An ambient haze of drizzling rain and clouds of yellowish chemical weapons pervaded the battlefield. The countryside was riddled with trenches marking the lines of the war. In between, no man’s land strewn with barbed wire and bodies. Mud-caked soldiers surged over the walls of the trenches and were mown down by gunfire before getting halfway across. The rumble of artillery fire rolled like thunder over the sharper rat-a-tat of machine guns; a shell exploded in the trenches; burning men screamed.
The newspapers were reporting that the death toll had reached five million. Nobody quite remembered why the fighting had begun[1]. It had taken only a few years for most of the world to get roped into the war. By this late stage, all involved agreed that the war could not end until all their enemies had been soundly defeated.
This particular border was, to a casual observer, largely unremarkable. Several hundred miles long, largely farms and grassland, a few scattered tree groves. It was significant for only two things: first, the nations on either side of the border happened to be on opposing sides of the war; second, (and, as it happened to transpire, much more importantly,) it was scattered with ancient ruins. Three hundred years previously, the mighty Caluthian Empire had been crushed, its holdings divided, its cities burned. Nothing was left of the old Caluthian capital but these ruins.
Tutosa
and Etovraan had no particular quarrel with one another, really. Indeed,
relations had been strong before the war. The wool of Tutosan alpacas was
prized worldwide, and Etovraan imported more Tutosan wool than any other
nation, to supply its famed garment factories. Unfortunately, Tutosa happened
to have a mutual defense pact with another neighboring kingdom, so when
hostilities began to flare, Tutosa was forced to decide between two old allies.
Similarly, the Republic of Mundus only joined the war in response to a seemingly unprovoked surprise attack by another third party altogether. But, almost as soon as the war began, a newly minted Mundi colonel persuaded his superiors to send him and the 5th Infantry Regiment to the Tutosan-Etovraanian border.
So it
was that most of the ruins of the old Caluthian capital began the war under
Tutosan control, but a concerted, sustained effort by the Mundi 5th Infantry
had pushed the battle lines slowly west.
The ruins had already been ravaged by time, neglect, and long-ago wars. This long battle had been no kinder. Those few pillars that had survived the three hundred years since the glory days of Caluthi had been blown flat by artillery fire from both sides.
The
colonel had found it challenging, but not impossible, to orchestrate an
archaeological excavation in the middle of a bloody trench war. Luckily, the
most important parts of the ruins were buried deep underground, relatively safe
from the war. With solid enough reinforcement for the tunnels, the dig could
proceed with only minimal danger.
In the midst of a particularly dense bit of ruin, there was an entrance to an ancient building, partially collapsed, the rubble only recently cleared away. Two Mundi soldiers bearing rifles and nervous expressions flanked the entrance. Their post was a little too far from the front to worry about stray bullets, but shells from the sky were an omnipresent danger.
Beyond
the half-collapsed entrance, old, crumbling, damp stairs descended about a
hundred feet down, into the dig site proper, a maze of tunnels, strewn with
stones and rubble, lit by kerosene lanterns hanging from the walls every thirty
feet or so. Soldiers worked efficiently at gathering stones and stacking them
neatly out of the way. Down here, the sounds of rain, machine guns and
artillery faded to an occasional dull rumble; the world shook slightly and dust
sifted from the ceiling whenever a shell exploded too close, but other than
that, there was only the noise of soldiers moving rock.
Down several maze-like passageways, at the end of a newly-excavated tunnel, there was an old bronze door. The door was engraved with warnings in the language of Old Caluthi and half a dozen other languages, most of them long dead. The colonel had already translated most of them: warnings like “beware”, “turn back”, “a curse shall befall who enter here” – standard fare. Two Mundi soldiers swung a portable battering ram against the door, the repeated slams echoing down the narrow tunnels. The colonel regretted the senseless destruction of valuable old Caluthian works, but they didn’t have infinite time, and the door was sealed, welded to its frame at the time of its creation – which he saw as a promising development, all things considered.
As far
as Colonel Julian Malachi was concerned, all the fighting on the Tutosan front had
been dedicated ultimately to this one purpose – for that matter, not just the
war, but his entire career, even his entire life since he was a boy reading old
Caluthian stories in his uncle’s study. And they were close to his goal. He
felt it in his bones, he tasted it in the back of his mouth, the hair on the nape
of his neck stood on end with the feeling of impending success.
As far as Helen was concerned, the whole thing was a pointless waste of time. She didn’t care about the war or the colonel’s grandiose stories about Old Caluthi and what he would do when he uncovered its ancient power. She was content to indulge the colonel in chasing after myths and legends as long as his money was good – which it very much was. She had a family back in Tutosa, and they would be the richest family in town once the war wrapped up.
With a
sudden deafening, creaking crash of
metal and stone, the old door surrendered to the battering ram, breaking loose
from its moorings and raising a huge cloud of gray dust as it landed in the
room beyond. Helen and the two soldiers backed away, coughing.
