Between divine and damned
Chapter 3 : Half divinity
2019. Abyei, Sudan.
The gunfire was deafening as Captain Raza crouched behind the sandbagged defensive position. His rifle kicked against his shoulder with each squeeze of the trigger, sending rounds downrange towards the ragtag group of bandits attacking the UN peacekeeping base.
"Targets at eleven o'clock! Lay down suppressing fire!" Raza shouted over the cacophony of battle. His troops responded instantly, their disciplined volleys of gunfire forcing the attackers to keep their heads down.
Raza risked a glance over the top of the sandbagged wall. A dozen or so bandits, clad in tattered clothes and carrying an assortment of aged Kalashnikovs, were sheltering behind a crumbling mud hut a couple hundred meters away. Their aim was wild and badly coordinated - a few stray shots pinged off the defensive barriers but most went sailing harmlessly into the distance.
"We've got them zeroed, sir!" yelled Corporal Amir from Raza's left. "Just give the word!"
Raza shook his head, sweat already beading on his brow from the intense desert heat. "Negative, Corporal. Our mandate is strictly defensive. We'll hold this position and wait for them to withdraw or be driven off."
The bandits seemed to sense that their ambush had failed. A few broke from cover, firing wildly as they turned to flee back into the maze of alleys and nomadic dwellings surrounding the UN camp's outer perimeter. The rest followed moments later in a disorganized rout, disappearing from view.
"Should we pursue and neutralize the hostiles, Captain?" asked Sergeant Idris urgently. "We can't let them simply regroup and strike again."
Raza considered it for a moment, his instincts screaming at him to give chase. But commanders had a responsibility to follow protocols, even in the heat of battle. Leaving the camp to pursue would only expose it to further attacks.
"Negative. We'll hold fast and wait for reinforcements from the rapid reaction force," he decided. "But I want a security sweep in case any stragglers are still lurking nearby. Idris, take a fireteam and..."
His orders were cut off by the crackle of the radio at his belt. "Captain Raza, this is Falcon Actual on the tac net. Be advised - We have critically injured civilians arriving at the main gate requiring immediate medevac to the field hospital. I say again, prepare to receive mass casualties immediately!"
'Damn it,this can't be good..' Raza felt his blood run cold.
There were no major population centers for miles around the remote peacekeeping outpost. If civilians were injured and arriving at the camp's gates, that could only mean one thing - an inside attack.
Without a second's hesitation, he clicked the radio transmit key. "Solid copy, Falcon Actual. I'm inbound to triage."
Raza turned to regard his troops, their faces grim behind a sheen of sweat and gunpowder residue. "Idris, take command here and recheck all defensive positions. If any more of those bastards are still lurking out there, I need you to snuff them out."
The seasoned sergeant nodded curtly. "You got it, Captain."
As Raza turned and sprinted across the compound towards the main entrance, his mind raced with grisly possibilities. A firefight inside the camp could only mean their attackers had inside assistance from one of the local hires or support staff. The thought made him feel simultaneously cold with dread and hot with rage.
They had walked directly into a trap. And despite everything, the worst may still be yet to come..
'Please God, keep my Alessa safe and away from harm' Raza repeatedly chanting his prayer in his mind.
...........
Deep underground, in a vast cavern of lava and stalagmites, robed figures attended hellish forges. At the center, a hulking, vaguely humanoid shape wreathed in flames hardened into a crude carapace. As molten rock was sluiced over it, cracks formed in the hardening shell.
With an explosive boom, the cocoon burst apart. Emerging was a nightmarish hybrid monster - part insect, beast and human. It unfurled batlike wings tipped with hooked talons. Its elongated, armored skull sprouted rows of fangs and a cluster of venomous tentacles.
Heavily muscled and plated with chitin armor, rivulets of lava ran off its carapace. The robed figures knelt, chanting towards the newborn abomination. Their leader raised his arms beseechingly.
"I stood by my name as a worshiper of The Fire, breathing life into you with the lingering souls of the damned!" he cried in a booming voice. "Arise!!"
The shaman flung something at the beast's head - a talisman wreathed in ghostly spirits that swirled around the creature's form.
"The power of anguished shades binds to your flesh! Use their eternal torment as fuel to slaughter the wretched beings who imprisoned them!"
The hybrid beast reared back, unfurling its wings to their full span. It opened its circular maw in a deafening roar of primal rage.
Raza stood frozen atop the sacrificial altar, eyes wide in shock and revulsion at the nightmarish vision unfolding before him. The subterranean cavern's hellish ambience seemed to leach the air of any oxygen as he watched the robed cultists conduct their blasphemous rites. When the molten cocoon exploded and the grotesque hybrid monster emerged, Raza felt a visceral wave of nausea and fear grip him.
As the inhuman abomination unfurled its wings and roared its primal challenge, Raza's knees threatened to give out from the overwhelming dread. This was far beyond any mission briefing he could have prepared for. He was bearing witness to the unholy birth of a new age of ramrod savagery, powered by occult forces man was never meant to trifle with. Raza's gut clenched as he realized his world would never be the same again.
That sickening thought was interrupted by a sinister voice directly behind him.
"How do you like your new self, my dear human guest?" it purred.
Raza spun around, coming face-to-face with a stunningly beautiful woman with ivory skin and slitted pupils like a reptile's eyes. Her curvaceous form was barely contained by wispy crimson robes that clung to her voluptuous frame.
