I could feel the intense heat coming from the lava lake below despite the bridge being made of a metal frame, and the floor of it was made of heat-resistant glass. The bridge had only one opening in the center where the intense waves of heat were able to seep through and caused me to sweat intensely as I crossed it.
When I finally made it to the other side of the bridge, we split into the two teams that Trent ordered us to become for the assault on the vampire stronghold.
I noticed that there was a massive wall that was made of a dark red metal. There were no openings in it to climb my way up. The wall was at least twenty feet in height which meant that I would not be able to scale it with the limited amount of fuel that I had if I was going to activate my jetpack on this mission.
"All right, Danny, as the leading member of this pairing, I want you to attack them directly while I will snipe them from a distance from that cliff over there." Raven said to me as she pointed at the nearest entrance to their fortress and then at the cliff that was at least thirty feet away from it.
"Okay, then we should establish a private communications channel by moving the dial to channel number twelve." I said as I adjusted a dial that was on my scouter until I saw that I was active on the frequency of channel twelve.
"Private communication channel established." Raven said before she began to move faster than me towards the hill, where she said that she wanted to go and start sniping. I am assuming that was because she had more distance to cover to set up herself for the mission than I did.
I began to walk slowly along the wall trying to ensure that I paid attention to everything that moved around me so that I would not be caught unaware of any movements made by the enemy no matter how small it might be.
When I made it a few feet from the entrance to the stronghold I noticed that there was only one skeleton warrior standing guard and that he was holding a mace in his left hand and a shield in his right.
"I am in a position to begin the attack, and I have noticed that there are not as many undead guarding the outer areas of the fortress that I thought there were going to be. This probably means that this is only a skeletal crew. The main force will be there inside of the stronghold.
Yes, and before you say anything, I did not mean to make that kind of pun. " Rachel said quietly to me over the private comm channel before I saw the skeletal soldier fall right in front of me and then burst into flames.
"Okay, now that you have made an opening for me, I will move on." I said to her into the com channel before stepping over the pile of ash that was left where the guard was previously standing.
The area outside of the stronghold had a variety of tents that were positioned around the main entrance to the undead stronghold. These tents were all colored black, and they all had a crew of at least three skeletons surrounding them.
As I was moving into the enemy camp, all the enemies that were not inside of the main building started to fall and burst into flames just before I made it to them. Because I was trying to sneak up on them.
Normally they would have screamed in pain as soon as the fire bullet from Raven's sniper rifle hit their bodies but I noticed that she targeted the neck area\ to cut off their vocals so that they could not alert the enemy to our presence while they were dying in pain.
This conflict has made me aware of raven's creativity and ability to continually think outside of the box.
I snuck into the side buildings one after the other and quietly stealth killed all the enemies without making a single sound as my scythes came swinging at the backside of their necks.
"I have killed all of the enemies; so, it is safe for you to enter the camp now. We should be able to make our attack on the stronghold with less of a struggle now.
Also, you were correct it did seem to only have a skeletal crew so that means the diversion plan must be working and that their main army is going to be attacking where we originally landed and set up our defenses." I said over the comm channel as I stepped out of the last tent and waited for her to meet me before entering the stronghold through the side entrance.
"I am running low on the fire ammo for my sniper rifle. I only have four full clips left, at least of that type of ammo left." she said to me as I saw her reloading her weapon while moving closer to the door after entering through the same stronghold gate as me.
"All right, let's get ready to enter this fortress. I have a personal score to settle with any werewolves that we might run into." I told her with a look of determination as I opened the door that was going to lead to the completion of our objective.
"Trying to make up for your mistake on the last mission, huh? Okay then; I will agree to these terms if you leave the vampires that might be waiting for us inside for me then." Raven said to me as she closed the door behind her.
The inside of this stronghold looked like a dark house of death. I saw that they had the skulls and skeletons of different species hanging from the wall as if they were set up to show off as trophies of war. The flooring was made of hard stone, and each room had a massive archway separating it from other rooms instead of a doorway.
This building was almost entirely dark, with only a bit of artificial light coming from the glowing metal rods that I saw attached to the ceiling.
"Well, you have to admit they are definitely maxing out the creepy factor as well as the whole creature of the night theme that they have going on inside of here." I said to Raven after looking at everything that was around us while walking down the hallway.
"If you have a complaint about their horrid designs and decorations, why don't you take it up with the head honcho sitting in that throne over there?" Raven said as she pointed to a dark figure that was about twenty feet in front of us.
I looked at where she was pointing and I saw a tall female body that looked almost completely pale white and she wore an elegant black dress that seemed to flow off her as if it was made purely for her.
"Well, it seems that you have made it to this fortress, and is this what you were looking for?" she asked as she tossed a black rock in the air and caught it as if to show it off to us.
"Danny, that is the item that we are here to retrieve because I see the black crate right there that has Trent's beacon on the bottom of it.
