Jacob Ward sat his horse with greater ease than he would have ever thought possible in his previous life. [Horsemanship] was one of his passive skills, and allowed him much increased ability to understand his mount. He now handled the creature with smooth assurance.

 

One of the local youths who had not yet unlocked a class came riding towards Jacob’s position. The boy had already had some basic riding skills, and had volunteered to ride with the scouts patrolling ahead of the wagon train.

 

“Report, boy. Are the farms in the next valley going to evacuate?”

 

The younger man turned his horse to fall in next to Jacob with a deft gesture of the reins. “Yes sir, or at least most of them. A few holdouts ran us off, but they were all white-haired ancient classers.”

 

“Why is that so important?”

 

The youth gave him a strange look before clearing his throat and continuing. “I forget Worldwalkers don’t know everything, sir. For classers that old, they may not have the endurance or regen of the rest of us, but the raw power never goes away.” He grinned savagely. “They may only be able to do it once or twice before the effort kills them, but they can still crack the earth or break the sky.”

 

“So the Deskren will have a sorry time of it, to try to rout them…”

 

“They’ll fight like cornered badgers,” the youth agreed, “and if they take enough out at once to gain a level, they could hold this valley for days.”

 

“Good,” said Jacob, noting with a smile the slight confusion on the lad’s face. “I can’t put off Class Selection much longer, and the caravan can’t afford to have me down for two or three days to get over it.”

 

“So the rumors are true, sir?” His face shone with a new eagerness. “We can hold for a few days; the training has already let most of us learn new combat skills, even some of the older classers. Or you could lay in one of the wagons for Selection, and we can just avoid stopping at all…”

 

“That’s an option I’ll talk over with Erin and the others. Now, you go see my wife for some food and then get rested for your next patrol. Mishel’s husband Parnus slaughtered one of the hogs this morning, so there’s bacon.”

 

The youth gave an earnest, if imperfect, salute and turned his horse to head back towards the rear of the caravan, where Jacob’s wife rode with the family that had first took them in when they arrived on Anfealt. A [Farmer] and a [Midwife], who had graciously allowed the newlywed pair of Worldwalkers to stay in their barn in exchange for help with the fields. It had not lasted, however, as the Deskren incursions began less than a month after the Purple Night.

 

The city of South Hollows had fallen, and it had not gone gentle into that good night. Knowing the alternative was slavery, the entire city had taken up arms to clear a path for the young and those unable to fight. Those unable or unwilling to flee had made suicidal last stands street by street, to buy time. The evacuees had scattered into the surrounding hills, and different groups banded together for protection from banditry and from the slaver teams who filtered into the wilderness, picking off stragglers.

 

A few haggard groups passing through the farmstead prompted the farmer and his family to evacuate as well, smoke from the neighboring lands a grim notice of the consequences of staying alone. One family and a pair of Worldwalkers on the road became two families, then three, then five as more joined them. Jacob’s background in military command lent itself almost immediately to Skills regarding organization and the logistics of managing a caravan on the march. Most of the common citizenry of Anfealt stood in awe of Worldwalkers, and that gave an even sharper edge to his natural abilities to command.

 

He was not sure exactly when it happened, but he had become the unofficial leader of an entire column of refugees. He did, however, know why: his natural aptitude for any number of survival-oriented tasks -- organizing wagon trains, managing the flow of bodies without any getting in another's way, and maintaining effective patrol coverage, to name but three -- led the refugees to defer to him almost without conscious thought.

 

When the first bandit raid came in the middle of the night, they lost three wagons and the lives of a dozen refugees. The caravan's food stores had been raided, and several women had also been dragged off into the night. Though he had assumed everything would fall apart after that, the thirty riders he led out to rescue the women had not turned against him.

Indeed, while his wife helped heal the traumatized girls with her own class skills, those who had been in the rescue party had dispersed among the wagons, spreading tales of his passive command skill, [Momentum]. Any mounted unit he led travelled with greater... inertia, was the only way he could describe it even to himself.

