DOCUMENT REF: LFA-001-B
ARCHIVE STATUS: STASIS PRESERVATION / HARD COPY ONLY
ORIGIN: Sgt. Nicholas “Nick” Lombardhy
LOCATION: [REDACTED] River Caves, North Vietnam
DATE: November 22, 1969
[ARTIFACT DESCRIPTION]
A folded, grease-stained letter, never mailed. It was found tucked inside the cover of Nicholas’s Bible after his death in 1998. The edges are singed, and the paper smells faintly of ozone and old blood.
[TRANSCRIPT]
I ain’t tellin’ the brass about this. They’d lock me up in a padded room or, worse, send some suits down here to poke at things they oughta leave buried.
We were tunnel rats today. Command said there was a VC supply cache hidden in the caves near the river. We went down—me, Miller, and Kowalski. It was tight, wet, and dark as a tomb. But the deeper we went, the strange it got. The walls changed. It wasn’t limestone anymore. It was… smooth. Too smooth. Like someone had melted the rock and shaped it with a hot spoon.
We found a chamber. It wasn’t no supply cache.
There were skulls. Hundreds of ‘em. But not human skulls. Some looked like those black devils I saw in my fever dream last year—long, banana-headed nightmares. Others were different. Big. Heavy bone ridges. And they were hung up like prize catfish on a wall.
The air in there was hot. Not humid-hot like the jungle, but dry hot. Like standing next to a furnace.
Miller touched one of the statues—a big, ugly thing that looked like a man in armor, wearing a mask that was all ridges and tubes. As soon as he touched it, the shadows moved.
I swear I saw three red dots appear on Miller’s chest. Just dancin’ there.
I froze. I knew that feelin’. The feelin’ of bein’ watched by somethin’ that could kill you before you even heard the shot.
Then the heat spiked. The air shimmered, and She was there again.
The Lioness.
She stood between us and the statue. She didn’t look at us, though. She looked up into the dark rafters of the cave, where the shadows were thickest. She raised a hand, palm open.
The three red dots vanished. The pressure in the room lifted, just a fraction.
Kowalski and Miller? They didn’t see her. They were lookin’ around, confused, askin’ why it got so hot all of a sudden. They couldn’t see what was standin’ right in front of ‘em. But I could.
She turned to me, her eyes burning like coals.
“Careful where you step, builder,” she said. Her voice was low, like a growl deep in a throat. “This is a kennel.”
I gripped my rifle, sweating bullets. “What are they? More demons?”
She looked at the statue, almost respectful-like. “No. Not demons. Guardians. Of a sort.”
She walked over to the wall of skulls, running a finger over the bone of one of those black nightmare-things. “The universe is a garden, Nicholas. But gardens have weeds. The Shadows… the things that bleed acid… they are the weeds. They choke the life out of the stars.”
She gestured to the masked statue. “And these? These are the gardeners. The Hounds. They do not build. They do not plant. They only prune.”
I looked at the scary-looking armor. “They hunt those things?”
“They hunt everything that is worthy,” she corrected. “They live for the thrill of the kill. They follow a Code written in blood before your species crawled out of the ocean. They are cruel, yes. But they are necessary.”
She leaned in close to me. “They are not your enemy today. You are too small. Too soft. You are not ‘trophy’ to them. You are just… background noise.”
That stung a bit, bein’ called noise, but I wasn’t arguin’ with a ten-foot goddess.
“But hear me well,” she warned, her face hardening. “A day will come when your children grow strong. When they build ships that can challenge the void. When they carry weapons that can burn the sky. On that day… the Hounds will look at you, and they will not see noise anymore. They will see game.”
“So we fight 'em?” I asked.
“You survive them,” she said. “You earn their respect, or you die on their spears. There is no middle ground with the Hunters.”
She started to fade, the golden light of her hair dimming out. “Leave this place, Nicholas. Take your men and go. The masters of this house are sleeping… but they toss and turn.”
I grabbed Miller and Kowalski by the collars and dragged ‘em out. told ‘em the cave was unstable. We blew the entrance on the way out.
I ain’t never goin’ back. But I know they’re out there. The Builders… the Weeds… and the Hounds.
It’s a big, ugly universe, and we’re just tiny little ants tryin’ not to get stepped on.
[Entry Ends]
HISTORIAN’S NOTE:
LFA-001-B confirms early Lombardhy awareness of the [REDACTED] species.
- E. Lombardhy