The shrill beauty of the frozen forest was not the kind of thing Curie had ever thought she would encounter in Vault 81, nor the cohesive elements of a society unaffected by the brutal alterations of radiation. Yet here she was. Her chance to bring civilisation, technology and science to new people's was an opportunity too great to miss!
They were now even further north than the encampments. Further than ever before in fact, she figured. She was not tired like her flesh and blood companions, but it wasn't that which concerned her. It was the eery reports of cannibals living in these lands. Fjorn and his tribe, the Woodhides, were a relatively civilised group among these 'wildlings', but some truly did deserve their reputation. She had heard stories east of a man who offered his own offspring as sacrifices to strange gods, and of monstrous Pleistocene creatures dwelling in these lands. She had already seen giants, and the rumours of mammoths and Megaloceros being present here too were too great opportunities to resist. Studying intact fauna like this would add so much to the understanding of the ancient. So much progress for science!
"What you thinkin' about, machine? Running some fancy things in...whatever you have instead of a brain?" Rugas the archer asked as he eyed her up from the side. He was a new recruit to this expedition they were launching to the far north. The main purpose of this was to investigate disappearances in the region, though it seemed there was also suspicion that Mance Rayder was hiding something from Fjorn too. Deacon had noted what kind of man Rayder was, a man of deceptive arts like himself. It takes one to know one, her processors thought as she reflected on the situation. She returned herself to the conversation, all in a time far beyond what the human mind could comprehend.
"Just all the research and data I will be able to collect here. You can deal with these military threats of savage cannibals and rival tribes, and I will do whatever research I can here. I can defend myself of course, and you if need be, but only as a last resort. That is my purpose among you after all. I hope I can not be an obstruction to you."
"Indeed, let's hope so." The archers were certainly of use to the group as they marched up. But it was the Minutemen who were the true leaders. The lords of Westeros were not informed of this, it was certain, or else the Minutemen and they would certainly fall into dispute, and perhaps even war. To collaborate with the enemy could not be taken lightly after all! The minutemen had technology and logistics on their side, far more than any disorganised tribes.
One example of such technologies were the group of military grade robots who aimlessly followed them around the outer peripheries of the group. They had lasers, guns and armour thicker than any medieval plate. Some would give power armour a run for its money.
Rugas started talking again. "I can't wait to slaughter these scum! When we get together with the Whitefeathers again, we'll smash those cannibals to pieces. Maybe I can kidnap a new wife from them! Hope she's better than the last one." Curie kept her disgust to herself.
"Alright, soldiers!" Commander Jenny gave as she led the small army. "We are dealing with an unknown threat here that is very skilled with the terrain. They may not be technologically adept, but they probably have numbers on their side, and they have knowledge here. Watch out for traps. Even our robots won't be much help against those, I'm afraid. Make sure they don't make you complacent, and you'll almost certainly make you way out of this alive. Is that clear, men?"
A unanimous positive response was heard across the Minutemen, but Curie felt too busy to comply. She was not truly a minuteman after all, merely a collaborating scientist. She had no part among them, or with these 'Railroad' Deacon belonged to.
Neither did the free folk, who had their own hierarchy here. Led by Harren, the archers and spearmen would know the terrain reasonably well, and the many ways to live off the land, as had been shown before. As experts of the hunt, they would doubtlessly find the food to survive the shivering winters here. Curie used her solar panels to charge her batteries instead. That way, no animal or plant could come under harm from her. all she would hope to do is to continue research on the denizens of these intact forests. She prided herself on this.
Rustling could be heard from far ahead. Perhaps it was a sign of some local creature to study, or one of the Free folk had sent scouts to stalk them as they went into the woods? She sent power to her thruster, elevating her well above her normal height, allowing her to scout the locations more easily. She noticed it was some ferret, one that she felt didn't deserve to be made food by the humans she travelled with. She felt the need to decieve to save the life of another.
