Swordlight at the Cliff's Edge - 神威がくぽx巡音ルカ

💜💗💜💗💜 Story 💗💜💗💜💗 Back to Back on the Battlefield: Prologue — The First Battle Predawn mist hung low over the walls of Eagle's Beak Pass, where three thousand soldiers stood in silent ranks, their torches flickering in the cold wind. Megurine Luka stood at the center of the high platform. She was the youngest commander this army had ever had, her pink hair tucked beneath a black peaked cap, her gold epaulettes catching faint glints in the darkness before daylight. The medals on her chest were still new. Not one of them had touched blood. She wasn't nervous. At least, she made sure no one could tell. "Commander." Kamui Gakupo stepped onto the platform and halted three paces to her side, his boots falling steady on the stone. He was the deputy commander, more senior than she was and older, yet on the day of her appointment, he had been the one to kneel before her and place her sword in her hands. "Scouts report twenty thousand enemy troops arrived at the pass this morning," he said, his voice low and even. "We have three thousand." "I know." Luka gazed into the mist. "We follow Plan Two. Hold the choke point and lure them in." "Plan Two needs someone to hold the cliff on the left flank." "I'll go." Gakupo turned his head, his violet eyes darkening slightly. "The commander should not stand in the most dangerous position." "Then tell me," she said, turning to meet his gaze with her blue eyes, "does a commander who's afraid to stand in the most dangerous place deserve three thousand men willing to die for her?" After a moment of silence, Gakupo bowed his head, though the corner of his mouth moved ever so slightly. "Then the right flank and the center are mine." The horns sounded. The enemy army surged forward like a tide, their war cries shaking the walls of the pass. Arrows blotted out the sky, and the ground before the choke point turned to blood and flesh in an instant. Luka led her personal guard in a desperate defense of the cliff, her sword flashing, enemy soldiers falling back wherever its silver light passed. But there were too many of them, and her line was pressed back inch by inch. At noon, an urgent report came from the center: the right flank had been breached. "Where is the deputy commander?" "Still... still at the front!" Luka gritted her teeth and was about to pull troops from elsewhere when a unit of elite enemy soldiers suddenly stormed up from below the cliff. Her guards fell one after another, and in moments only a handful remained at her side. A blade came slashing toward her face. She raised her sword to block it, the shock numbing her hands, and was driven back to the very edge of the cliff. Loose stones tumbled away. There was nowhere left to retreat. "Get down!" A streak of violet steel swept past from behind her, hurling the closing enemies back, blades and all. Kamui Gakupo, drenched in blood, his cap askew and his long hair in disarray, landed firmly behind her, his back slamming against hers. "You... weren't you on the right flank?" "The right flank held." He panted, his sword pointed in the opposite direction from hers. "I brought back what was left." Luka froze for a moment, then tightened her grip on her sword. Through the thick fabric of their uniforms, she felt another person's warmth and heartbeat for the first time, heavy and rapid, yet somehow steadying. "I'm leaving my back to you," she said. "Those words," Gakupo replied quietly, "I've waited a long time to hear." They struck together. It was their first time fighting back to back, and they were not yet practiced. They were even a little clumsy, their blades colliding several times. But after each clash, they found each other's rhythm faster, until silver arcs and violet lightning wove together into a barrier that nothing could cross. By sunset, the enemy had broken and fled. Eagle's Beak Pass held. Of three thousand men, only twelve hundred remained. That night, Luka stood alone on the wall, watching soldiers carry away the wounded. Gakupo came over and draped a cloak over her shoulders. "Your first battle," he said. "You won it." "We won it," Luka corrected softly, her eyes on the campfires burning in the distance. "But this is only the beginning, isn't it?" "Yes." She gripped the edge of the cloak and said nothing more. From that night on, the whole kingdom knew that in the northern frontier there was a pink-haired commander, and a deputy who always stood behind her. And no one knew how far this war would carry them.