Penny

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

I smiled at how easily Kian talked his way into a comfortable spot at the inn. I knew that the people only half believed in his ‘daemon’ but I also knew that life in a small town was monotonus. Daemon or n daemon, the chance for something exciting and entertaining was worth the price of a meal. For my own part I had other priorities, days spent climbing over mountains and dodging greenskins had left me feeling less than civilized. Fortunately the best inn in Zinoca ran to a simple bath in the form of a large iron bound half drum which I guessed had been used to ship wine or ale in bulk before the locals got more creative with it. The serving maid was a little scandalized when I asked not only fresh water, but hot fresh water to fill it, but for a silver coin I was able to overcome her initial reluctance to do more than make doe eyes at Kian.

During the bath I asked her what the gate guard had meant about Bradolf.

“It’s a town up the river, uppity farmers and timber men for he most part,” she confided in surprisingly nasal Tilean. I think she meant it to show that she was as sophisticated as I was, but I much preferred her bastardized Riekspiel to the hash she made of the Mother Tongue. Bradolf had, she claimed, once been a hamlet under the control of Zinoca but wealth from its mahogany groves had lead to its growth until it rivaled the parent city. Predictably friction between the old families and the new money was acute.

“We even had a few battles, mostly just the men shaking their spears at each other,” the serving woman explained as she scrubbed my back rather harder than seemed strictly necessary.

“Everyone was saying it was going to be war before the orcs showed up this spring.”

“And you have been fighting the orcs since?” I asked. She made a dismissive sound by blowing air through her lips.

“The orcs don’t come down out of the mountains much, except at night, it hasn’t stopped the men from squabblin’ only made them a bit more cautious about it.”

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

“Beren!” Jocasta screamed as she stumbled through the cloud of stinging dust towards where he beast and monk had impacted the ground. It was impossible to think that anyone could have survived such an impact but her mind refused to countenance the possibility. The whole place stank of bacon grease, ancient dust, and the vile admixture of fluids and burned flesh of the creature had given off in its last few seconds of life. Jocasta reached the head of the beast and began to furiously tug at the tumbled wreckage of masonry. Still animated by her spell, the dragonflies also began to work, picking up tiny pebbles and tossing them aside in a whir of wings.

“Lass…” Otar said gently, “he fought bravely but…” Jocasta whirled on the dwarf, eyes blazing. She thrust a fingertip into his chest like he point of a spear.

“No!” she snapped, “you morons wanted this fight for your honor or whatever.” Jocasta made an expansive gesture to encompass the devastation all around them.

“When we could have just left and been fine. I helped you as a favor so now…you will help me dig,” she snapped punctuating each word with a thrust of her finger to Otar’s chest that sent the stocky dwarf stumbling backwards in retreat. The priest dropped his weapon and grabbed a stone, pulling it free. The other dwarves took his example and within moments an orderly excavation was underway. The dwarves were clearly naturals at the work, picking stones in a way that prevented a cave in. Jocasta wracked her brain for a spell that could help, but found nothing. Instead the dragonflies crawled into he interstices of the stone seeking pockets beneath. After a few moments one of the little constructs emerged, carrying a few grains of a fine white sand. Jocasta scowled at the little golem but Otar’s sucked in breath prevented it. He shouted something in Dwarven and the party redoubled its efforts, pulling stones free in a virtual frenzy until they exposed a strangely rectangular face of compact white sand. It was apparently moist enough to stay together although that didn’t explain how it was withstanding the tons of weight atop it.

“What in the name of the …” Jocasta began.

“A Casting,” Otar pronounced as though this made everything clear. With a muttered prayer he reached out and the sand retreated from his hand as though blow by he wind. It opened to reveal a cavity in which Beren lay, unconscious but whole. There were several inches of space to spare in all directions but it was obvious the monk lay in a larger than life hollow that mirrored the dimensions of his own body. Jocasta, her antiquarian interest returning with the sight of an apparently alive Beren thrust her head into the space, trying to map it with her mind. It looked ‘like’ Beren’s body but it wasn’t, it was proportionally shorter and thicker and the negative space that would have been a space had a definite beard. Otar and Radsvir reached in and seized Beren by the ankles, dragging him out of the space.

