The real bitch of it was that Justice didn't need to control all the Gears all the time, to wreak all the havoc she wanted. No one was sure exactly how many she could hold onto at one time, tales still being told of that legendary first march eastward, the old cities with all their majestic weaponry swallowed whole by ten thousand, twenty thousand Gears at a time, swarms of all shapes and sizes. It seemed impossible that one mind could control so many others for any length of time, on land and in the air, over miles and miles, no matter what sort of nightmare they'd bred her to be - but it had still taken them so long, too long to make sense of the war they were fighting.
Hardly a singular sin, only twenty years since Kliff had managed to persuade the assembled armies to take careful note of just where and how Justice struck at their forces, creating at least a basic sketch of where her attentions were heavily focused, and how long it might take in a battle before even her monstrous endurance would begin to fail. No one had believed him at first, Justice considered even by those who ought to have known better as little less than the Devil incarnate, without flaws or limitations of any kind. Just discovering that there were patterns, ebbs and flows where it was clear she was resting, recovering, and that every Gear at every moment was not, in fact, forever and always under her control, it meant something. In a war of few real victories, with so much lost and so much unknown, even the smallest discovery was comforting.
A cold comfort. Justice might not be able to control so many at once, but much of the time, she didn't have to. All Gears had been originally intended for war, and so many of them were fine-tuned to obey their most violent appetites. Justice only had to spur them on, lead them into the charge, and the Gears would handle the rest themselves, often flying into a berserker rage that would not stop until they died, or there was nothing left of the army they'd been set against. Kliff had lived more than long enough to see it both ways.
Of course, even out of battle, even with her attention on some distant shore, the Gears were still her eager messengers of destruction. Give them no direction, and they would eventually seek out food, wherever it was easy to find. So here Kliff was in some village they'd meant to pass by, only a small group of men with him but all of them veterans. Barely needing his orders before splitting up, following the sounds of destruction as Kliff hurried directly down the main street, to where a Gear was laying waste to the center of town, the humpbacked edge of its carapace just visible over the nearest line of rooftops.
It was easy to tell the cities that had felt the Crusades batter at their gates, not only in damage done, in buildings rendered piecemeal from the scraps of their fallen comrades, but from the strange, eerie silence during an attack. The people who had seen how Gears hunted knew better than to scream, that it would only attract them - there were no faces visible behind even the panes of whole glass, not a flicker of movement from any house. The whole town was no doubt hiding underneath kitchen tables or in inner, windowless rooms. Attics. Cellars, though nothing less than solid stone would stop a Gear that could dig, and even silence could do nothing against their sense of smell. The sad truth was that no amount of preparedness was worth anything without a good measure of luck.
Kliff drew his sword as he turned the corner, his own luck with him that there was simply one of the massive creatures, the curved shell sweeping down into a pair of enormous pincers crushing the paving stones beneath it into dust. He'd fought this type before, big and armored and ugly but without acid or fire or anything all that dangerous. He was still surprised, as the creature lifted one giant arm, slamming it into a pillar already mostly shattered, and a figure darted back, like a bird shaken out of a bush. A tiny slip of a boy, and the wreckage around them proved that he'd been successfully dodging the Gear for some time, but now there was nothing left of his cover, and only fifteen feet, maybe ten between him and the curved, axelike beak looming nearly twice as tall as he was.
"Boy! Don't move!" Kliff roared, gratified when the gigantic head swiveled around toward him - the thing couldn't see worth a damn, but it would still have the boy if he fled and even as Kliff ran forward, he was certain he would be avenging the child's death, too young and too frightened to just stand there in the open, so close to his doom. Perhaps a miracle, then, at least the minor sort Kliff thought he might still believe in, that the boy was either too startled or too terrified to move. Kliff shifted his sword to his off-hand for a split-second, pushing out with the other as he passed, the shove not at all gentle, but hopefully enough to get the boy out of harm's way. After that, he could spare the child no further attention, everything focused on finding the soft folds between the thick, armor-plated joints, slashing and dodging, pushing the beast into a fury that would drive it to distraction. Every move the creature made shook the ground beneath his feet, though he was fast enough to keep ahead of it. Finally, with a few well-placed deep cuts, Kliff managed to bring the Gear down on one side, blood pouring from the crumpled limbs. He never fought assuming he would have assistance, but it was still nice to see the flicker of blue fire, a shower of ice that blinded the beast even as a column of fire poured down its roaring throat.
Kliff drove his sword into the shattered ground, wiping the sweat out of his eyes as the creature let out one last pained roar, neck twisted with its final death throes, and it collapsed to the ground with a tremor that made the distant church bell chime.
"You know, it always feels more like a victory when they don't squash us flat." The ice mage grinned.
"Is everyone all right?"
The fire user nodded. "It wasn't a planned attack. I think there were a few casualties, back there. We should see if they need assistance, if you're all set, sir."
Kliff nodded, waving them off with nothing resembling a salute, though the men had already turned away. It was a simple fact of serving under the High Commander; formality, pomp and circumstance were only for special occasions, and heaven help you if it ever took precedent over taking care of those in need.
Speaking of those in need… Kliff glanced up, looking around for the boy who'd been there at the beginning, half-prepared to find him cowering in a little ball in the rubble somewhere, nursing some injury he hadn't been able to see, or at least frightened beyond consolation at how close he'd come to being the massive Gear's last meal.
He had to blink, then, just to believe what he was seeing. The boy had not only returned to the open on his own, but he was standing only a few paces away from the Gear's massive jaws, staring at it with a quiet, thoughtful expression, nothing like panic at all, and as Kliff watched, the boy reached out, touching the monster with one small hand.
The feeling that trickled down through him, the realization was hardly new. He had been here often enough before, even if the circumstances were slightly more extreme than usual. Another child he could train, with cool regard where panic ought to reign, thoughtfulness in place of terror, and maybe once there had been excitement at the thought, the potential, but all Kliff really felt as he stared at the boy now was a crushing dread, an overwhelming sense of weary sorrow.
If only the child would run, or cry, or do anything to make himself ordinary. Instead, he looked back at Kliff, with brilliant blue eyes, sharp and curious and fully aware, so there was no mistaking his calm for anything but what it was, rare and valuable and terribly necessary, though Kliff did not have the irony left in him to call it a 'gift'.
"Ky!"
The boy looked away, toward the young woman in a long habit who appeared from around the corner, a simple metal cross gleaming in the light as she darted forward - recoiling with a gasp from the Gear, a far more normal reaction, and clasping the boy to her as Kliff pulled his sword out of the ground, and stepped forward to introduce himself.