The humans claim he is one of them – but we know better.
Yes, we know better than the Humans could. After all, they didn’t see it – they didn’t see him. The angry god, the blood-red hurricane, the slayer… We have many names for him now, and he is the greatest blight that has ever befallen our city.
To call him a Human would be to blaspheme against his name.
It started mere days ago – a fleet hired by the galactic senate to attack the Human-conquered worlds in a system of some importance. The nature of the mission was fairly standard, but what happened next wasn’t.
The fleet returned, not in jubilant victory, but in tattered remnants of its previous power.
Then they came – a fleet of humans, following in the tracks of our navy.
The war-packs assembled for battle, and the Humans fell from the stars in streaks of fire.
But we were many, and they were few. We denied them breach after breach in our defenses, but among the stars our ships crumbled and burned until there were none left.
Then they let fire fall from the sky, and our defenses were crippled.
The humans landed, and now we could not drive them off.
While the humans in the west tore us to shreds, there was another breach of Humans that had landed in the east – in the middle of one of our cities.
They were but fifty, we numbered in the millions.
Our Alphas rallied their troops.
“Drive away the aliens!” they cried as they herded their forces towards the human breach.
The humans fought valiantly, killing four score their number for each who toppled, and then there was but one.
I was there to see it – the face of the mad god.
The being was no man, you can trust me on that. No man would be able to fight like that monster.
When we sent hundreds of troops, soon there would be none, when we sent thousands, they would break and flee in maddened horror.
He cleaved us with his terrible axe, and the city was turned into a grinder of meat – our meat.
I saw my brothers be slaughtered like insects before that man, and I heard his terrible roar.
”For Pony!”
“Lady Mayuki! The reports from the east claim that one of the crashed warriors is still alive!”
Mayuki looks up from the table where a map of the city was laid out, and for the first time since this blasted siege began, she felt hope.
She had despaired when Olaf and his unit were shot down far away from their front line. That had been a week ago now.
They had faced a challenge they hadn’t been prepared for. The forty five thousand Gammorran soldiers had been outnumbered more than a hundred to one, and the enemy wasn’t some pushover senate species but Quntar, one of the most ferocious sentients in the galaxy.
If it wasn’t for the complete Gammorran air superiority, they wouldn’t have been able to win any of the battles.
But luckily, the quintars seemed to have never experienced proper trench warfare.
Mayuki had been happy to teach them about it.
The gammorran lines had been advancing, meter after meter, swiftly digging new trenches as they moved ahead. Where trenches couldn’t be made, they built barricades, placed landmines and tank traps.
The enemy had shown that they knew little beyond the field of raiding warfare or using sheer numbers to overrun their opponents, and all that the Gammorrans had to do was move forwards at a quick enough pace that they were a large enough threat, and then the enemy would endlessly throw themselves towards the Gammorran trenches.
Sure, the fenrisian berserkers might not approve of the ‘cowardly’ means for battle, but the remaining troops had been appreciating the cost-efficient means to dispatch their enemies.
Meanwhile, endless bombing runs had torn away much of their enemies’ defenses, and more modern methods for warfare, like the endlessly playing of propaganda and other means, had kept their enemies awake.
Resistance had been lessening at a drastic pace the more recent days, and the xeno death rate had been staggering.
Just burning their enemies’ bodies had filled the skies with smoke, and the clouds were now nearly black. “Put together an unit of berserkers, and inform the rest of my lieutenants. We’re going on a rescue mission.”
Olaf was tired, wounded and sore all over, but he was glad.
He was overlooking the city in which he had done battle for a week now.
His brain swam with the stimulants that allowed him to stay awake for such an extraordinary amount of time.
“C’mon buttstallion. We’re moving back down.”
He thrusts his heels into the sides of his most recently subjugated Quintar, and it knows better than to resist and begins trotting back into the depths of the city.
Olaf looks around, and can see quintar, males and females, disappearing into the buildings, shying away from his gaze.
The whole city has submitted to him.
It seems killing all of the so-called ‘alpha males’ had been a good decision after all, even though it had required him to slaughter his way through a great number of their warriors first.
He sees what seems to be a speck of gray on the western sky, and Olaf shades his eyes with his hand.
Hah! It’s a ship!
About gods-damned time!
“Faster, buttstallion!”
He shoves his heels into the creatures sides again, and it moans in pain, but it does as commanded.
The severed heads of the alphas rustle towards the alien’s hindquarters.
“Secure the plaza!”
Mayuki slowly walked down the ramp, following four of the berserkers she had gathered for this mission.
She didn’t know why, but they had been a lot more attentive and obedient towards her since the battle for the planet began, but still they were just as dreadfully unpleasant towards any other authority they came across.
But for now she didn’t question it.
She lets her eyes roam the surrounding buildings.
There were broken corpses littering the street corners, but not a living soul in sight.
Wait, she could see one now!
“Quintar!” she shouted, and pointed towards the four legged creature.
Her warriors readied their weapons, but then she could hear him laughing.
Then she realized it wasn’t the quintar laughing, but the man straddling its’ back, using it’s hair to steer the creature.
She immediately felt a surge of relief. She recognized the rider.
“Olaf!”
The berserker slips off the mount, which takes the opportunity to flee back into the city.
“Hello there, commander.”
He steps towards her, and she can see him staggering, and run forwards to catch him just as he falls.
He is covered in dried blood.
“Olaf? Are you hurt?!”
He sounds more tired than she has ever heard him.
“Nah, but I would really like a nap…”
His eyes close, and he grows still. For a moment she thinks he might have just died in her arms, but then he begins snoring.
Taal fled as fast as his legs would carry him, but the effort of carrying around the mad god in the shape of a man had drained him horribly. He could feel the dead skulls of the alphas bounce on his back, and they reminded him as to why he fled.
He fled because of him, that creature.
It had looked like a human, but not even a human could possibly fight like it had.
It had fought for days in a way that would have rendered the most powerful Quintar unconscious after just a few hours, and he hadn’t gotten worn down. He hadn’t slowed. And he had slaughtered the army gathered by the city’s alphas’, making the rest flee as he took the alphas’ heads.
The creature was a nightmare made manifest, and Taal knew that if he didn’t take this opportunity to flee, there would never be another.
So he ran, until he there was nowhere left to run.
The planet soon surrendered to the invaders, but by then half of its’ population was dead or unaccounted for, and the many cities had been turned to ruin by endless bombardment.
And a new religion was founded among the surviving quintar – the worship of the mad, blood-red god.