Ketch watched the army retreat with her heart in her throat, pounding endlessly. So many Knights and Mages had wandered past her, a seemingly endless dispy of wealth and power, any one of which could have obliterated her without a second thought. She'd trusted in her Skills, stuck to the shadows, and that had seen her through, but gods. She never wanted to be so close to danger again.

  Naturally, that wouldn't happen. She'd chosen her spot, ying within the frumpy pile of a colpsed tent, because she needed to confirm who was leaving. Not every noble joined each assault, after all. Some had to be left in camp to "mind" their lessers, which was a polite phrasing for walking about with sword and armor, gring down at anyone who looked like they might wish to desert.

  Had she been in the Royal Army, Ketch certainly would have fled. A week of sitting in the same camp had turned the picturesque Tulian grassnd to an ugly mess, first with a miasma of dust choking the air, then, after the rains, a cloying bog of muddy ditches. Only the stream kept the vicinity from being filled with the scent of human waste, and even that small mercy was being steadily overwhelmed as the days wore on.

  And that's the least of their worries.

  Ketch emerged from her hiding pce as the first cannons boomed, that incongruously cheery cloud flowering from the wall signaling the death of gods knew how many. She purposefully kept her back to the sight, uninterested in seeing the source of the mentable cries that drifted over the wind.

  For all her discrediting of the Sporaton camp, as she ventured deeper into its interior, she at least had to admit it had been slowly improved. The initial damage from the first cannon barrage that had wrecked its former location and forced a hasty flight was slowly being rectified, a sembnce of order restored. Ketch passed rows of ashy fire pits dug from the mud, surrounded by fireproofing stones with racks of freshly cut firewood drying nearby. What tents existed were slowly being corralled into lines and rows, and navigating the pce no longer required climbing for a vantage point every few dozen yards. Many troops were left behind from the assault, taken by diseases that the healers hadn't yet had the chance to rectify, as was the danger of any rge gathering of peoples from different regions. She heard plenty of coughs and miserable sniffles throughout the camp and very few conversations.

  One pale, trembling man emerged from his tent, forcing Ketch to sidestep with a turn of her head, hiding her Azarketi features behind her hair. She'd been growing it out over her months away from the ocean, finding its bck length rather helpful to hide her features without a hood. It was only down to her ears at the moment, but every bit helped.

  She felt only the briefest flicker of his eyes rolling over her, a buzz which fluttered away as he began to retch. Ketch couldn't tell if he was diseased or hungover, and she wasn't interested in learning. She gave his tent a wide berth, keeping him well downwind of her.

  She continued her weave through the tents, avoiding the areas where her count of the nobles showed some had chosen to remain. Judging by the previous few days, she would have hours yet until the rest returned from the fight. She could afford a circuitous route.

  Her goal for the infiltration was perhaps the most daunting since she had found her way into the Eliah estate. That had been a mess and a half, punctuated by Selly's dagger sweeping her away from something she really had no right to have survived, but this was potentially even worse. Escaping a handful of confused guards and drunken nobles was one thing– mad mage of a hidden god notwithstanding– but slipping through a roused war camp was yet another. Sara had dragged her through her Advancements, and she was faster in a creep or sprint than she'd ever known was possible, yet even she couldn't outrun a shout of arm.

  Nonetheless, she pressed on. Her efforts within Sporatos of ferreting out the cult-like religion of the hidden god had gone poorly, to say the least, and Sara still needed to know what, exactly, she was fighting. The Champion's general disinterest in the matter had been supremely confusing to Ketch, and by extension, Selly. Neither of them could fathom why Sara so focused on the King and his nation, rather than the hidden god. No matter how vague her patron goddesses' guiding words had been, it seemed clear to them that there was only one thing a literal god would be interested in: another god.

  Sara had apparently disagreed. She wanted information on troop counts, formations, training, and equipment, not the identity and spread of a god-empowered cult. Ketch had provided, but had felt Selly's silent pressure goading her towards other goals. She had privately agreed, but a general sense of gratefulness towards Sara had ensured she remained on-task.

  Now that there was a mere mile separating them, however, Ketch's inclination to pursue her own interests had paradoxically grown. The cult was nearing her city, aiming for the harbor she and her family called home. If there was to be a Battle of Tulian, Ketch wanted to know what role such a strange faction would py.

  Thus, she found her footsteps slowing as she neared the center of the tent city. Simple lean-tos gave way to rger canvas castles, clusters of posted guards marking the tents with present occupants. Other patrols marched up and down the degraded streets, the hafts of their spears beating out a rhythm to dissuade any camp follower from even thinking of pinching something from their betters.

  Ketch felt a set of eyes from one such patrol nd on her, a dozen eyes digging into her skin. Ketch embraced her hands within her sleeves and bowed her head, turning her head ever so slightly to one side. The eyes grindingly slipped aside, focusing on other, more interesting things.

  Ketch had worn elegant funerary garb, a bck, loose-fitting dress with a voluminous hood. It was not immediately ostentatious, cking gems or embroidery that would immediately mark her as nobility, but was still of a recognizably fine make. As she'd intended, to their eyes her diminutive stature and mourning garb marked her as a junior member of a noble family whose elder had perished in the battle.

