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violence

gore

They weren't losing. The leadership of the nation of Kalizal was not losing. They'd survived generations of outright warfare with their neighbors, the people of Alv. They'd build their cities of black rock on the faces of dormant volcanos, and used the deadly, shifting shale of the upward paths as their defense. Their walls were imposing black obelisks that stood out against the smoke-filled air of this world, appearing like monoliths as one drew close, warding against any attack. The ballistas, the trebuchets, the boiling and flaming oil, the rock-falls... they had numerous defenses to rain down on those damn Alvian raids.

Alv... The raiders. The steppe-folk, all black chainmail and deer-mounted bowmen, throwing-bombs and spears. They were notorious for their lightning assaults, their decimation of trade routes. Nobody could remember how long the two nations had been at war on this dying world, this place of black rock and pluming lava. Nobody could remember how the wars had started.

Kalizal had prepared an assault to end all assaults: a war-party of their own. One that would ride down their mountains, a rare descent from their fortresses of steam and churning smoke. Their soldiers would leave the safety of their walls, the thump of their machinery, and encircle the Alvian capital of Alvar at dawn, when the raiders were likely to be only just returning. They'd prepare, and... Well.

"They were already dead," the scout panted. One of the few who'd seen it. One of the few who'd made it back inside of those precious walls.

The military leadership hadn't understood, at first. Disease? (they'd asked.) A flood, a fire? "Th-they were... eaten, s-sir."

Eaten. They were processing this when the horns began to blow, discordant and deafening, filling the city. The walls all went on alert at once. The leadership--suspecting an Alvian counter-attack--rushed to the walls.

What they found was... monsters. Beasts the likes of which this rocky world had never seen. Monstrosities with scything limbs and glowing eyes, slavering jaws--sometimes more than one--and a savagery unmatched by even the Rock Wolves to the north. The beasts tried the walls. Some of them made it over--climbing, flying. They wreaked havoc. By the time the ballistas and soldiers could take each out, circles of massacred soldiers and civilians were piled in circles of blood around their corpses.

The rest of the beasts circled back, stymied by the walls.

Kalizal's own army, still returning from the field, caught the monsters from behind. It didn't matter. The gates were closed, and could not open. While many of the beasts were cut down, the soldiers were forced to retreat. And the monsters followed them. No scouts could reach them, and the leadership--watching with dismay as many of the beasts peeled away from the walls to hunt (there could be no other word for it--it was no real battle)--had to assume the army was either dead, or fled.

But they were not losing.

They had been at war for generations. Their livestock, bred from the creatures of the volcanic fields; their underground farms, lit by lava-light... these had kept their cities alive for years while under siege. The black, smooth walls still stood. The burning oil still poured, and mined rocks still rained down. The beasts had fallen, one by one, though far too many yet remained.

All they had to do was survive. All they had to do was trust in their walls.

* * * * *

"So yeah you're gonna go under the walls," said the scrawny, overly-tall Valkhound before Gravedigger. It was picking its teeth, its perpetual grin widening. "Don't try to just come up and fight them. There's, like, a lot." It laughed, a raucous sound, and gestured to the distant city. "Make us openings. We'll use them! Some of us will die. It'll be GLORIOUS. We'll fucking wreck them first, 'course. Then, uh. What was it."

The beast paused, wracking its brain, consulting the orders it was meant to pass on. Loose orders, though; there was no real hierarchy here. Just demons, unleashed. "Oh, right. You have big ears." A long forelimb reached out, a claw aiming to gently flick one, just in case Gravedigger didn't know where his ears were. "Listen for stuff that might be important. Important buildings. Leaders. Dig it all down from underneath. Uhh. Leadership. Important machines. Whatever." It pulled a bone from its teeth at last, tossing it aside, and licked its jaws with a too-long, glowing tongue. "And destabilize the walls. Dig those down if you can. They can hold out awhile. But honestly... do whatever. Don't die. Kill shit." It nodded wisely.

