August 4th, 1926 – Moskva, the Lair of the Dark Mother
It watches through a hundred thousand eyes; it listens through a hundred thousand ears; it acts through a million limbs; it thinks with a single biological mass that has as much in common with the slave-sparks' brains as they have with the neural systems of individual ants.
The situation is not progressing as it planned. Despite the numerous agents it has sent to destroy the weapon of the slave-sparks, the device is still untouched, still a threat to it. It still has a host of agents left, but many have been disabled, and while it can recycle their components, the process will take time.
It does not feel frustration, because it is as capable of feeling anything as the smallest piece of rock resting on a mountainside. But the persistence of the slave-sparks does trigger its escalation protocols, and so it begins to consider new courses of action.
It could move its primary terminal to intervene directly. Prior observation has shown that the slave-sparks cannot withstand close proximity to it. But unlike the ones it subverted in order to manifest, these slave-sparks have demonstrated that they possess some defences against its influence. And moving might cause the other bright presence it can sense floating in the sky to take action. More importantly, its primary terminal cannot move as fast as its agents : it simply isn't designed for it. All that might achieve is bring the terminal closer to the weapon when it activates.
It discards this course of action, and immediately moves on to the next one. From its observations, the coordination of the slave-sparks is their greatest advantage. It lets them leverage their mechanical weaponry for maximum effect despite their lack of a truly unified awareness like that of its agents. In order for the threat to its purpose to be removed, that advantage must be taken from them.
One of its agents is suited for the task. It has already succeeded in hunting and eliminating the leadership caste of the slave-sparks which previously inhabited its lair, which kept them from becoming a nuisance. It has been upgraded with the ability to conceal its presence from every sense of the slave-sparks for short periods, and is sufficiently lethal in its own right. But the slave-sparks will be aware of this vulnerability, and they have many assets its agent cannot face directly. A distraction is needed.
Its mouths speak, adjusting the orders it sends, and the largest agents it currently has on this planet begin to move.
Inside her Hüne, Frieda Wotjek watches, and waits, suppressing her and her mount's desire to stride forth and join the fray, to let loose their shared fury upon the Progeny. She and the other eight pilots have received very clear instructions : they are not to waste energy on the numberless horde of the Progeny unless they receive direct orders to the contrary. They are too important, and there's always the risk that one of the beasts might get lucky and cripple them – or deploy some kind of counter they haven't prepared for.
Instead, their focus is on the Kinder, the spawn of Being K which most closely resemble their nightmarish creator. On the way from the mustering point at Tiegenhoff, Frieda and the other pilots were briefed on Projekt K, and told everything Division Y knows on the Kinder. Before the Solstice Event, these particular Mythos entities had only been summoned twice : once during the initial testing of the Kindermärchen's contents at Castle Schwartzstein, and again against the Dacian Army, in Division Y's first field deployment (at least, as far as Frieda knows).
In theory, the Hünen's weapons should be able to hurt the Kinder, despite their tough hide and incredible regenerative abilities. They'd been able to hurt the Ivory Blasphemy in Remula, and the Congregation's last-ditch attempt to doom the world had been a higher-class entity than the Kinder. For obvious reasons, they couldn't test this beforehand, but that's fine. Frieda trusts the occultists; more than that, she trusts the strength of her Hüne.
Lieutenants König and Neumann are on the Hüne's shoulders, like they were at Bovariastadt. Back then, Frieda thought there wasn't anything she could possibly despise more than the Eikons, who dared to invade her Fatherland and twist the minds of its people.
She was wrong. At least the Eikons' indoctrination could be healed, their victims saved from Being X's insidious control. There is no hope for any of the Progeny to return to Humanity : the occultists tried everything they could on captured specimens, and didn't find anything. The brass made sure everyone in the Allied Forces knows, to make sure nobody hesitates at the idea of shooting something which was once a civilian.
Death is the only mercy they can give to the Progeny – death, and vengeance upon their destroyer. It is a cold comfort, but it's all they've got.
For now, the Kinder have remained immobile, standing amidst the defiled ruins of Moskva. But that cannot last, and predictably, it doesn't.
As the defensive line buckles yet holds under the strain, there is a shift in the terrible noise produced by the Dark Mother. As one, the Kinder start marching, threading ponderously amidst the horde of lesser monstrosities. Looking at them from afar, they appear slow, but that's only an illusion : with how large they are, they're easily keeping up with the rest of the Progeny.
Frieda notes that, despite the Kinder's size and the Progeny's frenzy, none of the Lycans are crushed underfoot by the greater horrors as they advance. They seem to flow around the Kinder, dodging their enormous limbs on instinct. She doesn't think human soldiers could achieve that level of coordination, and the sight of this sends a shiver down her spine as it reminds her of the true, awful nature of the foe.
As the Kinder enter the killing zone, artillery shells start slamming into them. There is some damage, but it regenerates too quickly for anything but concentrated fire to have any chance of taking them down, and the Allied Forces cannot afford the distraction. Just by walking forward, the Kinder are shielding the horde with their bodies, leading to more beasts making it through.
