Trash would've rather stayed down in the real dark, but she'd left home and come out to the beach of the island at night anyway, going as fast as she could out of the facility. She'd lumbered and stomped her way up and up, accidentally breaking more things than she could count, but she'd made it out of the access tunnel. She looked hard from the black surf to the treeline, hoping for a glint of red, but not finding it.
"Be-eth?" She called in her crackly voice, her eyes rounding out in indecisive fear. She thought about turning her lights on, but instinct kept claim and she stayed dark. She was big, tall and solid, and seemingly built of scrap metal, weapons, and junk shaped like a very large person. When she moved, her footsteps were heavy, and she usually rattled and clanked a lot. She had to actively try to keep it just a background noise.
"...Beth? Are you h-here?" She called again, walking closer to the trees.
The long, slow groan of cracking wood and a heavy mass of tonnage smashing along through bending trees and sand likely did nothing whatsoever for her nerves, nor the heavy shadow coming nearer and obstructing the stars that caused it. One might almost think it was a gigantic rowing ship of some kind, except it was moving on land, with clearly pained noises to both vessel and terrain as it stubbornly broke everything in its course. In but moments, it would be upon her part of the clearing.
At first, she'd thought a Tank had snuck up on her, before the flickering lines across her vision settled on the masts and the furrow in front of it. She realized she was in it's way and hurriedly moved to the edge of the clearing, not being quiet anymore. There wasn't any point, and she didn't want to be ran over.
Trash looked again, and yes, it was a ship. One that moved on land, somehow. Her eyes were wide as she watched it sail, before taking a few more crunching steps back. She was sure they'd seen her, and maybe they'd seen Beth too... She'd known things were weird up here, but this was something else. The idea they might not be friendly made her shrink back.
"...Ahoy? Hail?" She called, voice box turned up louder. She'd thought about firing a weapon upward to get their attention, but that seemed like a bad way to start things off. The lights on her shoulders and behind her spiky mouth lit up, revealing her standing there with her and watching it. She blinked and then waved. "...Avast? No, it's Ahoy. R-Right?"
Her call was answered with a strange and blistering hail of languages that were most certainly not English, although there was a bit of proto-Saxon among the Finnish, Danish, Germanic, and Scandinavian. Not a one said 'ahoy', but the bristle of arrow and explosive that -hadn't- been released at her face, only readied, bore well for her efforts at diplomacy anyway. By the standard of not being attacked, at least!
The sight of so many weapons had widened her eyes and had her take another step back, until she was nearly up against a tree. She raised her hands above her head before pausing. Her forearms were moving, parts slowly shifting around and melting, running like worms into new shapes-
Trash clenched her hands and forced her pieces to stabilize. She needed fingers, not weaponry in return. She cocked her head and glanced up, her mouth falling open as she kept tracking sharp points. Her vision blinked bright orange and then went back to grainy, static lines focusing on targets... They looked like people, from down there.
"Welcome to the is-island!" She said with her hands around her maw, her voice louder than she normally ever had it. There was static when she spoke. "Normally, people sssail around it, but...well. Here y0u are. Could some of you come down here? It's hard to yell."
She looked at what few stony faces she could see, before seeing up and beyond that. Rain clouds were gathering, up there in the dark. Soon it would storm, and Beth would be stuck in it...
"...please?" She called, lowering her hands and letting the lights on her strobe in succession.
A face, largely skeletal but still somewhat fleshed, loomed closer as he stepped off the ship and strode toward her with a large club over one shoulder and a net in the other. "PING! BIDA!" it roared at the crew, and even more rapidly assembled in view before forming a long line. "Grunnr vapna!"
In three swift, consecutive and well drilled movements, they grounded their arms. The butts of spears and halberds rested on the ground, as did axes, while many, many bows were replaced. Then as one the left hands returned to the uniform positions at their sides.
Turning to her, the figure crooked an order and barked in the same tone that modern men would associate with a drilling sergeant or a captain in field. "Langr!"
Evidently frustrated when the word didn't immediately register, the armored sailor gesticulated towards the area in front of him. "Langr!"
"Come here, please!" spouted a parrot helpfully in English, although the man smacked what dessicated remains he had in place of lips at it. "Well, he means Close Up, but it's all the same! Same! Same! Mrwaw, gotta cracker?"
Trash eyed the two as she stomped over, looking around at all the weaponry and grim people wielding it in her direction carefully. The zombies in the Basement weren't like this, not at all.
"Nooo..." She said, when she was Close Up. All her surface was filled with machinery, weaponry, and junk; it made her almost a giant, from how much of it there was. She bristled with cables, ammo belts, hydraulics, and slim threads of metal that clinked when she stood still. Even deactivated, pieces of weaponry abounded on her arms; her right elbow had slowly grown the magazine for a Reaper assault cannon as she'd moved to the pair.
"Sorry. I don't eat them." She said, blinking under scrutiny. Her mouth was like a bear trap, metal and filled with sharp points, while Her face was still mostly human, although it was dirty. Her hair hung lank and unwashed, dusted more grey than white. "...what are you? Is th-that rude? I mean, what are you doing here? Thanks for coming, but... We don't get many visitors." She said, pointedly looking towards the ship.
"Veg?" it demanded. "Veg??"
"Fight," elaborated the parrot. "Not sure if he's asking if you're going to or answering your question. Mwrhaw. I'm a wizard! A wizard! No one believes me, though. And this lot is dead set on finding somewhere to hide from the other dead boys. They all look the same to me."
"DAUTHR TIL OVNIR" the figure hissed. One didn't even need the translator to get 'death to our enemies' out of the tone. "VEG?"
"I bel-Ieive you. Oh. Uh..." Trash stammered, eyes darting between the two. She'd been worried push would come to shove.
"I don't want to fight." She said simply, holding her right arm up and continuing it's transformation. Her fingers extended and metal writhed until the Reaper cannon had replaced the limb entirely. She cycled the barrels once, on the verge of firing a salvo into the air before lowering the heavy weapon down. "I'd really rather not..."
"Have you seen anyone else on th1s island? About this tall-" she showed where with her other hand-"thin, wearing a mask?"
"No one, no one. We only just marooned. Probably not be around for long if there's nothing for them to burn or stab or steal, really! Especially with their cousins a half day behind. Mnyhahh. Don't be surprised if slightly prettier looking but uglier intended sorts just like these crash your beach looking for them. Maybe your friend ran into Sven if it's unlucky."
"Oh... Are you running from your cous-ins? " She asked around her, knowing full well only the bird spoke English. "The Facility I live in is already burnt and stolen, but if you want, I supp0se you could stab the walls."
"Are you an invasion force?" Even with her single-toned voice, she didn't sound wary or scared; moreso curious. What was worth invading around here? "Beth is very unlucky, and I am too... Who's Sven? Is that your captain?"
"Sitja," the officer ordered more calmly, and the troops replaced their weapons and sat on the deck or at their oaring and sail posts. "Berja ykkarr andskoti, brtet."
"Er, sit, death to your enemies, etc. He's pretty well decided not to stab you. Good show?" the parrot warbled. "Don't say that name again much if you want to keep that going. This is our captain. Weiss. The man whose name we aren't going to stress our violence happy undead friends with by saying a lot is the captain of another crew of them, except that crew is supposed to be killing this one. Mwrhah. Wissu, wissu, I could really use a drink."
