The Warrior's Beckoning

by Patrick Howard

  The administrator turned to the Survivor. “I’ll need you stationed here in case it gets this far. You’ll be our last-ditch effort to hold it at bay.” He stood a few feet in front of the three pads.

  “It seems to have taken a keen interest in me,” I said. I looked at Daniel.

  “Maybe it’s tracking the book.” Daniel removed the logbook from his robe and tossed it to me.

  “I’ll return to the tunnel system and distract it,” I said.

  “Good idea.” The administrator turned to the others. “There will be another entity converging on us. It is very powerful.”

  “The big monster that wiped out my team? We took it down,” said the squad leader.

  “No, you merely slowed it down. It reforms, drawing its energy from the darkness of the forest. It is the spawn of hatred,” said the administrator.

  “I’ll keep it busy,” the squad leader said.

  “I’m with you,” said the other soldier.

  “No.” The squad leader placed his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Stay here and aid in the defense.” He headed for the elevator.

  Joel and Rick also stayed behind to defend the compound. Time was short. I joined the squad leader in the elevator. We were both silent as the elevator ascended to the surface. What could we say? The two of us were going to play decoy in situations that seemed impossible. We would be up against two entities of vast power and knew we had little chance of overcoming them. We would face them nonetheless.

  Daniel’s Sacrifice

  THE GLASS CYLINDER closed around me as I awaited what I could only assume was certain death. I would step into the unknown. Perhaps there was a song or a poem that could adequately define the situation, but personally, I found more comfort in the Word. I thought of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon said that both the foolish and the wise would fall into darkness; we all face the same fate. An energy flowed around me, and I began to lose myself. I looked at my hands and saw a transparent image of myself appear. My body grew numb, and I felt as though I was slipping into a dream—one from which I would never awaken. That was me: wise enough to grasp the sacrifice required, yet foolish enough to step forward.

  Reality faded before me, and I slipped into a void. A pulsing stream of light stretched through the center of the void, like a tunnel of light, piercing the fabric of space and time. It all seemed so fluid…light piercing dark, me flowing in a stream of light. All tactile feeling left me; I was now separate from the physical reality I had known. Echoes circulated the void, growing ever near. A cry rang out—the cry of battle? Was I already hearing the sound of someone facing down a tide of hatred, a battle I would soon enter?

  The scene drew near. I could feel it now. The Scribe had no fear of the fog that pursued him. He found sanctuary in knowing the Lord. He was a man consumed by the cold unseen, yet fulfilled by warmth. There were forces at work other than evil.

  I come in his name.

  The Scribe had taken his own life, limiting the entity’s power. Still it took his body; still it struck down his protectors. With no strength remaining, the knights leaned upon their swords and staffs, shoved into the ground, to await death with honor. The new entity opened its hidden mouth, and a wave of its cold fog roared toward the knights, enveloping them. It entered their bodies, freezing them from the inside. They shook, and they trembled, but they made no sound. Their very life essences were being frozen, yet they refused to cry out. Nor did they curse the Lord they had served so valiantly. Amazing…

  The last knight crumpled to the ground, his skin gray and cold. The sages stood over the fallen knights. The entity inside the Scribe’s body paused, as if sensing my approaching presence. The sages reacted similarly as I entered the Scribe’s possessed corpse.

  At first it felt as if I had awakened from a long slumber. Then the cold set in. The entity did not react suddenly but slowly, seemingly not viewing me as a threat.

  “What’s this? Another soul for me to devour?” it said in a distant echo.

  “No,” I said. It felt so strange to share a single body, yet to possess two different voices and thought patterns. “I have come to fight you.”

  The entity laughed. “You? You are no match for my power,” the entity said mockingly. “Wait…have you been sent here from another time? Ah, the future, yes. So you have seen what I am capable of, yet you are not afraid? You are either very vain or very foolish.”

  “I am neither. I am faithful and loyal, and that gives me courage. To fear something is to grant it power. You have no power over me,” I said.

