Gunfire rolled throughout the hills around her, mixing with the screams of the wounded and dying, as well as the rolling thunder of nearby artillery explosions and the roar of close-in jet engines. Pale blinked as she woke up, staring at a sky pockmarked with smoke and flames. She only had a moment to try and get her bearings before someone abruptly pulled her to her feet and thrust something into her arms. She blinked to clear her vision, and when she did, she saw that the person who had helped her up was a Marine, and he was shouting at her.

"On your feet, soldier!" he shouted, his voice barely audible over the sounds of combat. "We need you out there, now!"

Pale blinked again, the world coming into focus all around her. Past the Marine shouting at her, she was finally able to make out what was happening. She was in a trench on some planet, the terrain around her littered with barbed wire and impact craters, filled with both mutilated bodies and spent shell casings. And through the hail of bullets pouring out from her trench, she was able to make out a wall of ornately-armored reptilian humanoids, steadily lurching forwards.

The Marine began to shout at her once more, but barely got a few words into his statement before a bolt of molten plasma took his head clean off. Pale watched as his body fell to the ground, and she stared back at the mass of Caatex warriors moving towards their trench.

And through the overpowering fog of war, she was just barely able to make out someone shouting something over a nearby radio.

"-Arrow, I repeat, Broken Arrow!"

Pale stared ahead, numb, as the radio operator continued to rattle off his call for fire support. Slowly, she looked down at the object the Marine from earlier had thrust into her hands, and saw that it was an assault rifle. She blinked, as if in a daze, and then looked up once more.

She was just in time to see the artillery bombardment make impact, reducing the entire advancing Caatex wave into little more than red mist.

The shockwave washed over her, blowing out her eardrums and leaving her deaf. Pale fell to the ground, completely discombobulated.

She stayed that way even as shells continued to land all around her, before the barrage finally consumed her, too, and she disappeared in a sea of fire along with the rest of the trench.

XXX

Pale catapulted awake, gasping for breath. She sat in place, taking in deep gulps of air as she frantically looked around, desperate to confirm that what she'd just witnessed hadn't been real.

It took her a moment, but eventually, she realized the truth – she was still in the back of the wagon. It had all been just a dream after all.

Pale brought a hand up to wipe cold sweat off her brow, taking in one final deep breath to calm herself.

"Pale?" she heard her friend call from outside the covered part of the wagon. "Is everything okay?"

Pale shook herself out of her stupor, then began to move towards the front of the wagon. She pushed the overhanging curtain out of the way, then stepped out of the rear and sat down in the passenger seat up front, saying nothing the entire time.

"Pale?" her friend said again. She bit her lip. "...Bad dream again?"

Pale hesitated, then nodded. "...Yeah. They've been getting more frequent."

"I'm sorry. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not much to talk about; it's the same as it always is. Still, I appreciate the thought. Thanks, Kayla."

Next to her, Kayla gave her a disappointed look, her wolf ears flattening against her head, but nodded nonetheless. "Sure," she said, "anytime."

Pale nodded, then turned her attention to the road ahead as the horses pulled their wagon through the countryside. It had been several months since her arrival on the planet Sjel, in addition to the multiple decades she'd spent listlessly drifting through unfamiliar space, all due to her faster-than-light system having taken a stray plasma torpedo while attempting a jump. It had been a one-in-a-million shot; she'd simply gotten unlucky.

She could only hope that it hadn't led to the end of her creators in the meantime.

Pale shifted in her seat, suddenly uncomfortable. Humanity had made her to be their ultimate weapon – a living AI that could command an incredibly advanced gunship all by itself. She'd only been out in the field for a little less than two years, but in that time, she'd single-handedly managed to turn the tide. Humanity wasn't quite winning thanks to her, but they at least weren't completely losing anymore.

And then it had all come to an end in the blink of an eye. She'd been transported to a completely unfamiliar solar system, and had eventually made landfall on a completely new planet, one that was downright medieval compared to the humanity she'd left behind. A normal person would have given up at that point, but not Pale – not when she still had a war to fight, and her own humanity to save.

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"How much longer, Kayla?"

The wolf girl in the seat next to her shifted, her ears perking up again. "Shouldn't be much longer now," she replied. "We've been on the road for long enough that the Luminarium ought to be coming up at any point."

Pale allowed herself to relax at that news. If nothing else, that meant that she was one step closer to her ultimate goal of making it off-planet and back to her war.

And really, she owed Kayla a lot for helping with that. When she'd made landfall on Sjel, Kayla had been her first real ally, and vice versa; she'd helped the wolf girl survive an attack on her village by berserkers from the far north, in exchange for Kayla assisting her however she could. Pale could still remember it all vividly, despite it having been several months since then – and more than anything, the feeling of having someone there to watch her back stuck with her.

For all her short life, Pale had been on nothing but solo missions. Having a wingwoman for once felt… unusual, but not in a bad way. She still remembered how it felt, knowing that she wouldn't be entering a fight alone – through all the bandit encounters, Kayla had been there, helping her fight. Whether it had been the berserkers throughout the countryside, their warrior-king in the far north, or the horde of undead led by an elder vampire in a winter-stricken city, Kayla had been together with her.

And that made the memories almost bearable.

Visions of her nightmare pushed themselves to the forefront of Pale's mind, and she couldn't help but scowl at them as they flashed through her head. It was just a dream, of course, but it was one that made no sense to her – she'd never served as an infantry unit at any point during her humanity's war with the Caatex, so what, exactly, she was supposed to glean from her nightmare, she had no idea.

