Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Chapter 487: The Han Civil War XIII

My shadow came to life.

It became solid, three dimensional, as it picked itself up off the ground, wielding the same weapons I did. I had to look to confirm with my eyes what I thought I saw - I no longer had a shadow. Sunlight just… passed through me and hit the ground as normal.

My shadow took up a defensive pose next to me, shield up, spear at the ready. The same size as me, seeming to wear the same gear, all painted in the darkest of shadows. Everyone in my line had their shadow awaken as well, and I was soon surrounded by a second set of undying soldiers.

Mine naturally wasn’t the only shadow to have arisen. The entire Legion had a clone with them. The shadows followed orders perfectly, mechanically. They weren’t just copying the movements of the person next to them. I waved my hand experimentally, but my shadow kept facing forward. Moving slightly, like it was a living, breathing thing.

I whistled and broke out a thought process.

Dark was one of the most lethal elements. I didn’t need to go any further than Artemis picking it up as her third class’s element as evidence, but it was uniformly considered one of the deadliest.

It suffered from a range problem. Dark just didn’t go very far, and I suspected it might even have a penalty in how far from the caster a Dark skill could go. It was part of why most Dark or Void element users tended to be warriors like Iona’s mentor Alruna, or Hunting from Remus. Dark required people get real close and personal to effectively use.

Massive strength or a hyper specialized, conditional skill could extend the range, and Katerina had both.

It wasn’t my skill, and I didn’t consider my shadow to be ‘me’, no matter how much she looked like me. I didn’t think I’d be responsible for any harm she did, but I had to question what would happen if I stepped near someone, and the shadow tried to murder them.

Where was my responsibility?

…

I could probably stop it just by moving myself, so I was possibly responsible enough for it to count.

Damn.

The shadow legion made me briefly wonder why Katerina was ‘just’ a Legata, and not a War Sentinel. How large was the gap between the two? Were all the Legatus this powerful?

How powerful were the two cards that Queen had gifted me?

Orders were shouted, and everyone squeezed a little closer together, metal and wood shields overlapping with shields of inky Darkness. Spears in the front row went low, while spears in the second row went high, two layers of pointed steel and all-consuming void pointed towards our foes.

The Legion was tightly packed together on the left wing of the army, practicing a tight, defensive formation as opposed to a looser, more aggressive one.

“Left!” The [Tribune] roared, and the entire cohort took a left step forward. “Right!”

The Centurions joined in the cadence, drums beating in slow time with the commands.

We took a right step forward, having drilled this particularly slow method of advancement for months… years for almost everyone here.

Drills tried to be bloodless combat, to turn combat into bloody drills.

Rocks and metal slugs whizzed over my head like angry bees. Arrows rained down on us, and long-range skills were fired in our direction.

A vortex of air hit one of the [Batteries] at an odd angle, slipping past the shield and connecting solidly with his head. The pressure difference snapped his neck, and my healing snapped it right back into shape.

I traced the shot back where it came from, quickly losing it as the distance became significant. I was forced to mentally reevaluate the Wind element when it came to combat.

I’d always been told, seen, and believed it was one of the weaker combat elements, and it was only now that my assumptions were being challenged. If it could pack a lethal punch at that sort of range, it was a serious element to look out for. Not as good as Earth or Metal for long-range ‘reach out and touch someone’, but the potential was there. It had a different set of utility than Earth or Metal at the very least.

Then we were past Meng Ao’s barrier.

We hit the enemy lines not with a crash, but with a whimper. I couldn’t see it, being so deep in the formation, but I could hear it. The desperate cries on the other side to ‘hold the line’ and to ‘kill the invading barbarians’ the moment they entered Sound range. The staccato of metal on metal as the dullahans trembled at our approach, then the sharp, acrid tang of blood.

Left. Right.

An implacable, remorseless killing machine, the Legion didn’t slow one bit as we hit the dullahan lines. We simply scythed through the irregulars and conscripts like they weren’t there. A slow-moving engine of death, that chewed up everyone foolish enough to stand in its path.

We marched slower going up a hill.

“Rotate!” The [Centurion] in charge of our century called out, and the first lines stepped to the side and stayed in a defensive position while the rest of the troops continued forward. Weird shit happened with the shadows and the soldiers trying to occupy the same space - they sort of flowed over and through them. Once the former front line hit the back of the century, they slid back into position, and continued to march forward.

