Lilya woke me just as we could see the town in the distance, and I began to worry as I looked ahead. The setting sun reflected off the clouds of smoke blooming over the town, tinting everything in a dark red light, the fires we could see in the town adding to the atmosphere of destruction.

We followed after the APCs as they entered the town, some of them stopping and disgorging their soldiers, who began to go door to door, searching for either survivors or Tesser. Lilya and I remained on the cart, following after the bulk of the APCs. Here and there, Tesser soldiers started to appear, and every so often one of the APCs would stop, letting out soldiers to fight the Tesser. I watched flames from one of the Tesser wands splash off the shield of one of the soldiers on our side, not a flicker of the liquid seeming fire licking at them.

Thinking I should get one of those shields, we continued down the streets, but soon the Tesser resistance mounted. The first wave of Tesser was crushed under a few of the APCs, but the vehicles were soon bogged down by the large number of Tesser soldiers. The soldiers from our side were soon pouring out of the APCs to fight, and Lilya and I hopped off of the vehicle we had been traveling in. I took a few potshots at Tesser soldiers where I had a clear line of sight, but soon my view was covered by soldiers on our side, fighting in melee with the Tesser soldiers, who didn’t fare too well when their wands were countered by the shields of those on our side. Lilya on the other hand, waded into the battle with gusto.

I decided to try and get around the fighting, hoping to find Dmiyo and Alya. Slinging my rifle on my shoulder, I tightened the straps so it wouldn’t get in the way as I took my revolver from the holster on my hip. After making sure that it was loaded with the last of my special bullets, I started to go door to door, checking each one to make sure that I wouldn’t be suprised by a Tesser popping out from behind me.

The houses were entirely deserted, except for the occasional charred corpse, and a good portion of the buildings were simply burning, or already burnt out husks. I didn’t bother exploring those, until I heard a cry from one of them. I paused for a second, not sure I’d heard anything, when I heard it again. I didn’t recognize the word, but it unmistakably meant ‘help’. Putting my exploration on hold, I ran into the building I heard it from, ignoring the flames licking around it.

Running inside, it was lit by the flickering of flames at the edges of the building, the ceiling shifting in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable, but I wasn’t willing to leave someone to die without at least trying to help. Ducking down as low as I could to avoid the smoke, I followed the continued cries for help, soon finding they were coming from a wardrobe of some kind, where a beam from the ceiling had fallen in front of it.

I instantly ran over and started to use all of my strength to drag the beam. It shifted, but so did the ceiling along with it. I stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath before going into a coughing fit from the smoke.

Deciding to ignore the shifting of the ceiling, I took a much shallower breath this time, and gripped the beam as well as I could, squatting down before pouring as much mana as I could into body enhancement. I squeezed as hard as I could, and slowly dragged the beam towards me and away from the wardrobe, ignoring the uncomfortable shifting of the ceiling.

Small flaming pieces of whatever the roof was made of rained down, and I did my best to ignore them, even when one landed on my arm, giving me a nasty burn. I continued to drag the beam, scraping it along the floor until I saw the wardrobe door shove open, just wide enough for the child inside to squeeze out.

As he got out, he practically collapsed, and I grabbed him, starting to run out of clean air myself. I picked him up and carried him to the outside, where the air, while not clean, was no longer unbreathable. Coughing my lungs out, I sucked as much of the relatively clean air as I could into my chest. I looked down as I was done, to see the kid doing the same, but he seemed to have it worse than I did, lying on the ground curled up.

Not sure what to do, I kept watch for any Tesser soldiers, until the kid finally pushed himself off the ground, standing up and saying something to me that I couldn’t understand. I shrugged, and said “I can’t understand you, sorry,” before motioning to myself, saying “Name Lucas” in their language, leveraging my very low mastery of the language.

The kid gestured towards himself, saying “Name Hail.” I nodded, keeping my gun out and keeping a look all around us, before gesturing for the kid to come with me as I headed back to where all the soldiers were. I didn’t want to go searching door to door with a kid, and I figured I could drop him off with the soldiers before continuing.

