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On a good day, the southern regions of Bozja could be charitably described as hot.
There weren't many good days where the weather was concerned.
"No," Lyon snapped at the mage who'd been following him around the fortress, doing their best to stammer out requests, "we can't get new parts shipped over from Kralja faster than a sennight, and there isn't a reserve any closer! You can blame the XIIth for that! Right now, we can count ourselves lucky that we've got two generators going at all so the comms aren't completely dark, and even they're about to burn themselves out. You want the entire Castrum to throw open its doors so the enemy can mince inside without lifting a finger? Because that's what you'll get if you keep making impossible demands!"
The man blanched, taking an instinctive step backwards. Sadr had likely known what would happen if he personally set foot near the War Beasts at this hour, which is why he'd sent over an expendable junior signifer instead of a higher rank. "But -- but the experiments need to be preserved at very precise temperatures, and we, we can't simply -- "
"The engineers will be testing the power grid again in a few bells to see if they can start re-enabling security. That comes first." Ducking into the supply hall, Lyon scowled at the soldiers who had been stationed on watch, visibly wilting at their posts. "If Albeleo is that unhappy about it, we can ship all his mages up to northern Zadnor so they can roll around in the snow and cool their heads in the frost." The threat sounded better than reality; even when they did get a sprinkling of colder temperatures, Zadnor was temperate enough that any precipitation melted in moments without a chance to build up. Didn't keep the clouds from sprinkling flakes across the plateaus, however. That region had been on the losing end of the Citadel's explosion in every way.
If it were up to Lyon, he'd have sent everyone away already and evicted the Castrum down to a skeleton crew. Managing beasts was easy. Two-legged ones like hyurs and elezen should have been too -- just another kind of mammal, no fancier than the rest -- except that something had fallen apart along the way, degrading at some point between the use of stone tools and taxation charts. Now, instead of squabbling over the best orchards that could feed your clan, it was all about if you had the biggest pauldrons in the room so that everyone else would think you had the power to decapitate them with your own armor if you displeased them.
Lots of cloudkin had similar decorations, really, only they had the decency to posture with the feathers they had to grow first. There was even a breed of Doman heron that made absolutely massive nests on the ground, usually by stealing bits from their rivals. Eastern Mud Daubers, the Garleans called them, though they didn't resemble vilekin in the slightest. Lyon loved to watch them move, their multi-jointed legs unfolding like giant spiders as they stalked towards their prey. You could tame them, but you had to keep at least five per aviary so they'd be too busy stealing from each other to worry about what a two-legged peon was making them do, treating whistles and bells as the lesser annoyance compared to their neighbors.
He'd have taken an entire flock of them any day -- a whole rookery of screeching, shitting daubers -- above having to wrestle the pair of Sadr and Sicinius to keep them on their tasks instead of snapping at their fellows. Even though the Castrum had been assigned to Lyon's oversight, both of them felt like they should be in charge, claiming that their areas of specialty were intellectual while the War Beasts just took on anyone who could muck a stable. That was the problem with being a praefectus castrorum. Noah had repeatedly saddled him with the responsibility whenever possible, dragging Lyon back up the ranks to sas every time he'd managed to escape and then claiming there wasn't anyone else suitable to fill the position. Prestige be damned. Lyon couldn't wait until he managed to pawn it off on some luckless soldier who would likely imagine it to be a promotion on their part, and a punishment on Lyon's; more the victory for him.
Scowling, Lyon waved the mage off more firmly, hooking a burlap bag off the shelves and filling it with citrus fruits from the nearest barrel. "The engineers have their hands full already with trying to keep the machines from overheating and frying their inner workings into slag, and the rest of us are making up for the duties they can't run. If you mages need your comforts that badly, then find a way to help with those fancy magicks you keep bragging about! Now get out of my face, unless you want me to post you to the front line to hold the defense alone, and put you to better use than mewling louder than one of my kittens."
