>>5623234The decision made to push on, your triad moves forward in a wedge formation towards the house, carefully watching each slice of cover and window for potential ambushes. You still have Veritas over your shoulder- Prozchek carries a bulky MG, and Jiminez his long-barreled rifle- and the burden is not light; you're definitely reconsidering all the weighty ammunition for next time you're out on patrol. When you close to within a hundred feet of the house, you step across some unsee-able boundary and everything seems to change all at once.
https://youtu.be/YKxy_R0OXQI?t=8A fetid stench is the first thing that grabs your attention- predatory, like an odor or a musk. It brings you back to that crappy little kitchen in Syria, leaves you standing there shocked momentarily before you can faintly recognize Pro and 'Nez moving in your peripheral vision.
The snapping report of a bullet whizzing past your face brings you back to the here and now in an instant, and you hit the deck promptly. "What the fuck is going on?!" you scream, but all you can hear in the earpiece is loud hissing static, so you toss it away from you and bring your gun up to zero in on your aggressors.
There are only four: one up in that second-story window and three spread out across the porch area, all cloaked in long, white robes with a black hand painted across a metal plate on the front. Their weapons (a collection of old bolt-action rifles and shotguns) are in hand blasting away at you, so you kindly return the favor just as Jiminez and Prozchek are doing.
>29 for Pro>28 for 'Nez>22, 48 for your Firearms roll against Normal difficulty (needed 65 or lower)Your enjoined assault is altogether too much for these robed Collaborators- you even see sparks flash off of one of their faceplates as you send a round of .458 ripping right through their head, sending that individual straight back to whatever foul monstrosity it worships. You watch with morbid fascination as a black, shapeless wisp detaches itself from the body, going up, up, up..
With no more fire coming your way, you are free to follow the wisp's ascent to its apex where the sun would be up in the sky. But it isn't there. Instead, you see a great gaping blackness, like someone has inverted the colors of the world in a cosmic Photoshop accident. The sky is a squirming grey, falling ash drifting down from a place unseen.