As she slowly looked him up and down with a cruel smile, Raza felt his blood turn to ice water in his veins. He followed her gaze downward - and immediately recoiled in horror.
His legs had mutated into digitigrade haunches like a tiger's, covered in dark fur. His left hand had become a scaly, snake appendage tipped with wicked-looking claws. The rest of his body was disturbingly inhuman as well.
"Wh-what have you done to me?" Raza managed to choke out, his voice trembling.
The demoness' smile widened, revealing needle-sharp fangs. "Merely welcomed you into my fold, half divinity one. You now share the splendid bloodline of my layrinth."
As the foul implications of her words washed over him, Raza wanted to scream. But all that came out was an ungodly, inhuman shriek. Raza fainted.
The demoness ordered her monstrous slave. "Take him to my palace, I assume we must have much to talk about."
The world the demoness's palace resided in was a bleak, colorless realm that seemed drained of all vibrancy and life. A dense, oppressive fog hung heavy in the air, blurring the lines between sky and ground into an infinite grayscale haze.
The palace itself was an enormous, towering obsidian spire that twisted and curved in on itself in a dizzying, non-Euclidean manner. Jagged minarets and grotesque gargoyle statues lined the outer battlements, their snarling figures forever frozen in anguished screams. The entire ebon structure seemed to drink in what little light permeated the dim atmosphere, absorbing it like a black hole consuming starlight.
The grounds surrounding the palace were a barren, cracked and fissured expanse of baked earth as far as the eye could strain to see through the gloom. Not a single plant, tree or any other verdant life appeared to grow in this parched, scorched hellscape. The only features disrupting the flat, dusty plain were sporadic clusters of jagged obsidian shards protruding from the ground at bizarre, unnatural angles.
The air held the sense of being fundamentally wrong - heavy, stale and completely devoid of any breeze or wind. It suffocated the senses with the charnel reek of burnt ozone and rotten eggs. Every gasping inhalation carried the faint metallic tang of blood on the thick miasma.
In the distance, indistinct shapes - some hunched and others tentacled or winged - could be seen shambling through the murky haze, their forms too alien to focus on. The only sound was a constant, droning reverberation like the furious buzzing of a billion insects just out of earshot.
This desolate, lifeless world seemed to exist in a permanent purgatory of twilight, caught in an endless dusk between the light of creation and the utter void of oblivion. It was a entropic, damned plane of existence, as devoid of hope as it was bereft of color and vitality. An endless grayscale purgatory reflecting the bleak malignancy of its unholy mistress.
Raza cemented the view that his eyes saw. Everything was foreign and alien to him. The sky was sunless yet a streak of crimson crack dimly lit the atmosphere. 'Should I just jump and end this nightmare for good?'
"Oh please don't, although it doesn't seem much, I put quite an effort to keep you breathing. Surely you would appreciate and at least pay back your debt of gratitude before you meet your doom?" Raza turns his gaze toward the demoness. With his suicidal thought lingering in his mind, his fear toward the monster seem to subsides.
"What are you?" Out of millions of questions, that is the one that comes out of his mouth.
"Who, What, When, Where, it is… as usual?" She smiled.
"Before that, allow me to explain the WHY first." She walks closer to Raza and traces his chest with her finger, teasing the man. Raza swallowed empty air while his body shuddered in tense.
"The sole reason I saved your wretched life, apostate, is the faint glimmer of faith still smoldering within you...despite your forsaken ways." The demoness's full crimson lips curled in an alluring sneer as she slinked closer.
Her tone took on a deeply sensual, almost mocking purr. "How deliciously curious you are, straddling the line between the divine and the damned. A dichotomy of celestial servant and profane exile, all in the same bewitching flesh."
One razor-tipped talon traced along Raza's jawline as the demoness leaned in until her mouth was mere inches from his ear. Her sulfurous breath washed over him in a warm, intoxicating caress.
"Tell me, my pet, how does it feel to be neither one tempting fruit nor the other? You cannot be both apple and fig. And yet there you hang from the perilous, twisted bough - not quite either succulent prize, but infinitely more...tantalizing."
Her forked tongue flicked out to slowly lick the outer curve of his ear, making his distorted form shudder involuntarily. The demoness's husky chuckle reverberated through his core like sin made audible.
"I simply cannot resist such an uniquely beguiling delicacy. You'll keep me...ravenous for answers."
Raza's heart pounded in his chest as the demoness's words pierced him. She knew his closely guarded secret - something he had never revealed to anyone.
"How...how do you know that?" he asked, his voice trembling with disbelief and panic.
Maintaining his secret as an apostate who had renounced his faith was of utmost importance to Raza. He had constructed an entire life hiding that truth.
For this infernal seductress to so casually lay it bare shook Raza to his core. He felt utterly exposed and vulnerable.
"That knowledge...it should be impossible for you to have," Raza stammered, struggling to regain his composure. "I've kept it buried so deeply."
His eyes narrowed with anger and suspicion at this unholy being who had unveiled his most private truth against his will.
The demoness chuckled and ran a claw along Raza's jaw. "Did you think you could keep secrets from me in my own realm? The moment all of you were transferred here, I plundered the depths of your feeble psyche. I know everything that I need to know - the current human world, your technology, and how weak humans have become."
Her eyes glinted with amusement. "A being such as myself need only glance upon your kind to lay bare your minds. I saw your efforts to bury your apostate nature and found it entertaining."
Leaning in, she whispered, "You shabby fraud, thinking you could hide juicy secrets from my senses. Your fear and self-loathing sing to me."