Dresmond kindles the flames with his breath and rises up back to his seat: a backpack, with a question.

“So, Vulrick, what’s on your mind?”

The fully-armored Vulrick, leaning against the packed wall of snow, raises his hand and gives a single stroke to his helmet visor as if it were a chin. “Why are you curious?”

Dresmond squints an eye and smirks. “As if I needed a reason, sir.”

Vulrick is still. “Guess you’re right. So be it, I’ll tell you, but you won’t like the answer, I’d bet.”

“Try me.”

“I’m doing my damnedest to think of absolutely nothing.”

Dresmond crosses his arms. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m tired. Out of everyone still here on the western side, I’ve probably been fighting this war the longest. The fighting started close to my village- and then I had to choose.”

Dresmond leans forward a bit and adjusts his glasses. “You fought in the first skirmishes?”

“I did,” Vulrick says with a completely matter-of-fact, completely plain tone.

Dresmond is silent for a moment. “… What side were you on?”

Vulrick is silent as well.

The wind blows and tosses about Dresmond’s wide cloak.

There is tense pause, and then Vulrick finally reaches for his helmet. For the first time during the mission, and only to Dresmond, he decides to reveal his face.

He works through the various devices set upon the helmet to hold it into its plating joints, an advancement intended to prevent the user’s bones to be broken from an attack without the plate’s joint harnesses being destroyed first. The helmet comes off, and while the skin can be chalked up to the child of a marriage from the dark-skinned Spirakandrins and the light skinned Whihelmishians, it’s his face that tells Dresmond that he’s a pure easterner.

Vulrick has wide, dead eyes, unlike the usual sharp brows and pierces gazes prevalent in the west. His nose is straight, jutting perfectly from the ridge. His hair is a scrapped, unkempt pepper color, balding from age or stress, and with the exception of a short, but full beard. Perhaps most incriminating to his race, his eyes are colored with an unnatural ochre: a rare, recessive trait found almost exclusively in the East. His expression is slant, dull, and empty: the face of a man who is no stranger to immaculate, all-encompassing pain- the sort of profound torment that a common creature can only dream of in nightmares. This is the face of a man who has walked with hurt for a long time, like a great, debilitating cancer that he fights every moment.

Dresmond inspects Vulrick’s features with a mixed expression. “Well… Damn. I can understand why you have the helmet on… You killed some of us, didn’t you?”

Vulrick glances aside, his ochre eyes shining in the fluctuating firelight. “At the time, I didn’t know who was on whose side. People with magic and people with guns both came to kill me and my family- I wasn’t going to allow either to take them,” Vulrick says, gaze now pointed at the raging flame.

There’s a cough from one of the unconscious. Hoss’Rayull is flinching with new-found feeling. It won’t be long now.

Dresmond nods. “I suppose I’d have done the same thing…. So at the skirmishes, both sides treated the people in midland as an enemy?”

“It was a confusing day. It was peaceful at first and not everyone was dressed in uniform, so people started attacking based on race. My family represented both the East and the West in a lot of ways. We also were on the rivers, and no one ever made it clear what side those bank interiors are on. We were on land that both had claimed, but neither had cared about until the war begun.”

“Heh,” Hoss’Rayull scoffs out, slowly pulling himself to a sitting height. “I thought your story sounded a little bullshit- you sound and look too old to have been living with your parents just a couple’a years ago.”

Dresmond smirks. “Glad to see you back, Rayull.”

The hulking dragon-kin grins, his mighty row of teeth glinting a feral crimson against the firelight. “Well it looks like your guess was right. I’m feeling better already. Never bled out in all my eighty years of fighting, but I suppose this would be the day, considering we killed an overlord.” Rayull stretches, and starts packing off his armor to inspect it. “So, Vulrick. Was the original story a lie?”

Vulrick nods. “…That was the easy story. I tell that to the higher ups and folks I don’t know to stay out of trouble. Truth is I killed a few on both sides that day protecting folks. My parents were there, but they were both eastern.”

Dresmond leans forward a bit more, the light reflecting in his glasses in a strangely inhuman way. “So then why are you on our side?”

Vulrick replaces his helmet. “It was the side that would accept me. I find myself bent to fight this war, regardless of what side I’m on. I ranked up so quickly because of my merit in fighting. Turns out the W.K.D.R. doesn’t mind much where you officially come from so long as you kill the people they want.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Hoss’Rayull sighs. “Truer words have not been spoken.”

Vulrick nods. “I’d suppose you’d know that as well as I would, being a scale and all.”

Rayull nods back with a grin. “That’s the life I’ve been given, ‘spose what matters is how we all play the cards we’ve been dealt. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s been mine- and I think that makes it worth living.”

Dresmond readjusts his glasses. “I guess you two have had a pretty shit time.” No one responds with words, but Rayull’s smile grows, and Vulrick looks up to the clouded, snowy sky. “Well, I wouldn’t really be able to relate. Spirakander has always been nice to Spirakandrins, of course, and I didn’t get treated much differently when I moved near Ragnivan to Frau. Sorry, guys.”

Vulrick shakes his head, and Rayull shrugs. “Like I said, it’s not the hand that matters, but what you do with it.” Rayull places his scaled hand against his face. “I’m feeling a bit out of it. I’m going back to sleep.” He lays back at the very edge of the fire’s heat, a half-breed creature like him needing less than a warm-blooded mammal.

Dresmond looks to the now-resting Rayull, and then back to Vulrick. “So, you really just joined our side because you could?”

