Hey, It’s Dwight.
Sorry for the gap in time needed to collect myself… even as I’m recounting what’s been going on the past few years, I’m still running operations myself. Although… There is this fairly large mission set coming up, so let’s just say while I am covering the milestones, nothing saying we can’t double back or, triple back? Revisit down paranormal graveyard lane…
Anyways, shortly after my first Situation Whiskey, I had managed to acquire quite the reputation amongst the brass at PEXU for my “capability with minimal support in austere environments-” or that’s at least what Montgomery told me. By the time I walked out of my first year in the unit, I had more or less square up against PARAFOR at least once in almost every regional sect across the world… the exceptions being Africa and the Pacific. Though the latter would change, the last time I was in the east I was serving with the flag on my shoulder, and me and my platoon were suffering in 90% humidity in the depths of the Jungle Combat Training Center in Korea… which coincidentally enough is where I’d be going back to.
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Dossier: Nine Tailed Fox
I’d never been big on Asian folklore, but one thing I gather is that due to the proximity of Japan, Korea, China, many of the entities tend to remain in the region and prowl regardless of the national borders each country erected so sternly. The Kappa were a recurring problem I’d heard about, a consistent source of disappearing people’s the JSDF and the ROK regularly convened about… however one of the most terrifying that is spoken about only in hushed whispers is the demon that seeks to achieve immortality: in Japanese you’ve probably heard of it as Kitsune, though in Korean it’s pronounced Kumiho. What I was sent prior to my departure for the peninsula was stepped in millennia old iconography with not so much in the way of recent info… I could come to find out why.
I wouldn’t be doing this alone however; due to the proximity the location of the Kumiho was to the DMZ, the deployment of a larger unit would unnecessarily increase tensions with the DPRK, so PEXU had to deploy solo operators.
My secondary I would be rolling with would be a man by the name of Jae-Hyun Kim; a survival and evasion specialist and a member of South Korea’s elite 707th Special Mission Group, a unit shrouded in mystery and black operations, known only for their high risk operations. His was a resume stepped in special operations etiquette and proven from what several various pages of redacted previous operations told me, and supposedly I had done such a good job that this old burnt out Light Infantryman was seen as equivalent… we’d find out if that was true in the coming days.
You know what I hate about flying? Turbulence. You know what’s worse than turbulence? Enduring it while you’re 30,000 feet over the deepest ocean in the world. I’m not gonna sit here and act like I’m stone stoic, there’s a reason I never went to airborne school. The flight over despite it’s extremely long wait time was… nostalgic.
I was on one of those mega sized several hundred seaters, the kind of ones with multiple floors, screens on every TV. The downside was I had to ride in economy, yeah even when you’re contracted for Counter-cryptid operations, the government still had to save its nickel somehow. I’d thought back on the predicament we found ourselves in… scrapping the top of the budget, plenty of munitions to go around but major support was few and far between… as to why, well… I’ll get to that later.
For now I just sat back, enjoying the ambience of the mach 700 horsepower outside as I took in my surroundings; a dark haze from the scenery of the plane, the slight shake every two to five minutes, the eyes outside of my window. I cracked open my bottle of- wait, hang on. My eyes shot to the window to my right, my own face staring back as the deep, blood red irises were consuming. My own smile seemed to creep up the sides of my face as my skin stretched and tore, my breathing seemed to get hemmed up for a moment as I didn’t know what to do, my blood ran cold, I flinched in my seat. -And then I woke up….
You know that split second of deathly fear you feel, like you’re going into free fall? You especially feel it on a plane due to the air pressure and disorientation from turns, that. That’s what I felt as I woke up… looking around, everything was fine, I pulled up the cover to the window and there was nothing… just clouds, rain, and a slick plane wing. I excused myself to the restroom… which as a 6’2 american on flights made for people who are on average a foot shorter than me, you can imagine how comfortable that was. The splash of cold water on my face sobered me up as I gazed into the mirror… I must’ve been so stressed I burst a blood vessel in my eye.
Fucksakes: one stress alleviated, another added.
