Infiltrating the Empire side again was significantly easier. The soldiers had made massive strides in digging the trench that had been filled in and backing it up with sandbags; the simple fact was that it still wasn’t complete. After retrieving the uniform and backpack and putting them back on, it was only a matter of risking the tentacle monster that was still floating above the battlefield then dashing through a gap in the barbed wire and rejoining the soldiers.

I even grabbed a shovel and dug for a little while to solidify the normalcy of my presence. It helped that I knew all the protocols and general movement of the troops from having run around these trenches for the last few years.

On my way back I had stolen some rations from the enemy soldiers, but while this food filled my stomach, I had to use an incredible amount of healing merely to get them down — the bare minimum of flour mixed with sawdust, ground insect, and some sort of mystery lard. I felt it better not to ask what the source of the rendered fat; rat and a human corpse being the most readily available.

I found my way to my office and slept for I don’t know how long — hours, days, who knows. It was dark when I slept and bright when I woke up. Afterward, I cleaned up and went to the mess for some food decent food then stumbled up to the keep to see what I had missed over the last few days.

Lieutenant Cham said, “Lynx, where have you been? Red Panda has been frantic. You weren’t supposed to leave the keep.”

“I needed some time alone.” I said, “Then I had some duties to run for Samdi. Did I miss anything important?”

“Haven’t you heard. The Pyromancer hasn’t shot a fireball in Three days. Command is trying to figure out why. They are sending you children scurrying around like hill of ants someone’s dropped a burning ember into. I haven’t had a wink of sleep over the last three days. And most of your fellow runners are the same — too much work. So don’t just stand there. I have messages to send. I don’t know where you’ve been, but you managed to choose the worst possible time to disappear. If I hadn’t seen you by the end of the day, I would have reported you as AWOL. Technically you were on leave, but things have been in a tizzy here.”

“What can I do?” I said.

“Just go see Lord General Aram and see if she needs you. I’m sure she has a package for you to carry.”

I headed up to the Lord General’s office and was told to wait in the reception area until they needed me for something. After about 10 minutes an aide to the General came out and sent with a sealed package and said, “I’ve messaged ahead, and they are expecting you in the lower headquarters.”

I set off at a run, and about ten minutes later I was handing off a message and waited to carry another. This time command had me move six packages out to the second line of trenches. In the first bunker, I handed off a package to tired looking captain, two lieutenants and six angry looking sergeants who stood around a makeshift map of the entire valley. Then I was off to deliver the next package, then the next, until all six were delivered to variations on of the same group in different bunkers up and down the line.

I did pass two different runners, as I was making my way back to the headquarters. I waved, they waved back, but nobody had any time to stop and gossip.

Then I was up delivering another set of sealed packages to the furthest ballista turret down the line. Then I had to pick up a colonel’s laundry and give it to him in his office. Then I dashed off to Samdi’s office to see how he was doing with the increase in munitions production he was supposed to have been working on.

“Fine, fine, fine, my beautiful boy. Just remember you owe me a favor. I would like to make use of that lovely healing talent you have for a pet project that I have wanted to work on for years.”

I grimaced and carried the message back to command that according to Samdi, the increase munition production was on schedule.

By that time I had been running for about nine hours straight, so I drifted into the mess for a meal and a break. Getting some food, I spotted Red Panda sitting at a table by herself eating slowly.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up at me, and then looked back down at her food, saying nothing.

“Sorry I haven’t been around,” I said.

Still, Red Panda said nothing. So I sat down at the table across from her and began to eat. She looked up at me, then picked up her plate and walked away, throwing out what she hadn’t eaten and leaving the tray on the dish cart. I finished my meal in silence, and nobody else came to join me.

The next day was more of the same. I got up early, ran errands, spoke to a few of the other runners. Red Panda had been withdrawn all week and hadn’t really talked with anybody except to do her job, and even then the other runners were covering for her a lot.

Sometimes one of the other would find her just standing somewhere staring off at the enemy lines with a package that needed to be delivered immediately. The other runner would pry the package out of her hands and deliver it for her along with anything they were carrying.

This wasn’t working too well. I saw Tiger Willow coming down the ramp from the keep. He had an angry look on his face. I waved, and we both slowed down as we met coming and going.

“Yo,” I said

“Red Panda had better get her act together. I’m sick and tired of covering her ass,” Tiger Willow said.

“Leave her be, she’s having a tough time,” I said.

