Swordtember prompt 4: Crystal

Feat. Gwuenevere (she/her) and General Tristan (they/them) (story under read more)

What strange alchemy is this??

A fine example of Gwuenevere’s crystal attack powers…

General Tristan, a broadsword who serves under the Janthizerain Arch Thermite, is tasked to take his soldiers to capture an Erdestrian mining town near its southern borders. Surrounded by earthen domes and ravines, the mines here are an important source of metals used to construct flying polearms and war-torches for Erdestra’s armies. If this town is destroyed and its resources looted by Sir Tristan, it will weaken Erdestra’s supply chain.

Without warning, Tristan invades the town, giving little time for its citizens to evacuate. Tristan allows their soldiers to ransack the town’s buildings, refineries, and mines. But from over the hills comes the Erdestrian General Doomgreater, Prince Luther, and their army to take it back. As the two armies clash, Tristan has their forces break down the supports in the mines in hopes of causing a cave-in. But as they hack through the mines’ columns, a lone Erdestrian soldier follows them inside.

Tristan heard rumors of a cloak that somehow defeated General Viez during a battle a month ago. It was said this cloak wielded a crystal blade made from her ichor, and its sharp edge cut through steel, no matter its thickness. Tristan thought it was ridiculous gossip about Viez’s sour defeat. What piece of ragged cloth would ever think of fighting?! Yet Gwuenevere stands before them, fighting their soliders with that crystalline blade.

No matter how much they swipe at her with their blades, Tristan and their soldiers quickly find Gwuenevere a formidable opponent. She is quick, focused, and incredibly stubborn for a fragile object. She trained her blade on Tristan, the tip of it scores the surface of their blade from the blade tip to the rainguard of their face. Now hindered by pain, Tristan makes a downward strike to end this tomfoolery.

All that Tristan knew next is the bright blinding light of something erupting out of their face of their rainguard. They hear Gwuenevere’s angered yell and a sudden rush of magic blows them away from the little cloak. Tristan slams into a wall and collapses onto the ground, their blade broken in two. Their upper half of their blade tarnishing and turning to crystal, Tristan looks up with their uninjured eye and sees the cloak charging them with her blade raised for a final strike.

Sometime later, Prince Luther takes a few soldiers to flush out the remaining Janthizerain soldiers from the mines. With General Tristan missing, their soldiers’ morale fallen into complete disorder, and many had fleed. In the mines, Luther found the caverns covered in familiar glowing crystals. In a large room of broken columns and ransacked storage chests, Luther finds Gwuenevere escorting a few young curios who hid in the mines from Tristan’s soldiers. Gwuenevere is all torn up from her fight, but her material enhancements strengthen her fabric body and keep her going.

As Luther and his men help Gwuenevere find the remaining curios in the mines, Luther asks Gwuenevere about General Tristan. Gwuenevere points to a large crystal column that snaked up and down a nearby stone wall. There embedded within it is General Tristan the broadsword, their metal core warped and twisted by glowing crystals while their kernel lies entrapped by its crystalline prison.