We’ve been marching for just over a day now, I’ve been placed near the back of the group in between the high ranking people at the back and the main force at the front. The first day of marching was pretty intense, with everyone eager to catch this aberration, but by now everyone’s settled into a calmer routine. I’ve been mostly watching the scenery go by and being in my head about what I learned in the briefing and how I failed to notice the aberration. Logically, I know that it was just hiding it to avoid capture, and due to the severity of the aberration, its not my fault, but I can’t help but feel responsible for the deaths of all those soldiers.

  As the twin suns climb higher in the sky, I notice I’ve fallen into rhythm with two of the others. One is another woman who looks to be an Officer like me. She looks about my height and age and has brown hair down to her shoulders and a fringe that comes down to just above her eyes. The man she’s talking to looks younger than her, and is one of the soldiers from the Beam unit I saw earlier. He’s well built—as you’d expect a young soldier to be—with black hair that’s cut short. He’s wearing the standard Beam uniform, mostly just trousers with a hooded cloak. Under the cloak is a black light armour, and at his waist is a holster for the signature crossbow. It still looks mostly standard, meaning the guy must be a relatively new recruit to the Beams. As I watch them, the Officer finishes whatever she was saying and glances at me. I try to look away, embarrassed at being caught, but we’re next to each other in the formation, so there’s only a little space between us all anyway. She approaches me, falling into step next to me, “Hey! It’s Officer Icishan, right?”

  “Yes, that’s me. And you are?” I ask her. She sounds friendlier than any other Officer I’ve ever spoken to before, and I’m not sure how to react to it.

  “I’m Officer Rebecca Lorenga, but you can just call me Rebecca, using my full title all the time is a tad cumbersome, no?” She says, grinning at me.

  At this point, I’m more confused than ever at her effusive friendliness, but I go along with it anyway. “In that case, you can call me Charlotte then. How did you get assigned to this operation, Rebecca?” I ask, feeling a strange curiousness about this weirdly friendly Officer. Most Officers training involves competing with your fellow Officers, for better results and better assignments, I know for certain that mine did. My focus on that is part of how I managed to rise through the ranks so fast. I’m still undecided on whether this assignment will be good or bad for my career.

  “Oh, just lucky, I think. I’m part of the western garrison in Solcept and seeing as they went out of the western gate I think they just chose from our garrison to fill out the numbers.” She laughs softly, “although, I guess calling it lucky depends on how quick we catch this aberrant.”

  “True enough,” I say joining her in laughing, “were you in the briefing, I don’t remember seeing you there?”

  “No, no I didn’t get to go. One of the other officers from the group from our garrison—who’s had some more successful assignments than me recently—got to attend that, me and the other Officers just got the documents so we know enough of what’s going on.” She says, a blush creeping into her cheeks as she does.

  “It happens to the best of us. Well at least you’re up to date on the aberrant we’re chasing. Any thoughts on the matter?” I ask her, always keen to get as much info as I can and you never know who has the right insight to fix a problem.

  Rebecca looks up at me, smiling. “Not really had any thoughts other than the obvious ones in the documents. Although this does seem a rather large group for chasing a single aberrant. Maybe it’s just an abundance of caution considering what happened last time we slipped.” She says, the look on her face turning thoughtful. My admiration for her strategic mind is interrupted by the blush that creeps across my cheeks now as she mentions the slip up, clearly referring to my negative testing of the aberrant and leaving it to the soldiers to deal with. Soldiers who now lie in pieces. “Say, the documents we got said that the soldiers were killed, do you know what actually happened to them?” Rebecca asks, almost innocently.

  I give her a look, suppressing the shudder that accompanies the memory of the images of the dismembered soldiers. “Well, based on the evidence it’s difficult to say the definite cause, but it, uh, seems they were dismembered through some kind of augmented physical strength.” I pause, trying to not let the thought of it get to me.

  “Gods… that’s insane. I got to look at the aberrant records once and that sounds way beyond anything I saw in there.” She says, trailing off, awe clear in her voice.

