A Shroud of Stars

[Light Ice]

In a time before time there had been no world, no land, no countries, and no Kings. All that was swirled in the infinite beneath the heavens and stars; boundless and formless as history under the watchful vigil of the Gods. Nameless, for in this world no man has ever presumed to know them, they bored of endless millennia and came to the pleasure of creation. They forged the world entire, its water and air, and all the beasts and marvels of nature.

A few thousands years past and the Gods tired once more, annoyed with the creatures short lives. They were no longer entertained. Possessed of cunning, but not intellect, their beauty soon was lost in the eyes of the immortal and they once more dipped their essence into the foundry of creativity and sprung forth from it a new life. Mankind, in its infancy, lived in tribe-like ignorance. Primal. Violent. Dramatic.

Again, time passed. This time, while entertained, the Gods found themselves unsatisfied. They desired creatures to whom they felt invested. Company. Not equal, but near so, to serve as their fingers amidst the realm they had created. They were to be grand creatures, one for each of the Gods, and so the Gods forged their own and gifted them a part of themselves. A light from the infinite. Candles in the dark of the abyss. The creatures knew speech and gave to themselves the first of their words as a name. Dragons.

Over men; the Dragons ruled as they were told. They guided them into tribes under the orders of the Gods, divided themselves amongst them to dutifully watch as mankind played out their lives to the pleasure of the Gods. This was the First Age of Men and Dragons, for they were one in the same, and it stretched a thousand years. The Gods, however, were not appeased. They tired. In the infinite, in the tireless fathom of an endless history, there was nothing in the world that could tie them to it. Their Dragons, born to the mortal world, had more a binding to it than they did and so, in an instant, they receeded to the ever dark of oblivion and left it to their creations.

With their creators gone, their options open, the Dragons were free to exercise their care for the world. The light of the Gods, born within them, was a gift they understood to be precious. They loved man, in all his imperfections and bestial inclinations, and so sought to elevate him with their gifts of language and reason.

The Age of Enlightment began as the First Age ended, with the Dragons laying the foundation of knowledge in the hearts and minds of men. Mankind, enamored with learning, grew quickly under the guidance of the Dragons. It took to their magic and built its first cities, forged its first machines, and learned of history, the stars, and higher learning.

But the Dragons were imperfect. They cared, deeply, and in that caring forged convictions in the direction to which men should go. They bickered amongst themselves, forged factions. Some, enamored with their love of knowledge and learning, believed that mankind’s pursuits should be shared and encouraged in all. Others, whom believed this knowledge and the powers that came with it were only for the worthy, thought it best to be selective.

The two sides eventually came to head. Deshiahk, the Black Dragon, came to lead those that were for hoarding and protecting knowledge and magic from the weak, gathered up a force of men and struck out against his brothers. Unprepared, having never truly imagined war or conceived its strength, the world was caught by storm and nearly swept aside. It took the leadership of Xalious, First Born Dragon, and the courage of those beside him to gather what was left of mankind and shield themselves from the assault.

For decades war raged, neither side gaining much ground, until Xalious called for Deshiahk to speak to him across the plains of the Ice Wood until the conflict could be resolved. Deshiahk, his heart blackened by rage and a lust for power, murdered Xalious and unleashed his magic upon his own. They became twisted, gnarled, savage creatures of war. Orcs. Goblins. Werewolves. The corpses of the fallen risen up in an army and set forth upon the world.

Still, he was defeated. His armies banished to the East and his power thought to have been lost forever. Wary, and enlightened of darkness, the Dragons that were victorious could not take pity on their mislead brothers who had followed Deshiahk. They removed from them their magic, their essence of the Gods, and forged it into pieces of armor to be worn by their Champions of Men. One man. One woman. A king and queen. Guardians of the realm.

The Third Age, The Golden Age, began.

The Dragons that remained poured themselves into the realm of man. They served the High King and Queen and their court, a Council of Lords, and gave to them slivers of their essence and taught them the use of magic. Great cities were forged and great steps taken. Ten thousand years of prosperity, peace, and progress. The Dragons were pleased. Mankind happy with the eternity they seemed promised

It would not be.

