The blade catches, then gives. Metal parts like gristle. Brynhild tears the Draugr apart the Draugr's metal neck and the head falls into mud with a thud, the crimson light in its eyes dim and then goes off indicating its death.
"Next," she says, and kicks it remains away as though it was nothing.
The barricade set up by the rebels shakes under the pressure of the on coming iron army, God they are so many were they as many as this before? More of them climb up the slope with their mock-human frames in char-black carapace, the seal of Tyrakos stamped like a brand on to their throats. Their jaws rasp looking for who or what to kill. Their helm-speakers spit static.
Sound stacks on sound. There are screams, rifles cracking, steel on steel, skin burning, A gun hissing itself to death where it jammed and cooked on its own heat, basically every conceivable sound as long as it is that of horror. The pass funnels all of it tight, like a throat that cannot swallow fast enough, making the bloodshed a lot more worse.
The bearers of the Obsidian Dawn armbands like Brynhild are the only people here that can face this horde without immediately becoming mincemeat even but here right now they are being overwhelmed. Men and women in mismatched gear hold the barricade shoulder to shoulder, no room for fear, no room for doubt. A captain's voice rips the air.
"Hold the pass or the civilians die!"
Brynhild risks a glance, she sees Ensenreich refugees jam the canyon behind them. Men run, their wives with shawls pulled tight, kids with faces the color of old milk. Medics stumble past with stretchers. An old woman grips a sack of bread with both hands like it's a baby. The little ones crouch behind wheels and crates. Some cry. Some don't make a sound at all."How were they able to pass the no man's land " Brynhild asks, but this is not time to think, oh no you don't think when this terror faces you, the orientation of your thought is just attack, attack, attack.
This is not a fight, rather it is a knife laid over the throat.
A Draugr staggers in, its chest sparking from where someone has torn half the plating away. It falls to one knee, the speaker scraps out a sentence.
"Directive Seven: Resource Consolidation. Unregistered humans will be processed or reclaimed."
"Processed? What do they do to them there in Eisenreich?" Brynhild hammers her fist into what remains of its chest. The voice dies. "Over my dead tits."
She yanks free and turns into another swing, because of course there's another—and someone else surges into her periphery.
Her name is Freydís, Blonde she wields a terrifying looking axe, and oh she can use it alright and to great effect.
She swings the axe violently, not delicate as one would expect giving her stunning looks. She displays pure violence, true brutality, you do not want her going at you that's for sure. It looks like something she was born knowing—where to stand so the hit lands, how to roll her shoulders so the shock doesn't break her spine.
But that is not what Brynhild notices. What she notices is the curve of Freydís's back when she puts her whole body behind a blow. The man in Brynhild speaks. "If we live, I'm buying her a drink." "Two."
And while Brynhild was busy fantasizing and salivating on Freydis body, A Draugr leapt from her blind side. Brynhild pivots, fist up, and she lets metal meet metal. The Draugr jerks, goes to the mud.
"Later, tin man."
And Brynhild stands over it and punches the lights out of it.
"Eyes up, Bryn!" Freydís barks.
"They are," Brynhild says, grinning at the carnage that is all about her.
At the barricade's center Styrkar Magnússon, leader of the group broad as a door, with a hammer in his right hand points to the downslope.
"Block C-seventeen! If that cart goes, they're finished!"
She looks to the direction of his finger tip. And sees as a wagon tilts, filled with overloaded sacks, children on top like birds on a fence. The axle pops. It tips. It spills everything into the mud, kids scream as they slide.
The Draugr smells the opening. They go for them like wolves.
"Ah Fuck off!" Brynhild runs towards the children hoping to protect them. Boom. The air fizzles with a grenade explosion. Shrapnel ticks her armor and she hears someone else's scream blinking out in a wet sound. She hits the ground with her shoulder, and gets up immediately, fists ready for carnage, and smashes into the thing reaching for the smallest boy. Sparks jump. Its helm splits very easily like a nut under a rock.
"Run, pup!" she says. Something warm slides down her cheek. Blood. She doesn't check where from but a shrapnel must have had her.
Behind her, the Draugr columns are pushing downhill, inch by inch. She can feel the crowd's panic moving like heat.
As if by some miracle the Draugr suddenly stops.
As if the puppeteer has finished work, every iron head turns at once. One voice comes out.
"Terminate the spearhead."
They mean her. She feels it. Then she sees one, they call this Draugr a Juggernut. Something so big her mind tries to slide off it.
"Come on then," she says under her breath, fist clenched. "You bastard." Brynhild grins.
Then the next wave hits. Shields grind, claws rake, intestines fall to the ground, brains are cut to pieces. Brynhild and Freydís end up shoulder to shoulder, backs touching, counting on the other to be exactly where she should be. Draugrs lunge forward, their crimson eyes flare all over the place. Draugrs those evil killer robots beating, killing and maiming.
They hear a kid scream again. Brynhild turns and sees it: The Juggernaut Draugr has broken through the barricade killing and destroying everything in it's wake, its arms are like clamp jaws, wherever its feet leave trenches. It lunges.
"Brynhild, move!"
Freydís slams into her. Its claws just miss Brynhild by a hand's width but it finds Freydís instead.
There is no time to think. Brynhild throws herself back like she has always done. But this time she was too slow. The Juggernaut lifts Freydís like a doll. She hacks once, twice with her terrifying axe, good hits, hard hits but the gripper doesn't care about good. It tightens. Armor splits. Something inside her cracks with a sound that uproots the world.
She screams but her scream dies down. The machine had torn her open.
Freydís blood freckles in the air and unto Brynhild's face. She staggers. Everything in her chest tries to go two directions at once—rage and grief at the same time. Her stomach knots.
She swallows it down the way she knows how.
"You wouldn't let me have that one, would you?" she says to the ruined body, voice raw. "Uhh she has a perfect ass, too."
The laugh that punches out of her breaks into a sob. There is movement above. A shape steps through the smoke where the ridge fire paints the air orange.
It is a Draugr, but what is this Brynhild has not seen this type of Draugr before, "These killer robots just keep giving us surprises".
This one was taller. Its armor is different from the rest like black glass that has been poured and hammered in hell. Lines crawl across its shell—marks, then filled with a cold light the air tastes like metal ones you breathe. Brynhild is forced to ask "What the fuck are you."
One by one, the marks wake. A hum starts low and climbs until her teeth pick it up. Brynhild immediately understood that they were cooked. She looks back and then she sees Styrkar Magnússon coming towards her direction it is as though he was coming to take both this monstrosity and the Juggernaut head on Styrkar is the strongest amongst all of them Brynhild knows that but do he have what it takes to take down what stands before her. Well even if it happens I should not be here when the two face off as she began to retreat.
The thing lifts its hand. Its markings flare.
The world tears.
Light punches through the barricade. Wood and iron explode outward. Men and body parts fly. People disintegrate. Bodies rise like dust. Everything goes up, all at once, like the air turned into a giant hand and flicked the whole pass in disgust.
Brynhild tries to scream, but the sound gets stuck in her throat.
Then the world goes blank.