With the world seeming to end 300 meters away, Finch tried to bury his head in the ground. The destruction's sound wasn't just heard—it was felt.

  It punched through every Marine’s body like a sledgehammer, causing their very bones to rattle and their headaches to throb. The ground beneath those in the defilade bucked and heaved like an angry bull, sending dirt, rocks, and what might have been pieces of trees raining down everywhere.

  Multiple explosions merged into one continuous roar that went on and on, with each detonation feeding into the next until Finch couldn't tell where one ended and another began. The air itself seemed to be screaming, torn apart by the sheer violence of whatever ordinance the fast movers had dropped.

  The airstrikes continued for a full minute, each explosion as overwhelming as the last, until they finally came to an abrupt end. As an eerie silence settled over the forest, Finch noticed a few finally starting to stir, but the Lance Corporal kept his head clutched in his hands. He couldn’t help but curse as his ears rang like church bells even through the Peltors clamped tightly around them.

  Eventually, Finch cautiously lifted his head, and what he saw made him immediately cringe. The immediate area was more or less fine, as the groaning and moaning of those they had effectively mowed down were still dying. However, Finch could see in the distance where the vast majority of the Imperial Forces had been retreating towards; the forest had been stripped completely bare. Trees that had stood for who knows how long were simply gone, replaced by splintered husks. The fortifications the enemy had been building were now abstract art pieces made of shattered earth and pulverized stone.

  "Holy fucking shit," someone—might have been Pham, Reyes or even Mack—groaned from nearby.

  Finch couldn't have said it better himself. The adrenaline dump was so intense that when he tried to get back into a firing position, his rifle started rattling in his hand. Hell, even his ears were still ringing despite the electronic ear protection. Everything sounded as if it were underwater, muffled and distorted.

  The SEALs were the first to recover from the danger-close airstrike. Their years of operating in the shit shown through as they threw their weapons over the defilade and immediately started scanning the devastated forest through their optics. One of them—a stocky operator with a beard that probably violated seventeen different grooming standards—muttered, "Damn, they fucked every goddamn thing up."

  He wasn't wrong. Where once stood alien forest now looked like the surface of the moon had hate-fucked a lumberyard.

  Then the distant sounds started rolling in. Explosions and gunfire resounded throughout the forest as other Marine and SEAL platoons engaged their own objectives. It wasn't the clean, Hollywood sound of battle—it was sporadic and chaotic symphonies that ebbed and flowed like a deadly tide.

  The distant fighting came in waves. First, the sharp crack of small arms fire—M4s and M27s snapping out in individual disciplined bursts. Then the heavier, slower rhythm of machine guns laying down base of fire, their staccato-like reports echoing off the alien trees. Explosions punctuated the cacophony—some sharp and immediate like hand grenades, others deep and thunderous like artillery or air-delivered ordnance.

  But mixed in with the familiar sounds of modern warfare were things that made Finch's skin crawl. Strange whooshing noises that crescendoed into electrical snaps. Low humming that built to sharp cracks like transformers exploding. The distinctive howling screeches of what had to be an area violently freezing. Occasionally, an otherworldly shriek would cut through everything else—whether from some magical effect or a dying creature, Finch couldn't tell.

  The sounds overlapped and merged, creating an audio landscape that was both familiar and terrifyingly alien. Distant firefights would peak with intense exchanges—the rapid cracking rhythm of a M240’s answered by that strange crackling of magical energy—before dying down to sporadic pops and bangs. Then another sector would light up, the cycle continuing across the entire operational area.

  Finch looked to his right, further down the line of Marines, and saw Gunnery Sergeant Rodriguez speaking with Lieutenant Watts. The young officer appeared a bit frazzled as sweat carved clean lines through the camo paint on his face while they gestured animatedly toward the destroyed enemy position. Even from this distance, Finch could see the Lieutenant's hands shaking slightly—a jarring blend of both an adrenaline dump and the concussion from the airstrike.

  Then he saw the Lieutenant's hand go to his push-to-talk, "One, go!" Watt’s yelled in his mic.

  It took a few seconds for the order to filter through the chaos before First Platoon's squad leaders started barking orders. Fire team by fire team, Marines from 1-2 started getting up and launching themselves over the defilade. Their movements were a bit stiff, but they were still well-practiced and honed over the innumerable training iterations—one team bounding forward while another provided cover, then switching roles in a deadly game of tactical leapfrog.

