James was in a strange place that was completely white, soundless and airless. Upon further inspection, he realised that 'completely white' wasn't an entirely accurate description: a spherical, glumly colored barrier enclosed him from all sides. He wondered how exactly everything was so bright when he was so completely cut off from any discernible source of light, but he sure as hell wasn't going to complain about that.
He waded through the emptiness, trying to ignore the weird stirring in his stomach and wondering if that's how astronauts felt in their weightless space stations. He looked closely at the circular barrier, and wondered exactly how he had deduced that it was, indeed, circular. It was gigantic, and the curvature was barely noticeable. It was segmented into uniform rectangles, and the thin, viscous layer covering them, made up of thousands of giant grey and white pixels, seemed eerily similar to television static. As if on cue, the pixels coalesced to produce infinite widescreens, each playing loops of certain scenes that were intimately familiar to him. The ones closest to him were all playing variations of Jack Monroe murdering him in increasingly creative ways.
Figures.
He was trapped in a hollow sphere made up of his nightmares. How stupidly symbolic.
He snapped his eyes tight and thought as willfully as he could. Wake up. He opened his eyes and was greeted by the same whiteness. He tried again and received similar results. "Wake up!" he almost screamed. His throat still felt sore as hell.
He opened his eyes. He now had an overwhelming desire to wring the neck of whoever had coined that adage about third times and charms.
After some moments of contemplation, he supposed that he needed a path, with a number of distinctly defined checkpoints, to get out of here. He thought about that good and hard for a while.
No dice there, either.
There had to be something he was missing, he reckoned. It was like in school, where he always forgot to carry the twos in kindergarten. He had to be overlooking something in his bull-headed way of approaching this dilemma.
And that something, he realised after a while, was perspective.
This wasn't something he could escape from. This was a Category-5 Hurricane, a Deluge, a Tsunami of awe-inspiring power that was all encompassing in scale and scope. He needed a refuge, a place to hole up in and wait until it died down.
He needed a house.
Four triangular sheets, vividly coloured, materialised simultaneously. They surrounded him, interlocking at the edges to create a giant tetrahedron. They cut him off from the hypnotic pulsation of the looped nightmare screens, replacing the epileptic sensation with more soothing, albeit awkwardly posed, still shots.
He looked around, expecting some kind of a door. He shrugged when he found none.
It wasn't a house in the strictest definition of the word, but it would do.
He directed his attention towards the images.
In front of him, pale, dainty hands rested on a shawl-covered lap, the slender fingers wrapped around a cryptic doorknob.
To his right, he saw an extended hand reaching towards a lean figure not more than five feet away, his stature shrunken with fear and despair as he vacillated at the edge of a rooftop. His features were indiscernible in the darkness of the moonless night.
To his left, a large, meaty fist was drawn, gloved in dark red, bulging muscles of the arm straining against a white fabric as the limb drove through the air with frightening speed. When James looked at that, he could almost taste that familiar ache and subsequent numbness in his jaw.
Finally, beneath him three pairs of bare, almond-skinned legs trotted along a damp, grassy riverbed, hems of weatherworn frocks twirling with abandon in the morning breeze.
These visuals were flat and stationary, yet when he looked at them he found a nuance of depth and motion; a dense fluidity existed among the grains of these pictures, swirling in an invisible yet perceptible manner, casting the illusion of a thin surface guarding unexplored wonders beyond it.
He started towards one wall, intending to touch it. But then all of a sudden, he felt something hit his head. Dumbfounded, he looked around and saw nothing out of place. He rubbed his temple, nursing the fading pain when he felt something sting his scalp.
It was little more than a pinprick, but soon it was a thousand pinpricks, and that was enough to wake him up.
James sat upright, rubbing his numbed cheeks back to his life as he took in his surroundings, which were significantly changed from how they had been but an hour ago. The mist was back, and it had returned with a vengeance. It was so dense that it seemed to be almost tangible, as though he could grab a handful. The temperature had dropped like a stone, and he could feel his bones creak even through the insulated lining of his suit. Snowflakes drifted serenely through the air, taking detours in the form of freeform dance routines. The snow level had risen noticeably as well.
