Randel stopped at the edge of the forest. He had run so far today. He couldn’t stay. Those creatures, they spoke the language of Britain and America. He understood it some, not much, but enough to know that they didn’t understand. And IT was trying to get out. The wisp wanted to let it. He could feel the hatred. The Wisp always did that. It reminded him of a story he had heard once about a man who developed a way to suppress his morals. He suspected that it may have been more than a story.
IT had been found by the wisp. Drawn out, to take over Randel’s body. IT made him watch. The more IT spent out, the less Randel could tell the difference. Still, he resisted. He didn’t want to become a soulless killing machine forever. He never could. He pulled the metal cylinder off his hip and raised it to eye level, Wisp? If I smash the lantern, will IT go away?
No. It never will. It is you, after all, that condescending voice he heard every time the doctor had stuck that needle in his arm. Every time he went to open the lantern.
I died. “I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FREE!” He hit his knees, sinking the dirtied brown trousers into the soft dirt, “DEATH WAS SUPPOSED TO FREE ME!”
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The coffin took eight men to lift. Claymore One offered to carry it, in honor, they said, of the sacrifice. Alice had been up in arms about it at first, the deep-running feud still strong. Oreldo had talked sense into her, with one simple sentence, ‘Let them. But I’m leading.’ Corporal Oland weighed five hundred kilograms. Oreldo had essentially demanded that he be allowed to carry the heaviest part of the coffin. By himself if necessary. Martis had stepped up to take the opposite. The two could generously be called skinny, but the Claymores accepted the terms.
The damp grass squeaked beneath their boots as the six soldiers followed Randel’s team. Alice took point, her normal ‘blade forward’ attitude suppressed by the emotional weight of her loss. How he had died because of her.
The truck parked on the lonely hill lurched as it’s winch took up the weight of the coffin, swinging it gently between two A-frames on either end of the grave. Alice took her position at the head of the coffin, placing her hand to the elegantly detailed redwood. That coffin had been Alice’s idea. She had personally paid for it, selling some of her jewelry to afford the import taxes to get the lumber carved up and shipped from the West-most coast of America. It had the Section Three emblem etched into it, above where Randel’s head lay. Below that, carved with just as much skill, sat the emblem of the 901st. Above his heart. Where it belonged. The lantern itself had been cleaned inside and out by Captain Hunks, the only man Alice trusted with the artifact. It now hung at her side, opposite her family’s dagger. She had sworn she heard his voice when she tied the lantern to her belt, but it never showed her that glow it always had for Randel. It was cold. It held no battery compartment, and as the captain had informed her, would never have functioned as a lantern anyway. He told her the inside of the metal cylinder was so battered and torn that he would have sworn someone had let a cutting torch and a power-drill play in it at the same time. There was no rational reason why the hinge even worked. It wasn’t connected to the shutters at all.
Still, she unconsciously opened it as she began talking, letting the memories wash over her as she spoke aloud of his bravery, stupidity, honor. Her men were at her side, rifles drawn and aimed unwaveringly at the sky. The lantern stayed dark. She finished speaking and raised her arm. The soldiers around the coffin raised their rifles. Twenty-one guns. Eighteen Claymores. Martis, Oreldo. One lone Tiger II on the road through the cemetery. A rolling salvo in honor of the fallen, concluded with the resounding thump of the tank shell firing. The lantern closed with her eyes. Work-hardened hands caught her as she fell, the illusion of Randel fading away as she collapsed into her subordinates arms.
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Thunder rang in Randel’s head. He counted. Twenty rifles sang out. One thump drowned them out. Wisp?
You died. I was there. That body failed.
“SEND ME BACK!”
I can’t. You would have to kill yourself, or find someone to do it for you.
Randel gripped the back of his head, let his muscular neck go limp, and smashed his face into a rock. It broke his nose, split his forehead open. Didn’t even come close to destroying the thick calcium deposit that made up his skull. Again. A third time. Still nothing.
“WHY WON’T YOU LET ME GO HOME!”
The wisp was silent for long enough for Randel to pound his skull against the bloodied rock three more times before it stopped him, Because it isn’t time for you to go home. When it is, you will be reborn there. Until then, please stop trying to kill yourself.
Blood mixed with tears. Randel didn’t really feel the pain of the torn skin, he only felt the pain of loss. It struck him deep in his heart. The same pain he had felt when Hans died before his eyes. Wolf. Franz. Bat. But they weren’t dead They aren’t dead.
No. Your friends are alive. For now. The Lieutenant has taken up my lantern.
It didn’t come with? But it’s right here his hand gripped the familiar cylinder.
Remember how you died? Things don’t disappear in your world. She recovered it with your body. Took it as her own. It might kill her.
Randel paused at that, thinking specifically in a way the Wisp wouldn’t hear, then to it, Might? The Doorknocker was climbing out of its holster, rising towards his face. In his mouth.
NO! NOT YET! You have time. Years. Decades maybe. She was not… it seemed to be thinking over its next words, …Gifted the way you were. There is no longer a life in that hunk of metal. It will take nothing that cannot be fixed.