>>5635308>>5635312>3,5,6 + Disciplined 3x3The army of the mud-eaters marches in strange, uncanny waves, as if their heads remember to move a moment after their legs. They seem to undulate and shift in unison. The drum beat grows yet louder and louder as they draw nearer - covering of ears does nothing. The drumbeat is within a dwarf's head - it seems to have something to do with the 'sight' of the mud-eaters. To be witnessed by their eyeless spoon-shaped faces makes the world beat like a great heart. They are disorienting - the whispy ones with fractal hands seem to dance as the formation approaches, and a few dwarves are dazed enough that the blowdarts find their necks uncovered, and they soon drop spluttering and feverish to the cave-floor, to be stepped over and dragged to the back of the company.
The tricks of the olms are not sufficient to break you. Though it takes a great steeling of the mind, the dwarves pull themselves back together. A cry of "Khazuk! Khazuk! Khazuk-ha!" is taken up to break whatever strange spell of confusion these things put out. It rolls like its own drum-beat, up and down the line, as the marching company meets its foe. The hail of blowdarts does not break solid dwarfish discipline, and neither do the spikes and spears of the mud-eaters. Their great mutant captains are mighty, and one or two break into the formation, but they do not stand up to the even, steady process of dwarven infantry. Shoulders up, voices loud and mattocks swinging in clean, solid order.
For a hundred lifetimes of dwarves, this has been the right way, the only way. When the depths spit up some new monstrosity, the dwarves meet it, solid as steel, and grind it to paste against their steel. It is no mean feat - the less experienced members of the throng nearly fall out of step, stumbling and catching wounds as the formation slowly moves back towards the treeline, but the mass holds. All have cause to thank their armour. A few dozen dwarves fall on the slow withdrawal, but they give much better than they get.
By the time the olms notice the sea of red eyes looking down from the canopy it is too late. Slingbolts fall like rain. Chunks of loose rock are broken from the cave ceiling, crushing mud-eaters whole. The Rib-Breakers and Fangcape's champions leap into the fray beside you, taking the weight from the exhausted frontline. Fangcape's great whipsword tears through their wet flesh like a razor, and Rib-Breakers are witnessed wrestling great mud-eater mutants, pulling limbs from them until they can reach their empty faces to strangle their lives away, weeping in rage and remembrance of their lost homes.
The rage of the cavern apes is overwhelming. They have waited long, you sense, for the chance to draw their enemy into the range of their vengeance. The chance you have given them.
Cont.
