Kerrebis landed on a high cliff with an ear-numbing whistle. Clouds of fog creeping over the plains formed semicircles, pushed out of the freighter's nozzle.

A ramp protruded from the abdomen of the aircraft, behind which a bright light flashed. In an instant, human silhouettes began to pour onto the cliff. Their clothes contrasted with the matte military suits surrounding the area in a caring cordon. Their armour presented the present, and the costumes of the newcomers were a cluster of different eras.

When the first wave of newcomers lined up on the landing site, a man slipped out of Kerrebis. Bargeous, of medium height, with black skin flowing down in this hellish weather. His armour even more dull, repulsive of light and losing the human gaze. He left the newcomers to his men and pulled long steps towards the viewpoint.

Chris stood in line, under the watchful gaze of a masked soldier. Completely confused, lost in what surrounded him. With his faulty eyesight, he tried to see any point in his surroundings – but the fog ate the entire horizon. Rays of light, like distant lightning or explosions, were the only thing he could find in this layer of clouds. Besides, only an asphalt airstrip, a huge freighter behind him and a group of soldiers.

Until he saw the tree. And he doubted.

"I'm either dreaming or that fucking tree is looking at me," someone said next to him.

Big red fruits with eyelids looked toward them. Someone began to breathe spasmodically.

The soldier with a short command told them to turn around and, still standing in line, put their gaze into the hexagonal structure of the viewpoint. To their eyes, it was some strange bunker in which people disappeared as soon as they entered as if behind the event horizon of a black hole. However, Christopher was sure of it, everyone felt on their backs the sick look of a tree rich in eyes.

They stood there for a moment until someone in the line fainted and fell on his face. It sounded like a bag of meat softly falling to the ground and blood appeared on the asphalt.

The soldier made one move and grabbed the poor man in a polyamide jacket by the scruff of the neck, put him in some barrel, which clicked and then silently led the fainted man out of their viewing corner.

Soon after, the rain came and he kicked the tar out of everyone in just a few moments. Despite the screams, no one led them under the roof. They waited. Christopher mumbled more curses under his breath than he had done in all his childhood until he almost started screaming in anglo-saxon, when someone pushed him and, along with the mates, he walked towards the bunker.

There they didn't care about clothes. They were torn off of them with some kind of laser beam. Moments later, they walked through a long corridor, completely naked, sprayed, dried and soaked anew. They fell over, and cried; Christopher switched from hostile swearing to the quiet, whining mantras of 'fuck' that kept him on his feet. Until the corridor spat them out into a large room where new clothes were waiting for them.

Although the word 'anew' was quite an abuse.

Chris found his cabinet, in which his name was written – Baczewski – and only after a moment of walling up, he reached out to touch the material hanging on the hanger. Never, in any museum, did he have a chance to touch the costume of a soldier from the war. And now, he had it under his fingertips. And he couldn't find himself in how ordinary, rough the fabric of these pants was.

Someone came in and told them to get dressed in five minutes. They stood for a moment, a group of naked men, complete strangers, completely taken out of context. They looked at each other, it lasted a little, until one of them broke and with a vigorous movement began to put on underwear and short pants. Chris, when he put on his uniform and tinkered with the schnauzer pulled out of the cabinet, played only one thought in his head: God, where am I, God, that they give me weapons and... God. Tears flooded his thoughts, for he repeated it over and over again until with a red face he stood in line with the rest. Another matte soldier came and led them behind him through two corridors to an oval elevator. There, the elevator, instead of moving, opened its floor and sucked them instantly. By the time they opened their eyes, they were already standing upright before Tomatius Elm.

The broad-shouldered African-American exchanged two glances with their guide, nodded, and his eyes rested on Christopher.

“I am Tomatius Elm. My function, assignment, and organization won't tell you much. What should satisfy you is that you are here according to the law, both your local and supranational”, this last word Christopher guessed because it seemed to him that Tomatius said something completely different, meaningless. “You have been assigned a task, as citizens and members of your families. Your uniform...”

"I'm sorry," someone on the right broke out in a screeching voice. Chris jumped up. Tomatius looked in that direction as if he were following a flying fly. “But I demand that you tell me where...”

