"A giant wolf?"
The Priest didn't take took kindly to the answer he was hearing. He grabbed Cassie by the front of her parka and yanked her towards him.
"You knew there was a giant wolf in this mountain and you said nothing?" The Priest shoved her back. "If you think I'm-"
"You have nothing to worry about," Cassie assured, "in the vision, there were certain parts of the mountain that the wolves tended to avoid."
Tyler tilted his head. "'Wolves' as in plural?"
She nodded.
"How many giant wolves are there?"
She shrugged. "There's only one wolf big enough to jump from the ground to helicopter height while the others are infants."
Tyler shook his head. God must have a strange sense of humor if he is forcing me to make contact with an animal similar to the one I almost killed.
Cassie pointed up the mountain. "Follow my lead and we should be fine."
Derek thought of something. "Did you write about these giant wolves in your journal?"
She shook her head. "I figured that an animal that large wouldn't survive with the oxygen levels as they are right now so I didn't write anything about it in my notebook."
Tyler snapped his fingers. "Which means that when Overlord comes on this mountain, they'll be woefully unprepared for these beasts."
"Just follow my lead and I'll take you to the parts of the mountains the wolves don't explore." She went back into the cave to retrieve her gears, the others following her example.
"Piece of advice for you: Don't stray from my path."
Alec rolled his eyes. "That goes without saying."
Cassie began walking. "Let's go."
Tyler and Alec cocked their firearms and stood at the back of the group.
"Also, aim for the inside of their mouths."
Things could not have gone any worse for the Overlord soldiers in the middle of the mountain. Burak and Leyla took two platoons worth of Overlord soldiers with them on Mount Ararat, ready to overwhelm Drake and the others with their numerical advantage. They called in several helicopters for supply drops but every single one of them went missing as soon as they flew over the mountain.
Luckily, they had Avtoros Shaman 8x8 and snowmobiles to transport them.
Now dressed in an Overlord uniform, Arda spoke, "It's like we're in a snowfall version of the Bermuda Triangle. All our supply drop helicopters vanishing without a trace."
Hasan and Arda followed the group of Overlord soldiers up the mountain, shivering. The fifty-plus soldiers had jackets that could adapt to any temperatures but they were still feeling the effects so they were dressed in heavy snow jackets.
Arda looked at Hasan as he rubbed his gloved hands together. "Glad to be back in the ranks."
Hasan nodded slowly. "Y-yeah."
"Are you stuttering because you're cold or you're-
"C-cold," Hasan cut off.
"So, you're in 'regular' mode now?"
Hasan growled. "Shut up, A-Arda. I h-hate when you t-think I-I have some dis-disorder."
Arda narrowed his eyes. "I've known you for a long time, little brother, and I know what kind of person you are."
"S-shut up."
He grabs his brother's shoulder. "Someone kidnapped Belinay Sadik. I was confused as to who it was but when I looked over it, it made sense that my first guess was correct."
Hasan rolled his eyes.
"At the warehouse, the Sunni Islam arrived minutes before Overlord got there yet neither Overlord nor Sunni Islam claimed responsibility for kidnapping Sadik. However, you and I are the only ones with connections to both groups, me being an inside man for Sunni Islam with you being my brother. Tariq has interacted with Yagmur in the past and I told you about him."
Hasan looked at Arda.
"You kidnapped Belinay Sadik and when you left a chip in the warehouse that would detect intruders, you contacted Sunni Islam through my contacts and then Overlord through your own contacts." He leaned his face in. "Why would you kidnap her?"
Hasan looked away. "Does it matter?"
Arda nodded.
"Why?"
"I know you got anger problems little brother but taking your anger out on a girl is not the way to go. What were you going to do to her?"
"Torture her to insanity," Hasan hissed. "It's only fair a thirteen-year-old like her suffer like I did when I was thirteen years old."
"That was years ago, little brother," he reprimanded.