  The entity scoffed. “Enough!” it shouted. “I will send you back into the void for all eternity!” With that, the entity drew in the energy of all its slain minions. As its power grew, I began to drift, my anchor loosed by its surge of hatred and sorrow, a force beyond any one man. The sages focused the last of their energy, drawing what they could from their fallen knights, and their staffs released a bright light into the waves of darkness. Their energy flowed into the Scribe’s corpse and was channeled into me.

  No, one man could not resist the entity. And if one be overcome, the two shall stand against him, and a threefold cord shall not be quickly broken. Ecclesiastes. We were united threefold—the knights, the sages, and the scribes—against this entity. The entity’s hold on the body was slipping, and its rage grew.

  The knights were still there. I could feel them—their spirits, their strength. The entity’s rage burned as its power diminished, like fire without oxygen. What would happen to me? The fog surrounding the body began to fade, and my skin—my skin now—returned to normal. The last remnants of the entity’s cold soul faded from me and formed into a whirlwind, spiraling into the sky. The dark shadows that it controlled joined with it, the mass swirling faster and faster, tightening in on itself until…nothing.

  The fog and shadow vanished into the night, leaving behind only the full moon. The stars…so numerous! So glorious! The sages looked at me in wonder and then turned their gaze toward the light that surrounded the fallen knights. The knights’ skin regained color, and their chests rose and fell with life. They stood, swords and shields ready, but the enemy was nowhere to be seen.

  I looked down at the white toga that clothed my body. The chest of the toga was red, drenched in blood. The knife fell free, and the puncture sealed itself. I was alive, yet so far from the life I had known. I began to sing a song that I had not known before. Had the Scribe written it?

  Unravel the mystery of me,

  The key embedded in me.

  What is it to be?

  This call I answer,

  This path I venture,

  What is it that I see?

  Who is it that I hear?

  In this nightmare I have known

  In the past I run from

  Unravel the mystery of me,

  The key embedded in me.

  What is to come?

  The past I explore,

  How do I move forward?

  Is it I that holds me back?

  Who do I wait for?

  The Savior I look to

  In the battle I run to

  Unravel the mystery of me,

  The key embedded in me.

  Who am I to question the struggles I have known?

  Am I to understand this plan you have woven?

  The will that I follow by your unseen hand

  Unravel the mystery of me,

  The key embedded in me.

  In the final victory,

  Will you be waiting for me?

  This Savior

  I accept the Lord that I kneel to.

  Unravel the mystery of my salvation,

  Your Word embedded in me.

  There was a mystery about all that had happened, and it stretched well beyond my understanding.

  One of the sages spoke. “You are the one we have waited for.” He made a motion to the sky with his staff. “One of wisdom and faith who would come, sent by God from another age, to take this body.”
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  “How did you know?” I asked. I followed his motion with my gaze.

  “Gabriel empowered us with a message. The Holy Spirit empowered us for battle,” the other sage replied.

  “Was it a dream? The message, I mean?” I asked. I studied my new body.

  The sages nodded.

  “I, too, was a part of a team assembled by a singular dream…in another time, another place. The rest is up to them now.” It all seemed to be leading to something. But what?

  David’s Sacrifice

  I WATCHED AS Daniel’s body fell to a slump in the chamber. Then my chamber closed, and energy crackled around me. I found myself somewhere between reality and a dream; my body became numb, and everything went black. A rift into a black void opened above me, and I was pulled into it. Darkness was everywhere. A light, nigh and fast, formed before me and shot through the void, pulling me deeper. Perhaps I should have felt fear, yet I was at peace. I was a soldier, and it had always been my duty to face danger in the place of others, to fight in their stead to keep them safe. Darkness has always awaited me, and light has always carried me.

  The void shaped itself around the light into a tunnel. A scene appeared at the end of the stream of light, and I heard the sounds of battle. A sinister laugh echoed through the void. I was not alone. The entity and I were heading into the same battle.

