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The Rise of Felskein [Completed]
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<blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 4363567" data-attributes="member: 60965"><p>Session 7, Part 2</p><p> </p><p>-Notes: Went and added a few physical details about Kezzek to 6:1 and 6:2. Not much, just a few crucial details.-</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The attack came without warning, five of the giant creatures flying from their hidden burrows, mandibles wide, as the companions rode through the gully. Kezzek snarled and charged the nearest two, slashing back and forth with his quor'rel. The battle was pitched about him, but Kezzek's whole attention was focused on his rearing horse, the swing of his blades, and the mandibles snapping around his head and scraping off his gauntleted arm.</p><p> </p><p>An arrow exploded out of the forehead of one and a moment later Kezzek was wrenching his blade from the other as it thrashed in the dirt. He glanced over to see Gork'nar on foot but handily finishing off another. A fourth lay smoldering and riddled with arrows not far away. Suniel was no where to be seen.</p><p> </p><p>"Where's the wizard?" Kezzek shouted, scanning the nearby area.</p><p> </p><p>"I think one dragged him into its hole. That one?" Grok'nar said and pointed with his sword before burying it in the ankheg at his feet again as it spasmed.</p><p> </p><p>Kezzek rode to the hole Grok'nar pointed at and leapt off his horse. The tunnel was fragile and narrow, but he saw something shuffling inside at the edge of his keen orcish dark sight. "In here!" he shouted and charged.</p><p> </p><p>The fight was brutal in the close confines and Kezzek was afraid the tunnels would collapse at several points. When the ankheg was finally dead, he dragged Suniel's limp form back into the light and the waiting Grok'nar and Harold.</p><p> </p><p>"You look like hell," Grok'nar said. "He dead?"</p><p> </p><p>Kezzek wearily knelt next to the elf and examined him. The wizard's wounds were deep and raw, his breathing shallow. "I don't..." he began.</p><p> </p><p>As he watched the wounds began to close, the ragged edges slowly pulling together. Most of them didn't seal completely, but Suniel's breathing became smoother and his eyelids fluttered.</p><p> </p><p>"The wizard must have some impressive rejuvenation spell on him," Kezzek said, watching the healing with interest.</p><p> </p><p>"It's not him, I've seen this before," Harold said from where he still sat on his warhorse. "It has to be Grok'nar."</p><p> </p><p>Kezzek quirked an eyebrow at the hobgoblin and Harold was looking at him levelly as well. Grok'nar shrugged and pulled out a bundle of bandages from his pack. "Still probably need some of these for you and the elf."</p><p> </p><p>For the first time Kezzek really noticed his own wounds, the pain seeping in as the adrenaline faded, his orc blood singing with the after-energy of battle. He had two bite wounds and innumerable other small cuts, scrapes, bruises, and acid burns all over his body. "I've had worse," he said.</p><p> </p><p>Suniel coughed and opened his eyes, squinting in the daylight as he looked up at his companions. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Well, if this is heaven, it's far uglier than I imagined."</p><p> </p><p>"Cute," Kezzek said, helping the wizard to his feet.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Suniel stretched his leg, wincing as the bandages shifted. The camp fire popped as a log split and across the fire pit the Greywarden snorted and shifted in his blankets. Suniel smiled as the half-orc growled in his sleep.</p><p> </p><p><em>I'd be dead today if it weren't for him</em>, he thought. <em>I guess whatever has kept me alive this long has a different fate in mind for me than being ankheg food.</em></p><p> </p><p>Harold stirred and shifted as well and Suniel glanced in his direction. <em>I wonder what fate brought all of us together. Greywarden, Crystal Towers soldier...</em> His gaze turned to the snoring hobgoblin. <em>And a hobgoblin with strange healing powers. A defective hobgoblin,</em> he mentally amended, half-chuckling. <em>I wonder what he really wants, is it really-</em></p><p> </p><p>He was never sure what it was that forewarned him, but one moment he was sitting by the fire, the next he had thrown himself to the side as a huge chitinous figure exploded out of the ground where he had been sitting, mandibles clacking together in a spray of acid.