When Hell Froze

by Forrest Minter

  He flashed her a roguish grin. “This is a question?”

  She shrugged. “It’s nice to hear it said.”

  He stopped her, and turned her to face him; a hand on each of her shoulders. His face bore a look of utter seriousness. “Beneficence Church, I love… your ass.” He smacked the bulge in question, and took off running. With a curse she chased him, and finally caught him when they reached the barracks. He stood just outside the door, waiting for her, and she came to a stop in front of him. Extending her hand, she flicked his forehead hard.

  “Coward. I know what you wanted to say.” She told him, a look of warning in her eyes.

  Charlie threw up his hands. “Guilty as charged. You caught me.”

  Benny’s entire demeanor changed to one of uncertainty. “You can say it if you want. I don’t mind.” She said, looking away as if not wanting to see his reaction.

  “But you won’t say it back?” He asked, his rakish mask failing to contain a burst of emotion that crossed his face like a quick wave.

  “I haven’t decided yet. Maybe hearing it will help me make up my mind.” She replied, still looking away.

  Charlie reached out, and lightly guided her face so that she was looking at him. Her eyes glistened with the precursor to tears. He kissed her for several seconds before pulling back. “I love you Benny, I have since the moment I met you.” She nodded and looked down again, seemingly unable to meet his gaze. “I… love you too Charlie. You’ve been good to me.”

  “See, wasn’t so hard.” Charlie told her, running his hands through her hair.

  “Come on, we have to get ready for the mission.” She muttered, simultaneously hiding from his gaze, and bumping her head up into his hand.

  He snorted and shrugged. “Have it your way.”

  They walked in companionable silence, arm in arm until they reached the dorms a minute later. “Want to come in?” She asked, stopping by her room.

  “Sure. Need help with your things?”

  “Something like that.”

  The moment he stepped through the door, she closed it with a kick, and threw him down on the bed. “I’m a lot better with this than I am with the emotional crap.” she said, stripping herself determinedly. Mentally she reaffirmed that she had taken her herbal birth control supplement.

  Charlie smiled. “Me too.”

  Benny winked at him as she turned off her bedroom light.

  Chapter 3

  Charlie and Benny stood in a line with the ten other members of their squad; Father Ellis pacing in front of them. All signs of their bedroom exertions had been erased by time and a shower. Across the room from the group stood the portal. Some forms of magic were available to anyone with enough mana to use them. Portals were one such magic, reverse-engineered from the demon portals that connected to their world. Portals were either of the permanent or temporary variety depending whether they were powered by environmental magic, or a mages personal mana. An entire division of the military was devoted solely to sneaking portal operators behind enemy lines to facilitate troop movements and surprise attacks. It was one of these temporary portals that they faced now.

  “Everyone packed and ready?” The Father asked. “Now’s the time to speak up; this will be a multi-day deployment with no return trips.”

  While technically it was possible to bring the portal mage with them to ferry them back and forth from the base, this was frowned upon if you didn't have a good reason. Few individuals had the mana reserves necessary to maintain a portal for long durations; fewer still were willing to join the military, making those who did valuable assets. Military command frowned on commanders who acted irresponsibly with the lives of portal mages.

  “I think Benny forgot her condoms.” A woman’s voice called out to the assembled soldiers. Her name was Jewel Rizen, and she vehemently despised Benny. After an awkward one night stand a year prior involving Benny and a man who hadn’t revealed he was in a relationship with Jewel, Jewel came to the natural conclusion that Benny was a slut who needed to be harassed as often as possible.

  “Can I borrow yours? Oh right, you aren’t getting any so you don’t have any either.” Benny called back.

  Father Ellis’s eyes narrowed. “That’s enough of that, both of you. Since there are no other concerns, once more into the breach.”

  With that, he strode calmly through the portal. The squad followed behind him single file. They emerged into a dense forest with the portal letting out inside a small wooden structure like a miniature palisade nestled in an especially dense grove. Benny evaluated the site dismissively; having seen a thousand others just like it, before moving forward with the squad. Inside the structure a small group of twenty soldiers went about their day.

