“If you are going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston Churchill

Chapter 4: A Whole New World

My head was pounding when my eyes opened. The desert sun was casting down it’s brilliant glow as I rolled onto my front. My ears were ringing loudly. I could hear voices in the distance, although they sounded distorted, as if they were underwater.

I tried standing, but a case of vertigo left me nauseous so I sat on my knees for a moment. I looked around as my vision started to clear. There was a repetitive knocking sound coming from all around me in staccato bursts. I felt like I should be doing something important right now.

Looking to my left, I saw an unoccupied trench site with a C6 general purpose machine gun laying unmanned. That shouldn’t be… I thought groggily as I made my way to the support weapon to keep sentry until its owner got back. Looking to my right, I could see two soldiers in a similarly entrenched site, only their guns were flashing and creating the familiar noise I was hearing.

As I found myself lying by the C6, a sudden flash of clarity hit me. My headache cleared and I grabbed the weapon, hoping it was loaded, and took aim on several insurgent soldiers laying down fire on my brothers-in-arms. I looked at the ammo feed, and saw that I had about half a belt left, and with no extra belts, I’d have to make this count.

I found the largest cluster of enemy combatants and fired on them. When they all had their heads down, I heard the telltale poping noise of someone firing an M203 grenade launcher. The explosion hit the enemy position dead on, knocking out the low mud wall they were hiding behind. Surveying the battlefield, I saw several large clusters of dead hostiles. Looking back to friendly ranks, I saw a few wounded friendlies, and a few who were not so lucky. One of those unlucky few was the C6 gunner whom I was lying upon. I felt my eyes water as the headache returned full force.

I awoke, almost disoriented to the point of puking. I made a grab for my rifle, but it was in none of the usual spots I would put it while I slept. Panicking, I ripped my eyes open to try and see where I was.

The light burned as I forced my eyes to stay open and drove myself to my feet. The distinct lack of my weapons brought the fight with the chimera back to the fore of my mind. Seeing the body nowhere to be found, along with neither my knife nor my rifle, I assumed the worst. It had taken me off to its lair and was going to eat me. Again the adrenaline tore through my still exhausted body while I crept through the forested area I was in until I found a suitably tall hill to perch myself on.

Just on the other side of the hill, however, was the black carapace of a small changeling trying to drag my rucksack towards me. With her mouth. Still confused, I dropped my guard as the overwhelming headache returned. Gunfire echoed in my mind, a nightmare of my past clinging to the waking world. I got up and stumbled towards the changeling.

I think she gasped when she saw me coming towards her, but I didn’t care. As the minute she stepped away from my ruck, I unzipped the top most pouch and pulled out a small white bottle. Opening it up, I pulled out the toilet paper I used as a sound buffer and grabbed two large green gel capsules, and a small red pill. The only adornment on the three pills was the number ‘400’.

Throwing the pills into my mouth, I took my hard canteen out of my tacvest and drank greedily from it, swallowing the pills in the process. Whether through a form of placebo effect or the drugs being damn good, I immediately started to feel slight relief. The red caffeine pill was giving me a boost of energy while the two capsules of ibuprofen were soothing my aching head.

“Where’s my rifle?” I asked now that I had a slightly clearer view of the world around me.

“Uh, what’s a rifle?” she asked innocently.

“The thing that kills things and makes loud noises.” I said sighing, not caring about how she interpreted that.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in realisation, pointing with a hoof in the direction she came from. “It’s still over there.”

After grunting in affirmation, I grabbed my rucksack, prepared myself for how much it was going to suck, and threw it over my shoulders. As I walked in the direction she indicated, I did up the chest and waist belts on the ruck to ease my sore body.

“How do you carry that thing?” She asked as she panted lightly.

“With my arms,” I replied, not really giving a shit about anything but my rifle.

“No, I mean, it’s just so heavy!” she said, exasperation evident in her voice.

“Practice.” She groaned at my answer, and continued to lead me to my rifle in silence.

We weren’t far from where I was pounced on by the giant cat. When we got closer, she picked the weapon up with her levitation and floated it to me. Pointing the weapon in a safe direction, I rotated it to the left and looked into the extractor to see just what went wrong. Just as I had expected, there was one bullet partially in the chamber and another sticking halfway out of the ejection port. Rolling my eyes, I released the magazine and put it into my empty mag pouch on my tacvest. Crouching, I rotated the rifle ‘till the ejection port was facing down. I pulled the cocking handle back and watched as both the rounds fell to the ground. Releasing the cocking handle, I pulled it back again, this time rotating the weapon back to the left so I could inspect the chamber. Seeing no round, I released the handle, drove my palm into the forward assist on the right side of the rifle, took an aimed shot at a tree, and let the rifle tell me it was empty. After closing the ejection port cover, I laid down my weapon, and slotted a fresh magazine into the housing.

