Necros: A War of Zoids
By THE Xenomorph aka familyghost
Synopsis: A world with a secret past is about to get a wake up call from the metallic warriors.
Chapter 6: Travels – Nightmare of a Necromancer
Lycus did not recognize the lands he now walked. Only minutes earlier he had been listening to Frank and Ash chatter over their communications like two little girls on a communicator. Now though he stood in a world once very familiar to him, now nothing more than a dangerous alien landscape. Towers of ivory and mirror sprouted from the ground as he ran. Each time he thought it was over another building would rip through the landscape and frighten him in another direction.
As he ran from the sprouting structures, the surreal feel of the lands became even more threatening as wild and greatly exaggerated zoids clawed their way to the surface from crypts deep in the ground. Soon the zoids had him cornered between several large buildings and he could do was think about how it all had to be a dream, but the realistic look of several zoids kept him in disbelief of his own mind's power.
The zoids began to close in, several voiced by pilots of his past. People he had killed, people returning for vengeance. They all came closer, seemingly marching and creeping as one massive skeletal hand reaching for a victim's throat. He closed his eyes waiting to die. Then the roar came.
A chilling roar of power and fury distracted the zoids and then all at once tore through them. Lycus' eyes flew open and before him stood the nightmare made reality. His past. His zoid. His-
"BOSS!" Ash shook his master awake gently.
"What?" Lycus sprang awake, the cockpit's dim light allowing him to see his skeletal companion and his reflection which showed him drenched in sweat.
"You were screaming like a banshee." Ash said, slightly worried about his master.
"It was nothing, just... bad memories." Lycus sighed. "Are we camping soon; I'm getting cramped."
"Another hours boss, right now we're still in the open and Wraith says it's best to have cover with this König after us." Ash said calmly. "I got some water for you though if you want it." Ash held up a glass bottle with a cork.
"Thank you Ash." Lycus sighed as he took the bottle and sipped from it as a child would test a new drink.
"No prob boss." Ash said. "So, uh, bad dream huh?"
"Yes." Lycus muttered.
"Zoids?" Ash asked.
"How did..." Lycus started.
"I don't know, you just always seem... apprehensive around them." Ash said.
Silence filled the cockpit as the two plodded behind the large Gustav. Within an hour the group found a nice large wooded area to camp near. The Barrigator Brigades were hidden and the Zero and König Wolf which Wraith had commandeered were nearby on an almost constant patrol while the Cannon Tortoise and Gustav rested just outside the woods. As the Liger Zero came in to rest for the night Lycus was busy finishing a small lesson with Tari.
"So much has happened in only two days..." Revenant commented as he boiled a nice soup to go with the deer that Ash had caught for the group.
"Time's funny that way." Ash snickered as best a skeleton could.
"Hey boss, want us to join Wraith on patrol?" Frank asked.
"No, he can handle it." Nami grumbled. "I have never met a more obstinate, arrogant, insufferable jerk!"
"Have you looked in a mirror." Lycus said with a joking smile.
"I'm not in the mood." Nami snapped. "He said I was slowing him down..."
"Maybe you should practice piloting the Zero then." Ash said.
"I pilot it whenever I'm not sleeping, hello running for our lives!" Nami snapped at the skeleton.
"Technically, you're not piloting it." Lycus said. "Liger Zero is special, you can't just tell it what to do. You have to respect it, treat it as if it were a part of your family, even an extension of yourself. It lives and thinks just as much as you." As if to punctuate Lycus' statement the Liger roared loudly as the sun set.
"Whatever." Nami groaned as she sat next to Tari. "So what'd you learn today; how to kill someone with a single word?"
"No." Tari was disappointed. "He's only teaching me basic magic until I'm sixteen."
"She needs to be able to master the basics and some advanced skills before she can hope to master even simple necromantic spells." Lycus smiled. "She also has a lot of work ahead of her."
"But summoning Shey was so easy." Tari moaned.
"Summoning one's first familiar is always easy as it never goes beyond the abstract." Tsurellis came out of the Gustav. "Tari should probably get inside..."
"Incoming?" Ash hopped to his feet,
"Command Wolves and a König." Tsurellis said. "You coming too Lycus?"
"Yes I am." Lycus gathered his materials together and headed into the Gustav without a single word after that.
"You guys should probably get ready." Tsurellis said.
"Right; guys lets get to it." Nami popped up, "How do these guys find us?"
"You're joking right?" Ash asked in a condescending tone. "You think we just blend in with giant metal animals walking the land? Any village would have non stop chatter if they so much as saw our shadows."
Nami just growled in frustration and stomped to the Liger Zero.
"I bet she has a mental brake down within the week." Frank blinked with a smile.
"Ha, you're too kind; I give her three days." Ash laughed as the two Barrigator pilots made their way to their zoids. "If not tonight."
Meanwhile across the plains the leader of an elite zoid corps, the pilot of the König Wolf, was marching his men foreword at a steady pace, unfortunately the mage Torin was slowing the group down.
