“… so Badger Alder didn’t even look at me, and I said like ‘yoo-hoo’ and she just kept talking to Tiger Willow, like what a bitch, but that isn’t the only thing I was with Red Panda and Badger the other day, and I went up to them after we had class with mage Strynx and they were both…”

I was sitting on my cot in the Runner quarters while trying to figure out what the hell Fox Maple in the bed next to mine was talking about. She had been rambling for the last hour and a half straight, and I still didn’t have the slightest clue about what she was talking about.

It was, however, the most she had ever said to me, and since she usually just blushed and tried to avoid me whenever I was around I was attempting to follow what she was saying.

It was hard.

“… and then Brazil-nut, that’s my little cousin back home, said in a letter that she wanted to meet you and I said that she would have to come here and it was terrible up here, and the girls were so mean and said that you queefe in your sleep when you really don’t, do I, and while I was writing her Red Panda came in and saw that I was writing…”

I had spent the last month reading and practicing life detection magic. The principle was a bit like radar. I would send out a pulse of life magic, and it would reflect to me off living things while ignoring nearly everything else. The range was limited — about two hundred yards for most life mages who dedicated themselves to Detection Magic. I could manage about a mile and a half if I tried but I was beginning to realize I was a bit of a freak when it came to Life Affinity.

Of course, given that most areas were full of living things, from mice to people to grass and trees making sense of all the information was a big part of the study of the subject. There were runes dedicated to filtering out auras, sizes, affinities, blood, and all sorts of other factors. In a way casting a detect life spell was a lot like doing a database search or using an Internet Search Engine without the help of an algorithm.

What I wanted to do was get back to my book. But Fox Maple kept on talking.

“…and then I said, ‘you don’t say,’ and she said ‘hell yeah, I say,’ and I said ‘oh no you don’t,’ and she said ‘oh yes I do’…”

I nodded. “Yeah, I understand,” I said not understanding at all.

Just then Red Panda came dashing into the room, “I’m going to visit my brother. Wanna come?”

Since getting shot at and potentially burnt alive was better than continuing the conversation I was having I said, “Sounds fun. You don't mind if I leave right Fox Maple? Or do you want to come?” I turned to Red Panda.

There was no chance of that since the two of them hated each other and you couldn’t drag Fox Maple to the battlefield. Not even if you promised her cookies. “Red Panda, Do you mind if Fox Maple comes?”

Red Panda shrugged. Shocked, I looked over at Fox Maple, now her face for some reason was as bright red as her hair. “Mmmm, okay,” she said.

What fresh hell is this?

I strapped on my sword, and the three of us started walking through the fortress. Or rather, Red Panda and Fox Maple walked ahead while I trailed behind. After making a quick stop in the mess hall and picking up enough lunch for Terrald and his team of earth-affinity mages we started heading down the ramp to the front lines.

The sky overhead was a clear bright blue, but there was a strange fog that clung to the ground thickly over large parts of battlefield making it hard to see long distances from the ground. It had been raining for the last few days, and the earth everywhere was drenched.

“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what do you think of Stansry,” I heard Fox Maple say to Red Panda.

“After what he pulled last week I don’t like him.” Said Red Panda

“Who’s Stansry?” I asked as we were walking down the path from the fortress to the lower level.

“Me neither,” said Fox Maple. “He is supposed to teach. That is what he’s there for isn’t he? Our families pay good money for us to be here. For the experience, for the training, for the teaching.”

“Do they, my Father never told me,” said Red Panda, “I just woke up one morning, and he said, ‘Midget if you want to practice blowing things up, you are going to have to go where the people you blow up are trying to blow you up first. You are going to stay with your favorite brother.’ I think he was joking mostly. I never blew anybody up. Not on purpose.”

“I never met your brother. What’s he like? I’m the only kid in my family. My Mom met my Dad serving as a runner like this fifteen years ago and wanted me to experience what they had experienced” Said, Fox Maple.

“Your dad met your mom as a runner?” I said.

“My brother is an idiot, but I like him,” said Red Panda ignoring me. “He thinks he has to be responsible for me, but he’s such a total pussy, and it isn’t like I can’t completely take care of myself.”

“It must be nice. Having someone to look out for you and having someone to look out for. I’ve only got my parents, and they are usually deployed in different parts of the empire and only see each other every couple of years on leave.” Replied Fox Maple.

“I don’t know my parents that well either,” I said.

