Unified Year 1923, Rhine Front

Mathias paced, checking a dull steel wristwatch every other step. Around him was the trench, a mass of rotting wooden planks, haphazardly placed plates of corrugated steel, and an unbelievable amount of mud and water, which pooled up beneath the boards they walked on. Wetness seemed to permeate everything, his boots, the little crevice dug out in the side of the trench that served as his bed, and the inside of his bags of equipment. The walls of his home were around a half-head taller than him, hiding from his sight a field that contained nothing but more mud and remnants of steel shells, twisted and mangled apart by their impacts. Although, he would likely only catch a brief glimpse of the expanse before receiving a bullet to his head for the trouble. One of the enemy snipers had been good enough at their job to have been given the nickname "Mama's Boy" by the men, for his seemingly endless desire to please his superiors, waiting every hour of the day for a single shot that he never missed.

As for the smells, he was glad that he had gotten used to the foul combination of urine, excrement, gunpowder, and the dirty socks which he wished there were more of. In his first turn cleaning the latrines, he had almost been knocked out by the combination of the odor that blasted his nose with the force of an artillery shell and the sheer sight of the slurry of waste. He had never had a strong stomach.

Thinking of artillery shells, many were raining down around two hundred fifty meters east of his position. Friendly guns blasted from kilometers behind the front lines, going through an amount of material better counted through raw tonnage than the number of shells fired. He could hear the sound the 155-millimeter shells made as they landed like they were crunching and tearing through the earth, each impact like thunder.

However, despite the lightning god's best efforts, he figured they would get little done. No matter how much they pounded away, men in field-grey would scurry like rats out of the trenches the second the cracking stopped. It would all be done in seconds, one moment he would think that the enemy was all gone, reduced to stray pieces from the artillery, then the next they were manning machine guns and ready to snipe the navy-blue hats off of any heads poking out of the trenches as if nothing had happened at all.

Sticking out a hand in front of him, he braced himself against a sheet of corrugated steel. He ran his hands across the bumpy surface, feeling each little dip and crevice as if they were ten times larger than they actually were. Hours of digging, working against the mud that sucked his shovel down into the earth had caused them to become bruised and sore beyond recognition. The worst was an angry dark-purple welt on the palm of his right hand, colorful even compared to the reddish hues visible elsewhere. If he tried to aim his rifle - made out of hard wood and steel - the injury would flare up in pain, making it a difficult task to properly shoot his gun.

When he had asked the medic for help, he had responded, "It's only a little bruise," and had recommended that he bandage the injury if he wanted. It had softened the pain a little, but not enough.

He removed his hands from the wall. Wooden boards creaked underneath him as he paced again, his breath growing faster with each step. Glancing overhead, he could see signs of the sun creeping over the horizon, warm rays of light that shone into his eyes marking the beginning of dawn.

It was almost time.

He looked around at his comrades. Men in varying stages of wear and tear hugged the eastern parapet made of yellowed sandbags, holding long, bolt-action rifles in sweaty palms. Their torsos were colored in navy-blue fabric, and their pants dyed an almost offensive red that clashed against the dull brown colors of the earth that surrounded them. They too checked wristwatches, eyes darting back and forth between the top of the parapet and the ticking hands of the clockwork.

A cough came from his left. The momentary distraction caused the men to take their eyes off their watches to look at the pale-faced youth who had disrupted their mental preparations. The rifle strapped vertically on his back was too long for his skinny frame, the barrel sticking up past his head. Mathias only glanced at the boy, then checked his watch again. It's time.

The artillery barrage stopped, and the air grew still. As if the clock of the universe had broken, and all of the world was frozen in place, not a single sound breaking the silence. Then, an ear-piercing whistle screamed through the zig-zagging trenches. In an explosion of movement, soldiers started scrambling up dirty walls and onto the field above, where there were no signs of life except stray chunks of weedy grass and burnt-out trees stained with ash.

"Move!" screamed a sergeant, only meters down the trench from Mathias. "Follow your comrades!" The instant the words left his mouth, he heaved himself up, disappearing from view.