For Deshiahk returned, and with him an Army a hundred times that of old. Once more, from the East, he swept a path across the world of mankind. The great cities burned and thousands were butchered. Once more, standing on the doorstep of the world’s reigns, Deshiahk unleashed his fury. The Dragons, weakened over the course of these many centuries worth of sharing their essences with mankind, could no longer stand to Deshiahk as they had before. He was now, in his twisted selfishness, the greatest amongst them. In his power he had them. Wounded. Vulnerable.

It was then, conceived by the courageous and wondrous mind of Vadula, smallest of Dragons and Lady of the Stars, that the Dragons bound together and sacrificed themselves. Iyotar the Smith, whose scales were the hardest and whose strength was of legend even amongst his own, sacrificed himself so that the others could have precious time to complete their last gift to mankind. Consuming their own lives as fuel, they assaulted Deshiahk and ripped from him the gift the Gods had given to him. The end of the Dragons swift, sudden, left the hordes of Deshiahk’s monstrosities without leadership.

And mankind, lead by the High King and the gifted Lords beside him, swept them aside with shield and sword and once more banished them to the East. Victory, once more, was won with the most grievous of sacrifices. And in the absence of the Dragon the Fourth Age, the Age of Man, began.

Through the years, the many centuries, as men loved women who had not been gifted by the Dragons, the essence thinned like droplets of ink upon the sea. Slowly, but steadily, the magic of the Gods slipped from existence. Thousands of years passed and without the guidance of the Dragons or evidence of their wonder, the history of the ages fell to mythos. It became tales for children. Bards. Fairy Tale.

In time, without the guidance of the Dragons, mankind began to revert to some of its more primitive urgings. Some, those few who still believed the legends of Dragons and Gods, blamed Deshiahk’s essence for the corruption of some men. They said that he had never really been destroyed entirely. They believed that as long as his armies existed – so would he. In some form, or another, like a shade of his former self. Gathering strength. Readying. Using cunning, and worse, to deal blows to the realm that had twice defied him.

And so when the High King was betrayed, when the Golden Kingdom fractured in civil war, they believed it was his machinations that were cause. Still, they were the very few. A handful of men, old and withered, amidst the skeptics.

Regardless, at the end of the Third Age, the Fourth Age began. An age without Dragons; it was also the age of Two Kingdoms.

In the East, raised by those who claimed their ancestors to be touched by the Lady of the Sky, lay the Kingdom of Alfheir. A bastion of mountain villages and ancient ruins, tunnels, and mines that stood along the border with the Far Eastern Wastes. It had been a realm long suffering encroachments from Orcs, Goblins, and the ruinous remnants of Deshiahk’s forces. This was the throne of the Line of Vadula.

In the West, raised by those who claimed their ancestors to be touched by The Great Smith, lay the Kingdom of Sudenwald. A wealthy land stretching from the Ice Wood on to the Gold Coast at the Western Sea; Sudenwald was home to the largest cities and greatest trading ports in the known world. It had long suffered encroachments from the Wildmen of the North, in the Forgotten Mountains, and their barbarian hordes. This was the throne of the Line of Iyotar.

The two warred for a hundred years. Fought, steadily, until no advantage could be gained. Between them, the King of Sudenwald ordered a great wall to be forged. Standing eighty feet high of stone, ice, and snow, the Frost Wall was a boundary between the Two Kingdoms.

In time, however, the war ended. The Two Kings, content to rule their own lands, signed treaty and lived as weary neighbors. So, in this image, the land has remained for fifteen hundred years. Quiet. Tense.

But a great evil has risen and soon, sweeping from the East, it will be upon the lone Kingdoms of Men to salvage the world from the greatest of Darkness.

__________________________________________________​

The sun crept its slow rise along the east and through the trees came the first hints of promise that the day would be a good day. Brilliant, blushing across the horizon in maiden pinks and brilliant oranges, the light of the world began its inevitable waking. It could help shake the deep chill of early morning and here, amidst the Ice Wood, it was a chill of the ageless and tireless winter. It was the chill that set to your bones, beyond your heart, and spread its cold fingers through your innards like sharpened shards of glass. A man could freeze at night before he knew he was freezing, beset by the tidal winds of lore and captured amidst the towering pine trees that had stood for centuries.