Frieda leans forward, the Hüne mimicking her movements. She doesn't leave her position, though : she is too well-trained a soldier to move without orders in anything but the most urgent of situations. They have to wait for the signal, which she knows she won't be able to miss – and she is right.
Frieda's mount senses it first : a spike of mana gathering in the sky, far beyond the reach of any aerial mage using a single-core computation orb. Then she hears it, echoing across the battlefield and through the Hüne's armor in defiance of all acoustic principles. To her human ears, it sounds like a gentle lullaby, reminding her of her mother singing to her after a nightmare, years ago now. But to the Wunderwaffe to which she's bound, it is something else entirely – it is a wave, a command, a prayer, a decree, a lever being pulled which causes the unseen gears of the universe to turn.
It is the Director, playing a tune on the flute she took out of the Black Vaults of Castle Schwartzstein – the Flute of the Dark Mother, the very artefact which she used to unleash Projekt K on the Dacian Army. Back then, the Director was able to dismiss the Kinder she'd summoned once they had crushed the Dacian troops : it is the hope of the Allied Forces that it can do the same here.
Frieda tenses, all her senses honed on the Kinder's lumbering forms as the Director's song reaches them. The Hüne can 'see' how the Flute's influence clashes against the eldritch ties linking the Kinder to Being K, how the Flute's music battles with the bleating of the Dark Mother. Translated into something her human mind can comprehend, it looks like tendrils of blue moonlight reaching out to the Kinder and knotting themselves around black and green growths, like serpents or tree roots fighting.
The Kinder don't disappear, don't return to whatever hellish realm they came from. They didn't plan for it to happen : that would be too easy, though Frieda cannot help the flicker of disappointment she feels. Still, the Flute clearly has an effect of some kind, as they slow down, then stop. Reading the body language of such living nightmares is an exercise in madness, but Frieda likes to imagine they're confused, unsure of what's happening – maybe even afraid, if the Progeny are capable of such.
No matter the Kinder's current mental state, this isn't an opportunity they can afford to waste, and Frieda's superiors realize it immediately.
"All Hünen," the voice of Colonel Lergen comes over the communication network, crisp and cool, "engage the Kinder while they're distracted !"
Frieda laughs mirthlessly as she mentally commands her mount to charge. The Hüne is eager for battle, and that bloodlust flows through their link to mix with her own – she has seen so many horrors on the way to Moskva, and heard reports of many more. She looks forward to venting her anger on some deserving target, though she knows better than to let her anger affect her actions.
Across the line, the rest of Projekt H follows suit, as does the American Titan. Ten of Humanity's greatest feats of arcano-engineering march against a dozen of Being K's largest abominations, a battle of giants the likes of which the world has never seen. The Alliance's warmachines attack in pairs, taking advantage of the Kinder's immobility while it lasts (they don't know how long that will be, whether they will eventually break from the Flute's influence or the Director will have to stop first, but it's obvious it won't last forever).
Simple arithmetic dictates that one of the Hünen must have the Titan as a partner, and the randomness of their position on the line means the honor is Frieda's. She moves ahead of the American, both because the Hünen are more suited to close-quarters combat, and because she's the one with actual experience in battling giant abominations spawned by high-Class Mythos entities.
The Allied giants crush the Progeny underfoot as they stride, whatever alien coordination which allows the beasts to avoid the Kinder's hooves not protecting them from the metal boots of Hünen and Titan. Through her link with her mount, Frieda feels the beasts' bones break and their tainted viscera paint the feet of her Hüne, and shivers in revulsion at the sensation.
Once they are less than a hundred meters from their target, Frieda fires a beam of blue energy at the Kind. The attack leaves a deep gouge into the flesh of the creature, and a torrent of blackish ichor pours out. The beast stumbles, but manages to catch itself without falling, and within a few seconds the wound is already starting to close over as its regeneration takes effect.
"Wotjek reporting to command," she announces, hands tight on the two controller orbs of her mount. "I have confirmation that Projekt M-derivated weaponry is capable of harming the Kinder, but not to disable their regeneration with a single shot, over."
"Understood, Wotjek," replies Colonel Lergen. "All Hünen, follow the plan and overwhelm their regeneration."
That is their best hope : that, when facing with a weapon capable of truly harming them (as opposed to the pitiful gunfire of the Dacian Army, which could barely penetrate the outermost skin layers of the first Wunderwaffen ever deployed), the healing factor of the Kinder has a limit. Based on the regeneration of the Werwölfe and the Fiends of the Nameless City, this seems likely : if you can inflict damage faster than the enemy can regenerate it, then you can kill them eventually.
It's just going to be long and bloody work, and generally, the Mythos entity isn't going to just sit here and take it.
In this case, however, since the Kind is still immobile, she keeps firing, every shot hitting center of mass – not that such accuracy is anything to be proud of, given the bulk of her target. Soon, the air around the beast is filled with a black mist as ichor flows from its injuries. Frieda hears the other Hünen report the same result with their own targets, but despite their efforts, none of the Kinder have fallen.
