Residential Block Northern Shopping District.... Impasse

 “All in one piece, then?” the sergeant asked, his attention still focused at the lower ever-stair landing.

The professor nodded, then added a “Yes,” when the sergeant did not look his way. 

“Sounds like there’s a ‘but…’ attached to that.” 

“Reinforcements,” the corporal said. “Eight, that we know of. Down from nearly a dozen.” 

The sergeant grunted. “It was awfully quiet work.”

Residential Bloc Northern Shopping District, continued...

 

The professor looked down, and then behind himself.
 

“She was just here!”
 

“Well, now she isn’t,” the sergeant said, with a glance at the professor. “Fix that, so we can get out of here.”
From the distance, in the darkness, there came a flash of bluish light, and the sound of a man’s voice — and then another’s — crying out.

Residential Bloc North Shopping Disctrict, continued...

 (4♢)They found the sergeant crouched at the top of the second floor ever-stair landing, helmed up, sighting down his longarm, which he braced against the central railing.

“What in the hells is—” the corporal began, only to be cut off by the sharp report from a sidearm, the bullet pinging off the immobile ever-stair between the first and second floor.

Residential Bloc 77G North Shopping District, continued

The corporal shrugged off his pack at the top of the immobile ever-stairs’ third landing. “I’ll take up station here.”

The professor, too, dropped his pack, and after a glance at the directory map on the wall, started down the tiled path towards Maiden’s Wear. He turned, when the girl didn’t follow, and held out a hand.

“Come along, girl,” he said.

Residential Bloc 77G North Shopping District

 

“What about this one?” the corporal asked, holding up something frilly and pink, with an inordinate amount of bows in front of the girl.

As with the three dresses he’d picked prior, the girl looked the garment up and down, and then returned her stare to someplace that seemed to always be over the shoulder of whomever was speaking to her.

“Yeah, not particularly practical.” The corporal tossed it aside, atop the pile with the others.

Uthorrad, Inner City Residential Bloc, continued....

 

“Hold!” the sergeant called, when after three paces, he realized that the girl had not followed.

“Last chance,” he told her, and waited a beat. Then another.  He had just turned on his heel to resume his march when the howls sprang up. Not close, well beyond the borders of the housing bloc’s grove. But not so far away that a loping run wouldn’t see them breaking through the trees in less than a stretch’s turnover.

Uthorrad, Inner City Residential Bloc 77G, continued...

 

    The wolf-like beasts advanced, spreading out. One angled for the men, while the other two made for the girl.
    The dark-haired man dropped to one knee at the bottom of the stairs, bringing his longarm up, sighting down the barrel. His shot dropped one of the wargs headed for the girl. The corporal kept running, firing from the hip, wounding the other wolf-like creature.

Uthorrad, Inner City Residential Bloc 77G: Daybreak

 

   (3♦︎) Rather than try the levi-lift, they opted for the exterior stairwell.
    A yipping howl reached them as they turned ‘round the second-floor landing. The sergeant made to carry on, but the dark-haired man plucked at his sleeve.
    “What now?”
    “You didn’t hear that?” the dark haired man asked.
    “Just some dog.” The sergeant’s sleeve slipped free as he shrugged.
    “No,” the dark-haired man said. “That’s a sentinel hound’s warning.”
    “Close,” the corporal said. He rummaged through his pack, and pulled out a scuffed far-seer tube. He put it to one eye, squinting the other as he swept his gaze across the copse of trees along the far side of the development.
    They’d skirted the edge of the recreational park on their way to the housing bloc the night before. The yipping bark repeated, to be joined by another. Shadows roiled in the half-light, and as they began to move, they became discernible even without the aid of the far-seer.
    “Wargs.” The sergeant’s growl might well have been that of one of the shaggy wolf-like forms that skulked beneath the tree line. “To think we almost—”
    “We have to get down there!” The corporal hitched his gear, and pushed past the other two men, taking every second or third step down, just slow enough to keep his pack from pulling him too far off balance.
    The dark-haired man followed the corporal’s sightline, sucking in a breath as he caught sight of what had the other man in such a hurry.
    At the edge of the park, where the paving gave way to close-cut grass, a girl stood, staring upward at the swirling fall of ash, oblivious to the three hunched dog-like creatures that loped from the trees.

On track to return soon....

 When the templates in the box aren't quite the ones you need, building and editing takes a wee bit of time. 

