"So we're sure that this is their main base?" Chase asked, glancing sideways at Royce.
"If the intel is accurate, yeah, this should be their primary staging ground. They shouldn't have any other camps. At least not this band anyhow." The sniper said without taking his eyes away from the scope.
Chase grimaced, bringing the binoculars back up to his eyes, looking down at the camp below them. The team was perched up on a ridgeline looking down at the raider settlement nestled between the rocks and hills, hiding it from distant sight. It was a decent setup, though it surrendered the high ground to a potential attacker, and it seemed the raiders were either too sloppy or too afraid of discovery to post patrols or sentries.
It was a fairly sizable camp, with a large round tent at the center and numerous smaller tents and shanties, raiders lazing about and enjoying their spoils in their presumed safety.
"So what's our plan? Call in your Army and watch the fireworks?" Diana asked, checking the camp through her Bozar's scope as they lay on the ridge.
Chase frowned again, shaking his head. "No, I don't think so. We have to handle this problem very… delicately. Subtle enough to not seem like we lost control in the first place. But final enough that no raiders try this again anytime soon."
Tony nodded his agreement. "We also need to get in there and retrieve whatever intelligence they might have down there. If we can find info on who put them up to this, or how they were getting the shipping schedules to attack those caravans, then it would go a long way to preventing further bloodshed. Raiders are like weeds, cut them down and they grow up somewhere else. If we want this problem truly resolved we need to tear it up by the roots, that means finding who's supporting them and making sure that they… learn the consequences of their actions."
The Stalker considered it, before he nodded, looking back through the binoculars. "Besides, a full scale assault is too risky. I'm seeing a few prisoners down there, probably for ransom or slaves for the raiders themselves. We need to get them out before we level this place."
Diana raised one brow skeptically. "Level this place? Seems rather dramatic. I'm good, and your team is the best the Mojave can send. But do you really think that the six of us can take down at least fifty or so raiders?"
Chase lowered the binoculars, turning slowly to face her. He let a slow smile creep over his face, showing teeth that were almost fangs. "We can level the place. Just trust me." He said in a very dangerous whisper. "We wait for nightfall. Everyone get some rest, this is going to be interesting."
XXXXX
Alaric mashed the firing stud on his minigun, gritting his teeth as the Vindicator roared and spat a hail of lead into the great horde of enemies ahead of him. There were so many, hundreds, though he wasn't sure exactly how many, just that everywhere he looked seemed to be a sea of tattered uniforms and raw red flesh. Open mouths with broken teeth screamed at him as melee troops charged and ranged fighters laid down barrages of fire. Despite public perceptions of power armor users being able to walk imperviously through hails of gunfire, being inside a suit while under this kind of constant assault was like sitting inside a bell while it was constantly struck from all sides. The impacts were dulled but you still felt them, muted punches expending their energy as rounds fragmented on strong titanium and ceramic armor.
But the energy still mattered, and under the weight of so many shots the knights were staggering, it was as if they were being sand blasted by the volume of firepower being hurled indiscriminately at them, so many stray rounds kicking up dirt from the dusty ground that it was like the surface of a lake during a rainstorm.
Muscles and armor groaning in protest, Alaric advanced, seeking the refuge of cover behind a fallen pile of masonry that may once have been an office building, unable to hear himself think over the endless ringing of bullets pounding on the surface of his armor, so loud it was almost shocking when it suddenly abated as he reached cover.
Alaric turned, minigun barrels smoking as he looked at the knights behind him. Kruse had been right behind him, staggering and falling against the brick wall, his armor pockmarked and dented all over, other knights following behind him. A few hulking bodies lay prone in the parched dust, armor shattered or vital points pierced. Next he turned his gaze back to the cave mouth they had just escaped from, and where the majority of his army troopers, and thus the bulk of his force, were taking refuge. It seemed that the enemy was focusing their full fury upon himself and the obvious threat, and had not yet investigated the cavern or encountered the troops sheltering within. Good, good, that gave them something of a trump card at least.
Kruse hauled himself over, coughing behind his helmet. "Ack! Against such numbers, valor seems helpless, lord. They will cut us down with sheer numbers before we can close the charge!"
Alaric nodded, grunting as he rose up, bracing himself against the broken wall as he opened fire once again, pouring a long burst into an onrushing pack of melee fighters, waving chipped blades and arc casters. He took a quiet satisfaction in watching them being chopped apart by his screaming weapon. When the Vindicator spoke, squads died.