“I’ve heard of households like yours,” said Red Panda, “It ain’t my kind of thing, but I get it, military families, that are so devoted to the Empire that their career is their whole life.”

“Yeah. The servants raised me until I was five, Then my parents sent off to the military academy in the Capital. I was basically raised by staff and by moving from boarding school to boarding school and from post to post to the occasional battle like this one. Once my I was even stationed in at the same base as my dad was for six months. He’s a Colonel and outranked me and was always busy, but it was nice to see him every couple weeks.” Said Fox Maple.

“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” I said.

“So are you going into the army when you get your status?” Red Panda said

“I don’t know. I want to say yes. But I keep thinking that everything has all been planned out for me ever since I was born. I just don’t know what else there is different to do. The only thing I know is our Empire’s Military.”

“Foxy baby, are a ton of universities in the empire you could go to when you become an adult. I know you are mostly studying leadership and logistics up at the keep, but they're a few years doing something else, anything else, can’t hurt. Anything more than a year or two of this and it becomes a total snooze fest. If you go to University, you can always come back to the army afterward. And if you want to study something like Magic, Medicine, or Engineering the army can give scholarships people who are willing to serve afterward,” said Red Panda

“I like big butts, and I cannot lie,” I said.

“I don’t have any magic,” said Fox Maple, “I like math, but not enough to spend my life doing engineering, and you really need a life affinity to do Medicine.”

“That sucks balls,” said Red Panda.

“Not really, if I do decide to leave for a little while I’m thinking about studying Military History and Tactics. They have a good program at Hapistrel University.”

“Fuck that, that’s pretty much like just staying serving.”

“Except I’d be out in the real world for a while, so I could decide if I really want to devote my life to this. What about you Red Panda?”

“I’m a simple girl. I just wanna blow things up. All I need is to find the place where I can blow the most things up, is all. After that life is gravy.”

“And Lynx Elm is going into the Inquisition. That’s a high position in the Empire. One of the core Imperial orders. They don’t take many people,” said Fox Maple.

“He’s already part of it, and I don’t think he likes the idea much, or that he has many choices,” said Red Panda.

“Girls, I’m right here!” I yelled.

“Oh hey, Lynx. I forgot you were back there,” said Fox Maple.

“Hey Lynx I kind of like firm muscular butts, but whatever gives you a woody when you wake up in the morning,” said Red Panda.

Fox Maple blushed.

We walked a little while longer in silence until we got to the first layer of trenches. The smell of rotting corpses, burnt flesh, and upturned earth were milder back here. Apparently the closer you got to the fourth trench, the worse it got.

The three of us walked single file towards the bunker where Red Panda’s brother usually stayed. The mud was fresh and deep. In places, we had to wade up to our knees through stagnant muddy trench water. Fresh clothing, laundry, freedom from the insects, weather and a roof over our head was one of those differences between the front lines and those of us privileged to be back in the main headquarters. It made us spoilt, but I wouldn’t change my place with these poor, dutiful men and women for anything.

We got to the place where Terrald Blue Panda Hazelnut was usually stationed and went down the steps into the cave-like barracks. It was filled with men and women relaxing and sleeping, but we couldn’t find Terrald at his bunk.

“Hey, where’s Terrald,” I asked a young corporal with the white stripes of life-affinity on his uniform and who looked like he had just gotten his status magic last solstice.

“It is an honor to be of service to a member of our Empire’s Great Inquisition. Captain Terrald was called with the rest of his Earth Squad to shore up the fortifications in the fourth trench. He will be there for the rest of the week.” The corporal said.

“Ugh. Wasted trip. Well, at least I can see if any of the soldiers need any healing.” I said.

“Sir, are you authorized to heal? It isn’t my place to question a superior officer or a member of the Grand and Mighty Inquisition, but sir you are a runner. In my training for my life-affinity certification my sergeant kept drilling into me that there is a chain of command about who is authorized to heal what and exactly how much, and who must not.”

“Don’t worry about it…. What was your name again?”

“Terce. Corporal Terce Lemming Lemon-grass.”

“Don’t worry about it Corporal Terce; I’m pretty much as far out of the chain of command as it is possible to be while still being part of it. Besides, I’ve already cleared any random healing I do already with Tilde.”

“Lynx, why don’t we go out and surprise Terrald in the fourth Trench. He’s probably bored out of his mind. He and his team could use the lunch we brought them.” Said Red Panda

“Red Panda, you seriously want us to wander up and down the fourth trench looking for your brother. We don’t know where he is. There are miles of fortification out there where he could be,” I said.

