I Know You'd Do The Same For Me

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Well, at least not before the Rapture.

Yes, that Rapture... the one from everyone's favorite Holy Book... the one where the Son of God was supposed to return to this decaying corpse of a rock we call Earth and spare the ones who were first in line for Sunday's communion wine. The earnest few, the zealots and repentant sinners, the homunculi who blindly followed the dulcet tones of their area code's loudest megalomanic clad in the purest, most recently bleached clerical vestments. Be it a desire to rectify a past wrong or to reinforce the staunchness of their beliefs, they were told over and over again that they were chosen for a greater purpose. Each hymn (sung poorly or not) added that much more protection to their Armor of God. Each genuflection and properly executed sequence of bows and utterances of "Amen" was a combat drill for the demons they hoped they'd never see. They called themselves an Army of God, but in the pageantry of their shared worship, they neglected one extremely critical detail:

The Bible was written by man.

On Sunday, April 1, 2046, the devout, maniacal Christians described above realized this far too late. This was the day of the Rapture, but not as it was described in everyone's favorite Holy Book. What ensued that day was an extinction-level event enabled by a Higher Power... not without purpose, but certainly without remorse.

Rather than the Son of God returning to Earth to ferry the most faithful to Heaven, it was Hell that drew first blood on Sunday, April 1, 2046. What first appeared to be an anomalous collection of tectonic tremors across the globe turned out to be the desperate gnashing and tunneling of the souls of the damned. The initial breach of Earth's soil happened within the Calvary megachurch in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The first contact between the congregation and the languishing souls of Hell was as terrifying as it was spectacularly gruesome. Horror stole the expression from the faces of the faithful as they laid eyes upon the future they hoped they'd never see. Before them were not the emaciated husks of sinners, but the hardened remains of what were once men, women, and children who refused to accept Christianity's brand of fire and brimstone.

Those poor souls deserved better. Swift was the culling of the Crusades, and swifter still was the merciless retribution of the damned.

Hopelessness spread like a plague through the slaughterhouse that was Calvary on that fateful day as the tearing of flesh drowned out the agonizing screams of the once "faithful" soldiers who now found themselves begging for death. Some fought back against the enraged frenzy Hell had wrought only to be treated to physical pain previously thought unimaginable. Not a single soul in the self-proclaimed "Army of God" was prepared for the fury that Hell wrought that day.

You see, Hell is a somewhat complicated and misunderstood metropolis. It is more than just seven lakes of fire where murderers, rapists, and those of similar ilk are sent to be punished for all time. While those detestable miscreants certainly suffer well-deserved fates worse than the most devious torture of man's history, many of the damned are not as sinister as we are led to believe. A prime example of this are the souls mentioned above, the souls sent to Hell by the crusading despots behind Christianity's bloody history.

Ah yes, the Crusades... certainly not one of Christianity's finer moments. Roughly 1,000 years after the death of Jesus Christ, centuries of bloodshed motivated by misplaced enthusiasm and overzealous conviction ravaged the holy land of Jerusalem. Mankind is no stranger to senseless killing, but those struck down in the Crusades were sent to Hell by the divine blades that felled them without a chance to defend their honor. The sinister tradition of using holy blades in the Crusades began with Pope Gregory VII and continued throughout future campaigns. It was not Gregory's prime objective to damn the souls of his enemies, but rather to protect the lives of his soldiers and kinsmen.

Even so, such unintentional malice yielded unforeseen results.

The souls ferried to Hell by the swords of Heaven were given unexpected solace by the kings of Hell. Lucifer in particular (as you might imagine) understood their plight all too well... for he too was an outcast of the divine order. Rather than subjugate the casualties of the Crusades to pain and suffering, Lucifer provided them a chance to rebuild their lost civilization. Thus began the first colony of Hell, a city of the undead forged with the strength of a new flame.

Much in the same way that early humans settled the surface of Earth, the born-again heathens settled the depths of Hell. For hundreds of years, Hell's humanity flourished in parallel to their counterparts on Earth. Frankly, who wouldn't flourish if offered a second chance to live one's life?

No one... and yet... something drove those innocent souls of Hell's first colony to claw their way to Earth's surface. Only something inexplicably dark and dreadful could be so unabashedly culpable. As fate would have it, such an inexplicably dark and dreadful thing was on display in Calvary church that fateful night of April 1, 2046.

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Calvary was not the only edifice ravaged by Hell's colony that day, but it was the location where our story truly begins. As the death toll parabolically ascended past the thousands, the US military finally unveiled it's trump card.

