Leary, the Faithful.
***
There would come a time in every war when I would have to remove myself from the battlefield. A non-commissioned officer was I, a mirror to the officers at my side. But not just any non-comm. I was the Noctis Marshal. My station was too high to lead from the front- at least until things got bad enough to call one us in to destroy.
Standing beside the Abyssal Regent and Praefectus Noctis, ensuring my non-comms had everything they needed to lead from the front- that was my role. Yet, here, in this forge of Legionaries, the order of operations was reversed. And yet, they were not.
In any realm save perhaps Maru, we of the Elven Devil's Troupe would be the first to arrive in any given area. We would be the first to explore. The first to experience. The first to learn. The first to judge or more likely be judged. As of yet, I knew not if we would simply leave messes for the Legions to pick up behind us or if they would fan out from our position like an Abyssal wake. I knew only that we would be the first to do all things in those realms, unexplored by us.
Including war.
In this forge of legends- this demigod-producing factory- it was the same. We were the first. The first to suffer. The first to rise. The first to change. The first to dominate. There would be no legionaries picking up behind us in this place, however, for we made it better for the proctors and instructors who would come behind us. There were no lands for our followers to expand upon either; for we made their homes for them. Even before we made homes for ourselves.
While they were not, the order of operations was reversed.
War. For us and us alone, war came in flavors. If some entity got into a conflict with me and in turn used might, magic, skills, or cunning to bring me to an end, that was between me and them. A Solitary War. If all of the Troupe got involved, it would have no ties to the Legions or the Empire. A War Party. It was only in those cases where allies, assets, and other such things were threatened would the Legions get involved; for they were explorers above all else.
The order of operations was reversed.
We entered the Darkroom to see the wicked face of war grinning at us. Powerless as we were, we were forced to fight together as a team. To bond and grow as a unit. We gained power together and subsequently split to impose our will on this vast realm. And only now, at the tail-end of our year in the Darkworld, had we the strength, assets, and cunning needed to be the first to repay what was due.
It couldn't have come at a better time, for the change came slow as the tide so often did. The fields of flowers spread across the land began to dry from the overbearing heat. The tug of gravity beneath my feet increased just a bit more. The howls and cackles of long-felled creatures spawned behind my train of bone.
Much of the last month was spent traveling across the Bugdilk dominion, spreading destruction wherever I went and using the bones of my felled enemies to create vessels and skeletal minions to scout the lands in my stead. A great bone bridge to a flock of bony buzzards. An osseous obelisk into a train-mounted gimbaled spell cannon. Fields and mountains to railways and tunnels.
The Grand Duchy of Kas was a different story. They were the neutral goblin nation of the Darkroom, set between our less powerful enemies and the superpowers in the distance, who in turn acted as a barrier to the friendly nations in the furthest corners of the room. But we had little interest in them. Our interest was with those superpowers that had been observing us since we first entered, adapting to our abilities until it came time to face us in the crucible.
It wasn't until I came upon the border of the Oim Kingdom that I ordered a full stop. However, it was not because of the hulking vessel of bone that lulled in the sky- a vessel I did not create, though it was a good design. Even with realms 1.9 G's pulling on it, the skull, spine, and ribs of some long-forgotten leviathan hovered above and a head of on propellers shaped like wishbones.
Still, though, it was not why I paused. Nor was it the sight of pods and bone-encased capsules I released to fill the skies, each of them packed with arcane tech goblins. I paused because I finally realized the change was upon us.
The Crucible was here.
And I was prepared.
I had yet to take off my armor since I first began my crawl across these lands. But that wasn't saying much when my armor was augmented into my third cervical vertebrae. The five thoracic vertebrae, the Rubber, Spike, and Silk-infused vertebrae in the lumbar region; and the three fused, gravity-infused sacrum vertebrae had yet to be used. Much less the infusions in my ribs, sternum, and arms. Until now.
