[ALERT Side-Story] Home Is Where The (Undying) Heart Is [COMPLETE]

The skies were darker than normal for a typical night in Naarajärvi. The normally quiet snow-swept hills were filled with gunfire. When the horn immediately sounded, no one knew what to make of it. Then, without warning, an entire battalion of the living dead came and pushed on the town’s perimeter defenses.

These weren’t your average Romero-style zombies. These were armed walking corpses, composed of victims of war spanning the centuries. It said a lot that some were warriors armed with Tenth Century Nordic equipment, while others were reanimated Soviet conscripts of the Second World War. The warriors of pre-Christendom Scandinavia fell quickly, while the later century undead endured. All in answer to the horn, and with an overriding directive in their lifeless minds.

“Death to the Living…”

With the tactical nuance of the conscripts, one could mistake them as having more intelligence than the others. The truth was, this was little more than muscle memory and habit on display - the nerve twitches of those who had died long ago. If falling back on military training they had in life was what accomplished the stated directive of killing the Living, that’s what they will do.

Emergent behavior at its finest.

Within the hangar where his white-painted TYPE-HOGIRE power armor was waiting, Taavi Virtanen was being briefed on what was going on. It hadn’t even been a day since he got back from Ruokolahti. He’d only had enough time to eat, and go through high altitude recon footage.

It wasn’t just the living dead - supernatural creatures of all types were wandering around the world. Though, Scandinavia and Continental Europe was seeing some of the worst of the living dead walking, killing anyone who was still alive.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Taavi trailed. “An undead artillery team?”

“Three, in fact,” Ilona said. “They aren't very good shots, but they are getting closer. They need to be dealt with if the town is going to survive the night”.

Stepping into the power armor, the HOGIRE interfaced with the neural cybernetics needed to connect to it. The full-face helmet descended over Taavi’s face, concealing it, and the rest of the armor shielding his body from the elements. Internal climate control kicked in as the armor’s fission battery kicked in, the thrusters on the back igniting with a test fire.

“How bad is it in the rest of the country?” Taavi asked.

“Bad, though the Finnish Defense Forces are holding out well - their attackers are not as numerous or well-armed as ours,” Ilona responded. “Take out the artillery emplacements as soon as possible. If you can manage to destroy those before our perimeter defenses fall, we should have the firepower to hold out against the rest”.

Chambering the round from his Sako TRG-42, Taavi nodded. He carried five extra magazines and a few explosives.

Artillery…this was starting to feel like the Continuation War all over again.

“Roger that - this is White Glint, deploying…”


If there was any town that could be accurately be called a ghost town, Metsäjärvi was the place. Since its fall during the Winter War, the town never saw reconstruction. Very few souls passed through, except for the brave few volunteers that dared to reclaim the bodies of the fallen.

The sign that welcomed visitors with the name of the village creaked in the chilly wind. The birds had fallen into complete silence - in complete dread of what was happening. Once a lumber and fishing village, Metsäjärvi was a derelict that hosted buildings in various states of disrepair, collapse, or incineration. Other buildings had been reclaimed by nature entirely.

The lumber mill, once one of the most productive buildings in the village - its main economic backbone - had been silent for nearly a century. Rust had long set in where there had been iron on the tools, blades, and fastenings. A classic square town, roads faded from disuse and buried under snow.

Around the old village was dead silent, save for the noiseless rising of ghosts that should have remained dead. In pursuit of their goal, and in the absence of human life, the cries of dying fauna filled the sky.

This was what Eevi Väinölä was greeted with…

Floating many kilometers to the north, a cold, lifeless figure that - by all rights - should have died of the Bubonic Plague in the 14th Century of the Scandinavian region, looked out over the vast expanse. The chilling wind did nothing to phase the emaciated, shriveled, dry body of the lifeless woman. Her eyes glowed a cold blue as her leather cloak creaked in the wind.

They were in the forests of this nation - her children. The dead that she raised and gave purpose again.

There was shelter within her insanity. When the horn blew, Skadi the Lich Queen heard it. The call was to kill all mortals and go westward to the United States. Addled in her grief as she was, and with ambitions of her own, she disregarded obeying it…

But her children - her precious undead that she would spread her curse to the living with - heeded it instead. Rebelling against her, they began to kill, with no regards to the plans she had for the living.

Painful as it was to do so, she needed to put her children down, a bit at a time. It wasn’t a complete loss, though. The living that her rebellious children had cut down would repopulate her legions’ ranks - a small comfort in her accursed existence as undead.

An existence she would make all share with her…

With a determination to rebuild from the ashes, Skadi the Cruel hovered over the snowy hills and the frozen waters of the lake.

The walk home had been cold and isolating for Eevi. But she was no stranger to that. The centenarian had arrived on the outskirts of a destroyed and long abandoned village around nightfall some 5 hours after leaving Ruokolahti. A cracked and leaning signpost had snow accumulating on it from the growing weather. Walking up to it through the snow, she wiped off it's surface to reveal the old and fading writing carved into the surface itself. Metsäjärvi.

She was home at long last.

Walking past the sign, she walked into town. Rows of houses hugging the central road through town were decorated with the scars of long extinguished fires and the scars of old bullet holes across some walls. The mills no longer rang with the hum of their saws and the town square was absent of children dancing and playing while their parents scolded them. But she was home.

A small house was tightly packed at the end of the street opposite from where she entered town. Nearly a third of it's roof was missing and a darkness stained the wood itself casting an eerie shadow in the night of the snowfall. Eevi wouldn't go there yet. She couldn't go there yet.

The entire trek here her hands stung and were stabbed by invisible blades tearing at her very soul, but as she entered Metsäjärvi once again she found the pain subsiding and momentarily relieved. With this euphoric release from pain Eevi felt her exhaustion finally arriving all at once upon her shoulders. The cold, the walk here, her flight over, and the countless hours of lost sleep had begun to press down upon her.

