Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist/Hagane no RenkinJutsushi belongs to Arakawa-san. I just borrow the characters from time to time and hope that I don't break them… too much.

And a big shout out to Unlucky Alis, for applying her beta'ing expertise to this chapter.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX—The Road to Hell…

(... is paved by your own hand.)

White-blue alchemical energy lanced from his fingertips and arced across the earth, searching out with greedy fingers for its target, latched on to glass vials, gnawed with a thousand sharpened teeth until the things finally caved.

The last of Edward's improvised bombs, all potassium and water and hydrogen and the volatile arrays meant to activate them, deafened them with their explosions. Metal scraps and loose earth soared a half dozen meters into the air, and beige-clad enemy soldiers were thrown about like old rag dolls. Shrill howls were torn apart by the cacophony of screaming horses and roaring engines, of shouting soldiers and the sharp report of gunfire, of the muted whisper of flames that rose and fell beneath it all.

The battlefield—once an open plain of golden wheat and dotted with sheep, now ruined and broken and pocked with gunfire and Edward's own alchemy—trembled under the force of it all.

Or maybe, he amended with a grit of his teeth, the earth was quaking under the footfalls of enemy soldiers that just kept fucking appearing out of nowhere, like maggots on rotting meat.

Southern foot soldiers streamed forth from the forest to the south, weapons gripped in white-knuckled hands, spread out to avoid the strafe of bullets coughing from the muzzles of the machine guns on Pontecuti's defensive wall. For every beige-clad enemy that fell, two more crowded past him, racing as though they could somehow catch up to the convoy of Amestrian transports scrambling up the churned dirt road.

Then, with the thunderous pounding of heavy hooves, Aerugonian cavalrymen surged forth from the forest. They split apart, heading east and west, cutting through the fields and oh-so-fucking close to where Edward and his team still crouched. Both teams unfurled themselves, became two thundering walls of beige uniforms and flying hooves.

They swooped in, cutting across the roadway. A shifting barrier of horse flesh, just enough to slow the trucks—

Edward could just make out the cold gleam of metal, half hidden by an Aerugonian hand, before the horseman dashed in front of the lead vehicle, tossed the grenade beneath the tires—

The transport jerked. The drab green hood jumped up, belching red flames and black smoke; shrapnel flew outward, shattering the front window and burrowing itself into the truck's cab. The noses of the following vehicles dove toward the ground, tires skittered in the dirt, weapons flashed from beneath the covered flatbeds. The horsemen let out a few of their own shots, then turned their steeds as though to seek the shelter of the trees at their backs.

And as they neared, the next wave burst forth. A flood of beige clad soldiers, pistols and rifles gripped in their hands, rushed headlong toward the vehicles, toward the village. The horsemen swerved again to lead the charge, and muzzles flashed along the perimeter wall as they drew near, flames erupted from one of the rear vehicles, but there were so many now…

His ears were ringing, deadening the sounds of chaos that surrounded him. The tang of blood and the acrid sent of cordite, the hazy smoke from guns and flames and explosions that rolled across the fields like a haze. Hawkeye's rifle smoked, and the woman tightened her jaw as it slammed into her shoulder. The bolt slid, an empty shell dropped to the ground by her knee, the weapon bucked again—

But the southern soldiers kept pouring out, harsh voices adding to the din, rifles bucking and snapping, bullets riddling the vehicles trapped on the road, dimpling their metal skins and tearing through the canvas, whistling over his head and burrowing into the skull of the soldier who'd been keeping track of the arrivals. They swarmed, like locusts, like a deadly pestilence, and a horde of them narrowed in on the location where he was hidden on his knees and elbows, where Hawkeye was grimacing while her rifle slammed into her shoulder again. One caught sight of her, twisted his own weapon around to take aim, and Edward raised his pistol.

The weapon bucked in his hand, and the shot went wild. He took aim again; his lieutenant was faster. The rifle coughed, the soldier went down, and she tossed the thing to the side to scrabble for the second rifle she'd hidden by her knees. Brought it up, shot again, sent the empty shell flying through the air with a slide of the bolt, and Edward dropped his pistol—he was fucking useless with the thing anyway—to grab at the empty weapon. Loaded it with trembling fingers, shoved it back her way, pretended not to notice her grunt as the recoil sent it bucking into her same shoulder once more.

