I'm feeling the hate of the world
and it's crashing me
I'm feeling the hate of everyday life
And it's crushing me
I swallow the hate, betrayal and lies
Swallow it whole
and shove it deep down inside of me
I'm feeling the weight of the world
and it's crushing me
How much more will it take?
How much more until it breaks me?
This world is crushing me
The following morning, Doyle was awoken with by an abrupt knocking on his door. "Sir, the results are in," Tauri announced, peeking his head into the General's chambers.
Doyle yawned and stretched. "Already?"
The magnificent winged-man nodded. "Kal has found a match. He refuses to tell anyone the results until everyone is assembled to hear the announcement."
"Sure Taur. Gimme a few, and lemme go get Cordy."
"Miss Chase is already awake and having breakfast in the kitchens. We will all be meeting in the Conference room in forty minutes," the Captain intoned, bowing his head slightly as he backed out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
Doyle looked at the time piece on his wall. Not even 7 yet. "Well, guess the jury's back," he murmured under his breath, tossing off the covers to his bed and padding over to his closet.
~~~~~~~~~~
A good half hour later, Doyle was at his seat at the head of the conference table, eyeing Cordelia, who sat in anxious anticipation to his right. "You ready for this, Princess?"
She nodded. "Of course I'm ready…" she paused, looking toward the other end of the room, where Kal sat, looking inanimate, while they awaited the arrival of the stragglers. "So, what exactly is this robot guy's margin of error?"
Doyle laughed at her nervous question. "'e's not really a robot. Where 'e's from, the people transferred their consciousnesses to machines cause their planet couldn't support livin' beings after a time. 'e's really a real guy inside. As for 'is error, I've never known 'im to be wrong. Man's got an extensive demon database stored inside 'is body."
"Weird," she responded. "So everyone has their own set of super powers."
"Not everyone," he disagreed. "Some of us are just, us."
She was about to respond to a certain skin condition of his that allowed for minor injuries like oh, snapped necks, but a loud buzzing suddenly began to scream into her ears, as the red lights mounted on the walls started to flash like police lights in time to the noises.
Doyle tensed instantly, head swiveling from side to side. "What the…"
A soldier burst into the room and then stopped short, straight as a board as his hand flashed up to his head for a perfect salute. Doyle returned it perfunctorily. "Sir!! Saeryth's armies have been spotted by our scouts; they're headed full strength towards the front lines!" the messenger reported.
There came a frozen look to Doyle's countenance, as if someone had taken a freeze frame of his reaction to the news, blown it up, and super glued it to his face. "He can't…we just…" Cordelia recognized his sudden inability to form coherent sentences as a bad thing.
And then like that, the surprise, the uncertainty of the Doyle she knew was gone. Something washed over him in those two seconds in which she'd been pondering exactly what the hell was going on, something strange. His jaw clenched; she saw the barely perceptible twitch of muscle in his cheek in what looked like something reminiscent of Angel's expression of resolve dropping like a final curtain over him. But it seemed colder, impartial, as if an iron wall had just slammed down and he had to hide everything he was in real life behind it until the danger had passed.
Doyle took a breath. "All right, Private. Arrange a transport to the battlefield, we'll meet the bastards 'alf way… before they cross the borders. Order the troops out on patrol to prepare for battle an' call my officers to the conference room ASAP."
"Sir, yes sir." The Private saluted again and spun around like a machine, before stomping down the hall to respond to his orders.
The other officers present in the meeting room were silent and grim, regarding Doyle as to what would happen next. Cordelia was in a tizzy of confusion. "Doyle? What's going on?"
"Saeryth… the leader o' the humans… bastard's tryin' ta jump us before we recover from last night, is what. If we don't get reinforcements out there our first lines are gonna get trampled an' he's gonna lay siege to the whole encampment."
"What can we do?"
"We're gonna assemble those that can ta fight. I'm gonna send out an alert to the cities an' the other command posts so they know what's goin' on. We'll 'ave a quick meeting an' get out there to drive 'em back."
She was about to ask another question, but he turned his swivel chair to face straight ahead instead of slightly at her, as it had been until present, so that he may address his officers. "Looks like they're tryin' ta hit us before we can recover properly from the other day." A few of the soldiers nodded in assent to their leader's diagnosis.
Cordy's brow furrowed. **Wait! We still don't know what I am.**
"Where the heck is Maj?" Doyle asked, irritated, after a second.
"Technically, the meeting was assigned to discern officer Chase's origins," Kal explained. "And for that set meeting time, the Colonel still has two minutes…"
The double doors leading to the conference room burst open for the second time that morning, Maj at dead sprint full in, having to skid to stop from colliding with the General's chair as he did. "I'm here! I'm here!" he announced, however unneeded, a little short for breath. "I was finishing breakfast. Now what the hell is going on?"