"True my friend, so let us hold out, we must count in our endurance. We shall bleed them out, let them exhaust themselves upon us and when they grow impatient and come to root us out, then we will counterattack with the rest of the army. We need to draw them in, my friend."
Kruse laughed once behind his helmet, hauling his tortured body back to its feet and checking the load on his laser. "Aye lord." He turned to the other knights, rising tall upon the mound of masonry before Alaric could stop him. "Knights! Rally to me! Each of you is worth a dozen of this pitiful rabble! Show them the strength of our resolve and the might of our arms!" The Knight Commander shouted, brandishing his super sledge in one hand as he fired from the hip with the other, sending ruby beams carving down into the onrushing rabble.
All around them, the Marked Men were swarming like ants, seeking new firing lanes and approaches to root them out of their hiding place. Alaric's ammo counter ran lower and lower as he chopped through enemies, he had lost count of how many had perished under the withering hail the Vindicator put out. All around him miniguns blazed, lasers, plasma and LAERs barked, gauss rifles fired with their high pitched whine and metallic clash.
As he gunned down another squad of enemy warriors, Alaric began to wonder again exactly what was going on here. Why had they all assembled here? What had motivated them to join forces? And more specifically, who was leading them now. This all spoke of organization and planning, there was a greater strategy at work behind the movements of the enemy army. For an army this was, where once had only been a rabble of pain-crazed survivors. Could he really count on them to grow impatient and throw themselves into a headlong charge like the Marked Men he was used to fighting? Or was the mind directing this force willing to be patient? Was he sitting himself in a trap?
"Kruse, I don't like this." He grunted, cursing quietly as his minigun finally ran out of ammo, having torn through a small army's worth of mad ghouls. He dropped the ammo pack to the ground and set the weapon down, drawing his prototype laser rifle, firing cyan blasts into whatever target that presented itself, the shots blowing off limbs and hollowing out torsos.
"Neither do I lord, they seem willing to grind us down here." The knight Commander grunted, gunning down an enemy before he could fire the arc caster he carried.
"We may need to signal the counterattack sooner than later, I'd call for fire support but I'd rather not level the facility we're here to take."
"Or hit a buried nuke and spread radiation over the entire region." Kruse responded.
"That would be bad." Alaric agreed, keying his radio. "Colonel, we're going to need that backup sooner rather than later, send in the roboscorpions as a first wave to shake them up, then get your men into those low buildings, stick to cover or you'll be chopped to pieces. We'll try to draw as much of their fire as we can to give you time!"
The infantry commander acknowledged his order as he slotted a new electron charge pack into his laser rife, blasting off another head as the enemy made their push again. "Kruse, how's it looking over there? The infantry are going to need a distraction if they're going to get to an effective fighting position without being chopped apart."
Kruse looked up over the rim of the broken building, then looked back to Alaric. Then he looked back over the rim again as though doing a double take.
"Kruse? What is it?" He asked.
Kruse turned back towards him. "Deathclaws sir. It seems they've domesticated them." He said in a perfectly level, calm voice.
"Well." Alaric said, trying to find something to say that fully expressed the situation. "Shit."
As it turned out, 'domesticated' was a little too strong a word. As Alaric peeked over the lip of broken masonry, he saw several large cages, scrap metal sides shaking as the howling beasts within were enraged by the cacophony of the battle around them. One by one the cages were open, and the beasts being driven towards them by Marked Men with arc casters, cajoling the Deathclaws forwards with biting arcs of electricity.
Alaric sneered behind his helmet, it was a rather bad situation. They couldn't leave cover or they would be cut down by the sheer volume of firepower being hurled at them. But they couldn't stick still or the Deathclaws would find them easy pickings in close quarters.
"Prepare for close combat!" Kruse bellowed through his helmet, readying his hammer and taking potshots with a laser pistol. Alaric grunted as he followed suit, igniting his Protonic Inversal Axe and drawing a PPK-12 gauss pistol, other knights drawing big bore pistols and rippers as they listened to the howl of the enraged Deathclaws.
Alaric shook his head a little, he couldn't just sit here, waiting for the beasts to hit them. "Kruse, you have a marksman?"
The Commander nodded at once. "Night Preston, ready your rifle."
Preston, a knight in T-45 power armor, unslung an M28 gauss rifle, the design originally used by the Chinese and then copied by the American forces during the conflicts on the eve of the Great War. "Call the target sir." He said in a calm voice despite the chaos all about.
"The enemy is using handlers to corral the Deathclaws, start dropping the ones with the arc casters! If we're lucky the beasts will turn on them."
