Tjao Chronicles: Chapter Five

Hesse Arc Pt One

The transport plane shook in the air as it passed over France. Ahiga tried not to think about their destination.

It was going to happen at some point. He thought to himself. The reason they tolerate mags is because they need us to deal with this kind of shit; and probably because no one wants to see who would win in subspecies war.

"Eyes on me everyone!" Liban called as he walked to stand in front of the plane's hangar door. "We'll be parachuting in slightly outside the current line of contact with the enemy in the Nurnberg suburbs. The first order of business will be linking with the European Mag team. We will be under European command for this mission, our services are on loan. Apparently, the Euros want to show that they can be big boys and don't need the Commonwealths to hold their hand. And you'll need to get used to the…eccentricities of our European comrades."

Yekaterina groaned. "The Euros are fucking dorks is what you mean. They dress up in costumes and call each other nicknames like in one of those old superhero comics."

"Just be glad they didn't take inspiration from the funny animal comics Kat." Kobold snorted.

Yekaterina blinked. "Are you kidding? Then they'd be furries! Sexy, sexy, furries..."

"I hate that I've learned this about you." Liban said flatly.

"Don't kink shame bro it's not a good look, you don't want to go down that path." Ricky reprimanded.

Liban grimaced and looked at Ahiga. "Back me up here Ahiga."

Ahiga blushed and lifted his hands in a placating gesture. "Don't drag me into the hole you dug for yourself Liban."

Ae-Cha cleared her throat to get their attention. "If I may," she said as the others looked at her, "don't be a piece of shit Liban."

Ricky jumped out of his seat, "You just got roasted brorangutang!"

"No one is on your side on this." Kobold added as Yekaterina got off of the bench and reached across the plane aisle to high-five him while Ricky began to dance tauntingly around Liban.

Liban sighed and pushed Ricky back onto the bench. "At this moment my hate for all of you cannot be mea-" his sentence was cutoff as the plane rocked in the air and Liban tottered and fell, managing to fall onto the bench next to Ricky.

The intercom crackled.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing turbulence as a result of demonic activity but rest assured, we will soon be over the drop zone. Over and out." The pilot announced before the intercom once again came to rest.

Liban stood up once more and walked to the exit ramp before turning around and facing them. "Get into formation everyone, we are about to drop."

With some grumbling the group lined up behind Liban. Ahiga stood directly behind him and felt a horrible pain in his stomach as his anxiety and fear mingled and knotted together.

Oh my gods I don't want to die. Wait. Gods. I need to focus on something. On hope. On faith. Ahiga felt a twinge of pain shoot through his soul. He had only grown reconnected with the old ways recently, and he had no spiritual guide. He believed in them, but he felt distance between him and the gods and spirits of his ancestors. Distance born of time spent in foster homes with caretakers who were usually Anglo, and if not lazily secular then actively proselytizing. He felt a sense of loss, he felt like his acknowledgement of the distance he felt made the distance worse, which worsened his faith, which when he noticed made him feel more distant from his faith which…

Stop! He mentally yelled at his own spiraling mind. You need to recenter. You can't follow the loop of self-doubt. That's what will kill you down there, they'll eat that up like candy on Samhain. You need to have faith, if not in yourself then in your comrades, he looked around and knew he trusted them, and in your ancestors and gods, even if you can't see them.

He inhaled and exhaled one more time as the hangar door dropped and the air in the cabin rushed out. Liban leaped and plunged into the unknown. Ahiga forced his knees to carry him past the edge of the ramp and looked only forward into the blue beyond as he leaped.

Plunging. He looked down at the earth below. A sea of suburbs held together by a net of trolley tracks greeted his eyes. He plunged past Liban who opened his parachute and proceeded to pull the string on his own.

The string came loose and flew away from his hand as his parachute stayed in its pack. He pulled the secondary string. It flew through the air just like the first and his pack remained closed.

Well fuck, he thought to himself. This is an embarrassing way to die. I was hoping for a cooler death. One that made everyone think I was a hero. This is just kinda lame.

His thoughts were oddly calm as death greeted him as a certainty and not a possibility. Then he had an idea. He reached out his hands and a green forcefield formed around him in a perfect bubble.

