QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]

A grenade fell from the treetops, bounced off of Arokht’s back, and exploded.

The blast drove him to the ground. At once, the soldiers of Raxis opened fire, mottled green and brown camouflage fading from their black armor. Their rifles screamed sharp retorts, kicking up dirt and grass and bark. One of Gelu’s soldiers, Algon, the chaplain thought, fell immediately, dozens of flechettes embedded in his helmet and chestplate. One shattered his mask's left eyepiece. A few dented his bandolier of grenades.

Anila twisted as more flechettes sliced through her, but from her wounds welled up something blue and gelatinous, pulling them closed again. She tried to run to Arokht as he bellowed, trumpetlike, shaking earth off of his body as he rose. Sparks flew as his armor deflected the flying darts. He raised his cannon and fired again and again and again. Scything tendrils of fire and light joined his frigid blasts as Rachel unleashed her inner star, screaming in fury.

Gelu dove for what cover he could, flechettes jutting from his robes. Some providence of Frigidus had prevented him from dying instantly in the ambush. The chaplain shouted something foul, conjured his frozen gun, shot three-inch shards of jagged ice at Raxis’s men. Beside him, Congelos, the last of his squad, took careful aim with his rifle and fired with precise bursts. He still made no sound.

Arokht raged. He seized a tree with his primary arms and with incredible strength snapped it. The tree fell. So did the two black-armored soldiers crouching in its branches. They jumped to another tree, but Arokht shot them mid-leap. They shattered against the bark.

A black-clad soldier dropped gracefully from the canopy, followed by another, and another. Tightening the noose. One landed with a thump ahead of them. It was larger, bulkier than the others. Three red bars decorated its right shoulder. Its armor whirred as it brought a massive, black gun to bear on the alien. It fired. A thunderclap, a shockwave, a rush of air. Metal and polymer sheared, snapped. Arokht roared again, not in rage but in pain. He stumbled, fell heavily. He did not move.

H-034 turned, targeted, fired at Rachel. Again the thunder. A curtain of fire billowed across the forest floor, swallowing the woman and three Predators. Smoke filled the battlefield. The Hunter ignored it, stalking towards Algon. The Wintergod’s minion lay facedown, one hand bent under his body. He twitched feebly, still alive. Barely. H-034 stood over him, flipped him over, slammed the butt of his railgun into Algon’s face, turned it horrifically inward. He looked down.

Algon’s hand gripped a grenade. The pin dangled from his thumb. H-034 jerked back, his already inhuman reflexes augmented by his armor. Not fast enough.

The blast swept H-034 off his feet and the shrapnel cut through him in a dozen places. The shockwave caught Anila, knocked her out. Hot metal shredded her leg. She fell.

Concussed and bloodied, H-034 struggled to stand. His armor sparked and whined in protest. He heard something stomp noisily over him. He looked up. The thing was huge and dark and lit with blue lights. Its abdominal armor had been ripped open by the Hunter’s weapon, blue coolant and teal blood pooling on the ground. But the armor had worked quickly, sealing the open wound with anti-puncture foam, administering painkillers and stimulants and aggressants.

Unmistakably alive and unmistakably furious, Arokht reached out to seize H-034.

The fire continued to rage, snapping and hissing like something alive. Gelu and Congelos, both wounded, fled under the cover of smoke so thick it was almost solid. Red eyes saw them. Four Predators, communicating silently, turned to give chase. Without Rachel directing the blaze, the fires would not harm them. Such was Pyrum’s will.

Something soared out of the smoke behind them. It struck one Predator in the head, snapped its neck, and hit the ground with a thud. It was a gun. A huge, black gun covered in glowing red lines. An arm still gripped it.

Three Predators turned to face Arokht, striding out of the fumes. His secondary arms dragged what remained of H-034 with him. More of the Hunter dripped from the iceworlder’s armor. He raised his cannon and fired.

---

Arokht crushed the last Predator’s skull in one four-fingered grip. It didn’t scream. None of them screamed. Disappointing, but he was still glad. Lambs they may be, but Raxis’s soldiers fought until they died. No retreat, no surrender. It had been a good fight.

