But life is long, and the seconds continued to pass until they turned to minutes. The minutes did not form an hour, instead Chris gave way and their choices became intolerable. Did they grant authority to someone else and let them try to power Synarchy? If the effort failed the platform would go into uncontrolled shutdown and they’d likely be flung off, or perhaps fall off without being able to coordinate easily. Anya could try to put herself back into that bloodthirsty state of mind, but it had slipped away almost without seeing it. It would be difficult to reenter and taxing to maintain. Worse, Anya herself was still exhausted— doing better, but she’d be capable of running the platform some five minutes at best. Lululu had been helping them all along, so while she claimed to be able to pilot the vessel it seemed like she was probably more tired than she was letting on.

  It could have been possible for Synarchy to consume the dead necrites, but given the platform was already mostly autonomous if it was capable of doing that it likely already was. Anya had paid attention mostly to herself and the overwhelming strain of pushing forward and the thoughts of death that came alongside it, and it was likely the others were doing the same. One thing was certain: it was unlikely Synarchy could be maintained any longer. The others, though perfectly talented soldiers, would be unable to channel the ambient magic power required to power such a large platform. Therefore the only thing to do was let Synarchy power down face-forward, or perhaps to jump with as much force as it could exert to throw them forward.

  This last last option was enticing, but ultimately if Chris was already tired it would be inadvisable to exhaust him all the way. If Yuna and herself were any example, Chris would be dead weight already. Making him go to the brink would simply make him dead. It would also make any attempt to control their trajectory difficult or impossible.

  “Put us down, Chris. You’ve done enough.”

  It wouldn’t be unreasonable to yell at your commander ordering you to die. You might break decorum, but at that point who cares? With the end of your life forthcoming there’s no further purpose in maintaining a reputation. It’s all going to end soon anyway. Heroic or villainous, the lives of soldiers were always told in the history books from the perspective of command.

  “Mutinous soldiers rebel and entire squad is wiped out.”

  “Honorable soldiers capture the line.”

  “Yesterday’s line was recaptured by the brutal enemy terrorists in a deadly assault.”

  It didn’t make a difference in the end, however you received your orders. You’d be dead and whatever headline you generated wouldn’t even be a footnote. Even in the grand battles to decide wars it was always “Emperor’s Conquest is Successful: Peace Treaty Declared.”

  And when even the commander was surrounded there would be no record of what transpired in the moments before the end. Not even a “artillery shells pound east encampment, soldiers shocked and terrorized by shrapnel.” The best you could hope for was “a number of soldiers were lost in the assault.”

  There’d be no mention of your name. Your face would probably be pulverised, and the sight and smell of your own bloody flesh would be erased the moment the lights went out upstairs.

  Even still, Anya’s soldiers accepted their fate. From the moment they had come outside it was clear what would happen next. Some had held out hope they would find buildings off somewhere in the distance, but after more than an hour in the darkness with nothing but bloody smiling demons on all sides there was no hope left of salvation. Where the buildings had gone was immaterial; all that mattered was that they weren’t there.

  And so Chris let the platform down slowly as they greeted death and its many smiles. Jesús yelled as his heavy weapons began to fire. Dio shouted louder. Alex shouted too. Yuna and Anya and Chris and Lululu said nothing, even as they all began to fire. Explosions and flesh grenades tore holes in reality and made it seem like the world was ending. Thousands of bodies flew up at the magnitude of their gravitas, but there were more on all sides. They pressed forward but there wasn’t any meaning in the act. They used every weapon at their disposal, but for all their guns and ammunition these weapons were not enough— Synarchy hadn’t been enough.

  Anya took out Judgement and eyed the other members of her squad. Her right hand continued to alternate fire between standard rounds and rockets, but there wasn’t any meaning in the effort. Only the left hand held any hope of survival, but she’d sworn on the Emperor’s name she wouldn’t needlessly kill her own soldiers.

  But the minutes passed as blood rained from the sky in great torrents as they made their way forward from the head of the liquid bone river. It made no difference how many bodies fell, nor how red the great swelling tide of blood beneath their feet became as the liquid bone fell further behind. Her boots were soaked through to the ankle, and yet in every step Anya knew her skin had not been stained. The same could not be said about the others.

  Jessica was the first to fall. She had been fighting near Dio and Will, but when he ran out of supplies they no longer had enough means to halt the swelling tide of flesh. Anya was stretched to all directions, and Lululu was augmenting every shot fired, but Anya was exhausted and Lululululu had nothing left. They were at the end and they all knew it.

  Jessica’s carotid artery was severed in the first of many bites by lipless teeth, and Anya didn’t even have the mercy of granting her death. There were no bullets to spare. She did kill the necrite biting Jessica, but it meant very little and may have even been an act of malice if you thought about it for a second. But Anya didn’t have a second. The necrite was on top of Jessica and she killed it.

  Now Jessica had the great pleasure of experiencing what it was like to bleed to death. Her pulse quicked rapidly as the heart sensed a rapid drop in blood pressure, but all it did was make her die faster. It wanted to restore homeostasis, but there was nothing left to maintain. Just a hole in the neck to bleed from: that was all Jessica amounted to now. Her head throbbed with its blood supply severed, and she screamed but it came out muted. She was choking on blood and couldn’t even scream properly.

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  No one was there to save her. There was no healer and no supplies. Even if they did have supplies it wouldn’t have mattered. They were all so focused on holding the line. Even just one more second. Even just one more instant.

