Running the Gauntlet - Part 4
Jan. 3rd, 2016 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rubyrubyrubyRuby inserts herself near where Liya and Maggie have set off. The mask at her neck remains there. Quite ineffectually. Bouncing on the heels of her feet, she watches Maggie and Liyandra head off, eyes feeling like they're drying out she hasn't blinked nearly enough times. "...Can't 'it oos. Too fast. Can't 'it oos. Too fast..." She pulls her headband forward over her cornrows, feathers fanning and splaying back from behind her ears. Ruby smacks at her thighs and then knuckles the major muscle vigorously. Feels real. Feels good. "It's just noise! Noise can't 'urt!" she calls after the femmes first into the gauntlet. "Run for your loife! And then she's bounding in, shoving and pawing past Merrisol if he's still rearguard with an exhuberant shove. Y'know, for luck."
The noise does reach a crescendo. Two dueling symphonies of mechanized madness locking into hardpoints and shoved along rails into position. Chambers loaded and slammed shut. Deep wide barrels erected with juttering clunk-clanks. Massive leaning windmills on wheels that are thrown into a crazy spin. Many many instrument of war, rather than music, that are all tuned up and ready to play a lunatic and deafening song.
RPG: Merrisol challenges a difficulty of 12. Merrisol chooses Resolve and the gifts PHY-ST, STY-CC, and STY-SW. Merrisol fails.
Merrisol's obscured head swivels to the left and right as he tries to adjust to the slightly smokey view through the round glass lenses. The vista shakes around him, partly from the uneven terrain underfoot, but also from the distant rumbling as the machinery of war revs into motion. He checks his forward gait at the rude sideswipe and tracks Ruby's gangling lope ahead, his 'whaaat?' look lost behind the inhuman mask. Fixing on Liyandra and Maggie next, he offers a sharp nod to the pact of mutual assistance but draws a filtered breath of grim gratitude when they drop down into the relative cover of the first trench. He alters his steps further afield, putting real distance between their positions for no doubt brashly protective reasons. Clods of dirt rain into the squared U-bend of the trench as he skirts around it to stay aboveground in a charge towards the first of many obstructions, a shelled-out artillery fortification. Scattered sand drums, their broken edges fanning upwards in deadly blackened claws, describe the long-ago blast that ripped apart the shelter.
The first shells have begun whistling overhead as the sides begin their mindless bombardment of the enemy borders, and even though his position isn't being specifically targeted, the traveling concussive waves try to knock him off his feet, the oppressive din is like nothing produced in Amber except perhaps within a volcanic forge. Gasping in the confines of his mask, he grabs a toppled wall and vaults over into the exposed bunker, casting about to assess the possible exits and getting a bleak lensful of the ragged old corpses of the gunners. They had been pinned down, the escape routes collapsed, poor unfortunate blighters. Knowing the others might make for this same shelter and fate after him sparks his horror into urgent determination. Attacking the far wall, he tests the give of various barrels, and then throws his shoulder into the gap he creates while heaving the debris aside. Clotted sand spills all around his legs, but a way is being opened to the next stretch of field. Almost. Nearly there. Then...
*BOOOM!* almost directly overhead, as shells from the opposing armies crash mid-air and detonate in a rippling shockwave full of shrapnel. The framework of Merri's efforts caves inwards, and he /just/ manages to get his arms braced upwards to keep the structure from doing the same to his head. The sand is still cascading freely as the wall comes down on that side, howling Beggie and All. At least he's created a wider escape passage than he originally intended?
RPG: Maggie challenges a difficulty of 10. Maggie chooses Resolve and the gifts BLD-OB and SKL-OB. Maggie succeeds.
Running the trench might have sounded like a grand idea when looked at from a distance. The reality is less easy and far more bleak. The trench is uneven, poorly constructed and a bit haphazard. The first problem she encounters is an area where the side facing the nearest military force has partially collapsed, narrowing an already limited avenue. Here, the brown earth dusted over with ash and a strange, black powder that smells of sulpher and rot. This last spills out of a complex gun still held in the hand of the youth who once wielded it. Beneath the slide, and off beyond, lie the broken bodies of the dead. Every few yards lies someone with a different cut to the uniform worn. Perhaps these were junior officers whose lives were cut short with those of their platoons. The smell in the trench is horrific as the remains are turned into futile furtilizer by the small worms and other vermin that live within the soil.
Squaring her shoulders, determination blazing fiercely within, Maggie takes the trench at as rapid a jog-trot as she can manage. Skirting a contraption that is part catapult, part rocket launcher, she feels compelled to hiss at the thing, but keeps her disquiet to herself. The footing in the trench is trecherous, with dips indicating where fox holes once kept soldiers safe and she wonders, idly, whether connecting the holes with the rest of the passage was a good idea or not. It certainly made it clear where the fighters were to anyone looking. Leaping over a body, she lands feet first in what might once have been his lunch though whether he had eaten it prior to dying or not is not something she pauses to check. The vile, nearly liquid stuff causes her to slide forward several feet, though she keeps upright all the while and manages to use the momentum gained to pick up her pace. Then, just around the next bend comes the end of this leg of their journey. They will need to climb out and enter the bunker where Merrisol is.
Overhead, the two rockets or shells or whatever, collide in that ear-deadening KABOOM. Startled, Maggie ducks, then looks wildly around to see if everyone is all in one piece.
RPG: Liyandra challenges a difficulty of 10. Liyandra chooses Resolve and the gifts PHY-KS and SUK-RH. Liyandra succeeds.
