It was inevitable that as soon as a series of gunshots and screams erupted from somewhere in the camp, every soldier around was alerted at once. Nearly instantly, officers gathered their companies and raced toward the white tent where the disturbance had originated.

  Captain Gerber had been one of the first to arrive, knowing who had set off in the direction of the tent beforehand, he realized his colleague had likely just met their demise.

  If the blood spray visible from the outside of the white canvas was anything to go by, all four commanders had met their end within, which finally confirmed that something was going on here.

  Captain Gerber realized he was probably the last official fit to lead the battalion, and made a series of judgment calls inside his mind that would forever be known only to him. At once, his expression evened out and he addressed the companies present.

  “Bobcat company, fall back to the radio station to alert brass: the Major and three Captains have been compromised by an indeterminable force. Redhorse, Wintergreen, and Sabertooth companies: keep your weapons trained on that tent!”

  He shouted over the hundreds of men, some who were still arriving. At his words, several dozen peeled off from the main group while the rest found cover and vantage points encircling the tent, hundreds of flashlights shot their beams into the canvas. Due to its thickness, a silhouette could hardly be seen, but Gerber quickly realized that only two individuals were present within.

  “Occupants of the medical tent, this is Captain Gerber! Come out unarmed with your hands raised within the next five seconds or we will open fire!”

  Gerber’s shout had long been known to carry steel with it, and paired with a command that left no room to negotiate, no one in the battalion doubted his words.

  Every member of the battalion of soldiers knew he would make good on that statement, those who had served directly under him even more so, and were the first to turn their rifle safeties' off. The question was whether the tent’s occupants knew that.

  Gerber’s eyes hardened as he waited for any response from the tent, or even for the silhouettes to move, but nothing happened. Eventually he nodded to the man next to him, who raised his voice into a loudspeaker in front of him with practiced rigidity.

  “Five!…Four!…Three!…Two!…One!…”

  “--Captain Gerber, what’s going on here?!”

  The countdown was interrupted as he and the Captain both looked to their sides, where a familiar face had arrived.

  Gerber eyed the arrival cautiously, still not sure of his involvement in whatever this situation was. It was the tent’s provisional owner who had come, the battalion’s head doctor.

  “Doctor Meyers, this is a military matter, please keep your assistants and yourself at an appropriate distance for your own safety.”

  Gerber looked around for an officer to direct the doctor away.

  “Surely you don’t mean to fire upon my tent, do you? There’s valuable equipment in there! Records of progress we’ve made on the specimen as well! The reinforcements arriving tomorrow will surely want to take a look at those, don’t you think?”

  The Captain was focusing on getting an officer over, when something made him pause.

  “Arriving tomorrow? You’re mistaken, Doctor. The reinforcements are expected to come tonight. As soon as possible. Regardless, how would you…”

  BOOOM

  All of a sudden a flash of blinding light erupted within the group of soldiers, scattering rock debris and flesh in all directions.

  The Captain and several others attempted to shield their eyes from the flying rocks while their minds failed to adjust in time to what was happening.

  BOOOM

  Another explosion tore apart the companies, detonating directly on top of one of the tented barracks.

  Gerber wiped the ash from his eyes. Shock fell upon his face.

  “Mortar fire? Where fr–our mortars?!”

  He jumped down from his elevated position, pushing past the doctor to address the recovering battalion.

  “Someone’s accessed the armory! All companies push to the southwest!”

  “Oorah!”

  The hundreds of soldiers all composed themselves upon hearing his orders and shouted in unison. Tearing off toward one side of the camp, their march was quickly slowed as they came under mortar fire at nearly point-blank distance.

  “What in the–it’s our own soldiers!?”

  Gerber cursed as he finally got visual on the mortar crews. He even recognized some of them. He realized that as he raised his rifle at the hill that the guns were positioned on.

  Spies? Traitors? Or dissenters? What had compelled them to kill their own comrades? Gerber’s usually calm mind was churning for the first time in years as he fired upon the artillery crews, placing a round expertly through the skull of one of them before emptying his magazine at another.

  All of that took place in less than a minute, before the mortar fire was then drowned out by machine guns on another rocky hill. He turned at the noise, and his face went pale despite his conditioned calm.

  There were more traitors than Gerber could anticipate, and they had already set up a flank on the other side of the camp. Raining down machine gun fire on top of their already-shelled out position, bodies accumulated in their ranks.

  The tents had provided no cover against the belt-fed guns or shrapnel explosives.

  Numerous as they were, armed with just simple rifles the battalion couldn’t hold out for long as the night sky roared with thunder, cracking apart in shades of orange and red.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  …

  Never in Gerber’s life had he ever considered himself a religious man. Decades of military education and even longer spent in the fiery mires of war had robbed him of whatever part of his mind might have believed in a benevolent god.

  But as he knelt on the ground, his face inches from kissing the blood-slicked stones of the Jejune, a terrible feeling stirred in his stomach. For just a moment, he forgot the cold metal of the rifle pressed against his head.

  Bearing witness to the indescribable silhouette on the other side of the medical tent, now lit by the fires of the surrounding camp, after nearly fifty years he felt that something beyond their understanding might exist. Whatever it was, the thing responsible for the bloodshed today, it was far from the benevolent creator that the churches and temples of the world venerated.

  No, it was an angry thing.

  A monstrosity of twisting vines that echoed an orchestra of wet snapping and dreadful yawns. Not a god, but a demon.

  By the time Justin stepped out of the tent with his main body, after more than half a day of isolation from the rest of the camp, Captain Gerber’s mind was already close to breaking.

  Noticing the whimpering of the survivors, Justin sent them a curious glance that was shortly followed by a hundred other pairs of glazed yellow eyes.

