Chapter 11: Sifting

Hoplite heaved a large tank sized chunk of rubble over his head, throwing it toward a clear patch of purplish corrupted earth. The massive thing impacted, sinking into the soil and snapping off one of its edges from the force of its landing. The dirt that was kicked up plumed out in spiraling patterns, descending in the same fashion and somehow arranging itself upon landing into even further spirals.

This was a sight he had grown used to after the first dozen times he had seen it, though he still had no explanation for how it worked. All he got from Lance was ‘The Death Spiral taints even the soil’. Did that mean that this dirt could infect those walking about without a hazmat suit? If that were truly the case then surely there would have been signs of spreading infection by now. These people seemed to understand how the curse could spread, and Gali had told him that the dirt could not ‘cause significant enough pain’ to spread the curse.

He said it as if dirt could rise up and stab you.

While Lance seemed mostly ignorant of what made a fiend what it was, these Fiendwallers knew a great deal. Firstly, only humanoids could catch the most dangerous strain of the virus… curse, while animals for some reason could only catch a lesser kind. Those could die normally, but fiends however, could not. None knew as to why, but humanoid fiends couldn’t die, not unless every scrap of flesh was burned away.

They also were also sapient in incredibly rare cases. The death spiral curse didn’t take away the infected person's sanity on its own, rather it was its effects over time that took their toll on their minds. Every single pain or ache that a fiend felt after being cursed was permanent, it never healed and the pain of the wound never faded. This would eventually drive fiends insan. After the pain threshold was met, they would go looking for uninfected hosts to spread the curse too.

The reason being this: If a fiend causes pain to any living thing not afflicted by the curse, their pains ease, and their wounds heal. Eventually they are driven by the agony they feel to cause pain and spread the curse by any means necessary, despite any previous moral standings.

This information actually made Hoplite… feel… bad? Yes, bad for the wretched infected. The feeling of sympathy was a rare one in him, Hoplite rarely felt it for anyone, even fellow Ternans falling on the battlefield. It was a privilege to die for Terna after all.

The thought of eternal agony that never faded, forever undying and just feeling that pain until you reached the point of desperate insanity? A cruel, cruel fate indeed, no wonder anyone infected committed suicide before the spirals could turn them.

He shook his head to get his mind back on track. A small motion that would have been imperceptible to anyone but another Hoplite. He looked down into the rubble cavern that large piece of debris had been blocking, only to see nothing in the darkness below. It had been two days now since he began his search for the shuttle, but he had only found empty pockets in the rubble so far.

A team of men with pickaxes approached the chunk of debris Hoplite had just tossed aside with pickaxes and hand carts, all with sheens of sweat at their brow that shone in the fading light of the day. It was like that across the valley on this side, everyone that was free was out clearing rubble and breaking apart the bigger chunks to be carted off. A small camp had been erected on this side of the Fiendwall, with a guard patrol of defenders and tongues surrounding the worksite to ward off any new fiends that arrived from the south. The debris that was taken away was simply dumped in a large pile a good distance away from the breach. There had been talk of reusing the rubble to make a temporary wall around the camp but Hoplite didn’t know if that would ever come to be.

His mind was mostly on just finding the crashed pod.

Whoever was in this shuttle would be wise to ration whatever they had, otherwise they wouldn’t have lasted very long. Hopefully, it was one of Terna’s pods… if not…

If not, then Hoplite would deal with it as protocol dictated.

Lance was far below, helping another elf woman, a Tongue, lift a boulder that was many times smaller than the one he had just chucked. The tongue seemingly stared jealousy at Hoplite's arms, perhaps wanting to be strong enough to lob about huge chunks of rock to impress Zodd.

He did not bother to tell her that lifting the rock was mostly the suits doing. Lance herself just stared concernedly at Hoplite as she heaved the rock into a nearby cart, a broad shouldered dwarf hauling the cart away as soon as that piece was added to the collection of other chunks. The dwarf huffed and puffed as he dragged the cart, its wheels sinking beneath the massive weight of its load.

A strong branch of mutation that one was, the strongest base human Hoplite had ever seen could pull that sure, but there weren’t many that could. That dwarf was broad across the shoulders and quite plump, with a large gut that hung out from beneath a sleeveless shirt. He had seen other dwarves occasionally, ones far broader and without the paunch. How much could the stronger ones tug?

He turned his attention back to the pile, rummaging for a long while until he heard a familiar voice call out from atop the significantly smaller rubble hill. A female voice. Hoplite checked his camera without turning and saw the half-elf Twindil, standing atop the rubble and wiping a sheen of sweat from her brow.

“Hi Hoplite! Is that you Lance down there!?” She called, carefully descending the treacherous terrain “I see you’ve cleared out most of the fiends already, we heard about it in the camp.”

