Control Comes from Within

“Don’t be nervous.” Wetoile said, her voice firm as she polished her gauntlets till they were gleaming like mirrors.

Gee, thanks. I’m instantly cured.

“Have you realized that your sarcasm is prone to expressing itself when you come under stress?”

Not now, Spearmint.

“Sigh, very well. I’ll leave you to your upcoming battle. One final thing, do try not to perish. Finding another den as suitable as this would be difficult, in the event you do end up falling.”

That’s it, no food for you today.

“But you promised a sweet from the bake –”

I tuned out my companion’s annoying voice and tried to focus on what was actually happening around me.

“Your job is not to fight, it’s to protect us,” Enandel said, turning away from the battle and looking straight at Desnae and me. “Us three have the hard part of the job: actually finding and bringing whoever’s wounded back. All you have to do is keep the little vores off of us.”

“Vores?” Desnae asked.

“The monsters. There’s only so many ways to refer to them,” Enandel stated as he started counting off his fingers, “Monsters, voranders, the Great Enemy, the fallen. The point is it’s shorter and less of a hassle. And besides, what sounds scarier, a vore or a vorander? If you get used to calling them vores, eventually you’ll think of them as a plague or natural disaster, you know, something beatable, instead of something evil that can end the world.” he declared, casually regarding plagues and natural disasters as something beatable.

Finally, the call to action reached my ears, sending a twinge of fear through me as I heard the words I had been dreading.

“Healer! We need a healer!”

“That’s our signal. Remember, Desnae’s up front with us, Rhaaj in the back with Jav. Whatever happens, stick together.” Wetoile said, apparently giving orders now. Her eyes closed for a moment before they opened again, urging us all towards the battlefield. “To the right flank, follow me.”

All my equipment was ready. I just needed to watch the backs of my team. Squad? Nobody ever told me our designation. For all I knew, we were just some random unit.

That didn’t matter anymore as my rambling ended as soon as I crossed the barrier of the defensive formation. My senses were immediately assaulted by the stimuli of the battlefield. My ears were practically deafened by the grunts and shouts of the defenders and the various animal noises of the enemies. The smell threatened to knock me out or make me vomit with how rank and putrid it was. I could taste the blood in the air, the faint tang of iron that rose up from the endless number of bodies that lay unmoving on the ground.

“Rhaaj, hurry up! Let’s go!” Wetoile looked at me. I took one moment to gather myself and followed the rest of the team.

The backline where we currently were was relatively peaceful, but that atmosphere died quickly as we dashed forward, as we had to practically fight our own side to get to the wounded, pushing and shoving the mass of bodies at the rear like it was a Black Friday sale.

“Got him!” Enandel cried out, as he threw the wounded student onto his shoulders in a fireman’s lift, the others surrounding him. I kept my eyes peeled for any stray attacks headed our way, but luckily none arrived. We pushed our way back to the rear, and dashed to the healers, as Enandel literally dropped his cargo onto a cot, ready for the healers to do their job.

“Another one near the guards. Let’s go!” Wetoile said, as she hurried back to the front, the rest of us following in her wake.

For the rest of the day, I escorted my team as we did our best impression of an ambulance, carting off the wounded or dead off the battlefield and into the impatient arms of the healers. It was harrowing when the person who was only reported to be injured ended up dead before we got there, but there was no time for grief or any other emotion.

The third-years, despite their levity, had a solid grip on the situation. Wetoile took command and urged us forward, always keeping us busy enough that there was no time to dwell or fixate on what could have been. Enandel, for all that he had to physically lift and carry the majority of the wounded, kept a smile on his face the entire time, though I did begin to question his sanity at one point. Javorn, who remained mostly silent, did his part as well, nudging me in the side whenever we needed to push through, or lobbing an overhead spell onto the monsters whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Desnae and I did what we could to help but our contributions were far overshadowed by what the others did. Despite being labelled as guards, we never had to fend off more than a handful of attacks, and all of them were promptly dealt with. The biggest threat I had to deal with was when the top half of a goblin-type vorander, its entrails spilling out, feebly scratched at my boots on the ground, its sharp fingernails barely alerting me to its presence. A quick thrust of my shortsword ended that ‘threat’.

As we ventured out more and more, I could hear how the battle was progressing. The mages stopped performing large-scale attacks and focused on targeting the largest monsters, low grumbles and small explosions marking their time of death. The scouts on their aerial creatures would occasionally fly low, close to the battlefield, and pepper a row of enemies with their projectiles, both mundane and magical. When I heard a stampede of hooves gallop from one end of the battlefield to the other, I could tell that the battle was nearly over if the guards thought it was safe enough to mount up and clean up the remaining enemies.

Before I knew it, we were back in the healers tents, helping with the actual treatment of the wounded. Running around to get bandages and tinctures in the bustling encampment was a welcome change of pace from running around and collecting bodies that were barely clinging to life.

All said, at the end of the day, it was a complete victory for mankind. The city still stood. The battle had somehow been won, the enemies completely wiped out and the hopeless situation overturned.

