Jerryal Thune ambled along down the longest distance of the Nyord Sardi wall on orders of his lieutenant.
"Security, security," the Lieutenant of the Guard had said, "That is what we do. It is why we are guards. What manner of guard leaves open such critical areas in moments of siege?"
And so Jerryal bobbed down the length of the wall to its farthest reach, where it was passing the bulk of the populace of the nobility district and began to merge with the Blackcomb Mountains that surrounded Nyord Sardi.
The dark and the cold of the onsetting autumn were chilling him through his thick armor. His polearm bounced along with him. "Out 'ere in the mi'le o' no where- who would bother wi' it?"
Screams and battle cries, smoke and fire all melted back in to a faint memory as he meandered from the gates. Thin, striated clouds passed quickly over the waxing gibbous moon. He could just hear the bone-chilling cry of wild dogs in the far distance. He quickened his pace.
"More o' them, ya say? Down this way?" he hears suddenly around the corner of a short shambles of a brick house.
"Oh yeah, I 'eard 'em just a bit ago. Goin' to the cemetery, they was."
Jerryal nearly bumped in to them as two other guards came round the corner. "Oh, apologies," he mumbled to them.
"Ah, good, ano'er good man. Here, come with us. 'ere may be somethin' troublesome this way. Ardor says he saw-"
"HEARD!" the other interjected, a squat, beady-eyed man.
"-heard some rebels makin' their way to the cemetery."
Jerryal nodded. It gave him something to focus on and companionship in a city gone mad.
* * *
"It's open! I knew it! I knew it! I told ya I knew it, di'n't I, Ardor?"
The un-introduced guard nudged Ardor as he said it. Ardor was obviously not pleased. Regardless, they had arrived at the cemetery.
"But how they do it what wi'out the key? The royal mausoleum... Is nothin' sacred to these rebels?"
Ardor rolled his eyes and heaved up his pike, "I' doesn' matter what they did. All that matters is that we gotta go get 'em."
The other guard was at a loss for words and followed suit.
Aidan fell through the opening and in to the semi-darkness, relieved only marginally by the light summons of Tyreon. His young, small body fit easily through the hole.
After several minutes packed together in the suffocating dark and must, a small, ornately-carved archway was before them, it's inner darkness revealing nothing of its mouth.
"We are going to have to squeeze our gear through here, although you may want to hide some of what you do not need behind in this greater hall if you can spare it." He kept his voice low for an unknown and instinctual reason.
Aidan bent down and took up a piece of crumbled stone block. "How deep does it go, I wonder?"
He chucked it in to the abyss. After what seemed a long hour it knocked against something hard and skittered down, presumably, on a dense floor.
"It's... It's a chasm."
The iron-wrought gates came to a screeching halt as they clanked at last in to the top of the archway. Though it was night, the entire scene was drenched in blood red ember and golden orange fire, and as the Elite Royal Guard marched through the gateway to meet the battle, the light flickered eerily on their polished armor, harbingers of death and doom to ragtag mobs of hearty peasants.
At least Mother will not have to see this, Derroda comforts himself, trying to assuage the slight pains of conscience that played at the fringes of his mind.
"My Prince, what shall we do?"
The query was almost misplaced in the swell of heady guilt that whipped through him at what he was about.
"My Prince...?"
Derroda raised his hand in silence. "Take your marksmen and ready them for hand-to-hand combat. I will not have the Elite compromised, not matter what madness Father orders me. I trained with many of them, myself. Many of them are... Are my friends."
----------
".... Does anybody else hear metal plate? Either my senses deceive me, or we could have a bit of a situation on our hands."
Mentis' words echo ominously off the walls as the ambient sounds of battle fade in to silence. All that could be herd was that terrible, steady, metallic crunch of armor and weapon in march.
"Mentis, maybe we should take a route further away from the center of the city...?"
Aidan took note of the jagged, glassy frame of the window and took some strips of cloth from the deep crimson silk curtains, wrapping them about his hands as he hauled himself through.