"No signs of life here. It must have been leaves rustling in the wind!" Part of her wanted to see what these alleged cannibal tribes Fjorn had referenced were about. to deal with groups as monstrous as raiders and supermutants again would take out the moral ambiguity that was developed around the conflicts between local tribes, all trying desperately to survive out here. In the lands north of the Wall, distinguishing right from wrong in such situations became very difficult. She knew what she should do at least.
Deacon came up from far behind, seemingly wanting some time alone. "Sorry guys, had to take nature's call, you know the drill!" Curie figures that he had stayed far too long merely for urination, and no signs of deficating were present on his bodily posture, though these weren't always easy to detect even for her.
"Took a damned long time pissing, you did." Harren noted. "We don't have time here. Winter hasn't come yet, but it will sooner or later, and these tribes may get to us even sooner. Can't say it's a fate I'd like to suffer, though you may have something different to offer? All those secret times away must have something, right?" He huffed and crept forward, ever ready in case predators came.
"I can agree on the not getting eaten part, but I can't help wonder why you're being so secretive about what's up here, so maybe you should give us slack! We're Minutemen and we just want to bring justice where we go!" Curie knew from her experience with Deacon privately that he was the kind to investigate rumours and track over great distances on unknown sources. It was clear he was up to something with Railroad H.Q. It just wasn't clear to her yet.
"Calm down, men." Commander Jenny barked. "We're on a very specific mission here, let's not screw this over for the sake of someone going for a piss!" Everyone was quiet now. Curie imagined the wildlings like Harren would protest, but then again, Jenny and the other Minutemen had vastly superior weapons. They weren't as disciplined as the Brotherhood or fanatical as the Railroad, but they had a serious edge against wildlings and most raiders, from what she could observe.
But as her optic processors observed her sides, she could see the Minutemens' weakness clearly as well. They were now outnumbered by Wildlings. Their intentions are good and kind, but their ambition is their curse, she thought. And if they are not careful, their downfall.
Harren pointed ahead with his bow. "There. We're close." He pointed at a marked tree, alone and cut off from the rest of the trees. A red arrow pointed up. "That is the sign of the White Feathers. Our allies for the past five generations. Fjorn's...ancestor made a pact with the Feathers and our tribes act as one in battle ever since. We are nearing their territory." As they marched forward, Curie noticed a change in the forest. It was not as pristine as it was, but some had been cut down, presumably to make wood for the camp.
"Aren't there normally scouts or something to welcome you?" Corporal Alan noted. He was low in rank among the Minutemen, but he was one of its primary technicians who handled the machines. Lacking Curie's self awareness, they were just tools of gardening, cultivation and defense. Most dangerous of them all was the Assaultron Gorgon he named "Zap". It was te most powerful of its kind: rare even among the Gunner ranks. She had heard it had killed at least seven super-mutants, if not more, with little but a scratch on it. Even a deathclaw matriarch failed to take it down. Nothing that dangerous dwelled up here, surely?
Harren turned back. "That is true. The cannibals have attacked, and we don't know how many they have lost yet." He readied his bow. Jenny raised her gun and nodded the other Minutemen to do the same. Deacon alone kept his weapon in its holster. Curie did not want to fight today, but it seemed there would be no choice.
She saw something in the distance, through the blizzard blowing ahead. A vague shadow, that became clearer as she zoomed in with her cameras. Silhouettes. Of men. With weapons in hand!
"Gentleman, it seems we are under attack! Right ahead. They seem to be coming in our direction armed with axes of some sort! But-" before she could finish, Rugas and his brother Orig got their bows out and fired.
One missed, the other struck a target on the leg, slowing them down. She advanced ahead, switching to infrared vision to see how many targets there were. There were at least nine of them, and they all had high heart rates, though something didn't seem right.
Officer Jenny opened fire on the cannibals, who seemed to utterly ignore the guns aimed at them, and she and her Minutemen comrades fired at the upcoming savages, downing four of them. Private Macdonald, the last survivor of the raider attack days earlier, tripped one with a butt of his rifle, while a sixth, a ragged axe-man with blood around his mouth was hit clean by Marek's own axe, cringing as his steaming entrails landed in the snow.
