Disclaimer: Don't own anything!

Author's Note: Thanks ThePurpleRose for pointing that out. I read your review in the middle of writing this chapter, so it gave me a different view on everyone that didn't occur to me.

I think my English teacher is psychic. We're currently reading and analyzing Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which is a fictional, but realistic account of soldiers in the Vietnam War, so that's giving me even more context. For this chapter, I also did a bit more research on slavery in the American Civil War era to give me some more details.

I can officially say that I have begun applying for college. Just sent in my first application yesterday to Flagler College. Keeping my fingers crossed.

-/-/-

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

-/-/-

"That's a ranch?" Yuan asked, looking down at the place.

Two long, narrow buildings were placed side by side on the far end, outwards towards the plains that stretched long to the horizon. There were another few buildings, simple and boxy, placed closer to the mountains, some with multiple floors or connected to the others with hallways. The fences built around it were high and even from up in their vantage point at a cliff that jutted out from the mountains, he could see the guards. Something about the place made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Zaren's fists clenched and his knuckles were bloodless. His tension made the strong muscles in his forearms stand out, as well as the numbers tattooed there. "That's a ranch."

They're waiting for the guard shift. It's still early, terribly early, and the sun wasn't visible on this end of the mountains yet. Mithos was sitting in between some tree roots, a bizarre mixture of small and dangerous. He had a sword strapped to his built—a short sword, to be sure, but Yuan knew that the blade was honed and that the sword wasn't the most dangerous thing about him. Neither was the magic. It was how utterly not dangerous he looked at first, and even second, glance.

Martel was looking out at the world, leaning on her staff, and Yuan wondered what it was that she saw, exactly. She wasn't wearing her dress (She only has the one and she usually tries to keep it as clean as possible.) and she looked different like this, fiercer. The breeches fit well, at least, but the shirt was a size too big. Her hair was braided back and wrapped in a bun, so as to prevent anyone from using it as a hold.

(They've all been affected by the war, but Yuan thinks that it's most obvious in Martel. Because she was so very strong, so very steel-spined. She doesn't break under the grief like a lot of the men have. It had hollowed her out and she'd filled it with something that burned rather than the something that had been there before, which had simply glowed. But burn or glow, Martel is still the woman he's going to marry. Yuan can feel that, the same way he can feel the lightning buzzing in his skin)

"Why us?" Martel asked suddenly. They all looked at her, but her eyes were on Viren. "Why choose us for this? There are a hundred mages older and more experienced," Martel didn't add that they were more skilled than her brother because he was something more. "Than Mithos, and you could have chosen any Healer."

But Viren saw through the first question with the ease of a strategist, both mental and physical. "Because Mithos is the most skilled mage we have and because, with so few of us, we need the strongest we have to be able to take this place down. As for why you," Viren paused at that, trying to find words. But there weren't many words he could find for Martel. She had something about her that was calming, yet inspiring at the same time. In the old legends, he thought, she would have been the woman who would have had wars fought and worlds changed for her. "You're a good Healer in a crisis and I wasn't foolish enough to think you were going to stay behind while Mithos came with us."

She studied him with narrowed eyes, but seemed to accept the answer because she smiled, a wry twist of the lips. "Well, you're right about that."

Yuan glanced over at Kratos, who hadn't said a word most of the morning. It wasn't entirely surprising; Kratos wasn't a morning person by any standards, never had been. But this was a different kind of quiet. He nudged Kratos' shoulder with his foot, which was the only part of his body he could reach since he was up in the tree.

"Hey," He said, voice low. "You alright?"

"Just thinking."

Kratos wasn't lying. He had been thinking. But it wasn't a place his thoughts normally wandered to and it wasn't a particularly pleasant place. His father had been a general. Kratos remembered asking about it Before (It's Before Yuan because Before that, Kratos finds it hard for anything to compare to After him), when he was very young. There had been stars on his father's shoulder, and Kratos had always liked stars. He'd asked if they stood for anything.

Sandor Aurion looked down at his son. Small, still, with large, curious eyes. How very like his mother he was and so very little like him. Sandor hoped that Kratos would grow more like him, would be able to see the world as he saw it. "Yes, Kratos?"

Kratos tapped at the stars on the shoulders of Sandor's uniform jacket that he had yet to put on. "Whaddo these mean?"

"They tell people what my rank is."

"Whas rank?"

"It's like…school grades." Kratos' brow furrowed in confusion. Sandor recognized the expression, had seen it in the mirror sometimes. "Every year, you go to a new grade and you're above the new kids, right?" Kratos nodded. "Rank is like that."

"Oh…what rank're you?"

"I'm a general."

"Oh."

Kratos remembered liking to run his hands across his father's stars, liking the texture and the cool metal.

"You're spacing out on me." Yuan said, suddenly much closer than he had been. Kratos hadn't even seen him jump from the tree branch. He tilted his head in that curious way of his. "What's goin' through your head?"

"My father." Kratos saw the automatic clenching of Yuan's jaw.

"What about him?"

