[IC] Spiritum

[HeySeuss]

(Collab between AlexStarsion, vietmyke, Mike73, Mercenary Lord and HeySeuss)

The truck didn’t have very good suspension, so there was a lot of creaking and jostling. It was dark, but the fires in the distance provided a point of reference for driving. Gideon, however, rode in the back with the others, having assembled a pack of supplies from his camping gear. It was mostly dark, but the crash site created some glow in the distance, an easy beacon to follow.

Gideon had done enough night exercises at the Citadel, they all had, to be fundamentally okay with the deepening spring chill of the night. He didn’t have uniform gear packed away, but instead had worn the sort of clothes he took for outdoor activities anyway. They all had some variation of outdoor gear, some of them had weapons but they were mostly loaded up with booze, not equipment.

Others could pull weapons out of the Mist, out of themselves, but Gideon’s preferred mode of operation was a rifle. He didn’t have one of those on hand, but he had a hunting knife and a combat hatchet that he favored.

Every creak and groan of the truck felt like they were being given away, but the reality was that this was a rescue, as far as Gideon knew, and they were not walking into an ambush. Even so, despite this being his suggestion on getting down here, he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise a bit, and faced outward, keeping eyes on their flanks, watching along the roadside as the truck rolled by it. He left the conversation to others.

Galahad sat himself down across from Gideon, at the edge of the truck so he could look out just as easily. He didn’t bother sitting in the front seat- He didn’t much care for Darryl, and he was well aware that he had a similar sentiment about him. Besides, you didn’t need a tactician to tell you how to drive towards a crash site. Instead, Galahad would prepare useful spells for their little outing.

Of course, they were engaging in more of a humanitarian search and rescue mission rather than a force-recon patrol, but it still never hurt to be safe. No one had ever complained to him about keeping them safe. During field operations, the instructors loved to throw curveballs at the team- such as giving them faulty or non-working equipment. In their last 4 years of training, Galahad had perfected a spell for their team.

Gathering the mist around him, he created a set of ‘beads’. He bound a basic protection spell into the bead- it was a standard barrier spell, cut-down to relieve the burden on himself. The barrier spell would protect the wearer from a single blow from a weapon, projectile, or other deadly weapon to the torso or head, the primary vital regions. Attacks to the limbs were inconvenient, but nothing their medic couldn’t handle. Only for Theta and Trent did Galahad extend the protection spell to include the arms instead- several mages used hand motions to help them concentrate and focus for spells.

The second spell bound to the bead was a communication spell, for the cases where their communication equipment didn’t work, they could utilize the communication spell to talk to each other. The bead would collect sounds from the wearer and project them through the other beads, like a walkie-talkie system. It also had a vocal trigger to mute and unmute. It wasn’t as efficient as their long range communication technology, but in a pinch it would do the job.

The last spell bound to the bead was more for Galahad’s usage than anyone else. When someone’s barrier spell was expended, it would trigger an alert on Galahad’s bead, allowing him to know who had been attacked, and subsequently restore their barrier when the conflict had ended.

The result of his spell weaving was a set of orbs no bigger than a pinky nail each. Galahad stuck his bead to the dogtags around his neck, before handing one off to Gideon and passing the rest out.

Trent grinned, staring at the back of his eye lids listening to the spell Galahad was weaving and enjoying the tones it made. Communication, protection and a relay of some sort that he couldn’t pin point. Getting them to mesh together made the notes sing out to Trent. This, was going to be interesting when he was “sent” to the front lines. Taking a bead when it was handed to him, eyes still closed, head still leaning against the truck, he stuck it under his own collar. His voice would catch enough for their group and leaving his hands open to do what he did best. Blow everything sky high. He passed them on to the next person without much looking at them.

Lee didn't have much of a response to Gideon's comments beyond shooting him a sour look. He was honestly thrown off by the sudden fiery event in the sky and was too mentally preoccupied trying to figure out what the hell was going on to come up with a snappy comeback. Though of course, once they all got on the truck and began to drive off to the crash site, he managed to think of something good, but it was too late by then so he just let out a huff as he folded his arms. It was almost uncharacteristic of him with how quiet he was, but he just seemed to be shocked. While no one had expected the firefight and crash to happen, to him it was just surreal to see it with his own eyes. This was the real thing, something he'd been training ten years for, and he didn't feel ready.

But really, that was his own fault. He never took any of the training seriously until recent years, and now he just felt unprepared. That wasn't to say he wouldn't act if the time called for it, but he there was a bout of anxiety dwelling deep in his chest. What probably worried him the most was that he wouldn't be able to step up if anyone needed him to, or that he would somehow screw something up.

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. He was getting in his own head and freaking himself out, he needed to relax before he created some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. He could handle this, he knew he could. Ready or not, he still had the skill to act and contribute. Maybe not to the extents that everyone else around him could, but he wouldn't let that stop him from doing what he could. If anyone needed backup, he'd be there. Mentally, he prepared himself to peer into the Mist in case a spell of his could be useful during this rescue mission. If necessary, he would even summon his weapons, though he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Sometime during the ride, Galahad had created what could only be described as magic beads. Lee took one once he was handed one and attached it to his jacket's collar, making sure it was on securely before leaning back in his seat. He'd elected to sit in the back, figuring that despite being friends with Daryll, someone else would be better suited sitting up front, preferably someone who wasn't him that could react quickly if something was happening out on the road. Trent was sitting next to him, head leaned back and body language that said he didn't want to do anything at the moment. Lee hoped he would be ok in case things went south, Trent had drank almost as much as him, though possibly even more.

Trent couldn’t help it, but his hand patted Lee’s leg, right above the knee cap, “I’m fine, I can feel you staring.” He still kept his eyes closed, humming softly to the music only he could hear. “Setzer and Zimmy made sure I could handle my drinks when I DID go out.” He let the small conversation die and finally opened his eyes to look around when he felt the truck coming to a stop.

Lee looked over Trent patted his leg, and nodded in response. Right, Trent would be fine, there wasn't anything to worry about with him. He may be small, but Trent was more than capable of handling himself, he'd proven as much with his spell casting prowess during combat training situations. Lee still hadn't gotten over how such a small guy could hold so much power, but he should have known that looks could be deceiving.

The beads were better than nothing, at least. They were going in with what they had. When Darryl slowed the truck up and ground it to a halt., Gideon was over the side and onto his feet on the ground with a light pack over his shoulders. It was the basics of medical supplies and some gear, but they’d packed for a party. All the same, he knew this area well, better than the rest anyway, because it’d been a place he’d hunted and fished on throughout his childhood. Even so, it was dark and he didn’t want to use a flashlight.

There was a spell for that, or at least a trick he’d used before. He wasn’t a guy that had a lot of magical firepower to spare, but he was extremely creative with what he did have, and was good at the manipulation of light and images as well as terrain conditions. With the bead replicating communications and giving them some protection, the real missing element was vision. It was, again, like the Citadel and the malfunctioning equipment.

He reached into the Mist and pulled down a miniscule amount of power. That was Gideon’s way, use the minimal amount of power and sparingly. After all, magic was a finite resource, like petroleum, like a tree. He’d often wondered where it came from and if there was a way to renew or recreate it. No answers on that, of course, but it was an intriguing question.

The practical effect of the minimal magic use was to pull some of the ambient light in and use that light to illuminate vision for Gideon. The trick was making it so he could see out but that it wasn’t giving them away, and that was the subtle piece of business. Then again, subtle ‘did that happen?’ magic was Gideon’s stock in trade.

“Best I take point. I know where we’re going.”

Zimmy wasn’t much a fan of the whole “silent and grave” riding bit. Sure, she was as used to it as the rest of them: they had gone through hours and days of this kind of riding when training in the Citadel, but that didn’t mean she liked it.

Darryl was driving, though not very well, and Galahad was doing that thing with magic beads he liked so much, and Gideon was being subtle as always...they were all specialists, she reflected. Specialists who were expected to be good at everything, and better at a few things. No pressure or anything.

So it was with some relief that they all stopped and disembarked. This was something she could get behind. Literally. “Lee and I can take the back. We’re fast enough to get around in a pinch. Just in case someone is out there that shouldn’t be, you know.” She looked down at the little gun in her hand, checking to make sure it wouldn’t explode when she fired it. So far so good. “Any objections?”

Trent stretched his arms high as he once more exited the vehicle, he arched his back and tilted his head with a nice soft cracking noise, “Can we stay out of that thing for a while next time…” His grin was still in place but his eyes, which to that point had a mystified look to them, hardened. “I’ll go right in front of Lee and Zimmy. Galahad has the more versatile spells, mine are more of a packing punch.” With two swipes of his hand, left going from his right shoulder to left leg, right hand going from left shoulder to right leg he pulled his pistols out from the Mist. Checking them was like second nature, clips in, finger off the trigger but on the safety for a quick draw.

He held them aimed at the ground and looked around himself, “I think, after this we head back to the camp site, drink the rest of the booze and party like we planned…” Trent shot Zimmy a smile and a wink. “See if we have more stories of our ‘shenanigans’ before we all get moved to new places.” He walked forward a bit, bumped shoulders with Lee and grinned at the taller male. “Maybe get Darryll some driving lessons without lights whilst we’re at it.”

Lightening the mood was something Trent strived for, even when he was checking everyone over for jitters. Darryll had been concentrating on his driving and everyone was so silent he had wanted to speak but was working on getting his slightly addled brain back to the realm of functional that he wouldn’t screw this up. He’d let Gideon lead them, listen for Galahad’s warnings if he needed to pull on the Mist to do what he did best, keep Lee and Zimmy informed if needed. Watch Theta and Darryll’s back and enjoy Sezter going beast on whatever enemy cross his path.

“I’m starting to see why our instructors refused to put us all in the same team structors… remind me to have words with them when we get back.”

"Sounds like a plan," Lee agreed with Zimmy and Trent's formation suggestions, "I'm used to taking things on from the back anyway, it's usually my role in this kind of situation. Alright, let's do this." It took a few seconds, but eventually a frown formed on his face. "...Uh, w-wait. That came out wrong. Pretend I didn't say that." He turned to Zimmy as he tried to change the subject, "A-Anyway, I've got you covered. Let me know if you need a boost, I can hook you up. Same goes for the rest of you, as long as I can see you my spells will connect, so don't be afraid to ask."

He chuckled a bit when Trent rubbed shoulders with him and tried to lighten the mood. Even at the worst of times he was still trying to prevent everyone from becoming too grim.

"Man, if we can finish this quick enough to get back in time to drink our asses off, I'll die a happy man," Lee joked, "But, something tells me we won't be partying again any time soon." He looked back in the general direction of the crash. Right, they still had a job to do. "But, I'm totally up for getting Daryll some driving lessons."

Once the dispositions were shaken out, Gideon took the first, cautious steps off the road and into the woods, moving carefully and finding his way. Even with the enhanced vision, it was easy to misjudge. Everything was in a blue tint but he could see more. By the same token, it required focus. Walking point wasn’t just stomping around to run into something. It was about care taken in every step, watching for wires, sensing for danger in every way possible. Bad point men got wasted. Gideon did well in training, but that was training and this, it felt like, was a real life situation, full of unknowns.

Next step forward. A few more, and he found an old deer trail that they could use to get closer into the crash site. He weighed the risk of using the trail versus not, heaving to the drilled-in wisdom of forward reconnaissance, patrolling and pathfinding -- don’t fuck with trails. But that was in a combat situation, and that assumed that the enemy would lay in ambush along it. Here, he decided to break the rule, if only because they were technically still rescuing people, rather than trying to ambush them or avoid ambush.

They were in a tactical column, it was the easiest way to move quickly, but even that wasn’t fast, not by the standards of civilian hiking. But Gideon, by the standards of combat patrolling, was moving at a fair clip along, toward the burning parts of the royal hunting preserve...

@Draken@AlexStarsion@vietmyke@Mike73@Mercenary Lord@Hexaflexagon@McHaggis

[Hexaflexagon]

_Muzak

---

“We land on the grounds of the royal place per our request beyond the reach of the public, from our landing point it's about twenty paces to the door.” Captain Rekks went over the plans yet another time. Only thirty five years of age, he looked at least ten years older from the stress. The only son of a minor noble in the inner territories who joined the military to go make a name for himself. Serving with distinction he was transferred to the Imperial Royal Guard and become captain three years earlier.

“Captain. No offense but is this really all necessary?” Colette questioned after holding her tongue for the last hour or so of the security briefing.

“Necessary? Of course it is! The Imperial Majesty entrusts me with your continued safety and we are going into heart of enemy territory here.” The captain insisted.

“Yes and my father is a very smart man for that,” Colette started, “but this isn’t a military operation captain. We are an envoy of peace are we not?”

How will I convince an entire nation that peace is opportune if I can’t even convince my own soldiers? Colette thought to herself as the disbelief began to form over the Rekks features. He attempted to speak mouth forming words but without sound. Finally he seemed satisfied and swallowed a handful of air before he spoke.

