Martha pulled herself up to the top of the tower and punched a hole in it. Her vines ripped and dug at the stones until she could force herself through the hole and emerge into the gently falling snow. None of this should be happening… none of it. Everything had been going so well.

WHY WAS IT GOING WRONG?

She wished she still had two hands. Wringing one hand against a collection of bark and green plant flesh just wasn’t the same. It wasn’t even her hand. When she thought about it there was very little her left. Original Martha was just a memory now, and it was fading more every day. Smoke billowed into the sky in the distance. Even as she watched, another cloud began to rise over another town. It was all going wrong.

It had all happened so fast. Four days ago, the first town fell, and Martha had been shocked at how fast it was. Still, it was only an outlying town, with only the weakest of her units. Then, the next one fell within hours. A desperate look through the eyes of a fleeing survivor had revealed why. The Waystation, if that is what it was, had changed. A gleaming line of metal and polished wood topped with gleaming crystal moved faster than a coach and horses across the landscape like the approach of a new age. Those eyes had been closed by the wheels of the thing as it ran them over.

Martha had hesitated then. Perhaps this was not such a sure thing after all. Her mind had locked onto the image of Bert as she had known him, of the Waystation as it had been explained to her. She knew she was more powerful now… but assumed they were still the same.

She had been wrong.

Had Rose known all along? Martha doubted it, but either way, it was almost over now. Desperate times called for desperate measures. A glint of metal on the horizon. They were headed here now, and she was out of time.

Out of choices.

“My people!” Martha called, all eyes turning to her. “Now is the time to make our greatest stand! Now is the time of our victory!”

The idiots cheered, oblivious in their devotion to her. They would all die, every last one of them.

“Take heart, brave souls!” She called down to them. “Fight to your last, and know I am preparing something to make our enemies bow before us!” Her eyes flicked to the horizon. Definite glints of metal now. There wasn’t much time. “Defend this tower at all costs! They must not enter until I am ready!”

Martha scuttled back through the hole, confident they would hold with everything they had: fools, but useful fools.

She wept through her own eyes for the last time. It was a terrible thing she was being forced to do, but they had left her no choice.

Martha barricaded the door, collapsed the stairs, and moved to hand in a chrysalis of vines in one corner. Every second counted.

With her preparations complete, Martha opened the door in her mind and forced herself through it….

Martha opened her new eyes in the darkness below ground. The diggers bore through the earth and stone with an unyielding pace ahead of her. She took a moment to examine her new body. It was female, at least the parts that were left. Mostly stone, she was heavier than she was used to. Still, it was a body. With deep breaths, she prepared for the final step.

As the others streamed by, almost at their destination now, Martha closed her eyes and found the consciousness within. It was pushed aside by her own, but still there. She wrapped her will around it and squeezed until it popped. She was alone in the body now. With one final effort of will, she slammed the door in her mind shut behind her.

Something inside her tore, something painful, but it only lasted a moment. A gasp of pain, nothing more, and she smiled in the dark, moving back into the throng forcing their way through the dense clay.

They had taken her People from her, and they had taken her old body from her, so Martha would take their children from them.

==============

“Is that a bloody human trebuchet?” Bert asked as he pointed out the lumbering figure with one giant arm peeking over the walls of the keep ahead of them.

“Human might be pushing it,” Bell said with a grin.

A giant rock arched over the walls, flying clear of them by several meters before digging into the ground in an explosion of dirt.

“Accuracy could use a bit of fine-tuning,” Bud laughed.

“Those walls look pretty strong,” Bert admitted as they made their way down the winding approach, dodging the occasional rock as they rained from the sky. “We’ll have to go over.”

There was an amused chuff from Slothy.

“No!” Bert insisted. “Over. You’ll hurt yourself on those gates.”

Slothy whined a little but eventually chuffed a reluctant agreement. They broke into a jog as the rocks started to zero in.

“Let’s go to the left, take a wall, and move from there,” Bert pointed. “No need to try and fight them all at once.”

“And I can cover your climb,” Bell nodded. “Good plan.”

They stopped briefly as the gates opened and a flood of figures poured out. There were few recognizably human shapes amongst them. As The People formed into ordered lines, the group looked at each other in surprise.

“Uh, they are going to fight like an actual army?” Bell asked. “That’s new.”

“They never had the numbers before,” Bud said, sounding worried.