"Doesn't change the fact that what happened to us happened." He looked at Arda. "Have you forgotten what those rebels did to our parents? Have you forgotten all those people that were slaughtered before us? Hm? Have you forgotten what they did to us?!"
Arda nodded. "I think about it every day."
"If you and I were forced to watch our friends and family get slaughtered in front of us while being beaten within an inch of our lives for days on end, it's only fair that Belinay Sadik and everyone goes through the same thing." He smiles. "After all, Overlord is about fairness."
Arda shook his head. "You're looking at Overlord's objective in a twisted way. Yes, we are about creating a fair world for all and it wasn't fair what happened to us but it's also not fair to put people through the same kind of torture."
"Keeps things fair if I did."
"Belinay did nothing to you."
"And we did nothing to those rebels."
Arda glared at him, angry written across his face before it disappears and is replaced with a sad look. "I joined Overlord so I can get rid of all sadistic torturers in this world."
"There will always be evil in this world, big brother. Anyone who tries to rid the world of evil is stupid so rather than get rid of evil, we accept that evil is a natural occurrence. I joined Overlord for the sole purpose of doing what was done to us on other people."
"You have a sick and twisted mind."
Hasan nodded. "I do."
"You set Overlord and Sunni Islam up to kill each other and you planned on torturing a thirteen-year-old."
He's full of rage, Arda assessed. He doesn't care about fairness; he wants people to suffer because of what happened to him. He remembered a quote his mother told him. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' It was quoted from the bible but in that case, I'll do the reverse. If Hasan wants to make the entire world suffer, I shall make him-
"WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!"
Hasan and Arda looked ahead as a soldier came running down the hill. They recognized him as the soldier that was sent to scout ahead in advance. He was sprinting towards them, looking over his shoulder as if he was being chased by something, and slowed to a stop in front of Burak and Leyla.
"What's going on, soldier?" Leyla demanded.
The soldier was stuttering so much that his breath could be seen with each stutter. "B-big, BIG!"
"Big what?"
"W-wolf. WOLF!"
"Big wolf?" Leyla repeated.
A soldier laughed mockingly. "Big bad wolf?" The other soldiers laughed.
The soldier pointed in the direction he came. "Big! Giant! Wolf!"
The mocking soldier pointed behind the stuttering soldier. "You mean that wolf?"
A short distance away, a wolf was approaching them slowly, staring into the mocking soldier's eyes with its beady yellow ones. It charged for them.
"Aww, big bad wolf indeed." The mocking soldier spread his arms. "Come to papa wolf."
The wolf jumped at him. The mocking soldier punched it in the snout before pulling out a gun to shoot it in the head.
He looked at the stuttering soldier. "Yeah, real scary."
Burak and Leyla looked at the stuttering soldier.
"Get your head out of your ass, soldier," Burak ordered, "or I will feed you to the wolves."
The stuttering soldier pointed a twitching finger in front of him and behind Burak's back.
"What?"
A soldier went wide-eyed and shouted, "MUSTAFA, WATCH OUT!"
A four-legged creature with black fur, razor-sharp claws, and wide yellow eyes stared down at the platoon of soldiers from a hilltop with saliva drooling from its mouth, its paper-white fangs bared for all the soldiers to see. Without hesitation, it snatched the mocking soldier and swallowed him whole before he had any time to scream.
"Giant wolf!"
"Open fire!"
The soldiers opened fire on the giant wolf, switching their firearms to automatic and not bothering to conserve ammo, and taking intervals to prevent overhead.
The giant wolf barely reacted to the bullets bouncing off his body and opted to stay here while he waited.
A small army of adolescent giant wolves hidden behind the giant wolf came out of hiding and charged at the soldiers.
From a distance, the adolescent wolves looked like regular-sized wolves but when they got within ten feet of the soldiers, they saw that they were the size of an adult male and their jaws were big enough to bite off a human's arm up to the elbow.