Liya is behind Maggie, though she has a double whammy (and perhaps not the only one). The scents in this place, and the visuals are enough that her keen senses are more than a little swamped. So she has to concentrate hard to keep from turning green. Thankfully, concentrating on running and moving through the trench is something that does in fact help her focus. Almost mesmerized by the very race, just moving as fast as she can, surviving this obstacle course - they have gas masks, this is a good thing!, Liya moves forward, following Maggie. Sprite, atop Liya's shoulders, makes herself as aerodynamic as she can, but that extra weight is felt, Liya's shoulders aching like nobody's business. She gets warning of the slippery spot, given Maggie's slide, so manages to miss it, her feet coming down on a more solid section of the floor. "Don't stop if you can help it," she calls to Maggie, her voice sounding very odd coming from that mask. And yet, it's all she can do to say that much, sure she's going to keel over any second. Sheer stubbornness is keeping her going right at hte moment.
RPG: Ruby challenges a difficulty of 12. Ruby chooses Force and the gift BLD-OB. Ruby fails.
Ruby has the flapping poncho of someone ahead of her for a moment. That's good because that means someone is blazing a trail. She can keep in their wake and have a moment to adapt if things get hairy. She's being outpaced though and her plans are wound up in a Tosser and lobbed Bog knows where. There's a route almost directly ahead that requires rising and charging across an expanse that has little cover. She's caught out there, a tall loping target, when the rounds come down in an initial checkerboard of strikes. Airbursts of shrapnel explode to her left and right, and almost comically keeps her initially upright after some concussive shoving back and forth. Ears ringing, she's absorbing more than just shockwaves as she drunkenly careens into a tangled bundle of thorny vines made of steel. Her body bounces after another nearby ground tremblor and she falls into a parallel trench system in no man's land dragging a wrapping of barbed wire along with her as an accessory.
The bunker where Merrisol is has become little more than a pit with a couple of standing corners. The newly toppled wall is a scrabbling mound of sand, burst sand drums, sand, smoking metal shards, sand, and Merri. One arm juts out of the debris, searching blindly for a steady handhold by which to haul himself out. Canned curses spit through the layer of sand on his head, as the gas mask works to protect him from smothering. Ahead, the gap in the fortifications looks out over the interminable tract of No Femme's Land, likewise scorched and broken and being bombed all to heck. A tumbleweed strangely resembling Ruby in a barbed-wire slinky bounces into view and then into the next trench... how surreal.
RPG: Gaval challenges a difficulty of 12. Gaval chooses Grace and the gift STY-AE. Gaval almost succeeds.
The half squating and running figure of Gaval pops up from.. why and the hell was he in another trench? Perhaps a wrong turn back there. Needless to say the mask wearing man with the swords on his back is zig-zagging and doing it reasonably well. Two steps forward and one to the side. Anotherr three forward and then turn sharply. Almost completely random. Bullets bit the dirt about him and he bulls one of the blades from his back as he nears the entagled Ruby. The sword raises and then there is a motion that goes through his form. Like getting punched in the back and he falls forward in a half roll and lays still, bleeding from a bullet wound in his off arm. "Well...shit.." He gasps.
RPG: Maggie challenges a difficulty of 12. Maggie chooses Resolve and the gifts BLD-OB and SKL-OB. Maggie succeeds.
Don't stop moving. Good advice. Maggie tries to take it. Whirling back to face forward again, she grits her teeth and leaps up the side of the trench. Using the clenched fist of an ex-warrior, held in place by his or her armor, she boosts up out of the hole. She intends aiming for the bunker, but it is no longer where it was. In its place is a pile of rubble with Merrisol's hand and arm sticking up out of it. She sways as shock paints a grim picture of her love buried alive, joining the masses of dead lying strewn about the field, "no..." The short, sharp cry is cut off as she notes that the limb is moving. In this place of no magic, limbs don't wave just for the fun of it. He's alive. Her flood of relief is also cut off as she hears Gaval's voice. Torn! Growling in consternation, she whispers, "I trust you, Kerf." To... use that fine brain of his to get himself out of the silt-in? Apparently. Blowing the questing hand a kiss, she turns on her heals and darts off toward the apparent collision between Gaval and Ruby.
RPG: Liyandra challenges a difficulty of 12. Liyandra chooses Resolve and the gifts PHY-KS and SUK-RH. Liyandra succeeds.
Liya is behind Maggie, shorter, so it's a tougher scrabble up for the Sukhoti, the Wyvern actually takes to the air, but not much, using her wings to give the woman a bit of a break from carrying her. For all that it helps. Up, and out, that same hand working to also give Liya her opportunity to get out, and then she too is getting that horrorstruck look on her face, as she sees the ex-bunker. "Volcano goddess," is what comes out of her. Sheer shock, and she might scream that, because those earlier shots - deafened. Who knows how loud she's talking. She scans over to see Maggie going to help Ruby and Gaval, and makes her poor aching muscles move forward, but she stops to watch Kerf, ready to go give him a pull, if she can. Sprite comes to land beside her on a metal bar, still not trying to get that mask off. "I really hope we don't have to come back the same way."
Ruby rolls about in agony. Now that the shock of getting rocked about by things exploding is wearing off, the pain of many hot metal shards sizzling in her meat is more prominent. She groans into a muddy water-filled depression, half submerging her head and making sickly brown bubbles. Her poncho is is swiss cheese and ragged. The perilous place they're in is definitely not safe. Things still zipping through the air like bees on crack. Thunder everywhere. She rolls back and forth and gets onto all fours, pressing barbed wire into one side of her and collecting around her left arm and leg. She nearly collects Gaval in in while she whines in pain. "G...Gaval? Can't stay...C'mon..." She spits and her teeth are covered in flecks of blood. The side of her head looks like it got a dose of buckshot.
