The enemy was close. They would probably attack just before dawn, when the minds of the marines and soldiers in the encampment were most weary. Justin watched the shadowy wood-line. He knew they were out there. They were probably watching him now, letting the tense calm eat away at his nerves. He preferred violence to stillness. His thoughts would sour in the long gaps between fighting.
Justin hated the men in the woods.
The Alliance troops called them slinks, because of their sneakiness and
cowardice. He hated them because their ways confused him. Their ways confused
everybody. The slinks never engaged in open warfare. They couldn’t, because they
didn’t possess the technology that the Alliance marines did. The slinks had
simple weapons: clubs, poison, and of course fire.
By any rational assessment, the
slinks should have been defeated long ago, in the face of the Alliance’s
superior numbers and technology. But they hadn’t been defeated. In fact, the
slinks were destroying the Alliance piece by piece.
Justin squeezed his carbine pulse rifle.
The handguard bit into his skin. He liked the sting of it, because pain kept
him awake during the dark watches. On very long nights, Justin would sometimes
bring a blade up into the watchtower with him. He’d press the blade to his hand
until his mind was fully alert. His wakefulness kept the camp safe.
The young man sighed as he flitted
his goggles between night vision and thermal vision. All he could see past the first
few trees was a white haze and some indistinct movement. The slinks often melted
a kind of fibrous plastic, the fumes of which masked their bodies from night
vision and heat seeking tech.
“Hey Woodward, you’re relieved,”
the Corporal of the Guard said as he stepped up into the hut atop the watch
tower. The watch relief followed closely behind the corporal.
“How’s it looking?” the corporal
asked. He was a thick man with a very direct gaze.
“The slinks are waiting…like
always,” Justin said. He slipped past the corporal as the watch relief took his
post. Justin was much thinner and younger than the corporal, looking rather
boyish for a marine.
“Alright. Well try to get some
rest,” the corporal said.
Justin didn’t think he’d be able to.
The camp’s bedding was seldom generous enough to gift him with sleep.
His bowels growled. He nodded
toward the corporal, too tired to give the proper “Aye Corporal.” He descended the watch tower and began to
trudge back the center of camp.
“Woodward!” the corporal called
again to Justin by surname.
“Yes, corporal,” Justin stood
smartly.
The corporal shook his head and
just said, “Try not to get ghosted, man.”
Justin nodded again, “You too.”
He resumed his short journey back
into the camp and emptied his bowels in one of the camp’s makeshift relief
stations. He thought about trying to sleep. He was exhausted, but that was no
guarantee he’d be able to sleep.
Instead, Justin made his way to the
golden temple in the center of the camp. The golden temples were the Alliance
members places of worship and ritual. Back home, these temples truly were
golden. But here on the battle-front, they were little more than stone enclaves
with religious adornments inside. Every camp was assigned a temple and two holy
shepherds, one shepherd to watch the troops by day and one by night.
The night father was Ser Eli. The
day mother was Ser Mara.
Ser Eli waited at the doorway, as
though he were expecting Justin to arrive.
“Eli”, Justin said in greeting. He
didn’t care for ceremony.
“How fairs your person tonight,
Justin?” the shepherd asked.
“I’m tired but resolved.”
“And…how fairs your faith tonight?”
Justin bowed his head a little. “Rather
defeated,” he admitted.
The shepherd nodded and said, “Please
do come in?”
Justin locked his rifle in the safe
near the doorway and entered the temple.
They sat, and Ser Eli began warmly,
“What’s bothering you tonight?”
Ser Eli had kind eyes, a bald head,
and a gold-colored robe. Justin had found him to be a good listener, even when he
didn’t have all the answers.
Justin shook his head, “I feel like
this war is absurd.”
“Absurd?” the shepherd asked.
“Yes, how are they winning, Eli?”
Justin asked. “The Alliance has every conceivable advantage. You couldn’t wish
for a better military. And yet, the slinks continue to take ground, camp by
camp. Is the Creator against us?”
Ser Eli didn’t say anything at
first. He took his customary pause.
“Our battle is not against flesh
and blood,” the shepherd said at last.
“It feels like it is,” Justin said.
