Chapter 70: First Battle

The next morning, she didn't even have time to speak to anyone.

She was jolted awake by a panicked Argy, shaking her like a plum tree.

"What's going on?" the young woman mumbled, still half-asleep, facing the boy's dark expression.

"The village is under attack by orcs."

Blanche shot upright, fully awake this time. The movement was so abrupt the sheets slid off her still-numb legs, and the last traces of sleep clung to her gestures like a stubborn fog. Her already quickening heartbeat anchored itself into reality over a few sharp beats. She took a deep breath, trying to gather her scattered thoughts.

Nicky knocked at the same moment on her door, which was still wide open.

The sound echoed faintly in the room, blending with the hallway's silence. The unnecessarily open door framed his silhouette like something self-evident. The outside air slipped into the room—cooler, flatter—cutting through the lingering atmosphere of sleep. For a few seconds, everything hung there, suspended between waking and intrusion, as though both realities were reluctant to merge.

Then everything snapped back into place with force, as Nicky's voice rose.

"Aaron teleported out, Glen followed him on Sapphire and he's already frozen a ton of them. Damn it, he turned into a dragon! Not Glen! Sapphire! He turned into a huge ice dragon!" the pixie exclaimed, increasingly resembling his miniature alter ego, flailing his arms everywhere.

The young man looked shell-shocked, hyperventilating. Argy rushed to calm him down, but it didn't help.

"How many orcs?" Blanche asked her son.

She felt an odd sense of relief at the drakion's presence. With a being like that involved, the orcs didn't stand a chance. Well... she hoped so.

"Too many," the white mage grimaced.

She immediately leaned toward Nicky, who was still trembling despite Argy's efforts. His shoulders jerked with small, uncontrollable spasms, as if his body still refused to accept that the danger was over. His gaze, unfocused, searched for anchors it couldn't quite find, caught between exhaustion and lingering adrenaline.

Without thinking, Blanche wrapped him in a tight hug.

The gesture was instinctive, almost clumsy in its urgency, but sincere in intent. She had seen it work in a movie once. And in doubt, movies were sometimes perfectly acceptable sources of wisdom.

She stayed like that, still, offering steady warmth and a constant presence—an anchor point in the residual chaos vibrating through his body.

And it took a full minute before it started to work.

At first, nothing. Then, very slowly, the tension began to loosen in fragments: the tremors spaced out, Nicky's breathing became less ragged, more regular. His body, still rigid, started to accept that it could relax without immediate consequence. The silence around them settled back in, softer now, less jagged.

Blanche didn't move right away.

She waited a little longer, as if afraid the slightest motion might break the fragile balance that had just formed.

"Where's Derek?" she asked next.

"He's missing."

Blanche turned toward her bed, pulled on socks and shoes, ready to rush outside. Her movements were quick, precise, almost mechanical, as though her body had already decided before her mind caught up. Fabric brushed against her still-warm skin, and she tied her laces without slowing down, already oriented toward the urgency waiting beyond the door.

But before she could leave her room, Argy stopped her. He was sitting beside her, with still-disoriented Nicky on the other side.

The pressure of their presence was enough to halt her instantly. Not a forceful gesture, not a visible restraint—just Argy's way of occupying space, calm and solid, like a fixed point in the middle of motion. He said nothing, but his silence carried weight, structured, like a decision already made.

Nicky still looked half-lost, his gaze drifting between exhaustion and confusion, as if trying to reassemble a world that had shifted too quickly around him.

Blanche stayed still for a second.

Her hand still on the doorknob, body already angled toward the exit, she felt the invisible counterweight of their restraint slow her down.

"What now?" she growled.

"Aaron was clear. We're not allowed to go outside. We stay here."

"What?!" Blanche snapped. "You seriously expect me to sit here doing nothing while they're fighting out there? No way."

"I promised him," Argy insisted.

She saw it in his eyes—he wouldn't let her cross the threshold. So she closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

"Fine... but can we at least go up to the roof to see what's happening?" she asked.

The two young men exchanged a look, then Argy nodded. In situations like this, seniority and judgment took precedence.

The silver-haired mage went to his room to grab his camera.

And so the three of them found themselves there, capes on their backs and binoculars in hand, in the very same spot where Aaron had stood the day before. The wind was sharper up there, as if it remembered past battles. The ground still bore faint traces of movement, almost erased by dust and cold.

Framed between her two companions, Blanche watched the battle unfolding below. Their presence on either side formed a line of stability against the vastness of the landscape, but her attention was already drawn elsewhere.

Sapphire was sublime, its black scales with midnight-blue reflections slicing through the bright winter sky lit by the two suns. Light slid across its colossal body like on a living blade, revealing fleeting metallic glints before disappearing again into the shifting shadow of its wings. Each beat seemed to move the air itself, rippling the frozen sky.

Mesmerized, she watched the immense drakion.

There was something both majestic and terrifying in its mere existence—an ancient power that did not seek to impress or convince, only to be. The world seemed smaller in its presence.

The ice blasts were colossal, and Glen, perched on his familiar, fired arrow after arrow from the back of the titanic creature. The projectiles cut through the air with impossible precision, leaving brief fading trails before vanishing into the chaos of battle. Despite the distance, every movement felt perfectly coordinated, as though man and beast shared a single will.

And in that suspended spectacle between sky and earth, Blanche remained still, absorbed, as if the entire world had narrowed down to this one scene.