However, there still remained the matter of determining the identity of the mysterious assailants who had taken a liking to his head. And thankfully, he didn't have to exert much effort on deducing the answer, for without any warning a pea-sized ball of white fell through the fog and hit him squarely on the head. When he touched the point of impact, he found nothing but flaky bits of snow.
"Soft hail," he said to himself softly. Thank God for small favors. If that were regular hail, he would have had a concussion at the very least.
It was Phyla's turn to take watch now, and she was sitting upon the boulder. When James looked at her, he saw that her otherwise unblemished face was covered in irregular patches of snow. "It tickles, doesn't it?" she said, smiling. She welcomed this little distraction, finding pleasures in the small things of the afterlife while there was still time to do so.
Her sincere glee was infectious, and James couldn't help but grin back as he pulled the cowl over his head. That lessened the intensity of the impacts significantly, and now indeed they 'tickled'. He felt a twinge of regret when he realised that he had never gotten around to thanking Stark for the impact proofing.
It was then that he heard it.
Now, James had good ears. He didn't have Superman ears, eagle ears or even dog ears. He just had good human ears. You would be surprised at the number of sounds we have learned to block out in our day-to-day lives. James just knew how to listen.
And when he heard that faint but distinct swishing sound tear through the fog, James listened good and hard.
It couldn't be the hail—it had a peculiar acceleration that was fairly distinguishable from gravitational pull. Puzzlingly, the sound was intensified in volume, but waned in frequency. And that was when he realised what it was.
It had to be projectile motion.
"Phyla! Shields!" he yelled, loud enough to break Alex's thin sleep. The boy heard the sound and knew what it was immediately. He swiftly grabbed his scabbard from the ground and swung it over his back.
Phyla was dumbfounded. "But why, they are harmless-"
"NOW!"
Phyla complied, erecting a hemispherical dome of light some ten feet in radius over their heads; and just in time, too, for in the moment after twenty arrows clanged cacophonously against the barrier.
Phyla's surprise at the attack was so palpable that her grip on the light dome slackened for a moment, and an arrow broke through the weakened lining. She recovered immediately after, and the reinforced barrier snapped the invading arrows in twain.
James waited a while for a potential second wave, and then ordered Phyla to dissipate the dome. He knelt down, picking up an arrow from the snow and examining it closely.
"You see that?" he showed the other two, twirling the arrow intently, "Iron shaft, which is pretty unusual. The broadhead," he pointed to the tip of the arrow, "has four blades, and made of steel, too. See how it's dipped in dried blood? Filthy arrowheads increase the chances of the wounded dying from infection. These people mean their business, that's for sure."
He stood up, tossing the arrow to the ground. He looked at the other two expectedly; judging by their looks of determination, they were of like minds with what he was going to say. Even Alex seemed to have adjusted to the stings of the hail.
"If they could track us here, in this weather," he said, his voice steady and composed, "they could track us anywhere, anytime. We need to make a stand."
It was then that he realised that the wolf was nowhere to be seen. He frowned. It had picked a hell of a time to go scrounging about in the wild.
"Alright," he said, drawing his Luger from the holster, "we need to set up a perimeter. Triangle formation. Watch your backs and inform each other when you spot any moving target. We don't move out until I say so. Is that clear?"
Phyla and Alex nodded. The latter actually seemed enlivened at the prospect of an impending skirmish. James didn't begrudge that-It's easy to get bored in the middle of nowhere.
They picked a ground with relatively level terrain and took their positions. The familiar sword with the inscribed crucifix hilt materialised between Phyla's cupped hands, and she drew it back as she stood in a defensive pose. Alex reached over his shoulder and drew the scabbard. With steely deliberation, he unsheathed his katana.
James was caught off-guard when he saw the unusual blade, for it was covered entirely in a dark crimson- obviously, a huge blood stain- that gleamed even in the dim light of the fog, more so than the golden hilt. Although the stain was dried, it seemed to possess a strange fluidity, as though it were some sort of ruby-red mercury. The weapon exuded a formidable aura as Alex wielded it, his perfect stance belying years of rigorous training and discipline.
James couldn't help but feel a little stupid for bringing a gun to a swordfight.
"I have something," Alex spoke suddenly, "Northwest. Range, 200 meters."
James focused his hearing in the direction, searching for the disturbance. He found it soon enough; it was faint, but he could recognise that guttural echo anywhere.
