AN: Don't get too excited. This is an extremely short chapter that I wasn't planning on posting at all. I wrote it to set a theme for which to write the following chapters, and I was going to change and improve this one to accommodate for what comes after. There's even a marker to add more to this chapter. Eventually, it just made sense keeping this one as a nifty short, so I'm posting it. More to come soon.


Chapter 29

Watching


X Genocide X

King Malthon Eyenhart was the image of quiet wrath.

Two days ago, they had survived the Singing Blades on a night he would label a great defeat and a great victory. All of them, without sleep, worked hard to recover from the losses. Humbled Ymirjar were more devoted than ever, and Sin de Rath spread a wildfire of rumors with his great forging in a storm of qiraji. Hope rekindled, and yesterday Malthon and the other strategists began to plan to continue the invasion.

With a wide sweep of his fist, Malthon threw aside the models of their shocktroopers from the table. Betrayal from within shattered the Exilee last night. Thomas, their Ranger-General, proved more disturbed than he had fighting the Singing Blades firsthand, announcing his forces to be "unable and helpless to their expected duties" and that "enduring pension must be undertaken before they could rightly recommit to the campaign," after which he vanished into his tent and refused to lead or be met.

A blow to the heart.

The individual figurine that represented Baelin Drekthac, the Dragon of the Ymirjar, was nearly crushed in his fist as Malthon removed it from the map. Sometime this morning, Drekthac had vanished with his val'kyr and some frost vrykul, flying north into the wastes atop his proto-drake with supplies for a long journey. The reasons behind his leave were still a mystery, although Hilda's similar retreat from the political scene suggested an unfavorable involvement. The spider val'kyr was brooding, it seemed.

A blow to the arm.

And finally there was Sin de Rath the Mad, represented by a pitch-painted staff with insect wings. It stood proudly in the center of their marked stronghold, so Malthon flicked it over, to better represent the warlock himself. Still inside the stronghold. Yesterday, while Sin dodged his messengers, something significant had taken place between master and qiraji. An assemblage dark as old gods, involving psychics and ancient ritual, but so guarded was the region of its happening that Malthon had no clue of what took place there – only that in the outcome, Sin and his kaldorei protector demanded reclusion, and that those who saw them noticed something inexplicably "off" about them both.

A blow to the mind.

Of the four men Ghat'Nothos deemed threatening, only Malthon himself remained standing. Fortunately, Overthane Ufrangsson's vrykuls and the autonomous Ymirjar were still unaffected by recent events. They, along with Malthon's own crusaders, were all they had to campaign with.

"Fool King?" Thodin asked after his rearrangements.

Malthon faced the titanic man, finding an aged face as wary and worn as Malthon's own. Spending the last few days with the Ymirjar strategists, he had come to learn much about them and their ways. Thodin in particular was a man in his own league, blessed with the lightning of Thorim, aged into several millennia of experiences, and one of the many Ymirjar honored with death knight strength. He had a voice as high as Drekthac's among the individualistic Ymirjar.

"Send the raiders," Malthon encouraged finally. "That is my take. Hesitation would be the death of us; the campaign must continue. I will mobilize my men immediately. We can use a combination of vrykul builders and those from the Argent Crusade to fortify our march. At the least, we can buy time for the shaken and the fallen to find their feet once more, to join us when they are ready."

Sigarda the Avalanche scoffed while the others nodded. "Or we can send some val'kyr to burn the fear and shame out of the cowards."

Malthon nearly replied to her quip with heat and vehemence, but just barely he caught himself and recognized the suggestion wasn't serious. The last thing any of them needed were more hands threading through their minds and emotions.

"I suppose it was never even a question," Ufrangsson settled. "If we slowed at every bump, we'd still be killing each other on the glacier. I expect your crusaders will take the place of shocktroopers, and so I will scale up my men into a nice, meaty hammer to make up for your absence. My Blood Guard has been restless this war, and the Blades were a poor relief to honor the gods and their ancestors."

Thodin nodded. "We are all agreed then. We will begin the raids immediately. Let us get this campaign underway."

XxX

Atop the lightning-dressed mountains, only a few miles from the newly built stronghold, Drekthac was watching. Over the last two hours, their gates had released the hungry hordes of vrykuls, both Ymirjar and Jotunheim, with the mounted forces of white and black that marked the Fool King. Above that procession were the flocks of snow-colored val'kyr, shouting and crying out like a chorus of doves to urge the warmachine onwards with heavenly blessings.

The initial march was a fantastic scene of fanfare and superhuman might. There was a religious element to it, something sanctimonious that worshiped the divinity of warfare and the piety of warcraft. If bloodletting was the prayer for such a deity, Drekthac would be among the apostles of that ecclesiarchy.

