He was relieved that the semblance of an organized ambush flew out the window. The rix troopers poking at the bushes with their rifle were not.
The foul insect and its friends spread out and cocked their guns, energy regulators charging up as they prepared to turn the foliage into ashes. Snapped twigs around folded leaves with footsteps on the ground beneath told them all they needed to know.
This assumption shattered much in the same way the rear trooper's head did when what his chitinous skull split into two with the whispering wind of something swinging through the air, two both halves leaning opposite directions staring wide eyed and shocked as brain matter and flecks of blood sprayed onto those in front of him. Panic spread, weapons raised, one firing prematurely and answered with hissing chastisement.
None of them saw the huge fungoid descending but they heard the rustling of the branches and leaves just in time to see the knife making a horrid crunching sound drive through the face of another bug, the impact cratering shell and shattering its grotesque visage, sending its limbs in a wild spasm.
Horror turned to hatred then to a choked gasps; even less than that. Choked gasps barely escaped erupted lungs, blown apart into gory mist a silenced energy rifle, turning a single column of soldiers into a pile of twitching death-begging bodies. Another fumbled for its rifle, aiming at the fungoid terror and wildly tapping the trigger and cauterizing the flesh of another of its own, shoved out before him and staring with a mortified scowl, head jerking from each round that punished its vaporizing biomatter.
Maleirzwan moved faster than the revulsion could set in, kicking the corpse into the shocked soldier as he barreled into another rix soldier, ducking low in a blur of bowling motion, smashing into his knees and sending him tumbling to the ground. He swept around, feeling the butt of a rifle smash into his side. The pain reinvigorated him as he spun about, a serrated knife finding the ribcage of an enemy; sawing, biting, chewing, ripping in moments - something awoke in the blade, reflecting in his consciousness. A hunger, a need, a hate that was not his own, as if drank from the lifeless body on its end now fallen to the dirt.
*Click*. The sound of a mag jittering in a gun - the soldier he'd knocked down earlier, rising to his feet, hands shaking, mandibles clenched.
Shriek and chitter. Another who'd been knocked aside amidst the carnage, steadying his aim, right on his centre of mass.
Burning anger. A vengefulness much like the one that echoed inside of his skull, inside of his veins, boiling and pouring out at the seams. A another gun, a bigger gun, a bigger bug, bigger guts.
They were so helpless to him. The hatred told him. The hatred knew. He welcomed it as he would a guest. Living steel hungered, hostile flesh awaited. Too close to raise his own firearm.
So be it.
His arm swung outwards, an almost comical gesture. A palm erupted as if something had shot from within but it was not a single blur of black but a lengthy, flapping mass of living perversity. It slapped against the arm of the rix who had thought he could take his shot, throwing off his arm, before it wrapped around his arms. Hundreds of legs grasped against his form, scratching flesh before the same hungry sawing continued - a knife was held in the creature's palps and mandibles, now burrowing into his throat, life fading with every gnashing incision.
The larger rix swung his hefty weapon upwards but his dead-standing comrade was yanked his way, crashing into him as the snaking limb slid off of his body. He spun as he tossed him, swinging the living whip and rolled away into the same bush they'd thought he was hiding in. Rifle fire followed, igniting leaves and shattering branches. A grenade replied. The bigger rix saw and held onto the corpse, knocked bast as the black desecrated its remains. He looked to see his comrade gurgling for life and clutching to a seeping wound in his stomach with his sole attached arm.
A splitting pain his back, a howl of agony that he had not the the strength to utter. Life extinguished before it slumped face forth onto the ground.
Maleirzwan reloaded the weapon and moved on.
---
"Maleirzwan moving to rejoin." He said as he jogged towards the others. A foul smell, rix in nature, clung to his body. He was wiping something with a cloth of some sort; bits of matter flaked off of it and the smell grew deeper and more pungent as he neared. "Are there any kuvexians on the ground?"
We are now heading to the city!
