Far beyond the Eastern edge of the Equipoise Forest— where even the most veteran outdoorsmen would hesitate to travel to— the once vibrant and dense flora along the fertile ground of the woods began to transition into a more rocky terrain, where the towering trees would become more sparse, and the diversity of the vegetation would begin differentiating to that of the "habitable" rim of the area.
The deeper one would travel through the mountainous terrain, the more dangerous the vertical landscape would become; skeletal remains of wildlife could be found in abundance between the fissures of the gray, rocky ground— the surface of their bones scorched black, as the temperature radiating deep within the crevices of the dry Earth rose to the atmosphere.
With ash raining down on the hellish landscape, one would think to find refuge underneath the surface of the gray, rocky terrain itself. However, almost every habitual cavern and underground cave was occupied heavily by the nearly unbreakable roots that bore deep beneath the terrain— the colossal extensions of the surrounding forest transferring the warmth and nutrient-filled ash back into the flourishing woods, that were circling around the nightmarish landscape.
With the two polar opposite ecosystems working together in harmony to sustain life for those within the liveable parts of the Equipoise Forest, one would wonder why anyone would choose to venture out to the sizzling and ash-ridden grounds of such a hostile environment— where temperatures reached upwards of one hundred degrees Celsius during the day, and sixty degree Celsius during the night.
That's what the two unlucky bandits thought to themselves, at least; as they stood guard behind four-foot tall slats of horizontal rocks— crossbows in hand, while the heat of the hellish surface seeped through the windy cavern they were instructed to monitor access control of.
Drenched in sweat with most of his leather armor and chainmail set off to the side, the bandit on the right side of the cavern shook his head to himself as he took a puff from his pipe.
"This is fucking bullocks, Reggie," the blond man with a thick, scraggly beard complained bitterly— letting out a low groan of dismay, while trying to calm his nerves by taking a deep puff of tobacco.
Across the mostly flat surface of the path down the cavern that cut through the slate they were positioned behind on opposing sides, a dark-skinned man with a bald head glistening with sweat turned to glare exasperatingly at the light-skinned smoker— the orange light of the torches that had mounted along the walls of the cavern illuminating the inside of their sauna-like guard post.
"Shit man, tell me about it…! Can't believe I got stuck out here with your dumbass, while everyone else is inside where it's cold— apparent-fucking-ly," Reggie complained with a scornful voice, as he let out a shaky breath of air before wiping his forehead with a cloth soaked in drinking water from his canteen.
"Ya, I know right?! How the fuck does that even work?!" The blond, bearded man asked with an infuriated voice— blowing out a cloud of smoke from his cracked lips, before continuing to complain, "The sodding place a dwarven-bastard's dream— with all that metalworks shit they got lying around, you'd think it'd be hotter in there than it is out here!"
Shrugging his broad shoulders, Reggie shook his damped head in agreement. "Shit man, I don't even know… Everything about this goddamn job reeks of some grace-A bullshit, Jean."
Raising a brow at the dark-skinned man, the blond bearded-man nodded once at him with a perplexed expression across his face— one hand holding his piped and the other resting the butt of his crossbow against his shoulder.
"Such as?" Jean asked, before being met with an abrasive look of disbelief from his fellow bandit.
"The FUCK you meeean "such as"?!" Reggie demanded in an appalled voice, and stared expectantly at Jean— who in turn simply shrugged his shoulders back at the dark-skinned man. "A-Are you joking with me, or are you being fucking sincere?!"
"Just don't know what you mean is all; no need to get all fuckin' pissy about it," Jean replied nonchalantly, to which caused Reggie to respond to his naïveté with a palm to his face.
"Maaaaan, you're dumb ass hell," Reggie insulted with a disapproving tone in his voice— earning himself an amused chuckle from the lackadaisical bearded man. "Riddle me this, dipshit: who the hell hires a bunch of thieves and murderers?"
Raising a cheek and narrowing an eyelid at him, Jean let out a scoff as he shook his head at Reggie. "S'not as uncommon as you're making it out to be, lad; plenty of diplomats and explorers hire adventurers for security detail, all the bloody time."
"This ain't even remotely like that; like for one, we ain't even part of the guild, motherfucker!" Reggie exclaimed, and paused to pour some water onto the top of his white towel along his scalp, before continuing on with, "And two: the guy who hired us ain't some diplomat, or shit; he's a fucking evil weirdo, Jean! Ain't no way he's here for-"
Before the heated man could finish his rant, a gunshot rang out through the corridor— followed by the blond man dropping his pipe the moment he saw the top of his companion's head explode into a viscus mess that splattered against the rocky cave wall closest to him.