The threat worked; the signifer gulped and skittered away. Lyon slung the bag over his shoulder with a smirk, forcing himself to also turn towards the door. He regretted having to leave the larders. Not only were they one of the coolest spots in the fortress, but they were similarly restricted in access, which he also had to enforce in order to keep everyone from packing themselves down there and ruining the confined space. As a barracks, Alermuc Fortress hadn't been built with comfort in mind. Cobbled together in the middle of a war, the Bozjan architects had prioritized efforts on decorative mosaics and carvings that blared their national pride -- but not on practicalities like deep underground cellars, strategic channels of ventilation, or latrines whose sewage lines didn't keep clogging every sennight.
They'd built it as a symbol of defiance, and -- just like any other symbol -- actually living inside it was a hollow gesture, like a pile of bones whose owner had never drawn breath to begin with.
Lyon cursed it again amiably as he padded through the fortress, his reed sandals slapping against the damp soles of his feet. The fabric of his pants was sticking to his thighs like wet silk. He'd pulled off his gloves a while ago, sacrificing their protection in favor of saving both leather and skin from the hazards of excess sweat; he'd lived through too many campaigns with one fungus or another nagging him for the entire deployment, and every beastmaster was constantly fighting something off as it was, picking up diseases from their surroundings and fighting not to transfer the infections between their own animals. During the taking of Nalbina, he'd spent all six months of the final siege with warts, bad enough that he'd wanted to shave his fingers down to the bone. He hadn't been the only one.
Bozja was just another flavor of the same slop. One of the first renovations that the IVth's engineers had put into Alermuc had been climate control, but this summer had been uncharacteristically hot even by local standards. The IVth had staffed the Castrum too fast in an attempt to reinforce it, and had never found time to retrofit properly in the middle of an ongoing war. When that same equipment had inevitably failed -- hastily installed and then overstrained from the amount of machinery that Sicinius kept shoving into every room -- Lyon had rolled his eyes at the outcries, utterly unsurprised.
A site-wide power failure was dangerous enough when it came to regular deployments. When it came to an active battlefront, the results were often lethal. Sentry devices were harmless without energy to run them. Ceruleum-fueled magitek chugged along well enough for short bursts, but even those systems were under strain from the blistering temperatures. It had fallen to the War Beasts to fill in the gaps: living beings that could sniff out their prey unaided without need of artificial weapons or armor, and who could keep the Bozjans at a far enough distance to not suspect their enemy was wide open.
It was a wretched stint of work, and thankless, too. Any beastmaster not in the field was desperately working to keep the menageries from perishing from extremes: hauling buckets of lukewarm water, monitoring for signs of overheating, and making sure that no beast had been stranded without being regularly checked on. Animals didn't need ceruleum to power them, but they couldn't just be shut off and stuck in a closet either. While it was standard practice to draw a portion of their forces from fauna who had adapted to these exact conditions, not all their creatures were native to Bozja. Worst of all, the temperatures were harsh enough that even local breeds would have chosen their own methods to cope -- methods away from buildings like the Castrum, slithering into mud pits or the deepest crevices they could find away from company. Penned up, they were suffering even worse than the soldiers, and needed care as well -- particularly when the mages and engineers were turning up their noses and claiming that animals could simply cope because they should be out in the wilderness anyway.
Which was idiocy, pure and simple. Beasts didn't know why they were being forced into guardwork rather than be allowed to soak themselves in the nearest river and not come out again. You couldn't tell them to be patient while a solution was being tinkered with. The more they trusted you, the more miserable they stayed. In normal conditions, Lyon would have let a number of them go loose in search of relief -- but normal conditions didn't mean a host of hostiles waiting outside their encampments, willing to put a blade through any lone War Beast they came across.