The changeling watched as I performed a rather basic ‘bolt partially forward’ stoppage drill, eyes wide as I went through the series of extremely practiced movements. Finding a nice tree, I took off my rucksack and leaned heavily against it, holding a hand to my head in pain.

My shoulders had started to go numb from the rucksack by this point, and I was glad to have taken it off. “Fuck me. Over,” I droned as I felt my eyes glaze over. The changeling giggled at my plight, causing me to scowl. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead.” I said, not bothering to look up but entirely willing to bring her mood down to my level.

“Oh,” she said, blushing slightly, “I know, and I was going to thank you for it, but I was too busy fixing all of your broken ribs.”

I threw my hands up in plight. “Yup, it’s official. I don’t give a fuck about anything anymore.” I took off my helmet, placed it on the top of my rucksack, and continued to be a useless sack of shit against the tree.

After several long seconds of silence, the changeling looked at me with a slightly worried frown. “You should drink more water,” she said quietly.

“I have to conserve water,” I rebutted. “Speaking of, if you live in a desert, shouldn’t you be packing a dozen litres of water just to get back home?”

“I… uhh…” She looked at her hooves as she sat down next me. “The ponies robbed me.”

“Riiight.” I drawled sarcastically as I reached back to my rucksack, pulling out another IMP. I held back a look of disgust and almost puked in my mouth as I read the title. It was the dreaded ‘Salmon Fillet w/ Tuscany Sauce’. “Want some food?” I asked, quickly hatching a plan on how to pawn it off.

She looked at me with her large azure eyes, almost seeming to be on the brink of tears. So I opened the IMP, pulled out the aluminum wrap with black lettering that might as well have been the ‘toxic’ symbol, and threw it in her general direction. Luckily, the Salmon IMP was the only one in existence with black lettering which made it easy to tell apart from every other still slightly edible IMP Canada could offer.

I grabbed the dessert that came with it and ripped open the pouch of wet packed peaches, slurping it down greedily before looking at the confused changeling. She had the aluminum wrap in her magical grip, trying to figure out what to do with it. Grabbing the giant spoon from inside the IMP, I handed it to her as well, just adding to her confusion.

“Rip the top open, and eat the contents with the spoon.” I said, trying to hold back laughter. “Also, do you know where my bayonet is?”

After easily tearing through the aluminum, she pointed a hoof to a nearby tree where I clearly saw the knife, buried up to the hilt in wood. I blinked several times, before the overwhelming smell of the horrible IMP beside me took hold of my nose and forced me into action. I stood up and walked nonchalantly towards the tree in an attempt to flee the alchemical horrors being unleashed upon the new world and placed my hands on the knife.

I looked back before I pulled to see how the changeling-turned-test-subject was doing. She was gagging on her first spoonful of fish, and when she saw me looking she quickly put an extremely forced smile on her face, likely in an attempt to not look a gift horse in the mouth. I almost felt bad for her. Almost.

I gave the knife a tug and it practically flew out of the tree, catching me off guard and sending me stumbling backwards. How in the… Observing the hole in the tree, I noticed a sheen of red smeared across the wood. Wood and blood on metal don’t make for a good lubricating mix, but for whatever reason, it worked, and I had my knife. I wasn’t about to begin arguing logic at this point. Instead of trying to figure this out, I just shrugged my shoulders, moved back to our temporary picnic area, and grabbed my bottle of CLP oil from my ruck.

The first thing I noticed was that the changeling was no longer eating the ‘Salmon’, nor was the package anywhere near us. She had either finished eating and buried it, or would rather have starved than eat it and buried it anyway. I assumed it was the second one.

The second thing I noticed was that her shell was slightly greener than usual. Again, that could have been a product of the light, or it could have been a product of the IMP. The latter seemed far more likely to me.

Allowing myself to laugh slightly at her plight, I lubed up my knife with CLP, and then cleaned it off with a rag I had in my cleaning kit.

“What are you doing?” She asked woozily.

“Cleaning my weapons.” I stated as I slid my bayonet back into its sheath on the side of my tacvest. “And preparing my rifle for forest warfare. How far out are we from the desert?” I asked as I removed the magazine from my weapon.

“About an hour,” she responded, watching silently as I removed the bolt from my rifle and gave it a good lubing. After a solid fifteen minutes of just cleaning my rifle up, I put the bolt back in and went through the modified function test to make sure everything still worked. The changeling tilted her head at the myriad of clicks and clacks that came from the rifle as I cocked it and dry fired it several times in succession while flicking the saftey switch to different positions. “What are you doing now?” she finally asked.

