Year 3043 AGD
Month: Ragnós
Eighthday
Continent of Terroval
Southwest of Stalwart
Blood Orc Encampment
The night had felt excruciatingly long, and the little sleep Shawnrik had managed was fitful at best. As morning approached, he felt like it would have been better to stay up all night instead of fighting a losing battle with an unassailable foe. His time spent with Ol’ Man Walkins had given him a healthy respect for sleeping lightly. If it wasn’t some other thief coming in to take what they had or silence the competition, it was Ol’ Man Walkins searching through your things looking for what you might be holding back from him. The last two months of travel with Ashur and Dunnagan had instilled a new level of caution to his already alert mind. The difference tonight was that Shawnrik knew the enemy was just down the hallway; every strange sound would bring him out of his half-conscious state. The one time he had been able to fall asleep, his dreams were plagued with the reptilian face of his dracair jailer.
Sometime, in the early hours of the night, Shawnrik noticed a soft sound that reverberated through the wall. After concentrating on the sound for a long while, it finally clicked: it was the sound of someone crying. Once he realized what the sound was, he began to focus on where it was coming from, then trying to make out who it was. Shawnrik found that if he concentrated hard enough, he could make out several voices. The barely suppressed whimpers of children mingled with the quiet sobs of women who have come to know despair. It was then, listening to the cries of an unknown number of women and children, that something changed in Shawnrik’s thoughts. Eventually, he found himself lulled to sleep by the haunting sounds. The next time the lithe assassin came into his dreams, Shawnrik wrapped his hands around the man’s throat. The Dracair pulled his dagger and stabbed him over and over again, but Shawnrik held on. Even as he felt the poison coursing through his body, he refused to let go, one thought driving him onward before he awoke. You will die before me!
“Bad dream, lad?” Dunnagan asked, sitting against the stone wall of their cell opposite Shawnrik.
“Yes and no,” Shawnrik replied. “Last night I heard crying—it was more than one person. They are being held to the northwest of us, I think.”
Dunnagan nodded, his face somber. “Aye, I heard ‘em as well, though I didn’ think ye’d be able ta hear ‘em. At least we know that some o’ the caravan is alive. Assuming they haven’t gathered even more people from the area as well. What happened in yer dream?”
“Last night when I tried to fall asleep, I dreamt of our scaly friend, standing at the front of the cell and taunting me. Not able to sleep with his eyes boring into me whenever I closed my eyes, I listened to the sounds around us. That was when I noticed the crying. I listened to it until I felt I could hear each individual voice’s anguish, and sometime during that, I fell asleep. I once again dreamt of our dracair captor...” He flexed his powerful young hands “... but this time, I wrapped my hands around his throat. He kept stabbing me, and I could feel the poison coursing through my veins, but still I held on.”
“Good lad.” Dunnagan smiled up at his young friend. “You’d have made a good dwarf.” Hearing Ashur snicker in the corner, Dunnagan turned to his old friend. “Oh, don’t worry, lad, ye’d have made a good dwarf too.” Looking back to Shawnrik, he added in whisper loud enough to be heard by Ashur, “His head is certainly thick enough.” This broke a lot of the tension that had been building in the cell and allowed them to truly laugh for the first time since the day they were captured. As if their laughter had been a cue for his entrance, the dracair assassin opened the outer door to their holding area and began to move towards the trio.
“It seems the overgrown snake does not like to hear us laughing,” Ashur said loudly, and with more joviality than Shawnrik thought he himself would have been able to muster.
“Aye lad, it’s a failing of the Dracair as a whole. They only seem ta get their kicks when they’re bein’ sneaky or slaughterin’ somethin’ weaker than themselves.” Dunnagan tried to stifle his laughter as their captor moved closer to their cell. It was still apparent in his voice, however, when he said, “Oh, ‘allo scaly.”
