Third Thrust – Within the Crisis
"Wake up! Wake up Sylvia!" a stiff hand shook her flesh to accompany these words. "You have to wake up now, you're still bleeding a trickle, and you've lost enough blood as it is!"
The voice was without warmth, it had all the musicality of rocks being struck together, but it was still welcome. As much as anything could be welcome in the wash of dizzy memory that poured over Sylvia now.
"Luny?" at first it was a question, then it was a demand. "Luny! Why? Is this your plan, to destroy us all?"
"Stop!" Luny's voice was commanding, and his bony fingers dug into her body, lifting and pulling, turning Sylvia's ravaged form onto her back, so she faced the morning sunlight.
"You dare to tell me to stop?" Sylvia could hardly contain her outrage.
"Yes!" The man in black, his face still hidden behind his dark cowl, snapped. "Save it!"
"I will not simply accept…" she began, building up to a frightful stormcloud of rage, emotion that demanded release.
"Save it I say!" Luny barked. "Later! There will be time for all that later! For now, dealing with the survivors trumps all! Now, close you wounds."
These words drained away some of the fury, if only for a moment, and Sylvia realized just how weakened her body felt, how powerless. She looked at herself and saw for the first time the wounds she had taken. Her shield, Tyrin's shield, was shattered, and an unclean and wretched collection of scabs marked where much of her forearm and hand ought to be. The cut that had severed her leg was cleaner, but it had gone just above the knee, and a slow dripping pattern of red still oozed forth.
It took all the energy Sylvia could muster just to exert the little yoki it took to close that wound, and her head fell back against the ground, grunting with the effort, after she had done so.
"Eat this," Luny shoved a chunk of something against her mouth, not gently. Feeling the texture Sylvia opened, chewed, and then swallowed. It was a wedge of cheese, made from goat's milk for certain, and foul tasting, but she knew it brought energy. Luny shoved another, larger, wedge into her mouth thereafter, hovering over her as she ate. Then he placed a canteen above her face and poured. "Swallow, gulp by gulp, you need this, and you know it."
When she had drunk several mouthfuls he stopped. Carefully he positioned her right arm, the one arm still with a hand, on her stomach. There his wrinkled hands placed the canteen, and the rest of the block of cheese. "You will eat and drink it all, and you will not move beforehand. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Sylvia did not waste energy to nod, recognizing how seriously she had truly been wounded. She would do as he said. It would be enough to give her the strength to hobble about, and then to find more food. I can recover fully, given time. Sylvia had never been wounded this badly before, but she had lost limbs in the past. She was a defensive warrior, they could be restored.
Luny got up, and began to turn away, when a single thought, impossibly urgent, flashed through Sylvia's mind. "Wait, wait Luny," she begged, feeling weak and pathetic as she never had before. "I must know, how many, how many are left?"
The man in black did not look at her, turning away. "I do not know. We're still searching through the field." He shook his head, and for a moment, just a moment, all his guard was gone and Sylvia saw a grim and horrible truth. Luny, in his way, cared and grieved for this mistake, but it was this that marked him out from so many of the other men in black. They, she could sense, did not. "Not enough," he concluded.
"Get up when you feel able," Luny said as he walked away slowly. "Eat and drink as much as you can, and start to heal. There may be others you can help."
After Luny had gone Sylvia waited a time, letting the warmth, the energy of food diffuse a little through her body, bringing strength back to her limbs a little, allowing her to silence the pain that still raged through her body. Only then did she dare sit up partially and look out onto the battlefield.
Sylvia had seen things even few other Claymores had seen: armies of men and yoma fighting together, a half-human half-yoma slain by a human sword, bodies of men ground up into a press to make paint for a yoma's twisted sculptures, and more, but she had never seen anything like this. Before this day, no Claymore had seen a real battlefield, such as the humans have, the killing field, now, Sylvia knew with absolute clarity. We have.
The flesh lay in great piles; rot had begun to set in immediately, characteristic of the corrupted flesh of yoma and the awakened. Clouds of flies and flocks of birds swarmed and pecked. Blood pooled and flowed from one place to another, among the corpses both large and small. Here and there clean bits of steel could be seen, or a flash of white yet unstained, but for the rest red-stained mud colored all, a cruel display, as if the earth itself had been ground up in the mouth of some great giant. There was sound, but also a great silence, for the voices of the dead made no sound, yet they were there.
