In the Wastes

[Xarkly 17299]

"CAAAAVAAALRY! REAAADY!"

 

With his lance thrust skwyard, the Deep Cold morning gleam gleamed palely on the spiked aurum head. Vaeyl's hobnailed boots dug into the ribs of his white-skinned Cold Bear, prompting him to lumber up and down along the lines of bear-mounted riders. Clad all in their black plate with white-trimmed edges, the Knights of the Vaeyl Order - his Order - sat mounted on their bears, cloaked in white-and-black, with the white plumes of their helmets billowing in the bitter wind. Flagpoles fashioned from tree trunks were erected through the wave of white-plumed riders and intervals, upon which a white eye was emblazoned on flag cloth. Just behind the ride of riders,  heavy infantrymen in that same black-and-white plate, and kiteshields painted with the Order's white eye stood ready, and behind them lines of cowled archers blackened the slopes of the snowy hill.

 

"READY!" An officer from the front line of riders barked back and, in unison, the riders thrust their spears towards the snow-veiled sky. "Hoo! Hoo!" They bellowed.

 

Vaeyl turned to glance across the impending battlefield. It was a stretch of grass frozen so that it crunched like glass under the weight of his bear, and it was ringed on either side by snow-cloaked spruce trees. At the far end of the field, frosty grass and snow vanished beneath a horde of black. None of the Morghuul were mounted - Vaeyl thanked God for that much - but the forest around them could have concealed anything. Had it been up to him, Vaeyl would have scoured every inch of land with his scouts, but they had stumbled upon the Undead army by sure happenstance. The fiends had marched straight through a blizzard while the Order had been forced to camp just beyond the hill. It was a miracle that Vaeyl had managed to get the Order into some formation so quickly, and with so little notice. Indeed, the army of ghouls did not look big, nor threatening, but that was what unnerved Vaeyl. It seemed almost too simple. 

 

"INFAAANTRY!" he roared back. He could not let his doubt show - not now. "REAAAADY!"

 

"READY!" came the officer's reply from behind the riders. Shields clanged against the frozen ground, and deafened the wind with its odd drumbeat. "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" Echoed the infantrymen as they clanged their swords and maces against their shields. 

 

Vaeyl let them continue their chant for a moment. The wind blew at their backs and towards the enemy, so he was happy to let their preparation reach the ears of the baying Morghuuls. Unconsciously, Vaeyl's fingers anxiously drummed on the shaft of his aurum pike. His bear, too, could sense his unease. Between the painted mask, black-and-white, of course, that clad his face, the bear glanced up to him with wide eyes. Stifling a sigh, Vaeyl patted its neck with his free hand.

 

He wrenched his eyes from the Undead, and looked back to his Order before he shouted with renewed vigor. "AAARCHERS! REAAADY!"

 

"READY!" Though the archers stood the furthest back, they replied with volume equal to the Knights just a few feet from where Vaeyl stood. "Hoo! Hoo!"

 

For the final time, Vaeyl turned from the lines of Ordermen and wheeled his bear to face the Morghuuls at the other end of the field. A niggling voice in his head insisted that this was too simple, that he was overlooking something, but he ignored it. There was nothing to be done now. Nothing to be done, except to win. He pushed up in his stirrups and held his lance by the lower end of the shaft, so that he and the aurum spearhead could be seen by both every Orderman and every Undead.

 

"WITH ME, THEN! PUT THE FEAR OF GOD INTO THESE ABOMINATIONS AND GRIND THEIR ROTTED BONES!" Vaeyl leaned forward, half-kneeling now, and lowered his lance. "VAEYL ORDER! CHARGE!"

