Dead hands reached out. He recognized the fallen and they did not frighten him:

One-eyed Meri, killed by dog spiders.

Alik and Buuko, struck down by rakkes and the Shadow Monarch’s dark elves.

Regimental Sergeant Major Lorian, sitting tall on the horse Zwindarra, both felled in the battle at Luuguth Jor.

And so many others…

“Join us.”

He eased the hammer back on his musket. A charge and ball already rested inside. He turned the musket so that the muzzle rested firmly over his heart.

Frost fire danced along the metal in anticipation.

It would take but one squeeze of the trigger, but what would he end, and what would begin?

“Join us.”

He wanted to believe that all the pain, the fear, the terrifying rage, the nightmares that stalked his sleep…all would sink into a cold abyss. The shades of those that had gone before beckoned him, but their voices trembled with a pain he could only guess at. Could it be worse than what he lived with now?

One final act on his part and he would find out.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

“There you are!” Sergeant Yimt Arkhorn said, trudging up the slope. The dwarf’s voice boomed like a cannon in the cooling night air. “I wouldn’t a thought it possible to lose someone on this wee pebble of an island, but you just about managed it. You don’t want to be hanging around this sad lot,” he said, casting a hand toward the blackened husks of trees and the dead. If the dwarf saw the shadows, he said nothing.

Private Alwyn Renwar lowered his musket as the frost surged briefly before guttering out. He slowly turned to face the dwarf.

“Five islands in a row,” Yimt said, huffing to a stop beside him on top of the ridge. He hoisted his shatterbow up to his shoulder, hooking one of the curved arms over it so that the double-barreled weapon hung down across his broad back. He reached to his side and grabbed his wooden canteen, first offering it to Alwyn, who shook his head.