Elaina, Colay, and Emerald led the Ember Wolves squad on their first mission since the battle of Ettenmark Fields. It was time for them to make their way into Plainsworth proper, to investigate the temple of the Builder and the series of texts hidden there - at least according to the intel the scouts had passed to Dame Livia. Rumored to hold information on how to destroy a Chosen, these documents could also be used to learn how to destroy a broken, or maybe even undo it.
The militia guarding Plainsworth spotted the legion patrol and gladly waved it on toward the Temple. Stony-faced sentries wished them safe passage: none that had entered the temple had come out again in some time now.
The Ember Wolves climbed up the massive front steps that led to the monolithic, main cathedral complex, the largest of all buildings in the town of Plainsworth. As they looked over the imposing doors and walked around the perimeter, they spotted a second entrance, leading down into the cellars below the cathedral proper.
"The books will be in the library, not in the basement,” Emerald pointed out. “My vote is we go through the front doors."
Elaina nodded as she surveyed the outskirts of the complex with her mechanical eye. "We'll go through the front – and just in case the door is booby-trapped, we'll wreck it." She motioned for Colay, the Legion's loan remaining heavy, to move in.
Colay grinned as he set down his kit, pulling out and polishing off the fine-looking sledge hammer he used more for demolishing and not so much for fighting; it had the look of a well-loved family heirloom.
"Hold your ears closed, dearies. This is gonna be loud!" Colay took a single step back as if to give himself a running start before firing himself toward the door, aiming a massive swing of the sledge hammer at the corner where door met wallframe. The applied force was just perfect as the door knocked in with a thunderclap of perfection.
Certan Blackmarsh, rookie leader of the Ember Wolves, rushed into the gap, motioning his squad to secure the initial area and prepare to fire at any enemies they would come across. But there were no enemies, fortunate or not, and inside, the area was quite quiet with the faded hint of an echo reverberating from the door being bashed in. Elaina and Emerald followed in behind the squad, while Colay put away the hammer and marched in confidently with his own warhammer and shield. He strolled past where the rest of the team looked around, observed the area, and turned the corner to the main chamber of worship of the cathedral, now empty of both people and seats. Other than the pillars holding up the two alcoves on each side of the main chamber, the only noteworthy object was the great statue of the Builder, which stood tall behind a small altar, lit by natural moonlight in a perfect location that made it glow as if by magic, expert craftsmanship.
Elaina pointed out then that there were a couple of rotters laying under some debris, looking like they were playing dead. Not that they were tactical enough to make that happen usually, but some strange effect or force was over these rotters. Colay stopped and motioned to two of the squad members to join him as he got that sledge hammer out again.
"We'll take that pillar down and drop it right on top of those rotters – they'll be not trouble to us." he grumbled, heading toward the pillar with his sledge hammer in tow. Emerald quickly climbed up to the second floor to assist the effort to topple the pillar. With a single focused effort, the squad managed to knock it down: one hit, a second hit, and the pillar began to topple, Emerald riding it down to smash those rotters with a thunderous sound.
But the noise was too much. Crows, armed with crossbows and throwing daggers, appeared on the balconies on both sides of the main chamber and started to launch a surprise attack.
From the cellar near the statue, another group of Crows appeared, firing more bolts at the squad. All of these shots rang out and sent the squad diving for cover as Colay called out for them to return fire. Colay, noticing the ground-level Crows in the back of the main hall, held up his hammer and charged, waving his arm at the squad. Calaban Solo and Valori Couth charged with him to take them out.
Elaina began bringing down some of the crows on the balcony with the limited help of Cer'tan and his poor musket fire, covering the charge.
The crows by the statue turned from the approaching squad and ran a little deeper into the sanctuary. Colay sprinted around the corner with Valori and Calaban close behind, noticing just in the nick of time the booby trap that had been laid for them. Colay couldn’t avoid it, but he could turn his shield toward the trap as it triggered, pushing down and back against the rookies as he covered them..
The blast was focused and powerful. It hit the shield with a force that no man could resist. Colay launched from the ground and flew under power of explosion across the room. His back slammed against the pillar holding up the platform the altar sat on. The mass of the pillar stopped him cold, breaking several bones and forcing a stream of blood and gore to spill out of his mouth and fill it with blood. Colay went to press the bottom of the shield into the ground to help him up. He fell as quickly as he attempted to stand as the shattered shield fell to pieces against the ground and he toppled as one of his legs proved useless. He looked down at the shambles of his own leg, wondering if he’d ever walk again. Screams of pain coming from his own mouth were quieted by the blood that poured out with a tooth onto his lap. Finally, Calaban and Valori found him through the smoke and dust that had been kicked up.
