Europa IV

  It took nearly a day for us to finally hear the crackle of gunfire outside the Foxhole. Whilst Betty and I’s wounds were… reasonably containable, and thus the simple medical supplies this place had were enough to treat them, some of the others weren’t so lucky.

  The young daughter who witnessed her father take an arrow through the throat had a sprained ankle and a bleeding gut wound—only God knew whether she would make it to Enoch in time; and a young man with a serrated bone arrowhead lodged in the side of the heart—well, we were just waiting for him to die.

  While Eden had a radio tower, we were too far out of range for us to receive any help. Our only hope was Enoch. Some pleasant idea that they’d come for us when they saw we’d haven’t arrived on time.

  And thankfully… they did. After a long, sordid cacophony of screeching, gunfire and gore, the battle was finally done. The alarms of the foxhole entrance went off as two sons walked through the two decontamination sections and stopped at the door. One of them wore a red cape, same as Perseus, and had a longsword strapped over his shoulder. Both of them were utterly drenched in blood, from head to toe.

  The other one, in the plain dark green uniform, took off his grey mask and clicked his tongue. “Lucky we came, huh? Haven’t seen a horde of imps like that since Enoch.”

  His face was clean, his eyes brown. And his black hair was a bit long, a bit curly, and incredibly oily.

  Rising from the copper wall he rested on, Samson, the son Perseus had hugged back at the Garden, laughed. “It’s good to see you brother.”

  “It truly is,” Perseus smiled, rising alongside him. “And you, Carolus.”

  As Samson and his brother embraced one another, the red-caped myrmidon, ‘Carolus’, just stared at Perseus through the goggles of his mask. The light of the Foxhole shielded the colour of his eyes. But even at the door of the foxhole, his tall figure and unmoving body begged the attention of the room.

  “I saw the remains of a son out there,” Carolus’ filtered voice said. “And an old man too. Although I’d be hard-pressed to say ‘remains’ for either of them. More remnants. You didn’t think to grab their bodies in your flight?”

  Perseus stood there, his head lowered. Obviously they took the death of a son quite seriously, and somehow, Perseus had messed up.

  Carolus tilted his head slightly, towards Elder Cecelia, who was now standing next to me. He slowly raised his hand towards the young man squirming on the ground with bloody bandages wrapped around his bare chest. “What’s the matter with him?”

  I rose from the ground to stand beside Elder Cecelia as she did a slight bow. “I stowed his mind, and with proper equipment, I can save his life.”

  Turning back to Perseus, Carolus sighed. “We’re building temporary foxholes outside, to replenish our oxygen. We’ll travel to Enoch in the morning.” He pointed at Perseus. “You should have known better.”

  Carolus slowly turned to me and walked over. With a quick glance at Betty, still sleeping on the ground, his gloved hand took hold of my wounded forearm, pulled the sleeve back and lifted it up to his goggles.

  “You’re… supposed to ask before you t-touch a lady.” I tried to be witty, but instead I’m quite sure that stutter will haunt me the rest of my life.. This man scared me.

  I caught a glimpse of his amber eyes behind his blood-stained goggles looking up and down my arm. “What colour hair was the imp who bit you?” his filtered voice rasped.

  “White, Myrmidon Carolus,” Elder Cecelia answered for me.

  Dropping my arm with little care, he turned to Elder Cecelia. “We meet again, Cecelia.”

  “There was a time when you'd take off your mask before greeting me,” she chuckled.

  “That was a better time, I imagine.” He turned away and walked back to Perseus.

  ‘I imagine.’ I’d forgotten about my latent hate towards Perseus for using words that weren't his, but that had brought it back to the fore of my mind. So this is who he got it from.

  “Tell me,” Carolus mused, his mask right in Perseus’ face. “What if Enoch had been under siege from this sudden imp resurgence? And we couldn’t come save you? What was the plan?”

  “Had no one come by tomorrow,” Perseus whispered. “We’d have sallied out and fled to Enoch.”

  Scoffing, Carolus turned back to us. “Sisters, meet me outside in a moment.”

  With that, he left the Foxhole.

  Samson’s brother, still remaining, walked over to Perseus and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry about him. He’s under a lot of pressure. No one could’ve expected such a force.”

