Sable moved as easily as she killed.
Of course, some of her chosen targets had decided not to stand out with their unit. Maybe they’d assumed they could fool her, or maybe they were simply unaware of their status, or maybe they were in a gray-area, and had simply hoped for the best, or maybe they were just too scared to move.
It happened.
No matter their reason for delaying the inevitable, however, those final stragglers were always survivors, and they put up more resistance than the rest had.
None fought back, and fewer still attempted to run, but their auras rose up to defend them against the Black Flag nonetheless. The crescent sword of death, coated in a sheen of darkness, cleaved through aura, and armor and bone, and landed with a satisfying thud into spurting rib cages and shattering spines, until the last of the stragglers was dead, and there was only one place left for Sable to look.
There, in the center of the whole thing, was one survivor left, standing amidst the bodies of his fallen unit.
Sargent Dalmation stood there, bearing – as he always had – the cruel necessities of leadership.
To his credit, he let none of this show. He held a brave face. But, standing alone as he was, and with no where to look except at the Black Flag – he looked almost lost.
----------------------------------------
Before he died, Sergeant Dalmatian made certain that the prince’s head was turned over to the Lieutenant in good order.
He seemed almost more concerned about it than his own impending death. Tradition, Cas had heard it called.
He took the head, had it identified by members of the Prince’s guard – for the prince was rarely seen in person – and, respectfully, presented it to the Leuitenant who took charge as the new commander of the prince’s army.
And then Sargent Dalmatian was killed, and Sable left.
Then… life went on.
Sara reported herself to high command. There, she also took the opportunity to put in a good word for Cas.
The Luitenant, an older woman with tan hair and a sleep deprived expression, signed some papers absentmindedly and handed Cas a bright badge that identified her as an Auxillary.
“It’s a tremendous honor, wear it with pride.” The woman attempted to give Cas a rousing speech about the importance of the position, but the attempt fell flat after the first syllable, not helped in the least by the fact that the woman didn’t even look up from her paperwork as she handed over the sigil.
Cas took it without a word, affixing the bright ribbon. It looked delicate at a glance, made from many thin petals, and it seemed to have a brightness independent of its color.
“Now, if you would please leave us, Auxiliary Cassandria. I have some sensitive matters to discuss with our dear Psychic Sara.”
Cas turned to leave when a hand stopped her.
Sara, turning quickly and leaning in, hissed in an urgent whisper. “You’re supposed to run aura through it!” Turning back to face the Lieutenant.
Cas, nodding, did just that as she slipped underneath the low entrance of the Commander’s tent.
Item Equipped!
Identification Badge
Role: Auxiliary
Faction: Regalia Ember
Unit: Trinket Ember
Commander: Lieutenant Enda
Line leader: Chief Auxiliary Barka
Charisma: ± 24
Cas blinked at that stat modifier. Plus or minus twenty four?
Curious, she pulled up her character sheet to find the relevant status completely unchanged.
Then again, loudly identifying with a faction was a polarizing action. She wondered for a moment how many people there were in this world that would kill her on sight just for wearing this little ribbon.
A tremendous honor indeed. Cas wondered if it was worth it, however.
Just then, she felt that familiar phone-line ringing against her aura. She picked it up to find Sara’s thoughts on the other end.
The stream of consciousness exploded in Cas’s awareness like a flashbang, and was gone just as quickly. Cas shivered with a tingly feeling at that. It didn’t hurt, but apparently voice-mail was just as annoying over psychic links.
Cas headed down the hill, curving her path to dodge around lively conversations and curious strangers.
Thankfully, no one minded her any attention. Everyone in sight had the same, tired expression that had confused the Lieutenant, and none seemed in the mood for conversations that weren’t strictly necessary.
The command tent had been built atop a fresh hill. The old command post was still in view from here.
There was a small unit of soldier’s there, wading through the litter of monster corpses as they worked to retrieve the prince’s body and to salvage whatever material they could from the remnants of the camp.
Apparently, little of value had been left in tact, At least, nothing valuable enough to be worth digging through ten feet of corpse litter, for.
Massive steel carts were rolled down the hill by manpower, rocking over the uneven terrain of bodies and almost spilling the launder of tarps that had been stuffed into each one of them.
Tent materials were apparently in high demand, but not for their original purpose. The dome tent was being cut apart, with glowing swords, being scrapped in order to create orderly sheets that the dead would be shrouded in.
The army took great care to lay out the bodies of the dead and to shrowd them in whatever scraps of cloth were retrievable.
