Oliver sprinted for the trees, arms and legs pumping as hard as he could with the armor weighing him down.

He didn't much care that he was running down the center of the street, open from every angle. If there was somebody targeting him that wasn't running at least as fast as he was, they'd be ash before they caused him any problems. He'd already seen the napalm fall from the sky, knew that anything it touched would burn, and keep burning.

The dragon was closing deceptively quickly, the inferno in its mouth building in intensity with every passing second. His lizard brain very much did not like running at the giant flaming danger beast, but his survival instinct told it to shut up and keep running. It did.

When he was still about halfway to the tree line, the fire began to pour forth from the dragon's mouth. It was still in front of him, and as flame began to fall, hypnotic in its intensity, he knew he was going to die.

Unbidden, the words of Roger Frost's famous poem ran incongruously through his head.

> Some say the world will end in fire,

> Some say in ice.

The mother from before passed him by, sprinting all out, hair streaming behind her and baby flying up in down in her arms.

> From what I’ve tasted of desire

> I hold with those who favor fire.

The flame now was close, splitting into many separate streams as it fell.

He chanced a backwards glance. The father was a few paces distant, but gaining on him.

The treeline was twenty paces away.

> But if it had to perish twice,

> I think I know enough of hate

Ten paces.

> To say that for destruction ice

> Is also great

> And would suffice.

And just before he reached the trees, the flame touched down behind him with the roar of a hundred jet engines.

But it was behind him, the blast of heat that washed over him merely that of opening an oven on a summer day rather than searing the flesh from his bones.

Seconds later the three -- four -- of them reached the trees together, looked at each other panting, disbelieving, and then as one turned to witness the devastation they had nearly partaken of.

They watched in awed silence, breathing hard, as the world went up in flames. The path they had just taken through the camp was now a towering inferno hundreds of feet wide.

The fire had joined with the one he'd seen earlier, walling most of the camp off from the sight of their vantage point. Nothing had followed them, or could have followed them.

He turned and walked deeper into the trees after a few moments, unsurprised when the husband and wife chose to follow him.

"What do we do now?" asked the husband as they walked further into the trees.

"I don't know," said Oliver. "Wait."

"Do you think the soldiers might -- you know -- find us?"

"Maybe." Oliver shrugged. "Hard to say. We could keep going, but it's dark. I don't want to get lost."

They ended up hunkering down in the trees just barely in eyeshot of the camp, well away from wandering eyes above and below.

There was little said for the remainder of the night. The sounds and light show from the camp had abated for the most part, so it became a very mundane wait for the suns to rise.

Away from the fire, the night air grew chill. The couple wrapped their baby in their own outer layers to keep it warm, but it cried for much of the night regardless.

His armor grew cold to the touch, and he took to shifting it around as much as it could to keep the cold metal off of his skin. It didn't really work, so he settled for being cold.

Nobody got so much as a wink of sleep.

But eventually, rise the two suns of this land did, and with the dawn Oliver crept closer to the edge of the trees, intending to see what remained of the camp.

Improbably, from what he could see, there still stood a good amount of tents and buildings towards the center of camp despite the fire. Many of the peripheral tents had been destroyed, but much remained, much more than should have been possible.

The dragons were gone. He waited and watched for soldiers until his legs had grown stiff and he began to think somehow both sides had abandoned the camp in the nights. But then he saw movement.

He crouched down further, eyes snapping to the figure picking its way between the tents slowly. It was a person wearing gray plate armor.

The figure was soon followed by a couple more, poking around through the ashes that had been the street they'd made their desperate run up.

Somehow, defying all his expectations, and experience, the camp had not fallen to the surprise night assault.

He waited for a few more moments to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him, and then went back and got the couple with their child.

The four of them cautiously made their way down into the camp once more. At the sight of them a couple of the men that had been poking through the tents turned, hands on their swords.

"Who goes there?" challenged one of them, a shorter man to the right of the road. He glanced at his compatriot.

"We're from the camp," said the husband, when Oliver didn't reply.

"Hiding in the woods, were you?" asked the other soldier suspiciously.

Before any of them could respond, the baby chose this moment to start crying again. The effect was instantaneous; the two soldiers relaxed at once, dropping their hands from their swords.

"Yes," called out the mother over the wails, as she tried to situate the baby more comfortably against her hip.

