From a seat made of empty medication boxes, Enric watched as the tip of his boot opened like an animal’s jaw with the jostling of his toes. He liked his boots. They have been through a lot together, and the thought of replacing them was strangely as saddening as leaving many of his men behind.

The field doctor pointed a finger at a pile of dirty boots crowded in the corner of the emergency tent. “I’m pretty sure there are some that will suit you.”

“I’m not wearing someone else’s boots.” Enric said. “Samm told me you received plenty of supplies. I just need a bandage to tar over.”

“Sure, just a minute,” said the doctor as he examined Ualok San’s kneaded leg. “Tida, prepare this one for surgery. Anyway, what a joke to receive everything now instead of when I really needed it.”

Enric sighed, rested elbows on the knees and closed his eyes to seek the absolute black, trying to block the memories tormenting him. The colonies’ campaign was not what a young idealistic man could wish for. Endless battles to gain any ground were continually mixed with surprise attacks and guerrilla warfare. The mercenary groups, which were basically canyon fodder, were lacking weapons, basic supplies and had been left to their fate by a command that, from its safe corners in the south, gave orders without knowing a thing about the front. And yet, the war, or massacre, whatever you want to call it, had been won by Herjard and his subordinates, nonetheless. A victory earned with the perseverance and courage of a few and the sacrifice and suffering of many.

Doctor Dyland tossed a small bundle Enric, caught with ease. Not finding any rush to return to the headaches of the commanding tent, he carefully wrapped his boot while Carrasso, a young private, moaned in pain and Sebastian, the second doctor, begged for help to handle a new bunch of injured. Wet earth and charred flesh mixed with medicines and disinfectants. The familiar fragrances partner with a perfume so unfitting as the two pristine uniforms it came with. The newcomers, dressed in Herjard’s officer’s clothes, showed too much petulance for someone who doesn’t know where they’ve gone.

One, who darted to ask about the person in charge, was a tall, scrawny man who, although he did not seem to have fought in any battle ever, had half his face marked by war. A reminder he almost covered with a leather patch under a kind of reddish glowing monocle instead of an eye. The officer threw his long jacket over a nurse and repeated the question with clear impatience. “Where is your sergeant?”

Enric rose as the second officer stomped closer, triggering on him a concealed defensive stance. His muscles tensed and his sight sharpened over the newcomer. “Rick ‘the man o’war’ Ventfort!” said the officer as he give an unwelcomed pat over his shoulder. “This is the man, Lieutenant.”

Enric forced himself to stand firm before a prosthetic stare shot over him. Squeezing his arm, the closer officer continued his annoyance. “you have grown, ma’boy! do you remember me?”

A big smile was all Enric needed to recognize him. The man who once signed his enrolment to hell no longer had long dreadlocks, but he still had wooden teeth, as well as his deceitful attitude. “I think so… Michael, was it? Where have you been?” Enric said.

“Meekel, Meekel! It’s nice to see you my friend!” he shouted so everyone could witness a phony friendship become as real as the war itself. “I’ve been fighting here and there like everyone else! But enough chit chat. Let me introduce you to Lieutenant Erzo Van Zhoar. From the Fourth South. We are here on a really important mission.”

Enric doubted his involvement in any battle straight away. He could see it in the eyes. Meekel’s here free of the burden: Untouched by the hells. Same as the remaining one of his lieutenant. Erzo rotated a metallic outer ring just like if he was a sailor adjusting a spyglass to focus closer. His prosthesis was lacking humanity, but his remaining eye, blue and deep, was as innocent and green as any fresh recruit. “Vega has done a great job on Ada. His mastery of the game is enviable,” Van Zohar said with copious satisfaction. “But I have to admit it is the stubbornness of your soldiers and your fast thinking what made Balustra fall. You’ll get a medal for this!”

Having to be rewarded with a piece of junk was a thought even more nauseating than the trenches. With a knotted throat, Enric pointed with his jaw at a corpse hiding under a white sheet. “That was thanks to Captain Gerrard, sir. Not me.”

“Nonsense, Rick!” Mekkel interrupted. “Mind my words, Lieutenant, this man hasn’t earned his reputation from nothing!”

Van Zhoar’s eyebrows rose, and he muttered a wildly misguided opinion regarding the relation between a soldier’s appearance and his performance in the field. Enric, pretending to agree, tried to clear his mind while words flew away without landing any sense on him. When Erzo tired of his own voice, he left the tent eliciting snorts from doctors and sighs of relief from patients. Mikkel followed, beckoning Enric to join.

The Silent hill, where the remnants of the seventh division had been camping for weeks, dazzled by the morning lights. It was a poor and sad place, marked by the scars of war in every corner. The troops, just as disdainful as their leader, wandered around with dire diligence, mingling army duties with the doings of daily life. The camp lacked the discipline and manners demanded by the command figurines, but to anyone who knew the place well, it was a hardened beast, a battle monster leaking its wounds and waiting to strike again at any moment.

Surrounding the camp, especially the northeast, please the eye of the weak either. The Aras road, once surrounded by flowering meadows and thick forests, was a muddy snake slithering through a strewn of shelling puddles. The city, still wounded after its surrender, was bleeding out spurs of inhabitants rushing to escape towards the north.

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Would that city that had resisted so much finally bleed to death or would it still want some desperate last blow? It was hard to say, standing houses and ruins, almost invisible under a fog that flooded everything except the long spikes of the cathedral, turned the place into a perfect trap. Enric didn’t care if orders were to go. He felt ready to die long ago. But he pitied his men. They all deserved to go home. Return to their wives and children. The crossroad of his thoughts received directions when Van Zhoar explained the reason for his visit.

