Chapter 10: Hamburger Hill

Hoplite moved between the rows of tents, making a 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 that more imposing as it cast a long shadow over the camp. The sun sat right between that gap it seemed, 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.

Tongues of Zodd, for that was what they surely were based on their wildly different outfits and unorthodox means of fighting, were always the first to descend on the fallen fiends. Other men stood far behind them with large tower shields and spears, holding a shield wall around the foot of the rubble hill, 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.

Unlike the Tongues, these soldiers all were dressed in uniform gray plate armor, with a single bright sky blue feather adorning the tops of their open-faced helmets. 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?

As he approached the back of the shield wall, he drew stares from everyone in the camp behind him. 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 more where they didn't try to whisper at all. Hoplite didn't try to correct them.

He soon saw the mayor over the defenders shoulders, fighting alongside the Tongues. 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, who turned and gave a small shout at seeing him. Hoplite loomed over him, and he made sure not to take any action that the defender would have seen as a threat. 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 they turned their heads to keep wide steady eyes on him.

"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 wall, some occasionally being replaced by another wearing the same dull gray breastplates. Taking shifts, as he had heard earlier. As he approached the mayor, he adjusted his combat knifes sheath, having wrapped it around his shoulder instead of his waist so he could tie more tactical pouches there. Each of those pouches carried extra ammo as well as grenades.

After all, he wanted to take out as many fiends as he could as fast as he could.

The mayor brought another heavy blow down upon the skull of a gasping fiend, turning its head to mush. Despite the obviously fatal blow however, the body still thrashed violently, clawed hands swiping for flesh. Deep spirals 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 since 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 tone "Please tell me sir golem that you be here to help clean this up!"

He then hunched over, hands on his knees as he huffed and puffed "Ain't as young or as skinny as I used ta' be, but I gotta keep the Fiendwall running and that means helping clean out the filth. We work 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, 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 the higher ups. 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, and Gali laughed as they shook hands, 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 bind ye set you to come to the defense?"

"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 is that some kind of magic what lets you see all around ye?" Gali asked, putting a hand on his doubled chin.

Hoplite internally sighed "Yes. It's magic." He said, not wanting to go into the details on how his cameras operated.

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 take it ye have heard of what some folks are callin' the 'Starfall'?" He asked.

He hadn't but that title could only mean one thing.

"One of those very stars shot through this section here… I was only a few rooms over from where it struck but many of our defenders atop the wall confirmed it. 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.

Hoplite removed his hand and immediately made way for the hill of rubble. Gali waved at his back and turned to leave through the parted shield wall, those wide shoulders hanging low. 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, more 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.

Far off to his left and right bonfires raged, with heavily armored men throwing in the remains of brutalized fiends that 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, and the impossible durability of these fiends…

But no, he wouldn't 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 his fellow Ternans, re-indoctrination would be a petty thing in comparison to what he would be put through.

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He did not want to 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 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. He 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, near 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. These 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. It wasn't too long before he finally reached the peak of the rubble hill, and he stared out with wide eyes at the sight that lay before 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. So even plant life could be infected with this disease? 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 thousand 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 many 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.

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 one.

 

 

That one's head was caved in beneath the force of the blow, 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 was an incredible shot, but he turned his attention back to the battle. He crushed the skull of the fiend clutching his ankle, 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 half-way mark. Here he stood for an hour as the waves came upon him, all trying and failing to pull him down. Hundreds were blasted apart by slugs and hundreds more were pulped by just his fists, all rolling to the foot of the hill in a growing stew of organs and blood.

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 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 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 him 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 women, elves and orcs, all berserking warriors trying their best to impress Zodd the 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.

Why risk themselves like this? It was a pointless question he knew. Their faith in Zodd was what drove them after all. 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.

On they fought like this until finally there was a lull in the combat. Hundreds of Tongues lay dead, either by suicide to avoid the curse or by 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.

Hoplite ran and began striking deep into the small horde that surrounded the orc, both men 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 running in a completely different direction "Over ere! You ugly wrinkly grapes!"

Hoplite stared after the orc for a brief instant as he charged… and followed 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 trifle. 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 him 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 describe it, but he appreciated it.

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