I wonder if this'll work. He thought to himself as his brain began to flood with adrenalin. Ah fuck, I'll find out pretty soon. He looked down at the closely approaching ground, he could make out yards and what looked like a group of people staring up at him. He lifted his face and closed his eyes waiting for the bubble to make impact with the ground. He felt like he was getting slower and wondered if it was his sense of time being altered by impending death. Then he realized the wind coming across his face was a different speed, the upward draft was gone.

He opened his eyes and saw his bubble still surrounding him, but looked down to see it resting on a slowly descending Persian rug that gently dumped him in the middle of a trolley track. He dropped the shield and blinked as he noticed the people standing before him.

The nearest person to him was a short, black-haired, olive-complected, teenager whose face was hard to make out as the top half of his head was covered by a mask of what looked like dark blue rubber that tied around the back of his head. The rest of his costume was the same pattern, thick blue rubber that covered his torso, arms, legs, and neck while his feet and hands were covered by black boots and gloves respectively. Ahiga noticed a raised black cross insignia on the boy's chest.

"You had a bad fall there Senor, good thing el alfombra caught you or you would be splat on the pavement."

Ahiga grunted. "Thanks for the save, uhm…what's your…nickname?"

The boy chuckled. "Well do not thank me senor, thank Lama Fedele." The boy said pointing over his shoulder at a yellow Sri Jayan who wore a grey uniform with a face mask designed to look like a spear pointing downwards, fitting considering the massive polearm the Sri Jayan held. Ahiga also noted the fact that the mask concealed the Sri Jayan's small horns and had to dip below his closed third eye. He nodded at the Sri Jayan and turned his attention back to the boy who began to speak again.

"As for me, I am known as Chico de la Biblia."

Ahiga failed to suppress a wheezing laugh. "I'm sorry…I'm really sorry, it's just that your name translated into English is…very silly." He managed after forcing the laughter to a stop.

Chico de la Biblia seemed at ease as his gaze lifted to look above and behind Ahiga who looked in the same direction to see his squad being carried by Yekaterina's wind to land behind him on the street.

"Jesus Christ Almighty Ahiga! Do you have to give us a heart attack on every goddamn mission!" Kobold yelled as he ran to Ahiga and grabbed him by the shoulders to shake him.

Ricky ran towards him and pushed Kobold aside to lift Ahiga into the air in a hug as he sobbed and managed words between breaths. "Oh..god…I..thought…we…lost…youuu!!! Ahhh!!!"

Ahiga wiggled out of his grasp. "Jesus Christ Ricky calm the hell down I'm fine!" He protested.

Yekaterina patted him on the back and Liban and Ae-Cha nodded to him as they assembled and began to take full stock of the European team. Alongside the teen in the mask and the Sri Jayan stood a knight in gleaming slivery armor of chainmail who had a small axe and a sword on his belt and held a flail and a large tear-drop shaped shield in his hands.

"Bonjour," the knight said, "you may call me The Third Roland, or Roland the III for short."

Liban walked forwards and began to shake their hands while Ahiga noticed a shadow from above. Looking up, he saw the silhouette of a man with wings. He was briefly taken aback by the sight before realizing what he was looking at.

The man descending from the sky had skin that was white, truly white like ivory or marble instead of the shade of pink that defined Caucasians, his hair meanwhile was the red of a vibrant rose and curled into loose springs, his massive wings were orange and spotted in black like a monarch butterfly, his nose was thin and hooked, his chin pointed, his cheekbones high, and his eyes had red irises that pushed his whites into being barely visible slivers while his pupils were curved slits of black that could be easily construed to be the letter S. He was covered in scale-mail armor that was as white as his skin and he held a sword in his right hand with a hilt like polished brass and a blade like red sapphire while his left hand held a medium-length javelin that had a handle of semi-translucent mother-of-pearl and a tip that looked like it was forged out of a rainbow opal whose colors seemed to dance in the sunlight.

The man spoke in a voice that seemed oddly melodic and feminine. "Greeting warriors from over the sea, I am-"

"-Sin Seeker." Ahiga finished his sentence.

The man nodded. "You know of me?'

"Heh." Liban responded. "Everyone knows of you Sin Seeker. We just didn't expect to see you here."

"And why not? This is the continent of my origin and I vanquish demons wherever they may be."

Liban nodded. "We know. We just weren't informed you were going to be working with us in particular. Is this all of your group?"

"No." Roland the Third responded. "We have two more." He said before calling out, "Woods Walker! Argammon!"