The cohort was a 3x3 grid of centuries, and part of our drilling included how to ‘rotate’ the centuries around the stationary center - where I was - to always keep fresh soldiers in the front.

In theory we could also rotate the entire Legion, but I had my doubts on the practicality of that in the heat of battle.

I got to see glimpses of how the shadow legion fought. They were made out of Darkness, they had no substance to them. Blades created eddies through their bodies as they passed through, but the shadow’s spears were even deadlier than a real one. Their shields ‘ate’ attacks.

A sword passed through one of the shields, and only half of it came out again. The soldier had a brief shocked look on his face before a half-dozen spears impaled him, and left him for the third line to finish off.

The lack of substance wasn’t all upside. A clever dullahan with a grisly whip made out of a human spine - why!? - used the shadow soldiers to their advantage, lashing his whip down low, through their feet, then flicking it up to strike calves and thighs. The man was a clever Classer, realizing that we didn’t move out of our formation. As long as he kept backpedaling, he was free to harass us outside the range of our spears. Our pace couldn’t be stopped, it was good for a thousand things, but we were a little weak against a powerful skirmisher with a longer reach than our weapons. Optio Maxlin’s lines were trying to redistribute potions, but it was taking time.

Soon we’d be deep inside Meng Ao’s army, and we wouldn’t be able to get anymore. One or two more volleys of potions, that was it.

“Wren! Take out bone whip!” Leonidus ordered over the command channel. The soldier in question blitzed through our lines, engaging with the skirmisher in an utterly unfair 2 on 1, the Primus Pilus’s shadow joining in on the fight. The level disparity made short work of the duel, and Wren made his way back into the Legion to triumphant cheers from the rest of us.

Burning blood started to rain down on us. The ground fell away beneath a trap, three soldiers screaming in agony as sharp downward-facing barbs let them in, but not out. Not without taking a pound of flesh.

“Three steps!” The [Centurion] ordered his century, able to quickly respond. “Front line, fall back!”

The century moved forward, protecting and covering the soldiers in the pits. I turned my head and focused my voice in the way I’d been taught, putting every ounce of command and authority into my words.

“Pull them out!” I roared, having faith in Reed’s ability to keep me from shouting in command’s ears.

The soldiers did what they were told, and while boots, belts, and some chainmail was left behind in the pits, the soldiers came out fine.

Night and I had spent many hours discussing my [Oath] and how it’d apply to battles like this, where people were trying to kill other people, and I was firmly on one side. I thought I had mostly figured it all out - while people were trying to kill me and mine, I was content to heal one side in favor of another. The gods and goddesses knew I’d done it often enough working as a Ranger or a Sentinel.

What surprised me was the sheer disparity in abilities. The average Exterreri soldier had a few dozen levels on the base conscripts, and that completely ignored that our side was labeled [Warrior] while they were [Artisan] and [Laborers].

We didn’t have to kill them all to utterly crush them. I couldn’t see what was going on past the century right in front of me to do more, but I could do one little bit. Make this one part of the battlefield a little saner. Save a few more lives. Each life saved was a victory, a balm to my soul.

“Dawn to the Legata. I need the century in front of me to start taking prisoners.” I didn’t shout or yell, there was no need with all the skills flying around, Sound included. I had faith in Reed’s abilities.

“Dawn. Unable to fully secure and extract prisoners at this time.” Katerina’s voice echoed in my ears.

“Katerina. No need to extract.” I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. I wish she could just listen and understand and do it.

What was it Iona always said?

Right!

Everyone wanted something. Figure out how to align interests.

“There is minimal risk to the soldiers in front of me currently, which is likely lowering their experience gain.” I was speaking rapidly, knowing that Katerina could keep up with me and the slower I talked, the more people died. “A ‘capture and subdue’ is an order of magnitude more difficult, boosting our experience at minimal risk to us. Captives are also valuable, and the Legion gets to practice more skills.”

“Agreed with Dawn.” Leonidus’s support was unexpected. “We bear none of the cost of capturing Meng Ao’s soldiers and gain all the benefits. If Dawn’s confident that she can handle the added difficulty, I see no reason not to.”