The white-yellow flames that flowed and ebbed across the fields were more yellow now, and only one of the machine guns was peppering the ground with a deadly metal hail, but the enemy kept on pressing forward, and if the men in the trucks didn't fucking take their chances and move now they would get swarmed by the advancing troops, already so close—

A bullet whistled above his head, entirely too close for comfort, but he pushed himself out of his crouch anyway and, bent almost double, darted down the line of soldiers. All those months ago he'd worked with these same people to sneak through the forests blanketing the hills by the Passage Command. He'd been moving too fast for them—he was far more practised at sneaking around undetected than these soldiers ever had to be—but two of the smaller veterans had stood out, quick and silent like shadows, able to keep pace while the others stumbled about the underbrush…

One was on his back, staring with blank eyes into the sky as it shunned the burnished orange and embraced bold streaks of pink and lilac. The other took aim at the man who had killed her partner, a snarl on her lips as she fired.

"Corporal!" Edward ducked down beside her. A quick glance in his direction signalled that she was listening. "Get to the trucks before those bastards do. Tell Mustang to clear his men out, but they have to stay on the roads. I'll give him some cover."

"Got it, Major!" She dropped another enemy soldier, reloaded, and slid the rifle over her back. On elbows and knees, she disappeared into the thick grasses.

The enemy soldiers spread out, weaving through the tall grasses and pressing toward the town. The horsemen darted forward, and another grenade was tossed through the air, but the thing was caught in a jet of flames and exploded before it had a chance to land. Dark soot and shrapnel rained down onto the squad of soldiers who'd tried to deploy the thing. They swung around again, and the lone machine gun followed them, and a few rifles coughed in response. One of the soldiers fell from the perimeter wall; two horsemen dropped from their saddles.

Then the low rumble of idling trucks spluttered, died. Another flare swept across the fields, and Edward's stomach folded in on itself as the gentle wind smothered him in the scent of burning fat and charred flesh, and then blue-clad soldier after blue-clad soldier leapt over the tail gates, sporting bloody comrades and laden sacks over their shoulders, and made for the false haven that was the town crouched just more than a kilometer away from where they'd been trapped.

Another jet of flames scorched the earth and blackened the fields, cracked the flesh that covered strewn limbs and sent sparks dancing, and there was the bastard General's familiar mess of black hair, though plastered with sweat and tacky with blood from a wound to the temple. The man's mouth was working, and his shoulders were tense, and his dark eyes were wide, and one arm hang useless at his side, but of course he insisted on bringing up the rear as the men around him sprinted northward—

And—fuck, no—the chimaeras zoned in on them as though they were rabbits for the hunting, loping past Aerugonian foot soldiers as though the beige-clad men and women were merely shuffling their way forward, charging past the horsemen, fanning out so that they, too, could avoid the hail from the one remaining machine gun. Mustang snapped, and the plume spread wide across the fields, but there was no way that the older alchemist wasn't tiring, because the chimaeras swerved out of the way with far too much ease, disappearing into the fields, and alarmed shouts from the Amestrians followed them.

Edward slammed his hands into the ground.

The ground beneath the fields had been stolen to create the rest of the perimeter wall, leaving nothing but yearning space and unforgiving stone beds behind, tottering and perched precariously on crumbling towers of fertile soil. He grabbed at the timid, flickering flames of alchemy buried within him, threw them out over the land and spread them so very thin, but it would be enough—it would have to be enough—he couldn't afford to pass out this time.

The fine web of blue-white energy caught against the towers, already weak and failing from the weight of the truck that had tumbled out of control, from the weight of a thousand enemy soldiers, from the trembling explosions.

It took less effort than he thought it would, thank fuck, and for a breath, the mats of roots from corn stalks and wheat stalks kept the ground intact. But then the quaking started, and the ground at his feet shifted as the earth tried to hold itself together, bowing inch by inch. All around, the enemy soldiers slowed, hesitated, threw uncertain glances to their squad mates—

And then an eruption of groaning, roaring, crackling earth drowned out everything else. Fine dust and shattered twigs, sharp stones and crumbling leaves burst into the air, so thick it nearly blocked out the emerging sun, and grit collected in his lashes, caught in his eyes, and he couldn't see a fucking thing—

Throwing an arm over his mouth was instinctive—something, anything, to keep all that crap out of his lungs—he was already choking on the stuff as it was—and it felt like sometime between an eternity and a heartbeat before it all settled back to the ground—

The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was.

