In the depths of the underground complex…1026Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTpA2pvZx6t
The gentle tapping on the surface of a table resounded in the emptiness of the vast chamber in the heart of an underground bunker whose high ceilings were lined with strips of electrical lights. Echoes bounced around the six walls of the hall, with each sound taking a whole minute to dissipate. Despite being a grand war cabinet’s lair, it seemed oddly unused, where rows of telephones had wires clipped onto electrical highways, and files of teleprinters were placed in front of perfectly aligned quilted chairs for officers and their hard pinewood desks. Everything appeared untouched and unstained, resembling a museum display in pristine condition. One could imagine walking down the aisles of offices that charted the room—how many hundreds of roles that would have had to collaborate. The constant clicks and clacks of typewriters, along with the occasional whir of printers, would often be drowned out by the shouts and rustling of paper. However, those sounds had vanished, and to one man, this memory was fresher than that of yesterday.
He would always find himself going there as an escape from peace to reminisce about times of war, to rediscover the fires hidden in his heart. The embers of his ambition stirred whenever he hallucinated those days of action, and although he was nowhere near his physical peak, he wanted to wield his bardiche one last time before his body would rust away. A scar ran across his always frowning face, and his greyish-white hair was still abundant. The sun he had encountered on numerous battlefields naturally tanned his skin, and his beard was meticulously groomed. The air was being strangled by his grip, his hands were venous and warm, and he exerted a monstrous aura that none dared cross until one man appeared in his life.
When the front doors of the chamber swung open, a streak of light briefly flashed by, giving colour to the rank plates on his shoulders, bearing six stars that only a Grand Marshal could boast. However, as this storied warrior sat in wait before two cups of citrus tea, he began to sweat. He gazed at the book that lured the infiltrator closer, whose resonant footsteps marching down the centre aisle replaced the sound of the Grand Marshal’s tapping finger. The wait for his guest felt like an eternity when suddenly a hand reached for a chair beside him, and the stoic-appearing soldier flinched. When the infiltrator pulled back his chair and took a seat, the Grand Marshal steadied his breath and slowly moved his eyes upward, finding it inhuman of him that he was able to make it past all his guards without a single bloodstain on his suit as the fiend glanced at the book between their cups and reached into his inner pocket.
Cautious of the infiltrator’s hand, the elder leaned into his chair so that he would be able to see his every move. “Warm nëden das bök, en du kan rëden eren der hërt? (Why do you require this book if you can recite it off by heart?)” The Grand Marshal asked him in the common tongue of standard Zhermanner.
The infiltrator removed his hand from his pocket, and the Grand Marshal felt his entire body brace up, but he revealed only a branded cigarette box, which he gave a firm tap and loosened a stick of smoke from. His match burst into flame in one swift stroke, and he held its embers beneath his cigarette before tossing it onto the ground, where it was put out by the cold, hard floor.
Soaking his lungs in smoke, the infiltrator exhausted his fumes in their chamber of little ventilation and formed a cloud of tobacco that hung over their heads as he brought the book closer to him without asking for permission. “Family possessions. Nothing more.” He answered with a blank expression on his face.
Watching the ash from the infiltrator’s cigarette collect on the table, the Grand Marshal wondered what was necessary to justify his perilous journey to the Rus, but his guest refused to reveal anything. The infiltrator flipped through the tome, skimming its words, which he had studied since childhood. He had always found the diagrams and anatomical sketches of otherworldly beings intriguing. Notes and coded ideas dotted each chapter like an inked analysis of a detailed novel, but only the infiltrator understood that all of the information contained in that single tome could grant one god-like omniscience.
Having scanned the preface before the infiltrator arrived, the Grand Marshal hoped to spark some conversation by summarising what he had read. “A world without Eifer. That is no better than reducing humans to animals.” Somehow, his courage had returned when he gave his opinion, but he did not know that the infiltrator was least impressed. “In my mind, that is the farthest thing from paradise.” He added while he was sipping his tea.
The infiltrator did not seem to care much about the Grand Marshal, who had taken a peek into his tome, but they were conversational enough to continue their talk, albeit with vastly different understandings of its contents. As he closed his book, he ran his hand across its cover, which had been engraved with a silver mould of a strange tree. It had human hands for branches and a thousand eyes sewn into its trunk, its bark made of skin and its roots made of spine, in the author’s interpretation of paradise, but it appeared unlike what the Church taught. The tree was bathed in a pool of blood sourced by a waterfall that cascaded from the infinite ceiling, and in the distance floated an island chained to the abyss. When the infiltrator removed his hands from the textured cover of the tome, the initials of the writer were forged under light: E.R.
“Your mind matters not.” Bearing the voice of Death’s messenger, the infiltrator responded as he stared at the Grand Marshal, who had been frozen by his ice-blue eyes, and only when he continued to fill up his lungs with smoke did the elder become released from his spell. “I have the Old and the New. The Medium, I can flay. Only the Calamity remains.” He stated as he reached for the Grand Marshal’s cup and drank from it, not out of spite, but out of an intuitive sense that his cup had been poisoned. “I presume you’ve held up your end of the bargain.” The infiltrator surmised as the steam of the tea condensed on his glasses.
“Bargain?!” The Grand Marshal thundered with a sudden excitement. “I would not have forsaken this opportunity regardless of your interference.” He confidently asserted with a grin.
The infiltrator set down his cup and slipped the tome under his arm like it was a fashionable purse as his other hand put out the embers of his cigarette. Straightening out his jacket, he stood up and pushed the arch of his glasses upward for it to rest higher on the bridge of his nose before uttering one word in response. “Good.” Exhaling the smoke in his lungs, he turned around and began walking away towards the side exit that promised an emergency path straight to the surface, an escape route that only the Grand Marshal and his staff knew.
The Grand Marshal watched as the infiltrator vanished through the doorway as quickly as he had appeared, and he felt his chest relax, but he would never be able to sleep soundly again. There was a tingling sensation, as if a string was wrapped around his heart, that the infiltrator had kept as leverage against the Grand Marshal, and if he made one wrong move against the fiend, he would be hunted down to the Blightlands. His strange thoughts clouded him as he sat in his vast war chamber, alone once more, accompanied by the light of a dying lamp and two cups of tea that had cooled as a bead of sweat bled from his scalp.1026Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNqHKKHiVYj
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