The sun had set several hours back, and the overcast sky wouldn’t have allowed her to see it even if it was still there. There were three moons on this world, but all were gone tonight. There was only the world as seen through sterile floodlights, but where ordinarily one could expect to see grass there was none. Where in the distance one could imagine tall buildings erected out of immense progress in the economy and in material science, there was nothing. There was no fog, but the black night obscured everything outside of the floodlights’ few hundred foot radius. But even still, Anya knew that what she saw did not span a few hundred feet.

  As Synarchy blew through the corrugated metal doors she had shut not even a few hours prior, what they saw outside was unrecognizable. Body after body after body stripped of its skin in all directions. There was no gap to see beneath, only a shining red-white sea of faces without lips that showed the permanent smiles of unobscured bloody teeth that ran red with the fluids released by exposed muscle not designed to see air. There was no sound or smell from them, but the color also did not fade. Instead Anya had the grace to see them in their full mince-meat glory. Row after row after row forever in all directions now all moving their heads to look at the flesh mech that had burst outside to their greeting.

  It was disorienting to watch them step forward in chaos, swirling toward the grinder that tore ever-still forward in their midst. Row after row rendered boneless and squished into paste. Row after row of fresh meat to fill the gaps without end. All smiling in the face of slaughter. All silent as their bones turned at first to mulch and then to milk stained red and pink with destroyed vital organs and oh so much blood.

  It was sweet to feel the wind on her face, but with it came the first smell these creatures had produced, perhaps unleashed from the filtered air they had come to appreciate inside. It was blood, of course, harsh and overwhelming on the nose. There was no smell of rot, only blood and blood and blood, and likewise there was nothing to see but red-white bodies and red-white paste extending evermore into the darkness.

  It was at this moment Anya finally realized that even fourteen pills may not be enough. The other soldiers did not speak, perhaps out of fear of disturbing her concentration amongst the silence and wet squishing noises that reminded them all that this situation wasn’t a dream. It was real and they were there. If there was a hell, this was it. If God had ever existed on this world, he had abandoned them now.

  Where was the love and mercy in endless civilians converted to skinless monsters? In being processed into hamburger and left to rot above a field of what should have been grass now replaced with an endless amount of their own flesh and viscera? And yet Anya’s hands couldn’t help but tremble. The feeling wasn’t so much the fear she had expected— though it was certainly there, buried amidst the chaos and freshness of the situation— but more an overwhelming fervor to kill and an excitement to see just how far she could push into this expanse without giving out. If she was to die, and she would, then there was only one thing to do as a soldier. Kill.

  She gave the order to everyone on the back with her:

  “Kill.” And they knew exactly what it implied. They were in hell and this was to be an endless slaughter. Even still they were soldiers. Even still their job held only one meaning.

  To kill.

  And yet Peter objected.

  “We should save ourselves for when you can’t keep going.” He spoke at normal volume, the sound of bone melting and flesh squishing being a surprisingly quiet backdrop.

  What did he mean “save themselves?” Anya thought. There was nothing left to save.

  “We’ll keep pushing with you on our backs if we have to, but we have to escape to the city, climb a building if we have to. If we can just survive until the reinforcements arrive—” he continued.

  “Look at this!” Anya screamed. “There won’t be reinforcements!” Her mania was clear.

  “Even if we do survive,” Lululu reminded them, “midnight approaches.”

  “You don’t honestly believe that do you?” Jesús objected. It was a ridiculous idea, that the sun would go out. And even if it did, what did it matter now when it was already night?

  Lululululu didn’t respond, opting instead to allow the endless squishing of bodies to fill the silence. What did it matter if the sun rose again if they wouldn’t see it either way? Perhaps there would be reinforcements, but they had no way of knowing how far this sea of bodies stretched, nor even if they were the only location experiencing this old-style of warfare.

  Endless bodies made their way to the grinder, already stripped of themselves. Their appearance didn’t even pretend to be able to sustain itself after the battle was over. They would die here and now or they would die to the elements or disease. There was no survival without skin, even in a mild climate such as theirs. Even the cool night air should have been slowing them down if not for their clear magical origin.

  But Anya didn’t care about all that, not anymore. There was only the melting of bones and endless gory steps of Synarchy to extend the pink river that flowed from behind them far away into the base. The floodlights had faded now, and there was not even a single moon to shine. Even still, Synarchy’s writhing vessels extended with light to showcase the scene it had crafted for some ten or twenty feet around. A pink river shone with endless meat to all sides of their vessel. Endless smiling teeth from skinless mouths greeted them even now, knowing their fate to come.

  But body after body greeted her and the mania to kill found itself ever-more sated. Ten necrites killed, twenty necrites killed, fifty necrites killed— at that stage it was reasonable to crave more to slaughter. One hundred necrites killed, one thousand, ten thousand— at this point it didn’t matter anymore. Twenty thousand, thirty thousand, forty thousand— Anya had no awareness of how many had died now. Was it in the hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? They all fell effortlessly. It was the ideal battleground for a bloodcrazed mania, and yet what did it even mean to crush so many bodies? A thousand thousand thousand more would take the place of every one to fall. It was an endless slaughter to satiate the ravenous thirst for blood, but as a human and as a mortal soldier Anya could only kill so many hostiles.