Even for her, with all the information in her data banks and at her disposal, the subconscious mind was still very much a mystery. For the longest time, she hadn't thought herself capable of dreaming in the first place, but apparently, something had changed.

Perhaps it was truly exposing herself to what killing was like firsthand., then.

Pale's brow furrowed in annoyance. She was a weapon, first and foremost – killing had never bothered her before now, even with the insanely high body count she'd attained through the course of the war, and it made no sense to her that it would suddenly bother her now.

And yet, she couldn't deny that something had changed. Otherwise, she wouldn't be having these dreams in the first place.

"So," Kayla said, interrupting her thoughts. "Have you given any thought to what you want to do once you get to the Luminarium?"

"Of course," Pale answered without hesitation. "I don't think I should need to tell you what it is."

"Oh, I know that much, at least. But… there has to be something more, Pale. You can't tell me you're not at least a little curious about how magic works."

"I can't use magic, Kayla. We've established this."

"Well, maybe you just didn't have the right teacher," Kayla offered. "If anyone can teach you how to use magic, it's the professors at the Luminarium. It's not world-renowned for no reason, after all."

"Not to rain on your parade or anything, but you're still very confident they'll even let us in. From what Evie said, they're very elitist about admitting outsiders."

"We'll just have to pass their entry exam," Kayla insisted. "If we do that, then they can't turn us down."

"If you say so."

"I mean it, Pale. Seriously, have some confidence for once."

"That's funny, coming from you. What happened to the ball of neuroses you used to be?"

"Ball of what?"

"Anxiety, basically."

"Oh. Well… after you've faced down an elder vampire and a horde of undead, everything else just seems kinda trivial."

"I suppose that's understandable," Pale admitted. "Anyway, you know what I'm planning to do once we're in. What about you?"

Kayla's brow furrowed as she brought a hand up to her chin in thought. "Truthfully? I'm still not completely sure. I just figured, in the absence of anything else to do, I might as well head for the Luminarium. I mean, it'll have food, shelter, education… and once you graduate, you can go basically anywhere, since you'll have proven your aptitude with advanced magic at that point. And, admittedly… if you're going, then I want to go, too."

Pale said nothing, instead turning her attention back to the road ahead. From what she knew, the Luminarium was one of the premiere magic academies on Sjel. Kayla had first brought it up as an option for them after their mission to rescue her father from the berserkers had failed. In the absence of any better options, they'd both decided to go for it. It had taken them a bad winter, an undead incursion, and the better part of half a year to even come close to where the academy was supposedly located, but they were almost there now. And with any luck, Pale would not only gain entry, but also get access to their archives, and hopefully find some magical solution in them that would help her repair her ship.

It was a long shot, but aside from spending several decades uplifting the people of this world, it was the only option she had.

As the thought of repairing her ship crossed her mind yet again, Pale couldn't help but frown. That was still her main goal, of course, because she still had a war to fight – she owed her humanity that much, at least – but at the same time, she'd grown attached to Kayla, as well as to her other friend, an Elven merchant named Evie. They'd met Evie on the road, and managed to save her from the berserkers; she'd escorted them farther north, though they'd ended up splitting apart when Kayla and Pale had crossed the sea in search of Kayla's father. Evie had found them again on the return trip, however, and they'd traveled together for a time afterwards. She'd been with them when they'd encountered the undead, and had fought on their side to take down the vampire responsible for the incursion as well. Ultimately, though, she'd chosen to stay behind and help rebuild the city the vampire had destroyed, as well as keep an eye on the captain of the town guard, who'd been infected and turned during the fight.

Admittedly, it had hurt, leaving Evie behind. Not only was she a friend, but she'd taken both Pale and Kayla into her family as well. Still, it was what had needed to happen at the time, and so Pale didn't regret it too heavily. Even if she never saw Evie again before leaving the planet, it would be a necessary sacrifice in the end.

"Hey, Pale?" Kayla suddenly said.

"Hm?" Pale turned towards her.

Kayla bit her lip, suddenly nervous. "If… you ever wanted to talk about your nightmares-"

"I'll talk to you," Pale said. "And that's a promise."

Kayla breathed a sigh of relief. "Good… that's good. I'm glad to hear that."

"Mhm."

The two of them continued on in silence after that, neither of them saying anything, instead simply following along the road, listening to the horses as they trotted along the path.

Eventually, after a few more minutes of riding, the two of them crested a hill, and Kayla gave a sudden gasp. Immediately, Pale looked up, and was taken aback at what she saw.

"Kayla," she said, "is that-"

"Yes," she said, awestruck. "It is."

Pale stared straight ahead, her eyes locked on the stone tower standing off in the distance. The tower was a faded yellow color, and stood several hundred feet in the air, from Pale's estimation. All around it were several arrays of smaller buildings, along with a decorative interrupted stone wall that surrounded it all. All told, it looked less like a stereotypical school campus and more like its own miniature community.

"It's beautiful…" Kayla muttered.

Pale said nothing, though privately, she was inclined to agree. Of all the places she'd seen since arriving on Sjel, this was the most impressive one so far.

Next to her, Kayla bit her lip. "I… am suddenly very nervous."

"Don't be," Pale assured her. "We've come this far, not to mention been through far more than any of the other students have been, no doubt. Compared to dealing with the undead, this is nothing."

"You're right…" Kayla took a deep breath. "Okay… I'm going to bring us in now. Let's make the most of this, Pale."

Pale nodded. "Absolutely, Kayla."

With that, Kayla snapped the reins, and the two of them began the final stretch of their ride to the Luminarium in earnest, with renewed vigor in their hearts.

Whatever happened, Pale knew, they'd at least be going through it together.