  Casting a wry smile, Perseus hugged him. “It’s good to see you again, Gideon. Although I wish it had been under better circumstances.”

  “My brother’s here and you’re alive,” Gideon laughed. “What better circumstances could there be?”

  Elder Cecelia tapped my shoulder. I turned to see her mask on.

  Understanding, I drew my own from my breast and dragged it over my head, turning the nozzle of the canister on.

  When we got to the small hall with the two decontamination sections, Elder Cecelia looked at me. “Are you alright? Your first battle’s always… memorable.”

  “It was hardly a battle for me. I lost my long-awaited gun in seconds.”

  “You fought that imp off of you—even if for a moment. That deserves commemoration.”

  “You waited a while to commemorate me, didn’t you?”

  As we got to the end of the hall, Elder Cecelia put her hands on the ring of the door and turned it. “We’re arbiters of wisdom and logic to most people,” she informed me. “Even soldiers—we can’t be seen ‘comforting’ or ‘praising’ one another.”

  Giving a reluctant shrug of agreement, I witnessed the brutal scene that awaited us once the door opened. In the centre of the field, between here and the river, a giant hole was being dug by about thirty sons; to the left, a giant mound of dead imps was being added upon every second by the tired sons who scoured the field picking their bodies; and to the right of the hole, a single son sat beside two bodies covered in black tarps.

  All the while, the only light which illuminated this view was the brilliantly bright moon in the centre of the sky, casting a terrible crimson hue upon the world and creating a sordid clash of red and black which painted an ominous scene.

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

  On the other side of the river, sat upon the largest rock in a scattered splatter of them, was a son with a particularly red cape, facing the river. Without a doubt, that was the myrmidon, Carolus.

  Elder Cecelia and I circled the hole as several sons, both in the ground and scouring the field, gave us nods. When we finally came to the right side of Carolus, I eyed the river: it was a bloody red now—although I’m not sure whether it was the moon or the imp blood which caused it.

  Carolus had his sheathed sword now resting in-between his crossed legs and leaning on his right shoulder. He did a slight turn of his head at our arrival before reaching to his left side and grabbing a pistol.

  “One of the sons just handed me this. I assume it’s yours.”

  “It is!” I buzzed, ripping the pistol out of his hand. “Thank God!”

  “Thank Edward, more like.” Carolus did a quick take back at the Foxhole’s entrance. “Tell me something, Elder Cecelia. Did Perseus attempt to fight off the imps, or did he flee at the first sight of them?”

  “They fought for quite a while,” Elder Cecelia replied. “But, as he tells it, eventually they were flanked from Enoch way.”

  Scratching his left arm, Carolus nodded.

  “Why did you chastise him for not getting the bodies?” I asked, but I probably shouldn’t have—judging by the glance of disapproval Elder Cecelia threw my way.

  “Because now we can’t eat our brother,” he monotonously replied, seemingly not caring for whatever boundary I broke.

  “You eat—”

  “They do,” Elder Cecelia cut me off, predicting me. “It’s their custom.”

  “Strange custom.”

  Carolus scoffed in amusement. “That it is.”

  After a short silence, Elder Cecelia clasped her hands together. “Was that all, Myrmidon Carolus?”

  “No,” he instantly replied. Carolus got up from the rock, slung his sword back over his shoulder, and drew a grappling hook from his side. “We’re crossing the river.”

  “Might I ask why?” she questioned.

  And so he pointed forward.

  In the ‘U’ shaped peninsula on the other side of the river, the land was flat. The grass was long, untrampled by continuous journeys of travelling soldiers; thus, the light of the moon had cast a million outlines of red on black that continued until the mountain ranges north took shape. In these shadows, you could hardly notice anything… but on closer inspection, there was a shadowed shape that was different. It was… a jagged cross. Facing us. And there was some sort of humanoid on it.

  “I take it you didn’t do that?” I asked, remembering the scores of impaled imp heads.

  “I did not,” he replied, shooting the grapple across the river.

  After tugging it into place, he tied it around a sturdy rock.

  Taking a single step to surmount the rocks, he walked over to a son by the hole and whispered. At once, the son summoned ten of his comrades and they came to our position, shooting their own grappling hooks over the river.

