“By the blood of the angels!” Harold screamed, slamming a hand into the cabin’s wall. The wood crumpled slightly under the force of the strike, shaking the entire building. “An offensive? That’s practically a death sentence!”

  “Come on now,” Erich replied soothingly. “It won’t be that bad. If the Major is coming himself he’ll make at least some effort to survive. Remember, the worst offensives are usually entire columns attacking with the officers in the rear echelon. That way, if the attack doesn’t work out, the ‘important’ people manage to escape.”

  “He has a point,” Gwen said, her voice slightly cold. “The elves wouldn’t have a problem with sacrificing us in order to secure some scraps of land, but they won’t do the same to themselves. If the Major is coming himself, that means that he at least plans on surviving. I can’t say I’m thrilled with having to be part of an attack like this, but it isn’t a completely lost cause.”

  Harold flopped down at their small table, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

  “I’m still not happy about it,” he grumbled. “You heard the Major. I doubt his plans for including us in the attack involve tender, loving care. He’s probably going to sacrifice us to summon a demon or something.”

  “He wouldn’t-” Erich began, only to pause as his brain whirred through the possibilities. “I don’t think he knows enough demonology to manage that. It’s true that you can contact the demons more easily when you’re out on the bridge, but there haven’t been any rumors about the major studying their summoning or contracts.”

  “And how would we know?” Harold asked darkly. “I’m telling you, the minute we get near a spire, I’m going to run for it.”

  “There are a lot of reasons for us to visit a spire,” Kaden chimed in. “After all, they’re the only place to find glow stones or to set up a temporary base. Who knows, the Major might even want to contact the angels. Like the demons, you can only really do that at a spire.”

  “Angels?” Harold questioned, raising a single eyebrow incredulously. “The Major?”

  “There are a lot of reasons to visit a spire,” Kaden replied, skirting the issue. “I don’t trust him either, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Mostly because I peeked at the mana density of those guards that were standing around him. About half of them were fourth tier. The others were third tier. With all of us ganging up, we could maybe take one of them. Desertion is even more suicidal than a doomed offensive.”

  “It always has been,” Erich replied. “Really all we can do is make sure that we’re healthy, in shape, and well equipped for the operation. Maybe say a few prayers and collect some good luck charms. Whether we survive or not is fate, but how is that different from the rest of our lives? From the moment we enlisted to give our families a tax break, our lives were forfeit.”

  “Plus,” Erich pushed, “Where are you going to go? If you return to the army you’ll be executed. The cinderborn are slavers. Are you going to sign up for a life of servitude? What are the other options? You can try to ascend a spire, but angels jealously guard the gates of heaven. You can climb down the spire and enter hell. There the demons will let you come and go, but only after hunting you like an animal, feeding on your terror and then your flesh as they chase you across the brimstone planes.”

  “You’re sure a bundle of sunshine,” Harold said, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Here I am railing against the injustices of an unfair situation, and you come out of nowhere to point out that our total circumstances are infinitely more unjust than the specific scenario I’m complaining about.”

  Kaden took one of the seats at their small table, legs of the wooden chair scraping against the stone floor as he pulled it out and flopped down.

  “I think I miss the sun the most,” he mumbled wistfully. “Back home we signed up to fight between worlds without a sun or stars to provide heat and light, but it didn’t really sink in. Now that we’re here, having nothing but torches and glowstones is driving me insane.”

  “For me it’s the lack of trees,” Erich added. “There’s no soil and no light so it would be crazy to expect there to be anything other than endless rocks, but I didn’t realize how bad it would be until we were stuck here. Back home, whenever I wasn’t practicing martial arts I’d spend the entire day hiking, hunting and camping. I knew the forests and hills behind Burrwood even better than the layout of my family’s villa. Now-”

  He shrugged helplessly. “Now all there is for me to look at is endless rocks, sweaty soldiers, and the carrion feeders skittering from body to body out in the dark.”

  “I heard the scavengers aren’t even from here,” Kaden said darkly. “Apparently they followed the armies onto the bridge a couple hundred years ago and now they just live out in the dark, eating the bodies of folks that die between the lines and absorbing mana. That’s why they look like animals from back home, just… wrong. Twisted.”

