Episode 11.2 - Combat Evolved

Everything is eerily silent on the morning we take our positions. Following Eshu's awakening and our training with Mike, it is a grey day that greets us. Rainclouds seem to box us in on all sides.

All is quiet, putting into perspective just how busy and loud everything had gotten. The village is abandoned; its people either inside the fort or evacuated south, so that its dirt-path streets lie lonely and its humble homes empty. The Estolpfo all silently man their turrets, a stalwart, disciplined hush to them.

There's a faint screech in the air from our stoic line of windmills, turning ever so slowly in the light breeze.

When they finally arrive, it is like a swarm of insects. Hundreds of identical shapes packed tightly together, charging without qualm, without a thought for self-preservation, they roar towards us.

In a way, we are lucky. If the enemy had infinite energy, they might sit at a distance and shoot at us indefinitely until the barrier fell. If they had more resources, menus like ours, perhaps they could build power stations, or long-range artillery, or some sort of tunnelling machine to come from below - but they have none of that. Limited by their own programming, by simplistic ‘scripts’, they take the bait Lila has laid.
     The shield flares to life, blocking a thunderstorm of bulbous blue energy blasts that begin to cross the sky, slamming into the barrier as it visually swells and pulses in rippling, dissipating waves. But it won’t block physical matter, and so they charge, dashing themselves against us for the chance that they can break through the most brute force of ways.

“Fire!” I shout firmly.
    The Estolpfo all along the barrier’s perimeter let loose. Blasts of a similar kind but set to a different frequency launch at the advancing ranks of drones. Tall, round bollards of armour plating are smattered with the first wave of turret fire. I watch a blast melt and burn into a drone, and yet it keeps coming towards us. There’s a sickening moment of panic before the turret hits it again, and in a glorious storm of fire, the entire top section of the creature explodes, gnarled metal and machine fluids plume into the air like a fountain.

“Confirmed kill!” I cheer. Through our telepathic link with Lila, I hear Sek, Tom and Mike all say much the same, reporting each from their respective face of the barrier.

“Hells ya!” Lila calls back, “Keep wary. I’ll spot as best I can from up here, but don’t let your guard down.”

“Roger,” I nod.
     Telepathy with Lila is an odd feeling. It's not like a voice in your head, but rather like the person is talking right next to you, often leading one to subconsciously turn towards the voice.

Our ring of turrets fires endlessly; the Estolpfo's training and the relatively short distance make almost every blast a clear hit. As the enemy's vanguard collapses, the next row of drones simply presses straight through, nudging the scrap of their fallen comrades aside, tracks trodding over, not a moment’s thought wasted as they mindlessly keep pushing, compelled onwards by their mapping.

“Up above,” Sek says over the link. I glance up to see what we expected, a squadron of Killer-Drones flying high in the sky. It's kind of comical how they fly - their underside simply glows with a blue flame - it looks like a child’s drawing of a simple rocket.
    They soon reach the barrier, and I watch it ripple and pulse like the surface of water after you throw a stone. I also hear Lila. She utters rapidly a series of made-up words, part of the limited language the developers made for demons in the game she’s from. In Escape, those words are a severe pain; as part of our magic training, me and Eshu had to memorise as many of those gobbled phrases as possible.
    Magic isn’t just incantations either; one has to truly understand the ‘essence’ of the words in order for them to do anything. It's a real hassle, but Lila rattles them off without pause, before finishing with the spell's name: “Iona’s Teardrop.”

Just as the drones break the surface of the shield and appear on our side, Lila’s spell manifests. Five grimy spears of dark, swirling grey energy. Long and narrow, rounded on one side, a spear-point on the other, likely where they get the teardrop name. The black lines jut out into each of the invading drones in a snap, and then right out their backs.
    Unlike the turrets, this doesn’t cause some large dramatic explosion, the enemies look fully intact - and yet, after a few moments, their hovering blue flames go dim, as do the red lights in their ‘heads’ - and they topple lifelessly through the air, before cratering into the ground with a shallow thud.

“Four more on your six.”

“I got it, don’t worry,” Lila scoffs and begins that rapid chatting again.

Suddenly, I spot a lone drone coming from the opposite side, “Behind yo–” I needn’t be worried, cloak ruffling in the wind, magenta hair an ever-tousled mess, Eshu is already on it. I hear her chant the same words as Lila, if a lot slower, “Iona’s Teardrop.”

A single spear appears, narrower and less length but unmistakably the same high-level attack. It streaks out and hits the lone ambush drone, while Lila likewise unleashes four more on the main group. Another five drones fall pathetically out of the sky.

“Nice one, Eshu!” I call.
    That’s the first time any of us have tried magic in battle, to think she’d have gotten so good even having skipped lessons due to her bedriddenness. It makes me so happy to see. Perhaps this plan of mine to have her partake really was the correct one.

It also fills me with anticipation; maybe it's finally time I tried out a spell, too.

My chance doesn’t take long, “Tom, Sek, two drones look like they might make it on your sides. Mike, one on your righ–, ya, look left a bit, there. Ko, could be three for you, can you take that many?”

I grin. I do feel some anxiety; these aren't like the scouts with easy weak points, and the risk of failure is massive. If even one drone gets through without us there to fight it, it will smash our turrets, and that will create a hole. It might only take a handful of turrets before the line falls completely, at which point, well, looking out at the still growing ranks of drones cresting the hill and flooding towards us, we’d be overwhelmed in no time.
    Even so, I want to have faith in my strength. I want to believe that becoming Lila’s blood sister, training, magic practice, and all the battles we’ve been in until now, will see me through.

“I got this,” I reply.

