Pallad marched onwards through the ruins. It wasn’t even too ruined. It was a battlefield, but thankfully the constant firing from either side always at least narrowly missed. It was either complete stupid luck, or his own arrogant move that prevented the fire spells from hitting his broad stature.

  The constant flaming bolts launching out of giant magic circles. Never was his cup of tea, real warfare. It was only the short battles he cared for. The one one one duels, the ones that civilians could easily replicate.

  The ones he could easily replicate. But here it’s different. The sky is a deep gray from the smoke of the ruins surrounding him. The smoke of the burning city. There was no beauty in the fire, there was no red of the ruby seen around, it was the red of blood.

  It was different from usual fighting. He sees his ally, a short statured man, look at him with terror in their eyes as the orange gets closer. Suddenly, Pallad had to jump back, but for some reason he didn’t grab the ally.

  The fiery blast was quicker than he was, like a mortar shell, leaving the poor man as nothing but smoke and the smell of burnt flesh. Pallad was left running for his life, the constant loud bangs, and collapsing buildings making it hard to maneuver.

  Impossible, that word was always thrown around whenever he asked about war during the peace time. Yet here he is on the losing side of the battlefield. He knew this was just a sacrificial play strategy-wise.

  That’s all he is to everyone in the grand scheme of war. A mere number to throw at the wall to distract other numbers for numbers to lessen a different set of numbers. But now that he’s living in it, maybe he doesn’t enjoy bloodshed as much as he thought.

  He looks in the eyes of the soldier in front of him, wielding a sword, before Pallad cuts him down. The soldier is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but his blood is red just like Pallads.

  The blood soaks the ground, as the soldier’s terrified eyes are etched into Pallad’s brain, deep in one of the many wrinkles, but Pallad must keep moving lest the bombs hit him next. These fireballs are each cast with 5 different mages all hitting a different part, allowing the cost to be negligible and damage to be great.

  And of course there were more than 50 mages on the side bombing them, some of them casting [Flight] to allow them to land them at better angles. Once more, the city he was assigned to defend, is falling worse and worse.

  The shrill shrieks from the civilians terrifies Pallad to the core. Another boom nearby, as an arm lands in front of Pallad. But he must march on. He must survive to see the next day. There is nothing this war means other than bloodshed, doesn’t it.

  He’s in the tower, this isn’t a world he’s lived in for more than half a week, but he’s already in a war as a pawn to be sacrificed on the complete other side of the board other than his home square.

  And it’s terrifying. He doesn’t get the context of the deployment, nor the joy of coming back home a hero. He’s dying here and he knows it, or he’s going to survive and just move on with the tower.

  This world he’s fighting for is meaningless, and maybe that isn’t so bad. But the people that are dying are real. The people he hears screaming and crying over distant sword clashes are real. They have lives rooted in this world, there are historians being pushed off buildings to prove a point.

  There are fools who speak up against governments across this world who are killed because what they said was a bit too bad. And those are supposedly the people he’s fighting. But they could also be the people he is fighting for.

  And he’d never know. This thought isn’t what pushes him forward, to try to kill as many of the external soldiers as possible. It’s just to survive. A fight for survival, he’s the prey that’s fighting back from the innumerable hunters.

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  But the city is already mostly leveled. It’s a lost cause. He’s long lost a while ago. And this haunted him. His legs finally failed him, as he collapsed down in the middle of a street. Another loud bang lands right on the building to his right, which topples over-

  And it’s just black. Void. His eyes are dry for not being able to blink for a few hours or risk death. The cold air on them is irritating, they itch. Painfully so. And it’s irritating both on the pain side, and on the mental side.

  He wants to hit something hard, but he’s incapable of movement. His brain slowly catches up on events as he realizes what must’ve happened. He’s dead, and this is the afterlife. He can’t move or feel his limbs because they aren’t there.

  He’s dead, it’s the only reasonable conclusion. Why else would he no longer hear the screams of the civilians and see the fearful eyes of the soldiers he was left to cut down? Why else would he finally feel at peace since entering this damned tower?

  It doesn’t even feel all too bad. It feels decently nice even. He kind of doesn’t want to return. Until he’s slapped awake on a carriage.

  “Wake up.” Judine is across from him, and is staring with a determination he knows he didn’t have himself.

  “W-where are we?”

  “You know where, we’re launching an attack on some small city.”

  His heart dropped to the very pit of his stomach. This isn’t the same city he was just fighting for, right? There’s no way the tower would ever do that.

  “Thankfully, we’re just commanders, we won’t be on the field.”

  “But is that really right?”

  “Hm?”

  “I’m asking, is what we are working for the right cause?”

  Judine pauses, as she thinks. The carriage wheels squeaking over the uneven road, the bumps feeling most unpleasant shaking the entire carriage. They couldn’t see the outside, therefore they didn’t know how far they were travelling lest they opened the curtains.

  The suit felt itchy across the collarbone as it felt impossibly heavy. Draping over him like the combat gear he was in minutes before. Maybe mere moments before. The silence continues to drag by, like the body bag the soldiers would be in.

  Until eventually, “No.” The answer cuts through the sounds of the carriage like sharpening a knife.

  “Then why?” Pallad asks instantly, the question rolling off his tongue before he thought of the meaning itself. He didn’t know if the horrors he experienced on the battlefield were speaking for him, the allies he saw die.

  “It’s simple.” Judine begins, her eyes glowing the same color as her blonde hair, the same color as her light magic. “The cost is justified according to the reports.”

  “Justified to reports?” Pallad feels those words repeat in the carriage, but under his own voice. There’s nobody else in the carriage, but it feels as if everyone has their eyes on him. Judine’s condescending look wasn’t aimed at Pallad, they were aimed at the hundreds who believed in Pallad with their dying words. He feels it repeat again with even more rage, his eyes going blurry.

  “Yes,” Judine sits down, just as relaxed as before. Her deep green sweater folding slightly. Her neatly ironed clothes, made in luxury.

  Compared to Pallad’s, his simplistic outfit of a black shirt and golden bracelets made by monks. Made with materials nearby, nice cotton outfit that’s easy to move in. It’s not even ironed, he didn’t have time to get it.

  “You think that the costs…” Pallad begins, taking a deep breath, “are all the issues regarding this?” He sits back down, staring deep into Judine’s eyes. She stares back, coldly. Completely empty in feeling.

  Her response matched this, “Of course not,” she began, her eyes flashing something else, “but those lives are something we’d have to lose anyway, no? Either we kill them ourselves, or we send other men to kill them.”

  A pit in Pallad’s stomach opened and grew greatly. It’s nothing he can argue against. She’s right. They have a way forward, without having to get their hands dirty, without having to see the death and bloodshed. This was the first this had ever happened, of course she’d rather do that.

  Anyone would rather do that, but of course blood-lusted Pallad saw it differently. That’s what she must be thinking, that’s why she’s talking not about the losses of lives themselves, or the losses of the men. The same blood is spilled, so who cares.