“Why doesn’t it collapse?” Jocasta asked aloud, reaching out to touch the sand. It was yielding beneath her fingertips but flowed back into position the moment she withdrew the digits.

“It wont collapse until the statue is cast,” Otar supplied with monumental unhelpfulness.

“I never thought I’d live to see such a thing, and for a human,” Varin said in a voice intermingled with pain and awe. Jocasta turned to look at him and noticed blood bubbling at his lips, one pupil blown in a bloodshot eye. The dwarf sat heavily and began to cough, spraying blood onto he arm he used to shield his face.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

"Fine," Jocasta responded testily, "but ill need some chalk."

__

The creature appeared to make long circuits of the city. Its path was evident from the tumbled masonry where it had squeezed past structures as well as a sheen where some kind of slime had been ground into the cavern floor. The primary path, a result of hunting or territoriality, was glossy with long use but lesser swaths of destruction demonstrated that the beast wasn't limited to its circuit. Jocasta had wondered allowed if the thing ever slept, but apparently its functions were basic enough to keep running even in what passed for rest.

"Everyone in position?" Jocasta asked as she peered over the ruin of what must have once been a smithy. This area seemed to have been industrial, though it seemed even normal dwarven homes were likely to have a small forge inside. Judging by the number of metal debris scattered around that wasn't just a religious consideration. Beren gave her a thumbs up from his position across the street, indicating the dwarves were ready. Jocasta unfastened her earrings and held them in her cupped hands. She closed her eyes and whispered a spell then breathed outwards onto the little metal dragonflies. Her breath came out as golden mist which whirled around the earrings like water flowing down a drain. Both earrings twitched and began to move, beating little wings that were suddenly more than wire and glass. The fingernail sized insects fluttered up into the air and began to buzz around Jocasta's face, darting in and out to pluck at stray hairs.

"Stop that," she whispered and then told them what she wanted. They buzzed skeptically, but then took off down the road at the speed of panicked sparrows. They spread out to either side of the street, buzzing low as though something so small could possibly be interesting to something so vast. As they approached the lifted suddenly and spread apart. Arcs of electricity jumped from one to the other as they rose until they were buzzing around the monsters enormous head. It roared as the miniature storm crackled around its head, snapping its enormous jaws this way and that. Its very size worked against it, the air it disturbed buffeting the little dragonflies out of its path as teeth the length of Jocasta's forearms clashed impotently. The beast thrash, smashing several buildings that had stood for thousands of years to piles of rubble as it twisted, spewing massive amounts of dust that light the little stabs of magic like mariners flares. It was so big that it appeared to move slowly, like a distant landslide as it turned and snapped at its tiny attackers, already fleeing back down the street whence they had come. It shook dust from every building in the city as its belly hit the ground and it began to slither after the two dragonflies, gaining speed slowly but inexorably as its vast stomach muscles contracted in kinetic zig-zags that made Jocasta queasy to watch. Less queasy if it hadn't been headed right for her.

"If this thing kills me I swear I will haunt every last dwarf," Jocasta muttered as she gathered her arcane energies. The beast was coming on a tremendous rate of speed now, kicking up a bow wave of broken masonry as it closed on the fleeing dragonflies. It opened its mouth and roared, blasting Jocasta with a cloacal stench she could have done without ever having experienced. The noise was literally stunning drowning out even the hammer of rock on rock for a few seconds. Beren was shouting something over the ringing in her ears but all she could do was lift her hand and stare at the chalk mark she had placed on the street. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her guts felt like acid as she spoke the arcane phrase. At first nothing seemed to happen and she panicked, thinking that she had botched the spell, then the creature began to flail erratically as it began to slide out of control. A hundred foot section of road was suddenly coated with an inch thick layer of bacon grease. The beast was massive, but is very bulk and momentum worked against it as it suddenly couldn't get any traction. It skidded past Jocasta's hiding spot, thrashing about desperately for purchase before smashing into one of the stalagmite towers a second after a bow wave of greasy white fat. The sound was like the world ending. Masonry exploded as the ancient stairway was crushed to powder. Hundred pound pieces of stairway began to rain down, ripping free one after the other and tumbling onto the beast as the dwarven construction came down in an incredible vista of destruction.