  In fact, as she passed the patrol, the Captain at its head murmured a quiet "M'condolences, m'dy." Ketch silently nodded back, keeping her blue skin well out of sight, but privately she was taken aback. She'd always led a quiet, solitary life. Did people in the city really just see someone they thought had suffered a tragedy and offer polite nothings? Ketch would never.

  At least it confirmed her pseudo-disguise was working. It had been the only outfit she could think of that would expin wearing a hood in the Tulian heat, and thankfully for her, Noctie's salvaged wardrobe had included quite the collection of melodramatic bck dresses and robes. Vampiric stereotypes existed for a reason, apparently.

  Ketch passed several more patrols on her way to the innermost ring of the tent city, all of which either murmured sympathetic comments or outright diverted from her path, pressing into thin lines on either side of the dirt street. Her Skills ensured their gaze lingered for only the briefest moments, never catching more than a glimpse. As far as she could tell, there was something unpleasant about her to the eye, some undefinable attribute which encouraged one to find something more... present, to look at. Whether it was purely her own Skills, or Selly's subtle influence upon her form, she was peculiarly difficult to observe at for extended periods of time.

  Ketch used this property to slip into an empty tent nearest her target, waiting for the brief moments when she felt no gazes scraping across her scales before ducking in.

  The interior was appropriately vish, a canvas flooring protecting lush rugs from the dirt and grasses otherwise inseparable on the campaign trail. A rge mattress with a folding frame dominated the centermost space, with desks and trunks and drawers of various description decorating the walls. Ketch spent a moment dragging a writing desk closest to the wall of her interest, opened her notebook atop it, and sat down.

  Some fifty feet away, two tents down, was where the King's so-called advisor resided. A pce of prominence, a mere handful of rows away from the King himself, but not quite near enough to suggest undue influence, with the innermost tents to the King reserved for the upper echelons of nobility present amongst the army. Ketch took long, slow breaths, setting quill to paper, and activated her test Skill, acquired shortly after her arrival in the Sporaton camp.

  The world of sound sharpened. What few bdes of grass remained rustled beyond the tent walls, brushing up against one another. Particles of dirt scraped and ground against one another as the boot above them turned, digging a trough in the ground. Guards wet their lips, tongues spreading saliva over the ridges and bumps of skin. And, above the commotion, there were voices. Many of them, dozens and dozens within a few hundred feet, men and women overpping in a confusing tumult.

  It was overwhelming. She had to swallow the primal urge to silence the Skill, pressing her palms ft to the desk as she took deep breaths. She could hear the wind whistling down her throat, filling the fibers of her lungs, and then she exhaled, some of her breath leaking through the slits of her gills to tickle her ears.

  Noctie had been Ketch's inspiration for this Skill, and through discussion and training with the vampire, she had managed to acquire the ability upon her next Advancement. She had not anticipated the difficulty of wielding it, however. It was the second side to the double-edged sword of involving herself with Sara. Noctie had spent decades climbing through her Advancements, cultivating her Skills deliberately with unending patience, as did most everyone. The vampire had been in her seventh decade when she reached her thirteenth Advancement. Ketch had just turned nineteen. In a strange dilemma that she didn't think many in history had ever faced, her Skills were increasingly outpacing her skill at wielding them.

  But she hadn't risked this much to be overwhelmed by the sounds of grunting and coughing. Ketch continued her slow breaths, filtering the sound of her own lungs from her thoughts, and then moved through the assortment of distractions. She recognized, catalogued, and set aside the rustling of grass, the whispers and snickers, the crunch and squish of boots in mud and dirt. Second by second, minute by minute, she listened to, then discarded the most irrelevant conversations. It was a strange, strange process, one she couldn't rightly put into words. Meditative was perhaps the closest comparison, though Ketch had little experience with such a thing. As she was forced to rifle through unending conversations about rations and chafing armor, she wished she'd adopted a meditative practice much earlier in her life.

  Abruptly, she tched onto a particurly strange cadence of speech. A low, slow chant, filtered through the distorting enchantments of a wooden mask. Ketch tensed, raising her quill.

  A chant, she realized. Not a conversation. A low, repetitive droning, barely audible, even with her Skill activated.

  In the deepest recesses of her mind, Ketch felt Selly stir. The witch's mind joined with hers, pressing close, intense as the bzing sun.

  It was not every day one saw the will of a god invoked, after all.

  ---------------------------------

  Evie

  ---------------------------------

  "The fuck is wrong with them?!" Sara demanded, haloed by a cloud of gray smoke.

  Evie did not offer an answer, because she did not have one. When the first mage's shield had broken, she had thought the day's assault was doomed to failure. The endless stream of musket fire should have broken the peasants suffering it, and when they fled and broke the line, it would not have been long until the others followed.

