The Grey March
Inphyy, alongside Aspharr marched with their army behind them, Castle Varrvazzar sat mournfully in the distance. While there was no snowstorm, there was an unsettling mist in every opening of the valley, the clearing itself, was disturbingly devoid of any shroud. In patches about the field and several openings, Inphyy could spy black shapes and protrusions; dead bodies and weapons that hadn't been cleared or buried, or placed into re-use.
She had a good mind to ask why they had not done this yet, it was a bad omen to leave your soldier's bodies to rot.
They hurried to the front as they saw soldiers gathering in the small ramparts in the very front of the gates.
They ran as fast as their legs could carry them.
"Soldier! Report!" shouted Heppe as they neared the closest rampart, carved out of aged stone, mud and wood.
The grimy, jumpy man looked at Heppe and both had the same stray thought;
-The Templars have had it easier than we have
The man stood nervously and saluted Inphyy and Aspharr as they came closer.
"Temple Knights! We are grateful for your assistance, I am sorry about your comrade, he was a testament to the valor of a Champion of the Light"
Sesh's face flashed through the face of everyone who heard the man speak and they grimaced.
"Re-port" said Inphyy, stepping up to the man, her conscience raw from having heard mention of Sesh and being in the place that would turn out to be his grave.
She remembered the dead soldiers out in the battlegrounds and swore to herself that she would find Sesh's body, however long it would take her and she would carry it to the Castle and bury it with all honors due to a hero of the Kingdom.
It was then that they heard a horn, a deep, thunderous, orcish horn.
Through the mist, they could see a contingent of orcs, trolls, goblins and other beasts approaching, a contingent of well enough size to take the ramparts.
"Damnation!" yelled the man in charge of the bulwark's defenders.
"That knight of yours that had come a month ago and sacrificed himself to buy us time. But I fear it might have been a death in vain, the Bulwark will fall if they keep coming in waves of that size" said the man.
Inphyy looked at him with disgust, "You there! Get your men ready, we will meet the enemy head on"
Before the commander, who turned out to be one of Lord Varrvazzarr's three sons, could argue something caught their eye.
The contingent had stopped in mid field and was looking as if there was a squabble amongst them, it was only when they began to shift backwards, all of their spears and archers facing the Gate, and the tundra behind it, that Inphyy noticed that someone or something was coming.
Whatever it was, the goblins didn't seem to be happy to see it. More than anything, they seemed to be afraid.
The son of Varrvazzarr sensing an opportunity marched his troops forward to meet the enemy troops in at the lip of the small hill where they would be at a disadvantage for charging if they tried it.
Inphyy and the Temple Knights followed suit, marching alongside the troops protecting their flank. They would have been smiling if they hadn't seen what came out of the mist behind the goblins.
In the bottom of a topographic V, trapped and slowly panicking, the goblins began to squabble and fight over what to do. But everyone, stopped talking when the mist gave way to monsters.
Human soldiers of great size, the biggest among them easily being the size of an Orc and the smallest being larger than the biggest men that anyone had ever laid eyes on marched silently to the lip of the V and looked down.
Heppe stuttered when they heard roaring and screeching from behind the mist, behind the giant men emerged a cacophony of monstrous sounds. The army behind the great wall was being slaughtered.
The Temple Knights and the soldiers felt cold chills up their spines. While the cold of Varrvazzarr could normally cut to the bone, the silent, misty frost that the knight army had brought with them chilled the heart and killed the spirit. By some unseen signal the army marched in long strides, shoulder to shoulder with weapons the size of men and stepped up to the goblins which pressed into each other, trapped between the defenders of the Castle and these unknown soldiers. When the first line of the warriors reached the goblins with perfect order, they lifted their massive weapons and brought them down un-stylishly on the edge of the mob shattering the frail bodies of the frightened goblins.
When the cornered orcs snapped they charged the line of black knights and they were cut down as well, some of them were impaled then swung cleanly over the marauder's heads and into the back ranks where they were subsequently torn apart.
