"I think I'd rather not waste the shots. You seem to know what you're doing more than the last guy anyway."

"I'd understand if you didn't trust my word, and verifying a decent shot's worth the ammo if it saves on misses later, but. Appreciate it. I won't waste 'em."

"Now you, frontline or backline?" he asks the mute knight.

She considers, then holds up a single finger. That probably means frontline.

"Then come with me."

A little wave to Cynric and he starts leading the way again.

"Kill lots of beasties," says Cynric, waving back.

Vanya follows, of course. But she does give Cynric a wave first.

Here's the frontline. Scions (or, well, non-Ishgardians) seem to be disproportionately represented, here, and Otohiko himself will be there, too. They're past many layers of wards and many rows of cannons and seem... actually surprisingly well-prepared for this.

What they are not, however, is well-staffed. But the adventurers and warriors the Scions have managed to collect all carry themselves with the weight and poise of veterans, and their familiarity with the Warrior of Light as he passes by them bespeaks martial prowess that may yet overcome their low numbers. The other three city-states—Ul'dah, Gridania, and Limsa Lominsa—have sent help as well, but they seem to be merely token contingents, more for show than anything else. The ones in charge of the various small groups scattered around seem to uniformly be unaffiliated adventurers that came with the Scions rather than Ishgardians or anyone from the other local powers.

Hm. This is interesting, and not unexpected. Of course the Ishgardians would have the foreigners do the really risky business.

They were absolutely missing someone of her expertise, though. Someone who specializes in getting enemy attention and keeping it focused on them is a bit of a rare thing, especially with adventurers, what with how phenomenally stupid it tends to be.

Vanya turns out to be surprisingly bossy, for a mute woman. She walks right up to anyone that is in a spot she doesn’t like, and she taps them on the shoulder and points where they should go. These are all talented people, it’s quite obvious, but so is the fact that they are not all used to working as a unit. The mute adventurer going spare even turns out to have paper and a graphite stick stashed, and starts writing out little instructional slips for people, using her left arm as a base to write on. Orders such as, ’Watch for stragglers attacking support,’ and ’Prioritize slows and snares over direct damage,’ and ‘Get behind them and push them towards me’ and ’Biggest explosion maker, focus on big groups and let others handle stragglers’ are handed out when it looks like they’re needed.

Probably she should lie low or something, but screw that nonsense. Clearly she’s needed, and so she will help. If it gets her killed after all of the fighting is done, for being suspiciously too competent, then so be it. She will have saved a lot of lives with her horrible death by Holy See.

Otohiko keeps an eye on her for a bit, from a distance, but he's needed five places at once so when he's satisfied she is appropriately competent he runs off.

She is absolutely competent, and even tells adventurers to go switch their little paper assignments with each other if they think this isn't playing to their strengths properly. She's not particularly attached to these specific people doing these specific jobs. Just that the jobs need to get done.

Do they get some kind of windup before all hell breaks loose, or does it just break loose out of nowhere? She's so excited to find out.

It is absolutely out of nowhere! Except for the sudden deafening cry of hundreds of dragons all at once, but that's sufficiently awful it may well be considered as an opening salvo.

The dragons attack from all directions, with both physical and magical shots, trying to overwhelm the wards with sheer force. The wards hold up, of course; Ishgard would not have lasted as long as it has if the wards could be breached this easily. Still, it is more sustained fire than they have had to deal with in the thousand years this war has lasted, and they're unlikely to hold forever.

But the bands of surrounding dragons are not the main strategy, here. The Steps of Faith themselves seem to be the target of the principal Dravanian force, at least if one judges by the five stories tall (on all fours) dragon that lands with an earth-quaking thud and starts marching towards the city.

... Ah.

Well, at least this will be interesting.

