08-29-2015, 08:01 PM
My feet fall softly upon the mossy ground. I take care to avoid the pools of stagnant slurry that passes for puddles of water in this blighted place. Not that it would matter if I didn’t, my stiefel are far from immaculate. The mud and stench of death reminds me of the trenches. It is almost like I am back at home.
Yet, I have never felt so far away from the Fatherland.
I search for my allies, but my simple eyes cannot pierce the veil of unnatural fog.
“Roger…? Crow?”
My words are a whisper. No need in attracting unwanted attent-
Oh schrauben.
“CROW?! ROGER?!” I shout.
“Christa?...” I try weakly. I start to rattle off names, hoping someone will hear me talking to myself.
Nothing. Damn it. Damn it all. Truly, I am alone. I begin to contemplate my next move, when all of a sudden, it feels as if thousands of needles are scraping down my spine.
Something is...compelling me to walk forward. There is something ahead, though I know not what. I level the staff in front of me, fingers stroking the lever-trigger. My breathing becomes shallow and ragged, as if I was attempting to breathe in a layer of smog. The air feels heavy and thick, smothering almost. My feet have been moving of their own accord. I have not felt such trepidation since...since the operation. Since meeting my old ‘friends’.
One step at a time.
Focus.
Left foot, right foot.
Left foot, ri- ACH SCHEIßE!
I cry out in shock as a rotten, soggy hand latches on to my ankle. I almost trip over my own feet, but with some quick thinking and lucky aim, I swipe the staff as if it were a scythe, severing the hand from a currently sunken arm. The handless limb flails around, stirring up quite a lot of muck and grime. I take a moment to detach the vise now clamped onto mein poor ankle. It takes a moment, as the hand is slimy and cold, but eventually its dead fingers relinquish me from its grasp.
The situation in the apparently bottomless puddle has gotten worse. Half of a zombie has now climbed its way out of that hole. And one-handed too! How impressive.
I make a rather nasty face, a sick grin accompanying the hate in my eyes.
I slide my left hand to the top of the staff whilst keeping the right on the bottom of the hilt. With a mighty oomph, I swing the staff high into the air, before bringing it back down in a deadly arc like an axe. The blade sinks itself into the untoten’s rotten flesh with a sickening squelch. Placing one dirty boot on what remains of its skull, I casually rip my weapon free from my now twice dead opponent, along with a splattering of diseased grey matter and bone fragments. I remain silent for a moment, staring at the dead, putrid corpse.
My right eye develops a twitch.
“You… You see what happens when you touch the Doctor!? Eh!?”
I shout at the zombie as if it could hear my cries of outrage. In a furious tempest of anger, I begin to repeatedly swing my staff into the zombie over and over again, as if I were a deranged miner digging for gold.
Gold being chunks of flesh and internal organs.
“Why!? Why won’t you stay DEAD!?” I shout at the desecrated corpse, hysteria flooding my voice. Chunks of black meat splatter onto my face, the blade of Kemat stabbing into the rot at a frantic pace.
With an inarticulate screech of rage, I suddenly recoil from the body, or rather, what’s left of it. Where there was formerly an undead, now lies a mess and tangle of intestines, broken bones, and torn flesh. I plant the staff into the murk, shaft end down.
I fall to my knees, staring at Kemat’s Bite.
My eyes drift down to my hands, which are resting atop my knees. They are covered in a viscous black-ish blood. My eyes float back up to the staff. The same pitch blood coats the blade affixed to the right side.
“You are pathetic, Edward.”
There’s that blasted feeling again. Those rusty needles pin-pricking every vertebrae of my spine.
That voice.
“Samantha.”
A small girl with hair like the feathers of a raven, in a very old styling of polka-dot dress steps out from behind the tree in front of me. In her arms, she is clutching a stuffed bear. The staff rests between us, serving as a barrier, as the line in the sand.
“Edward Richtofen. You accomplish nothing but proving your insignificance. This is not your story, not your epic. This is not where you belong.”
My face distorts into an expression of pure pain and agony. “You think I do not know that you, little brat? You think I have delusions of grandeur involving this universe and these poor fools who inhabit it? Are you really so naive as to believe that I do not plan to return to my allies? To finish what I have started!?”