 

He did not even need to heel his bear. The sudden torrent of indistinguishable cheers and shouts mingled into one deafening tide as the bears charged forward, turning up snow with each heavy step, as the standard-bearers raised the Order's white-eye. With Vaeyl at the head of the charging lines of bear-mounted Knights, their aurum lances lowered and their streamers flickering like black-and-white flames, the Undead lines rushed to meet them. Yet as the bears closed in on the walls of black shields, toothed with hooked pikes, a geyser of earth suddenly burst from the ground barely half a dozen feet from him. A Knight let out a strangled scream as he was engulfed by the geyser's cloak of steam and snow. All around Vaeyl, the ground burst with pillars of earth and fire. Overhead, the sky roiled with brewing lighting.

 

"MAGE!" he cried out urgently. "THEY HAVE MAGES! PUSH -" He cut off abruptly as a silvery lance of lightning descended from the sky, and struck the ground just in front of him. Intense heat licked at Vaeyl beneath his armour as he was thrown from his bear. Time seemed to slow as he sailed through the air, watching the Undead break their line of spears-and-shields and advance. Then he hit the ground, and his vision went black.

_

With a gasp, Vaeyl bolted upright in his chair. The wood creaked in protest as the bronze points of his gauntleted digits unconsciously dug into the armrests, and his breathing was deep and heavy. 

 

"Nightmares," he murmured reassuringly to himself. "Just nightmares." He remembered that battle well -- it had been one of the only occasions on Aegis where he had nearly lost a battle. He well remembered leading his cavalry to plough into the Ibleesian lines before they could wreak too much chaos, but that nightmare had been one of many where it looked as if he had lost a battle that, in reality, he had won. He even recalled a chilling vision one night where Iblees himself, with wings of storm clouds and eyes of smouldering coal, killed him.  "Just nightmares," he repeated adamantly as he unsteadily pushed to his feet. He did not know why nightmares of Aegis haunted him so - Atlas was as far as he could possibly be from Iblees, the Undead, and decades worth of maddening memories. With a glower, he glanced towards the back of his chambers, where glassy ice marred the stone. Over the centuries, the ice of the Wall itself had crept through the castle's sourthernmost face.

 

As always, he was left with a hollow knot in his chest when he woke from his nightmares. As horrifying as they were, losing to the Undead time and time again, he had been flesh in the dreams. Proper human flesh, not like the artificial form he was bound to now for the sole purposes of fulfilling his duty. With a ragged sigh, he flexed his fingers. The false flesh beneath felt stiff and unresponsive, like he was a puppeteer pulling a string, whereas the gauntlet itself moved so fluidly it was like the cold bronze metal responded before he even thought of moving. "I am more metal than man," he whispered hoarsely. The sound of his words echoing with the walls of his white-crest greathelm only enforced the words.

 

The door of his chamber swung open to admit a finger clad all in bronze plate, painted black and crested with white. On his chestplate, the white eye of the Vaeyl Order seemed to shine in the dim light of the Yatl Wasteland. The entrant fixed the thin visor of his greathelm on Vaeyl. "Lord," he said stiffly. His words echoed inside his helmet as much as Vaeyl's did.

 

"Captain." Vaeyl made a vain effort to expel the groggy sleepiness from his tone as he straightened up. He was surprised, too - seldom was he ever disturbed within the heart of Lasthope. Sometimes it felt like he slept for weeks at a time, besieged by nightmares all the while.

 

"We had another incursion, Lord," the stiff-voiced Captain said matter-of-factly, his tone devoid of the merest implication of emotion. "They breached one of the doors before we drove them off."

 

Vaeyl inclined his head, before he wearily crossed the room to where the north wall was replaced by a stone balustrade that overlooked the entirety of Lasthope, and beyond that, the white ocean of snow that was the Yatl Wasteland. He could occassionally spot a cowled archer stalking along the walls, a flatbow strung on their shoulder and quivers bristling with arrows, and a heavily-armoured infantryman hauling buckets of frozen fish to where they stabled their bear mounts.

 

"We have to find the other crypts," he said after a moment.

 

"Lord?" the Captain sounded skeptical.

