The jungle was filled with noise, snapping tree limbs, yowls of hunger, and the clacking of many limbed creatures as they lumbered forth.
As one we opened fire, my rifle blaring and culling a biotic with every burst. We hardly needed to aim. I’d seen the wolves, the way they raced forward to mob a target, but this was something wholly different. Wolves would move as a single unit, organized, allowing the others to move like water around them. That in and of itself often limited how many could realistically come at once.
This was a tidal wave of flesh, three meters high, stacked with as many biotics that scrambled over one another. Whereas, individually, these biotics were far too weak to comprise a realistic threat when they abandoned stealth, this approach would quickly ameliorate their weak point.
“Fighting retreat!” I called over the communications line without hesitation, our group immediately moving backwards. As we moved, more of the forest came alive with motion. I opened up a fully automatic burst of fire, tearing through six biotics in the blink of an eye. Cat, fungal slime, scarecrow, they all melted into one horrifying pot. I could see Spindlies scattered within them, but they were few and far between, their spikes were fully withdrawn into their bodies, small feelers grasping any nearby biotic and hitching a ride. I marked them as I found them, trying to be certain to kill them in one burst.
The map notified me quickly that there were biotics looping around, seeking to pincer us and envelope our position. Our fighting retreat was a good idea, otherwise they’d have been able to swallow us up and force a last-stand.
But still, this wasn’t as threatening as it might have first appeared. Droves died as Fran’s magnetized feathers tore through the back line, allowing us a clear avenue of escape. Alice’s arrows cut into several at once, exploding into fragmenting death afterwards to claim a fistfull of flesh more, killing a not insignificant sum. Richard’s weaponry were the bane of these large groups, gouts of acid that was far superior to that of the fungal creatures melted through tissue voraciously, accompanied by toxic vapors that further disoriented the mass.
Daniel opened fire at the largest portion of the wave, cannons and machine guns tearing through literally dozens at a time. He kept the bulk of the wave from us, scrambling over its own dead and staggering as fire belched forth from electrocuted masses - Terry uber-charged some kind of bolt weapon that fired nets of metal, sparking from lines still attached to his mech, trailing backwards.
I felt my connection to the assault rifle in my arms burn as I accessed it, honing my focus and feeding the strict viewpoint of a muzzle chamber to my minds eye. I could tell exactly where my gun was aimed, and I fell into my trance. It was a cold smoldering fury, all other emotion gone, the only things that mattered was the Purpose.
Reaper’s Eye, I realized then, would be an excellent name for what I was doing. My arms jerked violently with every shot, or burst, as needed for the target. To a viewer, I wasn’t even looking at my targets, but my suit and my weapons themselves fed me all the information I needed. Superheated bullets projected at pseudo-railgun speeds tore through tissues with abandon, often punching through multiple targets at once. My rifle blared at very nearly fully automatic speeds as I sought potency through efficiency.
Less than a dozen seconds later, we’d broken the attempt at the entrapment, and now the horde was forced to continue attempting to catch up with us. In this, they were wholly incapable, my team and I were adept at controlling the flow of large numbers of enemies. Practice with wolves and Wolven itself had given us plenty of insights to use.
Daniel was left to focus on the center while we split up firepower on the flanks. Terry controlled the tempo, griping and calling out to us whenever a new discharge of electricity was about to roll. Several locations that we fled from bore rods, each connected by wire to his mech, jolting with brilliant white bolts of electricity that would almost seem to crawl across smoking corpses.
I raised my gun to fire at one particular biotic, only to see both eye sockets suddenly sprout an arrow, a single one that split mid-flight. It collapsed even as a blender of blades swept sideways, Fran’s special type of feather that contained a small battery and was capable of projecting itself violently even after being fired, in more than one direction. Every other feather she fired struck forth in straight lines and returned in similar manners. She’d had a few that were capable of manipulation at range, but now she had two full wings of them.
Plenty to wreak havoc on large numbers like this.
“Hit something new!” I heard Richard shout, “our flanks again!”
I turned to see what he was talking about, realizing that he’d been laying gel-mines on our flanks the entire time we were falling back, seemingly worried for good reason. One of the mines had exploded, covering a hulking form with sizzling pale acid.
It screeched in anger and pain as it surged forward, the capability of its stealth ruined with the acid.
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What emerged from the visage of jungle undergrowth was not something I could easily ascribe to any given creature. I felt the fugue of the Reaper’s Eye let up just enough for me to verbalize an order, though it felt almost like opening the jaws of a steel trap that stubbornly bore its fangs into bone.
“Daniel, sweep our sides!” I shouted, the rest of us ducking down.
