The Stag is Loose – Pine Barrens Redeaux
The Paladin Brotherhood is slogging forward with confidence through the brush and scrub pines. And the darkness? No problem for Hyne – but for his men, new-generation night-vision goggles are almost weightless and actually sharpen visual targets at distance as effectively as they clarify eyesight within yards. This technology has evolved to make men the equal of nocturnal animals.
And then there’s some of the “goodies” Lee has returned with from The Old Ones. Brynne, their Aryan aux pair and resident celestial medicine expert, has operated on each of the men, installing through a small skin flap on their skulls an “Experiential Awareness Interface”. This tiny object utilizes human cranial bone porosity to feed directly into the brain a 360 degree “intuitive visual field” – that is, an instinctual sight plan as to what is happening inside a “cone of proximity” of about 50 to 60 feet. Fremd, Chen and L’Enfant describe the effect as having “eyes in the back of your head”. Once a person gets used to it, an Experiential Awareness Interface is a sixth sense.
Then there’s Ursus.
Ursus looks, moves and acts like any muscular male German Shepard. But he is a fully autonomous canine android that is indistinguishable from any other actual German Shepard dog. A perfect copy in every way. He’s covered in fur, his skeletal structure is light alloy titanium steel, and his brain is a quantum computer that employs fully sentient artificial intelligence to recognize threats to his “pack” or posse and respond accordingly. He doesn’t have to be walked, fed or otherwise fussed over. Although he looks like a pet – he is more than an affectionate canine companion. Ursus is a military asset that is programmed to kill, maim and destroy the enemies of its pack.
And who are his enemies? Whomever his “pack” or posse say they are. And his pack has identified Vampyres as a primary target. Ursus has detailed files on the biology and morphology of Vampyres, their movements, smell (yes, Ursus has an extremely developed olfactory sense), history on Earth and fatal weaknesses.
Ursus stalks as silently as any hunting dog and is equally as vigilant for any signs in the forest that its prey is near. He draws unlimited energy from the so-called Zero-Point Field or “Over Unity Energy” that Nikola Tesla discovered over a century ago. His hearing is on a scale that is orders of magnitude beyond what any Earth animal or auditory receiver technology can register and communicates telepathically. Of course, Ursus barks to get attention, growls to indicate displeasure or caution and packs one Hell of a bite. He makes his own adorable dog noises and sounds to blend into his terrestrial environment – and even presents with a textbook body temperature signature of a fully grown, healthy German Sheperd – 101 Degrees Fahrenheit.
He’s programmed to respond to positive reinforcement like praise, affectionate touching- like petting and caressing – and voice commands from his pack. But the only member of his pack or posse he’s hardwired to sacrifice himself for is Hyne and Lee’s son – Arkan. Ursus is the guardian of their child, first and foremost.
Per L’Enfant has been running drones over the Pine Barrens for the past week. He’s gleaned enough data to conclude that there are at least six more members of the Vampyre Coven active there – probably taking refuge under the ruins of the Hampton Bog Iron Furnaces in Wharton State Forest in Shamong, NJ. It’s along a narrow, disused dirt road – Hampton Road – that used to service an old freight line of the New Jersey Central Railroad.
The images, however, are odd. They’re below normal human body temperature for sure. But the entities seem to be doubled – almost on top of each other, creeping through the heavy forest in randomized, herky-jerky movements. They’re large – no doubt about that – but close to the ground. The height metrics to be assessed by the AI algorithm that’s parsing it all out into a recognizable life form are confusing. And they only come out at night.
Last night it looked like the things were rearing up – then dropping down again. There was a heat signature – human – apparently running away from the Hampton Furnaces ruins, zigzagging between the scrub pines erratically. Two unidentified “doubled over” images clearly reared-up and then took after the human heat signature. The dull glow of that smaller heat source was quickly extinguished. Whatever the unknown entity was down there, it had clearly killed the smaller object – and then loitered over its dead carcass to feed. What are these things? Who are they?
L’Enfant shows the images to Hyne. His response leaves no doubt he has some idea of what they are walking into.
“We each carry an AK47 and extra magazines of Sodium-Silver Nitrate ammo. We’ll probably have to lay down a field of fire. We’ll also need some of our special Chinese Thermobaric Throwing Flares to cook these bastards – and explosive grenades, just in case. Everybody carries five of each. Pass the word.”
