The darkness wrapped itself around Erich, threatening to choke out the narrow sphere of light cast by the glowstone in his hand. Harold, Kaden, Gwen, and the two Iron Ax martial artists walked close to him, packs almost the size of their bodies strapped to their backs. In the darkness around them, another three glowstones lit up the vanguard, rearguard and major’s group as the twenty or so warriors and mages walked slowly through the pitch black that separated the two worlds.

  Erich couldn’t tell if there were any predators hiding in the eternal night around them. The blackness seemed to drink up all the light from his glowstone, leaving nothing but a faint impression of the endless but uneven plains that spread in every direction. The landscape itself was beyond frustrating. There were enough ridges and outcroppings to make their group watch where it was going, but not enough to serve as proper landmarks. Even though the battle lines were maybe only a day apart, it was common for smaller groups like theirs to become completely lost while wandering through the dark.

  Already, the imperial battle lines were so far behind their group that Erich couldn’t spot them. All that was left was the endless black void and the shuffle and scrape of armored boots against the rock.

  They still didn’t even know what the role of their group was. The Major had brought about ten loyalists and another mage with him, but they didn’t bother to explain how the offensive was supposed to work. Instead, everyone involved just gave the lower tier warriors their packs, expecting that the martial artists from Hollendil would be able to use their mana to strengthen their bodies and carry the entire warband’s food and bedding.

  Erich had the lightest of the packs. He was the only first tiered warrior in their group, the rest had died in the cinderborn attack, and he just wasn’t able to carry as much as the rest of his companions. More than that, the Green River School wasn’t suited for strength and resilience in the same way that the Iron Ax warriors were. Neither of the other martial artists complained despite carrying easily two to three hundred pounds.

  Instead they all kept walking, following the bobbing light of the vanguard as they walked out into the contested area between both battle lines. It felt like they were in another world, and in a way they were. The cinderborn, like the Cothleer elves, weren’t native to Hollendil. Like all worlds, Hollendil had four worldbridges, one located at the furthest extreme of every cardinal direction. Once someone crossed through the mountain ranges that marked the end of the world, they descended into the dark and rocky emptiness that was the hallmark of the worldbridges.

  Here, barrier between dimensions thinned, allowing contact with demons and angels. It still wasn’t easy, but the further you walked from both ends of the bridge, the closer you came to heaven and hell. More importantly, the battles on the worldbridges were the primary source of aether, the substance used to develop and upgrade a martial artist’s image.

  It was part of the reason why all of Erich’s companions had reached the second tier. Combat always allowed a warrior to rob a portion of their defeated opponent’s aether, but most relied instead on slowly accumulating the mystical substance during their daily practice, something that was much easier in the spaces between worlds.

  Except of course, that it didn’t really benefit Erich much. He could feel himself gaining more aether during his daily routine, but the process was incredibly slow. Erich was growing closer to a breakthrough, but even with the bursts he’d earned in the recent battle, it would take him months before he saw any real benefit from his time on the front lines.

  None of that mattered out in the dark. Five days, ten days, or a year, any sort of development was a concern for a later date. Erich wasn’t going to advance to the second tier in the next day or two, so it might as well be an impossibility.

  “Erich,” Harold whispered, leaning slightly to the side in order to put a hand on his shoulder. The other man nodded toward the darkness.

  Fainly, he could make out two sets of eyes just above each other, one yellow and one green. They stared unblinking from the darkness as Erich frantically channeled mana into the glowstone.

  The magical rock grew warm in its hand, transforming the power he fed it into light that pawed helplessly at the night that surrounded them. It didn’t change much beyond illuminating an extra ten to fifteen feet around them, but that was too much for the scavenger that was watching them.

  Before Erich could make out the shape of the monster, its eyes closed and it slipped away into the dark, leaving him and his five companions alone on the featureless plain outside of the gently bobbing lights that represented the rest of their expedition. He bit his lower lip, chewing it gently as he looked from each faint point of light to the other.