The knight, to his credit, didn't waste any time with needless gestures, just a polite 'Sir.' Before he was crawling up the broken pile of bricks and concrete, laying his armored bulk flat upon the top of the mound to present as small a target as possible. The gauss rifle was a sniper's weapon of the highest order, capable of landing killshots at far greater ranges than were an issue here, and a moment later there issued the distinctive report of a gauss rifle, a combination of supersonic crack and something like two blocks of metal slamming together.
The unfortunate animal handler's bits had barely finished spraying all over the terrain as Preston ejected the spent microfusion cell and busied himself with loading the next one, eyes already seeking his next target as his hands performed the practiced action without him having to think about it.
"The beasts are charging!" A knight called, bringing Alaric out of his momentary distraction, arm snapping up with the speed and precision of a radar-guided gun, blasting four 2mm hypersonic slugs into the first Deathclaw, shattering the creature's skull and sending it sliding across the ground from its retained momentum.
He continued firing as fast as he could, the few remaining miniguns spinning, barrels smoking hot as they ejected a small mountain of spent casings and feed linkages, their little hill of brick and stone surrounded by a field of dead men and severed limbs, the beasts charging towards them. Deathclaws were brave creatures and singularly focused, but in the end they were animals, untrained, savage creatures who despite being unto mythical monsters in the wastes, just wanted to eat and live another day, these were not well trained war hounds but a rabble of creatures coerced into the charge through pain.
And in those conditions, even a Deathclaw might have second thoughts. To punctuate the thought, another beastmaster vaporized into a red mist as a 5mm tungsten slug ripped through his chest at multiple times the speed of sound, the Deathclaw he had been antagonizing into a mad frenzy charging through the sudden gap in the wall of electrified prongs to begin tearing into the Marked Men line, blood sprays and severed limbs flying through the air as Kruse let out a bark of derisive laughter.
But then, the beasts were upon them, clambering over the bricks to get at them, their beady animal eyes frenzied and thick hide bearing fresh scars from their confinement, whipped and starved like some old-world arena bull. Alaric shifted his stance, raising his axe to detach a Deathclaw's hand at the wrist as it swiped at him, simultaneously emptying the last of his gauss pistol's magazine into the face of a creature about to disembowel Knight Preston as he scrambled to his feet from his prone firing position, ejecting the spent magazine as he twisted and engaged the wounded Deathclaw again, driving a power-assisted kick into its gut and exploiting its new weak side to decapitate it with a precise swipe of his glowing axe.
Again he had cause to bless the implants in his brain which allowed him to maintain multiple trains of action and thought simultaneously, essentially giving his full attention to the rigors of personal combat as well as listen to his radio without it really distracting him, the advanced sensors behind his false eyes painting the battlefield in a computer's precision, measuring ranges and distanced down to the millimeter and calculating the speed of everything in his sight cone.
"Sir we have begun the push." Came the voice of the Army Colonel over his radio set. "We're hitting them with the first wave of Roboscorpions right now and the enemy line has been disrupted by those rabid Deathclaws, just hold out a little longer, the Army is on the field!"
"Thank you Colonel." Alaric said in a hasty, clipped voice as he ducked under a swiping claw and drove his axe up into the Deathclaw's belly, the energy blade finding little resistance in scaly flesh, no matter how tough. The knights closed ranks, a shrinking ring of gleaming power armor as the Deathclaws circled, looking for a weakness in their defenses, a waver in their line as the tide of the battle turned slowly, grinding on around them as they were locked, oblivious, in mortal combat.
A gasping cry from behind him signaled another knight's fall, though whether wounded or dead he could not tell and had no time to discern, the bloody-clawed monster that felled the warrior being shredded by a few rapid pulses of a scatter laser , going down in a smoldering heap.
Alaric's mind was submersed in the odd, placid calmness that seemed to overtake him in battles of late. He wondered if it was all his experiences numbing him to the carnage around him, the circuitry in his brain guiding his thoughts along more logical, dispassionate paths, or perhaps simply his artificial heart regulating his body's systems to the point where the biological compulsions of panic and anxiety simply didn't seem to take hold of him anymore. In any case, he was glad of it, for without that state of mind, of being the eye of the hurricane, he couldn't possibly fight as well as he did.