I landed in Seoul a few hours later, I guess the singular positive out of whatever that waking nightmare was-was managing to kill a slew of time. Though I’m not gonna lie, the vivid reality I felt was all too real… I couldn’t think about it now, I compartmentalized it to the back of my mind and swallowed the key. As I made for the arrivals I ran into Jae; He was a shorter guy, probably like 5’7, with a high and tight, a black jacket and a set of brown and gray digi-camo pants.
“You are Nolan?” he said, shaking my hand and grabbing my weapons case with ease; “Eh, call me Dwight”. He seemed to chuckle at the contrast, his active duty sense of formality, whereas I showed up in jeans and my old leather jacket with a chicago flag patch on the side: “You can call me Jae then…”. We loaded up in a shiny new Tahoe, pulling out… my eye getting lost in the spiraling highways and streets of Seoul that I barely saw between rotations for training and details, Jae drew me out of the nostalgia: “So… have you been briefed on our enemy?”.
“Which one? The mythic being or the ones north of the 38th parallel?” my quip seemed to break the professional ice between us. Jae handed me a folder and I flipped it open, the first thing to greet me wasn’t what I expected… it was some sort of rocky beach head, the pic centered on a hollow rock that had been split open: “What’s this?”.
“That is the killing stone… it is nestled in the volcanic mountains of Japan…. An ancient evil was trapped within it, the Japanese Kitsune… it was placed within an inhospitable place and was sealed for a millennia… it broke open just recently…” he explained, I raised an eyebrow. Some of you might’ve heard of this a couple of years back, but I was still confused. That was across the sea all the way in Japan, what was it doing here in South Korea? “-Did it decide to get a new view?”.
He reached over, flipping the picture to reveal another…. Dated weeks ago; it was an ancient metal pot, old carvings from an era long since buried and purged, the top welded and burned shut- split open down the fuckin middle, so much so I could see the near one inch thick iron cut clean in half.
“-it is not the only one to evade spiritual custody” Jae muttered. “Both of them escaped in close proximity… it can’t be a coincidence” I said, shaking my head. My mind thought back to Minnesota, to mostly classified operations on the East Coast, overseas, outside intervention in releasing millenia old evil was a real and present danger. Jae didn’t seem to focus on it too much: “Maybe… seals are old; however, their blessers have long since left us. Whatever cause does not matter, we have to put it down before she takes more with her?”.
“She?” I raised an eyebrow. “Yes… In the first week we recorded two dozen… harvested…” He said, pulling off the exit towards our destination. I looked at the date of the Kumiho’s escape, glancing over “How many as of today?”.
“Hundreds”.
We made a thousand stops, the air was cold and the rain was heavy but we took our time getting to where we were going. Jae had a reason; concrete morgues and backroads police stations. Everytime we arrived, three cadavers or more greeted us. What I saw made my stomach crawl up my throat: Their faces were contorted in fear, skin drained of all life to the point as black as ash… and their chest cavities were torn open. I remembered this as we pulled up to a ROK Military Police annex, watching them zip up the body bag slowly, the sounds of heavy rain echoing through the open bay door.
“I thought these things were tricksters….” I said, noting the direct violent approach it had shown the people as it continued to reap over the land. Jae’s eyes were locked onto the body bag as it was loaded into a zinc coffin; “The Kitsune are… the Kumiho are a terribly different thing entirely… we are chasing death incarnate, Nolan”.
Soon we arrived at a village north of Seoul, the noise and pollution from Korea’s massive urban center fading off into the distance as all that surrounded us was green forests, hills, and the sound of trees and wind. The area around the settlement was slightly hilly, ancient roads had been freshly paved over, while the buildings were a mix of old school slate roofs, and modern concrete and glass houses in between each other. Two eras were colliding on some of the oldest soil in the pacific… much like our coming confrontation, the comparison ate away at my mind. Jae wore a holster on his hip matching his oh-so-covert military-like attire, whereas I kept my 9 tucked away in my jacket. I let him take the lead as he guided me through the streets.
