Several hours later, Margo stood at the balcony overlooking the base of the fortress, and the remnants of Guina littered around it. She reminisced on her days in the facility, when she stole a book from the library and read about a mythical bird that eternally rose anew from the ashes it died in-- a phoenix, the book called it. The fortress and the people of Ophelia, Margo’s Ophelia, were much like a phoenix. In the dust of Guina and the hate of the surrounding territory, they rose the tower above. Though her fingers shook with anticipation, Margo knew that their home would only grow higher out of Yulo’s ashes too.
Yulo’s army arrived late. They strode on horseback at a nonchalant speed, and Margo could see it in the way that Yulo’s metal-plated shoulders slacked casually that there wasn’t a worry to be had on their end. As they approached the outskirts of the fortress itself, however, Margo smirked as Yulo straightened up at the sight of the changed view. Around the fortress, drawn in hundreds of braided lines with intricate intersections revealing small leaf insignias brazen in the dirt, was a humongous circle. It rounded the base of the fortress tightly, like waves running out from it. Carefully, the horses trotted over the lines, a few hooves threatening to buckle down into the deep grooves.
Many of the Blems stood just outside the main entrance of the fortress. Margo could make out Treeg and Xireal at the front, a crowd of close to a hundred crammed together just behind them. It wasn’t as many as she had hoped-- there were still twice as many hiding inside the wooden walls of the fortress-- but there were more than enough to enact the plan she and Treeg had put together the night before. That was more than what she could ask for, she thought, curling her hand around the silver hunting knife Treeg had loaned her.
“Precautionary measures,” he had said quietly. Margo scrunched her face up, pointing at her face as she glared at him.
“I can literally make my teeth into daggers,” she replied, then demonstrated by unhinging her jaw and lining it with the same blade. Treeg winced at the grotesque sight, but refused to take it back and instead pushed the hilt further into her palms. She felt the clamminess of his hands, cold, beading sweat wiping off from his fingertips to her own. He wiped his hands back down his cloak and avoided making eye contact with Margo.
“Then just keep it as a good luck charm,” he said softly, his cheeks a pink, rosy hue.
Once Yulo had come close enough to talk, they extended their arms out, shrugging largely with their shoulders in an exaggerated motion. “This doesn’t look like a surrender, Miss Margo.”
“The people of Ophelia stand before you as one,” Margo shouted, remembering the words she practiced with Xireal and capturing as low and serious of a tone as she could manage. She tried not to cringe over how childish her own voice sounded, like a little girl playing leader instead of truly being one. She fought her doubts back, swallowing dryly and continuing with her declaration. “We do not bow to the nobles of Fable. We do not bow to you.”
Yulo cocked their head curiously. Their tightly-lipped visor tilted down, and Margo could feel their beady eyes examining her through the narrow black slit. After a silent beat, they slowly moved their head from left to right, tearing their attention away from Margo to eye the people she spoke for.
“You all believe this child will save you?” they questioned, their voice dripping with mockery. “This is what you’re fighting on? The ambition of one little girl and a great big tree? One good swing of the axe and both will come toppling down.”
The people of Ophelia did not retort. They all continued to stay pointed forward, and whether that was Margo’s motivational speech or by Treeg’s strict instructions, Margo couldn’t say. More than anything, she hoped with each breath that it was nothing more than their own show of confidence. Yulo scoffed at the sight.
“Fine then,” they sighed, lazily waiving their fingers and motioning forward dryly. “Then by the King’s blade, your lives are all entirely and justly forfeit to mine.”
As Yulo spoke, a white fog billowed out from between the plates of their armor, circling their gauntlet and slipping into their palm. A hilt formed from the fog, and an opaque white blade incapable of reflecting the sunlight slowly emerged from the base. It still gave off little clouds as they swung it up, and pointed in the direction of the defending Blems. Immediately, the sound of horse feet thundering across the ground sounded, and the hundreds of armored knights behind Yulo charged forward.
“Treeg, now!!” Margo ordered.
Treeg dropped to his knees, both hands pressed to the ground. Xireal placed a hand on Treeg’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Another civilian reached up and mirrored Xireal. The Blems all held one another, connected by mere fingertips and hope for survival. The ground rumbled, and all across the field under the trampling feet of the knights and their horses, glowber plants surged upwards, rapidly winding through the dirt at the intervals they had drawn prior. Just like the fortress itself, these plants formed walls of vines, with glowber fruit bigger than Margo’s head suddenly blooming at the tips. In the library, Treeg had been able to bring forth a table-full at most upon his command. But with the combined mana of each person behind him, he could summon black thorned plants that braided into stalks wider than the stone huts in Guina.
Margo leapt off the side of the balcony, soaring down in her bird form. The knights had begun slashing through the thicket, the guts of glowbers staining their suits with bright, orange liquid, and they were already making their way through the first wall with ease. But that was to be expected. No wall they built couldn’t be broken down by the knights; that was a fact Treeg had insisted upon when Margo first brought up the plan. It was Margo who would have to bring lethality to the battle.
