Observation Duty

The battlefield had quickly become a waiting room.

The heave of dirt continued, but now in service of a most morbid sort of clean-up, not the rigors and tumult of carnage and its aftermath. One difference between this sort of battle and a Barrier John had forgotten – in an intentional sort of way, the thought too unappetizing to allocate much space for – was the fact that these undead monstrosities were real, were tangible. They did not merely dissipate when the last of them was defeated; they overstayed a welcome that had never existed, rotting and bloating and releasing smells that did not require the evaluation of the Order to be labeled as 'unholy'.

Given the intent to keep the Barriers intact, they could not easily rid themselves of the waste, either. It had to be tackled by hand. A token effort was made to identify some of the more intact masses. Mages searched for friends, family, comrades in arms. John didn't let himself watch their efforts for long. He couldn't afford the reminder that everything he'd killed today used to be a person, when it still held life that had not been poured into it.

And he couldn't stomach the thought of looking over corpses like that. Searching for the ones he'd loved, hoping to lay them to rest.

Most of the work was left to the Great Plains Alliance mages. Tired though they were, it was all but assured that many of those being processed were their allies, and while some seemed to think that a reason to make themselves scarce, others became defensive – even hostile – any time it seemed like the Springfield forces were wandering too close to the work.

Bones were removed from the Barrier and tossed into a pit, flesh was piled high to be burned away, and funeral rites were given to the ashes and anything that was still recognizable as some form of corpse. Everything else was collected, transported outside, heaped into landfills, and rapidly buried under every ounce of dirt they could manage.

A few of the most dangerous bodies, those that had been heavily enchanted or the ones that were outright caustic by their warped nature, were handed over to the Order. Those were the only carcasses handed over without more than a token argument from some. Even those deeply grieving seemed grateful to have proper magics around for dealing with the blighted that retained a hazardous nature even after their second ****.

John had neither attachment nor purifying magic, so his duty became simply to wait. Wait for something to change. Wait for news to arrive.

He did not wait as long as he’d feared.

The afternoon was spent with one set of arrivals after another, some new, some familiar. Reinforcements came from the command center only a few minutes after their part of the battle had finished. Perhaps 'reserves' was more appropriate. They did not add to their forces, but they did rotate in to relieve the most haggard of mages.

Sophia and Vallya were the next, and their arrival was not so gleeful. Their sentry duties had borne fruit. Rotten fruit, perhaps, but that was precisely what they were intended to catch. Undead had arrived outside the Barrier in great numbers, though not so great as the mass they had faced on first arrival. A few were attempting to claw at the exterior, but most seemed quite content to walk on by toward the command center.

"Can you bring them into the Barrier without dismissing it and reforming it?" Moira's question was valid, and though John didn't know the answer, he was confident enough to say that he would try, and to sound sure of himself when he said it.

"And are you aware of where they are within its boundaries? Can you track them, give us time to set up where you intend to pull them within?" Kwang's question was equally valid, but much harder to bluff. John hadn't noticed any odd pressure, mana drain, or headaches from the ones that were actively assaulting the Barrier. The fact that they could wail away at the front doors without alerting him, whether or not they were actually inflicting any damage, made him think sensing them just by walking through was already a lost cause.

"I don't think so," John admitted. "I don't have a lot of fine control over the Barrier."

Kwang made an unimpressed sound, but said nothing more as he drew his blade. Kim stepped forward into the space left by her father's silence.

"The size of it alone is enough to be impressive." Kim's face was perfectly even, but something in the way the words danced along her lips did not make John think of his Barrier. "Forget attempting to locate them and pull them in where we can ambush them. Can you draw them into the Barrier individually?"

"Without sensing them?" Moira questioned.

"Pull one small area at a time. Then the next, once the first are defeated." Kim moved as she spoke, using the tip of her blade to mark a box in the dirt some twenty feet wide on each side. "It will not only make the fighting easier, but it will allow Moira, Etriyya, and myself to contribute more to the process."

Kim did not elaborate further with their temporary allies so close by, but the meaning was clear. Allowing anyone outside the group to participate reduced their experience gain for each lost kill; bringing in a dozen or so at a time, small enough in number that Moira and Kim could overwhelm them alone, maximized their gains.

