Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="havenstone" data-source="post: 4738480" data-attributes="member: 61094">The Breaking of the NorthKYLA WAKES UP from a cold, starless night on the plains, having walked east for most of the previous day to avoid the great host that she knew was marching south.  The dust of Mercon’s seven thousand soldiers, which had smudged the whole western sky when she made her camp the previous night, has settled.  Hearing grumbles of thunder from the west, Kyla quickly finishes the last of her water and sets off on foot for the last few hours’ trek to Guardwatch.  She arrives shortly before dawn and heads to the merchants’ camp to find <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4711278-post50.html" target="_blank">Tevrala</a>, T’harai’s outcast sister.Atrix’s relatives, the Perigords and Porphyry, have already left.  “There was some sort of terrible row between Kendall and his daughter,” a friendly merchant tells Kyla over his breakfast.  “Shouts and tears, who knows what.  Then yesterday, Kendall sold all the stock he had to the rest of us – must have needed the gold awfully bad – and he and Porphyry rode off.  I didn’t see the daughter go with them.  She seemed like a nice girl.  I can’t imagine what kind of trouble she got into that would need that kind of money.”“And the Arawai woman who was with them?” Kyla asks cautiously.The merchant purses his lips.  “You be careful who you mention that woman to, lass.  A day ago she left her babe with some pious cloth merchants of Velnar — asked them to make sure he’d be all right — and then she got onto one of Kendall’s horses and rode off through the guard cordon before the army left.  Everyone knows she went back to die with her folk.  I’m glad to see you haven’t done the same.”Kyla shakes her head.  “No.  No, I don’t really have a folk.  And her people will surely kill her if our army doesn’t.  Where’s the baby?”She finds the little albino with the Velnaryn merchants, who despite their piety are plainly fretful about having extended charity to the child of a wild Arawai.  When Kyla explains that she is willing to take the infant off their hands, they are more than happy to hand him over.  “Did his mother tell you his name?” she asks.“Ah, he doesn’t have a name yet,” the portly clothier replies.  “She said someone else from the family usually chooses it.”Kyla picks up the sleeping child.  “His name is T’harai,” she says in a quiet voice.  “It means Lord of the Flames.  He has an uncle by that name.  A noble man who did what he could to end this war.”The merchants shift uncomfortably.  “Do you need any milk for him?  He fed an hour ago.  There’s a woman with the Kedris traders who has a babe only a week or two older.”“The d’Loriads will help me find a wet nurse,” Kyla says shortly.  “Thank you for your kindness to the boy.”  Cradling little T’harai in her arms, she walks toward the castle, wondering what she can possibly say to Gareth.She is halfway to the gates when she hears the wailing rising faintly from the southern plains, and sees a scattering of horsemen appear along the horizon.  An anxious crowd forms around her and surges southward to meet the retreating knights.  The first man to appear, a mountain rider of Kedris, is bleeding from an ugly head wound; his remaining armor is blackened and warped as though he had fallen into a forge.  “Flee,” he shrieks, spittle flying from his cracked lips.  “Flee!  Demons fight with the Arawai this day!”  He spurs his horse frantically into the crowd, trampling several helpless people in his desperation to keep riding north.The next rider is scarcely less wild-eyed, but pauses for a moment to answer the frightened, demanding crowd.  “The Arawai do not fight alone.  A thousand thousand strange warriors have joined them, armored and masked and bearing steel.  The monsters have called fire down upon us, and lightning.  I saw General Zeresc swallowed up by the earth, along with thousands of our men.  The other Generals of the North have fallen or are fleeing.”  He cranes his neck to look back to the south.  “The Arawai are pursuing us.  Sweet Ain, run for your lives!”FIREBALL AFTER FIREBALL bursts out of nowhere into the ranks of Northern knights around Ontaya.  The smell of sulfur and scorched flesh is thick in the air.  On the slopes of the basin, two thousand soldiers who have not yet even seen the alien, golden-skinned legion begin to panic as they witness the nobility of a half-dozen nations dying inexplicably in flames atop the ridge.Unflinching, Ontaya bellows at her squires to make an orderly retreat.  Despite the confusion and terror in their eyes, they fall back fighting with the discipline their paladin leader drilled into them over the three months’ march.  They push back an Arawai charge, and during a second of calm, Ontaya is able to take in the battlefield.  She sees the army collapsing, as the Arawai horsemen flank them, and from the other side of the ridge she hears the metallic clamor of the armored strangers marching into combat.  “Corim!” she shouts to the leader of her squires.“Yes, m’lady?”  All of Corim d’Orbis’ customary roguishness has been stripped away by fear, fury, and determination.  Ontaya places her hands on him, healing him of his wounds and restoring him to full strength.“You have command.  Retreat and return to Lynar.  Warn them of what’s happened here.  Tell them that the d’Aramants betrayed us to this.  Go—now!”  Ontaya wheels Dorma around, knowing that Corim will want to protest, knowing that he will obey.  Spotting a group of knights who are faltering against another Arawai advance, she charges back to them and holds the line long enough to give her squires a fighting chance.  Then the ranks of unspeaking, armored spearmen arrive along the ridge, and a horrified din rises from the Northern soldiers as two enormous bursts of flame devastate the middle of their ranks.  An Arawai chieftain shouts in heavily accented Northron: “Throw down your arms, blaspheming kherasi!  Surrender, or by Keyashai we will slay you to the last man.”As swords and spears clatter to the ground all around her, Ontaya casts a searching glance to the south.  She sees her seven squires break through the last barbarian line and ride for freedom, with the Arawai in hot pursuit.</blockquote>

Verification