Enter: Gravedigger, a creature purpose-built to destroy Kalizal.

The city wasn't losing... yet.

@Gravedigger

All your dreams are down below

the gravedigger

Gravedigger was confused. This place was not Let. He and Eleven had been able to get a brief glance - they'd told each other they'd find a way to meet. She withing the barrier of Noctua, he out in the world, fighting the Creator's wars. He promised he'd find a way to slip away, even if just for a moment. But this...was not right.

This world was all choked skies and fire and ash, dark stones and death, no forests or snow capped mountains like he'd seen in the distance. Had he been...wrong?

He was never going to see her again?

Someone was talking to him. Some thin, scraggly beast that reminded him very much of many of the other creatures that lurked around Draco. But he'd never seen this one. They weren't from the caves, were they? He didn't recognize any of them. From different nests, then. All bred for this one purpose. It was humbling, upsetting, but a cold, grounding reality that his purpose was not to be friends with anyone, it wasn't to love or be kind or give a stone to his best friend to keep, it wasn't even to be remembered. His purpose was to kill and die in war. This war. He was going to die on this planet.

Not yet, though. This is what it's all been for.

He listened and planned, barely flinched at the flick against his ear. "I don't know if my ears are quite so sensitive as to catch words through layers of rock, but I will try. I will dig tunnels for you all to get in and then rip their walls out from the roots. If I hear them mention anything, that will be my target." Where they ready for the valkhounds bursting out from below them? Did they know there existed one who had been created simply to bring down their walls?

He did not know who they were, nor why this battle was being waged. But...the thought of it, the imagery of the bloodbath ahead, the anticipation of coming violence, it was heating his blood like water on a flame. He growled his excitement as he pushed past the valkhounds to lead the way, stubby legs carrying him through the shadows to find a good place to begin his tunneling.

A nice crevice where a formation of rocks met the ground, out of sight of the kingdom's walls, but closer then they'd been minutes ago, was the place he chose. It would make for a good entrance, hidden from soldiers and easily accessible to the following valkhounds. He collected as much saliva as he could in his jaws, and with tooth and claw, began to dig.

The acid he produced weakened the stones as he bit forward, crushing them in his jaws. Thick claws carved away the remains as he began to tunnel down at an angle, straightening out eventually, to get their tunnel beneath the ground and started forwards towards where he remembered the distant towers to be. For a while, it would simply be this tunneling straight while he listened for increased vibrations in the ground above - something that would signify to him that they were beneath a place with a lot of people running around - a kingdom, perhaps.

buried under broken bones

As Gravedigger began his work, the other Valkhounds milled around. Some were coming and going from this loose almost-warcamp; arriving with severe injuries, limping and bleeding and telling happy war stories, or reporting the deaths of those who hadn't backed down. Others were just setting out, with some new plan to try and get past the walls. These small groups, though, often paused to watch the newcomer in their midst, and as the minutes ticked on, they started to linger. To watch.

The obvious question ("what's he doing?") became a repeated refrain, a question answered again and again by others who had already asked ("digging under the walls, Aglon said!"). Excitement soon became palpable, with the war parties choosing to stick close to the work-in-progress tunnel rather than setting out on their own. Gravedigger's work was obviously their best chance at ripping down that city quickly.

Someone was even kind enough to haul in food: a ragged, half-eaten deer-thing with black fur, its eyes already clouded with death and the saddle and bridle still stuck to its corpse. This was offered to Gravedigger, and the rest hung about the tunnel entrance, and waited.

As the work went on, the vibrations around the digging Valkhound changed. Rather than the occasional mild tectonic rumble, sporadic and distant, there came instead a constant churning up ahead. Something unnatural, like a rapid heartbeat in the rock ahead. The voices faded away behind him, and he was left in warm, smoky silence.

