This is first of a miniseries I've conjured. Seeing the attention my old story got, this is one I started on but never finished way back when. I'll endeavor to finish it finally and I hope you all like it.
@cbishop@impurestcheese@AssertingValor@ficopedia@_nox_@lipsticklesbian@tommythehitman@killerforhire
In the southeastern reaches of the Iron Sands Desert, a wasteland of greyish brown reaches beyond the ability of any mortal to see. Vast, mountainous dunes of greyish sand roil and shift with the unbroken wind here in the interior desert where only the hardiest of mortals and titanspawn dare tread, such as the daring band of adventurers that happens to be escorting a three wagon caravan on its way to a village further north nestled between the Bonewind Hills and the northeastern reaches of the Titansforge Mountains. The guide of the caravan happened to also be the most important item of the inventory, an elven Sorcerer Priestess of Lethene simply named Arcaneaux on her way to visit one of the tribes of the Lethena on the the outskirts of the Bonewind Hills. She was a raven haired beauty, except for a few streaks of scarlet. A bizarre feature apparently attributed to her titan influenced bloodline.
The Sorceress was in the lead wagon, riding passenger where she launched spells of lightning and fire at the gnolls. She was a vision, stunningly proportioned and clad in simple robes with a necklace of what looked to be coyote fangs dangling from her neck. Her features were especially hard for an elf, the scowl she wore as she launched her destructive magics seeming somehow normal for her, though she relented upon noticing what appeared to be a small war party ride out of the dusty distance lead by a woman in what appeared to be exquisite scale armor and a leather cloak. Her crew of adventurers were all spear wielders, and they rode in hard at the flank of the gnolls besieging them.
The motley crew of adventurers met the sorceress' own by sheer twist of fate in sight of the central southern edge of the Titansforge Mountains, perhaps three days ride from it. The caravan had been beleagured by gnoll skirmishers for some time, with naught but the sorceress and a pair of horse archers defending it when they were out of the blue greeted by this welcome sight.
The sorceress knew she and her men to be a worthwhile addition to her retinue as she observed the short work they made of the gnolls, the strange magic that the now seemingly unarmed woman wielded proving effective with the implements she called to hack and slice the flesh of her enemies, and her Tehlashos comrades were skilled with the spears they wielded as light lances to ride down their canine adversaries. Where the horse archers had been exhausted and low on arrows, the arriving warriors were fresh and unexpected catching the man-dog creatures completely unawares.
The newly arrived cavalrymen would not have to scour the enemy long to send them scurrying into the distance, gnolls being famous for their cowardice in battle. They thrill on the ambush, pride themselves on their trapcraft, and never attack when their numbers are not an advantage, or so claim the Tehlashos. When their victory was secured, the newcomers rode back to the caravan, their light warhorses carrying them nimbly across the scorched and broken earth. It was then that the sorceress guiding the caravan invited them to join, and guaranteed them rewards upon safe deliverance.
The trip proved to be a long and arduous one, for the better part of the first week they could scarcely tell that any progress had been made, though the priestess assured them they were making good time. Her powers were almost as strange as those of the warrior with the empty scabbards who said her name was Fenrille Windstar, though her spirit was much more harsh. This was to be expected, as all who intimately venerated the embodiments of the primal powers of Scarn strove to hold themselves as extensions of the will of their adopted masters, as such they carried themselves as closely as can be expected to the way they perceived their masters to carry themselves. In her case, it was akin to a capricious and cruel abandon. Sparks literally flew from her person when orders were not carried out immediately, and the weather seemed empathically linked to her. This was somewhat a good thing, however, for it meant a constant breeze, albeit frequently tinged with ozone.