Then the Titan brings up its main armaments, a massive engine which makes up most of its right arm. Compared to her Hüne's own ranged Projekt K-derived ranged weaponry, it is painfully slow to charge – but then, the Americans have only been working on their 'death rays' for a fraction of the time Division Y has been able to perfect their arsenal.
"Brace for discharge," the Titan's pilot calls out over the radio (he isn't powerful enough magically to use a communication spell, which Frieda still finds weird). Arcs of energy are running across the metal giant, leaping between plates, and there is a sound of pressure building that reminds Frieda far too much of a pressure cooker on the verge of exploding.
The superweapon fires, and Frieda is forced to admit the American scientists did some damn good work. There is light, and the smell of fire and lightning briefly fills her mount's extra-normal perceptions. When her vision returns, the entire upper half of the Kind's massive body is just gone, leaving a smoking crater in its place.
For several seconds, it remains standing, and Frieda is struck by the horrific doubt that even that might not be enough to stop the Kinder. Then, with the kind of slowness typically associated with avalanches, its legs buckle and it falls, never to rise again, finally crushing several dozens of lesser Progeny that fail to get out of the way in time underneath it.
Inside the Hüne's piloting chamber, Frieda lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. She isn't sure whether it is truly dead : the Progeny's biology is an affront to nature at the best of time (and yes, she is aware she is currently sitting inside a summoned horror from beyond the stars covered in metal). But it's not moving, and that's good enough for now.
"Target down," she hears König announce, with a slight inclination of voice betraying his surprise that no one who doesn't know him well could pick up. "Move to the next one."
"Understood," comes the reply of the Titan's pilot – a tall brute of a man Frieda met before the Operation's start, who was surprisingly polite to a slip of a girl ten years younger once he realized she was an aerial mage before becoming a Hüne pilot.
Frieda and the Titan are half-way to their next target when the Flute's melody abruptly stops. On instinct, she looks up, bending the thick neck of the Hüne to direct its eyes toward the skies.
She sees the Director, no longer playing the Flute – no longer flying under her own power, it looks like, as another mage is holding her. There is no sign of enemy action aimed at her, not that the Progeny have shown anything that could threaten Major Degurechaff when she is surrounded by a guard of recently-resurrected Untoten and Nazzadi mages.
So far, at least, she hastens to amend the thought, having spent too much time on the battlefield to taunt fate like that.
Without the Flute's song keeping them quiescent, the Kinder swiftly awaken from their torpor. The one Frieda and the Titan are targeting begin galloping, its legs moving far quicker than anything that size has any right to be. It's going right for the Titan, and Frieda knows at once that, somehow, it (or rather, the alien intelligence directing it) has identified it as the greatest threat.
"Step back !" she shouts, and moves to intercept.
Up close, the beast looks even bigger. It is about the same height as the Hüne, although its body keeps shifting shape, and its total mass far outweighs the Wunderwaffe. As it approaches, she brings up her left arm and pushes her claw into the mass of the Kind, tearing into its flesh with disgusting ease. A torrent of ichor erupts from the wound, but the beast doesn't even seem to notice, and keeps moving forward with all the subtlety of a battering ram.
It smashes against the shield König and Neumann bring up just in time, but the kinetic energy bleeding off from the impact is enough to force the Hüne to take several staggering steps backward. At the same time, Frieda feels the wards on the Hüne's chassis flare up, pushing back Being K's influence as it tries to jump from the Progeny-born eldritch horror to the Imperial-made one. Bile fills her mouth in reaction, but she forces herself to swallow : there is far too much priceless equipment in the pilot chamber for her to vomit.
Tentacles erupt from the Kind, lashing out at the shield, every blow strong enough to crush a tank to pieces. Frieda wishes they could use the dimensional-shifting spell which served them so well at Bovariastadt, but with Being K's presence messing with the local space-time, that's impossible. They don't know what will happen if they try, but given how volatile the spell formula is in the first place and how much testing and fine-tuning it took before the Director authorized its use on the battlefield, it wouldn't be anything good.
This fight will be hard, but Frieda thinks of all the soldiers on the battlefield fighting for their lives, for the lives of all people everywhere, and she and her Hüne bellow their determination as they run back at the Kind, to keep it busy while the Titan tries to get a good angle to shoot it dead, dead, dead.
Behind the frontline of the most important battle in the history of the world stand a bunch of large white tents, each marked with a red cross – a relatively recent symbol in the history of Mankind, but one that is already known worldwide nonetheless. Within the largest of these hastily-constructed refuges, directing the efforts of dozens of medical personnel, Doctor Iosefka is leading her own war against death. It is a battle no less bloody and hard-fought than the one being waged outside, and one that has been ongoing since the first ape-like human being realized there were things they could do to keep their brethren alive.
