It was cold down here, besides the stink of rotting flesh and waste nearby, that was pretty much all he knew. The doors to the escape shuttle weren’t opening and he was stuck in here with a buncha corpses of fellas he didn’t really know. The flashlight on his helmet had gone dead and he was stuck in pure blackness and cold.

And the stink of rot.

Michael wretched, hunching over in his seat and spitting out absolutely nothing from his guts. He hadn’t eaten or drank very much since the crash, he wanted to ration whatever he could after all. He needed to keep himself alive for the rescue team. If only he could stop from barfin' it all up...

Rescue was a comin’, that much was for sure. The first thing he'd done upon landing was hit the emergency beacon. That had been a while ago though… but surely they wouldn’t just leave a squad of marines to die buried beneath some rubble would they? They had heard the signal before the pod went dark right? Right? The pilot had said to brace for collision with some kind of structure, and they all had…

But Michael had been the only one to survive, albeit heavily bruised and with a piercing headache to show for it. There had been one other guy out of the six of them that had been breathing, but he died within a couple a’ hours of the crash. Maybe if Michael could have gotten him some help he woulda lived… but he couldn’t blame himself, after all, he wasn't a medic.

Michael sat up in his seat, wiping foaming spittle from his lips as he did so. He didn’t want to die like this… he would not die like this. He’d killed so many aliens that it’d be some kinda cosmic joke for him to just die here in the dark, Alone. Nah, for his death, he’d be fighting four yugoros bare-handed at once, maybe then his death would be acceptable.

But like this? Trapped in the dark? Alone?

No one to talk to, alone with his despairing thoughts. A true nightmare scenario for him, talking to people always helped distract him from the hopelessness of this life, so he always sought company in his off hours, just so he wouldn’t be alone…

So he wouldn’t be alone with his gun.

He took a deep shaky breath and heaved again, coming up with nothing. He couldn’t afford to think about that now, help was coming… it had to be. He just needed to deal with being alone just for now, he could bear with it, he’d gone through worse hadn’t he? How long had be been alone in here now? In the dark? Alone?

That was the worst part of it to Michael, it was the sheer loneliness and isolation of the shuttle. Of course the stink was another factor… piling the bodies into the cockpit had only slowed the stink from spreading, and that was only made worse when he had to inevitably use the non-functioning lavatory. The shuttle had crashed at an angle with the nose of the pod tilted downward, so his waste had all ended up piling down there with the rotting corpses as soon as the toilet filled up... He had been using his helmet at first, pouring the contents into the tilted toilet until eventually it had began leaking out... seeping down the pod in a line of sewage. The damn thing wouldn't flush without power... and even if it could, the backsplash of the toilet flushing would spit most of it back out anyway... Back out onto his dead comrades below.

The guilt of imposing such a dishonor on fellow marines sickened him, though not nearly as much as the smell. He’d get em’ buried good and proper as soon as he got the hell out of here. Only problem was that he couldn’t, the pod door was sealed shut and the power had gone out a while ago. Michael couldn’t remember when it had, but it did, which meant life support was out now too. Michael hadn't run out of oxygen yet thankfully, that was due to him twisting the valve on the emergency tank next to the cockpit, but that thing couldn't last forever.

He had to try something to get out of here or he’d end up like one of the bodies in the black abyss below. Question was, what had he not tried? There were guns a’ plenty in the shuttle, good amount of food and water too, but there wasn’t anything like a welders torch that he could cut the metal with…

The emergency lever to open the door manually was a no go as well, damn thing wouldn’t budge. There were the guns… but they couldn’t bust through that door and the glass down below was stronger than any caliber the squad had packed for evac.

Still strong enough to put a hole through my skull…

Michael took a deep, steadying breath. He wouldn’t give in… not yet. There was still plenty of water to live off of, he just needed to keep it down until help showed up. He’d been puking up constantly from the rot so he’d mostly been drinking the water and barely touching the food as a result. Michael tried at the emergency latch again to no avail, tugging at it with all his strength before he lost his grip on the handle and fell back into the rotting abyss.

A wet plop greeted his ears and he felt the filth creep between his armor plates and soak into the flesh of his back. The half-sealed cockpit door was the only thing separating him from the packed-together corpses of his fellow soldiers. He could have wept. What would he do even if he got the door open? More than likely that would just get him killed, rubble would pour down on him and crush him to death.

