Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paka" data-source="post: 901776" data-attributes="member: 100">Story Post #2Cleaver Unsheathed They all watched the Orc Shaman take his cleaver out of his belt. The Orc had burns all over his body, desplays of his devotion to the Burning Mother Tribe, grabbed Vorden’s thin Elf wrist to hold it down to a rock but he shook away, “Get away from me!” Defiantly, he put his lithe fingers on the rock and looked the shaman in the eye. The Shaman lined the cleaver up with his hand and Vorden took his fingers away, leaving only the one, they one they agreed to. The Shaman grimaced. Karhoun and Unaros, friends with the Elf since their own childhoods were holding their breath. Tomorrow they will leave with 6 Orc and 6 Goblins for Baden’s Bluff, begin their adult lives, their paths of manhood. But in the now Vorden was giving up his finger. They thought back and wondered how they got here.  This was madness.Unaros’s mastiff, Olin, now possessed by a Demon, licked his lips, smelling fear and knowing that blood wasn’t far behind. Before Now Two hours ago Karhoun’s Dornish arms were ready to wrap Vorden up to hold him down. Unaros was going to do the cutting. The shaman wanted two fingers, he had said, two freshly cut Elven fingers in fair trade for his magic staff. Unaros assured his large Dornish friend that the trade was in Vorden’s best interests and he would thank them in the end for making the decision that he could not make. But Karhoun had tripped and Unaros’s dark magics had failed them. Vorden walked away from their attack, left them in a pile and threw a dagger at Karhoun, which stuck in the meat of his buttocks. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damned terrible. Unaros healed his friend’s back end with his Shadow Legate magic, letting the cold comfort of Izrador wash over him like a winter’s wind. Four hours ago they had been haggling with the Shaman and the Chief of the Burning Mother Tribe, trying to get their allotted nine Orc escort. The Shaman turned the missive upside down and claimed it was only six. That was when Olin smelled the staff. He said it was powerful, maybe a marred Covenant item of some kind. Vorden’s mouth had nearly watered when he checked the markings on the staff with runes in his Lorebook and realized it had Druidic origins. They all knew he would stop at nothing to get it. They tried everything. They couldn’t get the Chief to allow his Shaman to go on the journey around the Pellurian Sea towards Baden’s Bluff. They couldn’t kill him and take it with his tribe all about him. Vorden had even considered taking a Halfling slave and enlarging the cut off fingers. When it was put forth that an Orc would know the difference between Halfling and Elf fingers by smell he seriously considered marinating the magicked finger in his own blood. In the end they got six Orc and six Goblins for their journey. The Chief was glad to be rid of the Goblins, parasites on the tribe. As if to make Vorden want the staff more the Olin, the sniffer-demon said, “The staff smelled of the Erethor. I was in a body once on the Elven Front, serving a Legate who died there. The staff smelled like the wood from that cursed place.” The words seemed odd out of the mastiff’s mouth. The astirax or sniffer-demon was a new tennat in the once sweet and eager to please mastiff. Last Day Karhoun thought about walking around the tower for the last time. Seeing the links from Orc to Orc, tribe to tribe. He closely watched the way power worked here, how some Legates commanded better slaves and some Orc commanded more fear. Goblins had their own pecking order, he had seen that but in Orc presences the Goblin pecking order meant little to nothing. Karhoun walked around Theros Obsidia for the last day and thought about lines of power Unaros thought about how everything had changed. Olin was his dog, had been his dog since his father’s bitch had birthed him in their family kennels. Now an ancient Demon walked in Olin’s skin. His friends seemed distant, almost antagonistic. Would his status as a Shadow Legate be outshined by the Elven Night Princeling? If so, the Elf would have to perish. Karhoun would do that, would do it for his old friend Unaros. Vorden thought only of the staff. He was brought up far from the Elves and only knew his mother, his father and a few torture victims in the tower. The staff was made of Elven wood…wasn’t it? It was a link to his past, to his future, to the man his father was. He had to have it. Paying the Price for Magic The cleaver went through meat without a sound, through bone with a sick crunch and hit the rock with a metal on rock scrape and a spark. The pain blinded Vorden and blood soaked the Scarlet Prince’s left sleeve. Unaros healed the wound, closed it and Karhoun helped his friend away. The Shaman slurped the finger into his mouth, eating it on the spot, blood on his lips and rapture in his eyes. They walked away with the staff, marred at the ends where once there were iron shods before they were ripped away. It was a fitting lesson for younglings on their way out into the world, a moral they would need to compile for themselves.  It was up to them to take the magic, the squalor, the blood and the toll it all took and glean wisdom from the experience.</blockquote>

Verification