“Easy for you to say. Some of us didn’t run off who knows where when she needed them.”

I had nothing to say to that and continued up the hill to drop off a package at the Lord General’s office. From the smell of it, I think I was carrying someone’s dinner.

Troops began to gather in the forward most trench. Typically there was a four days on three days off rotation, but that ended suddenly. Or not so suddenly depending on how involved you were in the command structure. On everybody’s lips were the words, “The Pyromancer has been silent for five days. Was he gone? Was something happening over there? Were they planning an attack? Were we planning an attack?”

Then the shelling started on our side. Somehow they had managed to triple the number of ballistas hidden in the mountains and spears with exploding heads rocketed over the battlefield in waves. All day and all night never letting up. On a run carrying a package up into the mountain tunnels to different emplacements, I found teams of wind mages, controlling the currents to increase the range of airborne ballista spears.

I overheard one mage say “I’ll be glad when this is all over, and I can get back to the university. I had to leave my daughter with her nanny three days ago. I miss her already.”

The shelling continued through the day and all night. Instead of the staccato drumming it had once been, the sound was a constant wave of explosions that tore up the no man’s land.

“Still no sign of the pyromancer fucker.” I overheard a colonel say. “Don’t let those motherless sons of bitches sleep; I want to tear up their lines. “

Lieutenant Cham sent word that I was temporarily transferred to the hospital for the next few days, and I when I went to visit Colonel Tilde Jackalope Trente I found him organizing supplies and equipment.

“Ah, Lynx Elm good to see you. We are deploying a satellite triage at the just behind the fourth trench, and we are looking for some of our more adventurous healers to staff it. I would like you to be one of those healers. Like usual, all I want you to do is sort through the wounded, keep alive the ones you can keep alive, leave the less wounded for later if someone is beyond hope move on. No heroics and conserve your mana.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, already knowing the answer but playing my part.

“Command thinks the Pyromancer has gone on the run to a safer hidey-hole. He has shown powerful space magic capabilities. After questioning prisoners, we think that they’ve only got the old, the infirm, and the young propping up their numbers. It is disappointing that it has to come to this, but at least this pointless war is almost over.”

I traveled with a bunch of medics and soldiers carrying supplies out to a hollow that had been dug out just behind the forward most trench. The field hospital was covered with a hastily erected camouflage tarp over a fortified steel beam structure. I was even surprised when I saw a lieutenant with the ochre stripe of a force mage looking bored and sitting on a crate of compression bandages.

I walked over to the force mage and said “Hello.”

The force mage was in his early twenties, and he rolled his eyes somewhat when I introduced myself, but he said “hello.”

“Looks like we’ll be working together. Maybe? Or are you just here visiting?” I said.

“You running errands for the healers?” The force-affinity mage said.

“Naw, for the next few days I’m one of the healers. High Life magic affinity, plus a good amount of practice over the last few years with the wounded. Lynx Elm by the way.” I said holding out my hand.

The force mage took my hand and shook it, “Hener Deer Kudzu,” He said, “What’s it like out here? They gated me in from Visseff two days ago. Nobody gave me the tour, they just handed me a backpack full of supplies and led me out here.”

“Mostly it is mud,” I said over the sound of our sides continuous bombardment of the enemy lines. “It was a lot more interesting a few days ago when the pyromancer was going crazy spraying the whole valley with fireballs every few seconds. Normally I would say, stay away from being this far forward, but he’s been quiet for the last few days. Command thinks he’s run away. He has access to some heavy duty space affinity magic.”

“I guess that’s why they wanted me here. They didn’t tell me much, just to keep the hospital defended if necessary. A pyromancer no shit.”

“Supposedly he was using a 9000-year-old fire core.”

“Fuck! I don’t know how long I can hold out against something like that. Maybe one fireball, depending on how hot it is.”

“Pretty sure the fucker is gone. So what were you doing in Visseff?”

“Studying in the College there. After I got my status, I didn’t want to go back to the farm right away, so I joined the Army. Figured I would see the world for a couple of years, and come back and buy a new farm instead of working on my parent's farm with my brother and sisters. The army tested my affinities and found a medium-high force affinity and a minor ritual affinity, so they made me an officer and shipped me off to school. Ever since then I have been memorizing runes. What about you? Kind of surprised that they let someone your age out here as a healer,” Hener said.