I soon found that the battle line had moved up significantly, our soldiers were surrounding a large group of Tesser, who in turn were surrounding a squat stone building. I watched as our soldiers pushed into the Tesser, limbs being removed, blood spraying from cut arteries, and occasionally organs splattering onto the ground as people were cut open, the swords of our soldiers seeming to ignore the Tesser armor.

I finally got a better view of the squat stone building the Tesser were surrounding, when I saw the two people who had held the hole in the wall at the first attack. They jumped out of the stone building, cutting into the Tesser soldiers who had turned to face our group.

Alya soon followed after them, even with a limp she managed to cut through the Tesser soldiers, though not quite as quickly as the pair. I sat there, feeling useless, unable to fire my guns for risk of hitting an ally. The battle soon ended though, the Tesser soldiers surrendering after a certain point. The Tesser soldiers were soon disarmed, and brought by some of the soldiers back towards where the APCs were.

Lilya, who had been fighitng in the front lines with the soldiers, was soon reunited with Alya, and I started to get a sinking feeling in my gut. Where was Dmiyo? My worry was soon shown to be legitimate as I saw Lilya’s expression turn to one of horror. I ran up, wanting to know what was going on, and not knowing how I could comfort them. I ended up standing there awkwardly as Alya held Lilya, stroking her hair and whispering to her; even as she had her own tears in her eyes.

I soon noted the child I’d helped is hiding behind me. I found out why when a man came up to him, grabbed him by the ear, and started screaming at him. I watched in annoyance until the man went to slap the child, and I caught his arm, giving a firm “No,” in their language. I let the man tear his arm away, and he was soon dragging the child away by an arm. I watched as the child was dragged off, looking at me mournfully. I hid my head in shame, I just couldn’t bring myself to stop his family taking him away, and could only hope that their relationship wasn’t normally as bad as that.

I was soon distracted as the crying of Alya and Lilya turned to anger, and Lilya and Alya started running to the powered cart we’d taken to get here. We hopped in, to see the soldiers doing the same, and we were soon all headed in the same direction — the direction opposite the big city.

I wondered what was going on, when a few minutes later, I start to see some massive construction in the distance. As we get closer, it becomes apparent that this massive object is man made. It looked like an amalgamation of different sized boxes, some wooden, mostly those on top, while the ones on the bottom were almost entirely made of varying kinds of metal. Some parts had the red of rust, while others looked as shiny as stainless steel, and they clashed with the wooden boxes higher up on the object.

We soon were able to see the bottom of it, and I let out a sharp breath. Along the bottom, there were tens of treads, varying in size, but clearly meant to move the chaotic object, or what I was starting to realize was a moving city. At the base of it, I could make out people being led into the moving city, chained up and surrounded by Tesser soldiers. It isn’t until one of them looked back that I recognize him.

“Dmiyo!” I shouted, but my voice has to be lost among the sounds of the APCs and our own vehicle, or the constant rumbling noise coming from the behemoth of a moving city. Lilya and Alya looked at me though, not able to recognize Dmiyo from this distance, and Lilya somehow managed to make the vehicle we’re riding in speed up even more.

We were starting to get close, when a fireball more massive than any I’ve seen before came arcing out of an opened port on the city, flying and exploding into a sea of fire onto one of the APCs. I instantly turned to Lilya, to see Alya wresting the controls away from her. She soon turned the powered cart away from the Tesser city, driving us out of range of its fireballs while Lilya screamed. The APCs followed us away from the moving city but the one hit by the fireball coasted to a stop and ceased to move.

I sat there in a numb mood. I had thought of Dmiyo as my friend. I hadn’t been able to understand much of what he’d said, but he was always good natured, and he’d been helping me a lot with the sparring practice without being cruel or actively trying to cause me pain. I shook my head, I had it easy. Lilya and Alya were bawling, Alya tried and failed to keep a stoic face while Lilya simply let out her emotions. I took controls of the cart and started to guide us to the town.