Allowing herself entry into an abandoned home that looked together enough for suitable shelter for the night, Eevi began to settle in for the night unsure of what exactly she was doing here. Grey and decrepit was the inside as she entered and scanned her surroundings. The table had been sat for a dinner that was never served. If her memory served, the village was preparing for some quiet and quaint New Years celebrations across the various homes that year. Some of the utensils and dishes were gathering generations of dust on the floor, no doubt knocked down in the panic of the attack on their home.

Ignoring her memories from the night that changed her forever, she moved to the large bed in the corner. It was uncomfortable and faded down by the years it lingered here unused. But a bed was a bed and Eevi desperately craved sleep. Sitting down, Eevi removed her coat to use as a makeshift pillow and lowered her head to the bed. Sleep quickly took her in this old, dusty bed. The sleep would be short lived however.

When she awoke the world was still dark outside as it had been when she fell off to sleep. It had to have only been a few hours by her reckoning. But the sound that woke her was like a waking nightmare. The gale of the storm howled its banshee like cry, ripping through this grave of a town and carried a terrible sound with it. Gunfire and explosions. It was like she was back there again. Even this isolated in the woods as Metsäjärvi was, there was faint and distant cries of terror throughout the night. Creeping up to the window of the house, she saw figures moving around in the dark. There had to be dozens of them shambling and creeping, almost aimlessly, through the snow and amongst the trees and dilapidated buildings.

Whatever was going on, all Eevi could know for certain was that she was not alone tonight. Settling down in the dark and collecting her thoughts, confusion could only leave her lips. "What the hell is going on?"

When the horn initially blew, the settlements to be hit first were those that were reasonably occupied. Metsäjärvi had been largely ignored in the opening minutes, though people wandering the forest outside of it found themselves under attack by the undead of various kinds. Some were elderly that had only been reanimated in recent years. Others were the decaying remnants of the Soviets that attacked the area so long ago during the Winter War.

All showed one thing in common: decaying skin, and glowing red lights for their eyes. And in absence of living humans, they would attack any wildlife they came across. The birds in the area around Metsäjärvi wised up and went quiet soon after the gunshots approached. The number of conscripts for the Finnish Defence Forces were rather light, given the lack of strategic advantage that Metsäjärvi offered, but there was a small patrol out on standard maneuvers when the havoc started.

The report of M23 rifles (basically Finnish copies of the ubiquitous AR-15 rifles, with the twist of a different gas system) sounded through the darkness as a trio of conscripts - one wounded - stumbled into the town. Two were utterly terrified. Only one - a designated marksman with an old Soviet-era Dragunov - appeared to have any sort of handle on his fight-or-flight response.

Commands were muttered, and the marksman appeared to be taking charge of the situation, ordering the remaining two to find a shelter to hunker down in to begin emergency medical aid in relative safety.

Wrapping a tourniquet around the leg of the other, the rifleman who was still uninjured helped his wounded comrade to his feet and moved them both further in town, looking for anything with four intact walls to take cover behind. The marksman, in the meantime, moved over to a blasted-up, but still solid, two-story building as a vantage point, the relatively intact roof above where he lay powdered in snow, offering a degree of concealment.

Several mounds of snow had piled up in the village, and the two conscripts moved carefully as the distinctive report of the Dragunov went off - the senior member of the team covering for the rear. Return-fire hit the dilapidated buildings, but the riflemen were still intact. Most of the buildings they passed barely provided much protection from the elements, much less from gunfire. Jimmying the handle on one that still had its walls and roof intact, the aged lock creaked and gave way as a flashlight shone into the room, and a Glock held by the wounded rifleman was flagging around the room - a room in the very same house that Eevi was in.

The chorus which filled her night left Eevi in a state close to shock. Gunfire, shouting, panic. It was like she was only a 19 year old girl again. She hated that feeling. Frozen in this state, she wondered what was going on. In this world it could be anything. A magic portal to the past, pocket-space of the night of her trauma, or even just a rogue and freak gunfight in the woods during a snowstorm. Really any of that could happen in this day and age and be completely normal to some people.

But why did it have to happen to her though? Wasn't one night of terror and turmoil in her destroyed home enough?

Pulled from her wallowing and self-pity by the sound of the door to her temporary shelter from the cold, Eevi instinctually readied her powers against the potential threat. When a flashlight illuminated the inside of the abandoned house, she waited with baited breath in the corner, perched on the bed like an animal with her hands ready to kill if they proved hostile towards her. If the trembling of the light didn't give away the fear in it's holder, the telling shake silhouetting the pistol in his hand did more than enough to betray his emotions. Whoever these people were, they were running for their lives and now found shelter for very different reasons in the same place as herself.

When the light and accompanying firearm finally found her in the corner, she heard a gasp of shock come from the figure hidden behind the light, almost blinding in its contrast with the dark of the night. A voice, attempting to pull some semblance of authority and control back into its owner, shouted at her beyond the light. "Don't move! Stay right there and put your fucking hands up!" The fear was ever-present in his tone, but a loaded gun pointed at you was a loaded gun regardless of who held it. Maybe even worse so if held by afraid and erratic people.

Complying with the orders, Eevi raised her hands slowly above her head. A second voice muttered near to the first one. "What the hell is she doing here, this place is supposed to be abandoned?" This voice sounded to be in pain but just as afraid as the first one. Deciding to speak for herself, Eevi answered their question. "I was paying my respects to Metsäjärvi, the snow got rather bad so I came in here to sleep until it stopped." The moment she spoke, she heard the two jump as if they hadn't expected her to speak to them. It was a half truth but the fact that she was a survivor of this very village didn't seem very pressing or relevant in that moment.

"I said stay right there!" Their fear was making them ignorant of the situation at hand, Eevi felt her irritation growing but she had to stay calm while under the barrel of a man in fear of his life. "Whatever is going on out there I haven't the slightest clue. But if you're in here to hide then raising your voice like that and pointing your gun at a lady all by herself isn't going to help any of us." She was pushing them somewhat, but she hoped they would see some rationality in their desperate situation after hearing her out.

"I don't know one way or the other if we should trust her, Sergeant," the wounded soldier said. "But a living soul is better than a zombie that can shoot".

