Our Silent Lives Conquer Worlds

Ilima Dilemma

Ilima city, abandoned during the war and left as a place for Stranded and Locust...has sunk.

Marcus, Dom, and Ben all saw it with their own eyes, a massive worm, bigger than anything they've ever seen before, tunneling through the underground behind a Locust atop a strange flying mount, like a Reaver on steroids. No sooner did Ilima fall, and no sooner did they realize just what they were up against.

The Locust were sinking all cities around Jacinto, all to cave it in from the lack of support.

"Shit...how the hell are we suppose to fight that?" Dom was sounding defeated, completely at a loss for what to do.

"We'll have to figure it out somehow, but for now we'll keep moving and find any survivors."

With two curt nods, they started to walk through the ruins of the city, seeing some survivors around, where some made it fine while others were ripped apart by viscous two legged creatures: Bloodmounts.

Said Bloodmounts had riders, but were easily dispatched before taking care of the creature itself. As expected, in the recently sunken city there was heavy amounts of Locust scouring the place to find human survivors, which made their job all the harder.

Bullets started to fly ahead of them, as several Stranded ran to cover while firing their guns. One of them saw the Gears, but wasn't complaining at all about the extra muscle. "Hey! They're tearing everyone apart! We need some help!"

The Gears were immediately on it, running to their side and assisting in the gunfight. Several Bloodmounts and their riders were there, but went down as easily as you'd expect from the large amount of collective gunfire.

...

That's when a Bloodmount from somewhere else was thrown into a wall.

"What the shit?!" One of the Stranded seemed surprised that it appeared out of nowhere, but it was clearly dead.

They looked over to where it was thrown, seeing nothing there. "Weird...let's move Delta."

The city was crumbling all around them, and the now larger group had to worry about not only being crushed by falling debris, but also falling into the many cavernous openings that would lead them to certain death by falling. The loose rocks under their feet would occasionally shift around from the seismic activity, but nothing major past that to worry about.

With guns held high, they were surprised to find a very small amount of Locust past the one's they've killed already. Did they really only send in such a small squadron, or have they been split up somewhere?

"Keep your eyes sharp, never know where they're hiding until we find 'em ourselves."

"Uhh...Sir?"

Marcus turned to Ben, who was looking out through an opening in two fallen buildings. "I think I know why we haven't seen many of them..."

Marcus walked to where he was, and looked in as Ben stepped to the side. "...No wonder."

Beyond the two buildings, there were dozens of dead Locust, all killed in various ways. Some were impaled on objects in the surroundings, some were covered in bruises and still bleeding profusely, and even further were crushed by either something...or someone.

"Sir, do you think it's..."

Marcus held up his gun, starting to walk back to where Dom was now waiting. "Couldn't be anyone else. Let's just hope she cleared out even more than that."

Eventually, the Stranded split off from them in search of more of their own who were alive, leaving Delta squad to find the fallen Raven alone. A flare was shot into the sky above where they should have been, so they needed to get moving and find the chopper before the Locust got there first.