Eventually that heartbeat--an obvious beacon--was almost overhead. A few hundred yards forward, at the most, and by now other sounds were audible, or rather, he could feel them through his feelers and via his bat-like ears. He was too deep down to make out words, of course, but the hum of conversation did reach him, if barely. The voices held a tenseness that might have been fear. And the heartbeat was clearer, now: a thump-thud of machinery, something with the hiss of steam.

The machinery--whatever it might be--lay farther ahead. The voices started just overhead; perhaps that was the wall's demarcation point. Other, stranger vibrations came from much farther out, and to his right: sporadic clanging, like metal on stone, and it rocked through the tunnel around him. Whatever this was was not particularly strong. It wasn't mechanical. It was people, doing... something, to the rock.

He might explore further, or choose one of these places to erupt from. Or he might prefer to try and emerge somewhere quiet to see what he was working with.

The world was his oyster, if the oyster was a walled city full of dangerous (but edible) soldiers.

@Gravedigger

All your dreams are down below

the gravedigger

Hot, oily blood nearly boiled in his veins from the excitement, but he contained himself. He continued to dig, monotonous, steady, reigning in the coming eruption because once it began, he didn't think it was going to stop. Not until ll the people of this keep were dead...or he was.

The deer brought to him was a relief, to get his teeth into something to help stave off his physical and mental hunger, and it gave him the clear mind to think as he tunneled. Think and plan carefully. There was machinery in there, and he needed to find it and destroy it, but he also needed tunnels for the valkhounds to erupt from. Once one thing happened, it would be harder for the other one to be as successful - the guards would be alerted, word would travel, and defenses may increase. And he couldn't do both at once.

...Or could he?

Perhaps he was the only tunneler here, but that didn't mean he had to make a single tunnel. He could make multiple. And just...not open them just yet. It would be risky, of course, especially for the one going up. If someone stepped on the ground wrong, they could cave it in prematurely and ruin it. But it was worth a shot - he wanted to strike as many places at once, because the surprise attack from the ground would only work once. Might as well take advantage of it while he could.

He started with the tunnels below, digging more carefully as he approached the mechanical heartbeat. His feelers listened carefully for the echo of vibrations he could faintly hear, to detect exactly how close he was getting to a break. It was hard to figure it out though, with the machinery so close, and he felt his claw give way into open air, pulling it back quickly. Shit. He hoped nobody had seen that.

Quickly pulling up a rock and stuffing it in place of where he'd made a small hole, he backed up and quietly returned to the place where he'd measured to be his crossroads.

He was more careful about the second hole, climbing towards where the people were working the rock. He didn't get as close this time, using the sounds of the workers as a judge of how close to get this time, stopping long before he'd breach.

He turned again back to the main tunnel and began to dig up - not directly towards the ceiling, but beginning a path upwards towards where he could hear people talking and shouting and moving above his head. Steep enough that it was efficient, but not so much that the other valkhounds wouldn't be able to climb. Again, he stopped long before he needed, pausing for a moment to see if he could catch any words before turning back.

It had all taken a while, with how carefully he'd dug the tunnels, but the moment was approaching. Returning to the valkhound encampment as quickly as possible, he emerged from the tunnel and cleared his throat. "Hey! The tunnel is just about done - here's the plan."

He waited a moment, for as much attention to get on him as possible, before continuing - "Split yourselves into two groups - one will go up to flood the city, the other below. They have something going on underground. The tunnels need a bit more work to finish, so that we'll all emerge near the same time as each other. Take them by surprise all at once."

"City group will be first. You'll be emerging up from the ground. Second group will wait just before the junction for me to return. I need to lead so I can finish the tunnel. You'll attack the underground." He paused for a moment. "I will be going on ahead - I've found their machine. If anyone wishes to follow me, I intend to destroy it."

buried under broken bones

Above Gravedigger's head, where he carefully slotted rocks into place, some domesticated Rock Wolf on a short chain and full alert began to bark.

It was, tragically, completely ignored by the workers, who weren't close enough to see the claws that had briefly broken through.

If only they had listened.

