Siege State
Chapter Ten: The Grind

The next few days blessedly passed without incident. They forged further into the Deep Green, away from where they found the boar. They took enough boar meat to feed a village, and left the rest for the forest to strip.

They marched through the daylight, shoving and hacking through greenery, detouring around titanic trees, and driving through tangled inclines and gullies. At night, they slept in huddles, never far apart, never far from their weapons. The watch rotated in shifts, staring into the shifting grey-scale landscape around them, their imaginations turning every noise from the forest into the creeping approach of some monster.

In Tom’s experience the fear eventually turned into a hard knot, an odd alloy of exhaustion and anxiety, formed like a diamond under unrelenting pressure. Every noise added another almost imperceptible layer to it, and eventually they would fuse. At long last the shift change would come, and sleep would overtake exhaustion as surely as a fox taking a rabbit. Even the distant sound of trees breaking or enormous wings beating was not proof against sleep. The small comfort that at least you wouldn’t be the first to get snatched into the dark if an attack came made a surprisingly good pillow.

And so the days passed, the unit settled into as comfortable a routine as one could replace in a Reaping.

On the third day, the unit found a stand of juvenile wood golems. The twisted creatures were incredibly resilient but, as with all golems, grew in power incredibly slowly. The unit surrounded them and hacked them apart methodically. The only real danger they posed to the concerted effort of the unit was tiring them out.

On the fourth day, a soldier went missing from a campfire while they broke for lunch. His squadmate had stood to grab some boar jerky from his pack, and when he turned around the man was simply gone. Hours of searching turned up only a single spatter of blood on a trunk several feet away. As they packed up to leave, one of the soldiers manifested Fear. The single skill he manifested alongside the Ideal made him immune to it. Tom knew he wasn’t the only jealous one.

On the eighth day they’d been marching for an hour when a man stepped on a snake and died screaming inside of a minute, blood leaking from his eyes. The snake was quickly dispatched, being normal aside from its particularly potent venom, and they began to continue their march.

Within minutes, they began to hear a tumultuous cracking. It sounded like several trees being slowly broken or uprooted at once. Elenfield and the Guards pulled together, discussing in brief, urgent tones.

Eventually, Kawlstone and Gracefield slipped off into the forest towards the noise. Elensfield, Markhart and Clairvine stayed behind to protect the column. Everyone stood around, the odd whispered conversation withering under harsh glares from nearby soldiers. Everyone was tense. Nobody could concentrate over the bassy sound of wood splintering in the distance.

The Guards seemed mostly unaffected, but Tom was close to Clairvine, and could see her eyes flicking nervously between where he assumed her wisp was and the source of the noise.

Tom was watching her unobtrusively when her eyes went wide, snapping back and forth rapidly as she read something in the air. For several strained minutes she stood, alternately reading from her wisp and furiously whispering to it. At last, her face settled into a sombre expression.

“Listen up,” she said, obviously wanting to shout and not being able to. It didn’t matter. Everyone was hyper focused on whichever Guard was nearest to them. Heads snapped toward her immediately. The other Guards began to issue orders around them as well.

“We need to move. Quickly. Leave anything you can’t carry at a run.” she looked around at the nearest soldiers and citizens, making sure they’d understood. She nodded grimly. “Follow me. We head north and east, fast as you can. If you fall behind, you get left behind. And if you do get left behind, whatever you do - don’t call out for help. Now, go!”

Tom didn’t need telling twice. He was loath to abandon any weapons, but he’d rather not die by stupidly clinging to one, and a sword wouldn’t do him any good against something that could push multiple trees down at once.

He ditched his bastard sword, undoing its scabbard from the strap across his back and tossing it to the ground as he began to run. He kept his short sword. It wouldn’t hinder his running, and he didn’t want to be totally without protection if he lost his spear in the flight.

They ran in a long column, slowed by the logistics of moving around in the forest. Moving the amount of people through the haphazard spaces under the canopy was a trial at the best of times, but putting aside caution and throwing more brute force at the problem helped somewhat.

