The Commander’s voice cut cleanly through the roaring of the artillery; “light it up, men!”. At his command, the appointed priest-in-charge shot a white-hot, small ball of fire from the entrenchment, landing it in the midst of the hole; atop where they had dumped three quarters of their every flammable source of fuel. In the blink of an eye, a column of fire rose like an infernal dragon - silently scorching the monstrosities that had nearly reached the fine defenders of Cradle, securing a temporary perimeter.
In the distance, fleshy horrors were pouring out from the thicket. Commander Behemoth-Bane stood at the entrenchment, staring up at a tall wall of gathered leaves, dry shrubbery and twigs. The priests’ chapters along with nearly all the artillerymen had been pulled back to gather the flammables and stack the debris in the tall pile.
Jarek followed shortly behind the straight-backed, mysterious, black figure - dreading another stare from those cold, dark eyes of his mask. What he had thought to be a man in a mask, he had begun to think of as a mechanical construct of cold, hard calculations - his plan, obvious for most the men, involved serious risks and grand leaps of faith.
“C-Commander…” Jarek began. But the Ghast simply continued staring at the wide-eyed, adrenaline-fueled warriors sprinting to- and fro the pile.
The General’s splitting headache worsened as he fell to the leaves and heard his men’s panicked screams ring through his consciousness: “General! General - they’re diverting; they’re coming up the hill! They’ll be on the artillery in minutes!”
As the transmission ended, Jarek quickly rose to his feet and reported to the dark figure: “They’re coming up the hill, Sir! They’re charging for the artillery!”
He had expected something - anything. But rather than transmit another message through the exhausted General, the Ghast raised his voice in a demonic roar, shouting a reverberating: “Melee warriors! Oil-gear - protect the artillery at all costs! Up on the hills - now!” None stopped to question his hellish voice - none even paused. A resounding echo of slaps to chests preceded the charge of green forms clad in wide, protective parkas of oiled cloth up the hill.
“How many are there in the total of those units, General?” The Ghast turned smoothly over the bare, dirty ground and questioned.
Jarek felt the dark eyes glare at him through the slits in the mask and swallowed. He wiped his forehead with the metal wristguard and informed: “T-there were six units when the charge started. I’m not sure how many remain…” The General trailed off.
In another reverberating roar, the Ghast commanded the riflemen and the priests: “Continue! Quicker! This is your last stand - these are the most important minutes the Governor will ever live! This will be your magnum opus, gentlemen!” And without another word, the black shape set off after the green forms- quickly sprinting past the many melee combatants.
Behemoth-Bane stood atop the eastern hill, in front of the roaring artillery cannon and looked down on the battlefield. The Monstrum had almost reached them - their path diverted from the hole and had begun their assault in full. The repeated strikes to the central hive had caused a massive influx of the Spawn into the valley, where they condensed before the hole before spreading out again to charge the cannons.
When the melee combatants finally arrived at his side, Behemoth-Bane had produced his silver blades and stood with his back facing the enemy to address his men. The sight of the silver edges were a sight to behold - amazing in their own right, but inspiring in the hands of the Governor’s best man. With a sword on either side, he looked across the fighters. Axes, swords, hammers, scythes - their weaponry remained unbloodied, by not for long. Their protective parkas were drawn low over their foreheads, seamlessly transitioning into masks he found more frightening than his own. Flexible, oil-and-cloth materials leading down to protective tubing beneath the parkas to supply clean air.
The thirty or so black lenses looked to him with unmoving focus as he spoke: “They may kill us. They may take us as slaves - they may violate us! But by morning, we will have served our Duty to Man! Our descendants will walk the lands, free of shame! Free of oppression!” He turned back around to view the Monstrum with clarity for the first time since his arrivals.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The hive’s morphotype was sextapedal - six spindly, long, bony legs on either side of a human torso and a bloated abdomen serving as their reserve tissues.
They lacked any and all facial features - only a head-sized extension of flesh stood from the neck where powerful pincers of ivory clicked threateningly towards the Ghast.
As they rose to sound their demoralizing screams of battle, their characteristics showed in full. Four arms stuck out from a fetal form on the inferior side of their bodies, gripping the air with three-pronged fingers tipped with razor-sharp keratin.
