Distant sounds of explosions and gunfire stirred Sam from his nightmare. He blinked groggily several times as he shook his head and looked down. He smirked, seeing Ellie still wrapped around him. Another distant explosion shook him from his momentary reverie.

He jolted out of Ellie’s arms, grabbing his rifle and belt, throwing them on over his underclothes. He sprinted to the door as Ellie grumbled unhappily while she slowly stirred herself awake as he hurried out of the hut.

Sam slammed the door open, sprinting onto the brisk morning air, squinting through the foggy gloom. The FOB was alight with activity, soldiers springing from their bunks, Sergeants barking orders, and boxes of ammunition being hurriedly carried to the water-cooled machine guns on the wall.

The mountain shuddered as yet another roiling crackle echoed around the valley. Sam turned in the direction that he’d felt the shockwave from. He sprinted to the east side of the camp, as the gentle slope of the plateau took him beneath the cloud layer.

He found Kara and the First Sergeant staring through binoculars at an inferno across the valley, illuminating the tops of the clouds meters above the flickering tips of the blaze.

“The hell?” asked Sam, turning to Kara.

“It’s Fourth Platoon, Lieutenant,” she answered, lowering her binoculars from her eyes and handing them to Sam. “They’re under attack.”

“From what?” Sam asked, pulling the binoculars to his eyes. His heart dropped at what he saw. Even at the low magnification of the binoculars, he could clearly see the last stand of the few surviving men of his sister platoon. Two Mages hurled fireballs and what looked like hardened disks of air at the defenders, who were desperately attempting to flee deeper into the camp as a single mage within held the line, batting aside the fireballs and discs between hurling their own.

Enemy soldiers streamed in through a massive breach in the fortifications, the small bright muzzle flashes of their rifles just barely visible at this distance. They fanned out through the camp, sparing none. Wounded soldiers were bayoneted on the ground, shot in the head as they attempted to surrender.

A bald man in a Lenitian uniform ran for the friendly Mage, grabbing her by the arm. Words were shared, and the Mage nodded sadly, placing a solitary kiss on the soldier’s lips. The man raised a pistol to the side of her head, and put one round through the side of her skull, lowering her gingerly to the ground, before standing and shouting something at the opposing Mages, delivering a crisp salute, and blowing out the side of his skull.

Sam’s heart fell as a lance of fire plumed from the cloud cover, incinerating many of the fleeing soldiers. As it cut off, a black shape was visible working its way skyward, out of view of Sam. He lowered the binoculars from his eyes as his pace quickened.

“Kara, get the men working on those tunnels fucking now,” he growled, handing them back to Kara, “First Sergeant, make sure the men all have a full house of ammo, and start filling sandbags. I want defenses throughout the entire camp, not just the wall.”

“Sir,” the older man asked with a raised brow.

“Just do it.” Sam cut him off with a wave of his hand, “We might not survive an attack like that, but I’ll be damned if our men don’t carve a big fucking chunk out of those fuckers. Clearly surrendering doesn’t do shit, so we’re gonna make them bleed.”

“What will sandbag fortifications do against a fire drake, sir?” the First Sergeant asked hesitantly.

“Not a fucking clue, probably nothing,” Sam groused, heading back to his hut. “Probably nothing. But against those grunts over there, it’s a sight better than trying to defend over open ground.”

“It…” the First Sergeant paused. “It will be done sir.”

Sam rushed back to his hooch, opening and closing the door rapidly to find Ellie already dressed with her bolt-action rifle in her hand, placing the flat-brimmed helmet on her head, the tips of her long ears brushing the metal.

“Ellie, we’ve got-“

“I know,” she replied solemnly. “I saw. Those soldiers looked an awful lot like what mother showed me in her vision.”

Now that he thought about it, the uniforms looked unsurprisingly similar to the ones worn by the soldiers in the vision Senire had shown him in her halls. The same gray and blue uniforms worn by both the mage he and Kara had fought earlier, and now the soldiers ransacking the position across the valley were a dead link to those he’d been sent to stop.

“So these are the fuckers Senire wants us to prevent succeeding?” He growled, grabbing the pack full of spare ammunition, water, and supplies.

“Maybe?” Ellie answered with a shrug, “My link with her was mostly severed when you chose me. I haven’t had access to my foresight since coming here.”

“Your link?” Sam asked, not comprehending her explanation.

“Mhmm,” she nodded, turning to face him with her vibrant vermilion eyes. “When we met, I could see all the possible deaths one could face if I looked them in the eyes.”

