“Fuck,” groused Sam, lowering the binoculars. First Sergeant Stahlbrecher had brought them to the highest point in the camp, which overlooked both the valley below and a vast swath of the open plains of Darabad to the north.

As night began to fall, the small, nearly imperceptible dots and lines on the horizon revealed themselves to be enemy encampments, fortifications, and trench-lines.

“My thoughts exactly,” grumbled the First Sergeant. “More than likely, that’s the force mentioned in your Mage’s reports. By my count, we’re looking at a battalion-sized combat element supported by regimental supply forces.”

“Why the hell haven’t they pushed, then?” Questioned Sam, pulling the binoculars up again, looking at a particularly nasty-looking fortification that seemed to be bustling with near-microscopic soldiers.

“Couldn’t say, LT,” Stahlbrecher shrugged, I’d’ve pushed well into the valley by now with a force that large.”

“Something isn’t right here,” stated Sam, jumping off the small ladder over the sandbag wall, “Kara, you seem to be in the know about the other fronts, you have any ideas?”

“Their push into Sulesti, while rapid and successful, seems to have been muddled by defenders, and they haven’t made it more than thirty kilometers south of the city, through with their push along the Seaward Plain being harried by naval bombardments, cavalry, and Mages from the Ducal Academy, I believe they’ve failed to push as far as they wished, we’re witnessing the consequences of that right now.

“In short Sam, I’d imagine they’re uncomfortably low on supplies, ammunition, and haven’t gotten the division or so of reinforcements they expected to aid their assault.” Kara finished with a definitive nod.

Sam nodded, still uncertain of how to proceed. He wasn’t an officer by nature, and felt more akin to the NCOs of the platoon rather than the others like him that he’d met. Unfortunately, this applied to large scale planning as well.

“Kara,” he said, a sudden idea popping into his head, “Do we have any miners in the platoon?”

“Aye, Sam, we do,” she answered, “How is that helpful here though?”

“What would it take for us to convince them to dig a big spider-web of tunnels through the side of this mountain?” Sam inquired, a malicious grin splitting his face.

“I’d imagine Mountainbreaker would be very open to the opportunity, as well as several of the Dwarves here.”

“Good, get them on that please,” Sam remarked, adjusting the strap of his rifle on his shoulder. “I’m gonna go start my patrol of the wall, Kara, did you get your range set up yet?”

“I… yes, I just adapted the rifle range already in place on the west side of the camp.” She replied uncomfortably.

“Good, go get some training in, grab chow, and then go to sleep.” Sam ordered, giving her a polite nod and beginning his walk around the hundred-meter circle that was the camp.

Three hours of walking in circles later, Sam exhaled in annoyance. Say what you will about a world full of magic, monsters, and dragons, guard duty was guard duty. No matter what way you sliced it, walking in circles around a camp and passing the same stone in the ground what seemed like eleven thousand times in a row sucked.

‘Sam,’ Ellie spoke into his mind, ‘Would you join me in your hut?’

Sam quieted his mind, knowing that she very much could hear his thoughts, and stared into the starry sky above. Sighing once, he wandered over to Corporal Southbranch nearby, helping direct some lower enlisted to fill sandbags to increase the height of their fortifications in key areas, along with fortifying the interior of the camp.

“Corporal Southbranch,” he asked from several feet behind her. “Do you mind taking over watch for me for a bit?”

The engineer cocked her head to the side, fixing at him with an appraising gaze.

“Fist fights a mage,” she replied with a smirk and an eye roll, crossing her arms under her modest chest, “But can’t handle a few hours of watch? Typical officer.”

“Corporal, you’re the one who told the medic to go fuck himself, and that you heal better outside,” groused Sam, “I need to go meet with Sergeant Vezir real quick.”

“Ah, are you finally going to bed the poor, starry-eyed Drow?”

‘Is that what she is?’ Sam internally realized.

‘Drow, Dark-Elf, Cjzojecz’ais,’ answered Ellie in his head, ‘It seems like every world and culture has a different name for us, but it usually boils down to some twisted around translation of Dark-Elf.’

Sam had to actively work to hold back a wince as he realized his mistake. He seemed to continually forget Ellie was there, and privy to his internal monologue whenever she had the whim to be. At times, especially in combat, it was incredibly useful to be able to have a seamless form of communication. At others, like now, it felt like he just couldn’t get a moment of free time to himself.

Then what Southbranch had said slapped him across the face, and he quickly shook himself out of his internal consideration.

