SoS B1 C3 X6: Flight
Driven to flee by the strange monstrosity outside, Donald, Tskhan, and Immuena quickly found themselves joining the rest of their party as they convened within the basement of a large parish. After some hushed back and forth sharing what had brought them here, they turned their attentions towards finding and gathering energy cells.
The team turned towards their team leader, Immuena, who gave a plan of action…
After a short pause Immuena drew a large breath and laid out her plan, "Tskhan, I need to work with you to locate the power cells energy signature using your energy meta proficiency, we'll be moving while we do this. Allarah, you're our eyes while we find the cells, starting now. Don, Ulysses, you see anything get in our way or disturb Tskhan and I, we need you to remove it- violently or otherwise. Laemon, I don't know your abilities, but do what you can and I promise you'll get the cells you came for. Okay people? We need to hurry."
The party moved as a unit through the dark streets of Gritm. The roads were slick from rain, and as they exited the Parish they found themselves in a town square with a large metal grate, the one they'd been down in before, at its center. There were no light sources beyond the occasional flicker of lightning through the building storm.
Tskhan and Immuena put their heads together, literally, to track down any sources of energy they could find. Immuena did the broad sweeps and Tskhan the precise ones, honing in on the batteries by the harmless radiation they gave off. Whenever there was one out of reach (as many were, apparently a parkourist had never been brought on these missions) Laemon would climb up the to the eaves or poles to grab it.
It was nerve wracking work. Allarah's icy eyes darted in all directions, seeking anything she might have to sic Ulysses and Don upon. The two were on alert as well, all squared shoulders and curled fists, ready... waiting.
It came without herald, and without sound. One moment they were poking around the town, popping energy cells from anything they could manage, the next they were running for their lives.
Don lead the way into an apartment complex as the rest of the party followed and Ulysses took up the rear. He peeped around corners and down halls, waving them in as he found each to be safe. He walked into a room and there it was, plain as day. Skin like drawn black leather, eyes milky, it's snout contorted into something resembling a smile as lips drew back over teeth like flat, white tombstones, like human teeth. Its lower half was like a pig and it's upper half was like a dog, but neither much resembled either when you took the other into account. The pig's body bristled with black fur, and splayed fingers tipped its long, spindly legs. Where a head would be a dog's torso curled upwards, like a bad retelling of a centaur, and it's arms were poised like a mantis' each tipped in talons.
It raked at him, cutting a gash in his shoulder. With a dull whump like glass breaking in a cloth bag he crumpled its snout into its brain, fell gasping back into the hall, and cried out to the others. "I think we've overstayed our welcome, time to go!"
And not too soon, either. It appeared that the shadows had been housing many such abominations, and they now took this chance to attack. Don and Ulysses were dispatching them with haste, but haste was naught before a growing horde.
Allarah pulled the bag from her back and emptied its contents onto the ground, making sure to grab her journal and the dataslate. While watching the beasts, she placed six of the power cells into her bag and slung it onto her back, ready for an attack. While running, she kept an eye out for the entrance, the bikes, and beasts in her path.
"Back to the church!" Immuena hollered after breaking her connection with Tskhan. She then whipped out her pistol and a power cell, prepared to run and gun the moment everyone retreated. More importantly, she was prepared to sacrifice resources to save some lives.
Tskhan prepared to defend the group's evacuation alongside Immuena; he however wasn't in the mood to sacrifice anything today.
Allarah's focus was on survival as she grabbed what she could, dumpped the rest, and legged it back towards the parish with her allies in tow. Laemon kept easy pace, and so did Ulysses and Donald, but in the panic of the moment Donald barely managed to do much more than graze his targets as he sprayed bullets at them.
Immuena fared worse. In the initial panic she took shots at the pot-belly nightmare lurching after Donald. She missed, and several of the rounds bit through his armor's weaker points, opening bleeding wounds along his side and chest.
Tskhan stepped in and saved his ally, removing the beasts' wounded head from its shoulders, then plunging the other end through the corpulent form of another as it reared up. Hot guts spilled across the floor, but they were already gone.
They ran through the streets, backtracking their steps as the place more and more began to fester with these monstrosities. Some of them could be recognized as the long-limbed beasts which had chased them through the forest of stone trees; their mouths split wide in slavering smiles as they caught sight of their prey.
The party was just reaching the parish when the grating in the ground before it burst open, and the twisted, roaring head of the great beast Immuena, Tskhan, and Donald had tried before to escape heaved its twisted form up onto the street, blocking their path.
Allarah and Tskhan met the monster head on, each casting spells at it, testing its defenses with varying tactics. Flames sprouted from Tskhan's hand while gouts of white, lacy meta jetted from Allarah's palms. Both of them were ready for its retaliation and, as one, danced out of the way of its thrashing tentacles.
