Chapter 55 - Take the Streets
*BRAP* *BAP*
Scourge-Touched Undead takes 18 damage. (18 base)(Piercing)
Scourge-touched undead is marked.
Scourge-touched undead is cursed.
Scourge-Touched Undead is bleeding.
Scourge-Touched Undead takes 15 damage. (14 base, + 1 Marked bonus)
Scourge Touched Undead defeated.
You have been awarded 12 experience points. [10 base (-6 level, +2 nemesis, +10 group,+4 chain, -8 non-combat class)]
I loved the smell of Volatility in the morning. It gave off a sort of tingly, ozone scent with a dash of purple that really blended well with the sunrise.
I also loved the smooth efficiency of a machine well made and put to use in the right way. That was the good stuff.
The turret I’d just activated tracked and fired, cracking off short bursts of thunder in oddly spaced fits as it dealt with the many separate tracking angles and the complicated field of fire it was tasked with keeping clear. The time between volleys was longer in this iteration, the targeting program taking more time to hone in on something and take it down, but I’d designed them for economy over firepower this time. Gone (hopefully) were the days of a partially obscured monster wasting ten or twenty bullets of my turrets’ magazines. Now the turrets dealt with the monsters out of cover first then worked their way down from least obscured to the most.
At this moment, the newly activated death machine didn’t need to track very wide, the horizontal angle only about thirty degrees or so, but the alleyway I had it facing down had lots cover such as drainpipes, balconies, gutters, and rubble, not to mention four stories of vertical space to keep clear.
*BRRRRAP* *BRRT* *BRT*
Scourge-touched, previously allowed to roam and slink around with impunity, picking over the remains of the city they’d murdered, found themselves and their closest friends suddenly very unwelcome in this part of town.
This was my alleyway now, so sayeth my meticulously crafted, magic powered, automatic, boom stick.
My turrets tended to start high, I’d noticed, this one, like the others, tracking up to a window sill high above where a scourge-touched goblin was perched like a gargoyle, sniffing the air, quivering, twitching and generally being creepy like they did when they didn’t have a living being to chase down and kill immediately to hand.
A burst of automatic fire, three rounds in under a quarter of a second, took the creature in the temple in a glorious show of precision marksmanship. The monster’s head rocked sideways, slammed forcefully into the far shoulder as the rounds drilled neat holes in the skull. The scourge-touched’s body spasmed just once more before it tipped forward, arms shooting out in front of it like an old-timey pugilist as nonsense nerve signals were sent to its limbs from a brain that had just been forcefully rearranged.
As it fell three stories to the street, the scourge-touched’s scalp flapped in the rushing wind to expose the collapsed remains of its skull until its body came to a full stop against the cobbles with a *slap*.
The turrets’ aim was good before, but now it was uncanny. I’d dialed the power on the individual Volatility explosions down slightly with this latest iteration and shrunk the buffer spring, giving this model a sliver less of a punch but far, far less recoil with every shot. The result was a slightly quieter, far more accurate machine that could put a grouping of three or four rounds in a circle about the size of a coin. I wouldn’t trust them at extreme ranges, but that’s not what I needed them for today. I needed lots of things dead at medium range, and I needed my machines to go the long haul, cool enough to grab and store when the time was right as well.
I made a mental note. The slower, less energetic projectiles didn’t have the penetrating power of their previous iterations, but they did their job well on small fries like this. I dared not go lower on the power output, though. The last thing I wanted was to reduce lethality.
This was the sweet spot, enough to crack through bone and get to the vitals but not so much that it was overkill. In theory, it would delay the rate at which the action and barrels overheated, but I probably wouldn’t get entirely past that problem unless I developed some kind of cooling system.
Yes. I was aware of exactly how my thought process sounded, cooly calculating just the right amount of *oomf* to put into a machine so that it could kill hundreds of (kind of) living beings with maximum efficiency. I got it. My conscience just couldn’t seem to muster up a whole lot of sympathy for the scourge. Not anymore. When I did get a flare up in the conscience department, all I had to do was look at the bloody streets and remember how full they were when I’d walked through them before. My sympathy generally sat down and shut up for a while when I did that.
