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Rule of Darkness -Book II Chapter 3 Last Update 19 June 2008- Book I Completed
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<blockquote data-quote="Ghostknight" data-source="post: 3356471" data-attributes="member: 15338"><p><strong>Rule Of Darkness: Part1, Chapter 2</strong></p><p></p><p>Chapter 2</p><p></p><p>In the valley below slaves, bent to their work. Their backs marred by scars, by fresh rivulets of blood inflicted by the whips of their taskmasters, by the sun that shone down onto skin never offered protection against its burning rays. In unison, they bent and rose, depositing handfuls of reeds into the buckets behind them before they bent down again. The sun overhead was not hot today, the heat of summer long gone, the coolness of autumn a relief to those who toiled. Gyv sat staring down, her bow bent, the arrow centred on a fiend that strolled through the field below, and its fearsome visage observing the slaves and taskmasters alike. This fiend stood tall, thick bony ridges running down its back and along its arms, bony ridges that were as sharp as any sword. The fiend's face sported the same bony ridges, hard and angular; none who saw that visage would ever imagine asking it for mercy or compassion.</p><p></p><p>Above, Gyv pulled back the string of her bow, the yard long arrow sporting a viscously barbed tip. The arrow lay tight against her arm, a piece of loose blonde hair weaving across her face in the gentle breeze. Gyv sighted along the bow for a long moment, making sure of her aim before releasing the shaft, and watched it streak down to pierce the fiend's chest and send a brief fountain of blood into the air, but it was all in vain if killing the fiend had been her desire. A heartbeat, an intake of breath and the arrow fell out, lying on the ground steaming slightly from the heat of the body that rejected it. </p><p></p><p>"Get up there, you fools Find the one with the temerity to shoot at me!" The voice is deep, rough, and amazingly loud across the fields. The fiend speaks a guttural language, well suited to its voice, a language native to the lower planes of Hell, not to this world, this place. His words create a frenetic bout of activity, men running in the direction from which the arrow came, whips in hand. Some of the better-armed guards waved their swords in the air as they ran, a few guards remained behind to watch over the slaves.</p><p></p><p>The lack of attention on the slaves satisfied Gyv. From above, she watched how, in the distance, slaves are slipping away, helped out of sight by a group of green clad men. With a few gestures and quiet words, she slipped away into the forest, the plants closing behind her, leaves patterning themselves to hide her tracks from those busy storming up the hill. Today, she could feel content, almost happy. Today some would breathe free, but the happiness of the moment was marred by the frustration that her arrow had been no more than a fleabite to the fiend, the wound already healed and forgotten. Her thoughts wound round her, like a poison on the success of the day. We need to know what will hurt them!</p><p></p><p>She circled around the fields, making her way to the group that had assembled beyond. Twenty of her men stood there, along with 20 slaves. A simple rule that always observed- no more slaves rescued than rescuers; many times newly freed slaves needed shepherding, and attention divided over too many could lead to mistakes. The group moved out, heading through the forest towards a cleft in the jungle floor, the chasm that led to safety. Behind them, commotion broke out, the chasers had returned empty handed, the slaves had been rounded up and counted and the missing number noted. Gyv turned to her companions.</p><p></p><p>"Take them to safety. I am going back to make sure our tracks are properly hidden." She did not wait for an answer, but darted backwards, heading back along their trail, carefully erasing any signs that they had inadvertently made. </p><p></p><p>"I tell you they must have come this way, the other parts of the fields would have been noticed." The voice came from beyond the trees, the edge of the field just out of her sight. She lay against the trunk of the tree, its red tinged bark irritating her hands, making her skin itch. At times like these, she cursed her height, her wide shoulders, and the difficulty of hiding when one stood taller than many of the soldiers who reported to her. Above her, looking down, sat a squirrel, its eyes red flamed, the madness of the fiends within. Chattering, it started down the trunk towards her, soon to be joined by two more. The trio approached her, their red eyes gleaming, their mouths foaming as they looked at her, prepared to jump.