"You'll find out everything on the spot", Tomatius replied quickly. When the screeching man opened his mouth again, the dull soldier next to him smashed his stomach with a fist. Man's eyes almost jumped out of orbit when he fell to his knees and tried to catch his breath at all costs.

Tomatius made a calming gesture.

"What you need to know is that we are in a difficult situation and for a long time. Your help is essential to complete our task. Which at the same time becomes your task. Behind me," Elm pointed behind me, aiming at the big screens, or windows, stretching across the wall of the wide room they were in, “there are people whom you have to convince to stop and go home.”

Men in uniforms from the Second World War looked at each other with shock in their eyes.

“I repeat. You have to convince them to stop and go home. You will get specific personal assignments from Tehtian, who will take you to the place of action. Questions?

Millions, but none aloud.

"Let providence protect you," he said, nodding at the same time and simply disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The matte one behind them growled and they moved forward. An illuminated path on the floor led them in a semicircle through the room. When they were close enough to the big screens, Chris realized that they were windows coming out of the side of the cliff on which they landed. He looked down as the fog thinned out for a moment. And he froze.

There was a battle going on at the bottom.

The elevator spat them out at the bottom of the cliff, perfectly on a compact tract stretching right and left, all the way to the walls of fog. It was the only view they could classify. In addition, grey-eyed trees, metal grasses and blood-red stones appeared before their eyes, pulsating like abandoned organs. The earth turned to dust under their feet.

But everyone was still looking at the black, jerky shape that was in front of them, floating a quarter of a meter above the ground.

"I'm Tehtian", he said. Someone sat down in shock. Chris clenched his hands on the rifle with all his strength until his knuckles whitened. The screeching guy just vomited. "Let's go.”

The shape without waiting for them began to drift across the plain in the direction from which the distant sounds of battle were carried.

They waited a while and then looked at each other – at least those who had not yet been overcome by the views. Chris stretched out his hand, and handed it to the nearest one.

“Chris.”

Uncertain they reciprocated the gesture.

"Charles", said a very tall, slender guy.

“Paul”, quickly threw the spectacle with his helmet falling on his forehead.

“Michael.” He eagerly shook his hand, clutching it in a firm embrace.

Chris caught Peter, Gabriel, Patrick and Radek, but he did not even try to deceive himself that he could remember their names.

“Do you know where we are? Does anyone remember anything?”

They shook their heads.

“How did you get here?” Chris tried further.

"I just fell asleep," Paul said, and his face twisted, as if he were holding back his crying.

"Me too," someone in the back threw in.

“I was driving a car”, Karol interjected.

“I remember something, but nothing I could describe” - Michael clapped his hand on the knee.

Chris, seeing that it would not lead anywhere, waved his hand.

“Let's just stick together, okay?”

Everyone agreed to this without thinking. And suddenly someone howled loudly, people jumped away. Christopher turned and saw the throbbing black right in front of his nose. It smelled like an end.

"Let's go," Tehtian repeated.

So they set off, crying in terror.

The grasses turned out to be sharp, and the eyes followed them all the way. It was only when they began to disappear into the trench that Christopher felt hope that they would hide from their frantic gaze. But there were other, worse things in the trenches that he would have liked to deny from his memory.

For example, a severed hand suddenly grabbed Michael by the leg and began to pull him in some direction. In the scream that arose, people pulled out bayonets and began to beat the hand until they snatched the tendons and Michael ran backwards. There, however, Tehtian waited, and terror gave way to terror.

However, when one of the corpses, still drooling, with the part of his face torn off, began to crawl towards them, it was too much for everyone. They turned around and with animal fear fell backwards. They were running, backpacks were banging on them, they were falling to the ground, someone fell, howled, got up, someone trampled on him. Until they reached the wider trench, where Tehtian was waiting for them.

They clashed into a group, Christopher on the right, a useless rifle in one hand, a bayonet in the other, like a dagger. They steamed with trembling lips as they watched for more madness around them. And this animal fear pushed Michael to the incomprehensible.

He broke out into this antithesis of the Burning Bush and, aiming his finger, began to scream:

“Who are you, you cunt? Who the fuck are you...”