If it were flying, this would be a job for artillery and dragoons, but since it's on the ground, it's her problem. A flying dragon is both less vulnerable and more vulnerable, what with having delicate wings that keep them aloft that are easily torn open by sharp pointy things. A grounded dragon, meanwhile, is a dragon that gives up mobility for getting to use all of its teeth and claws and whatnot without having to worry about dodging critical hits. With a dragon this big, it is not getting back into the sky mid-battle, not without some kind of miracle. It needs time and everyone politely giving appropriate space to take off. Maybe a running start, or jumping off a cliff. It is fairly safe to assume that it won't be getting it in the middle of combat, though it admittedly might make a play for breaking through the wards on the side of the steps to dive into the depths below. But that would be risky, and the creature might not be able to halt its momentum before it hits the Sea of Chaos below and gets summarily ripped to pieces. A desperate last resort.

Ultimately, this is now a game of slowing the big dragon as long as possible, while not getting too close to its sharp bits.

So nobody wants to be anywhere near that dragon's front, obviously. Fire and teeth and death and so forth. There is not really much anyone can do about that except stay the hell away from it and blast it from afar with cannons and magic. The tail is almost as dangerous, especially if it manages to pick up any kind of momentum, so too far behind it is a dangerous place to be, too. Not that there's any non-dangerous place to be, here, just places that are more or less off limits. Also super off limits is anywhere the dragon can stomp with its feet. Under the dragon itself is better, but if too many high value targets get concentrated there, the dragon can in fact just slam its body into the ground to kill everything beneath it. It at least has the benefit of making the dragon slow down a little. Better, though, is to bait a slam and then get everyone out from under it before it does any real damage. About the only place that one can reasonably pull this off is near the hind legs, since they are less dexterous than the fore legs, and further from the head, where the dragon sees and hears what's actually going on.

Which is to say, she will be conducting this entire fight from almost directly under the dragon's ass. Because everything is going to be trying to kill her first, and it'd be nice if the everything would instead be some of the ones to get squished by the giant dragon. Make the dragons conduct friendly fire, and all that. In theory, one could fight the little dragons away from the big dragon, but that's splitting forces and firepower, and her job is to slow this monster down as much as possible. All of this might not be obvious to someone who isn't a native Ishgardian, so. Don't worry everyone, 'Vanya' will be here to show you how this is done.

Hopefully this dragon isn't one of the ones that's rude enough to pee during battle. Probably not, the extra weight of urine and excrement during a flight isn't worth the potential hit to morale, really. But. It would suck.

She slams the pommel of her sword into her shield twice, to get the attention of anyone who doesn't know what to do or is too busy shitting themselves, and then charges. Hey everybody, she's one of the anchor points of this magic shield they've got over everyone. Come try and kill her!

Dragons have been fighting humans for long enough to know how tanks work. Attacking basically anyone other than the tanks will be useless, the stupid magic shield covering them will make it pretty ineffective, so: here's a handful of dragons and drakes coming after each of the tanks around! The non-Dravanians are entirely outnumbered, of course.

'Vanya' is a little rusty with her paladin abilities, which makes sense. It's been years since she's used a sword and shield. While she's not actually incompetent, and all of her tactics are up to par, anyone who has enough attention to be able to judge her abilities can probably tell. Fortunately, she never really forgot. It was all still there, just buried under how she prefers the reach of a greatsword and the draconic method of channeling emotions into magic. It's muscle memory, she just needs to practice it again. Being in the middle of a battle is admittedly not the best time to be practicing rusty paladin skills, but, well. It's certainly quick to inform her when she fucks up, and the old memories are coming back nice and quick. At first it's just a badly remembered copy of Vethrione, the baby paladin, right before the Seventh Umbral Calamity. Perfectly acceptable, but probably not anything special.

Except, that's not really who she is anymore, is it?

She is more knowledgeable, more experienced, tougher, stronger, and much more willing to commit to her actions than she had been. Being filled with some anger issues and a touch of insanity also probably helps. Once she gets enough of a handle on her old paladin skills to leverage them effectively, she starts rapidly improving. Not quite to her actual skill level if she were allowed to use a greatsword and magics considered heretic, but definitely pretty good. ... Also pretty angry. She doesn't like Nidhogg or any of his brood, and she is annoyed about having been scapegoated for this fiasco. Her plan was to stab things until she felt better and this involves stabbing things with great prejudice. Cynric's backstory about how she was really mad at some dragons rings so true. Honestly, it'd make any watching Ishgardian proud.

