Post by Magnus Faustus on Nov 5, 2010 23:59:14 GMT -8
OOC: First post in a long while, horrifically long, probably going to be edited later, but at least it's here. Oo I'm almost tempted to append more to the last bit, but it's late and I'm bloody spent. Be back in eight or ten hours. 
IC: When they had left home on that bright afternoon one month ago, Magnus hadn't imagined his little mainland escapade to involve wandering his way through trackless deserts, and brutal wastes. In his mind the world he had come from had begun to be questioned as a sick and twisted dream that he had concocted to provide buffer against the insanity within and without.
He tried to keep his cool through everything, tried to remain objective in his goals, but the simple truth was that it was becoming far too easy to concentrate on his own survival above all. Although his conscious mind tried to rationalize the killings, something inside seemed to devour the details of each obstacle with a primal relish. He did not think it right that he could not remember the faces of all those he killed, as all seemed to run together in a great chain of red in his memory. It was this base emotion that clouded his dreams every night, crawling through his mind like some kind of alien influence that he was not willing to recognize as part of himself.
Ralma had tried to explain this mindset as something akin to a Freudian leaking of the Id into the region normally inhabited by the Ego and Superego. Although this was a gross paraphrasing of the crude simplified terms that she spoke of the issue. Moreover, she belittled it as something minor, that was gotten over as easily as the fear of water once a child learned to swim. But Magnus perceived her experience as being starkly different, she was an originally 'base' mindset that was wearing the trappings of civilization as a guise. He had the perception that who he was in society was 'him' and the base underpinnings of natural instinct were foreign intrusions on his original 'rational' mindset. It was this that made him fear that he would effectively 'drown' in the other he was progressively uncovering.
Somehow it was this growing uncivilized streak that was giving them an unfortunate reputation as they traveled toward where they thought their original destination was situated. The political impact of the Dra'zinian superiority group that they had slaughtered early in their journeys had garnered them criminal reputations and substantial bounties across the continent. Newspapers described them as 'nationalist saboteurs' attempting to destabilize the continent in advance of foreign aggression. It was no small wonder then, that the borders were closed when they tried to exit through a pass to the south, turned away by the presence of hundreds of agitated armed troops and tanks shaking down traders for passports and identification.
In retrospect, Magnus regretted his 'brilliant' idea to use one of the dangerous unpatrolled and unserviced mountain paths to cross the range. He hadn't counted on how persistent their pursuers would be, as they had been picked out rather quickly by a scout team that had radioed their course back to their superiors. Two days of trekking through the mountains had sapped their energy and drive, and it was on the third morning as they broke camp and resumed their unsteady course south that they heard the distinct sound of helicopter blades in motion resonating off the rock faces all around them. Cold, exhausted and hungry they ran, discovering minutes later that their pursuers had shoot on sight orders when autocannons splintered trees and boulders near them.
Sighting what appeared to be steam escaping from a cavern at the bottom of a valley, they darted down a steep incline, an action that required more tumbling and falling on Magnus' part as the helicopters tried to get a better firing angle on their targets. They had only just managed to run inside the cave when a barrage of rockets and gunfire demolished the entrance, sealing them underground. With no way back, they made their way underground, following winding tunnels unsure of their location or direction due to sudden inaccuracy of their compass which he guessed was because there were exposed deposits of magnetite buried in the walls.
Their first observation of the caldera, was that of the growing heat, at first a welcome change from the biting cold of the mountains, then a sudden sweltering humidity as they came upon the sight of melting glacial water spilling from high above into the mouth of an extinct volcanic vent. Skirting a narrow precipice to reach another tunnel at the other side of the caldera, they made their way upward again.
Soon it became apparent that they were not the first in this tunnel, as a broken humanoid skeleton with scattered cloth remnants lay pressed against the side of the tunnel, most of the bones looking as if they had been chewed.
"This is not a good sign." Magnus commented, as he idly flicked one half of the bone he had picked up back among the remains, "Whatever did this was strong enough to crack the bone open and suck out the marrow."
"Wolves do that.." His sister remarked, seemingly unshaken by this discovery.
"No, wolves have to chew at it.. Notice here? The bone is snapped straight across. You'd need big hands and a lot of power to do that." He responded, showing how the half-femur he was holding had no deep teeth marks and simply been broken in half like a turkey wishbone.
"You want to turn back?" His sister scoffed, "If I can deal with ogres, I'd say I can deal with whatever caused that."
"Ogre." Magnus corrected, his expression showing more exhaustion with his sister's cavalier attitude to danger, "There was only the one."
His sister blew off the criticism with a hastened wave of her hand as she marched up the tunnel, forcing him to follow or be left by himself.
"You couldn't even handle that one. You had too much fear then. If it's another one I'd almost want to let you take it on alone." She finally said.
They soon discovered that there were more bones in the tunnels, albeit none that were actually full bodies. In fact Magnus guessed that it might have been one body broken and scattered bit by bit.