He stepped forward, striding over the fallen knight to meet the Deathclaws personally, shifting his axe's position a few inches to prepare for probably counterattack. Gauss pistol up, sweep left. Deathclaw advancing, preparing to strike with right claw. Put three slugs through the inside of its right elbow, arm disabled, attack neutralized. No time for the killshot, new target on the right, readying to strike, indecisive, weak stance. Remove nearest limb from the forearm down and follow with shoulder tackle, the beast was sent sprawling to its back. Another target front, making for full charge. Too much momentum to engage in melee, loss of balance unacceptable, six shots center mass, target neutralized. Crippled Deathclaw on left? Eliminated, allied kill, head vaporized with plasma rifle. Prone target to the right has regained footing blow out right knee with two shots and decapitate with axe. Next target advancing, only one shot remaining, insufficient for conventional kill. Probability of eye shot 76%, acceptable risk.
Alaric pulled the trigger, sending the last slug in his twelve shot magazine bursting through the Deathclaw's eye, splattering its brain, the beast falling as he ejected the spent magazine, the whole frantic combat only lasting five seconds or so. As he slammed a new magazine home, he took a brief moment to assess the wider situation, looking behind him as he let straw shots glance off his armored bulk like a spring rain. The Roboscorpions had done their job and made the first attack, taking the brunt of the initial enemy resistance on their armored hulls as they scurried over the uneven terrain, blasting with their energy weapons and cutting through ankles and legs with their mechanical pincers. After them he saw the signature uniform coats of Army Troopers amidst the rubble, advancing in the wake of the robotic charge and capitalizing on the confusion in the enemy ranks. Odd, he didn't remember Marked Men having such a preference for laser weapons, but perhaps they had found another untouched armory since he'd been through here, laser rifles were common enough in prewar military bunkers.
His eyes were quickly drawn by a loud roaring noise, the biggest of the cages being torn open from the inside as a great brute of a Deathclaw came charging out, its scales almost black and its horns great and curved. The Marked Men tried to restrain the great Alpha but it either didn't feel their weapons or simply didn't care, tearing into them with ferocity and malice, shredding its attendant guards before howling to the heavens. The battle had devolved into a brawl between two fractured armies with the Deathclaws now abandoning all pretense of direction and now little more than a terrifyingly dangerous random element careening around the battlefield.
"Sir, that Alpha is heading right for the Army lines." Knight Preston grunted, nursing a wounded arm, blood leaking from great gashes in his power armor.
"Heavy weapons teams!" Alaric called into the radio, knowing that even the 7.62 rounds would be like flicking peas at something that old and enraged past the point of feeling pain.
"They won't get there in time!" Kruse barked. "I'll handle it!"
"Handle it? Kruse? Kruse!" Alaric shouted, catching a glimpse of a familiar figure in T-51b power armor charging across open terrain, super sledge in hand, before he was lost amidst the press of bodies and the howl of beasts.
Kruse's armored boots pounded the gravel and dirt, kicking it up in a spray behind him as he charged, pushing his armor and his muscles to the limit as he rushed across open ground towards the big Alpha Deathclaw. It was a terrible monster to behold, scales so dark to be almost black, hulking over its lesser kin, a champion among monsters, the Army Troopers would have no chance against such a monster. Thankfully the tide of the battle had shifted somewhat, the army of tortured Ghouls having more to worry about than one armored figure, directing their attention to the more pressing threats of rampaging Deathclaws and attacking soldiers.
But the lesser monsters were barring his way to the Alpha, perhaps acting as some sort of honor guard for the vile champion, three lesser beasts moving to block his path. With a fluid motion he drew his laser pistol in his left hand, pumping controlled shots into the nearest of the creatures, causing it to snarl as its thick hide blackened and hissed under the shots, though he soon had to return the pistol to its holster and take up his hammer with both hands, charging forward to meet the monster's bull rush, bringing his hammer down in a heavy overhand sweep.
The head of the hammer only clipped the monster as it was forced to dodge, ruining its charge, the heavy discharge of the kinetic head spinning it a bit in place and making the beast howl in pain. No time to engage it though as another closed to his side, the knight grimacing behind his helm as he swung hard. "Avaunt! Foul beast!" He cried, if only to give himself courage, as he brought the hammer around to slam into the creature's shoulder, the kinetic impact head making a loud crack as it discharged energy in kinetic force, sending the unprepared creature sliding to the side with a surprised hiss. He lost no time, swinging the hammer in wide arcs, the beasts hissing and pulling back as they learned the pain the humming hammer could dish out, beginning to circle him more cautiously.
