The battle continued for the rest of the day, neither side relenting until the sun crossed the horizon and night fell. Throughout the rest of the fight, Lucien only went for the Stone Soldiers– which were already distracted by another opponent. Oftentimes, the storm soldier also perished soon after.
His weapons clanked against his armour as he headed back with his battalion. He had not shied away from looting from his dead comrades. He now had a quiver attached to his back, a collapsed bow hanging from his belt, and a dagger beside it.
Lucien got a strange look from the soldier beside him and shrugged, "It's not like they can use their weapons anymore."
The soldier shook his head and walked away. Back in their tent, their numbers had nearly halved. It was no longer cramped, and he could sit comfortably. It took him a moment to realize how morbid that line of thought was.
The Stone army suffered a sizeable dent in their numbers, but the Storm army had paid a hefty price for that.
'At this rate, we'll lose, and I'll fail the trial.' He scoffed. Something needed to change. But he couldn't do it alone.
He sighed again as his shift came up and made his way outside to stand guard. The enthusiastic soldier from before joined him a moment later, having survived the battle.
There was a hollow look in his eyes; they were red from crying. His hand trembled on the pommel of his sword.
'Someone close to him died,' Lucien suppressed a sigh and turned to him.
"Who did you lose?"
The boy yelped in surprise, snapping his head towards him. He stared at Lucien for a while before speaking, "A fri-friend of mine. She, uh, she stumbled and, uh, they sta-stabbed her."
"Ah," He breathed out awkwardly. He didn't know what to do! He'd never had to deal with a grieving person before.
"Yeah," He stared into the hole, "That is what we're here for, to die for our people, right?"
"We don't need to," Lucien said, glancing around. "Listen, I may have a way to end this war, but I need your help,"
He perked up, his eyes shining a bit brighter, "You do?"
Lucien nodded, "it's a bit…distasteful, but it should work."
It took him a while to explain it to him, and by the end of it, he seemed visibly upset with the plan.
"Why would anyone even think of that?" He frowned, shuddering in disgust.
"It's what we need to do to survive." Lucien shrugged.
"But desecrating the corpses of our comrades…"
"As I said, distasteful… but necessary." He stared at him, "Are you willing to put aside your principles to live or would you rather die on this hill?"
He looked down at his feet, his facial muscles tensing in turmoil. He clenched his fists, and for a moment, Lucien thought he was going to hit him.
Sighing, he looked up at Lucien, "Alright, I'll help you. But if it doesn't work, I'm taking you in."
"Sounds fair." With any luck, he'd be out of the nightmare by then anyway.
They continued the rest of their shift in silence, and when morning came, they fell into formation again and the battle resumed.
This time, too, Lucien made no move to save his fellow soldiers, even when he could have. He would only attack once the stone saints grievously wounded their opponent. It was during this that he received his first memory.
He had found an elevated part of the land and hid himself there amongst the remains of the stone soldiers. Sheathing his weapon and readying his bow. Lucien waited there patiently, observing the battlefield. There, a dozen meters away, a stone soldier was locked in combat with one of his own.
Notching an arrow, Lucien closed one eye. Below him, the stone soldier was overpowering the storm soldier. Falling to one knee, the storm soldier barely caught her overhead slash on his blade.
The stone soldier pressed harder, a web of cracks spreading across its victim's blade before cleaving through it.. Purple blood drenched the stone armour as it tore into his shoulder
Lucien knew he didn't have long before the lightning fell and slayed the stone soldier, so he let his arrow go. High above, thunder roared, and a bolt of lightning fell from the sky, heading straight for the soldier. Before it could hit the soldier, it suddenly diverted towards Lucien's arrow as if drawn in by an unseen force.
The bolt of lightning hit the arrow, but it didn't push it off course. Rather, it seemed like the arrowhead absorbed the bolt of lightning. The arrow began glowing a bright purple, and Lucien could swear it became faster.
The arrow tore through the stone soldier and the storm soldier before lodging itself deep in the ground. A massive hole replaced what used to be their head, and lightning still arced within.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast: Stone Soldier.]
[You have slain a Dormant Stormforged, name unknown.]
[You have received a Memory: Stone Spear.]
Lucien stared at the spot in silence for a few seconds until he found the will to move. That bright light had to have given his position away; he could not stay there. He managed to slip away just as two stone soldiers walked over to his hiding spot and began poking around.
He'd have loved to take a look at his first Memory, but doing so in the middle of a battlefield was tantamount to death. Some distance away, he noticed the excitable soldier pull away a corpse towards the hole where a pile had already begun forming. In the far horizon, the stone giant had come a lot closer.
