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« Archival Document — HSA-008-Advent || Black Sunrise || Operation AEON DAWN »
4:28 pm: entity is born
5:20 pm: entity begins moving
5:22 pm: paratroopers land
5:24 pm: reinforcements (+josef) teleport in
5:30 pm: 200 people have teleported in
6:40 pm: water floods sublevels, flash-boils upon contact with entity, shrouding it in mist.
5:53 pm: entity wanders around the open-air facility until it finds a key, eats it (makes people incapacitate when they come close)
6:12 pm: oldlace circles facility, waiting
6:20 pm: entity dies
Within a hidden German facility, on an uninhabited island in the Baltic, 1945 …
The facility is a rat-nest, filled with vermin of the lowest kind, bloated with hate and bile. A trapped maze, filled with Nazis both dead and dead-to-be, fighting, hexing, dying to protect the Patenkind, the God-child.
A labyrinth with a Minotaur at its center.
Boom.
Special Operative Josef is in the thick of melee, sparring against a whirring, roaring construct made of clockwork and blades, its beryllium bronze heraldry scratched out and defaced with a painted swastika. Ancient Mekhanite ingenuity, stolen and repurposed for the glory of the Third Reich. It wields five curved khopeshes. He wields nothing but his fists.
It is more than a fair fight.
The construct swings a brazen sickle-sword, aiming for Josef's neck. He blocks with his arm, and the blade cuts through his AOI fatigues embeds itself into the meat of his clay arm. The construct attempts to withdraw, to pivot to another angle, but the sword is stuck fast. The golem twists his arm, and shears the bolts in millennia-old joints as he rips the sword from the construct's chassis. The metal beast roars and steams, cogs chattering pointlessly in its newfound stump. Josef presses the advantage and pushes forward.
He raises his fist and prepares to land the killing blow, a fist right through the chassis to grab its clockwork heart, but stops at the last second. A throbbing pain pierces his skull, like nothing he's ever experienced before today. He stumbles and falters, giving the mechanical marvel an opening.
Boom.
The robot darts into his reach, coming so close as if to fold Josef into a warm embrace. The robot's compound eyes reflect the golem's silhouette in its many facets, his own glowing eyes staring back at himself a dozenfold. The robot's remaining blades scrape at his clay hide, attempting to find purchase, attempting to find a way to prise inside and destroy his heart. Destroy his Key.
A phalanx of Templar march down the corridor, blocking gunfire with sigiled shields, cutting down Germany's finest mages with swords and pistol
Above all else, there is a heartbeat, more seismic than cardiac. Echoing throughout the facility and rattling artifacts sensitive to such things.
The heartbeat of a newly born god.
Boom.
The taskforce moves deeper into the facility. More bodies, more Nazis, and the air grows thicker with the taste of magic, of copper and ozone and citrus. The wards on the Templars' armor begin to glow, activated from the sheer density of residual magical energies in the sublevels.
The heartbeat continues to grow louder, and Josef's headache continues to grow worse.
They are near.
A thick mist begins to shroud the corridor, warm and muggy like the steam from a sauna. Visibility drops, and their pace slows accordingly. They are very nearly flying blind, and could easily be ambushed.
But they aren't. The sounds of the continued fighting of Durant's men and Obskuracorps mages fade behind them, and they are left alone, moving in silence, feeling their way through the beseiged Nazi base by inches.
The Templar on point holds up a mailed fist. At the end of the hall, in the mist, stands a thin, small shadow.
The shadow of a child. The Child. The infant thaumarch, manifested from the Nazis' ritual, free and unbound from any rite of loyalty. A faint, warm breeze emanates from the end of the corridor, and the steam flows in curls and eddies, floating on convection currents coming from nowhere. The strike team draws closer.
Details begin to coalesce through the clouds. The shadow stands in front of a vault, staring at the complex mechanisms composing its lock. The thaumarch is surrounded by the bodies of Allies and Nazi alike, piled up near it and around the hall. Josef cannot tell if the soldiers are dead, or merely slumbering.
