Day 70 / Unrelenting
It had been a slaughter. Exhausted, Garret collapsed, plopping himself down on the muddy ground, leaning against a moss-covered log. Annika was in a similar state, covered in mud and blood, with barely enough energy to stay on her feet. She wandered over from her group of soldiers and sat down beside him. The two leaned against each other, propping each other up, and preventing them from falling into the dirt if they passed out. The actual battle (an overwhelming victory for The Order) lasted only an hour or two, but tracking down the remnants… that took the entire day and most of the night. Indeed, they'd been pursuing and fighting the fleeing mamono for so long, Garret swore he could see a slight, tell-tale glow filtering through the tree canopy. Dawn couldn't be far away.
"Get some rest, everyone, I'll stay awake in case we get new orders."
Or at least he'd try to… At his command, the exhausted wizards he was responsible for dispersed to find their own resting spots amongst the trees, reuniting with their partners if they were fortunate enough to be nearby. Brynhild had instructed The Order to halt its advance via her divine voice, citing the destruction of the remaining mamono and the relative safety of their current positions, so the men needed to take the opportunity to get what little sleep they could. They were in the demon realm now, and could be attacked at any time. They needed to be ready.
Almost immediately, Annika was out like a light and began snoring loudly in his ear. Now alone with his thoughts, Garret's mind drifted back to the battle and the… horrors it had brought.
The initial assault had been chaotic to say the least. The Order charged forward to meet the enemy in battle, but the mamono, having just lost their leader, were more concerned with trying to get away. Now, why would an army that matched The Order's give up so easily? Well, Lukas might have been out of commission, but Brynhild was still there, and made it abundantly clear she wasn't planning on showing any mercy.
The Valkyrie blasted a hole through the magical tree-canopy and, once inside, began her grim work. With flashes of holy magic, monsters were disintegrated and jagged ravines were carved into the ground. The damage she inflicted to the terrain confounded the retreat as monster survivors had to try to traverse the scarred landscape by climbing the sides of craters and crevices, or more commonly, running around them. This slowed their progress enough that, despite their head-start, The Order had no trouble catching up to the rear of the fleeing army, with predictable results. Disorganized and routed, the monsters only put up token resistance as they prioritized scrambling away, trying to avoid both the swords of The Order and the magic of Brynhild. The stragglers didn't last long, nor did the denser clusters as they got closer to the main portion of the army.
Once they were near enough, Brynhild switched tactics and, instead of attacking the center of the army for maximum casualties, began striking at its edges. The lead-most mamono, who might have thought themselves safe, having finally reached the shelter of still-rooted portions of forest, suddenly met their end as the Valkyrie dove from the sky, shattering their bodies and the ground around them. The natural vegetation did nothing to stop her, she saw right through it, and as groups of monsters tried to go around the split in the earth, they too quickly found their escape cut-off. Slowly but surely, thousands of desperate monster girls came to the realization that the Valkyrie was not going to let them run, and that their only way out was through The Order.
Now cornered, like a wounded animal desperately thrashing out, the mamono army surged and crashed into the human lines with the force of a tidal wave. Some of their over-eager elements had extended beyond the support of the larger formation, and were swept aside by the sudden wave of bodies pouring back. Sor a moment, The Order's army was caught off balance. As magicians, Garret knew they had to do something before their frontline was overwhelmed, but with such little energy left, their options were severely limited. Eventually, he'd settled on a strategy of using flashy spells to blind or startle monsters that were breaking through, only ordering the use of lethal (and much more energy intensive) spells when he saw no alternative. This bought the sword and spearmen a bit of time, allowing their ranks to reform, and thankfully, it seemed to have been enough. After a few minutes of frantically shouting commands or casting his own spells, Garret watched as The Order finally rallied (with minimal casualties), and the desperate mamono wave broke against their steel. Utterly exhausted, his magician group ceased their support and waited. Now it was up to the foot-soldiers.