That's not to say she goes full berserker rage or anything. Anger with a purpose, and her purpose is ultimately to protect. She can just protect very angrily, and be sure to keep everything trying to kill her, because damn if she's not trying to kill them right back.

Her focus on the aetherial shield does mean that she can't focus so much on offence, but that is itself pretty fucking irritating to the dragon, when it has to mostly ignore the people who are actually stabbing it, cutting it, punching it, shooting it, or setting it on fire to instead go after these tanks. Of course, that irritation is also part of the strategy, and if the dragons waste some frustrated shots at protected damage-dealers, all the better for everyone.

The adventurers and non-adventurers around do pick up on the way she seems to actually be pretty damn competent for a complete unknown, and the fact that the Warrior of Light seemed to approve of her convinces anyone who wasn't convinced by that alone, so she finds herself in charge of one of the small bands of fighters. Despite many of these people not being used to working as a unit per se, it is common knowledge that you follow the tank, and after it becomes clear Vanya has a reason to be standing somewhere that looks at first glance dangerous, well, they'll be hitting some dragons.

That's all anyone here really wants to be doing. Being (kind of) in charge when she can't actually talk is a tricky problem, but mostly she can just let everyone do their own thing. They're competent, and she did what she could with splitting the work beforehand, so. Hopefully they'll get the hang of it. Though, some faster than others, she supposes. She does need to grab one lancer (not dragoon, a proper dragoon would know better) by the scruff of his neck and drag him out of the path of the big dragon's back foot. Well. Toss him. She tosses him a little. He's fine. It's better than what the dragon would have done. But otherwise, yes, these people are delightfully competent, and on the whole bring more interesting weaponry to the table than the standard Ishgardian fare. Lots of neat magic is flying around.

It's not really much of a surprise that she starts having fun. Ah, sweet simplicity. It's been a while since she had this. Her life has been very complicated and with lots of shades of grey, lately, what with rebelling against the country's government and often needing to fight people that don't deserve to die. Now she can actually just kill some things that deserve it! It'd be better if she had her greatsword, but this is tolerable.

The unreasonably massive dragon continues its advance despite the punishment it's receiving. A true believer, or maybe it just knows it has actually no way to run away now given its size so it had better press on and hope it gets healed at the end. Either way, it moves.

It moves right into the range of the first set of cannons.

Well, at least there's not much danger of missing. Time to blow that thing into the abyss.

The cannons do a lot of damage, which is great. Unfortunately, it's all against a very large and very angry dragon. It's going to take a lot to take this thing down, and meanwhile, it's getting closer. And closer. And closer. That cone of horrible death directly in front of the dragon's face is getting uncomfortably friendly.

He notes midway through attempting to blow it into the abyss that it's going to reach him and the other cannons before he runs out of ammunition. That's... bad. It seems a shame to destroy such a nice toy, but if his options are 'let the nice toy be destroyed by dragons' and 'destroy the nice toy in a final bid to hurt the dragons as much as possible,' well. Option two is the one that's more likely to be useful. He waits as long as is sensible—a bit longer, actually, some of the more intelligent cannoneers have already started to retreat—and then disables every single safety on the cannon, breaks the capacitor that regulates the fuel output, lights the fuse, and runs.

The ensuing explosive blast actually manages to stagger the thing, which is very satisfying.

One Ishgardian knight who was particularly slow is almost caught in the blast and throws Cynric a (helmeted) stink look but opts to keep running for now. There are more cannons closer to the city to be manned and fired.

The Warrior of Light catches Cynric's eye and offers him a thumbs up of encouragement, too, after the explosion. Clearly it was noticed, and the staggering of the beast, however short it may have been, is an opportunity to further damage the creature. It might be optimistic, but despite the low numbers the elite adventurers around seem to actually be whittling the big dragon down at a very encouraging pace. This might work after all.

He'll need to find that guy later and apologize, maybe buy him a beer.

But at least they're making progress. That's something.