</p><p></p><p>By the Celestial hegemony blast the fiends and their accursed luck, just what I did not need at this moment in time; tainted squirrels to attack me when I want to remain hidden. Carefully she started backing off, her hand reaching out, grasping the hilt of her sword. The squirrels' eyes followed her, their chattering rising, their movement-keeping pace with her own. As they approached, the smell of rotting meat came off them, the bits of dead skin and bits of meat stuck in their fur creating a nauseating miasma of smell around them. </p><p></p><p>Gyv, concentrating on the squirrels, nevertheless kept her eyes and ears open for movement from those outside the forest, listening to the occasional snippets of conversation that drifted towards her. The guards were not entering, to her relief, but twenty slaves were to be offered as sacrifices for the twenty that had escaped. There were always plenty of slaves, discipline was more important than a few extra field hands. Also, it seemed that some of the guards were to join the slaves, an object lesson to those who remained: NEVER let a slave escape alive!</p><p></p><p>Damn them. Damn their discipline, their hierarchy. We will defeat them, someday, somehow. Even as her eyes stung knowing the torture, the pain that the twenty slaves would suffer before their deaths, the first of the squirrels jumped at her. She twisted away just before it reached her, her blade slicing across its stomach, creating an eruption of intestines and blood. In the moment she twisted, the other two jumped at her. One latched onto her thigh, digging its teeth into her, its claws trying to rip through her leather clothing, the third met with her boot, its head splintering from the metal capped toes that staved in its skull.</p><p></p><p>Her side felt like it was on fire, her blood pumping around her body like boiling lead penetrating every segment, every pore. She moved to detach the fiendish creature, only to watch in horror as it fell off, lifeless. The pain in her blood increased, her senses blotted out by a wave of pain. She could not hear herself scream, she could not see where she was going; all she did was flee, heading blindly, panicked into the depths of the forest.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Darkness had fallen when she came to her senses. Gyv found herself lying on a bed of leaves under a massive oak tree. She sat up, feeling the burning in her side, the wound not visible in the dark. She felt around the area, noting that it had scabbed over, that the skin felt normal and that nothing was swollen.</p><p></p><p>Have I been lucky enough to escape the taint? What happened when that fiendish thing bit me? She stood up, her legs sending messages of pain as she placed her weight upon them. Damn, how far have I run? Where am I? She looked around trying for a landmark, for anything that would point out to her a way home. As she looked, she saw she was on the edge of the forest, the mountains rising up nearby.</p><p></p><p>The forests edge, at least three days travel from where she had been, where she should be. The moon had been a full disk, lighting the sky the last time she had seen it, now it was completely absent. She looked around, noting the details of the landscape, dying inside all the time. Taint. She was tainted, it must have grown within while she had been senseless for so long- for in the starlight she was seeing as well as she could on the brightest of days.</p><p></p><p>With a deep breathe she pulled out the pin. Made of cold iron to penetrate even the hide of a fiend, it pulsed with the power of the poison within, a poison that would kill any of fiendish blood. She sat beneath the tree, feeling the wind, the cool night breeze. She looked over the canopy of the forest, knowing that within its depths stood the safe house and encampment of the House of Souls she had served so long. She thought of her children that would miss her, her husband that served under another commander, of the friends and the freed slaves that treated her almost like a goddess. For a while she sat, tears coming to her face, evaporating in patches of cold. She took a deep breath, a swift movement and the pin pierced the flesh of her thumb. She waited for the burning, for the fire to consume her blood, boil her skin, pop her eyes as the poison destroyed the taint within, and took her life. Better to die pure than live a slave to the fiends, the last thought as she prepared for the end.</p><p></p><p>She waited, and the burning came, along with her screams that ascended into the night, carried on the wind to two who sat nearby, awaiting the dawn.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>"Any idea who she is?" Jeria knelt over the woman who lay unconscious on the ground. She was beautiful, at least in human terms. Tall, with blonde hair that had been cut short, arms which were well muscled and marked with scars from where a bowstring would chafe across them as it sent an arrow on its path. She wore leather armour, coloured green, which hid the shape of her body. Copper bracers covered her wrists and an empty quiver rode on her back.</p><p></p><p>Gruzz stood a short way off, examining the ground and the area in which she lay.</p><p></p><p>"She has been convulsing- see how the grass and plants in this area have been crushed and broken. Probably from this," he held up the pin, its dull colour almost lost in the dark but easily seen by ogre eyes that can see in the darkest of caves. "A testing pin, very rare these, the city guild of alchemists can never produce enough. The gate guards go mad whenever a caravan must be admitted and there is no pin."</p><p></p><p>He walked over to Jeria, looking at the woman.</p><p></p><p>"Get her armour off. Let's see what is beneath."