Fable - Ask Embrace the Slaughter

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"Stand aside," Irene called to the three ogres along the left flank. "Save your strength."

She stood among them now, her profile tiny compared to each of their massive frames. The ogres were breathing heavily, not quite winded, but certainly having expended a fair effort in fending off the gretches. The next Troll was perhaps a half minute out, its face twisted with hatred but its pace slow and methodical, not fast and frenzied like the first three to crash into the line. The ogres all looked to Irene, their Praetor in charge, and ceded the ground to her. They knew her nickname. They knew what she could do with those blades in her hands.

"And let me handle the refuse."

The gretches before her, hesitantly jerking forward and back, feinting and posturing, now at last with the ogres stepping back committed once more to their attack.

Irene showed no mercy, ignoring the pain of her wounds and simply letting her body flow in its fluid motions. Quick, precise, deadly. All was vacated from her mind but the present moment, but the task of death and dealing it, but the foresight of her movements and that of her enemy's, a pattern to be written in blood. And so it began.

Off with the hatchet-wielding hand of the first gretch. Stepping just so she used its falling body as cover against the attack of the second, stabbing around it and piercing her seax through the creature's crooked nose. Her left sword swung about behind her back cutting open the third. A twirl of both her blades killing the fourth and fifth. The first gretch, handless, stood and saw her blade raked across its neck, and a river of its blood flowed. Two pounced at her and she stood off to the side and they sailed past—precious few seconds before they became relevant again. She blocked the spear of the sixth and ducked the hatchet swing of the seventh; off guard she caught them both by switching which arm she attacked them with, and down they went, their chests impaled through. The two pouncers recovered and came from behind; their crude spearpoints she sliced off with one blade, and with the other beheaded them both in a single wide slash, claiming them as the eighth and ninth to fall. Hearing the descending shriek of the tenth gretch, leaping at her yet again from behind, she merely pointed her sword to her rear and let it impale itself.

She whirled around to face the front again, the impaled tenth sliding off of her blade, the ten fresh bodies all around her then. Contemptible cowardice was all she saw in the lowly creatures' eyes. That hesitation again, their bestial morale wavering, as they considered another assault or scampering away.

"You sought death," she said, caring not if the stupid trolloids could understand her. "You found it."

Then she rushed them.
 
Mogrin's fellow ogres turned that Troll's arm into the next thing above paste, all of those massive strikes from the warhammer not only powdering the bones but even tearing and lacerating the hide. Already could it be seen that those wounds of the flesh were sealing themselves back up, but the bones, ha, not the bones. They wouldn't heal so quickly. They would stay broken.

The ogres finally took control of the Troll's right arm, freeing Mogrin of the burden. All he had to do now was keep the Troll in check with his body and legs, make sure it didn't kick out or throw him off or roll away, and keep a tight hold on its neck so it didn't take a bite out of him or his fellow Maulgar.

Easier said than done; Mogrin was already feeling tired from the exhaustive effort, and the Troll's struggles seemed far from letting up. As the two ogres pounded away on the other arm, the Troll snapped up at Mogrin, pushing against his strength and coming close to sinking its teeth into his face.

Mogrin, angered, grabbed hold of one of the Troll's tusks. "I'll give you something to eat." And with an immense burst of strength snapped it off. Shoved it into the Troll's open, roaring mouth. It didn't do much, for the Troll swallowed its own tusk in short order, and it was mostly a wasteful effort, but it was satisfying nonetheless.

But not as satisfying as what came next.

"We're ready, Chief," said one of the ogres.

"Got it nice and tenderized," said the other.

Indeed, now both arms were shattered. Broken. Useless.

"Bash this jin's skull in," Mogrin said.

And both ogres, one with his warhammer and the other with his club, took turns beating in the Troll's head. The roaring came to a stop, and soon that ugly countenance was turned into a sloppy mess of green flesh, white bone, and red pulp. Even still was the Troll's body, its legs, struggling, only some of its vigor gone.

"Get your cutters out, boys." Mogrin pulled up one of his axes. "Take an arm. I'll take the head."

He got to chopping at that thick trunk of a neck, the work much like that of felling a tree now. The beat of the Dhuumok's drum set the pace of his chops, and at that moment the primal pleasure of claiming victory over a hated foe made Mogrin perhaps the happiest ogre in this damnable pass.
 
