The taps on a great central table filled the emptiness of the vast chamber. It was the heart of an underground bunker. Its high ceilings were striped with lights cut, and walls so far, only of the six sides was the floor reachable. Echoes of the chamber bounced around, with each sound remaining for a whole minute before dissipating. For a war cabinet’s lair so grand, it was utterly unused for years, though every surface appeared to have been often cleaned. Weekly at least, for no dust seemed to have collected. There was pride that this nation has taken in caring for their equipment on the desks that once collaborated within that chamber. Telephones, with wires clipped onto electrical highways; teleprinters, with no stains nor fingerprints on their keys; and the luxury of the officers’ cushioned chairs. Everything was untouched and unstained. In pristine condition, it was like stepping into a museum of antiques used only within a certain span of history and past time, yet appeared unused. The blocks of offices lined, ranked from the doorway till the far board, charting the room with hundreds of positions that would fulfill numberless roles. The clicks and clacks of typewriters and the occasional whir of printers. But even that noise would be quelled by the shouts across the room and the constant rustling of reports on paper. Those sounds were no more.
It was all stored in a memory fresher than that of yesterday by one man who would always find himself returning there. As an escape from peace and to rediscover the fires in his old, nostalgic heart. The embers of his ambition were stirred from hallucinating the gone days of action. Although he was nowhere near his physical peak, with his body rusting with time and joints that would not work the same, he was a warrior. Scarred along his face, and his grayish white hair was still abundant. Whose eyebrows were always set in a frown, the veteran’s beard was combed and styled, and his skin was tanned by the suns of battlefields. Keeping a grip on the air that was immense, the hands that did it were veinous and warm, exerting a monstrous aura hiding beneath an officer’s coat waiting to be unleashed. When the door leading into the chamber opened, a streak of light briefly flashed by, giving life and color to the rank plates on his shoulders. Bearing a five-pointed star and a double-headed eagle, he held the unmistakable title of a grand marshal.
Yet, this storied warrior drew cold sweat as he sat in wait before some citrus tea, steaming and warming his sinuses, that he had brewed for himself and his guest. The scent was pleasing to every sense. But there, most displeasing, between the cups, was a book with a black and white coat. No more was seen in the shadow, stronger than the flickering electric lantern. His taps on the table halted and they was soon replaced by footsteps marching down the aisle where carpets once laid decades ago. Far, it felt to have taken an eternity for his guest to arrive when suddenly, a foreign hand reached for a chair beside the grand marshal who thought the man to still be making his way. He was already there. The stoic soldier wanted to flinch, but the instincts of his experience forced that thought away. As the infiltrator, who had murdered his guards and pillaged half his fort, pulled back a chair, the marshal could not ignore how it was that his hands were unstained and without the stench of blood. Despite the prints on the floor that he had left in red, there were no hints that there he was a killer before him.
Taking his seat, the devil shore a glance at the book and tea, giving no care for his host. He reached into his inner pocket and revealed a branded cigarette box which he gave a firm tap against and loosened a stick of smoke from. With a light flick of a match, the cigarette was lit in one stroke before the splint was tossed onto the ground and its ember put out. Granting his lungs a soak of peace, the intruding guest exhausted fumes into the chamber of little ventilation. It was the near-stagnant air that formed an atmosphere of tobacco smoke around their heads. Bringing the book closer without ever asking, the infiltrator drove their tensions to an assured high as they sat opposing, though on the same side of the table, as neither enemies nor allies.
“Warm de bök rekueuren wen kann du rekiten? (Why do you still require this book when you could recite it by heart?)” The grand marshal first spoke in the world language of the Zhermanniker, breaking the evil stillness.
The ash, that was separated from the cigarette with a tap, collected on the table. His guest would still refuse to look him in the eye when a conversation drew. Faced down, all his purpose, assumed from his expression, rested on the tome. But the old man grew impatient.
“Family possessions.” The intruder answered. “Nothing more.” He gave even a blunter affirmation with the cold from his soul seeping through his human skin.
Flicking open the tome from its cover to its beginnings, the infiltrator skimmed through the pages that he had studied and read since childhood. Every chapter and their words had been memorized, yet the only thing that still interested him beside mere annotations were their diagrams and anatomical sketches of beings that seemed otherworldly. Dotted by minute notes and copies of coded ideas, the paragraphs that lined each page were in need of a magnifier to read, filling every page with black ink that sometimes seeped beyond its margins. Like a detailed fiction, all the information that was encased in that tome could gain one god-like omniscience. Then, perhaps, it was no story, but was a truth that one of the two believed it to be.
