Zinna poked her loose teeth with her tongue.

  She figured that wasn’t a good idea cause wriggling them around only made them looser.

  Sadly, she couldn’t help it.

  She couldn’t see out of her right eye, which forced her to keep turning her head whenever she heard something possibly coming from that blindside.

  Her nose throbbed and the blood in her lip and face had crusted.

  No healing though.

  She sat outside her commanding officer’s office.

  Despite it all a smile split her lips… even more than her fellow soldiers’ fists had done.

  She had been marched to the office by a pair of berro. That was knew to her. She hadn’t known that the army had its own version of law enforcers.

  She had walked while the thugs she had brawled had to be carried out of the barracks.

  The door opened and a young officer-looking barely a man beckoned her brusquely.

  She marched back strait and chin held high.

  Whatever punishment she faced didn’t matter.

  She had already won her life’s wish.

  “Conscript Zinna Orologiaio, markswoman, Level 23 and fencer Level 11. Hmm, no brawler class.” Her commanding officer— she assumed— had an orb with her file. “Total levels near twice your age. Exceptional for a conscript. It doesn’t say here why you’re a conscript. As a commoner you should be on the lower officer track with those classes and levels. Then again, brawling does not become an officer, so that must be my answer. Now, punishment. Ten lashes, one month’s pay split among the aggrieved parties and your day offs for the duration of this campaign spent doing drudge work.”

  “Yessir!” she saluted.

  Easily worth it to take out a bunch of rapists.

  “However, we are in unprecedented times. I don’t know if I believe it, but there is a suggestion that we are seeing the beginning of a Calamity. Nothing official of course and you will not repeat that. Understood?”

  “Yessir!”

  “But, you must be punished. Discipline must be maintained. Therefore—”

  The door burst open and the hairs on the back of Zinna’s neck rose.

  A flowery scent filled the office as heels clacked on the stone and robes swished a whispering song in her ears.

  Zinna turned, mouth dropping along with one tooth that finally gave up the struggle to cling to its place in her gum.

  A tall, regal woman strode past.

  Thick hair dark as a raven’s feathers fell freely like a lustrous, wavy waterfall halfway down her back. Skin like coffee and cream glowed with undeniable vitality. Dark eyes smoldered as they bored into the suddenly gulping officer.

  The woman’s purple robes were embroidered with gold script that glinted in the sunlight from the open window.

  Zinna shivered.

  She had been around enough magic items to know that the robes were soaked in enchantments.

  The woman raised a hand, gesturing with it as if it was a snake or some kind of long-necked bird.

  Zinna wasn’t good with imagery.

  To her it looked unnecessarily graceful.

  She did note that the woman had more rings on her fingers than she had fingers.

  “There will be no punishment, officer. This brave young soldier did what she did for justice.”

  Fuck!

  The woman even sounded like music.

  Zinna distrusted her immediately.

  Probably a charm Skill. The kind ladies and lords used to deceive the populace.

  “Lady di’Seta, please, this is a military matter,” the officer said after a long moment. “I have been made aware of your… new initiative… however, Conscript Orologiaio must be punished for discipline's sake.”

  “Discipline? And what sort of discipline is there in allowing sexual abuses, hmmm?”

  “We investigate and punish according to regulations.”

  “Let us not quibble. We both know that such crimes are overlooked in the best of times for the sake of appearances. Now that our empire— long live the Emperor— faces its most desperate times, well, one does not need to leap into a lava pool to know that these crimes will go unpunished. So long as your army has its bodies to man the walls, eh, officer?”

  The lady gazed with what Zinna figured was supposed to be benevolence. She wasn’t sure what that looked like in real life, but the lady sure was turning on the charm Skills, probably.

  “This young woman, Zinna. She did you true justice today in stamping out a foul evil that should have no place in our society, let alone in an army on the verge of war with the existential threat of our era. Undead as far as the eye can see. Powerful revenants the likes of which the emperor’s champions would quiver in their boots to meet face to face. And the empress herself. She who has reigned over the Frozen Eternities for millennia untold. Yes, officer. Those rapist men, I’ll see hang and this brave soldier and those that fought on her side I’ll see given medals. Their deeds shall be known throughout the Imperial Shield and the Empire of Man!”

  The officer paled, but he gathered enough courage to speak clearly.

  “Apologies, Lady di’Seta, but all that sounds very much above my rank. I shall bring your concerns to my superior officer with haste.”

  The two officers bolted from their own office like rabbits flushed by a wolf.