“Noble family. I started seeing mana when I was young, so my family forced me to study runes for nearly as long as I can remember.” I said.

“Hard work. Sometimes I’m envious of the people with only a minor affinity. The army just gives them a skill gem, and an hour later they can function as a serviceable mage.” Hener said.

“Yeah, but with no versatility, no ability to learn new skills in that area and a complete inability ever to improve. Runes are a pain in the ass, but once you figure out enough of them, you learn patterns you can use towards figuring out the rest on the fly.” I said in disagreement.

Hener sighed, “I suppose, but I’ve spent five years, and all I know are around 600 of them. And there is so much other stuff they teach us: numbers, reading, and writing, self-defense, the history of the empire. It’s all useful I guess, but I don’t know how I’ll ever use if I go home. I don’t want people to think I’m some sort of elitist snob.”

“So tell me about force magic,” I said.

We spent the next couple hours while nothing happened to discuss the various runes that he used. He could make a shield strong enough to cover the whole hospital and could manipulate objects with his mind. I tried to do what he did but discovered I had no ability with force magic.

But just out of curiosity I used the runes he was using for his shield and substituted runes for life affinity in place of force affinity, and suddenly cast it as a spell. Around us, a translucent shield formed around the hospital that kept, if I could interpret it correctly, kept out all living things. Or it blocked life magic. Or maybe both. Or neither. I would have to experiment a bit more.

I wasn’t surprised that I had read nothing about this kind of life shield. So much of the empire’s commerce and status was based on blood magic, that something that could potentially block it — even for just a short time — would be probably kept hushed up.

“Fuck no, I don’t want to try your ‘life shield’ out. What if matter can go through and life can’t? What if my body can walk through, but the part of me that is alive stays on the other side of the barrier? I don’t want to walk through your insta-kill shield of doom. You really shouldn’t fuck with that kind of magic. And if you do, try it out on a rat or something first. Not on people. Not on me. If you don’t understand something don’t test it out on yourself. That’s one thing they teach us at Visseff,” Hener said.

The same runes that Hener used for telekinesis when I substituted out the force for life seemed to let me cast healing spells at a distance — awkwardly. It was like a set of invisible hands made out of life magic appeared that I could direct with my eyes and my mind, and then use that as a point to cast extremely mana inefficient life spells through.

“With force magic, the instructors say that telekinesis follows an inverse square relationship with distance and mana. I’m not sure what that means, but the further out that I try to move something, the more mana it takes and the weaker I get. I bet you it’s the same with your life mana,” Hener said.

The hospital had some cots laid out for us to sleep in while we waited, and as nothing happened in the morning changed to nothing happened in the afternoon, became nothing happened in the evening.

It was hard to sleep with the explosion going off in the distance, especially now that I was so close to the very front lines, and in such an exposed position. The only thing that let me get any sleep was the knowledge that these were our munitions going off.

The next day was pretty much the same. More and more people made their way to the first trench. Now and then I saw teams of people carrying assembled wooden ladders. When I asked a passing group I was told the ladders were for “For scaling walls and trenches.”

The explosions kept sounding off in the distance, while I kept sitting in the hospital twiddling my thumbs. Hener was playing dice with a couple of the orderlies. I declined to play, mostly because I wasn’t stupid enough to gamble on dice against a person who was capable of telekinesis.

I was watching a massive explosion off in the distance when out of the corner of my eye, I saw the unmistakable image of Red Panda. I got up and dashed over to her.

“Hey, Red Panda! Red Panda! How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.” I yelled.

Red Panda turned towards me, and then I saw that she wasn’t wearing the uniform of a runner anymore but instead the outfit of someone in the regular military.

“What’s this,” I said, pointing at what she’s was wearing.

“Lynx, I quit the runners. I joined the elemental mages. I’m only here for the next couple of days, and then they are sending me to the military college in Visseff until I get my Status magic in a year. Then I can become an officer full time.”

I looked at her shocked. “Is that what you want? We used to make fun of the lifers.”

“Things change, people change,” she said, “people grow up. Terrald would have wanted me to follow in his path."

I hugged her. “If that’s what you want. Who knows, maybe we’ll bump into each other some other time.”

“They wanted me to leave earlier, but I wanted to barbecue some of those fuckers for what they did to Terrald and Fox. How many enemy soldiers does it take to make a bonfire, Lynx?” Before I could answer, she said, “I don’t know, but tomorrow I’m going to find out.”