The Knight grinned behind his helmet, laughing softly to himself. "So you do know fear." He chuckled darkly, thinking fast. Three Deathclaws in close combat was an almost impossible fight under these circumstances, and while he was a brave and dedicated warrior he was no fool. They would close and cut him apart, there was no time to hold a defensive, the only option was to attack, teach them fear and pain.
"I will suffer you no more!" He bellowed, war cry rendered a booming inhuman echo by his helmet speakers as he charged the nearest monster, turning his headlamp up to maximum in the small hope of blinding it as he pushed forward, swinging from the shoulder as if he was chopping wood. The creature attempted to block, but the force of his swing pushed through the defense, slamming into the beasts head and sending it to the ground like he was driving home a nail. Instinct told him to expect the attack from behind, turning as he heard the loud scraping squeal of claws rending at his power armor, scraping across the heavy shield casing of his reactor. He jerked the weapon back, stabbing at where he expected the Deathclaw to be with the end of his hammer's haft, which was sharpened into a spike.
Rewarded with a cry of pain, he wrenched the weapon sideways, tearing the wound open in a spray of blood, building momentum with the swing to connect with the creature's head. As the beast behind him started to rise, the third one circling and snarling as its more aggressive brothers fought, Kruse pressed the attack, slamming the front of his hammer's head into the beasts gut, before turning the head vertically and dragging it up to slam into the underside of the beast's jaw, snapping its head up vertically and breaking its jawbone. But again the other attacked from behind and he turned to block, claws scraping over his armor and possible tearing it, he had no time to check, as he brought the hammer up again.
He raised it to block a strike that might have taken his head, ducking as the claws took just long enough to slice through the metal shaft of his hammer, cutting the haft in two and sending him off balance for a moment, but he rallied as quick as he could to slam the now one-handed hammer into its face, stabbing backwards with the spike that had been the other half to ward off the other beast, threatening to stab an eye out.
"It would be a heroic end, battling a pack of such beasts." He taunted aloud. "But I shall strike thee down, and move on to your champion!" He stuck again, dazing the Deathclaw before him. "Or in more common language." He continued, grunting with exertion as he shattered the beast's skull. "Get the hell out of my way!" He blocked the strike of the third beast with the hammer's head, the weapon starting to smoke and spit sparks as the claws cut into its internal mechanisms. He reversed his grip on the metal spike, driving it through a gap in the second Deathclaw's ribcage, making the creature spit blood before he kicked it, driving the metal spike out through its back, one more spin among the others sprouting there. "Begone!" He cursed the final one, hitting it with the damaged head, bits and pieces of his ancient weapon breaking off as he struck, the kinetic impactor tearing itself up with unstable energy bursts. The Deathclaw jumped back to avoid a strike, pulling back and preparing to charge. Warned by a high pitched whine in the hammer's head, Kruse drew it back and hurled it end over end, colliding with the beast's face and finally detonating as its fusion power plant breached catastrophically, blasting most of the Deathclaw's head away in the process.
The knight turned from the ruined bodies of his foes, barely registering the bite of pain in his body, one of their claws must have made it through, but he keyed up a few stimpacks and some Med-X to hold him together, just a little longer, he had a job to do. The great Alpha had been watching him, but to his dismay it turned aside and continued towards the soldiers, their frantic weapons fire glancing off its hide like insect bites. He had to do something, so in the lack of any real plan he fell back on what he was best at. Bravado, and audacity.
"Turn and face me foul creature!" He bellowed, drawing his laser pistol and Ripper, expending the last of the weapon's power cell into the great beast's back. "I, Knight Commander Kruse challenge you to single combat! Face me if you have the courage!"
Perhaps it was the stings of the laser blasts leaving smoldering pockmarks up its back, or something in the defiant way he spoke, but the Alpha turned towards him again, rage burning in its animal eyes. "Now I've pissed it off." He muttered to himself, holstering his pistol. The Alpha roared and started towards him, bellowing an animalistic challenge and building up speed. Without any better idea, and no time to think, Kruse let instinct take over, revving the Ripper up to full power as he started to run towards it as well, bellowing a challenge back in his own way.
"Have at thee!" He shouted at the top of his voice as they came crashing together at the epicenter of the raging battle.
The beast was larger than he was, even in his armor, but the ceramic and titanium of Kruse's T-51 was made of sterner stuff. The Alpha's scales were as tough as Kevlar and ceramic plate, but when titanium met flesh at a full charge, flesh yielded. The impact shook the knight to his bones. The Deathclaw had slashed at him and the claws had bitten home, but the sheer momentum of his charge could not be negated so easily and he shunted the full kinetic energy of his reckless charge into the beast's torso, driving it back and forcing it to dig its claws into the tainted earth. The beast growled, Kruse growled back. His charge spent, he tried to step back but the Deathclaw wrapped its arms around him in a bear hug and began to squeeze.
