When people thought of war, they always imagine a hard battle and dying for a righteous cause. Most assumed that the majority of deaths came from the fighting, noble warriors doing their best to fight for survival. In reality most of the deaths came from the people caught in between the fighting. They were the ones who had no weapons to fight back. Their deaths were the ones without honor or glory. They were more of a victim than any soldier, as a soldier at least has a weapon. This was all apparent as Attie went through the village, trying to identify the dead bodies. This was a village where the horde had been defeated but the army still had to retreat due to injured forces. A horde of monsters were suspected to hit this place again as there were many bodies leftover for them to devour.

Identifying dead bodies was a dangerous job so it was given to Attie, probably due to her intimidating armor that makes her look far more impressive than what she actually was. She had a silver chestplate with cosmic wings on the back, colorful gauntlets that allowed her to change weight without using magic, a red fire scythe, and a mask that had all the colors of the dawn. People had started calling her the Angel of the Dawn or just Dawn Angel. She would have told them her real name but she didn’t want to spoil that image of her that they had built up in their minds. But the consequence meant that she was in charge of the body identification process. Some of the houses had been torn apart while other houses remained, it seemed that most of the homes on the left side of the village had been destroyed.

Attie walked into one of the homes to find three bodies torn apart. One of them was a woman, one man, and one of them was a child. The child had suffered the worst since its arms, legs, and half its face was missing. Attie took her journal from her satchel and began to record the amount of people in the home. She also added in a drawing of the scene along with a description. It was a gruesome sight but she was focusing on recording things like height, weight, and any appearance traits that can help identify who they once were. After writing things down in her journal, Attie put it away and began to investigate the home. Almost everything was broken, except for a small ring that the father or mother might have worn and a little painted picture that the child had clearly made. Attie took both of these things and put it in her satchel before returning to the bodies. She kneeled down and touched the mother’s head, just like how the priestess back at the safe camp had taught her.

“May your soul find the afterlife and reach your happy eternity.” Attie said quietly.

The phrase was generic enough that it would work for almost anybody, as many different people had different perspectives of a happy afterlife. Attie was unsure of what it actually did but the priest emphasized that the people alive would prefer knowing that there was some sort of burial ritual practiced for their dead loved ones. Raising to her feet, she went on to say the same words to the other two then began to leave the house. There was only one thing left to do. When she was outside, she checked to see if the house was far enough from the other homes before she hit the wooden home with her scythe. The scythe began to burn the wood and started a small flame that grew larger and larger until it was burning down the house. This was the last step that the priest had suggested. Apparently citizens in the swamp considered burial an inappropriate burial since the bodies often contaminated the swamp water. Cremation was a popular burial technique in the village and it was said that the soul was properly free after the body was gone, though Attie didn’t know if that was true. She left the home burning and decided to go to the next house. 

When it came to understanding the impact of war upon civilians, Icarus knew of it better than most. He had lived as a general in an era of civil war before the great demon war of his home realm. This instance was far more reminiscent of the latter war as this incursion from the Void was less of a war and more of a slaughter. The sheer destruction present was akin to a swarm of locusts bearing down upon a field of wheat. 

Now that he had the time to wander the battlefields, he was taking the opportunity to hunt for survivors and slay any of the straggling creatures from the Void that dotted the area. He disliked swamps, as there was always something hidden in the murky waters, mists, and mud. More often than not, it was unpleasant, much as the ambient smells and sounds were. The air in this landscape was somewhat different, more… cloying, like flesh burnt, dissolving, desiccated, severed, and any other number of ways removed of that life it clawed to in its final moments. The smell permeated the entire swamp, even through the porcelain mask Icarus wore.

His tattered cloak and light armor offered no drag against the ankle-deep water as he spotted a flame in the distance. Given the relative stillness of the swamp until the conflagration began, it seemed as though it was intentionally set. Is it another of the creatures or is the cause more… mundane? he thought to himself, activating his aura sight to scan for signs of life.

Ahead, he could make out one rough patch of brightly colored fuzz in the mist. That was near the rough limit of his ability’s usage, meaning he couldn’t quite tell if it was human or otherwise. Looking around for a good destination, Icarus teleported ahead so he could move silently and instantly approach from a better vantage point. From there, he saw what appeared to be a woman, offering prayers to some god or other that likely wasn’t listening and certainly uninterested in the affairs of mortals.

”I take it you’ve prepared a funeral pyre for the departed? Did you see what creature attacked this homestead?” he asked from a fair enough distance, calling out over the roaring flames. He didn’t know what the disposition of the woman was toward sudden guests was, but he was confident in his decades of experience, even if he did still look to be in his twenties.