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Irene slew as many gretches on the left flank as she could—instilling fear in the rest of their kin she lacked the time to reach, or making a carpet of corpses, either result was to her liking. But, with the imminent arrival of the next Troll on the left flank, she was out of time to properly bring either to full fruition.

"Ogres!" she called out behind herself, backing away from the approaching monstrosity. "All yours!"

Irene fell back, her part finished, and quickly did the three ogres come up to grapple with the beast. One of them, unfortunately, took a vicious bite to the shoulder and lost a chunk of it to the Troll, fell from the shock of his injury, and one of his mates had to help drag him back while the other took on the Troll by himself. Had the wounded ogre been left there, the gretches surely would have seized the opportunity to start eating him alive, as was befitting of their repulsive nature.

Irene rejoined the formation proper, taking a moment to survey everything: the ogres were doing well enough in wrestling the Trolls back as they came and killing them safely behind the main bulk of the fighting. Mogrin was still behind the formation, working diligently at slaying the big Troll he'd taken. The Templars, thank Regel, had finished with their use of healing magic, and their wounded men and women from the ambush were up at the line, waiting as fresh reserves to replace any exhausted Templar.

Behind Ol' Kegbreaker now, Irene shouted over the din of combat, asking loudly of him, "How do you and yours fare? Do you need replacements?"

"Ha! We Arragoth are nothing if not famed for our endurance!" he boasted, cleaving into a gretch's skull with his axe precisely afterward.

Yet still there were some wounded dwarves among the front line, plain to see. The gretches might have only crude weapons to their name, but underestimation of one's foe was a dead man's folly.

"Arndel!"

"Praetor!" shouted back the Templar Chapter Master.

"Rotate in some of your Templar. Relieve the wounded dwarves."

"Owh, my beautiful line of dwarven shields!" Ol' Kegbreaker facetiously lamented.

"Make do," Irene said.

And then she went to their few ranged fighters, their crossbowmen and the two elven archers.

"Munitions?"

"Low!" said the male elf, nocking another arrow and letting loose, helplessly striking a target in that massive green horde before the dwarven line—he couldn't miss if he tried. "We shall all be expended soon!"

"Use what you have—make every arrow and bolt count," she called to the collective line of ranged fighters. Every gretch felled at a distance was one less the front line had to concern themselves with. "Then take up arms from the wounded if you have no sidearm of your own. Skirmish on the flanks, or rotate in to the front. Praise Regel with a blade soaked in the enemy's blood."

"EVET, PRAETOR!" came the hearty and unified response of all the crossbowmen and the elves. Their enthusiasm, their utter lack of reluctance, for the task at hand fired Irene's heart and warmed her blood.

Here in the Westlurch Pass was the greatest example of Gildan courage since the Armistice began, and Irene thought herself fortunate to be present as its witness. This was something, should she perish this day, that death was too feeble to take from her. To take from Gild as a whole. These were the acts upon Arethil which endured through eternity itself.
 
Toward the end, when a deep red trench had been chopped into the Troll's neck, Mogrin set aside his axe and dug his thick fingers into the gorge of the pulsing neck wound and with a great separating heave wrenched open the chasm of gore even further with his bare hands. The bone of the Troll's spine, already cracked by the axe, he snapped as if bending and breaking a hard branch. With a jerk of his right arm he tore the Troll's head from its body.

Mogrin stood, holding the battered head aloft, and bellowed out a victorious roar, beating his chest and smearing copious streaks of the Troll's blood across his broad frame. He panted with fatigue after his roar had departed his lungs in full, but the act worked against his exhaustion. It invigorated him. It honored Threshkuul and it honored his tribe and it brought glory to the Maulgar.

Mogrin threw the head to the rocky ground and said to his two fellow ogres, "Finish up, and take a breather." Indeed, the Troll was still putting up a squirming fight though it had been decapitated, though its arms were in the process of being hacked off. But such was the weakness of the beast's struggle now that Mogrin need not sit atop it.

