Glacial March

-1:00 P.M.-

With a large-scale sprint dedicated to crossing the river that separated Orion and our forces, we all charged forwards with relentless courage and anger directed at the man who threatened our futures.

We scaled that river and climbed up the glacier, rapidly approaching the metallic gate. As I turned around to plant the rope against rocks to we could climb the glacier easier, I finally got a glimpse at all of the rage stuffed into this crowd. Everybody looked dead set on pushing for freedom. A much more effective strategy than Orion had.

Tavian, Ellie, Noboki, Dani, Carl, Ullr, Charlie, Mandi, Lia, and I were all grouped as we put up the ropes for our friends to follow.

"Remember the plan! Lia, take my stim-shot and use it to fight Moon. I want to be safe on every level." Tavian told us.

"What about if you get hurt?!" Lia yelled out to him. I was on board with her.

"Don't worry so much about me. I'll find a way. Moon is the top priority for fighting, right after Orion, but Sky will be able to handle Orion." Tavian explained. I was confident in him, I was confident in myself, today would be the day Orion dies.

"Fine, but you better stay back and out of trouble! I'll go find Moon, move up with the crowd, right?" Lia asked Tavian. Tavian nodded and turned to Carl, Charlie, and Mandi. "You three. Now that Noboki is out of the question, we can split our forces a little thinner. I want you three to head towards June and Amera. But please be careful, just because they aren't Noboki doesn't mean they won't be just as strong." He explained.

"Ellie and I will take the frontlines and fight with every other soldier, pushing to the castle to regain some ground. Noboki, you stay in the very back and wait for everybody to pass that glacier. Once we're all a safe distance away, you blow that glacier to smithereens so nobody can come up behind us. Sky, Dani, Ullr, you three stick together and figure out how to spread your forces accordingly." Before Tavian could finish, Dani raised her hand with a frown, then crossed her arms.

"I'll go after Moon too." She demanded.

"What?! That's insane! Let Lia handle it, we might need you somewhere else Dani." Tavian responded to her. I decided to step in.

"With Dani and Lia, I'm confident Moon won't stand a chance. Let her go, I'll cover where I need to in her stead." I told Tavian. Dani smiled at me, then turned back to look at Tavian.

"Fine, that works," Tavian said. I pulled my stim-shot out of my plate-mail and gave it to Dani.

"If anything goes wrong, you use it," I told her. Everybody left in our crowd looked toward me. The last remaining people were climbing the ropes and everybody was almost collectively up on the glacier now.

"What about you?!" Dani asked me. I pointed to the strand tattoo on my face.

"I can get help if I ask for it now. Don't worry about me." I told her. Dani hesitantly nodded before moving towards Lia's old position, fighting upwards with the crowd to meet with Moon.

"Ullr... you and I will take Dante. I owe him a visit." I said out loud. Ullr nodded.

"I'm with you, Bossman. He pisses me off too." Ullr said, punching his fists together. Then, it's settled. Dante didn't stand a chance against both Ullr and me.

Ullr and I split off from the group on the western front, walking towards the edge of the glacier far away from everywhere else. Since we were hunting from afar, we sat on top of an ice spire that stood above all else. Ullr helped me move up to the top and I dropped the rope I was carrying around to lift him to my level. After we both got to the top of the spire, Ullr laid down and pulled out his telescope.

"They're just starting to notice our arrival. No soldiers yet... we'll have to wait up here." Ullr commented. "Hey, Bossman, how in the world are we supposed to seclude Dante from the rest of the fighting force?" He added.

"Tavian explained that his top soldiers like Dante are worth two hundred men, Orion holds people like Dante in high regard because of their fighting capability, and because of the strategy Tavian introduced to Orion, he knows that Orion will send Dante, June, and Amera to the back of our forces to corner us. That's why Noboki is going to blow the back entrance up, so Dante and the others are forced to come right at us. When they try to come up behind everybody, that's when we come in to stop him." I told Ullr.

It was a fool-proof plan. I couldn't believe it based on the chances it took with everybody's strategies all coming together at once, but there were no holes in it at all. If Dante's main attack strategy was to come up behind us, then it would make sense for us to be watching this path, especially if he couldn't fully come up behind us. We could cut him off and seclude him in one spot to prevent an attack. Perfectly foolproof.

The war had just only started on our front, but it felt like I was watching everybody run for ten minutes with Ullr up on the spire of ice.

"Bossman... is something cooking?" Ullr asked. I shook my head, continuing to watch the crowd. Orion's soldiers finally started retaliating, and the fact that I could still see women and children running meant he didn't enact his plan. His System wasn't Corrupt, I still had the upper hand. How could I keep it from becoming Corrupt from this far away?

The soldiers continued to push against ours, but we were steadily gaining ground over Orion's men. We had more than a long way to go, but succeeding now would boost morale and cause us to pull ahead.

"You seemed to overlook something." I pushed Ullr's body off of the ice spire when I heard Dante's familiar voice echo behind us. Ullr fell to the rope and slid on his way down to the glacier, but I was thrown down to an even lower part of the original glacier he was on. The spire could be counted as the third floor, while the main glacier was the second, and I just hit the first floor.

"Impressive reaction time, White Stone! You've always amazed me with it." I drew the sword from my back and held it up to fight against Dante. He looked different now... Dante had cloth wrapped around his head that covered his eye, and bandages around the rest of his body. He looked a lot worse than I remembered from so long ago.

[Remember]

The words flashed in my left eye as I continued to look at Dante. The piercing pain I hadn't felt in so long had returned and I was stuck standing a few feet away from him with the words stuck in my eyes. I couldn't remember now, I had to focus on the battle.

[Remember]

It flashed and the words got bigger. So big that I couldn't see Dante through my left eye anymore. I could feel heat sear the left side of my cheek, pushing the numbing pain further up my cheekbone. I couldn't even speak at this point, I was holding back tears of the pain from my cheek and the tears that followed right behind Domin's death.

[Remember]

I remembered now... Dante was the one who incited that attack. Dante was the one who ordered Lia, he was the one who killed Domin.

There was no way in hell I could let this man live. I focused on him again after the word disappeared and everything around me went dead silent. My tunnel vision had initiated and nothing else in this world mattered...

Except killing him.