Attie was surprised by the sudden voice in the distance. She hadn't been expecting anybody to be around, especially since this area was known to have been attacked. Walking away from the house, she began heading towards the stranger then stopped a few feet ahead of him so she could hear him clearly. Attie gave him a little wave before responding to his questions. 

"Hi!" She said with a friendly attitude, "Yeah I figured something out for their funeral pyre. Though I must admit I don't have enough time to go through all the traditions that a normal funeral pyre has. But its better to have them burned than to have them eaten in the next horde attack. Oh, and the monsters who killed the village were already destroyed but the army had to retreat from this area due to wounds and not enough protection to set up camp. There are more eldritch beasts on the way but I will have enough time to get through this village before they show up. And if they are early, then I guess I'll have a flaming good time." 

She had to make a joke, there was far too much carnage and death to not make some way to cheer herself up. Attie looked back to the village and began counting the other houses. There were nine more to get through and she was running out of time. If she didn't get them all cleared out before the beasts came, then some of the bodies could get eaten which would result in a devastated family. Nobody wanted to have their loved ones in the bellies of monsters. 

"I got some more homes to clear." She explained, "I have to count them too so that if their family members come looking for them they will have some closure. You'd better get to safety, just cause we won doesn't mean that there aren't monsters still lurking about." 

Icarus tensed for a second until the woman almost seemed to burst in a happy-go-lucky manner almost impossible to fathom in this destroyed village. Her assignment was fairly straightforward, and he was minutely concerned about the possibility of there being only two of them present and having to face off with a wave of creatures. His duty was fairly simple: skirmish as necessary to provide more time for survivors and support personnel to perform their duties. It wasn’t much of a task, more of his own personal goal.

Icarus hadn’t formally signed up with an army for this endeavor, meaning his was acting generally solo and chipping in where possible across all the battlefields when convenient for him. His rest consisted of him returning to his personal corner of his merged Void for several hours to sleep. To assist this woman, he had a solution that would save time and make her job quite a bit easier as well.

”No worries, I’ll be fine, though it would be an annoyance if you were in need of gate travel because your task took too long. One moment…” he trailed off, focusing his power to collect in his right hand. Taking a knee, Icarus let his power flow into the ground, pressing outward in a single pulse that lightly breezed along the soft earth. 

Within a few moments, the pair were joined by more than a dozen corpses walking upright toward them. Their bodies had various degrees of damage, with on holding their head in their hands as the lined up, shoulder to shoulder. ”Simple Necromancy only animates flesh, so neither those gods of life nor death should be upset over some manipulation of souls by mortals. This should help considerably and I recommend we make this a bit quicker, there have been a few stragglers hanging out in the area,” he explained, letting the deceased lay down beside one another for easier counting before releasing his spell.

Attie's eyes opened wide in surprise as she watched the corpses rise to their feet and fumble around. Some of the corpses had no legs so they had to drag themselves with their hands. There was one corpse that had no legs or arms so it just rolled around trying to get to where they were. Attie was not against using necromancy, as it was just a spell to her to reanimate the dead. If somebody was trying to make the dead into a real person or bring back somebody, that was an issue. But just using the corpses as tools was not a problem to her. She waited until all the deceased laid down one by one then turned to Icarus again. 

"Hey thanks! That's going to save me a lot of time!" She said taking off her mask to let him see her face, "My name is Attie. Its a pleasure to meet you! Would you mind doing one more thing for me? If you could keep an eye out for monsters while I'm doing the work, it'd be a big help. Sometimes when I'm concentrating I'm oblivious to the rest of my surroundings." 

Attie pulled her mask back on then turned back to the corpses and began counting them. Taking out her journal, she wrote down the number of corpses and as much of a description as she could give them. If the corpses had any personal items still on them, she would write down which corpse it belonged to then take the item in case the family or loved ones wanted it. If not, she could always find somebody else who'd want the items. There were twenty-one dead bodies in all. She could identify six as male, seven as female, five as children, and the rest were unidentifiable due to their bodies being torn apart so badly. Attie snapped her journal shut then grabbed her scythe to burn the bodies. 

"You might wanna stand back." Attie said to Icarus, "The scythe doesn't know friend from foe." 

She then swung her scythe and hit every single body, causing them all to burst into flames. 

Upon receiving the woman’s thanks and introduction, Icarus gave a slight bow and removed his mask, looking up to face her. ”Icarus and that won’t be a problem,” he replied, placing his mask back over his youthful countenance. This was, after all, the entire reason he stopped and decided to assist her anyway. As he believed, “onesies and twosies” could still be in the area and neither detected them nor were detected yet.