He veered down the corridor towards the west wing and was hit by a fresh wave of odors, worse than all the rest. The air stank. It was bad all throughout the fortress -- stone fortifications with poor opportunities for air to escape -- but the heat had escalated matters to a point where even Lyon wrinkled his nose, picking out the haze rolling in from the outer courtyards. Piss and feces of all sorts mixed with animal musk and soldiers' sweat: the purest signals of beasts making their presence known to others in a language more universal than speech. It was a palpable stew of moist scents that pressed against his skin, adding a new flavor to the layer of grease and oils that already sat on him like a coating of ooze. He wanted to scrape it all off with his fingernails, except that they were already filthy too, with grime caked deep down to the beds.
Grimacing, he trudged through the wide hallways, leaning into the tepid breezes that uselessly churned the air. The soldiers had dug out every fan they could find in the back storerooms, even the big construction clunkers that had been retired after the Castrum had finished getting outfitted, each blade as big as a roegadyn. They'd set them up around the fortress in hopes of generating a crosswind, and instead had created a cacophony. The roar made it sound like Lyon was standing in the center of an airfield while a dozen ships perpetually took off around him, stirring up hot air that didn't get any less hot for the motion. The world was heavy and thick, ponderous enough that it felt like he would drown in place simply by breathing, and even then he'd bloat like a floater after death.
Out of habit, he checked on his own pens, which turned out to be unnecessary -- all of them looked good, maintained as well as could be thanks to the help of the other beastmasters. Water levels were high. Food had been set out even though few of the beasts had an appetite in the heat. Dawon was extremely angry in her roost, muttering as she stamped irritated circles in her hay with her tail lashing, but someone had been brave enough to fill up her troughs too; he'd have to commend that poor soul, especially since Dawon had a known tendency to bite.
His senior beastmasters had picked an unused den as their own temporary shelter -- bare stone and empty walls, with all the lights off and only the hallway glow trickling in -- and had hunkered down to endure, stealing a few bells of rest between shifts. By the time he arrived, Clarricie and Pagaga had already slunk back in from the field, and were cooling down as best they could. Like many of their subordinates, they'd pared down to the basics of their gear, prioritizing survival over modesty; the long coats and skirts had been the first to go, leather armor set aside to dry. Their shields were leaning against the wall with their battleaxes beside, belts discarded alongside the pistols that hung on them. With their animals latched in their pens, they were all woefully unarmed in case insurgents somehow did charge in.
Still -- despite appearances -- his troops were far from defenseless. Anyone engaging an unarmed beastmaster quickly discovered how familiar their would-be victim was when it came to grappling against something stronger, accustomed to enemies bearing razors on the ends of their paws and daggers in their mouths. If you couldn't keep yourself from harm without a blade at the ready, you didn't deserve being in the War Beasts at all, and Lyon made certain to enforce it.
Clarricie lifted an exhausted hand in greeting as he entered, her skin still flushed and drenched from the field. She'd stripped down to a camise and the lightest pair of trousers she likely owned, and even then the only reason she hadn't switched over to smallclothes was likely because they'd chafe too badly in the humidity. Her other hand was attempting to gather her hair higher off the back of her neck. She must have pinned it up earlier in the day, using fastenings of wood and leather -- metal clips had an unfortunate tendency to end up wedged in curious creatures' innards, piercing the intestines if you were unlucky -- but patrol duty had ruined whatever careful arrangement she'd started with. Tufts had escaped in every direction, tangling together in whorls against her skin where they weren't jutting out like twigs.
He waved her over, settling down gratefully on the marginally-cooler stone, and straddled his legs open so she could sit between them with her back towards him. With a sigh of surrender, she abandoned her efforts and scooted in, splaying her elbows upon his knees like he was an overstuffed chair and his bones were the armrests.
He grinned at how quickly she gave up the fight. "We could shave your head," he offered practically, working to remove the tangled wreckage of her hairclips first. There was a ladybug clumsily crawling among them, a stray from outside; he picked it out and set it aside carefully on the floor, where it sat for a moment in tiny befuddlement before trundling away.
He could hear her groan, drawn out just long enough that he knew she was seriously considering it anyway. "No."
"You shaved your head just fine in Golmore, if I recall."
