Heart of Darkness

by SousChefSean

The Summoner says very little about his world, despite how frequently some ask questions. But in the midst of a conflict with the Lady of Nightmares, a few Heroes learn more about his homeland than they ever wanted to know.

Children's Crusade

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Pawns in the game are not victims of chance

Strewn on the fields of Belgium and France

Poppies for young men, death's bitter trade

All of those young lives betrayed.

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The first thing Ayra noticed was the smell.

She was no stranger to the stench of a battlefield – the uniquely repulsive mixture of blood and iron – but this was on a completely different level. The metallic edge was magnitudes more powerful and pervasive than what she was used to; as if forged ore had embedded into the very earth itself. What was more, there was a certain smokiness permeating throughout it all. The smell of burned cloth and flesh was nothing new to anyone who'd fought with mages, but again, the sheer scale and power of it was unlike anything she'd ever experienced.

And then there was the scent of corpses. Though she'd smelled plenty of rotting bodies in her day, they had never been any older than a few days and sat outside a castle wall after a siege. By contrast, these carcasses smelled weeks old and surrounded her in every direction. Beyond even their age, they were wet, creating an unholy combination of decay and bog unlike anything she'd ever experienced.

The scent was so utterly repugnant that, when Ayra slowly came to in a hazy, sluggish state, it was the assault on her nostrils that made her more awake than asleep. She forced the lethargy from her mind and body, and noticed she was lying facedown on a layer of mud. Spitting out the small clump that had gathered on her lips, she moved her arms to underneath her torso, found a relatively stable spot to give her hands purchase against the slickness, and started to push herself off the muck.

Then, barely a couple inches up, the ground a few feet away violently exploded and sent her tumbling into a ditch.

She couldn't even say what sudden force had caused that – she was disturbingly familiar with the shockwave of magic meteors crashing to the earth, but that power had almost felt like it originated from just above the ground. Whatever it was, it knocked the wind out of her and left no chance for her to catch herself as she rolled down a steep slope. As she flopped into a heap, her remaining senses finished being jumpstarted by that sudden explosion and enabled her to start figuring out just where she was.

Even before her eyes stopped spinning, her ears broke through the dull ringing they'd briefly been overcome by. And what she heard promised nothing good: more explosions booming in all directions, some constant, percussive noises that were both near and far off, and the all-too-familiar sound of men screaming at each other.

Ayra didn't know any of the specifics, but she had a pretty good idea of what she'd found herself in the middle of. Once she realized that, her warrior instincts took over and she shook her head to clarify her thoughts and vision. Ignoring the swimming feeling it put in her head, she rushed to her feet and drew her sword, only to find herself baffled by what she saw. She was in what could only be described as a trench lined half with impossibly smooth stone and half with wooden boards, the alternating layers topped by bags of…something.

Her gaze followed the trench's path all the way to the end, some two dozen or so feet away, where it appeared to split in two directions. Just as she did so, a figure appeared from the proverbial crossroads. He defied all expectations, and almost made her think she'd hit her head too hard. The soldier (she doubted he could be anything else) wore no armor save for peculiarly angled steel helm. His uniform was nothing more than a mud-splattered grey jacket and trousers tucked into a pair of boots. In his hands, he clutched what she almost wanted to call a lance, but the unusually small blade on the end and weak-looking wooden frame made her unsure. And, most bizarre of all, he didn't have a face – his helmet sat atop two gaping, pitch black circles and some kind of wide, jutting snout.

For several seconds, they just stood there, staring at each other. The faceless man moved first, bringing his brittle lance up to his shoulder and leaning into it, as if inspecting the shaft for any cra-

BANG!

Arya's heart practically leapt out of her chest when the stone wall right next to her head burst in a shower of rubble. Even if it hadn't, the sudden startling sound from the soldier, disturbingly identical to the other such noises in every way save volume, would've been enough to stop her heart for a beat. Meanwhile, the man was fiddling with his 'lance', a little wisp of smoke coming from the back as he returned it to his shoulder.

She couldn't begin to fathom where she was or what was going on, but Ayra was no fool – whatever he'd done to shatter the stone had been meant to shatter her skull, and he was about to try again. Letting instinct guide her, she ducked low, just barely managing to avoid another would-be attack striking right behind where her hair was a second prior.

She prepared to charge and close the distance before he could get another attack off, but lost a couple seconds when her boot slid on the muddy ground. As she caught her footing, he wasn't without his own problems: his weapon gave off no more smoke, no matter how much he tinkered with it. Whatever was wrong, he decided it couldn't be fixed and got down to her level by making a charge of his own, the literal tip of the spear aimed at her.

Finally, Ayra thought with a grin, something familiar! However lost she was, she knew well how to deal with a charging lancer. She let him get just close enough that he was forced to commit his weight behind the thrust, and then slid to the side. While he skidded forward on the mud, she aimed her sword and stabbed at his heart. Unfortunately for her, he skidded on the mud too much, and managed to accidentally duck under her strike. What was more, he reached out with a wild hand to slow his descent and found purchase on her flowing tunic, dragging her down with him.

Since she received a face full of mud when she fell into the ground, she had to wipe her eyes clean before anything else. Luckily, she was a fast wiper, because the first thing she saw was the soldier stabbing down at her with a knife he'd pulled from somewhere. Desperately, she grabbed his wrist halfway and cursed the muck for making it so difficult to get a good grip on him and forcing her to use both hands to keep him at bay. He made matters worse by shoving his free, mud-soaked hand into her face, making it harder to breathe and see him.

"Englisches schwein!" He cursed at her in some guttural language, and she noticed amidst their struggle that his disturbing non-face was some kind of fabric mask. Whatever its purpose, she was quickly running out of options, and so tried to jab her knee into his groin. Due to both the awkward angle they were at and the thickness of his pants, her attempt had minimal effect, and Ayra began to grow seriously worried at her prospects of survival.

Just as his knife was scraping the edge of her breastplate, she heard another of the banging sounds distinctly nearby, and the man seized up for an instant before slumping against her. Dead?! She thought, incredulous, and shoved him off her as footsteps approached. Standing over them was another soldier who almost looked identical to the one she'd been fighting, except his muddy uniform was green and his helmet was more of a wide-tipped bowl. He had a weapon just like the grey soldier's readied, though he soon lowered it.

"Bloody 'ell!" He exclaimed behind his own strange mask and extended a hand. "You alright there, lad?"

"Y-yes, I'm fine." Confused but not ungrateful, she took his help and got back to her feet. "Listen, I need your help. I–"

"You're God damned right you need 'elp! Just look at you! Ain't got a rifle or a gas mask or even a shovel! Look, I know the push in 'ere was tough, but how'd you lose everything?! Your lieutenant is gonna give you 'ell, you know that?" The man's shoulders slumped. "Well, if he made it that is – I saw the Sixth Manchester get shot up fierce in the first wave…"

"W-what?" He was acting like she was just another soldier in his army! Did he not see how out of place she looked? How she was grabbing a sword from the ground and dressed in regal purple?

He ignored her confusion and reached down to the dead man, where he promptly undid his 'gas mask' and handed it to her. "Here. Yeah, I know, it's a Hun mask, but you know 'ow much they love to gas their own trenches when we start taking them. 'Course, there's no guarantee we will take it, but better safe than sorry, right?"

Ayra had endless questions, but she did understand one thing: both sides were wearing these masks for a reason, and if she was smart, then she'd do the same. Once she took it from him and started turning it over in her hands, trying to figure out how the straps went on, he continued, "You best be more careful about keeping all your gear, bloke. Never mind the Boche – if the officers see you with nothing, they might think you're trying to desert and 'ave you shot."

She went stiff for a moment and realized how much more complicated her situation had become. If the soldiers on both sides saw her as one of this man's comrades, and attempts to escape after the battle would be seen as treason and punished accordingly, then she was rather limited in options when it came to finding a way back to Askr. Still, since at least one faction on this battlefield wasn't attacking her on sight, that made the choice of whom to throw her lot in with a simple one.

"By the way, I'm George." He introduced himself as she finally got the constrictive mask over her head and properly strapped on. It painfully tugged at her hair and made seeing and breathing a hell of a lot tougher (which probably explained why that 'Hun' soldier missed his first shot) but had to be worth wearing in some way she couldn't yet see. "Private George Collins, part of the First Yorkshire."

She blinked and rapidly scrambled to come up with a passable introduction. "I'm…Prin-Private Ayra Isaach, from the…Sixth Manchester." She figured picking a group that was 'shot up fierce' would minimize the chances of someone pointing out she didn't belong – for Gods knew what reason, these people thought she was one of them, so if she wasn't where they thought she should be, there was no telling what they might do to her. She hadn't used her kingdom as a last name in ages, but was glad she had it in her back pocket to avoid rousing suspicion.

"Aw, God…" He moaned and shook his head. "Sorry I was so 'arsh on you earlier. With you and your mates getting what you did, it's a miracle you got this far in one piece."

"U-uh…" She stammered, unsure what the proper response was. "D-don't worry about it. I'm…just glad one of us made it."

He nodded. "That's the spirit. Still," he tilted his head, "'Ayra'? That sounds like a girl's name! You from one of the colonies or something?"

"I…" have no idea what the hell you think you're seeing! Ayra wasn't one to care if men found her attractive, but she was very clearly a woman! Her breastplate did nothing to hide her sizable bust, she had hair so long it nearly went to her waist, and her outfit accentuated her wide hips and toned thighs. Sure, she didn't think of herself as womanly and what femininity she did have was dampened by all the mud, but it should've still been plain to see! Then again, she bitterly thought, if he thinks I'm one of his comrades, then Gods only know what I look like to him. And besides, so what if she had a girl's name?! What, had he never fought alongside a woman before?

With a huff, Ayra shook her head and let the matter go. Whatever he was seeing, George saved her life, and she owed it as Princess of Isaach to repay him for that. "Yes, I'm from…way out in the east." She took a gamble in picking a random direction, but it paid off when George nodded his head.

"Thought as much. Only the Orientals would mix up their boys and girls!" He shrugged. "It's just a bit rubbish that your folks picked a local name for you, but I guess some blokes like going a little native."

"…Yeah." She had no way of knowing what would constitute a faux pas in this situation and so decided to keep her responses as curt as possible. The more pressing matter was what in the name of the gods she was doing there! How the hell had she gotten to this world? She strained her memory, but all she could remember was training with Larcei and Scáthach in Askr, the same as any other day. Was her presence in the world the result of some foul magic? Had the Breidablik gone haywire and accidentally sent her here while Kiran was summoning, or something?

Their attention was pulled by louder shouting and banging from around the bend, reminding her that there was still a battle to survive before she sorted out the details of where she was. "Alright, Ayra, time to do our part!" George declared and readied his weapon again before using it to point at the dead Hun. "Grab that bloke's rifle and whatever rounds he 'as on him – that sword your folks sent you won't do much good if you can't get close to anyone."

She presumed he was talking about the thin, wooden spear-esque thing that nearly blew her head off. She was as clueless about its use as she was everything else around here but needed an excuse to avoid rousing suspicion. "Oh, his, um, stopped working. That's why he charged instead of keeping his distance."

"Bah!" George spat. "Typical Jerry guns! It just figures their rifles never work when you actually want them to." He shook his head. "Well, better pray the fighting gets up close and personal, then." He took point and motioned for her to follow him. "Off we go!"

Her body having shifted back into a proper stance, she followed him as they made for the part of the trench still embroidered in combat. Ayra's couldn't deny an unfamiliar level of nerves – if she ended up caught between two aimed 'rifles', it wasn't likely to end well – but was also eager to get into the action and make the 'Jerries' pay for trying to kill her. She wouldn't let the tightness and slickness of the trench catch her off-guard a second time.

When they rounded the corner, all hell had broken loose. Green and grey uniforms clashed with each other in every which way, some pointing rifles and others thrusting them. Many, to her initial bafflement, were swinging what looked like sharpened shovels. She didn't need to be a brilliant tactician to figure out that the long, stocky rifles were unwieldy in such narrow conditions and that a shorter weapon capable of swings and slashes was a better fit.

