Damon marched the company out of base in single file; they formed up around the pyre in battle ring. The pyre had to be made near the gate as the sun was setting and the battlefield was full of dozens of creepers scavenging the corpses of the mingler army. Four of Damon's men were laid out on a crude set of poles over a pile of dried grass and sappy green branches. Two men had gone out and drained a fire trunk for three jars of sap and used it to douse the branches and the bodies. Still whether their comrades would actually burn was uncertain. It didn’t much matter though as far as Damon was concerned; it was the thought that counted. In the deep jungle there would be no funerals just a few words and back to the circle of life with you. Even now chances were these dead would end up in a flyer's gullet.

A wiffle landed thirty paces away and tried to dig its talons into a half-eaten mingler, the beaker that already had its long proboscis deep into the carapace didn't want to share so the wiffle released the mingler and dug into the greedy beaker. The wiffle's massive wings struggled hard to try to carry off the brute but it had taken on more than it could carry. It skipped and drug the thrashing monster towards the pyre its wings struggling to get enough lift.

"Faber, Schroeder take out that wiffle. Mickelson deploy your pike, stick that beaker." The men broke out of battle ring and everyone tightened up their ranks. The monsters' momentum pressed them onto the set pikes.

"Charleston, dispatch that beaker. Hueller, dispatch that wiffle."

Damon watched as his orders were carried out and the interruption was put in order. The men pulled their weapons free of the dead. Damon was momentarily entranced by the hundreds of night creepers that were flying up out of the jungle canopy, taking to the sky. He put the men in night formation their pikes extended and raised over their comrade to the right forming a sharp deterrent. They didn't have much time, they were out in the open and the night creepers would soon be zeroing in.

He looked around the company and tried to gauge morale. They hadn't fared well, four dead, one man without a hand making him unfit for battle, one officer turned graven, one officer overtaken by cowardice and insubordination. He had eighteen healthy and fit soldiers, today he'd lost seven of them. Eleven men, that was barely enough to fill two crews. He needed more soldiers. He was only two miles from Galleria, but this was an EIS mission, these men were dispatched from the capital, getting more men of this caliber wouldn’t be easy. He could raid the Galleria royal guard, but he figured getting imperial paperwork to requisition them for a secret mission was going to take some time.

He thought of taking this skeleton crew into the deep jungle. They were going up against something greater than whatever had possessed Blain. He studied the faces of his men they were all half hidden in shadow. He could only guess they were stewing over the difficulties of the situation. He had some experience with the graven they were immortal, but not impossible to kill. A bolt in the brain was usually enough to do the job. Of course they had reflexes that were twice as fast as any regular man, but if you cracked open their skull they usually died. If you were more adventurous a blade stuck in the gut would puncture their parasitic heart. He’d killed three graven that way, watched them die with disbelief written all over their faces. There was something about being immortal that made death an unexpected surprise.

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He’d put a bolt in Blain's head; he’d stabbed him in the gut; he’d torn out his eyeball; the thing wasn't fazed. He looked at the darkness settling over the jungle, Blain was out there somewhere and if the bastard came at them right now with nothing but his bare hands, Damon didn’t know if the bastard could be stopped. If he couldn't kill Blain, what was he supposed to do with a queen? That was only half the problem, before he could take out the queen, he was going to have to get through Landrey, if he was anything like Blain that was going to be quite a chore. Things were getting out of hand. Right now, he’d like to have a couple hundred royal guards and another couple hundred rangers. He figured his men would come to a similar conclusion.

Damon cleared his throat. "Two days ago, you didn’t know me. You didn’t know the man next to you. You came here all alone. You're not alone anymore. You know me. You know all the men here. We came here as strangers, but now that's not the case. We all love our mother and our father, but we had to leave them behind, because battle is our father and death is our mother. That's what makes us brothers. You may not like your brother, he may be a vile piece of shit, but he will give his life for you, and you will give yours for him. That is what these men did. Our brothers died so we may live. They died so our children may continue to draw breath, so that our wives will be able to sleep behind strong walls.

Our mission is going on to be hard, but look around you, look at these monsters, they were hard, they were brutal, and look what we did to them. This field is full of the mingler dead there has not been a mingler battle of this scale in twenty years. You are the empires elite. You were chosen to be here for a reason that reason has not changed. We are the thin line between our homes and these creepers. We can’t go home with a job undone. We kill and die so that our people can be cabinet makers, so that they can be merchants, artists, mothers. If I could resurrect these men, I would, but I can't, I can only finish what they began... Will you join me?"

The men looked around, they shifted and considered. Damon stared them down, in unison they replied wearily. "Aye."

Damon sparked his lighter and lit an oiled rag. He set it on the grass and stood back to watch the fire eat at Galadriel's cloak.

Damon looked over his company. He'd hoped his words might firm up their resolve, but these men would carry on regardless. They were too ashamed to admit they were scared; to admit their choice to become royal guards had been a big mistake. That was why soldiers weren't sent out one by one. They didn't fight for themselves; they fought so they wouldn't be shamed by the man next to them. He looked at each of their faces. He tried to remember his first brother the child of his mother, but he'd had so many brothers since then that their faces all just ran together.