Gruub

- WW1 era tech (bolt action rifles, etc)

- Gruub factory inside a reinforced castle

- Gruub somehow is able to distinguish between friend and foe

“I wonder what the Gruub tastes like.”

“You’re welcome to try it.”

- Speech by army leader

“FIRST PERSON TO HAND ME THE HEAD OF ONE GRUUB PLEMBLE III WILL BE INSTANTLY PROMOTED TO THEIR IMMEDIATELY HIGHER RANK!”

- Surprise attack goes wrong, Gruub is flung everywhere and everyone’s split up

- Hopping from rooftop to rooftop and avoiding seas of Gruub they are the first to get to the capital

- The two meet the leader of the castle

- Davis is double agent, but they get in situation where Jondo is holding pulled grenade

- Story ends on trippiness

15,000 soldiers all camped around a castle. Their lack of formation was indicative of their complete confusion as to why they were even here in the first place. Each had been diverted from their regular regiments by a letter that was so vague, had it not been hand delivered by each soldier’s superior, it would have just been thrown out as junk mail or a lame joke. Some were sitting on their helmets fiddling with their bolt-action rifles, some were chattering away getting to know each other as it had seemed each had been ensured with surgical precision that they didn’t know anyone else. Some were doing all of these at the same time, such as the two men lying almost vertically on a grassier patch of the hill having met not five minutes beforehand.

The thin one with mutton chops that looked like they were about to come alive and attack someone was assembling and disassembling his rifle. The other more rotund but surprisingly athletic looking man was staring at a nearby oozing outflow pipe. The gelatinous purple sludge was trickling out and piling itself onto the same mass of goop. The soldiers there had two instructions from the letter:

1. Arrive at these coordinates at this time following this map, and

2. Do NOT touch any purple goo if you value your life

“I still think this is a wind up,” the rotund man said.

The mutton chopped man stopped halfway through inserting his rifle’s spring. “It was delivered by your CO. If it is then a lot of the corps are in on this crack.”

“I mean, mysterious purple sludge? This sounds like a bad sci-fi story.”

“You’re welcome to touch it but does the value of your life outweigh possibility of this being a practical joke? Just sit and enjoy the being paid to do nothing, joke or no.” He didn’t even look up from his now newly assembled weapon.

A stiff breeze blew through, rustling the grass and everyone’s uniforms, wafting the strange smoky smell of the purple sludge. Everyone seemed unfazed. Though there was no purple sludge smell training, everyone just knew how to react.

“I’m Jondo by the way,” he muttered, about to fall asleep from boredom.

“Davis, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of each other by the end of today. We’ll attack the castle and piss off to our respective regiments.”

“The castle back there?”

“No, the other one you can’t see,” Davis snarked back.

“But we’re smack bang in the middle of our territory, why would we be attacking one of our own castles?”

Davis shrugged. He wasn’t in the mood to debate a mission that could have a billion different forms.

After an ungodly amount of time spent waiting and staring, the soldiers heard what sounded like a fog horn coming from the top of the hill. A soldier covered in a deep black coat tilted his head away from the giant megaphone to make sure everyone was paying attention. After an hour of talking and staring at nothing, there was nobody who wouldn’t be.

“Men and women of various companies…” he announced. ”…We sit hiding within our own territory because the enemy resides in that castle.” He threw his arm back and pointed behind him. “And in that castle a foul weapon is being produced, that purple sludge you’re probably confused about from your instruction sheet. That…is an agent that melts anybody within our corps, and only our army corps.”

Had the audience not been a group of disciplined soldiers, there would have been a chorus of interested chattering. But all he got was a few grunts and the whistling of the wind. “We are still unsure how it leaves the enemy unaffected, but in the next few hours that won’t matter because we are going to surprise them and destroy this facility. We have given you a lack of formation on purpose. We have found that the more random and erratic our formations are, the less likely you are to be hit with it.”

He slapped the megaphone. Nobody except him seemed to know why. “This is Gruub, named after our enemy Sir Gruub the Third, the bizarrely named king who is in fact residing in that very castle, taunting us by being in our own territory. WELL NO LONGER! MEN, AT THE READY!” He shouted, motioning them all over. True to his speech, everybody made their way up the hill in seemingly random positions. Hundreds were peeking their heads over the hill and thousands more were behind. Davis and Jondo were in the slush pit with everyone else behind.

The general raised his hand, readying the order to charge. As he did this a series of drummers began a drum roll. As a few more soldiers who had been distracted by the speech were gathering their things, the drummers stopped, and the general motioned everyone forward.

There was a half second pause as everyone was thinking how to charge, and everyone came to the same conclusion: However the hell I please. People tumbled over the hill, some were screaming a war charge scream and some just ran. Besides heading towards the castle, everybody seemed to be approaching their mission in wildly differing ways. In any other mission the chaos of the attackers would have denoted a horde of drunks. But here, it was a surgical strike of lunacy.

When the first line of soldiers were halfway across the field past the hill, a long series of clicks came from the ground as soon as the boots hit them. A moment’s confusion ensued before a line of mines blew up in a shower of slick purple Gruub.

