My awakening to my new world was not a gentle one. The first thing I got to feel was landing hard on my face as if I had tripped. This hurt a lot more than falling on the asphalt of a paved parking lot. I distinctly felt uneven ground under me with a large jagged rock poking me in the stomach. I also was gasping for air as it had been driven out of my lung from the impact. I tried to take a gasping breath but immediately began choking on dust that had entered my mouth from the fall.

  I pushed myself on my hands and knees as I took ragged breaths, coughing out globs of dust mixed with a little bit of blood from a small cut in my mouth when I accidentally bit down on my cheek. My head swam and my vision was blurry as I got breathing under control.

  The second sensation to come to me after waking up face first in the dirt was the loud roar of hundreds of voices and the clash of steel on steel. I tried to clear my vision but the damn dust had even gotten in my eyes! I felt rough hands pull me to my feet and then a hard slap across my face. It actually worked a little, my eyes finally opening although barely.

  It was hard to make out at first as tears filled my eyes, slowly removing the dust from them. My head still hurt like someone had struck it like a gong and my abdomen hurt from the rock I had landed on, but I could make out some details. The sky was a dark overcast, threatening to rain at any moment. There were hundreds of blurry shapes colliding with hundreds of other blurry shapes as the distinct sound of battle raged ahead.

  I felt another hard slap that cleared my vision as the face of the most grizzled looking man I had ever seen came into view. “Surge, miles!” I stared blankly at the man. His entire face was a crisscross of old scars with a large cut across his cheek that would more than likely add to his collection. He had a long, drooping mustache that was beginning to stain red with blood. His eyes were a pale green but blazed with intensity as he spoke again.

  “Porro miles!” I tried to cudgel my brain into moving. His words felt like a command and not a question. “Progredi, cohortem sustine!” The words didn’t make any sense. Some back part of my brain told me it sounded like Latin but that hardly mattered since I didn’t understand anything he was saying.

  Apparently the grizzled man had enough of my nonsense because he slapped me beside the head and shoved something in my hand. The blow hurt like hell and I was reaching the point where I was about to slap him back. My head hurt like it was and I didn’t need him giving me a concussion but just as I was about to say something, he was gone, already running to a spot in a line of soldiers in formation as they marched forward.

  That was when it all started to click. My eyes mostly cleared, I was able to take better stock of the situation. Hundreds of men and women wearing chainmail and carrying spears or swords depending on the detachment, charged into or retreated from battle. It was chaos, it was horror. The air was thick with fear and the coppery scent of blood as well as the promise of rain to fall soon.

  Each century of soldiers held two banners aloft on either side of the formation. The banner was navy blue with silver accents with a crest of a creature that looked somewhat like a dragon but thicker in the neck and less serpentine…not too dissimilar from a famous kaiju I used to watch crush Tokyo as a kid. They collided with similarly equipped soldiers who held banners that were yellow with black trim with a crest in the shape of a head of a creature that looked like a cross between a T-rex and a and a bull.

  Team T-rex seemed to be winning the current engagement as team Kaiju struggled to keep their formation of their line. Arrows began to darken the sky as team Kaiju was ordered to form a shield wall. A silvery barrier formed in the air above team Kaiju and deflected the majority of the arrows but many still managed to get through but they were blocked by the shield wall. Only a single person was hit. A scream came from beneath the wall of interlocking shields and a ripple from the formation hinted that the injured was being pulled back through the formation as each line of soldiers hauled the injured to the back.

  I was broken from my stunned moment of watching the battle as arrows began whistling towards me. I yelped and started running towards team Kaiju’s shield wall as arrows landed dangerously close to me. One was so close that I felt a flash of pain across my face as a line was drawn across my cheek from an arrow that just barely missed. I felt the fletching tickle my ear before skipping off the hard packed earth behind me.

  The formation was only a hundred yards away from me but it felt like miles away when dodging dozens of arrows falling from the sky. One thing most books and movies don’t tell you when fighting on a real battlefield was how uneven the ground actually was. Hundreds of feet marching in unison did make the ground more hard packed, but there were still plenty of rocks, roots and small holes in the ground that were eager to cause me to trip and seriously injure myself. I nearly tripped for a third time that day as my foot snagged a root I had not noticed but I managed to catch myself just before I fell and I was able to awkwardly run forward.

  A second arrow grazed my left shoulder, my luck somehow managing to hold out. “Fuck!” I hissed as I ran into the rear line of soldiers. Only one in the line bothered looking at me. He said something in the quasi-latin language that sounded like a question but there was a definite sneer on his face. He shoved me forward, deeper into the formation.

  I had only now realized that I had been carrying whatever the grizzled soldier had shoved in my hand. I looked down as other soldiers shoved me further forward, the soldier from the back calling something out. What I held in my hand was a sword, but it was different from what I had seen on earth. It had a leaf style of blade but shared a similarity to a crusader style hilt.