Nothing I have ever seen has been like this. How many of my kind, how many half-human half-yoma, lie in the mud? How many friends? How many of the only ones who can understand what we are? How MANY! Sylvia sobbed, the sorrow pouring out as her eyes darted across the battlefield, catching the still faces and shattered forms of her former comrades, and worse, the ones twisted by awakening, faces still human but bodies lost, going into death as monstrous things. Above it all was the one simple realization: this did not have to be, they did this, this…experiment!
There will be no forgiveness for this. Loyalty yes, I will obey my orders, will do what I must, but I will not forgive and I will not forget. Even if I am the only one who survives! After she swore this oath Sylvia collapsed back down, the sobs continuing.
It was sometime before she regained control of herself, she might even have slept. There was no way to know. Knowing this Sylvia refused to be idle any longer. Carefully but quickly she ate the rest of the cheese and drank the canteen to the last. Then, working slowly and carefully, using a skill she had been forced to learn once before, she detached the harness for her sword and planted it upright in the ground. The massive, long blade could then be used to pull her upright, and as a crutch in place of her lost right leg.
As she stood, more pieces of metal crumpled away from her left side. Sylvia looks down at the pieces of Tyrin's shattered shield. She managed, with difficultly, to sheathe the sword at her hip, but the shield was gone. I will find a man to make me a new one, just like this one. I will, as soon as I can. The shield had saved her life yesterday, and Sylvia would not abandon it.
Then, as every step burned, she hobbled through the wasteland to seek out any of her comrades who remained. She would know the answer to her question.
They were eight in all, gathered in a circle, seated on loose stones. Eight half-human half-yoma, all that remained of the forty-two who had fought against Luciela. They had many different numbers, but they were not strong. Only one among them was a single digit, Rosalie, number seven. All had been wounded severely, and none had escaped without losing at least part of a limb.
Racquel was among the survivors as was Caitlin, and Sylvia had been filled with joy at that realization, that at least as few she knew lived yet, but every time she thought on it she only recalled the many others who had not survived. She also knew that Rafaela, though not among the dead, was not with them. No one had an answer for that, or anything else, yet.
It was Rosalie who addressed them all now, these pitiable survivors who had gathered. Sylvia knew her, they had served together once before. She was a steady, forthright warrior who was ready to command and confident in her powers. Her pale silver, almost gray, hair was kept cut short, halfway down the neck only, a military cut that made her appear older than a warrior ordinarily would, and authoritative. Whipdraw Rosalie, as she was known by many for the eye-blink fast draw-cut maneuver she used, would be the kind of warrior Sylvia would have been glad to serve under in other circumstances. Now, that no longer applied.
They were all scarred and reeling, wounded, but Rosalie was injured deeper than the loss of both her legs that she had suffered in combat. Something had been drained out of her by this engagement, and her confidence, her steadfast valor, was not there, not as Sylvia recalled it. We all look older now, changed, devastated. We have all lost something here, some more than others. What have I lost? She did not know, and she did not know how a mirror would answer her in that moment.
"I suppose," Rosalie began, grimacing in pain from her wounds, and embarrassed at having been propped up on a rock by another. "That I am now the number one warrior, in a sense, but I will not speak that way. It would not be right to line ourselves up as if we had earned advancement, not today. I am number seven, and for now that will have to serve. I hope the rest of you will join me in holding our old numbers until such a time as we may gain new ones, though I don't know when that will be."
Sylvia nodded along with the rest, there was no opposition.
"First," the single digit continued, trying hard not to frown. "I wish to congratulate all of you on being with us. In that chaotic madness too many fell, far too many. I want to say that whatever you did to survive, whatever it was, there is no blame. No cowardice, no shame, nothing of that sort can be carried from this. I will not have it. We survived, and as victory was impossible on that day, we must take survival itself as all we could hope for. I will not dishonor the memory of the fallen by wishing to join them."
There were nods at this, but many were reluctant, and Sylvia could understand. She herself felt some shame at surviving, lying bleeding in the mud as the whole battle raged, and she had been powerless to do more. Others might have run, or hidden behind the swords of others. She knew then that she would never ask, never place blame. Rosalie was right, to live through it was enough alone.
"Beyond this, I am uncertain," the words tore out of Rosalie, and the suggestion of tears formed behind them. "I do not know what happens next, what we should do, or how we should proceed. We have a choice to make, and we will make it," her voice grew momentarily iron hard. "However, first there is someone come to speak with us, and I ask that, no matter your anger, he be allowed to speak."
