Meanwhile Elsewhere on Rifts Earth
Apok-alypse Now Part 2
The Priest's son turns and stares right into a grotesque face with glowing red eyes, fangs, and a crown of horns. He squeals and scrambles backwards until he sees the completely human hands and body then stops and tries to compose himself. "Sorry, didn't recognize what you are. Glad you could come to our aid, Apok."
"Yes fine, you have been welcomed. Now I have some _things_ to tend to." says the demon faced man as he draws his sword, and a cleaver like weapon.
The man leaps away and runs into a group of the Ram-rats swinging his weapons. Rams are sent sprawling, peices of them and blood flies. They try to fight back but to no avail as the man crushes them under heel as they fall. The people stand amazed and cheer the strange individual. A flying serpent swoops down towards the man, he turns and catches the serpent squarely in one shoulder severing the arm. The man catches on to the trailing grappling hook and climbs up to the back of the beast. The rider turns to fight off the man but is very quickly thrown off where he bowls over several people who scramble to their feet and slay him.
The man jerks on the reins of the angered beast and it turns around swiftly. At the man's command it flies straight at another of its kind. Not knowing the game has changed the creature waits for the signal to swerve, but it doesn't come. The creature bashes into its brethren and both fall towarrds the ground. Then they recover. The beast the man is riding turns it's snaking neck so that it can stare back at the rider with one of it's eyes. It screeches when it sees the man and turns over to fly upside down. It heads straight for a building intent on scraping him off. Just short of the domed roof the man jumps off and strikes the top of the wall, he scrambles for purchase then sinks the cleaver into the wall to stablize himself. He chants briefly and a hole opens just to the left of the cleaver, he clambers down into it.
He comes out of the door at the bottom in a moment, in his arms, a rifle. He turns the gun on a serpent flying by, he fires a burst that pounds into the creatures hide and shreds its underside. The Dark Priest begins to chant, someone yells a warning to the man, he turns and fires a burst at the Dark Priest then swears when it has no effect. He lunges twards the priest just as the area he was standing in bursts into flames. Quickly he drops the gun, unsheathes a silver dagger and thrusts it at the Priest. The Priest jumps back. The man swings again, the Priest grabs his arm, but not before it cut through the robes and into her belly. She doubles over in agony, then suddenly stands up, her eyes flaring red in the darkness, "Hello Trent," she says in a voice not quite human.
"Krikton." says Trent, "How's the arm?"
"I'll cut to the chase, Trent, you will not escape this time. Right now a Shock is waiting for you, as well as some other surprises."
"I'm sure I'll be just overjoyed at your gifts upon little puny me. Why do you want me so badly? Is it just because I know so many things, because I was a trusted advisor, or because I hurt your feelings when I left you... that's gotta be it, you still love me... HAHAHAHA!" shouts Trent so everyone can hear him.
Meanwhile the humans struggle on against the Ram-rats, the feathered serpents streak through the air, and large worms begin to crawl out of the tunnel the Dark Priest had created. "Tanglers!!" cries a voice.
The worms slither out of the hole quickly, and begin to wrap around people with their tentacles. "What do you want Krikton?" asks Trent.
"I want you to die, you and all of your kind. A simple desire." replies the possessed priest.
"Oh...", says Trent unsurprised, "I thought you were brighter than that. You've got to know that it will never happen. Take a look at how long I've survived. And I'm just a puny human with a piddly symbiote."
"You have luck on your sides you buryn'thdok. It shall run out very soon." says the inhuman voice.
A bolt of crackling energy strikes the Dark Priest from behind and her body falls to the ground. Trent nods his head in salutation to the hulking form of shining armor known as Krim the Slayer, Tim, to his friends. [GM Note: Tim is a Holy Terror, an enigmatic creature that appears to be a walking suit of ornate armor. It is unknown whether the Holy Terrors are robots, cyborgs, creatures of technowizardry, or just born as they are, but they weild magic, and are psionic in nature and exhibit the full range of human emotions. It's even been speculated that the Holy Terrors themselves do not know their origins either.]
A pair of tangler worms coil around the Terror's legs as a half a dozen Serpent riders catch it by the shoulders and back with their hooks. Krim is dragged high into the air the worms trailing after him (it's customary to imply a gender although how to determine it is unknown, if it is even possible, the gender may only be a thing of personality rather than physiology). The worms start biting at Krim's thighs. He tries to grab at them but the grapples restrict his movement. The beasts struggle with their tremendous burden. He crashes into a building crumbling the roof inwards. The force of it drags the beasts down, they crash on the other side of the building, the riders slouch unconcious in their saddles. Krim climbs up over the roof, the worms lost somewhere in the house. He leaps down onto one of the serpents as it tries to rise. It crashes to the ground, the rider dead and the wings of the creature broken under the massive weight of the valiant Krim. It thrashes around helplessly trying to drag itself out from under the Terror. Krim stands up and walks across the serpents length and stomps down several times on its neck just behind the base of it's skull.
"Where are the Hospitalers? And the Templars?" shouts Trent to the nearest villager.
"They either abandonned us days ago or were buried in the last few weeks. It's been very rough lately, and now we must defend ourselves." answers the man.
"Well things are about to get worse," says Trent as he spots the gigantic Shock parasite, "Do you happen to have a Battle Saint handy?"
The man screams as he sees the lumbering giant insectoid towering over the tallest building. Standing a tremendous fifty feet tall, the craggy armoured parasite breaks into a lopping run. As it goes it crushes people like ants under its clawed feet. Trent grabs a woman and yells in her face, "Is there a Battle Saint, or an Orb around here? <She shakes her head in negation.> In that case run. <turning around in a circle Trent yells at the top of his voice.> RUN, run as far as you can, there's a Shock Parasite coming, RUN!"