“Tribune Tristanus. Disagree. This is our first engagement. Keep it simple. More complex maneuvers for further engagements.”

With nobody saying anything else, the command chat was briefly overtaken by recon reports.

“Wang Jian has taken to the skies on a paper tiger. Battling Meng Ao. Harpies circling. Meng Ao’s heavy cavalry looking for an opening.”

I wasn’t going to wait. I extended my healing carefully, cautiously, picking a few individuals who were no longer a danger and fully disarmed.

It had the potential to go horribly wrong. It’d be on my head if they got up and stabbed the fellow men and women of the Legion. It’d arguably be mutiny or treason if Katerina decided against taking prisoners.

If saving people’s lives made me a traitor, I’d wear the badge with pride. My [Oath] was my highest ideal, the one thing I strove for above all else.

I would save lives, come brimstone, fire, and the end of the world.

“Take prisoners.” Katerina ordered, and I felt a huge invisible weight lift off my chest. “Only for the cohort Dawn’s in.”

It was interesting to see in real time how long it took the order to trickle down the chain of command. It felt like an eternity, and there was a brief awkward moment as soldiers were repeatedly stabbing fallen dullahans, trying to get them to “Die, die, DIE!” while I was keeping them alive.

Then the order to take prisoners came down, and various impromptu ways of tying hands behind backs were found. Prisoners were roughly shoved into the dirt, rapidly turning into mud with all the flowing blood, hands bound behind their back, and roughly stepped on - but they lived.

It broke my heart, but I had to admit that anyone tagged as a [Mage] was likely too dangerous to take prisoner. They’d be able to kill any one of my patients easily, in a way I might not be able to counter.

I wish I could save everyone. I wish nobody would die. A naive, childish wish, one that I carefully guarded and nurtured against the vast world trying to stomp the ideal to dust.

Reality snarled at me.

There were tens of thousands of people fighting here. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t keep everyone alive. Trying to heal both sides, every injured man, woman, and child, would just up the casualty count.

I dreamed of a better world. I wanted to make a better world.

But that wasn’t the world I lived in now, and practicality forced my hands. I asked myself a question.

How would I save the most people?

How could I keep the largest number of people alive?

In the moment, I believed that throwing my weight behind one side whole-heartedly, rescuing people while I could, and seeing if the other side would break and run, would result in more people alive than any other path I could take.

I could be wrong.

I almost prayed I was wrong, that there was some solution I could find that had even fewer people dying.

Barring that, I wasn’t going to let my agonizing result in anyone dying. Quick, decisive action was required. It saved the most lives in the end.

A warrior sprinted through Wang Jian’s forces, eight shimmering blades of Ice dancing around her, cutting down everyone who came near her. A… I couldn’t tell if they were a kid, a beardless dwarf, or someone who’d shrunk themselves, was sprinting between people’s legs with Lightning arcing from their body to random people near him. A bare-chested minotaur lowered his horns and attempted to ram through our Legion, single-handedly. He got two lines deep before the combined mass of spears brought him down, and the Legion seamlessly reformed around the hole he’d punched, the soldiers battered and with their gear broken, but nobody dead.

My mana was holding strong. Between my [Batteries], our slow pace, and the fact that we outclassed the levies hard, I wasn’t being taxed particularly hard.

At the same time, I had to consider that this was the start of the battle, and the sun was still rising. This could go until late into the night, at which point I’d start needing to make hard decisions.

Hard decisions - while half-blind. Being tucked away inside the Legion was great for many things, but not for having a full view of the battle for split-second decision making.

The battlefield was both chaotic and controlled. It felt like I was in the eye of the storm, sheltered from the chaos and death flying all around. I saw skills bloom from far away, their impact so large that it shuddered over the Legion, and others were smaller, closer, more personalized.

A thousand things were going on at once, and no matter how many [Parallel Thought] processes I had going on, I could only follow a small fraction of the battle.

All the while, skills flew. A deep breath in, followed by harsh bellows and agonized screaming was a former [Glassblower] aerosolizing burning glass into our forces. Burning blood continued to literally rain on us as a battlefield skill was used. Barriers were erected and Acid clouds descended. Lights flashed far away, only to get eaten by Darkness. Shockwaves made my teeth chatter, and the ground occasionally rumbled beneath my feet.