“One thousand years ago the men and women who locked away the Kumiho lived here… at the seat of this valley. Now? It has traveled in a death march across 85 miles to reap over their descendants…” Jae says, he stops at a T intersection, pointing to the roof just ahead of us. The sloped traditional tile roof was visibly torn up… the intersecting pieces were smashed, others had deep gashes in them. Now fire clay, the material it’s made out of, isn’t the most fragile material… ancient humanity knew what it was doing to protect itself from rain, hail, and harsh eras, so to see it demolished in such a way sent a chill up my spine. Jae then pointed to another… then another, then one of the more modern buildings had the damn concrete cracked and the wire glass windows completely blurred due to cracks. This was enemy territory, I could feel it… all of these people were living on contested territory by something almost virtually incomprehensible.
“So… all those centuries ago… this is the place?” I ask.
“Yes… also, my home” Jae said, like a weight just dropped the gravity of the situation, especially for him, set in deeply. I looked over to see his piercing eyes inspecting every inch of soil. We stood as the last, best chance they had… “One creature did all of this?” I said, Jae shook his head staring daggers into my soul; “That is not a creature… its capability is absolute and it is older than the most early stone of the planet we walk on….”.
He gestured for me to follow as we rounded the sides of one of the houses and there, I saw it: Claw marks, prints and hand marks that looked somewhere between a horrifying beast and something attempting to imitate a man, burned deep into the clay, tile, and stone across the house as it seemed to scale it like an efficient, yet ruthless being. “The earth bleeds the longer it is left to roam, Nolan-... Dwight” Jae says, collecting himself. “We’ll get it done….” I told him with all the reassurance that two guys staring down an east eldritch abomination could. There was a twinge of a smile- the scream we heard from off in the distance dropped any pride we had as every blood cell we had ran cold. “On me” Jae commanded, hand on his holster as we hoofed it. I knew it, I fuckin’ knew it… when I said enemy territory? This is what I meant, I felt sickening vindication for my paranoia as I followed.
The yelling continued…. First a woman, as we could hear every centimeter of her diaphragm calling out in terror, then children, crying. We reached the top of the hill and rounded a corner… a group of people were fleeing from the front of a two story home where a woman had collapsed into the arms of her husband. Jae took the lead, kneeling down as I kept watch… Was it here? If so, we needed to get back to the vic, and lock n’ fuckin’ load. But… could it already know? How potent was this thing’s foresight.
I was overthinking, I scanned the rooftops, saw people peek around alleyways, spying on us- or maybe just seeing what’s happening. Could it be one of them? The Kumiho was said to be able to take the form of anyone, especially prior victims. I stood over Jae and the couple, hand resting on my iron as I gazed around, anxiety permeating my movements as I could feel like I was being stalked. I knew the burning sting all too well, having done this dance more times than I could recollect… it was watching us, wanting to see how we responded.
Jae consoled the woman, he shot up to his feet, hand snapping and unholstering his pistol as I instinctively drew mine. “What’s the ‘sitch?” I asked, eyeing the building with him, his breathing heavy as he kept his barrel out and pointed towards the door; “-She said it lies within… her father attempted to save the child in the upstairs room…”. My eyes snapped to him when he mentioned there was a kid in there; “-And the Kid?”.
I knew the answer in my gut, I didn’t want to, but I had to confirm. He ignored me for a moment, maneuvering on the door muttering; “They are already a delicacy…”.
We both flowed through the front into the main living area, I activated a light on my pistol as he did the same, the interior was dark due to closed blinds. Pucker factor set in as I imagined it could be anywhere… golden eyes staring at me, waiting for us to have charged in, room clearing with pistols wasn’t optimal. Jae called out in his native tongue, yelling as he led the way up the stairs, I followed. At the top there was a door to the left and right…. We each choose a door, Jae went left, I went right… I drew short: The kid’s room. My lowcut boots could feel the carpet and toy bricks on the floor underneath me as I quickly scanned the surroundings, my cone of light quickly clearing the back corners, the closet door… then, to the bed.
A small figure laid on the bed, half covered by a torn up blanket as light shown in from the window just adjacent to the bed…. broken glass covering the area around it as the slats covering it were either torn off or hanging. My hang shook from adrenaline and anticipation as I scanned the bed, the lifeless body of an adult collapsed over it…. There was too much dead space, the closet hadn't been cleared, I didn’t know if either of them were breathing or-... “Jae!!!”.
He quickly charged in after clearing the parent’s room, stacking up behind me he stopped, and I could hear him stifle a gasp. “No…” he muttered, my free hand aimed towards the far side of the room; “Closet”.