</p><p></p><p>Jeria gave Gruzz a look, one that spoke volumes about what he thought of undressing a strange woman lying unconscious in a forest. Gruzz laughed at him, swatting him on the back, sending him staggering a few paces.</p><p></p><p>"Don't be foolish, boy. We need to know who she is, what her affiliation is. I suspect I know, but it is from rumour, old tales, half-whispered news told over mugs of ale in the smoky light of a tavern. Now get that armour off her. If she is our friend, she will thank us. If she is an enemy, it will be easier to kill her."</p><p></p><p>Jeria bent to his task, carefully untying the laces that bound the armour, the overlapping lengths of leather coming away easily. She smelt of sweat and dirt, as if she had not bathed in a long time. Underneath was a plain brown shift, sleeveless and with an open neck. Around her neck, he could now see a medallion. He lifted it, trying to get a better view, his own fiend enhanced vision, not the equal of the ogres but still good enough in the dim starlight. </p><p></p><p>The medallion shone with the reflected light of just a few stars, the silver in it highlighting the engraving of a man standing with a plate of food outside a house with open doors. He took the medallion of her neck, handing it to Gruzz.</p><p></p><p>"I thought they were just a story, something to soothe children when you need them to sleep at night."</p><p></p><p>Gruzz took the medallion, hefting it in his hands, letting it slip through his fingers before catching it again.</p><p></p><p>"The House of Souls? Nah, they're real enough. The closest bunch we know of is at least a week's journey from here."</p><p></p><p>Gruzz knelt down, gently turning the woman's face to the light, placing his face close to her mouth.</p><p></p><p> "I know who she is. Goes by the name of Gyv, a legend in the House. They say she has freed more slaves in the last five years than anyone else did in the fifty years before that." Gruzz saw the look that he was getting from Jeria and laughed.</p><p></p><p>"I ran into her band escorting some slaves back to safety a couple of years back, when I was till partnered with Mistel, Gods grant his soul peace. Now I want to know what brings her out this way, lying exposed outside the forest with a testing pin nearby." He lifted the body heading back towards the cavern and the city.</p><p></p><p>"Sorry Jeria, but you're going to have to wait to see your first dawn and go on your first patrol. Something like this right by the city gate has to be reported before anything else."</p><p></p><p>Jeria watched as Gruzz pushed his way into the cavern, then followed. A last glance, at a sky that seemed to be changing from black to royal blue in the distance, and he dived inside, to safety, to the warmth of the caves embrace.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: Red"><em>Please let me know what you think- feedback is valuable!</em> The Rogues Gallery for this story hour is <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3356654#post3356654" target="_blank"> here</a></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ghostknight, post: 3356471, member: 15338"] [b]Rule Of Darkness: Part1, Chapter 2[/b] Chapter 2 In the valley below slaves, bent to their work. Their backs marred by scars, by fresh rivulets of blood inflicted by the whips of their taskmasters, by the sun that shone down onto skin never offered protection against its burning rays. In unison, they bent and rose, depositing handfuls of reeds into the buckets behind them before they bent down again. The sun overhead was not hot today, the heat of summer long gone, the coolness of autumn a relief to those who toiled. Gyv sat staring down, her bow bent, the arrow centred on a fiend that strolled through the field below, and its fearsome visage observing the slaves and taskmasters alike. This fiend stood tall, thick bony ridges running down its back and along its arms, bony ridges that were as sharp as any sword. The fiend's face sported the same bony ridges, hard and angular; none who saw that visage would ever imagine asking it for mercy or compassion. Above, Gyv pulled back the string of her bow, the yard long arrow sporting a viscously barbed tip. The arrow lay tight against her arm, a piece of loose blonde hair weaving across her face in the gentle breeze. Gyv sighted along the bow for a long moment, making sure of her aim before releasing the shaft, and watched it streak down to pierce the fiend's chest and send a brief fountain of blood into the air, but it was all in vain if killing the fiend had been her desire. A heartbeat, an intake of breath and the arrow fell out, lying on the ground steaming slightly from the heat of the body that rejected it. "Get up there, you fools Find the one with the temerity to shoot at me!" The voice is deep, rough, and amazingly loud across the fields. The fiend speaks a guttural language, well suited to its voice, a language native to the lower planes of Hell, not to this world, this place. His words create a frenetic bout of activity, men running in the direction from which the arrow came, whips in hand. Some of the better-armed guards waved their swords in the air as they ran, a few guards remained behind to watch over the slaves. The lack of attention on the slaves satisfied Gyv. From above, she watched how, in the distance, slaves are slipping away, helped out