Something creeps towards the hellish stretch of trenches and craters and destroyed equipment. The seemingly random peppering of shells has been shifted to something that /creeps/. It's not as fast and chaotic and staccato as the air bursts. It's a rolling barrage of ground that's mulched when organized artillery is sent from either side. The left certainly has good timing. The right isn't quite on schedule, but both sides are settling on trading cruelty. And eye for an eye. Bomb for bomb.
The waving limb ranges out further and presently Merrisol grasps an iron trellis that used to hold the ammo supply. Good thing nobody ended up using that opening in the bunker wall, since the pile of rubble starts to heave and throb like a tectonic entity being birthed. A sand shower flows from Merri's back, hissing through the folds and tears of his burnt poncho, and much of the debris follows suit. Then he lifts his head, an alien profile thrusting forth to stare goggled-eyed at the harshly overcast sky. A long tinny gasp, as new air sucks in through the unclogged filter nozzle, and the man climbs and claws the rest of the way out. First thing he sees as he levels his regard is Maggie pelting across the open field towards the next trench. Then, knocked sideways by another concussive impact to the nearest enemy front, he finds himself half knelt before Sprite, and Liyandra not obeying her own advice. "Liya! Are you all right?" is all he gets to say, before the carpet bombing commences, shaking the very air around them with its deadly approach. The borders are lost behind the moving wall of thudding artillery fire, the way ahead to the castle is a rapidly narrowing channel, at least where one side is concerned. "Carp. We have to go." The cover of the next trench, where the others are holed up if luck be a lady. He stumbles up with a groan of effort, and throws his arm out to offer Sprite another perch to flounce upon. "Runrunrunrun!"
Gaval glances over at Ruby and grunts. He contemplates how nice it would be to lay there for awhile. Play dead. And yet booming is coming. Getting louder and lounder as the shots fire across the land towards them. Like invisible giants feet pounding out new holes. His hand turns and the starblad lifts and slides deftly between several of the loops of the metal thorns that cover Ruby. A sliding slice and the sharp blade sqweels through the pring steel of the thorns. Popping many of the coils free. "Life for the runners, Ruby!" And he rolls up to his feet and dashes for the next trench, arm bleeding as he goes.
Running is much easier up here where the ground is not squishy or up and down irritating. Until another crashing boom sends the earth teetering to the left. Maggie hop-skips to avoid sliding, for this upheaval is much like being on the deck of a ship mid-storm. Uncomfortably so, as the earth is not supposed to heave and sway this way. Spotting Gaval's blade squeeling through the metal obscenity covering Ruby, Maggie offers the pair a wan smile, utterly lost behind her mask. Life for the runners. Yeah, that's been a reoccuring theme of late. When the booms and buzzing bullets pause, she is almost ready to call it a blessing or a fair break, but that would be a lie considering what comes after. The steady advance of rubble creating carpet bombs is hardly encouraging. Looking over her shoulder, she spots Liya ans Sprite with Merrisol kneeling in front of their friend. Another wave of relief fills her when he rises and the two start to maybe head their way. With the bombs still heading their way. Gasping for air even with the masks on, Maggie tries to measure the advance against their position relative to their destination. Crud on a cracker. "Run!" Angling for the next trench, she screws her resolve to the sticking point and forces loudly protesting muscles to work once more. Once more, that is, until the next once more.
Liya signals, and Sprite stays in the air, but low, skimming the ground as she flies towards Maggie and Ruby. Liya mutters Sukhoti imprecations as she starts forward, feeling every muscle in her entire body, top to bottom. "Run," she says, and the slow steps become faster ones, as fear, adrenaline and relief that Kerf is still hanging in there all vie together for top spot in her exhausted brain. And then she's running, her feet light, even when the ground moves like storm tossed waves on a small boat. "Ruuuuunnnnnnnnn!" Her scream is used to give her impetus, racing along to the next time.
RPG: Ruby challenges a difficulty of 12. Ruby chooses Force and the gifts BLD-OB and PHY-UB. Ruby almost succeeds.
Ruby is hot on Gaval's heels after a rusty resuming of forward motion. Less lengths of that entangling stuff means less chance of tetanus and a better chance of not tangling up in a mess again. A few stubborn coils remain clasped like demented fashion accents around her thick thighs and arms. "Too early...fook'n too early! S'posed tah be more talkie talkie an 'ot wind!" She coughs and throws herself into the next length of trench. It's terrifying how the closer it gets, the worse it gets. This should be obvious, but the way it advances gives Ruby plenty of time to ramp up her own personal terror. She rapidly tries to think whether it's too late to turn back. The image of the Pattern tries to form in her brain, but it's rattled loose as doom encroaches. Run! OMB run. The barrage is almost on top of them and she looses her marbles runs along the trench rather than remain tucked along the side. If Gaval stops for breath there's a danger of being caught up or trampled. Keep running. Missing quite a few decorative feathers, she runs like a lunatic with her arse on fire. When there's an obstacle or body in the way, she throws herself at it like a battering ram. Friend or foe. She's smashing into and out of things as she picks up speed without grace or thought. Anything to try and beat the bombs coming.
She wings off a metal box with a hollow stem that looks like a mast, denting the metal and continuing on her way. There's another crash as she goes bodily through leaky sandbags blocking the end of one trench in an explosion of sand. It flies into her eyes and she stumbles like an enraged bull into the open. She's stitched up by an invisible sewing machine but keeping moving. Waving at the sudden worse-than-killer-wasp wounds and landing in yet another half-buried tomb of soldiers where she claws at herself frantically.
