Lisa jumped back from the rockslide to catch her breath. The immediate area was safe for now. She had already slain nearly two dozen of the Twisted but just beyond the largest of the rock piles was the main body of the Twisted hoard. They were already crossing over the rockslide, and they were gaining ground at an unprecedented rate. The loose rocks were slowing them down but every time a Twisted fell it was trampled on by the ones coming up from behind it, making the path more stable with their crushed bodies.

“Where are the buried townspeople?” Lisa said to herself as she quickly scanned the rock piles before her. “There has to be someone who survived.” Then a tattered blue piece of cloth caught her attention. “There’s one!”

Lisa ran over to the cloth, grabbed it, and pulled hard. Out from the rubble a man appeared as Lisa lifted him up from his shirt tail. The man wasn’t moving but from the dust blowing out from his mouth told her he was just unconscious.

Lisa set him down and looked up to check on the Twisted’s progress. Unfortunately, she saw that she had no time to tend to the man for three Night Hounds were already standing atop the tallest rockpile peak. Lisa picked up her katana and prepared to fight when the head of the closest Night Hound exploded!

Looking up at the cliff top Lisa saw Gillian and the other with him were now shooting at the Twisted. Lisa waved up at him and he replied nodding his raised rifle once before going back to shooting. She then turned her attention back to the unconscious man.

Lisa tapped the side of his face gently as she spoke, “Hey, wake up! You can’t rest now. Wake up.”

The man started to stir, and he opened his eyes unsteadily as the sunlight struck them. Lisa smiled seeing this. “Good, you are waking up. Come on, we need to keep moving.”

“W-what happened?” The man groaned raising a hand to cover his eyes. “Wait, where is my wife! She was right next to me when… oh no! She was in that rockslide too!”

“Stay here. I’ll go look for her.” Lisa said getting up to go for where she first found the man.

Lisa tossed away a few rocks when a pink sleeve poked through the sand. “Here she is!”

After digging the woman out from the sand within seconds thanks to her still being in Stage One, Lisa found she was in the same condition as her husband. The man had recovered enough to stand, and Lisa handed her over to him. All the while this was happening the gunfire from above hadn’t let up once. Suddenly a bullet pinged off a rock right behind Lisa. She spun around in time to see a Logos Cutter had made it through the rockslide and bullets and was now hopping right towards her.

“Little sneaky guy, come get me!” Lisa challenged raising her sword.

The Logos Cutter let out a shrill shriek as it made a huge leap at Lisa. This kind of attack was pointless for as soon as the Twisted jumped it was doomed to be skewered by her blade. Tossing the dead creature aside onto the rocks by her feet she spotted a humans leg sticking out from the rock she was next to. Tossing a sizable stone aside Lisa found the rest of the older male underneath.

“Help me…” The man croaked raising a hand to her.

“I got you.” Lisa answered immediately taking his hand.

As she lifted him the man sucked in his breath sharply as if in great pain. Lisa looked down at his other leg and arm she found that both were likely broken. She then looked towards the Twisted now less than ten meters away and then back up at the cliff top.

“Someone, help me dig out all these people!” Lisa called to those above her. There was no immediate reply, so she kept calling.

Lisa’s calls were eventually heard by someone, and that person informed the militia guarding the top entrance to the cliff. The dependable looking man Gillian had told to keep an eye on the area was named Jake, and he was perplexed by the issue. On one hand he knew he should send help, but on the other hand he was told to wait here.

The man and unconscious woman reached the top of the path to pass by the militia at this point. Seeing them covered in dust, sand, and bleeding in a few places Jake knew the answer.

“Come on let’s go help down there. We can split up in two groups, and I’ll go down there with anyone that follows me.” Jake said taking the initiative to start jogging down the sand path.

He was soon followed by fourteen other ERM militia and the person that came to relay Lisa’s call for help. They arrived to find the at Lisa had already dug out two other people from the rubble.

“Quick, take these three up the path and get them to someone with medical skills. All three of them have broken bones.” Lisa said urgently. “The rest of you start looking for anyone else here.”

A screech drew her attention and this time two Night Hounds, and a Logos Cutter were climbing over the rocks towards them. One of the ERM militia shot at the Twisted approaching striking a Night Hound in the shoulder. Lisa followed up by cutting the creature down and kicking the Logos Cutter away from her. The second Night Hound slipped on the loose rocks and started sliding off the path to go back down to the open scrublands below.

One of the militia men happened to look over the edge to see what happened to the Night Hound and he let out a shout of alarm. “Oh s***! Everyone look out, the Twisted are climbing up the side of the path!”

The rest of the militia men and Lisa rushed to the paths edge and looked down in disbelief. The Twisted were climbing up the neatly stacked rocks used to hold up the path in uncountable numbers. If they hadn’t seen them coming just then, Lisa and the others would have been surrounded and completely caught by surprise.

