A future chronicle for Sturm Wulf.
It seems as though he's formed a new alliance...

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I had no clue how long I had been laying beneath that pine tree. It just felt good to rest after running for so long. The sun felt good on my tired face. A sudden darkening hits my eyes and causes me to stir from my slumber. I open an eye and shift my grip from the handle of my Mosin-Nagant to my eyes. I rub the sleep from them. I pull my hand from the inside of the stolen field coat and wipe the snow from my nose. The stillness of the scene in front of me, the cold Russian morning, is broken only by a solitary figure in an old shawl. I rub my eyes again, trying to focus them on this person. At first, I can only focus on the large details. He’s holding a rifle. He has on a torn shawl, and he’s a dog. He appears to be looking at something up in the sky, though I can’t tell what. Then slowly more details appear. He’s a wolf of some sort, very well built. He’s intimately focused on something out where I can’t see.
I look him completely over after my eyes finally adjust. He looks different than a wolf. His shawl covers most of him. I can’t make out much. The sun makes his details hard to see. I squint as I try to make them out. Something strange I notice is that in the sun, his breath doesn’t condense. There’s no steam in the air… I don’t know what that means. I couldn’t think. It’s too cold out. Suddenly, he reaches behind him and grabs his rifle. The shawl flops over his arm and what I see takes my breath away. A swastika is blazoned plain as day on his chest. It lies on top of a palm tree, though I don’t know exactly what that means. He raises his rifle, a scoped Kar 98k and aims somewhere I can’t see. He looks like he’s, he’s made of metal. I don’t even know what he is, but I don’t want to find out. The last thing I wanted to find in this Russian forest was another German soldier, not like the one I saw guarding that tunnel I saw earlier...
I shift my hands to the ground and prepare to run for my life. I wasn’t going to go back. No, never. I get a large lump in my throat, then swallow it to get ready. I noiselessly shift my Mosin to my back and dig my feet into the earth. The wolf turns away from where I am and I make a break for it. I feel my body groan and ache from the sudden movement. The wolf whips around and lowers his rifle with a surprised look on his face.
“Wait!” he utters as I run, my back to him. I pay him no heed. I just keep running, my feet aching in the cold, the crunching of the snow beneath my boots. I keep running, my vision blurry, my eyes tearing from the stinging cold air. I watch my shadow as I dash in the midmorning sun. I only make it about 100 yards before I make a blunder. I clod through the icy white, my lungs stinging from the icy wind. I make a final step before my foot breaks a small patch of ice, hiding a loose root. I feel my toes catch underneath and I fall. My hands are clenched so tight against me that I can’t put them out in time to catch me. I nearly catch myself, but I fall and hit my nose hard into the icy ground. I feel the pain shoot through me and I see blood stream from my broken nose. My eyes tear like crazy and I roll over onto my side. I cough painfully and forcefully try to blow all the blood out my nose. I shake from the pain and cold. I can barely see as I see the wolf catch up to me, he bends down and I manage to wheeze
“No” before he is upon me. The last thing I want is for them to catch me and take me back…

In my pain induced slumber, I experience a strange dream. I’m at my small house back in my hometown with my wife, and her unborn child. The doctor had told us it was a girl so we decided to name her Mishka. A good name for a child, we figured. I walk up the path to our front door and my wife opens the door and sees me. She opens her arms and invites me into them, and I cannot help but oblige, for I love her more than anything. I drop my pack and run to her, but as I run, my steps seem to get smaller and smaller. I pant and cough as I run, but she only gets farther away. Suddenly, a black wolf stands in my way. He’s dressed in a Nazi uniform, with a large swastika on his arm. He pulls out a luger, and shoots at me. The bullets pierce me, but I don’t feel them as I struggle to reach my wife. I pull out my Tokarev and begin to return shots, but when I pull the trigger, it is like I am out of ammunition, I only hear the click of the hammer. I seem to get closer, but then the wolf walks up to me and strikes me forcefully on the muzzle with the butt of his luger. My muzzle burns from the hit. It feels like the pistol is made of searing hot steel as I feel the blow sink into me, and I feel myself falling, falling, falling…

I awake with a gasp. My eyes flash open and I am nearly blinded by the light of the sun. I cringe from the sting of my muzzle and the burning sun. I shift the cover that is placed on me. I recognize it as the shawl the wolf was wearing.
“I wouldn’t try to move just yet. Your nose is broken; you could really hurt yourself.”
I turn to the sound of the voice and see what looks like the wolf I saw. He’s a wolf, but appears to be made out of some sort of metal. I don’t know exactly what to make of him. I lie down and just try to gather my thoughts. I cross my eyes and see that my muzzle has a white linen wrap on it, or at least on the top, and little spots of red show through it.
‘Why did he help me? Why didn’t he just kill me? But then again, I don’t even know what he is.’ I recall thinking.
I look to the wolf, sitting on the ground, and see that he has a small fire going. He appears to be roasting a rabbit. I sit up, pushing his shawl down off my chest and sit cross legged and turn to him, the smell of the cooking rabbit enticing me. The wolf notices and looks to me. He pulls out a knife and carves a piece of the rabbit off of the spit. He wipes the knife off, puts it back in a small pack on the ground beside him and offers the piece to me. I take it he doesn’t want to kill me. I reach out and take it from him and take a bite. The bite is painful, but the fact that I finally have some food in me after a while more than compensates for it. I eat the piece rather quickly, and take another. After a while, the rabbit is nearly all gone, and little more than bones and a few scraps of meat are left. I sit in silence with him for a while, and a number of questions formulate inside my mind.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” I finally ask.
The wolf looks to me, and I feel the power of his blue eyes upon me.
“I saw no need to kill you. You have as much of a right to live as I do, and that seems fair, don’t you think? You did not try to kill me, even with that rifle of yours, so I felt that I should do the same.”
“Well, why did you help me? I don’t understand why…”
“I helped you because you were in need. I didn’t leave you there because I knew you would die if I did. I want to help people because it means that I can do more than just kill and destroy for what my leaders call ‘racial purity’.”
I sit silently for a moment. I think over what I’ve just heard and try to get all my thoughts straight. I believe what he says about not wanting to kill me. I did not take the chance to kill him. I don’t know why. I am not a killer. I’m just a man trying to get back to his family.
“My name is Mikhail Chernov.” I put my hand out as a gesture of goodwill. The wolf sees this, reaches out a metallic paw, grasps my hand and replies
“Sturm Wulf.”
“So, Sturm, what exactly are you?” I ask.
He looks in my eyes and says
“I am what is known as a robot. A machine that can move and think by its own accord. I am not alive, per se, but I am aware of everything going on around me. I was supposed to be the Germans’ perfect soldier, but I somehow broke free from the Nazi’s control and began to think for myself, and I deserted, figuring it was better to be fighting for myself alone, than with millions for the wrong cause.”
I cannot believe what I have just been told. A living machine, created to destroy and enslave those that opposed their fascist ideals. My God, what would the Germans think up next?
“I think you had better wait a while before I tell you anything else. You are still very weak from losing all that blood when you broke your nose, and I don’t want you to strain yourself physically or mentally. Wait three days, then ask me again and I’ll tell you.” He says.
I could barely wait, and I fall asleep soon after, my eyes heavy.