Desert Storm

Draupnir Mond fills Iyolin in on the secret order he gave G.S back in Chapter 15, to weaken the Empire's forces from within — a briefing that leads straight into the army's next debate. After reclaiming Asbender Fortress in the wake of Thunderdoom's fall, the Silver Arrow Alliance argues over whether to press on toward Trisis or wait for G.S, still stuck in Bifrost. Worried that morale might dwindle if they pause too long, Iyolin decides on a bold advance. It proves to be exactly the wrong call: falling for Kasim's scheme, the Pandragon forces are utterly defeated, and Prince Lacid narrowly escapes only through the sacrifice of others.

Silver Arrow's very success sets the trap. Riding the momentum, Iyolin's leading supporters press hard for the strike west into the desert kingdom of Trisis. Chief among them: Erich Schultz of Astania, the Bishop Knight Captain and one of the loudest hawks for the expedition, and Dycus Rockwood, the Dagal warrior — highest-ranking Dagal warrior, captured at Trisis, later released as Beradin's ceasefire envoy to the Black Bridge.

Iyolin is not blind to the danger. She knows the odds are poor: no Bifrost flanking support, a campaign fought on terrain and in a climate that hugely favours the defender. But the critical thing this chapter makes clear is that she specifically waited for G.S's signal from Bifrost before committing — and it never came. Duke Moselle's assassination and G.S being framed for the murder (Chapters 15–16) left G.S trapped in Bifrost with no way to communicate. The alliance commanders could not wait indefinitely. Iyolin marched.

The causal chain is explicit: with Bifrost in internal crisis after Moselle's murder, it was impossible to easily deploy troops from there; G.S's absence removed the one tactical mind capable of compensating for the terrain disadvantage. The campaign Iyolin launches is missing both its flanking cover and its operational commander. The disaster is engineered, not accidental.

Arriving at the Scorching Sands, the Alliance meets the Assassins — the core of the Trisis Army — and defeats them so easily that morale soars, and the advance continues. Trisis commanders Maetro and Urdana, caught off guard by the momentum, pull back; Dycus, confident in a rout, wants to give chase, but Iyolin warns him not to let his guard down. Still, as the Trisis Army keeps falling back with so little resistance, doubt gives way to overconfidence within the ranks — rumors that the famed Assassins were overstated start to spread, and the army pushes on.

At last the Alliance and Kasim come face to face. He grumbles about the Four Heavenly Kings' failure to stop them, but commits the Trisis Army to a full battle anyway — then, judging the fight unwinnable, retreats. Flush with confidence, Dycus volunteers to pursue him, and Iyolin, believing victory is within reach, presses the advance to finish it.

But Dycus doesn't come back. Tracking him turns up only the remaining Urdana and scattered Trisis forces; uneasy but unwilling to rule out that he's simply fallen into one of Kasim's traps, the Alliance decides to keep advancing rather than turn back.

Kasim — the Trisis desert overlord, one of the Empire's Seven Knights, and pilot of the first-class Machina Ra. Known as "the mercenary king" and one of the swordsmen the Black Prince himself acknowledged as a genuine challenge. A master of desert warfare who uses landscape, heat, and the enemy's own momentum as weapons. His assassins: Urdana, Maetro, Aznim.

The Alliance's unease deepens as Kasim and his army stay conspicuously out of sight — until a horde of monsters blocks their path, and the desert weather turns hostile with a sudden, ominous sandstorm. Soldiers fall out of formation as the storm wears the army down; by the time it finally subsides, the combined toll of heat, monsters, and exhaustion makes it clear to everyone that they've walked straight into Kasim's scheme. Kasim himself reappears to confirm it, delighted and openly mocking the Alliance he's just broken — and the enraged Allied Forces charge him anyway.

Rather than meet Silver Arrow head-on, Kasim has drawn them into this decoy war from the start: provoking early overconfidence, attriting the army across the dunes, and finally overwhelming the cavalry as the sandstorm leaves them blind and exhausted. The result is catastrophe.

The Holy Knights are annihilated — Durant Rembrandt, Locarno Stanley, and Cindy Roseley among the dead. Iyolin is taken prisoner — thrown into the Dark Castle's dungeon, making her the shortest-reigning monarch in Pandragon's history. A few escape — Kevin Hastings and Haya Belle are sent away in time to protect Lacid, who alone of the royal party gets off the field alive.

The emotional core of the chapter is the parting between the captured queen and her younger brother. Sensing defeat against overwhelming power, Iyolin and Durant realize they cannot let everyone be wiped out and resolve to at least get Lacid to safety. As the disaster closes in, Iyolin slaps the brother who swears to stay and die beside her, and forces him to run — telling him that this may be her last request, that he, not she, is now the last hope of Silver Arrow. She confesses that her hands are too stained with the blood of revenge, that she has lost the right to lead, even the right to call herself a woman or a person — but that he is different, and can do what she no longer can. And she points him toward the one ally she trusts: if G.S is safe, he will help you, so go and find him.

With Lacid sent away, the Pandragon Alliance makes its final stand, charging Kasim and Trisis's forces with everything they have left — and is defeated in a valiant, hopeless struggle. It is a deliberate inversion of everything built since Chapter 1. The "goddess of revenge" who carried the whole resistance on her charisma is reduced to a prisoner begging her sheltered little brother to survive — and redirecting the future to him. Even in total defeat, Iyolin's commanding presence is what held the army's morale together right up to the moment of annihilation. The soldiers stayed formed because she stayed formed.