Taking a breather himself, Mogrin looked back down the pass. Nothing, save that small assortment of gretches who had worked their contraptions (and that bit of magic, strange) to block the pass with boulders and fallen trees. He looked up at the walls of the pass. The gorge of the Westlurch pass wasn't entirely sheer, but had some natural shelves—inaccessible from the inside of the gorge, unless you brought climbing gear or could jump unnaturally high, but could be gotten to from other routes. It was from these that the gretches first sprang their ambush, raining down from the natural shelves like a downpour of gnashing teeth and savage shrieking.

Mogrin didn't see anything else up there, but then, how could he, with the angle down on the ground being so poor? Could there be something else lurking? Something had brought this horde of gretches and Trolls together.
 
IN GILD​


"You thought your deceptions would save you."

Boesarius placed upon the table his toolkit. He unfurled it neatly. His gloved hand passed over the various implements. To his left, chained to the wall of the dungeon room, was what appeared to be a human woman. Thin, frail, naked, its face with a row of freckles that crossed over the bridge of its nose, ordinary green eyes, ordinary red hair. It hung by shackles attached to its wrists, its feet and its toes barely able to touch the stone floor.

"You thought you could do whatever you please in Gild."

Boesarius selected a freshly sharpened iron scalpel. Examined it this way and that in the light of the overhanging lantern of the room. The chains of the shackles holding the apparent woman rattled. The creature assuming the woman's form was shaking with fear. But it was too late for fear.

"You thought you could hide from me."

Boesarius turned to face the seeming woman. The shadow cast by the lantern above upon his wide-brimmed hat drenched his eyes in darkness. His lips were an impassive line. He approached the ostensible woman, in fact a Black Shuck, with the scalpel in hand.

He said to it: "I want you to know, before we begin, that what killed you is the same thing that always kills your atrocious kind."

The imposter woman feebly turned its head away from the scalpel now held up for it to see and truly reckon with. It pressed its one cheek to the wall behind it, looking fearfully and sidelong out from the half-lidded eye which still faced the tool, the iron it was made of.

"Your hubris."

Slowly, Boesarius brought the flat side of the scalpel to the false woman's exposed cheek. He pressed the tool to its flesh, observed the burn the iron caused on contact, listened to the pitiful, feminine moan of pain from the disguised woman—its weeping would have been persuasive to the naive.

Before Boesarius could demand of his prisoner that it say it too, that it repeat exactly what he had said, bringing the jin to heel and making one of its last acts upon Arethil one of submission, the dungeon door opened and new light spilled into the dark room. Boesarius languidly turned his head to look over his shoulder. The low sizzle of the ironburn continued uninterrupted on the Black Shuck, and it continued to weep and moan.

Bashrahip Mustafa Junnal took a brisk step into the room from the hall. He regarded the sight of Boesarius and his prisoner with some noted aversion, but said nothing of it. Instead, the bashrahip got straight to the point. "Regulator Boesarius," he said. "You are needed. Quickly."

"I'm occupied," Boesarius said coolly.

"Praetor Irene is in peril—"

"She can handle it."

"Without aid, she and her entire maniple will perish."

And then Mustafa told him of the danger, that which Priestess Marta had discovered. Boesarius raised his head and his gaze slightly, the shadows crawling back from his eyes and revealing in his gaze a piqued interest. Not his favorite prey, what threatened his fellow Praetor, but it would do. It would do.

Boesarius drove the scalpel into the Black Shuck's exposed breast, its long handle sticking out like the hilt of some mythical blade set in a stone, and the Fae creature howled in agony.

"Hold that for me," Boesarius said. "I'll return for it soon."

And in such a state did Boesarius leave the seeming woman, the Black Shuck, in the room. He shut the thick door on his way out and in so doing smothered the creature's tormented cries, containing each and all in that unforgiving room where only the stones could hear them.
 
IN GILD​


By now the word was spreading like wildfire. Grigori and Marta had each told groups of Praetors they encountered, who in turn and with their own haste went to tell others, and soon enough a sizeable force was raised. By chance, he and Marta met again, and he told her where he was going: to his home in the Krala Ait to don his armor and take up his weapon. Many other Praetors had to do the same. Marta wished him all the speed Regel saw fit to grant him, and that they would meet again at the Western Gate. Grigori nodded, and hurried across the city and into the Krala Ait.

He all but threw open the door to his villa. For the first time in a long time, the quiet and the stillness therein did not bother him. He went immediately to the master bedroom, quickly shedding his stately garb and looking to the table upon which was arranged in orderly fashion his armor and arming garments. He began the work of dressing himself for battle.