That’s where everyone is heading now.
Hyne still uses hand signals – but everybody has perfect line-of-sight because of their new surgically installed celestial interface “Kit”. Hyne takes “Point” – and Ursus covers their rear. Their dog is also incorporating everyone else’s 360 degree “Experiential” field data in real time. The Paladin Brotherhood is a unified fighting core of interconnected commandos. One body and mindset – or, what the French Foreign Legion calls, Un seul Corps Militaire. Never in the history of human military affairs has anything come close to what is purposefully walking through this stretch of Pine Barrens wilderness.
Hyne suddenly raises his fist and crouches down. A clump of scrub and bushes up ahead is bending backwards as if something is crawling through it. Everybody freezes – then hears a low growl from Ursus.
In the distance something rears up – something on hind legs. It’s raising arms with claws – pincers – and its front legs are thrust forward – like some demonic Volkswagen-sized scorpion brandishing a huge, curled tail stinger. The hideous sounds come immediately after. Screeches – guttural rasps and snarling concatenations, first clicking and then scraping – its claws lofting above it some forest animal in its death throes, writhing and howling in pain.
Whatever it is – it’s feeding. The men watch from a distance the thing lower itself back down on four long, spine-covered legs and move away in weird but effective slithering, side-shuffling movements, its rear tail stinger towering above it. It moves like some old stop-motion animation monster from a 1950s Ray Harryhausen science fiction movie. The things heads towards coordinates they know are the Hampton Bog Iron Furnace ruins.
Hyne looks at his crew and racks his AK47. Whatever these things are, a mano-a-mano blade fight is not his first choice for a frontal assault. This has got to be a firepower battle. They’re going to come out of the Pine Scrubs guns blazing. He signals his crew to move forward in the Hampton Furnace ruins direction.
The forest cover clears – and mossy, lichen-covered stones appear towering over them like ominous giants from Greek mythology and the storied walls of Troy. There’re openings and archways in the ruins – more than enough to hide an army of freakish, giant scorpions. Hyne knows these things have been sent to bodyguard the Pine Barrens Vampyre coven. Satanic overlords have made available to their Vampyre allies these nightmarish fiends from Hell to keep the Adrenochrome flowing.
The Human demand – and compensation Vampyres receive – must be great, indeed. A Luciferian quid-pro-quo.
Hyne signals everybody to get ready. He clearly sees how soil has been displaced directly in front of the large archway to his left – that’s where the Scorpion has retreated to its lair. He unpins and throws a grenade inside.
The detonation is deafening. Then screams fill the air.
Two Scorpions emerge, their claws waiving and insidious jaws already grinding back and forth, anticipating nourishment. Hyne jumps to one side and brings his AK47 to bear on the head of one while Xen Chen greets the other Scorpion with more automatic rounds of Sodium-tipped Silver Nitrate projectiles. Metallic elemental Sodium in the ammunition ignites into flames immediately, causing the cursed insectoid freaks to scream even louder and spew forth acrid, foul-smelling smoke from their wounds.
One falls. Then the other. Dirk Fremd quickly rolls a Thermobaric Flare under each and stands back for the incineration process to completely destroy them. Hyne signals everybody to enter the void beyond the archway and makes the “eyes open” gesture.
Ten……twenty……thirty……fifty feet inside. The silence is unnerving.
Then they’re ambushed.
Two more Scorpions emerge from side tunnels and rush at them, claws snapping, rear stingers thrusting forward in spasmodic bursts of deadly force. Hyne empties his first magazine and swaps it out for another. Fremd runs straight at a Scorpion, his weapon on full auto, bobbing and weaving to avoid its hideous and deadly tail stinger like a football quarterback. Xen Chen and Per L’Enfant lay down even more fire – and the things collapse into a stinking, smoldering mass of gigantic, prehistoric insect remains.
Hyne throws a Thermobaric incendiary bomb under each of them and signals the crew to keep going deeper into the tunnel. They creep slowly. It’s a cramped, dark, dank passageway that accesses a large domed room that looks like it was carved out of the primordial Earth itself hundreds of years ago. There are blazing torches bracketed into the walls, transforming the cavernous space into a medieval dungeon. He hears whimpering – slight, weakened but persistent. Ursus growls a low-pitched alert and stops in his tracks.
