Page 113 of Ashes of Honor

The tree line exploded. They came at us in a tidal wave of nightmares. Their movements were fast—damn near too fast to be real. But they were. And there were hundreds of them. They weren’t Pansies—not the ones we knew. Not anymore. These were something worse. Taller, their limbs stretched too far, as if Ronan had put effort into taking a human and twisting them until the proportions no longer made sense. Their faces were a mess of sharp angles and glowing eyes, and their movements … fuck me, their movements were all wrong. Jerky, but fast. Impossibly fast.

Shields went up across the field, but not quick enough. Pansies hits met our troops head-on with a sickening crunch, mouths full of jagged teeth snapping through the air.

“Hold the line!” Amaia ordered, her voice cut through the rising panic.

Pure shock halted my steps. Soldiers scrambled to regroup, firing into the horde, Amaia’s orders already unraveling before our eyes. They fired into the horde and I watched as the scout—Park—went down, dragged into the swarm. Pansies poured through Royal Oaks for as far as the eye could see.

Amaia grabbed my arm, yanking me out of my frozen disbelief. “Fall back. Now.”

Her command jolted the soldiers into motion, but the swarm was faster. It surged forward, cutting off escape routes and cornering entire units.

A roar tore through the battlefield.

It wasn’t human. Hell, it wasn’t Pansie. It was something in between. The humanoid appearance was a grotesque mockery, it struck a chord of fear within me. It was deep, guttural, and loud enough to vibrate in my chest. Every head that could spare a second snapped toward the sound.

“What the actual fuck,” I muttered, mouth dry. My stomach twisted as I met Amaia’s eyes.

Amaia looked rattled. Not panicked, not defeated—but rattled. And that scared the shit out of me. The ground trembled, and I realized this wasn’t the end of the simulation. This was something else entirely.

Alexiares

“I’m not one to speak on the cruelty of methods,” I said, pulling us down to the ground in order to avoid an out of control burst of fire that was bound to weaken our shield. “But releasing Pansies at a time like this is a bit excessive, no?”

“Those aren’t mine.” Her eyes shifted with trained efficiency. Fear had been replaced by raw fury.

I cleared my throat, shuffling us toward higher ground. “Pardon.”

“Where the fuck would I get Covert Uniforms from, Alexiares?”

I glanced toward her with the jerk of my head. The realization of her statement overshadowed her annoying habit of using sarcasm to communicate when all she needed to do was explain what the—Never mind. Now’s not the time.“Fuck.”

“Fuck is right.” She dropped our shield with an exaggerated sigh, like this entire nightmare was a personal inconvenience—which, I supposed it was. “Pros and cons … Pro, this is extremely realistic to what we’re likely to face. Con, I promised them no one would die unless it was a tragic accident.”

I snorted despite the gore-feast happening around us. “Is this an ‘act of God’ insurance claim type of qualification for an accident or …”

She glared at me, magic simmering in the cusp of one hand, her knife in the other.

I gestured toward the carnage behind her. “I see at least ten dead bodies, and I’m being generous with the math.”

The perimeter had collapsed. If the Pansies were swarming us, our units on the edges of Royal Oaks were either dead, incapacitated, or regretting every life choice that got them here.

“They’ll have my head for this,” she said, already moving.

“I dare them to try.” I followed, knife ready, because if this was how the day was going, I wasn’t about to let her take all the glory—or the blame.

The Pansies poured in—fast, jagged, monstrous. Their twisted bodies jerked unnaturally. Earsplitting sounds of joints cracking sent a chill down my spine as they moved with a speed that defied logic. They weren’t human anymore. Not even fucking close. Which made things worse, because they weresmart. They organized themselves. The strong lead their attack, breaking through our lines, testing weak points.

Amaia didn’t hesitate. Her knife was a blur of movement, her wrathful red-hot fire burned through the swarm with ruthless precision. I kept pace, blades cutting through the closest threats.It was an exhaustive effort with us all spread out. Every one we took down, five more clawed their way forward.

“This isn’t a drill! Move your ass or you’re all dead!” I shouted over the chaos, slashing through a Pansie’s chest. Its ribcage splintered under my blade, its insides spilled out with an oddly satisfying stench of the finality of death.

Amaia echoed the warning. Her voice was sharp, slicing through the panic. Soldiers scrambled to regroup. They rallied around her, using her as their goddamn North Star, but without the lethal weapons they were accustomed to arming themselves with in the face of Pansies, it was a losing effort.

Steamfire.I caught her eye in a brief moment of still between stabbing. The unspoken solution hung between us. Her hesitation mirrored in my own movements. We’d been saving it, building up our power together in order to create a brutally deadly force, conserving every drop for the real war. But this? Fuck it. It wouldn’t matter if we never made it out of this.This, it was close enough.

“Use it carefully,” she said, her voice tight.

“Sparingly.”

---