Rolling to the trampled mud ground in the alleyway beyond, he looked up and down the street. It was empty except for Tyreon and Valos, almost ghostly. The sky was dark and choked with plumes of smoke and ashes, streaks of red and orange playing along the fringes of the far houses. The echoes of battle were faded in to an ambient fog of sound, like a dull memory rehearsing its vague details in a dream.
Northward, he saw the high walls of Nyord Sardi rising against the scape of homes. Southward, he could make out nothing but tiny pinpricks of light in the sky, stars a great deal further away and safer than he was at the moment. He thought of his mother, living in cold and muted misery in a hamlet far from their ruined home, taken in by a good family sympathetic with the Movement.
For mother, he thought. She is all I have left. For father and what a death he died. For my sister, where ever she is now.
He looked back in to the shattered frame, in to the subtle darkness of the home he left. It had, at one point, been the home of a noble and, perhaps, a family. Now it was a shell of shadows, broken and humble in the face of a ruthless enemy...
We are the enemy, he thought darkly, who have killed so many... No, it is for them, for my family. It is the right thing to do. It is justice.
It is for a better future for all of us.
He caught site of Farihah, a moment of peaceful beauty misplaced in a world gone mad. Without even giving it a second thought, he cast over his arm. "Here, take my hand. You do not want to cut yourself on all of this."
Strange how much can change from killing a single man.
Aidan rolled his eyes. "There's a door, you know."
He sighed and followed suite. "We should stay to the narrow back alleys, we will have more cover, then."
----------
"Stop this madness, my son!" shouts Countess Amriella from atop the high walls of Nyord Sardi. "Look at the madness you bring upon our county!"
"What madness have we not already? Father is a man of inner demons. This is a child's fairy tale compared to what evil things he has done!" He turned to her, nearing on anger, "I have no time for this."
Derroda beckons a guard. "Take this woman to her chambers and seal her in. I fear for her safety and my own."
Immediately, the guard left his post beside the threshold to the great towering wall of Nyord Sardi and addressed the Countess. "Come with me, my Lady."
"Never would I have anticipated such vile behavior from my only son!" he snarled at him. "If I would have known what loathsome evil I would have spawned, that my son would turn on his own mother, I would have never conceded to marry in to this accursed family line!"
"That is enough!" Derroda shouts. "Take her, now. I have no further business with her."
Indignantly, the Countess went with peace until she was lead to the flight of stairs that would lead her back in to the narrow passages of the fortress. "You will rue the day you have betrayed your mother."
And she was gone.
***
"Hold your fire!" Derroda shouted to the marksmen. "Send forth the Elite!"
At his word, men rushed to the gatehouse below and the massive iron-wrought gate of Nyord Sardi began to grate against its gears.
Aidan mulled it over. "Perhaps the inner fortress will be empty of soldiers since they are fighting the revolutionaries at the walls. We may just make it."
Aidan looked cautiously at Farihah, awkward and uncomfortable near a distant window. "And then, I'm guessing, we just have to... climb several hundred flights of stairs to the top of the tower, break through the courtroom, and kill Count Reithwayr."
Aidan simply stares at the wrinkled map spread out before them. This is taking a lot more effort than I would have thought.
"How are we supposed to get there if we don't know where it is? And what of protections it would have from intruders? They must have put something to challenge the way."
The whole strategic plan was as foreign to Aidan as it seemed to be to Farihah. He was a farmer's son dressed up with a second-rate sword and scant leather armor placed in a young boy's fantasy. He had no experience. Even his passion to end the rule of Count Reithwayr was steadily waning as the plan became more and more complicated.
"And I, well..." Aidan wondered what he should tell them. His story was not anything as adventurous or interesting. He found that the desire to divulge even his name was no where near as strong as it had been when he laid eyes on Farihah. "I came from the deep south of Aboron. My name is Aidan."
Aidan took a moment of brief respite, steadying himself with a breath, and then slowly slid his shabby sword in to his makeshift scabbard. The effort proved challenging.
"I- Erm, no- This is-," he started to motion to the others, then stopped. "Or rather, we are- or, well, we're going to..."
He sighed. Pointing to each in turn, he did his best to level his voice, "Tyreon, Aritius. Here, come inside, it's not safe out here."
