As Harrant walked into the small barracks common room that he and the crew had started gathering in between shifts, he already knew what he would hear. Collin's face was drawn up in a tight ball as soon as he saw Doug, like he didn't want to say the words that they both knew they needed to share.

“So. How many do you know about?” Harrant asked him.

“Three. All dead.” Collin said.

Doug stood there for a moment as he took it all in, then sat down opposite Collin.

“Martin is down in the infirmary with a gut wound that's probably going to end him by tomorrow. Then i'm tracking another three, dead as well.” Harrant said.

“Oh.” Collin looked down at the table. “Are my three the same as your three?”

Doug didn't want to do this. But the look In collin's eyes got him to start sharing.

“Edgar caught a frost rock in the head so I heard. Then I saw both Corey and Ham get thrown off the side of the wall when a metal mage got pushed off the edge.” He told Collin.

“Damn it.” Collin slammed his fist on the table. “We weren't even supposed to be here Doug!”

“Yeah. I know.” Harrant put his head in his hands, staring down at the table. “I'm sorry.”

“No, Doug. That's not what I meant. I know this isn't your fault.” But the words didn't move Harrant from his position.

Part of this was his fault. End of the day, he had been the one who had chosen to bend the knee to Dei back in the catacombs. He was the one who got them an in with the city garrison. And he was the reason that they had been chosen to go on that stupid caravan guard trip, then got picked out as veterans to help with the battle.

And despite it all, they were just common men.

They couldn't do shit in this fight, not with magic flying around like mages were a dime a dozen. Just like he couldn't do a damn thing to stop her if Dei had chosen to kill them back in the catacombs.

Hell, the only reason they had survived the attack on the convoy was because Xei had taken it easy on their carts specifically, and even then they almost died.

So what the fuck was a common man really worth in this world of madness?

“The names of my three were Oleg, Zack, and Paul. That's…that's everyone Doug.” Collin said.

He didn't need to look up to see Collin's face. He didn't want to.

There was no part of him that wanted to see the look of despair on that face. The look of a man that he had let down.

A man that he couldn't protect, because he was nothing but a common man.

Doug stood up and walked away from the room quickly, tears welling in his eyes. He let the tears free only once he was out of the room, noting the fact that Collin didn't even stand up to follow after him. They were all dead after all, so what did it matter?

He found his feet guiding him further out of the keep towards the battlements where the moans of half dead soldiers still lined the walls. The sun had risen over the shining white expanse laid out to his right as he walked down the wall, smattered with the spray of blood, dirt, and charred ash from the night before.

The city on the other side of the wall wasn't looking much better as entire sections of the wall had erupted inward leaving rubble in the streets. The bodies that littered those streets were all misshapen by magic of one type or another. Force mages lay skewered by earthen spikes while layers upon layers of heavy infantry lay still on the ground with small holes caused by spherical bullets that had crushed through their armor all the same. The victims of nature and water mages were a little bit harder to notice as they generally seemed to focus on more of the support role among the arcanist ranks.

Doug averted his gaze to look down the open entrance to one of the earthen tunnels that had been propped up against the lip of the wall. Now that he could see inside the place as sunlight lit up the inside of the tunnel as it leaked in through the small cracks in the stone, it presented a strange sight. It was like someone had taken a long hallway from a cave and simply placed it on the surface of the land. Just like that. Magic.

For some reason Harrant found himself walking down the long tunnel, rays of light passing him by in an even tempo. The massive stone blocks were concerningly held up by nothing but the force of both halves leaning against each other. Yet after the battle was done and over with, the structure still held up. An awkward ramp that would probably take the bastion months to dig away again.

Was there even a point? The arcanists had already proven they could make this trick work at least once, and from the sound of it, this just seemed to be their normal method of attack in the first place. So why bother with walls when magic could just tear it all down in a few minutes?

The tunnel ended in a cave in, the rooftop crushed inward by a massive boulder that stained the ground in blood and dust. Harrant walked past half of a severed body laying next to the debris and leaned out one of the small cracks to the side of the tunnel, looking out on the sea of white.

He saw yet another series of holes. His own work, and that of his men, but what he was actually surprised by was the number of bodies he could see from this angle in those holes. Colorful clothing clashed with the dark red color of blood at the bottom of those holes, all intermixed with the awkward angles of body parts that weren't supposed to be sticking out that particular direction.

One of the holes was so full that it even looked like the people inside were still moving at the bottom of it. The small shake of a child crying over their parents body's, or perhaps just a figment of his imagination.

Wait.

That crying child had a sword next to him.

Harrant ran back up the tunnel one or two sections until he found a hole big enough to fit through. The rock squeezed on his body as he tried to push himself through, but he was only able to fit through once he unclasped the sword from his belt. He reached back through the hole and grabbed the scabbard from the other side, pulling it after him as he jogged down the loosely piled dirt that comprised the tunnel hill.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

His feet fell out from under him as he tried going down the dirt incline, forcing him to slide down the rest of the way before he reached the field itself. Then he found himself running, heedless of the trap holes around him as he chased after the dull sobs that were just audible from a hole up ahead.

When he finally found the correct hole, he looked over the edge to find the young boy lying there, cupping the face of a young lady that looked up at the sky with blank eyes. Harrant didn't know what to do other than kneel there on the edge of the precipice, staring at this boy as he looked down upon his mother.

“Hey!” Harrant called out to him, reaching his hand down into the hole below, but the boy just ignored him.

“HEY!” He yelled this time.

No response.