The girl remains silent, even as tears begin to well behind my eyelids.
“It was you! You took everything from me you little weibsbild! You unleashed the disease! You killed Maxis!”
My hands tangle themselves in my hair, gripping tightly onto the locks that have been growing for the past several months. I groan, and that groan eventually evolves into a shout of excruciating internal pain.
“You should have saved him Richtofen. That was your role; Keep my father from becoming infected. You-”
No. No. I rise to my feet without a word. The little lost girl stops mid sentence, and our eyes meet. Samantha’s eyes are black pits, devoid of any sort of emotion.
“He is not your father!” I begin with a shout.
“You are a figment of Ludvig’s imagination! You haunt me as you haunted him. You prey upon my paranoia, upon my mistakes! I will not have this.”
I stomp towards the staff, spraying swamp murk into the air as I do. I yank my weapon free from its post, and turn away from my demon.
Only to come face to face with her again. She floats in front of me, nose inches away from mine.
“You cannot walk away from this, Richtofen.”
Her voice no longer sounds like a small child’s. It is a rasping, ancient sound, with a demonic taint. I clench my teeth, staring into those black eyes once more.
“Away from me, dämon!”
I take a wild swing with the staff at her pretty, doll-like face. The blade is stopped short, just barely unable to make contact with her snow white flesh. I struggle with all my might, trying to finish the arc and bring that knife crashing into her taunting features. I scream in pure rage, and fling my hands away from the staff, trying to pull it away from her for another attack, but this only succeeds in leaving Kemat’s Bite frozen in mid air, blade still centimeters away from wiping that blank stare off of Samantha’s annoying face.
IT IS NOT FAIR!
Samantha raises a hand, and a wall of invisible supernatural energy flings the staff away from her presence. It spins towards me like a deadly buzz saw, and I am forced to jump out of the way to avoid getting turned into bratwurst.
*Ka-THUNK*
I land in a roll, and when I look back, I see that Kemat has lodged itself in a thick Spanish moss tree. My head swivels to the brat and-
Samantha is floating right above me. She holds a pale hand in front of my face, palm outward.
“With the power of the Aether, I sentence you to torture at the hands of your own broken mind.”
Wh-
Blackness.
Nnng… Ich...Wo bin Ich? I don’t remember...Ah. Where have I been? What is going on? The blackness fades from my vision, and I can see clearly again. I carefully scan my surroundings, trying to glean some information as to where I am. Stone walls, lab equipment, thin horizontal slits for windows, salvos of explosions and weapon fire outside.
An operating table.
My gaze slowly falls to the makeshift operation table. On it, lies a pale, vein-riddled corpse. It’s features include a short, grey beard, an angular but humped nose, and the wrinkles of one who has lived for quite a while in a time of great stress. My patient’s eyes have rolled into the back of his head. I can only see the whites. His mouth is agape, as if he was screaming in agony.
His head has been precisely cut open from the top, as if the operator had used a can-opener. I lean over to look inside the recesses of his skull, and find that it is empty.
No brain.
I am suddenly aware of how klebrig my hands are. I raise them into the dim yellow light that is hanging above the operating table, and find they are coated in both fresh and dried blood.
This is-
That’s right. Yes. I was operating on Maxis. He was about to succumb to the disease that had consumed the rest of our workers and armed forces. I begin to visibly shake uncontrollably, and find that it is very hard to stand up. Ludvig Maxis, my colleague, my confident, the closest thing I had ever had to a father, was dead.
And I killed him.
I attempt to speak, to say something, anything to break this horrible, foreboding silence, but no words come out. My bottom jaw is trembling uncontrollably under the effort. No. No I did not kill him. I saved him. I saved Maxis from the sickness that was consuming Group 935, I saved him from becoming one of them.
I saved him.
I keep telling myself this, but I know in my mind that it is untrue. I let him contract this illness. I let him die. His earthly body was doomed because of me, because of my mistakes.
Der Gehirn. The brain, where is it? Where?! I search frantically around the operating table for Maxis’ brain, the only part of his body that was uncorrupted by the disease brought upon this world by element 115. I swerve around, searching the tables of lab equipment for my only hope.
