"I..." The masked being said cautiously. "I saw a vision... Of Crinnan or... the Demon as he is now called. Does this mean he lives?"
Eon remained silent. He was resolute to give the being no comfort, no hope. He watched him frustratedly fidget in his chair and then relax.
"No matter then." He said after realizing he would not receive an answer. "Suppress me, tuck me away. Imprison me in my own fucking body again. It doesn't matter. I won't make it out of this alive anyway." He rattled his chains out of anger and then waited.
Eon's swarm surrounded him and entered into his body through his exposed ears. The being lurched for a moment and clenched his fists as a freezing cold feeling shot through his spine.
It happened quickly, he had control one moment and in the blink of an eye it was all lost. The being watched as the locks on the chains disengaged and fell to the floor and then felt his body stand. He watched as Eon lifted his hands and examined them and then heard himself laugh a laugh that he did not create.
"Be still, Rubaan." Eon said. "Your Saviour is home now."
Chapter 4: Part One
The Demon IV
22nd of Ramlia - 346 AG
14:00 - Belhaasi Weald
"Behold!" Sage proclaimed, carrying in his arms a white linen wrapped parcel. "One of the blades that your father wielded in the Exgrane Liberation Wars." He presented the package to Crinnan and stepped back to watch him unwrap the package.
Crinnan pulled the linen off the weapon, revealing an oiled, single edged saber with a gold and blue basket hilt pommel. He held the weapon by the handle and turned it over in his hand a few times, examining it.
"This is Govian." Crinnan said, glaring up at Sage. "Not a weapon my father would have carried."
"Yet it was in his hand when General Hralsta was assaulted." An exaggerated look of false surprise spread over Sage's white face. "Perhaps this is a detail I have overlooked for two decades now... perhaps your father, Govian blade in hand, stormed the tent of the mighty General Hralsta in full Black Knight regalia only to deceive. I should say I fear the worst dear boy, I worry your father may be an agent of the Govian Empire!"
Crinnan stared blankly at Sage's ridiculous grin and shook his head, dismissing his foolishness. He looked back down at the sword and returned it to its scabbard. He clipped it around his waist and looked to the obnoxious, yet mysteriously powerful Elf.
"I am ready to leave." He said, "I need to return to my squad."
"Your squad, yes." Sage said, nodding. "Century Squad, no?"
"Yes." Crinnan said, shifting his weight to his other leg. "How long before you are prepared to leave?"
Sage drummed his fingers on the counter top he was leaning against. He looked at the boy with an inquisitive expression and finally snickered and shook his head.
"Tell me, boy." Sage said, his tone implying he already knew the answer to whatever question he was about to ask. "What do you know of the the Belhaasi Weald?"
"Only that it is in the way of me and my squad." Crinnan replied, crossing his arms. "What more is there to know?"
Sage superciliously shook his head and stood upright. "Much." He said, pointing at Crinnan. "Traversing the Belhaasi Weald will be more than a simple stroll through the woods. There is much to contend with in these forgotten ruins." He stepped around Crinnan, never removing his gaze.
"What then?" Crinnan asked impatiently. "What must a person of my abilities worry themselves with?"
"Your abilities." Sage laughed, shaking his head. "Were they enough for you last time you entered this ancient overgrown city?"
"Last time I was ambushed." Crinnan retorted, "I was on patrol, surrounded... I fought but was bested."
"By whom?" Sage asked.
"Many people." Crinnan replied. It was dark. They were in the trees and I was alone. I killed a few of them I think."
"You were captured by the Toraan." Sage said, "Consider them the Belhaasi version of Canrom's Marauders only more... grotesque.... Had I not found you, your body would surely be in some stage of digestion by now."
Crinnan hummed and nodded his head. "Well thanks then." He said, looking away from his supposed savior. He tried to recall the faces of his attackers but realized he had not seen a single one of them. All he could remember was their stench, the feeling of their blood draining onto his hand, and then a sudden nothing.
