“Move, move!” the sergeant screamed. “Come on, little piggies, you wanna live forever?”

The boars surged forward, carrying their shotguns, glaives, and swords. Emilia staggered behind, breathing in the heavy animal musk and fear that filled the air.

What the fuck am I doing? Emilia thought as her boots hammered across the metal flooring of the Cage.

The heavy tesseract bag on her back dug into her shoulders and seemed to try and topple her with every step. Not only was it heavy, but it also had another weight, one of responsibility.

Universal mana, so much damn mana that it could power the Cage for days. Well, before the mana purge. What she carried on her back could have cleared out an entire city of mana mutations and monsters. What she carried would keep a over five hundred boars, crows, and human soldiers fighting. She was responsible for that.

What the fuck am I doing!

Only a few weeks before she had been barely surviving in Chicago. Her mother had become a mental case after Integration, her brother dead had died fighting monsters, and her father gone out many years before for a pack of cigarettes. Staying in Chicago meant death, but that was also the entire state of the world at the moment. Death at every corner, but the corner that Maya Sullivan offered was one of good food, good pay, decent equipment.

At the time it seemed the right thing to do. Go and fight for humanity across the devastated world. Bring in the survivors into safe havens, help rebuild it. It had seem on the up and up, that Maya Sullivan was looking out for humanity.

Then came the Flesh Army threatening not humanity, but Maya Sullivan herself. Now, instead of saving mankind, they were fighting nightmare creatures from some hell world. Death cultists cannibals.

The flimsy robes that covered Emilia didn’t seem like sufficient. Nothing like the marsani brigandines that the boars (orcs?) wore. They also carried flechette shotguns or heavy marsani bladed weapons. Weapons that looked like they could kill if looked at wrong. What was she carrying? A small beam pistol and a heavy pack of universal mana.

What the fuck am I doing here!

***

Maya grimaced as she sat down on a chair. Her head was aching and her body still hadn’t gotten rid of the soul chilling cold of the teleporter. Screens floated in front of her, the ragged hole into the Cage held open by the Flesh Army mages, the horrid nightmare creature flopping its way into the gaping hole, and finally her own forces racing to defensive locations.

A great city landscape was greeting the Flesh Army. Buildings rising up to five stories, narrow streets, and a lot of debris and places to hide and fight. Along with that, all the buildings were interconnected, allowing her soldiers to move and reposition as they saw fit.

The Crows were great scouters and raiders, they could fit almost anywhere and had an uncanny ability to fade from sight if they stayed still too long. It was one of those weird natural abilities that some SIL gained.

The Orcs were tough frontline fighters, they would hold bottlenecks, Spartaning up narrow alleys and streets so that the Fleshies couldn’t move too many troops on them at once.

The humans were a mixed bag. Many like Alverez and Canton were purely mercenary in their wants and willingness to face danger. They would hold the lesser valuable targets, even though they had the best unit cohesion and experience.

Her own troops and the penal battalion would be the main back up in firepower for the Ocrs. Although they weren’t as trained and their loyalty still questionable, they would fight. How long and how hard was up to how many Fleshies survived contact.

“You look like crap,” Bell said.

“Takes one to know one,” Maya grinned. “What are the odds on our survival?”

“You really want to know?” Bell asked.

“Never tell me the odds!” Maya shouted, rising to her feet.

“Is she like this in every life and death battle?” Asoltolia asked.

“She’s been worst at times,” Bell replied.

“Those are some tough looking hombres,” Maya said, glancing at the soldiers that Asoltolia had brought along for the fight. A thousand tough boys and girls from the Union, all in far better gear and armed with gleaming deadly weapons

Maya was stuck by the image of ragged barbarians fighting along side Roman soldiers of old. The mismatched armor, most being rejects, cast offs, or obsolete to most SIL in the multiverse, yet top of the line for her pitiful Earth soldiers.

It wasn’t just humans out there, there were crows and the orcs.

“They’re the usual force we send out to fight real battles,”Asoltolia said.

“Unlike the fresh faced babes you sent to fight on Earth?” Maya asked. She scanned Asoltolia’s troops, they were being held in reserve until the main flesh army pushed its way into the Cage. That was if the Champion Horror out there could be killed. Killing high tier critters was not in Asoltolia’s contract. “Who are those?”

Two dozen sharply dressed SIL stood in the back of the gathered troops. They wore long calf length robes that shifted as if it were made of metal. They had the air of elites or pretentious assholes who were annoyed with having to stand about with the peons.

“High-grade Mages,” Asoltolia said. “A bit of failsafe, if we all are going to die, I’d prefer that I get out of here alive. Their service is of no charge, as they’re here to keep me safe.”

Maya nodded, glancing them over once more. They did look like arrogant assholes, but any SIL that had managed to get to high-grade had to step on a lot of lower grade peeps.

She looked out on the battlefield, the two forces slowly merging together across the vast space she had created just for this battle. A rough estimate on the the Flesh Army’s numbers ticked at the edge of Maya’s vision. Once it reached five thousand, she was glued to the screens.

