Stalemate - 1. Sarelin Cats

PRIVATE ELLIOT, SIGNAL CORPS, 3RD REGIMENT OF THE ARMY OF SARELIN

The lines were set.

Elves hunkered in their trenches, just outside the range of Fort Naia. They had learned their lesson; the guns of the nekos were nothing to scoff at. The remnants of the Astaran Expeditionary Force’s camp outside Sarelin reminded them of how easily they had died, bombarded by weapons that no one ever dreamed could reach as far as they had.

Elliot cowered under a dugout, listening to the shells exploding mere yards in front of the trenchline. They were at the extreme edge of the fort’s range, and still the nekos refused to give up. Why was he even here? Who had pissed the cats off to the point where they were willing to fight the largest kingdom in the world, just for a few cranberry bogs?

Elves lay around the dugout, some playing with cards, others cleaning rifles and bayonets, or trying to catch some sleep after an early morning watch.

“Elliot!”

The sharp sound of his name on the sergeant’s lips pulled Elliot from his thoughts, back into the terrifying reality of war. He scrambled to his feet, saluting with his hand over his heart. Every thump could be felt, his entire body trembling as another shell screamed overhead.

“Shell hit our wire. You are to go back to the reserve trench, and give Captain Sylvan this letter. No one else.”

“Aye Sergeant!” Elliot said, accepting the paper from the other elf.

The sergeant moved on, and Elliot took a step toward the door of the dugout, nearly tripping over a sleeping elf. How anyone could be sleeping through the explosions was beyond him.

Dirt rained down through the open door, and the brown haired elf flinched. He took a deep breath, before stepping through the gap and racing down the narrow trench.

Mud from a late rain sloshed over his feet, loose soil from the drier sections threatening to make him slip. He ducked low as another shell landed with a thump in front of the trench, sliding forward to reach the communication trench that led back to the third and fourth defensive trenches.

Twists and turns slowed his dash, the sound of the neko shells echoing through the trenches as he raced the hundred yards to reach the third trench. Taking a moment to catch his breath in the stench of unwashed bodies and boggy mud, the elf moved off again, darting between other soldiers as he aimed for the next communication trench another hundred yards down the line.

Further and further he moved, no longer pelted with soil. The tension slowly drained from him as he drew away from the shells.

It was unfair. He was supposed to be a bugler, playing in the Queen’s band, not stuck in some heated bog splashing through muddy waters to deliver messages while dodging bullets.

Yet here he was, serving his queen as a conscript, taking the place for his sister. Running through three miles of mud and dirt, hastily dug by order of General Aithin to remind the elves, there would be no more retreat. They would fight here. They would win here. Or they would all die.

Elliot prayed they would win.

PRIVATE ADYA, BLUE LOTUS

The coughs of the sick filled the tent. Plague was running rampant through Sarelin, and the dead were piling up in record numbers. The Red Lake was polluted, bodies still being dredged up from King’s Crossing, and a miasma of death hung over the city like a spectre.

Private Adya of the Khorsan Blue Lotus set a bag of fluid on a metal stand, sticking a fresh needle into a neko’s arm as he prayed he got the right spot. Three months of training gave him the barebones of medical knowledge, and he was frantically trying to learn the rest on the job. With the present plague, he and his companions were using every bit of help they could get their hands on. Masks protected them from the mysterious disease that had left so many dead in just half a year, yet so many of his fellow doctors had succumbed to the plague regardless as the masks slowly ran out. It was only a matter of time before Adya followed and he knew it.

The calico wasn’t even supposed to be here. Barely sixteen years old, he had joined two years early, faking his name and age to get into the Khorsan medical program. The plague in Sarelin, and the presence of the elven army drove the nekos to travel from the desert to the plains, to offer their aid as much as they could.

A constant rumble could be heard all around the tent, a war going on around a plague. Invariably, members of Adya’s units were sent to the front lines, barely two miles away, to tend to trenchfoot or bullet wounds or to try to prevent the plague from travelling among the neko defenders. Cannon fired from the fort, and barbed wire protected the hospital from assault. It wasn’t even the only hospital. The city wouldn’t allow the plague to be treated within Sarelin. All patients had to be brought outside the walls, where the pestilence would do less harm.

A sudden explosion hit outside the tent, ringing erupting in Adya’s ears as the needle in his hand stabbed into his next patient. He panicked as blood welled up on the neko’s arm, his ears folding as another explosion followed, and then another.

Dark skin grabbed his furry arm, and Adya spun around, coming face to face with a panicked Niwo doctor. The neko’s lips moved, the world silent around the calico even as the world shook from another explosion. A tug on his arm followed, and Adya yanked his arm away. He couldn’t leave; not when there were a dozen helpless nekos laying in the tent, and hundred, maybe even thousands more in other tents beside the city walls.

The Niwo didn’t spare another attempt. She raced from the tent under another tremor, and a silent scream tore from Adya’s lips as shrapnel from an exploding shell tore through the fleeing doctor.

Inexplicably, a song burrowed its way up from the depths of his mind as the world exploded around him. Elven shells fell over the hospital, massacring the sick and the healers alike, and all Adya could think was that Sarelin cats were indeed quite delicate things...