Apparently, white was the preferred color for funerary garb. The grave-preparers went to great lengths to procure any white cloth they could for that purpose, and where none could be found, they at least ensured that the faces and hands of the dead were covered in a white material that had been cut for the purpose.
She could see priests of sorts, standing at the head of the new cemetery, reading something in a somber voice to his departed pulpit.
It was in Cas’s instinct to offer help, whenever she saw work being done, but she stopped herself at the last second.
It just didn’t feel right to touch any of those bodies, now that it was too late. The space seemed a holy one, and she doubted any of them would want a monster to be the one that buried their bodies.
She couldn’t blame them.
A sudden storm of melancholy took over Cas, and she headed off to a distant corner of the camp for her own purposes.
Sara called her early in the evening, when the meeting had concluded. Cas, for whatever reason, hesitated in picking up, and Sara didn’t call her again.
----------------------------------------
The next morning was a beautiful one. The stray clouds of yesterday had grown, spreading out into a beautiful vista of floating mountains that reflected the amber rays of the morning sun.
Of course, Cas could hardly appreciate the color values, but it was a beautiful sight nonetheless. Although, she was beginning to forget what a sunrise looked like. The base colors were easy enough to remember, but the subtle hues and refractions of sunlight as it scattered through the clouds was a difficult image to grasp onto.
“Ahhh! Good morning, Cas!” Sara stretched tight fists up towards the sky, back arching as she worked a kink out of her spine, letting the discomfort show in a squint of her eye as she twisted her lips into a guessing posture. “Ooooof!” she worked the last kink out, dropping her ams to swing by her side as she looked over at her resident Auxillary. “Good news, I’ve managed to get you a position as an Auxillary in the Psychic’s platoon. That means we’ll be working together,” she cheered, pointing a finger between the two of them. “Did you have a good night?”
Cas was stunned at the sight. She almost didn’t recognize Sara. Somehow, the woman had managed to perfectly do her hair and makeup, despite crawling out of a camping tent – that alone kept her on-brand at least. The rest of her outfit was entirely different, however.
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Having abandoned the dress, Sara now wore the same livery as the standard foot-soldier.
Dark cloth armor – red, Cas guessed using context clues – hugged tightly around her torso before draping down into an armored box-skirt on four sides.
She wore riding pants underneath, in a mis-match of accessories, and the collar of the outfit, which came just up to the base of he neck, revealed an overflow of chain-mail which seemed just too large to be confined by the limits of the outer cloth.
It all looked… second hand.
Then again, Cas – remembering herself – looked down at herself.
Her clothes… had survived surprisingly well, thanks to her aura. That was to say, they were mostly not in tatters. As the various shrapnel holes had been small enough for the fabric to close back around. The blood stains weren’t even noticable, considering they were all camouflage by other bloodstains.
Cas took a sniff of her coat. It seemed fine, when she knew it shouldn’t have been. The entire outfit should have been petrified into a giant scab, by this point, but it all seemed still usable somehow.
Probably something with the aura.
And then Cas lost her train of thought somewhere, left staring at her right shoulder where a particularly dense splotch was still seeping through the fabric, and highlighted the stitch count of her coat quite distinctly.
“Hello?” Sara brought her back from her musings. “Earth to Cas?”
“Right,” Cas blinked, realizing she’d been late to her end of the conversation and rushing to say the first thing on her mind. “I was just realizing you got your uniform.”
“Oh!” Sara gripped the torso of her outfit with an embarrassed expression. “These aren’t mine, really. They’re not even tailored to my size! And you should know I’d wear a different uniform as a Psychic. No.. I just had to make due with this because all their spare uniforms were in the old camp.”
She gestured with a nod in the direction of the monster graveyard. Cas didn’t ask for clarification as to what happened to the clothes. She doubted any were in a condition to be worn… or to want to be worn by anyone.
“So where did you get that, then?” Cas asked, gesturing to the foot-soldier’s outfit she was now sporting.
“I just got it from one of the bodies,” Sara answered, pointing to the graveyard at the bottom of the hill.
“What!” Cas exclaimed with an intense amount of shock.
“Yeah!” Sara answered with equal enthusiasm, “You just missed out. They were distributing uniforms and spare accessories from last night. That’s actually what I called to tell you about, but you seemed busy.”
Cas, blubbering, cringed away from her friend as she clarified: “That’s not what I mean!”
“Oh! Well! That’s fine. I think your clothes are serviceable enough, anyway. I doubt we’ll be seeing any combat. The Lieutenant just ordered a march directly back to base this morning, and that’s all tamed territory.” she said, pointing towards the sunrise.
Sara seemed in high spirits, although they became more guarded as she noticed Cas continually staring at her.
