Location: The Ash Wastes, Sector 7 Perimeter.
Time: Sunset.
The sun did not set in the Ash Wastes, it suffocated.
The sky, usually a haze of industrial orange, deepened into a bruised, toxic purple as the light began to fail. The temperature dropped, but the radiation levels spiked.
Across the sprawling salt flats, a storm was moving. It wasn't weather, it was war.
The Iron Legion convoy tore across the wasteland in a "Thunder Run." Fifty steam-tanks, tracked haulers, and weaponized hearses kicked up a wall of dust so thick it looked like a tidal wave of grit. The ground trembled rhythmically, a seismic drumbeat announcing their arrival.
At the tip of the spear was Group Alpha: Captain Grist's heavy assault unit and Dante's Psychopomp.
"Visual contact!" Silas screamed over the roar of the engine, clutching the dashboard with white knuckles. "They're ugly! Even from here, they're ugly!"
Ahead, the Living Wall of Sector 7 loomed out of the twilight. It was a nightmare of calcified bone, coral, and fused ribcages, pulsing with a wet, red bioluminescence.
And standing in front of the wall, waiting like gargoyles guarding the gates of hell, were the Bio-Titans.
There were three of them.
Subject Alpha: A sixty-foot tower of muscle with no skin. It stood on two legs, weeping acidic bile from exposed pores. Its right arm was a massive, chitinous pincer the size of a crane, twitching with anticipation.
Subject Beta: A quadrupedal horror, looking like a skinless wolf the size of a warehouse, with dorsal spines that vented steam like a locomotive.
Subject Gamma: The smallest, only forty feet, but covered in armored plates that shifted and clicked like sliding puzzle pieces, protecting its core.
Dante keyed the radio handset.
"Captain Grist," Dante's voice was calm, cutting through the static of the open channel. "The targets are spotted. Remember the plan. You draw the fire. I deliver the payload."
"Don't tell me my job, Scavenger!" Grist's voice roared back, distorted by the noise of his own tank. "I'm going to mount that wolf's head on my hood before you even park your car!"
Grist's tank—The Meat-Wagon—surged forward. It was a behemoth of riveted steel, painted with shark teeth, bristling with flamethrowers and heavy bolters.
"All units!" Grist bellowed. "Suppressing fire! Burn the meat!"
The battle began with a roar that shook the earth.
Grist's unit opened fire. Heavy shells slammed into the Titans. Explosions blossomed against the wet flesh of Subject Alpha. Chunks of meat the size of sedans were blown off, raining down on the sand like hail.
But the horror of Sector 7 revealed itself instantly.
The wounds didn't bleed, they foamed. Pink bubbles—rapid-growth stem cells—erupted from the craters in the Titan's flesh. The foam hissed, knitting muscle and skin back together in seconds. The damage was undone before the smoke cleared.
Subject Alpha didn't even flinch. It simply raised its massive pincer and smashed a mercenary buggy flat, burying the screaming crew in the sand.
"They're regenerating too fast!" Silas yelled, swerving The Psychopomp hard to the right to avoid a gout of acid spit from Subject Beta. The acid hit the sand, turning it instantly into boiling green glass.
"Grist needs to get closer," Dante observed, his eyes narrowing as he tracked the regeneration rate. "He needs to make them angry."
As if on cue, The Meat-Wagon rammed into the shin of Subject Alpha. Grist popped the cupola hatch, manning the pintle-mounted heavy bolter.
"Eat lead, you sack of guts!" Grist screamed, pouring fire into the Titan's knee joint.
The Titan roared—a sound like tearing metal and wet leather. It looked down, ignoring the other vehicles, focusing entirely on the annoying metal flea biting its leg.
"Target locked," Dante whispered. "Subject Alpha is distracted."
He turned to Silas. "Get me close. Left flank. Under the armpit."
"You want me to drive under the monster?" Silas shrieked, his voice cracking.
"Drive, Silas!"
The Psychopomp drifted, sliding sideways through the sand. Silas floored the nitrous button.
CRACK-BOOM.
