Warlords

In the ruins of empire, leaders clash

The conquest of the planet Cylas was almost complete.

Glassy, vitrified soil crunched beneath the spear-warg's armored feet, the very earth melted by the plasma barrage which had preceded its coming. Tungsten-ceramic armor plating swathed the beast's body from its three-sided head to its short, segmented tail - and further enhancing the eponymous, spear-like raptorial appendage that lanced from between its two front legs.

The ancient image of heavy cavalry, pulled from the past to serve the present in building the future.

Reins of woven carbon fiber trailed from the steed's cross-stamped helmet, held in two of its rider's three-fingered hands. In the rider's third hand the titanium spear Ascalon gleamed under the light of two suns, and in his fourth and final hand there waved a blindingly white flag - held not in surrender, but in parlay.

Coming to a respectable distance beyond the fortifications of his foe's final strongpoint, the rider halted his mount, mantle of light purple leather swirling around his armored shoulders. Raising one hand from his steed's reigns, he ordered his warriors to stop, their own spear-wargs chortling in barely-suppressed battlelust as they obeyed in turn.

The column halted, the warrior at its head now dismounted, stabbing the flag of truce into the melted ground as hard as his prototype combat exoskeleton would allow.

"COMMISSIONER!!!" He howled at the top of his lungs, voice further amplified by the cybernetic larynx which had replaced the one he was born with. "I am Gospel-of-Mark, son of Gospel-of-Matthew - by the Grace of God, Defender of the Sacred Republic!" The climbing-hand holding Ascalon struck the golden Devouring Cross emblazoned on the Defender's left pauldron, the spear ringing with a pure note as it was then thrust into the sky. "Come out and face me!"

From the enemy fortifications, there was no reply, save for the awkward, dumbfounded stares of the foe as - presumably - one of them radioed the situation to their command post.

"Face me, Fire Commissioner!" Gospel-of-Mark shouted again after what seemed an appropriate pause. "Across two worlds now, you and your warriors have fought valiantly, with all the courage and cunning inherent to an honored adversary. So then, as one warlord to another, I offer you this final courtesy:" Ascalon's point was lowered parallel to the ground. "Face me in single combat! Kill me, and my warriors shall withdraw from this planet, and my heirs shall leave yours in peace for all their days."

Left unspoken, of course, was the corollary to this offer - that if Mark won, then the Commissioner's soldiers would lay down their weapons and kneel to him instead.

…though given the context, the Defender thought as he awaited an answer. I think it's pretty well understood…

For what seemed like the longest time, there was no reply, the only motion from the final citadel being that of firefighters-turned-soldiers taking advantage of the momentary lull to quickly duck into their half-slagged slit trenches and reload.

And then at last, the challenge was answered.

From the ruins of the Cylas fortifications, a single human female arose, clad in a once neon-yellow hardsuit that had since worn down to a dull tan. One shoulder plate was festooned with certification-plaques, while across the other was slung a thick halligan bar, the former rescue tool sharpened on every point. 

Mark's eagle-sharp synthetic eyes caught a name crudely etched into the halligan's haft.

'Suzie.'

On the left side of her breastplate was a badge wrought into the shape of a broken dragon, mirrored on the right by the word 'FIRE' stenciled in unyielding block text. On the outside of her armor a repurposed rescue exoskeleton was bolted, rusted but still entirely functional.

Thus arrayed, the Fire Commissioner of Cylas marched out to meet the Defender of the Sacred Republic, flanked by two of her firefighters - one with the wolfish shape of a spireglider and the other with the centipede-esque shape of a tunnelcrawler. 

It was a pitiful escort for the ruler of an entire planet. 

But then, Mark had little space to judge on that front. Even as master of five worlds, only fifty followed him now in his troop of dragoons, and across Cylas only fifteen hundreds marched beneath his banner.