"Mage Torin, I advise you to keep pace with the company." The leader snarled into his communications.
"Captain Morello I am more than capable of handling my own pace, thank you very much." Torin's smug face appeared on screen and then immediately recoiled. "By the Seven Scepters!"
"I told you not to open visuals with me you moron!" Morello shouted as he closed the link and recoiled his scared face into darkness. "Now keep pace you bloody mage!"
"Y-yes, right away." Torin fell into a steady pace with the Command Wolves and Morello let a cruel smile slip onto his lips. His distaste for mages made this mission more of a hassle than anything else, but orders were orders and his ruler was not the kind of man to tolerate a single soldier's complaints, even if the king also agreed.
"All right men, here's where we divide and conquer. Torin, keep that Liger Zero busy while my men reduce the rest to scrap." Morello commanded from the König Wolf as it leaped to a higher position. "When they scatter I'll bring them down."
Torin and the group acknowledged the order with a simple grunt. Torin quickly led the men and the Command Wolves into the clearing, on the opposite side of which was the Gustav and Liger Zero.
"This will be simple, and I'll pay that girl back for damaging my precious Breaker..." Torin grinned as he opened communications with the Command Wolves. "Break off and attack, now!"
Nami barely had time to react as the Command Wolves stormed down on her and the Gustav. She couldn't believe the number of the command wolves, she counted at least twenty coming from each side and the Geno Breaker charging in from the front.
"By the gods..." Nami panicked. "We're going to die!"
"HEY!" Ash was forcing several Command Wolves back with Frank's help. "Get these guys quick!"
"Where's that damn ghost when you need him?" Frank shouted as several Command Wolves slammed into his side. He managed to grab and twist the leg off of one.
Soon Nami and the group found themselves backed against the Gustav with little hope. The Command Wolves had herded them into a small area where they could not fight back.
"Should I hit the button now?" Tsurellis asked with a yawn from within the Gustav.
"Go right ahead." Lycus smiled as his apprentice simply looked on in confusion. "Mess with a Metal Empire Zoid, please we dare you." Lycus said to no one as Tsurellis pressed a large blue button. Soon the Gustav shook with a violent force and shed a small section of it's armor from which a large gattling gun poked out of.
"What is that?" One of the Command Wolf pilots asked before the large gun began to tear through the large group of zoids with little problem. Soon only a few remaining Command Wolves stood next to the shocked and awed Geno Breaker.
"That's NOT POSSIBLE!" Torin shouted from within his zoid.
"Kids these days..." Tsurellis smiled.
"Ain't they a trip?" Lycus joined in the smile.
"No!" Torin shouted as he brought forth his zoid's large blades. "I'll kill you!" He charged towards the Gustav, but tripped when Ash threw his Barrigator's tail in the way of the Geno Breaker's legs. Nami immediately followed up with a savage claw attack to the Breaker's side armor. "Morello get this psychotic female off of me!" Torin shouted into his communicator.
On a hill far from the battle, but not to far to be out of range, Morello sat with his König Wolf and aimed his sniper rifle carefully. He still couldn't fully believe that the Gustav had a hidden weapon inside it, and worse yet it had flattened most of his men in mere seconds. As he took his aim he became aware of a strange sensation, a sensation he rarely felt. He had become someone else's prey. Without a second thought he dropped his aim and quickly rolled to his right, which spared him an attack from a solid white König Wolf. He marveled at the purity of the zoid, completely bare of armaments and he could definitely respect an pilot capable of sneaking up on him, but he also had a mission to complete.
"Identify yourself." Morello commanded, a visual communication opened and for once Morello was shocked by what he saw. A pitch black cockpit with two glowing blue orbs greeted him. A sinister laugh followed as the obscured pilot spoke.
"You shouldn't have shot down my Eagle..." It hissed in anger.
"Nobody could survive the wreck I left that thing in." Morello thought as he heard the voice. "What are you?"
"What am I indeed..." The voice trailed as the video feed began to shake and fade, then finally it cut off completely.
Morello then watched in complete horror as pure black tendrils sprouted from the White König's shadow and began to pull the beautiful zoid into the ground. Soon more tendrils sprouted and forced the zoid to it's haunches and then it was completely absorbed in the pitch of the tendrils.
"What..." Morello could not even find the words to describe what he was seeing.
"I give you..." The video feed re-established and Morello let his eye very briefly wander to see the ghostly form the piloted the Wolf, then his eyes shot forward again as the blob of black broke and a warped and twisted form crawled forward. "...The König Beast."
The zoid that was once a pure König Wolf was now twisted. It's white armor was now a warped and hollow black, the pure red eyes now a vicious and sickly blue. The claws once merely dangerous were now glowing with a deadly white hue. What colors on the Wolf that weren't twisted to black were some shade of blue-green. Morello could also clearly see a new weapon mounted on the Wolf's back, but could not discern it's function.
"I think it is time for you to die..." It was the last thing Morello heard before the flash of the dangerous claws ripped his zoid's head from it's body.