In general, wolves don't bark that much, and even when they do, it's usually for one of two purposes- either to alert others about danger or to signify that they are closing in on a kill. That there was a group of wolves hunting the travelers was now certain beyond the shadow of a doubt, and it wouldn't take the world's greatest wolf expert to guess what they were barking about at the moment.
Alex had caught on just as quickly. "It's them, right?" he paused, an unusual mixture of trepidation and eagerness seeping into his tone as he continued, "I thought they sounded familiar."
"You are a quick learner, I will give you that." James grimaced. He was trying to make some last minute tactical adjustments. Of course, their attackers were working with wolves. It was completely logical if one considered Jon's wolf, who was still conspicuously absent from this party. A fresh wave of paranoia attacked his mind- was it the beast that alerted them?
"You know," Phyla remarked wryly, "somehow, I get the idea that you guys know something about these attackers that I don't..."
"They are friends of his." Alex pointed towards James with his thumb. James simply grinned. He appreciated the levity in crunch times like these. "By the way, I hate to be that guy, but I told you so."
"Well, kid..." James said, "we are on that bridge, and we are crossing it."
James hoped those weren't famous last words.
Now, they waited. The waiting was always the worst.
James would never forget that night in Pavuvu, when a draftee had gotten buck-naked in the middle of a freezing downpour, walked to the clotheslines where every grunt was busy taking their now-wet clothes off and then tried to mumble something incoherently to the impromptu crowd, waving his service sidearm like a maniac the entire time. He gave up after a couple of seconds and simply ate the bullet.
He glanced at the two standing by his side. Training and experience were two very different things. He just hoped they weren't about to find that out the hard way.
They didn't have to wait for long. Now they could all hear the noise, getting louder and louder at a blistering rate, and it was very much similar to the thundering of hooves.
"Contact." James announced tersely, "Foot-mobile. 9'o clock, 50 meters."
A dark silhouette tore through the mist, and its monstrous size, coupled with its unusual shape, was enough to give James pause as he took it in. This was no ordinary wolf. Hell, it wasn't even anything like Jon's wolf.
If their resident wolf had resembled a Shetland Pony in stature, then this one was closer to an American Bison on steroids. It was easily five feet at the shoulder, and perhaps ten feet in length from snout to tail. Its dense black fur became more apparent as it gallopped closer, as did its face, which was a terrifying mixture of bear and hyena-like features. Its muzzle was long like the latter's, and its eyes were black beads like the former's.
However, James was so captivated by the beast's appearance that, until now, he hadn't noticed that it wasn't alone.
"Well, isn't that swell!" James snorted nervously when he spotted the strange rider upon the saddled wolf.
He- if it was a he— was humanoid, but definitely wasn't human. He had a pale, dilapidated skin that was too leathery and dry, as though it was harvested from something else and then put over this creature's musculature in some twisted taxidermist prank. Fangs portruded out of wide mouth, and, along with the reddish, slanted eyes and flat nose, they looked appropriate on a face that only a mother could love. He was smaller than humans of average height, and he was bow-legged and long-armed, which seemed to swing limply like those of an ape.
He wore armor that was cobbled together from various sources: the vambraces and the greaves were made of corrugated steel, the gauntlets and boots of badly-tanned leather. A rusting steel-plate cuirass ran over a dirty grey tunic. There were no spaulders, or a helmet for that matter. Clearly, whatever group this creature hailed from didn't have that many of those, if they had any at all.
He shouted when he spotted them, speaking in a hoarse, biting dialect. He spit out the broken words in short bursts, pausing significantly between each sentence fragment. It was as though he hated to talk at all.
James agreed with that sort of sentiment. It was way past time for talking. He cocked his Luger and lined up the shot at the rider's skull.
The rider reacted immediately, fetching his bow and letting loose a flurry of arrows at the three of them with speed and accuracy that would make Genghis Khan proud. They ripped through the air despite the weather, the propelling force being so great that the arcing motions were practically nonexistent. Within seconds, they were within a hair's breadth of their temples- but even then Alex was faster. He spun his sword from his right side to the left in a great arc, snapping the iron shafts like a twig.
"Here," he said, putting his hand on the barrel of James' pistol and lowering it as he did so, "let me handle this."
James looked at him questioningly. He turned to look at Phyla, who was more amused than terrified at the proposition. James shrugged in concession.
