“I’m telling you, it’s darker.” Bard looked up into the night sky, squinting.

“It’s night,” Viggo said from beside him. “Of course, it’s dark.”

“Darker,” he stressed. “Aren’t you listening?”

Pat did his best to ignore the twin’s argument. They’d taken to cleanup duty after the day’s training, along with Orvar and himself. In part, this was to watch the recruits, and to stay available to the rest of the newcomers.

Well, Pat had done it for those reasons, copying a tactic the head of his father’s guard used. The twins were here on Pat’s “orders”. Mostly because he’d caught them flirting with one of the new girls from the village. There was enough tension in the base without adding that as well. Nobody liked to take orders from the man dating their sister, after all.

Orvar stood nearby, looking intensely at something in the distance. Pat followed his gaze to a set of recruits by the collapsed wall. They spoke with each other animatedly, not even bothering to face the outside world. That might not have been a problem, if they weren’t his assigned guards.

Pat started towards them, intent on disciplining the two, only to stop mid-stride. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he saw a black silhouette in the darkness of the road beyond.

“Orvar, did you-” Pat stopped as a bullet took a chunk out of one guard’s head.

Orvar’s gun was already raised, spraying down the area. The recruits followed suit, and only in the brief flash of overwhelming muzzle fire did Pat see what they were shooting at.

Two men on the hill, one already dead while the other tried in vain to sprint away.

He didn’t make it far.

The rest of the field was empty. A scouting group then, one that had managed to get remarkably close given the base’s geography.

It seemed they were being tested, which meant a real attack wasn’t far off.

Some of the recruits still fired at the obviously dead men, even as the twins tried to bark them down.

Pat wasn’t paying attention to that, however. With the threat gone, his attention was on the boy laying on the ground, unmoving, warm blood pooling around his ruined head. A boy that had been there on Pat’s orders, who had died because Pat hadn’t prepared him properly.

That was about to change.

“And what was more important than your job?” Pat asked the other guard, the one that had survived, in front of the rest of their recruits.

He’d had anyone that wasn’t on duty pulled from their beds, Pat wasn’t about to wait for the next training session. He was making an example of this.

The guard didn’t respond, eyes fixed on the ground.

Pat gestured to the wall they’d been watching.

“This isn’t some beast at your walls, this is war. This is an enemy better trained, and better equipped-”

“You’re not our lord!” One voice spoke up from the back.

Pat turned towards the speaker, one of the older boys Tel had brought in.

“Rand!” Tel himself moved forward as if to berate the boy, Rand apparently, but Pat put a staying hand on his chest.

“No, I’m not.” Pat said. “But if you want to live, you’ll listen to me.”

“Really?” Rand challenged. “What’s some noble blood going to do to help us? What use are you? We go to bed exhausted every night.” He gestured to the wall. “That man died because you treat us like slaves. Far as I’m concerned, this is proof that you ain’t fit to lead.”

A few grunts from the others told Pat that this was not an unpopular opinion. He’d been pushing this group hard since they’d arrived, putting them through a routine much like his commander had given him. And it seemed that some resentment had built up.

“And do you believe you’re more qualified to lead here?”

The boy hesitated, before squaring his shoulders.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Very well.” Pat gestured to the twins, whispering a few words. In a moment, they brought him a spear, Bard moving to give Rand one as well. “Then duel me for the position.”

Rand looked at the spear, suspicious, but testing the blade found it just as sharp as it should be.

“I accept.”

Rand tensed as he saw Pat toss his gun to Orvar, then hesitated. He’d probably only just realized that guns were an option. After a moment longer, he followed in kind, offering his gun to Bard. Pat inclined his head toward the teen in approval.

As the group spread out, creating a ring around the two, Pat saw a moment of indecision in the teen’s eyes. But it was too late for that. Pat intended to change things, these people needed a leader, and since their Commander wasn’t here to fill that role, it was up to him. He was the one with the experience and training, the Twins, even Orvar had deferred to him in their commander’s absence. He’d been raised with every advantage, every bit of training one could get. And much of that involved combat, as in his father’s eyes, leaders were destined to encounter violence in one form or another.

So, when the boy that had lived most of his life as a farmer heard the signal to begin and immediately rushed forward, spear point leveled on Pat’s chest, it wasn’t difficult to sidestep the blow.

Pat arched backwards as Rand turned, jabbing at his head in a wild, uncontrolled flurry. He danced around the blows with practiced ease. He allowed the boy to attack, showing the others just how outmatched he was. This wasn’t ego, he needed them to know he wasn’t some spoiled brat. He’d trained all his life to lead. And as the boy overextended, Pat smacked the point of his spear off course, bringing the blunt end of his own weapon down on the back of the teen’s neck.

