All forces that may be evacuated from Leik without harming the overall war effort have been removed as of Gleaning 27, save for highly mobile special units. Those committed to the defense of the city are largely degraded units, conscripts and otherwise-compromised resources.

The remaining battalions of ensouled troops are a detached contingent from Sever’s forces led by Oberst Galen Wahl. While a competent asset, Wahl’s forces have been graded 5-D-RED on an index of political concern during Sever’s convalescence. Wahl has been increasingly paranoid, insubordinate and belligerent, and this defense will serve as a self-assessing test of his continued ability to command.

Field handlers have been tasked with soul assessment and triage of his units; out-unit bonding exercises have concluded satisfactorily with at least 50% probable retention in more-secure unit groups based on past modeling, although significant divergence from predictions has been noted in recent weeks. We advise further investigation into the effect of obruor damping on retention and affinity when opportunity presents.

- Institute Circular #3540, 29 Gleaning 693.

“More surprises,” Galen said. “I expected you to run.” Behind him, the six men in his escort fanned out.

Michael made no move in response. “You must have a low opinion of me,” he replied. “Only an idiot would try to outrun a potens, much less seven of you.”

“My apologies for the implication.” Galen began to pace to the side, his eyes not leaving Michael. “Yet one could say the same about engaging a potens in unarmed combat. I will not fault your confidence, at least - but without skill to match it, we would be circling back to accusations of idiocy.” He took a few more steps. “I heard some outlandish stories from the northern front about your fight with Friedrich.”

“I’ve heard a few myself,” Michael replied. He kept his eyes forward, tracking Galen with only his spector’s sight. Etxarte and Zabala made no pretense of poise, turning to face their opponent as he slowly circled them. There was silence for a few paces.

Michael let it draw out for as long as he dared before indulging Galen’s curiosity. “In reality it was a very short affair,” he said. “Friedrich tracked me along with Sibyl and her cadre of troops for some time. They caught us at the northern lines when Friedrich destroyed our carriage.” He paused again, listening to the soft tread of Galen’s boots against the grass.

“It was rather similar to today, now that I think about it. I drove his men away, after which he came out to fight me alone. He attacked and couldn’t hit me. I attacked and could.” Michael took a slow breath. “Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“I’m afraid you’ve ended the story before the part I was most anticipating,” Galen said. The pace of his footsteps did not change, but a heat begin to build from where he walked, a red haze of anger like an open furnace. “The part where you tortured him as he lay defeated. Or did you think he would be too broken by it to remember?”

For a moment Michael’s mind was blank, his memories of that day streaming by in a disjointed flood. There had been no torture. They had both fallen to the lightning, then-

Showed him how it felt to be torn to pieces.

Michael licked his lips, remembering Sobriquet’s furious, empty eyes. “Ah,” he said. “Sever had attacked and wounded a friend of mine, a while before that. She took the opportunity to do to him what he had done to her.”

The anger hammered at his back, so hot that Michael felt he should be drenched in sweat. Galen paused in his arc, directly behind Michael. “So you contend that the torture was justified,” he said. “That he deserved it.”

“I think he would agree with me,” Michael said. He turned slowly until he was facing the Ardan officer. “What was it he said? ‘If I do this and he can’t stop me, he was never alive to begin with,’ wasn’t it? Just a corpse that dreamed he was alive.”

The outrage within Galen leaked into his eyes, flaring for a bare moment; he clenched his fists. “Say what you will about him, but Friedrich did not inflict pain for pain’s sake. Torture was never his vice. What you did to him was reprehensible, Baumgart.”

Michael felt the fear building in his two companions, and worked to keep his own from his voice. He could tell that Galen wanted to kill him, to smash him into the dirt with all of his considerable strength. “A man I know cautioned me recently about exerting my soul on the world,” he said. “He said that the harder I push, the more it incites the world to push back in turn. Power invites power’s response.”

He straightened up, squaring his shoulders; his eyes met Galen’s. “That man was in Friedrich’s camps for weeks,” he said. “Worked to the bone, starved nearly to death. I know you recognize that what he was doing was wrong, I heard you speak to him about it. He defended it. Your friend didn’t care that he was responsible for creating an edifice of human misery here in Daressa.”

