Rofoscue waved the Constables down. They kept their weapons trained on the resisteel nest, as they worked their way down the sandy embankment, sliding, stumbling and cursing the whole way. As they left the relative safety of the hole on the Drydellian street, they began to get more nervous despite having the Legionnaires cornered behind Tzreek's ruined nest. They sent a hail of emitter fire at anything that moved from cover. One got an angle on a Legionnaire that was taking cover on the periphery of the nest.

He fell down in the sand and tried to scramble his way back to cover. He never made it. The constables focused their fire on him, while he shouted out for the medicus and mercy.

Moloch looked to where the medicus had fallen, the top half of his body was still intact as he held the hand of another dead legionnaire, spending his last moment trying to administer aid to his fallen brother.

Several dead albino hybrids were scattered around them.

Moloch went red with Fury. He had enough of this. He would die on his feet not cowering behind this twisted wreckage, while he waited for these Constables to come and finish him off.

He turned to Potter, who still clutched their Legion standard, as he fiddled with several input knobs. Moloch knew he was trying to extend their communication range and break through the comm blankers so they could send a message to the republic about what happened to them here.

“Potter, how long before you can summon the shield on the standard again?”

“Well it's ready now Centurion, I just don’t think it will be able to stave off all of their emitter fire for very long.” “How about twenty seconds?”

Potter thought for a moment. “Aye, it might hold that long.”

The plodding footsteps of the Constables in the sand told him that they would be upon them in moments.

“Keep the wounded between us. Whoever wishes to die on their feet like a son of the Legion, is with me.”

He took a moment to look at Haru.

“Haru, can I trust you to flank them when we’ve drawn their fire?”

“Yes.” Haru said simply. He was already crouched in the sand and tensed up ready to spring on the nearest constable that rounded the corner of the nest.

If you can, leave Rofoscue alive. I want him to repeat everything he told us to a Legion interrogator while he makes him sing. If we can survive, I want to bring this whole Drydellian level down.

The hybrid nodded. “I will do my best.” He said, showing his gleaming incisors.

Krasus flexed his arms, and dropped into a crouch.

“Whenever you’re ready Potter, hit the shield and we will run straight at them. Try to grapple with them boys and take their weapons.” he commanded.

The surviving Legionnaires looked grim faced and dirty. They were bleeding through their torn and gouged armor from dozens of wounds. Their eyes were wide and bright, not wild from fear, but they shone with the feral light of a being that will fight to their last breath to survive.

The standard bearer sparked up the shield and they formed a tight formation behind it. Roaring with all their might and running straight at the Constables.

The Constables of Drydellia did not expect this. They began to panic as they fired on the shield. Potter held the standard with all his might, his muscles bulging. He began to sing a benediction of war, into the loudspeaker which he had cranked up to its maximum volume.

He growled out the syllables, and it sounded like a thunderstorm, as the old republic battle hymn rocked the chamber. It called upon the light and intoned it, calling power down amongst them. Moloch, Krasus and the Legionnaires were wreathed in a white golden light as the shield whined in protest, the fringes becoming red as it sizzled and sparked.

They ran towards them as fast as they could, as they got close, Potter, stuck the standard in the sand and dove at the nearest constable tackling him with a yell and they went down brawling in the side. He still sang his war hymn, at max volume while fighting the constable.

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Potter ripped his sidearm out of its holster and shoved him back, blasting the Constable right in the guts. He threw the downed constable's rifle to another Legionnaire beside him.

The power of the song fortified Moloch. In that moment, it felt like everything was going his way. It was like a lucky moment that began to stretch on and on.

He honestly believed nothing bad could befall him, he felt uplifted and infused with courage and strength. He couldn’t miss any of the shots he was taking, as he struck down Constable after Constable with ruthless precision.

Then Potter took a shot right to the knee, and the hymn was cut off. He went down howling as the joint began to dissolve.

The effects of the war song evaporated and like a shroud of mist being burned off by a midmorning sun, and the reality of their situation dawned fully upon their minds.