In the land of the Twin Kingdoms, the shattered realms to which autonomy had taken root like cancer, the marvels of this old wood and the mythos buried in the forest roots had slipped to the very edge of memory. They were whispers, ghost stories, for bratty children whose parents sought lessons and grave hands. It had been a thousand years since the last magic had been seen, cast by the hands of the Last Dragons, who’d conspired in shadow to birth the new world in the blood of the old.

Ghost stories.

Now, in the fresh light of dawn and the birthing of the new day, there were naught left to tell the deaf ears of his Legion. The men marched with ridged determination. Disciplined. Practiced. They were as fine an army as he had ever known and lacking, all the same, because in their hearts there was no faith. No history. No lore. He watched them amidst the hazy light of dawn, rapidly peeling back across the heavens to reveal blue sky and white cotton clouds and steady golden light, and found himself alone amidst dozens. Alone, it seemed, save the familiarity of the feeling itself. An old friend.

Movement stole his eyes and the man they called Warden looked after it, cutting his pale stare through the thick trunks of towering pines and the dark green brambles of Winterthistle. It shadowed them as it always had, long loping strides and narrow, muscular haunches; a grim, gray vision amidst the snow and wood. The Dire Wolf watched him and he watched it back, goading his horse along, meeting the amber-eyed stare with his own.

“Sir?” The man to his left asked.

Stretching in his saddle, he slowly lifted his broad hand to point amidst the trees. Their shadow crept along with them, moving easily, its chin lifted in stoic indifference as it ran parallel to the trail beneath them. The man beside him looked, his hair proper dark like all sons born to the Noble Houses, and squinted through the passing pines and falling snow until he saw it. The man’s name was Dregor Black and while the pair shared a name they did not share blood. Dregor, born the son of Count Alustrand of Garusfel, had a more deeper bond that bound him.

They were brothers in Bastard-hood.

It was Dregor alone to whom he trusted himself completely. The man, a tall and lean man whose quickness lent itself as his primary asset with a blade, had been with him since they were small. It had been a relief to the fathers, burdened with the evidence of their misdeeds, that they had been too eager to unload. Their childhood had been a crucible. They had endured the same merciless torments and the same prejudices – at first with confusion and later with acceptance. It had been the bond of Bastard-hood that had carried them through. It was that shared shame that had carried them here.

They were the same age – though Dregor wore his years better, looking more the boyish handsome of twenty than any other man at thirty. Colton suffered the opposite without concern. His dour features, cut in sharp and grim angles, were laden with thick and coarse stubble. The pale of his eyes, flint gray, were set beneath stern brows of ebon. He’d looked thirty at twenty and now, with thirty-one approaching, it’d just the same been forty.

The hardness of his look, however, betrayed youthful quickness. He had been born strong. Fast. His broad shoulders filled to a rugged frame with thick, corded legs. As a boy he had outwrestled, out dueled, out ran, and out rode all comers. The natural talents of his birthright eclipsed most, and still, found themselves shadowed by the ferocious intensity the crucible of his childhood had forged in him. His was the manner of the unrelenting man. A grinder. A tireless worker. He was, in so many ways, the antithesis of his two brothers.

King Lucas Ioyar, half-brother and keeper of the Throne of Sudenwald, was a sensitive and thoughtful young man.

Captain Dregor Black, dearest friend and Captain, was handsome and charismatic.

“Again, and once more.” Said Dregor. His eyes were green and clear.

Colton did not look to him.

“The are thought to have vanished. There must be a pack in these woods.” He marveled.

Colton said nothing. For a moment the Wolf lingered, looking out across the frozen waste of the Ice Wood. It was searching. Half-hearted. The stoic, sharp cast of its features betraying nothing as to what. Or where. It merely moved, much like he did, patrolling the frozen wastes as it was meant to do. Surviving. Lingering. The heroic and regal mythos of its past clinging to its back like a weight, obscuring all thoughts of its future. He felt for it in that instance. Alone amidst the trees, amidst the cold, like some gaunt vision of himself – a reality to which he was too familiar. For a moment longer it lingered, before it turned, looking directly to him. The meeting of their eyes stretched long minutes, unblinking, before it turned abruptly and loped north amidst the trees. He saw its muscled flanks churning through the fresh powder a few seconds later and then it was gone, lost to the wood.