As the knights tore through the plant defenses, screaming and shouting as meek vines started to replace them, Margo searched the walls for Treeg’s beacon. It shimmered, climbing subtly upwards towards her as she descended upon it. The beacon was a blood red glowber. It pulsed, beating like a heart and glowing bright from the center outwards. Treeg had told her he would connect every fruiting vine to this one. “I’ll bring them all to one point. All you need to do is find it, and then…”
Margo pecked at the fruit. Her beak pierced through the smooth, soft skin of the glowber, and a spout of liquid shot at her as she drilled herself into it deeper. The juices turned sour in her mouth, her magic shooting out from her and traveling through the fruit. As she pulled away, her pink feathered bird chest covered in a dark crimson fluid, she could see a black, milky substance left behind inside the glowber beacon. It swirled around the glowing center and snuffed the light out entirely.
A violent slashing noise startled her up and away, narrowly dodging the eager blade of one of Yulo’s knights. The knight’s sword sliced through the beacon, causing it to erupt with a vile, rotten smell. The crimson fluid sprayed onto the knights armor. The metal began to sizzle, eating away at the knight’s armor and corroding the layers to reach the clothed skin beneath. The knight dropped their sword in terror, and Margo watched with glee as they tried to pat the smoking hole with their gauntlet, only getting more of the fluid on them in the process. From above, she could see all of the glowbers had been successfully infected, no longer the vibrant orange they had come into the world as, but a black tar-like skin that drooped downwards like melted wax.
As she circled back towards Treeg, however, she noticed that the afflicted knights only bore acid-splashed holes in their armor after the fruit had popped. Some were cursing at uncomfortable holes in their boots or helmets, sure, but none were dying. She watched with a stomach full of dread as Yulo reached out and smashed a whole fruit with their bare hand, then tossed it aside without so much as a second glance.
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Margo and Treeg’s plan had worked, yes, but it hadn’t done any real damage. She swooped back, rolling into her human form to grab Treeg by the shoulders. “It’s not working, my virus can’t get past the armor.”
“Maybe you didn’t peck it hard enough,” Treeg mumbled nervously, eyeing the encroaching horde with a nauseous look on his face. “Maybe it needed more of your magic to spread?”
“It spread just fine, but it’s like--” Margo was interrupted by an enormous rush of fog. She turned her head to see it passing through the braided vines, forming Yulo sitting atop their horse with their blade smoking at their side less than a hundred feet before them. More silver blades were piercing into the wall, twisting and carving out holes and entryways through the vines.
Margo hardly had a moment to take in the dire situation in front of her, before Xireal shouted at the top of his lungs, “For Ophelia!”
He charged forward, sparks of red trailing behind him. The crowd behind him surged forward fearlessly, throwing themselves into battle as more of Yulo’s men cut their way through to the other side. Treeg and Margo stood in the middle of the stampeding rebels. The noise of war cries and blades colliding with the improvised weaponry of the Blems seemed to fade to silence between them. Treeg’s hazel eyes bore into her, his eyelashes lowered over them with worry. His bottom lip had been chewed to a bruised red color, and he lodged his upper teeth into it again as Margo’s grip fell from his shoulders.
“It didn’t work,” Treeg echoed, a hollow, hopeless tone to the words.
“No, it didn’t,” Margo said, her eyes sliding back to the battle. Her fingers trailed down, breaching the space between them again to take Treeg’s into her own. He was shaking, she realized. Or maybe that was Margo? She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t afraid. She watched Xireal’s arm fly up ahead of the fight, a white blade sailing upwards to slice it cleanly at the wrist. Margo flinched, snapping back to Treeg. “But that just means that we have to figure something else out.”
Treeg hesitated. His breath seemed to catch in his throat, a strangled, wispy noise slipping between his teeth and hanging in the air. “You’re right… But how?”
“We need to figure out what’s stopping them from catching the virus. But we can’t do that from here,” Margo said. She backed up, dropping to all fours and squeezing her eyes shut. Her body twisted, bones snapping and merging into her fox form.
“I don’t see how becoming a fox is going to help us get anywhere faster than their horses,” Treeg rambled. But Margo shook her head, her pink fur rustling with the movement. She shook faster and faster, urging her body to be more than it had ever been before-- something she’d only dreamt about.
An agonizing, excruciating pain pulsed in her shoulders. A horrible cracking noise filled her pointed ears as two curved white bones sprang forth from her coat. They stretched as her form expanded, a vision of the gargantuan paws she had born instinctually in the fox den pictured in her mind’s eye. She rose, towering far above Treeg and meeting the height of the fortress’s massive front entrance. Pale, peach-pink talons shot down from the bones outside of her body, forming rudimentary bird wings twice the length of her body. Four eyeballs opened on each side of her face, running the length of her protruding snout. With four rows of sharp white teeth, she growled painfully to Treeg, “Get on.”