The warning came after a moment of glancing around the swamp, causing him to suddenly withdraw a couple of additional meters. As he feared, however, a distant howl followed after the eruption of flame, indicating they no longer were hidden. ”Running short on time, Attie. I’d wager six minutes at best,” he paused as another guttural sound resounded through the air, this time from the opposite direction and significantly closer. ”Make that three minutes,” he corrected as he drew his blades. 

The new weapons he had forged with Hiro’s assistance were Damascus-style gate-craft. This meant he had a separate blacksmith pounding the material into a welded billet while he forced the compounds to overlap unnaturally densely. Rather than the steel forming rigid structures, they formed rigid structures that were entwined and overlapping, tripling the density. This meant that he forged the blades so thin, they had almost no bevel, but had strength comparable to mithril of greater width. One could look at them from the edge and they would appear almost as thin as paper, but could withstand incredible punishment.

In his right hand, he held his katana and within his left, the longsword he maintained for parrying and stabbing. From beneath his robes, his mana was circulating to the point that his shadow was reacting to it. In the years previous, he had coexisted with the element of darkness, drawing inactive energy from shadows to ignore mana consumption. Now, he suppressed it, mostly, as it had the habit of getting out of control. Even now, his shadow rose from the ground and took the form of a ghastly apparition looming over his back with a ghastly maw curled in a twisted fashion, as though beckoning the creatures toward death. ”I see the first! Sixty meters to my front. Be ready to fight or ready to run!” he called, steeling himself for the clash of his weapons and visceral carnage to follow.

Soon, all the corpses were burnt to a crisp. She doubted that the monsters would go after any of the flaming corpses unless the creatures wanted to die. A scent hit Attie's nose as she realized that the monsters were approaching. With her scythe gripped tightly, she stood next to Icarus and prepared for a fight. If he was determined to fight, then she would fight with him. 

"I hope you weren't expecting to fight alone." She said with a smirk, "Cause I'm not leaving a friend behind." 

Suddenly a chomper came up behind her and tried to tackle her. It had been sneaking around them for a while before deciding that now was the time to attack. Attie managed to kick it off of her while avoiding its powerful jaws. She pushed herself to her feet and held her scythe, preparing for the next attack. The monster lunged at her and tried to snatch her up in its jaws. Her burning scythe was plunged into its forehead and burned through its skull. She pulled her scythe out of the monster and flew up into the sky to get a better look at the other monsters. There was two chompers, one plaguer and a banshee who were all together. 

"I'll take care of the banshee." She shouted down to Icarus, "Once that thing is taken out, we should have an easier time." 

She then began flying towards the ghostly creature. The banshee called out and the monsters began to focus their attention towards Attie, as she was heading towards the monster's healer. The monsters were more powerful due to the scream and were healed up from any previous injuries. Attie put her hands over her ears to block the annoying shrill of the eldritch ghost. Once the call was done she resumed her fighting as she went to destroy the banshee. 

"Keep them off my back!" She shouted to Icarus. 

The banshee tried to claw at her but it missed. Attie took this chance and began slicing at the banshee. The banshee began to float higher but Attie was able to follow it with her wings. She raised up her scythe and sliced across the banshee's neck, effectively chopping off the monster's head. The head fell to the ground and Attie looked over to see how Icarus was doing. She flew towards him quickly, ready to assist him as much as possible. 

The woman’s reply almost made him chuckle. Friends already? Well, I’ll take them when I can get them, he thought to himself. Icarus turned at the last moment to defend Attie against the monster that had chosen to attack from behind, glancing away after he saw her take care of it. Others were approaching and Icarus focused on them as his companion took to facing the airborne enemy. One thing he was grateful for was not having to waste mana to strike a flying adversary when possible. 

Dashing forward, the precision of his swordplay was made apparent. No movement was wasted beyond what was necessary to provide the required effect of the blade. Sidestepping right before sweeping across with a horizontal slash brought him the momentum necessary to cleave the first chomper in half. The next was within immediate striking distance and Icarus swung at its knee, severing the leg as he spun to maintain his momentum. Against the downed foe, he stabbed twice with his longsword in his other hand, once targeting the back of its normal head and then the spine directly behind its large maw. 

The bloated, macabre plaguer was more of an issue, though not much of one. Keeping a distance of a few meters, Icarus summoned one spectral blade, using only a fifth the normal mana. Pointing his katana directly at it to maintain his aim, he sent the spectral blade forth, using the disposable magic weapon to impale it. The resultant explosion was minor, sending viscera and debris only a meter or so. 

”Finished here!” he called even as he turned and saw Attie had almost completely rejoined him from her scuffle. ”Are we finished out here or do you have another destination we need to hit?”

Seeing that everything was over, she relaxed and looked over to Icarus. 

