“Captain Scharf exhibited a most unique aberrance, you see. His right eye hosted an intriguing feature; the reversed lens. This malformation both magnified and inverted that eye’s vision. It was… quite debilitating in everyday life, as one might imagine. However, when that eye cast its gaze down the sight of a specially-designed sniper’s scope, it became a lethal advantage.”
Sturm listened intently as he passed underneath the yellow glow of a street lamp, accompanied by the major general. He had never quite been able to muster the courage to inquire about Scharf’s aberrance directly.
“Armed with a high-powered anti-tank rifle, your captain was more than capable of eliminating enemy exceptionals from a range that left them unable to retaliate,” Dietrich continued. “By the end of the conflict, he had amassed twenty-six kills, if my memory serves me correctly.”
Twenty-six? Sturm awed internally before clearing his throat to speak. “That’s amazing, Mr. Major General. But… couldn’t anyone have used a rifle like that against the enemy’s exceptionals?”
Dietrich chuckled amusedly as he marched down the sidewalk next to the young swordsman. “Yes, that’s true at the most basic level. Yet, it was the reversed lens that allowed the weapon to be used to its full potential. You see, this anti-tank rifle had a maximum range far beyond the normal capabilities of the human eye, and even exceeding those of a traditional sniper’s scope.”
“So you’re saying that only his eye could maximize the rifle’s effective range?”
“Precisely,” Dietrich answered with a snap. “The specially designed scope, made to compliment the reversed lens, was more akin to a downsized astronomical telescope than anything you’d traditionally find mounted on a weapon. In combination with the armor-piercing, high-velocity rounds used with the rifle, the effects could be devastating. When all was said and done, it allowed Captain Scharf to dispatch enemies from nearly two kilometers away.”
If what the major general was saying was accurate, then that would suggest that Scharf’s aberrance was entirely limited to his right eye. In other words, with that eye destroyed, the captain was now left with little more than the basic superhuman enhancements typical of most exceptionals. That would explain why Scharf had resorted to the ring during the morning’s trial.
“Is that really it, then? The captain lost his aberrance with his eye?” Sturm pressed further. “That’s terrible…”
Dietrich hummed solemnly as he tugged the visor of his cap down over his eyes. “Perhaps not. While the loss of the reverse lens was certainly a tragedy, Scharf remains more capable than you might realize. It is my understanding that his left eye is quite powerful on its own.”
At this point, the two found themselves in front of the bar where the alcohol-induced melee had occurred. Through the glass storefront, Sturm could make out the extent of the damage within. Stools and chairs, some with legs split and broken, lay strewn around the room. Tables were flipped and shattered glass coated every centimeter of the polished wooden floor. Several SS men nursed injuries inside the building, while one man sat on the sidewalk just outside the door, icing a wound on his forehead. As Sturm looked on, the last severely injured soldier was loaded onto a stretcher and carried out of the bar. Before this man could be loaded into the ambulance, Dietrich stepped beside the stretcher and checked his condition.
“How are you doing?” asked the major general, removing a flashlight from his pocket and shining it into the soldier’s face.
Groaning in pain, the man crossed his forearm over his face and rasped, “Please, the light’s too much!”
Dietrich put the flashlight away and shook the soldier’s arm reassuringly. “You’ll be alright, rifleman. You’re plenty strong.”
With that, the man was loaded into the ambulance. Seeing the chaos imparted by his captain’s rampage made Sturm confident in Dietrich’s earlier assertion. Whatever fraction of his aberrance remained, it was more than enough to leave the captain a dangerous warrior. Now that the issue of Scharf’s aberrance had been cleared up, it was time for Sturm to ask a much more difficult question; one that he knew could never be asked of his captain directly.
“What happened the day Scharf lost his eye?”
The major general, watching as the ambulance took off down the dark street, did not offer an immediate answer.
“Mr. Major General?” Sturm spoke up once more.
Dietrich pushed his cap’s visor back up and turned to the boy with a troubled look about him. “I will tell you what I know, but it is probably for the best that you don’t discuss this with your captain. I cannot imagine the pain that still racks his heart over that day.”
“I understand, Mr. Major General,” replied Sturm, feeling somewhat guilty that he was about to receive information that Scharf likely preferred remain unknown.
“You’re familiar with Johannes Fiesel, are you not?”
Returning a nod, Sturm added, “The traitor, killed by my dad.”
“Correct,” answered Dietrich, glancing up at the starlit sky. “Fiesel was a powerful Iron Knight- some say that he would have surpassed your father if given enough time to amass strength. Unlike your father, however, he had few inhibitions in the pursuit of his goals.”
The young swordsman blinked and cocked his head back in disbelief. “Stronger than my dad? What do you mean?”
“Johannes Fiesel’s aberrance was different than any that came before. It was… wicked. In fact, the nature of his abilities was so atrocious- so vile that some doubt his status as a true exceptional at all.”
