~* Author's Whining *~
I'm a college student now so chapters, as you have noticed, are seriously slowing down. Not writing (my creative, expressive outlet) is driving me up the walls.
~*~ Chapter 49 ~*~
The blue phoenix bow didn't lower, only pulsated with power. The lines of his face were set in determination. The string of the bow touched the corner of his mouth, soft neon glow casting shadows on the opposite side of his face.
Maybe he didn't know his native language, history or anything about Kaldorie culture; however that didn't seem to stop him from embodying their greatest characteristics: marksmanship for one thing, and a love of enormous cats. Loyalty to his caretaker, who by all rights should have served him up to some demonic demi-god the day he was found, touched the Druid in a deep and profound way. She had lost a family once; had turned that rage and anger into perfecting the devastating strength of the Bear form. The scout had done the same: his love of his father made a shared enemy of the Scarlet Campaign. The Druid guessed his bow skill had never been honed on something as base as a target dummy.
The Banshee Queen released the white priestess, who took the opportunity to catch her breath and readjust the coverings. "Did you not hear me when I said you can fight afterward?' The Queen's white hair framed annoyed red eyes, giving her an even more sinister look. In another life she and the white priestess, who's own pale tresses framed an equally piercing pair of red eyes, could have been related, race aside.
"Where are the children you took?" The angry priestess looked ready to wind up another blast. Perhaps she would have had Mr. Meows not yowled loud enough to cause the humans to flinch. The cry received an answering response from the Scourge outside. Everyone cringed that time and glanced at the gate. Their attention returning to the scene at hand; the angry cats glanced towards the gate and then back at the priestess.
Salira, the commander and Nekov fretted about the gate as well. "Whatever issue you have with Mr. Of Darrowshire," Nekov stepped between the priestess and the cat, "it can wait for latter. We can worry about-"
"The children. Where are they?" The white priestess chewed the words like a wolf on a bone, unwilling to let it go. "You will tell me or I will let them take you all!"
Serz looked stricken, casting about for some explanation as to what she was talking about. "Perhaps if I knew which child-"
"Southshore, you crazy marmot!" Clear as crystal the undead Quel'dorie child spoke up. The grownups turned to look at her, brows up in surprise. Her brow was down in annoyance. At some point she had cut her eyebrows into short, sharp points just an inch away from her face and dyed them blue. The way she ground her teeth together bespoke a hatred of the priestess to match the scout.
"Southshore…" The white priestess breathed the word out as if it could sooth some inner churning emotion. "All of them? Every single one?" Her red eyes swept over the undead children and the elfin child who had taken it upon herself to be their voice.
"Every. Single. One." The child's ears were both missing, though by the look of it they had been cut post-death. The shortened ends now bore three points instead of one. "There is an agreement, you see. We are Forsaken by the living, but we do not forsake them. We aren't like you." The last word was a sneer and the regard was echoed amongst all the undead children around her. Little voices chimed in with, "We are Forsaken!" "The Dark Lady watches over us!" and "Scarelt marmots!"
The priestess' red eyes flicked to the Warlock, to the Dark Lady, to the scout, "That's a High Elf ranger's bow from pre-Shattered Silvermoon, is it not? They don't-can't!-make them like that anymore. Collectors kill for items like that. How is it he has such a thing?"
"Maybe I killed for it, just as you suggest." Said scout's voice was dark, dangerous. An undead warlock had raised him to be more than moonlight and baby furbolgs. There was shadow in him as there were in all true elves.
The commander was glancing back and forth between them all, but at the sound of stone crumbling and shrieks of triumph from the host outside, he stepped in, "Might be he found it. I care not as long as he can shoot it and hit something." He winced when the priestess shot him a narrow-eyed look. "Ah, enemies preferably. I believe we have little time left."
Kayas wondered for the first time just where the priest had gotten off to. Was his warlock with him? Had they left Tirisfal? And if they had did it mean they gave up getting her back from the Scarlet? If so, did that mean the collar no longer worked?
