Hoplite took in the gargantuan structure ahead of him. The wall loomed tall over the land, casting a wide shadow across the valley just below it. The deep gray stone wall was incredibly worn, as if it had seen several thousands of years pass. Hoplite took a deep breath as he emerged out of the Faewood, still staring intently at the Fiendwall with Lance following close at his side. She stumbled slightly in her normally graceful stride, her face a ghostly pale hue. 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 Fiendwall as quickly as he could, after all, if his suspicions were correct, then it had been an escape shuttle that had crashed here.

It was almost hard to believe that such a massive structure could have sustained such damage… it was truly an impressive construction, though while the sections of the wall that were whole seemed so grand and imposing, the massive V shaped breach in the center erased that sense of nigh-invincibility. His eyes traced the outline of the breach to its bottom, spotting several shapes moving about between hundreds of tents behind the wall. A circle of other shapes -soldiers if Hoplite guessed correctly- surrounded the mound of rubble at the foot of the shattered section of the wall.

Bumping his chin, his front view camera zoomed in, losing no clarity as he observed the people below. It was mostly humans amidst the hustle and bustle of the camp, many going between tents and carrying all manner of things, everything from trays of food and bedrolls to bandages and burlap sacks. The tent city stretched far across the valley and many 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 great feats of bravery and combative prowess. Their god being 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 some things to ask about some of the other… anomalies, the party of misfits had performed when they had all fought side-by-side, but that could be for a later time. Besides, they would have likely just told Hoplite that it was ‘magic’, just as Lance had.

It was surprising to see them again so soon despite the fact that they were all headed to the same objective… But it had been strange to see that they had not deviated an inch from heading directly to the east of his pod. They had been shocked at seeing his speed, all save for Theopalu who had merely yawned at Hoplite’s passing.

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

Intricate spirals were etched into the dark purple flesh of the scrambling creatures like brands, and their twisted forms both repulsed and intrigued him. Several of these infected humanoids bore mortal wounds that would have left most men dead, or at the very least disabled, yet these mutants continued to climb, uncaring of their conditions. These had to have been 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 its descent.

Dead, no chance of anyone surviving those arrows on top of that fall-

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 broad heavily armored 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 was 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 rubble.

Hoplite focused 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, complete with beds and sections of copper piping within the walls. Did they have indoor plumbing within the wall? Would it be heated as well? The presence of copper may have meant that these Fiendwallers had access to electricity… but Hoplite would not get his hopes up. 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 without it crashing down on itself?

Perhaps the wall was always here, a result of tectonic plates and chance? The rough-hewn stone of the wall almost looked as if it were formed naturally… yet on closer inspection, Hoplite could see intricate engravings set into face of the rock. Zooming in further, he could make a few of them out… Most of them depicted a single man with a shield, a spear held against a swirling spiral that menaced over the comparatively tiny warrior. The spiral was twisted and contorted in a way that made Hoplite almost sick to his stomach.

Looking instead at the tiny man, Hoplite could see that the engraved fellow was apparently screaming, likely in horror at the twisted thing before him. These engravings repeated in similar variations all across the surface of the Fiendwall, even the rounded top which seemed to have no point of access… How did the engravers get up there to make these macabre art pieces?

Hoplite shook his head, clenching his jaw as he looked back to the huge mound of rubble below. He shouldn’t be focusing on engraved artwork… no matter how sickeningly fascinating it was.

Based on the distribution of stone in the mound, the majority of debris must have fallen on the opposite side of the valley leading into the Fiendwood itself. The shuttle must have hit the Fiendwall from the west then, meaning that the shuttle had to be on the other side… with all the fiends. Hoplite looked away from the breach, further firming his jaw as he turned 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.

Hoplite blinked.

“I am not a gorilla.” Hoplite replied after a second.

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 “You should drink this while I’m gone. I’ll be back.”

He laid it down next to her clammy hands before 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 though, 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.

Hoplite had no fear of contracting this ‘curse’, his suit was airtight and would not allow any pathogen through its filters, 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 plating could withstand an incredible amount of punishment, far more than what beating fists and gnashing teeth were capable of.

