Alice Finn woke very early in the morning, roughly around four, and found it impossible to get back into a peaceful sleep… not that it had been peaceful before she had awoken. She had been having an odd dream, with things in the darkness that wanted to hurt her, and she couldn't escape. She rolled over in her guest bed, and looked across the room where Lucy Gray was silent and asleep. All right for some, she thought, and quietly climbed out of bed, an art she had mastered from sneaking out of her room in the dead of night… whenever she stayed with her 'Uncle' Tom or in her own home. The parents very rarely heard it, but the one time her Secret Agent father, Huckleberry Finn, had found her, she had gotten out of trouble by using the excuse 'I needed a glass of milk'. He'd bought it, luckily, and let her off… promising not to tell her mother as long as she assured him she wouldn't do it again, and that she would take a drink of water or the like with her to bed.
So it was that Alice crept from the room, noticing that Lucy barely stirred, only shifted slightly and fell silent once more, thankfully. Quietly, she crept barefoot down the hall in her nightgown, and walked past the other bedrooms, where people were still sleeping. As she walked past the bedroom that contained Will Quatermain, she saw his door was slightly ajar, and peered inside, catching sight of the rifle laying on a chest of drawers by the window. No matter how tempted she was, Alice forced herself to move on, and leave the gun be.
She had inherited her father's – not to mention uncle's – love of guns and the like, and yearned to try out Will's own weapon, but she knew he wouldn't let a 'girl' like her handle it. The thought made her angry, and she remembered how her father and uncle had showed her just how to use one and load one… her mother was furious about the whole thing, but she never actually interrupted and stopped the practise whenever the three underwent such a thing.
She just worries about me, Alice realised as she crept down the stairs, wincing when one creaked underfoot and hovering over it as if waiting for someone to burst out and investigate the noise. I've just realised how huge this house is. It was big enough for all the children and Marie Jekyll, and Alice's own mother, along with Vicky Skinner… she found herself wondering where it had come from, and then decided she need not worry about such things.
Alice walked into the living room, and curled up in an armchair by the lifeless fireplace, staring at the blackened wood. She wondered what her father and uncle were doing at that moment, and despite herself, her eyes welled up. She forced the unpleasantness down, and told herself sternly that they both knew how to handle themselves… the amount of adventures she had heard about in her younger childhood; they would be fine. Her father was an exceptional agent, or so she had heard from her mother, who thought the world of Huckleberry Finn. Alice wished he was here with them, but she realised he would have – without a doubt – run off with Tom Sawyer on this mission of theirs. That thought made her frown. Her uncle was always looking for thrill and adventure, and she had a terrible feeling that one day… he would step in too deep.
They're both fine… they know what they're doing, and I'll see them both again soon. As she started to feel her eyelids become heavy, the last part of her thought was almost lost even to herself, I hope…
As soon as they had come close to the Dark Lord's lands, they had branched off into three groups and turned away on their own small missions. For the moment, they still sat on the hill on horseback, the four of them, save for the Aseyewrn, who landed covertly some few feet behind them and walked up on foot. He was silent as he moved, and he stood between Skinner and Tom as the horses snorted and pawed at the ground. One shied, Mina's horse, and reared its head.
"Can't blame it," Skinner noted, nodding his head down at the field rolling out beneath them, a sort of plain that stretched out from the tall, ugly tower of a fortress off to their right. "Look at that…"
"I had no idea his forces had amassed so heavily," Piero said with a dark undertone, shaking his head back and forth, his wild hair giving him an almost feral appearance.
Tom shifted in the saddle slightly, and sighed. "There's thousands of them… not to mention… those." He swallowed dryly, pointing loosely with one hand off to the rear, where gigantic beasts were in a seemingly peaceful slumber. Covering most of the plain were orcs… and as Tom had estimated, there must have been thousands of them, a terrifying spectacle. Most of them were still for the time being.
Piero followed the American's indication, and ran his hands through his hair. Clearly, he was troubled, though he tried to hide it from his features. "Dark dragons… gayaerea…"
Skinner remembered that word enough to recognise its meaning – 'dreaded ones'. He shook his head. "How many of them are there? Can you see?"
Mina narrowed her eyes, and fell silent, along with Piero… as one they both said, "A dozen."
"Damn." Tom looked troubled, understandably, whereas Skinner remained silent in his concern.
Suddenly, Mina turned her head, and said, "Quickly… we must find cover."
Without hesitation, the others followed her, Piero swinging onto the back of Skinner's horse to run with them. Whatever Mina had sensed, the Aseyewrn did not trust the use of his wings in this time, and felt it better to stay low. They charged quickly into the cover of a thick wood, and dismounted. Piero said something to the three animals, and they quickly fled away to better cover, after Tom and Skinner had removed their weapons from the harnesses. The four of them ducked down in some bushes, and cast their eyes skyward at a horrible unearthly sound.
