When they finally crawled out of the cave, the snow-covered field was gone, replaced by churned earth from the vehicles passing by and scattered craters.
A tank still burned in the distance, and a tracked crew transport that looked to have been ripped apart by giant claws lay on its side only a few hundred meters away.
Wolfe tried to sense his familiars, but only one of them came in clearly. Stephanie was making her way to him, but the distance was still too far for mental communication.
The Witches that Wolfe was bonded to still gave a vague sense of their emotions and direction from him, but it felt vague and fuzzy in an uncomfortable way that he wasn’t sure could all be attributed to distance.
All of the others had severely faded, and Wolfe wondered if they were sick or injured since the sky seemed to be normal again. Perhaps they were simply exhausted, and the depletion of their aura would recover with a bit of time.
At least they didn’t feel panicked anymore, so the first wave of the mundane army’s assault must have been repelled.
By unspoken agreement, Wolfe and Priya began walking back toward the camp, hoping that yesterday’s battle had chased the enemy from the compound. Everything in the Frozen Wastes was calm, with no sign of anything living, only more destruction as they made their way over what was once pristine grassland.
Priya took a radio from the pack and clicked it on, then sighed.
“It’s damaged, the recharging inscription has been scrubbed off the back, and the battery is dead.” She explained.
Wolfe tapped it and let a hint of mana flow out as electricity, mostly filling the batteries and making the device crackle to life with casualty reports and troop movements.
[This is Lieutenant Priya requesting a status update on my unit. I volunteered as the rear guard and got separated from my unit during the initial attack.] She requested.
[Good to hear from you. You’re a hero on the front line after yesterday. Your actions saved over two-thirds of the soldiers in your region, and the [Lightning Array] saved thousands more after your unit got away from the camp and had time to spread the knowledge.
Reports say that your unit got nerve gassed at the camp, and it will be a long recovery before they are fit for duty, but most are still alive.
Where are you now? We will try to send a recovery unit for you.] The voice of the sector commander replied.
[Roughly twenty kilometres North of our position along the defensive line, on the path of the enemy retreat. Look for the burning tank if you need a landmark.]
There was a lot of chatter after that. Nobody at the command center knew exactly what happened at the camp, but the unit almost all survived the initial attack and rescued many others as they fled from the toxic gas bombardment.
[Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to return. The entire defensive line was subject to a biological weapon, and we estimate it will take months to disperse from the soil and other solid surfaces.
Command requests that a new forward scouting location be set up wherever you feel it is possible. Your unit has been returned to Sylvan, including the new recruits, who have been granted immediate citizenship in return for their heroism.]
Priya and Wolfe shared a smile for the good news before the reality set in that the whole border was a toxic wasteland, and they couldn’t return home to be with the unit until spring.
[Understood command. Supplies are limited to a single pack for two soldiers, so a static position may not be possible for some time. I will update daily or as relevant.]
ƥαṇdα-ηθνε|·ƈθm
She could only hope that the command for the survivors to gather in one spot hadn’t been a mistake that introduced a new horror to the city by sending all the afflicted soldiers back.
“Should we go back to the cave we made last night? We can expand it enough to be comfortable, and it’s not far from water if that river is still drinkable. It’s not the worst spot ever, and it’s far enough from the line to be counted as a forward observation post.” Wolfe suggested.
“We might as well. It’s too cold to stay out in the open without a fire, but we should dig deeper into the hill so that the heat sensors don’t find us. They only see a few meters into the ground at most, so we can hide from casual detection just by remaining inside the cliff. But we should stop off at the destroyed vehicles first. They might have left something good behind.”
The tank was probably a lost cause, it was fully gutted by fire, and the munitions box on the back was gone. The transport might still have something useful, Wolfe hoped, though that would depend on how much of a hurry the departing soldiers were in.
They approached the vehicle as silently as possible, unsure if there were any hostile monsters or survivors inside, as Wolfe used [Detect Hidden] to search the vehicle.
“Six bodies, no life signs. They’re all frosted over. Whatever they were fighting, it must have been bad. It looks like they left almost everything behind.” He whispered.
Wolfe raised his rifle while Priya swung the back door of the vehicle open. Nothing moved inside, so they carefully entered and began to search the labels on the crates.
“It’s all food. Nothing but food.” Priya cheered quietly, then frowned as she realized each of these boxes weighed a hundred kilos.
“Help me drag them out onto a tarp or something solid. I can use some gravity magic, and if it’s all on a single platform to target with the spell, we can float our loot to the cave.” Wolfe told her, not completely convinced he really could do what he said, at least not in one trip.
They had just finished piling the last of the boxes on the tarp from their pack, and Priya was looking dubious about the feasibility of this plan when a small black cat jumped up in the pile and began to purr.
“Stephanie, it’s good to see you again. How did you get through the attack?” Wolfe asked.
[It targets witches in specific, but I’m a Familiar Cat. The armour spells hold it at bay, so the worst affected are the ones whose armour was breached or who were sleeping when the gas was deployed.
The Servants got a small dose after their armour was broken while they tried to rescue the injured, but the others got them protected again after only a few seconds. You might not have noticed, but everyone else was drawing almost entirely from your mana to prevent their spells from collapsing with the smoke suppressing their auras.
It’s nasty stuff. From what I could see before I left, it corrupts the witches in the same way as the bloodline curse and makes it impossible for them to use mana or gather an aura.]
A bioweapon that mimics the curse? That couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, Wolfe decided. The mundane armies might have been planning this invasion for a very long time.