With a mere thought, the 3 cervical vertebrae in my augmented spine blossomed to life, covering my head in the glorious M1 helmet while a devilish mask and goggles of bone congealed over my face. With my eyes bolstered and supplemented further by the networks, I turned my gaze to the growing clouds of black and green rain, wherein I spotted something tantalizing.
"LOOK WHO IT IS, BYS! LITTLE LEARY'S ALL BLOWN UP! GAHAHAHAHA!"
That all-too-familiar voice grated against my ears and resonated in my bowls in ways that sent ripples through the divine materials comprising my nerves. My forearms responded readily to it, conjuring a pair of shields just as twin scimitars struck against them like lightning.
The resonance of adamantine on adamantine rattled the entirety of my skeleton except in two places. The rubber vertebrae in my spine and the Volterum in my ribs. But I paid neither of them any mind, for my reunion with a goblin with hooped piercings and a mechanical eye was due.
"IT'S ME! RATTER!" Another twang reverberated down my arm with the words. Followed by another. "TAT!" And another. "TAT!" and more. "TAT! TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT…" On and on, Ratter swept and slashed, making my ribs tingle more and more until something wicked within me started to snap.
The four claws of bone-infused metal clutched around my chest cracked to life, elongating into spider limbs that shot out with the force of a cannon. "…TAT- Ugh! Ohoho! My shoulders! My legs!
My! My my." Ratter grinned from the end of my limbs, raising his scimitars high and wide. "You're gonna have to try harder than that, Leary, by!" he swiped, clanging his swords against my armored neck. "I survived the revive this time!" He shouted, slashing into my ribs.
"And all times before!" He screamed, swiping at my legs. "I'm like you!" swipe. "I'm arcane!" swipe. "It's insane!" he swiped as he had swiped so many times before, bringing the vibrancy of my ribs from red to orange, and then yellow in ways that saw something giddy meld with the devil inside me.
I lashed out at Ratter's face, losing myself enough to find my bony digits gripped around the remains of his snout and squeezing more. Thus I continued where my instincts left off, squeezing and pulling to flip him between the ground and me before I unleashed everything.
"GYAAAAA!"
My scream released a violent stream of vibrant yellow energy- a beam- to slam into Ratter's chest and move on to bore a hole in the ground beneath us. But I knew that wasn't enough. He was still down there, in a pit of rubble and smoke. But before I could give chase, I was surrounded by a buzzing volley of fire, ice, lightning, steel, and other projectiles.
I tried not to block it, for I am Leary, the Faithful. I showed my faith in my God and stood true until a hulking suit of metal appeared amidst the chaos. Boasting a comparatively tiny hobgoblin head, it raised its arm to unleash a cannonball with great speed. Again, I tried not to block it. Yet it did not hit me.
The ball exploded just in front of me, sending me flying into the distance to fuel my 3rd, 2nd, and 1st thoracic vertebrae with power. From them came skeletal wings that quickly became wreathed in umbral muscle and skin covered in feathers with the same osseous-adamantine nature as my other limbs.
Banking around the formation, I put my Uma into action while I infused the rest of my thoracic augmentations to reinforce my armor with scales and emit a protective barrier 5 meters around me, giving me some reprieve. Though it would not last long. The constant pangs against the barrier saw my ribs lose their luster, draining to a dull red before I ascended for the counterattack.
It came with the muffled shot of my spell cannon in the distance. I dove, outstretching my hands to point all my fingers toward the enemy as I unleashed everything within me.
"I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS! TOO LONG I'VE BEEN WAITING! FEEL THE WRATH OF LEARY OR BOW TO THE MIGHT OF YOUR GOBLIN GOD-EMPEROR!"
My frenzied words drowned out the clusters of metal-encased bone shards I sent raining down on the enemy. But a few were undeterred by either my words or the attack. The hobgoblin mech raised its barreled arms as I banked and weaved, spitting out my fingertips against the wave of spitting fire.
But it wasn't enough. Thus I adjusted.
Five and five shots were recast in favor of pairs that smacked into the hobgoblin with a slow rhythm while the deafening explosions of my spell cannon crept closer and closer to him., filling the air with Smoky Bones until the last agent-filled shell ignited the smoke in a fanatical explosion.