"Do not put your trust in your abilities alone." Sage said, leaning on the ruined counter once again. "Find faith in something more, trust in something higher than yourself."
Crinnan groaned and turned around. It was already enough that Sage seemed like an overpowered lunatic of a hermit, but throwing the idea of being "evangelized" to while wandering through the ruins of a thousand year old city just seemed like more than he could stomach.
"Who shall I put my faith in if not myself?" Crinnan asked. "Dura'Ana? The Brothers? The moon? Who?"
Sage smiled and winked at the boy. "Me."
Crinnan huffed and started toward the hole in the wall at the front of the house, stepping over one of the dead Govians on his way. "Are we ready?" He asked, holding his hands outward, palms up, "Can we leave now?"
"We are and we can." Sage replied, hopping up from the table he was leaning on. "I suppose I will tidy up once I return. Before we leave, however could I bother you to drag those bodies outside? I would hate to return home to the odor of rotting flesh."
"Can you not simply move them with your... magic shit?" Crinnan asked, glaring at the Elf.
"I could." Sage replied, shrugging his shoulders, "But I should say you killed them. You should move them."
Crinnan sighed and walked over to the body in the center of the room, the one he had shot in the head. He grabbed the soldier by the hands and pulled him backward toward the hole in the wall. He dragged him over the rubble and onto the splintered porch outside.
"Is this far enough?" Crinnan shouted, looking behind him at Sage. Sage shook his head and waved his extended index finger in the direction of the woods.
"Further." Sage replied. "I should say the grass is far enough."
Crinnan huffed again and dragged the Govian down the two stairs that led to the lawn. "I should say that you are a fucking idiot." Crinnan said under his breath as he tossed the body into the grass. He dusted off his hands and looked back up into the house where he saw Sage laughing softly to himself. Had he heard him?
The dead body of the Govian whose face mask Crinnan had shot through floated through the air out the hole in the wall and past where Crinnan stood. Crinnan watched silently for a moment and then turned his head over to Sage who remained unmoving, leaned at his place against the splintered counter. He wore an expression that indicated he was bemused by Crinnan's reaction.
"One left." Sage said, pointing to the Govian whose throat Crinnan had slit. "Get him out and then I should say it will be time to depart."
Hurriedly, Crinnan clamored inside and took hold of the dead Govian's arm. He began to drag the soldier but stopped when he noticed something clutched in the Govian's hand. He dropped the body and knelt down next to it.
Curiously, Crinnan took hold of the soldiers wrist and pried his fingers open. A piece of crumpled, glossy paper fell from his hand and into the blood that had pooled on the floor. Crinnan carefully snatched the paper up and unfolded it.
The paper was a photograph, it showed an image of the soldier Crinnan had killed but in civilian clothing. He wore a red collared shirt and denim pants and was knelt next to a brown haired boy who looked no older than four or five years old.
"Stupid fuck." Crinnan said, tossing the photograph onto the Govian's chest. He shook his head, feeling pity for the Govian and his son. "You fought your emperor's war and died a sorry death. You failed your child."
A violent wave of vertigo overcame Crinnan. He lost his balance and crashed forward, barely having enough time to catch himself from falling into the blood pool beneath him. His spine felt cold, as if it were made of ice and for a moment his
whole body went numb. He lost his strength and as his eyes rolled into the back of his head, he fell on top of the stiff Govian body beneath him.
"Da, why!" Crinnan heard the voice of a young boy wail. "Don't leave me and Mama again, you promised you would be home a long time!"
He saw a young brown haired boy, the one from the picture he had found on the dead Govian. He looked around some more and realized he was standing in the living room of a Govian house. It was the type he had seen in pictures, clean, nicely painted and comfortably furnished with a plush red couch and television. He looked directly at the boy but the boy seemed to not notice him.
"Da has to do his job." Crinnan heard the voice of an adult male say. The Govian he had killed walked into view, not wearing civilian clothes like in the picture but instead outfitted in the combat armor he had died in. He too seemed oblivious to Crinnan's presence.