Shawnrik had seen a snake with his head in the air warning that it was about to strike not all that long ago, and it had looked happier than the dracair assassin’s face did at that moment.
“You three seem to think this is a pleasant experience,” the assassin hissed through gritted teeth. They were teeth the likes of which Shawnrik had only seen on carnivores, all pointy and made for tearing. “I am called Tallion. If that is too difficult for your feeble tongues, you will refer to me as Dracairei.”
Shawnrik gave Ashur a quizzical look, it being the first time he could remember hearing the term.
“It’s the name that the Dracair call their assassin branch of the family tree. The warriors are referred to as Dracani, and the dreadnaughts are Magnus Dracani.”
Again, a small hint of surprise lit the dracair assassin’s features before he managed to school them. The next look that came across his visage was animosity tinged with a hint of curiosity, or at least that is how Shawnrik interpreted the look that the Dracairei was giving to Ashur.
“You know much for a soft skin. By what are you called?”
“My mother named me David,” Ashur replied.
“Ah yes, but that is not what I asked. We have heard you refer to the large young one as Shawn, and the dwarf you called Dunn. However, we have yet to garner your name.”
“Well Tallion, sir, you can call me whatever you like. I’ve been called just about everything in the book. Everything from milord to you son of a bitch. You take your pick. Though, I wouldn’t recommend referring to my mother in such a context. The last fellow who did that isn’t much of a talker anymore,” Ashur said, his confident smile firmly in place.
The Dracairei made a hissing sound. “I do not think that I would be able to break you, gentlemen.” His tone seemed momentarily melancholy to Shawnrik’s ears, but as the assassin continued to speak, it was obvious he had managed to bury whatever it was he had been feeling. “We might be able to break the young one, but I think it would take too much work. Instead, until you give us answers, we shall torture women and children in the next room.” The assassin turned as if to exit the room, and a low growl erupted from Shawnrik’s throat.
Ashur put his hand on his young friend’s arm. “Most people call me Ashur,” the big man said. A noticeable misstep was apparent in the assassin’s stride as Ashur told the Dracairei his name. Tallion quickly attempted to cover his misstep by gracefully spinning to face their cell.
The assassin moved closer to the bars, as if to get a better look at Ashur. Shawnrik noted that Tallion was still well out of arm’s length when he stopped for his scrutiny, however. “You lie. Prove you are who you say you are.”
Ashur’s posture changed instantaneously, and Shawnrik realized then that his traveling companion had been making himself look smaller and less threatening ever since they had been surprised on the rocks overlooking the orc camp. “Open that door up and I’ll show you,” Ashur growled.
“No, I do not think that we will do that. I suppose that would make your dwarf friend Dunnagan Stormhammer?”
“Aye Tallion, that I be,” Dunnagan said, his tone as threatening as Ashur’s posture.
Tallion then turned his gaze to Shawnrik and hissed. “Then who would that make you? You, who travels with such infamous criminals?”
“Criminals?” Shawnrik asked, no need to hide his incredulity.
“It’s their twisted sense of self,” Ashur said. “There are always two sides of an argument. To them, we are criminals. To the Protectorate, we are heroes. It’s all a matter of perception. I suppose that they consider most of their craven butchers heroes. I, however, have never killed any women or children.”
“Ah. Well then, I suppose that would make me a criminal in training, yet to be charged with a crime.” Shawnrik grinned, and Dunnagan snorted in appreciation.
“Well then, we will have to let you rot here for a short while until we figure out what to do with you.” As Tallion turned to leave, Shawnrik knew that they had gotten to the assassin. The first tell was that the man was no longer moving silently, his claws making a quiet clatter as they connected with the stone beneath his feet. The second was the slamming outer door to their holding area.
“Well, we know we aren’t talking to whoever is in charge around here yet,” Ashur sighed.
“We do?” Shawnrik asked, wondering how his mentor had come to that realization.