Grigori thought to himself that perhaps the time had come to speak with Bashrahip Mustafa. Grigori felt strongly that no manner of solace would be found for him among the Council—he could only endure sparing amounts of it, when by duty to the state he ought to cast a vote on some pivotal matter. His true place was out among the danger which threatened Gild and the Gildan people. Of this there was no more solid proof than the reignition of purpose's driving flame within his breast today.

Armored now, with his shield strapped over his back and his sidearm on his belt, Grigori now reached for his axe which hung by hooks on the wall.

And here he stopped.

Paused. His hands were frozen, seized by a kind of trepidation.

He had not touched his axe since then.

Grigori swallowed. His throat was dry.

Then, slowly, as courage mounted, he willed his hands forward, and his grip closed around that fateful weapon of his. He lifted it from the hooks. Felt again its weight—once dreadful, now something less so—in his grasp.

"'It is not the blade,'" said Grigori, "'but the hand that wields it.'"

Solemnly, he departed from his room and from his villa. Then his sense of urgency made greater claim to his mind, and he picked up speed and began to jog toward the Western Gate.
 
The fight wore on. The tide of the trolloids crashing against the formation of Gildans and Templar, and in the churning arose to the surface of that sea of blood corpses and casualties aplenty. The bodies of gretches everywhere littered the pass, and the formation had to back up some just to have some clear ground upon which to fight, and yet, as they did, the Templar in the back ranks had to watch their footing from the old corpses resting in the dusty, rocky passage from the initial ambush. Some of these were flung down the pass by the ogres, who were all by now exhausted and sluggish from their battles with the Trolls, and in this way could they still contribute to the fight without being liabilities. Still, all the Trolls were dead, and though they had killed some of the ogres as well, that was a major victory. The gretches, still in a formidable though distinctly less numerous horde, were wavering; their attacks now were marked more by hesitancy than ferocity. They were close to the breaking. The pace of the battle had slowed dramatically.

Which was a godsend from Regel, if one were to inquire of Irene in that moment. She was quite good at ignoring pain, but exhaustion could not be so easily conquered. The spirit infused the body with energy, but this infusion had its limits.

Presently, she and Mogrin held the left flank of the shrunken formation. Shrunken, because a number of dwarves and Templar were by now wounded, the Templar clerics tapped on their arcane reserve to refresh the latter, or were dead, and the formation had to contract to stay cohesive. Hence the godsend from Regel. If the gretches were of a more suicidal bent they could surge into the more lightly defended flanks and come to surround the formation as a whole.

Irene's arms shook. Her legs shook. All her body burned with fatigue, and some of it ached and stung with the pain of wounds. Mogrin was beside her, taking in great heaving breaths as he, too, fought against the exhaustion of a prolonged battle without any relief.

The gretches before them shrieked and gibbered, but had yet to work up the nerve to try for an attack.

She pointed a quivering sword at the collective enemy to their front.

"Just one more," Irene said to Mogrin, looking up to him with a face now utterly drenched in sweat, blood, and dirt. The face of a woman who had delved into hell and was yet still clawing her way back out, trophies in tow.
 
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Mogrin's arms, his legs, each and all of his limbs felt like fallen logs, wanting nothing more than to just drop and become one with the ground. But though he felt demolished by the barrage of fatigue, he was up here, fighting so some of his Maulgar didn't have to, fighting alongside Praetor Irene because, in this moment, there was no other human walking the face of Arethil who pleased Threshkuul more.

His axes dripped with blood. Irene's swords dripped with blood. Both of them were likewise covered in it, and each looked like a harbinger of some dreadful calamity whose promise was endless carnage.

Irene pointed one of her swords to the shuffling, feinting, posturing gretches. Spoke.

"And then another," Mogrin replied, baring his teeth in a ferocious grin that dispelled any notion that he would allow his body's exhaustion to overcome his spirit's fire to finish the fight.
 
Irene shared in Mogrin's obstinate defiance of his body's limits, baring a grin much like his in solidarity.

"And then another after that."

She turned the full fury of her gaze back upon the gretches. The whole of her body could be incinerated in the fires of fatigue, yet her eyes would never tire, never waver.