Back at the tunnel entrance, the Valkhound crowd had grown. No longer were they coming and going: they were waiting, eager, for Gravedigger's return. He had become a war-leader in the space of time it had taken him to dig, and a multitude of misshapen beasts listened with slavering jaws (literally; some were drooling black Oil at the prospect of violence) as he laid out his plan.

Almost as soon as he had finished, they began to try and split themselves into groups. But the problem with ordering Chaos was that Chaos was, well, chaotic. Someone shoved someone else. Two different Valkhounds tried to raise their voices and proclaim themselves leader of the same group, while another began to roar about who would be best suited to which; she was immediately argued with, vehemently, and someone started spewing black flames.

Three fights broke out, one of which involved no fewer than eight Valkhounds.

At length, however--at last, and after one limped back missing a forelimb (someone else was now eating it triumphantly)--they had split themselves into two larger groups, and one smaller. Three of them had decided to go with Gravedigger, or rather, had won the right to via combat.

The first was long, lanky and purple, with a snake-like head and neck and a furry mane down its back, its long tail ridged with spines and ending in a barbed spear. It had two sets of forelimbs, and jutted out one clawed, seven-thumbed hand to try and shake Gravedigger's... talons. "Galgrin. We're coming with you. This," they went on, jutting those too-many-thumbs back toward their two friends, "is Snarl, and that's Piru." They didn't have designations, or didn't use them.

Snarl was a hulking thing. She was built like a bear but purple and skull-faced, marked with glowing chartreuse rosettes. Piru was almost feline, like a large black leopard, but unnaturally long in the body and bore a second jaw along the underside of his ribcage, one that snapped and drooled impatiently. Galgrin, apparently their unofficial friends' group leader, grinned. "So when do we begin?"

The other two, much larger groups waited--listening and milling about in a mostly even split.

Someone's hand raised, finally, in the "underground" group. "So when you say we're attacking underground, you mean, uh. We're fighting rock?" A tragic misunderstanding, but this one didn't even seem to mind. If Gravedigger had directed him to fight the volcano, he'd have probably started biting then and there.

@Gravedigger

All your dreams are down below

the gravedigger

The sudden outbreak of violence was not ideal but...well, he expected about as much. He'd seen how valkhounds in the forge behaved sometimes and these were no different, if even more chaotic and prone to these fits of viciousness. He simply waited until they were complete, not commenting or trying to stop it - he'd only hurt himself too and they needed him in the best shape for this.

It struck him then that he was in command. How had that happened? Sure, he'd been afforded some special treatment in the nest, being trained as much as he had, but he'd never held a position of leadership or really anything close to it. He found it a lot less intimidating then he'd thought it would be - probably because it would be a short lived position. He was grateful, in that moment, for Vargas's training. The combat training, yes, but also the strategizing that others of the forge had passed onto him. It was just for this, this one attack, and then he would just be another hound among the ranks. Or dead. One of the other.

He nodded to Galgrin, shifting his weight to awkwardly raise a talon to shake the many thumbed hand. "I am...Gravedigger." He had considered giving his designation, but there was no need for it anymore. The nest was far behind. Nobody else used designations anyways. They were meaningless here.

He looked to the three and huffed. "You'll stay at the back. We don't all want to get stuck in the tunnels trying to get to the fight first. Once I break the first two tunnels open, we'll go." He raised his voice to the rest. "I go in first. The group going up will follow behind me - the second group behind them. Second group will wait behind the opening of the two tunnels for me to get back. You might be waiting a minute or two - but don't worry, you will see battle soon."

He looked to the one that had asked a question and shook his head. "No. There are other caves underground. Open places in the rocks where there are people to kill. I'll break open the tunnel for you so you can get to the them."

He would hear anymore questions and answer them the best he could, but he was growing impatient, and he could tell the valkhounds were as well. So once they were all ready, and lined up as best as they could (he really did his best to get them in rough groups in the order they should go in), he turned and headed into the tunnel.