It clicked and he disappeared. Not that Tehtian ate him. No, no. Michael was just there, you blink your eyes and he wasn't there anymore.

“Here are your assignments. Check in your pockets.”

Some trembling hands groped and fished out rolled up… screens? Others just stood. No moving. Eyeballs stuck in a black shapelessness.

“What...?” suddenly someone next to Chris whispered. “... my...?”

Someone cried again.

“Like a crowd of women...  in view...  The Beatles”, Chris strained, shaking hands and unfolding the screen.

His rifle fell to the ground when he saw the name: Jarosław Baczewski. His late grandfather.

“Is this a joke?” he strained towards Tehtian. “Is this a JOKE?!”

He shouted the last word. He pulled everyone out of their stupor. They followed him with their eyes, some of them unsure whether it was worth blinking again. However, Chris did not disappear. Instead, Tehtian increased its volume.

They stepped back as the shapeless swelled and a figure jumped out of its depths, looking like a cross between an Aztec priest and a medieval doctor from the Plague. Long beak, dozens of black feathers, black as burnt coal body. In one step he was in front of Chris.

"Nothing is a joke here," he replied, snapping his beak.

After that, he limped like a stork and jumped five meters behind them. Turning around, he ordered to follow him.

It took everyone a while like they would follow a surreal dream. But they went, gathering each other from the ground, again into the trenches of hell, not knowing what else to do.

Many steps further, from the run of the dead thoughts, they were snatched away by the voice of the people. Somewhere between the corpses stretching out their hands towards them, they saw a grey old man with a narrow face. Christopher quickly looked towards the screeching Patrick, and he stood as if enchanted. Slowly he watched as the elderly man in uniform gave orders to the corpses around him, and they slowly crawled in the direction indicated by him, throwing sluggish grenades and firing the weapons with those fingers that were left to them.

The roar of the battle was becoming unbearable. It smelled of death.

“Grandpa?” said screeching Patrick suddenly.

The elderly gentleman looked in his direction, but saw Tehtian, saluted him, and then looked again in the direction from which the question was asked.

It lasted until a moment before he whispered, totally inaudible, but clear from his mouth:

“Patrick?”

It was the most surreal sight to date. Grandson slowly walked towards the captain in his sixties, commanding a company of corpses between a sea of grass of steel and stone organs.

Tehtian snatched them from the moment with one screech, and the rest set off, leaving grandpa and his grandson to themselves.

When they reached Michael’s Grandpa, the battle became a real hell.

Between the trenches, in the open, legions of corpses dressed in solider’s uniforms devoured. Cutting against the grass, trampling the lying stones into pools of blood, they devoured each other, tearing off skin, limbs, eyes. Between them, soldiers, sergeants, and lieutenants walked, calling them to make an effort or participated in the fighting themselves.

Michael's grandfather was following the order of the corpse sergeant, who laughed out loud, looking at the only living soldier. Before he could do anything, one of the enemy corpses caught up with him and began to bite off his leg with a visor.

Tehtian clacked.

"No one will come for him anymore," he said to the rest.

They looked at him with pleading eyes. Tehtian looked at them with a garnet of his eyes from behind the goggles above his beak.

“What's going on here...?” Chris choked.

It lasted a while. That silence in the midst of death.

“Hell. A scrap here. A piece there. Time... Space...”

They didn't understand.

Amid a cloud of smoke, the smell of gunpowder, and the bubbling rabies of the dead troops, Christopher finally saw him. A proud captain who, with pets on his shoulder, explains something to a bunch of dull corpses huddled around him in a trench. What a peculiar sight it was, seeing a man almost buried alive by the essence of evil, but still with full courage commanding his host from hell.

Christopher looked around from his place in the trench and did not see either Tehtian or the rest of the boys. He understood that the group had to rush further. He gathered once, the second time, and bent down, he set off under the whistling of bullets and machine guns. The force of a grenade threw him at the corpses standing next to him and miraculously managed to get out of their hands. They hissed at him as he ran until he reached his grandfather. With the rifle butt he cut into one of the skulls, with a bayonet the other, and the deadness parted for a moment, after which she wrapped a cordon around them both. He looked at his grandfather, looking vigilantly above the ground line at the enemy troops. But when he looked around again, at the dead hissing faces, he felt as if he had fallen into a hole full of black mambas and bears.