Servos and hydraulics squealed in his ears as he fought, warning lights blinking on his HUD as the hi-flow hydraulics of his suit were straining beyond their safety limits as he tried to push against the immense mass of mutant muscle crushing him like a tin can. "Not. So. Fast!" He gasped through gritted teeth, his hand scrabbling for the ripper strapped to his thigh. He couldn't hear the motor whining into life over the shriek of his tortured armor, but he felt the vibration coming up through the mechanical gauntlet and he stabbed where his instincts guided him. The monster roared in pain and the grip went slack. Kruse pulled the whirling blade from where he'd stabbed it into the monster's armpit and pulled back, bringing up the weapon in a ready guard.
He felt pain within him, unsure where the injury was exactly but his suit had been pierced in the initial clash. Somewhere around his chest or gut most likely, judging by where the blood was flowing out of his armor. How serious the wound was he couldn't say, he couldn't even feel it. The initial clash had ended in a draw it seemed, blood flowing from the wound beneath one of the beast's arms. The two champions began to circle now, reptilian eyes gazing into the scowling visor of the knight's helm. A claw jerked forward and Kruse swatted at it with the ripper, a feint, the beast testing him. Its scales were covered in scars but he had hurt it dearly in an important place, perhaps even crippled it, now they showed each other respect, no blind charges now.
The beast growled, low and menacing, and Kruse answered in kind, his voice low and inhuman through the speaker on his helmet. Then he began to laugh, slowly at first but then stronger, welling up from his core. He wasn't even sure why he was laughing, it just felt like the right thing to do, perhaps it was the adrenaline rush, or some reaction to the pain he wasn't feeling. Sensing some insult in the laughter, the great Alpha growled a challenge and went forward, swiping with its claws again. Kruse blocked, sending it away with torn scales, realizing he must have crippled one arm with that lucky strike, judging by the way the beast was holding it.
Capitalizing on his advantage, he drove forward again, stabbing and cutting with the ripper, his bellowing discordant laughter booming from the tinny speaker. He met the open-palmed swipes with stabs and cuts, a nick here and a cut there, the Alpha growling with anger and impatience. Finally the monster overcommitted and Kruse struck, shifting the weight of his body and twisting his torso to throw the full weight of his armored bulk into the stab. The ripper met the monster's palm and with a squeal of rending flesh, tore through it to punch clear out the back of its hand. The Alpha's roar was deafening, making his helmet ring like a struck bell. Both hands crippled and blind with rage, the alpha dove forward to bite his head off.
Kruse let go of the weapon, the teeth stilling without his hand to press the trigger, and he grabbed the Deathclaw by both horns. The weight of the monster hit him hard and he was going down to the ground, but a twist kept him from landing on his back. Writhing on the rocks and dirt, they struggled, his vision distorted as saliva coated his visor. Maybe it was the injury or the sheer thrill of the moment, but Kruse felt fresh strength surging in his limbs as he clamped his gauntlets on those horns and started to twist, slowly turning the beast's head. The Alpha realized what was happening too late, crippled arms flailing and tail thrashing in the bloody dust. "I. Am. Kruse." He grunted through his damaged helmet. "Knight of the realm." There was fear in the monster's eyes now as he kept twisting, straining as the Alpha's head was twisted to ninety degrees. "Slayer of dragons!" With a final wrench there was a loud crunching noise, and the beast went still. Kruse laughed again, so quiet it couldn't be heard outside his helmet, his tormented armor shutting down, hydraulic fluid and lubricant leaking, mixed with his blood. "I've… always… always wanted to say that." He chuckled, as darkness crept over his vision.
===Author's Note===
First off, I've made this little side project. The TDiC visual guide. A little thing I slapped together using the armor and gear I've used to inspire my descriptions. It's not perfect, but I think it's the best I can do based on combining other people's mods and clothing to represent what I have in mind.
(Write imgur dot com here) /a/nae0A
Okay I really have no excuse for the wait this time. Other than to say that Fallout 4 and Star Wars: The Old Republic are very distracting indeed. But here I am, writing what I feel I'm able. And as always displaying my love of tormenting you all with cliffhangers.
Always happy to hear your reactions and reviews, thanks for sticking with me and my incredibly unreliable update schedule!