The trolls roared and charged into the line bashing away the knights with visible effort, but no sooner had they broken into the first three lines. Their legs and stomachs were cleaved open and the marauders in crimson armor broke into a run with unnatural speed and launched their bodies into the trolls and toppled them backwards into the ground, these same crimson knights swung their cruel axes with surprising speed into the faces, necks and chests of the trolls with just one hand.
While the trolls were reduced into dismembered, gory, blood pulps, they screamed;
-Kill, Crush and Destroy!
-Bloooooooooooood!
Their voices were guttural and metallic in a way, each sounded like three voices in varying tone speaking at the same time.
The goblins began to scream and strike back at the knights, their maliciously sharp blades bounced and scrapped off the attacker's armor. These hoisted them up by their necks and tore out their spines or threw them back into the ranks to be done the same or worse. The defenders of Varrvazzarr looked away and grimaced at the butchery, they were at a relatively safe distance, but this view was destroyed when a terrified goblin ran up to them without thinking seeing them as saviors and was impaled by a claymore, a double handed sword the size of a man which was thrown almost fifty feet from the battle to its target and hit it accurately.
The slaughter was brief and brutal, but many of the contingent had been spared, they were being beaten into the dirt, forced to eat snow with blood, while others were being dragged away in manacles.
Whatever the knight army had planned for them they didn't want to know.
The Temple Knights watched the scene like it was a dream, most of them weren't even aware enough to get into a battle stance. They watched the battle like they weren't part of it, they forgot the cold, they forgot the war, and they forgot themselves.
But it was only when four of the knights approached the defender's battle line with their weapons down that Aspharr had enough sense to order everyone to be ready and to only attack on his mark.
There was something about how the knights were approaching that told them that they did not mean to hurt them.
The four knights shifted their course towards Aspharr singling him out from the lines. Inphyy ran to his side and stood defensively in front of him.
The knights were all the more terrifying now that they were up close to them.
Their armor was iron, heavy and coarse, the same was as bloodcaked as their weapons, stained by gore and mud.
Their helmets were horned or bladed, the faces of the same were skeletal or the visors of the same were constructed to reflect monstrous shapes.
They did not speak a single word, but stopped almost twenty feet away before parting to reveal a smaller knight.
The same marched with an imperious authority and surety towards Aspharr and Inphyy.
This knight's armor was a different tone than the other's. It was ash black, with its trim being white as the virgin snow atop the surrounding mountains. His fur cloak was blacker than the armor, darker than the cloaks that every knight in the army wore. He carried a rectangular longsword as beautiful as it was morbidly dark and foreboding, engraved with black runes on its shiny silvery edge. The horrifying visage was complete by the knight's helmet. A horned, brutal thing, the eye slits glowed with unnatural energy and the mouthpiece was a clenched jaw of interlocked metal teeth.
He spoke with the same kind of guttural voice his soldiers had, but it was cleaner and softer somehow, it was a charismatic voice.
"Hello" said the commander.
Inphyy looked back at Aspharr then back at the commander. Her hand, never leaving the pommel of her blade.
"Who are you?" she asked, her words like venom.
The commander took off his helmet.
Aspharr nearly threw up, Inphyy felt like her heart was about to explode.
It was Sesh.
His skin as pale as Inphyy's, cut with red, ritualistic markings and his hair, draping down to his shoulders and as white as a corpse's skin.
Altered, but very much alive.
His once, warm yellow eyes, were now a hellish crimson.
The half-elf's cruel red eyes pierced Inphyy's own like a glass arrow through her heart.
"Hello Inphyy" he said as he stepped up to her.
She backed into Aspharr who had backed into a soldier who had backed into the one behind him.
He smiled a smile as cruel as his eyes and spoke again.
"What's the matter Inphyy? You look nervous" he said as he stroked her arms.
Inphyy's vision blurred and everything came to darkness.