Case in point, she caught a glimmer of reflected light in the corner of her mask's lens and immediately darted backwards, dragging George by her free hand with her. A rifle tip stabbed right through where they were standing a second prior, giving Ayra ample opportunity to cut down the overextended fool. These soldiers' relative lack of protection finally gave her an advantage all her own: where normally she had to carefully target gaps in an opponent's armor, here she could simply strike the most easily reached vitals. Her blade easily cut through the side of the Hun's mask, but the fabric's resistance threw her blade slightly off course and meant she carved a deep gash down his right arm, sending him and his rifle flopping to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

"Get down!" She scarcely had time to ready her blade for a finishing blow before George's order rang through her ears. Like she had in so many battles prior, she put her faith in her comrade and did as he commanded. And not a moment too soon, as the wall just above her head burst into more tiny pellets of rubble. She turned her attention to the other direction, where a Jerry (why did they have so many names for these people, she wondered) was aiming at her and shortly aimed at nothing when George landed a shot over his heart.

"Come on, lad!" He cried and tugged her forward. "We got to clear out the barracks!" Forced to write off the soldier with the torn mask and mangled arm as effectively disabled, she followed him into the main avenue being fought over and could scarcely make out who was targeting her with the mask obstructing her peripheral vision so much. She managed to make a few bobs and weaves here and there, but most of the shots that narrowly missed her only did so on account of her attackers' own inaccuracy. While she wasn't without some small victories, like stabbing Huns that were busy fighting other green troops, she was forced to acknowledge that she had far less impact on the battlefield than a descendent of a crusader typically did.

When she and George reached an entrance dug into the side of the trench that was already surrounded by a host of green soldiers, she barely had time to look for a spot to position herself when someone in the crowd shouted, "GRENADES!" A second later, a rapid series of explosions rocked the crowd from its center, sending a cacophony of screams and blood flying outward. Flecks of gore splattered onto her mask's lenses, forcing her to wipe them clean of bone and muscle with her tunic.

She saw clearly again just in time to watch the survivors repay their foes for the blood the spilled. They took little balls from their belts, pulled a pin at the top, and threw them into the entrance, and backed away as explosions and screams now rocked the interior. A pool of blood flowed into the open and mingled with the existing puddle of blood from the first explosion. The entrenched opponent no doubt crippled, a few green soldiers went into the gap with rifles raised and, after a few distinct firing sounds, came back out none the worse for wear.

With that area secured, she shared a glance with George and glanced around, finding the trench around them more or less under green control. A couple Jerries were being finished off, but it looked by and large like they had won the battle. And, though she'd arrived incredibly disoriented halfway through, Ayra couldn't help but feel bitter about how little impact she had. Dangerous as she was with a sword, it was hard to get close enough to actually use it. That said, she was largely just glad to still be alive, and took a few steps back the way she came to make sure everything was as clear as it looked.

Though…she couldn't help but notice there were far fewer grey uniforms littered around the trench than green ones…

"GAS! GAS! GAS!" Soldiers screamed in warning all around her. Swiveling her head to identify the new threat, she saw clouds of a fine, pale mist sprout up seemingly from nowhere all around her. Within a matter of seconds, the wan fog rolled over her and George, obstructing their vision to only a few inches in front of them. Ayra didn't see the danger posed by the gas beyond making it hard to see, but the mask she was wearing was so widespread for a reason – she tightened its strap to make sure she didn't inhale anything and set about reorienting herself.

Unfortunately, her ignorance was soon rectified. That soldier whose mask she'd sliced open and had been forced to abandon earlier stumbled out of the mist towards her. But he bore no weapon anymore, and though his lacerated arm still poured blood, it was clearly the least of his concerns. Both his limbs, even the maimed one, clawed at his throat in desperate, panicked motions. The portion of his face she could see was contorted in an expression of naked terror and his exposed eye pled her, who had already crippled him, to offer whatever aid she could.

When he opened his mouth, Ayra expected him to cry for help. And though that may have been his intention, it wasn't what actually happened – rather than any words, he only produced a wretched gurgling sound from the back of his throat. She thought the noise unsettling enough and was unprepared for the tide of foamy blood that abruptly spilled from his lips. Horrified, she stepped back as he reached a frenzied hand towards her and sunk to his knees. The awful choking continued for nearly a minute, his motions growing weaker and skin growing paler by the second. At last, the man crumpled to the ground, the blood that poured from his mouth having accumulated in the remnants of his mask and beginning to dribble out onto the mud.

If that was what happened to anyone who inhaled the gas, she thanked Od and the gods that George had insisted she put on her mask. She couldn't fathom how it did what it did, but that man had clearly suffered an excruciatingly awful death and she felt a pang of guilt for not giving him a swifter end earlier. Now that he was gone, she realized she could hear similar blood-choked gasps and gags all around her. In every direction she dared go, she stumbled onto a poor maskless soldier writhing on the ground, their faces all stained red by their own blood and hands desperately grasping at their necks.

Experienced warrior that she was, her thoughts wandered to what would happen if this gas were used in Jugdral or Askr. It went without saying that they had no specially made masks and that merely covering one's mouth with their cloak wouldn't suffice. If a castle were besieged by this alien, grisly weapon, the only viable defense she could think of involved mages wielding sufficiently powerful wind tomes to blow it away. And even that wouldn't be safe bet with anything less than maybe a Tornado tome, since wind magic was more concerned with creating blades out of the air than blowing it around. Absent that, the only recourse would be to hide in a remote room and stuff fabric in the gaps between the door and the wall.

And beyond even the danger of breathing it in, she worried that the mist was harmful merely to stand in. She could feel the exposed skin on her arms, legs and neck grow slightly irritated and wondered if the gas couldn't do to the outside of her body what it was capable of doing to the inside. She didn't have time to dwell on those concerns, as a familiarly stocky figure emerged from the fog and gripped her arm. "Easy, lad!" George exclaimed. "You gave me good fright, bolting off into the gas like that!"

"I-I'm sorry, I just didn't expect…"

"First time, eh? Good thing we got you that Jerry mask or you'd be in a right state about now." He lifted a hand from his rifle and shook it around. "Don't want to stick around 'ere for too long – this stuff'll burn your skin if you let it. Come on," he gestured towards the way he came, "there's bound to be a clear part of the trench they didn't shell." She followed his lead, the two of them sidestepping both the soon-to-be corpses littering their path and the living troops trying to navigate their way. "Stay alert." George warned her amidst the last choking and retching around them. "Whatever the Jerries are planning, they're sure to spring it any sec–"

"FLAMETHROWERS!"

The panicked alert quickly devolved into an agonized scream. Ayra had scarcely readied her sword in the direction it came from for a second before a wave of searing heat rolled over her. Not far behind the heat was its source, burning away both the gas and the survivors still blindly stumbling around in it. The intense rise in temperature put a thick layer of condensation over the lenses of her mask that she had to spend a few seconds wiping away.

Once it was gone, she half-expected to see mages throwing fireballs from their tomes. Instead, she beheld veritable streams of fire being poured into the trench from above by soldiers wearing large metal tubes on their backs. Thick black billows of smoke rose to the sky, their smell doubtless punctuated by the stench of scorched flesh. The soldiers coated every surface they could see in the ignited torrent, their reactions to their grisly work hidden behind the obsidian void of their mask's lenses.

Even in her worst nightmares, Ayra had never dreamt of anything like it. All fire magic she'd ever seen, even the divine Valflame, lasted for only a few seconds at most. No matter how almighty the tome, its user could only cast one spell at a time, and only a great host of mages could conjure enough magic to cover that weakness. But these weapons had no such downside that she could perceive – the flood of fire they produced burned so fierce and wide they could probably kill through suffocation alone. And for her personally, there was a detail making them especially effective.

Fire was instinctively terrifying, but it was even more so for Ayra ever since she was summoned to Askr. She recalled all too well the feeling of her flesh charring and falling off her bones and had to fight down a level of reflexive nerves every time she faced down an enemy mage wielding some manner of flame tome. In those circumstances, it was her muscle memory and experience dealing with such foes that enabled her to overcome her body's impulse to flee.

But she had nothing to call upon for this. These 'flamethrowers' were unlike anything she'd ever seen – even if she was on level ground with the soldiers using them, she didn't see how she could possibly get beyond that constant gush of burning liquid. She was so shocked (and, though she despised admitting it, petrified) by these terrifying new weapons that she didn't notice another had appeared just above her until its nozzle was pointed practically straight at her.

She had scarcely a moment to widen her eyes in terror before the soldier tumbled into the trench, his uniform stained with a fresh spurt of blood. Still dazed, she stared at his corpse until a violent shake of her shoulder burst her out of her stupor. "Let's go, Ayra!" George ordered, smoke wisps rising from the back of his rifle. "There ain't no way we're 'olding on to the trench! We've got to get out of 'ere now!"

Numbly, she nodded along and followed his lead to the opposite trench wall where a wooden ladder was propped up. Ayra didn't like running from fights, but she could tell the difference between cowardice and suicide and knew damn well when it was time to cut her losses. George threw his rifle over the ledge and scrambled up the ladder, Ayra herself not far behind him, her blade already back in its sheathe. Behind her, she could feel the greedy flames licking at her heels, a grim confirmation of how close they'd cut it.

Once her head peeked over the edge of the trench, Ayra saw for the first time the battlefield these people had been fighting over. Every descriptor that came to her mind failed to do a modicum of justice to the utter otherworldly horror of what she witnessed. The scenery, if it could even be called that, was a haphazard assortment of craters, mounds of mud, and rotting corpses. For miles in either direction, sprawling meshes of…something extended parallel to the trench, the strands decorated in limbs, organs, and bodies in varying states of decay; only a few small gaps here and there offered a breach through the entangling coils. Occasionally, hulking steel boxes in the shapes of rhombuses rusted in the mire, having long since worn out whatever purpose for which they'd been constructed.

The landscape didn't remotely resemble a single locale she'd ever been to; it didn't look like it had ever sustained life, or, if it had in some distant past, ever would again. At a closer glance, she could see what almost looked like the charred, blown out remains of tree trunks. If that meant all she beheld used to be a forest, then she was even more disturbed by the sights before her. All these soldiers were fighting and dying…for this?!

What kind of nightmarish hell world am I in?!

With her higher thoughts momentarily shut down by sheer abhorrent shock, only instinct pushed her body over the ladder and into the unearthly wasteland. George was already on his feet, his rifle clutched in his hands. "Let's get a move on!" He implored, already darting away. "Before they can man their machine guns!" She sprinted after him, never more thankful that the swordplay she inherited from Od emphasized mobility and meant she wore very little cumbersome armor.

As soon as she was racing across the wasteland, Ayra understood at once what the point of the trench was. Out in the open, she felt terribly vulnerable and her every instinct was screaming at her to stop being so exposed. It was little wonder why, considering the ground was going up in dozens of little bursts all around her every second; it was as if someone was using George's rifle magnitudes more rapidly than he could. She'd seen plenty what even one direct hit from that invisible force was capable of, and was suddenly glad nobody seemed able to see her distinct 'target me' purple tunic.

With George as her guide, they hurried through one of the gaps in the tangled strands. Once she was close enough to get a decent look, she realized it was some kind of metal forged into a coil and periodically woven into sharp knots. Disregarding however the hell a blacksmith could make it (and in such mind-boggling quantities at that), it was readily apparent why the stuff was littered everywhere: any would-be attackers would have to spend an ungodly amount of time cutting through it, during which they'd be easy targets for the defenders sitting in their trench.

Perhaps that fear of becoming a sitting duck was why, to her right, she saw a soldier tangled in the barbs reaching out his hand in a plea for help. Whether he hadn't seen the gap she and George were using or had been too scared to care, his attempt to charge through had put him in the worst possible position. Ayra had no means of reaching and pulling him loose, and even if she did, the enemy quickly solved the problem for her – as rapidly as a group of assassin's daggers, several invisible strikes peppered his back. The soldier went limp and became one of dozens, if not hundreds of other grisly ornaments adorning the metal coils.

Pushing the dead man out of her thoughts, Ayra emerged on the other side of the gap, George already several paces ahead of her. She darted in his wake, her steps less steady than his on account of her less suited boots. Still, they stayed together in their mad dash across the desolation, taking care to bob and weave around the many craters littering their path. Even worse, ceaseless explosions from an unknown source still rocked the landscape, forever threatening to send them into one of the gaping mounds all around.

Everywhere around her, Ayra saw swarms of soldiers doing much the same and being picked off seemingly at random. Both the pattering sound of the enemy's weapons and the little puffs of dirt were sprouting up everywhere with ever greater frequency and more often hit men instead of earth. She watched seemingly countless fit troops in full sprint simply crumple into a heap; even if they survived their injury, they'd be trapped outside the trench where death would surely claim them. Ayra forced herself not to think of such things and just focus on following George until they–

BOOM!

