Benjamin was one of the few people sober enough to watch the sunrise over the giant turtle the following morning. It was an impressive sight. He wanted to go up and explore it, but instead, he helped the clay people prepare breakfast, which consisted of sweet fry bread and fruit. 

The food itself was good, but he helped because he couldn’t help but admire the strange glazes and patterns that developed on those strange men and women when they got too close to the flames. He still hadn’t been able to decide if the strange fae lived for only a day or two or if they were reborn anew with every sunrise; both seemed equally likely, but he really couldn’t say for sure. 

They were intelligent, friendly, and talkative people, but when they were newborn and barely differentiated clay mannequins, it was impossible to tell them apart. It was only when patterns and colors were baked into their pale skin that they started to take on a bit of character. One might become a beautiful woman with a splotchy raku glaze pattern, and the other might take the shape of a man with daubs of rust-colored lines and splotches that looked almost like war paint. 

It was a fascinating series of contrasts, and it was more than enough to occupy Benjamin’s attention until his friends rejoined the land of the living. Raja and Emma both emerged with hangovers, but thanks to Matt’s lesser cure spell, those effects vanished as soon as he noticed them. 

It’s a pity that spell can’t do anything for fatigue, Benjamin thought to himself as he yawned. 

He’d been too excited to get much sleep, and as soon as he started explaining why to his friends, he could tell he immediately had their attention. Well, he had their attention once they finished gawking at Skaros, who loomed unperturbed far above them. 

“So first wood men, then clay men, and now stone men, huh?” Raja asked with his mouth half full. “Do you think they’ll be the ones that will be able to keep the big bad wolf from blowing our house down?”

Emma rolled her eyes, and everyone else just sort of looked at Raja, prompting their friend to double down. “What? Not funny?” he laughed. “Not by the hairs of your chinny chin chin?”

“I think I liked it better when he had a mute button,” Matt said flatly. 

Everyone laughed at that, even Raja, but when Benjamin suggested they split up, everyone got serious again. “You mean split up the army?” Emma asked for clarification.

“No, I mean like all of us,” Benjamin said with a shake of his head. “Right now, we have all our eggs in one basket. If the Sorcerers ever find us, they could wipe us out in one shot. You saw what they did with that mountain thing.”

“Still not a good enough reason,” Matt said. 

“Look, I know you two don’t want to be separated, but if you each took a thousand men, then you could—” Benjamin started, carefully explaining why it was a good idea as he was peppered with interruptions. 

“Just because I need to focus on building some hardware doesn’t mean the rest of you need to sit out,” he said with a sigh.

“God, you can be such an idiot, Benjamin, you know that?” Emma said with a smile. “We’re you’re fucking friends. As much as I love killing these assholes, we’re not just going to go fight this war without you, you know? We’re in this together.”

Matt nodded at that, and Raja opened his mouth but quickly closed it again as he realized he was about to ruin the moment. Despite the fact that what they wanted to do was nearly pointless, he still appreciated the gesture. He didn’t want to be split up from them either. 

Eventually, Benjamin relented, and Matt picked a few warriors from his inner circle that he thought would make for excellent leaders in his place, and they built the plan together. Despite not having an exact map, it was a pretty simple plan: the current army would divide into four groups of nearly a thousand people each, and they’d all take different paths to the inner sea, wiping out every plantation and soft target they could. 

Without the siege magic that Benjamin had in mind, those groups would skip any fortresses or strongholds and focus on achievable victories that starved the beast. It was a simple plan, but even simple plans could fall apart pretty quickly when the enemy could summon more soldiers and summon monsters without too much effort.

“The fact is that thanks to the centaurs and all the other fae that dwell in the sea of grass, we know where the area is, but they don’t know where we are,” Matt said, impressing the plan on the men who would be taking over before Benjamin made the announcement to everyone. “That is our biggest, and right now our only real advantage. You need to pick your fights carefully, or they’ll whistle us down to size in no time, and as soon as a summoner takes the field, your archers have to take the bastard out ASAP.”

There were some questions about why they couldn’t break the other side’s mind control anymore, but all Benjamin could tell them was that he was working on it. Truthfully, if he could locate the Prince’s privileged ports, he might yet succeed, but those were long odds. “Things were a lot easier when we could make them switch sides on command,” he agreed. 

