A push stirred him awake… He had fallen asleep wearing his armor. The queen stood before him… Was it already time for battle…? How long did he even sleep… It was still dark outside…

‘‘We are advancing our attack now. The enemy is distracted, so this is our perfect opportunity. Come.’’ She said coldly. Her laughter from hours ago was gone completely.

Harry groaned as he stood up from his bed… He was exhausted mentally and physically… Now he had to kill people for a queen he, let’s be honest, had as much respect for than she had for the rest of the men in her queendom… He had seen her kill countless men for basic errors for the small days he was here and the queen had the ugh… She was giving him passes where other people didn’t. It infuriated him. Whatever… A cog didn’t complain.

Tightening the belt that kept his armor together, he walked toward Elaria before glancing behind her, noticing that both the black helmet division and the silver helmet were already ready on their horses in the yard. With a sigh, he followed after the queen up to their own horses… The battle was now or never. Today was the day he might know if there was fact an afterlife… The answer scared him.

Elaria took notice of how tired he looked and sighed softly… Which Harry took notice of but simply brushed it aside… Why would he care if the queen showed him sympathy… He mounted his horse and motioned for his side of the army to follow him… His eyes roamed the male soldiers trying to spot Luka… If he was the leak, he probably wouldn’t even show up for the battle… But there he was at the back. Most likely waiting for the best moment to divert path and disappear. At least he showed up… Hopefully he will manage to get away safely…

Luka rode on his horse taking quick glances around him to see if there was a safe and sneaky way to get out… A small click from the forest drew his attention… taking his focus completely off the rest of the world… He motioned to Harry that he was going to check up on something before turning his horse around to reach the place he had heard the noise… He may have been a coward… But if he had spotted a trap, he had to make sure it wouldn’t be used on them.

Harry and the rest of the army kept on galloping toward the enemy castle… But as they came closer and closer…something was off. There was no sign of human life… Harry and the queen jumped down their horses and cautiously walked into the castle… There was this warm smell as if a bomb had just exploded…but there was n— A crater stood in the middle of the castle… The red star that Harry had seen last night had crashed right here… Corpses laid around the crater… They had been turned to skeletons from the sheer heat.

Elaria jumped down into the small crater… curious in what had caused this much damage… Kneeling down at the impact point, she found a jewel…or a red gem, if you will. It waved in her hand with a strange energy…an infinite one. Elaria smirked to herself as she stashed the gem in her pocket for later examination.

Harry glanced down at the queen only for him to be able to witness her stashing the gem… He didn’t know what she had stashed… But he noticed. With a sigh he glanced at the room and noticed one human who was somehow still alive…well, not for long. Their flesh had melted and solidified completely on the left side of their body. The human glanced up at Harry with a small smirk… He had probably recognized that he was an enemy, but why did he smirk?

All of a sudden… A scream echoed from outside the castle… Luke’s.

“Dolls! They’re mechanical dolls!” He said in horror.

Mechanical dolls? What the hell was this kid talking about? Harry stormed out of the castle and froze as he saw a horde of shadows standing around the army with Luke standing right before them. Alone. Blade at the ready. How did mechanical dolls even get—Dammit…is that what they were working on earlier? Did we activate a trap that activated them? Shit. That must have been what Luke had heard…

One doll approached Luke slowly, each movement from it making a small clicking noise as a gear shifted within it. Truly impressive technology…and terrifying. Each of the dolls contained 4 arms with blades mounted on each of them… Truly a death machine. Luke trembled in his boots; the hold on his sword wavered… He knew he should run…or regroup with the army… But for some reason…he didn’t.

Harry glanced at the two divisions… Why weren’t they doing anything? Ugh, damn heartless bastards. He said as he unsheathed his sword and jumped back onto his horse.

“Dammit… I need to reach this kid…”

A blur of inhuman speed swooshed past him, dragging the air behind itself. The leopard of the blade cut through the mechanical doll before it could even lift its blade at Luke. Elaria did not waste a second and kept on moving, slicing through the mechanical dolls as if they were made of butter and her sword was flaming red. Luke fell backward from the sudden woosh of air striking behind Elaria and before he even had landed on the ground… The mechanical dolls that were surrounding him were all destroyed as Elaria stood tall, illuminated by the moonlight.

Harry hopped off his horse, glaring at the other mechanical dolls who had started to surround the divisions.

Luke was safe. He was going to make sure that the army was safe now… They may be heartless, incompetent assholes… But he was their general. He was a cog. One that had to be a role model.

Lightning almost roared through the clear night sky as Harry swung his blade through the air at one of the mechanical dolls… The doll lifted one of its arms to block the upcoming move but…time seemed to almost slow down for Harry… His focus was higher than ever as he suddenly shifted his grip on his sword and struck at the doll’s legs to make it collapse to the side to finish it with a stab to the chest, piercing the doll straight through its cogs and shattering them to pieces.

A cog shattering another cog. Harry smirked as the mechanical doll’s oil shot out of its “corpse,” covering his face in the dark liquid.

This was almost fun… tearing something that had no soul…no life apart. It was…sadistically enjoyable. Harry moved to the next doll as Elaria kept on dispatching of a large number of dolls by herself… The army watching in awe at the strength of the two individuals…

Luke took that moment to run away from the battlefield… Everyone was focused on Harry and Elaria. No one would ever notice him.

Elaria blurred past Harry, slashing at a doll who had almost hit him in the back as he was focused on another one. Their backs leaned against one another before they parted ways to keep up their assaults on the dolls.

Luke kept on running away from the battlefield until he entered a forest. It was silent while the giant trees covered even the moonlight from entering its home. The forest was filled with corpses—one of them reached out a melted hand and wrapped it around his ankle, pulling hard and swiftly, bringing him down to the floor in one quick movement. The amalgam of flesh quickly wrapped itself around his body in the goal of silencing any screams… The flesh was hot…smoldering… But no one would hear a thing.

Harry and Elaria dispatched of the final doll with the help of a few soldiers who had finally decided to do something… However there wasn’t a second to relax for them… A guttural, melted scream echoed through the sky as a heavy mass of flesh came out of the forest that Luke had ran into… Harry froze in horror at the sight before him… In the flesh of the beast before them… The melted flesh of Luke had been fused to it… The agonized face of Luke melted to a still.

Elaria quickly connected the dots of everything that was happening… The red gem crashed through the sky as the enemy kingdom was preparing these dolls for any upcoming battle and killed them…infecting their corpse and mutating it… This amalgam of flesh before her was a result of the powerful artifact she held in her own pocket. A small grin came on her face… She held terrifying powers; now she just had to figure out how to work them… She sheathed her blade and pulled the gem out of her pocket, slowly advancing toward the fleshy amalgam.

Harry stood to the side in horror as he watched what the hell was even happening.

The amalgam of flesh glared down at the gem; it seemed almost…unsure of how to act. Elaria tilted her head to the side at that realization. It wasn’t attacking her… This melted being… saw her as superior?

With a smirk, Elaria swung the gem in the air, testing out the waving energy coursing through it. The wave of the gem tore through the fabric of space and ripped the amalgam of flesh apart in unthinkable ways that made everyone in her army gasp in surprise.

The leopard of the blade had acquired newfound power… But what would she wield it for?