Ryu was unsure how to describe the scene below him. Slaughter was one word for it, but with slaughter came images of the butcher’s cold cellar and the massacre of innocents. The cold, calm dismemberment of the human forces below him was a cruelty without a name.

He knew the darker side of humanity. He knew its ins and outs, knew its callous thoughts, knew its unspeakable horrors. And yet, Ryu was still in shock at the battle below. There, a woman. He watched her sprint away from her crumbling home. Watched her stumble down the street, casting glances backward with a tear-stained face. Watched the serrated spear of chitin spear through her chest.

Dehumanized. That was what one force did to another in this cruel world. Want to turn your people against a rival force? Name them monsters, lie about their misdeeds, and make evil caricatures of their leaders. Ryu understood that, despicable as it was, but he was unsure what to call it when one side was not a human. Or when that same side- the Bugs- had no hesitation to begin with, seeing humanity as empty suits of meat for their spawn.

He spit to the side. Sixteen Bugs, a Brute- one of the enlarged warrior Bugs- in each squad of eight. They were ruining one of the Aristocracy’s small districts, and Ryu wondered where the military was. The fort was close enough, unless… Well, unless a larger force was already besieging it.

He chewed his lip. Up to him, he supposed. It was a shame then that he was naked and unarmed, his storage ring taken by the Bugs long ago.

He hopped from the terrace he was seated on, dropping upon a Bug in a spray of yellow ichor. [Whisper Step] carried him over to a second, and it died under a barrage of blows. Two souls, he thought with a smile. Black smoke leaked from his mouth.

Minutes later, he stepped out from the ruins of a collapsed building, spattered in ichor and bits of carapace. A small crowd of humans cried out at the sight of him, but whether it was from fear or relief, he was unsure. And in truth, it did not much matter. He had a fort to visit, a family to save, and an army to kill.

A better man, a better world. His hopes seemed as foolish as ever, but he dismissed the thought with a weary sigh. Foolish hopes were as valid as any other in the face of death.

He stepped over the corpse of one of the enlarged Bugs, and his arm jerked to its body with a will of his own. Ryu gritted his teeth. “Ender,” he said with a thought. “What are you doing?”

Touch it, brother, his Shard Twin’s voice said. It had changed since his merge with the body-snatcher, gaining an odd flatness. Trust me.

Trust me. Gods, but he did not have time for such things. People- his people- were dying. He touched the corpse with his pale arm. It shuddered. The Bug’s body shrunk. Chitin sprouted from his arm, coating it in thick, black carapace.

Not completely unarmored, then. He suppressed another sigh. One problem at a time. He leapt to the top of another building, heading in the general direction of the fort.

Over one roof and then onto another. Ryu passed statues of gargoyles, spires of stone and iron, and magnificent arches, ignoring it all with the single-minded focus of the desperate. His bare feet slapped against the stone, the wind more of a roar than a whisper in his ears. The closer he got, the more memorable buildings he saw, and the slower he seemed to go.

Suffering was ever a hard thing to ignore. Ryu was a bad man, it was true, but he was not evil. Ignore the cry of a hunted child? Ignore the pained grunts of a man defending his family? Ignore the begging of a mother desperate to defend her son? Such a thing was beyond him, and as the dead piled up, his mind began to fray at the edges. For every life saved, twice as many were lost, simply wheat reaped under the Bugs’ scythe.

So Ryu visited the attackers and showed them to the afterlife, for it was a fate they brought upon themselves. His heart only grew heavier, however.

A man could only endure so much tragedy, and Ryu was sure he had seen enough for a dozen lifetimes. Alas, if only the gods agreed.

***

Emiko was having a rough day. A rough two months, really. First the attack on the Contest, then Ryu’s disappearance, and now the siege of the fort. Damn, why couldn’t she have been one of the ones to escape to the Gate?

No, detach. She schooled her expression, looking down the line. Hard faces greeted her. Cultivated endurance or not, a week of hard fighting was enough to make any warrior weary. When the enemy was an inhuman, seemingly untiring race of monstrous, bipedal ants… Well, perhaps it was enough to say that the bunks were plagued with screams and void of sleep.

“Hold! The wall must hold,” she cried, ripping her longer sword free from a limp Bug and kicking it off the wall. A damn wonder it had even held this long. With the enchantments being used sparingly, the walls were nothing to soldiers that could leap over small buildings.

The crack of one of the fort’s ballistas brought her back to the present. The Bugs did not leap the wall completely because then they would be caught between the wall and the fort. Their flat, empty courtyard was a good killing ground, and any competent commander would rather fight from a wall of their own. Right.

