The next day everyone meets up just outside of the inn.
“Did everyone do what they needed to here? I want to go check out that destroyed village Kayde mentioned,” Drakthar impatiently asks the others. He believes the Iron Legion were the ones who destroyed the village.
“I did... I would have liked to sell the tooth I got from the sand dragon, but someone ruined that,” Alcaeus sounds frustrated. Kayde starts to whistle innocently, despite everyone knowing full well what he had done.
“I’m ready to go, lad, I had my time with the women yesterday,” Jorge mentions.
“What about you Xander?” Drakthar addresses the last holdout.
Xander seems unsure, but agrees, “Yeah, I do not have anything to do here”. He knows that Gwendolyn will find him, so he doesn’t necessarily have to stay in Aconblasam in order to see her again.
They travel for half a day before reaching the destroyed village. Where there once stood proud wooden structures, nothing but burnt shells and ashes littered with brittle bones remain.
“Maybe whoever destroyed this place didn’t take these people’s valuables,” Alcaeus speculates. He disappears inside one of the ruined buildings looking for anything that could be worth something.
“You think it was the Iron Legion?” Kayde asks Drakthar as they look around. Drakthar glances at a corpse that had escaped most of the blaze and notices the neck was cleanly cut with no other injuries.
His voice devoid of emotion, he replies, “It was them,” recognizing the way he used to carry out similar missions.
“They are still doing the Sacrosanct Empire’s bidding,” he notes, not able to think of any other client that would want this job done, or would have the gold to have it carried out for them.
“What should we do?” Xander asks, not sure of the exact reason they came here.
“Look around, see if there are any clues as to where the Iron Legion is right now,” Drakthar explains, walking off into a different building than Alcaeus.
They all spread out and search through what remains of the village. Alcaeus is unable to find any valuables. Anything of worth was already taken and sold by the Iron Legion. Initially, they find no clues pointing to where the Legion could be until Kayde finds a piece of parchment wedged against a floorboard inside one home.
Kayde heads to the center of the village and calls out, “Hey Drakthar I think I found something”. Drakthar comes outside to see what Kayde found.
Kayde unrolls the parchment, revealing a small map of part of the desert, “look here, on the back, it says if you get lost this is the meeting point. And there is an x on the other side”.
“We are heading to that x right now. If we move quickly enough we should reach that location just before the sun sets,” Drakthar demands, rallying everyone to leave the village.
“What are you going to do if you find them?” Xander asks while they head towards the location.
“I don’t know, but I need to find a way for Orrin to accept my challenge to one on one combat. I don’t see him doing so willingly though,” Drakthar mulls over the issue as they walk, eventually coming to a decision.
“I have a couple of people I’ve saved who are loyal to me. If I can get them a message, they might be able to get me to Orrin. Kayde, if I give you a message, can you sneak in and deliver it to a couple of men named Bill and Bob?” Drakthar requests.
“Yeah, it’ll be easy, I’ll just lurk around while invisible until I find them,” Kayde assures him.
As the sun begins to set, the group notices a few off-white color specs off in the distance. They stop and Kayde scouts ahead using the scope of his rifle.
“It’s a large encampment of tents. It has to be them,” he informs the others.
“In the middle is a large tent, and there are a bunch of smaller ones scattered around,” he adds, squinting to get a clearer look as the sun starts going down.
“That is the command tent, it’s where Orrin will be. Just ignore it for now and get the message to Bill and Bob,” Drakthar instructs.
The others wait as Kayde goes invisible and approaches the encampment. He sneaks around, waiting and listening to any conversations that could lead him to either Bill or Bob.
It takes him a while, but after listening in near the area where most of the soldiers are dining, he hears, “Bill, Bob, after you are done eating you are dismissed for the day”.
Kayde sees two men run off as if their commanding officer might change his mind, happy to be done with their assignments for the day. He follows them until he can get them alone. They walk into their tent and lay down. There are only two cots in the tent so Kayde assumes no one else sleeps here.
Kayde appears from nothing causing Bill to start hollering for help.
“Shh, stop, I’m not here to hurt you. I have a message from Drakthar Borro’vaga,” Kayde frantically tries to get him to calm down.
Bill and Bob look over the message, “Yeah this is from Drakthar alright. Still trying to fight old Orrin I see”.
“So can you two help him?” Kayde gets to the point.
“We can, but you are going to need to sweeten the pot for us,” Bill tries to haggle.