"Knock yourself out, kid."
As affirmation, Alex switched from holding his sword double-handed to wielding it with his right, pointing it downward and away from his body, as though goading the rider to attack. He approached the mounted enemy with the utmost composure. There was no use sprinting in snow that reached up to one's knees.
The rider snarled, firing multiple arrows at the advancing teen in rapid succession. Alex simply swung his sword left to right, and then back again. It oscillated to and fro like a pendulum that also spun on its own separate axis, leaving a mirage of a blood-red rainbow in its wake.
The rider yelled in frustration when he reached for his quiver for the umpteenth time and grasped nothing but air. He tossed his bow to the ground and brought out a black, dirty scimitar. Alex continued unabated; the distance between them was scarcely ten meters, and decreasing.
The enraged rider kicked his steed hard with his iron-spiked spurs, and that galvanised it into an even faster gallop towards Alex. The rider continued to spur it on, holding the reins tightly in one hand while brandishing the scimitar menacingly in the other.
Alex waited until his enemy was within a few feet of his position before gripping his sword with both hands once again and lunging towards the incoming rider, who swung at him reflexively, overestimated his range and missed.
Alex gave neither him nor the wolf a second chance: he swung the sword in a massive uppercut, splitting the beast's muzzle, the rider's torso and skull in two like butter. Showers of blood burst forth from the gashes, and the crimson of the wolf and the oil black of the rider intermingled with entrails of both to create a dreary fountain of guts and gore. The wolf continued sprinting on autopilot for a split-second longer before throwing its rider off and crashing into the ground.
Alex landed on his feet, and took a moment to observe his handiwork.
Everything erupted into chaos after that.
Hoarse, bloodcurdling yells filled the air as looters rushed out of the woodwork from all directions, most of them on foot. There were a dozen of them, at least. The most physically fit specimens ran at them, some of them dual wielding strange swords that ended in an arc instead of a tip, while the leaner raiders formed a defensive line and shot arrows in suppressing fire. It was a clever strategy, meant to box the three in and serve them up to the shock troopers in a nice little package, wrapped up with a figurative bow.
The only viable reaction was to break ranks and engage the runners head on. James briefly locked eyes with the other two in a steely gaze, and their course was decided without any words being spoken. They dispersed and progressed towards their pursuers, each disappearing from the other's line of sight as they did so.
Of course, the raiders had counted on that. Divide and conquer was the name of the game. To hell with that, James thought with contempt. He was going to take them on in their own game and beat them, too.
He fired off quick shots as he strode towards them, targeting their limbs and their guts in order to disarm and disable them through non-lethal means. This seemed to work, too- the gaping holes left in the wrists and arms of some of the chargers effectively put them out of combat. The hand cannon crackled thunderously each time it was fired, an explosive declaration of intent that made no small impression on its victims.
But the huge recoil of the gun was too much for James' normal arm, which started to ache after the first few shots. This threw off his equilibrium, and an arrow flew through his wrist the moment after, the resulting surge of pain causing it to jerk back involuntarily and fling the sidearm onto the ground. Twin swords swung for his neck in a converging motion, and he barely dodged them by rolling past his attacker. He spun back, grabbing the arrow and tugged it out of his palm. The barbs pulled on his nerves like guitar strings, and the subsequent severance eked out a few electric notes that played Iron Maiden on his synapses.
Six brutes advanced on him in a pincer movement: two approached from the front while the other four blocked his left and right flanks. He spotted his Luger lying a good ten feet beyond the wall of advancing enemies. He fetched his knife from his waist, a deadly calm enveloping his being as he did so. The non-lethal option was out of the window.
One looter charged from the right flank, while two others tried to circle from the left flank to his back. Their movements were telegraphed, and James aimed to take full advantage of that. His Systema knife training was swimming to the forefront of his consciousness; now, the knife was no longer a separate weapon but simply an extension of his hand. He spun around to his right flank, parrying a sword strike and riposting his attacker in the jugular and the right internal carotid artery.