“So this happens tomorrow,” I asked. “Is that official, or just a guess?”

“Official, but don’t spread it. I overheard Colonel Sanbon talking about it to Chancellor Termass. So what about you? I suppose you are going back to running errands for Samdi and Cham.” Red Panda said.

“I’ve been thinking about it. I’m tired of it here. Samdi keeps reminding me that I owe him a favor which I don’t want to pay back. I think I may head out in the next few days. Nothing is keeping me here except that my father wants me to be here, and well… you know my feelings about him. I think I might visit my brother and sister in our villa in the capital. I don’t know my brother and sister that well, and I’ve never been to the capital. Plus the imperial city might be interesting to visit. It is a long way away by ship, and that will let me do some thinking.”

“You might want to look into hitching a ride with the military. They’ve been having a team of space mages open gates to bring in exotic mages in from all over the empire for this offensive. They’ll probably want to send them back to where they came from when the battle is over. You might be able to take a shortcut to the capital if you find the right group to mix in with. That’s how I’m supposed to get to Visseff.” Red Panda said.

“I’ll think about it. Thank you. I wish things could have been different.” I said.

“Me too. I’ll miss you,” said Red Panda.

“Goodbye,” I said, and Red Panda walked off.

I hadn’t been thinking about leaving and going to the capital. It had just sort of popped out as I was talking, but now that I had spoken about it to Red Panda, I realized that I was tired of this place. Tired of being a runner, tired of Samdi, tired of the dirt and the mud and the trenches.

I didn’t have any other place to go unless I wanted to join the army and follow Red to the academy at Visseff. That might be fun, and as a bonus, it would be a massive ‘go fuck yourself’ to my father's plans. But I couldn’t see myself regimented in some hierarchy, and I was sure that my father could pull some strings to have me under his thumb again.

By midnight the number of troops in the forward most trench was overflowing. The scuttlebutt was that there was a similar crowd in the third trench. I sat next to Hener on a box of potions. There was another life mage pacing back and forth, an older man who had never bothered to tell me his name. Plus about twenty stretcher bearers were trying not to act anxious.

From where I was standing I could see the occasional soldier sipping from flasks with mild alcoholic beverages, puffing away at a joint, or smoking a cigarette. But for the most part, they seemed more worried and focused than attempting to mellow out or find bottled bravery.

Then the shelling… well… explosive ballistaing stopped. From various points along the line, with my mage sight I saw runes shoot into the sky and suddenly the darkness of the night became as bright as daylight as twenty miniature suns now hung in the sky, vibrant with the golden rays of light mana.

Horns began to blow up and down the line, and the men and women in the trenches shouted battle cries and climbed out of the rifts of dirt and sandbags they had been hiding behind and began walking forward falling into well-practiced militarily precise rows. Tower shields in the front row, pikes in the second, pikes in the third, archers in the fourth and low ranked support mages in the rear. Behind that stepped men and women carrying ladders, grappling hooks, stretchers, medical supplies.

As they crossed the no man’s land enemy arrows began to fall among them. But there were enough force affinity mages, or at least mages with some sort of force amulet or device, that the arrows that arced towards empire soldiers hit a clear field of nothing, and then rolled harmlessly backward over the advancing soldier's heads.

There were even a few things that looked like tanks that advanced without soldiers. Inside these machines were mounted the same Phlogiston guns that had been mounted in the pillboxes where Terrald and Fox Maple had died. The guns spewed fire out at the enemy trench. And even in the distance, I could see bodies writhe in soundless agony were bursts of fireballs from the Tanks and guns struck them.

One of these tanks must have held Red Panda because the fireballs shooting from it was significantly larger and faster. She was doing real damage to the enemy lines and had burnt what looked like a score of enemy soldiers — the very old, the infirm, the very young. I looked away. It was war, and she had chosen her path.

Every once in a while a stretcher would come to us with a wounded soldier. Mostly they were people who had tripped in the mud or cut themselves on some barbed wire that hadn’t been destroyed by the constant shelling.

By now nobody was surprised that the pyromancer had not shown himself. I wondered aloud with everyone else what had happened to him. Where had he fled too?

Morning came and at a little after 5:00 am word was passed to us that the enemy had unconditionally surrendered.