She paused, seeming to consider her next statement.

“I could also see all the deaths one was indirectly or directly responsible for.”

The revelation hit him like a truck. Just how much of his blood stained past had she seen? His eyes narrowed before he clicked his tongue once. He didn’t have time to delve into the mysteries of the universe and what she’d seen.

All that mattered was surviving this and stopping the enemy dead. He could deal with his mischievous Drow later. He set his rifle and pack down, and started hurriedly throwing on his uniform top and bottoms, along with his boots.

Ellie watched him as he strapped into his gear as he did his best to avoid her now familiar stare, and the feeling of someone dredging through his deepest thoughts and memories. Sighing as he finished lacing his boots, he looked up at her confused face.

“What?” he demanded, briefly glancing up to her.

“You’re upset with me. You’re upset that I haven’t revealed the secrets that aren’t mine to reveal, Sam,” she said with genuine pain in her voice. “That hurts. I am just as bound as Senire is to withhold secrets. As a Goddess, she’d get a slap on the wrist. I would get blinked out of existence like blowing out a candle.”

Sam sighed deeply. She wasn’t wrong. He was deeply upset by the whole situation. It felt like he was being thrown to the proverbial wolves, without intelligence, without a clear goal, and no real chance of success.

“Ellie, I-“ he started, reaching out a hand before letting it fall to his side and hanging his head. “I don’t know what to do here. I don’t even know why I’m here, because I get the feeling this goes far beyond a kid in some village being raided by soldiers. That might be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it’s not the whole picture.”

“I don’t have a way to answer that, Sam.” Ellie stated quietly.

“I figured,” he replied not unkindly. “But I feel like I’m getting the short end of the stick here. That was at least a company sized element that hit Fourth Platoon, supported by Mages and a damned dragon. I’ve spent a lot of years slinging lead in whatever shithole Uncle Sam decided they disliked that day, but I don’t have the skill sets necessary to take that kind of heat.”

“I mean,” Ellie shrugged, “A dragon really isn’t all that different from an attack helicopter.”

“Okay, do you have a Surface-to-Air missile hanging out under that blouse?” Sam teased back.

“Would you like to find out?” she winked back at him.

“Not. The. Time,” He groaned, dragging a hand down his face in false annoyance. It really wasn’t the time to take her up on the offer, but a little levity could sway morale even for himself in a useful direction. He knew why the officer of the other camp had done what he’d done, in the end. He didn’t want to have to do that to Ellie or Kara.

“Fine, fine,” she soothed, raising her hands up in mock surrender as her rifle swayed on her back. “But now you have a Dual-Element Mage to work with. Dragons are tough, but an eight-hundred pound boulder being launched at the speed of sound will definitely do a number on one.”

Sam canted his head in thought. He really hadn’t looked at Kara like that before, but now that Ellie brought it up, she was a living, breathing claymore mine. Towards the end of last night, she’d been launching small clumps of pebbles with sonic booms at the range, along with man sized boulders at unnerving velocities.

“Good point,” he replied with a shrug, before running a hand through his hair and exhaling. “Alright, okay, I can do this.”

Ellie took that moment to spring forward, wrapping one of her long arms around his hip, planting a long, gentle kiss on his lips. After several seconds she pulled back, much to his relief and dismay.

“You can,” she said, smiling brightly as her eyes briefly flashed. “I wouldn’t have chosen you if you couldn’t.”

“Why me?” he asked quietly, casting his eyes to the floor.

“Sam,” she chuckled, seizing his chin in her thumb and forefinger, redirecting his gaze back to her eyes. “I work for a Goddess of death. Most of the people she recruits aren’t… like you.”

“Like me?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

“The most important factor in killing is why,” she clarified. “Most people she recruits for work kill for glory, sport, and every once in a while, fun.”

She inhaled deeply, snaring his eyes in her deep crimson pools, that disconcerting feeling of someone diving through his psyche returning.

“You’ve killed dozens, and you will kill many more in your lives, Sam. But every time you’ve taken a life, the reason has been preservation of life, self-defense, or justified retribution. That is a very important qualifier, Sam, and it is why I agreed to go with you when you asked. Very forward, by the way.”

“I figured that was what your chittering was,” he teased as she rolled her eyes. “Thank you for coming, by the way. It’s… comforting to have someone who I can actually talk to.”

“You seem to be getting along just fine without me,” she shrugged, “but I get it, and you’ll never be alone again, Sam, that is my solemn vow to you.”