of sight by a group of green clad men. With a few gestures and quiet words, she slipped away into the forest, the plants closing behind her, leaves patterning themselves to hide her tracks from those busy storming up the hill. Today, she could feel content, almost happy. Today some would breathe free, but the happiness of the moment was marred by the frustration that her arrow had been no more than a fleabite to the fiend, the wound already healed and forgotten. Her thoughts wound round her, like a poison on the success of the day. We need to know what will hurt them! She circled around the fields, making her way to the group that had assembled beyond. Twenty of her men stood there, along with 20 slaves. A simple rule that always observed- no more slaves rescued than rescuers; many times newly freed slaves needed shepherding, and attention divided over too many could lead to mistakes. The group moved out, heading through the forest towards a cleft in the jungle floor, the chasm that led to safety. Behind them, commotion broke out, the chasers had returned empty handed, the slaves had been rounded up and counted and the missing number noted. Gyv turned to her companions. "Take them to safety. I am going back to make sure our tracks are properly hidden." She did not wait for an answer, but darted backwards, heading back along their trail, carefully erasing any signs that they had inadvertently made. "I tell you they must have come this way, the other parts of the fields would have been noticed." The voice came from beyond the trees, the edge of the field just out of her sight. She lay against the trunk of the tree, its red tinged bark irritating her hands, making her skin itch. At times like these, she cursed her height, her wide shoulders, and the difficulty of hiding when one stood taller than many of the soldiers who reported to her. Above her, looking down, sat a squirrel, its eyes red flamed, the madness of the fiends within. Chattering, it started down the trunk towards her, soon to be joined by two more. The trio approached her, their red eyes gleaming, their mouths foaming as they looked at her, prepared to jump. By the Celestial hegemony blast the fiends and their accursed luck, just what I did not need at this moment in time; tainted squirrels to attack me when I want to remain hidden. Carefully she started backing off, her hand reaching out, grasping the hilt of her sword. The squirrels' eyes followed her, their chattering rising, their movement-keeping pace with her own. As they approached, the smell of rotting meat came off them, the bits of dead skin and bits of meat stuck in their fur creating a nauseating miasma of smell around them. Gyv, concentrating on the squirrels, nevertheless kept her eyes and ears open for movement from those outside the forest, listening to the occasional snippets of conversation that drifted towards her. The guards were not entering, to her relief, but twenty slaves were to be offered as sacrifices for the twenty that had escaped. There were always plenty of slaves, discipline was more important than a few extra field hands. Also, it seemed that some of the guards were to join the slaves, an object lesson to those who remained: NEVER let a slave escape alive! Damn them. Damn their discipline, their hierarchy. We will defeat them, someday, somehow. Even as her eyes stung knowing the torture, the pain that the twenty slaves would suffer before their deaths, the first of the squirrels jumped at her. She twisted away just before it reached her, her blade slicing across its stomach, creating an eruption of intestines and blood. In the moment she twisted, the other two jumped at her. One latched onto her thigh, digging its teeth into her, its claws trying to rip through her leather clothing, the third met with her boot, its head splintering from the metal capped toes that staved in its skull. Her side felt like it was on fire, her blood pumping around her body like boiling lead penetrating every segment, every pore. She moved to detach the fiendish creature, only to watch in horror as it fell off, lifeless. The pain in her blood increased, her senses blotted out by a wave of pain. She could not hear herself scream, she could not see where she was going; all she did was flee, heading blindly, panicked into the depths of the forest. *** Darkness had fallen when she came to her senses. Gyv found herself lying on a bed of leaves under a massive oak tree. She sat up, feeling the burning in her side, the wound not visible in the dark. She felt around the area, noting that it had scabbed over, that the skin felt normal and that nothing was swollen. Have I been lucky enough to escape the taint? What happened when that fiendish thing bit me? She stood up, her legs sending messages of pain as she placed her weight upon them. Damn, how far have I run? Where am I? She looked around trying for a landmark, for anything that would point out to her a way home. As she looked, she saw she was on the edge of the forest, the mountains rising up nearby. The forests edge, at least three days travel from where she had been, where she should be. The moon had been a full disk, lighting the sky the last time she had seen it, now it was completely absent. She looked around, noting the details of the landscape, dying inside all the time. Taint. She