NOVPUBThough their so-called training had barely stretched beyond a day, Cole was more than ready to return to the elegance afforded by their OTAC privileges. The train ride back was, by every technical metric, identical to the first. It boasted the same aristocratic accommodations; the same deference from the staff. But experience was a cruel editor, and after the day they’d had, familiarity had been rewritten into something else entirely.
Comfort wasn’t about the presence of luxury. It was about what came before. And what had come before? A ‘training exercise’ that had been anything but – a crisis meant for seasoned Slayers, not freshly arrived personnel seeing their first goblin.
In fairness, they had been given the basics. Verna had shown them the ropes, and they’d honed their skills well. But that was just theory. Translating it into high-intensity combat against a Vampire Lord had been another matter entirely, and though they’d made it through intact, it wasn’t because of anything taught in a controlled environment.
It was because they had real combat experience prior to this – not entirely applicable to this world, perhaps, but more than enough to have properly conditioned them. Put anyone else in that situation and they would’ve gotten cooked, much less gotten away with just cuts and bruises.
The countryside zipped by like some medieval postcard reel. The cliché was almost funny, considering everything they’d just been through. Staring out the window, Cole flexed his side, testing where that blow had left its mark. His ribs had long since shut up thanks to his healing potions and Elina’s work, but the knowledge of the strike lingered, a phantom reminder of mortality that no potion could quite erase.
He glanced at Ethan, who had shifted in his seat again, probably dealing with the same phantom pain from where that Nevskor had nearly snapped his legs. Been there, done that – the body remembered what the mind tried to forget.
Even in rest, Warren didn’t waste time. The majority of the trip had been dedicated to analysis, from the Vampire Lord’s tactics to the techniques they used to bring it down. Something had the man spooked, and it sure as hell wasn’t the Vampire Lord itself.
As frightening as it was to face it, the demon probably ranked low on Warren’s threat scale, which meant he must’ve been spooked by its very existence. K’hinnum’s presence out on the field heralded the arrival of threats that wouldn’t rank so low.
They hit Alexandria after dark, getting whisked away to OTAC the moment they stepped foot off the train. Cole had really looked forward to a proper shower and actual sleep, but he’d expected as much. Bureaucracy might slow down most operations, but not OTAC’s.
Cullen Fernal himself had been waiting for them in the Operations Center alongside Syndra. They hadn’t even bothered with pleasantries, opting to dive straight into the heart of the matter.
Cole obliged. He kept his report tight, starting with the missing patrol and going all the way up to K’hinnum’s speech – or at least, the version of it he and Mack had reconstructed and written down.
Cullen gave nothing away – not in his posture, not in his expression, not in the way he processed the report without so much as a flicker of concern. But silence was never truly neutral. It was either a void or a shield, and men like Fernal didn’t waste it on the former. If the timeline was accelerating, if a Vampire Lord was already working to weaken Celdorne, then OTAC had never expected the Demon Lord’s premature awakening as a possibility to begin with.
The dots had done them the favor of connecting themselves, proving that whatever schedules OTAC had made were never the right metric to begin with – about as Protean as a game of thrones, where victory was real only until the next move proved it wasn’t.
Cullen still remained an unreadable slate, but his orders filled the silence for him. Strinrik and Allesoire’s expedition was done – recalled outright because, shockingly, hiking into a demonic hot zone wasn’t quite the most tenable career choice. When OTAC started pulling back high-level Slayers and their heavily armed escorts, it was as good as admitting that no one out there was handling shit anymore.
Syndra’s intelligence division got bumped to high priority, tasked with tracking and reinforcing all convoys, confirming whether any other outposts had gone the way of Kidry. It would be up to her to assess the seeming coincidence of the fiasco – perfectly timed with their ‘training mission’ – and to lock the whole outpost down before possession became the next great export.
The possessed would be studied. If a cure existed, OTAC would either find it or decide the effort wasn’t worth the cost. Either way, containment took precedence. If the situation in Kidry wasn’t recoverable, well… that wasn’t today’s problem. Nobody had thrown around the word losses yet, but it already tainted the air, a polite omission in place of an ugly truth.
