer to the river, but I hadn't. I had stayed exactly where I started, knights running at me to take me out specifically. I had been target number one.

I glance down at the ring of bodies around me. Fear pangs my heart as I crouch down, but it quickly becomes apparent to me that none of them were actually dead. Just knocked out, a few groaning with injuries my sword had inflicted. But none are dead. I take a deep breath of relief, my muscles aching with the motion.

I glance up as a buck trots past, a leg freshly bandaged, antlers stained dark with blood, heading for the rest of the battle. He catches sight of me and nods his regal head, fur wet with sweat. He then breaks into a gallop, followed by a few of my warriors, all with some sort of bandaged wound.

I look up to the sky as the familiar sound of V's wings flap overhead. I watch him skim downwards, right over the heads of some of the more spread out fighters before a smaller being leaps off of his head and he curves back up to the sky. Must be Ren. I think to myself.

I take a moment to gather myself mentally before I step carefully over the unconscious bodies around me and start to make my way to the still-raging battle. My legs feel like lead, and my muscles ache. My bicep burns from where it had been cut and I feel multiple different smaller gashes around my body. But still I trot carefully towards the fighting, intent on making it until the end. Whatever that end may be.

I falter when I hear someone groaning, and I recognize their voice. I look to the ground to see a familiar face. Zandere lays writhing on the ground, arms encircled around his abdomen. I hurry over to him, stumbling to my knees over him. His young eyes find mine, and he flashes a tired smile before his face goes blank and he lets out another groan. He's deathly pale and a line of watery blood trickles out of his mouth.

"Hey." I croak out, not realizing how thirsty I was until this moment.

"Hi, y-you're maj-" He tries to get out but pauses as a cough racks his body, blood splattering out of his mouth and partly on my pants. He winces, looking at it. "S-sorry." He wheezes. I fail to mention the fact that my clothes were already ruined with blood from multiple different hosts.

I furrow my eyebrows and reach down to his arms. I carefully peel them back, and suck in a breath when I see his wet shirt, soaked dark with blood. A slit in his tunic makes it obvious he was stabbed. He had already bled a lot, his arms slick with it and the grass black beneath him.

"We're going to get you patched up, ok?" I tell him, feeling oddly attached to the teenager I had only met today. Afterall, he's only a few years younger than me. He doesn't deserve to be here, yet he risked everything to be anyway. If any of the knights recognized him and realized he had betrayed them, his entire family would be killed.

Maybe he was targeted because of that? What if they were already dead?

I look up and scan the thinning battlefield, spotting a person who wasn't either rushing towards the battle or limping back towards the hill. I raise my hand and call for the medic. He looks up, recognizes me, and races over. Zandere coughs up more blood.

"B-bosses suck, huh?" He tries. I look at him strangely. "Old s-sarge got me." He huffs out a laugh that turns into another coughing fit.

"Got a-all mad I betrayed 'em. B-but I wouldn't ch-change it for the w-world." He looks up at me with big, innocent blue eyes. "Pa and Gran always said to do th-the right thing. Th-this was it, r-right? I-I did good?" Tears well up in his young eyes and I can't help but feel my heart breaking.

"Yes, Zan." I tell him, my throat hurting too much to finish his name. "You did great. They're going to be so proud of you when we get them back." I put a hand on his shoulder as the medic finally arrived. Zandere closes his eyes, humming in the back of his throat, a small smile gracing his lips.

"That would be nice." He says quietly. I look at the medic who's hands fly around his torso, his eyes concentrated as he works on the boy.

"Will he be ok?" I choke out, emotion welling in my throat. This kid is my responsibility. I can't let him or his family down like this.

"Not sure. I can try to get him stable but he's lost a lot of blood...I'll take him up the hill to the more skilled healers. They'll know what to do." Immediately he starts gathering Zandere up with surprising ease.

"You know, I always wanted a brother..." Zandere slurs with a dreamy-like sound to his voice, followed by a drunken laugh, and then they're gone. I watch the medic run back to the hill, the boy draped over his arms for a long time.

Eventually though, I turn back to the battle at hand. I shake myself, trying desperately to get my head back in the game. A battle is still happening, I can't forget that.