A disorganized, demoralized, and undisciplined foe proved no trouble for The Order's army. Though surges here and there occasionally broke parts of the frontline, despite the numbers and desperation of their enemy, The Order's discipline and training held. Slowly, they advanced, methodically cutting down rank after rank of the mamono forces. Annika and the soldiers around her were, thankfully, out of danger for almost the entire battle. Assigned with guarding Garret and the other magicians in their area, they only saw action when they moved to reinforce the spearmen just ahead of them, who were endangered by a sudden surge. That was taken care of quickly, though, and the advance resumed without incident. Within two hours, the bulk of the monster army had been slain, and the remaining fifth was apparently too small a number for Brynhild to justify containing any longer. She let them run, and with that, the hours of hunting down stragglers began.
Were they really any better than what they'd been killing? An unwelcome thought had come to Garret during the time he'd spent chasing the mamono, and now that his mind had wandered back, it returned once more. Sure, it was true that monsters corrupted people and forced them into a new life, but… well, they'd just slaughtered an entire army to the (wo)man. No retreat was allowed, no mercy was given… In a way, rather than forcing a different life on someone like the monsters did, they'd forced the lack of life on them by sheer virtue of their race. Did substituting the rape with violence somehow make it better? Was there a different way they could have done this? Garret shook his head and tried to focus on what he was protecting: the beautiful woman sleeping on his shoulder, his friends, and all the people he'd left behind in Naton and Northreach. He couldn't think like this. If he did, he might not be able to carry on. … But would that really be such a bad thing?
"Psst."
Garret looked up and saw a certain ranger picking his way through the underbrush towards him. Once the man got close enough, he thrust out his hand with a grin.
"Told you you'd make it through. Now. Spyglass."
"Oh,… Right."
Careful to not wake his sleeping companion, he slowly shifted, retrieved it from his belt, and handed it back.
"Thanks… it helped a lot."
"I'm glad to hear that. How you feelin'?"
That should have been pretty obvious... Garret looked to his right, at his snoring partner, then to his left, at the gaggle of magicians scattered around the clearing in varying states of unconsciousness.
"Exhausted… Worn out. Tired."
That caused Rick to snort and smirk a bit.
"Yeah, I can see that, but-"
His gaze suddenly snapped to the forest as he spotted something, and in the blink of an eye, he'd drawn his bow and nocked an arrow, watching to see what might come. Fortunately, it just turned out to be a lost soldier who, after being given directions by Rick, wandered back into the bush towards his group. With that dealt with, the ranger relaxed, though he didn't replace his bow in its sheath.
"That wasn't what I meant. Stress, the battle, your new responsibilities… you dealin' with all that ok?"
Garret nodded and lied for what felt like the hundredth time.
"Yeah."
Rick was a ranger, not a priest, and not one of the friends he felt comfortable confiding in. There was no need for him to know his doubts, or the disgust that he'd felt with himself when they chased down the remaining monsters. Tramping across blood-soaked fields and stepping over fresh corpses could upset anyone without a strong stomach, but the worst part was that some of them were still alive. Clutching at entrails that had been splayed from their bellies onto the ground, or at the stumps of missing limbs, hopelessly trying to staunch their bleeding, mortally wounded mamono lay amongst the dead, occasionally squirming as a soldier accidentally stepped on them. Garret had tried to put them out of their misery with quick stabs from his sword. Many of them, especially the older women, seemed to welcome it, closing their eyes and awaiting the end of their suffering, but some of the younger girls didn't go easily. They tried to crawl or slither, depending on their species, away from him, crying out in fear or pain as they did. That forced him (or other soldiers) to chase after them and pin them down to deliver the final blow.
It was a kindness, he told himself. They were all going to die from their wounds anyways, he was just stopping them from suffering needlessly… But every kill, every coup de grâce, pulled at his heart. How many of them might have escaped if Brynhild hadn't cornered them? How many had been forced into fighting the battle? His mind flicked back to Ilona and the monsters he'd slain back on the plains. Children, families, slaves… and now, helpless wounded. What was this war turning him into?