Still, solid decisions, all of them. Sensible. Right, even. And when all that planning inevitably collided with the reality that demons didn’t give a shit about the best laid plans of elves and men or otherwise, Cole’s team would be the ones standing in their way. Cole’s team would be forced to hold the shortest end of the stick. Cole’s team would be getting fucked the hardest.
They were promised rest and training, but who knew how long that’d last? Given their luck, the next ‘training’ mission would probably be as ‘easy’ as the one planned at Nolaren. They’d get a crash-course in ‘good enough’ before getting thrown at something that should, by all rights, be eating them alive.
In any other world, with any other party, this would be a death sentence – a bloody, grotesque catastrophe and a tragedy for all involved. But they managed to get by with just the basics, and they’d continue to do so. Still, Cole wouldn’t let himself get cocky with a single win; any advantage was worth securing.
Cullen wrapped up with a repeat of the same directives Syndra had given them. Most immediate – and, if Cole was being honest, important – of all, they’d go home and rest.
– –
Cole accompanied Mack to OTAC’s medical wing, breakfast still settling. He had to admit, everything here was high-grade – just a notch below the castle’s over-the-top spreads or the train’s fancy dinners. But with a declining appetite, he only saw the meal as solid fuel after the Vampire Lord shenanigans chewed him up and spit him out. Sleep sufficed, and that was the best word he could use to describe his rest. He’d have preferred to attempt to catch a few more hours, but Mack’s psych eval was next on the docket.
With the Kidry survivors inbound, the medical wing had readied for crisis response – doctors and apprentices executing their own version of a mass-casualty protocol, albeit with runic flourishes. Though, Cole didn’t really have high hopes for that.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
They found Elina in the midst of sterilizing equipment with her magic. She looked up, raising an eyebrow. “Sir Cole? And Sir Mack? What brings you here? I had thought you both mended. Do you yet suffer some lingering ailment?”
Mack smirked, tossing a hand up. “Ah, we’re both fine. It’s nothing like that; if you’ve got the time, I wanna show you something – a psych eval. Psychological evaluation. We’re gonna need some privacy for this.”
Elina nodded. “Very well.”
She guided them away from the epicenter, arriving at an empty office in a quieter part of the facility.
“This evaluation, I presume, gauges the resilience of the mind – like a fortitude assessment. Or is it perhaps some subtler inquiry?”
Mack closed the door, pulling up seats for them. “Yeah, something like that. Think of it like this – you can sometimes tell when a guy’s lying, right? Maybe he glances to the left, or his voice sounds weird, or something. There’s always a tell. Same goes for someone who’s happy; they smile, they laugh, their tone is lively. And the same goes for pain – the type that can break a man without a drop of blood. The signs are always there, and this eval picks up on those signs. Figures out who’s just tired, and who’s drowning under the weight of what they’ve been through.”
Elina followed Mack, sitting beside him. “A study to discern what a man will not – perhaps cannot – reveal.”
Mack grinned. “Yeah. And Captain Mercer here’s volunteered to be our case study.”
“A willing subject?” Elina asked. “I had thought these inquiries a thing men sought to avoid.”
They were indeed, but Cole wouldn’t dare put it so bluntly – not with Elina’s impression of him at stake. “Oh, don’t mistake me for eager. This was inevitable. Mack’s just making a spectacle of it.”
“Eh,” Mack leaned back, spinning a pencil between his fingers. “Gotta run the eval either way. Figured I’d kill two birds with one stone – get Elina a front-row seat while we’re at it.”
Elina, though – she definitely wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity to twist the knife. “Ah, how noble! Shall I commend your valor now, or wait till the inquisition has had its due?”
Cole chuckled. “An inquisition, is it? Yeah, that sounds about right.” He stopped smiling. “Y’know, I think you might feel differently once Mack’s done prying into my head.”
Mack got his notebook ready. “Let’s get to it, then.”
Mack cleared the administrative mundanity in no time. Name, rank, date, review of the after action report – check, check, check. Then came the checklists designed to measure how traumatized and stressed he was, from the PCL-M to the MOSS. Cole answered as honestly as he could. He had been through enough of these evaluations to know the script by heart. Those standardized assessments were just bureaucratic theater; just trying to compress the chaos of combat into neat little boxes and numbers.