  Throwing his weapon over the defilade as quickly as his shaking hands could manage, Finch settled the VCOG's reticle on the smoldering hellscape ahead. He continued to scan, trying to pinpoint any movement among the destruction to ensure First Squad didn’t face any nasty surprises while trying to ignore how his heart was attempting to punch its way out of his chest.

  "MOVEMENT, ELEVEN O'CLOCK!" Mack's voice suddenly cut through the ambient noise like a knife, immediately followed by the sharp report of his rifle.

  Every Marine swiveled their weapons toward the direction the SEAL Platoon Leader had started firing, scanning for anything to fire at. Finch caught sight of a few stumbling figures in the distant haze—some unlucky souls who somehow survived the airstrike. However, they appeared off, resembling more like extras from a zombie movie than enemy combatants. Their clothes were torn and smoldering, their movements uncoordinated, leading Finch to realize that they were definitely not lucky after all.

  The SEALs' rounds found them first, dropping the first poor bastard face-first into the churned earth. But then the Marines opened up. The next couple immediately ate a wall of death as the jarheads lit up that entire area, suppressing it entirely as First Squad bounded up.

  For a moment, Finch thought it was a bit overkill as his own reports of his rifles cracked off, but he thought better than to keep thinking that. There was no such thing as ‘overkill’ in the Marines. Only open fire, and dead. And nobody was taking any chances with the magic shitheads that were in play.

  Lieutenant Watts' voice then crackled over the net again: "Three, go!"

  Finch's head snapped to his own squad leader, Staff Sergeant Michaels. The NCO's hand was already in motion, gesturing for them to rise as he shouted, "Reyes! Get your team's ass over there! Wheeling, you're covering! Stuyvent, prepare your boys to bound next!"

  The familiar commands cut through the chaos as muscle memory took over and conscious thought faded. Finch's body moved before his brain fully processed the order; his boots found purchase on the loose earth as he hauled himself over the edge.

  "Bounding!" Reyes yelled, leading his team up and over the defilade in a scramble of aggression and hatred.

  They barreled through some thorny bushes that seemed almost as bad as concertina wire, getting stabbed and snagged on every piece of gear. Each Marine in Reyes' fire team couldn’t help but unleash creative curses as they shouldered their weapons and pushed up to a defensible position thirty meters ahead. Newman's colorful vocabulary regarding the local flora's parentage was particularly impressive, even by Marine standards.

  "Ow! Jesus... ow!... Goddamn alien thorns!" Pham hissed as a branch whipped back and caught him across the neck, leaving a thin line of blood.

  Finch's rifle remained level as he swept it across no man’s land. Dead bodies and still-writhing wounded littered the ground as they quickly pushed up, trying to take positions so that the next fire team could move up. But as Finch and his fire team settled behind cover, the smell hit them. A lingering chemical odor from the massive amount of ordnance dropped mixed with the coppery scent of blood. There was also something else in the air… Something alien that made his nostrils flare.

  One of the wounded, however, had the wherewithal to start crawling away. Well, Finch would have liked to call it crawling, but the man—elf, whatever—seemed to pull himself along as if his lower body didn't really weigh anything. His legs were completely limp as they dragged behind him as if his spine were severed, yet he moved with a desperate strength that normal humans shouldn't possess. It was a weird dichotomy that really highlighted that these weren't normal people.

  Pointing his weapon at the poor bastard, Finch’s trigger finger twitched as his reticle hovered over the man’s back as they pulled themselves toward a rather thick makeshift shield. The Lance Corporal’s mind was wracked with the decision. The guy was done, not really that much of a threat anymore, and what could he do with a shield? But then again, magic was a thing here, and who knew what kind of garbage a wounded mage could pull off given half a chance?

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  But, just as Finch was about to make his decision, he nearly jumped out of his skin when a series of suppressed snaps rang out. The elf's head jerked once, twice, then went still as dark blood pooled beneath him.

  A hand then slapped Finch's shoulder, making him whip around. "Come on, let's go! We gotta get on top of that shit as fast as we can!"

  Finch's head snapped around, trying to find out who had blasted the dude as the voice traveled from one side to the other. It wasn't until he finally caught sight of that Navy SEAL who'd saved him from the fairy that he relaxed. The frogman's face showed all business behind the neck gaiter pulled over his nose, and he was already moving past Finch toward the objective.

