"With me!" Shouted Orik. He lifted Volund over his head, holding it aloft for all to see. The dwarven steel flashed bright and iridescent, stark agianst the wall of black, smoke clouds building up in the west. He looked to the soldiers following him out of the tunnels.
An arrow whizzed past him, he paid it no mind.
The warriors gathered at the base of the slope of shale Orik was standing upon answered him with a single, full-throated bellow: "Vor Orikz korda!" They brandished their own weapons and charged forward, scrambling over rough terrian, and clumps of rubble.
Orik turned his back on the men. On the other side of the mound lay the valley leading up to Farthen Dûr, a thousand or so of the calvary trampled down the mountain side towards the monsters who had just realized that they were trapped. Behind them rose a tall, dark silhouette of the mountain that contained Tronjheim.
With a cry, Orik leaped off the rubble toward his marching soldiers below. The men shuffled to the side as Orik made his way downhill, lifting their spears and pikes to keep from injuring their king. The soldiers followed close behind as Orik was the first to clash with the monsters.
Orik parried the first attack with a flick of his wrist, swinging Volund faster than either a human or dwarf could follow. The monster's face went slack as his sword was launched through the air. It tried to sidestep a few inches, but Orik lunged forward and took it in the gut, resulting in a sharp crunch.
The creature fell, landing on a patch of hazardous rocks. Orik then ducked behind his shield as a rippling sheet of flame appeared between him and the next monster. With a few crackling sounds, the lush grass caught fire and instantly began emitting oily smoke. From beneath the rim of his helm, he watched as the monster continued walking through the fire unharmed.
A line of archers on the plateaus above let fly a volley of arrows at an oncoming wave of creatures. The projectiles struck their upper torsos and several of them collapsed while others continued walking with struggled movements.
Replacing Volund with a sword, he ran forward and, with a single stroke, lopped the tops of a dozen polearms as easily as he might flick the seed heads of barely stocks. He slashed the nearest creature across the chest, slicing through it's tough skin as if it were the flimsiest of cloth. A fountain of black blood arose. Then Orik stabbed the next creature in line and struck the monster to his left with his shield, knocking the attacker's weapon back.
The large monsters' attacks seemed slow and clumsy to Orik as he danced through their ranks, cutting them down with impunity, giving the following knurlan an oppertunity to finish off the injured enemies. When he spun around to evade a pair of crude spears, he saw the flash of dwarven armor close behind as a dwarf jumped across his left side, swipping a sword to the side with his shield.
Farther back, the rest of the foot-soldiers poured out of the tunnels, however, most refrained from attacking due to the lack of space. The battle soon swept the dwarves apart, carrying them to opposite sides of the valley. Orik was not concerned. Even without a great number of soldiers around him, he was more than evenly matched with the slower, and much larger, monsters.
A spear thudded agianst Orik's shield, bruising his shoulder. He whirled toward the thrower, a big, scarred monster missing his left arm, and sprinted at him. The creature struggled to draw his sword in the enclosed space he happened to be centered in. At the last moment, Orik twisted, tensed his arms and chest, and rammed his sore shoulder into the giant's sternum.
The force of the impact drove the monster backward several feet where he collided with a few of his own kind, and fell on his half drawn sword, and was quickly finished off by a passing dwarf. A bitter smile twisted Orik's lips. The archers above had stopped a good number of the creatures, many of which would stop and fire their own arrows at the dwarves.
The onslaught of clattering arrows gave him the chance to rest for a moment, which he welcomed. The attack on the creatures had begun at daybreak, and he had been at its forefront the whole while.
Once the arrows ceased the monsters took heed of the dwarves once agian. A swift movement at the periphery of his vision caught Orik's attention. He looked up in time to see a dwarf launch a spear at a creature; it impaled it through it's thigh, black blood oozing from the shaft.
The fighting continued for another few minutes, whereupon the ground was covered in bodies of knurlan and enemy alike.
Orik allowed several of his soldiers to continue on without him. After a quick examination of the bodies that lay sprawled around him to confirm that they were indeed dead, he looked back across the valley towards Farthen Dûr, fires were slowly crawling up the stone.
Some dwarves had positioned themselves around the base of the mountain to keep the creatures from entering. Others assembled in ragged lines next to the entrance to Tronjheim, ready to fight if the giants got through the first blockade. Amoung them stood Kvístor, wielding his sword and shield, issuing orders to the detachment under his command.
As Orik prepared to make his way to farthen Dûr, streaks of light in the sky captured his gaze. He had seen things like this before, chuncks of fire and rock would fall from the sky, often resulting in a huge explosion and crater. But these were different, they appeared out of no where and zoomed from their origin like flashes of lightning.
Several of the objects struck the mountainside creating soft thuds, but quickly escalating into a tooth-jarring shockwave that blasted deep holes in the crag and sent particles of stone flying for half a mile.
The dwarves positioned on the mountain were shook from their stances, some were knocked off and others were lifted into the air by the force of the explosion. The monsters roared in triumph as more fireballs blasted Farthen Dûr.
"Are the monsters capable of magic?" Orik asked himself, covering himself with his shield as rocks rained down on him, creating sharp clings as the rubble pounded his armor.
A squel interrupted him.
The sound was stabbing, slicing, shivering, like stone scraping agianst stone. Orik's teeth vibrated in sympathy and he covered his ears with his hands, grimacing as he twisted around, trying to locate the source of the noise.
But still, the armies retained from their shock, and the dwarves, more than wanting revenge for destroying the surface of their home, bore down upon the remaining monsters, yelling and cursing the creatures.
