Later that night, Akari and I sit side-by-side on a rooftop surrounded by my militia guards, all of us looking out into the deepening darkness in an attempt to see packs of volcora before they arrive. Even this late in the day, the work on the threshing is still going on; peoples’ need to get away from this town is pushing them to greater and greater speed in their work — loading the grain straight into vehicles.

  With the worst of the injured healed, I’ve finally allowed myself a break — at least until someone else gets hurt. I’m not so crazy that I’ll insist on healing every paper cut and scrape, but people with deep lacerations or even broken bones? Those I can’t seem to ignore.

  Despite not shifting into my assault state and my mana toxicity being lower than it’s been in a number of days, I feel like the symptoms of mana poisoning are getting worse instead of better. Sitting beside Akari, I feel generally weak, and the trembling in my hands has worsened and spread to the rest of my body, making it hard to move my shaking limbs.

  While a part of me wants to shift to my assault state for a time, just to regain my strength and steady my limbs, the mere idea of shifting sounds nauseating. I know I’m starting to border on the realm of causing myself serious harm, and I think if I try to heal anyone else right now, Akari will genuinely make good on her threats to lock me away until I’ve ridden out this sickness.

  Even still, even with the inevitable result of my choices weighing me down, I don’t know that I’ll be able to hold myself back from trying to heal the next person to come along. What if they die because I didn’t help them? What if I have to add another to the line of corpses I see when I close my eyes?

  In some ways, I prefer the simplicity of an incursion zone over this. There, all the people I’m protecting are esoteric ideas, safely tucked away in their homes where they won’t be in any danger unless I fail. This is worse, so much worse. The enemy is actively using the townspeople against us. They know that they are our biggest weakness, and so they are striking at them again and again, knowing that we will be forced to respond.

  I think I’m starting to recover from the things I’ve seen in the incursion zone — if just a little. Sure, I’m terrified of rain now and unable to dream or draw without visions of the dead appearing in my mind, but at least outwardly, I’m doing better. Or… perhaps I’m just better at tucking away those emotions in the back of my mind.

  Even now, I can’t help myself from looking down at the townspeople below me and worrying about not being able to save them. Maybe they’ll meet the eyes of a gazer with no one there to block their vision, maybe one of the wolves or apes will ambush them in the dark and tear them to shreds, or maybe, as they’ve been doing more as of late, the volcora will simply toy with the civilians. Hurd them around, scare them, and hurt them until a sentinel arrives to their rescue. The goal seems to be to hurt and exhaust us, not the townspeople; they are just a means to an end.

  That makes me wonder what would have happened to Shirakaze if we didn’t come. Would the town have been spared but for a few assaults? It certainly wouldn’t have garnered the kind of attention it is now. More likely, though, that large group of volcora who arrived here on our first few days would have moved through the town, methodically killing everyone present until no one remained.

  “Akari,” I say, breaking the silence for the first time in over an hour. “Do you ever wonder if what we’re doing is right?”

  Stars, my voice sounds hoarse. It didn’t sound like that earlier, did it?

  Beside me, Akari shrugs. “Not overly,” she says simply. “We follow our orders, and those orders involve helping people. Sure, we have a lot more power and influence now, but the decisions of where to go and who to help are better made at a macro level by people who can see the whole picture. We’re only a very small piece of a very large puzzle.”

  My eyes fall, and I watch my hands trembling on my lap. “I suppose there’s wisdom in that. I mean at a smaller level, though. Every decision we make can cost lives, and most of the time, those lives aren’t our own. What if we patrol the wrong area or miss something while on watch? People can die for our mistakes.”

  Again, Akari shrugs, turning to me. “It’s as we discussed before, we can’t be held responsible for the Volcora’s actions. We do the best we can and control what we can, but some things will always be left up to fate.”

  I close my eyes, clenching my hands into fists in a vain attempt to stop the trembling. “What if fate is cruel? What if it lets good people die for no reason? I have the potential to get stronger; I can save everyone — heal everyone. If I don’t… isn’t that on me?”

