Gwendolyn

It was strange to see this part of Barleybarrel so empty.

For every moment Gwen had seen it; from when they first arrived through Gloam covered tracks, to every point during their battles when she returned to look, the grounds around and south of the town's train station had been teeming with people. Thousands, both hopeful and terrified, but always alive and noisy. Seeing the same place — now so silent there was nothing in the air but the quiet, monotone drone of the pilot lights — left the impression that this might very well be the end of days.

Which might not be wrong, if the coming days go poorly.

The only defiance to the impression of the end times was the steady rhythm of a few shovels at work. Three soldiers, all wearing white scarves, were digging a hole just a few dozen feet away from Vincent's tunnel. More soldiers waited nearby, most standing solemn and quiet, though there was a small group in the peripheries who were talking in hushed voices.

Valen marched ahead, and true to everything she expected of him, the first thing he did was pick up a shovel, and spot out one of the soldiers already digging. Surprisingly, the soldier he spotted out was Roderick.

Gwen pulled a bottle of water out of her kit and handed it to him. "Almost didn't recognize you."

"Really? You've known me for about eight months now," Roderick said.

"Eight months didn't change you as much as the last couple of days have," Gwen admitted. "In some ways, you've done a hell of a lot more living since the Golem came than you did until now. You've held up through horrors that broke older adults."

"Older adults? That sounds like you're halfway to a compliment."

"Let me get the rest of the way there. Roderick, you're starting to look like that scarf belongs to you. Remember when Valen was still a corporal? His sergeant ran, deserted his post, and tried to bring his whole squad with him. You walked into the Gloam to rescue people. You're part of a story Barleybarrel will tell for a long, long time."

"When does it start feeling like I did enough?" Roderick asked, as he wiped at his eyes. Dust, Roderick would claim; tears he would never admit to.

"Pretty sure it doesn't. We are the walls, remember? We wear and crack so everything behind us stays safe. People might heal better than stone, but break pieces off of us and they don't grow back. That's just as true for the wounds we can't see."

Roderick nodded. "Does it start to hurt less?"

Gwen wanted to both grin and cringe. Abyss only knows what expression her face took. "Hurt less? This is what winning a battle feels like. It's the second saddest thing there is. Only losing one feels worse."

"Blackened shit at the bottom of the abyss," Roderick cursed, as he finished his water. He hefted his shovel again, and turned to take over for one of the other soldiers still at work.

Gwen watched Roderick get back to work for a moment or two, before she saw something that drew her towards the lieutenants. The four of them were still speaking as if conspiring together, but there was a fifth person in the group.

Cameron.

"Absolutely not, Private Aster. I'm not willing to detach either of you for a side project, unless it's critical to the defence of the City. Special Talent Hearthsward is part of the Company, and will remain so until I am forced to give him up. If it is your opinion, and that of Corporal O'Fallow, that Vincent is still sound of mind, I have no reason and even less interest in having him or you detached so you can get a full hearing at the Bureu's headquarters."

"Ma'am, it's imperative Vincent gets this, and quickly," Cameron pleaded. He sounded strangely desperate, a tone Gwen hadn't heard from him before. Like Mack, Cameron was normally a calm, if forceful presence.

"What do you think he'll get at your headquarters, that he hasn't received already?" Lieutenant Volenski asked. Not a rhetorical question, there was no hint that she was in a hurry for an answer, or that she was making a point.

"Judgement from an impartial senior evaluator," Cameron said. "Mack and I are not impartial, when it comes to Vincent."

"True," Lieutenant Volenski agreed. To Gwen, it was clear the two of them were not speaking about the same thing. The lieutenant believed the lack of impartiality stemmed from having just been saved by Vincent. But to Cam, there was nothing in his motives that suggested gratitude.

Lieutenant Volenski rubbed her forehead with one hand, and held up the other placatingly. "If you still feel he needs it, have a missive sent, and ask them to meet us at our muster point. Godichelli's wall, at the eighth tower past the second Causeway. I will allow you Priority: Blue. Your master sergeant is more than equal to your needs."

Cameron looked like he was about to say more, say something foolish or even dangerous to himself. Lieutenant Volenski was now effectively the company's captain. Leader of the Cadavalan Rangers; the pride of the army. A great deal of the City's hope had only just set itself on her shoulders. She might not respond well to ultimatums from subordinates. So Gwen stepped up, hooked Cam's arm so it was pinned behind him, and clapped him on the shoulder with her other hand.

"We should go find Redgrave," Gwen whispered as Cam twisted to try and free himself. "She won't slow our evac. You don't have very long left to send that message."

Cameron scowled, pulled himself loose, and turned back to the lieutenant. "Understood, ma'am," he said, before he turned around and walked away.

