Chapter Eight

War Stories

Shin never agreed with her quick inclusion in the missions, but the day finally came. The day before her first mission, alone, Shin and Lizbeth talked a little in the barracks, after receiving orders from their superiors that they will be deployed.

While they were changing, the conversation had turned a bit sour.

"You're still too green, if you ask me," Shin said as he took off his training shirt.

"I'm older than I look and I passed the training," she grumbled back, while looking at his scars. She had gotten used to seeing them, but they made her wonder more about his past. Not the past she already knew, but the one even he couldn't remember.

"Still... even if you are an adult... I still think it's a bit early."

Lizbeth crossed her arms and looked away, pouting. She was only wearing pants, exposing herself to him.

"I know you're the one who told Wingate to delay my deployment."

Shin paused for a moment, looking at her body, but quickly looked away and lit a cigarette. It was really hard for him not to look at her.

"I have no idea what you're talking about…"

"I don't like being treated like a child."

"I'm not treating you like a child. But…"

"But, what?" Lizbeth asked.

Shin stepped closer, now looking at her face just a few centimeters away.

Lizbeth felt heat rising from her chest, a fire she couldn't name, mingled with the harsh taste of smoke and the smell of stale tobacco that seemed to wrap them in a silent bubble. She wanted to look away—but couldn't. Something in the steadiness of his eyes held her, and for a moment the noise of the mission and orders felt distant, as if only the two of them existed in that narrow room.

"Training is one thing... but pointing a weapon at another person is different. Once you pull the trigger, there's no going back."

Lizbeth dropped her arms and looked at Shin's chest.

Those scars were truly painful to look at.

"I know... you don't need to tell me over and over. I know what I'm doing. I want to do this."

Lizbeth felt her chest burn from having him so close. The cigarette smoke hung between them like a veil in that moment.

Shin pursed his lips slightly. Maybe he had been too hard on her.

He didn't like arguing with her, but he had really been reluctant to send her on a mission. Almost all the others had years of fire, while the younger ones already had at least a couple of years' training. She had done it in half that time—albeit exceeding all expectations.

Lizbeth looked up, and with their eyes locked, she nodded.

"I'll be ready. When the time comes, I won't hesitate."

Shin sighed, and she could almost see a look of pity in his eyes.

And so she participated in her first real mission. Shin also asked to be sent on that mission. The target was relatively easy and far away from other points for enemy reinforcements to arrive.

A rescue operation of some artifacts in the mountains of Austria.

It was perfect.

Fast, clean, no casualties. There was only a small troop of soldiers on site, and the work force consisted of human prisoners used in mining and excavation for certain relics. The initiative recovered the objects. A series of shields and other weapons that were almost unrecognizable, but that one of the feys in the mission detected that they had some magic imbued in them. The soldiers were put at the disposal of another company at that time and the prisoners rescued.

But clean didn't mean easy.

Halfway to the settlement, while the enemy soldiers were being surrounded, Lizbeth had wandered off a little, looking for a place to relieve herself. That's when she found herself face to face with one of them. He didn't seem much older than her, if at all. But he was human. Unarmed, his back against a rock, panting like a cornered animal. Mud up to his waist and fear all the way to his eyes.

She raised her weapon. Her arms didn't tremble, but something inside her chest definitely did. That's when the soldier revealed a grenade.

She remembered those sailors she had killed, using nothing but her voice.

Those poor bastards hadn't even realized what was happening. In a matter of seconds, their bodies had vibrated, and their molecules had scattered like the first moments of the Big Bang.

But this time… if she didn't move, she would be the one to explode.

She could kill him, yes. But he could also throw the grenade at the very same second.

Aiming the rifle wasn't hard.

What was hard was looking beyond the scope and seeing a face. A human face.

She remembered what Shin had told her. "Once you pull the trigger, there's no going back." And in that instant, she understood it wasn't just about the shot. It was about the decision. That second when you become someone who could do it. Someone who can look at another living being, assess the threat… and decide whether they deserve to keep breathing.

He didn't move. Neither did she.

