Sir! the portal is fluctuating again, radiation is leaking!

How is the situation? Are the walls holding out?

Yes, sir. The walls have mitigated the radiation. But that is not the problem, this event could only mean that someone from the other side is tampering with it! we may be seeing another assault in a minute.

I shall alert the council, monitor the situation. Alert the garrison commanders and tell them to take up positions!

The sun of this world was going to rise soon. The break of dawn in a new world, how surreal. A normal human would be confused and terrified if he were to be somehow transported into a new world with no knowledge of how he got there, how the world works or if he even stood a chance in surviving. But not us, we were men and a woman of war. Whatever we may face, whoever and whatever we may kill, will be for the peace and harmony for all of humanity.

“What the hell are those?” Snake whispered. We were crouched down behind two big rocks with our feet buried in the snow. It’s been six hours since we first arrived in this unknown world and this was our first time seeing these strange green creatures up close and personal. They were different from the animals we had seen so far such as the herds of bison roaming around the snowy plains and snow-white birds that rested on the highest branches of the pines.

We were walking down a clearing between the forest when we heard the scream of a bison that was cut short. We then went to check out what happened and we found these creatures feasting on it raw.

“My scanners can’t confirm what the hell those things are but I am certain they’re not friendly” Yeti replied, pointing his rifle at the direction of the creatures. I was crouched next to Diplomat who was sat to the right of Yeti, we both had our guns pointed at the creatures.

The creatures were short, humanoid, and green. They had long noses and ears and skin that was wrinkled. They wore what we saw as leather around their groin, the fact that they can survive in temperatures below 0 despite not even wearing anything on their torso made us believe their bodies were adapted to the climate. There were six of them eating the carcass of a bison a few meters away from our position. They held these short knives and one of them, presumably the leader or the alpha, possessed a sword.

“For being resistant to these temperatures, it’s a surprise they even bother covering their crotch,” Diplomat said, placing his finger on the trigger.

“They resemble one of the creatures we were given a picture of, the.. goblin” Snake said, this was true. Maybe these were another kind of those goblins?

“Ghost, what should we do?” Yeti asked me, I looked at him and stood. The creatures may be unknown to us but I already know they are not immune to our bullets.

“Aye, let’s follow his lead” Diplomat stood and the other two soon followed. The goblins were too busy eating the carcass to even notice that we were walking towards them with our rifles ready to blast them into smithereens.

The leader of the group, the one with the sword, was the first of the group to notice us. Immediately it jumped and pointed its sword and screamed its lungs out. Soon after, the other goblins had joined him in the screaming. Their facial expressions were horrendous.

“They should die just for giving us that look,” Yeti remarked as he readied his rifle.

“They appear to be taunting us, which is dumb,” Snake said, I could tell she was aiming for the crotch of the goblin with the sword.

“Disgusting” Diplomat remarked, I could tell he wanted to pull the trigger but I raised my hand to let them know that we will do that, eventually. We needed to see first how these creatures behaved to better understand how to fight them in the future.

We were slow in our approach, making sure we did not do any sudden movements that would entice them to charge us head-on. Doing so would only make them useless opponents who would run face-first into our barrels.

Their screaming became louder when we were just a few feet away. They were brandishing their weapons like children. We could even see their saliva oozing out of their mouths and flying all over the place with each scream and growl.

Snake and Yeti secured our left flank while Diplomat and I secured the right. We were forming a pincer to surround them though we were outnumbered. I waited until one of them decided to attack us.

It wasn’t long before one of the goblins with a knife charged at Snake. It was time to kill them, I thus concluded they possessed no complex strategy, just taunting and lunging. Maybe I expected too much from these creatures who don’t even have proper clothing.

I gave the gesture to immediately open fire. Yeti and Diplomat pulled their triggers and blasted the goblins from their head and down to their knees. Snake, on the other hand, did something different, as always. As the goblin charged at her with its knife against its belly and pointed, she turned her pistol into a rope and dodged the goblin’s lunge. She then proceeded to wrap the rope around the goblin's neck and choked it unconscious.

The rest of the goblins fell dead next to the carcass, their innards blown from their bodies while green blood leaked from every hole. Snake’s decision to choke the goblin was appreciated by Yeti who took the time to examine it. Snake dragged the unconscious bloke across the snow and placed it against the rocks while Yeti knelt down and let his scanners do the work.

We all stood guard around Yeti as he examined his newly-found specimen. The likes of which were disgusting in all aspects. After a few minutes, he was almost done.