The scourge-touched killed for killings’ sake, and I wasn’t about to waste emotional bandwidth on pondering if I was doing the right thing.
As they’d done with every avenue of approach I’d fortified so far, the scourge-touched reacted to the sudden change in their circumstances with aggression. Every face on the street turned my way, and they surged forward as one. They howled and bared their teeth, just as they had on the other approaches I’d set up today, but it wasn’t the suicidal rage mode they entered when they saw me without my disguise. Their special brand of hate was, apparently, for humans only, and they could only get good and frothy if they knew their target was human.
The monsters came on as a coordinated group, the old and the new. Infected beasts were a more common sight out here near the outer walls, apparently, and I was just getting acquainted with dealing with them.
Goblins leaped from building outcroppings. Gangly, misshapen undead lurched over the filthy puddles and loose stones of the street. Blind, hissing rodents that looked like they would be at home digging through soft soil and munching on crops, scrabbled toward me, their metallic claws sparking off stone.
Some kind of gray skinned, amorphous something tried to pull itself out of the gutter half a block from my position, but it didn’t get far enough into the open for me to get a good picture of its full form. The turret was on it immediately. A dozen buzzing bullets ripped down the length of the monsters’ body in a neat line until its wrinkled skin burst open and spilled black fluid onto the street like a burst water balloon. After that, the rest of the corpse slipped back into the sewers below.
That was a new one.
I pulled up the combat log to take a look.
Scourge-Touched Smothering Thrag takes 9 damage. (16 base, -7 resist)(Piercing)
Scourge-touched Smothering Thrag is marked.
Scourge-touched Smothering Thrag is cursed.
Scourge-Touched Smothering Thrag takes 11 damage. (16 base, -5 resist)(Piercing)
Scourge-Touched Smothering Thrag takes 17 damage. (16 base, -2 resist, +3 Knife in the Dark)(Piercing)
Scourge-Touched Smothering Thrag takes 16 damage. (16 base, -1 resist)(Piercing)
Critical hit!
Scourge-Touched Smothering Thrag takes 32 damage. (16 base, 16 bonus)(Piercing)
Critical hit!
Scourge-Touched Smothering Thrag takes 35 damage. (16 base, 16 bonus, +3 Knife in the Dark)(Piercing)
Critical hit!
Scourge-Touched Smothering Thrag takes 32 damage. (16 base, 16 bonus)(Piercing)
Not the first Resist text I’d seen, but despite the animal dying quickly anyway I didn’t like to see it. It meant we were starting to pull wildcards from the deck, and things were going to get progressively more interesting as more of Ralqir’s wildlife was turned. The ‘smothering thrag’ was emblematic of a shift in threat level. I probably should have seen this coming, since I’d nearly died to something called a joroba the last time I’d been outside the Spire.
“Sir. They’re getting close. Shall I call for a volley?” Lieutenant Obvious asked nervously, mouth right next to my right ear so he wouldn’t have to shout over the guns. The archers, guards and goblins alike, were set up behind us down below in the yard, prepped and ready, arrows nocked and awaiting the signal.
I shook my head, hoping the gesture translated well enough through the hood and the mask. This approach was a pretty narrow one. The turret didn’t have much area to cover, at least not as much as I’d seen them do on the other avenues. It should be fine, barring a legitimate swarm.
“I think they’re getting it, Lieutenant! We’re fine!” I shouted, resisting the urge to give a thumbs up (stupid alien culture) while trying to sound reassuring, but the volume I had to use probably diminished the calm I was trying to convey.
As he and I watched, the turret cut down dozens of monsters as they tried and failed to swarm our position. The narrow alley was the near perfect ground for the gun to dispense death. Any charge of sufficient numbers the scourge put together was quickly decimated, the front rank getting a facefull of lead forcing their friends to jump over their corpses or take the time to dodge around them, but the turret’s tracking was quick and exacting. Those that took the air came down dead, and those that stayed on the ground were picked apart even as they dodged.
The climbing monsters were no better off. Their bodies rained down from above to slap wetly onto the stone and stain them an unnatural black.