“That’s the trick, isn’t it?” Ser
Eli put his finger in the air as he spoke. “We measure our losses in physical
destruction, but…our enemy has found a way to defeat us mentally and
spiritually. That’s the true battle. The battle of belief. Let me ask you this,
Justin. What are you most afraid of?”
Justin shivered as he spoke. “I
don’t want to get ghosted.”
“Yes, exactly,” the shepherd said.
“We once fought with honor, knowing that death in battle only brought us into
the afterlife, with the Creator. Armed with this belief, the Alliance was
unstoppable. I remember the days when the Alliance marines tore through enemy
lines without fear of death, and with the bold knowledge that being slain was
no punishment.”
“Then, the slinks came,” Justin
shuddered.
“Yes,” Ser Eli agreed.
“Well, why doesn’t the church
preach against their claims, Eli!?” Justin blurted. “You could, you know! If
you just told us that the slinks aren’t really capable of turning us into
ghosts, we could regain our strength. We would fight with the honor we used to
have in battle!”
“A practical lie? Is that what
you’d like?” Ser Eli asked.
Justin shook his head, “I just…I
wish I believed something other than what I do. I wish I didn’t believe the
slinks could turn me into a ghost, to walk the earth forever in agony.”
The shepherd nodded.
“And!” Justin continued, “Even if the
slinks are lying. Even if everything they taught us about the ghostings and their
ability to stop us from entering the afterlife is false. I can’t…convince
myself of it. It’s all I think about when they come to fight us. I wish…I wish
I could choose what I believe.”
The shepherd nodded. “It is
appointed for each man once to die. And after that, to face the judgement,” Shepherd
Eli quoted. “Do you believe that, Justin?”
“Yes,” Justin nodded, “and still…I
know what I’ve seen. I can’t deny my own experience.”
“What our enemy does is certainly an
abomination,” the shepherd admitted.
“Do they really commune with the devil?”
To this the Shepherd waved a hand
and said, “They don’t need the devil to do what they do. It’s much simpler.
They use pain to disrupt our path to the afterlife.”
“That does sound so simple,” Justin
said.
“Indeed, pain connects us to the
physical world like nothing else. Pain, in a very real way, tethers you to the
earth. When a person dies as they should, peacefully, their consciousness
leaves their body smoothly, like a snake shedding it’s skin. But…the more painful
the death, the greater the chance a piece of you gets left behind on this
physical plane.”
“That’s why the slinks burn people
alive?” Justin asked, “In the hopes that the pain will tether part of the
person’s consciousness to this dimension?”
“The ancient ritual was fire, yes.
But now, of course, they use the Elusian poison. They claim it’s more reliable,”
the shepherd said.
Justin bit his lip and said, “Watching
that poison kill, it’s the most horrible thing.”
The Shepherd’s expression became
somber.
Justin continued after a pause, “they
say Elusian poison is the most painful experience known to us. But when it
kills, it looks…different than I ever expected. They don’t scream, Eli. No, no one
ever screams when they get infected. They just…freeze. They go rigid. You
wouldn’t even know they’re in pain, except for…their face. Ugh! That face! I
see it in my dreams. It scares me more than the carnage. It scares me more than
anything. They just sit there with that expression on their face until their
bodies give out.”
Justin took a moment to clear his
throat, then continued. “How can we fight against an enemy that will doom us to
a shell of an existence? They’ve taken away heaven. They’ve taken away
Valhalla. There’s no glory to be found in death.”
The shepherd bent forward and put
his hand on Justin’s shoulder.
“Scripture only gives us
hints, but I believe that the Creator always builds a way,” the shepherd said.
“A way through that hell of an
existence?” Justin asked.
“Yes, given time.”
“How much time?”
The Shepherd leaned back and said,
“I don’t know. I imagine time works quite differently when you don’t have a
body. It would be hard to place yourself in time or space without one.”
Justin shrugged, “I wish I knew
more of these things.”
“The shepherds are searching for
answers as well. All things will be revealed in time.” Eli said.
“That’s not exactly the type of
message that would rally the troops though, is it?” Justin asked.
“No, it…doesn’t seem to be.” Ser
Eli shook his head.