Rick.
Suddenly he remembered the man was still standing there, and as quickly as he could, Garret shook off his sour expression, forcing himself on to other thoughts.
"Yeah, I think I'm fine. I'll get used to leading people soon… I hope. You?"
If he'd spotted Garret's expression in the dark, Rick didn't show it. Instead, he looked around, confirming that everyone else had fallen asleep, then took a seat beside Garret.
"That's good. The Order will always need competent leaders."
When Garret turned the question around, Rick answered with a confident 'I'm alright.', but then paused for a moment, looking away.
"I just… I really don't like this war."
Coming from the man who'd encouraged him, saying 'its killing time!', that seemed out of character.
"You too? So much for 'cheer up'."
Rick sighed.
"Well, you've gotta have that sort of bravado to get through a fight, but yeah, there's just too much death and too much suffering. Take me back to the good old days when rangers were simple wilderness guides."
"Oh? And when were those?"
"Uh… I think that was back when Naton was founded. There weren't many monsters around here then, they only became a problem in the last century. At that time, rangers acted as cartographers, guides, hunters, explorers… all manner of things that did not involve slaying monsters. Or so the stories go."
"Sounds nice…"
"Yeah…"
Rick shrugged.
"Can't worry about that, though. That was a couple generations ago, and we've got a war to win now."
"Mmm..."
As the pair fell silent, the question Brynhild had asked last week came back to Garret. 'What keeps you going?' He was still confident in his own answer, but evidently that wasn't driving away all his doubts. Since he seemed to be in the same boat, but was managing alright, maybe Rick had a better one? It wouldn't hurt to ask.
"So, uh… Rick, if you don't mind me asking, how do you stay motivated?"
"To fight the war?"
"Yeah."
"Well I, uh… I trust our Goddess. She's given us so much; I think we owe it to her to follow her commands. Going against a deity doesn't seem too smart either."
So, the scriptures. That line of reasoning was right out of their holy books and chapel sermons. Sure, it was true, and she did save his life (albeit through Lukas and Brynhild) when he'd been corrupted, but...
"That's it?"
"Well, the other part is that the monsters could stop this if they wanted. Humans are backed into a corner. If they stopped fighting, they'd slowly be driven to extinction from mamono corrupting or transforming, uh,… us. If we stopped fighting, there'd be no more humans. If they stopped attacking, there'd be no war."
That was one way of looking at it, he supposed. Garret wasn't sure he entirely agreed, but thinking about it that way did make him feel a bit better.
"Makes sense… Thanks."
Rick nodded, then pushed himself to his feet.
"Why don't you get some sleep, Garret. I'll keep watch."
"You sure? Aren't you tired?"
Rick waved away his concern, then began to pace about.
"Don't worry about me. I can work a long time without sleep."
Garret didn't need to ask twice. He closed his eyes, leaned into Annika, and was out before he even knew it.
The next morning was relatively uneventful. Though he had hoped to be relieved of his command, apparently that responsibility would be sticking with him for a while. The order of the day was to get their logistics sorted, so it fell to him to organize his wizards for the hike back to their original camp. They'd need to assist with the tear-down. That lead to him tramping across the bloody battlefield once more, doing his best not to think about what he was stepping on. Averting his eyes from the ground, he looked up and saw that the magic holding the tree-canopy above their heads showed no signs of weakening. With no one around to sustain it, the enchantments must have been designed to be semi-permanent. It seemed their cartographers would have another landmark to plot on their maps for the foreseeable future.
