The Magnus Archives - MAG 163 - In the Trenches

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Case ########-3Statements on war.Audio recording by the Archivist, in situ.Thanks to this week's Patrons: Ghost, Amanda Williams, Elisabeth Banks, Brendan Tihane, Infini, PhoenixFlame, Saga Blomberg, Kristen Secrest, Genevieve A., Alexia De Leon, Corey Frampton, niblick_iii, Anna Loftus, Erin, Samantha Curtis, Alex, Ricky Dash, Samantha Cross, Sophie Talbot, Shiv, Jamie Galioto, isobel, Sarah Kershaw, jenni from the block, Hannah Kincannon, Jortin Blims!!!, Lunagalemaster, Mae, zaraegis, Luceil GreenAppleSause, Mary Lanners, Gabriel Murphy, Art Stephens, Em, Cassie Waln, Joshua No Relation To Sarah Baldwin, Milan Nigam, Mackenzie Massey, Tavin Kastner, Nathaniel BeckIf you would like to join them, be sure to visit www.patreon.com/rusty quillEdited this week by Elizabeth Moffatt, Brock Winstead & Alexander J Newall.Written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J Newall.Produced by Lowri Ann Davies.Content warnings:- Warfare- Gunfire / Explosions- Loud noises- Xenophobia- Medical Trauma- Body Horror- Chemical Warfare- Medical MalpracticePerformances:- "Martin Blackwood" - Alexander J. Newall- "The Archivist" - Jonathan SimsSound effects this week by bone666138, RepDac3, Archeostransitking, percydood = garden rain, Yoyodaman234, Izmraul, Owl, _stubb, Halleck, leonelmail, malexmedia, InspectorJ, stomachache & previously credited artists via freesound.org.Featured music by: kylesCheck out our merchandise at https://www.redbubble.com/people/rustyquill/collections/708982-the-magnus-archives-s1You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast software of choice, or by visiting www.rustyquill.com/subscribePlease rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear.Join our community:WEBSITE: rustyquill.comFACEBOOK: facebook.com/therustyquillTWITTER: @therustyquillREDDIT: reddit.com/r/RustyQuillEMAIL: [e-mail] Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill Ltd. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International Licence Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Search for the Ostium Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, or go to ostiumpodcast.com or rustyquill.com for more information. Have fun. See you later. Rusty Quill Presents The Magnus Archives Episode 163 In the Trenches I'm knackered. Are you?

I... Hmm. Well, okay, well, no, no, I suppose not. But I think I should be. Yep. How long have we been walking? Fourteen hours and twenty-three minutes. What, seriously?

Yes. I don't think it means much out here, though. We should probably rest. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know if we can rest. It feels more like, well, waiting. So, are we going to walk all the way to London?

If you know an alternative, I'd be very keen to hear it I mean, cars? You know, planes, trains, automobiles? It wouldn't help Alright, a boat then Geography doesn't work anymore Space doesn't work. All right. So what does that mean? It means the journey will be the journey, regardless of how we choose to make it.

Right. And you're sure we can't just, you know, speed it up a bit? No. I just... don't like being out here. You see that tower? Way off in the distance. Yeah.

It's watching us, isn't it? The Panopticon and the Institute merged into something entirely new. What? No, there's no way we could see it from here. We must still be a hundred miles from the border, never mind London. You could see that tower from anywhere on Earth. And it can see you.

And if you walk towards it, eventually you'll get there. But you have to go through everything in between. You're being ominous again. Sorry. Sorry. What do you mean, everything? What's out here? Nightmares. Come on, that trench is our first. What tre- where did that- why is that here? In the world as was, we wouldn't be too far from Kinloss Barracks. So instead we get the trench. How do you know all this stuff? Not sure. I'm scared.

Yes. That's the idea. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Stay with me. Go next door. Come on. Shit, shit. It's okay. No. You're okay.

No, no, no. This is not okay. Come on! Are you... I'm fine, I'm fine, I just... How about you? You're not hurt? Er... no. Good, good, good. John, we're not alone.

Ignore them, they're not... Ignore them. They're not... Just ignore them. They're not real? Well, they're real. They were normal people before the... Before me. But now they're here, meat for the grinder. I just mean there's no point talking to them.

Don't be a prick, John. Hey, I'm sorry about him. He's going through a lot. Well, we all are, I suppose, but well, I, I guess. Hello? They won't hear you, Martin. They're all too busy waiting to die. John. They sit here, the image of everyone they hold dear locked in their mind. Knowing they'll never see them again. Waiting for the order. Dreading the bullet or the drone or the barbed wire that will tear them to shreds and leave them nothing but a bloody...

John, enough. Enough. Please don't tell me these things. I'm sorry. There's just so much. There's so much, Martin, and I know all of it. I can see all of it, and it's filling me up. I need to let it out. I'm sorry, but Tuff, that's not what I'm here for. I can't be that for you. I just can't. I know.

