0:091 on the 81st day of Fall in the year 1208
I was going to die today. Probably. I stood in a line of men in the gleaming armor of the iron-skin legion. I was only four rows back from the front so I could see the demons lined up across from us through the gaps. Demons come in many types but most resemble giant bugs of one sort of another. I could see the kith, which are car sized mashups of an ant and praying mantis with burning scythe claws, the morgeth, bus sized beatles with several centipede heads like an insectoid hydra, and the sekteth, which are horse size wolf spiders with sixteen bladed legs. I could even see a few of the orialiths, millipedes bigger than a subway train rippling with eerie rainbow light. The demons were an army made of nightmare monsters and they had come to kill us all.
A loud boom came from behind followed by two bright flashes of green light above us. The signal to advance. The sound of metal armor was deafening as, at once, the century began to move. My legs felt heavy, like I was stepping through deep sand, but I pushed forward in lock step with my row. I couldn't see the rest of the army but I really hoped they wouldn't send us out alone. We had chosen the battlefield, a rocky valley between two sheer cliffs. We marched down a slope as the demons came up to meet our advance.
For a moment I lost my nerve, I had no business being here. I'm a crafter not a soldier. Despite filling out the ranks in a dozen or so battles in the last few years, this was my first time being sent into the thick of it. My clumsiness was going to get my whole decade killed. Then I squashed all thoughts and tried to remember my training. Every boy in Cinder, and many of the girls, started some sort of combat training at the age of ten. A rebellious stray thought reminded me that I had always been a terrible fighter, in this life and on Earth. I had a cushy engineering job at a defense contractor in my last life and had never even been in a fight. In this world, a place the locals call Root, I still fought like an inexperienced kid. At fifteen, they push out anyone that can't cut it, which definitely includes me. Anyone not in the army after that point serves in the reserve guard. That was five years ago and my family is still disappointed. Of course, in times of need, they will still call up anyone who can hold a spear which is why I'm here.
A loud screech came from the demon lines and once again I squashed the urge to run. Then I saw our first attack. Far above us there were dozens of boulders falling toward the demons. Earth element mages would make them light as a feather and toss them up, only for them to regain their weight and come crashing back down. Just as they were about to strike there was a loud crack in the air and the demon lines were covered in fire. The cannons and fire element mages had struck. Then the rocks struck and I could feel the ground shake with the staccato impacts. I let myself hope for just a second that our mages had managed to wipe them out before the first Morgeth burst through the fire and came straight in my direction.
"FORM THE LINE!" yelled Heldin, the century commander.
He had a horn that used air magic to make his voice carry. My mind flashed to learning to make them from the vocal cords of a howler beast, a kind of gorilla bat that hunts in packs in the southern jungles. Gods I wish that was what I was doing today. Anything but this. I pulled my attention back as the first row planted their feet, interlocked their shields, and held their short spears overhand at the ready. The row behind them also had spears at the ready but no tower shields. Instead they held a short crutch shaped brace that fit into a notch where the first row's shields overlapped. The third through fifth rows, including me, all held long spears like lances in our left hands and the left shoulders of the men in front of us in our right. The century was a hundred men in all which meant twenty in a row. The result was a wall of sixty spears about five feet in front of our shield wall.
As the Morgeth approached other shapes emerged from the fire. Kith are largely immune to fire, at least at the temperatures our mages can field in battle, so it wasn't surprising that most of them made it out. I sharpened my focus as one of the morgeth's heads swung down to bite at the first row. The forest of spears lifted to meet the attack and the monster was pushed back. Then the body struck the front line.
"YIELD AND SURROUND!" yelled the commander.
Starting with the back row the men began a shuffling step to pull back the line. They pulled on the shoulders of the line in front which started their movement while keeping everyone in formation. We had drilled this and a thousand other maneuvers until we all dreamt of them in our sleep. The goal was to lure in and eventually surround a large enemy. When it was fully trapped the two ends would join to reform the front line. We didn't make it that far. When it was my turn to move, my foot slid back into a narrow crack in the rock. I pulled on the shoulder of the man in front of me to catch myself from falling but then he lost his balance and fell to his knees. This weakened our part of the line and I could see the formation start to come apart around me. The morgeth was getting closer and I moved to get back into position, only to realize my foot was stuck in the crack.
The men to either side of me were already moving back and gaps were opening where they really shouldn't. The guy in front of me backed up around me as I worked with both hands to free myself. I got hit with the butt of a spear as the second row in front of me pulled back to throw it. It didn't hurt through my armor but it must have messed up his aim as he cursed loudly after. I finally got my foot free only to look up into the open maws of two of the morgeth's heads. I could see fangs that dripped with a strong acid. I was out of formation in the second row and with the spear wall disrupted the monster could attack the shieldbearers at will.