Will anyone let him at another cannon since his explosion trick, or does he have to go stab the big beastie's ankles or something? He doesn't particularly want to stab the big beastie's ankles.

There are more cannons than people available to use them so he can actually fairly easily find one, although that one knight (and presumably friends they've talked to) is giving him a wide berth.

Cynric is totally fine with this. He will give everyone else a wide berth too, since he might end up blowing up another cannon. He doesn't want to blow up another cannon, but, well. He didn't want to be here at all, and yet here he is.

The battle proceeds.

There are forays and retreats, from both sides. For the most part, Vanya doesn't participate in them any more than she needs to. As far as she's concerned, her job is to stand still. Or, well, be reliably in the same spot in reference to the really big dragon. Which means moving at a predictable pace. She is becoming very familiar with this particular dragon's ass, and she can't say she sees the appeal. Hraesvelgr is not as big as this dragon, but she nonetheless has a lot of questions for Saint Shiva if she ever happens to summon her soul back into her body again. As she understands it, their love was neither platonic, nor celibate. So it'd start with, 'No, seriously, how?'

Is this relevant to the current situation? No, not really. But it's better than being vaguely annoyed that she doesn't actually know this dragon's name, when she's putting all of this work into killing him. Or noting that, yes, this dragon is definitely a male dragon. Or dragging that fucking lancer out of the line of fire again, because somebody seems to have some kind of death wish.

Eventually, though, it starts to become rather obvious which way this battle is going to go. The big dragon is looking, as some might say it, 'a little rough.' This is beginning to reach the point where she'd expect her job to be a lot less about sarcastic commentary on the proclivities of dead people, and more about dealing with whatever crazy shit this dragon's about to pull. Because if he (the dragon, it just seems polite to use the appropriate pronouns at this point) doesn't do anything, he is certainly going to die here. And if there's anything she knows, it's that when you are faced with certain death, you do all kinds of crazy things to get out of it.

The dragon has been moving slowly but surely. Most of its efforts have been focused on being inexorable and, occasionally, destructive. In particular destructive of each further layer of the sabotaged Ishgardian wards, which assaulted from all directions like they are usually only need a single powerful attack by the big dragon to fall. And there have absolutely been casualties on the Ishgardian side, too, though actually fewer than dragon casualties for once; mostly only the smaller or earthbound ones were the ones killed, but still, it is a rare victory when they don't lose five people for each Dravanian downed.

To say it was all for naught would be perhaps overstating the point. The Ishgardians did not actually expect the adventurers brought by the Scions to be as competent as they were, and you will find no true knight admit that each of those elite people were as effective as fifty of the Holy See's truest, but it was nevertheless the case. Vanya herself played no small part in this, and there are probably hundreds of people who now unknowingly owe her their lives.

So faced with such fierce and unexpected opposition, the Dravanians... lose.

It's hard to point to what exactly the last straw was, the thing that finally convinced their gargantuan assailant that actually he was going to die if he kept to the plan. Maybe it was the diminished song of his siblings, their number greatly reduced by the defence. Maybe it was one too many wounds, one too many scars, one too many cuts. Maybe it was when he tried to break one more layer of the magical barriers protecting the city-state and failed. Whatever it was, he... gave up.

Dragons don't see life the same way mortals do. They are, in certain ways, both more and less individualistic. Dragons live in their Song, they live in their enormous family and the nearly-a-hivemind of understanding each other's innermost thoughts and feelings through magically enforced empathy. But they also live for very, very long. Forever, if they're not killed. Some, like the father of all dragons Midgardsormr, live on even after they've been killed. It's hard to compare the experiences of beings whose existence spans eons to those of people who are gone in mere decades. Each life lost is mourned in the Song, felt by all of dragonkind, a star gone from the sky. But what is one life in the face of the Song, of moving as one with your family, with other dragons that have spent centuries by your side? Would you not gladly give it, for them?

It's hard to point to what exactly the last straw was, but there was one, and the gargantuan dragon whose name will be remembered only by his siblings turns around, slowly, ponderously, and falls down the side of the Steps of Faith.