Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Badlands

Dream selves were finicky. I'd been told that several times by several different people.

I'd started by believing that there was some barely-understandable formula to the whole 'dream self' thing. As my waking self, I would lie down and go to sleep. Then I would wake up as my dream self, waking up to the sight of a green ceiling. My dream room on the golden moon of Prospit. That was where I'd always wake up, and that was where I'd met Cruz, even before I'd known him in the real world.

Then I'd decided to leave Prospit not too long ago, moving to the Battlefield at the heart of Skaia, and now I would always wake up at the White Keep, in my dream turret. Perhaps Prospit dreamers were always destined to leave Prospit and to the Battlefield, and I'd simply fulfilled that general expectation. And that made sense, I guess—now that I'd relocated myself to the heart of Skaia, I was waking up on the Battlefield merely because I was meant to do so.

But then all that had been thrown into confusion the other night. Instead of waking up in either my dream room on Prospit, or my dream turret in the White Keep on the Battlefield… Instead, I'd woken up on the back of a burly Prospitian soldier named Firehands…and it'd become apparent to me that even though it'd made no sense to wake up there, my dream self would ultimately awake where Skaia needed it to awake. I'd awoken among the Browncoats that one night because I was needed there.

There were forces at work here that I could barely comprehend. And so, after the night I relayed the White King's new orders to Theo, I found myself waking up every night as my dream self in Fort Terminus, not my dream turret at the White Keep, and…well, I just decided not to think too much about it. I preferred my brain when it didn't hurt. Whether I wanted to or not, Skaia seemed to want me to take part in the push through the Badlands.

There was the equivalent of nearly two divisions encamped here. The Alabaster Rifles, who'd been stationed here ever since the resurgence of the Dersite behemoths, and the Browncoats. The Browncoats had lost a lot of soldiers, but their ragged numbers had been bolstered somewhat with the remnants of the other two divisions that had been annihilated at the King's Airfield. Fort Terminus itself had become merely the center of a much larger camp—the bulk of the soldiers were encamped beyond the fort's walls.

Sending us through the Badlands to attack the Black Keep… Dear God, the White King must have been getting desperate. There had to be something I was missing…otherwise it would be a certain suicide mission.

The Scarred Marshal hadn't been too happy when I'd brought him the news of the Browncoats' impending arrival, my first night waking up in Fort Terminus. I'd told him the orders the White King had given to me. But if he wanted to denounce the orders, he would not do so in front of me. And after a few seconds the Marshal seemed to calm himself.

"The King knows what he is doing," the Scarred Marshal had murmured to me. "He's one of the most meticulous individuals I know. Even as his army burns…he still has a plan." I wasn't sure if I was the one he was trying to reassure.

I'd awoken in a room at the very top of one of the corner towers of Fort Terminus's walls. I didn't bother taking the stairs down to the battlements, and then down to the gates. I would just jump out of the window like I always did. Before I did that, though, I took a moment to yawn, looking out at all of the forces arrayed around Fort Terminus. To my mild surprise, the sea of tents that had surrounded Fort Terminus was now gone, and a large column was being formed to the west.

The Alabaster Rifles were getting ready to move out. Looks like I woke up just in time.

And in the west…in the near distance, I saw dark storm clouds and a gray fog. The Badlands waited for us, almost like some sort of gleeful monster about to chomp down on its next meal.

I glided down to the ground in front of the gate. The jeeps were bringing up the rear of the column, bearing supplies and extra ammunition. If the Alabaster Rifles were going through the Badlands, they'd need those supplies, as well as a way to carry them easily—hence the jeeps. The infantry formed the bulk of the column, organized roughly into their companies and platoons. Also accompanying the column was a battalion of tanks. A platoon of tanks comprised of four units; three platoons plus a mobile CP and two supply trucks formed a company, and three companies formed a battalion. You can do the math.

The individual companies had long since lost their mobile CPs, so all of the armored shit was being run out of a lone mobile command car, which located in the middle of the column. The Scarred Marshal was technically supposed to be there now, but he had obviously wanted to be at the front of the column when they moved out. Presumably, he'd sent the Vice Marshal—his executive officer—to man the CP in his stead.

The infantry numbered roughly eleven to twelve thousand strong, counting both the Alabaster Rifles and the survivors of the disaster at the Airfield—all of them now fell under the command of the Scarred Marshal. Theo had taken command of the Browncoats during their retreat through the Cloudy Mountains, but he'd been more than happy to turn that command over to the Marshal upon his arrival at Fort Terminus. The soldiers themselves hadn't packed very heavily, either. Horrible as it sounded, most of them were not expecting to return.

I felt a sudden jab of curiosity when I spent some time thinking about the Prospitian armies. In the past few days during my dreams, where I've had the company of no one but carapacians, I'd taken it upon myself to learn and understand more about the race of enigmatic snow-shelled Prospitians. It was from the burly Browncoat light machine gunner known as Firehands that I got most of my answers.

