by David Gunter
Standing up as he had, the moonlight had touched his skin, and David noticed then, looking down at his arms, which were crossed defiantly in front of his chest, that the skin of his arms had a shine to them that appeared a bit brighter than it should. The wolf creature could see it too, and it visibly stared at it and then did something entirely unexpected.
It gave a nod, turned, and kept going down the path it had been taking. David stared as it walked by and then disappeared into the cold mist that continued to flow over the ravine and which seemed to go on forever.
David felt his knees shaking uncontrollably, and suddenly his vision got darker and darker, and he felt his body relax and fall onto the branches and leaves at his feet. Then passing out, he felt nothing more.
CHAPTER VIII
Soldier of Light
John Taney wanted to make his father proud. And since fierce religiosity and belief in the strictest rules of right and wrong were hung over him since his youth, he had joined the military when he became of age and served there as a chaplain. While in service, and through no fault of his own, he found himself serving in a time of war and, using this same zeal, found himself defending his comrades in a skirmish on the edges of the never-ending war for oil in the middle east.
There he’d brought new honor to the family, for his defense of the helpless and that of his peers, through that skirmish. His father, however, had decided that John had made the red bird on the top of the family crest a bloody one. Fortunately, by then, John had learned to see things differently from his father and, through this experience, saw another path in the form of a slight deviation in his career.
He had struggled to continue in his original military calling as a chaplain until he, one day, received a call to train with and then join the special forces of his nation. And so, becoming a Royal Marines Commando and ministering to his comrades there became his true calling and for two decades after excelled in uplifting the morale of his company through the longest missions war had to offer.
John Taney learned to love war, but it hadn’t given him much in return. He had been keen on getting his company into the thick of the meanest and bad-est places that war had to offer. The trouble was that it was starting to wear him down. So after two decades of war, he was glad to get a mission of a different kind. He was to provide a virtual reality landscape his ‘bootneck’ background for experimentation. The military was looking for ways to help train a new generation of soldier, and his CO felt it was time for him to think of the next phase of his career.
He’d been given this opportunity to live on as a legend in a world that would never let the very best of his commando tradition vanish from memory.
“Immortality and war!?! Hell yes! Sign me up”, he’d told his commanding officer.
John had arrived at N’Pab in his boots, ready for action. He’d quickly gone through the tutorials and had been connected up to the systems which translated his memories into digital signals.
The next thing he knew, he fell through space and landed in a dark cave. Then he walked towards the light.
Never before had he been this sure of any decision as he now felt about this one. He was standing at the mouth of a cave, looking at a vast and complex world full of potential. There was so much he could do here.
John made his way down a winding path from the cave and then found himself with a choice to go either west to the city of ‘Madrea’ or east to ‘Bay City.’ Either city seemed like a good place to start, so he reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt and decided to travel in whatever way the wind blew.
A gust of wind blew east, so John turned and headed on the path to ‘Bay City.’
As he walked along the dirt road, he made observations about this new world. Everything felt so real, so tangible, and so green. He looked up at the sky and saw a very near planet, visible in the daytime, along with an even closer moon. He noticed, too, that his feet were completely dusty now and that he could feel every contour of the ground and the accumulation of morning dew and dirt that were muddying up his feet.
‘This cloth I’m wearing is going to be a problem once I get into town’, he thought. ‘I need to change this to something a little more useful.’
He looked around and noticed that he had very little road left before getting to ‘Bay City.’ However, on the right side of the road, there was a lush green forest, so he chose to veer off the road and head into the forest to look for something that could help remove the foreigner vibes he would no doubt give off in the city.
As he walked, more or less, casually over stones and around trees and bushes, he noticed that on one of the trees, there were signs that a large bear had been marking that area. He paused to think and, after having a short vision of himself being mauled to death, decided right then and there that whatever happened, this could and would only ever be a game to him.
“This is just a game,” he muttered aloud to build his confidence. ‘I need to get a weapon before I keep going, though. Maybe a sharp tree branch or a booby trap?’. He knew that going after a bear was no easy thing, looking down at the flimsy cloth the game had given him for starting gear and shaking his head. But doing the impossible was what had stood him apart from the rest. He just needed the right strategy, and he’d be sure to progress quickly in this world.
Looking around, he noticed a few broken branches but nothing that would really work too well for killing a bear. So he kept on going, carefully stepping as not to break any branches and call attention to his presence.
After walking for a while and climbing to a higher part of the woods, he noticed to his left that near the city, on its outskirts, there was a path leading out into another part of the woods and, from where he stood, he could just make out a couple of headstones and one particularly large statue which looked very interesting. He decided to veer off his current path and take a closer look at the odd cemetery. Before doing that, he made a mental note of his current spot and also noticed one more tree in the opposite direction, which had also been marked by the bear.