“Is something the matter?"
Cas, shaking away her preconceptions about wearing dead people’s clothing, decided to leave the matter for now.
“It’s nothing,” she answered. “It just seems a good night’s rest has done you a lot of good. Not that I’d know anything about that,” letting a bit of jealous dejection come into her voice. Sleep sounded like a welcome break from reality, right about now.
Sara brought a hand to cover her lips. “Oh, dear. I forgot you don’t sleep. Did you spend the last night ok?”
“I took watch,” Cas shrugged. “Barka seemed happy enough to get a volunteer.”
Sara nodded genially. “Yes, and how was that?” in a prompting manner.
Again, Cas could only muster a shrug. That seemed to be the only emotion she was capable of nowadays. “Dunno. Just kind of stared out onto the field, I guess.”
“Heyyyy! Are you the new-” A loud voice called out, waving from the head of a group of figures heading their way.
A psychic tingle that was felt all over suddenly silenced them, however.
Sara sent a hard glare at a set of approaching figures until they changed trajectories with hesitation. “Maybe we can talk later!”
The figures turned away, continuing their casual conversation and only sending occasional glances back at them.
“Come inside,” Sara said after a bit, holding the flap of her tent open.
Inside, Sara smoothed out a patterned rug and sat down on it. “Here,” she pointed to an open space opposite her, directing Cas to take a seat while she rummaged through a bag at her side.
Cas sat down, sitting up to look curiously over Sara’s shoulder as she looked intensely through her satchell. Cas could tell when someone was preparing to have a serious conversation, and swallowing her own feelings of trepidation, decided she’d go along with it. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.
“Ahh, here it is!” Sara sounded a bit annoyed at the object for having hidden itself so successfully.
The interior of the tent was lit diffusely by shaded sunlight, more than enough for Cas’s eyes to see every detail of the thing.
Which made it all the more surprising when she couldn’t even muster a guess as to what it was.
It was a small, square plate, about the size of Sara’s palm, with a brilliant surface that scattered light and a frame of what appeared to be intricately carved ivory running along the borders.
“What is it?” Cas pointed at the widget, raising an eyebrow in concern.
“Pattern square,” Sara answered, waving further questions away as she ran her aura into it. Cas saw the woman’s aura extend over the square, flashing over it like a flame as she equipped the object and… presumably did something with it as she held it up and stared into the hypnotizing pattern that formed in the center of it.
After just a moment, Sara lowered the square and sent a concerned glare over the edge of it.
“Ok, so, just to be clear,” Sara prefaced, “when you said you didn’t have any combat training, you did also say you’d never been in a fight. Is that right?”
Cas shook her head. “Not until I woke up on this-” she paused, looking over her shoulder. “Not until I woke up on this continent,” she corrected herself. She was so used to being able to see through solid objects, it was difficult to remember that anyone might be eavesdropping on the other side of a tent-flap.
“Then,” Sara continued, an increasing note of horror in her voice, “I take it that means you’ve never seen a person die?”
“No!” Cas said, almost insulted. “What kind of place do you think I lived in? And I told you numerous times, I was a scholar!”
Sara didn’t seem to understand it, or believe it if she did. “Well, surely, even scholars have seen some death, where you’re from. I mean, you’ve never picnicked over a battlefield? Even from a distance, you must’ve been able to see some people dying!”
“Who picnics over a battlefield?” Cas said, sounding worried.
“A murder on the street?” Sara suggested.
“No!”
“A public execution?” Sara, increasingly desperate to draw a positive answer from the woman.
“We don’t even have those anymore!”
“An assasination?”
“No– well, actually, there was Reagan-”
“Yes!” Sara cheered.
“-but he survived.”
“Ugh!” Sara ugh-ed with all the disappointment her independent heart could mustre.
“What is wrong with you?” Cas said. “What does it matter anyway?”
Sara paused, palms together and took a deep breath, now in full retreat of her expectations as she exhaled and pointed her hands over at the woman. “You’ve at least seen animals die, right?”
Surprisingly proud not to have disappointed Sara on this topic, Cas answered happily: “yeah, by the thousands.”
“What animals?” Sara asked,
Abashed, Cas answered. “Mainly wasps… and mice.”
Obviously, to tell by Sara’s expression, that had not been good enough.
“Well, surely you’ve seen large animals getting killed. You know, the kind that make a fit and scream and wrestle with their killers.”
“No,” Cas answered, deciding to tear this bandage off quickly, and sounding even disappointed in herself.
“How?” Sara said incredulously. “I distinctly recall you mentioned eating cows at some point!”