After the carapacians were born in the Veil of asteroids that formed the outer boundary of the Medium, they were immediately enlisted in the Prospitian Army and sent to the Battlefield. There, they would serve for several centuries under the White King, and it was only after this initial term of service in the military that they were discharged and allowed to live on Prospit. The soldiers called this particular term of service their Birth Campaign, and most of the soldiers you'd see at any given time were still serving it out. To many of the first-timer soldiers—to whom the war on the Battlefield was the only thing they've ever known—Prospit was like some sort of mythical, far-off paradise. A city-planet of gold, waiting to receive them if and when they completed their service. The stuff of dreams.

I could only imagine what it would be like to be a Prospitian soldier who finished their term of service and was able to look upon Prospit, to walk its golden streets for the first time. To them, it must feel surreal.

Many of the Prospitians ended up returning to the military. The carapacians didn't biologically age, you see. They didn't die of old age. Many of them would ultimately grow weary of life, rejoining the army as a way to die while still serving their home. Some of them were naturally gifted at warfare, and would rejoin the army as veteran noncoms and officers. The Scarred Marshal was an example of this. Firehands was, too, though he was content to remain an enlisted man. Others still would rejoin the army when they found themselves unable to integrate themselves into life on Prospit, after having been fighting the Black King's army for God knows how many years.

Kind of puts some things in perspective, when I think about it. Sure, lots of the Prospitians I've met on the Golden Moon were pretty weird, but all of them had been soldiers at one point. And they were the lucky few who'd survived to the end of their Birth Campaigns, and that took a lot of skill…or maybe just a healthy helping of luck. Most of the Prospitians who had earned Titles were some of the oldest living carapacians—members of the first few generations of Prospitians created by the White King and Queen, ages ago in the past.

I found Theo and the Scarred Marshal at the head of the column. When the Marshal saw me approaching, I could see him muttering under his breath even though I couldn't hear the words he was saying. He was having a bit of a learning experience, lately… Now that everything was going to shit for the Prospitian Army, the Scarred Marshal found himself and the White King relying more and more on us Heroes.

The problem was that he disliked Heroes. He was the kind of military commander who believed he could accomplish anything with discipline and a stern fighting force of good soldiers. He viewed Heroes as unnecessary, and resented the fact that he now had to turn to us for help. I would think what he was feeling was probably how the sword masters of olden times felt when blades were getting replaced by firearms. Either you swallow your pride and start using guns like everyone else, or you get slaughtered.

The Marshal had made his choice…but that didn't mean he had to like it. He resented Heroes…and he also seemed to resent me in particular. He seemed fine with Theo, but he'd never really stopped being kind of an asshole to me.

I think that was just due to my wonderful, accommodating personality. Theo's never had any issues with authority—he was a very good student, and his conscience usually prevented him from breaking rules most of the time—but me, I chafed under it. I can't tell you how many of my earlier teachers used to hate my guts by the end of the year with all my arguing and debating every tiny little issue; that was before I'd matured and learned to channel my assertive will into a stolid, resilient, much more passive stubbornness. I found it almost physically difficult to perform tasks if someone rudely orders me to accomplish them. And so, put me in the same room with a stern, no-nonsense kind of individual like the Scarred Marshal, who expects everyone to march to his own personal drum… Put me in a room with him, and one of us would come out with a black eye.

And as much as he seemed to dislike me, I could only imagine how much the Scarred Marshal would hate Gino, if the arrogant dickwad ever decided to grace us with his presence. Or—oh, God, just the thought of this makes me laugh—how the Marshal would react to Cruz. Jesus, I could see it all now—Cruz lighting up a blunt in the middle of the Marshal's command post…the Marshal getting ripshit pissed, ordering Cruz out of his tent…Cruz simply smiling, blowing a plume of smoke into the Marshal's face, and telling him to 'Chill, man, just let the coolness seep into your vertebrae'.

Then the Scarred Marshal would probably shoot him.

Of all of us, Theo was probably the best one to work with the Scarred Marshal. Cass probably would have done well, too, knowing her… It took discipline for her to be a straight-A student. 'Course, I had no idea what she was up to, lately… No one really used PalHassle, anymore. Cruz and Tami were both on Prospit probably dropping acid or something, Theo spent his time here on the Battlefield… No one had heard from Gino or Gwen in several days, and God only knew where Anna was.

Or, I suppose I should say God only knew when Anna was. And Cass… I think Cass was still on her planet. Like me, her quest was pretty solitary, and no one had really heard from her. Or my Sprite… I really don't understand why she kept my Sprite around. What was wrong with her goddamn sprite? I hadn't seen her in a fucking month. What if she didn't like me anymore, or what if…?

Fucking shit, I have had it with those thoughts. Think about something else, think about something else…

"You alright, dude?"