Except, maybe, for the part where he’d been shot with a railgun. It wasn’t the shooting that bothered him--Arokht had suffered worse injuries in the past--but the fact that there was no way he could get to a proper medic on this godsforsaken world. (His gods, not theirs. Their gods were pretty clearly paying attention to this place.)

Not only was his biology alien, so was the very chemistry of his body. Humans were carbon-based. Iceworlders were ammonia-based. Water burned Arokht like acid. No human surgeon could help him. Until he’d killed the Outsider and found a way back to his ship, he would have to walk around with the metal slug buried in his body. Right now, his internal nanomachinery was probably hard at work isolating it from the rest of his organs, stopping his bleeding, patching his wounds. The round wouldn’t kill him (iceworlders were hardier than that), but it made his right leg drag slightly. It annoyed him. He’d get used to it.

He looked for the others in the aftermath of the ambush, picking through charred and crushed corpses. The fire licked at him harmlessly, unable to find a way into his thick armor.

Arokht gathered a pile of what used to be a Frostsworn soldier, piecing it back together as best as he could. It wasn’t Gelu. The iceworlder felt a twinge of emotion deep within his two hearts but stamped it out out before he could identify it.

Arokht scavenged H-034’s discarded railgun, prying the fingers of the Hunter’s severed limb away from the grip. His secondary arms held it awkwardly; it wasn’t designed for iceworlder hands. He didn’t know how many shots it had left, nor how to reload it. Still, the extra firepower would be useful.

He discovered Anila, crumpled on the ground and unconscious. She bore many wounds yet did not bleed. Something blue and translucent seemed to be eating or replacing her mangled leg. The inferno crept dangerously close to her. For a moment Arokht debated letting it consume the strange woman, but that struck him as somehow wrong. The longer she stayed alive, the easier it would be to attract the Outsider, he contended. Thusly justified, he grabbed her by the collar and dragged her away.

Leaving her slumped against a tree in cleaner air, Arokht trudged off to consider his next course of action. The odds looked grim. Anila had yet to wake up. Rachel was gone. So was Gelu. One Frostsworn soldier was dead, another was missing. Sonora had never showed up in the first place. The iceworlder felt his rage growing.

As it stood, there was very little chance of him successfully gathering all the rest of the contestants. Their personalities would strike sparks against his own, or the minions of some random god would scatter them again. It frustrated him. It frustrated him how idiotic he’d been. He should never have trusted these aliens. He’d grown too used to leading obedient, trained soldiers. Nothing good could possibly have come of him trying to lead a ragtag team of outcasts and eccentrics.

Should’ve expected this to happen.

Then the fires guttered and died.

It was as if some unseen hand had suddenly smothered the blaze, leaving only blackened dirt and charred wood. A strong, hot wind began to blow, carrying the smoke away. A distant wailing echoed through the forest. The wind? Arokht bristled, alert, all four eyes scanning for threats. What now?

The noise came closer, a high-pitched wail mixed with an infrasonic thrum that would inspire terror in all but the hardiest of humans. Even Arokht felt a spark of unease as he turned to face the source of the scream. He heard the footsteps of something huge stomping towards him. A dim red glow shone through the trees. The iceworlder raised his cannon, waiting for the thing to make its entrance.

If it hadn’t been for his motion sensor, Arokht would have been taken completely by surprise. Because the approaching, keening thing was only a distraction.

The iceworlder spun, barely managing to raise an armored forearm in defense as a whirlwind of blades struck him from behind. He swung his cannon arm, hammer-like, but only caught empty air as the thing leaped back with impossible speed. Warning lights flashed in his helmet. Arokht looked at his arm in horrified amazement: the creature’s blades had sliced deep gouges into hisimpenetrable armor.

If Gelu had been present, he’d have identified the attacker as a Makhê, Proioxis-class. A spirit of battle and one of Raxis’s most fearsome servants. It stood only about as tall as a normal human, but mistaking it for one would be impossible. Two torsos, back-to-back, swiveled freely above one pair of digitigrade legs. Four swords swung from four hands. A red glow shone from the joints of its black armor as it moved. Crimson eyes glared from behind its two helmets. It hissed, crackling like fire, and charged again.

Arokht could target and fire his cannon in the blink of an eye, but in the blink of an eye the demon was already somewhere else. Undeterred by gravity, it leaped between trees as easily as it ran across the ground. The Proioxis crossed the gap between them in seconds. Swords gleamed and sparks flew as it pirouetted around the huge iceworlder, cutting into his armor, dodging his counterattacks with ease. Then it danced back again, skipping nimbly away from Arokht’s clumsy reach.

