Marika
"Haha!" Laughed the enormous jarman as Marika giggled. "What a splendid tale, you must tell us more of it once we return victorious, my lady Marissa!"
Internally, she flinched a little at the deception. Externally, she was excited about his enthusiasm. It was dawn, and the Erdtree's light glowed with an energetic hum as the group organized near the gate. It would be their twentieth attempt at finally bringing down the general and granting him his much needed rest. He had worked so hard in life as she had come to truly see all of her children had, and she only hoped now that this group's plan could at last rectify at least one poor son's cruel fate.
Alexander, Blaidd, a strange deathbed lady that had joined them in the last few tries, and her moonlit knight stood by the gate. They were prepared, rested, and armed with as many things as they could find. Alexander had gained a garishly large hammer that he proudly wore on his back, torn from the hands of a giant tree sentinel he claimed during a scouting trip for supplies. He had gotten some rudimentary armor as well as her savior's insistence that true warriors fight intelligently, not just skillfully. A basic series of iron and leather plates circled his torso and a dried mass mushroom cap as a helmet. His body was rigid, so his armor had to be more designed to deflect blunt power as the knight had claimed.
Blaidd, meanwhile, had been fashioned some clawed gauntlets that far exceeded his normal ones. They had been made from the massive talons of the gate guardians when they unitedly pinned and declawed one, an effort that had more or less needed several days to recover from collectively. They were set two by two on each hand and foot and designed to allow him full range of movement with his wrists and ankles. His cloak was also reinforced with an inner layer of iron made from gathered spearheads and brokwn swords throughout the castle. It was heavy, but Blaidd had found a way to weaponize it like an animal sweeping its bladed tail.
The newer ally who identified herself early on as Fia claimed to be of little use in pure combat. She was, however, capable of powerful deathroot incantations and spells and would be staying alongside Marika as a supporter. While her spells were unlikely to ever slay the general, Marika suspected the corpses littering the battlefield might have a use for the strange woman who she found often looked a little too often at her knight for her liking. Still, beggars could not be choosers in this campaign.
They both stood by as their three warriors approached, all having toolbelts of supplies that her knight had insisted they bring. A few pots of various concoctions and greased ropes that were meant to infuse weaponry were helpful, but she had also ensured each brought a few throwable items to draw his attention. Alexander had what were rocks tonhim, but small boulders to the rest. Blaidd had taken the remaining spear tops and refashioned them into throwing daggers. Luna, of course, had her beloved throwing knives that had now been dipped in quite a number of various poisons. For a knight, she was clearly not opposed to fighting dirty.
This wasn't about a clean death, though. It was about a one man army needing an army to finally put him down. Whatever tools of war could be fashioned were plenty as valuable as another.
The three each gave a bow, and her knight a smile to her ward. Melina appeared beside her as the three turned to the portal, fading into it slowly together.
"This will change everything," she said, "and I will at last fulfill the purpose you laid down for me." Admitting the truth of knowing everything with a single sentence.
Marika's hands lightly gripped at her upper arms in a self gripping hug of concern. "Must you?" She asked almost to herself as much as to Melina, and Melina looked as much shocked as quietly elated by her words. "Must we keep this game of sacrifices going... just to keep the peace?"
Her daughter watched her with a very quiet, very thoughtful expression. She could not tell what her daughter was considering, but as she turned back towards the battlefield, she hoped that this may have given her some small chance at hope.
They all needed hope these days.
Luna
The three of them slowly appeared in that all too familiar dusty wasteland of bodies and battle arms. A vast desert littered with the rotting corpses of battles long past, and those unfortunate enough to have tried to grant mercy to the titan of war in years past. Even standing in the sand filled her with brief memories of that horrid swamp they had thankfully agreed to avoid. That smell of rotting toxins, festering bloat, and lost souls doomed to slow and painful deaths. It reminded her far too much of a certain god she had a passing alliance with that smelled equally as unwashed, especially his favorite generals.
Still, this was not about their comfort. Within a second, they heard his horrible warcry as he readied a volley in the distance atop a great mount of corpses and sand. A towering figure clad in gleaming gold armor that now was soaked in blood and rotting postules. A helmet like the great maw of a roaring lion with a vast mane of feathery adornment that resembled the slicked back mane of a lion king caked with entrails. His dark skinned face glowed with insanity as two deeply pained orangish eyes peered out from his helm as he gripped his massive bow and fired a massive arrow the size of a battering ram at the trio.
