Chapter 2 - Conflagration
Dranze plodded heavily through the dense forest surrounding his home, heading south toward a neigboring keidran village. On his back he carried a tall quiver-like case containing fifteen shortspears, each handcrafted by his father, Altair, and carrying the sword Valen had given him on a leather belt hanging loosly around his waist. He replayed the short conversation in his head once again.
"Lately, there has been much worry among the surrounding villages concerning the human city to the north," his father had told him, "Many have noticed strange lights emanating from it, and some even believe that the Templar may be constructing one of their Towers there."
Altair lowered his gaze and stood considering for a moment, gingerly holding a small gold pendant and chain in his palm, once a gift to a mate long dead. Years of forging weapons and wares in a blistering furnace had sculpted his musculature and honed his dexterity, making him one of the most skilled smiths in the forest. A tall man, he wore heavy leather clothing and gloves made from boar hide, a necessity when working with red-hot metals.
He looked up at Dranz again, "The chieftan of a village to the south feels that the humans may attack, and has requested arms for defense."
He indicated a container with fifteen small spears inside leaned against the wall to the right.
"Why would the humans attack us now? We've done nothing to them," asked Dranz, cocking his head slightly.
Altair turned slowly and gazed out a window facing north, looking pensive, "The Templar are not like the human's we are familiar with. They are unwilling to share territory with the likes of us. Worse, their influence spreads to those around them, like an infection, and soon an entire city is ready to take up arms in support of the Templar's whims."
He met his son's gaze once more, "Our neigbors feel conflict with the humans is inevitable, and I need you to get these weapons to them," He handed Dranz a map of the forest, a small x indicating a village several miles to the south.
The younger keidran studied the map for a moment, and said, "Very well, I'll get these spears to them," he slipped on the container's shoulder strap, and turned to walk out the door.
He stopped, "Father?"
"Yes?"
"What do you think the humans will do?"
There was an expectant pause. Eventually, the older keidran said, "I can't surely say. I just hope we're prepared if the worst comes to pass."
And with that, Dranz turned slowly and left, adjusting the case on his back to a more comfortable position.
Emerging from his recolection, Dranz considered what his father had told him. What would happen if the humans did indeed attack? What would happen to the village? To the whole area? Would the surrounding keidran settlements be prepared for such an onslaught? The questions buzzed through his head over and over again, yet no answers came to quell them. He was left with an anxious knot in the pit of his stomach.
Trying to focus on something else, he glanced around the area, taking in the scenery: the ground was covered in a lush carpet of grasses and shrubs, and tall oaks towered above everything, throwing alternating shadows and beams of light over everything. The entire scene was quite relaxing. Dranz took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, feeling the knot loosen just a little.
He looked over his shoulder toward the sky, and immediately froze. The spears he carried dropped to the ground, unnoticed, and he swore he felt his heart stop. A thick column of acrid smoke hung in the sky to the north, emanating from where he had been no more than two hours ago.
Dranz sprinted feverishly through the forest, fueled by pure adrenaline and barely feeling his feet touch the ground. Through the leaf-thick canopy, he could see plumes of thick black smoke cutting through the otherwise clear sky, an omen emanating from the direction of his home village. Terrible images raced through his mind, postulates of what he would find, each flashing its hideous face for a mere moment before giving way to even greater horrors.
He did his best to suppress his imagination and continued the frantic race to his village. "Someone must still be there," he thought, clinging to the hope with all his strength, "Valen and father are skilled warriors, they have to be alive!"
At last, he came to the crest of a hill overlooking the village clearing. Gazing at the scene before him, all hope in him shattered like glass, the shards tickling somberly in his ears; not a single building was left standing, most set ablaze and reduced to nothing more than smoldering piles of cinders and empty, blackened husks of what they once were. Pitch dark smoke poured from the ruined structures, creating a plume of death that could be seen for miles.
Dranz felt a strange numbness overcome him. The scene was so surreal; he'd heard tales of such atrocities committed by the humans from those few travelers who passed through the village, but it had always seemed so distant, so impossible that it could actually occur anywhere nearby, let alone here. Such catastrophes belonged in the realm of dreams and legends, yet it was painfully real, a nightmare sprung from slumber to wreak havoc on the waking world
Almost autonomously, he trudged down the slope, once again breaking into a run as he reached the bottom. Countless acrid smells assaulted his nostrils, forcing him to gag and break into fits of coughing. A closer proximity to the scene did nothing to restore any semblance of hope; nothing moved save for a few remaining fires flickering in the wind. Small craters pitted the ground in several places, still smoldering from the heat of the explosions that carved them.
And then there were the bodies, countless numbers on them, broken, lying in the dirt with joints bent at unnatural angles. Most were people from his village, faces he recognized and knew. Interspersed among them was an occasional human, some wearing chain shirts and others still clutching swords and daggers in their cold hands. It was a scene of carnage; some of the dead missing limbs, others with their abdomens' split and entrails dangling out. Still others had been run through with blades, killed by a single stab wound in which the fatal weapon still resided, their blood pooling beneath their fallen forms. However, the most disturbing of these were the ones who's identity he could not decipher, for they had been rendered completely unrecognizable by burns, flesh blackened and peeling, bones exposed. These victims were so mutilated that even their race could not be identified; whether they had been human or keidran would never be known.