  “Hey, I’m sorry for eavesdropping but could I ask some questions?” A male voice asks from behind Rebecca, I look up surprised to see the Beam who Rebecca was talking to earlier. Rebecca spins around, more surprised even than me.

  “Eavesdropping what they teach good Bisolian devotees during training now then, is it?” She says, and I can’t tell if she’s actually mad or joking.

  “I’m so sorry Officer Lorenga, my listening was only to further enhance my usefulness to Solaris and Solanka!” He says, trying to bow as we still walk.

  I see Rebecca turn to me and roll her eyes. She grabs the young Beam under his arms and yanks him upwards. Keep walking, you loon. “You’re fine, no hard feelings.” She says, shaking her head.

  As we start walking together, I decide to try and make this less awkward. “So you said you had questions for us? Do you perhaps have a name too?” I ask, raising my eyebrow as I do.

  “Oh! Of course Officer Icishan. My names Timothy Grundel, but everyone just calls me Tim. And well, as for the questions, I heard you talking about the aberrant and as we’re all part of the force to exterminate it, I wanted to know anything I can find out about its capabilities in order to destroy it better.” He says, rushing everything out. I have an inkling that he might be intimidated by me and Rebecca.

  “Well, as I’m sure you heard me say to R- Officer Lorenga, no one has seen her aberrant ability active and survived, but based on the remains it’s fair to say it augments her strength to a rather horrifying degree. Enough that she can take on a group of 40 Squires and Paladins and come out the only one standing.” I say, taking a small amount of pleasure at the dawning look of horror on Tim’s face.

  “So, so that’s why there’s only Knights and up here, okay… so staying at range is the strategy okay, okay.” He says, muttering to himself.

  I give Rebecca a look and she puts a hand on the guys shoulder. “Hey, you don’t need to worry too much, there’s 70 or so Knights here which means they all have equipment or armour that’s been affected by the divine, like you and your crossbow. It’s all gonna be fine, no need to worry.” She says in a soft voice.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “T-thanks,” he says, voice still a bit shaky, “yeah, we’ll be okay.”

  “We sure will, I just wanna know how one aberrant is so powerful. It seems way over the normal range”, she muses half to herself and half to us, I think, “you know, form when I saw those aberrant records that one time.”

  I smile at her and Tim, “well hopefully we can get it out of the thing just before we exterminate it. And hopefully that happens sooner rather than later. The gods know what horrors it can unleash on the countryside in the meantime.” I say, thoughtfully, as we continue our march away from Solcept.

  It’s been about a day since me, Rebecca and Tim had our first conversation and it would seem that Rebecca’s friendliness is infectious as we’ve all continued to talk and have even managed to get on first name basis. Even if it’s obvious that Tim feels like he shouldn’t be doing it sometimes.

  At about midmorning, we hear the blaring horn—coming from the front of the column of troops—that signifies a halt to the march. Before long a Squire approaches, sprinting up the side of the formation. They pass us and head straight for the cluster of people that stand around Commander Trinak.

  I glance at Rebecca, who’s stood to my side. “Must be something important.” I mutter to her. She just nods in agreement. We wait for a short while as Commander Trinak and his troupe race down to the front of the column. Before long a Squire come racing back us to summon us to the front of the column, where they’ve clearly found something of the aberrant we’re chasing.

  Me and Rebecca head down to the front, into a clearing where the road opens up—typically for small gatherings of travellers—where Commander Trinak beckons us over. “Ah, there you two are, come here. Meet my ace up my sleeve.” He says sweeping his hand out to the right, gesturing to the man stood there. I hear gasps from some of the other people gathered here. The man stands there, a distant expression on his face, completely overshadowed by the shining white lights in place of his eyes. “This here is a Divine Tracker I’m borrowing from our friends in the Supremacy. They give their lives in service of our twin gods and as result they can ‘see’ traces of the Divine Spark left behind by these aberrants.” He looks around at everyone, grinning, before returning his attention to the Divine Tracker, “take it away my friend, you sensed something, now tell us what you see.”

