Doom Story Update

3k words

***

It had taken her legions sooner than she expected to answer her new orders, and while she’d always loathed the lesser demons for their lack of backbones, this time she was glad for their swift obedience.

The possessed had opened up gateways around the gore nests, using them as focal points to transport her demons to the staging point. There had been delays getting the demons in the destroyed nest’s quadrant into action, but that was to be expected, and the few remaining forces that Andreas hadn’t suffered were hardly worth the effort anyway.

She had watched from the rooftops as her legions amassed, filling the concrete streets with their red bodies. The occasional brawl cropped up here and there from the fodder, but that was to be expected from such a brittle, yet numerous force.

By the time the portals had dispensed the last of her ranks, she was gazing upon an army, their battle-hungry faces surveying her just as she surveyed them. It was a far cry from the cosmic battleforces she’d been granted during her first conquest of the continent, before the Dark Lord had decided to whisk portion after portion of her resources for more ‘important’ campaigns, but that did not detract from its substantiality.

Just shy of ten thousand demons had free run of Spain, and with little else to do but to fight amongst themselves, they had leapt at the chance for action. Imps made up the vanguard, while a mix of mancubus’, cacodemons, knights and revenants made up the backbone.

The former would soak up as much gunfire as possible while the latter spearheaded the siege. Hell had used such a stratagem across many worlds, and had proven equal parts effective and reliable, Sharrya had a backup plan all the same.

She was not alone up on those rooftops. Flanking her were two of the biggest demonic castes ever spawned from Hell, towering over even Sharrya. Their humanoid bodyplans were pungent to look at. One leg was entirely synthetic, while the other was a glistening tan colour, the wrinkled flesh sleaving over three ivory toes. The mechanics from the leg spread up into the crotch area, where circuit boards and thick wiring veined into the torso, hooked up to sockets and pumps that had replaced most of the organs. Their ribcages were five layers deep, visible through rips in its sinewy flesh.

Like its legs, one of its pink arms was whole, tipped with four clawed fingers, while the other had been replaced with a missile launcher with four rotating barrels. Any fraction of movement from them, even just a flex of its claws, was followed by a whir of motors. If Sharrya were to tear a gash through its fleshy parts, she doubted she’d see very much that hadn’t been replaced with metallic counterparts.

Not that she would entertain such thoughts lightly. Cyberdemons were cruel, sadistic, and blessed by the Hell-gods themselves. It was only through the Dark Lord’s orders that they served Sharrya as her bodyguard. Without such prestigious orders, they would have strung her corpse on the cathedral’s walls and usurped her operation long ago.

“Neither of you are to engage until the imps have done their duty,” Sharrya said to them, the cyberdemon’s long, upswept horns slicing the air as they turned their flat faces down on her. The shape of their features reminded her of bats. “Once the gate opens, or the field collapses, whichever is first, only then you may commence the slaughter.”

The one on the left nodded his horned head, while the other grunted. The two monsters followed her silently as she stepped between them, moving for the far side of the rooftop. A winged imp was perched like a gargoyle nearby, his arrowhead tail swishing back and forth at her approach.

“Give the order to your kin,” Sharrya said. “On this day, we march for glorious battle.”

The creature nodded, its leathery wings flapping hard as he took off like a missile, streaking over the heads of the army and toward the rearguard. Sharrya took up the demon’s place, pausing to admire the view for a little longer before stepping into the open air.

Her cybernetic armour was layered with shock absorbers, but she would have survived the four-storey-tall drop without it. Electric whines cut through the air as her heavy frame crashed to the street, spiderweb cracks blooming from her hooves.

Panicked squawks rose from the surrounding crowd of imps and revenants that had gathered at the foot of her procession, scrambling to get clear as the cyberdemons fell down to either side of her, their prosthetic legs falling to kneeling positions as they absorbed the fall’s impact. The crashes they made as they hit the ground were like two miniature earthquakes.

Sharrya moved through the crowd without delay, the demons parting around her. Before her lay the streets of the city, some of the blocks obliterated under artillery and weapons fire, a vague sense of recognition passing her mind as she examined the walled streets. She must have walked this place at some earlier point in her conquest, though the details escaped her in favour off the present.