"Hn..." the sergeant hesitated, before saying, "Fine, but I hope you're willing to help out. Kersantti [sergeant] Karlonen, out of Helsinki".

"Korpraali [private first class] Salminen," the wounded soldier said. "Kersantti, I think my injury is opening up".

Karlonen set the wounded Salminen down, then looked to Eevi, his own pistol still aimed at her with suspicion.

"I don't know if you noticed, but there's a lot of freaky things going on outside," Karlonen said. "We have no hope of making it through this unless we work together. We've got zombies outside, and they can carry guns."

"Lousy shots with them, but I got unlucky," Salminen said.

"Clear your sleeve away from the wound," Karlonen commanded, opening a bag of medical supplies, his pistol's muzzle slightly raising off of Eevi.

"If you want to help, I need someone to handle Salminen's tourniquet while I suture his wound, " Karlonen said. "Otherwise, keep your head down".

Outside, the distinctive shot of a Dragunov rang out as the marksman, Luutnantti (Lieutenant) Snellman, took aim on a zombie that got too close to the village outskirts. The gases from the muzzle brake kicked up some snow, but the flash hider did its job.

The zombie fell over, but rather than merely lay there, it disintegrated into ash as it hit the snow. It seemed that whatever ability was used to reanimate these undead freaks was too unstable to keep them together once they fell in combat. The rest of the zombies began to fire, but between the poor visibility of the snowstorm and their inherent lack of accuracy, they hit nothing but wood and brick, not managing to hit Snellman.

"Zombies? Now that one is new for me." With introduction out of the way Eevi felt comfortable enough to lower her arms and settled into a more relaxed position sitting on the bed now. "Seems I'm destined to run into soldiers this week."  She caught Karlonen giving her a confused look at this and laughed at him, waving her hand at him. "Nothing, don't worry. Just speaking aloud." Her laugh at this was cut short by the wounded soldier, Salminen, wincing in pain at his injuries as he sat at the abandoned dining table.

Rising from the bed, she approached him. The least she could do was help the fodder be as ready and capable as they could be if she were to survive the night against the apparent undead threat she now found herself entrapped against. Sitting in a chair to the wounded man's side, she waited for the other man treating him to instruct her when to grab and hold the tourniquet. While Karlonen worked about treating his comrade, the wounded Salminen attempted at small talk with her. "It is an odd night to find such a beautiful young lady alone in this ghost town." A real charmer he was.

"Eevi. This 'beautiful young lady' is named Eevi. Like I said, I was paying my respects. My family lost people here during the war." She heard a grunt from Karlonen, diligently at work, as he commented on her story.

"My condolences. My family are locals around here and my grandparents told me a story once about this village lost in a single night out here without any survivors." Before Eevi could comment, she heard another shot fired by the rifleman outside. Karlonen handed her his flashlight when she returned her gaze to the two. "You can hold that tourniquet tightly enough with one hand, here I need some better light while I work or this fool is want to lose his leg."

Chuckling out a response at his friend's words, Salminen spoke up. "You wish bastard. It'd give you a chance to finally snag some ladies with my dance moves out of the way." He looked over at Eevi then shot his eyes back down in awkwardness. The young man had some kind of fancy for her evidently. How distasteful. Flashing his eyes back up at her, he let an awkward smile cross his face. "I really am a good dancer though."

Being robbed of another chance to respond, multiple shots were fired outside. A deliberate and repetitive pattern that was not being fired out of mistake or from missed shots being retaken. Eevi's suspicions were confirmed as the sound of small arms fire from different weapons began to pelt the wooden walls of their shelter. Looking outside through the cracked window, she saw multiple figures moving in the dark towards the village now.

Handing the flashlight to Salminen, Eevi made for the door. "It sounds and looks like your friend could use some help out there. Please excuse me for a moment gentlemen" And before they could protest, she made her way through the door into the nightmare hiding amongst the snow and night outside.

Upon stepping outside, Eevi would immediately be able to note that visibility beyond five meters was very poor, preserved only because the buildings were blocking the wind. The shots of the Dragunov wielded by Snellman began to ring out again, with another zombified Soviet dropping from a shot to the head, dissipating into dust. Were Eevi to approach the house that Snellman lay prone in, he would express surprise that a civilian was in the area, and would advise her to return to the others to fortify the house they were in.

There were other problems, however. Because the three survivors were in a hurry to get to shelter, none of them had time to deploy mines on the approaches - the entire area behind the house was open to attack, and it appeared that some zombies had gotten through into the village. Or, perhaps, these zombies were already dormant in the village, waiting for something to wake them up?

In any case, the zombies within the village weren't armored, nor were they well-armed. Most of them were using farm equipment and other tools as improvised melee weapons. Outside of melee range, they posed no threat. Every one of them was dressed in what they wore when they died - a few still carried the signs of having been partially incinerated during the Winter War. While Eevi might have been able to recognize some of them as neighbors she had prior to the war, there didn't seem to be any family among them.

The more armed ones - those with guns - were still on the outskirts being dispatched by Snellman.

Eevi would have plenty of time to dispatch the undead villagers, but from there, had a range of options available to her.

She could support Snellman in clearing out the undead Soviets on the east flank, which would reduce the firing coming from that direction. Doing so would leave the western, northern, and southern approaches unaddressed. She could opt to check on the other flanks, potentially thinning out those areas, but risking Snellman getting overrun with numbers in the east.

A third option would be to hold position in the village center, able to respond to all areas equally, but exposing her to fire without any cover. And finally, there was returning to the house and fortifying it, which presented the lowest risk to Karlonen and Salminen, but allowed for no room to maneuver if the zombies broke the perimeter.

Of course, she could make a break and abandon everyone, but risk running into the woods infested with zombies...and even worse things. The sky was the limit on her options here.

It was Eevi's move. What will she do?

In any case, Karlonen was providing emergency aid to Salminen with his medical supplies, stemming blood flow and closing the wound where possible.

