“Wasn’t the plan to lure them into the hallway?” Sera asked no one in particular as Layla and Tiriana both went towards the enemy giants in the room ahead.
“That plan went out the door the moment they started shooting,” Rinnie responded as she slung her bow and replaced it with a misericord before jogging off to join the fight. Briefly Sera considered drawing her hammer and joining in as well, but it was more of an intrusive thought than a real consideration. She knew she was a liability here.
Layla accelerated, charging towards the giants, and Tiriana ran off in another direction, dodging through the scrap and rubble littering the room. Both armored gunners began to back up, scrap scattering as it was shoved aside by their boots, but Layla was faster and soon she made contact. She directed a mighty swing towards the giant on the right, which caught the blow on its gauntlet, just below the spike on Layla’s poleaxe.
With its free hand, the gunner shoved the barrel of a wrist-mounted gun into Layla’s stomach and fired. Even at point-blank range her armor deflected the shots, but the impact of each round could be felt even so. Layla grunted in pain, but wasn’t so easily stopped.
“You lost your chance to run.” She took a step back to give herself space and struck her foe with the other end of her weapon, and when it was reeling from the blow, she brought the spiked end back around, driving the point into its shoulder.
The giant’s thick armor absorbed the blow with little more than a dent, but damage was damage and that dent represented a weak point to be exploited. Before Layla could take advantage, though, the other giant came in and grabbed at her, intent on restraining her for its partner.
Tiriana wasn’t going to let that happen, though. While Layla distracted the gunners, she was preparing her next spell. This time she planned to put multiple degrees of separation between spell and effect, using magic to accelerate a physical object in the right direction. Fortunately, there was plenty of metal available. First she lifted several fragments and welded them together, then she formed a barrier akin to the barrel of a gun around the mass and prepared an explosion behind it.
“Let’s see you negate this!” When the second giant reached for Layla, a sound akin to a cannon firing erupted from the side and a mass too fast to track with the naked eye slammed into the creatures flank, sending it careening into piles of scrap and rubble. “Rinnie, now!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Rinnie shouted as she darted out from behind another stack of junk and jumped onto the fallen gunner, driving the point of her weapon into the elbow joint with the same strength she used to draw her bow. Thin metal gave way. Her misericord parted flesh and shattered bone.
Even a crippling injury drew no sound from the wounded creature, though, and it was quick to raise its other arm in an effort to fight back. Rinnie yanked hard to free her weapon and rolled away, vanishing into cover before she was shot.
Meanwhile, Layla grappled with her first opponent. When it tried to bring one of its guns to bear she knocked its arm away with the butt of her poleaxe, then swung it in the other direction to batter its armor. She ducked under the retaliatory swing of the giant’s other arm and then shot back up to strike it under the chin with her weapon’s haft, rocking its head back and opening it up for a flurry of follow ups that sent it staggering back.
“Ready for another go, Rinnie?”
“Just cast your spells, I don’t need your coordination!”
Seeing Layla had her side handled, Tiriana focused on the other gunner. It struggled to its feet, casting its gaze around in search of Rinnie, but Tiriana was already preparing her next attack against it. She lifted a ball of welded scrap metal into the air and then cast it down like a meteor, allowing gravity to do most of the work for her. Spotting it coming, the giant lifted its hands to catch the falling metal, which was descending faster than it could dodge.
As the ball of scrap fell, though, Rinnie appeared like a flash, emerging only long enough to punch a hole in the back of the giant’s knee before vanishing again. The gunner’s arms still managed to catch Tiriana’s attack, but the servos in its armor strained audibly against the burden. With its suit weakened in two places it only held up for a moment before giving out. Machinery in its elbow and knee broke apart and the giant sank to the ground, disabled but not out of the fight.
With its remaining arm the giant shrugged aside the ball of scrap and raised its good arm to return fire on Tiriana. The elven mage threw up a barrier, and with it deflecting only a quarter the volume of fire she’d been contending with earlier, there was little danger of it faltering. It made no difference either way, however, as Rinnie appeared yet again while the giant was distracted, creeping in right under its nose to plunge her dagger into the soft spot under its chin and into its skull.
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When she withdrew her weapon, a gush of blood accompanied the giant toppling to the floor.
On Layla’s end, metal rang with strike after strike, as if a hammer was beating against an anvil. She seemed to speed up with every blow, falling into a rhythm of deflecting attacks and countering with one of her own. Each hit left behind another dent in armor plating that was barely holding up against the beating it was taking. When the spiked end of her weapon finally tore a hole in the giant’s chest plate, Layla wrenched her poleaxe to hook the inside of the armor and heaved downwards.