I yanked myself out of my own mind and back into reality. Theo was standing in front of me, giving me a weird look. "Yeah, uh…"

"Thinking of Cass?" Theo asked. When I gave him a look of my own, he went on to clarify. "You always get that face when we talk about her. Makes me feel sad just lookin' at it. Don't tell me you still ain't been able to talk to her, yet."

"Okay, I was nearly blackout drunk the first time she met me, and I made a complete ass out of myself," I growled. "Then it takes me a year to screw up the courage to have a full conversation with her, and then the fuckin' world ends the next fucking day. I swear it's like the universe wants to keep this from happening."

"Skaia has its ways, bro." Theo shrugged. "Maybe…maybe there is some reason why you haven't been able to contact her all this time. We probably won't find out what it is for a while, though…if ever. And for the record, that first time you met her, she thought you were hilarious."

Eager to change the subject, I gestured with my head over in the Scarred Marshal's direction. He was busy conferring with two individuals dressed entirely in black, armed with assault rifles. Rangers. "Still have the Pale Marksman in our corner?"

Theo nodded. "Yeah, the Rangers are in the Badlands as we speak. We'd be rollin' blind if it weren't for those guys. The Marksman seemed to like you—those things she said about you when she recruited you for that outpost op in the Cloudy Mountains were some of the nicest things I've heard come out of her mouth. What'd you do to earn her respect?"

"Nothing major." I shrugged. "Flew out over a Dersite camp and lazed a radar jammer—the one that kept the Prospitians from detecting the bombing run that took out the Airfield. Fat lot of good it did, though…"

"Naw, I think that'd probably do it," Theo chuckled. "She likes it when people are able to pull crazy shit like that. Just don't make a habit of it, or else she'll start to consider you a danger to her men. C'mon, let's see what's up with the Marshal. Try not to piss him off today, will you?"

"Sure."

That being said, I just went ahead and kept my mouth firmly clamped while Theo called out to the Marshal. "Trouble up ahead?"

"There is always trouble ahead," the Scarred Marshal grunted. "You just never know how far ahead."

The two Rangers stepped back and saluted the Scarred Marshal, who dismissed them with a nod of his head. They filed past us silently, speaking only as they passed me. "Knight," both of them touched their fingers to their brows in a respectful salute as they passed me by. I couldn't help but wonder if they'd been part of the group of Rangers who'd witnessed me destroy the Dersite radar jammer. That little stunt seemed to be winning me more fame than I'd ever intended.

That wasn't really something I wanted. When a lot of people start hearing about you doing crazy things like that… I just didn't want the Prospitians—or even my consorts, by extension—to start thinking that I could lead them to any kind of victory. Because I can't.

I mean, I can definitely help them along the way, but… I'm no leader. I leave that shit to the clan chiefs, and to the officers. They run the show. They point at an obstacle and I violently remove it, 'cuz that's what a Knight is supposed to do. A lord says 'Do this', and his knight goes and does it. I was more of a weapon than anything else. A blunt instrument.

The Scarred Marshal continued to speak to Theo. "Fortunately, all the Pale Marksman has found on our route is a small town. Ruins, nothing more."

"We can't go around it?" Theo asked.

The Marshal shook his head. "Terrain to the south is impassable, and the plains to the north have lethal radiation levels. We're heading through a corridor of sorts through the Badlands, and it would take us days, maybe even a week to reach the Black Keep if we went around. This is time we do not have."

"The Black Keep is on the other side of the Badlands?" I asked.

The Scarred Marshal closed his eye, taking a moment to breathe deeply. "Yes, Knight, the Black Keep is on the western boundary of the wastes. Any more geography questions to waste my time with?"

I didn't flinch. "Yeah, uh, how do you guys have a fort so close to the Black Keep? I mean, you'd think it would've gotten leveled just from the proximity."

The Scarred Marshal held my gaze for about seven straight seconds before turning back to Theo, who stopped glaring at me the moment he was in the spotlight. "We're moving out, Thane. Give the order. I will retire to the mobile command post—send a runner to me if the Rangers report in again."

And with that, the veteran Prospitian division commander stalked off, heading towards the middle of the column.

"Just can't keep your trap shut, can you?" my best friend grumbled.

"What, I asked two simple fucking questions to the guy," I protested. "Sue me, why don't you?"

"Hold that thought," Theo held up his hand, silencing me. With that, he focused on his Aspect, summoning a powerful wind about himself, propelling him about thirty feet up into the air. When he was up there, he seemed to conjure up what looked like a ball of concentrated wind…only to send it hurtling away from him, so fast that it vanished within a second. A loud CRACK reverberated through the air, almost like a clap of thunder, but harsher and more contained.

