The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all
- Yvon Chouinard
As the sun began to sink low on the horizon, casting a warm and golden glow across the battlefield. Silenced horrors in the trenches could no longer be heard as they were drowned by the sound of hurried footsteps followed by the echoes of ceaseless gunfire.
A soldier wearing an olive drab stained by mud, sweat, and vomit darted across plains of mud towards a trench as a knight clad in dark armor with a strange black smoke surging under its steel plates pursued him.
The soldier's fatigued body flailed aimlessly as he lurched forward and fell into a gutter. Between panicked breathes the soldier's face was laced in agony as beads of sweat streamed down his face, a wooden stake had lodged itself deep into his knee due to his fall, he sharply inhaled to try and alleviate the pain, but breathes turned into gasps as it burrowed deep into his bone marrow, fountains of blood spilling from the puncture.
The clanging of armor drew closer and closer as the soldier trembled, his body involuntarily shaking from the pain, waiting for his inevitable doom he shut his eyes…
And for a moment the world stood still.
Until, an inexplicable smell filled the soldier's nostrils, by now he was used to the smell of decaying flesh but somehow a stench worse than that had presented itself, slowly filling his lungs. As he opened his eyes the shadow of a knight cast down above the trench. It stood there in silence looking down at him. The soldier froze in place as his eyes locked on the creature standing before him.
A sudden surge of pressure could be felt on the soldier's neck, as the creature suddenly disappeared from its position and pinned the soldier onto the muddy planks, the soldier retaliated by fiercely punching the knight but it only made the creature tighten its grasp, and wring his neck with more pressure, choking on his saliva the soldier could only convulse as his vision started to darken and the sounds of the battlefield slowly died until a void of darkness veiled the soldier's senses.
"…"
Gasping for air, the man suddenly perked up as he recovered from the pressure that tried to end his life. His throat felt as if it was burned from the pressure, his world grew hazy as he clumsily stumbled on the ground recovering from what seemed like a hopeless situation.
His hands instinctively went to his throat, his wounded fingers tracing the contours as if he could not come to terms with the reality of being released from its grasp. The battlefield of his struggle began to regain its clarity. The weight on his chest lifted, as he drew in a shuddering breath, the stench-filled air felt like an elixir of life as he regained he slowly drew breaths of air. Coughs erupted from deep within as his eyes scrambled toward his surroundings.
The entity was mysteriously frozen in place, the smoke under its armor suddenly dispersed and as its chain mail started flinching, a large burst of smoke was released into the surrounding area. The man coughed as the burning stench of the dark smoke blurred his vision, as the smoke slowly dissipated the armor disassembled itself and fell lifelessly into the ground revealing a black alien-like sac that slowly split open after a series of grotesque undulations, revealing the hand of a human child.
The soldier could not believe what he was seeing, he quickly crawled to the sac and began it tearing apart, uncovering what seemed to be a human baby within a sticky transparent membrane. The soldier could not comprehend what he was looking at, he stared at the baby in pure disbelief, rubbing his eyes to deny this mysterious revelation, to confirm whether or not his mind was playing tricks on him after almost getting strangled to death, but no it was real… a real baby. No amount of words could describe what he was feeling.
Hurried footsteps could be heard beside the soldier as he turned around he saw another soldier.
"Wilfren, What happened to the forward squad?" The man screamed at the top of his phlegm-filled lungs, desperation was evident in his voice "Dead...They're all dead…that thing– it killed them all" The other soldier's face was slowly filled with horror as the news left Wilfren's lips
"Do you have any idea where that thing went?"
"It followed me here I...I don't" Wilfren stuttered with his words "But…I don't think that should be your concern right now"
The soldier looked at Wilfren perplexed, but as he peered towards Wilfren's hands he simply could not believe what he was seeing.
"A baby? O-out here on the battlefield?"
"That thing..made this"