The first of the three is right in front of me. I see a rather scar-lined Estolpfo gunner looking nervous, like he’s going to try to turn his turret. I call out to the little guy, “Keep looking straight ahead. If they get past your line of fire, we’ll handle ‘em. You focus on the large groups, can’t hit the stragglers only to let twice as many slip in, alright?”

“Grake!” It clicks with a little nod, sounding mildly embarrassed but firmly refocusing on the main rows approaching.

The lone straggler hits the barrier and gradually seeps through like the flying ones before it. Up close, these guys are tall, their ‘eyes’ above mine, I look pretty small by comparison. It immediately begins to swivel, a heavy motion like the barrel of a tank and all the more deadly. However, it's a mistake for it to target the turrets over me - I sprint across the short distance, feet padding hard against the turf and lash out, letting the reinforced claws of my gauntlet do their work. With a screech, metal drags through metal, and the drone’s barrel slides apart awkwardly, cut in three by my attack.

“EMERGEN–”

“Way too late, fella,” I smirk.
     With my other claw, I go for a simple jab upwards, ramming the tips up under the lip of its top section and right into the two glowing orbs that pass for eyes. It flails around, weapon and vision disabled. I’m not finished yet, as the second drone comes barrelling through the shield, and this one has clearly decided I’m worth targeting first, heh.

I kick off the ground hard, cartwheeling backwards just as it fires a blast that sends the dirt it hits sky high. As I land, I immediately crouch down, low as I can go. As expected, another shot passes directly over my head, I feel the intense heat singe the tips of my white hair black, and prickle the skin on the back of my neck. I don’t let it bother me, charging forward, one stride, two, step-in and an uppercut with my gauntlet smacks his turret to the side just before his third shot can roast me.

All the while I chant, slower then Lila by a heck ton, and I have to focus to remember the lousy ‘essence’ of each word, not biting my tongue is a challenge, but finally, as I wind my left fist back for a full on hook to the second drones stupid face, the spell is done: “Nereus’s Veil!”

My gauntlets glow hot, wreathed in a swirling grey light. My left fist drives into the drone’s armour plates, and with a terrific crunch, it goes through them.

“UNKNOWN ATTACK,” It shrieks as my magically reinforced claws dig through its cables and pistons, snapping circuit boards and cooling fans - until, deep within - they graze a glowing orange gemstone. It shatters immediately.
    The life from the second drone's camera eyes flickers out.

I don’t have time to dally, the third drone has just broken in and fires without any shits to give about hitting its allies. I don’t bother trying to drag my arm back in time; instead, I brace my legs and push the dead unit to spin. It hurts as the jagged cut metal my gauntlets made scraps against my upper arm, but the ploy is successful as drone Three’s blast smashes into number Two's corpse, me safely behind it. Sort of safe, kind of, ok maybe the force of impact sends drone Two’s corpse tumbling backwards, with me still firmly lodged inside…

Stamping my boot on it and yanking my hand free at last, I jump off the freewheeling cylinder of dead robot and roll to a slightly unsteady landing back on the grass.

Enemy Three fires again. No time to dodge. I bring my gauntlets up in front of my chest as the beam zooms towards me. The energy blast lurches against them, made of sci-fi bullshitium and enhanced by my magic; they hold, but my legs literally dig swallow trenches in the ground as the force of the blast pushes me back. The splatter of energy is also anything but uniform, as it dissipates against my weapons, globules of the raw heat smatter my armour and even burn through to the skin.

“Iona’s rejection,” I mutter the other spell I’ve been prepping under my breath. If I could chant faster, I wouldn't have had to take that first shot, but let me tell you, spellcasting while jumping around is harder than you think!

A second blast strikes me, but this time there's no splatter - instead, it bounces right back. The rebound in my wrists is intense, and as soon as it's passed, I have to drop my stance like it or not, just to shake some life back into my numbed hands.
    The drone has no such luck; the rebounded attack drives through the air and shatters its frontal armour, its turret bends and buckles, its plates sunder apart.

‘Iona’ comes up in a lot of Lila’s spells; her rejection, an enhancement that lets you reflect one attack, is apparently to do with her refusing the immortality of her fellow divine. It's a rather sad meaning, but I’m downright elated that it works on the laser bolts of these guys.
    Technically, that was the lore in the game, too, but there you would just press a button rather than having to study all this to make your spells function. Ugh, so much trivia to memorise.

Still, I'm grateful it worked. I cover the distance to the battered third drone more casually, the threat dealt with, and exhaustion creeping in. Its armour is so buckled I simply reach in and crush its power gem.

“AAARHH,” I turn half-surprised to remember I didn’t actually kill the first one, only disabled its weapon and sight, “Ah, sorry, guy.” I promptly put that one out of his misery, too.


Stretching some life back into my arms and eyeing a couple of my burns and bruises from the encounter, I take in the surroundings. The Estolpfo turrets continue to unleash their attacks on a seemingly endless supply of drones cresting the hill. There are now whole rows of dead miniature tanks on the plain outside the shield. The new waves have to push paths through their dead, clunking ever forward, still charging. We must have blasted through a hundred by now, maybe more, yet onwards they move.

“Done,” I hear Sek pant over the link.

“Same here, and your little skeleton commander guy finished his two like a minute ago,” Mike adds, sounding a little bitter at Tom’s apparent speed.

“Don’t let up yet,” Lila replies, “Sek, I see another to your right. Ko, two more straight ahead. Mike, Tom, stay alert.”

I wipe away the mix of sweet and miscellaneous drone fluids staining my face, flex my fingers to make sure feeling has fully returned, and hop in place a couple of times. Satisfied I’m still fighting fit, I turn towards the next wave, “Roger that!”