He held cover on the center of the room as I moved, whipping open the door… the closet was clear, I turned to see him already approaching the bed. The adult body was pulled off, the body of the grandfather who had entered with a large knife, attempting to defend his grandchild… the knife which had been used to cut out his own heart, still stuck in the gaping crater that was cut all the way into his chest cavity. His eyes were void of the colors of his irises, Jae pointed this out to me with a grimace, I’m translating roughly but he said: “His yeonghon.. his soul… it is gone”.
Worst was the kid… their skin was gray to the point of almost being pure black, the lines split open as if they were falling apart. Poor boy, his eyes wide in terror as he looked up, his heart was taken the same exact way. Jae gripped the blanket on the bed, face twitching out of anger… I shut the kid’s eyes, muttering a small prayer as we left. If it was bold enough to do this in broad daylight… We unloaded our gear at a nearby house towards the western edge of town, that I learned was Jae’s home. I put this together when we entered with duffel bags and weapons cases, and he dropped all of that to hug two girls that ran up. His wife greeted him soon after, as did his grandfather; “-This is my friend, Dwight…”.
We had gotten settled, Jae ensured we got one of the upstairs rooms to set up ‘Overwatch’ as he called it. Unlocked my case and prepped my weapons; an M4 Benelli, a semi automatic shotgun, the italian special. My MK18 rifle was here, along with a set of dual tube night vision. As I checked my lethal assets, I heard Jae call to me from across the room; “Have you got a family?”.
I shook my head “Nah… never settled down”. “You’d make a good dad, you know?” he quipped, preparing his own weapon: an “SR-16”, a new AR/M4 style weapon common amongst special operations. He continued his insightful analysis of my burnt out being: “I can see it in your eyes… You’re looking to finally slow down, yet your heart cannot find the place”. “You sure that’s not the caffeine?”.
“I have to warn you though, brother…” Jae said, checking his body armor and belt; “-The Kumiho culls the hearts and in doing so, the souls of people… to earn immortality. Every life consumed, every memory assimilated, every song ended… is another step”. I thought about it as I gazed over at the target package resting on the desk in the room… the pictures, the information, the mythology, then Jae’s own words. “Hundreds” already consumed. If it hadn’t achieved immortality already?
Then it was going to be an absolute pain in the ass to take down.
“Well….” I said, holding my 12 gauge in my hands; “-It’s a good thing we came backed by superior firepower”.
Our last moment of respite came when I was invited to dinner with Jae’s family at the table. His father sat at the head, both Jae and his wife flanking him as their kids sat with their mom. I was told to sit at the other end as the “guest” to their home. They served me… ‘Japchae’, his wife told me it would “heal the soul before a confrontation”.
Honestly I think I’ll be going to korean grills more often, it hit in a way I hadn’t felt in a small bicentennial. I was drawn from my all to Americanized devouring of their food by Jae’s father; “You’re in the American army?”.
“Was… sir” I said, policing up my respect in a way that had Jae and his wife chuckling. The old man’s eyes were that of slick granite, welcoming yet with a wall of stoic confidence behind them. “Once a soldier, always a soldier” Jae said between bites, in a way that had his wife slapping his arm and telling him off for eating while speaking. After everyone in the village had settled down for the night, remaining indoors even on the weekend, a pseudo curfew was in effect…. We got to work. I pulled my plate carrier over my jacket, slinging my rifle to my back as I kept my shogun at the ready. I pulled down my night vision as the dark, shadowy rural village we were in became bathed in a wave of blues and whites that illuminated every corner, dispelled every shadow… with the natural moonlight aiding us, we were in business.
I stepped out onto the darkened streets, the wooden steps creaked with every moment I made as I could hear my boots impact the paving of the roads. The entire area was deserted as I scanned, a piercing feeling of impending contact… [“Radio check-”] I heard Jae’s voice come through the radio, my free hand slid off my shotgun and to my push to talk; [“This is November-1, loud and clear”].
Silence returned to my headset as I scanned around, the only audible sound was my gear rubbing up against my jacket, the rocks underneath. Even the small river than ran nearby got even more silent… all of the crickets, birds that had been here an hour prior were gone.