The condensed Lightning Mana injected into the engine. The hearse shot forward, tires screaming, weaving between the Titan's massive, stomping legs.
Dante kicked the passenger door open. The wind howled, smelling of ozone and rancid meat.
He stood on the running board of the moving car. He looked up. Above him, the massive, exposed ribcage of Subject Alpha loomed like a ceiling of flesh.
"Prime," Dante commanded. "Shielding."
"Affirmative. Diverting auxiliary mana to kinetic dampeners."
Dante jumped.
He didn't aim for a foothold. He aimed for the flesh.
He slammed into the side of the Titan, driving the claws of his mechanical hand deep into the wet muscle fibers to anchor himself. He was a flea clinging to a giant.
The Titan shifted, feeling the parasite. It thrashed wildly, trying to shake him off.
Dante hung on, his boots scrabbling for purchase on the slick, mucus-covered skin. The smell was overpowering—rotting sweet fruit and raw sewage.
"Regeneration is just assembly," Dante gritted out, the Silvergrin flashing against the wall of meat. "Let's see how you handle disassembly."
He jammed his organic left hand against the Titan's skin.
"Apoptosis."
He didn't try to blow it up. He didn't use fire. He sent a signal.
Die.
Deep inside Dante's chest, the green fire of the uranium he had consumed flared, then dimmed. Mana rushed from his core, through his arm, and into the Titan.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
A grey patch of necrosis bloomed around his hand, spreading like wildfire. It wasn't rot, it was desiccation. The cells simply stopped functioning. The pink foam tried to rise to heal it, but the new cells died the moment they touched the grey zone.
The sound was nauseating—like a thousand autumn leaves being crushed at once. Krinkle-snap-hiss.
Subject Alpha screamed. For the first time, it felt loss.
Dante climbed. He scrambled up the rotting flesh, using the grey, dead patches as handholds, aiming for the neck.
Below him, Grist was watching through his binoculars.
"Look at that crazy bastard," Grist muttered, firing his bolter blindly. "He's actually eating it."
Meanwhile: The Main Force (Group Bravo)
Location: 500 meters East of the Titan Melee.
While Dante and Grist occupied the monsters, the bulk of the Iron Legion—twenty tanks and two hundred infantry—swung wide. Their objective was the depot gate.
"Titans are occupied!" The Bravo Commander radioed. "Path is clear! We are green for breach!"
The tanks rumbled forward, crushing the bone-fences. They thought they were the hammer.
But they were wrong.
A single figure stood in the breach of the wall.
He wore armor of white chitin that gleamed like polished bone. He held a curved, red crystal sword that hummed with a high-pitched whine.
Valerius.
"Halt!" the Commander ordered. "One hostile. Infantry, clear him out."
A squad of ten mercenaries charged, firing their rifles. Bullets pinged off Valerius's armor like hail on a tin roof.
Valerius didn't move until they were ten feet away.
Then, he vanished.
There was no magic. Just raw, terrifying acceleration. A cloud of sand exploded where he had been standing, but the sand hung in the air, lagging behind his movement.
There was a red blur. A sound like a jet engine spinning up—ZZZZZZT.
The ten mercenaries stopped running. For a second, nothing happened.
Then, simultaneously, their upper bodies slid off their lower bodies.
The cuts were cauterized instantly. The crystal blade had vibrated at such a high frequency that it created a localized plasma edge, separating matter through friction alone.
The Commander in the lead tank blinked. "What..."
Valerius appeared on the hull of the tank. He wasn't even breathing hard. He looked sad. Bored, even.
"Your machines are loud," Valerius whispered.
He stabbed the sword down.
The crystal blade pierced the armored turret of the steam-tank like a hot needle through butter. The vibration transferred into the metal.
HUMMM-CRACK.
The tank's boiler resonated until it shattered.
BOOM.
The turret blew off, spinning into the air. Valerius rode the shockwave, flipping backward and landing gracefully in the sand, twenty feet away.
"Ambush!" the radio screamed. "We have a Sword-Saint! Repeat, Class-A Threat on the East Flank!"
