Contrary to what the Centaur must have expected, I did not duck nor roll away from it as it drove its talons towards me. With my blades in hand, I leapt with a swing in motion. The red blade, driven by the combined might of my bio-steel flesh and the power armor I wore, sheared through the claws like I was reaping wheat. The second strike was a shallow feint, startling it with a graze across the stomach. It didn’t carve deeply, but in the heartbeat of this happening, the Centaur went to guard its chest with the other arm.

My true swing struck hard and true, catching it at the neck and slowing on the thick armor and breaking through the dense spinal column the beast bore. Still, it’s head flew freely after, even as I planted a foot against the back of the Centaur, not fully realizing it was already dead.

I pushed off surprising the second that had been riding on the tail of the first, likely seeking to trample me had I dodged. It rose its claws defensively, but momentum carried it forward towards me. I hopped, flipping off of the first now-corpse as the Centaur carried itself under me.

Instead of beheading it, I bisected its head at the temple, severing it vertically. The blow almost diverted off of the thick plates, but I managed well enough, smoke already trailing from the swipe.

As I landed, though, the final Centaur didn’t allow me to reposition. It was in mid air, having lept to land upon me, crushing me with its overbearing weight. Given that the creature was three meters tall, it could very well do some damage at the least.

I flung my blade upwards, projecting it with deadly precision.

It cut straight through the mouth of the Centaur and up through its head. I managed to give myself a few centimeters as it crashed down the the ground, jamming the blade even further into its head.

Contrary to what I expected, it began to move, albeit staggeringly. I rushed forward, cutting its head off at the neck and retrieving my sword, head and all.

I heard the tell tale sounds of a dozen sucking wounds, and noticed that the Centaur attacking Terry had been perforated by Fran, though she was no longer paying any attention to that side of the fight.

Richard ducked and moved with agility between four Centaurs, the first one bleeding profusely with blood that wasn’t quite silver. Pale fluids crackled and popped from each of the four, and as Richard rolled between the legs of one of the creatures an arrow punched through the back of its head.

Alice was supporting as she could without the use of explosives, knowing that Richard was too close. The Adder himself was living up to his name, the three tails of his mech suit latching onto the ground and even the biotics own limbs to sling him around.

It was with horror, then, that I realized that he couldn’t keep this up. He was only human, and even as I ran forward to assist, with Fran’s feathers already mid-flight, I knew the blow was going to land. All at once, the fugue state that I was encased in swept away with the shock of my irrational mind, my human psyche shuddered.

One good strike connected, the sharpened claws sweeping through the joint of his armor roughly, hitching halfway. Richard screamed at the contact, even as the second reaping arm came down just below the shoulder.

The metal of the exo-suit wasn’t strong enough to withstand the full impact on its own. Leveraged with the biotics other hand, the arm was suddenly no longer connected with the rest of Richards body.

It almost seemed triumphant for the heartbeat it had before Fran’s feathers punched through its head. The others were pushed back in that same instant, and Alice’s body moved with practiced precision even as she shouted in panic.

Explosive arrows tore into the other two Centaur, heads exploding a moment later.

Before the bodies could even hit the ground, Alice was beside Richard, faster than I could blink.

I was there beside him, seeing Richard howling in pain, writhing as he gripped the stump of his left arm.

“Rich, stay still!” Alice shouted, “you’re gonna be okay, we have you, easy!”

Coldness gripped my heart at the sight, knowing full well that people could bleed to death from injuries like this. Quickly, I sat down next to him, brain faltering for a solution as Alice sought to gain his attention. This man was a friend of mine, a teammate, and he was wounded.

Then, just as suddenly as the panic set in, I felt a cold, clinical apathy begin to kill emotion. Even as it happened, I could feel both myself and Wolvey shudder in disquiet at the sudden shift we shared.

But, it was necessary, this coldness, the Reaper’s Eye knew nothing of emotion, just of the calculated fury and that which needed to be done. With fresh eyes I examined Richard, snarling in pain, writhing even as I pressed my arm against his torso. The weight may as well have been inexorable for him, no motion would come to him. The limb rested not far from us, the wound fairly smooth along the severed portion, though the elbow farther below was cut deeply by the talon that had held it.

However, in spite of the grevious wound, there was a distinct lack of red gore upon the ground. I grabbed a hold of his arm, noting that his exo-suit had clamped hard on the limb above the injury. That explained the abundance of screaming, and why he wasn’t bleeding profusely. Idly, I moved through the pack at my side, a syringe filled with a potent cocktail of painkillers within.