Once they reached the junction point, he paused and turned back. "First group, follow, second group stay back behind the junction!" He hoped that they could at least follow commands like this and that he wouldn't find himself in a traffic jam when he returned to head down the second tunnel.

Leading the first group up the tunnel towards the surface, he arrived at the end. Leaving a space for him to duck into once the tunnel was completed, he immediately began to attack the rock and stone. "Give me a minute," he growled as he spat all the acidic bile he could musted, coating his claws in the stuff and ripping rocks out of the way. He didn't care about going slow or making noise - the fast this got done, the better.

And it didn't take long for him to at last rip a hole into the open air. The rocks around were weak enough - he fell back, saving his eruption for now and snarled at the first valkhound in line as he ducked into his crevice - "GO!"

He'd wait until the line was all gone before doing the same to the other tunnel, following back to where the second group was (hopefully) waiting and (hopefully) not in the way. Down the tunnel towards the workers they went, where he'd do the same thing again - create a quick hollow to duck into before pushing through and digging out as fast as he could until his claws breached open air. He fell back as quickly as possible to allow the line of valkhounds to race through.

He tried not to get too excited, or else he would throw himself in after them to carve through the soldiers and workers awaiting them down there. Not yet not yet, so close. Almost there.

He returned to the main tunnel to lead the remaining three valkhounds up through the tunnel towards the mechanical heart. It was much quicker to dig through this tunnel, as he had already gone a little bit too far. But he didn't duck out of the way this time - he dug all the way through until he could push himself out of the tunnel, making room for the others to follow as well.

buried under broken bones

The die was cast, and all that. The first group poured from the earth: unleashed Chaos behind towering walls. Though Gravedigger did not wait to see what had happened, the shouts of alarm and guttural snarls told the story well enough. It would take a moment for what few soldiers remained behind to react, longer still for them to reach that place. It was impossible to know what sort of terrain the Valkhound forces had emerged into, but even if it were a killing ground, the slaughter would be one-sided for a time. All else aside, Kalizal was not expecting these beasts to erupt from the very rock that had so long defended their city.

The second group was loosed into someplace where the shouts of alarm were not cries for reinforcements. Instead, these were screams, those of women and children too; civilians, their safe havens breached utterly. The less said of the stench of blood and the sounds of ripping and tearing, here, the better. It was carnage that this Chaos eruption left in its wake. And it was unlikely, judging by those screams, that any true combat would take place here. That anyone would make it in time to rescue even a single soul.

It provided, almost accidentally, a distraction for Gravedigger himself. For as the alarms went up, the vibrations of fleeing footfalls overhead were clear as day through the rock.

The place into which he emerged was a vast pit, lower than other parts of the city, and was perhaps why its sounds had carried to him so clearly: it was simply closer to his digging. And it was clearly the heart of their industry. A vast, vast forge towered overhead: smoke-blacked steel embedded in the stone, glowing lava dribbling down from massive tubes and flowing into troughs created for this purpose. A great hammer, run by some steam contraption hidden behind the rock, clanged heavily on a vast anvil, across which lay blooms of iron still stained with their impurities. Forge, and anvil: and mine, too, the outsides of the pit half dug away by pickaxes that the fleeing miners were carrying toward the cries for help. The clanging, and the rush-whoosh of the automated bellows, sounded like the heart and lungs of some enormous mechanical beast.

It was lucky the Valkhounds had not come up directly beneath the contraption, or their tunnel would have flooded with lava. As it was, they were dangerously close, mere yards from the nearest glowing trough.

@Gravedigger

All your dreams are down below

the gravedigger

The sounds of screams echoed in Gravedigger's ears, knowing the carnage he had just unleased upon the people of this kingdom, and perhaps in a previous time it would have disturbed him, but now here on the field of war with Chaos pounding in his veins, it only fueled his fire.

He turned to the other emerging valkhounds, eyeing the nearby pools of lava and hissed, "Careful! Lava - don't fall in." He'd rather keep his fellow soldiers alive as long as he could. He looked up at the machine, then, the forge and anvil and troughs and could name or recognize none of it, wondering what the hell they were going to do. It was huge.