~~~~~~~
"Sir, we're almost through the front lines!" Medth reported in a shout, to be heard over the din below.
Saeryth, standing around a table with some of his officers, waved the messenger off. "Very good. Alert me as to when General Doyle and his entourage arrives?"
"Yes, sir."
He turned back to the map. "We'll break through. Breia, I want you to take your division and circle around towards the back of the complex once we do. You, and you…" he indicated to two other colonels. "I want you two on either side. My corps will be at the front. We'll lay siege to Doyle's post, and the creatures' entire domain will be open for invasion."
"But sir, they're bound to receive aide from the surrounding commands, how are we to prepare for that?"
"I have instructed my auxiliary divisions to form a wide perimeter around our attack to fend off any of the smaller forces that might be deployed to aide Doyle," Saeryth responded, irritated at his subordinate's stupidity. Did the man really think he hadn't thought this through, that he didn't have every aspect planned to perfection? **Ignoramus. ** "We all know that once Doyle's command falls the entire spine of the protective army falls with it, don't we?" he asked, searching his underlings in a frighteningly calculative manner.
"Yes sir," they all responded instantly.
"Good. If we surround Doyle's command, starve them out, kill them all, our entire army will be able to march on towards the cities, conquer the animals living in them, and finally end this ridiculous little war."
Breia kept her mouth shut over the true significance of victory, should they achieve it. The slaves they would take, the prime land, the innovations of the creatures to add to their own technology. Saeryth always thought the effort was a silly little war. She was convinced that if he had in fact been disallowed from killing anything he wouldn't have joined the armies in the first place, even if it had been his ancestor who had first rallied the humans to battle.
"Sir! Additional divisions on the creatures' side have been deployed, but Doyle has not yet arrived. Should we allow for the new arrivals to join the lines or cut them off?"
"Medth, if you were smart, would I really need to answer that question for you?"
"Yes sir, excuse me sir." The aide scurried out of the tent.
"All right then. It seems the plan has begun. Is there anything else that should come to my attention?"
"Reports say that a new officer arrived under Doyle's command today," Breia observed.
"Well, that's a given, considering the death of Lieutenant Aurelin," he drawled.
"My sources say it was an inter-dimensional officer, my lord," she explained, bowing her head slightly, though a mischievous look glinted in her eye. He caught it and sent a disapproving rejoinder her way.
"Is that so? Well, I'd take the time to be intimidated, but I find that my emotions are strangely all trained on you, Colonel, and how irritating your little tangent just was. New officer or not, they all die the same way."
"By your brilliant strategy, of course," she allowed, showing the appropriate submission to curb the General's agitation.
"We'll save the subservience for later, Breia, get back to your regiments. If I desire anything I'll send a messenger." He turned to address them all. "Dismissed."
They saluted, by touching their fingertips to their foreheads and bowing their heads before exiting.
Saeryth watched them leave before sitting down in his chair to listen to the sounds of battle, the sounds of the dying. He laughed a little to himself before grabbing his sword off of the table and unsheathing it. He drew his thumb across the blade, regarding its shine in the dim lighting of his quarters for a moment. Perhaps today he would get the fight he desired.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"We've got a full frontal, boys," Tauri announced. "We've already sent a few thousand uninjured; they should be reaching the field before too long."
"Good," Doyle nodded. "Before we get out there I just want ta say a few things…"
"Sir? I wish to say something as well…" Kal started, putting his hand up in the air. "…about Miss Chase."
Doyle closed his eyes and took a breath. "Kal, I know yer excited 'bout findin' out so fast, but could we wait till the possibility o' dyin' is out fer a bit?"
The robot would not be stopped. "Sir, I think it is important."
"Kal, not now, okay? We need ta map out a basic strategy 'ere…"
"Sir, I believe it is of great importance."
Doyle sighed. "Fine, fine, Sergeant. If you think it's that important, by all means, ferget the battle an' let us know," he drawled, irritably.
The cyborg stood up, accepted the invitation to speak despite the sarcasm that had laced it. "I have assessed Miss Chase's blood sample and I believe I have been able to identify the demon blood within her."
Cordelia, despite agreeing to the non-priority of her condition at the present moment, was riveted.
"I have concluded that she has been infused with the blood of the Tharrier." He looked around the room after having made his announcement.
Everyone deflated at the anticlimactic nature of his great find.
"And that means what, exactly?" Gwyn prodded.
The robot let out a very human sigh, as if dealing with the ignorance of carbon based life forms was a trial in itself. "Tharrier demons are a rare and very beautiful breed of demon that reside in a heaven dimension not far from this one. They are explicit servants to the powers of goodness. The blood of the Tharrier is said to cleanse darkness from within a soul."
There was an intake of breath on Doyle's part.