For what felt like endless minutes, the world narrowed down to that invisible axis between her index finger and her heart.

Finally, another soldier rushed past her, shouting a command to stand down.

The enemy lowered his arms and placed the grenade at his side.

No one fell.

But Lizbeth didn't lower her weapon right away.

Something inside her had crossed a line, even if the shot never came.

And when she finally managed to breathe normally again, she knew she was no longer the same.

It hadn't been about whether she pulled the trigger or not.

Just pointing that rifle at a living being had paralyzed her for a few seconds that felt like an eternity.

Rain had started to fall as the transport touched down.

Lizbeth descended in silence, her rifle still slung over her shoulder, boots caked in dry mud. Shin was waiting by one of the supply trucks. He didn't say anything when he saw her. Just watched her with that look he used when he wanted to know something.

She stopped in front of him.

"I didn't shoot," she said, as if it were either a confession or a victory.

Shin nodded slowly. He pulled out a cigarette, but didn't light it.

"Would you have?"

Lizbeth didn't answer right away. She looked down, then up at the gray sky.

Finally, she met his eyes.

"I think so. But I'm glad I didn't."

Shin pressed his lips together slightly, then handed her the cigarette.

She took it and lit it. Took an awkward drag, coughed a little.

"Tastes like shit… maybe it is," she said.

Shin gave a knowing nod—a tiny crack in his usual wall.

"Yeah. But, it helps..."

"...with what?"

"With everything that doesn't get said."

Lizbeth handed him the cigarette.

Shin took it and walked away. But halfway down the path, he turned around.

"You felt it, didn't you?"

"The what?"

"The weight."

Lizbeth didn't answer for a few seconds. She adjusted the rifle on her back, then nodded.

"Yes. I felt it."

Shin nodded too, and kept walking.

"Good. Never forget it. It's an extension of yourself on the battlefield. It's your decision what to do with that weight."

Lizbeth watched him walk away and nodded again.

That weight could protect others… or herself.

It could take a life… or spare one.

That, too, was war. A more internal one, and perhaps not as important in the grand scheme of the conflict.

But it was a war to keep her soul.

***

Still, her baptism by fire didn't come until a few days later.

With the mission that took place at a train station in Innsbruck.

The cold night air bit through Lizbeth's jacket as the Armitage Initiative team crouched in the shadows near the train station. The iron beast hissed softly, steam rising like ghosts around the tracks, waiting to swallow its cargo.

Inside one of the dimly lit cars were prisoners—feys seized by the Gestapo. Among them, according to the information a spy from the United States Kingdom, captured weeks ago in Italy and now en route to Germany. Their extraction was urgent. Failure meant losing a vital link in the secret war.

Shin—always the cannon meat—whispered orders to the small squad led by Jamiel, a Dutch captain in charge of the operation. He had already scouted the area and something didn't sit right with him. There had been no signs of the supposed spy. Just feys, locked in chains, being transported like livestock.

Mari fluttered nervously behind Lizbeth—her tiny frame betraying no fear, only the impatience to sip from a flask of wine she had stolen from someone, somewhere.

"Stay close," Jamiel said, voice low but firm. "No mistakes."

Lizbeth adjusted the strap of her rifle, feeling its cold weight against her back. For some reason, she already knew this wouldn't be like the last mission.

This could be the moment she had both craved and dreaded.

The team slipped closer to the platform. The air smelled of oil and rust, of coal burning in distant furnaces. Shadows danced between cargo crates. Suddenly, a harsh bark of German commands shattered the silence. Enemy patrols were closer than expected.

"Ambush!" Shin hissed, drawing his weapon.

"Shit," Jamiel muttered, signaling the other seven soldiers to move.

Lizbeth's heart pounded. They had been spotted.

No… could it have been a trap all along? She though. It was possible. The Ahnenerbe was the Initiative's primary adversary. But where was the spy? Had he been moved along another route to Germany, or was he still in Italy?

Either way, there was no time for doubt now.