 

"The other crypts. The ones in Kahaer, Yrodholm and Cirann." He would damn himself to the Nether if he used the names the Axios invaders had given the various regions of Atlas. "We need to find them. We need the warriors there. Lasthope won't hold for much longer. Not without aid." He had the men who called their lands 'Haense' to thank for that -- had it not been for the Battle of the Wastes, the Vaeyl Order still would have stood several thousand strong. With the Oathstone destroyed at the hands of one of the invader mages, they were reduced to a few mere hundred.

 

"Lord, would ...would that work?" The Captain asked hesitantly. "Would they answer us? Most of them were only auxiliaries, Lord, and the exact locations of the crypts are lost."

 

"Auxiliaries or not, we must find them." He glanced over his shoulder, and beheld the Captain appraisingly. "Do you think we can last much longer? Sooner or later, the invaders will find a way to take this castle. We must be ready for when that happens." Even as he spoke, Vaeyl was painfully aware of the looming wall of ice upon which Lasthope was built. The Captain glanced to the ice on the room's south wall with obvious uncertainty. "You will send out riders and scouts," Vaeyl went on as he turned back to look out over the balustrade upon the castle and the Yatl Waste. "to Yrodholm first, then once we establish our footing, to Kahaer and Cirann. Once we establish the location of the crypts, we will invoke the Oath." For a long moment, silence hung in the room as the Captain simply stared. Vaeyl rigidly kept his back turned, his eyes on the white wasteland. "See to it, Captain."

 

His answer came in the form of the creaking of armour as the Captain bowed his head. A moment later, the door closed. With a heavy sigh, Vaeyl relaxed his body and leaned against the balustrade, as if for support. "Just nightmares ... Nightmares end, sooner or later." He squinted down to one of the castle's courtyards, where one of the few remaining Knights was applying armour to his bear.

 

"An end. Sooner or later, one way or another. An end."

 

 

 

[Pond 1069]

((Good read, gives more back story on that ice wall))

"Zu datz wub doze tingz ayre inzyde dat ice wayl...." Puknaak would say, as he examined the ice wall just a few mere hours before this, seeing that the wall had pushed forwards inland, and giant spikes had been made spouting out of it.

[Imperium 3495]

Rhys stands atop  Helmholtz, his eyes fixed on the south. He recalled the great battle of the Wastes 16 years ago, a faint smile appears as the image of the retreating Ordermen flashes into his mind, "One day they will return, we must be ready."

[HurferDurfer1 2978]

Coltaine, the mage who had shattered the Oathstone, sits alone in his meager keep deep in the Yatl  Waste, nearly in the shadow of the massive ice wall. One perpetually dark day, as he sat working on a particular bone staff, carving out small indentations in which to embed gems, he would hear a terrible rumble and roar. Coltaine would lurch to his feet and make his way to the parapet atop the main tower, looking south he would let out an audible grunt, "Did that damnable wall get closer! This wont do, a shield must be fashioned, I aint getting driven out no I aint." he clacks in the harsh wind and snow, before heading below once more to prepare his materials.

[Malgonious 2758]

On 5/19/2018 at 6:26 PM, HurferDurfer1 said:

Coltaine, the mage who had shattered the Oathstone, sits alone in his meager keep deep in the Yatl  Waste, nearly in the shadow of the massive ice wall. One perpetually dark day, as he sat working on a particular bone staff, carving out small indentations in which to embed gems, he would hear a terrible rumble and roar. Coltaine would lurch to his feet and make his way to the parapet atop the main tower, looking south he would let out an audible grunt, "Did that damnable wall get closer! This wont do, a shield must be fashioned, I aint getting driven out no I aint." he clacks in the harsh wind and snow, before heading below once more to prepare his materials.

 

Adalwulf would watch Coltaine hard at work, an audible sigh leaving his mouth as he slumped back against the corner of the wastelander's home, falling back into a deep sleep.

[ScreamingDingo 20568]

Moved to The Great Library. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.

 

If you feel this is a mistake, please contact myself or any FM and we'll restore it.