Rand‘s momentum sent him sprawling to the dirt. By the time the boy recovered, Pat had already pressed the point of his spear into the teen’s neck. He froze.

“I don’t care if you don’t like me.” Pat said, keeping the point even. “I don’t care if you decide you want to hide in a hole until the enemy is on our doorstep. But if you want to fight, then you will listen to me.” Pat withdrew the spear. “I’m trying to keep you and your people alive. Because when they come, and they will come, it won’t be my family they’ll kill. It will be yours.”

He turned, tossing his spear to Bard. The teen watching him, dumbly.

“I never said it was a fight to the death,” Pat explained. “We need every man we have. Including you.” He turned to the rest of the crowd. “And if anyone else has any issue with my leadership, you’re free to challenge me as well.”

None spoke up this time.

“Sure about this?” Orvar asked.

Pat considered, looking at the still dazed teen, and his friends, before he resolved himself.

“We might not be the best people to lead you, but we’re all you have. Think on what I’ve said, but if you aren’t willing to listen to us, then don’t bother showing up tomorrow. I refuse to fight at the side of someone that will get me killed.”

With that, Pat and the others moved off. Leaving Tel to pick up the pieces.

That man would iron things out, he knew that. He just hoped that little display showed that he was more than some spoiled nobleman with lofty ambitions, that they were here to help.

Summers had found the group mounts easily enough, more of the long-haired horses that seemed to be favorites of the locals. There were more than a few people leaving the city in the wake of the disaster, making purchasing them out of the question, just as they’d thought. What the city didn’t think of, and what Summers had settled on instead of robbing some poor bastard, was raiding what was left of the samr’s holdings in the city.

It hadn’t been hard. The samr Mia controlled were far less dangerous with her dead, and he had more than enough spare weapons to take them out at a distance. While his suspicion that they’d go feral without her was right, to a degree, they still had enough sense to use weapons. It wasn’t quite the same as when someone was first infected, more so, it felt like a mad scramble to kill as much as they could.

However, what they gained in ferocity, they lost in intelligence. They had almost no sense of self preservation. That was fine with small towns, but a big, organized city with bottlenecks and tunnels, proved to be that strategies’ undoing. Turned out, rushing towards an entrenched enemy doesn’t work out well, even if your toys were shinier.

During the cleanup, Synel had managed to spread the word about the base some more. And in the wake of he and Roan’s experiment, made a point to mention how one of the leaders was a manpak.

Roan was still preening over that. And honestly, once they found out how his blood worked against the hamr, or at least how to use it, he might turn out to be the key to their success.

Asmund planned to meet them at the base. And take as many of his people as he could. The other city leaders were hit hard by the attack, so he wasn’t worried about his safety, but that didn’t mean he needed to be careless.

So, they were back on the road, with a handful of spare weapons, grenades, and as much food as they could carry. They’d also packed a few carrier vests, plates, and what food they could salvage. Some were even supplies he’d stolen from the samr.

“It’s odd, isn’t it? Hamr, samr, I mean. Isn’t the hamr a god?”

“Not really, samr means. . .” Synel paused, searching for the word. “The same,” she settled on. “As in how the soldiers acted. Hamr isn’t a name, not as you know them. It means body, or flesh? Vessel?” She paused, thinking. “Whole. It means whole, as in a whole person. Like your word, ‘one’. They sound similar because they are similar.”

Summers looked at Synel, considering how very little he knew about how to speak their language, despite getting his point across most of the time.

“I sound like an idiot talking to you, don’t I?”

“No.” Synel said soothingly, moving in closer to him. “You sound like a child.”

Summers closed his eyes, trying not to get angry.

“I really need to work on that when we have the time.”

“I’m always happy to help.”

As the day went on, Summers and his group ran into their first obstacle. An unexpectantly mundane one. A river.

Summers examined the banks, seeing no easy way to pass.

“Hey Asle, think you can get us across?”

Asle glanced at him, hesitant. It wasn’t that long ago she’d been injured using her power, so that was understandable.

“We can ride down the bank until we find somewhere to cross.” Summers said.

“No,” Asle replied after a moment. “I can do it.”

She extended her hand before Summers could argue and the air in front of them shimmered. Only, it wasn’t the other side of the bank in front of them. It didn’t even look like a river. Summers peered into the portal, only to see a rocky, obsidian like stone in front of him. He double checked the horizon, that didn’t match up at all. Asle frowned, trying again, only to meet the same result. This time, Summers noticed a familiar, spherical chunk taken out of the land. Something that looked like the damage he’d seen around the base.

“Huh.” He angled his head through the portal, only to notice that the sky was an angry red.

Slowly, Summers extracted himself from the portal, turning to Asle.

“Asle, I don’t think that’s the same planet.”

Asle let out an annoyed huff as the fifteenth portal in as many minutes fizzled out.

