02-26-2012, 01:33 PM
Spoiler:
Mood-music.
Blight had come to the forest three days before, withering the budding emerald leaves and sickening the livestock let out the barns to graze for the first time that year. The diving sun cast all shadows tall and dark and together with the effects of the Blight rendered the glade in a malicious gloom.
Colphan sat leaned against a tree, both his kneecaps were pulverized and a bent metal spike jutted out of his abdomen. He was a high elf and a farstrider that suffered fatal injuries only hours before, he was hit by a mass of rotten flesh and shrapnel catapulted by a contraption some called “meat wagons”. It was an unspoken certainty, his death and so he was left behind in that clearing with nothing but a small blade.
Ten young men marched along a path, a man up front spotted three ghouls skulking and a moment later the figure slouched against a tree which the undead circled. A battle cry about the glories of war and the reward of buxom women and bottomless pints initiated the humans’ rush. These men were barely men and not even soldiers, but a band of conscripts from the area forced to defend their homes against the undead threat. They were armed with pitted swords, pitchforks and axes meant for wood and wore chain mail or hardened leather their father’s kept from the following wars, if they wore any armour at all.
Sheer numbers allowed their momentary victory and joy hindered the men from noticing the threat that was upon them. Shadows darkened and shades coalesced among the humans and they panicked. Swords fell through thin air as the ghastly shades dissipated and reformed, only luck landing a few strikes upon them.
The trap unraveled because of the humans and the elven rangers witnessed the entire spectacle perched upon branches several feet off the ground. With the extent of his injuries, Colphan had been quick to find peace when facing death and worded a final wish. They chose to honour their dying comrade and helped him to the clearing, his bleeding flesh was to lure the undead fiends out in the open. A fellow ranger with fair skin and pale blond hair was the last to embrace Colphan, despite the plentiful blood. He had brandished a dagger from his boot and pressed the handle into the palm of the injured quel’dorei and so they parted without the exchange of words.
Two of the shades merged and in its new form summoned a pillar of seething darkness up into the grey clouds that encroached the approaching night sky. It was answered by two hollow shrieks from afar, a noise that made the humans shiver in their boots. Arrows whistled past them and halted in midair with the tips nestled in knots of concentrated shadow, outlines of the hit shades flickered before they dematerialized and the arrows fell to ground.
A gargoyle burst out of the murky sky and swooped down into the fray, talons of stone rent through worn armour and feeble flesh. It was shortly followed by a greater wingspan that circled above the clearing and dove for the gargoyle as it ascended. The hard beak snapped at the fiend’s shoulders and a torrent of flames lit up the sky, stone cracked from the heat and the dragonhawk tore a wing off the gargoyle. Chunks of stone littered the glade as the monster petrified and crashed into a gnarly oak.
Another arrow slammed into the ground among the shades and soldiers that remained, raw arcane surged from the point of impact into the surrounding area. An order in common was shouted from a treetop and the humans obeyed and dispelled the last shades. Their joyous relief was short lived when they looked down at the elf they fought to save, the rangers chest was drenched in fresh blood and his throat slit.
The elven rangers led the six surviving humans to a hidden camp, shared water and salted meat with them and tended to their injuries as well as they could. One farstrider, that presented himself as Riael, splinted and bandaged the arm of the soldier Marius and they also shared the first watch while the others slept. The elf, many times his age told him to grab his shield and blade in its scabbard while the ranger armed himself with a simple staff.
“Keep your shield close and brace with your body and not the arm.”
Riael did not wake anyone for the second watch and Marius did not realize that enough time passed for their shift to be over. The young and bruised soldier struggled to keep up with the quel’dorei’s agility and flowing movements, but quickly grasped the concept of using his entire bulk behind his shield and also learned the importance of mobility. Marius was made to stand with his feet wide apart and dodge a barrage of slaps and thrusts of the staff by only moving his body and not his feet.
The six humans and four high elves fought alongside each other until the moon waxed and their paths separated.