Enemies Without, Enemies Within [Dobson]

[PepsiWhirda]

Dobson paced around the center of the crossroad, his movements tight and agitated. Tears like fat beetles crawled down his cheeks. In front of him, someone had jammed an iron gibbet into the ground with enough force to shatter the cobblestones like so much glass, and pierce the soil underneath. A cage hung from the gibbet, twisting and creaking in the wind. It contained the severed head of Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

The young soldier balled his fists and blinked until the tears stopped. He scanned the shuttered and boarded windows surrounding the village square for any sign of life, anyone who might have seen his moment of weakness. It simply wouldn’t do for Commander Skender to be seen crying.

To his good fortune, the village was deserted as the moon reached its apex and began its descent toward morning. A distant rumble and crackle spoke of an approaching storm. Somewhere nearby, a dog bayed into the night.

Dobson sucked in a shuddering breath to steady his nerves. The promise of a storm, and with the storm rain, gave him perhaps an hour before any evidence of the professor’s killer would be washed away.

There were hundreds of footprints in the dust, but he could find no clue amongst them. The killer had chosen Darkshire’s most trafficked area in which to display his gruesome act. The decision served a cunning, two-pronged purpose: to make tracking them impossible, and to give the scene the most exposure the following morning. It was sheer luck one of Dobson’s patrols had discovered it first. The discovery of the severed head of Darkshire’s most staunch protector would cast the village into outright pandemonium.

Dobson had a hard enough time maintaining enough men for a militia without the chilling promise of sinister agents lurking in their midst.
He leveled his stare upon the head itself, flinching as he met the professor’s sightless gaze. His scan took in every minute detail: pursed lips; broad, placid features; the shock of gray hair swept haphazardly across his forehead. His last expression held no surprise, no regret. There was only stark disapproval, the sort of look a mother gives her mischievous child. Although Dobson knew it was not meant for him, he still found it accusing.

The young soldier peered closer, his gut lurching with grief. The professor's skin had started to mottle as decomposition took hold. Not recent, then. The prospect of Dracula or Scylla planting spies in their midst spoke to a truth Dobson had been fervently denying since his arrival in the Omniverse. If things got much worse, as it now seemed they promised to, Darkshire would be forfeit. The villagers, who had endured horrors beyond imagining for more than a decade, would be forced back through the gate, and darkness would triumph over light.

As the first icy raindrops pelted his hair and provided camouflage for the tears leaking anew down his cheeks, Dobson saw the smudge of white on Van Helsing's chin. He unlatched the cage door. It swung open with a groan. His finger darted in and secured a dab of the stuff, but the young soldier knew what it was before he raised it to his face: makeup. The sort of makeup only one man in Darkshire wore.

Rage supplanted Dobson's sorrow. He slammed the cage door shut and grasped the iron ring atop the cage containing one of his oldest friends, lifting it gingerly from its perch. Then he set off toward the mayor's mansion.

[PepsiWhirda]

Dobson stalked through the deserted streets, his knuckles white around the iron ring atop the cage. The sound of his heels click-clacking against the cobbestones filled the air, magnified in the stillness.

He passed walls plastered with posters displaying the smug grin of Karl Jax. Dante's Abyss! they trumpeted. Calling all Primes! Ultimate showcase of cunning, survival, and ruthlessness! He had only met the foppish madcap once, during his promotional visit to the village, but the sight of him turned Dobson's already uneasy stomach. Behind his dancing eyes, Karl Jax was callous in the face of their suffering, treating death as a spectacle to be beheld. Every Prime he recruited for his insane game was one fewer defender Dobson could call on for assistance, every coin flowing into his bulging pockets a shameful mockery of their very real plight.

Holding the head of his closest friend, Dobson felt backed into a corner from which there was no escape, his entire world crumbling around him.

Lost in thought, Dobson didn't hear the sound of approaching boots until the young soldier bowled him over, the two hitting the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. The cage hit the ground with a dull thud, the door swinging wide. Dobson let out a strangled cry as Van Helsing's head hit the street, rolling grotesquely on its side, the professor's lips parting and his blackened tongue slithering between them.

For a long moment, both soldiers froze, fixated on the scene.

Dobson snapped back first, shoving the young soldier off of him. He stood, slapping dust off his tunic with both hands. Dobson tried his best to suppress the horror before him and focus his ire on the kid, drawing to his full height to loom over him as he struggled to climb to his feet.

"To attention!" he barked, hardly recognizing his own voice from behind his facade of authority.

The soldier went rigid before him, his eyes wide and swelling with tears. "My apologies L-Lieutenant," he managed, literally shaking in his boots. "There's word from the gates. Whirda Windstrom has returned!"

At the recruit's mention of Whirda, Dobson momentarily slipped out of character, confusion flashing across his narrow features. Rather than put the mask back on, he took a steadying breath and let calm overtake him. Whirda is an opportunity. She can help me.

"Tell them I'm on my way," he said.

After the soldier had turned and prepared to run off, Dobson clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Not a word of this to anyone," he hissed. "Understood?"

The soldier shook his head vigorously. "Understood, sir."

"Dismissed."

As the recruit's footsteps footsteps receded down the street, Dobson bent down. His hand hesitated a few inches above the professor's head. Keep breathing. He cupped Van Helsing in both hands and put him back in the cage, closing the door with a click. He was presented with an impossible choice: bring the professor's head with him to the gate, risking an information leak that could plunge the village into chaos, or discard it like so much rubbish, to be retrieved later.

He squared his shoulders and straightened, still carrying the professor. There was no chance he would bring that indignity upon the memory of his oldest friend. Leading Darkshire's militia was a life rife with hard choices, but he was no monster. He had to hope Whirda wasn't either.