A soldier was overwhelmed by three adolescent wolves and collapsed on his back. The wolves bit into him and painted the snow around him red with his blood.
A soldier with a shotgun hit a wolf in the head and knocked it back but the wolf got back and snapped its jowls at the shotgun barrel.
A group of soldiers gathered around the superiors to protect while simultaneously backing away.
One of the soldiers in front of Burak was swept off his feet and overwhelmed with three wolves.
"Fall back," Leyla ordered.
"Fall back," Burak repeated. He looked around him to see that a quarter of the soldiers were already dead. He looked back at the snowmobiles they came with. "On the snowmobiles."
Burak grabs Leyla by the hand and drags her to a snowmobile.
Once they were both on, he started up the snowmobile and drove off.
Hasan and Arda climbed on the next snowmobile and hightailed it out of there, five more snowmobiles with two soldiers each following after their superiors.
The soldiers that stayed behind ran for the Avtoros Shaman 8x8 all-terrain vehicles and attempted to drive out. There were four of them both only two managed to fill up with eight soldiers each and get out while the others were left to the wolves.
The 8x8 vehicles took off in a different direction from the snowmobiles to give their superiors a fighting chance and focused on the giant wolves chasing after them. The 8x8 vehicles had a turret gun in the back built thirteen years ago called the MG-225 that fired high caliber rounds. A soldier mounted the turret and fired at the wolves. This seemed to be doing the trick as the adolescent wolves chasing after them were being cut in half with their body parts spewing across the snowy surface and cutting the numbers down.
The giant wolf chased after them. The soldier manning the turrets in both trucks opened fire, each having the hive mind to focus their attacks on the heart area. Once again, the giant wolf barely reacted. When both soldiers aimed for the wolf's feet, the wolf decided to take action.
It leaped high into the air and came crashing down on the first 8x8, reducing it to a pile of totaled car parts.
The remaining 8x8 focused on driving out of there instead of running and gunning. The turret soldier continued to spray bullets at the creature but it seemed to be hopeless. He aimed the turret up towards the creature's eyes and opened fire. The giant wolf held its head down like a student in shame and chased after them.
The giant wolf waited for its time to strike and leaped over the 8x8. The truck tried to halt to a stop but it crashed into the wolf's paws so hard that the back went flying upward. The giant wolf held a paw down at the back of the truck and snapped its teeth at it, grabbing the turret soldier and swallowing him in one gulp. After it was done swallowing the soldier, it flipped the truck on the top and pressed down with both paws.
The truck began caving in with the windows cracking, metal falling apart, and soldiers screaming in agony.
The soldier in the passenger's seat climbed out the busted window before the 8x8 was crushed into the ground. He ran as fast as he could to get away from the creature, despite knowing how futile it was.
"I don't want to die!" he cried as he was cornered at the edge of a cliff. "No one kills me but me!" Without even thinking, he jumps over the cliff just as the giant wolf caught up to him.
He thought that he would fall to his death but the soldier fell short and landed on a cliff protruding from the mountain. He landed on his back, the window knocked out of him. Once he felt the pain ease away, he picked himself up and looked at where he was sitting.
"I'm alive!" he cried with joy. "I'm alive!"
The giant wolf let out a howl that sounded like an inhuman roar that echoed throughout the mountains, sending chills down the soldier's neck. The giant wolf leaped over the edge and landed on the same cliff as the soldier. Rather than crush the soldier under its paws, the cliff broke under the wolf's weight and sent both the wolf and soldier falling into an abyss.
Cassie stopped with a gasp, the hairs on the back of her neck spiking.
"Did anyone else hear the howl?"
And with that, the creature, or creatures, hidden on Mount Ararat are finally brought to light. It's not the Yeti but man-sized wolves with one of them being the Fenrir Wolf. If the wolves can annihilate three-quarters of two platoons of soldiers in less than five minutes, what hope do Cassie and co have... had Cassie not have foreseen the wolves in the visions?