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Sure enough, the two heads struck in a blur of movement. One of the shieldbearers in front of me was knocked to his back and another had his shield torn from his arm. Then I was out in front. I fumbled for my sword while trying to shuffle back. Then the monster stepped on me. One of its gigantic legs hit me and I was flat on my back in a world of pain. The last thing I remember was it picking me up and tossing me into the air. Like a shiny silver coin I flipped end over end until everything went black.
***
2:125 on the 81st day of Fall
I woke up in a hospital tent. It was lit with several braziers and I could see row upon row of injured soldiers. None seemed critical though, perhaps those were in another tent with the life mages. Magic healing could get you back on your feet in a day instead of a month but it requires physical contact so they usually put the patient wherever the mage is staying. A quick self check told me I wasn't too bad off. I was having a hard time breathing from what was probably a cracked rib and my ankle was purple and swollen but I had lived. How had I survived being thrown like that?
Then I remembered one of my lessons on the standard set of enchantments in the iron-skin armor. I leaned over and pulled my helmet from the pile of gear stowed by the bed. The iron-skin was half the reason why the Cinder citystate was still around this long into the demon war. It was basically mass produced, spring-steel, full plate armor. I turned over the helmet to see its enchantment more closely.
The standard set was built around strength and weight reduction. There is a kind of goat common in this mountain range whose natural magic allows them to jump or fall off of cliffs by removing all of their mass at the last second before impact. Using certain parts of the goat in the armor, along with its core, we can imbue the weight reduction effect into the armor.
Normally it is dialed down to a modest 50% weight reduction in the armor itself to save magic. This means that we can make the armor with about fifty kilograms of material but it only weighs about twenty five kilograms. Root has their own weights and measures but, as most of my science knowhow comes from Earth, I think in kilograms and meters. Pretty nifty no matter how it's measured. Additionally, there is a trigger built into the helmet that activates on high acceleration to unlock the full effect of the enchantment for a second or two. It takes exponential quantities of earth mana to reduce weight over time so it burns through the armor's reserves. Sure enough the orange glow, which is actually a separate enchantment to display the core’s reserve level, was about as dim as it gets before failing outright. No weight means no momentum. No momentum means that stopping movement takes very little energy. It's basically the difference between throwing a wine glass and throwing a styrofoam cup. It is intended to prevent concussions from helmet impacts but today I used it like the goats to negate fall damage. That was a lucky break.
I exhaled in relief. I would live another day. I rested in the cot for a few score measures trying to take shallow breaths before someone came to check on me. The field nurse pushed gently on my chest, two ribs cracked but not broken, and my ankle, a bad sprain. He eventually pronounced that I could recover with the rest of my decade. He wrapped my injuries, gave me a cane, and kicked me out of the tent. It was when I left the medical tent that I saw my decade. Nine men were hanging about in the yard waiting for me.
"Theod! Good to see you're up and about." called Peradeo, the decade leader.
His inflection implied that he could care less if I had died of my wounds, as long as he didn't have to wait around any more. It occurred to me that the nurse had been in a bit of a hurry. Was I cleared just so Peradeo could get on with his day? I hobbled my way to the waiting group. Everyone in my decade glared at me the whole time.
"Report!" Peradeo said, in his crisp command voice.
"Sir! Theod Aegis reporting." I said, straightening up as much as I could. "I sustained two cracked ribs and an ankle sprain. I'll be on minimum duty for at least two tendays and on light duty for five."
Maybe I could cut that down with magical healing but I wasn't going to tell him that. I could see it wasn't what he wanted me to say regardless. I knew he wanted me to recount how I had screwed up in the battle. Doing this in front of the group and in the middle of the busy camp was meant to make me feel shame. All I felt was happy to be alive so jokes on him.
"During the yield and surround maneuver, my foot fell into a crack in the rock." I said. "I lost my footing and disrupted the formation. Things just fell apart from there."
My tone was resigned. I looked around at the others. I could tell they were angry, even furious at me. Mostly though they were exasperated. We had spent hours drilling that maneuver together until we all had blisters. We did it so many times because I kept screwing it up one way or another. Okay, maybe I felt a bit of shame.
I had been assigned to this decade a year ago after my last one finally got rid of me. They had always seen me as a weak link and so had pushed and pushed for me to get better only to give up in the end. As I looked around at the group their hard eyes reminded me that this group's strategy was to break the weak link so they would get assigned another one. There had been hostility and occasional abuse from day one.
"To be clear," he said. "your chest and your ankle - your left ankle - have been injured and any harm to those areas could prolong your recovery?"
He wasn't looking at me. Instead he was looking around at the others. I had a bad feeling about this.
"Yes, Sir." I said.
"Very well, you are dismissed." he said, turning and walking away.
The others lingered for a moment with nasty looks on their faces before dispersing. I tried to think of a way to avoid the beating I knew would be coming tonight but I couldn't think of anything. The forward base was locked down tight and we were here for another few days at least before heading back to Cinder. If they didn't get to vent their anger tonight then it would only be worse tomorrow night. I gritted my teeth and began my hobbling walk to the mess tent to get some dinner.
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