The Yabanchi Screamers were still crawling out of the hole they had made when a jump portal opened up next to them. The unlucky monsters who were standing where it materialized were bisected by the tear in real space, but the survivors were not much better off. Armored men, clad from head to toe in thick-plated suits, materialized from the portal, but they did not yell or give a battle cry, their weapons did that for them. Automatic shotguns thundered as they delivered deadly loads of slug shot into the surprised Yabanchi. By the time the beasts had realized a new threat was attacking them, the armored warriors of the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps had already set up a deadly crossfire of automatic rifles and shotguns that dropped their targets in swathes of lead.

As more stormtroopers entered the field, their comrades in front of them advanced in step with one another, and pushed the foe back to the hole they crawled out from with fire and maneuver. The Yabanchi were furious and hurled themselves at these new enemies with the same ferocity that they did to their other prey, but as the ocean waves meet the rocks of the shore, the Yabanchi broke on their firing line and could not gain back the ground they were steadily losing to these machine-like killers.

Eventually, the line was pushed to the edge of the Yabanchi’s ambush hole, the entrance to a series of tunnels the creatures had been digging for weeks. More stormtroopers advanced, with tanks of fuel on their backs and nozzles in their hands, and aimed their weapons at the Yabanchi boiling up from below. Gouts of flame spurted onto the reaching claws of the void spawn and the Screamers that burned lived up to their name with the wails they rent the night with.

From a view above the battlefield, that conflagration of inhuman flesh looked like a lone bonfire in a sea of darkness. Yet, darkness pushed back, with tendrils of grasping claws that reached for the carriers of that flame that so dared to defy it with their living breath.

And the night would have won too.

Even with all their weapons, training, and strength of will, the servants of the hungering dark were more numerous than the stars above, and would have smothered the arriving stormtroopers in their hateful assault. Yet a lone figure emerged from the portal the stormtroopers had arrived from. She was lithe where they were bulky, fair where their armor was dark, and cool while they fought for their lives and died.

She had no mask, for she did not need one; she was above mortal concerns as she floated into the air and mentally probed for what she was looking for. Paradise was a desert island of rock and stone and death, not anything she could usually work with, but the world’s abundance was not found on land alone. The woman smiled, strained, but confident that this would work. She had enough mana for only one shot, but it would be enough.

The stormtroopers were falling back, giving up ground to the Yabanchi. To their inhuman foe, it looked like they were admitting defeat and it emboldened the enemy, but the stormtroopers knew what was coming next. In a tightly packed formation around the portal, they made a stand and held the enemy off. They made sure that as many Screamers that they could draw, were off the slopes of mountain and hill, and were charging at them. They were not retreating, they simply waited for the storm to hit.

It came as a drizzle, the toxic liquid burned flesh where it stuck, but the horde was too incensed to pay any mind to small pains. It was not until the sound of a million freight trains going by at once, thundered in the valley, that any of the creatures paused their assault, but by then it was too late.

A tsunami of the ocean waters came flooding onto the island plains, hungrier than even the Yabanchi that it swallowed, knocking the void spawn off their feet and drowning them underneath its waves. The wall of water threatened to do the same to the stormtroopers, but an invisible hand guided it away and directed the waters to the hole the Yabanchi had made. Millions of gallons of toxic water extinguished the flames of burning Yabanchi and drained the Screamer horde into the earth below. The island greedily gulped down the waves and tens of thousands of Screamers were entombed in a watery grave. A resting place without light or dignity for the few days or so it would take for the acidic liquid to melt their bodies away.

The waters returned back to the embrace of the ocean and the plains cleared. There was not a Yabanchi in sight, for even the flyers had fled in terror of the carnage, but the Vanguard would not remain still. A man in a black trench coat gave the order and they obeyed. Through the mud and poisonous vapors, they advanced up the hill, for in the distance they heard the sound of combat. At the summit, they saw men and Screamers locked in close quarters, with the humans badly losing. The waves had not reached that height and so the peak's inhabitants were spared. Yet what few extra minutes of life those Yabanchi had were taken away as the stormtroopers joined the fray, exacting their price. For as the stormtroopers climbed that hill, they found among the cooling bodies of Yabanchi the torn remains of the regiment's troopers. Their brethren had been slaughtered by these beasts, and for that, the stormtroopers would make them pay.

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When hands found him and the light of day broke the eternal darkness surrounding him, Tanlon struggled and screamed. Only when the owners of those hands started speaking to him in the Imperial tongue did he stop flailing, but that was as much because the strength had fled his limbs as anything else. He felt like he was floating, the sun overhead was his only guide to tell him that he was moving and someone was speaking to him.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Tan, it's going to be alright. Hang in there, just hang in there." It was Haylock's voice, a small blip registered in his mind, but he did not pay any attention to it. Everything was getting colder and he wanted to get away and bury himself in the sand, but he couldn’t. He was being carried away and his body betrayed him, refusing to listen to his commands.