Ordinarily I knew I would ask permission first. But that didn’t matter now, and I was certain that he would rather not be affected by pain. I pulled his helmet from his head, jabbing the needle into his neck and injecting the cocktail.

Within seconds he shuddered and exhaled in relief.

“Fuck.” Was the first thing he said, a cold, clammy sweat trickling down his neck.

“You’re gonna be alright.” Alice said, clutching his head from above, setting him down against her knees. Tears flowed freely from her cheek, “I’m so sorry, I should have been faster.”

“No.” He shook his head, and blearily looked around, “not your fault-”

He froze upon seeing his own severed arm only a few meters away.

“Oh… oh no…” I looked to him, feeling his body shuddering under my hand.

“Rich, hey, calm! It’s okay!” Alice helplessly drew his gaze to anything else, “look at me, okay, just focus on me.”

“M-my arm,” he wheezed, panic, setting in, shock might come shortly thereafter.

“Matt, help!” Alice looked up at me in desperation.

Somewhere there was another voice that called for me to be supportive and helpful.

But why? He’d only lost an arm.

At that, the wailing voice in the back of my mind redoubled, and I flinched, reconsidering the position. Perhaps some kind of comfort would be in order.

“Richard,” I said, catching his attention fully as I pressed just that much more on his chest. He looked at me, confusion and panic still ringing his eyes.

“You’ve lost an arm.” I stated calmly, “but, you’ll live. The cut appears to be fairly clean. We’ll be taking the arm with us, and you may yet have it reattached. For now, I need you to breathe-” I let up on his chest just slightly, “-in and out. Slowly, count in your head, ten seconds, in and out.”

The others looked at me with frank shock at my handling of the situation. The voice in the back of my head seemed exasperated that our bed manner was so awful.

And, apparently to the surprise of said voice in my head, Richard was visibly calming. I carefully applied a sealant to the limb, a foaming liquid bandage that we could dissolve later. Carefully, I did the same to the arm once I was sure that Richard wasn’t about to go into shock and potentially die.

Alice and the others didn’t say anything, Daniel having managed to fend off the horde and cease firing a minute before. I went about the process with detachment, handling the limb with procedures that I’d memorized, or that I tapped into as I went. It was more like following a program than actually knowing why I did these things, but that was enough.

After I’d finished, and checked Richard, I nodded.

And then felt all of my emotions rush back into place with a sharp gasp.

“Fucking hell,” I shook my head as it seemed to spin.

“Matt?” Alice asked with a quiet voice, “you’re scaring me a bit.”

I looked up, seeing the others stare at me in quiet examination.

“What was I doing, exactly, for the past few minutes?” I asked, “I remember helping Richard, but the details aren’t forthcoming.”

As one, they all turned to Daniel.

“Uhhh…” he began eloquently, “well, you did help, but like a robot.”

I waited expectantly for him to expand upon that explanation.

“It’s like you weren’t really… there.” Alice swallowed, “but, nevermind, we can talk about that later. We need to get Richard out of here.”

“I’d like to talk about this now,” Terry mumbled, “that was a trip.”

I shook my head, “Alice is right. Terry, dump the other sensors, we can come back for them. Alice, help Richard pile into the trailer. You three will go to our outpost and get medical support. See if… this can be…” I gestured to the arm, swallowing hard and shaking my head, “we have to check out the other teams.”

My team seemed satisfied that I was back to normal, not flippantly referring to Richard’s severed arm with apathy. That wasn’t something I expected, and it seemed that I was more readily capable of sinking into that state than ever.

Not something I was sure was a good thing.

The three of them quickly moved off, though we wrapped Richard’s arm in something to as to not literally be carrying the arm with us. We had surgeons and robotic assistance on hand, perhaps we could save the limb.

But, that would have to come later, though I was already exhausted. We moved on rapidly, checking out the logs from the Legion. It seemed two other groups had been attacked in similar ways, while many of the others hadn’t seen more than a handful of biotics the entire day.

Our side, apparently, had been hit with a lighter wave than the other two, but we’d suffered far less casualties.

Strauss had checked in, having been a part of one of the groups that had been attacked. There weren’t many casualties, at least three Knights and two of my Legionaries were injured, and it seemed that one of the Knights was dead from having been trampled by the Centaurs sneak attack. Thanks to Strauss’ latent psychic abilities, though, he’d been able to determine that they were present, giving them enough of a heads up to matter.