As he approached the camp, several dozen of what had to be 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 had the head of a bull and the legs of one to match.

Then there were the 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 a… hmm…

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 mayor o’ da fiendwall. Er, you want fight yeah?” The orc asked, quirking an eyebrow and pointing a thumb back toward the rubble wall “Yoo’s a… whatchamakallit right?”

“Yes.” Hoplite replied in his standard monotone, trying to keep his growing impatience from leaking into his voice “Where is the mayor?”

“Pullin’ a double at the rocks, can’t miss em. Biggest muscle-fat ya ever seen.” The orc told him, gesturing with a pointed thumb in the direction of the breach.

Hoplite nodded and moved past the orc, the other Tongues leaving a path for him to move through. Hoplite was sure he had seen ‘mucle-fat’ earlier during his camera sweep crushing the skull of that fiend.

It was time to meet the mayor.

As Hoplite approached the breach through the encircling campsite, he drew stares from seemingly everyone he passed. None moved to intercept him or take any aggressive action, but all eyes seemed to be on him. Children pointed and tugged mothers skirts to draw their attention to Hoplite, staring in both amazement and shock. He heard ‘golem’ more than a few times, uttered in tones low enough that most people wouldn’t have heard it. And even more where they didn’t try to whisper at all. Hoplite didn’t try to correct them.

The locals of the Fiendwall were mostly humans it seemed, with the occasional dwarf or orc wearing the same simple brown garb going about their business. These Fiendwallers wore outfits of sturdy brown cotton, the men often wearing shirts with no sleeves, while the women all wore trousers beneath divided riding skirts. They were all almost uniform in dress, but these people couldn't be more different otherwise. Humans of all races, heights, hair and eye color made up the majority, not counting the orcs and dwarves that seemed to have fewer differences between one another... aside from the knots in the dwarves' beards and the shade of green on the orcs. The human men seemed to be partial to how they wore their facial hair, a thick mustache atop their lips, lightly curled at the ends while the women wore their hair in several dozen long braids when length allowed it.

He passed right on by the staring Fiendwallers as he went, quickly closing on the breach as he marched dead ahead, shifting his path whenever someone moved into it. Hoplite had to do that a lot it seemed, several Fiendwallers who heard him coming would turn with a smoldering glare initially, only to gasp and stumble away or freeze in place at the sight of him. Hoplite remembered years ago that he had wanted people to stop staring at him after the infusions... But he had accepted long ago that all eyes would be on him, he just had to deal with it.

Hoplite continued to move between the rows of tents, continuing his beeline for the massive gap in the Fiendwall that loomed ahead of him. Now that he was closer, the cyclopean size of the wall seemed all the more imposing as it cast a long shadow over the camp. The sun sat right between that gap, its light breaking the long shadow on this side of the monolithic construction and casting smaller shadows between the bits of rubble strewn below. There he saw the battle-line holding the fiends back, dozens of monstrous creatures tumbling down the rubble hill in almost a rhythmic sequence, being riddled with arrows before being beaten and hacked apart at the foot of the gap.

More Tongues of Zodd -for that was what they surely were based on their wildly different uniforms and unorthodox means of fighting- were always the first to descend on the fallen fiends. Other men stood far behind them wielding large tower shields and spears, holding a linked shield wall around the foot of the rubble hill. The formation was likely for keeping in any fiends that may survive the initial fall. That didn’t seem to be a common occurrence, based on the brutal efficiency of the Tongues that fell upon the fallen fiends like feral hounds.

Unlike the Tongues, the shield-wielding soldiers all were dressed in uniform gray plate armor, with a single bright sky blue feather adorning the tops of their bucket helms. The symbol of a large square adorned the chests and shields, with an intricate spiral etched within the center of the square. He had seen flags on the way here that depicted the same symbol, perhaps that was the standard for those who lived in the Fiendwall?