“With all do respect my lady. These people are savages and brigidiands. I wouldn't even blink an eye if they decided to try and attack us. Peace will only come once we crush them beneath our heels.” he asserted. Colette was to respond but the sound of instruments and navigation equipment blaring filled the the bridge of the Palatine.

“Captain you should see this.” A slightly panicked voice of the navigation officer called out.

Rekks give Colette a curt bow before turning around and walking quickly towards the navigation officers post. She was working at a tense and deliberate speed cycling through different commands and panels on her console. She gestured at the display ahead of her. A map displaying the Mist currents in the air, vital as to not distribute the reactor which powers the great airship. “Look.”

Colette remained where the captain had left her but shifted to the side to peer at the console. A large concentration of Mist colored an angry red upon the map moving straight towards them. A Mist storm. Mist storms were not an unheard occurrence the large deposits of arcane energy sometimes gathered into powerful destructive vacuums of energy that could alter the very fabric of reality around them. Though this was odd, such storms usually occurred in the wilds and untamed lands far beyond the reaches of civilization where such mist levels could be reached.

“Brace for impact!” Rekks shouted over the roar of the instruments as Colette turned her head toward the viewports gripping the table ahead of her. Per the nature of the Mist such storms were nearly invisible unless you knew what to look for. Colette in her extensive studies had learned some of the signs. She watched closely as the sky outside the viewpoint began to shimmer ever so slightly like a pebble had just been dropped into a lake. The shimmer grew in intensity faster and harder until the entire outside world became unrecognizable blur. The ship rumbled and shook and then it all stopped. The ship made it through the ‘otherside’.

The fading sunset cast sky had been replaced with a shining sea of stars. The land below looked completely different even as the bridge crew frantically tried to regain control of the situation. We teleported? Colette wondered though her thoughts were cut short.

“Captain...” She voiced.

“I see it.”

A large military like vessel hovered in front of them. Dark as the sky around them the entire vessel seemed to shimmer in and out of view as if the light was bending around it. It wasn’t nearly as large as the Palatine but unlike the large diplomatic cruiser this ship was obviously meant for battle.

“Is it from Rassvet?” Rekks called aloud, clutching at the gunblade at his hilt as if it would do something.

“Not that we know of sir.”

“What in the spirit's name is going on.”

Almost as if it was answering his question, the mysterious ship began to open fire on the Palatine. A sea of fire was released from the ship as heavy cannons tored into the Palatine. Warning sirens began to blare as multiple consoles on the bridge began to glow red. Colette almost fell to the ground from the force of the impact if it were not for Ardin next to her who gently held her up. She looked towards him, his face stern even as his eyes casted his unease plain and clear.

“Get the princess to the escape craft now!” Rekks yelled towards Ardin who nodded as we already dragging Colette by the hand out of the bridge most of the security team following them. Personally rushed frantically around them as they moved towards their battle stations. All the while the mysterious ship continued its bombardment.

As the made there way down a hallway the outer wall exploded. Ardin threw his hand up reflexively a barrier appearing and halting the shrapnel in mid-air. The cold wind whipped into the ship along with smell of smoke. Something came flying through the now opened access point. Smashing into the wall. Everyone froze as it slowly began to untangle itself and pull its way off of the wall. Standing so tall it brushed against the ceiling as its eyes glowed to life. One of the large fists quickly transforming into a giant cannon of sorts.

The royal guards rushed past them to engage the new foe. Without thinking Ardin pulled her down a connecting side passageway. A voice came over the intercom speaker distorted more static than anything else. “Intruders have boarded the ship. Repeat intruders have boarded the ship.”

The wall to the left of them exploded as one of the robots was thrown through it a giant spike of ice protruding from his chest as it crashed into the far wall. Out from the hole that was punched through the door one of the Imperial mages stepped outwards staff still glowing. A cadre of soldiers pouring outward around her. She looked at Ardin and nodded.

“Do you know what’s happening sir?”

“Not the faintest idea.” It was at this point that the robot eyes began to glow again and with surprisingly quick speed it grabbed the soldier closest to it and easily crushed him in its hands as it rose upward.

“Run.” The mage insisted as she turned away from the pair muttered underneath her breath as her staff began to glow once more.

Ardin and Colette made there way through the ship with speed avoiding contact with the many assailants continually being launched into the ship. They made their way down to the shuttle bay. Off from the main hangar it was used primarily in situations such as these to allow for VIPs and others to be able to escape if the Palatine was ever compromised not that the engineers ever imagined such a day would come. As they made their way across the catwalk connecting to the shuttle the ceiling above them buckled and burst open and two of the robots landed in front of them.

“Stand back.” Ardin command as he drew his rapier from its sheath.

“I can fight.” Protested Colette but he just shook his head slowly never losing eye contact with the machines. Body in a easy defense stance he watched and waited.

One of the machines raised its arm already in cannon formation and fired. Ardin flicked his hands creating the same barrier that he had made before catching the flechettes that were expended. Rather than letting them drop as he had earlier with a simple flick of his hands they shot back at the robot at twice the velocity slamming hard into its chest. There was enough force to send the robot careening off the edge and tumbling through the open sky below.

The other moved quickly rushing forward Ardin dodged out of the way as the fist came colliding with the ground though the force of the impact was still enough to throw him from his feet. He looked up at the robot that towered over him and began to mutter a spell as it raised its fist to crush him. Yet before the spell could be released an arrow slammed into the exposed circuitry around the neck and upon impact released a jolt of electricity through the machine stunning it. Seizing the opportunity Ardin rose and with a flick of his rapier severed the head from the chassis.

He looked towards Colette the bow that she had materialized in her hand already vanishing into dust. She gave him a small grin. “If you didn’t want me to fight. You shouldn't of taught me.”

Despite the situation Ardin chuckled. “Get in.”

Colette made her way around the robot and into the shuttle where she began the startup sequence. As Ardin turned to follow her inside a voice called out to him.

“And where do you think you are going Mister Kazmyr?”

Ardin pressed a button on the console sealing the shuttle door as he turned around weapon drawn.

---

As they reached the crash site the group began to spread out slowly beginning a simple Encirclement procedures around the circular depression. The centuries old trees around them were either burning pyres at this point or had their thick trunks snapped like a child’s toy in a tantrum from the force of the shockwave. The heat could be felt through their boots snapping upward trying to latch onto them. The occasional rustle of movement was heard and they all tensed before it was revealed to be a rabbit or deer running out of the danger that they were heading into. Looking up past the canopy the assault craft that had brought the ship down had seemed to have vanished from sight but if one watched carefully they could see the faint flickering outline hidden amongst the dark sky.

Setzer made no moves to hide himself or go undetected. As massive as he was such moves would've only been pushing back the inevitable. Heavy footfalls cracked scattered branches and twigs beneath his feet. He did not focus upon the movements around him which he knew were his friends, he didn’t focus on the oppressive heat the surrounded him getting hotter and hotter as they approached the epicenter of the explosion. What he did focus on was his breathing slow and steady. 1....2....3...4...5 Inhale. 1....2...3...4...5 Exhale. He repeated the process over and over again as the trees began to vanish around him and the ground sloped steadily downward into a crater as he arrived on the lip of the crash site,

What remained of the Imperial vessel crackled with flame. The shattered levithan lay in two halves standing this close what had appeared large in the sky was now enormous. Larger than some towns in Rassvet the great machine lay its metal twisted and warped. He could feel the disturbance in the air now oversaturated with Mist from the explosion. He watched small pockets of reversed gravity with rocks and pieces of scrap metal ascended into the air, areas were sparks of electricity appeared and disappeared with no discernible source. It felt like a heavy pressure pressing down upon his shoulders.

Slowly he raised a hand towards his ear and channeled the mist around him. It was one of the most basic techniques that the WARDENs learned and one of the only ones that Setzer himself could do with practical ease. He focused on the images of his friends and plucked on the invisible strings of Mist that connected them allowing for communication at a distance. Feeling the connecting take root he spoke quietly as he peered over the lip of the crater. The words coming to them as a quiet whisper on the wind.“I’m going in.”

With that Sezter slide his way down into the crater. His face scrunching up and fighting back the urge to cough because of the smoke that filled the air. As he moved about the debris careful to avoid the various magical disturbances. The sound of metal scraping across the ground drew his attention downward and he looked down ward tensing up. Some sort of large robot was dragging itself towards him. Missing its legs, one arm and half of its head, using its only remaining arm it moved slowly towards him. Glowing eyes flickering in and out. Right as it reached him the eyes shut off completely and the carcass came to a halt.

“Got some sort of robot here.” Setzer spoke as he peered down to examine it further. “Doesn’t look like anything we make or even Vangar work for that matter.”

With some level of effort he managed to flip it over and peer at its front side. He took into account the bullet holes and other assorted damage that certainly did not occur during the fall. The plating itself despite the heat around them was cool to the touch. His eyes focused upon the blood stained hand though coated with white flecks of bone. He looked up towards the sky where he knew the mysterious ship was still watching overhead. “Maybe it came from our mysterious friends.”

He stood up and made his way deeper into the wreckage. As he passed through he began to some more human bodies some in better shape than others. They were most definitely from Vangar but it was strange. They were not in the normal gear that was accustomed to the raiding parties. There uniforms seemed more ceremonial than anything else. This wasn’t what he was expecting at all. “Yo Galahad, Gideon either of you recognize these uniforms? Cause these ain’t standard military types that's for sure.”

His thoughts were interrupted as he heard a groan of pain. He turned and saw movement beneath a broken off piece of the ship. He rushed over and ignoring the burning sensation of his hands against hot metal he lifted the piece off of whoever lay below. Letting it drop to the ground next to him with a thud. An older man looked up at him, graying mustache burnt and singed, he wore the dress uniform of a Vangar officer adorn with medals twisted and some only pools of metal liquid at this point. His torso had been blown open and entrails spilled out easily from within and despite it all he somehow managed to stay alive.

“Stay with me old man.” Setzer spoke as he knelt down to try and assist the man. He froze as the man placed a blood soaked hand upon his face pulling his head to look at him. His voice was weak and was almost lost on the roar of the fear around him.

“The girl....” Before he could say anything else his eyes closed and the hand fell limp from Setzer face leaving a bloody smear. He pulled away and looked following the bloody path that the man had dragged himself across before the part had fallen atop of him. He was heading in the direction of what seemed to be a shuttle of sorts that had crashed on the outer lip of the crater apparently having not been able to get out of the ship in time.

Slowly Setzer made his way over as he did he conjured up his sword. Feeling the heavy weight suddenly press down upon his back as it took form from the Mist around him. The weight gave him an ease of comfort as he grabbed the handle as he neared the shuttle. Despite the crash it had seemed that the shuttle was in relatively good condition. Protocol would of stated that Setzer should of waited for the others before he opened the vessel but protocol had seemed to vanish out the window in its entirely. The door to the shuttle had been jammed shut in the crash but that wouldn't stop Setzer slowly using his blade he prayed the metal open like a human can opener pulling the doors open.

Almost immediately an arrow shot outwards from the darkness of the cabin slamming into Setzer’s shoulder. He stumbled backwards clutching the arrow breaking off the shaft as he whispered underneath his breath to his friends. “We got a live one here guys.”

Another arrow shot forward but this time Setzer was ready and he deflected it was ease. He peered into the darkness and he could just make out the outline of two blue staring back at him. A voice called back shaking but surprisingly composed given the circumstances.

”I suggest you get the fuck back.”

[HeySeuss]

Let it Rock

---

The body Gideon studied was pretty well mangled, but he could make out the gear, "Dressed like Vangar military, class A uniforms," Gideon noted coldly as he crouched down; the boots gave it away. Those were in no way combat boots. The simplest way to check things was to reach into the corpse's collar area and pull out the ball chain from the neck of the poor, mangled bastard laying there, mercifully dead. The weapons were useless, but the dogtags were surprisingly intact, "Leutnant Ritter here was definitely Vangar Army." Still, Gideon wasn't a bastard, he tucked the dogtag back into place for the graves registration types that would eventually, he hoped, bury the man.

There wasn't much hope that they would be rescuing anyone out of this wreckage. For one, it was a military transport of some sort. For two, there wasn't much chance of survivors. Three, if someone did survive, that awful truck would kill them on a bumpy country road just trying to get them out to a regional hospital. They had no way to call for a medevac. They were marking bodies.

The place all around them was broken up pieces, chewed up earth, destroyed landscape from the collision. He'd never seen magical devastation on this level or even heard of it in any sort of historical context; it was a whole piece of living ground just wiped out, and there were still plumes of Mist left over in the aftermath. The heat buffeted them from the fires still burning here and there and there was a terrible smell of fused plastics and metal, and something more coppery and savory; cooked human flesh. That was a new smell for Gideon, something his brain catalogued with brutal efficiency and marked, 'experience trauma later.' While Setzer tried to talk to the old man, Gideon watched, still and tense.

"Wonder what they were doing here, dressed for a party like that?"

Setzer tried his best with the old man, but one look said that the best they could do was give him morphine, and that wasn't exactly a supply Gideon had handy. It wasn't part of a first aid pack for hiking and there wasn't time to go trying to scrounge it out of this wreck...though it seemed that almost nothing actually was there intact.