Calaban and Valori carried Colay back to the rest of the team and laid him down as Valori called for medical attention. Emerald dipped down to try to help him. Colay's injuries were more than bad: his life was quickly leaving him as his eyes closed and he started to fade away.
As her companions attended to Colay, Elaina skulked around the corner to look up the staircase leading to the library side of the temple. She peeredinto the dark with her mechanical eye and the scope on her rifle. Staring right back at her was a slim-looking woman wearing an armored corset, holding two pistols, and peering through a pair of goggles that pierced right into Elaina's soul.
Elaina quickly lifted her rifle up to aim and fire it just as the woman did the same thing right back at her, and both pulled the trigger simultaneously. The others were all still covering Emerald as she attempted to save Colay's life, and Elaina was now alone in a gun battle. But the battle was short-lived as the first bullets impacted and exploded between the two, Elaina then raising a concealed pistol to take another fast shot as the other woman fired with her own. This time, however, the slim woman was hit; though she retreated around the corner and out of sight, the bullet she fired caused the sound of a shatter. Elaina collapsed back against the wall, breathing rapidly as Emerald now looked her way.
Elaina looked back at Emerald with a single good eye: the bullet had penetrated the mechanical eye she favored and completely disabled it.
Emerald’s attention returned to Colay and she continued monitoring his body, relaxing slightly as she realized that her healing was working and he would pull through - at least, so she hoped. Emerald rushed over to Elaina, looking up almost as if through a dead eye. As Emerald started mixing a tonic of herbs, one of the rookies – it must have been Cer’tan – called out.
“Something... just dropped down the steps.” Cer’tan pointed, his voice carrying a distinctive tinge of concern. His bristling muscles showed that he was on edge and ready for a close quarters fight. They looked over and saw the object that had come down the stairs, could it be a bomb?
Emerald saw smoke start pouring forth from a big bomb-looking object. With one sniff of the air, Emarald felt a blackness gathering in her lungs and pointed for the far stairs. “We need to continue toward the target, now.” she stated, her voice was more demanding and commanding than it had ever been with the squad.
As they gathered their wounded and made an orderly withdrawal, Calaban started to back away towards the exit of the temple. “Continue? We need to leave! We’re all going to die!”
It was a moment where all their hearts started to break, and their minds along with it. Cer’tan growled and charged Calaban as he tried to lead them away. His meaty mits grabbed Calaban’s exaggerated collar and lifted him hard against the wall.
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“We leave when the order is given.” Cer’tan growled, his phlegm flying into Calaban’s face.
Calaban cursed and looked about at his comrades, none of which backed his drive to flee. Alone in his cowardice, Calaban slumped in submission. Cer'tan released the man in a heap on the ground.
Emerald motioned and helped Elaina to bound up the stairs while keeping a look out for traps.
The upstairs apartments that once belonged to the temple attendants were ransacked, but no bodies were in any of the rooms. With a sickening surety, Emerald thought of the rotters they’d smashed below, and who they might have been before they were turned.
The smoke stopped climbing but filled the floor below. The squad established a firing line through the doors that surveyed the middle of the temple, facing the balcony on the opposite side. In that balcony, the crows now took cover and watched them as their strangely normal and human leader worked in the library.
A few glances were exchanged between between the squad before Elaina limped up to yell across the balcony.
“We should talk! We have you outnumbered and surrounded, friend of crows. Let's work out a deal for whatever it is you want.”
The crows braced their hand crossbows but a figure did move within view just long enough to set up a device to speak through. The quick glimpse proved it was the same woman as before, lithe and covered in gadgets, but looking very much alive.
“Alright, I suppose we can work out some kind of deal.” she answered. Her voice was calm, steady, and controlled. Her seething disrespect for them and her own heir of superiority continued in her voice. “How’s the eye, by the way?”
Elaina squinted - a poor idea with one good eye left to her - and scowled. “First off, who are you? Second, what do you want here?”