  As Synarchy continued to press forward, Anya grew tired. It was perhaps ten or eleven o’clock when their usual turn-in time was seven or eight. She had been going for some fifteen or sixteen hours straight, training and killing and doing her best to carry on a numb routine. Even amidst the glorious slaughter she had so craved it had turned into a nothing. She held the trigger and Synarchy carried on. A yellow-wrapped gray beam fired almost without input, and yet as she began to stare at its reflection in the pink mud beneath and behind them she noticed it felt almost detached. There was no effort in blowing the endless bodies away from life. At first this cannon had made even her bones ache, but now?

  There was only the endless slaughter. Anya looked at her pale hand gripping Synarchy’s single trigger-vein that wrapped around her arm now. It had always been pale, but was it always white?

  Peter put a gun to her head, but she knew that didn’t mean anything. His other hand carried the real danger, and even that was meaningless.

  “You’re making a mistake.” She said calmly.

  His voice did not waiver. “No, I’m not.” There was no guillotine-scythe ready to detach his head from the shoulders for disrupting chain of command. In this he had confidence the Imperial Mandate had left her. And yet she retained command of Synarchy. It made no sense, but even still he had no choice.

  Anya followed the outline of her skin up the arm and found it the same shade all the way to its Prussian blue covering at the sleeve.

  “Do you even think a bullet will harm me now?” She could react to a gunshot far before it breached the first layer of skin.

  “No, but fire will.” He answered.

  “Then why haven’t you burned me already?” She said, mocking his indecision.

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  “Because you’re still carrying us forward, but I have to be ready for when that stops.”

  “And when it doesn’t?”

  “...”

  Anya heard a gunshot, but didn’t react. The sound had not come from behind her head, and the sensation on her skin wasn’t that of compressed bone piercing the outer layer of hair in preparation to expose the brain within. Rather, she felt blood run down her neck and Peter’s corpse slump against her. The weight of his lifeless body was surprisingly light, almost weightless even, though perhaps that was the result of her own present strength.

  “Fuck you!” Luther shouted in a broken voice. Peter had judged the color of a person’s skin for the last time.

  No one objected to the killing. Peter had put a gun to Charon and wanted to throw them all overboard this vessel carrying them through the depths of hell. The ferryman’s cloak had slipped and Peter wanted to kill him because his bones were on display. It was only expected that he himself would be thrown overboard instead, relieving the weight from Anya’s shoulders and affirming Luther’s decision to kill the man who had prematurely killed their commander on speculation alone.

  Anya did not thank them, nor did she expect thanks; their safe deliverance would be enough. But the minutes wore on in agony as the pain of deliverance made itself known. So what if she had been granted the strength of fourteen pills? It meant little when the weapon Anya had to operate was an ancient relic created to be among the mightiest weapons of a world-spanning empire. Such world-class war-defining power necessitated world-class unmatched strength as the starting line to using it, and world-class endurance for every second spent in the full-tilt rowing required to keep the death vessel going.

  She could kill and kill and kill but even in her fervor Anya knew she couldn’t keep going forever. The bodies of the dead kept climbing. It had to be in the tens of thousands now, but how many more were left to come? The smiling bare teeth of the skinless continued to exist outside Synarchy’s missing walls. No matter how many steps they took, the scenery was always the same: a pink river of blood and melted bone to the rear with the endless fuel for its continuance on all sides. They couldn’t go on forever.

  But Anya wouldn’t give up. Even if they had Judgement, she wouldn’t use it. They had an alternative hope, however strained. In her role as commander, Anya had the power to wield Synarchy, but in that same role she should have the power to delegate her own authority in the same way it had been given to her by Raethor. In death, someone else would be able to take the helm.

  But Lululu had other ideas, so Anya listened to them. “By the power vested in me I command you: lead.” The words were directed at Yuna, and in saying them Anya knew the effort was successful, as her head grew light and her vision blurry. It was a fast second before she lost consciousness, but a very, very, very long one for Yuna, who’s heart had raised some 150 bpm in the act of taking control of Synarchy. The platform lurched and Jessica nearly fell off, having been half-asleep in delirium.

  Anya woke up a day later, but it hadn’t been a day. Her head was in Alissa’s lap, who was gently stroking her hair. Anya sat up quickly and noted the bleach-white strands fall over her shoulders. She looked down at her hands and they were the same shade. Everything beneath her clothes had been stripped. She opened her mouth, but Alissa told her it was the same color as everything else. Even her teeth had been given free whitening strips— the kind that turned them denser and more opaque on top of totally obliterating all their stains.

  Anya almost felt like she could fly, but in taking the leap of faith necessary to achieve that end she would almost certainly die. Their surroundings had not changed in…

  “How long has it been?” she asked, yawning and wiping grime from her eyes.

  “Thirty minutes or so.” Dio answered. Even the grime was white. She looked at Alissa’s lap, but it was not bleached.