"Right, well. Food's being served in the center of camp, I think they're handing out blankets too," the same soldier responded. "You should head in and get some while it's hot."

"Thank you," called back the woman. The soldier nodded to her, then went back to poking through something in the street.

Oliver trailed along behind as they made their way further into the camp. With the hungry, cold parents leading the way they met with no further challenges. Nobody looked twice at Oliver in his armor.

As they passed towards the center of camp, they saw much evidence of the deadly struggle which had taken place. Having just survived a night-time battle for their lives, the soldiers of the camp were already out and working -- some in full armor, some in partial, many without any at all -- to salvage what they could from the wreckage and lay bodies out in neat rows along the street.

Oliver saw many corpses wearing that strange yellow and blue armor. There were a near-equal amount of gray-plated soldiers, many of whom had been caught off-guard and so wore only a few pieces of armor or none at all.

Privately he was much surprised to see how many of the foreign troops had fallen and how few of the soldiers this side had lost.

But he was not at all surprised to see that the sheer number of civilian corpses -- men, women, children -- far surpassed the military death tolls on either side. And surely many more had burned in the fires, some of which still smoldered in patches as they passed through.

The number of camp followers required to support an army of this size -- washerwomen, tailors, leather workers, smiths, cooks -- was substantial, and these had taken the brunt of the attack. It was, no doubt, a devastating loss.

And from the looks of the parents before him, eyes glazing over, they recognized just how easily they could have numbered among the fallen.

When he realized they were in shock, wandering with no real destination, he called out gently.

"Hey, you two."

They both stopped and looked at him, bloodshot eyes glazed over in ash-covered faces. The woman had dark, curly hair and green eyes, the man brown eyes and deep bags.

They were standing on one of the streets that escaped the fire only to see more devastation, with many of the tents collapsed. Wounded people, civilians and soldiers alike, were being moved onto stretchers as people worked around them on both sides.

"What are your names?" he asked.

They took a moment to respond. Then simple social conditioning prompted the man to respond. "I am called Demos, and this is my wife Kara," he said.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

His wife nodded when he looked at her. "And you?"

"My name is Oliver," he responded.

The man nodded, didn't have a ready response. He paused, then looked back at Oliver. "Thank you for saving our lives," he managed.

"You're welcome," said Oliver. "Where is your tent?"

"It's, ah," the man said, looking around, and then pointing. "That way, I think. It's hard to tell."

"Perhaps we should make our way there?" suggested Oliver.

The man nodded, at at a loss for words. They picked their way through the camp as the suns rose. He wasn't sure why he was going with them. He had his own path to look to.

But it was easier to travel the camp un-halted, since nobody questioned a soldier escorting a couple with a child through the camp, even when that soldier was a head taller than most and to the trained eye clearly unexperienced with his armor and his role.

The age old maxim held true here too: with a clipboard and a hard hat -- or in this case, a couple and a baby -- you can get just about anywhere.

His heart sank as they entered a region of burned out shells of tents and buildings. There were fewer soldiers working here, since the fire had been so thorough. There were human remains in the street, scattered between tents, people who had been caught off guard by fire falling from the sky.

It was impossible to tell who they'd been. The smell was almost unbearable, the stench of a thousand lives gone up in smoke, cloying, sickly sweet, impossible to avoid.

His fears were confirmed as the couple slowed to a halt a few moments later before what had conceivably once been a tent but was now nothing more than a pile of ashes.

The man was searching for words as he stared down at the remains of their life, throat working, but nothing came. The woman was just watching her husband with a quiet intensity, face empty.

Oliver felt his own throat choking up in sympathy, managed a few words anyway. "Perhaps -- perhaps we should get something to eat?"

The man nodded and turned away.

A little while later, they had found one of the food lines that snaked through the camp leading towards one of the galleys. As they stood silently in line, Oliver searched for something -- anything -- to say.

Then a thought occurred to him. There was something he needed to know.

"Demos. Do you have a system?"

"Yeah," said the man, frowning and turning out of him, jerked out of his stupor. "Everybody does. Why do you ask?"

"Right, of course, I was just wondering... what is yours *like*, exactly?"

The man looked confused. "What do you mean? I'm a leather worker. So my Path is geared towards crafting."

"Your... path?" asked Oliver. He'd have tried to feign knowledge more convincingly, but wasn't feeling particularly up to it at this moment.

"Oh, you call them something else? You aren't from around here, are you?"