“Clever buggers, too,” Bert admitted. “Let us get all the way down here before they reveal themselves.”

“Too late to go back now and get those demons,” Bud said grimly. “They could chase us down before we got back to the Waystation.”

“Well,” Bell said with a grin. “You didn’t think it would be easy to win a war, did you?”

“Well, I kind of hoped,” Bert admitted.

The lines ahead of them were something out of a nightmare. The front row was vine-wrapped with long spikes that jutted from each arm. Stone braced their legs as they prepared to absorb a charge. Behind them waited a line of heavier soldiers with stone shields replacing one arm entirely and wicked-looking clubs made of twisted vines and stone or metal shards. On and on it sent until the back lines made up of grotesque people with swollen backs bristling with stone spikes and smaller versions of the human trebuchet.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“No holding back this time, I guess,” Bell grinned nervously at Bert.

“Exactly,” Bert nodded. “No holding back anymore. Use everything you have.”

Bud nodded, and Slothy growled. He looked at each of them, one after another, holding their eyes for a moment. “My family,” He said with a grin. “My family now and forever.”

Bell grinned back at him as knives began to slide from her storage and start to orbit around her. Bud limbered up, pulling his bowstring a touch tighter while checking the straps holding him to Slothy, who was growling like a pissed-off buzzsaw.

“When you’re ready?” Bert asked Bell. “Would you like to do the honors?”

“Delighted!” Bell took a step forward as she began to glow red. “FOR THE GARBAGE MAN!”

They charged as one, feet flying over the ground toward the enemy lines as the glowing knotwork on their bodies began to shine and pulse with a fierce light.

Bell veered off first, leaping through the air to the left and diving into the front lines. SLothy broke to the right as Bud began to blur, a hailstorm of glowing arrows being unleashed as Slothy bowled over the front lines to be trampled beneath her as she tore into enemies that were already bristled with arrows.

Bert put his head down and activated shield charge, firing off a mana burst through his shield as he hit the first defenders.

The enemies disappeared into a haze of blood and bits with the combined power.

Pouring mana into his axe until a glowing blue mana copy grew three times the original size, he laid into the enemies around him without even a thought of mercy.

Bert lost track of time as the enemy came at him ceaselessly, their numbers feeling endless as minutes turned into hours, and the numbers never stopped coming. Twice, he had been forced to move just to avoid the dead tripping him as he fought with axe and shield, both glowing with power. Ducking under a slashing sword, he cut up, severing the arm from the torso, only for the thing to grab an arm from a fallen friend and attach it like some demented Mister Potato Head.

The sheer amount of damage they had to inflict on the cultists to get them to fall was staggering. He slammed it back with his shield and severed its spine with a powered slash across the chest. Even then, he saw it starting to rebuild until he leaped forward and smashed its head with his footed feet.

The battle got grimmer as time went on. He caught glimpses of the others fighting every now and then as one of the bodies surrounding him fell. The last he had seen, Bell was standing in the center of a killing field as her knives spun like a hurricane. Anything that pushed through got her Ringer in the face before it could clear the knives. Bud was off Slothy’s back now, fighting with a sword and dagger, his bow slung over his back as he calmly diced anything too slow to run.

Slothy was their battering ram, charging through the lines before throwing herself on the giants at the back. All four sets of claws made short work of even the largest of the enemy, but any who survived would be back before long.

It was a battle of attrition, and for the first time, Bert was worried they would not be able to outlast the enemy.

Their two great strengths were their endless mana and his healing. Now, they fought an enemy who, by numbers alone, could overwhelm their mana spending. No matter how much he had, he could only SPEND so much at once. As for his healing? They could match him in that. Every attack that didn’t kill vanished in seconds.

To make matter worse, these were people, they were adapting to his tactics quickly. He was seeing more and more that had long-range weapons, or worse, pikes.

Bert began to sweat and pant as he fought harder.

Time was running out.

Bert was being pushed back, moving away as the press ahead of him stuck with whips and elongated weapons. His shield glowed and grew as he braced his feet, feeling them slide over the ground as night finally fell.

Bell and the others faced the same problem, and before the sunset, they found themselves fighting side-by-side once more. None of them joked or called out insults. Even Bell was quiet as she focused. Only three knives were still flying, the others lost along the way.

Bert started to call a retreat when a loud, gurgling horn was sounded on the walls, and the ground behind them erupted as more of the People climbed from secret tunnels. It was a perfectly timed trap, and once more, the group was surrounded with no way out.

