I was born a slave. I won’t die as one, count on that. I’m going to kill everyone I can, until I’m dead. Every man has to have a purpose.

The first time I realized I could actually do it was when I survived the first fight in Oksa, northern sector. It was snowing. The slowly falling flakes seemed to add to the silence of the blood-stained snow around me. The clang of the swords had died away, but my ears were still ringing. My hand was shaking, my nerves were shot, but I was ready for more.

The pale bleak light that glittered so blindingly from the ice fields and the snow-covered plains, struck streaks of silver from the carnage, where the dead lay in heaps. Nerveless hands gripped broken hilts: helmeted heads, drawn back in death throes, red beards and golden beards tilted grimly upward, as if in last invocation to whatever god they believed in. The people that live there are called the Oksaee. They are the most common slavers that work us nearly to death in the mines.

Across the red drifts and armor-clad forms, someone approached. He was the only thing moving in that utter desolation. The frosty sky was over us, the white plain around us, the dead men at our feet. He walked with a determination that unsettled me.

Dirt and old blood smeared his armor; his sword was drawn. His cracked helmet showed the marks of fierce strokes. The guy was a warrior. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, so I secured my footing and hoped my mech-arm wouldn’t freeze up in the cold.

“Dark one,” he said. “Tell me your name, so that my brothers in Oksa may know the name of the pitiful slave who died before the sword of Obduul."

“You won’t live to tell your brothers anything,” I said.

Obduul roared and sprang, and his sword swung in a mighty arc. My metal arm blocked his blow and my vision was filled with sparks as his blade struck it. I reeled and thrust with all my might. I felt my sword drive through brass coating, bones, and heart. The red-haired slaver died at my feet.

A sudden weariness overcame me. The glare of the overhead lights on the snow cut my eyes like a knife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely far. I turned away from the trampled expanse of death. I took a few steps, and the glare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave of blindness engulfed me, and I sank down into the snow, supporting myself with the stronger mech-arm, seeking to shake the blindness out of my eyes.

A silvery laugh cut through my dizziness, and my sight cleared a little. There was a strangeness about all the landscape that I couldn’t place or define—an unfamiliar tinge to ground and sky. Before me, swaying like a sapling in the wind, stood a woman. Her body was like ivory, and save for a veil of insulation cloth, she was naked as the day.

Her slender bare feet were whiter than the snow they spurned.

“Who are you?” I asked. I had not expected to see, much less, kill any woman.

"Who cares?” Her voice was edged with cruelty.

"Call up your men, then,” I said as I stood and tightened the grip on my sword. "I’ll kill you all."

“Big talk for a slave.”

Her unruly locks were were neither red nor yellow, but a glorious compound of both colors. Her eyes seemed to be shifting clouds of colors, colors I couldn’t quite recognize. Her full red lips smiled, and from her slim feet to the blinding crown of her billowy hair, her ivory body was perfect. My pulse hammered in my head. I wasn’t sure if it was lust or fear.

“You know I’m a slave,” I said. “Tells me that you must be a slaver. I’m going to kill you or die trying.”

“Are you an idiot as well as a slave?” she asked. “Your arm is made of lanthanum. Only slaves get the low-grade stuff. Wanna hide the fact that you’re a slave? Then hide your arm or get a new one. I’m surprised it hasn’t oxidized out in this air. What spray coat is it treated with?”

“Who are you?” I asked. “I’ve just killed thirteen men. I’m fine adding some more blood to the snow. Yours or mine, I don’t care.”

“Maybe I can help you, why do you think it has to be a kill or be killed thing?”

“Why would you help me?”

“I’m an escaped slave too,” she said. “Not from the mines, but from the far southern caverns. I have seen the morning frost glittering in the light here. I’ve heard the wind whispering across the snows. There’s a beauty here. Not everyone here are slavers. I live in a village that has no part of your war.”

“I taught myself the maps. I didn’t think there was a settlement within leagues of here. But since you’re practically naked, I’m guessing it can’t be too far. “

“It’s further than you can walk, slave!” she laughed. “You think you would kill me? I’m the one who hasn’t decided to kill you. Lie down and die in the snow with the other fools. You don’t have the strength and I’m not going to look after you.”

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“You said you’d help me.”

“I said maybe I could help you. Now I’m bored and I don’t think you’re worth the trouble.”

Rage shook my soul. It was like a physical agony flooding my whole being. I didn’t say anything as dove for her. I was going to kill her with my bare hands.

With a shriek of laughter she leaped back and ran, laughing at me over her shoulder.

“I was just seeing if I could get you to move a little!” She said. “Yes, of course I will help you. I hate slavers even more than you. They raped me. They aborted my children. When you kill them, I want to be there. I want to watch all of it.”

I took a breath and began to feel embarrassed about my rage. Here was a woman who endured even more than I had.

“I’m sorry. Let’s go then.” It was all I could think of to say.

We started out across the white blinding plain. The trampled red field fell out of sight behind us. My feet broke through the frozen crust. I sank deep in the drifts and forged through them by sheer strength. But the girl danced across the snow as light as a feather floating across a pool; her naked feet scarcely left their imprint on the frost.