Except, of course, some sort of pod. Setzer was the first to it, and took an arrow for the effort. Gideon, as the voice was shouting out warnings, didn't really feel inclined to play, but also didn't have much to play with. But he did have a rock he could pick up.

"FRAG OUT!"

It was dark and everyone was keyed up. When he threw that thing, he threw it in that pod just like a grenade, and ducked just like he was trying to avoid a blast, pulling Setzer with him. He didn't bother to use magic for that bluff, because it was hardly needed and might have given away that it was a trick -- the thing clanged into the hatch enough like the real thing that a trained person would react the way anyone trained or experienced would react to a grenade; they'd find ground.

His side knew it was bullshit and bluff, but Gideon also figured that this person had no idea, and she was shooting at his buddies, he had to do something.

[Mike73]

Closing in on the crash site was incredibly nerve-wracking, and traversing it even more so. The heat of the environment, the heaviness of the Mist in the air, and the overall paranoia that the attacking airship from before could return and open fire once more was all enough to make Lee actually attempt to be cautious. The moment the crash site wreckage came into view, he thought of an idea and pulled out a tool of his: a small roll of thread. He usually used it when setting up pranks back at the Citadel, but it was still a rather valuable tool even in the field, especially given his magic expertise. He unrolled it until a good few feet was hanging off the end and onto the ground, then hooked the roll to his belt and cast a minor charm to let it automatically unreel further behind him as he walked. The thread itself was extremely thin and hard to see even with good lighting, so it would stay hidden in the darkness and cluttered forest ground.

The purpose of it was simple: it would allow him to tell if they were being followed, though how it worked was slightly less simple. By applying a minute amount of Mist from the surrounding area onto the thread, he would be able to pick up on any movements near the rolled out thread. The Mist would multiply the strength of any vibrations that would occur on the ground and then send the signals down the line to Lee, like a makeshift telephone kids would play with by connecting two cups to each other with a string. It was a neat little trick he'd picked up during an ambush simulation the squad had been given awhile back, and now it was finally seeing practical use in a real field situation.

So far, as the group began to cautiously explore the crash site, the thread wasn't giving Lee any warnings, which was a relief in the midst of the chaos he found himself in. The wreckage combined with the bodies of the dead was a sight that could wear anybody down, but they were Wardens. They had to keep pushing and moving forward. And so, Lee did. Though corpse of the robot Setzer found almost made him want to turn back.

"What the hell even is this thing?" Lee muttered. It wasn't Rassvet or Vangar, that was for sure. Though the raised the question: who's was it? This was quickly turning into conspiracy and confidential information territory, and he didn't want any part of it, but still he continued on. They soon ran into the mutilated old man, and while the ghastly sight made Lee recoil at first while Setzer talked to the guy, Lee eventually recovered enough to approach and see if he could do something. He quickly realized however that the man's condition was far beyond his medical reach, hell even Theta likely wouldn't be able to patch this guy up. There was little anyone could do beyond ease the pain in his last moments, but the chances of anyone having or finding morphine were slim. Lee did know a spell that could numb out the pain, maybe he could use that...

His attention was quickly turned away from the dying man however when he realized there was a struggle going on at the pod with Setzer. Lee's eyes widened in shock when he saw Setzer take an arrow right to the shoulder, and he ended up abandoning the man to rush over.

"No shit we've got a live one," Lee retorted back at Setzer, and shook his head at how calm the big guy was being despite getting shot. His pain tolerance levels had to be off the charts. Before Lee could offer a quick patch up, Gideon took initiative and tried to force the attacker out of hiding by tossing a rock in the pod under the guise of a grenade. 'Good thinking Gid,' Lee thought to himself, and decided he would ready himself to follow up in case things went south. Though of course he preferred that this rescue mission actually stayed a rescue mission.

[ML]

When Zimmy had set up this whole party-in-the-woods shindig, she had initially imagined a massive rager of at least thirty people. After all, they had spent ten years in harsh, endless training, so who in their right mind would anyone have an objection to having fun? Apparently everyone except the crazy bastards who had come along with her.

Okay, so it wasn't the huge turnout she was expecting, but it was still going to be a good time. Plenty of booze, some decent company. Setzer was a lugnut, but he was entertaining at least. Lee and Darryl and Theta were here too, and they were great. Galahad and Trent were fuckin' weird sometimes, but they liked alcohol as much as the rest of them, so she gave them a pass. Gideon was...well, he was definitely something.

Of course, now it was all absolutely pointless: a giant-ass fireball had just smashed into the ground near them, they were honor-bound to check it out, and to top it all off, half the alcohol was already gone. Of course she had probably drunk most of it, but that was entirely beside the point.

Setzer made the intelligent decision of going in first, sliding down into the crater of the ship before anyone could tell him what a stupid idea that was. Instead of following him down, Zimmy looked up to the top of the crashed aircraft. There were several metal spars sticking out of the rubble, higher up than the rest. That was much better than going down into the pit of absolute death itself. She tugged the Mist into position around her, willing it to assume it natural form and hide her from normal human sight. Then she sucked in her breath, along with a series of sparkling fragments, and then leapt up, once again feeling gravity itself slip and slide off her body.

From up there, she'd be much better equipped to let them know if an attack was coming. She could see all sides of the wreck, and up into the sky as well. The only thing she wouldn't be able to warn against would be assailants in the bulkhead below her. And really, if the WARDEN couldn't handle that, then what the fuck were they doing in the program?

She arced up and over the metal spars, and for a moment she had a flash of fear that she had overshot her target. Then she started to descend with a lazy slide, and her feet touched the metal just wonderfully. She grinned: perfect landing. Hadn't even stumbled, which was remarkable, because she was pretty sure she was still very much drunk. It was amazing what adrenaline did for you in these strange circumstances.

Zimmy landed just in time to hear Setzer's warning--a live one?-- followed immediately by Gideon's maniacal grenade toss. Hopefully is was just a bluff, but she was too far away to really tell. When she saw Gideon grab Setzer and drag him away, she knew it had to be fake. Setzer was a walking tank: he could probably stop a grenade from exploding just by breathing on it or something. At the very least, a grenade wasn't something that would dent the man's fortitude. Thus, a bluff. Now all that remained was to see if it worked.

In the meantime, Zimmy resumed scanning the horizon. Something in the sky had shot down this ship, and it was probably still up there. All it would take would be one bad twitch and they might have hellfire and grimdeath raining down on them. But man, the ship had been totaled. As she turned in a circle, there was just nothing but twisted metal and depressingly-ruined fabric. Mist buzzed in and out of existence around her, and Zimmy knew that was bad.

It struck her that this was the kind of thing that the Intelligence Division would have a field day about. That shadowy man had been her first and last point of contact with the organization, which was a real shame, because this was the kind of thing that she would definitely, absolutely report to them. All she had was some weird as fuck bracelet, though. Probably a one-way transmitter. Useless.

"Try not to kill whoever's in there, guys." Thanks to Setzer's wires, Zimmy didn't have to shout to get her point across. She tossed her hair back, trying in vain to get it out of her eyes. "Could be someone important, and we don't want to get court-martialed before we even start service."

[Draken]

Daryll was on edge. There was fire, there were corpses, and there were robots at various levels of "broken." He was particularly unnerved by that ones which were only probably nonfunctional. His paranoia rose when he saw one attempt to right itself, though it only had one working leg and half an arm, sparking flying wildly from the new gaps in its hull. Luckily, most of its power seemed to drain when it placed its stump arm directly on a metal beam from the ship, sending what Daryll could only assume was a massive jolt somewhere into the rubble, where the other end resided.
As people converged on Setzer and Gideon, Daryll kept towards the back, opting to, instead of pushing forward, watch their rear. He took position near some sort of ruined wood piece of furniture, keeping its unburnt mass at a short distance, but between his body and the forest.
It was at this point, while others dealt with this new threat, that Daryll had a minute to think; a luxury he soon regretted. He realized that his normal combat style was dangerous here, amidst the raging Mist. Bits of wreckage moved on their own, fires erupted and were utterly extinguished by the wild magic. As a frequent user of short teleportation, Daryll did not want to think about just how many things could go wrong in such an unstable environment. He felt vulnerable, under equipped, and near blind to the entire situation. Regardless, Daryll had his Gunblade at the ready, prepared to move in case of emergency, and kept his watch while frantic words behind him turned slightly less agitated.
Daryll's sense of vulnerability, however, was soon overwhelmed by hunger. Nobody had really taken a meal, and the smell of burning flesh brought out his appetite, regardless of will. Daryll started to feel a bit ill at his stomach's visceral reaction, but it did little to curb its demands. He tried to redouble his focus on keeping watch, struggling to push his stomach far out of mind, lest he lose what little it did contain.

[AlexStarsion]

Trent gripped his pistols in a white knuckle hold as he moved away from the others along the wreckage. Burning contents blocked his path in, trees burning at his back and Trent itched to call upon the Mist to put out the fires. All of them. Galahad would have his hide, but the steady sound of a war gong played from the sky, pulsing into his bones and making his teeth chatter. He didn't need to look up to know that something was up there, probably watching their every move, waiting to see if they would be a threat. Another pulse of tone hit Trent and he shook his head. Walking back the way he had come, he started to pull moister from the air and dousing the forest fires little by little.

It was easy enough, minor control for something like this, less taxing on his body to keep himself from burning out. He walked along, dousing the heavy fires and letting some of the minor fires go to keep as a pathway of sorts. He ignored the flames on the aircraft, lest whatever was making the gong noise in the sky notice something odd and do something to reignite it. Again Trent shook his head when Setzer did what he could with the Mist connecting them all together along with the beads Galahad had given them. He kept up his dousing of the flames and listened with half and ear.

It was getting louder now, the notes from the Mist, with more of it leaking out and from what he was probably adding to it, he continued onward and watched as Zimmy vanished from sight and did what she did best. Part of him felt bad for the young woman. She had been excited for most of their class to come to this gathering, he was gratefully it wasn't so. He shrugged as Lee's words came to him as if the other could see his action.

"Who knows," he muttered. He watched Daryll with worried eyes for a moment, it seemed he wasn't the only one on edge here.

“We got a live one here guys.”

"I suggest you get the fuck back."

He chuckled at the others comments but kept silent himself. So far, everything was going alright and then he heard Gideon's voice calling about a frag out. None of them even had grenades on their person, there was no possible way the Prince would do something like that. His power with the Mist wasn't strong enough to even make a Magical Bomb like that. Hell, even thinking of doing that in these conditions would cause one hell of a blast.

He had to bite down on his forefinger to stop the giggles that escaped his lips. Per WARDEN Field Manual, Section 5-52, use of a rock in high density Mist areas was seen as an acceptable protocol to... He cut off that train of thought with more chuckles.

"5-52..." he laughed harder and made sure it wasn't too loud lest he give away what Gideon had done. Putting one gun into his front pocket after checking to make sure the safety was on, he fully turned to look into the sky when he heard the War Gong again. He couldn't see it, but he could hear the Mist whatever was up there was using. His eyes stayed glued up there, free hands making weird gestures waiting for whatever it was to make a move. He'd be ready to make his own against it to defend his classmates.

[vietmyke]

"Indeed, Vangar Class A's" Galahad agreed as he peered over the body Gidon was crouched by. "They're meant for ceremonial, diplomatic, or other formal occasions. Not something you'd wear on a combat patrol, in any case."

Galahad didn't give the bodies much care, or time of night. Instead, he spent most of his attention carefully monitoring their surroundings, watching for dangerous pockets of Mist, and occasionally calling out if a squad member got too close to one. To most, Mst was invisible, and hard to detect, and even those trained in detecting the Mist could find difficulty tracing it in such a Mist-Hot location- such as the crash they were currently investigating. Some or the larger pockets of Mist were easily recognizable the floating rubble and intense heat were things that people could easily notice and avoid. The more difficult to spot plumes were the medium strength plumes of Mist. Their energies masked by the intense heat of the crash itself, the Mist spots, while not as deadly as walking face first into a Mist spike, were much more dangerous due to their difficulty to spot and side-effects. Mistburn was an injury commonly experienced by search and rescue crews- and was often their cause of death. Much like radiation, absorbing too much Mist from these invisible plumes would cause nausea and could destroy the body quickly if left untreated.

It also made the use of energy based and ranged spells problematic. A lightning bolt could set off a stray pocket of Mist, and then they'd all be in danger. And since detecting some these Mist pockets were difficult for even dedicated mages, it effectively gimped the range that they could safely fling spells.