  Erich shuddered. He’d seen a scavenger during his one offensive. After their column was driven back by the cinderborn, the imperial soldiers had no choice but to flee back across the darkness that separated the battle lines with nothing but a cracked glowstone.

  No one else in his group of six had mana, so the duty of keeping the glowstone illuminated had fallen on Erich. About six hours into their retreat, he spotted it for the first time. The monster looked like a wolf except that it was too long. Sleek and unblinking in an unnatural way. It paced them for hours, staying just outside the circle of faltering light, and Erich didn’t dare stop for rest as the creature soundlessly followed them.

  It only left him alone when one of the soldiers in his group grew tired and fell behind before Erich noticed that he wasn’t able to keep up. Almost the second the man slipped outside the circle of light there was a short scream and a wet crunch.

  That was the last he’d seen of either of them.

  “Just like us,” Harold said unhappily. “Things weren’t perfect back in Hollendil, but I at least felt like I had a purpose, like the world was moving toward something. Here in the army, I’m just lost. When the cinderborn come, we fight. When an officer says we should attack, we attack. The rest of the time we just spend drilling and training while looking over our shoulders for a cinderborn assault or a senior officer with equal fear.”

  “I don’t have goals anymore,” he continued, running a hand through his hair. “When I enlisted there was a vague feeling that I might be part of an army that would overrun the cinderborn and conquer something. Then we would be in line to receive loot and even potentially low level noble titles.”

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  “It’s not going to happen,” Harold said, sighing. “Both sides lob siege spells overhead, killing handfuls of soldiers and martial artists. We keep our heads down and occasionally sally out into battles. There’s no plan to win from either side. All we’re doing is bleeding to death and slowly going crazy in the dark.”

  “But what if that’s the point?”

  All three of them turned to look at Gwen as she asked the question from where she was leaning against the wall next to the door.

  “I have friends on the Southern Front,” she continued. “The army there isn’t just ‘volunteers’ from Hollendil. There are entire units from Cothleer filled with second and third tier human martial artists backed by elves. The Republic of Mareen is fielding an army around the same level. The troops from Hollendil are little more than fodder designed to blunt enemy attacks before the elite units swoop in and kill everyone. Down there the army is actually making progress.”

  “I don’t think the Empire is even trying to conquer the western bridge right now,” Gwen finished. “There are just enough soldiers here to stop the cinderborn from breaking through, but neither side is trying all that hard. We aren’t seeing anything more than probing strikes and individual officers seeking out honor and riches via glorious charges that go nowhere. It may be a bit conspiratorial of me, but the entire fight seems like nothing more than an excuse to keep trained military age humans away from Hollendil in order to reduce the risk of a revolt.”

  That put a pause to their conversation. All four of them sunk into a deep silence that lasted for almost ten seconds. Finally, Harold broke the quiet.

  “That makes a lot of sense actually. If this entire war isn’t about winning, just thinning out our ranks and leaving the survivors too disorganized and mentally scarred to oppose the Empire, our tactics line up perfectly. Crap.”

  “There isn’t any glory to be found in the dark,” Gwen replied, “only survival.”

  Erich found himself nodding. There really wasn’t anything else to say. The Major had a sword to their back and was forcing them onto the spears of the enemy. It wasn’t a game that they were meant to win. The empire had rigged it against them before the four of them were ever born.

  “Then what are we supposed to do?” Kaden asked bleakly. “I miss Burrwood. It wasn’t perfect, but ever since I was selected to join the army, my family tried to give me the best childhood they could. They didn’t really have the money to enroll me in the Green River School, but they made it happen so that I would have a chance to survive the war. I want to go home, to pay them back for all the opportunities they’ve given me.”

  Erich’s face twitched as memories exploded from the depths of his mind, threatening to overwhelm him. His father had never even let him address the man by his first name. Erich’s brothers Jonas and Finn would refer to him as ‘dad’ or ‘Felix’ all the time, but for Erich, he was only Father.

  They gave him freedom, but little else. Jonas had nothing but cold glares for him, and although Finn was too young to know why he wasn’t allowed to play with Erich, it was clear that his father and mothers were all working together to keep the boy from him. From the moment he outgrew his tutors, Erich was left to himself.