"I got lice in Golmore from the godsforsaken bedding they put us on." Clarricie slumped forward, her fingertips drumming idly against his shins. "I scratched up my scalp so badly that I bled. What a wretched summer that was. Never again, Lyon. Never."
"Mm," Lyon agreed; no need to argue that one. It was equally true that the IVth would ship them off anyway without asking, whether back to the Jungle or somewhere even worse -- and they would all go, complaining loudly on the journey and then even more loudly in the fight, Clarricie venting her irritation on their enemies while they performed this routine again and again without cease.
A clomping of boots drew near, and then Hernais ducked into the room, mouth slack from panting in the heat. Lyon paused long enough to throw the boy an assessing eye, grunting under his breath in approval. He'd forgotten Hernais for a while when the boy had been working on transferring to beastmaster training, having to learn the labor from the ground-up; in all honesty, he figured that Hernais would wash out early on like so many other idealistic hopefuls. Instead, Hernais had doubled down on his fanaticism, applying a furious devotion to every stricture the War Beasts followed like there was no higher law in existence. Even now, the boy was still clothed in his full gear, sheathed in leather from head to toe, following the idiotic requirements to stay in uniform and maintain decorum while on duty -- Noah's dictates, not Lyon's -- and looking fully agonized for it.
Thankfully, the moment he was through the doorway and officially off-duty, Hernais set his axe and shield aside, shucking the rest of his uniform with the same swift practicality as the other officers. In mere seconds, he had stripped down to his undershirt, shaking out his leather coat and inner vest and laying them inside-up to dry. Lyon caught a whiff as the motion carried it to him; the boy was as ripe as a five-day shitheap in the sun, with the sharper note of fresh feline urine to round out the bouquet.
At least the cats were managing to stay hydrated.
Lyon paused long enough to give a jerk of his chin to the boy in acknowledgement, and then -- when Hernais tried to snap to a salute, drained and wobbling -- just shook his head and leaned over to fish around in his supply bag to pull out one of the limes. Aiming carefully, he lobbed the fruit across the room. Hernais interrupted his disrobing to lunge forward and catch it with both hands, stumbling but successful; he promptly dug his thumbs in to peel it, exposing the pale innards as a spray of tart juice fanned over his forearms. Then, without hesitation, the boy bit down promptly into it, devouring the sour meal as willingly as if he'd been eating an orange. Another good sign; Hernais was losing his greenness, even if he was still adapting to the demands of being an experienced campaigner. They'd be able to take him to the Estersand next, or even Valnard if they had to, depending on where Noah needed the deployment.
Still propped against his knees, Clarricie stirred, stretching her neck from side to side. Lyon leaned forward to drop a lime into her hand too, and she shucked it with the same brutal efficiency as Hernais, pulling wedges out and popping them into her mouth as she recognized the need to replenish fluids and nutrients in the heat. To Hernais, she asked, "How are the drakes?"
"More riled up than the coeurls." Wolfing down another mouthful of fruit, Hernais tore the rest of the rind off, sticking the discards safely in one of his pouches where they'd be kept away from the inquisitive jaws of animals who'd be sickened by them. "For scalekin, they're awfully stubborn in the heat, or mayhap that's just me."
"It's just you." Pagaga finally spoke up from where she was plastered to the floor, as deep into the room as she could go without completely losing the lukewarm airflow from the door. She had chosen to lay herself full-bodied against the stones with her cheek pressed against the ground to cool off, splayed out like a starfish. Her hair was loose and unbraided, flung to the side, but even then, she kept her ribbon in place. It trailed limply over the strands like the wings of a slain cloudkin, equally defeated.
Hernais bared his teeth at her, but there was no real snarl behind it: just two irritated members of the pack jostling at one another, incited and exhausted by the heat. "A few more generators are up, but their internal fans can't keep going past a few minutes at a time," he informed Lyon, continuing his report. "When I left, I saw the mages starting to use ice spells to try and cool the machinery down. It looked like it was helping, but one of them told me that they can't go too fast either, or else the casings will crack. Condensation's everywhere. We've already got standing puddles on the floor, and that means -- "
"Mildew." Lyon groaned. "Rot. Little bastards never think things through, do they."