Day 75
The following days were more interesting. With the main mamono army defeated and its fleeing members tracked down and slain, The Order spread out to sweep a wide path through the forest. They couldn't purge it all, of course, it extended as far as the eye could see in every direction, but orders filtered down saying that this wasn't necessary. The crusade's main purpose was to reclaim a chunk of territory and the port-city it contained, so, as long as they cleared enough land to open a safe corridor to Naton, that was good enough. Strangely, though it was even more dangerous here than in the forest they'd cleared several weeks ago, they suffered surprisingly few casualties. Maybe it was because the soldiers were getting more experienced, or maybe the alien nature of the demon realm was better for keeping people on guard, but whatever the case, they did surprisingly well. Sure, there was the occasional problem of women accidentally walking into tentacle bushes, or men being lured off by the numerous alraune that dotted the forest, but the only big issues where when they encountered something they'd never dealt with before.
In the first week, a group of a dozen or so soldiers disappeared from one of the advanced scouting parties. Obviously, this wasn't something to be tolerated, so a much larger and better armed force was sent after them. Garret and Annika were amongst this number, with him commanding a portion of the soldiers, so they got to witness the strange new creatures firsthand. After following the route the scouts would have taken for several hours, they stumbled across a grove of fruit-bearing trees. The grass here was thick, but soft, cushioning their footfalls as they marched, and branches hung low, weighed down by a veritable cornucopia of oversized, delicious looking fruits. Hundreds of enormous, vibrant flower blooms adorned the trees that weren't fruiting, filling the air with a sweet fragrance. At any other time, this would have been the perfect place to rest, relax, maybe have a picnic or take a nap, but… something was wrong. A scent in the air, camouflaged by the flowers, sapped at their strength and filled their limbs with fatigue. Sensing the dangerous environment, Garret ordered his group to hurry onwards, weapons at the ready. Remembering his previous encounters with distracting scents, he wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.
A short way into the grove, they encountered the first sign of their missing comrades. Attached vertically to the trunk of a tree, stood a strange translucent cocoon. They couldn't make out exactly what was happening on the inside initially, but by passing a lit torch behind it, they could see the silhouettes of the two figures within, gently thrusting together with slow, periodic undulations. That let them work out everything they needed to know, but dealing with it was a different story. The cocoon proved exceptionally difficult to damage. Spears, swords, maces, everything just bounced right off, leaving nary a scratch on its glossy shell. Garret even lent a hand with his magic, but had so much difficulty burning through it that he gave up before even getting half way. This wasn't something that a fire mage could solve, at least, not without exhausting themselves on a single monster. Maybe electricity or acid spells would have worked, but not fire, and he hadn't been assigned any other magicians for this command. Moving on, the group found eleven more cocoons attached to the trees nearby. Apparently, this was where their scouts had been lost… but to what? From further on, that strange scent kept wafting in. Something told Garret they'd find the answer if they followed it.
Worms.
Their scouts had been taken by worms.
… How?!
Another ten minutes of marching brought them to a group of trees that had seemingly finished fruiting. The berries, or whatever the strange heart-shaped fruits were, lay mostly on the ground, scattered beneath the trunks, and a gaggle of strange worm-like creatures inched about, devouring them all. Wait, no, 'worms' wasn't the best description, their green skin and numerous small feet made them look more like caterpillars. Were these monsters? Despite their varying lengths of green hair and human-like faces, their bodies looked far closer to larvae than the shapely women monsters usually emulated.
… Just how did they manage to fuck anyone?
Their existence puzzled Garret, but he could come to no other conclusion. They hadn't seen any other (living) monsters on the way, and the cocoons lined up with caterpillar physiology, so they had to be responsible for the disappearances. The question of how had they managed to capture an entire scouting team still remained, but Garret decided that didn't matter. New species of monster or not, they had attacked The Order, and that mean they needed to be… slain. He took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. Just monsters, Garret… If they'd stopped, there'd be no war.
A particularly zealous spearman took the lead, stepping forward to stab at one of the caterpillars even before Garret had ordered an attack. The monster barely tried to get out of the way, so sluggish was its movements, and it keeled over and died with a shriek and a groan after two more thrusts. That got the attention of the other feasting mamono, who slowly inched towards him, but they posed no threat. Their bodies were soft, their movements lethargic, this one soldier could probably slay them all on his own… or at least that was what Garret thought until the scent hit him.