"They invaded ages ago and never left these islands. They killed their shield kin for food and coin, and their gods have been sending a different sort of undead to kill them as punishment since, as I understand it. These are Draugr and Wights-"
The captain growled warningly and the bird flinched visibly- "and the others are-"
"EINHERJAR!" a lookout screamed at another ship cresting early on the horizon, illuminated by a gigantic flaming woman-and-sword whose wings blazed out as long as its sails. The set of strange things Trash had been talking to immediately began to lash out, and she could see what the wizard had meant by 'prettier'- in that their targets, while wearing very similar armor in very similar formations, looked entirely alive and human.
Trash had blurted static from surprise when the other ship had broken the dark and set towards them, whipping and staring at it. The crew didn't look like the Zombies she knew, either- much less skeletal than the Undead she'd been talking to, for one thing. The Draugr launching arrows were merciless, from what she tracked heading toward the other vessel.
This wasn't at all what she'd expected. The surface world moved very fast. She raised her gun and aimed at the enemy mast before slowly lowering it instead, considering. This sounded like a matter of honor, and she didn't need to get involved in a fight that wasn't hers. Besides, none of this crew had guns that she could see. If the others didn't either- and she didn't hear any going off- then it wouldn't be a good idea to just cut them down. She didn't want to, anyway.
She took a step back, and then another, tracking both ships and turning her lights off.
"Deyr fé,
deyja frændr,
deyr sjálfr et sama;
ek veit einn,
at aldri deyr:
dómr um dauðan hvern."
So declaring, the heavily bearded Einherjar that the parrot had called Sven swung his greatsword and hewed halfway into a Draugr's neck as the two forces closed, then thrust it to the ground with a heavy shoulder rush and swept off the head with another mighty stroke that rattled the blade as it crunched in and through bone. A spear pierced his side in return, ichor flowing from the corpse's rebuttal, and he gave a laughing howl as of the most depraved of combat masochists in the modern era before the ancient impaled his fellow again. He unseamed him from the knave to the chaps, long dead intestines not so much falling out as dustily idling from the severed navel and lungs faintly withering slightly more from the exposure and the brilliant blade through its throat, the gaping hole quite enough for someone Trash's size to put her arm clear through.
"Cattle die,
kinsmen die
you yourself die;
I know one thing
which never dies:
the judgment of a dead man's life."
The parrots translation was sad and perchance a fair bit ironic, considering what it had explained about the situation.
Whereas the Draugr, being very much more angry than dead, seized its punishment and kinsman both and began trying to throttle his leg, not being able to reach his neck from its pinioned position in the deckwood. Raking claws and the creak of ligaments threatened a lost limb. It was a scene repeated all about the two ships, although with different implements; a shield mashing in a face or snapping vertebrae here, an arrow through eye and ear there, a long boarding knife clipping open a spine and all the precious meat around it. Chaos and carnage held where before her night had been lonely and concerned, but peaceful by comparison.
Taking her aside by means of a head nudge and a wink, the parrot addressed her more directly. "This is a long and involved and complicated story, but, mrwarh, I'll make it short and spitting easy. You may want to just shoot all of them, mind you, it'd be even easier. One way or another, they'd stop being your headache; even if it meant the end of headaches."
"Ahem. A long time ago, the era of the Scandinavian and Norwegian kings was coming to a close. People were converting to Christendom, settling foreign lands, becoming the knights of those lands instead of raiding them for the gods. One set of them went further and stole the armory of their lord, killing the soldiers who guarded it, and fled to use it as collateral with a set of silver merchants they had met upon the Silk Road. They wanted to find the Japan country and settle it, for its vast wealth in silver and in warring peoples.
"They sailed right past it in rotting hulks of timber, desperate, and starving in unfamiliar waters off an unfamiliar continent, in a wholly different ocean than their own. When the end came, they decided to a man to kill each other, gripped by the madness of fear, the ocean, and hunger each, as well as a sense of their own magnitude of betrayal. When they died, they went neither to the halls of the new god or to the sets of their old.
"Instead, the pirates opened their eyes, those that still had them, and discovered they were still there on the craft that had brought their death and doom. Still laying in their own gore. The pain of it stilled several for decades before they began to move again, sailing for anywhere, anyplace, to set down on land again.
"When they committed their murders in life, they attracted the attentions of beasts in the ruins, far back in Europe; the powries, who cannot be fled. They unintentionally brought swarms of the fierce little red faerie monsters into Pacific lands, hunting for the ones that first aroused their attention, learning to use ship and star to hunt even more efficiently.
"Powrie and Draugr first landed in this archipelago years ago, and were driven off nightly by some of the stranger latent native forces; and, also, the ones who are killing them right now, their gods' answer to their betrayal. Night after night the Einherjar get thrown back into Valhalla if they lose, but strive to utterly destroy the Wights otherwise.
"I'm just a plot convenience, er, an impartial deserver who would really like you to kill all of them and make me not a parrot anymore, myraah. One who had nothing at all to do with any of this and didn't deserve to be a bird. Mnyaewh?"
"Oh- so, oh-" she started, eyes wide. Staring around her showed countless violent scenes, death on a scale she'd never seen before. She was almost hiding behind the tree by the time her glance around was done. An ammo belt had swam like a lamprey from her back to the gun at her elbow, and she was a little happy to be at full ammunition. This was a lot to process, so the simple things comforted her.
"They're... Two tr-ribes of dead, then? Warring for decades, probably... I don't think I should kill them all. Or st1ll be here. But I'm sorry... Why are you -a bird? Did the Thieves do that to. You?" She asked. Two Draugr were approaching her; she stomped into view before firing two thirty-round bursts of bullets over their heads, her eyes still wide, her mouth hanging open.
"Sorry..." She said, after returning to the parrot, not watching them head back to the battle proper. "But, so, uh... They're evil, then? The ones that had you, who the Einherg- Ein.her.jar are killing?"
She raised the gun again, while her left arm began to slither and reshape itself as well.
"If they're bad, they deserve to die, don't they?" She asked the bird, as static slithered and locked onto targets across her view. "The world will be a better place. Maybe the einherjar-" she looked relieved to have said it right."-have seen Beth!"
"The thieves may have, er, been indirectly responsible. A bit. A little. Maybe. Ughhh, fine; if you're going to shoot them for me, you deserve the truth. Their own gods weren't the only ones involved that got angry about the whole affair... although ours, what you would call Polynesian instead, they were more angry with -me- for guiding them in to shore instead of leaving them floating trash out there forever," the parrot cringed, hiding his face under a colorful wing. "When you're young, and stupid, and not divinely cursed, you tend to think that having an army of thugs that won't die would be a benefit to your plans if you could turn them loose on your enemies."
"So I stole the thieves from the waves; but I couldn't control them any more than their king or their gods did. Now all is chaos, and they definitely deserve to die."
"Beth?" the one called Sven frowned back at her, between an ax lodging partly in his shoulder. "Hvat?"
The word sounded like it was meant, a 'what', although in their heavy accent.
"I wondered why they were he-ere." She said, looking up at the Parrot before aiming and concentrating again. Only Sven's hail caused her to blink before she shrugged and cut two Dead men in half with tight bursts of auto-cannon bolts anyway.
"Yes. Hello!" She waved happily with her clawed left hand. Trash loved meeting new people. "My friend, Beth? Have you se3n her? About this tall, very thin, wears a ma-ask? Red eyes?" She asked, watching him take the axe before eyeing his trail of the dead. They'd been right not to say his name. She took careful aim above him, closing one eye before a missle shot from her shoulder and hit one draugr in the distance with a fireburst.