  “So,” Harold whispered. “Why do you think we’re out here anyway? So far the only explanation I’ve heard is a sneer and ‘take my pack before I beat you, yokel.’ All I know is that we’re carrying a lot of food and bedding. Even if we were sneaking to the enemy lines and back, I don’t think the Major would need half of the stuff we have with us.”

  “I’m guessing sabotage,” one of the iron ax warriors chimed in. “I don’t know how the Major plans to do it, but if we’re sneaking out into unclaimed territory with this much food we have to be looking for a weakness in the enemy defenses to exploit. There’s no way a group this small is meant to actually take over a section of the wall.”

  Erich pushed another pulse of mana into the glowstone. It was tiring to invest so much energy in the rock, but the scavenger had spooked him. He couldn’t see or hear it, but that didn’t mean that the creature wasn’t out there in the dark, stalking them. At least for a little while, the extra light would keep the shadows at bay.

  “We might be setting up an outpost at a spire,” Erich replied. “I know that they aren’t common, but a group this size is about right for setting up a monitoring post that could be used as a staging area for a later attack.”

  “Why would the Major be here then?” Gwen asked. “I don’t even know why he would need loyalists for that. It would make more sense to send out a full company instead, that way there would be plenty of ordinary levy soldiers on hand to drag out timber and set up barricades. There’s only so much that twenty of us can do, mana or no mana.”

  A throat cleared itself in the darkness, just outside the range of Erich’s glowstone. The six of them froze.

  Barely a second later, one of the loyalist humans, a huge man with a two handed sword strapped to his back, stepped into the circle of light. He looked over each of the martial artists, and Erich could feel the strange warrior’s eyes memorizing his face before peering through his skin and looking at the bones and mana pathways beneath.

  Finally, having cataloged, analyzed and dismissed their entire contingent, the man spoke up.

  “Hold still. We’re almost to our target. Major is coming. He’ll brief all of us, then it’ll be lights out.”

  “Lights out?” Kaden asked incredulously. “This far out into unclaimed territory? Even if we don’t get lost, predators will attack us before we manage to make it a hundred feet. That’s a death sentence.”

  The big human stared at Kaden. For a second, the Green River warrior stood his ground, but it didn't take long to break the loyalist’s gaze, glancing down at the ground while the other man looked him up and down.

  “Orders are lights out,” the loyalist grunted. “Predators? You can fight those. Not following orders?”

  The man smiled, his teeth glimmering in the light of the glowstone. “Not following orders and you fight me. Lot more fun that way, but then the Major would make us carry the packs. Your call.”

  Erich shuddered. There really wasn’t any emotion in the man’s voice. It was like the warrior was discussing what tomorrow’s breakfast would be. He was perfectly okay with killing all six of them right there if they stepped out of line.

  Kaden looked terrified. Erich couldn’t see his face, but his friend had turned as white as a sheet and he was practically shaking.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “He was just asking for clarification,” Erich interjected, trying to project confidence he didn’t feel as he stepped in between Kaden and the more experienced warrior. “If the orders are that we risk our lives for the Major, that’s what we’re going to do. We just wanted to make sure that we understood what the orders were.”

  The loyalist turned his gaze to Erich, and for a moment he felt like he was staring directly into the sun. Mana exploded outward from the other man, half blinding Erich and threatening to push him back a half step as the invisible energy rammed into him like a wild animal.

  But Erich didn’t move. He rooted his feet into the stone and stood his ground, trying and probably failing to maintain a pleasant smile on his face as the warrior loomed over him.

  He had to be at least fourth tier. Demas was fifth tier, and the only time Erich had felt anything approaching the suffocating wave of energy that was currently battering him was when he had watched the Captain practice. The stranger’s power wasn’t quite as overwhelming as Demas,’ and Erich didn’t notice any of the tell tale signs of elemental manifestation coming off of the man, but there was no question in his mind that the warrior could overwhelm him and everyone in their group in a matter of seconds if he wanted to.