They draw closer. Josef can now see its waist-length hair, blond tresses that flow like molten gold from its head and down its shoulders. It turns, and he can see its blue eyes, a deep, burning blue, like twin pools of liquid oxygen. He can see its face, open and innocent and neotenous, carved from the finest of pale marble. There was not a single curve or cut out of place in its form, symmetrical and beautiful in every way. The ultimate creation of a society that craves perfection.
It is a girl.
The lead Templar moves to raise their sword, but Josef stops them with a heavy hand on their pauldron. "Look at the bodies surrounding Her. You would join them if you try to strike Her down."
The Templar frowns. "What would you have us do, then?"
"Stand back, and watch."
The Templar relaxes his grip on his sword. In the interim, the Girl had turned back towards the vault door, studying it. Josef's head twitches as Her heart beats once more, sending another rivet of pain through his lumpen skull. How annoying.
The Girl places her hand on the vault door, which begins to shake and creak. Silver wards flare to life from the attack. Flesh-eating scarabs form from nothing and swarm Her, oozing tendrils of darkness leach from the shadows and grapple Her, and a dozen other hexes and curses heap themselves upon Her as the Girl activates and burns through the layers of protection spells engraved on the vault door.
Her heart beats. The beetles fall away, their shells smoking. The tentacles writhe and wither, as the portal of darkness that created them close and sever the tendrils at the root. The curses and hexes bend and twist in their path, swirling around the Girl as if drawn in by a gravitational pull, before passing through an event horizon and dissipating into nothingness.
With a violent, vibrant crash like the sound of glass breaking, the wards shatter, and the door comes away with it, disassembled into its constituent parts and discarded in a heap on the floor. The Girl walks into the vault, unperturbed.
The strike team follows soon after.
They find the goddess sitting cross-legged on the vault's concrete floor, next to a wooden transport crate stuffed with straw, its lid ajar. She holds in Her hands a hunting horn, carved from the horn of an extinct auroch, capped with polished brass, Nordic runes etched in a spiral pattern down its length. It is one of the Obskuracorps' ersatz Keys, An object of occult power and cultural significance, one that represents the heritage of the Aryan nation, and the strength which it seeks to attain.
She brings the Key to her her mouth and begins to chew on the rim, the bone splintering between Her teeth.
The Templar to Josef's right shifts, sanctified chain mail rattling. "Guess the thing's hungry, eh?"
The golem nods. "Indeed."
He shifts on his feet, staring at the Child as She enjoys Her first meal. He nods again, this time to himself. "Alright, then."
Josef takes a step toward the thaumarch, holding his hand out as the others begin to follow. Alone, he approaches the entity, and crouches in front of her. He speaks slow and purposeful, choosing his words wisely. "Hello, Child. Is the meal to your liking?"
The Girl cocks Her head and looks up to Josef. Even crouching, his earthen bulk looms over the slight build of the infant goddess. Bits of spit and bone hang from Her lip as She chews. Her voice, when She speaks, is quiet, more of a thought than a sound. It is a subliminal vibration that shakes the core of Josef's very being, as each word brims with the power of the burning sun and the force of the howling winds, raw and brutal and innocent of all malintent. Unthinking Nature, formed and shaped into the figure of a child.
"What are you?"
"I am a golem. A construct made through magic by the hands of man."
She cocks Her head, not understanding. "Construct?"
"I was not born, and do not possess a soul, as my companions do. My father, my creator, shaped me from clay and Key, and carved into my forehead the words of God. I am much like you, Child."
The Girl purses Her lips. "Was your father cruel to you?"
Josef shakes his head. "The kindest man I have ever known."
She gnaws on the rim of the horn. "Mine isn't. He hit me."
Josef is quiet for a moment, before responding. "You do not have to worry about him, Child. We … took care of him. He will not be able to hurt you any longer."
She pauses, glancing at Josef. The mist twists and colors within the vault, the sharp scent of lilacs filling the room. "Thank you, golem."
"My name is Josef ben Judah. What is your name, Child?"
"My father called me God-child. His followers called me Demiurge. They all called me Savior."