Similar shouts could be heard all up and down the trench line. "Go! Go! Go!" Followed behind the bursts of noise were a raw, feral roaring coming from the throats of the soldiers. They bellowed in defiance as thousands of bodies hurled themselves up, rifles and metal straps clanking with the sound of countless pots and pans crashing down from cupboards.

High above in the sky, he could see the explosions of mages fighting for control of the airspace, fireworks that dotted the sky with black clouds followed seconds after by the sound of the shockwave. Smaller, but still visible were the specks of the mages themselves whizzing around like tiny fairies.

The belching of FT-17 tank engines to his right distracted him as he caught a glimpse of shadows crossing the trench, their large treads ignoring the obstacle. Moving past his position, their sound started to grow distant. Then, he saw a few of the dots high in the sky moving down and firing a series of shrieking shots that glowed like Christmas lights. As they hit their targets, the revving sound of the engines stopped, permanently halted.

He adjusted his prior assessment - the mages were more like bloodsucking mosquitos, ready to take whatever opportunity presented itself.

The situation of the tanks was similar to his, rooted in place as his comrades disappeared over the lip of the trench around him, hands shaking, violent spasms running down his spine. He couldn't move a single inch. I have to go up. I have to go up, then forward. It wasn't that he felt heavy or even particularly nervous, his muscles just refused to work. I have to move!

It was his first real combat experience. His first time, and he was being ordered to participate in a frontal assault in the center of the Imperial line. The most dangerous assignments he had experienced on the front were cleaning the latrines and fending off rats.

Neither of those was anything like this.

Just move! With his sore and bruised fist, he punched himself square in the side of his head without holding back. He forced away his fear, batting it aside with all the grace of a bulldozer as he staggered around, hissing as he gritted his teeth in pain. For a few seconds, all he felt was dizziness and regret at having done something so rash.

Then, something inside of him clicked, and he found that he could move again. His feet were no longer stuck to the ground.

In the next instant, he hoisted himself up, wincing again as his bandaged hands caught against the rough, rocky dirt near the top of the trench. I have to. I have to. I have to! A blue cap poked its way out of the hole, then the rest of his body followed, eyes finally seeing for themselves what lay beyond on the open field.

I did it!

A fresh breeze unbelievably pleasant compared to the smell of the trenches blew past him, tickling his facial hair. Then, the sounds of combat brought him back to reality. The horde of men sprinted behind hollow husks of trees, took shelter in craters the size of cars filled with muddy water, or charged forward with harsh glints of madness in their eyes, some cackling as bullets whizzed around them.

On the opposite side of the field hundreds of meters away, grey men with steel helmets shot at them with their rifles, around half of the cracks caused by their guns corresponding with a Francois soldier jerking to the ground. For some reason, the machine guns hiding in squat concrete bunkers in the second trench line hundreds of yards away weren't firing, but he didn't have time to think about that.

Close to the ground, he was about to sprint forward. Then, something caught the corner of his eye, causing him to stop.

Ahhh….. Next to him was a body. A crater had formed between a mesh of thinly tangled barb wire and the sandbags that formed the parapet, only meters away from the trench. Inside the hole was the unidentifiable remains of a soldier. It looked as if it had gone through a blender, the man's body a mess of sausage-like pulp that oozed a continuous stream of blood. Bits of bone, ivory specks peeked out of areas where joints should have been. Mangled navy-blue cloth turned crimson had mixed into the man's flesh with wet fibers clinging to every surface. It had been a miraculous direct hit.

Ahead, he managed to hear a shout, the rest of the world of bursting shells and cracking guns having grown silent in his ears. "We've got them on the run! Don't let them escape, keep moving forward!" A muted cheering accompanied the words, overshadowed by the sounds of fighting.

He barely registered the sound. Ahh… Ahhh… Ahhhh…

Burning hot bile bubbled up in his throat. He tried to contain the flow of liquid and chunks by clamping his hands over his mouth, gagging as he crouched, frozen.

