(Arg my head… Why the fuck is there blood in my eyes!?)
Forcing himself awake as his head pounded, Tom finally opened his eyes while ignoring the sting of it as blood had run down from his forehead into his eye.
"TOM!"
Finally seeing Tom regain consciousness, Lisa let loose a suppressive burst from her rifle before she ran over to him and helped wipe the blood away from his face.
"What's the situation?"
Forcing the pounding headache to the back of his mind for the moment, Tom realised his plan of attack had fallen apart at some point and they had been spotted early.
"They knew from the start! Get up, we need to go!"
Lisa, Victor and Tom had barely exited the abandoned warehouse in the capital when they had been hit in a coordinated ambush by a mix of knights and city guards who seemed to have been waiting for them.
"Lisa, it's not firing!"
"You've hit the fire selector! Turn that knob on the side!"
Having acted on instinct when Tom had been knocked out by an explosion, Lisa had tossed Victor Tom's rifle and hurriedly explained how it was used as the two of them were attacked by a seemingly endless stream of soldiers and mages who were very willing to throw away their lives at a chance to end theirs.
"Shit!"
Seeing the situation, Tom finally kicked his head into gear and got to his feet. The first thing he did was to key up his radio.
"Contact contact contact! Code black, enact all contingencies!"
[CODE BLACK 04 IN EFFECT; TTS 30 SECONDS.]
With acknowledgement coming from the radio, Tom accessed his neural uplink and took in a frankly inhuman amount of information in a fraction of a second as his vision blurred slightly and blood started pouring from his nose at a steady trickle.
Altimetry map is good, all available Wasp's are go for level 9 strike9004 targets painted, IFF and threat analysis running…. Painting clusters.98 urgent firemissions assigned and cleared; go for strikeBoarhounds have their orders; pathing, fire grouping and IFF updated.Go for mission G6
"Tom! What're we doing?"
Sensing they were soon getting overrun as it seemed the guards, soldiers and adventurers attacking them truly didn't care about their own lives, Lisa turned to Tom for guidance, only to see him wiping the blood dripping from his nose with a confident smile as he summoned another loaded M-909X hog.
"We're advancing, go straight for gold!"
While he could still pull out and abort, Tom figured he wouldn't get another chance to attack.
It was now, or never.
-
"This is an unprecedented failure."
Standing in his castle office, King Oldsted Frederick XI could see explosions in the lower city with his own eyes.
"My Kingship, if you-"
"No!"
With a resolute slam into his desk, King Oldsted silenced the young head of the Randall family that he had summoned to dress down and rake over the metaphysical coals for his failures.
"I don't need your petty excuses! I don't need your insidious explanations and I most certainly don't need you to try and explain this away like I'm some petulant child!"
Finally turning to the young lord, King Oldsted made it clear by his voice, expression and choice of words that he was furious.
"It has been 5 generations since a hostile power invaded this capital! Are you such an ingrate that I need to explain what exactly this means!?"
Needless to say this was the worst embarrassment King Oldsted had been forced to endure in his 65 years of life, but when rivals internal and external would hear about this they would think him and his Kingdom a wounded, weakened dog prime for attack. By failing to handle this annoyance the young lord Randall had continuously downplayed and assured would be handled, the young lord had struck his king with at least 20 years of embarrassment, sabotage, coup d'etat attempts and needless skirmishes to test his borders.
If it wasn't for the storied, noble and distinguished past of the Randall family, King Oldsted would have stripped it of its nobility for these failures before having the entire family, any who worked or associated with them and the 3 next generations of the family hung at the outer walls.
"My Kingship! I-"
Still, the young Randall tried making excuses, but much more infuriating than that, King Oldsted could see in his eyes that this young pub wasn't sorry in the least for his actions, in fact his eyes showed he was simply annoyed.
That, along with the embarrassment of having his capital invaded, was what angered King Oldsted the most.
"ENOUGH!"
Slamming his fist into his office desk hard enough for the knights stationed outside to feel it in the floor, King Oldsted spat his next words out with such vitriol, anger and pure hate that they couldn't be misunderstood by anyone present, or anyone who would write this down for the history books when they told of the downfall of house Randall.
"You will handle this personally and with IMMEDIACY! Or I will have you fall on your own sword Adam Randall! IS THAT UNDERSTOOD!?"
"... Yes, your Kingship."
With no other choice than agreeing, Adam Randall knelt down for a moment before turning and leaving the king's office.
"..."
Taking a moment to collect himself after the young lord had left, King Oldsted addressed one of the knights that was part of his personal force.
"If he tries to worm out of this, strike that ignorant imbecile down and hang his decapitated, flayed corpse from the inner wall."
"Yes, my lord."
Although the young lord's recent track record was spotty, King Oldsted had no doubt he would start performing again, given the incentive he had just provided.