His brow itched; pinning up one of Clarricie's braids to keep it in place, he took a moment to drag his headband off, using the sorry scrap of cloth to scrub at his forehead. In all honesty, it was tempting to bury his face in it and rub even harder with it as a washcloth -- except that it was wet enough to be one, soaked through with his own sweat. Slathering it all over himself would only add to the foulness, not remove it.
Once more, he thought bitterly about how unfair it was to spend most of his time on camp logistics instead of actual battlefield maneuvers. However soon he managed to demote himself again, it couldn't come fast enough.
In the corner, Pagaga rolled laboriously over like a griddle-cake flipping slowly in the pan, rotating itself to heat evenly throughout. "And what is Hamshanks up to out there?"
Hernais yanked off his remaining boot and then peeled his sock off, damp enough that it clung to his skin for every ilm of the way. He gave it a wet shake before tossing it onto the floor, working on his trousers next. "Just started the evening route. One good thing about having him with us is that the Resistance hates red chocobos now. The moment they spot a single feather, they're gone. So long as he's out there, they'll keep their distance."
Clarricie arched her neck back to sigh at the ceiling melodramatically, undermining Lyon's efforts until he gave her skull a poke to remind her to straighten up. "I bet you he's already asking for twice the overtime," she groused, leaning against Lyon's thighs as she braced her wrists on his knees and let her hands dangle. Her skin was sticky and equally hot, but he let her continue to use him as furniture; it wouldn't have been the first time, and he was taking advantage of the chance to comb out her hair properly anyway, checking for ticks and other pests that might have latched on during her inattention. "The bastard's such a money-grubber. Shake a handful of gil in front of him and he'd dance for anyone."
Hernais cocked an eyebrow, not arguing; the boy was already wise to the seeq's ways. "Every time I see him, he's begging for a chance to earn more. Just how big is this mercenary company he was in charge of again?"
"Big enough to sustain themselves, and some with positions in the IVth of their own," Lyon grumbled, sectioning out a portion of Clarricie's hair to tame it. "He's got no cause to plead to their starvation! Still, it can't be said that the man isn't diligent in trying to make a living. He sends the excess funds back home to his crewmates who aren't enlisted -- I've signed off on the orders myself."
Mollified, the rest of the beastmasters resumed their attempts to endure the weather, lapsing back into their miseries. Hernais -- finally down to his smallclothes and nothing else -- joined them on the floor, sitting down with a heavy sigh as he propped up his knees to try and maximize the available skin exposed to the air in hopes of a breeze.
"When I was stationed in Doma," he offered suddenly, "the locals would play a game in the summer whenever the temperatures turned for the worse. Their homes use natural airflow to cool down, so they would slide open all kinds of doors to try and get a breeze through. Whenever that wasn't enough, everyone would get together and share the most frightening stories they heard of, particularly involving ghosts or the dead. Ever tried it?"
All of them stared at him blankly.
Pagaga was the first to speak up. "If an ashkin showed up behind me, I'd kill it. If naught else, that's what the axe is for."
Clarricie was slow to agree, but no less skeptical. "I can't say it seems wise. If you're afraid of something, you learn how not to be. Else, you end up dead."
As one, they turned to Lyon next: the adjudicator of all their disputes. Lyon gave them a baffled look back, equally confused. "Aye. I'd do the same. Don't know why anyone'd be afraid of ghosts, anyroad. You find 'em everywhere on battlefields of any worth. Might as well decide to be mortally terrified of maggots."
Undeterred, Hernais only flapped a hand at their refusals; he had a bad habit of increasing his enthusiasm in the face of discouragement, which was sure to lead him headlong off a cliff someday. "Isn't there aught you were ever afraid of, Lyon?" he asked eagerly, his eyes bright with hope for more stories -- and maybe that had been his goal all along, picking up more tidbits about the IVth's past battlefields like a magpie chittering over flashy rocks. "Surely you've seen the most impossible foes out there on campaign."
