#mankhad

Dagun Mankhad

Never did he think he would be here again.  A’ruun hated the snow with a heated, burning passion, and Garlemald was full of it.  He had been assigned to one of the Bozjan scouting squads, mostly because he knew the Eblan Rime. He had trained here, he had worked here, this had been a significant part of his life, it had even been his home in the barracks outside of the Tower Babil.  

They had been tracking a Garlean patrol that was making semi coherent patterns of movements, but every once in a while, they would peel off somewhere in a random direction.  Drawing on his years in the XIV legion, it wasn’t a tactic he was familiar with, but maybe they were doing it to maintain some element of surprise if they happened upon anyone else.  His guess was, they were tempered and lost, but they’d need to investigate further to find out.

There were three others with him, a Hrothgar named Vitally, an Elezen named Rothshance, and Willum, a middie.  All had seen a fair amount of combat, A’ru could see it in the way they moved, the light steps they took so that the snow would cover them quicker.  Roth had been assigned as his spotter, Willam the move ahead scout, and Vitty the Kitty, a name that A’ru didn’t say aloud, was pretty much orders and the oh shit brake if things hit the fan.  He carried a massive gun blade, ornately made, but definitely had seen its share of blood, bones, and bowels. A’ruun had admired it and even though he wanted to learn how to use it, had yet to work up the courage to ask Vitally.

The patrol kept on the move, not stopping for too long, Vitty sent Will up ahead to see if there was anything he could discern from them, make sense of their movements, anything and report back.  It had been an hour or so of them sitting in the snow, behind a hill, surrounded by nearly empty bushes. Roth had tried to keep a look out with his spotting scope, but the patrol had decided to move quickly away from where they had been when they sent Will up ahead, going out of sight behind some snowy foothills.

“He should have been back by now.  You know that’s not good,” Roth said, fear audible in his voice.  He constantly worried about the younger man who was only in his second year of fighting. The low bass growl came from Vitty, “He’s probably just being careful, there’s not a lot of cover between us and them. He’s a smart kid.”

A’ru took his long barreled rifle and looked through the scope, hoping for something in his reticle, anything of young Will.  It was getting dark and it had been way too long for Will not to have returned.  “We should get moving then, see if we can go wide that way, I think he would have probably hunkered down there if he got into trouble.” He pointed to a small copse of evergreens.  The other two just nodded and picked up their packs.  

The Garlean patrol was still nowhere to be seen, but they continued on quickly and as carefully as they could.  They weren’t concerned about boot prints or even the crunching sound that they made with each swift step through the snow.  It really didn’t matter when they heard gunfire from not far off.  They rounded a small rock formation, and caught a glimpse of the trees.  On the freshly fallen snow, there were pockmarks of green, black, and red.  The sight was exactly the one they didn’t want to see.  

Will had climbed up a tree, it seems, because there were hack marks along the trunk and a few branches pulled off, he was pressed up against it as two tempered soldiers had pulled him holding him there, trying to wrench his arms out of their sockets.  The horror came when they realized a third had been digging around in his stomach, removing his guts and entrails, slopping them down the front of him and to the no-longer virginal white snow.  He looked like he had been trying to scream in sheer pain and horror, but he no longer had the ability to while his life slowly drained from his face. 

The entire scene played out in a matter of seconds, but A’ru felt like time moved on slower than was possible.  He wasn’t quick enough to raise his long gun, but as soon as he did, he took the shot.  Fuck the rules of not killing tempered soldiers, his people weren’t worth the cost they were paying.  He took a single shot, misting the helmeted soldiers brains inside their container, and he watched as they dropped to the ground.  Vitty and Roth had already sprung into action, but were waylaid by more of the first legion’s lost souls.  A’ru dumped the sniper rifle and charged in, pulling his short sword free from his back, hacking, violently into one of the soldiers next to the tree.  As his opponent was pushed back, their helmet fell to the side. When they hit the ground, burning eyes stared at him maniacally, eyes that he knew.  Baatu had been close to him in the years after he was first conscripted into the Au Ri company. They had trained with one another, slept and ate next to each other, fought and were punished side by side.  

That man was gone, nowhere to be found in that monstrous husk any longer.  A’ru paused for a moment, and that moment was all not-Baatu needed to get the jump on him, causing A’ru to drop his blade into the fulm deep snow.  The Mankhad was pretty well wrapped up in whites and grays, fanged teeth sunk into the fabric at his neck, trying to get to his throat to rip and tear his head from his shoulders.  He felt himself fall backward as the other man snarled, bit, scraped, and kicked like an animal pouncing on its first meal in days.  A’ruun brought up his arms to try and shield himself from the attack.  He could hear the other tempered soldier now eviscerating what was left of Will, A’ruun prayed to Nhaama she had taken him before he could feel anything more.

As he tried to fight off Baatu, he grabbed the slavering Xaela by the jacket, positioned his knee in his gut and rolled backward flinging him off and behind him.  Rolling to his knees, he took out his dagger, he could see Vitty and Roth weren’t have an easy go at any of it as they were both outnumbered by ruthless, mindless zombies. Vitally had a few on him now, one latched to his body and fur, his coat having been removed in the melee, his body covered in blood matted hair.   Roth was screaming shrilly, covered with three or four of them, himself.  The snow around the elezen and the piled on tempered soldiers eventually seeped with a dark red, and the screams fell silent.  A’ru was only a few feet away from Will, or the remains of him, and he looked back on the soldier wildly feasting on him. He turned away from Baatu and jammed his dagger into the back of the black helmet.  The horns sticking out of that helmet made A’ru not want to know if he knew who he had just put down.

Loud, guttural roars and powder charged bangs were heard nearby, Vitally had his gunblade back in hand, fending off the four he had on top of him.  He called out to A’ruun.  “Get the fuck out of here, you pink bastard!” ‘That Pink Bastard’ was how he had always referred to A’ru, the bastard former Garlean soldier, turn coat, and now mercenary.  Eventually the name had some sentiment attached to it, and he wondered if this was the last time he’d hear it from that gruff, Hrothgar voice.  Baatu charged him, and woke him from his escape of reverie, anything to cope with the horrors of what was occurring all around him.  He sunk the dagger into the other man’s abdomen but the force at which Baatu tackled him, sent them both rolling like a snowball, into a rock.  The thud he felt as his back was pressed against it, jarred his entire body.  Baatu snatched at him, trying to pull off his scarves and his coat, now saturated in blood, it’s pristine, snow-white visage gone.  They wrestled for only a few moments before A’ruun could find the dagger sticking out of his former comrade in Garlean arms, he pulled it out and jammed it into the middle of his chest as the other man drooled saliva and blood all over his face.  A’ruun felt himself shuddering, crying as what life remained slowly left the eyes a blank window into the deep darkness of death and oblivion.  All he could do is stare into them before the body slumped against his and he could feel the entirety of dead weight pressing down on him.