  Which left Zinna alone with the lady and another man— had he been standing by the door the whole time?

  She studied him with a markswoman’s eye.

  Plain in all respects.

  Dressed like some kind of manservant.

  Made sense that a lady would have that following her around.

  What was weird was the lack of bodyguards.

  Nobility always moved in public with bodyguards. Otherwise the public would give them what they deserved.

  “Soldier Orologiaio.” Lady di’Seta fixed her with an unblinking stare. “Reckless, but I love it!” she smiled like a cat that caught the pet bird with its cage door open.

  Zinna glared, but luckily for her one couldn’t tell thanks to her swollen face.

  “Ah, one moment.” Lady di’Seta snapped her fingers.

  Her manservant moved silently like that cat despite his height and bulk.

  Hmm… Zinna craned her neck back and decided to watch her mouth with the lady.

  He picked up her tooth, making it look like a tiny seed in his fingers as he handed it to the lady.

  “It may be presumptuous, but you must want this back.”

  Zinna nodded.

  “Open wide.” Lady di’Seta’s fingers danced. Her rings clinked and twinkled. The tiny gems in some of them glowing faintly even in the bright sun.

  Spellcasting without words and barely any gestures.

  Zinna decided to mind her expressions.

  She felt no pain, just a bit of pressure in her gum and the odd sensation of her flesh un-swelling.

  After a moment she felt at a normal face and gazed out from two eyes.

  Even the crusty blood was gone.

  “Thanks,” she muttered.

  “It is the least service I can perform to thank you for your bravery.”

  “Okay… er… am I not being punished anymore? It wasn’t clear.”

  “I don’t believe so. Our initiative is rather unprecedented and such things are prone to teething pains.”

  “Teeth… pains…”

  “Like babies, you understand.”

  “Yes…”

  “Good!”

  Zinna felt the lady regard her like she regarded her rifle and rapier.

  “Well then! Off you go, Soldier Zinna! Continue being brave. Continue to watch out for the weak ones. Do not fear your officers overmuch. We ladies will fight for you in our ways as you fight for the empire and the living.” Lady di’Seta waved, revealing silk wrappings around her arm.

  Zinna left, glad to be away from the opulent noblewoman despite the help in getting her off her punishment and healing her.

  She walked with a bounce to her steps.

  She felt fresher than she had in a long time.

  Like she could brawl with another dozen rapists.

  …

  The week passed without incident.

  Zinna picked up her weapons, armor and the rest of her kit from one of the armories.

  She spent most of her time exercising, training and getting her long rifle just right.

  Her class must’ve gotten her special treatment because she got a sniper’s loadout.

  The rifle was more powerful and it had a far eye enchantment on its iron sights, which replaced the bulky and cumbersome far eye attachment. They even gave her a supply of special ammunition.

  Her barracks turned out to be alright after she and some of the others had stomped out the thugs.

  That was her only concern and it kept her head on a swivel whenever out of her barracks for retribution.

  But it seemed that she needn’t have worried.

  Dansy, a girl even younger than her, had an ear for the gossip network that connected the different units, squads, companies and so on across the Imperial Shield.

  “It’s the Silk Mothers. Word is they’ve been taking anyone that gets caught trying to rape to this building they got and doing… things to them.” She grinned.

  Bilmyth, a boy even younger than her, stared up at them all with wide eyes.

  “What are they doing to them?”

  Zinna tsked.

  “Shouldn’t believe everything you hear going around the spider web. Figure only a fourth even has the ring of truth to it. They say where these Silk Mothers are based, Dansy?”

  “Er… no one’s locked that down yet.”

  “See, if it was legit information someone would have seen this building and these men being moved there. They’re probably in some brig somewhere in the city. It’s a huge place.”

  The others at the table started bombarding her with questions.

  Was she really the old veteran?

  At least at the table, in the moment.

  Dansy tried again.

  “No, I swear on my ma, Zinna. They’re saying that the Silk Mothers are making sure those men are punished and that they’re going to use them as meat shields against the undead when the time is right.”

  “Okay, first of all, I’m going to ignore that last part because it’s just ridiculous. The army would never allow that. Now… what’s with this ‘Silk Mothers’ shit? Are the ladies really calling themselves that?”

  “Yes! That I know for sure. I was talking to a guy from the Fifty-Seventh that had a cousin in the Tenth that escorted a few ladies on a tour of the Seventh District. They were talking about it.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Zinna had no idea where that was.

  She had a vague mental image of the map of the fortress city in the macro sense.

  The only place that she knew well was her battalion’s slice near and on the Second Wall.

