If there was one advantage to infiltrating Nocturnal Nation, and Aexilica had to admit she was struggling to find any at all, it was that the people there were so thoroughly beaten down and abused that they seemed not to take any note at all of anything. She had never seen a bunch so terrified of the unusual in her life.

They never met her eyes, even as she exertively tried to catch theirs, and seemed to shuffle more than walk. The way they moved, she realised, was rather repulsively akin to those motions of a frightened animal. A beast accustomed to being struck as it drew too near, yet forced close all the same by its need for food or shelter.

"The Nocturnae keep their humans beaten down," Krummer hissed, eyes sharp and hot enough with rage that he seemed almost to be balancing all the fear of all the locals at once. "Makes them more malleable I suppose." He spat, contemptuously. Aexilica was almost surprised not to see the spit sizzle.

"Keep that to yourself." Kruger told him coolly, glancing around as he said it. Aexilica followed his gaze and found many of the citizens suddenly giving them a wider berth, paying furtive attention and scrambling away. Not good. Attention would get them killed, however easy things were so far.

"Apologies, Fuhrer." Krummer dropped his gaze instantly, and Aexilica saw Kruger's features twist again. Not cruelly or with any great rage, more a dull sort of annoyance. Was the word an insult, she wondered? Surely his sycophant would not use it if so. But then why would he be so bothered?

"We should keep moving." Vari grunted, surprising Aexilica by taking the lead. But pleasantly surprising her, at least. If he was in front then maybe his body would shield hers if they were ambushed by any of those curious staves the people of these lands used in battle.

They did keep moving, and quicker. Long strides carried them deeper into the rotting city, where the mists seemed to coil like exhalations from diseased lungs and everything reeked of terror. They had a destination, though. Something to give focus to their steps, if only of a wavering kind.

It didn't take long to find a group of the Nocturnal Nation's guards, and a briefer time still to overpower them. The soaring technologies of this land, Aexilica had learned, came at the cost of rarer magic by far. Not a one among the warriors was anything beyond what a mundane human body could manage, and though all were equipped with those deadly staves they didn't have the chance to use them. Not so much as a scream rang out before all of them were either dead or incapacitated. The prize was not simply neutralising a group of enemies however, it was what they were wearing.

"These reek." Aexilica frowned, lip curling as she pulled on the sweat-clodden fabric and disguised herself. The others did so too. None of them bothered to move out of sight as they did so, nudity was a petty concern in their current conditions and there was no surprise to see it abandoned in favour of survival.

"That's probably for the best." Krummer noted, as he clothed himself. "Some of these creatures can smell better than any blood-hound, they'll have far higher odds of detecting us if we don't reek of the enemy."

It made a sort of sense to Aexilica, but did little to mitigate the smell.

What did was the urgency of their mission, and the terror of throwing herself back into it. They breezed through the streets with a newfound air of…Repulsion. If the people had been wary and scared at the outskirts, here, deeper into the city, they were practically terrified at the very sight of them.

It's the clothing. Aexilica realised, tugging at her strange coat. The notion of a uniform has Kruger called it was still odd to her, and she could recall the bizarity of seeing it in the enemy mid-battle. How every man she killed seemed to have been replaced by a hundred identical copies, how their numbers appeared without end.

Now she saw another element to it, because wearing those colours left her a copy of all the others, too. There were no individuals in this army, just pieces of the greater hole. Of course people feared her as she wore their colours. She was their very nation's killing force all condensed to a single body.

Which didn't mean they could afford to be lax as they made their way through the city, far from it. By now word would have spread that a group of oddly-dressed people had been making their way around the outskirts—they had to assume it would have, at least—and so the enemy's guard would be raised. Unfortunate, dangerous, but unavoidable. Speed would avail them here, not caution.

Fortunately, there were other advantages. This place seemed bizarre in its diversity, to Aexilica. Most of course had the same pale skin as Sculds, and basic features of brown hair and tallow faces were common enough that she knew them to be ethnic traits. But there were far more people clearly extracted from some other race than she'd have expected in either Aethiq or Scurlga, slaves included.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Standing out as much as they would have in Aexilica's home would have been dangerous, and the unexpected anonymity made things smoother by far. They continued through the city, walking briskly enough to ensure word of their sights would fall behind them. Or trying to, at least. Another disadvantage of this land's scarce and feeble magic was the knowledge that moving with obviously superhuman speed was, itself, a clear indicator of them being abnormal. They were forced to take the plodding pace of people whose muscles moved under their own power only, even as every nerve in Aexilica's body frayed with the instinct to hurry.