Mari darted to the left, vanishing behind a stack of crates while returning enemy fire, and Shin covered the right flank. Lizbeth was pushed forward with another soldier, toward the train cars where the prisoners were kept.

The clang of boots echoed as Nazi soldiers poured out of the station building. Lizbeth raised her rifle, her hands steady—but her mind a whirlwind.

Up ahead, a soldier emerged from the shadows, his weapon already trained on them.

Time slowed.

The rifle felt heavier now. Lizbeth's breath caught in her throat.

Once you pull the trigger, there's no going back.

She steadied her aim, eyes locked on the soldier's face. There was something human there—a flicker of fear or maybe surprise—but she could not hesitate.

The shot rang out, sharp and final.

The soldier crumpled to the ground, eyes wide in shock.

The smell of gunpowder filled her nostrils.

A rush of adrenaline surged through Lizbeth, mingled with a cold, creeping weight deep in her chest.

Another soldier charged from the right flank. Mari appeared beside her—her tiny frame deceptively deadly. The shots from the small fey had already taken down four soldiers on the opposite side. With a whispered incantation, a shimmer of light erupted, momentarily blinding the new attacker.

"Now!" Shin called out, firing a burst that dropped the enemy.

Lizbeth's fingers trembled slightly as she moved to cover Mari and the prisoners. More soldiers appeared, their numbers growing by the second. The station turned into a chaotic battlefield—metal clashed with the sharp crack of gunfire and the occasional shimmer of magic.

Lizbeth fired again, this time not just to wound, but to stop. Each shot was a jolt—part instinct, part grim resolve.

Between bursts of gunfire, she caught glimpses of Mari weaving through the chaos, her small form relentless. Jamiel and the others returned fire as well—some fighting hand to hand, others behind columns, ducking and striking like phantoms. Shin was a shadow, precise and lethal, switching between his rifle, Colt, and close combat with terrifying fluidity.

The prisoners were shouting—afraid, but holding together.

Lizbeth's chest burned with each breath. She was no longer the girl who had only dreamed of helping in battle; she was a soldier now, carrying the weight of life and death on her shoulders.

Suddenly, a grenade landed near their cover.

"Fall back!" Shin shouted, pulling Lizbeth with him.

They retreated behind a rusted container just as the explosion rocked the platform, sending sparks and debris into the night.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Lizbeth's ears rang. Her heart pounded like a war drum in her chest.

The battle raged on for a few more minutes, then all fell silent. They had made it through. The team regrouped quickly, tending to the injured prisoners. The spy—the key target—was among them after all. Pale, bloodied, but alive. He had been tortured, but hadn't given up the information the Gestapo wanted. His transfer to Germany had been for one purpose: to break him with a psychic mind reader.

"We need to move. Now," Shin said, voice taut but steady.

Lizbeth looked at the bodies strewn across the platform—some enemy, a few of them hers. The cost was written in the blood on the floor.

Her hands still shook as she slung her rifle over her shoulder. She caught Mari's gaze. The little fey gave her a small nod of encouragement—unsentimental, but real.

For the first time, Lizbeth understood the brutal truth of war: it was not just the enemy outside, but the battle inside—against fear, doubt, and the irrevocable change of crossing that line.

As they melted into the shadows, leaving the station behind, the train's whistle blew—a long, mournful sound echoing into the night.

Her innocence was gone, replaced by a fierce determination forged in fire and smoke.

***

After that, Lizbeth was no longer just a protégé.

She was an official part of the Armitage Initiative on the frontline, or as the OSS across the pond liked to call it: the Magic Corps.

That success was only the beginning. Over the next four years, Lizbeth, Shin and the others operated with the Armitage Foundation.

Missions in almost every theater of war, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, in the Balkans, in the deserts of Egypt, where they stayed for almost two months.

They attacked trains carrying dark artifacts, disrupted rituals that threatened to unleash horrors upon the world.

Many missions she worked with Shin, though at other times they acted separately.

