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The low thunder of heavy guns, the kind found on battleships, beats like a dru across the distance to decipher their trajectory It’s too far, but I can guess I’m Silver I knoe think

"For upon the metal fro together a steel wall as quickly as he can The whistle of artillery grows closer and I look up, squinting through the haze With a snap, I rip the goggles offoverhead

The firsta section of the seawall, turning friend and foe to gray or pink mist in equal measure Only the oblivions survive, soht off their bodies We cower behind our steel, weathering the blast as it pulses forward

The ss, acrid and poisoned with bone dust

We won’t survive a direct hit like that Not e have here We can deflect the missiles as best we can, but it’s only a matter of time before one of the blood "Into the fort"

All to plan

Get the battleships to open up, pummel their oalls Keep the heavy fire on the fort, not the city or the Air Fleet

That’s what Cal said they would do, and so stone, as we grapple down the seawall, our ranks bleeding into Patriot I look back, counting as quickly as I can Maybe sixty of us roup of seventy-five souls Seventy-five deadly Silvers and battle-hardened Reds, their guns lethal and precise

But their fire is reserved for Silvers I notice they don’t bother with the soldiers in rusty red uniforarrison Soht our ranks as we push on Fewer than expected, though As General Farley assured us, the ent out through her channels The Reds of the city have been warned When the assault coht with us if you can

Many do, joining our train of death

Thunderheads pulse above, turning the sky black Their lightning is unpredictable, less powerful than Mare’s But a symbol all the same

Ene what can only be the work of the lightning girl

She isn’t here, you idiots, I sneer in ht

The interior fort is an experiun his own assault,his battalion up and out of the tunnel system Harbor Bay is built on It is an old city, well preserved through the ages, with deep and twisting roots The Scarlet Guard knows the quickly and without pattern Leading the battleship fire, letting it follow and destroy Keeping the worst weaponry fro innocents, probably just to show Mare he can Hanging h another wave of co a combination of bullets and blades to level the men and women in front of me Their faces are shadows to me, inhuman Unworthy of memory It’s the only way to do this properly

The whine and thrum of artillery becoht,in ti everyone blind The Patriot garrison is hopelessly adrift They don’t have a plan for this kind of attack We certainly do

My first burst of fear coer at lance at each of the familiar faces of pale skin and silver hair He isn’t here