Counting in his mind, he ignored the rest of the battlefield and tried to escape the image by closing his eyes. For a while, there was nothing but darkness, and the rising tide of foul liquid started to abate.

He risked a glance back at the body.

Instantly, a tsunami of brown left his throat. As the soupy substance riddled with chunks of unidentifiable food was ejected, he continued staring at what he had seen, what looked to be a string of pink intestine trailing out of the stomach of the corpse. His vomit plopped onto the dirt in a pile next to him as he kneeled, holding himself up with shaky arms.

Right after the first stream of waste stopped, he threw up again. Again and again, he heaved the contents of his stomach out. The chunks of food that had left his stomach in his initial discharge were no longer present, replaced by yellow bile that left a bitter taste in his mouth. Streams of the pale white-and-yellow liquid started to pour out from the small divot in the ground that had been containing the mess. Some of it flowed down to his bright-red pants, staining his kneecaps with the disgusting mixture.

Dizzy, it looked as if the ground was spinning around him. The last drops of liquid left his mouth, and then his stomach was empty, leaving a hollow and starved feeling in his chest. In the same position, he knelt there, panting hard. On the verge of a panic attack, he removed one hand from the dirt to pound his chest, beating it like a drum as he hyperventilated, not getting enough air from his shallow breaths.

After a couple of seconds, the world regained stability. His breathing returned to that of a sprinter's, rather than a man dying from asthma. I can't… Who was it that got killed? He had been absorbed by himself in the moments before the attack. It could have been any one of his comrades. One of the people who he had joked and complained with in comparatively normal circumstances.

Was it Pierre, the father of two twin daughters who carried around a photo of his family wherever he went? Or was it Fernand, the twenty-two-year-old college student who had volunteered the instant he had heard about the draft? He had never shut up about patriotism and how much he loved the Republic, but he was clever, someone who Mathias felt like he could always talk to and get a worthwhile response. Maybe it was Gabriel, the dapper man of undeterminable age, who bragged about having five girlfriends yet claimed to love every one of them dearly. Despite his obvious faults, he had carried himself cheerfully even when they had been assigned the worst duties together.

Whoever it was, they were now dead. The body was mangled beyond what their family would recognize. Pieces would probably be left behind when moving it to a national cemetery. I can't…

Bam! A shell landed behind him. His ears popped as the blast wave shoved him back with all the force of a direct punch to his chest, pushing him over on his side and forcing him to tumble down some sort of decline. Coherent thought escaped him as his head pounded like he was being clubbed. He felt as if his heart would pop from the pressure, and he would die then and there.

But he didn't. He was kneeling, his vision blurred through a thick layer of glass, split into two. Shrill whining echoed around in his head as he struggled to get a grip on his surroundings. I can't! The ground underneath him felt wet and uneven, squelching as he crawled around. Touching what felt like a string, he instinctively tugged at it, then pulled it up to his face. What is this?

The two indistinct images that he saw started to grow clearer, moving together to form one picture. He looked at what he was holding.

An agonized howl ripped out of the man's throat. He was kneeling in the body. His hands and feet had been crawling around in the ruined flesh. In his palms was the slimy rope of intestines that oozed pink and red fluid.

He scrambled to his feet, running blindly. In a panic, he reached over his shoulder for his weapon and gripped the long-barreled rifle tightly, like it was his lifeline. Not knowing which direction he was going, he forced himself to sprint as fast as he could, leg muscles burning as they strained and bulged, fueled by raw adrenaline and terror. All he could think of was how he had to run, get away, and escape to someplace far away where he couldn't see the body anymore, couldn't see the remains of the man that once was, and couldn't think about how that might have been him if he had just left the trench just a second sooner.

But as he ran, the sounds of combat only grew louder. Tripping as he stepped into thin air, he tumbled head over heels into a pool at the bottom of the shell crater. A few feet deep, the water looked what would happen if cold water was poured on coffee grounds, black particulate floating in icy liquid. He landed flat on his back as he slammed into the muddy floor of the hole. As he tried to breathe, filthy water entered his lungs, forcing its way down his throat. After a second of confusion, he managed to sit up, pushing his head above the surface of the water. He sputtered as a torrent of liquid and dirt left his mouth.

