ONE: THE GRANARY

  “Cursed gates, Null. Keep up,” Marcus hissed under his breath. The admonishment sliced through the oppressive night, causing Cassius to cringe as he tried to catch up with the higher-level legionnaire.

  The man’s blood-red cloak blended into the darkness, his silhouette barely visible against his surroundings. He stood under the faintest light of the moon, which shone through the clouds roiling above, and obscuring the starlight of the heavens beyond.

  “Apologies, sir. I’ve exhausted my mana.”

  Cassius attempted to keep his voice low, but his heavy breathing made it difficult.

  “Say something next time. Damned replacements,” Marcus muttered the last part as he turned away and started back down the road. Cassius groaned and followed after, the clatter of his pack bouncing on his back loud in the relative silence of the road.

  Grass swayed on either side of them as Cassius caught up to the other legionnaire, the warm summer breeze hardly bringing relief from the stifling heat, while they kept their eyes open and ears alert. Monsters shouldn’t be this deep into the Republic’s lands, but assuming that there were no monsters was a fast way to get killed and eaten. The veterans had been sure to beat that into Cassius' head during initial training.

  “Are we almost there?” he asked as the hour deepened.

  Marcus sighed but answered after a moment. “Green recruits are worse than children. The granary shouldn’t be far, though.”

  Cassius kept his face blank even as Marcus’s words rankled his pride. Ever since he’d joined the Thirteenth Legion, he’d been looked down upon and sneered at by the veterans. Over a month now, he’d had to deal with their disdain—it was beginning to wear through his patience.

  “Yes, sir,” Cassius said and kept his displeasure to himself. Lashing back at them would only make it worse. It was better to bear the hazing and wait for another replacement to join their file. It was only a slight salve for his prickled pride that needing a replacement would mean one of the veterans had died.

  True to Marcus’s words, the walls of the granary soon appeared. Low and made of baked mud, they were hardly impressive. A pair of men working together could scale them with ease. It was the deep cellars that ran beneath the walls that they were there to judge, not the woeful defensive positions.

  Cassius looked up at the walls and searched them for a night watchman. There should be someone who was looking over the granary and the small contingent of homes down there. A firewatch, if not an actual guard at least. He looked at the gates and frowned as they grew closer; they weren’t perfectly sealed.

  “Marcus. The gate is open,” Cassius whispered. The older man hesitated for a moment, foot frozen above the hard-packed road, before he continued forward. Marcus shifted his spear to a more comfortable grip while rolling the shoulder that supported his shield.

  “Alright. Quiet and careful. Spear till we’re in the walls, then blade,” Marcus whispered back, and Cassius nodded as he shifted the grip on his own long spear. Marcus slowed their pace toward the gates, but kept moving forward.

  “If you run on me, I’ll see you crucified,” Marcus threatened, and Cassius swallowed hard as they neared. Tension thickened until they were before the gates of slatted wood nailed and lashed tight with leather strips. Well made, even if they were thin and would fold under a determined man with an axe, let alone a battering ram.

  Marcus pressed the butt of his spear against the slightly ajar gate, pushing it wide open with a shrieking creak. Inky darkness awaited them. Nothing was visible as Marcus shrugged out of his pack and cloak. Cassius followed his mentor’s lead and sighed in relief as the heavy kit finally came off.

  “Ready?” Marcus asked, and Cassius nodded quickly, which caused his helmet to bob on his head, slipping down to obscure his vision for a second. Cassius pushed it back up quickly and tightened the strap under his chin as Marcus led the way to the granary.

  Passing through the gate, the smell of blood and rot came instantly. Mouldering bodies and iron assaulted Cassius's nose as the two legionnaires walked together, shields up and spears out as they moved down the main street towards the grain vault.

  Every granary was built the same way. The main street was wide enough to allow the passage of carts or wagons directly toward the grain vault with ease. Side streets were built on a grid, with a few homes for those who watched over the granary, along with a mercantile shop, blacksmith, tannery, and other small shops that the small farm managed along the frontier.

  Not a soul stirred. There was an unnatural stillness as they crept their way forward slowly to the gates of the vault. Marcus leaned down and pushed the steel-banded door. It refused to move under the legionnaire's strength. Cassius kept his eyes locked on the world around them, the quiet streets that were devoid of life. There weren’t even damn rats stalking about.

  “What next?” Cassius asked after Marcus pulled back from the door.

  “There’s a class stone here, right? It’ll be in a secured room on the far side. If there’s anyone around, they’ll have gone there to reinforce it,” Marcus answered without any bite. It was strange to hear the older man speak without venom. A sure sign that the otherness of this place was wearing on him.

  Cassius couldn’t argue with that, just nodded along as the two of them kept moving, their only company Cassius’s heavy breathing as his nerves grew tighter. The granary wasn’t a large settlement, able to be crossed in only minutes until they reached the sturdiest building they’d seen so far. It wasn’t made of baked mud, but of stone with another steel-banded door sealing it closed. Arrow slits were the only break in the stone facing.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Door’s open,” Marcus said, cursing a second later as they pushed their way in and the wretched smell of blood and rot doubled. Cassius gagged, bile rising up in a wave that spattered the stone and his boots.

  “By the cursed gates,” Marcus whispered, horror in his voice as he looked over the massacre that painted the walls. Cassius wiped his mouth and looked up.

  Bodies were nailed to the granary’s stone walls. Angry red symbols glowed with infernal light around each of them, which only served to illuminate the disfigurement and cruelty they'd been put through. Flesh flayed, organs dragged out of their cavities to hang toward the ground, teeth pulled, and skin burned to leave nothing more than a horrid mockery of what had once been a living being.