Dranz fell to his knees, shaking violently, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. He felt an upwelling in his throat, and vomited, the sickening odor of mutilated and charred corpses overpowering his senses. He felt light-headed, and his mind buzzed with a mix of guilt and despair.
"I should have been here," he thought despondantly, "I could have helped fight, could have done something."
Moving numbly through the ruins, he came to what was left of his father's workshop; inumerable scorch marks scarred what was left of the walls, and the entire roof had caved in, frorming a pile of charred rubble. Instinctively, he began to dig through the debris, shifting chunks of brick and wood frenetically. He dreaded what could be underneath, but at the the same time he couldn't leave without finding out.
Grunting with effort, Dranz threw off a fragment of roof, and simply stared at what lay under it. A wave of sickening horror flooded him, and he toppled backward onto the ground, scrambling away from the scene and breathing in short, irregular gasps: concealed beneath that fragmet of roof were two charred corpses, burned beyond recognition like countless others. The only hint to their identity was a small, half-melted gold pendant around the neck of the taller victim, glinting in the sunlight seeping through the canopy.
Nothing was left anymore. The entire world had gone up in flames. And here he stood among the ashes, hopeless, aimless, and desolate.
Suddenly, Dranz spotted movement out of the corner of his eye; one of the bodies was moving. Breathlessly, the young keidran came to his feet, legs quaking beneath him, moving to investigate what he'd seen.
To his dismay, the survivor was human, clad in a chain shirt over soft leather clothing. A long slash ran down the length of his left leg, and his face was covered with various cuts and abrasions. His helmet lay on the ground about five feet away from him, exposing a bloody lump on his head poking through a tangle of short brown hair.
The man gestured to Dranz, trying to garner his assistance, gasping out words in a language the keidran could not understand. Dranz simply stood, looking and the pitiful man lying before him.
"Humans," whispered a voice in his ear, "They did this. None of the fault belongs with you; all of it rests with his kind."
Dranz's hand gripped his sword's pommel tighter. The human gestured more insistently, apparently frustrated.
"Just look," the voice continued, "it's all gone. Your village; destroyed. Your friends: slaughtered in their homes in cold blood. All by humans."
The young keidran suddenly felt a hot sensation in the pit of his stomach, working its way upward as if traveling through his bloodstream, engulfing the emptiness created by the disaster before him. The despair and sadness vanished, replaced with an increasingly intense feeling of revulsion at the pleading figure before him. Still he stood motionless, his gaze fixed on the human, who was shouting now.
"Kill him," barked the voice with finality, hungry for blood, "Kill all of them, as they did here, as they killed your friends and loved ones, without mercy or regret."
Within each keidran's psyche, therein lay a terrible fate. When a keidran becomes emotionally overwhelmed, when they could not contain their baser desires, these instincts burst their floodgates suddenly and disastrously, wiping aside any semblance of rational thought, all traces of reasonability. Any keidran afflicted with this becomes little more than a savage beast, attacking others on sight and living by pure instinct. Such an unfortunate creature is only referred to as a Feral, pitied by its former people, feared by humans, who tell stories of Ferals rending entire families to pieces completely unprovoked.
For an instant, Dranz felt what was happening to him, and a wave of icy fear passed through, chilling him to the bone before being boiled away by the cascade of hate and rage that followed. It was like nothing he had felt before, a hatred so deep and pervasive that it surpassed all reason, but this was no longer of any consequence to him. He craved but one thing now; the blood of humans, the ones who had wronged him so, the ones who had taken everything he had cared for and set it aflame simply to watch it burn.
An instant later, Dranz felt his right arm shoot forward, propelling the blade clutched in his hand through the helpless human's stomach. The victim emitted a strangled yelp as the sword pierced his torso, eye's dialating in shock and color draining from his face.
Before the soldier could make another sound, Dranz twisted the blade and wrenched it from its victim, causing a spray of blood to fly from the weapon, flecking the keidran's fur with dark crimson spots. The human lay gasping if the ground, blood oozing from his fresh wound and leaking from the corners of his mouth. Seconds later, his eyes glazing over, he quit breathing and lay still.
Dranz thought nothing of it. He simply stood straight up and ran into the forest upwind of the village, in order to escape the overpowering odors it contained. Once there, he tested the air for any scent that was similar to the soldier he'd just killed.
He quickly discovered one; a large group of humans had moved north from the village, back toward their territory. The trail was no more than a hour old, and such a gathering could only move so fast in this terrain. Dranz sprinted after them singlemindedly, bounding on all fours and allowing the blade to fall from his hand; the weapon pierced the ground and stood straight up, momentarily resembling a solitary monument before leaning to the side and falling into the dirt and ash.