He knew he would need something more to be able to survive a full-on battle with a bear. The size of the bear was another problem, so doing a little looking around might be just what he needed to find the tools for the battle.
“I’ll get back to you yet, yogi,” he mumbled to himself and started heading towards the cemetery.
He’d walked for at least thirty minutes before he started to wonder if he’d ever make it to the cemetery, and his feet were already covered in bruises and cuts from the evergreen tree needles, pine cones, and sharp stones that covered the forest floor.
Then he spotted the welcome sight of an iron fence which he had earlier observed surrounding the cemetery. He walked around until he was standing at the opening of the site and entered through the gate, which was adorned with angelic stone figures all about.
The cemetery had many beautiful effigies as well, and these seemed to play with his eyes as he walked towards the center of the cemetery. Some figures were those of children playing games of hide-and-seek. These stone children appeared to be playing behind the cemetery stones, and some, he noted, had little angel wings and looked to be about to take flight and were hardly touching the floor. Others were of beautiful women playing harps or sunbathing. He noticed that some of the figures were looking at the children playing and women bathing as if in great sadness. It struck him that these looked like they were in mourning or attempting to reach out with open arms in the direction of the other figures. The one he thought was the creepiest one was one of a woman kneeling, reaching out with both arms in the direction of two children who were depicted playing with a ball just out of her reach. The children were enjoying their game, completely oblivious to the anguish in the face and eyes of the woman.
John looked in amazement at the frozen scene playing out in front of him and saw enough to realize the twisted nature of this place before deciding a
bruptly to avoid looking at any more of the stone creatures and those they tormented. So he focused on getting to the center of the cemetery and the statue he’d spotted earlier and ignored the twisted depictions all about him.
Once at the center, he stared up at the statue of a giant knight who appeared very majestic and untouchable. Then he looked down and read the inscription on the stone at the foot of the knight.
It read, ‘To the fallen soldiers of light that both in life and now in death defend the living from the dark. We honor and forgive you’.
John paused and remembered his fallen comrades’ names throughout the years, which hadn’t come out alive, having died in some of the worst battles of his career. He felt his knees buckle under a weight he couldn’t explain and, before he understood what was happening, dropped to his knees on the hard cobblestone before the monument. He was looking down at his hands that had caused the death of so many, and then he saw their faces.
He had never stopped to think about his life choices and those who had paid for all the bad ones. It certainly hadn’t been all on him, though. Everyone and everything had been sacrificed to win someone else’s war, but what was left of himself? A kind of desperate plea built inside of him and, though he could think of so many reasons and excuses for the past, the memories overwhelmed and filled his emotional capacity to the brim. He looked up to the sky as if looking for redemption, but none was there.
Then the emotions were unleashed, and he did the only thing he could think of.
“Noooooo” a long and mournful cry left his mouth, and he didn’t know how he would ever stand up again. Everywhere he now looked, his eyes found the mourning and emotionally crippled loved ones of those he had taken down, cut down, and stolen from the living.
His eyes turned to the woman he had seen earlier, and he realized why she had disturbed him so. He saw the children playing ball and remembered the wall falling on them after his team had succeeded in setting off explosives in a nearby house.
‘I wasn’t responsible for the loosely built walls in that city! He thought in anguish.
“You can’t blame me!?!” he said as he looked at the woman, but his eyes fell, failing to meet the statue’s stare. He turned back to look at the knight before him.
“I’m a soldier, I fight, I live, and then, I die!” He shouted at the knight kneeling on one knee before him. He looked up at the knight and saw that the knight was looking up at the sky and saw then that the knight had a singular stream of golden tears streaking down the left eye and which fell to the ground creating a puddle of golden tears at its feet.
John read the stone at the knight’s feet once more, and it meant something else to him. He felt it was a statement of forgiveness from those whom knight had touched with death. The people of this ‘Bay City’ understood his plight and forgave him. They had created a monument around this understanding and had prepared this place for soldiers, like him, that had never had a chance to face those that had fallen or the loved ones they’d left behind.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words coming out in a hoarse-sounding whisper.
He turned to the woman reaching out to her two children and repeated his words with more courage in them, this time. “I’m so sorry.”
He knew it didn’t change anything he had done, but maybe he needed to forgive himself and be able to move onward from that place and, more importantly, from that past and those mistakes. He would not be defined by those things. He was more than that. He had to be.
Feeling his spirit more than a little drained from these revelations, he stood up and looked behind the statue of the knight and saw that behind the statue lay many stone caskets which appeared to be the final resting place of numerous soldiers.
Looking for a way to move forward and beyond his memories, he walked around the knight and went to stand beside one of the stone caskets. As he examined the stone covering, he saw that it had many feats of heroism and also a few gruesome ones chiseled on it.