Macdonald held the spearwoman down with the butt of his rifle, crying out "What did you do with the Whitefeathers? Tell us!" The woman turned up, shaking. She had fear in her eyes, Curie noticed. A deep primordial fear. She seemed to want to speak, yet also seemed unable to.
"She's obviously scared by your gun, Mac." Deacon stepped in, under his John Johnson disguise. "Maybe turn it down a bit?" Curie knew better than this though.
"No, private Johnson." Jenny stepped forward. "She's never even seen a gun before. She's not afraid of our weapons, or even us. The others who came for us don't seem to be any different. Something happened in that camp."
She was right. The irregular heartbeats and breathing Curie detected were signs of fear, not anger or rage. If cannibalism meant little to these people, what could?
Before she could continue, one of her men spoke out. "You're saying we killed them for nothing? Fleeing people for nothing?"
Red Rugas, fiery as his hair, turned to this private. "Nothing? Those we killed were savages who ate the flesh of their fellow men and threatened divisions within Rayder's army! They deserved a far more painful death than what we gave. We can rectify it with this woman!"
Jenny stepped forward. "No. We can use her to lead us to the Whitefeathers' camp, and if we can get past her obvious post-traumatic stress, perhaps some information on what happened. See if anything's changed since Harren's last journey there. You know what I'm saying?"
Rugas, with his axe aiming towards the captive, stood at odds, his face contorted in rage, but ultimately, his heart rate reduced and he relented. The snow died down now. The way ahead started to become clearer as a result, but only very slowly. The prisoner was handcuffed by MacDonald and she was dragged forward with the others. Curie felt confusion. Should she pity her, or shun her? There was only one way to find out.
More red arrows appeared on the trees, with white feathers now on them. But the trees were stripped and some smeared with blood. As Harren noted immediately afterwards, "something isn't right here."
The captive, previously silent and quietly walking, suddenly started to wail as she entered the grounds first. She turned round and screamed to try and get out again. Two Wildling axe men held her in place, shouting to restrain her and calm her, while Deacon stepped aside awkwardly. Curie entered. Now she could see what there was to scream about.
"Dear god." She heard one of the Minutemen exclaim as she saw a dead child near the gate. It must have been an eight year old girl. Even in the Commomwealth, the slaughter of children tended to be carried out by only the worst raiders and cruellest gunners. Her dead eyes looked up to the sky, as if crying out in warning. As her other optic sensor turned, Harren and the archers moved in first.
"By the gods, they're all dead! The Whitefeathers are no more!" Marek dropped to his knees, murmuring. Perhaps he was praying to the Old Gods that lived in these trees? She would need to gather more data on which trees these were. But the tragedy at hand was shaking her conscience to it's core.
"Oh all the innocents who perished here!" She exclaimed as the corpses were flung around each corner of the camp, equivalent to over one hundred metres from side to side. Men, women, children, dogs, aurochs and even a Megaloceros lay there. She saw that there were different garments on some of the corpses too.
"Fjorn will be furious about this!" Harren exclaimed. "We shall scout the area for signs, so-" he was cut off.
"There's Clan corpses here too, Harren. Quite a few actually." Orig pointed around to one of the marked corpses, with red face paint like blood and the skins of mammoth instead of reindeer.
Rugas dismised it in an instant. "The Whitefeathers would have certainly fought back against these brutes. Their losses would be too much."
Harren seemed unsure. "Then why were they running from the camp? And some of these men looked surprised. As if they were hit by something else. A third tribe perhaps?"
"Whatever it is," Jenny started. "We better deal with it as soon as possible. If this is some other tribe, or beasts, we need to set up a parameter and deal with them responsibly."
"If they are beasts." MacDonald said. "We've seen goddamn giants here! What else are they hiding up here? Yeti? Sabre-tooth? Ice dragon?"