With these words a man in black stepped forth from the shadows behind the rocks.
"Why shouldn't we gut the bastard?" a warrior to Sylvia's left growled. "They killed us! Almost all of us! How about we kill them until the dead are even and then we let them talk!"
"No!" Rosalie did not shout, but her voice was infused with an echo of the single digit's old command. "If vengeance is our choice we will make it, in time, but first we will hear these words. We will not kill the messenger, not the one who has risked his person to speak to us now. We are not yoma! We shall behave like men."
There were grumbles, and angry noises short of words, but no one moved.
Sylvia recognized Luny's figure in the man in black before them, but she said nothing. He kept his cowl up, and she did not want to make this in any way personal. He had told her to wait, and so she had waited. She would get her explanation now, one way or another.
The way he began surprised them all. "You are right to be angry," Luny said first of all, and several audible gasps filled the pause before he gathered himself to continue. "Mistakes were made, and thirty-four warriors paid the price with their lives. We had our reasons to attempt what we attempted, and we had our reasons to believe it would succeed." He paused again, and took a deep breath.
For the first time in her life Sylvia saw a thing the man in black said with the full truth behind it. He does not believe that. She comprehended in sudden shock. He never believed in this trick of Awakening, the men in black were divided on it! It was not possible to fully comprehend the impact of that realization in that moment, but she understood there was sincerity here. Luny actually held some measure of guilt for these events.
"Instead, there was a failure,' the man in black continued, slowly turning to face each of the eight in succession. "That was regrettable. It was also regrettable that you, any of you, were present." He looked down to the ground, not meeting their gazes. "I believed," and Sylvia recognized how significant it was that Luny used the term 'I' here. "That your presence provided insurance, that in the case of failure the assembled host of warriors had the best chance of stopping the Awakened number one. That," and his gravelly voice filled with real emotion. "Was an error in judgment. The vast number of warriors only increased the chaos and made the carnage worse. It would have been better, in hindsight, to have only the other single digits present, or perhaps no warriors, and simply accept the result, come what may. That mistake cost many lives, and while it is of no use to apologize to the dead, I wish to make certain you know that such a thing was never intended and it is deeply regretted."
Sylvia would never know what the organization as a whole felt regarding Luciela's awakening, and later events would not make her opinion a generous one, but from those words she always knew that some of the men in black, at the very least one, were capable of admitting they were wrong. It was something as important as anything else she would ever learn.
"However," and with that one word Luny banished all the emotion and regret from his voice. "That is the past. What remains now is the present." His head rose and he faced the warriors again, one by one. "Some of you no doubt wish to take revenge, to make us pay for the lost friends and comrades. I tell you now, that will accomplish nothing. Will you battle the trainees and try to strike at us? With your few numbers and many wounds, could you succeed? Even if you shattered our warren and drove us to ground we would rise again. It will not bring the dead back. All die and half-human half-yoma die sooner than most. Don't throw everything away simply because a few have lost a handful of years." That last statement was callous and cruel, but true. The lives of Claymores were short, not more than a handful among the fallen could have reasonably expected to live even ten years more after yesterday no matter what happened. "Do not think that destroying us will somehow save the world." Luny's voice rose, filling with power and energy.
"Will it drive away the yoma? No! Will it end the lives of the awakened ones and abyssal ones, now three in number, abroad in the world? No! Will it save the lives of any human who might die at their hands! NO!" Now Luny drew his black robe inward, and his body seemed to condense. "That last is the most important of all. Your existences, the lives of all you warriors, save the lives of humans. Your horrible fates are paid with in unshed blood. Eight of you stand before me; three more reside far from here. Eleven warriors in all, eleven out of forty-seven, and the hunting of yoma goes on. For every life that was lost yesterday human lives will be lost by the dozens. That cannot be changed, but if you raise your swords against us more will be lost. If you should desert, thinking, and it is likely true, that we no longer have anyone to spare to hunt you down, then the number falls away from eleven. More humans shall perish, and the lives of those who stay shall be all the harder. Every one who drifts away now may take a comrade who remains with her into the darkness."
"So we are just to go back to our duties," this voice, interjecting, was Caitlin's. "We pretend that nothing has happened?"