A blast went off directly in front of her, sending Ayra flying onto her back with a painful thud and a ringing in her ears. Groaning, she laid in a dazed bundle, her legs and arms stretching around with no real rhyme or reason. After what had to be at least half a minute, her head finally stopped swimming and she managed to pull herself off the ground into a kneeling position. Her hearing still escaped her, but a puff of dirt right next to her hand reminded her of the danger she was in. Huddled on her knees, she prepared to continue making a break for it when the debris ahead of her cleared and stole her breath.

Laying directly in front her was George's rifle, still held firm in his hand.

And laying beyond the shredded remains of his arm was a fresh crater, smeared red.

Only another explosion to her rear prevented her from gawking and getting herself killed. The same survival instinct that kept her going in so many battles past reactivated now, pushing her back to her feet and forcing her to resume her rush forward. She was now blind as to where, exactly, George had been leading her, but followed the wave of fleeing soldiers in his stead. Her head light from the way the mask constricted her breathing and lungs burning, she ran as far as she could, hoping she wouldn't end up like the other men she saw get caught up in an explosion and be sent flying with limbs ripped off and chests blown open.

Finally, she came to another jumbled mess of spiked metal, this one every bit as coated in gore as the one behind her. For once, fortune appeared to be on her side, because there was a visible gap directly in front of her. She dove into it, her efforts to get past intensifying when she saw the opening of another trench – the one George's side used, no doubt – just beyond her. Frantically, she scrambled out the other side, the hail of attacks now striking so close that she could feel the wind rushing past her ear.

She came to the trench's opening, a wooden ladder identical to the one she'd used to flee waiting for her. Heart pounding in her ears, she raced down it as fast as her feet could carry her, one final puff of dirt striking an inch from her hand. Once she was safely out of the open, her shaking hands reached up and practically ripped her mask off. Without it, she could finally see and breathe clearly; the latter was particularly welcome, judging by the way she was heaving deep, gasping breaths.

Swarms of troops arrived around her, but Ayra barely registered them. She needed space and time to process what she just went through. Her heart was pounding in her ears and her whole body wouldn't stop trembling. She couldn't remember any other time she'd been so rattled, and that lack of control made her almost as frightened as the ceaseless brushes with death she'd just had.

Unfortunately for Isaach's princess, her reprieve was still a way's off; she'd barely brought a quivering hand to her sweat soaked forehead before a shrill whistle pierced her ears. "TO YOUR POSITIONS, LADS!" Somebody ordered. "PREPARE TO REPULSE THE GERMANS' ATTACK!"

The declaration was startling at first, but it did a decent enough job of brushing away her borderline panicked shock. Her confusion at the nature of the order was quickly replaced by grim familiarity. Of course. She thought, gritting her teeth. This is the push to destroy the routed force that ends every battle! Considering they were all huddled in a line instead of properly fleeing, she figured there wasn't much chance of escape. The situation was so severe that, for the first time, she got the feeling that their foes' actual name was used instead of a pejorative.

With narrowed eyes and a calming breath, she drew her sword and prepared to kill whomever first broke into the trench. No matter how rattled, scared, and confused she was, she would always be willing to fight. Maybe the 'German' trench had proved she was hopelessly out of her league in this ghastly world, but she was determined to do something. She owed George her life – if she gave it to protect his comrades, she'd consider her debt well repaid.

Her first clue this wouldn't go the way she thought it would was the distinct lack of hoof steps. Cavalry was always what one used to pursue a routed army, right? That confusion barely sprung into her head before she saw the foolishness of it; with the land beyond the trenches being so covered in craters and that barbed metal, it'd take a miracle for a single horse to get itself into a gallop, let alone a whole line of them.

Her second clue was the lack of panic from the troops around her. They were frantic and rushed, sure, but they still arranged themselves in a startlingly orderly fashion against the trench walls, rifles aimed at anything that would dare approach. The whole thing was too well-coordinated for the kind of beaten troops she was used to helping Sigurd pacify. They had thoroughly trained for this, or else been through it so many times that it was routine.

And if so many of them had gone through this before, that meant they weren't the ones about to die.

She scooped up an abandoned helmet lying at her feet and threw it on – she'd always thought them too off-balancing for swordplay, but something told her she wasn't about to put her blade to use. With some protection for her head, she filled into a small gap in the line and peered over the trench. Out in the wasteland, she saw a veritable horde of Germans emerge from the dusty haze, all in those same distinct helmets and gas masks. Scattered throughout their numbers were a few of those terrifying flamethrower troops, though their weapons weren't quite as frightening now that they weren't perched right on top of her.

About an instant after she saw them, everyone else did too, and another whistle signaled the defenders to begin. Ayra had witnessed firsthand what these people's weapons could do to a mass of targets out in the open, but, subconsciously or otherwise, she'd just thought the carnage around her the natural result of a disorganized retreat. She was very quickly proven wrong when, within just a second or two, the charging Germans started dropping like flies en masse.

It was a much different experience to be on the side safely huddled in its trench, but in some way, Ayra found it just as disturbing. She wanted to be relieved that her life was no longer forfeit, but the sight of such a massive charge being cut down with such minimal effort just looked so wrong. Belatedly, she grasped just what George had meant about the Sixth Manchester being 'shot up' – if her side's efforts to breach the German trench were remotely like this, the casualties even before they reached it must have been utterly appalling.

Eyes wide with troubled awe, she looked to the men at her side and found their faces grim and resolute. They're all used to this. She realized. This is normal… She glanced back at the mass of Germans so casually dying in droves, not a one startled by the brazen butchery they were a part of. For both sides… What she also found was the explanation behind their weapons: whenever they tugged at the bolt near the back, a little hollow metal cylinder popped out in a puff of smoke. When a certain number were ejected, the troops removed the rectangle at the bottom of the rifle and put in a new one that she saw was filled with more metal cylinders.

They were attacking by shooting small pieces of metal far faster than she could see them move, and with stunning ease at that. They were like bows that took very little skill to use, didn't need as much space to shoot, and, if the wounds and scenery in the trenches were any indication, inflicted far more damage. To the side, about a dozen soldiers away, she could see a few using one that never seemed to stop – puffs of smoke from the tip and rhythmic shudders along the body continued unabated as they swiveled it back and forth, directing its carnage at anyone unlucky enough to cross their sights.

Even after Gods knew how many of their friends were soaking the earth red, a layer of Germans reached the metal coils, and Ayra got to see them fulfill the grisly purpose she'd already deduced. There were two outcomes: either the Germans tried to cut a new hole in the metal and got shot to hell while they were fiddling with their tools, or they tried going through one of the few pre-existing holes and formed a convenient line for the troops to aim at.

A few Germans got close enough to pull what looked like some form of small club from their belts and throw them over the barbs. Ayra thought it was a pathetic excuse for an attack on par with throwing rocks until explosions and screams wracked the trench, and realized those were the same 'grenades' that had been so lethally effective earlier in the close quarters of the trench. But her allies knew exactly what they were dealing with and dispatched almost everyone grabbing the grenades before they could lob them. The consequence of which was the grenades going off around the Germans, worsening their already bad situation and sending doomed men to an earlier and more painful grave.

In no time at all, it was over – the Germans realized (or maybe decided) that they weren't going to crack the proverbial nut and retreated, untold scores of their friends left maimed and dying in their wake. The soliders around her kept their rifles trained forward, but visibly relaxed, their safety now all but assured. Ayra, too, stopped being so tense, but the loosening of her shoulders came more as the result of dazed understanding than any conscious sense of relief. On unsteady legs, she stumbled backwards and ran a hand through her grimy, sweaty locks, unable to believe any of what she'd just experienced.

Though she'd awoken in the thick of things, she was able to put together a rough blueprint of what had happened. First, her side had attacked the German trench and been allowed to get a foothold in it – after what she just saw, she flatly refused to believe they'd been willing to sustain the harrowing losses it would've taken to claim it normally. Then, with the bulk of their defenders already pulled back, the Germans proceeded to gas the trench and use the reduced visibility to torch anybody smart enough to have worn their mask. Finally, with the would-be attackers routed, the Germans had intended to capitalize on the panic and win the battle with a swift counterattack.

Instead, they'd been just as torn to pieces as her allies, with the ultimate result being that nobody won the battle. No, she shook her head and struggled to keep bile out of her throat, that wasn't a battle. That was just mutual slaughter. Ayra was no greenhorn. She wasn't some demure maiden who waved to the troops from her ivory tower. She'd killed more people than she could count, seen a great many people she cared about be killed, and even been killed herself. Death had been her closest friend from practically the moment she was old enough to bear children. But never, in all her years and fights and travels, had she fathomed that mass butchery on such a scale was remotely possible.

She couldn't begin to guess how many soldiers had been killed in just that hour alone. Soldiers that not only died practically at random and at a chillingly efficient rate, but who had died for absolutely nothing. The situation was exactly the same as it must have been before she arrived: two trenches locked in stalemate on opposite ends of an unfathomable expanse of devastation. The whole thing was like two fortresses besieging each other – all that had changed was the number of bodies rotting in between them. She would've laughed the idea off as a sick joke had anyone described it to her, but there was no mirth to be found in the reality of the thing.

"Oi!" Her internal consternation was broken by someone shaking her arm. "You alright there, lad?" She blinked, recognizing those words as the same ones George had first said to her. But George was dead, and this was a taller man with a short-trimmed mustache and clear blue eyes that strongly stood out against the grime and gore around them.

"I…" She breathed, not realizing how shaky her voice sounded. "I don't…t-the Germans, they…"

"They're gone, lad." He reassuringly patted her on the shoulder. "Not forever, God forbid we should be so lucky, but we held 'em off."

"B-but…but we didn't win." She shook her head at how blasé he seemed to be. "Nobody won! How many of us just died to achieve nothing?!"

He gave her a long look, eyes shining with something akin to pity. He patted her shoulder again, this time much more slowly and deliberately. "This was your first real fight, wasn't it? I saw how you froze up when the Boche 'ad their go at it."

Her first instinct was to be insulted, but she knew what he meant and couldn't deny she'd never partook in anything like this before. Ashamed of her own impotence and how affected she'd become by the stress of it all, she ducked her head and quietly admitted, "…Yes."

"You've just got a bit of shell shock, mate." He patted her back this time and gently pulled her his way. "Come on, then. Let's get you a tin of grub and 'elp you figure out what you just went through." He extended his free hand. "Lance Corporal William Gant, East Lancashire, at your service."

She accepted his offered handshake. "Private Ayra Isaach, Sixth Manchester."

"Oh, Lord…" He sighed. "I'm sorry, mate. It's no wonder you got shell shock, bein' in the first wave like that. Though, if you don't mind me asking…"

"I'm from the far eastern colonies." She pre-emptively answered the question.

"Ah." He nodded straight away. "The Orient; right, that makes sense. Shame your family was visiting home when it was time to answer His Majesty's call to arms, eh? Way I hear it, the Orient's about the only part of this war that isn't a charnel 'ouse."

"Yeah…" She unenthusiastically answered. Well, that at least confirmed she was fighting for some kingdom, though she still hoped to pick up said kingdom's name, learn whatever had set all this off, and find some way back to Askr. She still had no clue whatsoever where she was; for starters, who the hell were the Germans and what was the Orient? She'd never heard anyone in the Order of Heroes mention a people or place like that. For another, just how big was this war if the 'far east' was wrapped up in it too?

Not helping matters was that she finally had something familiar, and it was the last thing she wanted: the moans and whines of dying soldiers littering a battlefield. Again, Ayra didn't shy away from killing people – if she was being disturbingly honest with herself, she rather enjoyed the satisfaction that came with cutting down a foe after a hard-fought duel – but she wasn't some sick freak who took pleasure in killing someone who was defenseless. Unfortunately, finishing off the leftovers from a battle was just a necessary part of waging war. Awful as it could feel to stab someone without a weapon who was begging her not to, indulging their pleas for mercy would just eat up resources the army needed for itself.

But then, at least those poor saps got a quick death when she found them. The soldiers outside the trenches would get no such relief if nobody could line up a shot – if anyone was lying in one of those craters with their legs blown off, for example, they'd have no recourse but to wait until they bled out or else hope they could turn their rifle on themselves. She heard at least one plea to that tune somewhere in the distance, but most of it was the guttural gibberish that very first soldier she ran into had snarled at her.

Ayra was more used to ending those cries than enduring them, but William, and likely everyone else, had plenty of experience. When he saw her glance up at the edge of the trench with a disconcerted look, he tugged her arm and solemnly shook his head when she turned to him. Accepting his silent advice, she tuned out the moans and screams with unnervingly well-practiced ease and followed him.