Her chest surged with passion as her demons joined her march, the sounds of their cries for bloodshed muffled through her helmet. This was what she was born to do. Her at the spearhead, her elite guard behind her, and her legions behind them, their desire for conquest enunciated by every step. Leading a standing force was a euphoria like no other, it was the one thing that gave her purpose, and it had been denied to her for so long that she had become lazy, content, weak.

No longer.

Now she had structure, she had a goal, and with those she would not be stopped. She would break down the Rallypoint’s walls, secure her human, and prove to the Dark Lord she didn’t need all those resources he had taken from her. It was all so very simple.

Though she imagined Andreas would find some way to complicate things. That was all well and good – the challenge would erase all her congealing faults – and she welcomed, no, insisted that he try and stop her. It was more fun that way.

For the next half hour, the stomp of hooves and feet cut through the pervasive silence of the decaying city, her legion trailing along in her wake. She kept her eyes forward the whole way, though in her mind she could see the way they flowed through the ruins after her. They crept through every road and sidewalk, climbing the broken windows and moving over every crater with a disciplined ease. Her army was like a giant cloud of gas, flowing through the destruction unhindered as it zeroed in on her target.

The tips of the Rallypoint’s walls rose into view before long, the sun setting on the horizon directly behind it, the domed rooftops inside the complex glinting in the light. The great guns on the corners were set in their resting positions, meaning no forewarning had reached the defenders about her oncoming force.

A stew of intermingling feelings settled in her stomach as the lower ends of the walls became visible, and she beheld the fortress in its entirety. It felt like an age had passed since she’d last laid eyes on the Rallypoint, and its image brought forward all those sequestered memories she’d rather kept locked away.

She remembered a section of the eastern wall had sunken away, splitting the whole section in twain as the giant slice of metal had fallen into a recess. Thick lines of humans dressed in everyday clothes were rushing through the gap in the wall, columns of tanks with their treads lined with sandbags forming two protective lines to either side. They filled the air with fire and tungsten as her legions gave pursuit, tides of demons slamming into the first layers of the point-defence. Her minions were endless, but their bullets were not, and the lack of ammo and her personal oversight of the offence ensured steady progress towards the gate.

She remembered one of the humans screaming strings of numbers into his radio, and it was only a little later on she realised those had been coordinates. The fools had called down artillery right on their positions, but she supposed that wasn’t really a foolish decision. They were overrun, and were dead the moment the gate had begun to close.

The terrible racket as the sixty-meter-tall gate closed had been terrible, rising up at just a slow enough pace that if she pushed her forces enough, they might be able to climb over before it closed too much. The tanks and the soldiers had delayed them too much, however, and by the time her legion had cut down the last vehicle, the gate had risen over thirty meters. She remembered about eight imps had made the climb anyway, but only four of them had managed to reach the top lip, their clawed toes the last thing she saw of them before scrabbling over the gate. They had likely been shot a few moments later on the way back down the other side, but she had to respect the dedication.

That had been the only time she’d seen the interior, and when she tried to remember what lay inside, all that came to was an explosion of green.

She had given the order to fall back, both because trying to scale those walls was suicide, and because the oncoming bombardment was battering the masses. There had been a rise in the Earth about half a mile off from the fortress, and she had used the vantage to analyse the grounds for the follow-up attacks she was already planning that day.

She stood on that vantage now, one hoof slightly raised above the other as she perched on the slope, eyes scanning the section of wall she knew to be a gate. It was camouflaged into the wall very well, but to her trained eyes she could just about spot the grooves running down the barrier from top to bottom. She had made the mistake of splitting up her forces to hit the three sides of the Rallypoint accessible by land, but now the true place to strike was more obvious than ever.

“Legions of Hell!” she roared, her voice booming across the immediate area, her voice carrying in the still air. “For too long have these humans cowered right under our noses, mocking us with their very existence. That ends today! They are marked for Sin, and you shall be the ones to do the branding. Go! Cauterize this scab once for all! Go!”

The legions had taken off before her speech had even ended, the frenzied imps and groaning possessed sprinting and leaping into the no-mans-land dividing the ruins from the Rallypoint. The heavier castes hurried to keep up with them, tiding across the barren ground in a mad dash.

Craters tens of meters in diameter pockmarked the terrain, but her legions flowed between the obstructs without delay, fuelled on by their hatred for the hiding mortals. Sharrya wished to join them, to rip through those walls with her own two hands, but she tempered her excitement. She could not afford to be impulsive.