“Adjusting my weapon for fighting in a forest.” I said, sliding a full magazine into the housing. “In the desert, you don’t want any excess oil in your weapon, ‘cause sand will stick to it.” I grabbed the partially empty mag and started re-bombing it with ammo. “In a forest environment where it’s just generally… wetter, you want more oil, to keep moisture out.” She had been nodding silently as I explained, most likely not comprehending the subject at all.

When I had finally packed everything away, I looked at the changeling with a soft smile and shrugged. “Thanks. For saving me.”

It took a moment for her to register what I said before she smiled back, shrugged, and said “No problem.” Her entire being seemed to be brighter.

Shaking my head at the ridiculous notion, I stood up, grabbed my rucksack, and set out again, only looking back once to see if Kania was following.

“You know,” she said, catching up to me at a trot, “you really shouldn’t be walking around with a bag that heavy, right?”

“Why not?” I asked. “I’m practically infantry…”

“Because I just finished healing half a dozen of your bone fractures a half hour ago.” She stated bluntly.

“Meh,” I responded. “I’ve definitely been through worse.” After a moment of mental searching, I came up with a quote that my dad had on one of his military shirts that I saw once a decade ago. “Pain is temporary, glory is eternal.” I mimed, taking strength in the phrase I had used to get me through basic training.

“As poetic as that is, I seriously think we should stop and rest.”

“I only have a week of food left for the two of us at the rate I’m rationing, maybe less. If I feel like suffering dehydration, then I can stretch my water out for two days.” I took a quick swig from my camelback. “Speaking of, I haven’t offered you any yet. Want some?”

Her ears splayed as I lectured her on why we couldn’t stop and rest, before she demurely shook her head. “I don’t need to eat or drink for the trip.” she stated almost too quietly for me to hear.

“If I let you starve, I’d be doing my uniform a disservice. That is literally one of three things I will not do.” I said harshly, remembering how hard those three things were beaten into new recruits. I had adopted them as a self motto before I joined the army, but I never had the words to vocalize what I felt.

Never disgrace yourself;

Never disgrace your family, and above all;

Never disgrace your uniform, or the soldiers who wore it before you.

Again she looked to her hooves. “Honestly,” she started, looking back up to me. “I’ve gone for longer with less…” The creepy smile that accompanied her next sentence unnerved me, “Besides, your love is delicious.”

As we continued walking, my left eye twitching, her smile slowly turned into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I responded quickly, throwing up a fake smile. “I just don’t get your culture’s jokes, is all.”

“Jokes?” she responded, sounding genuinely confused. I could feel my heartbeat increasing as I felt that familiar tingling in my spine that always meant something was about to either go horribly wrong, or just be plain stupid.

“You know…” I said with trepidation, choosing my words as carefully as I could with adrenaline starting to pump into my body. “You eating my non-existent love.” I accidently let out a choked laugh, letting my nervousness show.

The sudden look of fear that was etched across her face was more than enough to confirm that she did indeed, somehow eat my feelings. She opened and closed her mouth several times in indecision. I cut her off before she could voice an argument with a sigh, and a very simple statement: “Zulu Foxtrot.”

She seemed confused at my burst of military lingo because she stopped gasping like a fish and asked “What?”

“It’s a saying from where I’m from.” I said simply, explaining it as I would to any civilian. “It replaces ‘Zero Fucks’ with their equivalent in the NATO standard phonetic alphabet.” I could feel my breathing becoming laboured as the march wore on my body. “All that it basically means, is that I literally have zero fucks to give. I don’t care.” I shook my head to emphasize my last point.

“I had zero fucks to give before I got here.” I wanted to get rid of my body’s weariness despite the fact that I knew we had only been walking for a half hour tops. So I started talking. “When I got here, I was ambushed by another of those winged lions, and a fucking pink unicorn. These aren’t things you find in my reality, you know?”

She nodded along with a small smile on her face as I spoke, probably having no clue what I was talking about but not really caring either. “The stupid thing just pauses in mid air like some fucking cartoon, so I do what anyone sensible would do and shoot the fucking thing. The next morning, I’m ambushed by talking armoured horses. Later in the day, a changeling comes up and helps me.” I could feel a tear welling in my left eye, something that’s always happened to me when I’m at the limits of my frustration. It’s an oddity of mine that I’ve never been able to explain, even to myself.. “And all the while, I have zero radio signal. Fuck sake…”

“And you’ve never seen anything like this before?” she asked, concern whittled into her voice. She continued after I shook my head, “Must have been quite the culture shock… If it makes you feel any better, I’ve never seen anything like your clothing or your armour.”

It took me a few seconds to realise she was referring to my frag vest, before I started chuckling lightly. “This piece of shit?” I asked, incredulous, “This frag vest can’t do shit. At most, it’ll stop low velocity shrapnel from a grenade or an RPG, but it’s absolute shite against bullets.” She just nodded her head with a smile before I sighed again. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Nope.” she said cheerfully. “But if it makes you feel any better, the forest should be ending soon.”