  “Was no monster that did this,” Marcus said as he walked closer to the first corpse and prodded it with his speartip. The red light flared even brighter from the symbols, preventing the steel tip from touching the body. His voice trembled, either with fear or anger, Cassius couldn’t tell. The red light of the runes amplified the horror etched on his face as he drew closer, drawn by morbid curiosity.

  “Some type of skill, then. I’ve never heard of a class like this, though,” Marcus said, turning to look at Cassius with an unspoken question.

  “Neither have I. This is supposed to be a [Farmer] class stone, yeah?” Cassius said as he looked toward the plinth of smooth, milky crystal. How his voice remained steady, he didn’t know. A numbness crept through him as he felt something inside of himself step away from the scene. Blood had darkened into chains of black text that wrapped around the class stone. A dark red aura filled the foreign words, drawing Cassius’ eyes towards the symbols. He looked deeper, and deeper, and…

  “Cut that shit out,” Marcus snarled as he slapped Cassius across the chest with the butt of his spear. Cassius shook his head, clearing the cobwebs out of his mind as he turned back toward the door and the gates beyond.

  “We need to warn the others. Antonius will want to know,” Cassius said, thinking of the file leader. Marcus just grunted, his dark eyes sweeping around the room as he nodded along.

  “You’re right, of course. Take a torch. You remember the signal. Red flame, side to side three times and then down,” Marcus ordered.

  Cassius froze as that wasn’t the code for caution. It was the code for immediate danger. Sweat popped out on his back, and he nodded, throat too dry to say anything as he tightened his grip on his spear.

  “Of course, sir. I’ll go and do that right now,” Cassius said, eyes sweeping the dark corners as he backed out and into the street. With Marcus’s warning, the silence and stillness now had an active, malignant presence to it. He jogged back towards the packs where their torches and color-changing chemics would be.

  The only sound was his boots shuffling through the dirt and his hurried breaths. It took only a minute to cross the granary and reach their untouched packs. Shuffling through the pockets and straps to find what he needed took only a second. The torch was atop everything with tar-dipped wrappings, the pouch of chemics that would make the flames burn bright red right beneath it.

  It was so quiet that Cassius almost didn’t notice it.

  The drip of liquid hitting the ground. He looked at his spear, out of hand and leaning against the wall. It would be a reach, a hard reach, as the sound of dripping behind him got closer. It wasn’t from inside the gates, but from the road that they’d crossed.

  Cassius pushed the torch and pouch of powders into his off hand, relying on the forearm strap to keep his shield in place as he reached down for his sword. The sweat-stained wrappings welcomed his fingers as the sound of dripping stopped. Cassius’s breath froze in his chest as he slowly turned to look into the countryside behind him.

  “Cursed gates,” Cassius whispered as he stared at the creature that lurked only feet away. A hunched figure, limbs crooked with long talons that gouged lines in the dirt. An oversized lower jaw jutted from its head, long trails of saliva strung from the dagger-like teeth. A strand of it broke apart and splattered against the ground. Crimson eyes gleamed in the low light as it took another step forward.

  Steel hissed as the sword flew free of the scabbard. The beast lunged forward, jaw unhinging as a black tongue lashed the air. Cassius could feel the thin tendrils of mana in his body, hardly anything left from the march toward the granary. It would be enough, though.

  [Thrust] was the cornerstone of the legions. Mana covered the length of his blade as Cassius stepped forward and shoved the gladius toward the beast when it finally howled, a discordant sound that echoed with the screams of the damned. Metal bit into flesh as Cassius angled the blade up and through the gaping jaw to pierce upward into the skull.

  Flesh parted with ease beneath the mana-enhanced blow. Hot blood splashed across his bracer, hand, and blade as Cassius twisted and tore the creature’s jaw free. It flew past him to smash against the wall. The monster bounced free and staggered back. Pain nettled his sword hand, but Cassius pushed through, raising the blade to hack down at the creature while its bulbous head was lowered. Black blood pooled on the ground in a puddle at the monster’s feet.

  At the last moment, Cassius pivoted the strike to become a downward thrust. The point of the gladius speared through the beast’s head and into the neck. Cassius snarled and ripped the blade free as the monster collapsed. For the first time in his life, he got the alert that he'd killed a monster.

  Summoned Imp

  Level One

  Information: RESTRICTED

  Cassius could only look at the words for a moment before he dismissed them as the pain in his hand grew. The imp’s blood was viscous, sticking to his skin and burning as Cassius cursed. He grabbed the canteen on his hip and started to clean it off. He cursed under his breath as the water slowly washed the burning blood off to reveal reddened and inflamed skin beneath.

  “Kill that all by yourself?” Marcus’s voice startled him. Cassius spun as he grabbed the gladius and whipped it around, breath coming in heavy pants. The veteran swatted the blow away with casual contempt as he stepped to look over the monster.

  “What did the system label it?”

  “A summoned imp. Only level one,” Cassius replied as he lowered his sword. He looked at the blade and quickly poured water down it, grabbing his cloak to wipe away the ichor to reveal pitting across the entirety of the blade. By the time he finished cleaning his hand, sword, and bracer, his canteen was empty.

  “The blood is corrosive. Not strong obviously, but enough to be a concern,” Cassius reported as Marcus walked around the beast, slowly taking it in.

  “Summoned monster means there’s a summoner. The rest of the file is in danger. Get up on the wall and give the appropriate signal,” Marcus finally ordered as he reached over and grabbed their packs and cloaks. “Hurry it up. These walls are shit, but if those monsters are out there, I’d rather be inside the walls.”

  Cassius couldn’t help but agree with Marcus as he got to his feet and left the dead beast on the ground. He headed toward the wall, flying up it as he fumbled the torch and chemics, pouring the sandy grains into it before using his striker to send the tar-soaked linens up in a flare of light. Cassius lifted the blazing red torch high into the air, a beacon to everything that lurked in the night