Chapter 52: Gleipnir

Weeks had passed since my and my mens encounter with the Wabakaki and we had been brought out of our comfortable barracks, tossed right back on the road on a trip to a village near the Cities largest stone quarry.

Word had been spreading around about a group of beasts causing havoc, destroying buildings and slaughtering innocent.

Normally, us of the Super Suppression Unit would not bring ourselves to deal with this type of problem. That was usually left to a group of soldiers.

But when word was spread that a Super was one of those beasts, we were naturally assigned to take care of the beast and bring back whatever corpse it left behind to the squinks.

It took us a good week and a half to arrive by the village. I don't remember the name anymore, a fact I've been finding more prevalent in my old age. Though I do recall the atmosphere, the terror, the nervousness.

How every man, woman and child locked themselves within their huts. We were lucky to catch a family that had packed up all their stuff and was making for the gate, ready to escape this mounting hellhole.

I had asked for directions to the quarry where the beasts were said to be nesting. But all four of them just blankly stared at us before walking past me and my men. That was unnerving to say the least.

I hadn't planned to take my men out there just yet, night was already making itself known to us and fighting at night was a danger we did not want to deal with, especially for beasts that worked more in the night.

We may have challenged beasts like the Nui and the Tyrant who actively assaulted us at night, but we weren't dull enough to challenge the beasts at night.

In the end I had my men set up cam just outside the front gate and got to resting with a two man rotation swapping out every two hours.

By morning light five of my men were gone. One was dead with a single hole through his head.

None of us heard anything. Nor did we see anything.

Still we were on high alert. We all grabbed our weapons and got into formation while I kept an eye out on the surroundings.

Around then I noticed a group of civs wandering from the city gate into the forest. Normally, I wouldn't be as curious about such a thing, but after one of my men is killed and five more go missing, I understandably grew on edge.

And something about this village had been bothering me.

The people were strange, not there.

I was beginning to notice the same for my men. Not many, but a few of the weaker willed were growing slow. I even beat one upside the head with my fist when he dropped a cannonball just inches from my foot as we tracked those civs through the forest.

After that knock the kid seemed to wake up and said the few words I'd never forget even should all my memories be taken from me.

'Boss? How did I get here?'

He looked so confused down on the ground that I stopped my men and began to throw question after question to the kid. His last memory was going for a shit in the night when he'd noticed a glimmer of gold coming from where the watch were sitting.

The same watch that left with one dead and two missing.

I knew it was a Super by this point. Few specials held any abilities to mess with memories. Even fewer could control more than a singular target.

And if my suspicions were correct, which they turned out to be, this beast was messing with the minds of this entire village and possibly the very beasts we were sent to hunt.

Not an hour later my trackers brought us to the far side of the quarry. There, far down below where the stone was cut I could see dozens of men, women and children laying unconscious on the ground in piles, all covered in a white thread. I even saw my men somewhere amongst the mess of limbs and bodies.

We started our assault not long after we saw the first of the beasts, a special class, Morrigan Slasher. It was taken down by a single cannonshot.

Minutes later a horde of 1st and 2nd classers rushed out. Cannon shots and blades swiftly dealt with them as we crawled our way step by bloody step down the slopes into the maw of the beast.

I sent two of my men to check on the unconscious troopers, civs could come later. All four of my men who were in the web pile were dead, their bodies desicatted and skeletal. Only one had barely a semblance of life still left on him, the fifth missing trooper.

He died three years later from complications in his recovery.

When me and my men began our march into the caves, I ordered them to royally knock the lights out of anyone acting off. I didn't trust nor did I know how this new beast initiated its control.

Halfway in, half my men turned on eachother. We put them down promptly with non lethal force. I checked the bodies myself finding a single golden needle pressed into the back of their neck. So thin was it that I almost mistook it for an issue with my sight.

I pulled it out and got the others to do the same, before continuing in deeper to find the beast.

And it was possibly the most disappointing thing I had ever seen.

A thin, six legged beast standing barely up to my knees with three perfectly golden orbs dotting its eyes.

Even the fight was disappointing, it just huddled in a corner while I approached it myself, plunging my blade into its chest.

In the end, I never figured out exactly what the beast was, barely got its name from the squinks. Just a bit of info on what they made from it.

Gleipnir, they called it. Apparently they'd used multiple dangerbeasts to make it. How many I do not now. I worry if they used other Supers in the construction of this Gleipnir.

I fear the destruction such a monstrous contraption could do.

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Should be last of the really short chapters.

Honestly I could really put this with the previous chapter, but let me have this bit of simplicity. It gives me another backlog chapter.