While the squad stayed hunkered down in the relative safety of the bunker entrance, Commissar Gourke flagged down a stormtrooper that was running by.

"What in the Queen's name is going on here?!" Gourke snatched the man by the arm and practically dragged him into the bunker with the rest of the squad. The stormtrooper made a move to leave, but Gourke pushed him against the wall. "Speak up, Imp, I asked you a question."

"Begging your pardon, Commissar sir, but where've you been? Those void beasts have been attacking us for over half an hour."

"I can see that, but why aren't the weapon emplacements bringing that thing down?" Gourke pointed at the dragon, now so high in the sky that it was barely a shining blip, but none of them doubted that it would be coming back soon.

"It was friendly fire. The troopers that came back from the bunker went and blew up nearly every gun we got. By the time we figured out what was happening, Yabanchi were pouring up from the valley and that dragon swooped out of nowhere." The stormtrooper's eyes narrowed behind his mask and Tanlon saw his hand edge toward his sidearm.

"There's no need for that, brother." Tanlon grabbed the man's gun before the stormtrooper could react. "We encountered a squad under those void beasts' possession down below too. We're normal though." As if to illustrate his point, Tanlon held the handgun out to the stormtrooper grip first.

The man took his weapon back, eyed the squad again, and put the weapon back in his hip holster.

"Aye, trooper, I think you probably are." The stormtrooper squared up and looked Gourke in the eye. "I need to get back to my company, sir. We're barely holding off the ground attack as it is."

"What about that dragon?" Gourke asked.

"It doesn't get close enough for our weapons to really be effective. It's just been making runs at stragglers in the back lines"

"Get back to your position then, trooper, my squad and I will handle it."

"We will?" Mad asked.

"Yes, we will. We're back on the surface now, boy, and I'm taking command of this squad. You've been demoted."

"You can't do that!"

"I can. Keep arguing with me and the charges I'm going to press on you, I'll also apply to the rest of your squad."

"They didn't do nothing to you," Mad replied.

"They didn't do anything after you assaulted back there either," Gourke retorted back. "So, step back in line or I'll line everyone up with you!"

Mad looked down at the ground and Tanlon half expected him to lunge and tackle the commissar. Instead, the stout trooper looked up, his eyes broken.

"What are your orders, sir?"

Gourke sniffed in satisfaction. "I want a double file, every man using his rifle to draw that Yabanchi to the ground."

"And from there?" Mad did not sound like he truly believed in this plan, but he went along with it anyway.

"Use one of those dart grenades they issue you squad leaders and blow it up. Simple enough for you to understand?"

Mad patted the two dart grenades at his belt and nodded, but Tanlon thought this sounded like the stupidest idea ever. The squad was going to go out in the open, in the middle of a Yabanchi assault, and try to hit a giant dragon with small arms fire was it was airborne. Nevertheless, the men of the Imperial Vanguard were drilled from birth to follow commands and filed outside to the orders of their commissar.

The sky was darkening from black smoke and Tanlon did not have to wonder why. Nearly all the weapon emplacements that they had set up around the Delos Array were now smoldering ruins of slagged metal and burnt bones. A charred Mylock corpse not too far from one of the anti-air launchers confirmed a sneaking suspicion that had been growing in Tanlon's gut. The remainder of the possessed squads that had been sent into the array's bunker must have returned to the surface and caught the defenders unaware. The coordination between that sneak attack and the simultaneous ground and air attack from the other Yabanchi was unnerving. The beasts were supposed to be little more than mindless monsters, yet this attack showed a higher level of intelligence behind it.

These thoughts were too high for a simple ground grunt and Tanlon left his theories behind as he lined up with the rest of the squad, weapons aimed at the dragon soaring through the sky. The commissar could say what he wanted about the Vanguard Troopers, they lived up to their reputation for discipline and orderliness when the dot of the dragon started growing larger. Each man shouldered his weapon and fired at the Commissar's command, save for Mad who had a dart grenade in his hand and hoisted back like a football.

The dragon flew so fast that Tanlon did not think that a single one of their shots had hit it and even if they did, what could the spattering of an IM-3 do against such a monster? One of the scaly creature's talons alone was bigger than a man, not to mention the jaws on that thing. Yet Tanlon stood by the rest of the men and fired, training guided his hands to steadily reload despite the trembling shaking his core.

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As the dragon was almost right on top of them, Tanlon felt the air heat up like he was in an oven. It was then that he almost panicked and ran, for surely they were about to combust like the other soldiers had before them, but whatever source of heat the dragon was using to melt targets did not have had a chance to fry them, since one of the dragons rainbow translucent wings was shredded by an explosion that smote the dragon tumbling to the earth below.

"Got 'em," Mad bellowed.

Tanlon would not have believed the luck for a throw such as that had he not seen it firsthand, yet there the dragon lay on the ground only a hundred feet away from them. Unfortunately, grounded as it was and momentarily stunned, the Yabanchi got back up and looked directly at their small squad of troopers. A sense of impending doom ran through Tanlon as he saw the look of cruel exultation in the dragon's eyes. Aside from breaking some of the thin membranes of one of its wings, the dart grenade had not even left a mark on its scales. They had hardly damaged it at all.

