Kaleb’s eye was fixed on the corpse of the Quill he’d killed even as a regular who knew first aid wrapped his wound in a clean bandage. He was sitting on a stump, farther back in the field, yet his eyes could see the body as if it was still in front of him. He’d killed…a man? He didn’t know. It felt ridiculous to imagine that it didn’t count just because the person he’d killed wasn’t human.

He’d been a living, breathing, thinking being. And Kaleb had just ended his life. But he would’ve had the same fate had he not delivered the killing blow, wouldn’t he? The enemy wouldn’t have hesitated to end his life.

Even without trying to recall it, the sickening crack of the soldier’s skull echoed in his mind. Again and again. Whenever he tried to get some clarity, The echo would return with vengeance. Again and again and again…

“Kaleb? Kaleb? Kaleb!”

Kaleb’s eyes shifted up and he saw his friend, Yezdriel, standing over him and shaking him by the shoulder. The man who’d been bandaging him had finished and left. “Are you well?” his friend asked.

“I–” Kaleb patted his wound. He couldn’t feel it for some reason, and even as he patted it and his mind registered something, he couldn’t parse it out of all the other feelings he was experiencing. “I don’t know.”

“Greysen says it’s just a flesh wound,” Yez said. “It’ll be a bit painful but it’ll heal eventually. Are you in pain?”

“No?” Kaleb said, staring at his friend, unblinking.

“It must be an after-battle freeze. It happens sometimes,” Yez said.

Kaleb was barely registering what was being said, but he suspected Yez was talking about something like shock.

“We ought to get you away from this sight,” Yez continued. “Come.” He hauled him up and led him away. “You must breathe in as deeply as you can and then let it out.”

Eventually, Kaleb found himself sitting behind the carriage he’d ridden to the battlefield, taking deep breaths that only served to make him feel worse. Yez had left, but he’d checked on him from time to time before leaving again to do whatever it was that he was supposed to do. When he came back last time he’d said that they might camp here for the night.

By sunset, he was feeling a little better, blocking the day’s events with monumental effort. A small camp was taking shape in the vicinity as Yez had predicted. Those who were wounded were either seated or milling about, and those who weren’t were doing the labor needed to erect the camp.

Kaleb began to register the pain in his thigh. It was deep, even though the regular who’d treated him had told Yez that the wound hadn’t reached the bone. It was also burning like hell. Once he thought of that, he registered another weak burning sensation on his wrist. He pulled back the sleeve of his gambeson and saw a second star had joined his first. He’d have to tell Master Beris that he could open a new node.

Someone called for him to join a circle of people that was forming around a cooking pot. He did. Now that feeling was returning to him, he found that he was starving.

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As he ate amid the crowd, talk of the battle gave him a clearer picture of what’d happened. They’d avoided a bad turn by the skin of their teeth.

The allied mercenary company that had been holding their center hadn’t been the one to mess up. Rather the band from the guild of awakened, named Mercer’s guild, had nearly caused a total collapse of their lines.

When the battle had first started with thin but organized ranks taking the brunt of the enemy charge, the lines had held alright. But soon enough, a lack of cohesion in the guild band ranks had caused their awakened to splinter into small pockets and then retreat. The mercenaries in the center had been forced to stretch themselves to the right to prevent the enemy from breaking through and fleeing, or worse, trying to roll them up from the flank.

As the stretched center contended with the enemy’s left flank, the enemy’s center saw a chance as the pressure lessened on their front. They tried to blow a hole between the center company and Captain Simion’s Awakened Company. The spells that had been thrown at them had been the initiation for that, an attempt to fix them in place and imbalance them. Captain Simion had rallied his men and forced back the tide. Yet the enemy still managed to force a small gap between the center and the flank.

Meanwhile, the retreating adventurers and treasure hunters from the Mercer’s Guild band had regrouped under the command of someone(allegedly an officer from Commander Ainsley’s command) and began acting as a reserve, sweeping up the enemies that’d managed to get behind their lines. Then they’d arrived to plug the small gap the enemy center had managed to open. Even then, their side was barely keeping it together. Thankfully, before things could take a turn for the worse, Commander Wystan Ainsley’s troops had come from behind the enemy and completed the counterpincer. They had chewed through the enemy’s thin rearguard as fast as they could and had come to their aid.

Most of the enemy’s troops had surrendered when that’d happened, the rest scattering and fleeing into the surrounding wilderness. They were in hostile territory however, and most of them would eventually be hunted down and killed.

A commotion from the edge of the camp drew Kaleb’s attention as the night's darkness began to overtake the sky. Captain Simion had returned.

Since the battle had ended, all the captains had been assembled by Commander Ainsleys.

The captain came up to the center of the camp, which happened to be near their cookpot. “We march at first light,” he announced, to the chagrin of everyone.

A lot of grumbling took place as people cursed at themselves or the people who were forcing them to march. One of the captain’s lieutenants had joined them at the cookpot and had said something about ‘a dumb goatfucker’ who should’ve just kept his mouth shut.

It turned out that an enterprising young shepherd, who’d gone up one of the mountains nearby to catch some wild goats, had spotted a small company of men using a goat trail to pass the mountain barrier far to the west. The only significant gap on this end of the mountains was guarded by Commander Ainsley’s troops, yet there were small passages in the mountains that couldn’t fit any significant force. Most of these passages were unknown and difficult to navigate.

The commander wanted someone to investigate this small force infiltrating the hinterlands through the mountains.

Most of the company’s regulars–and even the captains who’d convened after the battle–obviously thought the ‘damn shepherd’ was just seeing things, which he might have been after all. Yet it had been decided that The Awakened Company would be the ones to investigate it, while the larger mercenary company would stay to reinforce the commander’s position.

Kaleb postponed telling Master Beris about his new star until the next day. He could do without the pestering for today. Yez checked on him once more after he’d eaten and advised him to go to bed early to avoid exhaustion. He also told him to try to go to sleep without dwelling too much on the day’s events, as if saying it somehow made it easier to do.

And so Kaleb went to bed, wondering whether he’d have to kill again within a few days. And cursing the damn shepherd.