Chapter 53: Chapter 46 – Kill or Be Killed

"Mercy is nothing but a luxury on the battlefield. When it comes down to a battle, oftentimes all you can do is to kill others so that you do not end up killed yourself. Survival is almost always everyone's priority in such trying times, while other considerations often take the backseat instead." - Myrddin deVreys, Captain of the Death's Hand, Ptolodecca's team of trained battlefield assassins.

As she charged into the raging battle ahead of her, Aideen allowed her instinct and training to take over, as thinking too much would not have helped her in the chaotic brawl the situation had turned into.

 

More militiamen trickled into the fight from other sections of the town, but most of them went to reinforce Tirya or Diarmuid since their sections were closer, which left her area the one under the heaviest pressure. The line of militiamen still held, anchored by the Death Guards who fought valiantly and led by example, but it was a fragile balance.

 

She soon found herself running from place to place, healing injured combatants at once moment, crossing weapons with a raider and taking lives the next moment, trying to be where she was needed the most as soon as she could be.

 

While the Death Guards had a few members capable of using healing magic, there were not that many of them, and most of the time they were occupied entirely by the battle, and thus left unable to come to the aid of others as they were themselves busy fighting for their lives.

 

Aideen was a far more powerful healer than them, and more importantly, she didn't allow herself to be embroiled overlong in any one place, as she moved from spot to spot and dispensed healing to those who needed it the most as soon as she arrived there.

 

The elven raiders noticed the stiffening resistance quickly, and they also quickly pinpointed the reason why to Aideen, who went around healing people, at times even bringing back mortally injured soldiers into the fray. Her presence and actions had greatly boosted the troops' morale, and they fought all the harder for it.

 

Probably because of that, she soon found herself accosted by a concentrated push from the raiders, twelve of whom descended on her with blades drawn and murder evident in their eyes. Contrary to their expectation, she just gestured to signal the death guards to pincer the other raiders, and leave her alone, as she hefted her weapons and met the elves head on.

 

The elves were met with surprise when Aideen simply welcomed their blades, and ignored them as they slashed and pierced through her body. On the other hand, when she struck one dumbfounded elf in the throat with a thrust from her staff, the damage she left was far more permanent.

 

Aideen managed to remove a second enemy from the fight while they were surprised, as a second elf fell with a broken neck, but then the blade of the other ten descended on her. She gave up all pretense of defense, allowed the blades to pierce and slash through her flesh, only using her healing magic to repair what would have impeded her mobility, and focused on killing her opponents in any way she can instead.

 

When soldiers or Death Guards glanced at her as she fought on, they couldn't help but shudder, half with worry, and yet also with some trepidation at how she fought on despite injuries that would have sent any one of them to the grave on the spot, no questions asked.

 

They saw that she held her ground, and chose to do as she had bidden, as they pushed hard against the flanks of the elven advance. In the cramped quarters which favored close quarters combat like that, the elven raiders couldn't use their superior agility and mobility well, and soon fell one after another to the concerted push by the soldiers.

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By the time the elven advance was repelled, and the raiders were starting to retreat, a few Death Knights had the time to catch their breath, and turned to see Aideen's struggle behind them. What they saw, chilled their blood and caused cold sweat to drench their backs.

 

Aideen swung her three-sectioned staff like a flail and struck the last of the elves that had attacked her right in the small of his back as he turned to fled, the blow hard enough to shatter his spine and cause the elf to drop as he lost all feeling below his waist.

 

Eleven other elves lay as corpses on the blood-drenched ground. Two had their skulls shattered with their brains strewn haphazardly all over the place, while another two sported indentation on the side of their head that went deep enough to mash their brains inside.

 

Most of the rest had broken necks, except for one, an elder elf whom was the leader of this group of raiders, who Aideen had finished off just before by pushing her staves into his eye sockets until they broke through and reached his brain. That act had caused the last elf she brought down just now to flee in fear.

 

The last elf desperately crawled away from her with his hands, as he looked at her with sheer terror. His terror was well grounded, for Aideen walked towards him slowly, while she pulled out the blades still stabbed in her body one by one, and let them fall.

 

Her tunic was torn and shredded all over, and the white color of the cloth, with the green tree of life emblem of Vitalica, was no longer visible as what's left of the cloth had been drenched entirely red by the blood she had spilled. Not the blood of her enemies, but that of her own.

 

Dozens of deep cuts and stab wounds all over her body visibly closed up as she circulated her magic, and as she stood before the elf in the tattered remnants of her clothes, she looked as if nothing had ever happened to her, the her blood-drenched state put a lie to that image.

 

Silently, she brought her weapon down on the head of the last elf, and put him out of his misery, while the soldiers around her watched her half with horror, and half with admiration. The elven raiders had booked a full retreat by now, no longer willing to risk their lives against the much harder target, and the fight was dying down around them.

 

Then Aideen looked around at the corpses strewn around her, the corpses she herself had just killed, as the implication and nausea caught up with her mind, and she vomited a copious amount of blood.

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