As reluctant as Lyon was to think back upon the worst fights, it wasn't fair to shut down the conversation completely -- not when they all needed a distraction to keep their minds off the heat. "A few things, aye," he deferred. "But either I bested it, or it put me in the infirmary long enough to get away and I haven't found it twice."
"Hah!" Pagaga's triumphant cry nearly drowned out his final words. She pushed herself up to point an accusing -- though wilting -- finger towards him. "So you're admitting to your cowardice openly now, old man? More proof of your unsuitability!"
Lyon resisted the overwhelming urge to fling one of the limes at her head, though it would have been good for her to have another bite; they all needed another round of water, even if it was too hot to go in search of a bucket to piss in afterwards, what with the latrines fermenting and foul while their contents merrily rotted in the heat. "Fear's useful to remind you when you might have gotten over your head. It can freeze you up, aye, but it gives you good advice too. If it's the only insight you listen to though, that's when you get into real trouble. Always look to your beasts." He shook his head, rubbing his fingers briskly on the back of his neck to puff out the hairs and get them to stop sticking to his skin. "Any animal worth its salt knows fear. They want to live as much as we do."
Hernais lifted a fist, which turned out to be -- unfortunately for Lyon -- from admiration and not surrender. "Inspiring as always! So -- what manner of terror was it that proved so difficult?" He grinned, as fresh-faced and excited as a child. "What nightmarish creature of legend could make even the Beast King hesitate?"
Lyon snorted. A fancy title was only that; it didn't confer any special powers to have extra words added to your name. The difference between a pyr and a van was only letters. Arrogance wouldn't protect you from a bullet.
But Pagaga was sitting upright now, riled enough to quarrel again, and he could tell from Clarricie's posture and the tension of her muscles that she was paying attention too, both of them alert and interested. As miserable as they all were, keeping their spirits up was the best option, and he'd be a fool as their commander to ignore the opportunity.
"The scariest thing I can think of," he began, drawing out their anticipation like a grand string of mucus from a gigasnail, "is when Ganpp turned to me one morning after he'd recovered from that lashing that nearly did him in, and said to me, 'you know that sprat I picked up out of the woods? I think I want to keep her.'"
Pagaga's affronted roar was like the sweetest blessing to his sweat-drenched ears; lacking anything nearby with any real weight to throw, the girl fumbled for her discarded shoes, flinging one in a lazy arc that plummeted to earth before it could even threaten Lyon's space. "Aye, and the scariest thing I've ever seen is your rotten, withered excuse for a face!"
Clarricie's answer was far shorter. Her fingers curled closed against Lyon's knees, her head bowing forward for a moment before she voiced quietly, "I've already been through the worst. There's naught left in this world that can do more."
She had the right of it, of course. They all did. Pagaga had already turned morose, her expression tightening down into a small, angry frown: likely remembering the flames that had brought her to them, or the invisible blaze that had torn through her adopted father until it had eaten him alive.
When it came to mortal fears, they'd all been through enough.
"Ghosts, then," Lyon said firmly, steering them onto the path of speculation instead of regret. "If we're not afraid of them, then we can be the tales that haunt people in the night. All right then, everyone -- tell me the thing you mean to turn into when you die," he announced, tossing the challenge into the room like a single hank of meat for them all to tussle over, staining themselves red with its blood and each other's. "And it'd better be a damned good monster, to scare all the piss out of every Legion from here to the Imperial Palace itself!"
Clarricie barked a sudden laugh, sharp, short and breathless -- like the cry of a stabbing victim who'd just had the air knocked out of them thanks to the blade punched through their chest. But -- as always -- she was fast to read his intent, and she knew the value of creative entertainments. "Something that can seep through doors, like mist," she reasoned. "Something only my victims can see. I'll stalk every official who separates the recently wedded and leaves the survivor shrouded in mourning clothes. I'd curse the bastard with hallucinations that would drive them steadily mad until they turn around and find themselves being torn to pieces in the safety of their own chambers, stabbed and struck by a flurry of blows -- unable to tell if it's my hands clawing at their flesh, or their own."