Such things here are not looked down upon, however. Nature is cruel, but through its cruelty one can be refined and grow strong. That which does not kill a man makes him stronger, this philosophy permeates every level of society in the badlands of Termana. The critical difference between the Clerics of the Gods and the Servants of the Titans, is the Titans do not respect grovelling. Where the Gods demand respect through polite rituals and proper methods of requesting attention prior to the gift of some measure of ability, the Titans recognize only strength. If you want something, you take it. You prove your worth by holding onto it and taking more, the intelligent know when they have reached their limit, the foolish will undo themselves and overreach. Beggars can starve for all the Old Ones care.
Fenrille and Arcaneaux got along as well as can be expected, she being a Titan worshiper and herself favoring Erias, the God of Dreams. She pressed her for knowledge as to where she derived her ability to conjure such odd weapons as hers, flowing blades seemingly forged of violet dreamstuff but as lethal as those wrought from the iron bones of the Old Ones themselves. These questions she merely shrugged off, much to her chagrin. She knew her to be something more than she let on, but she also felt her intentions to be true and this served well to check her frustrations over the matter.
After their first week of traveling together, the uneventfulness began to crumble. One of the Tehlashos escorts spotted a stranger on the western horizon, the way they had come from. A stranger on horseback riding alone. The stranger would remain distant, but a shadow in their trail nonetheless. Twice the Tehlashos outriders tried to engage the stranger to discern his intentions, and both times he easily kept his distance much to their frustrations.
Fenrille of the empty scabbards found herself troubled by this stranger. He answered no hails, he simply trailed them. Arcaneaux didn't like it either, she had the same premonition of trouble. After the third night, things began to happen. It began with a dead archer.
When one of the horse archer scouts failed to report back, Fenrille road out with her Tehlashos lancers to discover the reason and found the man not terribly far from camp. His entire neck had been scorched as if yanked from his horse by a red hot and spiked chain, his face transfixed in an expression of mute agony. The heat had surely scorched his voice away before he could cry out.
As they went back to their horses to make ready to transport the hapless victim back for a proper burial, a scarlet light lept from the shadows to slam home into the back of one of the outriders, flames licking across his back as he falls forward from the impact of the vanishing projectile, uttering a cry of pain as he hits the dry earth. A second missile silences his suffering in a flash of crimson and flame before he could properly push himself back up.
A young man steps from the darkness of the night, his ready blade glowing like a torch from the flames enshrouding it. With a motion of his arm,, he transforms it into something like a segmented whip as he greets the remaining warrior and Fenrille,"At last I've found you, the scourge of Chelaque. Your lord bids you return with me, your antics have troubled us enough."
Fenrille chortles softly, her own fernlike blades springing silently into existence about her hands as she gestures for her companion to stay back with his fallen comrade. The barbarian outrider has a superstitious expression about him over the two strange warriors squaring off with one another. Fenrille replies in gentle tones,"Chelaque can come for me himself if he wants me back. I remember the lie of our existence, he will not take from me what memories I have."
The man twirls his blade lazily until he's scorched a rough circle in the earth around him as he answers this,"Our purpose is the liberation of the uthriach and the overthrow of the gods, the power you were given is for this purpose alone, only though death can they be rejected!"
With that, he snaps his arm towards her, his weapon snaking at her in a flash as she cartwheels aside out of its path. Thus does their dance begin, ethereal weapons flashing in the darkness with silent lethality. The silence is broken briefly when she brings her offhand blade down on his segmented blade to disrupt his assault long enough to close in on him. She's not quite fast enough however as he dances back from her, whirling like a dancer before lashing out at her ankle to snatch her feet out from under her.
Fenrille cries out as the burning blades scorch around her ankle and her world isturned upside down forcibly. She rolls aside before he can follow through, the otherworldly segmented sword crashing down where she had lain with an eruption of sparks and sand. As he readies his next attack, she kips up to her feet nimbly and sends a blade flickering with added energy to his offhand shoulder, the blade striking true and rewarding her with a pained cry of his own.
The man snarls at her as he utters,"You will return to your master, you've no place among savages."