This was a battle she didn’t know how to fight, this was a battle that even Asoltolia didn’t know how to fight. Instead it was a battle that people like Canton, Alverez, and Earth’s people knew how to fight. Even the orcs and the crows knew about ambush, about feints, and how to get their enemies all riled up to follow them straight into a trap.

***

“We’re all gonna die here and be eaten by aliens,” John, an Infantry soldier, muttered as he looked out on the ‘city’ they were defending. This whole Cage was some kind of magical wonderland and here they were trying to fight street by street against a bunch of monster cannibals.

“Just watch your sectors and kill anything that’s not human… or pig… or crow… or weird blue people with fancy ass armor,” the Sarge said.

“There’s also Yosi, the four armed guy, the robots, and whatever Maya Sullivan brought to fight for her,” Private Gomez added.

Emilia peered through the roughly shaped window that was supposed to be some kind of apartment. They were about three floors up and troops were scattered across the building.

She could hear the rumble that was growing louder every minute.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Holy shit,” Johan cried. “Here they come!”

***

“Contact has been made,” Chu said, watching a screen as blue dot soldiers were firing upon red dot Fleshies.

Maya watched as the numbers ticked up to ten thousand. She zoomed in on the massive amounts of the Tarvana surging toward the ‘city’. Behind them the massive bulk of the Champion towered behind them. It seemed to be waiting for something, but Maya was fine with it hanging back.

The Tarvana weren’t all rushing into the city like a hoard, instead their commanders were sending them in by waves, the first wave obtained a foothold, pushing back Maya’s troops while the second wave advanced. Then they begin to advance into the city.

Form what Maya had gleaned, it took an army a lot of training to be good at urban combat. You didn’t just throw people into the meat grinder and expect things to go your way. In fact, Maya wondered if the Tarvana had any training in urban combat. Did the Fleshies have cities?

She pushed away the thought as blue dots fell back and the red dots moved forward. Maya rapped her fingers on her chair, eyes flickering across various screens. There were casualties, there were dead, and they were soldiers being pulled out of the line to the medical areas, bleeding, screaming, and dying.

This wasn’t a kind of fight Maya was used to either. Most of the fights she had been in were personal. She was on the frontlines, as it were. She wasn’t in the command center, sitting and waiting. Peru was the only fight she hadn’t been able to fully engage in, as it was in the Multiverse and not the RSH. Tender had done the heavy lifting there, along with the teleporter.

The fight would have been easy if she could have used the teleporter, but the biggest difference in fighting low leveled humans and robots was higher leveled SIL caused a lot of interference. She hadn’t faced any real interference while fighting Salmanco’s troops in Peru yet here in the Cage the Tarvana were blasting out all kinds of energy, the waves of destructive mana disrupting system tech.

Weapons were shielded form that kind of interference, but the teleporter was a giant fragile machine that if a harsh word uttered at it would cause it to malfunciton. Instead she would have to engage in other methods to stop the Fleshies.

In this case she was putting all her hopes in the basket that Canton and Shanchez were carrying.

***

The number ticked to thirty thousand, all the Flesh Army’s lower leveled troops. That put their numbers slightly more than those Maya had defending the Cage. Normal military doctrine was that about three times as many people were needed to assault a place than were needed to defend it.

That was if the assaulters weren’t able to blow up buildings with a wave of a hand or send shards of metal screaming down narrow alleyways.

It was a new way of fighting for everyone and with only slightly over a month, militaries had to adapt to it.

“We’re got them where we want them,” Canton announced.

As far as traitorous, power hungry military leaders went, Canton was pretty competent. He was liked by his soldiers and held a strong sway over them. His whole reason for being here was weapons, money, and acknowledgment by the 3S Alliance that he was a member.

Maya only wished others would be so open about their goals and wants. If they were, then this whole Flesh Army battle would have been a cakewalk.

Explosions ripped across the lines of the advancing Flesh Army. Clusters of buildings had been stacked with good old C4 and other human explosives. Apparently C4 didn’t work in the Multiverse, not due to the current needed to activate it, but due to some system fuckery it was just inert.

Within the low ambient mana conditions of the Cage, it went boom.

Maya watched the prototype of what she wanted to create, a city for people to live in, work in, and create to help humanity erupt into flaming hot shards of death.

The Tarvanan number ticker flickered downward. More explosions followed and then more. She winced at the devastation, but sighed when she saw the flickering of mana shields.

Canton didn’t give the Tarvana a break, a moment later scores of mortar rounds were falling into their numbers.

“Alright, we’re pushing,” Sanchez’s voice came over the comms.

Maya gripped her chairs arms.

***

“Move!” the Sarge screamed. He carried a railgun and pushed forward with the heavily armored orcs. The towering beasts let out squeals and screams in bloodlust and stormed from shielded and hardened buildings.

Emilia gagged at the sight as she nearly slipped over broken and crushed alien bodies. Flames were still flickering and the sickening sound of metal hitting flesh filled the air.

“Move it, mage!” someone screamed. “We’re dying out there.”