Gasping for air, he then faced upward, looking toward the heavens.

He was greeted by diluted rays of sunlight, blocked out by clouds of coal-black ash in the sky above. Focusing in, he could hear the mages still fighting, clashing for control of the airspace.

"We have them on the run!" someone shouted, his voice cracking from overuse. "Keep moving forward!"

Mathias swiveled his head like an owl. As he checked his surroundings, he realized where he was. He had run across no man's land and was now right next to the former enemy trench line, in a hole carved out by friendly artillery. The cold water had returned some of his senses to him.

Details filling themselves in, around him he saw soldiers like colorful ants ran out of the first enemy line they had cleared and toward the next one, full of the field-grey men who had retreated to their second and final line. In the distance, the blond-haired man could see some of the enemy still running away, a few stragglers who had managed to survive at the last second.

Finally, he processed the orders that had been barked out. I don't want to go. He was battered and bruised. His ears rang, a constant buzzing like a hive of bees was inside of his head, flying around and stinging the inside of his skull occasionally. The rifle in his hands would have been discarded long ago if it weren't for the shoulder strap keeping it on his body, its weight heavy, heavier than it had ever felt before.

Meters in front of him, the same hoarse voice came out from a man who leaped from an enemy trench, running with his comrades. "Follow me!" he shouted, waving his arm forward.

On the vast open field, the same as the previous field they had crossed that was full of mud and filth, thousands were sprinting. I can't… He saw a group of four men halfway across the field being thrown apart by a shell, which blasted away both earth and bodies without distinction. Another group, this time of six men who were running side-by-side were mowed down by cracking machine-gun fire that came from a concrete bunker in the distance. It wasn't shooting before, so why is it shooting now!

In less than a minute as he lay in the pool of water, he saw what looked to be thousands turn into hundreds. With overwhelming force, the number of digits present in the battle had changed.

A scene of a dark morning filled with steel and bodies filled his vision. The sky was wide, and the enemy had reduced the splotches of red-and-blue on the field in almost a single instant, unfeeling and imposing. The world had never seemed so large before.

I can't. I can't. I can't! He felt his feet begin to move, soaked leather boots digging deep into the bottom of the pool, then the mud at the lip of the crater. His field of vision changed, now looking away from the enemy and back toward where he had come from. Right before he fled, he saw other people doing the same, running with their backs facing east. Some of them tried to lower their heads as they ran, while others sprinted as fast as they could, racing across the shell-pocked field.

We've already lost! A mad grin spread across his face as he struggled to keep his balance on the uneven ground. That's right… this isn't deserting, it's a retreat. Why should I have to kill myself for nothing? In between gasps for air, he chuckled, suddenly snorting from laughter.

One step in front of the other, he made it halfway across the field. "That would be ridiculous!" he choked out, wheezing as his lungs exerted themselves to the limit. Despite all of that, a warmth lit up in his chest. Pure happiness he hadn't felt in a long time, like he was back in his childhood, curling up in front of a crackling fireplace during winter. It filled his strides with purpose and gave his legs a final boost of power. Before he knew it, he was in the last twenty-meter stretch until safety.

I'm almost there!

It happened in an instant. A bullet burst into his skull, leaving a clean hole rimmed with red in the cloth of the cap Mathias wore. Then, it plopped out the other side of his head after tearing up the brain tissue in between. He didn't have any time to react, crumpling to the ground like a falling leaf. The smile was still transfixed on his face.

Over four hundred meters away, Heinrich Graf ducked back into his trench. His entire body was clad in a field-grey uniform made of rough fabric, with only the skin of his face and hands bare. On top of his steel helmet was a conical spike that protruded straight upward, once polished to a point where it could be used as a mirror but now dull and stained brown. His face was rough and unshaven, with stubby blond hairs sharp to the touch and dirt covering his pores. High cheekbones and a defined jawline could be made out under the shadow of his helmet. His eyes were brown, the same dark shade as the earth on the Rhine front. Set deep into their sockets, they gave him a serious air, compounded by the stern expression he always wore.