There was a loud, rumbling wave of sound as every vehicle started their engines. At Theo's signal, the column started moving west, towards the gray fog that hung thick in the near distance. My best friend released his hold over the wind and landed next to me gracefully, continuing to walk beside me even after he made landfall. "Did you just break the sound barrier or something?" I asked him.

"Somethin' like that, yeah." Theo cleared his throat and pulled out a small tin of Altoids, popping one of the breath mints into his mouth. He then turned his attention back to me. "Sorry, I should've been more clear earlier. When I said 'Don't piss off the Marshal today,' I really meant that you shouldn't even speak. I'm sure you've noticed a difference in the White King since the loss of the Airfield?"

"He has been a bit frayed, lately."

"Yeah, well, same goes double for the Marshal," Theo explained. "Only instead of getting absent-minded and exhausted like the King does, the Marshal just gets angrier and angrier. And he was angry before things started getting bad."

"Can't imagine being ordered to march through the Badlands has helped any," I remarked.

We reached the Badlands within forty minutes. We were moving at a pretty steady pace—not quite jogging, but still faster than normal marching. This seemed to be the norm for the Prospitian soldiers; perhaps carapacians tire much more slowly than we do.

Entering the Badlands wasn't a dramatic occurrence, or anything. No one really even realized we'd crossed over into the wastes until long after we'd actually arrived. We passed through some low mountains—the same range which Outpost 34-W had been in, where we'd first encountered the Dersite behemoths. Then it was into the Badlands. First we were enveloped by the thick gray fog. Then, bit by bit, the grass faded away, and the black-and-white chessboard pattern of the earth vanished, gave way to an ugly burnt brown color. And when the fog grew not quite so thick, we found ourselves emerging into another world. Dark storm clouds hung ominously low over our heads, and thunder growled in the distance. I think I could smell rain, too.

There were other smells… A bitter taste to the wind, and something else, something acrid… A faint odor of smoke. There were no fires nearby—it was more like there'd been a colossal fire here a long time ago, and the smell had never quite gone away. Actually, I was probably right; I remembered the White King explaining to me how the Badlands had been created. They had once been a beautiful region, chosen by the Black King to be the manufacturing ground of his behemoths—the bishops, rooks, and knights that towered above the rest of the soldiers, spreading havoc wherever they went.

And so, the White King sent in the Royal Air Force and completely leveled the entire region, turning it into a charred, blackened wasteland. There had obviously been mountains in this part of the Battlefield, but even they had not been able to withstand the fury of whatever the Royal Air Force had hit them with. Hills had been transformed into swathes of sharp, steep, sheer rock formations. If there'd been rivers, the riverbeds had long since been cracked and ruined along with the land through which the rivers used to flow.

This was a dead place.

The ground was hard and colorless, and though it may have been an illusion, it almost looked like there was a thin layer of ash covering the rocky earth, constantly being blown about by the breeze. The horizon was broken by the uneven landscape, and the ground itself was filled with chasms and cracks, broken hills, and even a few gigantic craters.

We marched in silence for a pretty long time. Several hours. During this time, I could spy the broken, ruined remains of a mountain range far to the south, just peeking over the horizon. The further we traveled, the closer the jagged crags that had once been mountains grew…an impenetrable thicket of rock. Maybe the Rangers, or perhaps even a small infantry force, could traverse terrain like that, but there was no way in hell our entire column could.

No one spoke, really. I'd gotten used to the soldiers mouthing off with each other during long marches, but today they were all silent. It was as if this place; its shadows, its wind, its darkness—even if we made a sound, it would just be swallowed, like we were speaking directly into walls. Other than the wind, the rumbling thunder, the soft hum of our vehicles' engines, there was no noise whatsoever. Skaia was a strange place, and even stranger when it was wounded.

I also had a little chill that would crawl up my spine every so often. I felt like I was being watched… But the Rangers had not reported any Dersite activity anywhere nearby, and I could not see anything strange no matter where I looked… So I just started ignoring the feeling, after a while.

After about five hours of solid, fast-paced marching, we came up on the northern end of the former mountains to the south. The ruined mountain range ran from southwest to northeast, and so it had been drawing closer and closer as we moved further west, and the path the Rangers were leading us on happened to coincide with the location of what had once been the northernmost peak. And built at the foot of that peak were the sad remains of what had once been a large, town-like settlement.

None of the buildings had roofs, anymore…or upper floors, for that matter. There were a couple structures that still even had more than one wall, and they were the lucky ones. They looked like houses, personal quarters…larger buildings in the center that had probably contained the base's operations center, the mess hall, the armory… But the attention-stealer of the town was a massive, hulking, charcoal lump of a building that had once loomed over the rest of the buildings in the base. It was much more…grotesque in appearance—it had been a metal building, so rather than simply being obliterated like many of its smaller counterparts, the giant building's walls had been…

It looked like someone had made a model of a warehouse out of butter, put it in the oven for a few seconds until it started to really melt, and then found a way to instantly freeze it. The roof was completely gone, as well as the southern and over half of the eastern walls. And the remaining walls were half-melted away, twisted.

