Charlie's Inferno - Chapter 1
The account of Lieutenant Charlie Stone, Sergeant of the Sons of Virgil, mankind's first Infernal Long Range Reconnaissance Platoon.
A quick note: this is chapter one of what will eventually become an Archive novella. I intend to release these chapters here first before compiling them into the book. Keep in mind that this chapter and any following it will likely change before being formally published! The Archive would love to have your feedback as we embark down this journey. Please help us shape this story as it develops! Thanks so much for reading!
Looking for the audio version? It’s at the bottom!
The gravel crunches beneath my boots as I slowly duck behind the outcropping of rough volcanic rock that lies between me and the ruined obsidian castle that has just appeared before me. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been out here, how much training I’ve had, there are some things about this place that are impossible for the human mind to get used to. The tendency for enormous monoliths, mountains, or other towering features to appear seemingly out of nowhere is one of those things. Something this large would have been visible from nearly 10 miles away on Earth, but here it didn’t make itself apparent until I was damn near on its doorstep. The scientists and cartographers say that there’s nothing strange about it – it’s just a combination of the craggy, broken landscape, wherein one can go hours without getting a clear view of the horizon, and the fact that opaque, crimson fogs are constantly seeping from damn near every fissure in the ground. They say its nothing to be frightened of – it’s not like these places are actually moving around or flashing into existence on a whim. I say they can go fuck themselves. Has one of them ever been the first person to explore a landscape that’s committed to jump scaring you every chance it gets? If they had, I doubt they’d be so damn flippant.