Along the central continent, dozens of small battles, raids, and assaults were taking place every day, with both the Enemy and the Authority sending out their troops in small and large numbers. Each one was trying to push the other backwards, take and hold ground, strike a meaningful blow to the other.
The land was long, and while on a map it looked thin, in reality it was still hundreds of kilometres in width, with all varieties of terrain found within it. The centre was dominated by a mountain range, higher than anything seen on Earth, its peaks steeper and more treacherous than anyone cared to try to summit, its centre a part of the warzone as the two sides dug tunnels around each other, a game of cat and mouse, or, more accurately, mole and mole. Never seeing the outside of the rocky peaks that they travelled through, the warring factions navigated mineral seams, empty caverns, and ancient magma chambers, hoping for secrets, or a way to undermine the enemy, both metaphorically and literally.
North and south of the mountains were expansive plains, warm savannah in the north, scrub and grass in the south, both dug up into trenches and down into the earth. The north, warm and temperate, the wild grasses tall and the fields long and undulating. Like its southern cousin, warfare here was both via underground breaches and overground charges, with scouts mapping entrances and access to the others and raiding at every opportunity.
To the far south, as the continent narrowed, the grassland disappeared and was replaced with a huge upheaval of stone and rocks, for hundreds of kilometres. Nothing grew, there was nothing green. Not even the troops spent much time there.
Creatures the size of leviathans, however, did.
In the north, beyond the planes, a wide network of lakes had formed from the rivers that flowed down the mountains and through the plains. There, there were ingenious underwater and marine habitats formed by the combatants, with those skilled in water magics, or with a natural affinity for it, trying their best to sabotage and sink their opposition.
It was a world at war, but seemingly one not that good at it, for whilst each side continually attacked, trained, and recruited, very little progress was made by either side. Something was missing.
-
Jerah looked around. The Portal had taken them to a large, nondescript room, with bare walls and dark earthen floor, the room itself empty apart from a desk with a frustrated looking official sat behind it, staring down at some paperwork. As the half dozen or so of combatant recruits filed in, the official looked up, his frown only deepening.
‘Yes?’ he asked, expectantly. He was a dark skinned man, though Jerah didn’t bother to guess where he was from. It seemed unlikely to matter.
The group didn’t say anything for a second, each one waiting for the other to self nominate as leader. Somehow, the combatants were some of the less narcissistic of the overall group of recruits, and no one felt like the role was naturally theirs. Eventually Jerah made the decision.
‘We are new recruits. From Blackmoor.’ he said, taking a step forward.
‘I see. Blackmoor? You were due through an hour ago. These Portals aren’t easy to maintain. Where’s your chaperone?’ the official said. The frustration was now clearly directed at the new group.
‘We do not have one.’ Jerah said. ‘We were just told to leave the camp and head to town, where we would be directed on to the Front.’
‘Of course you were.’ the official said. ‘Blackmoor.’ He repeated the word like it had a nasty taste. He shuffled some papers, then put them all down in a very specific spot on the desk, and stood up.
‘You should have been escorted by a chaperone who would then take you through the camp and ensure you ended up in the correct place. However, as is typical of Blackmoor, you have been left woefully unattended.
‘Fortunately, you are the last arrivals for today. Let’s run through a register, and I will take you to your residences going forwards. Welcome to the Southern Plains’
-
Jerah’s religion did not have a comparable version of hell to Christianity’s hellfire and torture, instead believing that non-believers simply faded into non-existance, missing their chance for a second life in the Lord’s realm. Stories from other cults had still managed to fade into theirs, however, with myths of eternal pain and torment, of horrors unimaginable.
The next two weeks felt like the beginning and middle of those stories, as Jerah and his friends were split up into different regiments, supposedly based on the needs of the commanders there, and the recruits skills and abilities. Jerah found himself in a battlegroup with Kara, though they rarely saw each other; battlegroups consisted of multiple hundred people with minor formations within.
He was unsurprised to find that the main contingent of the army was full of competent, motivated people, knowledgeable and skilled; he was equally unsurprised to find that he was not considered one of those people. When his new Company leader, Major Por, asked him for his background, she’d seemed to nearly spit when he’d said he’d been trained at Blackmoor.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
‘You’ll learn on the field.’ she’d told him.
That had both been true and false. He’d learnt a lot on the field.
He’d learnt how to recognise incoming missiles that would explode on impact, flinging shards of ice in all directions that would leave any flesh that it touched frostbitten.
He learnt that some shadows moved when the item casting them didn’t, and that these were Shade Dancers, and they could tear through a group of soldiers in seconds.
He learnt that some of the warriors on his team could summon powers beyond comprehension, near destroying buildings with a single punch, charging faster than the eye could see, and throwing fire so hot that it burned pure white and turned the landscape to char and glass.