Catching up with Gideon and Setzer, Galahad couldn't help but make a face, the crash site reeked of a smell that combined plastic and metal with human flesh. Galahad glanced around at the debris strewn about, almost awed with the level of destruction the ship had experienced. He wondered if this had anything to do with the bullet marked robot that Setzer had found. The robot didn't appear to be one of theirs- unless the military was working on some top-secret mechanized weapon project, but even then Galahad was sure he'd of at least heard of it. Galahad played with the idea of securing and taking the robot carcass with them. If they could get into its memory banks- if those were still intact, they would potentially be able to pull out audio and video data of what transpired on the ship. Galahad doubted anyone was alive so it wasn't like anyone could tell them what happened-

An arrow burst from the opening Setzer made in a shuttle they had found, and struck him in the shoulder. The next few moments were a blur, as Galahad threw himself against the side of the shuttle, opposite Gideon and Setzer, as the former threw in a rock yelling grenade. As quickly as he could, Galahad peered into Mist around him, to confirm no dangerous pockets of Mist were within the shuttle, while at the same time rapidly conjuring a bead in between his fingers. Galahad used a backhanded toss to lob the bead in after the grenade without exposing himself. In the darkness, the bead would follow the rock, and would be masked by the sound of the rock bouncing around the inside of the hull.

Looking at the other two, he gave them a short nod. At the snap of a finger, Galahad could detonate the bead, causing a blinding flash of light followed by a deafening thunderclap. Unlike a traditional flashbang, Galahad had complete control of when and how powerful it could be.

"Just in case." Galahad murmured quietly, so only their communication spell could pick it up.

[Hexaflexagon]

She dreamed of blood and fire. The raging inferno lighting up the abyss around her. The smoke filling her lungs with ashen remnants and obscuring her vision. She stumbled and fell hands sinking deep into the lifeless bodies below her. Her countrymen, the people that she was supposed to be protect. Dead splayed out like animals to the slaughter. Those that lived clinged to what little life they could calling out to her, moaning and writhing in pain. As she attempted to push herself up a hand wrenched itself from the crush and grabbed at her, burning skin at the touch.

Another hand rose and another and another. Ripping and tearing at her pulling her into the pile of corpses. She tried to fight back but for every limb she managed to pull away it seemed like four others had rushed up in its place. She watched as the hole that she was dragged through slowly began to fill in bodies casting her in darkness. And then there was nothing.

Her vision came to distorted and warped. Her left eye throbbing swollen shut from having smashed into the shuttle console. Pilot’s chair had ripped from its bearings with her still strapped into the seat. It was thrown backwards somewhere in the middle of the shuttle on the ceiling which had somehow along the way become the floor. The last impact had jettisoned her from her bindings having sent her sprawled across the floor. Her ears still rang and she felt her stomach lurch as whatever contents sat in her stomach had been forcibly expelled into a rather pitiful puddle. Scrunching her face in disgust her hand sliding across slick metal walls somehow managed to find enough purchase to pull herself into a sitting position. Stabbing dagger-like pain almost immediate as she tried to put pressure on her right leg. If she hadn’t already vomited from the constant titling of the world around her, she would've vomited from the sight. Tibia fractured and jutting outwards a few centimeters below the knee cap.

She tried to remember what happened but it was hazy. The memories of the attack all fading into her. Ardin... Ardin had told her to run, to release the holdings and get out. The assailant that had come after them having pushed him into a corner. The attacking ship had fired upon the shuttle as soon as it hit the open air. One of the engines blew and all she could do was try and pitch the nose upward enough so that the cockpit wasn’t crushed instantly upon impact. Which had lead her to this moment. The killers were still out there and she was next.

No. She wouldn't die here. She was Colette Van Skymning, of House Skymning. She had a lineage tracing back hundreds of years. Her ancestors had conquered kingdoms and defied the Spirits themselves and lived to tell the tale. She was not going to die scared and alone in the wreck of a shuttle. She couldn'tl. Or at least that’s what she told herself even as her hands shook and the tears flowed freely from her eyes. She took a deep breath and then another.

One step at a time. She pressed her hand against the broken leg. She then began to channel the Mist. Her heart pounded inside of her chest one wrong move, one loss of concentration and she could empty in too much Mist into her body and induce Mist Burn, too little and all would be for nought. She bit down hard on her free arm in preparation and began to push with the Mist. She could feel as the energy was forced into her bone and very slowly inch by inch the protruding flash of white was slowly forced back into the body. She bit down harder into arm feeling the cooper taste of her own blood fill her mouth. Finally after what seemed like an entirely she let it go. The bone was back in place, the pain was still there and enough would easily snap it again but if she was careful she would be okay.

It was then that she heard the footsteps. Heavy and cumbersome things crunching across scorched earth. Her mind instantly flashed back to the robots that had assaulted her ship. She quickly conjured up her bow with an arrow already being drawn. A large blade slammed through the busted door. She flinched backwards but managed to remain quiet as it was torn from its hinges. She kept the bow level waitin and waiting. The door was pulled away and backlit by the fires that raged behind him was a.... Man? She hesitated for a second and when the arrow was released it wavered from the heart and smashed into the shoulder. The man said something that fell on deaf instantly Colette released another arrow. This one was easily deflected away by the man’s massive sword. She could hear others approaching she yelled out a warning.

Another voice yelled out. What was it.... Grenade?! A small spherical object came soaring through the sky and landed easily inside the twisted hull. Colette reacted instantly Ardin’s training kick in hard and fast. The bow vanished and her hand flicked out and instantly a small glowing barrier appeared around the ‘grenade.’

The WARDENs would of noticed something at this point. An oddity that only those as highly attuned to the Mists as them would detect. For rather than the expected result of magic being used, a lessing of the Mist in the air around them as the user draw in power something else happened. The already heavy background Mist layer that surrounded them flamed up almost as if they were fueled by the girls casting. The ship above reacting to the display letting out a low groan that made the ground shake. The light from the barrier was like a torch in the abbys cutting a slice of light in the darkness.

Rather than seeing the enemy that they all envisioned they saw something else. A girl maybe their age or a little bit younger. Distinctively not from around their neck of the woods in both appearance and facial structure - the hair ink black tucked into a braid too dark and the skin a warmer palette than that seen in the mountainous lands. She looked like the enemy. She looked from them down towards the ‘grenade’ now illuminated by the light of the barrier.

“A rock?” She asked surprised. “Did you just throw a rock?!”

Setzer having wrestled Gideon off of him at this point standing back up with his sword at the ready took a step forward calling outward as he did. “Trust me lady wasn’t my idea.”

As he moved closer the girl rose her hand upward into the air, the mist flared again angrily. The arcane energy dancing and sparking off her like a live wire. Gallahad would feel the energy of his ‘flash bang’ being drawn into the angry around her like a magnetic pull. The center of her palm beginning to glow with a light the increased. “Step. Back.”

Setzer despite himself managed to halt his movement. His sword was still raised ready to charge in at a moment's notice but he called out to her. “Woah. Woah. As much as I would like to give you a thrashing with my sword here, me and my friends need some answers.”

“Answers?”

“Yeah, you know the talkin’ type.”

“Like what?” The mist still charging around her lashing outwards in small sparks of energy that bounced off of Setzer’s blade.

“Well who you are would be a good start don’tcha think?”

“You first.” Colette responded voice firm.

“Well on account of the war going on and you crashing your airship filled with Vangar soldiers here how about no.”

“I was invited here. By your King of all people. And within hours of entering your airspace, a trap is laid upon us and we are besieged. I think it is you that has some explaining to do unless the rumors of all you Rassvians being brigands and cutthroats was true, which would mean my mission her was all but pointless. Which would just add on to my list of things gone wrong today, of course. ”

Setzer raised an eyebrow at her turning to address his companions. “Invited by Balthazar? Is she crazy? Did we just pick up a crazy girl? Because I don’t deal with crazy all too well reminds me too much of my grandmother.”

Colette still holding her spell at the ready sighed and looked behind Setzer towards those that she knew were hiding out of her range of sight. “Listen. If you haven’t kill me at this point that means something. Can I please talk to somebody that doesn’t have an IQ of a fucking chipped brick?”

[vietmyke]

"Shit." Galahad growled as he felt the mist around them intensify. He felt the mist around him shift and bubble, as though magic was being conjured, but instead of leaving the surrounding area and focusing into one single point, the mist seemed to just swell around them. The feeling was raw and crushing, and Galahad could almost feel the weight as if it was pressing down on his shoulders. The mage was powerful, extremely so, more than Galahad or anyone he had ever met, but also crude, unrefined and untrained.

"Mage." He growled in a low voice. He didn't have to project his voice because everyone could hear his voice thanks to their communication spells. Mages, especially enemy mages were always wildcards. As any of them knew, mages often had the potential to be the most destructive force on the battlefield- capable of inflicting extreme enemy and allied casualties alike. As such, an unknown mage was an unknown and dangerous quantity. They could be weak and trivial, but they could also be destructive and terrible. From the way the Mist was reacting to the individual inside the shuttle, Galahad was learning towards the latter.

Galahad listened to the short exchange between Setzer and the shuttle occupant with only moderate amounts of internal head slamming. Luckily, Setzer didn't set the girl off and led to their deaths. Still The girl seemed unlikely to slowly release her spell any time soon, and Galahad couldn't forcibly shut down her magic without risking the spell going off and setting off the rest of the mist around them, giving them all major Mist Burn and probably killing them all.

“Listen. If you haven’t kill me at this point that means something. Can I please talk to somebody that doesn’t have an IQ of a fucking chipped brick?” the voice called out to them.

Taking a deep breath, Galahad ensured his barrier spell was in place, and this time took the bead into his hand and began actively controlling the spell with his own powers to prevent his protection spell from being sucked into her spell like his last. Stepping out from behind Setzer, Galahad placed himself within view without entering the shuttle itself.

"My name is Galahad Quaid, son of General of the Kingsguard, Epriham Quaid. Please identify yourself." He spoke in an even tone, his voice neither authoritative nor conceding.

Colette's ears perked up at the sound. A general's son. Maybe he would have answers that the mass of muscle was a sword in front of her would'nt. If nothing else at least he would have the common graces of the nobility. Spell never dropping she called back towards the blonde-haired one. "My name is Colette Van Skymning of House Skymning, daughter of his Imperial Majesty The Undying Flame, conquerer of the seven lords and uniferer of the broken kingdoms, seventh in the line of sucession of the throne of the Imperial Dragon, high princess of Vangar, lady of Koskov, Altzer, Zardoff, princess of Sorgod, Oztveir and Twyrl, and mistress of Ordanga."

"Fuck," Gideon muttered. Vangar royalty complicated things immensely, and if she wasn't kidding about the invitation, this was ugly and a breach of diplomatic norms. If it was an internal faction shooting the ship down, bad. External faction that managed to infiltrate and, without being detected before now, create this situation? Even worse. Someone that had access to the travel itinerary and route that knew where to strike. Out here, a strike team could move in and go after their target to mop up anything that qualified as a loose end.

Galahad watched in an almost exasperated silence as she listed off her titles, vaguely reminding him of the reasons Gideon had previously mentioned for disliking being in court. Galahad had never given much credence to such misgivings, but he was tempted to revise his thoughts on the matter. All things being said, Galahad was somewhat impressed with the princess' ability to recite titles, with only a single breath inbetween. In any other situation, this would've been a point for conversation. But such was not the case.

"Wait Skyming like the Emperor of Vangar that Skyming? " Setzer asked.

"No like the fucking carpenter from down the road. Yes that Emperor."

"Setzer, I appreciate your need to point out the obvious, but please, shut up." Galahad muttered under his breath. Galahad assumed the princess' presence in their lands had something to do with the peace talks that were all over the radio for the past few weeks.

Gideon put a hand on Setzer's shoulder and a finger to his lips. Everyone was announcing titles, but Gideon was a bit more careful with information like that, especially with the enemy right there.

"Princess Skymning," Galahad offered, with a slight nod, "May I ask what happened here? We spotted unrecognizeable machines in the wreckage with signs of damage from weapons." Galahad was under the suspicion that the mysterious machines had something to do with the wreckage- he wanted the princess to confirm that for him. Not that he absolutely knew that he could trust her word, but nobles were typically not of the lying type, rather they just preferred to stay silent otherwise. Perhaps they were just not good at it.

Meanwhile, Gideon muttered into their link they had, "Folks, we might want to spread out some and keep a perimeter here. Keep an eye out for emergency rescue or...anything." Gideon wasn't necessarily a spit and polish sort of guy, but he did have a strong appreciation for good patrol discipline and fieldcraft.

"And keep an eye on that truck," Gideon added, "but assume roads might be watched." Military training said that the easiest path was usually mined. Or at least, that's what his favorite instructor, Master Sergeant Rask, liked to emphasize.

"I told you already. Your king invited me here to attempt something of a peace talk. We ran into a Mist Storm popped out here and were besiged by machine like creatures. I tried to get to my escape shuttle but as you can see they managed to shoot that down. And then Mr Sword for brains opened the door and now we are here. And you still haven't given me a good reason not to turn you all into smoldering ash yet." She responded gesturing to her hand still glowing.

"Well, for one, if you haven't noticed, the Mist around us is pretty unstable," Galahad pointed out in a matter-of-factly sort of way, still aware of the pressing atmosphere around them. "And by pretty unstable, I mean dangerously so. If you tried to turn us into smoldering ash, you'd probably end up turning the crater we're all in, into an even bigger crater- you along with it. So for your safety, as well as ours, I'd suggest you very carefully dispell that spell.