"Pull them all in!" The call came from one of the alliance mages, one of the fresher ones. A middle-aged fellow with dirt-brown hair and a splattering of freckles partially covered by an unkempt beard. The variety in their outfits and the lack of a clear status symbol gave John pause, but the way that he held himself and the confidence of his voice gave the impression of a field officer.

"And you are?" Sophia did not step forward, did not dare claim the position in front of John, but she did straighten up. Her amazonian stature put her a full head above the tallest gathered there, a fact that many seemed to have forgotten while she was on patrol.

"High Mage Sevitus. I've taken command of this sector for the time being," he announced boldly. "We must bring their forces within the Barrier as quickly as possible."

"To what end?" Etriyya called out, stepping up to face off with her equivalent.

"We cannot allow them to reach the command center! Our guard was stretched thin enough before they called us up to relieve this sector." The man puffed up his chest, hand on his weapon. There was no threat in the grip, only an eagerness to throw himself at their enemy. Whether it was born of foolhardy bravery or the desire for glory was harder to discern.

"Then take yourselves to the perimeter of the Barrier nearest the command center and face them yourselves, without us." Etriyya didn't bother to entertain their notions, regardless of the cause. Her only hesitation was a quick glance to her Warden, and a nod was all it took to steady that moment of doubt.

"Vallya and Sophia can handle any stragglers that John fails to trap within the Barrier," Kim cut in. "Or they can provide us warning if too many are at risk of making it through, and we can pull them all in at once. Either way, the longer we spend talking, the less time we have to properly deal with the situation."

Sevitus scoffed, but made no move to head to the Barrier's perimeter. He glanced between the gathered Springfield mages and, perhaps sensing his lack of leverage, finally waddled off into the crowd once more, barking orders that did not seem to carry any immediate changes in their ranks.

"Kim is right." Moira shifted on her feet, eyeing the nearby stretches of land. "We need to begin working quickly."

"Sophia, Vallya, I'll need you both on this. I'll send Shishun as soon as she returns, too," John assured them. "Coordinate with us, let us know where their forces are concentrated. Use landmarks; this Barrier isn't altered from the landscape outside. And guard the south end of the Barrier while you're calling them in. Make sure anything that gets past the boundary without being drawn in is dealt with."

"At once!" the two called and ascended nearly in unison. They disappeared before clearing thirty feet of altitude, and it wasn't long before their voices resounded in John's mind across the communication rings.

The process was more awkward than John had hoped. Pulling things into the Barrier took a few attempts, but it wasn't effectively all that different from exiling others from inside, at least in theory. In practice, the act of trying to limit it to a set amount of space made it rather like bobbing for invisible apples, using a net that stretched and condensed based on your thought patterns.

It was good for his mana control, for his flexibility, and for learning to properly control his abilities rather than relying on his systems to handle everything. It was bad for his ego. But eventually, after two-dozen attempts, a cluster of shambling corpses were pulled into the Barrier with them and swiftly slaughtered.

From there, the issue became communication and visualization. Coordination across the boundaries of a pocket in reality was awkward, a little like playing Pictionary. Not every stretch of land had a conveniently recognizable rock or tree formation, and more than once, John thought he had made a mistake in the process of entrapping their enemies, only to realize that the plot of land Sophia or Vallya had directed him to was a completely different patch to the one he had picked.

A grid pattern would have been ideal if the areas being dealt with were large enough for that to be feasible, rather than trying to pull in small clusters of foes in rapid succession. If their enemies were more concentrated, distances and directions from a fixed point would've worked, but the areas that John was targeting were so small in comparison to the distances it was hardly worth it. Their foes weren't forming a spearhead - they were a series of clusters, spread out across the entire length of the Barrier - even in other sectors. Sevitus was on standby to radio in the larger clusters when they wandered into their neighboring sectors, rather than sending Kim or Moira sprinting a mile in either direction.

The implications of that didn't go unnoticed.

