Misc. B5C14

It was technically the second siege I had been a part of, and yet this felt very different to Mistral, larger both in the scale of the fortifications and the army of Grimm attacking us. Magnis' walls were giant, requiring either ladders or siege towers to scale, and there were far more of them winding off to the left and right, wrapping around the houses with an inner-wall surrounding the keep itself. We were all of us spread out and I'd not seen a familiar face for a good hour or two. I did hear their voices occasionally, and since none were raised in screams of agony or grief, had to assume everyone was okay.

[...]

Though the Grimm had neither siege towers nor ladders and couldn't have hoped to scale the sheer walls, they had their own methods, and it was both simply brutal and foolish at the same time. The first waves of Grimm had hit the wall and started to attack it – not that their claws could do anything. The second and third had been the same, piling up at the base uselessly and doing more damage to themselves than to us.

But they had formed a foundation. As more tried to push in against the walls, they inevitably stood on the shoulders and bodies of their fellows, cutting a little higher, and this continued on and on until the Grimm had somehow formed a ramp of their own bodies, each fighting to clamber over the other until they'd actually reached the top of the walls.

[...]

That was my task, to run along the walls and offer my aid everywhere, as opposed to hunkering down and fortifying one spot. While I wasn't used to such mobile fighting, at least not as much as Ruby, Blake or Ren were, I could see the value. We didn't need to hold one spot indefinitely, but rather to hold everywhere for long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

[...]

Ren caught me fifteen minutes of Grimm-killing later.

[...]

"Blake's going to try and hold the eastern wall on her own. She's best suited for it with her speed and stealth."

[...]

A messenger caught me not twenty minutes later, basically to pass on what I already knew about the evacuation.

[...]

"It was Commander Sullivan, sir. He and the Mistral Commander are going to hold the gate when the time comes, and he's asked you and the other Heroes to be the last ones on the walls while the Soldiers fall back."

The messenger certainly had balls to suggest that, though he probably assumed we wouldn't punish him for what sounded very much like a suicide quest. Ren and I couldn't hold an entire wall to ourselves, but then we weren't supposed to. We were just meant to draw the Grimm's attention – all of them – while the other Soldiers retreated. Wonderful.

"He said if anyone can break off and retreat safely in the thick of battle, it would be you Heroes."

He wasn't wrong. It was a thankless and dangerous task, but if anyone could manage it, it would be us. I just didn't like our chances, nor the idea of Blake playing bait for an entire quarter of the Grimm horde.

But what could we do?

"Alright, fine. I take it I'll know the signal when it comes?"

"Three horn's blasts," the messenger reported, rushing off to pass the order along.

[...]

Keeping accurate track of time was impossible, but it was somewhere between my second and third wind, when I wasn't even sure what dredges of energy I was running on, that the horns sounded.

[...]

"Yang and Nora were better off than we and are now fighting at the gates to the inner walls. Lots of cuts and scrapes, but they're alive. Blake was badly wounded-" Ren quickly moved to push me down as I tried to rise. "She's alive," he hissed. "She's alive. Something caught her leg. She wasn't able to run back to safety, but she was able to hide and sneak her way back into the walls."

"Where is she?" I asked, straining to see her in the cramped medical tent.

"In the main keep. She arrived before we did and the injured were taken there, at least until it filled up and they had to open this tent out here. I'm sure she's fine, Jaune. I heard the wound was deep but not life-threatening. She's stronger than us."