"Sven? Welcome to the island!" She said, her throat lighting up before her weapons did. The two-barreled assault weapon roared as she tracked a few more targets and cut lines in the terrain behind them. "As for you... I want them all to leave, so it's best. I kill all the bad ones here, and you'll be free?... Stick around. I might. need your help." She said quietly to the Parrot.
"They're not really so good at the staying dead thing," the parrot suggested. "Pushing their ship away might help more. Or just putting them in enough cages or on enough sticks to stop them moving in a troubling wa- whaoooa those are a lot of guns."
It was the parrot's turn to be silently terrified at the mass of war that Trash could unleash, even as the Viking opposite gave an uproarious laugh watching the devastation before striding to clap her shoulder. "Il ya duna, hird forad!"
"Make noise, ... army monster?" the parrot translated, and flinched as if expecting her to shoot him next for it. "Er- in the he seems to really like and respect you sense of that?"
"Beth á landa-leiton?"
"He doesn't seem to have seen her. He's asking if she went exploring. S-s-sorry, mraww."
"Darn... Yes, she did. But Beth isn't all together, so I need to find her. It's dangerous when she's out." Trash said, brightening at him. Army Monster wasn't that far off the mark, really. She fired a pair of missiles and turned back to him before they hit.
"No one else lives here, so there's that, but there are other Facilities and the tunnel network to the other islands... I think she's just in the wo-oods somewhere, fighting trees, but still. All this war might draw h3r out..."
The explosion lit up the night in front of her with a fireball.
"Is your axe wound okay?" She asked, turning and firing something on her arm. A red-white beam of light lanced out, and much further away, undead burned.
The Norseman did not speak her language, but the parrot translated; in turn, the undead of holier persuasion than his fellows glanced at it and shrugged heavily, speaking rapidly enough that the bird failed to catch it the first time. Eventually, the answer came out, between sword strokes, explosions, and burning incendiary masers and lasers, as "It will be."
Abruptly, and truly so at that, half of the battlefield and one of the grounded ships simply vanished. Utterly. Starkly gone. There was a flap of the Valkyrie's wings, cheated screams from those Wights and Draugr who were not still suffering from injuries, inspired actual death at last, or Trash's weapons, and a great deal more silence.
"Every day, they begin anew, in the halls of Valhalla," the parrot whispered in the quiet. "Usually the Einherjar just brutally kill each other there if the Aesier or Vanir haven't sent them on a task. That does put a bit of a damper on fights that haven't finished by the day's close, though. And the crew they chase runs further from every battlefield."
Indeed, the survivors... if such can be used for unremittent undying vagabonds that already died, once or several times... were already pulling themselves together as best they could and hurling their longship back into grinding motion, aiming for anywhere- anywhere but here- mostly the sea. Trash was almost forgotten, two heavy longbow shots and a javelin in parting aside.
"So... One eternally runs, and one eternally chases?" She asked, before taking the shots she saw coming. They stuck fast in her, wedged by force. They weren't strong enough to pierce her skin, but they were poking out like fence-posts in a dump. Trash reached out and ripped the javelin from her chest, dropping it down to wave at the retreating Draugr.
"We really usually don't have so many guests... I wonder if they'll be backk? I doubt it." She muttered, her arm slithering apart into a hand once again. She looked around at their foreheads owlishly.
"Well, you all g-got them! Or some of them, anyway. Go0d job!" She said, her voice higher-pitched than it had been. "...welcome to the island?"
It was a fair observation, of course. Kuwahawi had many strange mysteries of its own accord above and below the Pacific waters, but it was also entirely provably peaceful and quiet enough to make it a place for vacationing and not for armed expeditions. Although she had meant it more than likely as regarded her own facility and island, it held true for most of the Archipelago at large, in truth.
What ever could be drawing these things out, and where, oh where, was Beth? Surely unrelated, of course; but perchance not coincidence.
"I, er, don't suppose you know what year it is?" the parrot asked. "I haven't been on shore since eighteen forty five, when I learned this language."
"It's..." She thought about it. "Twenty fifteen, I think. You're an old spirit! Do you think-"
Lightning flashed, and her gaze snapped upward. She grit her teeth together worriedly and looked around her at the jungle and assembled dead soldiers, her fingers writhing nervously.
"Have any of you seen Beth, maybe? Tall, thin, wears a mask, has a machete? A ch-choppy sword?" She asked hopefully, before turning back to Sven. "If the Draugrr are gone, can you please help me look around? The storm is coming..."
The lynch pin for the reentry of his warriors peered at her, the sole Einherjar remaining almost not casting a concern to the rapidly departing duty leaving the shores. Aloud, Sven murmured to the parrot. "Hvat tala?"
"Lunks don't speak English. Pl-please don't let him crush me. That hurt the first time. They make bad enemies. Er-" the parrot stopped to translate. The Hirðman Einherjar slowly nodded, then tested her words, almost as though to defy what had just been explained to her.
"Ch-choppy... sward? Sword? Sverð?" he pointed up the remnants of the treeline and an outcropping of rock. "Hljodlyndr Söldner."
He indicated a chop and something going flying, presumably a head, since he picked up one of the ones handy and hurled it for demonstration.
Trash watched as the rearguard of the Einherjar began to depart, blinking. They really all left at daybreak? She'd thought one or two wouldn't want to, or would rather chase down the fleeing Others... But if it was How Things Were, she understood perfectly. She wondered if Valhalla was a nice place, or the wolf-den she imagined.
She nodded quickly when Sven showed her the head. "Yes, I c0uld see that. Fighting would draw her. Sorry I don't speak your language... She must still be in the area! Do Draugr vanish when the sun rises? I see some bod.bodies, but if not." She paused midsentance.
Trash blinked down at Sven before she closed her eyes and sighed. "I think I know what she's doing, wherever she is. You don't have to come with me, it might get danger-rous."
"You can stick with me, though." She said to the Parrot. "Nobody will hurt you up here. Except the Doctor, but- nevermind. Sven seems nice! Did he really crush you?" She asked, smiling at the man in question. With her mouth, it looked sad, like a shattered metal slinky was leering at him.
"Vikings do that. Crush birds. Kick dwarves into fires. Crush each other's heads over smalltalk at dinner or trick perfectly decent trolls into eating their own daughters. You might have a better time of it if you throw the 'nice' man back into the brine, big lady," the parrot advised.
"Fighting. Fy-ting. Bardagi?" asked the fellow, wiping blood from his matted beard and gesturing with weaponry in various directions before gesturing at the carnage. "War? Is war, fighting?"
"Yes, War is fighting!" She said, nodding enthusiastically and giving the parrot a reproachful, basset-hound look. "Beth loves fighting. It makes her feel better. Something that size was-"
Further away across the former battlefield, there was a sudden sound of rending metal and a rising howl. It was filled with fury and choked with anger, and it kept going until it cut out to the sound of more ripping.
"...That's her." Trash said simply, looking in the direction of the scream.
Hefting his greatsword to a shoulder brace, the Norseman broke into a light run. Towards the noise, rather than away from.
Trash followed at a light pace, careful not to dislodge her passenger.
The bodies of the Dead were hacked apart when they began to find them, thick wounds like axe-blows deep into the few surfaces that stayed together like shields or rib cages. The path was meandering and seemingly random, with more and more carcasses dotting along it. There were blood splatters all over, filled with footprints. Where there was a lot clearly not from the Draugr, it shone like oil and stank like wet pennies.
The more dead, the more of these patches, until they came to an old quarry. In front of the gate was enough of Beth's blood that it looked like the girl had exploded and covered everything in a radius.
"Oh... She's having fun." Trash said, worried. She walked up to the open gate, paused, and then pointed over near an old bulldozer.