He regathered the remaining dregs of alchemical energy to him, pulled his fingers out of the earth, tried not to breathe too heavily even though his heart was pounding frantically against his ribs and his lungs ached for air. Fatigue tore away his strength, his muscles quivered. With a groan he could barely hear above the ringing in his ears, he let himself fall onto his ass.

He scrubbed the dirt off of his face and only succeeded in smearing blood from a score of fine cuts across his cheeks. He bangs slapped against his cheeks as he shook the dirt and debris from his hair. Trembling fingers rubbed furiously at an ear. Had… had he gone deaf?

His eyes scanned over what remained of the blackened, scorched fields. Deep craters marked the landscape—a thousand sinkholes, meters deep and lined with unforgiving stone. Unsteady edges crumbled, raining dirt down into their depths . A few pained moans drifted up, some cautious calls, and a single barked out response that he couldn't understand. They were still alive in there, he realized, and his lungs froze.

He'd never thought—hadn't let himself—

Without warning, an inferno blanketed the landscape, flames licking close enough to where he hid that he could feel the heat on his cheeks. The calls and shouts died away in an instant. The heavy smell of blackened meat swelled out of the sinkholes. A whisper at the back of his mind reminded him faintly that the changes in the molecular structure of burnt lipids could make sensitive skin—like that around the mouth—feel sticky—

He swallowed thickly, once, twice, three times. Pressed his fingers to his mouth and hoped that the scent of damp earth, embedded in the fine lines of his left hand and buried beneath his fingernails, could filter out the stench of burnt bodies—

Fucking focus, Elric. You can't lose your shit now.

He squeezed his eyes shut, tossed those whispering voices and the oily black disgust aside. The bastard had seen the problem for what it was—enemy soldiers alive, too many to be taken prisoner, and far too close to their last stronghold to be allowed to escape—and he'd acted.

The flames were so hot that they probably hadn't even realized what was happening. At least that was a kinder death than the Amestrian soldiers they'd condemned. Besides, this… this was all their fault, right?

This was their fault.

Shouts drifted toward him, drifting on hazy, putrid air, and he forced his eyes open again. The soldiers on the road had been forced to the dirt by the trembling that his transmutation had caused, but Mustang's hoarse voice was urging them onward. They gathered their weapons, helped bloody comrades to their feet, pushed forward.

The only movement now was from Mustang's men as they stumbled up the hillock and disappeared behind Pontecuti's perimeter wall.

Had the Aerugonians decided to withdraw? Had it worked?

Was… was it over?

He glanced over at the squad of soldiers who'd followed him out here, ignored the lurch of his stomach when he realized that only four others—including Hawkeye—were still crouched among the battered grasses. The first lieutenant's tight gaze met his for a moment, then she gathered his own abandoned pistol and her weapons, and scrambled to his side.

"You realize it had to be done." Her voice was soft and hoarse, as though she'd been shouting and had nothing else. She offered the Browning to him, and automail fingers closed around the weapon's grip.

It almost hurt to jerk his head in a quick, short nod. "They would've attacked the town. We've got to protect the civilians, right?"

They were people.

They were the enemy.

He drew a hand over his face. Grime stung the cuts that adorned his cheeks and jaw, and he focused on the pain instead of the maelstrom churning within his skull. "What do you think? Are they gone?"

"I…" She cast bronze eyes over the foliage, the hills, over the waving fields at their backs. Sighed heavily. "Practically, they should have retreated. They realize that there are at least two State Alchemists here now, and their tactics so far suggest that they are trying to avoid battles involving multiple alchemists."

"But you're not convinced."

"I lost sight of their chimaeras when you transmuted the earth." It wasn't an answer; he'd have to trust that she was going somewhere with this. "However, they were able to avoid both gunfire and the General's alchemy—both of which happened far more quickly than the collapsing earth."

"If they were properly made, they should be able to change their forms. They could've done that and run back into the forest with the rest of the foot soldiers."

She arched an eyebrow. So she didn't believe that either, then.

He reached for the canteen at his hip, tried to mull over her words while he washed the dust from his mouth. But fatigue made his mind hazy, and his thoughts flittered about like moths before a flame.