[Parry] deflected a Skill-enhanced blow aimed for her head in a flash of color, and she clenched her jaw. Relaxed. Focused. Calm. A flurry of strikes shredded the Bug in front of her, tipping it back over the wall to join its fallen brothers. Or sisters. Whatever, bastards were dead anyways.

“Emiko, report,” Kaito’s voice said in her heard, the young noble’s voice sounding strained in her ear. Poor guy. The burden of command had only grown on her friend’s shoulders, the fort’s forces having swelled with House Ishida warriors.

“Alive and well, sir. My section of the wall is holding, although some of the men are in need of rest,” she said, the small Comm Stone in her ear relaying her words.

“Good to hear. I’ll see what I can do for your men, but in the mean, clear a part of the wall. Lord Haru has detected a powerful Bug, and he is sending a Master your way.” His words were followed by the soft click of the Comm Stone ending their connection.

Emiko turned to the soldiers beside her. “Clear this part of the wall.” She thanked the gods someone had been intelligent enough to mark the wall into sections, else she might yell until her lungs burst with nothing to show for it.

Her soldiers obeyed as best they could, and she only had to push a few to get them moving. Small victories, but that was all she had to win anymore. The Bugs held off of the empty wall, none wanting to be caught in the fierce duel ahead. Emiko herself only spared herself a final look at the sea of churning black carapace that marched over the bridge before hurrying away.

An armored woman landed in the place Emiko’s soldiers had just vacated, an elegant polearm held over one shoulder. Then the Bug landed at her side, and Emiko allowed her gaze to flick back to the fight in front of her.

Hours. Days. Weeks. She wasn’t sure how long they would need to hold out. All the forces had plans in place for this. Not a soul in the Sixth thought this tenuous stalemate was built to last, yet none had wanted to disturb it, either. The Bugs, however, had moved far more effectively than anyone could have counted on.

Their enemy had scattered assassination attempts and probing attacks between forces, playing on their rivarly and lack of communication. Nobody had realized their moves were the beginnings of a larger strategy. Well, not until after anyways.

On and on, Daisuke and Kaito had told her of the importance of communication, and yet she had to admit her focus had been on her swords. Now here they were, cut off from reinforcements, their communication enchantments blocked or destroyed.

She blocked a sickle-like blade aimed for her throat. Relentless monsters. She had seen with her own eyes the callousness of these creatures, their disregard for human lives similar to the beasts of dungeons and wild places. If only their intelligence matched beasts as well, but the Bugs had at the least a more collective intelligence- if not an outright higher one- than their opponents.

Her blade plunged between a pair of snapping mandibles, and she allowed her worries to fade into the roar of war. Then Kaito’s voice entered her ear once more.

“Emiko!” he said. “Hurry to support the Master Class. She’s flagging, and we have to keep that Bug tied down until someone else can finish it. Remember, your goal is to slow, not eliminate. Don’t die.”

Her Comm Stone clicked off before she could respond, and she turned to the fight between the elites, waving for another soldier to take her place. Chaos greeted her.

Light flared between the two Master Class level fighters in the form of Skills. The spearwoman was gashed and limping, and her opponent was a titan clad in midnight carapace. Emiko watched the woman dodge one strike, block another, and then get crumpled by a third, a frown forming on her face all the while. Stockpiled energy, perhaps? The Bug’s attacks were tame- if not downright predictable- until one burst out with blinding speed and power.

“Damn it all,” she cursed, using [Step] to reach the Bug’s side. Her short sword swept under its guard, while her longsword lunged over it. Both met empty air, and then she was flying, her ears ringing and aching.

Blood. She tasted it. She… War. She was in war. Her body moved without command, snapping to its feet and grabbing for swords that were no longer there. She looked around. There. Emiko snatched her longsword up, spit out pink phlegm, and hopped back onto the wall. A body tumbled down before she made it, the Master Classer’s broken form falling lifelessly. Then Emiko had no time to hesitate.

A blow pounded into her shoulder. Another her chest. Her breastplate dented. The third was a stomp, and it shattered her leg with its damned strength. [Cut] highlighted her blade with ruby light. The sword tasted only air once more. Dead. She hoped the line to the afterlife was short, but intuition told her the god of death had more than his fair share of refugees after the day’s events.

A chitinous arm exploded through the chest of her enemy in a spray of yellow, and Emiko recoiled, her leg giving out beneath her. Infighting amongst the Bugs? It seemed a little late, but small victories were victories all the same. The arm tore away from the Bug, dropping the corpse off the side of the wall. Familiar blue eyes that were more flint than ocean met Emiko’s own. Perhaps the afterlife had room for her, after all.