</p><p> </p><p>"Attack!" he shouted, retreating and hurling a ball of fire at the ankheg as his companions leapt from their bedrolls and reached for weapons, Kezzek running towards the thrashing horses with a roar while Harold and Grok'nar faced another. One of the horses squealed in pain and the others strained at their ropes. </p><p> </p><p>Suniel murmured and gestured as the ankheg he had just wounded rushed towards him, blasting it backwards again. It fell heavily, but a moment later was scrabbling back to its legs, rearing back its head in the movement Suniel had come to associate with them spitting acid. With another chant and a flick, he blew its head off, raining him with smoldering pieces of chitin and tiny flecks of acid that burned against his skin like hot needle-points.</p><p> </p><p>Nearby, Grok'nar and Harold were finishing off the one that had rushed them. A second ankheg was struggling to drag a fallen horse away from the hill where they had made camp. Kezzek was missing.</p><p> </p><p>"Get the one going for the horses!" Suniel shouted and ran off the direction he had last seen the Greywarden.</p><p> </p><p>He found the quor'rel lying in the dirt not far from the horses and halted, straining his senses as he searched the dark for some further sign.</p><p> </p><p>A moment later he heard the scrape of metal on rock and he ran headlong in that direction, mindless of the dark that was nearly complete even in his keen elven vision.</p><p> </p><p>He found the burrow by literally falling into it, landing heavily on his side in the loose dirt. The burrow was pitch-black so Suniel pulled out one of the pebbles he always kept in one of his robe pouches. A moment later it flared to light, refracting off the facets of two bulbous eyes and glinting off a metal gauntlet.</p><p> </p><p>"Here, here!" Suniel shouted as the ankheg clamped down on the Greywarden's body and dragged it further down the tunnel. Suniel charged towards it, brandishing the light and blasting it with razor-sharp slivers of energy. It chittered at him and lunged, sending him backpedaling as its mandibles snapped together inches from his chest.</p><p> </p><p>He stumbled and it pressed towards him, dragging him under it with its forelegs. Suniel's magic tore into it again, throwing it back for a moment, but it was on him again, mandibles wide as it lunged towards his head.</p><p> </p><p>Suniel raised his arms futilely as it dropped onto him, but something slammed into it right before it struck, throwing it back. "Come, beast," Grok'nar said in goblin, standing over Suniel as he faced the creature.</p><p> </p><p>The ankheg lunged forward but Grok'nar ducked under, his shield slamming into its head with a cracking sound, sending a mandible flying, and driving its head hard into the packed soil of the tunnel. In a rain of dirt, still pinning its head to the ceiling with his shield, Grok'nar pivoted and drove his blade into its neck, grunting as he drove his shoulder into the motion. His sword buried in to the hilt and the ankheg convulsed.</p><p> </p><p>Grok'nar leapt back as it flailed in its death throes and stomped its head into the dirt with a hobnailed boot. It twitched as he ground his heels into its eyes and spat on it. Then the hobgoblin turned, covered with ichor and dirt, sheathed his sword, and helped Suniel to his feet.</p><p> </p><p>"Let's get this orc out of here before the tunnel collapses. He might be useful later if more attack."</p><p> </p><p>Suniel nodded and together they hauled the unconscious Greywarden out of the crumbling burrow.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>"You sure this is the stream?" Harold said as they stopped to water the horses.</p><p> </p><p>Grok'nar nodded and checked the bandage on his shaggy mount as it drank. "The ankhegs don't stay to their side of it completely of course, but it's a general demarker of the Burrows."</p><p> </p><p>Harold scanned the area. "How intense are the patrols around here?"</p><p> </p><p>"He already said they didn't think anything would come through here, archer. No patrols," the Greywarden rumbled, checking his own bandages with a wince.</p><p> </p><p>Grok'nar echoed Kezzek.</p><p> </p><p>"Then I say we camp there," Harold said, pointing upstream. "That formation looks like its mostly the 'crown' rust-rock. We camp at the far end of the <strong>U </strong>it makes. Defensible and sheltered, fresh water."</p><p> </p><p>"And there's shade," Suniel said, wiping his brow. "That alone is enough for me."