  Benny lined up with the others silently in a double column while Father Ellis spoke to the Commander of the tiny fort. With a wordless hand signal from Ellis, the squad left the compound, and began marching at a brisk pace into the woods. They marched for a day and a half, stopping only to eat, sleep, and relieve themselves. Conversation consisted only of hand signals in order to avoid alerting any potential enemy scouts. When they reached their target on the morning of day three, Benny was almost relieved to see the contingent of Demon guards standing by the bridge.

  The guards in question consisted of primarily the standard demon soldiers. With the same average height as a human, they had red skin, small pointed horns, barbed tails that could act like spear-points in a fight, and retractable talons on their hands. Their hair was mostly a uniform black color, though some boasted a dark red hair similar to Benny’s own. Benny had always found that similarity to be a disturbing coincidence. The demons were armed entirely with spears, a common sight in any low-tech army where metal was more expensive than lives.

  Benny’s own people had once fought with guns and bombs, but when the demons had first arrived, it soon became apparent that their skin was nearly impervious to any weapon of the time; magical reinforcement causing bullets to simply bounce from them, and explosions to flow around them. It was after the initial period of panic that Orion had begun communicating with his priests, revealing a blessing that would allow weapons to pierce demonic flesh. Unfortunately, weapons needed to be blessed individually, the ritual involved took several hours, and the nature of guns meant that individual bullets needed to be blessed rather than the guns themselves. This all added up to it being nearly impossible to mass-produce traditional ranged weapons capable of harming demons. The only saving grace came from magical weapons that channeled the mana of their users into effects such as lightning blasts, but those were naturally limited by the mana pool of the soldiers, making them inefficient at best.

  Benny examined the deployment of the demonic troops. Around a hundred in total dispersed on both sides of the bridge with a makeshift wall to make assault more difficult. More than should be expected for a random bridge in supposedly safe territory, but not an unreasonable number if they considered it a high value resource. Ellis spoke to the rest of the squad in hand-signals.

  “Mendez, Vallir, artillery support. Church, kill the wall. Everyone else, frontline combat.”

  He glanced at them, and each soldier nodded affirmative.

  Charlie replied, “priority targets?”

  Ellis chewed on his lip for a moment before replying. “Vallir support Church. Mendez support frontline.”

  Both men nodded, and Benny pulled out a specially made notebook she carried with her on missions. Inside were the kind of stickers one might use to put their name on a present, but these were made of a special paper designed to enhance any magical effects placed on it. While such paper was normally meant for use in magical tomes, she had found it amplified the effects of her sigils several-fold. Benny drew a sigil of destruction on one of the stickers with a pen, but didn’t activate it. She gave a thumbs-up to Ellis, who nodded. He began counting down with the fingers of his right hand.

  “Five”

  “Four”

  “Three”
r />   “Two”

  “One”

  At zero, the squad sprang into action. Benny circled around the battlefield to come in from the flanks while Charlie lobbed fireballs at any Demons who stood in her path. While she patiently fished for her opening, Benny drew a sigil for “speed” on a sticker, and stuck it to her own forehead. The world seemed to slow to a crawl as she moved, including her own body. She strode ponderously toward a demon, sword out, and slashed her sword clean through its neck. The demon barely even had time to lift it’s spear a few inches. The decapitated body fell in slow motion as she twirled toward the next.

  In the distance she could see Jewel, seemingly moving at incredible speed even through the effect of Benny’s sigil. Jewel’s gift was speed, and though Benny would never admit it, she was sometimes jealous of the straightforward, murderous nature of her gift. Closing with the next target, Benny shut the momentary pang of jealousy from her mind. The effects of the sigil had begun to wear off now, and this demon’s spear moved noticeably faster than the first. Benny, dexterous even when moving at a normal time dilation, batted the spear aside with her sword, comboing the motion with a quick thrust into the demon’s heart. It shrieked in a horrible tone, voice distorted by her altered perceptions, before collapsing. Benny stuck a finger to her forehead, and reactivated the sigil before it wore off completely. The sigil would be less effective with every activation; anything which affected her directly generally was, but the demonic forces were mostly arrayed around the entrance to the barricade, leaving the bulk of the wall undefended.