Justin thanked the shepherd. His
mind wasn’t at ease. It probably never would be as long as this bloody war
continued. But the opportunity to express his doubts always alleviated some of
their pressure.
The marine retrieved his rifle and
made his way back to his bunk.
Most of the soldiers and marines
were sleeping when he entered the bivouac shelter. He tried not to wake his
bunkmate, Private Jones, as he sat down on the thin mattress of the lower bunk.
But Jones stirred anyhow. All the marines were light sleepers this late into
the war.
“Hey Woodward,” came a sleepy tone.
“Hey Jones,” Justin said.
“Is it third watch yet?” Jones
asked.
“Nah man, you have a couple more
hours.”
At this, Jones nodded and turned
over. As he did so, he offered, “Alright Woodard. Try not to get ghosted
tonight.”
“You too, mate,” Justin said.
Justin slung his rifle and lay his
weary body to rest, still fully clothed.
Then Justin closed his eyes.
He wasn’t sure how much time had
passed. Perhaps four hours. Perhaps four minutes. His body was too tired to
accurately assess time.
All he knew was that the base
sirens were blaring when he awoke, and marines were scattering.
Because he typically slept in his
boots, Justin simply rolled out of his bunk and unslung his rifle.
He saw panic in the eyes of his
fellow platoon mates. Then he smelled the smoke.
Dark clouds wafted in from every
exit in the bivouac shelter. Then fire began to leak inside, like water,
crawling along the barracks floor. The fire seemed alive. It slithered towards
its retreating prey.
Justin was struck from behind and
thrown to the ground. A soldier, completely engulfed in flame howled and dashed
across the bay of panicked warriors. Platoon members cleared a path, to avoid
catching the flame themselves. Several tore through their packs in desperate
attempts to find their extinguishing kits.
Justin smelled the fumes of burnt hamburger
and heard the increasing shouts of warriors doing their best to put out the
flames. The efforts of the warriors were far from sufficient, and the fire grew
inside the building at an astounding rate.
Justin’s bunk mate helped him to
his feet and shouted something. Justin couldn’t make out it was.
He glanced over to the far wall of
the barracks and saw the Corporal of the Guard organizing a firing squad. Four marines
unloaded their weapons into the side of the barracks shelter. Pulses melted
through the siding. They were making their own doorway out of the doomed
shelter.
Once the wall had been sufficiently
weakened, the corporal charged forward and threw a heavy kick. The siding gave
way, and immediately flames spilled inside and ignited the corporal’s boots and
pants.
The slinks had covered the entire shelter
in a skin of fire. There was no escape.
Through the opening in the shelter
wall, Justin saw the outline of a tall man in a goat’s head mask. The black
horns stood out in stark contrast to the orange flames dancing in front of him.
“Slink!” Justin shouted as he
raised his rifle. He could barely hear his own voice.
The room erupted with gunfire as
every marine and soldier trained their weapon on the lone enemy and engaged.
One hundred carbine pulses later,
the lone slink had been reduced to a slushy pile of ground meat.
But the platoon had all been a
half-second too late. A canister tumbled through the opening in the shelter and
released a fine white smoke.
The canister came to rest at
Justin’s feet. He was the first to be infected, but Elusian poison was potent
enough to infect everyone in the building within two minutes.
All the other platoon members
scurried away from the mist. But not Justin. There was no point now. He’d
already smelt it, and that meant it was too late.
The rumors were true. Elusian
poison smelled like pungent flowers: lilacs.
Justin turned his gun toward his
face, swallowed the barrel, and tried to pull the trigger.
Once again, he was half a second
too late. He lost all control of his bodily movement immediately. His limbs froze
and he toppled to the ground, not lucky enough to crack his skull on the
concrete below.
Then the pain started, and Justin
understood why people infected with the poison never cried out. Effort, any
effort at all, was impossible under the weight of such overwhelming pain.
Every part of him hurt more than
any part of him had ever hurt before. A living anguish touched every inch of
his body at once. His head, brain, skin, muscles, bones and internal organs all
boiled.
Awareness retreated from his mind,
and the pain became the center of his world. It became more real than him. He
began to question his own existence, but the existence of the pain could not be
denied.
