The swamp stretched out like Satan's armpit, which was humid, sticky, and reeking of death and regret. Every step was accompanied by a squelch that sounded like someone slowly drowning in custard. Rus was beginning to understand why humanity abandoned nature. It wasn't because of technology. It was because swamps exist.
Amiel walked a few paces ahead, drone controller in one hand, her rifle in the other. She moved like a ghost and was silent, focused, and way too clean for someone trudging through foot-deep Gobber piss water.
"Anything up ahead?" Rus asked, more out of boredom than genuine concern.
Her eyes didn't leave the screen. "Two heat signatures. Small. Likely scavengers."
Rus leaned forward slightly. "Gobbers or just very bold rats with delusions of grandeur?"
"Gobbers," she replied, adjusting the drone altitude with a flick of her thumb. "They're hiding in a tree stump. Burrowed in."
"Lovely," Rus muttered. "It's always tree stumps. Have you ever noticed that? These freaks treat decayed lumber like it's a five-star hotel."
"Efficient shelter," she said blandly.
Rus narrowed his eyes. "Yes, well, if efficiency means you're sleeping in your own feces while chewing on bark and bones, then sign me up for the Gobber real estate agency."
Amiel said nothing. Just turned slightly to avoid a puddle that looked suspiciously sentient.
She had this unnerving calmness. No matter what exploded, screamed, or bled nearby, she just kept moving, like someone who had seen every nightmare already and filed them under 'mild inconvenience.'
The drone whirred quietly above us.
"Left," she said.
Rus followed her lead, stepping over what he thought was a branch, until it twitched.
Rus paused. "You know, Amiel, a normal person might react to the possibility of being consumed by swamp mutants."
She looked at the branch, which was very much a dead Gobber—and then back at Rus. "You didn't die."
"Your empathy is overwhelming," Rus said. "I feel emotionally nourished."
She gave a small nod, as if agreeing that yes, he was indeed full of shit.
They kept moving through the marsh. She paused occasionally to tap commands into the drone. Rus paused occasionally to complain about everything, which seemed to fuel her silence.
Finally, she stopped.
"Cave ahead," she said. "Covered in vines. Drone caught heat. Bigger signature. Possibly a nest."
Rus squinted through the muggy air. Sure enough, nestled under the twisted roots and overgrown slime was a little hollow, just big enough to birth nightmares.
"Oh good," Rus muttered. "A goblin spa. Shall we ruin their mud bath?"
She raised her rifle and nodded. "Yes."
Rus sighed. "You really bring sunshine to my life."
Without a word, she moved into position. Rus followed, because unfortunately, sarcasm doesn't turn into bullets.
And off they went. Into the bog. Into the cave. Into yet another chapter of "Why Did I Sign Up for This Shit?"
And Amiel?
She never stopped being calm.
Which meant one of them had to panic for both of them.
And that, as always, was for Rus to do.
* * *
The cave stank like every rotting promise the world ever made. Mold, sweat, swamp piss, and Gobber musk, a bouquet so offensive it could be weaponized.
They slipped in through the low opening, boots squelching in the soft, moss-caked floor. The drone hovered silently above, its night-vision cam feeding into Amiel's display. She pointed to the left, rifle shouldered, eyes half-lidded as if this was all just a particularly annoying chore.
"Two o'clock. Behind the fungal growth," she muttered.
Rus adjusted his aim and dropped the first one with a clean burst—two rounds in the head, one for good luck. Gobber brains splattered on the bark behind it.
"Next?"
"Low right. Under the root arch. Breathing heavy."
"I would be too if I lived in this sewer with dreams of stabbing people for snacks."
Rus pivoted, fired. The Gobber's chest exploded like a wet piñata.
They kept moving. Rus swept the area with his rifle, Amiel kept her gaze on the drone feed. Silent teamwork. Effective. Efficient. And frankly, a little too quiet for Rus's comfort. Who got used to Berta's bitching.
So, naturally, Rus opened his mouth.
"Hey, Amiel?"
"Mm?"
"Just curious… you and Stacy? Kate? Or Berta?"
She blinked once, then responded like she was answering a math problem.
"No."
Rus blinked back. "Oh. Sorry. I figured with all the… you know, aggressive sexual osmosis around here—"
"I prefer men."
Rus stopped short mid-step.
"Wait, seriously? Perhaps bi?"
"No."
"So you're straight-straight."
She nodded. "Yes."
Rus lowered his rifle slightly, still scanning the shadows while also shocked. "Right. Yeah. I didn't mean to assume. It's just—well, Berta makes everyone feel like they accidentally walked into a very sweaty, very confusing orgy."
"Understandable," Amiel replied flatly. "It's not an unusual assumption considering the Sergeant's… sexual liberties."
Rus scratched his chin, then shot a Gobber peeking out from a moss bed.
"Well, in that case, we should be friends."
She gave Rus a slow, sideways glance. "Are you hitting on me?"
Rus let out a very tired sigh. "No. I just want to talk to someone who doesn't refer to her own genitals as a 'sacred altar of satisfaction.' and calls herself a 'Finger Goddess'."
Amiel tilted her head slightly. "You consider yourself sane?"
"Relatively."
"You hold full conversations with a woman who thinks punching a man during foreplay is romantic."
"True," Rus admitted, firing again, another Gobber collapsed in a heap.
She raised an eyebrow.
Rus raised his rifle.
And the both of them kept moving quiet, calm, and slightly better off knowing they weren't completely alone in the loony bin.
After a while, a fog clung to the swamp like a pervert at a strip club, desperate, sticky, and refusing to let go. Gunmetal gray light filtered through the canopy above, creating long shadows that made even the vines look suspicious.
They kept moving.