Wounded soldiers are brought in on stretchers carried by dedicated teams of three runners, who go back and forth between the medical center and the frontline. The men they bring are bleeding and broken, missing parts of them lost to the ravenous hunger of the Progeny. Now that the beasts have reached the defensive line due to the Kinder blocking some of the artillery fire, not a moment passes without more being brought in. Yet Iosefka knows that this flow is but a fraction of the casualties of the Allied Forces : most who fall simply die where they stood, slaughtered by the unholy beasts.
The knowledge of it burns, but she cannot help the dead. Despite all the advances of Division Y where magical healing is concerned, despite all the miracles wrought within the halls of Castle Schwartzstein, that much remains the province of God alone, and if He is involved at all in this battle, then He is being infuriatingly subtle and mysterious about it.
But Iosefka can still help those who are brought to her, and she does so.
She will not stop. With spells and bandages, with bone-saw and disinfectant, with blood transfusions and a hundred, a thousand more tools of her craft, she keeps working, keeps shouting orders, keeps forcing order to the chaos through sheer will – and her people answer. Medical mages and Imperial doctors, from Division Y, the Eastern Army, or brought from the rest of the Reich along with the artillery pieces even now raining death upon the horde : all of them follow her lead without question. Even the medics of the Unified States' contingent have joined the effort, because here like outside, things like nationality and creed mean nothing compared to their shared goal :
To save one more life. And then, after that, one more, and one more, and one more still.
Always, always one more. That is the oath of the medic in war, the only promise that can be kept when that dread beast, far more terrible than any Mythos entity dragged from beyond the veil by the folly of men, comes calling.
When Iosefka swore that oath, she had no idea of the true horror of war. She was too young to remember the last conflict to tear the Europan continent asunder, and this war was a magnitude more terrible from the start anyway, even before the Director let loose Division Y's creations.
Now she knows. She has faced more gruesome injuries than those of the soldiers she now heals, back in Castle Schwartzstein, when one experiment or another went wrong, but never in such vast numbers. There is blood everywhere, despite their best efforts to avoid contamination, and she has a feeling she won't ever be able to scrub her hands clean.
But that doesn't matter. She is a doctor; she will help those she can.
She whispers her oath to herself under her breath as she sews a soldier's guts back in, in between shouting orders with a voice that's becoming hoarser by the moment. The familiar words anchor her to the moment; they keep her focused, keep her sane. It is an oath, a prayer, and a promise, one which has been sworn by learned minds in one form or another for centuries :
Primum non nocere …
Before joining Division Y, Micolash was nothing. The fourth son of a minor noble family, he never achieved anything of worth, and his parents and siblings always made sure he knew it. He was more interested in books than glory and wealth, and had neither the patience for nor the understanding of the games of prestige and politicking that seemed so important to everyone around him for some unfathomable reason. Even his magical potential was too weak to qualify him for the aerial mage corps, not that he had any interest in joining the Army in the first place – he knew the kind of training they were subjected to, and he'd no interest in suffering it himself.
He knows his father arranged his transfer to Division Y so as to get him out of view, while still being able to claim his son was serving the Fatherland. Truth be told, Micolash didn't mind. There were plenty of books to read in Castle Schwartzstein he had never heard of before, and people who actually knew what he was talking about when he went on one of his rants about ancient history and myths.
But then the Director came. She wasn't the Director then, of course, but it was clear from the onset that she was something special, and she took charge almost as soon as she arrived in the castle. Micolash, unlike others, had seen it immediately. She hadn't come to Division Y in unspoken exile like him and most of the others, but because she genuinely thought they could serve the Empire by mastering the secrets of the universe.
And such secrets they learned. Such wonderful horrors, such horrifying wonders. Micolash was here when the Denkmaschine was turned on for the first time; he was here when the first Class One entity was summoned in controlled conditions using a ritual it had reconstructed, proving that there was something to what they called Elder Magic then.
Since then, his mind has been opened, and he has followed the Director's lead into places Man was never intended to walk. He has gained knowledge he could never have imagined before coming to Division Y, and he will never regret it.
He knows this came at a cost. His dreams are no longer his own, despite all the safety precautions the Director put into place, and his body is failing, the result of performing too many pioneering experiments, before proper protocols were designed. It is only thanks to a cocktail of stimulants, not all of which were the product of Imperial science, that he can be here on the field of battle, instead of slowly withering away in his bed.
It is a shame, but if not him, then it would have been someone else in his place, and Micolash likes his occultist colleagues. Besides, the fact that Doctor Iosefka gives him only a couple of years left to live at best is the reason why he is here, on the frontline, instead of back in the magic circles casting support spells for the aerial mages.
The soldiers around him are casting wary glances in his direction. Micolash knows he doesn't look like much, wearing a trooper's helmet on his head and a lab coat with embroidered occult sigils on his body. If not for the emblem of Division Y on his shoulder, he has no doubt the glances would be a lot more disdainful.
As the horde of Progeny gets closer, Micolash looks down. In his hands, he holds an innocuous-seeming injector, not that different from the ones used by the Director herself for the Kosmosblut. The contents, however, are far different.
Micolash knows that, if he uses it, the serum will kill him. It has killed every single one of the ten death row inmates on whom it was tested before the Director pulled the plug and closed this avenue of research. But he is dying already, and using it might just be enough to let a few more soldiers survive this day.
