Deathless

Deathless

by Z. Luna Eligos

The rhythmic marching of a handful of soldiers punctuates the humid summer air, the spattering of rain on matted soil. Tents stretch on for several city blocks in a makeshift city of imperialistic fervor. The sky is as dark and ominous as would befit a mass execution, the snuffing of countless souls who dared to cross the empire. A self important man gazes on from underneath a gaudy hat, all velvety navy and clad with far too many gold buckles. He smiles to himself. What a glorious day for the empire.

"Are they all accounted for, private?" The man asks with a haughty voice. He doesn't even look at the soldier, his eyes instead fixed upon his own fingernails. Is that dirt?

"Yes, sir." The private stands so rigidly it's as if someone shoved a rod into him from ass to skull.

"Remind me, Bennett. How many?"

"26, Colonel Brach, sir."

"Glory to the empire, for he fells many foes today."

"Glory to the empire," Bennett stumbles.

Colonel Brach motions for Bennett to follow as he inches towards the massive trench that the prisoners dug. Each and every person's fingers are stained with the earth they were forced to move piece by mushy piece. Brach frowns. That is a piece of dirt under his nail. How the hell did that get there?

"Sir." A woman's voice breaks him from his fixation. What was this one's name, again? She's just another peon, who can keep track of so many names and faces? Even if she is a higher rank than private.

"Yes?" Brach raises his eyebrows as if the woman has just said the absolute dumbest thing he has ever heard. She winces.

"We are ready."

"Ah." They had damn well better be. How he hates delays, especially when his pretty white coat is being sullied by this insipid downpour. His eyes happen upon a single man. Gangly, gaunt, pale. This loathsome creature has long hair parted over one eye. And worst of all, he's just sitting in the mud looking as serene as a monk. His fingers aren't dirty, the damned things look pristine. Brach bristles. "This one. Why are his hands clean?"

"He refused to dig, sir."

"And you just let him?"

"Sorrel beat him with a baton. He didn't care. Said he'd rather rip his teeth out than dig."

"Did you take him up on his offer?"

"What?"

Brach fixes an exasperated glare at the woman. "His teeth."

"No, sir. It didn't feel humane."

The colonel clicks his tongue. "And why should we offer humanity to inhuman garbage? To oppose the empire is to refute mankind itself."

"Sorry, sir."

Brach hums. "Disappointing."

The woman signals to the troop awaiting her command. Bennett looms on Brach's side like a starving puppy. Several soldiers form a deadly line between the colonel and the prisoners, hands white knuckling their guns. A few of them are shaking.

"You are gathered here today because you have sinned against the empire," the colonel's voice booms. "Some of you have harbored rebels, others have conspired with unholy plans to sabotage the imperial army. You are all seditious, treasonous weeds and as such, you have been sentenced to death. For the empire to grow, we must cull that which would impede it. Glory to the empire!"

"Glory to the empire!" The soldiers bellow in response. Did the woman say it? Brach swears that she remained silent. He makes a mental note to mark her file as 'lacking patriotism.' A chorus of guns clicking as the soldiers prepare for the order, each one aimed at the misbegotten weeds in human skin.

"Fire!" Good. Brach was beginning to worry that she lacked the spine.

The shots ring out into the grim evening air as a cacophony of death. Body after body is torn asunder as bullets rip through flesh and bone alike, splattering the ground in crimson rivulets. Brach surveys the scene, reveling in the demise of traitors. Most of the corpses–or soon to be corpses–have fallen into the ghastly trench, but some of the damnable souls had the gall to fall where they stood. Soldiers march forth tentatively to put boots to bodies, shoving them back to where they can be buried and forgotten. It's better than these treasonous cowards deserve.

"Oh, Brach." A ghastly sing-song voice calls from the trench. The man with pristine hands rises from the swarm of carcasses, apparently bullet free. Goddamn these ingrates, don't they know how to aim a gun? The man lumbers forth, his uncharacteristically soft voice calling from undaunted lips. He wears a sinister little grin. "I've been dying to meet you."