"I need to catch a bad person, someone who wants to hurt us." The Govian continued, kneeling down and scooping his son up into his arms. "I'm doing this because it's my job to take care of you and of my country... Da is going to help get all the bad people out of the world so that all little boys and girls can be happy and live good lives like you do."
"I just want you, Da." The child said, "Other boys and girls have their own Das to save them."
"Not all of them do." The Govian said, tenderly stroking the boys hair with his gloved hand. "Some need my help, some need me to save them from the bad people... so that they do not turn into bad people too."
The child was silent. Crinnan watched him nod his head and saw his lower lip quiver. His father patted his head and walked toward the door.
"What is this?" Crinnan asked as the images of the "vision" faded. It seemed to be swept away as if it were only dust in the wind and left Crinnan standing confused in darkness.
"My fucking memory." An unexpected voice replied. The voice sounded sullen, broken and highly irritated. Crinnan turned around to find the owner of the voice but found nobody.
"Who are you?" Crinnan asked, disturbed by the situation he found himself in. "What's going on?"
"I was hoping you could tell me." The voice replied. "And as for who I am... you cut my throat earlier... you killed me. You.. watched me die."
Crinnan jerked his body awake and crawled backward into Sage's arms. Sage held him tight, patting the confused soldier's shoulders and whispering that it was okay.
"Let me go!" Crinnan shouted, ripping his body from Sage's grasp. Crinnan panted heavily and wiped the sweat from his brow. As he got to his feet, he looked around and verified that he had returned to reality. Sage stared at him and shook his head.
"Which one of them did you meet?" Sage asked softly. Crinnan looked over at the Elf and shook his head.
"Is this... a thing then?" Crinnan asked, pointing to the soldier with the slit throat. "Whatever this even is?"
"Everything is something I should say." Sage replied, "But yes... what you are experiencing is indeed a thing."
Crinnan rubbed his forehead and sighed. His eyes wandered to dead soldier whose memories he had just seen and back to Sage. "So what do I do?"
"Worrying about it will not change what you have become." Sage replied. "Right now I should say we need focus only on the task at hand; returning you where you belong."
Crinnan shook his head and looked away from the dead soldier. He watched as the body lifted into the air, spilling more blood onto the floor, and floated out the door with the others, Sage's doing no doubt. Sage looked at him and pursed his lips together.
"Things will not be the same for you." He said, standing to his feet. "You had a brush with death and it changed you. Your life will never be as it once was..." He paused for a moment and turned to look out into his lawn. "Forgive me." He continued, "I fear I am manifesting more questions than answers and for that I am sorry. For now, let us venture forth into the Belhaasi Weald."
Sage stepped outside and Crinnan followed. His mind hurt, everything he was experiencing was weighing heavily on him. He had no idea what to think of the vision or whatever it was that he had seen, was afraid of Sage and the reign he had on his abilities, and was worried about returning home.
"The Belhaasi Weald was not always the molded forest of ruins you see now." Sage said as the two neared the treeline. Crinnan looked back, and up at the single tree that towered over Sages home. It looked healthy, strong... out of place.
"After the city of Belhaas was leveled by the forces of the Church in the early stages of the war, nothing was supposed to be able to live here for quite some time." Sage continued. "Belhaas was headquarters to many members of the Alliance of Corporations, those who stood against the power of the church, any many great corporate leaders died that day... what the Church did not anticipate, and probably did not care about, was the survival of the experiments."
Sage and Crinnan crossed the treeline and stepped into a dense forest with trees that stood tall and blotted out the sun. Many of them were tangled and misshapen from their poor growing conditions, some had gray trunks while others had brown. Crinnan crossed all manner of shapes and sizes of leaves, some as small as a coin, others as large as he. The floor was littered with layers of the decomposing leaves and fallen tree trunks. What Crinnan found interesting though, was the ruins.