Dark shapes flew overhead, swift and hideous, and Skinner frowned at their appearance.
"Harpies…" Piero revealed, keeping his voice low as the creatures continued over the plain and landed near the slumbering dragons. The dragons themselves did not move, their black scales glinting in the sun, and their crested, horned heads lolled on the ground with their spiked wings curled around their gigantic bulks.
"What are they?" Tom queried.
"Dark creatures that serve the Dark Lord. They are deadly in battle," Piero revealed, and he met their gazes in turn, adding, "they spit liquid fire, and are vicious on top of that." His wings arched, and he scowled. "Wicked monstrosities."
Skinner raised a brow. There was definitely bad blood between both species of winged fliers. His attention then changed, though, when he heard a low rumbling.
"How much damage can they inflict on Terragan's defences?" Tom asked Piero as they hid in the wood.
"The liquid fire can burn though the strongest of metals, even in your world," Piero said, before tensing as he heard something moving in the distance. He drew his dagger, the soft whisper of the steel — Mina supposed it was steel; in this world, their metal could be anything — against the weathered leather somewhat comforting. She herself heard something, a mere rustle of bushes against something, the scrap of cloth against bark.
Beside her, Tom cocked the Winchester, the sound painfully loud in the tense silence. Skinner frowned, pulling his new sword of the sheath that the mysterious Aseyewrn had given him. He trusted both Piero and Mina enough to know that something was wrong.
When Xanthe came though the bushes, followed soon by her group of Hyde, Allan and Dorian. The Aclidian female looked very worried.
"Kwentra lye i'narn," Piero said immediately, knowing that something bad had happened. [Raven's note: the Elven used means "tell us the tale".]
"Grave news," Xanthe told them, keeping her voice down. "There are more of them than we thought. They have secured the alliance of the Queen Harpy. She leads them into war as scouts and the first wave of attacks."
"We had to take some of them on," Xanthe continued. "We hid their bodies in the bushes further behind, out of sight."
"They put up one wicked fight," Allan comment, showing the floating sword and its bearer a tear in his right sleeve. "One of them scratched me. I was lucky they didn't spit on me, though. Xanthe here tells me that the burns wouldn't have healed."
"But their smell?" Mina inquired. She gave the air a delicate sniff, but didn't detect anything that smelled like rotten eggs, which was what she knew those harpies to smell like. In reply, Xanthe opened a pouch at her waist and pulled out a little green ball. The smell of fauna came from it.
"Those disguise their scent," Nemo told Mina, who had raised a brow. "Hence the fauna smell."
"Thank Laire for their invention," Piero told them in an off-handed manner. He turned back to the dragons, and squinted. "A dozen dragons...a nest of harpies…thousands of orcs…"
"They're planning a full-scale invasion," Tom said.
Laire, Eiselbahr and Hyde peered through a thick bush at the sleeping dragons. The Elven commander had told the beast that they would only really wake up at night, although they could fight in daylight. Right now, though, they seemed to be resting.
Saving up their energy for an invasion, Laire thought grimly. How they had managed to keep Hyde out of sight was still amazing. For a brute so big, his sleuth is more than commendable.
"Laire," Eiselbahr prodded him in a rib, and Laire squinted in the direction that the Elf was pointing to. He saw the big iron door, and was able to make out a small illustration on the wood. "Ammunition and weapons store," Eiselbahr whispered. Nodding, and gesturing for Hyde to follow him, Laire dashed out from behind their dead bush and pulled open the door silently, and then he ducked in.
Hyde and Eiselbahr followed shortly, and Laire muttered a spell and a small light of blue fire appeared in his open palm, illuminating the room. He turned around slowly as Eiselbahr shut the door.
"We were right," Laire whispered. "They plan an invasion."
"What's all this?" Hyde asked, looking bored.
"This is might you'll be going up against," Eiselbahr told him, before moving further into the room as Laire inspected some of the weapons. There was the usual fare for the orcs: spears, swords, and bows for the few archer. But there were some things that baffled him. New weapons, perhaps, some with spikes, and what looked to be …
"…dragon saddles," Eiselbahr announced as he came in from the innards of the room. "They have dragon saddles."
"Which are used for…?" Hyde snorted.
"Riding dragons, of course," Laire told Jekyll's alter-ego. "It has been tried before, yes, but with disastrous results. People have tried to tame dragons before, but that failed horribly. But this…" He fingered a saddle, and found that it was made of tough leather-like material. He frowned, turning to the Elven commander. "We need to get this information back to Terragan. The very presence of the gayaerea is enough. Now that they are going to ride them…"
Eiselbahr nodded, but that was when they heard footsteps coming from outside.