The beast went into spastic convulsions as it was pummeled from above by the rain of stone. Incredibly it was still alive, though when it pulled its head free of the wreck, three of its five compound eyes had been smashed to jelly. It screamed in rage and confusion as it pulled free, throwing rock in all directions. Jocasta coughed and belatedly pulled her scarf up over her face.

"Well," she gasped in a tiny voice, "I cant to all the work for you."

Death's Edge: A Warhammer Story

"Halt! Who goes there!" came the cry as we approached the walls. They were fairly impressive fortifcations, stone based and topped with timber pallisade, beyond which steeply sloping rooves could be seen. We saw plenty of evidence of the Orcs we had seen in the mountains as we walked towards town, the landscape being dotted with burned farm steads and the occasional smashed cart.

The cry was in thickly accented Tilean, though I was willing to bet it wasn't the mother tongue of the guard up on the wall. The guards were all but invisible behind the walls, visible only as the bobbing tips of pikes and the occasional flash of color. The Border Princes were a home to the flotsam and jestsam from every human culture and even this close to mountains the architecture and speech was distinct from Tilea.

"We are travelers from Tilea!" I called back, aiming my cupped hands in the general direction of the guards voice. I became uncomfortabley aware that there were probably a number of crossbows pointed at us. There was a long silence broken only by the caw of distant ravens. Quite suddenly a bell tolled, startling a flock of crows from a steeple somewhere deeper into the settlment. I tensed, imagining this to be an alarm, but it must have simply been telling the time because it faded slowly in the crips alpine air. I was about to call again when the heavy oak gate began to swing open, revealing a knot of men in a mismatch of armor and colorful clothing that I thought might have been Imperial in origin. The curuious faces of villagers could be seen behind them, held back by other men with stern expressions and long pole arms.

"Welcome to Zinoca," a man called in thickly accented Tilean "You'd best come inside before the greenskins get you."

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Sayeeda stared blankly for several seconds, her mind as blank as the white heart of a star. The information she had been given was so alien and unexpected she couldn't assimilate it. Something bumped her from behind and she spun, embracing the long ingraned maxium that any action was preferable to none.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Taya squeaked as Sayeeda's arm pinned her too the bulkhead. Sayeeda's eyes suddenly focused and she stepped back with a gasp. Taya rubbed her throat and glanced up and down at the naked mercenary.

"Is this a sex thing?" Taya asked with a quick backward step.

"There was a problem in the R.I.P," Sayeeda replied "I came right from bed."

"You sleep with your boots on?" Taya asked.

"Don't you?" Junebug replied. Taya looked momentarily non plused as Junebug vanished back down the corridor.

Ten minutes later, showered and wearing a pair of fatigue pants and a tan PT shirt, Junebug reappeared on the bridge. Taya and Neil had both settled into their stations and the Highlander was on course for the distant white spot that represented one of the systems planets.

"Is this really your home planet?" Taya asked as Sayeeda came in, her terminal already glowing with information on the planet.

"Celandine," Junebug confirmed. There was a brief awkward silence which impelled Junebug to speak further.

"I grew up here, till I was 19 and shipped for the Academy on Blakely," she confirmed.

The world below had an slightly alpine aspect, though the equatorial belt was relatively warm. Dozens of small cities dotted the globe, linked by high speed monorails. Shuttle craft decended from a circle of orbital stations, taking engineers or researchers from station jobs to the ground.

"You haven't been here since you were 19?" Taya asked. Junebug shock her head.

"I came back here on leave after five years with the Armored," she admitted, "It didn't go well."

"You have family here though right?" Neil asked.

"My parents, my sister and brother," Junebug admitted.

"Awesome, are we going to go visit?" Taya asked. Junebug sighed and punched in landing cooridinates for one of the larger cities.

"I suppose so.."

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

It would happen soon.