A short, slight woman with platinum blonde hair and fur clothes topped with a wolf's head hood emerged from a seemingly impossibly small bush next to a nearby house holding a sling in her hand and nodded at them.

"Sup." Ricky said. "I'm guessing your Woods Walker?"

The woman nodded and gestured upwards with her head. Ahiga looked up and saw a blurry object descending from the sky only to watch it smash into the earth before them causing an area of street to splinter apart under the impact. In the resultant crater stood a seven-foot-tall, olive-complected woman with short black hair, bulky musculature, a large, antiquated crossbow in her arms, a curved short sword on her belt, and armor of what looked like bronze consisting of knee and lower leg guards, arm guards, a chest plate, a back plate, a Greek-style helmet, and a small, square shield on her left arm.

"Now we are all introduced." Sin Seeker said.

Liban nodded at him. "Indeed, so now we need you to tell us what to do."

Sin Seeker motioned westwards, "The enemy comes from that direction, the battlefield is in chaos, and we need to approach cautiously in order to apprise a constantly changing situation. Updates about the enemy from high command are good, but they will always be out of date."

Liban grunted, Ahiga guessed he was discouraged by the lack of strategy. Sin Seeker turned away from them and began to fly at a relatively leisurely pace towards the west so they could keep up, Lama Fedele flanked him as he rode on his flying carpet.

"So," Ahiga said as he walked beside Chico de la Biblia, "what do you do?"

The teen chuckled. "I am not a mag if that is what you are asking. Nor am I a wizard."

Ahiga raised a brow in a questioning motion causing the teen to chuckle again.

"I was blessed by the Holy Ghost who told me to wield the swords of Saint Alfonso, when I went to his cathedral, they flew through the air towards me and allowed me to possess them so I could use their power for good." He tapped the crossed rapiers on his back, "I am given the speed of the word with these swords, and they protect me from demons, that's why I was called to stand beside Sin Seeker. That's why everyone here was, we all get our powers from the relics we hold rather than our learned skills or inherent abilities. And all our relics are holy."

"Does it bother your faith that Sin Seeker is Jewish?" Ahiga asked. "And why would the Holy Ghost choose, well, a teenager?"

The teen shrugged. "Who are we to attempt to pry at divine mysteries? Only a lunatic could deny that Sin Seeker is an enemy of demons and a friend of humanity by dint of his relationship with his…partner. Now about his view of the divine I must disagree."

Ahiga avoided mentioning that Sin Seeker was fused with an angel, and that to him that suggested a closer connection with the divine than swords that made the wielder run faster and be harder to kill.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

His thoughts were derailed as he felt the shiver travel up his spine. A horrible feeling, like spiders were crawling up his vertebrae and worming their way into his nerves. He felt a distinct sense of dread and horror, he tried to figure out what direction it was coming from but every direction he focused on seemed off, until he realized it was coming from underneath the earth.

"Everyone move! There's something underground!" He yelled as he leaped into the air and pushed Chico de la Biblia forward.

Where his feet last were the asphalt of the street burst open and what appeared to be a purple pile of sand erupted from the earth like a spout of magma from a volcano. Ahiga landed back from his former position and saw it wasn't sand, it was thousands of miniscule, squirming, organisms each about the size of a grain of rice. Some flew in every direction as the pile oozed its way to the surface and Ahiga seized one that landed on him and gave it a glance. His only frame of reference was that it looked somewhat similar to an ant-sized snowman made of purple flesh with a mouth on its top part that vomited up a droplet of acid onto his skin. He threw it on the ground and stomped it as the acid elicited a slight burn from his skin.

The pile continuously lifted itself out of its tunnel and formed a blob of a body that it hoisted up on shifting pillars of wriggling organisms. Newly formed tentacles began to pull wads of organisms off its body and Ahiga formed a force field just in time to stop a chunk the size of a basketball that was thrown his way.

"Yekaterina boost my fire!" Liban yelled as the woman nodded and pulled two vials off her belt before popping off the lids. She quickly turned the solid oxygen and methane ice into torrents of air that she blasted at the creature, the air currents then ran into Liban's fire forming an inferno that scorched the amalgamation and forced it to flee into the tunnel it had emerged from. Liban did not let up as he curved his gout of flame to follow the beast underground while Yekaterina continued to boost his flame with her air stream.