“Yeah, we have it nice here, you have to make it worth our while in order to get us to jeopardize our position,” Bob agrees to further Bill’s point.
Some friends they are, Kayde thinks to himself.
“I can give you gold. My friends and I have an abundance of it,” Kayde offers.
“Nah, we have that. Being in the Iron Legion, gold is never a problem,” Bill explains wanting something more. Kayde starts to ponder what else he could offer them.
He finally comes up with something; “one of my friends has a bag of holding filled with alcohol. If you two go help Drakthar, I will make sure you get the bag”.
Bill and Bob look at each other and start to whisper, conferring on whether or not they want to accept Kayde’s offer.
“Alright we will help you in exchange for the bag,” Bill says while holding out his hand to shake on it.
“Yeah, they don’t let us have any alcohol here, some bullshit about not dulling our senses” Bob agrees, also extending a hand.
“We will head to Drakthar right now. You sneak out a different way so it isn’t suspicious,” Bill tells Kayde their plan.
Kayde sneaks off, while Bill and Bob head to Drakthar and the others. Drakthar sees the two of them coming.
“Bill, Bob it is good to see the both of you,” he greets them warmly.
“Yeah, we came because of your cyborg friend. He told us we could have a bag of holding full of alcohol if we helped,” Bill mentions.
Jorge hears this, his eyes grow wide and he starts to grip his bag tighter.
“You’re mistaken lads, this bag is not something Kayde can bargain with,” Jorge will not give up his bag willingly.
“Jorge give them the bag,” Drakthar demands, implying he will not give Jorge a choice. After a long look at Drakthar and one last swig of alcohol, Jorge relinquishes the bag over to Bill and Bob.
Meanwhile, Kayde took an alternative route out of the encampment. Once he thinks he is far enough away he turns off his invisibility.
“Hey, who are you?” He hears someone asks him.
“I’m here to negotiate with the Iron Legion,” Kayde tries to explain realizing he has messed up.
“I am part of the Iron Legion, so what do you want to negotiate?” The man calls his bluff.
“I have the location of a sand dragon corpse…” Kayde stops his explanation as he witnesses a line of men leave the encampment and head directly towards where the others are.
“You know what guys I’m going to have to go,” Kayde mentions before going invisible again.
“What the hell?” They react in confusion to a man disappearing right in front of them. Bill and Bob must have been followed, Kayde figures as he runs back to the others. He gets there and hides behind Drakthar’s cart.
Drakthar sees what seems like the entire Iron Legion slowly walk towards them. Near the center stands Orrin.
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“Orrin, I challenge you to a Borro’vaga!” Drakthar declares in front of everyone.
Orrin starts to laugh and some of his men start to laugh along with him, “you are still not nearly strong enough to fight me. Run along boy”.
Drakthar doesn’t let the laughing intimidate him, “you’re still scared to face me; you always have been”.
“You are still just a boy in my eyes. You have done nothing to distinguish yourself, so why should I lower myself or dishonor my blade by fighting you?” Orrin asks, belittling Drakthar in order to avoid fighting him.
Silence suddenly reigns along the dunes. The members of the Iron Legion watch in awe as Drakthar pulls out the gigantic tooth of the sand dragon and heaves it into the ground, seeking to prove Orrin’s statement false.
“Clearly a fake, you could have gotten that off any trader,” Orrin tries to discredit him.
Drakthar goes into his bag of holding again and pulls out a second tooth slamming it next to the previous one.
Orrin doesn’t give up, “I do not see how a second changes anything; you could have bought two”.
Members of the Iron Legion begin to whisper to each other. They are questioning their leader, believing more and more that Drakthar has actually slain the legendary dragon. This is further confirmed for them when Drakthar slowly lays a chunk of the hide of the beast at his feet.
“You are going a long way to prove your strength, you wasted much gold to put on this show for everyone,” Orrin comments, unashamedly trying to avoid a one on one fight at all costs.
“I understand now, you’re afraid of me old man. You hide behind your men even now,” Drakthar puts more doubt into the soldier’s minds.
“I do not have to listen to this. Everyone, kill the deserter and his friends,” Orrin orders, not wanting to have his strength questioned in front of his men any further.
A little over half of his men begin to rush forward, not questioning their orders. A much smaller group stands firm.
“What are you doing? Attack him!” Orrin orders again.
“You should have fought him and proved your strength. You are a coward and I will not fight for someone with so little honor,” one man bravely stands up to Orrin.