  "Right…" Finch managed to sputter out as the SEAL pushed forward, flowing through the terrain like water.

  The tempo began to quicken as more Marines made their way toward their objective. Other fire teams from the Second and Third Squads advanced, while more cracks echoed from the SEALs and Marines checking any bodies they encountered. No one was taking chances. Everyone received attention, whether they moved or not.

  "Got another mover here—" A Marine spoke before aiming his M27 at a struggling and wheezing Human on the ground. "—never mind, he's good."

  As they pushed through the remaining foliage, the assaulting forces found themselves stumbling into a scene of hell.

  Once the Marines and SEALs reached the devastated area, they paused and took it all in. The forest wasn't completely barren—broken trees jutted up like accusing fingers, and tangled foliage was still stubbornly rooted in the ground. But the sky was visible now; great tears had been torn in what had been a continuous canopy. Sunlight—or whatever passed for it in this fucked-up world—streamed down in dusty shafts, illuminating the destruction.

  About 200 meters ahead, where the enemy's fortifications had been, they were reduced to mere craters. The ones farthest away were still whole—smoking, but intact. Now that Finch had a good look at it, they realized they had caught them all with their pants down, mobilizing just outside the bunker proper. There were bodies—or parts of bodies—scattered around like a child's forgotten toys, leading all the way up to the broken entrances of their main objective.

  "Jesus… Well," Newman said, settling into his position behind what might have been a tree stump or a chunk of fortification, "this is properly fucked."

  Finch couldn't really argue with that assessment, especially with half the ground caved in from collapsed tunnels, trench lines that were demolished, and the remnants of what used to be... people. They had definitely caught a couple of dozen of the Imperial quick reaction force (QRF) out in the open and dropped so many munitions on their heads that it pulverized anything and everything. The devastation was so complete that in some areas, Finch couldn't tell where the enemy ended and the earth began.

  Deeper in, though, Finch saw the entrances of trenches and obvious fortification systems that remained intact. They were severely damaged—smooth stone that was cracked and spalling, support beams that snapped like twigs—but strong enough to still be defensible. A few figures emerged through the shattered entrance with nervous and cautious movements, clearly scoping out what had just occurred.

  The Marine’s musing didn't last long, however.

  "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU IDIOTS DOING?!" Staff Sergeant Michaels' voice boomed from off to Finch's flank, about twenty meters away. "GET OUT OF THE OPEN AND HIT THOSE TRENCHES!"

  The SEALs were already sprinting forward like bats out of hell to assault a still-intact bunker while other squads from the Marine platoon began running for the first set of broken trenches and dove in.

  Snapping out of his reverie, Finch raised his weapon and fired a few rounds at the distant figures before taking off running. His boots slipped on the loose soil, causing him to tumble face-first after Reyes, who was already moving down into a trench system that led to a caved-in bunker. The entrance yawned like a mouth, disappearing into darkness that suggested it went deep—really deep.

  Finch hot on his heels when his foot snagged on something, sending the Lance Corporal diving face first into the trench system. Usually, Newman would let out a jeer and laugh at the Lance Corporal, but no words were exchanged as the ‘Senior Private’ and Pham moved past Finch, taking up his usual position in the stack.

  But as they settled in the trench, the rest of their platoon made their presence known.

  Rifle and machine gun fire erupted again, turning the air into a deadly storm. With Finch in such a forward position, he caught the worst of it. Supersonic cracks split the air as rounds passed over their trench system—that distinctive sound of death missing by inches. The whizz of rounds overhead was accompanied by the angry buzz of ricochets off the natural and unnatural stone reinforcing these structures.

  The gunfire that poured out was unholy in its volume. It wasn't just a few guys popping off rounds either—it sounded like an entire support squad had moved up and started shit on anything and everything that moved.

  Ducking their heads lower, the Fireteam cowered as rounds snapped overhead, sending chips of stone and dirt raining down. Finch rolled around and scrambled on the ground, trying to gain his bearings on what the hell just happened while his hands frantically patted across his plate carrier and legs.

  Shit! Fuck! Shit! Am I hit?!" Finch’s voice cracked with pure, unfiltered panic as he continued his frantic self-assessment. His eyes were wide with that particular kind of terror that comes from not knowing if you’re about to find a hole in your body.