Lyon shot her a chiding look, which was completely wasted on the back of her head. "That'd be me on your death list as well," he warned, but she gave him a lofty wave, satisfied with her imagined bloodshed.
"I'd haunt the battlefields, not someone's bedroll," Pagaga sneered. "Deserters. That's who I'd punish. Anyone who flees from the field and keeps running 'cause they're too scared to keep fighting, rather than bide their time so they can come back for more. Just when they think they've escaped, I'd show up with spectral griffins at my side, Vochstein ones, and rip the milksop to shreds like a mob of crows come to pick the eyes out of the dying before they're even a corpse!"
"Aye, you screech enough for three birds put together," Lyon put in, and grinned as she screwed up her face to pelt a round of curses at him.
Hernais took a surprisingly long time to answer, rubbing his chin as he flexed his feet back and forth to keep his ankles from getting stiff. "I'd hunt the traitors," he said at last. "The ones who'd sacrifice their own comrades for personal advancement. Not to win a necessary battle, or to cover the retreat for others. Just vanity. I'd bring the ghosts of their victims with me so they could have the pleasure of dragging them into nothingness too. At night after the sun goes down, we'd gather around one by one, the darkness slowly getting thicker -- until their betrayer discovers that they're choking to death on all the blood they've spilled, gasping and kicking their heels like newborn foals until their organs burst."
"What if one of the dead soldiers was a newlywed?" Pagaga had tipped back over and was regarding them all from an askew angle. "Would it be a race to see who gets there first, you or Clarricie?"
The noise Clarricie made in response was a hungry one: a familiar, musing giggle that typically came right before she launched a particularly nasty assault with her axe. Hernais yanked his feet closer to his body. Lyon tapped her shoulder with an affectionate thumb.
They all fell quiet together though, sensing the one story that hadn't been revealed. Clarricie was the one who braved it, patting his shin with a clap of her fingers. "And you, Lyon?"
For a moment, he couldn't come up with anything. His mind was filled to the brim instead with the simple comfort of the other beastmasters in the room, humming with the echo of their voices laughing and fighting and too alive for death to dare to touch them. There was nothing grander than their delight; they warmed him more than any mortal summer. As filthy and stinking as they were, these were all his officers, who stood shoulder to shoulder with him as fiercely in the shitheaps as in the carnage. His soldiers, who called him by name instead of any other artificial honorific, who shared their natures with him openly, trusting him enough to speak without hesitation: defiant, devoted, and endlessly rambunctious, just like the beasts they cared for.
"I'll be the creature in the deepest wild," he decided suddenly, feeling the rightness of it deep in his soul, in the same way that his instincts pointed him to the best opening on a battlefield. "The Beast King, aye -- the one you hear moving just out of sight, when the woods come in thick and deep and you know in your bones that you're completely on your own against the thing that's hunting you. It'll start with just a rustle in the bushes, a scrape in the back of the cave. A pressure on the air. The feeling that something's watching you, heavy on the back of your neck. And then, right when my prey's about to break, that's when I'll come out of the wild and challenge them to a fight, just the two of us -- and if they lose, I'll take them for my own."
He woke all at once, jolting upright in the dimness, his body alert before his wits could catch up: fumbling through the sharp shock of disorientation that stemmed from recognizing that something was different in the world, something potentially wrong. The Castrum was ominously quiet. Automatically, his mind jumped to the worst case scenarios, running through options that he might have to react to within the very next heartbeat. Rebels might already be within the walls. If all their generators were completely dead, then the automatic locks should have been disengaged -- but that meant all the sectors would be unsecured, opening up vulnerabilities of access where doors could be forced open. The only worse outcome would be the reverse, where everything froze up completely. Lyon had been on the wrong end of too many ambushes where the failsafes had jammed and reinforcements had been trapped inside their own barracks, helpless to do anything but listen as their fellow soldiers were murdered on the other side.
