Law and Sacrifice

The man walks quietly toward the battle. Nothing about the man is unusual. Bald, male, average height, slightly overweight with a greying beard to the middle of his chest. His clothes are equally as plain, blue jeans with visible wear, brown boots, and a grey shirt under a leather jacket. He is about as average a sight as anyone could expect, unremarkable in nearly every aspect save perhaps his eyes. However, as he closes in on the embattled military force there is a subtle shift in the air. Strange energy creeps over the area as he continues onward. The man is completely unnoticed as he reaches the human battle line no doubt owing to the 'demon' horde which is currently absorbing the soldiers' attention. Sure, he’s out of place this close to a combat zone, but he wasn’t something of note. That illusion shatters the moment one of the creatures breaks the human defense line.

              It was becoming all too common for the creatures the troops were calling, ‘minotaurs’, to batter their way into human forces. They are larger, faster, and stronger than any human alive and their thick hide makes them a hard kill without either a high-caliber weapon or massed fire. Specialist Julia Monroe turns just in the nick of time to escape the massive cleaver wielded by the ten-foot-tall monstrosity. That is when she notices the civilian approaching from behind her current position. The man points his middle and ring finger toward the minotaur and within seconds four chains burst from the ground and seize the beast-man. The hulking creature struggles against the dull grey chains now biting into its flesh. The soldiers don't even hesitate, proceeding to bring the minotaur low under a hail of bullets.

              She couldn’t help but notice the dispassionate expression on the man's face as he continues forward seemingly unbothered by the ongoing conflict. Julia calls out to the stranger, but he doesn't respond and merely continues to stride directly toward the oncoming horde of ‘demons’. Specialist Julia and her surviving squad mates Sgt Law Okamo and Private first class Malsun Cho launch over the short concrete barricade they had been defending and move to retrieve the errant civilian. The three soldiers run as fast as their adrenaline-saturated bodies will allow them in their body armor. They watch as the ‘demons’ turn their attention toward the easy prey. The three know that even though they are closer none of them could reach this lost cause before he will be swarmed and torn apart. The three slow their dash and begin backing away toward their barricade when the event gets turned upside down.

              The man stops and holds out both his hands toward the oncoming threat before him. There before the eyes of the three soldiers, a steely grey light came from the man's open palms. As the demons close in around him, chains, dozens of them explode from the ground and begin violently lashing the ‘demons’. Viscera flies and roars of hate and agony fill the air as the surge collides with the writhing tendrils of metal. The three stand shocked at the sight, this man, is a mage. The chains steadily gain speed as they tear through one demon after another, the display becomes increasingly more gruesome as the chains invade the sound barrier and begin ringing out metallic whips and thunder peals as they crash through the ‘demons’. Slowly the man begins to walk forward again. Any time the ‘demons’ are not swarming the man his chains scream through the air and hungrily seek out a new beast to drag into their frenzied dance.

              Malsun and Julia both look to their Sergeant for some direction. Okamo for his part is mesmerized by the sight before him. His mother had been a mage, a handful of humans that developed reality-bending powers when the ‘demons’ began appearing. She was a brave and noble soul, his mother. Her ‘magic’ leaned toward the protective and she had the power to draw on her life force to create mystic barriers that even the ‘demons’ struggled to breach. She had been called the last mage for three years before she passed away. Sgt. Okamo’s mind showed him his last memory of her, she was smiling back at him as she held a swarm at bay single-handedly. ‘Go now boy, go, make your mama proud.’ Her last words, even still they had that southern honey to them. She spoke them as the blood began running from her eyes and nose. But she kept that smile. Okamo now back in the present looks between his last two soldiers, he was conflicted. They could make a push and try to convince this mage to fall back, but it was likely they would die in the effort. The other obvious choice was to pull back to the relative safety of the barricades.

              As the three stand they are pounced upon by a monster that has been nick named a ‘fader cat.’ These beasts look similar to a six-legged panther with no tail and three toes per paw. Their name comes from their ability to become invisible without warning. They can still be harmed, but it’s hard to kill something you can’t see, thankfully they’re a rare sight. The three soldiers burst into action roaring an alert and scattering away from each other as they try to put distance between themselves and the beast while already firing upon it. PFC Cho is the unfortunate target of the initial attack and she doesn’t even get the chance to escape the first contact. Malsun is slammed to the ground under the overwhelming weight of the four-hundred-pound cat. Thankfully the other two react fast enough to prevent the creature from landing its fatal venomous bite, peppering the creature with 5.56 rounds. The beast scuttles backward and lifts its front paws off the ground then releases a bone-shaking roar. As SPC Monroe adjusts her aim the creature vanishes. They knew it wasn’t over, the ‘fader cat’ will run off and stalk them until an opportunity presents itself to kill them, but that was a matter for another time.

