[b]Redana![/b]

All is chaos. The world does not function. The foundations of the heavens are but water. Tears and shouts are at once swept away by the storm. Things are at their worst.

Or so you thought before the Solid Projectile volley hits.

Human skin has long been proof against the mere ministrations of physics and smokeless powder. Assault rifles long ago joined the blowpipe and sling in the museum of obsolescence. Instead the military demand for ranged firepower has been filled with the noxious battle-chemical cocktail known euphemistically as 'solid projectiles'. They seem harmless enough in the hand - little glass marbles filled with multicoloured and swirling colours, like a bite taken from a rainbow. They seem harmless enough when they impact - certainly they sting like being struck by a paintball, and might leave painful bruises if they happen to strike unarmoured skin. But the bite of these weapons comes in the highly reactive gases that billow outwards when those hideous chemicals react with the open air.

The red ones merely detonate with sound and light, converting their contents into magnesium flashes and point-blank thunderclaps. The blue ones gust forth in clouds of smoke thick and heavy with poison. The green ones contain electrochemical lightning that overwhelms the nerves like a thunderstrike. Heightened senses and keen servitor hearing and smell renders one even more vulnerable to the sudden deafening, blinding, foul-smelling explosion of sensation. In time the body can adjust. In time one can deaden ones nerves to the point where even this detonation of suffering is no more than the wind. But there are many demands on one's time in this moment, not least of which are the hurricane charge of Ceronian warriors.

They have come equipped for capture. They laid down their spears long ago, but they have long since herded and trapped the squidlike Secretaries of the leviathan and other benign creatures to serve as workbeasts. The same trapping techniques and lashes are applied here with expert practice. Limbs are caught in rope snares and sprinters circle in leaping unison to entangle and net the disoriented targets. Finally, the strongest martial artist close from behind to twist and lock joints pending the final click of chain. The gagging is not an ordinary part of doctrine but they have their orders.

Firm and muscular hands wrap around your neck, tracing up your jaw to settle into a full and harsh grip, pinching down to open your lips. Shouts of defiance are cut short as the gags are pulled roughly into place, pulled harshly back like a tug on the reins by the Ceronian straddling your back. You're held firmly in place while the leather is twisted into place and buckled into position. Then it's to be seized roughly by the hair and turned to face the rain to wash the mud and blood away. You are to be presented to the Admiral, after all, and your bodies have value even if she has decreed your words do not.

By the time your senses have cleared themselves you are free from the rain and mud - the one positive to this moment, though you are still both soaked to the bone. You hang by your wrists with your feet just off the floor, back to back with each other, tied together at the wrists and the ankles, intimately aware of each others' attempts at struggling. You're in the tacky and backwards little throne room (the Empress' throne room is so vast one can hardly make out the distant side of it, this is barely a bedroom by comparison). 

"Excellent," came a cold voice - cold, but not quite cold enough. "You have served me well."

[b]Vasilia![/b]

There are indeed guards. A squad of ten, eerily hollow-eyed, with none of the chatter or small talk or moments of distraction normally demonstrated by such guards. With Galnius' squad their numbers are even with yours but that is not a situation that favours you - they stand within a long, linear corridor with room enough for three soldiers abreast. They are not in a shieldwall formation now but it would take moments for them to manage such a thing, and once they have it will be as though the corridor is blocked with a gate of adamantium. Narrow environments with no possibility for flanking are the ideal conditions for phalanx stalemates - were such a thing to form those ten could hold against a thousand. 

Fortunately and unfortunately these soldiers do not seem inclined to patrol, meaning you have plenty of time to develop a plan.