  Between his tenth birthday and the day he enrolled in the Green River School to prepare for his time in the army, no one offered Erich anything, but they also didn’t bother to keep tabs on him. Those years were some of the best of his life. He learned how to set traps for rabbits, assemble a campsite from nothing but fallen branches and leaves, and for the first time, to actually enjoy himself.

  As for Burrwood? It was never home. He had friends in the Green River School, but outside of Elias and Ben, every one of them was going to be deployed to one of the fronts. Statistically, a couple of them would probably survive, but there was no promise that they’d be in their right minds if he were to make it home.

  “You know,” he hazarded, thoughts spinning. “Do we actually know how bad slavery would be? I mean, everyone knows that the cinderborn enslave their prisoners, but I doubt they make their slaves fight. Who knows, it might be better than dying for no reason out in the dark.”

  “If the opportunity came up…” Harold let himself trail off as he made eye contact with Erich. An understanding flashed between them before Kaden spoke up.

  “But there won’t be an opportunity. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see the loyalist martial artists that the elves brought from Cothleer in action, but they’re absurdly powerful. Every technique they use is stronger than it should be for their tier, and they’ve clearly trained together since they were kids. I don’t have any idea what they’re doing to raise martial artists in the heart of the empire, but whatever it is, I know better than to pick a fight with them.”

  “Even if it wasn’t for the slavery at the end of a long march through the predator infested dark,” Kaden finished, shrugging, “any one of the loyalists could kill us in the blink of an eye. It wouldn’t be a fight, just a quick and bloody execution.”

  “I don’t understand how they could do that,” Harold replied, looking past Erich and his companions at the featureless log walls of the cabin. “It’s clear that the elves are oppressing humans, they’ve kidnapped them from the human realms they conquered and brought them back to Cothleer to train them. Sure, that made the descendents of the people they captured strong, and sure they’re given more rights than the rest of humans in the Empire, but it’s not like they get as much as elves.”

  “What’s worse is how they act toward the rest of us,” he grumbled. “The elves treat all humans like we’re barely better than animals, but the loyalists are treated more like prized pets than anything approaching equals. Despite that, the loyalists themselves are the worst. They go out of their way to abuse people from Hollendil. I just don’t understand why they’re siding with the elves against their fellow humans.”

  “Think of it like the kids from rich rich families interacting with the kids from farming families,” Gwen’s response dropped the room into immediate silence. “If you have a couple privileges or baubles that someone else doesn’t have, it’s easier to rub their nose in it than it is to pick a fight with the elves. The elves would just burn your entire village down, you can get away with making fun of the farm hands.”

  Harold and Kaden both shifted uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact as they fidgeted. Everyone that attended the Green River School had some money. Martial artists that survived their military service were in high demand in the larger cities. Most regional hubs had a school like Green River, but it was a service restricted to those who could afford the massive fees needed to lure an instructor from a more lucrative posting elsewhere.

  Erich hadn’t really grown up noticing his family’s wealth, after all he was basically a ghost in the villa, but once he started venturing out into the surrounding countryside he learned the difference fairly quickly. Everyone with a little money, from the shop owners, to the guards, to the town magistrates treated the day laborers and sharecroppers like trash.

  Life was hard for everyone, and the poorest folks managed to attain the dubious benefit of not paying taxes by virtue of ‘not having any money.’ The rest of Burrwood was forced to either part with half of their earnings or their children. This inflamed tensions to the point that fistfights outnumbered whispered comments and dark looks between the two groups. More than once, Harold, Timothy or Kaden had come back with torn clothes or a split lip from scrapping with the farm kids.

  By and large the poorer families left Erich alone and he left them alone. Most of his time was spent outside of the city anyway, so it was easy to ignore the simmering tensions. That didn’t stop him from noticing how silly the hierarchy was. Everyone was oppressed by their local baron, and he was under the thumb of the elves. The rivalry between the merchants and craftsmen and the hired laborers was little more than a distraction from how tough and unappealing all of their lives were.

  “I’m sure it’s the same story,” Gwen finished. “The loyalists get taken to Cothleer and get techniques and benefits that the rest of us would kill for, but they’re still treated as something less than a full person. Of course they’re going to take out their frustration on folks like us given half a chance. How can we really blame them? It’s not like any of us have done any better back home. It’s only now that we’re on the other side of it that we have any problems.”

  “Well,” Kaden replied unhappily. “It still sucks.”