“Cant…keep…this…up…much…longer,” Bell panted at him.

Bert just nodded, in the same condition. His arms were aching, and he had forced so much mana through his system that he felt… baked. All of them were bleeding, healed, and half healed wounds opening as they moved.

“I’ll try and clear us a path!” Bert called and prepared to shield charge with everything he had left.

“I’m not leaving you!” Bell protested angrily. “We go down together or–”

A horn blew long and loud as the light played over the keep behind them. Bert winced, wondering what fresh hell this was. A second later, he realized it wasn’t a horn. It was a whistle. A train whistle.

Moments later, the night exploded as fireballs began to rain down.

===============

Belandra Michaels didn’t want to be here. He never even wanted to join The People. Not that they asked, but if they did, he would have said no. Who wanted to be a thing, anyway? Waking up as one after they had taken his town was awful, but the voice in his head insisted it was right.

He had no idea why they had even brought him to the new continent. He had been so anxious as he crossed through the portal that he had to be pushed by those behind. Still, the leader seemed to like him for some reason.

When they insisted he replaced more of his body, he would have liked to say no… but they were all looking at him expectantly.

So he agreed and lost his legs. Later they wanted part of his chest, and everyone was proud of him. The next thing he knew, they had brought him new things to absorb, and before he knew it, he was bigger than the others.

It only got worse from there.

They had him use his huge, long arm to throw big rocks at walls in other towns, and then they saved the people inside.

Deep inside, Belandra thought that it was all wrong. But the mind of the leader seemed more important than his own; besides… everyone told him it was the right thing.

They had to be right, didn’t they? How could so many people be wrong?

When the leader, their perfect mother, had told them to fight and to win, in her name Belan had been fired up to fight in her name, but then… it was only three people and a bear.

How was it right to fight three people and a bear with a whole army?

The longer it had gone on, the worse he felt.

The People were going to win; of course they were. They always did.

That was why he never mentioned the fourth person to anyone. She was pretty and was hidden most of the time, but he saw her. No one else was paying attention to her, so Belan let her fly away when he saw her heading back.

At least one person would escape.

He was deliberately missing. Belan hoped no one noticed, but he intentionally threw his rocks too far. If he hit the four fighting people, it would make him feel like a bully, and Belan hated bullies. It was well he was looking for a clear space to put his next rock when he saw it, even if he thought it must be a weird dream at first.

On the hill that led down to the keep was a light, and it was getting closer and closer. It was also getting bigger. Belan activated his improved sight and zoomed in on what he was seeing. His giant arm trembled in fear.

Charging down the hillside was a giant wood and metal snake. Its eyes blazed light, and a small skeleton stood on the nose, laughing as it held two of the biggest fireballs Belan had ever seen. Standing on the top of the head of the thing was the woman he had let go.

Her eyes blazed with light as she cast some spell, and the night turned to day as the lights found him.

All the mental controls of the The People vanished as Belan started to back away, panic flooding his system. He opened his mouth to shout a warning but was much too late. The snake thing crashed head-on into the lines of his people, and screams filled the night as they were crushed. He saw one last glimpse of the skeleton as it threw fireballs so fast he could barely see, and then Belan turned and ran. He ran right through the back walls and tumbled to the rocks far, far below.

Smashed and dying on those rocks, Belan knew he could reform himself with a thought… but closed his eyes instead.

He didn’t like this world anymore. Maybe he would get to try another one in his next life?

=============

Bert and the others were frozen with shock as the Waystation plowed into the enemy, bodies, and bits flying in all directions as it continued on and on. Over half the enemy forces. A second later, the ramp to the Bear’s Fall fell, and the Demons erupted into a fight. They quickly fought their way over to Bert and the others, getting them time to take a brief breather before the gates to the keep opened again, large shapes lumbering out into the night.

“Protect the Waystation!” Bert called and led the charge to protect Way Way. They were going to be too slow; the first lumbering shaped pulled back huge fists to begin hammering on the train when the form of Bernhardt clambered onto the top of the train. He raised his hands, green energy screaming from them in a torrent. Scruff’s fields came alive, and plant met plant in combat, with the old Gardener cackling madly as he waved his hands like the conductor of a hellish orchestra.

“Form up in front of the Waystation!” Bert roared. “Push into the keep!”