[“I am in place”] Jae said, taking an overwatch position on the top floor of his house.
I swallowed hard as I continued to scan my surroundings, sticking to the walls of buildings as I prowled through the darkness; [“It’s too silent out here”] I muttered into the comms. A moment passed before he whispered through: [“Then it is here… prepare yourself”].
Suddenly… a loud snap and crash occurred in the distant, causing me to pivot 145 degrees towards the southeast. I quickly took off, the muzzle of my shotgun leading the way as I navigated the tight corridors and walkways between roads and buildings.
[“I… think I saw it, you’ll be coming right up on it”] I hear Jae messaged through, the crunch of grass under my boots only grew louder as I rounded a corner…. Only to see nothing; the slight shake of a large roof tile as it rocked on the ground, surrounded by fragments of clay. I scanned the area, then up and around.
[“November-1?”].
My breathing was heavy as I looked around,
[“Nothing, you got anything?”]. [“Negativ-...”].
Silence followed, my blood ran cold; [“You there?”] I asked back. I spun around; dark trees surrounding the town seemed to be more impermeable than usual, my night vision couldn’t pierce it. I backed up, just a small bit, the sting of being observed followed, I looked around… then, a gut feeling caused me to spin around. At the peak of one of the rooftops… a set of piercing, golden yellow eyes scanned down at me, sizing me up. My jaw clenched and I aimed my weapon- the sound of a wrenching scream from someone directly to my 9 0’clock drew my focus, nothing. I scanned back… they were gone. It was fucking with me, it had me out in the open and it was trying to gauge my reaction time. Knowing it was inevitable that I would engage, I switched to my rifle, slinging my 12 gauge back- not trying to deconstruct any houses and anyone who might be within them.
Almost immediately I heard the crunching of tile ahead as I took aim, the laser mounted on my rifle allowing me to aim under night vision. It was heading towards the center of the village… I kept pace, the silhouette darted across roofs at speeds unimaginable, barely a flash or a blink. All the while I tried to take aim… nothing, I rounded a corner back onto a main road… My barrel immediately dropped as I came face to face with a kit, my boots scraping as I stopped, holding out a hand.
“Easy, easy…” I tried to calm them, I didn't know Korean and Jae was currently unreachable. “You need to get back in doors” I pointed to the houses around, my eyes still scanning… I should’ve known something was up when the kid didn’t even flinch at the sight of a fully armed american with multiple weapons. I just thought it was something cultural, I spun around, rifle aimed… then… I looked back: “-Kid you need to…”. The smile on that… thing’s face, stretching to the point where the flesh should have torn, eyes wide and piercing into my soul. I didn’t notice it at first as I was scanning other sectors but…
…-It was the kid we found in that upper room. My rifle immediately snapped to the creature, who stood there wearing the visage of the fallen. The laser was slightly shaking as I backed up, not wanting to take my eyes off it, then… a series of shots ringing out from the west caught my attention. That was Jae’s weapon… Then, through a broken radio transmission: [“November-1, Alamo!! Alamo!!! Alamo-...]. Alamo. It was code amongst PEXU units where whatever safe haven was established was breached by an enemy force- his home. My eyes snapped back to the thing, it was gone… Just a set of beast-like claws burned into the road. God dammit.
I raced back to the house… front tiles falling off as the upper window was breached, I called out; “Jae?!”. No answer, my barrel was raised as I pushed through and entered- one person room clearing is hell and is almost always a death sentence, but circumstances be damned. “Friendlies entering!!!” I called out, it was our “running password” to avoid fratricide. The main living area was clear, save for someone huddled in the corner… Jae’s wife. “Hana!!!” I called out, arms wrapped around her legs as I reached out, her eyes staring at me in terror. “Hana it’s me!!”.
She backed up slightly, shivering; “It-... It looked like you”.
I stopped as I realized all the commotion from the top floor had ceased. I raised my weapon and aimed for the stairs; [“November-1 to Kilo-9, status”].
