The Saga of Tanya the Merciless

In darkness deep the shadows dance,

Beyond the realm of measured chance.

Where songbirds once their music made,

Now silence drowns the evening shade.

The morning mist clung to the valleys of Sector Four like old bloodstains that refused to wash away. Tanya stood at her window, watching the grey shapes writhe against the dawn, twisting into forms that seemed almost deliberate in their fluid grace. Three weeks had passed since the Americans withdrew, yet something about the emptiness they left behind felt wrong - as if they had taken more than just their presence when they departed.

"The dawn patrol reports are here, Colonel," her aide whispered, as if normal speech might shatter something fragile in the air. She accepted the papers without turning, her eyes fixed on the ways the mist moved against the laws of wind and weather. The numbers were perfect, of course. They were always perfect now. Yet somehow their very flawlessness felt like a wound in reality's fabric.

Where gentle winds once kissed the trees,

Now crawls a cold and bitter breeze.

Through empty halls where children played,

The echoes of our choices fade.

Sector Four had changed in ways that defied traditional metrics. The British still probed her lines, but their attacks carried a strange hesitancy, as if they sensed something their intelligence reports couldn't quantify. Even their prisoners seemed different - their eyes holding shadows that spoke of things glimpsed but mercifully forgotten.

She found herself walking the forward positions at odd hours, drawn by an urge she couldn't name. The trenches were immaculate, of course. Each position maintained with mechanical... she stopped herself. That word had begun to taste like ashes in her mouth, bitter with implications she refused to examine.

Through broken dreams we wander far,

Past hopes that shine like distant stars.

While in the depths of endless night,

Our children learn to fear the light.

The Processing Centers' silence weighed on her more than she cared to admit. Their hymns had marked the rhythm of her days for so long that their absence felt like a missing heartbeat. The workers still performed their duties, their movements precise as choreographed dancers. But something vital had gone from their eyes, replaced by a stillness that reminded her of deep water.

"Show me the casualty reports," she instructed, though she already knew what they would say. Zero losses in the past week. Zero injuries. Zero deviations of any kind. A perfect record that should have filled her with professional pride. Instead, she found herself searching the numbers for any hint of human imperfection, any small flaw that might prove her growing fears unfounded.

Beneath the earth old secrets sleep,

Where forgotten children softly weep.

Through halls where mercy once held sway,

Now crawls a thing that hates the day.

The dreams had started subtle - barely worth noting in her personal log. Small discrepancies in her nightly routine, moments where reality seemed to slip sideways when she wasn't looking directly at it. But they had grown steadily, like cancer metastasizing through her unconscious mind.

She dreamed of children's choirs singing in empty halls, their voices perfect in pitch and timing. But when she turned to look, the singers had no faces - just smooth, blank surfaces that reflected her own horror back at her. She dreamed of perfectly ordered ranks of soldiers marching through the mist, their movements synchronized beyond human capability. But their footsteps made no sound, and the ground beneath them writhed like something in pain.

Watch the darkness deeper grow,

Where even shadows fear to go.

Past the boundaries of our sight,

Something stirs in endless night.

The reports from her forward observers had taken on a strange quality, as if reality itself was beginning to fray around the edges of their perception. They spoke of impossible geometries in the morning mist, of patterns in the enemy's movements that seemed to form coherent messages in a language they couldn't quite grasp. One veteran sergeant, decorated for valor under fire, had submitted a twenty-page report consisting entirely of fractal patterns drawn in microscopic detail.

"The men are... changing," her senior medical officer had noted, his clinical detachment slipping just slightly. "Their coordination has improved beyond all measurable parameters. But their brain scans..." He had trailed off, staring at charts that seemed to shift and writhe under direct observation.

Through the valleys echoes ring,

Of songs no human throat should sing.

While in the depths of endless seas,

Our children drown by slow degrees.

Most troubling were the changes she observed in herself. The subtle shifts in perception, the way time seemed to flow differently when she wasn't actively measuring its passage. She found herself completing complex calculations without conscious thought, seeing patterns in random data that yielded predictions too accurate to be coincidence.

Her beloved poetry had begun to change as well. The verses that once celebrated the beauty of precise coordination now whispered of darker things - of patterns that moved beneath the surface of reality, of rhythms that matched no human heartbeat. She had stopped recording them in her log, but they continued to write themselves in her dreams.