"Scatter!" Shouted the knight as her two allies rolled and dodged to each side as the knight lept over the shot, whistled, and mounted her spectral steed as they charged first toward the grand general as he knotched another greatarrow. Just as he fired, she dipped to the side while leaping from the fading Torrent as he disappeared before the greatarrow landed. The knight was close enough now, tossing a couple of small knives just far enough to hit the grand general's fingers. It made the man roar back and drop his bow, having to yank out the knives as their tips burned him.
This gave the knight just enough time to close the gap as the brief burn wore off the monstrous beast of a man. The knight lept into the air, swiping two strikes at the grand general as she knicked at the belts of his chest plate before landing with a roll at the thunderous sound of his slamming boot that narrowly missed her arm. She turned and threw a knife right between his legs, much to the very rapid horror of what must have been left of the general's mind, into the forehead of the horse between his legs that he often kept there. It fell right over, too old and exhausted to take even that strike and fell after a second to a silent and almost painless death.
This dropped the general as his entire spell that kept him atop his horse was entirely built on it being alive and moving still, causi g him to fall over in a half crumbled forward kneel. He was clearly enraged, but before he could respond, Alexander cracked him in the helmet with a downward slam using his knew hammer, and Blaidd slashed the other strap of his chest piece. His helmet went flying, and the front of his chest plate quickly slammed to the sand and exposed his chest. This was their chance!
Rushing forward, blade sheathed and prepared, she lept in a charging slash of moonlight at his chest, only for all three of them to be blown away by the sudden gravitation roar of the general. His very rage itself seemed to make every weapon in the arena bend and buckle away as the three warriors rolled away into the sand as the general slowly lifted up the corpse of his trusted companion. The limp, old, and weather horse lay almost like a doll in the massive general's heavy hands. The sky itself was visibly darkening, as if the light itself was being bent away from this battlefield.
Recovering to her feet and regaining her bearings, the knight tried to register where her allies were. Alexander had landed with a loud gruff but seemed alright thanks to the sand and his new cushy armor, while Blaidd looms to have landed gracefully with a newly clawed grip on the ground and the other on his blade as he shook his head to re-adjust himself.
When her gaze then turned back towards where the general had stood, he was mysteriously gone. A tingle came at the back of her neck slowly as her gaze turned upward. A moment after, a dark thing arced through the sky and descended towards their battlefield.
"I way, that was most uncouth!" The jarman said as he righted himself fully, starting to run back to his companions.
"Alexander! Wai -"as she was cut off by the force of a mountainous man smashing down onto the massive jarman and turning him, thankfully, only into spirit dust.
Blaidd howled in anger but stayed by the moonlit knight to ensure that their plan stayed together. However, when the newly landed general ripped two collosal blades from across the battlefield into his hands before slamming them into what would have been the remains of Alexander and yanking them out to be covered in massive, heavy chunks of purple magic infused iron ore and granite, with four similar made orbs now risen around him like collasal war satellites, the beastman seemed visibly nervous for a half second. Still, he seemed to steel his resolve . His grip tightened on the handle of his blade as the two stood before the towering and now quite enraged General Radahn.
With a great and defiant roar, two of those massive orbs launched at the two warriors as the man made a made charge at the two. Each barely missed the leaping warriors as they smashed up sand like two bombs exploding with the force to fell fortress walls and threw away both in disarray at the sheer force. Both landed safely, split apart, but smiling.
In the distance arced a great streak of golden light from the distant shore, an incantation the Marika had taken a long time to refine and craft after hearing a story of a strange princess who weld wisdom like a weapon. It was a single bolt of light that was woven from strands of Erdtree light and struck the general's chest, though barely missing his heart. It instead bore a hole from rippling pec to the back of his right shoulder blade, damaging a lung but not slowing him down right away. The visible rot of his insides told one enough of how much damage he had already suffered as rotted black oozing blood seeped from the fresh wound.
It did, however, stun him briefly. Long enough for the roots of Fia's spell to finally trigger and suddenly grip his ankles in what could be the surging hands of a hundred or more corpses that all seemed to grab at him like the twisting vines of a tree.