 

When they had charged into the ragtag camp of bandits, their horses’ hooves struck the ground with thunderous impact, and they hit the brigands with such force that the enemy had been nearly obliterated. Bodies, tents, armor, even the other group’s own mounts had been sent flying as if struck by a plow, not mere horseflesh. Those not sent flying were trampled and broken without mercy, and the sight of the battered women next to their wagon rid them of any notion of taking prisoners. Jacob had put the surviving bandits to the sword personally, while his makeshift militia watched with flat eyes.

 

There had been no more losses to banditry since that night. Jacob had drafted the best riders from among the refugees and organized training schedules for scouting and formation drills. Everyone with fighting experience had been drawn up to practice in groups for at least two hours every evening, when the caravan halted for the night. The wagons were now circled together whenever they made camp. Anyone who could swing a pick or shovel quickly learned how to dig shallow trenches for defense, and everyone with archery skills kept eyes on the surrounding hills and forest glades at all times. People with woodscraft or hunting skills or classes were recruited to stealthily keep watch on the surrounding area, ready to sound a signal with flashy spells or by simply blowing horns if they lacked magic.

 

What Jacob had was an army assembling itself as it went, protecting the children and livestock in the middle of a barricade of healthy and strong bodies. Several bandit groups since the first had mistaken the caravan for easy pickings, and had paid the price for their hubris. He had gained the title [The Implacable] when he executed the rapists in that first battle, providing a significant boost to his already-formidable abilities. His original thirty riders were quickly growing into a solid cavalry unit under his lead, his Skills allowing for rapid maneuver and almost-instinctive unit awareness. Thanks to watchful scouts, several groups of unsuspecting brigands had met their end facing a heavy charge. What amounted to a proto-hivemind among the riders under his command permitted a remarkable fluidity, the men able to be everywhere among the wagons until they all needed to be somewhere to repel a threat.

 

Shaking himself out of his reverie, he sat upright in the saddle and watched the refugee train pass by into the clearing where initial fortifications for camp were already being dug, that could be added to later. Trenches were being carved out and berms of dirt piled up to give archers cover, to break up enemy charges, and to protect against magical attacks. The few people they had picked up with magical classes moved in a group, laying out protective wards and linking them in a circle around the grounds. They had no offensive caster classes so far, but several classless teens showed minor talent with basic attack spells and seemed eager to train towards combat-related magecraft. Jacob looked over the forming camp and was once again struck by the sense of a military compound, at once filled with both pride at the ability of those under him and remorse at its necessity.

 

As the main body of the column moved into the fortified area, Jacob saw his wife, Erin, climb down from one of the two large conestoga wagons that had been converted to mobile field hospitals. Her med school training on Earth had led to her gaining skills in diagnosis and healing magics and surgery on a level that the people they met so far had found miraculous. Even though they had successfully fought off every raid from both regular bandits and Deskren slavers, they still ended up with wounded to care for. She had gained a class within the first week of the march from such extensive use of her abilities, and the [Hand of Solace] had organized every warm body with any healing talent at all into the kind of trauma response unit that would make any metropolitan hospital jealous.

 

He spurred his horse to an easy trot and made his way down into the camp. His wife, having just finished dumping out a basin of bloody water into one of the latrines, approached him. “Everyone made it today, Jake,” she called as he dismounted and handed the reins to one of the tenders that helped manage the caravan’s mounts and livestock. “I couldn’t save Millie’s arm; the arrow was poisoned, but at least now she won’t have to worry about infection. The rest will be up and walking in a day or two at the most.”

 

He didn’t respond, simply walking up and lifting her off her feet in a hug that highlighted the difference in their respective heights, with her shoes nearly a foot off the ground.

 

“You have to choose, don’t you?” she said after silently enjoying the attention for several moments.