was tainted, it must have grown within while she had been senseless for so long- for in the starlight she was seeing as well as she could on the brightest of days. With a deep breathe she pulled out the pin. Made of cold iron to penetrate even the hide of a fiend, it pulsed with the power of the poison within, a poison that would kill any of fiendish blood. She sat beneath the tree, feeling the wind, the cool night breeze. She looked over the canopy of the forest, knowing that within its depths stood the safe house and encampment of the House of Souls she had served so long. She thought of her children that would miss her, her husband that served under another commander, of the friends and the freed slaves that treated her almost like a goddess. For a while she sat, tears coming to her face, evaporating in patches of cold. She took a deep breath, a swift movement and the pin pierced the flesh of her thumb. She waited for the burning, for the fire to consume her blood, boil her skin, pop her eyes as the poison destroyed the taint within, and took her life. Better to die pure than live a slave to the fiends, the last thought as she prepared for the end. She waited, and the burning came, along with her screams that ascended into the night, carried on the wind to two who sat nearby, awaiting the dawn. *** "Any idea who she is?" Jeria knelt over the woman who lay unconscious on the ground. She was beautiful, at least in human terms. Tall, with blonde hair that had been cut short, arms which were well muscled and marked with scars from where a bowstring would chafe across them as it sent an arrow on its path. She wore leather armour, coloured green, which hid the shape of her body. Copper bracers covered her wrists and an empty quiver rode on her back. Gruzz stood a short way off, examining the ground and the area in which she lay. "She has been convulsing- see how the grass and plants in this area have been crushed and broken. Probably from this," he held up the pin, its dull colour almost lost in the dark but easily seen by ogre eyes that can see in the darkest of caves. "A testing pin, very rare these, the city guild of alchemists can never produce enough. The gate guards go mad whenever a caravan must be admitted and there is no pin." He walked over to Jeria, looking at the woman. "Get her armour off. Let's see what is beneath." Jeria gave Gruzz a look, one that spoke volumes about what he thought of undressing a strange woman lying unconscious in a forest. Gruzz laughed at him, swatting him on the back, sending him staggering a few paces. "Don't be foolish, boy. We need to know who she is, what her affiliation is. I suspect I know, but it is from rumour, old tales, half-whispered news told over mugs of ale in the smoky light of a tavern. Now get that armour off her. If she is our friend, she will thank us. If she is an enemy, it will be easier to kill her." Jeria bent to his task, carefully untying the laces that bound the armour, the overlapping lengths of leather coming away easily. She smelt of sweat and dirt, as if she had not bathed in a long time. Underneath was a plain brown shift, sleeveless and with an open neck. Around her neck, he could now see a medallion. He lifted it, trying to get a better view, his own fiend enhanced vision, not the equal of the ogres but still good enough in the dim starlight. The medallion shone with the reflected light of just a few stars, the silver in it highlighting the engraving of a man standing with a plate of food outside a house with open doors. He took the medallion of her neck, handing it to Gruzz. "I thought they were just a story, something to soothe children when you need them to sleep at night." Gruzz took the medallion, hefting it in his hands, letting it slip through his fingers before catching it again. "The House of Souls? Nah, they're real enough. The closest bunch we know of is at least a week's journey from here." Gruzz knelt down, gently turning the woman's face to the light, placing his face close to her mouth. "I know who she is. Goes by the name of Gyv, a legend in the House. They say she has freed more slaves in the last five years than anyone else did in the fifty years before that." Gruzz saw the look that he was getting from Jeria and laughed. "I ran into her band escorting some slaves back to safety a couple of years back, when I was till partnered with Mistel, Gods grant his soul peace. Now I want to know what brings her out this way, lying exposed outside the forest with a testing pin nearby." He lifted the body heading back towards the cavern and the city. "Sorry Jeria, but you're going to have to wait to see your first dawn and go on your first patrol. Something like this right by the city gate has to be reported before anything else." Jeria watched as Gruzz pushed his way into the cavern, then followed. A last glance, at a sky that seemed to be changing from black to royal blue in the distance, and he dived inside, to safety, to the warmth of the caves embrace. [COLOR=Red][I]Please let me know what you think- feedback is valuable![/i] The Rogues Gallery for this story hour is [url=http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3356654#post3356654] here[/url][/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
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