Valerius flicked a drop of oil off his sword. He glanced to the West, where the massive form of Subject Alpha was screaming, a grey rot spreading across its chest like a cancer.
He narrowed his reptilian eyes.
"So, you are fighting the mountain, Silver Face," Valerius murmured. "Impressive. You consume, just as I destroy."
A heavy machine gun opened fire on him. Valerius sighed, deflecting the bullets with blindingly fast parries, the red blade moving like a shield of light.
"I suppose I must finish my chores before I can come play."
Valerius surged forward, a white whirlwind of death, tearing into the Iron Legion's main force.
Back at the Titan Fight
Dante was running out of time. And mana.
He was clinging to the neck of Subject Alpha. The necrosis was spreading, but the Titan was massive. It was thrashing wildly, shaking the earth with every stomp.
Grist's distraction was failing. The other two Titans—Beta and Gamma—were turning their attention toward the flea on their brother's neck.
Subject Beta, the Wolf-Titan, opened its maw. A glowing green ball of pressurized acid built up in its throat, aimed directly at Dante.
"Incoming projectile," Prime warned, the red tactical overlay flashing in Dante's mind. "Evasion impossible. Impact in 25 seconds."
Dante looked down. Grist was directly below, reloading his bolter, oblivious to the wolf.
"Grist!" Dante shouted, his voice amplified by the conduction of the Titan's hide. "Look up!"
Grist looked up. He saw the Wolf-Titan aiming at Dante.
"Don't just stand there!" Dante yelled, staring down the barrel of the acid cannon. "Be a hero!"
It was a gamble. He was banking on Grist's ego. He was banking on the fact that Grist hated losing more than he hated Dante.
Grist saw the acid charging up. He saw Dante clinging to the kill. If Dante died, the Titan survived, and Grist failed the Baron.
"Oh, hell no!" Grist roared, slamming the bolt home. "That's my kill!"
Grist slammed The Meat-Wagon into reverse, spinning the tank on its treads. He aimed his primary flamethrower not at Alpha, but at the face of the Wolf-Titan.
"Chew on this!"
A stream of liquid napalm erupted, engulfing the Wolf-Titan's face in sticky, orange fire.
The Wolf shrieked, blinded. The acid shot went wide, sailing harmlessly over Dante's head and dissolving a patch of the desert into smoking slag.
"Nice shot!" Dante muttered.
He reached the base of Subject Alpha's skull. The vertebrae were the size of barrels.
He didn't use Decay this time. He used the Gentleman's Ripper.
He slammed his mechanical fist against the Titan's spine. The claws dug in.
"Inject Payload."
HISSS-THUNK.
The pneumatic piston fired. The vial of Potassium Nitrate and Sulfur injected directly into the spinal column, deep into the marrow.
"Combustion."
Dante kicked off the Titan, backflipping into the air.
BOOM.
The explosion was muffled, contained inside the neck. But the physics were undeniable. The massive spine of the Titan severed.
The head of Subject Alpha—a mass of flesh the size of a bus—flopped uselessly to the side, held on only by stretching skin.
The massive body seized up. The neural connection was severed. The legs buckled.
CRASH.
The Titan fell. It hit the sand with the force of a meteor. A shockwave of dust and displaced air radiated outward, knocking Grist's tank sideways and cracking the windshield of The Psychopomp fifty yards away.
Dante landed in a crouch, sliding through the dust. He stood up, smoke rising from the exhaust ports of his mechanical arm.
The battlefield went silent for a heartbeat. Even the other Titans paused, confused by the sudden, seismic death of their alpha.
Dante looked at Grist, who was climbing out of his overturned tank, bleeding from a cut on his forehead.
"One down," Dante called out, his voice calm despite the adrenaline crashing through his system. "Two to go. Are you still playing, Captain?"
Grist wiped blood from his eyes. He looked at the dead mountain of flesh. He looked at Dante, standing amidst the dust like a wraith.
For the first time, there was no mockery in his eyes. Only the terrifying realization that the Scavenger was exactly what he said he was.
"I'm still playing," Grist spat, grabbing his machete and checking the edge. "But you're buying the drinks."