Lucien sighed as he unsheathed his sword. He doubted he'd find a spot as good as his last one again. It was a shame he had to give it up so fast.
He stared at the metal of his sword, somehow it could absorb, attract and redirect pure lightning like nothing else. He knew that metals were conductive by nature, but not to that level.
'If only I could take one of these weapons back to the real world.'
He shook his head and began looking for his next adversary; with any luck, he might just get another memory.
Lucien grunted as he pulled his sword out of the stone-like flesh. He barely had the energy to move anymore. His armour had been drenched in purple blood; only some of it was his own.
He had not gotten any new memories or echoes, even though he had killed his fair share of nightmare creatures. The young soldier walked up to him as they marched back to the tents. He was drenched in even more blood than Lucien, and a look of disgust was plastered on his face.
"There's enough bodies." He said quietly.
"Are you sure?" Lucien asked, glancing back at the mound of corpses.
"Yes."
"Then we must begin tonight," He glanced around before grabbing the young soldier and bolting off. In the cover of the night, they managed to remain undetected as they lay beside the pile of corpses, pretending to be dead.
Lucien only got up once he was sure there was no one nearby. The young soldier frowned as he stared at one of the corpses.
"How do you plan to tie them together? We have no rope."
"We won't need any rope," Lucien said, grabbing the nearest pair of bodies and unsheathed their swords.
He thought back to what his mother had taught him about the human body, specifically the skeleton. He remembered how both the forearm and the lower legs had two bones running parallel, although their names escaped him.
He lined up the arms and legs of the two bodies, laying them flat against each other, "Here, hold it like this."
The young soldier did as he was told and held the limbs in place with a look of confusion on his face. Lucien picked up one of the swords and raised it above the overlapped limbs, and stabbed down, skewering through both limbs.
The boy visibly flinched, his mouth wide open, "This is sick and wrong."
"You can whine about it after we get out alive," He said as he stabbed through the other pair of limbs. He pulled the bodies behind him and held up the arms of the second corpse.
"What are you waiting for? We don't have any time to waste."
The young soldier sighed and pulled out another body, and so the gruelling work continued.
Arondil slammed his hands on the table, "How long are we going to keep sending our soldiers to their deaths?! This battle has been nothing but loss after loss; nothing we do affects them."
"There is nothing else we can do," Marlene said, "Sacrifices are necessary in a war, Lord Arondil. You'd do well to remember that."
"Sacrifices?" He yelled out incredulously, "Sacrifices have meaning; this is nothing but a meaningless slaughter! Have you not seen the sheer number of bodies piling up out there?"
At the edge of the table, Elder Ronovan opened his mouth, "Some things are beyond us mortals to understand. We must trust in the Great Mother's plan."
"Screw the plan," He scowled and stormed out, startling the two soldiers standing guard outside. He walked away from the settlement and towards the bloodstained battlefield. He stopped a couple meters away from the mound of corpses.
He let out a deep sigh; the others likely knew something he didn't, and it was driving him crazy.
"Are you sure this will hold? What if it just cuts through their arms?"
"It only needs to hold for a few minutes, that's all I need."
Arondill frowned. He knew one of the voices; it was the soldier he had talked to a day ago. But what was he doing there?
With a hand on the shaft of his halberd, he walked towards the voices. But nothing could prepare him for what he was about to see.
The two soldiers from before, the quiet one and the young one, sat amongst the corpses. A trail of bodies lay between them, connected by stabbing their limbs with their own swords. The quiet one was in the process of connecting the arms of one body to the legs of another, while the young one held the limbs aligned. They had frozen in surprise at his sudden arrival.
His polearm whistled through the air and stopped an inch away from the neck of the quiet one.
"You have one minute to explain before I take your head off."
The quiet one opened his mouth to speak, "Right, uh, you see we were just-"
"We're trying to redirect the lightning left behind by the goddess to kill the stone giant." The younger one interrupted.
The quiet one sighed, "And since our blood attracts and conducts electricity like nothing else, this was the fastest option."
"So you think desecrating the corpses of our brothers and sisters is acceptable for your survival?"
"Yes," he looked up defiantly. "They're dead, they might as well help us from beyond the grave."
"What he means to say," the younger one cut in, "Is we're just charging to our deaths everyday, nothing is changing. At least with this, we have a chance to win."
He had no retort to that; these soldiers were being sent to be slaughtered everyday, and the others didn't seem to care. Were they really to blame for taking such drastic measures?
"So we either defile a few corpses for our survival, or we charge in against their superior numbers day after day and hope we don't die." The quiet one said. "That's a pretty easy decision for me."
Arondil sighed, "Go through the ribcage horizontally, this way the blade won't cut through the flesh and the structure can hold for longer."