All around them, the line of soldiers broke up; though a few stayed on alert at the rim of the trench, most of them began heading off to Gods' knew where. They were probably on their way to get rest, treatment for some injury, or food like her and William, and they all seemed able to navigate the winding trench like the back of their hand. For Ayra, who couldn't begin to guess which branching paths went where, it was another grim reminder of how long these people must've been doing this.

Their trek wasn't entirely a pleasant one – though the defenders had held firm, it stood to reason that some fell to those exploding sticks or just a well-aimed shot. Several times, they had to step over a fresh corpse or slide past a group trying to get a maimed soldier to a healer. Though obviously much less horrific than the sights and sounds around her, Ayra had a revelation on the way that further dampened her spirits: she was the only woman in sight. She realized that George and William's confusion at her feminine name hadn't been born of crass chauvinism, but by genuine bewilderment that a woman could possibly be among them. If they saw her for how she really looked instead of just another man in uniform, she could only imagine the kind of looks she would've been getting at that moment.

Then again, she bitterly noted, running her hand through a clump of hair caked in drying mud, I doubt I'm exactly a sight for sore eyes right now. Ayra was far from the type to care about style or smelling like a freshly bloomed rose, but feeling grimy, sweaty, and mud-splattered was only fun when she got like that by proving her martial skills in combat. Being filthy because she spent however long running for her life and getting her ears blown out just made her deplorable state that much more miserable. She was a princess, and childhood rigor alone dictated she'd rather look presentable if she could help it.

But everyone else appeared just as squalid as her, so she supposed it wouldn't matter even if they could see her true visage. In fact, even the cooks looked a mess when she and William finally reached them in what had to be the trench's rear. They had no food prepared that she could see – considering what just happened, she figured as much would be the case – but that didn't dissuade anyone. Already, a small line was formed, soldiers consistently leaving with some kinds of little containers in their hands. She smothered her confusion and followed Will's lead, asking for a 'daily ration' with her hand outstretched the same as he did.

The containers were helpfully labeled – BISCUITS, CORNED BEEF, TEA – though she couldn't imagine how they'd be safe to eat sitting in tiny boxes for who knew how long. Still, she stuffed them inside her belt pouches (which were just about the only thing that her outfit had in common with everyone else's), and let Will lead her out of the traffic.

"I've got me a little teapot, some water in the flask," he raised and shook a full-sounding waterskin, "and enough wood an' matches for a small fire. It won't be enough to 'eat the meat up, but we can at least get a spot of tea to wash it down. Normally, the officers would get on us for lightin' a fire, but I think they'll agree there's not much risk from the Boche right now."

"Thank you." She nodded and tried to force a small smile to her lips. "I appreciate this, William."

"Aw, just call me Will." He waved her off. "And don't worry about it, lad. Once you've made it across No Man's Land and back for the first time, I think you deserve a bit of 'elp."

No Man's Land… She repeated to herself, her smile dissipating at the all-too-fresh memory of that…ruination. She had to admit, it was a brutally fitting moniker. Nothing would be able to survive out there for very long, nor could anybody hope to lay any claim to it. It was land both devoid of men and unowned by them; she couldn't have come up with a better name if she'd tried.

She followed Will to what appeared to be a more lived-in region of the trench, with dirty blankets and more personal effects lying about the place. She couldn't tell what was whose, but Will naturally had a lay of the land and brought her to a pack covering a small pile of twigs. Taking a seat on the mound where his things had been resting, he removed a humble, dented iron kettle and tiny box from the pack and laid out the twigs in a meager makeshift firepit. He splashed the little stack of sticks with something that smelled strongly of alcohol, drew a miniscule scrap of wood from the box, and, to her amazement, quickly struck it along the side and produced a small flame. He wasted no time setting fire to the bundle of twigs, rested the teapot atop the fresh fire, and filled it with water.

Even she, who never brewed her own tea, could tell what came next and fished out the labeled box she'd been given. Will graciously accepted it and combined both their tea rations into a brew, stirring with a poorly crafted iron rod. "Well, that ought to be ready soon enough." He gestured to a mound of dirt behind her. "Go ahead and take a load off. Ain't no sense in eatin' on your feet, is there?"

Ayra couldn't argue with that and did as he recommended, undoing her belt and letting the weight of her sword finally slip from her waist. She rummaged through her pouches for the rest of her ration, but couldn't help giving it a suspicious look once it was actually in her hand again. "…Are you sure this is safe to eat?"

He wryly chuckled. "Not safe for your sense of taste, that's for sure. But it's got all a proper Brit needs, even if it is rubbish whether you cook it or not. Just makes the Princess' care packages at Christmas all the sweeter, eh? Oh, and by the way…" He handed her a fork with a rusted hilt. "Figured you might've lost yours in all the mess earlier. I'm sure the chap who normally uses it won't mind you 'aving a go."

So, they were all 'Brits', were they? A shame she had no clue what that meant, but she understood the foolishness in turning away the army's standard food. She took the fork, undid the bizarre metal package labelled 'CORNED BEEF' and took a tentative bite of the unappetizing mush inside. It did taste atrocious, he wasn't lying about that, but it also didn't taste rotten. She knew she needed the meat to stay in proper fighting shape and wasn't a picky five-year-old, so she forced herself to shovel the ration down. The so-called biscuits were little better, resembling more stale bricks than anything else, but they were filling and gave her a much-needed bit of energy after all she'd been through.

The tea finished just in time to wash down the gruel and Ayra readily accepted the sad tin cup William poured it into. She noted with some dry amusement that, from her childhood to her time in Askr, she'd practically always had tea served in fine porcelain cups. As someone who eschewed most of the finery usually indulged by princesses, she found it ironic that it was only now that she drank her tea out of something so humble.

"So," William said after they'd both had a sip of the stale, bland brew, "how're you feeling, lad? The first time's rough for everyone. Doubt you'll forget what you saw anytime soon."

She had temporarily, but being reminded caused the entire experience – nearly losing her head, the poison gas, the flamethrowers, the mad dash across No Man's Land – to come flooding back. Her whole body stiffened as her senses recalled being pushed to their breaking point and her breath involuntarily started picking up again. "I-I…" She stammered, both not knowing how to explain just how jarring it all was and being ashamed of how scared she still was of everything. "I've never seen or…or even imagined anything like that…"

He nodded in understanding. "My family stayed out of the cities when all the factories started sprouting up, so I grew up a farmer the same as my father." He scoffed and shook his head. "Even 'earing the stories, it's something else to actually see a tank."

"A what?"

"Oh, come on, you must've been running right by them. Those giant, lumbering metal boxes on the treads. I figure 'iding behind one of those as they slog forwards is the only way a Sixth Manchester could've gotten to the Jerries."

"Y-yes, of course." She hastily assured him, realizing he meant those rhombus-looking objects sitting in No Man's Land. Those things could move?! How?! "I just didn't know that's what they were called. They…didn't tell me very much."

He sighed and shook his head. "With how fast the fresh meat gets ground up, I guess the Brass just don't think it's worth the trouble to let you know what you're in for. What else didn't they tell you?"

Ayra could tell a golden opportunity when it was given to her. She wanted answers, and here William was, giving her an open door to ask whatever she wanted. She'd have to mind her wording and the order of what she probed, of course, but this was finally her chance to figure out just what in the hell had gone wrong in this world. "Well, if you're offering…" She shook her own head and gestured to everything around them. "What is all this? I mean, why are any of us even here? What could possibly have started something so…so…"

"Crazy?" He cracked a sardonic smile. "That's one of the questions you 'ear the most around here. I reckon only the officers know for sure, but the story most blokes usually give is that some Serbian loony shot the Austrian prince or something."

"…And?" She asked, waiting for what diplomatic debacle escalated the situation. Even Ribaut's incursions into Grannvale hadn't meant the war was an unstoppable certainty – it was the treachery of Grannvale's nobles in murdering her father and his peace delegation (not to mention Prince Kurth) that made bloodshed necessary. A random nutcase killing the prince shouldn't have started anything but a state funeral.

Will merely shrugged. "You got me. Pretty sure the Austrians and Serbs never liked each other. For whatever reason, the Kaiser threw his lot in with Austria and the Tsar backed Serbia. And since the French 'ad a score to settle with the Boche, they joined the Russians too, so Germany 'ad trouble on both sides to worry about. We could've stayed out of it, but then the Hun couldn't 'elp himself and went raping through Belgium to get at France, so Parliament and His Majesty put us with France and Russia. I remember we were all very excited about the whole thing at first – sounded like an adventure, it right did – but now I think we all just wish King George had fought to keep Britain out of this mess."

Even considering that Will obviously had an incomplete picture, Ayra couldn't believe what she was hearing. It took a bit of sorting to figure out which terms referred to who, but the whole thing sounded like a harmless little spark blowing up into a forest burning inferno. What should have been a simple dispute between two old rivals had instead, for whatever reason, exploded far beyond their borders to engulf a hell of a lot more.

Logically, she knew that there was far more at play than she could see. Much as she preferred swordplay, she had been schooled in politics and understood that power struggles and old grievances dominated the relationships between nations more than the merits of whatever immediate problem was before them. Though she could only guess, Ayra wouldn't be surprised at all to know the countries he'd listed, and not just France, had long been itching for a chance to take each other down and merely seized on an easy opportunity.

But when faced with the reality of that power-politicking, she just couldn't fathom any sane ruler leading their people into something like this. Sigurd and his close-knit band aside, she hated Grannvale. She believed the country was by and large a degenerate hovel of snakes, and had that belief vindicated in the way they cannibalized each other in their power struggles. By every right, Arvis deserved to be tied to a stake and burned with his precious divine weapon for what he'd done to Sigurd and the rest of them. But even with all the seething, cold fury she felt for Grannvale, she would never have led Isaach to a war against them if it meant turning Jugdral into a giant No Man's Land. No grudge could be worth ruining the very earth as these people had.

She was so wrapped up in her internal evaluations that she almost missed the sound of Will sighing and finishing his thoughts. "That was about two and a half years ago now. Can't believe it's been that long, and nobody can tell 'ow much longer this'll go on or who'll win it."

That number felt like a punch to the gut, and it took all Ayra had to not outright incredulously gasp. Again, using her head would've led to the obvious conclusion that this war had to have gone on for some time – the lack of any obvious way to break the stalemate and the devastation of the landscape were testament enough to that – but it was awful on a basic level to hear that everyone had been going through such horror for more than two whole years. She'd been with Sigurd for roughly a similar length of time, and it sickened her to her core to imagine spending all those days living in a muddy trench and largely putting her life in the hands of fate by charging through No Man's Land.

With the length of the war sorted, that naturally led to a morbid curiosity about the scale of it. "H-how…" She swallowed and saw in her mind's eyes the endless expanse of gore and carnage just above their heads. "How big is all of this? I mean, with so many countries involved…" She stared into her black tea and watched her brow furrow. "And how…how many have died so far?"

His eyes sunk to the ground and he took a long sip of his tea. "Yeah, tough to imagine this could stretch very far, innit? Ain't got a clue about the Russians on the Eastern Front, or the Italians out in the mountains, but 'ere in the West, the line stretches all the way from the Channel down to the Swiss. Pretty much Belgium and the entire French border with the Huns." He shrugged. "'Course, that don't get into all the colony battles down in Africa, or the Navy tangling with the U-Boats. And speakin' of, around a year back or so I remember 'earing something about the Navy getting itself into a right mess with the Ottomans. Really, bloke, I'm pretty sure the war's in every ocean and on every continent except Antarctica and the Americas. I'm just glad we didn't end up in the intense part of the front down around the Somme."

Ayra no longer saw her reflection in her tea; in fact, she no longer saw anything. It felt like her body had momentarily shut down while her brain scrambled to fathom the sheer scale of what she'd found herself in. Forget turning Jugdral into a massive No Man's Land – this war had spread to multiple continents. Her first thought was of the other worlds she'd learned about in the Order and the idea of a war so incomprehensibly massive that blood could be spilled on those various soils and still have no end in sight.

It just didn't seem possible from a practical matter of logistics. The sights in this one little strip of battlefield boggled the mind at how even an army of blacksmiths could forge enough steel for the rifles, their ammunition, the huge tanks, the flamethrowers, and the sprawling metal barbs. To make no mention of simply getting it from the furnaces to the front lines! And this apparently wasn't even the 'intense' part of the war. That thought alone made her want to lie down and try to forget about the past few hours. For the sake of whatever stability she had left, she couldn't think about the fact that there was at least one part of this war magnitudes more awful than what she'd already experienced.

