01-28-2017, 06:07 AM
Quote:This is the intro/setup post. The fight has not started yet.
There was a moment, as Illidan's army made its final approach, rumbling through the mud and parting the mist, where events seemed detached. The scene hung suspended, as though reality were holding its breath.
Then, everything seemed to happen at once, snapping abruptly into stark, vivid contrast.
Kelly's psychic senses screamed as the massed ranks of ghouls, monsters and wraiths collided with the vanguard of Darkshire's military might. His quarterstaff moved in a blur. In those first confused moments, the traveler broke a werewolf's knee with a swift, low kick, drove his staff into the eye of a screaming set of bones, whipped the other end of his weapon up into a decrepit vampire's groin, and, acting on pure reflex, telekinetically thrust the sword of the dying soldier standing beside him up under the chin of a very surprised ogre. It was a hell of a way to discover that his psychokinetic range had increased, but now was not the time to consider the implications.
Darkshire's lines had bowed inward with the impact of the initial charge, but at a glance - which was all Kelly could afford in the brief moment before more monsters closed in to replace those he'd felled - they seemed to be holding.The psychic allowed a thin smile to emerge from hiding as a Zergling rushed him, fangs snapping and scythes slashing, only to catch a concentrated psychokinetic bolt in its throat.
Over the next two minutes, there was little further opportunity to track what was happening on the rest of the field. Kelly fought like a machine, moving his staff with near-robotic precision. Half-lost in the rhythm of combat, the psychic saw his enemies as collections of weapons and targets more than individual creatures. Weapons he stopped or avoided. Targets he smashed, either with his staff, his boots, or his burgeoning psychic force. The remnants of the unit he'd been placed with, twelve of the original twenty troops, were mentally flagged as priority assets - Kelly protected them whenever he could, taking advantage of his staff's reach and his psychic abilities to meddle in parts of the melee where he wouldn't otherwise have been able to help.
Suddenly a rumble, different from the thunder, overtook the field, sending ripples through the mud. The battle didn't pause, but the intensity diminished as the eyes of both armies were drawn to the walls of Darkshire, where plumes of smoke were rising. In one stony flank, a gaping wound yawned, lit by the crimson glow of small fires.
Deflecting a wild blow from a hulking undead armed with a rusty blade, the traveler frowned as he charged a psychic bolt and blew off the creature's kneecap, crushing its skull with the end of his staff as it fell.
Sometimes I hate being right. But how did they do it? A sleeper-cell? A trojan horse among the refugees? Did they sneak a detachment around behind the city, bypass the main force and plant explosives?
Even if the embattled psychic strategist had been expecting an answer, what happened next would have come as a surprise.
Not twenty feet to Kelly's right, a section of the battlefield dropped away, the muddy ground disintegrating, sending monsters and soldiers alike spilling down into a dark, hollow space. Then, it happened again. And again, further along, the subsiding ground proceeding in the direction of the breach. He immediately grasped the implications.
A tunnel? They dug an actual tunnel? You've got to be kidding!
There was a decision to be made, here. The existence of a tunnel entirely changed the strategic map - in fact, it had the potential to render the admittedly quite dramatic battle being fought all around him little more than a distraction, even if the breach in the walls could be held.
Kelly engaged his neural throttle, increasing his formidable brain's processing speed, and the world around him seemed to slow down, giving him time to act, and to think. He identified the enemies harassing the nearest five Darkshire troopers, and cleared a space around himself, crushing the throats of slow-motion ogres, the skulls of nigh-frozen zombies, and breaking a naga's neck in the scant moments before the world caught up with him and his perception of events snapped back to normal. Then, with a little space in which to work, he fired off several quick force-bolts, no stronger than well-thrown punches, but both distracting and well-aimed enough to give his allies the openings they needed to finish their monstrous foes.
Kelly moved closer, yelling for them to form up on his position, and to their own mild surprise, they did. Their captain had been killed already, and the traveler had the voice of Command.
"What's going on?" one of the soldiers called over the din of battle, slashing repeatedly at a wraith until it finally lost cohesion and washed away in the rain.
"There's a tunnel over there, under the field." the psychic said, calling to mind the names of those present, and finding that he only actually knew four - one was from another part of the vanguard, and it had only been important that he meet the people in his actual unit. "Someone needs to lock it down. Harker" - he glanced at a short, spry-looking woman in half-plate and studded leather armor who had already lost an eye - "get word to command. The breach in the wall is so urgent and obvious that they may have missed this. You other four are with me. We're going down there."
***
Kelly and his little group of soldiers - a stocky middle-aged man named Mason, a younger fellow named Butcher, an athletic, shaven-headed woman called Rothchilde, and the stranger, who identified himself as Corporal Wesley Bewilderforce-Tooms - slid down the walls of the partial-cave in, and struck out into the gloom. They were accompanied by a group of troops from another unit that had seen what they were doing and grasped the urgency their task.
The inside of the tunnel was extremely dim, and smelled of soil and rot. Perhaps surprisingly, it was no darker than the stormy night outside, lit by the glow of the fires of battle streaming in with the rain through the collapsed sections of the ceiling. As his eyes grew further accustomed to the gloom, the Prime could see that although the floor was rocky and uneven, churned by the passage of dozens of monstrous feet, and the earthen walls were angular, formed of compressed soil and stone.
This wasn't done using shovels, and it wasn't done by an animal.
He ran a hand along the wall, feeling the striations where something moving in a spiral had left a series of regular grooves as it passed.
Some kind of tunneling machine?