And there it is, suspended in a green, slimy concoction that I brewed up myself to preserve Ludvig’s brilliant mind. I scramble for it, making a mad grab as if I was going to lose it at any moment. I store it safely in my padded satchel.
“Do not worry Maxis. You will live again.” I murmur to no one.
I am broken from my reveries by the wall of the bunker being blown inwards by some explosive force. I shield my eyes from flying debris, and see a figure shrouded by dust standing in the newly erected entrance.
“You Edward Richtofen?”
A gruff American accented voice greets me. Allied soldier Tank Dempsey slowly steps into the open. My old ally eyes me up and down, before levying a dangerous looking revolver at my face.
“You’re coming with me.”
“Dempsey? Is that you?”
Wait...How do I know this man? His blocky features contort into a scowl.
“How do you know my name? Who the hell is feeding you intel? Was it the Russian?”
Nikolai.
“You mean Nikolai? Where is he?!”
Tank Dempsey snorts.
“Your informant Nikolai Belinski was mauled to death by your very own workers about thirty minutes ago. I suspect he is in the respective gullets of about six zombified German meat bags.”
No. No this is not how this is supposed to happen. There are supposed to be three of them confronting me. Three!
But...
“Takeo, the Japanese samurai, where is he?!”
Who are these people?
“The Japanese captain Takeo Masaki is also K.I.A. Where are you getting these names from, scum? This is Allied information only, you-”
“Sei ruhig! Shut up! I am trying to think, and your insipid questioning will get us nowhere!”
How do I know these names, and the faces that go with them? I look up, and the soldier lowers his weapon, and stares at me as if it was the last time I would be able to stare back. He speed-walks over to me and places barrel of the gun to my temple.
“My orders were to drag you from this hell-hole back to my commanding officers. They didn’t say in what sort of shape or in how many pieces.”
I sneer at him, throwing my own death glare.
“Kill me then Dempsey. Show your superiors how good you are at following orders.”
His response to that is to smack me in the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. My vision threatens to black out as I feel my eyes pop out of my head, but I hold it together. These past few days in the trenches have hardened me.
“There is no time for these petty arguments, my American idiot. They come for us.”
This entire time, they have been ripping at the boards on the windows, clawing their way out of the ground like the insignificant worms they are. The untoten.
“Something is wrong here Dempsey! Nikolai Belinski and Takeo Masaki should not be dead!”
“Yeah, and the dead shouldn’t be up and walking around making more people dead. People die Richtofen, especially in times like this. You’re going to have to explain what the hell you mean by that.”
I do not know what I mean by this. I don’t know how I know these things. They are just there, in my head! And these thoughts, Gott how they hurt! I can’t think about mein dead friends, because I know they are not dead! But-
An ungodly screech pierces my thoughts. Dempsey’s eyes grow a little frantic. They are closing in.
“We’re taking this conversation on the road. C’mon Doctor. We gotta go.”
And so we do.
We open the bolted door to the trenches. They are appearing all around us, crawling out of the ground and breaking through boarded off excavation tunnels.
This is so wrong! Takeo and Nikolai are supposed to be here, I know they are! We are all supposed to build the staffs of power and wield the elements together.
Warten. Staffs? What staffs? Gah it’s like un whirlpool of different memories in my head, and I can’t take it! These other memories, they are encroaching into my own thoughts, and it’s maddening! It’s like thousands of different voices are whispering and shouting and talking all at once!
Yes you fool! Staves! Staffs! Weapons of Massenvernichtungs! Maxis designed them, you, Nikolai, Takeo, and Dempsey built them!
No. No that is impossible. The Russian, and the Japanese captain, they are both dead. This American soldier has told me as much.
This American soldier is an idiot! You know this! This has happened before! Hundreds of times over.
No. I have never met this man before in my entire life.
Ahead of me, Dempsey clears any undead that get in the way of our progression through the trenches. Brains splatter the muddy path. The way he carries himself, his language and his tone.
What a kapitalistisch capitalist pig.
Nein! Stop that!
