The Storm Legion lieutenant strode before the assembled villagers, who stood unmoving in a line. “You have all become a part of the Storm Queen’s army,” he called out. “What is more, you have become a part of her. You will know no greater love than the Storm Queen’s, which I am sure you felt when you looked into her eye. Now, it is time to cut ties.” He gestured, and his soldiers distributed shovels among the villagers. They were pushed toward the bodies that littered the streets of their village, friends and family who had not submitted soon enough.

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Just over a rise, the sole survivor of the slaughter of Whitefall huddled behind a rock. Though her fingers shook with the cold, she guided the bullets into the barrel of her gun.

As the villagers dug, one of them fell, too weak for the work. “You,” said the lieutenant, gesturing toward one of the other villagers. “Crucia has no room for weaklings in her army. Bury him with the others.”

The villager stepped forward, empty eyed and raising his shovel. Just before the shovel came down, a bullet knocked it from his hand. The lieutenant turned, barking to his men, “Marksman!”

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The soldiers rushed up toward the rise. A slender young woman stepped up with a rifle propped against her shoulder, and as a bullet exited the barrel, it shot forward with an arc of lightning behind it that spread through the chest of the soldier it entered. A second shot followed right at its tails, hitting against a second soldier with such thundering force that he was knocked back fifteen yards. As the first soldier reached her position, she hoisted the gun and leveled a shot into his chest, blood spraying in the snow. As the last of the group reached her, she leapt back unnaturally, landing twenty yards back and firing again as she did. The force of the bullet dropped its target but also arced out and toppled his companions.

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The battalion’s mages finally managed to get in range of the girl and hit her with a stunning bolt. For a moment, she seemed snagged, then as quickly as the effect had hit it was gone, and she was running with unnatural speed through the snow. She reached a high position and then stopped, turning her rifle toward the lieutenant. He barked an order, an edge of terror to his voice. The legion’s mages doubled their efforts, hurling spells toward her. She danced from side to side and the spells fizzled against her. Bullets dropped the mages one by one, and once again she directed her eye toward the lieutenant, who scrambled back in terror.

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“This is for Whitefall,” said the girl in an emotionless voice.

Local legend says that the bullet hit with such force that it decapitated the lieutenant. The rest of the battalion ran in fear from the sniper and her unerring bullets. There was nothing that could be done for the people of Whitefall, and the first act of the one day legendary marksman Gisa Malik was to bury the people of her village in the frigid earth of the Iron Pine Peaks.