  Instead the Royal Army pressed further, marching stalwartly up to the walls until the front line was physically pressed against it, dders being raised above their heads, bullets raining down from above. They had suffered inordinate casualties, far greater than the ten percent that Evie's lessons had suggested would be required to break the morale of the ill-trained, yet they had not fled.

  Perhaps it was because of the nobility at their backs, marching up and down the lines while bellowing encouragement and threats in equal measure. If that was the case, however, Evie's bullets occasionally piercing the nobility's skulls should have dealt with it. Instead the peasant spear blocks had continued to absorb fire, something maddening in their eyes.

  The battle was a raging fire, and as ever, the center of the confgration was Master. The gaping hole in the defenses was a maelstrom of arrows, powder smoke, and bodies, the shriek of men and steel combining into the most horrific cacophony Evie had ever been subjected to.

  They were both in the line together, muskets brought to their shoulders. The Knights had three times attempted a breakthrough, and three times had musket fire battered them back.

  "Not all of them died," Sara noted, unprompted, as she reloaded.

  "Master?"

  "That st wave had lots of gray streaks on their armor," Master continued, biting a paper cartridge and dumping it down the barrel of her musket. "Seems like we've killed all the ones with shitty chestptes."

  "They'll be noting who survived and did not."

  "Yeah. Not like they can do anything about it, though."

  "That depends on how long this war sts."

  "Then let's hope they– Make ready!"

  Evie snatched her rifle up, leveling it. Unlike her, Master had caught the signal from the wall that the Knights were massing for another push. Muskets raised beside and behind her, nestling her into the front ranks of a wall of gray iron. She had cotton wax stuffed deep into her ears, but she still fttened them, bracing for the shocking rattle wholly unique to musket fire.

  The Knights appeared in the blink of an eye, tearing holes from the smoke as they bore down with impossible speed. Evie had just enough time to comprehend the fact that some were carrying some sort of shield, then her sight nded upon the visor of a Knight, and then the world was consumed by violence and fire.

  "Halberds!" Master roared, sliding one foot backward with mechanical precision. Evie dropped her musket unceremoniously, drawing her rapier. The musket-wielding troops beside them fell back in lockstep, repced by those determined to be the most effective halberdiers of the Tulian army.

  The complex exchange of front-line troops was an incredible risk, one requiring a synchronicity that was nigh impossible, and Evie never would have condoned it without Master's Champion's Inspiration. A handful of soldiers tripping over their fellows would have ruined the entire line, spelling disaster, yet bolstered by Master's Ability they moved with inhuman precision, sliding past one another with an ease almost graceful.

  Evie and Master took two steps forward, pcing themselves before the others, and waited.

  The Knights emerged from the fog, covering the distance in the span of a blink.

  Evie lunged without thought, aiming for one of the Knight's visors. A quick tuck of their helmet turned her bde aside, then they swung their mace for her head.

  Evie was already stepping back, leaving it flying through the space her skull had just occupied. Her rapier followed the motion, tip flicking for the brief fsh of chainmail which protected the interior of the Knight's elbow.

  The enchanted bde sheared through the light steel, sending a spray of blood into the air.

  The Knight recoiled, reflexively putting a hand to the wound, and Evie's instincts screamed for her to follow after them, to turn the defenseless moment into their st.

  But they were not the only Knight present, and the light war cuirass she had chosen for the day was not enough to afford her Master's nigh-invincibility.

  Her offhand flicked up from her hip, holding a weapon of very strange make. One of the army's common muskets, but with the barrel sawed off ten inches from its hastily modified grip. A pistol, after a fashion, though stuffed with far more powder than any non-Irregur could have handled without snapping their wrist.

  The weapon bucked in her hand, pink fire engulfing the entirety of the Knight's head. They dropped like a sack of grain, then were repced in the line by a second Knight, charging with a poleaxe held high.

  Uninterested in facing a polearm with a rapier, Evie dismissed her sword in the same motion her main hand snapped to her other hip, raising a second pistol.

  Evie closed one eye, taking a calm breath.

  The poleaxe swung.

  Evie pulled the trigger.

  A searing pain bzed to life in her left shoulder, spreading down her breast to her ribs. The Knight dropped with the crack of pistol shot, as dead as the first, and only once she saw the limp body did Evie drop the pistol, inspecting herself.

  The axe-headed bde had dug several inches into the meat of her shoulder before bouncing off her colrbone, dragged in a line through her cuirass by the Knight's colpse. The enchanted weapon had cut through her mundane cuirass with ease.

  Evie tried to reach for the bag off her left hip, found her arm wasn't responding, and stepped out of line while fumbling awkwardly with her right hand. She got the potion free after several seconds, plenty long enough for her to swear she would keep potions on either side in the future.

  She tossed down the bitter draught, shaking her head to clear the locks of sweat-soaked hair which were sticking to her eyes. The fiery agony in her shoulder was repced by a bitter icepick, tendon and skin audibly reknitting. She was just about to rejoin the line when a rge hand took her by the shoulder, fruitlessly trying to shove her to her knees. It may as well have been a toddler's grip, and she ignored it, dragging its owner along with her.

