Devil's Story
About
A short, intense story about an immortal, infernal general fighting in a losing war against the forces of the Brethren. This takes place before the events of my story Rue and Woe. This character does show up in Rue and Woe.
It’s easy to blame the past.
Perhaps this could have been avoided if we were quicker, more subtle, had time to prepare, had crushed resistance before it could unchain its horrid creation, this Protector, against us.
Demons surge through the battlefield, driven by sheer terror. Once fierce warriors ready to face the might of the heavens for damning us all as slaves of the Divine Plan, now our armies flee before the Protector of the “God” we had defied.
An army has arrived, charging my position as fast as it can from several kilometers away. From what I see, not a single Brethren stands among them. Instead it is an array of changelings, animals, beasts of the earth large and small. The Brethren have deigned to sacrifice the beings of the earth where they did not before, so my enemy today is this desperate, ragtag army of claws and teeth.
It is a pitiful reminder of what is left of the Brethren’s ranks, outside of their Protector. Ordinarily my men would have shot these creatures to death well before reaching close quarters and then ask for more. But none of my men stand with me today. They are either dead or fleeing as far as I can. It is just me, the sword in my hand, the hate in my heart and the sheer will in my mind keeping me here.
The earth and sky tremble underneath the wings and feet of dragons, wolves, bears, birds and beasts. All driven by single-minded purpose, something deep within them subverting their biology, which would tell them that charging straight at an armed man would be fruitless at best, suicidal at worst. They march on, completely against reason, prey among predator, all intent on tearing me and the men fleeing behind me to shreds.
The Brethrens’ subversions do run deep indeed.
I find it hard to not smile a little. These are poor odds indeed, there are enough of them to blot out the sight of faraway hills with only their bodies, let alone the colossal storm of dust they stir. They are closing to about 1000 meters, the fastest of them will be on me in less than half of a minute. I can see them panting, tongues lolling, eyes staring completely dead ahead. Their conscious minds are probably terrified but their altered wills drive them relentlessly forward like any living slavemaster would. I would feel pity for them, but all the same, they will unquestionably chase down and kill me and everyone I know, unless I kill them first.
At least maybe my death might shame my troops to turn around and die fighting. To see their general fight thousands of wild beasts alone and die thinning the herd in a most literal sense. Perhaps. This is not the time for such thoughts though. As I am my only ally on this battlefield, I am my first concern here and now. Here, I chose a chokepoint, the entrance to a canyon, but most likely I will be driven back by the sheer press of weight and numbers. Still, it is better than fighting completely in the open.
I am called immortal, that I may bleed for an instant then my blood shall vanish back into my body like it was never shed. But if I am brought down even for a moment by these creatures, I will likely be ripped to shreds in the single second I am helpless. And then, unable to heal quickly enough against so many foes, I would be torn to pieces over the course of several minutes, my regrowing body forcing itself to relive each wound and agony until my mind gives out and I am utterly destroyed at last. It will be a death most unenviable. Mortals, understandably, do not appreciate how quickly their deaths can occur, but it is a blessing nonetheless.
Enough thought. The first of them is upon me. A wolf and its packmates lunge at my throat, its instinct to chase fleeing prey replaced by an unnatural thirst to kill me where I stand. I dispense with finesse and smite the first contender across the head and neck with my blade, drenching the earth beneath in viscera. Not even a yelp, as I adjust the angle of my advancing sword to run through its charging packmate and immediately strike yet another out of the air with my free hand. A fourth wolf latches onto my thigh, and I crush its head underneath my sword arm’s elbow as I pull my sword free from its dying friend. A sharp tearing pain emerges in my back and I hear the cry of a bird. I spin around and give a mighty slash, sending blood and feathers everywhere. They are trying to flank me, the situation is already out of hand. No matter, I turn around again and cleave through a changeling, its furred mockery of the human form giving way underneath steel and anger. Many more beasts take its place, clawing, biting, screaming at me.
