Alden was glad to be mostly naked. He’d never sweat this much in his life.

He’d been trudging through the rain forest for at least an hour, and still hadn’t caught sight of any Kindraeli foot patrols. He’d been briefed on the humid weather of Ool’ool’veen, of course, but this was still beyond anything he’d been prepared for. He could only imagine how much worse it would have felt with several pounds of kit on his back.

Most of his trek had been spent swatting at hungry insects, and trying to avoid thinking about Flight Officer Thee’vaa. Alden didn’t like leaving a man behind, even if that man was a woman.

A naked woman.

Put a sock in it, Sergeant. Focus on the mission.

His tactical goal here had not changed, despite the circumstances of his arrival. The 25th Airborne’s mission had been general havoc-wreaking and intelligence gathering. Any information they relayed back to HQ would be used in the planning of a unified aerial, naval, and land assault of Kindraeli occupying forces in the so-called Risen Land.

Alden knew he was close the enemy airbase Thee’vaa had mentioned. It had been his squad’s primary target, anyway. They’d been ordered to scout the base, take as many photographs as possible, and relay the information back to Commonwealth Command via clairvoyance. After which, they were to do all they could to harry the base’s offensive capabilities through guerilla tactics.

Obviously, the photos and clairvoyance were out of the question now. There was no indication that his squad’s Seer had survived the drop. Or any other member of his team, for that matter.

It was all up to him now.

And all he had was a pocket knife and some grenades.

Crouching low behind a thick-leafed tropical bush, Alden spotted an opportunity to even the odds a bit. There, off to his left, a red-haired, kilted Kindraeli soldier was relieving himself just off the main trail. Apparently alone, the enemy troop was armed with a both submachine gun and a sidearm. And appeared to be about Alden’s size.

If Alden could get the man’s uniform and weapons, he might be able to don them and sneak into the base. He couldn’t fake the red hair, obviously, but he had it on good authority that not all Kindraeli were gingers. He’d have to take his chances.

It was an easy thing to sneak around behind the Kindraeli. Alden was most of the way there, anyway, so a few careful, silent moves put him in the perfect position. Immediately behind the man, prone, hidden within the think foliage. He flicked his switchblade open.

The enemy soldier was just finishing up, whistling an unrecognizable tune, when Alden stuck, reaching out from the bushes and slicing the man’s Achilles tendon.

The soldier screamed and began to crumble under his own weight. Alden leapt to his feet and caught the man from behind, covering the enemy’s mouth with one hand as he drove his switchblade into the base of the man’s skull, and wiggled it.

It was a risky move, but it seemed the Petty Gods were with him today. The Kindraeli’s body functions ceased almost instantly, and the man was now an inert sack of muscle and bone.

A few moments later, the body was hidden under a pile of forest refuse a few yards off the main trail, and Alden was kitted out in a Kindraeli uniform. It actually fit him fairly well, and he found he liked the feel of a kilt on his lower body. It let his nether regions breathe much better than the pants his own uniform required. A welcome respite in this heat.

Now to decide on an approach to the base. Alden would be taking a huge risk if the base was sparsely manned and everyone there knew everyone else. An unlikely situation, but still not a risk worth taking. He decided it would still best to sneak in if possible, then use his disguise to move about with less chance of being caught if he acted like he was supposed to be there.

He retraced the dead Kindraeli’s path as best he could, and found that it converged with at least three other trails. They had all come from farther up the road, possibly together, and diverged here onto separate routes.

Patrols. One-man patrols. That meant the base couldn’t spare many men beyond its borders.

Alden could see the gates to the base now, less than a klick ahead. There were four armed guards on the ground outside, armed with submachine guns, plus one each in watchtowers flanking the gate. The watchtowers had automatic chain guns in them, and each man also had a sniper rifle.

The Kindraeli were not messing around.

Alden scurried into the underbrush alongside the road to the gate, hoping the men in the towers hadn’t spotted him. After a few minutes of not hearing any alarms raised, he decided it was safe to try and get closer, maybe skirt the perimeter fences probing for weak spots.

That was how he found the mass grave.

He’d heard the rumors, of course. All the Commonwealthers had. And he’d figured that, as with any bit of war-time scuttlebutt, they’d been a heap of malarkey wrapped around a kernel of truth.

He’d been wrong. What he saw before him now confirmed the rumors in every detail.