The golem tilts his head, the golden flame within his eye-sockets flickering. "Those are all titles and descriptions, Child. Did they not give you a name for yourself?"
The Girl frowns. "I don't think so."
Josef hums, thinking. He looks towards the Templars, who are all following the conversation with rapt interest. One of the soldiers is fingering the beads of the rosary hanging from his neck, silently mouthing a prayer. Josef looks around the mist-shrouded vault, observing the piles of artifacts looted from across the world, the crates with lids half-closed, the glint of gold and jewels barely visible. He spots a clutter of relics in the corner discarded and forgotten, obviously Jewish in origin, most likely stolen from Germany's synagogues. A menorah, the Menorah, the lost candelabra from the Second Temple, stolen away to Rome and then lost, is perched atop the pile, one of its branches broken off, the inscriptions on its base defaced.
Josef looks back to the Child, who meets his gaze with Her own. "Perhaps 'Basha'? In my father's language, it means 'child of God'."
The Child bites Her lip, Her gaze unfocusing as She says the word quietly to herself. Her voice reverberates within Josef, and Her heart beats once more. Her eyes clear, and She smiles. "I like that!"
Basha's smile is the most beautiful thing Josef has ever seen.
"Tobias, you take your men and report the thaumarch's location and activities to Durant. I will deal with Her."
The head Templar looks to him, eyes wide. "You cannot be serious. Leave you alone with a rogue Nazi god?"
The golem hums, his gaze still on the Child,. "Your sword will shatter against her, your wards will not repel her. Neither spell nor blade nor bullet shall slow her, but perhaps words shall.
"You're old."
"That I am, child."
The Girl looked up at the golem. She asks a question with a voice that is more of a thought than a sound, a subliminal vibration that shakes the core of Josef's very being. "What are you?"
Josef gets down on one knee, sinking it into the soil to get to Her eye-level. Her eyes are pools of steaming liquid oxygen, more blue than the sky, clear and piercing and innocent in the way that all children's eyes are.
"Yes, construct. It is… something that is made, not born."
"Am I a construct?"
He sits with Her upon a fallen log, overlooking the white sands and the gray slate of the Baltic. One can almost be at peace, here. If Josef had lungs, he would have inhaled the salty air and sighed. But he doesn't, so he can't. He and the Girl sit quietly there, listening to the sounds of the surf on the shore.
Josef can no longer hear the chattering of gunfire and the muffled gasps of conjured flame, the fighting must have stopped, but who the victor is, no one can say. If the Obskuracorps had won… well they will know fairly soon that it was a poisoned chalice, that they had won the battle, but certainly not the war.
Josef hopes Sir Durant and his team persevered. He is a strong man. A good man. Josef cannot say for certain that he deserves to survive WHITE ARROW, for that is only something that G-d can determine, but it is something that Josef believed, nonetheless.
The golem heard the bassy whine of a B-29, and saw the AOI's plane overhead, banking in a holding pattern, watching, waiting. He did not know why it was waiting,
He looks down to the Girl, playing with the spirits of cat and dog and deer, Her flaxen hair flowing in the ocean breeze, Her giggle parting the branches of the trees. A part of him wishes to call off the plane, to abort the strike, to tell Command that there are no threats here, that She is just a Girl, a Child. To tell them that to kill an innocent is to sin. But what would Her life cost? How many would She destroy before maturity? What would Her free will cost?
A moral absolutist and his first moral dilemma. How it frustrates him.
The golem pats the log next to him. "Amara, come here. I would like to tell you a story."
The Girl runs over to the golem and climbs onto his lap, much to his surprise. "What is a story, Josef?"
Josef hesitates, for a single moment, and wraps his earthen arms around Her. "A story is a false thing that we tell others, to entertain them or teach them a lesson."
Amara smiles. "Tell me a story, Josef."
The whine of the B-29 becomes louder in the distance as it banks around for a final pass. He begins to rock Her in his arms, felt Her radioactive warmth against his chest. "Well, there once was a rabbi in Prague…"
Job 4:17: "Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?"