Vin could do nothing but stare at the horrific scene before him, his mind refusing to come to terms with what he was seeing.
It was a massacre.
Monster and human corpses alike dotted the meadow, and the once green grass was now stained red with the blood of the fallen. Just from his current position Vin could easily make out what had to be at least fifty or so dead bodies, the Earthers clearly caught entirely unawares based on the lack of weapons he could pick out.
If the other sides of camp looked the same, the death toll had to be in the hundreds.
There were a few dozen exhausted looking men and women walking up and down the field of corpses, checking for pulses and occasionally shouting for someone to help them as they stumbled upon someone still clinging to life. He got a few tired glances thrown his way, but everyone was clearly far too busy to bother worrying about his sudden appearance.
Vin stood there frozen for what felt like an eternity, before the sounds of pained moans snapped him out of his trance. Darting forward, he honed in on the noise, dropping to his knees beside a man he’d thought was dead like all the rest. The man had a toolbelt strung across his waist and no weapon to be found, marking him as some sort of crafter.
“Renewal!” Vin hastily cast, focusing the life mana on the giant gashes something had carved deep into the man’s chest. Vin held his breath, waiting to see if he’d made it in time. After a few seconds he let out a relieved sigh as the horrific wounds slowly began to close before his very eyes, and the unconscious man’s moans quieted down.
Before he’d even finished healing him however, Vin’s high focus helped him pick up on another sound, this one the quiet, shaky sobs of someone else hidden among the field of bodies.
Gritting his teeth, Vin healed the first man until he was confident he wouldn’t bleed out before jumping up and sprinting over to the new noise. This time the person was still conscious, sobbing quietly as she held her hands firmly against a deep puncture in her leg. Vin barely remembered anything from his first aid training, but based on the amount of blood she was losing, whatever monster had attacked her had clearly struck an artery.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, giving her a reassuring smile as he dropped down and placed a hand on her leg, covering her hands with his own. “Renewal.”
At first, the woman looked at him in a panic, clearly in some state of shock based on her wide eyes and rapid sobs. But the moment his mana got to work, slowly stemming the flow of blood and knitting her flesh back together, she calmed down, taking a few shaky breaths.
“What happened here?” Vin asked, hoping to get some information while her leg healed to a state he felt comfortable leaving her.
“Monsters,” she hiccupped, leaning down and wiping her nose against her shoulder. From her still rather clean looking project Ark fatigues, Vin pegged her as a member of the second wave rather easily. “I’m an Herbalist, and I was coming back to camp after collecting some plants in the designated safe zones, just like I’ve done a dozen times before. But suddenly, out of nowhere, the field was filled with monsters!” She paused, shaking slightly as she took another haggard breath. “Before I even knew what was happening, something that looked like a deranged anteater stabbed me through the leg with its snout, and I went down. The only reason I survived this long is because some of the herbs I’d collected were coagulants, and I was able to slow the bleeding down. I… I had to watch them kill everyone…” she said, her eyes dulling as she scanned the field of slaughter. “…they’re all dead…”
“Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Vin said soothingly, trying to place himself in front of the shocked woman’s gaze and distract her from the scenes of carnage. “We’re going to get you fixed up, and you’ll be good as new, alright?”
The woman nodded, her eyes still glazed over a bit. Hearing people run up behind him, Vin turned to find his teammates standing there, staring at all the bodies with horrified expressions.
“What happened?” Shia asked, a hand over her mouth in shock.
“I don’t know for sure… But I think wave three came early,” Vin said, a sense of foreboding creeping through him.
“What? How is that possible?” Alice asked, finally jumping down from Alka’s arms and rushing over to the woman’s other side. “The general said we’d have twenty days between waves two and three! We should still have four days left!”
“I know what he said, but look around!” Vin snapped, gesturing toward the blood-soaked field. “These monsters apparently came out of nowhere, just like what happened before wave two. What else could it possibly be?!”
“The two of you can worry about the why later, right now you have more important things to focus on,” Alka said, her green eyes narrowing as she swept them across the battlefield. “I’m going to go hunt down any leftover monsters that might still be out and about and make sure it’s safe. Scule, you and Reginald should help Shia find any wounded and patch them up if you can.” Before even waiting to see if her suggestions were followed, Alka took off, unsheathing her new blade as she began her hunt.
“She’s right,” Scule nodded, completely serious for once as he hopped onto Reginald’s saddle and took off across the battlefield. “Come on!” He called back over his shoulder. Shia hesitated a moment longer, as if she still had questions she wanted answered, before finally racing off after them, already casting Sense Life and pointing out specific bodies.
“I’m going to help her back to camp, and then try and figure out what happened,” Alice said, checking to make sure the wound was mostly healed before throwing the woman’s arm over her shoulder and standing with a grunt. “You should go find Spur or Myers and see where they could use you the most.”
“Good idea,” Vin said, checking to make sure Alice had the woman before taking off toward camp.
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It had been nearly two weeks since he’d last been here, and the place was barely recognizable. The dozens of pitfalls Alice had dug to ensure their survival of the second wave had been not only reset, but drastically increased in number and scattered all around the camp perimeter, along with what looked like the remains of a handful of traps he didn't even recognize. Vin first thought it was a tad overkill, but based on the number of monsters currently lying skewered or blown up within the traps, he instead began wondering if she hadn’t prepared enough.
Gone were the hastily built wooden walls around camp, replaced with chiseled stone bricks held together with mortar. These new walls were lined with outward facing spikes, many of which currently supported bloody monster corpses, testifying to their efficiency. There was even a main gate fit with thick, wooden doors and a small guard tower right beside it.