  “Alright, sure, I’ll let you have that. But, tell me this, Dansy… who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about, huh? If you can’t answer that, then you have to think really hard about believing this rumor. Like I said. Three-fourths of what you get on the web is straight trihorn shit.”

  “Oh! Guys! I got one too!” Ettyre waved his pudgy hand.

  Zinna didn’t know how the young man maintained his softness with the amount of exercising she had seen him doing.

  “I heard…” he drew their attention, causing her to roll her eyes. “That…”

  “Just spit it out!” Dansy huffed.

  “That… we… have demigods on our side!” he grinned, crossing his arms across his ample chest like a smug lord.

  Zinna contemplated smacking him upside the head.

  But that was her nobility hatred thinking.

  Ettyre was as common as she was, which saved him.

  Bilmyth leapt out of his seat with a whoop.

  “That’s great! It means Suiteonem is with us! May his rage grant us strength! There’s no way he’d let us lose to undead, right!”

  That certainly was good news… if true.

  …

  The stench of weapons fire and undeath filled the inside of the wall where Zinna and her squad observed out of slits in the enchanted stone.

  The empress had to be using magic to make the stench so powerful that it made them gag even from such a great distance to First Wall.

  Zinna didn’t get it.

  She saw the horde coming from all the way down the gentle slope of the paved road into the Frozen Valley where winter stuck around for most of the year.

  The sight had made a little bit of pee leak out and she refused to describe it to the other conscripts.

  The last thing she wanted to add to the stench was that of their piss and shit.

  Skeletons and zombies as far as she could see. From one end of the horizon to the other and in the frozen forests if the clouds of mist streaming from the dense foliage was a sign, which it probably was.

  Cold and frozen kinds.

  Ivory bone partially sheathed in blue and white that glittered like crystals in the sun.

  Gray, decayed flesh that looked as hard as a rock like sides of meat hanging in a butcher’s freeze larder.

  She had thought that cold, frozen things didn’t smell. Or at least not as bad as things left out in the sun.

  Something, something, science.

  She hadn’t been properly educated since she was a child. Before that damn lord destroyed her family. May he rot hanging naked from his balcony for eternity.

  “Heh!” The memory never failed to bring a smile to her face.

  It also reminded her that she didn’t need to be terrified.

  She had already won.

  All this was just the price of victory.

  He had told her to do as she willed and that would be enough to buy her mother’s and brother’s happy life.

  “Okay, not-demon… whatever you want me to do, I’m here to do it,” she whispered.

  She watched huge boulders covered in pitch and set ablaze rolled out of First Wall. Simple weapons that relied on gravity to roll down the long, sloping road with devastating effect on tightly-packed undead that were too stupid to dodge. Thousands of them were pulverized as far as she could see.

  Siege fireballs catapulted from weapons emplacements all over the Imperial Shield. Those near Second Wall, where Zinna stood, shook everything with each shot, showering her in dust. They arced across the sky, trailing dark smoke, reminding her of the falling stars she watched with her father on the roof of their home.

  She thought with certainty that not even the frost forests could withstand such powerful fire magic. But, she was mistaken. They crashed into the forest for many kilometers away, but instead of setting the forest ablaze they simple sent smoke into the sky. Thick and black at first, then thin and white and finally nothing. Faster than it seemed possible.

  That was the empress’ magic at work.

  Zinna was certain.

  Only the most powerful ice spellcaster could do something like that.

  “What’s happening, Zinna?” Dansy’s eyes were wide.

  Not that the girl could be blamed.

  Everyone’s eyes were wide.

  Zinna didn’t have a mirror, but she’d bet even odds that hers were just as wide.

  “They haven’t even reached the wall. We’re keeping them back.”

  The air was so thick with fire from her side that it almost looked like a swarm of irk flies over a trihorn ranch.

  She decided to keep her speculations on the ammunition supplies to herself.

  There had to be plenty.

  The fortress was the size of the city with the fraction of the population of one.

  She wasn’t a siege defense genius, but even she could see that meant more space to store munitions.

  “There’s—”

  Dark dots emerged from the horizon.

  She had Skills to improve her marksmanship, including one that generally made her see as far as an eagle. There were limits on duration and number of usages on account of her level and she had been ordered to only use them when given the order to conserve them for the most impactful moments.

  But, she couldn’t resist.

  She mumbled her Skill and instantly wished she hadn’t.

  The dark dots suddenly resolved into undead birds.

  Except each was about the size of a house and not the tiny houses in the district aptly named The Narrows where most of her extended family lived.

