Honor the Living and Dead

My thoughts were jumbled, and time had no meaning as I ran to her. I could not tell if it was minutes or hours. But she was there, where she had managed to prop herself up against the bloody cavern wall.

I hiccupped and realized that my voice was gone. There were so many dead, but only one mattered to me: The one that was like me—the one who was the closest living thing I had to family. I couldn't speak. I was barely able to whisper her name, and her eyes opened.

I took her hand in mine. She was battered and broken, and none of her injuries healed despite the empty food packets around her. Autophagy: The very act of healing was forcing her body to consume itself, to heal itself. A deadly cycle that there was little chance of breaking.

I wiped her blade, cleaned it as best I could and brought it to my wrist.

Tamara somehow reached and caught the blade in her hand before I could cut. She pressed her hand against it, drawing a deep but short wound that didn't bleed. "Feral and Lycan. Our blood doesn't mix," she whispered and pressed her bared hand to the blade. It cut, but there was no blood, "You know what that means."

I did. I held Tamara, lied to her, and whispered that she would be just fine. She looked up at me with those enchanting, hypnotic eyes and called me a liar with a soft laugh. Then asked the question that mattered most to her that I answered truthfully: Dead, with a video to prove it.

Those eyes, her smile, thoughts and hope of seeing her, working with her, fighting alongside her kept me going through those long months of training. I'd never gotten to know her as a person, and she was dying. Only minutes were left now.

There would be time enough for guilt later as I focused on her trying to memorize every detail. But what I took away, more than anything was her complex, multilayered scent. A hint of spring rain, fresh fruit, that faint sweet smell of something I can't identify, and traces of copper. That means more to me than any picture.

She smiled at me, and my heart broke in two again. It wasn't fair. I kissed her tenderly and felt her kiss back. She was limp when I pulled away, her eyes staring, no longer seeing me but staring into the great beyond.

They were open and staring, but they had lost that lustre and shine, and she wasn't breathing. But there was calm serenity upon her face, peace in death that I don't think she'd ever had in her nine decades as a Legionnaire.

I don't know how long I sat there, but eventually, some detached, clinical part of me felt that she was gone and would never come back. I rested my chin on her head and held her nestled against my chest as bloody tears fell into her blond hair.

The price paid was steep and soured any notion of victory for me. Fourteen did not survive the caverns of Froideville, but the mission was accomplished, and the threat neutralized. The sacrificial altars were melted down and torched, the walls and floors scoured with flames, and the dead incinerated to ash.

Secondary teams would supervise the purging and sealing of the caverns properly. The location would be marked and then monitored for decades to come. Anyone poking around or expressing too much interest would be investigated and possibly get a bullet. I didn't care about any of that.

A week later, I was still suffering from aches and soreness that would take what felt like months to fade. I was summoned to one of the lower levels of the Operation Center. A place I have only been in a handful of times since. I was left standing and waiting before the massive Gothic-styled doors with bas-relief etchings of a warrior angel upon each door.

I had ten minutes to study the detail in the carving before the doors parted silently on well-oiled hinges. The interior was mostly dark, with few lights along the walls lit. But to my eyes, it might as well have been broad daylight as I followed the carpeted path towards those gathered.

There were at least fifty people in the room, and it took some conscious effort not to bolt from the stares of so many. But I knew what was coming: my place in the Legion was calling me forward.

I passed between the gathered warriors and stopped when I stood at the base of four steps. At the top of those stairs, with his arm in a sling, was the Centurion, Danial Ian Daur, Commander of Legion Operations for the Suisse Romande region of Switzerland.

Standing to his immediate left was a man that I did not know. His eyes were hard grey flints against a weathered pale face, his hands heavy and scarred from years of conflict. When he spoke, it was like being at the eye of the storm, listening to thunder boom, "In place of Tamara Copeland, fallen in battle, I, Lukas Holt, issue the call! I call forth Alexander Whitlock to take his place within the Legion," he turned to face me, "Do you come willingly and knowingly?"

"I do." On a whim, I'd made a choice lightly, almost when I thought my life could not get any worse. I climbed the first step.

"Do you stand illuminated to the truth of the Legion and its purpose?" his voice was like the staccato of a machine gun at full tilt.

"I do." I'd read all the files, absorbed all the history, and learned things that no one outside the Legion would ever know or believe. I took that second step.