"There. There's Beth." She said, her heart sinking.
The thin, ragged woman was either surrounded by Draugr or keeping them prisoner; either way, they watched each other. Her shoulders rose and fell; her black hair hung lank and dripping red, and her eyes burned out of her simple white mask. She was growling and twitching around to watch them all; the machete in her hands was chipped and scratched, but a thick slab of killing metal, still.
Beth snarled and swung out; her blade hit a shield with a sound like an axe meeting a tree stump before she pulled it-and him- closer. She ripped the machete out and brought it down again and again, battering him until he was kneeling; When he was, Beth kicked out at the shield and swung, decapitating the man. She hoisted his head and threw it at the others.
Those with spears had stabbed her while she mauled their man, several times. She'd acted like she hadn't felt it, hadn't even noticed. Her own footsteps were soaked with blood too.
"...she's very nice, when you get to know her." Trash said.
"Did the Doctor you mentioned make you like this?" the parrot whispered, more than a little chilled even with its own exposure to this sort of violence over the... long period Trash had described. "Er- can you get her over without her bleeding out?"
"...No. There were other doctors, but she's the last one now. Someone has to k3ep the records." Trash said, lifting her hand and looking down at it before glancing at the parrot. "Other ones turned me into this. Something from another universe, but without the Warp? I used to be a re-real person. So did she, I think."
Beth lost an arm to a sword-slash; her next strike cut through shield, armor, and sternum all in a sudden spray. She hissed and grabbed for her arm, jamming it back along the wound; she took the sudden rain of blows silently, huddling over herself tightly.
Her blood kept falling as Beth straightened, her arm good as new, and roared back into the attack.
"They only infected me with something-oh, no, 1'm not contagious- but they really messed Beth up. Bad."
The girl in question grabbed a spear where it had stabbed into her before snatching the warrior's wrist and cutting off his arm, lunging forward and chopping his head solidly in half. She snapped the spear with another blow before yanking the head out of ether back.
"They're all gone, but we're still here. Still alive." Trash said quietly, before it thundered again. "I think I can get her attention. Don't worry, she has plenty of blood. Beth never runs out."
"So I'm seeing," the parrot croaked, and averted his gaze. "Are there more of you?"
"Huh? Oh... No. There were more people tested than just me, but they lost themselves by stage four. None of them ever made it past stage six." Trash said, her simple voice downturning. "I was the dark hor-rse candidate. Brought from outside. Nobody expected the virrrs-vi.rus. To bond so well with me."
"I was their last success, before the Facility turned out the lights for good. The both of us, re-eally. They made me a monster and her a killer." Trash said, looking small and fragile for something her size. "We're both the remains. I think she'll like you both, too. I hope. I might just... Let her k1ll these last few."
Working its jaw, one of the decapitated screamed soundlessly for about five minutes in rage, hands writhing as Beth cleaved them. Eventually, far too long for the comfort of Trash's companion and in a note of interest for the man approaching her, the animation stopped when the pieces were too small to have anything resembling ligaments. Then Sven was upon her.
Beth turned and eyed Sven like a wolf over fresh kills, a low warning growl coming from under her mask as she gripped her gore-streaked machete tighter and pointed it at him. Her eyes were glassy and dull, and up close, Sven could watch her wounds crawl closed. Beth snarled at him again before she hefted a head off the ground and hurled it into the bushes.
"I wonder if she knew we were due for a battle?" Trash mused, before the first raindrops began to fall, plinking across her surface. She looked at the sky, troubled, while Beth began to run with blood anew, from her tight black suit to her dripping, lank hair.
"H'vild, Thegn," the Norseman instructed in the low commanding tones of a field marshal doing personal inspection instead of the bark of mass maneuver. He locked eyes with the mask and rested on his sword as the other arm swung a still gagging decapitated head itself. "H'vild."
"Be at ease," he said in uncomfortable, broken English, robbing it of much of the tone's former power in his halting confusion over whether they were the right words. "Ease, warrior."
Beth growled again, but with less aggression this time, kneeling down and going back to dismembering her former enemies. She moved jerkingly, but deceivingly fast, looking up to the sky and raising her sword.
Beth closed her eyes and howled at the storm, all directionless anger and unsatisfied madness, spreading her arms until she ran out of breath and collapsed to her knees, morosely dragging a torso over and ripping the arm off with a grunt. She stood back up and sheathed her sword, looking around dimly. Her gaze seemed to drift slowly back to Sven no matter where she directed it.
"Hi, Beth." Trash waved, after having walked over. There was a small umbrella above the parrot's place on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Beth nodded agreeably enough before pointing at Sven, then the hacked apart bodies. Trash tilted her head and blinked. Beth pointed at Sven again before eyeing the storm again and looking meaningfully at Trash.
"His name is Sven, an Einherjar. Once dead war-rior of honor. You met his enemies already!"
Beth nodded quickly and put her boot through the torso at her feet, before looking at Sven again. She turned her gaze slowly to Trash, then back to Sven, then even more slowly back to Trash. Her machete slowly raised.
Trash narrowed her eyes and shook her head; Beth turned again and studied Sven, particularly his sword and grim bearing before she decisively sheathed her own blade once more. Trash sighed in relief as Beth took a step closer to Sven and tilted her head, kneeling down and holding out a skull from the ground like a dog with a stick.
"What ho! What is this appalling scene of slaughter?" cried an unfamiliar voice, a jostling knightfish atop a sea horse calling from just off the coast and gawping in horror. Well, one must presume it to be horror. Fish eyes do tend to goggle by nature.
Ignoring the silly, Sven tapped the skull before hurling one of the heads he held instead for her.
Trash waved at the Knight once she was sure she'd heard him, while Beth followed Sven's lead and threw the skull as hard as she could. She jerked down and grabbed more, throwing them into the bushes, or towards the ocean, or once, without warning, at the ancient bulldozer nearby. The metal bits on her seemed to add to the strength of her withered limbs.
When she'd thrown enough, she went out at a lope to grab the ones she could see to throw them again. One of the heads she'd brought back was the one Sven had shot out first.
She smacked another one into the bulldozer and laughed; it was simple and happy. The rain didn't dim her eagerness to throw heads at all. Beth pulled her machete out and threw one up in the air, waiting till it came down to split it with a quick chop. She laughed again, turning to Sven and looking at him searchingly. She tilted her head and held out the one he'd tossed to him again.
Trash smiled. "I knew she'd like you. Normally she's shy around new people, but she did just sp-I'll gallons of blood."
He waited until the bird had translated this, before giving a low, rumbling guffaw and offering a response in kind. The parrot muttered something about Tyr blessing by the blood on the bade, but looked too ill to speak it loud enough to actually make sense of the phrasing. Then, he began methodically mounting some of them on speartips and stakes before hurling them into the sea. The knightfish rode away from one such disposal narrowly avoiding being clipped.
"I- is there any food or shelter on your island, miss? Er... whatever is your name, anyway? What is this locale called? We are still in Kuwahawi isles, right?"
"Oh! Yes, we're within Kuwahawi. This is Testing Center 67bb. It was Alana Isle before then... It's small, but there's bedrock underneath us. This island is very stable." She emphasized. "There's... The facility is safe, mostly, but parts of it go very deep, and the power is off. There's food, and we c0uld have a fire. It might draw a few zombies, but they're mostly peaceful and dumb."
"I didn't-? Oh. I'm Trash. What's your name?" She asked, while Beth watched Sven at his work.