Jenny aimed her carbine at him. She certainly has no time for dissent, Curie though as she observed from her left optical frame. "Silence, private! Your irrational fears are unwarranted, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for this to have occurred. We just need to find out what."
Curie observed in her right optic that some signs of disturbance were present in the snow, near some of the corpses. Some rodent could have done it, such as a vole. Yet her monitors could detect no heartbeat. The Minutemen would not believe her if she voiced her concern.
"Rugas, burn the corpses. Now!" Harren started, as he took his bow out, ready for some unknown threat. "We can't take any risks."
Deacon raised his voice this time. "What do you mean risks?" He looked around to his 'fellow' Minutemen. "Sure a cremation's nice and respectful, but we could need that fire to warm ourselves. And I didn't think you'd want to burn those cannibals."
Harren turned to him. "Trust me, we have to. You might think us a people of tall tales, but those tales are there for a reason. As I said, we must burn them."
"That will be all, private." Jenny got her signal to Peterson, the demolitions expert of they had bought along should the need arise, who got out his flamethrower.
He was a ragged man, probably in his fifties. He had likely served under the old general before Nathan, and disbanded upon his predecessor's death. His red beard seemed rusted, and his eyes, eyes that once shone with life, felt empty, as if missing something inside. The weapon would be handy for the cremations taking place. Cure wasn't sure why this needed to be done though.
Tradition perhaps? Many cultures in the prewar world would burn their dead ceremonially, so perhaps it was a deep rooted tradition here. Or was it to prevent animals from raiding camps?
MacDonald pushed forth the captive. As the last survivor of the true 'first' expedition beyond the Wall, he had seen terrible things from wildlings and the familiar raiders, and Curie couldn't blame him for being suspicious. Rugas prepared his axe for something deadly. It seemed as if they were-
"Please, gentleman! Let us not resort to such violence. It will not solve anything with this poor woman!" She tried her best to defuse this.
It did not work. Arguments soon broke out between the wildlings, the Minutemen and the tribes woman, who started to talk but it was obscured. She tried to listen in, even if it took everything in her processor to do. Once more though, her audial sensors noted that something was moving outside this group. Something big.
The woman was whispering. "Men...dead...attack...Whitefeathers...dead were walking...white...white..." Confused ramblings most likely, but they had meaning as to what happened. They could not be ignored.
Her mumbling trailed off. Curie finally had enough of the bickering around and shot her laser to the sky. "Ladies and gentleman, shall I?" She projected her voice much louder than usual to them. They all stopped disputing and looked at her. Even the captive looked up at her, as if suddenly realising what she was.
"We can't afford to fight like this. This woman clearly has something to say here. She mentioned in her whispers that there was an attack and that her tribe and the Whitefeathers were killed. Perhaps it was the snow? Let us not get further-" she was cut off.
The captive was smacked to her feet again by MacDonald, with his rifle pointing in the back of her head. "Listen here, you cannibal shit! You're going to give us what we want, or else." Curie felt more and more uneasy. She sensed more activity going on around them. Behind MacDonald even.
"Private!" Jenny put her hands out, obviously trying to defuse the situation. "You do that and we don't know what killed the Whitefeathers. Our mission up here is jeopardised, and this whole expedition could be a failure. Just calm down. Now!"
Macdonald ignored her. "I'm sick of taking orders from someone who wasn't even my original captain! I say we end this whole affair now! I say-"
He never finished his line, for a dagger rended into his side, to his shock, and a pale, shrivelled army wrapped round his throat and tore it from ear to ear with a spear tip.
Blood rushed out and steamed across the snow beneath them. MacDonald fell, the captive woman screamed for her life and tried to run as two of what had been corpses stood atop MacDonald, stabbing him as his gasps grew weaker. They looked up at the others as they did so, staring vacantly.
"What the fuck!" Deacon cried out, as he stood back. Almost tripping on himself. The others were similarly in shock as the corpses around them, well over two hundred, started to rise. Even the animal carcasses rose from the ground, all with glowing blue in their eyes.