Mark how shadows twist and turn,

Where ancient wisdom slowly burns.

Through the halls of memory's grace,

Something wears our children's face.

The British had begun withdrawing their forward observers, pulling them back to positions well beyond normal engagement range. Their radio transmissions, when intercepted, carried an undertone of primal fear beneath the professional courtesy. They had started referring to Sector Four as "the dead zone" in their coded messages - a designation that bore no relation to any known military classification.

"There's something wrong with the light," one of her junior officers had reported, his voice carefully controlled. "Not the quantity or quality - just... wrong. As if it's being filtered through something that changes more than just its wavelength." She had dismissed him from duty, naturally. But later, alone in her quarters, she found herself staring at the shadows on her wall, watching them move in ways that light and geometry insisted were impossible.

Listen to the whispers grow,

Of truths no mortal ought to know.

While in the depths of endless time,

Our children learn new ways to climb.

The Processing Centers' silence had begun to spread, like ink through water. First the birds had stopped singing, then the insects had fallen quiet. Even the wind seemed muted now, as if sound itself was being slowly drained from the world. Her soldiers had adapted with predictable skill, developing hand signals of unprecedented complexity. She tried not to think about how they had mastered them so quickly, or why the gestures sometimes seemed to leave afterimages in the air.

"The pattern recognition algorithms are showing some unusual results," her research staff reported. She noted how carefully they avoided looking directly at their monitors while presenting the data. "The system appears to be identifying correlations in ways that... that shouldn't be possible with our current understanding of mathematics."

Through the darkness children crawl,

Where shadows dance on memory's wall.

Past the boundaries of our sight,

Something stirs in endless night.

She had stopped sleeping properly three days ago, though her performance metrics showed no degradation. In the deep hours of night, she found herself standing at her window, watching the mist move through her sector like a living thing. Sometimes she thought she saw shapes in its coiling patterns - suggestions of geometries that hurt her eyes to look at directly.

The dreams, when they came, were filled with children's voices singing in perfect harmony. But the songs they sang were wrong somehow - mathematical progressions that seemed to describe things that couldn't exist in normal space. She would wake with fragments of their verses burned into her mind, each word precisely arranged in patterns that seemed to move when she tried to write them down.

Mark how silence spreads its wings,

Where memory of mercy clings.

Through the halls where children played,

Now crawls a thing of light and shade.

Her veteran units had achieved something beyond mere perfection in their movements. She watched them through her field glasses, noting how their formations seemed to flow like liquid mercury across the landscape. They no longer spoke at all, communicating through means she couldn't identify. Sometimes their movements appeared to violate basic laws of physics, though her instruments insisted otherwise.

"The men have stopped dreaming," her medical officer reported, his voice carefully neutral. "All of them, simultaneously, three nights ago. Their sleep patterns show normal REM cycles, but they report only darkness. Perfect, absolute darkness, with something moving just beyond the edge of perception."

Through the mists our children stride,

Where ancient horrors seek to hide.

Past the bounds of mortal sight,

Something wakes in endless night.

The fog had begun behaving strangely in the past few days. It moved against the wind, forming patterns that her meteorologists insisted were impossible. Sometimes it seemed to react to the presence of her soldiers, coiling around them like a curious animal. The British had started calling it "the breathing dark" in their transmissions, though they never explained why.

She found herself thinking about the children more often now - the ones who had lived in the villages before the Processing Centers were established. They had sung too, hadn't they? Simple songs of childhood and innocence. Not these perfect harmonies that seemed to echo from empty rooms, these mathematical progressions that described shapes that couldn't exist.

Watch the darkness deeper grow,

Where even shadows fear to go.

Through the chambers echoes ring,

Of songs no child should ever sing.

Tomorrow would bring something new. She could feel it in the way reality seemed to flex and bend at the edges of her vision, in the way her soldiers moved with liquid grace through impossible geometries. Something was coming - something that would shatter her understanding of the world in ways that no amount of clinical detachment could protect her from.

For the first time since she had embraced the beauty of perfect coordination, she felt afraid. Not of failure or inefficiency - those concerns seemed almost quaint now. No, she feared she had glimpsed something true about the nature of reality itself, something that human minds were never meant to comprehend.

Through the darkness children crawl,

Where shadow's whispers softly fall.

Past the bounds of mortal sight,

Something wakes in endless night.