I can't be that for you. I just can't. I know. I'll use the tape recorder. I just... You probably want to wait outside. No. Well, put your fingers in your ears then, I suppose. Fine. And what about them? They don't even know we're here. We're not part of their nightmare.

Right. Martin? Martin? Martin, I hate your tea and wish you made coffee instead. Right then. There is a wound in the earth. A bayonet gouge scored through the soft and sodden mud for uncounted miles. A trench that marks the front line of a war that has no name. It has always been raging, deep in the hearts of the powerful and those that thirst to see

bodies piled high in their name. And now it has a battleground. A thousand pointless conflicts and bitter stalemates, stitched together like a triaged chest wound. It is a butchered border, a thin and punctured membrane between the unending meat grinder and the terrified victims it longs for. You may find this trench reaching all across the world, and it will never stop, never be satisfied, never think of peace. Charlie stands there, waiting in a transport. Once, it was a thin metal landing craft, drifting slowly through a fetid lake. The waters were red and black by turns with

blood and oil and the floating bodies of those before them, that were pushed aside by the boat's wake. Next to him, Charlie saw Ryan, who he'd known since childhood though the other details were hazy Ryan gave him a thumbs up and an encouraging smile before his face exploded inwards to a sniper's bullet peppering the boat with shards of bone and gore Charlie swallowed and waited as the bullets kept coming

and those around him died but did not fall, propped up as they were by the pressing mass of people around them. He could not move, and as he waited for the shot that would take him, his legs fell away in fear. Now he is in a helicopter, strapped in tight and unable to move. The man in the gunner's chair is dead, bound limp in his seat harness, half his jaw gone. The thump, thump, thump of the rotors pulses through Charlie like a toothache, and he cannot hear the shouts and cries of his comrades. He looks out of the side as a telltale line of smoke arcs up and around

towards them from the scorched earth far below. He cannot hear his own scream. He lies upon the ground, amid the twisted wreckage of whatever he was trapped in, feeling the jagged shards of broken bone dig into him. Charlie looks up and sees something floating there silently. It is sleek and merciless, its featureless carbon-fibre face regarding the shattered man dispassionately. The drone's camera blinks once, twice as he tries desperately to crawl away, pain lancing through every part of him. The thing makes no sound as it follows him, matching the excruciating pace of the bleeding soldier. Charlie knows when it decides to fire, he won't even hear

it. He places his hand down and it sinks suddenly into the mud. He cries out as the rusted barbed wire curls itself eagerly around his wrist, digging into his skin. Tasting fear, more wire slithers through the churned earth towards him, stretching and gripping him tight, rough needles puncturing his legs and chest and throat, pulling him down and holding him steady as the drone lingers, its blankness giving no hint of the thoughts behind its trigger. There is a rumbling in the earth around him as a tank speeds along its unstoppable path, and Charlie is immediately pulled under its tread. He has a moment of shocked horror before being reduced to a smear in the mud.

Inside the tank, Ishan screams. Ishan remembers the recruiters. He was promised valour and camaraderie and the chance to be part of something meaningful. He knew that part had been a lie, but then, so was the choice. His alternative was stagnant poverty, and that was really no choice at all. The money would help his family, and he could spend some years in hell if he needed to, for them. But he didn't know about this war that had always been raging and would never stop. How could he have known what the trench would be? They had taken him, dragged him from the flooded foxhole where he had sheltered for a moment's brief respite, and taken him to the tanks. Those monstrous beasts of iron that rolled

forever forward, guns firing and treads, leaving the earth scarred in their wake. They pass above the trench again and again. They never turn around, pushing onward, ever onwards, the bones that stick in their gears, not slowing them for a moment. Ishan had been afraid, terrified that they were going to strap him to it, pin him to the Goliath's hull like all the other flayed flags of war, striking fear into the hearts of the enemy. But instead they fed him to it,

tossed him into its burning innards and sealed the hatch behind him. Now his body has contorted itself to fit. His fingers clutched around the firing lever, pulling it frantically is the only thing that will reduce the impossible heat even for a moment. From the tiny slit in the metal he can see other soldiers, baby-faced friends and the monstrous pig-faced enemy, both falling beneath his iron coffin's advance. He tries to cry, but his tears turn to steam. He waits, craving and dreading the final kiss of the bombs, the terrible, thundering guns so far away that none have ever seen them, raining their arbitrary ruin upon the

endless fields of the dead and dying. They are perhaps the only thing that can fell the tanks, splitting them like rotten fruit beneath the force of their rounds. Ishan begs, pleading with whatever god of hatred and pain he hears piping gently on the breeze to let the bombs rain down on him, to release him from his imprisonment in a single flash of destruction. But when his prayer is answered, the white-hot agony of melted and crumpled metal is like nothing he could dream of. When Hosanna takes him into triage, she can barely bring herself to look at him. She wheels his stretcher to its place in the stinking, vaulted tent that serves as a field hospital, walking through a sea of stained bandages and around the piles of festering gauze.