Even without Saint Drekthac, however, the hymns of war were sung zealously. The lines of defenders that stymied the black tides parted for the procession, and they entered the war with an unstoppable momentum that tore through the initial Skinless and pushed onwards. This was not a war that could be fought defensively, so each advancing location must be claimed through miles of bodies and blood, all the way to Ulduar.

By now, that march had nearly reached the mouth of their valley, just below Drekthac's patient vantage point. After the initial thrust into the Skinless' body, the Ymirjar had broken from the spear to work at the bulk, cleaning the valley of the ebony presence until all the remained were the crumpled, defeated bodies trampled into the white snow. The Overthane and Fool King continued to the mouth, where a solid line was held in defiance to the aggressive counter of the Skinless. Desperately, and reminiscent to claiming the pass into the valley from Icecrown, the Skinless threw bodies at their lines like they meant to stop them with a wall of flesh and bodies. In minutes, they were already forced to fight atop the acidic corpses of the fallen.

In his vigil, Drekthac did not miss the absence of their two newest allies. A small part was pleased that the pests were out of his way, yet the quieter majority of him worried over it. The betrayal within the Exilee had crippled them, an occurrence that might continue throughout the war, while any hesitation from the Madman was enough to make him pause. Sin was everything Drekthac hated about magic cranked up to overkill; an impersonal wave of his hand could massacre scores of even Sightless foes. His lack was obvious.

Drekthac watched.

A pack of Skinless felstalkers sprinted fearless towards the front lines. The way was paved by an arcane spell, throwing more broken pieces of black flesh into the piles. The lead felstalker went down in a burst of nymph spear and arrows, and the two behind collapsed under the mighty vrykul bolts from their crossbows. Like it was planned, the three following demons smashed against their fellows while they were still falling, kicking them airborne a second longer mid-sprint. Missiles hit those quivering bodies, jarring the momentum but protecting the felstalkers behind, and then the beasts clawed into the black flesh for powerful leaps against the defenders. Shields awkwardly caught what they could, but the acid bombs from the first felstalkers trailed the sudden attackers, and men went down.

Only a single example of assault amongst hundreds and thousands. Drekthac's war-weary mind processed what he could, one exchange at a time. Sometimes he thought of what he would do in the same situation, how he would need to move and when he must strategically employ his rage for lightning-quick reactions. Ultimately though, he sought the flow of the battle, and the longer he watched, the more he thought he felt it.

There was a singularity to the enemy, like they were under the control of a hivemind. As seen with the felstalkers, they did not behave as beasts or men, with fear or emotion. The most individualism Drekthac saw was when some functioned as units, usually by likeness in form or function, yet he saw even those pockets function in perfect synchronization to changes in the battlefield, without signals from lung or instrument to guide them. It was as though an individual stood beside him up on this bluff, watching the battlefield from above, and it directed all the Skinless like fingers of its own hand.

Ghat'Nothos, The Always Watching. What a name. Well, now Drekthac was a watcher too. The playing field was that much more even.

Realizing his own thoughts, Drekthac snorted and spat. It had the sound of something Sin would say. He wasn't here to learn how the old god "thought," to learn it from within. There were other, madder men better suited for that. Drekthac sought to learn the fighting strategy of the Skinless. He was no master of the strategic field, but there were few men that knew fighting as a hivemind better than a Son of Blackrock. In that war, there were no men, no women, no names or people. Only faceless bodies committed to the greater beings of Hate and Vengeance and utterly compelled by that singular force to kill as many orcs as they could.

A loud sigh sought to interrupt his musings. "When I decided to accompany Drekthac the Immortal on an adventure, to beat back the Old World alone but for our duo, I did not expect our saga to praise how we sat aside for half the war and watched our kin die."

"Britta the Blood Maid is not a fool," Drekthac replied, glancing her way for a second. "Act not like one now."

Seated on the snow cross-legged and fiddling with arrows, Britta huffed and also viewed the battle below. While she did not respond, Freydis did, reporting neutrally, "Hilda says that while Britta is no fool, you certainly are, Baelin." Britta grinned but kept her bloody comments to herself.

In Common, Drekthac groused, "Can't you keep the damned women out of your head for one hour?"

"It isn't worth the effort," Freydis said with a shrug. "And even if it were an easy matter, the words of Hilda are no trifling to be ignored on whim. I also agree, as all val'kyr do, with her plan to soulbind the val'kyr to you."

"It's true," Helgrin threw in. "I would say it is imperative that we do so. You are great, Ymirjar, but with a portion of all our power tied to you, Baelin Drekthac will be more than just "Immortal.""