  I was far from an experienced blacksmith or historical expert, but I had spent a fair amount of time studying swords in my youth. Like most boys that age, I was obsessed with anything sharp and deadly looking. I will admit, I had a small collection of swords that were poorly made and often impractical but my inner teenage edgelord had refused to part with.

  The sword in my hand felt heavy but I could tell it was far sturdier than the swords I got at the Saturday market as a kid. I didn’t have time to further examine the weapon as rough hands forced me further up the line until I was the third line from the front and then shuffled to an open spot in the line. Many of the soldiers gave me withering looks before their attention returned to the battle.

  To my surprise, the old grizzled soldier who had picked me up earlier was standing next to me. He looked over at me, his glorious mustache flowing in the wind like small streamers on either side of his head. He gave me a single nod and also returned his gaze back to the battle, but I felt his rough hand clap me on the shoulder before returning it to his side.

  It had escaped my attention when I had woken up and the subsequent dash for cover, but I now realized I wore chainmail like the other soldiers in my adopted century. The interwoven links had a fair amount of rust on them and the armor itself felt poorly maintained, like only a hope and a prayer were what kept the links on me. I had padded chausses on my legs and leather boots with steel plates over the toes.

  I didn’t have a helmet but from what I saw of my comrades, they didn’t either. In fact, when I took a closer look, their equipment was in much the same condition of my own. Most had swords of a similar design to my own but a few carried maces and one particularly large specimen of a man carried a two-handed war hammer. He was in the same line as my own and when he caught me looking, he gave me a broad smile that showed a couple missing teeth.

  I quickly returned my eyes forward to the battle. My heart was racing, I was scared absolutely shitless. It felt like ten minutes ago I was waiting to start another day at work moving product around a warehouse as it got shipped off to other parts of the world.

  Now I was standing in formation with a bunch of soldiers that looked like they were having an identity crisis if they were roman style legionnaires or medieval soldiers from Europe. I would have pissed myself if I had anything in the tank but I had skipped my morning coffee today because I had forgotten to get more after work the day before because I was out.

  I looked up at the shimmering barrier over our head. I wondered to myself. It was mostly translucent except for the shimmers of blue that pulsed from the center of the barrier. It was shaped like a wall but angled in such a way that arrows often deflected off of it. It took several arrows in a single area before they began to make it through and their speed bled off quickly. That wasn’t to say they weren’t dangerous. An arrow that had lost half its speed was still deadly, just easier to dodge. Though dodging was difficult in such close quarters, that was what the shields were for.

  The formation rippled as the soldiers at the front began to rotate back in the line in

  a practiced motion. Only the front two lines of soldiers had shields and when they rotated back, they gave them to their fellows who had been in the third row, my row. A hard-faced woman handed me her shield as she rolled back to the rear of the line with the rest of those that had fought at the front. I had to admit, it was surreal to watch. They were cogs in a well oiled machine. The front line would fight for several minutes before the line behind them took their spot and those at the front made a rolling motion that passed between soldiers until they were in the back. I held the shield limply, not comprehending what I was supposed to do with it until the grizzled soldier to my right smacked me beside the head and made an exaggerated motion of strapping the shield to his arm.

  I nodded numbly and did my best to get my arm through the straps of the dented heater style shield. It had once been painted in the navy blue of the banner with a symbol that looked similar to roman numerals on it. Other cohorts had similar shields with different symbols. If I had to hazard a guess, it denoted their cohort number for easier distinction in the heat of battle. The banners also had matching symbols below the head of the kaiju crest.

  Why the fuck was I doing any of this? I should have ran. I had no idea where I was and didn’t see anywhere to really go. But it would have been better than walking into the jaws of death with a bunch of strangers. Peer pressure was a motherfucker when arrows are whizzing at your head. I wasn’t a soldier. Hell, the most organized I had ever been with a group of my peers was when I played football in high school and even then I was not any good at the sport.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The thought tangent abruptly ended when a voice from the back line shouted a command that the grizzled man at my right echoed and we rotated forward to the front line. I felt my heart nearly leap out of my chest as we pushed forward. The grizzled man shouted “Scutum forma!” As one, each soldier locked their shields together.

  I was the last person to get my shield in the right place and only after a jerking motion from the grizzled soldier that forced my arm into the right space. The enemy line collided with us a moment later. It sounded like several cars colliding at the same time as the enemy pushed against our shield wall.

  We dug our feet into the ground as the enemy pressed in. It was like some strange tug-of-war as they would shove against us and a moment later we would make our own push. The enemy, now considering the yellow banners as the enemy, were taking ground from us. They had better arms and armor than us. Plate armor was mixed with their chain and their weapons looked to be in a better condition. The design of their blades were a little different too. They looked closer to roman gladius designs with the more angular blade shape.