__________________________________________​

The station had been inglorious and where others saw insult he had seen only opportunity. Such was the way of service. It was not within his heart to weigh each gift with the expectations of entitlement. He was a bastard son. A fortunate son who was given advantages many bearing the name “Black” would never know. His father was a King, a Lord of the Western Realm and Dragonborn and while he was no heir apparent, or even noble in the traditional eyes of the Court, he was schooled and trained as though he was one.

He had lived in the Guest Manor of the King and been raised by a cadre of housekeepers and guardsmen. It had provided for him a dual education of sorts. On one hand, provided by his father and groomed as properly as a bastard could, he had his formal education where he had excelled as an avid reader of history and a quiet, patient student. On the other was the education of the guards and housemaids; cunning and diligent. By the time he was ten winters, old enough to begin professional swordsmanship by his father’s trainers, Colton had been more familiar with the sword than most boys twice his age.

Advantages.

There were many. The greatest of which, the one afforded him regardless his merit, has been his father’s gift of nobility.

“Boy,” he had said as his weary and aging fingers pushed his signature across the scroll. “You will have land and title – for you’ve the blood of Kings in you.”

It was a lesser Lordship but Lordship, none the less. It was an acknowledgement to which he had been waiting to receive for most of his life. The King had eventually died. Passing, like a summer’s breeze, that autumn. In the end it had fallen to his brother, the Heir to the Throne of Kings, to decide which land would be his and to where his command would lie. The realm had snickered when he’d been declared Lord of the Ice Wood, Marshall of the Forgotten Legion. It’d been a holding unwanted by most. Passed over.

Beggars could not be choosers.

The Castle had been in disrepair and the villages neglected. Of the men stationed along the North-Eastern border of the Kingdom almost half were convicted criminals who had chosen service over death or prison. It was an undisciplined, wild, and sorrowful place. Perfect, really, given the dour nature of its birthing. He’d been allowed the right to name one man as his Bannerman and chosen Dregor, brother in spirit. The pair had arrived at Castle Black amidst a blizzard, their horses snorting and whickering with frozen noses as the snow pelted at them.

Now, years removed from that day, Colton Black looked out to the pristine grounds of the Castle Black courtyard. Men, busy with the burden of soldiering, moved in small groups amidst the shuffling of their ebon armors. Maille, blackened in the forges, adorned them like coats. He exhaled amidst the darkness and watched his breath mist on the wind.

“Come to the bed, M’Lord.” Came the whore’s voice from inside.

She was a pretty thing with olive skin, slithering sylphlike beneath the sheets as her brown hair laid in feathered waves across her shoulders and along her gently rounded cheeks. Her body a bounty of soft curves, generous womanhood, beckoning him back to the warmth she promised. Colton stood amidst the dark, looked out from his balcony to the world he had carved, and allowed himself the grim consideration.

Meager, his lands stretched out beneath the bindings of the ever winter. Trees, towering pines and skeletal conifers, cast themselves as crooked shadows in the faint moonlight. Without the fruited mines of the Kingdom’s Western lands the Ice Wood and its villages were cast to live modestly. It took a patient and deliberate hand to govern the meager vestiges of income and to understand the stout-hearts and tireless work ethic of the people who carved their livelihoods out of the country’s coldest bones.

“Come to bed, m’Lord. The cold is fierce.” She simpered again.

And this time he went to her. The turn on his heels bringing him round and giving the chill air his back. His mind was wrought with the worries, trivial and otherwise, that came with his modest gift of Lordship. To the north, shielded by the Mountains of Guarondiveld, lay the raiding hordes of wild men. In morning they would remain. The whore would be gone and so he slipped between the soft spread of her thighs and sank into her, hurled her back amidst the sheets with a wanton cry and drank up the helpless arch of her beneath him. Soon, amidst the sounds of his body battering her own and the pleased whimpers from her full lips, his thoughts abandoned him and Colton Black, “The Bastard”, became Colton Black “The Beast”.

The whore, quite simply, came.

(This thread is closed.)