Vin imagined both must have looked rather impressive before some hulkish monster had smashed into them, sending it all crashing to the ground.
Darting through the now open gate, Vin paused to take in the scene before him. There were far less corpses within the camp walls, but a hell of a lot more destruction. The handful of wooden buildings that had been constructed since his last visit had been utterly destroyed, as though some sort of out of control team of elephants had smashed their way through everything. Thankfully, it appeared like most of the newer buildings were made from a far sturdier form of stone or concrete, and while they were chipped and missing chunks here and there, just about all of them were still standing.
People wandered about in a daze, taking stock of the damages and checking on the few corpses here and there. Based on everyone’s haggard and weary appearance, the battle couldn’t have ended all that long ago. Vin scanned the crowd until he spotted a familiar face, blinking at their strange looking outfit.
“Shredder!” He called out, running over to the warrior. “Where’s Spur?”
Shredder had been busy overseeing a handful of combat classes as they began cleaning up the monster bodies, but his head jerked up at Vin’s voice. “Vin?” He asked, first blinking in shock at the sight of him, before taking on a far more familiar scowl. “Where the hell have you been?”
Shredder was wearing some sort of full-body armor made out of gleaming silver scales. Or at least, what few scales weren’t currently covered in blood were still gleaming.
“I came as fast as I could,” Vin said, wincing at the venom in Shredder’s voice. Logically, Vin knew he wasn’t in the wrong. None of them had any idea this monster attack was coming early after all. Even so, it was hard not to feel guilty after seeing the sheer amount of death and destruction all around them.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t fast enough,” Shredder spat, glaring at him. Despite the vitriol in his voice, Shredder looked more exhausted than Vin had ever seen the man. Even more so than the battle before wave two.
“I know, I’m sorry. Where’s Spur? I need to know how I can help.”
“Where do you think? Once the battle wrapped up he grabbed a good chunk of the combat classes still capable of fighting and rushed off to meet the third wave. If there are any monsters lingering over there, there would be a thousand more casualties unless he clears them out first.”
“So that is what happened?” Vin asked, hardly able to believe it despite the horrifying scene he’d run through to get here. “The third wave came early?”
“That’s certainly what Myers thinks,” Shredder said, letting out a deep sigh that seemed to take most of his anger with it. “Honestly, I’m glad to see you didn’t die out there. If only because we’ve lost enough people already. When you left and we didn’t hear anything for a few days, people started wondering if you were in trouble. After a week passed, most of us just assumed you were dead.”
Vin couldn’t help but wince as Shredder leveled with him. How the other Earthers had to feel about his long absence hadn’t even occurred to him until now. He’d bounced from one important thing to the next, never stopping to even consider if there was some way to get a message out to Spur letting him know that he was alright.
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning on vanishing for that long again,” he promised. “So Spur is over at the fragment center?”
“Unless he changed his mind, yeah,” Shredder nodded. “I decided to stay behind, both to try and help clean this place up a bit before the new arrivals showed up, and in case any more monsters attacked.”
“Alka is sweeping the perimeter for them now as well,” Vin said, glad he could at least be the bearer of some good news.
“Your creepy ghost friend?” Shredder asked, looking slightly relieved at the news. Clearly he recalled her incredible display of monster-killing skill from the previous battle.
“Yes, but she’s a golem now!” Vin said, already taking off back toward the destroyed gate. “I’ll explain later!” He shouted over his shoulder.
Not even the confused look on Shredder’s face could lighten his mood, and Vin felt a lump in his throat as he ran back out into the field of bodies. He spotted Scule and Reginald struggling to drag a limp body over to Shia off in the distance, who was busy healing a crying man with what looked like bone spikes of all things jutting out of his side. From the looks of things, Shia had quickly taken control of the situation and had organized the scattered people looking for survivors, pointing out and directing them to bring her all the wounded so she could heal them.
Part of him wanted to sprint out to Spur and figure out just what the hell was going on, but healing the wounded was more important. Yet just as he went to run over and join Shia, a gruff voice called out behind him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Halting in his tracks, Vin turned around, blinking at the semi-familiar sight. An older man with rough stubble and wiry muscles was squinting at him as though he’d lost his glasses during the battle. With a start, Vin realized where he knew him, thinking back to the time he’d spotted someone administering first aid to some rather puffy looking individuals.
“Frank?” Vin asked hesitantly, not sure if he had the medic’s name right.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Frank grunted in a shockingly accurate dwarf impression. “Why are you still here? Your friends and I can handle the wounded. You should go make sure that idiot colonel doesn’t get himself killed out there.”
“I have healing magic,” Vin argued, sweeping his arms out over the field of bodies. “I should be here!”
“You gotta learn to triage, kid,” Frank said, turning and spitting off to the side. “Losing a few more people here won’t change much. Losing Spur, Myers, and Phil? That’s a blow we won’t recover from.”
“Those three can take care of themselves!” Vin argued, grinding his teeth as they wasted time fighting instead of healing people.
“Normally, sure,” Frank nodded, watching Vin like he was some dumb kid who just didn’t understand the way the world worked.
“But not after Spur went and painted a big old target on the back of his head."
not something Spur anticipated.
750 favorites (absolutely mind-blowing), it is time for the sixth official fragment selection poll! As always, if you would like to have a say in one of the future fragments that Vin and the team end up traveling to later on in the story, feel free to cast your vote! (And a super quick thank you to my Edregon Advisors who answered the call on our Discord to help me brainstorm suggestions on such short notice haha. Ember, Pingu, Spiritualdab, Waffle, Frank, and Doink, your guys' efforts were much appreciated!)
Discord
Which of these fragments would you most like to have incorporated into the story?