All of this was just putting off the inevitable: standing up in front of thousands and explaining what was going to happen next. He’d wanted to tell them everything, but Matt had argued that just like in a real military, important information like, ‘we’re going to craft a super weapon that will turn the tide of the war and let us defeat the Rhulvinarians once and for all’ should be withheld for the good of everyone. In the end, he mostly just thanked everyone for working so hard for the cause and told them that they were splitting up so they could continue using the hit-and-run tactics they’d used so successfully until now. 

People clapped and cheered at the appropriate moments, but the whole thing still felt inadequate to Benjamin, and as he stood there on the back of the cart that served as his makeshift stage, he couldn’t help but wonder how many people in the sea of faces would die before he saw them again in a few months. 

After that, Matt took over and explained that they were going to fight and kill as many as possible, and then they would all reassemble near the inner sea to conquer the cities there. Though the audience stayed enthusiastic, as Matt stacked goal on top of goal, Benjamin couldn’t help but feel exhausted. 

Any part of what they needed to do to achieve victory sounded hard, but when he put them all together like that, it seemed impossible. They needed to sack hundreds of smaller settlements, several larger cities, and beat off an unknowable amount of nearly immortal mages that could teleport large armies and small mountains at will. 

Matt called it “A challenge they couldn’t refuse.” Benjamin had to force himself not to laugh at that. That was the understatement of the year. 

Lunch was already cooking by the time all of that was done. Matt spent a few minutes with his generals, then finally returned to his friends and said, “Alright, we can leave whenever you want.”

“There’s one more thing we need to do first,” Benjamin corrected him. 

“What’s that?” Raja asked. 

Benjamin didn’t answer, though. He just started walking toward the giant turtle. There was zero chance he was going to miss out on the chance to explore something like that. 

He had no idea how to get up there, but that wasn’t about to stop him, and after a few minutes of asking around, he found out that the answer was a few lifts operated by mules and capstans at the edge of the shell. The wooden cages were the ricketiest elevator he’d ever been in, but no matter how much it swayed in the breeze, it never felt like it was about to give way, and a few moments later, they were on the mottled shell of the majestic creature’s back. 

Even forgetting that this was a living creature that moved slightly with each breath, it was a surreal experience. Narrow footpaths wound between tightly clustered buildings that scaled the side of the monster. More than anything, the adobe buildings resembled cliff dwellings of the southwest, and on the slopes that were too steep to build, terraced gardens had been built up along the flanks. 

Benjamin talked to the humans who were too frail to join the celebrations and learned much about the simple way of life they lived as they drifted around the sea of grass. Mostly, though, he learned that Emma was afraid of heights. 

No one had known that until now, not even her, apparently. Well, she must have known about it at some point in the past and forgotten, with everything that had happened, though. Still, she clung to Matt for dear life on trails where the rest of them only held the rope handrails with a light grip. 

Raja teased her about it as he showed off, using mana-fueled powers like hunter's grace and disengage to leap from perch to perch like he was filming a particularly ill-advised parkour video. “You’ve got to check out this view,” he said, standing on a particularly exposed beam with nothing but a five-story drop below him. “It’s to die for.” Benjamin rolled his eyes, but Matt finally shut him down by threatening to throw their friend off the side if he didn’t stop. 

All in all, it was a town built for hundreds, and perhaps half of those seemed to be human. The remainder were mostly clay people, with a few beastmen scattered around in an almost random mix. 

Even though it bordered on the surreal, the tight, nearly vertical confines of the two- and three-story buildings were filled with the same smells of cooking and laundry, and they heard everything from women singing as they knitted and spun to smiths hammering and children playing. It was a beautiful place. There was even a temple built to the throne at the very front of the shell. 

She might be ambivalent about what she was going to do with the manthings on her side, but it was clear, from the amount and variety of the offerings that had been left there, that the manthings loved her and would love nothing more than to stay if they were given the chance. He hoped that would be the case. 

Honestly, he would have loved to stay here, too, if they didn’t have so much to do. A beautiful view that changed every day and a giant turtle to slowly rock you to sleep. Who could ask for anything more? Benjamin thought to himself as he took one last long look at the impossible town and its even more impossible location.

Sadly, after the hour's long tour, with the sun nearing the far horizon, it was time to be on their way. They had a lot to do, and every day this war dragged on, hundreds more people were going to die.

Author's Note: Broken System 2 is now available for Pre-order at Amazon. Please consider picking up a copy if you love this story.