If there were grander, bloodier, even more shattered battlefields around, that just made the scope of everything that much more impossible to comprehend. The maniacs directing the war not only made enough of this stuff for several continents' worth of war and moved it to where it needed to be, but they'd been doing it for two and a half years?! How?! Their entire societies would have had to have been directed for the sole purpose of waging war to have even a chance of sustaining themselves for so much as a few months! No matter how she tried to explain it, the whole thing felt like she'd been told the sky was green. She simply refused to believe it was possible.

And then, he answered her other question. "I can only guess at the death toll, but…" He sighed. "It's got to be millions. The way we die out here – us, the French down south, and the Germans – it can't be anything less. I've never been to the other fronts, but everyone says the Russians, Italians and Austrians aren't doing any better. If you made me throw out a number, I'd figure at least a few million, and probably even more. And that doesn't even get into the millions of us who've been maimed for life." His tired, empty eyes glazed over and fixed on something only he could see. "God only knows 'ow many millions more will die before it's all over…"

Ayra always had a very strong stomach; she had to in order to excel as a warrior. But as a princess, and as a human being, she felt every imaginable urge to throw up. It was inevitable for nations to settle their grievances through war – that was just part of being human – but for those disputes to take such an egregious toll in life in so short a time was nothing short of a tragedy. Though she had always known about and accepted the bloodshed that came with conflict, Ayra had never so much as dreamt that a war this calamitous was possible.

It bore repeating that she understood on a very intimate level what it meant to take a life. She'd found letters from home on corpses, heard mortally wounded soldiers beg for their parents as she cut their throats, and seen the terror and despair that gripped someone when they realized she had defeated them. When the magnitude of death was 'merely' on the order of a dozen thousand, at most, she'd had little difficulty lamenting it as the necessary price of victory. But imagining millions of people going through that left her feeling like someone had torn out a chunk of her soul. Even the Loptyrian Empire, for all its butchery and oppression, hadn't managed to reach such heights through any of its numerous atrocities.

It was just incomprehensible. There was no way she could spin it in her head and somehow have it make sense. If millions of people had been sent to die in these trenches, how had their countries not collapsed outright? How could food be grown when all the farmers and fields had been blasted into pieces? How did trade and the economy function with nobody alive to make anything not related to the war effort? How were all the rulers still in power and not facing an armed uprising from their people for perpetuating this atrocity they called a war for over two years instead of hashing out at least an armistice?

Could it really be possible that everyone – the British, French and Russians, and the Germans, Austrians and Ottomans – hated each other so much that they just didn't care? That they'd be willing to burn the entire world to the ground just to force their despised enemies to die with them? By every recounting she'd heard, even the Ending Winter wrought by The Scouring of Elibehad been unintentional. Even those humans and dragons, in their genocidal war of extermination, hadn't wanted to unmake the world and kill everybody just so the other side would have nothing left if it somehow survived.

But these people did. If they were willing to let so many die, permanently mar the earth into an unrecognizable scar, and supply a war on so massive a scale, that had to be their aim. They had converted all of civilization into a machine that had no point but to destroy itself. Even to her, who had never known a life without a sword in her hand, there could be nothing sicker and more wrong. Life here served only one purpose: to waste the great gift of life.

She couldn't bear to look at William. Poor, hapless farmer that he once was, she wondered if he understood the magnitude of what his world had devolved into. "H-hey…" he called out to her as she cupper her face in her palms and held back a sudden urge to weep. "Look, mate, I know it sounds bad, but…"

But nothing. She mentally rebuked. Whatever empty justification he and the soldiers gave to each other, she didn't want to hear it. She didn't want any more part in any of this. If she were a native with no future like him, she'd probably just try to desert so they'd shoot her already and get it over with. Whether it was by the hand of a German, fellow Brit, or even one's own, it sounded like death was largely just a matter of time.

But Ayra did have a future. She had her debt to Askr to repay and her children to look after for as long as they were together in the Order. And, though she was uncertain of how she could go about it, she also had a debt to George she had yet to repay. She needed to stay alive to both make Britain whole again in his stead and find some way to return to Zenith. Perhaps that was easier said than done and she was a naïve fool to think any of that was possible, but she still had to try, didn't she?

And the first step to trying was getting her jumbled thoughts in order. As things stood, she hadn't been so off-balance in a long time, if ever. She needed to get a clear head so she could start figuring out what her next move would be. And the simplest way to get a clear head was to get some desperately needed rest. "Can…can you just show me where to sleep?"

Will's mouth hung open for a moment, then quickly closed and was accompanied by a nod. "Yeah, of course, mate. Just follow me." She did so, trying as best she could to block out the varying states of despondency the troops around her were in. She didn't want to think about the unique awfulness of their lot in life any more and thus just kept her focus on Will's back. In little time at all, he led her to a sort of barracks, where cots coated in dirt and grime were aligned in compact rows. "Don't worry about takin' anybody's spot. After today, there are bound to be vacancies, you know? And, I shouldn't have to say, but I wouldn't worry about any orders from your lieutenant…"

Whoever that was, they were probably decaying out in No Man's Land, their body riddled with holes. Unnerved by the image, she shook it off and gave Will a friendly nod in thanks. "I'll see you around, yeah?" He said. "Figure you could use a new mate."

"Thank you." She quietly affirmed. "I…could really use a friend about now." With a friendly wave, he returned her prior nod and went about his way. Ayra dwelled on her own words and found that, yes, she truly did want one of her old Jugdral comrades there with her. Even shifty, flighty Lewyn would've been a sight for sore eyes. Alas, she was cut off from both them and her new allies in Askr. She was alone, and had nothing but the day's exhaustion for company as she crawled into what had to pass for a bed around here.

As she laid in the filthy cot, the smell of rot, waste, and disease all around her, Ayra couldn't shake one particular thought running through her head: from the moment she met him to the moment he disappeared in that explosion, George had always been wearing his mask.

He was dead and she'd never seen his face.

She wasn't a stranger to that idea, since heavily armored knights similarly covered their faces for protection. But if they were killed – be it by blade, arrow or spell – one could always recover the body and strip them of their armor. Even she and her comrades, for all that Arvis and his Roten Ritter laid them waste, left behind most of their bodies, charred as they surely were. But George had been so thoroughly obliterated that, even if she were somehow able to locate the spot again, there was nothing to find but a mangled arm. There was barely anything to bury, and she wasn't stupid enough to believe anybody was going to be retrieved for proper rites anytime soon. All that was left would rot away or be blasted into nothingness the same as the rest of him; either way, he'd be forgotten by both time and the war as early as next morning.

As would a myriad of his countrymen and enemies alike.

That made her profoundly sad, and she slipped into an exhausted sleep with an empty feeling in her heart.

---

It took the better part of a week, but Ayra finally figured out where, exactly, she'd found herself.

She was in hell.

Every time she tried to think about it, that was the only answer that made any kind of sense. Hell was where people went to suffer ironic punishments for their sins, right? Well, she was a warrior princess who found life most fulfilling when she spent it swinging a sword at people. And though her transgression had been unintentional, she understood why it angered the gods so: she had cheated death and returned to life so she could keep fighting and killing.

With those two facts taken together, it was little wonder why her personal hell had taken on such a shape. What other way to make her renounce her previous path in life than to put her through a conflict so unbelievably awful that she was ready to pray for a miracle to restore peace? What better punishment for the bloodthirsty princess than to drop in the middle of a never-ending war where all those wonderful sword skills she'd spent a lifetime honing were utterly worthless?

And the war truly was endless, she had no doubt about that. It was impossible for either side to overcome the other, not that it would stop them from suicidally trying. They'd come up with plenty of horrific inventions – the gas, the 'planes' she saw flying overhead, and the tanks rusting out in the muck – and were still no closer to victory than before. They'd probably come up with fresh nightmares that would be just as worthless. Nobody was ever going to win the war, and just about the only thing that might stop it was everybody running out of bodies. But even if that happened, she figured they'd just calm the front down for a decade or two while they waited for their populations to recover. Then, they would all get right back to it like nothing had happened.

Maybe somebody could've conceivably sued for peace right at the outset…but now? Now, after millions of lives had been thrown away in futile attempts to break an unbreakable stalemate? No, nobody was going to let all that they'd sacrificed be in vain. The Great Powers would continue to pour incalculable amounts of people into this graveyard in the desperate, fruitless hope that it might one day all be worth something. They would kill and kill and kill until the world was nothing but No Man's Land and mountains of corpses. And Ayra would be stuck there in the middle of it all, waiting for the day she wound up in somebody's sights so she could die cold and alone just like everybody else.

Then, she was certain that she'd wake up in front of another trench and do it all over again.

She didn't know how she'd died in Askr, but she also didn't really care anymore. There would be no return to the Order, that much was certain. She would never get to see Scáthach, Larcei, or Shannan ever again. She would never be in any kind of position to make enough of a difference that she paid George back – in fact, she began to wonder if he'd actually done her a favor by not letting that first German kill her. She'd managed to hold on to the stupid dream that escape was possible for a few days, but the trench did wonders in breaking everyone's souls. The more she was exposed to the horrors of this hell, the more she came to see the futility in hoping for any kind of freedom from it. Gradually, day by day, hour by hour, every facet of the nightmare was laid bare to her.

Ayra's first thought upon waking up after that first night had been one of relief – attacks took time to plan and coordinate, so there was bound to be a quiet period for a while. But apropos of fighting the war, the only other thing to do was simply live it. And life in the trenches was a wholly different, yet comparably miserable form of torture to fighting over them.

Sanitation, or rather the lack thereof, was the most obvious concern. Ayra was no prissy noblewoman who needed four different shampoos to start the day, but she liked to be clean as much as anybody else. Waking up with mud caking every strand of her hair and grimy sweat sticking to every inch of her body was not pleasant, and the fact that everybody else did so without a second thought confirmed that she wouldn't get to bathe for some time.

Even when she'd been desperately fleeing Isaach with Shannan in tow, the two did their best to camp by streams and rivers. Beyond the obvious necessity of water for drinking, it made cooking easier and enabled them to at least rinse themselves off in the current. Shannan, having been out of the castle so infrequently before then, managed to see the splashing and deep water as something of a game. Ayra was more concerned with getting the twigs out of her hair (hostile to traditional femininity as she could be, she liked how she looked and refused to cut it), but even she couldn't deny the simple pleasure of soaking after a long day's journey.

Alas, those days now felt bitterly distant when filth and gunk were the indelible norm in the trenches. About the only reprieve any of them got was several of the men pooling their canteens into a large drum and passing around a dirty rag soaked in the communal 'bath'. That was understandably disgusting in its own way (especially when she was the only woman for miles), but when the alternative was chunks of dried mud weighing down her hair, beggars couldn't be choosers. The sole saving grace was that even the men didn't want to burden each other with a collective rag that'd been used to rinse their privates, though that silver lining could be difficult to see with everything else going on.

But a dearth of basic cleanliness was only the beginning of the hygienic nightmare the trench offered. Rats were all too-often the scourge of anybody hunkered down for a siege, and the trench was no exception. The filthy, disease-ridden rodents were absolutely everywhere, gorging themselves on both unguarded food stores and the bloated bodies of the dead. And even neglecting their tendency to spread plagues, the little bastards were a threat to the flesh – one poor man recounted a story of waking up in the dead of night with a positively massive rat about to tear a chunk out of his face.

She never saw it personally, but she heard that the medical tents were downright littered with soldiers suffering from some awful, gut-churning disease or another. Either from the rats, the damp, cold weather, the pervasive lice that colonized ever thread of her clothes within a day, the lack of simple hygiene, or some combination altogether, tales of brutal maladies she'd never heard of – typhus, cholera, dysentery – ran rampant through the men.

And then, at the end of her first day, she got to see a particularly gruesome affliction unique to the trench's environment. A soldier hobbling around on one foot was ordered by a passing healer to take his boots off. Slowly, painfully, he did so, revealing to her the half-rotted stump at the end of his leg. While she watched in gaping horror, the healer chastised the man for carelessness in dealing with 'trench foot', and dragged him off. Will explained to her that the rot was caused by merely standing in the muddy trench in one's boots for too long, and that the only recourse was regularly swapping out muddy, wet boots and socks for dry ones. Except there weren't any dry alternatives, so airing one's feet when not performing an active task was the next best thing.