  Reaching down, Akari lays her hand atop mine on my lap, looking straight into my eyes. “Serena, there is no strong enough that you can save everyone. Not even the strongest sentinels in the world can do everything — be everywhere at once. Control what we can control; do your best. Making mistakes is okay; we just need to learn from them and move forward.”

  I look away, tears in my eyes.

  “I’m not sure I can think like that. I can’t… I can’t keep seeing people die, Akari. It will destroy me… I can’t move past it. I can’t stop seeing them. Seeing a body without life force, it’s just…” I trail off, unable to force out the words. Unable to face how every corpse I see makes me feel.

  “And you hate yourself because you think you failed them?” Akari asks, her voice soft.

  “I did fail them, Akari!” I exclaim, my emotions boiling over. “If I were stronger, if I just took the right actions in the moment, I could have saved them!”

  Slowly, Akari nods. “And so, you heal yourself to unconsciousness and exhaustion. That way, if someone dies, there were no actions you could have taken to stop the death. If you’re unconscious, you can’t do anything at all.”

  I open my mouth to deny it, but… she’s right. There is something freeing about the lack of choice. About making a simple decision like "heal everyone" and doing your best to fulfill it, even if it’s at the cost of logic. If I do my best, if I try to heal everyone while treating them all as equals, then how can I be blamed if one of them dies?

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “I… That could be-”

  In unison, our two radios let out a chirp before emitting Baylee’s voice. “All sentinels form up at the north end of town. I repeat; all sentinels form up. They’re coming.”

  Akari frowns, then meets my eyes. “We’ll continue this later,” she says before shifting in a flash of violet.

  Volcora gather in one of the distant north fields, looking almost like a swarm of black ants as they move across the distant landscape. So many of them… so incredibly, many of them. There must be at least a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, in the crowd forming up. And they just keep coming.

  Standing in my assault state beside the others, I feel weak and nauseous. Power that normally feels like lightning in my veins instead feels like sludge, further infesting me. The sight of all those enemies, the knowledge that there is almost nothing I can do to protect the people I’ve worked so hard to save… It crushes me.

  Despite it all, Baylee still looks calm, and that regal expression of a leader fits her features perfectly as she stands with hands behind her back. “Steady, everyone,” she says, tone firm. “Remember, these volcora have proven that they are here for us, not for the townspeople. We stay strong and follow the strategy.”

  Baylee’s strategy is simple: she’s been having all of the grain loaded straight into vehicles as the threshing has been completed, and now all that’s left are the townspeople before we can evacuate.

  Behind us, people stream in and out of their homes, loading their vehicles with what appears to be all their possessions. A part of me wants to run down there and scream at them to hurry up; nothing is so important to bring with them that it delays their evacuation from the town. They have most of the food already, now the most important thing to preserve is their lives.

  After consulting with the GDF, Baylee determined that the best method going forward is to lead the volcora in a fighting retreat. Instead of retreating toward the town, we can retreat in a northeast direction, meeting up with soldiers moving south in a convoy from the Northern Front. After regrouping with the soldiers and whatever sentinels are with them, we should be able to finish off this force.

  My main worry with the plan is that we are leaving the townspeople borderline undefended again. However, the volcora have proven that they are more interested in taking our lives than with trying to wipe out a small town of normal humans. Hell, letting them flee to Shinara and put even more strain on our dwindling supplies there is a borderline strategy in of itself if they don’t understand what we’re going with the grain.

  [I don’t like this, Serena,] Celeste says in my mind as she watches the gathering forces. [You’re too weak right now for this kind of fight. Using your powers is going to feel awful and weaken us further. I’ll be honest; I think you will probably fall unconscious with a borderline lethal amount of build-up before you even reach ninety percent toxicity.]

  “We don’t have a choice,” I tell Celeste, once again trying to still my trembling hands — shooting a bow like this is going to be nearly impossible. Although, I suppose the number of enemies will make it hard to miss.

  [Tell the others you can’t teleport today. If you do, you’re going to be so disoriented from the nausea that you won’t be able to protect yourself or react to danger. They are going to have to cover for you,] Celeste says, her voice firm and holding a hint of condemnation. As if to say, you did this to yourself.