The imps crossed the first hundred meters unmolested, thousands of them breaking cover from the ruins and pouring into the open. She thought she could see figures up on the walls, perhaps those were lookouts trying to raise the alarm.

On the second hundred meters, even more movement lined the fortress, followed by a distinct clanking of metal that carried over the distance. Sharrya watched as the heavy gun emplacement on the left corner began to shift, its motors cranking as it rotated on its housing. The quad-cannons turned from the skies to the ground, adjusting its sights across the charging imps. The gun on the right corner mirrored its movements.

There was no delay, the great guns opened up on the encroaching horde, each barrel erupting in fire and filling the air with thunder. The canons fired in slow succession, first the two on the left, then the two on the right, the muzzles rocking back to adjust for the heavy recoil.

At this range, there was no travel time. Each payload threw up great clumps of dirt and ash, obliterating tens of demons with each shot and sending dozens more scattering. Body parts mingled with the tossed Earth, showering down on the imps who attempted to make their charge more erratic in the hopes of becoming less easy targets.

The fort guns walked their sights across the charge, explosions of detritus travelling down the imps as though unseen landmines were cooking off. Not even the full scope of possessed had stepped foot into the killing field, but Sharrya didn’t need the height to realise the spearhead was taking heavy casualties.

Heavy, but not unexpected, though that correction did little to quell the troubled pang in her heart.

The guns turned back the other way, shaving off the demonic ranks ten layers at a time. No imp or possessed change course, as going back or seeking cover would only prolong their time in the no-mans-land. The guns had a wide firing arc, but their size meant they couldn’t get a line of sight directly at the wall’s base, but it was almost two full minutes of evisceration before an imp made it through.

He was only a red speck at this distance, but he stood out against the fort, and he began to hurry up the vertical face, claws and toes digging into the metal for purchase. When he was halfway up the wall, gunfire erupted from between the buttresses, a stream of bullets sending the imp careening into freefall.

More imps were breaking through to the wall, their numbers reduced to the dozens, but they followed in the imp’s example regardless, scurrying up the metal like questing ants. The corner guns disembowelled the charge all the while, the tips of their barrels glowing with heat.

The cyberdemon on her left growled, a sound that made even her uneasy, and she had travelled far more nightmarish places than Hell. He made to step forward, but Sharrya held up a hand.

“Not even you could withstand those heavy guns,” she warned. “Victory relies on your discretion, so get a hold of yourself. Your time will come soon.”

The cyberdemon bristled, staring into her soul with those beady eyes, but it seemed to decide a fight wasn’t worth it. She had to be firm with these monsters, it was the only way to keep them in check. She could relate to its growing impatience, however. It was not easy watching her legion get torn to shreds while she stood safely at the far rear.

Her troubles were quickly put aside, however, when the flap of dozens of wings reached her ears. She turned to look behind her, her spirits soaring as winged imps swarmed the skies, their calloused bodies weaving between the skyscrapers. They banked over her army like locusts, rising into the air on their spread, veiny wings. Their number was countless, the fliers resembling a blob if one unfocused their eyes.

The swarm careened across the battlefield, their flight path curving high above the Rallypoint. Such a tightly packed aerial body would have been chewed up by flak rounds, but the Rallypoint’s guns were focused on the ground forces.

The gun on the right attempted to correct this critical mistake, but the winged demons were already halfway across the battlefield, angling their bodies head-first as they swooped into a collective dive. They rained down atop the walls, slicing human figures apart through sheer momentum.

The winged legion fell upon and between the buttresses, taking the posted humans by surprise. Sharrya could see humans being tossed from the battlements, others being gripped by the shoulders and hoisted into the sky by pairs of imps, bringing them to soaring heights and then dropping them to grisly fates. The attention of the scampering imps was relieved as the fliers sowed chaos, but the true clause of the attack was more than a simple distraction.

She was too far away to make out details, but the corner gun that had turned to face the fliers fired off three more salvos, and then abruptly stopped. She could see flapping wings all around the weapon, her demons flocking to the emplacement like moths. She could imagine them ripping into its mechanical guts, slicing the components with their claws, sending fireballs into its exposed logic circuits, perhaps tearing apart the compartment of its gunner crew. Whether it was any of these things or none, it mattered not, the massive gun had ceased firing. Its counterpart continued to walk its devastating barrages across the ground, but that was an enormous reduction in the defender’s firepower.