The Road to London – Bloody Rose Hill
A Hellgate: London fanfiction, by yours truly.


2 AG.
12th of November.
Dorking, England, south of London.
Noon.


“They say that no plans, even the best laid ones, never survive beyond first contact. It’s true. Painfully so.

Things went fine to begin with. We closed in on our hill and split in two groups, support and assault. The support took cover in the ruined buildings along the bottom of the hill and remained out of sight. The rest of us went up to the hedges that go along the north-west and north-east sides of the hill to get closer.

As we got close enough to get a good look at our enemy, I realized just how bad things were. They had spitters. Only acid, guessing from the green runes on their bellies. Even worse, they were guarded by an entire damn platoon of blade demons. The hill was crowded.”


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“Jesus, Joan...” The young man stares up at the hill from his position inside of the hedge. His voice is but a scared whisper. “Even if we had both of the NG’s, this is a ... a really bad situation. We can’t just charge them like this.”

Joan nods, holding her blade carefully on her lap, with her hand rubbing at her helm´s forehead fruitlessly. “Damn it, damn it, damn it... we need this hill. We need it now. The others are damned without our support, but...”

“We’re damned if we do, they’re damned if we don’t, eh?” He forces a weak grin, but his pale face and trembling hands betray it.

“Yeah.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence. The demons on the hill are always silent. They move about, they eat, they crowd around their flames, but they never make a sound. Not to each other, at least. Damn their screams when they fight.

The rest of the assault squad is hidden in the hedge as well. If it weren’t for the demon’s convenient shortsightedness. Hell doesn’t seem to be easy on the eyes after all. This gives them a little room for maneuver, but not much. Not much at all.

“I got it.” She reaches out and pats the young mans knee softly, “You, you’re gonna go back down to the others and tell them to open fire on them with all they’ve got, alright? And I mean all they’ve got. Especially with the NG. Waste ammo all you bloody like, and do not retreat. We’ll hit them in their flank. Once the spitters start charging up and the blade demons start focusing on us, I want you to take the squad up the eastern flank, and take them out from range, alright? If those things start dropping acid on us...”

The man nods firmly and immediately starts crawling down the hedge, clumsily passing the rest of the squad as he goes. Joan’s attention goes back to the top of the hill.

“He’ll attack soon,” she explains to herself. “Damn it. This better not fail.”

A couple of minutes pass. Everybody’s getting more and more uncomfortable in their positions. Nervousness makes way for fear. Morals start dropping. Then, ironically, the sounds of weapons fire drops the tension. It has begun.

Archs of electricity, concentrated beams of holy light, blessed machinegun fire, thousands of little green acid balls... it’s colorful. Beautiful, really. Beautiful, until they start sreaming. Loud, deafeningly so; each demons screaming with the intensity of a thousand souls from the most twisted pits of Hell itself. The horror of it is indescribable. It makes her sick; and the awful pleasure she gets when one of them is cut in twain by a holy bolt, or when another’s head turns into vapor from the NG, doesn’t help. Not at all. It’s disgusting. She revels in it.

They charge down the hill, blades held high. This is her que. She stands up, the rest of them follow her lead, and she charges; the rest follow, firing at the blade demons at close range from the side. Their guns are all close combat things. High damage, large splash, quick rate of fire... it’s a carnage. But it’s not enough.

Joan’s blade cleaves right through one’s middle. She spins and slashes out again; this time, the blade makes contact to the back of a knee. She stabs, cuts, slashes, punches, kicks- even grabs one by its misshaped ears and headbutts the demon. But it isn’t enough. They’re so many and in the chaos of it all, she just barely notices that the support fire has stopped. A quick glance down the hill reveals them running to the east; they’re flanking them already? The spitters.

She looks to her left, spotting them. It’s true, their taking aim, but not on the support. They’re aiming at them; and finally, she realizes the true grimness of the situation.

The demons have been cut down to at least half their original size, but they still outnumber them. It’s hard to say, maybe three or four against every one of them, which is hard to accept, when knowing it only takes one to kill one of her men. And kill they do. In between every kill of her own, she takes a glance at her men; two are dead. Butchered. A third is killed right infront of her. Half of his head is cut cleanly off, spraying her with blood.

“Damn it damn it damn it damn it-“ And then it gets worse.

The support opens fire, ripping through the fragile spitters, but not before they let loose their acidic spit. Just under a dozen high, green colored trails arch into the sky, before falling down towards the battle.

“Damn it.”

And they hit friend and foe alike. Anyone hit directly is dead. Anyone hit by the smaller splashes will be lucky if they live. The battle pauses for just a split second, and she finds herself staring. One of her men is hit in the stomach by one of the smaller splashes. He cries and screams as it melts into him, before collapsing from the shock and pain, his insides rolling out. She feels like throwing up. There’s four of them left out of the original assault group, and they’re not done yet.

She tightens her grip on the blade and cuts out again, letting out a barbaric cry of rage. For a moment, the demons hesitate as she assaults them, but quickly regain themselvs and fight back. The other three join her, firing at them with all they got; but they’re outnumbered. But just before the demon’s can take proper advantage, the support opens fire again; this time, from the top of the hill.

In a matter of seconds, its over. The battle is over. The dead litter the hill side, but the demons have been defeated.

‘Victory’.



Doesn’t seem quite proper to call it that.



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Post script!

Thanks all for the interest shown! I hope the last, uh... 'two days' haven't been too long. ;) Anyway, here you go!