</p><p> </p><p>"Good," Harold said, already leading his horse towards it. "Because now that we're here, we need a plan."</p><p> </p><p>"I've had a plan since I headed to Northmand," Grok'nar said, his eyes narrowing as looked at the battered party - Suniel kneeling nearby, checking his horse's hoof, Kezzek disassembling his quor'rel as he walked, Harold stopped not far ahead, squinting at the rock formation as he dug in the saddle bag where he kept his waterskins. Grok'nar's hand rested on his hilt. "I think it's finally time to act on it."</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>A hobgoblin approached the outpost on foot, alone except for a chained figure it prodded on with its sword. The two hobgoblins on watch straightened and peered into the darkness beyond their torchlight, trying to make out details. When the figures finally entered the firelight, Cherek's eyes widened.</p><p> </p><p>"Grok'nar? I thought you were dead."</p><p> </p><p>Grok'nar gave his lopsided grin and took Cherek's hand. "Take more than Neergrog's goon stabbing me in my sleep to put me down. I see you two have managed to survive somehow too."</p><p> </p><p>Cherek nodded as his brother Pick approached and slapped Grok'nar on the back. "Neergrog and his Iron Ring thugs don't know we're related and we weren't about to let him know. Don't go telling on us now," Cherek said.</p><p> </p><p>He jerked his chin towards the dirty, worn, bandaged, yet proud-looking human in some form of uniform that stood in chains behind Grok'nar. "Who 'dat?"</p><p> </p><p>Grok'nar's grin widened. "I caught me the human responsible for destroying the raft camp."</p><p> </p><p>Cherek and Pick glanced at each other and cast scrutinizing gazes at Grok'nar. "How you know about that? We just found out ourselves."</p><p> </p><p>"Used my brains," Grok'nar said, tapping his forehead. "Heard him talking about it and then figured a way to catch him unawares, you might say. Figured he might be the sort of thing that might get me back into Neergrog's graces."</p><p> </p><p>Pick stepped closer and looked the human up and down appraisingly. "Well, if there's anything, he'd be it. Neergrog flew into one of his spittle-rages and found a few more 'traitors' to execute when he heard the news. This human says he destroyed the whole camp on his own?"</p><p> </p><p>Grok'nar shrugged. "Near enough. Doesn't really matter as long as Neergrog thinks so, eh?"</p><p> </p><p>"Well, good luck in there Grok'nar," Cherek said as he and Pick stepped aside to let them through. "With the mood Neergrog has been in lately, you'll need it."</p><p> </p><p>With a nod to his cousins, Gork'nar entered the outpost, heading straight to Neergrog's audience chamber with his prisoner.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iron Sky, post: 4363567, member: 60965"] Session 7, Part 2 -Notes: Went and added a few physical details about Kezzek to 6:1 and 6:2. Not much, just a few crucial details.- The attack came without warning, five of the giant creatures flying from their hidden burrows, mandibles wide, as the companions rode through the gully. Kezzek snarled and charged the nearest two, slashing back and forth with his quor'rel. The battle was pitched about him, but Kezzek's whole attention was focused on his rearing horse, the swing of his blades, and the mandibles snapping around his head and scraping off his gauntleted arm. An arrow exploded out of the forehead of one and a moment later Kezzek was wrenching his blade from the other as it thrashed in the dirt. He glanced over to see Gork'nar on foot but handily finishing off another. A fourth lay smoldering and riddled with arrows not far away. Suniel was no where to be seen. "Where's the wizard?" Kezzek shouted, scanning the nearby area. "I think one dragged him into its hole. That one?" Grok'nar said and pointed with his sword before burying it in the ankheg at his feet again as it spasmed. Kezzek rode to the hole Grok'nar pointed at and leapt off his horse. The tunnel was fragile and narrow, but he saw something shuffling inside at the edge of his keen orcish dark sight. "In here!" he shouted and charged. The fight was brutal in the close confines and Kezzek was afraid the tunnels would collapse at several points. When the ankheg was finally dead, he dragged Suniel's limp form back into the light and the waiting Grok'nar and Harold. "You look like hell," Grok'nar said. "He dead?" Kezzek wearily knelt next to the elf and examined him. The