Chapter 62 - Accepting

"Up, up, down, down, left, right, left right," Lyra chanted, almost like a prayer. "Yeah, like that's gonna work..." she whispered bitterly, releasing yet another arrow. "How I wish Karabell and Commander Frederick were here!"

The arrow lodged into one of the furred Garglings' eyes. The trainees were doing a surprisingly good job. Most of them had already grown accustomed to the creatures' attack patterns. She wasn't going to run out of arrows anytime soon, either. They just needed to keep all those Aberrations at bay for a little while longer. She was sure that Frederick and Karabell would manage to defeat the Ringleader. Lyra bit her lower lip, scrunching her face up in concentration. She wondered how many of their allies had died. On second thought, she didn't want to know. It made no difference anyway. They were all willingly putting their lives on the line, including herself. Letting Karabell down after everything they'd been through was absolutely unthinkable. A sharp scream rang out behind Lyra, bringing her back back down to earth. Undoubtedly, one of the girls had been injured. Lyra ground her teeth as she felt rage surging through her body. Those children were protecting her. Even if they got hurt, even if they died, she had to keep shooting.

"Don't mind us, Miss Lyra," she suddenly heard a boy yell. "Sorry for disturbing you. My reckless friend got a little too close. I'm sure it's nothing serious, though, so there's no need to worry," he added with a nervous laugh. She couldn't tell if he was lying or not.

"Alright. I'm counting on you," Lyra mumbled, frowning.

Shooting from a kneeling position had always worked best for her. It provided a lot of flexibility, allowing her to move around swiftly at all times. However, she still needed someone to protect her. She couldn't outrun an Aberration. Plus, concentrating while knowing that she might get attacked at any second would've been impossible. Karabell had realized that, which was why he'd asked the others to keep her safe. But he seemed to have overlooked something. It hurt too much, knowing that other people were dying or getting injured for her sake. She couldn't even turn around to see the faces of those children risking their lives to defend her. Constantly hearing their pained screams like that, Lyra honestly felt like she was going to lose her mind. But she couldn't help it. They couldn't do anything. As long as the Aberrations' leader was still alive, that merciless battle wouldn't come to an end. No, maybe that wasn't it. There was something they could do. Something only they could do. They had to keep those creatures from going after Karabell's team.

*

"How're you holding up?" Fen called out to Shono.

They'd been fighting for quite some time. Defending against the Aberrations wasn't especially hard. The problem was that they had to look after the trainees at the same time. How could any of them have known something like that was going to happen? For them to be attacked by an entire army of Aberrations...

"I'm fine for now. Don't get distracted," Shono replied, managing a tired smile as he blocked the creature's blow.

Fen's expression remained neutral. He knew that Shono wasn't fine. His uniform coat had been seriously damaged, and his arms were covered in cuts and bruises. Fen smirked. Was he really worrying about Shono? Ironic, considering that he wasn't unscathed, either. He ran his fingers along the large wound on his chest before clicking his tongue. It still hadn't stopped bleeding. The last two Garglings they'd killed had put up quite a fight. And it seemed like things were only going to get tougher. At least Kirru's Aberrations were helping the apprentices take out the lesser creatures, so he and Shono didn't have to worry about those. Fen cast a cold gaze at the scaled Aberration in front of him. They couldn't waste their time battling that weakling. They needed to hurry up and go after the Superior Kirru had sniffed out. Fen'd sworn to himself that he wouldn't let all those children bite the dust. All his life he'd told himself that living plainly, not accomplishing anything, wasn't wrong. He wasn't special. He wasn't even a captain. Fen had told himself that over and over again. But he'd been wrong all those years. He was finally aware of that. Perhaps special people did exist. People that had the power to change the world, like Captain Karabell or Commander Frederick. Even so, he couldn't use that as an excuse to live a meaningless life and die an even more meaningless death. Saving the world and whatnot... Fen knew he lacked the power to do something like that. But it didn't bother him anymore. He didn't care about anything else besides saving those children.

"The world can go to hell for all I care," Fen muttered to himself. "You think we'll find the Superior?" he shouted as he finished off the scaled Gargling.

"Who knows? We might not even get a chance to look for it. If we keep slaying its underlings like this, the Superior will end up being the one hunting us down instead. Probably."

"I really hope that's the case," Fen replied as he stole a glance at the crazy man running across the battlefield. "Man, look at him go. Ergo's something else when he puts his mind to it. Still, what was Captain thinking? Asking those guys to give weapons to the Aberrations..."

"You shouldn't talk so much. Doesn't it hurt?" Shono replied seriously, pointing to the bleeding wound on the man's chest.

"Yeah, it does. It hurts like hell. But it's going to take a lot more than that to shut me up," the instructor joked, but the humor in his voice didn't match the concern in his eyes.

Fen hadn't lost that much blood yet, but things were not looking good for him. Shono had also caught on to that. However, taking a break to patch up his wound wasn't an option. He could do that after they killed the Superior.