It was a trench, maybe 100 yards long. Dug parallel to the base’s main fence, so deep that sea water pooled at the bottom. And it was full of corpses. Dozens, maybe a hundred or more, Risen-Landers. Some fresh. Most older. All shot in the back of their heads. Left here to rot in the tropical sun, fed on by scavengers.

A sizable number of the bodies – Alden guessed a majority of them – were “merfolk,” those Risen-Landers who, like Thee’vaa, had been born with atavistic traits that better equipped them to a life in the seas than on land. That required most of them to get about with wheelchairs on land.

Wheelchairs that had also been dumped in the mass grave by these poor souls’ executioners.

Alden’s gorge rose. Had he had anything to eat in the last day, it would have come rushing up out of his stomach. As it was, he suffered only dry heaves.

But his anger quickly subsumed his disgust. The Kindraeli had indeed been driven mad by blind devotion to their Queen-Goddess. They had become monsters.

Alden, in that moment, would have gladly erased all of them from the world, had he the power to do so. Killing men in war was one thing. Executing the sick, the infirm, civilians… that was the work of monsters.

He thought of Thee’vaa. Prayed to the Petty Gods that she was safe, that she had not fallen into the hands of these ginger-haired butchers. And thinking of her, his Flight Officer, brought his mind back to the task at hand. He had to find her, find a way off this island. The world had to know what was happening her.

The sun was setting now, so Alden maneuvered himself upwind of the murder-pit to avoid the stench, and hunkered down in a hilltop vantage point south of the perimeter fence, giving him a good view of most of the base. He saw an airfield, perhaps two dozen single-pilot fighter planes, a handful of two-man bombers, three troop transports. Dozens of Kindraeli troops moved about at various tasks, mostly patrols and maintenance. There was a makeshift radio tower at the north end of the airfield, next to a shed that Alden presumed to be the command center. Beyond them lay the barracks and recreational areas where Kindraeli troops recuperated after slaughtering innocents.

What if I need a pilot?

Well, if you live that long, come find me.

Thee’vaa. Thee’vaa could fly them out of here. But this was a big island, surrounded by an even bigger ocean.

And that’s a deep trench.

He had to know. He’d sworn to never leave a man behind. Even if he was a she.

Steeling himself for terrible revelations, Alden crawled over to the murder trench. The sick-sweet smell of rotting flesh, the buzzing of flies, the scurrying of nighttime scavengers… he was going to dry heave again. Bone-deep digust overwhelmed him, threatening him with fainting. He’d seen death before – he was a soldier, after all – but he’d never been so immersed in it, never had it squeeze all other perceptions out of his senses. There had always been something else to distract him, something to look away towards, to use to deny the weight of what he was bearing.

But not now. He fought to stay focused, dug deep into his find for something to pull him back.

Her face. Thee’vaa’s face. He recalled it every line and curve, her glistening eyes, her inviting lips, her delicate ears. And every other detail of her, as well. The smooth line of her collarbones. The curve of her waist. The grace of her “tail,” a set of two legs fused inside a sleek sleeve of well-defined muscle, enabling her to swim like a dolphin. The birthmark on her rump.

If she was here, in this dreadful pit, she’d be one of the freshest kills. She’d be on or near the top of the pile.

He wouldn’t have to crawl through a corpse-trench, after all. He could just skirt the ledge, scanning for her face. Or what was left of it, after being shot in the back of the head. Failing that, her birthmark would call out to him in the light of the full moon.

He took a deep breath, ignoring the lingering stench of murder. Made sure there were no enemy troops around to spot him. They seemed to want to avoid this place as much as he did.

He’d done the grim work of corpse-sorting before. This shouldn’t take him more than an hour. Provided he didn’t collapse into a quivering mass of dry heaves again.

Something – an animal? – rustled in the bushes near his left foot as he prepared to stand up. “Sgt. Threlvaine, what in the haunted sky are you doing?”

It was only a whisper. The loveliest whisper he’d ever heard.

“Thee’vaa?”

She clapped her hand over his mouth. “Shhh!”

“Thee… Flight Officer, how did you…?”

“I crawled here from the shore, trying to find a weak spot in the perimeter fence.”

“You crawled?” he whispered. “All the way from shore?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ve been hiding here for hours. I fell asleep crying.” She paused, looked away, her jaw quivering. “I saw the whole thing, sir.”

Alden didn’t have to ask. He offered her his hand. She hesitated for a few seconds, and then took it.

They sat together quietly, drawing comfort from each other, for they knew not how long.

Finally, Alden said, “We’ll get word back to the High Command. If we can.”

“We have to, Sergeant. The world has to know.”

