The cold chill of the dew soaked grass sipped slowly through his cassock, though, at Iron he felt very little of it. Seth had since been given his position somewhere atop a hill so that he looked down on events and he’d laid here for minutes stretching on end. He was a sniper and his stillness had become as much a part of him as the skills he’d garnered over the years.

He was here when the sky was dark and remained even now that the sky was broken. Surprisingly, his minds stilled themselves just as he stilled himself. They bickered of nothing and voiced even less. It made him wonder if now, so close to a war against beast destined to last no less than a month, trepidation was beginning to take hold of all four of them.

The sniper rifle Gregory had given to him rested in front of him. With a finger rested casually against the trigger, he buttressed it with his shoulder. His free hands, for reasons he couldn’t actually understand, was placed on his shoulder.

Beside him, Timi laid on his back, staring up at the breaking dawn with his hands behind his head. He wasn’t necessarily still, but he was silent.

Their other brothers had their positions. Positions that were not here, and Seth kept track of them with his minds while he stared down the scope of his rifle.

On the other end, a distance he had failed to measure, he watched Reverend Gregory approach the crack. The hole in the world was aptly named. Where a fissure was like a fracture in the world running a length as high ten feet or the occasional twelve, a world crack dwarfed it, running high enough to pierce the skies like a blasphemous atheist.

But that was not where the differences ended. A fissure started out as cracks in the world a glass cup gently pricked so that its cracks were long interwoven lines spreading across like roots. Only when its beasts ventured out of it did it widen, each beast opening it up for more. But a world crack was different. It was a long single line that spanned from the ground to the sky. Then broke. In its breaking, it shattered a hole in the world wider than the gates to a mansion. The hole was always wide enough to admit an entire cavalcade of soul mage.

But the final glaring difference was that where a fissure only expelled beasts, a world crack allowed entry of anyone. Even now, nowhere near a day old, anyone could enter. So everyone did: Barons and gold and silvers. Why? Because if they did not, if they failed to bring it to heel, in a matter of time its beasts would pour forth and bring the world to heel.

It was a chaos the world was not ready to suffer because beasts from a world crack came in droves.

Seth watched Gregory stop, halted by a raised hand from a man in a military garb. It was a camouflage of greens and blacks fitted out with a helmet that carried a torch. He carried an assault rifle in hand and watched Gregory with a fear he visibly fought to hide.

They’d set up a barricade in front of the crack. Blocks as high as the average man’s waist were situated in places, designed to serve as shields from attacks. Each one was painted red as if to hide any blood spatter.

It seemed the cassock carried far more power than many were willing to believe. Rumors weren’t the only places they existed.

Gregory, accompanied by nine other priests, halted casually. He seemed a man in no hurry. The military man raised a hand to his shoulder and bent his head inwards, he spoke into something attached to his shoulder, eyes never leaving Gregory. He spoke for a while and Gregory waited. Supported by nine others, the Gregory and his team were outnumbered two to one.

“Any idea what he’s saying?” Seth asked his mind.

The answer was not comforting.

Do we look like we read lips?

“I’d check,” Timi said, staring at the sky. “But it takes a while for rumors to get to me.”

Seth spared his brother a glance and nodded. “Sure thing, brother. Sure thing.”

Timi did not take his attention from the sky.

When Seth returned his attention to the events far ahead of him, Gregory and the military man were engaged in what seemed like a civilized conversation. He watched their exchange of words displeased at his inability to read lips.

Itchy fingers at ten o’clock, one of his minds pointed out.

He turned the scope, zoomed out so that he had more of the soldiers in his sight. He moved his attention where his mind had warned and found a soldier whose eyes kept darting fearfully between each priest. His trigger kept poking his gun’s trigger like a rattled teenager about to be caught in something he should not be doing.

“Do you have him?” Seth mumbled.

“Can’t say I do,” Timi replied as one of Seth’s minds answered: Got him.

Seth spared Timi another glance and found the boy wasn’t even looking at him. It took him a moment to realize his brother was answering him simply to humor him. Timi knew he wasn’t talking to him, yet spoke because he was speaking.

Is he trying to make you seem less cracked in the head? one of his minds asked. Because that’ll be confusing considering there’s no one here to play pretend for.

“Doesn’t matter,” Seth replied. “All that matters is you take the hand.”

You sure?

Seth nodded. “I want him down the moment he tries anything.”

Sure thing.

Seth knew the moment his arm was no longer in his control. It wasn’t necessarily a sensation of numbness or a loss of control. It felt more like staring, looking but not necessarily seeing. It was knowing what was before him but not understanding it consciously. His arm was still his but his awareness of it had shifted slightly.

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He’d split his minds. One kept the uncomfortable soldier in sight while the other kept his finger on the trigger. As for himself, he kept his eye on Gregory’s conversation that seemed—from the military man’s body language—to be going south.

Soon the military man began raising his voice. He pointed a violent finger behind Gregory and barked orders Seth could not interpret.

Trigger finger’s getting antsy, one of his minds notified him, a squad member reporting to his commander.

“Put him down once you feel you have to,” he told it.

While the man shouted, Gregory stood, unflinching. He watched the man as an elder would an unwise child. Whatever the man was, he was no Baron. And from his use of words, he knew nothing of Gregory’s rank. It was unfortunate. Everything was escalating, pushing further into the embrace of violence and its territorial aggression.

A military man barked in the face of a man capable of slaughtering him and his squad of twenty men. Gregory took a casual step forward and violence raised its blood ridden head.

