Day 5 (Friday, April 29, 2022) Adirondacks, Tupper Lake, New York, United States

Etana had a good feeling about his patrol. Ella was definitely going to be somewhere west. It just felt right.

It was a nice day and Etana could have just spent the day in the forest hiking or relaxing. He looked up at the blue sky and saw the wisps of clouds and birds flying overhead.

Soon they would be done and head back to New York. Maybe he could finally tell Tauthe how he felt about her - he had tried in the past, but it just never happened. Even Davcina knew, and she was oblivious to this most of the time.

Ooh, movement! Etana slowed his pace further and took cover behind a tree. Maybe this was Ella, and he could get a week of leave! He could go see museums and go to Central Park or maybe even come back here.

Etana never saw the bullet that killed him. His head jerked back, and he fell to the side.

Ella had made it across past the cabin uneventfully. She found a fallen large tree and thought about digging underneath it with her hands to create a place to stay. But spring rains were a constant threat and a ditch under a fallen tree was not exactly luxury in rain. The tree cover here was quite thick and she wondered if she could climb a tree and make some sort of platform off the ground instead. She found a relatively easy tree to climb, slung her rifle over her shoulder and started making her way up until she just broke through to the top. She lay along a branch and shimmied outward and then unslung her rifle to look with the scope.

The wind was blowing towards her and her hair kept flapping in her face. She kept an eye out for animals she could maybe shoot, but for once she had eaten enough when she had run across a large patch of wild strawberries. They had not been ripe, but that had hardly mattered and she had gorged.

And then she saw the white stag. What the fuck! That stag was clearly following her since she was now miles away from her old hunting grounds.

The stag looked right at her through her scope. Ella knew it. She didn’t even bother to take her finger off the trigger guard. Then it tilted its head to its side, as if to say, look that way.

Ella panned her scope over and inhaled sharply. Soldiers in camouflage were moving through the forest, guns out. There was at least a platoon out there, as Ella counted. Twelve… Thirteen… Fifteen total. More behind them, but in distinct. One of them was clearly a comms officer with antennas sticking out from their pack all over the place and that walk of someone with too many batteries on them.

They were in three squads of five and had spread out. Ella looked at each one carefully. She got a good look at one and saw an unfamiliar unit badge on its shoulder, a black circle with orange edging and white lettering.

Mercenaries? Zaidu had made them memorize many of the US and Western unit badges, and they were supposed to start on the rest of the world soon enough.

She made a quick decision and practically ran down the tree at a breakneck pace and took off, sticking to hardened earth and stone as much as possible. She moved quickly and efficiently through the brush.

Her strides lengthened and even though she felt weak from not enough food, the sdrenaline kept her moving. Jump over a ditch, run across a fallen log, dive through a hole in the brush, faster and faster. Her eyes began to glow and she put on more speed. One mile burned away and then the second.

She burst out into the cabin clearing at full pace, Adra was on the porch and he stood up in alarm. She ran for the door at full pace and almost tumbled as she tried to stop herself, ramming into the door at half pace to come to a stop.

“Ella, what are you doing here?”

“Soldiers…” she was having trouble catching her breath. She raised a finger to point where she had come from. “Three klicks that way.” She sunk down to a kneeling stance as she unstrapped her rifle, trying to scan the forest, but the reticle kept bouncing as she heaved breaths.

“Ella…” Adra began but Zaidu came out.

“What was that sound?” he hissed before he saw Ella

“Soldiers, four plus squads of five coming this way. Saw them three kilometers that way sir!” Ella managed to say, never taking her eye from the scope. “Badge is black circle with orange edging.”

“US defense contractors. Mercenaries.” Zaidu spat to the side.

“Call everyone in on the radios. Let’s grab our weapons and pick a better spot to defend.”

“Etana, Davcina, Tauthe. This is Adra. Fifteen hostiles. Three klicks west of cabin.” But the only sound was warbling static.

“I say again. This is Adra. Please respond. Fifteen hostiles, that is fifteen hostiles. Three klicks west from cabin.”

Again no response.

“Comms jammed,” Zaidu growled.

“Grab the weapons and head north by north east to the embankment there and hold position.”

Ella and Adra ran inside where they had stashed their weapons. Ella had never thought she would be truly happy to see her rifle, but there it was. She recognized it even though it was flanked by five others. She picked it up and said, “There are many like it…” and checked the chamber. The rest of her gear was piled on a corner, and she hurriedly put on the belt and vest, both still packed fortunately. Then she loaded magazine after magazine everywhere she could. She grabbed two of the others gear and threw them in a duffel along with their cleared rifles and whatever else she could find.

Zaidu was ready for war. He was doing something to the door involving a grenade.

Adra grabbed everything else Ella couldn’t get and threw it in another duffle and they both ran out the door with huge, heavy packs to the embankment that Zaidu had pointed out. Zaidu followed at a slower pace, covering their tracks as he went.

Soon they were lying on the other side of the small hill. Zaidu came and dumped his gear and grabbed a lighter selection of weapons. “Wait for the house before shooting. I’ll circle around and when you draw their fire, I’ll take them from behind.” He took off at a light jog just outside of the eastern perimeter of the clearing.

Them they waited. Ella and Arcsa took turns watching the west and their surroundings to make sure they weren’t flanked. Then they heard the distant crackle of gunfire. Concentrated bursts.

They continued for longer and Ella could feel the tension rising. Then she smacked her forehead for being an idiot and flared her eyes hard. She didn’t sense any magic out there besides… two Aqrabuamelu to the west where the gunfire was. And Zaidu’s image had made it to the southeast across the field from them. There was a haze of distortion that Ella associated with illusion around one of the attacking soldiers.