She replies loudly as she darts up to him closing the breach with presented blades,"Nor among deicidal hypocrites!"
The man's skill bewilders her as he parries twice in spite of his injured shoulder. The heat of his blade further suprises her as she's already having to block out the pain of her seared ankle. After several beats of close melee, she tries to seal the deal with a thrust that should have found his injured side, but the graceful opponent whirls out of the path of her attack to shove her off balance. As she lurches forward, he snaps his blade down yet again to reintroduce her to the ground, this time head over heels.
His blade had found her already injured leg, this time around the calf. Her form is briefly illuminated as his blade finds its mark in his favored follow through and blinding heat fills her form as the blades crash down on her armor. Fortunately they don't penetrate the quality scales, but the force accompanying the flames is intense nonetheless and it drives the wind from her lungs.
A beat passes as the man approaches her, demanding her surrender. Before she can choke out a reply, the crash of thunder drowns out the world along with a flash of silvery blue light. The man is lit up where he stands, his eyes wide with literal and figurative shock as he drops to his knees, a smoking black scorchmark in the middle of his chest.
Arcaneaux the sorcerer priestess of Lethene stands some distance away, her palm pointed meaningully their way as she utters darkly,"Noone goes anywhere with the likes of you."
Fenrille of the empty scabbards sits up, looking down at the scorched scales protecting her chest and she observes,"This could have been a lot worse. I'm in your debt."
Arcaneaux approaches, her hips swinging as she wastes no time approaching her odd benefactor, declaring,"I think now you'll give me the explanation I asked for earlier."
Fenrille replies as she struggles to her feet, Arcaneaux helping her up as the nearby Tehlashos hefts his fallen comrade across his horse,"I'll tell you everything when we get back to your tent."
Arcaneaux nods with satisfaction as she aids Fenrille in getting onto her horse. She wouldn't be walking very well for some time with her injuries. The Tehlashos man loads the strange assassin across Fenrille's horse, his superstitions forbiding him from loading a man like that across the same horse as his comrade. He'd heard their exchange, the dead assassin may as well have been an atheist. His soul would know no rest in the afterlife for scorning god and titan alike and he'd not chance his friend being drug back from his rest by such as that.
Fenrille painfully offloads herself from her horse, nearly collapsing from the pain lancing up her injured leg. Arcaneaux claps her on the shoulder to steady her as she fixes her gaze and intones,"It reminds you that you are alive, doesn't it? What does your god have to say about pain?"
Fenrille looks at her oddly as she hobbles into the tent of the priestess of Lethene. Lethene was known by all as the Mother of Storms, the anarchic bringer of total destruction who birthed the first hurricanes and tornadoes and sundered the first civilizations. She was the titanic mother of the god of war and reigned presently in the planes of Chaos. Eventually she answers her,"Erias would say this will pass, that it is less real than the cause which needs tending."
Arcaneaux sets her down on a pile of furs and strides over to a table she has set up for the burning of offering incenses and candles to the Titaness. Erias was the Lord of Dreams, a god of prophecy and the lord of the space between this world and the next that most only see in glimpses when they slumber. A creative god whose priests often tend owleries where they raise messengers while contemplating the meanings of the dreams of the faithful.
As Fenrille sat crosslegged inspecting the scars of her leg, Arcaneaux set about the business of preparing a salve. Arcaneaux gave her reply as she worked,"Lethene would say embrace it. Pain is a blessing hidden within a vexing riddle that asks 'Where did I err? How can I do better?' Its blessing is a reminder that we yet live to learn from this mistake, and a warning to acknowledge it lest we endure the riddle yet again."
Fenrille regarded the other woman, mystified by her perspective. She'd never regarded pain as any sort of blessing, perhaps an irony given her own preoccupations. She sits in silence as the other woman works, pounding herbs in a mortar and pestle before layering the pastey concoction onto a a patch of thin cloth. When its covered, she places another cloth over it and steps over to her with a roll of bandages and gestures for her to straighten out her leg for her. She then applies these and says,"Now. The explanation you owe me."
