Zek

The Iron Ram was here, directly perpendicular to the mountain, only a few meters away, it's so called iron ram having already dug into the mountain so as to stabilize itself. The moment the mountain shook with the combined mass of the dreadnought directly below us, two grappling hooks, fired out of the ship's bow ballistae were fired in a 90-degree arc, rising tens of meters above us only to sink back down and cling onto the cliff edge, giving the enemy the perfect route directly to us.

In charge of our front had been Yilie's second in command, Hide, however, he had been critically injured by a shard of one of our catapults a it had exploded into a million tiny pieces, one rather large one striking Hide in the chest. Zetsu was now in charge, absolutely containing no idea of what the hell he was doing. The moment he saws those hooks emerge from the horizon, he froze, but by some fortune, those under him were better prepared. And so they rushed forward, alongside myself, immediately using whatever we could to dislodge the solid steel hooks that had dug into the ground with no effect however, at least until Luke ran forward, blowing holes directly where each prong had dug in, loosening the hook for us to send it back down towards The Iron Ram. The same thing was done with the second hook.

Our catapults may have been out of operation, but we were still had the ammunition. Barrel after barrel of blasting jelly, as Zetsu stood motionless, was rolled to the cliff edge, lit by Luke or the other firebender that luckily was still with us, and sent down below to the vessel below us.

The remainder of our men still possessing bows, as the tunnels below prepared for close-quarters-combat, fired at the enemy below us. And so the earthbenders faced a combined force of exploding barrels and fierce arrows. The majority of the barrels slipped in between the gap between the cliff edge and the ship, detonating harmlessly at the bottom of the sea as only one managed to hit the vessel's deck, reducing one of the ballistae to slags. By the time we could even think to light the barrels for a shorter fuse, the earthbenders below had raised their defenses once more and had thus created the earthen shell of a turtle as the soldiers quite literally walked up the mountain, some one step at a time, and some moving the earth beneath their feet to elevate themselves.

The earthbenders aboard The Iron Ram were done wasting time as well. Their attention shifted to us now, firing rock after rock, disk after disk, arrow after arrows our way 2 of our men were killed by arrows, and 3 more by flying rocks, by no means worth the effort. "Pull back!" I yelled, seeing this was a worthless effort. "Pull back!"

Before we could pull back, an overeager Fire Nation soldier, pushing one final lit barrel over the edge was met with an earthen spear that went completely through the barrel, impaling him before the barrel could detonate, taking out 2 others alongside him and sending molted slags of stony remains below.

I moved back to where Ka'lira was tending to a wounded soldier and Jadoh was distributing close quarters weapons to the soldiers, clearly against his will, likely viewing his job as beneath him, the piece of shit that he was.

Zetsu had somehow snapped out of it and was now on the PA, practically begging Yilie to tell him what to do. I shook my head. This was the man sent to lead us.

We could hear the same characteristic metallic grinding and scraping behind us as the grappling hook fired into the air once more, only one this time, grapping into the cliff side once more. A soldier rushed forward to dislodge it alongside Luke who I just barely managed to hold back. I tried calling out to the soldier, but it was no use as his head was taken off by a disk of solid, compact stone, some glory hound of an earthbender below taking the first shot he could.

Luke looked at me, and I didn't need him to say, "thank you" to know the intent in his eyes. He looked to the barrels of blasting jelly that we would have previously been raining down upon some Earth Kingdom skulls, and I got his meaning. We rolled a barrel forward to the hook, not daring to get close enough to the cliff edge that had taken already more than a few of the lives of our fellow soldiers and waited.

We could already hear the battle below, roaring through the tunnels as first contact was made, and knew we would be coming up next, but the longer we could avoid it, the better. And so, climbing up the hook, the first earthbender showed himself, and Luke fired. The barrel exploded into a ball of gold as the man's face was taken off of his head, and the iron hook was blown into thousands of tiny shards, and pushed back into the sea, tearing off a chunk of the cliff' edge along with it. Yet the sounds of the battle below told us we had evaded the fight for only the time being.

We had only further validation of that when the PA activated once more, and Yilie's voice, surrounded by the shouting off the world around him, spoke, "Your female mercenary. Get her in the castle. I want her with my wife and son, to defend them, and if it comes to it, make it quick."

Ka'lira had heard. And I couldn't get her face out of my mind as she rushed down into the dark abyss of the warring tunnels to attend to a matter that was best left unspoken, yet she of all people seemed to understand what she was being asked to do, and so she left, and I only prayed her job didn't come to it.