The only things missing were cobwebs and a wayward tumbleweed.

I sure as fuck didn't want to go in there… But, sure as the rain forecast on my planet, we were heading right for it. I looked off to the right, saw that there was nothing to the north of the ruined town. Nothing but plains, by the looks of it…probably had been grasslands back in the day. In any case, it didn't make much sense why we couldn't just roll right through there—it wasn't as if flat wastelands were difficult for tanks and jeeps to drive over, or anything.

But when I pointed this out to Theo, he shook his head. "Don't you pay attention to anything? The Rangers reported that those plains to the north had lethal radiation levels. We can't travel through there without exploding from cancer."

That's right, the Scarred Marshal had mentioned something about radiation. So that meant… "So the Prospitian Royal Air Force used nukes?" I asked next.

"Yeah, something like that," Theo nodded. "Didn't last very long, though. The Prospitians had been working on making nukes for a really long time; when they finally perfected it, they tested it out on the Dersite behemoth facilities. But after the creation of the Badlands and seeing what the nukes had done, the White King scrapped the entire Prospitian nuclear project."

"But why?" I could spot at least a million holes in that logic from a mile away. "Why not fire a nuke at the Black Keep and slam it down the Black King's throat? This fucking war with the Dersites would've been over centuries ago!"

"Yeah, that would make sense to us humans," Theo agreed. "But they aren't human. They're Prospitians. The Prospitians exist to defend Skaia from the Dersites, who want to destroy it. If they used nukes to wipe out the Black King and his armies, though, they would destroy Skaia in the process. The cost would've been too high."

"Well I'm not talking about carpet bombing the whole fucking place to glass! All they'd need is a single nuke to take out the Black King, then the rest of the Dersites would-"

"No, dude, you don't understand!" Theo took a deep breath, trying to stay patient with me. "You don't understand what Skaia means to the Prospitians. It's freakin' sacred to them, man. Like I said, their sole purpose in existence is to defend it. Using nukes against the Dersites… That'd be like saying the Muslims should've burned Jerusalem to the ground during the First Crusade to keep it from the Christians—it would end the wars in the Holy Land…but they would never destroy Jerusalem. Because it is sacred to them. That's what Skaia is to the Prospitians."

I could see what Theo was saying, but I still wasn't totally convinced. "Jerusalem being sacred to Christianity and Islam still hasn't stopped it from being the victim of countless battles, though. Armies on both sides have completely clobbered it just to gain control of it time after time after time! Same thing here—even if the Battlefield is sacred to the Prospitians, that still doesn't seem to stop them from damaging it with all their bombing runs, their ground campaigns. What difference would one more nuke make?"

"The land can recover from bombing runs and ground campaigns. Not from nukes," Theo argued. "Skaia reacts badly with radiation. The Badlands isn't a damaged region of land…it is a dead region of land. And so the Prospitians refused to kill any more of Skaia. Not even to wipe out the Black Keep."

I cast a glance over my shoulder, looking back towards the middle of the column. "Can't really believe our one-eyed friend would go for that."

"Oh, he didn't," Theo clarified. "He argued bitterly with the White King for years, trying to convince him to take out the Black Keep…but the King never gave in. Lucky for the Marshal—the King was largely convinced to scrap the nuclear project by his wife, and if the Marshal kept pressing to keep it going, he probably would've had to deal with the Queen. And she's really not someone you want working against you."

There were two more Rangers waiting for us when we rolled into town. The Scarred Marshal had left the MCP and returned to the head of the column in time to meet with the Rangers before the rest of the two divisions got into town. It turned out that the Pale Marksman and her Rangers were up ahead, scouting out the best possible route through the radiation-filled wastes ahead. The radiation seemed to be concentrated in large pockets, so the challenge was to find a path that ran between those deadly pockets. A path through the wastes that wouldn't give us all radiation poisoning. The Pale Marksman's Rangers had discovered three such paths, and they were in the process of determining which one was the best one to take. They left soon afterwards.

In the meantime, the Scarred Marshal decided to order the column to power down and set up camp for the night. A storm was brewing, and the Marshal figured we could use the wrecked buildings for shelter. The soldiers only started setting up their bedrolls and tents after a perimeter had been established. As I looked at the Prospitians setting up camp, I realized just how much each individual soldier carried in addition to their weapon and ammo. Camp gear, bedrolls, rations… Jesus, they were like pack mules when they weren't in battle.

Finally, though, after sentry duties had been assigned and camp was set up, the soldiers were able to settle in. I could hear music drifting through the wind from several directions as some of the soldiers took up their likely-contraband instruments to try and offset the darkness of the Badlands. Nighttime was beginning to set in, and I had a feeling I'd have trouble seeing my hands in front of my face when it got really dark.