They stopped as a noxious smoke came up from the tunnel and Woods Walker and Ahiga reeled back from the choking fumes before Yekaterina gathered the vapor up into a concentrated sphere and forced it back into the tunnel as Kobold touched the tunnel's edge and caused the earth to seal it off.

Sin Seeker looked down on them and nodded. "Efficient work." He said before he turned forward once more, and his face grew worried. "The screen of the enemy's forces approaches. Put your offensive fighters behind your grapplers and prepare to hold the line. Kobold, form a moat against the horde."

Everyone moved into position, but Ahiga was confused as to whether he should be in the back or front do to being an atlas class, but also having his green lighting, ultimately he joined Roland, Argammon, Kobold, and Chico de la Biblio at the front while Woods Walker, Yekaterina, Ae-Cha, Liban, and Ricky moved to the back as Ricky prepared his assault rifle loaded with silver bullets.

Ahiga prepared for the enemy as the ground began to shake, sparing a brief glance to the sky where Sin Seeker and Lama Fedele prepared to fight the enemy's air support.

"Hold firm," Sin Seeker yelled, "the enemy is weaving down the street towards you."

The rumbling in the earth grew more intense and horrible whispering voices began to fill Ahiga's head driving him mad before he suddenly regained mental silence. He looked over his shoulder and saw Ae-Cha in deep mental concentration and nodded to himself.

People forget how important it is to have support. He thought before he once again noticed horrible screeches and screams filling the air. Suddenly he realized that he was now hearing them in the mundane sense.

He sniffed. I can smell them. Like piss and shit mixed with rotten meat and sulfur and…hatred? I can smell…hatred? He shook his head and tried to concentrate on what was important.

Horns blasted and he felt his bones shake from the sound. He shivered and noticed the smoke and dust approaching from over the roofs of the houses. Sweat ran down his sides and across his face as the horrible chattering grew more distinct.

A demon leaped through the air to land on the roof directly in front of him. It was roughly similar in body plan to a lemur but the size of a child with furless red skin, horns like an ibex, and a long tube-like tail ending in a spike of bone. It lifted its lips to reveal prominent canines and as it let out a horrible screech from its throat.

RAI SHA TEEL!

It screamed out as more lemur-esque creatures began to leap onto the roofs around it and started to jump to the side, slowly circling them from the rooftops. One was suddenly beheaded by what looked like a flying stone. The creatures briefly stopped their advance as another was knocked off a roof with crossbow bolt before more were struck with bullets, psionic blasts, and miniature tornados.

Then they moved in for the kill.

Ahiga focused on the one heading directly for him which moved in step with the rest of its troop, one column seeming to target each of his frontline comrades as they leapt over Kobold's trench with no difficulty. He swiftly reached for the crossing leather straps on his chest, grabbed a blessed titanium throwing knife, and launched it at the creature nearest to him. He watched as it lodged into the center of its skull and sent it tumbling. The second beast hopped over the body of its comrade and continued forward, dodging a thrown blade from Ahiga and picking up its pace with dogged determination.

Ahiga grabbed three blades and launched them all, one creature went down as a knife severed its elbow with the strength of its impact while another screamed in agony as a knife went through the front of its chest and disappeared into its body while the third knife became stuck in the back of the devil lemur directly in front of Ahiga, not seeming to slow its advance. Ahiga's hand twitched as he was tempted to send forth his green lightning, but he remembered how drained it made him every time he used it and grabbed another throwing blade instead. He aimed and managed to nail the lead devil lemur in the eye, causing it to roll over onto the ground limp as a sack of beans.

The new lead devil lemur simply ran over its flailing comrade and jumped at Ahiga with its claws out, its teeth barred, and its tail spike lifted over its head. Ahiga felt time slow down and realized he knew the exact trajectory of the devil lemur as it descended through the air towards him. His brain seemed to trace its route for him, and in less than a second he slightly altered his stance, and allowed the devil lemur to descend past him before grabbing it by the back leg, and pulling it upwards before smashing it against the street with enough force that its horns were knocked backwards through its skull to poke out from the bottom of its snout.

He lifted his eyes to see the next devil lemur taking a different approach, running low at his feet. He jumped into the air and landed on the beast's back feeling its spine crunch beneath him. It wiggled as he planted one foot on the ground and lifted the other into the air as the demon's tail spike lashed out at him. He reached to grab the creature's tail only to find it too fast for him and changed his tactic once again bringing his foot down in a stomp on its abdomen which imploded beneath his heel as the demon let out a few last twitches.