"You're kidding!" He answered as Magnus perceived what looked to be the small bones of a hand or a foot pressed into the ground beneath them.
"A little.. But you better not run away this time.. I won't just give you a black eye for that this time." Ralma grumbled, picking the one tunnel at a fork that seemed to have dim light visible at the far end.
However this seemed to be where the body bits had led from, as they turned the last corner Magnus perceived the skull and upper spinal column of the scattered victim, thoroughly over chewed by whatever had pulled it from the rest of the body. It was this observation that led him walking straight into his sister's upraised arm.
"Wh- ?" Magnus started, but stopped as she gestured for him to be quiet.
Reaching behind her brother she pulled the their survival knife from it's pouch and started slinking forward. Perplexed, Magnus drew his revolver and followed after, trying hard to mask the sound of his shoes against the ground, while his sister skulked forward upon the mangled sneakers that clung to her feet by way of improvised lacing. She moved faster than he did, but made no sound he could detect. He only hurried enough to keep her in view, but could not manage to do so as she rounded the corner first.
It was then that he heard his sister's footsteps once more, along with something else moving, or more accurately shuffling, followed by a startled growl rising into a panicked snarl. Discarding stealth, Magnus ran around the rest of the corner, and perceived a creature the size of a bull, but more resembling a lizard thrashing about with his sister clung to it's back, the knife impaled deeply into it's back as his sister tried to move it to hit something vital.
More by mechanical instinct than by conscious thought Magnus raised the revolver and fired two shots at the creature's elongated forelegs. One missed and grazed along the creature's stomach, while the second struck the limb at the joint causing the creature to lurch off balance. At first he had thought he had crippled it, but found that the injury had given it only momentary pause as it focused on the loud noise of the revolver and went stampeding toward him, raising its body up on it's hind legs, flexing the claws on it's forearms like it was trying to imitate a saurian ancestor.
He felt struck by an impulse to go in two directions at once as the creature lunged forward, one told him to run, the other told him to charge in firing. Stepping back two steps, he fired twice more, putting both bullets into one of it's hind legs. Unlike the first hit, this appeared to have more effect, as the creature crashed to the ground as it's leg went out from under it. It attempted to thrash and squirm it's way toward it's adversary, screaming like a caged animal. It was this moment of weakness that allowed Ralma to claw her way forward and stab the knife into the crown of the reptile's head, driving through it's flat skull and into the ground below with as sound that Magnus could only attach to stepping on a full carton of eggs.
It's muscles attempted to squirm once more as it lay pinned to the ground, although these only lasted for less than half a second before it lay deathly still.
"One big ugly lizard... No ogre at all!" Ralma said confidently as she braced her foot against the back of the creature's head and wrenched the knife free.
Magnus advanced cautiously toward his sister, becoming increasingly aware of how large the chamber was. Here the steam from the caldera was escaping from an unnatural hole in the ceiling that led up through the teeth of some overhanging icicles to the outside. Unnatural, Magnus was sure because at one corner of the cavern was a large painted mass of metal, some old aircraft that had crashed more or less intact into the side of the mountain and had landed roughly inside the mountain's caverns.
Magnus wandered to the side of the craft, where it was raised up upon landing struts, covered with many instances of emergency repair to the chassis. Inside he could make out two seats, underneath a sealed canopy. Nearby and around the cavern were scattered pieces of equipment welding guns and bits of metal, evidence of efforts to repair although undoubtedly cut short by the reptilian denizen that they had just killed, or one like him. Repairs made easier, he guessed, because the plane hadn't fractured into many pieces as it's collapsible wings had been retracted into the main body before impact.
"Northern design.. Little crude.. But.. Hmm."
Ralma coughed loudly with impatience.
"Exit's right there. Let's go already!" Ralma said as she gestured with her thumb to the hole the craft had made in the mountain on it's way down.
"I think this thing might fly.. If..." Magnus leapt atop the craft and struggled to release the canopy catch, disappearing inside the cockpit for a moment.
"It didn't do these guys any good! Let's just go!" Ralma said as she gestured to the pieces of bone that they had followed up the tunnel.
A click came from within the cockpit, and a soft red glow illuminated the transparent canopy momentarily.
"They're probably still looking for us, if we go up on the surface, they'll just try gunning us down in those helicopters again... But if we get this thing running, we can cross the border before they can catch us. Give me a few minutes to figure out how to get this thing running... Shouldn't take... What's that?"
Magnus was probably talking about some part of the machine, and not what Ralma heard immediately after. The howl the creature had made as it charged was being echoed up the tunnel they had entered from, or was being repeated by others of it's kind.
"Magnus! There's more of them!" She exclaimed, appending a particularly unpleasant oath to her speech to get his attention, "Give me the hammer!"
