Foot Soldiers of the Enemy

After months of training and years of preparation, one warrior landed every three seconds and rolled, coming up in a crouch, weapons ready, ensuring the integrity of our landing zone until we got the signal.

Pharaoh took up a station-keeping position overhead as we silently broke into our designated fire teams and entered the forest that bordered Froideville. We made our way between the trees in good time until only a few hundred meters separated us from the last recorded position of the cluster of cellphone signals.

The natural sounds of the forest had died seconds before the beginning of their ambush. The hairs on the back of my neck rose in warning as I caught a scent of rotten blood with the cloying tang of rotting fruit. One shouted warning became an overlapping chorus as several somethings burst out of the undergrowth, from inside trees and even dropping in from above.

They were flat and grey with streaks of red and brown along their flanks. Five limbs extended from a central body, jointed and conjoined in a fashion that defied logic. There was no symmetry to the placement or appearance of these limbs, nor was there any discernable pattern to how they walked.

Each limb ended in a talon or claw, and their heads were shapeless elongated skulls; there was a slit in the "face" where the mouth would be, filled with fangs, but otherwise, no eyes, no ears, no nose. Eerily silent as they charged us. Each was twice the size of an adult human.

One creature wrapped its limbs around Legionnaire Justine Carmine's torso and squeezed. There was a sickening crunch, the sound of metal tearing as retractable claws and spikes emerged from the muscular sheaths of the limb, breaking through it like wet paper.

Initiate Michael Cross died as his gunfire chased another creature leaping from tree to tree. His bullets found their mark, penetrating and punching clean through its elongated torso. Two of its talon-tipped appendages flicked back and forth, bisecting him into four uneven portions that slopped apart.

I'd successfully drawn a bead and engaged one target, giving the face a quartet of three-round bursts. It turned in midleap, and I leapt back. Its bulk smashed into the loamy soil underfoot. For a moment, there was the smell of earth, and dirt, before the same rancid stench poisoned the air.

I dropped into a crouch, letting go of my guns before lunging with a snarl, claws raking across its flank and severing several limbs. It made no sound but retreated. Gunfire chased it through the foliage as it fled.

The entire engagement lasted a brutal 22 seconds, and silence reigned as our suppressed rifles ceased fire.

We took a moment to consolidate and, with practised motions, stripped them of ammunition and weapons. Pulling the igniter tab, it set their corpses blazing. Backlit by the glowing red flames, we advanced.

The creatures returned in equal numbers, but we had their measure now. They drew more blood, but we killed and reduced them to ash. Our blood was up, choleric, enraged, and we pushed forward in hot pursuit.

Weapons clattering as we fell upon them this time, keeping the pressure on them as search and destroy tactics. We hunted them through the forest. These were the so-called "lost and damned," the unfortunate souls who worshipped something that had warped, twisted and mutated into what we now hunted.

When they turned west and tried to lead us away, Tamara ordered us to let them go. Our target was to the East. They knew the forest better than we did and would be back once they realized we were no longer chasing them.

We found it, but it was more like we stumbled into their clearing, or rather their nest. It was a small clearing, maybe twenty square feet of space. At its centre stood what must have been a century-old oak tree before a bolt of lightning from the heavens had left it a splintered, leafless husk.

The air reeked of blood and death, the odour laying like phlegm in the throat. We fanned out a crescent formation with the points forward to encircle what we'd subconsciously agreed was their nest.

An inhuman cry, partly one of pain, one of something else, split the silence of the woods and the Legion of the damned boiled out like ants to defend their home.

Blue-green ichor sprayed as gunfire slew a handful, and several grenades knocked over a handful more. Those knocked down were trampled by the rest of the advancing beast pack. We retreated smoothly and efficiently, fire and manoeuvre tactics allowing us to inflict punishing causalities. But in every fight, there comes a moment where you either have to commit fully or disengage entirely.

The moment came and went in the time it took to blink.

The gunfight became a full-on melee. I don't know who threw me the shotgun, but I was grateful as its blessed buckshot tore three limbs off the thing charging at me. It ploughed a bloody furrow into the ground and came to a halt, twitching and slashing at me with its remaining two limbs. I broke its face with a cloud of buckshot and a curb stomp.

Another smashed me to the ground, two of its limbs bludgeoning my armour as a third tried to wrap itself around my neck. I growled and focused my rage, and the beast took control.

The scales of my armour shifted as I let my body partially transform. My head snapped forward, sinking into the rubbery, pale white flesh of the limb around my neck. Its flesh was no protection from my fangs that snapped shut with a harsh "click!" I jerked my head back and tore the offending limb off. Claws punched into its head from both sides as I twisted, severing the front portion of the elongated skull.

I tackled another, wrestling with it for a moment as we rolled across the ground, claws flashing as I severed one limb and then another, then caved in its torso with a two-handed hammer punch.

Tamara streaked past me, blue blood staining her claws as her claws cut through one elongated skull lengthwise. The creature continued its charge heedless of its fatal injury for several moments before it almost comically fell over.

The entire swirling chaos of the melee lasted only minutes, and the things were almost wholly mindless, making them easier targets. But the slaughter cost Legionnaire Olivia Ruiz Sanchez and Initiate Marita Schmidt their lives.

We took stock and reformed our lines, and pressed forward once again. Tamara was at the centre of the line and leading it from the front. It was all overwhelming to me: so much blood, death, an orgy of violence, chaos and destruction. I found myself asking Tamara the question, "How do you do this?"

Her answer was as honest as it was brutal, "The Legion has been at war for hundreds of years. Fighting a war means casualties. I will grieve their loss later." She unhooked the thermite igniters and dealt with the remains of our comrades. We torched the corpses of the enemy without ceremony. We gave our dead the respect they were due and burned them.

Our task was not done. The dark void was visible between the roots of the blasted tree, daring us to enter to face whatever lurked within. I asked her about what we had slaughtered. Was I right?

Tamara nodded, "Whatever is down there has found a way to commune with an ancient evil… What we culled was once human, before demons possessed them and mutated those of weak will into these near mindless servants."

Demonic possession is a two-way street. You get these abject bestial slave mutants when a demon possesses a human. However, these kinds of lower mutants serve something else, something more significant, called an "Ascended." These are often human, who had sufficient will and strength to subdue whatever they summoned, or worse, were granted some mutations as a blessing or reward for services they had provided as a human thrall.

Corrupted, possessed, mutated, they would continue to serve the agenda of whatever it was that "rewarded them."

Actual Demons, fortunately, are few and far between. The last confirmed True Demon to cross into our world led to the Great Fire of London in 1666s. There were theories that the Galveston hurricane of 1900 was one too, but there has been little evidence to corroborate that theory.

"Ascended?" I whispered to her. I'd paid attention in boot camp, I'd seen the footage, and it scared the hell out of me. We were all literally in over our heads now. Tamara nodded to me, "Make the call."

I nodded, swallowed my fear and changed the channel on my radio, "Pharaoh: Threat assessment complete, Ascended arising. Chapter assistance required."

The radio crackled an acknowledgement, and the chopper banked overhead and disappeared.

Tamara met each of our faces in turn, "Double file, diamond formation, Keep it tight. Advance!"