This little tale is a short action sequence following on the heels of Shadow of the Bastard King. Originally published as a couple of chapters at the beginning and ending of Shadow of the Bastard King, it is a continuation of the same story, albeit 3000 years separated from Sumeria. Argan has been embedded with German Polizei for many years. Hunting Nephilim hiding amongst the Nazis is a lot easier than in most places, monsters tend to find an easy home in such families. In the rain and cold of 1943 Argan finds himself in Nazi controlled Lithuania, hunting and ancient enemy that has set himself a home at one of the most notorious concentration camps in Europe.
I find the concept of monsters like the Nephilim, be they in the form of goblins, trolls, or werewolves, or whatever shape, easy to embed into a group of wicked people as were the Nazis of Europe. Nazis are easy to vilify because, well, they embraced villainy as a positive trait. But they are not at all the only such purveyors of evil. Nazis focused their evil on certain groups of people. So confident were they in their wickedness and violence that they industrialized their sadism. Institutionalized murder was stitched into their uniforms as Totenkopf, scary death’s head skulls sewn right on their uniform and cap. They reveled in evil.
That said, they were not the worst, not by far. Their peers, the Soviets claimed to be brother to the common man but then killed tens of millions of their own people in the name of socialism. Mao even worse than both, killing nearly 60 million Chinese on the path to a bright new communist world! And those were just the 20th Century baddies!
The Mongol conquest was worse. They just murdered everyone equally whenever the desire struck them, nearly 80 million dead at their hand, wiping entire people groups completely off the map.
Sometimes it is easy to vilify a particular group of people because they are actual villains. Sadly for the world and its inhabitants there are and always will be plenty of utterly depraved humans who will go to no end of travels to ensure the rest of the world has a horrible day. For writers like me, there is always someone who welcomes monsters, always someone who invites demons, always a target for Argan to close with and destroy.
Sadly, there is no end to the story material taken right out of history.