wizard's wounds were deep and raw, his breathing shallow. "I don't..." he began. As he watched the wounds began to close, the ragged edges slowly pulling together. Most of them didn't seal completely, but Suniel's breathing became smoother and his eyelids fluttered. "The wizard must have some impressive rejuvenation spell on him," Kezzek said, watching the healing with interest. "It's not him, I've seen this before," Harold said from where he still sat on his warhorse. "It has to be Grok'nar." Kezzek quirked an eyebrow at the hobgoblin and Harold was looking at him levelly as well. Grok'nar shrugged and pulled out a bundle of bandages from his pack. "Still probably need some of these for you and the elf." For the first time Kezzek really noticed his own wounds, the pain seeping in as the adrenaline faded, his orc blood singing with the after-energy of battle. He had two bite wounds and innumerable other small cuts, scrapes, bruises, and acid burns all over his body. "I've had worse," he said. Suniel coughed and opened his eyes, squinting in the daylight as he looked up at his companions. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Well, if this is heaven, it's far uglier than I imagined." "Cute," Kezzek said, helping the wizard to his feet. *** Suniel stretched his leg, wincing as the bandages shifted. The camp fire popped as a log split and across the fire pit the Greywarden snorted and shifted in his blankets. Suniel smiled as the half-orc growled in his sleep. [I]I'd be dead today if it weren't for him[/I], he thought. [I]I guess whatever has kept me alive this long has a different fate in mind for me than being ankheg food.[/I] Harold stirred and shifted as well and Suniel glanced in his direction. [I]I wonder what fate brought all of us together. Greywarden, Crystal Towers soldier...[/I] His gaze turned to the snoring hobgoblin. [I]And a hobgoblin with strange healing powers. A defective hobgoblin,[/I] he mentally amended, half-chuckling. [I]I wonder what he really wants, is it really-[/I] He was never sure what it was that forewarned him, but one moment he was sitting by the fire, the next he had thrown himself to the side as a huge chitinous figure exploded out of the ground where he had been sitting, mandibles clacking together in a spray of acid. "Attack!" he shouted, retreating and hurling a ball of fire at the ankheg as his companions leapt from their bedrolls and reached for weapons, Kezzek running towards the thrashing horses with a roar while Harold and Grok'nar faced another. One of the horses squealed in pain and the others strained at their ropes. Suniel murmured and gestured as the ankheg he had just wounded rushed towards him, blasting it backwards again. It fell heavily, but a moment later was scrabbling back to its legs, rearing back its head in the movement Suniel had come to associate with them spitting acid. With another chant and a flick, he blew its head off, raining him with smoldering pieces of chitin and tiny flecks of acid that burned against his skin like hot needle-points. Nearby, Grok'nar and Harold were finishing off the one that had rushed them. A second ankheg was struggling to drag a fallen horse away from the hill where they had made camp. Kezzek was missing. "Get the one going for the horses!" Suniel shouted and ran off the direction he had last seen the Greywarden. He found the quor'rel lying in the dirt not far from the horses and halted, straining his senses as he searched the dark for some further sign. A moment later he heard the scrape of metal on rock and he ran headlong in that direction, mindless of the dark that was nearly complete even in his keen elven vision. He found the burrow by literally falling into it, landing heavily on his side in the loose dirt. The burrow was pitch-black so Suniel pulled out one of the pebbles he always kept in one of his robe pouches. A moment later it flared to light, refracting off the facets of two bulbous eyes and glinting off a metal gauntlet. "Here, here!" Suniel shouted as the ankheg clamped down on the Greywarden's body and dragged it further down the tunnel. Suniel charged towards it, brandishing the light and blasting it with razor-sharp slivers of energy. It chittered at him and lunged, sending him backpedaling as its mandibles snapped together inches from his chest. He stumbled and it pressed towards him, dragging him under it with its forelegs. Suniel's magic tore into it again, throwing it back for a moment, but it was on him again, mandibles wide as it