The room was completely silent, but Colson’s face was almost audibly red. He had quite likely read through this himself, along with the major and the brigadier, but having someone in the room to direct his feelings towards only made matters worse. Meeting the stare of the brigadier, he calmed himself slightly.

  “I don’t think I need to tell any of you what this reads like,” Bumley said a short moment later. “What I wonder is, why would a highly decorated general of the SEMP write this, if not forced? Bear in mind, I do not think anyone forced her hand. This has the tone of a career suicide note, and even despite the goings on in the world right now, this is highly unlike the general I know quite well,” he continued, expecting some kind of response when he finished.

  “So long as it stays in this room, at least for now,, I will explain her words as well as I can,” Erik said, receiving a nod from the brigadier. “Having escaped from Norway and crossed Sweden, I found Mathisen’s regiment at Bridgefort. As a civilian refugee, they let me in, but when they discovered my baggage, Mathisen herself interrogated me. I guess, with her being on the frontlines, she saw the slightest chance of turning this war around, and made a decision no one in her position would normally do. This war isn’t normal, though.”

  “What was your mysterious ‘baggage’, Mr Fried?” MacLeod asked.

  “The head of a Hellbeast,” Erik explained. The brigadier and the major nodded solemnly in response, likely already thinking something of that note. The captain, on the other hand…

  “Like hell! Those things can’t be beat! They can’t die. They won’t die, no matter what we throw at them! There’s no way you could kill one, no matter what you’ve led the general to believe!”

  “Captain!” the major shouted. The captain calmed himself, but he made no sign that he was finished with this.

  “She decided that I, and by default, Jessie here, would give this world one final chance to actually win this war. Former Colonel Ashleigh and former Major Svensson were dismissed from duty, and given the chance to join me in this endeavour. Blindly, they accepted. Later that night, two beasts attacked Bridgefort. Mathisen trusted me enough to let me prove my claims to her or die trying, and the two beasts were quickly dispatched. You should be sad you missed the following party, Captain,” Erik said, facing the captain at the end.

  “Lies!” the captain said, knocking his closed fists into the desk in front of him as he stood up. Erik had waited for just that, and pointed a stick at him. Before anyone could react, a greying white goo shot from the tip of the stick, quickly enveloping the captain from the torso down. The goo solidified quickly, stopping his movements. The major and the brigadier both rose from their chairs in surprise,

  “Mr Fried, what are you doing?” the brigadier yelled.

  “Proving a point,” Erik responded, unconcerned about how the brigadier and the major were reacting. “Don’t worry, it’s temporary.”

  “The fuck is this?” the captain screamed, visibly straining against the concrete-like substance.

  Erik placed the stick on the desks in front of them, and it turned to fine sawdust as everyone stared at it. A few tense moments later, Bumley sat down, eyeing the captured captain with worry. The major followed suit in exactly the same manner.

  “Magic is real. I realise how that sounds, but that doesn’t argue the fact. What’s important for you to understand, is that magic is what can kill those monsters.”

  The discussion stopped after this, at least temporarily. The brigadier wanted to show Erik’s group something, but demanded that the captain be released before that. Erik rose for the first time since sitting down, He walked closer to the captain, and everyone, even his group, tensed up.

  Erik lifted a finger to his ear, and the room somehow turned even more quiet. The concrete surrounding the captain made a slight crack sound, and Erik clenched his fist, punching the concrete at the base near the captain’s legs.

  The material violently broke apart near the area of impact, and the captain could move his legs once again. He then struggled more, slowly breaking out of the rest of it. Erik easily stopped the fist flying straight at his face with his own hand.

  “Easy, Captain. If nothing else, he’s proven that he has some means that we don’t. Whether that be technology or magic doesn’t matter right now,” the major said, clenching the captain’s shoulder tightly with his hand. Eventually, the captain ceased struggling. “Take five, Captain. Meet us in hangar three,” the major said, then led the rest of the group out of the room, then out of the hangar.