 

[DemureDryad]

http://i1005.photobucket.com/albums/af180/Taliah32/0907-5-1.jpg​

Excerpt from the Diary of Princess Kari Vadula III

December 12, 1539 A.S.

I am worried for my people. I can see the fear written on their faces as I pass, though they smile and wave. You can always tell such things, if my perception fails me, by the way the taverns fill, and by the way rumors multiply like plague. They are right to be fearful, but I wish that their unquestioned patriotism extended to confidence. Then they could be happy. Then they would not have to look over their shoulder, wondering when the hordes were to come.

No one really believes the traders, when they come with their stories. Only half of them come true. But these were true. They came in waves. The quiet, in the waste, was merely a precursor to chaos. It was only a month ago, when they descended upon us. They attacked where we were weakest. Even weaker than we traditionally are, as their lull had provoked us into allocating our soldiers elsewhere. A grave mistake. Garrisons in the southern reaches of the Kingdom were overrun without struggle. They burned the fields, the textiles… Everything. I shudder to think of how many of my people perished at their hands.

Only that short month ago, I traveled with my brothers to the hunting reserve. I attended the Solstice Festival, where a bashful miner won a kiss from me, after winning a quarterstaff competition. Things were so easy. Everyone was happy. I studied my magic, trying to forget how impossible it should be. The autumn saw my twentieth birthday, and even politics could not sour the fact that my life and the lives of my countrymen were good and plentiful.

I feel so frivolous now. I have only my lessons in magic, which nobody really knows anything about. The people think that I am a miracle. I am glad for their hope, but I cannot save us. Enemies that despise us surround us; enemies that possess the power to destroy our nation. Even now their werewolves slip passed our defenses to terrorize and destroy. They spread despair and panic with ease. The horde waits while we endure famine. They are coming, and soon.

Our history has shown, this will end, for better or worse, at Hduns Keep.

* ~ * ~ *​

He watched the battle from the foothills, dark eyes serious. A scarred hand ran over his shaven head, feeling the soreness of the new tattoos, a star for each man he had killed personally. But there was not enough room on his head for every death he was responsible for. A sinister grin distorted the jagged black designs decorating his face. The Alfheirans were making a futile stand within the mountain pass, in an attempt to delay turning to their inevitable last resort in Vailkrin. The tide was quickly turning.

If there was one thing he knew about Alfheiran scum, it was that they would fight to the last man. This was troubling, since he had come down upon them without mercy or lethargy. Years of planning were behind this invasion. Pri-Oar had numbers. He had surprise. And, most importantly, he had Deshiahk. The power he had lent him coursed through his veins. Pri-Oar could feel it, fueling his rage, making him stronger. Just as the strange being had asked, he had united the tribes of orcs and men alike with his military prowess. The smarter ones had yielded. As promised, the Dark Lord had granted him the right to be his general in a righteous eviction of the ‘civilized’ blight upon his lands. My lands… The cruel grin split his cheeks once more. It was an expression that made his advisors wince. But things were going well. He would not have to execute any of them on this day.

Easily seven feet tall, and covered in his devilish tattoos, his ebony figure cut an imposing silhouette. Faintly, the tribal lines glowed red, as he conferred with his master.

My lord. Their lines are breaking.

The voice dominated his mind, drowned out every other sensation, every sight, every smell. I AM PLEASED. MEET THEM IN VAILKRIN. LEAVE NO VADULA ALIVE. SHOULD THE DAUGHTER OF TANIT PERISH, YOU WILL BE REWARDED.

Yes, my lord.

It was not easy to make Pri-Oar cringe. As his advisors shied away from his ethereal glow, knowing what it meant, he watched his army break through the Alfheiran soldiers, trampling through a muddy concoction of mud and snow and blood.

* ~ * ~ *​

Screams. Moans. Shouts for bandages. Shouts for her. Blood smeared cots. Frantically, Kari ran from cot to cot. From makeshift beds made from cloaks, to pews doubling as a morgue. Piles of bodies. Men she couldn’t have saved had she split herself into ten Kari’s. The temple of the Dragons was a hurricane of past violence. Never had she seen anything like it.

