Bertrand did actually have a few more questions to ask, but none of them were really that important and he had a post to man and the medic also had an autopsy to perform. So he just said thanks for listening and that all his questions had been answered.

And then after a few more pleasantries were exchanged he set off, he planned to just walk straight to the wall and relieve the light infantryman who had replaced him for the night shift.

But his plan got derailed when he exited the clinic and saw someone he thought he would never see again.

It was the lighting mage, alive and walking around on unsteady feet.

He seemed to have also just left one of the clinics and was heading over to the guards to join in their game of skat.

Unlike the medic Bertrand had a fair few questions for the mage that he considered important, but judging by the scowl on their face it seemed like they would be far less welcoming than the medic.

So he held his tongue and instead kept on walking back to the wall.

Seeing the mage alive and seemingly well did boost his morale quite heavily, even though he couldn’t pluck up the courage to go speak to them.

It was an uplifting reminder of the strength the Francia military had.

And even more importantly it was a joyful reminder of the strength that the average person had now.

The lighting mage looked to be around the age of twenty three and was most likely at the bottom of the pecking order amongst mages.

Yet despite that, he had slain a watcher single handedly and defied death, being disembowelled and still managing to recover in a matter of days.

Mages weren’t human anymore, they shared more in common with the zombies than they did with actual people like Bertrand.

They were forces of nature made manifest. Capable of conjuring up tornadoes with a flick of their wrists and unleashing great waves of fire with a cough.

They could point their fingers and a great bolt of lighting would smite any who dared oppose them.

And yet soldiers just like Bertrand had butchered them. Toppling their ivory towers and staining their fine carpets red.

The lighting mage that had killed the watcher wasn’t even worthy of being called a shadow of what he could have been.

It would be more accurate to say that he was the imprint of the shadow

he could have been.

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Bertrand actually shuddered at how powerful someone like that young mage could have become had Francia remained under the boot of the aristocrats and mages.

Had mighty could they become had they been capable of being taught by a proper mage and been allowed access to libraries filled with ancient tomes from which they could learn new spells and rituals?

It was very likely that they would have become capable of utterly annihilating the watcher and by extension, Bertrand and his fellow soldiers by the age of thirty had those libraries and teachers still remained.

Then again, the main reason the revolution had succeeded was because the mages had grown increasingly laxer in their pursuit of the arcane arts, had they all truly strived to achieve a greater mastery over magic then Francia would still be under their corrupted control.

But they were gone, almost every senior mage had taken the noble’s side in the civil war and the grand libraries they had were burned, the sacred pages of their disgusting books used as toilet paper by the revolutionaries.

Bertrand didn’t exactly hate mages but he certainly didn’t appreciate them and even though the lighting mage had saved him he still couldn’t really find it in himself to respect them for it.

The only mages he respected were ironically the senior ones.

Because to have survived the purge they had to have been literal saints, even neutral mages who kept to themselves and only focused on their magical pursuits while not bothering with politics were killed.

Only the most pure hearted mages were spared from the massacres.

This all happened years ago but despite that the wounds caused by the mages had turned into scars. The lighting mage for instance was almost certainly viewed with suspicion and kept under close watch by both ordered guards and paranoid soldiers.

Bertrand might have trusted them more had they been older because then that meant that they would have sided with the revolutionaries over the nobility but as it stood the only reason they were currently on the same side was because the nobility had lost the war.

If the lighting mage had been a mage back when they were in control, it was almost guaranteed that he would have become a wretched monster just like the rest of them.

Many people just couldn’t bring themselves to trust new mages, they were untested after all. The senior ones who remained had all chosen the common folk but what if the new blood switched sides and ran over to the Collation.

Seer knows they would be treated far better there. Countless spell tomes, mystical techniques and most importantly, respect, had been lost to the mages of Francia.

The Collation offered them a way to regain everything they had lost and so much more.

The suspicion cast on them probably didn’t help them either.

But quite frankly did it matter?

Bertrand wasn’t exactly a strategist but they had beaten mages far greater than the greenhorns they currently had, so would it really be a big deal if they jumped ship? It would be a loss for sure but not exactly a fatal one.

Though that was his own opinion, and even weak mages were far more powerful than any none mage soldier.

Except for the gold buttoned soldiers of course.

Those guys were literal legends.

They were heroes of the Franica Conglomerate and were gifted their buttons by Napoleon himself.

Almost every one of them had completed tasks where the odds were insurmountably stacked against them.

And they were gifted top of the line experimental equipment above even the armaments that the imperial guard bore.

The mages may be the Seer’s shields but the gold buttoned were the peoples shields.