Elsewhere across the line, there are others like him, who have given their lives to Division Y already and are looking for a way to make their deaths mean something as well. Each of them carry a different object taken from the Black Vaults at the Director's orders; each of them is ready to die to help stop the Dark Mother. In a moment of dark humor, the Director called them her 'Suicide Squad', before immediately apologizing for her lack of tact.
It was, Micolash reflects, the only time he ever saw the Director act like a flustered child of her apparent age. The memory brings a brief smile to his lips. It is good, he reflects, that their leader should still possess some measure of humanity, for all her great intellect and terrible power. After all, power without conscience is precisely what they face now.
Thanks to the Kinder joining the fray and acting as living cover to their lesser brethren, the Progeny are beginning to push on the defensive line. In response, Colonel Lergen has given the order to activate the 'Suicide Squad' to take some of the pressure off the Allied Forces' mundane soldiers.
It is, objectively, the correct decision. Still, Micolash doesn't envy the Colonel for having to make it. He's never talked with the Director's favorite military officer, but he's seen him around, and Lergen looked very, very stressed indeed.
Hopefully he'll be able to get some well-needed and better-deserved leave time once this whole mess is over. But, one way or the other, Micolash won't be there to see it.
"For the Fatherland, then," the occultist whispers to himself, not even able to hear himself over the cacophony of the battle, and jams the injector against his scrawny neck before activating it. There is a slight pain as the needle pierces his skin, but it is completely eclipsed as the serum takes effect.
Fire. It burns through his veins like lightning, until it reaches his heart. In the time between heartbeats, it pools within Micolash's core, then the muscle beats, and the fire erupts, spreading across his entire body. A green inferno, too powerful for his frail flesh to contain.
But that is fine. Micolash never intended to contain it. The serum's formula is derived from ancient texts which supposedly held the secrets to a fire-breathing spell, something which must have been quite the showstopper back in the old days but is little more than a party trick in the modern era. Once the fragments were fed to the Denkmaschine, however, something far more powerful came out.
Micolash smiles. Strangely, there is no pain anymore. He suspects that is because the pain receptors of his human body simply have no idea what the Hell is happening to him. He would like to make a note of it for the record, but his teeth have started to melt inside his mouth, fusing them shut, so he cannot share this new insight with the people around him (who are edging away from him anyway), and holding a pen would be difficult with the tips of his fingers burning away to reveal green fire.
Oh well. So be it.
He instinctively knows how to use the fire within to propel himself forward, how to make it flow from his hands, his mouth, his eyes. The researchers who developed and tested the serum thought that's because it connects the user to another Mythos entity, the one the green fire comes from – like the fog of Projekt N, and the horrors of Projekt K. The fact the fire can only be used to destroy is another reason why the Director forbade further research into the matter : they already have enough problems with two Class Ten entities meddling with the affairs of men.
He comes down in the middle of the Progeny, burning a spot for him to land with a stream of fire that consumes his feet in the process. Then he is fire and he is death. He keeps moving by pouring more fire from the burned stumps of his legs, and unleashes great waves of green flames from his hands that consume hundreds of beasts at a time. An aerial mage can do the same with a good orb and advanced attack spells, but the serum gives Micolash unlimited castings until his body gives out, and every aerial mage is needed elsewhere.
Micolash burns the spawn of the Dark Mother, but more come, always more. The malign intelligence directing them has detected him now, and it wants him removed, regardless of the cost. Even as his brain boils within his skull, part of Micolash wonders if it senses the touch of the pseudo-fire-based entity from which the serum is derived on him. He hopes one of his colleagues is taking notes for later analysis.
The thought makes him laugh, or perhaps it's the fever making him delirious. His melted teeth part once more, molten ivory flying like spittle, and once he starts, he cannot stop, and he laughs, laughs, laughs.
He is still laughing when he is finally brought down by a score of Lycans, their claws and fangs tearing him apart.
As he dies, Micolash wonders if his family will be proud of him now, but to his own, final, pleased surprise, he finds that does not much care.
In the end, he found his own worth.
General Hutton wonders if he has died and gone to Hell. Really, it seems like the most reasonable explanation for this nightmare.
He came to Europa ready to fight the Empire's monsters, but this is something else entirely. For all the terror they left in their wake, the Imperial Wunderwaffen have always been tightly controlled, and deployed sparingly, always in support of the rest of the Imperial Army's efforts.
This is not that. Standing in the command center, looking down at a live magical projection of the battle, the American General feels his blood freeze, even as he does his best to keep it from being visible on his face.
There is control behind the Progeny's actions, but it only makes them more horrifying. The part of him that still thinks like a child raised under the tenets of the Church cannot help but think that they are faced a divine scourge, sent by a god more malevolent than the foulest blasphemer could ever have imagined.
What good can mortal men do before such evil ?