"Happy to oblige," Brach says as he draws his pistol. Honestly, how have none of these worms fired at this ghoul already? Must he do everything himself? His barrel explodes into action, a bullet rocketing straight between the man's eyes. Brach has ever been a damn good shot, after all. His body slumps to the ground as brain matter leaks from the cavern in his skull, the sickly stench of death beginning to set in from the trench. But then Brach notices the corpse's arm twitching.

"You're going to have to do better than that," the corpse coos.

"Impossible," Brach gasps.

His foe rises from the ground, pushing himself off sodden dirt as the fluids stop leaking from his forehead. Amazingly, aside from the blood and brains smeared across his features, it's as if he was never wounded at all. His grin has taken on a peculiarly ghoulish quality to it, it sends shivers down Brach's spine.

"Kill him, you imbeciles!"

Several soldiers rush forward with sabers in hand, each one piercing his flesh as a clumsy iron maiden. One of his arms is caught in the contraption and pinned to his side. The ghoul cracks his neck as his eyes light up with sinister glee. One of his hands reaches out, clenching down on a man's throat with inhuman strength. The soldier gurgles and croaks until his sounds stop altogether and he is a lifeless heap upon the ground. Brach's mouth is agape. Soldiers shout at the ghoul and drive their blades further into his torso. Horribly, the creature is undeterred. His hand wraps around the face of another, his thumb digging into her eye. She screams and falters, her sword wrenched free from his side. His other arm joins its brother, newly freed thumb making the other eye match. Her screams continue to ring out in the damp air until he wrenches her head to the side in a sickening snap.

Brach's senses leave him as he gazes upon this atrocity. He runs. Better to let the riffraff handle this. Surely they will figure it out. This must be some sort of misunderstanding.

The ghoul laughs as he stares the remaining three jailors down with murderous glee. Two of the soldiers wrench their blades free before plunging them back into pale flesh, piercing his simple clothing and running red with blood. His forehead descends as a meteor into a soldier before him and they crumple to the ground, nose spewing forth blood. His hand reaches inside the fallen man's mouth, filling it with the taste of sanguineous dirt. He grasps at it while his free hand holds the man's head down with shocking force. The sounds of tearing flesh sing out to compliment his strangled screams, the horrible severing of sinew. The ghoul discards the fleshy mandible in his hand before setting his sights on the poor woman in front of him. His hand flies to the knife in his boot and it comes to rest in the bottom of her jaw, a straight line from jawbone to brain.

The final soldier's saber cleaves his neck in two, punctuated by a hideous squelch. The ghoul's body straightens and turns around slowly as violent shivers run the length of the soldier's spine. Two bloody hands wrench the man's throat and he cries out and claws at the headless body. It is a futile effort. When the man passes out, the ghoul cradles his face before violently snapping his neck. Bennet witnesses these atrocities in abject horror, fear setting thick roots into the mushy soil. The captain took off screaming long ago. He should have too and he knows it, but the sights of this… thing, this monster. It's too much to bear. The creature in the shape of a man stoops to grasp the knife in one hand before scooping up his severed head in the other. When it turns to face Bennett, his face is painted with a mad elation. He doesn't even try to put the head back, instead wielding it like a glorious trophy of war.

"Hi there." The ghoul's grin is as inhuman as it is drenched in blood. Bennet says nothing. His brain screams run, but his legs will not comply. "Don't worry about a thing. Just tell me where Brach went and I won't touch a hair on that pretty little head of yours." His soft voice croons, violent yet tender.

"Back of the camp. It's a big tent, you can't miss it." Dammit, why are the words spilling out of him this way? What kind of soldier is he to give up his commanding officer's position to the enemy? He deserves punishment, he deserves death.

Brach sits at his desk as a stony figure, a gargoyle perched atop a sturdy wooden structure. His sword rests on his lap and his pistol lays before him on the desk. He is nothing if not prepared, or so he tells himself. A figure appears at the tent's door, a silhouette of terror. Brach's hand flies to his gun, a white knuckled grip. But then Bennett steps through, absolutely drenched in blood and holding something in his hand.

