The sky was on fire above Fort Lakewind. The angry evening sun lanced at a tortured earth with red-hot rays through low-rolling, sooty clouds. Two weeks of magical bombardment had done a number on the feudal fort. Little remained of it on its rocky hill but the blackened southwestern turret, the fragmented curtain wall still partially holding on and failing. The rest of the fasting was reduced to a shattered crown upon the steep cliff overlooking the lake. Of the lake, the crash of the dam downcountry had drained most of the water. Left in place of waves was an ugly, muddied scar gouged into the county, filled with the remains of rotting silver trout and gored men and foreign abominations.
But though the ruin of a castle was more a hazard than help to anyone now, retreat was strictly prohibited. Orders from above were to hold the eastern shoreline at all costs.
The displaced skeletal ghost of the XIV Battalion had dug down in the long shadow across the south-side slope, cast there by the glow of the infernal day. From that fleeting darkness the troops would rise to fend off one enemy assault after another like necromantic ghouls of the elder days. From a distance, they looked like gray rats crawling behind the disfigured corpse of their fallen titan protector.
The site of my first battle.
A dust-dressed wasteland, where the parched air seared the lungs and smelled of burn, of thoroughly tilled dirt, rotting meat, and human waste. Leftover mana dangled in the sky like white-hot hairs stuck on the retinae, and my eyes throbbed painfully whenever I made the mistake of looking up.
So there was war. War at last in all its unabashed glory, all around us. A device from old books brought to life. Theory made tangible. And it was exactly as I always imagined it would be, a thousand different faces of misery. A Hell that tormented those looking for rewards and rewarded those looking for torment.
My head down, I followed High Mage Couren through the trenches excavated into the soft hills curving round the lake, ground to a curdled paste by cannon fire. We passed scattered lines of men as close to death as a man could be while he still stood and bled. Filthy faces, where only the whites of the eyes were visible, followed our passage, rounded and wide with marvel and horror. At our passing, the line stirred into disturbed murmuring.
What's going on? What is a child doing here? Am I dreaming this? Have I already died?
I tugged my hood lower over my face and hurried on. Up the worming dirt line and onto the fort hill, a stone's throw from the still largely intact back wall. There on the slope, we found Major Tommas of the Royal Army of Calidea, the man left in charge after a line of vaporized predecessors. He had set up his command post on that stretch of barren rock, as high up and close to the devastated castle as he dared, as if to establish some wavering degree of ownership, or maybe to assure his men they weren't yet beaten, or maybe only to assure himself.
"Who goes there!?" the Major hollered when he saw us approach. As if he couldn't recognize the royal crimson robes of the High Mage from five miles away. Or, was it even us he saw in his eyes, and not some shell shock phantoms?
The Major was a man as round as a boulder. The two weeks he had spent on the active front hadn't changed that. They didn't have a shortage of supplies here, only that of lives, and the more the lives dwindled, the more effort it took to spend the supplies before they spoiled.
"I'm Couren," the High Mage said. "We've come to provide support."
"I see, I see!" remarked Major Tommas with a deranged smile and looked around. "Reinforcements at last! Brilliant! Where are they?"
High Mage Couren missed the Major's meaning. "Who?"
"The reinforcements? Did you leave them in Dale? Bring them over! What are you waiting for? We need to show the men to their stations!"
"No. We are the reinforcements."
"What? You? You and..."
The smile faded from the Major's wide face, now forced to look at reality. There was nobody else there but the High Mage, me, and the two timid adepts of Mysterium who escorted us. The Major's gaze finally fixed on me, as if he hadn't noticed me there yet, or maybe actively avoided seeing. He bent over to peer under my hood.
"What, a—a child!?" he exclaimed, incredulous, becoming red out of agitation. "One lanky lad and a little tyke? Have you bastards gone completely mad!? What are you thinking, bringing children to a place like this!? Do you want her to be eaten alive? This is war, not some idiot picnic! And we're losing it, thanks to you and your…!"
"This is generation nine," the High Mage dryly interjected.
The Major's beet-red face paled, and his jaw fell.
"Bleeding Hell. This is…? You're up to the ninth already?"
"Nines are better optimized than the previous generations. Order any troops on the shore to withdraw. There are hellions inbound. I'm sending her in."
"Just this one? Alone?"