Had Curie had lungs, she would be screaming right now. All she could do now was ready her weapons for the coming assault.
A hale of bullets broke through the growing snowstorm, yet seemed to not affect the charging corpses besides slowing them down. A corporal went too far into the fog, and she was surrounded and torn by the Wight armada.
"Are they ghouls?" The captain shouted over the commotion. "How are ghouls this far north? And why aren't they responding to bullets? This can't be right.
Curie shredded one heading for the captive in half with her buzzsaw, and yet it continued to try and stab at her. All the while, she seemed to be mumbling "white! White! Ice! Blue! White!"
As her scans revealed, these were something far worse than any ghoul. Something that should not be according to all the scientific research she had done. "They have no pulse at all! And there is no radiation here to turn them. I feel they are some-"
"Wights!" Harren cried as he booted one and coated his arrows in paste. "They're wights!" The wildlings there froze and began prepare their satchels as they fought off the invading force.
Curie turned to retreat and gather, but the girl at the gate, or what had been the girl at the gate, greeted her, dagger in hand. Her sensors froze. Could she kill a little girl, even one who was undead?
Peterson's flamethrower went off in the background. He cried out. "They burn like napalm! Scorch the fuckers!" They are weak to burns? She knew she had to act fast. She hesitated for a few seconds and fired her laser at what had been the girl.
What had she done to deserve this fate? The hole was small, but burned clearly, and yet the screeching thing ran towards her, dagger in hand. It was only as she dodged the blows that the fire spread across the 'wight' and it soon caught fire, flailing around. After some time wandering aimlessly, it collapsed and stopped moving.
"Activate the bots, Alan! Now!" Curie heard another voice. He got out his control module and pressed a button, but not before being pierced in the leg by a spear one of the 'wights' held.
He cried out, but soon that wight was shredded by gunfire from a sentry-bot, which blasted a missile into an incoming group of wight-wolves, smashing them into burning pieces. Others caught fire. Curie saw one of the Wildling spearmen was among those caught in the blast though. Such a tragedy, she thought to herself.
She realised that the moment they had arrived, both exits to the large camp were being cut off by the incoming wights from the outside, while te freshly slain corpses and their weapons were inside. The perimeter was twenty foot tall spiked ironwood logs. It had been a trap!
As she turned, she saw the others were just as entrenched in the chaos. Deacon ran out of ammo in his automatic 8mm and flung a frag grenade at some wights carrying bows. She realised one of the wights was the former chieftain with his head hardly attached to his body now, roaring at her like a lion. Deacon rushed to the side and grabbed an obsidian tipped spear, mainly out of desperation as he couldn't find his ammo.
Captain Jenny threw a highly flammable Molotov into the way of a wight polar bear that rushed in. Peterson rushed to Alan to reach him up. He was still trying to activate Zap, the most powerful of the party's robots, and deadly. The Robobrains and swarmbots were easily overwhelmed and the sentry bit was distracted, as a wave of dozens of wights gathered around it, chipping at it in vain with their daggers, but obscuring its vision.
A rumbling came in the ground, startling everyone. Cure rotated to see, only for an undead Raven to fly at her, damaging her left optic frame, obscuring her vision. She knocked it down with a saw and fired her laser into it, quickly roasting it. She now heard a huge crash as the walls of the camp were smashed down in a blur, with Orig crushed underneath some wood from the source of it.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me!" Peterson grunted as they came toe to toe with a huge wight mammoth!
Rotted, blue eyed, and more than fifteen feet tall at the shoulder, it was truly a terrifying sight. It turned to Orig, who tried to crawl out of the wreckage, and savaged him to death with its tusks. It's bellow echoed through the entire valley so birds came from the trees. Curie had rarely felt fear, yet now was that time.
Harren had now gotten out his fire-tainted arrows and was offing smaller wights as he saw his comrade fall. He charged as the remaining Wildling archers fired at the great beast ahead. Around them, Marek charged between the Minutemen, slashing at any creatures avoiding the Minutemen hail of bullets.