  "Down, ma'am!" A man's voice roared, nearly pleading. Evie obliged, crouching. No sooner had she moved than a Sergeant of some description called out the command to fire.

  The world once more broke apart, sulfurous smoke choking her every sense. Musket balls leapt from the second and third line of soldiers, who were arranged according to height, firing over the heads of their comrades.

  The second volley crashed into the Knights just as violently as the first, but at such a close range, the effect was even more dramatic. Evie was treated to the sight of metal ripping through metal, blood coating the faceptes of Knights with gleeful abandon as those standing before them died in spectacur fashion.

  Wholesale chunks were torn through the ranks of Knights, and as their training dictated, the Irregurs embedded among the Tulian halberdiers seized the moment. They leapt forward, drawing short weapons and shields meant for the close-pressed melee, ying about themselves indiscriminately. They were no match for the Knights in ordinary circumstances, but with the enemy so disoriented by the cataclysmic blow of fifty close-range muskets, the disparity was narrow. Many armored soldiers were taken to the ground with a sportsman's tackle, turning the battlefield into a series of ugly, knife-wielding wrestling matches.

  A whistle promptly blew, the Sporaton sign for withdrawal, and the chaotic melee dissolved in an instant. The discipline of either side created a surreal sight as Knight and Irregur disengaged from their opposites, jogging to rejoin their respective lines. If it weren't for the corpses they left behind, it would have looked like the end of a friendly practice bout.

  Evie returned to Master's side just as a runner appeared, this one of the more adult variety Master preferred. It seemed this one knew Master well, because he began his report even while snapping off his salute.

  "Report from the wall, ma'am! Knights continue to gather at the breach, but mages have moved under cover of spell-shield to several points along the wall."

  "Where?" Sara demanded, not looking at the man. She was busying herself lifting Evie's cuirass to inspect her wound, even though it was clear she'd already drunk a potion.

  "They're spaced approximately a hundred yards apart, beginning–" The man paused, realizing he was about to point the location out for a woman who wasn't paying him the slightest mind. Evie nodded him on. "Here, here, there, there, and one beyond. Five points, ma'am, Colonel Targ made a specific note of that."

  It took Evie a moment longer than it did Master to realize the significance of the number. Mages moving to five points. They only had four cannons.

  "Is that all?"

  "Yes ma'am!"

  "Good. Grab some water and wait nearby. I'll send you back to Colonel Targ with orders in a minute."

  Another salute, then she and Master were as alone as could be conceived on the battlefield. Evie tugged her cuirass back down, forcing Master to abandon her nervous tutting, and looked to the breach in the wall.

  "Did you notice what they were holding, at the start?" Master asked.

  "Only that they were holding something," Evie said. "The specifics eluded me."

  "Shields." Master's neck craned forward. "Yeah, like this one."

  Evie caught Master's elbow as the idiotic woman tried to move forward to pick up the implement from the open field. With a whistle and point, she instead tasked one of the halberdiers with retrieving the implement.

  What they brought back to Evie was unique, and almost hiriously crude. She accepted it from the halberdier with a smirk, turning it over in her hands.

  "It seems the weapons are proving exactly as fearsome as you promised, Master."

  "Guess so."

  The 'shield' was in fact two separate enchanted breastptes shed together, several different kinds of belts and buckles tying them to a more standard wooden shield beneath. It was a heavy, unwieldy thing, and it rattled loosely with every touch.

  Evie reached into one a dent on the surface with a pair of fingers, searching. After a moment she felt a different texture of metal, which she pinched and withdrew.

  "Effective, though," she said, holding the fttened musket ball up to the light. It fked and fell apart.

  "Yeah, it stopped it," Master said, accepting the ball from Evie. "But it sure as shit cost a lot of money to do that."

  "Mm," Evie agreed. The expense of armor couldn't be exaggerated. "I also question where they acquired such a surplus of enchanted equipment."

  "Took it off their dead Knights, right?" Master's tone clearly showed that she thought it were obvious.

  Evie made a face. "That would be quite the departure from cultural standards, Master. Enchanted armors are heirlooms, passed down from parent to child in the hopes that they may one day fit one's progeny. Even if they do not, and are condemned to a fate of dust-gathering, they are considered treasured symbols of a lineage's martial pride."

  "These aren't museum pieces, though," Sara said, gesturing to the bits and pieces of original leather which still adorned the pte. Fresh and well-oiled, without sign of cracking or age. "They had to have pulled these off their dead, right?"

  "That would be..." Evie searched for a comparison to draw. "Ill-received, Master," she eventually said, seeking refuge in understatement. "When the King returns to the capital and word is received from nobles that their family's precious armor was hacked apart to be used as a shield? There won't be riots, but it will be a close-run thing."

  Beneath the thin slits of her visor, Master's eyes narrowed. Evie felt a brief spark from her colr, and recognized it as the sign that her owner was consumed by her thoughts. It was a result of her own Skill, Favored Guard. It prodded her to focus on her surroundings when Master was distracted, analysis getting the better of her, requiring Evie to pay closer attention to potential threats.