"Analu, ironically enough," wailed the bird. "The cause for cowardice and beastly form alike, in the crueler of the gods' jokes! For my name, I, am Manly, in your tongue! Analu, who is not analu!"
"Be-eth?" She called in her crackly voice, her eyes rounding out in indecisive fear. She thought about turning her lights on, but instinct kept claim and she stayed dark. She was big, tall and solid, and seemingly built of scrap metal, weapons, and junk shaped like a very large person. When she moved, her footsteps were heavy, and she usually rattled and clanked a lot. She had to actively try to keep it just a background noise.
"...Beth? Are you h-here?" She called again, walking closer to the trees.
The long, slow groan of cracking wood and a heavy mass of tonnage smashing along through bending trees and sand likely did nothing whatsoever for her nerves, nor the heavy shadow coming nearer and obstructing the stars that caused it. One might almost think it was a gigantic rowing ship of some kind, except it was moving on land, with clearly pained noises to both vessel and terrain as it stubbornly broke everything in its course. In but moments, it would be upon her part of the clearing.
At first, she'd thought a Tank had snuck up on her, before the flickering lines across her vision settled on the masts and the furrow in front of it. She realized she was in it's way and hurriedly moved to the edge of the clearing, not being quiet anymore. There wasn't any point, and she didn't want to be ran over.
Trash looked again, and yes, it was a ship. One that moved on land, somehow. Her eyes were wide as she watched it sail, before taking a few more crunching steps back. She was sure they'd seen her, and maybe they'd seen Beth too... She'd known things were weird up here, but this was something else. The idea they might not be friendly made her shrink back.
"...Ahoy? Hail?" She called, voice box turned up louder. She'd thought about firing a weapon upward to get their attention, but that seemed like a bad way to start things off. The lights on her shoulders and behind her spiky mouth lit up, revealing her standing there with her and watching it. She blinked and then waved. "...Avast? No, it's Ahoy. R-Right?"
Her call was answered with a strange and blistering hail of languages that were most certainly not English, although there was a bit of proto-Saxon among the Finnish, Danish, Germanic, and Scandinavian. Not a one said 'ahoy', but the bristle of arrow and explosive that -hadn't- been released at her face, only readied, bore well for her efforts at diplomacy anyway. By the standard of not being attacked, at least!
The sight of so many weapons had widened her eyes and had her take another step back, until she was nearly up against a tree. She raised her hands above her head before pausing. Her forearms were moving, parts slowly shifting around and melting, running like worms into new shapes-
Trash clenched her hands and forced her pieces to stabilize. She needed fingers, not weaponry in return. She cocked her head and glanced up, her mouth falling open as she kept tracking sharp points. Her vision blinked bright orange and then went back to grainy, static lines focusing on targets... They looked like people, from down there.
"Welcome to the is-island!" She said with her hands around her maw, her voice louder than she normally ever had it. There was static when she spoke. "Normally, people sssail around it, but...well. Here y0u are. Could some of you come down here? It's hard to yell."
She looked at what few stony faces she could see, before seeing up and beyond that. Rain clouds were gathering, up there in the dark. Soon it would storm, and Beth would be stuck in it...
"...please?" She called, lowering her hands and letting the lights on her strobe in succession.
A face, largely skeletal but still somewhat fleshed, loomed closer as he stepped off the ship and strode toward her with a large club over one shoulder and a net in the other. "PING! BIDA!" it roared at the crew, and even more rapidly assembled in view before forming a long line. "Grunnr vapna!"
In three swift, consecutive and well drilled movements, they grounded their arms. The butts of spears and halberds rested on the ground, as did axes, while many, many bows were replaced. Then as one the left hands returned to the uniform positions at their sides.
Turning to her, the figure crooked an order and barked in the same tone that modern men would associate with a drilling sergeant or a captain in field. "Langr!"
Evidently frustrated when the word didn't immediately register, the armored sailor gesticulated towards the area in front of him. "Langr!"
"Come here, please!" spouted a parrot helpfully in English, although the man smacked what dessicated remains he had in place of lips at it. "Well, he means Close Up, but it's all the same! Same! Same! Mrwaw, gotta cracker?"
Trash eyed the two as she stomped over, looking around at all the weaponry and grim people wielding it in her direction carefully. The zombies in the Basement weren't like this, not at all.
"Nooo..." She said, when she was Close Up. All her surface was filled with machinery, weaponry, and junk; it made her almost a giant, from how much of it there was. She bristled with cables, ammo belts, hydraulics, and slim threads of metal that clinked when she stood still. Even deactivated, pieces of weaponry abounded on her arms; her right elbow had slowly grown the magazine for a Reaper assault cannon as she'd moved to the pair.
"Sorry. I don't eat them." She said, blinking under scrutiny. Her mouth was like a bear trap, metal and filled with sharp points, while Her face was still mostly human, although it was dirty. Her hair hung lank and unwashed, dusted more grey than white. "...what are you? Is th-that rude? I mean, what are you doing here? Thanks for coming, but... We don't get many visitors." She said, pointedly looking towards the ship.
"Veg?" it demanded. "Veg??"
"Fight," elaborated the parrot. "Not sure if he's asking if you're going to or answering your question. Mwrhaw. I'm a wizard! A wizard! No one believes me, though. And this lot is dead set on finding somewhere to hide from the other dead boys. They all look the same to me."
"DAUTHR TIL OVNIR" the figure hissed. One didn't even need the translator to get 'death to our enemies' out of the tone. "VEG?"
"I bel-Ieive you. Oh. Uh..." Trash stammered, eyes darting between the two. She'd been worried push would come to shove.
"I don't want to fight." She said simply, holding her right arm up and continuing it's transformation. Her fingers extended and metal writhed until the Reaper cannon had replaced the limb entirely. She cycled the barrels once, on the verge of firing a salvo into the air before lowering the heavy weapon down. "I'd really rather not..."
"Have you seen anyone else on th1s island? About this tall-" she showed where with her other hand-"thin, wearing a mask?"
"No one, no one. We only just marooned. Probably not be around for long if there's nothing for them to burn or stab or steal, really! Especially with their cousins a half day behind. Mnyhahh. Don't be surprised if slightly prettier looking but uglier intended sorts just like these crash your beach looking for them. Maybe your friend ran into Sven if it's unlucky."
"Oh... Are you running from your cous-ins? " She asked around her, knowing full well only the bird spoke English. "The Facility I live in is already burnt and stolen, but if you want, I supp0se you could stab the walls."
"Are you an invasion force?" Even with her single-toned voice, she didn't sound wary or scared; moreso curious. What was worth invading around here? "Beth is very unlucky, and I am too... Who's Sven? Is that your captain?"
"Sitja," the officer ordered more calmly, and the troops replaced their weapons and sat on the deck or at their oaring and sail posts. "Berja ykkarr andskoti, brtet."
"Er, sit, death to your enemies, etc. He's pretty well decided not to stab you. Good show?" the parrot warbled. "Don't say that name again much if you want to keep that going. This is our captain. Weiss. The man whose name we aren't going to stress our violence happy undead friends with by saying a lot is the captain of another crew of them, except that crew is supposed to be killing this one. Mwrhah. Wissu, wissu, I could really use a drink."
"They invaded ages ago and never left these islands. They killed their shield kin for food and coin, and their gods have been sending a different sort of undead to kill them as punishment since, as I understand it. These are Draugr and Wights-"
The captain growled warningly and the bird flinched visibly- "and the others are-"
"EINHERJAR!" a lookout screamed at another ship cresting early on the horizon, illuminated by a gigantic flaming woman-and-sword whose wings blazed out as long as its sails. The set of strange things Trash had been talking to immediately began to lash out, and she could see what the wizard had meant by 'prettier'- in that their targets, while wearing very similar armor in very similar formations, looked entirely alive and human.
