Cam had been forty-five when he died in a freak accident whilst on a ship in the South China Sea, a collaborative effort between extremely rough seas, a messy kitchen full of sharp implements, and Cam being where he probably shouldn’t have been. He’d woken up in Heaven and been surprised, but not unpleasantly so. He’d been told that he’d been selected in the war against evil, and that he was to be trained in the art of combat.
It was exciting to hear, and Cam was looking forward to making a difference, fighting for the side of good, honoured to have been chosen by the Lord. He’d been told he had been granted the rare Class of Infiltrator; the true black ops fighters of their side.
Three months of training, meeting new species that he’d never imagined in his wildest dreams, learning skills that he’d never thought possible. He became master of stealth and assassination, with Level 15 in Stealthy Manouevres, Disguise, Short Blade Mastery, and Agile Manouevres. He’d been deemed ready and sent to the Front, like many in his cohort. A strong fellowship had been built between all the recruits in the year, even with the odd slug-like people that were barely comprehensible despite their telepathy, or the arachnids that could only communicate with leg signs. Having trained together, and worked with them all in missions and combat trials had created a deep bond. He was almost looking forward to fighting with them for the cause.
The Front had been more intense than expected; despite what his teachers had taught him, he’d still expected to be a mess of broken cities and open warfare, similar to the scenes described to him by his father in the wars with the North. But instead he found himself in trench warfare, with both sides dug in, stuck in messy, muddy tunnels, with a no man’s land between the two forces that varied between kilometres and metres.
Cam had been welcomed to the outpost, valued for his abilities before he’d even demonstrated them, and sent out to a base that was as close to the enemy’s as could be. He’d been sent with two of his fellow recruits; the Arachnid, Far-Jump, and a human from the Alman world, Emlee, and he was glad for it. Even with the new, superhuman Skills he’d gained, in this new wondrous world the Authority had built for them, you still needed some friends with you.
The first few days had been simple, if not exactly fun; they went through a whole new orientation, joining a battle group that manned the station at the front. Most of the base was actually below the earth, with the seemingly simple trenches that he’d been greeted with actually extending dozens of metres underground, with large caverns excavated and simple rooms carved into the earth. It gave the impression of permanence, as if they intended to be here for a long time; the Lieutenant in charge of his platoon confirmed that they had, in fact, been dug in with little movement in over a year. Cam was expected to change that.
He was given small missions; scouting areas, testing discreet advances into no man’s land, smuggling items across the border. It had been simple, and even fun; his Disguise Skill had a Camouflage Technique that allowed him to turn almost invisible with the right clothes and only a small trickle of mana, and Muffle meant he made no sound as he moved. He’d been able to scramble over the dangerous gap with no issues or alarms raised and provide updates on the upper trenches for the platoon, and slowly he started being requisitioned by other platoons in the company.
The first time he’d been asked to do an actual violent offensive, he’d said yes without question, though inside his mind was a whirlwind. He’d never killed in his first life. But that shouldn’t matter; this was the battle between Heaven and Hell. He knew that it would come to this.
He wasn’t alone; though he scouted the entry point to ensure that it was clear, he was followed by five other commandos on the raid. They consisted of warriors, mages with devastating single target attacks, and a supplementary GateKeeper to keep them shrouded against the defences and alarms. The aim was in and out, clear out the upper tunnel, and get out. Intelligence said that there’d be less than a dozen soldiers at the top; most of the troops were downstairs, using seismic monitoring as their main defence against attacks due to the latest fashion of trying to attack using earth magic and tunneling.
They got in and spread out, speeding through the tunnels that Cam had helped map out, using speed and offensive Techniques to bring death swiftly and silently. Cam watched it all, staying with the larger group as it thinned out, warriors and mages taking side channels wordlessly. He saw and heard blades slicing and stabbing, spells being slung with the crackle of electric energy, or the chill of death.