Poking his head out of the cockpit in apparent bewilderment, Magnus looked at his sister's deadly serious expression and threw off the leather backpack he was wearing and laid it on the nose of the craft. His sister pulled open the top, reached in to take hold of an iron pole that was pressed to one side of the backpack. Within there was a small spell-bound dimensional anomaly, wherein they could store far more than seemed physically possible, without dealing with the mass. A 'gift' from one of their few friends in the north, which repeatedly came in handy when trying to provision for long trips.
As she pulled at the object in the backpack, it seemed to distort severely as from it's mouth was pulled the head of a massive stone hammer, weighing easily more than the feline was wielding it. Though she made no complaint of it's mass as she rushed to the tunnel and struck the ceiling, bringing a rain of rock into the tunnel in an attempt to block the entrance of any more of the creatures. Tons of rock showered down, as she progressively tried to demolish the tunnel. However she did not fully succeed, leaving a narrow corridor by which the monsters might be able to squeeze through, albeit one at a time. Not perfect, but it would prevent her from being swarmed, at least immediately.
Behind she heard the engine of the craft struggle to gain power, then dying down. Her brother cursing at something, and then a scuffle of metal parts some insistent banging before another attempt.
The howling died down, to be replaced by the sounds of claws working at the rubble. From within the opening she had left she could see the shadowy shape of one of the creatures attempting to squirm through. It was smaller than the one she had killed, possibly a youngling or maybe the natural size of the creatures, whereas the one she had killed was the alpha of their pack.
As it's snout pressed it's way out of the tunnel she rewarded it by bringing the huge hammer down on it's skull with full force like she was smiting a mole. It's gecko-like skull collapsed under the force, and he body went limp, only to be pushed aside by the next creature that was coming through the tunnel. She repeated the action twice more, before noticing that the rest of the pack was burrowing, rather effectively, through the walls.
"They dig.. Of course they'd have to do that. They live underground.." She cursed again as she bashed another intruding skull before having to retreat once two openings gave way to four, then six and she was forced into the center of the room, "Alright! If you want me that badly! Come get me!"
Swinging the hammer from side to side, she warded the lizards off, striking any that tried to get too close. As one reared up and snapped at her hands she drew back, twisted the hammer around and drove into the beast's chest, throwing it into the opposite wall like a golf ball. Similar attempts to bring her down met with equally brutal responses as saurian blood stained both her hammer and flew across the cave in great startled gushes as limbs were crushed as easily by that mighty huge hammer as one might grind down a soup cracker.
Not all of the creatures were so dense as to go straight for Ralma, but not many, as the bright red-haired body moving swiftly amongst their peers, smiting her foes with both skill and inhuman brutality was hard to ignore in the earthy tones of the cavern.
Despite this one of the pack clambered atop the metal mass as it sputtered in an attempt to come to life. Climbing to the rim of the cockpit it let out an angry snarl and tried to charge it's occupant. The thunderous blast of a shotgun met it's attempt, painting it's head over the cave wall. A noise which turned the attention of every member of the pack to the craft and the body of the unfortunate who had caught buckshot at point blank spilling over its side.
"Ralma! Keep them off me! I can't do anything like this!" Magnus exclaimed as he returned to the mess of wires he was in the process of either 'fixing' or hot wiring.
"Got my hands full here!" She answered briefly as she caught a row of three of the creatures with a swing of the hammer when they looked in her brother's direction.
Splintering bone wrapped around the hammer until it threw it's gory cargo across the cave as Ralma readied the return swing. At this point she was relatively sure she had made the creatures somewhat afraid of her, seeing as how they were trying to attack in groups of two or three instead of singularly. Although as she threw these attempts back on the pack and slaughtered more of their number, they seemed more and more apt to try to approach the aircraft and interfere with whatever her brother was doing. She began inching in the direction of the craft to more directly block the progress of any newcomers to the fight.
After a minute of this, and a few close calls of her own, a steady rumble from the aircraft announced her brother's apparent success.
"That's done it! Come on!" Magnus exclaimed as he tried to stow the wires and parts he had been diligently picking through.
Even as a spectacular physical combatant, holding her own against the pack of hungry subterranean lizards had required the investment of more of her blood than she had liked. Small cuts bled up and down her arms and legs, along with one slightly deeper on her right side. One of the creatures had bitten down the hilt of the hammer, and would not allow her to leave easily. She twisted the hammer sideways, knocked the creature's feet out from under it, and stomped roughly on it's trachea, crushing it's spine like rotted wood.
"Agh! About time!" She hissed as she turned and jumped aboard the craft, which was now hovering a few feet off the ground, taking the time to knock off a persistent hitchhiker before climbing into the copilot's seat before the canopy closed.