"The other is that you don't know what our numbers are. It's dark, it's cold, and you're in enemy territory that you don't know very well," Gideon likewise, was matter of fact, even while he shifted his position to keep an eye outward, "And whoever these things are, in their shoes I'd be sending a team to verify that you are in fact dead and, if not, finish the job. Just a thought, while we chit-chat. There's a big fire to light the skyline for many miles. so they don't need a big sign to find us. And I don't want to be here when that happens, do you?"

"Gideon's right. We need to get out of here, fast." Galahad said, half to her, half into the communicator to the rest of the squad.

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence as Colette considered the situation in front of her. They could feel the unease in the Mist as it almost seemed to react to the girl's own emotional state. It charged and sparked around them frantic. Finally she let out a breath of resignation and the glow in her hand slowly began to dispell itself, the pressure in the air lessening as the Mist began to withdraw. Yet the high levels of energy seemed ever-present around the girl like a cloak of sorts. "Maybe you have a point. Though at this point I wouldn't be suprised if you were all working with whoever is on that ship."

"If we want you dead, all we have to do is walk away." Gideon's tone had a bit of a hard edge to it. Sure, they were in on it. And they came loaded for a Rassvet Royal University stag party. Lesson learned; he wanted something with automatic fire capability and would never go without ever again.

She looked at the blonde-haried on that the other blonde had refered to as Gideon. He looked familair for one reason or another but Colette could'nt quite put her finger on it. None the less she give a half-hearted shrug. "Fair enough."

Slowly she rose to her feet and limped her way out of the corpse of the shuttle. The freshly healed-leg give way under the pressure and Setzer reached out quickly catching her and holding her up with about two fingers. "You're welcome."

"Fuck you."

"Glady." Setzer felt the elbow slam underneath his ribs.

"Wait, what ship?" Galahad questioned, "We didn't see a second ship in the air, just yours." He said as they began climbing out of the wreckage. Perhaps this ship was the source of the strange machines, but they had nothing to base that off of. For all they knew, the machines were Vangar mechs and malfunctioned and turned on their owners.

"The ship above..." Colette started but as she turned to look up at the empty sky. "What the fuck?"

"Forget that ship for now, we'll work it out when we aren't standing around like targets. Let's check that pod for useful supplies. We're loaded for a kegger, not a fight and her leg's gimpy. We need to get a move on before anyone decides to follow up on their work."

"You're not going to find anything. The shuttle's meant to act as a landing craft for docks that the ship was too big to land at. It's not supposed to carry people for more than a couple of seconds at a time." Colette pointed out.

"Well, good to know we're not the only ones that thought we were coming for a party." Gideon's tone was not impressed; they might have forgotten their guns, but at least they'd brought medical supplies. He'd be happier once they were in a treeline or something.

"And good to know that assholes aren't just a thing in Vangar."

"Spirits get a room already won't you?" Setzer responded with a sigh.

[Mike73]

Lee's first thoughts upon seeing who the person in the pod actually was were neither helpful, nor practical, or really even appropriate to the situation.

'Oh my God she's hot.'

Thankfully he didn't blurt those potentially lethal words out loud as soon as he thought them since he at least had some self-constraint, and the split-second internal reaction over his opinion about her attractiveness was soon overcome as he began to fully digest the situation. The woman was from Vangar, and she was a princess at that, and apparently the only known survivor of the sky battle everyone had witnessed earlier. While he didn't blame her for her hostility, considering the situation, her abrasive nature came as a surprise to him. Gideon always went on and on about how royalty and the like always have to be proper, and that being a WARDEN was something that allowed him to act out against that since it was expected for military folk in general to act and speak brashly. Yet here was a princess swearing and threatening to blow them all up, somehow out-rebelling Gideon, a guy who had become infamous in the media as an icon of royal rebellion. Lee tried to think back to see if he could remember ever hearing about Vangar's princess or what she was like, but he soon remembered that he actually paid close to zero attention about anything involving politics and ended up drawing a blank.

During this train of thoughts of his, he eventually realized that Setzer Gideon and Galahad had taken the lead in the conversation with the princess (was her name Colette?), though really Gideon and Galahad lead the conversation while Setzer acted like Setzer and was already flirting with her. Though maybe it couldn't really be called flirting if the only response he was getting back was being struck in the ribs. But more importantly, the other two were talking about actually important things, like immediately getting the hell out of the crater and finding safety. The second Gideon had mentioned for the others to maybe set up a perimeter, Lee was ready to jump right on that, but the conversation soon made it turn out that just getting out of there as quickly as possible would be the more preferable outcome. And Lee wasn't about to argue that.

"Second ship?" Lee repeated when it was brought up, and looked up as well but didn't see anything. But then he noticed Trent. His friend had seemed distracted by something during the trek to the crater, but now he seemed to be focused as he stared skyward and made motions with his free hand. Lee's own look he was giving Trent began to become tense as he started to connect the dots.

"Can you hear something?" Lee asked, somewhat aware that Trent could 'hear' the Astral Mist though not exactly sure how it worked for him, "Is...is there something up there?" Lee looked upwards again and gulped. This was so bad. "Guys, I'm not saying we should run, but let's pick up the fucking pace." The thread still wasn't picking up any vibrations from the truck's direction which meant they hadn't been followed, but if there was a ship in the sky that they couldn't see, then being able to foresee a ground ambush didn't matter if enemies could be deployed from the sky.

[AlexStarsion]

Another pulse and suddenly, silence. Trent couldn't HEAR anything. It was almost like a dog whistle, human ears couldn't pick up on it, couldn't hear it. Trent panicked internally, what could have caused such a thing. Taking a deep shaky breath he didn't move his head but shifted his eyes to the side and listened to the conversation. He could hear how they spoke, but it sounded different as if less background noise made the world less bright. Less.. How Trent saw it, in a sense. Sighing and turning his full attention back to the sky as their conversation came to a close, it was a rushing, much like the ocean waves hitting the shore all at once. Whatever the princess had done, Trent didn't like it. Part of him wondered if it was like when he was at the capitol, with the crystal thrumming in the back of his mind, drowning everything else out. Had he become so lax, so overwhelmed by the outside to not notice something like that? Thoughts for another time.

When he saw the look on Lee's face for just a moment, he liked her even less, but he stomped on that hard and kicked it into the back of his mind. He couldn't make out Colette's tone, it was muted but that didn't make any sense. Galahad had called her a mage, with some vehemence which was rather ironic considering his "teacher" was one himself.

"Gideon she acts like you," Trent muttered his hand still making motions in the Mist but not doing anything with it. Whatever he had heard from the sky was gone now, drown out in the wreckage's Mist's sounds. He kept his eyes on the last place he could pinpoint the war gong and let out a frustrated sigh.

"Is...is there something up there?"

Trent shook his head and looked back down to the ground and his full surroundings. He muttered his reply, "whatever was up there I can't sense. Whatever she did with the Mist seemed to silence the area... It was..." Trent shook his head. He was acting like he was a teenager again, unsure of his way with the Mist and it's flow, but being cut off like that, unsure of his own footing? He didn't like the feeling of powerlessness in this whole surrounding. If he had used his power, he'd have Burnt himself and those around him, he wanted away from this.

"If we're leaving, should I make it look like this place blew up from the leaking Mist," Trent asked through the link. "IF someone is after the... woman, wouldn't do to give them an easy time of it would it?" He wasn't sure what to say to the princess, so he'd focus on the issues around him.

Heading out in front of the group, he made his way up the crater from the crash site, he would wait for the others to get there, "Daryll," Trent spoke up. "You can't teleport with someone can you? I'd rather not get caught in the burst that might come out if I get the okay for destroying the site."

[Draken]

Collab with @Mercenary Lord

As if mentioning it made it real, as soon as the group started looking at the sky, a ship winked into view, as if a curtain had been whisked aside. A split-second later a flicker of motion from high up caught Zimmy's attention.

For a precious few moments, Zimmy hesitated: she didn't want to interrupt the oh-so-important ramblings of the nobility below, after all. Then the movement evolved into a very robot-shaped blur, and she could be silent no more. "Gentle lords and ladies," she muttered into the air, "I appreciate the grandstanding and all--really, I do--but we've got real problems now. It's time to go. Can the princess walk? Run, preferably? Theta, Trent?"

Daryll jumped on what Trent was saying about teleportation, growing annoyed at the squad's tendency to hold two conversations at once. "No, I cannot, Trent. Well, technically, yes, but I'm not actually very good with teleporting anything except myself, and this is not the place nor time to push my limits. That also means that I'm not about to bring Princess... Princess out either. Theta can take care of any mending we need right now. Zimmy and I will bring this thing down, or at least tie it up. Lee, Trent, watch the new perimeter."

Daryll waited a moment for everyone else to act on their orders, basking in the shame of already forgetting her highness, Colette Skymming's name. After the miniature pity party, he gave a look back and motioned Zimmy in. The look was useless with her cloaking, but at least there was no confusion on who he meant. His only hope was that she'd have one of her infamous plans. Things always seemed to go more smoothly when she took the lead, though instructors rarely agreed.

They had only moments to work out a plan of attack. Ironically she and Daryll were probably the least equipped to handle this giant incoming death-machine. But everyone else was more important, to be perfectly honest. Setzer was the wall to protect the princess, and Gideon and Galahad needed to keep talking to her to keep things from deteriorating, seeing as she could blow the entire crater up instantaneously.

Luckily, her mind flashed back to a very particular moment in training--or more accurately, the many periods of dicking around she and Daryll had passed the time with. "Daryll," she said, as the sound of an incoming robot grew louder and louder. "How well do you remember that aerial fighting bullshit we came up with last year?"

Daryll couldn't help but smile. "I remember that everyone else did indeed call it bullshit. Against a robot, should make the thing helpless. I'm in, on your signal." The excercise last year was supposed to be practice for duo firefights, but Daryll and Zimmy had decided to forgo shooting and cover entirely. Their plan was foiled after several matches, but it worked wonders the first several attempts.

"Cool, great." At least, she mused, they would die in a flash of glory. Then the robot hit the gound in the crater, sending up a spray of debris. She could almost see the thing rising through the dust. Go time.

As she leapt off the spike where she'd been keeping watch, Zimmy reached out to the mist below her and congealed it into a sort of...cosmic jello. It was an old trick she had learned early, good for reducing terminal velocity. Not quite flying--she was still trying to master that--but it was good enough. The problem was that too much mist in the crater itself could set them all on a path to mist-death, so she had to grit her teeth and use as little mist as possible. That meant hitting the ground hard.

"Fffffuck," she hissed as she hit the ground hard. She didn't have time to waste on pain, though, and she rolled to her feet. "Hey!" she shouted, kicking a rock at the robot while she ran closer. It dinged off the big metal head and the thing turned to look at her, just as she smoothed all the mist below her into a frictionless path. It was actually quite a small amount of magic, as were most of her machinations.

The next few steps of this plan required excessive precision. As she reached the robot, she gently pushed on the mist around her, willing it to become buoant. That was how she always jumped so high, except this time...

"Daryll! Help me out." She couldn't lift the damn thing by herself, even with the weakened gravity. He was with her, though, having followed her just a few paces behind and one to her left, avoiding the path of Mist Zimmy employed. He rolled in, timing it so he was lying on his back at the robots shiny, metal feet. Daryll's feet, however, were now making impact with the thing's equivalent of an abdomen, using all the strength in both his legs to shove the thing towards the sky. Intertia was a bitch, but once all that metal got moving, it took its sweet time slowing down.

While the hunk of definitely-not junk was moving upwards, Daryll and Zimmy began enacting part two of setup.

Zimmy glanced at the robot one more time to make sure the plan was working. The thing was heavy as fuck, but they really only had to get the thing to just slightly above the danger-zone, and then Daryll could take care of the rest.

Looked good to her. She turned back to Daryll and smiled. "The things we came up with instead of getting laid, man." Then she tugged just a little bit harder on the mist and fell into a solid 'throwing' stance. Then she grabbed Daryll's arm and waist and bodied him into the air after the robot. "Show 'em even the stupid ideas are useful," she said, more to herself than anyone else.

It had been a while, but Daryll still knew how to maneuver in the air. Throwing his weight, he caught up to the robot and made impact, feet first. Feeling the mist, and drawing it in. he pushed off once more, nudging the robot higher while he worked his best bit of magic. Without a hint of excess effort or theatrics, he relocated himself to now be directly above the helpless hunk of metal, sword already in place. The stab went straight to the things chest armor, and made disturbingly little dent. Its arm-cannon began to glow.

So maybe it wasn't quite so helpless.

Daryll pushed off again, banking in the direction of the thing's head. A cursory examination revealed few seams. The thing didn't really have a neck, so he figured his best bet might be to simply detach that weaponized limb. He teleported again, now on the opposite end, coming up near its legs. This time, he latched on, wrapping one arm around its equivalent of a thigh while planting his feet on its back. He brought the edge of his blade down where the leg he held met the robot's core, and was delighted to feel it give a little. He was promptly shocked when the metal shifted beneath his feet. Apparently the torsos could rotate 360 degress.