Her eyes flared to life, illuminating the darkened room with their bright cherry hue, driving the shadows from the corners of the building as she drug her index finger across her heart, shearing through the fabric of her tunic as small rivulets of violet blood began to spill forth.

Sam jumped back, mildly panicked at the display. He got the distinct impression something wildly important and beyond his understanding just happened before his eyes, but lacked the wherewithal to discern just what it was.

“Ellie,” he said, raising his hands before him. “What the fuck?”

She giggled maliciously, her eyes losing their voluminous light as the lines of blood dried beneath her uniform top, forming a small, jagged, pale violet X-shaped scar right over her heart.

“I came to a decision,” she answered cryptically, smiling like she’d just won the lottery.

“You wanna explain what the hell just happened?” Sam asked, gesturing wildly with his hand at her chest.

“Secrets, Sam,” she answered with a wink.

“You’re gonna abuse the shit outta that,” he said, groaning and running a hand down his face, “Aren’t you?”

“Ab-so-lutely.” she nodded with her teasing grin.

Sam couldn’t hold it back anymore, and he began to laugh. A genuine, deep belly-laugh sprang from his depths. He hadn’t laughed like this in just over a year.

“Thanks, El,” he said as the rippling aftershocks of his merriment faded. “I needed that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a platoon I need to get ready.”

* * *

Sam internally groaned at the squad of men before him. As it turned out, turn of the century basic training didn’t really teach any small unit tactics that would be useful to him. Hence, he was here, running each squad in his four-squad platoon through an exhaustive, if brief, class on reacting to contact, hasty ambushes, and fire-and-maneuver.

This was his third time explaining an L-shaped ambush to his second squad, and they seemed to be unable to comprehend why you wouldn't want to catch the enemy in a crossfire from opposite sides.

“Because, corporal,” he answered, doing his best to not grind his teeth. Most of these men and women were conscripts, poorly trained, and sent off to die on the front lines. “As I’ve said before, you run the risk of putting a round through your own guys, in addition to allowing them easier cover. There’s a whole lot less cover readily available that covers two intersecting directions.”

“Sir?” a Gnome private asked. “What if you have an ‘hele-gated’ position, like you said earlier?”

“It’s ‘elevated,’ private,” Sam sighed audibly, “And because bullets ricochet and bounce. Even at lower velocities, you could still kill one of your buddies.”

Sam looked at an excited young goblin Lance-Corporal, who had been studiously taking notes the entire time on a small pad with a stick of charcoal. He quirked a brow for a second as she quickly flashed her eyes up to him, blushed, and flicked them back down to her implements.

“Lance-Corporal,” he asked, getting her attention, “May I see that pad of paper?”

“I… uh,” she stammered, hurriedly flapping pages back down, “Yes sir.”

He stood up from his impromptu map on the ground with sticks and stones, and hurried over to the diminutive four-foot tall woman. She slid her wildly over-sized rifle to the side and quickly sprang to her feet, passing him the pad of paper. He nodded once, glancing down to the comprehensive notes she’d taken.

His eyebrows rose as they scanned not just the notes, but well made, if hastily constructed diagrams of what he’d explained. Far better than his own on the ground. He knew that his explanations had only been half-working on his men so far.

“Squad,” he said, deciding to go a different route, “You’re dismissed.”

The unit stood with near-uniform sighs of relief, now very excited to return to their normal duties instead of Sam’s impromptu class time, despite the fact that he was actively working to keep them alive.

“Lance-Corporal, err,” he started, realizing that he hadn’t actually learned the Goblin’s name yet. He eyeballed the nameplate on her chest for a second, hoping he wouldn’t woefully butcher the pronunciation. “Lance-Corporal Vomfreet’zee, fall in on me for a second.”

She scurried up to his side as he walked back to his hut with celerity, hoping to make use of the large, blank pieces of paper there, along with her near perfect handwriting. He mentally thanked Senire for giving him the ability to understand the language of his home country, especially the ability to read the hodge-podge swirling runes that were decidedly not English.

He opened the door to his hooch, thankful that Ellie was off running circles around the camp, organizing the NCO’s and disseminating orders for the best defense of his camp while he taught. He heard the door click softly shut behind him as he set the pad of paper on the desk, and began fiddling with the trunk beneath. The previous officer in command had been something of a sketch artist, and had many different colored pencil-looking contraptions, ink pens, and good sized books of paper crammed into the chest.