“I know where Captain Terrald is, and I would be my honor to guide a member of the Inquisition and his associates out there,” said Corporal Terce. “I'm supposed to be back to the fourth trench already, anyway. This morning I helped carry a stretcher to the hospital and was due back at my position an hour ago.”

“You girls want to go?” I asked.

Fox Maple shrugged, “Might as well; I’ve never been that far forward in the lines. Could be a good learning experience.”

Corporal Terce took the lead, followed by Fox Maple, then me, while Red Panda brought up the rear. Down on the battlefield, the fog wasn’t necessarily as thick as it looked from up above, but it did weird things to perspective and vision. Out of curiosity I looked at it with my mage sight and saw no trace of magic. But the abnormal opacity in the air and strange way it was behaving worried me.

“So Lynx, why don’t you bang Fox Maple. You know she wants it.” Red Panda said.

This was a conversation that I had been dreading having for a while now. It had become obvious that Fox Maple had a bit of a crush on me. The problem was that while my body was nearly 15 years old, due to the whole twice lived thing I was mentally a whole lot older. Nobody in this culture would blink an eye if the two of us got together, but the idea of having sex with a 14-year-old girl still made me nauseous.

“I’ve been seeing Lieutenant Kimber in the Hospital. You know the tall, pretty blonde life-affinity girl.” I said.

“What? And you didn’t tell me. Isn’t she ancient.”

“She’s only 21. And she’s fun to talk to. Besides most of the runners are usually up in the fort, and I spend most of my time down in my office waiting for the off chance someone has a request for Samdi. The hospital is nearby. One thing just leads to another. It’s only happened a couple of times. I seduced her, but I think she thinks I’m too young.” I said.

“Well if you are into MILF who am I to judge. Who knows maybe Fox might be into threesomes.” Red Panda said, and I shuddered.

“You know I can hear you,” said Fox Maple who had stopped and turned towards us, her face redder than I think I’d ever seen it before.

“Sorry Fox,” I said. “For everything.” Then trying to change the subject I spoke a bit louder and said, “So Corporal, how long have you been in the army.”

“Since I got my copper status a few months ago in Larkin,” said Terce

“Oh really? I was in Larkin at the same time. I can’t believe you joined and got here before I did. I admit that I took my time, but I didn’t think I was that slow.”

“No, I came in with the other recruits. Those of us who joined in Larkin trained there for a month, and then we waited while the Empire’s three space-affinity mages opened a gate from Larkin to Devotion Valley.”

I thought about it for a second, “So what made you want to be a soldier if you don’t mind my asking? I know that with the three of us, we are all here because of family. Is it the same with you?”

“No. Not really,” said the corporal, “I wanted to be a farmer like my parents. But then when I was in Larkin, and the Necromancer was on the loose, it was just so terrifying. Then when the brave inquisitor Lord Er captured him and his accomplices, something inside of me just knew that my duty was to the Empire and to protect it.”

“There was a friggin Necromancer in Larkin while you were there Lynx, and you didn’t mention it,” said Red Panda.

“That’s because it wasn’t something I wanted to be reminded of. The Necromancer was a guy I had been training with over the last year. Lord Er told Wilmette to leave and then just rounded up some patsies. Basically some kids just off the farm and used them as a scapegoat to calm the city down. I really don’t like talking about it. Bad memories.”

“YOU’RE LYING!”, shouted corporal Terce. “Lord Er is an honorable man who defeated the necromancer in single combat and fights against evil in its purest form on a daily basis. He did his duty as a member of the holy inquisition by keeping the darkness that lurks in the night and the perils of the twice lived at bay.”

I rolled my eyes but said nothing.

“The empire is the greatest institution in the world to bring the brightness of civilization out to the savages and barbarians lurk and probe our borders always for weakness. That’s why I joined the army. To bring civilization to the savages and to defend my family from the baby killers we fight every day. Someone should report your seditious speech to the Noble Lord Samdi or Lord General Aram,” continued the corporal.

“Maybe you are right. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe we are out here risking our lives to spread civilization to the poor deprived barbarians and to protect our families from baby rapists. Maybe we aren’t trying to expand into new territory that includes a primordial dungeon.” I said.

“Shut up Lynx. I happen to agree with the corporal,” said Fox Maple.