"No this was the last one on this." Attie said, "I'm sure there are other houses and homes we are missing but those places are hard to find, especially during war. All of the known villages and homes have been taken care of. We'd better get back to the camp. I'm sure the general will be glad to know that the families minds will be mostly put to rest. And the ones with dead relatives….well they will have some form of closure. Anyway lets get going." 

They headed off to the camp and arrived right as the sun was lowering in the sky. The camp was surrounded by guards, all looking for any threats that the darkness might hold. In front of the entrance there was a security system checking for anybody who might be a chomper in disguise. The easiest way to prove that she wasn't a chomper was to use magic so she held up her hand to one of the guards and made her hand glow for a short amount of time. That was enough to prove that she was who she said she was and Attie was allowed into the camp. The tents inside the camp were mostly all white with the exception of a few colored tents for nobles or generals.

All the generals were figuring out battle strategies while the soldiers were resting. This was one of the few times that they were able to relax and gather up their moral for a bit. Each of the soldiers looked tired and drained, as though they had been fighting this battle for a hundred years. In the middle of the camp was a large bonfire with many soldiers huddled around it for warmth. The food tent had a medium sized line full of people waiting for food. There were even a few refugees who hadn't quite made the journey to safer places, huddled around the fire talking to some of the other soldiers. Suddenly a young refugee man approached both Attie and Icarus.

"Excuse me, but I heard that you were the people who checked on the destroyed villages?" The young man asked, "I wanted to know if you've seen my wife. She has blonde hair, beautiful brown eyes, and she had a sword with her. Her name was Emily and she was helping the soldiers defend the village. I didn't know if she had gotten lost, was at a different camp, or….if something had happened."

Attie kept herself from sighing deeply as she knew this was exactly what she'd have to be worried about. People wanted to know about their loved ones and she hated being the bringer of bad news. Taking out her journal, she checked for a description of that kind. 

"Yes." Attie said with a slightly somber tone, "She…was one of the bodies I was sent to check on. Her body was found near the village and she had this around her neck. Would you like to have it back?"

The man's eyes filled with grief as she said those words. Any hope that he had was dashed in seconds and he felt stunned. Attie pulled out the locket from her satchel and handed to the young man. With shaking hands, he took the locket and opened it to show a small painting of Emily and himself. He closed the locket then held it to his heart for a few moments before looking back up to Attie with tears filling up his eyes. 

"Thank you for saving this. Both of you." He said to the both of them as calmly as he could, "It…it means a lot to me. Before I go….did she have some sort of burial? I don't want those monsters anywhere near her…"

"Don't worry." Attie reassured him, "We gave her a cremation so that the monsters couldn't get to her. She's now a part of the earth again and they won't ever be able to hurt her in any way." 

Though his expression was still one of pain, he clearly felt relief by that fact. He nodded and looked to Icarus to give him his thanks as well. Then the young man headed off to his tent. A woman fully dressed in armor suddenly approached Attie and inquired about the information she gathered. Attie ripped off the pages of information and handed it to the soldier, along with all of the items that went along with it. Now Attie wouldn't have to be the bringer of bad news anymore. She then turned to Icarus, to see how he was doing. No doubt that the whole event would have brought down his moral. 

"How are you doing?" Attie asked him sincerely. 

The journey back and through the camp hadn’t taken long, nor the pass through security. He hadn’t even needed to say a word as he lifted his shadow to wave for him, demonstrating more than enough for the guards present. The entire conversation held with the worried young man went without him saying a word, just a solemn nod as he thanked Icarus. It wasn’t his task, merely one he found himself joining on to assist Attie.

They all found themselves in a struggle for survival against an existential crisis. In his experience, every minor positive change had a possibility of setting into motion a series of events that bring about the outcome he sought. It was why he performed his tasks and duties as he saw fit, disconnected from the world and chiming in only when he saw something necessary. Life, as it seemed, would continuously entwine his fate to others.

Even as the man walked away, he thought of his own departed wife, dead by her own hand after his first death. Thinking of her caused him to experience tinnitus as he developed a headache from the memories he had been suppressing for years. The thought of seeing her, hand gripping the dagger in her bosom as she sat in her throne… it made decades of forgotten pain return as though he were there. It was the curse of a eidetic memory. Whenever it was triggered, he could remember the most absolute of details, pleasant or otherwise.

”Just old age getting to me again. I’m not quite as durable as I used to be,” he said, being honest while also hiding what it was that bothered him. His physical prowess was no less than it had been at his peak, which was convenient given he was physically only in his early twenties. The additional decades of life outside of that had weighed on him heavily. ”What about you? Plans now? A new bounty, perhaps?”