  It was also a sign that Master was, consciously or not, tapping into her Blessings. In moments like these, Evie had learned to ready herself to accept some conclusion that was utterly without evidence, yet nonetheless made perfect sense.

  "They volunteered for it," Master decred. "And the King didn't come up with the idea. Too smart a military strategy, too stupid a political move. Graf, then. Probably asked the Knights before they went into battle if they'd agree to their armor being used to protect the others if they died." She scanned the field, searching for other signs of the shields. "That's why there's only a few of them. They only have so many dead they could recover, and not all of them would've agreed to have their armor used like that."

  "Alright," Evie said.

  Master looked to the shield, then the Irregurs. "They're helpful stuff for us, though. How many of your guys are trained with shield and sidearm fighting?"

  "All, of course."

  "Well, you should probably decide which ones get the fancy shields." She returned to their spot in the line, retrieving the muskets and pistols they had left behind. Evie busied herself with distributing the looted shields while Master wiped down their other weapons. It was far from ideal, simply dropping the weapons on the spot, but the proximity and speed of the enemy charges necessitated it.

  The tactics on dispy still set her teeth on edge. Master often talked of the ponderous nature of the rger battles she had participated in, only naturally comparing them to what she knew of her old world's conflicts, and so took what some might call a callous approach to the management of battle. Evie had been forced to expin to Tulian Army officers on several occasions, in private, that Master wasn't ignoring the needs of battle when she behaved like this.

  She had given no orders regarding the mages and their positioning, and Evie imagined she could feel the messenger's impatience as a physical force, a corkscrew twisting into the nape of her neck. Rather than being inattentive, however, Master had just spent so much effort readying herself to make snap decisions that the "antiquated" combat was entirely excessive for her needs. Evie couldn't protest. It had been she who had emphasized the dangers of haste to Master, echoing the words of Graf Urs.

  As she'd expected, when Master returned with the muskets and pistols, she began listing off her orders.

  ---------------------------------

  Ketch

  ---------------------------------

  The chant that fell upon Ketch's ears like waves was a jagged, harsh thing. It had the drumbeat cadence of a war march, making her flinch with each harsh, dissonant sylble. She had heard her mother's entreaties to Daygon before, when she readied herself for the long journeys to the Deepwater hunting grounds. Those prayers, though spoken in a dead nguage, had been a soft, lilting entreaty, a humble request for guidance and safe passage. Not this... jarring command. A ritualistic order, meaningless words flowing through half-formed lips to enforce their will upon the world.

  Selly's interest grew sharper, and Ketch felt her peering through her eyes, molding their senses into one another's. Ketch could feel the warm waters of her home coaxing through her scales, the simpler matters of what went where and who was who fading to insignificance.

  It was too curious a prayer to investigate from a ter recounting, after all. There were lessons to be learned in the selfsame watching of things, details best preserved within one's own mind.

  Ketch leaned closer to the tent wall, ears straining. The nguage was not one Selly knew, and that was a strange, strange thing. Either the nguage was from very, very far away, or had not been spoken aloud in centuries. That they couldn't interpret the words being spoken quite hindered their investigation of their purpose, but not ruined it. The strings of magic were still being plucked and woven, and its effect was still to be seen. When one wished to determine a spell's Intent, much could be learned from how its energies shaped the world upon their release.

  Unfortunately, questions remained. Should the chanting be allowed to reach its conclusion? A single voice often raised little power, but this was not an absolute maxim, and it seemed to them that the casting coinciding with battle was hardly a coincidence. There were allies to be considered, loyalties at risk, and if the ritual's intent proved hostile, friends and lovers endangered.

  In counter argument, what could Ketch's self do? A mage of the caliber to cast spells beyond their knowledge was not one easily defied. Thirteenth Advancement though she may be, her Skills were subtler things than Selly's self, meant for slipping through the sides unseen. To disrupt was to be noticed, and to be noticed was to be at risk.

  They sat in the empty tent for a time, listening to the grating chant, two mouths gnawing at a single knuckle. Eventually, Ketch's self won out. There were lives on the line, and contingencies had been prepared. No matter how welcoming a shadow's embrace was, there was little that could accomplished without stepping into the light.

  Ketch found herself emerging from the tent without preamble, carefully winding her way towards the strange chant. As she drew nearer and nearer, it became audible even without the aid of her Skills, and rather understandably, none of the guards ventured near. She stood in brought daylight next to the canvas wall, hands on her hips, thinking.

  How exactly should she go about interrupting the ritual? Clearly, whoever was casting it was too distracted to notice the Azarketi literally standing outside their tent, so she had a wealth of options. Really, she would've expected them to have actual guards, but they'd clearly they'd thought the entire war camp surrounding them had been enough protection. She could skitter off to find a crossbow and send a bolt through their back, or she could knock out one of the tent poles, or any number of options. Deciding which was her main issue at the moment.

  What would Sara do, though? Ketch wondered.

  That was a question that took considerably less consideration.