Reaching up she slipped a gray finger under the collar of her shirt and gave the metal collar a little tug. The shock went strait to her toes, amplified by her current state of sodden wetness and burned. The Dark Lady glanced over, "He's around here somewhere so don't get it into your head that you can slip that contraption just yet."
The commander grunted, "Besides that, you're still our prisoner."
"Is that why you gave her one of our tabards? Because she's our prisoner?" Salira had balked at being in command and gladly passed that command, but she and the Druid had grown close these last few days. This was a dark night for her especially, seeing a great many truths in every lie that had been told her by the Scarlet High Command.
The Commander signed as if explaining something to a child, "Weapons are weapons. She'll fight for the living with her last breath, and so we dress her in Scarlet red lest she forget whose side she's on."
I wear this tabard because you almost hog-tied me to get it over my head. "Would that my friends back home could see me now." There was no pride in her voice, but hollow resentment.
The Dark Lady beamed like the moon had broken threw the dense cloud cover and said, "We'll remedy that soon enough."
My friends back home or what color I'm wearing? The prospect of either frightened the Druid. Bad enough she was infected with the plague, but the though of carrying it back home where it might take root and spread, even accidentally, caused tendrils of apprehension to creep up from her guts. Surely the priestesses of Elune will be able to help me, fix me? I'm not dead after all. I'm not!
The warlock was suspiciously silent for most of these exchanges. Kayas caught his eyes and her eyebrows rose in question, one finger still under the collar. He smiled slyly back, rain soaked lips pulled tight across his weathered face. He knows. He knows and he's not saying. There was worry in his eyes though. He might know but it wasn't a matter of keeping a secret for it's own sake, but because it needed to be kept.
So many secrets for one warlock. It was the hallmark of their kind. Normally they squirreled away secrets of magic and conjuring, not the secrets of land, loyalty and governance. There are reasons warlocks aren't accepted into society; they collect and horde secrets to establish greater power and influence. But what of a man who had privilege, influence and secrets that did not stem from being a warlock?
What of a warlock who was not a warlock at all?
A deafening screeched flying over the gates caused the civilians to scream in return and scatter. Another gargoyle had gotten impatient and broken formation. It flew at the fleeing elderly with outstretched claws. Hairy, gaping jaws salivating for warm flesh.
A feral fire lit the white priestess eyes. She sprang away from the Dark Lady with a big smile, as if this very moment were what they had all been waiting for. Several bolts of holy energy found and stung the creature's backside. It wheeled around and headed towards the priestess oblivious of the fate of the previous contender.
Taking hold of the warhorse's reigns the white priestess unclasped them from the bit in a split second. The flying monstrosity was almost on her when she spun, flung and wrapped one line around its neck. Instantly it jerked upwards into the air. The priestess flew upward with it, dangling form the other end of the leather cord.
"Did you ask Pilipa if you could use her reigns to lasso sky monsters?!" The Banshee Queen looked as if she wanted nothing more than to chase the flying figure down but even her ability to vanish from one spot and appear in another would not take her far enough into the air to retrieve her horse's tack. The horse in question looked very confused and seemed a little lost. She started to wander away from the Banshee Queen in search of some unknown thing. The Dark Lady issued a sharp command in the language of her Forsaken but the horse ignored it and kept going. This greatly annoyed the undead elf but the disgruntled woman was looking once more at the priestess, the real source of her irritation.
Kayas realized that without the reigns the Forsaken couldn't control their skeletal mounts. She filed that away for latter use as she and everyone else watched the priestess winding upwards into the drizzle and smoke. The Dark Lady's cloak billowed out behind her, black and tattered and tragic in its disrepair. The slip of white leg or pale arms showed too that the figure was indeed a person and not some enormous black bird, though if you so much as blinked the illusion asserted itself.
The gargoyle wheeled left and then right. The strong hands of its passenger let go of the rope one at a time to fire holy bolts of energy at first one wing and then the other.
