Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

“I should just bash your brains out, you don’t use them anyway!”

“The light! Can somebody bring some light here? Do we have spares?”

“Point your light over here, boy!”

“Quiet!” the General’s voice boomed across the landscape, pushing all other sounds out with both loudness and authority. “Do you hear that?”

The brigade instantly got silent—so silent you could hear someone’s soles scratching against the ground as they were shifting their weight. Homewrecker knew why; the General’s invitation to listen to something could not possibly mean anything good for them, taking into account their surroundings.

And in the absolute silence that had formed, cutting through the almost palpable tension in the air, the whisper of mad ramblings, spoken by a voice no longer human, had blown up louder than a grenade: “Wanton Greed.”

The wave of whispers rolled across the crowd; none of them dared to raise their voice, to be the first one to speak up, but they couldn’t stay silent either. They understood the rules of the game, they knew that no one knew where that whisper had come from, but they also desperately needed to make sure that the man standing next to them didn’t know either. They had to know that they weren’t lonely in their ignorance, and that at the very least they were facing the same problems as their tribesmen.

It was strangely comforting to be scared together with someone.

“Where the hell is it?”

“Swollen Sunrise.”

“They are here…”

“Bramble Tree.”

“We shouldn’t have come here…”

“Thorn of Purple.”

“We should’ve tried to escape with Killmonger, I told you.”

The sea of their noises was being polluted by the whispers from beyond seeping in, their creeping madness blending in with the sprawling insanity of the surrounded soldiers. The voices of those who they had killed were calling out to them from beyond the grave, and although there wasn’t any meaning or system to those messages, the main idea was crystal clear, its two words relaying more than a thousand well-spoken sentences could.

“ We’ve come. ”

The commotion was undercut by a loud sound of impact as something hit the ground. The soldiers gasped and got noticeably quieter.

Homewrecker wanted to take a look, but looking away could mean death. Regardless, he saw from the corner of his eye that Corpse Eater threw him a curious glance and, not taking his eyes off the ground in front of him, the boy whispered: “Take a look what it is.”

Corpse Eater cast a quick glance back, before returning to a firing position and adjusting the gun in his hands. “There’s corpse in the middle of the crowd now,” he informed Homewrecker.

It wasn’t very informative, but more details followed as the soldiers in the middle were discussing it.

“Where the hell did it come from?”

“It fell from the ceiling! Can we look up here?”

“Someone ask the old man!”

“Hey, I know his face!” Homewrecker heard the surprised whisper of one of the men. “It’s Red Hands! He went missing the moment we went in!”

“He must’ve been dropped back by whatever had carried him off!” the other whisper guessed.

“Don’t look up then! Nobody look up! Keep your eyes to the ground!” the third voice warned the others.

“Hey, what is that on his chest?” the fourth whispering voice wondered. “It doesn’t seem like a wound… It’s words! Written words!”

“What does it say?” somebody wondered. The entire brigade held their collective breath to create the perfect medium for the reader’s voice.

Silence.

“It says… ‘ you’re next. ’”

There was a pause as the meaning of that phrase and its presence on the body that had dropped from the ceiling sank in. Then, the silence was torn to shreds by someone’s scream.

“They’re on the ceiling!”

Homewrecker didn’t need to turn around to know that, against the old man’s repeated warnings, somebody turned his lamp upward. He knew that it was a bad idea; even if the villagers weren’t up there, the creatures that preyed on those who were the most curious could still be patiently waiting in an ambush.

But no shots or gasps followed. The ceiling was probably covered in its lush upside down groves, but if there was something else up there, the boy knew that he’d go deaf from all the shots.

And then, while everyone was looking up, when everyone was expecting the enemy to drop on their heads, with their scythe-like claws ready, the boy noticed, from the corner of his eye, the light going out to the left of him.

A moment later a crashing sound boomed across the Underworld, and half of the lights, including his own, went out.

Ironically, being the first in line to die saved his life.

Desecrator had thought that being the first to step into the unknown territory meant he’d be the first to die for sure. That he’d be the one to soak in all the terrors that the Underworld would throw at them. But their enemies—or the priestess in particular—probably expected the same line of thinking and thus had come to the conclusion that the front lines would be the place where the best shooters would be.

Desecrator knew that it wasn’t the case. He knew the faces that had surrounded him and, in their presence, he feared getting shot more than getting eaten. Not that it wasn’t the worst way to go, as he had come to realize over the course of their short journey.

When the villagers attacked, he was one of the few who saw how their assault began. His eyes registered a quick shadow separating from the ground and crossing the distance between its place of ambush to where the oblivious Orphan Maker stood quicker than Desecrator could draw in a breath to shout a warning. Its legs unraveled like springs during its jump. And, before he could finish blinking, the creature had snuffed the kid’s life out, slitting the boy’s throat with a cut so deep the boy’s head rolled back, held only by his vertebrae, and then grabbing him in a monstrous hug to carry him off.

He didn’t know if it was a calculated move or just a happy coincidence for his enemies, but Orphan Maker’s body was still tethered to the generator by a cable. Whether it was intended or not, the attack had missed it. And, as the boy’s body was dragged into the shadows, the cable straightened out and pulled the generator with it.

Desecrator knew firsthand how heavy that thing was, and yet it tumbled and fell from the trolley that had been carrying it with the ease of a carton box. The fall wasn’t that big at all, but as it hit the ground something within it shattered under the machine’s own weight and, without convulsing or producing any other signs of struggle, the generator died—and with it, the other five lamps that had been attached to it.

It was the moment that the villagers needed to start their assault. They didn’t try to pretend to be humans anymore; their unified croaking roar shook the boy’s bones as they let out their true nature, shedding their last traces of humanity.

The soldiers rushed toward the second generator’s saving bowl of light, where the General was already climbing onto it to get a better viewing position. The lights of the lamps flickered as the boys were hastily pulling them off and throwing them down; with them on, they were walking targets. One of the shaking lights suddenly twitched and flew three meters to the side, before its color changed from white to red. Somebody hadn’t made it in time.

“Keep the lights on!” the General hollered, trying to take aim. “Point them at ’em, keep them in the lights!”

Nobody listened. In this situation, it was better to face the General’s fury later than to come face-to-face with an undead monster with feet-long blades. They all realized that they needed lights to see where to shoot, but no one was willing become a hero for the greater good.