The Eternal Winter - Chapter 11 - A Familiar Face (Patreon)

                                                       Alexander North

Surprisingly, it doesn’t take me long before I run into someone.

And it’s someone I’d rather not see right now, judging by the family crest he has displayed on his shoulder.

The instant he steps out of an office into the hallway, he turns to me and quickly focuses on my own shoulder, bearing my own family crest and rank of second lieutenant. He then spreads his arms out and exclaims in an oddly quiet voice, “Alex! You’re still aliiive!”

He then rushes over to me and pulls me into a bear hug, taking full advantage of his massive size difference over myself.

Although unlike all of the other times this has happened, I don’t grunt thanks to my newfound strength. Instead, I push him back a little before looking him over to check for wounds.

Meanwhile, he himself looks surprised at my strength for a second but seems to push the thought aside as he notices the tears in my uniform and asks, “Were you hurt?”

“Don’t worry about it, Phil, I’m fine,” I answer in response before asking, “were you not able to find your team during this?”

Our quarters are all separated by our squads, so unless he or his team weren’t at their rooms at the start of this – which, considering that this happened at night, I’d think they probably would be – then he must have been separated.

“Yeah, my team was having an unsanctioned party with another squad during the night, but I didn’t go,” Phillip explains, making me wince slightly at just how unfortunate that timing is. “What about your squad? I see you’re not with them either. Weren’t you supposed to be on a mission?”

“Our ship lost power and crashed while we were coming back from the mission, so we walked back through the blizzard, but I was separated in the process,” I answer before starting again towards the stairs with him following next to me. “What happened here? I would’ve expected more soldiers to still be walking through the halls.”

“It’s honestly kind of hard to say,” he says while taking his helmet off, revealing his slightly pudgy looking face, short brown hair, and equally brown eyes as he sends me a slightly worried gaze, likely due to the fact that I had just mentioned our ship crashing, “at one moment I was sitting in my room playing a game, and the next? Everything suddenly grew cold.”

He then faces forwards again and continues, “I ignored it at first, thinking that the AC was just turned on or something, but when it kept getting colder, to the point that frost started building up on everything in the room and mist started filling it, I knew something was up. And that was when the screams and shrieks started echoing from outside in the hallway.”

I grimace at that, but stay silent as he finishes, “I quickly got my gear on and rushed outside, only to find a monster that looked oddly like a wendigo from our mythology classes feasting on John from squad AH22. So I quickly fired my gun, just for the bullets to fall to the ground and attract the creature’s attention.”

He pauses there as we reach a bend in the mist and frost-coated hallway before turning the corner to find the next part of the hallway clear of monsters, with the exception of one dead monster and a few dead soldiers.

“Damn,” he mutters at the sight of them, and I nod my head in agreement. Although while we’re walking by, something catches my attention.

The monster isn’t illuminating its regular light blue glow.

So does the energy fade away after a period of time left untouched? Or did another monster absorb it?

I tense up slightly at the possibility that there could be a monster nearby, but Phillip just kneels down to check on the dead soldier’s family crests.

“Shit, this one’s Vixaran,” he mutters after getting to the third body and not recognizing their crests.

“Wait, really?” I exclaim while getting down to check the crest myself. Just to find the very familiar crest of the archducal family holding one of the positions on the merchant’s council leading the Economic circle of the Empire. “Shit, it’s really him!”

We both get up while sharing a look before Phillip mutters, “This’ll probably cause quite a few political problems in higher society. Do you think you might be called back because of it?”

As he says this, he glances at my own crest, which is also an archducal family crest. Just one from the other archducal family.

I frown at the question and shake my head.

“You know as well as I do that dad tries to keep me out of politics as much as he can,” I remind him before continuing forwards and adding, “Besides. We’d have to be able to contact them to be called back.”

“Oh,” he mutters, not moving for a second, following which I hear his footsteps quickly catching up to me as he says, “I guess you have a point there.”

The real pressing question here though is just how many other soldiers have died already for this place to seem so… empty? And if they did die, then where are the corpses? Or where are the monsters if they turned?

There would be blood stains everywhere and probably some gore if a wendigo went around eating them all. Not to mention that those three corpses wouldn’t be there if one did.

Besides. I’m pretty sure the captains – whose ranks are made up entirely of symbiont hosts – should be able to deal with the monsters in smaller numbers.

My thoughts are interrupted as a loud screech echoes from down the hall, seemingly coming from one of the training rooms. Then another one, something akin to a rabid snarl follows right after it.

“That’s not good,” Phillip mutters while raising his sword, which I really wish I had right now, but we don’t bring them out when we’re on an op where the combat is going to be in a ship.

“No, it’s not,” I mutter in response as we slowly walk across the hall.

Once we make it to the training room, we peek in through the window of the door, just to find four wendigos and two wraiths trying to attack two low ranking soldiers who at standing high up on the obstacle course of the training room

I look through the room for the other entrance, just to find the door torn to pieces that are scattered across the floor next to it.

Guess that explains how they got in despite this entrance being closed.

“We should help them,” Phillip says while reaching for the doorknob, only to pause as he realizes that he doesn’t have a plan. He then looks at me with hope shining in his eyes.

“No,” I state without any hesitation in my voice, seemingly shocking him in the process. “There is no way we’d be able to get in there, rescue them both, and make it back alive. At this point, it would be better to regroup with the commander or other higher officers and come ba-”

My words are cut off as I notice one of the two soldiers spotting us and pointing while shoving the other one’s shoulder. And as soon as I see the face on the other one – who for some reason isn’t wearing his helmet – I get a very bad feeling.

“But what if they’re dead before-” I cover his mouth with my palm while pointing at the door window with my other hand before he can finish talking, making him look to see the second soldier pulling out his gun with a smile on his face and tossing it straight towards the door we’re standing behind.

Now, the gun doesn’t reach all the way to the door, considering the vast distance between us, but it does land several meters away form the door with a loud clatter sound.

A sound that immediately draws the wendigos’ eyes towards us.

“Run!” I shout at him right as the wendigos all tear off towards us, leaving the wraiths to continue staring at the two soldiers that had just fed us to the metaphorical wolves.

Phillip quickly joins me as we begin running down the hall in the direction of the stairs. And as we’re running, I ask, “Still want to save them?”

He just shouts, “Hell no!” right as the wendigos tear down the door to the training room and slide across the frost-covered floor for a second before beginning to follow us down the hall.

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