Aidan eased the front door open to take a better vantage on the goings on of the outside. The volley from the walls continued to poor down along the main avenues, Standing Legion soldiers were now entering the fray from the outskirts of the external housing of Nyord Sardi, and immediately across the smoke-clogged street stood a solitary girl, more beautiful than any he had ever seen, poised unreassuringly against the oncoming blade of an Aboronian soldier.
A strange thing happened then. A decision was made without the inclusion of any conscious thought, drawing on some deep-hidden well of strength he did not know he possessed, and he hurtled through the door, across the debris-strewn road, and then he was in the soldier's breast, warmth dripping all over his hand, and a strange look of confusion settled on the soldier's face.
Aidan watch as the man slipped free of his blade and slouched on the ground, blood gushing from his wound.
"I..." He was at a loss for words. He had never truly killed another being. This was his first of the battle.
The question had caught Aidan off his guard and his mouth fumbled awkwardly for an answer; he was tired and worn. "Aidan. Aidan Cree of southern Aboron."
The moment was muddled in his mind, and then he had the sense of logic to return the question to Tyreon, "And you, sir?"
There was a sudden crash from the street, dust and the finery of a nobleman's shelves falling to the floor as the acquainting group steadied themselves.
Aidan stood for just a moment, taking in those strange eyes, deep as an endless ocean yet filled with a consuming emerald. "You... I know what you are."
He thought for a moment, "No, it does not matter now. We are brothers in war. Let us meet the Count and show him what strength two races have against one."
Aidan motioned around the house and in to a back alley, "We need to avoid the arrow volleys. Let's try to stay behind the buildings for as long as we can."
Aidan managed to vault behind a heavyset barrel as the barrage of arrows rained down from the darkening heavens. He felt the barrel rumble as it was pounded by relentless thuds. He could hear the chaos all about him, watched as mere feet from his haven nobility and revolutionary alike were nailed to the ground in a bloody mess.
His heart racing and body sweating, Aidan waited for the brunt of the airborne attack to stop and then quickly ran from the barrel behind a nearby building.
"Quick, hurry in to that house. Stay here until it is clear."
The calm and steady voice was a brief calm in the storm, a bit of friendliness that seemed out of place. Exhausted, Aidan quietly rounded his head about the corner to witness the man at the door, infinitely youthful with robes and iron mesh about his body.
"You," Aidan coughed, "Where are you bound? Are you heading to the fortress?"
Suddenly, a horn bellows from atop the lofty ramparts of Nyord Sardi. It echoed long and bailfully, rumbling through the brick and mortar of the crumbling outlying nobility's housing. Aidan stopped midway with his sword ready to pierce a man he did not know, and, astonished, both quickly looked toward the sound.
High above, Aidan saw the synchronized glint of hundreds of bows raising to the skies and hundreds of men stepping forward to view.
----------
Enter Countess Amriella Gremne-Aboron.
Amriella ran as fast as her thick royal dressings would allow her, clasping a handkerchief in her left hand and yanking herself up the stairwell with her right hand on the railing. The ramparts of Nyord Sardi seemed an eternity beyond her futile steps, forever moving yet farther from her so that she might never reach it.
"No, my husband! Please no! You will kill not only the revolutionaries, but the nobility will suffer your deadly wrath, as well! The survivors will surely join the Revolution against you!" she remembers begging Reithwayr.
She remembered his vile grin, then, that maddened, twisted, meniacle work of devilry. "No, my love," he said with a sweet lift in his voice, "the people will relish dying by my orders, and since you have brought it to my attention, I will personally feast upon the heart of every survivor, revolutionary or not!"
She then remembered Reithwayr turning to her precious son Derroda, who bowed slightly and averted his father's eyes. "My son, my son, now you see what separates leaders from the weak! Send out my orders to the Royal Guard. Perhaps someday you will be as great as me!"
I must stop them. She was crying now. Surely, I have some influence. I am the Countess!
After what seemed a vast ascension of the highest mountain, she topped the last cold, stone step and rounded the corner toward the landing to the wall, her delicate Aboronian jewelry tinkling and glittering in the torchlight. As she had anticipated, the elite of the Royal Guard's marksmen were lined atop the wall in perfect unison, their arrows ready, and Derroda's arm and hand held in the air, ready to issue the order that would cast many lives in to oblivion.