By the time it had turned all the way around, however, Daryll was on what was qualified as its back... Or front. He didn't care, really, what mattered was it being a blind spot. This time he went for the arm cannon, aiming at the base once again. It turned, but this time he clung, no longer holding to the independent legs system. He struck once more, and exposed wire.

His blood was pumping as he felt the warm glow once more. The robot had brought its arm cannon up, now pointing back, over its shoulder and at Daryll's head. He blinked, both literally and magically, reappearing on its left, offhand moving to grip its arm. He made a second go for the wounded leg, really just trying to make it move the position of its arm. As an AI, it fell for the deception readily. As Daryll delivered a final blow to the arm, now clinging to its shallow dome of a head, he felt gravity once more take precedence over the lift he had given the flying piece of junk.

"Zimmy, I'm coming down, save my ass!" Daryll yelled, forgetting the communication spell in the rush of the moment. Figuring she would need time, and wanting to make sure the robot was thoroughly crippeled, he gave the wounded leg one more go, taking satisfaction in the severing of several wires. He then pushed off for the final time, entering freefall and awaiting salvation.

"Only your ass, Daryll?" Zimmy grinned fiercly at the spectacle above. Okay, so neither of them were Setzer-level battle-god, but between the two of them, they weren't bad at all. "The rest of you is just as important, isn't it?"

She chuckled and reached out to the mist above, slowing Daryll's fall as best she could. Unforunately she couldn't set him down gently: that would have meant risking a decent amount of mist manipulation right in the danger zone, which was a no-no. But Daryll was tough, he'd be fine.

The robot landed before he did, as Zimmy released her influence, clanging down hard to the dirt. It was down an arm and a leg, and for a moment, Zimmy wanted to make a joke about the price of attacking them. Unfortunately, she decided to look up instead, and she groaned.

More blurs were descending upon them.

"Well, fuck. Setzer, now's the chance to show me that your pretty body is good for more than just looking at."

Daryll followed up over comms, his face growing pale. "What she means is, more hostiles incoming. Time to get the fucking hell out."

[Hexaflexagon]

They watched in stunned silence as the ship materialized into the sky above them. Nighttime sky suddenly filled with the looming silhouette leviathan sized ship as big maybe bigger than the Vangar ship that had crashed. If the Princess was an overabundance of Mist, the craft above it was on the other end of the spectrum cold and foreign to the world and all that stood around it. It produce a metallic groan once, twice and finally a third time that seemed to worm its way into their heads, rattling and scratching at the skull.

Objects began to be jettisoned from unseen launch ports, they came soaring towards the ground like meteors but as they approached the ground and could be seen with more detail they appeared to be robotic entities similar to those that Daryll and Zimmy had dispatched a moment earlier. But where they faced one these were several dozen. The landed into the crater throwing up dirt and debris into the air as they did. And with another metallic groan from the ship this one at a slightly lower frequency like buckling steel, dozens of glowing eyes stuttered to life around them. And one by one they stood up from their personal craters and methodically and slowly made their way towards the group, bulldozing their way through anything that happened to be unlucky enough to be in their way.

"Well, fuck. Setzer, now's the chance to show me that your pretty body is good for more than just looking at."

“Ya don’t fucking say.” Setzer muttered his voice noticeably lacking its usual bounce and boom.

It was easy sometimes to forget that Setzer held an impressive number of top marks on almost every combat simulation back in the Citadel. Maybe it was to overcompensate for the fact that he had a lackluster magical capacity or that as a country bumpkin that had to walk ten miles a day to school because his alcoholic father refused to drive him, book learnin’ wasn’t really something that he was all that attuned to. Combat though, combat was something that came naturally to him. Combat came from the bloodied knuckles of schoolground brawls and the bob and weave of dodging the screaming bottle of whiskey tossed at his head. It was the primal dance that once you knew the beat of it was hard to dance to anything else.

He took in the current situation around them. Counting steadily approaching eyes, how long it had taken them to get from where they had come in, to the other side of the crater where the Princess’ shuttle had crashed. The truck was further out from there but at least the trees could provide them some overhead cover from the airship above. With the current group currently outmanned and surrounded everything was coming up red. This was the kind of situation that their instructors had warned them time and time again to not get themselves into. It was five different ways of fucked up and Setzer was loving every second of it.

“Here’s the gameplan. Shortest route to the truck is through the thick of these mechanical shits. We punch a hole and run like hell. Hopefully before that big old cruiser points its guns at us.” Setzer explained causally like he was discussing dinner plans and not a near-suicidal rush through robot hell. “Oh and Princess you're gonna want to ride me.”
“What!” Colette began angrily.

“Phrasing sorry. Buut maybe like that later. You know if you're up to it” He explained as another word made his sword disappear and picked the girl up in a Fireman’s carry with as much ease as one might a sack of flour. She slammed her first against his back but he didn’t even seem to notice all that much. He shifted his footing adjusting to the weight now placed on your shoulder. “You know you're lucky you're as light as you look.”

Colette punched him again this time hard enough to make him flinched a little. “Just make sure we don’t die, you fucking idiot.”

“Well you heard the lady.” Setzer told the rest of the time and without anything resembling a warning or a ready sign he broke into a run heading straight in the direction that the truck was in. The mechanized infantry seemed to react to the movement and suddenly broke out into a run concealed thrusters on their backs propelling them forward with great speeds. Setzer ran a zig-zag pattern through the ruins as cannon shots exploded around them. He picked up the sounds of fighting as the rest of the team pushed forward through the debris field but he dared not to look backwards keeping his eye dead foward. Focused on maneuvering through the rubble and navigating the pockets of heavily focused mist that could prove even more fatal than the robots.

A pile of broken metal exploded to the left of them as one of the machines came barreling in ahead blocking the path. There was no way in hell that Setzer was turning ahead and so he pushed forward even as it raised its arm-cannon and began charging a shot. Setzer closed his eyes ready to began a pulverized mess of meat when he felt it. Before it was an unnatural change of pressure but now as close as he was to the source it felt like all his organs were vibrating getting faster and faster ready to explode. And then all that pressure was released as a blinding light was released next to his head and slammed into the chest of the robot punching a hole clean through it and sending it down onto one knee.

He titled his eyes upward at Colette hand raised sweat formed at the brow, panting in short uneven breaths. “Nice.”

“It’s not dead. Keep running you idiot!” And true to her words the mechanical contraption was already beginning to rise again sputtering to life like a giant hole through its chest was a mild inconvenience at best. Setzer pushed past it and kept on running dodged and outstretched claw as it shot out in a desperate attempt to slash outward at him. Scrambling he made it up the other side of the crater and pushed into the forest pumping mist into his body to ease the screaming pain in his legs from the continued dead sprint. He could hear the sounds of his teammates continually yelling status reports in his ear and the sounds of trees snapping behind him as the robots pushed ahead after them.

He saw the flash out of the corner of his eye from somewhere high above but didn’t put two and two together until a cluster of trees slightly ahead and to the left of him exploded into a ball of fire. The blast was powerful enough to throw him off of his fight and sending him crashing into a tree trunk, the princess having been knocked away in the commotion.

His eyes opened as his ears ring and the world around him shook. He could feel the heart around him as the surrounding trees had burst into flame. Pushing himself to his feet ignoring the hot soil burning his hands, he peered through the smoke looking for Colette. Frantically searching through the smoke, he felt the ground shake as another shell slammed into the earth further off the mark this time. Finally he found her back on the ground, hand outstretched another shell mere inches away from her face suspended and floating in space. The Mist churning and fluctuating around it.

Pushing his shock away he ran forward and pulled her out from underneath the shell.

“You okay?”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s go.” She nodded weakly and made a motion with her hand and like a fist just punched the shell it was propelled back upward into the sky where it slammed into the ship that was now firing down at them. The explosion seemed to shimmer across some sort of barrier to little effect than possible making their mysterious attackers more angry than they already were. Scooping her up Setzer kept on pushing forward.

---

Somehow some way they made it through the explosions and the robots to where they had left the truck safely tucked away. They seemed to be out of the ship’s firing range as no more shells had fallen for the last several minutes, but the robots still followed them heavily and without reprise. Leading the pack as it was, Setzer and Colette arrived first. He quickly ran over to the truck and deposited her into the bed. He turned back towards the forest where his allies were still coming through.

“Listen you know how to drive stick?”

“I’m a princess not a fucking hermit. Yes I know how to drive stick.”

“Good. The keys in the ignition start her up and be ready to move quickly.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Buy us time.”
And with that Setzer conjured up his sword and walked forward watching intently as a pair of brightly glowing eyes burst through the clearing. The robot with the same hole in its chest. The same one that had been following the pair since the start of this clusterfuck. Setzer grinned and charged.

When he reached striking distance he brought the sword down in a huge arc and with great speed. The robot pushed its right arm upwards in response and countered the blow mid-swing. Setzer expected for the blade to slash through as it did nearly everything else. A blow with that much power usually enough to bring down weaker opponents upon contact. This one sunk barely an inch into the robotic appendage.

“Shit-” Was all Setzer managed to get out as the robot smashed him to the side with its arm.

He was sent sprawling to the ground eating dirt a few feet away. Pushing himself up he ran again at the robot this time learning from his mistakes and swinging blow the arm into the chest. Similar result occurred as the sword hit home but the robot didn’t even register the blow and balled fist slammed into his head once again sending him sprawling to floor.

He tasted the blood in his mouth, he could see stars and was pretty sure he could speak five more languages than he could previously but he managed to push himself back up. He flashed back to Zimmy and Daryll fighting the robot. He remembered how the limb had been served. A plan formed. He concentrated and focused on his blade, focused on the Mist around him. On the individual molecules and started to make them shake and shimmer, and shake and shimmer. And soon the blade-began to glow with an intense heat.

The robot raised its cannon arm and fired, using mist-enhanced speed he dodged to the left. It fired he dodged again always moving closer and closer and closer. As he drew into striking distance the arm shot out to finish it. Setzer brought the blade up and blocked with one of the sides, muscle buckling underneath the weight as he continued running sliding down the arm and firmly rooting the blade into armpit area of the robot. Screaming out in frustration he pushed and he pushed, the superheated blade having an slightly easier time to push through the metal and with great effort the blade came free from the other side severing the arm from the body.

“Take that you-” He felt something grab the back of his shirt and wrench him backwards before throwing him to the ground. The wind was knocked out of him as he peered up at the one armed robot looking down at him. It raised one of its colossal metal legs and brought it down hard intending to crush Setzer into a bloody pulp. Reflexly the warrior raised his sword into the air. The blade pierced through the foot but the foot kept on coming down towards him. Setzer felt the pommel of his sword dig into his chest as the robot pushed down common to a halt about three quarters of a way down the blade pushing downward.

Setzer yelled in angry protest and pumped what little reservoir of mist he had left into the muscle in his arms and he pushed with a superhuman strength. With grip on the sword as if he was about perform some strange version of the caber toss, he pushed his arm upward and felt as the leg of the robot was pushed upward, sword getting out the other side of the piercing foot slamming headfirst into the large robot bearing over him. The robot fell over from the impact and Setzer got up and ripped the sword from its head and just started beating it over and over again. The distorted sounds of blunted steel smashing over blunted steel as the robot was slowly crushed beneath the blows.

“AND. STAY. DEAD. YOU. FLAMING. SHIT.” Setzer yelled at the robot and with one final blow that crushed what was left of the head, the glowing eyes turned dark. Panting, tired and full of pain and a wounded pride he looked up into the forest where at least a dozen more glowing eyes were fastly approaching. The rest of his allies at this point were inside or nearly inside the truck at this point.

He made the sword vanish and began sprinting towards the truck despite the pain and yelling at the top of his lungs as he did. “Drive! Drive! Drive!”

[Hexaflexagon]

Ignore

[AlexStarsion]

Hearing Zimmy and Daryll work in tandem made Trent's ears ring. He'd admit, even when he was paired off against them he had been listening to their powers meld behind the thrum of the Crystal's song that they had wiped him out before he had even gotten a spell out. Having the instructor rip into him and Trent blaming his lack of will as a fluke and stage fright had gotten him a lot more physical work then he would have liked to deal with. The only plus was getting Daryll's help with studying afterwards.

As they landed he tuned back into what was falling from the sky, and his eyes locked onto the ship. Before he could call out his idea of bringing the damned thing down Setzer's usual voice was matter-of-fact.

“Here’s the gameplan. Shortest route to the truck is through the thick of these mechanical shits. We punch a hole and run like hell. Hopefully before that big old cruiser points its guns at us.”

Trent sighed and shook his head as he did a fast head count. In all this Mist Mess, he couldn't do anything, usually in the back to take out targets with high leveled magics was what he did best. In this, he was utterly useless. His pistols may as well be pea-shooters. Checking the one in his left hand, he couldn't help but sigh in disgust. They needed cleaned, he forgot, that guns in the Mist Pockets made them useless until cleaned and cleansed.

Chuckling as the princess hit Setzer a few times, he let his laughter drop, made sure both pistols were on safety and starting pulling the Mist little strands at a time. Yeah he would be worthless until they got out of this cluster of unfortunate surrounds.

