Second Life as a Soldier

Walter didn’t say a word after warning me. He just set off, same steady pace as when he’d led me here. I followed, clutching the parchment the sergeant had handed me.

The fort was alive around us. From the quartermaster’s store came the roar of voices, men shouting for rations and gear, a clerk’s quill scratching furiously over ledgers. Boots clattered on stone as patrols came and went, the parade ground echoing with their rhythm.

And yet, for all that noise, Walter’s silence drowned it out. He never glanced my way, never offered reassurance or explanation. He just kept walking, guiding me south along the line of barracks.

I looked down again at the parchment, at the neat columns of names, crimes, and Classes. Murder. Arson. Banditry. Theft. I’d hoped these ‘criminals’ were just unlucky souls caught in some tangle of bureaucracy, but I was completely wrong. From their profiles, they looked like the worst kind of humans I’d heard of in either life.

The noise of the fort dimmed as we left the bustle of the square. The barracks at the southern end were quieter, the air heavier. Regular soldiers drilled or oiled their gear in the open, laughter breaking between orders. But where Walter was leading me, there was no laughter.

Walter slowed at the far end of the barracks line. “Break time,” he rasped, his tone as flat as ever. “They’ll be here.”

And they were.

Four men lounged in the shadow of the southern wall, the battered numeral three painted above their door. They had claimed the place as their own, dragging out crates and a cracked bench, one end propped with a stone so it wouldn’t collapse. A wineskin lay overturned near their boots, its contents long gone, and a scattering of gnawed bones and wood shavings littered the ground. The air smelled of sweat, leather oil, and sour drink. It didn’t feel like barracks break time. It felt like the lair of something dangerous.

One leaned against the wall, spoon flicking lazily between his fingers as though it were a dagger. Another sat on a crate, knife rasping curls of wood into a pile that looked like he’d been at it for hours. A third stood apart, arms folded, still as a stone post. And the last, gods, the last, towered over them all, broad as a barn door, his shadow spilling across the others.

I stopped short. My breath snagged, throat tightening like I’d swallowed stone. For a heartbeat, I thought of beasts in the forest, shadows between trees, tusks flashing in half-light. These men loomed just the same. Their sheer size erased whatever I’d read on the parchment. They were towers, flesh and iron instead of bark and fang. At sixteen and 5’9”, I wasn’t small, but my knees prickled with the same weakness I’d felt facing down the first Alpha in the wild. I felt like a child among giants.Walter, though, stood before them without a flicker of doubt, shoulders squared, chest open. Where I shrank inside my own skin, he seemed to grow, as if daring these criminals to try him.

And in the usual monotone, he introduced the largest of them. “Garran.”

Seven feet tall, shoulders like a wall, chest as broad as a cart. He wore a leather cuirass that looked cobbled together from three smaller ones, the seams straining, the buckles bent outward by the sheer size of his frame. The straps cut into his bulk, warping under the pressure, and still his arms bulged free, corded with muscle. His nose had been broken and badly set, jagged as the cleaver scars across his apron, just as the record described. His boots creaked when he shifted, iron studs biting into the cobbles.

The Butcher. That was the name inked on the parchment. He had been a town butcher once, until a drunken brawl over coin left two merchants dead in a pool of blood. He should have hung for it, but instead the Crown had sent him here, a weapon wrapped in flesh.

Mana Tier: Early Tier Two. Class: [Butcher], Level 25. Affinity: 10% Fire.

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I noticed the scarred knuckles of his hands, cracked and swollen like no weapon had lasted long in them. He never looked at me at all. His eyes stayed locked on Walter, as if testing for cracks in the man who left himself so exposed.

Walter’s hand shifted, slow and mechanical. “The one with the spoon—Barry.”

Barry lounged crooked on the bench, chainmail hanging half-loose where straps dangled untied. One boot rested on the bench, the other stretched far out. At 6’2”, his frame was wiry, built for quickness rather than strength, and his grin came easy, mocking. A spoon danced effortlessly in his fingers, flashes of sunlight sparking from the edge each time it turned. His eyes never settled, darting from Garran to Walter to me.

Barry the Rat. Thief, trickster, sly-tongued liar. He had robbed the mayor’s house during a festival and been caught before dawn. Twenty years in the mines had been his sentence until the army dragged him here.

