Humanity

"Our explorers climbed the highest mountain, through the clouds, up to the heavens themselves, to take audience with our gods. The summit was barren." - excerpt from “Ascension and the Anointed: An Introductory Guide”

It had been two weeks since the failed expedition to the alien space station resulted in the death of the entire crew and the loss of nearly all of their Divine weapons to enemy action or battle damage. The civilian population of Aristhea was appalled and outraged that their sacrifice bought them no victory - the demon creature calling itself the Tyrant of Elikos had escaped again, probably to lick its wounds.

A second team was being put together, and another Divine was being prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.

From within the specially treated faceplate on the helmet of his sealed environmental suit, Sergeant Sahm’aad “Sour” Ukachenkov looked upon the miserable appearance of his personal Divine patron. Katarina, the Goddess Harvest, had reached Ascension some five hundred years ago. Her domain of irrigation and agricultural control provided vital inroads to peace and stability in the central deserts as the sand was reclaimed into rich, arable land. Most remarkable was that she accomplished this within a mere two decades of her temple’s establishment.

The soldier had met her in his childhood once before, a towering figure of religious awe as the savior of the desert cities. A terrorist faction had sabotaged the pollination ecologies around his home and destroyed much of the area’s local food stores in an attempt to force the government to capitulate in the face of a famine. Once the terrorists started making moves to repeat the attack on another city, the Divine stepped in. Lady Harvest herself rode at the head of her Temple Guard and reaped them with a wave of her hand. Vividly his mind fed him near-forgotten sensations, ancient pain resurrected unwillingly. He’d been starving for weeks. The adults of his family didn’t make it, sacrificing their rations to Sour and the other children as the food supplies started drying up. They tried planting, but they had no idea what they were doing. As Lady Harvest retook the city, her personal transport rumbled through the avenue his house was on, and he and his surviving cousins dragged themselves beyond the walls of their family compound to witness her passage. He had cried tears of gratitude as she blessed the seeds clutched desperately within his too-thin hands. They grew bountiful fruits the very next day after planting, of impossible variety. She had saved his life that day, and his faith in her had never wavered.

Sour tried not to cry now as the goddess was brought in shackles before the sacrificial altar. While the first Divines had been volunteers, those that remained were less enthusiastic about the idea of transforming their entire existence into a single relic. So they had attacked and captured Lady Harvest, for no other reason than they believed her expendable. The cowardice on display by the other Divines was disgusting, but unassailable - like most humans, he had not been Anointed, so he could not withstand a Divine’s direct radiance without dying.

With her sacrifice, the desert cities would boil with rage. Sour would bring word to the city-fathers of the murder of their benefactor. Even though it meant his death, he would ensure Lady Harvest did not fall without consequence. His spine stiffened with newfound steel, and he felt the Lady Harvest turn her attention to him but briefly - his senses were suddenly overloaded with the heady feeling of an oasis all around him, fecund growth digging deep to ensure survival.

She knew him, and forgave him. Sour could not control the stray tears that leaked down his cheeks, but he was grateful that his suit did not show his face. A hand left its normal place on his rifle and clutched at his chest where, beneath layers of ballistic weave and ceramic plate armor, a silver necklace with the symbol of Lady Harvest rested upon his skin. It felt preternaturally cold, almost painfully so. The soldier tried to ignore it for now, utilizing an exercise born from long practice to keep himself in a state of bored awareness.

He would have to be careful about who saw him with his childhood charm from now on. Open devotion to dead gods was not looked upon with favor by the chain of command.

Lady Harvest was unceremoniously lifted up by the hands of a pair of Anointed and restrained on top of the altar, though she made no obvious effort to resist. Beneath her, the altar itself was covered in complex mathematical etchings and strange, esoteric religious iconography. Sour had no education on these subjects, so they appeared profane and evil to him. Surely, any thing that removed that which was good and blessed from this world could be deserving of the name evil.

“Beginning device start-up sequence. Thirty seconds to activation. All personnel, please clear the testing chamber.” a voice crackled over his helmet communicator, but he ignored it. The Anointed wouldn’t care if he stayed here, and Lady Harvest deserved to have at least one follower serving as a witness to her death. Her murder, really.

“Oi, Sour. You awake there mate? You gotta move, buddy. Boss’s orders.” another voice intruded upon his thoughts as a second man clapped a firm, unshakable hand upon Sour’s shoulder plates.