"We're running low on ammo here!" Peterson cried out. "I don't have the fuel to toast that mammoth. If we're not quick, that thing won't stop till it crushes us!" Curie whirred over as the army of the dead encircled them, except for Harren and his escort, who scouted towards a rocky edge which seemed to be a source of wights coming through. Perhaps they were finding where these new ones were coming from?
Alan screamed at the controls. "God-fucking-damn it!" He was agitated now. He clearly was out of his depth. Mostly gathered into a small group of seventeen now, they were surrounded on all sides by the wights.
Until Alan cheered. "Yes!"
A massive blast of red tore through the wight ranks in the dozens, and soon the cause passed through, effortlessly cutting through wights as if it were dance. Zap was operational again, and she could see that this robot lived up to its reputation.
"I took the Gorgon model and made a few adjustments here and there. Like the armour, taken from an X-02 power armour set." Alan seemed to boast as they were assured as to the number of wights being slaughtered.
Another explosion occurred. The Sentry Bot must have self destructed, exploding with the force of several mini-nukes, smashing a large chunk out of the wooden walls, and incinerating hundreds of wights that had crawled over it. The mammoth was now the only heavyweight among the wights left, with various skeletons and half rotted corpses standing around it in a vanguard, armed with spears and a bow.
Zap went ahead of them. Alan pressed a new command in. The visor at its front glowed red, brighter and brighter as it cut through skeletons coming at it, making not even a small dent on the robot. They clearly had never encountered anything like it before, for they took no notice of its glowing.
Jenny pushed them in. "Here it comes!"
A blast of intense laser shredded through the wight mammoth and its surrounding allies, killing at least forty human wights and various dogs and shadowcat-corpses. Still more were incoming, but the bulk of their force was incapacitated.
They now broke out of formation into their force. With the Cannibal captive near her, she and Deacon took their chance to go to te Cliff edge where Harren and his archers had climbed, using the conveniently placed ledges. She still mumbled words about "walker" and "other", so hopefully Curie could ask her out of combat. But before they could-
"Turn back now!" She looked up with both her good eyes. It was Harren, seeming haunted and injured. "It's worse than I thought! What are you waiting for? Get ou-" he could not finish. For a transparent blade pierced his chest from behind, quickly withdrew and decapitated the man as he stood. It seemed the other archers must have shared this fate.
She glanced down at the head that belonged to Harren, still twitching with shock. She heard Deacon gasp as a landing took place on the snow nearby. What came in its crouched position was unlike anything Curie had seen before.
The being that had killed Harren looked vaguely human, and yet was almost otherworldly in many ways. It wore black metal armour everywhere except the head, with a sigil of an arrowhead in the centre of the chest. The being wore no helmet, and had an almost human beauty to it, with long white hair flung down from the scalp to its hips. In its hand, it held a transparent curved sword of some sort, made of what looked to be ice.
The skin was a milky complexion, with a vague blue tint like ice, with its signature shine. It was ice! This was no undead zombie, but another form of life from the carbon based life she had known. Inhuman. Elegant. Beautiful. dangerous. Utterly terrifying.
The most startling thing as it rose was its eyes. They didn't merely have a flowing blue tint to them, they shone bright blue! It's eyes widened at the sight of Curie, clearly unfamiliar with the form of a Miss Nanny robot. It drew it's weapon and started to march towards them. She wasn't sure how to react to this being. Two of the wights came down by its side, and it sent them forward too, guarding its flanks.
"Curie! Curie!" She could hear Deacon's concerned fears. "This thing is not our friend. Let's attack it if we can!" She backed away, with Deacon coming ahead with the Obsidian spear in hand.
"Come at me, you blue bastard!" If he had ammo, he would surely have used that instead, but it wasn't something they knew yet. The being seemed fearful of the spear, but noted how inexperienced Deacon was and after dodging his thrust, swatted him aside with ease with a single shove. The others in the group caught their attention on it now.