The military man raised his gun and fired it. Gregory ducked his head to the side so the barrel missed him. Itchy finger at the back raised his gun. Seth’s finger squeezed his trigger. Escalation became a thing of the past.

Two gunshots boomed over the distance. One military man’s head exploded in a spray of blood and nine priests moved with the efficiency of the damned.

In the cacophony of erupting gunshots, death moved with them.

…………………………………….

“I’m surprised you knew to take the shot,” Gregory said, candid. “Most Irons fidget and pay very little attention. I was quite aware of the soldier but thought you’d be too distracted by myself and the commander to notice.”

Seth and his brothers were standing amidst the aftermath of the chaos. Barnabas was looking around with an uncomfortable frown. If the rest of his brothers were put out by the sight before them, they didn’t show it.

The fight had ended in record time, lasting no longer than four minutes. Two priests sat in a corner with bullet holes in them though they were alive. A set of their colleagues stayed with them, extracting the manasteel slugs the soldiers used from their injuries.

If there was anything Seth learned from this, it was how useless he was in a fight between golds, even as a sniper. The moment the battle had begun, he had seen nothing. Each soldier and priest moved with a speed that made [Quick Step] seem like a hurried stroll. The air lit up with sparks of reia as skills were set in motion. It was the brightest, most beautiful display of death Seth had ever seen. And his uselessness had stared back at it.

Yet Gregory stood here commending his first shot.

A priest walked up to Gregory, his stature clearly deferring to a superior authority. Respectfully, he leaned towards the man and asked in a low voice Seth’s ears were primed enough to hear.

“When do we go in?”

Gregory looked around them. There were soldiers who still lived. However, not for long. They groaned in pain, some pleading as the remaining priests gathered and a few walked around, weapons in hand, confirming the dead.

One spoke of a family waiting for him back home and a little girl he didn’t want to leave behind when a priest ran him through the skull with a spear.

“Pathetic,” Forlorn spat, drawing one of his mind’s attention. “It’s alright to try and kill us but a sin for us to kill them.”

“They have a family waiting for them at home,” Gregory said. “They are, in the simplest words, sacrifices to whatever group they serve. Their deaths will be mourned.”

“And ours won’t?” Forlorn replied.

A small smirk stained the corner of Gregory’s lips. “And who would mourn you?”

Silence took Forlorn by the throat and choked out any answers he might’ve had. Knowing this, Gregory turned away from the boy and walked towards the crack.

“Ever told you how much I hate priests?” Forlorn muttered to no one when Gregory was gone.

The crack was in full display now. The little barricades the soldiers had set up had been cast aside and disintegrated during the brief massacre. Besides the dead littering the floor, there was nothing in their way.

Gregory stood before the crack, thoughtful. From it Seth could sense the heat haze that was the distortion in the world caused by strong reia. He watched it and Gregory, waiting as all others for the Baron’s next words. Unlike fissures that were no more than a plain white at sight, the crack revealed an entirely other world. It was a vast forest green of trees and grasslands. However, Seth saw enough to know that beyond it was the color of sand.

This was the first crack he was seeing up close but he knew beyond the trees was barren land. Despite the clear view, Gregory’s next words shocked him.

“Get Nartic and Paul in good enough shape. We have no idea what lies on the other side of this crack and I’d like to not be taken by surprise.”

It’s not like someone could be hiding behind the trees, one of his minds thought.

At Gregory’s words the priests began convening on the crack. Nartic and Paul, the wounded ones, were supported along, their injuries properly bandaged up beneath their cassocks.

Each priest stepped through the crack, sending ripples through it as if stepping through water, sending crackles of blue lightning where they passed.

Ten men went each time, advancing side by side, and three groups were through before Gregory returned to Seth and his brothers.

“Beyond those cracks, you all continue to fall under my command,” he told them. “What we are is the preparatory team. We will set the foundation, and in time the rest will join us. Until the time that our might stands within that crack, you will follow my commands to the letter. You will hunt what I ask you to hunt and stay away from what I ask you to stay away from. Is that understood?”

Each of them gave a single nod; all except Timi.

Gregory turned his head to him. “Oluwatimilehi Adio, is that understood?”

Timi stared at him as if he had spoken an unknown language, then turned to Seth.

Gregory sighed quietly and turned to Seth too. “I guess the stories are true,” he said. “Then tell me, Seth Al Jabari, are my words understood?”

We like Timi, one of his minds thought. We really do.

And we appreciate his friendship, another continued.

But, a third joined, is he trying to get us killed? What does he expect us to do; protect him from a Baron? He can just nod his head like everyone else and say yes. It’s not that hard.

Seth ignored his thoughts and nodded. “I’ll keep him in command, Reverend.”

Gregory nodded once. “Good.”

Then he turned, walked up to the crack, and stepped through it, black lightning crackled where he passed.

And they followed.

Seth felt as if he was walking through drying mud. He had to force his way through as if the crack was rejecting him. Then Timi stepped through beside him. the resistance ended abruptly and he heard the sound of something cracking.

You Have Been Poisoned.

………………………………………….

The other side of the crack was a lie. The crack was a lie.

Seth and his brothers stepped out from their world and into a barren wasteland with erupting volcanoes rising in the distant. A red sky blanketed everything. The land was scorched and crack. A soil reddish brown frozen in its death were nothing would grow. It was a desolate world with neither protection or cover.

And its sun was a black that did not shine in a blood sky.

Off in distances so far cars were needed to traverse it sat different people huddled in small preparatory camps.

Each camp turned to them at their entry and their terrified hostility was a weight on the world.

“Form up, boys,” Gregory commanded, ignoring the groups. “We have a crack to seal."