I will stop interrupting when you start listening to me scheißekopf!
“Verdammt voices! Get out of mein head!”
Dempsey brains another cursed soldier, and then looks back at me.
“You alright back there, quack?”
*tha-thump*
Quack.
Quack.
“Quack?...” I mutter.
I’ve never been called that before.
Yes. You have.
Sei ruhig! Shut up shut up shut up!
I see a man that is dressed as if he belongs at sea. I remember an old shanty that I sung around a campfire. Other faces. Faces that are blacked out by my own mind. I see myself tending to this man’s wounds. I see myself tending to many people’s wounds, in some sort of encampment.
I sink to my knees. The memories, they threaten to burst through my skull. I hear the calls of the dead behind me, all around me in fact. I cry out, my shouts of pain louder than theirs.
Dempsey comes skidding to a halt in the slick mud, before running back to me.
“What!? What happened? Did you get bit?”
I respond with another cry of agony.
All of a sudden, the radio attached to Dempsey’s tactical vest begins to chatter. He grabs me violently by the arm and hauls me to my feet, half way dragging my sorry arsch away from the growing threat of the dead. The United States soldier clicks on his radio, and speaks into his shoulder.
“I’ve got the target, quit bitching at me... Roger that, RTB for re-tasking.”
Another face makes itself known to me. Aryan features, someone of the Fatherland. I hear words spoken in my native tongue, shared around a campfire. He was a soldier. No, a mercenary. Hired gun.
Where have I been?
Der Omniversum.
Die stimmen! The voices continue to haunt me! They do not cease! Ich-
I don’t get to finish that thought. Thousands and thousands of memories, thoughts, words, whispers, voices, shouts, names, places, VOICES STIMMEN VERDAMMT VOICES!
I see myself dying hundreds upon hundreds of deaths in these trenches and on this battlefield at the hands of the undead hordes. They rend the flesh from my bones, shoving it into greedy rotten maws thousands of times over. I die, again and again, failing my task every single time. The cycle is never broken. Every time I die, I awake in the same bunker, in the same situation, playing the same sick game. Agartha will never be mine to control. I cannot save Maxis. I cannot save my allies, my friends. I cannot save my homeland. I cannot save myself.
And then the cycle was broken. I had died once again, feeling the pain of carnivorous teeth shredding into my flesh. However, when my eyes opened again, I was out of the loop. I was not in the decrepit bunker where four fated allies were destined to meet over and over again.
I was in the Omniverse.
And my work is not done there.
“Unhand me Dempsey.”
“What? No way in hell that’s happening, I need to get you to-”
I draw my Mauser pistol and aim it square at his face. This is not real. This is not the Tank Dempsey I know.
Though to be perfectly fair, if it was, I would still do it.
Dempsey points his own weapon at me. We stand there for a few moments.
“What in the hell do you think you’re-”
*PAP-PAP-PAP!*
This impostor falls to the ground, three small rounds of ammunition lodged into his skull.
The real Dempsey would have shot first and asked questions later.
I hear the growls and roars of diseased soldiers. In front of me, more than a few enemies block my path. I calmly look behind me to see a horde approaching me at a quick pace.
Without a word, I raise the smoking barrel of my Mauser to my temple.
End the Cycle Richtofen.
I squeeze the trigger.
“Ich… Wo bin ich?” I open mein eyes, and find that I am staring at the sky, but therein lies the answer to my problem.
I stir from my slumber, and find that the swamp has almost claimed me. I struggle out of the torf, mud sticking to my back. When I am on my feet, I see that Kemat’s bite is leaning against a Spanish moss tree, unsoiled by grime or blood. I calmly retrieve it from its resting place.
Samantha is not here. I am beginning to wonder if she ever was.
Der kampf geht weiter.
Yet, I have never felt so far away from the Fatherland.
I search for my allies, but my simple eyes cannot pierce the veil of unnatural fog.
“Roger…? Crow?”
My words are a whisper. No need in attracting unwanted attent-
Oh schrauben.
“CROW?! ROGER?!” I shout.
“Christa?...” I try weakly. I start to rattle off names, hoping someone will hear me talking to myself.
