Chapter 3: Chapter 2: Fiery Trials, Part 2

Somewhere in Eastern Europe, during the Soviet Offensive…

“AAAAGH!” Explosions erupted from everywhere, accompanied by a hail of gunfire that almost drowned out the distant screams of thousands of men, women, and children. The ground was covered with filth, mud, and blood. Flesh and guts and bones lay scattered about, alongside a veritable sea of bullet casings. But above all of that, covering even the dirt-encrusted ground, were bodies – thousands upon thousands upon thousands of bodies. There were so many of them that the line between soil and cold-dead skin seemed to blur into a single, cacophonous mess of crimson blotches and humanoid shapes upon the mud.

I have to hide!

There were shouts from somewhere, in a language I did not understand. It didn’t matter. I ran as fast as my feet could carry me. There were buildings, but they were all cracked apart and broken down into rubble. The acrid smell of smoke and powder filled the air. There were a few cars here and there, but they were all equally shattered and crushed, riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks.

There was nowhere to hide. I needed to hide.

My next step forward was abruptly brought to a halt when I stepped on something that squelched and burst. I glanced down and my breath hitched. It was a piece of a brain. Not a meter away was a little girl, whose head had been torn open; her grey matter was spilled onto the ground, alongside her blood and her guts. She was holding onto a toy on one hand and… a severed hand on the other. There was another child beside her, the upper half of a boy who must’ve been around my age.

And then I realized I was standing around the corpses of children. The building across us was a school.

I lurched forward and hurled the chicken soup from earlier. It was too much. Tears streamed from my eyes and snot from my nose.

Why was I here? What did I do to deserve any of this?

Someone screamed something from somewhere. And I saw the vague outline of soldiers approaching from the soft haze that blanketed this place. There must’ve been hundreds of them. The beat of their footsteps seemed to shake the earth. The gunfire seemed to lessen around me.

The soldiers neared.

I did not want to die. I did not want to die. The tears did not stop. I don’t want to die!

I fell over and crawled under the bodies. The smell was repugnant, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was the face that stared at me as I held my mouth and nose and cried in the darkness between the mud, blood, filth, and the bodies above. The face was that of a little girl. Her golden hair was matted and covered in gore. And insects gathered in her mouth. I wanted to move away, but I couldn’t. I was stuck there, unless I moved back out and I wasn’t about to do that.

The soldiers stepped over the corpses, shouting and screaming in a foreign tongue. I didn’t recognize it. I shuddered and closed my eyes, hoping and praying for this nightmare to end. I felt the pressure of their boots and the weight of them as they marched over the bodies, which slowly pressed down on me. The blood and the grime splattered all over my body. It was cold and sticky on my skin, like the filth from a blackened canal, left to fester for years and years. I wanted to vomit again, but my stomach was empty.

What did I do to deserve this?!

I only ever stole a bunch of foodstuffs from people who probably wouldn’t have noticed they’d gone missing in the first place, people who were rich and powerful, and from other thieves. I did what I could to survive. I did what I had to do. But never have I done anything that could’ve been truly evil.

Why was I here?

Why did it have to be me?!

I cried and prayed. I’ve long since abandoned the idea that there was a god watching over everyone; the war wouldn’t have happened if there was a god who cared. My family wouldn’t have been murdered before my eyes and I wouldn’t have had to live in the streets, like a stray dog, stealing just to survive. But, I prayed nonetheless, because I did not want to die.

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease! Someone, please save me from this hell! Mama!!! It hurt so much, the weight of their boots and the weight of the corpses atop me, slowly pushing down with every passing moment. They didn’t even know I was here. But, they wouldn’t have cared anyway if they did. Like the other children, whose bodies lay scattered across the ground, they would’ve killed me. They would’ve shot me down, like they did everyone else. I’d heard stories from the grownups and the elderlies, that foreign soldiers cared little about the lives of civilians, who were often shot down on sight or tortured and defiled.

I’ve lost count of how many innocent children have been dragged onto the streets by Japanese Soldiers and executed for all to see, their bloody bodies pierced onto spears and left to rot in the sun so their parents may see it and weep and cry. No one was safe, no life was sacred. The only thing that really mattered, the one thing that kept people from dying, was power.

And, more than anything, I craved power. Because I did not want to die – not by the hands of the Japanese or the hands of the strange, magical people who forced me to kill a little girl with my bare hands.

I DON’T WANT TO DIE!!!

I felt a strange heat suddenly erupt from my stomach. It quickly spread across my body, like a flash of fire that consumed all in its path as it spread outwards. I could not describe the sensation that followed in the wee moments that came afterwards, only that it felt right; it felt like something I’d felt so many times before, a familiar feeling that should not have existed, because I definitely hadn’t felt it before. Whatever it was did not linger in my body for long. The heat exploded out of me and extended to every single corpse around me.

Silence reigned for a brief moment.

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And then, the ground shook… and the corpses around me stirred.

It began with the ruined face in front of me, the little girl with golden hair, whose eyes had popped out of their sockets – one bulged outwards, while the other dangled down. Her face, dead and pale, moved. Her jaw cracked and fractured and lurched inwards, followed by the rest of her face, which split open and extended, exposing bone, muscle, and sinew. And then her head tore backwards and her chest split apart, revealing grisly, bloody ribs and the organs held within. Her flesh squelched as it tore itself apart.