“Well, don’t just stand there with your mouths open, start shooting them!” Lisa yelled.

Most of them did just that and they started shooting at the monsters climbing swiftly upwards. Numerous Twisted were sent tumbling away to the ground as a result but their sheer numbers were going to overcome the militia very soon. Three of the militia closest to the top of the path started to back away to escape, but Lisa saw them and grabbed the closest of them.

“If you are going to run away, at least take those injured with you.” Lisa said pointing at the three laying on the ground.

“Fine!” The man shouted pulling his arm free from her grasp.

Lisa then patted Jake on the back. “Fall back up to the top of the path. There is nothing more you can do here. I’ll hold them off until you can retreat!”

Jake fired one last round before giving out the order to fall back. Lisa looked both down the path and below her at the hoard closing in knowing that this fight might be one of the hardest she’s ever been in. Well, at least the top ten hardest battles she’d been in. A new string of gunfire caught her attention and craning her neck to look left she saw that Orin and his forces were shooting at Twisted that were swarming up the cliffside closer to the river.

“This is not looking good.” Lisa said to herself. “We are going to be overrun at this rate.”

“Lisa!” Gillian’s voice rang out from overhead. Lisa looked up to see Gillian pointing towards the end of the slope. “Get out of there, there are some huge Twisted coming your way!”

Lisa looked back down the path and knew she indeed was in trouble. The three Plain Striders the baby Hoard Mother sent had arrived. That’s when another heavy rumble rippled across the battle grounds, the Hoard Mother was giving new command.

Lisa watched curiously as the Twisted blocking the three Plain Striders way parted and then closed in behind them. “Are they working together in an organized manner? Did the lead Twisted tell those bigger ones to block the gunfire so they could break past the rockslide?”

Lisa’s guess was only half right. What she didn’t know was that these Plain Striders were coming after her. It was just the baby Hoard Mother was taking the initiative to use the Plain Striders to block the bullets too as a bonus for the rest of the hoard.

Additionally, now that the Twisted hoard had finished eating what humans they had killed so far, the baby Hoard Mother sent all the Twisted to attack now. Before only twenty percent of the Hoard was attacking the human defenses, and now all of them were on their way. All this was being obscured by the dust that had settled over the open scrubland making this attack to be entirely unexpected by the humans who were thinking they were managing to keep the Twisted at bay this whole time.

As the three hulking Plain Striders thundered up the path, Gillian and the rest started shooting at the creatures. This resulted in nothing, the bullets were merely shrugged off and the Plain Striders kept charging. Nathan was watching and called out for everyone to throw their rocks in mass as the creatures passed under them. This resulted in hundreds of rocks to come tumbling over the cliffs edge and pummel the flanks of the Plain Striders. The results were the same as before, no effect. The only silver lining to this failure was that a few stray rocks struck down the Twisted that had managed to keep up with the Plain Striders so far.

Seeing they weren’t going to be stopped any time soon Lisa yelled back up to Gillian, “Tell that crazy cousin of yours to start blocking the path again. I don’t see anyone else here!”

“Terisa now!” Gillian yelled in Terisa direction.

Terisa was already keeping a close watch on the situation and before Gillian had even finished yelling the Mechs were already pushing the piles of rock and sand down. The result was three piles of sand and rock to heap up on the path to be taller than Lisa. Looking at it one would guess that the Plain Striders would at least slow down to deal with the obstruction, but they held fast to their pace.

Terisa’s voice crackled over the intercom of the three Mechs. “Back up and push the next load! We aren’t making any progress!”

The Hanna and the two pilots did as they were told and just before the Plain Striders reached the obstruction a second equally as high layer was stacked atop the path. Still, they did not slow down. The lead Plain Strider lowered its head so that its horns were nearly scrapping the ground. Letting out a massive bullish bellow the Plain Strider made its intentions clear, it was going to bulldoze the obstruction away!

Lisa started to back peddle with her katana raised in front of her. “These Twisted are relentless!”

Then with a mighty ‘crack’ the Plain Strider collided with the wall of rock and sand. There was a massive spray of earthen materials as the beast pressed on into the pile. Then to everyone’s dismay the Plain Strider knocked a large portion of the obstruction off the path. Left behind at the spot the Twisted struck there was hardly a stone remaining and on top of that, even some of the path itself was gouged away!

Following right behind this terrible display the other two Plain Striders followed the example of the first and blew away equally as large portions of the obstruction over the edge. When they were done half of the rock and sand was gone. Backing up the three huge Plain Striders prepared to attack the obstruction once more and when they did there would be nothing standing in the way of the hoard.

Lisa and the townspeople were going to be doomed to die at this rate!