“Yes, of course. The Dracair have insatiable egos, Dracairei being the worst of the lot on that front. He would not have said we so much if he was the one in charge. By including himself as someone who could make decisions, he was overstating his own importance. It will be interesting to find out who is running the show. This is quite the operation, I think.”
“Aye,” Dunnagan agreed.
“For now though, we might as well train.” Ashur said, looking around the small, cave-like cell.
“Train?” Shawnrik asked.
“Yes, train. Just because we are cooped up in here doesn’t mean we should let ourselves deteriorate. Pull that large rock out of the corner there, Shawnrik. It looks like it weighs quite a bit.”
Shawnrik groaned.
Year 3043 AGD
Month: Ragnós
Second Fourthday
Southeast of Asylum
“What do you think they’re doing?” Za’erath whispered.
“My guess is looking for people like us, brother.” Za’kereth smirked as his twin glared at him.
Victor had quickly picked up on the differences between the grey elf twins. The usual way to tell the two apart was fairly simple: Za’erath’s robes were a lighter shade of gray than Za’kereth’s. However, Victor had noticed that the two would occasionally switch outfits to see how long it took someone to notice. The two were very good at affecting each other’s tones and mannerisms, but there were several places in which their mimicry was incomplete.
Za’kereth tended to be the livelier of the two, his mind always flitting from one place to the next. To someone like Victor, who had been taught what to look for, it was easy to notice how this mindset affected the way that the mage moved and spoke. The ends of sentences and some of his words were often clipped or drifted off as if his mind was already at work on several other problems. If he were engaged in conversation, he would often be looking through the person he was talking to; that was, of course, if he could be bothered to look at the person at all.
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Za’erath, on the other hand, seemed to find the most mundane things completely fascinating. If you talked to him, you could easily get the feeling that what you were saying was the most important thing that had ever been said on the face of Terrazil. His movements tended to flow, or flutter lazily from one motion to the next. When he spoke, his remarks tended to be short but thoughtful. Victor also thought that Za’erath seemed to have a slightly healthier shine to his ashen skin than did his brother.
Victor was glad for the byplay from the brothers, because it took the focus off of himself for a short time. The stealthiest members of the squad were currently spying on a dracair patrol in the valley below, and Victor was sure that the others could see his hands shaking. This was the first time he had actually seen the dreaded Dracair in the flesh, and in that moment, he realized that all of the stories he had heard growing up had not done them justice.
The two warriors, he knew from conversations around the campfires, stood about seven and a half feet tall, and were referred to as Dracani. One of the warriors was a creamy white, and the other was pitch black. Keeping their height in mind, Victor figured that the two warriors were probably the most powerful-looking humanoids he had ever seen. It was difficult to keep that thought in mind as the two warriors stood in the shadow of the third member of their patrol.
Having read as many books as he could find on the subject of the Dracair, Victor thought he would be ready when he saw his first Magnus Dracani— he was wrong. The creature below had to be at least eleven feet tall, its size making the two large dracani warriors seem tiny in comparison. From the books he had read, Victor figured that the Magnus Dracani would look more like a young wingless dragon, but what sat at the bottom of the hill could not be described so easily.
The main body of the thing certainly looked like a young dragon or drake, as it had four legs, scaled skin, and razor-sharp claws. That is where the similarities ended. A torso came up from the front of the creature as if someone had tried to create a draconic centaur. Unlike a centaur, however, the torso looked more like the dracair warriors than any human. Where the warriors had been bred to be outstanding fighters, the Magnus Dracani had been created and bred to be the strongest thing on the field. Victor shuddered as he thought about what must have gone into the creation of such a creature.
“That thing is a monster,” Victor whispered.
“That it is, me lil friend,” Sergeant McDowell whispered back. Victor wondered for a moment how the dwarf could be so sneaky with hair that red.
“The first time I saw one, I nearly ran away,” Corporal Jameson whispered as they began to back their way off the hill to discuss their next move.
