"Please... please. D-Don't let me die."

Tired cries fell on the uncaring landscape. Explosions could be heard in the distance. The grand chorus in this song of war, accompanied by verses of cascading laser fire. The lone soldier crawled along the ground, her uniform torn to shreds. Was she a Thaal? A Kaled? Did it matter? There were so few differences between them these days.

"Please..."

Private First Class Wessler was not a religious woman. She never had time, nor a particularly strong inclination for such things. Baz, the medic in her battalion had always tried to get her to read scripture, insisting that it was what she needed in these troubling times. She paid him no mind, citing that there was no end to all this. No words of comfort in a book would help them.

Baz died, screaming. His legs were blown clean off. His last action was to give her his holy book, in the hopes that in dying, his last act would have some meaning. Perhaps it did. The rain of laser fire that had killed Wessler's battalion happened to miss all her vital spots. Her legs were torn up, but unlike Baz's, they were functional. The Laser bolt that would've pierced her heart was actually stopped by the book in her breast pocket. She was thankful for this. She wished she had listened to Baz, all those weeks ago. She wished for the comfort that he found in the words that she had found so hollow. She wished for so much.

The dust in the air kicked up from the surrounding battles was think in the air. It bore into her skin; tore at her face. The cloud was a permanence. The product of mountains torn asunder, of valleys razed. The results of so many battles across the planet Skaro. Wessler's was not the first, nor was it the last. Never the last.

As she crawled, she kept her head down. Partly because she wanted to make herself a small a target as possible, but also because she hadn't the strength to lift it. Yet something was amiss. She could feel it. More accurately, she could hear it. Voices on the wind, amidst the fighting.

These voices were not in the forms of crazed battles cries. The pathetic weeping was nowhere to be found. What Wessler heard was conversation. Was this her salvation? She was driven forward by new hope for rescue, raising her head ever so slightly. The poor girl never could have known what she was crawling towards. Two men, harbingers of unimaginable terror. Ministers of the end of all things.

One man was tall. He was thin; gaunt even. He was clothed in a black robe that covered everything but his face. She strained to even see arms or legs. All she was a man's face sitting atop a thin black pillar, carrying nothing but dark purpose.

The other man was odd, in contrast. He hunched, kept his hands buried in his trouser pockets, his head careening around, staring like a child in a sweets shop. He wore a red jacket of some sort. It popped out of the haze like a target. A tattered hat sat on a head of puffy hair. What was most curious was the multi-colored scarf around his neck. It was long. Too long, she thought. It dragged along the ground as the two of them walked.

Were they not worried that someone would find them? The both of them were like walking targets out here. She strained to hear what they were talking about.

The man in the black robe spoke. "You enjoy the freedom we allow you. In return, occasionally, not continually, we ask you to do something for us."

The man in the scarf and hat stood strong despite his hunched posture. "I won't do it. Whatever it is, I refuse."

What could they have been speaking about? Why weren't they in uniform? Where were their weapons? So man questions raced through Wessler's mind. These men felt wrong. Their presence here felt wrong. They did not belong. Wessler's thoughts were cut short by the uttering of a single word from the man in black.

"Daleks."

The man in the scarf and hat turned to the other, attention obviously caught. There was weight to the word. Impossible weight that Wessler had no way of comprehending. Why did the word give her such pause? There was so much venom in the way they spoke it. So much fear.

Dalek, she thought. Dalek, Dalek, Dalek. This would be the last word that Private First Class Wessler would hear before succumbing to her wounds. Her body would never be found. Another victim in an endless war. A war that no one could remember the reason for. It had become a constant. Synonymous with life on Skaro. War was all they knew.