Caltrops were scattered in great waves as the dullahans pulled back. My ear crackled with deliberate noise as Reed shifted the channels around. A small notification that I was now talking with slightly different people.

“Dawn, any issues with sharp foot injuries?” Leonidus asked.

Oh gods.

Oh goddesses.

I saw exactly where this was going.

I swallowed a nervous lump.

“No issues.” I whispered, knowing he could hear it.

The order to slow down, stop, or divert ourselves never came, but the screams.

The screams haunted me. Not everyone had a pain skill.

“1st Cohort!” The [Tribune] ordered. “Rotate! Three steps!”

The cohort stopped its endless march along with the rest of the Legion, and started to turn. I was one of the only people not moving, along with the rest of my line. We were in the specialist position in the center of the cohort, the axel to the great wheel being rotated around. The centuries in the front shuffled to the right and back, while fresh centuries moved forward. My old line, Grizzly, Darts, Specs and the rest were now near the front of the fighting.

I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of Auri burning a streak into the sky, heading towards the harpies. She had a grudge to settle, and clearly now was the moment.

We were the tightest-packed formation I could see, and it made us tempting to the harpies above. Another barrage of rocks came down on us, some missing entirely.

Some.

With the weight and the speed the rocks were going at, a hit on a shoulder tore an arm clean off, and a hit on the head was instantly lethal. Not even my healing could fix a head entirely obliterated like that.

A rock crashed through Spec’s shield, the forces trying to break his arm but failing. It hit his helmet and glanced off.

A skill? A miracle? Sheer, bloody luck?

Specs couldn’t believe it either, taking his helmet off and marveling at the dent, studying it through his multi-faceted glasses.

The second rock obliterated his head, showering us in blood and bone. Nike’s eyes bulged in disbelief.

“Dawn!” She yelled at me in shock and surprise more than anything else.

“I’m powerful, I’m not all-powerful!” I snapped back at her, fighting back the despair at one of my friends dying. We’d lived and laughed together for months, and he was dead in an instant. There was no time to mourn, to grieve, to lament his life, a thousand others needed my attention now or the list would simply grow.

I suppose I’d always been right about my suspicion that instantly obliterating a head was more than my healing could keep up with.

I was no [Chaplain] or [Priest], no [Gravedigger] nor [Mourner]. The living were my concern, not the dead, no matter how much it broke my heart. I stepped over Specs, wishing things could’ve been different.

Through all this, no matter the obstacles sent our way, we implacably chewed our way through Meng Ao’s forces. The complaints about our formation, speed, and how many troops we had fighting in the front going on in the command chat steadily died out, replaced by utter smugness from Katerina. She didn’t say anything, but I could feel it radiating off her in waves as we utterly crushed our foes.

The sun steadily climbed overhead, and of all things, I caught myself wondering about lunch.

Lunch.

While on the battlefield.

I wanted to rage and scream at myself for becoming so detached from the battle. From the countless lives snuffed out around us. At thinking of my stomach when I’d just stepped over Spec’s cooling body, trying not to slip on the blood. How many had fought? How many had died? How many notifications starting with ‘your army has slain’ were waiting for me?

And I was wondering about lunch?!

I needed Iona, or maybe to fly to the island and find Linnet.

I reviewed injuries to see if there was anything I was missing. If my healing was failing in some respect.

Crossbow bolt to the face. The eye was pierced, the orbital socket was blown back, and wood, steel, and bone shards were embedded into the brain. Frontal lobe and parietal lobe shredded. Middle cerebral artery and ophthalmic artery ruined, pouring blood and causing secondary issues. Meninges punctured, all three layers. Back of the skull blown apart.

[Dance with the Heavens] was on the case. The bolt was dissolved, not a fleck of metal, wood, or any minor impurities from either left behind, such as a crushed up portion of an insect shell from the wood or carbon from the steel. Harmless, practically unnoticeable, but in the brain it would cause endless issues. The skull fragments snapped back into place, recreating the structure of his head. Jellied eyeball was brought back together in the vitreous, then the choroid, retina, fovea, sclera, lens, cornea, pupil and iris were all reconstructed. The optical nerve reattached the eye to the brain, the meninges was stitched back together. Destroyed neurons were recreated out of thin air, pulled from the great dimension that stored all matter. Arteries were reconstructed, and the blood pooling in his head was vaporized, returned in kind to the dimension the neurons had come from.