Stowing the hammer back into the backpack, she braced as Magnus pushed the throttle forward, directing the old aircraft through the hole it had created when it had crashed. She knew well enough that while her brother wasn't much of a threat when it came to fighting, he was without a doubt the most reckless driver she knew. This gave her some second thoughts as to whether she was safer fighting the monstrous reptiles that she had just left in the cavern. All that was protecting her from her brother's insane piloting methods was a uncomfortably frayed belt system.
Whether by luck or by skill, the aircraft worked it's way up the shaft leading to the surface, finally erupting from the exit with a sudden burst of acceleration as Magnus brought it up to cruising velocity. Shortly afterward, he released the locks on the wings, giving him enough control to prevent the aircraft from diving into another mountain face. Setting their course south, Magnus pushed the old aircraft to its limit in a bid to cross the border before anyone could pursue them.
------------------
An hour later found the old craft emerging from the mountain range, keeping a steady speed to try to avoid jinxing whatever remaining luck they had on their side. Inside, Ralma was finishing up using their first aid kit to staunch or stitch her wounds with bandages or sutures respectively, as her brother attempted to make sense of the written language that some of the controls were appended with.
"You'd think they'd have the sense to stick to the general organization of controls.. Can't find anything resembling a radio receiver in here." Magnus complained as he kept the plane steady with one hand while he perused the switches and buttons on the dashboard.
Cutting the last of her bandages to a proper length Ralma tightened the binding before tying it down.
"Why do you need a radio? We don't have friends over there." She commented.
"I don't need to talk to anybody.. I just need to hear what they're saying..."
He flicked a switch in the mid-dashboard, causing a panel to release revealing a speaker and a display containing an oscillating green frequency line. Immediately the cockpit was filled with the sounds of a rather irritated exchange that they had jumped into mid-conversation.
".. forces you are to turn back on your heading and leave sovereign air space or we will take your continued intrusion as an act of war."
Magnus would have pressed the transmit button to respond to the directive, but another voice interjected before he could move his hand.
"Screw your orders, we're under orders to shoot down that target. Either help, or get out of our way!"
"Negative, we're dispatching fighters to 'escort' you back across the border."
Glancing through the canopy at his rear, Magnus could see several black dots with jet trails following in a cloud bank several thousand feet above them. Beginning to descend in sequence and pursue the slow moving antique aircraft that plodded it's way along just high enough to clear the mountains. The lack of radar was a lethal oversight on the part of the designers, and Magnus would have taken the time to curse them, had he not immediately dropped altitude and pushed the throttle to full. It was as he turned his attention forward that he noticed more specks emerge from the clouds ahead, at a lower altitude, but ascending toward them.
Not that he had much to do about those in front of him, as tracer rounds danced over the wings of the plane from behind. With little time to do much else, he threw the craft into a steeper dive,turning over and out onto a western heading, following valleys and whatever natural cover he could find to make it hard for his pursuers to get a proper lead on him. An action not well received by his sister as the old aircraft's hardness threatened to break and slam her against the canopy.
Quickly it became clear that the two formations had met, although most seem tied up in trying to shake the persistent defenders, two managed to keep on target and follow their target down. As bullets rained down on them, Magnus kept twisting the plane into even more absurd turns and jerks, making the metal chassis around them creak in complaint.
"Put us on the ground! We're going to get killed up here!" Ralma cried as she fought back a wave of nausea.
No such luck, as the pursuit dropped into an extremely narrow canyon, littered with outcroppings of jagged crystal. The age of the plane seemed increasingly obvious as it barely managed to pull off the painfully risky turns that the canyon required while their pursuers seemed to be gaining ground, and did not suffer from any lack of ammunition.
A large mass of crystal reached across the canyon ahead narrowing their avenue of escape to a small gap near the ground. Either through reckless abandon or senseless bravado, Magnus went for it, however got nowhere near as a burst of machine gun fire struck the engine and the crystals ahead...
Ahead, the crystals exploded with white light, enveloping the floundering craft. And it, along with part of the canyon was blasted out of existence.
------------------
Or at least that was what it seemed to happen, as the uncontrollable vessel was shot out of one existence and into the nebulous space that scholars from their world called the Nexus. A swath of the multi-verse that was tied together by arcane constants and barriers protecting them from outward intrusion from invaders. However it did little to contain the free-tumbling aircraft as it plummeted out of the shimmering vein of worlds and into the ether. In five seconds of terrifying free-flight, it plummeted toward and into a mote of light, trailing a blue haze.
A mote of light, wherein a small town theater was hosting a new three-dimension movie featuring flying saucers and invaders from another world. Through the haze of blue and red disposable eye wear, the audience did not notice the flash of light behind the screen as a rift between dimensions opened, and even when a spiraling mass of smoking wreckage punched through the screen, narrowly missing the occupants of back seats by a margin of two feet, they did not notice that it wasn't part of the show. It was the shrieking peal of tearing metal and splintering wood that woke them from their movie watching and sent them looking for the fire exits while the film screen caught fire and began collapsing to the floor.