Giving a glance at the book he had dared to read before returning it to its rightful master, the grand marshal summarized, “A world without eifer.” Somehow, he bore the courage that he lacked minutes ago, to challenge him, “That seems like quite the redundant place, with humans reduced to nothing more than animals.”
However, he was given no regard, for the infiltrator did not seem to care much that the marshal had introduced himself to his uncommon knowledge without permission. At the very least, on the subject, both were conversational, though with different understandings of what their world should be shaped to become.
“A far cry from paradise, in my mind.” The elder gave his word of advice, stepping over his bounds of appeasement, and ventured into the danger of critique.
The cover of a tree, molded like metal, was colored with life as the book was closed. With human hands as its branches and leaves and eyes grown into its trunk, the tree’s bark was skin, and His roots were bathed in a pool of blood under a waterfall cascading from nowhere. In the distance, a floating island dangled, chained to the infinite ceiling and abyss. As the devil ran his hand on the hard, textured cover of the tome, the initials of its author was forged in the light: E.R.
Bearing the voice of a messenger from death, the invader responded, “Your mind matters not.” Lifting his head to finally face his host, his bluish pupils had frozen the marshal.
His glare was not maintained for long as he withdrew his attention to the tome. Continuing to fill up his lungs with smoke, two things became the only objects of his satisfaction like no other man, as the elder was released from his spell-like petrification.
“I have the Old, the New, and the Medium I can flay.” Spoken calmly, another scent, beneath his tobacco, came bearing. “Only the Calamity remains.” He stated with sincerity.
It would have been rude for him to deny the tea that had been so carefully brewed by the host of the war chamber. Cooling before them, both vessels held the same volume, the very same aroma, and color. Yet, the assassin-like guest reached for the furthest cup that he had swapped for his own under the grand marshal’s watchful eye, following the trade. By the smallest handle that only a child could fit their fingers through, the devil pinched it, and raised the tea towards his nose. Cleansing any impurities within him with the white steam of heat, with a single sniff, he could tell that no cheap ingredients had been gathered for this particular brew. Between the refreshening herbs and fruits from the best of the world, it was clear that this host had taken his liberty to grace his seasoned palate.
The invader surmised, rolling the fragrance of the tea beneath his nose as the tea lightly steamed his glasses. “I presume you’ve held up your end of the bargain.”
“Hah! Bargain?” Boastfully, the grand marshal thundered, with an excitement that was never there before.
The devil-man’s sips of tea were quiet, who gave no mind to the elder’s loudened voice. Still, peacefully enjoying the sweetness and the bitterness of harvest, with a hint of sourness from the citrus infused in the tea.
With his spirit alight, the grand marshal asserted, “This opportunity would not have been wasted nevertheless, were you not its cause.”
Lowered, the guest’s tea cup was settled on the table again. The infiltrator slipped his tome under an arm and carried its texts, sainted to him, like a fashionable purse, as another hand busied putting out the ember of his cigarette. Pressed against the table, within the cusp of its own ash, the smoke stood upright for a few seconds before tilting and tipping over. After the odd hospitality of the military, he stood, straightening his sleeves and jacket, then lengthening his tie until its tip laid on his belt’s buckle. Pushed up against the bridge of his nose, the arch of his glasses rested, cleared of the mist that hazed his bottom-half sight. The infiltrator, with an elegance of how he had entered the chamber for the meet, was prepared to depart once again.
When the grand marshal expected more from him to say, all that the man uttered was one word in response, “Good.” Exhaling the last breath of tobacco from his lungs of poisonous fumes, there was not a sentence that followed it.
Turning around, the devil began his walk away towards the side exit, far from the main entrance. It was unlit, but the staircase promised a path straight to the surface. How the infiltrator knew, a foreigner who had never visited the underground chambers of a military complex in fact, was terrifying even for the old warrior. He seemed to have reached the grand marshal without any warning prior, and though his appearance was expected, none could have expected that he could treat infiltrating the headquarters of the great Confederacy like a stroll without a single worry of failure despite making no preparations before. Having weaved unchallenged in the mazes of corridors and stairs, rooms and quarters, one would think of never wanting to come face to face with the devil again. It would have been foolish. Then the guest had departed in a blink, as quick as his arrival was. En route to home at last, and mayhaps, an ordinary life. But the grand marshal will never sleep easy, despite feeling the strangle on his heart finally release. There was a tingling string that was kept there as leverage. With one wrong, he knew he would be hunted down. His strange thoughts clouded him as he sat in a vast chamber, no more human than the hunter’s next victim. Alone again. Accompanied by a fading lamp. The teas had cooled from hot to lukewarm. One cup was half empty and another was undisturbed. From his temple, a droplet of sweat bled.
95Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEvdHGFJ3xp