Suddenly a heavy blanket of exhaustion enveloped him, and he had to fight to stay on his feet. It was now revealed that the strange energy-sapping scent they'd smelled earlier was coming from these bugs, and now that they were in danger, they'd begun to secrete vast amounts of it. The spearman, caught right in the thick of it, got such a strong dose that he collapsed on the spot, his spear rolling away as he lost the strength to grip it. Slowly, one of the mamono inched over to him and began to crawl on top. If they didn't figure out a way to fight these things, their comrade would be, quite literally, fucked. Thankfully, an arrow came to the rescue. From further back, a pair of rangers who been less affected by the scent than everyone else, and had drawn their bows, sending a pair of arrows into the caterpillar's head. They repeated this process for the others and, slowly and methodically, put down the rest of the group. Garret ordered those that were still standing to retreat for a moment, escaping the soporific effects of the vapours, but once they had dissipated enough, they dragged the sleepy spearman out of the clearing and began their march home. Their mission was complete, and a new enemy had been identified, but Garret suspected this would only be the first of many troubling encounters.
Day 79
A few days later, they had a nasty scrap with some hornets. One unfortunate group of soldiers had apparently trodden into their territory, and soon The Order found themselves being harried by swarms of the flying monsters. Here, their army showed its inexperience at dealing with airborne enemies. Rangers had a terrible time landing hits with their arrows against the swarms of winged women, and mages wasted energy as inaccurate spells spiraled uselessly off into the sky. As their foe went about their business, stabbing isolated soldiers with venom-dripping spears, and then snatching the paralyzed men and women to be carried back to their hive, Garret found his thoughts drawn back to Nathan. Airborne explosions of rock shards would have been a most-welcome countermeasure, but evidently there was not a single other earth sorcerer in their crusade. That meant they couldn't use the same method that had downed the succubus, and were instead forced again to shelter under shields and around formations spearmen, hoping that eventually the rangers would figure out their aim.
It took a week for an effective air-defense to be marshalled, but once it had, the hornets quickly learned to give The Order's army a wide berth. Formations that performed better, defensively, were devised, and after many unwanted sessions of target practice, their rangers had finally started to reliably hit their marks. That kept The Order's main column out of danger, but scouting parties still regularly reported being attacked, so a decision was made to divert the column, delay their advance, and track down the hornet's nest. Fortunately, this didn't prove to be a difficult task.
Sharp-eyed rangers noted that, after an attack, the hornets tended to retreat in approximately the same direction, rarely deviating from their course. With this knowledge, a few squads of exceptionally brave men and women were dispatched to act as bait in different areas and, when the survivors returned, the compass bearings their rangers had recorded for the hornet's flight paths were compared. Sure enough, by plotting the vectors on a map, they found a common point of intersection that was only a few days march away. Lukas, who by now had recovered from whatever condition he had after the battle, convened with his officers, and after a few hours of planning, redirected the crusade onto a course that would let them arrive just before dawn. The logic went that, if hornet mamono behaved similarly to hornet insects, this would be when nearly all of them would be sleeping inside the hive. In another stroke of luck, this turned out to be true.
Day 82
The march to the hive required a bit of weird scheduling to make it work, but after a short trek, a day of rest, a longer march, and a short break, they managed to arrive a few hours before sunrise. Thanks to their spellsingers, the march hadn't exhausted their forces, so they didn't need to wait. As they organized for their assault in the dim light of pre-dawn, Garret leaned against a tree and marveled at the size of the nest that lay in front of him. It was easily as large as two or three of the barracks buildings they'd lodged in when they first arrived at Naton, so obviously there were no trees of sufficient size to suspend it. Instead, the nest seemed to have flown outwards from… wherever it had originated, resting on the ground and engulfing nearby trees and bushes as it'd expanded over time, flowing like an oversized doughball. It was still dwarfed by the scope of the arachnae's mountain complex, however, and that comparatively manageable size meant that Lukas, Brynhild, and their officers, deemed it worthwhile to launch a rescue operation. When they had the chance, The Order didn't leave anyone behind.