“This thing is a male” Yeti said.

“It has a penis?” Snake asked.

“Yes, but it lacks an anus” Yeti added.

“What the fuck?” Snake looked back in disgust.

Clearly, this creature did not defecate in a manner similar to other humanoids. Yeti then told us his discovery.

“Its organs all point to only one possible alternative for its lack of an anus.. it would vomit its feces instead. Its digestive system is not a one-way route but actually turns back” Yeti explained.

“Are you done examining that thing? It’s too disgusting to live” Snake said. She turned around and pointed her silenced pistol at its head.

“Well, there is nothing else left to learn from its anatomy, their behavior is primitive as far as we are concerned”

Snake turned to me for approval. I gave her a simple nod.

She pulled the trigger and the goblin was no more. Its brain matter was splattered all over the rock behind it.

“I also conclude that their bodies are not that durable” Yeti added.

With the goblins out of the way, it was time for us to get moving. We started walking south as per the advice of Yeti.

“I believe we will come across a river to the south judging by the tectonics my radar is detecting below us. The river seems to be a wide one, connected by streams that deviate by the hundreds but I doubt it's not covered in ice” Yeti said.

“You can detect tectonic plates?” Snake asked.

“Yes, the radar is THAT powerful,” Yeti replied.

“It would be nice if we came across civilization. Like, a village. Villages are common, right? Like, come on. Our intelligence reports state that the attack on Paris was organized by a coalition of polities, namely kingdoms” Diplomat said. It was true, during our group briefing, it was explained that they discovered a hundred banners all belonging to different troops. The banners had the same animal drawn on it, an eagle. Whoever sent them loved eagles.

The sun had begun to rise after an hour of us walking. The first break of dawn, the sky was painted orange as the star rose from the east and planted its light over the land. The birds had wakened, a while ago there were only a few but now they were flying by the dozens. We were all silent, focused entirely on our surroundings. Yeti was in charge of leading us through this wilderness while Diplomat and Snake held their heads high and their weapons ready.

I was walking behind the group. I had nothing special to do but to gesture out orders for now. I was thinking of how we should approach the natives if we come across any. The chances of us encountering these natives were fairly high and we needed a plan on how to interact with them.

But interacting with natives with an understanding a thousand years backwards would cause some misunderstandings. I fear they'd mistake us for deities. Walking around in power armor. Maybe interaction should be kept at a minimum for now. I would have Diplomat handle the interaction while the three of us stay back.

I wondered if our suits had specific enhancements that were unique only to one? In the case of Yeti's, he had a bigger radar but his armor is slightly vulnerable on the side where the radar was.

While I was lost in thought, Yeti called out to me.

"Ghost, I am detecting twenty biological signatures right ahead of us" He said.

"Wait, how come we haven't detected them? how close are they?" Diplomated asked.

"They seem to be.. a kilometer. They just appeared on my radar now" Yeti explained. I opened my radar to check if I could also detect the signatures and he was right, twenty or so biological signatures were a kilometer ahead of us.

"Can you discern their movement? are they even moving?" Snake asked.

"They seem to be heading south too, we won't be running into them. However, I doubt these are goblins. The goblins we encountered did not show in our radar at all, only the bison they killed. But I am not sure, we could use our scopes though," Yeti said.

Indeed we could, our visors had the ability to magnify to the direction we wanted as long as we faced it.

"I'll check it out," Snake volunteered. She ran in front of us and pulled out a sniper rifle. Clever, she used the sniper rifle as a means of further magnifying her sight. As she looked through her scope, we used our own magnification to see if we could discern what was ahead of us.

As if I was speed through the woods, my vision was magnified by almost a kilometer. I saw the group, they were tall and looked a lot like humans. They were wearing winter clothing made of fur, the fur was similar to that of polar bears, are their polar bears in this place?

They were also accompanied by a group of bison, probably tamed. The bison all had things strapped on their backs and all of them were pulling what I would call a sleigh but with more things. I can't really describe what the hell they were hauling. The humanoids' faces were too small for even my magnified vision to see, if we could see their faces, we may be able to determine if they were human or another humanoid creature.

“Humans,” Snake said, “They are humans. I saw eight males and six females accompanied by six bison, all of which are hauling things I can’t even describe,”

“Ghost, I believe we can use them to our advantage. We can follow them and see where they are headed. if they are hauling that much then maybe they are on their way to their village or a city, either of the two is a high probability” Yeti suggested. It was a good suggestion, well, even if he did not tell me we would still follow the group regardless.

"We should get going then,"