Just as they had on the other approaches, the scourge’s charge broke just as suddenly as it formed, and the disparate survivors scattered into the empty doorways and the interiors of the buildings or slipped into the storm drains and gutters.
Bodies of slain monsters littered the open ground, three here, ten there, a straggler or two in odd repose draped over rubble or debris in the middle of the street. The closest they’d gotten was maybe six feet from our barrier.
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Now, if they kept to their previous behavior pattern, the scourge would keep their heads down, at least for a while. They got way more timid after a showing like this.
As a general strategy, the scourge seemed to be opportunistic in nature or a flavor of it, content to nip at and harass the scattered pockets of armed resistance down over time as opposed to committing to a big stupid battle where they risked a lot to gain very little. It showed some kind of tactical or strategic thinking that I wasn’t comfortable seeing from the murderous assholes.
Then again, maybe the swarm tactics were simply saved for special people such as myself. I resisted the urge to retie the catch on my mask. No need to call attention to it.
The camp was essentially approachable from five avenues, three of which, the ground level ones, I had pretty much cleared of monsters now. There were two side alleys like the one I’d just cleared and the main road that led straight away from the gate. Four turrets now stood sentry to cover all that ground.
The main road, blocked off by the big semi-circle of piled up crap or ‘junk berm’ as the goblins called it, was framed at the corners by two old, stone and mortar buildings that had once been businesses that served incoming traffic from the gate. The avenue itself was at least fifty yards wide here and roughly straight with only a few overturned carts and piles of rubble from collapsed buildings to get in the way of my turrets’ lines of fire. Its size, though, warranted two separate guns to cover it all.
If it were me, I would have shrunk the junk berm a bit to give my guns a bit more room to fire without big old buildings giving the monsters cover and concealment to approach the wall, but the survivors hadn’t designed the defenses with me in mind. They were just trying to make it to the next day. I’d just have to make do with what we had and hope for the best.
The other two vulnerabilities in our setup were both the city wall. It was higher than any of the roofs of the buildings, and it was nearly impossible to stop climbing monsters from finding their ways up there and getting into the camp by jumping or scaling down. That was my next problem to tackle. Right now, it was being handled by a firing line of crossbows and a detachment of spear goblins that would finish off any living stragglers and retrieve all the bolts, but that wouldn’t work during the upcoming evacuation. We’d need all those people down on street level.
Obvious and I slid down from the top of the berm to land in the yard again. Preparations for our escape were happening at a breakneck pace. People ran everywhere, carrying stuff, piling things into crates, stuffing things into packs. The mood was generally rushed but hopeful. Everyone was more than ready to get out of here and finally have real walls between them and the monsters, and I didn’t blame them.
Tiba and her honor guard marched up as we got to our feet but didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “The Tribes are ready soon, but things are uncertain,” Tiba announced with a hint of tiredness. Though her words were dutifully stoic for her followers, her expression held the hint of uncertainty. “Before, when we try to move, the Black Ones are everywhere. I feel like it happens again if we wait too long or move too soon.”
I did a quick sweep around the yard, making note of all the angles, trying to picture a gaggle of people waiting to stream out of here and down the alley to safety. Once the barrier came down, there would be a bottleneck at the exit followed by a run down the narrow street my party and I had used to get here. Then, even if we had someone there with the key to open the door to the tunnels instantaneously, we’d have to contend with an even narrower bottleneck as everyone streamed into the underground, all while the enemy closed in for the kill.
The last people to get off the street would probably have a hell of a time.
That’s why I was going to be one of them.
How the plan would hold up to a nearly instantaneous swarm, I didn’t know. That would be the worst case scenario, and I was increasingly worried that was exactly what we were in for.
If it were me giving orders to a few hundred thousand ravenous monsters, I wouldn’t waste numbers going after fortified positions like this one, especially considering said monsters didn’t have to eat or drink like regular folks. No, I’d wait people out, starve them, and end them when they were vulnerable, like, say, when they were making a desperate dash for safety.
