We were often operating above the Kundi swarm, dancing on their heads and shells, stabbing and crushing down into them, as often as we were on the ground. Just crushing their lower legs would send them falling haplessly, to be crushed or impaled by those coming in behind us, screaming, shouting, and following the siren songs of our Swords that were promising them that they could kill anything.
The first Kundi noble showed up, ran into Jensa, and when an eight-foot arcing pincer came stabbing down, the psi-charged chitin slid right alongside her face, down the length of her body, and as the noble leaned down for the follow-up, Hawk punched right up into its acid-spewing mouth and out the back of its head, banefire shredding it internally and doing the rest.
I crushed the skulls of two of its guards, bouncing from one to the next, while Celestia actually reached out, grabbed another guard’s skull as she parried its top two pincers with Chill, raised a foot to hold its left middle claw back, and the right side claw pinged harmlessly off her Buckler Out. Chitin crunched, and she whipped it up and over and backwards with quite improbable strength for her build.
Two powerfists slammed together on its slender midsection in midair, voltage crackled and it literally blew apart in an acidfest as one of the urgobs happily played pattycake with it, laughing in glee at the show.
The Queen, huge and spider-like, was looming at the back, watching everything, some dangerously quick and graceful noble guards gathered around her, watching as we ripped through the swarms of her children so fast.
No, this wasn’t a good day for the Kundi.
“You!” I balanced on the heads of two Kundi, stomping down on one and cracking it open, as I pointed at the Queen. “Only one thousand get to live! Kill the weak, and wait for the drow masters to come, and you might live... or die here and now!”
Bugs were a higher lifeform than plants, and the Whiskers of the Wild had no problem getting them to understand.
Six razored limbs caressed one another as soulless eyes stared at me, thinking, and the Queen let out a trilling squeal on the audible, psychic, and olfactory levels.
Like the cellulocusts before them, the swarm obeyed instantly, dropping their fights and withdrawing in a wave as the killers behind me watched, scuttling off as the powerful Kundi moved off with predatory grace to find others to fight who were weak.
Almost fifteen percent of those behind me were dead, mostly the weakest, the dumbest, or the poorest, none of whom were prepared for the kind of fighting they were dealing with. Everybody was banged up by now, oozing various blood, oil, ichors, and whatnot, and self-repairs and synthflesh were being applied, along with crushed healing crystals and bandages, if nothing else.
After all, everyone had to live.
Keva raced up a hundred foot-slope that hadn’t been there half an hour ago, and looked around. Our path was laid out instantly.
“Slaughter specialists to the front, tanks behind them, infighters guard the tanks! If you think you’re fast, follow the frozen sword!”
Celestia immediately took off in a certain direction. Various creatures who thought they were fast afoot or awheel peeled off after her, sensing some excitement about to happen.
“Let’s go! The goblins are just over there!” I resumed trotting, while shattered carapaces and piles of dead Kundi were kicked out of the way, and the gladiators shifted around, the multi-limbed specialists with multiple attacks moving to the forefront, while those in the heaviest armor assembled behind, Keva and Jensa cursing anyone who made a fuss viciously enough that their auditory organs might start bleeding.
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There were a lot of Goblins. It was basically a full army of them, in standard triple array.
Hordes of the little green ones, with hooked knives and spiked clubs, attacking in clusters, going for joints and dragging things down by dint of numbers, eager to fight and not really aware they might die, ready to expire and have fun doing it.
They were the job of the slaughter specialists, who scythed through them like wheat, limbs ripping and flaying, green blood flying and organs spraying as goblins went down in droves. The tanks were behind them, wading through any numbers passing the butchers, breaking their rush, sweeping back and forth, and the infighters guarded their flanks and prevented them from being toppled, leaving few openings for the goblins to race back into the ranks behind...
With the wave assault broken and scattered, the elite gladiators had no problem dispatching them one after another, callously and coldly killing them with minimal fuss and muss. Every one of them was starting to feel the grind and weight of the fighting now, and realized there was going to be precious little rest at all. This was not a place where they could rest between battles. If they tried to, they were only setting themselves up as the weak, and they would become the centerpoint of multiple forces as the arena shifted around us.
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This would have been a much different fight if ranged weapons were involved, as even primitive goblin flamers were nasty enough when firing in the thousands. Alas, they only had basic weapons, perhaps electrified, some vibroknives, nothing to speak of.
Now, the hobgoblins in formation behind them were wielding disruption pikes, lightning spears, and vibro-axes, wearing carapace armor, and moving in formation. Buttressing them were dozens of urgobs in power armor... not as developed as the urgobs with us, but definitely no pushovers, and their weapons were crackling with lightning and fires and pure psychic power to bolster them.
There was no hesitation whatsoever in the urgobs with us to get to the fight, as intertribe warfare between gobbers was anything but unheard of... and the weak had to die if the strong were going to live.
The tanks smashed into the disciplined lines of the hobgoblins, sweeping aside their polearms, taking the hits, opening up gaps. The infighters poured in, widening those holes, and the other gladiators raged inside, turning the fight into a swarming melee the Goblins had no way of winning.