Night had finally descended on the unsuspecting suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. Calvary, the once magnificent monument to the Heavens, had been reduced to little more than a dystopian ruin of Gothic horrors. Thankfully the surrounding area had been evacuated leaving the local Hell-spawn temporarily contained by a combined effort of the National Guard and the Golden Cross. The Golden Cross, or GC, were an elite group of military personnel trained and educated in the requisite disciplines for sustained combat against Christianity's specific cast of unearthly threats.

Interestingly enough, the initial plan for creating the Golden Cross was to train priests and other holy men in the art of war. Results of this initial plan can politely be described as "mixed", but it turns out that most priests are not fighting men. As you can imagine, such a strategy did not scale as intended.

That being said, many of the priests involved in the initial training realized the immense potential of this project and a handful agreed to stay on under their newly demoted title of Instructor. Ask any of the newly minted "Instructors" though and they will tell you they did not feel slighted in the least. Remember, a majority of priests are not fighting men, but all of them share a pair of absolutely necessary initiatives: the sanctity of mankind and the preservation of self.

In total, 10 priests stayed on to offer tutelage and guidance to the military recruits that made it through the initial training of the Golden Cross. Unsurprisingly, these ten wise men would come to be known as the Disciples of the Golden Cross. Out of those ten faithful Disciples, a clear leader emerged in the vessel of St. Paul I. As mentioned before, not all priests were fighting men, but Paul was an exception to this rule. As a former Navy SEAL and a genuinely devout man of God, he was exactly what the Golden Cross needed. He was strong enough to bear the weight of his duty, but carried more than the necessary grace to always resolve whatever chaos crossed his path. He was infallible, but he knew that if mankind was to survive any encounter with even a remotely powerful platoon of Hell's demons, mankind needed more divine muscle.

It was this realization that lead to what became known as project NEPHYLIM. Whether you fancy them giants, half angels, half demons, or somewhere in between, one cannot argue with the historic strength of such otherworldly titans. Paul sought to replicate the strength of these beasts through the use of modern technology and volunteered to be the paternal didact for whatever emerged on the other side of this experiment. Honorable of a notion as this was, many of the Disciples attempted to dissuade Paul from this pursuit.

The reason for this lies in the appropriated acronym above. Per the classified files surrounding this endeavor, NEPHYLIM stands for the following:

NE: Nanomachine-Enhanced

PHY: Physically

LIM: Limitless

As you can imagine, the brave souls that emerged from this project with their sanity intact would have more in common with God than Man. The dissenting Disciples deemed such an outcome beyond blasphemous and akin to artificially manufacturing false Gods, but again... most priests were not fighting men. Paul knew that for every score of nightmarish monstrosities felled by the Golden Cross, there would be dozens more eagerly awaiting their chance to go bump in the night. With his exemplary grace that allowed him to resolve any chaos that encroached upon him, Paul eventually dispelled the doubts of his fellow Disciples. At the end of the day, they knew all too well the frailty of men. At the end of the day, their desire for self preservation took precedence over potential sacrilege. At the end of the day, the Disciples put their faith in St. Paul I.

Thus began project NEPHYLIM, the first step of which was to cultivate a list of candidates worthy of ascending to godhood. Paul and his Disciples agreed that each of them would select one soldier... one champion that they felt would provide humanity the greatest chance for survival. The ten soldiers chosen would be the acting hands of the Disciples and allow for increasingly complex, optimized military strategies to be utilized by the Golden Cross. This of course was operating under another assumption that tragically proved itself false:

The assumption that all the soldiers would survive their ascension.

Much to the distress of Paul and his Disciples, half of the ten soldiers selected for the project did not even survive the nanomachine-enhancement procedure. The champions chosen by St. Stephanie III, St. Jeremiah VI, St. Galahad IX, and St. Beatrice IV died within minutes of receiving the nanotechnology injections. Their bodies identified the foreign agents as overly antagonistic causing their immune systems to assault the nanotech without relent. The nanotech responded in kind by devouring them alive from the inside. The poor warriors barely had time to realize what happened before succumbing to the combined effects of every major bodily system failing simultaneously. Grisly of a fate as it was, it was dwarfed by the harrowing end suffered by the fifth casualty.

As an avid researcher and technophile, St. Gerard II chose his champion based entirely on their physical robustness. To give some perspective to the impact of Gerard's chosen one, his champion Achilles was one of only three named test subjects in the entire NEPHYLIM dossier. Gerard knew that enduring the initial skirmish with the nanotech would be of paramount importance, something with which he believed his 6'10" champion would have no issue.

