TOTALDAGGER

Act One – Nothing is Written Under the Bridge 

The Wolf came down like a prince bound in blood.
He lopes lordly in search of lost innocence.
He devours bottomless contempt.

Dark spruce forest sprawled for miles over a stretch of the Yukon.
The land itself was silent under a blanket of virgin snow, and a full moon cast a powdering of silver over the gnarled forms of trees that bowed low and naked.
A figure stalked in their shade, leaving no tracks to mark his passing. At times he stopped and listened, melding with the stillness. More often he moved with purpose.

On the outside, his was a youthful aspect, still in the throes of adolescence. Arrayed in broken patterns that played tricks with the weak light, he could hardly be called a man.

But his gait, each movement deliberate with a predator’s violence, the cordlike muscles rippling powerfully beneath his fatigues, was undoubtedly that of the Wolf.

His steady cobalt eyes flashed his hunger for the feast ahead.

The Wolf stopped at the edge of the forest, into a world of fire and the smell of brimstone.

Once, it had been a town. Sprung up from the gold rush of a bygone century and passed with it into obscure history.

That town, that for so long had not heard human feet crunch the snow in its streets underfoot, was now host to the staccato of desperate gunfights and the thunder of man-portable artillery.

Where once there was only the moonlight, now the harsh beams of flood lamps and the strobing of muzzle flashes and artillery blasts hunted for targets.

After so long of being left to its rest, people had come back to this town; the first, a smattering of the lost, the desperate and the insane, moved in to breathe new life, only to bring forth very old, very strange things.

Then those who followed after them, to raze it and to kill every trace of its now abominable existence.

It was a violent death.

Camouflaged shapes darted between its decrepit buildings, brilliant tracers whizzing in and out of snow-buried alleys, tearing into wood and brick and shattering glass.

Mortars crumped from somewhere in the distance, their bombs arcing in before sending up rippling blossoms of snow and shrapnel.

Flames raged through what once had been homes, livelihoods and gathering places, engulfing long-forgotten possessions.

Helicopters painted black as night hovered in and around the surrounding hills, daring to pop up and lob rockets and cannon fire into strongpoints, disappearing behind terrain before the defenders’ scant supply of missiles could get a lock.

The pall of acrid smoke that was the result of all this left visibility nil, clearing up only in patches before obscuring the battle again. Drifting flares hung in the air to paint it in unreal flickering light.
And through all this din of incoming fire and outgoing spite, a bell tolled, and the world shimmered.

Even as the attackers brought all the firepower of modern weaponry and all the artifice of practiced killing to bear against the town’s recent occupants, its defenders were holding, at least for the moment.

They were buoyed by petty magics and stiffened by months of militaristic preparation, but they were still essentially civilian, and human.
But they were fanatics, and over the next few hours they would die in their hundreds.

The Wolf lowered the night observation devices, his NODs, to his eyes. The world of fire became a tunnel rendered in grain and hues of green.

He thumbed his radio to confirm his position to friendlies. His breath froze even as it left his mouth.

The response was immediate.

“Snake Doctor copies all. Clock's ticking, Wolf. Execute, out.”

His role was the centerpiece of the assault– scaling a sheer cliff and skirting the surrounding forest, he now had a foot in the defenders’ backdoor.

Normally, his task would be assigned to a team, four to six men at minimum.

The circumstances were not normal in the slightest, and neither was the Wolf.

He reached forward to operate the infrared laser on his rifle, invisible to human eyes, useful for working around the hindering bulk of his night vision. Laser on, laser off.

He tugged on the charging handle, checking his primary one more time, then his pistol.

Both were fitted with a select combination of attachments, finely tuned for the frigid conditions.

One in each chamber. Loaded and locked.

The Wolf exploded into action, closing the space from the tree line to town in seconds, moving in and among the abandoned buildings like a specter.

This far behind the line of resistance, the only hostiles to be seen were support personnel– only a few combatants in hurried transit, if at all.

