"Land ho! Land ho, LAND HO!" A sailor shouted from the lookout, or Crowsnest, of the tallest mast of the KYV Kylia. Below him, the deck of the flagship pitched and rolled under a slate-grey sky, spray needling into every exposed inch of skin. Six Sixth-Rate ships packed with 940 combat troops struggled through the frothy winter currents of the bay.
Above the fleet, barely visible through the scudding clouds, the KAS Korona engines roared at full power just to hold position against gusts that threatened to fling sideways into the sea. Inside the gondola, engineers gripped support struts white-knuckled as the deck lurched, muttering prayers to their respective Hylian or Slavic gods.
"Two kilometers to the cove!" the navigator shouted. "Rocks on all sides, bad landing!"
"Bad landing beats no landing," The captain growled. "Signal this to the admiral."
…
With confirmation from Admiral Viysʹkovo, the order went up before a single boat touched water.
"Airmen, up! Scout the tree line before the Marines set foot on that beach!"
From the decks of all six ships, the 700 Kylian Lavovy Airmen launched into the wind in staggered flights, wings beating hard against gusts that tried to fling them back into the sea the moment they cleared the rigging. They climbed fast, fanning out ahead of the fleet in a loose net, eyes and rifles trained on the black cliffs and the tree line beyond.
"Anything?" a flight lieutenant shouted across the gap to the airman flying wing on him.
"Nothing but rock and snow, sir! Not even a goat track!"
"Keep looking. Rock and snow is exactly where I'd hide an ambush."
They swept the cove twice, then a third time further inland, banking low over gullies and boulder fields where a company of archers could have sat quiet for a week without being spotted from the water. Only when the lead flight signaled clear—three short flares, green against the grey sky—did the landing boats finally lower. With confirmation from Admiral Viysʹkovo, landing boats were lowered into the water. General Morsʹkyy rode in the lead boat, drenched to the bone, glaring at the approaching shingle beach as though it had personally insulted his mother.
"If I die in a boat before I even get to shoot anybody," he announced to no one in particular, "I am going to be very upset."
"Noted, sir," said the marine beside him, bailing water with a helmet.
The boat struck stone with a spine-jarring crunch. Morsʹkyy and his Marines threw themselves over the sides of the boats, wading through freezing surf before it had fully stopped, rifle held low, boots sinking into shingle and slush that shifted like it was trying to swallow him.
Now firmly on the rocky beach Morsʹkyy and his Marines ducked for whatever cover they could find. Their rifles pointed outwards from the landing zone ready to give hell to any enemies they might encounter.
Overhead, the Airmen continued their slow circuits, wings dark against the clouds, watching the ridgelines for any sign of movement while the Marines secured the beachhead below them.
For nearly a full minute, the only sound on that beach was 240 Kylian Marines breathing hard through chattering teeth and the relentless hiss of the surf.
"…Empty," Morsʹkyy said finally, lowering his rifle with something between relief and disappointment. "Would've liked a fight to warm up. This cold is doing things to parts of me that shouldn't be that color."
"Empty on the ground, sir," the flight lieutenant called down as he swooped low over the beach to report. "Airmen count zero enemy contacts within five kilometers. We'll keep circling while you get the tents up, just in case something decides to wander in from the hills."
Within the hour, the beach had transformed from empty shingle into a sprawling beachhead tent rising in the lee of wind-scoured cliffs with crates of shells stacked and lashed against the wind.
Kylia touched down last, boots crunching into wet stone, Zirka's hilt cold against her palm even through the winter glove. Behind her, Rosa and Zeleny folded their wings against the gale, both looking thoroughly unimpressed with Hylian weather.
"Cheerful," Zirka said, her voice a private hum only Kylia could hear. "Truly, an inspiring vista. One of my top 10 favorite recommendations for vacations."
Rosa sidled up, arms crossed against the cold, eyeing the empty beach and the black cliffs with open suspicion. "This was too easy."
"It was supposed to be," Kylia said. "Yuter's plan only works if nobody's watching. Enjoy it while it lasts as my ships need to take three more of these trips to drop off over 3,000 troops still on Pavo Island. By then the Hylians would be alerted to our operations. Preferably we attack at full strength but Admiral Viysʹkovo projects that it'll take till early summer to send everything over, so we need to advance quickly and take as much territory as possible now before the Hylian resistance mounts.
…
"Bring the guns across!" Odin called out, watching the first cannon crew ease their piece down a plank ramp and onto the ice sheet. The gun crunched, settled, and held.
Where Yuter's battalions would spend the coming months manhandling artillery across the sea on ships, Odin's engineers simply laid rope and canvas across the frozen bay and dragged the guns behind sleds, horses straining but unburdened by mud or rock. An entire battery that would have taken three days to move by cart crossed ten kilometers of ice in a single afternoon.
"Never thought I'd be grateful for this cursed cold," muttered a gun sergeant, watching his howitzer glide across the ice like it weighed nothing at all.
"Don't get used to it," Odin said, riding past. "The ice ends where the mountain begins. After that, we walk."
"No resistance," Captain Kinnota reported, cantering up on a horse still shuddering from the crossing, breath pluming like a chimney. "Not so much as a scout, sir."
"For a thousand years," Odin said, eyes tracing the pass winding between the peaks like a scar through stone, "they hid behind these mountain walls, believing that we couldn't touch them while they toyed with our affairs. We are about to teach them the value of a second opinion."
"And if Hyrule Castle notices us marching up their front doorstep?" someone asked.
"Then we'll have saved ourselves the trouble of knocking."
A ripple of grim laughter passed through the officers, short-lived, quickly swallowed by the wind. Behind them, Sovi stared up at the pass with an expression that mixed old grief and fresh hunger in equal measure. Her city had been retaken. Her people fed, housed, counted, and mourned. But the men who had burned half her population still drew breath somewhere past that mountain, and she intended to be there when the bill finally came due.
…
Two weeks into the Lanayru campaign a Hylian patrol out of Kakariko Village, twelve men walking a route so routine they'd stopped bothering to look at anything, crested a ridge and found 700 Kylian Lavovy Airmen led by five Valors soaring overhead towards them. General Morsʹkyy and his 240 Marines were left to guard the landing zone for any Hylian surprise attacks.
"MOTHER OF HY—!" was as far as the lead scout got before bullets and grenades rained down from the sky above them.