Trash had blurted static from surprise when the other ship had broken the dark and set towards them, whipping and staring at it. The crew didn't look like the Zombies she knew, either- much less skeletal than the Undead she'd been talking to, for one thing. The Draugr launching arrows were merciless, from what she tracked heading toward the other vessel.
This wasn't at all what she'd expected. The surface world moved very fast. She raised her gun and aimed at the enemy mast before slowly lowering it instead, considering. This sounded like a matter of honor, and she didn't need to get involved in a fight that wasn't hers. Besides, none of this crew had guns that she could see. If the others didn't either- and she didn't hear any going off- then it wouldn't be a good idea to just cut them down. She didn't want to, anyway.
She took a step back, and then another, tracking both ships and turning her lights off.
"Deyr fé,
deyja frændr,
deyr sjálfr et sama;
ek veit einn,
at aldri deyr:
dómr um dauðan hvern."
So declaring, the heavily bearded Einherjar that the parrot had called Sven swung his greatsword and hewed halfway into a Draugr's neck as the two forces closed, then thrust it to the ground with a heavy shoulder rush and swept off the head with another mighty stroke that rattled the blade as it crunched in and through bone. A spear pierced his side in return, ichor flowing from the corpse's rebuttal, and he gave a laughing howl as of the most depraved of combat masochists in the modern era before the ancient impaled his fellow again. He unseamed him from the knave to the chaps, long dead intestines not so much falling out as dustily idling from the severed navel and lungs faintly withering slightly more from the exposure and the brilliant blade through its throat, the gaping hole quite enough for someone Trash's size to put her arm clear through.
"Cattle die,
kinsmen die
you yourself die;
I know one thing
which never dies:
the judgment of a dead man's life."
The parrots translation was sad and perchance a fair bit ironic, considering what it had explained about the situation.
Whereas the Draugr, being very much more angry than dead, seized its punishment and kinsman both and began trying to throttle his leg, not being able to reach his neck from its pinioned position in the deckwood. Raking claws and the creak of ligaments threatened a lost limb. It was a scene repeated all about the two ships, although with different implements; a shield mashing in a face or snapping vertebrae here, an arrow through eye and ear there, a long boarding knife clipping open a spine and all the precious meat around it. Chaos and carnage held where before her night had been lonely and concerned, but peaceful by comparison.
Taking her aside by means of a head nudge and a wink, the parrot addressed her more directly. "This is a long and involved and complicated story, but, mrwarh, I'll make it short and spitting easy. You may want to just shoot all of them, mind you, it'd be even easier. One way or another, they'd stop being your headache; even if it meant the end of headaches."
"Ahem. A long time ago, the era of the Scandinavian and Norwegian kings was coming to a close. People were converting to Christendom, settling foreign lands, becoming the knights of those lands instead of raiding them for the gods. One set of them went further and stole the armory of their lord, killing the soldiers who guarded it, and fled to use it as collateral with a set of silver merchants they had met upon the Silk Road. They wanted to find the Japan country and settle it, for its vast wealth in silver and in warring peoples.
"They sailed right past it in rotting hulks of timber, desperate, and starving in unfamiliar waters off an unfamiliar continent, in a wholly different ocean than their own. When the end came, they decided to a man to kill each other, gripped by the madness of fear, the ocean, and hunger each, as well as a sense of their own magnitude of betrayal. When they died, they went neither to the halls of the new god or to the sets of their old.
"Instead, the pirates opened their eyes, those that still had them, and discovered they were still there on the craft that had brought their death and doom. Still laying in their own gore. The pain of it stilled several for decades before they began to move again, sailing for anywhere, anyplace, to set down on land again.
"When they committed their murders in life, they attracted the attentions of beasts in the ruins, far back in Europe; the powries, who cannot be fled. They unintentionally brought swarms of the fierce little red faerie monsters into Pacific lands, hunting for the ones that first aroused their attention, learning to use ship and star to hunt even more efficiently.
"Powrie and Draugr first landed in this archipelago years ago, and were driven off nightly by some of the stranger latent native forces; and, also, the ones who are killing them right now, their gods' answer to their betrayal. Night after night the Einherjar get thrown back into Valhalla if they lose, but strive to utterly destroy the Wights otherwise.
"I'm just a plot convenience, er, an impartial deserver who would really like you to kill all of them and make me not a parrot anymore, myraah. One who had nothing at all to do with any of this and didn't deserve to be a bird. Mnyaewh?"
"Oh- so, oh-" she started, eyes wide. Staring around her showed countless violent scenes, death on a scale she'd never seen before. She was almost hiding behind the tree by the time her glance around was done. An ammo belt had swam like a lamprey from her back to the gun at her elbow, and she was a little happy to be at full ammunition. This was a lot to process, so the simple things comforted her.
"They're... Two tr-ribes of dead, then? Warring for decades, probably... I don't think I should kill them all. Or st1ll be here. But I'm sorry... Why are you -a bird? Did the Thieves do that to. You?" She asked. Two Draugr were approaching her; she stomped into view before firing two thirty-round bursts of bullets over their heads, her eyes still wide, her mouth hanging open.
"Sorry..." She said, after returning to the parrot, not watching them head back to the battle proper. "But, so, uh... They're evil, then? The ones that had you, who the Einherg- Ein.her.jar are killing?"
She raised the gun again, while her left arm began to slither and reshape itself as well.
"If they're bad, they deserve to die, don't they?" She asked the bird, as static slithered and locked onto targets across her view. "The world will be a better place. Maybe the einherjar-" she looked relieved to have said it right."-have seen Beth!"
"The thieves may have, er, been indirectly responsible. A bit. A little. Maybe. Ughhh, fine; if you're going to shoot them for me, you deserve the truth. Their own gods weren't the only ones involved that got angry about the whole affair... although ours, what you would call Polynesian instead, they were more angry with -me- for guiding them in to shore instead of leaving them floating trash out there forever," the parrot cringed, hiding his face under a colorful wing. "When you're young, and stupid, and not divinely cursed, you tend to think that having an army of thugs that won't die would be a benefit to your plans if you could turn them loose on your enemies."
"So I stole the thieves from the waves; but I couldn't control them any more than their king or their gods did. Now all is chaos, and they definitely deserve to die."
"Beth?" the one called Sven frowned back at her, between an ax lodging partly in his shoulder. "Hvat?"
The word sounded like it was meant, a 'what', although in their heavy accent.
"I wondered why they were he-ere." She said, looking up at the Parrot before aiming and concentrating again. Only Sven's hail caused her to blink before she shrugged and cut two Dead men in half with tight bursts of auto-cannon bolts anyway.
"Yes. Hello!" She waved happily with her clawed left hand. Trash loved meeting new people. "My friend, Beth? Have you se3n her? About this tall, very thin, wears a ma-ask? Red eyes?" She asked, watching him take the axe before eyeing his trail of the dead. They'd been right not to say his name. She took careful aim above him, closing one eye before a missle shot from her shoulder and hit one draugr in the distance with a fireburst.
"Sven? Welcome to the island!" She said, her throat lighting up before her weapons did. The two-barreled assault weapon roared as she tracked a few more targets and cut lines in the terrain behind them. "As for you... I want them all to leave, so it's best. I kill all the bad ones here, and you'll be free?... Stick around. I might. need your help." She said quietly to the Parrot.