"NO!" she shouted before she could think of anything else.
Amriella ran desperately to her son, falling in to his right arm. "You cannot do this! You must not do this!" She heaved a great breath. "You know in your heart it is wrong!"
She heard Derroda let out a quivering breath. "I am not in a position to disobey my father, or the Count's, wishes."
She groped his chest and yanked his face down to her's, "There are thousands doing that very thing at the foot of this blasted fortress of death and every vile thought! You know this is madness! Please, Derroda, my son! We can overthrow the Count and rule in peace!"
He pushed her away, "What makes you think that these people, who have suffered for so many years under our kind, would want to be ruled by us? In their minds we are the same."
Aidan looked about for some way down. "Some magic would help," he noted, "if I knew any."
Jerryal Thune ambled along down the longest distance of the Nyord Sardi wall on orders of his lieutenant.
"Security, security," the Lieutenant of the Guard had said, "That is what we do. It is why we are guards. What manner of guard leaves open such critical areas in moments of siege?"
And so Jerryal bobbed down the length of the wall to its farthest reach, where it was passing the bulk of the populace of the nobility district and began to merge with the Blackcomb Mountains that surrounded Nyord Sardi.
The dark and the cold of the onsetting autumn were chilling him through his thick armor. His polearm bounced along with him. "Out 'ere in the mi'le o' no where- who would bother wi' it?"
Screams and battle cries, smoke and fire all melted back in to a faint memory as he meandered from the gates. Thin, striated clouds passed quickly over the waxing gibbous moon. He could just hear the bone-chilling cry of wild dogs in the far distance. He quickened his pace.
"More o' them, ya say? Down this way?" he hears suddenly around the corner of a short shambles of a brick house.
"Oh yeah, I 'eard 'em just a bit ago. Goin' to the cemetery, they was."
Jerryal nearly bumped in to them as two other guards came round the corner. "Oh, apologies," he mumbled to them.
"Ah, good, ano'er good man. Here, come with us. 'ere may be somethin' troublesome this way. Ardor says he saw-"
"HEARD!" the other interjected, a squat, beady-eyed man.
"-heard some rebels makin' their way to the cemetery."
Jerryal nodded. It gave him something to focus on and companionship in a city gone mad.
* * *
"It's open! I knew it! I knew it! I told ya I knew it, di'n't I, Ardor?"
The un-introduced guard nudged Ardor as he said it. Ardor was obviously not pleased. Regardless, they had arrived at the cemetery.
"But how they do it what wi'out the key? The royal mausoleum... Is nothin' sacred to these rebels?"
Ardor rolled his eyes and heaved up his pike, "I' doesn' matter what they did. All that matters is that we gotta go get 'em."
The other guard was at a loss for words and followed suit.
----------
After several minutes packed together in the suffocating dark and must, a small, ornately-carved archway was before them, it's inner darkness revealing nothing of its mouth.
"We are going to have to squeeze our gear through here, although you may want to hide some of what you do not need behind in this greater hall if you can spare it." He kept his voice low for an unknown and instinctual reason.
Aidan bent down and took up a piece of crumbled stone block. "How deep does it go, I wonder?"
He chucked it in to the abyss. After what seemed a long hour it knocked against something hard and skittered down, presumably, on a dense floor.
"It's... It's a chasm."
The iron-wrought gates came to a screeching halt as they clanked at last in to the top of the archway. Though it was night, the entire scene was drenched in blood red ember and golden orange fire, and as the Elite Royal Guard marched through the gateway to meet the battle, the light flickered eerily on their polished armor, harbingers of death and doom to ragtag mobs of hearty peasants.
At least Mother will not have to see this, Derroda comforts himself, trying to assuage the slight pains of conscience that played at the fringes of his mind.
"My Prince, what shall we do?"
The query was almost misplaced in the swell of heady guilt that whipped through him at what he was about.
"My Prince...?"