Still, he will be damned, quite possibly literally, if he lets his fear affect his leadership. So he keeps up a strong front as reports come in from all across the line through radio and communication spells. Him, Lergen, and a handful of other officers are shouting orders, moving reserve forces into position to plug gaps and delay the inevitable – and it is inevitable. The Kinder being successfully held back has bought them more time, but there is no question that sooner or later, the Progeny will break through.
The only question is whether they can hold them long enough to fire the Wunderwaffe atop the hill and take out the source of this madness. Last they heard from the magical engineers, the work was on schedule, but –
Hutton's train of thoughts is interrupted by a shrill scream of terror and agony that ends abruptly, its source far too close for comfort. The American General stands, throwing his chair to the ground in his haste, and turns in time to see the cause of the scream tear a section of the command tent open and stalk inside.
His mind rebels at the sight. Until now, he's only seen the Progeny on photographs and magical records, as well as a few autopsies. To witness one of them alive and in motion is something else entirely, and his respect for the soldiers holding the line increases even further, even as another part of him notes that this particular example of Being K's flesh-crafting is unlike anything he's seen in the scouting reports.
It is big, bigger than the Lycans and the Satyrs, though mercifully not nearly as large as the Kinder. It has too many mouths, one on its head and several on its torso, between rows of leaking teats. On its canine head, four goat-like eyes blaze with undeniable intelligence, surrounded by a mane of red hair, falling down like a bloody waterfall.
And the stench, dear God, the stench. It fills the tent, a musky scent that completely overpowers that of the gore from the beast's victims. It simultaneously make Hutton want to puke, to scream, to indulge in desires he'd no idea his brain was capable of conjuring.
The beast stalks forward, its gaze fixed on the Imperial officer next to Hutton.
"Colonel Lergen," it growls, the words making it seem even more abominable despite being perfectly understandable Imperial – because nothing that looks like that should be able to talk. "Mother has sent me for you."
"You speak," says Lergen, sounding utterly unworried by the fact there is a monster in their command center (and not one of the ones which are on their side). "Interesting. We thought the Satyrs were the only breed of Progeny capable of mimicking intelligence. What are you, creature ?"
"I helped Mother Russy come to Her children," growls the beast. "She remembers, and honors me for it. I am Her voice and Her herald, and now, I am Her knife, to silence those who dare attempt to harm Her."
"Ah. A former cultist, then," replied Lergen, still looking and sounding impossibly calm – disdainful, even. "But you're wrong. You are a slave, nothing more. And no matter how favored by your master you might be, a slave you shall remain."
The beast makes a noise like several kittens drowning, and it takes a moment for Hutton to realize it's laughing.
"We are all slaves in the end, Lergen. But … You might yet join Her children." It reaches up with one of its paws to touch one of its leaking teats, the gesture somehow disgustingly obscene. "You need only kneel and partake of Her bounty through me, and She will remake you as She has remade Her children. One such as you would be welcomed, given a place of honor in the world that is to come."
"I am a Colonel of the Imperial Army," sneers Lergen. "We do not accept bribes, and we do not kneel to monsters. We kill them."
There is a brief pause, just long enough for Hutton to wonder where the fuck are their reinforcements. The radios are still on, after all, so someone must have heard them talking. Why in God's name haven't the mages come down to deal with this monster ?! Come to think of it, how did it even manage to sneak into the camp in the first place ?!
"Then you will die, and your flesh shall serve Mother Russy in a different way," declares the beast, before charging straight at them.
On instinct, Hutton draws his firearm and shoots. He's a General, but he hasn't always been one, and he still spends time at the shooting range to keep his skills sharp. All that training means that, even now, his hand is steady, and the single shot he manages to get off hit the beast's grotesque head.
Predictably, it does nothing. It is a pointless gesture, and Hutton knew before he pulled the trigger. But it's hard to suppress your instincts, and besides, what was he supposed to do ? Not shoot the twisted monstrosity as it comes to kill him ? Even pointless defiance is better than meekly surrendering in the face of certain death.
Then the Albish witch, Niniane, leaps from behind the desk where she was hiding to stand between Lergen and the beast. She is holding a silver cross in her hand, brandishing it before her like a talisman, and for an instant Hutton thinks the girl has gone mad and is going to try to exorcise the monster – which, sure, might look like a demon called forth to plague the world by heretical madmen, but he's fairly sure if that worked Division Y would have found out and weaponized it by now. Especially given what happened at the Holy See.
Then the cross glows with a golden light, which forms a barrier around her and Lergen, and the beast's claws bounce off it.
It snarls, a sound entirely devoid of humanity. It smashes at the barrier, again and again, and Hutton sees Niniane wince with every blow. The General isn't well-versed in magic : he knows more than most due to having been granted command of Research Group 51, but he's no mage himself. But it's obvious that the girl's getting tired, and won't be able to keep the barrier up much longer.
He glances sideways, and sees Lergen standing there, staring at the beast on the other side of the shield. The Imperial officer still doesn't look afraid : he has drawn his own pistol, and is checking it as if nothing was wrong.