Achilles was a behemoth by all measures of man. His terrifying height was made all the more imposing by the 250 pounds of lean mass giving it shape. Such physical advantages made the nanotechnology injection feel like little more than a paper cut for Achilles. This paired with Gerard's expert counsel and rigorous, preparatory conditioning routine allowed the nanotech to synthesize with Achilles at a higher synchronization rate than any other champion: a staggering 94% of the foreign bodies were successfully assimilated.

At this point you may be wondering why Achilles is listed in the NEPHYLIM dossier as one of the five champions that didn't survive the nano-enhancement. Unfortunately, even the Golden Cross is not immune to the necessity of revisionist history.

After only 24 hours of rest, Achilles awoke from his convalescence. Gerard, who spent the night sleeping in the control room adjacent the injection chamber, excitedly probed his champion between fits of praise.

"Achilles! You magnificent bastard... how do you feel?! I... I can't believe you recovered so quickly! It's... IT'S-"

"Incredible." Achilles replied, flatly.

"YES!! Indeed it truly is-"

"No." Achilles whispered, once again interrupting his Disciple. "I feel... incredible."

Paul, having been alerted by Gerard of Achilles regaining consciousness hastily entered the control room. In sharp contrast to his fellow Disciple, Paul's countenance displayed thinly veiled concern wrestling with fear. Even with Achilles's impressive physical condition, not a single shred of data derived from the Golden Cross's outcome projections implied a recovery time of less than three days.

"How long has he been awake?" Paul asked, his voice steady.

"Less than an hour." Gerard crooned. "Can you believe it Paul? My champion survived! MY CHAMPION!! I don't even know where to begin, I... I've got to get a closer look!"

"Gerard No!" Paul quipped. It was a futile attempt to reign in the infatuation of his colleague who seemed almost... possessed... as if he was being lured by a Siren's song of his own making.

Gerard rushed into the injection chamber to gaze upon his glorious champion. Achilles remained seated on the edge of his bed as if he were the center of a great whirlpool, drawing his Disciple closer and closer to his immense power.

"You are a true marvel Achilles... NO! A miracle! Yesss... you shall be the future of the Golden Cross. The future of HUMANITY! The next great hero to lead us to victory over the DAMNED!"

"Yesss..." Achilles repeated. "And what of you, Gerard?" Achilles asked, his voice now doubled by a lower octave. "What will be your contribution to the Cross?"

"Why YOU! Of... of course!" Gerard's voice began to waver. His heartbeat raced as he began to question the haste of his decision.

"NO!" Achilles roared, shaking the injection chamber with the resonance of his voices. "You shall be the first... WITNESS!"

"GERARD! GET OUT OF THERE NOW!"

Before Gerard could make it to the exit of the injection chamber, Achilles lunged at him with all the wrath of a vengeful God. He caught his Disciple by the arm and spun him around with such force that he ripped the limb cleanly from his torso. Gerard shrieked in bitter agony as Achilles peered into his eyes.

"Yours shall be a cautionary tale, my little Icarus..." he mused as he gripped Gerard's petrified head in his monstrous hands.

"PAUL! HELP ME PLEA-" Gerard's voice was cut short by the visceral squelch of Achilles crushing his skull.

"GC Order 99! Lockdown injection site 2 IMMEDIATELY!" Paul shouted into the main communication channel of the Golden Cross Headquarters. Before Achilles could release the corpse of his Disciple, the injection chamber was suddenly wreathed in dense sheets of indestructible diamond plating.

"This is supposed to contain a God?" Achilles laughed. "There is nothing you can-"

"GO TO HELL!!!" Paul snarled as he activated project NEPHYLIM's failsafe. In the same way that Gerard prepared Achilles for the nanotech enhancement, Paul prepared a final safeguard for the Golden Cross. Not only would the entire injection site be sealed by diamond plating upon issuing Order 99, Paul also outfitted the chamber to contain and survive a flash of Final Judgement. Final Judgement was the GC's code name for a concentrated blast of holy lightning. For context, imagine destructive efficacy on the level of nuclear warheads, but with the precision of a subatomic drone strike.