This is the last time I set out with a team of women, all ready to gang up at a moment's notice, Drekthac thought sourly. Below, he caught sight of enormous Skinless beast rip free of the ground, throwing the budding corpse wall and living aside in one heave. From everywhere, Skinless took to flight, leaping onto the worm's back, riding it like a living siege tower. The titanic Fool King met it in flashes of Light and fire, and in only a few thundering cracks, the thing was dead.

Drekthac sensed it before it happened, as part of that forward-thinking hivemind. The jormungar – he suspected – was beaten at its breach point, and for its death, the dozens of yards of beast flesh that towered up high pitched forward into the body of the defenders. Vrykul magics sought to turn aside its fall, to no avail, and it crashed atop scores of men. Then the Sightless beast, for that it what it must have been, exploded in its acidic death rites, and all the mantis-like creatures that clung to its back were hurtled into the staggering defenders as if shot from a cannon. Like the ones that assaulted the Gates of Ymirheim, a storm of scythe arms began to hack away at the defenders.

Britta cursed to herself at the aftermath, while Drekthac remained somber. He kept watching.

If if the magic powerhouses Hilda or Sin de Rath had been present, that tactic would not have succeeded. Drekthac suspected Ghat'Nothos knew that as well, and it was strategizing appropriately to the absence.

"Drek, when will we fight?" Britta asked, more tightly than before.

When I'm sure we will make a difference, he replied silently. For now, he would keep watching.

So he did, until the night was deep and the cold was deadly for such exposure. In that time, the Ymirjar raiders finished in the valley and broke the defensively held stalemate at the valley mouth, and they disappeared further along, taking to the fight in the vrykul way, while King Malthon and the Overthane began construction of a base at the choke point. It was the first of many to come.

For a time longer, Drekthac sat there in the dark, bundled close to Britta and Coralhide. His eyes swept the valley of corpses, finding no movement, no sign of his adversary. No shadows crept, and the only sounds were the rushing winds and the shouts of men as they built that fortress.

His attention finally wavered from the valley and battle, and he turned to the patient Ymirjar huntress that was equal parts his friend and his bane. "Britta," he addressed hoarsely. His sudden thirst surprised him, and he realized how long it had been since he attended his human needs. The last few days, val'kyr warcallers had burned such grievances right out of him. Clearing his throat, he continued, "How long has it been since you last met with your Hyldnir sisters?"

"Oh?" There was intrigue in her voice. "Why you askr?"

"You wanted another saga in this life, no? I think it's time we got started on it. Helgrin, I believe this tale doesn't need the hindrance of sleep."

Unlike Freydis, who was raised only during the Lich King's reign, Helgrin was a true Handmaiden of Ymirheim, and she knew the runes of the warcallers sure as the others. Maldrid too had been such a val'kyr, but she...

Blue runes sizzled and popped in the air like a bad gnomish experiment, and in the aftermath, Drekthac felt that siren's call slip from his bones. His mouth flushed and belly settled as with a full meal. Such was the magic of the Val'kyr.

"It shall be so, Ymirjar," Helgrin agreed, and there was pleasure in her voice. The time for action had come.

Moving aside the furred vrykul arm that held him, Drekthac rose from the snow. Coralhide's maw glowed with firelight, and he squawked confusion. Beating the proto-drake's neck with a fist until his tongue drooped out like a dog's, Drekthac told him, "Yes, we will fly by night. Are you up for it?"

The tongue licked back its oily saliva, and while clearly not understanding the question, Coralhide puffed his chest and shrieked loudly. Showy bastard. Drekthac smiled and scraped the underside of the drake's chin with his gauntlet-encased fingers. Now he received it like a cat, careening and cooing like it tickled.

Noticing Britta reaching with her gloved hand, Drekthac took it and heaved her back to her feet in one pull. The giantess acted like she expected nothing else, stretching and walking off the stiffness in her joints. Once Drekthac was seated upon Coralhide, she slipped up behind him, and flanked by both val'kyr, the mighty beast took to the skies once more.


AN: I promise I haven't been idle lately. I have several chapters for WotSE lined up and nearly completed. Up next is Sin, and boy is it just one long, wild ride. Get hype. After that is an interlude which finishes a scene from that chapter, so I want that done before I post the next chapter. I don't know how long it'll take, but there is a full chapter ready for after the interlude and I'm halfway through the chapter after that.

In other news, and unrelated to WotSE, I have revamped my account a bit. Some old stories have been removed. I'm adding some new ones – one of which is fully written already (I did that in my last "break" from WotSE, last year). I really want to fix some of my other stories too, the ones that the site broke when they stopped supporting asterisks for scene breaks, and a rewrite of the Andariel scene in LLL has been called for since the day I wrote it. All in due time, I suppose. I thought about changing my account name, but I've grown too fond of it.

Again, none of that is relevant to this story, which is still active as ever. I just wanted to put this out somewhere.

-Sub-Zero879