But it was as he saw the sluggish creatures in the back that he realized that their enemy was brutal and that their decision to move up the oil-wearing melee fighters had been the right move. A long tail of arm-like appendages supported a glandular protrusion dripping highly corrosive fluids on the surrounding, uncaring Monstrum.
“Hold the line! Keep up the artillery fire!” Behemoth-Bane shouted as he finally charged forwards, into the first line of man-high beasts.
They were fast, as the colliding forces soon discovered. But the Ghast was quicker - determined in his movements. Jarek had arrived up on the hill to watch the black form strike out at the many who turned their focus on him.
He beheld the gracious Ghast’s form, never once diverting from his path. When one of the beasts charged at him, he side-stepped the ivory fangs and delivered a face-cleaving strike down its head. He threw the blade up to the skies and in one, smooth movement, manifested the long high-caliber pistol from his sleeve to fire two rounds before grabbing the sword from the air again.
He was like a juggler - a dancer; an artist, all at once. Jarek could do nothing but stare in awe as the Ghast targeted the monsters’ abdomens before slicing across their chests, severely limiting their regenerative abilities by removing the storage for their tissues.
Blood rained down unto his silver armor as his men finally clashed with the beasts. Axes, hammers, blades, ivory and keratin collided - destroying Man and monster alike. But it was a battle not meant to be won by mortal men.
“Behind you!” Jarek warned a humongous, axe-wielding man who had just landed a blow to cleave a monster’s head. Behind him, as warned, a beast approached to leap at him - boring the inferior appendages into his arms and chest.
The ungodly howl of the warrior cut through the clashing of metal and bone as he was raised high above the beast. Cracks and clatters preceded the slow tearing of his arms before the creature brought him close to skewer him on its mouth-pieces.
A long proboscis extended from the monster’s head, lapping at the streams of blood staining the man’s oiled cloth, feeding the beast with new, regenerative energy.
Jarek fell backwards as another man dodged a blow, narrowly escaping a claw, but losing his hood in the process. As if the beasts in the back had awaited the opportunity, Jarek saw something shimmer slightly in the atmosphere high above the combatants - a rain of black liquids that struck every man, only to simmer on the oiled cloth before it trickled to the forest floor… everyone except the man without the hood.
His eyes immediately erupted into bulbs of foaming white before he began to grip at his face. He attempted to wipe the corrosives off, only to find his gloved hands covered in his melting skin and flesh.
Before he could succumb to the lethal concoction, another beast had come from behind to skewer him, too.
Jarek’s eyes were as wide as they were teary, but was eventually drawn to the shimmer of silver in the back - like a dragonfly’s wings in the sun. The Ghast had picked up the pace and was unleashing havoc on the acid-spitting monstrosities, turning his back to the direct spurts of corrosives to soak the blows, only to turn around again to seamlessly deflect or strike.
Jarek was stricken by a terror as he watched the beastly man scour his way through the field in a back-and-forth manner, returning to down them again as soon as they had achieved a semblance of recovery. By the second felling, the monsters would fall upon their fallen brethren and consume them - eagerly piercing flesh to inject corrosives before lapping up the interiors through their proboscis.
Even in face of the cannibalism, his disgust was more directed at the Ghast who had such capabilities, but instead of defending his men, he seemed intent on going through with his plan of insanity.
“General! The signal!” There it was again - that demonic voice, spoken through the teeth Jarek had seen as he spoke into his mouth.
He hesitated. Should the plan fail, he would likely lose more men. Should he succeed, victory was still a ways off.
“Go! Priests - fire in unison!”
He could hear a distant roar of a countdown, before every priest along the wall of debris set their attention on extinguishing the raging fires in the pit. When the flames finally died, another countdown sounded before they willed a great gust of air to life - quickly disintegrating the wall and filling the air with the leaves, twigs and shrubbery.
A great gale blew across the entire battlefield to the north. Jarek felt the strong stench of accelerant - dispersed on the winds by the debris and dreaded what would come next. The Ghast continued the slaughter as the priests blew wind after wind down the passage - motivated by the approaching horde of monsters as much as the order of the Ghast.