Aldacha shook his head and turned away from the view out of the western side of the guard tower, a structure made of gravelly, flaking concrete stained brown where the iron struts and braces were exposed to the elements. "There's nothing out there you paranoid fool."
He turned to Issot, the other soldier on guard duty in the single tower near the gate as he pulled a packet of cigarettes out of the top pocket of his uniform shirt. The other man moved the spotlight across the foggy field outside the base, over the muddy road, and to the edge of the nearby forest.
"I swear I saw something moving out there." He squinted and adjusted his glasses in an attempt to try and see through the thick mist that rolled in from the forest. "Have you ever seen it do that?" There was a nervous tension in his voice.
"Do what?" Aldacha said around the cigarette between his lips as he fumbled for the box of matches in his pants pocket. "The mist" Issot said without turning around. "It's just rushing in from the forest like a wave. I’ve never seen it this thick before." He turned and frowned as Aldacha stuck a match and lit his cigarette. "Those things are gonna kill you, you know."
Aldacha grinned and inhaled a lungful of smoke and blew it out without taking the cigarette from his mouth. "They haven’t proved cigarettes are bad for you. Besides," He took another draw as he moved back to the tower's view of the forest. "Everyone's gotta die from something, right? Wow, that fog is really weird."
The mist rolled in from the forest like a grey silent tide, waves of moisture soundlessly undulated across its surface to mutely lap at the base's walls. Aldacha shuddered and took another deep draw on his cigarette as the ambient temperature dropped three degrees. Issot removed his wire-frame glasses and wiped the sudden thick condensation off the lenses.
Aldacha suddenly stopped moving, holding dead still as he stared at the edge of the forest, the 60 meters distance between the wall of concrete and the wall of trees made to feel longer by the obscuring effect of the fog. He thought he could make out a dim figure at the edge of the forest.
It stood perfectly still, in the shadow of a medium-sized willow, the dangling fronds hung straight down and broke up its shape, but he could still make out where the head was, that would an arm lifted to rest the hand on the twisted, knotted trunk. He thought he sensed rather than saw an imperceptible shift in the shadowy for that might or might not have been a man standing under a willow.
"It's looking at us," Issot said, having put the glasses back on and moved next to Aldacha. He reached for the spotlight, and just as his fingers touched the handle, the bright globe made a muffled tink-pop with a flash of blinding illumination and then went dark. Aldacha squinted and rubbed his eyes, as he tried to restore his night vision. When he again opened them and looked out he saw dozens of silent dark figures moving through the mist for the wall’s gate in a slow implacable procession.
He turned to his fellow guardsman, his order to sound the klaxon dying on his lips as he saw the grimace on Issot’s face – and the wide crimson crescent across his throat as thick, bright arterial blood pumped down his neck and soaked his grey uniform shirt. Aldacha turned in panic as he began to run for the door of the watchtower and call the alarm vocally, but then the world twisted and spun disorientingly and he found himself unable to command his body. The world stopped spinning as his face hit the concrete floor and his mouth gulped for air as he tried to breathe.
He finally realized why he couldn’t breathea few eternity-spanning fractions of a second later when a body fell into his skewed view of the watchtower floor, blood spewing from the severed stum that used to be his neck. A pair of timeworn standard issue Dravidian army boots stepped in the pooling blood as they came into his view, and the figure squatted down in front of him. It’s appearance added to his already unsurmountable horror as it’s ghastly appearance became the last thing his fading sight would behold. It wore what looked like an outdated Dravidian infantry uniform that was stained and half-rotted, much like the pallid grey flesh of the man occupying the uniform. There were ragged, diseased wounds surrounded by purple bruises all over the body and he noticed the left arm had ragged chunks missing from it as the offending limb reached out for his hair and moved his line of sight up to it’s decaying visage. One eye socket was nothing but a ragged mess, but from the other bruised socket glared something from a madman’s nightmares. A firy yellow pupil burned inside a crimson iris, like an ember of firey malice from out of hell. Dirty wet red locks of matted hair hung over the face at the apparition leant down to whisper the last words second private Emir Alsacha would ever hear in his life.
“Everyone’s gotta die from something, right?”
Adric stood up from squatting in front of the guardsman’s head and turned his illusion-enhanced features to face the hashishiyun woman as she wiped her short sword off on the other dead guardsman’s shirt. “Go and unlock the gate for the others. Remember to tell them to move and fight as quietly as possible. And please tell them to not ham it up with zombie shambling. This isn’t some B grade horror flick.” Stoat nodded and walked out of the small room.
Omsula Emzir could not believe what he was seeing or hearing. Everywhere he looked there was a new horror to behold. What could only be the bodies of long dead soldiers moved silently throughout the compound, shooting, stabbing, and bludgeoning his comrades to death. The living soldiers had tried fighting back, but when they fired their weapons, the bullets had seemed to have no effect on the apparitions as they steadily, implacably advanced on the soldiers and run them through or shot them with rust and dirt grimed weapons.
It was a rout. Worse, it was an unholy slaughterhouse. A new terror gripped Omsula when he saw a tall feminine figure stride in through the gaping wall gate. She stood probably 7 and a half feet tall, and her skin was a deep blue-purple shade under the moonlight. Blue-black midnight hair whipped and swirled around her head in a raging tempest of terrifying tresses. In each of her four arms she held a weapon. A saber, a sickle, a mace, and a Morningstar. She was practically naked, her tall sensuous body was clothed only in a light gauzy material that fluttered lazily in a breeze that disturbed neither the mist flowing in from outside the gate not the hair or clothes of the soldiers within, living or dead. Her only other adornments was an intricate headdress with silent tiny bells that moved and noiselessly bumped against her forhead and a belt around her waist, from which hung three grisly accessories. Two severed heads and a hand, still dripping blood that looked black in the low moonlight. Her face would have been the perfect example of stunningly exotic Dravidian beauty, were it not for her impossibly gaping mouth and the 5 inch tounge that snaked from it, a forked tip flickering and tasting the air.
Omsula began stuttering prayers he hadn’t said since he’d joined the army at the sight of Khan’li, mythical goddess of war and fertility made flesh before him. A soldier stumbled to glose to the four-armed giantess, and she swiftly swung the wickedly curved scimitar and took the man’s head off in one expert swipe. Night-blackened blood sprayed from the the neck stump as the body fell, and the dark, slick substance spattered across the face and breasts of the ferocious creature.
She turned fathomless black eyes on Omsula as the last of his comrades died, and she began to advance on him. He stumbled over a dead friend’s body and could only stare and attempt to stammer any prayers that mentioned Khan’li She moved toward him with a sleek, feline grace as the dead soldiers finished off the last living man. As this terrifying apparition towered above him, he felt a warm wetness dampen his slacks, but fear blocked any shame he might feel.
She leaned down toward him, and he could smell the coppery sweet scent of fresh blood on her breath. His vision began to dim as terror forced him into shock. Before he could pass out a series of jumbled images spiraled through his mind, accompanied by a voice that sounded both darkly sensuous as warm poison and dry and raspy as the midday desert.
Remember your brothers’ deaths. And your Emperor’s sins for which they died.
The images were of a quiet temple-city surrounded by mountains, people cowering at two bright flashes of light lit the dusk scene up brighter than midday. Bodies blacken and are blasted to dust before his eyes and two great towering clouds of ash, smoke, and fire rise into the clouds, topped by billowing mushroom-shaped caps.
Dravidia has forgotten the Old Ways, forgotten her Gods, and committed a great sin against this Holy Nation. We return to give your sinful nation the fruit ashes and ruin that thou has sown.
As he blacked out, Khan’li delivered one final message.
Tell them all.
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