As bad as things may have gotten up on the mountain, duty assignnts at the Grassbrook Fort had actually beco rather relaxing for the average Domain soldier. Despite the dozens of Rainlander and Challenger prisoners held there, there had been no uprisings nor even minor escape attempts since the fort had been turned into a prison camp. The Rainlander army officers had largely been captured alive, and they and Lady Highbranch had counseled the other prisoners to remain calm and follow orders. The frontlines are far away, and not even Lady Highbranch is important enough for the Rainlanders to send a rescue team down this far in the middle of a war.
That said, security had certainly not beco lax. The guards at the camp largely appreciated their 'easy' assignnt, and no one wanted to be caught slacking and sent into the dungeon as punishnt. In the retellings that occurred every night in the Lucky Bastard such an assignnt had gained the reputation of practically being a death sentence, a story that barely needed exaggeration. Even at night in the light of the moon the fort is kept well-lit and patrolled, with magic lamps set at regular intervals to catch anyone who might be sneaking about.
So it is that when a large hole suddenly opens up in the ground of the fort's main courtyard, the alarm is made within monts. Unfortunately for the garrison soldiers, the handful of guards patrolling the courtyard at that mont along with those on the nearby fortifications are no match for what cos out of that hole. Beings of rock and fla crawl their way up, imdiately setting nearby defenses on fire, and at their lead stands a knight with a skull for a head.
"Tremble, denizens of the Domain! Tonight is the night you will feel the cold, bony grasp of death! I have looked within my heart for rcy, and found that it is absent! My eyes seek out the innocent, and see nothing! I shall slay all those who stand before until my legs give out, which will probably take so ti given that I don't have any of those either! My intestines - " Whatever activity the knight's guts were about to get up to is left a secret as a fury demon soars up behind the man and gives him a smack on the back of the helt as she passes him by.
"Stop wagging that tongue you don't have and get to work, Dave! Soldiers of the Domain are not children to be frightened under their beds!"
"Fine, fine! Nice to be working with you again too, Lyota! I was just building up though to an aweso line about how the King of Death was coming for them, but I guess stabbing people is pretty intimidating too..."
Not far away, a magma elental raises a bulky fist in his direction. "The Socialist Commonwealth of Worldwide Elental Brothership, Sisterhood, and Non-Gendered-Sibling Unity rejects all pretenses of monarchy! We seek liberation, not new chains! Cease your prattling or be counted among our enemies!"
"Fuck! Politics! I'm out of here, ti to find a nice life-or-death struggle to hop into! Spider-kid, get your rocky pals under control!"
Even as Dave takes off at top speed, chasing a pair of fleeing kobolds, Grizza shouts after him. "I don't command the elentals! I'm just leader of one team! We...oh, he's gone."
"Fuck the undead, help up, 'spider-kid'! We can't all climb rocks like you driders can!" Tassa's irritated voice sounds up behind the leader of the Rough Gems, but as Grizza pulls the half-minotaur out into the light there's a wide grin on her face. Axes at the ready, the woman is already looking for opponents to fight. "Which way?"
Grizza quickly examines the directions the first wave of the assault have spread out in. "Lyota's covering the gate, to make sure ssengers don't get out to Grassbrook. The elentals are going after the nearest walls to tie up the patrols, the skull is...literally kicking a kobold's ass. Looks like we're clear to take on our main assignnt and seek out the prisoners. Rember, first priority is the officer's quarters, then we seek out the banshee."
As she climbs out alongside them, manipulating the earth to create handholds for her heavy form, Roxxy voices a question. "Why's Taly so high up on the priority list? Even if they decide to kill her, it's not like that actually slows her down much."
Tassa shakes her head. "It's not because the dungeon is worried about her. It's because if we break her loose, she might be - " The Challenger's explanation is cut short as half of a small, distant structure explodes outward. Given that none of the assault team had gotten anywhere near there yet, the minotaur is fairly certain that soone else is responsible for the sudden violence. "...She might be strong enough to help us out with the rest of the objectives. Speaking of, I think we've found her."
Grizza is already heading in that direction, although he's preparing his wand for a fight as he does so. "She's not alone! There's a fight going on over there, too! Priority shift, reinforce her first, officer's quarters later!"
The Rough Gems follow their leader, enchanted crystals reflecting the moonlight as they ponderously make their way across the grass and dirt, but the ones they're heading towards are moving much more quickly. As they watch the Banshee Queen's opponent sprouts wings from the back of her robes, yet taking to the sky still doesn't provide her with much safety. With a pair of leaps the dungeon guardian has leapt her way onto a sagging wooden beam and then directly into the fleeing demon, tackling her back down to the ground.
It's a temporary victory though, seeing as how Taly finds herself blasted off by an explosion of arcane energy a mont later. "How!? How did you break all of those enchantnts!? Only a Supre-tier mage could have countered all of...oh." Whatever realization the demon cos to, it's superseded by the one that occurs seconds later when she sees the approaching Challenger party. "...Elentals. You tunneled all this way..."
Although Grizza doesn't recognize the well-dressed succubus standing before him, the young man does know the signs of a well-trained mage when he sees them. "She's casting a spell! Prepare your defenses!" As the elentals raise up walls of stone the drider casts his best barrier spell, hoping that it will at least slow the Domain agent down...only to be slightly confused when he glances back in her direction. "...Oh. She's...gone?"
The mystery of her disappearance is solved when Taly dashes back in front of them and leaps onto thin air. She gives it a few good blows as she tumbles, and Grizza gets the impression that the thin air is going to be sporting a few bruises in the morning. Despite her slight distraction, Taly still manages to call out to him. "Just an invisibility spell - she's a sneak, not a fighter! I got her, you get the rest of the prisoners!"