"We're making a point of splitting them up, but they're doing half the work themselves," Etriyya muttered while wiping off a particularly gruesome chunk of rot from her blade. "Losing good kills to the others."

"They're not intending to break our lines." Kim stood in a ready stance between rounds of combat, her breathing deep but even, blade at a carefully held angle that could turn into a lethal strike with the barest flick. "They're testing the strength of each sector now. Our ability to fight... and to detect."

"They're prodding for weaknesses. Seeing if their plan stole away enough forces from any given sector to gain control," Moira agreed. "Adantia must have succeeded in clearing out the sector that was lost and reinforcing the other end."

"They know that we're running thin on stamina and reserves," Sevitus contributed grimly. His enthusiasm for 'pulling them all in' had dimmed the longer the slow, steady trickle of undead continued. "They are merely keeping us from properly resting."

"Would explain why these are so weak." John eyed his interface with displeasure. They were all significantly underleveled compared to the build-up of undead that had been massed inside the Barrier under their noses.

"Strong enough to pose a threat if we let our guards down, but weak enough to cull as long as we're not blind and deaf," Sevitus agreed. "They know they have us on the ropes. They'll keep this trickle up until they break through, or until we die of old age."

News came shortly after that the fighting on the eastern front had ended. Adantia had arrived not long after she departed their area, and her presence had quickly erased any gains that the undead masses had made on the other side of the sector divider. Their casualties were worse, in part due to the divides between the Barriers being fully torn down before Adantia's arrival. John tried not to let that part echo around in the quiet of his mind between assaults.

It wasn't long after that when Adantia herself arrived, returning from the east in the same fashion, riding on her cables until she stepped off just a few feet away from John.

"All clear on the other end. They didn't hold up as well as this lot, but they'll be alright for now." Adantia stood stiffly when she came to a halt, but her cables were already branching out again, weaving in all directions beneath the ground.

"What of the constant waves they've been sending here?" Moira still had her hammer in hand, poised for battle she knew was coming, if not precisely when it would arrive. "We intended to help their mages rest. This is hardly restful."

"War never is," Adantia scoffed. "But you're right. They're sending more to the east, and Gerry said there have been a few small clusters to the west too. There's at least one necromancer working to get these weaklings put together on short notice. Probably in a Barrier not too far away from the line here. I'm going to push out now that things are stable, see if I can root them out."

"I will aid your efforts." Kwang stepped forward. His eyes looked out to the distant northern border sharply, as if he thought an enemy mage might pierce the veil at any moment. "I cannot cover as great an area, but I am more likely to go undetected. If we are fortunate, we may begin to cull their numbers early."

"Won't catch me complaining about a helping hand." Adantia was already turned north now, strolling toward the Barrier's edge. "Best time to do it is now. They had no reason to prepare for us to show up here and now, so not much chance for an ambush. Worst case some mole ratted us out on the way here, and that would still only give them a couple of hours to prepare something. Judging by how many freaks they had built up in that Barrier, they've been working on this one for a while. Might have even infiltrated that place overnight, or some time late yesterday."

"Were there any signs of how they infiltrated the Barrier undetected?"

Adantia's face tensed at Lord Brighton's question. John hadn't known Adantia long enough to read her more subtle details, but seeing the brash woman hesitate at all brought a note of concern to his own expression.

"Yeah. Yeah, there were," Adantia admitted. Her arms, already crossed, tightened around her own chest. "One of their Fateweavers, Irvaie. He got assigned to the section of the front I was covering before I got ambushed. More or less tried to babysit me. They took him out first when they attacked me, made sure there was nobody to break their Barrier while I fought."

Adantia went quiet for a few seconds. No one stepped in to fill the void she left.

"I found him toward the east end, trying to escape, probably got called back when they realized the Barriers collapsing was intentional." She shrugged, and like that, her usual attitude of indifference was back in place. "Put him down. Laid him to rest. Whatever you want to call it, it's fixed now. My money is he got rezzed and controlled by whoever was sending the rest of these waves, so I vote we get moving while they might still be hanging around."

"Agreed," Kwang said curtly. "Let us make haste."