“Then you are all traitors as well,” Orrin states, drawing his massive hammer, marking them for death.
“So then we are,” the man raises his sword, ready to fight back.
As fighting breaks out between members of the Iron Legion arrows begin to rain down near where Orrin is standing. An airship lands near the battlefield and the Silent Brotherhood pours out, joining the fray while laying down fire with volley after volley of arrows.
Despite all of their newfound comrades, a group of men from the Iron Legion makes its way to Drakthar and the others, including Orrin. Drakthar quickly goes to his cart and dons his power armor, and the rest of the Iron Legion members have done the same.
Kayde and Xander begin to fire upon the ones approaching them, but, more often than not, their bullets are effortlessly blocked by the power armor.
“This is going to be tough,” Xander comments seeing the mass of warriors charging at them in power armor.
“Just focus on hitting their faces, that part isn’t covered,” Kayde fires away, finally connecting with one’s forehead, causing him to fall to the ground in a pile of rolling steel and flesh and getting in the way of those behind him.
Xander sighs, “easy for you to say, but I am not the crack shot that you are”.
Jorge angrily hurls fireballs at them, envisioning Bill and Bob in his mind as he does. He is not quite over the loss of his bag of holding, and more importantly, the alcohol it contained.
Five men, including Orrin, surround Drakthar.
“It is not too late to fight me one on one,” Drakthar makes one final plea.
“You say that now because of the situation you are in,” Orrin sneers, knowing he cannot defeat Drakthar man to man.
“I was merely giving you a chance to salvage your honor, now that you have declined I can cut you and all of your men down,” Drakthar confidently replies.
Drakthar swallows a pill before hefting his battleaxe.
“That is tough talk for someone who claims to be stronger than me but needs to resort to taking a Stym to fight,” Orrin observes. A Stym is a drug that allows the user to surpass their natural speed and strength, but when taking it there is a chance the user could fall into a frenzy and attack whoever is in their sights, friend or foe. Drakthar is a practiced user, so it is less likely for him to lose his head.
“You brought the entire Legion to fight me, I am going to need it if I wish to beat all of you,” Drakthar calmly retorts, not giving in to Orrin’s taunts. They begin to get closer to him, tightening the circle in a practiced fashion to overwhelm him with their numbers.
While the others are fighting Alcaeus tries to stay out of the chaos around him. He ducks behind the cart hoping that no one will notice him.
“Hey, you were with the deserter,” a man from the Iron Legion spots him. Alcaeus tries to get up and run, but he trips over a leg on Drakthar’s cart, breaking the bottom of it off.
“You weakling, running from a fight,” the man scoffs, beginning to chase after Alcaeus who is now crawling away from the man as furiously as he can. As he does his whip is undone and trails behind him. The soldier walks after him and it looks like he will catch up to Alcaeus.
Just as he gets close he is taken off of his feet. One of the legs, made bulky from his power armor, got tangled in Alcaeus’s whip causing him to fall to the ground. Alcaeus looks back and sees this as an opportunity. He eyes the broken off piece of wood from the cart next to the man. He picks it up and stabs the man in the face over and over. The man’s blood now coats the wood sometimes getting onto Alcaeus’s hand when he attacks again.
Alcaeus continues to maul the man’s face long past when the man has died. He continues too focused on survival to realize he had already finished him. He stops and drops the stake; his hand stinging from all the splinters that are now on it. He wipes his hand in the sand trying to get the blood off it. He then spits into the pulpy mess that was once a face.
“These power armored guys aren’t so tough,” Alcaeus tells himself as he goes back to hiding behind the cart.
Back with the others, Drakthar fights five men simultaneously as Xander, Jorge and Kayde try to help him from a distance. Kayde kills one of them, leaving Drakthar to only deal with Orrin and three others.
Drakthar blocks a sword coming for his head and gets hit in the back of his knee. It almost causes him to lose his footing, but he is able to remain standing. When they try something similar on him again, he kicks at the one behind him, knocking him to the ground. Kayde takes that as an opportunity to shoot the man in the face. Xander makes an attempt as well, but he just misses, hitting the sand.
Orrin who was hanging back decides now is the time to strike. He attempts to hit Drakthar in the side with his war hammer, while the other two distract him. It connects, but Drakthar grabs a hold of the other two bringing both of them to the ground with him. He cracks one of their necks by tightening his elbow around his throat. The other collides with his axe on the way down, severing his jugular.