Emilia rushed forward. The entire Cage was considered low ambient mana, not enough to fully recharge someone who was using active abilities. It was her job to try and keep everyone topped up on mana and also provide shielding when it came to it.

She released some of the tesseracts power and hurried behind the troops tearing through the bloodied and confused Tarvana.

***

“They’re falling back again,” Chu said. “At least the orcs aren’t trying to chase them down this time.”

Maya winced at the comment. A thousand of the orcs had charged forward, hell bent on killing the Tarvana, only to come face to face with the Champion. They had been too far out to be helped and within moments they were dead.

“It’s a stalemate,” Asoltolia said. She had stood her ground behind Maya for the last few hours. As the Tarvana tried to surge into the city and the defenders had pushed them back again and again. “They’ve got to be using a lot of their stored mana.”

“They can eat mana stones and regain most of it,” Maya said.

“Interesting species.”

The only good thing to come from the multiple charges by the Tarvana was the mana that was coming off of them as they died. She was already cycling it through the Cage and using it to keep the lights on and to rebuild some parts of the city that was being wrecked.

“This is going to take a while,” Asoltolia said. “Go rest, eat, see to your troops. They need to know their leader is there and is watching.”

“Yeah,” Maya said, groaning as she got to her feet. Her head was still aching as she tried to work around the issue of closing the dimensional tear the Fleshies had kept open. With it open, she couldn’t connect to the Multiverse and chew them all up and spit them out. It was a raw wound that was was slowly spreading.

Another issue was the giant tentacle critter. It had been hours since the battle began, but the Champion had only stood in the back of the Cage, its tentacles slowly waving as if it were trying to cheer on the dying cannon fodder. Surely the High General didn’t kill hundreds just to summon the lazy turd.

Where were the others too, the named Mother fighters and the Undying that Bad Blood had told her about. So far it was only the weak Tarvana, the cannon fodder, that had been attacking. There were a few higher levels among them, but not enough to turn the battles.

Perhaps they were testing her. Seeing if she was worth the effort of sending in their big guys. Maya didn’t know and that worry gnawed at her. She had hoped the fight would have been one and done, but as it were it would appear they were in for hours of more intense fighting.

Her troops weren’t cut out for that. Most hadn’t even been in any real fire fights and the Penals were basically barbarians without any real discipline or order. If this stalemate went on for any longer, things were falling apart.

It was different than defending their own homes and settlements. She couldn’t expect them to hold to the last SIL nor did she want them too.

Ten thousand Tarvana dead and nearly fifteen hundred of her own. The number was due to the orcs rushing out and not following orders, but that was a large percentage of her fighting force already lost. The orc leaders seem ambivalent about it, but loosing anymore would cause them to give up. Regardless of if it mean their gilts would go mad and die.

Maya brought up a screen and began running numbers and comparing them to the maps of the fighting. A lot of Tarvana had died at the edge of the city, but more had just been clustered about, as if they were lures or stupidly out of place. For all the Tarvana were, they weren’t entirely stupid.

The graphs of how much mana had been expended and how much had been collected in various sections began to populate her screens. Maya skimmed through them and stopped.

The mana math wasn’t adding up. She checked again and even as they were gaining a lot of mana trapped within the Bubble that the Cage existed in, the numbers weren’t balancing out.

Mana rechecked the maps of the fighting and then changed the view into mana concentrations. She stopped and gaped at the image.

“Aw, shit,” she muttered then raced back to the control room.

She burst back into the room, breathing heavily. Asoltolia and Chu looked at her in concern.

“What’s up?” Chu asked.

“Pull everyone back, right fucking now. Get them back to the secondary defenses and tell the mages to throw up as many shields as they can,” she cried.

“Why?” Asoltolia asked.

“They’re burning a fucking rune into the cage material with their dead,” Maya said, flicking the image onto the main wall screen.

Although enchanting was out of her ability, due to no mana channels. Maya had learned the basics from Izumi before he left. Enchantments were artificial mana channels, they were engraved into materials using mana and like mana channels they could move mana to create effects. Protection, damage output, or even create a giant ass bomb.

“It’s an explosion rune,” Maya said.

One of Asoltolia’s body guards craned his head at the image. “Its crude, but yes it is an explosion rune. Although something that big will need a massive amount of mana.”

“A giant mana fueled Champion who has been siphoning off mana from the cannon fodder and chewing down bucket loads of mana crystals,” Maya said.

“Canton, fall back. Sanchez get the Infantry and the Orcs and Crows back. Right now. Fall back. Right now,” Chu yelled into the comms.

Maya overrode the comms and spoke directly to the dozen figures who were carrying tesseract packs.

“Mages, Code Red. Full shield, use every drop you-“ Before Maya could finish the screens flashed a brilliant white and destruction mana interference washed them out.

Maya groaned as she could feel the the explosion erupting within the Cage itself. She could feel the mass die off of high-grade Tier 2 components and union tech that was holding the Cage together. The pain tore through her and for a moment all she felt was white hot pain and then there was darkness.