Chapter 23: Civil War Part 6 (Victory)

Chapter 23: Civil War Part 6 (Victory)

Pursureres of rebel Commanders are Captain Gregor and Cilia commanded a handpicked Hunter-Killer unit: the fifty elite Royal Guards from Alexius's retinue, warriors who had stood with him in the palace coup, and Cilia's two hundred light cavalry, the fastest and deadliest riders in the kingdom. They moved with a speed that defied all conventions of Leonese warfare.

The half-finished Prince's Highway gave them an initial, shocking advantage, but once they veered off onto the muddy tracks of the Eastern Reaches, Cilia's genius truly shone. Her scouts, a whispering wind of wolf-kin and elf rangers, fanned out for miles. They didn't engage the fleeing rebels directly. They were far crueler. They became ghosts that haunted their every step. They picked off their outriders, drove off rebels from their fleeing path so they couldn't hunt for food, and left subtle, —a dead rebel scout left hanging from a tree, a Royal Army arrow planted silently in a tree trunk just feet from their nightly camp. They denied the fugitives a single moment of rest, a single breath free from the terror of being watched.

Gregor and his Royal Guard were the hammers that followed this psychological torment. They were a knot of pure, terrifying force, moving with a relentless, ground-eating pace that never faltered.

Aboard a laboring horse, Marquess Dynan could feel the jaws of the trap closing. His fine silks were spattered with mud, his face, once flushed with arrogance, was now pale and gaunt with fear. The glorious rebellion had lasted less than a week. Now he was a hunted animal.

"That Bishop!" he spat, his voice a ragged gasp. "This is his fault! His useless Templars, his talk of holy crusades! He has led us all to ruin!"

Bishop Valerius de Avarus rode beside him, his white clerical robes stained and torn. Outwardly, he maintained an eerie, almost infuriating calm, but his mind was a cold storm of calculation. The war was lost. Marquess Dynan was a spent force, a blustering fool whose usefulness had ended the moment his army broke. The Bishop's thoughts were no longer on victory, but on survival. How could this defeat be spun? How could he preserve himself, the vessel of the Church's will? The 'heretic' prince had won this round, but the war for the soul of Leo was eternal.

Lord Patrin, however, possessed none of his father's fleeting rage or the Bishop's cold pragmatism. He was simply a terrified boy, stripped of his privilege, facing the raw consequences of his actions for the first time in his pampered life.

"We're all going to die!" he wailed, tears carving clean tracks through the grime on his face. "It's your fault, father! You and your stupid pride! You should have just bought me the elf!"

The remaining hundred or so household knights that formed their retinue listened to this, their morale crumbling with every passing hour. They were exhausted, hungry, and haunted.

On the second day of the pursuit, their rearguard simply vanished. One moment they were there; the next, only silence and the faint, coppery scent of blood on the wind. Cilia's riders had struck and faded away, leaving twenty more rebel knights dead without a single loss. Panic finally shattered the Marquess's nerve.

"We make for Blackwood Bridge!" he commanded, his voice shrill. "It is a stone chokepoint. We can hold them there! We must hold them there!"

It was a desperate, foolish plan, born of terror. Blackwood Bridge was a narrow, ancient stone structure over a fast-moving river—a defensible position, but also a perfect cage.

They arrived with Gregor's force hot on their heels. The hundred exhausted knights dismounted, forming a hasty, terrified shield wall at the mouth of the bridge. They were the last remnants of House Dynan's power, and they knew they were about to die.

The attack was a study of brutalist efficiency.

Cilia's light cavalry did not charge. They galloped in wide, graceful arcs, staying just out of effective sword range, peppering the knights' formation with arrows. The arrows did little damage against their heavy plate, but that wasn't the point. They forced the knights to keep their shields up, to stay packed together, unable to maneuver. They sowed chaos and frustration.

Then, Gregor and his fifty Royal Guards advanced.

