ALBION
Several days have passed. Painful, filthy, reeking—the very thing I feared about this moss has happened. Piss and shit have seeped into it. The stench constantly reminds us of the hell we are trapped in. We tried to break through the Bavils, to force our way out of this rat hole, but they’re too fast, too strong. Two of us got killed—our fault, but mostly because of those bastards.
The first day, which I thought would be the hardest, was actually the easiest to endure. The smell wasn’t as strong back then, and the lack of real light—not these strange lamps, but true sky—hadn’t yet weighed on us. Hunger and thirst were just fleeting concerns—we assumed they wouldn't let us die for nothing. What would be the point? And yet, that is exactly what they are doing. We hadn’t fully grasped that we weren’t just being detained—we were in a death cave. A slaughterhouse where they don’t cut your head off, but let you slowly rot, where the last survivors will suffocate from the vapors of decaying bodies and mold-infested moss.
Maybe this is how the Bavils consume humans, their method of feeding. I keep asking myself, but I still don’t see their mouths. Their faces are smooth, impassive, like the edge of a blade. Maybe these fuckers eat through their asses? Groboln had joked on the first day. Even he doesn’t laugh anymore. He has good reason to be grim, beyond our situation, and so do I.
The strange man trapped with us has been a surprising help—yesterday, when we tried to escape.
Everything had started well. Even though he’s always whispering strange, unintelligible words to himself, he understands quickly. He can even say a few words, stumble through half-sentences, though he never quite finishes them. Along with the two other mages, Sergo and Dixtra, we devised a plan. Not everyone knew about it, just enough to keep it from looking suspicious, but enough to make it work.
But nothing went as planned. The lamps didn’t shatter properly—at least not all of them. A shard, maybe glass, exploded into the air but didn’t plunge the cave into darkness. No flames, no magic sparks, just some kind of glowing tube. Then, the combined spell of the three mages barely grazed the Bavils. One of them launched itself at Sergo, knocking him several meters into the moss. The poor guy was still mid-incantation when he got thrown, and the ground caught fire. We started to burn. Groboln and Dixtra struggled to put it out, but it was some kind of white substance, shot from red cylinders carried by the golems, that finally extinguished the flames.
It was a bit too late. I saw the clothes fuse with bare skin, smelled the acrid stench of burning flesh—nauseating beyond belief, even more so because we knew it was human. Two of us died—a man and a woman. I didn’t even know their names. Scouts—Elinak and Ptojé, burned and suffocated because of our mistake.
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One of us, though, managed to slip out in the chaos—the strange guy, Admiral, the one who isn’t one of us. The bastard was smart. He took advantage of the confusion, the chaos, to escape, slipping through their metal legs and disappearing from this death trap.
Maybe he is our last hope, cause we really need that.
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ADMIRAL
“Fuck!” I exclaim, completely out of breath.
Leia’s robotic voice glitches more and more, her response to my outburst completely… nonsensical.
“Does that mean. ;;e They tried to eat?:::”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up, Leia!” She’s been malfunctioning for over a day, murmuring gibberish, spitting out bizarre translations, sometimes even whispering completely contextless phrases when no one is speaking.
She’s not working properly, and that’s a huge problem. Her servers must be damaged, maybe more than I expected. I hope I can fix this soon. But I’m more shocked by my own weakness. I nearly collapse onto the cold, damp grass. It feels good—seeing something other than that awful cave.
I need to get them out of there, fast. That place is… inhuman. Because that’s what they are, after all—humans, like me. Not so different, in the end.
I struggled to admit it, but the sleepless nights, the stench of waste and decay, Leia’s endless, senseless whispers in my head, the hard ground breaking my back—those people helped me hold on. They kept me from marching up to the droids and abandoning my plan, escaping out of sheer discomfort. I held on, in part, because they spoke to me, shared what little rations and water they had.
They have nothing left to survive on. I can’t let them starve to death.
I’m panting, my cheek pressed against the soft grass, my filthy clothes absorbing the dew.
“Plumbing services not oooo ;; OPPORTUNIST.”
I shove a finger into my ear, as if trying to dislodge a parasite burrowing too deep—and that’s exactly what Leia has become. A damn AI doing everything except helping me, an AI I would beat the hell out of if she had a physical form.
I growl weakly.
“You are going to remove this fucking thing from my ear, Leia!”
She doesn’t respond at all.
Shit.
I don’t even know where I ran when I escaped that hell.
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IN THE FOREST
Men and women march. They are not alone. Whatever they are transporting, the carts, the legs, the footfalls shake the ground and trees in their wake. And it is obvious that this grim procession is not here to admire the landscape—that behind their facial masks, there are no smiles, no desire to savor the moment, the life, the crispness of a sunless dusk.
They wouldn’t even know what a sun is. And it doesn’t matter.
What they know is that they have received orders. That words, prayers, and liturgies accompanied their departure.
And each one prays that they will return the same way—victorious against the rot of this world.
Even if few still believe in it.
Even if most know they are only fattening their masters, their overlords, rulers already bloated with power—whose greed has erased all conscience. And perhaps that is precisely why they have devoted themselves to this task. Because a tool is needed to wield that hunger, that insatiable thirst that devours those who dare not control it.