Return of The Corps

[Thaal Sinestro]

“Ey mon,” the troll whispered, her eyes cautiously scanning the field she had been dragged to before even the sun had bothered waking up, “what you think we doin’?”

There were a handful of other recruits at various points surrounding the perimeter of the field, as varied in shape and stature as they were in origin. All nervously shuffled and fought through their own trepidation to hold distant, awkward conversations. By a visual count, there seemed to be about twelve people there in total. One pair had already began to throttle each other, seemingly in a dispute about a weapon. There was the crack of gunfire. Eleven people in total.

The sand fury looked up to her from behind her opaque goggles, her jester-like cap twitching as she tilted her head curiously. After a few moments, it became clear she wasn't going to reply to the troll’s questions.

“You a touched t’ing, ain't cha?” the troll said, clucking her tongue. She shook her tall, ironwood staff, the bones and dark red feathers rattling atop it. “I gotta figure we’s doin’ some kinda fightin’, if dey’s give us back our weapons 'n t’ings.”

She looked around the perimeter of the area they had found themselves in as the sun poked its nose above the horizon. “Name’s Ur’Gezza, by da way.” She tugged down on the weathered leather armor, a massive pauldron shifting, then tightened one of the many brass buckles. She tilted her chin towards the fury’s katana and offered a long-tusked smirk. “You ain't gon’ get me wit’ dem swords, is ya?” She chuckled to herself when her companion didn’t, deep wrinkles in her ruddy grey skin accentuating her anxious grin. “Either way…” She shook her head of rust-colored hair with her three-fingered hand, lack of grooming causing her once tall and neat mohawk to deflate into a frazzled mess. “I ain't goin’ down wit’out a fight, mon.”

“That's the spirit!” a voice boomed from the distance, accompanied by the thumping of hooves in the sand. A large, thick cut man rode into view, his horse black with a fiery mane, his body wrapped in deep yellow robes. A pike was in his hand, a bow on his back. “Let's hope you have the heart to back up such a claim!”

Dezial and his sand-steed made a long, lazy loop around the obstacles of the testing ground, a collection of barrels, shallow ditches and other small bits of cover littered across an acre of rapidly warming sand. Aside the stony mesas in the far distance, there wasn't another landmark in sight.

The two women stared at the warrior as his mount trotted him closer. “What we doin’ here, mon?” the Ferraki shouted, tightening her grip on her staff.

“Well you see, I will be seeing if you're worthy of a ring!” He turned a few meters from them, zig zagging between burnt out warrigs and stacks of smoldering tires. “And you? You'll be surviving.” He allowed his polearm to slide down in his grip, the head dragging in the sand, leaving a wake of dust trailing behind him. “Or not!”

He took a sharp turn and disappeared behind the cloud, the only evidence he was still there was the thunder of his steed’s horseshoes.

The recruits stiffened, and the fury drew her twin blades. Their eyes were locked on the swirling cloud, attempting to peer past the miasma as it settled. Instead they saw an arrow snap through, a tiny path clearing in its trail, wisps of grit flitting after it. The same fury trilled and bound backwards, spiraling through the air and rolling her her feet smoothly. The arrow sunk into the dirt a few feel in front of her, and she immediately began to circle, warily eyeing the sun-harried battlefield. Ur’Gezza lifted her staff and a shear of wind buffeted away another shot that was intended for her throat.

Dezial’s laughter boomed over the training ground. “The killing will only stop when there’s two left!”

The two warrior women glanced between each other in a moment of silent acknowledgment. A moment between two beleaguered souls, set to an impossible task at the risk of their lives. In that moment, they knew each other perfectly, and could see the heart that beat within the chest of the other.

Then they ran in opposite directions.

The caterwaul of a dying man filled the air, and Ur’Gezza chanced a look in his direction to see him impaled to a wooden barrel, the dark steel of the pike protruding from his gut. Dezial twisted the weapon inside of him, then jerked it free in a spray of gore. The shaman looked away, afraid to know if the Corpsman had picked her out in the unfolding chaos.

“That makes ten!” the cavalryman cheerfully announced, followed by the familiar sound of a firearm. The man that had killed his partner had apparently intended to use the weapon he had won. The snap of his bow, and a gurgling yelp followed. “That was fast. Nine!”

The shaman ducked behind one of the twisted chunks of indistinguishable metal that littered the killing ground, and began to wave her hands over each other in an esoteric movement. Electricity sparked between her fingers, and she closed her eyes, thanking whatever gods this land had for her continued connection to the elements.

“WITNESS ME!” a bold voice called, disrupting her concentration.