“So you contend you were the world’s just response to his actions?” Galen snarled, taking a step forward. “It must be convenient to be so free of responsibility. To take none for your own transgressions.”

Michael felt the air draw taut around them, a drumhead moment waiting for the beat to fall. There was no sign of Sobriquet, nor of Mendiko reinforcements. The thunder of battle around them seemed muted, dulled by the intensity of Galen’s stare.

There was nothing to it; the moment could be delayed no further.

“I consider myself responsible,” Michael said. “For his torture, his suffering, and every misery he inflicts upon the world from this point forward. I should have been stronger, then, and killed him where he lay.”

Galen’s face twisted; Michael had already seen the golden path of his charge forming between them in the air. His hands shot up to grab Etxarte and Zabala by their arms. He managed to pull them to the side just before Galen launched himself forward.

The two men’s eyes met as momentum carried Galen past the falling trio. His jaw was clenched tight with rage, frustration building from the near-miss. Luminous arcs curved forward and around, tracing the footsteps he would take to turn and strike once more.

Michael smiled and relaxed his grip on Vincent’s soul - then drew upon it in full. Light flared into jeweled tones before all sight disappeared. He dragged his escort back hastily as Galen stumbled to a halt, his head whipping around.

“Fall back,” Michael hissed, shoving the two fortimentes towards a gap in the encirclement. “As far as you can while protecting me. Stay low, stay quiet.”

They withdrew without an acknowledgment, although Michael felt a quick stab of guilty relief from each as the prospect of them standing toe-to-toe with an angry potens faded. Carefully, he straightened up. Galen’s own escort had rushed in as Michael plunged the ridge into darkness, each slowing to a cautious walk as they lost their vision.

Galen, too, had ceased his rush; his hand dipped into a pocket and withdrew a small object. Michael noted that the others did the same. He watched warily as Galen raised it in the air - then pressed his fingers together, causing the device to emit a soft click. Behind him, his men did the same, their heads orienting towards the noise Galen had made.

Michael paced back warily as Galen’s unit formed a loose line across the blot of darkness he had made. It was hard to tell the size of the area he had masked, but it extended farther than he could shift his sight; the Ardans made no effort to find the edges. Instead, they advanced their line slowly toward his position.

He walked slowly amid the gilt landscape, Stanza guiding his feet in soundless steps. The line of potentes gave no sign that they had heard him, keeping their advance steady. They walked past his previous position before Galen raised his hand; a soft click sounded. The others reformed a line at right angles to their previous march and began to advance once more.

A frown grew on Michael’s face. Though an obvious adaptation to counter-Ember fighting, this was not an effective strategy. He could dance around them in the dark for as long as he pleased, Galen had to know that. Why, then?

The answer nearly killed him as it came. A golden cone of light formed from above, just shy of where he stood; as Michael watched it began to narrow, condensing around a point on the ground that began to glow and twist. Michael’s eyes widened with realization.

He flung himself to the ground just as the artillery struck. The burst was closer than any he’d seen before, the blast wringing him like a damp cloth. He felt the dull sting of fragments peppering his back - but no pain followed, no blood drenching his clothes. The reinforcing soul of the fortimentes kept the worst from him.

Galen’s men, meanwhile, kept their slow advance, unperturbed by the explosion. Michael looked up, spitting dirt from his mouth; behind the golden wirework of lines marking Galen’s men, behind the slope of the ridge and the distant city beyond - beyond all that lay the thing that hung so quietly in the sky that Michael had nearly forgotten its presence.

But Sibyl’s eye had not forgotten his. A second bloom of light began to form, and a third; Michael rolled frantically away from the marks before the shells impacted. His ribs vibrated with the force of the explosion, his teeth chattering together. He looked up to see light sprouting up and down the ridgeline.