The Wolf ignored most and slipped past, making expert use of the sounds of close battle to cover his movements.

He made use of the same sounds to cover his kills. One, three, five, one; all clueless until the very last instant. None could penetrate the shadows. 

Center mass, tight groups, then headshots close in, all on the mark, only engaging that which directly opposed the path to his objective.

As he went deeper he encountered less and less opposition.
As he went deeper the pale glow that emanated unnatural colors from the center of the settlement grew stronger. The peals of a distant bell grew louder.

Voices started to gnaw at the edge of his mind, but could not find purchase on his iron will.

Clock’s ticking, time to get a move on.
Legs pumping, his advance soon carried him to his objective, and that was when he caught sight of the target.

It had been a typical timber-and-brick construction, a dozen others like it across the region.

That was where normalcy ended; insanity began with the glow above its lopsided tower that veiled the true sky from view, and the light seeping through its stained glass windows that writhed like a living thing against the white noise of the snow.

Here, at its origin, the glow was strongest, and the voices from nowhere and everywhere grew to a discordant chorus. Ear protection did nothing.

Here, each resounding clang of the bell made the brain judder inside its case.

Here was their moldering temple, a church turned in service to other, older gods.

The Wolf could sight no one around the exterior, not even guards.

It looked like only the very inner circle was allowed close witness to the culmination of their worship.

There was only one way in, easily turned into a fatal funnel if the Wolf forced the entrance.

He wasn’t going to.

The Wolf made his way to the wall facing his direction.

He set his pack down, turning out blocks of plastic explosive, detonators, wire and a “clacker” firing device, and prepared to blow his way in.

Then the Wolf saw the writhing luminescence wax frantic, and heard the cacophony building to a unholy crescendo, the incessant shriek overpowering the sounds of battle.

Spurred on to greater urgency, his work remained efficient, and silent. Set-up done, he took cover behind a low wall separating the church grounds from the street, enough not to catch blast and fragments from his own demolition.

The Wolf stowed his NODs away, and primed a concussion grenade from his vest, anticipating close-in work.

Grenade in his right hand, he made himself small and squeezed the clacker in his left–

Clack.

The wall disappeared in an a resounding cloud of shattered brick and splinters. The Wolf vaulted the low wall, throwing the grenade into the breach as he did. Unnatural light from inside spilled through the blast haze. Another explosion, deadened slightly, and the Wolf was crashing into the smoke before it could settle, gun up, optics hunting–

Crash.

Blacking out for what seemed like an instant, he was greeted by the sight of the rafters cast in myriad colors, each one a shade of damnation. Sharp pain split his head, each sonorous toll of the unseen bell another red hot spike driven clean through, and he tasted metal. Training took over: observe everything, admire nothing. He had crashed through a pulpit and now lay on a raised area of the floor.

Over what had once been the altar, obscene symbols and effigies hung on the wall that tore at the seams of his mind to look, stretching into cracks–

Crack.

The sound of brittle bones snapping clean brought the Wolf back to attention. Discarding his broken helmet and recovering with the lethal grace of his namesake, he turned to face his opponent, the threat that had brought him and all this military might to this benighted town in the middle of nowhere.

What he saw strained the Wolf’s mind to comprehend.

To the Wolf’s eyes, it was a yellow mass of gurgling appendages snapping at tortured angles, dreadfully distinct even as they blurred into each other, tracing impossible patterns and exposing veins that glowed like seams of magma.

Then the heady stench of noisome decay washed over him like a raw red wave.

The Wolf never saw the blow that launched him. How could he? The Thing had flung him clear across the church at a speed defying all sane reason.

To the average person, this Thing would be madness and dread.

To the Wolf, this Thing was all hate and fury.

For all its force, it had been a glancing blow, and he could still finish it. It wasn’t yet too late.

The Wolf raised his weapon and took one step forward–