“Now, Lance-Corporal,” he said, retrieving a stack of papers along with red, green, and black writing implements, “I need you to, I, uh…”

He turned around with his gifts in hand to find the surprisingly busty Goblin topless, and hastily working on her pants. He took in a longer-than-comfortable eyeful of her curvaceous form, his lower brain appreciating the smattering of dark freckles contrasting to her forest-green skin and auburn hair.

“Lance-Corporal! What the fuck?” he barked, quickly turning his back to her, feeling his cheeks heating.

“I-” she squeaked, the soft rustling of fabric ceasing momentarily. “I thought you wanted…”

“No!” he stated, woefully embarrassed. “No, I thought your handwriting and sketching skills were outstanding, and I wanted you to make a series of field manuals for the men! Why on Senire’s green earth would you think I wanted, well, uh…”

“But my mother said Tribal Chiefs took their subordinates to bed!” she said by way of explanation, further confusing Sam.

“I’m a Lieutenant!” he replied in confusion, unable to get the vision of her out of his head, “Not a Tribal Chief! I’m not just going to haul off one of my subordinates at random!”

“Oh,” she said with a surprising bit of melancholy in her voice, “I’m sorry I’m unable to please you sir.”

“That’s not!” he began, before groaning and pressing his fist to his eye. “Please, just put your top back on, V-V-, Zee,”

He gave up trying to pronounce her name off-the-cuff, and just called her Zee out of a desire to simplify things. It wasn’t his fault that the names on this world were unnecessarily convoluted.

‘Ellie, a little help here?’ he sent his Drow companion, who seemed to scan his recent memories, and then beamed him an image of her laughing.

‘Well, now you’ve fucked up,’ she said after she’d finished her bout of giggling, ‘You’ve changed her name and taken her into your home. You’re as good as married!’

‘No, no I’m not,’ he griped back, having made yet another cultural blunder, ‘I swear, I need a fucking cultural sensitivity seminar from you about all this.’

‘But it’s funnier to watch this!’ Ellie teased in his head, ‘She just dove right in without a second thought!’

Finding no help from Ellie, Sam groaned internally, and turned a pensive glance to the Goblin, who looked like she’d just been scolded by a parent and was now sulking behind her wild mop of hair.

“Listen, Z- er, Lance-Corporal,” he said after he found her decent, “I get the feeling there was some… cultural miscommunication there, and I’d like to apologize if I sent the wrong message, I really was just impressed by your writing skills.”

“It’s okay,” she answered softly, “I was just happy that you’d think I’m worthy of…”

She trailed off in a way that tugged on Sam’s heartstrings. He grit his teeth and turned to the side.

“Listen,” he said soothingly, sitting down on a small stool next to the desk, “It’s not that you’re unworthy, or unattractive, or anything else.

“We’re in a warzone, we just watched Fourth Platoon get fucking annihilated by an assault less then twelve hours ago. Right now, my only focus is keeping as many of us alive as possible, alright? It has nothing to do with you being unappealing.”

“So after the battle, you’ll have me?” she chittered excitedly, snaring him with her over-sized dark eyes.

“No, that’s not what I said,” he replied, now very uncomfortable with the fact the door was shut, and he sent another desperate plea for help to Ellie, who cackled in response, loud enough from him to hear from the other side of the camp.

Zee’s ears twitched in response as her eyes flicked momentarily in that direction and back to Sam.

“Can- Listen. Can we just go over what I called you in here for?” he asked the exuberant Goblin. “I have paper and something to write with. Can you do a more detailed version of your notebook with my paper on a larger scale?”

“You… you want me to scribe for you?” she asked, grin going wider as she bounced enticingly to the paper. Sam shook his head once, trying to weave the visual of the chesty little thing out of his mind. He realized what had changed since the classroom. A small pile of white fabric lay on the ground behind the goblin, now excitedly testing the writing implements on her own pad of paper.

‘She was binding her chest,’ he realized, ‘Those are probably hell on her back without the right over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders.’

Shrugging, he stood up, and gestured to the chair next to her.

“You’re welcome to sit if you want,” he said, worming his way out of the hut.

“Oh, thank you!” she replied, shooting him a bright smile as she aggressively drew something on her small pad that seemed to always be just out of view for him. “I’m not sure I’m the right height for it, though."

“Feel free to use the bedrolls,” said Sam, realizing that she could use them as a booster seat.

“Oh?” she asked, her smile widening uncomfortably, “I will dear! Go do chief things!”

Sam nodded, not wanting to touch that with a ten foot pole, and left the hut with celerity, bent on inspecting Kara and her squad of tunneling Dwarves progress.