  Carolus circled the hole and walked back into the Foxhole as I turned to Elder Cecelia. “What does he want us for?”

  “To find out what happened,” she replied. “And to make sure there isn’t an army of imps in those glades.”

  “What do you think it is? An imp?”

  “It’s too big to be an imp,” she sneered—not at me, but at the answer of it all: that was a human on the cross. That was an affront to our God. Her God, moreso.

  One of their sons, after tying his line, came over and handed us plastic bags from his waist.

  Watching Cecelia bag her pistol and ammo, I did the same.

  To our left, Carolus, Gideon, Perseus and Samson appeared—at least, I’m ninety-percent sure they’re Gideon and Samson, their uniforms are a bit hard to tell apart.

  “If we’re ambushed,” Carolus began, holding Perseus’ shoulder as he pointed to the river bank on the other side. “We’re going to retreat a bit into the river. When I give a signal, open fire on the grass and, I cannot stress this enough, Percy, aim high.”

  Perseus nodded. “What if we’re attacked here?”

  “Defend here,” Carolus replied. “With your life. No retreat.” Carolus tapped Perseus’ chest as he grabbed a bagged rifle from a son and walked into the river, holding on to a wire. “Come on.”

  Following him, I took hold of the same wire with my free hand and followed him as my boots became submerged in the coldest water I’d ever felt; soon came my legs, drenching the trousers I wore under these robes; next was my arse, sending a prancing shiver up my spine; and then my chest, which, apart from the tight harness of my canister, made the rest of my clothes become loose and heavy.

  Only my head was spared, as the strap at the back of the neck made it skintight.

  To my left, Gideon and Samson swam. And to my right, Elder Cecelia trailed after a soldier I didn’t know—and behind her was another, who was helping her too. Elder Cecelia wasn’t that old, mind you, but she was in her late thirties; that age has its downsides—or so I’m told.

  It wasn’t long before I lost my footing and the fierce force of the river showed its true colours; with my legs swaying to the right, I trod water with my right hand—carrying my bagged pistol—and pulled myself forward on the wire with my left.

  After five minutes of this, my feet finally found footing again as the river bank came close. We ascended to the grey sand right before the grass, and by the time the water had left my apparel, I felt as if I’d worked out for hours.

  Taking his rifle out of the bag and pulling back the bolt, Carolus climbed up the bank a bit, looked back to Elder Cecelia and me, huffing our guts out, and did a hand signal to his men. “Sisters? Can you feel anything?”

  Without the chaos of battle on my mind, clarity became me as I drew on two years of training. My mind searched ahead, whistling through the glades of grass searching for being, for matter, for thoughts. There was… nothing.

  I shook my head and, waiting for me to answer, Elder Cecelia concurred.

  Nodding, Carolus did another hand movement—which was far too quick for me to remember. “Stay between the lines,” he commanded us, before Gideon and Samson took his left and right side. Together, they moved into the tall grass.

  Elder Cecelia and I unbagged our guns as another row of three followed, this one more spread out, I looked back and saw five more sons breaking onto the sand.

  Already aware, Elder Cecelia got me up as we moved in a straight row behind the five. The simplicity, the pattern of the red and black painting before us was broken by our arrival. As rifles pointed left and right and straight on, we pressed forward as the cross came further into view.

  …

  I… I can feel something. My breathing became two sets. “He’s alive!” I yelled forward.

  Carolus looked back for confirmation, and Elder Cecelia complied: “It’s true. It's human—but I can’t read anything about it.”

  “Edward!” Carolus called out.

  “Sir!”

  “You’ve got that lamp, right?”

  Behind us, a bright, golden light stretched onto our figures, casting black shadows onto the now-lit blue grass.

  The eerie silence of the night increased tenfold as the grass disappeared and the cross came into view. All about the ground, the grass had died; it was stomped, ruined, cut and maimed. And as we approached the cross itself… something inhuman came into view.

  It was a man, crucified upon it—as we had suspected. But his legs had green and pink scales, running up the outer sides of his thigh and arching towards his groyne; his arms too had them, but these ran up the side of his neck and up his cheeks, stopping before his eyes; and his eyes… they were red.

  And he stared at us… even in death, he stared at us.