Mortified and suspended by disbelief, Jean stared with his jaw agape as the practically headless body of his companion stumbled clusimly a few paces towards him. By the time Reggie's lifeless body collapsed onto the cavern floor, a second shot had already rang out within the tunnel— the blond bearded-man being flung over onto his side, after a bullet found its way through his head as well.
Having used her magnified scope in combination with her natural nocturnal vision, Amerika ejected the brass casing of her fired-round onto the cave floor by pulling down the lever attached to the bottom of her rifle's custom firing mechanism— cycling her next round, before using their moment of breathing room to load two more rifle rounds into her firearm's loading point.
"Fockin' pricks— good bloody riddance to both of them," the goblin girl muttered remorselessly under her breath, before raising the sawed-off butt of her rifle up to her shoulder— looking through its magnified scope once more, while Ren stood beside her.
With both of them wearing leather suits of armor that Amerika had jury-rigged from salvaging what she could from the deceased tribal wolves, the only true difference in their attire that separate them from being perfectly uniformed were all the bandages that Ren still had wrapped around the top of his head, and around the parts of his body that were still in the process of fully healing.
"Right then… Onto phase two, Ren," Amerika muttered loudly enough for the boy beside her to hear— her attention focused mostly on the tight slit at the end of the tunnel that was just wide enough for an average human to slide in through.
"I'm gonna stay here, and give yew some cover while yew go over there— behind that big-arse rock barricade to yewr left," Amerika commanded with focus in her voice, before remembering to reassure him, "Ain't nuffin' gonna jump out and git yew, kid— not when I got me bloody barrel point at the only way in-and-out of this joint!"
Gripping the wooden handle of his .357 revolver with both hands, Ren raised his arms up while keeping his elbows close to his chest— just like how Amerika he taught him.
"Right…! Okay, got it," Ren replied with nervous excitement in his low-tone voice, and made sure that his iron sights along his firearm's barrel were focused on the horizontal fissure along the end the of the cavern, before power-walking toward the large slate of rock— the one specifically where the dark-skinned man had been behind.
Feeling the humid heat flowing in from the cavern's entrance blowing against his sweaty back, Ren let out an uncomfortable sigh as he kept his revolver aimed ahead of him— the dim light of the wall-mounted torches giving him only a limited field of vision.
With his heart racing and his endorphins flowing through his veins, the danger Ren felt after hearing a shot ring out from far behind his shoulder was invigorating to him.
'Someone was coming out of that hole?!' Ren thought to himself, as he sped up his pace until finally getting behind cover. Kneeling down at the edge of the large slate, Ren aimed his revolver out toward the horizontal fissure, where a corpse of a bow-wielding bandit lay along his side— most of his head missing, with his brains splattered against the adjacent wall.
"I-," Ren began, but quickly cut himself off the moment he remembered what Amerika had told him about hand signals.
So instead of telling her vocally, Ren kept his right hand on the grip of his revolver while raising his left arm behind the cover of the elongated slate of rock; forming a thumbs up with his raised hand, Ren then made a fist with his index finger out before swirling it in a circular motion.
'Shit, I'm surprised he remembered that one,' Amerika thought to herself— feeling proud of how quickly the child was able to learn from her— before making a mad dash to the four-foot tall boulder along the opposite side of him.
Hyper focused and unable to feel a twinge of pain in his body, Ren had enough spatial awareness to notice the large, slender man in black robes that attempted to use magic to sling himself out of the fissure at break-neck speed.
Drawing his revolver up to compensate for how fast the man was levitating past the walkway between the two boulders, Ren dry-pulled the trigger— causing the hammer of the revolver to slam against the primer of his .357 round.
Blowing the man's right knee clean off, Ren watched in seemingly slow motion as the bandit mage lost his concentration; resulting in his breaking, as his trajectory changed dramatically— causing him to slam against the cavern wall.
Before he could retaliate, Ren took aim at the hooded man's forehead; showing no mercy as he glared at the confused expression across the bandit's wide-eyed face, Ren fired another shot that sprayed the cavern wall in bone shrapnel, and bits of chunky gray matter.
"Nice work…!" Amerika complimented with a satisfied tone in her voice, as she came to a skidding halt once she got behind the other slate.