  Encountering a final demon on her path, Benny grabbed his spear, thrusted at her with poorly trained enthusiasm from the air with one hand, while the other stuck her sword through his head. Casually, she threw the spear like a javelin into the ranks of the primary defenders, and was grimly satisfied when she heard a scream from that direction. Using her remaining speed boost to dodge a smattering of bow fire, Benny reached the wall, planted her destruction sticker on it, reactivated her speed sigil for good measure, and began sprinting for all she was worth. A moment later the wall imploded with a loud thwump, accompanied by the cries of unlucky defenders who had been too close to the detonation. Benny stopped running, reset her guard, and turned back to the fight.

  What came next was a slaughter as over a hundred demons were cut down by the squad of soldiers. With the walls breached, the demons lacked any form of defensive advantage, and the squad hammered into them mercilessly. Within an hour, the fight was over, and Benny leaned against the rubble; humming lightly to herself as she used a stone to re-sharpen her blade. What they always forgot to mention in the stories about heroes, and villains was that swords grew dull rather quickly with use. By the sixth kill, your enemies bones had likely reduced the edge to little better than a butterknife, and the sword became as much bludgeon as cutting weapon.

  Charlie’s head popped up from beyond the rubble. “Alright Benny, we’ve secured the area. You’re up.”

  Benny sighed. Technically, they had ample access to explosives, and didn’t have to rely on her powers. Unfortunately, Father Ellis was a pragmatist who didn’t believe in wasting resources if they weren’t needed. He still brought the explosive clay of course; as a contingency, but as long as she was alive, she would always be the team’s goto for demolitions.

  “Fine, I’m coming.”

  Putting her whetstone away, she stood, and surveyed the bridge. Taking measurements with her mind, she nodded and pulled a stick of chalk from her bag. Within two minutes she had drawn a massive destruction rune along the bridge. She then extended the end of the destruction rune into another rune, similar to writing cursive. This next rune was a time rune, allowing her to set a timer on the effect. A minute later, she was still working on this rune, when a cry rang out from one of the squad members posted to the perimeter. Jewel appeared next to Benny and Charlie; who had stood silent vigil over her, a moment later. Her tone was pure professionalism, lacking the normal derision she used on Benny.

  “There’s a force coming from the south. Looks like they’ve got elites and vindicators. Roman says over a hundred total. We need to move.” Vindicators were large demons gifted with a kind of anti-magic field, and were usually deployed to counter special forces teams such as their own, or magical defenses. By themselves they weren’t necessarily a problem, but backed up by an army of over a hundred, there was no way a single squad of skilled, but powerless soldiers would win.

  Benny looked up, anxious. “As far as we know this is the only bridge for fifty miles, and the river is too strong to cross. We came from the south, how are we going to get back to the portal?”

  Jewel winced, and sighed. “Father Ellis says… he says we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Benny sighed, and shook her head; both at the situation, and the bad pun. Sometimes the good Father couldn’t help himself, and Benny found herself wondering what kind of person he would be without the years of military discipline, and responsibility.

  “Do we blow the bridge now, or wait until we can get back?”

  “We blow it as soon as everyone is ready to march North.”

  Benny nodded, and resumed drawing the sigil. The rest of the squad assembled silently at the northern edge of the bridge while she worked, and the moment she was done she activated the sigil without waiting for permission. She nodded at Ellis, and told him via hand-signals, “one minute timer.”

  Ellis nodded, and they began to jog the moment she had fallen into formation. A minute later as they entered the treeline, there was a booming sound strong enough to shake the ground like a miniature earthquake. Benny didn’t look back.

