Chương 4: A Failure of Discipline

They'd found a blown-off bunker door they were using as a makeshift stretcher. Hervosare held onto it as best she could. Markos, the Captain, Sasdiv, and Velas pulled, straining as the weight of the metal door and her. The four of them pulling somehow made decent speed. They were far from the road now. The disorganized retreat from before looked orderly now. Masses of soldiers were making whatever speed they could up the road, almost all order gone.

Desperate men and women made what time they could through the morass the rain was making of the elevated highway, the occasional pocket of order forming around units still holding together. No vehicles were left. The Traveler had come by for two more passes. The orbs of light had always targeted vehicles, and she stopped dropping them only after shrieking down the entire line for what must have been miles. No more runs for her. The anti-aircraft guns ahead at the train station had filled the skies with flak.

They'd seen her shield flare into a near-constant blast of white light as exploding shells burst around her. She'd finally left, flying up beyond the banks of the clouds. But the artillery hadn't stopped firing yet. Occasionally, shells would land at the road near them, not close enough to hit but close enough to see body parts flying and to hear the screams.

"This is a disaster," The Captain muttered. Markos hadn't had time to get his name yet.

"I should have stuck with Dreven."

"Major Vorgai said for us to try and figure out the state of the rearguard, Captain," Velas said.

"It took all of five seconds to figure it out. Holding as best it can. It's about to collapse. Travelers aren't about to let up." The Captain cursed as they had to take the door on a wide swing around a rock in their path.

"Then I let my better nature win out over reporting back."

"For what it's worth, Captain, I appreciate the gesture," Hervosare said quietly from the bunker door. The Captain grunted, seemed to think momentarily, then quickly replied, "My ire isn't at you, corporal. It's not been a good day."

"That's an understatement," Sasdiv noted. They trudged silently for a little longer, dragging the bunker door along with them. Hervosare clung tightly onto it, occasionally whimpering as they hit a bump or a rock, and her leg stump jolted. They'd done their best, but there was no morphine, very little in terms of bandages and a belt as a tourniquet. Any chance of a mage being in the mass fleeing was non-existent. They could only hope it held, for now. Suddenly, she yelled from the bunker door.

"Incoming!" Markos looked back over his shoulder and followed her gaze up into the air. Something was in the sky. It's too big and too slow to be an artillery shell. They all flung themselves to the ground as the front end of a half-truck came hurtling down at them. Blood sprayed across Markos' face as it landed on the side. He stared blankly at the mess of limbs and the splattered mess underneath the torn-apart front half of a half-track.

One of Sasdiv's arms poked out from underneath, connected to a mess of gore that he couldn't recognize as the slightly insane private. Soft things rained on and near him. Fleshy things. A bisected head landed next to him, a few inches from his hand. Brains leaked out along a line, cutting it smoothly in half. Something rose in his stomach. Half-disgested food rose in his throat. Gasping, he vomited his last meal at his feet, scrambled to his feet, and started running.

Someone cursed at him as he ran, but he could barely hear. The bridge. He just needed to make it to the bridge. Make it to the bridge. Cross. Escape from this underworld the Travelers had made. His lungs strained for air. They burned, and he stopped, gasping the dry, smoke-filled air, which only made his lungs burn even more. It forced him to stop, to pause. To realize what he had done. He made his way back to the other two near the door and took his place once again. None of them said anything.

Velas was pale, the orange-colored scales dotting his face near pale white in coloration. The captain paused, went to the body, and somehow pulled Sasdiv's tags from the body. Herevosare was still alive, crouched near the bottom of the door, eyes screwed shut. Other Scaverians joined, possibly from the road. Looking over there, the back half of a half-tack had impacted over there. Bodies scattered around. Someone was wailing, grasping at another underneath as comrades tried dragging him away.

He forced himself to look away.

Lewis Jacobs, Chosen of the Sun Goddess Timata, formerly of New Jersey, bit back a curse as his foot sank into the earth. His heart pounded as two seconds passed before his foot stopped, his leg up to his knee in the muck. Please, no more tunnels, he thought, hoping his new goddess was listening. With no sign of the sun, his connection to her was tenuous. A vague sense of concern and nothing more. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Two more seconds, and his foot didn't move further. It lifted out of the muck with a squelch as he continued up the slope of a hill. He trod on a Scale's corpse, letting the enemy sink into the soft muck. Torrential rain continued to make a swamp of the ground, but it had let up a little in the past ten minutes. Maybe the other Travelers realized where he was? Corpses dotted the hill, providing safe spots where he could be sure no traps lay. Tumbling into the bowels of the earth would not happen again.

Most of them sported charred holes burnt through them, his work. There's easily been thirty here, observing the valley below. Directing artillery fire was Lewis' guess. He'd found binoculars and radios squawking and hissing in their language on the way up so far. They must be out of jamming range. The Scales had been focused on them when he'd arrived. They'd not even noticed before a few dozen rays of light lanced from the bottom of the hill and skewered them all.