Immuena saw her opportunity and hurled the battery. She meant to shoot it, but her shot went wide, and missed altogether. It still exploded just fine, however, landing roughly on the stone before bursting open. It wasn't the conflagration she'd probably expected, but the arc of green energy and the loud fizzt, followed by a laceration blasting open along its hide was satisfying all the same.
Taking advantage of its distraction, Ulysses, Don, and Laemon all attacked. Ulysses shot at it while Don and Laemon ran around behind it, teeth gritted, eyes sharp. Laemon drew from his hip a long, thin, straight blade of black metal. It started to hum as he flicked his wrist, and when he jammed it into the creatures back there was a great and awful screeching, a sound of utter agony. It came not from the monster, but the blade.
The horde twisted around the corner and came at them, all scrambling limbs and gnashing teeth. They were caught between a rock and a hard place, with the cliffs or the parish as their only hope of escape.
The massive monster was in quite the state of damage, but before their very eyes its flesh began to restitch. Organs bubbled up within it, displacing the old by pushing them from its closing gashes.
"We should run- like now!" pointing to the parish, Immuena hollered as she watched the beast regenerate, felt the horde closing in, and saw her friends' (and acquaintance's) lives were beyond in danger.
Allarah glanced from the monster to the church and started running upon Immuena's recommendation.
The group hightailed it out of there, avoiding the tangle of thrashing tentacles. Tskhan, and Allarah, with the furthest to go and the most chances to be pummeled, didn't fare as well as the rest. Both were swept up in the same bone-cracking, air-stealing blow.
They were flung across the square. It was in the direction they wanted to go but it was clear as they landed that they were not going to be moving anywhere very quickly.
"Up and about," Donald said, gripping both by their wrists and hauling them onto a shoulder each. Ulysses tried to keep Donald safe by laying down some covering fire. "Keep lively."
They rushed into the parish. Ulysses was last, scooted forcibly into the door and face first into a pew by a stroke of a tentacle. With a broken nose spewing blood down his face, he needed Laemon's help to continue.
"It followed us up," Donald remarked. "It'll follow us back down. Let's dash."
Guided by Allarah's bleary directions, the crew ran. It didn't help matters when a rush of water poured forcefully down the tunnels, tugging at their feet. Presumably the monster was somehow coming down the tunnels, displacing quite the amount of water from the swamp as it went.
Ulysses went down first. His armor was heavy, but the floor was slick and the water fast. His feet went out from under him and off he went, shouting down the tunnel. Allarah went down next, and Tskhan followed. Don caught one, mostly focusing on catching her bag so it didn't explode, but Tskhan slipped out of his grasp and careened down the tunnel after Ulysses. Don was strong, but Allarah was heavy. He found himself sliding down after her, barely keeping his footing.
A titanic roar echoed through the waterways. Laemon politely touched Immuena's back as he came up behind her and passed her his bag of energy cells. "Please don't drop these," he said. "If I'm not there in... five minutes, leave." He drew his banshee blade and dashed down another tunnel. The sword screeched it's screech, and the monster howled in kind.
Tskhan scrambled to hold onto the side, but the pain was too great to bear. Every wheezing breath caused his cracked ribs to shift. He failed, and though he saw the light at the end of the tunnel -- a lightning flash in the night -- he was helpless against it. He was poured out of the cliff and onto the ground below. The mud was soft, but the height was great. He smashed into the ground with enough force to hear bones snap and crack. The last thing he saw before he passed out was Ulysses' body next to him in the mud, and Don and Allarah scaling down the cliff.
Allarah and Don were the first down. She started the (thankfully untouched) bikes while Donald carefully lifted Ulysses and Tskhan onto the backends of the bikes. By the time they were all set Immuena had arrived. A tense moment passed as the seconds ticked by. It almost seemed as though Laemon wouldn't be catching up with them when…
Laemons blade flew from the cliff and landed a distance away in the mud. He flung himself down after, landed roughly, grabbed and sheathed his blade, then hopped onto the bike with Tskhan and Allarah, leaving Immuena with Don and Ulysses.
"Go go go... it's not far behind!" He shouted over the roar of the growing storm. "It's not far behind!"
They hit it, hard. With a burst of the grav-bike's engines they were off, tearing through the stone forest while... whatever it was, came roaring after them. How it had fit through the tunnels was a mystery, but it had, and it was making quite the cacophony as it crashed after them. Somehow it caught up with them, shape tremulous, ever shifting. Mouths split open along its corpulence, revealing rows of slavering teeth and barbed tongues.
Laemon fired the pulse, Allarah boosted it. The monster barely staggered, but it was at least enough to save them for the barest of moments. When they broke the treeline they saw the glow of the city through the storm. There were sudden flashes of light of energy canons firing, lighting up the plane. The heat of it arcing overhead flash=fried the rain and singed their hairs.
Abated, the beast collapsed, dragging the remnants of itself back into the stone forest. The party pulled into the garage at the edge of the city, and the gates closed behind them.
Comments