Michael’s heart sank as the number of incoming shells mounted, panic gripping him. He didn’t know how much harm Etxarte and Zabala could shield him from, and he didn’t particularly want to find out. Concussions sounded again and again as he crawled-

A shell burst only a few paces shy of where he lay, tossing him bodily along the dirt. His mind went blank, the roar of the shells fading into indistinct nothingness; when his vision cleared he was lying on his back, staring up at Sibyl’s eye in the black void above.

He counted time in shellbursts, three more sounding before he tried to pull himself upright; Michael failed, nearly screaming as the motion twisted at a jagged length of shrapnel that had embedded itself in his thigh. He slumped back to the ground, breathing hard, and saw Galen’s head turn towards the noise he had made.

Michael smiled up at Sibyl’s eye, letting his head fall back against the churned soil. “You just have to drop one in the right spot now,” he murmured, feeling lightheaded. “Right here.” He imagined the arc of the shell that would kill him, already high overhead.

He stifled a laugh - then froze. A real smile stretched across his lips as he pulled upon Stanza, racking his delirious brain for the right words. “Shift the barrel, gust the air,” he gasped, feeling his soul reach out to assert itself amid the darkened landscape. “Guide the fire to fall - there.”

For a moment, nothing happened, though the world shivered with the pressure of his soul.

A glow formed at Galen’s feet. Then another, and another. Michael smiled, letting out a choked laugh - then flopped over onto his stomach, covering his head.

His scream of pain was thankfully muffled by the dirt. Dazed, half-faint with agony, he wrenched his sight upward just in time for the first shell to fall. It struck just beside Galen, detonating inches from his foot. The blast threw the Ardan commander to the side and knocked the man beside him to the ground.

The next shell struck the fallen escort squarely in the chest; Michael felt a sympathetic ache beneath his ribs as the man vanished in a spray of gore. He tried not to focus on it, flaring the fires within him as he bade Stanza shift the incoming fire towards the Ardan troops. Another man was struck in the shoulder, his arm torn off by the impact.

Panic began to set in among the remaining men as they realized it was more than bad luck at work. Michael felt their fear build; he summoned Spark into the fray and threw it back at them.

A crystalline clarity fell over him, a calm and quiet utterly at odds with the explosive fracas destroying the Ardans. Michael directed the shells down, the fear he wielded making slow headway even against the granite resiliency of the potentes. He denied the light, claiming sight for himself alone.

It took time for his dazed mind to settle upon the word for what he was feeling, but as the shellbursts mounted and the men screamed, he looked down upon the Ardan soldiers and felt it.

Control. His soul seeped out, permeating everything; he could see the fall of the shells as if he had thrown them himself from some lofty perch. Three of the men who had come with Galen were dead, now. Two were running. The final member of the escort was standing over Galen, pulling him upright.

Michael tilted his head and watched light slowly blossom around the man. The first shell missed, making him stagger backward; Michael frowned and raised a coil of root from the ground, snagging the man’s foot. He wrenched it just so, the soldier letting out a strangled cry and falling to the ground. His head struck the soil at the center of a patch of light.

Another moment later the soldier was no more. Galen was tossed back to the ground by the force of the shell’s explosion, then again when one struck close to his knee.

Michael blinked, moving his sight closer; Galen was remarkably resilient to harm. At a thought, the shroud of darkness dropped away, sunlight revealing the extent of the Ardan commander’s injuries. The near shellbursts had peppered his skin with shrapnel, blasting away skin and fat - but underneath the dirt and blood, he remained improbably whole.

Galen’s fists clenched, preparing to rise once more. Michael guided the next shell down directly on top of him, striking him in the upper chest. He was hammered back into the dirt, his cry lost in the detonation.

Yet his fingers still curled into the soil, his arm flexing; as the smoke cleared Michael saw a ragged hole in the muscle of Galen’s chest, crusted with char.

Another shell came down, gouging a chunk from his abdomen. A third blew two fingers from his left hand; Galen clutched it to his chest, a strangled scream of pain ripping from his throat.

Fear cut through the haze, shot through with pain and grief. Galen’s mind was a chaos of feeling, scrabbling at the edges of a reality that slid away from him with each merciless impact.