“Victoria Karhowl. I’m here for all the lovely knowledge they were hoarding away from the common people.” the slim woman replied. “
Elaina looked back to the squad, delaying for time but aware that any delay probably helps Victoria more than them. Wordlessly, the squad began pulling out their climbing ropes, with knowing looks to Emerald and Colay, now back in the fight with his wits about him again. The two of them grin and coil the ropes around their arms. They leave the chamber and head to another less well-lit balcony. Elaina returned her attention to the woman.
“Look, we want some information from this library as well. Let us have what we want, and we’ll let you have something specific you want. Then we don’t have to kill each other in this place of knowledge.” Her bad mechanical eye sparks as she blinks.
“No, no. It’s fine.” purred the slim woman. “Your people already almost got killed here and you’d best keep your distance. Don’t fret, I’ll be done soon.”
After tossing the ropes to a higher spot on the opposite balcony, Colay and Emerald both nodded silently. Without a plan or a word, they slid across and dropped down behind a statue, opposite the one that had fallen over earlier.
As the small talk continued between Elaina and the slim woman, the crows remained distracted just long enough to allow the two infiltrators to begin sneaking inside.
But just as they both made for the internal rooms of the library, Colay kicked the corner of the door frame and let out a quick curse. The crows turned at the vulgarity, launching back into action. Elaina broke off her conversation as she and the squad opened fire with their muskets and Colay and Emerald broke into a sprint.
A big armored beast stood in their way. Both Emerald and Colay rushed to bypass it.
Emerald dove between the legs of the behemoth. As she did, she felt a crack in her back. Colay ran around behind the lumbering undying beast, its armor plates slowing its movements. Once past, they could finally see Victoria clearly. With a book under her arm and a pistol in her hand, she backed away from them into an alcove with a window.
Emerald and Colay ran for her, but the pistol fired first, striking Emerald. Despite her would Emerald continued barreling towards Victoria as Colay engaged one of the crows. From the way she was eying the window, Emerald realized that Victoria was planning to jump - and Emerald dove at her as Victoria began to step out. The two plummeted several stories out the window and out of Colay’s sight.
“She’s escaping out the window!” Colay howled as he continued fighting the crow.
Elaina glanced around at this, locating a matching window on their side of the cathedral. They opened it and peered outside, but the angle was all wrong. Then followed a near comedy of errors. They formed what could best be described as a human ledge or pyramid to support someone getting out onto the roof. Each of the squad used a grappling hook and their bodies to provide a platofrm for Elaina. Elaina climbed her way out and leveled her scoped rifle over the edge of the roof. She then saw Victoria, turning and grinning as she was about to slip between the fence. Grimacing, Elaina pulled the trigger, hoping for a miracle of a shot at the engineer’s head. She didn’t even have time to see the results of her shot as she started to tumble down along with Cer’tan. Just as it looked both would fall several stories, arms caught both of their legs.
Two other squad members held their legs as they dangled out of the window. They dropped their gear from the recoil and fall. Slowly and with a muscle-burning agony, the two crawled back into the room.
The battle had left many of them with broken morale and broken bones. Although Emerald had survived the fall, something was off about her. That head-long charge seemed to have given her a reckless streak that all that went on the mission could identify. The rest of the crows had fled. And Victoria tightly clutched the book she’d so sought after, her blank eyes gazing at nothing, the bullet hole in the back of her head almost unnoticeable under all her hair. It took two members of the squad to pry the book from her death grip. with a bullet hole passing cleanly through her skull, her unblinking eyes unable to read the tome she’d almost won. , well, she had a ripe bullet hole right in her skull. Her book, the one she’d so sought after still clutched in her death grip.
With all the specialists so nearly out of action, the squad took turns looking through the book. The squad handed the book around until it was mostly on Valori. She uses her wits and knowledge to find a segment of the book that described something called a Murder Barge. She then theorized that perhaps Victoria had taken this book in hopes of building one.
Victoria was dead now though. One of the elite Lieutenants of the Cinder King’s army would plague the land no more.
**
The Legion had set up camp astried the city of Plainsworth, with mountains dominating the Easterly view. Elaina had just sat down on a newly cut tree stump stool as she set her sniper rifle down, leaning it against the side of her tent. She’d never truly get used to the primitive conditions of camping like the legion so often had to do. Seeing Plainsworth on the horizon had excited her. Would they get to stay in some dry and housed accommodation? The answer had been no. The mayor of the town had been suspicious of all the soldiers that had survived and hadn’t stopped before his town to fight the Broken onslaught.
Quartermaster McKellum strided over to Elaina with a bit of a limp. “Lassy, I see you pulled through that brawl at the library.” He said with a sort of hesitation that he was about to ask something further of her.
