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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tom Cashel" data-source="post: 398467" data-attributes="member: 321">The DOOR from EVERYWHERE, part 9Olaf Rolf: Headed WestOnly four hours since his death, and anyone could see that Einil Gallowglar was missing her husband Torg.  She loved the way he braided his beard, and his granite gray eyes, and he stumping along beside her on patrol.  But now he’d gone to Moradin’s Hall–sent there by the berserker’s cruel axe.  Taken away.The sun was down, and the wind began to blow cold out of the northwest, where they said a Shadow was growing on the silhouettes of distant peaks.  As far south as Aerunedar, there were speculative whisperings of Shar’s plots in the Moontemple at Mountain Door.“We must have an alliance with the great Halls of the north,” decided Dorn Trueforger, and bid his nephew Velm take a chest of mithril.  Velm took the mithril and told Torg and Einil Gallowglar to carry it all the way to Citadel Adbar in the Spine of the World–the utter north.Even though Torg lay cold within his cairn of stones, that was what she intended to do.  She longed to deliver the mithral all the way to the gates of Adbar.  The sliver of a moon rode scudding clouds.Crackling and glowing white, ten hovering spheres appeared around her and swarmed in on her.  Burning jolts racked her body.“We’re under attack!” shouted Runold Rolf.  “Archers come to bear!  Due south!”Every man and woman picked up a longbow, some a crossbow.From the south came the flying apparition: Draped in dusty cloaks and bearing the claw of Bane on his sable vestments, wreathed in smoke, drifting in midair above the wagons.  In his right hand was the black smoking mace known as Judgement, stolen from the still-warm corpse of a Doomtyrant in the Lost City of Aerunedar.“Faraugar,” said Einil through blistered lips, and tried to stand up.“Fire!”  A hail of arrows flew up and those that found their mark bounced aside without effect.  The terrible apparition laughed then…a leering gloat of a laugh that raised the hackles on Welby Otz’s feet.The halfling was among the archers, firing true but wondering if it was of any use.  The wizard just shrugged off a dozen hits!  The crackling spheres of lightning darted like will-o’-the-wisps, and where they went they shocked and burned.Suddenly three identical images of Quario Seveniss leaped from his wagon, all at once.  “Keep firing!  Wear down his defenses!” the elf wizard shouted.But the terrible flying wizard used his lightning to cut down the apparent leader, Runold Rolf, and to freeze Eejol Lenumbrar in his tracks.We kept firing.  The wizard’s sparking will-o’-the-wisps cut down Quario Seveniss.Stubbornly, we kept firing.  The wizard had shrugged off a score and a half of hits.  Scowling from above, the Banite threw lightning bolts that jolted the Otz Brothers and Svatt Rolf, and left them all crisped with bowstrings burning.That was when we broke.  I took the baby and Thordis was carrying Lum.  The Chakises yelled at us to get into their wagon.  Behind me I could see Eejol Lenumbrar still frozen in place, his family unwilling to leave him and huddled around his legs as though he were a statue.  People running every which way and babies crying.The whole Evernight family was piling into a wagon.  A streak of orange light fell from the wizard’s outstretched arm and the wagon exploded in a blast of flame.Then our wagon was jolting away down the road, the orange glow of flames receding into the bleak shadows of the Stonelands.  Three other wagons escaped too, but I don’t know who is in them yet.  I only know that I, Olaf Rolf, am now the eldest.  It is my duty to care for Thordis and the babies.  My father and mother are dead.Farouk Chakis says we are headed west.  It’s all we have.</blockquote>

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