"Together," she said.
 
Both Mogrin and Irene had barely even taken their first steps when came from behind them the bellowing alarm from Skrog the Dhuumok, his drumbeat ceasing in that moment and his mallets pointing. "CHIEF! UP THERE! CURITES! CUUUURIIITES!"

Mogrin whirled around, and that lingering suspicion he had earlier was confirmed with all its attending dread. Emerging now from their positions of hiding and to the edges of the natural shelves of the gorge, this on both sides of the pass, were a whole band of mages. At least two dozen of them, each and every one of them wearing dark robes, all their faces painted with black occult designs.

It didn't take much to deduce who they were.

Necromancers from Althhaven, that scourge of a school in the Spine which continuously spawned brazen and arrogant Curites who would descend into Campania to wreck havoc, and this particularly upon the Kingdom of Gild. It was as though they either took offense at the tenets of Jura, or viewed them as an open challenge inviting them to test their foul magics. That there were so many necromancers, all working together, was just like the horde of trolloids: unprecedented. Yet it was clear now who was behind the gigantic coalition of greenskins. The how and the why of it remained a mystery, and one which had no place in the present moment.

Their chanting came rolling down from the shelves of the gorge like a baleful chorus. Their hands became enwreathed in foul, sickly auras as they began casting their spells.

Mogrin could only watch with a horrific apprehension as, one by one, the dead gretches, some of the dead Trolls, and, hell, even a number of the dead Gildans and Templars began to rise up. Rise up all around them, for there were corpses both behind and in front of the formation.

The living trolloids had been used as pawns to chip away at the Gildans' and Templars' strength, to rob them of their vigor to fight as fresh combatants. And now the dead were rising in accordance with the necromancers' insidious plan, aiming to slowly but surely grind down what was left of them.

The deadly trap was now truly sprung.
 
"MOGRIN!"

The shout of his name ripped his attention away from the horrific magic raising up the dead all around them. She couldn't fault him for it. She couldn't fault any of her fellow Gildans, any of the Templar, many of whom were in that moment stunned with shock and fright. Magic alone was blasphemous enough, but necromancy was one of the foulest kinds, defiling the sanctity of the dead's rest and turning them into slaves. Irene hated it with a passion.

And hatred was her fuel.

Irene shot a glance up at one of the necromancers. Her Disruption shut down his casting, and what looked like sparks but was in truth raw mana crackled in the air around him in bright but brief burst. The whiplash from having his spell interrupted physically disoriented the necromancer, as if he had been punched—one of the marks of a spellcaster who lacked expertise. A novice, then. Inexperienced. Freshly graduated from Althhaven, young and brash and thinking he had at his command the might of a god. He knew not what he grasped or how even to wield it.

She looked to Mogrin then.

"Defend me from the gretches while I—"
 
"Irene, look."

She looked to their front at his prompting, and saw exactly what he saw. The gretches, the whole horde of them, were just as apprehensive and frightened of the rising dead as they were. The alarm in their gibbers and shrieks reached a fever pitch, their spindly fingers pointed at their risen comrades, and they attacked the zombie gretches as readily as they attacked the front line of Gildan dwarves.

"They weren't expecting this either."
 
"Curites," Irene spat. Even if the gretches and Trolls were jins, the callousness on display from the Althhaven necromancers was just the sort of thing Irene would expect from a mind addled with magic. Readily did they dispense with their greenskin allies, their usefulness in pinning down the Gildans now spent, and the necromancers betrayed them as easily as they drew breath. And the gretches were too stupid to even know what had happened to them.

This infighting between the living and the dead gretches was only a small boon, however. Still there were the undead rising up everywhere the eye could glance in the pass, their wounds and their broken bodies hindering them not a whit as necromantic magic held them together and gave them unholy life, gave cold fire to their assault upon the Gildans and Templar.

Irene snapped her gaze back. Toward one of the Risen Trolls at the formation's rear. She felt her power of Disruption return in a small matter of seconds, ready for use. She blasted the Troll with it from afar, those crackling sparks erupting from its body, surprising the ogres ready to do battle with it. The Risen Troll fell into a heap, that pale light departed from its eyes. Good. Easily done, and in keeping with her assessment that these were inexperienced necromancers they were dealing with, for their horrid zombies weren't resistant at all to her anti-magic severing the strings binding them to the caster's will.