Gritting my teeth, I pick up my 3 ton legs and force them to carry me towards the fight. Every huffing breath is a knife in between my ribs, my lungs trying desperately to rake in the necessary oxygen. It feels as if they aren't big enough, yet still I force myself to keep jogging, pushing back the woozy feeling in my head. My bicep stings and the bruises forming on my limbs are stiff with pain. My hair sticks to my forehead, slick with sweat, my hair tie being rendered basically useless after all the strands had slipped from it. The putrid smell of smoke, sweat and blood stings my nostrils, my clothes sticking to my body after being drenched with my own dampness and blood.

My fingers tingle slightly as my heart works double time to pump blood to my limbs, my calves seizing up from the exertion. But eventually, I make it to the riverside. It only takes me a few seconds of taking it in to know one very vital fact. A fact that turns my blood cold and immediately drowns out all my pain and tiredness, replacing it with a terrible, suffocating fear.

We're losing.

Every fighter is taking on at least two others, there are more than double bodies on the ground that I recognize versus the ones I don't. We can't win this. I thought we could...we could have left. Simply run and find a new home. Then everyone could have lived...these people won't see the morning because of me.

Raindrops pelt my skin but I don't feel them.

Once again my consciousness retreats back into my mind, letting my rage-filled subconscious take the reins. I'm just an onlooker, watching my own movements through my eyes. I don't feel the punches I take or the stabs I force forward with my sword. I don't feel the blood splattering on my forearms. I don't comprehend when my sword slowly moves from using the butt of the handle on temples to the blade on abdomens. The sound of steel piercing flesh is found on deaf ears.

They don't deserve it. I know that. I know it deep down in my conscious mind.

But the animalistic part of me doesn't care if their actions warrant this or not. They wear the black armor of Ivar, and that's all that matters.

The only thing that stops me is the sound of trumpets.

The foreign noise throws me out of my stupor, making me pause in my rampage. I stand there, breathing heavily, chest heaving, my fingers clenched around my sword. Sweat drips off my face, another warm substance drips off my hands, though I don't care to look down and see what it is. Bodies lay around me, half of them still moving in pain, but the other half are laying deathly still, dark halos around their torsos. I make eye contact with another knight, and he takes one look at me and moves on, shaking his head as if to say "not worth it". Good.

Finally, I turn backwards towards the sound of the instruments. At first I don't see anything, but then I see the shimmer of gold amongst the trees. Then men are pouring over the top of the hill, formed in tight ranks. Flags wave at the front corner of each group, their footsteps in perfect sync, shaking the ground beneath them.

A laugh tears itself out of me before I can stop it. Then I'm doubled over in hysterical giggles. Relief crashes through me like a tsunami, and suddenly the fear releases its suffocating grip on my heart. Instead a beautiful thing takes its place: hope.

I find myself sprinting forward, running full speed despite how bone tired my entire body is. Rain pelts at my skin, the skies beginning to open up. I'm thankful, it washes away the smell of blood and death, and hides the tears of relief flowing from my eyes.

I scan the newcomers, desperately trying to find their leaders. At the head I see three different people with red capes flowing behind them. I run up to them, meeting them at the bottom of the hill. They spot me and pause, their troops continuing forward.

"Prince Liam!" The one in the middle greets. I take a moment to catch my breath, looking through her helmet to the face underneath.

"Meike?" I ask, tilting my head, another hysterical laugh tearing out of me.

"You know it. You...look like hell." She notes, looking me up and down.

"That's to say the least." I laugh again, looking to her right to see her partner, Captain, barking orders at a platoon of troops. Her commanding voice carries easily through the ranks, making it clear how she got to such a high rank. She doesn't wear a helmet, like her two counterparts, her cape torn in parts at its bottom.

I take a deep breath, calming my racing heart and look to her left. The tall figure has his face obscured completely by a helmet that covers everything but his eyes. I look at him curiously, and he seems to huff a breath before reaching up to slip the helmet off of his head. I feel my jaw drop open.

"Rowdan?!" I croak the word out, my already parched mouth somehow getting more dry. The stunning model of a man smirks slightly, his coiling hair wet with sweat from the heavy helmet, his perfectly modeled body outlined in the golden armor that pings with the rain that pelts it. I can't believe it.