But still, it was not enough.
I cursed at the hobgoblin mech and the ship of bone steadily pouring out goblins armed with mechanical wands and power armor. That anger intensified as I banked around once more, fueling my sorcery with something fiendish as I charged madly into the brute.
A cannonball could not have impacted as greatly as I did the hobgoblin. With his cackling visage entrenched in my grip, we tumbled and tossed while the wicked bone within me poured through my charged ribs and out of my arm like lightning. He howled with laughter as he fried from the Volterum discharge, and then began to panic as wickedness began to seep into him, petrifying his skin into a statue of metallic bone that would remain throughout the ages.
Therein marked the start of my crucible.
After that, I continued past the Oim border and the mountains straddling them, seeing the fault that Ratter must have emerged from on the other side. Upwards of a tenday was spent crawling back and forth, killing everything within. Filling it in with rubble; filling my bone worm with bones to create bone bots to scout this foreign environment around me while my badger tank finished off any survivors.
I waited until the start of the Crucible's second month for Ratter, thinking that if I truly did kill him, it'd be nice to kill him again before I found his boss. I never found him, but to the south, I found traces of Reina's brood so I pushed my bone boys east. That was not to say I was dismayed, however. I was quite entertained the entire time. The machinations installed by Iris and Reina allowed me to check up on the others' progress across the world.
The Mother of Flesh wasn't bound to pillage Oim like I was. She was focused on the Black Brood's expansion. An isle of flesh-crafted creatures within the inland sea to the south housed her Brood. At the bottom of a deep pit, they gestated and spread beneath the waterline, acting like mycelium to colonize the bedrock of every continent.
Iris was doing the same thing with little success; as her creatures required industrial waste and scrap to form into their habitats. Thus she elected to conduct surveillance and provide support after building a hive for herself on the northern coast of Freysia.
With Ratter nowhere to be found, however, I moved deeper into Oim. Wherein I came upon a vast lair home to an arcane, highly intelligent osseous warg. And Ratter.
He appeared when the beast was most distracted and I was preoccupied elsewhere in its lair. A bone-weakening poison was used to weaken it enough for him to steal its strength. Then he came for me.
He, and his minions.
They ripped through trunks and boulders alike to reach me, all while slinging spells from their mech-wands and throwing arcane grenades with levels of accuracy even I was impressed by.
With twin axes conjured from my fingertips, I engaged with levels of zeal only I could muster. For the first time in my life, I let my lumbar augmentations shine as brightly as everything else. I bounced and snaked all through the forested hills with reckless abandon, impaling goblins and mechs alike like an adamantine sea urchin shot from a cannon. I bounced, leaped, and darted unceasingly for weeks on end, ensuring to leave strings of adamantine silk in the wake of my travels to halt up those who lived; though not for long.
Those who lived soon fell. Yet others got away. Ratter always got away. Although I could not despise him for it. Our fights were always riveting. He had proven a capable rival, if not a cowardly one, always giving me the slip behind his minions. Always hiding when I slayed his armies.
He led me over the southwestern hills and across the mountains to skate across the glaciers near the Darkroom's southern wall, using his minions as sacrificial pawns to make himself stride that much further, that much faster. He supersonically sprinted across the wide fjord that fed the Great Oim Sea and darted north, back into the tundra and forests, using scavenged mech-wands and arcane javelins to destroy my vehicles whenever possible.
Up and around the small peninsula at the opposite end of the Great Oim Sea- over 2,000 kilometers of rough terrain, I chased Ratter. Throughout the 2nd month and through to The Crucible's 3rd, my Boneworm Train chased me, absorbing the fields of bone to repair itself, build rails, and construct more cannons atop to protect itself from the swarm of ever-increasing goblins keeping pace with it.
But still, it was not enough. He brought me to the end of the line and retreated, giving my train nowhere to churn; and I could not chase him, for we received orders to recall on the 1st of the final month.
We were being invaded.