Fortunately for Garret, he didn't have to join their attack. While the rangers and foot soldiers of The Order surrounded the hive, then began their assault, storming into the entry ways around the nest's base, mages were expressly forbidden from participating. The papery walls of the nest were likely to be extremely flammable, and everyone wanted to avoid having to contend with a raging conflagration, while also fighting monsters and trying to carry prisoners out. Spells, even when not fire-aligned, always carried the risk of mana-sparks showing up from magical feedback, and no one wanted to test just how many it would take to start a fire in there. Instead, Garret waited, chatted with Annika (who had been among the contingent of guards left behind to protect the wizards), and generally milled about, purposelessly. On one hand, he was happy that he wouldn't be put in the position of having to command the execution of humans-turned-incubi again, but on the other, hearing sounds of combat coming from the insides of the hive, with no way to help, made him anxious. Thankfully, the operation turned out to be a success, though, his fears, unfounded. Over the span of an hour, soldiers gradually trickled out of the hive, carrying men and women who, while busy clawing at their own nether regions or groping at their rescuers, were still human. Unimaginably horny humans, but humans none the less. Once they were cleansed, and had worked the venom out of their systems, they'd live to fight another day. The same could not be said for the hornets inside.
"It was so fuckin' cramped in there…"
The next day, a very tired looking Eric regaled him with his experience of fighting in the hive when they sat down to eat together.
"The entrances are pretty wide, but once you get inside, the whole structure is organized into tiers."
He held their plates above each other to demonstrate the concept.
"The main path spiraled up, connecting them, so getting from one tier to another wasn't hard, the problem was tryin' to move around once you got inside one. They build their rooms into the ceilings, right, so there's not much walking space underneath them. You had to crouch or crawl most of the time to get around, and then deal with hornets trying to skewer you from their rooms above or further along at the same time…"
"Sounds like a nightmare."
"Yeah… Well. We got through it. This thing was worth its weight in gold, though, let me tell you."
He thumped his shield with an armoured fist, for emphasis. A shield that, courtesy of the hornets, had many new dents and scratches etched into it. Then he sighed, took a few more bites of food and continued on.
"The hard part was getting the women out. Men were easy, ya'd just pop into their rooms once you'd killed their hornet, grab them and drag them out. Women, though, were usually fastened to the ceilings outside of rooms by that paper bullshit."
"I wonder why?"
Eric shrugged.
"Dunno. Maybe so the whole hive could have access to them? You know how they change our women."
"Yeah…"
"Anyways, that wasn't the point I wanted to make. The point was that you'd have to stop, carefully crawl under them, get your buddy to pass you a dagger, then slowly cut them out of there, BUT! Because you're right under them, they'd fall on top of you, so you only had a few seconds to react. Usually, they didn't land hard enough to really shake you through your armour, but if they had a stinger, you had maybe like… two seconds to shove them or stab them before that thing was going right into your leg. Saw a few other soldiers get caught by that, and then we needed to drag them out too. Their venom is fuckin' potent…"
He interrupted his story with another long drink. After the battle he'd been describing, poor Eric looked like he needed one.
"Fuck, man,… You were so lucky to not have to deal with all that crap. Give me an open plain any day, I hate fighting on my knees…"
You wouldn't know it, listening to Eric's complaints, but the operation had actually been classified as a resounding success. The Order had managed to rescue most of the recently kidnapped soldiers, and with the population of the hive exterminated, the area was much safer to traverse than before. Now that they were no longer being harried from the air, once they got moving again, they made quick progress.