"This organization controls your feet, and your swords," Luny answered, swift striking without turning to face Caitlin's question. "What you do with the rest of you is not our concern. Requests will still come, and they must be met, or humans die. If you feel such things are meaningless, feel free to try and claim your revenge, or whatever peace you can seek, but remember the price that comes with it."
Damn you Luny! Damn you forever! Sylvia could see what had just been done, and she understood why it would work where so many other men in black would have failed. Toying with their desires, their pleasures, their quirks as so many men in black did, would not have worked, it would not have held back the rage, and the betrayal fury waiting in them now, but this, this was different. He had made it their choice, had laid their actions against their humanity, had dared them to deny that side of them, the thing all of them valued the most, to turn their back on their ability to show human guilt and compassion. What you have just done is so like you Luny, just as when you had Lynne killed. Fair and just, but impossibly cruel. You are indeed reasonable, may you burn for it!
"Now then," Luny went on, carefully and deliberate with his words, making sure he was heard. "I suppose you will each decide as you will. There is no forcing you, not now. Even so, let me say something about what will happen should you maintain your duties." Eight pairs of ears turned in to listen, though their hearts boiled and loathing, outward and inward, simmered in the air.
"There are eight of you here, three others in distant lands, so eleven veteran warriors." Luny gave a single shake of the head. "Eleven is not enough. We shall immediately take what trainees we can and make them full warriors, but even with that done we shall manage perhaps twenty-two or twenty-four warriors, barely half strength. For the future training will be accelerated and many new trainees will be brought up quickly, but, given the certainty of high casualties with such a practice it will take at least two years to reestablish our strength and have the organization functioning properly. It is these two years that will be the heart of the crisis, when each of you, regardless of number, will be so valuable. We shall merge areas together, doubling the coverage each of you must patrol. Team missions will be curtailed, and though we shall simply not face the most dangerous threats such as powerful awakened ones or strong nests, the difficulty of the average mission will surely increase. You will have to use experience and discretion to preserve your lives. This is not the time for heroic self-sacrifice. There will be other days and other battles with yoma. For now we must simply keep the organization's operation steady enough to prevent catastrophe and the people losing all faith in our ability to protect them. The chaos unleashed by that would bring a bloodbath and perhaps even the yoma ruling over the continent."
Heads nodded, for all this made practical sense. It was harsh, but it was a real plan, a plan that could work, and by presenting it Sylvia realized that Luny was influencing them. His option, though it offered no vengeance, no justice, returned the familiar to them when it had seemed almost entirely washed away even as it gave them a powerful purpose. Before was the stick, this, then, is the carrot. Cunning Luny, Sylvia thought. Yet, I think even without that, there is little other choice. She was a hunter of yoma, and more, Tyrin had charged her to live. So she would live on hunting yoma, not throw herself at the organization in futility. Neither, will I forget, and I shall do all I can to make sure none of us do. Our feet and our sword does not include our tongues.
"It makes the most sense to begin soon, to give the yoma no additional time to run free," Luny concluded. "As soon as each of you heals enough to travel provisions will be provided and you can head out to new areas. The first may be able to leave next morning." He turned away from them all, and then slowly, ever so slowly, turned back. "I had almost forgotten. It is unpleasant, but on that subject, there is one other thing that must be addressed."
"What?" one of them, it did not matter which, asked.
"Four of you are offensive warriors, four of you defensive, but all wounded," Luny spoke matter-of-factly, emotionless. "That has to be dealt with."
"How?" it was Rosalie who spoke now, for she was an offensive warrior. "We cannot recover! I watched as Luciela crushed my feet beneath her claws!'
"True, but there is another option."
"What? You can't-" many voices spoke at once.
"Stop!" Luny's hand slashed through the air, invoking silence. "It is necessary." His eyes searched around the circle, meeting Sylvia's first, and then searching, searching, finally settling.
"Number twenty-two, Caitlin, come forward," his hand jerked her outward.
Sylvia watched Caitlin step from her rock. The younger Claymore carried only one major wound. She had lost her right arm just above the elbow. It was easy to see, now, that she was an offensive warrior from the way the injury remained; it had not begun to regenerate.
"Sylvia," Luny spoke the single word, he did need to say anything more. She understood what he intended. Carefully, using her right arm to hold her sword as a crutch, she hobbled forward to stand beside Caitlin.
"You can't do this," one of the others spoke, half-panicked. "It's wrong, it's a violation!"