Derroda raised his hand in silence. "Take your marksmen and ready them for hand-to-hand combat. I will not have the Elite compromised, not matter what madness Father orders me. I trained with many of them, myself. Many of them are... Are my friends."
----------
".... Does anybody else hear metal plate? Either my senses deceive me, or we could have a bit of a situation on our hands."
Mentis' words echo ominously off the walls as the ambient sounds of battle fade in to silence. All that could be herd was that terrible, steady, metallic crunch of armor and weapon in march.
"Mentis, maybe we should take a route further away from the center of the city...?"
Rolling to the trampled mud ground in the alleyway beyond, he looked up and down the street. It was empty except for Tyreon and Valos, almost ghostly. The sky was dark and choked with plumes of smoke and ashes, streaks of red and orange playing along the fringes of the far houses. The echoes of battle were faded in to an ambient fog of sound, like a dull memory rehearsing its vague details in a dream.
Northward, he saw the high walls of Nyord Sardi rising against the scape of homes. Southward, he could make out nothing but tiny pinpricks of light in the sky, stars a great deal further away and safer than he was at the moment. He thought of his mother, living in cold and muted misery in a hamlet far from their ruined home, taken in by a good family sympathetic with the Movement.
For mother, he thought. She is all I have left. For father and what a death he died. For my sister, where ever she is now.
He looked back in to the shattered frame, in to the subtle darkness of the home he left. It had, at one point, been the home of a noble and, perhaps, a family. Now it was a shell of shadows, broken and humble in the face of a ruthless enemy...
We are the enemy, he thought darkly, who have killed so many... No, it is for them, for my family. It is the right thing to do. It is justice.
It is for a better future for all of us.
He caught site of Farihah, a moment of peaceful beauty misplaced in a world gone mad. Without even giving it a second thought, he cast over his arm. "Here, take my hand. You do not want to cut yourself on all of this."
Strange how much can change from killing a single man.
He sighed and followed suite. "We should stay to the narrow back alleys, we will have more cover, then."
----------
"Stop this madness, my son!" shouts Countess Amriella from atop the high walls of Nyord Sardi. "Look at the madness you bring upon our county!"
"What madness have we not already? Father is a man of inner demons. This is a child's fairy tale compared to what evil things he has done!" He turned to her, nearing on anger, "I have no time for this."
Derroda beckons a guard. "Take this woman to her chambers and seal her in. I fear for her safety and my own."
Immediately, the guard left his post beside the threshold to the great towering wall of Nyord Sardi and addressed the Countess. "Come with me, my Lady."
"Never would I have anticipated such vile behavior from my only son!" he snarled at him. "If I would have known what loathsome evil I would have spawned, that my son would turn on his own mother, I would have never conceded to marry in to this accursed family line!"
"That is enough!" Derroda shouts. "Take her, now. I have no further business with her."
Indignantly, the Countess went with peace until she was lead to the flight of stairs that would lead her back in to the narrow passages of the fortress. "You will rue the day you have betrayed your mother."
And she was gone.
"Hold your fire!" Derroda shouted to the marksmen. "Send forth the Elite!"
At his word, men rushed to the gatehouse below and the massive iron-wrought gate of Nyord Sardi began to grate against its gears.
----------
Aidan mulled it over. "Perhaps the inner fortress will be empty of soldiers since they are fighting the revolutionaries at the walls. We may just make it."
Aidan looked cautiously at Farihah, awkward and uncomfortable near a distant window. "And then, I'm guessing, we just have to... climb several hundred flights of stairs to the top of the tower, break through the courtroom, and kill Count Reithwayr."
"How is this going to work?"
"How are we supposed to get there if we don't know where it is? And what of protections it would have from intruders? They must have put something to challenge the way."
The whole strategic plan was as foreign to Aidan as it seemed to be to Farihah. He was a farmer's son dressed up with a second-rate sword and scant leather armor placed in a young boy's fantasy. He had no experience. Even his passion to end the rule of Count Reithwayr was steadily waning as the plan became more and more complicated.
No, you must do this. You must be strong.
"I- Erm, no- This is-," he started to motion to the others, then stopped. "Or rather, we are- or, well, we're going to..."