 

“I can’t put it off any longer. But I hate leaving you helpless while I’m under.”

 

She straightened her blouse and apron as he set her back on her feet, shooing away his concerns with a wave of her hand. “It will only be two days, three at the most. We can hold off the raiders, should they come. You’ve trained your men well; trust in them. I’m more worried about what class you plan to choose.”

 

They walked between the rows of wagons, stopping at a nondescript cart pulled by a single horse. “I’m not worried about little raids, Erin. If the Deskren are mounting a full invasion, then there are entire armies on the move. And my options so far…”

 

“No half measures,” she said sternly. “You do what makes the most sense for the mission, you’ve never been a glory hound.” Her face twisted with disgusted outrage. “They enslave children,” she snarled before calming herself and continuing. “The man I married stood against such evils back on our old world. He wouldn’t be the same man if he didn’t here as well.”

 

“I’m not going to disparage myself, woman,” he said with a feral grin and pulled her into another embrace. “If I commit to this, I absolutely can break the Deskren. All that will take is time.” His savage grin faded, replaced with an uneasy expression. “But it could be decades of war, hon. What about after?”

 

“How can there be an ‘after,’ if they aren’t beaten? I won’t wear a collar like a dog, or bring children into any world ruled by the likes of them.”

 

His slumped a little as he held his better half, a more resigned and somber mood now floating between the two. “You know me better than these people, know what it will mean if I do this. I explained my options to you when I checked them last.”

 

“Every day we wait they take more innocent people, Jacob. As long as you don’t come back from this as some silly dancing dandy, you know I’ll stand with you no matter what it takes to finish them.” She pulled back, fixing Jacob with an intense gaze. “I married a good man, not a nice one.”

 

He threw back the flap on the end of the wagon, revealing a bed of folded blankets just wide enough for a person to lay comfortably within. “All of the extra defenses have been prepared, and they all know what to do to keep reinforcing them,” he said as he stepped onto the running board at the back of the cart. “You’re in charge until I get back.”

 

“If you aren’t awake by the third day, we’ll move the convoy. I know we can’t stay in one place any longer than that.”

 

Never one to drag out any form of goodbye, Jacob leaned down and kissed his wife, then turned and crawled into the wagon to lay down. A brief mental command to pull up his status menu and he was once again in another place, oblivious to the surrounding world.

 

His wife had recounted her Class Selection to him, with her other self being a nurse dressed in hospital scrubs in a hospital waiting room. Her presentation of the Class Avatars had been a gigantic sprawling facility with different types of specialized doctors and healer classes, with a few Life- and Death-aspected mage classes scattered here and there.

 

Jacob’s own was very different. Instead of a waiting room, he found himself in an Army recruiter’s office, but with a younger copy of himself sitting behind the desk. So similar to the same room he had walked into all those years ago, before his first enlistment and service, and later his trip through West Point.

 

His other self did not even get up from the desk as he had the previous visits when Jacob had came here to review his choices. He simply nodded, and sipped from his mug of coffee before speaking.

 

“So this is it, then.”

 

“There’s a lot that needs doing, and I don’t see anybody else doing it,” Jacob replied with a shrug.

 

“That’s how it goes. We swore the Oaths when we signed up, and the spirit still pulls, even if we’re far away from where we swore. Some things are simply intolerable, and require that hard men do hard things.”

 

“Then let it be done.”

 

Recruiter-Jacob nodded and waved towards the door. “You don’t need me out there; we both know what you’ve chosen.”

 

Jacob gave a somber nod, then turned and opened the door. He stepped out, not into an arena, or a hospital, or a ballroom, or any of the other manifestations that had been described to him. No…

 

Jacob Ward’s Class Selection landscape was a battlefield. Or The Battlefield, thought Jacob grimly.

 

It stretched from horizon to horizon, running into the distance both ahead and behind. Near the limits of his sight, explosions flashed and thunder tore the sky as dirt and rubble and bodies were churned up by the chaos of the conflict. Clouds the color of gunmetal hung low and ominous, and the scent of burned things both organic and synthetic permeated the air.

