Desculpem lá, mas a short story vai ser em inglês. Para a infelicidade dos meus professores de português, expresso-me melhor em inglês. Go figure XD
É melhor entenderem que isto é um conto que estou a escrever que têm algum "background" extenso. Se houver interessados, mete o background aqui. Senão, poupo espaço no blog XD
Prologue
3 in the morning. Why does this kind of situation always happens in the middle of the night. Never after dinner or just before breakfast. No, it has to be in the middle of the night. Satanists. Gods I hate them for their stupidity and ignorance.
But I have to admire the daemon's logic though. Get a few lies about immortality and ascension into daemonhood into these cultist's heads and they'll do anything.
Including kidnapping and sacrificing people to open a portal for said daemons pass through the Alliance defences. And screw around in our territory. And daemons screwing around is bad, because it means extra work for me. And extra work pisses me off, and that is very very bad.
I'm already annoyed, and the fire knows it. It flares and rages, screaming, demanding to be set free. By the time I arrive at the location, a 2-story house, it howls to burn it down. To let the ash and cinders fly in a fiery tornado.
I don't let it. I keep it in check. If I lose control, no gods or daemons could stop it. Primordial Fire, fire from the Big Bang, from the moment of creation. Unspoiled, uncorrupted, pure and powerful. And alive. Like all things in life, nothing comes with a price. In my case, a very bad, earth-ending-in-fireball price.
The whole block has been evacuated, and the security division is already locked and loaded. I check to see if there's some approach not covered these guys didn't remember, and not seeing any, go talk to the C.O.
'Officer, I am agent Viktor, I was informed of this situation on the way here, do you have any updates?'
The officer salutes me and points to a screen in the back of a command APC.
'Sir, we surrounded the house as soon as we arrived after targets were pinpointed by the oracles monitoring system, and given the speed that was accomplished, we tried to recon the house, but there were wards preventing it. I ordered a team to go in to take them out before they could put something more than wards in the house, but they were taken out.'
I must've had a "what the hell?!" face on, because the officer swallowed and continued his report in a more submissive tone.
'We believed at first they selected this house at random, but apparently there were a number of cultists already inside. Both houses next to the targeted one were empty on arrival, so we can assume they were taken hostage along with the people who lived in the target house and had plenty of time to put up wards and others traps.'
The officer seemed a good man, one who obviously knew he just screwed badly in this situation and wants to redeem himself at any cost. Unfortunately for him, I can only offer revenge for the men he just lost.
'Sir, if I may?'
'Yes officer...' I take a quick glance at his name tag to relax the man a bit, 'Krant, speak up.'
'Sir, I think... these are not normal cultists. They planned this in advance, right up to us showing up. Sir... they were ready for us.'
He sounded ashamed, as if it was his fault these cultists were smarter than average.
'Krant, it isn't your fault. This is a war we are engaged in, and in any war, when presented with a new tactic, one man cannot simply overcome it on the spot. He must observe it, analyse it, then evolve his own tactics so that he may never be caught unprepared and allow that one time to be the only time the new tactic works.'
Looking a bit relieved, I started being serious about this.
'Obviously these cultists were prepared, meaning they observed our tactics and probably our response times. However, the fact that you and your men aren't dead yet and I haven't had to burn an entire street to take out a daemon, means that they haven't summoned it yet. Officer Krant, I'm going in through the front door, because everything else is probably rigged, since your division would never go through the front door and they know it.'
The man looks at me as if I was a oracle, divining knowledge for his benefit.
'After I go in, you and your men will shoot anyone and anything that comes out of that house, myself excluded, either coming from the doors, windows, walls or even from beneath it. ANYONE AND ANYTHING!! Is that clear Krant?!'
'SIR YES SIR!!'
'Good. I want every available gun, cannon, flame-thrower and whatever else you got pointed at that house. It's the middle of the night, I'm pissed off and these guys aren't helping.'
'Yes Sir!!! Teams 1 through 3, lock grenade launchers, frag and incendiaries. Team 4, anything moves outside the house, I want a anti-tank round on it. Team 5, get those...'
I leave the man to his preparations and head to the front of the house. It's an old suburban one, a lot like those english ones back in London. One door in the middle, one window at each side and 3 windows on the 2nd floor. All covered, of course. Why put wards against divining if a sniper can put a round between your eyes? I am still standing in the side walk when I get the OK from Krant.
Here we go.
I walk up to the front door and try to open it. Locked. Well I never expect things to be easy. I side-step the entrance and look at the lock.
I hear a bang.
The sniper blows the lock and half the door open with high calibre ammunition. I take a last look at Krant and say the words "anyone and anything" over the radio. He just tells me to save the hostages.
I turn around and walk into the house. No use telling the man what I am really here for.
The bottom floor has been cleaned out. Even the walls are down, only the pillars are left standing to support the top floor. The radio is all static, thanks to the wards. There are flash lights on the floor, probably from the team who came in before, blood pools in a few places, but no bodies.
No bodies. Ah sh*t.
You know why everyone is afraid of the dark when we're young? Genetic memory. Before technology, before science, when we hunted to survive, we slept near fires to keep the beasts away. It's a basic instinct, passed through for endless generations. Fear of what lies waiting in the dark. Of what is made of the dark.
Besides the wards, they put something else in here. A hell shadow. A being that lives and hunts in the shadows of Hell, so that, wherever you run in Hell, be it in the light of hellfire or the shadows of the pit, you'll never be alone.
No bodies on the floor, so it won't feed and fill itself. No bodies, so it's always hungry, always hunting. These bastards are way too smarter than they're supposed to. But I don't have time to think about that now, the shadow envelops me so fast I can barely see the light from the flash lights. But I wait. I wait for the darkness, for the absence of light. Only then can it become material and feed. I wait.