The second figure towered over Sour, a full head and shoulders above with bulk to match his 7-foot height. Sour was not a short man, but to Esisk, all men were short. He was Anointed. His features had been smoothed into pleasant shapes by an unnatural hand, the lesser curses of age and mortality gently sanded away until all that remained was a vessel worthy of Ascension.

“...I’m not leaving her alone. I need to be here, Esisk. For her.” Sour finally said quietly, switching his radio to a personal encrypted channel. The Anointed warrior looked at him, evaluating for a long, drawn-out second. Then he nodded.

“I believe you do, brother. Witness her.” he replied cryptically, lifting his weighty authority from him and switching his radio to a different channel, one that Sour could not listen in on. The other two Anointed tilted their heads simultaneously as Esisk said something to them, and they both nodded in solemn approval. Nobody liked what they were doing here, but the Divines were difficult to gainsay when so many of them had died for nothing.

As a mortal, he had their respect, for what it was worth. He’d probably spend the next few years in the brig somewhere for gross insubordination, but it would be worth it. Sour could trust Esisk to bring word of Lady Harvest’s fate to the city-fathers. The Pantheon would find their war hard to continue when one of the biggest political and economic blocs on the planet withdrew their support for further expeditions.

The three Anointed left Sour alone in the chamber, giving him cheerful waves as the bulkhead doors sealed behind them and the countdown timer grew increasingly shrill in Sour’s ears. He hit his audio seals and was surrounded by insulated silence while repeated, urgent requests for his attention over radio comms were similarly ignored.

A deep, metallic whirring noise began to emanate throughout the chamber, and the Lady Harvest gasped in shock as the etchings below her came to life and started to crawl over her skin, flowing from inanimate media to immortal flesh. Where they touched, darkness grew and consumed her, causing the Divine to scream out in pain.

The soldier’s heart broke and he started charging towards her, desperate to save her from this final fate, but the fundamental forces at work before him were beyond his knowledge or understanding. His movements were slowed to a crawl as the air itself thickened and restrained him, an invisible barrier surrounding the altar. Helplessly, he looked on as his Goddess turned her head and stared straight at him, and he felt a silent compulsion to remove his helmet and look upon her with mortal eyes.

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A compulsion he obeyed without question, and suddenly his mind was awash with knowledge. Soil composition, water management, crop fertilization and nutrition ratios. It was incomprehensible. She was Growth and Abundance. How could they do this?! This perversion of what was right incensed him. Her Divine light seared his eyes and his flesh, and he felt channels of scarred flesh drive deep furrows into the paths where his tears had run down. Forever marked in his grief.

He screamed of endless winter in a language he did not speak as the Goddess died her final death, exploding in a wash of sacred energy that flung Sergeant Sour back into the far wall of the chamber some thirty feet away. The impact left him disoriented, and he was having trouble…existing at all, really. His shoes felt too tight, his uniform suddenly too-small…what was going on?

His eyes swiftly recovered as he blinked rapidly, trying to erase the blinding sensation of staring point-blank at a god. He felt…so different. The doors opened, and Esisk and the other two Anointed rushed in, followed by a cohort of heavily armed soldiers a healthy distance behind. They kept their weapons at the ready, in case the Anointed wanted him put down instead of arrested.

Esisk and the other two gazed at him impassively for a while, their body language indicating a discussion occurring between the three of them that was not meant for lesser ears to overhear. Finally, Esisk stepped forward and reached out a hand to help Sour back up off the ground.

“That wasn’t the most suicidal thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s very near the top, bud. Congratulations - you lived. Come on. Command wants to talk to you.” Esisk finally said aloud as Sour took the proffered hand and was hoisted up, Esisk flexing with surprise at Sour’s increased mass.

“Esisk - the city-fathers. Tell them what happened to her. Please.” Sour begged quietly, knowing his fate was sealed. He had not perished in the face of a dying god, and his crime would never be announced publicly, but he had no doubt that he would never see daylight again.

Esisk gave him a bemused look and nodded. Suddenly Sour realized that he wasn’t looking up at the Anointed - the man was at eye-level with him. A mental inventory rapidly confirmed that the other sensations he was feeling were a part of the same cognitive dissonance. A black film covered his skin beneath his armor, a kind of concentrated filth that was indicative of his purification. A phenomenon that only happened in stories.