There, at the end of the domed structure is a tall, hooded Vampyre. It’s hideous face and fangs flicker in the torch light. Next to him are two other Vampyres, twisting and contorting themselves in poses they intend to be threatening and intimidating to Hyne and his men. On the other side of the rounded vault structure is a Scorpion – holding within its claws a naked little girl. Her face is beyond frightened. She’s been tortured and bloodied. She’s been abused and drained of vital fluids. The child has been harvested for Adrenochrome. Red smeared rubber tubes still dangle from intravenous needles protruding from her arms. At the bottom of the gigantic Scorpions legs are three other naked and battered children – blood spattered and barely able to croak sounds of shock and starvation. They, too, have intravenous tubes coiled about their pathetic bodies.
A voice echoes and reverberates within the chamber, loud and menacing. Its tone is anything but conciliatory – it’s an invitation to war. The tall, hooded Vampyre at the far end of the gallery raises its withered, skeletal hand and points at Hyne with each word like an accusing prosecutor in a courtroom drama. Interestingly, he bears no signs of KURU or visible sickness.
“SLAYER!! YOU – THE ONE CALLED HYNE!! RETREAT IMMEDIATELY FROM THIS PLACE OR THIS CHILD WILL BE SEVERED IN HALF BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES – THEN EACH CHRISTIAN CHILD HERE IN TURN!! THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN HARVESTED OF THEIR JUICES – WE HAVE NO FURTHER USE FOR THEM. THEY ARE LITTLE MORE THAN CHRISTIAN GARBAGE!!
OUR MIGHTY LEGIONS OF DEMONIC SCORPIONS AND LOCUSTS DISPATCHED BY THE ANGEL OF THE ABYSS – ABADDON HIMSELF – WILL PICK YOU OFF LIKE RIPE FRUIT IN OUR GARDEN!! DEPART FROM US, NOW, HYNE!! AND REMEMBER – HELL IS COMING FOR YOU SOON!!”
Hyne raises his fist to signal his crew to full stop. Then he does something surprising.
He drops his AK47 to the ground.
Hyne slowly moves towards the Hellish Scorpion, raising his hands – palms forward – gesturing complete surrender. But as he inches forward, Xen Chen notices a subtle movement in his right hand….it gets closer to his head. The move is subtle – and Hyne is using an exaggerated swagger to keep all eyes on his torso.
The Scorpion is snarling and snapping at him, dangling the limp, naked child in front of him as a lure in front of a fish. It makes a weird, screeching and grating sound as it shifts from front to back legs and partially rears up to intimidate and challenge Hyne. Its quivering stinger tail points at him like a spear ready to launch.
Hyne slowly inches ahead, hands up – now talking out loud to the tall Vampyre but never taking his eyes off the Scorpion.
“YES! I AM HYNE! I RAISE MY HANDS IN SURRENDER AND BESEECH YOU TO LET US GO, UNHARMED. I FEAR I HAVE UNDERESTIMATED YOUR DEMONIC DEFENDERS –
Then with a blinding speed Hyne reaches his right hand below his collar. In one fluid movement, he extracts his Seax – and throws it. The prescient blade – expertly crafted in a time and place unimagined by man – finds its mark. The precise target Hyne throws it at is the Scorpion’s eye and – behind it – the brain of this insidious fiend.
The Scorpion immediately drops the child out of its claw and rears up, wailing in agony. It’s blinded and disoriented, screaming out deafening howls of torment.
Dirk Fremd leaps onto its scaled back as it pitches downward in writhing despair, his large Bowie knife plunging and thrashing at the ball of neurons that clearly comprises the freaks’ central nervous system. He hacks at the Scorpion’s chitinous exoskeleton in such a murderous frenzy that he only narrowly avoids being impaled by its tail stinger. Fremd finally extracts Hynes’ Seax and tosses it back to him. Ursus catches the blade in mid-air and brings it to his pack leader like he’s fetched a stick in the park on a sunny afternoon.
Hyne points at the Vampyres barks one order.
“KILL THEM!”
The boys are spoiling for a knife fight now. No firearms are discharged from here on. They drop their AK47s as they wade into the Vampyre trio.