Outside the theater, the old plane drove itself into the asphalt, crumpling up, and scouring across one lane before rolling over on it's nose and coming to a stop parked upside down on the canopy, pinning its occupants inside.
IC: When they had left home on that bright afternoon one month ago, Magnus hadn't imagined his little mainland escapade to involve wandering his way through trackless deserts, and brutal wastes. In his mind the world he had come from had begun to be questioned as a sick and twisted dream that he had concocted to provide buffer against the insanity within and without.
He tried to keep his cool through everything, tried to remain objective in his goals, but the simple truth was that it was becoming far too easy to concentrate on his own survival above all. Although his conscious mind tried to rationalize the killings, something inside seemed to devour the details of each obstacle with a primal relish. He did not think it right that he could not remember the faces of all those he killed, as all seemed to run together in a great chain of red in his memory. It was this base emotion that clouded his dreams every night, crawling through his mind like some kind of alien influence that he was not willing to recognize as part of himself.
Ralma had tried to explain this mindset as something akin to a Freudian leaking of the Id into the region normally inhabited by the Ego and Superego. Although this was a gross paraphrasing of the crude simplified terms that she spoke of the issue. Moreover, she belittled it as something minor, that was gotten over as easily as the fear of water once a child learned to swim. But Magnus perceived her experience as being starkly different, she was an originally 'base' mindset that was wearing the trappings of civilization as a guise. He had the perception that who he was in society was 'him' and the base underpinnings of natural instinct were foreign intrusions on his original 'rational' mindset. It was this that made him fear that he would effectively 'drown' in the other he was progressively uncovering.
Somehow it was this growing uncivilized streak that was giving them an unfortunate reputation as they traveled toward where they thought their original destination was situated. The political impact of the Dra'zinian superiority group that they had slaughtered early in their journeys had garnered them criminal reputations and substantial bounties across the continent. Newspapers described them as 'nationalist saboteurs' attempting to destabilize the continent in advance of foreign aggression. It was no small wonder then, that the borders were closed when they tried to exit through a pass to the south, turned away by the presence of hundreds of agitated armed troops and tanks shaking down traders for passports and identification.
In retrospect, Magnus regretted his 'brilliant' idea to use one of the dangerous unpatrolled and unserviced mountain paths to cross the range. He hadn't counted on how persistent their pursuers would be, as they had been picked out rather quickly by a scout team that had radioed their course back to their superiors. Two days of trekking through the mountains had sapped their energy and drive, and it was on the third morning as they broke camp and resumed their unsteady course south that they heard the distinct sound of helicopter blades in motion resonating off the rock faces all around them. Cold, exhausted and hungry they ran, discovering minutes later that their pursuers had shoot on sight orders when autocannons splintered trees and boulders near them.
Sighting what appeared to be steam escaping from a cavern at the bottom of a valley, they darted down a steep incline, an action that required more tumbling and falling on Magnus' part as the helicopters tried to get a better firing angle on their targets. They had only just managed to run inside the cave when a barrage of rockets and gunfire demolished the entrance, sealing them underground. With no way back, they made their way underground, following winding tunnels unsure of their location or direction due to sudden inaccuracy of their compass which he guessed was because there were exposed deposits of magnetite buried in the walls.
Their first observation of the caldera, was that of the growing heat, at first a welcome change from the biting cold of the mountains, then a sudden sweltering humidity as they came upon the sight of melting glacial water spilling from high above into the mouth of an extinct volcanic vent. Skirting a narrow precipice to reach another tunnel at the other side of the caldera, they made their way upward again.
Soon it became apparent that they were not the first in this tunnel, as a broken humanoid skeleton with scattered cloth remnants lay pressed against the side of the tunnel, most of the bones looking as if they had been chewed.
"This is not a good sign." Magnus commented, as he idly flicked one half of the bone he had picked up back among the remains, "Whatever did this was strong enough to crack the bone open and suck out the marrow."
"Wolves do that.." His sister remarked, seemingly unshaken by this discovery.
"No, wolves have to chew at it.. Notice here? The bone is snapped straight across. You'd need big hands and a lot of power to do that." He responded, showing how the half-femur he was holding had no deep teeth marks and simply been broken in half like a turkey wishbone.
"You want to turn back?" His sister scoffed, "If I can deal with ogres, I'd say I can deal with whatever caused that."
"Ogre." Magnus corrected, his expression showing more exhaustion with his sister's cavalier attitude to danger, "There was only the one."
His sister blew off the criticism with a hastened wave of her hand as she marched up the tunnel, forcing him to follow or be left by himself.
"You couldn't even handle that one. You had too much fear then. If it's another one I'd almost want to let you take it on alone." She finally said.
They soon discovered that there were more bones in the tunnels, albeit none that were actually full bodies. In fact Magnus guessed that it might have been one body broken and scattered bit by bit.
"You're kidding!" He answered as Magnus perceived what looked to be the small bones of a hand or a foot pressed into the ground beneath them.