"Do you stand ready to protect humanity against Darkness and all who would serve its goals?" It was a demand. Not a question.

"I do." I'd seen those that served the Darkness, whose followers ranged from humans to the supernatural. I had seen firsthand what those followers would do for that dark power. I took the third step.

"Thus, you stand illuminated to the truth," he turned to the assembled Legionnaires, "Illuminate him." I took the fourth step.

The shadows of the chamber faded, revealing a single chair, "Remain silent and endure."

Tamara had spoken about this, but it felt like months or years when she'd explained the significance of her tattoo, of the Legion's mark. It had been a cold wintery windswept night of my first hunt.

The tattoo measured ten centimetres high and pictured an angel with its wing spread swept back, in full plate armour with a shield strapped to one arm with a heavy two-handed sword in the other. There was no doubt that it was a warrior angel framed by a banner with a Latin inscription that stated: "Against Darkness."

Tamara wore the tattoo on her upper right arm, just below the shoulder. I choose the same to honour her memory and the others that did not survive.

It was fast: Others got a tattoo, 'shifters got a branding - less painful and healed better. It took moments; the pain of it was nothing compared to what I had previously endured—adding the colours to the wings in black, silver, and gold.

Tamara's tattoos had the same three colours, plus several others, and her wings were fully coloured. Mine mainly were blank, but I understood the why of it.

"Legionnaire Alexander Whitlock," boomed Lukas, "Stand and be recognized!"

The gathered men and women broke into applause that grew in volume and exploded into cheers. Suddenly, everything degenerated into pandemonium. They swept forward, grabbed, and then tossed me into the air.

I rose above their heads for a few seconds before falling back down to be caught by the hands of the same men and women who had thrown me up seconds before. There was laughter and cheering as I was thrown even higher, this time tumbling in mid-air, the faces of those below me a kaleidoscope of smiles and laughter.

"It's tradition," explained Lukas over several measures of excellent whiskey and cigars. The celebrations had been more traditional after throwing me back and forth like a doll. I was overwhelmed by the toasts and words of congratulations I had been showered with. These traditions go back to the founding of the Legion during the days of the Roman Empire."

The history lesson was brief but revealed the actual founding of the Legion itself: Originally, Roman Army Order XXX - thirty - ordered the creation of a secret legion that would be without number, trained to fight the "unusual" or "unholy" that may emerge to threaten the Empire.

Thus, this elite unit, known only as "The Legion," was created to stand "forever against Darkness" that threatened to wipe out Rome. In those halcyon days, Rome was considered the "light" of the Empire and, back then, the world." The Roman Empire crumbled, as all empires do, but the Legion had persevered in secrecy, forever committed to its task.

A few days after the celebration, Lukas guided me to a field with stone pillars set every few feet. Small rectangles dotted each one. I studied the one closest to me and found that each bore a name, followed by three dates. These were rough, worn down by the wind, rain, and snow. Many of them had names and dates, many fading away but otherwise clean. "Initiation. Elevation to Legionnaire. Death." he explained.

As we walked through the field of stone pillars, I had an eerie sense of De-Ja-Vu, remembering the last time I had seen stone pillars "growing" up out of anything. I noticed that as we walked, the years were growing more recent. The first had been close to sixty or seventy years old, dating back to the interwar years between World Wars 1 and 2.

These were more recent, some only a few years old now, and some only had two dates. A detail I had just noticed, and then I recognized some of the names: Initiates from my training cadre that had died and never taken the steps I had already taken.

I was in "The Field."

"The Field." Every Legion Operations Center has one to remember and honour all who stand and fight, giving their lives in the present as a gift to future generations. The victorious dead rest on these pillars and the bundle over Lukas's shoulder suddenly got heavier in my eyes when we stopped walking.

We took only a few minutes to hang the plaques, and I asked the obvious question, "What happens when the names are too faded to be read?"

"When the plaques are illegible, they are taken down, cleaned, and reused. Our dead are not forgotten, even if we can no longer remember their names or deeds."

Strangely, it was a fitting way to end life in the Legion. Forever remembered as one of the many and never forgotten.

It gave a sense of closure to short but eventful chapters in my life as I hammered the first of many into place. I didn't realize it, but there will be many more chapters.