Kain and his two children arrived at one of the forward operating bases on the edge of Darksol-controlled territory. Their trip had been both eventful and uneventful, but whether it was more one or the other depended on someone’s perspective. As Pluton slowly circled down towards the ground, Kain could see both sides of the conflict. In one camp there was the forces of the Greater Darksol Empire, a nation which comprised of Darksol itself and its puppet/satellite states. In the other camp, positioned just far enough away to be out of range of the Darksol artillery, were the forces of the People’s Union of Rusk.

Both sides were in stark contrast to each other. The Darksol-aligned forces were orderly, well-equipped and well fed. The Ruskians, on the other hand, were disorganized, poorly fed and armed with whatever they could get a hold of on short notice. Although, in Rusk’s defense, they still massively outnumbered the forces of Darksol, easily making any numerical comparisons result in at least 3.5 to 1 in Rusk’s favor. However, as this war had proved time and again, numerical advantages did not mean that there would be a victory.

It seemed that Raziel and Elizabeth realized the difference in power as well, with Raziel, the more studious of the twins, taking this opportunity to draw out a crude map of the terrain and approximate the number of Ruskians and other Confederacy assets in the enemy camp. As he was doing that, Elizabeth took out a few large bags full of arrows and began to put them in an enchanted quiver. While Raziel was more skilled with the pen and with magic, Elizabeth was more skilled with the bow and with daggers. Despite being so very young, they had taken up their own desired electives and had excelled at them. They were not the best, at least not yet, but they were getting better with each limit they broke through.

Before the family landed, Kain looked at his daughter and wondered how many arrows that the quiver she was emptying the bags into could hold. It seemed like they simply vanished the moment they entered the quiver, which made Kain feel a bit out-of-the-loop. After twenty bags, each containing over ten thousand arrows, had been emptied into the seemingly bottomless it, Elizabeth stopped trying to fill it up and fastened the container to her body before taking out a bow.

“Lizzy, if I may, what is that quiver and why did you dump so many arrows into it?”

Kain’s question was met with a smile from his daughter as she replied in a cryptic way.

“It’s a surprise tool that will help us later.”

Kain, having been from Earth, knew the reference, but was not sure whether his daughter was making the reference while knowing where it came from. He had his suspicions that his children were too good to be normal kids and therefore were more than they appeared to be, which, if true, opened up a whole new can of worms that he would have to deal with. He was intent to avoid dealing with this mess, whether really it existed or not, if at all possible and therefore acted as if his daughter had not referenced anything in particular.

“Well, if you insist. I am quite interested in why you dumped so many arrows into that quiver, but if you don’t want to talk then I won’t pry any further.” Kain said to Elizabeth.

“Father, that bow and quiver are a ‘gift’ from the hermit trash can that lives in the dungeon. I got a scroll from the trash can for my ‘gift’, so we are not unequal.” Raziel stated in a voice that made it seem as if he was talking to himself.

“Oh? Then why would you say you and your sister are not unequal when she gets both bow and quiver and you only get a scroll?” Kain asked his son.

“Because, father, the bow is useless without the quiver and the quiver is useless without the bow. My scroll, on the other hand, has no such limits and does not become useless after a single shot.”

Kain began to put two and two together. He had, back on Earth, heard a story of a TTRPG group that got a hold of a powerful bow and quiver, but it wasn’t like Zero Noir was lazy enough to rip off someone’s hard work like tha-… actually he probably was lazy enough to do that…

“Then, if I am not mistaken, am I to assume that the quiver can hold as many arrows as you want, but the bow can only fire once and when it does it unleashes every stored arrow all at once?”

At Kain’s guess his daughter clicked her tongue and looked disappointed. It seemed like he had hit the nail on the head.

“I was going to surprise him, stupid brother!”

“You can surprise the troops.”

“But they aren’t father!”

“Do I smell an Oedipus Complex?”

“A what complex?!”

“Never mind. Its over your head anyway and Freud has been disproven multiple times over.”

Kain watched his children go back and forth and was now certain that even if their bodies were of this world, their minds and perhaps even their souls were not.

“Enough bickering.” Kain said as Pluton touched down. “You both have better things to do than argue with each other.”

““Yes, father.””

…

It was now the next day. The family had slept together in a large tent in the center of camp and had been forced to deal with the extreme cold that was common this time of year. Well, not ‘this time of year’ exactly. Due to Kain’s Earth-self having very little understanding of geography and weather, he had assumed that Russia was ungodly cold almost year-round no matter where you were, hence Rusk was almost always extremely cold save for during the season where everything melted and became mud. In fact, it was a miracle that he had made it so that some mutated plants grew in the freezing and sub-freezing cold that was everywhere in Rusk almost year-round.

Kain and his children had been forced to experience the sub-zero temperatures in an extreme way while riding unprotected on Pluton’s back, and now Raziel was drafting up an aerodynamic box that could be attached to the massive undead beast that could be heated and cooled internally. All three of them were thankful that Wakanda had defected to their side and helped invent a portable space heater, to say nothing of the joy felt by those who had to spend long periods of time here at the front.

As the three of them exited their tent and felt the bitter chill against their few unguarded bits of skin, they said a silent prayer for the Ruskians who had to deal with this shit nearly all of the time and with little to clothe and insulate themselves. But, as Alexis would have said, they would not need to worry about the snow once they are all dead, so the three moved over to the largest tent and began to plan out Darksol’s attack on the poor and unfortunate Ruskians only a hop, skip and a jump away from them.