“You’ve heard the same rumors as me, Thee’vaa. Much of the world already suspects.”

“No, sir. Not this. This is not what it looks like.”

“It looks like a slaughter to me. Wanton slaughter.”

“No, sir. It’s worse. I saw the whole thing.”

Alden put a hand on her cheek, wanting to stroke hair that she did not have.

“The Kindraeli brought them out here from that barracks at the far end of the athletic field. The one you can barely see from this distance, even in daylight. I think it is obscured by some kind of spell work. They made the walkers drag the swimmers. You could tell all the prisoners knew they were going to die. That they’d all lost hope a long time ago. The soldiers lined them up at the edge, so they could all look down and see that trench full of their dead kinsfolk and neighbors. And then they made them chant.”

“Chant?” Alden asked. “To their ancestors?”

Thee’vaa wrapped herself up in her own arms, covering her nakedness protectively. Displaying not shame, but fear. Wanting to hide.

“Not to the ancestors. At least, not to ours. They chanted in Kindraeli.”

“In Kindraeli? What were they…”

She shrugged. “I don’t speak it. I don’t know. But when it was over, they each took a bullet to the back of their head.”

Alden balled his fists. “Murderers,” he said under his breath.

“And then the Kindraeli druids came and gathered their souls.”

Alden did a double take. “Their… how?”

“Some kind of wands, I think. They were metal, covered in runes, and glowed brightly. I could see…”

Her jaw quivered. Her voice cracked as she tried to hold herself together.

“I saw their souls get drawn into those things, Alden.” She called him by his civilian name for the first time. “Souls of my people, who should be swimming with the ancestors in deepest Thalassantis. Trapped in those wretched devices. Harvested.”

“Harvested? Thee’vaa, I don’t understand.”

“This wasn’t just execution, Alden. It wasn’t mere murder.”

Alden’s magical training was, at best, basic. His understanding, even less. A few basic knacks, a handful of wards, was all he knew. Enough for him to get his job done. He’d never paid much attention to the details or the theory. But he was finally beginning to understand what Thee’vaa was describing.

“You’re saying this was some kind of ritual?”

“A sacrifice, sir. Those people aren’t just being killed. Their very essence is being taken somewhere else to get…” She shuddered. “Consumed.”

“Erased from the Great Cycle,” Alden said. It was every mortal’s nightmare, a fate truly worse than death. Most cultures held that a soul upon death visits the afterlife of its ancestors, spends time with the Petty Gods, until it decides to return into a new life. So while death was a time of great sadness for the living, most people could face it with peace, knowing they would return.

To be removed from that cycle, to have one’s soul consumed in some foul ritual, was to be erased. Far worse than death was oblivion. The Kindraeli were harvesting the souls of their enemies, breaking the Great Cycle. Alden shuddered.

“But that goes against all tradition and doctrine, everywhere. Even in Kindrael. Why would they do it?”

“I don’t know, Alden,” she said, squeezing his hand. “It terrifies me even to ponder the possibilities. But I think we have to find out, if we can. It’s our duty.”

They stared then into each other’s eyes. The longing, probing, trusting gaze of lovers and comrades in arms. The gaze that forges bonds of honor.

“You’re right, Flight Officer. We get in there, find out what more we can, and then take one of those planes. Can you fly Kindraeli craft?”

She smiled, sniffled, wiped away tears from her face and his. “I can fly anything, Sergeant.”

“Alright then,” Alden said, checking his submachine gun and sidearm. “I have a disguise, as you may have noticed.”

She admired his enemy uniform. “It’s quite fetching, sir.”

“We just have to figure out how to sneak you in there.”

“I propose we don’t sneak. You should take me prisoner.”

Alden started to object, felt the urge to pull rank and tell her that was a damn fool idea. And it was.

He didn’t have a better one.

“I’ll have to carry you. You should probably play dead.”

“Whatever you say, sir.” She saluted him grimly.

Alden got to his feet, then squatted down to help Thee’vaa hoist herself up. She climbed him, rubbing against him as she went, wriggling into position dangling over his shoulder with her rump near his ear and her own head down near his hindquarters, tail dangling across his chest and down to his knee.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“I usually prefer being the pilot,” she said. “But the view’s not terrible.”

“Can it, Flight Officer. Here we go.”

Thee’vaa let herself fall limp as he stood up and wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her steady over his shoulder. After he got his balance, he strode confidently back towards the main gain.

Neither of them spoke a word to each other the entire way.