The biting wind was a constant tormentor to Nico. It was his sole enemy for this particular situation.
Darting his eyes around, all he could see was the endless, blinding expanse of a snowy landscape, surrounding him with the color white. It could drive any perfectly sane man... insane.
"Live..." Nico blurted out.
His declining motivation had to be reestablished. The only thing he could do was talk to himself. Give himself the motivation he needs to continue living.
Nico couldn't be blamed, not with the situation he had been handed. He was only 14 years old, a child-soldier, who was cast into the frontlines of Ilbaris, to take over the island of Fjellheim -- a mission that now seemed impossible.
The approaching night was obvious, especially with the shine of the setting sun. Nico's labored breaths were being exhaled in frosty plumes. This was evidence of the plummeting temperature.
The entire division -- the one he had been on. At first, it was the warmth that they noted down. This was the Fjellheim, and the vivid idea of 'warmth' wasn't within their biography. Their researchers didn't do a very great job.
However, the soldiers on that division became the researchers themselves when they realised that the outer edges of Fjellheim were the furthest from the source of the immense cold.
It was their commander to first discovered this, and as a result, they delivered a note to the headquarters about it. No message was sent back, unfortunately.
As Nico ran there, the amount of frost on the island was different from the edges. He could only come to one conclusion:
"The center... I'm too close to it. I need to retreat from it," he muttered, his words barely audible against the gale.
It was easier said than done. The only things he could realise were his senses, not directions. He had no idea in hell where the core was. If he did, he would've gone straight the opposite way.
The idea of living was becoming more fictional. Nico's physical and mental state began to deteriorate, manifesting into a burgeoning fatigue that caused him to see illusions, far from his comprehension.
The environment around him wasn't just snow anymore... It was like a tide that threatened to swallow him whole.
Nico's gaze fell upon his Ilbarian uniform. It was once a source of pride, but now, that pride has vanquished -- left with a mere fragment of its former dignity. It was tattered and frozen stiff, encased in brittle rime.
The clumps of snow clung obstinately to his rough wool coat and dark, tangled hair, which lashed wildly around his face. His black eyes, dilated, remained fixed on the horizon.
"Liars... All of them were liars, every last one of them," Nico stated, his words surprising even himself -- they came from his inner frustration.
Nico thought to himself, though: was he wrong? The head of the military affairs of Ilbaria -- he sends ambitious soldiers right to their demise, as if they were simply tools.
The illusion they planted on Nico and the others was downright wrong. Sacrificing hundreds of soldiers for one insignificant island... The Island that would lead to Nico's eventual death.
He recalled the vivid, yet visible memories, for when he aspired to become one among the Ilbarian war heroes. They seemed confident -- dare he say?
'It wasn't confidence... but arrogance.'
Darsion was a new nation, compared to the others. They thought that Darsion didn't have the necessary materials to plan an attack. But now, here he was, in Fjellheim, within Darsion territory.
The booming, abstract talk of "expeditions" and "securing key positions" was living rent-free within Nico's mind. He remembers the "guttural rumble of the transports" and the earnest, hopeful faces of his brothers-in-arms.
They were the ones with him: the allied Sixth Division, and they've all met their unfortunate demise.
"Mere days... were all it took for them to obliterate us," Nico observed, with a metallic taste on his tongue.
Down in his mind, Nico's memories deepened. The cursed, frozen ground was absent from his mental state, and into a meat grinder the moment their boots touched down.
Within hours of their landing, the first abominations had manifested. It was all bloody red from there on -- the screams, and the sickening thwack of severed flesh.
Nico recalled men who had shared jokes and laughter with him only yesterday, now gone, either silently devoured by the snow or reduced to crimson smears on the ice before the smallest understanding could dawn upon them.
From thousands to hundreds, then dozens, then a mere scattering of broken individuals.
He was running, always running.
Nico recalled specific, haunting images from his mind: his Sergeant's rage as he was dragged beneath the snow, Private Lysander clutching a fading photograph, and the shocking brevity of their commander's survival.
"Just keep moving," he whispered to himself. "Move and don't look back."
His mind prioritised survival over everything at that moment. He gasped for more of the cutting air, his eyes darting like a desperate searchlight for any salvageable resource.
Then, a chilling numbness had begun its creeping ascent into his hands. There was a terrifying, severe progression of hypothermia lurking within him. At that moment, a pivotal moment for Nico occurred.
From the very periphery of his left eye, he smells something profoundly, impossibly out of place. It was quite familiar to Nico. Achingly, bewilderingly familiar.
A familiarity that, in the desolation of Fjellheim and so far from Ilbaria, he rendered it utterly bizarre.
"F... Food?" he whispered a question.
The scent quickly became an absolute objective to head towards, leading him to the logical deduction that:
"A Darsion camp... must lie within that perimeter."
However, a profound caution immediately surfaces: it could be a deception.
This internal conflict between desperate need and overwhelming danger, coupled with his reflection on his lack of knowledge about Darsion military's "modus operandi," would make any sane man avoid the scent.
But he questioned it, mainly to himself:
"Is there any sane person in Fjellheim?"
He gave out a smirk as he fled away from his previous path, and in pursuit of food, or perhaps a nice party in hell.