Kratos' eyes travelled to where Viren was keeping a close eye on the ranch. "He was a general too, remember?" He didn't turn when Noishe's beak gently bumped his shoulder. They'd all agreed that Noishe was too noticeable to take into the ranch, but that he would be good as an extra guard for the rescued people and he could carry someone if they couldn't walk.

Yuan frowned, understanding the words, but not the context. It wasn't often that he didn't understand what Kratos meant. "Yeah. What about him?"

"He didn't usually go into the field."

The thought connected and Yuan made a sound of understanding. "You don't trust him."

"I want to," Kratos said truthfully. He liked Viren; he had a kind of strange kind of sincere, stubborn helpfulness paired with a quick wit. But something about all this didn't smell right.

"Guard shift." The General's voice called, soft, stern and steady. Kratos patted Noishe, who trilled and nipped at his ear. "Let's start heading down there."

-/-

In the half-light of the early morning, it had been easy enough to scale the fence surrounding the ranch, but now that they were in here, they didn't know exactly where to go.

"Should've gotten a map." Zaren muttered.

"If it's anything like the other ranches, it won't be difficult to find them." Viren said, scanning the area. "The half-elves are probably in those buildings, but there'll be guards at the doors and some kind of technology that creates their own version of a barrier."

"Let us take care of the technology." Kratos told him. "You take out the guards."

"Hey—hey, Mithos!" They all whirled at the sound of Yuan's voice. Mithos had one hand on the wall as if holding himself upright, his face too pale and tinged with green. Martel was beside him in an instant.

"What hurts?" She asked, suddenly all Healer as she scanned him for any injuries.

"Nothing." Mithos closed his eyes, but he could still see it.

(The mana here is twisted, warped, not natural and not healthy. It pounds in his head and builds pressure behind his eyes, but it isn't pain. Just a sense of wrongness. The colors are poisonous greens and violent violets; garish reds and terribly inky black. That connotation of color doesn't belong in mana.)

"This place feels wrong." Mithos said, still trying to get rid of the terrible colors that he thought would be painted on the insides of his eyelids until the world came down around their ears. "It's sick."

Martel couldn't do more than simply hold him. Could only kiss his hair and hope that it got better. This wasn't something she knew how to heal, wasn't something she thought really could be healed.

"It could be the magitechnology." Yuan suggested. "It's not real mana, what they're producing to use those machines. It's a weird mixture of electricity and some other kind of thing they figured out that mimics what we use mana for."

Viren glanced between the buildings and Mithos. "Are you good to go on?"

It wasn't a bad question, considering the circumstances, but Yuan thought that the question itself was a rather stupid one when you considered the person being asked. Mithos was one of the most stubborn people he'd ever met—including Kratos and Martel, naturally—and he was always good on his word. Since he'd said he was going to help get the slaves out of this ranch, come hell or high water, he was getting these slaves out.

Mithos nodded and, while he still looked fair shaky on his legs, there wasn't any brushing aside the fire in those eyes of his. "I'm good."

-/-/-

Despite what he'd told Viren, Yuan didn't have much experience with magitechnology at all. His knowledge was Kratos', but he had no application, no idea if his knowledge would mean anything when he actually sat down to do it. Or stood, as was the case.

They'd split up, with glances back at each other over their shoulders. Something about this felt very final. (It feels like an ending and a beginning and shouldn't this be happening to someone else? Someone older or wiser or more experienced? After all, things like this only happened to legends and heroes and Spirits knew that they weren't anything like those.)

Yuan thought that they should have felt guilty about the guards they had to go through (Literally because this is war and it was Them or the humans and They would always win out) but he didn't. He knew that he would feel guilty and tortured later, in the safety of their cots and bunks and Kratos would be a solid presence beside him because it was simply one of Those Nights when the nightmares were too near.

"This place is unnatural." Zaren muttered and his grip on his swords were tight, his shoulders tense.

"That's why we're getting them out." Kratos said with a terrible calm that Yuan didn't think he was ever going to get used to. Where was his coward? His dreamer and writer who liked to find pictures and stories in the stars?

(Logically, Yuan knows that it's a defense mechanism. He's read about those while Kratos did his homework, in those scientific books that the humans had used to teach back in the military school. He knows that it's the only reason that Kratos hasn't broken yet. That doesn't make it any easier to see it)

Yuan felt the moment when they turned off the magitechnology. The poison in the air (Mithos isn't crazy. Yuan can feel it too, a terrible, oily thickness on his skin) lessened and Yuan could breathe without feeling a tightness to his chest.

He'd been about to turn away from the monitor when something caught his eye. "Guys, look at this."

Kratos peered over his shoulder curiously, but Zaren stayed back a bit. "What is it?"

Yuan's first thought was why didn't Zaren see for himself, but then he remembered that Zaren didn't know how to read and then it was how long had he been so removed from his people that the thought that they could read was so automatic?

"They're plans." Kratos said, looking over the screen that Yuan had pulled up. "And that's a message to the head of this ranch. They're planning on rebreaking our lines."

"How?" Zaren asked, suddenly closer and looking at the screen as though he could understand what it showed. "Where?"

