Lesly was panicking. The danger to the teams had recently spiked. The cause could only be that the last of the easy prey in the plains was consumed. The ghost crabs had to resort to cannibalism to survive. It was not in any creatures nature to consume its own kind, so when humans returned to take back the land they went rabid.

The crabs had started to swarm any team that entered the plains. One was hard enough to deal with as the natural armor they had was both blade and bludgeon resistant. Now that teams had to be prepared for a dozen or more at the same time, they had no way cope. Her little brother was out there and she could do nothing about it.

Lesly was forced to wait, for the sake of her division. It made her furious, why were the tier threes sitting back in the fort ‘commanding’ when the weaker tier ones and twos were being slaughtered in droves. Lesly was far from a peak warrior, but she could swing around a ten pound war pick all day. With a tier three physique and a force multiplier, no tier three crab would last even a minute against her.

“Let me go and get Bruce,” Lesly glared at her commander who was sitting in a stuffed chair behind a desk.

The fort leader, Vin, was a highly accomplished warrior around two thirds of the way to tier four. Lesly hated him. He had an apathetic view of what he called lesser humans. Vin was willing to let them all burn if it cemented his position. It was a mindset that many of the Elders agreed with, which is why he commanded this base.

“Your brother is either dead or on his way back, either way, there is no need for you to go and get him,” Vin said without emotion, “He is resourceful, or so you have told me.”

Lesly ground her teeth. Vin was right in theory, but she did not agree with his logic, “If the Stone Caldera had used that logic, you would have died in the fields around the Plain Caldera.”

Vin’s eyes narrowed. When the ghost crab plague had first started, the warriors of the Plains Caldera had bravely held them off. One day their top warriors including their tier four guardian had fallen ill one night and woken up the next day as crabs. Vin had been the only elite warrior spared from that fate. He had run, getting picked up by a scouting team from the Stone Caldera.

“Watch your mouth spoiled child, I am a warrior, forged in battle,” Vin sneered, “You are some whelp, raised by gamblers with no real hardship. Don’t test me.”

Lesly knew she should let it go and abandon her post to go get her brother, but she was a person who always needed the last word, “You were forged in battle with beasts, and you were broken in battle with beasts.”

She turned and strode to the door. The sound of furniture moving was her only warning. A hand grabbed the back of her head, Lesly tried to resist, but was brutally reminded of the unfair strength difference between men and women. Vin slammed her face into the door, her face proved to be more durable than the door frame.

He threw her out of the commanders office and into the mud. Lesly glared up at him, he had gone to far this time. She slowly got back to her feet, wiping the blood away from her nose and mud from her uniform.

Vin frowned, he was the commander, it was her job to submit, “Do you really want to do this again?”

“Broken warriors can only hurt those who aren’t allowed to fight back,” Lesly grinned, and unbuckled her belt.

The war hammer and knives attached to it fell to the mud. Even if she used them, there was no way Lesly could win. Vin was right when he said she was raised in privilege and he was raised on the battlefield. He had a monstrous advantage in combat experience, however Lesly was raised in a merchant family. She had the advantage in propaganda and information control.

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Lesly continued, “If you won’t go out there and fight at least let the real tier three warriors do it!”

Vin had been a candidate for tier four before the plane caldera fell, and he showed Lesly why, “You arrogant little-.”

Lesly missed the rest, because Vin’s fist caught her in the face. It hurt, but tier threes had sturdy bones. She took a few steps back and glared at Vin. Lesly knew that he wanted her to submit, and took a second step back to avoid a grab at her face.

“You would rather hurt your warriors than let them fight? What is wrong with you,” Lesly yelled.

By now a gathering of people was watching from a distance. None of them wanted to attract Vin’s ire. However, most critically, there were other division leaders. All of them were tier three and many of them were looking with disapproval on Vin.

Vin’s grip found Lesly’s throat and pinned her to the exterior wall of his office. Her feet dangled, off the ground. Perfect. She put the final nail into the coffin of Vin’s credibility.

She teamed up and started begging, “Please, people are dying, we could save them.” Vin’s grip tightened, but Lesly still managed to croak out, “Just because you are too afraid to go, doesn’t mean others can’t.”

Vin’s glare hardened even further, but instead of speaking he simply threw a punch. He was an elite soldier, he did not talk with his target. He beat his target down, then went back to his master. A second punch came.

“Vin! Vin!” The fist stopped just in front of Lesly’s nose.

Vin whirled to find who dared to interrupt him. He saw the crowed that had gathered and realized why Lesly had been provoking him. She had been trying to get rid of him, and it would probably work. Vin glared at the man who interrupted him, he did not trust himself to speak, so he waited for the man to continue.

“A group of four people have just broken into no man’s land with a large number of crabs on their tail.” Vin realized that this could be an opportunity to invalidate all of Lesly’s words, however the man’s next words changed his mind, “It is the team led by Bruce.”

When the option of keeping his position competed against his vindictive nature, his vindictive nature won. He was the man who doomed almost ten thousand people to die, simply because they wanted to be free and succeeded. Vin turned back to Lesly with an evil smile.

“Well, you wanted to take something from me, I’ll take something from you,” Vin grinned, “Destroy all the bridges crossing the ditch.”

Lesly started kicking Vin, she screamed at him and cursed his whole family line. Vin dragged her out of the fort’s wall, following the runner as he went to relay Vin’s order. Lesly wished she had never entered his office, she should have just left. After a minute of dragging, Vin hefted her with one hand around her neck and the other keeping her arm locked tight behind her back.

Lesly watched as the bridges were set on fire. They were designed this way to make it easy to stop the crabs from crossing them in an emergency. There were indeed four people running with almost twenty ghost crabs on their tale. Six of them were even tier three. Lesly could only weep, helplessly as she watched her brother slowly lose ground to the horde.

The one at the front was yelling something. He was a relatively tall young man with black hair. His armor was torn and stained with dirt mud and blood. It looked like he had fought and beaten some of the crabs. Bruce and his other team members looked exhausted, but their armor was whole and unbloodied. Had one person done all the fighting for the group. Lesly hoped he was some tier three in disguise, it would be difficult, but a peak tier three could stall this horde of crabs long enough for help to arrive.

They finally got close enough for Lesly to hear what the black haired man was yelling, “Save your money devil!” Then a few seconds later, “Bastard, I know you can hear me!”

The last gasps of a dying man. It was a strange last word, but Lesly’s hope was rekindled when someone actually responded. A burly man along with two others were running to the canal with a log pulled from the pile meant to build extra bridges. They threw it across the canal, it was a terrible bridge, only wide enough for one foot. At least it was a chance.

The man yelled, “We get your services free from now on!”

Lesly was too focused on what was happening before her to pay any attention to the man she presumed was the called the devil. Her brother’s team ran even faster, but it was not fast enough. Lesly could see that the ghost crabs would reach the team just before they got to the bridge.

Vin saw this to and was fine with letting Lesly have her hope. His grin froze when the one who had been shouting skidded to a stop before charging back at the crabs. He had two knives and successfully slowed down the crabs long enough for Bruce and his two other members to scramble across the makeshift bridge.