He felt a warm stream run down his leg and his teeth tremble.

"Soldier," his grandfather shouted in his face, "where is my artillery support? Where is the...”

He let go of his collar, and a shock poured into his eyes. Christopher saw how through his grandfather's mind passes this flash that pulls people out of their stupor.

“Chris...?”

Chris felt his eyes melt.

“Chris, Most Holy God, Chris...?”

“Yes, papa, yes...”

Grandpa grabbed him by the shoulders.

“God, what are you doing here... I do not understand...?”

He looked around in a circle, suddenly his face grimaced and he screamed.

“What are you looking at? Hold the line, you bastards!”

And a flock of corpses, like a whip, jumped off to crawl to the walls of the trench. Still hostile hissing, but guarding the designated positions.

The gaze fell on Christopher again and the face, as if he had reconciled as if he had awakened from his sleep.

“Grandson. On Christ the Lord, what are you doing here... after all... after all...”

"I don't know, Grandpa, but I have to get you out of here.”

“Hence...?” he led with erroneous eyes around. “but we are fighting for our country, Chris..”

“Grandpa... this... it's not for real.”

“How is it not, Chris? After all, they are my soldiers. My friends. See. And there is the enemy. Do you know what they're going to do to you, how are they going to get you? Do you know what they did to the people?” here his grandfather's face broke into a grimace of pain. Red hatched on the skin, so hard man tried to stop the flood of emotions. He grabbed Chris by the sleeve, smeared him in his hand as if he wanted to take him in, as if… ”these... CATTLE... they took my father away from me. Do you understand that? Do you understand that Chris? These... Vile... canals, not people, they took my daddy...”

Memories of death tore apart all the thoughts stitched together by the war. Eyes burst, like bubbles with rotten tears— held for a long time and now sinking the irises with the blackness of sadness and the numbing mould of pain.

"They took him away," he continued, in a trembling voice. “On the carrier. Under this viaduct, we found you there once. And there he ...” he led with empty eyes through the corridors of memories. “And there they did him with a rifle butt ... Flask! And with their legs. Those dirty shoes... they beat my father... these animals... these dirty animals. Father.. me...”

The red broke when the mouldy tears forbade the heart.

“To me! TO ME, SOLDIERS!" he roared, his staring eyes over the corpses. They smelled blood.

They moved. A whole bunch of dead soldiers poured out of the trench onto the plain. To meet them rushed with a viscous valkyrie of death. The guns spat out lead in all directions, dragging the dead bodies into chaos.

Chris caught up with his grandfather in half a yard and threw him to the ground. No word was spoken, only the scream on the lips of the older man went out, and turned into a moan. As he whimpered, the man huddled in embracing his grandson and howled for his son's lost love for his father.

"I'm not going to let you go," Christopher mumbled. "I'm not going to let you go.”

He never let him go. Even when Grandpa broke out and ran on a pilgrimage. For the bike. Even when he beat him without recognizing him completely. He endured it bravely whenever his grandfather, devastated by Alzheimer's, continued to fight battles in the world of his thoughts. He always had the same warm hands that he caught, explaining to him that his wife was waiting for him at home. Joasia – this name pulled grandpa out of thoughtfulness and awakened the mind from numbness. Each time he was turning away from his imaginary pilgrimage, already more than ten miles from home, while everyone was looking for him. He turned to her name and let himself be led back like a child. Sometimes, while driving, he wanted to get off because he forgot. But this balm of her name always kept him somehow with reality.

“Grandpa... Grandpa, because Grandma Joasia is waiting.”

The same nectar. It silenced the screams then, silenced the crying also this time. At the sight of this broken look in the bloodshot eyes of his grandfather, Chris's heart broke once again. But he had to get up and get him out of this battle.