Visibility within the dense cloud
of dust was approximately zero, but that didn’t stop the colonel. He just
produced a handkerchief and held it to his face, raising his lantern high to
illuminate a few feet of dust-cloud as he ventured through the doorway. The
dust stung his eyes, but this close to his goal, he refused to let himself be
put off or delayed by such trivial matters. His manner was as one entering the
gaping maw of some huge, defeated beast to plunder its gullet, almost
completely confident that it’s actually dead.
The door was lying at a slant on top of a heap of fallen dirt and stone blocks. Julian stepped over it, barely managing to avoid stumbling over the heap. Then, just above the faint rumbling aftermath of the falling door, he heard a click and whirr of some long-disused mechanism. He froze, wincing at his own foolishness, suddenly realizing that yes, of course this place would be trapped. The men who built it had judged the object lying entombed within it to be the gravest existential threat to all of humanity – they wouldn’t rely on a mere sealed door carved with warnings to protect it.
But
nothing happened. No swinging blade fell from the ceiling, no poison darts shot
from the walls, no trap door opened up beneath his feet to dump him in a pit of
spikes. The walls and ceiling entirely failed to begin closing in, deadly
neurotoxic gas didn’t fill the room, and nobody would have to outrun any giant
boulders. Only one thing of note happened: the dust cloud slowly cleared.
Helen saw Colonel Malachi frozen in place, and stepped up to shove him bodily aside. Kneeling where he had been standing, she pried the pressure plate from the floor with a penknife retrieved from one of her many pockets. Several vital bits of the trap’s mechanism were corroded through or broken by simple entropy. Laughing, she said, “I’ve seen scores of these, and every one was busted all to hell. Nothing to worry about. You can get on with your looting, boss.”
The
colonel was not entirely reassured. Hopefully the thing he was after, the grave
existential threat, was more sturdily built than the traps meant to keep people
away from it. But he didn’t dwell on this thought for long, because the
settling dust was revealing more of the room. It was round, with no markings on
the walls. Aside from rubble and ruin, there was nothing to distract from the old
bronze box perched innocuously on a low stone pedestal in the middle of the
room. The box appeared to be approximately a one-foot cube, and Colonel Malachi
was absolutely certain that this was what he was after. Helen hung back, and
the soldiers took up positions by the door, but the colonel had no such
reluctance; he approached the pedestal.
His manner almost worshipful, he used his handkerchief to brush centuries of dust from the top of the box. Tucking the handkerchief into a front pocket of his uniform, he began to stalk slowly around the pedestal, his gaze never leaving the box, taking it in from all angles. “It’s over. This is it.”
Helen
stepped up beside him to examine the box, saying, “If the search is over,
you’ll be paying me and sending me on my way, yeah?”
The colonel scarcely paid her any
attention, pushing her aside. “You’re thinking much too small. It’s all over. The search, the war,
everything. This Artifact is the key to total, crushing victory.” Grasping the
lid of the box, he tried to open it, and found it still firmly locked, even
after three centuries.
Helen’s skepticism must have been
evident on her face, because Colonel Malachi gave her a disapproving look and
continued, “The histories are very clear on the Artifact’s power. And the
histories have led us straight so far; after all, here we are.”
Pushing the colonel aside, Helen
jammed the tip of her penknife into the lock and proceeded to jimmy it,
objecting, “Still sounds like mumb-jumbo to me. I mean, zombies? What’s next, a
loudhailer that controls dragons? A magic lamp that conjures fairies?” When the
blade of her penknife broke off with an unceremonious snap, she blinked in confusion. “Huh.”
The colonel gestured for Helen to
get out of his way, his tone suddenly brusque as he said, “Thank you, you’ve
been more than helpful. That will be all. Collect your pay from the
quartermaster on your way –”
He was interrupted by the explosion
of an artillery shell on the surface directly above them. The earth rumbled and
shook as huge stone blocks tumbled from the ceiling, kicking up another huge
cloud of gray dust. Helen yelled as she fell to the ground. The colonel threw
himself across the old metal box, shielding it from harm from his body. The
colonel’s lantern, thrown across the room, went out.
In the darkness, the air was choked
with dust. Everyone was coughing uncontrollably and intermittently as the
rumbling aftershocks faded away.
Eventually, fumbling with his
pockets in the darkness, the colonel located a match and struck it. With its
light, he found his lantern and lit it, illuminating the room and surveying the
damage.
Everything was caked and occluded
by white dust. The ceiling had completely fallen in near the doorway, blocking
the way out. One soldier was buried under the rubble. At a gesture from the
colonel, the other soldier, who had managed to get out of the way in time,
began shifting rocks away from the rubble heap.