Was his only option really to just wait?

No.

He didn’t have to wait.

He didn’t have to endure this agonizing isolation any longer.

He didn't have to think about his recently dead family and how his home planet had been enslaved by the Final Kind.

All it took was one bullet to not deal with it anymore.

How many hours had it been? Or had it been days? He couldn’t tell anymore… Time didn’t matter to him when he was all alone in the darkness. He waited, not moving from his place atop the cracked cockpit door. He couldn’t know for sure, but he was certain that the bodies were staring at him, staring at the back of his head.

Urine shifted off the door and spilled into the cockpit below, further defiling the corpses of proud Ternan soldiers with Michael’s waste. A day? Maybe two? No… it had been a week, a month even. How much longer would it be? How much longer-

He took his pistol from its holster with a quivering hand, and pressed the barrel of the gun to the roof of his mouth. The great Michael Harrison, could only be killed by himself. Hopefully that’d be etched into his gravestone… as if he’d have a gravestone after they lost the war with those damn aliens. This place would be his grave, that was all there was to it.

No more bars to drink at… no more hanging out with his buddies or picking up hot officer chicks, this was it.

He put his finger to the trigger and squeezed. His eyes closed before the bullet tore through his brain and began to ricochet through the shuttle.

At least that was what he pictured would happen. The gun didn’t fire. It must have gotten jammed somehow... Michael dropped the pistol and wept at the realization of what he had just tried to do. It hadn’t taken that long for him to give up after all… he really was as weak as grandad always said, may the old bastard rot in heaven.

“Please.” Michael rasped “Someone get me the hell out of here!” He screamed.

A moment of silence passed before he continued silently “Please… before I try again…”

…

…

…

Ferow the Raven stared at the floor of the cell, not looking up into the watch captain's face. He had just entered through the open door, shutting it behind him after shooing out his previous interrogators. The two faekin quickly hurried out in fearful silence, the night captain not sparing them a glance as they left.

They had brought him here to question him further about who had hired him to take out that freak of a human. They had manacled his wrists but left his ankles free, the shattered arc of his foot growing an apple-sized lump atop it.

Ferow felt no sense of loyalty to faekin, even if they did hire him for a job. He had given night watchers all the information Ferow knew of his employer, which as it turned out wasn’t much. Still, he gave what he knew in the hopes that he would be released from captivity. A low chance certainly, more likely he would be incarcerated for years to come… that is until he would escape. Then he would go after that freak once more. It was a matter of pride now.

Ferow had never failed in his life and that human…

He had handled Ferow as if he were simply a mere child with toys! The shame set his face burning with rage, his black eyes boring holes through the stone beneath his legs until snapping fingers caught his attention. Before he realized what he was doing, Ferow looked up, catching the green eyes of the night watch captain.

He was an older faekin, with actual crow’s feet deeply set next to those pale green eyes. Despite being an elf, the man possessed the face of a human, square and hard with the wide shoulders to match. Indeed, Ferow would have taken him for a human gorilla were it not for those ears and those soul-searching eyes.

Ferow possessed the soul-reading capabilities all faekin possessed, just at a lesser degree. That had never been a focus of his training, but he could still pick up on other's emotions. Other faekin that had come in to speak with him were all awed by his presence and respectful. In truth however he hadn’t needed his elf eyes for that, he would have been able to tell blindfolded that they were all but besotted with him.

This elf though? Those eyes were cold and near-lifeless. It sent a shudder down his spine to receive that stare but he kept his composure.

The night watch captain leaned closer, almost coming to kneel before saying “You’re popular for scum. Be thankful that you aren’t a citizen of the Bastion, for a far worse fate would have been set out for you for shattering the oath of shelter. As it is, you will still be executed for what you have done. I don’t care who you are. It’s over. Enjoy your last night on Ahkoolis.” He said, standing back up with his back straight “I am Muro, mine will be the last face you see tomorrow as I will bring down the blade that ends your life.”

Fear spread through Ferow like no other time in his life. This crazy old geezer really meant it, Ferow could see it in his eyes! What was it illegal to conduct business!? This ‘Hoplite’ was no elf! It shouldn’t matter to these faekin if one of their own kind took out a human… that was what he had been told his whole life anyway, and it was one of the only reasons he took this job. He was out of his element and he had no idea how things in this ‘Bastion’ operated.