Then a new figure rushes through the opening left by the beast in the side of the command tent. Despite the speed at which it moves, Hutton recognizes it from his briefing on the assets brought by Division Y to Operation Gottesmörder, thanks to the adrenaline flowing through his veins distorting his perception of time.
At first glance, it resembles the powered armors of Research Group 51. It is a bit taller, though, and unlike the bare metal of Teslus' creations, it is made of a smooth white material. There is an undeniable artistry to the whole thing, especially when contrasted with the unholy horror of the Progeny beast.
But then, you see the male human head atop its torso. A helmet of the same white material covers it almost completely, but the mouth and eyes are visible. It is as if someone took an antique marble statue, beheaded it, and put a fresh human head atop it instead.
"Hello, Natasha," says the mechanical creature as it wrestles with the Progeny on the ground, sending pieces of furniture flying. Its voice is rough, which is probably due to the fact it doesn't have any flesh below the neck : Hutton doesn't know how much of its vocal chords is left, but he doesn't think it's a lot.
'Totenkopf' is the name it was given on the briefing materials Hutton read. Now, the American General isn't ashamed to admit his knowledge of Imperial was a bit rusty before he got sent to Europa, but he did his best to brush up on his schooling on the way across the ocean. But it doesn't exactly take a linguist to translate that to 'Deathshead'.
He isn't sure whether whoever named the poor bastard was making a joke, or just being painfully descriptive. He isn't sure which option is worse.
He's also very much not thinking about why he's speaking with a distinct Albish accent. This has 'diplomatic incident' written all over it, and not only is now hardly the time for those, Hutton makes it a policy only to get involved in the ones he started himself, which is probably the only reason the diplomatic corps haven't had him quietly murdered in his sleep.
"Christopher," replies the beast – Natasha ? What the hell's the story here ? Hutton has no idea, and he's got a feeling that's for the best. "What have they done to you ?"
"No worse than what happened to you, I reckon. Let's take this outside, shall we ?"
With a mighty punch, Totenkopf bends the beast in two, before tackling it and dragging it outside like a football player whose coach has bribed the referee not to call a foul. A strange quiet falls on the command center, broken only by the tinny voices coming out of the radio speakers as new intel continues to come in, along with urgent questions as to what just happened.
"Shouldn't we move elsewhere ?" Hutton manages to say to no one in particular. "If it comes back …"
"What would be the point ?" replies Lergen with a shrug. "If Totenkopf cannot kill it, then we are dead anyway. There is no way we could move fast enough to avoid it, so we might as well make ourselves useful as long as we can."
For a second, Hutton stares at the Imperial Colonel, who looks utterly unperturbed. Then he finally sees the veritable river of sweat running down the other man's forehead. Perversely, the sight reassures him, as it tells him that Lergen still feels fear, meaning that he isn't insane, or at least not anymore insane than any of them.
"I suppose you're right," the American General nods, and they both turn their focus back to the comms station, pretending not to hear the sounds of the closest battle. If nothing else, they can make sure the transition of command is as smooth as possible.
Although, of course, all things being equal, Hutton would much prefer not being killed by a hideous monstrosity from the darkest pit of Hell.
Christopher Ward, once Agent 404 of the Allied Kingdom Secret Services, now recorded in the annals of Division Y only as 'Subject Totenkopf', is fighting with every bit of strength the Imperials have, for their own incomprehensible reasons, decided to give him.
When he realized what had happened to him, Christopher Ward begged to die. Who wouldn't, in his place ? Giving one's life for one's country is one thing : he accepted that possibility years ago, when he joined the Secret Services. But this living death, sustained by eldritch magic and forbidden science, is something else entirely.
It is possible, Christopher supposes, that some people would be willing to continue living in his current condition. He doubts they would keep thinking that after experiencing it, though. There is a difference between living and existing he never could have appreciated before, when he could still enjoy the simple pleasures of life that are now forever denied to him.
What has been done to him would be a war crime, if he actually was connected to the Allied Kingdom in any official capacity. But he isn't, so none of the treaties between civilized nations apply to him. It is still a horror and a blasphemy, a transgression against any God deserving of worship, though.
Christopher can, with great reluctance, understand why Division Y resurrected him in the first place after they found his cooling corpse in the snow after the break-in of Castle Schwartzstein. They needed to know what had become of the Kindermärchen he'd helped Natasha steal, and the Solstice Event and what followed proved they were right to be willing to go to any length to recover it.
But they should have left him die as soon as he answered their questions. Instead, they turned him into another of their supersoldiers, digging out some old concept notes for a 'full body prosthesis' one of their pet madmen had come up with years ago. He tried to force their hand by going on a rampage the moment they turned it on, but they were careful, and Degurechaff, that fiend in the shape of a young girl, has the Devil's own silver tongue. She convinced him that whatever the Federation would do with the Kindermärchen was partially on his head, and he could die once he'd helped clean up the mess he'd caused.
She also promised that if he somehow survives this battle, Division Y will put him down, before arranging for his mortal remains (including the rest of his body, which is kept in a morgue somewhere in their headquarters) to be shipped off to Albion for proper burial. So, between being blackmailed with his duty to his homeland and his desire to be buried there, Christopher reluctantly accepted – after all, he can always die later.