  But Jessica would not be the last to fall. Jesús stuck to his ways to the very end, and though the night was very dark the necrites closest to their group were illuminated by gunfire and a floating orb Anya guessed Lululu had placed above them some time back. Consequently, when the necrites closed enough distance to be unilluminated, he continued to fire off in the distance at the black ones obscured by night. How this guy possibly made it through basic training was beyond her.

  The necrites tore through his neck with their hands, though they didn’t have fingernails to ease the process. It was more like they ripped out his windpipe than any kind of scratching motion. Jesús, at least, had the mercy of losing both his carotids at once, though Anya didn’t know if that was better or worse than drowning in his blood. With no oxygen left coming into his brain, he’d pass out much faster than Jessica had, though Anya had no chance to confirm how long either of them lasted. He was quickly left behind in the dark and oh so very black night.

  The unit continued to step forward, leaving Jessica and Jesús to their fate. They all knew it was coming for them eventually.

  “Just use the box!” Henry shouted.

  “Do it!” Alex also yelled.

  Anya was in the center of their formation with Lululu at her side. When she looked over to the pink-haired 27-year-old pixie Anya saw the eyes of an old woman accepting death. 27 years was a short life, but for a soldier… Well, there was a reason few people took a willing post.

  Anya ran her right hand along the smooth mirror-polished surface that reflected her white flesh. There was only one imperfection along its six sides: a button at the top. Its action was smooth, and Anya almost didn’t realize the button had been pressed until Judgement clicked in a sound almost like Chris’ voice. Outside of time. Outside of space. Outside this world. It was on a different channel than everything else, and could be heard above all the carnage.

  Everything in the world stopped for just a moment as Anya watched judgement unfold on those who stood beside her. First she watched every smiling skinless necrite stop and begin to jitter in place as though chained from all directions. They began to distort. Flesh folded into flesh as their mouths collapsed in on themselves much as their cheeks had under Synarchy’s influence. Unlike with Synarchy, not only the bones had begun to collapse in on themselves, unshackled from gravity and bound to the new iron-clad law of death. Every segment of the body unfolded and shattered in on itself as though rendered some paper-mache puppet in the jaws of a meat grinder. There was no blood as they fell in on themselves, even if it looked like their entire bodies should have been mulched. Certainly they lost all structure in this process, and when they fell into the many holes in space that formed most prominently at the body’s center and face and just below the hip it seemed as though there was nothing to them at all. All weight and structure had collapsed.

  And then everything the bodies were was gone. For a thousand feet to all sides there was nothing but blood and trampled grass and darkness.

  Finally Anya looked back at her comrades, whom she hadn’t been able to watch die. Dio and Henry were the first to go. She didn’t want to imagine their deaths.

  Lululu threw her arms around Anya and looked up at her with a smile.

  “I want you to know I looked up to you. I really did. For all our differences you made a good commander. I hope you make it out alive.”

  Anya began to sob uncontrollably as the necrites closed in. They hadn’t moved even a foot after she pushed the button, and Alex had fallen to his knees.

  “Goddamn this fucking world!” he screamed until his voice couldn’t take it anymore. Chris silently patted him on the shoulder as if to say, “It could have been worse.”

  Alissa was alone and faced away from the rest of them, but from the rising and falling of her shoulders Anya knew that she, too, was crying. Anya made a head-motion to Yuna to go comfort Alissa, but Yuna had already started doing that. She didn’t want to watch Alissa cry alone any more than Anya did.

  When the necrites came Anya almost hesitated to push the button a second time, but Lululu looked her in the eyes and pushed down Anya’s hand. If anyone was going to survive, it had to be Anya. Lululu hadn’t told her, but Judgement wasn’t simply usable by anyone granted the Mandate of Command— it required a level of strength most simply didn’t possess. More than that, Judgement was a peculiar weapon. It could kill a thousand thousand foes in one heartbeat, but how much power it took away from the user varied greatly based on how in sync they were with the Mandate itself.

  Its power was a judgement of how closely your beliefs and opinions aligned to those around you, but the mode of power wasn’t any different. The user would kill anyone sufficiently antagonistic to their beliefs, yes, but judgement wasn’t special. There was no magic bullet that could kill all of your enemies using nothing but the power contained within you. If such a thing existed there would be no reason for it to target those nominally aligned with you. No, Judgement was not powered from within. It used the ambient magic of the air to power itself, and this meant the closer in alignment the user was to the air, the less power it would take away to correct this difference in killing one’s enemies.

  Lululu had confidence Anya would live because she didn’t even seem to register that Judgement had any draining affect at all.

  Lululu smiled as tears ran down her face, but took her hands off of Anya as they began falling in on themselves. It seemed she was close enough to Anya that she could still move somewhat as the process began. But, as Lulululu was keenly aware, Judgement had the effect of making all your allies into enemies. It wasn’t because you suddenly became hostile to each other, but rather because one would start to question how someone could use such a weapon, and if the terrifying effect of being smashed into a point all across your body would happen to you.

  And it would, because it was impossible to trust that it wouldn’t. So the weapon was locked away. But now Lululu got to experience it first hand. Her legs began to fold up on themselves as though rolling a rope for storage. Her jaw broke in all the agony that would normally entail as her head lost all structure and began collapsing in on itself toward the neck. Everything in the abdomen area closed toward the stomach right above the navel. Every nerve screamed in agony, but the one saving grace of Judgement was that it meant the brain was quickly destroyed as it fell out of reality. And though what Lululu felt was the pinnacle of agony, at least it was over fast.