'Now then... what goes next?'
Etaria took a deep breath and closed her eyes, making use of the tranquil silence that came after her powerful attack.
It was never her intention to buy herself this space and time to think things through... But now that she found herself alone and without a single sound to bother her, Etaria willingly indulged herself in the moment, taking some time to sort her thoughts out.
'There's Madam stalling for time, Zanba knowing far more than he ever allowed me to know, their strange connection...'
The princess squinted her golden eyes.
'No, not their connection. Our connection to this forest,' Etaria corrected herself, slowly but surely piecing together all the scattered pieces of information she received in this impossible and incredible encounter.
The princess closed her eyes and raised her chin, taking in a deep breath and keeping it in her lungs for a long while, before slowly, slowly breathing it out.
"Okay then," Etaria muttered before gathering just a single sliver of her mana and infusing it in one of the spell frames she was most familiar with.
For how simplistic it was, the spell she prepared was one of the few that only the golden lineage got access to. A convenience-class spell that was as simple as it was specific, exclusively aimed to work on those conditioned to notice it.
'Here we go,' Etaria thought, pulling out a small dagger from the belt at her waist before cutting the inner palm of her hand open. A mere second after she wounded herself, Etaria took a look at the blood seeping out from the wound.
'It's still not golden,' she thought, gritting her teeth in silent frustration for a short moment before raising her injured palm as high as she could, anchoring her lineage-exclusive spell right in the small puddle of blood forming right above the injury.
'Go!'
The mana surged forth into the frame of the spell, turning it from a mere concept into a phenomena factor.
The blood on Etaria's hand bubbled up as if it was boiling... before suddenly growing lighter and lighter in color, all the way to the point where the over-infusion of mana caused it to turn golden.
But the moment Etaria's blood took on the color of her lineage, it also reached the limits of how much energy it could contain. But the flow of the princess's mana didn't stop.
Quite contrary, Etaria continued to infuse more and more of it into the anchor within her blood, quickly turning her golden blood thicker and thicker... before it had no other choice but to start to take the shape of the spellframe she prepared in advance.
WHOOSH!
Upon reaching its maximum saturation point, the thickened, golden blood suddenly shot up, forming a simple, extremely light spear of roughly three meters in length. But this wasn't the end.
As soon as the blade formed at the very end of the spear, its upper part started to bloat. It grew fuller and fuller, all the way to the point where it looked like even a single gust of wind would suffice to break the structural balance and cause the top part of Etaria's golden spear to shatter...
Yet, the bloated part continued to grow as Etaria pushed more and more of her mana into the spell's frame.
And then, instead of shattering all over and spilling whatever made it bloat like that all over the place, the spear's top split open in a single, perfectly straight rift of a perfectly third of the spear's total length.
And yet, they didn't.
"To hear means to obey," the officer spoke as he lowered his head for a second, only to rise up and turn to the rest of the legionaries gathered on the spot. "You've heard our lady! Pick up the damn slack and get a move on!"
The officer turned around while unsheathing his sword and quickly fixing the position of his helmet. He then moved forth without any spare words, only lowering his head and throwing a short, "my princess" as he passed by Etaria while already moving in the direction the banner called him forth.
"May your fight be glorious and honorable," Etaria silently muttered the usual formula before turning her eyes in the same direction and taking a short moment to glance out into the distance.
With the trees blocking her view, she couldn't really see much... But by reading into the flow of mana of the world, she quickly managed to pinpoint the location where Zanba clashed with Madam.
'It's time for me to go too,' she thought, gathering the mana into the spell's forms embedded into the mana stones sown into her pants before releasing her hold over her mana and rushing ahead, supported by a series of tiny spells that made her step longer, lighter and nearly free of gravity.
A single step allowed her to cross the distance her men would have to run for a while to cross. And this same step gave her twice as much momentum as an average legionnaire would have while sprinting at his full speed.
Step by step, Etaria cut through the forest like an arrow. Thanks to the anti-weight augmentation spell, she didn't need to bother with any of the trees obstructing her path, as she simply walked up and ended up rushing above those.
Step after step... and just like that, Etaria arrived on the scene, where Madam just fell down to the ground, shaken by some sort of a powerful attack.
'Zanba! Where is he...?!'
Still some distance away but close enough to see everything that happened, Etaria quickly noticed her mate rushing towards the place where it seemed all the forest folk had gathered for their last stand...
'But what are those...?'
A group of strange-looking men held some weird, black sticks that continued to flash red as if lighting up several times a second...
Only for Zanba to walk out of the forest, all battered, clearly struggling to walk ahead when faced with... what exactly?
'Shit, no time to think too hard about it!'
Aware of just how much time she's already lost, Etaria gritted her teeth and gathered up her mana, ready to finish this fight in one, decisive strike. Yet, as soon as her mana filled the form of the powerful piercing spell she prepared, the area of the enemy army...
Suddenly vanished from her mana sense, carved out of the world's natural flow of mana by some sort of sophisticated barrier.
Opening her eyes, Etaria saw the whole area within the barrier suddenly covered with thick smoke that even her golden eyes couldn't penetrate. Yet, just before this smoke could cover all of those inside, her eyes landed on one, extremely specific person.
'So you are here,' Etaria thought, her eyes squinting as she rushed forth to add physical momentum to the power of her spell.
For a second, their eyes meet. But just like Madam did before when she had to pick whether to stop Zanba from invoking the taboo or defend from Etaria's attack, the princess pulled her attention away from the man, allowing him to escape into this unnatural smoke.
'I need to deal with that damned fox first!' she thought, gritting her teeth as she finally reached the most convenient spot, just to the side of the clearing where the locals made their last stand.
"I'm going to end it now," Etaria whispered to herself, gathering all of the energy she could muster... and dropping with all the power she gathered right into a random spot of the barrier.