Signaling for him to keep his revolver aimed at the fissure-entrance, the goblin girl took a moment to open her duffel bag she had strapped across her small body. Retrieving a small cylindrical canister from her bag, Amerika pulled its steel pin before cocking it back over her shoulder.
Skillfully bouncing the canister against the inner wall of the fissure-entrance, Amerika used her sleight-of-hand to quickly insert two .357 rounds into her lever-action rifle, while the entrance became filled with a cloud of black smoke that was being blown through the tight-space.
Seconds later, two bandits came rushing out of the fissure along the end of the cavern— choking and gasping for air, and wildly searching through their tear-soaked eyes to locate them. Unfortunately for them, neither bandits ever got to see who had smoked them out; as after two clean shots in their throat and through their skull, the duo came collapsing onto the rocky floor.
"Reloading," Ren called out, but loud enough only so that Amerika could hear him; taking out four .357 rounds from his leather pouch attached to his belt, and popping out the revolver's cylinder to empty out the four empty cartilages inside— keeping his thumb pressed up against the two good bullets— before finally beginning to load the four rounds.
"Aye," she called back, and unslung her scoped rifle before taking the overwatch position— blasting the hand off a would-be bandit, who had tried foolishly testing the waters before being left with only a bloodied stump where his wrist had once been.
Hearing the bandit screaming profanities while retreating, Amerika took out agrenade from her duffle bag before signaling Ren to move from his position.
Giving her a thumbs up, Ren proceeded to sprint over to the fissure entrance with Amerika following closely behind him. Once they reached the entrance of the nearby foot-long crack along the cavern wall, Ren stuck his revolver out as far as he could behind the cover of the zig-zag tight-tunnel.
Firing two rounds in succession against the wall at the end of his barrel, Ren was able to ricochet both rounds off the rocky surface— erupting in more cries of gurgling death from around the corner.
Knowing what was just beyond the cleared out corner of the rocky fissure, Amerika hopped up over Ren's head; using the tight space to wall jump from corner-to-corner, the agile little goblin pulled the pin of her grenade, before chucking it as hard as she could from behind the last corner of the cavernous entryway.
"Shite, shite, SHITE…!" Ren heard Amerika curse loudly under her breath, and managed to hop up and grab her by the ankle before pulling her back behind the cover of the first inner wall of the fissure entrance.
With the black smoke of the now emptied canister having filled the rocky entrance hall where the zig-zag fissure along the cavern wall opened up, not a single soul amongst the twenty bandits posted outside the large, opened bunker door saw the grenade before it was too late.
Not only did the blast radius of the explosion send fragmented shards of steel across the entire span of the entry space, outside the bunker, but the chemical compound inside the grenade reacted to air itself— causing liquid napalm to engulf the entire area in hellfire.
Tapping on Ren's shoulder to signal him to follow her, Amerika slung her rifle over her back before whipping out her own revolver from her side-holster— leading the way through the tight fissure.
Following behind the goblin with his revolver drawn, Ren couldn't help but to feel a sense of pity for the thirty men around him that were all burning into charred heaps of shredded flesh; but then he remembered what they had done to Amerika, and suddenly he began to feel far less sympathy for the band of murderous rapists.
"Let 'em burn; it'll save us ammo," Amerika instructed, as she led the gray-haired child around the spots of burning napalm that were pooled up around the rocky floor— the black smoke of their canister and of melting bodies flowing up through the natural ventilation shafts that led up towards the hellish surface above.
Far within the expansive corridors of the labyrinthine bunker, the handless bandit came rushing through the automatic sliding door of the mainframe room; his panicked mind too filled with dread to take any notice of the various electronic towers, or large glowing monitors that were dispersed throughout the extremely cold room.
"J-Jag, JAG!" The brown-haired bandit with a missing hand called out in a confused, and agonized voice— whimpering to himself, as he approached the otherside of the room.
Turning away from the dark-hooded robed-figure, who was holding a spherical device shield in solid gold, the bandit leader glared at his handless subordinate through the slits of his metal helmet— his silhouette of his fully armored body illuminated by the glow of the monitor behind him and the hooded figure.
"Olaf? What did I say about intruding on my private matters?" The nearly nine foot man in spiked-metal armor asked in a deep, intimidating voice; the white, ivory horns of his helmet giving him a ruthless appearance, as he stared down at the handless bandit with his armored fingers tightening around the handle of his guardless greatsword.
