Part 123: Globofglob: Update 16
THe first sand raider reaches the top, and Alius promptly shoots a bolt through his upper leg:
Another bolt hits him straight in the eye, and he goes down.
The second raider up the rand is the local leader herself. The Human guard runs out to meet her.
A wrestler climbs up the ram out of nowhere. He dived in front of one of the Pikeman, Ithev Viciup, and nearly tore his arm out of his socket to protect his leader. She, meanwhile, tookup a position at the end of the bridge and began to shoot.
The humans are getting slaughtered! Ithrev's arms both lie mangled and bleeding. A friend of his ran up behind the raider and cut off his right arm though, so we shouldn't have to worry.An axeman named Alim rushed up to the leader, but ended up with an arrow through his eye.
But more importantly:
Upon news of revenant's death, I ordered the rest of the squad from the gatehouse. I had originally thought to have them come to us, but the survival of the leader complicates matters.
Remember Ithev? Seems he lost his right arm and his left hand now. He's still hanging on, though. All the human warriors except the maceman are really getting massacred by that bowman. They do make good cannon fodder. Pity this incident will bar us from obtaining anything else they make. No doubt the traders are going to leave this hellhole as soon as the battle's over, now that their guard had been injured.
... I sort of wish I could go with them.
Anyway, I ordered the military to charge the bowman.
... On second thought, that might not be necessary. Great, what was once a battle is now a routine mop-up. THough, I do have a nice little trophy to put in my rooms.
Tehsid arrives first, and deals a quick blow to a wrestler's right upper leg. The wrestler tries to close the distance, but tehsid knocks his head in. The axeman was swarmed by Male Man, Sirocco, and tehsid. I didn't see who actually killed the guy, but they all seem to agree it was tehsid. He then goes down the bridge, to take care of the slower enemies.
Meanwhile, Male Man chases a wounded axeman into a cage trap. That makes the third one we captured. I might need to make a zoo.
Tehsid knocks the right arm off the next wrestler he sees, then follows it up with his right leg. The guy's head didn't even hit the ground before tehsid attacked the next guy. His next kill was fairly simplistic, he just knocked the head off the guy. His body landed a good distance away, though.
The last human maceman dealt a crushing blow to a wrestler's body, mainming most of his left side, while tehsid pummels the nearest axeman. The raider takes so long to die, you would think he was trying to take revenge for katanarisword.
Sirocco's currently chasing down an axeman, though he can just barely keep up with that spine injury of his. Once, he does catch up, he takes him down cleanly, with a single blow to the windpipe.
Meanwhile tehsid crushed the foot of an axeman, and Male Man finally walked down the bridge to take a look. He finishes him off with a blow to the upper body, which actually went through to the other side, showering all present in gore and intestines.
Sirocco rips a deep grash through a wrestler's left lower arm, and Male Man hits him from behind, severing his head. He then rips open the next raider's leg, before lodging his axe deep within the wrestler's chest.
One wrestler darts towards the bridge, perhaps hoping to escape to the relative safety of the cage traps, but tehsid caught him before he could. His bloody, limbless corpse sagged to the ground.
Piles of limbs are strewn about the battlefield, as numerous as rocks and ice. I've never seen so much carnage in all my life. Not a single champion was injured, though it was hardly a battle since the enemy leader was captured.
I had managed to capture two wrestlers alive, as well. The axeman I had captured died of his wounds.
Bobbin Threadbare wrote :-
I know not which of my allies saw fit to tell the fortress hammerer about my designs, but soon after approaching the first two, Daeren came to me and demanded to know what I was doing. Fortunate for me, while he was as prone to violence as his job suggests, he was also perfectly willing to listen to reason, and was willing to hear my tale. Hours later, once I had finished, Daeren's face glowed with rage. "How dare Boborachi think he can run this fortress?! Does he think to usurp the Queen herself?! I will punch those idiotic glasses of his so far into his skull he shall think the sun has gone into eclipse!" With effort, I calmed his anger, insisting he refrain from direct action for the moment. "The presence will seek out other allies if the ones it has are eliminated," I argued. "We should attempt to understand our true enemy before destroying its apparent extremities." With reluctance, he agreed. "But if Her Majesty is ever threatened," he told me, "ever threatened at all, I shall not hesitate to put my hammer to use." I am certain he would have done the same regardless of what I might tell him, so I assented.
One other I considered explaining myself to was, once again, Chance the Second. In spite of his earlier collusion with Parasol, I felt convinced that he would change his mind if I were to reveal the depths to which Boborachi had sunk. In more recent days, he had sequestered himself within his quarters, taking only one other dwarf, a mechanic named Dark Horse, into his confidence. However, I had apparently chosen the precisely wrong moment to approach him, as I found not Mr. Chance but Spermy Smurf in the former's room! The Guardian was ransacking the apartment, shoving papers and vessels off tables, throwing intricate machinery across the room to shatter on the opposite wall. It seemed to my eyes that he was not searching nearly as much as he was simply destroying, perhaps to make a point to the missing occupant. Nervous, I left the room, seeking to avoid the champion's notice.
Once he left and the room once again vacant, I fear I must note that my curiosity once again got the better of me and I entered the now disordered quarters. Examining the ruins, I noticed that one book upon his shelf remained conspicuously untouched. It was that most dire of books, the Necrodorfonomicon, written by the mad dwarf Abdul Deathnames. All craftsdwarfship was of the highest quality, and it menaced with spikes of what I feared could only be dwarven flesh. Wishing to know why it was undisturbed even as many of the books around it had fallen or tipped over, I attempted to pull it from the shelf, only to discover a secret lever that activated as I drew the book from its home, and a section of the very wall slid aside to reveal a hidden chamber!
What I beheld within that secret room was beyond my imaginings. Though I cannot say it was more terrible than the darkness held by Parasol beneath the mountain, the monsters I saw were heinous in their own right. Eight full creatures stared at me as I entered the workroom, dead eyes that displayed a low cunning one expects from lesser animals, but which were nevertheless coming from the hollow sockets of half-dessicated dwarven features. Ironworks of strange purpose seemed to grow from the limbs and torso of each creature, limbs which I was now realizing were patched together from an unknown number of original corpses. And, most disturbing of all, I realized that some of the patchwork parts were of the pallid shade of the Spawn themselves! What horrid experiments had Chance been conducting without any to see? Without thinking, I backed into one of the creatures, which seemed to jostle it off of the pad it stood upon. In an eerie, electrified voice, I heard it speak: "Initializing Start-up..." I could stay no longer. I fled the chamber, though I maintained the presence of mind to replace the despicable book as I found it, which I hoped would conceal my intrusion. I then ran as fast as my feet would allow, stopping only once my breath ran out.