"What is it, Twig? Did I forget to mention last time we met that I happen to be a highly ranking officer of Willow Isle? My apologies." His deep silky voice muses. I think back to that fighting arena, his shirtless, defiant frame, his continued stoic silence, his warm smile as he helped Kate after the fight.

"Uh-" I clear my throat when it comes out squeakily. "A little bit." I say. Hot Chocolate smiles for real, his grey eyes sparking with amusement.

"When I heard your name in the war room I couldn't help but want to come help. Mostly just to see your face right now, but I guess helping innocents is good too." He winks, his handsome features crinkling with amusement before another voice pulls us out of our conversation.

"Lieutenant Rowdan, I believe you have troops to lead?" Captain remarks, coming up to stand next to Meike. He looks up, watching as the last of their troops march towards the battle. He reaches behind him and unsheathes an axe from his back, weighing it in his hands.

"Right, of course, Captain. Stick to the original plan?" The knight in question nods and he adorns his helmet, flashing me another wink before he's jogging off to his troops. I glance overhead as I hear the sound of half a dozen dragons roaring past. I look at the two female knights, tears flowing into my eyes once again.

"Thank you." I tell them.

"Don't thank us, thank King Malik. He couldn't sleep for many nights before he decided to send his best troops your way. Though, never tell him I told you that." Meike says, a playful smile adorning her features.

"He sends his regards, by the way." Captain, the more stoic of the two says. I smile, turning back towards the battle, now looking a lot more even.

"We should get back to it, then?" I say, my voice once again heavy with emotion. I'm just so tired.

"Not you. Us." Meike says, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"You're not fit to continue fighting. You may feel fine now, but we've seen enough battles to know when a person is running on pure adrenaline. As soon as that runs out you'll be passing out in the middle of the battlefield and then you'll be no good for anybody." Captain reasons. I open my mouth to protest but am interrupted.

"Help the wounded. They need you with them more than they need you killing more people. Let us handle that. Be with your people." Meike says, gently prying my sword from my hand. My fingers cramp from being clenched around the hilt for so long, and suddenly I realize how hard it is to keep myself upright. I huff a sigh and nod.

Meike nods, adorning her helmet once more. She reaches up and unlatches her cape, letting it fall to the wet grass. Captain follows her lead, unsheathing her masterfully crafted sword. Captain then gently pulls the thin golden ring off of her finger, gazing at it fondly in her hand for a moment before tucking it into her breastplate.

"We'll take back your castle. We promise." Meike says before trotting towards the battle. Captain smiles.

"We brought your best friend in the whole world, Star." She says with a smirk. I roll my eyes.

"She's a good medic. We thought you could use the help. And the positivity." She pats my shoulder. "Don't die." And then she's running after her fellow officers.

I stare down at two capes laying on the soaked ground, the rain slowly turning them a burgundy color. I take three deep, measured breaths. Then I turn, finding the nearest body on the ruined grass.

For the third time that day I find myself falling into a daze, my conscious brain retreating to the dark corners of my mind. The job is simple: check bodies for someone still alive, pick them up or drag them to the top of the hill, repeat. Over and over again I deposit groaning or unconscious bodies at the top of the medic hill, letting the healers take over. My limbs grow almost numb from the constant excretion, but I don't care. The task takes my mind off of things. It stops me from thinking about how many of these bodies won't make it. Or if I'll ever see my friends again. Or if my sister lives or not.

After what seems like eternity, I turn from the hill to find there are no bodies I recognize. I search the battlefield yet I don't see any that aren't already limping or dragging themselves back towards the hill already.

The battle's practically over, only a few small skirmishes left. Everyone else is either doing my job as well or making their way to get healed themselves.

By the riverbed my legs finally, finally give out. I drop to my knees, my legs in so much pain I can't feel them anymore. My previous wounds catch up to me, the sharp pain in my ribs, the hot singing in my bicep, the aching in my bruises and the pounding of my skull. I sway on my knees, my head feeling dizzy. My eyelids suddenly grow so heavy they begin to close on their own, and then I'm falling.

The last thing I see before I fall unconscious is the dark river, pelted by the showers raining from above, and then the world goes black.

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Word count: 4123

Welp! That's the battle from our favorite boy's perspective. What did you think? Theories? Comments? Any predictions about the next few chapters? I love to hear them!

Cya next week!