"Not exactly, no," said Oliver slowly.

"Right, well, when I say Path, I mean – it’s a Maran word for your calling. Your specialty, you know? What you’ve built your system around. Me, I’m a leatherworker. I inherited the family Path, tuned over generations to make us some of the finest leatherworkers in Ware."

A faint smile played about his lips for a moment. Then it vanished. "Where did you say you were from again?" he asked.

"I didn't," said Oliver.

"Ah." His wife was watching Oliver now, face expressionless. The line was moving quickly. They were almost at the building where the food was being served.

"And this system, it runs on mana?" he pressed.

"Well... yes? I know the – the religious types", and he glanced around, lowered his voice, "they call it the breath of God. I think some people call it qi. It's like, life force, you know? I don't know much about how it works. I'm just a leather worker." He huffed a little nervous chuckle. "I feel like I'm taking the state test, here."

"I'm just curious, is all," Oliver said. The wife was still looking at him out of the corner of her eye, trying not to act like she was watching him.

The husband seemed nervous now too. "Yeah, well, if you want to know more about how our system works, you'll have to talk to the magisters down at the capital. Not sure how much they'll tell you -- it's state secrets, after all, isn't it?"

"State secrets?"

"Yeah, you know, how they developed it and stuff."

Then they were at the food counter, getting bowls of steaming hot soup from the person behind the counter, who ladled them out generously from an enormous pot sitting over an open flame on the floor inside the building behind them.

They took their bowls, Demos holding two and Oliver taking one for himself.

They stepped out of line. Before Oliver could open his mouth to ask his next question, Kara spoke first.

"You know, Oliver," -- butchering the pronunciation, as usual, oh-lee-ver -- "it was really nice to meet you. And thank you for saving our lives. But we should go."

She caught her husband's eye, nodding slightly. "Thank you," he said, leading his wife past Oliver.

Oliver didn't bother pointing out that they didn't have anywhere to go to.

"Again, you're welcome," he said. "But before you go, one more question." He paused as they collected themselves to leave. "How do you access your system?"

Demos gave him a confused look over his shoulder as he turned to go. "You just... do? I just visualize it."

And then they were walking away quickly. Oliver hadn't expected that reaction. It was like they were talking about a taboo, or he was asking very wrong questions or something.

Perhaps if this was a society where the system was developed in some way, he could see how it might be guarded. And if everybody had one, then only the people who shouldn't have one didn't have one.

Maybe they thought he was a criminal or something, somebody whose ability to use the system had been revoked, if such a thing were even possible.

Or... his mind snapped back to the first question the soldier who'd initially captured him had asked him. "Are you some kind of elf?" had been the question. Maybe that was a bad thing. Maybe that was what those people were scared of.

Oh well. He might never know.

In any case, it was worth trying to visualize the system, just in case he might have one, despite others' failures to detect it.

For some reason, what came to mind when the leather worker had said "visualize," along with the terms Path, calling, speciality… was a character sheet from Dungeons and Dragons. A class, that was what it reminded him of.

Back in the Marines he'd spent countless hours playing with buddies while they waited around in the heat, so it was easy enough to recall the standard sheet to mind.

He tried visualizing a character sheet. Only, instead of the name of a character, he imagined his own name at the top.

Oliver experienced a moment of brain fog, a kaleidoscope of lights flashing across his vision. He staggered, dropped his bowl of soup.

Seconds later, he regained his balance. And in his mind’s eye he now regarded a familiar-looking character sheet superimposed over his vision. It was present without blocking his sight, in much the same way he might expect to see his nose with one eye yet something else with the other.

He blinked, shaking his head, trying to clear his vision. But it was there, as had been the lights in the beginning when he’d arrived in this strange place, regardless of whether or not his eyes were open. Almost like the aura he’d seen before one of his very occasional migraines.

As for the contents of the sheet – it was like the way he imagined photographic memory would work, where people described remembering every word on a page or every line in a sketch.

Except he couldn't possibly be remembering this sheet, because, A, he'd never seen it before, and B, he didn't have photographic memory.

He skimmed over it mentally, reeling.

His name at the top, stats all the way down on the left, a list of abilities on the right, an inventory entry -- oh, he still had the stuff from the weed whacker in his pocket -- and... a log.

There were two entries at the bottom of the log that stood out.

> Unknown soldier killed. +119 mana.

> Unknown soldier killed. +218 mana.