"They'd just get in each other's way if there were more."
"You're mad." Major Tommas fell to sit on a rock, shaking his head. "You really have gone full-on mad. You Mysterium folks. You damn conjurers. You're bleeding bonkers, every last one of you. This isn't right. This isn't about making better soldiers anymore. You're messing with things that mortals weren't meant to touch. There will be consequences, mark me! There will be consequences!"
High Mage Couren showed no reaction. He never did.
"It's for our survival," he said. "For Calidea's future. Would you rather surrender to the Empire? They will do worse, if only we let them. They will do so much worse. It cannot come to that."
"At whatever cost?"
"Indeed."
At that moment, a soldier came running down the slope from the fort's side.
"Banshees!" he shouted. "We have banshees inbound!"
"No! Not those things again!" Major Tommas cried and wrung his ashen face. "That's it! We cannot hold here. The fort is lost. I'm ordering retreat."
"His Majesty has strictly prohibited retreat," High Mage Couren reminded. "You are to hold position. Punishment for desertion is death."
"We're all going to die anyway! What difference does it make?"
"I told you. 9XA will deal with them. You need only to stand your ground. This battle will soon be over." The mage turned to look at me. "You can do it, right?"
I nodded. I knew banshees. We'd studied every hellion recorded in the bestiary. Real battle was different from theory and simulations, of course, full of unknowns and random variables, but unless the monsters were completely different from the specs, I couldn't imagine losing.
"Then go. Show them what you can do."
"Understood."
I left to clamber up the fort's shadow towards the southwest turret rising to the red sky. I took my time to climb over and around the stones and debris. The way was cumbersome with the short legs and arms of a 9-year-old. Tripping here and breaking a leg would've brought my first assignment to an embarrassing end.
I tagged the curtain wall and rounded the corner and followed the ruined side to the causeway facing the lake, and peered far down to the dried-up basin where Lake Guileuve had once lain glimmering and sapphire-blue, now mixed into a gory potpourri, the victims of violence still burning here and there and veiling the view in their charred reek. I sought out a flat batch of pavement in front of the devastated ruin of a gate between the craters and sought for the enemy with my eyes.
Far below upon the bottom of the dried lake approached a loose group of eerie figures.
Humanoid types, looking uncannily like human women but taller, at least twelve feet high each, their unclothed bodies marbled with a decayed purple, as if drowned and waterlogged. Their arms and legs were unnaturally elongated, empty breasts sagging, bellies grotesquely bloated, like in the last stages of expectancy. But no life could come out of a hellion womb. They were an antithesis to motherhood and civilization, beings that existed solely to deliver death.
They said the banshee's wail could drive its victim mad with fear even from a distance, and was fatal up close. Their gross bodies were inhumanly tough, near impervious to swords and low-tier spells. Even one such a fiend could decimate a small town, and that was before the Tarachians got to work with their modifications. And I counted nine banshees striding towards the shore, enslaved by the imperial shamans.
I could have killed them from here, but waited.
It wouldn't have been any fun if the fight were too one-sided.
Yes, this was a real fight with my life on the line, the very thing I'd trained and sweated and bled for. I had to make the most of the experience.
I waited and watched the banshees tread over the mauled corpses of defenders covering the trampled beach, and pictured myself being ripped apart by their long talons and razor-sharp teeth even before hearing their ear-splitting cries. Just how painful would that be? Dread and thrill wrung my gut, but not unpleasantly.
"—Hey, kid! Get back here!"
A voice called from behind. Some soldiers had seen me climb the hill, had misunderstood the situation, and decided to be virtuous. They waved and yelled at me from behind the rocks, not daring to come any closer in the open.
I clicked my tongue in annoyance.
No more playing then.
I ignored the frantic soldiers, raised my small hand towards the lake and opened the channel. Mana rushed through my meridian in an intense torrent, fast as thought, erupting from the crown of my head,and swelling to the clouded heights.
The sky growled and thundered under the weight of the soaring power. An expanding bloom of deep red fire cast its light upon the lakeland. I stood pinned in a raging pillar of magic and let power fill me throughout to the last strand of hair, all of it perfectly under my conscious control. Humans could betray you, even reality could betray you, but this magic alone would always be mine and unerringly faithful.