Good thing the Scarred Marshal had the foresight to bring lanterns and torches, which were set up at the sentry posts and at various points throughout the ruins of the town.

I chilled with Theo at the edge of town. He had a deck of cards in one of his pockets, and we ended up playing War for a couple hours until the two Rangers returned once again, this time with more information from the Pale Marksman concerning our westward route. The two of us flew across to the center of town, where the mobile command post had been parked.

The MCP looked like a giant RV on the outside. Step in through the side door, and you found yourself in a surprisingly spacious room with ops stations lining the sides, manned by a lone HQ operator, and a small table in the middle of it all. The two guards stationed at the door of the MCP stepped to the side, allowing us to pass. Theo and me ducked inside, just as the two Rangers were beginning to lay out the prospective route their leader had chosen.

"The Marksman scouted out this route herself, sir," one of the Rangers was saying to the Scarred Marshal as we made our entrance. The Ranger took notice of me and gave a quick nod. "Knight," was all he said in greeting.

"Come." the Scarred Marshal gestured for me and Theo to approach the table. "I will be giving a briefing to the officers in half an hour, but you might as well hear the new intel now while it's fresh. Go on," he nodded to the Ranger who'd just been speaking.

"As I was saying, we've scouted the three prospective routes with rad-detectors, and the Pale Marksman determined the best one to be…"

To our west, we had two major problems. First, the pockets of radiation; and second, more shattered mountain ranges. When people say the Badlands used to be beautiful, it must've been a sort of Swiss Alps, Sound of Music, Grand Tetons kind of beauty, because this place just seemed to be choc-fucking-full of mountains.

Our route would take us northwest across a small plain and into another large mountain range. We would travel through a large valley that ran through those mountains, which would eventually turn back to the west, depositing us close to the western borders of the Badlands. From there, it would be an almost straight shot to the Black Keep. We were expected to be out of the Badlands in two days.

After the two Rangers took their leave, we were left alone in the MCP with the Scarred Marshal. Well, and the HQ operator, too…but he was busy listening to radio chatter at his station, so he didn't really count.

"May I ask you something, sir?" I asked the Prospitian division commander.

The Marshal glanced up from his maps at me, looking at me like I had five heads.

All I could do was shrug. "I'm trying, okay? Look, I know you hate me and all, but seriously. Why is the King sending us through the Badlands? Why now, and not freakin' a hundred years ago?"

The Marshal continued to stare at me for a second or two. Then he released his breath, lowering his head a little, massaging his temples. "I do not know," he replied. "There is a lot the King knows that I do not… We haven't set foot in the Badlands in centuries. Of all the patrols we sent there, only a single soldier ever returned, and he was stark raving mad by the time he stumbled back to Fort Terminus. Still… I have fought alongside the King since the beginning, and he would not send us through the Badlands if he did not think we would survive it, nor would he have us attack the Black Keep if he did not think we could take it."

"But it's the Black Keep!" I couldn't let it go that easily. "Massive walls! Thousands of defenders! Behemoths! The fucking Black King—I dunno if you've noticed, but when the Kings fight with their scepters, they get fucking massive! If we're gonna take him down, we're gonna need a hell of a lot more firepower than what we're packing now. We'll bleed out our strength getting through the Keep's defenses, then the Black King will just come out Sauron-style and curb-stomp us!"

"If that is what Skaia would have of us, then it will be a good death," the Scarred Marshal countered my mini-outburst with some pure emotional ice, daring me to argue further. He may not have been happy about this mission, but he was certainly ready to die. "Perhaps I will be able to give the Black King a scar of his own before the end. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to gather my brigade commanders-"

Before the Marshal could step towards the door, however, the HQ operator sitting at one of the stations suddenly tensed, holding one of his headphones tight against his left ear. "Sir? Sir, I'm picking up some disturbing chatter from one of the sentry posts… I think you should hear this yourself."

"Switch to speakers," the Marshal ordered, stepping smartly over to the operator's station.

The feed was distorted and full of static—another consequence of the radiation, I think. And even if there hadn't been static, we still wouldn't have understood the first transmission. There was a rush of static, which then partially resolved into screaming…screaming, and something else that I couldn't identify… Screeching? Growling?

Then silence. The transmission was cut off. "Sentry Post Five, repeat your last," another voice ordered. "Sentry Post Five, please respond! Sentry Pos-"

I was suddenly conscious of an unmistakable sound in the near distance. Weapons discharge… Someone was shooting at something. Then a third voice started speaking on the channel.

"Lieutenant! This is Sentry Post Seven, we're being swarmed out here! There's gotta be hundreds of them! We need reinforce-" And with that, Sentry Post Seven's transmission went dark, just like the last one.

"Damnation, all sentry posts report!" the Lieutenant on the radio shouted. "What is happening out there?"

