patterns.
Ree went third, letting Talon and her polearm take the anchor role behind them. Uncle Joe was on door duty, his well of courage properly spent.
Leading with the sword, Ree stabbed at one of the winged lizards, which pumped its wings and dodged up and away from her blow.
She followed the thrust with a cross-body cut, which caught a leaping gnome’s arm and carried through to cut it across the collarbone. The diminutive devil went down, and Ree continued her swing, spinning her weapon back around to her right to ward off another gnome before it could jump.
If she let the blade stop moving, she’d get overrun. Already feeling her barely mustered energy flag, Ree dipped into that cool well of magical energy, thinking of how John McClane hadn’t stopped, hadn’t given up, had always pressed on.
For understandable reasons, “Ode to Joy” started playing in her head, making the fairly workmanlike task of cutting down scads of monsters seem instantly more epic.
But even with her epic soundtrack, they were outnumbered and out-gunned. (Out-sworded, really. All of the prop guns were spent, and Lucretia didn’t seem to be a gun bunny.)
Just a few minutes . Just need to keep them from knocking down the door for a few minutes. Except that twenty minutes in fighting time was approximately forever. She’d competed in Taekwondo tournaments for years, and even those ninety-second matches dragged on like they were the battle of Helm’s Deep.
“How are we going to keep this up?” Ree shouted to Eastwood. If the monsters understood her, then so be it. She knew she was screwed, and the monsters might well know it, too. There were just too many.
“Don’t know!” Eastwood said, fighting on. “Just do it!”
Determined he was, but Eastwood was no speech giver. But he was holding his own, even though he’d lost the long knife somewhere along the way and was fighting with just the one sword and judiciously applied dirty tricks.
Pressed up against the wall, Chandra was favoring one leg. Beside her, Talon fought with her personal sword, a hand-and-a-half blade that she wielded like she’d had it since she was in diapers and baby tunics. And as a second-gen Scadian, that might even be the case.
Ree was drinking deeply of the Die Hard determination, but the creatures kept coming. The sewer channel was running with ichor, a stream of fallen monstrosities flowing away from the store, but not fast enough.
A boxy robot that looked like a teakettle on steroids launched forward, spout-butting her knee. She hopped back, lashing out with the sword, which sparked and clattered off the machine’s domed top.
In the next minute, she heard several more cries of pain. Chandra went down, and Talon dropped to one knee, warding everything off of the fallen punk.
Which left Ree and Eastwood nearly alone against the pressing horde. If there had been more space, they’d have been overrun long ago. As it was, the four of them half stumbled over one another as they tried to keep the store side of the tunnel at their flanks so the creatures couldn’t cut them off from the door. Ree took wounds along her arms, back, and legs. The Die Hard magic started to go faster and faster as she fought on with injuries that even adrenaline couldn’t push through.
Talon screamed as an arrow embedded itself in her shoulder, then dropped out from Ree’s peripheral vision.
This isn’t going to work.
Ree adopted her best get-the-whole-damn-bar’s-attention voice and shouted “Joe! Evac!” while pounding on the door with the pommel of her blade. Then she twisted the blade to spear another gnome as it leapt for her throat.
The door opened, and Ree held her ground, taking scratches and bruises under the ever-more-crowded press of monsters.
She heard wincing and pained moans behind her, which she hoped were Talon and Chandra getting their ass out of Dodge.
“You next!” Grognard said, the end of his word devolving into a growl as she heard
Ree went third, letting Talon and her polearm take the anchor role behind them. Uncle Joe was on door duty, his well of courage properly spent.
Leading with the sword, Ree stabbed at one of the winged lizards, which pumped its wings and dodged up and away from her blow.
She followed the thrust with a cross-body cut, which caught a leaping gnome’s arm and carried through to cut it across the collarbone. The diminutive devil went down, and Ree continued her swing, spinning her weapon back around to her right to ward off another gnome before it could jump.
If she let the blade stop moving, she’d get overrun. Already feeling her barely mustered energy flag, Ree dipped into that cool well of magical energy, thinking of how John McClane hadn’t stopped, hadn’t given up, had always pressed on.
For understandable reasons, “Ode to Joy” started playing in her head, making the fairly workmanlike task of cutting down scads of monsters seem instantly more epic.
But even with her epic soundtrack, they were outnumbered and out-gunned. (Out-sworded, really. All of the prop guns were spent, and Lucretia didn’t seem to be a gun bunny.)
Just a few minutes . Just need to keep them from knocking down the door for a few minutes. Except that twenty minutes in fighting time was approximately forever. She’d competed in Taekwondo tournaments for years, and even those ninety-second matches dragged on like they were the battle of Helm’s Deep.
“How are we going to keep this up?” Ree shouted to Eastwood. If the monsters understood her, then so be it. She knew she was screwed, and the monsters might well know it, too. There were just too many.
“Don’t know!” Eastwood said, fighting on. “Just do it!”
Determined he was, but Eastwood was no speech giver. But he was holding his own, even though he’d lost the long knife somewhere along the way and was fighting with just the one sword and judiciously applied dirty tricks.
Pressed up against the wall, Chandra was favoring one leg. Beside her, Talon fought with her personal sword, a hand-and-a-half blade that she wielded like she’d had it since she was in diapers and baby tunics. And as a second-gen Scadian, that might even be the case.
Ree was drinking deeply of the Die Hard determination, but the creatures kept coming. The sewer channel was running with ichor, a stream of fallen monstrosities flowing away from the store, but not fast enough.
A boxy robot that looked like a teakettle on steroids launched forward, spout-butting her knee. She hopped back, lashing out with the sword, which sparked and clattered off the machine’s domed top.
In the next minute, she heard several more cries of pain. Chandra went down, and Talon dropped to one knee, warding everything off of the fallen punk.
Which left Ree and Eastwood nearly alone against the pressing horde. If there had been more space, they’d have been overrun long ago. As it was, the four of them half stumbled over one another as they tried to keep the store side of the tunnel at their flanks so the creatures couldn’t cut them off from the door. Ree took wounds along her arms, back, and legs. The Die Hard magic started to go faster and faster as she fought on with injuries that even adrenaline couldn’t push through.
Talon screamed as an arrow embedded itself in her shoulder, then dropped out from Ree’s peripheral vision.
This isn’t going to work.
Ree adopted her best get-the-whole-damn-bar’s-attention voice and shouted “Joe! Evac!” while pounding on the door with the pommel of her blade. Then she twisted the blade to spear another gnome as it leapt for her throat.
The door opened, and Ree held her ground, taking scratches and bruises under the ever-more-crowded press of monsters.
She heard wincing and pained moans behind her, which she hoped were Talon and Chandra getting their ass out of Dodge.
“You next!” Grognard said, the end of his word devolving into a growl as she heard
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