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Eventually it was just him and one other warrior at a fork; left led to the last few chambers and rooms used for giving orders and regrouping; right led to the steps downstairs. Both were dangerous; if the alarm had been raised then people would be coming up the steps. Those that couldn’t teleport or tunnel, that was. But if the alarm hadn’t been raised then the left route was the only place likely to have people in it.
The warrior indicated Cam go left, and he did, signalling silently he understood. The warrior nodded and then went right. Cam ducked forward and moved swiftly, channelling Dash and Muffle and Camouflage simultaneously, checking the first room and then the second, finding to his relief that there was no one there.
The final wider section of trench, covered with steel plates to form a roof, was the dead end of this branch of the dug-out, and as Cam ran towards it he was pleased to see that, apart from a wide chalk circle drawn on the floor, it too was empty. He got to the centre of the room, did a three sixty look round to double check, then turned to leave.
There was a pop.
He span round.
The empty room was no longer empty; someone, a human, was stood just where he had been, in the centre of the circle, looking slightly disoriented, as if they hadn’t quite intended on being there.
The mage looked at him blearily, and spoke in a tongue Cam couldn’t understand.
‘Ecra dar mondir?’
The words meant nothing but one thing; this was a member of the Enemy’s army. It was Cam’s job to deal with him.
Cam’s daggers were already drawn; one in each hand, held blades down ready to slash or stab down. A split second passed, where he decided whether to move forward to attack, or to throw from where he stood. He decided the latter was the faster, and from this distance he couldn’t miss.
He flipped the dagger in his right hand up to a throwing grip with a practised precision, and used the same motion to draw back and then throw it forward. Its weighting wasn’t perfect for throwing, but it was good enough for this stuff; he was barely 5 metres away. At the same time he tossed the dagger in his left hand to his right.
The first thrown dagger flew off a second before the mage seemed to gather its bearings, realise it was being attacked, and act. And suddenly, the world slowed.
A small part of Cam’s mind was aware that something wasn’t right, could see that the dagger was tumbling slowly, much more slowly than it should have been considering the force of the throw. But Cam couldn’t move, or at least not move fast enough; his movements were slowed, even slower than the moving dagger. The small part of his brain that was still moving at normal speed could see that the mage was entirely unaffected, seemingly rapid compared to his own.
Not rapid enough though, it seemed; he had been too slow, and though he tried to move out of the way, avoiding a blade to the throat, the dagger still pierced his shoulder. He cried out, and suddenly Cam could move at normal speed again, and the motion he’d started to flip the dagger from one hand to the other continued as if he’d never slowed down.
Unnerved, Cam channelled all Techniques he had for speed and stealth and rushed towards the mage in a wide angle, trying to throw him off. The man had been knocked backwards several paces by the impact of the dagger, and was near the back wall of the room. He seemed disoriented again, and Cam used that as much as he could, as he neared the enemy, dagger ready to slash.
As he got within grasping distance of the man and leapt forward in a diving attack Technique, he suddenly felt a presence in his mind, something he recognised as a mental attack; the mage was attempting to use psionic magics to stop him. He had been trained for this though; he knew how to shore up his defences against a telepathic assault, how to build a mental wall that couldn’t be breached. He’d never done it mid combat though, and he was suddenly torn between focussing on his attack that was just seconds away, his outstretched blade just centimetres from the enemies throat.
Suddenly he felt time slow again, and his mental defences fell apart as his brain couldn’t address the assault at the speed it was attacking. He felt his mind falter and start to break as the mage started to hammer it, all while his body moved at the pace of a weight through treacle.
But as a weight through treacle will eventually reach the bottom, Cam’s attack had started, and after hours of having his mind smashed into pieces, in which just seconds passed, Cam’s Leaping Tiger Technique caused his body to crash into the mage’s whilst stabbing a dozen times with a savagery Cam had never shown before.
The moment the blade sunk in for the first time, the attack on his mind ended, and time returned to normal speed. But it was too late for Cam.
He collapsed next to the mage, covered in their blood, his consciousness broken.