There was a little boy standing in the middle of the street, a featureless mesh doll clutched in his frail twig of an arm. The mist shrouded his features, leaving only a skeletal silhouette standing out in the obscuring fog.

Other dolls of similar make laid strewn about the mist shrouded stone around him, little blue and grey domes with neat holes drilled through them haphazardly grafted into their criss-crossed scalps.

There wasn't much in the way of facial features on each; a pair of unblinking discs for eyes, a rictus grin stitched in where their mouth would be with calloused twine.

It was… disturbing. His chest tightened somewhat under the armor.

The Corporal looked up.

A great shadow fell over him and blotted out his view as the boy's free hand reached down and plucked him from the yard of dolls.

0-0-0

A flare of light broke through the unblinking red lens of his eyes. In that brief moment it almost felt as though they'd detached from him, the squishy orbs that synapsed them to his consciousness flickering around his surroundings with a wild and unhinged abandon.

He blinked.

A jarring rattle vibrated across the metal frame of the truck cabin, travelling through the seat beneath him up to his armored skin. A tingle raced along his bones.

He shook his head ever so slightly, and found that his vision had corrected itself now. The world around him seemed to phase back into focus, the Lieutenant sitting to his left manning the wheel, the sun-baked plains rolling past them outside the smudged windows.

He exhaled a breath he hadn't known he was holding in. The thin rasp that did manage to snake out of his barred teeth was lost among crackling radio feedback and the incessant shuddering of the truck ploughing over the earth.

The Corporal's fingers tightened just very slightly- testing the structure they laid on, mild downward pressures to ensure they were still anchored to his rifle.

Dozed off. The lack of sleep must have caught up to him? It'd only been a few days though. He'd tracked targets for two times that length before.

"-but, for the valiant men and women who won us the day here in Vasel, there is no time to rest-"

They were still reporting on that victory it seemed. The conditions outside hadn't changed much either, a lot of drying grass and dust as they skirted along the border of… some desert. He guessed it hadn't been too long since he'd drifted off.

Still, while on watch- that was unacceptable. Unexpected as well, but there wasn't much that could be done about it now.

Some desert. Where were they again?

Barious, some mental telegraph reminded him.

Switch off of watch duty with the Captain after passing it. Terrain and climate should be noticeably more temperate. Final destination in Kloden.

So it was then. He diverted his gaze back to the flat plains scrolling by outside, withering stalks of grass flittering by with an occasional bump in the terrain- all the way to the distant bright blue horizon.

Still not a single sign of life in sight. The Sergeant had said they'd be essentially 'home free' at this point, and the Corporal was starting to see why. He wondered, just a little bit, how often the squad would've gone through this exact routine, this exact route- just… waiting. With no target, no imminent threat in sight and no real knowledge of who or what laid out in the sprawling landscape that could pose a threat to them.

The radio broadcasts they received were about the only things that reminded him that, somewhere past those blue skies, there were plenty of 'threats' lying in wait.

"-anything at all to say?"

"…"

"Oh, the strong and silent type I see. Haven't really gotten to know your team too well, have you?"

A pause on the radio. He listened, as he usually did during the interview segments; using the voices to blot out the churning truck engine, while keeping his visual attention focused on the outside.

"No."

"I thought snipers usually worked in pairs?"

"Sometimes."

"Not you?"

"No."

"Not… very talkative are you?"

"No."

"Ah… well um, you wouldn't mind if I asked a few questions would you?"

"…"

"…"

"Ask them. Then leave me be."

"Right… well, um- I think it'd be, fair to say, that there's not a whole lot of your type around- uh, snipers, that is. I mean, I think, you're the first one we've had on here at least; what's it like to… be one of those few?"

He blinked.

Another quake running through the truck set his gaze straight again.

"…"

"…"

"…seeing through the scope is… uncomfortable. But necessary."

"How so?"

"It's disorienting. The lenses warp things. Twists them."

"So how is it necessary?"

"It makes things clearer."

"But you just said it's disorienting."

"It is."

"So…"

"…"

"…"

"…?"

"It lets you see farther. But the longer you peer into the scope, the more you begin to lose yourself in the distance."

"Have you… 'lost yourself' then?"

"No."

0-0-0

"Corporal."

"Yes Captain?"

It felt strange to speak after such extended silence. It shook him from the numbed routine of scanning over the dry plains outside.

"Where are we?"

He looked a little further towards to horizon, the pink-tinted stretch of sky where the sun precariously balanced itself on; just more flatness, more withering grass, more bleached earth.

"Still within the confines of-"

Barious

"Barious. Sir."

A pause. He turned his attention away from the windows now, the instinctual concentration on his distant surroundings broken as he inexplicably began to ever so slightly tense up in anticipation of new orders; it was a subtle thing, but he'd learned to remember the feeling of the tightening fibres around his fingers, when he gripped his rifle more tightly. More often than not, it was because he would soon be given the order to fire.

But there were no targets in sight. He glanced to his left, briefly meeting the red-eyed gaze of the Lieutenant who, perhaps similarly as him, was awaiting potential further instruction from their Captain.

So why did the Captain require a status report?

Switch off on watch duty after Barious.

That was why. But they weren't past Barious yet. So he shouldn't be receiving any new orders.

Unexpectedly, the Lieutenant cut in, his filtered voice crackling over the squad radio channel as well as physically reverberating within the confines of the truck cabin over the din of churning machinery.

"We should be close enough to the end of these arid plains by now, it won't be much longer before we can find somewhere more forested to stop and switch position."

"You sure you wanna take this tin can offroading in Kloden's pisshole?"

"If you prefer to walk, Sergeant, you're welcome to cut your own way through the forest."

Neither of the two officers decided to carry on with a cycle of rebukes and rebuttals as the Corporal had been expecting. Maybe they were simply too tired to bother now.

"Very well," said the Captain. "Carry on."

They carried on.