  I grit my teeth but ultimately decide that she’s right. “Guys…” I start, ashamed, “I’m… I’m not going to be able to teleport much during this fight. With my toxicity how it is… it will leave me too vulnerable.”

  Baylee turns to me, eyes hard. Stars, when did she manage to get so confident? “You are right to speak up, Serena. For now, you will need to stay with the core of the team. We’ll have to protect you if you go down. Otherwise…”

  For a moment, Baylee glances down at the packing-up townsfolk. “I’m sure we could also get you out with the townspeople. If you’re truly in no shape to fight, we should just evacuate you now.”

  Bile rises in my throat at the idea. Leaving my team to face this horde alone? Letting them fight without their support while I’m getting evacuated with the common townspeople? The thought lights a spark within me, and suddenly, I find myself standing taller, gripping my bow with firmer fingers.

  This is the same question Audrey posed to me when I first became a sentinel, whether to be a soldier or a civilian. For too long now, I’ve been trying to act like I’m still a civilian, still just a schoolgirl who stumbled into her powers. But I’ve seen more than that now; I’ve done more than that now. Like it or not, the small, meek girl I was when I first accepted my bond is different now, I am different now. I won’t let my team fight alone.

  I shake my head, meeting Baylee’s pink eyes fervently. I’m no stronger than I was before; of course, my hands still shake, and my body still feels weak. Yet, I feel stronger, firmer in my resolve. I cannot be shaken from my path, not now.

  “I won’t have you fight that without me. Not a chance,” I reply, no longer ashamed.

  I’ll admit that perhaps I did make a mistake by blindly healing the townspeople; it’s still hard for me to fully agree with the others that leaving them to their injuries is for the best, but I somewhat get it. In the past, I’ve always viewed healing as something to be done after the battle is over. What I need to realize, though, is that out in the field like this, the battle is never over. Who knows when the next attack could be? I can’t just blindly throw away my strength when a battle like this one could be just over the horizon.

  “Good,” Baylee says, her stoic expression cracking with a small smile. Then, she looks to the group at large, “Everyone else, how are we doing? Toxicity, general fatigue, everything.”

  Over the course of the next few minutes, I quickly find that I wasn’t the only one to make a mistake while in Shirakaze. Almost everyone is exhausted, having lost a grip on their toxicity or their sleep after our previous watch structure was broken by the first fight.

  Troy and I are the obvious worst cases of this, though. Where I’m almost crippled with mana toxicity, Troy is practically falling asleep on his feet. He has not been good about managing his sleep schedule, constantly acting self-sacrificing to watch over others while they rested. As he is now, I can tell that there’s a part of him that can barely tell what’s going on.

  We’re a bit of a sorry lot, but we’re determined. We have a job to do, and I know I’m not the only one itching to try out a new ability. Besides, we don’t even have to win by ourselves, merely lead the enemy away.

  After a bit more strategizing and general discussion, Baylee looks at the still growing horde — there has to be over three hundred by now.

  “We should go,” she says, just a hint of hesitance entering her tone. “They aren’t going to wait for us forever, and whatever is leading them will probably be here soon, and as soon as it arrives, they’ll assault Shirakaze. Let’s get moving before it joins its forces — we can start harassing them and leading them away to make sure that they follow us.”

  “I, uh, hate to argue with you, Baylee,” Claire says, looking out over the fields, “but I think we’re too late on one count.”

  Pointing with her remaining arm — her other still hasn’t quite finished being regrown but is nearly down to the wrist now — she draws our attention to a much larger black figure moving onto the field into the Volcora forces.

  It’s hard to make out from a distance, but from what I can see, the creature looks somewhat like a hog the size of a small bus mixed with an eldritch horror from someone’s fever dream. It has massive tusks that it has to be careful in wielding as they nearly take out some of its minions as it moves between them, and its eyes glow red so brightly that I can make out the color from here.

  “It’s a massive pig,” Troy says dryly. “All this time, I’ve been picturing some cunning foe… and it’s a stars-damned pig.”

  “Well!” Claire exclaims, still manic as ever. “It looks like we’re all eating bacon tonight!”