RPG: Merrisol challenges a difficulty of 12. Merrisol chooses Resolve and the gifts PAS-DE, STY-CC, and STY-SW. Merrisol succeeds.
With everyone yelling some variation of 'RUN!' within the same span of time, they're kind of lucky that there is a strafe-bombing in action. Neither side could possibly hear them in all the ruckus. And as far as running goes, it's not so much running anymore as it is bounding unfettered through a deranged funhouse complete with bouncy mats, teeter-totter floors, and pop-up obstacles. For every earth-shaking impact, there's a windmilling springboard leap over oil-spills and snaking barbed wires. Pounding alongside his fleet Sukhoti friend, Merrisol huffs in anticipation of sheltering in that next trench just a few dozen feet to eat up with their current breakneck pace. When suddenly... arrgh the others in their team burst forth like bunnies from a beaten bush, sprinting for the trench even further off. Life for the runners! But, at what cost to their sanity? "Bog onna /Bicycle/! C'mon!" Instead of sheltering, he chases after the others. They're not bunnies. They're lemmings! Outrunning the 'splosions only happens in the cinema, guys! "Gogogogo!" Through the closing window of doom, he sees other fortifications and wreckages exploding without need of shells. That'd be Ruby. "Cover ahead! Dive! Dive!" shouts the submariner, aptly.
RPG: Gaval challenges a difficulty of 12. Gaval chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-JN and STY-AE. Gaval almost succeeds.
Gaval is running for his life with this strange and unusual pain in his arm. There have been moments of fear in his life. And looking back on those he can remember he finds Ruby near most of those times. An interesting fact to explore later. If he survives this madness.
As quick as he is there is the panting presence of Ruby suddenly behind him. He jinks to the side to get out of her way lest he suddenly find her feet across his back. Another jink to the side to confuse those firing apon them both and then again aiming back towards the trench. He's close when he leaps, diving head first towards the trench. A random and miss-timed explosion lands behind him and the cuncussinve force pushes him much faster then what he planned. His feet fly into the air and head towards the ground. There is a painful whoomp as his back hits the far side of the trench and he slides down head first out of sight.
It is sort of amazing how fear can fog the brain but adrenaline can keep it clear. Or, maybe that is just the whoosh of dust across the lenses protecting her eyes doing the fogging and running full tilt through it clears it away. Looking from one side to the other, Maggie tries to keep track of where everyone is in the mad dash from one trench to the next. She is lucky in that she spots the mistimed blast that throws Gaval uncerimoniously into the trench. She jogs rather than jigs to avoid being blown back toward their most recently abandoned cover. A spray of schrappne ladden rubble is tossed her way as Ruby plows bodily through a wall. That brings Ruby into Maggie's focus and she calls, "Ruby, this way!" Toward the castle, sure, but in a more oblique fashion. Toward the trench first. Another glance finds Merrisol, Liya and Sprite. Whew. So far so good. Lifting a hand, she lets it fall again. If they can see it, maybe someone else can too. Dang it. With the bombs getting ever closer, she hears Merrisol's command to Dive and does so. Leaping over what might be part of an undercarriage of some long doomed run-about, she dives head first into the trench, tucking into a roll that brings her to her knees near Gaval. Spinning, she watches for the others, still too shell-shocked to wonder if the man next to her is all right.
Liya concentrates on one foot after the other. After the other. Even sprite is giving her chirrups of advice, coaxing her to keep going. Because the little wyvern is not a happy creature in this mess. If she figures out who is responsible for this, she might have to bite them. There's a jig, a jag, and a skidding wobbly movement that is none of the above, as Liya keepds going. There's that shout to dive, and hopefully her ears are working enough to hear it. Or her eyes through the mask to see it, but in any event, Liya races like a madwoman over cut glass, and eventually gets to where she can dive into the trench, and hope to the volcano goddess that the landing is at least ... non-fatal.
The barrage comes closer, changing the landscape once again in its wake. Exhuming bodies: Those that got an early retirement. The foulness adds another layer of ick-icing to the transformed stretch of land. Gouts of gore plume amidst dirt and poisoned water. An awful aerosol of decaying matter to go along with the big clumps to revolt the senses. Those of keen observation will note something unfortunate of the unearthed bodies in passing: Some wear gas masks quite similar to the group. Not quite as whole though. The rubbery substance is patchy. Dissolved by something. The barrage passes right in the Runners section and fate has a field day. The thunderous impacts punch with almost grid-like precision. Cover providing some mercy and the Reaper ready to harvest anyone above ground. The upheaval tries to rattle them to pieces, throw them about and is committed to moving onwards. After another 60 meters it ends with drill-like precision, though what's left of mother nature once again writhes before being allowed to settle.
Ruby huddles with herself in a corner of the darkened trench while death approaches. There's pain. But the psychological shell-shock trauma is getting front-row seating now. Squinching up her eyes tightly, oozing from wounds, she's trying to protect the important bits. Beneath a layer of caked mud and other fluids, a faint glow tries to project itself from somewhere at her sternum. It brightens with every spasm of pain that that thrums through Ruby. Her hands drag clawlike from her face and they move jerkily towards the odd glow. The urge to use it is quite strong.
That moment of mental stillness when you look around and can account for three out of four Horsemen in the fog of viscera and sulphur. Merrisol is certain he is not going to make it, even as Liyandra hurls herself on ahead and tumbles into the trench. The pulverised ground rises into the air all around him, mere paces away from relative safety. He is weightless, legs pumping futilely in space, a suffocating pressure enfolding his joints, compressing his chest. Through the smoke, he glimpses Maggie staring up from the dugout, so close he might stretch out and touch her cheek. And so, he does. The turbulence without resumes within, as he grabs up his wife in a tenacious hug and curls down into the muddy recess of the wall beside Ruby, Gaval, Liyandra, and Sprite, while the world dissolves and floats and reforms around them. As the last potshots begin to die off, he is amazed by the muted sound of his own shuddering laughter bouncing off the grimy walls of the trench. "Ohhh no, no, no.. this is /not/ fun, damn it..!"