  My instinct was to raise my hands to battle it now, but even as the thought formed, a bolt of energy struck it away.

  The entity laughed. “Well done,” it said. It was a black cloud, a mass of shadow. The shadow and I traveled the rift and loomed over the battlefield. In the distance, deep in the forest, an army of mortals and angels fought fiercely against a massive army of demonic creatures. Below, Ahadiel stood over the bodies of the Warrior and the Destroyer. Ahadiel removed the sword from the Warrior’s body and placed it across the sword on the fallen man’s bloodied chest, folding the lifeless arms across the blade.

  In an instant, I was thrust into the Warrior’s body. The wound healed as I entered. The shadow entity that had shared the rift entered the Destroyer’s body. The power I felt in my body was beyond my words, yet as powerful as he was, the Warrior was not able to achieve victory on his own. Only Jesus could do that.

  “Fighting from victory.” At last I understood what that statement meant. Our victory was assured. All that was required was to sacrifice ourselves. The first warrior had opened the door for me. Standing quickly, I raised my sword. The Destroyer rose, too.

  “My friend, we have been given a chance to partake in something grand,” the Destroyer said to me.

  I remained steadfast and silent.

  “The coming of darkness!” To my amazement, the Destroyer sheathed his sword. “Stand down, Warrior. We will not fight in this time and place. There is another battle coming for us, another time and place where you and I will match swords. But not before.” With that, he turned to enter the dark forest and faded from sight.

  Frank’s Sacrifice

  THE GLASS CYLINDER closed around me, sealing me in. There would be no escape from this. What have I stepped into? Daniel and David appeared dead in their glass prisons, and I awaited my execution—willingly, though it was frightening nonetheless. Knowing that it would merely be the death of my body gave me the courage I needed to hold back the urge to scream.

  Energy had surrounded both Daniel and David, and as their bodies slid to the floor of the chamber, a swirl of energy and light—the rift, I assumed—appeared at the top of their chambers. Now, as I felt myself slipping loose from my body, shedding my old self like shrugging off a coat, I welcomed that same energy sparking around me. I didn’t want to go back. I was not afraid. I could no longer feel my body. As if in a dream, I was pulled into a void, and I saw the body that had been mine sink down against the glass.

  The rift sealed behind me, leaving me in complete darkness…for a moment. Then a light came from below and stretched through the void, carrying me as it went, a bubble moving in a tube of liquid light surrounded by blackness.

  It should have been much more than anyone could handle, yet I was perfectly at peace, even knowing that a scene of terror awaited me at the end of the tunnel. And suddenly, there it was: an altar…a dark mass surrounding a bloody boy…a father restrained by two cloaked figures.

  The Drifter lay sprawled and bloodied in the distance, dead. He had followed the entity to the encampment and, assessing his options, taken his own life, knowing it was necessary. He had always known.

  As I was thrust into his body, I heard the weeping of a mother and daughter. The demon had released his hold on them so he could watch them suffer.

  In my new body, I stood quickly. My legs felt rubbery but young and strong. I picked up the musket from the ground, feeling a strange power within me waiting to be unlocked. I sprinted toward the altar, where the boy’s body had been claimed by a dark mass, transforming him into the creature we battled in the woods. I paused to take careful aim from the edge of the camp. I fired and hit one of the cloaked figures holding the father, who grabbed the falling figure’s hood and yanked him toward his other captor. Their heads met with a loud crack, and both fell.

  “LET HIM PASS!” the creature called out. The cloaked figures trembled at the terrible voice and stepped aside.

  The father grabbed his musket and pistol and ran toward the Drifter—toward me, screaming in fury. “You! You abandoned my son and me to this evil fate!” As he reached my side, he stared in confusion at the slick of blood that drenched my nightshirt and trousers. “Now, when it is too late, how dare you show your face?” the father asked in a saddened voice.