Celestia came over a hill on their flank even as the urgobs were surging to the front, and with a scream that nearly made a thousand goblins faint in pure horror, she was plowing into them, followed by the gasping strikers trying to keep up with her as she began to rip through the gobs in green spray and frozen body parts.
I didn’t tell them to flee this time; I just butchered all that came within reach, including two urgobs surprised Chalice could punch through their face plates and cut off their arms. Hobgoblin officers with their toothed scimitars went down with ripping speed, and I was covered head to toe with green gore as I killed and killed and killed as fast as possible, green banefire wreathing me as a figure of terror to the goblins as they died around me.
---
The slaughter continued until almost all the goblins were dead.
Seven urgobs and three hobgoblin officers were all that were left, crowded together and looking at the hundreds of green-splattered killers around them.
The urgob chief with us clomped forwards, looming over them, clearly bigger, stronger, and more terrible then any of them, the new gouges and scrapes on his power armor only making him look that much more formidable.
His gashed, crude helm hissed up, and he glared... not at the urgobs, but at the surviving hobgoblin officer with the crackling power scimitar, the mark of an elite, and probably the chieftain of this tribe.
“You wanna live?” he snarled in a gnarled, coarse voice... in Goblin, of course.
Hot red eyes glanced over at me and my girls. We’d all killed at least one urgob apiece, and treated hobgoblin officers like training dummies. Of course, the cybered guys with spinning saw blades and crackling power weapons all around them weren’t unimpressive, either.
“Yes,” he acceded, and whistled sharply. The surviving Goblins all turned smartly to the urgob, and power armor or no, knelt to him, doffing helms and helmets to do so.
He hur-hurred in satisfaction, then spun to look at me, slitted eyes both challenging and inquiring.
He’d seen us fight. If we wanted them to die, there was no way he could stop me.
“When there are ten thousand left, the drow masters come to join the fun. There will be one thousand of them.” They all blinked at me when I spoke in Goblin, and with an accent that made their hackles rise. “If any of you want to live, you need to kill the weak until only ten thousand are left, and then you need to kill the drow masters.” I met each of their yellow eyes in turn, and they squirmed as if I was leaning on them with a sharp weapon. “You will not make the thousand if the drow masters are not dead.
“If you fight with us, you kill the weak until the ten thousand, and then you kill the drow masters. Have no fear that we will turn on you to make the final thousand, because the masters will make sure that doesn’t take too long.”
My smile was merciless, and the goblins all swallowed.
“Mechanites!” Jensa called out from where she had swarmed up a nearby hill.
Everyone swore. The purely mechanical drones were a particularly unpleasant foe to fight.
I specifically eyed three members of our forces. “You three, you have EMP capability?” I snapped off. They all looked surprised that I had noticed, but only hesitated a second. “Move to that high ground! Everyone who is cybered, prepare to switch off electronics, and ready to reboot! Cluster, there, there, there, there!” I pointed, and the cyborgs of various sorts moved despite themselves. “Everyone else, prepare to sprint into the mass when the mechanites freeze! You run for ten seconds, then you kill everything around you! Shatter all the power cores!”
One hulking eight-limbed human cyborg with a blister ring, the urborg chief, and a half-reptilian, half-mechanical saurial all raced for high ground where the EMP pulses would carry further. The cyborgs would be absolutely vulnerable after the pulses went off, as would those in power armor, so only teamwork was going to be important here.
Nobody was much confident of their chances without the EMP, including the cyborgs. The mechanites’ arrays of adamant armor and weapons, kinetic fields, and disrupting limbs were going to be hell to deal with.
I aligned Chalice to Construct-killing, as did the girls, and everyone clutched their Power Weapons or adamant blades if they had them, cursing under their breath.
The lancers came out in front of the scuttling horde of manrippers, four-limbed things with lance points and power fields about them, sure to break lines and scatter mere creatures of flesh. The cyborg units with the highest defense waited to greet them, as we had to kill them to get the greatest number of the hound-like, saw-limbed rippers down in range.
Me and the girls slid out to meet them, shifting this way and that, pseudo-living AI seeing only blurred images with Vampire’s Veil cloaking us, and we sheered through legs like butter, spilling them over to crash and get carved up by those behind. One, two, three, four, six... the impacts behind us were horrendous, machines having no concept of saving their bodies, shrieking metal and flesh creatures tangled together, some caught, held, entangled by whips, bolas, tendrils, or the like, and being hacked and impaled in a frenzy.
“Wait for it...” I held up my sword, Chalice burning with an oily light now, capable of chewing through adamant like tofu at the moment. The racing, synchronous gaits of the bounding manrippers, eyes flashing, sparks flying between their teeth, saw-blade ‘wings’ and points extending from their heads sliding out in unison to charge in as they poised for great leaps.
I swept Chalice down to the right, and the reptile-man locked his claws to his perch, all the cybers powered down, and the EMP went off.