'Hold the blighted line!' The call runs through the quivering ranks bolstered only by fresh recruits and wounded men just as fresh off a stretcher. Coldflame and the plague wasn't what he'd expected when he signed on for yet another tour and declined further rest as his status freely supplies him with.
Another dragon made solely of bone and dark magic passes above, a searing wave of cold obliterating another newblood unlucky enough to hold his head up over the trench. Each death cut into the raven-haired man's soul with biting fury, a heckling of life. Were they not careful, they'd fight their own at sunset.
'Get your ass back down, Sergeant!' A sharp tackle of forged metal smashes into the distant man as his Captain shoulders him to the ground. A numb pain, almost a salvation in itself from the icy cold. It was the desert all over again, only now his friends lost themselves in the snow, and not the sand. Glazed eyes scan over his already rising superior, stunned to see him care for anyone but himself.
Cassian scrambles from the ground weakly, the armour offering a measly assurance of protection from the weapons of mortals only hampering him further as it had this far. The only reason to wear it was paltry shielding against the bites of the unliving, and even then you'd manage just long enough to have your face torn off instead. Chaos surrounds him entirely. They're not even truly in combat, and they're facing heavy losses. The sweep of bone dragons above, and the occassional swarm of living corpses still carrying the insignias that mark them out as Cassian's old friends and companions. Barely anyone was alive that he knew. New faces came every day, and vanished just as fast. This is hell, and we're not even close to any 'Gate'.
That he was alive was a mere stroke of luck. There was no being exceptional in these cold wastes. No heroes from the south as he and his friends had been told they were. Certainly, when they came in on the boat, the already present took to a morale boost, and you'd find the occasional soldier who asked about the legendary 7th who'd staved off the end of the world before, assumingly.
It faded just as quick however. Recruit or veteran, you fell to the cold. The unnatural breaths of the sky-kings. You too, would rise as a soldier in the army you fight to destroy, the moment you gave up. And everyone gives up. In this place, your spirit falls the first day. Cassian shudders, another breath exuded slowly. Not even a day of warmth and comfort would save him from returning to this.
Warmth. The mere word makes his stomache churn and his throat yearn for something other than water that'll freeze your veins solid. The keep they had left behind them in the safety of the mountains, a whole town built in the icy north, seemed so far away, long lost to the storming winds and the hidden glaciers trapping them ever further north. That their maps were blank didn't exactly help either.
'Incoming!' A young soldier screams at the top of his lungs, trudging through the heavy walls of snow before the trenches in an effort to cast himself back into safety. Cassian only finds him with his eyes in time for the youngling to see his call rewarded by a sweeping shape from the sky, another black monstrosity hidden in the deadly winds. Claws and bone clasp onto the helpless man, and his screams for help vanish into the howling night before anyone can truly muster some sort of defence or aid. Cassian's greatest fright comes at the notion that he'd expected it well and truly.
The warning rings true, however. Silhouettes begin to make their presence jarringly known on the closeby horizon at a steadily nearing pace, sending a wave of determination through the demoralized defenders. Cassian casts himself back down into the trench, hiding himself from view to tug at his sword. Tightens his fist around it. They usually never got this far back in the trenches. That is, until his companions in the first trench rose to unlife, and Cassian and his secondary row of defenders would be the new frontline.
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