She leaves the shuddering man and approaches a nearby doctor, its long form crouched over the open chest of a patient, its many hands a frenzy of scalpel, bone sore and needle as it giggles beneath its surgeon's mask. She wants to ask about the wounded, about what to do, where to put the new ones, how to help them. But even if her voice were not drowned out by the thousand-strong chorus of moans and pained yelling that fills the tent, the doctor doesn't seem to notice her. Hassana's eyes fall on the entrance to the tent, and she sees the line of civilians stretching away into the distance.

They are no less maimed, their agony is no more bearable, but there is simply no room. She tries to apologise, but there is simply no room. She tries to apologize, but instead she closes the tent. As she does so, she sees the trench behind her and, not for the first time, Asana considers trying to run. But there is no mercy for deserters here. On one side of the trench, the hungry guns of the vile enemy wait, and on the other the just guns of heroes will cut you down no slower, save perhaps a breath to call you coward. So she waits there, in the middle, with the weeping wounded and the soon-to-be-dead, waiting for the enemy to overrun them.

Sometimes, in the distance, Asana sees them. The enemy. Their skin rough, dark, and scaly, their faces twisted around cruel tusks, viciously sharpened teeth, and a pair of beady red eyes. Their lips are smeared crimson with the blood of children, and their greatest delight is to pluck the eyes of the innocent with their bayonets. To call them monsters is the simple truth.

They feel no pain, no remorse, and seek nothing but carnage. Sometimes, in the distance, Asana can even see an enemy triage tent, almost identical in appearance to her own. She can only imagine the atrocities that must take place inside. Far in the distance, she sees Alexei look out over the battlefield and her stomach turns at the detestable wrongness of his face. Lexei in turn looks out from deep in the trench. He catches sight of the enemy, their shriveled, rat-like heads causing the bile to rise in his throat. He is bored. The boredom is the worst part, the part that erodes his will

and drops him to despair. There is nothing to do, nowhere to be. The only thing to occupy his mind is the inevitability of the next attack, the next order to charge, the next dropping bomb. There is no way to know when and where these things will come. But no one will talk of anything else. His stomach growls, the hunger pushing its sharp fingers out from his belly. There are no more rations, and what there is tastes of cordite and sand and coats his tongue in an oily film that makes him gag. He has heard the enemy will eat your body if they find it in the mud. They won't even check if you're dead first. if they find it in the mud.

They won't even check if you're dead first. Alexei shudders at the thought. From far down the trench, a cry of panic cuts through the silence. A faint haze can be seen in the distance moving with the breeze. A new weapon. Alexei feels his knees start to buckle as he sees his comrades stagger out of the cloud. Their melting teeth flow down their faces like tears, and their limbs begin to fold and collapse as the bones within them liquefy. He turns and starts to flee down the trench. There is no cruelty so foul the enemy will not

perpetrate it. He runs almost headfirst into a portly man in a tailored suit, with a blood-red flower on his lapel. He smiles, pale skin splitting beneath his bristling white moustache, and he begins to shake Alexei by the hand. Good lad, he says. Good lad. Heroes one and all. A noble sacrifice. and all a noble sacrifice. Alexei starts to speak, to say he doesn't want to be a hero, he doesn't want to be a sacrifice, he wants to go home. But the man with the flower reaches his hand into the soldier's chest, and with a single jolly motion, plucks out Alexei's heart and places it in his wallet. Next to his bleeding corpse, Charlie wakes from what

passes for sleep in this place. A sergeant is yelling at him, screaming for him to take his gun and get into the waiting transport. There's about to be another attack, and heavy losses are expected. A familiar fear courses through him, but Charlie still picks up his gun and goes back to the war. I, um... end recording. Hold on. Yes. Good. Hold on.

Yes. Good. Try to keep up. Yeah, yeah. Oh, hey. John, did you... No. No, he was carrying his. All right. What are you doing here? It's dangerous.

You could get yourself blown up like all these poor... Who do you think they were? I really don't see why we couldn't just go round and pick a better place to... I guess there aren't really any better places anymore, are there? It's all this. Or worse. Or different.

You still haven't told me what you're doing here. Er... John? John, the payphone, that's here for some reason. It's ringing. John, is that... Is anyone going to get that? Unless it's for me?

Yeah, it's for me. Er, no. No, I don't think so, actually. Thanks, but that sounds like a really terrible idea. Sorry. Well, alright then. Mum, you need to keep up. It's not safe. Mum?

You okay? I... There was a phone. That phone. It... Yeah, it was ringing. Oh. Right.

Did you answer it? No. Hmm. Probably for the best. Yeah. Let's keep going. Hmm. Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 international license. Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims,

produced by Laurie-Anne Davis, and directed by Alexander J. Newell. It featured Jonathan Sims as The Archivist and Alexander J. Newell as Martin Blackwood. To subscribe, buy merchandise, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook, or email us via mail at RustyQuill.com. Join our community on the Discord via the website,

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