The noise does reach a crescendo. Two dueling symphonies of mechanized madness locking into hardpoints and shoved along rails into position. Chambers loaded and slammed shut. Deep wide barrels erected with juttering clunk-clanks. Massive leaning windmills on wheels that are thrown into a crazy spin. Many many instrument of war, rather than music, that are all tuned up and ready to play a lunatic and deafening song.
RPG: Merrisol challenges a difficulty of 12. Merrisol chooses Resolve and the gifts PHY-ST, STY-CC, and STY-SW. Merrisol fails.
Merrisol's obscured head swivels to the left and right as he tries to adjust to the slightly smokey view through the round glass lenses. The vista shakes around him, partly from the uneven terrain underfoot, but also from the distant rumbling as the machinery of war revs into motion. He checks his forward gait at the rude sideswipe and tracks Ruby's gangling lope ahead, his 'whaaat?' look lost behind the inhuman mask. Fixing on Liyandra and Maggie next, he offers a sharp nod to the pact of mutual assistance but draws a filtered breath of grim gratitude when they drop down into the relative cover of the first trench. He alters his steps further afield, putting real distance between their positions for no doubt brashly protective reasons. Clods of dirt rain into the squared U-bend of the trench as he skirts around it to stay aboveground in a charge towards the first of many obstructions, a shelled-out artillery fortification. Scattered sand drums, their broken edges fanning upwards in deadly blackened claws, describe the long-ago blast that ripped apart the shelter.
The first shells have begun whistling overhead as the sides begin their mindless bombardment of the enemy borders, and even though his position isn't being specifically targeted, the traveling concussive waves try to knock him off his feet, the oppressive din is like nothing produced in Amber except perhaps within a volcanic forge. Gasping in the confines of his mask, he grabs a toppled wall and vaults over into the exposed bunker, casting about to assess the possible exits and getting a bleak lensful of the ragged old corpses of the gunners. They had been pinned down, the escape routes collapsed, poor unfortunate blighters. Knowing the others might make for this same shelter and fate after him sparks his horror into urgent determination. Attacking the far wall, he tests the give of various barrels, and then throws his shoulder into the gap he creates while heaving the debris aside. Clotted sand spills all around his legs, but a way is being opened to the next stretch of field. Almost. Nearly there. Then...
*BOOOM!* almost directly overhead, as shells from the opposing armies crash mid-air and detonate in a rippling shockwave full of shrapnel. The framework of Merri's efforts caves inwards, and he /just/ manages to get his arms braced upwards to keep the structure from doing the same to his head. The sand is still cascading freely as the wall comes down on that side, howling Beggie and All. At least he's created a wider escape passage than he originally intended?
RPG: Maggie challenges a difficulty of 10. Maggie chooses Resolve and the gifts BLD-OB and SKL-OB. Maggie succeeds.
Running the trench might have sounded like a grand idea when looked at from a distance. The reality is less easy and far more bleak. The trench is uneven, poorly constructed and a bit haphazard. The first problem she encounters is an area where the side facing the nearest military force has partially collapsed, narrowing an already limited avenue. Here, the brown earth dusted over with ash and a strange, black powder that smells of sulpher and rot. This last spills out of a complex gun still held in the hand of the youth who once wielded it. Beneath the slide, and off beyond, lie the broken bodies of the dead. Every few yards lies someone with a different cut to the uniform worn. Perhaps these were junior officers whose lives were cut short with those of their platoons. The smell in the trench is horrific as the remains are turned into futile furtilizer by the small worms and other vermin that live within the soil.
Squaring her shoulders, determination blazing fiercely within, Maggie takes the trench at as rapid a jog-trot as she can manage. Skirting a contraption that is part catapult, part rocket launcher, she feels compelled to hiss at the thing, but keeps her disquiet to herself. The footing in the trench is trecherous, with dips indicating where fox holes once kept soldiers safe and she wonders, idly, whether connecting the holes with the rest of the passage was a good idea or not. It certainly made it clear where the fighters were to anyone looking. Leaping over a body, she lands feet first in what might once have been his lunch though whether he had eaten it prior to dying or not is not something she pauses to check. The vile, nearly liquid stuff causes her to slide forward several feet, though she keeps upright all the while and manages to use the momentum gained to pick up her pace. Then, just around the next bend comes the end of this leg of their journey. They will need to climb out and enter the bunker where Merrisol is.
Overhead, the two rockets or shells or whatever, collide in that ear-deadening KABOOM. Startled, Maggie ducks, then looks wildly around to see if everyone is all in one piece.
RPG: Liyandra challenges a difficulty of 10. Liyandra chooses Resolve and the gifts PHY-KS and SUK-RH. Liyandra succeeds.
Liya is behind Maggie, though she has a double whammy (and perhaps not the only one). The scents in this place, and the visuals are enough that her keen senses are more than a little swamped. So she has to concentrate hard to keep from turning green. Thankfully, concentrating on running and moving through the trench is something that does in fact help her focus. Almost mesmerized by the very race, just moving as fast as she can, surviving this obstacle course - they have gas masks, this is a good thing!, Liya moves forward, following Maggie. Sprite, atop Liya's shoulders, makes herself as aerodynamic as she can, but that extra weight is felt, Liya's shoulders aching like nobody's business. She gets warning of the slippery spot, given Maggie's slide, so manages to miss it, her feet coming down on a more solid section of the floor. "Don't stop if you can help it," she calls to Maggie, her voice sounding very odd coming from that mask. And yet, it's all she can do to say that much, sure she's going to keel over any second. Sheer stubbornness is keeping her going right at hte moment.