He crested the hill and looked across the plains and woods below. A road moved through the trees, feeding streams of Scales and their war machines through to a single destination. A whistle howled as a train pulled out of the railway station. The place was crowded with a mass of Scales as trains arrived, were loaded, and sent back. Back towards his target, the bridge across the river. He couldn't see it from here, so he conjured a dozen seeing eyes of light and sent them out.

Soon, one hovered twenty miles to the west of where he stood. He could still barely believe it existed, but there it was, a massive railroad bridge extending into the horizon, trains roaring across. The Scales organized a defensive perimeter around it as more trains arrived along six rail lines, racing across while other trains came in. They had a long trip to make over the bridge. The Malden was fifteen miles wide, that he knew for sure. He'd seen it from the sky before.

That the Scales had bridged it defied belief. Yet there it stood. And would stand but without the ability to let Scales cross it. Lewis looked down at it, raising his right hand to point at exactly where the sun would be beyond the clouds. It didn't matter how good the Scales were at engineering skills and feats. The Wrath of the Sun would eliminate them all. This battle was over.

"Timata, I call upon your power, that it may shine onto the world below, surging through the darkness to scour those who dwell within it with the purifying power of light! Let the enemies of your people taste the Suns' Wrath!" His finger moved from the sun to where the bridge met the earth in a single motion, jabbing at where the bridge met the shoreline over the horizon. Nothing happened. Lewis paused, checked his mana pool to see it at the same level, then checked the seeing eye light. Nothing.

With a ping a UI notification popped up. Your Incantation has fizzled. Your target has an anti-magic field around it, stopping it from being targeted by magic effects. It is effective level 500 versus your level of 145. What? An anti-magic field? Cursing, Lewis kicked one of the corpses, then howled as his shoe's tip met the hard metal steel of a Scale's mask. They'd destroyed the one at the fortress. Why did they have another? That was so infuriating that they were dragging this out.

Who did fighting this war down to the last person benefit? No one was the answer. The Scales' resistance only extended their pain, causing the deaths of themselves and others. They should give up now, while the peace terms remained favorable towards them. Instead, they kept on fighting, kept on trying to kill. Lewis'd thought he would die the other day, all because some stupid lizards wanted to keep ownership of some mines and the surface. Well, today would be a good step towards ending that.

Muttering angrily as he checked his foot, he cast Message while making sure his toes weren't broken. Trevor. They have an anti-magic field over the bridge. I can't cast on it. Lewis. I will send Rebecca to sabotage it. She can't be far from the bridge, delay as able. Delay? Well, there was one way to do that. He looked down at the train station. Probably not what Trevor intended. But Trevor wasn't here. Reciting the words again, he pointed to it. The world seemed to pause.

The storms above parted, clouds giving way. Soon the sun's wrath would be unleashed.

Markos wanted to murder the concept of hills. Eradicate the idea from existence. The world should be flat. Nice, simple, and flat.

"Put your backs into it!" The Captain's yelling was beginning to nettle him as well. Still, they pulled on the bunker door, only uphill now instead of mostly even ground. The gentle slope taunted them with how easy it should be. The metal of the door scraped against the rough earth and sand as they struggled a few more feet before it ground to a stop. Up above, he could hear a whistle. A train either arriving or leaving. Good. At least they hadn't stopped.

Their ticket out of here was on top of this hill, one of the train stations feeding into the rail bridge. They'd tried to move back onto the road to make it up the hill. No luck. Shell craters pockmarked every inch of the road. The back-breaking process up the hill would be easier than dragging Hervosare through that. Honestly, he was shocked the rail station could function with the amount of artillery shells sent at it. The road's destruction did have a side benefit.

Other members of the garrison had taken this route up the hill. The group helping with the bunker door had swelled to ten now. It helped to have an officer yell orders at them. Command would only fail to work in the most disastrous moments of discipline collapsing, or so he'd been told. His discipline had broken back with the half-track smashing into them. He wouldn't let it happen again.

"Forget the bunker door, lift her and run!" The Captain yelled out. As one, they dropped the bunker door, dirt and mud splattering around as it hit the earth. Hervosare groaned as the impact jolted her, then bit back her pain when they grabbed and lifted her. The Captain was staring into the sky. Markos followed his gaze. The sky opened above the train station, clouds swirling as they moved away from a central point. A circular opening appeared in the sky.

It was late evening, and clouds obscured it, but Markos could see the sun. His heart sank. No.

"Turn around! Retreat as fast as you can!" The Captain ordered.

"No one looks towards the train station!" Turning as a group was complex; if running up the hill was difficult, downhill was just as bad. Markos kept a hand on the back of Hervosare's head as they moved down, keeping her eyes away from what was about to occur. Loose rocks went flying under his feet, and the others in the groups also had their own balancing issues. It wasn't a matter of if the entire group lost their balance; it was when.

"Apologies, soldier," The Captain said to Hervosare before screaming out "Everyone hit the deck! Eyes closed!" Markos closed his as tightly as he could. Despite that, the world still burst into white as heat scoured his back.