Nursing his stump of a forearm closely to his chest, the agonized man grimaced at Jag's unnerving response to his intrusion. "Y…! Y-You s-said," the handless bandit stammered out pathetically, and trailed off into a whine before finally blathering out, "C-Come on man; d-don't be like that! I lost my fucking hand because of this shit— let me talk, PLEA-"
"-Spit it out, welp," the hulking bandit leader demanded, as he raised his nearly five-foot long greatsword effortlessly up— its long handle parallel from his armored hips, due to how short the ceiling rose.
Filled with dread after being reminded why he and the rest of Jag's crew feared him, the bandit's buckling knees stiffened as the whatever color he still had in his flushed face vanished in an instant.
"I…! Y-Yeah, b-boss— r-right…!" He stuttered, before dry swallowing the lump in the back of his quivering throat. "T-That lil' goblin bitch— t-the one we all had a bit of fun with…!"
Seemingly amused by the memory his terrified underling stirred up, Jag let out a deep chuckle before relying, "Ha, ha…! Ah, yes— HER…! Am I to assume that she's the one behind all of this commotion?"
"C-Commotion…?!" The bandit uttered out with narrowed eyelids, but dared not voice his disbelief loud enough for his boss to hear him. "Y-Yeah, Jag; it's her alright, but…! S-She's got a zombie with her, or something undead!"
"If you're all struggling to put down a three foot-tall fuck-toy and her shambling companion, then nothing of value was truly lost on this night," Jag declared with genuine malice for his men, which struck a chord with the dismembered bandit.
"I-It ain't that kind of fucking zombie, you metal fuc-," the infuriated man shouted back in retaliation, and immediately regretted doing so the moment Jag took his left hand off of his greatsword to cast a bolt of fire at him.
"GWAHHHHH, F-FUUUUCKK— FUUUU-AHHHHHH!" The dismembered bandit shrieked in absolute agony, before falling to the ground and flailing what remained of his body on the cold-steel floor.
Letting out an amused chuckle at the sight of seeing his subordinate burning to death several meters away from him, Jag's glowing red eyes gleamed with intriguement as he gazed up at the smoke emanating from the bandit's ignited body.
Watching the way the ventilation fan in the ceiling sucked away the unpleasant odors and unwanted heat from the room, the bandit leader hummed bemusingly to himself as he turned around to face back towards the hooded figure in the silver zipped-up robe.
"It's rather mind boggling how innovative mankind once was— even being here myself, it pains me to admit just how overwhelming all of this "technology" is for me," Jag mused with a deep, fascinated voice.
"Archaic— that is to say, the structure of this vault is," the hooded figure remarked in a condescending voice. "The amenities this underground facility hosts are indeed advanced— when compared to what's commonly available in this day of age, that is."
Scoffing in a low growl, Jag shook his large head at what the six foot-tall hooded man had just told him. "Unless you intend to unravel the mysteries within that orb, then I have nothing else to compare all that I see before me," the bandit leader remarked dismissively, while relaxing his posture as he turned his attention toward the large monitor above the now empty slot— where the gold-shielded device had once been inserted into.
"I might not understand what this bunker— or "vault", as you've labeled it— is fully capable of, YET. But what I know for certain is that the key to allow my lowly gang of thugs to ascend into a formidable army, is hidden within these apparatuses," Jag enthused with an arrogant voice, as he gestured at the sleek, metal towers that hummed gently in the cool room.
"Everyone of those disposable morons are fixated on what lies beyond the sealed doors to the armory— too blindsided by the appeal of their advanced weaponry, to even consider the fact that none of them have the knowledge to operate such tiny little tools," Jag continued, while paying no mind to the way the hooded man was opening a portal of swirling purple and black light.
"Your ambitions are your own to pursue; our business here has concluded, as far as I'm concerned," the hooded man said factually without any recognition for the bandit leader's grand scheme of creating an army for himself.
Not phased by the hooded individual's lack of interest in his plans, the nine-foot tall man turned his head over his jagged shoulder-armor, and watched as the hooded figure stepped through the portal with the spherical device in tow.
"Indubitably so, Completionist— indubitably so," Jag said agreeingly, and turned his head away from the direction of where the portal vanished. Saying nothing else, the heavily armored man began stomping his metal boots towards the exit of the mainframe room— crushing the charred corpse of his underling along the way, beneath his heel.