“Yeah. They’ll come at us hard. That’s the feeling I get, at least,” I admitted. I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it for her. I respected Tiba too much. “I think they’ll pounce when they sense we’re vulnerable. The bright side is that we’re not going far, and we’ve brought lots of firepower.”
“They surround us like hunting dogs,” Tiba remembered. “You see it in the caves, and I see it again outside the walls.”
“This time, we have a plan and a real place to go, and I’m not stuck in a cell.” I tried to smile reassuringly at her. I was doing a lot of that lately, reassuring.
“Your human magic is not much like the stories say.” she said, sparing a glance for the turret over my shoulder. It came off like an apology, like she was sorry she’d gotten it wrong or the stories got it wrong. “That is probably good, because I don’t see how sharper spears help us here. The stories speak of great things but nothing like what you do.”
“I think my path has deviated somewhat from what it was supposed to be. Maybe that’s for the best, though,” I posited. I was probably only alive thanks to said deviation, so I wasn’t about to complain. “What do the stories say, though?” I asked, curious.
She shrugged, her forehead wrinkling as she tried to remember and boil it down for the tourist. “Mastery over metal. Unbreakable armor. Swords that cut through whole trees. We trade for these things before the Dark Lord finds out, but the best things are lost or broken now.”
I fought to pick my jaw up off the floor, blinking once, twice. “Hold on. You- Goblins traded with humans? Like… before me? Before the Dark Lord even?”
Tiba’s eyebrows knit together in confusion like I’d just made the most obvious observation there ever was. “Yes? The stories say word reaches to the tribes that a human is here, and many of us pick up our best things and come see, the smiths especially. They are always excited to meet new humans. This is before the Dark Lord and the Black Ones. One of our old ones can tell the stories better than me, though. They hear many times and are better at telling.”
“Uh. Yeah. Just- Did the goblins live near the place where humans-” I searched for the right word to describe the insertion point, something that would be understandable from a goblin perspective. “The ruins where humans would appear. Did you guys live near there?”
Tiba shrugged. “Different clans back then, so maybe. Doesn’t matter. The Black Ones live there now. No one goes there anymore, except the stupid and very brave.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told I ride that line between those two concepts,” I said absently. Tiba had just thrown me another piece of the puzzle. The Black Ones’ territory encompassed the tutorial facility. There was a reason they were the first living things I’d encountered on Ralqir. This meant… what? That they were spawn campers? They couldn’t even talk. How did they know to stick around and wait for newbies to get tossed into a new universe when they could be out murdering to their black hearts’ desires.
Tiba didn’t wait for me to think things through, though. She was concerned with the now. “I am still worried about moving, Ryan. We won’t leave goblins behind to become Black Ones. I am not leaving goblins behind.” She held her chin high, daring me to contradict her, and her eyes went hard as stone.
I nodded, not about to tell a queen how to take care of her people. “We’ll make it happen. Lieutenant, you hear that? Oh. Sorry. Of course not. Uh- Queen Tiba is expressing concern for our dead if the worst is to happen. What can we do for her?”
The man stood up tall, shoulders back and actually saluted the little goblin chieftess. The gesture went over her head, of course, short as she was. Hard to stand at attention and salute a woman that only came up to your navel.
“Assure her highness that no one will be left behind, dead or alive. Our crossbowmen will get one, maybe two shots off before they will be on crowd control duty. They will be tasked with taking care of the wounded, goblins and tall folk alike.”
I translated for Tiba and saw her visibly relax as I did. Her grip on her spear never loosened, though.
“That gives me some comfort,” Tiba said. “Our dead burn or we risk them being taken.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” I said. The goblins knew more about the Black Ones and, by implication, the scourge plague, than even all the healers and scholars still alive in the city. We’d have to sit down sometime and talk about what she knew about the Black Ones… about a lot of things, actually.
A short Miur and a team of goblins rushed past us carrying a half dozen coils of thick rope between them. Together, they started tying the ends of the rope to different points of junk in the wall. The old goblin engineer, whose name was Flog, I’d learned, was among them, directing workers on where to pull and what to anchor on. Together, they’d be bringing the barrier down when it was time for our little exodus.