"What do you suggest?" He finally asked, and didn't even have the energy to pretend that he was simply trying to confer with his second-in-command.

"You're exhausted," she said without even a moment's hesitation. "If you push yourself much farther—" The glare was half-hearted, but she got the message anyway. "I think our best option is to return to the town and deliberate with General Mustang. The cavalrymen who originally came here with us should still be in good enough condition to perform a sweep of the forest and hills—Major, are you listening?"

Movement just over her right shoulder, faint and indistinct and half-hidden by an oak's low, sweeping branches, caught his eye. Alarm, finely tuned as it was, tightened around his stomach and stole his breath before he even realized what he was seeing.

His metal hand flashed in the pale sunlight as he snapped forward, wrapped his fingers around Hawkeye's shoulder, hauled her face down into the loam at their knees, ducked low so that all he could smell was earth and sheep shit, heard the cough of a rifle, flinched as the bullet ricocheted off the back of his hand—

Hawkeye barked out a sharp command, though his ringing ears couldn't quite make out what, and the rest of their squad dropped onto knees and elbows, readied their weapons, squinted through the broken wheat stalks. And the ground beneath them was shuddering again, and the movements in the forest as unmistakable now, trembling leaves and branches swaying.

A fresh wave of beige clad soldiers—and just how many of the fuckers were there!—surged toward the town, with two of the chimaeras at their front.

Hawkeye grunted just as another shot echoed across the open fields, and he shot a sharp look her way but she just waved it aside, grabbed for her rifle with an arm that hadn't been bloodied three minutes ago, took aim. The rifled smoked and two enemy sharpshooters fell from the trees.

At the base of the hills, there was more movement. Another wall of beige soldiers and screaming horses and dark-furred monsters emerged there too, charging for the village's western flank.

His stomach twisted. Adrenaline seared through his veins. He hadn't had the time—hadn't had the energy—had needed to take that strategic risk—when making the perimeter walls; they didn't go around the whole of Pontecuti, and if Caddock and Mustang and the soldiers behind the wall couldn't stop the Aerugonians from flanking them, then there'd be nothing to keep those beige-clad bastards from walking right into the town. Mustang's flames had lost their brilliant yellow streaks entirely, the remaining machine gun had ceased its chattering, and those craters had been the last trick he'd hidden in the ground to the south of the town.

A heavy, echoing blast cut through the air. Something shrieked, his heart stuttered, his attention flew skyward—no, no, not mortar fire; the civilians, hidden in their houses, wouldn't make it if—but flames flared from atop the perimeter wall, and the heavy round exploded, shattering windows of the nearest buildings and pelting the pale brickwork with metal shards. Those buildings weren't reinforced; they couldn't take the same amount of damage that the sentry towers and barracks and stables at Plains could—

A full platoon split off from the incoming army, charging directly at him and the last few soldiers at his side, weapons aimed and eyes narrowed in determination, and Hawkeye took aim and let out two shots before they could react. Two dropped, bloody third eyes sprouting from their foreheads, but even she could only grab at her second weapon so quickly, and those bastards would be upon them soon—

He heard the scream of another mortar round, and another one of Mustang's orange-red flames met it. The older alchemist had to know that the only defense that the town had from those deadly rounds was sewn into the back of his gloves, had probably left the defense of the town to Caddock so that he could focus on his alchemy and his own waning strength.

A low, primal growl pressed against Edward's teeth, and he didn't bother to swallow it back this time. Hawkeye shot again, as did the three under her command, but there were too many of them, and even if he and the others were able to pick off this platoon, there were still a hundred others that could easy move to overwhelm them.

Think. Fucking think. There had to be some way…

The solution slammed into his skull with the force of a steam engine. His flesh fingers buried into the blue wool at Hawkeye's bicep, and an inhuman grip caught the elbow of the man on his other side. They both jerked, the blonde lieutenant opened her mouth to snap off a few terse words, the other soldier opened his mouth to do the same thing, and he pushed them both backward, toward the Tevere.

"Get to the river! Run!"

"Edwa—"

"Fucking go, Lieutenant! Now!"

And then they were scrambling toward the slowly moving river, a third solider hot on their heels; Edward ducked low to avoid the bullets that screamed over his head, made to grab their last team member and drag him along, too. The man took one glance at his young superior officer, saw the others sprinting through the fields toward the bloody sunrise, scrambled to his feet to follow—

Collapsed face first into the ground, the back of his head shattered and tacky with blood.