The gunfire started to increase, and even through the walls of the MCP we were actually able to hear the screaming.

"I've heard enough," the Scarred Marshal growled. He crossed over to the front of the MCP and approached the master console, pounding his fist down onto a large orange button. Immediately, a blaring alarm started to howl across the ruined town, coming from the sirens mounted on top of the MCP. The Marshal then activated a universal channel and ordered all troops to full readiness. "Our perimeter is under attack. Prepare to defend yourselves. I repeat; prepare to defend yourselves!"

No sooner had the Marshal killed the channel than he loaded his pistol and was out the door. The town outside was in a frenzy—soldiers were scrambling out of their tents and retrieving their weapons, reporting to their officers. It was the epitome of organized chaos; there were soldiers running this way and that, but it was all really quite synchronized. The Alabaster Rifles and the Browncoats were well-oiled machines.

Many of the lamps had gone dark, rendering visibility to be almost moot. Some soldiers had taped flashlights to their rifles, but other than that…we needed more light. I could also see muzzle flashes lighting up the edges of town, in time with the staccato weaponsfire. I could almost see the silhouettes of the soldiers fighting out there, fighting against… I don't know what. But they were hunched, misshapen, and they moved really fuckin' fast…

Theo and I followed the Scarred Marshal into town. The Prospitian commander was armed with a pistol in one hand and a wickedly sharp-looking knife in the other, looking as badass as could be. We followed him towards the gunfire. Luckily, all the commotion seemed to be coming from the northeast outskirts of the base, so it wasn't like we were being surrounded, or anything…

But then again, it still wasn't a good situation. We couldn't really retreat anywhere if we wanted to—whatever was attacking us had effectively cut off any chance of retreating to the east, there were mountains to our south, radioactive cancer fields to the north…and we would be hard pressed to make an organized push westward before the officers had been briefed on the Rangers' newly-plotted route through the radiation.

More and more soldiers poured out of the woodworks, rallying behind the Scarred Marshal. As junior officers organized these carapacians into formation, the Marshal gestured for Theo and me to go on ahead. "Get up there now and help my boys!" he roared. "Keep things together until I get there! Go!"

And so Theo and I went. Theo summoned the wind to him and took to the skies. I jumped into the air and propelled myself upward with my dream flight. I didn't even need to will myself to move forward—I simply let Theo's wind do all the work for me.

Theo noticed me doing this and gave me a look. "You're like the assholes on the highway who drive really close behind those big-ass trucks so they can save on gas!" he shouted at me.

"I wanna keep as much gas as I can, I like the way it smells!" I shot back. Theo…well, he didn't have any reply to that. I don't think anyone would really be able to reply to that. Mission accomplished.

We made landfall at the outskirts to the northeast of the town, where we'd heard all the gunfire coming from. It was really dark and we could only see snippets of light from the flashlights some of the soldiers wielded. I squinted, trying to see in the dark. I couldn't really hear very well over the gunfire and the panicked yells of the Prospitians who were fighting for their lives.

I ended up generating a Force field about myself. Now, I don't mean an actual force field, I mean a Force field—a loose field of the Force Aspect being generated around me. I hold individual atoms in place at a certain distance from me, and I could feel when they were moved, the tiny little eddies of kinetic energy they stirred up. Only problem was that I'd barely started creating the field when it was suddenly disrupted by something small…small and fast.

In a flash, I was on my back, knocked off my feet by a strong creature. Before I could even call out to Theo, I felt hands close over my throat, choking me. I tried to break the grip, but it was too strong. The creature's skin felt like a hard shell…almost like a carapace.

I closed my eyes and retrieved my Lightbowie from its strife specibus, gripping it in my right hand. I pulled my knife close, thrust it up and under the attacker's ribcage. It gave a high-pitched screech of pain…and then collapsed on top of me. I swore for a few seconds, wrinkling my nose at the stench of the dead creature, pushing it off me. I then produced a large flame around my fist so I could see what the fuck had just attacked me.

It looked like a corpse. Dark, misshapen carapace that looked like it'd been melted…long, hooked claws, super-sharp teeth… Lips that had long since shriveled back, sunken opaque white eyes that almost seemed to glow with a light of their own…

There was a low growl coming from the left. I turned just in time to see another one of those mutated abominations bounding at me, its white eyes reflecting the firelight for a moment before it bounded into view. Not having very much time to react, I concentrated the flame and shot it right through the creature's face. It was quick, bloodless. The creatures didn't dissolve into grist or anything, so they obviously weren't any kind of underling…

A new resolve filled me, and I spread my arms out wide, levitating myself up above the ruined buildings. I could easily hold my own against these creatures, but too many soldiers had gone down; I had to help them out. And the thing that was killing them the most was the darkness—they couldn't see the abominations until the decaying creatures were on top of them.

