Lightning On The Horizon

Chapter I: The Battle of Sunset Mounds

It is paramount to understand the difference between costly triumph and pyrrhic victory.

... Vivella pulled the burning great-hammer from the charred corpse of a drone beneath her, crushing its ribs under the weight of her foot. Caked over in the black oily blood, her bright war paints were hidden beneath a thick coating of casualty. As the woman tried to lift her heavy eyes from the dirt, she saw the plains they fought upon were littered with the shapes of men and Avarati beating and slicing at one another. All around her, the various noises of gongs crashing, vicious combat and utter slaughter rang through her ears as the sudden stench of fires and cancerous hieroblight stung her nostrils.

She held her head in pain, looking to either side and watching fellow warriors tear and rip in the jaws of drones, their mouths dripping with the very sickness that now stained her great-hammer, Soldvant. Vivella felt a hand on her shoulder, a tightening grip, and met with the gaze of her closest friend and lover.

He was Yerman, a younger man, considered the youngest out of the warrior-scholars and a very adept healer. Without much hesitation, he helped her over to a nearby crater with a few blasted drones inside. The man fell face first into some guts, slipping over himself on the descent into the hole. Vivella almost caught him, but the two ended up slamming into each other as they each got a mouthful of mud and decay. Gunfire from the nearby line of men wielding arquebuses tore away at the skin of the grotesque drones charging towards them. The smoke of the discharges and the writhing of the creatures provided the two with a moment of relief, until one of the surviving abhorrences fell into the crater with them. Yerman shoved his sword into the gaping mouth of the drone, as Vivella's great-hammer came upon it's skull with full force. The subsequent crunch of bones and the displacement of sharp teeth yielded a satisfying end to the monsters life. Yerman shouted over a barrage of artillery as the shells pounded the fields overhead, sending dirt and blood over the top and onto their armor.

"C'hykia, we should have never engaged in open field!" Yerman cursed. He grabbed her face and peered into her weary eyes. "The Black Wind... ", a nearby shell clapped the air around them, "He is upon us!"

"He may be... But it does not matter. Push onward!" She wiped the blood from her face, smudging her war paint. Vivella staggered upwards and gripped Soldvant tightly, imbuing it with the white aurora of Primal Magic. It began to rain, and the heat of the hammer created dense vapor. Leaning upon the crater's side as the mud slid down it's curvature, she peeked over to gauge their situation, watching as the drones scurried in a tight formation surrounding an obscured figure.

A black, writhing mass of hieroblight seeped from a wall of drones, and the herd of creatures took many bullets and artillery fire, rebuilding as the dome of blight moved forward. A hideous cackle shrieked from within, and protruding from the flesh of the drones, arching blight was a charred, crooked scythe dripping with the cancer. The blade itself was seemingly made of a watery black substance, holding in place as the Broodmother herself lifted elegantly from the middle of the living shield. Dressed in a tattered corset of antiquated times, the mother of the Avarati revealed herself in all her festering glory. Emerald green eyes pierced the hearts of men, and with teeth as sharp as knives she donned a frightful grimace, drooling blight from her gaping maw.

She flicked the scythe forward, and Vivella climbed out from the crater gripping her weapon, stomping towards her adversary. Thunder exploded the very air as she fearlessly trampled over any drone that saw it fit to prevent her from her charge, bludgeoning and smashing them all the same. The wave of drones that formed the lower wall of the dome dispersed, and stampeded towards Vivella as a rallying cry in her battle-language was sung in a wavering tone.

Yerman followed close behind and gained enough speed to slide underneath one of the first beasts, slicing his sword across the length of it's underbelly. The few that could hear the battle-language over the screams of their compatriots rushed towards Vivella's front, banging on gongs and feeling all too willing to sacrifice themselves to let her carve her own path. Meaty smacks of flesh against flesh were heard as bodies and metal slapped together, breaking bones and ripping through skin and muscle. Those with firearms shot point blank into their enemies, pounding and breaking their facial structures as their noses and eyes caved inward, the puff of smoke burying them from view. The first few warriors that were swarmed could be seen squirming in hieroblight, melting their bodies into a black sludge, their screams muffled from the liquifying of their jaws.