Upon activation, a brief and brilliant white light filled the injection chamber. Accompanying the blast was Final Judgement's trademark period of protracted silence. While the exact nature of this eerie quietude is unknown, it is speculated that Final Judgement's graceful destruction is so complete that it consumes even the sound waves caught within it's radius. Perhaps it is God's mysterious way of providing the wielder of such power a moment of reflection in the wake of it's usage. Perhaps it is simply another unexplainable phenomenon stumbled upon by undeserving men. Regardless of what one chooses to believe, there is no arguing it's brutal effectiveness. Within seconds, the light dissipated... and all that remained was ash.

In the immediate aftermath of what came to be known as the Crucifixion of St. Gerard II, three of the five remaining Disciples withdrew from project NEPHYLIM. St. Peter X, St. Johanna VIII, and St. Alexander V reiterated their support for Paul, but no longer saw the merit in the grand designs of their once universally beloved leader.

"In all the time I've known you, you've never lead us astray" said Peter. "But this... this is surely a sign from God that we must change course, brother."

"The strategy of willingly executing one's greatest warriors, to my knowledge, has not brought a single victory to any army of Man OR of the Kingdom of Heaven." spat Johanna with palpable disgust.

"I would follow you to the very pit of whatever Hell you must descend, Paul." confessed Alexander. "But a Hell of your own making? A Hell wrought with self-serving delusions of glory and legacy? That is a journey for you, and you alone."

One by one, Paul's Disciples regretfully abandoned their once beloved leader. Shaken by the notion of visible fear, Paul escaped to a familiar balcony on the third floor of the Golden Cross Headquarters in an effort to conceal his pain. Had he been too eager to forge a sword for God's Will? Was he no different than Pope Gregory VII? His thoughts raced as he cradled his head in his trembling hands.

"I thought I might find you here." remarked a familiar voice. "No Malbec though? I suppose there is a first time for everything... even for you Paul."

The shadowy figure slowly sauntered into view; it was St. Elijah VII.

"Oh, Elijah, what on Earth have I done? Those poor souls... one for each bloody finger on the same hand I use to sign the cross... I... I don't know where to begin."

"Don't, Paul." chided Elijah, resting his hand on the hunched back of his broken friend.

Broken, but not beyond repair.

"I wasn't there. I don't know exactly what happened to those five warriors and I don't know exactly what happened to Gerard. But frankly Paul, none of that matters. Do I wish it were different? God, of course I do! What happened was beyond pain and beyond grief, but I don't enjoy seeing you like this anymore than you enjoy feeling this way."

"I should have saved him, Elijah. I could have saved him!"

"DON'T, Paul..." Elijah rose to his feet and addressed his leader with personal directness.

"How long have we known each other? How often have we come to this very balcony feeling as if the world were to be torn apart?"

"...since... Divinity..."

"YES! Since Divinity School, Paul. And no matter what brought us here, you ALWAYS found a way, didn't you? Even if it was the 59th minute of the 11th hour, you always, ALWAYS delivered, didn't you? Is this moment any different?"

Elijah once again sat down by his leader's side, providing ample silence for reflection.

"What does your gut tell you? What does your faith tell you?"

"...I... I don't see any other path to survival, Elijah."

"Then we keep going."

"But I don't want to murder any more innocent men! For God's sake some of them were practically CHILDREN!"

"Then we WON'T!"

Elijah rose to his feet once more and extended his arm as an olive branch, lifeline, and everything in between to his once again, intrepid leader.

"I believe in you, Paul... the Golden Cross believes in you... the question is... do you believe in yourself?"

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"Sir! SIR! St. Paul I, what are your orders?"

Paul's mind returned to the present, his vigor once again renewed by the memory of his old friend.

"Maintain the perimeter, extend the evacuation mandate another 12 hours, and clear an LZ... reinforcements are on their way."

The reinforcements of which Paul spoke were none other than project NEPHYLIM's first and last successfully engineered supersoldiers: Bael and Ayken, the champions of Paul and Elijah respectively.

Less than five minutes passed before the juggernauts of the Golden Cross landed on site in dramatic fashion. Such drama comes courtesy of their state of the art helicopter, the Apparition... so named for it's terrifying ability to render itself completely undetectable by visual or aural perception.

Think of the Apparition as the... Holy Ghost of the Golden Cross.

Bael and Ayken emerged from the Apparition and quickly approached Paul, their gait almost identical in cadence.

"Spared no expense on the theatrics, eh?" mused Paul with the affectation of a proud father.

"I mean... there's not a whole lot I can do about it" said Bael.

"You could hire another mechanic" responded Ayken.

The three shared an ephemeral, but comfortable laugh before embarking on what would become the first leg of their voyage to Hell.

"The National Guard has the surrounding area under control, but it seems like the Hell-spawn that terrorized the church have either returned home or gone dormant."