  Their eyes were clouded over or completely missing.

  Black and brown feathers were in patches, revealing dry, desiccated flesh. Sometimes all the way through the muscles down to the bones.

  They all had their bodies ripped open to reveal missing guts and a beating black heart that looked more like a crystal to Zinna’s inexpert eyes.

  “Oh… I think they’re attacking from the sky.”

  “What! How! Do we shoot?” Dansy shrieked.

  “Maybe… just wait for orders.”

  Zinna didn’t tell the others that there were skeletons crammed inside the huge birds where the guts used to be.

  She supposed it made sense that a skeleton could be folded up about as big as its torso when there weren’t any inconvenient things, like internal organs and flesh, to get in the way.

  Fire from the fortress began to stitch across the sky.

  Her heart sank to immediately realize that it wasn’t nearly as effective as the fire poured on the undead ground forces.

  The long rifle in her hands felt warm and ready to roar against the death eternal.

  Where were the orders to fire?

  First Wall was only about a thousand meters from second wall separated by open ground filled with buried explosives.

  The undead bird transports were almost directly over First Wall when they began to drop their skeleton cargo before wheeling around to pick up more, she assumed.

  “Damn…”

  “What happened, Zinna!” Dansy wailed.

  “We only got five out of twenty and there’s more coming.”

  “More what!”

  “Giant undead birds. Listen—”

  Her words were swallowed by the thunder as the skeletons triggered the explosives.

  The distance between Second Wall and First Wall was an illusion of safety that was now being disabused.

  The undead horde had their own artillery.

  Stones arced out of the dense foliage in such quantities that a black shadow darkened the landscape as far as Zinna could see from her narrow shooting slit in the thick stone wall.

  Thunder and quaking earth drowned out the prayers to Suiteonem and even a handful to other Gods.

  Her squad and the other squads sharing the section crouched low dropped their rifles and held on to their assholes as impacts thudded on the other side of their walls.

  She had thought that several meters of enchanted stone was enough.

  The Imperial Shield hadn’t fallen since the last Calamity when the blue-skinned humans had ruled the Empire of Man… oh… she may have overlooked that fact.

  “What about our shields?” Dansy again.

  “They said the walls had magic shields!” that was Bilmyth.

  Poor kid had pissed himself judging by the spreading stain in his pants.

  To be fair, he wasn’t the only one.

  The air had gotten really pungent all of a sudden.

  Zinna grit her teeth, doing her best to stay low, but ready to roll in case the ceiling began to collapse.

  “They’re probably saving them for the really bad stuff.”

  “This isn’t the bad stuff?” Ettyre laughed bitterly.

  “This is just the start.”

  Five hours ago.

  That’s when the longest ranged artillery began firing over the horizon on the undead.

  The thought that the horde could stretch from the Imperial Shield to however far that was made her clench lest she become like poor Bilmyth.

  Impacts struck the wall a short distance away from Zinna.

  It sounded different. Like glass shattering.

  Shouts from that section erupted.

  There was a different tenor to the voices.

  Not the fear of vague death, but one in fear of a certain one.

  “Breach! Undead in the wall! To arms! Mind your firing lines! Obey your sergeants!”

  “Move it you pissers!” her squad’s sergeant barked. “I want that firing line! Shoot only on my order or I’ll feed you to the empress myself! You, sharpshooter!” he snapped at her.

  “Sir!” She scrambled up with her long rifle in hand. “You’re on undead spellcaster duty. See one, take it out. Don’t wait on my command.”

  “Yessir!”

  There was no cover inside the wall.

  It hadn’t been designed with fighting inside in mind.

  Her squad took up a two deep firing formation pointing to their left were thick, black smoke slowly spread toward them. The first line took a knee, while the second stood.

  There was plenty of space for Zinna to find a clear shooting line.

  “Aim! Fire! Reload!” A sergeant barked.

  The thunder was deafening in an enclosed space.

  At least there were five other squads between them and what had to be the breach location.

  Make that four squads.

  The smoke had lunged forward like it had a mind, enveloping a squad.

  Screams heralded the emergence of the undead.

  Zombies shambled in the vanguard.

  Rotted flesh preserved for eternity in a partially frozen state.

  Yet again, Zinna cursed the stench.

  Frozen things weren’t supposed to smell. Not like they had been sitting in the sun for hours at least.

  Skeletons clattered in after the meat shields absorbed fire.

  “Retreat!”

  Soldiers fled back to the emergency escape hole where a pole allowed them to slide down to the next level.