But then, he thought as his glory-lust flared anew and burned away his ingratitude. This is where all great myths begin. Sparta and Prussia, Israel and Mexico - they all began here, in the battles waged by a few valiant men and women…

"Your little army of crusader cosplayers really gonna leave if I kick the shik out of you?" The Fire Commissioner spoke plainly once she had reached him, her voice raspy from a lifetime of smoke inhalation.

"You have my word," Mark replied without hesitation through his three prosthetic mandibles, tearing his knife from its sheath to scrape the spine of its hooked blade across one vambrace, pantomiming the act of drawing blood through his armor. "On the Blood of Christ, and on the blood of all my fathers."

There was silence between the two warlords for a single moment-

-and then it was broken.

"Then let's get this done, simp," the Fire Commissioner declared, Suzie clacking against her armored palm as the halligan was lowered into a fighting stance. "The boys I've got waiting on me charge by the hour."

And the instant he saw his opponent was ready, the Defender replied yet again - by using his spring-like legs to lunge directly at his foe, spear outstretched in a simple, straight thrust, crossing the five meters between them with a single bound. The simplest attack possible with a spear, perhaps - but deadly effective and deceptively hard to dodge or parry-

-and the Commissioner in turn did exactly that, batting Ascalon's point away with the haft of her halligan, bull-rushing into Mark's charge in an attempt to angle her weapon's curved spike into the eyehole of his helmet.

Planting his feet at the last millisecond, the cliffleaper pirouetted away from the human's superior inertia, levering the butt of his spear forward and directly into the small of his adversary's back.

Titanium met tungsten-ceramic with a mandible-shaking clack, the all-metal spear humming like a tuning fork as the Commissioner staggered away from the exoskeleton-assisted blow. Trying to press his momentary advantage, Mark recovered his spear and lunged yet again-

-only for his opponent to once more parry the strike, this time with a wild swing from Suzie that left the human so tantalizingly open - but also left Ascalon so woefully out of place that she easily blocked the out-of-measure followup thrust that Mark performed almost as a formality.

His advantage now thoroughly lost, the Defender settled in to the defensive, spear up in an easy ready stance. Like all humans, the Commissioner was a persistence predator by blood, almost tireless compared to the ambush-oriented cliffleapers.

The more energy he could make her waste, the better.

She proved unwilling to take the bait, save for a few probing tests of his defenses that were all easily turned aside.

Locked in emergent stalemate, the two leaders paced in circles like two planets orbiting a common barycenter, each passing the other's followers as they looked on passively, neither side seemingly willing to steal their respective lord's glory. 

Seconds more passed, and still they circled each other, self-confessed warlords squabbling over backwater planets, exchanging ineffective, probing flurries of blows in the ruins of an empire that had once spanned the entire known galaxy.

Growing impatient, Mark transferred his spear into the longer of his two sets of arms and sent out a pair of quick thrusts, one for the Commissioner's hips and the other for her neck. The first she easily parried-

-and the second, he reached too far with.

Smacking his spear's point aside with the head of her halligan, she stuck out the crowbar end of her weapon and charged directly for him, pointing the sharpened tines at the gap of his gorget.

The Defender managed to turn his body just enough that the tines glanced off the top of his armored shoulders instead of sinking into his airway - but he couldn't stop simple physics from sending him backwards into the dirt when the human rammed into him, his synthetic eyes briefly glitching from the sheer force of the impact.

Her opponent felled, the Fire Commissioner raised Suzie high in the air, stepping close to the cliffleaper in search of a vulnerable spot to drive the weapon's spike.

Too close.

Drawing one knee to his chest, Mark lashed out with a digitigrade leg, slamming it into the human's cuirass. 

His legs were powerful, able to send him more than twice his own height into the air - and now, further augmented by a combat exoskeleton's prodigious strength, they hurled his adversary away from him, the human stumbling over her feet as she too fell to the ground. 

Having somehow retained his spear through all of this, the Defender scrabbled to his knees, lashing out with Ascalon more in an attempt to keep up the pressure than anything-

-and hit, regardless.