That was all an extra point of paranoia she'd have rather not had on top of everything else, but then she was glad to have learned about it soon. On the second day, Will gave her a rifle he'd scrounged up from a dead soldier – apparently, the army was incredibly meticulous about everyone having the exact right rifle they'd been issued, but he figured her having the wrong weapon was better than having none at all and they'd deal with the blowback later. Naturally, she had no experience with the thing even if she'd somewhat figured out how it functioned, so for all intents and purposes, it did nothing for her. Still, the possibility of being able to actually do something if the Germans attacked again did offer a modicum of comfort.

She seized on the chance his generosity offered to ask about more of the weapons and supplies at play, since a lone grunt like she supposedly was wouldn't know much anyway. He was eager to explain, and the more he did, the more unbelievable the whole war became. First of all, it rapidly became clear that magic flat out didn't exist in this world. In the wake of the battle, she had considered that offensive magic might've just been obsolete. After all, for mass use, there was no point in picking out literate fire mages if flamethrowers were an option, wind magic was inferior to simply having a mask for the gas, and the rifles were vastly superior as ranged options regardless.

But when he described the difficulty the healers were having in patching up something as relatively simple as shoulder wounds (if his word was reliable, then amputation was disturbingly common), she realized that clerical magic couldn't exist, and that they just didn't have any magic of any kind. On the one hand, it was nice to finally have a leg up on this dreadful world, even if in a way she couldn't make use of. But on the other hand, that just meant the aftermath of any injuries would be even worse than she'd first imagined. She couldn't so much as bear the thought of the hell of being shot in her sword arm and having a cleric forcibly saw her arm off.

Secondly, whatever their deficiencies in healing methods, these people knew how to kill each other even more efficiently than she first thought. She finally learned what the hell obliterated George and turned this place into No Man's Land: apparently, they had massive guns called 'artillery' positioned miles behind the line that could fire exploding 'shells' well over the edge of the horizon. Or, alternatively, the shells could be filled with the nightmarish gas, which explained how the Germans could be so quick and well-coordinated in hitting their own trench with it. The only frame of reference she could draw were ballista, but the range, accuracy, and destructive power were so far removed that they simply weren't comparable.

But the real marvel was what he described in the air. Auspiciously, just as his artillery explanation finished, she heard a buzzing sound above her grow louder and louder, until some flying thing swerved overhead. He chuckled at her amazement and bewilderment, remarking that he'd reacted the same way when he first saw a 'plane'. She simply couldn't believe her eyes and ears when he elaborated – someway, somehow, they'd managed to make metal frames fly like a pegasus. In fact, that was just another thing missing from this world; absent any pegasi and wyverns, those flying machines were the first bit of real aerial warfare this world had ever seen.

The one she saw was likely a scout, he said, but they had ways of shooting at each other even up in the sky. And it turned out that a great many planes were needed at home to use said ways to defend Britain's air. Pegasus Knights and Wyverns Riders were limited by the stamina of their mounts, but the Germans had supposedly made giant 'airships' capable of travelling farther than any animal, loaded them up with explosives, and sent them over the border to bombard Britain's cities. That in and of itself was downright sickening and just gave her another reason to hate this rotten world – it was one thing to terrorize the civilians when their military was defeated and the nation at the victor's mercy, but it was quite something else to sneak past the lines and blow them to pieces when the army was still in the fight!

That was the moment she realized it was no wonder everyone hated each other so much that they were willing to fight an endless war. That was when she saw that, if a glimmer of peace had ever been remotely possible, the sheer savagery and boundless nature of the war meant that nobody would be foolish enough to entertain it anymore.

And even after she thought the limits had been reached, still more unimaginably advanced instruments of murder were relayed to her. The mines that exploded if one was unfortunate enough to step on them and had surely played a role in reducing the land to such a sorry state. The battleships that, despite supposedly being made out of steel, somehow ruled the waves with guns even larger than the artillery pieces on land. The even more fantastical 'U-boats' he'd mentioned once before that, with even greater impossibility, managed to be forged from steel and travel underwater to raid merchants with what she didn't doubt was total impunity.

And yet, for all their creativity, ingenuity, and technical brilliance, all any of it accomplished was killing everyone even faster than they would have otherwise.

Separate from all the repulsive diseases and terrible weapons, there was something to be said about the awfulness of remaining in constant contact with the enemy. In her experience, armies would be marshalled and marched out to meet each other in a pitched battle. There would be some exposure between the two forces while they maneuvered for advantageous terrain or some other tactical boon, but they would by and large only interact for a single day's worth of battle. Once that day was over, the survivors of the routed army ran for the hills while the victors enjoyed their triumph and started planning for the next, if any, pitched battles the enemy was willing to fight. The exception to that rule was a siege, but those were typically the product of a beaten side being forced to hunker down and try to hope for reinforcements (which, when Sigurd was leading the charge, would have already been wiped out).

But when both sides were effectively besieging one another and had limitless men and materials to throw into the siege, there remained an ever present threat to being on the battlefield. The Germans were always there, watching and waiting as the British waited and watched them. Every night, specialized troops worked to repair gaps in the wire under the cover of darkness, though even that wasn't a guarantee when the sky could be lit up by a flare that exposed them to the snipers who never stopped looking for the slightest hint of movement.

Still, even watching those poor soldiers die huddled under the wire they were supposed to fix hadn't really hammered into her how perpetually in danger she was just being in the trench. It took a particular incident for her eyes to begin constantly darting to the ledge like a mouse scared it would expose itself to a cat.

On her third day, Will had been guiding her along the front of the trench, pointing out which units were stationed where and with what duties. Since 'her' unit had belonged to a different sector and been all-but wiped out, he'd asked his officer to just take her into his. The leadership, doubtless having bigger issues to worry about, approved the request without a second thought, and so he was getting her acquainted with her new station. Though the British defense had held firm, sections of the line were blasted up regardless and required a bit of maneuvering to get through. At one part, the wood holding up the outer walls had been blown apart and caused a pile of dirt to collapse into the trench. One second, she was squeezing through a small gap against the inner wall and Will was stepping over the mound.

The next, his brains were splattered against her face.

She didn't know what happened at first; the wet splash on her skin almost felt like water. Only when she tasted copper on her lips did she look over and see Will slump over, the side of his head split open like an egg. When her mind finally caught up with her senses, her heart seized in her chest and she immediately crouched low. But, to her despair and incredulity, the soldiers around them made no such motion, and just dragged his body away with a shake of their heads. Left there, huddled on her knees, Ayra's legs gave out and she slumped to the ground, grey matter running down her cheeks.

It was just like George: one second he was there, alive and well, and the next he was gone. At least Will had left behind a body to bury…but on the other hand, at least George had been in a battle when he died. Unlike the wire-fixing troops who'd put themselves in harm's way by braving No Man's Land, Will hadn't been doing anything. He'd just been taking a step, telling her about the machine gun emplacement ahead, and gotten his head blown open. It wasn't like he'd been specifically targeted or ambushed by some carefully laid trap like Sigurd's band – whoever killed him was just waiting for someone to happen to poke their head over the trench by accident. It was nothing but pure happenstance that they passed through right as some sniper was watching that particular part of the line.

Only then did it really sink in for her what an inescapable deathtrap the trench was. While Will had cited astronomical numbers in his estimates, she failed to truly grasp just how cheap life was here. But in that moment, having seen men's feet rot off from simply standing in the mud, their supplies be infested with disease ridden rats, and the casual ease with which their enemies could kill them, she finally understood the true inevitability of death in this world. She finally realized that dying wasn't just 'largely' a matter of time – it was the only real constant any of them had.

For the next four days, she spent every waking moment in fear that she might inadvertently expose herself for a lethal fraction of a second, or that maybe the dreaded gas would suddenly fall upon her and sear her lungs into a bloody foam, or perhaps even that the same artillery explosion from nowhere that killed George would randomly claim her too. Sleep came only when the exhaustion of constant fright made consciousness too difficult to maintain. All the while, she wracked her brain, frantically trying to come up with some kind of way to escape and return to Askr. She explored every possible avenue her mind could conjure, at one point so desperate for a way out that she even prayed to the same gods that bestowed their gifts to her crusader ancestor.

Then, in a moment of clarity brought by the lack of deliverance, the truth came to her: she was in hell.

From that instant onward, her terror was accompanied by an ever-growing despair.

She knew, as surely as the sun would rise the next day, that she would die an awful death. She would suffer a fate every bit as excruciating as she had at Belhalla…only this time, there would be no resurrection in Askr's hauntingly beautiful ruins. There would only be the trench. Again, and again, and again. Every day that she lived with that knowledge pounding away at the inside of her skull, the more it wore her down. And as she was worn down, it became increasingly unavoidable that she would crack under the strain.

Ayra was strong, proud, and experienced, but none of that mattered in the trenches. The anxiety, the creeping certainty of torture and agony for no other sake than to suffer them, whittled away her once solidly steel nerves. Her formerly unshakable confidence withered on the vine and she grew more and more wary of leaving the cots in the morning. Her near indomitable sword skills only felt like a sick joke in the face of weapons and mechanical monstrosities she could neither comprehend nor counter. She teetered closer to the razor's edge, her erstwhile unshakable worldview so thoroughly undone that she had no faith in anything save the consistent misery of her new existence.

Then, as all things must inevitably do, the day came where she finally broke. It began just like any other – cold, wet, smelling of rot and disease, filled with doomed souls trying to forget their inescapable demises – and proceeded just like any other. Ayra spent the afternoon slouched on a mound of dirt in her section, half-watching a few men play cards they had no real enthusiasm for over a small portion of wine that would just make life that much more miserable for the winner when it was gone. The sentries around them periodically glanced through their periscopes and saw nothing in the quiet No Man's Land, the same as they always did. It was just more of the usual: waiting for death to come from either a lucky attack or an order to attack.

When a multitude of high-pitched whines appeared overhead, Ayra had scant time to be confused before the card game exploded in a burst of shrapnel and limbs and sent her flying back.

As quickly as a candle being snuffed out, the silent, boring trench became a chaos of blasts, vociferous roars, and showers of dirt. "ARTILLERY BARRAGE!" She miraculously managed to hear someone shout over the deafening noise. "TAKE SHELTER IN YOUR DUGOUTS!" Ayra knew death was coming, and largely spent her time waiting for it to come, but that didn't mean she didn't want to avoid the suffering that meant for as long as possible. Muscles acting on their own, she pulled herself up and tried to make sense of which way the traffic was headed. Her balance nearly toppling under the sheer weight of the shockwaves pounding the earth around her, she managed to stumble after a small group.

Their destination didn't engender awe: it was merely one of countless small man-made caves built into the trench walls for any number of reasons. This one appeared to be a simple storage area, but when the world outside felt like it was being destroyed, she'd have gladly taken shelter anywhere. Within a few minutes, it became clear that the Germans weren't making a cursory attack – their artillery grew fiercer and fiercer, making Ayra herself feel smaller and smaller.

The barrage only grew more and more intense by the second. Huddled in that dugout, the booming thunder of detonating shells pounding in her ears, Ayra became incapable of believing that she was suffering the wrath of actual human beings. The almighty, unimaginable power couldn't have been the product of any weapon. It was some kind of irresistible natural force that just so happened to be trying to wipe her from existence.

No, that wasn't right. The power ripping the very earth asunder wasn't trying to obliterate her, specifically. She was just collateral damage. Countless soldiers would be blasted into nothing as easily as the dirt, and she would simply happen to be one of them. In fact, she could've had Od himself at her side, along with the other Crusaders and their divine weapons, and they'd all end up being nothing but red smears on the ground, the same as everyone around her.

Her life or death meant nothing.

For the princess of Isaach, whose entire outlook on life was centered on her ability to seize her destiny with her own two hands, that revelation snapped some fragile thread in her psyche. Much as she feared her impending death in the trench, she had at least been determined to stave it off in whatever way she could. But the truth of the matter was that she was every bit as helpless as she had been as a little girl, when her survival was dependent entirely on her parents. Being reduced to that same level of impotence, with her very core shuddering under the never-ending quakes of the artillery, shattered the tenuous grip on her sanity she'd managed to maintain until then.

As if she was a four-year-old convinced monsters were about to burst from her closet, Ayra bunched her legs up against her chest, shut her eyes, and pressed her hands against her ears. When her meager efforts obviously failed to stop the ceaseless roaring that still rattled her ribs and teeth, her fingers reached up to clench at fistfuls of her hair. But when the earth continued to writhe and shake around her no matter what she did, Ayra became desperate for some kind of escape. She frantically needed to be safe again.