“It’s fine, Asle. Give it a rest for a bit.” Summers consoled. “This all might be a sign you injured yourself or something. Pushing its probably just gonna make things worse.”

They’d found a way past the river on their own and set up camp. Asle however, was having trouble coming to terms with the fact her powers were a little out of whack. Every time she tried to make a portal between two spaces, she’d instead make one between two worlds. Synel had checked Asle over afterwards, just to make sure she didn’t have a concussion or the like. But, as near as they could tell, she was fine.

“Do you think this has something to do with Asmund’s brother?” Synel asked.

Summers sincerely didn’t want to think about that incident more than he had to. There was something instinctually terrifying about what they’d seen, not helped by the fact he still wasn’t sure what it was exactly.

“I don’t’ think so.” Summers answered. “Or, maybe it is, but not just that. It’s not really a bad thing, just different.”

Asle was, in essence, a more mobile version of the machine that had brought Summers into this world. The problem being she didn’t seem to have control over what world she was going to. But she did seem to consistently go to the same world. That is, an incredibly dead rock that may, at one time, have been earth. Just like the world he was on now; it must have taken a much different path than his own. Because it looked like a scorched hellhole. He was surprised it had breathable air at all, but they’d still been careful to watch for anything coming through as Asle experimented.

“Christ, you know we really should be careful there’s no radiation over there.” Summers said. For all he knew, that was what a nuclear hellhole looked like.

Synel looked at him with what Summers assumed was some approximation of curiosity.

“Radiation?”

“I’d need way too much context to explain radiation to you.”

“Poison,” Asle supplied.

“Oh, I see.” Synel said.

“. . .Or not,” Summers acquiesced, sighing as Asle opened another portal despite his warning. “Asle, seriously.”

“I just want to see something,” Asle said.

“See wha-” Summers was cut off as Asle promptly stepped into the portal, then closed it behind her.

He had only a moment to process gut-wrenching panic before another portal opened beside him, and Asle stepped out.

All Summers managed was a strangled noise.

“I didn’t know if I could come back,” Asle shrugged.

“That’s. . .” Summers was at a complete loss for words. “You understand that’s exactly why I’m mad right now, right?”

“Do you know a better way to check?”

“You know I don’t.”

“Then you don’t get to be mad.”

Summers had to count to ten, reminding himself that Asle probably had a very warped sense of danger at this point.

“ You taught her this.” Summers looked at Synel accusingly.

“I don’t apologize,” Synel replied, smiling at Summers as he sat.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Asle said, still staring at her hand.

Roan eyed her.

“Does any of this? In the time I’ve been with you people I’ve nearly died at least three times, and that was the most normal part about it.”

Roan winced as he finished, catching both Summers and Asle’s attention. Summers noted a small, red splotch at the elbow.

“Asle, check his bandage, would you?”

She nodded, moving to follow the direction. Swollen, red skin greeted the two as Roan grit his teeth. The wound must have been infected.

“Ah shit.” Summers mumbled, moving to their poor excuse for a first aid kit.

Most of their supplies had been outside the Humvee, and as such most of them had been blown to hell in the attack. Summers was hoping Roan was out of the woods as far as infections were concerned, but he must have been taking that risk a little too lightly.

“Asle, we have any antibiotics?” Summers looked to the girl, who shook her head.

“Is. . . should we think about. . . cutting it off?” Asle asked. He ignored Roan’s wide expression.

Summers sighed, looking at the infected skin that led up Roan’s side.

“I don’t think it would do us any good. Frankly, even if it was an option, I don’t think I could manage it. I’m surprised Nowak pulled it off.”

Synel moved up beside him, inspecting the arm.

“That’s. . . not ideal.” Synel said. Roan flinched as she touched the wound. “Sorry, child.” She turned to Summers. “I’m an idiot, I should have thought to stock up on our medicine.”

“Not like we weren’t distracted,” Summers replied. “Do you think we’d be able to buy some in a town?”

“The closest town is a few days away. I worry his wound might get worse before then.” She hesitated. “However. . .”

“You have another option?”

“Well, there are trade roads nearby, if we altered our course, we could hope to find someone.”

“You think some random trader’s going to have medicine on them?”

“I know I would. The road’s full of dangers.”

Summers considered that. He didn’t like leaving something to luck, but as it stood, they didn’t have that many options. He’d have backtracked to the city if they could, but this far out, that wasn’t an option.

“Fine, Asle, can you try to clean the wound? You’re probably better at it than I am.”

Asle nodded, trying to hide a worried expression. Roan, for his part, didn’t look worried. He simply joked with Asle as she did her work, hiding the occasional wince.

He felt for the kid, and Summers couldn't help but wonder how many in the city had died from something as mundane as infection after the samr's attack.

No, that was a trap, he had a job to do, and people to protect. Right now, he needed to focus on them.