Yet the problem wasn't the skill of the necromancers. It was their numbers. Irene's gift could not possibly stop all of them from casting, could not possibly stop all of their monstrosities. Even the Troll she had just returned to the dead could be made to Rise again in short order.

The situation was beyond desperate. Every passing second was as deafening as a death knell. They needed a plan.

"Can your ogres climb up the gorge walls? Get to one of the shelves?"
 
Mogrin had already made his reckoning on that matter, and it wasn't all good news. He relayed his thoughts as quickly as possible, because his Maulgar were fighting, his fellow Gildans were fighting, the Templar were fighting, each and every one of them exhausted and pushed to their limit. This work of figuring out tactics was important, but, Thresh, was it hard to just stand here, thinking and talking instead of fighting and killing.

"No chance on the north side. It's too far up. South side?" The one they were adjacent to on the left flank. "Can't climb it, but if I give a boost to the second tallest ogre, maybe he can reach the shelf and pull himself up." Both hard feats, because both Mogrin and his fellow ogre had precious little strength left in their arms. "But he'll be all alone up there."

And getting his ogre back down would be harder than getting him up there. Ogres weren't light, they couldn't just fling themselves off those ledges like the gretches did.
 
"Then I'll go myself."

She Disrupted another Risen Troll from afar, figuring that was at present the best use of her Praetor power, and then looked up to Mogrin with a determination that could chisel her will into stone.

"Throw me up there."
 
"I'll take care of things down here," Mogrin said. She wouldn't be gone long, of that Mogrin had no doubt, but for the little interim he needed to assume command. Everyone was hard-pressed, the formation of Gildans and Templar currently improvising against the threats now on all sides.

And they themselves were out of time. Corpses of gretches near Mogrin and Irene began to stir with undead animation.

"Kill them good."

He put his hands on her waist, mindful of his own strength even in his exhausted state. Even so, he heard Irene wince, felt her flinch, and he backed off with his grip just a bit. Did he hurt her?

"Are you okay?"
 
Mogrin's hands had, inadvertently, flared up the pain in some of the wounds on her legs, where the bites and stabs of gretches had broken through her light armor and drawn blood. Adept was she at ignoring pain, but she was not miraculous at it.

"I am fine, Mogrin," she assured him, not in a voice cast in the steel of a soldier but one with the gentle warmth of a friend. His care for her well-being bolstered her spirit, and to her deepened their comradeship all the more. Thank you for asking.

She looked up again to that natural shelf. Readied herself.

"Do it."
 
Mogrin took hold of Irene once more, crouched slightly, and then with one great standing heave tossed her high up toward the edge of the shelf. She cleared it easily, and Mogrin heard the first crackles of her Disruption as she disappeared beyond where he could see her and engaged the necromancers. Ha, those finger-wigglers probably soiled their robes when they saw her.

Mogrin took out his axes again and chopped his way through a few Risen gretches. Damn the Curites and their magic, those once freshly dead gretches had their bones and their wounds mended by the reanimation. And if it happened with them, it could happen with the Trolls, though they were bigger and the magic required for that more costly; he could see some of his Maulgar grappling with headless, armless, even legless undead Trolls. If they got back to full strength? His exhausted boys, not to mention the rest of the formation, would be in trouble. But this wouldn't be a problem until Irene started to exhaust her Praetor power.

"Make a circle," Mogrin bellowed as he walked among the dwarves and the Templar. "Make it tight. And hold it."

Thankfully, no one had lost their head yet, and no one questioned this command. The circle was made, with the dwarves facing west, up the pass, and the Templar facing east, back down toward the blockade; nowhere along the circle was not threatened by undead. The ogres were outside the newly formed circle, but that was for the best, and Mogrin knew they could handle themselves for the moment.

"By my grandpap's beard, what is that?" said one of the dwarves.

Mogrin looked. He heard a strange, deeper pitched gibbering among the living gretches, and then he saw it: a gretch with eyes turned wholly red—some form of possession. It was gibbering and grunting and shrieking and hooting in that malformed way gretches communicated. And the other living gretches were listening. And the fight between the Risen gretches and the living ones had stopped. As the living turned their hungry gazes upon the dwarves, they with what dregs of bestial courage they had left joined in the attack with the undead, gretches both with a heartbeat and not now savaging the dwarven shields. So that's how the Curites did it, Mogrin thought.

