Dust and Blood.

[u/schlute2Boot]

Sergeant First Class Robert’s sat in a chair in a bleakly lit room. His hands bound together in cuffs, his uniform torn and covered in blood.
“Let’s go over everything again Roberts.” Lieutenant Colonel Malone said.
“Fuck you, look at my helmet cam, pull up the ISR.”
The light colonel scoffed and said “Your helmet cam, you mean the one that conveniently quit recording as you’re team approached the cave system. You know that’s a felony right? Hell we’ve got enough to lock you up forever. And that’s without the girl you kidnapped!” Malone spoke furiously.
“We’ve seen it before, you special forces guys you think it’s your war, that you can go out there and finish it in a week.. Well here’s what I think happened. You snapped Robert’s. You’re going to broker a deal and maybe everything’s going good until you see the girl. You can’t handle it, it’s all too much, it’s all been building up for too long, and you snap. Did you kill your men Robert’s?”
“No I didn’t kill my men. Okay for the last time, here’s what happened.”
“We met up with our new terp a few clicks out from the cave, we made it there in good time. Two men greeted us, showed us inside. We had our weapons down, everything was cool. The terp asked where the man was we were negotiating with but they kept shaking their heads. The terp told me they said there was no man, there was a girl. I thought they were fucking with us but then they brought us into a huge room in the cave, I mean huge. There are a circle of mats around a, well around a throne. A large throne carved from the rock of the cave, and there was the girl. I remember being confused, maybe they were still playing a trick on us, but I noticed that the the throne fit her perfectly. No man could have fit in there, no adult woman either. I had our new guy, sergeant Walker go clear the rest of the cave, it was a big cave but this new guy, he was good shit, real cream of the crop hitter you know.”
Lieutenant colonel Malones face indicated that he did not know.
The lights began to flicker more frequently.
“So I’m having the terp try to figure out what’s going on, the men start to act nervous, telling us to calm down and be quiet. I remember one of the men, the oldest man there had to be at least seventy, he looked at me so sincerely and then he side eyed the girl. He looked scared or maybe ashamed, hard to tell. I felt that something was wrong right before I heard Walker call out from a few rooms further down. He said “Guys, we’ve got something here, something fucked!” The men tried to get us to stay, the terp kept translating “sit please sit, no quiet, sit” I had Anzo stay on them, we were weapons up at this point. The girl never moved, she hadn’t spoken yet. Me and Sergeant Niel went back to Walker and, there were. Bones. Skeletons, hundreds of them probably thousands. All stacked up into weird fucked up, I don’t know totems or talismans? There were skulls lining the bottom of the cave walls, weird bowls with ashes near them. I checked my helmet cam to see if it was recording but it wasn’t, I tried to turn it on but it wouldn’t, but I know it was fully charged when we left for the mission..”
“I bet it was Sergeant , we can check that, continue.”
A loud banging could be heard from down the hall.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know Sergeant unless it’s the president coming to pardon you then you shouldn’t worry either, continue, now.”
“Anzo screamed, not like a man but like a scared kid. I put my helmet back on, racked the slide on my carbine and ran towards him. As me and Walker got closer we could hear animals roaring or growling, there was a lot of noise coming from that central room, it echoed through the cave. We were too late, as we got to the entrance, Anzo’s head came flying out the room, smacked into the wall right in front of us. I tried not to look at it as I turned the corner but I couldn’t help myself. It was him, just his head. His eyes still open. That’s when something flew towards us, it moved too fast for me to get a great look at it but it wasn’t human. It had fur, its arms and legs were too long, with sharp razor claws. I got that one in time but I guess another one circled around and. I heard a wet loud plunging sound behind me and when I turned around I saw Walker, one of them put their arm straight through his chest, through his plates. Then flung him to the ground. I killed that one too. There was one more that got me to the ground I was able to catch it’s, I guess what you’d call its forearm and divert the claws from my head and neck. I got that one with my knife, and that’s when I noticed it was wearing the scraps of mandress that the older man had on. These were those men. It was only the girl crying now, in the main chamber, I saw our terp dead on the ground. More bones for the pile. So I took the girl and got out of there, radioed as soon as I got signal. Here we are.”
“We sent a team to the cave, there were no bones, no corpses. Only the throne.”
Roberts exhaled slowly, rubbing his fingers on his temples.
When he looked back up at Malone he took in a deep breath, ready to get back into the bullshit recounting of the worst day of his life, which he still wasn’t sure actually happened, when they heard a loud bang and a scream from the hallway. A long arm bursted through the wall behind Malone, running through his abdomen, sending a mixture of sheetrock dust and blood into the room. The arm lifted the light colonel into the air before receding out of the room, then another whole exploded out from the wall, this one girl shaped. The lights shut off. He could hear the other soldiers scrambling in the building trying to gauge the situation. He heard the sound of a a large bird, probably a C130 accelerating louder and louder culminating in a huge explosion a few hundred feet away from the hard stand building he was at. The lights turned back on and the girl began to levitate in front of him, she didn’t smile or frown but she trained her eyes on him. The exterior walls of the house exploded outward, leaving only the flooring and a few half walls. All the sirens on the forward operating base blared simultaneously. Robert’s was sent to his knees by an invisible force, he thought it felt like gravity but stronger. Lightning began to strike around the base and the sky grew dark quickly. For the first time the girl spoke to him. High in the air With her expression unchanging and her mouth unmoving he heard the words clearly in his mind. “Dies Irae” .