“No! No I’m not,” he groused, “Besides, even if I did want to ‘bed’ her, I couldn’t. I’m an officer, she isn’t, in addition to the fact she’s my direct subordinate.”

It was the only trump card he had to play at this point, and he desperately clung to it, both in memory of his late wife, and the fact that he really hadn’t had a real chance to sit down and think about the ramifications of just what the hell had happened to him in the last day.

Hell, he didn’t even know how long it’d actually been, he realized, thinking about how it felt like he’d been slung around the galaxy on a massive wrecking ball. From dying on his home-world, to meeting a goddess of death, to waking up in a twisted version of World-War-One Europe with Goddess-damned dragons, he was just one man.

Corporal Southbranch on the other hand, furrowed her brows deeply, her unnaturally green eyes boring into his skull before she cocked her head the other direction. Her freckled nose wrinkled as she smiled at him like he was some precious idiot.

“Whatever you say, Lieutenant,” she snorted, crisply turning and beginning her patrol of the FOB.

Sam watched her go for several seconds, shaking his head at her odd reaction before he turned and made for the sandbag and wooden hut near the center of the fortifications that he’d been informed by the First Sergeant were the “Officers’ Quarters”.

In nearly any other context in life, his new hovel would’ve been considered unlivable, given that it was barely ten feet by ten feet wide, just big enough to hang his gear, lay out a bedroll, and have a small wooden desk, not that there was really any paperwork to do on it at this juncture.

He opened the slim door to the shanty, stepping inside the room, dimly lit by an oil lantern on the desk. Parsing his eyes over the enclosed space, he couldn’t see Ellie. What he did see, however, was the fact that his bedroll had apparently cloned itself via mitosis. That or Ellie had stealthily set up her own directly next to his.

He eyed the empty room for several seconds, turning around once in place, unable to find the woman who’d summoned him. Elle stepped out of a shadow in the corner of the room. In fact, she was the shadow, as the space quickly illuminated as she fled its embrace.

Sam blinked slowly as she proudly grinned at him.

“My powers are back,” she stated happily, bouncing once in place.

“I, uh, what?” Sam replied

“My powers,” she answered unhelpfully again, “I had to sacrifice them in exchange for passage to your world. Your world’s deity is unhappy at any other purviews being used in his space, and now they’ve finally reset!”

“Ookay,” nodded Sam. This conversation was going in a wildly different direction than he’d expected, but he wasn’t opposed to discussing what her ‘powers’ entailed. “I take it that becoming a shadow is part of that?”

“Yep!” she nodded excitedly, taking a step towards him. “I’m her oracle, which basically turns me into a miniature version of her.”

She bit her lower lip cutely for a second, looking off to the side in apparent consideration before her eyes flicked back to him.

“It’s kinda like I’m a car battery, but she’s a nuclear power plant.”

“What powers do you have?” Sam asked, somewhat interested, particularly from a tactical perspective. Shadow magic by itself would be invaluable for infiltration and observing enemy camps, maneuvers, and persons of interest.

“Well,” she said, a mischievous grin spreading on her eternally pretty face, “For one-“

Ellie dissipated into the blue and gold ball of mist she’d become in the realm of Senire, rapidly closing the distance between them before the little ball of nearly-invisible excited fog circled him twice, floated up into the air, and dropped right in front of his face, re-materializing into the woman millimeters from his eyes.

Her warm body pressed against his as she wrapped an arm around his waist, placed the other behind his neck, and pulled him down for a deep kiss. Sam blinked several times as her lips met his, their soft touch exquisite against his own.

He hated himself for it, but he kissed back. Just over a year without the touch of his late wife left him wishing for comfort and company. For several moments, Sam placed his hands on her hips and let himself enjoy her tender embrace. When her tongue pushed its way into his mouth, he gently, almost unwillingly pushed her back by her hips.

“Ellie, I…” he trailed.

“Sam.” She stated bluntly.

“I can’t,” he replied, casting his eyes down to the floor unable to meet her hopeful gaze any longer, “I’m… Just not ready.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sam,” Ellie chastised lovingly, “You are ready. I know you like no one else. I can see your memories, your feelings, and your thoughts as if they were my own. You’re afraid, afraid of a dead woman’s judgment.”

Sam snapped his mouth shut, his reply dying on his lips as he gazed into her vibrant red eyes. He took a deep inhale as the memory of his final moments in the Mexico desert flashed through his mind. He blinked and shook his head, spinning around quickly and exiting his hovel, unable to cope with the wellspring of emotion that he’d been steadily trying to squash.