Treeg scrambled over her sides. She yelped as he clenched two fistfuls of her fuzzy mane in his hands. “S-sorry! I’ve never ridden, a uh-- whatever you are.”
“I’m whatever I need to be,” Margo replied with a vain sense of satisfaction. She didn’t give Treeg the chance to settle. She sprinted the base of the fortress, her speed unmatched by any of her previous forms, and soon she was bounding up into the air with ease. There was a moment of immense discomfort upon the lift off, the pain still throbbing slightly at the spots where her wings connected with her body. But the large wings took her high into the air and allowed her to flap steadily above the field.
Treeg kept his legs locked to her sides, and Margo could feel his heart racing from how close he had squeezed himself to her back.
“What do you see?” she snarled, all eight of her eyes searching the field.
“I--” Treeg swallowed nervously. “If I look down I’m gonna puke!”
“If you don’t, you’re going to die,” she argued with annoyance, punctuating the fact with the loud snap of her jaw. From what she could tell, there was nothing powering the knights from the backline. Some were still struggling around the vines of the initial trap, a few dead horses caught in the thorns and being drained by the plants-- certainly an unwelcome surprise side effect of their combined magic, Margo noted happily in her mind-- but they all moved forward. Yulo was sinking their sword into a stout pig-woman, her squeals silenced as her head sailed through the air. Margo refused to waver from the shock, narrowing her eyes in on Yulo. Could it have something to do with the fog? No, she thought, it only swirled around Yulo when they attacked. That couldn’t be protecting all of the knights from her disease.
Something glinted below her on the field. Margo glided across the field, monitoring it carefully. It was another one of the knights, their metal boot slamming into a fallen black glowber as they swung at Xireal’s side. With one punch, Xireal sent the knight flying off to the side, and Margo was relieved to see that Xireal was definitely screaming but clearly still fighting and mostly managing without his left fist just fine.
But the eroding boot caught Margo’s eye. The knight held it, bitter at the corrosion beginning underneath, but Margo saw a thin trickle of golden light fading into the knight, and the droplets of the black fruit evaporated into smoke upon contact.
“What kind of magic goes under armor?” she asked, sailing back around the front of the fortress. By now, the knights had noticed her movements, shouting to one another to start attacking the airborne targets. She whipped through their bolts of thunder and fire with ease; either she was too good at this, or the knights just hadn’t gotten serious enough about it yet. Either way, Margo didn’t want to stick around to find out exactly which it was.
“How should I know which the knights use? That could be any!!” Treeg shouting, digging his nose down into her mane as a green boomerang of wind soared above his head.
“You’re the scholar!! What happened to being my Green Witch?!”
“Okay, okay,” Treeg huffed. “Magic beneath the armor prevents disease and rot… Did you see what it looked like? What color was the residual strands?”
“Gold.”
“Gold…” Treeg hummed. Margo felt his grip loosen, strands of fur slipping from his clammy palms and rejoining the rest of her coat in damp tufts. Firmly, he said, “Can you get us back to the library?”
Margo rolled three of her eyes. “Right now?! We’re kind of under attack, Treeg. I don’t really think we have the time for you to hit the books.”
“If it’s what I think it is, then the library is the best vantage point,” Treeg argued sternly, grunting as Margo took a sharp turn to avoid a pillar of fire shooting up from the ground below.
“Still, Treeg, it’s way too risky to--”
“--Do you want to end this Margo, or do you want to die?!” Treeg hissed into her ear.
Margo chuckled, surprised by Treeg’s outburst but welcoming the first sight of his confidence since before Yulo’s words plagued their every thought. “Alright, Mr. Witch. I’ll trust you.”
She whirled through the air, her paws drawn into her sides as she soared swiftly. Margo pointed her nose up, aiming towards the top of the fortress where the peaked windows of the library looked out over the chaos.
A whizzing spear of light intercepted her journey. It sank perfectly between her ribs and sparked near her pounding heart. She howled in pain, eyes watering and rolling into her skull as the electricity jolted through her.
“Margo, stay on course!!” Treeg cried out, leaning forward to pull her head back up from where it was drooping uncontrollably and attempting to steer her straight. But the impact had ruined her hold, Margo realized. It was as though this new and imaginary form she wore was nothing more than a thin sheet, and the real Margo was hiding under it. But now that the sheet had been ripped and torn by the spear, Margo could see herself. She was vulnerable. Much worse, she was aware, and because of that she couldn’t seem to keep the sheet from crumpling to the floor around her. Her fur was falling out in great tufts, her neck snapping in a full circle under Treeg’s two desperate hands. Her wings bent and curved, causing them to roll in the air as Margo shifted somewhere between a screeching winged-fox-beast and a terrified human girl.
