ARC 3 - AMBUSH


Chapter 17: Engagement

Perspective: Destiny


Destiny used a rock like a park bench as she waited for Voidblade to deploy her. Her headache was mostly gone, though an echo of it carried on thanks to the low blaze of the late-afternoon sun. They waited atop the cliffs. Warnado and Fristad knelt on the ground laying out redstone wiring. The crimson trail descended into a hole Fire had dug that led to the heart of the cliff-face. An array of pistons was holding back previously loosened boulders and mud. A flick of a switch and they would drop several tons of rock behind the enemy, cutting off their escape.

Amanda inspected her crossbow in the shade of a tree. Kay and Fire crouched near the precipice, passing a telescope between them and murmuring. The sound of marching climbed up the cliff. It struck her how high up they were, and how many heavily armoured enemies there must be for the noise to carry this far.

She knew Astro was on the other side of the valley, marshalling some archers into place out of sight for a trick Kay planned to pull off. She wasn't clear on what he was supposed to do after that, though.

Rose sat to her right, more glamorous than Destiny had ever seen her. Pristine hair. Armour neat and sleek as a ball-gown. She held a polished knife before her and used the reflection it created to apply a delicate coat of blood red lipstick. She pulled the lipstick away and her pupils narrowed hungrily at the sight of her own face. The far reaches of her mouth curled up a miniscule amount, betraying a cold enthusiasm. She sheathed the knife.

"You seem prepared," said Destiny with what she hoped was a good-natured snort.

"Back in my own world most of my targets were high society, crossed so many people off guest lists that this eventually became some sort of ritual. The whole looks-that-kill deal, it helped me out more often than I thought."

Destiny shrugged and didn't know what to say next. Eventually, she mustered a dry:

"Eh, we all have our rituals. Not sure how much endermen care, though."

"We'll see," said Rose.

That narrow smile returned, and Destiny felt a desire to back up several kilometres and not continue the conversation.

Thankfully, Voidblade returned to teleport Rose away. Destiny had never been more grateful to an enderman. Almost immediately after, Kay and Fire returned from the cliff-edge, gesturing to everyone to gather 'round.

"Right," said Kay before Fire could say anything. "Glibby's leading the patrol. The grey lads and the Dog are with him. Fire and I will go down immediately after the rockslide and trees fall to parlay with them, Destiny you're with us."

Destiny nodded. Kay then stepped back and gestured to Fire to pick up where he left off. She felt he still didn't seem to be grasping the second part of the job, but he wasn't half bad at the in-command part.

"If Glibby is reasonable, the show of force might encourage him to cut further losses, but from what you have told me about him that's unlikely. Be ready to strike if it's clear parlay is not an option."

Destiny's brain had an allergic reaction to the idea of letting Glibby go free, but she tried to hide the sudden, nauseous upsurge she felt from her stomach. Maybe the hangover hadn't entirely faded after all...

"If it doesn't work," said Kay. "I'll just shunt the Dog into a portal, and it'll be down to team rockslide to beat him into submission. Shouldn't have too much bother though, he's a pushover. Very friendly. Might even try to defect-"

"You are not to accept the Dog's defection," Fire cut in, giving Kay a warning look. "You will incapacitate him. Amanda, how many blunt bolts do you have?"

"Thirty-five," the teenager responded. "One or two to the head and he's down."

"Good. Be ready for Kay's portal and there shouldn't be problems. If he's incapacitated but conscious, don't interact, we'll do proper interrogations after the fact. The fewer expectations we give the more leverage we have later."

"Alright," Fristad confirmed. "You can count on us three."

He moved to clap Amanda and Warnado on the shoulders and then reconsidered. His arms fell like leaves in Fall. The history was still too recent and too weird there.

Destiny shot him an empathetic look. He smiled back as if to say "stay safe out there." She nodded and beamed back at him.

She followed Kay and Fire up to the edge of the cliff. The procession was now below them. The diamond armour of the patrol mostly blurred together into an indistinct sea of armaments, broken only at the front and back of the column. At the back were ten or so Endlings in obsidian armour, similarly monolithic. At the front was a group of five. At the forefront of it was the unmistakable shape of Glibby the Ape.

In truth, Destiny couldn't make out many of the features that got him his name. She just saw a shape about twice the size of anyone else in the procession. She could also make out the two huge, iron gauntlets it wore clasped around the reigns of a horse. Grey stains on the scene.

A memory exploded into view before Destiny. Those gauntlets, glowing molten from the heat of the blast. Emerging from the smoke. Soaring toward David. Slamming into Tyron's chest and dislocating his arm. Raking Kir across his gut.