  “I am a different man now,” I said. He shook his head, not understanding. How could he?

  I stared at the creature, wondering how I was meant to stop it. The father was looking at me with equal parts amazement and fear, and I looked down. My hands were glowing. Could that be the strange power I had felt? I raised my right hand and made a fist, and the light fused into a brilliant white ball. Without thinking, I hurled it at the approaching creature. As it struck the encroaching shadow, a shadow mist was released from its form.

  The creature stumbled and snarled. I looked at the father. “Your family was under its control. They have been released now and await you to the south. Go to them.”

  “And my son?”

  “Wait for him. He will be there soon. Run.”

  He scrambled away, and I turned to face the creature again. It charged. It was the same as the first encounter: massive. As I sprinted toward it, it swung its crushing arms at me. I jumped several feet into the air, hurling a ball of light at its chest. Again it roared and stumbled, crushing several of the cloaked figures nearby as it staggered. It charged once more, and I rolled between its legs and threw a ball of light at its back. It pitched forward, shrieking in frustration.

  Yet despite my efforts, the creature barely slowed down. I needed to hold on until the family escaped. As it lunged for me, I jumped onto its head and sent a quick barrage of light orbs into its skull. It roared and thrashed, knocking me to the ground. I rolled and recovered, firing another volley of shots into its face.

  The creature merely laughed. “A commendable effort,” it said. It laughed again.

  I gathered up all my strength and hurled a large ball of white energy into its gaping maw as it laughed. As I did so, a black mist spiraled from its back, unnoticed by the creature. The creature was too busy rearing back to crush me.

  My best was nearly done. Had it been enough?

  Ghost Hunter’s Descent

  THE COLD FOG followed me as I headed toward the tunnels. How long could I evade the entity? Its laughter echoed in my mind or in reality—I couldn’t tell which. I felt a shadow following me. Its cold presence entered the recesses of my mind as I moved stealthily through the forest.

  I reached the husk of the house where my ghost-hunting team had encountered the walking dead. I found Sarah and Joe—their bodies, that is—still and cold. Their skin
was gray, their eyes black.

  What would the entity do to them? Would it turn them into zombie types, too? I shuddered at the thought that I might have to battle my old friends. While I tried to put these dark thoughts out of my mind, I saw a scene, like a memory, play through my thoughts—a glimpse of those who had lived in the house long before:

  A mother in a tight-waisted cotton dress, which reached nearly to the floor, tucked her daughter into a small, white iron bed and pulled the quilts up to her chin.

  “Mommy,” the girl said. “Where’s Daddy?” The girl could not have been older than seven.

  “Daddy is doing his best for us,” her mother said quietly.

  “But where is he?” the girl asked again.

  “In our hearts,” said the mother, kissing her daughter’s cheek gently. “Don’t worry. He won’t abandon us.”

  The two took no notice of my presence in the room. I stood outside the glow of the oil lamp, but I was fairly certain that although the scene was taking place in the mid-1800s, I was standing near them in another time entirely. Nevertheless, I could feel their fear as strongly as if it were my own.

  The scene vanished, and the present-day setting returned. The room remained in a state of decay and sorrow. Two skeletons lay where I’d seen the mother and daughter just moments before—one child-sized set of bones on a rotted mattress and one adult, collapsed over the moth-eaten quilts as though to protect the child. A cold wind entered the crumbling home, followed by the fog, and immediately the mother’s body rose and grabbed me. My heart raced.

  “Please! Find a way to save my daughter!” she pleaded, sobbing. I nodded slowly, trying to back away. How could I bring her back? It seemed well beyond my power.

  “I’ll try, but I don’t know—”

  “Shh!” The mother looked over my shoulder. “He is coming. You must go!” A distant laughter followed. She released me and waved toward a large wardrobe in the dark corner of the room. She disappeared from view as I hid inside. Distant whispers seeped into the wardrobe. The entity had entered and was searching.