Kelly frowned, and strained his ears. It was hard to hear over the horrendous din of battle above them, but he thought he could detect the rumble and wheedling whine of a large machine.
Maybe six hundred yards? Certainly not much further than the walls. If they're still running a drill, then the tunnel isn't finished - and if we can reverse the machine, we can back it up and use it as a barricade.
He waved his troops forward - and almost immediately gestured for them to halt. There was a dirty, black-haired man dressed in work-clothes sprawled on the floor of the tunnel - a man with a shotgun in a holster across his back, and a chainsaw in place of his right hand. Judging by the tiny patch of sky directly above him, it looked like he'd fallen through the ceiling.
Hm. No armor, and that hand is extremely odd. His clothing is wrong for the moors... A Prime?
Sadly, time was of the essence. If the man was a Prime, he'd be fine one way or the other, and if he wasn't, he was safer down here than up there. Kelly was about to wave his troops onward once more when he was surprised by a loud groan.
"UUUuuuuuuhg. What hit me?" asked the man who fell.
"The floor," said Kelly, getting right to business. "My name is Kelly MacAryn. I'm a Prime, with the Darkshire militia. You're in a tunnel, under the battlefield. Are you on our side?"
The man pushed himself up on his hands and knees, shaking the cobwebs from his head. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. The name's Ash Williams - Defender of Darkshire. You might have heard of me?"
Kelly looked at his troops - and was encouraged by some enthusiastic nods. "I've heard of him," said Rothschilde. "He's a Prime too, though he's supposed to be a bit of an ass - but he's stood on the wall. He saved lives. Having him along would be a big help."
"Hey, lady," said Ash, standing up and brushing the dirt off the front of his shirt, "There's no need for name-calling. I just happen to have an appreciation for the finer things in life is all - myself, for instance."
He squinted at Rothchilde. "And you. You know, I don't usually go for bald chicks, but you kinda make it work. So, ah, after all this is over -"
"That's quite enough," said Kelly, his tone patient but permitting no argument. "We don't have time for this. The enemy is running some kind of tunneling machine, and if Darkshire is going to win this battle without serious damage to the city's interior, we have to intercept them. Are you coming?"
Ash hefted his chainsaw and grinned savagely. "An urgent mission that will determine the fate of the entire town? Kelly-boy, I wouldn't miss it for the world."
***
For the first couple-of-hundred meters, progress was difficult, but steady. The uneven floor and low light made footing tricky for the less sure-footed soldiers, and several times hideous, eyeless monsters burst from the walls, barely foreseen by Kelly, and subsequently cut to ribbons by the the soldiers' blades or Ash's chainsaw.
The chainsaw made the psychic nervous. It was a vicious weapon, yes, and the other Prime used it with more skill than Kelly would have thought possible for such an unwieldy blade- but it was loud. Possibly even loud enough to be heard over the sound of a giant drill.
Even so, it wasn't until their small military detachment had reached the point where the tunnel undercut the walls of the city that the problems really began. The explosions that had blown open Darkshire's walls had caused a near-total cave in, leaving only a small passage, barely wide enough for three men to walk abreast, held open by massive chunks of collapsed foundation. Ash and Kelly led the way through the the crooked passageway of shattered rock, their troops filing in behind them, until eventually they emerged again into a wider passage - and beheld the enemy.
Zerglings, with dog-like faces and scythes for arms, werewolves, a few wraiths - and many, many zombies, all marched behind a massive, streamlined vehicle with a drill on one end, mounted on treads and piloted by a hooded figure. It was almost fifty meters beyond the walls already, chewing merrily through the soil below Darkshire's foundations.
Ash reached for his chainsaw's ripcord, but Kelly stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He pointed to the soldiers emerging from the tunnel behind them and mouthed, "Wait." Ash smiled, nodded, and winked.
They waited. Mason, Butcher, Rothschilde, Tooms, and six others made it out before they were noticed. It started with a wraith, some unknown spectral sense detecting the presence of the living. The shade sent up a cry of a alarm, and soon Zerg, werewolves, and vampiric abominations broke ranks and surged toward the new arrivals, sending confused zombies stumbling as they passed.
Ash stepped forward and pulled the ripcord. His chainsaw-hand roared.
Kelly's iron-shod staff flashed as he set his guard.
"Form a beach-head!" called the psychic, voice ringing with the compelling certainty that he would be obeyed, "Defend the tunnel until the rest of our troops are through!"
A Zerg came at Ash. He sidestepped, severed it's spine with a power-tool roar and a whiff of diesel, and took out a werewolf on the backswing. Kelly charged a psychic force-bolt and blew the wraith into ethereal whisps, and waded into the advancing horde with his staff, breaking knees and shoulders, crushing throats and cracking skulls. Behind them, the soldiers of Darkshire formed tight ranks, bolstered by their allies who continued to emerge from the opening in the rubble. Not that many more would be coming, but the knowledge that there were more coming gave them hope.
On the far end of the tunnel, the drill slowed its advance, shifting down into a lower gear as the driver stood, practically trembling with outraged dignity. A high-pitched voice echoed across the chamber, audible even over the continuing grind and roar of Ash's chainsaw.
"Fools!" it proclaimed, turning with a flourish and summoning a ram-headed staff to its hand, the weapon leaping from where it leaned against the dashboard of its owner's vile machine. "Who dares to challenge SKELETOR?!"
Quote:And with that, this fight has been officially set-up! The next post is Skeletor's, and it is officially the first post of the fight, and the start of the timer. After that, the call-system is in effect.