  By now, Justin was finding it hard to get around in his main body with just his two legs. So many tentacles had sprouted from beneath the cracks in his armor whether he wanted them to or not, that he was actually physically impeded from walking around.

  Don’t misunderstand, it wasn’t that they were too dense, but that they physically cast too wide of a berth around him to venture into most structures. If he had stayed in the tent for another hour more, perhaps he would have had to cut himself out.

  That was why he had brought the remaining soldiers of the battalion before him. Also because he wanted to ask questions in person, and not through the mouth of one of the hosts.

  Despite everything that had happened today, in his mind he still identified himself as Justin, not the collective.

  Justin was afraid that if he was careless, that distinction might blur with time, so he wanted to keep acting with the individual in mind, to retain his sense of identity.

  “What position do you hold in your military?”

  Justin intoned his question evenly, or so he thought. When he actually spoke to the terrified Captain it sounded more like a corpse-like warble.

  “M-my position? I-it’s, or I-I’m a ca-captain.”

  Justin nodded. At least he knew that much, but he wanted to make sure there would be no games played here.

  “And to what country do you owe your allegiance? Describe it.”

  The man’s face paled, though Justin had no idea why. He was hardly asking for state secrets, he just wanted to know where he was on Lemus IV.

  Yes, yes, he knew this desert was called the Jejune, but they hadn’t done much background research on the natives, or well…he was sure Harriet had, he just hadn’t asked. Based on the answer he might at least learn roughly where he was.

  “D-do you n-not know that?”

  The captain slowly raised his head, to which one of the assimilated soldiers responded by pressing it down against the desert surface once more. Was Justin imagining it, or had his tone changed from fearful to hopeful?

  He scowled. Without a word, the soldier who had just pressed the Captain’s face down picked it back up, before turning it to the side where another captive officer was kneeling into the desert stone.

  He was someone who had commanded one of the companies that had fought back against Justin just a few minutes ago, but the only notable distinction between him and the Captain in Justin’s eyes, besides their obvious difference in rank, was that the officer was much more terrified by the visage of Justin.

  The man had actually soiled himself, and was quivering in fear while being forced to kneel in his urine-soaked trousers.

  Justin glanced at the Captain to make sure he was watching, before sending a thought over to the soldier that was behind the officer, who then abruptly shot the man in the back of his head.

  “What-!?”

  The Captain flinched at the wordless exchange, shocked more by the lack of warning than the grotesque brutality of it.

  His confusion quickly turned to fury however and he found the courage to look Justin in the eye.

  “What do you want?! Why do this? We never did anything to you, y-yo-you devil!”

  ‘I thought for a moment he was a weak-willed commander, but it turns out he’s not so simple. He wasn’t fazed by the death of his comrade nearly as much as I had expected. Or maybe they held animosity toward each other?’

  Justin hummed without replying to the Captain. Instead, he had the Captain’s face pushed back against the ground as he repeated his question.

  ‘But he’s still just a man. A volta would be far trickier, but this one I can break. Though I take no pleasure in it.’

  “Just describe your country.”

  “Go to hell, demon!”

  Justin was taken aback for a moment, before realizing that the man hadn’t meant it literally.

  Of course, he hadn’t said Daemon, but demon. A mythological, colloquial term that served as a descriptor for a monster or evil-natured entity rather than the actual term for the bestial antithesis of voltas.

  It might seem strange for a native to say something so close to the truth, but it actually made sense. One of the many great mysteries of the System was that its aspects spread across boundaries. Regardless of its presence in the darkest corners of the universe or not.

  Daemons were a twisted product of the system and the monstrous races, but their existence had still found root in the mythology of places where neither existed.

  Justin supposed that the lesser term was some grand expletive in the native’s culture, but was running on too short of a clock to be curious. With another mental signal, he repeated his little show with the officer two more times, finally eliciting the Captain’s horror.

  “Name it. What surrounds this…Jejune?”

  Gerber gritted his teeth, feeling phlegm rising into his mouth, he wanted to spit the wad at the base of Justin’s feet, but looking down the line of kneeling survivors, knew that it would cost at least a half dozen more lives.

  In his conscience, he couldn’t handle that. He was a Captain, yes, but there was a difference in sending his soldiers to die for an unwinnable cause, and killing them just to spite the victor. Nothing had been asked so far that the next person in the line couldn’t answer, and frankly Gerber didn’t know why he was still being questioned.

  “It’s…the Silver Republic. The nation I owe my allegiance to is the Silver Republic.”

  Justin’s eyes surveyed the Captain carefully before digesting the information. Luckily, he had heard of the country a little bit in their briefing. As they hadn’t known where the Herald would surface from underground until they were close, Harriet had given a brief overview of all the planet’s major countries, even if they had somehow missed the topic of mutant beasts.

  What he could remember about the Silver Republic was that like its title, it was a parliamentary republic with a chancellor.

  It had poor infrastructure off the planet, the height of which was a few satellites that could be called outdated if one were feeling generous.

  The boundaries of its territory were spread out over a vast but mostly uninhabitable region of mountains and deserts. The majority of its population was located in a few major cities along its southern coast, and the nation was currently locked in a silent arms and technology race against the other major powerhouse on the planet, the Principality of Amber. Like many of the early space-age civilizations, both had just discovered fission energy, and were sitting in a precarious balance with it.

  In terms of the planet’s average military the Republic was advanced, though not to the same degree as the Principality, but its greatest advantage was manpower. Anything beyond that hadn’t been covered by Harriet, as it hadn’t been necessary.

  All they really cared about was that if the Herald were to emerge within the Silver Republic’s territory without their intervention, response time would be slower on average but casualties would be higher thanks to the makeup of their army.

  In Justin’s case though, that suited him just fine.