He then saw who must have been the mayor over the knight’s shoulders, wearing the same plate armor but fighting alongside the Tongues as opposed to joining the shield wall. He was a tall man, and Hoplite could tell that; while he was well-padded with fat, there was also strong muscle beneath it all. Wide shoulders and thick forearms carried his attacks as he brought blow upon blow down upon the skulls of the fiends that fell at his feet.

The mayor wiped away a sheen of sweat from his brow, the sunlight reflecting off his bald head and gleaming gray plate mail. Hoplite stopped behind the shield wall, and tapped on the shoulder of one man. The knight’s head turned, and he gasped, eyes widening behind the thin visor of his helmet. Hoplite loomed over him, his own bulky shadow dwarfing the defender's by several feet. He made sure not to take any action that the defender would have seen as a threat, as that wasn't Hoplite's intent. Many other defenders and even a few Tongues turned to look at what their compatriot had screamed about, only to spot Hoplite.

None turned their shields from the wall, but all turned their heads to keep wide eyes on Hoplite.

“I’m here to fight.” Hoplite told the man “Let me pass.”

The man sputtered acquiescence in an almost unintelligible tone as he let Hoplite through, the other defenders whispering to one another as he passed within full view of the shield wall. There were around five-hundred men making up the shield wall, some occasionally being replaced by another wearing the same dull gray armor. Likely taking shifts, as he had heard earlier. As Hoplite approached the mayor, he adjusted the sheath of his combat knife, the velcro strap around his shoulder having come a bit loose on the trip through the camp. Normally he had it simply wrapped around his waist for easy access, but Hoplite had needed extra room for the extra tactical pouches he had brought along. Each pouch was filled with extra ammo and several grenades, all of which he’d need for the horde lurking beyond the wall.

Hoplite wanted to take out the fiends as fast as he possibly could, so he had packed a surplus for just that task.

The mayor brought another heavy blow down upon the skull of a gasping fiend, turning it’s head to tainted mush. Despite the obviously fatal blow however, the body still thrashed violently, clawed hands swiping for flesh. Like the other fiends, this one bore deep spirals that were etched into its purplish flesh, black as if they had been seared into the skin by a branding iron. The mayor stepped away from the mostly disabled creature with a spit and a curse, taking deep breaths as his jowls jiggled.

He turned to Hoplite and gasped, the little twirls at the end of his long brown mustache almost seeming to curl up on themselves. The blue feather was sticking out of his collar, having likely been placed there because the mayor eschewed a helmet. Hoplite could hear the sounds of pained moans coming from over the hill of rubble, new fiends replacing the ones fallen as soon as they were dispatched.

“My my!” The mayor said in a deep rumbling accented tone “Please tell me sir golem, that you do be here to help clean this up!”

He then hunched over, hands on his knees as he huffed and puffed “I no be as young or as skinny as I used ta’ be, but I do gotta keep the Fiendwall running and that do mean helping clean out the filth. We do be working in shifts right now until the fiends over the hill are taken care of, can’t work on cleaning out the rubble if you have a chance at catching the curse see?”

He then stood back up and offered a wide hand to Hoplite “I’m Gali, I do be the Mayor of the Fiendwall. Could I have your name friend?”

Hoplite stared at the proffered hand a moment before slowly taking it in his own. He wasn’t used to such pleasantries from anybody, not even from his superiors. No one wanted to touch a Hoplite unless they had to, at least… His own people seemed to be that way. He applied pressure carefully, not wanting to accidentally crush Gali’s hand in his own.

“I’m Hoplite. Hoplite thirty-seven.”

Hoplite seemed to be successful in sparing the bones of the mayor’s hand, and Gali laughed as they shook, three times up and down before breaking the contact “So there’s thirty-seven of ye? Or is there more? Are they coming to help you?” Gali asked him “Did the mage that did bind you set you to come to the defense, or are you an ancient one?”

“I’m not a golem.” Hoplite said “And no, I’m the only one that’s available.”

Gali played with the twirl at the end of his mustache and looked Hoplite up and down with a critical eye “Not a golem?” he asked, seemingly perplexed “So… how do you see out of that helmet? There’s no hole friend!”

“I… have cameras.” Hoplite said slowly.