"That the thing that's controlling them?" Jenny didn't wait for Curie's answer. "Open fire, Minutemen! Focus on the..."
"An Other." Marek spoke out under his breath.
"White Walker." Rugas said as it approached. "We thought they were just stories to-"
Jenny interrupted. "Whatever it is, it's commanding the dead. Take it out! Fill it with as many bullets as you got!"
A new hale of bullets went onto this 'Other', and yet it seemed to not affect it at all. Even the wights were at least torn to pieces by the bullets without being stopped, but with this thing, the bullets seemed to shatter on contact! She backed away, as even her laser did not afffect its armour. The being came to the mumbling captive and stabbed her in the heart with its blade, quickly killing her. As it turned up, Alan called out "Zap! Get this bastard in the ground!"
The robot's eye-laser was already warming up as it approached the Walker, who got its blade out to parley. The remaining swarmbots and Mr. Gutsies gathered around the side, forming a vanguard. Given how efficiently the robot had performed alone, Curie felt a sense of relief as to what was happening.
The blast hit the Other point blank in its face. She could hear cheers from the Minutemen, but to their horror it marched on, slowly but surely. It drew it's blade into the head of the Assaultron and ripped it apart, ending the blast. The head was clearly hurt, but the injuries rapidly healed as if it were freezing up again. The robot remained functioning- after all, that was how they were designed, but it's main weapon was no longer functional.
As Zap raised it's blades to attack, the Other threw its own up, and on contact, Zap's blade shattered like glass, to the surprise of everyone. A swarmbot was also shattered on contact in this same swing. Finally, to utterly crush Alan's last hopes, it drew it's blade into the robot's chest, deactivating it. It now looked ahead, and raised its free right hand.
The corpses of the wildlings and Minutemen who had died now rose, as did even more of the ancient skeletal remains from the frozen soil. The Wight that was MacDonald still held his submarine gun, and chaotically fired it at random as he shambles over towards them, hindered by the injuries that killed him. The man she had shared company with at the tents down south, had spoken about the nature of civilisation and the fate of this world, now wished nothing more than for this Minutemen expedition to be added to the army of the dead.
Curie panicked. She had no weapons around that could possibly harm this being, only its undead minions, the wights. Unless...
The obsidian spear!
Deacon was getting up again now, clearly still ringing from the blow by the Other. It was as if frostbite was coming to him, despite all his thick layers of clothing insulting him. The Other's magic bypassed this effortlessly, it seemed. He still had the spear in hand, though. And given its adverse reaction to this substance, it was clearly of some importance or another as a weapon. As she backed away from the icy gaze of the thing, the thief of the simple human dignity of death, she prayed to whatever was out there that they would find out the significance of this weapon.
Jenny, who Curie now saw had diverged from the rest of the group, guns blazing, was trying to euthanize what had once been MacDonald with fire from a Molotov she had. "I'm not ending up like these freaks of nature. I won't let us end like this!" As a large pack of wights came, she threw the Molotov at them and they caught fire. Macdonald's gun fired around chaotically as he flailed, and a couple of bullets found their way into Jenny's stomach, in what must have been excrutiating pain. A couple more hit Curie herself, damaging her main frame and destabilising her rocket propelling. Jenny had at least given MacDonald a more worthy fate than an eternal slave.
Yet as the Other commanded, a legion more came, encircling her. Curie could see in her eyes that her hope was lost. Her black hair was now glistening grey from the snow, and blood ran down her cheeks from the injuries she sustained.
She turned to Curie, who was busy backing away from the Other as the remaining robots were dispatched by it. "They're in your hands now. Lead them down to safety, don't let them fall to this, and..." Jenny hesitated, and for the first time ever, she could see tears welling up in Jenny's eyes. She seemed aware of this and looked back at the incoming horde. As she did this, Curie noticed her pull a pin out of a Nuka grenade. She finally spoke again. "...avenge me." She charged into the wight horde, with daggers and axes in hand. Curie, noticing her courage, charged towards the Other in her own act.
