Under the ashes and rubble, we rise,

No more shall the innocent pay the price,

No more shall the despots oppress,

No more shall you grieve or stress,

Beyond the ashes and rubble, we sing a symphony,

For all humanity, there shall be peace and harmony,

-My Savior

The sun was now over the horizon, its light planting itself over the pine trees and the clear snow. We were still tailing the caravan and showed no signs of stopping for even a quick break which was a shame, Yeti wanted to capture one of the humans for interrogation.

We followed the caravan across the taiga until we eventually came across the river Yeti had triangulated. We had maintained a distance of about half a kilometer between us and the caravan to make sure we weren’t spotted or got too close.

The river was frozen from what we could tell but there was a wooden bridge that connected each bank. Yeti had deduced that spring was actually on the horizon and the snow would start melting soon. From that, he deduced we may as well situated in the northern hemisphere of this world.

Snake was experimenting with her visor when she came across her unique technological advancement, she had experimental x-ray vision. She then combined her new-found ability with her magnification and managed to see what the caravan was hauling. The caravan was carrying preserved foods, mainly fish. The foods were all stored in barrels filled with water but packed with all sorts of fishes.

“How the hell did they catch a tuna that large?” Snake exclaimed. She had just finished looking inside the last barrel.

“So, they mostly have different variations of salmon and a tuna?” Yeti asked for clarification. Snake gave him a firm nod as she turned off her x-ray vision and lowered her sniper rifle.

“It’s likely that they are fishermen heading back to their settlement rather than traders,” Diplomat said, “But that doesn’t explain how they got a tuna, from what I know, Tuna live in the ocean and according to Yeti, there is no ocean around here,”

Diplomat had a point. According to Yeti, there was nothing but a wide stretch of taiga in all directions.

As we drew near the river, the caravan had crossed the wooden bridge and was now on the other side. Using my magnification, I went to check on the caravan to see what they were up to. I then noticed one of them looking back, staring at me. We’ve been spotted and so, I gestured my team to halt and dug ourselves into the snow.

“Shit, they noticed us?” Yeti exclaimed as he pulled out his rifle.

“I’ll check,” Snake volunteered. She pulled out her sniper rifle and aimed at the caravan.

“What do you see?” Diplomat asked.

“We’ve definitely been spotted. I see three of them pointing their fingers in our direction and.. they’re trying to make the bison walk faster,” Snake explained. They saw us even though we were half a kilometer away, they had keen eyesight for sure.

We waited until they were a kilometer away from us but that was as far as we could get without losing track of them. For some reason, our radars failed to pick up their biological signatures, even their bison, whenever they were already a kilometer ahead which was strange. Snake, Diplomat and I had radars that had a range of 10 kilometers while Yeti’s had a range of over 25 kilometers. We had no trouble detecting the wild bison herds or the birds in the trees, hell we could even detect the hibernating fauna who were burrowed under the ground.

We walked over the wooden bridge, it was surprisingly well-built. I think it could even support the weight of a tank crossing over it. The design was bland, two pillars on each bank and a fence on each side to prevent some idiot from falling off into the river.

“A bridge this sturdy means that it's used often. I doubt someone would invest so much for a sturdy bridge in the middle of nowhere,” Yeti said.

“That is true, and considering how feudal we know this world is, an investment of this sort would be a wasteful enterprise lest it actually brings great profit. A significant trading route maybe?" Diplomat added.

The caravan had gained considerable speed after we were spotted. They were moving faster than before though we expected that they’d eventually slow down after exhausting themselves. We, on the other hand, were assisted by our power armor and did not have to worry about fatigue for a week at most as long as we are well-nourished.

Speaking of, Snake had started to complain.

“I’m hungry,” Snake said while she stared at the pine trees we were passing by.

“The trees don’t have any nuts, besides, your suit will keep you alive for a long time,” Diplomat said.

“I know but I still have that urge to fulfill my desire to feed my body,” Snake complained.

“You didn’t have to resort to fancy talk to get your point across,” Yeti teased whilst pointing at the flock of birds which flew overhead, “If you want, shoot down one of those birds with your silenced pistol and cook them,”

Snake pondered Yeti’s suggestion and pulled out her pistol.

“Are you sure those are even edible?” Diplomat asked.

“Well, we won’t find out until we kill one,” Yeti replied.

A bird then fell in front of Snake with a hole on its chest.

“So how do I cook the bastard?” Snake asked as she pulled the dead bird from the ground by its feet and dangled it near her face.