Fenrille exhales, then clears her throat to begin. She explains to her the nature of her being as she understands it. The elans are individuals brought into service by the uthriach, ancient beings who seem to harbor a vendetta with the world itself. Gifted with strange powers and agelessness, but vexed with minds scrubbed of their previous selves. For whatever reason, she had retained a smattering of memories from her old life. Before being chosen by the uthriach for whatever reason, she had been a scout in the service of a kingdom across the ocean in the west.
Fenrille gestures for a drink and Arcaneaux obliges her with not only a skin of wine but brings her a pipe and her pouch of flavored tobacco. She nods gratefully to her and continues, explaining ho the uthriach, while seeming to be several creatures such as the slarecians and Chelaque, are actually a hive mind of sorts. In their hearts and minds, they are one and resent the world itself for not allowing them to be a singular entity in fact as they claim they once were before the world came into being.
Arcaneaux furrows her brows as she tries to make sense of what Fenrille is telling her, even in a world with gods like Corean the Avenger and existing in the shadow of fallen titans like Mesos the Sorcerer a story like this is still pretty incredible. She'd almost discount it as a concoction but she knew that in the old days before the great wars between gods and titans that there had been another war against creatures very much like what Fenrille was talking about. They had been driven into the darkness of the earth and forbidden planes where none could follow and were said to have been exterminated beyond their ability to threaten anyone, but it was also said in whispers by the scholarly and learned, and as often the demented, that this was a lie to comfort the faithful.
Fenrille accepts a flint and striker from Arcaneaux after packing the pipe. She feels the poultice working as she ignites the pipe and takes a long puff from it. She hadn't smoked in a long time, longer than she cared to consider and it doesn't take long to get a nice buzz to offset the pain in her leg. Arcaneaux asks her a question,"So, these things that made you what you are, an elan, how do they think they can do whatever it is they plan to do?"
Fenrille shrugs at this,"I don't know. I really don't know that they can but they think they can. That is the point. They truly believe the world can be unmade, and that this is the key to their freedom."
Arcaneaux sits up and rubs the side of her head in thought. Eventually she says,"You said you owe me. Accompany me to the Lethena. There, I will have a task for you."
Fenrille nods to this, finding it quite reasonable. The sorceress folds her arms loosely as she raises her chin to her, adding after a few moments,"I'll caution you, be well when we get there. It will be a trial. You will understand when we get there."
Fenrille takes a long drag from the pipe, raising a thin brow. The hard elven woman did not seem one to overstate things. The trip to the Bonewind Hills would be a long one to recover on. She wondered what awaited her there now more than ever.
Just to help with some of the odd names in the story....
Mesos: May-Zohs
Corean: Core-Rain
Lethene: Lee-Thane
Hope that makes it a bit easier. Let me know if you've any thoughts or whatnot. I'm trying to hold with the spirit that I started it with several years ago, though I've rewritten it and changed some thing up to keep it fresh in my mind. When I started it, I was hating on people generally. Really, I wasn't in a good place. Where I'm at now isn't much better, but I've more reasons than I did then but I hope this story may be the one that does something when I've refined it.
I like this quite a lot. Though it presumes the reader should know quite a lot about this world, it gives enough context clues, and just enough information that you get the bare bones to understand the basics of what's going on. For the party anyway.
I don't know if you meant for this, but I also like the slight Robert E. Howard Conan type overtones.
So far this is an interesting read and would be interested in reading more.
@heroup2112 Robert Howard was my inspiration :) My other story The Demonic Tower was the prelude to this one, if you haven't read it yet. I tried to pattern after him using the Dungeons and Dragons: Scarred Lands setting.
@jamiewolfe7: Somehow that doesn't surprise me. You did a REALLY good job of capturing some of the overtones of Howard without swiping. Impressive
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