The cold bit through me. My lips were parched. I could feel my temples throbbing. My teeth gnashed spasmodically as I shivered.

Her laughter floated back to me. Further and further into the wastes she led me, till I saw the wide plains give way to low hills, marching upward in broken ranges. Far to the north I caught a glimpse of towering mountains, blue with the distance, or white with the snows. Above these mountains shone the flaring rays of the upper auroras. They spread fan-wise into the sky, frosty blades of cold flaming light, changing in color, growing and brightening as they disturbed the solar wind with charged particles. The magnetospheric plasma shimmered, crackled, and bent itself into grotesque shapes, momentarily blocking out the far starlights.

The snow shone weirdly, first, a frosty blue, then icy crimson, then cold silver. My mind began to wonder at the necromantic strangeness of it all, so much so that I almost didn’t notice when two gigantic figures rose up to bar our way. The scales of their armor were white with frost; their helmets and their axes were sheathed in ice. Snow sprinkled their locks; in their beards were spikes of icicles; their eyes were cold as the lights that streamed above us.

“Get behind me,” I said.

“It’s ok. It’s my tribe.”

She walked up to them and hugged them. I felt relieved. If these people joined me in my fight, I had a much better chance of getting through this alive. I felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.

"Brothers!" she said as she turned to point at me. "Look! I have brought you a slave for the feasting! Let’s remove his head and lay it smoking on our table tonight!”

The giants answered with roars like the grinding of meteors hitting atmosphere, and heaved up their shining axes as they hurled themselves onto me. A frosty blade flashed before my eyes, blinding me with its brightness, and I gave back a terrible stroke that sheared through the giant’s thigh. I was knocked down into the snow, my left shoulder numb from the blow of the brute. My arm may have been made from lowly lanthanum, but I was grateful for it. It barely saved my life.

I saw the remaining giant looming above me like a colossus carved of ice, etched against the glowing sky. The axe swung down, barely missing me as I hurled aside and leapt to my feet. It cut through the snow and deep into the frozen earth. The giant roared and wrenched the axe-head free, but even as he did so, my sword swung down. The giant's knees bent and he sank slowly into the snow as strange gurgling sounds escaped from his half-severed neck.

I saw the girl standing a short distance away, staring in wide-eyed horror, all mockery gone from her face.

"Call the rest of your brothers!" I yelled. “I’m ready! I’ll eat their hearts!”

She turned and fled. I guess things stopped being funny for her, because she sure wasn’t laughing. I took off after her, straining every nerve and muscle, until my temples were about to burst. She drew away from me, dwindling in the hazy distance, until she was a figure no bigger than a child, then a dancing white flame on the snow, then a dim blur in the distance.

I realized I had been grinding my teeth because I started to taste the blood that ran from my gums. I guess I had been doing it to try to blot the pain of betrayal, which cut through me worse than the cold. I was stupid to have trusted her.

I kept running after her. I saw her blur grow to a dancing white flame, and then she was running less than a hundred paces ahead of me, and slowly the space narrowed, foot by foot.

She was running with effort now, her golden locks blowing free; I was close enough to hear the quick panting of her breath, and saw a flash of fear in the look she cast over her shoulder. The speed ebbed from her flashing white legs; she reeled in her gait. I closed in on her, just as she wheeled with a haunting cry and flung out her arms to fend me off.

I grabbed her and pulled her to me.

With a desperate move, she twisted from my arms, leaving her single cloth wrap in my hands. She sprang back and faced me, her golden locks in wild disarray, her chest heaving, her beautiful eyes blazing with terror. For an instant I stood frozen, awed by her terrible beauty as she stood naked against the snow.

And in that instant she flung her arms toward the lights that glowed in the skies above her and cried out. The scream was unnerving. It was high-pitched and almost knocked me down with it’s power.

I realized it wasn’t a scream. It was an alarm.

I lifted my sword and swung it down, splitting her head into two pieces.

There was no blood. Just a thick white oozing mucus. Tiny hair-like filaments wove in and out of it. The tiny wires began to take on a life of their own and arch back onto themselves. Her body fell onto the snow and the fluid leaking from her demolished head began to thicken and change to a dull brown color.

Everything was quiet. The only sound I could hear was my panting.

Then there was a loud booming sound, followed by what sounded like rockets shooting through the air. The whole air around me leaped into icy fire. The girl's lifeless body was suddenly enveloped in a cold blue flame so blinding that I had to shield my eyes. For a fleeting instant, skies and snowy hills were bathed in crackling white flames, blue darts of icy light, and frozen crimson.

High above me the sky flashed. Thousands of fireballs burst with showers of sparks, and the sky itself became a titanic wheel which rained stars as it spun. Under my feet the snowy hills heaved up like a wave. I started to run.

I didn’t look back as I ran, but I knew that they knew where I was now. Everyone would be after me. I wasn’t afraid though.

I would kill them. Kill them all.