Mana Tier: Early Tier Two, Class: [Cutpurse], Level 22. Affinity: 12% Wind.

The spoon flipped again, sunlight glinting sharp as a blade. He caught my eye, and winked.

Walter’s hand moved next, pointing toward the bearded man seated on a crate, knife rasping through wood. “Varric.”

The Bandit. Varric stood 6’5”, his arms as thick as my thigh, scarred and ridged from years of raids. His regulation mail bulged where he had stuffed scraps of fur beneath, trophies from a life spent in the hills, cut down to fit under a soldier’s armor. His knife worked with patient rhythm, curl after curl falling to the dirt, but his dark eyes never looked away from me. He measured me the way a man sizes up a merchant caravan before deciding whether to strike.

Mana Tier: Mid-Tier Two, Class: [Raider Captain], Tier Two, Level 28. Affinity: 10% Dark.

The sound of his knife rasping was steady, deliberate, and it made the silence between us worse.

Walter’s hand dropped to the last man, standing apart, arms folded. “Kael.”

Kael’s bulk filled the doorway behind him, his 6’6” farmhand shoulders stretching the ill-fitted mail to its limits. His hands were bare, calloused and scarred from work and fire alike. His blank face gave away nothing, only his thumb brushing the pale burn scar along his forearm.

The parchment hadn’t given him a nickname. Convicted arsonist. Burned a barn with debt collectors inside.

Mana Tier: Early Tier Two, Class: [Town Guard], Tier Two, Level 24. Affinity: 20% Fire.

I clutched the parchment tighter, the ink smearing beneath my fingers.

Walter turned slightly and, in the same tone, said, “This is Edward. Intelligence private.”

I had thought beasts were terrifying. But beasts were only beasts. These were men. Men with blood on their hands, bound into uniforms, forced to fight beside me.

Four pairs of eyes found me. For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then Varric burst into a booming laugh, the sound rough and mirthless. The others bared their teeth as if the joke belonged to them too.

“Hah! Crown must be desperate,” Varric rumbled, voice deep as gravel. “Sending this pipsqueak to us, are they? How old are you, boy, ten? Or did you piss off some noble and get tossed our way?”

Barry cackled, his spoon twirling like it wanted to be a knife. “Oi, don’t be so hard on him. He’s one of us now, a brother-in-arms.” He leaned forward, grin wide and wicked. “Means we all get to share him. You know… training, drills, long lonely nights.” He dragged out the last words with mock sincerity, then burst into laughter. “Don’t worry, lad. we’ll take real good care of you.”

Barry’s laughter rang out, Garran’s lip curled, even Kael gave the faintest smirk. The noise echoed against the barrack wall like hyenas circling prey.

Walter didn’t move at first. He just stood there, eyes dull, face unreadable. Then his gaze lifted, slow as grinding stone, sweeping across each of them in turn.

“That’s enough.”

He didn’t raise his voice. His stance shifted, just a breath of movement, and the air thickened. Mana leaked out of him like heat off a forge, subtle but suffocating. The hairs on my arms rose.

The laughter bled away. Varric’s grin faded, Barry’s spoon stopped mid-spin, and Garran snorted and turned aside. Even Kael blinked, expression flattening again.

The pressure vanished as suddenly as it had come. Walter’s shoulders sagged, the spark guttering out like a coal stamped underfoot. He turned back toward the barrack wall, voice rasping with old weariness. “Back to your break.”

I didn’t understand what they had felt, what line he had pressed against. But I saw the proof in their silence, in the way laughter curdled to nothing. For all their size and bravado, the conscripts feared him.

Walter hitched his shoulder as if shrugging off the moment, then glanced at me. ”Come. Mess hall first. Eat your fill. Your night shift’s with them.”

My mouth went dry. I glanced at the parchment again, at the neat instructions under “Duties”: sleep beside them, keep count of their words and tempers, file any whisper of desertion. Measure their loyalty, it said, like that was something you could tally on a ledger. Report insubordination. Record if they cracked under pressure. It sounded so simple. Standing here, it read more like a death sentence.

I almost laughed, bitter and thin. Measure their loyalty? To what, the Crown, the sergeant, or the first chance they had to slit a throat and run?