“Seriously Fox, the Noble Lord Samdi?” I said.

“Well, the empire isn't perfect, but on the whole, it is a force for good in this world.” Fox Maple said, “and there will always be some people in any culture who are insane or are criminals. There might even be institutions that have become corrupt or short-sighted. But you can’t just condemn the good that the Empire does by only looking at the bad. Since the ascension of our glorious Emperor, may she live forever, there have been dozens of colleges and universities founded, everybody has access to status magic, trade between cities has expanded, the military teaches the poor valuable skills, and the plague of the Twice-Lived is kept in check. Just the simple fact that we have the freedom to stand here discussing this proves how great the Empire is.”

I sighed since I really didn’t have anything to say to that.

As we neared the fourth trench, the sound of the fireballs flying through the air and the noise from the explosions grew louder. Every once in a while bursts of rapid-fire flew over our heads from the Empire’s equivalent to machine guns emplacements. The smell was terrible; a mixture of ammonia and decomposing corpses.

It was slow going. There was no direct route unless you wanted to risk cutting across the no man’s land that was lined with barbed wire while tiny balls of rapid-fire flames whizzed overhead and arrows from enemy soldiers constantly fell from the sky.

There were connecting channels dug deep between the different trenches that zigzagged along the landscape but they were few. Mostly the system was meant as a way for a limited number of soldiers to move from one fortification to the next, safely but slowly, while providing choke points just in case the enemy captured one of the lines. There were places that were tunnels underground, but they were few. And because of the rains, many of these tunnels were submerged. In these spots we had to belly-crawl through the mud under the barbed wire, all the time hoping that one of the rare enemy arrows shot by someone with a touch of air or gravity affinity wouldn’t find us as we made our way forward.

Someone had handed us helmets back in the second trench, and we were glad for them as we huddled and scurried and crawled behind corporal Terce. Eventually, we made it to a location where the accumulation of rain and constant explosions of fire from the enemy pyromancer had caused a part of the fourth trench to cave in.

We walked through ankle-deep mud that occasionally became waist deep puddles. I pretended not to notice the blood in the water or the occasional bit of human flesh that the cleanup crews had missed. Up ahead Red Panda’s brother Terrald was working with his crew trying to repair the damage. Terrald as the most powerful earth mage of the team would cast runes, slowly parting the bulk of the mud that had submerged and filled the trenches, like Moses parting the red sea. Watching the rest with my mage sight, I could see the rest of his team working on stabilizing the walls, while another team pulled the bodies of soldiers who had died in the mudslide out from the dirt.

Out here the distortions due to the fog let off, and I could see the enemy lines. Looking back I could see our headquarters through the billowing smoke and haze. Something odd was happening, I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

The work was slow and brutal, and it was made worse by the constant rain of arrows and explosions that fell around the group. It was like the enemy knew that something important was happening around this location — that there was a good chance of taking out some officers or high ranking mages — and as a result, there was a lot of focused fire falling around us.

Terrald saw us, “you shouldn’t be here….

He continued, “….we have a major flanking action planned if they have the balls to take advantage of this, but this point right here… we’re sitting in bait central. There is a pillbox a hundred yards over there. I plan to retreat into it with my team when the shit gets heavy. Get in and stay down. It isn’t safe, but it is too late to get you back to the fort — Corporal what the hell were you thinking when you brought these children out here. Never mind. But we will have words if we survive the evening.”

The four of us retreated into the pillbox that Terrald had pointed too. Was a concrete structure that opened into the trench. A short incline led down to a deep enclosure held up by pillars and the walls, even though they were lined with sandbags lying up against magic reinforced concrete walls, still shook every time an explosion sounded nearby.

Two corporals with the red stripe of fire affinity and another with the dark blue of water affinity stood watching out a small slit window towards the battlefield. They guarded a massive machine gun mounted on a tripod except there was no visible ammunition and there was a mid-sized dungeon core built in over the trigger.

They weren’t firing, and they seemed to be waiting for something.

I sat down on a sandbag and leaned back against the wall. The explosions sounded near and far outside, in a morbid Poisson distribution. The sound rang through the enclosed space of the pillbox, coming in through the door we’d come down and through slit window.

Listening to the sounds of the explosions I said, “I wonder how old the core that damned pyromancer’s using. I don’t know where he gets the mana to keep throwing fireballs at us.”