Harrant jumped into the hole without thinking, and the boy finally took notice of him. His eyes went wide, and he fell back towards his sword as he reached for the scabbard with small hands. Doug stood still, feeding his own sword into his belt before putting his hands out to the side showing the kid there was nothing in them.

The kid tried pulling his own sword out. It took him three pulls on the pommel of it, withdrawing the sword maybe six inches further each time before Harrant stepped forward and put a hand on the hilt stopping him. The boy tried swinging a fist at him next, which Harrant let fall weakly onto his chest and shoulders as the boy tried to fight him off while he held his other hand to the sword.

After a couple seconds Harrant caught the boy's other fist, holding him at bay. The boy’s eyes were nothing but rage as he started to make sparks appear in his hands and Doug cut him off. The very skin in the palm of his hand seemed to be melting away as the heat grew in his hands.

“Stop it. You can't bring them back.” Harrant told the boy, disrupting the growing fire in his hands.

The boy's eyes teared up as he looked at Harrant, then down at the woman to his side.

“I'm not here to hurt you.” Harrant told him. “I can help.”

“No! You killed them! Your people did this!” The boy shouted at him, thrashing his arms back and forth as he fought to get free.

Doug let go of one of the boy's arms, then slapped him across the face with an audible crack in the cold air. A large red mark started to well up on the side of his face as the boy clutched at it with his now free hand, stunned into silence once again.

“If you don't let me help you, They will kill you boy!” Harrant pointed in the direction of the wall. He didn't wait for an answer then, picking the boy up from under his arm pits and lifting him up until he sat on the edge of the hole.

“M-my sword!” The boy reached out like he was going to jump back down, but Harrant stopped him and bent down to pick up the sword after stuffing it back in the scabbard. With a casual throw, he tossed it up into the boys lap, then reached up to drag himself up and out of the hole himself. By the time he made it up, the boy was sitting there silently looking down at the woman below them, a massive wooden stake protruding from her chest.

“Say goodbye to her.” Harrant told him quietly, and the boy nodded as tears continued to fall from his eyes.

Harrant looked back up towards the wall and saw a series of men in green armor with bows loosely pointed in their direction but not drawn. He imagined the series of questions they would ask him if he returned with the boy, the interrogations. And worst of all, he imagined the teasing words that a boy who had just lost his family would receive. The jokes made by angry soldiers, and a hothead boy who didn't care about his own life any longer. Then he looked down on a large mass of bloody bodies held up by earthen spikes near the base of the wall.

“Come on, we're leaving.” Harrant said.

“But-”

“Now.” He insisted, and gripped the shoulder of the boy's tunic, lifting him from his seat.

The two of them swung around, turning towards the woodline beyond as Harrant walked the opposite direction from the walls of Keep Seton.

That was no life for a boy.

And there was nothing left there for a common man to do.

—

Fei scampered down the dark hallways of Keep Whisper while using a small mouse body to try and stay hidden. The change from the wolfhound body she had been using more recently was a bit jarring when she first switched perspective, but she quickly settled back into the smaller body with ease.

She figured if there was ever a time to explore the inside of this place, it would be when the boss wasn't at home for a bit, and that choice seemed to have merit. A quick scan of the place with her bone sight revealed that there were far less guards in the building than usual, and most of them seemed to be spending their free time in the barracks quarters, not going on patrols.

‘When the cat's away, the mice will play. Hehe.’ Fei couldn't keep herself from chuckling as she scurried down the hallways.

When she went down the stairs to the basement level, it could best be described as bouncing down the steps rather than anything graceful, but there was no one here to see her fall none-the-less. She continued deeper into the depths of the basement, passing by a long series of jail cells that held one or two human's each.

Fei stopped at each cell, switching back to her normal vision to get a somewhat dim glance at the men and women trapped there before moving on to the next one and the next. A dozen cells later, she had to squeeze under a thick wooden door at the end of the hall and into another wing of the jail.

At this point all the cell doors were made of iron reinforced wood, separating the prisoners into single person cells where they couldn't see anyone else.

‘How barbaric.’ Fei thought.

Instead of looking into each cell, Fei tried to guess at the approximate height of the individuals within the cells with her bone sight, continuing down the hall until she found someone that looked just about right. It was hard to judge since he was curled up into a ball for some reason.

‘You couldn't just randomly happen to be standing for me could you? Nah, that would make this too easy.’

She squeezed under the door once again then climbed up the stone bench that passed for a bed to the side of the room. When she marched up towards the head of the man she had been looking for, she started to get concerned. He was sweating profusely from nearly every pore on his body, and his arm was clutched to his stomach as his eyes seemed to see right through her.

‘Oh Chris. You are really not going too well bud are you?’

She hopped off the bed and took a better look around the room to see what she was working with. Stone, stone, and more stone. Though she did see some random bone shards scattered in the earth behind the back wall. Maybe it wasn't as thick as the rest of the room? Sure beats trying to break him out the front door anyways.

She looked up at a handful of skeletal bodies moving about above her like they were cleaning tables and sweeping at the floor, beyond which she spotted a small mouse corpse stashed away near the ceiling several stories up.

‘Is that the ballroom? They're literally dancing away above the corpses of their forgotten prisoners.’

Fei shook her head as a purple light suffused her body and the bones started to grow in size. The bright glow reflected in Chris's hazy eyes as he tried to back up into the wall behind him at the sudden sight before him.

“P-please. I'm not ready. Not yet.” He called out at her with a wheezing voice that was half a whisper.

She looked back at him with her now canine shaped head as the sharp claws attached to her paws started to bite into the stone below her.

‘Come on Chris. You didn't think your brother would just leave you behind, did you?’

She started digging into the back wall of the room.