“We have flamethrowers in our databank, use it with the right temperature and you’d have a roasted bird for breakfast,” Yeti said, “But.. you gonna remove its feathers first unless you want a third-degree burnt McDuck as your meal”

We continued tailing the caravan while Snake cut and pulled out the feathers of her soon-to-be meal. Not long afterwards, we began to hear a strange noise similar to a low-pitched call that echoed in the sky, it only meant that the sound came from the sky. Yeti’s radar began to detect a large biological signature 24 kilometers and was getting closer. After half an hour of walking through shallower snow, we spotted something in the sky. A silhouette against the clear blue sky that looked as if it was swimming up there.

There was no need for us to take cover since the thing was still too far away to pose a significant threat. The silhouette closely resembled a marine mammal we were all familiar with, the whale. It then sounded the low-pitch sound we’ve been hearing and we deduced it was the thing.

“A fucking flying whale?” Yeti said in astonishment. He pulled out a rocket launcher just in case, I immediately gestured him to stand down lest we drew its attention towards us.

“This is a world of supernatural, so something like that thing should have been expected but this is still unbelievable,” Diplomat commented.

“How the fuck can it even fly? It doesn’t even have wings!” Snake pointed out. This was true, for all we know, the creature is denying the very idea of gravity as we knew it.

“Yeti, explain that shit!” Snake demanded and we all turned to look at Yeti.

“Well, I am no scientist but I believe that’s a supernatural whale that somehow has the ability to defy gravity, that or you actually can swim in the sky” Yeti answered. It was a strange world and things would only get stranger the longer we stayed and the more we learned about it.

The flying whale then swam away from our sight but was visible in our radars. Yeti spent the next hour monitoring its movement as we continued tailing the caravan.

“The whale seems to be patrolling the area, it follows a circular route almost and we’re in the middle of it. Its behavior raises concerns, however, this type of behavior is similar to how some predators circle their prey before diving in for the kill,” Yeti said. If that was the case then we were its next meal.

We pulled out our HE weapons in anticipation of an attack. We decided to hasten our pace through the snow and went through the pine trees.

“As long as we are under the pines, the whale should not be able to locate us, unless the fucker has echolocation,” Yeti said.

“Don’t jinx it,” said Diplomat who was by this time aiming his rocket launcher at each opening in the branches.

The whale let out a menacing roar that I could only describe as being a hybrid of a roar of a lion and the singing of a whale.

“Shit! It’s coming!” Yeti exclaimed. Our radars blinked red as the behemoth was diving towards us.

[Warning, Biological Signature inbound]

Through a hole in the roof of pine branches, we saw the whale heading towards us.

“Fire!” Diplomat shouted before pulling the trigger on his rocket launcher. A cloud of smoke puffed out as the missile escaped its tube and flew straight at the whale.

“Firing!” Snake fired hers soon after.

“Fire!” Yeti exclaimed as he unloaded his machine gun. We switched immediately to our assault rifles and opened fire while the missiles traveled through the air.

The whale did not even mind dodging the missiles, it continued its dive and even opened its mouth.

“Impact in 5

4..

3..

2..

1..

Take cover!”

Multiple explosions ripped through the trees in front of us as we ducked for cover in the snow. Trees were knocked down, birds flew and snow was melted. The whale shrieked in agony and flew above us, its shadow dawning over us all. The whale then retreated back to the sky with an injured mouth and its upper jaw blown apart.

“Good God!” Yeti exclaimed, “That was scary shit,” Indeed it was. We may be soldiers of war but we were still humans. A flying whale the likes of which we have never seen before until just an hour ago suddenly diving towards us was not a pleasant experience for anyone.

We got back up on our feet and we watched as the whale retreated south. The explosion was rather close, a bunch of trees were blown to smithereens, a large number of the pines that were not directly caught by the explosion were on fire and a small crater was in the middle of it all.

“The caravan had disappeared,” Yeti said. Indeed it did, the caravan was no longer visible in any of our radars but we were certain they continued heading south.

“It’s times like this I wonder why the higher-ups did not give us a vehicle,” Snake complained.

“Our suits are our vehicles, remember? We can’t drive a vehicle here since, a. We don’t’ have any means of refueling, b. We would draw unnecessary attention towards us, and c. Our power armor will not fit in any vehicle, we’re huge,” Diplomat explained.

Speaking of vehicles, Yeti requisitioned an all-terrain vehicle but none were available when we were told to deploy. The suits all had the ability to make long jumps thanks to the thrusters on our back and hinds but consumed a considerable amount of power if used too frequently. The terrain we were on was unsuitable for propulsion since we risk crashing onto the ground due to the snow.

“Let’s get a move on,” Yeti said. We continued heading south to where the caravan was headed. The whale had disappeared from our range and I assumed we won't be coming across it anytime soon. Unless there is actually more than one of those things floating around in the sky.

We had finally calibrated our clocks to the world’s rotation. It was 1200 hours, 12:00pm, it would soon be noon and it seemed like we still had a long way to go.

"Wait.. I lost my bird," Snake realized.