Their forms blur into a mess of teeth and hair as I parry desperately, angling my blade to sever body parts with every strike that comes. The smaller ones are crushed underneath the larger ones, and those in turn are climbed over by even more smaller ones after I cut them down. I hack away at the beasts, ignoring every strike that sneaks through and draws searing blood from my chest and arms. I can still fight, I can still kill, that is all that matters! I duck under a swing and am met by a bite at knee level. I lash out with a swift jab and send it reeling backwards, buying exactly no time as dozens of animals lash out. A dragon roars overhead and slams on top of the two canyon walls above, trying to peck down at me in this great trench. For its troubles, I spare a swing for its eyes and it rears away roaring in pain, as dozens more animals beneath its shadow lunge and hop over each other to kill me. I give them ground, trading slashed paws and sliced throats for every meter I withdraw. Bodies launch away before my sword, some from sheer force, some reeling in agony.
The beasts crawl over each others’ bodies, giving no regard to the death before them, in their utter slavering madness. Peaceful herbivores become desperate monsters, carnivores even greater monsters, and I the greatest monster of them all. My blade, weary of duty, finally gives way as I thrust it into the hide of some large grazing beast, snapping off in its flesh and sending the beast toppling beside me. I immediately slice a throat, can’t tell whose, with the remains of my blade in a final send off then toss it aside. My hands will do. A punch, a kick, a trip followed by a quick hold and neck break, joints hardened by cybernetics and centuries of battle, now lashing out against the finest the animal kingdom has to offer. It will not be long before I am overrun. The continuous wounds are taking their toll, my nerves are singing with the pain of each minute’s many injuries and I know adrenaline is not forever. I cannot see a limit to them, they have almost pushed me out of the canyon and onto open ground, where I will have to defend myself from all directions. I crush heads under elbows, swipe at eyes with my hands and smash open knees with my feet in a bid to keep the fight controllable. I pray I am not crushed under some large animals’ bulk as I bring down a rhinoceros with the full weight of my body coming down on one elbow upon its bare skull. Were I a mortal, that would have shattered my arm forever, instead it’s only a few seconds. My good arm tries to deflect many jaws lunging at me, all teeth and all after a piece of my flesh. My broken arm mends in time to grab a bird of prey trying to gouge out my eyes and crush it in my palm. I drop it and barely intercept the charge of a bear shoving me clean out of the canyon and onto the wide open rocks below. As I hit the ground, I immediately grab out wildly for a rock of any kind and find one. I shatter it immediately into the bear’s head, drawing much blood. I roll off its corpse, as here mobility is everything. If I am surrounded, I will most certainly be killed, without eyes on the back of my head!
Footwork is paramount now, I dodge to the side and punch hard enough to lift a beast off its feet, my bloodied knuckles not healing fast enough, my tattered gloves an indicator of the wounds I have taken. I must dodge again and kick away a small one biting at my legs. I sprawl down on a tackling changeling and bring my full weight down on its head, before rolling off away from it as a blow meant for me cleaves the poor beast in two.
The dragon is back and it’s even more pissed without its sight. Naturally. I do my best to stay away from other beasts as I weave in and out of the path of its wild swings. I don’t know how it can still track me, but it’s doing a much too good job. Its claws kill more animals than me, but that’s of little comfort, as I am being slowly penned in by the mob of animals advancing and pincering around my location. Completely oblivious to the threat of death from me or errant blows from their own kind, there is nothing stopping them in mind or body from closing around me. The dragon bellows loud enough to outright deafen me and I scream back, half of terror, half of sheer rage. Its jaw snaps forward like a cobra and I dive aside just in time to avoid being chopped in two. It charges forward on all fours, knocking me airborne like a stray pebble, from a brush with its shoulders. I retain just enough presence of mind to twist in mid-air, landing on the balls of my feet amid a patch of rock the animals had not surrounded yet. I tip forward to regain my balance and lose my world in an explosion of pain. When I come to and can see again, I am covered in my own blood and one of the dragon’s claws is too. The other animals hoot and bark as they surround me, clearly expecting a moment of weakness. The dragon pays them no mind, and neither do I. It surges forward again. I cannot evade in time. I cannot hope to match its strength. I cannot hope to outbox a foe twenty times my size. But I can find another way. As it lunges forward, the near-blind dragon makes the mistake of leaving its red, injured eyes open. I leap into the air, foot first and land a single kick directly in its eyes. The combined momentum makes my foot plunge into deep into its eye and I could have sworn I felt its cerebrum compact against my boots. In any case, it screams, rearing back for the last time, and falls backwards, to the ground, taking me with it… right before the mass of crazed beasts that were once of nature. I reach out with my arms to block strikes and try to get back on my feet, but it is of no use. My entire body erupts with something beyond agony as I am pulled apart by jaws and claws of every stripe…. And then, far before I expected it… pain completely flooded my body and then everything went black and numb.