Steeping outside, Eevi felt the true embrace of her motherland deliver its chill touch to her skin. Having left her jacket inside on the bed, the snow was biting into her skin and stung deep. She missed this feeling. All the heat of the world could disappear for the rest of her life as far as she was concerned in this moment. This missed feeling was almost enough to make her forget the danger she was in tonight. Almost.

Adopting a far to casual walk, Eevi was strolling the dark, abandoned streets of Metsäjärvi once again like she would have on any other day in her past life. She was smiling, evidently relishing memories of a better, happier time. It was from the building she exited that she heard her first noise that wasn't distant gunfire. A dull thud of wood on wood. A pounding in the alley behind the house of someone attempting to break in through the walls of the house. Sauntering along the side of the house and around the corner, Eevi found the source of the disturbance.

Two figures were against the back wall of the house, hammering at the wood with the buts of their rifles. One wore the familiar grey m/36 jaeger uniform of the Finnish Army, and the other was adorned in the olive-drab vatnik jacket of the Red Army. "How pleasant, enemies of the last decades finally finding comradery in the afterlife." At the sound of her voice they slowly raised their ashen and haggard heads at her, their eyes absent in their sockets and only filled by the stygian void of their emptiness. As the dead Finn attempted to sluggishly unsling it's rifle from it's shoulder, Eevi raised her finger and fired one of her shots.

The impact ripped the undead man in half at his pelvis and sent his legs flying in two separate directions while his torso landed unceremoniously in the snow underneath him. Bringing her hand about to the Soviet's head she fired again. It's head disintegrated instantaneously from the blow of her powers with the rest of its body following suit shortly afterwards. "I am sorry gentlemen but you are disturbing a very important place for me so I'll have to ask you all to leave." Approaching the still crawling Finnish zombie, she raised her boot and stomped it's head until the dark dust had fully dissipated from the snow.

Only their weapons remained after them. The stocks rotting and their metal rusting and dented. "Must have picked them up right where they left them originally. Continuing on fighting like nothing happened." Shrugging off her thought she kicked the firearms unceremoniously into a pile of snow and circled the house. The sound of the Dragunov provided an oddly calming backdrop for her patrol around the house. With the arrival back at the front of the building confirming to her the immediate safety of the buildings perimeter, she looked through one of the broken front windows. Calling out to Karlonen through the window, she informed him of the situation. "Looks like they know you're in there. Take some caution and be ready to dive down at the sound of any noise."

Leaving the window she moved further away from the house. That interaction struck her as soon as she walked away as confusing to her. Why did she do that for them by covering the exterior and letting them know to be more alert than they already were? Probably to make the entertainment they could provide last for longer, especially with the wounded one. She had to see if she could stretch that one's emotions out.

Ducking aside into an alleyway between two houses crumbling against each other, she disappeared into the jungled knot of old homes and overgrowth. This was her hometown and she knew these streets better than any rotten creatures on autopilot could ever hope too and she would use this to her advantage. She would certainly make these intruders pay for disturbing the rest of her friends and family.

"These ones, too," Skadi looked over the bodies of two recently-killed soldiers of the Finnish Defense Forces. By appearances, the were killed with rifle rounds. And the sounds of weapons firing in Metsäjärvi told her that the survivors were there. She had to put down a few of her children, sadly - the horn's call had caused them to rebel, too.

She had with her half a score of raised undead, most of them Finnish Defense Forces outfitted with modern weaponry. Like their counterparts in Metsäjärvi, they were undead, durable, resistant to cold, and could use firearms. The most visible external difference is that the rebellious undead in Metsäjärvi had their eyes glowing red - Skadi's recently-raised undead soldiers had their eyes glow blue. Cold as the very snow that fell around them.

With a chant, she raised the two soldiers before her. They were added to the ranks of those she had with her, but the Lich Queen's presence on the battlefield hadn't gone unnoticed. A few of the attackers peeled away from Metsäjärvi's northern approach to belligerently attack the very woman that gave them life again.

"Ingrates," she said. "You repay my kindness in giving you purpose by attacking me."


Karlonen nodded after the knocking on the back of their shelter ceased, and Eevi confirmed that they had already known they were inside. Applying disinfectant and then styptic, Karlonen addressed Salminen's wound, suturing the blood vessels shut before wrapping it up in gauze and bandaging. Checking Salminen's pack, he retrieved a VP 2010 (basically, an updated, nationally-made copy of the US's Claymore anti-personnel mine), angling it near the door, giving the detonator to Salminen - the recently-treated soldier was in no state to accurately hold a rifle.

Karlonen, on the other hand, was fit to adequately fire a rifle. Leaving Salminen to hunker down, he stepped out of the house to check in with Snellman.

"Sir?" he asked.

"The northern front...they're focusing on someone else coming from that direction," Snellman said.

The northern front being distracted, the village itself being addressed by Eevi, Karlonen took station on the southern area. The old Soviets fired with their Mosin-Nagants, missing him by a wide margin while he took cover. Returning fire with his own rifle, Karlonen was able to dispatch around four or five with well-placed shots to the chest areas. Perhaps...

Perhaps they may be able to make it through this...

A thump sounded in the night, followed by a whistling noise approaching. A mortar!

The undead were using mortars!

It landed near Karlonen, but remained inert. A dud? Karlonen wasn't about to take chances; diving away from the blast radius, Karlonen took a few shots at the shell. It took two hits, but he was able to detonate it without sustaining injury.

Elsewhere, right by the old lumber mill, one of the mounds of snow began to move. One of the undead crawled out of the powder, carrying a hatchet. And he had a very distinctive appearance. His hair had discolored due to time, and was disheveled, but there was no mistaking that it had once been blond, as was his beard. The blood on his chest had dried a long, long time ago, but the wounds were still there, unable to heal - four or five wounds from where bayonets had pierced him.

This was what remained of Mister Väinölä...

Stepping through the snow at a slow limp, his hatchet was raised, eager to shed the blood of the living. Slowly, Mister Väinölä followed the life that he detected - someone young, whose blood would paint the snow. Faint recognition registered in his glowing red eyes as he saw who it was.

