Chapter Text

The wooden gate that separated the monks of Tau Kor from the rest of the Realm began to shake as the footsteps of thousands of soldiers began to pound toward the monastery. Some monks moved forward, wielding weapons and any makeshift objects they could lift against their attackers. Others rushed to gather children and move them toward the safehouse at the center of the monastery’s land.

A firebomb whizzed through the sky, taking off the top of a bell tower. Another crashed into the farmlands, setting the meditation maze ablaze.

Buck stepped forward with the other defenders, his shotgun in hand. He had not touched the dreaded thing in so long, and had hoped that he would never have to again.

His heart should not be pounding in his chest as hard as it was.

Buck was a trained fighter. He had spent years as a slave and a guard in the Thousand Hands Guild. He had spent years as a soldier in the Magistrate. He had fought in more battles than he could count, he had seen more soldiers and warriors than anyone else could have… yet at this moment, with the sight of the gate shaking and the sound of heavy monk breathing, Buck had never felt more alive.

For the first time in his life, Buck truly had something to fight for.

Something had flown high in the sky, faster than any of the firebombs that tore through stone buildings and farmland. The flying object was coming right for the army of monks.

Several monks fell back, trying to seek shelter. Others raised their weapons and prepared their stances.

The thing flew faster and faster, stopping short a few feet over the ground before them. His starlit cape and silver-blue hair froze Buck’s breath in his throat.

“Flee! Go!” Jenos cried, “Get your families and get out of the monastery!”

“We’ll fight for our home!” Shouted Hal from the crowd. The rest of the monks began to shout and murmur agreements.

“No! If you stay and fight, you will die!” Jenos cried. Suddenly, he stared off into space and muttered something under his breath. Buck raised a hand and was about to speak to Jenos, before the Ascended flew off, vanishing into the monastery.

“You heard him, we have to get out of here!” Buck cried back to the group. Some monks nodded and ran into the Monastery, while others stood their grounds.

“This is our home!” Hal snapped, “We stood up to the Goblin Scourges, we will stand up to these brutes!”

Something slammed into the outside of the gate, and the strong wood shook violently.

Buck stepped back as his fellow monks moved forward, weapons raised and ready to fight.

A sickening crack sounded through the courtyard, before the gate exploded open, sending shards of wood at the little monk army.

The “battering ram” that had taken out the gate stood before the lot. She was short, and adorned with silver armour over red cloth. She carried a massive cannon in one arm and wore a flag on her back. She lifted her hands to her face and removed the goat mask that hid her features. Her amber eyes scanned the lot and her breath was sharp. She threw the mask to the ground like a piece of refuse, selected the scarlet and blue flag from the back of her armour, and slammed the flag post into the ground.

A monk surged forward, his polearm raised, a battle cry on his lips. The woman knight released her arm from her cannon and, gripping it by its top handle, swung it like a massive tonfa. Before the monk could react, she smashed her weapon into the side of his face, sending him flying.

The monk slammed into the ground with a sickening thud, and a scarlet pool began from his mangled jaw.

Several more monks charged forward, and a troupe of soldiers poured in through the destroyed gate.

As the seas of armed men and women crashed toward the knight, she stood still and calm, her sad gaze meeting Buck’s. He could see the gaze of a broken mind in her eyes, the same gaze he had worn for countless years.

The seas poured together, blocking Buck’s view of the woman and striking him back into reality. He turned and ran into the monastery, Jenos’ safety now the only thing on his mind.

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Inara’s breath slowed as her senses became alert. She could hear the battle starting inside the monastery, she could hear the whir of the firebombs overhead, she could hear the crash as buildings fell.

What she could not hear, however, was the Mother’s power reaching her.

Come on, Stone Warden! She thought to herself, The Paladins need you! You need your power!

“Ma’am?” It was Druah’s voice behind her. The Stagalla warrior placed a hand on Inara’s shoulder.

“I cannot hear the Mother.” Inara sighed, glancing at the stone golem and at the group of militant Paladins behind her.

“Ma’am, even if you cannot hear her, the Mother can hear you.” Druah responded, “Call to her and she will answer, she will always answer.”

Inara nodded and turned back to the monastery wall before her. Destruction was so… uncouth, the Mother hated destruction. But, this was an emergency and the Mother would understand. She reached out a hand and gently touched the smooth wall. She whispered her prayer to the Mother under her breath, and she could feel the power surging through her feet, up her legs, into her abdomen, filling her chest, and finally down her arms. As the power entered her fingertips, cracks began to form along the wall. The spiderweb of cracks began to grow and spread rapidly, until they reached from the top of the wall to the ground. Inara pushed her palm into the wall, and the wall shattered like brittle glass, the pieces safely falling down to the ground instead of blasting in either direction.

“Move forward, Paladins!” Valera cried, “Find the monks and help them out through here!”

The Paladins moved inside, quickly making their way through the monastery.

Inara spotted a large Stagalla warrior throw an injured monk over his shoulder as if the monk was a toddler, before the warrior rushed back out of the monastery.