  “How’s Yuna doing?” Anya began, but soon realized Yuna was no longer at the helm.

  “I’m ok.” she said meekly. It was clearly taxing for her.

  Chris began to speak. “It’s unbelievable… that… you... could go on for so long.”

  Normally his voice was distant and emanated from all directions like some kind of magic god. Now it sounded like angry bees two inches from her ear. Anya reflexively moved her hands to cover them, but he stopped talking and his shoulders slumped. It was clear he didn’t want to irritate them.

  Anya dragged Yuna by the shoulders over to Alissa, putting Yuna on her own lap and sitting back to back with the one who had comforted her. Yuna didn’t object, though lightly slapped Anya’s hand when she went to pet her hair.

  “Where are you going to go after this is over?” She asked no one in particular, but only Alissa and Yuna were within earshot of her quiet voice anyway. And Alex, she supposed, but he was sitting off some distance to the side with his legs overboard, swinging. He didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Somewhere warm and peaceful. The Holy Lands maybe. I hear the beaches there are nice.”

  Anya pictured the little shards of glass and bone. It was true they felt nice running between your toes, but she could hardly call the mixture sand, even if that was what it felt like.

  “The water isn’t very clear.” Anya objected— it was choked in debris.

  “Tropical Lilitor then.”

  “It’s so pretty.” Yuna said. “The churches and old construction have such intricate carvings, and they’re right on the ocean too!”

  “You know they glazed them with treated wax to prevent the sea breeze from causing damage.” Alissa went on.

  “And cast spells on them every fifteen years to seal any worn spots and mend the cracks caused by age.” Yuna didn’t miss a beat.

  “Why don’t we go there together!” Anya proposed. It wasn’t such a bad place. It had been spared from the Tribulation Wars thanks to its insignificant resources and minimal political importance.

  “Yeah!” Alissa shouted. Alex looked over, but Yuna said nothing.

  “Yuna?” Anya asked. She said nothing.

  “Yuuunna!” Alissa continued.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Alissa asked.

  “I just can’t.”

  Yuna turned her head away from Anya.

  “The political climate there isn’t like it used to be. They’re not restricting visitors from the empire anymore.” Anya said, head tilted over Yuna’s ear.

  “It’s not about that…” she mumbled.

  “Then what is it about?” Alissa questioned to no response.

  “Change of subject!” Anya semi-shouted no louder than an army whisper (standard speaking voice), her voice still not having recovered.

  “Just let me rest.” Yuna interrupted.

  Anya complied. They’d pried too closely to her secrets, though Anya could take a guess at what they were; it would be better if she didn’t. So they sat in silence until Anya’s legs went numb. Yuna had fallen asleep, her breathing having grown regular and deep, so Anya gently began to reposition her to the skinless bloodless ground. Alissa, however, offered to take over.

  “Thanks.” Anya was grateful. Alissa smiled back. Her pink eyes were adorable but radiated maternal warmth.

  Anya stood and turned to Lulululu and Chris. “How much longer can we last?”

  “Chris is about to give out and I’m not sure I can take over.” Lululululu answered plainly.

  “What do you mean you can’t take over?”

  “That’s not what I said. It’s just… I’m not suited to this kind of magic.”

  “But you’re the all-powerful Lulululululu!” Anya teased. “You can do anything!”

  Lulululululululululululululu laughed softly.

  “I made that name up. I’m not any more special than anyone else.”

  “Well I assumed so. What kind of mother would name their daughter that?”

  She stared off into space for a second, remembering her own mother or lack of mother Anya guessed.

  “Anyway I’m more of a support-type. I can see and feel the power in the air, but my specialty is to redirect it. You can do many things with other people’s power, things few would suspect, but there’s only so much you can do on your own in this position. I can make bullets faster and have them travel farther, and neither Chris nor Luther have missed a shot today, but powering Synarchy? I’m not meant for that.”

  “Besides, none of you would have made it this long without me!” His eyes weren't visible, but Anya was sure Chris would be bugging out hearing that.

  Anya looked around for someone to take over next. Dio… Alex… Henry… Jesús… Will… Jessica.

  They were doomed.

  “How much longer do we have until midnight?”

  “An hour, give or take a few minutes, but it’s hard to tell out here. I’m relying on the feel of the air.”

  “And what does the air feel like?” Anya questioned, but she knew. It felt like burning razors.

  “If normally the empire feels like cool flowing strength, now it feels hot and tumultuous. Like something’s aflame within and preparing to erupt.”

  “And the sun’s going to go out?” Anya was almost mocking before, but she still didn’t believe it now.

  “It’s a metaphor. You know, like how if I told you about…” she waved her hands around madly, “this situation you wouldn’t have believed in plain words.”

  “So you’re saying it’ll be like this, but bigger?”

  “It’ll be like the sun went out.”

  Fair enough, but it wasn’t looking likely they’d be able to see this mythical loss of the sun. Even if the words were true so what? The sun goes out and you die. That’s the end. There’s nothing to do in such a moment. The sun goes out and you die. You watch the light dwindle and then you freeze to death or starve. In many ways it was better to die than to live and see it.