[EMERGENCY SITUATION] Holding the Arctic Line

In his apartment, Taavi Virtanen had finished typing everything up, putting things in a manila envelope. The deed to the shop, the deed to the cottage - every "t" was crossed and every "i" was dotted. He spent the last several days putting the finishing touches on the Last Will, coming to terms with the idea that it wouldn't matter how many odds he defied - this was likely to be the sortie that claimed his life. Even if it didn't, he was liable to die bedridden, choking to death on his own lungs.

Whatever Compassion had done to him a few days past had eased his symptoms somewhat, but he was still a doomed man. One might knock him around and say he was despairing for taking the precautions he was, but he wasn't. He was a realist - as a mercenary, every sortie he had ever done could have been his last. But that was all before Eevi reentered his life for the first time in nearly nine decades. As he sat with the papers in hand, with a special letter for Eevi to be opened in the event that he died.

Eevi was expected to arrive sometime today. She had left with only a letter to Taavi. And though cuts from her pay had been made to the town in the last few months, not once had she stopped in. Walking across down all the way to Eemil, he dropped off the envelope, with specific instructions to open it only if or when he passed. Taavi was wearing shades, both to prevent snow-blindness and because he was sporting a huge migraine thanks to his hangover.

Old Lady Katja had also passed away in the last few months. When no one answered for several days, Taavi and Ingvar both knocked down her door, only to find her hunched over her desk, dead. Doctors determined it was a combination of dehydration and starvation, worsened by exhaustion. Apparently, she had been writing down what she saw in multiple visions. And from what was written on one scrap piece of paper, she had wanted Eevi to see the papers.

Along with the visions written down on paper was an artistic illustration of a sinister woman over a cauldron. And Katja had been such an eccentric that she often whittled animal figurines in reference to certain people. As it turned out, she whittled out a wolf figurine in reference to Taavi, and what looked like a raven for Eevi, among others.

He read and reread the mission parameters. The undead were expected to move southwards the day after through several passes on their way down from the North Pole. No doubt there was a connection between there and Skadi's headquarters. The exact time they're expected to arrive is unknown, but Taavi was prepared to leave sometime past on that day midnight, just in case. The mission objectives were multiple: they are to prevent the undead from clearing the passes, and they are to defend the demolition teams while they plant the charges to collapse the passes.

Resistance is unknown, but preliminary scouting suggests that the undead have several mortar teams. Exactly which pass they will be assaulting is unknown, but if they can get a firing position on the demolition teams' positions, the operation would be in danger. If any demolition team perishes, each country's armed forces were going to be dragged into a long-drawn out meat grinder against an unknown number of assailants. The best case scenario would be to get passes collapsed with no casualties.

He hoped against hope that Eevi's message about being here wasn't just empty words.