His spearpoint sank into the seam between the Fire Commissioner's vambrace and her gauntlet, the woman's hand held up and palm-out in an instinctual defensive posture as she too attempted to rise.

And through the shaft of his spear, he could feel the long-familiar resonance of its tip piercing bone.

Snarling in a mixture of pain and anger and a healthy dose of fear, the human rolled away from Mark, blood dribbling out of the new slit in her wrist-seal. 

Stabbing again and again as he stood up, Mark pursued the Commissioner, the limp fingers on her wounded hand confirming what he already knew from analysis of his previous kills - that her hand had been all but severed inside her hardsuit. Ascalon, for its part, failed to draw blood again, instead skittering off pauldrons and thigh-plates and even her codpiece before she finally smashed his spear away with a desperate flourish of her halligan, finishing the motion by hammering Suzie into one of the Defender's greaves with her good hand.

The blow failed to pierce his plate or break his bones, but even so it sent his foot skidding out from under him, sending him skipping backwards and giving her the time she needed to finally get back on her feet.

Returned to their informal stalemate, Defender and Fire Commissioner stared at each other, silent save for the Commissioner's hiss of controlled pain as her own armor's tourniquet protocols kicked in, staunching the steady drip of blood from her ruined wrist.

"That it?" She spat through gritted teeth, jaw visibly clenched through her transparent visor. "I've been firked deeper by a half-price gigolo on his off night!"

Mark gave no reply, recognizing her taunts as the trap they undoubtedly were. Instead, he simply bounced on his armored toes in readiness, Ascalon's engravings sparking in the light.

Another moment elapsed, and the Commissioner finally lost her patience, sprinting forward yet again with her halligan held tight against her body, ready to lash out at any angle.

The Defender reacted by shuffling backwards out of range for the human's initial charge, stabbing his spear forward once she had lost her initial momentum - only for the woman to just keep charging once she saw his retreat, brushing Ascalon aside with her wounded arm just enough that its tip barely scored the outside of her neck-seal instead of piercing.

Once more, human and cliffleaper clashed in a brain-rattling clatter of tungsten-ceramic armor. Not hard enough to knock him over this time - but it was a close thing, especially once the Fire Commissioner punched him with her single good hand, wrapped into a hammer-like fist around Suzie's titanium haft.

On the end of his long neck, Mark's head and vision both rocked backwards, leaving him completely open to his opponent's backswing as she tried to drive the crowbar end of her weapon into his gorget for the second time.

And this time, she succeeded.

The cliffleaper gagged as the shockwave propagated through his throat and upper body, the thin-by-necessity plates around his neck cracking under the force of the exoskeleton-assisted blow.

Yet all the same, his armor stopped the attack.

Before the Fire Commissioner could withdraw for another strike, he threw his long neck to one side and wrapped it around the equally-long haft, trapping the halligan's tines in place. To her credit, the human only tugged on Suzie once before she let go, barking out a curse as she desperately tried to backpedal out of the cliffleaper's reach, her good hand finally going for the pistol at her side-

-too late.

Simultaneously releasing Ascalon and unwinding his neck from Suzie to let both thud into the earth, Mark lunged at his opponent, all four hands latching onto the Commissioner like some armored spider. Quick and nimble, one grasping-arm snapped to the woman's holster, pinning her hand and pistol both in place while his other grasping-hand ripped her knife from its sheath on the opposite side. 

And while his climbing-arms went straight for her throat.

Thick and broad, Mark's climbing-fingers were laden with muscle, evolved over thousands of generations to haul his species up sheer cliffs with the barest of finger-holds. And inside the gauntlets of his combat exoskeleton, they could easily shatter stone and crush metal.

In stark contrast, the Fire Commissioner's neck-seal was simply that - a seal, vulcanized rubber laced with kevlar and carbon fiber for slash resistance.

It bent so very easily under his grip.