Lizbeth had left behind the trembling shadow she once was. Time in the Armitage Initiative had transformed her, chiseling her like the sea carves rock, relentless and without pause. She was no longer the malnourished prisoner who once hovered on the thin line between life and death. Now she was a combatant with purpose, someone who knew when to raise her weapon and when to lower it. The difference between exercising violence and sparing a life. Every death weighed, every bullet fired, as did every life saved. There was no room for anger or hatred, what she did, she did because it had to be done. War did not reward those who hesitated.

During training, she tried to channel her fey skill on the battlefield, but soon discovered that she was not in control enough. Her voice was an edge without a hilt: too dangerous to those around her if she used it. It would have been simpler to send her to a group of sirens to help her understand and hone her talent—but she didn't have time for that. There was a war going on and she wasn't willing to waste any more days in preparation. What she had in her hands was enough. She was agile, could use weapons and was—as far as she could be—quite disciplined. Mastery over her singing could wait, the front line needed her now.

On more than one occasion she had encountered others like her, feys and humans with exceptional abilities, whether magical or psychic, torn from normalcy by the violence of the world. Not all were strong enough to fit back in. There were successful rescues, moments where a doomed soul could be brought back into the light. But, other times, the shadow was too deep. Some, after being released, would crumble into loneliness, walking away from the sight of their rescuers to write the last words of their story with their own hands. Lizbeth understood. She had seen that abyss, had felt its icy pull in her captivity. But she had chosen to walk in another direction in the end when she had nearly died, a pent-up flame that kept her going.

There was no romanticism in war. There were no epics or heroic deeds, only dirty work, missions completed with the precision of a surgeon cutting open living flesh.

Stories of bravery often left out the most important details. Freezing your ass off, sleeping under the open sky, wearing the same underwear for days, frostbite, mud up to your neck, and dodging bullets, grenades, and knife thrusts—when the fight came down to hand-to-hand. And in their case, dodging magic too. Real magic. Avoiding being devoured by creatures the Third Reich had summoned from abysses that had no name in any known language.

And the nightmares, of course. They came after the third mission. One in the Carpathians, when something faceless nearly devoured them. Since then, she dreamt of eyes that weren't there, of screams that weren't human. She dreamt of losing Shin in the fog.

But when they returned to base—that island that always felt so far away during missions—she could breathe again. She'd shower in hot water, eat fresh bread, and for one or two nights, sleep without dreaming. That was enough. That was all she needed to keep going.

There was a time when Lizbeth still thought war had a smell. She defined it in technical terms in her head: gunpowder, dried blood, piss. But after months in the field, she understood that the smell became part of you. It seeped into your pores, your scalp, your tongue. You slept with it. You woke up with it. Sometimes she dreamt of being clean, of rain, and when she opened her eyes, the rain was mud and the mud smelled like death again.

Human wounds never healed properly—not like hers. She could regenerate in seconds. The others? The blisters on their feet turned to open sores, oozing pus. There was never time to heal the usual way. Just old bandages, some alcohol, a bit of Mari's magic—if she was in the mission—and then keep moving.

And the cold. Fucking hell, the cold. On the worst days, her teeth chattered so hard she thought they'd crack. The trenches in the north were endless puddles, and the freezing water reached up to their knees. Sleeping was a miracle: half her body wrapped in a damp blanket or Shin's coat when they were deployed together, one eye open, finger on the trigger, and nightmares crouched in the dark.

Once, during a long mission, they ate canned vegetables they'd found without checking first. Hunger was hunger. Only afterward did she notice the larvae writhing at the bottom, growing fat and content the motherfuckers. She threw up behind a rock and then laughed—a dry, hollow laugh. It didn't even disgust her anymore. Shin, a little further off, didn't seem to care. In fact, he told her the worms were protein.

After the last close-quarters fight, she spent hours with a metallic taste in her mouth, as if she'd bitten into a bullet or licked a rusted blade. Maybe she had.

One time, after an ambush in the ruins of a French village, she saw a young Allied soldier—too young, with acne still on his face—laughing. He didn't speak. He just laughed. A long, broken laugh, like something had cracked inside him and he hadn't noticed yet. Lizbeth just watched in silence. There was nothing to say, and his squadmates eventually took him away.

