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VEDMAK
The stone walls of the mountain stronghold stretch up into the night sky. These cows have lived in conceited safety for far too long. Their belief in some paltry god cannot protect them from me. But it isn’t for my own pleasure that we will sack their sanctuary. No, it’s because this place is important to her and I know she’ll hear of it.
The newest additions to my army of Einherjar, driven by the Alchemist’s latest concoction of Red Mist, shuffle in adrenaline-fueled anticipation at the foot of the peak. The miniaturized nuclear powerplant I had constructed accelerated the screening process for dushi like mine pure, driven toward the one truth. Though the ratio of dushi to whining, sad, pacifist sheep-like souls is still poor, in less than six months I have been able to harvest enough to build this army of several hundred adult, Gracile-bound warriors and grow another thousand youngling shells ready to accept my brethren. Still, I need more to secure my triumph, and grow impatient. So, tonight, we slake our thirst for blood; another piece knocked from the chessboard in this war.
This is no victory, Vedmak. Unarmed Vestals? The cutting down of innocent women? You’ve become good at that, my Gracile demon says. You’re only doing this because you’re bored and petty. What a sad little imposter you are.
His tone has grown in volume and confidence over these months. Demitri’s mouth has not stopped running day or night.
“Innocent? These braying donkeys spout off about love in the name of a god that does not exist.” I spit on the snow-laden ground.
Demitri scoffs. You’re a monster in the bedroom of a scared child. But all children soon grow up. And the children of Etyom will rise against you. Murdering these Vestals will only elicit the rage of the Logosians. They’ll come for you. Or maybe I should summon that Creed to beat the stuffing out of you once more. He laughs, coarse and remorseless.
“Be silent, stupid kozel.”
If you’re so powerful, force me. Oh, but that’s right. You can’t, can you? Demitri’s voice is cold and mocking. Every damn stim the Alchemist tried didn’t work did it? You’re stuck with me. And the beauty of being trapped in this place of endless dark is that I never need to sleep. In this place, time is irrelevant. But you—trapped in my body—are bound by the laws of the physical world. How long has it been since you slept, Vedmak? Weeks? Months? Stimmed to the eyeballs, afraid of letting go.
“Enough of this.” I turn the valve screw another quarter inch, letting yet more Red Mist filter in through the breathing apparatus. The lungs sting, the muscles of this body tensing in anticipation of the violence yet to come.
That’s not going to help you much. What did you say to me once? Can’t outrun your shadow.
Killing these Vestals will help. Yes, a worthy distraction. Flaying these mindless sheep and silencing their lies will bring me peace. I clang the metal of my unfired scythe against the thick steel of the sword-like blade that now adorns the stump of an arm. It is an efficient, if not barbaric implement of war.
My Einherjar roar long and loud, their own weapons enflaming; maces, swords, and double-bladed axes setting the cloudless night sky aflame with the glow and crackle of blue plasma. “Var-dø-ger! Var-dø-ger!” Their chant echoes in the cracks and crevices of the mountain the Vestals of the Word call home.
A lone figure appears in the open spire window, peering out at those who will deliver her death. She screams and turns to flee, but a plasma bolt strikes her true and her body evaporates in a puff of ash. Her scream is brief and horrible.
“Glorious!” I yell. “Attack!”
The Einherjar charge the stone footsteps leading up to the heavy double doors.
Yet these feet will not move.
I scream again, willing this shell to capitulate. The muscles burn and feel as if they will tear.
You might command your army to do this, Vedmak, but you won’t enjoy it. Not one single moment, Demitri says as if through imaginary gritted teeth.
“You damn fool,” I shout aloud and give the valve to the Red Mist a full turn.
The legs struggle to obey and, though weighed down as if wearing lead chainmail, I trudge forward. By the time I’ve reached the top, Merodach has used a long, plasma broad sword to hack flaming gashes into the hardwood doors. Another swing and burned splinters explode from the portal, shattering across my mask. With a mighty grunt, Merodach kicks into the barricade, the door cracking and splitting.
“Again,” I shout.
Merodach snorts. Rearing back, the thick muscles of his leg coil. The heel of his boot lands with a satisfying crack against the joint. Bursting inwards, the doors swing wide in a spray of splinters.
We stream through, pouring into the torch-lit corridors.
“Leave nothing in your wake!” I shout.
The Einherjar power off into the temple, kicking in the doors of praying women and cutting them down. The Vestals are dragged from their rooms—the pretty ones are raped and left to bleed, the old and useless are beheaded on the spot. There will be no mercy for these cows.
A veiled woman streaks past and I swing my scythe first, followed by my stump-sword. But my attempt is slow and clumsy, the blades never coming close. She runs as fast as her cumbersome attire will allow, only to be seized by Merodach. He lifts her and smashes her skull into the wall, painting it in her blood, then tosses her lifelessly down a twisting set of steps.
Was that a miss, Vedmak? Such a shame.
“Quiet, kozel,” I demand and shove off toward the steps. “Down. Go down. They’re hiding in the bowels of this place.”
Without a force to stop them, my Einherjar cut through the religious zealots with little effort. Yet my blade tastes no blood. Every swing, every thrust of my scythe is evaded as if I were telegraphing my intent long in advance. Each time, the crimson-clothed vermin are picked off by one of my Gracile soldiers.
I told you.
“Damn you, Gracile!”
Merodach shoots a quizzical stare and, without breaking his gaze, casually lops off the head of yet another woman. Her disfigured corpse slumps to the ground. He lets his glare linger before stomping off into the last tunnel. I make chase, lumbering along behind as fast as these damned limbs will allow.