More flames flickered into existence around my hands and my forearms, almost as if I'd dipped my arms into oil…but I was unaffected by the heat. Then I took a deep breath and gave the flames as much juice as I could muster. They roared up almost twenty feet high, brightening to an almost blinding level. The core of the geysers of flame comprised of fire that was so bright it actually burned white, the outer reaches of the flames a bright orange at their darkest.

I wasn't making this fire to burn all the creatures, though. I was acting as a light source. With my fire, the vast majority of the northwest outskirts was lit up, and the soldiers were able to see what was attacking them. There was a brief moment of shock and revulsion at the mutated abominations, and that hesitation cost two or three soldiers their lives. But the moment passed quickly, and the soldiers were able to kill whatever was attacking them. Then they started grouping together, fighting in groups of five or six.

Theo jumped from one part of the fight to another, moving around constantly, helping the soldiers wherever he could. He didn't even use a weapon—the air itself was his weapon. He removed heads with precise blasts of concentrated wind, crushed windpipes…at one point I even saw him literally rip the lungs out of one of the creatures by seizing control of the air it had just breathed.

Our situation wasn't looking good, though. My fire lit up this part of town, but it also lit up a fair way into the north. I could see how many of those creatures were coming after us… There was a good-sized crowd coming our way, and we'd be hard-pressed to hold out against them on our own.

But then suddenly, the officer on watch—I think it was the Lieutenant we'd heard over the radio when we'd lost Sentry Post Seven—started shouting out new orders, and all of the embattled soldiers quickly gathered up the wounded, disengaged, and retreated. They fought off the abominations that nipped at their heels, able to easily do so thanks to my firelight. As a result, when most of the horde of mutated creatures reached us, they did not go through the embattled soldiers like a whirlwind of knives. Instead, we'd already retreated, so they gave chase, pursuing us further into town.

This must have been part of some plan that I wasn't aware of. I flew slowly back towards town along with the soldiers, keeping the way well-lit for them. And a very short way into town, we came across a rapidly-prepared defensive line. A row of lamps snapped on, providing more than enough illumination for the soldiers to see what they were shooting at, in addition to my firelight.

Led and organized by the Scarred Marshal, nearly three hundred soldiers had formed a defensive line across the streets of the town, reinforced by machinegun nests. All the soldiers who'd been caught fighting for their lives in the outskirts of town streamed through the gaps in the defensive line, clearing the impromptu defending force's lines of fire.

"Kill 'em all!" the Scarred Marshal thundered. Hundreds of soldiers opened fire at the same time, ripping through the first wave of mutated abominations. The machinegun emplacements opened fire next, firing in short, controlled bursts. The abominations were getting torn apart—body parts and blood were flying all over the place.

But the worst was when the abominations' assault was near its breaking point, and they were actually able to reach the defensive line in some places, resulting in more hand-to-hand fighting. Soldiers right at the front quickly fixed bayonets, meeting the abominations' attacks with steel. They all worked together quite cohesively. More than once, I'd spot a soldier holding a creature at bay while a second Prospitian stepped in and killed it while it was occupied.

The Scarred Marshal had placed himself at the weakest part of the line—the longest gap between the machinegun nests. And he was a fucking beast in hand-to-hand combat. He was taking multitasking to another level—one moment he would be dropping creatures with precise shots from his pistol, then he'd be fighting off the creatures that got in close with powerful kicks and elbow blows—finishing the incapacitated abominations off with his knife.

The wind picked up even more, and lightning struck the ground somewhere not too far away, lighting up the entire area for a split-second. I kept my fires burning, even when it started to rain. I was glad I'd cut my hair short last month, because having longer hair in wind like this would have been such a pain. And the whole time, I felt an incredible urge to drop back down to the ground and join in the fight. I could have incinerated dozens of the creatures without even breaking a sweat…but I probably would've roasted a few Prospitians, too. I was still working on keeping my fire under control.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the surviving abominations broke off the attack and bounded away, sometimes on all fours. They melted into the shadows and vanished, ushering in a temporary silence that settled over the town. Everyone stood still for a few moments, catching their breath and recovering from the general shock that those mutated things had brought.

I was able to release my fire and sink back down to the ground. I met up with Theo at the part of the line where the Scarred Marshal was; which was good, because I had questions. Lots and lots of questions.

"What the fuck was that?" I gestured at all the dead creatures. "What were those things?"

"They were Dersites once, but no longer," the Scarred Marshal murmured. "This explains our missing patrols…" The Marshal then snapped out of it and returned to reality. Raising his voice to its maximum volume, the Marshal addressed all the soldiers present. "Alright, boys, clean yourselves up and get back to sleep! We have an early morning tomorrow!"

Without a moment's hesitation, all of the Prospitians broke ranks, packed up their weapons and gear, and started making their way back to their tents, talking with each other and cracking jokes as if nothing had happened.

Man, carapacians were weird…