"A little.. But you better not run away this time.. I won't just give you a black eye for that this time." Ralma grumbled, picking the one tunnel at a fork that seemed to have dim light visible at the far end.
However this seemed to be where the body bits had led from, as they turned the last corner Magnus perceived the skull and upper spinal column of the scattered victim, thoroughly over chewed by whatever had pulled it from the rest of the body. It was this observation that led him walking straight into his sister's upraised arm.
"Wh- ?" Magnus started, but stopped as she gestured for him to be quiet.
Reaching behind her brother she pulled the their survival knife from it's pouch and started slinking forward. Perplexed, Magnus drew his revolver and followed after, trying hard to mask the sound of his shoes against the ground, while his sister skulked forward upon the mangled sneakers that clung to her feet by way of improvised lacing. She moved faster than he did, but made no sound he could detect. He only hurried enough to keep her in view, but could not manage to do so as she rounded the corner first.
It was then that he heard his sister's footsteps once more, along with something else moving, or more accurately shuffling, followed by a startled growl rising into a panicked snarl. Discarding stealth, Magnus ran around the rest of the corner, and perceived a creature the size of a bull, but more resembling a lizard thrashing about with his sister clung to it's back, the knife impaled deeply into it's back as his sister tried to move it to hit something vital.
More by mechanical instinct than by conscious thought Magnus raised the revolver and fired two shots at the creature's elongated forelegs. One missed and grazed along the creature's stomach, while the second struck the limb at the joint causing the creature to lurch off balance. At first he had thought he had crippled it, but found that the injury had given it only momentary pause as it focused on the loud noise of the revolver and went stampeding toward him, raising its body up on it's hind legs, flexing the claws on it's forearms like it was trying to imitate a saurian ancestor.
He felt struck by an impulse to go in two directions at once as the creature lunged forward, one told him to run, the other told him to charge in firing. Stepping back two steps, he fired twice more, putting both bullets into one of it's hind legs. Unlike the first hit, this appeared to have more effect, as the creature crashed to the ground as it's leg went out from under it. It attempted to thrash and squirm it's way toward it's adversary, screaming like a caged animal. It was this moment of weakness that allowed Ralma to claw her way forward and stab the knife into the crown of the reptile's head, driving through it's flat skull and into the ground below with as sound that Magnus could only attach to stepping on a full carton of eggs.
It's muscles attempted to squirm once more as it lay pinned to the ground, although these only lasted for less than half a second before it lay deathly still.
"One big ugly lizard... No ogre at all!" Ralma said confidently as she braced her foot against the back of the creature's head and wrenched the knife free.
Magnus advanced cautiously toward his sister, becoming increasingly aware of how large the chamber was. Here the steam from the caldera was escaping from an unnatural hole in the ceiling that led up through the teeth of some overhanging icicles to the outside. Unnatural, Magnus was sure because at one corner of the cavern was a large painted mass of metal, some old aircraft that had crashed more or less intact into the side of the mountain and had landed roughly inside the mountain's caverns.
Magnus wandered to the side of the craft, where it was raised up upon landing struts, covered with many instances of emergency repair to the chassis. Inside he could make out two seats, underneath a sealed canopy. Nearby and around the cavern were scattered pieces of equipment welding guns and bits of metal, evidence of efforts to repair although undoubtedly cut short by the reptilian denizen that they had just killed, or one like him. Repairs made easier, he guessed, because the plane hadn't fractured into many pieces as it's collapsible wings had been retracted into the main body before impact.
"Northern design.. Little crude.. But.. Hmm."
Ralma coughed loudly with impatience.
"Exit's right there. Let's go already!" Ralma said as she gestured with her thumb to the hole the craft had made in the mountain on it's way down.
"I think this thing might fly.. If..." Magnus leapt atop the craft and struggled to release the canopy catch, disappearing inside the cockpit for a moment.
"It didn't do these guys any good! Let's just go!" Ralma said as she gestured to the pieces of bone that they had followed up the tunnel.
A click came from within the cockpit, and a soft red glow illuminated the transparent canopy momentarily.
"They're probably still looking for us, if we go up on the surface, they'll just try gunning us down in those helicopters again... But if we get this thing running, we can cross the border before they can catch us. Give me a few minutes to figure out how to get this thing running... Shouldn't take... What's that?"
Magnus was probably talking about some part of the machine, and not what Ralma heard immediately after. The howl the creature had made as it charged was being echoed up the tunnel they had entered from, or was being repeated by others of it's kind.
"Magnus! There's more of them!" She exclaimed, appending a particularly unpleasant oath to her speech to get his attention, "Give me the hammer!"