“Are we going to attack?” Victor asked quietly.
“Yes,” Nim replied. “I think we are in a good spot for it, too. Elandria, do you think you can hit one of them from here?”
“If not, I can get it close enough to get their attention at least.”
“Where are ya aiming?” Drake, the group’s primary scout, asked.
Understanding the motivation behind the question, Elandria rolled her eyes. “Oh, I suppose the left eye on the Mag.”
At her announcement, a quiet debate started up amongst the men, and Victor could tell that they were betting on whether or not she could make the shot. While this was going on, Victor watched Elandria string her bow, marveling at how a lithe half-elf could string her mighty longbow with such apparent ease. In the background, Victor saw the group’s battlesorcerer, Trenton Grimbash, moving apart from the group as he began to work on his Shapings.
“Ye’ gonna shoot, Elly? Or ya just stand there lookin’ at the scenery?” Rundig, whom the squad affectionately referred to as the walking armory because of the amount of weaponry he carried around, was obviously ready for the engagement to come. Victor also thought that he had heard the dwarf say that she would hit the wrong eye, so hurrying her into making her shot was in his best interest.
“Shut it, Rundig,” Elandria said as she moved to the top of the hill, in full view of the patrol below should they happen to look in their direction. In one smooth motion, she withdrew an arrow from her quiver, nocked it, drew back, and shot.
Before meeting the impressive half-elf, Victor would have assumed that the shot was impossible. After watching the archer practice her craft over the last ten days, he thought that if anyone could make the shot, it was this petite warrior. The Magnus Dracani had eyes about the same size as Victor’s head, but those eyes were currently a few hundred yards away. There were quite a few things that could go wrong and mess up the shot: if the fletching wasn’t perfect, the arrow wouldn’t fly true; if a strong wind came up suddenly, the arrow could be knocked off course; the Magnus Dracani could move in a manner that she had not predicted. As the arrow flew through the air, Victor watched as Elandria carefully unstrung her bow and placed it carefully back into its case. She was pulling out a different bow when a bellowing roar sent every bird within earshot into flight.
“I’ll be a bearded gnome,” Rundig said as he handed a small pouch to the Cleric Bredwin. “Nice shot, lass.”
“As if shot by the hand of Ragnós himself,” Bredwin stated. No hint of the brogue that Victor had begun to associate with dwarves was apparent as the cleric spoke.
Several others on the hill were exchanging coins as the two dracani warriors pointed in their direction and began running uphill, moving from side to side enough to be a hard target for any more arrows from the party. The speed with which the creatures traversed the terrain surprised Victor, and their strides seemed more like small leaps to the young man.
Victor quickly moved back from the ledge, trying to get far enough away from the squad to be prudently safe from the coming battle. By the time he turned around and drew his dagger, the fight had begun. The two Dracani managed to leap onto the escarpment with little effort, their massive swords already drawn. Victor noticed the two grey elves had backed away from the fight as well, standing just in front of the half-ogre battlesorcerer, who seemed deep in concentration.
Had someone chanced upon the little battle at that moment, it may have looked like the two Grey Elves and the Half-Ogre behind them had fallen asleep, but Victor knew from the power that the three were pulling in and Shaping that they were very busy indeed. Victor looked back to the battle just as Rundig took a shallow cut from the tip of the black dracair warrior’s blade. Rundig was one of the few warriors that Victor had met who utilized armor for protection. The Protectorate had long ago learned that the best way to not die when fighting the Dracair or any of their minions was to simply not get hit.
There were few materials strong enough to hold up against the attacks of these massive creatures. That being said, there were known alloys that could stand up to such beatings, and Rundig was one of the few people who knew how to make armor out of those minerals, as evidenced by the next swing of the dracair warrior, as it rang the dwarf’s armor like a bell. The vibrations that ran up the sword from the impact made the warrior step back, opening him up for attacks from the other members of the squad.
