The Fall of Alisgrad: Smoke & Snow

[Xarkly 12878]

THE FALL OF ALISGRAD
SMOKE & SNOW

 

Spoiler

 

 

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A wind blew from the Rimeveld.

 

Carrying with it a biting chill and flurries of snow, the wind snaked south into the lands named Norland. It gusted towards the city of Alisgrad, where the steepled longhouses burned, spewing pillars of thick smoke to blot out the northern moon and stars. The wind blew over the trampled length of snow beyond the city’s northern walls, where countless shafts of arrows jutted out from the earth alongside the massive shafts of ballista bolts and shattered war machines.

 

The wind sang mournfully as it scaled the city’s south wall, stirring the fur cloaks and greaves of hundreds of enslaved Gladiators who lay dead, their torsos peppered with arrows and skin blackened from the cold. The wind echoed wistfully through the breach in the southern wall, which creaked and groaned dangerously as it keeled on the verge of collapse thanks to cannonfire. The wind wound over burnt and charred Gladiator corpses littering the breach and stones stained red from battle, before it blew into the husk of Alisgrad’s semi-collapsed temple, still smouldering. 

 

The ash within the Temple stirred at the wind’s touch, and mingled with the snow to form a ceaseless black-grey haze. At the foot of the collapsed Temple, the snow and ash drifted around Sedda of Clan Torath as he closed his eyes, and inhaled to the depths of his stomach. He did not care how cold the wind was, nor how the smoke scorched his throat -- to Sedda, the wind’s touch felt like …

 

“... Freedom,” he finished to himself as the cold made the hairs of his neck stand up. After centuries living in the Underdark, where the wind was but a myth, to feel it now was glory incarnate. This is why we’re here, the thought reverberated in his mind. This is why we fight. This is …

 

Slowly, Sedda cracked his eyes open.

 

Barely two hours had passed since the battle was won, and turmoil still reigned in the streets. Corpses - Norland defenders and enslaved Gladiators, mostly - were stacked haphazardly on street corners where the ash and snow was thinnest; plenty of buildings still burned, the glare of which forced Sedda to avert his eyes; and the sounds of dying moans echoed through the air as Gladiators and Norlanders alike were put out of their misery by Torathi Legionnaires in their black-lacquered mail. 

 

Misty plumes marked Sedda’s breath as he surveyed the ruinous scene. Legionnaires, with their Torathi pennants flapping proudly from their back, marched back and forth with supplies and injured comrades to hastily-erected hospitals in buildings that had sustained the least damage and, at that moment, Sedda watched five Legionnaires carefully light the shattered form of one of the Dreadknights of the Obsidian Infantry, grumbling about where to find a forge to repair it. 

 

Yes. Freedom, Sedda assured himself, but it sounded more uncompelling than when he first said it. All his life, he had supped on the tales peddled by the elders and the Matriarchs that promised a prophesied return to the surface world, where they would once more feel the fabled touch of the wind and liberation from the stifling caverns and tunnels of the Underdark. By the time he was grown, Sedda - like everyone else - knew that it was the birthright of the Mori’Quessir to reclaim the surface world and enslave the foul-blooded Srow to bring them order and civility. The Srow would resist, of course, but in the end it would be to enlighten the crude and rudimentary excuse for society, like a parent disciplining an unruly child.

 

… Freedom … Sedda had gone his whole life, fuelled on that prophecy, that birthright. He had risen through the ranks of Clan Torath, drunk on that promise of the wind on his skin one day -- of order restored. Of freedom. His eyes trailed towards the one of the city's most-intact buildings - a tavern, maybe of - where the Matriach's personal banner streamed proudly in the wind. From here, Sedda could see the winged helmets of the Onyx Retinue - the protectors of the Clan Matriarch - taking up position around the stronghold. 

 

Except … the Srow that Sedda had found at Norland were not the same from the stories he had heard. They were not debased savages living in squalor, and the many Srow that had joined them to defend the city were proof that they were not mired in constant warfare with each other. Sedda glanced down at his bloodied gauntlet, before he looked over his shoulder into the Temple’s hall. The roof had caved in during the fighting, and the beams had crushed practically all of Sedda’s surviving Gladiators. Even now, he could pick out more motionless limbs sticking out from fallen timber than he cared to count.

 

Sedda opened his mouth to whisper to himself once more, but no sound came. His eyes trailed upwards, to where the pillars of smoke churned in that grey sky, broken only by the spiralling snowflakes descending through the murk. What were those stories, Matriarch? He followed a crest of snow down, to where they fell on the bodies of his own Mori Legionnaires laid out ceremoniously near the foot of the Temple. Cloaked Mori Venyiri - Mourners - muttered inaudible prayers as they swayed an incense burner back and forth over their bodies in preparation of planting the Nekru burial fungus. 

 

Unbidden images flashed in Sedda’s mind of the Norlandic cannonfire striking the Temple and decimating half his unit, and nearly taking him with them. It had taken nearly an hour for Sedda’s ears to stopped ringing, but he suspected it would take many hours more for his frayed nerves to subside. Mori were not meant to end like that, blown apart by Srow cannonfire. That part … that wasn’t in the stories. 

 

With a slow, shaky breath, Sedda closed his eyes again. Whether or not the touch of the wind truly was freedom, he didn’t know. Whatever it was, Sedda was not sure if he liked it, but he quashed that voice in the darkest recess of his mind. If the stories had been wrong about this, then what was it that he had devoted his life to? 

 

That invited a more terrifying question.

 

What else were the stories wrong about?

[satinkira 6041]

"So.. it is war, then."

An Orenian relic gazed out over soon-trampled snow. News had just been brought to him of the destruction of Amathea, of the harassing of Barrowtown, of the peril of Alisgrad - and though the young elf knew he should feel hatred for the Mori, duty ever measured the distance between animal and man. So instead, he felt bitter sorrow, along with grim purpose. A new, powerful enemy to battle.. Such was to be his war. He was of the right age, and what approached felt.. consequential. This was no dispute over villages, this was a war, a continental conquest on a scale not seen in his lifetime - and on a scale he would likely never see again.

 

"I will make it my own." 

 

So the man told himself, the significance of the recent revelation escaping him, as great revelations so often did; their meaning eluding the frame of his comprehension, the ruinous destiny of Almaris banished from consideration. Because for all of his confidence, his grim self-assuredness, not once did Cirrus realise that they might lose.