I found myself lying in my old bed back at the dorms… It was impossible to sleep though. If I really focused, I could hear the screams of Bhaltair's soldiers having magic forced into their skin with rune carving. It reminded me of my father, making me feel as though I was turning into something between him and Bhaltair. Regardless of how true it was, my orders had killed hundreds if not thousands of people. I was too afraid to count, but the nagging curiosity was constant, my memory perfect enough that I could if I wanted to. Not to mention…
[Previous encounters
[Battle of Kasesh: 1
[The Empire of Akus' fourth legion: 8,079 reduced to 5,642]
[The Kasesh Garrison: 800 reduced to 461]
[Tabernath's independent force: ?????]
[casulty estimate
[Empire 30%]
[Kasesh 43%]
[Average unit combat effectiveness 8 to 1]
'8 to 1… 8 to 1 casualties and we still took heavier relative losses… Not to mention they lost who knows how many soldiers to the undead before getting here…' I closed my eyes, feeling like the more I looked at the statistics the less real it all became, the less human I became…
I started to cry. I didn't feel any deep sorrow for them, especially not my brother. My heart didn't hurt and my hands weren't shaky in the least. But I still cried.
The door suddenly creaked open, the Vive and Rune came in, prisoner in tow. "Oh Hey Siya. We're…" Runes' voice slowly trailed off as she walked closer. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah… I'm fine…" I muttered, sitting up and rubbing her head. "I take it you've been showing Hara around?"
Vive folded her arms. "Well, we showed her the places that didn't make her wet herself at least."
'Poor girl…'
"By the way… What the heck is going on in the dwarf workshop? She still thinks that the place we take people to skin people alive."
'Yeah that tracks…'
Rune suddenly hugged me. Despite being in dragon form, I felt so cold that for once she felt like she was warming me up, and with the way her hair stood up, I had a feeling she felt the same. "You know how the dwarves carved a bunch of runes into the castle walls to make it magic resistant? They're doing something similar to a bunch of the knights."
"THAT'S WHAT YOU DID?" Hara finally worked up the courage to speak, full on shouting at me.
"Please don't yell…" I groaned, rubbing my ears.
"S-sorry…"
"It's fine…" I sighed.
Vive grabbed a glass of water from the bathroom before coming back and sitting at the table near my bed. "Siya… Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"Why did you lie to Hara and say she was passed out for a whole week? You should have heard how pissed she was."
One look and she flinched back again. 'Why is she so afraid? Is it just because she can't use magic?' "I was trying to get her to tell me everything I wanted to know without hurting her. If she thought a week had passed it would essentially be the same as if her army had given up and left her, or at least proved them incapable of breaching the wall, making her vulnerable for the foreseeable future."
"So it was to scare her?"
I chuckled. "Yeah well… To be fair, I thought she'd be tough, I mean she's seriously a beast on the battlefield. She knocked Mo out cold with one attack."
They're eyes went wide, but I felt my own face start to sink at their astonishment. "Sorry about that Hara…"
She didn't say a word, probably confused more than ever. Honestly I didn't know why I was apologising either… Or for what… Or why I even could, being in that form…
Suddenly the battle horn blew, signalling another enemy attack and prompting Hara to smile for once, only lasting a second until our eyes met.
I felt a chill crawl across my skin. 'Last time I played it like a game, trying something crazy. I was even excited to see how well my crazy idea worked. My brother's entire squad was wiped clean. People I fought and bled with in training… Many of them had families… And I just…' My eyes narrowed and heated until they dried as the world tinted orange around me. "Rune… Come with me…"
We all made it onto the wall, even Hara. Normally it wouldn't be a good idea to have her even out of a cell… But it didn't matter… Not for what I was about to do.
I covered Rune's eyes as we stepped up onto the wall and turned her around so she was looking at me instead. "Rune… Don't look behind you ok… Just hold onto me…"
She did exactly that and I started draining her manna until my own circuits nearly burst apart at the seams from a complete overload as I channeled every bit of it into a spell I hadn't used since I first learned magic. "A star of the empire… Let's see which is brighter, yours… Or mine…" Of the original army, 30% was killed in the assault, and of the 5k or so soldiers left standing over half were suddenly covered in a blinding light from a massive ball of plasma hanging over their heads. "STOP!" Hara's voice screeched, cracking from behind me.
It only grew larger still as I kept going and the guards held her down so she couldn't move to top me. "You should have stayed behind the Black gate… And I should have shown you from the beginning… You were right to call this place cursed… All the more so to those trying to take it for themselves…"
"Siya… It hurts… I feel cold…" Runes' voice whined slightly, prompting me to almost instantly stop draining her manna, slowly putting what was left of my own into the spell instead as I turned back to the small star I was trying to form.
I closed my eyes and felt the familiar cold and lonely feeling that came with an extreme loss of manna. "To those that live here… And all the more to those that invade…This really is a land full of monsters…"
I watched as the plasma fell down right in the center of their army. They couldn't move fast enough and their screams of panic reached out over the plains before Rokai somehow slashed it in half, protecting the middle, but forcing it to fall to the sides. No magic barrier brought up by the exhausted mages could hold it for long, the best they could do was save those a bit farther away from instant heat death as nearly half of them were vaporized and the very earth was set ablaze.
Fire spread through the forest in waves, and before long the monsters calling it home began to run out of it in a panic and devoured more of them in a frenzied stampede as it all turned to cinder.
Rune's ears twitched as she heard them but I grabbed her head and made sure she couldn't turn to look, quickly grabbing Vive and shutting her eyes as well before the worst of it… Although at that point… I wasn't even really sure why I was bothering… "Rune… Are you ok?"
She clung onto me even tighter. "Mhm…"
I watched as the casualty numbers skyrocketed, again turning countless deaths into simple statistics that turned the tide of war in my favor… My manna circuits were shot, so much so I doubt I could try moving that much manna again without killing myself. I was standing, but only forcing myself to do so out of some twisted form of reverence for the chaos I had wrought.
Hara fell to her knees in tears. I couldn't blame her, what made it even worse was that had she been there she might have been able to cool, or at least slow or shrink it… But she wasn't… Also because of me. I had turned the cutest, sweetest little girl into the power source for a weapon I used to kill thousands after taking away their only defense. I used magic in front of the entire city of Kasesh… I didn't know what I was anymore, but I felt more like a monster than ever before. Even the demons I hunted had now killed fewer men than I had… Regardless of my orders, my own hands had slain thousands.
Even though the sun had set, my plasma burned bright enough for the clouds to light up as though it were day. 'So this is what it feels like… To become death…' My whole body was numb from my circuits bursting apart at the seams, and I couldn't explain it all, but it was once again like… I felt nothing. I could have sworn my eyes met with Rokai's gaze from across the field of ash and char, but still, nothing. "You should have stayed home…"