Inhaling as he took a lungful of the mountain air, his mind roiled at what had just happened. In truth, it wasn’t something he hadn’t wanted, and that realization irked him to no end. Grief was a funny thing, and there was no set period of time that you should mourn the loss of a family member.

His grandmother had remarried four years after the loss of his blood grandfather at Pearl Harbor. His uncle had never remarried at all after he lost his wife to cancer. The wife of one of the men in his platoon had been shacked up with another within four months of his death.

With his plans to drink himself under a table hopelessly shattered, he didn’t really see a path to heal in the way he knew how. He couldn’t really understand the superimposition of his feelings for Ellie and Anna, his dead wife.

While he still loved Anna, he couldn’t deny the feelings that had sparked to life for Ellie, much quicker than he’d cared to acknowledge. Ellie was there, had helped him in his darkest moments, and guided him down a path to an actual future.

Granted that future was in a war-torn alien world, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

He was abruptly jerked from his thoughts when a voice called him out.

“Lieutenant Volkjel,” Southbranch said in an amused tone, striding confidently toward him. “That was quick, I expected better from you.”

“Southbranch I will PT the shit outta you,” Sam replied, deciding to lean on his rank for once, “Injured shoulder or not.”

A wry grin split her face as she nodded half-heartedly.

“Understood Lieutenant,” she replied sarcastically.

Sam rolled his eyes and sighed, stifling a chuckle.

“Go back to what you were doing before, Corporal, I’m going back to guard duty.”

Sam resumed strolling around the edges of the camp, taking several moments to appreciate the unfamiliar constellations in the sky, the twin red and white moons, and the bright blue star set perfectly in the center of the sky above him like a jewel.

“The Princess,” stated Henfri from behind him.

“What?” He asked, not really wanting her company at the moment. The last thing he needed with Ellie putting moves on him was an overly-blunt, horny lizard woman.

“The blue star,” she clarified, “In my homeland, we call it the Princess.”

“I’m guessing there’s a reason?” Sam inquired, turning his head to gaze up into her eyes. In the light of the twin moons, she was clearly visible, despite her rapidly red-and-black shifting scales. She looked like a human, if it weren’t for the scales, wide, muscled tail, and golden reptilian eyes. She had no hair on her head, instead a mop of alligator-like triangular protrusions sat on her crown.

Intriguingly to him, she also had a very womanly figure, which decidedly did not match with the reptile-like appearance she gave off.

“There is,” she nodded, smiling and revealing a set razor-sharp front teeth, “A dragon princess once defied her mother’s wishes, and married a human. The Queen was displeased with this change of events, and disinherited her. Years later, after fostering a brood of half-bloods with her human lover, the Princess returned to dethrone her cruel mother. She brought the combined army of the human lands to the east, and several houses of human sympathizing Drakes that supported her.

“After a bloody battle, the Queen Mother was struck down, but cast a dark magic spell on her daughter in the final moments of the battle, banishing her to the heavens. As a result, she was cursed to watch her husband strike down the mother, and her descendants live out their days from the Etherium.”

Sam snorted. He knew there was probably a lot more nuance to the story, but Henfri was Henfri. Direct, self-assured, and smart in a somewhat clueless way.

“Sounds like as good a story as any for a constellation,” Sam shrugged, looking back to the star in question. Seeming in response to his gaze, the star flashed once. He blinked, realizing his mind must be messing with his eyes again and shook his head.

“Aren’t you on gate guard duty, Corporal?” he asked, turning to the big woman.

“We just got relieved by Second Squad,” she answered incredulously, “I saw you brooding, and thought I’d come talk.”

“I wasn’t brooding,” lied Sam.

“I could literally smell it,” she answered like it was the most normal thing in the world, which to her, it probably was.

“You could smell it?” He chuckled, only half believing her.

“Yes, all creatures put out a smell whenever they have strong feelings.” She nodded, smiling.

“Like what?” Sam grumped.

“Like when you look at the Staff Sergeant,” she stated before waving her hand in front of her nose, “I swear, it’s like you two are sharing a brain. As soon as you look at her, or she at you, boom! Like a flood of lust, it is quite potent.”

Sam turned away quickly, his cheeks rapidly heating.

“There’s embarrassment!” she teased, before Sam looked back to her scales, which were taking on more and more red by the second as she took another pensive step forward. “Or when you look at me. Fear. Excitement. Curiosity.”

“Corporal,” Sam stated, holding out a hand to slow her down. He was significantly displeased that he now had two living lie-detector tests for himself.