Time too retreated in the face of the
agony.
Justin boiled for a hundred years. Then
he looked and saw the flames from the barracks fire approached him. They still
had not touched his body.
Justin boiled for another hundred
years. His mind became heavy with the weariness of old age. He looked again and
found that the flames burned at his clothes and body. The fire enveloped and
barbequed his flesh, but the pain of the fire simply blended into the pain of
the poison’s scorching toxins. The pain of the fire was no different from the
pain of the poison. Both were unbearable.
Most of Justin’s mind began to untether.
Justin boiled and burned for
another hundred years. The pain never relinquished for a moment. It skewed his
senses, made it difficult to see clearly or identify where he was.
At last, when Justin no longer
recognized anything about him any longer, he found that he could move once again.
He found that he could scream, and
scream he did. He tried to cry the pain away, and it worked, only a little.
The briefest respite from the boiling
of his flesh became his only aim.
And so, he continued. Justin screamed
at the landscape, which now stood, devoid of any shelter, marines, or slinks. Everyone
was gone. What had happened to them? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was
the pain.
Justin stood in the rubble of a
long abandoned military base and cried for death to find him.
“I imagine time works quite
differently when you don’t have a body,” Ser Eli’s words found Justin in this
new shadow reality of pain and loneliness.
“No! No! No! No!” Justin cried out
for hours, and then for days, and then for years. He had no throat to grow sore
and no lungs to damage from the dreadful screams. But though he had no physical
body, he still burned. The pain refused to leave. Only his hollers made the
pain recede, ever so slightly.
“Did you hear that?” an unexpected voice
said.
Justin looked and saw children playing
in the ruins of old military base. He recognized them, not their faces. He
couldn’t see their faces. But they possessed an essence that he recognized.
“Slinks! Slink children!” he
shouted. He hated them. Their ancestors had brought him this pain.
He charged at them with a war cry.
The air did not slow him. Movement was like blinking. At once he was upon the
children. He tried to grab one boy by the arm, but it was difficult. Justin reached
out with anger and pain, rather than with hands, and the boy felt it.
The boy recoiled his arm and screamed.
The children ran away.
Overwhelming pain overtook Justin’s
awareness for a space, and he lost track of his place in time.
“Over here, near the wood-line,” a
voice spoke. Justin looked. Some men with construction equipment milled about
the camp ruins.
“Out!” Justin screamed, his voice
fueled by the pain and anger that now centered his reality.
The men were terrified. Some ran.
Some froze.
Justin threw his anger and pain at
a pile of bricks near the men. The bricks slammed violently into the earth,
narrowly missing the foreman. The workers dashed away in fear, and Justin felt
it.
Their fear gave Justin something
rich to feed upon. Fear gave Justin far more sustenance than anger or pain. He
gave chase to the men but found that his strength began to dissipate if he
ventured too far. Out there, beyond the trees, the slink offspring might be
able to challenge him. And he needed to take revenge upon them.
He crawled back to his death site,
back to the pain and anger. These were what he knew. He was pain, he was anger.
Without them, would there be anything left? He feared there wouldn’t be. His
friends had died the same way as he, but he couldn’t see them. Where were they?
He doubted they were real, and so he doubted he was real.
He knew only that pain, anger, and
fear, they were real. Their existence was undeniable.
The slinks had murdered him and his
friends, and now their offspring tried to reap the rewards of their sin. They
would pay.
Justin waited for more victims,
whose fear he could feed upon. He held his tether, and he became one with the anguish
for a space.
“This place feels wrong,” a new
voice allowed the lingering entity to anchor himself in the blur of time.
A lone hiker walked through the
barren field. The old military camp was long buried.
The lingering entity didn’t know if
the hiker had said those words or thought them. He didn’t care.
He howled, and the hiker froze. The
lingering entity felt the fear leaking from the hiker’s body. Her fear was his
sustenance, and it had been so long since his last feast.
He laughed, and she heard it. More
fear, more power.
He charged back and forth, in the dancing
shadows of the night.
The hiker screamed, and the entity laughed.
He didn’t recognize her essence. He
didn’t care. His pain was too intense for him to exercise discretion.
