Skin stealing. To Jaeger, the words held a dark promise and even darker intentions. It brought with it an overwhelming smell of blood, mud, and rusted steel. His mind took him to a different place.

  A dark, overcast sky, promising another day in this wet, rainy hell. He could feel the squelch of damp mud beneath his feet, his back resting against the dirty wooden ‘wall’; its surface defaced in memorials, hash marks, bullet holes, and the gore of the fallen. To his left and right, he could see some fellow soldiers in various stages of rest.

  Irin, one of the company’s berserkers, was cleaning his axes and meditating nearby. When not fighting, the man was as calm and collected as a bank teller, but the moment blood began to flow, he became a feral monster. Next to the berserker was Dyno, a pistoleer. The man was cleaning, loading, and adjusting his bandoleer of pistols as he spoke rapid-fire to the quiet berserker. The pair were close friends and made for a reliable team.

  Further down were two of the company’s wardens, a pair of fraternal twins: Quincy and Quinn. They were currently sparring with their flame-shields and surgiruments: a bulky gauntlet with an enscrolled blade emerging from the fist, and an injector containing a potent mixture of life-saving potions. Jaeger always had mixed feelings when seeing wardens; on the one hand, he was always happy for the mix of defense and medical support, but on the other hand, he couldn’t remove the idea of them being charm-chirurgeons from his mind. Lucky for him, the twins were open and polite people to be around, almost the direct opposite of a charm-chirurgeon.

  Vickers, the company captain, had his witchwood bow resting by his side as he lit up a fat cigar; Jaeger had no idea where he got them, it certainly wasn’t from his black marketeer. Speaking of Milo, quarter master/black marketeer/Jaeger’s best friend, was currently counting out the supply of powder and shot. He paused briefly to throw him a tired smile; Milo was ever the upbeat bastard.

  “Servus, Graben Hunter.”

  Jaeger sighed, adjusting until he found the least uncomfortable way to lean against the wall.

  “I told you to stop calling me that.”

  “Ja, and I ignored you. You are too sure a shot with that rifle and are like a bloodhound when it comes to hunting down the worst of the worst out here.”

  “The company would be dead and gone if it weren’t for the captain’s orders and your hunts. Some of my contacts in other companies tell me we’ve even earned a name, Wilde Jagd, the Wild Hunt. They say the captain is Wodan, and we are but his lost souls hunting the enemy until our final days.”

  “That’s a bit morbid, Karl.”

  “It is also closer to the truth than we’d like to believe.”

  Karl was the company’s runner; he moved between the trenches and the backline for supplies, messages, reports, and gossip.

  “Any news that isn’t gossip?” Jaeger asked.

  “Nothing concrete. I had a word with one of the note-takers for the generals’ meeting, who said an aide to the CCs heard that Lowrian is deploying something special. It’s supposed to be a counter to the shit that the chop-docs do.”

  Jaeger felt something under his skin writhe and wriggle, and he knew he wasn’t the only one. The things the charm-chirurgeons did were effective but awful, and to imagine a counter to it was not something taken lightly.

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  “Alright, men, enough lying about. I just got an inking. Command wants us to make a push for the first three trenches. Bloodfire will soften them, and flanking us will be plague marines to distract them.” The captain came over and interrupted them. “If we’re lucky, the bloodfire will have killed most of them, and hopefully there won’t be any blood contortionists or mutators.”

  We all saluted the captain as he spoke to us, before Karl sighed dramatically.

  “Captain, you know we aren’t lucky.”

  “Sure as sure, so you’d best ready some anti-mutagens and coagulants.” The captain turned to face the trench wall, as though envisioning the coming battle, adjusting his rune and fetish-covered witchwood bow. “And Karl, you’d best watch how you address the charm-chirurgeons. If any of them hear you calling them chop-docs, with our luck, you’re liable to be taken for an experimental procedure.”

  Karl’s face went pale, which surprised Jaeger as the man was practically corpse colored already.

  “Captain, I meant no disrespect.”

  Captain Vickers stared at Karl before giving a reassuring smile and turning to walk off.

  “Oh, I know Karl, and personally, I agree with you, but best to be safe. Ready up, men, we’re up and over in thirty.”

  “ég vil.”

  With that, the men moved with purpose, collecting their gear and readying for deployment.

  “Up and over!”

  Following Captain Vickers’ words, the soldiers of Jaeger’s squad climbed out of the trench, led by their twin wardens. Overhead, bloodfire rained down on the enemy’s trenches, drenching them in liquid fire. Even across the distance, he could hear the sound of dying soldiers, the very blood inside their bodies burning them from the inside out. To call bloodfire an abomination would be to overlook the uglier things that both sides had done; in comparison to some, bloodfire was no worse than bullets.

  As he thought that a rancid smell assaulted not just his, but the whole squad’s senses.

  “By all that’s clean and pure, I will never get used to their presence.” Karl gagged out as he stopped to stare at the towering plague marines.

  Jaeger pushed Karl forward, drawing the younger man away from the sight of the monstrous affliction-producing men.

  “Don’t stop and don’t stare.”

  The younger man nodded in thanks and kept moving. Because of the lapse in movement, the pair had fallen behind their squad; were it not for Milo’s raised rifle, the pair might not have found the squad. Rushing forward, the pair kept low, but thanks to the bloodfire and the plague marines, it seemed the Lowrian forces had worse things to deal with. The pair slid into the trench and landed next to Milo.

  “Glad you two could make it. I told the others to move on and stayed back to guide you in.” He said, lowering his rifle and attaching a wicked bayonet to it, before readying it and motioning them forward.

  “The others went that way.”

  Karl patted Milo’s arm before drawing his trench knives and moving forward. Jaeger side-eyed his friend before nodding and, rifle raised, moving forward.

  Moving through the trench was harrowing and disgustingly familiar. Weeks ago, this had been in Beserian hands, months before that Lowrian, and before that Beserian. This endless war seemed to measure no more than the five trenches in the surrounding area for all the new ground he’d seen.

  “Guys, you need to see this.”

  Moving forward to Karl, Jaeger found himself looking at a skinned and dead body. It was nude of any identifiable feature, simply a weak, red pile of meat.

  “Is it one of ours?” He asked.

  “No idea. I can’t get a scent from it, and it’s got nothing on or near it. If it wasn’t covered in so much blood, I’d hesitate to say this was human.” Karl replied.

  “Then we have to move forward. I can’t believe it’s one of us, though; we haven’t been separated from the others for more than a few minutes.” Milo said, prodding the body. “For something to do this, it’d have to be both fast and powerful.”

  “It could be the new thing the Lowrians deployed,” Karl said as he hunched over the body and took a deep sniff, before shaking his head in disappointment. “Yeah, I’m getting nothing. Not the captain’s cigars, the twins’ meds, or Dyno’s powder.”

  At the mention of the new Lowrian threat, Milo’s face went thoughtful. Jaeger stepped back from the body.

  “Then we move on. We need to find the others.”

  With that, the trio moved off, leaving behind a bloody corpse, one that hid a secret.