Seated on a sandbag that felt more like concrete, Capt Dogra listened to the two grunts keeping watch, “The Dark Wizard is out again.”

His buddy shrugged, “The Green Lady with him?”

“Nope,” came the bored reply.

Unable to resist, Capt Dogra asked, “Excuse me, did you just say Dark Wizard?”

The guys chuckled and the one without the binoculars explained, “That’s just what we call him. He wears dark robes and sometimes throws dirt up in the air. We kind of had to come up with nicknames for everybody down in the village.”

“That’s, uh, interesting,” the young captain answered. Eager to keep conversation going, ‘walkabout therapy’ they’d called it in training, he asked, “Speaking of names, how’d this base get its name.”

The other guy answered calmly, “Oh, it was overrun a few years back, everybody killed. Only two of the locals stayed to help while the others bugged out. So, it’s their names, since they died too—beheaded.”

Capt Dogra really wished he’d let the conversation fade after the Dark Wizard bit.