Kawlstone and Gracefield caught up quickly, joining the back of the column. They said nothing, having already passed any relevant information to the other Guards via their wisps, but they looked especially pale for people with Idealist constitutions.

They ran for the entire rest of the day, stopping for the night in a large clearing at dusk. They’d lost two more people in their mad rush, and no one could say exactly how. Gracefield and Kawlstone had remained at the back of the column to chivvy anyone who fell behind, and to ensure no one split off from the column in their haste. Clairvine’s earlier words were more to spur them to greater speed.

They were all battered, abused and filthy. Utterly exhausted too. The grand majority of the column fell straight down as soon as Elensfield called the stop, and the first watch was rustled up from those who had enough energy to stay awake to eat.

When they asked what they’d been running from, “Village-killer” was the terse reply. No matter how much they prodded and pried for specifics, “You’d thank me not to tell you, believe me” or some variation of it, was the only answer they’d give.

Although Elensfield said it wasn’t strictly necessary, the entire column ran the whole next day too.

And so the days became weeks, and soon enough they’d passed three of them. Hunting monsters. Stumbling across them. Running from ones they couldn’t kill. Halfway. Halfway through hell. Like sand slipping through an hourglass, time seemed to stall and scurry simultaneously.

They had culled a solid number of monsters and beasts. There appeared to be more of them than usual. More beast with abilities too. They’d gathered a large amount of essences, which could be drawn from the corpses of most monsters with abilities, or found in areas with particularly high-mana concentration.

Their attrition rate was acceptable, with twelve people lost in total. Five soldiers and six civilians had died over the weeks. One Idealist had been lost too. The newly-minted soldier following Fear had charged at a lone wolf they’d encountered. Instead of stepping back to encircle it with the unit, he had been torn open from shoulder to hip for his troubles. Clairvine’s Heart seemed to work better on bone than flesh, and Mat’s regeneration burst was far too slow. The man died unafraid, at least.

Seven people had manifested too. If some twenty percent of people manifested, they could expect around fifteen or so manifestations on this Reaping, accounting for those in the unit who already had Ideals.

Three were students, with one of those being a returning student manifesting their second Ideal. Another was Mat, who’d found Life, and made good use of it since. The third was a young student from the Academy who Tom vaguely recognised. They’d manifested Truth, and would certainly have a ludicrous incentive offered by the clergy to join the church when they returned.

Two were soldiers. One was the man who’d manifested Fear, and died because he hadn’t had the time to acclimatise to the skill it had come with.

The other was a woman who’d manifested Sword. She’d been left with the broken butt-end of a spear after a large forest cat had dropped in the midst of their unit as they marched and tried to drag her off. She’d swung at it in desperation as it bit her leg, and ended up shearing off a hank of fur and one ear with a blunt length of wood wrapped in shimmering sword energy. The offending feline had melted into shadow, yowling hate at them, and the unit spent the next few days jumping at every little sound.

Tom was exceedingly jealous of the woman. At this point it felt like Goddess was laughing at him, turning his life into some grand joke. He was increasingly mindful of the things Ella had said to him, and tried his hardest not to fall into a sulk, but it was hard. Doubly so, watching the ebullient soldier use her new skill to great effect in every encounter afterwards.

It occurred to him that perhaps his reticence might be hindering him, but all that minor revelation did was frustrate him further. Every single heir to the Cutter House for generations had manifested the Sword. It was in their blood. How could he not be frustrated that he hadn’t?

The last two people that had manifested were the most interesting, to Tom at least. Both were volunteer citizens, far older than people usually manifested.

The first was a journeyman carpenter who seemed a little ...eccentric. They were convinced they were destined to produce great works, and were thoroughly tired of their single Ideal, the Saw, having held them back for so many years. After witnessing Clairvine gently shape undergrowth out of her way as she moved through the forest using Wood, the first of her three Ideals, he had had a sudden epiphany, and manifested it himself. The man was utterly unbearable now.