  “Hold!” Zinna’s sergeant snapped.

  In any case it was too late to run toward the escape hole as the undead rushed past it.

  Two squads had made it though, so good for them, Zinna guessed.

  There was only one squad between hers and the death that walked.

  “Aimed shots only. Hit one of our own and I’ll feed you to them myself. Fire at will.”

  Her sergeant opened fire with his rifle before the rest of her squad.

  She sighted down hers, looking for the possible spellcaster in the rapidly creeping smoke.

  Operating the standard rifle’s action was easy.

  It was a simple latch to open and simpler to insert the projectile.

  Easy in a relaxed scenario, like a practice range, but infinitely harder when undead were shambling your way in an enclosed space with artillery falling all over just on the other side of the wall.

  Hard to focus when you weren’t sure if you should’ve been more worried about being eaten to death or crushed and exploded by something you wouldn’t see coming.

  Conscripted soldiers, young like her and even younger screamed for their mothers and fathers, dropping their rifles, trying to draw their backup melee weapons while at the same time turning to flee.

  It occurred to Zinna that their training had been wholly inadequate for this.

  She wondered it training could ever actually prepare someone to face such horrors.

  The squad in front of hers fell buried in undead.

  The only consolation was that the creeping smoke swallowed them up and silenced the screams and prayers.

  Her squad was next on the menu.

  Instead of ordering a retreat like a normal man, her sergeant barked.

  “Drop rifles! draw melee weapons! Imperial soldiers do not run! Glory to the emperor!” he drew a rapier with a flourish and lunged into the smoke with a Skill.

  “Screw this!” Zinna snapped. “Retreat!”

  She shouldered her long rifle and grabbed at Dansy's and Bilmyth's collars, yanking them back.

  “C’mon, idiots!”

  She pulled, then pushed them ahead of her, drawing her rapier as the others in her squad fled past her.

  Hungry rotted fingers emerged from the smoke.

  Too close.

  She thrust where she guessed the zombie’s head was and withdrew quickly, turning to run.

  Her sergeant was a moron that had been about to get a bunch of kids killed.

  So… fuck him very much.

  “Retreat! Don’t shoot!” she yelled for the benefit of the squads behind hers.

  Dying to a friendly shot was only second behind dying to zombie teeth on her current list of worst ways to die. Being crushed by falling undead artillery was a distant third, all things considered.

  A golden portal suddenly ripped the air open in front of her.

  She twisted, stumbling into the warm stone wall.

  “— better be worth my mana.”

  “Shut up.”

  Two voices.

  A young woman and a girl.

  They stepped out of the portal before it blinked out of existence.

  Taller than her and she was tall for a woman of the empire.

  “Ugh, basic undead.”

  “Not a waste of your mana then.”

  “Yes, but a waste of our time. They are worth nothing. Give me a revenant or a thinking undead at least, perhaps one capable of spellcasting? I’d like to test out some ideas.”

  “We have to follow orders.”

  “Tsk.”

  The young woman wore a golden breastplate that, judging by the distance it protruded from her chest, hid impressive assets that made Zinna feel immediately inadequate. Her mage-style robes were white and lacked the feel of powerful enchantments like Lady di’Seta’s. A golden helmet in the style of Suiteonem’s Empyreal Guard hid all but her red-gold eyes and a thin sliver of her full-lipped mouth.

  She gestured dismissively and instantly cleared the thick, dark smoke.

  The other one, the girl, wore golden armor over her thin torso and thinner arms and legs all over black clothing. Her golden helmet revealed the same red-gold eyes and nothing else.

  Both had numerous small bags and pouches around their waists and hanging from chest harnesses.

  The thin girl sounded about the same age as Dansy, but the similarity ended with the confidence in the former.

  “We won’t even have to use weapons.”

  “I don’t want to get zombie on my robes. I only have three of them after all and this is the first day.” The chesty young woman sighed.

  “It’s an undead siege, Fifteen. You’re going to get dirty or you’re not doing it right.”

  “You’re sounding like Eighty.”

  “Well, I’m not doing all the work.”

  “Why not? You said it’ll be easy, huh?”

  “Fine, be a weakling.”

  “Ugh!” the robed one flounced toward the shambling zombies and clacking skeletons.

  The thin, younger one followed.

  Zinna watched the two go about destroying the undead that had killed her fellow conscripts and made her pee herself a little as if they were squishing bugs in a garden.

  Thus, did she lay eyes on her first ever demigods.

  Daughters of Suiteonem… strangely named at that.