Orik tensed as he noticed faint lines of dust rising up the walls of the mountain from foot-wide cracks that had appeared beneath the blackened, partially destroyed craters. As the squel quickly shifted to a deep mechanical moan, Orik risked getting closer to the mountain to see more closely. The groaning of stone lasted for another minute before, without warning or preamble, the sound stopped, however, the sounds of war ever so pungent.
Orik waited a moment before lowering his hands from his ears.
He stared longer as fighters fought in the valley. Just as he lowered his hands, the cracks jerked open wider- spreading until it was several feet across and hundreds of yards long- seemingly streaching around the entire lower section of the mountain. Like a bolt of lighting, the crack struck and shattered several outcroppings, showering the ground below with pebbles. The whole mountain groaned, and from the craters to the outcroppings, the entire upper section of the mountain began to decend.
The more elevated section, when it fell into the lower, wider part of the mountain, rose a large cloud of dust and stone. Then Farthen Dûr shifted and dropped several feet within the lower counterpart- leaning even farther away from the rest of the mountain- pelting the dwarves with rocks, knocking them off balance, and forcing them to stumble backward under the shadow of the mountainside.
With a loud, hollow boom the wall of stone collapsed into the mountain where Tronjheim was, the echo of crunching and smashing stone resounded louder than all other noise from within the mountain. More dust and debris exploded out of the gaping hole in Farthen Dûr, and carried with it a jarring shockwave.
Orik stood from his hidden crouch, unbeknowest of his surroundings, and overcome with awe, fear, and fury. "Barzûl!" He shouted, dragging out his cry. The other dwarves let out their cry and anger and unleashed their fury upon the monsters.
A cling of armor strung him from his shout. He saw a dwarven soldier ducking under the mighty swings of a ten foot tall giant. With a twist of it's hand and a sharp kick to the dwarf's torso, the monster disarmed and launched the knurlag into the air.
"No!" Orik shouted, jumping over the fallen dwarf and raising his shield just in time to deflect the deadly blow from the giant. But it quickly returned another attack, with a cling and a shower of sparks, Orik parried the blade and regained a stance, preparing to deflect another attack.
But an explosion to his right caused him to remove him of his previous stance and aquire a new one in order to stop the burst of dirt. When he looked back up all he saw was a sword being thrust his way.
The remaining monsters stood upon the breach in Farthen Dûr, a rather tall one standing higher than the others, turned and looked out over the valley. Large walls of fire swirled atop the mountains and devoured the forested depressions between each peak in a yellow and orange wave.
Burning trees collapsed as their timbers weakened, landing with loud snaps and a burst of sparks. Thick clouds of ash arose from the valleys and into the sky where they blocked out the sun for miles around, casting the Beors in premature night. Flocks of birds fled the scene, their numbers as innumerable as the sparks floating in the sky. The ground-based animals struggled to escape from the flood of flames, and most burned before they reached safety.
The dwarves had long since forsaken this place, at least a day after the fighting ended, the monsters, however, chose to remain instead of chasing their prey. But their mission wasn't to destroy, but to pave the way. Soon would come the time for extermination, soon would be their chance to rise to power.
"What progress achieve the others?" The tall, slim creature asked, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a sheath for it's sword.
A smaller creature approached him, stepping upon burning embers as if they offered him pleasure instead of pain. "They've taken the capitol over, nothing but a pile of rubble it has become."
The larger creature's voice rumbled. "Good, mass the army at the elves we will, then we'll take on the survivors near the eastern sea where they've retreated. Our mission, then, will be completed."
The small goblin-like creature emitted a snake-like hiss. "Yesss. Then will come the other Ravtëlr from the sea across, and our race shall finally be undetered in power and Tónvrn's riegn be embossed."
The tall creature's laughter, evil and unsettling, echoed throughout the Beor mountains as hundred more joined in on his sickening amusement. Then, as their hilarity ceased, the giants swelled into a cheer. "Tónvrn! Tónvrn! Tónvrn!" They shouted, pumping their weapons into the air, the fires around them seeming to grow brighter.
"Is this not what our lord, Tónvrn, promised so long ago!" The large giant screamed, his voice rising above the chantting. "Many years it has been, yet here we are! Is this not what we were created for! Is not this what our architects made us to do!" He raised his hands as the fire intensified and swirled into the air towards an imaginary point above the valley. "When we do this, when our mission is complete! Remember why we do this!"
The creatures roared in awe as the tendrils of fire collided into a ball of flame, sprinkling the ground with sparks.
"We do it in rememberance of the wise one who created us! For without her we would be lifeless shells!" The monster shouted as the wind howled around the confligaration as it lowered into the valley.
"In this land she is called many false names; The wonderer, Uluthrek, Soothsayer. But we call her," here the giant paused and looked down on the ball of fire swirling in the valley. "Vëldrauthrín!"
At his words the inferno expanded as if were about to burst, tendrils of fire spinning around the main body of flame. Suddenly it exploded, and in a donut shape it spread over the mountains, covering the entire valley. Within seconds of it's discharge, the fire dispersed and the Beors were quiet, not even the monsters were left.
A/N: Hello. This was the chapter that I wasn't going to put into the actual storyline. But I decided agianst my previous idea. So I reworked everything so that this could fit in. This chapter takes place in the same time frame that the Riders meet the escaping dwarven citizens in the previous chapter. Hope you have enjoyed, reviews and constructive critisism are welcome.
Reply to reviews:
Wisebeyondyears- Thanks alot, and here it is. I hope you continue to read 'n' review. Lol.
Skierider- Well Orik is still in the Beors, King Orrin is most likely dead, Nasuada, I'm not sure if she is alive or not. Sorry, I just don't want to reveal anything yet. But if your really interested PM me and I'll let you know. *Spoilers.* And no, the dwarves are not going to march to Ellesméra. Thanks alot for the review. I hope you continue to read and support this story.