  Newman simply gave him an incredulous and stupefied look, visible even through his dirt-caked face. "No, you dumbass. You tripped on your own feet and fell like an idiot."

  "Oh..." Finch muttered as he stopped thrashing. “Well, fuck you." He finished, jerking around to free his gear from all the sticks, twigs, and debris that had somehow managed to catch on every possible attachment point. His magazine pouches were tangled in what looked like alien brambles, and his hydration tube had wrapped itself around a piece of stone-like rebar sticking out of the trench wall.

  “Stay low and just follow me!" Reyes suddenly yelled out, already moving forward in a low crouch. "We gotta keep assaulting this bitch!"

  Ahead of them, a section of the trench had already collapsed partially, leaving a shallow spot that would expose anyone trying to cross it. Reyes dropped to his belly without hesitation and started crawling forward with his rifle cradled in his arms. The others mimicked their team leader, immediately hitting the ground as bullets whizzed and snapped overhead, and followed Reyes, dragging their bellies through the jagged dirt and debris.

  "Holy Jesus!" Pham yelled as another burst of fire crackled too close for comfort and ricocheted off one of the magically formed stone bars. "Don't they know we're still downrange?!"

  Nobody bothered to answer the poor Private. They were all in the shit now, and expecting any kind of organization when things were this chaotic was a fool's errand. The airstrike had turned their carefully planned sectors of fire into a chaotic free-for-all, especially since the main bunker complex was more or less intact. Sure, it created a huge bottleneck, but they were up against magic bastards who could create supernatural magical shields.

  As they kept crawling forward, Finch and his fire team heard shouting and signs of fighting as suppressed rifle fire echoed around them. Eventually, in their low crawl, someone up ahead yelled "FRAG OUT!" which was soon followed by the distinctive clanging of a grenade bouncing off stone.

  About three or four seconds later, the muffled and concussive thud of an explosion sent another pressure wave through the trench system, rattling the dirt just in front of the marines. Then the sharp snaps of gunfire picked up again. By this time, the Marines had made it past the most dangerous part of the trench; it had finally leveled out to a height where they could stand, though in a crouch that made everyone's back scream.

  Still, they moved forward with their weapons drawn, carefully and deliberately checking corners by the book. The last thing anyone wanted was to go too fast and end up running into their death. Or worse, frag their own guy, especially now that friendlies and enemies were mixed throughout the entire complex like ingredients in the world's deadliest salad.

  Being at the back of the stack, Finch kept his rifle aimed at their rear, making sure no one was sneaking up on them or trying to jump into their little section of paradise. But after noticing things had slowed down considerably, the Lance Corporal took this chance to do a gear check. He patted himself down once more to make sure he wasn't missing anything important.

  Rifle—check. Magazines—check. IFAK—check. His hand found the gas mask snug in its pouch at his hip, and he felt a small measure of relief. At least, if these magic assholes started shitting out poison clouds or if some chuckle fuck threw CS gas in a hole like in their briefing, he'd have some protection.

  As they approached another junction, they heard more yelling. "There's assholes still in there!"

  "Just frag them out!" came the response.

  The call-outs made Finch gulp, especially as he heard more thuds of muffled explosions, but Reyes kept leading his fire team around the final corner. When they turned the bend, Reyes snapped his weapon up to his shoulder but immediately lowered it when he saw who was in front of a severely damaged doorway that led underground.

  Reyes wanted to say he got the jump on the SEALs, but one was already training his weapon on them when he turned the corner, and the SEAL stood down as well. The Marines had finally linked up with a group of Navy SEALs amid this chaos, and now it was time for everyone to be confused together and just go with the flow.

  Right now, they might as well take this structure and wait for further instructions, but it looked like it was still under construction. Tools were scattered about, bags of what might have been glowing bottles of alien hooch were stacked against the walls, and what the Marines could only describe as fantasy drugs lay on the ground by a flipped table.

  Just as one SEAL was about to pull the pin on his grenade, something bounced off the wall with a metallic clang and landed right in the middle of the group of operators and Marines. For a full second, both sides just stared at the strange, spherical, metal object before everyone made the same sound and screamed out the same thing.

  “OH SHIT!” Both the SEALs and Marines yelped as they practically leapt out of the trench into friendly fire that was still whizzing overhead.

  As it rolled away, a deafening and fantastical sound of an explosion rang out, sending a vicious shockwave upward and deep blue flames licking at the walls moments after they escaped.