Anya's words echoed in her ears: Kill that bitch something fierce.

The column was now predominantly in the valley, with only the endermen and a few stragglers outside. Fire nudged Kay, who closed his eyes and clenched a fist in front of him. A small spark of voidfire glowed silver, then purple in front of him, then vanished. He opened his eyes. Destiny squinted, confused. At that moment, the screams finished their ascent up the cliff-face.

Destiny forced her head over the edge and saw a scene of growing chaos. Just between the endermen and the human mercenaries was a rift of the same silver fire. It spat arrows from every direction, striking their enemies down. One endling, caught off guard, was already dead from an arrow through the eye. Others were injured at the chinks in their armour. The human rear-guard were in anarchy, their scattering amounting to a stampede that injured as many as the arrows themselves.

Destiny looked at Kay and gave him a thumbs-up. He grinned and pointed back down. That was when the trees started falling. First, she caught a glimpse of Tyron shoulder-charging a trunk and sending it collapsing onto a few of those fleeing the arrow attack. Then, another toppled, revealing the diamond shell of Steve, who quickly retreated back into the treeline, apparently without anyone noticing. Then another fell, and another, and another. Soon, six trees created a zig-zagging path through the valley which the mercenaries desperately tried to navigate and clamber over. The endermen were warping around, surveying the scene and dragging soldiers to their feet.

The second the last tree fell, Fire stood up, no longer afraid of being seen. He gestured to Fristad, who shot Destiny an excited look before flicking the lever.

Click! It was shortly followed by the crunch of several pistons retracting, and then the rumble of falling rocks and mud. It piled into the pass, filling it entirely. Several soldiers and one injured enderman ended up crushed. All in all, the opening strike had been a huge success. Between a quarter and a third of the enemy force was already dead or injured to a greater or lesser degree.

Warnado floated upwards to survey the scene, whooping triumphantly before dropping down in a backflip. Kay rolled over and applauded the rockslide team. Fire, however, was all business:

"Portal us down there Kay. It's time to see if they'll see sense."

Kay clenched a fist before him and summoned another fiery portal. They had all been through on to get there, but Destiny still found the idea slightly unnerving. Thankfully, passing through only provided a strange, numb feeling not unlike pins and needles. It passed and she took in the scene.

Kay was on Fire's left. She was on his right. They were striding up to the party of the Tower's officers. Glibby, The Dog and the three grey-scaled endermen who had captured her and David all those weeks ago. She picked out the one whose face she had half-melted. Apparently, his name was Silver, and he wouldn't stop glaring at Kay. Destiny felt kind of left out of the contempt, especially considering the face-melting thing.

She turned her attention to Glibby, who seemed unfazed. He wore his usual trench-coat and moleskin suit, with only a light iron chestplate as armour. He was beaming at them with his mouth, but his eyes remained cold.

He handed his hat to one of his bodyguards to reveal an elongated cranium, bald except for a small circlet of hair reaching from temple to temple. He passed the reins of his horse to a human soldier who was attempting to drag his friend from beneath one of the boughs of the nearest fallen tree. A squashed nose dominated the centre of his face. Rubbery, skin-coloured lips protruded from his face. Destiny finally had enough time to appreciate the resemblance to an ape.

The commanding party stopped about fifteen paces from them. The diamond-clad troops were beginning to recapture something resembling a formation at the end of the tree-maze. A line of archers was forming atop one of the heavier tree-trunks and aiming at them.

"Jolly great show! You gave us a proper startle." boomed the Ape. "A pity it has already worn off."

Fire bellowed back: "All we demand is a single prisoner. Everyone else will be let go. It's in your hand to preserve your soldier's lives!"

Glibby looked placidly at Fire before turning to look at Kay.

"Terribly sorry, Kay, do you mind introducing us?"

"Hello Glibby, I wasn't aware we'd been introduced," Kay called back in that obviously fake posh accent he kept using when he wanted to impress someone. "Hello again to you too, Silver, officer who is a talking dog… This is my commanding officer, Fire of the Mencur-Besh. I'd advise just handing over the prisoner. Otherwise, he will massacre your troops almost single handedly, we'll capture you, and then Astro and I will deeply enjoy applying a hot poker to your tender parts until you tell us what we want to know."

"By mods," Glibby laughed. "You do prattle on."

"I'm giving you one more chance, Glibby," warned Fire. "Surrender one of your officers or your soldiers will die."

"Well, so long as they're the only ones at risk, I don't see any issue with fighting on," Glibby said. A couplet of mock punches punctuated the last two works.