They eventually stopped and a new range of sounds assailed Tanlon. Voices, so many voices, like there were thousands of other men around him, but Tanlon did not think that could be right. Everyone should be dead. When he mustered enough strength to barely turn his head and look around, he saw a bustling mass of humanity. Troopers, thousands of troopers, carrying away Screamer bodies, marching in formation, or setting up weapon emplacements. He wanted to laugh, cry, maybe both, to do something to relieve the feelings of elation trembling in his chest, but he only shook, the numbness further traveled down his limbs and touched his core.

“Tanlon, they’re going to take good care of you. We’ll be back, I promise.” Haylock had grabbed his hand and was looking into Tanlon’s face, but the wounded trooper could do nothing except mutely stare back, teeth chattering.

“Get away, quickly, I will see to him, get out,” another trooper started shoving Haylock and the other troopers away, a white armband denoted him as a medic. With a few final goodbyes, the others left and it was just Tanlon and the medic in a large space filled with other wounded men. Tanlon did not even blink when the medic flashed a light in both of his eyes. The medic muttered to himself and pulled a marker out of his pocket. He marked Tanlon on the forehead part of his mask and quickly shoved it back in his oversized pockets, but Tanlon had seen the color. Black.

The medic walked away, moving to another patient who was whimpering and clutching a hand with severed digits, he moved to someone he could save. Tanlon understood, with what little was left of his mental faculty, and knew that his time was up, but he was so foggy-headed that he did not know how to respond. He shook more and prayed. It was an old prayer, the kind they discouraged at the academy, but a more religious-minded student had taught Tanlon how to do it after their classes. Tanlon had prayed for weeks after learning but eventually stopped. It felt too mechanical, like no one was listening, so he did not see the point. Yet now, with death's numb kiss taking his last breath, he prayed again after all those years. He prayed and he saw an angel.

Her's was the first human face he had seen in weeks since landing on Paradise, but she should have been wearing a mask, otherwise her lungs would be burned out. Yet there she stood, fair and golden-eyed, staring down at him with an unmasked face, and her expression was full of sorrow. The air around her head shimmered and she said something, but Tanlon did not hear, every noise around him was congealing to the same high-pitched squeal. He reached out to her, arm barely lifted an inch and fingers only brushing the edge of her dress, but she stepped back, surprised.

Please. Tanlon’s eyes must have said it for him. Please hold me. I don’t want to die. Please.

The girl hesitated and looked down at his quaking hand, she was pristine, fair, and untouched by the filth and dirt that had for so long defined Tanlon’s short life in Paradise, but she took his hand in her own and held it. Tanlon closed his eyes and darkness fell over him like a veil, the last thing he saw was that golden-eyed angel standing over him, crying.

“TODAY YOU WILL CHOOSE.”

In the void, the place between his closed eyes and somewhere else a voice spoke to him. He felt nothing, he floated there and waited, somehow he knew what was about to happen next.

“MY LIGHT OR EVERLASTING DARKNESS?”

With naught even a body in this void, he should have been empty, devoid of feeling, but he felt something. A pressure in his hand, he was not alone. The question was a simple one and the choice was clear, but he did not want to go to the voice. It terrified him. He was going to slip into the dark, hoping to find oblivion or rest in its alluring embrace, but the pressure on his hand increased and he recognized it as the Light reaching out. It was good and told him that he did not have to be alone, that he was loved. Tanlon’s mind was made in a space of less than a second, though in the void an eternity may have passed by.

“The Light.”

The shadows moved and it was then that Tanlon saw that it was not mere darkness, but a multitude of hands reaching out. They groped for him one last time, but they could not touch him, for they ran like something being chased by a greater power and the Light bloomed a new tunnel out for Tanlon to fall through.

He woke; his vision came back along with some warmth in his bones. He could still hardly move, but it was not because of blood loss or shock. Tanlon was overwhelmed, by joy and peace indescribable, and he cried. He wanted to thank the angel who had taken his hand in her own, but she was gone. He was still in the medi-vac space with the dead and dying, a fate he just barely missed, but greater powers had other plans in mind for him.

Tanlon settled back down and slept, perhaps the only man settled at peace in that restless host of soldiers, but his battle was not over, it had only just started.

Tanlon's Stats

Strength 12 Constitution 12 Reaction 12 Authority 10 Mana 0/0 Special Abilities Minor Vitality Regeneration