These are the kind of dismal thoughts that have occupied Christopher for the last few weeks. He would have liked to distract himself by fighting the Progeny during their march to Moskva, but Degurechaff vetoed it. She thought Being K could see through its creations' eyes, and wanted to keep as many of the Allied Forces' assets concealed as possible.
Christopher can admire her paranoia, if nothing else. That, and the fact that, in a roundabout way, she gave him a chance to claim revenge on his killer – although there is nothing he can think of that could possibly be worse than what happened to Natasha. He doesn't know how he knew who the monster was the moment he saw her – she wasn't a mage, and it's not like he can recognize mana signature now anyway – but there is no doubt whatsoever in his mind.
He and Natasha are fighting through the camp, lashing at each other with inhuman strength. The rest of the soldiers are keeping their distance – there are only mundane troops back here, every supersoldier save him being needed on the frontline due to the Kinder's advance increasing the pressure. Which, in hindsight, might have been a mistake, but they'd no idea Being K had infiltrators at its disposal : even now, Christopher cannot understand how Natasha made it so far past their line without being detected.
And he heard enough radio chatter to know that the situation on the frontline isn't so much balanced on a knife's edge as it is impaled on one and bleeding to keep it stable. So it falls to him to deal with the situation.
The Zertrümmerer Array is made of orichalcum, the same material as Division Y's weird automatons and Captain Weiss' arm. It is strong, far stronger than any metal Christopher knows of. But it still has limits, and the thing Natasha has become is strong beyond what the laws of nature allow, too.
In the midst of the brutal melee, Christopher can't use the ranged weaponry built into his arm, not here in the middle of the Alliance camp, where any bullet that misses its mark could kill someone important to the war effort. Besides, he has a feeling even the high-caliber machine gun wouldn't be able to hurt Natasha now.
There is nothing elegant, subtle or dignified about the fight between the two monsters the Russy and Albish spies have become. They fight like two feral animals wrestling in a muddy field, Natasha's claws tearing at the array's magical material even as Christopher's fists bury into her flesh, ripping fur and bloody meat apart. There is no pain, but Christopher can still feel the complex machinery keeping him … let's go with 'alive' for now, being damaged.
He kicks and punches, drawing on brawling lessons learned in the shadowy back alleys of a hundred cities across the globe. The ground shakes with the strength of his blows, dirt flying around the two combatants.
Natasha growls as they fight, bestial, brutish noises that are nothing at all like the ones she made during the nights they shared as they crossed the snow-covered mountains of the Reich on the way to Castle Schwartzstein.
Vaguely, Christopher hears screams and shouts around them, and the unmistakable noise of M-912 rifles being charged. He wishes they would just shoot and kill them both, but the discipline of Division Y's troopers is too strong : they won't fire while there is a friendly in the line of fire, except in the most pressing of circumstances.
Bones and orichalcum break, and ichor and oil spill onto the earth. Nothing will grow here for a thousand years – nothing natural, at least.
"I'm afraid there was never going to be a happy ending for us, luv," he manages to grunt in between blows.
Then, to his absolute shock, Natasha freezes. He immediately suspects a trick of some kind, bracing himself for anything – a magical attack she hasn't shown so far, some kind of acidic spit that can eat through his head's protections – but nothing happens. She simply lies there, pinned underneath him, trembling as she looks up at him.
"Please," she whines, and for the first time since she shot him in the back and left him to bleed out in the snow, Christopher thinks he can hear a hint of the woman he knew in the bestial voice. "An ending ? Now ?"
Christopher reflexively tries to swallow, but he cannot – he doesn't have saliva anymore, just some kind of bitter-tasting preserving solution that keeps his mouth functioning so he can talk.
"Yeah," he says at last. "I can give you that much."
Christopher rears up, bringing both hands together in the air. Natasha's brief immobility – perhaps a trap, perhaps a genuine instant of clarity resulting of an internal struggle he cannot possibly imagine – ends, and she bites and tears at his exposed torso. But it's too late to stop him.
He brings down his joined fists with all the strength he can muster, and crushes her skull, pulping her brain. The monster Natasha has become, punishment – or perhaps, in whatever passes for the Dark Mother's mind, reward – for unwittingly bringing this doom to Russy, finally dies. Seventeen seconds later, so does Christopher Ward, his life support finally failing from the damage to the Zertrümmerer array, leaving the two of them locked in a final embrace.
His final breath, such as it is within the preservative fluid, is a relieved one.
For him at least, the nightmare is over, and his duty is done.
AN : Oh wow, I am really racking up the killcount of named and new characters, aren't I ? But, given that this is THE big battle of the story, I think that was inevitable.
I'm not totally happy with how this chapter ended up, but I could spend weeks more working on it and never be satisfied.
Thanks to everyone for your kind words on the last chapter. You probably won't be surprised to hear that my initial estimate of how many chapters will be needed to cover the battle might have been overly optimistic.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts on it.
Zahariel out.