  “What’s your name?” The loyalist asked, nodding toward Erich even as he cut off the flow of mana. “You’re awfully resilient for a first tier warrior, and there’s something strange about your image.”

  Erich swayed, suddenly dizzy now that the pressure had let up.

  “Erich Saphir,” he croaked. Dozens of questions raced through his head, only to be swallowed up in the fog of exhaustion and stress left behind by the loyalist’s mana assault.

  “Saphir,” the loyalist said with a nod. “I’ll remember that. If you can survive the operation, someone will come talk to you. A first tier shouldn’t have made it this far. I’ll have to talk to the first sword about you.”

  “Wait here.” The man’s words lingered in the air as he disappeared into the darkness. One second he was looming over the six of them, exuding enough menace to stop a horse in its tracks, and the next he was completely gone.

  Erich looked over at Harold and Gwen, worried. Kaden was still too shaken to respond, but his other companions regarded him with concern.

  “Are you all right?” Harold asked gently. “I’m glad you stood up for Kaden. If you didn’t, I’d have to, and frankly that guy is scarier than the entire cinderborn breakthrough. Still, you have his attention now, and I don’t know that that’s a good thing. The way to survive a war like this is for no one to notice you while you quietly rack up accolades. Candles that burn twice as bright only burn half as long after all.”

  Gwen put a hand on his shoulder. Her usually stoic expression cracked slightly.

  “Be careful Erich,” she whispered. “If they suspect you of being a spy or a traitor, you’re already dead, but that isn’t the only outcome. From time to time loyalists will find a talented individual in Hollendil. They have a tendency to disappear. There are a lot of rumors about what happens. The loyalists might be killing them to eliminate a potential threat, but the most common belief is that they drag them back to Cothleer and force them to live in the human military enclaves there. It’s better than dying, but you’ll never be free to return to Hollendil and your family ever again.”

  His mind flashed back to his time in Hollendil. He didn’t feel anything toward his family, but the four years training in the Green River School were a different story. Elias was tough, but Harold, Gwen, Timothy, and Kaden were like the family he’d never really had.

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” he said with a frown, “I’m the least talented graduate from Green River. Timothy was the only one near me and he-”

  “The difference is that you survived,” Harold replied, cutting him off. “You’ve slain swordsmen of a higher tier than you and this is the second battle where you’ve come out of it in more or less one piece. Even if your mana levels aren’t as high or your image isn’t as developed as the rest of us, no one is doubting your skill with the blade.”

  “If none of us used mana,” Gwen agreed, “you’d probably win a duel with any of us within a minute. You train harder and retain more of the basics than any warrior I’ve seen. It’s only your image that’s holding you back, and the loyalist seemed to realize it.”

  “You’ve got more willpower than Brett or I,” one of two remaining Iron Ax fighters chimed in. “I was standing to your side, not taking the full brunt of that guy’s mana and it felt like I was in a hurricane. I don’t know how you managed to stand your ground against him, but I’m afraid I have to agree. There’s something special about you. Don’t know what it is myself, and no offense but I don’t care. The two of us have lost a lot of friends and we just want to survive to the end of our ten years. To me, it feels like unraveling the mystery of why that loyalist was interested in you might hurt my life expectancy.”

  “Good luck though,” the other Iron Ax, Brett, said with a half-hearted smile. “You seem like a nice guy, but if you’re going to serve as a lightning rod for fate, I’d prefer you do it somewhere else.”

  Erich chuckled, but he couldn’t really shake his sense of unease. Attention only brought problems, and it was hard enough to survive the brutality of the front without adding anything to the difficulty. Gwen patted him once on the shoulder before taking her pack off and setting it on the ground. The rest of their group joined her, and by the time the rest of the expedition had gathered around, the food and supplies were piled in a chest high circle at the center of the overlapping spheres of light created by the teams’ collective glowstones.