  The Tracker slowly looks around the clearing we’ve stopped in—his eyes pulsing as he does—before he responds, in a voice devoid of emotion. “The essence… it came to this clearing and remained for some time, although it felt… fear. After remaining its fear eventually fades and the essence moves on, further down the Western Road.” The Tracker finishes talking, its breathing heavy, and hunches over slightly, as if exhausted by what it just did.

  “Brilliant!” Trinak booms. “And now we know exactly what our disgusting little aberrant has been up to.”

  At that moment a Squire comes up and has a quick whispered conversation with the Commander. As soon as they’re done, he looks up, another massive grin on his face. “Officer Icishan, with me. We have witnesses!” He says already starting to walk off further into the clearing.

  I stand straighter as soon as he calls my name and hurriedly walk and catch up with the falling into step beside him. “Witnesses, sir?” I ask.

  “Yes, Icishan. Apparently they saw some homeless girl get on a cargo wagon. I’d like you to do the questioning once we get there.” He tells me.

  “Of course sir.” I reply, almost on instinct.

  Before long we arrive at the opposite edge of the clearing where a few of the Knights are guarding a small group of civilians stood there nervously. We walk up and Commander Trinak gives me a nod. I focus my attention on the witnesses, “Hello there, I’ve been made to understand you witnessed something notable?” I ask them, immediately settling into assignment mode.

  “H-hello Officer. Yes, we saw something we hope will benefit your holy mission,” the man at the front of the group begins, “we were talking to a group who were running a cargo wagon, transporting some food further west, as we wanted to see if we could arrange some transport for my family here, but the man running things declined.”

  I nod as he starts his story, encouraging him. “Okay, and what happened next?” I ask.

  “Well, as we were walking away from the wagon, some girl walked up and the man started talking to her. We kept an eye on things as she looked skin and bones, bless her.” The man looks down for a moment before continuing. “Then she spoke to other people in the group and they all got in the wagon and set off on the Western Road. That’s all we saw.” The man finishes, lapsing into silence.

  “Thank you, sir. I just have a few more questions for you and then you’re free to go. What did the girl look like? Was there anything unusual that stood out about her?” I ask, and once again I see the aberrant in my mind, looking half dead, but those eyes.

  “No, not really,” the man answers, “she just looked like a malnourished dirty girl. If I’d seen her in the city, I’d’ve thought she was one of those homeless people.”

  “Okay, thank you for that. Well, last thing, anything you can tell me about the other people on the wagon?” I ask him. I don’t think he’ll have noticed anything worth noting about them, but I do like to cover all my bases.

  “Not much I can rightly say, I’m afraid,” he says, “just that there were four of them, the guy in charge and his driver and two lady guards, least I assume they were, one had a giant bow.”

  “A giant bow, hmm?” I say, “interesting… Thanks for your help, Sir. You’re all free to go now.” I turn to the Knights and nod at them, before stepping back to where Commander Trinak is, off to the side.

  “Good job there, Icishan. Got what I expected and a little more too.” He grins down at me, putting his hand on my shoulder, “Right, get back to the formation, I’ll be there to update everyone shortly, then we’ll get back to the chase!”

  I can’t help the smile that crosses my face. “Of course Sir, right away.” I say before heading back the way we came.

  I get back in position, Rebecca and Tim greeting me, clearly eager for an update. “Just wait guys, the Commander’s gonna update everyone in a moment.” As I say that, we watch as the Commander steps in front of the assembled troops.

  “Right everyone, listen up!” He shouts, somehow elevating his voice loud enough then everyone can hear it, “looks like our aberrant managed to get transport on a small wagon heading west less than a day ago, so we’re getting closer all the time. We’re heading out as soon as we’re all ready so we don’t lose any ground!” He steps back and everyone erupts into movement as we collectively get ready to move out.