              Sgt. Okamo rushes to Malsun’s side and places a hand on her chest plate. “Wait, let me check you first!” He gives the young PFC a quick once over as Julia joins the two, weapon at the ready scanning for the next threat. Malsun’s left shoulder has a nasty gash but nothing life-threatening, it can wait until they got to cover before needing a bandage. Her chest plate was ruined from the impact of the ‘fader cats’ claws, but it served its purpose and saved her life. Likely her back plate was also useless now from the collision with the ground. “Back!” Law barks as he grabs onto Malsun’s body armor and helps hoist her to her feet. The three fall back to the barricade which was now reinforced by another squad from their platoon.

             Exertion was beginning to take its toll. He knew it would. It was why he had left the fighting in the first place. He wanted to live. The chains pirouette and whirl through the air around him bringing ruin to everything in sight. The older man remembers the frustrating limit of his power, most mages didn’t suffer from the same restriction as he did. Other mages didn’t need to see their targets. It was a dangerous restriction for someone as vulnerable as a mage. The ‘demons’ hunted his kind down when they first arrived twenty years ago. Since the appearance of the ‘demons’ he had served with the military for over a decade before he vanished during a mission with no known survivors. That was almost seven years ago now. According to all government records, he didn’t exist, even the TS5 (Top secret 5, a form of classification that requires an extremely high clearance and a specific, approved reason to view) documents list him as dead now.

              The blood begins running from his nose, his body is beginning to break under the intense flow of magic he is using. All around him ‘demons’ are being torn apart, as the bodies begin piling up it starts impeding his progress. As he continues to burn his life fuel, he thinks back on what drove him to this suicidal decision. Over the last four years, he had kept in contact with a few select individuals to keep abreast of the war efforts. He mapped battlefields, charted movements, and struggled to divine the ‘demons’ goals for years. It used to be simple, they swarmed toward any mage they could find, and by means yet unknown, they could track mages any time they used magic. His mind drifts further back, back to her, as he wades through the carnage. Evelynn Okamo, the woman was magnificent. She would give you the last of her rations if you were hungry, and on countless occasions, she would flare out her magic power to draw ‘demons’ away from friendly forces and other mages. Evelynn carried the weight of the war on her shoulders, and she had done it with a smile. His thoughts are dragged back into the now as a ‘demon’ evades his chains and manages to close in on the man. A sudden flare of anger pulses through him, the man seizes the on-rushing emotion and converts it to power then lashes out projecting a bladed chain from his arm and tearing the unlucky ‘minotaur’ nearly in half before another chain from the ground snares the beast and drags it back into several more chains. The man looks down at his arm and grimaces, using his own body to call a chain had torn his flesh from elbow to wrist.

              The immediate threat now clear he allows himself to drift into his thoughts again. He could still remember it clearly; he was too late to repay Mrs. Okamo for all the times she had saved his life. By the time he had arrived, the soldiers had already gotten clear and she was standing alone in a tunnel against a swarm of ‘demons’. For the first time in three years, he called upon his magic and created a whirring wall of chains between Evelynn and the remaining ‘demons’. He ran to her as quickly as he could. For his efforts, he made it to her just before she collapsed from her exertions. The dark smooth ebony of her face was nearly covered in the crimson of her life force. “Hey,” She smiled that brilliant pearly smile of hers through the blood, “Fancy seeing you here.” He opened his mouth to speak but she raised her arm a few feet to stop him. “My baby made it out, and that’s what matters.” She fell into a coughing fit, and dark thick blood sputtered from her mouth before she regained her breath. “You keep an eye on my boy, okay?” She coughed again, this time it was far weaker. “Now, go on, you shouldn’t see a lady like this.” Again, he opened his mouth to protest but Evelynn weakly shook her head as her eyes close. “Git” She said. He kneeled there beside her in silence and watched as one last smile crept onto her face. He heard her last breath.