Metal shrieked for an instant. One entire side of the giant’s chest armor came free, taking with it every bit of skin below. Red blood ran down its body, and yet it did not yield. Layla was off-balanced by the plate now attached to her poleaxe, slowing her for just long enough for her enemy to raise both guns and shoot her square in the chest. Unfortunately for the giant, though, this last effort had no more effect than any before, and it couldn’t stop Layla from flipping her axe over in her hands and slamming the bleed home in its chest, piercing its heart.
It remained standing a moment longer until she pulled her poleaxe free and it collapsed dead.
Layla examined her armor carefully, but found it to be undamaged. The giants they had fought this time were difficult to damage, but held little in the way of attack strength, it seemed.
“That felt too easy,” Rinnie commented, eliciting a rare grunt of agreement from Layla. Tiriana merely marched over to the giant that had squared off with their own warrior, though, and flipped it on its back with magic. The rest of the group gathered behind her as she coated her hand in a sheath of energy and plunged it into the corpse’s chest.
“What are you-” Vivi began in shock before stopping short when Tiriana’s hand emerged gripping a crystal. Even Sera knew what it was the instant she saw it, and the others certainly did as well. It was a magic crystal like those found in monsters- or, as Tiriana had told her weeks ago, mages.
“Living weapons for killing mages. They sealed them inside these suits so that their ability to control mana could be used to counter magic,” she told them with utter disgust.
“Thus explaining their inability to damage my armor. They were not intended to battle warriors,” Layla concluded in turn. “And yet, the first giant we fought had no such ability.”
“Neither did that one,” Tiriana pointed out, nodding towards the leaper that had fallen to her lightning spell. “I don’t sense a crystal in it. It was probably built using a normal person, or maybe a warrior. They’d probably be just as effective against mages, though. Spells take time to prepare, and they’re fast.”
“What is this place?” Sera wondered as she poked at the crystal fragments strewn around. Intact, they must have been part of something huge.
“The fortress’s core chamber, no doubt.”
“So it’s like we thought. The tanks were a distraction while they shattered the core on the inside.”
“Guess this heap’s not moving again,” Layla said as she kicked a chunk of crystal away. Tiriana hummed thoughtfully as she looked over the debris.
“I wouldn’t say that. Judging by the amount of fragments, this probably ran on a core similar to an expeditionary fleet battleship. They’re smaller, sure, but their weapons use a lot of mana.”
“If the cost is anything like the nuclear reactors big ships ran off of on Earth, that sounds…expensive,” Sera pointed out. “Who would possibly spend that much money just to make this walk again?”
“Precisely,” was all Layla said in response to that. Tiriana was at least self-aware enough to look embarrassed at having assumed Layla wouldn’t know similar cores were already available just because she wasn’t a mage.
“What do you think they wanted the pieces for?” Vivi asked, redirecting the conversation before things got any more awkward. Everyone looked at Tiriana as the subject matter expert, but she just shrugged.
“Every shard is usable, so it could be anything from grinding them up for use in mana-conductive alloys to powering tools. There’s too many applications, so your guess is as good as mine,” Tiriana explained. “If they had the technology for artificial cores they could have even built a new one from the remains, assuming they brought in more crystals from the outside to account for the losses the process would-“
“We get it,” Rinnie interrupted. “Long story short is that we have no idea. Any reason to stick around longer?”
“Without a specialist to take those suits apart, not really. We might want to discuss how we’ll handle things next time we run into a mixed group, though. We won’t always have the element of surprise,” Tiriana proposed. She’d used a very powerful spell to disable the leaper with this group and it wasn’t something she could launch with the snap of her fingers, especially in close quarters.
“Separate them. Divide and conquer. The leapers are much faster and their tactical acumen leaves much to be desired, so we need only attract their attention away and defeat them in detail.” Sera found herself surprised by the insight from Layla’s end. She knew the woman wasn’t just a complete musclehead, but she also wasn’t usually all that helpful either.
“…I can work with that. If I set a trap elsewhere I’ll have all the time I need, and then we just need to lure them in. Maybe I could set a few up as we go so we have more options.”
“So, the plan is to just feign retreat? Don’t we have a couple problems with that idea?” Rinnie asked, pointing towards Vivi and Sera with a thumb. Vivi’s athleticism, or lack thereof, was a valid point, but Sera had to correct the record in regards to herself.
“I may not be a warrior, but I can run just as well as Tiriana,” she said in her own defense. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be able to keep up.”
“I will carry the cleric,” Layla declared, staring at Vivi. Probably. The helmet made it hard to tell, but her head was facing the right direction. “If that is all, let us be on our way.”
“I have a name…” grumbled the cleric in question, earning her a comforting pat on the back from Tiriana.