“I asked Terrald what he knew about it, ‘cuz those are some awesome explosions. Command estimates it is around 9000 years old. According to Terrald, it might be one of oldest conduit cores in the world. Of course, nobody from the Empire has seen it,” said Red Panda.

I laughed, “what would you do with a core like that.”

The explosions kept getting nearer.

“Blowing things up already makes me tingle down there. You can’t imagine the mind-blowing orgasms I would have if I had that core. A girl doesn’t need a man, she just needs a really big fire, and that-there core makes the biggest fires,” said Red Panda.

The two fire affinity soldiers manning the guns turned to us and made a violent shushing motion. “Be quiet” the first of them stage-whispered at us, “They’re coming.”

Terrald came running down the ramp into the pillbox, followed by about six people, who were wearing the orange stripes of earth affinity. Terrald was the only officer in the group which usually meant that his team was made up of soldiers who had been discovered to have a minor affinity while they were serving.

“They’re coming!” yelled Terrald. “Get behind sandbags, you sons and daughters of bitches. They’re fucking coming.”

Then the booming of the explosions stopped all around us. Silence except for screams of wounded men and women who weren’t anywhere near a medic or life mage or even a friend to drag them to safety.

We crowded behind bags of sand. The fire mages stood by their guns. With my mage sight, I could see the earth mages doing everything they could to reinforce the strength of the enclosure we were hiding inside. Through the tiny slit window I could see the dimmest sliver of a cloudless bright cerulean blue sky, then arrows began to fall like rain.

“Hold, don’t fire,” commanded Terrald. “We need them to think that this section is weak and exposed. When command instant messages me word, I will give the order to fire.”

We waited in silence, crouched down behind the sandbags. Outside the rain of arrows continued and I could hear the screams and cries of people who had been hit who were hurt or bleeding and needed a healer. Then even from my limited vantage through the slit looking out, I could see an eery translucent green glow.

“Shit!”, One of the gunners said, “they’re coming in with force mages. They have a shield up.”

“Hold. Be calm. Don’t fire.” Said Terrald. “According to a message I just got from command the force shield isn’t a bubble, it only protects the front. Wait until they try to push past the breach in line four, and we’ll rain fire and hell with everything we’ve got from the sides. Just like the plan.”

“But sir. We have soldiers out there. They’re being slaughtered. We have to do something.”

“Far less than you’d think. I’m told command ‘ported in a specialized squad of light, sound, and darkness affinity mages to cast illusions of dying soldiers. They arrived two hours ago. Political bastards in command could be lying to me though. I wouldn’t put it past some of those sons of bitches to throw real lives away to use as a distraction. I trust Lord General Aram though. Now shut the fuck up and let me concentrate.”

We waited in the kind of surreal silence where we were surrounded by noises of death and dying all around us, of screaming and burning and killing, of footsteps and marching stepping through the mud and the gore, while we hoped they wouldn’t see our hidden little hidey-hole.

“They’re getting close,” said the gunner.

“Hold,” said Terrald.

“They have a fire wand with them. If they get near enough, they will burn us out, if we don’t kill them first.”

“Hold. Just a little longer.” Said Terrald.

“Just a little longer…. Fire!”

As soon as Terrald spoke a stream of tiny fireballs started to shoot out of the barrel of the gun. With my mage sight, I could see runes come into being around the gun as mana poured into both soldiers with fire-affinity. The water affinity soldier started to conjure small balls of cold water to keep the gun barrel cool.

Unlike a traditional heavy machine gun, there was no recoil and virtually no noise except a steady crackle of flames from the sound of oxygen being consumed.

Through the thin slot, the sky lit up. Instead of just the blue of the sky and the green of the force shield, fire arrows now fell from our side. Battle cries rang out as our soldiers who had remained hidden and pulled back to the flanks, letting the enemy soldiers in to what they assumed was weak spot charged out, to try to cut the mass of enemies who had managed to gain a foothold in our territory off from retreat. While heavy weaponry and bombardments pummeled their center.

For an instant, it seemed like it would work.

“Holy Fuck,” yelled Terrald who had been watching the battle from the command screens of his status, “Their force screen just became a bubble around the entire vanguard. They must have been hiding a high affinity mage or someone with a force affinity core in there. They’ve taken a spot right by the third Trench.”

The gunners in our pillbox kept firing at enemy soldiers who hadn’t made it to the safety of the force shield. But there were very few.

“New orders. We need to hit that force shield with everything we’ve got. I’m going to make a new opening facing towards it. Reposition the gun,” said Terrald.