The drone hummed overhead, doing its best impression of a lazy mosquito while Amiel monitored it from her wrist console. Rus still took the lead, his rifle raised, eyes scanning the gnarled bog for anything too ugly to live.
"There's one. Eleven o'clock. Squatting behind that dead log," Amiel said, voice as flat as always.
"Squatting? You sure it's not just taking a dump?"
"Still armed."
"Fair point."
Rus squeezed the trigger. The Gobber spasmed, rolled over with a hole where its thoughts used to be.
They advanced a few steps more.
"You ever wonder," Rus began, rifle still scanning, "why Gobbers look like what happens when you microwave a raccoon and give it a knife?"
"No."
"Come on, indulge me. They've got ears like pancakes, eyes like wet marbles, and breath that smells like expired regret. And the worst part? They always look smug. Like they know something we don't."
"They don't."
"Exactly. Which is why it's annoying."
Amiel didn't answer.
Rus shot another Gobber in the kneecap, then one in the face when it popped up screaming. It collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
"You know, if I wasn't stuck doing this, I think I'd be a librarian."
"Librarian?"
"Yeah. Books. Dust. Absolute silence. Nobody trying to stab me for my boots. Sounds peaceful."
"Hm."
"You ever think about quitting? Running off, starting a farm somewhere?"
"No."
Rus sighed. "I'm sensing a theme."
More movement.
"Three o'clock. In the reeds."
Rus shot first—three rounds, one Gobber, no problem.
"I mean, seriously. All this chaos. The shit weather. The weirdly horny squadmates. It's like we're stuck in some hyper-violent soap opera written by a drunk with a military fetish."
"No argument."
Rus kept walking. The bog gurgled under our boots. More silence.
"I talk too much, don't I?" Rus asked finally.
"Yes."
"…Was hoping you'd sugarcoat that."
"No point."
Rus grunted. "You don't talk much either. That always a thing?"
She nodded. "Talking wastes energy. And people usually ruin conversations."
"Fair. But here I am, ruining this one anyway."
She paused. Looked at Rus briefly. "You talk because silence makes you think."
That actually made Rus stop.
"What?"
"You talk because when it's quiet, you remember things. And you don't want to."
Rus blinked. His hands didn't move. For once, he didn't have a comeback locked and loaded. Not even a snide insult or a snarky jab about her being the reincarnation of Sigmund Freud with a rifle.
"…Huh," Rus said, voice quieter than he intended. "That was… accurate."
They stood in silence. Then Rus said it.
"We really need to be friends."
She looked at Rus sideways, the usual blank expression twitching slightly.
"You're not going to shut up until I agree, are you?"
"Correct."
She thought for a second, then exhaled through her nose. "Fine."
Rus smiled, adjusted his rifle, and shot another Gobber crawling through the muck.
"See? Already a great team."
Amiel didn't say anything.
But he could've sworn he saw the faintest twitch of a smile.
The kind that gave up.
* * *
The path back from the bog was slow but uneventful, save for Rus's ongoing commentary, which Amiel stoically endured like a statue that somehow learned to walk and shoot.
"So then I told the Gobber—metaphorically speaking, of course—'you're uglier than an armpit's worst nightmare,' and then I shot him in the face. Poetry, right?"
Amiel said nothing.
"And you, quiet as ever, probably silently judged my entire existence."
Still nothing.
Rus grinned. "Ah, the sounds of friendship."
They passed through the forward post's makeshift gate, the charred wreckage of a dozen dead monsters marking our welcome mat. As they approached the campfire where the rest of Cyma Unit loitered, stretching, cleaning weapons, or just pretending to be useful, he spotted Berta.
Naturally, she was lounging like a panther in heat, half-armored, one leg up, stretching in a way that was very deliberate and not at all subtle.
She spotted them and immediately narrowed her eyes like she'd just seen a cat climbing into her liquor stash.
"Well, well," she said with an eyebrow raised. "You two are back... and smiling?"
"I always smile," Rus said. "It hides the urge to bayonet someone."
Berta smirked. "So... Amiel, huh?" Her eyes flicked between us like a pervert reading between the lines. "You didn't hit on my baby girl in the task, did you?"
Rus blinked. "Your what?"
"My baby girl," Berta said with theatrical scandal, placing a possessive hand over her chest. "Amiel's mine. You touch her, and I'll rip your balls off and wear them as earrings."
Rus gave her a long, dry look. "Berta, if I wanted to die horribly, I'd try to French kiss a napalm canister. Far less screaming, and at least it wouldn't talk about its 'baby girl' in the third person."
Berta scoffed, rising to her full, towering Amazonian glory. "So you didn't hit on her?"
"No. And besides, unlike some people in this camp, I don't proposition every warm body within a hundred-meter radius."
Amiel stood by the gate, impassive, arms folded, rifle slung. She said nothing, didn't even flinch.
"See?" Rus gestured to her. "Model of stoicism. If I tried to flirt, she'd have shot me and gone back to recalibrating her drone like nothing happened."
Berta leaned in close, voice low. "If you so much as think about her naked—"
"Oh please," Rus snapped. "I've seen less possessiveness in rabid wolves. You're one step away from peeing around her bunk."
She raised an eyebrow. "Don't tempt me."
Rus looked at Amiel. "This is your fault, by the way. You could've just shot me."
Amiel blinked. "Still might. Who do I have to deal with you too?"
And with that, she walked off toward the barracks like none of this circus ever happened.
Berta gave Rus one last squinty glare before muttering, "Weirdest friendship I've ever seen. But well, as long as you two didn't fuck in the Bog, then that's okay."
"You gotta get your head out of the gutter, man," Rus shrugged. "Beside, I aim for quality over normality."
Then he went to clean his rifle before this insanity mutated further.