Apparently, it had been designed to fail in this way, according to the ancient green man. Made of junk or not, he’d directed every piece of wood, every length of rope, every hinge that was placed upon the pile to make sure it was fit for this purpose. He knew where the keystones were and what it would take to bring it down.
“Goblins,” he said, “always have a way out. We know it, or we make it.”
On the other side of the bonfire, I spied Sissa, Samila, and Geddon as they knelt in a loose formation with another company of guards, listening to a briefing by the last remaining Captain in the camp. Everyone, including them, would have their place in this operation, and the professional military people would have to pull a lot of weight and be ready to pick up more when things started to inevitably fall apart.
As if she sensed me looking, Samila turned her head slightly and met my eyes, and that little smirk of hers sprouted on her face as she shot me a semi-private wink. I returned the sentiment with a tiny wave, but that was the end of our little indulgence. She was right back to listening intently to what the Captain had to say, and I had to get back to my part in all this..
I scanned the rest of the camp, running my eyes over all of the motion, following the activity, checking down at shin level for what I wanted to find. Nothing.
No Trix.
There was that hollow, chilly feeling in my stomach again.
I hadn’t seen him since last night in the cells. Kolash was similarly absent.
We, the church guards and myself, made the collective decision to not lock the Bishop up despite some good arguments otherwise. The arguments against restraining the big frog came down to a few inescapable facts. Firstly, we couldn’t spare the people to carry him hogtied or unconscious when we evacuated the camp. Second, we needed him. He was the only healer in the city that we knew of, and it would save lives if we made nice. Third, no one was comfortable with keeping him a prisoner just because he was afraid for his people. Yes, he tried to kill me, but the aim of the act was to keep others safe.
I could respect that.
He’d just need to come around or stay out of my way.
Besides, I wasn’t overly worried that the Bishop would come at me with a curse or get his guards to kill me either. No, he wanted my existence kept a secret, like Jassin. Why else would he curse me then tell everyone else that it was an attempt to cure me?
Well, that was about to backfire on him if he was still interested in a fight. The fact that I’d survived the spell and wasn’t a member of the shambling monster horde was public knowledge now, and the Bishop would have a hard time explaining why he wanted one of his supposed elite fighters and only practitioners dead on the eve of battle.
No, he’d have to come at me in secret if he still wanted me dead, and he’d have to wait in line like everyone else.
Suddenly, the turrets on the main approach simultaneously came to life, letting loose a long, sustained stream of fire, drowning out all other sound. Everyone turned to look, all conversations put on pause. The guns hadn’t done this since I’d first set them up, and not nearly for so long. They should at least pause slightly as they acquired new targets and reengaged. This was a long bout of sustained fire, though.
It was over in under ten seconds, but the quiet afterward was equally deafening. It had a chilling effect on everyone in the camp. No one went back to what they were doing. They stared in silence at the guns.
Wow. That must have been a big group out there. Maybe the scourge were massing for a charge after all.
I poked that part of my brain that seemed to keep track of things with Detect and, more recently, Marked things. Nothing.
Then it happened again. The guns spun up, this time in fits and starts and then a big grinding crescendo to finish. That was a lot of rounds spent.
Detect, again, showed nothing.
Wait. no. There was something out there, distant, indistinct but getting closer. The shape was strange, angular, winking in and out of my awareness as my Mark struggled to keep whatever it was highlighted for me.
I looked down at Tiba, raising an eyebrow. Maybe I needed to-
Again. The air split with sustained gunfire.
What the hell is going on out there?
I took a breath to excuse myself from the group, simultaneously pulling up my combat log to get some kind of clue as to what the turrets were killing when one of the goat-legged guards did what I was about to do. He shouldered his crossbow and bounded up the junk berm in long surefooted leaps, until he reached the top. Once his head was above the crest, he froze. Whatever he saw up there, he didn’t like it. He staggered backwards in his shock, then turned back to us, wide-eyed. He cupped his hand to his face.
“It’s a Bra-!”
*BRTRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*
The goat guard’s message was cut off as the turrets went full blast on something very very close.
Then the far edge of our defensive wall of junk exploded.