Jae didn’t respond… “Hana do you have a place you can hide?” I asked, only to be answered with manic sobs. Great, just terrific. I approached her, taking her hand and helping her to stand up… just then, the sound of the side door opening caused my hand to snap to my pistol, drawing and aiming it at… Jae. “Dwight!!!” he called out; his rifle raised as he aimed it at me, I aimed back; “It’s me, Jae…”. I could tell he needed it to be proved as he stared back through his night vision, my pistol aimed at him; “Show me your eyes”. I flipped up my night vision as he looked, he followed… They were normal. As I was reupholstering my weapon his face went pale, seeing who was with me.
“Dwight…. Hana is currently in the room with our boy!!!” he shouted, my throat went dry as my head turned… only to be looking into a set of golden eyes, a sinister grin that bore several sets of sharpened teeth, and a smell of death and lavender.
Immediately “her” hand ripped from mine, slicing through my gloves on the way and causing me to grimace as I stumbled back. “Hana” screamed in a way that made my mind bent, my eyes watering as I reached for my rifle. I opened up with a set of shots, my suppressor snapping… she lurched forward and swiped at me, and it’s 4-foot-nothing frame it was shifted into sent me flying back into the front door way. My head slammed against the wall, knocking me silly as I watched Jae take aim and fire… the thing reverted to a truer form… the skin and face melting in a weird spiral, as it dropped and took to all fours… darkened flesh, golden eyes, nine tails behind it.
It smashed straight through one of the closed windows, crawling up the side of the house. I looked down to my chest… a single strike managed to almost completely punch through one of my armor plates, crushed ceramic and polythene spilling out like a white dust… along with cutting deep into the receiver of my rifle- Fucksakes. Yeah, so that’s how I lost my first rifle, still angers me to this day. I dropped my deadlined MK18 onto the ground, picking up my shotgun, checking the chamber.
“You broken?!” Jae shouted.
I shook my head; “Nah, still kicking”. A crash came upstairs, the scream of Jae’s son followed, he roared angrily as he charged upstairs, I followed. What played out next happened in the matter of seconds… but it felt like eternity- dunno if it’s because of adrenaline or just being near the thing. Jae charged in first, rifle raised as the thing stood over his son who was cowered under his bed, the Kumiho stood over him, one hand peeling the bed up before dropping it as we approached.
All darkness and ambient light seemed to meld with it, as if it was both everywhere and nowhere. With my buckshot I couldn’t get a safe shot. Jae fired first, impacting its sternum and causing it to pounce forward, their claws puncturing deep into his front plate. He struggled with it and I could see him grimace beneath his night vision, trying to shove it off as his rifle became trapped between them. I had to act, pressed my muzzle directly up to its hairy and mangled skull, and pulled the trigger- a small shockwave of the contained discharge and buckshot impacting corroded flesh, sending silver blood flying out as its screech caused me to feel nauseous.
With a swipe of its right hand it ripped one of my tubes off my night vision, and slashed into the right side of my face. There was barely any warning, no disgusting tearing sound, just a single swipe of air and half my face became unzipped…Guess I earned a new scar. My own red iron was blinding me, causing me to cough as I was flat on my ass. The entire side of my face stung as if it was on fire, the kind of pain you only know by being there- not gonna lie, don’t wish that shit on most… some, but not all. Even as the impact sent me stumbling backwards, I slammed back on the trigger, pumping it full of buckshot, the shots causing it to let go of Jae who fell back into a dresser.
My glove became drenched as I tried to clear my eyes. I caught a glimpse of what was next: from the shadows… a silver knife impacted the back of the Kumiho, my eyes followed to see Jae’s father twisting the blade, whatever it was made of hurt it, hurt it bad, and caused the area around it to start hissing with steam and fire…. -I also saw it duck down and slash backwards, gutting the old man’s stomach, the sound of mulched flesh and meat pouring onto the floor as he let out a single, pained gasp.
Jae cried out in anger as he fired his rifle, a hail of rounds tearing through the being that was falling apart… dark flesh melting the floor as chunks fell off. By this time I rose to a knee, wiping off crimson as it caked over my face, taking aim with my pistol. A light show of flashes both in IR through my still working tube, and in the darkness from my other eye. Snaps of 9mm were joined by 5.56 as we slowly cut it down… and soon enough… its golden eyes stared into my soul as it melted into a pile of mess and evil, eating through the floor. The adrenaline dump quickly left us as the wet-cold from the outside chilled both of us to the bone, I let out a shaky grunt as I viewed the remains of the creature: “So much for immortality”.