"Crazy she may be," Nekov said, "she knows the Scourge. She's steering it, catching a ride to the tip of the wall." He was awed. They all were.
"My word." Salira breathed out, "Not in a million years. I wouldn't have tried that in a million years."
Every eye was turned upwards as those pale feet touched the stone at the top of the wall. Turning sharply she sent a holy word of the Light threw the cord around the monster's neck. The compound was lit up as the creature lit up. Powdered gargoyle blew away as so much dust in the wind. The reigns fell slack and would have fallen to the ground, where the Dark Lady waited to retrieve them, if the priestess had no slug the length of it around her narrow waist and fastened it.
The Dark Lady howled, angry as a wet cat and fuming dire threats up the wall. The white priestess leaned over the edge, smiled and wave. The commander chuckled into his gloved hand, trying not to laugh at the sight of it. In the instant it took the undead Queen to whip around and silence his humor with a guttural threat the priestess disappear towards the outer edge of the wall.
Though none of them could see what was going on they immediately saw the first indication that it was working. From the spot the priestess had been standing came a soft glow of holy Light. It grew brighter and brighter in second till it shone almost as bright as the fire that bathed everything in a wash of red, orange and yellow.
"The focus crystals amplify magic," the mage-priestess explained, "so we used them to provide a holy shield over the entire compound. Any Scourge- I mean undead – ah… Forsaken? – are stuck on whichever side of the shield they are on when it's created. The priests could make openings to allow them to cross over but…"
"When the shield is up, my Forsaken will be trapped on this side." The Banshee Queen had expected this, "We will worry about that latter. Salira!"
The human warrior was startled to hear her name and obediently took a step forward before catching herself, "Ma'am?"
The commander squinted his one good eye at her, "You and she're on a first name basis now, are you?"
"Do be serious," the Dark Lady quipped, "I know the name of every single living being in my kingdom. Down to the last child."
The scout glanced at the ground in angst and back up. The Druid knew exactly what he was thinking. He was betting the Dark Lady didn't know his name, the one he was born with. For that matter, he doubted she'd know who had brought him to this wasteland in the first place.
"What's my name?" It was one of the orphan children, her matron clamping a hand over her mouth almost before the words escaped.
The Dark Lady smiled softly, "Emily Aiden-Marie Rethgar from Hammerfall in the Arathi Highlands. Your mother came here in the early days of the war to fight the scattered bands of undead. You're mother went back to Hammerfall to give birth to you and then brought you back here. She should have stayed in Hammerfall, or at least left you there with your father when she came back to fight in the war. They're both dead. Your father's corpse was burned by the Scarlets some five years ago and your mother is somewhere in Eastern Plagulands guarding a farm that is serving to brew cauldron's of plague. She's sentient, if not chained to his will."
The scout was stiff as a pine and trying very, very hard not to turn towards the Druid. The story hit too close to home for him. Judging by the reactions of those around her, it hit too close to home for all of them. Each of their stories was different, but on a level that can be compared to patterns, they were all the same. They fought. They lost. Some died. Some lived. Some serve in undeath. Some serve in life. Some are laid to rest. Most of them will never know true rest ever again.
The little girl's green eyes were wide. Beside her a hand shot up, "Me next! Where's my auntie Deleka?"
"Deleka Hosrench currently resides in the Stranglethorn Veil as part of Hemet Nessingwary's campaign of slaughter." Her tone of voice bespoke disgust. Though the Druid didn't know whom this Hemet was she understood that Stranglethorn Veil was both beautiful and dangerous. Chock full of wildlife and trolls, few ventured there for fear of falling to predator of the two and four-legged variety. The campaign of slaughter wasn't explained either.
Another hand shot up but the Dark lady cut the little boy off, "As much fun as this is we have more pressing matters. Salira dear," she turned towards the befuddled Scarlet warrior, "I put you in charge for a reason my pretty. It's precisely because you do not relish command that I did it; now obey."
The warrior gulped, "If it's you or them I'll take you. What are you're orders, ma'am?"