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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4396086" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 78PREPARATIONSThe morning after Dar and his companions received their special delivery, the town of Highbluff was a beehive of activity.  The temporary legion camp outside of the town echoed with shouted orders and the clash of metal on metal as legionaries gathered into their units.  Columns of men headed into the town.  They encountered sullen resistance and eager compliance to their orders in roughly equal measure.  By the time that the sun had risen fully above the horizon to the east, the entire town was in a stir of chaos that was only barely contained by tight strings of organization.  Those guards at the castle had slightly easier duty, but the sights they encountered were far more uncanny.  The baron’s guardsmen had gotten used to seeing unusual sights.  Groups of men suddenly disappeared or reappeared in the roped-off area in the back of the castle court near the keep.  Streaking clouds descended from above to take on the form of other men clad in the raiment of the clergy of the Shining Father.  Elves and dwarves and other men and women of faraway lands came to the keep by these and other means, sometimes coming and leaving within the course of a single hour.  But both groups of men, soldiers, and guards, were all too aware of what it was that they faced.  A ravager spawn had torn a swath through Highbluff years ago, and while the town and keep had been rebuilt, there were plenty of residents who still remembered clearly the violence of that day.  And word had spread from the survivors of the desperate battle at Rappan Athuk, stories that made that remembered engagement seem trivial by contrast.  The soldiers of Camar knew enough to know that they were but small pieces on the gameboard, and that the outcome of this contest, including the fate of their land, their livelihoods, and their very lives resided in the hands of those leaders who took counsel in the private chambers within the castle keep.  That was enough, for most of them.  They remembered another time when the dead rose and walked the earth, and when dark powers stalked the land.  Heroes had risen to face those threats, the same heroes that provided hope for them now.  It was true that there were those that deserted, slipping away out of the town as night fell, nowhere to be found with the coming of the morning.  But the orders that Dar had issued earlier had undercut the inevitable stirrings of panic.  Men did their jobs, and worked to get ready.  The leader of the castle garrison was a man in his late thirties named Captain Karic Garsen.  He had not been in Highbluff when the ravager spawn struck, but he’d served at Janaris with the Second Legion against the ghoul horde, and in the aftermath of the victory over Orcus he’d spent a season with the patrols that had scoured the southern lands for straggling survivors of the undead legions raised against the people of Camar.  He’d spent the last ten years here at Highbluff, and had a wife and two children.  The latter he had already sent on to Camar with his wife’s kin, leaving just him and Tamara in small house situated on the edge of town within bowshot of the castle walls.  The sun had already set as Garsen made his way home.  He felt bone-weary after a long day coordinating the implementation of General Dar’s orders in the castle.  The baron had thrown his full support behind the General, but Garsen had been surprised at how much resistance there had been to a course of action that seemed completely sensible, to Garsen’s thinking.  But then again, he’d seen more than most of the people of Highbluff, even those who had seen the monster that had ravaged the town first-hand.  The house was dark, and deep shadows were already gathering in the street.  Garsen went around to the back door, and frowned as he saw their horse, Champion, fretting in its stall.  None of the preparations he had expected to see were in evidence, but it was possible that Tamara had chosen to do the work inside rather than here in the back court.  He felt a tiny whisper of unease that was likely a product of all of the preparations he’d witnessed all day, but nevertheless he loosened his sword in its scabbard as he lifted the latch and stepped into the kitchen.  Tamara wasn’t there, so he went into the front room to see her lying on the couch.  She didn’t even stir as he entered, but as he called her name, she turned her head slightly to look up at him.  Garsen saw blood trailing down her neck, and the crimson edge on the collar of her shirt.  He took a step toward her, but stopped as a man appeared from the hall that led to their bedroom.  He was tall, pale, built like a warrior and clad in black that could not conceal the familiar outlines of armor underneath.  “I’m sorry to intrude, Captain Garsen,” the man said.  “Your wife invited us in.”Garsen reached for his sword, wondering about the us, but even as his fist closed on the hilt of his weapon, his eyes met those of the stranger, and all of his energy just seemed to bleed out of his body.  He felt a presence behind him, but could not move, could not do anything as he felt a sudden icy chill suffuse him, followed by a sharp pain on his neck.  “Remember why we’re here,” the man said.  The room seemed to sway around him, but then the cold presence lifted, and he found that he could still stand, though barely.  “You never let me have any fun,” a woman’s voice came from behind him.  Garsen blinked, and it seemed as though the tall man was suddenly right there in front of him, though he could not remember seeing him move.  He could not look away from his eyes, which held him in an iron grip.  “What... what do you want?” he somehow managed to ask.  The pale man smiled.  There was something oddly... familiar about him, although in his current state Garsen couldn’t quite identify what it was.  “Answers,” the man said.  “All I want is a few answers, to some very simple questions.  Give them to me, and we will leave you and your wife unharmed.  Well, at least we’ll leave you alive.”  The woman behind him barked out a laugh that was anything but amusing. Garsen did not believe him, but he knew that he would answer the questions, would do whatever the stranger asked.  All he could do, as he screamed a prayer to the Shining Father within the confines of his own mind, was to hope that surviving this meeting would be a better thing than having perished.</blockquote>

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