  As the group, Colson excluded, wandered the base towards hangar three, the major walked alongside Erik, obviously struggling to find some words to say to the man. Behind them, Angela and Emma were making acquaintances with Sophie and Jessie. The brigadier walked further behind them, deep in thought.

  “Out with it, major,” Erik said. Anything was better than the tense silence.

  “Was that real?” MacLeod eventually asked.

  “Which part? Also, yes.”

  “That was magic? It looked like a stick?” The last sentence was stated more like a question.

  “It was. See?” Erik answered, pulling out another stick from his trusted backpack, handing it to the major, who grabbed it instantly.

  “It’s a stick…”

  “Yeah,” Erik answered. It really was.

  “And you can do that with this? Is it like a wand?” the major asked, staring at the stick he kept rotating in his hands, trying to figure out the trick. Erik chuckled at that.

  “Not a wand, no. I can do weird things with weird stuff,” Erik explained in his own mysterious way.

  “Can you do it now?” the major asked.

  “Quite a few people around, but… I can show you another trick?” Erik said.

  “Of course!” The major gave the stick back to Erik with enthusiasm, but was slightly disappointed when the man put it back in his backpack. The maybe-magician pulled out a frisbee in its place, gaining him a confused stare.

  “This one’s less flashy, and shouldn’t cause too much of a commotion in the evening dark,” Erik explained, and tossed the frisbee in front of them. The frisbee stopped in mid-air, rotating to an upright position.

  “It hovers?” the major asked, walking slightly faster to reach the magic frisbee.

  “Among other things. Sophie, Jessie, check it out,” Erik said, getting the girls’ attention and pointing towards the frisbee.

  “Oh, that’s the shield?” Sophie asked, running past Erik and towards the frisbee. Just then, the major looked at it closely, attempting to walk around it to look at the other side. He bumped into the invisible wall it projected with a thump.

  “What?” he asked no one in particular. Sophie approached, touching the empty air all around the frisbee.

  “Woah! How far does it go?” she asked, also to no one in particular, as she ran to the side of the frisbee, her hand touching the wall along the way. She got three metres away from the centre, and her hand slipped past. The major did the same thing, only in the opposite direction.

  “Woah…” was all he said as he reached the end of the wall, walking around it and towards the centre again. “Why a frisbee?” he asked, just as the frisbee fell to the ground in front of him. He checked the wall again, but it was gone.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He then, with all the gentleness he could muster, tapped the plastic frisbee with his foot. He looked up at Erik when nothing more happened. Erik snatched the frisbee from the ground, drawing a cross on the front and back with a marker from his backpack, then returned both things to the pack.

  “I ask myself that every single time, mate. Every time!”

  The major, now much more enthusiastic with his questions, couldn’t keep his mouth shut until the group reached hangar three. The people in the front waited a short while for the brigadier, who had also seen the frisbee-wall, but hadn’t been able to touch it himself. He looked even more deep in thought after that, and he had inadvertently walked slower since then.

  “So what’s in here?” Sophie asked, looking to the major and brigadier both.

  “Let’s wait for Captain Colson,” the major said, and after a few minutes, the group was all together again, not everyone as happy about that as they could have been.

  “Ease up, Captain. I think you’ll regret antagonising these people,” the major told the still-flustered captain.

  “Yes, sir,” Colson answered, but didn’t seem genuine.

  The major sighed, then showed the group in. This hangar was locked tight with both physical locks and digital ones. It seemed to require two different hand-prints, which the major and the captain gave by placing their hands on a medium-sized screen on the side of the gate.

  The personnel in the vicinity stared at them when the gate opened, but no one came closer. Erik wasn’t sure if they knew what was in here, or if they weren’t allowed near.

  The answer to that came quickly as the group entered to a loud roar and thumping, the ruckus easily overheard by most of the base. It rapidly became obvious what they were keeping in there. The light gradually lit the inside of the hangar as it turned on, revealing a large steel cage with a lone Hellbeast inside.

  “You captured one?” Jessie asked with a grimace.