"Ah! Yes, ma'am!"
While he doesn't mind leaving that particular battle behind, resuming their original course towards the prisoners section of the fort is still no walk in the park. Fortunately the layout of the fort's hardly changed over the past month so the maps drawn out by the Rainlander soldiers living in the dungeon remained quite accurate, but new walls and defenses had gone up here and there. A whole section of the fort had been penned in with wooden palisades, and Grizza spots hints of tents poking out from behind them. "That's probably where they're keeping the low-ranking prisoners! The barracks are probably being used to house Domain soldiers now!"
"Let the elentals deal with those! The Domain's putting up a barricade that we need to worry about!" Tassa points down one of the main 'roads' running through the fort, and sure enough there's demons and kobolds piling furniture and construction supplies between two of the structures. "What do you think - go around, or smash through?"
Grizza turns back to inspect the elentals making up their party. Aside from Roxxy they have their other earth elental, Flint, with Cinder and Ashley present as representatives of the magma elentals. With all of the enchanted gems the team had been hoarding over the past year or two the four of them had beco quite powerful, but that had grown by even further leaps and bounds when Worthy Dungeon had equipped them for this particular mission. Seeing that they look ready for a fight, the drider grins. "Even if we find a route around, that just ans we'll be leaving all of those guards at our backs. What do you four say - ready to test out the dungeon's gifts?"
Roxxy slams her fists together, creating a sound like boulders smashing apart. "Yeah! That puny wooden pile of sticks is gonna be just...a smaller pile of sticks when we're done with it! Co on! Rough Gems, let's get rough!"
There's a cheer from the rest of the group, and the magma elentals step forward first. With a bit of magic and a few swings of their arms the pair are flinging forward balls of stone and fla that would make a siege mage envious, and even in the dim light Grizza can see the panic in the defenders' eyes as they spot the incoming projectiles. Not all of them are able to dodge in ti, and as the first magma bombs hit half a dozen soldiers are torn apart by the explosions. The improvised barricade does no better, with hardly two pieces of it left standing atop another.
Roxxy and Flint move in next, using a combination of their magical gems and their own natural defenses. Arrows fired by a squad of kobolds bounce off of them to no effect, and in return the two blast their foes with magical lightning bolts and splinters of conjured stone. One mage does manage to prepare a strong enough fireball of her own to present a moderate threat...only for it to dissipate as it cos into contact with Roxxy's stony skin, protected by a barrier-generating gem. The succubus doesn't get a chance for a second attempt, as a mont later a throwing axe from Tassa plants itself into the mage's skull.
That seems to do it for the morale of this particular set of defenders and the survivors capable of fleeing quickly do so. Grizza takes note of the direction in which they head but it likely doesn't matter - this is a rescue operation, not a search-and-destroy mission. Sure enough, the primary objective of that operation cos into view as they turn around the next building, Grizza noting the officer's quarters as being the only building with a bit of a garden planted in front of it.
The door to the building swings open and Grizza nearly fires an arcane bolt at the sign of movent, but fortunately the sight of silver hair and pointed ears slows his hand. "Lady Highbranch! Are you unhard?"
Gilda smiles at her newly arrived rescuers and stands up a little straighter to greet them. "We are fine indeed. Thanks to Taly's warning and a few improvised supplies, I was able to create runes of binding before your forces arrived. When the guards rushed in to help 'secure' their high-value prisoners, they found themselves being secured instead." The half-elf chuckles slightly at her own humor. "Commander Paulados and his assistant are tying up the last few of them now, they'll be along shortly."
As she eyes Grizza and his party, Gilda's smirk fades slightly. "...Are you the one in command of this operation?"
The Arcanist quickly shakes his head. "No, ma'am - the dungeon had to reserve a good portion of its defenders, of course, and normal monsters can't be sent beyond the dungeon bounds, but the dungeon could certainly spare more than us for a job of this magnitude. It is our responsibility to escort you to the exit route, however. We'll want to move quickly - we have tunnels back to the dungeon, but the plan is collapse them on our way back. Wouldn't want to leave them a back door into the dungeon, after all."
"Of course. Fortunately I did put on my good shoes before - " Gilda's next comnt is interrupted by a sound of rushing air from above the fort, and everyone turns their heads skyward to see what the cause might be. It seems that they're not the only ones who are curious, as a number of magic lamp spells soon activate to illuminate the new arrivals. Hovering above the camp, suspended within a sphere of distorted space, stands an arcane demon, an incubus, and a heavily-armored kobold. Grizza groans as he recognizes who this must be.
"...We need to move quickly. If we find Taly, she can cover our escape - "
"ATTENTION, PRISON BREAKERS!" Pretty Thing shouts to those below, although it seems to be a magical spell providing most of the volu. "I APPLAUD YOUR BOLDNESS. NO, REALLY! I WAS JUST THINKING THIS LONG SIEGE NEEDED A LITTLE SPICING UP. UNFORTUNATELY, ALTHOUGH I RESPECT YOUR BRAVERY I MUST INSIST THAT YOU CEASE IMDIATELY. PLEASE LIE DOWN WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEADS, OR I'LL HAVE TO MAKE THINGS...VERY UNPLEASANT FOR ALL OF YOU. YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY."
Grizza can just barely make out a smile on the incubus's face, and he gets the impression the demon is hoping that the prisoners and attackers will ignore his warning. What's even harder to mistake however is the look of shock his expression displays when another arcane demon soars up to et him, his voice equally amplified for those below to hear.
"TEN SECONDS, OLD FRIEND?" Sincere gives his opponent a sad look as he shakes his head. "I THINK IT WILL TAKE A LITTLE MORE TI THAN THAT FOR YOU AND I TO CATCH UP."
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