"Don't tell me what to karking do!"
The Mongrel paused, servos grinding as his mechanical head turned to regard Njal. If he could have blinked slowly at the man, he would have. As it was, he had no eyelids, so he settled for a blank stare - the only kind of stare he could give without pupils or irises. A thousand retorts, each of them half-amused and half-frustrated, surfaced in his mind.
Fine, then, he almost said,
sit there pouting and die. But though he was a warrior through and through, more accustomed to rage and bloodshed than tact, he managed to hold his nonexistent tongue.
Snapping at the barbarian wouldn't help him.
So the warlord ignored the petulant response and focused instead on surviving this encounter for a few seconds more. As Njal rose, pushing past what had to be a true
plethora of shattered bones, The Mongrel kept up the very literal stream of fire he was directing into the jaws of the Verdnaast. He was starting to get diminishing returns, though. At first the flames had triggered the creature's natural revulsion to the sudden burst of light and heat, the natural instinct that caused it to flee from forest fires - the rare foe its jagged teeth could not conquer.
But the Verdnaast was not a stupid beast, or it would not have been a true apex predator, size or not. The plume of fire was small compared to its hulking body, and as the initial shock faded it began to realize this fact. Something so much tinier than it, and incapable of melting or even scorching its thickly-armored hide, was not something it had to fear. A moment after the thought percolated through its bestial brain, it surged forward again, ducking its head left to avoid the worst of the heat - it was still sensitive, even if it wasn't being truly
harmed.
Fortunately, Njal was already getting in its way.
Wham-snickt. The barbarian's axe bit deep into the flesh behind the creature's manible-like jaw, cracking armor plate and ripping into tendons. Then again, a second time, deepening the bleeding hollow the huge weapon had gouged out. The Verdnaast roared in pain and rage, leaking vile ichor over the jungle floor... and Njal roared with equal ferocity, if not lung capacity. Here were two wounded beasts, two predators whose clash had left them both bloodied. Though the outcome was still uncertain, this battle was entering its final stages.
Letting his flamethrower gutter out, The Mongrel clenched his fist, cycling through the weapons built into his cybernetic arm. The nozzle he'd been deploying retracted, and a smaller, sleeker launcher emerged in its place. The warlord zoomed in his vision, employing his sophisticated suite of sensors and targeting computers, locking onto the neck wound that Njal had just left. He would get only one shot at this, and if he fethed it up, he would probably be shredded as the creature rolled and lashed about, raging as it bled. Here goes nothing.
The
explosive dart streaked out of the launcher, embedding itself in the raw, riven flesh that Njal had split open. The little projectile's payload was too small to crack the armor plating, but the soft flesh beneath was another matter.
Boom. Great gobbets of viscera burst from the impact site as the dart went up, its detonite shaft exploding in a fireball that seemed disproportionate to its small size. The Verdnaast staggered, suddenly gasping; its trachea was
gone, its lower jaw shredded, its barbed tongue hanging from a fresh hole in its neck.
But the blood-mad creature did not fall.
The Mongrel scarcely had time to duck as the thing began to writhe and thrash, slamming into trees, its howls of pain and rage turning into vile
sucking sounds as blood rushed into its voicebox. He was quick enough to dodge a swipe of its claws and a stamp of its taloned feet... but not
quite quick enough to mind the tail. And he was less lucky than Njal on that count, for when that huge muscled appendage whipped into him, the spikes atop it bit deep. One moment he was standing on the forest floor, scrambling to find some cover...
... and the next his chassis was impaled on two spikes.
Tor’r Tal’Verda
,
Kralmus Orr
, Raus Garrat