Flicking a pocket knife seemingly out of nowhere, he took off his helmet with his left hand. On the left side of the steel, there were a series of tally marks carved into the metal, counting sixty-one in total. The engravings had been done meticulously, starting next to the spike on the top of the helmet then continuing from left to right in rows, each marking a uniform centimeter in length, without a single imperfection in the dozens that had been carved.

Bracing the helmet left-side up against his thigh, he began the process of carving more tally marks into the steel. The man did it in small, rapid scrapes, like an artist creating a sketch with his pencil. Never too forceful, there was only a quiet scratching as he did his work. With the same mechanical movements, he finished, crossing off the series of four marks with a diagonal slash.

He set the helmet on the ground to his right, where a pile of his equipment was lying. After looping the strap of his rifle over his head, he placed his weapon in the pile as well, leaning it against a leather satchel. Then, he leaned down and sat next to his equipment. With a deep exhale, he released the tension he had been holding in his body, letting it seep away into the ground.

"Nice shot, Heinrich." The gruff voice came from his left, followed by heavy footsteps. "Four hundred meters is pretty close, but I'll give you props for a clean headshot."

Heinrich took a sip from his canteen, an oval of steel that was smooth to the touch, if not cold. "It wasn't perfect. I was at least a centimeter off from the center of his head." Strands of dirty-blond hair fell from his helmet, one falling into his eyes. He brushed it away. "I didn't take into account how slowly he was running."

Next to him, his comrade, Theodor Engel, sat down as well, unfastening his canteen. He glugged down its contents with massive contractions of his throat as if he were in some sort of contest. Muscles bulged out of his uniform, threatening to tear the buttons off of his torso and trousers. He was tall, at least two inches taller than the blond-haired man who was 182 centimeters himself. With doe-brown hair and a beard that went against regulation, he looked like an oversized, gentle giant in the cramped trenches.

After finishing his drink with a belch, Theodor elbowed his shoulder. "It wouldn't hurt to be less picky with your work sometimes, you know? We completely routed them, and I counted at least five kills that were yours, isn't that good enough?"

"Maybe." Heinrich plugged the cap on his canteen. With an appraising gaze, he picked up his rifle, a Mauser Gewehr 98 equipped with a set of lenses inside of its black scope. Strapped around the back of the man next to him was the same rifle, equipped with the special-issued scope as well. Admittedly, it was excessive for the range at which he was using it - no more than three hundred meters usually - but he wouldn't complain about being given proper sniping equipment. A born woodsman, he had learned how to hunt from an early age and had demonstrated his talent soon after being conscripted. "But it still could have been better."

"Hmph," Theodor grunted. "Always the perfectionist. I'll bet that you could hit a mage mid-air if they were flying low enough."

Setting down his rifle on his lap, Heinrich thought about it. "That would be very difficult." He flicked his eyes up, visualizing in his mind a Francois mage on one of their iron horses. "But I suppose it is not impossible."

"Oh, really?" Theodor replied, picking at the clods of dirt underneath his fingernails. "It was just a joke, but hey, if you say so."

"The difficult part would be adjusting for their speed. There would be no way to practice with a target that fast outside of combat." He tapped the wooden stock of the Gewehr 98. "Not that hitting them would do anything."

"They probably wouldn't even notice it." Having little success using his hands to scrape out the filth, the brown-haired man eyed the knife sheathed around his waist. "If it's not an artillery shell, you might as well be throwing stones at them. It really isn't fair."

"There's no point in worrying about it," Heinrich replied.

"Just how it is, huh?"

Heinrich shrugged. "As long as our mages do their jobs, everything's fine in the end. And they've been doing their jobs well enough."

Giving in to the ill-advised idea, Theodor took out his six-inch blade and with twitchy fingers, started to wiggle the blade between the nail and flesh of his thumb, a fat lump as thick as a Cuban cigarette. "I think they're doing better than 'well enough,' Heinrich. Have you ever seen a Francois mage firing on us infantry? By everyone else's standards, they're doing great!"

