THE EYE OF SOLZAN

Prologue

Sir Tehodre Burjor stepped lively to one side as a body fell to the ground next to him, thrown from the battlements above by a blast of flame. The greenskin spell casters were in fine form, throwing bolts of lighting and balls of fire against the mighty walls of the keep. The cliffs of the valley echoed the screams and sounds of the battle that raged on.

Burjor grabbed a passing warrior whose face was heavily tatooed in the style of the southern clans. "Man the walls!" Burjor cried. "We need to hold them off longer! Get every man up there, and get them bows!"

The warrior nodded and continued his sprint, heading up the ash-covered steps to the walls above. Within seconds he was dead in the courtyard, thrown there by another flash of light.

Soot filled the air, raining down on Burjor and the gathered human army and obscuring the full size of the goblinoid army beyond the walls. They could see it was tens upon thousands strong, but they could not see that the numbers were reaching close to one hundred thousand. Goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, ogres and more filled the valley, all of them intent on wiping the humans from the map. Not just this keep, but the whole race.

Burjor fell back towards the cliff face which the keep backed against. Many of it's halls were burrowed through that rock by dwarven smiths, and deep within those halls sat what he hoped was going to save all of their lives. The masterfully engraved doors stood open, and as he passed through them he ordered them closed. A team of oxen pulled on the tethers that helped swing the massive stone doors shut. They closed with a deep rumble and immediately blocked out the sound of approaching death beyond them. Burjor stood in the silence for a moment, with only the sound and smell of the oxen and the nervous shuffling of the KeepGuards.

"The doors stay closed," Burjor ordered, and stomped off down the wide corridor.

Beneath the cliff, the corridors of the keep were cool and silent, lit to a golden hue by hanging lamps that stayed lit at all times without need for oil. Burjor didn't notice the massive tapestries or works of art as he moved through the corridors, up ramps and stairways and through heavy wooden doors. Crossing through a wide circular foyer, he came to a huge door and two KeepGuards.

"I will pass," Burjor snapped, and the guards stood aside. Pushing through the door, he was met with a blast of cool air.

Across the small chamber from him, the entire wall of the room was open to the valley below. The sound of battle reached this high and, being above the falling ash, he could clearly see the full scale of the attacking force.

"By the Gods," he hissed, rushing forward and leaning out over the keep below where his men continued to die. The enemy force filled the valley from east to wet, north to south. They looked like a writhing dark sea and sounded like nothing he had ever heard before.

One of the three men already in the chamber pulled Burjor back from the brink. "Commander," he said. "We are not ready."

Burjor turned to regard the speaker. He was ancient, skin stretched over bone and not much else. A wisp of white hair clung to the top of his head like a fog. His eyes, however, were bright and strong. His name was Extens, and he was the most powerful spellcaster in the human realms. The reason he was here instead of fighting below was sitting in the center of the stone pedestal that sat in the middle of the room.

It resembled a large yellow diamond, a maelstrom spinning deep in it's center that you could not look directly at, for it avoided being seen. It always danced just on the edge of your focus, and whispered secrets to you. Burjor tore his eyes from it and glared at Extens.

"I don't care, we're being decimated out there!" he snapped, gesturing to the space beyond the wall. A breeze gusted in and whipped Burjor's mud-spattered cloak around him. "If we don't use the Eye now, we could all be killed! Everyone! The whole human race depends on us!"

"Using the Eye now could kill us all anyhow," Extens replied. "We are not finished the ritual. You storming in here like that interrupted us. We need at least another hour!"

Burjor went to the edge of the wall again. A fireball exploded in the courtyard. There were orcs on the battlements. "We have minutes. Use the Eye."

"It will kill us all!" one of the others cried. He was a student of Extens, young and frightened.

Burjor spun on him. "We were born to die, young one," he barked. "Better us here, and just us, than your mother back home in Keris, your brothers and sisters, your wife, eh?"

Extens sighed deeply and turned to the students. "We use the Eye. Pray to Solzan. It is his power we channel now. Commander, you may want to leave."

Burjor stood his ground. "I stay."

The three wizards gathered around the gem and linked hands. A strange chant lifted from them and the gem's maelstrom grew larger and brighter, eventually outgrowing the gem and filling the chamber with rainbow colours. Extens's chanting grew louder and more desperate. The young student was the first to be consumed by the Eye.

In the keep below, a growing light from above made everyone - even the greenskins - stop and look up. A hole had formed in the side of the cliff above the courtyard and a brilliant glow came from it. Far off in the trampled plains of the valley, the goblinoid army all looked towards the light. Some of the greenskins began to back away, as though a few extra feet between them and the human keep would save them.

With no climax, the light suddenly expanded outwards. In the blink of an eye, one hundred and fifty thousand greenskins were vapourized, and over fifteen hundred humans were turned to ash. The keep grew quiet.

The Eye waited.