Orrin tries to stop Drakthar from getting up, but Kayde and Xander fire at him forcing him to dodge. Drakthar stands up amidst the gore-soaked dunes with a fierce look in his eyes that scares Orrin for a split second. Kayde is about to fire the killing blow into his head, but Xander pushes the gun down so the bullet ends up in the sand instead.
“What the hell? That was it we would have won!” Kayde yells at him.
“No, we give him the one on one fight he wanted,” Xander explains. He intends to give his friend the battle he wished for.
“Alright I get it, that makes sense,” Kayde agrees after thinking about it for a bit.
Drakthar cleaves at Orrin and he is barely able to dodge.
“Not so intimidating without your men are you?” Drakthar taunts him, knowing he has won. Orrin doesn’t respond confidently like before, he is truly afraid for his life. It is only a matter of time before Drakthar will kill him.
Orrin tries to run one last time, but a circle of Iron Legion and Silent Brotherhood members block him. The battle is over, his side has lost. He turns back to see Drakthar in front of him.
“Fight one last time, go out with honor,” Drakthar instructs the scared man. Gathering what courage and hate he has left, Orrin raises his hammer to strike a mighty blow never finishing his strike as Drakthar cleaves him in two.
Orrin falls to the ground alongside his hammer, his face perpetually frozen in a mixture of terror and hate. Drakthar screams out in victory amidst the pool of blood at his feet, everyone watching as he achieves one of his life’s goals. He has surpassed Orrin and set his sights on stronger opponents to overcome.
After calming down, Drakthar returns to his comrades.
“Thanks, you guys. Kayde, Jorge, and Alcaeus, you are all true friends. This was not your battle to fight and yet you fought anyway,” he begins to show his appreciation.
He turns to Xander and embraces him causing Xander to flinch, “you are like a brother to me. I could have never made it this far without you, and you have no idea how much I appreciate it. I want to give you one of the teeth I took off the sand dragon”.
“Okay, but could you hold onto it for me, I do not have a bag of holding like you guys do,” Xander smiles awkwardly, still with Drakthar’s arms crushing him.
“Sure, I will keep it safe,” Drakthar replies, finally letting go of him.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Gwendolyn comments having seen the hug Drakthar and Xander just shared. Xander distances himself from Drakthar a little more. He grabs the golden bow off of his back and gives it to Gwendolyn.
“Oh, yes the bow. It looks like you were able to retrieve it,” Gwendolyn notes as she takes it from Xander. She stands in front of him for a couple of seconds waiting for him to say something.
“Still not much of a talker I see,” she chuckles as she adjusts her hair to show that the golden-toothed necklace he gave her is around her neck.
Seeing this gives Xander the courage he needs. He pulls a piece of parchment out of his bag and hands it to Gwendolyn. She takes it and begins to read.
To Gwendolyn
I have thought back to that moment many a time
As I saw something all too sublime,
I witnessed the arrow you shot with aim so true,
And at that moment I knew I felt something deeper for you
Then one day
I went to see you, but you had gone away,
My heart dropped, I was desperate and my chest felt bare,
I searched the city but you were nowhere
If I see you again I will not be scared,
I will finally let you know how much I care,
Gwendolyn, I ask if you would spend time with me
That I may attempt to make you happy
Gwendolyn isn’t particularly impressed by his poetry skills, but the meaning behind his words moves her. She locks eyes with him and slowly walks towards him.
Alcaeus who has been witnessing this exchange moves so he is in sight and pulls down his pants exposing himself, wishing that Gwendolyn will see him, but she doesn’t. She is too focused on the young man that poured his heart out to her to notice anyone or anything else.
Gwendolyn grabs the back of Xander’s head, pulling him down a few inches to her level. She closes her eyes, moving her lips to his. Xander, realizing what is happening, closes his eyes as well. He enjoys the moment; feeling how soft Gwendolyn’s lips are against his.
After they part Xander’s eyes flutter open to see Gwendolyn’s pleased face in front of him. She chuckles a little before turning around and walking back towards her airship. Drakthar goes over to Xander, giving him a hard slap on the back in congratulations. Xander, not expecting this, falls flat on his face. He lifts up his head, hair now mixed with bloody sand.
“Wait, I thought we could spend time together,” Xander calls out to Gwendolyn after he has gotten back on his feet.
She turns around to look at him, “why don’t you and your friends join me on my airship? We can spend a lot of time together on our way to fight the Cult of Chaos”. Xander of course agrees and he and the others follow Gwendolyn onto the airship.