Moloch aimed his spare pistol and missed both his shots at an incoming constable, and took two in exchange right in the chest.

“The barrel dilation must have gotten misaligned, to curve my shots like that. Why did I never notice it before?” He thought, as his armor whined and crinkled and then crumbled into soft chunks, that turned to dust, as one last shot struck it.

Then Moloch felt the stinging pain from the emitter burn off as it still melted the first few layers of his skin. If felt like he was splashed with a boiling hot acidic soda water full that was of glass shards and needles. He closed one eye and aimed a little wide right, and the next shot caught the Constable in the throat and he went down with a sick gurgle thrashing in the sand, amongst the other deceased who had fallen before him.

Moloch’s proximity alarm was chiming wildly. He was pretty sure the sensor was broken in the helmet, making it impossible to hear anything. He took it off and threw it to the sand.

Everything was happening around him in slow motion, he figured that this is how the last few moments of your life must be, stretched out into a slow stream as the inevitable destiny of your final moments are paraded before your eyes.

Krasus grappled desperately with a constable as two others ran up aiming their emitter rifles at his back.

Potter was down in the sand, howling and holding his dissolved knee stump. Three constables surrounded him, standing above him and lifting their rifles to melt the rest of him into an unrecognizable puddle.

They were finally surrounded, as the last of the constables finished encircling them. These would be his last moments among the living. He hoped that Nassim was alive out there and still had the strength to help guide him when he transitioned into death.

Out of the corner of his eye, Moloch could see the flickering silhouette of Haru as he tried to slink from the shadows and get behind Rofoscue. At least he has honor. Moloch thought.

Rofoscue stood at the lip of the entrance, hands on his hips in a wide stance, looking ever so smug and pleased with himself.

Then the constables began to glow. It was so slight at first that Moloch thought it was part of his transition from the world of the living to the plane of the dead and insubstantial.

But the moment the luminescent sheen appeared, whatever action they were about to take was halted by a beautiful radiance that seemed to collectively suffuse them. Now they began to a dark hot painful looking shade of red, coughing out steam between choked screams. Then Moloch realizes they weren't screaming, it was the steam as hissed from their ears and eyes.

Then with the instantaneousness of a flame appearing from a struck match, they were at once and in perfect unison, inexplicably set ablaze.

Maybe they were screaming or maybe it was the sound steam makes when it escapes a vessel under pressure, but the sound was one that Moloch would never forget as their high pitched wails of anguish tones, sounded all around them. They threw their emitters away and began clawing with what was left of their hands at what was left of their skin, and they cavorted chaotically around the chamber.

Now each one of them burned like a stick that had been dipped in pitch.

Rofoscue’s face had held a look of wicked gratification, but now his face was a mask of blind terror. He stumbled back, and began making furious inputs on his intelor pad, then he remembered it was broken, and he gave it up all together and started running away from the hole and down in the wall down the street.

An invisible force seized him and lifted him off his feet, and returned him smoothly to the opening. He tried to shout, but found he could not, as if something had turned off his capacity to speak. He turned to run and scrabble back up the hole, but he was held just off the ground, suspended in the air, like a marionette whose strings were just inches too short.

Then whatever force was wielding him, set him down. As soon as Rofoscue felt the solid earth beneath him, he turned to run. Then both his legs snapped with a sickening crunch, twisting themselves out into right angles at the knees. Then the invisible force gave him a violent shove forward, and he fell hard hard, unceremoniously sliding down the sandy slope and coming to stop at the Legionnaires feet, wailing in anguish.

He lay beside the legionnaires, the dead hybrids, and the burning constables, who had stopped running at this point, and now what was left of them burned away like amorphous blobs of tar.

“My legs, my precious beautiful legs!” He howled, his face and lips covered with bloody sand.

Moloch felt a pop in his ears, as time seemed to snap into focus as it seemed to pass at its usual speed.

Moloch, Krasus and the rest of the surviving Legionnaires turned to look up at the opening in the wall. A figure in a hooded robe stood at the lip of the pit, framed in light and smoke.