Walking down the hallway of the castle resisting the urge to scream or launch a coup d'etat, Adam was eventually joined by his second in command.
"Sir."
"What's the current situation?"
"They're pushing towards the inner city as you predicted."
(Fuck, what I wouldn't give for a rifle at this point… Still, these other powers aren't anything to scoff at either.)
While Tom had gotten the ability to request weaponry and equipment from his old world, the 'gifts' Adam had gained were far more subtle in their effects, perfect for slowly influencing the country.
"And the current effects?"
"... Sir, the guards, soldiers and mercenaries you've instructed have abandoned their self preservation as you commanded."
Although he had seen it in action a few times, Adam's second in command still found it creepy how his superior could suggest people to throw their lives away for his gain and how their eyes would turn dazed as they agreed before carrying out his command.
"Good, I'll be joining the fray as a forward observer, get my personal squad ready to move."
Hardened as he was, Adam's second in command still shuddered slightly at the mention of Adam's private forces, as they consisted of elite soldiers and mercenaries Adam had turned into nearly soulless, obedient puppets.
"Sir."
Most of the mop up division that Adam led feared his personal squad, as half of its current members were their former comrades who had failed to live up to his expectations.
If Adam's personal squad failed today, they would no doubt be replaced with members who didn't fulfil their orders today to his satisfaction.
-
"What the fuck is wrong with these people!?"
Shouting over the suppressive fire of the Boarhound which had placed itself on the roof beside her, Lisa watched countless guards and mercenaries continue to charge the machine gun fire and lose their lives before she exclaimed.
"It looks like they're on drugs… Or at least some kind of stimulant."
As the pair of Boarhounds were handling things for the moment, Tom had seized fire as he watched yet another guard getting gunned down, the unfortunate guard's braincase splattering out its contents on the wall behind him as he took a round to the face.
(At this point we might run out of ammunition… Shit.)
Seeing the seemingly endless forces run to their death, Tom realised that his idle thoughts might be coming true in about an hour and started exploring that possibility.
INTERFACE_CONFIRMED:_ACTIVE.
CONNECTION_SECURE.19.055_POINT(S)_AVALIBLE.
(Just over 19000 points, in theory that's good, assuming we don't lose a single boarhound or need to deal with first aid… Yeah, this is not good, not good at all.)
Although they were making good progress given the circumstances, Tom realised that a single bad roll of the cosmic dice could spell doom. Tom liked having contingency plans up his sleeve for the unexpected happenings, but after they had been surprised just after entering the capital, he had exhausted all of those, so they were starting to tread on thin ice.
(I guess it's do or die, no matter how much I hate it… Still, we could also just retreat, gather more points and try again.)
"Could they be under some sort of spell?"
While Tom was considering retreat, Victor noticed how dead the guards' and soldiers' eyes were as they charged to become cannon fodder.
"They might be…"
Hearing Victor's words, Lisa lowered her rifle and closed her eyes as she took a moment to focus, opening her eyes again as they gleamed with a green magical light.
"What the fuck is that…"
As she finally saw it, Lisa almost dropped her rifle in surprise at the disgusting sight that was now visible to her.
"What is it?"
Taking a moment to focus on a nearby dead mercenary, Lisa seemed to follow something with her eyes up into the sky, her eyes settling on something just above the castle.
"... Uugh!"
The moment she saw it squirm Lisa felt a buildup of gastric acid in her mouth, puking her recent meal up onto the street.
"Lisa!?"
"... I'm okay."
Wiping some leftover puke from the corner of her mouth with her arm, Lisa's eyes stopped glowing as she finally explained.
"There's… Something floating above the castle, it's a living, writing mass of magic with a million tendrils that extend all over the city, reaching down from the sky and into the head of the soldiers and guards we're fighting."
Normally Lisa could understand magic just at a glance, but this was something different, it seemed alive and malignant like nothing she had ever seen before.
"Great… Can you kill it?"
Figuring that whatever Lisa had seen was what motivated the hostile forces to throw themselves at him and the others, Tom took a pragmatic stance against the eldritch creature in the sky and figured that if it was indeed alive, they could kill it.
"Nope, I wouldn't even know how or where to even start… But I'm sure my mom could."
Familiar bias aside, Lisa hadn't heard of a better mage than her mother, aside from that Clair was also a living saint for her most graceful lady of the Hunt.
"Then its change of plans, we're breaking her out first."
Assuming Clair was properly aligned with their current objectives, Tom was convinced that she could do a better job handling magical threats than he could ever dream of.
"That seems like the best move."
Also agreeing with the new direction, Victor had also heard of Clair and her exploits, he was pretty sure she could deal with whatever Lisa had spotted in the sky.
"Then we push for the prison underneath the castle, advance!"
With commands given to Lisa, Victor and the pair of Boarhounds, Tom rose from his cover and led the charge, hoping they would reach Clair before running out of ammunition.