  Chapter 4

  The next day was a tense, silent affair. To Benny, the sun seemed to hang in the air; an unblinking eye in the heavens that barely inched forward as it watched their plight. By the time it set, forcing the squad of soldiers to halt; Benny was locked in a silent war with her own mind to stave off anxiety-induced delusions. Though it might have been easier to simply allow herself to go numb, giving herself to the silent drudgery of setting camp, Benny was too much of a professional to allow herself that luxury. If she did, she could get not only herself, but her squad killed by failing to be alert at the wrong moment.

  Father Ellis finally spoke in a hissing whisper, the sunset gloom now too dark for hand-signals. “Alright, three teams of four on guard tonight. You know the drill.”

  Father Ellis was a strong believer in the value of maintaining routine while in the field. Where some commanders would rotate watch shifts to make things fair, his credo was “You’re a soldier. Life doesn’t care what’s fair, only what works.” Benny couldn’t really argue this point given that she was still alive. Still, she knew that having second shift meant she had drawn the short straw when it came to proper sleep.

  Charlie appeared in front of her, and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up from the tent she had been staking into his face. He winked at her. “Wanna share a tent tonight?” He whispered into her ear, leaning forward to pose his question.

  She grimaced. “I already don’t get any sleep in the middle of the night, now you don’t want me to get any at the beginning? Besides, knowing us, we’d draw every scout in a mile with the noise.”

  He grinned back at her. “Think of me as a sleep aid.”

  She snorted, a slight smile betraying her flirtatious denial. “Thanks but no thanks. The last thing I need is to give Jewel more ammo in her ‘Bennie’s a slut’ campaign.”

  He winked at her again. “Your loss.”

  She shrugged. “Trust me, I’m aware.”

  His grin broadened as he turned to enter his own tent, already assembled. “There is something you can help me with though. There’s even nailing involved.” She said, causing him to turn back toward her with a quizzical expression. She held out her hammer. “Want to help me with these tent posts?”

  “Well played.” He said, grabbing the hammer, and chuckling.

  …………
…

  It was during Benny’s watch shift that everything went wrong. It started when a sound like the cracking of a branch sounded through the clearing, from the direction of one of the other guard posts. Benny squinted towards the sound, attempting to activate her vision sigil. It wouldn’t activate. This told her all she needed to know, and she tossed a rock into the string of cans that acted as the alarm.

  Acting like the special forces that they were, the entire squad was immediately awake and alert. Though she knew this, Benny couldn’t see it. She merely trusted in her team as she slipped into the shadows to observe the enemy. The guard posts had been arranged in a square formation, and the first thing she saw as she moved in the direction of the cracking sound was that one of the guards was down. In the gloom, she couldn’t see their face, but she knew from the positioning that it was likely Acolyte Fernandez. She hadn’t interacted with him much, but she still felt saddened by his loss as she sought out the threat that had downed him. Nothing visibly jumped out at her, so she stooped over to examine the body at her feet.

  This motion was all that saved her from three stones thrown from slings which converged where her head had been a moment earlier. Hearing the stones whistle inches over her caused her to instinctually launch into a roll, landing behind a large bush that obscured her position. She fought the urge to curse as the uneven ground bit into her shoulder, but the maneuver was worthwhile in the end, another stone impacting the ground where she had been standing.

  Hoping the bush had been sufficient to break line of sight, she rolled again to get behind a large tree without making herself too visible of a target. When several stones crashed into the bush several seconds after she had done so, it confirmed for her both that she had now broken line of sight, and which direction the slingers were coming from. She spared a moment to wonder “why slings, and not arrows?” But didn’t have the luxury to spend significant time on this thought. Having determined where the attacks were coming from, she decided that to attempt retreat would be suicide. Instead, she circled around their field of fire, using trees and bushes to cover her image as she crept toward them. The slingers had ceased firing, but the lack of movement indicated they were still in their original positions, perhaps believing she had been downed while behind the bush.