Victor could barely track the action of the battle, but he watched as Elandria rolled out of the melee and began to carefully pick her shots at the two Dracani. The fight had only been underway for moments, and already the two dracair warriors were bleeding from multiple wounds. Watching the battle, Victor couldn’t help but feel like something was missing; a moment later he realized that the screams of the Magnus Dracani had stopped from the other side of the hill. Another moment passed, and he could feel the ground shaking as the Magnus Dracani began to run up the hill towards the fight. This seemed to be the cue for the Battlesorcerer Grimbash, who began to swiftly swell in size.
Victor saw the head of the Magnus Dracani come into view as it reached the escarpment and attempted to pull itself up. Its bulk was too great, however. It would have to break enough of the wall to make it up the hill or go around the escarpment before it could enter the melee.
Out of the corner of his eye, Victor thought he saw Nim move in from behind the white Dracani and stab the beast in the neck, but it had happened so quickly that Victor wasn’t sure it had really occurred. The creature faltered shortly thereafter, giving Sergeant McDowell time to set up the kill. The fiery haired dwarf used the back of his axe to hit the Dracani’s knee, which caused it to lose its footing, and then shortly thereafter its head. The Dracani’s head emitted a shrill cry before it hit the ground, sending a shiver down Victor’s spine.
After a few hits, the Magnus Dracani seemed to decide that it would be easier to make its way around to the top of the hill rather than smash its way through the rock. About the same time the Magnus Dracani decided to go around, the half-ogre seemed to have finished his Shaping. Now twice the size he had been, both in height and in muscle mass, the battlesorcerer began to run, his course taking him to where the Magnus Dracani would soon be coming around the edge of the escarpment.
As the Magnus Dracani came around the corner, he was met by a large humanoid figure charging straight at him. The Magnus Dracani’s steps faltered momentarily, obviously not expecting to see anything that it would consider a viable threat at the top of the hill, but it recovered quickly and began to charge the massive half-ogre. Seeing that the Magnus Dracani was going to come to him, the battlesorcerer slowed his steps and prepared to meet the Magnus Dracani head on.
The two titanic figures were about forty yards away from where the rest of the squad was now whittling away at the remaining Dracani. As the Magnus Dracani charged, the battlesorcerer seemed to solidify his footing. A moment before impact, the half-ogre reached out, grabbed hold of the Magnus Dracani’s wrists, and flung the creature straight overhead. Victor’s mouth dropped open as the beast flew ten feet and hit the ground with an impact that made everyone except the half-ogre lose their balance.
Nim was the first to recover, quickly using his advantage to cut the black Dracani’s throat. The rest of the party stood and watched as the Magnus Dracani rolled over to regain its footing, clearly disturbed and amazed at what had just happened to it. The beast had managed to get a claw into the battlesorcerer’s shoulder as he flew overhead, but the damage seemed superficial at best. Enraged, the Dracair charged again, this time at a slower pace and much more cautiously. What the large man did next, however, surprised both the Magnus Dracani and Victor. Grimbash bent his knees and then proceeded to vault over the lumbering behemoth charging at him, managing to get his feet under himself in time to kick off of the Magnus Dracani’s head.
Disoriented and moving too fast for anything of its bulk to stop in time, the Magnus Dracani may have realized in the moment before he fell off the ridge that the battlesorcerer had quite literally set him up for a fall. As the beast hit the ground, Victor heard a noise that his mind associated with a rockslide, but the sound was instead the Magnus Dracani breaking several bones as it crashed into the hillside. The entire squad ran to the edge to see if the beast had broken its neck in the fall.