Terrald began to channel mana through earth runes and the slit that had been facing forward began to rotate slowly around the circumference of the pillbox that we were in, until the opening was facing thirty degrees away from where we’d been looking before.

From here I could see a green bubble blotting out the sky while a constant barrage from the ballista positioned in the mountains around the base with the specialized exploding heads that Samdi and his Twice-Lived made struck the force shied trying to bring it down.

Then I saw a small space in the force shield open up and a fireball shot out.

“The mother fucking Pyromancer is behind our lines. He’s with them. He’s fucking with them.”

The earth began to shake as explosions began to hit the earth repeatedly.

Terrald turned to us. “We need to get that force shield down as quickly as possible. I hate to ask this, but Midget, would you mind adding your affinity to the gun? The son of a bitch is pummeling the headquarters. He landed a ball of plasma right in the hospital. But he’s more vulnerable now than he’s ever been before. If we can take out that shield, we have that son of a bitch.”

Red Panda got up from behind the sand bags that she’d been hiding behind and scurried over to the gun. She concentrated a bit. She had been paying attention to what the gunners had been doing. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have learned that she had begged someone to let her play with one of these machine guns the first day she’d been stationed at this fortress.

Instead of the ping pong sized fireballs that had steadily been shooting out of the gun, the fireballs that now shot out were the size of watermelons and were colored white-blue instead of the orange-red that they’d been before. The water mage kept a steady stream of water falling on the gun barrel, but now the water turned to steam as soon as it it the barrel.

Watching the water mage, I cast the runes he was using and managed to make a small trickle of water appear. The amount of water I could summon wasn’t a lot, basically the same splatter volume as that last trickle of piss that streams out of your dick when you’re almost done pissing but still haven’t shaken yourself off, but I got up anyway and began helping to keep the machine gun cool. Some help was better than nothing.

The fire coming from the gun that Red Panda was influencing was now clearly having an effect on the force shield. Explosions and more fire from other guns rippled across its surface. But the pyromancer inside was giving back as good as he got. Fireball after fireball now that he was in range streaked towards the headquarters.

From my viewpoint, right at the slit in the pillbox, I could see people running between buildings on fire. I could see the hospital where I had volunteered was now a smoldering pile of lava. So was the entrance to the barracks and the command center. The ramp up to the fort was in shambles.

Red Panda was having the time of her life. “Oh lord, oh lord, OH LORD, Uhhhhhhh. YES, YES, YES.” And she had a hand down the front of her pants. Yet somehow the fireballs that she was summoning only got bigger, faster and more ferocious, the more she moaned.

The gun that Red Panda was controlling was doing far more damage to the force shield than all the other destruction being thrown against it. As I watched the shield began to flicker.

Maybe in desperation, maybe because the pyromancer figure that he or she could do no more damage to the main base, maybe that mage just wanted to get rid of a nuisance. Regardless, the focus of the enemy pyromancer’s fire switched all of a sudden, and fireball after fire ball began to be launched at our tiny pill box.

Red Panda kept firing. The force shield came flickered one last time and came down. Then a ball of flame came streaking out of the sky from the center of where the force shield had been and all the world exploded.

Who know how much time passed before I woke up. I suppose if I had status magic I could tell you to the exact second with some sort of internal clock function. But I did not know. I awoke and found myself covered in burns. The amulet that Lord Samdi had given me the first time I had met him which was supposed to protect me from the fire had been destroyed.

I quickly cast healing runes on myself before I could go back into shock. Most of my burns faded away. The nearest sand bags had fused together into glass. Where Terrald had been standing there was now something twisted in a black vaguely human shape, I could see his teeth where the skin on his face had burnt away, and the permanent rictus of pain in which he had died. There were three other corpses that were more charcoal than human.

I heard coughing from the very back of the bunker behind some sandbags. I rushed over. Corporal Terce had somehow survived, but he was in bad shape. I healed him up as quickly as I could, and said “help me see if anybody else survived. You are a life mage, help me heal anybody. I need help.”

Fox Maple lay on the ground a short distance away from him. I ran over to her, and cast life runes and healing runes into her. Nothing. She just lay there dead. I rolled her over to try to perform CPR, anything to get her heart started again, and saw that her entire back had been burnt to utter blackness.

I looked over at Terce. He stood still, rocking back and forth, doing nothing. I saw that he had wet himself. I chose to ignore him.