The explosion knocked nearly everyone off their feet. Curie bumped the White Walker off its feet as she was sent flying from the blast, unaffected by the radiation. It would be impossible to say the same for her human comrades now. The wildlings, without their radiation would suffer significant issues even if they survived today. They had not taken Radaway on their expedition, and so this would need to be treated back home. Her mind was always on those less fortunate than her, but it meant she could no longer see the threat in front of her.
Before her, the Other put its weapon away and walked towards her, with a mild but fading limp. It took its hand out, with what appeared to be a magical residue developing around it. Though she offered no outward expression or words as it approached, she reminisced. This is it. My life's works in vain, our mission in vain. Doomed to wander the Earth the pawns of things that should not be. She prepared herself for the end.
"Not today!" Deacon had gotten up again, and jammed the obsidian blade into an opening in the elbow joint of the Other's armour. It screached out in pain as it's arm started to disintegrate upon contact. It collapsed again on the ground and he assisted her up out to retreat, along with the other survivors.
With Peterson covering their tracks with his refuels flamethrower, they started on their way south. The mission had been a failure, and a terrible one at that. Things that shouldn't As she looked around, she asked- "where is Private Alan?" To the others.
"He ran off when the last of his robots were destroyed. No one knows where he went." One of the Minutemen sharpshooters noted. Something must have snapped with in him, she reckoned.
Marek was cradling a crippled Rugas in his arms as they marched downward from the cold. Two Minutemen assisted him with this to make the carrying quicker and less at risk from any pursuing wights.
As she looked back, she saw the Other had cut its arm off to save itself from the spreading obsidian-induced rot, and was stumbling towards the robots it had dispatched. She could see other bright blue eyes, at least eight, over the side of the cliff from where it came. They had ceased pursuing them, but for what reasons?
Deacon came by her as the others went ahead, scouring the back. "It's...it's like nothing I've ever seen. That must be what Mance Rayder's trying to lead the wildlings away from! There could be hundreds, maybe thousands more out there! How can we defend from that? How?"
Curie was concerned. They showed weakness only to obsidian, a volcanic metal present in little of Westeros or the Wasteland. "I cannot say, other than their weakness of obsidian is of note. We need to tell the others down south about what happened here! We cannot afford more losses."
Deadon sighed. "Assuming anyone even believes is. But we have to try. You tell the other Minutemen, and I'll tell my contacts. We need to save as many as possible. The more there are killed, the more they can use their...magic to raise." He showed clear discomfort stating this.
She struggled to find a rational answer. "I shall sort us out as we for south."
After several miles, Curie took her chance. The group settled by some rocks on the side of a mountain, one of the many frozen peaks of the Frostfangs, and sat down. Now, she could tend to Rugas' broken arm. Some soldering, alcohol covering and antiseptics were required, with him being too out of consciousness to cry out in pain as one normally would. Once this was done, she turned to the others.
"Minutemen, Woodhides. Whoever we are, today we must realise that there is more to this world than meets the eye. One perspective of science can live in conflict with one of magic, or one can find compliment or wholeness in the other. Things that should not be dwell in those lands and March south. Unless we unite together, as people and as sentient beings, I fear the worst."
Marek looked up to her. "This is it. The Long Night is coming. Just as the millennia old takes told us. We thought they were stories too, yet I saw one with my own eyes. No wonder of your technologies can save us now. We need to march south or else we face certain doom." Others around him nodded. They had lost too much today to fight more.
"Very well. We shall research this 'Long Night' and find out about it. But we shall not give up hope. It is not a body of flesh, or a brain that makes us human beings. It is not our DNA even, or our process of thinking. Hope is what makes us human; without it we are lost. And without our hope, all is lost. Fight for survival, for truth, for justice. Now and always." The group cheered, with whatever energy they had left in them.
If Fjorn and the others still breathed, they too would need to know what had happened here, and the Wasteland needed to know even more. They had seen a nuclear winter last decades, and now they faced a winter that could last forever!