A bright flash sparked from the back of the camp behind Henfri, near where the range had been set up. Seeing his opportunity to extricate himself from the position he was in, he looked at Henfri.

“I have to go see what that was, I’ll talk to you later.” He said bluntly but not unkindly.

Half-jogging, he burst past the blushing reptile. She was… weird for him. Ellie, for all her alien features, still felt decidedly human to his senses. Henfri, well, pushed the boundary. Seven feet of coiled muscle, oddly soft-looking scales, and frankly an enjoyable personality to be with definitely rattled around his thoughts.

If you’d asked him a month ago if he would find a reptilian monster attractive, even ‘cute’, he would’ve adamantly answered in the negative. Now though? It was a confusing maybe. He rounded a large boulder in the camp.

His whirlwind of thoughts was dashed against the rocks when he laid eyes on Kara, in the middle of throwing a fire-spike on the range. The bolt of bright blue flame sped towards a straw dummy twenty-five meters away, landing dead center.

Kara smiled proudly at her accuracy, and stood still for several seconds, looking to Sam like she was centering herself. She inhaled through her nose, exhaling deeply through her mouth. She opened her eyes, a blinding inferno pouring forth from her sockets like the wings of a phoenix.

She raised her hand above her head like the Fire-Mage they’d battled earlier, a coil of sparks forming above her as she swirled her arm, bringing it down in a snap as the whip flared to life. She flung the rope of fire towards the training dummy before suddenly it sputtered out, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.

The dwarf dropped to her knees for a second before she screamed at the top of her lungs, pounding a fist angrily on the dirt.

The mountain quivered.

Sam’s eyes widened as he felt the earth shift under his feet, as if a quake flared to life for a split second. He looked back to the Dwarven Mage, clutching the ground with white knuckles.

He had an idea, and walked up behind the woman.

“Hey Kara,” he stated as he strode up behind her.

“What. Do. You. Want?” she growled from her kneeling position on the ground, “Come to tell me that you’ve put in a request for a new magical advisor with command?”

“What?” Sam asked in confusion, “No, fuck that, you’re a better mage than I could ever dream of being.”

He wasn’t actually sure of that, having an incomplete knowledge of how magic worked on this world, but he assumed that if whoever he’d been before didn’t have magic, he wouldn’t either.

“Then what the fuck do you want?” she asked, sounding both relieved and deeply upset.

“How do you use fire magic?” he asked, stooping to pick up a stone from the ground. It couldn’t hurt to test his idea once or twice. “Like, run me through the exact process you use to make those fire spikes.”

She snapped her gaze to him with a scrunched brow before snorting.

“I just don’t have a large enough Mana pool, nor the time to spend meditating to build it up,” she replied, much of the heat in her voice dying, “As much as I appreciate you trying to help, plea-“

“Warrant Officer Coalbelt,” Sam stated like a parent scolding a child, “Just tell me how your process works.”

“I…” she trailed, “I reach out with my senses into the air, and feel the molecules that are open to excitement. I pour some Mana into them, and they spark into flame.”

“Have you ever worked with an Earth-Mage, Kara?” he asked, tossing the stone once in his hand.

“One of our meditation instructors at the DAM was an Earth-Mage, why?” she asked, raising a brow in confusion.

“Did he ever tell you how he did it?” Sam asked, picking up another small, smooth stone from the ground.

“He mentioned a little, but I don’t see how that’s-“

“Good. Try his process on these.” Sam instructed, holding the pebbles down to the Dwarf.

“Sam,” she replied, rising to her feet, “Dual-Mages are even rarer than Shadow-Sorcery, I don’t think-“

“Humor me,” he interrupted, “focus on the stones, and reach out to them like you do with fire.”

“Sam-“

“Kara.”

He stared at her with a serious expression, eyeballing the young woman until she sighed.

“Okay fine, but this won’t wor-“ she started and trailed off, her eyes going wide.

She cocked her head quickly, eyes going wide.

“I… I can feel them!” she stated excitedly, flicking her eyes up to Sam and back to the pebbles. She moved into a different stance and extended a hand towards the stones, breathing in and out once and closed her eyes.

With her fingers extended, Sam was surprised when the veins in her hand and arm bulged and changed to an earthy brown, contrasting with her pale skin. The pebbles in his hand shifted slightly, and Kara growled once.

“Easy, Kara, just focus.”

The stones in his palm rattled once, shifted slightly, and then jumped, hovering a foot above his open palm.

‘Attagirl,’ he thought as a wide smile split his lips.