The courtyard had become a charnel house of unprecedented carnage. Blood pooled in frozen red lakes between the scattered corpses, steaming in the frigid air as the final moments of the battle reached their crescendo. The pristine snow had long since disappeared beneath layers of gore, mud, and the trampled remains of the fallen.
Captain Diana's air blade screamed through the frozen air, its compressed wind howling like a banshee as it carved through Thorne's defenses. The Third Guard's metallic armor, which had seemed impenetrable moments before, split like paper under the concentrated atmospheric pressure. Diana's strike found its mark between the silver-etched plates, the wind weapon punching through Thorne's chest cavity with devastating force.