Another day, crouching by the remains of a soldier she had killed, she found a letter. It was written in German, the handwriting perfect. There was also a small wooden charm with a heart carved into it. She didn't need to read the words to feel their weight—someone had been waiting for him, someone who'd wait forever now. She kept the letter in her coat for a while, not knowing why. It didn't feel like victory. Just sadness. A stone lodged in her stomach.

But, within the brutality, Lizbeth found something else: determination. She had been reborn not as a monster, not as a martyr. Her life no longer belonged to her alone, it had a purpose in doing something better. And, despite everything, she had learned that moving forward was not only a matter of will, but of choice.

And she chose to live.

There were times when death was a whisper away. In missions against creatures, the line between survival and annihilation was thin as a spider's thread. The Nazis and, on another occasion, the Italians had played with forces that should never have been awakened, unearthing horrors from the depths that were not meant for human desecration. It wasn't just dark magic or forbidden technology, it was something more primal, more hungry.

Lizbeth had seen what happened when the wrong seals were broken: whole cities disappearing into the night, towns turned into echoes of what they once were. There were confrontations where the idea of victory became irrelevant, the only goal was to contain the disaster, to slow the advance of whatever it was that had escaped, before the whole world became its nest. And sometimes containing it was not enough.

Shin twice had to act as a decoy and blow up himself to destroy the threat. It was when Lizbeth saw his secret in action and why he was sometimes sent on missions alone many times. He had an armor that made him invincible while wearing it—not to mention that he was a fey unlike any other. He really could be considered an immortal in the full sense of the word.

It happened during the a mission against a swarm of summoned entities in a cave system—the Carpathians again. The sky burned with black lightning, and the earth seemed to boil with every step those things took. The situation was pure hell: the line had broken, and the only option left was to seal the breach.

Shin didn't ask for permission.

He simply took off his coat, grabbed a bundle of dynamite, and walked straight into the heart of the anomaly. Lizbeth and the others tried to stop him, but he just looked back and shrugged.

There was no resignation in his eyes, not even bravery.

A second later, the world caught fire.

The explosion wasn't like a bomb—it was an implosion of everything that shouldn't exist first. Shin had fused the detonation with the energy particles from his armor. The creatures unraveled as if they'd never been real, and the rift itself collapsed with a soul-shattering scream.

When the dust settled, Lizbeth ran to the smoldering crater.

At its center, Shin's body was already beginning to regenerate.

His torso was open, the inside visible—ribs split, exposed. It was the second time she'd seen something like this since they'd started going on missions together. And, just like before, Shin didn't scream. He didn't complain. She couldn't deny that seeing it terrified her—until she saw his face as he was regenerating. That face, seemingly expressionless didn't even flinch. But she could see beyond that. In his eyes, Shin did feel pain, even if he never said a word.

She saw it.

In his eyes, behind the blood and ash, there was pain. Just pain like any other person. And in that moment, she understood: this regeneration—this so-called immortality—wasn't a gift.

It was a curse.

One of the bloodiest battles took place in a nameless place, where the ground was made of ashes and the sky was a perpetual gray. There were no sides in that massacre, the creatures did not distinguish between insignias, flags, oaths or any other bullshit. Everything became a desperate struggle for survival, trying to put an end to the threat. They were insects gone mad, a swarm of chitinous limbs, membranous wings and soulless eyes, as tall as a man and with an impossible strength. They attacked without strategy, only with a primal urge to tear apart anything that breathed.

The rain wasn't falling—it was spilling, as if the sky had grown sick of the world. And the mud was so thick that each step felt like a muffled scream.

Lizbeth spat blood—not her own—and spun on her heels to fire into the air. The creature screeched, it was an impossible aberration somewhere between insect, bird, and a nightmare. Membranous wings, multiple eyes that focused on nothing, and an abdomen dripping black slime that melted steel.

"Left!" Shin roared, drenched in blood and ash. His right arm unleashing bursts of black particles through the air like invisible blades.

