The soldiers relayed more silent orders, two of them came over to Nathan’s body to check up on him, the others rushed to where squad leader was cut down.
“Ya did good kid.”
Nathan slowly came out of the shock.
“Huh?”
His wrists ached from the power of his pistol. The soldiers helped him up.
“You helped kill a devil, you gave us enough time to finish the job.”
“What? I..”
“It’s shock, we’ll get you back and you’ll be fine, this is a little too much for an excursion.”
“Excursion?”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s a tradition of ours.”
They walked in the direction of the other recruits Nathan slowly getting his bearings, he got a compliment on his revolver from one of the two soldiers, inspecting the ammo and the gun they saw it was made by a smith who knew what they were doing. While walking back the soldiers get an invisible order, one of them picks up Nathan and they run while carrying him back at dizzying speed. There was a flurry of activity in the caravan. Soldiers yelled and ran all over, the soldiers escorting Nathan set him down and ran off, he then joined with the other recruits as they sat inside a personal carrier. The first thing anyone says to him is.
"Thank you."
"I owe you one."
"You made it out in one piece." One of the recruits said with a smile.
“What happened?”
Nathan laughed, he didn’t remember. I tell him the story, embellishing how much I saved his life.
‘You possessing me is something we will talk about later.’
“It wasn’t much I was bait, bait he fell for.”
He uses ambiguous language “My gun didn’t even slow him down, but him playing with me gave enough time for a squad of soldiers to kill him.”
“A squad killed the martial artist?” Many of the recruits react in shock.
“Yeah? This entire organization has some odd backer to it.”
“How’d the devil die?”
“It was shot at and blown apart, his aura did little to stop the ordinance.”
The rear doors of the APC were opened, surprisingly enough the squad leader stood there, his cloak had cuts in it where his limbs were cut off.
“I need people to help operate defensive positions. We are grinding down their boss, any volunteers?”
The recruits froze, they all thought that man died.
“I’m fine, if people don’t volunteer I’ll order people to. I need a few people now and a few people later.”
The other recruits don’t even bother asking Him to do it, they go without complaint. Nathan leaned against the corner of the APC as what had just happened set in. At the sight of a pathetic slayer of innocents He froze, and I had to step in. Nathan saw what a pathetic thing he was, He hated this, he tries to make a promise but we both know it won’t last long, but it would last long enough so that when they needed more recruits he would be one of the first to volunteer.
***
Another horde of rats passed through her territory again, stronger rats than she had ever faced before. Her vermin army was getting totally annihilated, even those who were the predators amongst them. These rats needed to know their place. She stalked one of them in the forest to see how strong they were individually, the issue was that they never left each other’s line’s of sights, they left and rejoined in groups of two, she would simply take them on two at a time, the rats wouldn’t be that strong. She silently leaped from tree to tree watching and waiting for them to be close enough for her prodigious mass to crush them both. In a tree she clings to the trunk as it swayed in the wind. Her prey felt something was off, she jumped down on… only one of them killing the rat instantly, the other ran dodging and weaving between the trees back to it’s group. She wouldn’t let it, she pounced and killed the man tearing out his throat, she may be a demon beast but she was no devil lord.
She heard leaves crackle and twigs pop, in the next moment she was being fired upon. Somehow the dead soldiers got out the message to their comrades, grenades , bullets, and darts all deflected off of her twisting aura. Their darts smelled like some sweet and terrible poison, she let a little bit of it into her system and her muscles stiffened and spasmed. She was going to kill them for trying this, she purged the poison from her system and she went about making sure these rats knew their place.
They tried so hard to fight back. Loud and bright grenades exploded in front of her, they tried to run, they tried to use poisonous gas, grenades that ignited and sent burning fluid that all deflected off of her shield. They split off in separate directions while she was dealing with her ailments and tried to escape. But they were too slow, one by one she hunted them down, some squelched as she pounced on them, others didn’t even bother to beg for their lives as their stinging bullets penetrated just under her skin, there were a couple but some did beg, tragic, she killed them anyways. There was an entire nest’s worth of them transporting supplies where these ones were from. She would tear them limb from limb and show them where they belonged.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
***
The man that Nathan was the loader for was significantly more sociable than the other soldiers he had met.
“Europe was a beautiful place, the first time I went I experienced their food, and their beautiful cities. The second time I went I could barely see out of my gas mask.”
“Cut it down a little, the start of it seems like it has some bloat.”
“Alright how about: The first time I went to Europe I experienced their food and their cities, the second time I went I experienced MREs and a burning world.”
“Better, it will need more work, but now might not be the best time.”
“The proximity alarms haven’t sounded yet.”
“You guys seem like your minds are interconnected.”
The sociable soldier, his name was Greyson, chuckled, “Some of us can, others are too poor or low rank to.”
