West they marched, for the entire day.

When the Scouts finally stopped walking, the sun had already set.

Vas crouched down. He was in a sour mood, feeling a bit of abandonment by the majority of people he’d ever known.

“Why get close to anyone if they all leave you in the end?”

Alex slapped Vas on the back, startling him. “They’ve got a mission just like us! You did approve it in the end, remember?”

Alex walked over to Joust and helped him set up a little tent.

Selene set her bag inside the tent and stood beside Vas. She ran her fingers through his hair. Vas leaned his head against her.

None of the scouts were romantically involved with each other, but Vas felt intimately connected with Selene. They’d never had sex and weren’t planning on ever having it, but Selene knew how to calm Vas when he was agitated. Vas had been there to pull Selene out of her depression when her squad was annihilated. It was an unspoken bond.

And it wasn’t that Vas was ruling out sex, by the way.

There simply wasn’t the leisure to really think about the prospect.

If Selene walked up and said “Let’s have a good time in the tent,” Vas certainly would have considered the proposal. He probably would have agreed to it.

But for now, this was better. A companion that stood by his side, said nothing, and helped him relax.

“Why didn’t you go south?” Vas wondered the question aloud. He’d thought Selene would volunteer immediately for the more suicidal of the two suicide missions.

Selene continued running her fingers through Vas’s hair for a few moments, thinking.

“I don’t know,” she said at last.

They watched Joust and Alex construct the tent, bickering as they went. “Not THAT stake. OBVIOUSLY that stake is for the other part of the tent. . . JUST KIDDING!”

Maybe they weren’t bickering, on second thought. Maybe it was just Alex talking a lot.

Selene crouched down next to Vas. There was no sitting on the wet snow and sticky ash, unless you liked muddy pants.

“She sure is noisy.”

“Yeah.”

The night passed without incident. Joust and Alex slept for the first half, and Selene and Vas slept for the second.

Jade stood in front of her soldiers. The Risen behind her were like sheep, and she was the shepherd. She somehow had become their supply of energy, and they almost seemed to feed off of her aura. However, instead of feeling weaker because of this, she felt stronger with every additional Risen she added to her ranks.

Jade could not remember her life before her rise, nor did she care to. Whenever she tried to recall, she would find emotions like terror and sadness. She hated remembering those things.

So, she obeyed the commands of Hades and gathered more Risen for their army. That was her life. It seemed simple enough to her.

She walked to the north, because Hades had told her to. Her army was large, but could be much larger still.

Jade remembered that her objective was to kill as many humans as possible. She could not remember why, simply that it was now her role.

Hades stepped up beside her. He had grown even larger than the last time she’d seen him. He was well over the height of two people standing on each other’s shoulders. His arms were the size of her chest, and his legs were twice that size. He reminded her of something.

Remember.

She hated remembering.

But this memory wasn’t painful.

It was something she’d heard of.

Read about?

Seen?

A giant with one eye, wearing only a cloth over itself.

She knew she’d seen something like that somewhere.

But Hades had two eyes! So they were obviously completely different!

Where had she seen the giant with one eye?

Jade shook her head. It didn’t matter.

“Jade,” a deep voice came from the giant. It did not have the raspy screech Jade remembered.

Wait, what raspy screech? Hadn’t his voice always been deep?

“Make haste. The humans must not have too long to prepare once the storm takes them. We must attack with the ash.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

In the morning, Vas was awoken by Joust shaking his shoulders. Joust held a finger to his lips.

“We can see them on the horizon. Need to get moving fast.”

Vas nodded, and got up from his bed quickly. He’d slept almost entirely naked for the first night in a while next to Selene, and cursed the cold weather for forcing him to do so. If he’d been dressed they could have left faster.

Selene helped Vas pull his hand through his jacket, and that was when he noticed she had managed to wake up after him and be dressed before he was.

“How—”

“We need to move.”

They quickly exited the tent and Joust removed the stakes. They packed the tent into his bag as quickly as possible. Alex only made a quick comment about using the wrong stakes once, which showed how on edge even she was.

She quickly recovered once they were on the move, however.

“Anybody want breakfast? I have some rations here.”

“Yes.”

“Yup.”

Vas also wanted some, but he was preoccupied trying to look behind himself at the thin line to the south. They were coming. Not fast, but steady. Which seemed even more frightening.

What had happened to disorganized groups of Risen? They’d just been monsters before, but now… Now they almost seemed… Human.

It was like some force was making everything reach a climax, unnaturally. Vas wondered if the volcanic eruption had anything to do with it. Was it a signal of some kind? A weapon?

Vas knew it was something important and felt like he was on the edge of figuring it out. He knew he’d figure it out when it was too late.

This just wasn’t his kind of thing, solving mysteries. Vas glanced back to see Alex putting away the rations after giving them out to everyone who’d asked.

“I’ll take one too.”

“Of course you will!”

Vas and the others headed directly to the north for a few hours. They couldn’t afford being seen by even a single Risen, so they had to put enough distance between themselves and the following wave of Risen before they could go to the west again.

The walking had become increasingly difficult due to the ash as well as the snow, so they all stopped and put on snowshoes.

“Well this sucks!”

“Actually, with this we might be able to put additional distance between us and the following waves. In addition to catching the Risen in front of us.”

“Told you.”

Alex raised her hands, “Sure, yes, I get it. That part is nice. Thank you for your positivity. But that doesn’t change the fact that every time I take a step these stupid things throw snow up the back of my legs and make me cold.”

“And Alex marched valiantly back to the north, leading her poor troop of fellow scouts. She continued this way until she encountered a foe worse than any rabid animal or undead monster. Snow. Shoes.”

“Oh shut up.”

Vas laughed out loud with Joust and Selene. “Do you need us to carry you,” he wondered aloud. They all laughed again.

“I’m going to pull out the stiches in your leg tonight.”

“You all heard her. If my stiches are gone tomorrow morning, Alex wears snowshoes the entire way back to the Wall.”

Even Alex laughed a little.

“Do you think we’ll make it back? To the Wall?”

Vas didn’t know how to answer. They’d barely made it to the south. There were months upon months ahead of them in a frozen wasteland filled with enemies.

“Maybe. If you wear snowshoes.”

Alex glared and Joust fell over laughing.

Vas hoped they could keep having days like this. He’d had enough of death and fighting and loss.

They all had.