Nitocris moved with a grace that seemed borrowed from another era—or another reality. Her clothes were soaked in blood too, but her eyes burned with ancient fire. With a simple gesture, she split a creature in half. She didn't slice it—she unmade it, as if the world remembered for a moment that the thing should not exist. She had summoned a mirror, and upon seeing its reflection, the creature had vanished—divided and shrunk as if devouring itself.

Wingate Peaslee, reluctantly brought into this mission, was further back, shielded by a ring of soldiers who fell one by one—devoured, torn open by jaws that should never have crossed into the human world.

His hands trembled over an ancient device, covered in runes that pulsed with a dying glow.

"I can't close it yet! I need more time!" he shouted, his voice more librarian than soldier—but heavy with the knowledge that the universe was coming apart.

"We don't have time for this shit anymore, these things are gonna kill us any second!" Lizbeth roared, firing point-blank into one of the winged spiders lunging at her. The shot didn't kill it—just paused it long enough for Shin to reduce it to ash.

Behind them, the strange sky was opening. Not figuratively—splitting. A black, throbbing rift, birthing limbs, impossible buzzing, and echoes that made ears bleed.

The soldiers screamed prayers and curses in equal measure.

Nitocris, unfazed, turned into black smoke and flew toward the edge of the distortion. Her eyes—dark as shattered obsidian mirrors—glowed.

"These things don't die with bullets," she said, raising both hands. Her voice ceased to be voice—it became a chant. Ancient. One that made the earth crack like broken bone.

In that moment, Lizbeth understood a bit more about her: Nitocris wasn't just fighting—she was judging. That black smoke and the shards of mirror blooming from thin air erased the creatures as fast as they appeared.

Peaslee screamed something unintelligible. Then a burst of light shot from his device. The distortion shuddered. The creatures shrieked. Some twisted, caught between planes. Others simply snapped in two, as if they had ceased to be real.

The battle ended, but no one cheered.

What remained was the smell of burnt flesh, boiling mud, and an eerie silence that lingered after seen something too big.

Too old. Too real.

The fire the Initiative set afterwards erased every trace of that night of horror—yet it stayed burned into Lizbeth's memory for a long, long time.

On other occasion the squad where Lizbeth was, was not alone, other mixed squads had joined the fray, but numerical advantage meant nothing against something that knew neither fear nor exhaustion. Corpses piled up fast, soldiers and monstrosities mingling in the bloody mud. There were moments when Lizbeth believed they would never get out of there, that the swarm or creatures would consume them until they left no trace. And yet, they fought. Not because there was hope, but because surrender was not in the nature of the living. Even though the final battle was decided by her and Nitocris. Lizbeth used her voice away from the others to sweep away a good part of the foggy insects—while Nitocris deployed her fire, smoke and mirror abilities.

In time Lizbeth and Shin had become names that traveled between whispers and classified reports. They were not only efficient in the battlefield, they were forces of nature involved and there was a very good chemistry between them. Wherever they were sent together, chaos ended in order, or ashes. It didn't matter if the enemy was Nazis obsessed with the occult, beasts from forgotten times or even their own shadow cast in the foul play of war. They figured it out. And that made them dangerous. Not only for their enemies, but also for those who commanded them.

The Ahnenerbe—and rumors said that Himmler himself—had marked them as priority threats like so many others in the Initiative. On three occasions, they sent agents and specialized units to capture them, hoping to trap them, study them and weaponize them. They failed. Then they changed tactics. The last operation was not to take them alive, but to eliminate them. That attempt also met its abrupt end, with Shin leaving behind a pile of bodies and a clear message: they were not easy prey. But what was most disturbing was not the attacks themselves, but what they discovered next. There were spies inside the Armitage Initiative.

Two infiltrated agents, with direct orders to report on the Initiative's targets, on Lizbeth and Shin, and other targets, waiting for the right moment to betray the organization from the inside. They were unmasked and handed over to the British, who made sure they would never be a threat again.

Rumor had it that Emmeline had fed them to her bloodthirsty three-headed poodle, but who knew if it was true.

