You run for the next building, everything looks safe. No one passes by and the streets are filled with corpses. Perhaps the vanguard has passed by. Taking a breath, you peek out and sense no one.


Slowly you rise and take some tentative steps towards the next building. Though you cross a twenty foot expanse, you safely make it to the next stop. Peeking around the corner, you see a pitiable sight, a small blonde boy is crying over the corpses of his parents in the rubble strewn debris that was once his building. The piercing scream of an incoming flaming boulder smashes into the cobblestones vaporizing everything in your vision and knocking you back.


As you rise, you hear yet another burst far to the rear.


After regaining your feet, you start after where the boy was. There is nothing left but a smoking crater surrounded by a ring of flames. Despite your normal stoic nature, tears threaten to slide down your cheek. Gripping your blade, you force yourself to trudge onwards.


Three streets upward, you notice a firefight going on. Three Essitrean troops are hunkered behind a wall. Each has a crossbow and a fourth soldier lies dead with a bolt sticking out of his neck. You run in a crouch towards their position and fall to a knee beside the sergeant, "What's the situation Sergeant?" You ask.


He turns and almost goes for his sword as he doesn't recognize you but he says, "Mercenary?"


You nod and he grunts, "Figured you all had fled by now, hell if this wasn't my home I'd have fled long ago. Suppose I'll be dying within these old walls soon enough."


A crossbow bolt smacking against the wall brings him back to the fight. "Well, we're trying to reach a defensive position North of here but the bloody Turrics got us cut off. Out of a platoon sized element, only we remain and we're cut off from Main Group. If you can fire a crossbow, your help would be welcome. Hell, even if you can't you can at least take potshots at the bastards."


You nod taking up the Arbalest, a crossbow you are very skilled with and load the bolt. "Where are they located?" You ask.


He darws a quick picture in the dirt with a bolt and says, "We're here, their behind that berm over there. I'm pretty sure there's a sniper a little to the west. Bad thing is, though we can't see him, he can sure as hell see us and he's a crack shot. Took out Ivey with one clean shot, got Spiner just over there." He points to a Essitrean corpse about fifteen feet away, a bolt planted in his back.


Those idiots behind the berm are lousy but they've got us pinned with suppressive fire, can't raise my head without fear of taking bolts, the sniper though, he's the real challenge. We take him out and we can flank. Without him dead, we're stuck in a stalemate."


Add ARBALEST (Crossbow) to your Inventory.


You think over the options:

You say "Charge the Berm, they can't kill us all!"

You charge the berm and watch as two of your men fall from the crossbows of the opposing soldiers. You are next to fall with a sniper bolt in your neck. As you watch the rest of the men fall you curse your stupidity and choke as blood fills your windpipe and you slowly choke to death facedown in a growing pool of blood.


YOU HAVE FAILED!!!