As she finished speaking, the rest of her companions followed. Alistair rubbed at his eyes with a lazy hand, staring annoyed at Theopalu as the old elf scarfed down an entire loaf of bread, burping before asking for more. The pale man, Kid’ka, offered Thepalu another loaf from his bag. Before Theopalu could take it however, Alistair caught Kid’ka’s hand with a deep frown that was bordering on exaggeration.

“No.” Alistair said simply before letting Kid’ka’s wrist free, “We have to save our food, not pump this worthless old fart full of what we have!” He shouted, adjusting his red headband with a growl.

“But he’s helping us…” Kid’ka said with a small frown “I mean, man’s gotta eat right? He’ll need his strength if he’s gonna guide us through.”

Theopalu began picking his nose and whispering inaudibly to himself, staring longingly at the morsel Kid’ka was packing away. The woman with the oddly symmetrical face; Nolvi, then came over the hill, fussing with her hair and sneezing. The sneeze was unguarded, falling upon the back of Alistair's neck and forcing him to tense up with disgust.

The two then began arguing and Hoplite turned his attention away from them, seeing Lance jog up to meet Twindil. Hoplite lifted another large boulder to reveal nothing below, and tossed it aside as he did the last, continuing as he half-observed the interaction below.

“Twindil!” Lance shouted happily “It is good to see you again, I am afraid I haven’t had the time to do as you requested. Have you found out who it is yet?” She said, clutching Twindil’s hands in her own.

She smiled, that small scar at her lips tugging it down slightly and shook her head “No I’m afraid not. I’m beginning to suspect that he may have not been a watcher.”

Lance sighed and let go of Twindil’s hands “Well if you’re from Umant then I don’t know who else it could be… maybe an elf from the bastion?”

Twindil put a hand to her chin in thought “Maybe, but… well, I’m not sure if you know, but Umant does not… that is to say, pure-blooded elves are…” She continued slowly, her eyes sinking to the dirt.

Lance put a hand on her shoulder “It’s okay, I know all about what they do.”

She actually looked… angry, really angry. What was this ‘Umant’ and what did they do to pure-blooded elves? In truth, this wasn’t important to his mission, but listening in was distracting him from the growing frustration he felt at not finding the pod. He heard another shout from the hill and turned his attention that way, seeing the red devil-looking mutant Elum with his gray arm stretched high, waving to Hoplite.

“Hey buddy! I heard that there’s another one that fell here, so tell you what, we’ll make it a contest! Whoever finds it first owns it, what do you say!?” Elum shouted as he began to descend the rubble "I warn you though, these horns are lucky and will guide my path, best to give in now and settle on splitting the loot with me!"

Hoplite didn’t respond, keeping his attention on his work.

“Don’t be like that!” Elum whined, stumbling and almost tripping as he gestured that graying hand toward Hoplite.

Curious… had the tumorous gray patch grown since he had seen the red mutant last? The bulging veins seemed to have broadened and lengthened across the limb… Likely it would need to be amputated if it was cancerous, he doubted these people possessed the technology to cure such a strange growth. Yet… was that truly cancer? He’d never heard of tumors growing externally… It didn’t matter. He was hardly an expert on cancer.

Now that all of the rest were here… where was the ‘angel’ Baomiel? Alistair had been able to make the creature appear and disappear at will. Maybe the man had thought it wise to keep the mutant out of sight of common people. Hoplite could not imagine that even the people from this land would find it easy to stomach the sight of it.

That was what made sense to him anyway.

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He moved aside another boulder as the party approached him, with Lance leading the way. They all stopped at the foot of the rocks he stood upon and craned their necks to look up at him. He paused his work and cocked his helmet their way, waiting for a response.

“We can help with the boulders if you want.” Kid’ka said, scratching his shaven cheek “We thought we were coming to fight but it looks like that’s all done with.”

Twindil nodded “Well from what I hear there are still fiends that are coming across the great bridge en masse, it's a simple matter of keeping them away from the clearing efforts.” She said, sparing a glance for Kid’ka before turning back to Hoplite “So when they do show up, we’ll fend any off, and when there are none, we will help the fiendwallers clear this out.”

Hoplite simply nodded before turning back to his work. As Twindil said, the rest of the party began to work on the rubble alongside the rest of the defenders and Hoplite. Despite Kid’ka and Twindil’s frames, they were capable of lifting far heavier rocks than they should have been able to. Before he would have said it was bionics… but now Hoplite wasn’t too sure.

Alistair outlifted everyone save for Twindil, who still was capable of picking up table-sized chunks of stone on her own. Twindil seemed to be physically the strongest despite not being any taller than Lance. Certainly she possessed a wider frame than Lance and was corded with lean muscle, but table-sized chunks of stone should have been too much weight for her to lift on her own.