Everything, she thought, was going to go wrong. But it didn't. Their anonymity held strong as they approached the looming, black castle cresting the city. In the light of day it felt somehow wrong, at odds with the grimness of the land around it. The stone seemed withered, like it was flinching back from the light. It was a petty thing to find herself bolstered by, but Aexilica's nerves hardened all the same and she continued towards it.

"We stick together." Kruger instructed them as they approached. "And we move fast. We can't fight them power for power, so if we don't do this before the enemy can consolidate their forces then we'll lose."

She realised only then what a great risk was being taken. Not just by her, for Kruger himself to be doing this—throwing his own life onto the front lines—it seemed almost unthinkable.

"Why are you taking this chance?" She whispered, as they hurtled along the floor like fog dragged in a gale.

Kruger was silent for a moment, but she got her answer.

"To be frank, we have no chance of victory with your friend aiding them. If I can't help to unconfuse her now, we'll lose no matter what. This is not, in that regard, really a risk."

Put like that, analyzed with such stark, indifferent calculation, Aexilica could see the logic of it. And it was a sobreing reminder of how great the gap between her and Emma had gotten. Could the girl really threaten to bring a single side of this conflict victory?

Yes, she's Emma.

They reached the fortress, and were finally staring down the most dangerous part of their entire plan. Aexilica still wasn't quite used to these curious foreign buildings, and her only real point of comparison for the thing came from Vari's own palace in Vichin—or rather Vari's father's. That had seemed built purely for defensive purposes, to her eye. Thick, boxy walls that stretched high with its location being chosen in such a way as to give the structure a line of sight that extended in every direction around itself.

By comparison, this one seemed all too pregnable. But that was from the outside, Aexilica kept herself sharp as they headed for it.

She'd not been certain how Kruger had planned to undergo their infiltration, and her curiosity had been piqued for a while. As it happened he'd opted for rather a mundane strategy. They approached one of the side entrances, far from the front gate, and knocked. Then kept knocking. After a few minutes—terrible minutes in which each one seemed certain to end with word of their presence catching up—the door opened.

On the other side was a short, grubby looking man with mean eyes who did not appear in any way pleased to see them. Aexilica mirrored his sentiment almost reflexively.

"What do you want?" He spat. Strange accent, he had. Not like hers or Vari's that she could tell—though similar-ish to the latter. Krummer surprised her by affecting a near-identical one.

"We caught these fucks trying to scarper." He growled. "Hauling them back in, quiet-like."

The guard's eyes narrowed.

"Deserters? And you're just bringing them in? Where are the provosts?"

Krummer leaned in a shade, looking suddenly tired.

"Do you really want those shits sniffing around here? They're coming back willingly, let's just be done with this. I don't want to get dragged into a fucking court martial to repeat what I saw twenty times over the next fortnight, do you?"

The guard didn't look convinced as much as…Disinterested. Aexilica had to resist a confused frown at that. Aethiqi were hardly unerring in their duties, but this place seemed to breed a unique kind of apathy in its people that was hard for her to describe. It almost made her feel sleepy—drained—just seeing them think and talk. At last the guard spoke again, tongue practically dragging on his teeth as he made the words all slow and clumsily.

"Fine, fine just hurry them in. But if any of these buggers cause issues for me again I'll plug them myself."

Aexilica didn't know what that word meant, not in this context. She assumed she had just been threatened with either death or rape. Typical man stuff, then. They were ushered inside.

It was cold, dark. Aexilica had assumed the castle only looked foreboding from without, but inside its walls she found herself almost pinched by the tightness of it all. There was actually mist coiling around the floors, and their footsteps seemed to race ahead of them.

"Our knowledge of the interior isn't nearly as great as our knowledge of the Nocturnal military's customs and habits." Krummer warned the group, voice low and cautious. "Be aware of that. We're going in almost blind here."

Brilliant. Aexilica felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature, and everything to do with…Something. A presence, or perhaps a consciousness. The simple certainty that she was being watched.

She had, of course, felt such things before. In the plains, hunting. When her life was in her hands and her arms and armour were all that stood between her and a ferocious monster. Now the feeling was magnified a hundredfold. A thousandfold. There was a cool certainty in the back of her mind that she would encounter something deadly here, and that it would be all too eager for her life.

Paranoia? Perhaps. But one did not survive doing Aexilica's job for half as many years as she had by being not cautious enough. They continued slowly, turning corners only with frayed nerves and almost excruciating alertness.

And even still, with all that, they found themselves surprised when the first of the Nocturnae's leaders stumbled onto them. There was a moment. A single one, frozen in time. A second hung suspended in the air, slowly dangling one way and the other. It couldn't last. The strain mounted, and it crashed down to the ground and shattered. Shards of violence flew in all directions, littering everyone present.

They all started moving at once.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.