"Maybe so," Sylvia replied without turning, looking straight at Caitlin, and she saw regret, but also agreement in those silver eyes. "But nothing we say will remove the necessity."
Caitlin nodded, silent, somewhere between tears of joy and sorrow.
"I can't do it myself," Sylvia felt horrible, powerless, speaking those words, but her left hand was little more than an elongated wrist now. It would take some time yet to heal enough to have a grip. "Racquel." She did not want to burden a comrade she did not know well with this. She trusted Racquel, who had been there when Lynne died, to understand.
"Are you sure?" Racquel's serene voice asked carefully, not even acknowledging Luny's existence.
"Do it."
In a single smooth sweep, Racquel's sword leap out, up, and then down.
There was a single flash of frozen pain, a terrible instant when loss flooded through everything and yoki attempted recklessly to escape. Sylvia's will, never firmer, slammed it back down just as swiftly.
Bleeding only a little from the perfect slice, Sylvia looked down to see her severed right arm grasped in Caitlin's good left before it touched the ground. The calmly capable warrior turned ever so slightly and Racquel struck again, taking a tiny sliver of flesh from the stump on the right side.
Slowly, tenderly, and carefully, the number twenty-two Claymore fastened the arm of the number thirty-one to her right side. Yoki moved, squirming and wriggling in the wound. Flesh knit, blood vessels connected, and muscles and tendons attached in new, but the same, places. Time seemed to slow down, but eventually the wound closed and the flesh was all but seamless, only a slight difference in coloration indicating there was any difference.
Caitlin, hesitant and filled with trepidation, flexed each finger one by one, commanding flesh not truly her own, but now part of her. "Thank you," she told Sylvia.
Silent, Sylvia simply stepped back to her stony perch. Her mind was in that moment empty, she did not know what to think, if anything, of this event.
"Next," Luny pointed to another warrior, and three times more the cycle was repeated, the defensive warriors giving pieces of their bodies, their yoki, to another, as close in number as could be found. Sylvia did not watch, but looked away; somehow, she did not want to observe this happening to others than herself.
When it was done Luny grunted softly. "Well, I will leave you to make your choices, new assignments, outfits, and equipment will be supplied in the morning." With that he turned and walked away.
All watched silently until he was beyond earshot.
"I think the points that were there to be made, have been made," Rosalie spoke first when the man in black was gone. "We must swallow our anger, for now at least, and serve as we were meant to serve." No objection was raised. "However, anger is not the same as fear. The image of Luciela haunts me now and forever, and I shall not go back to my task the same as before. If any do wish to leave, if they feel they lack the strength to continue this work, then go. You may choose when, and how, but no blame shall be placed, and there should be no shame. We were never ready, can never train to be ready, to face that kind of despair."
A chorus of nods replied to this.
"Beyond that, I will charge you all to remember this, and to spread the word, first to our three other comrades, and then to those trainees who follow. We cannot allow the organization to silence this, or leave a lie behind. Luciela was of their making, their creation, and their decision. All the lives she takes, all those she ruins, the responsibility is entirely theirs. We gave every sacrifice we could; we have paid more than our share. We must remember, so that over time, they pay theirs."
Yes, I agree, Sylvia said silently. This is not something to be forgotten. We must fight through the dark years to come, so that the truth of this is not lost within the crisis. She could not hold her sword properly now, but she managed to wrap her left elbow around the hilt and extended it into the circle. "I will carry this memory, and all of you, with me."
Seven other swords, many just as awkwardly held and balanced, joined her own, crossed in the center. "Until our paths cross again!" Rosalie intoned.
"Until our paths cross again," the others echoed, and then the swords were raised up and placed away.
Alyssa, Caitlin, Cherie, Elsa, Marie, Racquel, Rosalie, and myself, Sylvia, we are the eight who survive this day. Linked by shared flesh, shared memory, and shared loss. I am neither the strongest nor the weakest among us here, but I swear, I shall not forget or fail this charge. Perhaps that is enough.
Author's Notes: This is an extremely busy chapter. There's just a ton of important stuff in here, much of which won't get referenced or fully explained until much, much later. In a way this is like the moment the seven principles in the manga all woke up after Peita, that event shaped so much of what follows. Anyway, there is more aftermath to come, and the next chapter will feature something of a departure of method, as I'm going to switch to Luny's viewpoint for the first time.