Nothing. Damn it. Damn it all. Truly, I am alone. I begin to contemplate my next move, when all of a sudden, it feels as if thousands of needles are scraping down my spine.
Something is...compelling me to walk forward. There is something ahead, though I know not what. I level the staff in front of me, fingers stroking the lever-trigger. My breathing becomes shallow and ragged, as if I was attempting to breathe in a layer of smog. The air feels heavy and thick, smothering almost. My feet have been moving of their own accord. I have not felt such trepidation since...since the operation. Since meeting my old ‘friends’.
One step at a time.
Focus.
Left foot, right foot.
Left foot, ri- ACH SCHEIßE!
I cry out in shock as a rotten, soggy hand latches on to my ankle. I almost trip over my own feet, but with some quick thinking and lucky aim, I swipe the staff as if it were a scythe, severing the hand from a currently sunken arm. The handless limb flails around, stirring up quite a lot of muck and grime. I take a moment to detach the vise now clamped onto mein poor ankle. It takes a moment, as the hand is slimy and cold, but eventually its dead fingers relinquish me from its grasp.
The situation in the apparently bottomless puddle has gotten worse. Half of a zombie has now climbed its way out of that hole. And one-handed too! How impressive.
I make a rather nasty face, a sick grin accompanying the hate in my eyes.
I slide my left hand to the top of the staff whilst keeping the right on the bottom of the hilt. With a mighty oomph, I swing the staff high into the air, before bringing it back down in a deadly arc like an axe. The blade sinks itself into the untoten’s rotten flesh with a sickening squelch. Placing one dirty boot on what remains of its skull, I casually rip my weapon free from my now twice dead opponent, along with a splattering of diseased grey matter and bone fragments. I remain silent for a moment, staring at the dead, putrid corpse.
My right eye develops a twitch.
“You… You see what happens when you touch the Doctor!? Eh!?”
I shout at the zombie as if it could hear my cries of outrage. In a furious tempest of anger, I begin to repeatedly swing my staff into the zombie over and over again, as if I were a deranged miner digging for gold.
Gold being chunks of flesh and internal organs.
“Why!? Why won’t you stay DEAD!?” I shout at the desecrated corpse, hysteria flooding my voice. Chunks of black meat splatter onto my face, the blade of Kemat stabbing into the rot at a frantic pace.
With an inarticulate screech of rage, I suddenly recoil from the body, or rather, what’s left of it. Where there was formerly an undead, now lies a mess and tangle of intestines, broken bones, and torn flesh. I plant the staff into the murk, shaft end down.
I fall to my knees, staring at Kemat’s Bite.
My eyes drift down to my hands, which are resting atop my knees. They are covered in a viscous black-ish blood. My eyes float back up to the staff. The same pitch blood coats the blade affixed to the right side.
“You are pathetic, Edward.”
There’s that blasted feeling again. Those rusty needles pin-pricking every vertebrae of my spine.
That voice.
“Samantha.”
A small girl with hair like the feathers of a raven, in a very old styling of polka-dot dress steps out from behind the tree in front of me. In her arms, she is clutching a stuffed bear. The staff rests between us, serving as a barrier, as the line in the sand.
“Edward Richtofen. You accomplish nothing but proving your insignificance. This is not your story, not your epic. This is not where you belong.”
My face distorts into an expression of pure pain and agony. “You think I do not know that you, little brat? You think I have delusions of grandeur involving this universe and these poor fools who inhabit it? Are you really so naive as to believe that I do not plan to return to my allies? To finish what I have started!?”
The girl remains silent, even as tears begin to well behind my eyelids.
“It was you! You took everything from me you little weibsbild! You unleashed the disease! You killed Maxis!”
My hands tangle themselves in my hair, gripping tightly onto the locks that have been growing for the past several months. I groan, and that groan eventually evolves into a shout of excruciating internal pain.
“You should have saved him Richtofen. That was your role; Keep my father from becoming infected. You-”
No. No. I rise to my feet without a word. The little lost girl stops mid sentence, and our eyes meet. Samantha’s eyes are black pits, devoid of any sort of emotion.