The one that worried me was Patrick’s team, the source of the second emergency beacon.

He hadn’t contacted in, and we, along with several other splinter groups, were making their way rapidly to their location.

The first responders had already gotten there, taken care of the remaining mobs, but also reported heavy casualties.

Fifteen Knights and six Legionaries were either heavily injured or dead. Lord-Knight Ned was there, one of the injured, and refused to speak to anyone.

Instead, as I found him, he was standing, forlornly, beside a familiar mech.

“Patrick…” the realization hit me like a mule kick to the gut.

“No way,” Daniel moved forward, but stopped as he really took in the scene.

His mech was in disarray, one leg and arm torn free, messily. It must have taken several strikes. The torso itself had been bore into, likewise with extreme difficulty.

Yet, they’d done so, and the ragged, bloody mess left behind told plenty of the story of what had happened.

“He saved my life.” Ned said aloud, “they’d come charging in, a phalanx. They tore one of my Knights in half right in front of me. I was stupid and charged them, they surrounded me.” He gestured to the huge amount of silver gore across the ground, one of his arms hanging uselessly at his side. “They surrounded me, tore into me, but Patrick bowled into the middle of them, battering them with guns. It wasn’t more than fifteen seconds, but he’d killed half of them himself… before they got him.”

I grit my teeth, walking forward to the body of the mech and putting a hand against it. No one said anything as I did so, feeling awash in emotions. Around us, I could see Patrick’s team, raw grief still apparent on their faces.

This was a man I’d had on my side for months. I spent hours talking about mechs with him. He was a friend who’d had nothing but love for what he did.

And now he was gone.

It left me feeling more hollow than in grief. I recognized this, though, similar to when Smith had departed. The grief would hit later, some small consolation that I wouldn’t need to deal with this here and now.

Pushing down the feelings that bubbled up within me, I sought to connect to his mech. Most of the machines, and even beyond that most every Legionnaire, had an onboard system that would allow us to see what they could see. Or their last moments.

It was similar to what had happened to us, though with key differences. The horde was larger, and Patrick and Ned decided to defend to the last. Their combined forces would have made that a trivial difficulty, even as the horde surrounded them.

The problem came sharply and at once. No lucky hit exposed the Centaurs before they were ready. Their presence was announced with trampling feet, claws, and the rending of metal. Patrick and Ned only seemed to realize by chance what was happening, the large group of humans around them suddenly in disarray at the presence of the cavalry charge.

Even full blown mechs were blasted over with the strength and momentum the Centaurs bore. The talons cut deep gouges into the armor, and the bigger problem was the horde that flooded in behind them.

Decisively Patrick and his team began to focus artillery fire on the horde behind the charging cavalry, refusing to give them support. Patrick himself pushed forward, Ned charging ahead. Even in the recording I could hear Patrick swearing and calling him back, but it was too late.

He came in as Ned was about to catch a talon to the back of the neck, one that might have ended the fight right there.

The rest of the battle was a blur, and a not insignificant amount of firepower from artillery fire.

I forced myself to watch until the end. Two of Patrick's teammates had fought to him, and helplessly I watched as they dove into the fray, Ned picking himself back up from being trampled underfoot, throwing himself forward once more in fury.

But Patrick was gone by then.

And, to my growing horror, so too were two teammates that rode forth. The Centaurs must have realized that the battle was going to turn against them, because the handful that remained dragged the mech-warriors kicking and screaming into the horde and beyond.

Wraith broiled in my gut. This would not be forgiven.

I stood, “it seems two others were dragged off. Were their bodies found?”

One of the remaining team members shook her head, “we didn’t find them yet, but… we didn’t look too hard.”

I nodded, understanding the sentiment. Idly I brought up my map, setting it to find ally’s. I sought the two in specific, expecting to find them buried among a mass of biotic parts.

“What?” I tensed, turning my attention to the north west with a glimmer of hope in my chest.

One that crashed and burned an instant later. Their markers were far away, but their lifesigns were flat.

“They were dragged, far away.” I said, “it looks like one stopped part way…” I turned to the scene of carnage around us, making a mental mark on the map in case they continued to move.

“Ned, can you call another Round? We need to discuss this.” I turned my attention fully to the man, who still stood staring at the man who saved him.

His eyes found my helmet, and I found a grim determination set within them. “That I can do.”

I nodded to him as he set off, purpose to his steps as Daniel and Fran sat next to me. They weren’t numb to how this affected me, or themselves really, but they could tell that they would need to grieve later.

We had revenge to pursue.