I screamed. And the only reason I didn’t vomit a second time was because my stomach was empty.

The soldiers screamed as well and shouted as all the other corpses around me stirred and moved and ruptured and ripped themselves apart in a frenzy of flesh, sending great spouts of cold blood, gore, and viscera shooting upwards, like great crimson jets. Gunfire echoed almost immediately afterwards. Tendrils of flesh and sinew burst out of each corpse and latched onto each other, forming a visceral network of moving dead flesh.

And then, all the corpses slammed into each other and formed a massive, singular mass of flesh, bone, and blood that pulsed and convulsed with dead organs and writhing tendrils. The soldiers screamed and opened fire. And I, covered in gore, took the confusion as my cue to leave, though I was rather certain that I’d been screaming as well. The crimson mass of viscera lashed outwards, emitting disgusting gurgling sounds it attacked with flailing corpses, whose sharpened bones became weapons in themselves. Left and right, people died as the monster moved at speeds that were unthinkable for its size.

Gunfire did little to deter it. One of the soldiers tossed a grenade at the monster and the resulting explosion did little to harm it. The dead flesh seemed harder than steel, despite the fact that it was falling apart and rotting. The monster thrummed and unleashed a ghastly shriek; the dead organs on the corpses within its form pulsated and flashed with crimson glows.

My mind blanked. My skin paled. And the whole world seemed to drop dead and cold.

I ran into an empty alleyway as fast as I physically could, just as the bleeding mass of flesh lurched and sent its sharp tendrils exploding in all directions. A whole leg flew overhead and landed on the ground beside me. Panicked and pained screams echoed wildly. Limbs and guts flew and painted the walls and the soil. And everywhere, there was only death. The sudden quiet, where there had been shouts and gouts of gunfire, sent chills running down my spine. More than that, however, was the shock and confusion that addled my thoughts on the matter. What just happened?

I didn’t know. I didn’t care – really. The only thing that mattered was that I was alive and that I needed to find somewhere else to hide in, before that thing came after me. Tears and snot streamed down my face as I ran and ran. I stumbled over a corpse and fell. A sharp rock stabbed into my right knee and cut open the skin. A yelp escaped my lips. It stung, deeply, but the pain was familiar and tolerable. I crawled forward and pushed myself up.

And then, the gunfire and explosions resumed in force. And all around me, the ruined buildings and roads exploded, sending massive plumes of dust and smoke outwards and obscuring my vision. “AAAAAGH!”

I saw nothing behind or in front of me. My ears rang and my head spun. The sounds of gunfire and screams had blended together into a static noise. I ran forward, nearly stumbling over all the corpses on the ground. And then, a massive plume of fire erupted in the distance, rising so high that all I needed to do to see it was to look up. Crimson flares, bound with all the colors of all the rainbows in the world, shot upwards like a gargantuan bird; massive fiery wings extended from it as it hovered in the air for a moment. A giant, flaming chicken; it was the only thing I could think of as I looked. Its eyes blazed and an ear-piercing shriek blasted away all the dirt and smoke in the air.

I fell to my knees and screamed as I clutched my ears. What is happening????

All the corpses around me stirred and moved as they did before. The bodies tore themselves open and apart. Tendrils burst from their bodies and connected, and then – as before – the corpses pulled themselves together to form a singular mass of murderous flesh. Ribs sharpened and became fangs of the many maws that spawned across its grisly surface, and the writhing hands and limbs all seemed to shudder and reach out for anything within reach. It moved by rolling forward, an amorphous mass of blood and gore.

There’re two of them now?!

It rolled towards me. My heart sank and breath hitched. My eyes widened and my eyes shook uncontrollably. Was this the end? Was I to be eaten by this monster?

I closed my eyes and curled into a ball on the floor and cried.

I hate it! I hate everything! Why do I have to suffer?! Why was I even here?!

But then, despite how long I lay there, the monster did nothing. I felt no bony tendrils piercing my flesh or hurt me in any way. I opened my eyes and recoiled. It was just there, a monstrous blob of bloody limbs, organs, and bones, doing absolutely nothing as chaos reigned all around us. I huffed and huffed as I pushed myself up. Only then did I notice just how cold the air really was. And the soft piles of snow that’d gathered.

I gulped. The monster just sat there, rumbling and gurgling, but otherwise doing nothing. It reeked of death and decay. And blood, pus, and viscera dripped down its abominable form. It wasn’t approaching me as I’d thought it would. It wasn’t attacking. It wasn’t tearing me limb from limb. It didn’t move, even as I took a single step away from it.

“What is going on?” I whispered into the wind.

Shouts rang out as a group of panicked soldiers walked into the alleyway. My eyes widened. They were all holding guns and there must’ve been over fifty of them. They raised their weapons. The world seemed to freeze.

I was going to die, wasn’t I? The soldiers pulled their triggers. And I only had a brief moment to witness the flash of fire and smoke from the barrels of their guns, before I turned away.

And then, the monster roared and was suddenly in front of me.

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