RPG: Ruby challenges a difficulty of 12. Ruby chooses Force and the gift BLD-OB. Ruby fails.
Ruby has the flapping poncho of someone ahead of her for a moment. That's good because that means someone is blazing a trail. She can keep in their wake and have a moment to adapt if things get hairy. She's being outpaced though and her plans are wound up in a Tosser and lobbed Bog knows where. There's a route almost directly ahead that requires rising and charging across an expanse that has little cover. She's caught out there, a tall loping target, when the rounds come down in an initial checkerboard of strikes. Airbursts of shrapnel explode to her left and right, and almost comically keeps her initially upright after some concussive shoving back and forth. Ears ringing, she's absorbing more than just shockwaves as she drunkenly careens into a tangled bundle of thorny vines made of steel. Her body bounces after another nearby ground tremblor and she falls into a parallel trench system in no man's land dragging a wrapping of barbed wire along with her as an accessory.
The bunker where Merrisol is has become little more than a pit with a couple of standing corners. The newly toppled wall is a scrabbling mound of sand, burst sand drums, sand, smoking metal shards, sand, and Merri. One arm juts out of the debris, searching blindly for a steady handhold by which to haul himself out. Canned curses spit through the layer of sand on his head, as the gas mask works to protect him from smothering. Ahead, the gap in the fortifications looks out over the interminable tract of No Femme's Land, likewise scorched and broken and being bombed all to heck. A tumbleweed strangely resembling Ruby in a barbed-wire slinky bounces into view and then into the next trench... how surreal.
RPG: Gaval challenges a difficulty of 12. Gaval chooses Grace and the gift STY-AE. Gaval almost succeeds.
The half squating and running figure of Gaval pops up from.. why and the hell was he in another trench? Perhaps a wrong turn back there. Needless to say the mask wearing man with the swords on his back is zig-zagging and doing it reasonably well. Two steps forward and one to the side. Anotherr three forward and then turn sharply. Almost completely random. Bullets bit the dirt about him and he bulls one of the blades from his back as he nears the entagled Ruby. The sword raises and then there is a motion that goes through his form. Like getting punched in the back and he falls forward in a half roll and lays still, bleeding from a bullet wound in his off arm. "Well...shit.." He gasps.
RPG: Maggie challenges a difficulty of 12. Maggie chooses Resolve and the gifts BLD-OB and SKL-OB. Maggie succeeds.
Don't stop moving. Good advice. Maggie tries to take it. Whirling back to face forward again, she grits her teeth and leaps up the side of the trench. Using the clenched fist of an ex-warrior, held in place by his or her armor, she boosts up out of the hole. She intends aiming for the bunker, but it is no longer where it was. In its place is a pile of rubble with Merrisol's hand and arm sticking up out of it. She sways as shock paints a grim picture of her love buried alive, joining the masses of dead lying strewn about the field, "no..." The short, sharp cry is cut off as she notes that the limb is moving. In this place of no magic, limbs don't wave just for the fun of it. He's alive. Her flood of relief is also cut off as she hears Gaval's voice. Torn! Growling in consternation, she whispers, "I trust you, Kerf." To... use that fine brain of his to get himself out of the silt-in? Apparently. Blowing the questing hand a kiss, she turns on her heals and darts off toward the apparent collision between Gaval and Ruby.
RPG: Liyandra challenges a difficulty of 12. Liyandra chooses Resolve and the gifts PHY-KS and SUK-RH. Liyandra succeeds.
Liya is behind Maggie, shorter, so it's a tougher scrabble up for the Sukhoti, the Wyvern actually takes to the air, but not much, using her wings to give the woman a bit of a break from carrying her. For all that it helps. Up, and out, that same hand working to also give Liya her opportunity to get out, and then she too is getting that horrorstruck look on her face, as she sees the ex-bunker. "Volcano goddess," is what comes out of her. Sheer shock, and she might scream that, because those earlier shots - deafened. Who knows how loud she's talking. She scans over to see Maggie going to help Ruby and Gaval, and makes her poor aching muscles move forward, but she stops to watch Kerf, ready to go give him a pull, if she can. Sprite comes to land beside her on a metal bar, still not trying to get that mask off. "I really hope we don't have to come back the same way."
Ruby rolls about in agony. Now that the shock of getting rocked about by things exploding is wearing off, the pain of many hot metal shards sizzling in her meat is more prominent. She groans into a muddy water-filled depression, half submerging her head and making sickly brown bubbles. Her poncho is is swiss cheese and ragged. The perilous place they're in is definitely not safe. Things still zipping through the air like bees on crack. Thunder everywhere. She rolls back and forth and gets onto all fours, pressing barbed wire into one side of her and collecting around her left arm and leg. She nearly collects Gaval in in while she whines in pain. "G...Gaval? Can't stay...C'mon..." She spits and her teeth are covered in flecks of blood. The side of her head looks like it got a dose of buckshot.
Something creeps towards the hellish stretch of trenches and craters and destroyed equipment. The seemingly random peppering of shells has been shifted to something that /creeps/. It's not as fast and chaotic and staccato as the air bursts. It's a rolling barrage of ground that's mulched when organized artillery is sent from either side. The left certainly has good timing. The right isn't quite on schedule, but both sides are settling on trading cruelty. And eye for an eye. Bomb for bomb.