He transitioned seamlessly into Krav Maga, smashing his concrete-hard elbow into the face of one of the would-be-backstabbers, while he grabbed the other's neck in a crushing sleeper hold that cut off blood supply to the brain. He drove his foot into the elbowed raider's chest in a brutal strike that had the cumulative effect of a mild coronary stroke. He went down to his knees and flipped the subdued raider over, executing a standard snapmare. He jerked the neck upwards just before his opponent's back hit the ground. Newton's Third Law took care of the rest, and the spinal column severed in a sickening crunch.
He sprinted towards his three remaining foes, two of which were already drawing their bowstrings. The third, one of those dual-wielding, imposing thugs, thought it was better than to engage James head on, sheathing his swords and fetching the crossbow from his back. Crossbow strings were notoriously hard to pull: most medieval crossbowmen would bend over, hook the string to a metal claw they would have hanging below their waists, and stand up. This raider, however, drew his crossbow with his bare hands, grunting loudly as to demonstrate his raw strength.
James ducked instinctively even as he kept charging, easily dodging the arrows. But the crossbow bolt was a different thing; the crossbowman aimed low, and when he released the string, the bolt tore through the air at a hundred miles per hour. James couldn't see it, but he could feel and hear the air around him being shredded by the primitive missile. He swung his knife upwards just as the bolt was about to pierce his jugular; a resounding clang echoed as the bolt was snapped in two.
However, tearing through a steel shaft wasn't the same as tearing through an iron shaft, and the knife's edge was already blunted if not cracked. James saw a small opening in the brute's defense and took his chance, pressing the small red button at the end of the knife's hilt. The blade promptly shot off and lodged itself firmly inside the crossbowman's bloated throat.
This only served to enrage the brute further, who began drawing his next bolt immediately. This time, James was defenseless. The bolt entered his right thigh and pierced through to the calf, and James went tumbling over. A brace of arrows embedded themselves into his back the moment after.
The brute yelled savagely, discarding his crossbow and redrawing his swords as he closed in for the kill. Still on the ground, James tore out the bolt and the arrows. The death metal was still blasting through his pain receptors, but sheer adrenaline had drowned its volume considerably. James rolled clockwise, barely avoiding the twin blades as they drove into the ground. Before the brute could recover, he swung his legs counterclockwise, closing around the brute's neck in a vise grip. He then launched himself off the ground and spun to his feet, compressing his hard calf muscles as tightly as he could.
The subsequent crunching sound was all the confirmation he needed.
Now on his feet, James retrieved his detached blade from the corpse's throat. Even as he fitted it back into the knife's hilt, a new wave of raiders closed in on him from all directions.
It all blurred together after that.
And for that, he was thankful.
He reached past the miasma of the sharp and blunt force traumas, both inflicted and received, and observed the events of the fog-obscured horizon with startling clarity. Phyla's movements were so swift that she simply appeared to be a bulbous beam of light, zipping to and fro through the sky with the grace of a figure skater doing pirouettes in a zero-gravity environment. Huge black silhouettes were scattered across the surroundings, roaring through the impromptu battlefield with terrifying agility that was more often than not neutralised with a swift splash of crimson. Two such shapes tried to break ranks and approach James, but they were cut off- a golden lance tore through one, while the other was ferociously tackled by a searing white outline of similar girth that had appeared out of nowhere.
The battle frenzy was over before he knew it, and he found himself standing over a dozen limp bodies. The wounded outnumbered the casualties by a healthy margin; still, five fatalities were five too many. His own body was covered in knife gashes, and arrow wounds. He was used to the pain by now- but he couldn't say the same about his handiwork.
What a waste.
He felt like an alcoholic who had fallen off the wagon the day after completing his first year of sobriety.
Not for the first time since he had woken up in that bar- and it certainly wasn't going to be the last- James found himself wishing he still had the shield. It was for their benefit as much as his. He fetched his Luger from the ground and holstered it, before setting off to search for his companions.
The weather was changing, and James had a feeling in his gut that it was changing for the worse. The soft hail had stopped falling, and that was pretty much the extent of the good news. The snow fall had become markedly acute, and the wind was starting to pick up at a steady rate. The mist was starting to fade, but James' visibility was still shot to hell.
It was the calm before the storm, and that truism could be very literal in this case.
The remaining raiders seemed to be aware of this possibility as well. He ran into some stranglers, and some of them shot off a few warning arrows in his direction before shouting hoarsely and retreating to the north. As if in protest, a bout of faint, mellifluous whining broke through the air, followed by a series of even fainter, dog-like yelps. This culminated in a forceful chorus of howls, once again commanded by that one domineering voice. The raiders shouted back in reply, some of them angrier than others, but eventually their voices died back, and the howling stopped shortly after.