Poking his head out of the cockpit in apparent bewilderment, Magnus looked at his sister's deadly serious expression and threw off the leather backpack he was wearing and laid it on the nose of the craft. His sister pulled open the top, reached in to take hold of an iron pole that was pressed to one side of the backpack. Within there was a small spell-bound dimensional anomaly, wherein they could store far more than seemed physically possible, without dealing with the mass. A 'gift' from one of their few friends in the north, which repeatedly came in handy when trying to provision for long trips.
As she pulled at the object in the backpack, it seemed to distort severely as from it's mouth was pulled the head of a massive stone hammer, weighing easily more than the feline was wielding it. Though she made no complaint of it's mass as she rushed to the tunnel and struck the ceiling, bringing a rain of rock into the tunnel in an attempt to block the entrance of any more of the creatures. Tons of rock showered down, as she progressively tried to demolish the tunnel. However she did not fully succeed, leaving a narrow corridor by which the monsters might be able to squeeze through, albeit one at a time. Not perfect, but it would prevent her from being swarmed, at least immediately.
Behind she heard the engine of the craft struggle to gain power, then dying down. Her brother cursing at something, and then a scuffle of metal parts some insistent banging before another attempt.
The howling died down, to be replaced by the sounds of claws working at the rubble. From within the opening she had left she could see the shadowy shape of one of the creatures attempting to squirm through. It was smaller than the one she had killed, possibly a youngling or maybe the natural size of the creatures, whereas the one she had killed was the alpha of their pack.
As it's snout pressed it's way out of the tunnel she rewarded it by bringing the huge hammer down on it's skull with full force like she was smiting a mole. It's gecko-like skull collapsed under the force, and he body went limp, only to be pushed aside by the next creature that was coming through the tunnel. She repeated the action twice more, before noticing that the rest of the pack was burrowing, rather effectively, through the walls.
"They dig.. Of course they'd have to do that. They live underground.." She cursed again as she bashed another intruding skull before having to retreat once two openings gave way to four, then six and she was forced into the center of the room, "Alright! If you want me that badly! Come get me!"
Swinging the hammer from side to side, she warded the lizards off, striking any that tried to get too close. As one reared up and snapped at her hands she drew back, twisted the hammer around and drove into the beast's chest, throwing it into the opposite wall like a golf ball. Similar attempts to bring her down met with equally brutal responses as saurian blood stained both her hammer and flew across the cave in great startled gushes as limbs were crushed as easily by that mighty huge hammer as one might grind down a soup cracker.
Not all of the creatures were so dense as to go straight for Ralma, but not many, as the bright red-haired body moving swiftly amongst their peers, smiting her foes with both skill and inhuman brutality was hard to ignore in the earthy tones of the cavern.
Despite this one of the pack clambered atop the metal mass as it sputtered in an attempt to come to life. Climbing to the rim of the cockpit it let out an angry snarl and tried to charge it's occupant. The thunderous blast of a shotgun met it's attempt, painting it's head over the cave wall. A noise which turned the attention of every member of the pack to the craft and the body of the unfortunate who had caught buckshot at point blank spilling over its side.
"Ralma! Keep them off me! I can't do anything like this!" Magnus exclaimed as he returned to the mess of wires he was in the process of either 'fixing' or hot wiring.
"Got my hands full here!" She answered briefly as she caught a row of three of the creatures with a swing of the hammer when they looked in her brother's direction.
Splintering bone wrapped around the hammer until it threw it's gory cargo across the cave as Ralma readied the return swing. At this point she was relatively sure she had made the creatures somewhat afraid of her, seeing as how they were trying to attack in groups of two or three instead of singularly. Although as she threw these attempts back on the pack and slaughtered more of their number, they seemed more and more apt to try to approach the aircraft and interfere with whatever her brother was doing. She began inching in the direction of the craft to more directly block the progress of any newcomers to the fight.
After a minute of this, and a few close calls of her own, a steady rumble from the aircraft announced her brother's apparent success.
"That's done it! Come on!" Magnus exclaimed as he tried to stow the wires and parts he had been diligently picking through.
Even as a spectacular physical combatant, holding her own against the pack of hungry subterranean lizards had required the investment of more of her blood than she had liked. Small cuts bled up and down her arms and legs, along with one slightly deeper on her right side. One of the creatures had bitten down the hilt of the hammer, and would not allow her to leave easily. She twisted the hammer sideways, knocked the creature's feet out from under it, and stomped roughly on it's trachea, crushing it's spine like rotted wood.
"Agh! About time!" She hissed as she turned and jumped aboard the craft, which was now hovering a few feet off the ground, taking the time to knock off a persistent hitchhiker before climbing into the copilot's seat before the canopy closed.
Stowing the hammer back into the backpack, she braced as Magnus pushed the throttle forward, directing the old aircraft through the hole it had created when it had crashed. She knew well enough that while her brother wasn't much of a threat when it came to fighting, he was without a doubt the most reckless driver she knew. This gave her some second thoughts as to whether she was safer fighting the monstrous reptiles that she had just left in the cavern. All that was protecting her from her brother's insane piloting methods was a uncomfortably frayed belt system.