“Got it.” He grunted, his arms going wide, all guns and a not insignificant collection of grenade launchers protruding from said limbs at the same time. “Down!”
The warning wasn’t needed. We’d gone over this strategy enough to know how dangerous it could be. Fran hovered directly over his head, firing out from her three pairs of wings in every direction.
The nova of firepower tore through flesh and plant alike. Heat angrily gushed from the barrels of Daniel’s weapons, the ammo pack on his back chittering away as it happily fed the beasts their fill. Dull grey feathers tore in behind them, and as we watched a dozen forms around us previously unseen were pelted with payload the likes of which only Daniel could so happily dole out.
Two of them, namely the first that had charged us and another one on the opposite flank, fell when their front legs exploded. Bits of their torsos had done so as well, heavy armor plating falling away, cracking and weeping silver blood.
Centaur like lower halves in the forms of a cat provided the mobility, a tail with a black barbed orb at the end of it, pulsating grotesquely as the creature shuddered in pain greeted my senses. The entire body was encased in a Carrier’s shell, albeit looking far more like they’d donned a suit of armor than a mere carapace. A layer of fine hairs protruded like adornments on the armor, flexing and shifting color and texture - that which the cats used to facilitate their impressive stealth options. An upper body similar to a bunch heartier scarecrow provided the framework for three more limbs. Two were arms, with meter long claws that looked like they could penetrate armor with far greater success than the other biotics we’d run across.
The third limb was some kind of pulsing organ that resembled a gun, seemingly growing from the shoulder and looping up and over to point forward. It drooled with some kind of smoking fluid, acid dribbling on the ground as the first creature was screaming, clawing at the ground with what would be mortal wounds for any man. Mandibles too small to reliably be used as weapons framed a complex mouth with many moving parts, bony plates forming a helmet with three sets of eyes protruding from them, facing every direction.
The creature resembled what I would call a centaur, if it was born and bred in hell.
I turned my attention to the next nearest of the creatures, all of which had now abandoned any pretext of stealth. The ten of them charged us, one immediately catching an arrow to the chest.
A ten centimeter wide hole fountained gore from the wound, but it carried on, its armor dense at the chest. Another two arrows brough it low, catching it at the knees instead, exploding and forcing it into the ground hard.
“Legs! Aim for legs!” Alice called out, the rest of us immediately following her lead.
Daniel pivoted his aim, “switching fire!”
The horde behind us had not been forgotten, nor did it wait for us patiently. Daniel had the firepower to deal with them, though, and I found myself wading forward a several meters. I stopped at a predetermined spot, only five meters from the group, and continued to fire with abandon. Alice’s arrows flew past my head on either side, punching down a limb each on another pair of riders.
Richard was somewhat less effective, lacking the immediate punching power that Alice had. He fired barbed bolts into joints, pumping three more riders with toxins on their way to us. Terry fired nets at another two, both of which evaded him, much to his loud disbelief. He switched to a heavy weapon, experimental in every sense of the word, and I watched as it arced with electricity.
It fizzled after a moment of charging.
“Ah, come the fuck on!” He shouted, hesitating for a moment as he realized he didn’t have time to switch weapons. In the same moment, I’d shredded through three more riders, leaving us with five actively charging us. Two focused on Terry, two on me, and the fifth coming straight for Richard. Another three rode in behind the one for Richard, slowed by the venom pumping rapidly through their veins.
I spared a moment to see Terry hold his weapon up, the first rider crashing into him with talons sweeping.
The bladed hand made contact with the tip of the gun that he held, and suddenly the world flashed white.
A thunderous pop resounded as half of the rider simply vaporized. Terry was marginally better off, his suit's hands were cherry red, but designed for… misfires.
Daneil, though, was next to him.
His suit went to a knee, half of his weapons suddenly inoperative.
“Shit!” He shouted, uncertain as to what just happened. He continued firing, though, knowing focusing more on the closest of the horde, now immediately making greater progress.
I grit my teeth, dropping my gun and pulling out my swords as the first rider made contact with me. Alice dropped back, immediately seeking to help Richard.
Something else happened at that moment as well, something I wouldn’t have noticed if not for the fact that I’d had the Obelisk give a much more insistent tone to it. Specifically, it was an alert for the Legion, one designed for emergencies, often in the event that rescue and support was needed.
Two such alerts sprouted, though I hardly had the time to attend to them right now. But, that meant that, perhaps, we weren’t the only ones having a hard time.
‘Focus on Us,’ Wolvey informed me dutifully, ‘Our head is best when still attached.’
In spite of the direness of the situation, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.