 

He walked along trenches and behind barricades, threading his way between artillery emplacements and the wreckage of tanks and vehicles from every era of war. Different versions of himself operated various pieces of equipment or stood next to them in uniform, all greyed out and faded, despite the perfect detail. He had made his choice before entering this place, so they did not call out to him. They merely discharged their roles in silence as jets thundered above and the ground shook from rolling tracks and marching boots and bombs falling from the sky.

 

The war-torn landscape was endless, but it did seem to have themed regions where one age of warfare was more pronounced than others. He had been here several times before, and knew roughly where his destination was. As he walked, the trenches and barbed wire gave way to more shallow ditches and walls of pikes, with infantry marching in lock-step to advance towards the field of death and destruction. Tanks and vehicles gave way to horses and wagons, but the eyes of all his copies remained the same -- iron determination and a relentless dedication to getting the job done. The eyes of the Soldier.

 

Here, the avatars were beginning to show up in full color -- options that were closer to or more compatible with what he had finally decided to choose. Men in crisply-pressed dress uniforms stood between men in gleaming medieval full plate to their left, and men in modern sets of body armor to their right. Though these, too, stood as possible directions for his Soul (as he had been informed after his first abortive Selection), they, like those before, stood silent. No Class like [Dawnbreak Commander] or [Ivory Gauntlet] for Jacob, no -- those classes leaned as much towards the glory itself as they did accomplishing the mission. Capable as they were, he harbored no desire for such gaudy frivolous things as medals and recognition.

 

For what seemed like half a day or more, Jacob’s feet carried him past interminable battlefields, endless tableaus, silent commemorations of death, destruction, and war. Finally, Jacob’s journey drew to its end. The clouds seemed to press further in as the machines of war faded behind him, the scream of warfare fading to the throaty rumble of distant ordnance, heavy with expectation. Before him stood a formation of at least fifty armed and armored riders, lances rising above them like jagged teeth, raking the sky. Blood, black and steaming in the wintry air, dripped down their shafts. Their armor was not polished, nor was it even uniform between each rider and horse, but all of it was functional and the care spent on maintaining that function was obvious.

 

One rider sat ahead of the formation. Like his brothers, he and his mount faced the battlefield; however, as Jacob drew closer, their heads turned to meet him. His armor, too, set him apart from his fellows -- it seemed to darken at the edges, leaking shadow into the air, leeching the light from the space around him. His mount, a massive Percheron, exhibited the same effect. His expression was cold and calm, his motions economy itself.

 

Jacob approached the imposing figure, neither saying a word until he approached to within a few paces, causing the massive warhorse to snort and stamp its hoof hard enough to throw up mud and dirt. Silence quickly returned, and Jacob and the rider watched each other for several long moments.

 

“It’s time,” he said to his reflection.

 

“Indeed.” The reply was given in a matter-of-fact tone, cold and deep, and in that moment, with that word, the muted thunder and roar of distant battle faded away.

 

“I intend to crush the Deskren. And any who enslave others. This world does not know war, not truly.”

 

“They will,” rumbled the reply.

 

“I will bow to no Kings or Kingdoms,” said Jacob. “I swore my oaths to one nation, and they still hold. Those who follow me will hold to them as well.”

 

“Then seek the [Oracle] in due time. She may fashion a treaty to set you apart from the Bargain of Kings. More than this I cannot say,” spoke the horseman.

 

“Then there is nothing more to discuss.”

 

The man made no reply, merely tucking his lance back against his shoulder and leaning towards Jacob slightly to extend a hand. He reached out and shook that bloodied, mailed gauntlet. In the next moment, the eternal battlefield vanished.

 

The [Blacklance Battlemaster] opened his eyes, gritting his teeth as the changes to be wrought upon his soul began to ravage his being.