“Unless of course, you let me drag you to every single day watcher in the Bastion until you recognize who hired you to do this. That elf will I flay and leave his skin out to dry as example to the other curs that attempt to betray our given oaths.” He said with a sneer.

He almost breathed a sigh of relief but held that in as well. Surely there was a catch? Muro would likely expect him to just pick the first day watcher they came across… Muro then pulled out a glowing purple collar and Ferow screamed as Muro forced it around his throat, clamping it shut and shoving the key into his pocket.

“You will now and forever more speak the truth, and only the truth Raven.” Muro said with a smirk “I will be back for you tomorrow, we have many watchers to speak with, and all will take a turn wearing another like yours.”

…

…

…

Hoplite took in the gargantuan structure ahead of him. At least fifty meters tall and as thick as a train, this simple stone wall was a deep weathered gray, as if it had seen several ages come and go. He rolled his shoulders as he emerged out of the Faewood, Lance following close at his side, stumbling slightly and a bit green in the face to boot. Most of this trip had been made carrying her with him, something she had grumbled about at first claiming that it’d be too long of a trip and that ‘I would puke all over that shiny armor of yours if you try to run that far in a day’.

She had come around once he had explained his reasoning, but before that Hoplite had been willing to leave her behind if she wouldn’t comply. Time was of the essence for whatever was in that shuttle. If there indeed was a shuttle to even find. The breach could have possibly been caused by something else but Hoplite doubted it. He had wanted to get to the breach as quickly as he could, after all, if his suspicions were correct, then it was an escape shuttle that had crashed into the wall.

Indeed, even though the parts of the wall that were whole seemed so grand and imposing, the massive V shaped breach in the center ruined that sense of invincibility the wall gave off. He and Lance had crested a high hill overlooking a treeless valley of green far below. Several people moved about quickly here and there as a circle of ragtag soldiers surrounded the mound of rubble at the foot of the breach.

Enhancing his camera, he could pick out a few more details on what was happening below in the waning light of day. It was mostly humans that ran about, many going between tents carrying all manner of things, from trays of food to what appeared to be primitive cloth bandages. The tents stretched far across the valley and all bore the image of the top side of a bloody red tongue.

Those must be the tongues of Zodd he had heard about from Lance on the way here. A warrior society hell-bent on impressing their god through impressive feats of bravery and combative prowess. The head of the ‘Might’ pillar, Zodd the King of Blood. An orc god, but the head of one of the three pillars that made up the pantheon of this world's main religion.

All drivel of course but it was drivel that would matter during his time stranded here. He possibly could have gleaned more information on the tongues if he hadn’t run straight past the party of mutants to get here. The pale man, Kid’ka, had said he was a member of this society after all, he surely would have known more than Lance about the subject.

Indeed, if Hoplite hadn’t prioritized reaching the site as quickly as possible then he may have stopped to question them further. He did have questions about some of the other… things they had done when he had met them, but that would be for a later time. They had been shocked at seeing his speed, all save for Theopalu who had merely given an uncaring glance at Hoplite’s passing.

Turning his attention to the breach, he found himself staring at the innards of the wall itself. Several open square chambers revealed themselves along the rims of the breach, several men armed with bows firing periodic volleys at these strange purple humanoid creatures that climbed over the hill of rubble below.

Intricate spirals were etched into the dark purple skin of the scrambling creatures. These must be the ‘normal’ fiends that Lance had told him about, the ‘unkillable’ ones. He watched as a fiend, a skinny wisp of a man with patchy white hair was shot in the throat and then in the chest by arrows. That last shot would have gone straight through its heart, and indeed the creature fell tumbling down the rubble hill, no doubt shattering several bones on the way down.

Hoplite actually felt his jaw open slightly as the man began to crawl on one unbroken arm as it reached the bottom, teeth gnashing before a fat man crushed its skull with a mace. Even then the arm still thrashed about wildly, seeking flesh to rend. That simply couldn’t be… but there it was, right before him, still flailing about even as others came in to join in the bashing.