"Bennett?" Brach's voice is weak, tentative. "Is it done?

Bennet tosses his quarry on the floor at Brach. Such boldness. Is that typical of Bennett? He has no idea. The misshapen thing rolls towards him after a thump. His breath hitches. The ghoul's head, that horrible thing masquerading as a man. Brach stands at once, sheathing his blade and grabbing the grisly trophy with one tentative hand. He holds it up by its hair and looks deep in its blank eyes. They look like any ordinary eyes, save for their glassy lifelessness. The eyes flick to his own, sudden madness therein.

"Blech!" The head roars and Brach drops it like a scalding pan. He yelps. Weak, he curses himself. "Expecting me, Brach?"

Brach fires the pistol, the deafening shot filling the room in powdered smoke. The ghoul's body playfully knocks Bennett's head from its neck before it scoops up its own and replaces it. Brach marvels at the flesh mending itself to a smooth, if bloody, surface. The bullet pops out of his head and nothing is left save for the blood staining his forehead.

"What are you?"

"That doesn't really matter, does it? I am here and that is all that matters."

"What do you want from me?" He is a portrait of a man scared shitless.

"I just want you. I'll bet you don't even remember me."

"I should think I would recognize an abomination like you."

"You wound me, colonel. I'm no abomination, I am merely an unstoppable force. And you have found your way into my path." He stoops to look Brach straight in the eyes.

"Why?"

"You don't even remember them, do you? My husband and my daughter. They refused to give up all we owned as the empire demanded. You decapitated them as an example."

"That… can't be."

"I saw you. I pleaded with you. You looked me dead in the face as you gave the order. I remember your shitty little smile." Any sense of levity to the man's voice has evaporated, replaced with violent disdain. "I was lost before I was molded into this form. Now I am unshackled from mortality. Free to wreak my havok on an unjust world."

"You would burn everything down for your lost husband and child?"

"Are you married, colonel? Have any kids? I would have settled for just your head had you 'only' killed him. But my daughter? My sweet girl?" He spits. "She was eight years old!"

Brach winces. The chaos emanating from the monstrous man has become unbridled rage. "I don't recall such a thing."

"That's because you do it all the time. I've kept my eyes on you, Brach. How many people have you killed, hm?" He is shouting now. "How many innocent lives have you snuffed out for imperial greed?"

Brach bursts into action, his saber ascending from his sheath and parting the ghoul's arm at the shoulder. The severed arm lands with a wet thud and the man simply grinds his teeth. What unholy creation is this beast? He grasps the wrist of his severed arm and, horribly, uses it as a cudgel to express his wrath. The clammy flesh bludgeons Brach again and again. He falls to the ground, he's sobbing now as the ghoul rains a flurry of blows upon him. And then it all becomes black.

He awakens to the pitter patter of rain on his face. Brach immediately recognizes the open edge of the camp. He does not need to see the trench of corpses to know they are there, the stench of death already perfumes the air. He struggles, but he is met with suffocating resistance. The ghoul continues to tighten him in a constrictor's embrace of chains, upright on a pole. Hideous laughter sounds behind him, a specter's call. The ghoul lopes to the center of Brach's sight line with a devilish grin on his lips.

"Are you ready to receive your just reward?"

"I'm not afraid of you," Brach lies.

"Let us see how far bravado takes you into your inexorable, imminent demise." He drops down to his knees and procures a bottle from his pocket, a vial glowing radioactive orange. That's when Brach notices the pile of wood at his feet. Oh, shit. This is a witch's death. The ghoul laughs as he pours the liquid fire from the tube, becoming a gleeful cackle as the pyre roars ablaze. Brach begins to cough, the choking smog seizing his lungs. The ghoul pops a seat on the ground with a wicked grin, his work achieved in the glorious song of Brach's anguished screams.