Ella drew more magic to try and find the third of their squad. She couldn’t tell who was who. And then one of the two she sensed went dim. The gunfire ceased and the remaining Aqrabuamelu was running, to the south away from the cabin.

“No…” Ella relayed what she had seen to Adra. Adra’s face fell. “Now there are only two of my crèche left.”

“But I didn’t see the third… maybe they are hiding?” But Ella knew that she wasn’t wrong. Only one of the others was alive out there.

Adter about ten minutes, Ella could make out motion at the edge of the forest. The mercenaries hung to the edge and regarded the cabin. waiting.

“What are they doing?”

“Zaidu had me build up the fireplace and turn on the oven high before we left,” Adra said. “They can’t tell if anyone is in there through thermal.”

Ella saw he was right. Two men, clinging to whatever cover they could in the clearing, advanced on the house under the watchful eyes of their brethren. Ella kept her eyes flared and started thinking about magic. But she waited.

The two of them got to the cabin and peered through the windows. Hand signaled back to their waiting platoon, NATO standard: No hostiles.

In proper military style they circled the house, checking for traps or angles but nothing.

They finally got the order to go in. Ella held her breath waiting for the explosion.

Nothing.

“Is it a dud?” Ella whispered.

“Wait.”

After a few minutes the rest of the squad approached the house and after a moment went in. She could hear them yelling, clearing room after room on both floors.

Two of them came out and Ella took a bead on one of them. He was tanned and grizzled, handsome in his own way, and Ella was prepared to end him.

Then the house exploded.

The man Ella had sighted was flung away by the explosion, most likely dead. She swung her rifle to the forest and waited.

It was about 350 meters to where the enemy platoon was. She saw one of the soldiers on the north side of a tree, scanning the field with his gun. She thought about the rabbit. The stag. The other animals she had missed. She channeled her magic hard for the distance, willing the bullet to go straight but knowing it was too far for her to reach. And she pulled the trigger.

A single crack sounded out over the field the soldier fell to the ground. Ella scanned and found another one. Pulled the trigger and it hit that one in the thigh and he fell loudly. Adra managed to take one down as well.

They had her position. Bullets came whizzing by screaming through the air and thudding on the rock in front of them. She flipped to burst and poked around the side to suppress them.

“Move,” she said calmly, detached, to Adra. “Find another vantage before they bracket us here.” She fired another few bursts and then slid over to another angle.

She heard gunfire from across the clearing to the south: triple bursts from Zaidu. There was yelling, the hostiles firing to their southeast where he was. Ella saw another hostile in her scope and pulled the trigger but missed. She took another quick shot before the enemy soldier made cover and missed again.

“Shit.”

Ella kept up the fire. Replacing her mag and pulling back the charging handle to keep the pressure on. She slithered back down the small hillock and then started scrambling around the perimeter away from the hostiles. When she found a promising spot, she took cover behind a tree, got her bearings, and used a branch to steady her rifle — about 450 meters.

The enemy had hunkered down. No clean shot. They started shooting at something and a deer stumbled out into the clearing, bloody and dying.

Thermal imaging. Adra and she wouldn’t be able to hide for long.

Ella waited. She needed to make her own opportunity. There had been five in the house. She had taken two more down and Adra had maybe gotten one. Zaidu may have gotten more, but it didn’t matter, the numbers were still bad. It was only a matter of time, these guys moved well, didn’t panic, and it wouldn’t surprise her if there were more coming.

She moved again, further around the clearing until she was directly across from the enemy, behind the burning house as cover from their IR. Then she slithered out into the clearing in her best military crawl moving towards the house. Closer and closer.

The house was a bonfire, and she could feel the heat coming off of it. She moved to the side slowly, carefully, to get a clear angle. Still trying to stay on the penumbra of the fire.

She looked up and saw a few of them. Two hundred meters. It was still too far for her. Her magic was not able to reach the distance. They were all in strong, covered positions.

She had to try. She pulled on her magic as hard as she ever had, the light shining forth from her eyes and reached for what she knew was there. She could feel it filling her. She grabbed at the magic hard, from her bones that had been infused with whatever that bear tooth had been. She couldn’t stop to think, she just gritted her teeth and pulled.

Her eyes were glowing brightly now, even in the daylight through her scrunched tight eyelids. The area around her took on that hypersaturated reality which was a sign of magic, but Ella couldn’t see it.

Ella was angry. At least one of her squad was dead. She felt rage like nothing she had ever felt before. She let the crown manifest and pulled harder. She could feel something more filling her. Still the white prismatic light that she associated with magic, but different somehow. Less raw and less potent, but less willful, less storm.

Her body was suffused. Her pores felt like they were glowing. It wasn’t enough. They were still too far. She pulled harder, and it hurt like small knives in her veins cutting her apart from the inside. Sweat ran down her face, and her shirt was soaked through. More. The pain was blistering, she felt like her hands were charring as the rifle heated up.

She couldn’t stand it anymore.

Ella shaped it, took that magic and made it into a spear, a torrent, something like an inferno. She was holding it, she wasn’t holding it. She was quiet and she was screaming. And she whispered to it and let it go…

At some point she had gotten to her feet. She didn’t know when, but she fell down like a marionette with its strings cut.

Suddenly, she felt cold. It was silent almost, just the sound of the fire from the house.

Then what she did hear is a scream. First one and then another. Then a shot. and then another.

She lay there for a moment, for an eternity, and then felt arms encircle her.

“Come on…” Adra dragged her away from the fired. And she passed out into blackness.

Three hundred miles to the south, a white raven ceased its mating dance and looked north. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” and left the black raven, the one with a clever flip, behind as the white raven raced to its friend.