  ---------------------------------

  Sara

  ---------------------------------

  Something deep within the Sporaton camp was afme. Above the haze of musket smoke, she could see smoke billowing skyward. The base of the plume was growing rger by the minute, implying the fire was spreading. With the majority of the camp out in battle, she imagined they'd be having a hell of a time combatting the fmes. She didn't quite understand how it was spreading so well, but she wasn't going to compin. Maybe a pair of unfortunate cooks had lost control of their fmes to an errant breeze. Whatever the case, the bck pallor proved a satisfying contrast to the white clouds which constantly vomited forth from the walls of Fort Midwich.

  The fields and skies of the battle were, in fact, positively choked with color. The gleaming steel of Tulian armor was neatly arrayed against the drab gambesons of Sporaton spear levies, within which was interspersed garish heraldry of the armored nobility. Gun smoke suffocated all of it in a gray haze, turning even the brightest shades dull and matte, save for five distinctive points along the wall. There the bck powder clouds were repced, burned away by gouts of nauseating green.

  The mages had begun their acidic spell once more, and this time it was a distributed effort. Five holes in the wall were slowly deepening, each created by a pair of mages. One mage maintained a simple, triangur shield over the other, whose focus was entirely spent upon channeling the spell itself. The troops had to evacuate the area of the noxious fumes, leaving them only capable of firing at sharply oblique angles, which the shields deflected easily.

  Behind the mages were thick lines of peasants, still standing eerily still under the hail of lead shot. They weren't inhuman, or possessed; they flinched, and spoke to one another, and generally still milled about or shifted from foot to foot, but something was wrong.

  Sara was no master tactician. She'd never even pretended she would be. What she was, however, was an impossibly good judge of character, and that was what she had relied on in her battles. As Evie had read to her account after account after account of historical battles, she'd learned that fate almost always pivoted on the commander which could better judge their opponent's intention. Much of military strategy was "solved," so to speak, in that for any particur attack, there was an ideal defense, and for every defensive strategy, there was an ideal method of attack. Mastery of combat came not from memorizing these matchups, but determining which tactic the enemy would use, and hiding which tactic you intended to use in turn. It was in this that Amarat's Blessings, lending her a physically impossible degree of insight into the enemy forces, had allowed her to perform as well as she had. Without that, she would have been near clueless, better off utilizing her skills as a frontline combatant rather than a general.

  And so she'd come to expect that insight, to treasure and rely upon it. Now that she was facing this alien, expressionless enemy? An audience she could not read, could find no insignificant hint from which to tease their secrets?

  She actually had to fight like a normal general.

  And she fucking hated that.

  Sara paced back and forth, wearing tracks in the grassy hill that had become her command post some five hundred yards behind the wall. The Sporaton Army was going to break through. It was inevitable, now. They'd suffered a terrifying number of casualties to do so, such that the catfolk of her army had begun to stuff their noses with ripped pieces of their shirt to stymie the scent of cloying blood, but it was going to work. There were simply too many pces for her to defend.

  And so, slowly, with the rearmost ranks going first so as not to alert the enemy to her actions, she'd begun the process of pulling back her troops. First the noncombatants, the quartermasters and cooks and camp followers, and then the reserves, who formed a stalwart circle around the unarmed. Then she'd begun to slowly nip off bits and pieces of the wall's halberdiers, trusting the powder smoke to obscure their absence. It was good fortune that the more spread-out acid attacks were progressing so much slower; she'd never have had time to do this without that.

  "Do you think he's in charge?" Sara asked, pausing in her pacing.

  "No, Master," Evie replied.

  "Why not?"

  "Because if the King had truly ceded control of the army to Master Graf, the battle would have already been over."

  "Lovely."

  Sara kept a careful eye on the rgest, original gap in the wall. If ever there was a threat to her pn, it was that gap. Without her and Evie present to bolster the defenses, the possiblity of the Knights breaking through was very, very real, and if that happened, the entire thing would go up in smoke. They would rove through her disorganized backlines like a pack of wolves amongst mbs, sughtering any they came across, capturing the fort in a matter of minutes.

  She kicked Champion's Inspiration up just a notch higher, vainly trying to bolster her troops. When she'd realized what the enemy was doing, that they'd somehow overcome any concern with morale, she'd chosen a different song from her usual fair. Rather than inspiring her own troops, the song was an attack on the enemy. She didn't think she had any song more appropriate for demoralizing a crowd of illiterate commoners who were suffering under a deluge of otherworldly weapons fire.

  A recruiting sergeant came our way

  From an inn near town at the close of day

  He said my Johnny you're a fine young man

  Would you like to march along behind a military band

  With a padded coat and a fine tanned cap

  And a longspear at your shoulder

  The silver he took and he kissed the book

  Oh poor Johnny what'll happen to ya?

  Of all the old-timey songs her dad had forced on her during their innumerable road trips, she hadn't imagined his 1800s-era war protest songs coming in handy. But there was no denying the fact that, for all she loved to savage the enemy's ears with bizarre electronica and screeching metal, simple, comprehensible lyrics were far more likely to provoke a gut reaction.