His attention was pulled the other direction when Chapter Master Arndel came up behind him and asked loudly, "Where's the Praetor!?"

A scream, sharply increasing in pitch. The body of necromancer hit the floor of the pass, dirt and loose rocks tumbling away from his twitching form. Mogrin jerked his thumb in that direction, toward the southern shelf. "Up there."

"We can't stay here! We will all perish in this quagmire of endless battle if we do!" He hesitated for a moment, then said, "I have a few among my Templar who have mastered the Flame. We can burn at least some of these undead to ash."

Mogrin, for one, wasn't thrilled about magic, but he didn't feel the same way about it that a Church Regulator like Irene did. She let them exercise their Church-granted Clemency once, but Mogrin wasn't sure if she'd let them do it again. "Hold on to that thought," he said. "She's coming back soon."
 
The wind rushed against Irene's face as she sailed upward. Her hair whipped around behind her. Mogrin had a forceful throw, and her weight was nothing compared to an ogre's, so at the apex of her arc she actually descended back down onto the shelf. Her feet touched solid ground, her seaxes slashed through the air as she swung her arms in the motion of landing, and she lifted her head and locked a determined gaze upon the closest Curite and began her charge.

The necromancer turned his head to look and his eyes bulged with surprise. Irene Disrupted his spellcasting and he flinched and opened his mouth wide to holler from the shock of it. Deep down his throat did Irene shove her first seax, plunging her second between his ribs, and then with a harsh wrench to the right ripped both from his body.

She charged the next as he was drawing a shortsword. She all but disappeared beneath his swing and across his back and spine did her blades sing a song of blood and bone. He collapsed into the dirt of the shelf.

The third had more martial skill. A deft parry of her right sword, but her left slid for its entire length across his neck. His scream was high-pitched as he clutched at the spurting torrent of blood, and Irene kicked him hard in the chest before she pressed on, sending him stumbling over the shelf's edge and plummeting down below to punctuate the Chapter Master's question.

Another tried some defensive spell. Irene Disrupted it. Cut his head off as he was trying to fade away from her, and the severed head spiraled in the air and did not hit the ground before the body of the fifth necromancer did so first, his heart near carved from his chest.

The sixth and final necromancer was more of a threat than the others. He had a greater repertoire of spells other than the raising of dead which Irene had to Disrupt immediately, and he kept pace with the flurry of her strikes, defending himself well enough with positioning and parries. But he was undone by the most innocuous of things: the scree of the shelf. Irene forced him to fall back away from her in the direction of those loose rocks and pebbles, and he, taking one fateful step backward, did so on scree just unstable enough to cause him to slip and fall. Irene raked her blades across the arteries of his body and everywhere spilled his pulse until he at last became one with the very subject he had studied at Althhaven.

Six dead. The smaller number between the two shelves overlooking the pass, but still it was six necromancers less who could wield their magic against her maniple, six slain necromancers who would blaspheme no more. Some pressure relieved, yet the overall situation remained dire.

Irene hurried to the edge of the shelf.

"MOGRIN!" she called.

And when he came close, she jumped over the edge.
 
IN GILD​


Marta stood by the Western Gate, along with a few dozen horses and their handlers all arrayed in ranks and columns for a swift departure once all was ready. She watched as the summoned Praetors arrived one-by-one with their gear, and in this her heart was split almost as if cleaved in twain, feeling two distinct emotions in its halves: she was glad that they all came without hesitation, yet she agonized over every moment which passed. Perhaps later she would have the time and peace necessary to chastise herself for a lack of faith. But now, it was all she could do to await the full assembly of the force which would either bolster Praetor Irene's force if they had not yet engaged the Althhaven menace, rescue them if they had...or bury them if their valor outlived their mortal bodies.

Grigori Mikhal arrived, and Marta made it a point to go to him and have a quiet word.

"It is not my intent to callously pry open any wounds not yet healed, but I wish to ask..."

Her upward tilted gaze drifted away for a moment, and her hands, held one atop the other by her chest, tightened with a touch of concern.

She looked back up, and spoke her question in a gentle tone incongruous to the hustle and bustle around them.

