Crash Landing
S-O-S
“Calling all Fence! Where the hell are y’all?!” Nothing but static played over the communicator as Remington fanned the hammer on an incoming squad of six Chosen soldiers coming over the hill. Six shots made six corpses. The earth rumble under her spurs as a gargantuan abomination bigger than a barn charged toward her.
The brute’s massive frame would have trampled her if she didn’t shed her physical form. Fading into a cloud of shadows, she shifted through the abomination and jammed her shortsword into its spine. The construct roared louder than a hundred angry bears. Like a pair of icepicks, she stabbed her way up the abomination’s back and climbed onto its stitched nape. The cold metal barrels of her sawed-off pressed against the back of goliath’s thick skull. Rotting brain matter mixed with gunsmoke as she squeezed the trigger.
“Up there on the corpse!” Rem barely had time to react before the whistle of arrows cut through the putrid air and homed in on her. She scrambled off the abomination. A surge of pain shot up her arm. Her eye fell to the source, a serrated arrow punched through the bicep, shattering the humerus. No time to reload the sawed-off with a dozen pairs of sabatons beating against the ground and converging on Rem’s position.
She squeezed the familiar grip of her single-action pistol and swung the cylinder out. It was time to tap into her reserves. Rem jammed her eyes shut and whispered. “Ash. Annihilate. Burn.” As she spoke those haunting words, a malevolent presence answered the call. It spoke alongside her voice like a discordant demon mimicking her.
A̷s̵h̵.̵ ̷A̶n̷n̸i̵h̶i̵l̴a̵t̸e̸.̴ ̵B̴u̸r̴n̶.̶
Each syllable grated the ears like raking claws, the very sound like an anti-thesis to reality itself, an abomination to all that was sound. She let the presence take the wheel. Her eyes flared with shadowflame. The roaring blaze flowed down the neck and surged to all her limbs to engulf her entire body. The pain was nigh-unbearable, but she forced herself through as she trained both eyes on her pistol’s cylinder. She forced down the urge to scream, choking her voice down in the pit of her throat and locking it there.
She would’ve given in if the will to stay alive wasn’t greater. With a restrained growl, she directed the chaotic flame and forced it into her pistol. It was like corraling an angry swarm of wasps jabbing your hand. Each chamber of the pistol flared like a grim furnace. Ghostly smoke wafted out from each as Rem peeked out from behind the abomination’s corpse and squeezed the trigger.
The pistol’s recoil kicked harder than a quad-barreled shotgun. Shadowflame roared out of the barrel and engulfed the dozen enemy soldiers in a gigantic fireball. The only thing remaining was the ash in the wind.
All strength in her limbs withered as she crumpled to the ground. Her palms hissed with still-smoking burns. Despite fighting to keep her eyelids open, they grew heavier by the second.
“She’s a caster!” the yell echoed in her ringing eardrums as darkness overtook her vision. Exhaustion. Pain. Hunger. All these lost sensations returned at the worst possible time. What was this place?
She awoke to tightened manacles around her wrists and ankles. Shifting even slightly raked the cold metal against the skin. Rem groaned. Her dry mouth and parched throat felt on fire as her vision acclimated to her surroundings, a cramped cell packed with maldraxxi undead. Some were already corpses. Some were pretty close, missing limbs entirely or haphazardly thrown into the room still bleeding.
--
Captured
A pair of red eyes peered across the room and met her purple gaze. “You’re the newest, huh?”
Rem opened her mouth to find her speech blocked by a metal mask strapped over the lower half of her face. She made out a silhouette in the darkness across from her chains. Two pointed ears poked out of disheveled snow-colored hair. The figure across from her sat criss-crossed, her metal jaw perched onto her pale fist. All Rem could offer in response was a muffled groan to the other prisoner.
“Shit. Forgot about the Spellguard. You’ve been muzzled,” she said as those red eyes inspected the metal mask. “They only do that for dangerous magical inmates. Must’ve given them a real fight.”
Rem stared back at the elvish figure.
“Blink once for yes. Twice for no.”
Her purple eyes flickered once.
“Good,” the figure growled. “Every casualty of theirs means an easier time breaking out of here.”
Rem pulled against her wrist’s manacles. The metal dug into her flesh, jabbing against the bone. She winced and flicked her eyes up to each one in sequence. The runes carved into the restraints hummed.
“No use. Chains don’t come off unless they bring in one of the liches to break the spell.”
Rem tipped her chin toward the figure across from her. The gesture’s meaning managed to get across: ‘Who’re you?’
“Celaryn,” the figure offered. “Just Celaryn.” Celaryn panned her crimson gaze across the room filled with maldraxxi in varying states of decay. “Been a while since an Azerothian was down here with us.”
( @slaughterjaw )