More time than expected, apparently....

Uthorrad, Inner City: Residential Bloc 77G

 

    The dark-haired man slowed, at the sounds of an altercation down a nearby alleyway.
    The sergeant grabbed his arm, and the man stumbled as the direction of his steps abruptly changed.
    “Keep moving,” the sergeant murmured.
    “But—”
    “Not our concern. These streets aren’t safe, and we need to get to somewhere we can hold up until daylight.”
    “But they could be hurt, and—”
    “And they could be beast men quarreling. Until we come along to remind them of who their real enemy is.”
    “But—”
    “No ‘buts.’ We move on.”
    “It’s not right.” There was a hint of steel in the dark-haired man’s voice.
    “No, it isn’t,” the sergeant agreed, “it’s war.”

    They pressed onward, reaching the dark-haired man’s quarters on the third floor of a typical middle-income housing bloc shortly before midnight.
    The night, however, was anything but restful. Far from it, it was as though the city sat in the midst of a great thunderstorm. But there was no rain, just a roar of distant and not-so-distant explosions, and flash after flash, as bright as— sometimes brighter than— the noonday’s sun. Each followed by a wash of heat, and a screaming wind that threatened to shatter the panes of glass in the windows. With each strike of the monumental lightning, the ground shook, which transmitted up through the building, which seemed unable to decide whether it wanted to shake itself, or sway from side to side, walls and floors and ceilings creaking and groaning like the wakened dead.

(2♠︎) Groggy, grainy-eyed, they gathered up their packs, the dark-haired man hurriedly putting together a duffel. The materials in his box he threw into a sturdy leather satchel, adding a few memory-keep slices of readingglass after a moment’s thought. Last thing before they left, he rummaged through the cloak cupboard, slinging a bolt-action long-arm over is other shoulder, and tossing a half-full box of shells into his duffel.
    It took the sergeant’s shoulder to get the door to budge, and they were greeted by a muted, steely light filtering through vast cracks in the overhead glassteel dome that enclosed the Inner City. A fine, dusty powder drifted from between those cracks, floating down, spiraling like snow that never fell in the sealed cityscape.
    The sergeant fished a kerchief from one of the pockets of his uniform, and tied it over his mouth and nose. The corporal and the dark-haired man did likewise, after sharing an astonished look at the state of the weather-that-should-not-be.

Role Call: "Lance"

 

Kilian Gunnarsson actually got a few years into his studies at Blackmoor University before the Imperial Defense Forces draft caught up to him.

Since then he has been pushed through initial training, and served mostly in the rearguards, pushing paperwork and making sure supplies were routed to their proper locations.

Kilian knew the city's days were numbered when CenCom sent his unit was to the Inner City to facilitate the garrison with breakdown and evacuation.

He did not expect them to pull the plug on the Lightning Road, stranding him there with the last of the garrison, and remaining residents...

Escape from Uthorrad

 

    Uthorrad, Inner City; Public Lightning Road Terminus 22:20

(2♠︎)The streets outside the Lightning Road terminus were empty… at least, as far as the men could tell. Thick fog settled in, obscuring everything more than a few strides away. Fighting could be heard, but between the muffling effect of the mists, and echoes off the buildings…. It was hard to tell if it was down the next block, or halfway across the city.

Role Call: "Doc"

 Professor Viktor Markhov taught history at Blackoor University, before taking a sabbatical to study beast man ruins in the Borean Valley of the far western continent.

    It was because of his familiarity with the beast man culture, as well as the history of the Empire that the siege and eventual fall of Uthorrad did not come as any surprise to the professor.

    He did not, however, think that he would actually be in the city when it happened...

Uthorrad, Inner City

 

Another tremor caused the door leading from the stairwell into the facility’s ground floor to rattle in its frame.
    “Behind me, Doc,” the sergeant said, and the dark-haired man and the corporal traded positions, the younger man reaching for the door’s handle.

 

“…. Lightning Road transit is offline: Do not expect reinforcements. If you survived the Sunfire bombardment, and you have any luck left, you’ll need it: You’re on your own. The Empire will not forget your sacrifice. Message repeats….”

New Year's Resolution? Not quite 4K

 Apparently there was a lot of talk about "Dungeon '23" going on on the Internet lately. Something about megadungeons and hundreds of rooms and creativity.