The two warriors capitalized, surging together at the briefly pinned general. Blaidd howled, leaping forward to strike in a massive horizontal sweep, just as the moonlit knight struck in a downward arc of pale moonlight that would have split the general in two, hand his own blades not caught and clashed against his charging attackers. Wounded and rotting, the lion general still raged. His blades, though, were noticeably less powerful. They had both lost around half of their gravity stones, and they were struggling against two much smaller combatants.
The knight decided to switch tactics, signaling to Blaidd through two gestures, a fox like sign followed by her thumb cutting at her middle finger as it hung from her hand. Blaidd nodded, disengaging the slash and throwing a few of the daggers at Radahns eyes as he recovered ground while the general's blade lashed from the sudden lack of pressure, opening him to one hitting his left eye and making his head lurch back. This opened up his attention as his other blade clattered to the ground as the force it was against faded, then turned into a pined roar as a slash of arcing moonlight tore wrist and blade from forearm.
Stumbling back in a defiant fury, he suddenly raised his remaining blade skyward, growling like a leering predator. Both combatants watched for a moment before the reality hit. After a second, the first smashing meteor hit. A single crash of rock and ice hit the sand with a loud and fiery bang. Soon, the sky became ablaze with so many of the same kind of burning rocks, and all seemed aimed at the two warriors.
Luna considered that from his wounds, they could simply let him die. The wound to his chest was still weeping. His wrist had been severed. They could just retreat, but that wasn't the point of all this. The point was a good death, a warrior's proper end. Stood on two feet and battling to those final breaths against a valuable foe. It was a quality of resolve she only ever found among her fellow warriors.
With a whistle and a leap, she was back on Torrent as she rode her steed away, dodging crashing meteors and leaping with the spirit horse's fine ability to leap once more in the air, she barely managed to avoid most of the smashing storm of boulders herself as she glanced back and saw Blaidd charge the titanous warmonger. Too lost now in a bit of his own bloodlust now, he was a beastman to his core who clearly thrived in the art of combat, and Luna knew that he was always going to eventually delve into a rage. She did not think less of him, for she had her own weight to carry, but it changed how she worked with him.
The beastman ran through a few of the smashing meteors as they managed to only clip his hide and armor, slashing at the general with a two-handed strike from a leaping attack. The general's sword answered, clashing in a brief spatter of sparks of iron and steel against crumbling granite and black metal before whipping his shoulders and slashing the general's face with his now bladed cape. The attack left the general reeling a little as the beastman managed to bat aside his blade from the Lion warmonger's hand before trying for a piercing thrust at his heart.
He nearly landed the strike, and he likely would have had he waited for the blood trickling down Radahn's face to blind his remaining eye enough. Instead, a massive hand caught the beastman mid leap in a painful and sudden crunch. A single dog like whine was released before a second, must wetter snap led to cascading golden lights fading from the general's blood-soaked hand as his furious, slowly bleedong gaze turned towards the horse that rode around him like a scouting hawk.
The knight watched with exactly as much concentration, knowing that any moment the general would shred through Fia's skeletons as his feet were already pressing against them to the sound of hundreds of snapping bonds. She had to move, and now.
With a roar of anger all her own, she shouted, "For the Queen, Eternal!" Charging forward as the bleeding monster roared at her, summoning countless further crashing orbs of rock in her path as boney fingers and arms cracked and shattered at his boots. Torrent wove and lept with the grace befitting a noble warhorse, though that only ensured that the swarm of meteors left the two of them bleeding and bruised but not crushed.
With one final act of cunning, she dove as Torrent once more dissipated and avoided a large diagonal swing by the general, sliding beneath his bound legs and spinning in place as a perfect circle of moonlight tore through Radahn's achilles tendons. She couldn't severe his entire leg through, especially both at once, but she could cripple them about as well.
Sliding further passed him as the massive man fell forward onto his knees as the pain hit him, unable to maintain even the bound posture as Fia's hands, what remained at least, yanked him down the instant they felt any give. His remaining arm was quickly gripped by more skeletal hands as they hit the sand, and a second arrow of light struck him true, hitting just by Luna's ear before spearing through the heart of the massive man. His back arched as he leaned back, a great cry of agony as the back of his neck.
She gripped tight to her hilt as she lept into the air, highlighted by the now visible twilight of night as Radahn's magic began to fade. A final arc of moonlight as the great general's eyes fell one final time of those most defiant of stars, and then, nothing else at all.