The second citizen who had manifested was much more charming. She was a laundry woman, who according to her, had spent her life working her fingers to the bone for an uncaring husband and ungrateful children. Her husband had recently passed, and her children never cared, so at the age of forty six she had volunteered for the Reaping. It proved to be a surprisingly prescient move. Thirty years after her first Reaping, on a quiet day that had happened to hold no more than a march through the woods, the forgotten laundry woman had manifested Grace. It was completely unexpected for everyone. People who had sniggered at her behind her back for joining marvelled as she slid through dense foliage as if she were made of smoke.

As the weeks passed, and some died, and others found power, Tom underwent a slow and strange metamorphosis. He longed for the Sword, even more than before, truly stretched for it with every fibre of his being, and still fell short. He killed monsters, threw himself at them whenever he could, volunteered for more watches than anyone. Some in the unit whispered that his recklessness was him trying to kill himself, but couldn’t do it himself given the shame it would bring to his House.

They weren’t far from the truth.

He felt like his very soul was pulled into the same shape as a Sword, drawn long by his yearning and beaten hard by failure. At the same time, the revelations sparked by Ella softened him, made his efforts almost shy in a way. He understood, now, how he must have seemed to his peers, and was embarrassed for it. He didn’t blame himself overly much though, knowing, as they didn’t, how his life had pushed him into being that resentful person. All he could do was try to be better.

He found a new strength, in this shy softness, this vulnerability. He didn’t know quite what to make of it, just yet. The revelation was only half-formed, but his intuition told him if he left it that it would eventually resolve into comprehension. Like a child attempting to sneak up on you, he could see it out of the corner of his mind’s eye, and all he had to do to lure it in was pretend he was oblivious.

And so it was that Tom found himself, tucked into his blanket one night after they’d made camp, staring at the canopy above him and thinking.

He’d spent his whole life trying for the Sword. His father had it. His grandfather had too. Most of his ancestors besides. He could feel it within him. He was a sword, but was that all of him?

There was something he’d been neglecting. His mother followed Healing. Tom had been healed almost as many times as he’d drawn a sword. He’d briefly tried to manifest other weapons before, but had never really considered that he might manifest something else.

Would Healing fit him? He thought it might. Your Ideals were something you intrinsically understood, something you had an innate affinity for. He knew he had an affinity for the Sword. He understood it inside and out. Could he replace the same in him for Healing?

He searched himself, trying to see if he felt any resonance towards Healing. There was no way to tell for sure, aside from intuition. It felt like it could fit, but he was also excited by the thought of a path forward, and couldn’t tell whether he was jumping to conclusions just yet. He would have to give it some time, and separate the idea from the emotion.

I am a sword, but the sword isn’t all of me, he thought. What if it isn’t Healing or the Sword? The sudden revelation was like a bucket of ice water down his spine. Have I truly been this stupid? It could be literally anything. Have I missed my Ideal, trying so hard for the Sword? I tried to manifest other weapons, but if the Sword isn’t right then maybe they’re not either.

Have I hamstrung myself being so bitter over this all?If it could be anything, what could it be? He would have to do some thinking. He prided himself on his sharp mind, surely understanding wouldn’t be his stumbling block. He was certain there must be more Ideals he had an affinity for. All he had to do was replace them.

What is the core of me? he pondered. What do I understand more than anything else? As his mind wandered down completely new paths, he once again felt that corner-of-his-eye feeling. Another revelation waited. The knowing made his soul start to vibrate along some strange axis.

He thought of his father. If he came home with an Ideal, even if it wasn’t the Sword, he could still save them from ruin.

He thought of Instructor Glass, and what she'd told him, and felt like she'd be proud of him.

His mind fumbled about inside him, reaching for something new. The tip-of-his-tongue suspicion gave the reaching some vague direction, some vague shape. The vibration grew stronger. What am I..? What could I be..?

A bloodcurdling scream rang through the camp.

“UP! UP ARMS! GODDESS, WH-” came a panicked shout.