"...will you fare well, out on the field of battle?"
 
IN GILD​


"To the contrary," said Grigori, offering Marta a reassuring smile, "my heart feels as though it has again attained the vigor of the Everburning Flame itself."

And with that, he swept by her, making like the other arriving Praetors and mounting one of the horses. He had spoken Regel's truth to the Priestess, but if he wanted that Flame in his heart to stay kindled and strong, he needed to keep his mind solely on the task. He needed to ensure that he himself did not pry open any wounds not yet healed.

Keep the faith.

Keep the faith.

By Regel, keep the faith.
 
IN GILD​


Boesarius arrived not long after Grigori had. It was not a matter of him having to rush off somewhere to arm and armor himself—he was ready to go, save some easily attainable armaments, the minute Mustafa Junnal summoned him. He had merely walked from the Temple to the Western Gate, and his pace served. He was close to, but not quite the last Praetor to arrive.

He'd time enough to stop by Priestess Marta's side.

He spoke without looking at her.

"The day will come, Marta."
 
IN GILD​


Boesarius Terral was certainly not her favorite person in all of Gild. Theirs was a first meeting, some ten years ago in the War College, characterized by ice and enmity. Some things never did change.

She tolerated him for the sole fact that he was here among others, and common among all of them was the mission to rescue Praetor Irene. Regel forbid if by some mad decision it should come to pass that Boesarius and herself were both assigned to some task, just the two of them. What savagery lurking within her breast would she discover, should ever that be so?

But for now, she tolerated him. Entertained him, even.

She responded flatly, "And what day would that be, Regulator Boesarius?"
 
IN GILD​


Boesarius looked sidelong to the shapeshifter, to the Letai, to the creature of parasitic blood who had through the foul intrusion that was her conception come to carry the name of Maisal.

"The day when you make your one fatal mistake."

He smiled.

"And I get to flay you alive."
 
IN GILD​


Marta watched the Regulator depart and mount up on his own horse. She suppressed the anger, the resentment, the frustration, the sorrow and so many other emotions brought swirling like a whirlpool in reverse up to the surface of her being. No one man better represented the central struggle of her life than Boesarius Terral, for in him lay the very essence of adversity that she faced in Gild, her beloved homeland, being a Letai. She had through great effort, great devotion to Jura, gained measures of respect, even substantial measures of respect, here and there. Yet there were some, like Boesarius, who would perhaps forever see her as a jin.

Still, that was no reason to abandon her own cause. Regel had bestowed this struggle upon her for the same reason that all gods saw fit to bestow struggles and difficulties in life upon their faithful: because he saw in her the potential to overcome, the potential for excellence. The gods, save only those evil few given to darkness, were not so cruel as to give to anyone a defining adversity which they did not have the means within them to triumph over.

Whether men like Boesarius ever came to see her as a fellow Gildan was irrelevant to her own virtue. Better that she suffer a hundred Boesariuses, a thousand of them, than to abandon her devotion to Jura and to Gild to spare herself the torments of the one.

At last the force of Praetors, some one hundred strong, was assembled. Marta swiftly rushed to the front and mounted her horse and turned it round to address them. Never before had she led her Praetor comrades in such a fashion, and let alone on so important a mission. Some would see her as a jin, some as a fellow Gildan, and others still through unfamiliarity and lack of acquaintance as nothing at all yet, other than someone, an obscure face, who bore the titles of Priestess and Praetor.

She wished to prove to each and all that she was as they were, a bearer of the Flame of Jura, proud of it, and that this pride transcended the form of the frail body in which her mighty spirit was housed.

"PRAETORS!" she called out as the gates were being opened. "We ride at speed for the Westlurch Pass! Curites from Althhaven, foul and loathsome, threaten our fellow Praetor, Irene Savashal, her Gildan maniple, and our friends the Keepers of Oath! To them, our kin and friends, we will bring life, and to the Curites—death!"

"EVET! EVET!" came the roaring response, and though she knew that not all of the hundred Praetors had joined in that chorus, still it filled her heart with immense joy.

"Regel is with us! Our task is given! And so we ride! RIDE!"

And from the Western Gate the thunder of galloping hooves, that formidable troop racing with all available haste to the salvation of their imperiled countrymen.
 
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