What really mattered was the interview.
“Let’s begin with the mission-specific assessment.” Mack shifted into shrink mode. “Talk me through your experience with K’hinnum. How are you processing that encounter?”
Cole already had his answer. “Hated it – nothing to compare it to; nothing that could’ve prepared us for this. That flash-step threw a real wrench in our shit. Not gonna lie, it was terrifying, y’know? Seeing something I’ve never seen before. Hard to establish fire superiority when your target can damn near teleport across the battlefield at will. We only got out because we got lucky – we just so happened to have tricks up our sleeves that the Vampire Lord had never seen.”
“Any intrusive thoughts about the encounter? Flashbacks, dreams, moments where it comes back when you’re not expecting it?”
Cole knew he couldn’t be objective – he could try, but no one ever was. He tried anyway. “When I’m not expecting it, no. But… I do replay it in my head sometimes. Analytically, of course. Definitely not tripping over it, but it’s got me thinking about how we fight back. It seems easily disoriented, so spamming flashbang spells could work – our concussive fireballs. Still, trying to figure out a good strategy against something so inhuman, it’s a challenge. A real challenge, I gotta admit.”
Mack nodded, making a note. “And how does this compare to human combat experiences? You’ve seen your share of that.”
Cole lowered his head. Human combat was grounded; sensible, but still just as prone to the bullshit that could sunder even the most perfect of plans. What happened in Yemen, for one. He pushed it aside.
“Human combat makes sense, y’know? Even when it’s chaotic, there’s a logic to it. There are constraints. The demons, though… How do you assess a threat when you don’t even know what they’re capable of? Granted, the Kingdom has some information, but only some.”
"So the unpredictability is higher," Mack observed.
“Yeah.” The word came out sharper than expected.
Mack made another note but moved on, continuing through several standard questions about sleep, appetite, and energy. Cole gave brief answers.
“Let’s move on to risk assessment. Primary concerns going forward?” Mack asked.
Cole almost blurted his answer. “Possession. That’s the big one. Even if it can’t control us, it can still affect us. I remember when it first dropped down – it felt like winning was a pipe dream. That aura… you felt it too, right?” He glanced at Mack, then Elina. “You know what it is, right?”
Mack gave Elina a nod, letting her speak. “I felt it indeed – a most dismal air, quite as you say it worked upon us. Truthfully, we’ve scarcely puzzled out half its secrets. It’s no easy matter, I assure you, to reason out a spell one cannot see. Yet this much we hold certain: that ‘aura’ is but a lesser influence, far below true possession.”
“Yeah, I’m worried about that myself,” Mack admitted. “But back to you, Mercer. Any other concerns?”
“Adaptation. These demons aren’t stupid. What’s worse than their abilities is the fact that they’re intelligent to boot. That infiltration on the first night, probing outposts, and… honestly? It probably wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that they planned to ambush us. Hell of a coincidence. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, thrice, more? They’re getting intel somehow.”
Mack registered the response with a look that suggested complete understanding. They all felt the same way. But he didn’t address it; instead, he continued with his interview. “And how’s that affecting your approach to team safety?”
The exasperation building up within Cole erupted in a tired smile. “Would it dock some points if I told you it’s got me paranoid?”
“Well, I definitely can’t blame you for that. Still, it looks like you’re particularly focused on unpredictable elements.” Mack leaned in, studying Cole like he was a lab rat. He recognized the underlying blight – Yemen. Everyone on the team knew, at least the broad strokes. “Tell me about that.”
Cole looked at Elina. All of their operations were classified, no more than a solid block of redacted text to anyone without the clearance. A few months ago he’d have shut the conversation down immediately with a foreign national in the room. But now? Their secrets meant fuck-all in a world where demons could possess people through a sandwich. Besides, to Elina, his war stories probably registered somewhere between fairy tales and anthropological curiosities – just more Earth baggage the otherworlders dragged along with their guns and gear.
“Doubt anyone from back home would get on our asses,” Mack reassured. “I need to know what’s going on.”
Cole exhaled. He would’ve preferred to avoid talking about it, but if it helped Mack do his job, then he had no other choice. “Copper Line, three years ago…”