"What about you, Dog?" asked Kay with a step forward and a squint off to the far side of the valley. "No chance of a last-minute defection?"

Fire sighed. Destiny could practically hear him mentally lament the momentum this conversation had lost them.

"Sorry, pal, but the ship sailed on that when you slammed my teeth into a set of iron bars," growled the Dog, baring his chipped and silver-coated teeth.

Destiny noticed he wore a monocle that looked like it was about to shatter under the weight of his furrowed brow. That was neat.

The line of soldiers was thick now, and the archers were growing more and more numerous. She clasped her hands behind her back and crystallized several sharpened icicles to throw at them.

Kay was now shielding his eyes as he continued to look at the far-side of the valley, even though the sun was behind them.

"Bah!" Kay sighed and threw his hand aside in a motion almost like a salute. "You'll come around eventually. My lads shall convince you."

At that he warped forward and shunted the Dog into a portal. Glibby backed up into a fighting stance and the Grey Ones bore their claws. Kay ignored them all and immediately followed this up by hurling a ball of voidfire into the line of soldiers, roasting only one but scattering several.

Suddenly, Glibby saw something in the reflection of his gauntlets. Astro swooped down like a spear from the heavens, arcing his sword underhand only for it to clang against one of the metal fists. The wizard ricocheted off and tumbled into the sky. Fire bellowed an order, and the fighters began to emerge from the forest to spread death among the Tower's ranks.

Destiny ran forward, hurling icicles at the Grey Ones, who promptly teleported themselves and their master away from harm. That done, she turned her attention to the archers, who were starting to loose arrows both in their direction and in the direction of the others. She saw a wall of rock send one of the archers flying, but they would clearly still need help.

She felt a paradoxical coldness in her forearms and hands as she summoned a pillar of fire that she blasted at the end of the log. Two archers fell off, burning, and fire began to spread across the trunk.

However, no sooner had she done this than the entire tree froze solid. Then, as the archers struggled to maintain their balance, a young woman clambered onto the log with them, a circle of spear-like shards of ice orbiting behind her.

Destiny almost didn't recognise the pale-skinned, dark-haired figure before she remembered Shadow had disguised herself before the battle started. Something about what she'd done in the village meant she didn't want the Tower realising she was part of the attack.

An orange-gold hunk of metal morphed into a scimitar, and the disguised Shadow charged forward alongside her shards. The shards would rend the armour of an archer and the sword would sever the flesh.

Destiny ducked a swipe from one of the endermen and scared them off with a blast of ice. She almost didn't notice as Fire slammed into the line of soldiers, using his halberd as a shoving tool to throw them off balance. The ones that couldn't recover their guard quickly enough were subjected to a series of attacks both from his weapon and his claws to exposed points, making their diamond armor matter painfully little.

She drew her bow and looked for a spot where she could be useful. Kay continued to portal around, hurling fireballs at the soldiers and shooting lightning at a small train of three endermen who were following him. Astro continued to soar around the battlefield, swinging his sword and shattering bones with his mind. Shadow stood on the frozen log, dodging projectiles and blasting ice both into the tree-maze and into the front lines.

A chance look over to Fire revealed one of the armoured ender materialising in his blind spot while he was still in the heat of battle. Sword raised, they hoped to strike him from behind. Destiny shot an arrow into the back of their knee and they crumpled. Before the arrow even made contact, Fire had broken with his opponent and started turning. Finding his enemy too wounded to think of teleporting he whipped his halberd and decapitated them. He nodded at Destiny before returning to his prior target.

She clambered up the log and melted herself a clear patch on which to stop. She saw Shadow beside her on a platform of ice.

"Loving the disguise," Destiny called out. "It suits you."

"It should," smiled Shadow as she turned to freeze one of the soldiers crowding around Fire. "It's how I look in my 'real world'."

Destiny decided not to question that, nodded and leapt over to the next log, which was free of ice. From here she had a clearer view of the battle's full extent.

Voidblade was at the far end of the valley, cutting down anyone who attempted to retreat over the blocked pass. Kay was still flitting around the mass at the front, dodging the swipes of endermen with ease and yelling grandiose insults. Astro had settled on the ground and was now cutting his way through to Fire, snapping necks and crushing ribs between strokes of the sword.

Down in the trenches, chaos reigned. At the edge, just on the treeline, Tyron and Urist found themselves in the midst of a troop of soldiers and endermen. They would have been standing back-to-back if not for the size difference or Urist's tactic of ducking through Tyron's legs to slam a hammer into the legs or stomach of an enderman before they could get away. One such blow doubled an enderman over as Destiny ascended the log, and Tyron capitalised on it by raking Kir across their winded opponent's neck.