Which was when the first Makhê, the screaming thing, made itself known by ramming the battered Arokht bodily into a tree.

This demon was larger and burlier than the Proioxis. Like its sibling, it wore black armor and stood on digitigrade legs. Perhaps the cybernetic legs of Raxis’s soldiers were meant to emulate the Makhê. Unlike its sibling, It only possessed one torso, hunched and broad-shouldered, bearing a single radially segmented helmet on its chest. Gelu would have classified it as an Alala-class. As Arokht heaved himself back upright, dazed, the Alala’s head opened up like a metal flower and screamed.

Iceworlder armor deflected most things, but it could only withstand physical attack. Arokht howled as two of his eardrums ruptured under the assault. He tried to retreat, his vision blurring, his entire body resonating painfully to the destructive scream. His ears continued to ring long after the screaming stopped. A small respite. Stunned and deafened as he was, the iceworlder couldn’t bring his arms up in time to block the demon’s sledgehammer fists.

The Alala struck with enough force to shatter concrete. A downward blow cracked the armor plating on Arokht’s head. A vicious punch to the chest sent him staggering backwards. A brutal knee to the gut brought the iceworlder to the ground.

Arokht twitched feebly, lying curled on his side. Multiple damage alerts flashed insistently over his eyes. Moving hurt. The Makhê stepped back, hands clenching and unclenching spasmodically. The Proioxis watched from a tree overhead.

Arokht remembered he still held the railgun. And the Alala was nowhere near as fast as the Proioxis.

A thunderclap, a shockwave, a rush of air. Otherworldly armor warped and snapped. The Alala screamed in pain, red fire spurting from the hole in its gut. It stumbled back, still screaming. In one fluid motion, Arokht picked himself back up and charged at the wounded Makhê. The Proioxis responded instantly. The air whistled as its swords spun, biting deep into Arokht’s armor. Wires split and coolant lines burst. One cut drew steaming blood. But the iceworlder ignored it, slamming the Alala against another tree to return his beating in kind.

Arokht bludgeoned the demon relentlessly with his cannon. It bled fire with every blow. Its radial helmet bent and deformed. One of its arms snaked out to seize the gun by its barrel. It pushed back with titanic strength, using the tree as leverage, the gaping wound in its belly already slowly closing. The demon and the alien wrestled, evenly matched. Then Arokht fired his cannon. The unnatural fires coursing through the Alala’s body resisted the heat-leaching beam, but not well enough to keep the iceworlder from shattering its arm.

The Proioxis stabbed Arokht’s ankle.

The iceworlder fell to one knee, growling. His inexorable grip faltered for a second; long enough for the Alala to force itself out from under it. Its mangled face flapped open.

So close to the Makhê, Arokht took the full brunt of the scream. The sound drove all thought from his mind. Organs ruptured. Electronics flickered and died. One eyepiece cracked. The mighty iceworlder slumped like a sack of bricks, acrid smoke drifting from ruined machinery. Even so wounded, he struggled to rise. Arokht refused to die. He wheezed, coughed up blood. With bloodshot eyes he glared up at the two demons. He laughed in defiance.

And hurled himself once more at the Makhê.

Show Content

bonus deleted sceneFar in the north, there lay a fortress.

Cloaked by a constant, swirling blizzard, the fortress rose into the grey sky, twisting spires and towers encircled by three crenellated walls. All of it was built from ice, huge, solid, and seamless. Strange lights danced within and across the massive structure like imprisoned aurorae. Here was Arctis Tor, the epicenter of Frigidus’s might. By His hand he raised it from the earth, by His voice he spoke the spells protecting it. Here, He was omnipotent.

It was cold. Too cold for all but the hardiest of life to survive. Unprotected, a normal man would freeze to death in seconds. Protected, he would have a few hours at most. The Order of Frigidus was not made of normal men. In fact, here, at the center of His glacial power, was one of the few places Frigidus’s followers could walk unprotected from the elements. Long lines of worshippers marched within the fortress’s outer walls, hooded heads bowed in prayer. The lowest of the Order, these common faithful bore the least of His changes. They could almost be mistaken for normal, were it not for the fact that they walked through subzero winds and swirling snow with only their flimsy white robes for protection, and were completely unharmed.