"C'mon, move your sorry hides!" someone shouted, "The faster you beasts move the fewer lashings you'll need to take!"
The battered keidran being addressed couldn't understand of course, and continued to trudge along at a slow pace, some stumbling occasionally. All thirty-two of them had their hands shackled behind their backs, and were all fastened together in one single file line with thick ropes and timbers.
They were all that remained of a small village just to the south, all others dead or lost. The humans had attacked swiftly and without warning, giving no time for the keidran to prepare. In moments, nearly the entire village was a smoking ruin, and most of it's residents lay dead or dying upon the earth.
"Ah, these things are just slowing us down, sir. Can't we just get rid of 'em?" the same man said to the Templar on his right, grinning deviously, "Some of the greenhorns still need a bit of practice."
"No, Captain, we're keeping them," responded the hooded Templar, goading the horse he rode forward with his bootheel, "If we get rid of them, this whole expedition will have been for naught. Besides, several of my best slaves have recently caught plague somehow. It would be more practical to simply find replacements for them; clerics are far too expensive these days."
"Of course, Master Calder," returned the Captain, turning to face forward once again.
After another hour of marching, the forest's edge became visible, and the trees began to thin, giving way to fields of tall grass and various shrubs. In the distance, a small human city appeared; it was a fishing community on the edge of the sea, complete with a newly constructed Mana Tower standing in the center and dwarfing all the surrounding buildings. Its energy core shone a bright blue at the pinnacle, hinting at the power it contained. Calder beckoned to a nearby soldier.
"Yes, sir?" said the man, giving a salute.
"Go into town and inform the guard captain of our return. Have them prepare cages for our spoils," Calder ordered curtley, indicating the captive keidran. With that, the man gave another quick salute and hurried off to deliver his message.
No sooner than thirty seconds after the messenger left for the city, the sounds of a struggle could be heard in the direction he'd gone; feral growls and shrieks of pain filled the air a short distance away, but the tall grass enveloped whatever was causing it. Then, as suddenly as they came, the sounds stopped, giving way to an expectant silence.
Calder jumped down from his mount, signaling for a group of three soldiers to follow him. A tall man, the Templar wore tradional mage robes, with the ceremonial blue Tri-Linear Circle emblazoned on the right chest area. A jewel-encrusted sword and scabbard hung from a belt on his waist, glinting in the fading sunlight.
The four men moved carfully toward the spot from which the sounds had come, swords at the ready. Ahead they saw a section of land where the grass parted, indicating that something was lying on the ground, pushing the brush aside.
Inside the indentation lay the messenger, barely recognizable. His face was literally covered in angry gashes oozing blood all over his face, staining the ground below crimison as it followed gravity's pull. His breathing was labored and shallow, and red bubbles could be seen emerging from his mouth as his lungs exhaled through the thick liquid.
"Get him to the city," Calder said, gesturing at the messenger, "Take him to the Tower and get him some help. Be wary of anything suspicious."
The three accompanying soldiers quickly acknowledged the order, though looking slightly aghast, and lifted the injured man off the ground, making toward the city with as much haste as they could muster.
Alone now, Calder intended to find the assailant. He kneeled and placed his left hand on the ground, instantly feeling the Mana energy begin to flow through him as he called it from the earth. Then he began to shape it, like an artist with a lump of clay, molding it to his whims through sheer force of will. Invisible ropes of magic began to take shape around him, like the creepers of a vine, sprouting from his body unseen, yet tangible.
With another small impulse of willpower, the vines spread out from the Templar in all directions, searching, groping through the grassland with singleminded intent.
At that moment, a figure dashed out from the grass at blinding speed, charging at the mage and snarling viciously, claws raised and ready to strike.
Calder's ethereal cords responded instantly, snapping back to defend their master and stopping the attacking keidran in its tracks. It hung immobile in midstep, struggling futily at the magic binding it and snarling in frustration and confusion.
The Templar stood from the ground and considered his captive. Clearly, the beast had become feral; no spark of rationality remained in it, just blind rage and bloodlust.
"So, you're the one who assaulted my messenger, are you?" Calder said, noticing the blood dripping from the attacker's claws. The keidran kept struggling against its bonds.
"No need for that, you know," the Templar continued, "Strength should not be wasted on that which is immovable."
The tiger continued writhing fruitlessly.
Calder grinned, "Well, I believe all that energy of yours should be put to better use."
The human raised his hand to the keidran's face, called his magic to bear, and forced it through his palm.
All struggling ceased when the keidran's head snapped backwards as if it had been hit with a heavy stone, knocking it unconsious. Its body became limp against the cords binding it as its muscles relaxed, and Calder removed them, allowing the keidran's torpid form the fall to the ground.
The Templar called several soldiers over to retrieve the new captive. "Careful with this one," he told them, "I have plans for it when we arrive in Athkatla."
End of chapter 2. Hope it was worth the wait.