“A what? Camera? Who is that supposed to be? Or do that be some kind of magic what lets you see all around ye?” Gali asked, putting a hand on his double chin.

Hoplite internally sighed as he nearly groaned out “Yes. It’s magic.”

Hoplite simply didn’t want to go into the details on how his cameras operated, it would take too much time.

Gali clapped and nodded his head “Aye I knew it so! Well, it be about the end of me shift sir Hoplite, please go about your business with the fiends any way you see fit!” he finished, stepping past Hoplite and toward the shield wall.

"Before you go," Hoplite started, placing a hand on Gali's shoulder "Why did this part of the wall collapse?"

Gali frowned, and looked up at the sky with a pained expression "Divine judgment for some ill we did no doubt, I do take it ye have heard of what some folks are callin' the 'Starfall'?" He asked.

Hoplite didn’t reply as he waited for Gali to speak.

"One of those very stars shot through this section here… I did be only a few rooms over from where it struck, but many of our defenders on patrol did confirm it.” Gali said, his voice draining of its earlier liveliness “Aye… I do not know to which god we had angered, but I no think that we deserved this kind of punishment.” He said with a slow shake of his head “But it is what it is, we Fiendwallers don’t go moping about until we get killed! No sir, we be made of tougher stuff than that!” Gali laughed heartily, his melancholy seemingly vanishing in an instant "Plus with all the panic with the fiends, we at least no have the time to panic about the monster next to the moon! I do hear that other places with less to worry about have gone ill in the mind from terror! None of that here safe to say, we all be too busy to be scared."

Hoplite then immediately made way for the hill of rubble.

“Uh… goodbye then and good luck?” Gali said slowly, brow furrowing at Hoplite’s retreating back.

Gali then turned to leave through the parted shield wall, those wide shoulders hanging low with fatigue. Now that Hoplite knew for sure that an escape pod had crashed through the wall, there was only one thing to do.

Neutralize the fiends.

Tongues of Zodd greeted him as he passed, looking up from beating fiends to nod approvingly at him. As he drew closer to the hill, the large chunks of gray rock became more prevalent, deeply embedded in the dirt from where they had fallen. There were smaller chunks as well, layed about here and there in the long grass. Occasionally he spotted jutting limbs and chunks of viscera between and under the chunks of rubble.

They didn’t belong to fiends.

Likely these would be cleaned up and given proper burials once the looming threat was taken care of. The rubble oddly enough, didn’t bear any of the engravings he had spotted earlier. Why was the broken section of the wall bare of the carvings?

Far off to his left and right bonfires raged, with heavily armored men throwing in the remains of brutalized fiends that had made it over the rubble. Surely that would end them, with nothing but bones they still couldn’t possibly function… right? This planet was beginning to get to him, he was beginning to wonder… he was beginning to wonder if maybe magic could be a genuine possibility. The more he thought of it, the more it (disturbingly) made sense. The people he’d met with anomalous capabilities, the gargantuan plant life, the fae of the trees, and the impossible durability of these fiends-

No!

He would not be drawn into such fancies. Magic was just an easy explanation to science. There were reasons, perfectly logical reasons for why such things were possible here on Ahkoolis. Whatever those reasons were however, Hoplite was ignorant of them. He would refer to anomalous occurrences henceforth, as ‘magic’ when speaking with the locals, and only to the locals. If he started spouting drivel about ‘magic’ to other Ternans, re-indoctrination would be an absolute certainty.

He would not go through that ever again.

As he reached the foot of the hill, a fiend came tumbling down to land right in front of him, pained hollow eyes staring into his helmet. It babbled through a half-broken jaw, swiping a gnarled hand in his direction before Hoplite crushed its skull with a soft stomp. He then magnetized his shotgun to his back, and heaved the swiping thing up with a single hand. His armored fingers sunk deep into its neck, with spurts of near-black blood seeping between them. Still somehow it fought on, even with its skull crushed and neck broken. Its blows reflected off the Phalanx suit without leaving even a scratch.