James didn't plan on sticking around to find out what exactly the dispute was about. He wanted to get out of here in one piece, and he wanted that yesterday. There were worse things at work here than raiders and wolves.
It was shortly after that when James saw his general vicinity starting to increase in luminosity at a steady rate, with the strange light coming in from an increasingly skewed angle from the horizontal plane. When he turned back, he saw the source of this unusual phenomenon. A huge halo had appeared in the sky. It was shaped like an eye, with a dense nucleus that was bordered by distant, diffusive arcs on either side.
How and why this had appeared, James could care less about. What he did care about, however, was that it offered a window of enhanced visibility, and he was hell-bent on making as much use of that as he could.
And sure enough, he spotted two distinct silhouettes in the horizon- one was tall and slender, covered in a silky black that reflected a good deal of light, while the sword clutched in the hands of the smaller figure glowed like a jewel. That was all fine and good, but there was one thing that rubbed him the wrong way.
They were going in the same direction that he was, and they had a pretty good head start on him to boot.
"Alex! Phyla!" he yelled as loud as he could through cupped hands, "I am right behind you!" His words fell on deaf ears. The deafening sound of the snow fall was starting to overwhelm everything else.
"Turn back!" he yelled again, wading as fast as he could through two feet of snow, "You are going the wrong way! We need to re-"
He stopped short when he heard the ice beneath his feet crack, and he looked down to see that he was at the very edge of the glacier. A thin layer of ice waited some two hundred feet below.
"Talk about a close shave..."
James retraced his steps, intent on working out an alternate route to his separated companions. He hadn't gone twenty meters when he found a nasty surprise waiting for him.
Two huge wolves were trotting by, flanked at either side by two smaller pups, which were already as big as a Beagle. These were of the same kind as the raider mounts, but even then they were behemoths by comparison. By the way they carried themselves, there was no doubt in James' mind. This was the Alpha pair. They were each carrying great chunks of raider flesh in their jaws when they stopped still upon seeing him. They dropped the carcasses to the ground and stared at him intently, growling and wagging their tails as they stood their ground. Their spawn hid behind their great bodies, stealing furtive glances at the intruder while waiting for the parents to deal with him.
Slowly, James unholstered his pistol, taking a crouching position as he did so. Don't break eye contact. Don't run. Don't make them see you as a threat.
A familiar flash of white registered in the corner of his eye. Jon's wolf had reappeared; it was silently stalking the Alpha pair from behind, keeping its head low and making no sound that was perceptible to the human ear. But the wolf ear is a thousand times more sensitive than the human ear, and the wolf nose a million times more receptive than the human nose- and sure enough, the Alpha female turned expectantly and barked angrily when it spotted the spy.
It all happened so fast.
The two lunged at each other, as black clashed against white. The Alpha male reacted immediately, launching itself towards the white attacker to help its mate. On reflex, James leveled his Luger and fired on the male from behind. The wolf roared, whirling back and sprinting at James with full force. James backed up as fast as he could while remaining crouched, getting off as many shots on target as he could. It was on him quicker than lightning, and before he could react he felt twelve hundred pounds of sharp force trauma crushing his gun arm and one ton of weight spearing him to the ground. A redux of the Zemo plane explosion blared through his pain receptors.
The impact proofing prevented the arm from being torn off altogether, but barely. It took all his focus and willpower not to slip into a shock and let go of his knife. With a mighty heave, he drove the blade on top of the animal's already wounded skull as hard as he could.
The beast reacted violently, jerking him around by his arm like a ragdoll. He swung his legs over the beast's back and wrapped them around its torso. He hung on, stabbing through the punctured skull repeatedly. After what had felt like an eternity of agony, the wolf finally succumbed to its wounds and slumped to the ground, almost crushing James' arm beneath it.
With unimaginable effort, James wrestled free a moment after to see that the female was still wrestling with Jon's wolf, whose snow-white coat was marred by huge gashes and torn-off flesh. James picked up his Luger with his left hand, fighting through the numbness spreading through his extremities long enough to get off a shot at the back of the female's unguarded skull. It collapsed in a heap and died shortly after.