The waving limb ranges out further and presently Merrisol grasps an iron trellis that used to hold the ammo supply. Good thing nobody ended up using that opening in the bunker wall, since the pile of rubble starts to heave and throb like a tectonic entity being birthed. A sand shower flows from Merri's back, hissing through the folds and tears of his burnt poncho, and much of the debris follows suit. Then he lifts his head, an alien profile thrusting forth to stare goggled-eyed at the harshly overcast sky. A long tinny gasp, as new air sucks in through the unclogged filter nozzle, and the man climbs and claws the rest of the way out. First thing he sees as he levels his regard is Maggie pelting across the open field towards the next trench. Then, knocked sideways by another concussive impact to the nearest enemy front, he finds himself half knelt before Sprite, and Liyandra not obeying her own advice. "Liya! Are you all right?" is all he gets to say, before the carpet bombing commences, shaking the very air around them with its deadly approach. The borders are lost behind the moving wall of thudding artillery fire, the way ahead to the castle is a rapidly narrowing channel, at least where one side is concerned. "Carp. We have to go." The cover of the next trench, where the others are holed up if luck be a lady. He stumbles up with a groan of effort, and throws his arm out to offer Sprite another perch to flounce upon. "Runrunrunrun!"
Gaval glances over at Ruby and grunts. He contemplates how nice it would be to lay there for awhile. Play dead. And yet booming is coming. Getting louder and lounder as the shots fire across the land towards them. Like invisible giants feet pounding out new holes. His hand turns and the starblad lifts and slides deftly between several of the loops of the metal thorns that cover Ruby. A sliding slice and the sharp blade sqweels through the pring steel of the thorns. Popping many of the coils free. "Life for the runners, Ruby!" And he rolls up to his feet and dashes for the next trench, arm bleeding as he goes.
Running is much easier up here where the ground is not squishy or up and down irritating. Until another crashing boom sends the earth teetering to the left. Maggie hop-skips to avoid sliding, for this upheaval is much like being on the deck of a ship mid-storm. Uncomfortably so, as the earth is not supposed to heave and sway this way. Spotting Gaval's blade squeeling through the metal obscenity covering Ruby, Maggie offers the pair a wan smile, utterly lost behind her mask. Life for the runners. Yeah, that's been a reoccuring theme of late. When the booms and buzzing bullets pause, she is almost ready to call it a blessing or a fair break, but that would be a lie considering what comes after. The steady advance of rubble creating carpet bombs is hardly encouraging. Looking over her shoulder, she spots Liya ans Sprite with Merrisol kneeling in front of their friend. Another wave of relief fills her when he rises and the two start to maybe head their way. With the bombs still heading their way. Gasping for air even with the masks on, Maggie tries to measure the advance against their position relative to their destination. Crud on a cracker. "Run!" Angling for the next trench, she screws her resolve to the sticking point and forces loudly protesting muscles to work once more. Once more, that is, until the next once more.
Liya signals, and Sprite stays in the air, but low, skimming the ground as she flies towards Maggie and Ruby. Liya mutters Sukhoti imprecations as she starts forward, feeling every muscle in her entire body, top to bottom. "Run," she says, and the slow steps become faster ones, as fear, adrenaline and relief that Kerf is still hanging in there all vie together for top spot in her exhausted brain. And then she's running, her feet light, even when the ground moves like storm tossed waves on a small boat. "Ruuuuunnnnnnnnn!" Her scream is used to give her impetus, racing along to the next time.
RPG: Ruby challenges a difficulty of 12. Ruby chooses Force and the gifts BLD-OB and PHY-UB. Ruby almost succeeds.
Ruby is hot on Gaval's heels after a rusty resuming of forward motion. Less lengths of that entangling stuff means less chance of tetanus and a better chance of not tangling up in a mess again. A few stubborn coils remain clasped like demented fashion accents around her thick thighs and arms. "Too early...fook'n too early! S'posed tah be more talkie talkie an 'ot wind!" She coughs and throws herself into the next length of trench. It's terrifying how the closer it gets, the worse it gets. This should be obvious, but the way it advances gives Ruby plenty of time to ramp up her own personal terror. She rapidly tries to think whether it's too late to turn back. The image of the Pattern tries to form in her brain, but it's rattled loose as doom encroaches. Run! OMB run. The barrage is almost on top of them and she looses her marbles runs along the trench rather than remain tucked along the side. If Gaval stops for breath there's a danger of being caught up or trampled. Keep running. Missing quite a few decorative feathers, she runs like a lunatic with her arse on fire. When there's an obstacle or body in the way, she throws herself at it like a battering ram. Friend or foe. She's smashing into and out of things as she picks up speed without grace or thought. Anything to try and beat the bombs coming.
She wings off a metal box with a hollow stem that looks like a mast, denting the metal and continuing on her way. There's another crash as she goes bodily through leaky sandbags blocking the end of one trench in an explosion of sand. It flies into her eyes and she stumbles like an enraged bull into the open. She's stitched up by an invisible sewing machine but keeping moving. Waving at the sudden worse-than-killer-wasp wounds and landing in yet another half-buried tomb of soldiers where she claws at herself frantically.
RPG: Merrisol challenges a difficulty of 12. Merrisol chooses Resolve and the gifts PAS-DE, STY-CC, and STY-SW. Merrisol succeeds.