Hoplite then slammed the body into a nearby chunk of rubble, painting the rock and leaving it sliding to the ground in a pulp of skin and jutting bone. Disturbingly… the thing still attempted to move… almost seeming to undulate in Hoplite’s general direction. The body should not have been able to function-

Stay. Focused.

Hoplite then began his ascent, climbing the treacherous hill as Tongues of Zodd shouted after him from below. He heard the words ‘dangerous’ and ‘too heavy’ repeated, but Hoplite paid them no mind. He knew on sight what chunks in the hill would be strong enough to support his weight, and he expertly maneuvered his way up.

To onlookers, it would appear as if he had decided to zig-zag up, as opposed to simply climbing straight up the obstacle. There were Tongues on the hill with him as well, feral-looking men and women armed with everything from intricate well-made swords to wooden clubs that looked like they had just been picked up from the forest floor. Their armor varied just as much, wearing everything from gleaming plate-mail to fur pelts that barely covered their bodies. The Tongues made a game of striking the fiends as they fell down, calling out points gained and bets won near-constantly, tones filled with mirth.

Hoplite ignored them as he climbed, occasionally receiving dirty looks when he ignored offers to partake in the game. He wasn’t here for fun, he had a goal that needed to be accomplished and he couldn’t spend time on worthless activities such as this. Despite disinterest in the contest, he accidentally did become part of the Tongue’s little sport as he had to constantly bat away fiends that fell toward him.

By time Hoplite reached the peak of the rubble hill, his hands were dripping black with blood from batting away the near-constant downpour of twisted bodies. Upon cresting the mound… Hoplite was nearly stunned by what he saw just below him.

A wide moaning sea of purple swiping limbs stretched almost as far back as his camera could see, a tainted violet landscape sucking in all the sunlight to make it appear as if night had fallen. Black dead trees broke the waves of fiends between them, large spirals engraved into the darkened bark. Even plant life could be infected with this disease? How had it not spread past this wall? It infected animals, people, and plant-life… it should have taken the whole planet over a long while ago…

Hoplite unslung his shotgun as the wave seemed to shift forward at the sight of him, all eager to tear his armor away and rip him to shreds.

An archer in one of the exposed rooms above screamed in terror at seeing the wave move, gesturing at Hoplite to get back down over the edge of the peak and out of sight. Instead, he took a step forward, toward the milling mass. There were several thousands of them, but Hoplite was confident.

Nothing they could do would be able to hurt him. He didn’t know where the shuttle had crashed, but if it had shot through the wall, it’d likely be beneath the rubble on this side. Hoplite couldn’t search with so many hostiles around, but he would reduce the number to a more… manageable amount.

There were a few hundred scrambling up the hill to reach him, many falling back down and taking even more down with them. The wailing cries of agony drowned out every other sound, even his own breathing. With a bump of his chin, the sound became a dull buzz instead as his helmet adjusted the overwhelming cacophony of pained screams.

He took aim and fired off his first slug, the blast tearing chunks out of corrupted flesh and stone alike and painting both with a coat of red. He took a step down, seeing a bisected fiend clamp its malformed mouth around his ankle as two others lunged for him. Hoplite put the shotgun point blank into the face of the closest one and pulled the trigger, its head disappearing in a cloud of mist as he smashed the back of his fist into the skull of the other fiend with a sickening crunch of bone.

That one's head was caved in beneath the force of his fist, and he could feel the flesh of the neck tearing away as it was knocked free to the other side of the Fiendwall. He saw on his rear camera as the head bounced down the rubble, only to be sent flying higher by a heavy club. An orc hollered and cheered as the head went flying into one of the bonfires far below.

Even Hoplite had to admit that it was an incredible shot, but he turned his attention back to the battle. He crushed the skull of the fiend clutching his ankle with a quick stomp, and grabbed the throat of one that had awkwardly climbed up behind him. The thing’s mouth and eyes were set wrong, with one half elevated high above the other.