The shuddering increased in Junebug’s mind. Number three engine had cooked its bearings in the long, full tilt, run across the ocean. Within fifteen minutes it would shake itself to scrap. That was fine. They only had three minutes and twenty seven seconds left. Light Attack Vehicle Hotel 3-1- Hello Hellfire, jounced on her uneven thrust as she bounced up the front of the beach and across a carpet of thick lantana. The intakes made a grinding sound as a storm of dissected plant matter bounced from their particle shields to be spewed outwards as a jet of sap and salad. They came over the low strand nose up, dangerously high, exposing the open plenum chamber to the enemy troops for a critical second before gravity slammed them back down. Fortunately the inhabitants of the fire base were too panicked to take advantage. Rifle shots bloomed out in the night, the stars of muzzle flash lobbing the deceptively slow moving tracer rounds that snapped overhead. High, too high. The front of Hello Hellfire crashed to the ground as she lost pressure in the chamber, spraying gravel and clods of turf as her skirts bit. The LAV bunny hopped on momentum, rattling Sayeeda’s teeth before thrust balanced and they rushed down into the rear of the firebase. The enemy defenses were on the landward side, they had never anticipated an attack from the sea.

The shuddering was worse. It wouldn’t matter. Three minutes, twelve seconds.

Sayeeda peered through the sight of the light plasma cannon that was her vehicle's primary armament. The holographic stabilizer compensated for the shuddering. The left half of her visor projected a plot position indicator in a twenty percent mask. Blue phosphor dots marked the other LAVs of her platoon. 3-2 Hot Stuff, 3-3 Hocus Pocus, 3-5 How the Fuck and 3-7 Hacksaw were all crossing the strand in a neat echelon. That was luck rather than parade ground precision, as they should have been crossing line abreast, but it wouldn’t matter, it hadn’t mattered.

The shuddering. How was number three holding together?

The firebase blazed with hostile fire. Infantry weapons the computer said, no threat, unless you were unlucky. The real enemy was the armored company picketed on the far side, guns pointed towards the land approach they expected to have to defend. The night screamed with the buzz saw rip of the LAVs rotary mounts. The twin pods fired seven hundred caseless rounds per second in a ruinous stream. There were no tracers, but the holographic overlay reported the radar tracks of the projectiles as wavy lines reaching out to snuff out the disorganized enemy. It was neat in the dark. You couldn’t see men torn to blood and gristle, or disemboweled by the sweep of a sleet of hyper velocity hard rounds. She couldn’t even smell the death yet, only the sweetly poisonous chemical residues being sucked behind her by her wake. The night air quivered as the remaining cars opened up, their gunners taking full advantage of their enemies confusion and questionable cover. Sayeeda filled her sight picture with a barracks and fired the plasma cannon twice with a world ending CRACK CRACK which dimmed the rotary mounts to insignificance. The barracks, a two story construction of wood and mud brick, exploded, the sun hot lance of plasma of the main gun converting the residual moisture to superheated steam which literally blew the building apart from within. No fantasy of darkness could mask her handiwork. A thirty foot tall column of flame blazed skywards, the ruins of the building serving as a directional chimney for the funeral pyre of its inhabitants. A flaming body tumbled lazily away to crash into the roof of a neighboring supply shed, a half second before a pair of bolts from Hocus Pocus obliterated that building too. Fire slacked under the combined shock of the onrushing LAVs. Padma, Sayeeda’ driver, jinked them sideways so they slalomed between a guard tower and a shed of corrugated iron, kicking up a storm of gravel which rattled off the metal like a storm of shrapnel. Sayeeda caught a glimpse of a shirtless enemy soldier clutching pistol in abject terror as armored death crashed past. They were in the open field in the center of the base now, a parade ground, a training field? Sayeeda had slewed her turrent at a thirty degree angle to their line of advance based on Imagery from a satellite over flight three days before. You learned not to trust satellite when it came to enemy units, but buildings could generally be relied upon not to move. The headquarters building was made of brick with a roof of fired clay tiles, great, vaulted brick archways formed its base. It was built to last a statement of intent of the government that they were in this thing for the long haul. Sayeeda let the LAVs motion drag her gunsight along the front of the building. Her mind didn’t register her pulling the trigger but she must have because each of the successive brick arches blew apart in gorgeous white flames. At the temperature of plasma everything burned. The calcium in the bricks sparkled incandescent white as sun hot bolts completed their combustion in a fraction of a second. One section of the building was a communications station, probably the only real target that mattered given the quality of enemy officers. It mushroomed skyward as it was spitted by converging fire from Hello Hellfire and Hocus Pocus as the formed a base of a triangle with the burning building at its apex. The masts and antennae burned brilliant blue and green against the night sky.