So, like the child she'd forcibly regressed to, she cried out for her parents.

"FATHER!" She wailed, her voice drowned out by the almighty bombardment. "MOTHER! HELP ME!" A particularly violent quake rocked the impromptu bunker, sending her crashing to the ground beneath a freshly dislodged pile of dirt. Ayra didn't even notice the change and just continued to madly scream, tears pouring down her cheeks. "STOP IT! PLEASE, DADDY! MAKE IT STOP!"

"Mother! Mother, wake up!"

In a single rushing gasp of air, it was all gone. The thunderous pounding, the convulsing earth, the soil pouring onto her head – it was as if none of it had ever existed. Blinking away the tears blurring her vision, Ayra gaped at the sight of a pleasant little verdant meadow, so unlike the blasted, corpse ridden No Man's Land she'd gotten used to seeing. The vibrant, healthy green instead of mud-splattered, dull olive was something she believed she'd never see again. And the cool, crisp wind blowing past her hair smelled only of faint flowers instead of months old rot.

Her brain effectively stopped in place, incapable of understanding the sharp juxtaposition to which it had just been subjected. Her state of suspension ended when a hand shook her shoulder and jolted her senses back into the frenzied panic they'd been in just a handful of seconds prior. With a terrified yelp, Ayra threw the hand off and shot to her feet on unsteady legs, her body still uncontrollably shuddering as if it were the dead of Winter.

Against every odd and every expectation she'd accepted as inevitable in the trench, she was face to face with her children. Shock and concern naked on their faces, they watched her and tried to find the right thing to say. Larcei was positioned slightly ahead of Scáthach, indicating that she was probably the one who shook her. By every right, Ayra should've been overjoyed. She should've been tearfully embracing her son and daughter, thanking them and Od and whatever gods were listening for reuniting them and delivering her from that unholy hell.

But, even if she was nowhere near the trench anymore, that didn't mean she'd been freed from it. Despite her plea for the barrage to stop being answered, her teeth and bones still chattered under the weight of the artillery pounding the earth apart. Her ears were still bursting from the booms and the incoherent screams from both her comrades and her own lips. Her nose still picked up the sickening decay despite the flowers nearby. Every blink of her eyes meant she still saw the eviscerated remains of soldiers hanging off the wire. Her mind still screamed at her to duck down and escape the open field, lest a German sniper use her for target practice. Her heart still pounded in her ears and her whole body refused to accept that it finally had the safety it had sought for so long.

Her psyche had been shattered, and that was not so easy a thing to put back together. With everything that she was so severely damaged, Ayra did the only thing she could do: she continued to break down. Hands resuming their vain effort to block out the shelling that she kept physically feeling pounding in her head, she crashed back to her knees. "No!" She cried, voice torn and worn from all her screaming. "No more! Please!"

"M-mother, what's wro–"

"Why?!" She wailed, collapsing once more into a ball on the ground. "Why won't it stop?! Somebody, please! Please, just make it stop!" She didn't even notice when two pairs of hands tried to steady her. She couldn't hear their panicked pleas for answers against the artillery and her own wailing. She couldn't so much as think about anything but the endless death, disease, and suffering to which she'd played part.

Though Ayra may have escaped the shells, she was nonetheless destroyed by the war.

---

Kiran was no stranger to surmounting obstacles. Hell, that was basically the first thing he learned how to do when Alfonse and Sharena put him in the driver's seat. But now, with the whole damn Order of Heroes caught up in an acid trip of a dream world, he was wondering if he hadn't met his match. Things were already completely ass-backwards in the realm even before Freyja went on her rampage, and now they were all concerned about just being able to get moving in straight lines. Though Peony and Mirabilis were doing their best, it often felt like too tall of an order for two faeries (or whatever the hell that proper name they said was).

Given all that, it was ironic that one of the toughest challenges facing him actually so mundane it could've popped up on Earth.

Ayra wasn't exactly one of his closest Heroes; she'd been summoned long after the Order got too big for him to personally get to know all the new Heroes. In fact, if he was being honest, he flat out didn't like her on account of her being a stubborn, ill-tempered stick in the mud. But she was a more than capable warrior who'd earned nothing but praise from Ryoma while serving under him, so he at least respected her abilities and what she could do for Askr.

And, however much he didn't like her, he never wanted her to end up the way she had. Ever since Larcei and Scáthach found her suffering a severe mental breakdown out in some random field, she'd basically shut down. She didn't eat, she didn't sleep, and she didn't talk to anyone – she just laid in bed in the healing tent and stared at nothing. It was a case they were becoming all too used to, trying to stay one step ahead of Freyja, but he'd never seen it get so bad.

The first time was Olivia, whom Astram and Karla found in a forest, sobbing and shaking all curled up in a ball. When they brought her back to camp, she confided in Azura and Sylvia that she'd had an awful nightmare where she'd put on a performance and suffered the crowd abruptly turning on her. First, she'd been cursed at, then they'd thrown things at her, and finally outright tried to assault her. When asked for details on just what the attempted assault entailed, she just pulled her legs together and cried, which was all the answer they needed.

That alone made them concerned about Triandra or even Freyja herself making full use of the home-field advantage. When Reyson was found in a similar state by Finn, Est, and Seth, and recounted a similar nightmare of his worst fears realized (in his case, an even more graphic recreation of the Serennes Massacre and subsequent enslavement by a Begnion noble), that all but confirmed Heroes were being targeted to live their worst nightmares in vivid detail.

Peony assured them that there were ways to overcome such insidious dream magic, but it required that they train themselves to either recognize a detail that didn't line up to reality (in Olivia's case, she was still a virgin, and thus shouldn't have known so vividly how it felt to be violated) or recognize that the recreation of some traumatic memory wasn't one-to-one with what really happened (for Reyson, that meant realizing he wasn't captured during the Serennes Massacre and thus the events had to be a fiction). But as that was easier said than done, they'd temporarily suspended major operations until Peony could help get everyone some level of resistance.

Alas, Ayra had been scouting off by herself when those incidents struck, and so had been caught unaware in a similar trap. But God only knew what the hell she'd been through - Olivia felt like she was about to be raped when she was woken up, and even she managed to at least somewhat confide in close friends after a day. But Ayra hadn't responded to anybody – not her Jugdral comrades, not her children, not even her husband. She just looked away from anybody who tried to talk to her and sometimes cried; on rare occasions, Lucius reported seeing her cover her ears and shake her head, whispering some desperate plea under her breath.

Kiran had been advised by pretty much everybody to let sleeping dogs lie – if Ayra was this affected, then nothing but time would remotely help. But, much as he hated it a lot of times, it was part of his job to be tough on people and push in spite of risks. Ayra might have experienced a different, more severe form of Freyja's nightmare magic than Olivia and Reyson, so he had a vested interest in figuring out everything she'd been through. He needed to know everything about the enemy that he could in order to give his Heroes the best chance of success and survival.

So, though it pained him, he ordered Priscilla to Silence the healing tent and pushed past her final protest for its secluded 'back room', where the catatonic Ayra had been lying for nearly three days. She didn't so much as twitch at his presence, let alone look up at him. Biting back a sigh, he tried to call out to her, "Ayra?" She didn't respond, so he pulled a chair up next to her and tried again. "Ayra, can you hear me?"

This time, her lack of feedback did prompt a sigh and duck of his head, along with a hand running through his hair. "Ayra, whatever happened to you is currently at risk of happening to anybody else. Peony can figure out a way to protect us from it, but only if you tell someone what you went through." Again, not so much as a twitch of her finger, so he brought out the proverbial big guns. "If you can't help us prevent what was done to you, Larcei or Scáthach might go through the same thing you did. Do you want them to have to endure that?"

Still nothing. Kiran shook his head, equal parts bewildered and unnerved at the way she'd just completely shut down. He leaned back in the chair, glanced off to the side, and mumbled aloud to himself, "Jesus, you look like those old pictures of shell-shocked soldiers…" His attention was directed inward as he tried to think of some way to get through to her, so he failed to notice her head slowly tilt towards him. He was completely unprepared for the single pained, croaked word that proceeded to fill the empty space.

"What?"

He shot up in surprise and leaned forward, his focused eyes meeting her empty, glassy ones. "Ayra! I was telling you that we need you to–"

"How do you know that word?" She followed up as if he said nothing, her voice raw and scratchy from disuse.

"What word?"

"Shell shock." She clarified, her body becoming invigorated by some kind of desperate, scared energy. "You…you shouldn't know…"

Now, it was Kiran's turn to be surprised. His eyes narrowed in confusion, and he tempered his excitement so he could lean in much more deliberately. "How do you know what that is? The only shells you should be familiar with are turtle shells and whatnot…" A startling revelation hit him, and his narrowed eyes went wide with shock and horror. Maybe she looks shell-shocked…because she is shell-shocked. "Ayra," he began, his hands going to comfortingly grip hers, "do you think of anything in particular when I say 'trenches'?"

Immediately, she flinched as if he'd struck her and tried to pull her hands away. Her breathing rapidly picked up and her whole body started to shake. "No…" She whispered and shook her head. "No, no, no, no, no! I-it couldn't have been–!"

He gripped her shoulders and tried to halt her shaking. "Ayra, it's okay! You're safe! The war is over! It's been over for more than a hundred years now!"

"NO!" She all but screamed and tried to break out of his grip. "It can't have been real! It can't! You're lying! I won't believe it happened! They would've killed everyone before–!"

He slammed on the table next to her bed, the noise startling her into silence. There was a definite risk in making loud bangs, but he needed to do something to get her to stop freaking out and sure as hell wasn't about to hit her. "Ayra, listen to me." He implored, moving her head so she had to look at him. "It only lasted about four and a half years. Germany lost. The British and French figured out how to break the stalemate with tanks, planes, and infiltration tactics. The Austro-Hungarians imploded and the Italians had a free road into southern Germany. The Americans joined the war on the Entente's side and made it so, no matter what, Germany would run out of bodies before anybody else. They lost, totally and completely. The Armistice was signed on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year."

She stared at him, eyes wide and doubting, but she was no longer on the border of hyperventilation or shaking like a leaf. "H-how…?" She whispered, head lightly twisting back and forth. "I-I saw it, Kiran. I saw No Man's Land." Then, like a switch had been flipped, she gripped his arms, thrust her face into his, and all but snarled, "I saw the mountains of corpses you savages made for nothing! I watched them choke on their own blood in the gas! I watched the flamethrowers burn them alive! I watched men be cut down like fucking wheat trying to get past the wire! I watched an explosion obliterate all of George except his arm and watched Will's head burst like an egg because he walked on a little pile of dirt!"

"How many?!" She practically roared. "How many millions of people had to die before you monsters decided enough was enough?! How much of the world did you have to destroy until you figured out how to kill each other without ruining everything?! 'Only four and a half years'?! I wouldn't have let that go on for four and a half days!"

Wide-eyed and breath caught in his throat, he watched as her rage seamlessly transitioned into anguish and tears began pouring from her eyes. "How could you?" She whispered, her fire extinguished in the blink of an eye. "How could you senselessly butcher each other like that for so long? How can you try to say anybody 'won' after letting so many of their own people be slaughtered? Why didn't someone stop it sooner? Didn't you care? Didn't a single one of you care about one other?!"

As she silently cried to herself, he reached around and gently patted her back, their gazes staying unbroken all the while. "It was a different time, Ayra. A lot changes in a hundred years. They had different values and cultures than you and I do. And, for what it's worth, Russia suffered a government toppling revolution in early 1917 partly because of the war. French soldiers mutinied in mid-1917 and refused to launch attacks until they knew their lives wouldn't be thrown away. Early on, there were a lot of optimists who believed the whole thing would be over soon because of how disastrous it'd be to keep going. I'm not trying to justify it, but maybe the explains at least a little."

"That doesn't explain a damn thing." She hissed. "You think Isaachian culture is to run from a fight? You think we don't value courage and sacrifice? We don't shun war, but we know the difference between war and pointless mass murder! It isn't a culture or a different value to throw away millions of lives for nothing! And it doesn't make a difference what people hoped would happen when we both know what did happen!" She shifted her grip to his collar and tightened it. "Why, Kiran?! Tell me what was so gods damned important that you all had to die in droves over it!