He knew something bad was about to happen when the lizard straightened on its hindlegs and exposed a pale white belly. Yet what Tanlon had initially confused as white scales on its stomach, he could see on closer look that the dragon had a massive row of teeth traveling from its neck to groin. Using both its hands, the dragon started pulling open the maw on its torso and the air started to thicken.

"Open fire!" Gourke raised a power armored hand and the rest of the squad obeyed. Except for Tanlon. He grabbed Snell and Mad by the collars of the uniforms and practically yanked them off their feet while he ran towards the nearest set of cover in the form of a melted autogun base. Throwing his friends behind the cover, Tanlon dashed behind it just in time too before the heat became a wave roiling the very air they were breathing. Whatever cries of protest Snell and Mad may have had were caught in their throats as their bodies overheated in seconds from the heat wave. There was no time to appreciate the irony of the cold mountain weather no longer being an issue since Mad and Snell slipped into unconsciousness from the heat and Tanlon barely held on to himself. His body tried regulating the temperature by sweating from every pore, but it seemed like even that water was turning to steam from the immense heat. In an attempt to wake his friends back up, Tanlon took their masks off and opened up their collars, but neither of them stirred.

The snip of cold air biting at his neck brought some of Tanlon's senses back along with the realization that the heat was no longer coming. Tanlon peeked over their cover and saw that the remainder of their squad had been reduced to piles of red, peeling flesh and burned bone. Gourke did not look much better, his power armored motionless on the ground, melted at the servo joints. The dragon had crawled closer and was now picking up some of the burned troopers and stuffing them into its gnashing mouth. The sound of its masticating jaws slurping flesh from the bone like his comrades were some kind of barbequed pigs made something crack in Tanlon.

Perhaps it was heat exhaustion robbing him of his senses, but he stood up from his cover and approached the dragon, plasma caster raised. The dragon noticed him immediately, but it kept enjoying its meal and only cast one eye at the oncoming trooper. That eye gloated down at Tanlon, like a bully who knew that it could not be hurt by something so much weaker than it. It thought that it was untouchable by these tiny mortals, at least until a plasma bolt caught it in the eye.

The dragon reared back and its flailing tail almost caught Tanlon in a wild swipe. The plasma bolt had been effective in instantly superheating the fluid in the dragon's eye and causing it to burst in a painful eruption. Unfortunately, Tanlon's final two shots struck heat heat-resistant scale and did even less damage than the first of Mad's dart grenades.

Taking the human seriously now, the dragon moved quicker than Tanlon would have thought a creature of its size capable and snatched him in one of its clawed grips. The red beast had to turn its head to look down at him with its other good eye and Tanlon thought for sure it was about to bite his head off, but instead, it brought him to its stomach and the grinding teeth therein. Past the stomach teeth and deep in the dragon's body, Tanlon saw a flicker of light that dragged his full attention away from the fear and anger seizing him. The heart of the dragon lit up again and the air heated up accordingly, yet Tanlon did not care about being burned anymore as he looked deeper into the dragon's body.

Tanlon stared into the prism heart of the dragon and felt his body lose control from the strobing of colors that should not have existed in this reality. He was a rodent, caught in the grip of an alpha predator from another world, but the fear of being consumed by the gasping maw dissipated as past, present, and future melded together in the swirl of alien design and Tanlon's consciousness spread out like butter on the fold of potential realities. He was born simultaneously as he died a thousand assorted deaths. He strode to the front of an assembly of thousands, Emperor Haylock holding his hand in triumph as they celebrated their freedom from the skies bolts of lightning struck down Tanlon's comrades as they charged toward the enemy lines, it was hopeless, no matter how many men they threw at that hated crystal castle it still stood. It was that blonde woman, every strike of her sword cut down a dozen men. Tanlon reached her and before his head was swiped off he heard her say, I love you, Tanlon. Let's run away together. From this war, from all this death. Tanlon gripped the white-haired girl's shoulders and tried to reply, but her mouth just lolled open and a high pitch scream and blur of Tanlon's perspective blossomed into an explosion of white light.

The world was shaking, but Tanlon did not know if that was from his ears ringing or his body trembling. He was back, but all those memories were still unpacking in his mind. Were they memories or things yet to happen? Tanlon tried to moan, but his he couldn't find the air to breathe and slid back to the ground after a failed attempt to stand up. A familiar sensation started creeping in his limbs and Tanlon embraced the bliss of unconsciousness. His lungs were damaged from barotrauma, every part of his body had a contusion of some kind, and bits of frag and blisters covered more of skin than not. Tanlon should have died on the battlefield again, yet his tissue kneaded back together on its own and his vital organs stayed alive long enough for bones to start mass producing more cells. By the time the rest of the regiment had fought off the Yabanchi ground assault and investigated the dead dragon, there was only four survivors left among the burned bodies. Three had to be rushed to the hospital immediately, but the fourth was totally unharmed despite his destroyed uniform and sleeping like a baby. His survival was miraculous and he would have been harshly questioned had they been able to wake him up. Tanlon was alive, but he was in a deep coma.

Tanlon's Stats

Strength 12 Constitution 14 Reaction 12 Authority 10 Mana 0/0 Special Abilities Vitality Regeneration