Deathless

A Golden Eagle soars above a concluded battle’s field. Not a single living soul remains on the terrain below, only the dead and the dying. The tall green grass is stained with shades of crimson liquid as pieces of human bodies are sprawled about.

The field is mostly quiet, aside from a few moaning dying men who let out an anguished squeak from time to time, awaiting the arrival of Peklabog’s apparition to appear before them to guide into the underworld. Their god of death is a merciless one as he takes the time to lead his subjects into his realm. Before entry, the dying masses have to prove their worth by displaying courage in the face of death.

A heavily tattooed man named Mstislav sits perched against a large boulder, a throwing axe is lodged in between his ribs. That man is no different from the rest of those who still remain on the field, for he too, is dying.

Mstislav chuckles to himself as he notices the eagle flying in the skies above, breaking the relative silence in doing so. He then spits blood onto the ground between his legs. Looking back up, he calls out weakly, “Perun… you’re watching me again, aren’t you?"

Grunting in pain, he ponders to himself about what hurts more; his back from being slammed into by a large war dog or the wound in his side.

Chuckling once more, the man points his finger weakly at the raptor in the sky while calling out to it, “Oh Mighty Thunderer, do you know that now my clan calls me Deathless? Well of course you do! They think I’m favored by the gods… they think my military success is a gift from you, Perun! Honestly, I think I’ve been cursed by your kind with these subtle voices in my head that tell me how to avoid certain death… for the most part that is…

“I mean, look at me now… hahaha… You must be enjoying this… You don't really care… Do you… eh…

“To be completely honest, my enemies have given me an epitaph too, they call me the Skeletal. I don’t know if it’s due to my rather thin frame or because where ever I go I end up swimming in the bloodied bones of my adversaries.”

The eagle lands on the ground, next to a corpse of a dead warrior, a couple of feet away from Mstislav wasting carcass. It looks at the dying seated man for a moment before digging its sharply edged beak into the corpse of a dead warrior.

As the raptor tears tiny crimson colored bits of flesh out of the carrion, the dying one calls out to it, “Hey, I know it’s rude to interrupt an eating person, let alone a god, but can you please explain to me why does it take so long for me to finally die?"

Just as he finishes his sentence, he begins to lose all feeling in his limbs, slowly, the loss of sensation creeps through each and every fiber in his body. Finally, starting to numb away his pain.

“Oh, there it…” he coughs, “is…”

Everything begins to feel colder and colder for the lone warrior with each passing moment. He cannot speak anymore. His body has grown too weak, finally, Mstislav gets what he has been waiting for, death’s sweet bliss.

Before his eyelids shut for the last time, Mstislav manages to make out a faint figure standing in the distance, he barely sees the figure but he recognizes the figures signature horns and a long beard.

“About time you show up, lord Veles…” the man whispers under his dying breath.

A shepherd’s staff hits the ground and Mstislav finally passes.

At night’s fall, a heavily tattooed man wakes up, finding himself seated perched against a large boulder. He groggily gets up to his feet, slowly, carefully. Looking around the man notices that the surrounding corpses are half eaten. The corpse in front of him reduced to a mere skeletal pile of red-colored bones covered in sparse patches of muscle barely that cling onto their calcified base.

The man picks up the bloodstained throwing axe from the ground and as he inspects the weapon for any imperfections, he muses to himself, “Well that was a nice trip to Veles’ garden…”

\*\*\*

Many years later, at the battle of Stalingrad, in a local skirmish over a tiny alleyway, a German soldier yells at the top of his lungs, “Fire in the hole!”, throwing a hand grenade at his Russian opposition. As the Russian soldiers run for cover, something; a figure leaps out of the shadows, snatching the grenade in mid-flight.  The grenade explodes violently shaking the alleyway, causing the Russians to fly into a berserker-like rage as a rain of blood and bits of human flesh falls upon all those present in the explosion’s vicinity.

Upon seeing the newfound vigor of the Russians, the Germans begin to lose their spirit and start attempting a tactical retreat as the fire from their opposition intensifies greatly. Making their slow way out of the alleyway, the German soldiers come across a pair of bloody legs barely attached to an exposed pelvis with some sort of fleshy substance bubbling out of the pelvic bone.

The sight causes some Germans to feel unbearably sick, for their mind could never get accustomed to the horrors of the Great War.

Seemingly mesmerized by the bizarre sight, some of them almost forget they are being shot at. They simply stare at a vaguely human form appear out of the fleshy pulsating mass.

The Germans are broken out of their trance only when their Russian counterparts begin shooting them at point-blank range. Starting to run again the remaining Germans’ path is eventually blocked by a single shirtless man whose upper body is covered by numerous tribal tattoos.

They begin shooting at the man, but no matter how many bullet holes riddle his body, he does not budge, merely staring at his assailants as the bullets fall from within him while his body regenerates the wounds.

Clearly terrorized by the sight, the Germans turn to run the other way but they are caught by a group of Russian soldiers who at this stage appear more like a mass of flesh-craving ghouls rather than soldiers.

The Tattooed man grabs one of the shaking Germans by his coat and turns him around, the soldier begins begging for his life, ignoring him, the man says in heavily accented German, “There is a reason why they call me the Deathless in the motherland…”

He then punches the German with such a force that the German flies a few feet backwards and is immediately knocked out cold.

The man spreads his arms and whispers, “Do you hear that? The eagle’s call?”

He then proceeds to scream at the top of his lungs, sending shock waves of utter fear into the hearts of the German soldiers, “Men, Perun is watching! Let us honor the God of the blue skies by offering him the ultimate blood sacrifice, here and now!”

Extensive gun fire and agonized screams echo through the alleyway and its surrounding area.