Gunfire rattled off the hull of the LAV as Padma began to turn. One of the threat carrots in Sayeeda’s display lit red as a shoulder mounted launcher turned on its active radar a second before she caught the puff of its rocket igniter. An alarm icon flashed and there was a whirring sound as one of the three laser projection heads of the point defense system aligned itself and dumped its capacitor through a weapons grade ruby that cost more than Sayeeda made in a month. The ultra high yield laser discharge shattered the ruby and cooked the lens as it pulsed outward. The incoming warhead exploded in a dirty orange fireball that contrasted hideously with the beautiful bursts of the plasma flames. Pieces of warhead and rocket casing rattled off the turret facing, no more dangerous than a handful of confetti. Rotary pods from three different LAVs pureed the man into mist before he could duck back into cover, leaving his loader coated in gore and screaming as he threw himself flat. A plasma bolt from How the Fuck ended any lingering threat in a white hot fireball.

“No.” Sayeeda thought/said but her mouth didn’t form the words. Instead she heard herself saying, as though from an impossible distance: ‘All units advance, hit’em girls or they will chop us.”

“Roger that moving…” Daisy Bell, commander of Hacksaw began to respond but was cut off as her vehicle was suddenly slammed sideways by a concussive detonation. A second rocketeer had gotten lucky, his missile smashing low into the vehicle's hull. Something, perhaps a piece of airborne debris had deflected the PDS. The rocket blast shredded the skirts and dropped Hacksaw to the ground. The two ton vehicle carrened across the parade ground like a plowshare, throwing up a bow wave of dirt as her momentum died. Someone was screaming over the comm, probably Sanchez, Daisy’s driver as she was peppered with shrapnel inside the driving compartment.

I regret to inform you that your daughter Carmen Sanchez was killed in action. She died instantly when…

Carmen’s screams continued to echo for a moment before the communications AI mercifully cut the transmission. There was a sudden whump of exploding gasses as the crowd control gas and smoke grenade canisters in the ruined LAV detonated, blasting out in a donut shaped screen of toxic mist. Enemy infantry rushing towards the downed vehicles dropped their rifles and screamed as the gas burned their eyes and throats. In theory the gas dump would give any survivors, immunized against the gas, a chance to escape before the enemy could close in. If there were any survivors, and if they were in any condition to escape.

One minute thirty seconds.

The four surviving LAVs roared past the burning headquarters building, their fans swirling the flames into great curving blades of fire. The real target lay ahead. A score of armored vehicles, local tanks and gun carriers lay in position behind a slotted berm of bull dozed earth, designed for the tanks to be able to roll up and fire when necessary. Support vehicles of all kinds, light trucks, ambulances, fuel carriers were all drawn up in neat rows. The formation was in chaos. Men running from their billets were leaping into their vehicles, the air was thick with diesel smoke as the tanks came online, multi-ton tanks maneuvering in cramped spaces. The local vehicles were light tanks, wheeled instead of tracked to give them speed and maneuverability on the coastal plains. They were slabbed with green and khaki sheets of ablative armor over a steel core. Sayeeda saw a rotating turret bat a truck away like a top. She could smell the cooked meat on the air even before she opened fire.

One minute two seconds. The shuddering was so bad the world seemed to fuzz around her.
The first shot hit the rear deck of a gun carrier, the ravening bolt of white hot plasma spurting in through an open crew hatch, blowing the tank apart from the inside out. The turret blasted upwards on a column of flame only lightly coloured by the fuel air explosion of its vaporized tanks. Sayeeda was already slewing the main gun right, snapping off two shots at a second tank. The glancing hits smashed the ablative armor in a spray of ceramics which cut down crewmen still scrambling aboard.
The berm lit up like a fireworks display as dug in infantry in bunkers and fox holes opened fire with personal weapons. Threat icons blossomed as anti-armor weapons came online. Two plasma bolts hit a bunker opening within a fraction of a second, pumping megajoules of hellfire into the confined space. Something, stores of munitions maybe, detonated blasting out a forty foot section of the wall in a spray of dirt which rained down on friend and foe alike. Hello Hellfire slewed sideways as Padma adjusted course to run down the curve of the wall. The hull rattled with bullet strikes and the point defense system fired twice more, the bolts visible in the dust and smoke in a way they were not in clear air. The red ‘lenses exhausted’ warning light lit. No further countermeasures available.