But the closer one came to the fortress itself, the more distorted its inhabitants became. The rank-and-file soldiers performed drills in uncanny unison, without need of the bulky masks and backpacks they wore elsewhere. Each was silent, their voices long scoured away. Their skin was desiccated and leathery. Commanding them were officers in long coats, their eyes little more than frozen lumps in sunken sockets. And moving among the regimented troops were chaplains whose mummified frames were inextricably woven with long tendrils of frost.

All of this was overseen by the generals in their high towers, with bodies that were as much preserved skin and muscle as they were carved out of ice. They were attended to by huge constructs, walking glaciers clad in thick black armor: Frigidus’s demons, slivers of His will. And in the highest tower sat the Wintergod Himself upon his frozen throne, radiant with power.

From the state of his followers, one would expect Frigidus to be little more than a man-shaped ice sculpture, but, like many of His kin, He had deigned to take on a more human form for the sake of those He commanded. There were some who called Him General Winter, and He certainly dressed the part. His white uniform was decorated with delicate filigrees of rime. Icicles hung from his epaulettes.

But were it not for the uniform, it would be easy to think Frigidus just some wizened old man. His long, thin fingers looked fragile. His face was pale and bony and wrinkled. Somebody passing him on the street might be inclined to give Him a few coins. Only His eyes betrayed His nature--totally white, and filled with cold contempt.

The Wintergod had never exactly been the most merciful of gods. Of the whole pantheon, He was among the least sympathetic to humanity. After all, if all of humanity died out at once, winter would go on regardless. Why should they matter to Him?

But then the war had begun, and Frigidus had found himself short on bodies willing to fight and die for him. He had needed to take a few more by force. A little show of power, and then the masses had flocked to him. It was pathetic, really. Their endless sycophancy grated.

Yet it was also satisfying to see his armies march and fight and conquer. The strength of a god’s army was tied to the strength of the god, and Frigidus was one of the stronger ones. After all, winter could not be fought, only endured. In turn, Frigidus had overpowered many lesser gods. Had he not slain Arkus, god of electricity? Defeated Arazan the Devourer, chained sand-king Ral? And then Frigidus had grown confident in his power, and struck at his old rival, the God of War itself. It had been a costly mistake. War may be merely a human concept, but the Wintergod had challenged Raxis to its own game. Now Frigidus was paying the price.

He had already lost on multiple fronts, and the red god was advancing further into Winter’s territory. Frigidus’s storms had stalled Raxis’s relentless march, but rumor was spreading that the war god had been negotiating an alliance with Pyrum, the many-faced goddess of fire. If Frigidus wanted to turn Raxis back, he would need to do it soon.

In another time, Frigidus might have been content to allow Raxis to crush his forces. He was Wintergod. The Cold King. Lord of Ice and Darkness. He was as much a part of the world as the tides and the slow drift of continents. His worshippers might fall, but he would carry on as always. As long as there was ice and cold, there was Frigidus. But now the Unraveling was upon them. The power of the gods was slipping away. Even the mightiest of them could fall and leave their domain masterless. Those who lost in the Godsworn War died. And the Wintergod was close to losing.

Frigidus was afraid.

He turned his attention from one battleground after another, places where his armies had been shattered. Surely, there was something he could salvage from the wreckage...

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Movement behind him. Arokht spun, leveling his cannon--

--at the face of an old man in a uniform, his face gaunt, his eyes completely white. He stepped out of the frost, and the world grew colder and paler with every step he took. He stopped a foot away from the gun aimed at his head. He looked up, unperturbed. He spoke, and his voice was the howling of a blizzard, the sharp crack of ice, the crunch of snow underfoot.

“You cannot hurt me with that, you realize. You would be using water to fight the sea.”

Arokht raised his railgun.

“You cannot hurt me at all,” the man sighed. His tone held no pride. He simply stated facts. “It would be best for both of us if you didn't try.”

“Identify yourself!” the iceworlder bellowed. Both his guns were pointedly still raised.

The man smiled a smile as cold and hard as permafrost.

“I am Frigidus. God of winter. I want to make a deal.”