Michael hesitated, but only for a moment. The next shell took a divot from Galen’s abdomen, driving the air from him in a blood-flecked gasp; still Michael bent the tracks of the artillery toward him. Aside from that a stray shot could still kill him, or that Galen was probably still more of a threat than he was - he could not stop.

Galen had named himself the same as Friedrich. He had laid the blame for today at Michael’s feet, and Michael agreed. Despite the fear he felt, the tears streaming down his cheeks, the pain and exhaustion nibbling at the edges of his vision, he had no choice.

This was the result of leaving a loose end; he would not leave another.

Galen’s forearm erupted with shards of splintered bone; he howled and spasmed with the pain. Michael reached for the next shell - and frowned as no light blossomed to herald its coming. Moments ticked by. The ringing of his ears persisted unchecked.

The barrage had stopped.

Michael lay panting, still face-down against the dirt. Sofia would have seen the effect of his meddling on the artillery; she likely stopped them as soon as she saw what he was doing, but could have done nothing about the shells already-fired.

With a grunt of effort he flopped onto his back once more. This time he did not stifle the cry of pain it provoked, the metal in his thigh grinding against the bone. He reached down with trembling fingers and grasped it, breathing heavily - then pulled it out.

The pain sent him almost past the edge of consciousness; when the white-hot spangles of it had cleared his vision he reflected that he probably should have left it in, and not risked bleeding out while unconscious. Slowly, Michael flooded the wound with Stanza’s influence.

A duller, hotter pain arose from his fumbling efforts to stem the bleeding, but in short order Michael managed to seal it past the point of immediate danger. He propped himself up on his elbows just as Zabala stood to limp over.

“Eromena,” Zabala muttered hoarsely, looking around at the devastated landscape, variously bloodstained and afire. “You kill them all?”

Michael shook his head. “Leader’s still alive,” he croaked. “We need to move.” He paused, craning his neck. “Etxarte?”

“Dead.” Zabala tapped the side of his head. “During the first few shells, I think. Can you stand?”

“Let’s see. Help me up.” Michael reached up and let the fortimens pull him to his feet. “There should be-”

“Baumgart,” Galen rasped, the words coming wet and bloody from his lips. “Baumgart!” He rolled to his knees. As he staggered upright Michael could see that his body was a ruin, missing gobbets of flesh and dribbling blood from a dozen wounds. He was nude but for a few still-burning scraps of leather clinging to his feet. Michael could see a stretch of charred rib on his left flank, and one arm hung uselessly at his side.

“Come on,” Zabala said urgently, pulling Michael upward. “He’s a potens, he can still-”

Galen lunged forward, his good arm outstretched. Zabala spun to pull Michael away from the assault, staggering backward; he drew his sidearm and fired. The shot took Galen in the forehead.

The Ardan commander sneered and took another unsteady step forward. Zabala fired again, striking close to Galen’s eyes, then cursed and fired into the exposed ribs on his left flank.

Galen howled and dropped to his knees. He spat blood and bared his teeth, struggling upward-

The rumble of a motor broke through the persistent ringing in Michael’s ears; he turned to the side just in time to see a truck crest the ridge, barreling towards them. Zabala blanched and grabbed Michael’s collar, pulling him back just as the heavy Mendiko vehicle slammed into Galen.

Michael sat up, blinking a stray droplet of sweat from his eyes as Charles leapt from the vehicle. Silvery metal flowed from his hands to loop around Galen’s wrists and ankles; the dazed potens staggered back and fell as the loops drew tight, binding his limbs together.

Galen growled low, struggling against the bonds. Charles scoffed and reached back toward the truck, letting a strand of metal scrape across the paint. A thin curl of steel spiraled up before the whole hood groaned and flowed down to his hand, the bulk of it rolling across the ground in a ball until it reached Galen’s legs.

Michael watched as the steel snaked its way up Galen’s torso, wrapping itself in thick bands - and then struck at his nose with a snake’s ferocity, flowing into the man’s flaring nostrils. Galen’s eyes went wide, the muscles on his neck standing out, but he could do nothing as the metal continued to snake down his windpipe.