The next words out of his mouth were not consciously uttered. They were a reflex action - the nerve twitches of a man that was ninety years dead.

For a moment, he lowered the hatchet, and reached out with his unarmed hand, as if to touch the daughter he had not seen in forever...

"Eeeeeeeviiiiii!"

The chill which found her wasn't from the cold which she lacked proper coverage for. Instead, it came from the fear she felt as her named croaked from the lips of the corpse stumbling in the snow towards her. The familiar blonde that she would recognize if she pulled a piece of her own hair out told her all she needed to know of this thing’s former identity. Her words caught on fully before her mind did as she stepped back, uttering their identity in fear.

"Papa."

His arms were outstretched for her, something in her mind wanted only to run into those once strong arms. To let the nearly century of pain out as she sobbed into his chest. But there would be no comfort from this thing. Because a thing is all this was now, not her Papa.

Raising her hand to this creatures legs and steadying her breath she fired into his abdomen and separated his legs from his body. The upper torso that used to be her fathers landed in the snow and the creatures became almost enraged at this wounding. Clawing at her with it's remaining two limbs, it dragged itself towards Eevi yet made little progress in the snow.

Walking through the snow, she crouched a safe distance away from him. " Hi Papa, I am home. Mom will probably be furious with me that I didn't call ahead eh?" She let out a bitter laugh, the rifle fire in the distance and the creature’s clawing for her being the only sound joining this now sad trio. "I went to America you know? It's a little old fashioned and different like you said, the people are far too friendly and not personable enough. It's odd." Eevi adjusted herself in the snow, the deep snow her Father was in impeded any real attempt to reach her so she settled to a more comfortable position for her casual report to her Father.

"But they are exceptional people. The kind of people who really help you find what your meaning or place in life is." Looking down at her tattoos, she felt the sting of tears on her face in the cold of the nights storm. "I've hurt them. Killed them. A lot of them. Just like the men who took you from me. Some of them deserved it, not nearly enough did though. But it keeps a roof over my head. Your Kullannuppu can go wherever in the world she wants and eats whatever she pleases. Mama would love the sweets I could have shared."

Her head was cast down at the snow. No matter how much she wanted it to be him, it wasn't. And this creature wouldn't see her crying. "I miss you both terribly bad you know? 90 years. I don't know if you understand the passage of time when you stop living but it has been 90 years. And I am so tired without you two." When her eyes began to cloud her vision fully with tears, she wiped them away. She felt the tears freeze to her bare arm as soon as it had wiped them off.

"I don't know why I am alive anymore. People tell me about purpose and meaning and to "find my place again", but none of them can tell me what replaces the hole my heart was left with by you two." She sat in the snow now, the cold was never a bother to her. "When I arrived in Helsinki first, I tried to die that night. An easy knot like you had taught me once paired with a strong beam to hold me long enough. It wouldn't have been hard, I was barely eating anything by then. When I opened my eyes and saw light again it was just another terrible daybreak instead of either of you being their to hold me."

"The rope has been perfectly cut off by something black that had stained it during the attempt. I know what did it, I just don't know how or why. Even when starvation and thirst were threatening to claim me and all I wanted was to lay down there on the streets and have it take me, something kept fighting inside me to get up and move. Even while I would tell myself that I did not want to eat, that I wanted to die and stop waking up, I would shove down each loaf of shitty bread as my life depended on it in spite of all that will and thought I believed I had to perish."

"So I am still alive. I am still alive and I am a terrible person. I miss you both terribly every single moment I am awake and can't speak with you anymore but I keep moving onwards for some reason." Her father had finally crawled close enough to her that she stood again. She stopped for a moment, stooped over what she once adored in this world more than anything, and stared into where would be eyes. Any kind of recognition, a semblance of understanding and comprehension, was all that she needed.

All she saw was empty hunger and a desire to kill her. Rising fully back to her feet, she pointed at the head of this monster, this macabre and cruel puppeteering of her beloved Papa. "I am sorry I can't be with you. I am sorry that this is happening to you now. But I will find who did this. And they will suffer." She waited for a moment. Just long enough for any part that was still her Papa to reply, to give her some kind of comfort or wisdom after so long. Her answer was the silence. And her reply was muscle memory at this point.

"Bang"

When he was reanimated early in the 1950s, Mister Väinölä was like any other of the Lich Queen's thralls: a dead mind and a puppet body that only followed orders. The necromancy that bound him - when used on the recently deceased - allowed some level of awareness, but no control over one's actions. Perhaps it was a side effect of the horn, or the proximity toward someone so dear to him in life...

Whatever the case, when he awoke, Mister Väinölä knew that a long time had passed. And he knew that death - whether through the tides of time or by his murder - should have long claimed him. He knew his limbs were moving of their own accord. He knew the directive in his mind - "death to the living" - was something he didn't want. His nerves were long dead, and he didn't register any pain as he was bisected.

As Eevi...his beloved daughter, talked on. That she was unable to age, that she lived only to survive. That she killed to live, a number of emotions passed through his fading awareness - disappointment in what she had become. Understanding in why she had become it. Perhaps the one thing he could still do - as his fatherly duty would require - was give her one last piece of advice.

"Time...marches on...Live...for more than memories," he groaned out. "You have...a choice...to make new ones..."

He reached for her shoe, wanting to touch her once more. Regardless of what she had become, she was still his daughter - someone he wanted to live life well.

"To...change...To find...a new lease...on life".

Mister Väinölä's awareness was rapidly fading as the directive began to take over. His Eevi was one of the Living - and that meant she had to join the dead. But he didn't want that - he wanted her to live. Live to change. Live to forget. Live for more than just her memories...or for herself.

"Finish...me..." his last words before the force bullet stuck.

He went still, gradually crumbling to ash. One final utterance left his mouth: "Free..."

In the hour and change that passed since the fighting in the region started, things had gotten worse.