"Are you going to fulfill your agreement with me, Raven?" I asked her as I pulled out my dual scythes and pointed them at the two black furred werewolves that were on both of her sides.
"As you wish." she said to me as I saw her walk towards the rear wall of the room and lean against it.
"Then we are going to be throwing both of our subordinates at each other. Come on, my bodyguards have slaughtered hundreds of Terrans. What makes this one any different?" she asked if she snapped her fingers, and then they started to move towards me.
"He is no typical Terran. If you do not take him seriously, you will die." Raven said in response to what she was asked.
"If you think that I am going to make the same kind of mistakes that I made the last time that I encountered one of your kind, then you have another thing coming." I said as I rushed at the one that was to my left and swung my both of my scythes at his wrists, which caused them to be severed from the rest of his body in one swift swipe
Then I dodged as the other werewolf started to attack out of fury at what I had just done.
After a few quick swings, he ran out of breath and became exhausted since he was much larger than me and that the larger they were, the faster they ran out of air while attacking other things.
I rushed at him and quickly and threw the weapon that was in my left hand at his neck, which became completely severed from the rest of his body when my weapon made contact.
"That takes care of one of your guards, and now it is time to finish off the second one." I said as I walked over to the werewolf that had his hands severed shortly before.
I took the other scythe that was in my right hand and quickly swung it horizontally across his neck to finalize his death while he was knelling on the ground and screaming in a deep voice as if he was in never-ending pain.
"Well done, Danny. I guess this means that it is my turn to kill the vampire in charge so that we can take back our prized mineral." I heard Raven say to me as I walked over to where the head that had my scythe in it was located so that I could pick it up and start to clean it.
I saw Raven put her sniper away and pull out a pair of pistols with very long barrels that she had resting on both sides of her waist.
"I hope that you do not believe that you can even stand a chance against me. I am not some measly turned vampire. I am a pureblood, and thus, I am much stronger than any vampire that you have probably ever seen." the female vampire said as she grabbed a chunk of a blue rocklike substance from her left pocket and swallowed it whole.
When the vampire swallowed the mineral, I saw a rush of blue energy envelop her followed by her eyes suddenly changing a large variety of different colors; but they were changing so fast that I was unable to verify exactly what colors they were changing into.
I suddenly began to shake at the site of the vampire even though I did not know what she had just done somehow, I knew that it most likely was not going to end well for us in the long run.
"Now that I have consumed a dose of Paradisus, you will not stand a chance against me. I will be able to predict all of your simple moves without even breaking a sweat." she said to Raven as I saw her eyes went back to their normal black color and the aura that had enveloped her disappeared without a trace left behind.
Raven then fired her pistols six times in quick succession, but instead of hitting their intended targets, the vampire seems to have the ability to dodge them without much effort at all.
"Stand still you little bitch. Let me kill you and put you out of your misery." Raven said as she tried to close the distance so that the vampire would not be able to dodge her next few shots so easily.
"I am going to guess the next few things that you will be doing in an attempt to try to stop me." the vampire said as she got so close to Raven that she was unable to shoot at her.
"How did you do that?" Raven asked as the vampire closed the distance between them.
"As I said I will predict what you were going to be doing.
The next thing you will try to do is back away but you will not be able to move freely. Then after that you will try to attack me with the butt of your pistols, but even that will not be able to touch me at all" the vampire said to Raven in a mocking tone.
Then as soon as she said that I noticed that Raven did exactly as the vampire said she was going to do as if she was able to foresee the future.
The next thing that Raven did was fall to her knees and dropped both of her weapons on the floor. After she did that she started to shake in fear, and looked at me with a massive look of dread and concern just before she turned her head and looked back at the vampire in front of her.
"Since I'm assuming that you are about to kill Raven, I want to know something." I said to the female vampire as she had her claws pointed at Raven's neck.
"Oh, and what is that? I mean I might be among a group of monsters but, I have a functional brain so I do not mind answering a simple question". She said as she retracted her claws and did not make the final swing towards Raven.
"I am curious about something; what was that blue substance that you consumed and why did you do it?" I asked her.
"Oh that; that was a small chunk of Paradisus that is barely refined. The reason why I ate it is that when a vampire eats it allows us to foresee the future somewhat at least". She said to me as she pointed her claws back at Raven's neck.
The thought of what she said to me was quite disturbing to hear. While it was nice to know what it is that the vampires do for their advantage in this galactic scale conflict; at the same time, she might be lying to me about it. I mean it would not be to her best interest to tell me the truth after all.
"I am not going to say that I truly believe a single word that you just said". I said to her as I threw both of my melee weapons at her.
After I did that all the fear that was stopping Raven from attacking the vampire suddenly seemed to leave her. She stood up beside me as if she was ready to kill the vampire.
When this happened, I saw Raven fire her pistols at the vampire and she burst in a yellow puff of light and there was no trace of her left behind.
I grabbed the black mineral and put it back in the box hoping that this would finally be the end of the mission and that I could go home without much of a fuss; but things do not usually go as I intend them to.