“Oh shit!” Davis shouted, barely hearing himself over the chorus of other voices.

The soldiers who stepped on them didn’t seem to exist for much longer than that. The disappeared entirely, not leaving even a single drop of blood behind. All those who were caught in the ensuing flood disappeared themselves. It wasn’t even accurate to say they melted. It was as simple as them just disappearing. Many could hear the general shouting, “I thought we cleared those mines, ah shit.” And yet the charge never faltered for a second.

Many more mines were stepped on but the charge never abated until a distinctly thinner group of people hit the walls of the castle, Davis and Jondo arriving at the same position. The soldiers reached into their bags and took out their ropes, tying the end to make a stopper for the slits of the castle. Many had begun climbing and as soon as they did members of Gruub the Third’s personal guard met them at the top with drinking glasses full of purple liquid.

They were dumping it down and the poor bastard who got hit would fall toward the ground, but never hit it before they had disappeared. Davis and Jondo were first and second on their rope, but notably they weren’t greeted by any guards. Both were confused as they saw their fellow soldiers being dumped on regularly. But the confusion ended once they saw the distinct outline of a cauldron being wheeled on top of them. They flew up the rope now, using all of their strength to reach the top before they would be drowned in the stuff.

Jondo and Davis were able to hop to either side of the wall clutching their rifles as the cauldron tipped over and their comrades climbing behind them ceased to be. Before the guards could react Jondo and Davis put two bullet in their heads. They hauled themselves over and many soldiers were already well beyond the wall and had reached the desolate, decrepit market town. Strange metal tubing went through various houses and all led back to the cobblestone keep in the centre.

Davis made it to the top first and the other guards were too overwhelmed to even glance at him. He helped Jondo up and Jondo began dragging his rope back up before Davis stopped him. “What are you doing?” He shouted over the hail of screaming and rifle fire. “There’s gonna be Gruub all over that thing. One touch and we’re dead…probably. On reflection I really don’t know how it works.”

“Don’t worry,” Jondo replied, “I’ll just leave it and we can find another way down to the other side.”

Soon enough, however, the yelling and gunfire were not the most deafening sounds that could be heard. A rumbling, like an earthquake, accompanied by a foghorn coming from the keep caused every enemy combatant to immediately stop and speed out of sight. Jondo and most of the soldiers were visibly confused but Davis’ heart sank into his chest, he had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen.

“EVERYBODY, FOLLOW ME!” Davis shouted, only to barely hear himself, let alone anyone else hearing him. He knew he could at least save one person. He nudged Jondo and motioned him over to the far side of the wall. He pointed at the closest thatched roof and made two hopping motions. The house’s foundations was raised off of the ground and looked like it would take a decent step to step off of it. The building next to it was a taller church with a smaller wall going along the spine of the roof.

Jondo looked at Davis and shook his head nervously, No chance in hell. Davis grabbed Jondo, looked him square in the eyes, and mouthed the words, “TRUST ME.” He then leapt onto the thatched roof, forcing a cloud of dust and twigs up and around him. If it wasn’t a tricky jump before, the puff that was obfuscating the roof would make it one. Putting quite a lot of unfounded trust in this soldier he just met, he took a few steps back and leapt.

He landed on the roof forcing it to bend just far in enough to shoot a wave of terror through Jondo. The dust forced him to shut his eyes but he could sense that he was starting to slip. He was grabbed before he could slide down any further and after he had rubbed his eyes relatively clean Davis motioned over to the church roof. Jondo threw his arms in the air, after all that they gotta do it again. Davis motioned towards the keep with a similar angry energy, implying they haven’t got any time for this arguing bollocks. He swung his rifle onto his back holster and patted it a few times in the vain hope that that would stop it falling out.

As it turns out, jumping from one slanted roof to another is a lot more difficult than a flat surface with lots of runway. He leapt without thinking and hit the cobblestone roof, with his rifle predictably sliding out and disappearing into the dark alley below. Piece of shit. As Davis was swearing in his mind Jondo had joined him, apparently being less apprehensive about leaping rooftops as before.

They peeked over the roof’s dividing wall just as the keep’s siren halted. As the crowd of enemy soldiers were running in the streets with the other soldiers pursuing them, the pipes that were running through so many buildings groaned and creaked. And then, just after everything became silent for a moment, they burst, blasting a wave of Gruub into the air. If anybody was still confused they certainly weren’t anymore. Davis ducked down and pulled Jondo down with him. The torrent hit the ground and erratically flowed through the streets. Not only were the friendly soldiers completely struck off of reality’s ledger, but the enemy soldiers were engulfed and drowned in the goo, which was like trying to swim in molasses.

Small splashes leapt up at the church, threatening the two with annihilation, but as of right now they were safe. The backwash of the wave was making it impossible to peek over the wall without getting a drop on them. And if a drop was all it took, it was a better idea to hide. Then, down below, Jondo heard a familiar voice barking orders to a bunch of soldiers.

- Jondo saw the captain yelling at Davis but calling him something different

“My friends call me Choppie.”

“Because of the—”

“Yes, because of the mutton chops.”

“Dusk’s light was streaming through the castle’s open air slitted windows.