However, Lizbeth and Shin were not the only names echoing through the corridors of the Initiative.

Other members had carved out their own legend, figures so imposing that their stories were told with a mixture of awe... and skepticism too.

Cladius, the wraith hunter, was a man who could track an enemy even after death, chasing spirits until they vanished completely.

Nitocris also had the ability to change her appearance to the point where even the most advanced detection devices could not recognize her. It was said that she once infiltrated a Nazi barracks, assassinated an officer, took his identity and lived with the enemy for three months, before blowing up the entire base from the inside.

John No Eyebrows, a Navajo sniper, whose name came from a burn that left him without eyebrows as a young man, had such absurd marksmanship that he managed to take down an enemy at 2.4 kilometers with a bullet that ricocheted off a light pole, before finding its target.

And then there was Laren, the giant of the unit. A man whose strength was already legendary—but whose fame came not only from his combat exploits. It was said that his stomach was a battlefield in itself, and that his digestion was capable of defying the laws of thermodynamics. During a mission in the Alps, after an improvised feast of emergency rations, mostly beans, a simple fart of his had caused the flag of an outpost to fly, alerting the entire enemy garrison and sparking a battle that ended with the capture of the place. Since then, his infamous skill became an anecdote that no one wanted to confirm, but which everyone repeated with a smile of disbelief.

There was also Osman, the painter and occult magician. Although already old, he had become a nightmare for the SS, leaving a trail of bodies stamped on walls wherever he went, with his strange ability to transform the bodies he pointed his brush at into paints.

And finally Mellie, the terror of Africa. Mellie was a vampire, part of the Rackhenhell family on her mother's side, but on her father's side her father was a magician and shaman who had taught her how to obtain the power of animals and project herself into them. She had killed several high ranking officers before crossing over to Europe and joining the second unit of the Armitage Initiative.

Then Lizbeth met someone else.

The Initiative's mission in the Netherlands had been complicated from the start. The Nazi occupation had turned the lowlands into a labyrinth of suspicion and brutality, and moving undetected required more than cunning: it required allies. It was then that Shin took Lizbeth to meet one of the top leaders of the Second Armitage Initiative Unit. The two had met at Miskatonic University and shared a friendship and interest in the study of preternatural events.

His name was Leon, a fey who fit the image of the elves in the Nordic tales perfectly: tall, a bit thin but with an imposing bearing, long ears and silky blond hair that cascaded down his back. However, any attempt to pigeonhole him into mystical nobility fell apart as soon as he opened his mouth.

Leon was not the ethereal, serene being one would expect, he was a son of Florida, with a drinking problem, an unpredictable temper and a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush. He could alternate between a brilliant strategist and an insufferable curmudgeon with the ease with which Churchill alternated between a cigarette and a drink. But he had to be given credit where credit was due: he was a born leader. His people respected him not only for his combat skills, but because he knew exactly when to give orders and when to let his soldiers make their own decisions. His vocabulary or his mannerisms didn't matter—not even his inclinations. It was Leon, along with Big Bertha, Maurice and Silen who ran that base.

The base of the Second Unit was hidden in the Veluwe forest, in another of the so-called evanescent lands, zones where reality bent and the rules of the world became malleable. It was not as large as Runen Island, but it carried its own weight in the war. For some time his team had been operating in secret, providing support to the Dutch resistance and sabotaging Nazi efforts in the region.

Rumors about them spread among the German occupiers like horror stories: soldiers disappearing into the forest without a trace, coded messages seeming to come out of nowhere, explosions occurring at the most opportune moments. And at the center of it all was Leon, with his jug of liquor in one hand, cigar in his mouth and his sword in the other, always ready to lead a charge or argue loudly with whoever was unlucky enough to disagree with him. It didn't take Lizbeth long to understand why Shin considered him a valuable ally, though it was also clear that working with him would be a challenge. But in wartime, allies were not chosen for their attitude, but for their effectiveness. And Leon, for all his faults, was someone who could be trusted when the going got really tough.

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