Then a thought occurred to him as he watched the scenes of battle portrayed on the stone. These men might have been buried with their armor and their weapons. If this was so, he just needed to don these, and perhaps these would be enough to face the bear.
“It’s not like anyone will mind, right? This fellow is not using them, and they will be put to good use, after all”, he said in a slightly reverent and a more uncertain tone.
He opened the casket by pushing the stone covering to the side and was excited to see that the knight had indeed been buried in a full set of armor and a very large spear was to one side of the knight and, better still, everything looked well kept and undamaged.
“Even in death, you are helping to further the cause and bring down the dark,” he told the corpse after he had equipped the armor. He said this, knowing that he hadn’t quite decided what the ‘dark’ was or what he might do to combat it, but the possibilities of having a deeper motif to work through really sounded great.
He thought about these things while reaching out to take hold of the spear. Holding it then in his hands, he felt suddenly that a fit of exhaustion was about to hit him hard, and before he could even react, he felt his world collapse around him, and he fell to one knee.
“What the devil…” he managed to say as he attempted to stand, but as he did this, he felt another dizzy spell hit him harder than before, and this time he collapsed flat on his face.
“Is this armor really that heavy!?” He said through gritted teeth, and then he fainted.
❧
In a strange place surrounded by fire and brimstone, John stood before a casket of a dead god, a creature of older times, and as he looked down at the creature, he saw his outstretched hand about to take a staff which appeared to be made of black crystallized bones and which glowed with dark power he couldn’t understand. Symbols etched onto the black bone staff were covering the entire length of the piece but what caught his eye was the fact that his outstretched hand was skeletal in nature. Then the strange scene faded away as quickly as it had come, and some part of John took the scene and filed it to a dark place in his mind, along with many other forgotten and repressed things.
❧
As John came to awareness, he vaguely remembered trying and failing a few times to stand up. Nothing much was memorable about the ten or twelve hours he had struggled on the floor except that he had noticed that night time had come and gone.
He noticed that his strength had grown a bit, so he attempted to stand again, but this time he only tried to get to one knee before attempting to stand. This time he succeeded.
“Now that’s not so bad!” He said mostly to pick his spirits up rather than a statement of fact. The words seemed to work.
Pausing to take a good measure of the next move, he took in a deep breath.
“Huuuuuggghhh,” he exclaimed as the air in his lungs struggled out of him, and he strained every muscle in his body to stand.
And there he stood, though wavering a bit.
Then he took a single foot forward, and just as before, he felt the dizziness hit him. This time, however, his determination forced him to stand even though the world was spinning all around him. He dared not move one more foot until the world stopped spinning.
This proved to be wise. When everything came back into focus, he attempted another step, and the dizziness once more returned.
At least a pattern was forming, and, before long, he was standing near the entrance of the gate and feeling three times as strong as he’d felt the day before. He reflected for a bit and realized that since he’d put this armor on, he’d felt like he’d been in a state of atrophy that had been slowly and painfully leaving him as he struggled to move.
‘This has to be the mechanics of the game,’ he thought reflectively. ‘I can walk without any armor and with a thin item of clothing, but anything more substantial has to be earned and has to be accompanied
by building up strength.
He was breathing deeply now and felt that he’d been fighting for many days without food or water, but he had a mission, and he’d never been one to shy away when a job needed doing.
“I’m coming for you, yogi,” he yelled out loud and then took one step and collapsed face forward. At least, this time, he had the foresight to fall, towards the soft grass to the left of the path instead of the cobblestone, as he had the night before.
Lying there in the grass, he exclaimed, “Haha… you see… that I’m… unstoppable…”, he then passed out.
About an hour later, he opened his eyes and saw that he was lying on the soft grass, and though the morning was still a little cool, he could also feel the heat of the day was starting to rise. He fought through the dizziness and forced his eyes to focus, and then remembered why he’d chosen to fall on the grass.
“Grrrrr!” his stomach also reminded him. He was famished, but the grass in front of him would have to do. He lifted the visor on his helmet, noticing how he’d managed to dint it the night before when he’d fallen. He then opened his mouth and chomped on a clump of grass.
“Diz shiz disgusching”, he managed to say with a mouth full of the stuff and then proceeded to swallow it and take another bite.
He was doing this when some information came to his mind, and he heard, in the voice of an older woman.
“You’ve stubbornly chosen to continue fighting through an impossible task. You’ve also chosen to eat a lesser food in order to survive with no regard for what others might think. For this, you are now awarded the honorific title ‘The Four Stomach Knight,’ where some see a field of battle you see breakfast, lunch, or dinner.” - Moon Mother
“Moooooo,” he said and then chuckled for a bit while preparing to swallow another large bite. The good news was that he was feeling his strength return to him with every bite. The bad news was that his stomach was threatening to expunge him of his efforts. That wouldn’t do one bit.