I awake. Which… is unexpected. What I see before me are people...what is this? As my newly knitting eyes adjust to seeing again, I think I recognize them!
“Sorry, sir. We hoped you’d heal after the explosion. Glad to see you did. Beats being eaten by animals any day, huh?”
The soldiers of the 43rd stand around me, all hunched over and covered in sweat and dirt, probably from running to my rescue? The part of my brain responsible for filtering has probably yet to grow back, so I utter exactly what I think: “I thought you assholes were fleeing from the Protector? Leaving me to die and all? Right?”
“Yes sir, … but… you were killing hundreds of animals and a fuckin’ dragon with your bare hands… we couldn’t leave the General to die like that…. hell… maybe you have a chance against that fucking thing.”
“Sergeant, those were unarmed, unled forest creatures. If I had any chance against something that kills immortals like-” I snap my fingers. “-that, then I would have tried my damn best when it killed half my family. I ran too.”
“Very sorry, sir! We did not know the other Generals fell in battle.”
“It’s in the past, soldier. Now help me up, I still feel like I got skinned alive. Probably because that happened. So, uh… what exactly did you to kill all those beasts?”
“Uh… 200 kilos of plastique. It was a bit much, but there were a shitton of them, sir! And we figured, if something only kills you once, immortals can probably handle it right?”
I smiled a little. Maybe we did have a chance against the Protector, if we had a general crazy enough to fistfight hundreds of opponents and soldiers crazy enough to dynamite that general rather than let him get overrun. But that would remain to be seen, another time.
Perhaps this could have been avoided if we were quicker, more subtle, had time to prepare, had crushed resistance before it could unchain its horrid creation, this Protector, against us.
Demons surge through the battlefield, driven by sheer terror. Once fierce warriors ready to face the might of the heavens for damning us all as slaves of the Divine Plan, now our armies flee before the Protector of the “God” we had defied.
An army has arrived, charging my position as fast as it can from several kilometers away. From what I see, not a single Brethren stands among them. Instead it is an array of changelings, animals, beasts of the earth large and small. The Brethren have deigned to sacrifice the beings of the earth where they did not before, so my enemy today is this desperate, ragtag army of claws and teeth.
It is a pitiful reminder of what is left of the Brethren’s ranks, outside of their Protector. Ordinarily my men would have shot these creatures to death well before reaching close quarters and then ask for more. But none of my men stand with me today. They are either dead or fleeing as far as I can. It is just me, the sword in my hand, the hate in my heart and the sheer will in my mind keeping me here.
The earth and sky tremble underneath the wings and feet of dragons, wolves, bears, birds and beasts. All driven by single-minded purpose, something deep within them subverting their biology, which would tell them that charging straight at an armed man would be fruitless at best, suicidal at worst. They march on, completely against reason, prey among predator, all intent on tearing me and the men fleeing behind me to shreds.
The Brethrens’ subversions do run deep indeed.
I find it hard to not smile a little. These are poor odds indeed, there are enough of them to blot out the sight of faraway hills with only their bodies, let alone the colossal storm of dust they stir. They are closing to about 1000 meters, the fastest of them will be on me in less than half of a minute. I can see them panting, tongues lolling, eyes staring completely dead ahead. Their conscious minds are probably terrified but their altered wills drive them relentlessly forward like any living slavemaster would. I would feel pity for them, but all the same, they will unquestionably chase down and kill me and everyone I know, unless I kill them first.