A mortar explosion rocked the house that Snellman was in, catching him in its blast radius, shredding him, severing his arteries. In seconds, he had bled out, Karlonen was being pinned riflemen that got too close and were almost on top of him. An explosion rang from the house that Salminen was in; the mine that he was using to cover the door had gone off, riddling his would-be attacker, but leaving him down to just his pistol as he tried to administer some painkiller to himself.

Around Eevi, several of the undead that were fixated on her as she was conversing with her old man had their attention drawn by something else. One took a face full of buckshot and fell over before crumbling to ash, the attacker similarly undead. This one's eye glowed blue with the only a handful of rifle shots to the torso having killed him previously - he lacked the shuffling limp that was evident in the undead villagers or the old Soviet conscripts. Time hadn't worn away this corpse, as it was nearly an hour old.

It leveled the shotgun at Eevi, only for a distorted female voice to command, "Hold, child".

Floating over the snow, surrounded by those very same undead that were gunning down the other undead - the rebellious ones - a desiccated-looking woman, clad in little beyond a cloak, focused her glowing blue eyes on Eevi.

"How sentimental," she said. "The dead care little for mourning what was lost. So...you are the daughter he once spoke to me of. Eevi Väinölä - of the Väinölä bloodline, itself connected to the Jorgunsson bloodline, and that connected to the Balke bloodline. There is little question: both of you can be traced back to me. How fortuitous".


Ilona was not wrong - many of the undead he faced were fitted with outdated, pre-WW2 era weaponry. Easy pickings for the perimeter defenses. Taavi instead focused on snipers as he closed the distance to the artillery batteries. Given that he broke Mach 2, even at sea level, reaching the batteries was no problem at all. The hard part was wading through rifle fire as he got close to plant the charges on the artillery.

Most of the weaker calibers ricocheted harmlessly off of Taavi's armor, but the occasional round from a Mosin-Nagant dented him. Taavi decided to buy time by taking out the artillery's loading team before planting the C4. A quick reverse thrust and one pivot later, he was on his way to the other emplacements. Really not much more to say than rather, rinse, repeat against an enemy force that could not keep up with him.

Taavi hit the detonator once he got clear, sending the artillery emplacements up in flames.

"Artillery down. Ilona, how's perimeter looking?" Taavi radioed.

"They're still taking enemy fire, but the undead advance is stopped in its tracks. The mission was a success," she replied.

There had to be more places in country that needed a helping hand. Taavi remembered when he met Eevi back in Ruokolahti - her destination had been Metsäjärvi. Taavi knew exactly where to go from here - and he silently hoped that he was wrong, and that she wasn't there at this present moment. He needed to know, one way or another, and he needed to lend a hand, pro bono, if need be.

"Returning for resupply," Taavi said. "Then I'm counting on you to hold the fort".

Five minutes later, he got the dents in his armor buffed out and his ammunition restocked. With all this done, he ran, living up to his handle: traveling so fast that he appeared to be a 'white glint' traveling on the horizon.

With a crunch that was followed by the puff of ash being released by the form of her father, Eevi became painfully aware of her situation. She was in an unfavorable position now. That much was certain to her while she stared down the barrel of the weapon being leveled at her head. She considered then what she might do, but after everything she closed her eyes and waited. She shouldn't have heard the bang.

While she did not know what dying was like, she had always believed you would never hear the shot that killed you. But she did. Opening her eyes again she realized her mistake by seeing the plume of snow, dirt, and wood erupt from back inside the village. That had to have been for one of her situational allies. She found herself worrying for their safety as the sound of small arms fire replaced the, by then regular, sound of fire from their primary weapons.

She was wondering more why she still had a head for these thoughts though.

Her eyes widened in horror at the reason why. A woman, dead as the others here, floated above the snow. Her chill blue eyes glowed carelessly at her in the dark as it commanded the wielder of the shotgun aimed at her head to hold. 'What the FUCK is that?" This creature looked over Eevi as little more than a thing as if she were less than the zombies she had been putting back rest thus far. Cautiously, she stood up straight and kept both of her arms ready to raise at the zombie with the shotgun and the woman in front of her. She didn't know if she could effectively do anything to her, but if she could get herself enough time to get back inside the confines of the village itself for some cover then that was better than nothing.

Her planning was distracted when this woman spoke more. She spoke of her father, of her papa. Said he had talked about her. But most importantly she called Eevi a descendant of hers. She laughed at this reveal, bitter and full of mirth, and pointed a mocking finger at this thing that called her a relative. "My father, Daan Väinölä, was the child of Aaro and Heli Väinölä. Their parents I couldn't tell you. They never mattered to me past that. Yet YOU, a ramshackle draugr of the olden times, says that as if it has any meaning to myself. I am sorry to say beloved grandmother of mine but I don't recall you at any of my birthdays."

Finishing her laughter, her face turned into one of putrid disgust and anger of the utmost contempt. Still holding her fingers accusingly at this monster, her eyes narrowed like knives.  "You drop that on me after the display of, which I assume you are responsible for, the state my Papa was in like it matters at all to me. I am sorry to disappoint you hag but be your name Bernadotte, Saud, Kennedy, or even fucking Christ, you are nothing to me. You should have stayed in your cairn you fossil." Snapping her other hand up towards the zombie with the shotgun, Eevi chose violence and vengeance in the honor of her Father  "Bang"

The shot to the shotgunner was dead-center in the chest, sending him slumping down to the snow before he dispersed into ash. Skadi the Cruel fared considerably better with her arm in the way, hanging on by a bit of bone and desiccated flesh. However, the remainder of her undead thralls were on alert and going for Eevi.

It was hard to read anything on the Lich Queen's face, but there was a hint of admiration in her glowing blue eyes. Whether her claim of Eevi being of her bloodline is true, or whether it was merely a lie to psychologically torment her, the intended reaction came: Eevi had attempted to fight. In so doing, she showed a defiant streak that Skadi herself once had. So many years ago, when the woman that she used to be lost her family to the Black Death, Alma Balke defied all morality, whatever absent gods were watching, and ultimately death itself.

In short, Eevi reminded Skadi of herself. And that's what she liked to see.

