“Do you really not have any equipment?” Tom asked dubiously as we tromped through a crowd of jingling and clanking soldiers towards our place at the front of what was shaping up to be the largest battle I had ever had the pleasure—or displeasure, depending on how you look at it—I had ever seen. And I had seen a good few.

  The army was segmented into four different contingents: the Barriers, the Brawlers, the Casters, and the Reserves. These contingents were pretty much what you would expect hearing those names, with the exception of just a few details.

  The Barriers were the meat-shields. They were the ones who absorbed whatever charges or magic may come the army’s way. Their survival rate was abysmally low, coming in at around three percent a week. For context, that means that every week pretty much the entire contingent had to be replaced due to casualties—mainly caused by large, area-of-effect spells. Individual shots were less of a problem, as were arrow volleys due to the presence of ample shields in the ranks. Participants were encouraged to bring or buy a shield at the earliest possible convenience. Too bad mine was probably dust and frozen splinters by now.

  The Brawlers was a blanket term for those who did the majority of the fighting without magic. Their survival rate was somewhere near the seventy percent mark. Rather high, if you think about it. It probably had something to do with the Barriers actually doing their job. These fighters were made of intermingled tanks, swordsmen and those with other close-range weapons, and projectile fighters. The projectile fighters, such as those with slings or bows or atlatls and the like, were positioned towards the rear of this contingent, but there was still a clear gap between them and the Casters.

  The Casters were those who could cast long-range magical attacks. Those who could only use close-range ones were dispersed among the Brawlers. Casters were placed in the rear because they had far more range than any archer did at this point, despite the archers’ range scaling faster than theirs. Their survival rate was in the middle nineties, which is amazing considering they occupied a pivotal role in the slightly-oiled machine that was the Intrepid Explorers’ army.

  The Reserves were, of course, held in reserve. They were a mix of two different types of people. One, the people too valuable to risk even a five percent chance of losing them, and two, the people who paid for the privilege. They were held in reserve, without risk of death. So far, not a single reservee had been killed in action.

  “I used to have a good shield,” I said, answering Tom’s question, “But I lost it last floor. Just got a brand new sword, though. It’ll have to do.”

  Elbon looked over at me, concerned. “That’s it? Even the newest of the newcomers have more than that.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t had the funds nor the opportunity to gather anything worthwhile in terms of gear yet. That would have to change in the near future, as I couldn’t see myself lasting that much longer without it. A good breastplate was the least I could stomach on my body at all times, and I still felt naked without one even though it had been more than eight years since I’d worn it.

  Still, having a sword was nice. And it was better than nothing even if the sword itself was specifically designed to go with a shield. Oh well, I would have to work around that little inconvenience.

  I pulled my sword out and examined it more closely in the light. It was engraved, strangely enough. It had a system of curls and dots like the edges of a doily carved into right where the blade met the crosspiece. It also had that strange symbol I had seen back on the entrance to the dungeon and the fountain outside it carved into the center like an eye. That was where the faint light-blue glow of the enchantment emanated from to coat the rest of the blade. It was also the place where I felt the most mana coming from.

  Above that there was a knotted pattern like you would find on ancient Celtic garments traveling up the edges of the fuller towards the point, where it tapered off in a distinctive needle pattern. There were words engraved on the hilt.

  VIVO, TENEO, MORIOR

  I live, I hold, I die.

  That’s what the sword said.

  A saying written in ancient Latin. Not something I would have expected to be on something given by the system. Its own language was runes, which is what I would have expected the text to be written in. That would be a rune pattern of intertwining knots much like the pattern running up the sword. They would form an equilateral triangle with the runes Life and Death on either point at the bottom with the rune for Grasp as the apex. The grammar was negligible.

  But that didn’t answer the question. Why Latin? Why not post-middle English or ancient German or perhaps older Mexican? Latin was dead. And not just dead as in not spoken anymore, but dead dead. Even the waning religion Catholicism had stopped using it by now. The last fifteen hundred years had just been that hard on the world.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Either way, it was clearly a message of some sort, just one I couldn’t quite decipher at the moment. It would have to wait for a later date.

  The others whistled when they saw the sword. Even Walter, who had been fairly quiet up until this point, could appreciate it for its beauty. It really was that finely crafted a sword. And the sharpness enchantment felt… somewhat more than others I had seen before.

  “Where did you get that?” Elbon said in wonder. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the work of one of the long-dead Paragons. Granted, it’s a lower tier than they would make, but still…” He trailed off.

  “I got it as a reward from my floor quest last floor.” I said, swinging the sword and feeling it glide easily through the air with little noise. “It was quite a floor, let me tell you.”

