What happened? Zan didn’t know. All he knew was he was on his knees, vomiting.

He expected the vehicle’s back doors to open, disgorging the automotrons within so they might surround and beat him to death.

But they never did.

Instead, the vehicle accelerated and turned around. He realized with horror what was about to happen — they wanted to blast him to dust with their front cannon!

‘MOVE!’ he willed his legs, but he couldn’t stand up, no matter how hard he tried.

Moving into position to end him, he thought it might be the end when, out of the blue, Jiehong came to his rescue!

Screaming with everything he had, Jiehong used his massive muscles to lift the transport vehicle, causing its cannon to fire into the ground instead of at Zan. Although he wanted to flee, his body still would not let him, and the impact blast sent him flying.

Skidding brutally to a stop, reality swirled before him. He stood up, though promptly fell back down. He could barely breathe. Barely think. Thoughts, sights, sounds all fused together. Unbeknownst to him, tears flew from his face.

“I got ya, buddy—” Jiehong said as he grabbed and moved him. Dragging him away from the front, but luckily when the next wave of enemies had not yet reached fighting distance, Jiehong plopped him down closer to the village boundary. Beyond them he hazily watched as an inferno consumed the lumber yard. Watching as it burned, only one thought came to Zan's mind: I spent my whole life working there. And now it's gone...

It looked like Jiehong was about to say something when the old man returned.

“We have to leave, now!” the old man said. Continuing, the elder said, “The town's packed their crap! We're heading along the road to a refugee camp. We need to provide protection!”

Jiehong nodded — or the world swerved in such a way as to mimic nodding — and with him in tow, Jiehong carried him underneath his arms like a sack of flour.

Blubbering incoherently, he gradually recovered his wits as his limp body saw itself be carried by his brother. Seeing the enemies in the distance gradually shrink, he wanted nothing more than to continue the fight. He couldn’t, though, he knew this. The day had taken everything from him; if he didn’t rest, he would fade.

Not realizing he fell asleep, he woke on the back of someone’s wagon.

“Ah, the hero comes to!” the old man from the front said to him.

He said nothing. His mouth was dry. He needed water. Confused, he asked what happened.

“Here you go, lad. You look thirsty with those chapped lips,” the man said, handing him a bottle of water.

Mouthing a ‘thank you,’ he took the canteen and drank from it with a hearty thirst. He gulped several times before stopping.

“D-did we win?” Zan asked.

“The battle’s over. You performed excellently! You reminded me of… well, me! When I was younger, of course,” the old man said, laughing.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He wanted to ask the old man who he was, but what came out of his mouth was, ‘Where is Jiehong?’

“Oh, Jiehong is near the front. Leading the caravan. What a man that boy is! He must make his parents proud!”

Although the old man was not wrong — Jiehong was, in fact, a wonderful young person — his praise at his friend caused a mild pang in his heart. Zan did not have parents. He didn’t have a family. No one said or would say such things about him.

He tried to move himself, but his muscles were tired, so they raged against him.

Groaning, he tried again.

Placing a hand on his should thereby suggesting he should continue to rest, the old man was forceful when he needed to; and though he appreciated the old man’s gesture of food when he offered some dried meats and cheese to him, it also made him feel infantilized being doted over.

He just couldn’t win.

An hour turned to nearly three, and he jumped off the wagon with his belly full of food and water. He thanked the old man, to which the old man acknowledged with a tip of his beautiful feather hat; had he always had such a beautiful hat? he wondered. Who was this man? Few villagers had luxuries like this old man had…

The walk to the head of the caravan was a shorter parade than he expected, which made his heart feel heavier than it ought to feel — everyone in his life, everyone he knew, huddled up in a quaint two-dozen strong carriage row. Reality did not reflect the chaos which dwelled in his heart.

He approached the caravan's front. He soon found his brother with some town leaders.

“Hey, where are our parents?” he asked.

“There you are!” Jiehong explained. “I am happy you woke up. The old fella took care of you, I see. Good! What an asset he was on the battlefield.”

Not able to remember if he watched the old man fight, his focus had been on not dying. But he took Jiehong’s word for it all the same. The old man was interesting, for sure.

“Where are we heading?” he said, still regaining his wits.

“To a far-away refugee camp. Near the capital, I think,” Jiehong said.

"So, the town was lost?" he asked.

"Yeah. Soon after you lost consciousness the horde became too much. Those huge four-legged machines, the Walkers, appeared. We couldn't handle their powerful flame crests."

Looking over the horizon, he saw in the distance other caravans of people fleeing from their own horrors. He wondered how many people died; it was impossible to know without a headcount. Still, he kept hope in his heart no one from his village died. The villages next to his, though? He could not say if they all made it...

But he pushed those darker thoughts from his mind.

He did not know the casualties, so far, and the fact was, he would not know. Not unless he was an official Royal Tabulator.

“Wild, huh?” was all he could say.

“Yeah. You can say that again… you fought well, Zan. Super courageous. If you hadn’t thought of that fire and blade trick, not sure what we would have done. Same with the tailpipe on the end of those machines. You were the hero today,” Jiehong said, lavishly praising him for the first time in his life. Well, maybe not the first, but the first of such praise being both warranted and of a mature nature.

Praise like that caused him to light up red. In a good way.

“Thank you,” was all he said.

“Do you think we will ever see peace?” he asked.

“Haha, of course we will! The war is just a temporary setback to the whole peace-thing. We’ll be sitting back, fishing, and joshing around before you know it," Jiehong said, attempting to keep the mood light. "We have to find somewhere safe, first. A city but we won't be able to live there freely. We won't be able to resist joining the royal army, if you know what I mean."

The caravan went unmolested through the road, tearing up dirt. Ahead of the enemy's advance they might be for the time being, he knew if they did not continue their accelerated pace day and night, the enemy would overwhelm them eventually. Listening to Jiehong speak, he read between the lines. When they got to the refugee camp, the powers-that-be would likely draft them into the army.

Which was… fine? He did not know. He wanted to fight, obviously. He wanted to defend his homeland. But the thought of also endlessly fighting as part of a unit did not seem appealing. The notion made Zan feel unnerved. Even if it also excited him, somehow, as it signaled the start of a new world.

Yet such matters were far off. They wouldn’t arrive at the camp for days, if not longer. In the meantime, he would have oodles of pontification moments.

Any such quiet moments of reflection, however, would have to wait.

Ahead of him, another caravan, larger by several orders of magnitude than their own caravan, exploded into flames.