lunged towards his head. Suniel raised his arms futilely as it dropped onto him, but something slammed into it right before it struck, throwing it back. "Come, beast," Grok'nar said in goblin, standing over Suniel as he faced the creature. The ankheg lunged forward but Grok'nar ducked under, his shield slamming into its head with a cracking sound, sending a mandible flying, and driving its head hard into the packed soil of the tunnel. In a rain of dirt, still pinning its head to the ceiling with his shield, Grok'nar pivoted and drove his blade into its neck, grunting as he drove his shoulder into the motion. His sword buried in to the hilt and the ankheg convulsed. Grok'nar leapt back as it flailed in its death throes and stomped its head into the dirt with a hobnailed boot. It twitched as he ground his heels into its eyes and spat on it. Then the hobgoblin turned, covered with ichor and dirt, sheathed his sword, and helped Suniel to his feet. "Let's get this orc out of here before the tunnel collapses. He might be useful later if more attack." Suniel nodded and together they hauled the unconscious Greywarden out of the crumbling burrow. *** "You sure this is the stream?" Harold said as they stopped to water the horses. Grok'nar nodded and checked the bandage on his shaggy mount as it drank. "The ankhegs don't stay to their side of it completely of course, but it's a general demarker of the Burrows." Harold scanned the area. "How intense are the patrols around here?" "He already said they didn't think anything would come through here, archer. No patrols," the Greywarden rumbled, checking his own bandages with a wince. Grok'nar echoed Kezzek. "Then I say we camp there," Harold said, pointing upstream. "That formation looks like its mostly the 'crown' rust-rock. We camp at the far end of the [B]U [/B]it makes. Defensible and sheltered, fresh water." "And there's shade," Suniel said, wiping his brow. "That alone is enough for me." "Good," Harold said, already leading his horse towards it. "Because now that we're here, we need a plan." "I've had a plan since I headed to Northmand," Grok'nar said, his eyes narrowing as looked at the battered party - Suniel kneeling nearby, checking his horse's hoof, Kezzek disassembling his quor'rel as he walked, Harold stopped not far ahead, squinting at the rock formation as he dug in the saddle bag where he kept his waterskins. Grok'nar's hand rested on his hilt. "I think it's finally time to act on it." *** A hobgoblin approached the outpost on foot, alone except for a chained figure it prodded on with its sword. The two hobgoblins on watch straightened and peered into the darkness beyond their torchlight, trying to make out details. When the figures finally entered the firelight, Cherek's eyes widened. "Grok'nar? I thought you were dead." Grok'nar gave his lopsided grin and took Cherek's hand. "Take more than Neergrog's goon stabbing me in my sleep to put me down. I see you two have managed to survive somehow too." Cherek nodded as his brother Pick approached and slapped Grok'nar on the back. "Neergrog and his Iron Ring thugs don't know we're related and we weren't about to let him know. Don't go telling on us now," Cherek said. He jerked his chin towards the dirty, worn, bandaged, yet proud-looking human in some form of uniform that stood in chains behind Grok'nar. "Who 'dat?" Grok'nar's grin widened. "I caught me the human responsible for destroying the raft camp." Cherek and Pick glanced at each other and cast scrutinizing gazes at Grok'nar. "How you know about that? We just found out ourselves." "Used my brains," Grok'nar said, tapping his forehead. "Heard him talking about it and then figured a way to catch him unawares, you might say. Figured he might be the sort of thing that might get me back into Neergrog's graces." Pick stepped closer and looked the human up and down appraisingly. "Well, if there's anything, he'd be it. Neergrog flew into one of his spittle-rages and found a few more 'traitors' to execute when he heard the news. This human says he destroyed the whole camp on his own?" Grok'nar shrugged. "Near enough. Doesn't really matter as long as Neergrog thinks so, eh?" "Well, good luck in there Grok'nar," Cherek said as he and Pick stepped aside to let them through. "With the mood Neergrog has been in lately, you'll need it." With a nod to his cousins, Gork'nar entered the outpost, heading straight to Neergrog's audience chamber with his prisoner. [/QUOTE]
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