“FUCKING SHITTY-ASS SON OF A BITCH-FLAVORED CUNT-WAFFLE MOTHERFUCKING GOD DAMNED PIECE OF CRAP! MOVE, DAMN YOU!”

Grima screamed a near endless stream of imaginative obscenities as she slammed her fists and kicked her feet inside RATBOT’s cockpit. It seemed that RATBOT had used up all the power in its batteries as well as having overmaxxed its core’s capabilities, leaving the colossal rat/ centaur war machine stuck in one place. The Dwarves had no idea that the machine that had just crushed the decapitated head of Old Ironsides was unable to even disgorge its pilot. Therefore, rather than risk having to face it, they had retreated to the second wall which was equally as defensible, if not more so.

“RRRRAAAAGHH! STUPID SCRAP BUCKET! WASTE OF METAL! MOVING DUMPSTER ON LEGS! WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE I AM GONNA MELT YOU DOWN TO SLAG! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU, YOU SHITTY LITTLE TIN MAN! LEMME OUT! LEMME OOOOUUUUUT!”

A crack of light appeared in the cockpit as the cockpit opened. Snikty has managed to climb up to RATBOT’s chest and open up the cockpit via an emergency external escape hatch. It appeared that Grima, while a certifiably insane mad scientist, had not forgotten that sometimes people get trapped inside things and need others to get them out. This was a lesson learned vicariously after watching several hundred thousand ‘test subjects’ starve, asphyxiate and generally die of neglect while trapped inside her constructs. Of course, the lives of those test subjects had meant nothing to her, but she was not about to let herself be condemned due to her own lack of foresight.

With great effort from both sides, the cockpit opened up and Grima crawled out and onto the back of a massive, mutated, patchwork abomination of flesh and bone.

“Huh. Jest-Joking you weren’t when you said-said that you had something as impressive-amazing as my machine… Still, lacks enough sparky-burny bits it does, yes-yes. Let me fix that issue you will?”

The towering monstrosity was something out of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s twisted imagination, or at least it looked like something out of his expanded mythos. It was in a similar form to RATBOT, but its main body scraped across the ground on its belly, propelled along by more legs than any mammalian being should rightly have. Its skull-like head was conventionally blind and near deaf, but somehow its sense of smell was heightened to an absurd degree and it could see in electromagnetic, thermal and mana vision from every corner of its grotesque body.

All over its body were the heads of mutated rats and Rattan Slaves who had been surgically implanted to act as backup neural processors as well as grant the abomination the sense of conventional sight and hearing that its massive main head lacked. Every part of its hairless body seemed to ooze out a slimy substance that even Grima found irritating to the touch, and normal Rattan and Dwarves would find as painful as raw capsaicin and poison ivy infused skin cream. What made it even more horrible were the numerous tails and arms that had been grafted on in various points, all of them either tipped with metal or tweaked so that they could never release the weapon that they carried.

“Teeheehee! My masterpiece this is, yes-yes! Ages it took-took to finish, still more did it take to get it tamed-controlled and ready for war-combat. Locked away for a good-long while it was, now free it is to kill-die the Beard-Things. Most impressive it is, no-no?”

Grima didn’t answer and jumped down from the Abomination’s back, picking up the remains of a long dead Rattan Slave and using it to wipe the creature’s funk off of her body.

“Still prefer metal over flesh I do. No offence-insult, but this thing-creature gives me the creeps. Too many limbs and heads it has; needs more metal it does.”

Snikty snorted and the Abomination crawled forwards.

“Suit yourself. Off I go-move to destroy the Beard-Things. Have fun getting that kill-murder toy of yours to run again. Time to waste we do not have, no-no.”

All around them the more experienced Rattan warriors had begun to rush forwards. With the first wall and gate having been abandoned by the Dwarves, the Rattan military had begun to make a concerted push, attempting to be right on the heels of the retreating Dwarves. Although the ones going forward were ‘free’ and ‘more experienced’ than the previous 160 thousand Rattan Slaves, they still were individually less trained and had poorer equipment than the Dwarves. This didn’t matter to the Rattan military however, due to the sizable numerical advantage that they held, which meant that the individual life of the average Rattan warrior was valued the same as or less than the former Soviet Union or the former People’s Republic of China had valued their own troops. The loss of a few hundred thousand or so was like a drop in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, utterly undeserving of attention, concern and notice.

After all, in the Rattan Under-Empire life was cheaper than cheaper than cheap.

…

“Hold the line! Your countrymen are behind you! Do you want these vermin to destroy our kind?! Line number two, relieve line number one! Dragonbreath Flamethrowers, project the fires of the primordial forge over the heads of the front line! Be careful not to aim low! Crossbowmen, arc your shots over the lines, not between them. Riflemen take aim… and… fire Volley! Now, move to the back! Next line, move forward! Riflemen take aim… and… fire Volley!”

The gap between the first and second wall and gate was set up like a concentrated scene out of the Western Front of the first World War mixed with a snapshot of the Eastern Front of the same war. The massive line of trenches on one sides and the massive barrier of barbed wire, landmines and pitfall traps in the middle prevented The Rattan military from advancing too quickly. They now were stuck in the same position that the Entente had been in, wanting to advance but only able to do so at extreme cost. Unlike the Entente of Earth, the Rattan Under-Empire couldn’t care less about the loss of life and limb, as they had more bodies to throw at the problem than the Dwarves had ammunition to deal with them.

Still, even Rippa Steelwhiskers, the leader of the Rattan Military, was unwilling to throw so many into the meat grinder for so little gain, and had called on Snikty and Grima to lend a hand in the endeavor. From the breaches in the first wall and the now torn down first gate came the whirring and screeching of Grima’s war machines and Snikty’s creatures respectively. Thousands of Wolf Rats rushed ahead to soak up fire and eliminate traps while siege weapons and motorized balls covered in spinning blades and drilling spikes rolled forward, carrying the batshit insane, surgically implanted brains of Rattan Slaves inside. While the Wolf Rats threw themselves at barbed wire and minefields in suicidal rushes, the Shredder Balls sped forward, their two hemispheres separated by a car tire wide metal cylinder that let the two halves of the metal ball rotate like semi-spherical wheels.

Only the glowing green photoreceptor in the center of the Shredder Balls let the disembodied brain know what was going on and allowed the completely unhinged cyborgs know where the foe was. The spinning blades on their sides spun like a mix of a weed whacker and a lawn mower while the drill-shaped spikes along the parts not covered by the rotating blades twirled with an endless whirring sound. Even being in front of the Shredder Balls was not a good idea due to the numerous spears that jutted out in uneven spaces and lengths from around the ‘eye’ of the machine The tire-sized cylindrical space between the two hemispheres was its weakest part, but that didn’t mean it was undefended.

Behind the tide of metal and flesh came even larger constructs of meat and mineral, followed closely by the Abomination itself with Snikty herself riding it like an oddly shaped mount. As soon as the musk of the Abomination began to roll into the lines of the Dwarves, many of them began to dry heave. A few managed to catch themselves and stop the vomit from coming up. They looked up at what could be causing the horrible stench.

Only to immediately regret that decision and empty their guts onto the ground.