Juliet sat cross-legged while staring into the horizon.

The orange rays of the sun were closing the curtain on yet another day of fighting. People were stripping off the hide from the Demonic Beasts; they would later clean it and try to make armor from it.

Jacob had tried to teach people about that before, he had also tried to teach them many other things, but Juliet had never seen people learn so fast. And that was because this wasn’t about learning, this was about surviving. The Tyrants had left knowledge in troves before departing and people at first had just started doing their own thing during the first battles.

Formations had been haphazard and chaotic. People would complain, they would lose their mind if even a small hiccup appeared among their lines.

Then, people had started dying. As soon as they crossed L’Aquila, the same city the Vermillion Tyrant had conquered, they had started meeting Demonic Beasts that couldn’t be taken down unless you collaborated with others.

And people had died. Not just died.

Died.

It was hard to grasp why something was useful. Or at least it was until your life quite literally depended on it. The only reason it hadn’t been a pure massacre was because some people were strong enough to take the brunt of the attack.

Juliet that day had almost died.

She had faced Charybdes, monsters so strong, devious and intelligent that she had never expected to find worse. And you know what was worse?

Being tired.

She had fought for more than a day straight.

She had not paced herself at first and a stupid Demonic Beast at the Apex of the Mantis Realm had almost beheaded her. Even her own body had started failing from all the blows she had taken. It had been brutal, a trial like never before.

No one had told her ‘be careful, Juliet, save up your energy because we don’t know how long we’ll be fighting’. She hadn’t been able to read Jacob’s emotions from the Ancestral Bond and she had discovered that from that point onward she would be in the dark.

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And dark it was. Maybe even darker.

“Juliet, food’s ready,” she heard a weary voice from behind her.

She got up and stared at Flavius.

“You are bleeding,” she noted.

“Yeah, those Cold-Blooded Mist Wolves apparently have some kind of poison on their fangs. I got bitten. I spoke with Andrew. He told me it should get better and that he had to save his Mana.”

Yes, that was another thing.

Triage.

They had an infirmary and already an incredible number of people with limps and stumps. Juliet had personally killed a few people who had been poisoned so badly they had only been waiting to die. And since she had no more her healing Golden Flames, she could not help in any other way.

They started walking toward the camp, surrounded by silence and a few screams of pain here and there.

A soldier – not that you could tell, they were just all soldiers by now – came running toward her.

“Angelo called for a meeting,” the man said while jerking to attention as soon as she got in front of her. She found such a behavior childish, but the second-in-command to the Vermillion Tyrant said that it was necessary to establish discipline.

“At rest, soldier. I’ll get to him. Please go fetch me some food.”

They didn’t even know if those were the right formulas. Almost on one had been a military or even just a police officer.

If most of the moving camp had not devolved in pure chaos yet was because they had made a police force.

“I’m sorry, Flavius. If you have anything important to tell me, we’ll speak later,” Juliet said. Her voice was as weary as his had been. But she could afford less rest.

She was a general.

At least in name.

She started walking toward the main tent, the biggest one. It wasn’t Angelo’s, it was simply where they met to discuss the next moves. To be honest, no one really knew what they were doing. They had to learn everything from scratch, almost. Angelo had been lucky to accompany the Vermillion Tyrant for a while and the great military knowledge of the latter had somehow rubbed on him.

Juliet saw some women with a red mark on their cheek break up a fight and beat up silly the two idiots who had started it.

Fuck, if we lose Rose, it’s going to be a real mess.

It was a random thought.

Rose had been taught how to formulate the same Soul Contract every single woman in the police force had to take if they wanted to be a part of them. She – and Helena – were the two only people who had learned how to draft a Soul Contract. And Jacob had taught them only how to copy the one he made as a model.

They needed their police. Their numbers were absolutely insane at the moment. She had no idea how many of them were there, but it was definitely over two hundred thousand now.

They had split though. An extremely large force of fanatics – and guess lead by whom – was on its way to the South.

Juliet sighed and moved to the side the flap that was the door to the tent.

Everyone was already there.