"Down towards the other end of these mountains." Kratos glanced up at Zaren. "Is there another pass through these mountains?"

"At this time of year? Maybe. Depends on how quick the frost is setting in up there."

Yuan checked his mental calendar. September was nearing its end and it was still fairly warm during the day but the nights were chilly and the days had only been getting colder. High in the mountains, the snow might very well have already started falling.

"Don't the humans have machines that can get through the snow?" Yuan asked.

"If they do, I haven't heard of it." Kratos knew that it was perfectly likely that a machine like that could have been invented since he and Yuan had run away. "We need to get going."

"Yeah…" Yuan tugged his eyes away from the screen, trying to make sure he remembered every word on it. "Let's go."

-/-

The guards where the slaves had been kept were in pieces. If they were lucky. By now, Yuan had become accustomed to just how powerful Mithos and Martel's magic could be and Viren was deadly with a sharp object in his hands.

They were helping slaves out of the buildings. Some of the slaves were limping, others supporting each other and some, very few, were walking on their own. They were painfully thin and their haggard faces were dazed, as though they couldn't believe that this was happening. Yuan flinched at the sight of some of their naked backs, scars and fresh lashes both crisscrossed across them. Martel was healing the ones who were the worst off and the pale green glow of her healing magic lit up some of their faces eerily.

At the sight of Kratos, many of the half-elves turned wary, some bristling and others hunching away from him. One spit at his feet, hollow eyes burning with loathing. Yuan instinctively stepped in front of his best friend, wanting to explain that this wasn't what they thought, that Kratos was here to help. But he knew just by looking at them that they were like Zaren; they wouldn't believe him. They might one day, but not now.

"We need to get out of here." Viren said. Yuan swallowed hard at the sight of the child in Viren's arms. The child looked like little more than a skeleton sheathed in sickly skin and her hands were tightly gripping his shirt, face buried in his shoulder. "We can't know how many of their guards are here or when they're coming by and we still have to get past the army."

-/-

It was slow going. They should have brought supplies, Viren thought, the little girl still in his arms. She refused to let go of him. Most of the half-elves kept a wide berth from Kratos, who hung back as rear guard. Noishe was with him and the children had looked at the bird curiously, their eyes lighting up in their gaunt faces.

Noishe had a pregnant woman on his back and the children were fascinated with his feathers, gently stroking them. One of the braver children—a boy who looked maybe eight, but who could have been older—had looked at Kratos and asked what the bird's name was. Kratos had smiled and told him.

"He's good with kids." Viren said to Yuan, who had a man's arm slung over his shoulder, supporting him as best he could.

Yuan glanced back, unsurprised and pleased to see the children tentatively trusting his best friend. (He doesn't know it now, but what he sees before him is the seeds of the new generation. Half-elven children, perhaps still afraid or mistrusting of humans, but willing to change and trust) "He's always been like that."

"…I think I owe you an apology, Yuan. And Kratos too." Yuan frowned at him in confusion. "When we first met, I think I sounded like I didn't trust or approve of the two of you."

"Don't act like you did at first. No one does."

"Even Martel?" Viren looked over at the woman, who was looking tired already, having to still stop and help heal people. She was stronger than anyone could ever see at first sight.

Yuan shook his head. "She tried to, but she wasn't comfortable around Kratos for a long time."

"…You love her, don't you?"

"What makes you think that?" In truth, Yuan thought he did. In fact, he was almost sure of it. The only problem was, he'd never been in love before, so he couldn't be completely sure.

Viren smiled and nodded at Zaren's back, several yards ahead of them. "Because you look the same as he did. Still does, sometimes, actually."

It felt strange, to think of his brother in love. The man Yuan was supporting raised his head a little, eyes brighter beneath the mop of hair. They were different colors, Yuan noted. One eye a strange pale yellow and the other dark as night. "My wife…where she?"

"What's your wife look like?"

"Pregnant." The man muttered. "My wife and son…"

Yuan glanced back at the woman that Noishe carried on his back. "What does she look like?"

His head shot up. "Is she here?"

"I don't know. What's her name?"

"Lira. Lira and the boy…the boy would be Nathel."

Viren hung back until Noishe was level with him. The woman turned to him. She must have been pretty, once. But now, her hair—the pale color of winter skies—hung lank and tangled around her face, her lavender eyes dim. "Are you Lira?" He asked gently.

The woman shook her head. "No. I knew Lira. They—they killed her. Because she couldn't work anymore. Too heavy with child."

"And you?"

The woman didn't look at him. "…He said that he could get me out. Of the ranch. He promised me. So I—"

"It's alright." Viren soothed.

"What will become of the child?" The woman asked fearfully. "It wouldn't even be half-elven, but something…worse. Diluted. And everyone would know what I-"

"I'm not completely human." Kratos said suddenly and they both looked over. "Your child wouldn't be so different."

"You think so?"

"Yeah." Kratos glanced around, at Mithos, who was smiling with some of the other children, at Martel, at Yuan. "You don't have to worry about your kid. People can surprise you."

She studied him. "Yes…I suppose they can."