  Two of the loyalists stepped out of the circle, facing the darkness in order to ward off any predators leaving another eight of the high level humans as they circled around Major Nettlewisp.

  The elf’s eyes were clear and he didn’t smell like brandy this time, a welcome change from the award ceremony. Erich’s expression lightened slightly as he watched the officer. The major was practically bouncing on his toes, excited to the point of giddiness. That meant that punishment was unlikely, but at the same time, enlisted soldiers knew better than to trust the good cheer and generosity of elves. Their entire race was mercurial, prone to lashing out in fits of magic and rage the second that something went even slightly wrong.

  “We’re close,” the Major said happily. “I can feel it.”

  One of the loyalists, a thin but heavily muscled man standing next to the human that had stopped their group earlier, coughed politely into his hand.

  “Right,” the elf responded breezily. “The mission. I didn’t explain it fully while we were with the column for fear of cinderborn spies. After all, they somehow found the brothel that I was staying in and attacked while I was indisposed in an attempt to assassinate me. That only could have happened if they had informants in our ranks.”

  “But even if one of you is an informant,” he continued, shooting the Erich’s group an overly wide smile, “that hardly matters now. You don’t have any useful information or anyone to inform. All that’s left is the mission, and I can assure you. The six of you will complete your role in it.”

  Harold shifted slightly, and Erich could almost sense how much the man wanted to ask what their mission was, but he thought better of it. Instead, the six of them remained at attention while Nettlewisp pushed onward with his speech.

  “The cinderborn thought that they could kill me while I wasn’t paying attention, and now it is time to return the favor. My informants have found out that a senior swordsman in their army is solidifying his image before attempting to advance to the next tier. Right now, he’s doing this at a spire where he’s closer to the energy of both heaven and hell. For the time being, no matter how powerful of a swordsman he is, his mind will be buried deep in his own image, and he will be unprotected. If we can strike down, we can kill a major asset to the cinderborn army, earning me a good deal of renown.”

  Erich couldn’t help but notice that it would be “us” attacking and “we” would be striking the officer down, but it would be “the Major” earning the rewards. He didn’t say anything. It would be embarrassing for someone to kill him before he could even fight whatever master the elf planned to throw him at.

  “More importantly.” There was no hesitation from the Major. It was like he was talking to himself. The presence of sixteen humans didn’t matter one way or another to the elf. “I am close to a breakthrough myself. The extra aether from killing a high level cinderborn will be enough for me to solidify my eighth circle.”

  Harorld gasped quietly, and Erich couldn’t really blame him. A mage’s circle produced and stored roughly the same amount of mana as a warrior of similar tier. Of course, that didn’t mean that they were equal. No martial artist on Hollendil could match up with a mage of the same level. Techniques were powerful but very limited in flexibility and scope. Before the fifth tier, a martial artist’s abilities were limited to increasing the warrior’s physical abilities. After, they could manifest their mana and change the outside world, but still not anywhere near the scope of a mage’s power.

  An eighth circle mage was strong enough to overwhelm a small army on their own. Erich couldn’t help but think back to the cinderborn attack that had overwhelmed their chunk of the wall. If the Major had actually helped them defend that fortress against the cinderborn, a seventh tier mage could probably have stopped the charge altogether with the help of the levy archers. Hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers didn’t need to die meaninglessly beneath dark and empty skies.

  “First Sword Anders will come up with the battle plan,” the Major finished, flourishing a hand dismissively toward the humans. “Your duty will be to injure the cinderborn martial artist and hold him in place for thirty seconds. I have a spell that can defeat him, but it takes time for the mana to charge. So long as you can tie him down and weaken his defenses, this will be a simple battle.”

  Erich felt his stomach drop. He was new to the army, but by now he had learned one absolute truth. Whenever a commanding officer stated that a plan or battle would be ‘simple,’ the casualties would be catastrophic.