Whether by luck or by skill, the aircraft worked it's way up the shaft leading to the surface, finally erupting from the exit with a sudden burst of acceleration as Magnus brought it up to cruising velocity. Shortly afterward, he released the locks on the wings, giving him enough control to prevent the aircraft from diving into another mountain face. Setting their course south, Magnus pushed the old aircraft to its limit in a bid to cross the border before anyone could pursue them.
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An hour later found the old craft emerging from the mountain range, keeping a steady speed to try to avoid jinxing whatever remaining luck they had on their side. Inside, Ralma was finishing up using their first aid kit to staunch or stitch her wounds with bandages or sutures respectively, as her brother attempted to make sense of the written language that some of the controls were appended with.
"You'd think they'd have the sense to stick to the general organization of controls.. Can't find anything resembling a radio receiver in here." Magnus complained as he kept the plane steady with one hand while he perused the switches and buttons on the dashboard.
Cutting the last of her bandages to a proper length Ralma tightened the binding before tying it down.
"Why do you need a radio? We don't have friends over there." She commented.
"I don't need to talk to anybody.. I just need to hear what they're saying..."
He flicked a switch in the mid-dashboard, causing a panel to release revealing a speaker and a display containing an oscillating green frequency line. Immediately the cockpit was filled with the sounds of a rather irritated exchange that they had jumped into mid-conversation.
".. forces you are to turn back on your heading and leave sovereign air space or we will take your continued intrusion as an act of war."
Magnus would have pressed the transmit button to respond to the directive, but another voice interjected before he could move his hand.
"Screw your orders, we're under orders to shoot down that target. Either help, or get out of our way!"
"Negative, we're dispatching fighters to 'escort' you back across the border."
Glancing through the canopy at his rear, Magnus could see several black dots with jet trails following in a cloud bank several thousand feet above them. Beginning to descend in sequence and pursue the slow moving antique aircraft that plodded it's way along just high enough to clear the mountains. The lack of radar was a lethal oversight on the part of the designers, and Magnus would have taken the time to curse them, had he not immediately dropped altitude and pushed the throttle to full. It was as he turned his attention forward that he noticed more specks emerge from the clouds ahead, at a lower altitude, but ascending toward them.
Not that he had much to do about those in front of him, as tracer rounds danced over the wings of the plane from behind. With little time to do much else, he threw the craft into a steeper dive,turning over and out onto a western heading, following valleys and whatever natural cover he could find to make it hard for his pursuers to get a proper lead on him. An action not well received by his sister as the old aircraft's hardness threatened to break and slam her against the canopy.
Quickly it became clear that the two formations had met, although most seem tied up in trying to shake the persistent defenders, two managed to keep on target and follow their target down. As bullets rained down on them, Magnus kept twisting the plane into even more absurd turns and jerks, making the metal chassis around them creak in complaint.
"Put us on the ground! We're going to get killed up here!" Ralma cried as she fought back a wave of nausea.
No such luck, as the pursuit dropped into an extremely narrow canyon, littered with outcroppings of jagged crystal. The age of the plane seemed increasingly obvious as it barely managed to pull off the painfully risky turns that the canyon required while their pursuers seemed to be gaining ground, and did not suffer from any lack of ammunition.
A large mass of crystal reached across the canyon ahead narrowing their avenue of escape to a small gap near the ground. Either through reckless abandon or senseless bravado, Magnus went for it, however got nowhere near as a burst of machine gun fire struck the engine and the crystals ahead...
Ahead, the crystals exploded with white light, enveloping the floundering craft. And it, along with part of the canyon was blasted out of existence.
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Or at least that was what it seemed to happen, as the uncontrollable vessel was shot out of one existence and into the nebulous space that scholars from their world called the Nexus. A swath of the multi-verse that was tied together by arcane constants and barriers protecting them from outward intrusion from invaders. However it did little to contain the free-tumbling aircraft as it plummeted out of the shimmering vein of worlds and into the ether. In five seconds of terrifying free-flight, it plummeted toward and into a mote of light, trailing a blue haze.
A mote of light, wherein a small town theater was hosting a new three-dimension movie featuring flying saucers and invaders from another world. Through the haze of blue and red disposable eye wear, the audience did not notice the flash of light behind the screen as a rift between dimensions opened, and even when a spiraling mass of smoking wreckage punched through the screen, narrowly missing the occupants of back seats by a margin of two feet, they did not notice that it wasn't part of the show. It was the shrieking peal of tearing metal and splintering wood that woke them from their movie watching and sent them looking for the fire exits while the film screen caught fire and began collapsing to the floor.
Outside the theater, the old plane drove itself into the asphalt, crumpling up, and scouring across one lane before rolling over on it's nose and coming to a stop parked upside down on the canopy, pinning its occupants inside.