“Well, yeah,” Cas admitted, “but I never actually saw them being killed,” Cas said, waving her fingertips in a sweeping posture. “That all happened out of sight somewhere! Again, why does any of this matter?”
Sara let out a deep sigh, dropping her head to collect herself as she stared down at the patterned rug between her legs. “It’s nothing,” she said at last, bringing her head up.
“No,” Cas interrupted her, sterner now. “You don’t get to grill me for twenty questions and say it’s nothing. It’s obviously something, so why don’t you just tell me what it is so we can deal with it?”
Again, Sara deflected a bit. “It’s nothing that’s your fault,” she said at last. “I guess it’s just something that I didn’t want to be.”
“What?”
Sara stared directly into Cas’s eyes, light eyes looking directly “I… can tell you’re in shock, Cas,” sounding genuinely sad. “I’ve never seen a case this bad.”
Cas resorted to sardonicism. “Yeah… obviously. I just saw a hundred people getting brutally murdered yesterday, and I sat by and watched, thinking I might be next in line. Why the hell wouldn’t I be in shock?”
A sudden bout of anger came from Cas knew not where, and it had turned her voice into a growl by the time she ended her sentence. It surprised Cas to find that nugget of emotion buried inside of her. After all, what could she possibly be angry about?
Scared made sense, or maybe sadf, but anger?
Her musings were then broken by a surprisingly soft sensation.
Sara’s hand slipped around her own, and the grip it maintained was soft despite Sara’s hard look. It was a hold that was easy to escape, and therefore comfortable to remain in.
“I know,” Sara said, speaking without any particular emotion. “I… I felt bad the first time I saw somebody die too, Cas, but…” here Sara stopped for a long time, and Cas waited for her to muster the courage to say the difficult words.
“You shouldn’t be cold hearted, Cas, but you can’t be weak, either.
“Those people that died yesterday. Would you have blamed any one of them, if they didn’t risk their life to save yours?”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Cas answered automatically, the question sounding ridiculous on the face.
“Well, you have to understand that they’re humans like you. They had the same feelings, and hopes, and the same sense of ego that made them think everything was their responsibility. And none of them would think of blaming you for not saving them.”
“Well, yeah,” Cas’s voice shook before she got it under control, unable to discern why such an obvious statement made her want to cry. “Why would they blame me? I’m sure they had better things to be thinking about.”
“That’s not the point. Whether they had better things to do or not, they refused to blame you because it’s not your fault. You’re not responsible for their deaths, and you should respect the dead enough not to place the burden of your own self criticism on their souls…
“You understand that?” Sara repeated.
“I do,” Cas’s voice was shaking even more now.
“Good,” Sara answered.
“...”
Sara continued after an interlude of silence; “Cas?”
“...”
“You know how the prince taught you to percolate your aura?”
Cas nodded, not trusting her voice.
“If you do the same thing with me, I can show you my mind..”
Cas obliged, and Sara spoke. Although, she needn’t have. Cas could tell what she was thinking before the words made themselves apparent.
Sara’s emotions were well guarded, and nothing came through except that exact statement, as well as the confirmation that it wasn’t a lie.
Cas just nodded again, having to settle for short, repeating nods in between shaky breaths. The flash of anger burned out, and she started remembering now, the intense worry and fear she’d felt back then… when Sara would live. She began to feel those emotions, more intensely than her dread deadened nerves had been able to muster at the time.
Sara, feeling that, withdrew her hand. “I think I’ve said everything I can about the matter, but… I have one last thing… if you’ll hear me.”
Cas assented with her silence.
“Do you remember, when you told me my traveling party had died, and I said I didn’t care because they were bad people?”
Cas nodded.
“Well, the people here aren’t bad people at all… most of them, anyway. But they are of a certain type, and you absolutely must not be seen looking too affected by something like this. That’ll be taken as weakness. However, I will be casting silence around this tent for the next few hours. I’ll make sure no one disturbs you,” Sara’s voice whispered like a ghost through the closing flap of the tent, and suddenly Cas was left alone with her thoughts.
She felt her body collapsing, face curling into her hands and tears slipping between her fingertips as she sucked in a deep breath and remembered the young man getting his face split open, and the dead look in the girl’s eyes as she fell, all the brave and sad faces – all the human faces that had been cut apart.
She remembered that young Unari in the village she couldn't save, the one who’d gone into the desert to die. Why had she forgotten him? She also remembered the feigned smiles of the one she’d saved too late. And she also remembered Kari, the one she’d left behind.
It didn’t make sense. They were strangers to her.
But Cas cried for them anyway.