7 Experience Trumps Theory

It was only supposed to be a ruse, a ruse to bring the church more power. But now it has become a crisis. Council-Head Jonas Khal was in the head of a long table, seated with him are church council members all arguing about what course of action to take.

"We must muster all available armies to meet this foe! Demons or not we will now go down without fighting!"

"Are you mad?! Even in the legends no man was able to hold back the forces of hell alone! It was always with the help of a god! A god that we don't have!"

"We should look into the old scriptures from the old religion, perhaps they were telling the truth after all and we can find a way to combat these demons of metal!"

"Are you proposing that we go back to those barbaric religions?!"

"They might have been speaking the truth unlike ours! We might've angered the old gods!"

"Nonsense! Your claims are baseless!"

"Twenty-three leagues away an army has been destroyed in less than a day! Is that not proof enough of such impossible power?!"

"Impossible? We destroyed the-"

"SILENCE!" The Council-Head stood up from his seat with both hands on the table.

The room fell silent as the Council Head's voice was heard. Slowly, he sat back down and rested the side of his head on one of his fists.

"My fellow councilors, we mustn't fall into chaos in this new crisis. We shall act swiftly and decisively to deal with the new enemy and not let them spread further from where they spawned."

"Head-Councilor, what if the old religions were speaking the truth? What if our little facade of a church is a massive blunder and an affront to the old gods?" A council member spoke up.

The Head-Councilor turned to face an balding man in high-ranking church robes., panic obviously etched on his face.

"High-Priest Callon, do you really think they were any better than us? Than our charade? I think not. In fact, I believe this only shows how weak your resolve is to our cause, so by the powers vested in me I declare that you are under arrest for hearsay High-Priest Callon and will be quartered as soon as possible!"

The High-Priest was shocked as the declaration of his execution was spoken by the Head-Councilor. Two guards entered the room and took him away as he screamed and kicked.

"Now, will there be any objections?" The Head-Councilor asked.

0840 Hours, Unknown Location, Valecan.

Jonathan ran towards a wall of a house and signaled his men to stack up behind him. They were on the road earlier, but then they saw smoke and later after they sent out scouts they saw fire from a settlement.

So they went in and investigated and now they're stacked up on a wall of a house because grunting a screaming could be heard from the inside of the house.

They saw bodies earlier, men, women some of which have garments that were torn apart, and children. All were killed and violated in a gruesome manner.

Now it seems like they were too late to save the lass that was being violated in the house, but they can save her from the fate of being killed.

"On my mark." Jonathan raised his hand.

The woman inside cried very loudly as a man laughed and said something in the local language.

"BREACH! NOW!"

The the pointman kicked down the door and and went in the house, shots we're fired as the house was filled with screams from both victims and violators.

"CLEAR!" The pointman shouted.

Other shots rang out as other squads started to clear up their own respective houses. The captain entered the house they just cleared and was shocked on what he saw.

A man an woman, presumably the father and mother of the two girls who were now huddled at the corner had their necks cut open and the mother's clothes were torn apart, obviously violated.

Then there were bodies of three other men in armor, one holding a mug with a hole in his head and two others with swords and holes in their bodies.

Bandits.

A shot rang out as another house was breached by another squad and it pulled out Jonathan from his daze.

"Holy shit sir, what the fuck is this?" The corpsman said as he checked over the bodies of the parents.

The captain looked away from the gruesome display and looked over to the two survivors of this horrific experience.

Ostia's POV

The strange men looked at her, she couldn't see anything behind those dark visors that they wore. In fact, she wouldn't know that they were human if it wasn't for them speaking. Their forms are human but they're unlike any culture she has heard about.

So she still has to be on guard.

She still was shaking from being violated but she held her little sister close as the man approached them both, then kneeled down.

"Are you alright?" He asked in a very accented Valecan.

She nodded her head, she wasnt alright but she wasn't going to show any weaknesses to this man. No matter how kind he would seem.

The man spome something to his comrades as two others approached her and her sister. Her heart stopped, are they going to violate her too? She held her sister closer as the two men stopped and reached out to her.

"They will help you." The from man earlier said.

Doubting it for a second but deciding there was nothing she could do, she reached out and allowed herself to be helped up while her sister was holding on to her hand.

But she felt pain, a great pain where the bandits have taken her and she collapsed.

Jonathan's POV

The woman collapsed and started to hold her... extrimities. She was under pain, presumably because of how the bandits treated her. He immidietly called for the corpsman to help her.

The corpsman acted quickly and gave her some pain-stoppers and treated her wounds all while the little girl- her sister stood there shaking in fear. Seeing this, jonathan reached out to the girl, she coulnt be older than fourteen and started to assure her in what little of the local language that he knows that it will be alright.

Later, the entire village was cleared out by Jonathan's company and the bodies of the civilans were pulled out and given proper resting places. Those were the bodies of parents, children, men, women who were slain and even violated by criminals.

Jonathan felt angry on how brutal this world was to innocents. He has seen war before, he has killed before. But he never have seen a mass slaughter of helpless civilians on this scale.

This world's ways disgusted him.