"They're not really so good at the staying dead thing," the parrot suggested. "Pushing their ship away might help more. Or just putting them in enough cages or on enough sticks to stop them moving in a troubling wa- whaoooa those are a lot of guns."
It was the parrot's turn to be silently terrified at the mass of war that Trash could unleash, even as the Viking opposite gave an uproarious laugh watching the devastation before striding to clap her shoulder. "Il ya duna, hird forad!"
"Make noise, ... army monster?" the parrot translated, and flinched as if expecting her to shoot him next for it. "Er- in the he seems to really like and respect you sense of that?"
"Beth á landa-leiton?"
"He doesn't seem to have seen her. He's asking if she went exploring. S-s-sorry, mraww."
"Darn... Yes, she did. But Beth isn't all together, so I need to find her. It's dangerous when she's out." Trash said, brightening at him. Army Monster wasn't that far off the mark, really. She fired a pair of missiles and turned back to him before they hit.
"No one else lives here, so there's that, but there are other Facilities and the tunnel network to the other islands... I think she's just in the wo-oods somewhere, fighting trees, but still. All this war might draw h3r out..."
The explosion lit up the night in front of her with a fireball.
"Is your axe wound okay?" She asked, turning and firing something on her arm. A red-white beam of light lanced out, and much further away, undead burned.
The Norseman did not speak her language, but the parrot translated; in turn, the undead of holier persuasion than his fellows glanced at it and shrugged heavily, speaking rapidly enough that the bird failed to catch it the first time. Eventually, the answer came out, between sword strokes, explosions, and burning incendiary masers and lasers, as "It will be."
Abruptly, and truly so at that, half of the battlefield and one of the grounded ships simply vanished. Utterly. Starkly gone. There was a flap of the Valkyrie's wings, cheated screams from those Wights and Draugr who were not still suffering from injuries, inspired actual death at last, or Trash's weapons, and a great deal more silence.
"Every day, they begin anew, in the halls of Valhalla," the parrot whispered in the quiet. "Usually the Einherjar just brutally kill each other there if the Aesier or Vanir haven't sent them on a task. That does put a bit of a damper on fights that haven't finished by the day's close, though. And the crew they chase runs further from every battlefield."
Indeed, the survivors... if such can be used for unremittent undying vagabonds that already died, once or several times... were already pulling themselves together as best they could and hurling their longship back into grinding motion, aiming for anywhere- anywhere but here- mostly the sea. Trash was almost forgotten, two heavy longbow shots and a javelin in parting aside.
"So... One eternally runs, and one eternally chases?" She asked, before taking the shots she saw coming. They stuck fast in her, wedged by force. They weren't strong enough to pierce her skin, but they were poking out like fence-posts in a dump. Trash reached out and ripped the javelin from her chest, dropping it down to wave at the retreating Draugr.
"We really usually don't have so many guests... I wonder if they'll be backk? I doubt it." She muttered, her arm slithering apart into a hand once again. She looked around at their foreheads owlishly.
"Well, you all g-got them! Or some of them, anyway. Go0d job!" She said, her voice higher-pitched than it had been. "...welcome to the island?"
It was a fair observation, of course. Kuwahawi had many strange mysteries of its own accord above and below the Pacific waters, but it was also entirely provably peaceful and quiet enough to make it a place for vacationing and not for armed expeditions. Although she had meant it more than likely as regarded her own facility and island, it held true for most of the Archipelago at large, in truth.
What ever could be drawing these things out, and where, oh where, was Beth? Surely unrelated, of course; but perchance not coincidence.
"I, er, don't suppose you know what year it is?" the parrot asked. "I haven't been on shore since eighteen forty five, when I learned this language."
"It's..." She thought about it. "Twenty fifteen, I think. You're an old spirit! Do you think-"
Lightning flashed, and her gaze snapped upward. She grit her teeth together worriedly and looked around her at the jungle and assembled dead soldiers, her fingers writhing nervously.
"Have any of you seen Beth, maybe? Tall, thin, wears a mask, has a machete? A ch-choppy sword?" She asked hopefully, before turning back to Sven. "If the Draugrr are gone, can you please help me look around? The storm is coming..."
The lynch pin for the reentry of his warriors peered at her, the sole Einherjar remaining almost not casting a concern to the rapidly departing duty leaving the shores. Aloud, Sven murmured to the parrot. "Hvat tala?"
"Lunks don't speak English. Pl-please don't let him crush me. That hurt the first time. They make bad enemies. Er-" the parrot stopped to translate. The Hirðman Einherjar slowly nodded, then tested her words, almost as though to defy what had just been explained to her.
"Ch-choppy... sward? Sword? Sverð?" he pointed up the remnants of the treeline and an outcropping of rock. "Hljodlyndr Söldner."
He indicated a chop and something going flying, presumably a head, since he picked up one of the ones handy and hurled it for demonstration.
Trash watched as the rearguard of the Einherjar began to depart, blinking. They really all left at daybreak? She'd thought one or two wouldn't want to, or would rather chase down the fleeing Others... But if it was How Things Were, she understood perfectly. She wondered if Valhalla was a nice place, or the wolf-den she imagined.
She nodded quickly when Sven showed her the head. "Yes, I c0uld see that. Fighting would draw her. Sorry I don't speak your language... She must still be in the area! Do Draugr vanish when the sun rises? I see some bod.bodies, but if not." She paused midsentance.
Trash blinked down at Sven before she closed her eyes and sighed. "I think I know what she's doing, wherever she is. You don't have to come with me, it might get danger-rous."
"You can stick with me, though." She said to the Parrot. "Nobody will hurt you up here. Except the Doctor, but- nevermind. Sven seems nice! Did he really crush you?" She asked, smiling at the man in question. With her mouth, it looked sad, like a shattered metal slinky was leering at him.
"Vikings do that. Crush birds. Kick dwarves into fires. Crush each other's heads over smalltalk at dinner or trick perfectly decent trolls into eating their own daughters. You might have a better time of it if you throw the 'nice' man back into the brine, big lady," the parrot advised.
"Fighting. Fy-ting. Bardagi?" asked the fellow, wiping blood from his matted beard and gesturing with weaponry in various directions before gesturing at the carnage. "War? Is war, fighting?"
"Yes, War is fighting!" She said, nodding enthusiastically and giving the parrot a reproachful, basset-hound look. "Beth loves fighting. It makes her feel better. Something that size was-"
Further away across the former battlefield, there was a sudden sound of rending metal and a rising howl. It was filled with fury and choked with anger, and it kept going until it cut out to the sound of more ripping.
"...That's her." Trash said simply, looking in the direction of the scream.
Hefting his greatsword to a shoulder brace, the Norseman broke into a light run. Towards the noise, rather than away from.
Trash followed at a light pace, careful not to dislodge her passenger.
The bodies of the Dead were hacked apart when they began to find them, thick wounds like axe-blows deep into the few surfaces that stayed together like shields or rib cages. The path was meandering and seemingly random, with more and more carcasses dotting along it. There were blood splatters all over, filled with footprints. Where there was a lot clearly not from the Draugr, it shone like oil and stank like wet pennies.
The more dead, the more of these patches, until they came to an old quarry. In front of the gate was enough of Beth's blood that it looked like the girl had exploded and covered everything in a radius.
"Oh... She's having fun." Trash said, worried. She walked up to the open gate, paused, and then pointed over near an old bulldozer.
"There. There's Beth." She said, her heart sinking.