Inara held her staff firmly as she moved, trying not to hear the sounds of fire and destruction tearing through what should have been a place of wisdom and peace.

She paused at the sight of a woman sitting beside a man who had been struck in the chest by a piece of fallen debris. The man lay sprawled out on the ground on a pool of his own blood, and it was apparent that he was not breathing, nor would he be waking up again.

Inara knelt beside the woman monk, placing a hand on her back. She couldn’t hear the woman’s weeping, but she could feel it through the woman’s body. Inara understood this heartbreak much more than she wished she did.

The Stagalla warrior rose to her feet and tried to nudge the woman into accompanying her, but the woman would not move. The woman fell forward, her head on the man’s chest as she wailed.

“He does not want you to mourn or stay here awaiting your death.” Inara spoke as she knelt again and returned her hand to the woman’s back, “He wants you to live, he wants you to fight. It is time to come and run, you must live on. If not for yourself, then live on for him.”

The woman monk raised her gaze to Inara’s, before nodding, wiping her tears from her eyes, and rising to her feet. Inara ushered her toward the entrance way that she had created and motioned for the woman to go. After she was assured that the woman had escaped to safety, Inara turned back to the falling monastery and resumed her work.

She spotted the Paladin Sha Lin hard at work trying to move a broken door out of its doorway to free a monk woman and her children. Inara moved to help, and the massive stone golem made quick work of the little door.

“Sha Lin?” sounded a voice from behind them. Inara and Sha Lin turned to see a large bald man with a crystal symbol painted on his forehead.

“B-buck? Buck, right?” Sha Lin asked in apparent incredulity.

“The families are hiding in the safehouse.” Buck spoke, “It won’t be safe from the bombs for long, but if we can get there we can escort them out.”

“Buck? How did you get here?” Sha Lin replied, “Last I saw, Master Zhin had sold you to the Magistrate and-”

“That’s not important right now!” Buck snapped, “We can talk later!” With this, the massive man turned and ran deeper into the Magistrate, followed by Sha Lin. Filled with hope, Inara followed the duo.

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“Princess, you should stay on your mount!”

Lian ignored the knight and continued her trek to the monastery. Soldiers rushed around her, and her closest guards demanded she stay back. She had watched the events of the Siege’s beginning unfold in a horrifying slow motion, from the moment that Khan stood in the field talking to the Ascended, to the moment that everything went wrong.

She continued her trek toward the monastery, hardly caring about the soldiers running back and forth around her.

There was only one person in her sight, one man who stood before the broken gates of the Monastery and watching with glee as his men tore through the sacred buildings. He held his burning blade gently beside him.

“This was not what we planned.” Lian snapped as she approached the man from behind.

“Well, this is what I planned.” Zhin responded, satisfaction riding his tone.

“Do you realise what you’ve done?” Lian watched him closely.

He glanced over his shoulder, his gaze meeting hers, “The princess brings an army to a monastery. The princess hires a bandit army to a monastery. The princess threatens a monk god. What have I done in this scenario?”

“I told you not to kill!” She snapped, “I told you I don’t want to hurt them!”

“Ah yes, I had forgotten.” Zhin chuckled, “I am supposed to respect your opinion, right? Was that it? Honestly, I had not remembered ever agreeing to something so foolish.”

“You. Firebombed. A. Monastery.” Lian spoke very slowly.

“No.” Answered Zhin, “This is your siege. It is your battle. You brought an army to a monastery, you hired a bandit army, you threatened a monk… who will ever believe that you did not also set the monastery ablaze?”

Lian crossed her arms, watching Zhin with a cold glare, “Why did you do this?”

Zhin approached her, standing so that his face was a foot away from hers, “Why did you bring me here, Lian? If it was the offer of my mother, you would have just given her to me. But no, you brought me along with you. Why? It’s because you wanted to show off, isn’t it? You wanted the Magistrate to see how you think you can rule over me, just because you think you own this whole damn continent. But it’s not just that, is it? You wanted me to know that you own me, you wanted me to know that you own this continent. You do not own my army, you do not own my people, and you do not own me.”

He paused to sheathe his sword. Once his hand was free, he rested both of them on Lian’s waist and looked into her eyes with an amalgamation of warmth and danger in his gaze, a sight that only a person like Zhin could wield.

“Do you know, Lian?” He continued, a slight chuckle in his tone, “If circumstances were different, I think you and I would have gotten along just fine. Perhaps our marriage would not have been so… pestering.”

Soldiers ran past and around the duo, the sky was light with starlight in the purple sky and the haze of flames from the monastery. The air was filled with battle shouts and screams of terror, of clashing metal against metal and hundreds, thousands, of footsteps. The smell of smoke and burning rode the wind. Lian’s silver hair was littered with dust and grit, and Zhin’s long ebony hair matched. His face was calm as he gazed at her, even if his dark irises burned like fire and the hands he had placed on her waist felt as harsh and dangerous as embers.

“Well, princess?” Zhin spoke playfully, “We better hurry along. I heard a siege is happening, we wouldn’t want to miss it.”