  “Yes. We’ve been experimenting with ways to kill them. I’m guessing most bases have one captured by now, as that really isn’t the most difficult to do,” the brigadier started to explain.

  “The difficult part is, as you know, killing them. We’ve tried everything from fire, to acid, to bombs shoved down their throats, but nothing works. Even radiation is completely ineffective, making us wonder if even nukes will be enough,” the major continued.

  “What they want you to do, is kill it with your tricks,” the captain intruded into their conversation. A few seconds of silence followed the statement, only interrupted by the brigadier’s throat clearing up.

  “Well, yes. You claim to have proved yourself to General Mathisen, and while I don’t want to doubt her words… I would want irrefutable proof. I trust you can give us this, Mr Fried?” Bumley said, clearly interested in what Erik would say next.

  “Why?” Erik asked, meeting only confused silence from both his own group and the UB officers.

  “I’m sorry?” Bumley asked.

  “I mean, why would we show you? What’s in it for us? Will you agree to help? Keep in mind, we’re nothing but a rogue outfit, and we’ll strive to keep it that way. We’re not military, nor will we be. Mathisen has promised all the help she can give, even the resources she isn’t technically allowed to give. Will you do the same?” Erik said.

  “You have shown us enough that I can answer that quite clearly, Mr Fried,” Bumley started, but was interrupted by Erik’s next words.

  “Please, call me Erik.”

  “Of course, Erik… Yes. If you can show us you are, in fact, the real deal, my regiment is under your command. We’ll-”

  “What? You can’t be serious?” Colson exclaimed.

  “Shut up!” the major interrupted, having finally had enough. He pulled the captain back a few steps.

  The brigadier took the opportunity to finish, saying, “We will, of course, keep to Mathisen’s plan. You will all be kept strictly off the books, until such a time as you feel it is okay to enter the military and the public’s eye. We’ll strive to keep everyone else off your backs, though I can sadly make no guarantees that it’ll work for long.”

  “That’s acceptable, Bumley. Jessie, would you do the honours?” Erik said, turning to Jessie. “We still don’t really know if you can kill them, so two proverbial beasts with one spell, right?”

  “I’d be honoured to,” she said, stepping forwards, carefully inching closer to the massive cage keeping the monster separated from the rest of the group.

  Bumley seemed surprised that another person would claim to be able to kill the beasts as well. Erik stepped up to her side as he was as interested in seeing this as the rest, though the rest didn’t step any closer, simply keeping their eyes firmly placed on the cage.

  “I’ve got two offensive spells, earth and fire. Anything particular you want to test first?” Jessie asked with a grin.

  “They did say fire didn’t work right? How about we prove them wrong?” Erik said, giving the captain an obnoxious smile.

  Jessie’s hoodie lit up from the inside, giving off a deeply red light. The light flickered and moved like a lit candle in the wind, but it didn’t go out. Erik was more interested in her than the beast right now, and was surprised when Jessie’s eyes glowed as red as the light from her Core.

  “Inferno!” she said in a deep voice, reaching her hand out towards the beast. The monster was suddenly covered in weirdly crimson flames that spun around its body quite rapidly. Erik temporarily lost control of his breath as he watched the magical flame.

  The flames started melting the thick steel bars of the cage, and it would be easy for the beast to knock the bars away from the rest of the cage at that moment. Still, it didn’t do anything but roar in pain as its own flesh melted much faster than the steel around it.

  The smell of barbequed meat filled the hangar in an instant, and after three full seconds of blindingly bright flames and intense heat, everything went dark. The intense light the flames gave off disappeared, and while the lights lined on the ceiling were still lit, no one could see much of anything for the next ten or twenty seconds, as they had all stared wide-eyed at the bright flames.

  “What the fuck was that? You have four of those spells as your Core power?” Erik yelled at Jessie in a high pitched tone. “I make frisbees hover!”

  Everyone except Jessie and Sophie stared at the melted cage with the ashen remains of a monster within with gaping mouths. Everyone was in awe, including Erik. That spell was way more powerful than any item he could use! And she had four of them.