“He is not your father!” I begin with a shout.
“You are a figment of Ludvig’s imagination! You haunt me as you haunted him. You prey upon my paranoia, upon my mistakes! I will not have this.”
I stomp towards the staff, spraying swamp murk into the air as I do. I yank my weapon free from its post, and turn away from my demon.
Only to come face to face with her again. She floats in front of me, nose inches away from mine.
“You cannot walk away from this, Richtofen.”
Her voice no longer sounds like a small child’s. It is a rasping, ancient sound, with a demonic taint. I clench my teeth, staring into those black eyes once more.
“Away from me, dämon!”
I take a wild swing with the staff at her pretty, doll-like face. The blade is stopped short, just barely unable to make contact with her snow white flesh. I struggle with all my might, trying to finish the arc and bring that knife crashing into her taunting features. I scream in pure rage, and fling my hands away from the staff, trying to pull it away from her for another attack, but this only succeeds in leaving Kemat’s Bite frozen in mid air, blade still centimeters away from wiping that blank stare off of Samantha’s annoying face.
IT IS NOT FAIR!
Samantha raises a hand, and a wall of invisible supernatural energy flings the staff away from her presence. It spins towards me like a deadly buzz saw, and I am forced to jump out of the way to avoid getting turned into bratwurst.
*Ka-THUNK*
I land in a roll, and when I look back, I see that Kemat has lodged itself in a thick Spanish moss tree. My head swivels to the brat and-
Samantha is floating right above me. She holds a pale hand in front of my face, palm outward.
“With the power of the Aether, I sentence you to torture at the hands of your own broken mind.”
Wh-
Blackness.
Quote:Translations:-----
schrauben = screw it
stiefel = boots
dämon = demon
weibsbild = wench
untoten = undead
ACH SCHEIßE = OH SHIT
mein = my
Nnng… Ich...Wo bin Ich? I don’t remember...Ah. Where have I been? What is going on? The blackness fades from my vision, and I can see clearly again. I carefully scan my surroundings, trying to glean some information as to where I am. Stone walls, lab equipment, thin horizontal slits for windows, salvos of explosions and weapon fire outside.
An operating table.
My gaze slowly falls to the makeshift operation table. On it, lies a pale, vein-riddled corpse. It’s features include a short, grey beard, an angular but humped nose, and the wrinkles of one who has lived for quite a while in a time of great stress. My patient’s eyes have rolled into the back of his head. I can only see the whites. His mouth is agape, as if he was screaming in agony.
His head has been precisely cut open from the top, as if the operator had used a can-opener. I lean over to look inside the recesses of his skull, and find that it is empty.
No brain.
I am suddenly aware of how klebrig my hands are. I raise them into the dim yellow light that is hanging above the operating table, and find they are coated in both fresh and dried blood.
This is-
That’s right. Yes. I was operating on Maxis. He was about to succumb to the disease that had consumed the rest of our workers and armed forces. I begin to visibly shake uncontrollably, and find that it is very hard to stand up. Ludvig Maxis, my colleague, my confident, the closest thing I had ever had to a father, was dead.
And I killed him.
I attempt to speak, to say something, anything to break this horrible, foreboding silence, but no words come out. My bottom jaw is trembling uncontrollably under the effort. No. No I did not kill him. I saved him. I saved Maxis from the sickness that was consuming Group 935, I saved him from becoming one of them.
I saved him.
I keep telling myself this, but I know in my mind that it is untrue. I let him contract this illness. I let him die. His earthly body was doomed because of me, because of my mistakes.
Der Gehirn. The brain, where is it? Where?! I search frantically around the operating table for Maxis’ brain, the only part of his body that was uncorrupted by the disease brought upon this world by element 115. I swerve around, searching the tables of lab equipment for my only hope.
And there it is, suspended in a green, slimy concoction that I brewed up myself to preserve Ludvig’s brilliant mind. I scramble for it, making a mad grab as if I was going to lose it at any moment. I store it safely in my padded satchel.
“Do not worry Maxis. You will live again.” I murmur to no one.
I am broken from my reveries by the wall of the bunker being blown inwards by some explosive force. I shield my eyes from flying debris, and see a figure shrouded by dust standing in the newly erected entrance.