In truth, they had both the same cultural heritage and both had mused before the Battle of Ettenmark fields that their families might have some distant tie. It was for these reasons that McKellum trusted her and others with their vaunted heritage.
Elaina kept her hands crossed in her lap and looked up at him with her one tired eye, while the lenses over her mechanical eye adjusted as he came into focus. “And for what do I owe this certain honor?”
He grunts. “Can’t I just talk to a wee bit of a friend?” He could see that she was not buying it. “Well, I’d like someone good at talking to nobility to secure food stores for the start of our journey. And I can think of none that are more imminently qualified to handle this sensitive arrangement.”
She reached up and shut the lenses on her mechanical eye and regarded him with her one good eye, giving the quiet mechanisms a bit of rest. “What’s the rub? I know its a task that on any normal foray could be handled by some of your new staffers.”
“Tis true. I’m sure you know that the Broken scouts have been spotted on the farms around the outskirts. And you can see that we are in no condition to defend a town like this... or to bring the citizens with us.” He frowned at this task and the thought brought him no pleasure.
“So we are asking for food stores with no eventual promise to keep them safe from the horde.” “That about covers it, lass.”
She looked at her rifle and knew that bullying would do them no good, not unless they wanted more directly to have innocent blood on their hands. “I’ll get it done.” She reached out and took the tin cup out of his hand and took a long swig of its contents to only find water. She handed it back and she headed into town without her rifle and without the squads, letting them rest.
She threw on an embroidered cloak that she managed to keep in some state of finery and entered the town limits. There were no gates to speak of. Plainsworth was a bread basket for the western part of the kingdom and not designed to survive a siege.
She saw the spires of the library that her, Colay, and Emerald had stormed through. On the outside, it looked so normal, so peaceful. Though as she headed towards the mayoral estate, she could see in the town square a scene of recent devastation. While they had been busy securing the library and temple, there had been a Pauper’s Ball of sorts. They’d sent men to it as a courtesy to the locals. The lesser nobility had acted as if no danger was at their doorstep. And it had ended with a number of things that she could only call lycanthropes. They’d transformed amidst the climax of the dance and torn the place to pieces, even killing two legionnaires.
They’d stopped the rampage, but the damage to morale and to their reputation here had been done. Now, she’d be insisting on supplies from them. She strolled up to the old estate and gave the ornate crafted door a swift and confident knock.
The big peep hole opened and a pretty woman’s eye stared back at her. “Yes?”
Elaina cleared her throat and went to speak but found that her voice was still strained from the recent battle. She composed herself after a moment and spoke again, “I’m a specialist from the Legion. I’m here to discuss some supply issues.” She cleared her throat as she said that understanding how difficult this could go.
She heard a commotion behind the door and then a couple of minutes of tense thoughts ended with the punctuation of the door swinging open. Elaina saw a finely dressed woman in a colorful dress standing there and motioning for her to come in. She followed and was led to some fine couches in front of a hearth. The woman was about the same age as the mayor, who she sat down next to and looked across the small table at Elaina. “My husband thought it best to leave you out there. I told him that was foolish.”
He frowned at his wife and then looked to Elaina, “What do you want?”
Elaina looked between them, “As you know, we are planning our fight against the Broken.” She leveled her eyes confidently on his. “We require you to provide us with some of your food stores. Here is a list of the supplies we require.” She held it out and he just stared at her.
His wife reached across and snagged it and looked it over. Finally, the curiosity of the mayor had him reach across and take it for a look himself. He snorted. “This is nonsense, we’ll never survive a siege if we hand you all of this.”
Elaina didn’t say anything and instead waited for things to sink in. “In the end, it's not really a request. As I said, this is what we require. If they choose to invade Plainsworth, no amount of food will keep you safe.”
The wife looked at the mayor with a concerned scowl. He set the paper down on the table. “That's all we have.”
His wife put a hand on top of his, rubbing his wrinkly rough knuckles. “If they do choose to attack us, we’re doomed, aren’t we?”
Elaina rubbed her own hands as if she was her own company for this hard conversation. “Yes, even if we chose to stay here, there are far too many of them. They might chase us and leave you be. But we can’t commit to that move without supplies.”
Minutes later, satisfied, she had received confirmation that the Legion would get its needs fulfilled. In the end, her last comments were true both on their only chances and on the needs of her people.