He grabbed it by the tail and pulled his attention to the side where he saw Roland struggling with a demon on his back that was clawing at his pointed helmet. Ahiga swung the barely alive demon by its tail and smacked the devil lemur on Roland's back with it. His creature's horns impaled the other demon, sticking the two together, and threw them both as a projectile into a third approaching enemy, sending it sprawling backwards where it temporarily tripped yet another devil lemur.

Ahiga felt like fire was coursing through his veins as he let out a yell and grabbed another leaping devil lemur by its horns which he snapped off before using them to club the demon into the ground and smash its skull. He looked up again and used one of the horns to stab another jumping devil lemur up through the bottom of its jaw and into its skull before swinging it into the ground and pulling the horn loose.

Then he felt four pairs of claws launch into his back.

Damnit! I didn't watch my back!

He felt the devil lemur on his back knock the wind out of him and he barely managed to stand upright and stab the abomination through the skull only to feel its tail barb pierce his lower back. Another demon running low to the ground launched itself into his lower left leg as the devil lemur on his back fell to the ground. He launched the devil attacking his leg with a kick as it bit him on the leg and quickly reached for a throwing blade with each hand and used one to knock down another low-runner and another to nail a leaper in the abdomen before he punched it back into the air sending black ichor spraying form its wound.

He looked out across the battlefield and saw the state of his comrades who generally seemed to be holding their ground. Roland smashed a devil lemur's skull with his shield before splattering another's brains with his flail. A crossbow bolt flew over Ahiga's head and knocked a creature akin to a antlered bat crossed with a pterodactyl out of the air. A six-feet-across octopus-like creature with folds of skin between its tentacles had its center of mass shot through with a stone, a fireball burned a beast that looked somewhat like a pig in armadillo's armor with far too many tusk and black smoke rolling out of its nostrils. El Chico de la Biblia zipped across the battlefield slaying devil lemurs and other demons that had joined the assault, Ahiga watched the head fly off a saber-toothed, hairless, chimpanzee-esque demon that ran on its hind legs and saw Chico de la Biblia then plunge his rapiers into a screeching animate rolling ball of flame and pitch that unraveled in its death throws as its fire died.

Horns blasted across the battlefield and the small demons seemed to grow still for a second before retreating backwards towards the source of the noise.

I don't like that at all. Ahiga thought to himself with a sense of dread.

The horn blasts continued in a rhythmic pattern as the sound grew closer once more. The earth shook. They came.

From around the street corner the snail eyes rode onto the battlefield, their steads leaping over Kobold's trench with only one misjudging its leap and falling in with a whinny of protest.

Ahiga got a good look at the infamous creatures all people knew with fear in their hearts, the cavalry of the demon hordes. They were roughly humanoid, although it was harder to tell with most of their spindly forms were covered in armor that looked more like the exoskeleton of an insect than anything forged. Only their heads were exposed to show their oddly round skulls, their grey wrinkly hide, their crocodilian teeth, and their projecting eyestalks which swerved back and forth across the battlefield. Their mounts heaved and ran forth, as the snail eyes were shaped roughly like men, so the hell horses were shaped roughly like horses. They could have almost been mistaken for horses down to the noises they made until one noticed the fur gray as ash, the lion-like heads filled with grinning teeth, and their long thick tails which swung behind them like a lizard's.

The snail eyes raised their barbed spears forged of metal as black as coal and fired off the first salvo of miniature rockets as the spear tips launched off their staffs only to be replaced. Ahiga formed a shield as Yekaterina shifted a wall of mixed iron and coal dust carried by her wind in front of the flying spear tips and Kobold quickly tapped it to transform into a massive steel plate that bent and folded under the spear tip rockets but did not break as it fell to the ground.

The snail eyes were not deterred as their mounts opened their jaws and launched a hailstorm of burning brimstones at them from their maws. Roland held up his shield, Kobold formed a pillar of earth for cover, Ahiga kept his forcefield up, and Chico de la Biblia dodged the burning stones as Yekaterina, and Ae-Cha used wind and psychic force to launch them back at the snail eyes.

The move was not as effective as they might have hoped as the snail eyes' mounts used their great speed to dodge the tossed stones with only a few being caught. They then closed in with Ahiga's line as the snail eyes raised their spears once more and Ahiga prepared for the greatest fight of his life…

Quo