Summoning Our Country - NHS Kai

Chapter 31: Battle of Menda Point Part 2

NOTE: Yeah, we were gone for six months. Sorry about that. With how busy I am, I don't think I could stick to a regular schedule with Kai anymore, but I'm free right now so I'll try to get out as many chapters as I can. This was supposed to be one chapter, but it's gotten long, so it was split into two.

Discord: https://discord.gg/wEp44XuaT3

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6:25, Cent. Calendar 27/01/1640, La Roche, Menda Point

It was a cold winter morning in the straits like any other. A thin layer of fog hugged the surface of the ocean, dissipating by the minute as the golden streaks of a rejuvenated sun came rushing out of the horizon to the east. In the midst of this empty ocean lay hundreds of floating black stones several meters wide, jutting into the sky from the seas like the teeth of a colossal underwater monster. These clusters of jagged rocks, a definite hazard to any seagoing vessels, surrounded a group of three bigger islands, the biggest of which was hardly more than several square kilometers wide. The lack of significant vegetation and port facilities, natural resources for growth, and land to build settlements on ensured that no one colonized this place—at least, not until recently.

As part of its long-term objective of securing regional dominance, the Parpaldian Empire had set its eyes on this group of unnamed islands. There was nothing of note on the islands except for guano, bird droppings used as fertilizer, but the Parpaldians weren't there for resources. By planting the flag on one of the more hospitable islands, which it called La Roche, Parpaldia was stamping its hold on the Altaras Strait intending to put more of the waterway under its sole control. In order to realize its designs on this southern region, it was paramount that these islands, collectively given the name Menda Point, were to be under their control. Building a lighthouse on where they initially planted their flag, they followed it by stationing a permanent garrison to keep the other major power, Altaras, at bay.

"Ughhh..."

The lone groan of a man echoed throughout the empty, pristine island, startling a couple of sea birds that had perched atop the battlements of an artillery dugout.

"Just a few more minutes, dammit..."

Allin, a soldat unfortunate enough to be posted in the middle of nowhere, was having a conundrum. As part of the night shift, which was about to end at 6:30 in the morning, he was supposed to have kept watch for the better part of the night. It was an unfair patrol system, adopted because there were only 20 of them on the island, and he just had to have rolled the worst possible face on the die. In what was essentially the middle of an endless ocean with nothing better to do, the most excitement he could enjoy was battling the vices of slumbering.

"Ah, shit..."

He leaned more against the cold, wooden chair of his westerly outpost. He could feel himself losing to the overwhelming power of his eyelids. It was soon to be decisive.

"Two minutes probably wouldn't hurt anyone..."

He had just lost the battle of wills. Conceding to his carnal desire to rest, he finally allowed his eyelids to shut close. But just as they were about to, his sense for patrolling, cultivated after months on the job, noticed a discrepancy in the sliver of light entering his eyes. This also prompted him to jerk himself awake, and in a matter of moments, he was up on his feet as if he hadn't been succumbing to sleep just a while ago.

"Hm?"

The discrepancy he noticed was two dark specks contrasting against the light blue morning sky to the west. His thoughts immediately considered them as wyverns, but the pressing fact he needed to know was whose side these wyverns were on. Binoculars in hand, he pointed them toward the two dark specks and looked through them. Sure enough, he was on the money about them being wyverns, but upon closer inspection of their identifiers—colored markers on the wings, tail, and abdomen of a wyvern for visual friend-or-foe identification—his heart skipped a beat. They were unmistakably blue and white: not the colors of the imperial banner, but of Altaras—of the enemy's!