Hana ran up the stairs; scooping up her son before crying in their head. Jae did as well… I stumbled towards the old man, flicking up my beat-to-hell NODS as we locked eyes. There was a strange chuckle in the man’s voice… seeing my face torn open to the point where I'm definitely sure I could feel windage through my cheek, and… the state he was in. I couldn’t hide the look in my eyes staring at his pulverized belly, he knew it… A shaky nod in the man’s face as he gripped my hand… and I held his… staying with him until it fell from mine. Jae walked over… a shaky breath in his voice as I stood up, our eyes looked to the hissing crater in the floor that was once the Kumiho.
A millennia of violence and torment ended at the end of the barrel of human determination. “Jae?” I asked, shakingly getting to my feed. “Call it in…” he muttered, I looked to him “Your mission, your home…”. I wasn’t going to take that from him, not after everything he’s given… and lost. I slowly closed the old man’s eyes as I heard Jae through my damaged peltors; [“Main… this is Kilo-9… OPFOR-Actual is down… preparing proof of Echo X-Ray”].
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I remained in South Korea for the funeral service, shortly after getting my face patched up. The loss of their grandfather weighed heavily on Jae’s family but with the Kumigo put down, it meant they and their people could move on. PEXU estimates that nearly half a thousand succumbed to its wave of death, and just the confirmed ones… those that went missing alone on trails, in rivers, of whom local police wrote off? It’s a miracle we were able to put it down at all after that long night. We parted ways, he told me if I ever needed him, simply call. In this industry? I may have to take him up on that offer one day… I would several times. I remember the phone call from Montgomery not long after that, I got a few weeks off to “heal up my injuries”. You know what they don’t tell you about facial injuries like that? How much it frickin’ burns in the upper atmosphere. Dunno if it’s the moisture but it was a long flight back to the continental 48. On the bright side, I got to relax at my house… I bought it shortly after my departure from that company I used to work at. My prior encounters before PEXU left me a little more than paranoid of the deep woods, and with my previous employers looking to catch me off guard I knew I needed a place of quiet, open isolation.
I got it… with a few caveats.
The house itself was a two floor ranch house that came with a large plot of land near the Rockies. Simple, quaint, no one for a few dozen miles… though the first weird sign was the fact that it had a foundation underneath that was nearly as large in area as the structure above. That and the fact that there was nothing on this place… no hauntings, killings, murders, but nothing at all… like it just dropped out of nowhere. Despite probably the better judgment of anyone else, I took it, used a variety of tools to renovate and fortify it, a small arsenal to guard it. Some days are peaceful, other days… not so much.
The day I got back I remember pulling up to my front porch in my SUV, a strange grey… thing on my front steps. I kept my hand death gripped on my nine as I exited my vehicle and approached. For safety or otherwise, a large amount of my property was lined with bear traps. Here’s a hint: they’re not for bears. So when I strolled up and saw all of them… and I mean all of them, all 12 were bent and warped together in a fashion physically impossible with no weld marks and beyond what any tools could do, and placed in a fashion too intentional to be an animal…. I looked around, noticing the air outside was a lot more stale than when I left it. There was also no wind… at all.
Let’s just say I made sure not to look outside when I heard scratching on the sides of the house that night. You’ll find the Great Plains, Oklahoma, and especially Appalachia are regions where you just don’t acknowledge some stuff. It was hard for my Chicagoan brain to come to terms with the outside being lined with gashes, too deep and too high to be from any local coyotes or other critters.
-Or the handprints that started to appear on my bannister or the sides of the house, a slight embed to be just deep enough to be noticed. One of them also appeared on one of my windows making me have to replace the entire thing… -fuckin’ jerk. But for now… it’s a weird symbiosis: The land likes to desecrate my house that doesn’t exist on any public records, I stubbornly remind it that I’m not going anywhere by paving and painting over anything it does.