The thin, ragged woman was either surrounded by Draugr or keeping them prisoner; either way, they watched each other. Her shoulders rose and fell; her black hair hung lank and dripping red, and her eyes burned out of her simple white mask. She was growling and twitching around to watch them all; the machete in her hands was chipped and scratched, but a thick slab of killing metal, still.
Beth snarled and swung out; her blade hit a shield with a sound like an axe meeting a tree stump before she pulled it-and him- closer. She ripped the machete out and brought it down again and again, battering him until he was kneeling; When he was, Beth kicked out at the shield and swung, decapitating the man. She hoisted his head and threw it at the others.
Those with spears had stabbed her while she mauled their man, several times. She'd acted like she hadn't felt it, hadn't even noticed. Her own footsteps were soaked with blood too.
"...she's very nice, when you get to know her." Trash said.
"Did the Doctor you mentioned make you like this?" the parrot whispered, more than a little chilled even with its own exposure to this sort of violence over the... long period Trash had described. "Er- can you get her over without her bleeding out?"
"...No. There were other doctors, but she's the last one now. Someone has to k3ep the records." Trash said, lifting her hand and looking down at it before glancing at the parrot. "Other ones turned me into this. Something from another universe, but without the Warp? I used to be a re-real person. So did she, I think."
Beth lost an arm to a sword-slash; her next strike cut through shield, armor, and sternum all in a sudden spray. She hissed and grabbed for her arm, jamming it back along the wound; she took the sudden rain of blows silently, huddling over herself tightly.
Her blood kept falling as Beth straightened, her arm good as new, and roared back into the attack.
"They only infected me with something-oh, no, 1'm not contagious- but they really messed Beth up. Bad."
The girl in question grabbed a spear where it had stabbed into her before snatching the warrior's wrist and cutting off his arm, lunging forward and chopping his head solidly in half. She snapped the spear with another blow before yanking the head out of ether back.
"They're all gone, but we're still here. Still alive." Trash said quietly, before it thundered again. "I think I can get her attention. Don't worry, she has plenty of blood. Beth never runs out."
"So I'm seeing," the parrot croaked, and averted his gaze. "Are there more of you?"
"Huh? Oh... No. There were more people tested than just me, but they lost themselves by stage four. None of them ever made it past stage six." Trash said, her simple voice downturning. "I was the dark hor-rse candidate. Brought from outside. Nobody expected the virrrs-vi.rus. To bond so well with me."
"I was their last success, before the Facility turned out the lights for good. The both of us, re-eally. They made me a monster and her a killer." Trash said, looking small and fragile for something her size. "We're both the remains. I think she'll like you both, too. I hope. I might just... Let her k1ll these last few."
Working its jaw, one of the decapitated screamed soundlessly for about five minutes in rage, hands writhing as Beth cleaved them. Eventually, far too long for the comfort of Trash's companion and in a note of interest for the man approaching her, the animation stopped when the pieces were too small to have anything resembling ligaments. Then Sven was upon her.
Beth turned and eyed Sven like a wolf over fresh kills, a low warning growl coming from under her mask as she gripped her gore-streaked machete tighter and pointed it at him. Her eyes were glassy and dull, and up close, Sven could watch her wounds crawl closed. Beth snarled at him again before she hefted a head off the ground and hurled it into the bushes.
"I wonder if she knew we were due for a battle?" Trash mused, before the first raindrops began to fall, plinking across her surface. She looked at the sky, troubled, while Beth began to run with blood anew, from her tight black suit to her dripping, lank hair.
"H'vild, Thegn," the Norseman instructed in the low commanding tones of a field marshal doing personal inspection instead of the bark of mass maneuver. He locked eyes with the mask and rested on his sword as the other arm swung a still gagging decapitated head itself. "H'vild."
"Be at ease," he said in uncomfortable, broken English, robbing it of much of the tone's former power in his halting confusion over whether they were the right words. "Ease, warrior."
Beth growled again, but with less aggression this time, kneeling down and going back to dismembering her former enemies. She moved jerkingly, but deceivingly fast, looking up to the sky and raising her sword.
Beth closed her eyes and howled at the storm, all directionless anger and unsatisfied madness, spreading her arms until she ran out of breath and collapsed to her knees, morosely dragging a torso over and ripping the arm off with a grunt. She stood back up and sheathed her sword, looking around dimly. Her gaze seemed to drift slowly back to Sven no matter where she directed it.
"Hi, Beth." Trash waved, after having walked over. There was a small umbrella above the parrot's place on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Beth nodded agreeably enough before pointing at Sven, then the hacked apart bodies. Trash tilted her head and blinked. Beth pointed at Sven again before eyeing the storm again and looking meaningfully at Trash.
"His name is Sven, an Einherjar. Once dead war-rior of honor. You met his enemies already!"
Beth nodded quickly and put her boot through the torso at her feet, before looking at Sven again. She turned her gaze slowly to Trash, then back to Sven, then even more slowly back to Trash. Her machete slowly raised.
Trash narrowed her eyes and shook her head; Beth turned again and studied Sven, particularly his sword and grim bearing before she decisively sheathed her own blade once more. Trash sighed in relief as Beth took a step closer to Sven and tilted her head, kneeling down and holding out a skull from the ground like a dog with a stick.
"What ho! What is this appalling scene of slaughter?" cried an unfamiliar voice, a jostling knightfish atop a sea horse calling from just off the coast and gawping in horror. Well, one must presume it to be horror. Fish eyes do tend to goggle by nature.
Ignoring the silly, Sven tapped the skull before hurling one of the heads he held instead for her.
Trash waved at the Knight once she was sure she'd heard him, while Beth followed Sven's lead and threw the skull as hard as she could. She jerked down and grabbed more, throwing them into the bushes, or towards the ocean, or once, without warning, at the ancient bulldozer nearby. The metal bits on her seemed to add to the strength of her withered limbs.
When she'd thrown enough, she went out at a lope to grab the ones she could see to throw them again. One of the heads she'd brought back was the one Sven had shot out first.
She smacked another one into the bulldozer and laughed; it was simple and happy. The rain didn't dim her eagerness to throw heads at all. Beth pulled her machete out and threw one up in the air, waiting till it came down to split it with a quick chop. She laughed again, turning to Sven and looking at him searchingly. She tilted her head and held out the one he'd tossed to him again.
Trash smiled. "I knew she'd like you. Normally she's shy around new people, but she did just sp-I'll gallons of blood."
He waited until the bird had translated this, before giving a low, rumbling guffaw and offering a response in kind. The parrot muttered something about Tyr blessing by the blood on the bade, but looked too ill to speak it loud enough to actually make sense of the phrasing. Then, he began methodically mounting some of them on speartips and stakes before hurling them into the sea. The knightfish rode away from one such disposal narrowly avoiding being clipped.
"I- is there any food or shelter on your island, miss? Er... whatever is your name, anyway? What is this locale called? We are still in Kuwahawi isles, right?"
"Oh! Yes, we're within Kuwahawi. This is Testing Center 67bb. It was Alana Isle before then... It's small, but there's bedrock underneath us. This island is very stable." She emphasized. "There's... The facility is safe, mostly, but parts of it go very deep, and the power is off. There's food, and we c0uld have a fire. It might draw a few zombies, but they're mostly peaceful and dumb."
"I didn't-? Oh. I'm Trash. What's your name?" She asked, while Beth watched Sven at his work.
"Analu, ironically enough," wailed the bird. "The cause for cowardice and beastly form alike, in the crueler of the gods' jokes! For my name, I, am Manly, in your tongue! Analu, who is not analu!"
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