“Run, run, run!” he shouted.
She did run.
The lingering entity blinked past
her and stood in her path.
The hiker twisted her ankle in an
attempt to turn away from the apparition too quickly.
The entity laughed again.
But he began to feel tired too. The
effort had drained him. He receded back into his pool of pain, anger, and fear.
“It’s haunted I tell ya! I’ve seen
things here you wouldn’t believe.” A voice roused him again.
Where once there was a field, a
house now stood. It was a new house, and a small family lived inside. A young
man pointed towards the front door and said, “I ain’t staying here no more.”
The entity tried to remember
himself. Where was he? When was he? Remembering took too much effort. He knew
himself only as the center which connected pain, anger and fear. He was the nexus
of anguish.
The nexus hated the family which
lived in the house. He didn’t know why he hated them, but he knew he simply had
to drive them out or drive them to madness. They had no right to occupy this
place.
Their constant voices pulled the
nexus into moments of time where he could terrorize them.
Anguish was all the nexus knew, and
so it was all that he could deliver. The family grew more and more frightened
night by night. If only they would leave, the nexus would dissipate until he
was roused again. But they didn’t leave. They were a proud family.
The nexus ate their pain, anger,
and fear. He ate their anguish, and he became stronger every night. When well
fed, he could move physical objects with ease. He slammed their doors shut in
the middle of the night, dropped kitchen knives onto the floor near their feet,
and shut off their machines. Perhaps he may have garnered the strength to toss
one down a set of stairs. That’s what he hoped for.
“Who are you?” a final voice spoke.
The nexus moved to the man who had
asked him.
A man with wise eyes, thick gray
hair, and a golden cloak sat at the kitchen table in the family’s house. Some small
part of the man’s essence was familiar to the nexus, but the nexus could not
recall why.
“Leave!” the nexus shouted at the
man in gold.
“Who are you?” the man asked once
more.
The nexus pulled back. The man in
the golden cloak wasn’t afraid of him, and without fear, the nexus could not
feed.
The nexus howled and receded back
into his sea of misery.
“I ask again, who are you?” With
these words, the man in the golden cloak pulled the nexus back into the same
moment once again.
“Leave me!” The nexus shouted.
The man did not react.
The nexus drew anger, and he used
it to pick up the kitchen table. He slammed it back down into the floor. The room
shook.
The man in the golden robe did not
react.
The nexus was tired. Lifting the
table had cost him nearly all his energy.
“Who are you?” the man said
repeated.
“I…anguish!” the nexus shouted.
“Let your anguish go,” said the man
in the golden cloak said.
“I…am anguish!” the nexus
responded.
“You’re not,” said the man. “You’ve
stayed upon this earth long past your time. It is appointed for each man once
to die. And after that, to face the judgement. This is unnatural. You must let
go.”
The nexus felt the weight of the
pain, anger, and fear he carried. Each one was a sea unto itself. The nexus was
just the point at which they all converged.
The nexus exerted the last of it’s
strength in a bloodcurdling cry.
“You’re the last,” the man in the
golden cloak said. “Pass on with the others. Face your final judgement.”
“Tell…me.” The nexus whispered.
The man pointed, and said, “You need
only leave this place and not return. Your pain chains you here. Sever your
connection and pass on to your final judgment.”
The nexus took flight.
The journey was long, because the nexus
felt every inch of it. He pushed himself to the boundary of his domain, to the
point where he felt his power start to fade.
He couldn’t do this, could he?
This place granted him power.
Without it, he had nothing. Without it, perhaps he was nothing.
The nexus thought about staying,
but the man in the golden cloak would remain if he did. There was no other
option. Nothing remained for him in this place.
The nexus continued on.
It’s power faded. But so too did
his anguish.
After a while, the journey became
easier with each passing length.
The fear soon dissipated, and the
nexus pressed forward with greater confidence.
Then the anger faded, and he found
himself regretting the pain of his victims.
Finally, the pain subsided. The burning,
which had scorched him for countless lifetimes, went cold.
The anguish broke away, and the
small piece at the center found himself once more.
Justin was all that remained.
Justin was all that passed on.
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