He also learnt that he was significantly weaker than anyone else in his team, and this was not something you could work around easily. His attributes had increased as he’d boosted his Warrior Monk class, and he knew he was faster and stronger than he’d ever been; he knew he could calculate and reason things through more efficiently. His Monk’s Chakra, Unarmed, and Focus Skills, some of the key parts of his Class, were at Level 8, a level he had thought respectable, until he was told that most recruits joined with a minimum of 15 in their relevant Skills and several Techniques. This became particularly apt when he joined an attack, and he found himself left behind within minutes. The moment he joined the fray, a small battle in wide trenches where his team of five were now engaged in a battle with four spear holding warriors. Jerah had about three seconds to see what was happening, identify the enemy; dressed in markedly different colours, surprisingly bright and colourful. He’d rushed forwards and thrown out a Chakra Blast that had hit an enemy human square in the chest.
The enemy hadn’t even noticed.
Moments later Jerah was thrown backwards by a shockwave that sent him tumbling out of the trench and back on the raised land around it. No one else had been. He landed on his back, rolling and scraping onto his front, disorientated, unable to move. A short while later he was dragged back up by a member of his team and sent off running back to camp. Mission accomplished. Maybe.
He was sent out on missions repeatedly, finding himself only to be a liability, with no real gain in Skills that would allow him to improve his Class and Attributes, or even just gain a better perspective on his role in the battle. The only benefits were the Missions that came through the CPS, that provided him with some context and occasional new Techniques or Levels. But it wasn’t enough.
He’d not seen Major Por again, instead reporting to a Sergeant Dappa, a man from his own world. There was no suggestion that this would help; in his own world, weakness was not to be celebrated. He was told to train and fight and follow orders. He didn’t need to know anything else.
He fell back on his faith, spending most evenings in reflective contemplation and meditation, enjoying the peace with himself and his God as he had in his first life.
Though he’d never felt this weak in his first life.
-
Kara lay on her bunk, one of the many reinforced and sized for a Baraye like herself in the barracks. She had been delighted to find out that there were many of her species in her new section, and after a few moments of uncertainty, they’d welcomed her into the team in the traditional way of her people; a group pile on wrestle right out in the open. She’d felt something like being close to home for the first time in a long time.
She was in a section full of melee warriors and beserkers, and a good half of them were her kin, in species if not quite in race. Whereas Kara was covered in shaggy dark hair, her fellow Baraye warriors ranged from long haired white and black stripes, to short haired blonde Baraye. She recognised the regions that they were from, though had never visited herself. Nevertheless, kinship came easily.
On the first night she was sat down by the senior members of her section and told the lay of the land. Hers was a group of brawlers and maulers, put together because it was thought that their chaotic fighting style was best grouped together rather than split out into individual teams. They were mainly used for when the Authority was trying to gain and maintain ground, and rarely for raids or rapid assaults; instead ranged units, or stealth and magic classes would undertake that role. If a weak section was identified, once the outer defences had been broken, the brawlers would be sent in to take down anyone left, in a ball of blades and fists and chaos.
At least, that was the idea, Kara was told. The most senior of the Baraye in her section, a sergeant called Tusk, informed her that recently, there were more blitz raids and harassment sorties than there were actual attempts to gain ground. In fact, the army had been at a standstill for quite a while, with no real change in ownership of any ground.
‘It’s like we’re just waiting for something to happen.’ Tusk had said, shaking his large blonde head. ‘Maybe there’s something else going on, I don’t know. Several of us have been here for years. And I mean, here, in this barracks.’
‘So what do we do?’ Kara asked.
Tusk shrugged. ‘We train. There’s lots of time to train.’
So that’s what Kara did.
The Brawler Class was not a difficult one to upgrade, with only a few Skills that it focused on, and while each level in the Brawler Class brought small increases to her attributes, they started adding up. She was a long way behind her peers in the army, but seeing her Skills tick up brought her great satisfaction, as did learning the Techniques that her team were eager for her to learn as part of their training and tactics. Unfortunately she did not learn the magic that she’d hoped for, but similar effects like Fear and Explosive Force joined her repertoire; the first allowing her to cause dread in her opponents, the second allowing her to transfer her kinetic energy into explosive flames.
She explored the Front, an odd network of tunnels that went a hundred metres into the ground and then out horizontally for miles. She was told that this was just one of many ‘Fronts’, and they varied in type, though most did follow this odd, ants’ nest trench warfare style. The warrens were effectively like large towns but in three dimensions, trailing out to the western beaches where the entrances were accessible via caves and cliff crevasses.
Troops not on active duty were expected to support with non-combat roles, and so Kara’s team were regularly on cleaning and cooking duty. Kara didn’t mind; she was training, getting stronger, and had made some friends. It didn’t quite make sense yet, but she had faith that it would. Her faith had gotten her this far. It would keep her going.