Her good hand crushed against her pistol's grip, the woman could only futilely bash her limp, wounded arm against the Defender's iron stranglehold, mouth open wide in a silent 'O' shape as her body instinctively - and uselessly - tried to pull in whatever air it could. When all that failed, the Commissioner bent her knees and hurled herself backwards, trying to either break his grip or at least get her pistol free.

Mark simply followed her down, all of his hands still neatly in place as he landed on top of her.

He tightened his grip even more, feeling the human's vertebrae beginning to shift even through the thick rubber of her neck-seal, the Commissioner's thrashing growing panicked and desperate. Her knees slammed into him now, frantically trying to knock the Defender off balance and regain leverage.

So with the single hand not occupied with strangling the Commissioner or with pinning her gun in place, he drew his hook-bladed knife-

-and dragged it across the back of her hip-joints while her legs were raised to strike him, cutting clean through the seal to sever the hamstrings underneath.

For the first time since he'd seized her neck, the woman made a sound - a stuttering, all-too-literally choked rasp as her lungs finally forced some air past the blockage, mouth open in what would've been a scream of pain had her windpipe been open.

And then at last, she went limp.

So he relented.

Rising from his disabled adversary, Mark released her neck, leaving her to gasp and cough and wheeze for air in the dirt as he retrieved Ascalon from where he had dropped it.

A few seconds later, the Commissioner's blank, unfocused gaze finally regained its direction and clarity - to see the Defender of the Sacred Republic towering over her, the tip of his spear digging into her visor right between her eyes, her good hand trapped beneath one of his three-toed feet.

"You are defeated," Mark declared without preamble, his voice a blend of imperious and respectful. "Submit."

The Fire Commissioner of Cylas said nothing, seemingly too busy trying to regain her breath as she ineffectually squirmed beneath his feet.

"You fought well," he continued when she gave no answer either way. "No one can accuse you or any of your warriors of cowardice." Compassion entered his voice as he bowed his head a few fractions closer to her. "No one else needs to die today."

The woman panted for a few seconds more.

And then she gave her rasping answer.

"Firk it."

With a final, desperate burst of strength she ripped her remaining hand from under his feet-

-as Mark stabbed his spear through her visor and into her face-

-too late to stop her from hammering her pistol into his hip and pulling the trigger.

He felt more than heard the gunshot blast through the seam in his armor - just like he felt the red-hot trail of the bullet ripping up through his intestines to come to a rest right below one of his lower lungs.

It did nothing to keep him from driving Ascalon clean through the Commissioner's skull, killing her instantly as he scrambled her brain stem.

Pain washed over him as he fell to one knee, doing his utmost to make the lean upon his weapon's shaft look like additional pressure in the finishing move rather than the bid to keep himself upright it really was. His entire lower body throbbed in time to a half-dozen medical alarms from his armor, stomach  burning like he was on fire as intestinal contents oozed into his abdominal cavity.

But then, he was used to pain by now.

He knew this wouldn't kill him immediately. He'd hunted enough in his life to know that gut-shots took hours to bleed out - more than enough time for him to finish this battle and make it to surgery.

So with one grasping-hand, one warlord wrenched the other's badge free from her breastplate, holding it high in the air for her soldiers to see as he alone rose, triumphant.

And alone on the battlefield, he declared his victory with a single, snarled word from his cybernetic larynx.

"Kneel."

At first, the Fire Commissioner's escort merely stared at him, afraid and confused; seemingly dumbfounded by the very request. But soon, they realized what was expected of them. First the tunnelcrawler, then the spireglider fell to their knees before him, laying down their weapons as they raised their hands in surrender - followed soon after by all the foe who had remained in their trenches.

The last defenders of an entire planet, bowing down to Mark in submission.

He hoped they would not see the worsening tremble in his arm as he held the badge aloft.

Art by AvesAdversary of Deviantart(https://www.deviantart.com/avesadversary)