He was Anointed. Sour now understood Esisk’s reaction; the Anointed answered to none but the Divines, so he was effectively outside of the normal chain of command. Like Esisk, Sour was effectively now a one-man company-strength force.

One of the other Anointed took point while the second hung back to bring up the rear, and Esisk and Sour chatted softly to each other via a sphere of silence artifact held in Esisk’s hand while the procession made its way through grim concrete and metal-lined tunnels dug deep beneath the earth.

“I didn’t think this was possible,” Sour commented, to Esisk’s amusement.

“Oh, it’s always been possible. Most Divines just don’t bother. It’s a big deal to them, symbolically. Guess Lady Harvest just…didn’t care anymore.” Esisk replied somberly, his stride carefully controlled so as not to outpace the regular soldiers filing in behind him. Sour deferred to his wisdom - the Anointed soldier was already past his 175th year of active service, and had plenty of time to fully develop his powers.

“Do we know who the relic will go to for the second wave?” Sour didn’t get a chance to see what form the Lady Harvest’s…sacrifice…had made. Weapon-forms were always gifted to loyal Anointed as a force-multiplier. Some more ancillary forms, like rings or jewelry, provided advantages only for mortals or for esoteric purposes, like measuring the exact distance between stars or the concentration of certain mineral veins beneath mountains of stone. That wasn’t to say these ancillary relics were wholly useless - it was the final task of the Divines that died to make them that provided mankind the capability to travel into the stars, to face the figure out of myth and legend that named itself Tyrant. That had to count for something.

Sour hoped a sympathetic soul would be entrusted with Lady Harvest’s final will. Esisk shook his head in response. “I didn’t get a good look at it, so I can’t tell you immediately. Just wait till after we see the CO and we’ll get you properly kitted out. Don’t worry, Sour. You’re part of the next stage of our evolution. You won’t be mistreated.”

Passing through a series of checkpoints of increasing security clearance winnowed down the procession from dozens to eventually only the Anointed themselves, Sour looking uneasily at the office of the battalion commander. His instincts as an NCO screamed at him that to be here was to be in a world of shit for the average soldier. He had to remind himself that he was no longer ordinary by any stretch of the imagination.

The battalion commander, Colonel Kilgrave, sat imperiously at her desk and sternly observed as the Anointed shuffled in, saluting her with perfect precision. The woman’s piercing gaze held Sour’s gaze for a few moments before she raised a hand, allowing them to move to an at-ease stance.

“Sergeant Ukachenkov, I understand that congratulations are in order. New Anointed are in short supply these days. However, I feel obligated to ask you what exactly you thought you were doing in that testing chamber. You were cleared for door duty and nothing more.” Kilgrave’s voice was iron-hard and Sour flinched at its harshness before remembering his new bulk made such fast-twitch expressions incredibly dangerous to others.

“My apologies, Colonel. Lady Harvest was a personal patron of my homeland. I felt a religious and cultural obligation to stand witness to her…transformation.” Sour started, faltering as he worked his tongue around the politically-accepted term for deicide.

“Lady Harvest was responsible for the personal liberation of Sergeant Sou- Ukachenkov during that nasty business with the Cult of Azeem some fifteen years back, ma’am. It’s in his personnel file.” Esisk added helpfully, almost forgetting decorum. Sour shot him a look. That story was intensely personal to him, and he hadn’t known it wasn’t private knowledge.

The colonel kept gazing at him before she eventually shrugged dismissively. “Well, at least she gave us a new Anointed out of the deal. You will be transferred, effective immediately, to the second wave team. The rest of you can go with him. Dismissed.” Kilgrave turned her attention away from the four demigods in the room and they saluted reflexively and filed out of the office while she resumed some administrative task on her secure terminal.

Sour caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective surface of a small mirror behind the colonel’s desk as he turned to leave. His hair was icy-white, with cold, digital-blue eyes that glowed dimly from deep within sunken pits of darkness staring back at him. The process of becoming Anointed had done more than simply improve him - it had changed him irrevocably. Running down his face, two bright-red scar-like fissures trailed from the edges of his eyes until they reached his lower jawline, giving him an unsettling appearance. He looked like an old desert demon made to frighten small children, threatening a terrible, cold death from a land too far away to visit within their lifetime.

Now, Sour supposed he was. Even if he was Anointed, war made monsters of all.