…
I guess it’s time I get back to the prior faction I mentioned… Remember when I said we were in a war NATO and other governments had been fighting for decades? That wasn’t an exaggeration. Do you know how many have survived this long in this cursed world? Answer: by being a stubborn species and forcing it to back down, and thus a balance occurs. We’ve been dealing with these things… entities, not myths, real, living things that have been around since before Pangea and the earth was cooled, all the way back with swords and hatchets- got bless our ancestors. Recently though an… escalation occurred.
World leaders got comfortable in the routine of covering up strange occurrences, attacks, and incursions under the guise of gas leaks, mass shootings, accidents, trying to hide the unnatural under a sense of conceptuality. The problem? They lost the narrative… quickly. I’ve got another question for you: What is a Cult? A group of unwavering devotion and ambition, misguidedly dedicated usually in a religious sense towards leadership that skews such effort and sacrifice for all too sinister purposes. The movement designated the “Blackwood Brotherhood” meets that definition to a T. Theorized to be the descendants of ancient wiccans and ritual practitioners from ancient europe, their modern incarnation bears that of ancient shifters under the guise if an elk or a deer's head.
They’re smart… extremely smart. When the powers that be decided to blame everything on natural disasters? They tripled down and festered distrust. If all these accidents keep happening, who’s to blame? The government that promised to protect you. Federal entities couldn’t just walk it back and say it was an occult outbreak in Louisiana or a skin peeler in Navajo territory, could they? Answer: No. Every “cult” has their public face, The “New Advent” is that answer… originally a humanitarian movement funded by rich backers of whom could not be traced, they offered refuge to all those who had been affected, who’s loved ones went mission by the hundreds of thousands every year. Like moths to a flame… they’ve flocked.
The Invasion has already happened.
Soon every state, every town has people who believe in the New Advent. Churches? Mosques? They’re there too… What about those powers that be? What about them… Many cut and run, looking to outpace our mysterious adversaries or… well, others went off the grid. I remember when I got that dossier and flipped through… there is no knowledge on their leader if there's one… could be a thousand cells joined together in a single consciousness, it would match up with the ideals of the “Romuva”, ancient russian pagans who’s ideals align all to similarly with the cult. What we do know? The New Advent is being pushed by a man only known as “Ryan Evans…”.
An unsuspecting survivor of the tragic… “disappearance” of Tipton, Indiana, coming from a rust belt family, he and his wife donated millions to helping people recover from such horrific occurrences. In a world of disasters, anxiety, war, Ryan Evans’ slicked over black hair, young and warm demeanor provided all the reassurance to a world looking for protection. He’s got a loving family, gets down and dirty, runs and extremely charitable tech company… everything is so perfectly lined up and… manufactured. Ryan Evans died in Tipton, Indiana and whatever crawled out of there isn’t a man anymore, but it’s charismatic enough to lure people, and because of it? Millions wear those golden wristbands, raise their hands, and praise an all too consuming movement.
PEXU was the short notice answer… led by a disavowed former NATO Chief, staffed by those who had come close to the silent apocalypse we’re fighting and losing against. What do they do to their followers? What “sacrifice” do they ask for? That “shifting” video showed me enough…
An insider amongst the ranks of the blackwood managed to sneak out the video after they were whisked away to a lodge deep in the dense woods of New England… in a room soaked with blood, the log walls and floors lined with glyphs, sundials, and other markings corrupted beyond measured… A group of white cloaked, deer headed individuals and candles around a man, stripped of all clothes… screaming as his skin began to split.
“BIND! Have you trusted a nation or god that saw your family and memories as a statistic? BIND! Have you sat in the dark wondering why your potential was wasted? BIND! Do you hear the call of the shadows and wonder if they are correct? BIND! They are correct. BIND! They want what's best for you. BIND! He is here, he is waiting for you! JOIN! We will save you. BIND! Open the door. BIND!” All of them screamed like sociopaths as that man screamed, pounding the floor as his body bled, skin peeled back to… I don’t know what I saw, but whatever crawled out of him wasn’t’ a man. The sender disappeared shortly after it was leaked, and despite it? Not a single person believed it… except PEXU of course.
That is what we’re fighting against.
Anyways… that’s probably enough for today, I’m hearing something outside, I’m going to go.. “Take care” of it.
I’ll be back soon with another update, Until then… stay safe.
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