"How long have the lights been off?" asked Bael.

"Since the sun went down. It's only been a few hours, but given the carnage from earlier, I don't think it's safe to send anyone else in but you two."

"Just say when and where, Boss" replied Ayken.

"The easiest entry point is going to be the enormous windows at the front of the church. The glass all but evaporated during the initial breach so what remains is little more than a collection of glorified archways. Given the radio silence that has preceded your arrival, I think that's the quickest way for us to find out what the Hell is going on."

"Understood" the two NEPHYLIM replied. Out of courtesy, the two demigods maintained a relatively normal pace as they approached the perimeter of the ruined church before vanishing from sight. Half a second later they reappeared at the edge of Calvary's enduring exterior.

Bael was the first to cross the threshold into the war-zone that once held a congregation of earnest Christians.

"I've never seen so much... red" said Bael. Before Ayken could chime in, Paul's voice crackled through their secure channel.

"What do you see, boys?"

"Aside from what remains of the patrons, nothing."

As Bael and Paul continued to catalogue the details of Calvary's present state, Ayken approached the section of the church where the organ once stood. Much to his surprise, there was no trace of an organ at all. All that remained was an enormous cavity in the flesh of the Earth.

"Bael... you need to see this..."

Like unsuspecting adolescents on the edge of a lake, the two unsuspecting demigods peered over the edge of the immense gateway to Hell. Neither had seen anything like it... perhaps if they had... the immediate aftermath of such ignorance could have been avoided.

"Paul... there's a gig-" before Bael could finish his sentence, a large black mass covered the bottom of the gateway to Hell. Swift as a shadow it climbed towards to the border of the two worlds, it's form taking visible shape with every breath drawn. First wings, then scales, then a pointed visage of which only one abyssal creature could posses came into view... it was a dragon from the depths of Hell.

"Bael! BAEL! AYKEN! Talk to me-"

"Don't sweat it, Boss" replied Ayken calmly. "It's not the first dragon we've sentenced to death."

As the gargantuan, scaly nightmare of Hell's design fully passed into the Earthen realm, Bael and Ayken teleported to either side of the beast. The dragon responded in kind with a guttural roar accompanied by a fountain of fire espoused from it's gaping jaws. Black flame engulfed the sanctuary, obscuring the NEPHYLIM from view; the demigods remained unseen even as the smoke began to clear.

Were it so easy...

In twin flashes of white light, Bael and Ayken each emerged from the aftermath of the dragon's black flame to cast Final Judgement from the palms of their hands, eviscerating the wings of the hulking beast before them. The great beast bellowed in pain as it spun it's body around in a desperate attempt to defend itself... the smoke of it's black flame still hanging thick in the air.

Bael managed to duck the giant's tail as it leveled Calvary's mezzanine... Ayken was not so lucky.

"KAYNE!" shouted Bael, his voice now accompanied by the same lower octave that once plagued the speech of Achilles.

He watched in horror while Ayken (as we know him) was violently thrown across the sanctuary of Calvary into a wall that nearly shattered at the force of impact. Unlike the wall, Ayken's body went limp on contact and plummeted toward the ground.

Bael immediately teleported to Ayken's position and dove behind what remained of Calvary's heartier pews.

"Stay here." growled Bael. Ayken attempted to stand but was restrained by his fellow demigod.

"1st Commandment Release, Armor of God" whispered Bael as he signed the Cross in front of Ayken.

"Wha- What are you DOING?" Shouted Ayken, already beginning to recover from his mortal wounds.

"STAY HERE!" roared Bael. Before he could respond, Ayken found himself wreathed in golden, holy light. He was encased in a shield... a protective spell... from which he could not escape.

"Bael! Ayken! What the HELL is going on in there?" Paul's voice boomed in the ears of his divine sons like a powder keg of desperation.

"Time to die." Bael huffed as he began to circle the wounded beast before him.

"Second Commandment Release, DIVINE LIGHT!" Bael's doubled voice rang out like an earthquake as he sprinted up the wall where Calvary's organ once stood. Upon reaching the height of the dragon's head, Bael kicked off the wall and assumed the form of a massive bolt of holy lightning. The black flame beast could only watch in horror as Bael's electrified rage ripped through it's flesh. Bael returned to human form as the dragon collapsed behind him. He slowly walked towards the head of the beast where his eyes met hers.

"I know you'd do the same for me." said Bael seconds before casting Final Judgement at point blank range. The black flame beast perished instantly.