Gwen started to follow him, until Lieutenant Volenski stopped her with an upraised hand. "If he's not going to have your sergeant send a comms request to oversight, leave him be. Shadows have their own scars to tend to, at least as much as any soldier. He'll be back in the fray when the time comes."

The lieutenant's reassurances were no real comfort. Something about Cameron's disposition, his discomfort, left Gwen feeling uneasy. It felt like ignoring an odd noise from an engine, leaving it alone and hoping it wasn't warning you about something worse. But the reassurance was also an order, and the lieutenant had turned her attention to a group of six soldiers walking in two columns, carrying something between them.

Captain Dremora. To be laid to rest.

The soldiers shovelling all stepped back, beginning a wide circle around the pit that everyone else added to as they joined. Gwen stepped in beside Valen, joined a moment later by Roderick, Hendricks, and Mildred. She wiped sweat from her brow, brushed dirt from her coat, and tried to clean herself off at least a little.

Being buried was not usually how the dead were sent off. It wasn't even common in the fringes, the places far from the towers and trains and smoke of the City. Every speck of dirt the City had was taken from the Gloam, and none of it was wasted for long. The idea of using it to bury the dead was normally a shameful expression of indolence, the kind of thing that not even the most self-important bureau chiefs would have asked done with their remains. Worse still, since the Gloam claimed the dead as much as it killed the living, crypts and graveyards simply were not something anyone in the City would normally countenance.

But for the Captain of the Cadavalan Rangers, already a living myth in the City, putting him to rest at his final posting seemed fitting.

"Rangers."

Lieutenant Volenski's voice rang in the quiet, like a train whistle in one of the quiet nights in the work camp, so far from the City. It might have been startling, if it should shake anyone in that circle out of their grief.

So no one flinched, or looked in surprise as Lieutenant Volenski stepped forward, right up to the edge of the pit they were about to lay the captain in, and turned to address them.

"We cannot spare the time Captain Dremora deserves. Barleybarrel's people are through the wall, and trains come even now to take us all to the City. Golems march in our fields. They march to extinguish the fires and plunge the City into the dead darkness beneath the Gloam," Lieutenant Volenski began, in a speech Gwen tried rather desperately to make sure she'd remember. "I will not begrudge you your grief, as long as your hands stay steady and the tears don't ruin your aim."

The Rangers' first lieutenant paused then, and turned to look at the captain. In her hand, she held the pommel piece of his sword, the metal hoop with two bars. "The City is now a little colder, a little darker. And to imagine I could just screw this onto the end of my sword and pretend I fit his boots would be absurd. We will carry on, I will assume overall command of the company, but out of respect for what we have lost I ask that you do not call me 'captain'. We had a captain. He will lie here, where he fought for us. And we will return here to grieve him properly."

With that, she tossed the pommel into the hole.

Without any other visible sign of being told to, the Rangers carrying the captain carefully lowered him into the pit, leaving him resting with his hands folded over his chest, white scarf still tied, eyes closed, and somehow still left with the grin he had always worn when he lead them into fight after fight.

The moment needed something more. Something else. And though Gwen didn't know if she could offer enough to fill the moment, she felt she should try anyway. "Commander," she said. "The Seed Bank still has trees and plants that haven't been taken out yet. Trees that don't bear fruit, that don't provide the right mixture of shade and nutrients for crops. To plant one of them here, when we can, would be one more small victory for the City."

Lieutenant Volenski regarded her for a long, quiet moment. "Commander?" she asked eventually.

"It's the title I remember hearing a lot, during the Irondrome incident. Whoever was directing the disaster response, it's the title everyone else gave him."

"I remember," the lieutenant said. "It will do. And the captain would have appreciated your suggestion."

Lieutenant Volenski, Commander of the Cadavalan Rangers, made a small gesture with her hand, and the soldier around her began to fill in the hole. No movement from anyone who didn't swing a shovel. No tears, no other signs of grief. Just the quiet witnesses as the captain's body was buried beneath the dirt.

It wasn't until the hole was filled, and a pair of Rangers laid a large slab of stone overtop, that anyone said something. And it was Vincent, who crouched down beside the slab, and held a finger overtop of it. "What would you like it to say?" he asked.

Lieutenant Sandson stepped out of the circle, and crouched down beside Vincent. He said something, but his damaged throat and lungs made it difficult to hear the man when he wanted to be heard. And in this instant, it didn't seem like he cared much. But Vincent nodded, and pushed his finger into the rock. It parted like porridge as Vincent's finger traced letters into the face of the slab. And when he was finished, only seconds later, Lieutenant Sandson only clapped Vincent on the back, stood up, and walked towards the gap in the wall.

In turn, each Ranger did the same. When Gwen took her turn, she was finally able to see what Vincent had written.

Beneath your feet rests Rhavin Dremora.

As if you could have burned so brightly.