Soon the wretched body was nothing but a convulsing bloody mess of shattered bones. There had to be a couple hundred men stationed at the bottom of that twenty-foot high rocky mound, and each were busying themselves with mashing up fiends that made it up over the breach. The defense was really quite clever he realized, forcing the fiends to climb high over that rubble mound to reach the other side of the wall only to be peppered with arrows before being finished off by whoever guarded the bottom of the mound.

He zoomed in on the archers then, surprised to see that those square patterns in the wall were actually sections of various rooms. There were some that looked to be living chambers, blacksmiths, markets, and what looked to be bars among other things. There weren’t any buildings on this side of the valley… did these people live within the wall itself? How could they build such a gargantuan structure this way?

He shook his head and looked back to the huge mound of rubble.

Based on how the breach looked, the majority of debris fell on the opposite side of the valley leading into the Fiendwood itself. Surely then the shuttle must have crashed into it from this side of the Fiendwall. Hoplite looked away from it and firmed his jaw, turning his head to Lance who still looked somewhat ill. She was hunched over on her knees, eyes red and tips of her ears a bright crimson.

“Just… one second.” She said heaving “I didn’t… oh by the pillars… I didn’t think that we could really get here in just one day…”

“We don’t have time-”

She glared up into his helmet “You try being manhandled by a big metal gorilla for an entire day and see how fine you feel after the fact!” She spat, ending in a long trailing cough.

“I am not a gorilla.” Hoplite replied.

He wasn’t.

Lance shook her head and hunched back over “Look, just go down there and see if you can find what you're looking for… I need to sit down for a few minutes… the world is all wishy-washy…” She then curled in on herself and fell to the grass, breathing heavily.

Hoplite unslung his canteen, handing her the metal container “Drink this while I’m gone. I’ll be back.”

He then laid it down next to her clammy hands, and began marching down the hill towards the campsite. She would either come find him when she was done with her sickness or he’d come back for her later. First things first, he needed to find whoever was in charge and see if they had already recovered the shuttle. If they hadn’t, he’d begin searching on the opposite end of the wall.

He had no fear of being infected with this ‘curse’ due to his suit, so searching through the rubble shouldn’t pose too much danger. After all, even if fiends couldn’t be killed, they still couldn’t breach his armor. The adium plates could withstand an incredible amount of punishment, far more than beating fists and gnashing teeth could overcome.

As he approached the camp, several tongues of Zodd moved to meet him. The motley crew of warriors had all been seated around the perimeter of the camp, holding a loose imitation of a watch. Hoplite thought of it as a watch, as much as it could be called one. They were a rowdy and rambunctious lot, pushing one another while seated and trading insults that’d put any drill sergeant to shame.

They all stood from around chairs or from the grass itself, a sheen of sweat beaded at their brows and a few stared worriedly at Hoplite. Others though? They stared at Hoplite with a sort of… hunger in their eyes, though for what he could not say for certain. Those ones did not look away when he cocked his helmet toward them, instead, they jutted out their jaws and tilted their heads back as they glared, seemingly in challenge.

There were other gaggles of different mutated branches but the majority of these tongues did seem to be human. Some mutations were more severe than others, such as the man that looked like a humanoid crow complete with a beak and black feathers, or the massive one that looked akin to a minotaur with a cow's head and hooves.

Then there were less aggressive mutations, like the big green-skinned men with jutting tusks from their jaws. Those had to be orcs for certain, some of them with arms big enough to rival that of a paladin. And then there was…

Hoplite almost squinted.

Did that woman have normal ears besides the feline ones or would there be smooth nubs where the human ears would go? No matter.

A big orc rubbed his bare scalp as he approached Hoplite. He could see that he was a full head taller than this orc, though if that mattered to the orc he did not show it.

“Ello’.” The orc said “Howsit?”

“Who is in charge here?” Hoplite asked in a level tone, keeping his shotgun lowered.

“That’d be the mayors of da fiendwall. Er, you want fight yeah?” The orc asked, quirking an eyebrow and pointing a thumb back toward the rubble wall “Yous a… whatchamakallit right?”

“Yes.” Hoplite said, containing his impatience “Where’s the mayor?”

“Pullin’ a double at the rocks, can’t miss em. Big fat.” The orc told him.

Hoplite nodded and moved past the orc, the other tongues leaving a path for him to move through. Hoplite was sure he had seen ‘big fat’ earlier during his camera sweep. Time to meet the mayor.