              Blood ran from his nose, eyes, and ears dripping steadily down his visage, the man’s arm now flayed to the bone did not help the situation. His vision was beginning to blur. He had never pushed his gift this far before, never had he manifested more than ten chains. Now however they are screaming around him in the dozens. ‘Carnage personified’ some people would call the aftermath. He grits his teeth and presses on. He has been dead for nearly a decade, he had dedicated that time to understanding, and learning. It would have been easy for him to stay in hiding, not use his magic, and run from the demons until they finally broke under the attrition of human weapons. But that would take decades. He was technically alive, but he hadn’t been living. He knew the ‘demons’ final, truly powerful commander was here, the man had watched the patterns and read the news, it was here, somewhere. That, however, wasn’t enough to draw him out of hiding. His contacts told him Law Okamo would be in the battle. Law, he had never met Evelynn’s son. But he would do as Evelynn asked, he would live one last time, to protect Law.

              His legs began their rebellion, every step was becoming a struggle not to collapse. The man didn’t feel he could have much blood left in him anymore. It is as this thought and the fear of failure creep in that fate intervenes. The screeching of metal on metal wails in the air around him as a shadow approaches. The man slowly traces the shadow to its source, an absolutely massive beast was approaching and its minions formed a tight phalanx before him, fending off the chains with their tower shields. Looking up, the ‘demon’ is easily taller than a one-story home, and is covered in burnt orange, scaly hide, four gargantuan wings spread from its back and a single horn rose from its head.

The man's vision blurs, and he stumbles back a few paces before regaining his balance. “I ain’t dead yet.” He growls to no one in particular. As the ‘demons’ approach, the chains begin striking from behind and thinning the enemy ranks. “More.” The man extends a hand and calls forth a tangle of seven more chains, this act however causes his bleeding to accelerate. The sight in his left eye fades out completely and he loses feeling in his left arm. The Demon commander snarls and bounds into the air as several of the chains finally free themselves from his guards. “It’s not that easy!” The man growls. With a dedicated effort, he calls three more chains from his own back and uses them to climb the buildings on either side of him in pursuit of the commander. The towering 'demon' soars up beyond the tops of the buildings but he isn’t fast enough. Most of the human's chains are now freed of their burden and spiral through the air tracing wide arcs as they launch upward creating a spiked net to ensnare the behemoth and catch up to it some fifty feet above the ground. Nearly thirty magical ropes of serrated metal puncture the Demon commander's flesh in rapid succession. The man's vision fades out entirely. He knows his chains have found their mark so he does the only thing he can think of, the man sends all three of the chains from his body to collide with the chains from the ground. One of them misses entirely but the other two chains strike true and stab into the Demonic commander.

The chains are relentless and slowly tatter each of the demon's four wings. As the duo, now chained together, drift to the ground the chains begin to fade out of existence. Two, then five, another twelve, he could feel the last of his life dwindling. Eight, three, one. He only has two chains left. The Demonic commander hits the ground and the human blacks out for a moment. One. He only has one chain left. The Demonic creature attempts to rise just before the final chain finds its heart from the inside. Footsteps, dozens of them closing on him as the man's last senses begin to fade.

Sgt. Law Okamo and the rest of his platoon surge around the fallen mage scanning for more ‘demons’. He rests his hand on the mage who lay there covered in blood. He watches as the civilian slowly smiles and speaks his last words, though they are scarcely a whisper “I was finally alive again. Evelynn...” Sgt. Okamo hears the man's last breath. The Sergeant knelt there confused, did this man know his mother, or was Evelynn someone else? Reaching down Okamo checks the man for a pulse then keys up his radio.

“Crusader one six, This is Crusader one seven bravo, over.” He says into his mic.

The response came “Crusader one seven bravo, this is Crusader one six, go ahead, over.”

Sgt. Okamo took a moment to respond “Crusader one six, the target is down. And we have a big body, over.”

The earpiece crackles back to life. “Crusader one seven bravo, target is down, clarify big body, over.”

Sgt. Okamo looks over the massive corpse and keys up his mic again. “Crusader one six, body unknown, huge, multi-winged, orange, ‘demon’, over.”

There was a notable pause before Crusader one six answers. “Crusader one seven bravo acknowledged. Return to point Juliet, over.”

“Crusader one six, understood. Over.” Sgt. Okamo stands up and nods to a fellow squad sergeant. Signaling it was time for exfil.

“Crusader one seven bravo, this is Crusader one six, out.”

As Law and the remainder of his platoon return to the barricade he thinks about the stranger's last words. ‘I was finally alive again.’ Who was that mage, and why was he smiling?