Hidros Station
Greenish brown bolts of acid shot past the strike team and hit the walls. Noxious gas filled the air as alloys broke down under the corrosive effects. Rayshe exclaimed the Sauridius hatchlings were using earth magic. Akamori drew his rifle and snapped off several air bolts at the undead, which blasted heads to gory matter. The defenders pinned the strike team down. More undead fell upon them.
Akamori could feel his heart thundering in his chest. They needed to push somehow. He couldn’t see how, though, not with the blistering fire they were under. Acrid smoke billowed as shots hit their cover and started dissolving it. The outer shell of a metal console discolored as it liquified, hissed, and bubbled. Sparks crackled out as electronics suffered under the acid.
“Private Sala. You’re up. Rush the enemy lines,” Rayshe ordered.
“Sir?” Akamori said as Sala’s expression went pale and the primal actually shrank smaller.
“You heard me, Private. Go!”
Sala’s gaze went distant, and Akamori wasn’t sure if Sala would start rocking himself. Being a war slave had to suck. Go here, do this, and die now. Akamori put a hand on his shoulder, and Sala turned to him. Sala didn’t glare, but there was fear in his expression. Akamori gave the primal his best reassuring squeeze he could.
“It’s ok. I’ll go with you.”
He saw Sala’s cheek twitch with doubt and confusion, but they didn’t have time for that. “The Eltee is right. We have to push or we’re just waiting to die on borrowed time. I’ve seen you fight. You’re a beast. We push together, ok?”
Akamori slung the rifle over his back, preferring to keep it handy. He gripped the hilt of his blade, his thumb hitched behind the guard, ready to push it free of its scabbard. “Let’s go show these overgrown lizards what we can do, eh?”
Sala drew in a deep breath and nodded. The faceplate of his helmet peeled back in small panels until his head was exposed and he triggered the armor to retract into storage mode. Akamori watched it retreat in progressively folding plates until it was the size of a bracer on his arm. Sala gave another anxious glance towards the shambling horde and the hatchlings pressing the attack. He glanced back at Akamori, the discomfort clear.
“It’s ok. The captain needs us to pull this off,” Akamori said again.
Sala turned to face back to the airlock, and Akamori wondered if he was looking for the ship for a moment. Sala always seemed to be protective of the Captain. The primal turned back to face him, nostrils flaring as he drew in a long steady breath. Then intense earth and light magic rippled out of the primal. His bulk increased, and his skin hardened to stone and mottled grey. It cracked and rumbled like a living rock sliding over gravel. His eyes flashed with radiant energy as the light magic poured from his body like stoked fire. There was the big rocky chaos monster that half beat the snot out of him. Akamori smirked, the anticipation of violence burning away all fear and doubt.
“Let’s go,” he said, drawing his blade.
Akamori and Sala rushed to the right side of the room, trampling a massive trench through the undead after the rightmost hatchling. It snapped off several acid bolts at Sala, but the light barrier/stone skin combo blunted the attack naturally since the two earth magics canceled out. The radiant aura Sala wreathed himself in healed whatever damage the massive brute actually suffered after the resistance. Akamori raced along with a strong wind pressing against his back for speed via the armor, and came out from around Sala at the last moment, cutting at the Hatchling’s leg. The blade stubbornly bit down into the scales and drew blood. He frowned at how shallow the wound was. His hud ran a quick perception check.
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Dragonborn Hatchling
Divinty: Mortal
Challenge: Difficulty Threshold 3
DT3? That was the first time he’d encountered something this tough, to his knowledge. He made a mental note to ask about all this later. That would no doubt draw forth some put upon a reply from the sergeant. Leaving the damage numbers and most notifications shut off had helped him really focus on the action so far. His blade’s hilt shifted in the hatchling's thigh, bringing his focus back to the present situation.
In response, the Hatchling aimed its spell rifle at him from point-blank range. The barrel coughed a bolt of propelled acid in the shape of a spell bolt. Cursing himself for letting himself be distracted, Akamori jumped, using air to spin himself to avoid the attack. As he distracted the Hatchling, Sala slammed a massive fist into the hatchling, crushing its weapon against its body and smashing it into the wall. It opened its mouth to breathe in Sala’s face, but Akamori spun, twirling his blade and ramming it down the Hatchlings’ face, pinning his head to the wall. Gore dripped out of the hole in the back of its skull as its eyes lulled over into death.
The other two hatchlings fired on Sala in retaliation, and the combined attack wore down his stone skin and a horrid sizzling noise sounded out. Pain howled from the wounded primal. Sala fell to a knee, clutching his other leg as it threatened to melt completely off. His light magic struggled to press the caustic acid back. Akamori swept around Sala, flicking his blade to cleave off the meat that was slowly being melted by the acid with an air slash. That kept his blade free of the corrosive magic. He advanced on the other two hatchlings as they shifted to aim at him, just as a hail of fire slammed down into them from Rayshe and Amara.
The two young dragons used their wings as shields to weather the attack. Akamori took a deep breath and whispered a prayer to his weapon. It glowed for a moment in response to the prayer, coated in a soft silver-blue glow. He rammed the blade forward, punching through the wing as the hatchling shrieked. It tried to press the blade away from its chest, but Akamori howled a war cry, air magic blasting into his back at his summons, and the blade surged forward into the chest of his opponent. The scales offered only temporary resistance before giving way to the magic enchanted sword bathed in air magic.
As he was withdrawing his blade, the last hatchling fired at him, so he used the body he’d just killed to stop the attack. Cover fire from Amara and Rayshe caught the hatchling and overwhelmed it. A shot to the knee, and then the face finished it for good. Akamori turned and saw Lt. Rayshe’s pistol smoking. Was he grinning? That made Akamori shiver internally. Amara was panting and gave him a nod. They’d survived this far. He and Amara rushed over to Sala, who was channeling light magic to regrow the damage done to his leg.
“You ok?”
The primal grunted, unable to speak without breaking his focus. Akamori took that as an ok, mostly. He glanced up and saw the Lt. surveying the area. “This shall suffice,” he said.
In the center of the room, Lt. Rayshe started kicking dead bodies to clear a space large enough to place the Void Gate assembly for the Marines to traverse through. Once the Lt. got the portal active, only then did it sink in that they’d been victorious. It felt pretty touch and go after they almost lost Sala to the hatchling attacks. Akamori wasn’t sure how to feel about the young dragons. He knew the Sauridius used them as shock troops with terrible effectiveness, but he had a hard time imagining human soldiers with no magic against those. The scales were too imbalanced.
“We just took down several hatchling raiders,” Amara said. Disbelief and pride mixed simultaneously.
Akamori could only nod, the shock still lingering in his mind. “For a moment, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it.”
“How many do we think are left?”
Rayshe glanced deeper into the station. “There were quite a few hatchlings in here, but they lacked the power to shackle so many undead on their own. There’s likely still a shackler here lurking in the station along with whatever surprises it might have defending it.”
“So stopping them is key,” Amara said.
“Yes. Which is where our marines come into play. We’ll use them to sweep and clear the station, and when they detect issues, we’ll interdict.”
“But those creatures will slaughter them?” Akamori said, confused.
“So?”
He blinked in numb shock at Amara. How did he respond to that? He had until the marines stopped filtering through the portal to find his answer. He just hoped it was a usable one because right now he wasn’t confident he could do much to prove his point, never mind resist the eltee’s urge to just order everyone to their death.