Eyes widening at the thought, the boy felt a chilling breeze lap at his back. “But if he wasn’t an exceptional, what was he, then?”
“A demon.”
Sturm’s blood ran cold. A demon? An honest-to-God demon?
“Or at least, that’s what some believe. His true nature is lost to time. We’ll likely never know for certain.”
It was a horrifying prospect. Though Sturm was raised a devout Catholic and held a galvanized belief in such evil beings, the prospect of one walking among the living was unprecedented. To think that a demon could have infiltrated the Iron Knight program- that it could have served alongside his father. Was such a thing even possible?
“What we do know is that one day, Fiesel’s mask slipped,” Dietrich continued, directing his focus away from the sky and back toward Sturm. “Maybe he assumed that he had accrued enough power to defeat the Hurricane. Maybe he just couldn’t bear pretending anymore. One thing is for certain; suspicious as his allies might have been, no one could have been prepared for what happened next.”
Jaw shifting anxiously, Sturm ran the major general’s words through his mind again, and a final time for good measure. One phrase in particular stood out to the boy.
“What do you mean by ‘accrued power’?”
Presented with this question, Dietrich’s tone and expression became grim. “Johannes Fiesel tore the very essence from his victims, which he then used to fuel his hellish flames. With every soul he consumed, his inferno grew brighter- hotter. They say it started with regular soldiers. Entire French battalions went up in his blaze. At the end of every battle, he was more powerful than before. Yet, at that time, his growth was gradual… It was predictable. The rest of Wyvern Team never would have been caught off guard, had things continued that way.”
A bead of sweat, capturing the green glow of the neon bar sign above, slid down Sturm’s brow. “What changed?”
“The Americans arrived...”
Sturm furrowed his brow, failing to grasp the implication behind these words. “The Americans? I-I don’t understand, Mr. Major General.”
“Surely you’re familiar with the concept of the ‘Hunter-Killer’ team? You’re a member of one such asset yourself, are you not?” asked Dietrich, holding out a palm in explanation. “It was the Americans who pioneered this concept. Teams of exceptionals, three to five in size, trained for and tasked specifically with the destruction of other exceptionals.”
Though he was indeed a member of the Third Hunter Team, Sturm was embarrassed to admit that he was not familiar with the origin of such formations. It was his honest assumption that clashes between exceptionals had always been commonplace. A reality where early Iron Knight operations consisted mostly of cutting down large swaths of conventional soldiers was difficult to imagine. Regardless of the light shone on his ignorance, the young swordsman still couldn’t draw a connection between the arrival of these anti-exceptional teams and Fiesel’s abilities.
“Yes, I see that look in your eye,” said the major general, folding his hands behind his back. “It’s no fault of your own that you can’t predict what happened next. After all, neither could the great Hurricane. You see, the souls of exceptionals seem to carry significantly more energy than those of the average human.”
The shocking realization hit Sturm like a truck. “Y-you mean…?
“That’s right. With every exceptional felled, his strength increased immensely, drastically, and most troubling of all, unpredictably. Though their aberrances were lost, Fiesel benefited from the full, unrestrained power of his prey.”
“How many did he kill?”
“Hundreds…”
This was simply inconceivable for the young knight candidate. If Fiesel truly did repurpose the entirety of his victims’ might, how had his father overcome such a monster? While the ill-fated pyromancer’s treachery had left the topic somewhat of a taboo, it was nevertheless strange that this was the first time Sturm had been exposed to these details. Major General Dietrich might very well have been the most knowledgeable individual on the topic of Iron Knights that the boy had ever encountered.
“At the time of his death, Johannes Fiesel was tied with the American, Transcendaman, as the second highest-scoring exceptional in the world, just five victories short of your father. However, were you to exclude all instances where the enemy surrendered or was incapacitated and account purely for kills, Fiesel would have risen to the first place spot with little competition,” Dietrich explained, coming across almost proud of his wisdom on the subject.
Sturm cupped his chin in thought. “Transcendaman… I haven’t heard that name in a long time. So what you’re saying is that Fiesel was more ruthless than the others?”
“Correct,” the major general replied. “He didn’t take prisoners… unless his allies forced him to. Considering that he relied on the enemies’ souls to increase his power, it’s hardly a surprise that he preferred to destroy them outright.”
“But Mr. Major General, there are laws even during war,” said Sturm, fixing his cap. “It sounds like you’re saying he murdered those people…”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” answered Dietrich, “Though I doubt he saw it that way. Fiesel was a predator at his core. If I had to guess, I would suspect that he viewed the enemy quite the same as you and I viewed the meat on our plates tonight.”
Looking down at the pavement, Sturm struggled to process these words. While he understood the comparison, the notion that a man could view another as mere sustenance was deeply unsettling to the boy. There may have been truth to those unholy claims, after all.
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