  It wasn’t impossible that Erik could find a thingamajig with the same kind of potential power, but he hadn’t yet. A task for his new friends, perhaps?

  Erik looked back at the people they were proving themselves to, and Jessie did the same, her eyes having returned to normal again. Bumley and MacLeod had no words, but their expressions could write entire novels. Colson, on the other hand, fell to the floor, landing on his knees and hands. He sobbed, and tears started to drip to the floor beneath him.

  “We’re saved… We’re saved,” he repeated over and over until he instead cried harder and louder.

  Everyone turned to him, but were just as speechless at the sight of the crying man as they were the magical inferno they witnessed a moment earlier, again with the exception of Sophie, who bent her knees down in front of him, placing her hand on the crying man’s shoulder. She said nothing for the first dozen or so seconds, but the man was calming down.

  “They’ll win. I know they will. But they need us as well, you understand?” she eventually said as the man had returned to only sobbing and heavy breaths. Colson looked up at the angelic face of the young girl, and nodded. Sophie returned the gesture with a smile, and helped the man up to his feet.

  “I need to apologise-” he started, but Erik stopped him.

  “You don’t. Have you lost anyone, anything, Captain? In this war, I mean?” Erik asked, sounding out his suspicions. The man only nodded in response.

  “The captain’s brother and sister, both exceptional officers, were among the first to die as defenders of the shoreline of England,” Bumley explained, getting the captain’s grateful gaze in return. “Many have suffered terrible losses these past few months. Like Captain Colson, I suspect many have already given up, and will prove resistant to the hope you will eventually bring. As agreed, you will have our full cooperation and discretion. I will talk to the men stationed here and root out the ones who won’t be part of this desertion. I will have them reassigned elsewhere. I hope you will trust the men and women who remain with the truth, so we can better assist your endeavours?”

  “Of course, Brigadier,” Erik said after seeing Jessie’s affirmative nod. “We’ll trust your judgement.”

  “Excellent. Give us a few days. In the meantime, you should lay low, and likely stay away from the base. I’ll take care of your accommodations until then,” Bumley said.

  “Sounds good. We have some stuff to take care of as well. A few days will likely do us some good,” Erik said. The brigadier nodded, and turned to leave the hangar, the major following suit.

  Colson remained, and the brigadier turned around a dozen steps later to see what was keeping him. The captain walked up to Erik and Jessie, his red moistened eyes showing a determination Erik hadn’t previously seen from the man.

  He stopped a few steps in front of them, raising his hand to his head in salute. A good distance behind him, Erik saw the brigadier and the major replicating this action. Erik acknowledged this with a nod, and stretched out his own hand towards the captain.

  “Happy to have you on our side,” Erik said, giving the captain a genuine smile.

  Colson looked down at Erik’s hand a moment, not wanting to break the salute off, but eventually did, grasping the given hand tightly. Without another word, the captain joined his superior officers as they left the hangar.

  Minutes later, Erik and his gang were ready to move out, having been given a transport back into Leicester proper. MacLeod returned to them, informing them of their accommodations at a hotel, three rooms booked in Erik’s name. They drove off in their transport a moment later.

  “Who’s up for drinks?” Angela burst as they had crossed the gate of the air base.

  “We should be ready early tomorrow morning. Drinks can wait till the war is over,” Emma responded.

  “Don’t be a spoilsport,” Sophie complained, Angela nodding in agreement to her words.

  “I’ll gladly join,” Jessie said with a grin. Emma looked to Erik for a fraction of a second until she realised how doomed she really was.

  “Bed at midnight, at the latest! I’ll personally rouse you all at 0600 hours sharp!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Angela saluted with a devious grin.

  “Are we sleeping at the hotel as well?” Sophie asked her older sister with puppy-dog eyes.

  “If Angela and Emma are okay sharing a room, then there’s a third room available, right?” Jessie asked the group. Angela and Emma confirmed. It would make it easier for Emma to get them all out of bed that way.