Day 96
After their detour to take care of the hornets, The Order was mercifully able to march for almost two weeks without incident. Ambushes or traps still occurred, of course, but no swarms of monsters threatened the column, nor did entire scout groups disappear wholesale. The most dangerous event was an encounter with an amazoness tribe, but while they were formidable warriors in raiding parties or single combat, The Order's numbers and disciplined formation fighting were able to easily win the day. It seemed like things were going well. Garret took a deep breath and allowed himself a bit of optimism. Maybe the worst was over? That hope was soon dashed, though, when the men began to change.
This phenomenon was, thankfully, rare. It was brought to the crusade's attention when one of their spearmen woke up to find he had grown a pair of tits. Small ones, not the heavy, oversized breasts typical of a monster, but breasts none the less. This drew many priests and wizards in to study the man, but though they found that he had slightly more demonic energy in him than the soldiers around him, there was no sign of polymorphic magic or further monsterization on his person. The fact that he cooperated fully with the investigation, retained all his original memories, and betrayed no difference in personality or mannerisms, further confused the study. After a long debate, the officers eventually cleared him to return to duty, with the promise that, after the crusade, The Order would do everything possible to revert the changes.
After a few uneventful days passed, people relaxed, thinking it was just a one-off occurrence, but as if to spite them, the same thing happened to a pair of other swordsmen the next morning. Then three changed… then four… on the fifth day, seven men woke up to find their bodies no longer entirely masculine, but that was, thankfully, the worst of it. The rate of transformations dropped, after that, to maybe one in five days. More worrisome, though, was the distress the changed men began to feel. Obviously, no one was happy with having their body forcibly altered, that was why The Order promised its resources to change them back, but the men began to report strange cravings they couldn't quite identify. Additionally, there was the discord and damage to the relationships between them and their partners. The majority of those changed had been homosexual men, and their partners were understandably less than pleased about their new womanly physiology. As time went on, those that had been already changed began to undergo further transformations. One man found his hips widening, another grew long, waist-length hair, and a third, especially unfortunate man, awoke to find a strange emptiness between his legs. Needless to say, with the exception of one or two soldiers who, shockingly, seemed happy with their changes, most didn't take this well.
"This is just… fucked…"
As Garret and Annika ate together during one of their mealtimes, he brought the topic up.
"Now y'know how the women of The Order feel, eh?"
"Yeah… I mean I always knew, but… I just hope we find the cause of it soon."
He was starting to worry that whatever was transforming their men might eventually target him. Sensing that, Annika smiled and threw an arm around his shoulders.
"Well don't worry, I'll love you no matter what.~ It just might be a sisterly love."
He appreciated her attempts to cheer him up with some light-hearted teasing, but that didn't stop him from worrying. How could he stop? Some strange, unexplained, and invisible phenomenon was attacking them.
"You're in a cheerful mood…"
She shrugged.
"Well I don't hafta worry about this problem for once, so yeah, I'm happy."
Come to think of it, she'd been perpetually cheerful for the last month or so, despite the horrors they'd seen or battles they'd fought. He'd been getting worn down and his nightmares had started coming back again, but she seemed completely unphased…
"… Hey Annika, are you doing alright?"
"Hmm?"
"Just… All the battles we've gone through, the things we've seen and done. Are you handling it ok?"
She smiled and nodded again, squeezing him with her arm.
"Of course! I've got you, that's all I need."
"… If you're sure."
She waved away his concerns with a hand, then went back to eating.
"Don't you be worryin' about me, Garret. I'm fine."
… Now where had he heard that before?
Eventually, the cause was determined to be related to sexuality. Everyone who'd changed was either homosexual or admitted to being open to trying. Something was causing the demonic energy within these men to build up far faster than normal, forcing changes despite the naturally high levels of spiritual energy a man usually had. By compiling a list of soldiers that fit this criteria and grouping them in with the lesbian couples to be purified more regularly by the priests, the issue of new transformations was completely solved.