At least maybe my death might shame my troops to turn around and die fighting. To see their general fight thousands of wild beasts alone and die thinning the herd in a most literal sense. Perhaps. This is not the time for such thoughts though. As I am my only ally on this battlefield, I am my first concern here and now. Here, I chose a chokepoint, the entrance to a canyon, but most likely I will be driven back by the sheer press of weight and numbers. Still, it is better than fighting completely in the open.
I am called immortal, that I may bleed for an instant then my blood shall vanish back into my body like it was never shed. But if I am brought down even for a moment by these creatures, I will likely be ripped to shreds in the single second I am helpless. And then, unable to heal quickly enough against so many foes, I would be torn to pieces over the course of several minutes, my regrowing body forcing itself to relive each wound and agony until my mind gives out and I am utterly destroyed at last. It will be a death most unenviable. Mortals, understandably, do not appreciate how quickly their deaths can occur, but it is a blessing nonetheless.
Enough thought. The first of them is upon me. A wolf and its packmates lunge at my throat, its instinct to chase fleeing prey replaced by an unnatural thirst to kill me where I stand. I dispense with finesse and smite the first contender across the head and neck with my blade, drenching the earth beneath in viscera. Not even a yelp, as I adjust the angle of my advancing sword to run through its charging packmate and immediately strike yet another out of the air with my free hand. A fourth wolf latches onto my thigh, and I crush its head underneath my sword arm’s elbow as I pull my sword free from its dying friend. A sharp tearing pain emerges in my back and I hear the cry of a bird. I spin around and give a mighty slash, sending blood and feathers everywhere. They are trying to flank me, the situation is already out of hand. No matter, I turn around again and cleave through a changeling, its furred mockery of the human form giving way underneath steel and anger. Many more beasts take its place, clawing, biting, screaming at me.
Their forms blur into a mess of teeth and hair as I parry desperately, angling my blade to sever body parts with every strike that comes. The smaller ones are crushed underneath the larger ones, and those in turn are climbed over by even more smaller ones after I cut them down. I hack away at the beasts, ignoring every strike that sneaks through and draws searing blood from my chest and arms. I can still fight, I can still kill, that is all that matters! I duck under a swing and am met by a bite at knee level. I lash out with a swift jab and send it reeling backwards, buying exactly no time as dozens of animals lash out. A dragon roars overhead and slams on top of the two canyon walls above, trying to peck down at me in this great trench. For its troubles, I spare a swing for its eyes and it rears away roaring in pain, as dozens more animals beneath its shadow lunge and hop over each other to kill me. I give them ground, trading slashed paws and sliced throats for every meter I withdraw. Bodies launch away before my sword, some from sheer force, some reeling in agony.
The beasts crawl over each others’ bodies, giving no regard to the death before them, in their utter slavering madness. Peaceful herbivores become desperate monsters, carnivores even greater monsters, and I the greatest monster of them all. My blade, weary of duty, finally gives way as I thrust it into the hide of some large grazing beast, snapping off in its flesh and sending the beast toppling beside me. I immediately slice a throat, can’t tell whose, with the remains of my blade in a final send off then toss it aside. My hands will do. A punch, a kick, a trip followed by a quick hold and neck break, joints hardened by cybernetics and centuries of battle, now lashing out against the finest the animal kingdom has to offer. It will not be long before I am overrun. The continuous wounds are taking their toll, my nerves are singing with the pain of each minute’s many injuries and I know adrenaline is not forever. I cannot see a limit to them, they have almost pushed me out of the canyon and onto open ground, where I will have to defend myself from all directions. I crush heads under elbows, swipe at eyes with my hands and smash open knees with my feet in a bid to keep the fight controllable. I pray I am not crushed under some large animals’ bulk as I bring down a rhinoceros with the full weight of my body coming down on one elbow upon its bare skull. Were I a mortal, that would have shattered my arm forever, instead it’s only a few seconds. My good arm tries to deflect many jaws lunging at me, all teeth and all after a piece of my flesh. My broken arm mends in time to grab a bird of prey trying to gouge out my eyes and crush it in my palm. I drop it and barely intercept the charge of a bear shoving me clean out of the canyon and onto the wide open rocks below. As I hit the ground, I immediately grab out wildly for a rock of any kind and find one. I shatter it immediately into the bear’s head, drawing much blood. I roll off its corpse, as here mobility is everything. If I am surrounded, I will most certainly be killed, without eyes on the back of my head!