When Setzer took off at a run, Trent slide down the craters edge and went sprinting after the big guy. Human. Meat. Shield. He'd buy the big guy a drink after this was all said and done. He'd buy him another drink for all the times the big man decided the nerd needed sunlight or he'd be so pale he'd vanish. Trent grinned as they ran, even if he fell back a bit.

With the Mist thinning out to it's slightly more then usual mess, Trent came to a stop and turned on his heel.

"You lot keep going," Trent grinned. It wasn't his normal 'everything will be okay, just tell me what's been happening' smile. "We have guest and my mother did tell me how to treat those un-invited to a party."

He didn't wait for them to argue, but took off into some of the woods drawing a handful of the mechanical beasts with him. Take down the easy prey, well Trent wasn't easy prey at all. A glass cannon maybe, but easy prey he was not.

A note played out in his head, tree roots shooting up to grab at mechincal limbs, blasted away by whatever arm cannons. Another note had shards of ice forming and bouncing off metalic skin. Two more notes and then more and Trent brought his hands up as if conducting an orchestra.

"You lot better be getting to that truck," Trent snapped as he dodged a grabby arm. "Some of these bastards have grabby hands!"

Bringing both hands down, he grinned as gravity intensified slowing the overly large robots down, summoning large icicles around him he grinned and couldn't help but banter to the unresponsive metal heaps, "See, most mages like fire, I like colder spells, the lack of warmth is rather amusing when they expect their lives to end in a moment."

Pulling his arm back as if it were a catapult, he swung it foward with all his might, two went down with ice spearing their mechnical chests, one was frozen in place, the other two droids seemed the least affected by the spell. Taking an arm cannon blast to the chest and having the gravity spell splinter like broken glass as the wind was knocked out of Trent's lungs.

"Oi," Trent coughed. "Not fair..." Said Trent on the ground melted away, the real Trent took off running from where he was using his magic towards the truck. He was panting and covered in sweat, his limbs felt like they were burning from the exsertion of the Mist and the physical workout.

----

Breaking out of the woods near the Truck, Trent slamming into it and hugged the thing as best he could, "Oh I missed you, did you miss me!? I don't care if it's a horrible cluck of metal at least you aren't shooting at me..."

Trent turned and watched as Setzer went after his prey and grinned, his eyes though went back to the ship.

"Galahad," Trent panted out. "The ship, even if we take off... Think you can help me summon up a storm to cover our tracks?"

[Mike73]

Lee's face paled when he saw the massive ship in the sky materialize from seemingly out of nowhere, and the color definitely didn't return when more robots began to descend from the sky and prepared to attack. He'd watched Daryll and Zimmy take on the single robot on their own, and though he was impressed with how quickly and efficiently they'd dispatched it, he knew none of them stood a chance against what looked like an entire army of battle androids. Especially not in such an unstable combat environment, as many of them relied on using the Mist for their tactics and fighting styles. They had no choice, they needed to get the hell out of there now!

"Alright, punch a hole, get the hell out, ride Gal's shitty truck to safety. Got it!" Lee replied to Setzer when he suggested his plan. Well, it wasn't really much of a plan, but "fight your way through" was about as complex of a plan as anyone could come up with at the moment, and he had to admit it was usually one of Setzer's better plans in most situations. He turned to the direction of where they'd left the truck but didn't immediately break into a run, not yet at least. Instead, he reached back with one hand for the roll of thread still connected to his belt. The string had begun vibrating the moment the robots landed, which was a rather pointless warning by now, but maybe it could still be useful. He brought the thread up to his mouth and cut it with his teeth, disconnecting it from the rest of the roll, and then held the now-loose end in his hand. With no need for the rest of the roll, he pocketed it with his free hand before then focusing on the Mist he'd applied to the string up to this point. Plenty of it had been unrolled during the trek, so perhaps, he'd have enough...

With a flick of the wrist, the string whipped up into the air. The Mist attached to it delivered the message down the line until all of it, even the beginning point just beyond the entrance of the crash site, received the command as well and leaped up into the air. And then, all it took was one good yank, and the entirety of it began to fly towards him, the manipulated Mist giving it a momentum it wouldn't normally have. It began to web and bunch up until it looked more like a makeshift net, and with the robots in the way, they became its targets. Lee just needed to add one final touch, and used his specialized magic style to turn the string into something much more of a hazard: its state became something akin to a hard industrial wire, thickened yet more compact. As it wrapped up a group of the robots that were in everyone's way, Lee took that as his cue to start running. The tense wire wasn't infallible, and would likely break within only a few seconds of struggle from the robots, but a few seconds of paralysis was more than enough time to give the WARDENs (plus the Princess) a head start in their escape.

As Lee ran through the trees with the others, he counted himself lucky that he hadn't set off any of the Mist pockets. He knew he'd only used a minute amount of Mist and that it shouldn't have been enough to be worried about, but it was still a gamble, and one that he could have lost at that. But maybe now was the time to take risks, seeing as they all seriously had very few options at the moment and were on the run from automative killers. Lee shook his head, still not understanding what those things were, or why they were there, or why the Princess' ship had been attacked, or why really anything that had happened was happening.

An explosion not too far ahead of him broke him out of his thoughts, and he quickly realized that the ship had begun firing at them.

"Shit shit shit!" Lee exclaimed, and knowing that Setzer had been leading the sprint through the woods, he was instantly worried that the worst had happened. "Setzer! Setzer, reply! Say something!" He was unaware of the ringing in Setzer's ears and assumed the worst. His throat tightened, and he doubled his sprinting efforts in an attempt to catch up to where the explosion had gone off to try to see if he could find Setzer and Colette. Though before he made it, he heard Setzer ask something, probably talking to Colette. At least he was fine-

Lee suddenly felt a massive force strike him in the back and send him barreling across the ground, and could hear something shattering upon the intial impact. Shock kept him still for a moment, but he quickly became conscious of the fact that he wasn't in any major pain and that he could still move. He grunted as he forced himself to stand, somehow not much worse for wear other than feeling a bit bruised. Looking back behind him, he could see one of the robots aiming at him with its arm cannon, steam emitting from it as it charged up another shot. Wait, it had blasted him? So how was he barely even injured?

...Galahad's bead. That's right, Grand Wizard Gal had enchanted them all with a single-use barrier. The shattering sound had likely been the barrier audibly breaking when he'd been shot.

"Imagine that, Gal's foresight saved the day again..." Lee muttered as he let out a chuckle, "Shit, didn't mean to admit that over the comm line."

Seeing as the robot was currently a very active threat, and that they no longer were in the unstable Mist apocalypse, Lee decided to cast a bigger spell this time around. He motioned towards a tree near the robot like as if he were trying to grab it, manipulating the Mist much more intensively than before as he established his "link" with the tree.

The way Lee experienced the Astral Mist was a little hard to explain. He couldn't see it or hear it like some of the others, but he didn't particularly feel it either. It was less of a physical feel and more of a mental feeling, yet not quite psychic either. It was like someone took the physical states of solids liquids and gasses and transformed them into mental feelings, though that probably didn't really explain it either. All he knew is that there was "mush" and "white noise", the Mist that everyone experienced; and then there were the "states", the feelings in the environment that Lee could transform and shape into his reality. These "states" required all of his focus in order to be manipulated however, and after years of practice he came to coin his process "linking". It was this strangely specific way of dealing with the Mist that probably allowed him to have such a strong connection to it, and it explained his preferred style of magic as well.

With his focus on the base of the tree trunk, he debilitated its structure with a spell that weakened its density. Barely a moment passed before the tree began to splinter, break, and fall over, as it was no longer able to hold itself up under its own weight. Its collision course was set to crash onto the robot, but it reacted quickly and fired its now-charged arm cannon at the tree, obliterating it completely before it could crush the droid. But when it turned back to face Lee, he was already long gone. He didn't care if the tree actually took down the robot or not, he just needed to distract it long enough for him to get away.

---

Lee was panting heavily by the time he made it to the truck. Sure, he was the kind of guy who you'd find more often out on the track field than in the weight room, but that didn't mean he actually liked running until he was dead exhausted and then forced to continue sprinting even further. And the alcohol still in his system didn't help any.

"Go go go!" Lee gasped between breaths once he clamored into the truck and threw himself onto a free chair haphazardly, "Get everyone the fuck in and let's go!"

[ML]

Zimmy knew her options were extremely limited. She'd seen Daryll struggle with the robot bastards, and she knew that they were tough. Tougher than she was by far. There was no way she was taking them out head-on.

And, to make matters worse, she was on the exact opposite side of the wreckage as the truck. A bunch of metal kluggers were between her and the vehicle. "Well, fuck." Not much else to say. They hadn't noticed her yet, but they would soon, and then it would be all over.

A gleam caught her eye on the ground. It was near her feet: it was the arm cannon they had severed from the robot. She knelt and scooped it from the earth; the air whoosed from her lungs. It was fucking heavy. And loud: as she staggered under the weight, one of the other robots turned to face her. It must have heard her gasp. "Fuck," she muttered, poking around at the exposed wires. "Come on, you bitch."

The robot came closer and closer as she fumbled with the cannon. If she took any longer, she'd have to just drop the thing and try to skate around the metalhead instead.

"Come on, come on come on come--" the cannon roared in her arms, blasting death toward the robots and sending her flying in the other direction. She barely got her feet under her before she hit the ground hard. She stumbled, muttering death threats to whoever had come up with the stupid idea to come out here in the first place, and re-aimed the cannon. She wasn't sure if it had done anything to the robot in front of her, but the thing had stopped, at least. "Okay, red wire on blue--" again a cannon blast shot into the robot, knocking it back another step. Hm.

Maybe she could...with a grunt, Zimmy flexed all of her Citadel-built muscle and shifted the gun to one hand. With the other, she smoothed out a pathway of Mist below the robot, all friction removed.

The next blast sent the robot skidding backward at least twenty feet, knocking it flat on its back and clearing Zimmy a bit of room to get to the truck. She breathed deep, shuddering with protest at the heavy cannon in one hand. "Fuck this," she hissed, and started to move.

Each time she came near a robot, she would point the cannon, remove the friction from beneath the stupid hunk of metal, and blast it away with the cannon. She knew she was overextending herself, but she was WARDEN--they were made of sterner stuff than most. She could probably go for another ten minutes of this pace before things got too bad.

That was until three robots convened on her at once. There was no way she was going to be able to shoot them all, so she had to drop the cannon and move fast. Instead of smoothing the Mist below them, this time she extended her hands like claws, and pulled as much mist away from the robots feet as she could. Then she sent all that Mist seeping into the Earth below, ordering the rock to liquefy until fifteen feet down.

The robots dropped like...well, like metal. In the span of five seconds they had disappeared into the sandy abyss, leaving Zimmy with an all-but-clear route to the truck.

Now the Mist whined in her mind, urging her on to use it more and more. She knew it wasn't good, but that quicksand wouldn't last forever, and the robots probably could escape it easily. She sucked in her breath and jumped forward, pulling the Mist behind her, and stretching the Mist in front of her. The combined effect propelled her across the rest of the clearing with insane speed, to the point where she nearly fell over when she landed in front of the truck.

She leapt up into the vehicle with a grace entirely unfitting for anyone intoxicated, flashing a bright smile at Setzer before her legs suddenly gave out beneath her. She slammed unceremoniously into the floor, her mind buzzing with energy, but her body gasping. She knew that feeling: Mistburn. Or, more accurately, right before mistburn. She was more or less at her limit. Any more magic, and the buzzing would get stronger and stronger, and she might burst into flames, or go manic and try to set everyone on fire, or something equally uncouth.

Better to rest and let herself calm down. "So, guys," she gasped, "I told you it'd be the part of a lifetime, didn't I? Didn't believe me, huh? Well, I told you so." She wanted to be snarkier, but her mind was still stuck on loop, saying MORE MIST MORE MIST MORE MIST MORE-- she wasn't in any position to throw around sass. "C'mon," she mumbled weakly.

[vietmyke]

Collab with @HeySeuss

---

"Well shit." Was the general feeling as massive cruiser suddenly materialized itself in the sky above them- seemingly out of nowhere. That marked this massive ship as something possessing of advanced technology, and was much bigger than anything the Rassvet military had readily available, and matched no Vangar ships that Galahad had seen so far. Plumes of smoke and steam erupted from the sides of the massive ship, and the faint echo of cannons exploding in the distance succeeded in getting Galahad's adrenaline running- if not the cascading thud of cannonball robots crashing into the area around them like armored paratroopers from hell, without the parachutes.

In between them and the truck they arrived in stood some 50 meters of crater, and another short sprint from the lip of the crater to the actual truck, and some half legion of tall, bulky mechanoids seemed hell bent on making sure they didn't get anywhere soon.

“Here’s the game-plan. Shortest route to the truck is through the thick of these mechanical shits. We punch a hole and run like hell. Hopefully before that big old cruiser points its guns at us.” Galahad vaguely heard Setzer explain, as he unceremoniously threw the Princess over his shoulder, and that was that.

"That sounds like a terrible idea." Galahad replied with an exasperated sigh, "Let's be off then." he replied as he followed suit behind Setzer and broke into a sprint. The robots reacted to that by charging towards them, hidden thrusters sending them forward at speeds faster than the average man's sprint.