"We have better equipment," Heinrich replied, monotone. "That's an important factor to consider."

Theodor sighed, "Yeah, sure." Having finished cleaning his thumb of all the largest clumps of mud, he moved on to his index finger. Heinrich went silent as he watched, showing mild interest in his struggle. Steel went between Theodor's fingers, touching the soft flesh underneath.

Heinrich blinked.

"Shit!" The knife dropped onto the mud below with a dull thud. In a lapse of concentration, he had done a side-to-side motion with the blade, cutting himself with the sharpened end. It had cut surprisingly deep, the man's strength working against him. Droplets of blood welled up from the wound, wetting the dirt around his fingernail.

"You know, caution is a virtue." The blond-haired man's lips stayed flat as a board. "That'll hurt when we carry our equipment to fall back to the next position." Reaching into his satchel, he pulled out a roll of white gauze, passing it to the injured man.

Tearing off a piece of cloth, Theodor wrapped up the wound. The giant groaned, a deep rumble in his massive chest. "You didn't have to remind me. Why do we have to retreat so often? I swear, it's harder to run away than it is to fight. Eventually, we'll have to make a stand."

"Eventually, but not today," Heinrich replied. And as long as the Republic keeps gaining territory, they'll keep attacking into our defenses. Like this, we lose nothing but land that's useless to both of us, and drain their manpower without losing ours."

Theodor furrowed his brows. "Doesn't mean I have to like it. I hope they have a plan for the time when we can't retreat any longer."

"Either way," Heinrich said, "There's no point in worrying about it. Either there's a plan, or we lose the war. Unless you plan on becoming a general in less than a year, nothing will change because of us."

Finishing his rebuke, Heinrich picked up his Gewehr 98. He caressed it as gently as he would a newborn baby, curling his spine to move his head closer to the weapon, examining every nook and cranny with deep-set brown eyes. His fingers ran along the bayonet, then down the length of the long wooden barrel until he reached the trigger guard, which he rubbed with his index finger, removing the flecks of grime that had stained the iron. "What we can do," he said, his eyes sparkling while looking at the gun, "Is do our jobs as best we can."

"...Man, sometimes, you can be a little strange," replied Theodor. He had turned his gaze from his injury to the other man, eyeing his treatment of the weapon like he was watching something taboo. Smothered in his left hand was his index finger, now wrapped up in both white bandages and thick flesh. "But I guess you're right about that at least. Just don't get too attached to that gun, or God will have something to say about it. He doesn't like people who kill for fun."

"I don't enjoy the killing," Heinrich replied, turning his head toward him. He met the giant's eyes with an even gaze. "That would be distasteful. Besides, you're not a bad shooter yourself, with that count. Twenty-three isn't a small number. Most men don't even pull the trigger half of the time."

Bearded lips parted as Theodor grunted. "Hmph, I do it for the Kaiser and God, and not anything else. I'm sure I'll be forgiven. Make sure you can say the same." He leaned back against the dirt wall, head tilted toward the early morning sky, stretching his tree-trunk-like legs until they touched the opposite side of the trench.

In response, Heinrich reached into his satchel once again, pulling out a ragged cloth that had probably once been white but was now as grey and mud-stained as their uniforms. He looked down as he started to polish the exterior of his rifle, deep in concentration. There was no real purpose to the action. Filth building up on the interior was what caused issues with the equipment, not specks of dirt on the outside.

A minute passed with nothing but the sounds of soft breathing and the rustling of the cloth as the blond-haired man set to his work. It was almost peaceful.

Theodor broke the silence. "Got no response?"

Heinrich paused in the middle of tracing a circle on the butt of his rifle. "Whatever you say."

Shouts sounded out in the distance, some sergeant reprimanding a private, a sound like harsh barking. But they ignored the chattering, giving no sign that they had even heard it. It wasn't their business, so they merely sat. Theodor resting, and Heinrich transfixed on his gun.