“Pod out!” Cassel, Sayeeda’s gunner, shouted. She popped from an open hatch and ripped the ammunition drum free, throwing it over the side and swinging a fresh one into its place. There was an autoloader, but it would have taken thirty seconds to bring up a drum from the internal storage. Cassel dropped back into the shelter of her gunnery station. The buzzing roar of the rotary pods resumed.

Forty Seconds.

There was fire everywhere. Tanks and support vehicles blazed. A fuel bowser went off in a low order explosion that shook the night. Flames reflected off the berm in a flickering rendition of hell. The sudden crack, crack, crack of hyper velocity rounds rent the night as one of the enemy vehicles finally cleared for action. The locals used 20mm tungsten penetrators in three round clips. Hocus Pocus flipped like a flicked coin, turning a half revolution in the air before smashing down onto the ground, exposed fans howling and sucking ribbons of flames towards its intakes like the fingers of a demon.
I regret to inform you that your daughter Cassie Bix was killed instantly when…
Twenty one seconds. The shudder was so bad Sayeeda could feel her teeth chattering.

They were nearly clear. They just had to run back to the sea. Padma was pouring the juice to the engines as the survivors sped away. Sayeeda fired constantly in time with the shimmer, the barrel of the plasma cannon glowing white hot as it overheated. If the barrel warped it could easily destroy the LAV when a fresh charge burst on the deformed barrel. Hello Hellfire climbed the low rise to the lantana. She was trailing razor wire like the tendrils of a jellyfish, it ripped and tore at the ground cover like a flail.

Three… two…

An enemy tank emerged from a maintenance bay a hundred meters behind her. Sayeeda watched it happen with her mind's eye. She desperately tried to wrench the controls aside but her hands remained steady and inert. Her eyes saw the glittering sea beyond the rise, it was very beautiful, as dark and mysterious as space.

One… zero…

The tank fired. The first shot glanced upwards off Hello Hellfire’s armor like a comet. The LAV rang like a giant bell for the fraction of a second before the second round hit, punching into the vehicles fusion bottle breaching the magnetic containment. The reactor went off like a miniature fusion bomb.

I regret to inform you that your daughters Padma Singh and Johanna Cassel were killed instantly when…

The blast gutted the hull of the LAV from the inside. Sayeeda felt herself lift as the turret housing rose on the concussion, slamming her into her restraints a moment before the canvas parted and she flew outwards and upwards away from the death of her crew. She turned a slow summersault in the air, watching alternate views of glittering sea and burning base whirl through her mind.

I regret to inform you that your daughter Sayeeda Cyckali survived a hasty and ill conceived operation in which elven other troopers were killed..

Weird, she could still feel the shuddering of number three engine as the black waters of the ocean rushed up to meet her.

Sayeeda started awake, out of bed and into her boots before she was fully conscious. She was shivering , clammy and soaked in sweat as she ran for the cockpit, taking the ladder in three quick steps. She burst in naked except for her boots, eyes locked on the sensor readouts. Neil turned in his couch, hands coming away from the controls as alarm claxons began to quiet. He arched an eyebrow.

“Good morning to you too.”

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

"We will slay the beast!" Gunir declared, his knuckles tightening on the haft of his axe till his knuckles cracked like the popper of a bullwhip. The other dwarves nodded with similar bellicosity. Jocasta glanced between the dwarves and made an exasperated sound.

"You can't be serious!?" she exploded. "We just barely escaped one dragon and now you want to fight another?" Otar's expression grew lofty.

"Aye lass, we wouldn't expect a human to understand the demands of ancestral honor..."

"Ancestral honor?! Even if you kill that thing... IF you kill it, something just as bad is going to move in the moment we leave," Jocasta snapped.

"Isn't there more honor in actually reclaiming this place by, oh I don't know, living to tell your people where it is?" she demanded. The dwarves were all stony faced and rigid now, their backs well and truly up. She hadn't counted on the Elder race's stubborn streak which her words had inadvertently roused.