The colonel reached up to set his
lantern on top of the box on the pedestal, then clambered to his feet,
coughing. He felt a stinging in the palms of his hands, and noticed that they
had been scraped bloody in the fall. Using his handkerchief to wipe blood from
his hand, he looked around.
Helen, meanwhile, examined her leg.
Her grubby civilian khakis had been torn and were turning slowly dark red with
blood. Her leg hurt immensely, especially when she poked at it. She concluded
that it had been broken by falling stones. She mustered the energy for the
single expletive, “Balls.”
The colonel was affected an
unconcerned air as he inspected the fallen rubble. “It would appear we’re
somewhat trapped.”
Helen tried to draw attention to
her bleeding leg with a, “Julian.”
The colonel ignored her, and
continued, “No matter.” Limping to the pile of rubble, he selected a
softball-sized rock, and returned to the pedestal.
“Julian.”
The colonel took a solid whack at the box’s lock with the rock.
“Julian.”
Another whack, and the lid of the box popped ajar.
“Julian!”
Dropping the rock on the ground,
the colonel lifted the box’s lid and peered inside. Inside, he saw a perfect
black sphere, which glowed faintly with a pale blue light. The room suddenly
felt colder. “I told you, it’s all over now.” He lifted the sphere from its
resting place and looked into it. Its glass exterior was a nearly opaque black,
but he could just make out the faint outlines of complex mechanisms inside,
clicking and whispering softly away.
Everyone stared in silence.
Eventually, Helen managed to ask, “How much d’you figure that’s worth?”
Colonel Malachi, finally noticing
Helen, turned to stare incredulously at her. “Worth? You would put a price on
the future? An end to war, to violence, to crime and terror? Peace and
prosperity for everyone? All in the palm of my hand!” He held the orb aloft
above his head, his injured hands leaving a smear of blood on its perfectly
smooth surface.
Helen was unperturbed by the
colonel’s suddenly megalomaniacal display. For a moment, all was silence.
Then stone blocks began to tumble
from the pile of rubble blocking the door. The surviving soldier backed away
nervously. A hand punched out from the pile and began scrabbling around,
dislodging more blocks.
Then, with superhuman strength, the
fallen soldier burst from the pile, scattering stone blocks like styrofoam such
that they crashed against the walls.
He staggered away from the debris pile, then slowly straightened. His head
flopped limply against his shoulder, his neck twisted at a crazy, unnatural
angle. His eyes were dull, his face slack and lifeless. This soldier, despite
moving about under his own power, was clearly dead.
The colonel breathed, triumphant,
“It’s over.”
Standing on a high point of the
partially-collapsed ruins, Colonel Julian Malachi surveyed the battlefield.
Darkness had fallen, but he held the Artifact aloft, and the ruins were bathed
in its blue light. There was a bit of a lull in the fighting. The only sound
was the drumming of rain.
After a few seconds, corpses lying
in the no man’s land between the trenches, several hundred yards away, began to
shift and stir. One by one – first those closest to the colonel, then those further
away – the corpses slowly rose to their feet, and begin to shuffle lifelessly
away from the colonel, towards the far trenches. Dead soldiers from both armies
marched, most of them carrying the guns they bore in life.
The soldiers in the far trenches
started pointing and yelling in their native tongue. They roused themselves
quickly, firing machine guns on the corpses in no man’s land. But for each dead
soldier that took a lucky shot to the head and collapsed, a dozen more kept
coming, bullet-riddled but uninjured.
When the shambling corpses reached
the far trenches, most of the Tutosan soldiers panicked and broke, running
before their suddenly unbeatable foes. Many were killed when the shambling
corpses started firing their weapons.
One Tutosan soldier threw down his
weapon, knelt in the mud, and began to pray with a small holy symbol on a chain
around his neck. He was shot in the back by a dead soldier from his own army,
who didn’t even break stride.
An artillery crew landed a shell in
the ruins several yards from Colonel Malachi. He barely managed to keep his
balance when it exploded. His ears ringing, he wisely began to make his way
down from the ruins.
A Tutosan soldier in a gun nest
turned his machine gun on the undead soldiers in the trenches, the rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat constant and
ineffective. The magazine ran out and the gun’s barking was reduced to a quiet whirr. The soldier drew a small pistol
and fired it at the oncoming corpses; one of them shot him almost casually
before moving on.
Soon,
the corpses were beyond the trenches, and still inexorably advancing.
[1]
Later historians would say it was precipitated by a minor skirmish over the
shifting of a river defining the border between Qejj and Etovraan, an
assassination in Mundus, a not unusual flareup of hostilities between North and
South Kehushide, the kidnapping of a mob boss’s daughter in Izkazka, or a freak
hurricane which the sorcerers who ruled Tokoztess blamed on their neighbors
across the water in Lawoskkods. In truth, all of these events individually
marked the earliest stages of the larger war.
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