11:45 AM
Tantalus sat and stared out through the window at the rapidly passing countryside. The train car he was sitting in carried fifty other Revenants from Tango Company. If he was correct, the Revenants sitting in this car were from Squads T1 to T10. The train car immediately behind the one he was currently sitting in carried fifty support soldiers. The Greycloaks completely filled four of the passenger cars.
The passenger car was nice enough. There were twenty seats on each side of the central walkway, and each seat could comfortably hold two people. There was still plenty of room left over, even with the fifty Revenants in the train car, though it would be very cramped to sleep there. Tantalus sat next to Redgrave at the front of the train car.
As he looked, Tantalus saw a small settlement pass by. Small houses and businesses dotted the landscape, but Tantalus did not see a single person. The structures there were in a similar state of disrepair to the buildings outside of the walls of Osiris.
“Do you think the whole world is like this, Redgrave?” Tantalus muttered.
Redgrave looked out the window. “I don’t think so, Riemann kept going on and on about the Outer Kingdoms. They’re far away from the Breach, so they’re probably fine.”
“Maybe,” Tantalus spoke to himself. “Though, I wonder if those outer kingdoms will stand a chance against whatever intelligent foe controls the Deluvians. They retreat just as we attack, they leave ambushes to hamper our progress, they sabotage transportation infrastructure just as it’s needed. We call them Orcs and Goblins, but they’re clearly capable of intelligent military strategy. Honestly, they’re doing what I would do.”
“Terrifying,” Redgrave joked. “What would you do next if you were them?”
“I’d destroy bridges and roads to slow the enemy’s advance enough to the point that I could move all of my forces to a point in the enemy’s path,” Tantalus muttered automatically.
“So far, it seems like that’s exactly what they’re doing,” Redgrave said.
There was a peal of laughter from behind Tantalus and Redgrave. The two Revenants turned around to see the women of Squad T2 crowded around the dog that Tantalus had found under his truck. The puppy’s tail was wagging, and its tongue protruded from its mouth. Mirage stroked the puppy’s back with a smile on her face. That was the first time that Tantalus had seen her smile.
“Have you guys decided on a name for it yet?” Tantalus asked Pixie.
“We decided to name him Odysseus, Odie for short,” Pixie smiled.
“A character from ancient Greek legend known for going to the underworld,” Tantalus said, “sounds familiar.”
“We got the idea from you, of course,” Pixie said. “It was the only name that everyone could agree on.”
Tantalus checked his watch. The Duke would be casting the Edict of Ostracization at any moment.
----------------------------------------
4:00 P.M.
Several hours passed without the train stopping. Tantalus spent most of the time talking to his squad, talking to Eska, and looking after Odie. At one point, Colonel Feldrast asked to speak with him. She had a private room near the front of the train. During this conversation, Maria Feldrast asked Tantalus whether he thought Operation Reunion would be successful. Colonel Feldrast was the only high-ranking NPC who really bought into the idea of Tantalus the Great Strategist. She had tried to convince General Dogwood to change the plan for Operation Reunion when Tantalus suggested it. The conversation they had on the first day must have made her think more highly of him. Tantalus gave her an answer: 15%.
"Why? What do you think will go wrong?" Colonel Feldrast asked.
"We are walking into the most obvious trap ever set," Tantalus snarled. "Dogwood and Mandelbrot think that we'll be fine due to the sheer number of soldiers involved. I'm not so optimistic. Something involving the Dark Apostles is going to happen, I guarantee it."
"That should be impossible," Colonel Feldrast said, but doubt had started to appear on her face. "The Dark Apostles have never previously appeared within the first year of the Deluge. What makes you think they will interfere with the mission?"
"Not to be disrespectful, Colonel, but I'm afraid I must answer your question with a question of my own." Tantalus took a sip of tea from the two sets of fine China that sat between the two of them. The tea had been poured by an officer with the rank of major. "Are Dark Apostles easily distinguishable from humans?"
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"What?" Maria Feldrast asked with unhidden shock on her face. "No, they are not. But... that's top-secret information. How did you know?"
"As I thought," Tantalus said, staring hard at his teacup. "The man I met last night was a Dark Apostle, wasn't he?"
"No, it's impossible," Colonel Feldrast tried to sound confident, but she could not hide the doubt from her voice.
An hour later, Tantalus was sitting next to Redgrave when the train came to a screeching halt. He was shaken out of the silent trance he had been in for the past half hour.
“We’ve stopped,” Tantalus said as he stood from his seat. “Synth, do you hear any troop movement near the train?”