Footwork is paramount now, I dodge to the side and punch hard enough to lift a beast off its feet, my bloodied knuckles not healing fast enough, my tattered gloves an indicator of the wounds I have taken. I must dodge again and kick away a small one biting at my legs. I sprawl down on a tackling changeling and bring my full weight down on its head, before rolling off away from it as a blow meant for me cleaves the poor beast in two.
The dragon is back and it’s even more pissed without its sight. Naturally. I do my best to stay away from other beasts as I weave in and out of the path of its wild swings. I don’t know how it can still track me, but it’s doing a much too good job. Its claws kill more animals than me, but that’s of little comfort, as I am being slowly penned in by the mob of animals advancing and pincering around my location. Completely oblivious to the threat of death from me or errant blows from their own kind, there is nothing stopping them in mind or body from closing around me. The dragon bellows loud enough to outright deafen me and I scream back, half of terror, half of sheer rage. Its jaw snaps forward like a cobra and I dive aside just in time to avoid being chopped in two. It charges forward on all fours, knocking me airborne like a stray pebble, from a brush with its shoulders. I retain just enough presence of mind to twist in mid-air, landing on the balls of my feet amid a patch of rock the animals had not surrounded yet. I tip forward to regain my balance and lose my world in an explosion of pain. When I come to and can see again, I am covered in my own blood and one of the dragon’s claws is too. The other animals hoot and bark as they surround me, clearly expecting a moment of weakness. The dragon pays them no mind, and neither do I. It surges forward again. I cannot evade in time. I cannot hope to match its strength. I cannot hope to outbox a foe twenty times my size. But I can find another way. As it lunges forward, the near-blind dragon makes the mistake of leaving its red, injured eyes open. I leap into the air, foot first and land a single kick directly in its eyes. The combined momentum makes my foot plunge into deep into its eye and I could have sworn I felt its cerebrum compact against my boots. In any case, it screams, rearing back for the last time, and falls backwards, to the ground, taking me with it… right before the mass of crazed beasts that were once of nature. I reach out with my arms to block strikes and try to get back on my feet, but it is of no use. My entire body erupts with something beyond agony as I am pulled apart by jaws and claws of every stripe…. And then, far before I expected it… pain completely flooded my body and then everything went black and numb.
I awake. Which… is unexpected. What I see before me are people...what is this? As my newly knitting eyes adjust to seeing again, I think I recognize them!
“Sorry, sir. We hoped you’d heal after the explosion. Glad to see you did. Beats being eaten by animals any day, huh?”
The soldiers of the 43rd stand around me, all hunched over and covered in sweat and dirt, probably from running to my rescue? The part of my brain responsible for filtering has probably yet to grow back, so I utter exactly what I think: “I thought you assholes were fleeing from the Protector? Leaving me to die and all? Right?”
“Yes sir, … but… you were killing hundreds of animals and a fuckin’ dragon with your bare hands… we couldn’t leave the General to die like that…. hell… maybe you have a chance against that fucking thing.”
“Sergeant, those were unarmed, unled forest creatures. If I had any chance against something that kills immortals like-” I snap my fingers. “-that, then I would have tried my damn best when it killed half my family. I ran too.”
“Very sorry, sir! We did not know the other Generals fell in battle.”
“It’s in the past, soldier. Now help me up, I still feel like I got skinned alive. Probably because that happened. So, uh… what exactly did you to kill all those beasts?”
“Uh… 200 kilos of plastique. It was a bit much, but there were a shitton of them, sir! And we figured, if something only kills you once, immortals can probably handle it right?”
I smiled a little. Maybe we did have a chance against the Protector, if we had a general crazy enough to fistfight hundreds of opponents and soldiers crazy enough to dynamite that general rather than let him get overrun. But that would remain to be seen, another time.