Red Panda was at the front of the pillbox. She lay slouched over the machine gun. I saw teeth and blackened bones and ashes where the gunners had been standing, but somehow Red Panda was largely intact. Her fire affinity must have shielded her from the blast.

I ran over to her, and again force life and healing runes to settle into and over her body, but she was dead.

I yelled “FUCK!”

And tried healing her again. Fuck this. I healed every wound on her body. But she was still dead. Then I extended a tendril of my Witch’s knack into her body and let a slow trickle of my own life force leak into her. But she stayed dead. I refused to accept it. Fuck this. And I did something I had vowed to hide. While letting my life from my Witches Knack flow into Red Panda, I began to use my Major Healing Knack on Red Panda.

At first, the process was slow. Like the Knack was looking for something to heal but couldn’t find things, but then it started to settle on Red Panda’s brain and in her heart, and merged in a completely unexpected way with the life I was pumping into her. And with my mage sight, I saw her aura start to throb and pulse with both life and healing, and an emptiness that until that point I hadn’t been aware of began to be filled.

Then Red Panda began to breathe.

I sat down emotionally exhausted. Watching Red Panda’s chest rise and then fall, rise and then fall was something so beautiful and remarkable that it was all I could do to hold back the tears that wanted to trickle down my cheeks.

“You healed her.” Said Terce who was still standing where I had last seen him.

“Yes.”

“You used the major healing knack.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “She wasn’t that badly hurt.”

“My grand mother used to tell me stories about Sanyo the Healer and the miracles he did when he lived nearly 500 years ago. He was a savior to the common people. We still have festivals in his name. I know what you did, you used a healing knack. Will you spread your miracle far and wide like Sanyo did. I can’t wait to tell everyone what I saw.” Terce said.

“You are mistaken. I just used regular healing runes. I am just a lot more experienced with them than you are and have a lot more affinity. You are mistaking everyday normal magic with fairy tales. Besides even if I did have a healing knack and I don’t, Healers are hunted down in this empire and killed.”

“Those are viscous lies about our empire, and you are lying to me. Why do you hate the land of your own country. People in this country don’t kill healers. We celebrate them. Saint Sanyo day is a holiday when we hold a feast in his name and hope for another person to take his place.”

“Sanyo was killed by the Emperor who took his knack as his own.”

“LIAR! FILTHY DIRTY LIAR!”

“Wait, wait, wait. It doesn’t matter anyway I only used every day normal healing runes on Red Panda. I know you don’t believe me, but I did. I swear to you on my love and respect for the Inquisition I hold so dear. Come, we still have to check to see if those other three earth mages survived.

I pushed myself to my feet, and slowly began to walk over to the last three bodies I hadn’t checked yet. It lay next to a part of the roof that had caved in. “Terce come help me.”

Terce came over but he muttered under his breath, “You do have a Healing Knack, I don’t care what you say.”

I kneeled down next to the corpse of the first one of Captain Terrald’s Squad. I could already tell he was dead, but I said, “I don’t sense any sign of life in this woman, do you Corporal?”

Terce knelt down to check.

And as Terce was focused on the body, I activated my body knack and pumped strength, speed, force into myself and in the one second of hyper speed I had drove my dagger up through the roof of Terce’s mouth and into his brain.

Then I waited the five seconds to pass and forcing my body knack into overdrive again, I lifted the part of the ceiling that had fallen in just enough to drop it down on Terce’s head. If anybody bothered to ask, the corporal had died bravely in the aftermath of the fireball when the roof had fallen on him and crushed his skull.

Quickly checking on the last two people in Terrald’s team who I discovered were dead, I went back to Red Panda and got her in a fireman’s carry and lifted her out of the pillbox to the trenches outside.

The battlefield was completely different from what I expected. Firstly the strange fog that was distorting the landscape so oddly was gone. Secondly, the area where Terrald had assured us illusions of soldiers were, were filled with hundreds, maybe even a thousand, dead or wounded troops in the uniform of our Empire. When I turned towards the headquarters, none of the destruction I had witnessed during the battle seemed to have happened to it. Instead, a large section of the mountain where nothing was, except for some ballista emplacements, were scarred with burn marks and vast swatches of it was melted.

Thousands of enemy troops lay dead where their barrier had fallen down. Elite troops by the looks of it. There was still sporadic burst of fighting, but for the most part, the enemy seemed to be surrounded and surrendering.

Of the pyromancer, there was no trace.