"We fight, to the last dwarf if necessary."

_______

"It might work," Beren cajoled the sulking Jocasta as she clandestinley copied down what she could of the dwarven spells and wards into one of her many notebooks. The dwarves were going over a battleplan they had already discussed a dozen times, sketching it out in the dust of the ancient temple's relatively unspoiled vestibule. It was plain to see that Beren was in something of a quandary, he was as obviously wiling to help the dwarves as he was to help anyone else, more so, for he had a kinship with them, but that still didn't quite make him a member of their clannish insular race.

"And it might get us all killed, and before I've even translated any new spells!"

At The Edge of The World

Darkwater Crossing was bigger than I had imagined. Much bigger. Perhaps it was because all the human endeavor I had seen on this continent seemed dwarfed by the immensity of jungle and landscape around it. Darkwater looked like a vast stone which had been split by the dark tannin rich waters of the river in its final united effort before it split into the silvery fingers of the delta that stretched out to the sea. It climbed from the bustling docks into ancient stone buildings, many of which existed only as the base for later construction of plaster and stucko. In the poorer areas the roofs were layered leaves while the wealthier areas sported tiles of dark greenish clay. Here and there, the original construction survived, rearing graceful domes and arches towards the sky. Strangely, this made it seem like the whole city was a construction site, where the newer structures were merely the scaffolding that would any day be removed to reveal the city in its restored glory.

There was an odd contrast in the people two, everywhere people were seen at work: stevedores loaded barges with timber and spices, cooks sataeed questionable joints of meat in thick aromatic sauces, wagons loaded with provisions clattered across the stone streets but there was a lethargy also. Housewives with colorful kerchiefs slumped in the shaded alcoves of their doorways while the swapped gossip with their neighbors, vintners in wine stained aprons fanned themselves with straw hats, toughs in leather jerkins diced in the relative shade of alley mouths. Everyone seemed more interested in staying out of the tropical heat, and where they couldn't picked at their work with only desultory enthusiasm.

I strode down the central boulevard, leading the Prostates by virtue of being uninjured but giving the impression I was somehow in command. Several of the toughs eyed me speculatively but either it was too hot to bother me, or the hard bitten Prostates dissuaded them. I reached the councilor's office, a large domed building that might once of have been a temple, and was met by a pair of slovenly looking guards. It took only a moment for the Councilor to appear. He was a neat looking man in late middle age. I got the impression he had once been handsome and athletic, but heat and age had dried him out into a sinewy armature of his former glory.

"My Lady?" he asked in a cultured voice that mostly hid his surprise.

"I have soldiers who need medical treatment," I told him imperiously, then softened it with a smile.

"Plus I'm told I can find a bath somewhere around here."

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

"Beginners luck," Jocasta declared loftily as she moved long the table. At each increment she picked up one of the small shot glasses and knocked back the liquor. It was of varying types and ranged from candy flavored to sinus burning rotgut. Jocasta had drank much worse many times. The stills of Navy ships during the war had rendered booze from any kind of carbohydrate, or straight from the hydraulic lines if necessary. Even so it was a significant amount of alcohol. She looked for the bottle she thought had provided the oily licoricey taint at the back of her throat and tossed it through the air to Neil by way of payback.

The smell of hot pizza distracted her from the moment of her revenge however, and she slid open one of the self heating boxes and drew out a slice. Meat lovers. She opened another. Meat lovers. In desperation she opened the third box. Olives, pickles, feta cheese, gara nuts and scardif. She grabbed a piece and popped it into her mouth.

"HOw did you know?" she demanded around a mouthful of pizza. Neil was balancing the bottle on his palm and grinning.