In the aftermath, the academy healers were recruited by the guards to help attend to their wounded as well, which had me running around for a bit longer, but it was a worthy cause so I kept my mouth shut and lugged around bloody sheets to be burned and crates of herbs to be ground into a healing paste. After assisting the healers, I was pressed into helping gather the bodies of the enemies into a massive pile for them to be burned. Revisiting the site of the battle was an almost cathartic experience as I was able to see the corpses piled as high as a mountain. The mages were working to restore the area to how it looked before the attack, replanting seeds and raising a better path out of the city than the one that had been quickly wiped out.

By the time I was allowed to go back to the academy, night had long since fallen, and I was dead on my feet, despite my improved stamina. I had followed the other students to a random training ground and threw my armor into the crates marking each type of piece. I pulled off my mace and shortsword, throwing them into the pile of weapons that needed to be repaired before the next battle.

There was to be a speech or something the following morning, but I was barely able to follow along as the professor went over the details. All I heard was that the information would be sent to my card and I stopped actively listening after that, desperate to just head to bed and sleep for as long as I could. I trudged along the path to the dorms, my eyelids already starting to feel heavier. I was in no state to be walking, so I flung myself into the Tunnel to the fourth floor with barely any thought. Once I rolled onto the right floor, I only stood up long enough to open the door to my room before falling to the floor in exhaustion, too tired to even take off the sweaty and dirt-stained clothes I was wearing. I only had a moment of clarity to think about how sleeping on the floor would probably be bad for my back, before my eyes involuntarily closed and I drifted off to the warm embrace of sleep.

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“Report.”

“The number of enemies killed amounts to a little over a hundred thousand. None survived or retreated. As for casualties on our side, the guards only said it was less than thirty. I couldn’t get a specific number, you know how their commander is. None of the staff were lost, though a few will need to spend a couple weeks recovering in the infirmary. As for students, we lost…three.”

“...Three students, and thirty guards…for a hundred thousand enemies. As much as it pains me to say it, it would be a worthwhile trade…if those damn things didn’t multiply like roaches. Sigh, make sure the families receive their compensation, and award all the volunteers their points by tomorrow.”

“Yes, headmaster.”

“Was there anything else?”

“I’m…not sure if it has any relevance, headmaster.”

“Out with it, man! It’s too late for this back and forth nonsense! Just tell me and I’ll decide if it’s relevant or not!”

“After the battle, the scouts reported traces of a spatial spell in the enemy’s breeding grounds once they flew back. They couldn’t determine the origin point or who the caster was, as too long had passed since the spell was cast.”

“Sigh. Fantastic. Very well, I’ll bring it up with the council. Get some rest, Okarot.”

“Yes, sir. Good night, headmaster.”

“Good night, Lambert.”

Once his second-in-command retreated from his office, the headmaster swiveled in his chair to face the transparent window-wall. Everything outside was pitch-black, but that was easily remedied with a simple night vision spell. As soon as the headmaster’s vision was able to pierce the veil of darkness, he stood up and walked closer to the window-wall, the transparent pane of glass that took up an entire wall of his office and allowed him to see outwards.

He first checked on his students. The majority who had fought were either in bed, sleeping, crying, or distracting themselves with a partner. He sighed internally at the unpleasant conversations he would have to have with those indulging in their indiscretions, but he would let them be, at least for tonight. As callous as it sounded, losing a student, while tragic, was not nearly as bad as losing a professor. He didn’t even want to think about how badly human-elf relations would be affected if they lost Passen to a monster horde.

Turning slightly, his gaze next fell onto the infirmary. It had seen every professor stop by at some point, with only a few needing more than a night to recuperate. Thankfully, all of them would recover with time, even the worst injuries made manageable by the quality of their healers. The students laying in the infirmary were perfectly fine, at least in the physical sense. They had been ordered to stay overnight so their mental states could be monitored. It was a known phenomenon of the mind where combat or extreme stress could cause the one affected to lash out randomly, either at others or themselves. It was best to keep the amount of incidents to a minimum.

Sweeping over the rest of the academy grounds saw a few professors patrolling. It had been centuries since the last incursion happened, but it wouldn’t do to have the monsters unexpectedly appear and rampage within the academy. The fallout would be…well, whoever survived likely wouldn’t live long enough to regret it.

Before he could head to bed, the headmaster had one final task to perform. He looked in the direction of the monsters’ breeding ground, the pit. His spirit practically begged to destroy the black abyss that exuded a sense of wrongness, even from here, leagues away. It was similar enough to other breeding grounds he had seen, the shriveled plant life, the water transformed into sludge, tiny eggs small enough to escape enhanced vision that contained a remnant seed of the savages.

What captured his attention was the location of the spatial spell that Lambert had mentioned. There were just enough remnant traces of essence for him to discern its location. As if it was waiting for him to notice it…before the final remnants dissipated into wisps. It manifested in the air. And as the scouts had reported that this particular nest had no aerial enemies…

The headmaster turned back around, grabbing a crystal plate out of his desk.

The other members of the council needed to be informed that there was someone, or worse, something, capable of manipulating the monsters into attacking.