Not Throwing Away Black Shot

Three years ago, the Legion accepted a contract from the Chosen known as Shreya, a living avatar of the Kalithari goddess of healing and mercy, to join the war against the Cinder King. By that point, the war had already been raging across the Alberetor Reach for nearly twenty years.

For three years Shreya and the other remaining Chosen have led their fleets in battle after battle against the undead and abominations of the Cinder King. The Wildsea is littered with the bodies of the dead, and even the mighty Ironroots are beginning to show signs of corruption. Entire sections of the canopy have begun to wither, and there are places where the trees themselves seem to have become hostile to those who travel through them.

Last week, the Chosen committed everything they had left to an all-out assault on the Cinder King's forces at Ettenmark Fields. Every last ounce of strength the Reaches could muster was thrown into the battle. It was, by every account, a titanic battle.

We lost.

The Broken—former Chosen who have fallen to the Cinder King's corruption—fielded new horrors against the armies of the Outer Reach. Creatures that had never been seen before Ettenmark tore through the lines, and whatever remained of the mighty Armada broke and began retreating north. The bulk of the Cinder King's forces are following close behind.

In the confusion of the route, we caught a glimpse of Zora standing alone before a charge of Cinderheart Knights, turning their charge with her blazing sword of fire, and allowing The Legion to make good its escape. We lost sight of her in the confusion.

The plan is to make for Skydagger Keep, an ancient stronghold in the main pass over the mountain range known as the Titans, but getting there will require supplies, and in particular Black Shot. The crafting of Black Shot had kept the undead armies in check for years. They were too well entrenched to attack directly, but smaller and better-equipped forces had been able to hold them at bay. Ettenmark changed that equation. The Legion is shattered, the enemy has new weapons of its own, and critical supplies of Black Shot were abandoned behind the lines while the retreat was organized. Those supplies are now in the hands of the undead.

The Legion made it across the Tigeria Rift via the Hozelbrucke Bridge several miles south, and the squad has been sent back to recover the abandoned Black Shot. If the Legion is going to have any chance of making it to the Titans, they need those supplies. Once the squad returns, another squad will blow the Hozelbrucke behind them, slowing the Cinder King's advance.

The mission is simple enough: recover the Black Shot, get back across the Rift, and blow the bridge.

The Black Shot

The rain is coming down hard when the Legion arrives, and thunder rolls through the canopy. Every so often the sound is punctuated by the howls of undead somewhere in the darkness.

The squad is brought in aboard two small cutter mission craft. These aren't built for speed or combat; they're designed to run quietly, with no saws and their engines muffled enough that they can move through the canopy without announcing themselves to everything within half a mile. The cutters drop the squad a little more than half a click from where the Horned One reported the abandoned caravan, then wait in silence for the squad's return.

The caravan is somewhere ahead, sitting on a reef of detritus suspended in the thrash. The brief flashes of lightning give them just enough of a view to make out several caravan barges, abandoned and partially tangled among the branches. The men responsible for protecting the Black Shot apparently cut their animals loose when the undead caught up with them and fled on ravensback.

The animals were corvairs—large, black, flightless birds bred for travel through the canopy. They're roughly the size of horses, with powerful legs capable of covering enormous distances and broad wings that aren't capable of sustained flight but help them leap from bough to bough.

Most of the corvairs are gone. At least one is dead among the wreckage.

Nubub moves ahead to get a closer look. When he returns, he tells the squad that there are Rotters beneath the thrash—perhaps ten of them, possibly more. They're scattered around the abandoned barges, mostly hidden beneath the foliage.

And there is something much worse. A Horror. One of the enormous new creatures Blighter has begun fielding at Ettenmark.

Nubub also saw a crow, but not just any crow. Bone-white mask. Red handprint. The Doctor.

The Doctor is one of Blighter's servants, and one of the few undead known to have retained its sentience. There are stories about the Doctor, although it is difficult to know how many of them are true. What is known is enough: this is not something the Legion wants to stumble into while scattered around the wreckage.

Stealth is discussed and rejected. It might be possible to get to the Black Shot without being seen, but if something goes wrong, the squad could find itself fighting the Doctor and the Horror while spread across the canopy. That's too much of a risk.

Amenmos suggests a trap. One of the barges can be sacrificed. If they rig it with enough explosives, lure the Horror and the Doctor onto it, and then blow the whole thing, they might be able to remove the two greatest threats before the actual fight begins.

"Explosives... good idea. Anyone bring any?" Kaven Vanell responds "I brought some, yeah. Just in case the other squad couldn't blow the bridge."

It's not a particularly elegant plan. It is, however, the sort of plan the Legion has become accustomed to.

Nubub and the Ember Wolves sneak back toward the caravan and begin rigging the explosives. The detonator is a small electrical device: a carapace housing with a two-part chemical trigger inside, connected to the explosives by a length of insulated wire. Once armed, turning the key shatters the vials and the fluids mix violently, generating enough electricity to send a pulse down the wire. It isn't particularly sophisticated, but it doesn't need to be.

The Horned One is the bait. She takes the shape of an eagle and flies to the abandoned barge, landing among the wreckage and challenging the undead below with an ear-splitting eagle-cry which deepens into a roar to challenge the thunder as her form shifts into that of a giant antlered bear.

The Doctor reaches her first. It moves with a speed that is difficult to comprehend, and with almost no sound at all. One moment it is three hundred yards away at the far end of the caravan, and the next it is on the barge. The fight between it and the Horned One is almost too fast to follow. Even in the massive form of a bear, with divine power still running through her she moves almost faster than the eye can follow, but even that isn't enough to prevent the Doctor from landing several grievous blows.

Then the Horror begins to climb. It comes up from beneath the thrash slowly, one enormous hand gripping the side of the barge and crushing part of it as it pulls itself upward. Kaven waits until it has committed itself, raises his finely crafted rifle, and fires. The Black Shot strikes the creature, but instead of tearing through its flesh it ricochets off an iron pauldron embedded directly into the thing's body.

The Horror keeps climbing. It reaches the top of the barge just as the Horned One shifts back into her eagle form. She takes flight, putting as much distance between herself and the barge as she can.

As soon as she's clear, Snarler triggers the explosives, and the barge disappears in a fireball. Shards of wood and black shot tear through the Horror and the Doctor. The Horror is obliterated outright, along with several of the Rotters surrounding it. There is no sign of the Doctor afterward. Nothing remains that can be positively identified as its body, anyway. It may have been completely incinerated. Or it may have survived.

Without the Horror and the Doctor directing them, the remaining Rotters almost immediately revert to their more familiar feral state. Whatever intelligence or coordination they possessed disappears, and they become considerably easier to deal with.

Snarler Blackbrow leads the Ember Wolves through the wreckage, and the remaining Rotters are quickly put down.

For once, the plan actually worked. The Legion recovers the Black Shot with no Legion casualties. The Legion could use the win.

The Black Shot was loaded into the small cutters, and the squad made their way back to the fleet, joining up with the Grinning Ravens as they crossed the Rift. As the Hozelbrucke Bridge crumbles into the darkness behind them, the Horned One flies ahead, tracking the wake of the Legion's fleet to bring the soldiers home.