What were Dmiyo and the other people taken for though? Was he taken to be a slave or something worse? I shook my head, I didn’t know the answer to those questions, but for now I was going to assume they were going to keep Dmiyo alive, and I was going to find some way to get him back, for myself, for Alya, and for Lilya. I kept watch on the mobile city, until the amalgam of wood and metal started making a much louder noise, and started to crawl away from us, slowly picking up speed.

We drove back to the town I still didn’t know the name of in silence. Lilya and Alya were still crying, though their sobs had died down,.and I brought the cart to the place where we’d originally picked it up. I was soon approached by the human wrecking ball of a man, along with the lithe girl who fought with him — the two people who had held the hole in the wall practically alone. He introduced himself as Sire, and the girl introduced herself as Anna, the familiar name making me wistful for home. I introduced myself, and then sat there trying to convince Sire that I didn’t speak the language.

Alya came to my rescue a few minutes later, her tear streaked face and voice that kept catching in her throat pulling at my heartstrings. Looking towards Lilya, I see the same, her body still shaking with inaudible sobs. I looked away, I couldn’t bear to see this. The sun finally fully sets, and we spend a time looking for somewhere to stay, eventually finding an inn that isn’t too burned out, going to bed with a large amount of people in each room, everyone searching for a covered place to spend the night.

Morning dawned, and I had gotten maybe a few hours of fitful sleep, my eyes feeling gritty and my limbs feeling exhausted. I was honestly not sure if it was from the death I’d seen, the multitude of people in the room trying to hide their sobs, or the tear streaked faces everywhere. Eventually, I end up crying a bit myself. I didn’t know what was going to happen to Dmiyo, but I thought of him as a good friend, and from everyone reactions, I wasn’t going to see him again unless I did something.

Trying to convince myself that I’d be able to help him eventually, I got up to see Alya and Lilya already up, which made me wonder if they’d even gotten as much sleep as I had. We were soon heading out of the room, doing our best to not step on anyone. We even managed to find out where our group’s powered cart is. While it didn’t carry us, and didn’t move nearly as fast as the one that we had taken to get to the city, it still had our stuff in it, and surprisingly, hadn’t been looted.

We were soon heading out of the town, towards the large city, likely to pick up Iosyo and Grigyo and inform them of what had happened. Unfortunately, this time we didn’t have the powered car, and by the time the sun set we were only a small fraction of the way there.

The days passed, a depressing silence being the prevailing atmosphere, and I didn’t try to break it, simply musing on some way to help Dmiyo, constantly coming back to the point that I simply didn’t know enough about this world. I eventually tried to get Alya to start up my language lessons again, and she obliged quickly, likely searching for anything to help distract her a bit.

The lessons continued, and I even got her to spar with me. I dove into the lessons with gusto, trying to distract myself as much as distract Alya, and soon Lilya joined as well, another person to pick on me. We arrived at the city some number of days later, my sense of time seemingly not working correctly, all the days blending together in my haze of sadness.

We arrived at the city, to see Iosyo, Grigyo, and Blake standing there. Iosyo and Grigyo started running towards us as soon as they saw us, but Blake just stood by the gate, not wanting to come see us apparently.

Iosyo and Grigyo soon slowed down, then sped up to full speed, likely as they noticed that Dmiyo wasn’t with us. They were soon at our cart, slightly out of breath, and Iosyo asked something. The answer he got is obviously not one he liked, and he yelled at Alya before he slowly turned from anger to grief, falling to his knees with tears leaking out from his eyes, repeating something over and over in his language.

I tried to not look, not wanting to brand yet another heartbroken face into my psyche. Eventually, he stood back up shakily, and we headed into the city, heading straight for an inn, where everyone ordered a lot of alcohol, me included. Blake seemed to be completely oblivious of the mood as he tried to get me to talk with him, but I kept shutting him down until he got in a huff and started grumbling into his drink. He went to bed early, but the rest of us, excluding Grigyo who was too young to drink, stayed up until the inn portion of the building closed before we stumbled up the stairs to get to our rooms for some sleep.