16.

In a half destroyed building, seven Infernal Soldiers stood about with spears standing upright, looking on from a shattered wall. They stood with careless ease behind the scant cover as the return fire from the Armory slowly faded away, weapon emplacement after weapon emplacement falling silent.

A mass of metal and corpses lay against the back of the building. A frame vaguely humanoid, but with four arms, and covered in glistening muscle fibers stretched over the violet metal. Crimson crystal orbs lay in its shoulders, knees, head, and the center of the torso. Each of them the size of a griffin egg glowed with energy. A mass pile of bodies were arrayed around the frame of the giant monstrosity and Erak figured out what the glistening muscle fibers were as he spotted a short, black, creature with hooked fingers, horns, and milk white eyes.

Flesh Shapter lvl. 9

To the other side of the building a huddled group of citizens lay in a pile, trussed and gagged. A circle of purple metal sat in the middle of the street, a…thing in the middle of it. It was like a cannon had been stretched and tied to a table and had the wheels removed. A bipod held the long tubular barrel pointing at the Armory. Faded blood red runes pulsed gently in the hazy air along the cannon’s length.

The table was long and wide, a trough in the middle that ran down the length and into the barrel. It was wet and glistening and Erak watched in horror as they grabbed one of the prisoners and hoisted her to her feet. He looked around and saw someone rising from the rubble, marching forward with an obsidian blade in his hands.

The man, and he was a man, was pale with haunted black eyes. Young but hard worn, with ashy blonde hair and blue-black bags entrenched under his eyes. His skeletal face was blank of emotion as two of the Infernal Soldiers lifted the woman up and upside down, dangling her long pale neck above the trough.

Blood Mage lvl. 11

Erak’s spear cut through the air without warning, flying fast enough it was nothing more than a blur. The mage looked up, shock and horror just beginning to register before the spear obliterated his skull in a spray of carnage.

Erak was chasing his spear even as Nevia began to scream, half-orders and half-curses. Erak’s arms pistoned as he barreled into the closest of the soldiers holding the hostage as it turned. He punched out with his shield, the rim crunching the demon’s face where nose met brow with a bone shattering crunch. It fell bonelessly to the ground, dropping the shrieking woman. The other soldier was looking about in a daze, still holding one of the woman’s legs as Erak pounced on it.

They fell in a tangle together and Erak got the mount, rearing up and over the demon, his knees pinning its arms. The shield rose and fell as Erak changed the demon’s skull structure. It stiffened and shook, squealing and screaming until, finally, it went still.

A spear grated off his armor, scraping loudly as the push of the blow threw him to the ground. He rolled and came to his feet, shield knocking aside another strike as the Infernal Soldier pressed its advantage.

Behind it Nevia dueled another of the soldiers, her blade swift as an arrow as she slowly dismantled it. A fifth soldier lay in a smoking ruin while more fire came pouring down on the last two, who were trying to cross the space between them and the rest of the soldiers.

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Erak was drawn back to his fight as the edge of the spear nearly spitted his head, the blow instead ringing off the side of his helmet. His head rang and his vision swam as he backpedaled, the demon giving no quarter as it stuck to him.

The blade of the spear flashed again and Erak reacted by instinct and grabbed the spear under the blade and held firm, pitting his strength against the demons. The demon snarled, teeth flashing as it snapped at him. Erak pushed the spear back as the demon strained to take it. It overbalanced and took a few hurried steps back, refusing to drop the spear as Erak followed it.

The bull rush worked as he got within its guard, dropping his shoulder and crashing into its midriff. The air whooshed out of it as Erak straightened, lifting it off the ground, before driving towards the earth, demon shielding his body from the earth’s hard embrace.

The soldier broke as Erak’s armored bulk landed on it. Erak felt the pop of organs pulverizing and the snap of bones breaking. He rose up and over his battered foe who lay there with blood trailing out of its mouth. Erak stomped down and ended it before looking about.

Nevia had finished her opponent off, but at cost. A long bloody furrow lay her arm bare, sliced to the bone. She was already hurriedly wrapping a tourniquet around her shoulder as she glared daggers at Erak. The last of the Infernal Soldiers were dead, burned down before they could reach the survivors.

Erak looked at the hostages, two score in number, and the mountain of bodies that were arrayed around that golem. The woman he had saved was trying to get to her feet, but failing as her tethers prevented her from finding a stable base. The rest of the hostages had hope, treacherous and frail, in their eyes. Nevia’s men were running to them, knives out as they began to free them.

Rutledge walked down to stare at the golem while Julius assisted Nevia in bandaging her arm. Erak walked over to retrieve his spear from the dead Blood Mage and then went to where Rutledge stood. He took in the edifice of cruelty, the thick spars and pounds of flesh wedged between them.

Half its body was done, legs covered in red and white sinew and scraps of skin. The small demon was dead, Rutledge having speared it with her cane while it cowered underneath a half used corpse.

“I fear what this implies. Not just monsters, but weapons of war. This is only the beginning, Erak, the first wave. They are incorporating us, our bodies, into their weapons of war. How…efficient.”

It wasn’t how Erak would have described it, but she wasn’t wrong either. Erak clambered up the frame and adjusted his mental calculations. Standing this thing would have been nearly fourteen feet tall. He reached the first shoulder and reached in, grabbing that glowing crystal ball and pulling it free of the pedestal it sat on. It was weighty and dense and Erak struggled getting back down without dropping it.

Small Energy Core

Uncommon

He handed the heavy core to Rutledge who grunted softly as she cradled it in both hands. Erak looked up and down the line and saw dozens of bolts of energy reaching up to blast at the walls of the Armory. He looked back to the near forty hostages they had saved.

Imperial City had hosted tens of millions in its labyrinthine streets and sprawl. There could be tens of thousands of hostages being used to fuel the onslaught on the Armory right now, waiting to be saved.

His duty was to his Queen and it demanded he go back to serve her. These were her subjects though and they were being slaughtered like sacrificial bulls. How many of these little camps could he reasonably clear before he drew a response from something that could stop him?

“Don’t be a fool boy. We had the element of surprise with us. The more of the guns you silence, the more noticeable it’ll become. Two, maybe three more and they’ll be dropping the hammer upon us.” Rutledge let the brief silence stretch between them.

“We do need to open up a gap in their fire though, to safely make our way across,” Rutledge said, a small smile on her weathered face as she moved carefully to the squad and the survivors. Erak looked over to where the nearest blast of fire had come from and knew that it was at the cost of a person’s life.

He lifted his spear and began to jog.