As they stumbled away from the shuttle, Galahad's eye caught the corpse that was the remains of the dying man Setzer had been talking to. More importantly, his eye caught a saber attached to the man's belt, and a sidearm in its holster. Taking a short detour over the body, Galahad did a quick tumble as he relieved the dead man of his sword and sidearm. With a whistle, Galahad shouted out "Gideon!" tossing the Warden the pistol as they ran.

A pistol wasn't the best thing in the world, but Gideon got plenty out of it; a latest-model Vangar weapon, and mercifully without optics. Limited ammo, but he could make every shot count.

To what avail? These were huge robots. Gideon kept running. There was a time to fight and this wasn't precisely it, with the metal monstrosities struggling with some sort of entanglement. The weapon got shoved into his belt, which was the best option he had as he made to use what handholds he could to get up the crater, to keep him steady as he tried to move as fast as he could out of the fracas, "Keep it moving, slow them down!" he gasped.

Following close behind Setzer, the pair of them scrabbled up the side of the crater, with bit less grace and efficacy than Galahad cared to admit, but pride was the least of his concerns when giant robots were chasing them. A quick look back showed Galahad that the net that Lee had put in place to stop the robots had already snapped, and he ducked reflexively as blasts from the robot arm cannons soared up through the crater to meet them. Turning back around, the situation outside the crater wasn't too hot either. While many of the robots were chasing after them in the crater, up outside the crater next to the truck, several were already up here as well, and Galahad could see other members of their group engaging in combat with them.

Once Gideon got to the top, he crouched, and he waited. He considered sighting down the pistol but dismissed that instantly out of the catalog of options he was considering. Instead, he tried the dirt with his hands and found it fairly disrupted, not packed hard at all. He growled, under his breath, "Cover me a couple seconds here," as he started to gather up one of the spells he did. His was neither a prodigiously powerful or conventionally dangerous talent, but Gideon thought sideways.

It wasn't anything flashy, but once others were past him, he pumped some energy into the ground, concentrating the groundwater from elsewhere, condensing moisture from the air. It was a brief condensation effect that left droplets to show for it, but little in the way of noticeable effect for those not looking closely. Nonetheless, the crater's slope was that much more muddy, harder to get traction on. It might not slow them up appreciably, but it also didn't take long.

As though reacting to his presence, another robot appeared out of the woods to confront them, arm cannon raised. Shooting a quick look back at Gideon, Galahad took a cautious step forward, drawing his recently acquired blade and holding it before him, the glowing orb of a spell coalescing in his free hand as a quintet of tungsten beads floated out of the case on his side and began orbiting his hand.

The robot's arm cannon glowed with energy and fired, the bolt flying off into the distance as the Galahad ducked out of the way with a mist-enhanced leap. Throwing his spell hand forward, Galahad gestured at the robot and the five tungsten orbs launched themselves at the robot like a hail of bullets, embedding themselves in the head, and torso, the force of the impacts causing the robot rock and stumble backwards.

Galahad grimaced as the robot caught and righted itself, it wasn't as though he expected that to finish it off, but the back of his mind was hoping. The thought quickly left his mind as the robot boosted forward with surprising mobility, now intent on using its cannon arm as a bludgeon. Galahad instinctively sidled and struck at what would've been the robot's collarbone with his acquired saber, momentarily forgetting that the robot was made of metal, and wouldn't react to a wound like a human would.

To his surprise, the saber sunk into the metal alloy armor of the robot, instead of bouncing off, cutting several inches into the robot's torso. Galahad would've been more intrigued with the discovery, had he not been in the middle of a fight. Rapidly reacting, the robot slammed its damaged cannon arm at the side of Galahad's head, his defense spell shattering with the sound of crashing glass as it saved him from a deadly injury and instead sent him flying several feet back. Quickly rolling to his feet, Galahad managed to catch the robot's 'eye' as it raised its arm cannon, energy charging. In that instant, Galahad gathered the mist around him as fast as he could, his powerful understanding of the mist allowing him to rapidly coalesce and bend the mist to his will.

As the cannon fired, Galahad blinked from existence, invisible wisps of mist all that remained of him in that location. A split second later, Galahad blinked back into existence face to face with the robot, his face almost touching. Without a pause, Galahad deftly raised a hand and placed it on the robot's chest. As his hand made contact with the robot's chest, there was a loud, echoing, thunderous clap as a wave of air distorting force caused the robot's chest to crumple in on itself and sent the robot flying some ten yards through the air and over the side of the crater.

The aptly named 'Thunderclap' as many of them referred to it as, was a favorite technique among many of the Warden's spellcasters. A quick, simple spell crafted for the purpose of putting distance between a spellcaster and their would be assailant, the result wasn't usually as explosive as Galahad made it, but he wasn't certain how hefty the robot was compared to an average human, so he went with excessive. From the sound of moving joints Galahad heard over the ledge, it was safe to assume the robot wasn't 'dead', but it was at least out of their way for now.

"Should've just started with that." Galahad said as he took a moment to catch his breath, sheathing the commandeered saber back into its scabbard.

"Pat yourself on the back later, you need your shoulder in its socket right now," Gideon panted as he sprinted for the front of the truck; he was using minute bits of Mist on the tires, trying to give them the extra bit of traction they'd need for the next step, especially if it got wet on the road. It wasn't taking down robots, but it was something. He wanted to take down robots, but he had a handgun and a limited supply of ammo. Instead, he focused on the little things. And with the last tire done, he was just about to get into the driver seat, except...

Setzer was depositing the Princess into the driver's seat, Gideon looked over with an expression of horror mingled in with 'what the fuck?' but didn't have time to question it. He did, of course, keep the pistol out of sight, as he got into the driver's side seat. She'd been firing arrows at his friends not too long ago.

"Get on and keep those things busy, we're hauling ass outta here!" he called to the others, as Galahad sprinted to the back of the truck. Galahad almost offhandedly threw off telekinetic bursts, pulling anyone who hadn't boarded the truck onto the old behemoth, before jumping on with a mist-assisted leap himself.

"Listen," he addressed Collette low and urgently, "you need to push this thing. I'm going to call out the curves in the road and you're going to have to trust me, because I know this place better than anyone, including the enemy. Also, no lights, too exposed."

He tapped the windshield, before she could start a 'you're crazy!' rant, giving it the subtle illumination enhancement that probably would save their lives; same spell he used to find his way in the dark on point in the first place. That was Gideon; subtle enhancements, the little precise things that counted. He wasn't powerful, but he made every ounce of juice that he could pump into something count.

"That ought to help. Now we need to punch it before they shred us with heavy stuff. GET A GOOD GRIP GUYS! AVOID LIGHT POLLUTION!" He had ideas on what to do with storms, terrain, trees. They could bring a lot of this down behind them, they could create torrential water on the roads, they could use mud to unmoor trees at the root from the soil and come down or they could use a blast to kick out enough of the tree to cause the timber to fall, but he didn't have time to tell them everything he saw.

He had a trigger happy teenaged princess behind the wheel, and he wasn't checking for a license, of a rickety last-generation Army 2 1/2 ton truck on some narrow, winding alpine country roads.

He made sure to shut off radios. He had no idea how the enemy was tracking, but it made no sense to have anything emitting any signal or receiving signal that they didn't need right then and there. That was Gideon's way of conquering the fear, by kicking every possible fucking tire while there was gunfire around his ears.

[Hexaflexagon]

---

Left!

The truck veered hard as it narrowly avoided another large pine that had materialized out of the darkness. Whatever accoutrements that had not been vacated previously were tossed around haphazardly throughout the interior. Shaking hands smashed the gear shift and prayed to whatever powers existed that the whole rig didn't stall. Somewhere beneath the roar and protest of the engine, the sound of branches snapping in the distance followed as their pressures maintained a close distance.

Setzer peered out into the darkness from his position at the back of the truck. He clutched his sword waiting and watching ready to repel any persistent robots. A roar sounding off in the distance and somewhere to the right of them a cluster of trees exploded. With all the lights turned down, their attackers were forced to go off of audio clues and their accuracy was seeing the worst of it. Not that Setzer was complaining as just one lucky shot from one of those machines was probably enough to blow all of them sky high. Somewhere ahead of him he heard Gideon somewhere ahead of him yell out another direction and felt the entire truck jerk. The Princess was doing surprisingly well at not crashing them yet.

His eyes flickered upward towards the skies. He intently watched a cold and unwelcoming blanket of skies watching, waiting. And then he saw it a slight flicker of bending light that marked the slow pursuit of the cruiser. He watched the slight glow as it began to charge for another bombardment. He turned his head and called back towards the driver’s cabin yelling as he did.

“Oi! The Fireworks are about to start up again.”

Chasing after the vocal conformation the sky flashed with a rapid strobe of hot white. Collette saw the flash in the rearview and a second later the landscape ahead of her began to detonate. It was almost as if night had become midday as the area around them was oversaturated with light. The heat licking at their skin and drawing the moisture from the body. Trees were tossed through the air like pieces of straw, boulders flung about like pebbles, and the earth itself spewed up chunks of molten material. The truck jerked and weaved dodging detonations that nearly toppled the truck just from the resulting shockwave. The smell of burnt earth and fire filled the air.

The explosion having acted like a flare to their pressures continued their own volley in earnest their shots landing much closer to their intended target. For the first time in a long time Setzer wasn’t one hundred percent confident about anything. They were going to die. They were going to die in a shitty fucking truck, in the fucking woods. They were going to die more hungover than drunk. They were going to die and he could do nothing about it. He couldn't swing his sword at a cruiser and even if he could he wasn’t quite sure that it would necessarily do anything.

This manic chase ontinued for what felt like an eternity. Eventually tires bounced from dirt roads to slick asphalt. The woods ended they had no choice but to go back to the highway. The bumping subsiding somewhat as the Truck began to pick up speed. Illumination coming once more from highway lights. It would be it. They could now get an easy shot off at them especially from the ship.

And then something strange happened.

Their pursuers stopped. Mechanical frames halted at the very border of the woods. Raised Cannons were lowered. Eyes flickered from a piercing orange to an unassuming blue. And very slowly they began to disappear back into the darkness. The ship froze in the sky. Another low tone from somewhere within its bowels was sounding that seemed to stretch across the land and vibrate their very bones but it stopped. It flickered and then vanished scattering like a disturbed reflection at the water’s edge.

They drove onward in continued silence still on edge. Setzer could of swore he could hear the heartbeats of his companions pounding waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yet all that was heard was the occasional cry of a wolf somewhere in the distance and the sound of wheels against asphalt. Cautiously the lights of the truck were flicked back on and headlights cut through the darkness. The sounds of the radio left on from before and seemingly forgotten in the chaos began to slowly fill the truck.

Collette’s hands were still shaking. Her heart felt like it was somewhere in her neck and refused to move down. Very gently she pulled her foot of from the gas pulling them from a frantic gallop down to a slow and steady trot. The old engine letting out a low sigh of relief as it did, a few seconds away from overheating itself. She flickered her head towards Gideon who still peered into the darkness ahead of them.

“You know you can loosen up a little bit.” She commented but whatever or wherever the jab was supposed to land somehow fell flat. “But uhh thanks for making I sure I didn’t flip this thing and kill all of us.”

In the back Setzer collapsed finally into a seat. The sword vanishing back into the mist. He breathed deeply wincing slightly as the adrenaline that filled his body slowly began to subside and the pain came rushing in. Nothing was broken from what he could tell maybe some deep bruising and a cracked rib but nothing that the magic of medicine couldn't fix.He peered out the back watching the lonely and desolate landscape roll on by. He tried not to think about those that didn’t make it. That wasn’t conducive to moving forward, to the mission. Yeah guess that was what they were on now, a mission.

He fished around in his pants and pulled out his cell phone that had somehow survived. The screen was cracked and half the buttons seemed permanently pushed in but it still turned on, which was something. The signal was weak but it existed. Though he didn’t even know who they would call, who would they tell. Oh yeah, we have an enemy princess that was here on a diplomatic mission, her shipped crash and then robots tried to kill us. Who would believe them? At best they would take it as WARDEN trying to prolong the war at worst they would take them as rogue agents acting out of line.

A warning light flickered on as the gas began to run out. Sighing Collette followed the signs off of the highway. Still very much in rural Rassvet the town they pulled into could barely be considered a town more of a rather large rest stop. Yet it was what they had going for them. Silently they pulled up to a self-service gas station harshly illuminated by an artificial glow that was disrespectful to the eyes. Somewhere within a small kiosk an employee pulled away from their phone to look at the scorched and banged up truck. A cock of the head and then a shrug as they want back to whatever they were doing. Attached to the station was a ramshackled building whose flickering sign of neon red advertised motel and vacancies. The prospects of sleeping an appealing idea. A key turned, an engine stopped.

Setzer dropped out of the truck and stretched. As he did he looked around at the emptiness that stretched out beyond them. The only sign of life beside them and the employee being the five or so long haul trucks parked in the motel parking lot.

He sighed, tired.

“So what’s the plan?”