"Five left!" cheered Kir for all nearby allies to hear. "Five endermen left!"

The sword's enthusiasm died down as a diamond-coated giant climbed over a log and began to square up to Tyron, who did not seem pleased to find himself in this situation again.

Steve, Jennifer and Rose faced an even greater challenge just at Destiny's feet. On the far side of the tree on which Destiny stood, the ground was thick with human corpses, and the soldiers kept swarming around them with ferocity, no matter how injured they were. Jennifer and Rose had escaped the worst of it by hopping between the bows of the fallen trees and launching projectiles into the crowd, but Steve found himself still in the very heart of it. Worse still, the Grey Ones had chosen this as their hunting grounds.

Destiny saw Steve cut down a soldier only to receive a blow on the helmet from one of the Grey Ones. He turned and saw the enderman disappear just in time to receive another blow on the helmet. Destiny tried to intervene, but every shot was too slow. The harrying of Steve continued for several bouts until, disoriented, he saw Silver in a fighting stance, beckoning. In one desperate motion, Steve attempted to impale the Grey Ones' leader, only for him to teleport away. Excalibur ate into wood and stuck there.

Steve cursed as he realised his mistake and attempted to pull Excalibur free. However, before he could do so, Glibby materialised, flanked by two of his servants, and pounded Steve's head.

The son of Herobrine rallied, pulled two lesser swords from his inventory and rushed at the Ape. He swung twice, once with each sword, but Glibby batted them away with one hand and punched Steve with the other. Steve's boots shattered from the force of the impact and he tripped over one of the corpses.

Seeing Steve in distress, Jennifer fired an arrow right at the Ape's exposed cranium, but one of the grey ones materialised and blocked it with their shoulder, roaring in pain. It materialised in front of its assailant and tackled her back into the sea of corpses.

Rose then charged in, swiping at Glibby with her knives and firing off duplicates. Sadly, her target proved improbably agile, and smiled as it dodged her blows.

"And here I thought my days in the ballroom were long behind me," he drawled as precursor to a retaliatory swing.

Destiny also nocked an arrow but found herself pirouetting away when Silver swiped at her. His claws peeled away an iron pauldron and grazed the flesh underneath. She, in one fluid movement, dropped to one knee and loosed the arrow at Silver's foot. He jumped back and before he had a moment to recover Destiny had loosed a pillar of fire at him which he teleported away from. Believing herself victorious, she rose, only for a new blow to knock her flat. Her bow snapped beneath her weight and she lay there, winded.

Silver hunched over her, fangs bared in a horrendous grin. He raised his claws and readied to plunge them down. Destiny formed a spike of ice in her hand, ready to bring him down with her. Just as the claws began their descent a gloved hand reached out and grabbed them: Kay had materialised.

He slammed the pommel of his sword into the enderman's head and hurled him from the log. Destiny could've sworn she saw a tooth flying out, but it happened too fast to tell. He pulled her up and they both turned their attention to the duel between Glibby and Rose.

The Ape seemed to notice the increased attention and decided to break the flow of things by grabbing Rose and tossing her away. As she landed in a heap a good distance off, Glibby looked quite pleased with himself. Unfortunately for him, this is just what Astro, who had returned to the sky, had been waiting for.

A jet of fire descended from the sky that Glibby's remaining bodyguard only just teleported him away from. They rematerialised at the bend in the maze, Glibby brushing down a small patch of flame on his shoulder. He cleared his throat to make some sort of snide quip, but before he spoke, the frozen tree shattered and Glibby had to raise his trench-coat to shield his face from the splintering wood.

Destiny looked at Kay and jumped down into the trench. The General followed, and the two cut off that escape route. Steve, finally getting a moment to unstick Excalibur, joined them. Jennifer, breaking free from the Grey One who had attacked her, blocked off the route to the forest. Rose got up from her heap, her hair slick with blood, and joined the growing blockade with a glare in her eyes that could melt stone. Finally, A giant fell, with Kir in between its ribs and Tyron yanking it free.

"Nice liver," Kir cackled with uncharacteristic malice. Then, more sheepishly: "Sorry. Only him supposed to hear that."

He looked up, saw Glibby and audibly growled.

"You again," Tyron spat with a flourish of his sword. "Oh, I have been waiting to kill you for so long! You are so dead, asshole."

Glibby, now rejoined by his three bodyguards, turned around with his hands on his hips. He hiked up his trousers.

"And here I thought this was going to be dull."

Destiny smiled as she heard genuine nervousness pierce the condescension.

Kir noticed the dead enderman on the ground and chirped out a cheery: "Four left."