An almost naked man, bald with black paint around his eyes, held a can of spray to his mouth and emptied the contents over his teeth, painting them and his lips a vibrant metallic silver. He then ripped across the battlefield, his long, thin legs carrying him as fast as they were capable. In his hands was what seemed to be a pole with some sort of device tethered to the end. “I shall ride forever,” he screamed as he approached his mounted foe, “SHINY AND CHROME!”

The tip of an arrow impacted the explosive at the tip of the lance, and the young man was consumed in an inferno of flame and pressure. A bloom of flame shot into the sky, and the blast wave shook the metal Ur’Gezza hid behind enough to make it buzz. After the last petals of fire had turned to smoke, a wary quiet sunk into the area.

Dezial sat, more than a few meters away from the blast area, and allowed his bow hand to drop with an oddly charismatic smirk. The rugged scruff on his perfectly shaped chin made his lazy contentedness all the more unnerving. “The Sinestro Corps has no need for martyrs or heroes!” he shouted, seemingly restraining a laugh. “Dead men cannot uphold order!” He casually stowed his bow and then twirled his pike into his hand. “Eight, if any of you dogs had lost count!”

Her eyes went wide, and Ur’Gezza redoubled her efforts in her communal with the elemental spirits. Her pounding heart was reassured by the crackle of lightning cupped in her palms, the voice of the sky visiting to sooth her troubled mind. Even here, in this place, living this nightmare, the elements had not abandoned her.

The stillness that the explosion brought loomed, each of the other recruits staying just as quiet as the troll intended to. The plodding of hooves allowed the cowering menagerie to trace their hunter’s movements as he leisurely stalked between their hiding places. “Now, it seems we have done away with the foolish!” She heard a bowstring, a sound she had already learned to dread. “Now to do away with the cowards.”

The rusted steel twanged over Ur’Gezza’s head, the head of an arrow punching through only inches from her face. The shaman choked down a gasp, a bolt of terror all but punching her in the chest. She rolled around her the ragged lip of her cover, and a bolt flashed from her hands as soon as she laid eyes on her captor.

Lightning crashed into the dornishman’s shoulder with a shower of sparks, and he tumbled backwards off of his saddle. His boots were planted and his posture righted almost as soon as his back hit the ground, and the tip of his spear was already haft-deep in some cat-person who thought they saw the perfect opportunity to pounce. He whipped the steel from the carcass and twirled it behind his back. “Seven,” he heaved, smoke drifting from his scorched robes.

The troll didn’t hold her position long, compromised as it was. She sprinted over the sand, happy that other targets were keeping her executioner’s pike busy, and tumbled behind a barrel. Compelled by the steady thumping in her chest, she was no longer content to simply hide. She uttered a negotiation with the primal forces that surrounded her, and summoned from them a stout wooden totem that she slammed into the ground. Gentle winds blew from the idol, droplets of cool, curative water dappling her face. Though she was not yet injured, the restorative effects of the Healing Stream quieted her panic all the same. It was better to have healing at the ready than hope she wouldn’t need it later on.

Her wrinkled features furrowed and she stood up from behind the ramshackle concealment. She asked of the winds yet another favor, and a murmuring zephyr wandered away with her words. The spirits of flame compiled, and Dezial’s robe spontaneously caught alight. Not done, Ur'Gezza wound her hands through the air, tugging at the fundamental structures of reality as she knew it. Waves of heat and smoke wafted up as molten magma burbled up from beneath the dornishman’s feet, and he only barely managed to leap to the side before a lava burst splattered up where he had once stood.

“I do hate warlocks,” Dezial grumbled as he furiously slapped out the lingering flames in the dense linen that covered his shoulders.

Before his ire could be put to use, a trill called out from behind him. He snapped his weapon to attention, only to see the sand explode about fifteen feet away. The sand fury emerged with her signature warcry, shortly followed by a gout of blood pouring from the decapitated body of some rough and tumble space marine that had enjoyed better luck during the Brood War. The sand fury spun and leapt back over the retaliatory gunfire of his partner, then lifted and fired her own pistol to fire with significantly better aim.

Dezial sneered with joy as the ruthless killer fell upon another team, then another. The flash of her blade and the pop of her pistol danced between the obstacles like a bloody blossom drifting over the desert dunes, the shrieks of her victims calling out in a chorus of woe. Before the Corpsman could even count, the battlefield was littered with the carcasses of the other hopefuls, and the silent fury stood amid them, not even short for breath.

Ur’Gezza looked on in shock and horror at the efficiency of the slaughter, her brutality even outpacing Dezial’s. “By da sand and sky, mon,” she whispered, but even they were too afraid to answer her.