Vulrick nods. “I had to fight- it didn’t matter whose side it was on.”

Dresmond sharpens his gaze. “Why? Don’t you have a goal, a purpose that you’re fighting for?”

Vulrick looks into his gauntleted hand. “All purposes I had died alongside those I loved. I lost everything in a single day,” His tone picks up a grim sound to it. “Now I’m only here to kill as many people as I can- I’m going to ensure our survival no matter what, so I can keep killing, and killing, and killing. Everyone who entered this battle ground knew they could die without a reason, and I’m here to ensure that happens. War is the darkest state of mankind, and the sooner I finish them all off, the sooner we can move on.”

Dresmond stares at Vulrick- the fire doesn’t seem to be giving off as much heat, now, and the whispering snow seem to be telling Dresmond peculiar, violent messages. Finally, Dresmond gains the strength to speak.

“You… I don’t think you really mean that. My… my mom taught me that inside everyone there is a lesson to be learned from them, and because of that we should show them respect. I think you’ve forgotten that. People are more different than you realize. You shouldn’t treat those easterners like their numbers, that’s li-”

“Who said anything about that?” Vulrick says with an immediately emotional voice, instantly edging upon the excited tone of anticipating violence.

Dresmond flinches, and even Rayull, who’s still falling asleep, opens his eyes to glance over.

There’s a short moment as they all listen to the singing of the snow and the music of the fire, then the armored man shakes his head. Vulrick takes a calming breath before speaking again. “Thank you, I’ll apply your council when I have need of it- but I doubt I ever will. I expect to die in this war, just as my family did. I don’t treat easterners like numbers. I care for all of them, and that’s what makes this so grisly…. Surely, when I’m dead, I can care about others again,” he says, casting his gaze far off to the dim silhouette of the mountains in the distance.

Dresmond squints an eye and draws back a bit. Vulrick’s smart, capable, and strong, but he’s probably nuts, he thinks.

“Sure. Now get some sleep,” Dresmond says, “I’ll take watch. The lack of rest’s getting to you.”

Vulrick shakes his head. “I’ve never been more lucid in all my life. I can’t go to sleep now- that’s what mends the mind, ties it back and throws it into that dungeon of consideration and morality. Never again will I weigh right or wrong- from the day I saw their bodies, I weighed the action of what I did. It was… my fault.”

Dresmond lays back, realizing there’s no way he’ll get Vulrick to sleep. “Just who did you lose, exactly?”

Vulrick sighs. “I’ll tell you everything soon enough. Get some rest, Dresmond- you still have the privilege of good dreams.”

“Vulrick.”

“…Yes?”

“I’m worried about you. Please just go to bed.”

“I’m afraid this is what’s most comfortable for me, sir knight.”

Dresmond pauses, and ultimately decides he does not argue with that.

Finally, he closes his eyes. “Alright, man. Just take it ea…” Dresmond scoffs. “Who am I kidding? Kick their asses- it looks like that’s all you can do, after all,” he corrects himself as he lays back onto his cloak.

Vulrick turns away, looking out to the deep woods. “I appreciate your understanding.”

A few hours pass of Vulrick staring out into the snow. The sun begins to shine on their side of the world once more.

Rayull, as per his nature and his race, gets up first with a full energy and an appetite to match. “Ugh… I’m… hungry!”

Vulrick nods over to Awnway, who’s carrying all the rations in his sizable backpack. Rayull helps himself to one and sits next to Vulrick. “Say, you haven’t been sleeping for a while, have you?”

Vulrick sighs. “No, sir.” He says as Cet pulls himself up from his spot with a look of pure contempt on his features.

“You really should, you know,” Rayull responds, tearing open another one of the ration bags and digging his face into it like a dog.

“Like I said: I won’t slow us down- and someone needs to keep watch,” Vulrick reiterates.

Rayull mulls it over in his head a bit, and shrugs. “Well we don’t need a watch anymore- it’s day. Could you give me the report for the day?”

“Everyone was out except Bayl, Dresmond, and me.”

Cet scuffles through Awnway’s stuff and finds a ration to eat.

“Yeah? Anyone seriously hurt?”

“Probably. I expect Carl’s done- only medical magic could save him, and the only guy that could know that, Mullant, is missing an arm.”

Rayull squints. “Most healing magic needs both hands used.”

Vulrick nods. “That’s right.”

Cet draws back. “So… Carl’s going to die?”

“Yeah,” Vulrick says. “There’s always been exceptions, miracles- but I don’t think we’re getting one of those.”

Cet looks over to Carl, his unconscious expression frozen in pain. “That’s… too bad.”

Rayull and Vulrick exchange a glance, and the dragon-half speaks up. “We’re actually really lucky we’ve lost no one up until now- I honestly thought fighting Overlord Crimson would have ended all of us, but we were coordinated perfectly. I won’t tell you that Carl’s death will be easy, but it’s something that every soldier needs to deal with eventually.”

Cet shrugs as if he didn’t care. “Sure.... So what’s on the agenda for today?” he says, now averting his gaze to the comfortable sight of the woods.

Rayull hums. “Well in our current state, we shouldn’t very well march. We’ll probably need to spend the day here. We could work for a shelter with some of the wreckage and trees,” Rayull notes. “The brick-out was useful for tonight, but if we want Carl to have anything resembling a chance, he’ll have to be warm.”

Awnway jolts stretches awake while Vulrick starts up to his feet. “What should we get, then?”

Rayull strokes his white-scaled chin in thought.