  They slipped the blades through the small gaps in the shield wall and managed to score hits. The man to the left of me took a sword slash that parted his mail like butter and left a wicked gash across his ribs. He screamed out in pain, dropping his shield arm to cover his ribs only to take a sword through his mouth and out the back of his head. He immediately fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. The soldier behind him tried to pull his body away from the front line so the gap could be filled but before he had even grabbed the man by the foot, half a dozen arrows hit him center mass. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  I tried my best to fill the gap as the enemy archers found a nice hole to fire into. Sensing my intention, the grizzled soldier took a wider stance and helped me fill the gap. I had been purely on the defensive so far. The pain from my minor wounds had been forgotten in that moment as I desperately warded off blow after blow from the enemy soldiers. My arms felt like jelly and my shield began to dip as I lost the stamina to hold it up properly.

  I struck out with my sword, no technique, no intended target, I just swung wildly between the gaps of our shield wall, trying to fend off the enemy that pressed in. Whether by luck or divine intervention, my sword sank into the unarmored neck of a young man that looked like he was still in his teens. The utter hatred in his eyes burned themselves into my memory as I took my first life that day.

  “I’m sorry!” I wanted to shout. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare and go back to my normal life. Fate didn’t have that in mind as a soldier took his place, the same hatred burning in his eyes as he struck out with his sword. The grizzled soldier to my right took him down with a blade through the armpit that he jerked in and out in a practiced smooth motion. The grizzled man’s mustaches were soaked in blood but he gave me a small wink.

  Finally, a soldier from the line behind us filled the vacant spot in our formation as soon as the bodies had been dragged out of the way and we resumed our pitched fight. There was a shout from behind our line that sounded like an order and the grizzled man echoed “Rotatio retro!” immediately we began to rotate back down the line. Well, they did, I kinda just got pushed roughly to the back until I was once again standing next to the grizzled soldier. He looked at me disapprovingly but nodded again.

  I was spent. I was ready to collapse to the ground right then and there but it wasn’t long until the line that had relieved us was now behind us and we were that much closer to the front line again. The fight went on like that for what felt like hours. Once it was our turn, we would fight and try to push the enemy back for several minutes until we rotated back. Rinse and repeat.

  The fight was not going well. We were steadily losing soldiers and soon we could no longer hold a proper shield wall. That was when the tactics changed. An order was given and suddenly the line space so there was roughly five feet between each soldier. The line behind us would cover the gaps between but primarily so soldiers could switch to a wider style of combat. The guy with the two-handed war hammer went to work. His war hammer shattered shields in a single swing only for him to flip it around to the spiked side which would punch through the enemies armor and leave a large hole in their chest. He was an artist with the war hammer.

  The enemy quickly focused on taking him down, leaving room for myself and my new grizzled guardian to take more of an offensive. I had already claimed the lives of two other men during our melee thus far. It had not gotten easier, but adrenaline with a healthy dose of fear for your own life was a hell of a drug.

  I was far from skilled. Even those that looked little more than teenagers had more skill than I did but my grizzled guardian was quick to back me up and I was able to observe a couple techniques he used during the fight and was able to make a sloppy recreation. Sloppy or not, they were working. One man had turned his back to me so he could get the guy with the war hammer but I managed to nearly sever his leg at the knee only for my grizzled guardian to finish him off.

  A call for us to rotate back was called but we were unable to disengage with the enemy. The only bright side was the enemy line had begun to be pushed back by our furious assault. I felt beyond exhausted but somehow I managed to dig on some reserve I didn’t know I had to keep fighting. My sword arm felt like it had been encased in lead, my shield having been shattered earlier in the fight. I had taken to a two-handed fighting stance or at least what I thought it would look like after years of watching youtube videos of professionals using swords. In the end, I just looked silly, causing another disapproving shake of my grizzled guardians head.

  I had lost myself in the fight. Stab, parry, slash, be saved by my grizzled guardian because I would flail about with my sword like an idiot, stab, parry, slash. The enemy line suddenly began to buckle and a shout from behind us had the entire cohort push hard forward. The buckling enemy line became a full on retreat that resulted in cheers up and down the line as our banner carriers proudly waved the kaiju headed banner high in the air.

  The fight was over but the battle raged on elsewhere. Other cohorts were fairing worse than our own. One was down to a handful of men and women. They did not have the same shimmering shield above their heads as we did and I wondered why. We did not press any further forward, whoever was leading us from the back had issued a command that let the men rest. Some immediately slumping to the ground, myself included. I was ready to die right here and now with how exhausted I felt. The sword I had been given looked worse for wear. I was not a swordsman by any stretch. My blade was covered in nicks and a distressing line that led from one nick at the edge to the fuller of the blade that likely meant it was about to crack.