“You Edward Richtofen?”
A gruff American accented voice greets me. Allied soldier Tank Dempsey slowly steps into the open. My old ally eyes me up and down, before levying a dangerous looking revolver at my face.
“You’re coming with me.”
Quote:Translations:-----
Ich...Wo bin Ich = I...Where am I?
Der Gehirn = The brain
“Dempsey? Is that you?”
Wait...How do I know this man? His blocky features contort into a scowl.
“How do you know my name? Who the hell is feeding you intel? Was it the Russian?”
Nikolai.
“You mean Nikolai? Where is he?!”
Tank Dempsey snorts.
“Your informant Nikolai Belinski was mauled to death by your very own workers about thirty minutes ago. I suspect he is in the respective gullets of about six zombified German meat bags.”
No. No this is not how this is supposed to happen. There are supposed to be three of them confronting me. Three!
But...
“Takeo, the Japanese samurai, where is he?!”
Who are these people?
“The Japanese captain Takeo Masaki is also K.I.A. Where are you getting these names from, scum? This is Allied information only, you-”
“Sei ruhig! Shut up! I am trying to think, and your insipid questioning will get us nowhere!”
How do I know these names, and the faces that go with them? I look up, and the soldier lowers his weapon, and stares at me as if it was the last time I would be able to stare back. He speed-walks over to me and places barrel of the gun to my temple.
“My orders were to drag you from this hell-hole back to my commanding officers. They didn’t say in what sort of shape or in how many pieces.”
I sneer at him, throwing my own death glare.
“Kill me then Dempsey. Show your superiors how good you are at following orders.”
His response to that is to smack me in the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. My vision threatens to black out as I feel my eyes pop out of my head, but I hold it together. These past few days in the trenches have hardened me.
“There is no time for these petty arguments, my American idiot. They come for us.”
This entire time, they have been ripping at the boards on the windows, clawing their way out of the ground like the insignificant worms they are. The untoten.
“Something is wrong here Dempsey! Nikolai Belinski and Takeo Masaki should not be dead!”
“Yeah, and the dead shouldn’t be up and walking around making more people dead. People die Richtofen, especially in times like this. You’re going to have to explain what the hell you mean by that.”
I do not know what I mean by this. I don’t know how I know these things. They are just there, in my head! And these thoughts, Gott how they hurt! I can’t think about mein dead friends, because I know they are not dead! But-
An ungodly screech pierces my thoughts. Dempsey’s eyes grow a little frantic. They are closing in.
“We’re taking this conversation on the road. C’mon Doctor. We gotta go.”
And so we do.
We open the bolted door to the trenches. They are appearing all around us, crawling out of the ground and breaking through boarded off excavation tunnels.
This is so wrong! Takeo and Nikolai are supposed to be here, I know they are! We are all supposed to build the staffs of power and wield the elements together.
Warten. Staffs? What staffs? Gah it’s like un whirlpool of different memories in my head, and I can’t take it! These other memories, they are encroaching into my own thoughts, and it’s maddening! It’s like thousands of different voices are whispering and shouting and talking all at once!
Yes you fool! Staves! Staffs! Weapons of Massenvernichtungs! Maxis designed them, you, Nikolai, Takeo, and Dempsey built them!
No. No that is impossible. The Russian, and the Japanese captain, they are both dead. This American soldier has told me as much.
This American soldier is an idiot! You know this! This has happened before! Hundreds of times over.
No. I have never met this man before in my entire life.
Ahead of me, Dempsey clears any undead that get in the way of our progression through the trenches. Brains splatter the muddy path. The way he carries himself, his language and his tone.
What a kapitalistisch capitalist pig.
Nein! Stop that!
I will stop interrupting when you start listening to me scheißekopf!
“Verdammt voices! Get out of mein head!”
Dempsey brains another cursed soldier, and then looks back at me.
“You alright back there, quack?”
*tha-thump*
Quack.
Quack.
“Quack?...” I mutter.
I’ve never been called that before.
Yes. You have.
Sei ruhig! Shut up shut up shut up!