It had been a thousand years or so since the bombs fell on Belhaas yet many buildings, while dilapidated and taken over by vines and trees, still stood. The Ancient Steele that the frames of the buildings and automobiles were made of held true to its reputation in the sense that it didn't rust or corrode and while the concrete walls of the buildings were mostly crumbled or crumbling Crinnan was able to get a sense of how the city was laid out.
The asphalt roads had all but crumbled leaving behind the steele rebar frames. Leaves and dirt mostly covered the frames and filled the holes between them but occasionally Crinnan would catch a glimpse of the rebar peaking through. What Crinnan found interesting was the mostly unmolested black shining divider that ran down the center of all the streets and stood nearly as high as his waist.
"Nanomachine technology had a rather chaotic infancy, I should say." Sage said as the two crunched their way through the dead leaves. "The 'experiments' that a few of the corporations in the AOC had were nearly all underground, safely locked away from the public and thus safely locked away from the bombs and from the... undead results of the chemical weapons... Eventually they escaped and somehow survived the fallout and the regenerating undead. These ruins ultimately became their city."
Crinnan heard what Sage was saying but did not make an effort to acknowledge his words. As he drudged his way through the ruins he found that his thoughts were too lost on the vision that he had had. He could not help but wonder if it was some kind of weird dream induced by fatigue or the drugs that Sage had pumped into him or if he had actually spoken to the person he had killed. The thought of it all did not settle well with him.
"They are around, the Toraan." Sage continued, "They are constantly hunting, watching and silently waiting. While some are peaceful little monsters, most are not so I should say you need to be on your guard... be mindful of the undead as well. The NaNe has adapted to the parasite in their bodies and has kept both parasite and host alive for one thousand years. Those of them that have survived this long are much more than the mindless, shambling ghouls they once were."
"I will stay on alert then." Crinnan said, half mumbling. "I do not intend on finding myself captured again."
"As you should not." Sage replied as he stepped on what Crinnan surmised was an ancient decayed jawbone. Sage cringed for a moment but did not slow his stride.
"That could have belonged to anyone." He said, speaking his thoughts aloud. "Perhaps an associate of my ancestors? I should say this city is littered with the remnants of those that once lived."
"Those that once lived."
Sage's words rang through Crinnan's head, further fueling the unsettling flames that had earlier been ignited in his mind
. He remembered the vision of the boy, the son of the being he had slaughtered earlier that day, the innocence and sadness in his eyes. Crinnan thought of the boy pleading with his father to remain home and recalled the same fear that had once been his own, the fear of knowing his own parents lived a life of danger and may never come home.
Crinnan felt a cold jolt shoot down his spine and it threw him off balance for a moment. A strange and curious feeling of sorrow seemed to slowly envelop his own emotions. Crinnan thought the sensation odd for he himself did not feel the emotion of sorrow itself, but more so he felt the presence of sorrow.
Sage watched as Crinnan stepped off balance again and paused for a moment to watch him lean his shoulder up against a tree. His curiosity led him to let out a hum and he walked over to the being that seemed only a boy to him. Standing before him, he grabbed each of his shoulders and slowly eased him to the ground. By then, Crinnan had begun to sweat from his brow.
"I should say I would like to know what seems to be plaguing you, dear boy." Sage said, kneeling next to Crinnan, who had his face buried in his hands. "You are not well."
"I do not know." Crinnan replied between heavy breaths. His spine felt icy cold and the feelings of sorrow and vertigo were making it hard for his own thoughts to manifest. He felt the vertigo overcome him once again and as his eyes rolled back into his head, he crashed to the ground of the Belhaasi Weald.
***
Darkness surrounded him in all directions, nothing was visible as far as he could see and not a sound was to be heard in that moment. Crinnan felt as though he was standing on something solid but he could not even see his own feet.
"Again?" He asked, feeling both scared and annoyed. He sighed and crossed his arms. "Why does this keep happening?"
"Hello?" A voice replied, echoing through the darkness like a ripple in the water. "Hello is it you?"
"Who?" Crinnan replied, "Who are you?" Crinnan was met with momentary silence. He could see nobody but he could once again feel the air of sorrow he had experienced earlier.
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