Then a sharp breeze touched his face. He picked out the low, familiar rumble of machinery reverberating through the Castrum, and realized what had startled him awake.
It was cold. The climate controls were back on, pumping out air in the areas that could contain it. The hurricane roar of the older fans had been shut off, ending the continual storm and returning the Castrum to its normal whir of background noise, balancing the needs of beasts, machines and magicks alike.
A quick glance confirmed it. He was the only one who'd awoken so far; the rest of the beastmasters had been too worn out to rouse easily, still asleep on the bare floor and struggling to remain that way. Now that the temperatures had dropped, the lack of clothing was coming back to haunt them. A few fulms away, Clarricie had curled up on her side to try and stay warm, tucked up with her hands folded into her chest, while Pagaga had dragged her discarded skirt over herself like a pile of forgotten laundry. They'd wake soon enough at this rate, and find it twice as hard to get back to a proper rest.
Lyon pushed himself to his feet, fishing his sandals and headband off the floor as quietly as he could. The nearest stable was only a few minutes away. The sun had already risen: a thin, angry dawn that simmered with heat carried over from the previous day. Stepping into it felt like walking facefirst into a furnace again -- a curious relief after being chilled, and one that would pass if he spent even ten minutes sightseeing, but he didn't need that long.
He heaped his arms full of spare blankets from the stalls, plucking them off the unused stacks where they might be cleanest, and shaking out stray spiders as he did. They were coarse things, suited to be laid upon thicker hides rather than fragile skin, but they'd do to block out the drafts and would serve as better pillows in the meantime.
Yet when he returned to the corridor outside where the beastmasters had taken shelter, he blinked in recognition of the squat figure limping towards him slowly down the hall. Stray noise wouldn't do anyone any good; he held up his hand to stall the other man, and moved to greet him first.
"Daguza," he said once he got close enough, keeping his voice low. "You've been out all night, aye?"
The seeq was a clever sort; he caught on immediately, eyes darting from the stack of blankets to the unlit doorway. "Just got back now, and thought I'd check in before heading out on the next patrol to see if I needed to adjust the route. West side's clear, no action. I spotted a few Resistance scouts sniffing around southwards, but they scurried away fast enough when they saw my feathered beauties, I promise you."
Even with an established service record, it was all too easy to suspect Daguza of deception whenever the man started up his usual smug wheedling. But Lyon could see the way that the seeq's skin had dulled from exhaustion, long ears hanging even more limply without any energy to twitch them. "I'll take the next shift off your hands. In return, I want you to guard the door, make sure the others get enough sleep to get back on their feet. You too, if you need it."
Daguza sank his weight onto his haunches, broad nostrils flaring with temptation. His protest, however, was as obsequious as ever. "Why," he claimed, "I could never shirk something as important as the defense of the Castrum. My sense of duty -- "
"You'll still get your bonus."
"-- naturally demands that I aid my companions in their slumber, eheh." Holding out his arms eagerly for the blankets, the seeq bobbed his head cheerfully. "I'll make sure naught disturbs 'em, you have my word. They're safe with me."
Handoff complete, Lyon stifled a yawn of his own as he pushed himself back down the route to his quarters; he'd want his axe and shield, and fresh powder for his feet before he shoved them back into the confines of his boots. In the absence of any attacks, Daguza would have been assigned to the routes west of the Castrum first, working with the sun behind his back. Sparser cover would mean that the territory would be blistering before noon. Bringing coeurls was out of the question. Dawon could be trusted to be ready for the field after only a few bells of cooling off, but she wouldn't like it, and Hernais had mentioned the drakes were restless anyway. Lyon could take a passel of them; working off the lizards' energy would do them all a favor.
He paused long enough to rub the back of his hand against his brow, feeling the stiffness of his headband already beginning to soak up a fresh round of sweat, and headed out into the endless heat of summer.