Gravedigger didn't even know where to start. He'd dug them up here, sure, but he couldn't exactly dig out around this place - on account of the lava and all that. And he doubted he'd be able to tear right through steel. His eyes landed on the bellows and he wondered if that would be a place to start.

Either way...it was time.

"RIP IT APART. KILL ANYONE YOU SEE!" The Gravedigger roared as it let go and lunged forward, away from the lava. It threw itself upon the bellows, clamping its jaw wherever it could and tried to rip it out, but it didn't budge. Still, the beast shook furiously, like a dog trying to rip a toy out of its owners hand.

buried under broken bones

Gravedigger's jaws might have closed around well-anchored steel, but his three newfound allies found far better targets. Galgrin was up and over the ground, scrabbling on loose stone and then launching into the mine proper, in a flash. They slammed straight into a huge rack of supplies, toppling them without hesitation into a trough of molten metal. The next they hit a second later, moving from rack to shelf and setting it all to burn--or melt. There were roaring hisses of steam as everything was destroyed--the carefully procured metals, the tanned leathers, the chainmail and hammered, purified ingots. All was heaved into the open forges, thrown into the flowing lava, clattering together and vanishing in seconds. Black smoke began to gutter and plume overhead.

Piru chased the few lingering miners, or rather, those who had been too slow to leave. These were consigned not to lava but to claw and fang; the stink of blood was faint beneath the smoking stench of industry, their screams muffled under the THUMP and CHURN of the machines. The feline Valkhound then leapt ten feet up, launching onto an overseer's walkway to patrol for intruders. No one would be calling the alarm here for the next few minutes, at least. The pair, and Snarl, were clearly at ease working together; these roles came naturally to them, as though they'd slipped into them a hundred times before.

Bearlike Snarl was last, plowing over into the heavier support beams on the tail of Galgrin's work. Not only were the supplies being destroyed, but she was now hitting smoke-blackened steel, tearing it forcefully from where it had been set with concrete beneath the rock. Her muscles surged beneath the green-dappled pelt, and her growls were mixed with guttural laughter. The pit was rapidly being transformed from the organized chaos of prepared assembly lines and war supplies in various states of readiness... to piles of rubble and melting tangles of useless metal, clogging the lava flows."Might want to get out of the way, there. -We got any way out?" Snarl called, glancing to Gravedigger.

Maybe Gravedigger knew the place's layout enough to point them in a better direction, or maybe Snarl's have to hold off on the best part: drowning all the half-destroyed supplies in molten steel, ensuring that nothing could be salvaged. If they had no other way of leaving, then flooding their escape tunnels with molten steel and rock might not be the best plan.

@Gravedigger

All your dreams are down below

the gravedigger

Unfortunately for Gravedigger, his own target on the forge had been quite useless compared to his companions, who were much more successful in causing destruction. It put a dampener on the eruption for a moment as he finally gave up and released his jaws from the bellows to look at what the others had done. Already they'd toppled supplies and were beginning to flood the lava flows. Probably not a great thing if they had no escape plan.

But the machine was still running, the forge still going, and their purpose here had been to destroy it, so he was not going to allow it to continue functioning. They needed a way out, since their original tunnel was soon going to be flooded if they continued. Turning away from the bellows, he threw himself towards the closest wall and smashed his claws into the stone. He didn't both starting a tunnel manually, it would take too long - instead he called for his magic, so rarely needed, and urged the stone to shatter. And shatter it did, like a tunneling blast running straight into the rock, the stone was corrupted and crumbled away at his command, revealing an inclining tunnel lined with oily stones - their way out.

He turned to the other valkhounds and bellowed above the sounds of the collapsing forge, "Here's our way out, we finish destroying this thing!" He lunged forward to clamp his jaws onto whatever steel and stone he could find, to help collapse the forge and let it tumble and melt into the lava.

buried under broken bones