"Ah! Such fire from my descendant! I can't wait to quench that fire, along with quenching all life on this miserable planet," Skadi said. "I ought to thank you, Eevi. When the horn blew, all my children - including your father - rebelled against me in service to that upstart in America. You simply helped me speed along the process of starting over."

Holding her good hand out, orbs of blue flew into the village, one flying into the corpse of Snellman, who was mangled by shrapnel. A blue shimmer surrounded his corpse as he levitated, only to get back on his feet, Dragunov in hand, as his eyes glowed blue. Karlonen, riddled with rifle fire, met a similarly grim fate.

Salminen looked on, staying conscious through the morphine. Shock peppered his face. He asked in horror, "Snellman? Karlonen?"

"You are a fool to hold on to something as ephemeral and fragile as life, Eevi. The meaning of life is to simply exist and to die - I offer so much more to those I raise," Skadi said. "But when you die, I will raise you from death and you will take your place as my right hand".

A few of the fresh riflemen point their guns at her, and Skadi commands, "No incineration - I want her in one piece."

Diving to the side as two of the nearby undead opened fire at her Eevi ran back for the coverage of the structures of Metsäjärvi. Sloppy marksmanship from the undead marksman had most of the rounds impact into the wood around her whilst she attempted to squeeze back into the gap. This did nothing to comfort her, a bad shot could just as likely severely injure her entirely by accident. That didn't sound appealing to her tonight.

Eevi hadn't even bothered to look back at the woman  she had shot, something in her told her plenty enough that it would require more than one blow to defeat that thing. The condescension as she ran from that creature was enough to make Eevi want to turn back around though. Her words struck at Eevi like a parent humoring a disobedient child's tantrum until they tired themselves out. It seems they might just be related if the two had that in common. Eevi may have just yet met her match in condescension tonight

’Oh I need to kill that bitch.’

Pulling herself through the wooden debris while the rounds still peppered the space around her, Eevi found herself facing three undead of the Finnish Defense Force. Instinctually she raised her hands and dispatched the trio before they received the opportunity to open fire on her with their more modern weapons. A thought occurred to Eevi after she dispatched these particular undead. If all dead like these could be revived, then what if any of her unlikely aid had died?

Unwilling to risk these creatures seizing her belongings including her valued inkwell, Eevi made her way back to the home.

Crossing the street from the cramped alley Eevi almost received an unhealthy dosage of lead as one of the undead in town sprayed arbitrarily down the road at her when she thoughtlessly exited. From the sound of it she was being fired at with an old Soviet PPS-43 so by her reckoning if she waited long enough then she would have exhausted its magazine and free herself up for an easy kill. While she waited though, frantic fire and panicked pleading from across the street caught her ears. It was that fool Salminen.

It sounded like she didn't have much time left to get to him.

But she didn't have to help him, it would be too risky to push this crossing while under the suppressive, if messy, fire from down the road. But she found herself standing up all the same. Her Papa's pained and dry grunting that tore itself from his ancient throat replayed in her mind to her. "You have...a choice...to make new ones..." Right as she braced herself on the corner of the wooden structure, she heard the gunfire stop. With a resigned sigh Eevi prepared to make a new choice.

"Alright Papa, watch your Eevi."

With that silent prayer to her father Eevi made a mad dash across the street. Heaving the frigid air of the night into her nostrils she smelt the thick acrid stench of decay and gunpowder weighing heavy on the air. The once quiet streets of her hometown being roused and disturbed once again with the raucous cacophony of battle as a stray mortar shell landed some dozen or so feet on her left and threw dirt and snow over her as she carried onwards. Seeing through the now damaged front wall of the house she saw two figures being fired at by the now terrified Salminen. Raising her left hand up she took aim and fired at the one raising a Dragunov rifle to shoot at Salminen. The blow landed effectively as the chest of the undead creature was blown outwards from behind, it's rifle dropping to it's side as it fell and turned to ash. Eevi turned her hand to the other one at it's side and prepared another shot.

Then, it happened.

A sharp, stinging pain exploded in her calf. Her leg buckled under her as the impact drove through her flesh. She hit the ground hard, her hands scraping against the rough, frozen dirt as she tried to catch herself. A searing heat spread from the wound, followed by a cold, numbing shock. She gasped, her breath hitching in her throat. She hissed through clenched teeth, her vision blurring for a moment. The pain was like a wildfire, intense and all-consuming, spreading up her leg and into her core. She glanced down, seeing the torn fabric of her pants darken with blood. The bullet hole was small but devastating, a crimson blossom on her pale skin. But fortunately as getting shot could be, the round went clear through her calf and hadn't apparently damaged her Achilles tendon or her tibia. That 'fortune' did little to comfort her pain at the moment though.

Casting her eyes to the side, she realized her mistake. A second zombie stood at the end of the street with another PPS-43 while the zombie next to it reloaded it's firearm. That was two things she hadn't accounted for, another undead, and their capability to reload their weapons.

One of their rounds had found her, and the realization brought a wave of anger and frustration. She could feel the jagged edges of the wound with each movement, the foreign feeling attempting to force her leg down as the, until now, unimaginable pain seared through her leg. She still heard Salminen screaming. He was begging. It would seem the last undead left in the building was the now deceased Karlonen and he was making some appeal to whatever humanity it still held. She could understand the sentiment.

"Move, you useless fool. Move, damnit!" She commanded herself, forcing her hands to grip the ground and push her body upwards.

The world around her seemed to move in slow motion. The undead soldiers continued their relentless advance, their glowing, azure, hollow eyes devoid of any recognition or mercy. She could hear the shuffling footsteps, the guttural moans, the sporadic bursts of gunfire. But her focus was on Salminen, still cowering, still in danger. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Eevi managed to get to one knee, then to her feet. Her injured leg screamed in protest, but she ignored it, drawing strength from a place deep within herself. She had faced worse. She had endured more. This was just another trial, another test of her resolve.

She had survived Metsäjärvi once, she would again.

