The acrid bite of gunpowder mingled with the coppery tang of spilled blood, a foul perfume that clung to the very walls of Caso City.

  Sergeant Aryn of Third’s Watch has lived much longer than a conscript should have. From bully of the orphanage to a soldier of chevrons.

  Training did lots to reform the bully, but three field promotions is what made him someone worthy of life. Not that countless patrols and sharp winters are worth fighting for, but Aryn had found camaraderie and perhaps an unhealthy amount of pride for Caso.

  Before him, the ancient stone battlements, the bastion he called home, groaned under the onslaught of a necromantic tide. Waves of corpses wailed against the wall of stone, steel, and magicks. Firearms stuttered over one another, as spells laughed over all.

  Aryn fought with a blest mace wrapped into his hand, he’d thought of getting it welded to his gauntlet, but the smiths never had enough time.

  As Aryn prepared to rotate back into the melee, his gaze swept across ramparts, taking in every faction. The Watch, Army, Council, Church, Guild, and Mercenaries; all not passively stepping on each other's toes. A mused huff escaped him before covering a fellow watchmen, taking over that link in a chain of living bullwarks.

  The air was stuffed with determination, undead and the living desperate for peace on their own terms.

  Hour after hour, the wall was held, but one change ruled an end. Within the tide, golems of flesh shaped around one enlarged limb, grabbed the dead and hurled them over the wall. What should have been sickening impacts, were muffled to whispers from the battle on the wall.

  One mercenary band after another failed to tactfully volunteer to deal with the ever growing nuisance. Leaving the rest to pick up their slack.

  Over time the tide lessened, as if reflecting the state of munition stores; while exhausted Clerics were escorted away and every spent Magi vanished into puffs of smoke. The wall held for a little longer.

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  A unit of Undead Spider Cavalry broke the deadlock, forming a gap that the tide flowed through.

  Aryn swung, dodged, and blocked the best he could. A kobold shaped zombie tackled and bit into him, as he bit back seeking to kill one more; but, as the foul magic paralyzed, Aryn watched in muted horror as the zombie took a few more bites, quietly thankful to not feel anything.

  As he passed, he lamented his time in service and those he had wronged, thinking that he could have been a better person. A better fighter or perhaps pursued a school of magical arts… or more realistically copied a spell or three.

  Now a spectral observer, he prayed for a deity to claim him, lest he be damned to serve in death. But as he is now, without a hand to knock on wood, necrotic energies rose to the wall, raising fallen defenders.

  He watched, a prisoner within his own reanimated shell, forced to witness the desecration of life, sacrifice, and cessation. Aryn silently despaired at his new fate, until he saw his unit, his men, stand with the discipline that he installed into them.

  A primal, un-roared rage broke what was left of him, shifting the veil between his intent and its execution. Aryn whirled to track where his puppet strings lead, finding Rot’s favorite pet, a cloaked figure surrounded by an honor guard trotting to his wall.

  He started shambling through forming ranks, beating a rifle out a watchman’s hands. He scrounged bodies and sachets for enough powder and a bullet.

  Every uniform passed increased his pace and every other step became more certain.

  By the time he reached a shattered tower, the veil was more suggestion than a confiscation of self; but it was shifting to retake his breathless shell. He loaded the rifle, while an internal struggle raged in the desolate theater of his mind, a silent war against the force that now animated him.

  Discarding the ramrod, he got comfortable in the shadow of rubble, shouldering one final act of defiance.

  He waited for the cloaked figure to come into view. He waited, finger dancing near the trigger.

  With no breath to still and dead winds blessing this moment. He waited.

  .

  .

  .

  Flint struck steel, then Aryn was no more.