The Desert is Cold in the Dark [Dark Data]

[Nebula]

With a sickening, twisting crunch and squelch, the impaled darkling succeeded in ripping the spear from its chest, accompanied by an almost comical fountain of dark, viscous blood. It shrugged, tossing the weapon back to its partner, who snagged it from the air and spat out another glob of sand from its mouth. Cracked, yellowing and blackened teeth twisted into a snarl, the bandages once swathing its face ripped and torn by its impromptu dismount from its steed. Taking the spear in both hands, it slowly paced toward Somerled, circling slightly to one side, moving sinuously over the treacherous sands, the loose and sliding ground not hindering its movements at all. Its partner moved in a similar fashion, almost slithering smoothly over the sandy ground as it circled around the opposite direction, hands held forward and flexing, grasping at the air and showing small, though gleaming and wickedly sharp, claws on its fingers. They both let out a hissing snarl, backed by a deep, guttural growling noise. Like some massive reptile giving a warning it was unhappy. And then with a simultaneous screech, high-pitched and ear-piercing, they struck, lunging in from either side. Hopping this way and that in swift, bounding strides they clambered, hopped, scrabbled, ducked, threw up clouds of sand, and pounced, spear and claws working in tandem to give the monster as tough a time of it as they could. It was wild, it was savage, it was messy, but it was effective and it was coordinated. When one of t hem pulled back to scurry about for another lunge, the other one darted in to strike and harry, always throwing up as much sand and grit as they could with their movements, fully exploiting their long, ragged robes to catch and disperse the airborne particulate.


The three raiders confronting the marine and the monkey burst from the sand dune, screaming in wordless, inarticulate rage. The leader, his voice an inhumanly deep, reverberating bass rumble, rose over his fellows in volume, giving a long, drawn-out bellow. It held no words, no meaning, but it shook the very sands and spurned his underlings on. Whether out of some supernatural effect, or just to get slightly further away from that unearthly noise, it was hard to say. But they leaped and charged, mangled firearms now turned into clubs and bludgeoning tools as they blindly hopped and surged into the fray. The leader, meanwhile, paced forward more slowly, reaching into the mess of spikes and bolts jammed into his back and drawing forth a weapon of his own: a long, curved machete, welded haphazardly to a long, spiked chain, bearing what looked disturbingly like a razor-sharpened meathook at the other end. Thick plumes of smoke started to belch from the gasmask he wore, and a shimmering haze of heat grew around him, flames dancing in the dark lenses of the face-covering apparatus.

And so things continue.

The entire darkling raider squad has been banged up and injured, but they're still going strong (mostly). Keep up the fight and finish 'em off.

Injury Rundown:
-- Somerled suffers a Minor Injury (dislocated shoulder) -- 2 points of damage
-- Jim and Ogong suffer 1 point of damage from general battle chaos and angry bullet massages

Everyone has four days and one post, up to 1000 words. You're cleared to finish the group off this round, so go wild.