Kal kept going. "However good Tharrier blood is, the demons themselves are quite weak, to offset their great power. Their life force is frail, and thus expending too much of their abilities is fatal to their kind."
Doyle looked at Cordelia, wide eyed, before turning back to Kalgear. "Are you sayin' what I think yer sayin', Sergeant?"
A miniscule nod. "The life force of a human, in contrast with that of Tharrier is greatly enhanced. Humans have a strong, durable inner energy. I believe that we have been given the very weapon in which to end the war, General. Miss Chase was sent here to cleanse the humans of their dark nature." Finished, the robot sat down.
Doyle gaped a moment longer, while trying to regain his bearings. "So you just told me that Cordy 'ere is gonna end the war by washin' all the evil outta the humans? Just like that?"
Kal nodded.
"Wait a minute 'ere. If it was that simple, why didn't the Powers just send a whole buncha Tharrier 'ere two hundred years ago an' have it end right there?"
"As I said before, General, the life force of a Tharrier is quite weak. Also, they are quite rare. It is highly unlikely that the Powers would find it necessary to sacrifice the few that they could to end a war here. It is also unlikely that the Tharrier would have been able to cleanse the entirety of the human army in their complete demon state."
"So they send us one Cordelia instead?" Doyle responded, skeptical.
"Sir, the human life energy is significantly greater than that of the Tharrier in its purest state."
"I got that," Doyle insisted. "What I don't get is why they didn't do it sooner then, if it was that easy?"
Cordelia sat up. "Skip told me, before I got here, that they gave me this power as a test. And when he came to get me, he said I could ascent because I hadn't been corrupted by it. You think that may be it?"
"They had to wait and find the person who'd use the Tharrier power the right way," Maj explained, picking up on Cordelia's idea. "And they found you." He laughed. "Well damn…looks like you're the one that's supposed to save us all!!"
There was a general murmur amongst the officers. Doyle on the other hand, was completely silent. "No," he muttered. "Those bastards."
"Sir? What's wrong?" Gwyn asked. "We've just found a way to end the war."
Doyle clenched his teeth. "You know how many humans are on this planet, Gwyn? 'Bout 2 million, probably more. Even if a human life force is greater'n a Tharrier by a hundred fold, you think it'll last fer that many people? She'll use all o' herself up to fix 'em. She'll die. Drained away fer the damn greater good. An' what if we miss one? A few? What if those few build up again, an' in another hundred years or so, the whole damn cycle repeats it self?" He looked over towards Cordelia. "I don't like those odds. Not fer the wager that's on the line."
Cordelia's eyes softened at his concern. "Doyle, I'm here to help. If that's what's supposed to happen, then let it." She had long been preparing for her death, before the Powers had intervened; she had come to terms with herself and her purpose in life a long time ago.
Something furious leapt into his face, a pure form of outright rage she'd never seen in him before. "Cordelia, you can't possibly…"
She flared in response to his tone. "Oh don't even!" she contested hotly. "You get to die to save us, but I don't get to for a reason just as good? Listen here, Mister I'm-A-Big-Irish-Hypocrite! I'm here to do a job. And dying in our line of work is a constant risk anyway, so why are you getting all touchy? I thought you had to take risks to go into war, don't you?! The Powers sent me here to help, and that's what I'm going to do, even if I have to go stand out in the middle of the stupid battlefield and glow until I explode. You don't know exactly how much I'm capable of handling; no one here knows exactly how many people I can help! And I have to help! Why else are we here? What else would a whole bunch of men and a friend of yours die for last night?"
"She has a point," Maj started, but was silenced by the look of death from his General.
There was a cough. "As interesting as watching you two hash out this debate might be, we're sort of in the middle of a battle," Gwyn reminded everyone.
Doyle scowled, throwing Cordelia a pointed look that said none of this was as finished as she'd like it to be. He hated this. Hated the possibilities of more death and more heartache and so much pointlessness. Mostly, he hated Saeryth. But it -all of it- was his job. He took a deep breath. "Right. Let's get goin' then. We'll discuss this when I get back, Cord."
She flared again. "What do you mean when YOU get back?"
He looked incredulous. "Didn't we just talk about this? You're stayin' here 'til you can be properly trained to fight!"
She crossed her arms. "Things have changed since then. We know why I'm here now. I wasn't meant to get a command, or, or to be in charge of a bunch of soldiers. I was sent to fix things."
He scowled. "We don't know that for sure yet."
"I'm coming and that's final."
Doyle let out a long suffering sigh.
I'm feeling the hate of the world
and it's crashing me
I'm feeling the hate of everyday life
And it's crushing me
I swallow the hate, betrayal and lies
Swallow it whole
and shove it deep down inside of me
I'm feeling the weight of the world
and it's crushing me
How much more will it take?
How much more until it breaks me?
This world is crushing me