  The recruiting sergeant marched away

  From the Inn near town at the break of day

  Johnny came too with half a ring

  He was off to be a soldier to go fighting for the King

  In a far off war in a far off nd

  To face the foreign soldier

  But how will you fare when there's lead in the air

  Oh poor Johnny what'll happen to ya?

  She'd even made some alterations to the song, back when she was in Tulian. Rather than whatever band had sung it for her father to repeat ad-nauseam, this rendition came from the bawdy bars and seedy alleyways of Tulian, lyrics tweaked to hit home just a bit harder for the Sporaton troops. The version she'd spread was already picking up steam back at home, becoming a popur drinking song, particurly among the City Guard and soldiery.

  Well the sun rose high on a jungle nd

  Where the thin red line made a military stand

  There was sling shot, bow shot, bolt shot too

  Swords and bayonets thrusting through

  Poor Johnny fell but the day was won

  And the King is grateful to ya

  But your soldiering's done and they're sending you home

  Oh poor Johnny what'll happen to ya?

  For an army of conscripts, even the story told in the song was optimistic. The Sporaton peasantry hadn't even been conned into their predicament, joining the military with false promises of honor and glory. They'd been unceremoniously pressed into service, and suffered all the worse for it.

  They said he was a hero and not to grieve

  For the two ruined legs and the empty sleeve

  They took him home and they set him down

  With a military pension and a letter from the crown

  But you haven't an arm, you haven't a leg

  The enemy nearly slew ya

  You'll have to go out on the streets to beg

  Oh poor Johnny what'll happen to ya?

  And so the songs went, on and on. She had quite a collection of them stored up in her brain, it turned out. Something about the brutal nature of musket warfare had inspired the troops to sing their woes away, back in the day. It was nearly poetic, in Sara's estimation, that the divide of neither centuries nor realities had fundamentally changed the agonies of a soldier. Forced to fight for a nd that didn't care for them, then tossed aside once they were no longer of use, it was as relevant in Sporatos as it had been for any 18th century British redcoat. A testament to the corrupting nature of authority, she supposed, or at least the dangers of unrestrained greed.

  Finally, after half an hour of gently pulling troops off the front line, the musket fire began to scken. The final defenders were being pulled back, firing one st shot before jogging off the wall. As they went, Sara was proud to see them pulling cleaning rags from their belts, stuffing them down the barrel even as they marched. Bck powder was nasty, nasty stuff, and after so many shots had been poured through the weapons, the muzzle-loaders were nearly clogged shut. Sara had seen more than one soldier picking up a piece of rubble to use as a hammer, physically driving their ramrod down through the powder-choked barrel. She wished she had the time to pass out water and proper cleaning rags, but damp powder was a risk she simply couldn't take at the moment.

  On the other side of the wall, she knew, a sense of growing confusion was taking hold. Just as the Royal Army had been readying itself to come to grips with the enemy, the entire fort had been abandoned. Perhaps some troops were eted, thanking the gods that they hadn't been required to suffer through hours of brutal close-quarters combat atop the wall. Others still were suspicious, anxiously awaiting a trap. Others yet still were simply too busy focusing on their stance, too absorbed up in nebulous fears to recognize the more concrete threat directly before them.

  Whichever theory was the one that the commanders of the Royal Army had decided was the truth, Sara didn't particurly care, because they were all wrong. By her and Evie's best guess, there was only a handful of minutes until the wall began to crumble.

  Sara took a deep, low breath, unbuckling then slipping her helmet from her head. She shook her hair out, which unnaturally fell into perfectly wavy raven locks, then gave a brief nod to Evie. The nod returned, Sara walked out into the open fields behind Fort Midwich, took several careful steps up a boulder, and turned so the entirety of her army could see her. A hush went through them, whispered comments battered back and forth, none realizing that through her Blessings Sara could hear every word.

  Going to pin the enemy against the wall, I bet, line 'em up like hogs for the sughter...

  ...cavalry can't get through there, y'know, so we'll finally be able to do 'em right out in the open...

  ...nothing like that, girl, the Champion's gotta pn. She built that fort bit by bit, ain't just gonna leave it...

  As thousands upon thousands of comments roared into her mind, Sara put a hand to her sword's pommel, activating her illusion.

  A massive version of herself appeared, a forty-foot leviathan that stared out at her troops so all could see her.

  "Soldiers of the Tulian Army," she began, voice like rolling thunder. "Fort Midwich is lost to us." A series of low, horrified gasps rippled through the army. Sara continued on, unperturbed. "Though we may have been able to hold longer, for days, perhaps even weeks, each evening repairing the wounds their mages inflict upon us, our time was always limited. We could not, and cannot, stand against an enemy so willing to throw away the lives of their people." Her expression hardened into a deep, scornful scowl. "Sporatos would choke us on blood, bury us in bodies, and though the cost would be unfathomable, it would be paid by the innocent. The guilty would escape without injury, thinking themselves heroes."

  She turned her back to the troops, hands csped behind her waist. "I will not allow them their delusions. If they wish to cim this nd as their own, then they must fight for it. Not their serfs, not their sves, not even their chicken-shit bureaucrats that tally up how many can die before it starts chipping away at how much money they'll make next spring."