A litany of curses, none of them creative enough, howled through his mind, but he turned on his heel and raced after the others. They were dashing over the limestone rocks that made up the shoreline now, splashing into the cool depths, weapons on their shoulders and heads way too easy to pick out. He slapped his hands together, brushed metal fingers against the ground as he ran, and a barrier sprouted behind him, just enough to make it hard for the Aerugonians to get a good shot in, and he stumbled and his vision flickered; the alchemy at his core spluttered and died away to just the flickering glow of white-blue coals.

He stumbled on the lose rocks that lined the river's edge, and fell into the water, spluttered and pushed himself to the surface before the weight of his automail could drown him—because wouldn't that just be an awesome fucking way to go—waded through the flowing water until he could crouch low beside the others.

His flesh fingers brushed against the cold steel of automail, and a forceful breath pushed away the screaming thoughts that demanded to know just what the hell he thought he was doing, that he didn't know how to perform a transmutation like this, that he had no right, that he'd promised himself—but that promise that already been shattered into a thousand shards of glass, and he'd promised Al that he'd come home, too.

The crackle of alchemical light sparked across the water, and he threw himself into the transmutation, on the way the water twisted and split under his direction, on the hydrogen that swirled and danced in the air, on the net of energy he cast out to keep it all away from the four soldiers watching his back, on coaxing it toward the scorched battlefield that had once been acres of farmland. Cast the net even wider to keep the gases there, let them build, let them play in the eddies created by hurried footfalls of enemy soldiers and snorting warhorses. And the last of the white-blue energy he held in his body dimmed to a single point of light, and his heart was pounding its way right out of his chest, and his muscles trembled but if he fell now he was fucking done for—

A shoulder hitched itself under his flesh arm and a calloused hand wrapped around his ribs. Though winking, spotted vision he found Hawkeye at his side, eyes hard but mouth twisted in worry, then the shriek of mortar fire cut through the air and he ended the transmutation like an executioner at the chopping block.

"Down!" His voice emerged as little more than a croak—barely intelligible, even to him. Metal fingers grabbed at Hawkeye's shoulder in a bruising gripped, and he dragged them both beneath the water's surface.

The explosion hit his ears like a muffled roar, the intensity of it stirring up the water around them, throwing them about and dragging their waterlogged limbs over smoothed river rocks. The light that filtered down to them abandoned its bold streaks of pink and lilac for a flash of pale orange. Then it dimmed as black smoke belched into the sky.

His grip on the blonde first lieutenant's shoulder weakened on its own accord, and he tried to push at the stony riverbed, tried to claw his way to the surface. His mind swam, drifting in and out of awareness, but he couldn't pass out here… He bared his teeth, scrabbled at the rocky riverbed with half-numb fingers, tried to find to strength to push away at break through the water's surface. But his limbs were so heavy, burdened by waterlogged wool and so very clumsy, and no matter how hard he tried, they wouldn't obey his commands.

Then two hands gripped his mismatched shoulders, hauled him upright. Even after he bullied his legs into taking his weight, they didn't disappear.

"We need to get you back to the town." It was Hawkeye's voice that filtered into his mind; he really couldn't find it within himself to disagree with the woman. She half-helped, half-carried him out of the river, and it was all he could do to stumble along with her.

A clumsy hand swiped his bangs away from his face, and tired eyes surveyed what had once been a battlefield.

There was, quite simply, nothing left.

The tall grasses and stalks of corn were pale ash, drifting forlornly in the breeze; the earth was smeared with dirty soot; skeletal remains, twisted and contorted in ways that no body would ever be able to endure, crumbled; the perimeter wall was streaked with broad, black strokes. To the south, the trees had are lost their foliage, and a score of flickering flames snuffed themselves out as he watched.

"Edward." Hawkeye's voice was so incredibly distant, but he could barely feel her fingers urging him onward. "Just keep moving. There are people who need us back at the town."

It… was an order. Keep moving. All he had to do was obey.

His head bobbed in a nod, and his weak legs moved on their own volition.

Be a good soldier and obey.

Random tid-bits of information:

1. Edward's reaction in the water—he splits up the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Hydrogen gas is excellent at going 'splodey. As a reminder, that's how Mustang thinks he kills Lust before Havoc is paralysed.