At their head walked Captain Gregor. He did not even bother to ignite his Aura. He didn't need to. His very presence was an overwhelming force.

"For the Marquess! For our honor!" a rebel captain roared, trying to rally his men.

Gregor met their shield wall. He simply raised his greatsword and brought it down. The sound was not the clang of steel on steel, but the sickening crunch of a smith's hammer crushing an anvil. The first knight's shield, his helmet, and his head were all obliterated in a single, cataclysmic blow.

Gregor stepped through the gap he had created. The fifty Royal Guards poured in after him.

What followed was not a battle. It was a slaughter. The Royal Guards were living weapons, their movements honed by Gregor's ruthless standards. They fought with a synergy and ferocity the dispirited household knights could not hope to match. The shield wall dissolved in seconds, becoming a chaotic melee where the superior skill and stamina of the Royal Guards were decisive.

Amid the chaos, Lord Patrin, seeing his father's last line of defense crumble, made a break for it. He shoved a man-at-arms aside and scrambled towards the riverbank, hoping to lose himself in the woods on the other side.

A shadow detached itself from the swirling melee. Cilia, on foot, her twin daggers a blur in her hands, moved with the speed of a striking viper. She ran Patrin down in five swift strides. He turned his face into a mask of blubbering terror and tried to raise a sword he barely knew how to use.

Cilia didn't even slow down. Her first dagger slapped his sword aside. Her second slid cleanly, almost gently, into his throat. His eyes widened in shock, and he collapsed into the mud, his life ending with a pathetic, gurgling whimper. The boy whose tantrum had ignited a civil war died for nothing, witnessed by no one of consequence.

On the bridge, Marquess Dynan fought with the panicked strength of a cornered animal, but he was overwhelmed by two Royal Guards and beaten to his knees, his sword knocked from his grasp.

Bishop Valerius de Avarus did not fight at all. He stood beside his horse, surrounded by his last four clerical attendants, his face pale but composed. When he saw Captain Gregor striding towards him, a god of death caked in the blood of a hundred knights, he raised his hands.

"I claim clerical sanctuary!" the Bishop declared, his voice ringing with a last vestige of authority. "I am a man of the Gods! You cannot touch me!"

Gregor stopped before him. He looked down at the Bishop, Then, with a movement far too fast for a man his size, he swung the flat of his greatsword. The blow caught the Bishop squarely on the side of the head. Valerius de Avarus collapsed without a sound, his claim of sanctuary ending in a heap of unconscious, disgraced finery.

Within ten minutes, it was over. Every rebel knight and soldier was dead. As per the Grand Prince's orders, only two were left alive: Marquess Dynan and Bishop Avarus, both bound securely and under heavy guard.

Cilia walked over to Gregor, wiping the blood from her dagger "The whelp is dead," she said, her voice flat. "The rest are silenced. The operation succeeded."

Gregor merely grunted, his gaze already scanning the horizon, back towards the main army. "Send the rider," was all he said.

Back at the Three Forks battlefield, Alexius was in his command tent, a royal physician carefully stitching the deep gash in his arm. General Varrus was outside, overseeing the grim logistics of victory: counting the dead, tending to the wounded, and securing the massive amounts of captured arms and armor.

The messenger from the Hunter-Killer unit arrived and delivered the report. Alexius read it and smiled.

He looked up at Varrus and Chancellor Elias, who had just entered the tent.

"It is finished," he stated. "Gregor and Cilia have the heads of the rebellion. The civil war is over."

In his mind, the System flared with triumphant light.

[PRIMARY QUEST COMPLETE: Crush the Dynan Rebellion.]

[Objective: Neutralize Rebel Leadership - SUCCESS.]

[Objective: Annihilate Rebel Army - SUCCESS.]

[Principality Stability: 75% -> 85%]

[National Morale: Increased (Awe/Fear of the Crown).]

[New Quest Line Unlocked: The Judgment of the Crown and Diplomatic Negotiation.]

(Continue....)