He bit his cheek, knowing that telling the history would only make her more upset. Still, she had a right to know why she was in the trenches, so he reluctantly explained, "The short version is that a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was part of a group that had ties to Serbian military intelligence, and the Austro-Hungarians suspected foul play. They demanded to do an investigation and Serbia refused, so they both went to their respective allies, Germany and Russia, for guarantees to back any war effort. Germany didn't trust France to just sit back and watch the four of them go at it – France was itching for revenge after Germany humiliated them in the Franco-Prussian War about forty years back – so when it was time to mobilize the troops, they followed the plan that called for most of the army to focus on a quick, preemptive knockout blow to France so they could then focus on Russia."

"But there was no 'knockout blow'." She bitterly spat. "And when Germany went through Belgium to reach France, Britain jumped in. The whole gods-forsaken border was ground down into a huge No Man's Land and filled with corpses! And all because some paranoid second-rate power suspected foul play?!"

"And how would you have felt if one of Arvis' former maids assassinated your brother? I know damn well Isaachian culture wouldn't let you take that sitting down!" He shot back, wrenching one of her hands off him. "They didn't go at it for fun, Ayra! They probably wouldn't have gone through with it if they knew how everything would play out, but everyone had legitimate reasons!"

"At least my father tried to negotiate when Grannvale marched on us!" She rebutted. "My brother only marshalled the army when Grannvale killed him anyway! It sounds like you all were just so eager to settle your scores that you leapt at the first chance you got!"

"They did try to negotiate! But when your armies have over a million men, the mobilization plans are on sort of a strict timetable! The German plan was precise down to the hour! Europe had been a powder keg for years by then, and everyone knew it – if Franz Ferdinand's death was what set off the big war everyone saw coming, they couldn't afford to not be ready to fight when it came knocking at their doors!"

"Well, that just makes it all better, doesn't it?" She jeered. "Maybe you wouldn't have been so ready to go at each other's throats if you weren't convinced the day of reckoning was always right around the corner!" Before he could try to rebuke her, she gripped his collar with both hands again and, despite being beneath him, lifted him a bit. "Stop trying to justify the insane bloodthirst and answer my question, you bastard. How many?!"

He sighed and made sure he was looking her dead in the eye. "The estimates for the death toll easily get as high as twenty million people. That's a rate on the order of ten thousand dead every day." And that doesn't even get into the Spanish Flu… Ayra began to look simultaneously sick to her stomach and in total disbelief. Her head shook almost autonomously, as if she wasn't aware she was doing it. He recalled Quan once telling him about the Loptyrian Empire's Great Purge that claimed a hundred thousand lives and considered that she might be imagining such an atrocity happening every ten days for over four years. In the face of a comparison like that, he knew he had to give some kind of context to help numb her shock.

"You need to understand something, Ayra: our countries have populations way, way beyond those in Jugdral or any other world you know. We have ways of growing food and making weapons much faster and on a much bigger scale than you can imagine. We can store food for long periods of time, so armies don't have to march on their stomachs. When you put all that stuff together, you get what you saw." Though he knew his next point would go over like a lead balloon, he felt the need to make it. "If Jugdral had all the same ingredients, you'd have done the same thing. Call it the worst case of sunk cost fallacy ever if you want, but it's human nature to see things through to the end."

Her expression maintained its earlier shock for practically an instant before contorting into a furious scowl. "Get out."

"Ayra, I'm only trying to–"

"I said get out!" She threw him away from her. "Go out there and tell everyone about that wretched world you came from. That's why you came here, right? To learn what happened to me so nobody else would have to go through it either? Well, now you know, and you're going to have to make sure everyone else knows what your people were willing to do to each other."

He could see it was futile to try and talk about the war anymore, but still had one last point to discuss. "And what about your family? Should I tell them you're fit for visitors?" She flinched, and her eyes went from fuming to nervous and uncertain. For a proud, powerful woman like Ayra, the thought of letting anyone, even her loved ones, see her so weak and vulnerable anymore than they already had had to be a gut-wrenching one. He sighed and pointed out, "They're going to see your condition sooner or later, Ayra."

"I-I'll get better." She feebly protested. "I'm talking again, aren't I? Give me another day or two, a-and I'll be fine."

"No, you won't." He bluntly shot her down. "You know, shell shock is actually an older term for what you have. I like to use it casually, but that's not the proper way to describe it anymore. These days, we call it PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." He gave her a sympathetic, but firm look. "If you're lucky, you'll have it for a couple months…but it can last for years, Ayra. You might have some of the effects for the rest of your life, and there's no shame in that. For all of your sakes, you need to let them come and talk to you now, not later." After a pause, he gently added. "You'll be okay, Ayra. You've got people who love you. They'll help you get through this."

Since he figured the next step was telling her family to go see her, he considered his business done and made to leave. But he'd scarcely taken two steps before Ayra's thin, weary voice stopped him one last time. "…What about here? They'll all go home one day. But Askr is the only life I have left. And fighting is the only life I've ever had. Will I be able to fight for the Order with them again? Will…" she gave him a scared, pleading look, "will I ever be able to live like I used to?"

Truthfully, he didn't know. He was no psychologist and couldn't begin to guess how well she'd recover. But that wasn't what she needed to hear; he didn't like her very much (having her take out her trauma on him in the stead of long-dead empires admittedly wasn't helping them get along) and had become conditioned to delivering bad news, but he still had a heart. So, he did his best to crack a small smile and assure her, "Yeah. I think you will. Especially with your friends and family there to get you back on your feet." It wasn't much, but some measure of ease fell over her and gave him peace of mind to leave her be.

As he walked out, he turned his mind to more pressing matters: some way, somehow, Freyja knew what World War I was. Peony had mentioned the gods called his home the 'World of Steel'. Had they watched their 20th century bloodbaths, and maybe ever further back than that? Or had Freyja somehow gotten the information from him? They said people dreamed every night, and just didn't remember most of them – had No Man's Land appeared in his subconscious one night for her to see?

Regardless of how she'd gleaned enough strands about the war to weave a nightmare out of it, his first concern had to be informing the rest of the Order about it. Part of Ayra's condition happened because she had no idea what she was caught up in – some context would help anyone in the same situation. Then again, he thought with a pensive frown, Reyson and Olivia hadn't found anything unusual about being in their nightmares. They didn't remember anything about this mess with Freyja, so wiping whatever memories they have of learning about the war shouldn't be very hard. He paused just before the flap out of the tent and gripped his chin. And there's a chance that telling everyone about it will just give her more ammo to work with…

He sighed and shook his head. He'd need to meet with Peony first and get a better understanding of how Freyja's power worked. For the moment, it was probably best to just count his blessings with Ayra; for one thing, he'd kept himself from saying 'World War One' and tipping her off that it was only the predecessor to something even worse. But then, if the best prophylactic measure ended up being an impromptu history lesson, it would inevitably leak back to her. And if Freyja worked better with the victim having some of the information already floating in their head, then…

God, I need a break… He quietly groaned and ran a hand through his hair. He knew damn well that reprieve was a rare treat even when things were quiet in Askr, and this shitshow was as demanding as it got. There was nothing for it but to start working out a solution with Peony as soon as possible. And if the 'solution' ended up being more like a least terrible tradeoff…well, that was the price of war, wasn't it?

With that thought, he stepped back outside and found himself immediately beset by Ayra's overeager daughter. "Kiran!" She cried, gripping his shoulders and giving him a little shake. "Did you get through to her? Is mother going to be okay? What's wrong with her?"

"Calm down, Larcei." He sternly said, peeling her arms off him; he sympathized with the girl, but was still her commanding officer and had to maintain certain decorum. "Yes, she's talking again, but she's far from normal. It's what we thought – a terrible nightmare conjured by Freyja or one of her cronies."

"But– but how?! Mother's the toughest, fiercest sword master in the Order! There's no way that crazy goat could come up with something scary enough to make her so…so…"

"She didn't have to 'come up' with anything. Your mother was forced to fight in a war from my world. It was a…" he glanced to the side, "uniquely horrible war. Something neither you or she could ever imagine, and it broke everyone who had to fight it for too long." Stubborn disbelief still danced in Larcei's eyes, so before she could give voice to it, he sighed and rested a hand on her shoulder. "Well, never mind that. Right now, Ayra needs you there to help and support her. I know you're curious, Larcei, but please, for her sake, just don't ask any questions. Not now, when it's all still so fresh."

"So…" her brow furrowed, "I can see her? W-we can talk again?"

"She might take a bit of gentle probing, but yes. Just make sure you watch what you say. I'll be sending your brother, father, and cousin after you, so try to get her ready for that."

Larcei nodded and slid past him into the tent. Off to the side waiting was Priscilla, having heard every word of his exchange with the younger Isaachian. As her eyes were burning with curiosity, he made a quick pass by her before he went on his way. "To reduce Princess Ayra, of all people, to so pitiable a state, whatever war you spoke of must've been unbearably awful."

"Trust me, Priscilla, you have no idea." He rolled his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck to try and undo some of the stress from his talk with Ayra. "Can I rely on you to keep an eye on her? I want to know if she relapses or anything like that."

"Of course, milord." She nodded. He began to walk away when she stopped him with one last inquiry. "If I may ask, what will be done now? I mean, to ensure we don't suffer the same fate?"

He paused; priority one was getting Peony and Mirabilis together, and then priority two was having runners find the rest of Ayra's family to send her way. He couldn't well just come out and say he had no concrete defense worked out, but raising false hopes carried too much risk of blowback if he was wrong. He opted to be vague and play off what she'd already heard, and so glanced back and curtly answered her.

"…You all might be getting a history lesson in the near future."

---

Guess who found a creative outlet for all his World War obsession of late. And hey, who doesn't like seeing a pre-modern/fantasy person try to grasp and cope with more modern warfare?

I envision this being a trilogy, with each chapter focusing on a different contrast between Fire Emblem and our modern 20th century wars. Here, Ayra in the Western Front of World War I juxtaposed the differences in warfare between the two. The other chapters would be Celica on the Eastern Front of World War II (almost certainly as part of Operation Barbarossa) juxtaposing the differences in morality, and then Sakura in the Pacific Theater of World War II (probably in mid-1945 domestic Japan, but I'm still uncertain) juxtaposing the differences in culture. The fic title is taken from the famous Joseph Conrad novel (of which Apocalypse Now is a loose adaptation), and the chapter title was taken from Sting's 1985 debut album.

It's important to stress that this is a nightmare of World War I, NOT an exact authentic recreation. That means some details don't line up to reality – for example, Ayra's unit would almost certainly have been cycled out of the front lines ASAP after engaging in a battle like that. But since the point is to use the war's horrors to break her will and spirit, she's stuck there indefinitely. And she likewise gets an incomplete (and often inaccurate) view of the war. Yeah, it's being fought on other continents, but most places aren't nearly as much of a brutal bloodbath as the Western Front in Europe. But again, the nightmare is intentionally vague on details so she can draw the worst conclusions possible and become that much more despondent.

And I hope people don't take it as OOC for Ayra to go more or less catatonic when she wakes up or be so emotional with Kiran. Here's how I see it: people in really stressful situations - ER doctors, first responders, soldiers - have a really black sense of humor to cope with what they're experiencing. They have ways of injecting levity into the awful events they experience. But Ayra is, as Kiran puts it, a stubborn, ill-tempered stick in the mud. She's a no-fun-allowed cynic who deals with stress by being too tough to let it get to her. But in the event that that isn't good enough, there's nothing to fall back on. She has no real coping mechanisms. So, when she hits her breaking point under an artillery barrage, she basically snaps like a twig. Her mind has no way to handle that level of stress and panic and anxiety, and so it basically just shuts down. Then, when it wakes back up, it's so off-kilter and out of whack that she lacks all her usual stoicism and stability.

Speaking of shattered minds, I hope everyone agrees that, barring maybe Seteth, Seiros, or the Fódlan Mole Men, I could've put goddamn anybody in this and they'd have ultimately ended up the same way (yes, even dragons/mages, because you can be sure their stones/tomes wouldn't work and they'd be even more defenseless than Ayra). It was well-documented that nobody, no matter how much of a stone-cold badass they were, could stay on the front lines indefinitely and not eventually crack like an egg. And they at least had some idea of what they'd gotten into – you dump a medieval knight into that hellhole and I might not even give them a whole day before shutting down. Frankly, it's unrealistic that Ayra got as far as she did without snapping.

Now, for all my readers, new and usual, a word about the schedule: this thing is probably going on the backburner for around a year, maybe more. I'd like the next thing I upload to be the new L'Amour Detruit chapter, but it depends on whether I can get it out before April. If I can't, this year's April Fool's chapter will be next.

Please leave comments/reviews for feedback, and thank you very much for reading,