The pain receptors on the side of the head stopped screaming that everything was wrong. My own close look at the operation had me satisfied that not only had I stolen him back from Black Crow, but he’d stay stolen. No tiny shard was left in his brain, slowly inching towards an artery, ready to rupture it in his sleep and cause a massive brain aneurysm.

“Check check! Incoming charge! Right wing!” A voice screamed in the command chat.

“Ironside! Right! Face! Brace!” Katerina instantly ordered.

In near-unison, we all stopped where we were, and turned to the right. The soldiers on the former front, now the left wing, still had their spears and shields in the same direction, but were no longer advancing.

“Dawn! Maximum visibility, front of the formation, now!” Katerina barely kept herself under control as she shouted orders in my ear. “Be showy!”

“Hold position!” I ordered Nike and the rest of my line, dropping my shield.

Maximum visibility was the order.

My wings unfurled from my back as I shot off towards the front lines. Multiple spellbooks snapped into existence as I teleported them out of [Loremaster’s Library], instantly opening them to the right pages and casting the skills at high speed.

A Sound spell to make me loud.

A Radiance spell to give me a powerful glow, almost but not quite blinding to look at.

A second Sound spell to imbue my voice with Radiance and Celestial, giving my words vibrancy and weight. I could do one myself, but not both.

I arrived in front of and slightly above the front cohorts in a flash.

“Dawn has arrived!” I yelled in triumph, raising my fist above my head. My hair whipped around me from the sudden deceleration, and I realized exactly why Katerina had needed me here and now, a brief morale boost far more important than trying to maintain plausible deniability.

We were facing a heavy cavalry charge.

Instead of horses, it was a herd of triceratops barreling down towards us, each one coated in steel inches thick, their horns with serrated coverings. Their riders all had long spears pointed towards us, and the greatest game of chicken was occurring.

The charge couldn’t break through the entire Legion. Shifted as we were, they’d need to break through three whole cohorts, each one piled 24 soldiers deep. It just wasn’t possible, they’d get bogged down and die.

Only if we held the line.

Only if the troops in the front didn’t break and run.

Make no mistake, in front of a heavy charge like that, everyone in the first three or four lines was a dead man walking. There was no way to survive, and I doubted I could do terribly much for them. Heads would burst like grapes under the heavy hooves, and anyone being trampled by the triceratops would be outside of sunlight long enough that [Wheel of Sun and Moon] wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing for them.

If the soldiers broke, it could have a cascading effect on the Legion. ‘They broke and ran to save their lives, why shouldn’t I also save my life?’

If we didn’t break, the cavalry died.

If we broke, we died.

They charged at us, and I instantly picked out a soldier with a much fancier hat, a commander of sorts. I raised my finger at him, intent on [Nova Lancing] him and potentially killing the charge in its infancy.

“Dawn, hold fire!” Katerina yelled in my ear. I paused, unsure why I shouldn’t start blunting the impact and taking out their strongest warrior, but discipline and trust held.

I stared them down, flying in the sky, daring them to hit us. It was only for a few seconds, but at the speeds everyone moved at, the seconds were like an eternity. The front ranks took a knee, shadow and flesh alike, and the second and third ranks clustered in around them.

The battle didn’t end just because we were facing one segment of the army. The battle continued to rage on, not just up and down our little corner of the battlefield, the Legion surrounded and besieged on all sides, and winning, but high in the sky where harpy feathers burned and fell, where archers were firing arrows and skills all over, the fight stretching for thousands upon thousands of men and women doing their best to butcher each other.

I had come up from the bottom of the well, and had a glimpse of the world. The only part that mattered in the moment was the charge coming my way.

I blinked.

They blinked, and turned the charge away from us.

“Alchemicals! Fire!” The tribune ordered as the triceratops thundered in front of our formation. Maxlin’s remaining potions were broken out, and thrown at the beasts.

“Dawn, return.” Katerina crisply ordered in my ear. I was back to my spot in a flash, not seeing the need to pretend I was slow anymore. Then, the command chatter went dead quiet in my ear for a heart-stopping moment. Words I feared and dreaded were spoken with an almost clinical detachment.

“Leonidus is dead.”