"I didn't, just picked the weirdest combination I could think of and hoped for the best," he admitted as Jocasta fixed him with a glare that would have been more withering if it wasn't over a mouthful of pizza.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

Everything was chaos. All around me people were scream, some who had seen the cardinal die, many more who had been caught in the blast of whatever device Vorn had just employed. Several of those closest to the false Inquisitor were down, blood leaking from shattered mucus membranes or burst orbits. Thousands of people were screaming and trying to flee. I saw a half dozen people go down under trampling feet to be pounded to death. Relics and oratories were knocked to the ground as people scrambled away in mass flight. A bronze brazier filled with burning coals was upended adding the smell of burned flesh to the scene. Church orderlies armed with heavy staves were trying to force their way towards the cardinal’s body, beating furiously at the panicking crowd, splintering bones and cracking skulls. Cyber cherubs flew in all directions, apparently infected by the berserk panic, in some cases zooming too close to the panic crowd to be pulled down and smashed to pieces. Bells and great brass gongs began to ring in alarm. The nave of the cathedral had been designed to channel choral music and the screaming and ringing amplified itself so much that I felt like the island was about to shake itself apart.

Somewhat ironically, my kneeling pose had granted me a degree of protection by placing my face below the blast. I sprang to my feet and lashed out at the retreating Vorn with my mind. The mental attack melted off his blessed power armor and I cursed myself for forgetting about it. Fleeing pilgrims in a ten foot radius went down, wetting themselves and frothing at the mouth from the psychic backlash. Without thinking I pulled the bolter free and fired it at the retreating Vorn. Clara had warned me against it but in my haste and panic I had forgotten. Sororitas train for years to use the blessed weapons and I learned why in the first few instants. The big weapon roared in my hands, emptying the magazine in a long burst. More by luck than skill the first round struck Vorn in the back. It splintered off his armor hewing down a pair of hapless pilgrims with shrapnel. The second round detonated the ribcage of a Church orderly in a spray of bone and entrails, by then the muzzle flash had lifted the gun to such a degree that I was raking the temple walls. A cyber cherub exploded, raining viscera and metal components down on the crowd, pieces of masonry and mosaic tumbled and fell, braining at least one person I could see. Mercifully, the gun clicked empty, the report still ringing in my ears as empty shells clattered to the ground.

“Frak!” I cursed, in most un-sororitaslike fashion as I took off after Vorn. When I say took off, I’m only barely exaggerating. Running in power armor is an interesting experience, and not something to attempt without training. I learned this last fact as I crashed through the crowd, flinging people aside with broken bones and worse. Vorn was out of the nave now running down a long hallway lined on both sides with intricate scenes of the Great Crusade, beginning on Terra and stretching to the stars in baroque splendor. I turned to follow and learned that a hundred or so kilograms of armor has thoughts of its own. I smashed into the mosaic on the wall, crushing the face of a savage looking Leman Russ before bouncing off and staggering to keep my feet. Several stunned looking orderlies looked on, but none appeared too quick to try conclusions with an apparent Sister of Battle. I reached out with my mind again. This time I didn’t aim for Vorn. An image of Horus Lupercal, rendered in marble and jet, pulled itself free of the wall and stepped into Vorn’s path. The rogue inquisitor smashed the image to dust a moment before Sanguinus brought a sword of glowing citrine down onto his shoulder. Vorn smashed the Angel with a fist before trampling Euphrataii Keeler underfoot.

I could hear Vorn laughing in contempt as my profane army continued to tear itself from the walls to assault him. Not a one of them did him any harm but that wasn’t the point. Vorn crashed head long into a wall that I had beglamored to appear like a doorway while his attention had been fixed on my mosaics. His power armor made a sound like a bell being struck with a sledge as he staggered backwards, head whipping to crack against the back of his armor. I slammed into him from behind, driving him into the wall again with the weight of my charge. Roaring in pain and shock, he smashed an elbow back into my chest plate in a shower of sparks, then spun, a power blade appearing in his hand. The humming steel would have gutted me if I hadn’t overbalanced and fallen on my ass. He glared down at me with hate filled eyes.

“Got any more tricks up your sleeve witch?” he demanded in a surprisingly cultured voice, raising the blade for a killing thrust. Bullets exploded off his chest in a shower of sparks and he staggered backwards under the impacts. Snarling in frustration he slapped something on his wrist. The fine hairs all over my body stood up and then Vorn vanished with a crackle and a whump of air rushing in to fill the space he previously occupied, leaving nothing but the faint effluvia of ionized air to mark his escape. I stared up at the empty air for a moment, turned to see Hadrian coming down the hallway with a smoking pistol, then sneezed violently as the remnants of the mosaics tickled my sinuses.