Hoplite evened things out by making the putrid face disappear with a headbutt, casting the living remains aside like trash the instant the deed was done. Slowly but surely, he descended the hill, blasting and kicking his way to the halfway point down the rubble. Here he stood for an entire hour as the waves came upon him, all trying and failing to pull him down. Hundreds were blasted apart by the Magnus and hundreds more were pulped by just his fists. All those he neutralized rolled to the foot of the hill in a growing stew of organs and blood that stained the loose debris and tainted landscape in a deep shade of dark crimson.

Every single one he ‘killed’ though continued to move, or at least attempted to move, no matter how much damage he inflicted upon them. Some that he had dispatched earlier eventually made it back up to him, only to be struck down again. None returned a third time. When he ran out of ammo for all his guns, he magnetized them to his back, drawing his Sectis knife and using it in tandem with his fists to tear apart their wretched bodies.

As soon as he found a moment where he wasn’t beset upon, he lobbed one of his grenades into the swarm, the explosion reducing some to near-nothingness and cratering the corrupted earth beneath their feet. When he ran out of explosives, he returned to his crushing fists and sharp knife, the edge of Sectis unmarred by the work Hoplite put it through.

He saw others appear, not fiends, on his rear camera. Tongues of Zodd reached the peak of the hill, no doubt wondering about the gunfire and explosions… or just the simple lack of entertainment since Hoplites descent. No fiend had tried to move past Hoplite, all intending on him alone rather than making it over the hill to easier targets.

“He’s takin’ oll da fun!” The bald orc he had met earlier shouted, hefting a large axe and bellowing “Let's show em how a Tongue can lick!”

With that, he let out a wild holler, the other tongues descending with the orc without a care for the danger. Indeed they seemed to make a race of it as they moved to outpace one another, usually in the most dangerous way possible. Hundreds of Tongues came down, men and dwarves, elves and orcs, all berserking warriors trying their best to impress Zodd: God of Might.

With them taking up positions along the hill, they all worked to strike down the fiends, with many Tongues themselves eventually succumbing to the purple wave of spiraling death. Despite that they continued to fight alongside Hoplite, even as he continued to descend further down the hill in hopes that they wouldn’t follow after him.

Why risk themselves like this? It was a pointless question he knew. Their faith in their battle-god was what drove them on. Still, Hoplite could easily neutralize this threat by himself, given enough time. It just seemed to him that they were pointlessly throwing their lives away… Well, if this was how they wanted to spend those lives, who was he to stop them? Despite the thought he found himself often going out of his way to save any nearby Tongues that were in danger.

Grateful grins and cocky smirks were given with every life he saved, but despite being saved from near death, the Tongues continued to strike on fearlessly. They fought on like this until finally there was a lull in the combat. Dozens of Tongues lay dead, either by suicide to avoid being afflicted by the curse or by simply falling down the hill. There were still fiends about, hundreds of them milling toward the Tongues survivors, who rushed to meet them without even a blink of fright.

Now, Hoplite could begin searching for the pod in relative peace… but…

The bald orc from earlier was being swarmed by fiends and was about to be overtaken. He stood with his back to a chunk of rubble, flat corrupted earth beneath his feet as he lashed out with his mace with a speed as if it were made of plastic rather than metal.

The orc was getting tired though… and he was going to be overtaken!

Hoplite barrelled into the horde that surrounded the orc, crushing or sending fiends flying when he collided. With blade and fist, Hoplite slashed and smashed, bringing the swarm to a disabled mass of twitching limbs. The orc breathed heavily, wiping sweat from his brow as he swung his mace up over his shoulder.

“Thank ya.” The orc said with a grin before running off to engage another swarm that was moving toward another group of Tongues “Over ere! You ugly wrinkly grapes!”

Hoplite stared after the orc for a brief instant as the green man charged… before following right after him.

It was just that it would be easier for him to find the shuttle with people around to help. Neutralizing the remaining fiends would be a simple matter. Though he found it hard to deny the odd feeling rising up within him whenever he saved another Tongue from death… It was an oddly warm feeling that spread through his back whenever he saw a pair of those grateful eyes he had saved from certain death. He had felt this before, usually after a prolonged combat mission out of cryo.

He could not put a name to the feeling, but he appreciated it nonetheless.