After a long moment of silence, Synth responded. “No, sir.”
“Squad T1, with me,” Tantalus gestured for his squad to follow him.
Tantalus and his squad walked through ten train cars, each filled with fifty NPC soldiers, before they reached the train car which held the two commanding officers.
General Dogwood stood in the hallway with a man dressed in the uniform of a civilian working on the train. As Squad T1 approached, Dogwood turned and spoke to them. “The bridge is out. We’re lucky the train was only going at half speed. Otherwise, we would have gone into the river.”
“Was it sabotage?” Tantalus asked.
“We can’t be sure yet, but that certainly seems likely,” General Dogwood said.
“What are we going to do now?” Tantalus asked. “It seems like we’ll have to find some other way to cross the river.”
The General smiled mirthfully at Tantalus’s words. “That would be the case, if we didn’t have three powerful mages on board. Feldrast, Graf, and I will be able to rebuild the bridge within an hour.”
“I guess we just can’t compete when it comes to magic, at least not yet,” Tantalus said. “While you do that, please allow my men and me to sweep the surrounding area for hidden enemies.”
“If your palms are tingling, Captain, then I won’t stop you. Permission granted,” the General turned and stepped off the train without another word.
----------------------------------------
Soon after, all twenty combat squads of Greycloaks had spread out in all directions on their side of the river. Tantalus went north; Gator, now strengthened with two new men from Bravo Company, went east; and FullDan went south. It was soon apparent, however, that there was no major Deluvian threat waiting for them.
The Greycloaks searched the area within a mile of the destroyed bridge for twenty minutes without any sound other than the occasional all-clear signal from nearby Revenants.
“There’s nothing here, Captain,” Elias said after Squad T1 cleared the tenth empty building.
“Maybe,” Tantalus sighed. “Let’s split up to search our area more effectively.” Tantalus looked around at the quadrant they were designated to search. He pointed out four buildings one after another and told each man to search one. “...and I’ll search that old motel.”
Squad T1 split up to search the area. Grim yawned in boredom as he went to search his own building.
Tantalus reached the motel. It had three floors, and each floor had about ten rooms. He went to open the first door, and it was unlocked. Tantalus checked every corner of the room with his pistol raised and his Garand slung behind his back. He went and did the same thing with all of the rooms on the first floor and then all of the floors on the second floor.
Eventually, he reached the second door on the third floor. He tried the handle, and it was locked. Tantalus had checked twenty-one rooms before this one, and none of them were locked.
“Sen, thrush, drast,” Tantalus chanted, and a small explosion centered on the door’s lock caused the door to open inward. He usually wouldn’t use six mana to open any random door, but something about this door made Tantalus think that it was significant.
A moment after the door exploded inward, Tantalus stepped into the room with his pistol raised. He looked inside the room and saw a backpack propped up against a wall. The covers on the bed were scattered, and the door to the bathroom was open. Like the other room he had just entered, there was a sunroof with a vanity shutter built into the roof of the room.
This was strange. All twenty-one other rooms he had just searched seemed completely untouched as if in preparation for a new guest. Someone had clearly stayed in this room recently.
Tantalus checked the bathroom, and no one was there. He returned to the bedroom and went to check the backpack. He unzipped it. Within were food, clothes, and… ammunition. Tantalus took his hand out of the backpack, and removed a magazine filled with 9mm parabellum cartridges. There were no guns in Osiris that used ammunition like that.
Without warning, Tantalus’s gaze was drawn upward by a sudden crash. Something large had smashed through the sunroof above him. As Tantalus looked up, he saw a man wielding a katana rapidly descending toward him. The man was wearing an overcoat, and a demon mask covered the bottom half of his face. The katana-wielding man was screaming at the top of his lungs as he fell, and the sound was barely suppressed by his metal mask.
Tantalus began to raise his pistol, but he realized that the katana would reach his head before he could shoot the man. At the last moment, Tantalus raised his pistol in a defensive posture in order to interrupt the arc of the plunging katana.
An instant before the katana struck Tantalus’s pistol, an unnatural pure-black aura enveloped the blade and began streaking behind it. The blade struck the pistol, and it was not slowed. As if it were cutting through butter and not iron, the katana passed through the gun and sliced into Tantalus’s body.
Tantalus jumped backwards away from the attack, just barely dodging a second swing. As he looked down, he saw that a trail of his own blood had formed on the ground. Stunned, Tantalus looked at his pistol. The gun’s slide had been perfectly removed from its grip. The 1911’s slide laid on the ground next to two of Tantalus’s fingers.