The banshees halted on the sandy beach and raised their bony, crinkled, famished faces with the gaping mouths and empty, blackened eyeholes at the power new and stange to them. They had no intelligence, but their instincts told them the end was at hand.
In routine motions, from which endless repetitions had sheared off the superfluous, sense of wonder included, I sectioned off 20% of the amassed energy for the first volley, divided the yet shapeless chunk of mathematical potential into nine forms, assigned the targets, and launched the spells—then to begin preparations for the second phase, without wasting time to check the result.
In a blink, the cindery bolts rushed down the slope and hit their marks. Each banshee's revolting head vanished off the shoulders, pierced and seared away by a thousand-degree needle of heat, the monstrous forms torn open halfway down to the torso. The missiles passed straight through, striking deep into the earth, exploding and blowing away the smoking, charred corpses before they could fall.
By the time dust settled, nothing was moving.
I scanned the shoreline multiple times, but the signs of life had vanished.
Really? Dead in one hit? Were they actually ranked B? I was told the real thing always exceeded expectations, so I played it safe, but 80% of the mana I'd reserved for the battle ended up unused. Disappointed, I let my hand fall and closed the channel, and the sky turned a shade less red again.
"Fire magic…?" I heard a soldier utter in the back in awe. "I have never seen a spell so…intense before."
I turned back to shake a finger and corrected him,
"This isn't fire magic. The flames are merely a side effect caused by friction igniting dust in the air. What you saw was a pure kinetic attack without any elemental charge."
Instead of comprehension, my words inspired only open loathing in the troops.
"Children don't talk that way! What are you? Demon? Monster?"
"I'm human," I retorted, a little insulted. "I'm a perfected human, trained by the Kingdom's brightest minds. You should be happy! Now that I'm here, you're all saved, and this tedious war will soon be over."
They didn't look convinced. Then they saw High Mage Couren come our way, and took off stumbling downhill in a hurry, shuddering and swearing as they went.
"You were slow," the High Mage told me, coming to stand beside me. "Did you get them all?"
"Of course."
"How was your first battle? Any problems?"
"It was so easy, I was going to fall asleep."
"Then keep going. We will neutralize the Empire's stations on the northern shore before tomorrow morning."
I glanced at the long lake. I looked to the far away horizon, where the narrow line of the opposing shore was barely visible. We were going to walk that far today? Had I ever walked such a distance in my life?
A mile or so behind the banshees followed the Tarachian infantry. If our side was hit, so were they, and they had barely a division of exhausted, famished troops to throw into the attack. The hellions were supposed to be a battering ram to clear a path for the foot soldiers, but the fiends fell too fast, and the invaders hesitated. Their already loose attack formation had already begun to drift apart. But they had come too far out of their stations and could only commit to the offensive now, whatever should come of it.
They were too pitiful to even look at.
Killing humans wasn't any fun. They died far too easily.
"Master, do we really have to go there? Couldn't we just wait here for the rest of them?"
High Mage Couren's dark eyes answered me with the usual, indecipherable gaze,
"It's an order."
"…Understood."
Never up for a discussion, damn it.
I set out down the causeway, along the brutalized ghost of a road, when a voice called after us.
"Hey!"
I glanced over my shoulder.
It seemed one of the soldiers hadn't left with the others. What did he want?
"You saved our regiment," the man said. "Thank you. What is your name?"
I checked the expression of the stone-faced mage. He didn't seem eager to answer for me, but neither did he expressly prohibit me from doing so.
"I don't have a name," I said and shrugged. "A war mage's life expectancy is about fourteen minutes, apparently, so there'd be no point in naming me. I'm just 9XA."
The soldier made no reply. He only stood there and stared, stared, looking very foolish, like slapped across the face. Slowly, he fell to sit in the sand, covered his face and wept.
Why did he cry? I couldn't tell.
I thought he was stupid. There was the reason why people died; they were so easily shaken by every little thing that didn't even concern them. Maybe I should have comforted him somehow? I didn't need his pity. For me, not knowing my future, not having any future, was solely a comforting thought.
Expectations, none.
The present was all that mattered. And magic.
Then the moment passed. Sensing the High Mage's growing impatience, I hurried to turn my back on that unknown soldier, and hiked down the slope to meet my honorable demise in a blaze of glory. But I couldn't have guessed just how far I'd have to go looking for it.