Write 2 Rank 2022: Girl Fights

The Creeping Greed (Round 6, Extended)

A Paladin in full battle gear resembles a hulking beast of metal plates and angled spikes. A juggernaut made to wage war for the megachurch. Even a corporation war machine Mk-IV can barely hope to match their destructive force. The free people of Fort Greenwich are hard-pressed to survive between the hammer and anvil. Psychics like Dreya are the only reason the stronghold has yet to fall.

Among them, Dreya Thorn has become the most prolific.

The zealots cease their barrage of gunfire. Smoke and dust swirl around their target, a traitor named Forest Alba. The air clears and there she stands, red flames crawling along her skin as bullets are ejected from her flesh. Her faith-based power, the gift of the paladins, repairing the damage and leaving her as good as new. Watching from the shadows, Dreya can't help but be impressed.

Above, the cleric radios crackle with reports from across the necropolis. Corporation and Zealot forces engage on multiple fronts. The battle is bloody and far from decided.

"Bravo Team requests assistance, Paladin Gaines."

Dreya can only see their shadows from her vantage point. They shuffle around the opening in the ceiling.

"The traitor is still alive. She requires our Mercy."

"But, Paladin Gaines, there is something-"

"Cover me!"

He drops down into the room with a ground shaking thud, rifle held high. Foolhardy and overzealous. Forest grabs the barrel of his weapon as he brings it to bear, a wayward round firing into the dark. She wrenches it out of his grasp and knees him in his armored groin, denting the steel but doing no real damage. Grunting, he lunges forward punching her with a plated gauntlet. Forest takes the blow, spins and kicks his helmet.

Dreya moves to assist and a bullet wizzes past from the opening above. The zealots can't pinpoint her exact position, but they detect her movement. Forest is on her own.

Gaines yanks off his helmet. "I've always wanted to test myself against one of you Class 2s"

"Such is not the way of a Paladin," she replies.

"You are now a heretic. Don't dare lecture me about the way."

He assumes a grapplers stance, prepared to utilize his mass and armor to his advantage. Forest bounces from foot to foot, her mobility an asset against the heavier foe.

"Are you prepared for Mercy?"

"Are you prepared for failure?"

A scream fills the space and blood showers the two paladins. Gunfire. More screams. A cleric leaps into the opening and is snatched out of the air, leaving behind a bloody mist and an unsettling rattling sound. The building shakes and something in the dark brushes against Dreya's leg.

A long sinuous form slithers just out of her peripheral vision. She dives out of the shadows, spurred by instinct, as the unsettling rattling grows deafening. The air pressure shifts and the wall tears away in a cascade of debris. A massive hole yawns open where Dreya stood only a moment earlier. Things move and squirm in the shadows, pulling, eating away at the edges. The building creaks and again there is movement just out of her line of sight.

They have to go.

She turns and finds Forest and Gaines locked in a deadly struggle. His metal fingers squeeze her throat, her thumb buried in his eye socket. Dreya funnels a burst of energy through her aura-bond and Forest roars like a berserker of old. Her scream becomes Gaines' scream as Forest smashes his elbow and tosses him by his eye socket. He sails through the air, crashes through a pillar, and crumples to the ground.

The otherworldly rattling returns, this time under their feet. The floorboards ripple like rolling desert dunes. Skin crawling, Dreya scans the dark room for a way out.

"Forest, we have to go!"

"Not until this blasphemer has his Mercy," Forest growls, red flames working on the bruises around her neck.

"I'm n... no blasphemer, Heretic. I walk the di... divine path."

The ground bucks violently.

"This Sunday School lesson is going to have to wait!" Dreya yanks Forest towards her as the ground explodes, tossing them like ragdolls.

Scores of writhing tentacles grab the debris, ancient wood and masonry, yanking it down into the inky black below.

"What is that thing?" Forest asks, the fire in her eyes dying. "What's going on?"

"Unless it's the elusive god of your megachurch, I'll assume it's one of the forgotten ones, the eldritch horrors who created the original corporations."

Forest pulls Dreya to her feet, her hands shaking in withdrawal from the use of her power. Dreya points towards a slanted doorway, barely visible in the gloom. A sickly pale tendril emerges from the hole in the ground and tears a rent in the ceiling. The unconscious body of a cleric falls down into the undulating darkness. Blood and splintered bone spews out of the hole. The walls shake violently.

"Come on!"

The two run to the doorway, climbing over rubble and into a dilapidated hallway. The walls groan and crack, and inky black worms ooze out. They move past as the growing mass reaches for them.

"This isn't over, Heretic!" Gaines shouts as the halls fill with the mounting rattling.

The pair reach a flight of stairs, the way up in shambles and the way down too dark to see. Shaking. Scraping. Slithering. Dust falls from the ceiling and the rattling draws closer.

"Down," Dreya says.

"Church, protect us," Forest whispers, snapping a fresh glow stick.

Dreya and Forest descend, ignoring the encroaching shadows and rippling walls. The stairs are uneven, shifted after decades of the ancient structure settling and resettling. The sounds of their footfalls are joined by skittering sounds hot on their heels. Something shrieks up ahead and scurries about, its movement making sucking noises.

The rattling comes from every direction.

Foul tentacles tear through the stairwell, smashing stone and wood in a threshing column of crawling slimy things. Dreya is knocked aside as something rips the flesh from her arm. She loses sight of Forest and the glow stick as she falls into the slithering dark. Head hitting wet ground, Dreya's senses reel. A tentacle wraps around her wrist and wrenches her across squelching and biting bodies.

She plants her feet and pulls, calling on the aura-bond and Forest's reserves. The tentacle snaps and the space rumbles. A glow stick falls from a great height, illuminating slithering bands of decrepit sore-covered flesh. The ground ripples and Dreya hops back, prying the pale tendril from her wrist. She concentrates on their aura-bond, following their connection to a spot not too far from where she landed. Forest is there, but she's fading.

Dreya rushes to the location but only finds slurping creepers. Throwing her head back, she turns her will into action, her hands into steel. Punching into the mass draws a pained groan from the entire cavernous space. Digging, pulling, tearing, she burrows until she finds Forest buried to the neck in foul slime. Dreya pulls her out and puts her over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. Slime spills down, covering her in the irritating muck.

"I'm not done with you yet, Paladin," she whispers.

Scanning the eerie landscape, she searches for a way out. Her skin crawls and the rattling sound slithers closer. Spotting an opening, she runs. It might lead to the sandy surface or back into the rundown ruins of the necropolis, but anywhere is better than the bowels of a forgotten corporate entity.

She sprints as the space reacts. Pale tentacles attack the glow stick, creating terrifying shadows along the undulating walls. Dreya reaches the opening and jumps up the ten foot distance. Her calves and thighs protest, but there's no time. The light goes out as she rushes through the opening, the darkness behind howls in triumph.

Purely by instinct and her hand running along the walls, Dreya follows the wet tunnel until she reaches sand-covered steps leading up. At the top is a shaft of sunlight. She climbs, ignoring the shifting sand as it tries to send her back down.