“Herjard has won, but the Colonies had not officially surrendered. Command wants an unconditional capitulation. It has been ordered to make this city an example to deter further resistance.”

Even in that strange place, so far from the world, rumours had reached of the great bombardments the sleeping Empire unleashed on the fallen kingdoms. Some call it Decimation. Countless bombs Herjard could drop from its flying balloons, the zeppelins, sweeping away entire cities and leaving nothing in their wake. “If the fate of Balustra is destruction instead of conquest, can I prepare my troops to return to Keer Port?”

“Negative,” Van Zhoar said. “We have come with a group of men of science who are going to do some research after the bombing. Your mission is to secure the area for their protection.”

Enric turned towards the centre of the camp, where a group of troopers were unloading boxes. When opened hundreds of cables, metallic packages, rubber overalls and gas masks scattered everywhere. “What type of research are we talking about?” Enric mumbled.

“The classified one.” Eliah replied, letting out a huffing scorn. “You’ll follow orders diligently from my top man, Doctor Sweez. Nothing more, nothing less. And I expect you to do it in a proper, clean and… whole uniform. Is that understood?”

Even disgusting those officers deeply, Enric forced himself to salute firmly. Eliah said little more than a laconic ‘command expects great things from you,’ and an insincere ‘your efforts will be rewarded, sergeant.’ Mikkel, left behind with him and with no one else around to brag of friendship, slipped quietly after. Happy with his solitude, Enric dragged towards the nearest bonfire and sat next to a young recruit entertaining the passers-by with the strumming of an old, broken guitar.

The morning was much colder than usual, and with the cheerful melody and the smell of recently brewed coffee, soon more soldiers joined the fire. Martin breathed out a misty cloud and slapped his shoulders. “Boss, those frescoes are unloading flamethrowers or we expecting gassed morning?”

“Heard we bombing the shit out of the city,” added Lean. “Decimation there we go!”

Phal clicked his tongue and pushed Lean’s head with playful disdain. “Shut up, kiddo! For real, Rick… What're we still doing here?” Pharl handled a smoking coffee Enric’s frozen fingers accepted with joy. He never had any troubles with the cold like everyone else, but the warmth was invigorating to his spirit. Lean’s annoying yet joyful attitude, a natural result of his youth and inexperience, unearthed in Enric a pinch of envy: a desire to feel the same way. But when life faces you with its meanest side, you have to mature too early or it swallows you whole.

“We will go to secure the place so those weirdos can do some confidential stuff,” Enric said. Uninterested in joining more gossip, he searched for the blackness of thoughts inside the dancing flames of the bonfire. The cackling of his men, sounding further and further away, dissipated like the melody of the broken guitar. When shouts of warning began, the sun was already rising over the mountains and the bonfire was nothing more than a pile of ashes. “You don’t look at the city!” said a man dressed in a strange rubber suit and a gas mask hanging from the chest. “cover your eyes!”

Another scientist, this one shaking a pocket watch in the air, joined the disturbance. “Five minutes to go!”

Against the warnings, most of Enric’s men rushed at the hilltop to stare at the city turned target. “I see no zeps,” Phal said. “Boss, you have an impressive sight. Anything there?” Enric denied, although he never checked the sky. His interest lay in the small black line coming out of the city. “They’re still evacuating,” he whispered.

“When the bombs start falling, they will rush to empty,” Phal said. The scientist who had been lifting the clock reached to the soldiers, moving them around with forceful pushes and pulls. He was wearing round specs, like the ones intellectuals used to read, although his were made of dark glass. “Cover your eyes. Look at the ground!”

“Why? I want to see it!” said Lian.

Enric put a palm over his eyes and ordered his men to do the same. He believed everyone would obey, but when the Decimation arrived, the scream from Lian disclosed his insubordination. Light enveloped the world with such intensity even tightened eyelids experienced the brightness of a sunny day. The covering hand appeared though closed eyes in its skeletal and, no matter how desperately Enric hoped for darkness, they would remain, like a dead man’s grip contending to take him with him.

Right after came the rumble and then a blast filled with the heat of a dry, unforgiving desert. The floor trembled and dust blew around with every item they’d not secured. The intense heat bothered the skin, but even more so the lungs. When the light dimmed, Enric’s eyes half-opened, still protected by a hand whose flesh had not been abandoned, as he believed. Only he remained standing after the blast. Lian, huddled behind sacks, was rubbing his eyes and moaning. Phal, curled up on the ground, was praying to his goddess. Others had stumbled, crumbled, or literally jumped into any available hole. The camp, which a few minutes earlier was an organised mess, was now a completely bewildered chaos. Nothing was left untouched.

“Safe!” someone shouted from behind. “Safe! Start moving, gentlemen!”

Enric had seen terrible things during the war. Nightmares impossible to forget. That day, that moment, didn't shock him as much as the horrors he had experienced before, but the sheer capacity of human destruction made his hair stand on end like nothing else before. The enormous cloud of smoke and fire rising on what had once been a city became the ultimate proof humankind's desire for destruction was unstoppable and the reminder that no one, no matter how strong, fast or gifted, could fight it alone.

Phal rose with shaking legs, hands pulling his greyed curls in disbelief. “Holy heavens! Was that really us or is it a punishment from the maiden?”

“Whatever it is, we don’t care,” Enric said, holding back a cough and dusting his shirt. ”Let’s get ready.”