  My grizzled guardian was standing along with the man who wielded the war hammer. They talked in quiet tones as they watched the fight I had been observing. I noticed two corpses in the rear line that wore gray robes. The man with the war hammer pointed at one of the corpses from our position and mumbled something that the grizzled man nodded to.

  I stared at the bodies for a long while before I understood the connection. They were the ones who made the barrier in the air. I had not had much time to think about it but this had to be some sort of magic. From what I had seen so far, they didn’t possess the technology for the barrier to be something technological.

  I looked to our own back line and sure enough, two figures in gray robes had their hands in the air, their thumbs touching and their fingers held high, kinda like someone forming a goal for flick football. Next to them was a man in half plate armor. He had a cuirass, pauldrons and a full face armlet style helmet with a navy blue crest atop that reminded me of roman centurion styles. He spoke briefly with the robbed figures and they finally dropped their hands to their sides and more gracefully sat down than many of the soldiers who had just collapsed in place.

  I watched the man I had dubbed as the "centurion" and a moment later was confirmed when one of the soldiers behind me said something that I swear I heard the word “Centurion”. The man left the cohort to quickly run up a ridge behind us where a group of men and women wearing similar armor and helmet crests. A tall man stood among the gathered centurions. He wore full plate more in line with late medieval armor designs. The crest on his helmet was more ornate. It had alternating patterns of navy blue and silver. I stared at the man for a moment before I felt a sharp elbow to my ribs. I looked over, scowling at my grizzled guardian.

  He said something to me in quasi-latin. I rubbed my ribs in annoyance. “What? What the fuck do you want?” I said, anger finally bubbling up now that the fight was over for now. He looked at me strangely and spoke again.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you are saying. Do you understand me, fantasy Sam Elliot?” The grizzled soldier looked over to the man who held the war hammer which was still covered in blood. Though to be fair, we all were at this point. I couldn’t breathe without tasting the copper of someone else's blood.

  The two spoke quietly for a moment, leaving me to just stare at them in annoyance. The man with the war hammer slipped the handle through a loop on his belt and jogged over to the two mages who were resting in the back line. He spoke with them for a minute, gesturing over to me. One of the mages pulled their hood back to reveal a young woman with neck length blonde hair. They walked over to me, weaving around the exhausted soldiers, finally stopping next to me. I tiredly stood up to meet them.

  If I was about to die because they realized I wasn’t one of them, I would do it standing. The man with the war hammer rested his hand on the bloody head of the weapon but did not pull it as the young woman walked over to me. When she spoke it sounded like the quasi-latin language that I had heard so far but there was a distinct accent to it. Seeing that I didn’t understand her she tried a different language. It sounded…Scandinavian? I didn’t understand either language so it didn’t really matter.

  “I don’t understand you either,” I said with a tired sigh. The woman shared a glance with the man who carried the war hammer. He still had not pulled his weapon though after seeing him fight, I had no doubt he could have it out of its loop and swinging at me before I could get an arm up to defend.

  The woman made a gesture in the air and then tapped me once on the head. I felt strange. Like I had stuck my finger in a low voltage electrical socket. I made a little yelp at the contact and nearly fell over a soldier who was laying on the ground, napping.

  “Oi you little shit, watch where you are going.” I looked down in shock at the man. I could understand him!

  “It appears to be working,” the blonde woman said. I looked to her and then the man with the war hammer and then to my grizzled guardian who had joined them.

  “Who are you?” The large war hammer wielding man said. His arms were now crossed over his chest, looking down at me which was worth noting since I was six two, not many people looked down at me.

  I was about to respond but I paused. I was about to give him my name but when I tried to speak it, I couldn’t form the words. I frowned at that. “My name is-” Buzzzzzzzzz it was like static trying to speak my name. Even when I tried to think of it I couldn’t remember it. I could remember the names of both of my parents and my brother but for the strangest reason, I couldn’t remember my own.

  I tried again but again, the same buzzing sensation as I tried to remember it. The three exchanged looks before the grizzled man spoke. “Your name, lad.” He spoke in a Yorkshire accent that took me slightly aback considering they were speaking a Latin sounding language before. I guess Hollywood got this one right for this world.

  I scrunched up my name as I tried to speak it again and again but I couldn’t form the words no matter how hard I tried. “You better come with me, lad.” The grizzled man said as he clapped a rough hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t rough but I could tell by his grip that I wasn’t going anywhere he didn’t want me to go.

  “It’s for the best,” the woman said. Her voice still sounded like it had a Scandinavian accent to it but I at least understood her.

  “It doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice, not that I have anywhere to run to anyways.”

  The large war hammer wielding man laughed good naturedly. “That’s the right attitude to have! Let’s go have a chat with the centurion.” I sighed and nodded as I was led towards the group of officers on the ridge.

  Fuck.