He sighed. Pointing to each in turn, he did his best to level his voice, "Tyreon, Aritius. Here, come inside, it's not safe out here."
A strange thing happened then. A decision was made without the inclusion of any conscious thought, drawing on some deep-hidden well of strength he did not know he possessed, and he hurtled through the door, across the debris-strewn road, and then he was in the soldier's breast, warmth dripping all over his hand, and a strange look of confusion settled on the soldier's face.
Aidan watch as the man slipped free of his blade and slouched on the ground, blood gushing from his wound.
"I..." He was at a loss for words. He had never truly killed another being. This was his first of the battle.
The question had caught Aidan off his guard and his mouth fumbled awkwardly for an answer; he was tired and worn. "Aidan. Aidan Cree of southern Aboron."
The moment was muddled in his mind, and then he had the sense of logic to return the question to Tyreon, "And you, sir?"
There was a sudden crash from the street, dust and the finery of a nobleman's shelves falling to the floor as the acquainting group steadied themselves.
"Noo!"
Silence.
He thought for a moment, "No, it does not matter now. We are brothers in war. Let us meet the Count and show him what strength two races have against one."
Aidan motioned around the house and in to a back alley, "We need to avoid the arrow volleys. Let's try to stay behind the buildings for as long as we can."
His heart racing and body sweating, Aidan waited for the brunt of the airborne attack to stop and then quickly ran from the barrel behind a nearby building.
"Quick, hurry in to that house. Stay here until it is clear."
The calm and steady voice was a brief calm in the storm, a bit of friendliness that seemed out of place. Exhausted, Aidan quietly rounded his head about the corner to witness the man at the door, infinitely youthful with robes and iron mesh about his body.
"You," Aidan coughed, "Where are you bound? Are you heading to the fortress?"
High above, Aidan saw the synchronized glint of hundreds of bows raising to the skies and hundreds of men stepping forward to view.
----------
Enter Countess Amriella Gremne-Aboron.
Amriella ran as fast as her thick royal dressings would allow her, clasping a handkerchief in her left hand and yanking herself up the stairwell with her right hand on the railing. The ramparts of Nyord Sardi seemed an eternity beyond her futile steps, forever moving yet farther from her so that she might never reach it.
"No, my husband! Please no! You will kill not only the revolutionaries, but the nobility will suffer your deadly wrath, as well! The survivors will surely join the Revolution against you!" she remembers begging Reithwayr.
She remembered his vile grin, then, that maddened, twisted, meniacle work of devilry. "No, my love," he said with a sweet lift in his voice, "the people will relish dying by my orders, and since you have brought it to my attention, I will personally feast upon the heart of every survivor, revolutionary or not!"
She then remembered Reithwayr turning to her precious son Derroda, who bowed slightly and averted his father's eyes. "My son, my son, now you see what separates leaders from the weak! Send out my orders to the Royal Guard. Perhaps someday you will be as great as me!"
I must stop them. She was crying now. Surely, I have some influence. I am the Countess!
After what seemed a vast ascension of the highest mountain, she topped the last cold, stone step and rounded the corner toward the landing to the wall, her delicate Aboronian jewelry tinkling and glittering in the torchlight. As she had anticipated, the elite of the Royal Guard's marksmen were lined atop the wall in perfect unison, their arrows ready, and Derroda's arm and hand held in the air, ready to issue the order that would cast many lives in to oblivion.
"NO!" she shouted before she could think of anything else.
Amriella ran desperately to her son, falling in to his right arm. "You cannot do this! You must not do this!" She heaved a great breath. "You know in your heart it is wrong!"
She heard Derroda let out a quivering breath. "I am not in a position to disobey my father, or the Count's, wishes."
She groped his chest and yanked his face down to her's, "There are thousands doing that very thing at the foot of this blasted fortress of death and every vile thought! You know this is madness! Please, Derroda, my son! We can overthrow the Count and rule in peace!"
He pushed her away, "What makes you think that these people, who have suffered for so many years under our kind, would want to be ruled by us? In their minds we are the same."
"Forgive me, mother."
He turned to his men, "Fire at will."
He dropped his hand. The arrows flew.