  “Must’ve been if you got that,” Tom said, his voice a tiny bit reverent. “May I touch it?”

  I held out the sword to him, and he gently placed the tip of his pointer finger on the unknown symbol. He nearly flinched at the prickly feel of Sharpness coming off the weapon.

  “Where’s the rune for the enchantment?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t find it on there when I gave it a once-over. It’s possible I missed it, but there weren’t any power runes on it as far as I could tell. Only that one in the center radiates power, but it isn’t Sharpness. It’s a rune I don’t recognize and can’t read for the life of me. It was on the front of the Dungeon as well.”

  Tom hummed thoughtfully, looking over the inscriptions in the blade. “Vivo, Teneo, Morior. I don’t recognize the language. You?”

  I nodded. “It’s ancient Latin. I would be surprised if more than one every ten million or more could read it. It’s a very dead language, just like runes. That there has a statement I can’t quite piece together the meaning of. I know what it says, but what it means escapes me.

  Tom raised an eyebrow and handed the sword back to me. “I take it you’re some kind of scholar?”

  “Nah, just interested in some pieces of history leading up to the war. Nothing too important.”

  He seemed to accept that explanation at face value even though I had left out the core of why I had done so. I guess normal people didn’t have to find a reason to do things other than that they just liked to do them. I had been out on the streets for eight years and I still wasn’t quite used to that. It was off-putting.

  We walked up to what looked like a command tent near the middle of the field of soldiers and on the edge of the camp itself. There were four people standing around it, each with an insignia on their breast signifying the contingent they were in charge of. There was a sword, a shield, a staff, and a letter R.

  I immediately knew which symbol was which.

  We walked up to the man with the insignia of a shield and saluted with a fist to our right breast. “Reporting for duty, sir.” Elbon said stiffly, keeping his back straight and his eyes facing forward into the middle distance. It was a fairly average salute, nothing special or elaborate like I had seen in the past.

  “Good, good.” The man said. “You’ll be front and center today, so be certain to prepare accordingly.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  And like that, we left towards the front of the army.

  I was unimpressed with the officers here, to be honest. Sure, maybe they weren’t supposed to be overly friendly with their men, and they probably were trying to avoid forming attachments to men who were going to die sooner rather than later anyway. Even so, they could make at least some effort to come across as actual persons rather than stone walls that told you where to go and when to fight. Good leaders didn’t just bald-faced order their charges around like dogs, they understood that their subordinates were men like them and treated them as such.

  On the walk to the front, I took the time to examine the faces of the people surrounding me. The people in the back were chatting and laughing, shaking hands and gesticulating their enthusiasm. But as we got closer to the place where all the death would happen, faces paled and expressions became more grim. These were people who knew their circumstances and knew they couldn’t do anything about it. The eyes that yet held hope in them were few and fleeting.

  Silence became the rule, not the exception, as we kept moving forward. Those that were talking were also sketching with sticks in the dirt or pencils on pads of paper—planning for the upcoming battle.

  Looking out into what once was called no man’s land back when trench warfare was still practiced, I saw nothing but a sea of red mud. This was a place men had fought and died or been wounded hundreds of times. It was a place of death and suffering and bloodshed such as I had not seen since the time before, when we few brothers had watched recordings of a war not seen for generations. The war to end all wars, it had been called.

  A foolish name, that. Inapt and idealistic, ignorant of human nature, and proven false not thirty years later. Humans are born for war. We know nothing but.

  There had been many like it, in the intervening millennium. And even seventeen hundred years later we were still waging its like. Amongst ourselves, against the stars, against faces that once belonged to the ones we loved most now usurped and twisted to malignant actions and disparate souls.

  Yet still, I found it fitting, in a way. The war to end all wars. The bellum bellorum. It’s a grandiose term designed to evoke a certain feel of finality. That’s what war is. An end. The end. That dying breath of eras? That crumbling of worlds? That is war.

  That has always been war.

  I am reminded of this now as I write this journal, just as I was back then on that blood-soaked plain.

  No. No it is not a journal. It is a memorial. It is my story, the story of a man who rose and fell, who won and lost, who gave it all on the field just like that day so long, long ago—that fateful day on which I took my first steps towards the Red Dawn. It is a final record of who I was and what I tried to be.

  What I failed to be, in the end.

  This flickering candlelight illuminates my work. It will go out, soon. I will light a new one. The nub of my pen will run dry. I will dip it again. Such it is with myself, this flickering life of mine. Soon it too will pass away and a new generation will grow in my place. That is alright. I never wanted to last forever. Just long enough.

  Just long enough.