I looked ahead of us and could see no end to the green nightmare. All I could see for miles in any direction was trees and underbrush. “I don’t see a desert anywhere in our near future.”

“It’s only another five or so minutes.” She said idly. My eye twitched again, and we continued in silence.

Five minutes later, I tripped on a root and found myself blinded by a suddenly very overbearing sun. When I found the strength to open my eyes, my body was literally half in and half out of a wall of trees. In a straight line to my left and right was forest. In front of me, was a desert. I slowly lifted myself from the ground and dusted myself off.

“Well. That just happened,” I said to no one in particular. I could make out a lone peak in the distance, probably belonging to the mountain that was the home of the changeling whose name I had forgotten an hour ago. I estimated that we had another four hours of hard rucking away.

I did an about turn and marched back into the forest. “Hey, what are you doing?” the changeling asked, clearly confused by my antics.

“Setting up camp. You couldn’t pay enough to walk all that today.” I found a suitable site for my bivouac and dropped my rucksack. “What was your name again?” I asked as the changeling as she sat down near my bag.

“Kania,” she said evenly, probably masking her disappointment.

“Tell me about that whole ‘love’ thing again.” I began a sweep of the perimeter as I waited for what I presumed to be the sparknotes version of how changelings feed.

“We gain a sort of… metaphysical sustenance out of it,” she started. “It fuels our magic, which we can use to fuel ourselves. We can use these emotions to bypass physical nourishment. We can also form sort of… bonds with other species using emotional links.”

“What kind of bonds?” I asked, starting on the camp itself.

“All kinds. It can be anywhere from a simple bond of friendship, to a symbiotic bond of love, platonic or otherwise. If a changeling falls in love with another species, she instinctually shares her powers, and likewise takes them from the other party. If a ‘ling were to reveal themselves to their significant other, then it can be willingly on both sides. If not, then their lover would just feel… different around the ‘ling.”

“That’s… actually kind of fascinating.” I said, throwing the finishing touches of scrim onto my lean-to. “So, you refuse food and water, because you literally don’t need them…” I trailed off as I thought deeper on the subject. “So long as I give you my love. That’s really awkward.”

“Er, but…” She stammered. “I thought you were giving me your love?” she asked awkwardly.

Putting on a stony face, I thought back over my feelings during the day. “Nope,” I said without the flicker of a smile. “I don’t think I’ve felt anything but confusion and exhaustion since I got here…”

“Then you must have a miraculous connection with a loved one where you’re from,” she said, face brightening as she put a few pieces together in her mind.

“Nope.” I again replied, flipping her smile upside down. “I didn’t have a girlfriend or anything like that back home…”

“Parents?”

“Maybe… Haven’t really talked to them in a couple months though…”

“Friends?”

“Most of them are dead.”

At that, she let out a mortified squeak; clearly sorry she’d asked. “I’m so so—”

“Don't you fucking apologise to me!” I yelled, interrupting her. Her mortification quickly changed to fear. “Each and every single fucking one of them gave their lives for their fucking country! We trained for it, and each of us would gladly do the same!”

“I... I honestly didn’t know…” She said, splaying her ears.

“I don’t give a fuck!” I screamed. “I’m a soldier. They were all fucking soldiers. It’s what we fucking do.” Realising I was yelling, I cut myself off, looked away, and took three deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Think about happy thoughts… like kittens… and Aqua.

By the time I had put a forced smile on my face and turned around, she had already started trotting to the other side of the clearing and was piling up some leaves into what I assumed was a makeshift bed.

She gave me one last glance before she looked away again and lay down in her bed of leaves. I could have sworn I saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes.

I sighed. Something I had noticed was becoming a habit. “We’ll rest here for a few hours, then break camp and boot ‘er.” I said, hoping she heard me. Deciding I didn’t need my sleeping bag because it was still the middle of the day, I pulled my ranger blanket from my rucksack and lay down on top of it. After taking off my tacvest and placing it near me, I curled into a human ball.

Lazily reaching into my left tunic breast pocket, I grabbed my phone and hit the power switch. After it goes through its boot up sequence, I take a glance at the remaining power and see it sitting at 77%. I flick through the options menu until I find the power saving app and place the phone in sleep mode. I then set a silent alarm to go off four hours from now.

I had no idea if my phone’s time was correct, but assuming it really was 1255 we would be on the road again by 1800 and the desert would be starting to cool off. Hopefully enough for us to complete the several hour slog to the mountain without dying of heat stroke.

I grabbed my floppy hat from my pants, placed it over my head to block the sun from my eyes, placed my phone between my legs, and hoped that I didn’t get stabbed in my sleep. Soon a fog covered my mind, and I drifted into an uneasy rest, letting my body naturally fill in the curves of the ground beneath me.