"Keep going," she muttered, each step a battle in itself. She limped forward, her movements awkward and uneven, but she pressed on. Now both undead began to fire at her from down the street, their sloppy gunfire began to spray amongst the snow at her legs, narrowly striking her once again. Taking her chances, Eevi swung her arm to the side and fired twice. One round struck the zombie that had shot her in the legs and threw it to the ground while her second shot missed the other. It's messy grouping of rounds began to get dangerously close to Eevi and he would surely shoot her as his compatriot had if she didn't neutralize him soon.

But she was now out of time and would have to decide on who's safety mattered more at this moment. The decision was made in an instant, a reflex of some deeply buried and thought lost part of her. Empathy and compassion.

She swung her hand towards the attacking Karlonen, uttering the words to use her powers in a fluid motion.  "Bang." The round found its mark, shattering Karlonen's head and sending him crumpling to the ground. She heard Salminen gasp, staring at the fallen zombie, then at Eevi with through the damaged window of the house with wide, grateful eyes.

But Eevi had no time to savour the moment. The rapid fire of the PPS-43 was still a threat, and she could feel the deadly rounds whizzing past her. She spun around, her hand aimed at the surviving zombie. She fired once again. As her bullet of force struck the zombie, it managed to get one final shot off. The bullet grazed her bicep, a burning streak of pain that tore through her arm. Eevi gritted her teeth, refusing to cry out. She watched as the zombie collapsed, its weapon clattering to the ground beside it as it turned to dust like all of it's fallen comrades.

The pain was relentless, but she was still standing. She glanced down at her arm, blood trickling from the fresh wound. It wasn’t deep, but it was a reminder of how close she had come to being more seriously injured. She finished her walk across the street, now hobbling through the pain on her injured leg, and barged her way into the building. The injured, shocked, and morphine-induced Salminen stuttered out something to her about his friends and allies rising to attack him after having been killed but Eevi did not have the time to listen to it. Painfully, she slung her bag over her injured arm and collected her coat again. Cutting off the rambling of Salminen, she gave him a stern order. "Grab what you can 'Dancing King' we're getting the fuck out out here and I need some help to walk out of here. So stand up, provide a lady a shoulder to cry on, and let's get out of this ghost town."

When all this had started for Salminen, his platoon had twenty people. By the time they got to Metsäjärvi, it was Karlonen, Snellmen, and himself. Now, he was the only one left. Him and a nearly complete stranger named "Eevi" - he should be glad that the stranger seemed to be capable of far more than she seemed at first glance, but the situation was still dire. A small sub-machine gun was what he was capable of lifting in that instant, and he was grateful his prior injury was patched up.

Even so, he was operating on the morphine dulling his pain, but also harming his awareness relative to what he was at full strength. That was bad because he and Eevi were forced to lean on each other's shoulders in limping out of town, caught in a crossfire between two groups of undead that were gunning for each other about as much as they were gunning for the living. He still carried with him medical supplies - Eevi was wounded and losing blood, so Salminen would like to treat her.

But it was too much risk while under fire, regardless of how poor the aim of the undead was. He most he could get on her while in in between the houses under the circumstances was a tourniquet above where her calf wound was, along with administering a localized painkiller to that area. With just one grenade on his person, he looked around the corners before pulling the pin, and tossed it to wherever the concentration of undead looked thickest.

He was using the one arm that was free to gun down any survivors, when he saw it. The undead unlike the rest, floating less than a meter above the snow. Hasty as Salminen was to move both himself and Eevi, most of his shots were grazing hits, with the one direct hit being a gut shot. With the floating Lich's expression being stuck in a perpetual grimace, he couldn't tell if it did anything other than merely annoy it.

"How droll," a female voice came from it. "Despite the pointlessness of living, you insist on resisting the inevitability of death. Perhaps I'll make you my left hand servant, and her, my right hand one. EheheheHAHAHAHAH! All will join me in my cursed existence!"

Along with the Lich Queen, the undead Snellman with his Dragunov jumped down from the roof the mortar shell had landed on, no more worse for wear than any other undead. It did take more time for him to get up, but he pointed the Dragunov at the pair. He missed, but not by much, the round grazing Salminen's thigh, causing just enough pain to stagger him and slow both him and the woman he was supporting.

Not that they really needed slowing, because Skadi was more than capable of catching up to them. With a flair for the dramatic, she held out her damaged arm. A short-ranged spell not greater than five meters was engulfing the escapees - necrosis was slowly beginning to set in. Cell death...pain...premature aging. Someone like Salminen would find themselves aging to death if left in range for too long. The effects on someone like Eevi, who couldn't age, were unknown - presumably drawing out the most painful death imaginable.

"You'll serve me soon enough, descendant," Skadi said, with the same level of cruelty she was named for.

This was the end of the line.

Or so Salminen thought.

That's when something zipped by, right through Skadi's left bicep, taking off what remained of her left arm in the process. The hit was enough to interrupt her spell and force her to back away into the cover of town.

The distinctive crack of a bullet breaking the sound barrier filled the night. And once more, when a .338 Lapua Magnum round passed through the undead Snellman's chest - the undead marksman fell to the ground, crumpling to dust. Three more shots - far faster than one would expect out of a bolt-action rifle - came through, thinning out the undead in the immediate vicinity.

Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, Salminen kept moving with Eevi in tow. However long they were in that cone of necrosis, Salminen looked to have come out of it with a few extra wrinkles, but otherwise okay.

Reinforcements? How? They hadn't managed to get out a transmission on the waves since this chaos started. Getting Eevi into cover, where boulders gave them cover for three main directions, Salminen handed Eevi his radio while he got what remained of his medical supplies to treat Eevi's bleeding. As best as he could, at least. Salminen had basic training in first aid, but had never done it under such pressure.

"I didn't send out anything," he said, hastily getting the disinfectant, styptic, and sutures. "See if you can get whoever that was on the radio".

Eevi, assuming she reached the right frequency, would hear, "This is White Glint, anyone reading me? Repeat, any survivors respond. Sniping position three-zero-niner from village center. Moving in."