James fought down the urge to vomit when he looked down at his mangled right arm. It was broken, and the calcium of his bones was visible at the epicenter of the bite. He had seen far worse during the Normandy Landing alone, let alone the War- but it was always a different, mortifying experience from one's own end.
Jon's wolf had sustained injuries of a less severe nature, but they were enough to give the mighty beast more than a moment's pause. It whimpered as it struggled to get to its feet. The pups, which were huddled together not far away, whined fearfully in response. This attracted the attention of the wounded wolf, which turned in their direction and stared silently. For the longest time, it made no further move.
James could empathise with the animal's plight more than one could imagine. The debilitating guilt that followed after orphaning children was intimately familiar to him.
James tore off the rest of the rags on his right arm and used them as a tourniquet to wrap around the wound. Even as he forced himself to his feet, James had a funny feeling in his gut that made him wary still. This time, he didn't bother holstering his gun. He might have further need of it.
The wolf approached the pups, which uncoiled and stared at her strange form with open curiosity. It pushed against their noses and they licked its muzzle in reply, yelping intermittently as they did so.
Yet this small moment of tenderness was just that- a moment, and when it passed, bottomless despair followed immediately after.
The temperature plummeted like a stone, and the pups were the first to react to the closeness of the fell presence, scuttling in opposite directions. The wolf turned, ready to pounce: but it wasn't quick enough, and it howled as something unimaginably sharp pierced past its hide as though it were paper.
It was a crystal sword that looked like a flattened icicle. As foreboding as it was, its wielder was multitudes more terrifying. It walked with a stiffness that brought to James' mind the Frankenstein movies of the twenties, except that there was a dreadful reality to this motion. It was humanoid, and shorter than a giant, but still damn taller than any human he had ever seen. It was naked, except for an ancient brown loincloth that didn't seem to hide anything worth concealing, anyway. Chalk-white, sinewy skin stretched over a skeletal, gaunt body, topped by a balding thatch of wispy white hair. It had deep blue eyes that burned, but they radiated coldness rather than warmth. James had seen them before- Jon had identical eyes in his reanimated state.
This had to be the nameless entity that the dying man had so fearfully referred to. And it had been waiting for James all this time.
James, like all good soldiers, was adept at compartmentalisation. He sectioned off the part of his mind reeling in horror and started unloading his Luger at the wraith. The bullets seemed to faze it not one bit, and it walked over to his position with deathly certainty. James emptied his clip, backing away to put some space between him and the advancing specter as he fiddled around his pouches for spare ammunition. He stopped when he couldn't find any more ground to maintain his footing, turning back to see that he had been driven straight back to the glacier's edge.
The wraith eyed James' left arm sinisterly, then outreached its shield arm and clenched its fist. Immediately, the pain receptors in his numbed wrist came alive, and the resulting agony spread through his body like wildfire, driving him down to his knees.
The wraith stopped only a few inches away from an exhausted James, cheeks drawn in and eyes widening and contracting as they peered down on him. Grim tidings were writ large in those bottomless pits.
You are damned.
You are doomed.
There is nothing you can do to save yourself.
Accept your fate.
Its edict being announced, the wraith raised its sword and touched James' chest with its end. Immediately, all the warmth drained out of his body and his pulse flatlined.
His life was flashing before his eyes.
It was 1945. He was clinging on to a booby-trapped plane roaring over the English Channel.
It was 2011. He was on a Chinook helicopter, and Natasha was mumbling something into his ear. He couldn't hear her.
With finality, the wraith pressed the sword, nudging him towards the edge. His limp body toppled over like deadweight. He fell through the ice, and the darkness of the water embraced him like an old friend. He fell deeper and deeper, at a rate that was so constant that he felt as though he was lying still.
It all made sense.
Maybe this was how it was supposed to end, after all.
But for the first time since he had woken up in that bar, James wanted to live.
Maybe he didn't deserve a second chance after all that he had done.
But damn it, he wanted to live more than anything else he had ever wanted in his life.
"You are going to be alright," Natasha said, that understanding smile upon her ruby-red lips.
James chuckled. Or at least, he thought he did.
"No, really," she widened her smile knowingly, "You are going to be alright."
And then the darkness parted like the Red Sea.