With everyone yelling some variation of 'RUN!' within the same span of time, they're kind of lucky that there is a strafe-bombing in action. Neither side could possibly hear them in all the ruckus. And as far as running goes, it's not so much running anymore as it is bounding unfettered through a deranged funhouse complete with bouncy mats, teeter-totter floors, and pop-up obstacles. For every earth-shaking impact, there's a windmilling springboard leap over oil-spills and snaking barbed wires. Pounding alongside his fleet Sukhoti friend, Merrisol huffs in anticipation of sheltering in that next trench just a few dozen feet to eat up with their current breakneck pace. When suddenly... arrgh the others in their team burst forth like bunnies from a beaten bush, sprinting for the trench even further off. Life for the runners! But, at what cost to their sanity? "Bog onna /Bicycle/! C'mon!" Instead of sheltering, he chases after the others. They're not bunnies. They're lemmings! Outrunning the 'splosions only happens in the cinema, guys! "Gogogogo!" Through the closing window of doom, he sees other fortifications and wreckages exploding without need of shells. That'd be Ruby. "Cover ahead! Dive! Dive!" shouts the submariner, aptly.
RPG: Gaval challenges a difficulty of 12. Gaval chooses Grace and the gifts BLD-JN and STY-AE. Gaval almost succeeds.
Gaval is running for his life with this strange and unusual pain in his arm. There have been moments of fear in his life. And looking back on those he can remember he finds Ruby near most of those times. An interesting fact to explore later. If he survives this madness.
As quick as he is there is the panting presence of Ruby suddenly behind him. He jinks to the side to get out of her way lest he suddenly find her feet across his back. Another jink to the side to confuse those firing apon them both and then again aiming back towards the trench. He's close when he leaps, diving head first towards the trench. A random and miss-timed explosion lands behind him and the cuncussinve force pushes him much faster then what he planned. His feet fly into the air and head towards the ground. There is a painful whoomp as his back hits the far side of the trench and he slides down head first out of sight.
It is sort of amazing how fear can fog the brain but adrenaline can keep it clear. Or, maybe that is just the whoosh of dust across the lenses protecting her eyes doing the fogging and running full tilt through it clears it away. Looking from one side to the other, Maggie tries to keep track of where everyone is in the mad dash from one trench to the next. She is lucky in that she spots the mistimed blast that throws Gaval uncerimoniously into the trench. She jogs rather than jigs to avoid being blown back toward their most recently abandoned cover. A spray of schrappne ladden rubble is tossed her way as Ruby plows bodily through a wall. That brings Ruby into Maggie's focus and she calls, "Ruby, this way!" Toward the castle, sure, but in a more oblique fashion. Toward the trench first. Another glance finds Merrisol, Liya and Sprite. Whew. So far so good. Lifting a hand, she lets it fall again. If they can see it, maybe someone else can too. Dang it. With the bombs getting ever closer, she hears Merrisol's command to Dive and does so. Leaping over what might be part of an undercarriage of some long doomed run-about, she dives head first into the trench, tucking into a roll that brings her to her knees near Gaval. Spinning, she watches for the others, still too shell-shocked to wonder if the man next to her is all right.
Liya concentrates on one foot after the other. After the other. Even sprite is giving her chirrups of advice, coaxing her to keep going. Because the little wyvern is not a happy creature in this mess. If she figures out who is responsible for this, she might have to bite them. There's a jig, a jag, and a skidding wobbly movement that is none of the above, as Liya keepds going. There's that shout to dive, and hopefully her ears are working enough to hear it. Or her eyes through the mask to see it, but in any event, Liya races like a madwoman over cut glass, and eventually gets to where she can dive into the trench, and hope to the volcano goddess that the landing is at least ... non-fatal.
The barrage comes closer, changing the landscape once again in its wake. Exhuming bodies: Those that got an early retirement. The foulness adds another layer of ick-icing to the transformed stretch of land. Gouts of gore plume amidst dirt and poisoned water. An awful aerosol of decaying matter to go along with the big clumps to revolt the senses. Those of keen observation will note something unfortunate of the unearthed bodies in passing: Some wear gas masks quite similar to the group. Not quite as whole though. The rubbery substance is patchy. Dissolved by something. The barrage passes right in the Runners section and fate has a field day. The thunderous impacts punch with almost grid-like precision. Cover providing some mercy and the Reaper ready to harvest anyone above ground. The upheaval tries to rattle them to pieces, throw them about and is committed to moving onwards. After another 60 meters it ends with drill-like precision, though what's left of mother nature once again writhes before being allowed to settle.
Ruby huddles with herself in a corner of the darkened trench while death approaches. There's pain. But the psychological shell-shock trauma is getting front-row seating now. Squinching up her eyes tightly, oozing from wounds, she's trying to protect the important bits. Beneath a layer of caked mud and other fluids, a faint glow tries to project itself from somewhere at her sternum. It brightens with every spasm of pain that that thrums through Ruby. Her hands drag clawlike from her face and they move jerkily towards the odd glow. The urge to use it is quite strong.
That moment of mental stillness when you look around and can account for three out of four Horsemen in the fog of viscera and sulphur. Merrisol is certain he is not going to make it, even as Liyandra hurls herself on ahead and tumbles into the trench. The pulverised ground rises into the air all around him, mere paces away from relative safety. He is weightless, legs pumping futilely in space, a suffocating pressure enfolding his joints, compressing his chest. Through the smoke, he glimpses Maggie staring up from the dugout, so close he might stretch out and touch her cheek. And so, he does. The turbulence without resumes within, as he grabs up his wife in a tenacious hug and curls down into the muddy recess of the wall beside Ruby, Gaval, Liyandra, and Sprite, while the world dissolves and floats and reforms around them. As the last potshots begin to die off, he is amazed by the muted sound of his own shuddering laughter bouncing off the grimy walls of the trench. "Ohhh no, no, no.. this is /not/ fun, damn it..!"