I see a man that is dressed as if he belongs at sea. I remember an old shanty that I sung around a campfire. Other faces. Faces that are blacked out by my own mind. I see myself tending to this man’s wounds. I see myself tending to many people’s wounds, in some sort of encampment.
I sink to my knees. The memories, they threaten to burst through my skull. I hear the calls of the dead behind me, all around me in fact. I cry out, my shouts of pain louder than theirs.
Dempsey comes skidding to a halt in the slick mud, before running back to me.
“What!? What happened? Did you get bit?”
I respond with another cry of agony.
All of a sudden, the radio attached to Dempsey’s tactical vest begins to chatter. He grabs me violently by the arm and hauls me to my feet, half way dragging my sorry arsch away from the growing threat of the dead. The United States soldier clicks on his radio, and speaks into his shoulder.
“I’ve got the target, quit bitching at me... Roger that, RTB for re-tasking.”
Another face makes itself known to me. Aryan features, someone of the Fatherland. I hear words spoken in my native tongue, shared around a campfire. He was a soldier. No, a mercenary. Hired gun.
Where have I been?
Der Omniversum.
Die stimmen! The voices continue to haunt me! They do not cease! Ich-
I don’t get to finish that thought. Thousands and thousands of memories, thoughts, words, whispers, voices, shouts, names, places, VOICES STIMMEN VERDAMMT VOICES!
I see myself dying hundreds upon hundreds of deaths in these trenches and on this battlefield at the hands of the undead hordes. They rend the flesh from my bones, shoving it into greedy rotten maws thousands of times over. I die, again and again, failing my task every single time. The cycle is never broken. Every time I die, I awake in the same bunker, in the same situation, playing the same sick game. Agartha will never be mine to control. I cannot save Maxis. I cannot save my allies, my friends. I cannot save my homeland. I cannot save myself.
And then the cycle was broken. I had died once again, feeling the pain of carnivorous teeth shredding into my flesh. However, when my eyes opened again, I was out of the loop. I was not in the decrepit bunker where four fated allies were destined to meet over and over again.
I was in the Omniverse.
And my work is not done there.
“Unhand me Dempsey.”
“What? No way in hell that’s happening, I need to get you to-”
I draw my Mauser pistol and aim it square at his face. This is not real. This is not the Tank Dempsey I know.
Though to be perfectly fair, if it was, I would still do it.
Dempsey points his own weapon at me. We stand there for a few moments.
“What in the hell do you think you’re-”
*PAP-PAP-PAP!*
This impostor falls to the ground, three small rounds of ammunition lodged into his skull.
The real Dempsey would have shot first and asked questions later.
I hear the growls and roars of diseased soldiers. In front of me, more than a few enemies block my path. I calmly look behind me to see a horde approaching me at a quick pace.
Without a word, I raise the smoking barrel of my Mauser to my temple.
End the Cycle Richtofen.
I squeeze the trigger.
Quote:Translations:-----
Stimmen = Voices
Verdammt = fucking
arsch = ass
Sei ruhig! = Shut up!/Be quiet!
Massenvernichtungs =Mass Destruction
Warten = Wait
scheißekopf = Shit head
kapitalistisch = Capitalist/Capitalistic
“Ich… Wo bin ich?” I open mein eyes, and find that I am staring at the sky, but therein lies the answer to my problem.
I stir from my slumber, and find that the swamp has almost claimed me. I struggle out of the torf, mud sticking to my back. When I am on my feet, I see that Kemat’s bite is leaning against a Spanish moss tree, unsoiled by grime or blood. I calmly retrieve it from its resting place.
Samantha is not here. I am beginning to wonder if she ever was.
Der kampf geht weiter.
Quote:Translations:
Torf = peat
Der kampf geht weiter = The struggle continues.
If you're new to Omniverse Shenanigans, feel free to pm me about whatever piques your interest!
![[Image: dlpaou6b73f.gif]](http://www.auplod.com/u/dlpaou6b73f.gif)
-by Jade Harley
Never Falter in the Face of Infinity.
-Tearan Wover
-by Jade Harley
Never Falter in the Face of Infinity.
-Tearan Wover