Per L’Enfant is the first to engage the tall leader. One slash severs its windpipe and causes its fangs to grimace in terminal defiance. He then gracefully dips to one knee slices through the fiend’s leg muscles with his Katana. In one final sweep, L’Enfant decapitates the filthy creature.
Xen Chen makes a toss salad out of another Vampyres’ guts with his trusty Wodao sword, then ends its agony with an authoritative chop to the back of its neck. The fiend’s head rolls away like a bowling ball. Not yet satisfied, Xen Chen sprints after it and kicks it even further away, grinning from ear to ear as he does so.
The fear and desperation in the eyes of the last Vampyre makes Hyne almost pity him.
Almost.
Hyne draws his Seax and points it the now-decapitated tall Vampyre. He asks one final question.
“WAS HE THE PINE BARRENS COVEN LEADER?”
The last Vampyre shifts about on his legs nervously, still making threatening, clawing gestures at Hyne’s team members that are closest to him. He bares his fangs in defiance and hisses, engaging in some ridiculous snake-dance that he thinks is cowing his enemies.
‘YES!! THAT WAS SUBARCHON DEVALIOS – THE COVEN LEADER. HIS REPLACEMENT WILL COME! YOU HAVE ACHIEVED NOTHING TODAY, SLAYER!! THE JUICE WILL BE HARVESTED FROM CHRISTIAN CHILDREN AND NOTHING YOU CAN DO WILL STOP IT!! THAT IS OUR AGREEMENT – CHRISTIAN BLOOD FOR JUICE!! PACTA SUNT SERVANDA, SLAYER!! YOU ARE BOUND!! PACTA SUNT SERVANDA!!”
With one movement, Hyne slices its throat – then saws off its vile head.
“Let’s get these four kids to someplace safe, then head back to The Hook. Use Thermobaric incendiaries to flush this place out. Do a quick perimeter search and make sure no surprises await us – then let’s get the Hell out of here. Reach out to the Helo to be waiting at the agreed coordinates.”
As they all fly to Paulus Hook, Hyne stares out the window into the thousands of New Jersey lights below and ponders what just went down. The kids are safe – dropped off at a local hospital ER ambulance overhang – but one thought keeps banging around inside Hyne’s head. That irksome phrase the Vampyre repeated like it was some talismanic magic spell or invocation.
“Pacta sunt Servanda”
Hyne’s Latin is a bit rusty – but he’s sure what it means in principle.
“Contracts are Binding” or “Compacts must be observed”
Who has the legal and moral authority to bind mankind to an evil bargain that trades the Blood of Christian Children for Adrenochrome? Can humans be bound by such a contract to forsake their children?
To Hyne it all sounds like some despicable, unfathomable Old Testament Curse.
The Blood of Innocents.
Eons ago, the ancient Hebrews and Babylonians threw live babies of their enemies that they captured in battle into a fire pit at the base of a statue of the God they worshipped – Baal. A horned beast with the head of a bull. It was a time when human sacrifice was common and celebrated. The Assyrians called him “Sha-Tan” – later written as “Satan”. Over time, the malevolent Baal was renamed Yahweh and assumed more anthropomorphic characteristics, all the while commanding his “favored” chosen people to slaughter their neighbors and steal their homelands and livestock.
A Biblical Testament was devoted to him and his mythical “Divine Covenant” with the Hebrew Tribes. Tribes that condemned Jesus of Nazareth to be crucified – and Tribes that never stopped hating him, his followers and everything he stood for.
Are Christian children being targeted by Vampyres in league with extremist non-Christians who seek to banish Jesus Christ once and for all and build their Third Temple in Jerusalem? Fulfill their self-serving, blood-soaked Old Testament prophecy?
Have renegade elements within the Holy See signed a Compact with Lucifer to restore Yahweh to his throne? And have these same renegade elements consigned Christian children to Baal’s fire pit – in return for Adrenochrome and a front row seat at Christ’s final defeat?
Hyne wants an answer – from a source that cannot lie. A source that is incapable of uttering an untruth. An Angel.
Better still – an Archangel.
Hyne needs his old nemesis –
Gabriel.
*NO PART OF THIS WORK PRODUCT IS AI GENERATED*
Copyright, 2026 – Jon & Jedediah Croft
www.bogironfoundry.com
Email: vlchek1@gmail.com