For a moment, the beast lay still, but suddenly, it released a groan of pain and rolled over. One of the creature’s legs didn’t want to support its body, and one of its arms hung loose at an odd angle. After only a moment’s hesitation, and seemingly without thought of the pain it would cause, the Magnus Dracani set its leg and then its arm. The beast stood there defiantly, assured of its own invincibility. Unfortunately, the creature’s pomposity couldn’t have prepared it for the large man that quickly pounced on it from above. The beast used its good arm to swipe at the big man’s chest as he came crashing down upon the Dracair. The half-ogre grabbed the creature’s head, seemingly unfazed by the gaping wound, and made a loud grunt of exertion as he twisted the creature’s head so that it faced its own tail.
The two colossuses crumpled to the ground. The half-ogre was exhausted and gravely wounded, but the Magnus Dracani was down for the count. Za’erath jumped off the cliff and landed softly next to the two figures.
“McDowell, Jameson, get down here and help me turn him over,” the grey elf priest said, post-battle being one of the few times he was allowed to order people around.
Without thought, the corporal and sergeant responded to the order and jumped down to join the large humanoid warrior, going to their companion’s aid. The two men struggled with the half-ogre’s increased mass, and if the battlesorcerer hadn’t already been on his side, Victor doubted that the two men would have been able to get Grimbash onto his back.
“This is bad; dracair claw wounds don’t heal with magic as well as other wounds. It is almost as bad as poison. I can stop the bleeding, but the wound is going to have to heal at a near natural rate.” No one said anything about the fact that they all already knew that information, because a helpful note of caution was always accepted, and even expected, amongst companions. “I need your help, Bredwin,” he said, looking up at the blond-haired dwarf on the top of the small cliff.
“Right,” the cleric said, as he ran to his packs and grabbed a small satchel. Moments later, he leapt down to assist the priest.
Victor, wanting to join them but not wanting to jump ten feet down, decided on a compromise, and landed on the back of the Magnus Dracani. It was harder than it looked, and it had already looked fairly solid. He walked up the creature’s back and stared into its lifeless eyes. The creature’s head was nearly the size of his entire body.
“Brave lad,” Victor heard Bredwin mutter as he began picking out herbs for the poultice they would use on the battlesorcerer’s wounds.
Victor saw the grey elf look up at him as he grabbed the mortar and pestle from the satchel that Bredwin had brought down. “He wouldn’t be with us if he wasn’t.” That was all that the man said before going back to work.
As Victor turned to study the Magnus Dracani, an odd thought struck him. Staring into the sightless eye of the large creature, Victor knew that all a blood mage would have to do to revive the beast would be to rotate its head back into the right direction before he could kick start the Magnus Dracani’s natural regeneration. He wasn’t really sure where the thought had come from, or why he was suddenly cutting at the creature’s neck with his dagger, but it felt right. It was slow work, but it was work only suitable for a dagger or small knife.
The scales had to be cut away from the beast’s neck before the head could be removed, and the scales were only small enough to be penetrated by a slim blade. Looking at the creature as he did his work, Victor realized that if someone were skilled enough, they could place a blade into the creature’s throat under a scale and restrict some of the creature’s air flow and mobility. That line of thinking led him to wonder if such a cut could be achieved from a throw. Cutting around the large patch of scales at the front of the creature’s throat, Victor managed to get a section that he would be able to test his theory on later.
As the head fell to the ground, Victor hopped off the beast, scales in hand, and walked towards the nearest stream. The stream had steady current, so Victor wasn’t too concerned about the blood pooling and poisoning whatever would drink from the water. He cleaned himself thoroughly before rinsing the patch of scales in the water. Walking back towards the squad, he found a tree that he was able to place the section of scales upon in order to test his theory. Measuring out thirty paces, he began to practice on the scales. After a few dozen attempts, he decided that it would be a difficult throw, but wouldn’t be impossible with the right weapon. He found that the dagger that Shaylyn had given him breached the scales much more easily than his other daggers, but he didn’t like throwing that one, so he only tried that once.
When his arms were starting to get to a point where the fatigue was throwing off his aim, he heard someone say that Grimbash was stirring. Victor grabbed his daggers, wiped them off, and sheathed them, before going to see how his companion was doing.