Charles let out a long, satisfied sigh, then let the thread of steel fall from his fingers; the metal instantly went rigid, as did Galen. He turned to Michael, leaning against the stripped hood of the truck. “Hey, lordling,” he said. “Looks like you’ve had a fun time of it.”

Michael looked wide-eyed between Charles and a slowly-reddening Galen. “Hey,” he said weakly. “I thought Sera was getting in touch with Antolin for help?”

“She did,” Charles shrugged. “But he wasn’t moving fast enough for her tastes, and I was right there at the motor pool, so.” He scratched at his jaw, looking out at the craters dotting this stretch of the ridge. “You did all this?”

“Artillery, courtesy of Sofia,” Michael replied. He looked up; the eye was still there, watching, vibrating with quiet fury - but the sense of machinations beyond his sight had faded. “I think she figured it would take me out before it managed to hurt the potentes.”

Charles chuffed out a quiet laugh. “Isn’t she supposed to be all-knowing?” he asked, making a rude gesture in the general direction of Leik. “Shows what that gets you. I guess that answers my other question about how you managed to put a Bulk in this kind of shape.”

Michael looked down at Galen, who was shading from red to purple. The only parts of him free to move were his eyes, and those were wide, bulging with panic. Charles traced his glance, then smiled and shook his head.

“Always were a soft touch,” he said. “Don’t you worry your dainty head about it, milord. This is how you put a Bulk down reliably - just hold him tight and choke him out. Once he’s sleeping, that soul of his will slip back a few notches, and all that damage you laid out will keep him down for days if it doesn’t kill him. By then he’ll be in some Mendiko cell.”

“You’re not going to kill him?” Michael asked, surprised.

Charles gave him an arch look. “I’m not sure if I should be mad or happy about how shocked you sound,” he said. “Nah, the boss said Antolin wanted the commander alive, that was part of what took him so long. Wanted some fancy team that’s trained for this kind of work.” He grinned. “Lucky you, I’m trained better.”

He offered Michael a hand; Michael took it and rose unsteadily to his feet.

“Thank you,” Michael said, looking Charles in the eye. “We’d be dead if not for you.” He held the eye contact until he felt an answering pulse of emotion from Charles, too complex for his weary brain to pick apart, then turned to Zabala, who was hauling himself up off the ground.

“No offense,” Michael said.

Zabala straightened up and coughed. “Ez, we were dead. Pistol’s not going to stop a potens in grab range.” He proffered his own hand to Charles, who shook it. “Thanks for the save.”

Charles nodded and turned to look out over the battlefield. The Ardan lines were still holding, but bereft of another rally like the one Galen had granted them, they were slowly falling apart. Michael took a step forward, putting a steadying hand on the truck.

He reached out with Spark, with the remnants of that heady feeling of control he had seized earlier. The fires within him burned at the limits of his endurance. “Drop your weapons,” he whispered. “Run away. You need not lose your life today.”

The words rushed out over the lines, a visible shock where he could still see men amid the darkness and haze of their camouflage. A few ran right away; others waited until they saw the first men running. The order mattered little. The next Mendiko volley sent dozens more scrambling, their obruors yelling impotently on their heels.

Michael sighed and slumped against the truck, nearly falling but for Charles swooping in to hold him upright. “Oop,” the older man said. “Dainty indeed. Why don’t you rest your porcelain ass inside for a moment instead of doing Michael stuff.” He gently shoved Michael towards the open door of the truck. “Just until we get you to see a doctor. Boss would kill me if you keeled over now.”

“Mmm,” Michael said. “Sounds good.” He stumbled halfway up the step, turning to look at Charles. “Where’s Sera?”

Charles sighed and shoved him harder. “Overextended herself with that stunt earlier,” he said. “Then with flitting around the battlefield trying to pull your ass out of here, by the time she got to me I could barely hear her speak. Get in.” He shoved Michael into the truck with a satisfied grunt, then slammed the door. “Now take a nap while I get our cargo loaded up.”

“Nap,” Michael muttered. “Yes sir.” He looked out the window as his eyelids began to slide closed; the last thing he saw before sleep claimed him were Ardan soldiers running, fleeing, alive.

He smiled, then slept.