the Mana-Wilds (the Cold Iron Chronicles) #5: Fangs of Iron

Chapter 6: a Fecund Sift

"I am no person who has any skill in 'Inspiring Speeches'... but what I am here to say... is what do we fight for?" The Doctor-Commander gave a stoic yet weary gaze upon enraptured Oprak, grasped with tyrannic intent by the gaseous spores that threatened to bring damnation to those who breathes its sultry respirations.

A part of him told him to run away... that the Gas Mask he wore on his face would crumble upon Princess Misoyvel's pernicious onslaught. To cut his losses and flee whilst he can. Yet the other voice in his head... most especially egged on by his celestial passenger Arazni would urged him to charge into the fray.

"You're are going to help those Greenskins aren't you?" Arazni capriciously sneered.

"It's either that or I don't get any Iron Ingots to repair my Myrmidons...And I can't eat all of your Three Sister's Soup alone." Izo growled back at the Angel. He then returned his gaze to his Myrmidons and F.I.R.E.F.L.Y.'s Further away, was the Generalissimo--- or Generalissima Azaersi with her Court and Opraki Citizens, their plum eyes looking over the foreign legion standing between them and damnation with bated breath. Helmi the Huldra too glanced sheepishly from the cover of a wall, her distinctive vulpine ears standing freakishly amidst the sea of Hobgoblins.

"We... maybe true blooded... if only just artificially made Americans Armed and baptized by the descendants of the Founding Father's, but if we are TRULY Americans! We must confront... nay... never ignore evil wherever we stand to be at. Oprak... maybe not one such American City... yet I implore you Myrmidon... to see as it if it were! Whether it's the great towers of New York... or the shining beaches of California... the Great Plains of our hearthlands... I say to you... do not let this tyranny from Tar-Baphon any further from where we stand!" He spoke, most of his words Izo would admit were mere scrambles of his brain trying to formulate anything on the top of his tongue that one would hear as 'Inspiring'.

"Come what may Secretary Baird... Oprak shall be no different than if it is Vellumis, Fort Bragg or Washington." Myrmidon nodded, all of 23 bodies saluted in synronicity.

"Here is my Orders... Purge this abominable mutation from this Earth!" he raised his Shotgun to the air.

Marching as one, not like as a rushing flood but a slow yet steady volcanic overflow. Armed with Fungicide Powder, the Myrmidons and the F.I.R.E.F.L.Y's germinate the contaminated city of Oprak.

"Arazni, tell me more of what you know of Princess Misoyvel..." the Doctor-Commander asked his passenger.

"Fortunately for the two of us, she does not seem to be personally attending her 'experiment' here... not that I see any of her more 'succesful' experiments running amok. She likely just applied one of her Genesis Blooms as her Agent and as her Oracle before leaving it to fend for itself."

"A Genesis Bloom?"

"A giant mushroom." Arazni abridged. "It would spawn Lesser Blooms through its roots. Find the Lesser Blooms, follow the roots and you will find its primogenitor. Oh and... purge them with that gruesome powder you have."

"Athelete's Foot doesn't exist in Golar--- Hold on is that one over there?" the Doctor-Commander pointed to a set of gnarled, finger if not branch shaped-like fungoids who emitted... or more of ejaculated noxious pores from their tips. More akin to a skeletal finger creaking out of the earth to spread its poisonous decay than a true flora.

"Yes! Get them out of our sight!" Arazni's voice swerved into a hateful blench.

Sharing in her disgust, Izo chambered a shell from his shotgun and blasts forth the fiery breath of his incendiary weapon towards the myconian abomination. The superheated magnesium burst the fungoid into a ball of flames, its dead-men's fingers smash violently and began to let forth a excruciating scream before its infernal expiration.