The final door is thrust open.
Inside, five or six Vestals kneel on the floor encircling something. They pray in whispers to a false god who will not save them. Their leader, the Mother Vestal, a young well-made woman, wearing some kind of headpiece, stands in front. One of them breaks her litany, crying out at my coming and runs for the door. I turn the valve screw wide open, letting a maximum dose of the Red Mist filter into the mask, filling the burning tissues of these laboring lungs.
With considerable effort, I manage to grab her by her habit and drag her writhing to the floor. “Yes.” I scream with glee. “My blade will taste your blood.” I raise my scythe above, which crackles and spits blue plasma. Her tear-filled eyes are afire with the reflection of my weapon and the orange light of the torches that fill this room.
“Yeos, save us,” she whispers.
“Damn your false god!” I cry. “I am the Vardøger. I am Death!”
The scythe comes down with all the force I can muster.
“Genrikh, please.”
My attack falters. What did she say?
“Genrikh, don’t do this,” the Vestal says.
But it’s not the Vestal. My wife stares back at me from under the headdress of the habit, her face panicked.
I loosen my grip on the scythe. “Ida? No, no it can’t be.”
“Genrikh, my love, don’t kill me,” she says.
“No, no this isn’t possible,” I shout, scrambling off the woman. “Make it stop.”
Demitri’s laugh is incessant in this skull, growing louder and louder.
The woman clambers to her feet and makes for the door, but Merodach snatches her up by the throat and brings her back to me. The Vestal, who appears exactly as my beloved stares at me, her eyes bulging, her face turning blue through lack of air.
“Please,” she hisses through Merodach’s grip. “Genrikh ...”
I raise the plasma blade high, but it won’t come down.
Merodach’s expectant stare bores holes into me.
What’s the matter, Vedmak? Can’t get it up?
Another scream of frustration pours from these stolen lips, yet still the image of Ida haunts me.
“I will kill you, Demitri.”
Will you now? How exactly? Kill yourself. Destroy my body? Please, be my guest.
Enraged, I turn back to the Mother Vestal. She and her braying sheep will pay.
It may be so but not by your hand, Vedmak.
The Mother Vestal clutches a heavy tome to her chest and appears to pray; her lips moving but no sound issues forth. My soul burns with the desire to cut her limb from limb, but every fiber of this stolen body fights me.
“Reams of paper will not save you,” I hiss.
She slowly opens her defiant eyes, her chin thrust upward. “But it brings a peace you shall never know, demon. Even so, I pray for you—”
Merodach grunts, more urgently than normal.
“What the hell is it?” I snap.
He swings his arm to point behind the huddling Vestals.
I push past them to see. A chuckle erupts from within. “Well, well, well. I would have had no luck, if not for misfortune. And I thought only cockroaches couldn’t be killed.”
Husniya? Oh no.
“The whelp lives,” I say, giving her barely breathing corpse a nudge with my boot. The Musul girl groans. “Her friends abandoned her here for what? Healing?”
“She’s dying,” the Mother Vestal says. “There’s no saving her. Let her pass to the Lightbringer in peace.”
“The Lightbringer?” I say, nearly choking on my own snort. “Those Opor morons brought a Musul girl to the followers of Yeos? The irony. Her pathetic brother will likely kill you for that.”
“Yeos loves all His children. It does not matter by which name the people are known,” the Mother Vestal replies, clutching the tome to her chest even tighter.
Merodach raises a boot to stamp on Husniya’s skull.
No, don’t. I won’t let you kill her.
Fear not, whining child.
I motion to Merodach, halting his attack. His already foul mood at my inability to kill darkens.
“She is more use to me alive. Give her a stabilizer,” I say. “We take her to the Poisons Lab.”
Merodach pulls an autoinjector from his pocket and presses it to Husniya’s neck. The girl moans.
“You can’t have her,” the Mother Vestal insists. She stands stoic, unflinching. A slight twitching at the corner of her mouth, the only tell of the fear in her heart. “If you take this girl, the one you fear will come to stand against you, bearing the light.”
I force this body to lurch forward, seizing the mother Vestal by her robes. “She is nothing. I have defeated that insolent Logosian whore at every turn. She cannot—she will not defy me.” I shove the Vestal back and turn from the wretch, the fire of my life force burning in a white-hot, all consuming, fury. A few heavy-footed steps toward the door and I stop by Merodach’s side. “Leave them alive to tell of what we did here. Let it be a battle cry. But burn the book. Leave no comfort. Then bring the Musul cockroach.”
Merodach nods, though apparently frustrated at not being able to finish his slaughter of these women.
I turn back long enough to see him seize the Vestal by the neck, her feet kicking and fingers clawing at his thick hands. The tome clunks to the floor. There’s a wonderful shriek, long and sustained, followed by the unmistakable smell of burning paper and flesh as the doors close behind me.
Fenrir, one of my better soldiers, runs up in the dark corridor, his blood-covered armor clanking. “Vardøger, you must come. You must see.”
“What is it, boy?”
“There’s something, like nothing I’ve ever seen, coming from Zopat—from the lab.”
I follow Fenrir back to the spire window and search the sprawling horizon. Logos, broken and burned, lies stretched out below. Vel, its secrets now spilled, sits on the hill to the east. And beyond Baqir, in the North, the bright lights of Zopat seem to once again burn brightly. But it is not Zopat. A large, glowing dome of green fire rises from the ground.
Yes. The door is open. More of my brethren will come.