And then I light it up .
A small burst, more light than heat, a flash bang, in the palm of my hands. It screams, like an eagle scratching a chalk board, for just a moment before it dies.
I am, at this point, focusing on 2 things: getting to the stairs at the end of the house, and not letting the fire out and burn this whole street. I start walking up the stairs, the fire more controlled now. And then I get upstairs, and I focus as hard as I can not to go berserk.
No walls upstairs as well, but the centre of the floor is a blasphemy no matter what religion or beliefs you have. There's a pentagram made from all the hostages in the centre, stitched and stapled together, and nailed to the floor so they won't move out of place. Men and women and children, crying and begging for help, with candles burning on their skin. In inverted crosses hanging from the ceiling are the men from the entry team, one still alive. And in centre of the pentagram, is a mount of naked, dead cultists, with one of them standing on top of them.
No, not standing. Floating, barely above the top of the mount. His voice is a gurgling, nauseating sound, like someone drowning in thick blood. His body is half deformed, trying to rearrange in the image of the daemon who is possessing it.
'Damn you!! Damn you to the freezing pit of the Morningstar!! I should have been complete by now!! Fully transformed this flesh sack into my glorious form!! What did you do?!'
I stopped listening to him mid-cursing. The hostages are still crying for help, those you can still speak, and the man from the entry team is moments from his death. I turn to him first.
'You have done your duty. You have taken time from this daemon and stopped him from fully passing over. Good job, someone is coming to help you.'
He smiles, tears in his eyes. Then I take his head in my hands and burn it to cinders in a blink of an eye.
The daemon stares at me, and the hostages start crying and begging for help louder.
'You... you lied to him didn't you? These pathetic worms have nothing to do with my delay in fully possessing this vessel!!'
'You're right, they didn't. When your little pet cultists raised the wards we knew they were trying to summon a daemon, so we raised an... inhibition field around this house, in a radius of an entire city block. But it's easier to lay them to rest if they believe they did something right. At least they won't be expecting me to that.' I pointed to the headless man.
The daemon glared at me, full of rage, his fury distorting his face to an even greater extension than before. He starts spewing curses and threats, most of them at my genitalia and what he'll do with my intestines. I'm not listening. I look at each of the hostages in the eye, and tell them the cultists can't hurt them any more. I tell them the daemon is weak and not even half-formed, and after I take care of him, everything will be all right. All they have to do is close their eyes, and I'll take care of everything.
The daemon is still cursing when they close their eyes, and I turn to face him.
'Come at me boy!!! I have feasted of the flesh of puny men like yourself in Hell for centuries!!!'
'Not like me. Never like me.'
His fingers start to grow, until the bones break through the flesh and become a blistered hand with dark talons. He licks then, anticipating my blood on them.
I never gave him the chance.
I focus the fire into a ball, enveloping me, spinning, faster and faster, growing larger and larger. The daemon realises, too late, what I am going to do.
I lied to the hostages like I lied to the soldier, myself being the only thing I planned to come out of this alive.
He throws himself at the flames, stretching his talons as far as he can, trying to pierce through. His arm goes up in flames, his talons turned to ash the moment they touch the fire. His screams of rage and frustration fill the entire floor.
The fire within listens and lashes and rages against my control. It wants to burn him, to feed on his flesh and burn his bones unto ash.
I can't lose control. Never. And it rages even more, knowing my denial of giving in. But I control the fire, it is my weapon. I do not fear it, for to fear it is to give it control over myself. Control over myself would be the death of my being. Fear is the mind-killer.
I expand the fireball, encompassing the entire floor. The hostages die quickly enough not to feel pain. I take a few moments with the daemon. Being a daemon, it is naturally resistant to fire, but even that does not save him from my fire. Pure and old, nothing is immune to it except it's wielder.
I burn him piece by piece, his screams passing from rage and frustration to agony and despair. By the time I'm done, the entire top floor of the house is engulfed in a small fire tornado, myself in the eye of the storm. I shut it off, slowly at first, then a hard stop, cutting the flow of fire around me.
I leap to the street at the same time the daemon's corpse lands, completely charred. I wanted to burn him into nothing, and I could, but orders are, when a daemon tries to possess someone with the inhibition field on, to take him out but preserve the body, so Haephestus and Athena's boys and girls in R&D can see if they can find something that can permanently stop the bastards from possessing.
The security teams seems shocked for a moment, then start cleaning up the scene for the R&D guys. Krant comes over to me asking what happened to the men and the hostages.
'Your men died in an ambush, but bought us time. Thanks to them, the daemon didn't have the time to fully possess his vessel. The hostages were all used as sacrifice, there was no saving them Krant.'
'I see sir. Thank you.' And with that he left to coordinate his men. He'll be a good commander someday, I'll have to classify my report so he never finds out what I did. No need to have a good man in the field second guessing himself.
I take a last look at the whole scene, then turn around and walk away. I put a smoke into my mouth and let it fire itself up. The fire is still too active, so I let it burn the tobacco inside. It's a good way to let it out, it burns the smoke completely, so I never inhale it, and also warns me if I'm losing control.
I look at the sky. Looks like it's going to rain. It would feel nice, wash all the stench from that business back there. Either way, when I get back to the barracks, I'm taking a shower, drinking a beer and getting a few hours of sleep. Mourning will be a bitch... recruitment for my team to handle this kinda of jobs starts early.
E é tudo. Por agora. Opiniões são bem-vindas.
EDIT: algumas correcções no material escrito aqui =P