  "I didn't bring you here to die. Some of you may be worried about retreating from this fort, which has served us so well this st week. Don't be. I have prepared you all, trained you all, to do one thing: retreat. To see the enemy, to know you cannot win, and instead of dying valiantly then and there, to slip away and fight another day."

  Within her gauntlets, Sara's hands slowly clenched into fists. "I don't want to be in this war. I don't think any of you do, not really. You may have volunteered for this, may have decided all those months ago that picking up a weapon was the right thing to do, and you were as right then as you are now." She turned to face them. "But fighting? Killing? Dying?" She shook her head. "There's not many people that want that. Not many worth respecting, anyway. The type of person that takes up a sword with a smile, eager to see how much innocent blood they can leave in their wake? I've got no respect for a person like that." She paused, letting the moment hang.

  "But there are exceptions." She allowed the first hint of a smile to creep up her face, just the left corner of her lip curling, barely noticeable. "Y'see, some people? Some people out there, facing us? They're not like you or I. They want to be here. They want to be killing. They love it. They live for it. They're not even here for the fight, for the adrenaline of metal against metal, for the feeling of putting everything you have against everything someone else has, all to see who comes out on top." Her hand snapped up toward the wall, where the first signs of acrid smoke were beginning to leak through the concrete. "Some of those sons of bitches out there really, truly, honest-to-the-gods, just like killing. They don't care how good they are, they don't care how good their opponent is. They just love to kill, to have power, to force themselves on everyone else like a fucking pig in heat."

  "That's how they got where they are, soldiers. Backstabbing, conniving, rotten little bastards that they are, they cwed their way to the top, all so they could come for you." She let her smile grow just the slightest hair farther. "They think you're weaker for it. For not wanting to kill, for wanting a simple life. Hell, that's what they think of me, too. The funny thing is, though, that they're too stupid to realize the most important thing."

  "A good man, a good person– they hate killing. Despise it with all their soul. They know it's evil, wicked, and they'll do everything they can to avoid it. But a good person is a smart person, too, and a smart person is the sort that can recognize certain things."

  The wall crumbled in a half-dozen pces, noxious fumes spitting and sputtering through. Slowly, as the gas began to fade, a wall of armored soldiers was revealed, Knights and mages and mercenaries alike holding readied shields.

  "People like that, they don't stop. They don't listen to words, or reason, and especially not pleading or begging. Hell, they get off on it. They love to hear all about how much power they've got over you, and doing anything of the sort will just make 'em twist the dagger deeper."

  Cautiously, still fearing a trap, the Sporaton army began a slow advance through the gaps.

  "So I'm not asking you, troops of the Tulian Republic, to die for your country. That's too easy, too simple, and it's what they damn well want. No, I'm asking you to do something very much harder."

  Sara's smile finally blossomed to its full extent, teeth bared in a feral smile.

  "I'm asking you to kill. I'm asking you to fight, tooth and cw and tusk, for every st drop of blood you can pull from those rotten fucking bastards. I'm asking you, when you see a knight in shining armor, to rush forward, to charge forward, every st one of you, until no amount of fancy noble training can keep you off of them, and when you've got them in your hands? I don't want you fighting with honor. I want you to bite. I want you to dig your fingers into their eyes, to take their skin between your teeth and tear, to grab their head with both hands and sm it against the ground again and again, until there's nothing left between their ears that isn't soaking out the sides."

  She raised her voice to a shout, one hand raised, as if preparing to signal the start of a race. "Today, we're going to run, and they're going to chase us. And they're going to ugh and celebrate, because they think they've won, no matter how wrong they are. But before that?" Her illusion faded, until she was just one woman standing on a stone, thousands of eyes upon her, but with her voice still booming with every sylble. "I'm going to give the survivors something to remember us by."

  Her hand fell, and in the same instant, four cannons roared. The Tulian Army jumped, startled, then tracked the iron balls through the air, watching them with an eager glee. Everyone had seen them, knew what they could do.

  Or, at least what they thought they could do.

  The iron shots curved too high, poised to arc a dozen feet over the heads of the Sporaton troops, smming uselessly into the grass beyond.

  But just two days before, Sara had finally managed to refine something very, very important.

  Fuses.

  The shells burst with a titanic crack above the Sporaton Knights, throwing dozens of pieces of shrapnel in every direction. It looked as if the entire area of impact had taken the full brunt of a musket volley, jagged iron chunks the size of a clenched fist embedding themselves in flesh and dirt alike. The fiery charge at the round's core was a bzing red, almost like a light spell, but so very much more effective. Dozens fell in an instant, screaming in hideous pain.

  "Again!" Sara roared.

  The cannons roared, and with hours spent precisely dialing in their shots, they detonated in nearly the exact same spot. Any soldier that had still been standing in the gap trying to help their comrades was thrown down into the dirt, struck dead as if a boulder had nded on their backs. Limbs were severed, blood sprayed, and audible only to Sara, one newly-demoted Lieutenant began to ugh.

  And ugh.

  And ugh.