Unfortunately, it was too late for those who had already begun to change. The alterations continued, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, but always progressing towards the final state of a woman's body, despite their best efforts to stop it. Still, the victim's minds stayed mostly untouched and wholly male throughout the process, despite now occupying the body of a voluptuous seductress or an androgynous tomboy. This caused no small amount of depression, confusion, or anger amongst their ranks. Sadly, or possibly mercifully, this was not the end of it, though. A week after the physical changes had finished, the mind began to change as well. The women began to report less and less discomfort with their new forms and a greater acceptance of their current situation. Slowly they began to pick up more feminine mannerisms, discarding ones that were traditionally masculine, until their behavior was indistinguishable from the other women around the camp.
This was especially confusing for their partners and friends. Before their eyes, people they were close to had slowly changed until they were acting just like women, but their memories, hobbies, and preferences, all remained the same as before, creating a personality that was both familiar, yet alien. More than a few ended up visiting priests for advice and counselling, having witnessed the physical and mental changes. The Order's official stance on the matter became that one should not mourn the transformations, because their friends had simply entered into a new chapter of their life. A strange, unexpected chapter, but a new chapter none the less. They had seemingly come to accept their new bodies and would continue to work alongside them as friends, if not lovers, so it wasn't like they had been lost forever. While words could not erase all the pain a mind felt, these statements did seem to bring some comfort. At least, they did until the changed women began attacking people.
Garret had the misfortune of witnessing one of those events firsthand. While he was on watch with a few other guards, one of the transformed women working with them began having difficulty thinking. It started with him… her fidgeting incessantly, then losing track of conversations if they were interrupted, and finally, restlessly wandering back and forth. When questioned, the man… woman mentioned having a hard time concentrating but didn't elaborate much. The true nature of their affliction revealed itself, though, when the group split up temporarily to walk their patrols. Garret and a spearman went one way, the woman and her partner went the other, but when they returned to their lookout point after they'd finished, Garret found no trace of the other pair. Following their footprints lead to them finding the man pressed against a tree, hidden from view from the camp, with the woman bouncing in his lap and shaking her hips. She rode him with a frantic pace, driven by an insatiable lust nearly unprecedented for a monster, but had still somehow maintained the presence of mind to keep hold of the cloth she'd stuffed into his mouth to prevent him from shouting. As the man came, the woman shuddered, several mind-shattering orgasms racking her body, then slumped to the side, unable to consciously handle the assault of pleasure. As Garret and the other guard ran towards them, the woman entered the final phase of her transformation. Having received the semen of a man and the shot of spiritual energy that accompanied it, horns sprouted from her head, wings and a tail emerged, and before their eyes, she rapidly transformed into a fully-fledged mamono.
Garret killed her on the spot.
When he returned to camp later that night, he found out that similar events had happened to just about every one of the transformed women, with similar results. One escaped, dragging their partner into the woods with them, never to be seen again, but the rest were slaughtered on sight. Needless to say, these events were not good for The Order's morale. It was this that caused Garret to realize no matter what they did, every day had the potential to bring a new horror, and there was no such thing as 'the worst being past' when in the demon realm. On one hand, it was useful, in a way, for his mental stability, helping him to justify the things he had done. He didn't want to see any more people get kidnapped, transformed, or violated like that, so… maybe his sins would be justified after all… On the other hand, though, it brought his mood down even further, which began to develop into a feeling of hopelessness. Was there any way out of this? Was there a third option? Something besides doing horrible things to monsters to protect humans, or leaving them alone and then watching humans have terrible things inflicted upon them? Garret didn't know… and he didn't really have a choice either. For the sake of Annika, his friends, and the soldiers under his command, he had to stay with the crusade. The Order, despite the attacks and strange, transformative phenomenon, was still pressing onwards in an advance that was unflinching, unstopping, and unrelenting.
Author's Notes: Nothing interesting to report at this time, sorry~
Until next time, Sayonara!