This time Adantia didn't bother with traveling by cable. Not where John could see, at least. She started running north, with Kwang following close behind her. They made it a hundred yards in the time it took John to process the movement, and then exited the Barrier.

When the two of them vanished, John was prepared to settle into another long cycle of waiting and slaughter, but Kim had other ideas.

"John, have you learned any abilities that would allow you to determine my location?" The question was simple enough that John didn't think twice before his denial. Kim seemed bothered for a moment, then pointed toward a fallen tree, a gnarled old oak that still bore the scar of the bolt that had felled it. "I'm going to exit the Barrier. I will save one of the creatures from the next wave they direct at us. I will pin it to that tree with my blade—I want you to try to sense it."

"Practice? Right now?" The lift of John's brow conveyed his uncertainty - the one she gave in return seemed almost offended at being questioned.

"Yes, right now," Kim echoed. "Unless you have something better to do. You cannot leave this Barrier, you cannot exhaust yourself, you should not do anything that causes you anxiety unnecessarily, you cannot do anything save wait... or practice. So, which will you be doing, John Newman?"

The question only had one answer. An answer Kim didn't bother waiting for him to give - she disappeared, flickering out of sight as she exited the Barrier and returned to the mundane world outside.

"Never learned about the glory of a proper break, that one." Etriyya strode up to John's left side, one hand on her chin. "Sometimes I wonder if she was born with that bloody sword in her hand. Maybe it grew up alongside her. Can you picture it, lad? Little baby Kim, popping out of the womb with a butter knife in hand?"

John didn't have a response on hand for that one. Certainly not from Etriyya. He turned to look at her and found the full Cheshire's grin waiting for him. Not an unwelcome look, but not one he'd seen in a long time. Not one he'd expected from her for a long time yet still.

"Moira wasn't kidding. You are proper bound up, ain't ya?" The Magiknight stepped closer so that she could throw her elbow into his ribs with a bit more leverage. "I'm trying to keep you loosened up, you stiff old bastard. Gotta make sure you're not slipping away from us. Wouldn't want to get my head chewed off again, would I?"

The reminder twisted in his gut, but it twirled a smile on his lips too. "Wouldn't dream of it. I appreciate the... 'comedy'."

"Christ almighty, don't be so mucky about it," Etriyya griped. "Never claimed to be a world-class entertainer, did I?"

"I appreciate the effort all the same," John assured her. "I missed this."

"Eh. So you saw a granny in the buff, I can't hold it against you forever." John nearly questioned her choice of words on reflex. Etriyya was many things, but a 'granny' was one of the last. But for all Etriyya's casual tone and the easy posture she took as they stared at the tree together, he didn't think it was too wise to venture too close to the old wound. Not yet, at any rate.

"I better tell Sophia to let me know when Kim has one pinned," John muttered, already reaching for the ring. Etriyya stopped him with a firm hand placed over his fingers.

"Best leave 'em to it. Sophia will make sure you know if there's a wave big enough they can't clean it up in a second anyway," Etriyya pointed out. "Feeling around through the membrane of a Barrier is a finicky little thing. I'm hardly a whiz at it, myself. Better if you don't know for sure if there's something there or not. If you know it's there, you're gonna start imagining things and pointing yourself in the wrong direction."

"Is it that subtle? How will I know when I do sense it for real?"

"Didn't I just say I'm not a bloody whiz? Figure it out, lad!" Etriyya clapped him on the back hard enough to rattle his chestplate around. "You never fell short when we used to train together. Figured out the lightning and all that quicker than any recruit. Kim's even going to the trouble of giving you something with a presence that ought to stand out. Just stare at the rotten tree and see if you feel anything even more rotten thrashing about!"

So John did. He stood beside Etriyya, staring at a tree, trying to expand his mind, or his aura, or whatever it was that connected him to the Barrier.

It felt... embarrassing. A little like a child trying to see if they could really use the **** after watching their first Star Wars movie. Social awkwardness, he thought ruefully, was not something he had expected to encounter on a battlefield. Yet with nothing to do but wait, John Newman committed himself to the task. He stared at that tree harder than anyone had ever stared at a tree before.