“I hear it’s a techlord ability.”
“They can to varying degrees, there are counters but I ain’t telling.”
There is a pause before the sociable soldier speaks again after gazing into the forest.
“I wish I was back home.”
“What do you miss most about it?”
“Most of my life at least was peaceful, no walking cannibal castles, no martial artists or mages, just a rotting world that I called home.”
Another pause as he checked the alerts, they were still clear.
“The rot is what caused it to end?”
“The foundation our world was built on collapsed. The second time I went I-”
A buzzer somewhere beeped. Greyson snapped to attention, “Their leader is coming, pay attention.”
Their trucks had circled to make an easily defensible position, the earth mage in the vanguard vehicle had recovered and made a series of barricades and fortifications and gave high point for mounted turrets to be placed on, Nathan was on one of those that held a heavy machine gun, a small number of recruits helped out for other weapons, but it by far was mostly these odd soldiers. On the trucks there were other weapons, Greyson called them “flamethrowers”, some new notification popped up and the flamethrowers on Nathan’s side of the circle fired.
It started with a piercingly short DING like metal scraping on metal and then the trees were burning. 50 meter long jets of burning fuel sprayed from their nozzles, drenching and igniting the and especially their canopies. Something was hiding in the canopy, a bubble of exploding fuel surrounded that something, and when the exploding fuel cleared he saw a feline beast. It looked like what tigers were described to him as, but where there should’ve been orange there was that sickening bloody red of devil lords.
Greyson adjusts the firing angle on the machine gun and fires. The bullets from his gun didn’t make it far past her shield, but other guns joined the choir, eventually they started hitting the beast. The men on the flamethrowers didn’t stop, their fire eroded the shield faster than any other weapon.
The beast tried to advance, but the wall of lead and steel pushed her back. That was the least of her worries, something approached her from behind at a blinding speed, a common dark green cloak clovered the figure and their shining colorful warhammer came down upon the beast’s head. The figure swang again, now taking the pointed end of their hammer into the ribs of the beast. As she swung the hood of her cloak flew off and her hair flowed out.
“What hole did you rats come from?” The beast spoke in a voice that sounded of starting panic.
In a voice that sounded too gruff for a normal woman spoke.
“You don’t deserve to know.”
The beast ran, much like a scurrying rat, what a hypocrite. The martial artist chased after it, other martial artists from the caravan joined her in running after the beast.
“Thank god we got out alive.” Greyson laughed.
Nathan stared off into the burning trees, “This isn’t the end of it.”
***
“This is unpalatable, it tastes like shit.”
“Have you ever tasted shit?”
“No, but-”
“Damn, if you did it’d be easier for you to get used to it.”
“Greyson you bastard.”
The two were eating a dinner of MREs, specifically some sort of dried ground up beef with tough and dense bread.
“I am, and about the MRE these early ones suck.”
“You’ve had better?”
“The plain meat ones tend to be bad, these ones also use simple packing methods, throw some hot sauce on that bad boy and you’ll be fine.”
Nathan puts some hot sauce to make his patty taste like something. It wasn’t good, just more tolerable.
“Just like your second trip to Europe.”
“What?”
“Today was like your second trip to Europe, you experienced MREs and a burning world.”
“Fuck you’re right.”
They laughed and told stories into the night. Some of the other recruits warmed up to the soldiers and the soldiers told stories of the things they saw. They had met a dragonslayer once, that man took on a team of soldiers in a drinking competition and somehow won. He then ran off the moment he got to his stop and hasn’t been seen since. One of the recruits talked about how he survived seeing a wolenaught, it saw him, but it ignored him. The soldiers mention that many of the wolenaughts actual temperaments vary. Nathan knows he could tell many stories about his interactions with dungeon divers, but he would rather go to bed. He fell asleep to their singing and their figures as dancing shadows.
Nathan dreamed and I felt him see something while I tried to hold together his mind. He saw a corpse with dead eyes that looked like his, blood was mixed with his hair and there was an unstable smile on the corpse's face. He knew that he could’ve been like this, he narrowly avoided being killed earlier today, he could be dead tomorrow, or the day after or the day after, this could be him he knew.
There was a corpse on the side of the road
Who they were? Who cares who knows?
It had no voice, no breath, no soul
Just a rotting body in a hole
It looked like me, we looked almost the same
Did it have my first name?
Is this what I could be?
A rotting squelching pile of meat?
I couldn’t take a look for myself but- ARRRRG I WILL HOLD THIS BOY TOGETHER. I NEED TO MAKE THEM PAY FOR WHAT THEY DID I WILL DRAG THEIR PALACES DOWN AND BREAK THEIR SPINES. THEY WILL NOT STOP ME!