Yelena
Guardian: LVL 6
EXP: 1200/2500
HP: 30/30
GLANCE: 20/20
The sands of the First Layer flew by them as they traversed the great desert on their beetle-mounts, borne inexorably towards the golden palace at its end.
She had to admit a certain sense of excitement. Every journey ends with a return, does it not? Though she knew equally that this return would be bold, bloody, and decisive.
She remembered the massacre she’d committed in those golden halls as she’d fled the prison with Marius and Antethra. She remembered her glee in cutting down Knox and watching him fall, feeling almost disappointed that they had to flee the place in the end. And she remembered the voice that had sounded in her breast as they had skittered away on Edna – a voice that had seen the true desires of her heart:
Will you be joining us soon, Sister?
She petted Edna as she kept up her frenzied pace with the rest of the army.
“You wouldn’t judge me, would you?” she asked the great beetle.
An appropriately positive screech answered her.
She cast her eyes over the rest of the forced around her – each beetle bearing at least four or five Gnolls whooping up a storm of dust around them, filling the sand-choked air with their cries of vengeance. She looked to see the Windcaller Gnolls at the edges of the armada commanding the sands to rise and cover them – a strategy Yelena had to give the old Elder credit for employing. It seems the Glance really did have more practical battlefield applications than she had at first thought.
And yet we fear it, she told herself, thinking of Dimedrious and her brothers and sisters on the surface. Why?
“How fair you, Argent?”
The question came from Mendax who was riding by her side. Seemed he actually requested to form part of the vanguard with her – obviously a sucker for glory, that one.
“I’ve never been part of such a large-scale operation,” Yelena admitted. “Is this how you fight all your wars on the Sands?”
“All those where we have a chance of winning,” the burly Gnoll replied.
“What do you think of our chances in this one?”
He looked at her with a mixture of pride and fury as he answered.
“This upstart bird has cost me countless comrades, including two of the finest warriors to ever grace these sands,” he told her. “By the Lightbringer, we’ll win this one. Even if I have to die to make it happen!”
A couple of his comrades heard his final sentiment and cheered openly, singing the praises of the great Mendax.
Yelena saw that Amara, riding alongside the Elder Gnoll, even added her voice to the crowd.
“She’s fired up,” Mendax said approvingly. “That’s the Lightbringer I know! That’s the Lightbringer we need. All this talk she has of preserving lives – peh! That wasn’t the attitude she had underground, when she let Kimon die for us.”
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Yelena was about to protest when Mendax raised his arm to continue.
“I’m not blaming her,” he said. “She probably feels bad about it. Hell, at the time, I wanted to kill her myself. But she doesn’t get it. This – all of this,” he said, spreading his arms wide and breathing in the air of the rising storm around them. “This is what we’re made for.”
He raised his greataxe in the air.
“We are bred for combat!” he yelped. “Born for war! We Gnolls of the sands know no fear, give no quarter! And we WILL take back our home!”
More cheers and hyena-yelps filled the air, and Yelena had to admit that there would have been a time when she would have added her own voice to those cries of preemptive victory. But something else about the creature’s words had struck her:
“Mendax,” she said. “When this is over - when you have your home back - what will you do?”
“Hmpf,” he snorted. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“You wouldn’t consider going below? We could always use a warrior.”
He regarded her for a moment with curiosity.
“You really mean to delve deeper?” he asked.
“I have to.”
“That’s what they all say,” he said with another snort. “Us? We’re meant for this place. You ask me if I’d rather see the Ta’Kella that lie beneath my feet – those closer to the Ida’Mallok than we ever have been – over remaining here with my free Brothers and Sisters? To me, the choice is clear.”
He raised his sharpened weapon again, and its clean edge shone against the sun of high noon.
“The Sands are ours!” he bellowed. “Death to the Blackbird! Long live the Lightbringer!”
They cheered and cheered, whooped and galloped faster towards the hazy towers of gold in the distance. But Yelena did not add her voice to their cries.
“The choice is clear, Mendax,” she whispered. “But is it really you who made it?”
----------------------------------------
Marius
“Now, I’d like them to get my best side,” he was saying, trying to steady his rather more aggressive beetle-mount. “I won’t say I’m an expert in sand-stonecrafting, but I’d rather they sculpted my statue on the right side. Girls always said it caught my rugged, devilishly-handsome-rogue look the best. Now, as for the hair, I admit I’ve never been a fan of my disheveled old locks. But then, honestly, how often do you look at a man’s hair?”
Antethra groaned again beside him, urging her own mount to quicken its pace.
“Why are you telling me these things?”
“I need someone to get my last wishes,” he replied. “Just before I delve below, towards greater dangers never before seen by humankind. I feel like some folks from the surface might make it down here after us, and so I’d like it if you’d tell ‘em exactly what their savior was like. So, as I was saying, make sure the sculptors get my good side. Put in a good word for your old pal Marius, eh?”
“We are not being friends,” she told him instantly. “We are never being friends.”
During this inane chatter he’d been scanning their surroundings. Cloaked though they might be, they passed by the ruins of several other dungeons they could’ve quested through, but he was surprised to find that a bunch of them were – in fact – locked.
Just as they’d set out he’d spotted a little cave hidden beneath one inconspicuous sand dune, wrecked red-pillars jutting up from the ground surrounding it.
DUNGEON: AGEMENAR’S THROAT
LVL RESTRICTION: 1-3
So this really was the newbie’s Layer. He couldn’t help but wonder at the fallen adventurers who might have braved those depths throughout time, or the treasures held within. It was pretty unfair, really – it wasn’t his fault he’d leveled up so fast.
Profession: Thief
LVL 6
EXP: 1350/2500
HP: 20/20
He’d really have to do something about that low HP score eventually….but then, that’s what he had Yelena and the other girl for, right?
“Say,” he asked out of genuine (wow, really?) interest. “What you gonna do once we beat this old bastard off the face of these sands? You got a retirement fund stacked away in that tight little dress?”
She scowled at him briefly but decided, against her better judgement, to deign him worthy of a reply.
“I will restore the Sisterhood of the flame,” she said. “We will replenish our numbers – Gnoll and human both. Those who have suffered under the yolk of The Blackbird I shall set free, and we shall watch a new sun dawn over our home once again.”
“Wow,” Marius whistled. “I almost wanna stay and help out with all that replenishment.”
“You are being a vile member of the male species, Marius.”
“True,” he said. “But that’s my whole ‘mask’, remember?”
She looked from him to the increasingly close shimmers of gold emerging through their hazy storm-cover.
“You could leave it all behind, you know,” he told her. “You must know that your Sisters probably don’t stand a chance in there. You must know they’re probably already d-“
The look of pure rage she shot at him stopped his next words in his throat.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “Unlike me, you’re not bound to go below. So you kill the good ol Don and dance on his grave, you bring your Sisterhood back and worship the fake sun up there. You know it’s only a matter of time before more adventurers trying their luck at the ‘Loft come down here – we definitely ain’t gonna be the last. Then you’re gonna have to deal with them.”
She regarded him coldly, listening, but not truly hearing him.
“Is this fight really worth it?” he asked her.
“Someone like you would never understand.”
He looked from her to the vanguard of the army, where the stormwall was now clearing away, and the gilded walls of Caer Akris glistened before them.
“You’re right,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t.”