So they got up slowly and step by step they went in the direction from which Chris came. Around them, there was a frenzy. Hatred devoured hatred. The deadness suffocated the last pennies of life from each other. Somewhere further away, Chris saw Patrick. He and his grandfather walked slowly in the same direction. Until the captain broke free from the embrace of his grandson and in front of Christopher, with Patrick's cry, shouted over the spectre of battle:

“Nope! You're gone! You are not alive yet!”

And putting his hat on his head, he ran again into the trenches, and there were thirsty hands waiting. Patryk fell to his knees, then threw himself after his grandfather and...

"Come, come," Christopher choked out, turning his head. The sounds he heard stuck in his skull like sharp skewers of grass injuring their calves. “Joasia...  Joasia is waiting...”

“Joasia ...” he whispered as he took his heavy steps.

A grenade exploded nearby. Shards of torn bodies danced in the air. Red stones have arrived.

“Joasia...”

They took steps. In toil, because the shoes sucked swamps of blood, human excrement and rainwater. But with each step, it thinned out.

“... Joasia...”

“Yes... Stasia”, Chris choked out of himself. Grandpa was weighing heavily on his shoulder.

From the right came the long-awaited artillery. Three guns harnessed to horses, now unlocked and banging towards rifles on a nearby hill. Two heavy machine gun rifles also joined the symphony, rhythmically responding to the deafening rattle of enemy rifles.

„… Joa… sia…” mumbled grandpa

„Come on... Please... Come...”

He corrected him under his shoulder and dragged the old man. Limp legs in officers' boots kicked pulsating stones and hooked on the steel grass.

Christopher's tooth broke when, clenching his jaws, he pushed on. He passed for a moment until the noise of battle was behind them, behind the cover of sweet fog.

“Grandpa... What is going on? Grandpa...” he mumbled, putting the man on the ground. He threw away his gun, grabbed his grandfather's face in his hand and patted him gently. “Grandpa?”

“Joasia ... “, flew out of the bruised mouth.

“Grandpa?!”

The eyes closed. The breath was tearing.

“No. No!” He unzipped his uniform on his old chest and began to ppress his heart, pumping blood. “Help! HELP!” He shouted in a tearing voice.

He looked around. He jumped off like pulled by a grenade. Tehtian, the antithesis of the burning bush, the shapelessness of blackness, was here again.

“Why? Why?!” Chris broke out towards him.

"You have set him free," Tehtian explained.

The breath broke off suddenly, like a candle blown away by the wind.

Christopher caught up to grandpa’s chest and began to press, again and again.

“But I don't want to! But I don't want him to leave!” he shouted, with clear pauses as he pushed on his grandfather's chest.

He pushed until his hands burned. But he didn't stop.

“I didn't tell him... I didn't tell him...” he panted, feeling that Tehtian was lurking.

He closed his eyes and pressed again.

“How I like his stories...”

Once again.

“... about these battles...”

And again.

“And that.. showed me...”

And again.

“... how to be...”

And yet.

“... Man.”

Again.

“And that...”

Again.

“ … I…”

Hands trembled. He fell on his dead chest, and something shot in his arm, it was burning terribly.

"I love him," he said, catching a cold hand. “And that I miss...”

Tehtian approached.

"You convinced him to stop. That’s it.”

Christopher closed his eyes. He remembered how his grandfather found him under this viaduct on the transport. When he ran away from the neighbours’ friends who beat him for having holes in his pants. When he found him there, he hugged him. He called brave.

"Because you see...," he said in his confident voice. The same one to whom he subjugated the hosts of hell. “the trick is not to give up when it's hard. Tomorrow will be a new day. And maybe it will be difficult again. But I know you can do it. Because?”

“I am brave?” little Chris groaned, cowering under the viaduct.

That smile. For whom he missed thousands of evenings, unable to forgive himself for not saving him, for not being able to cope.

“And you can do it.”

Christopher clenched his fists.

“No! I will not allow...!” he choked and swung over his grandfather's chest to force his heart to contract once more.

It clicked and he disappeared. No, not that Tehtian ate him. No, no. Christopher was just there, you blink your eyes and he wasn't there anymore. And when Chris’ opened his again, he saw the broad-shouldered African-American whose gaze pierced him through

“I am Tomatius Elm. My function, assignment, and organization won't tell you much…”