I stayed in the hospital, a few more stretchers carrying unlucky soldiers, most of whom had done something stupid or had just been plain unlucky were brought to the field hospital. I wasn’t even bothering to conserve mana now. I use spells to heal them up entirely, give them a slip of permission for a couple of days R&R and send them on their way.

Command had set up a temporary headquarters over in the enemy keep. I was told that they had hung about 50 men and women who for one reason or another had deserted our side and joined the enemy force over the last few years. Other than that they command being forgiving to their vanquished enemy.

Someone from the House of Status had set up a temporary facility and was quickly giving the enemy troops status magic. Mostly copper, but even the occasional silver and gold status for high-value prisoners. Blood was also drawn and kept on file from everyone. But that was just how our empire did things.

After three days with almost nothing to do in the field hospital, I eventually got bored of waiting and sent a message with a runner to Tilde to see if I could come back to the main base. He commanded the runner to go back with an okay, and thus my duty was over.

I stumbled back to the barracks and my office and assembled all of the possessions that I had gathered over the last few years into one spot. There were surprisingly few. I put the ones that would seem reasonable and normal for me to have in a fresh pack I got from the quartermaster — things that would be highly suspicious for me to have. Books on blood magic, tidbits I’d swiped from Samdi’s lab, books I’d stolen from the library, I put in the pouch of holding that I’d taken from the Pyromancer.

Carrying all of this up the hill to the Keep, I went to visit Lieutenant Cham who was in charge of the Runners.

“Cham, I’m sorry, but I would like to leave the runners.”

“Dear dear. That is too bad — first Fox, then Red Panda, and now you. Well, it makes sense, their country has surrendered. I can’t imagine that many people will be here much longer. It is always a shame to lose one of you. I assume you have cleared this with your family. What will you do next?”

“I was going to try to head back up through the pass and then ride to the nearest port and take a ship to the capital city. My brother and sister live there. I thought I would visit them.” I said.

“You are going to Magrithiam city? Every lad should go there once in their life. It is a beautiful, wondrous place with all the latest fashions. I envy you.” Cham looked distant for a moment and then said “Stop by Lord General Aram Heron Sequoia in an hour. I have sent her a message letting her know of your plans. She is expecting you.”

I put my pack down on my cot in the Runner dorm. Then I went up and said goodbye to some of the cooks that I knew and even to Merf in the library. Then I went up to the Lord General’s office.

Unlike before, I did not have to wait very long in the Lord General’s reception. About ten minutes after I got there, her aide ushered me into the General’s presence.

“Cham tells me that you would like to leave. Very well, you don’t have any formal attachment to the military beyond the Runner program. Not only that, despite your status as an Inquisitor you have been beneficial to the well being of the troops. Both Tilde and Colonel Sanbon have sung your praises, and there has been a noticeable drop in losses to Samdi due to your presence.

“By way of thanks, I will mention that Chancellor Termass will be Gating to the Capital in two days. I have already passed a message to him, and you may join the group he will be accompanying. It leaves from the bailey precisely at noon, two days from now. If you are late, you will have to take the long route which takes months instead of minutes.

“Thank you for your service. You are dismissed.”

“Thank you, Lord General,” I said, and left.

I spent the next day saying goodbye to the Runners and had an excellent fight with Lord Captain Orr in which I almost beat him, though I think he went easy on me.

Two days later, I stood in the keep bailey with my pack, dressed in my Inquisitor uniform, when Chancellor Termass and a group of about forty soldiers came out of the upper more luxurious rooms in the keep. Termass didn’t look that terrifying considering he was a Vampire. Paunchy, middle-aged and balding. He looked more like an accountant than a force of destruction.

The vampire nodded at me, then motioned with his head, to the back of the group. I nodded back, then moved in with the rest of the elite soldiers surrounding him.

A shimmering appeared in the space in front of the vampire, and then the area in front of him folded back like curtains in front of an opaque window. Through the window, I could see a room that was decorated with white walls with minimalist black wood trim. There were windows, that overlooked a massive city, filled the room with natural sunlight.

The vampire stepped through, and then the soldiers followed.

I tapped the man in front of me. “Why is the gate opaque.”

“Reverse-permeable membrane. It lets large particles through, but not small ones like air and gas. We’re on a mountain; the capital is at sea level. The wind pressure would reap havoc, without the membrane. Remember to breath when you get to the other side.”

I was the third from the last to step through the gate. I coughed a bit on the other side, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. A servant was waiting, and I was led out of the vampire’s house by the front door.