The Demolay Chronicles

The night air drifted through the open window, giving the entire room a slight chill. The breeze rustled the mosquito net that wrapped around the four-poster bed on which Sophia slept. Sophia had always enjoyed sleeping with the windows open when the weather was good. She had always loved the outdoors and never felt quite comfortable without the breeze circulating through the room. She also liked listening to the crickets as she drifted off to sleep; she found the sound they made soothing.

The sound the crickets made—or weren’t making, in this particular case—might have given her an entirely different feeling on this night. If she had been awake, she might’ve noticed the sudden silence that came over all the animals outside her window. It was the type of hush that fell over the forest when animals knew there was a dangerous predator nearby, knowing that any sudden sound or movement might mean death to any unfortunate creature foolish enough to alert the predator to its presence. But she wasn’t awake, so she slept on, completely unaware that her world was about to change forever.

Out of the darkness, an orb appeared, bathing the entire room in a scarlet glow. The orb slowly drifted across the room until it reached Sophia. It paused for a moment, hovering silently, and then it entered her. A few seconds later, small beads of sweat began to form on Sophia’s forehead. She began to toss and turn as the dream began to take her. The orb exited her and disappeared just as quickly as it had come.

Sophia found herself on a high cliff overlooking a valley below. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see. As the sun broke over the eastern horizon, Sophia could see from her vantage point the rays glinting off the armor of thousands of men as they rode off into the distance. It would’ve been the most picturesque thing she had ever seen, but the smell of blood and death that hung in the air was so overwhelming that it instantly destroyed any illusion that this was a place anyone would want to be. The raspy cries of vultures echoed off the mountains surrounding the valley as they fought amongst themselves, feeding on the bodies of the dead and dying.

Sophia watched as three vultures fed on the body of a young man who couldn’t have been much older than she was; two of the vultures were engaged in a tug-of-war over a portion of the young man’s intestines, while another vulture was busy pecking at the young man’s eye until it eventually succeeded in removing it from the socket and gulping it down in one quick motion. Sophia could feel her stomach churn as she tried not to vomit. She couldn’t help but wonder how the young man’s family would feel when they found out he was dead. She wondered if he had been conscripted into the army or if he had volunteered of his own accord. She wondered if his mother supported him in what he was doing or if she had been dead set against it. All of these thoughts and more occurred to her simultaneously as she took in the horrible scene below.

It was easy to glorify and romanticize war if you had never witnessed it up close. It was easy to be taken in by the tales of heroic bravery when you didn’t have to look at the cost in human lives.

Having grown up around livestock, Sophia was intimately familiar with death, but this was different. She had never witnessed anything like this before, and the sheer magnitude of the death and destruction was difficult to wrap her mind around. The idea that anything could be worth this level of human suffering was difficult to understand, let alone justify.

When she was much younger, she and her older sister would plead with their father to tell them stories of the battles he had fought in, but no matter how much they begged, their father would always chastise them, saying, “Stories of war are not the kinds of things that young ladies should concern themselves with.”

When Sophia and her sister Mary would protest, he would tell them that war brings only sadness and suffering to the lives of those it touches and that they should focus their energies on more positive things. As she looked down at the scene in the valley below, for the first time in her life, she understood why her father had reacted the way he did.

Before Sophia could give much more thought to what she was witnessing, she was distracted by the sound of two men engaged in combat a short distance away from her. One of the men appeared to be in his late sixties, and the other in his mid-thirties.

The older man was wrinkled and bald, except for a few thinning patches of hair on the sides of his head. She couldn’t make out the face of the younger man, but he seemed familiar somehow.

Both men were bruised and battered from what had clearly been a brutal fight. The older man was limping, dragging his lifeless left foot behind him as he walked. The younger man was barely conscious; his occasional moans of pain were the only indications that he was alive. Other than these occasional sounds, he seemed completely oblivious to the world around him.

The older man was in slightly better condition, but it was clear that the battle had taken its toll on him as well. Blood spilled from his mouth from broken teeth as he walked. With every step he took, the older man's breathing became more labored as he struggled to keep himself upright. He dragged his injured foot behind him, leaving a trail in the rocks and sand as he went. His face was covered with bruises, and his right eye was swollen shut from the fight, which he had obviously been losing only moments earlier.

As the older man continued to make his way toward the younger man, he paused for a moment, bracing himself against a rock as he bent down to pick something up. A moment later, he gazed at the longsword he held in his hand with sheer delight. The old man glanced over at the younger man, smiled a toothless, bloody smile, and began to laugh. Holding the sword in his hand seemed to breathe new life into the old man. He walked faster now, with renewed purpose, until he stood over the younger man, gazing down upon him with a hate in his eyes such as Sophia had never seen.

As he placed the point of the longsword under the younger man’s chin, he put just enough pressure on the blade to draw blood and said, “Now we can bring this whole sordid affair to an end, DeMolay. And He who is the Alpha and Omega, the great Lord Almighty, the eternal Holy of Holies, can finally damn your wretched soul to the lowest pit of hell so you can go be with your God for eternity.”

It was at that moment that Sophia realized who the other man was. It was her father, Luca. She wanted to scream; she wanted to yell some sort of warning, but she couldn’t. She wanted to help, but there was nothing she could do. As she watched helplessly, the older man continued speaking.

“Come now, Luca. You didn’t really think that you would be able to defeat a true servant of Christ, did you?” The man laughed and spat in the younger man’s face.

“We both know what the Good Book says, and we both already know how this story ends. You can’t possibly win, my boy. My victory is already assured; I’m protected by that most precious blood.”

As he spoke, he raised the sword high above his head, ready to deliver the killing blow, but before his blade hit its mark, the older man was struck, in quick succession, by three arrows to the chest. The arrows struck the man with such force the momentum knocked him off his feet. Death came so quickly that the man never even had time to register another conscious thought. He was dead before his body hit the ground.

Sophia shot straight up in bed. With tears streaming down her face, she let out a scream.