Nolvi, Elum and Theopalu didn’t seem to outperform anyone in feats of strength, but they didn’t seem to be tiring out despite the intensity of the work. Everyone besides Hoplite, Lance, and the misfits seemed to get tired far more quickly. How could that be? Nolvi didn’t look like she was built for long winded work such as this, with that slight frame and those thin hands.

Something to think on while he worked. An hour passed of digging through rubble, putting the debris on carts to be tugged away, and being frustrated until Alistair suddenly called out.

“I am sanctioned! I am an Atheyare and I must summon my eidolon! Do not panic!” Alistair shouted from atop a rubble mound a hundred paces from Hoplite.

Many fearful eyes turned upon Alistair as he began to summon forth what Hoplite presumed to be Baomiel. With that creature surely he would be able to move larger loads, but why wait until now to summon him? Why not just announce himself as sanctioned beforehand so the work could get done faster? As for being sanctioned, that was something he would ask about soon, his curiosity was piqued as for why individuals had to be ‘sanctioned’ to perform anomalous abilities.

Many shouted their fear and a few ran when Baomiel appeared, its slathering tongue licking up small pieces of debris as the upper half folded its arms, its all too human eyes staring down upon the mewling mortals beneath it. At least, that was the impression it gave off. Alistair pointed to a jutting section of rubble, and Baomiel complied, its two lower arms gripping the stone and dragging it away to reveal a glint of gleaming metal-

Hoplite leapt from his position and quickly scrambled up the rubble toward Alistair and his angel, more people screaming as Twindil brought out what she was insisting were sanctioning papers. Some stopped to look at them, others still ran, screaming ‘pillar-born’ or ‘godling’ in sheer fright. Ignoring their screams, he topped the hill, seeing what Baomiel had revealed beneath its feet.

He saw the octopus insignia on the door, the symbol of Terna.

He quickly began digging away more rubble, clearing away whatever remained burying the shuttle and gripping the lip of the door before dragging it out with a groan of metal scraping against stone. Many of those who didn’t flee at Alistair's proclamation clutched their ears and did not let go until the pod was level atop the hill.

He entered in the pod code used for the Sparrow, but not even the beep of him pressing the keys could be heard. The pod had lost all power. Hoplite gestured for Alistair and Baomiel to step back as he gripped the edges of the door. He had to do this before when one of these lost power on him thirty years ago, it was rare but it did happen occasionally. Hoplite strained, his fingers denting the metal of the door until he could get a good enough grip to peel it away.

Which he did.

The bent metal fell away clanging down the hill as Hoplite stared into the darkness within the pod. If there had been more sunlight to see into the pod, he was sure Alistair would likely be retching more than he already was. An emaciated corpse lay flat in the middle of the stinking shuttle, cheeks sunken in beneath a full black beard. Behind it the corpses of several Ternan marines were stuffed behind the cockpit door, raw sewage, blood and entrails now seeping out across the floor of the pod now that it was level.

It rolled across the starved body, and Hoplite was shocked to see it raise its head, staring disbelief at Hoplite. The marines black armor was stained with every bodily fluid imaginable and his white flesh was beginning to yellow. Black bags the size of quarters swelled beneath bright blue eyes that looked hollow with despair before recognizing Hoplite for what he was.

“Sir…?” The marine said with a trailing cough “What took you guys… so long…?”

Hoplite stepped in, uncaring of the vile fluids he marched through as he gently lifted the man from the ground. The marine had apparently removed his helmet at some point, revealing a head of close cut black hair that shone in the waning sunlight as he removed him from the pod.

“I’m cold sir…” The marine coughed with a shiver.

He might have been a brawny man at one point, but his form was shriveled and emaciated now. If only Hoplite had been quicker… if only he-

No, now was not the time for that.

He carefully descended the hill, the Marine groaning with every step until finally they both reached the tainted soil.

“Cold…” The marine repeated.

A small whispering crowd gathered around them, all staring with wide eyes at the two Ternans.

“What’s your name marine. Stay with me.” Hoplite ordered sternly “I need medical staff ASAP, take me to them now.” He nearly growled, head tilting up at the crowd.

Twindil came running up then, her normal smile gone and replaced with a determined frown “I know where the medical tent is, please come with me Hoplite. There are things I can do for him, but after that it is in the Pillars' hands.”

“My names… Michael, boss. Name’s Michael.” The marine rasped “Please sir, I’m so cold… can ya… can ya get me a…” Whatever he had been about to say was cut off when his head fell back, limp against Hoplite's arm. Those blue eyes began to glass over, staring at nothing as his breathing ceased.

Hoplite adjusted his grip and quickly pressed a gentle finger to Michael’s neck…

No pulse.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!” Hoplite shouted, turning his body fully towards Twindil, who stared worriedly at Michael.

“Afina… please.” She whispered, placing a hand to Michael’s brow “Let his diseases be cured, let his heart beat, let him continue to be tranquil in life!”

A warm golden glow then emanated from her gloved hand…

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