She knelt next to a soldier, his leg shorn off at the knee. He was quiet. Glassy eyed. Her mind had been numbed to the spectacle, she only saw a possibility. A few more decades of life, for this man. Horror? Disgust? These would come later. He babbled, in shock. “Princess… Are we winning? Are we winning the battle? I fight… For my country and my family. Are we winning?”

He went on, and she did her best to ignore him. Something about his ramblings was entirely disturbing to her. Erik, for all intents and purposes her uncle, patted his shoulder. “We’re winning, son. You did a fine job.” The grey in his beard was growing each passing year. Little blonde remained. The grey suited him, fitting with his scarred, grizzled features. The massive man glanced up from the mysterious soldier, watching young Kari work.

Muttering the words frantically, the rune on the palm of her hand glowed faintly. The blood spilling from the mans leg slowed, flesh knitting together as the dragons tongue left her lips. She had not been sure it would work. No one had tried such things in over a thousand years. “Its working… Erik, its working!”

“He’s dead, M’lady.” He frowned sternly at him, coldly accepting the young mans death, where Kari had not seen a death so personal. He had argued with father to allow her to come here. No other man could have spoken to father that way.

Kari felt her heart sink. “He was only a boy.” All at once, the realities of war descended upon her. Only a few had been saved that day, and the disappointment had taken its toll. Sorrow and blood saturated her mind. They were not winning. They were not going to win. The stark violence of the ordeal had impacted her, sullied the soft life she had lived. This was not like hunting elk.

Erik couldn’t let her focus on this, not if they had any intention of doing what they had come here to do. “We can’t save everyone, M’lady-“ A half human roar echoed amongst the dragons, carved into the rafters. They looked down indifferently upon the bloodshed beneath them. Cots flew as the beast reared up. Rippling muscle covered in ratty fur. The final remnants of a mans skin peeled from its sinewy limbs. A werewolf. Kari stumbled back clumsily, terror on her face as he grabbed a nurses head in its meaty claws, effortlessly dashing it against the wall, leaving a bloody liquid splotch of brains and gore. The dragons did not come to life. They did not benevolently swoop down from the ancient stone arches and breath fire upon the profane beast that wreaked such havoc beneath them. They watched.

The weak voice of a soldier rang out faintly amidst the screams. “Who let that thing in here!” Someone had failed. Wolf bitten men were to be killed upon discovery. She heard Erik draw his blade with a metallic sound and advance. Far too honorable to let the Princess, who remained much more capable, take on the monstrosity by herself. Yet, she still sat on her backside, baby-blue eyes wide and scared, full lips agape as comprehension eluded her. She blinked as Erik’s voice cut through the chaos. “M’lady! To the horses! NOW!” She blinked slowly and looked at him, standing. Suddenly her eyes hardened, and she stepped to the threat, as it killed more already dead men. Her hand extended, pointed at the evil creature.

”Fuss, Rah, goh!” Her will focused, she drew heat from the air, and particulates among its composition. She synchronized them with the elements touching her body, and convinced her mind that they were the same as those she was manipulating. She had never attempted anything so difficult or ambitious.

A miniature sun shot from her outstretched hand, a ball of liquid fire, splashing across the beasts muscled torso. The sound it emitted was like a wounded dog, and it died slowly, smoking and twitching.

Erik turned, his face a mask of fury. “Were leaving. Were leaving NOW!”

* ~ * ~ *​

The king cut an imposing figure, dressed in full armor, stalking through the halls of Hdun keep. His entourage had dwindled since the enemy incursion, but they remained, Erik among them. Normally well groomed, his neat grey beard had blurred with stubble. There was no time for trivialities now. He pointed to a boy, helping to pile rubble against the gates. His voice was gruff and purposeful. “You, boy!”

He froze, wide eyed, as he stared at his king. “Gather my family in the war room. Go on, get.”

He hurried to obey. “Yes, your highness.”

Turning away, he walked past the preparations for the siege, giving out orders. Experienced in such matters, he had been a general for his father before he died. A lord of one of the southerly principalities chattered on in his ear. “This escape, you say, for the Princess… I should go too. It’s only right, as I am betrothed to the girl…” He had been posturing to go with them for the better part of a week. Ever since the battle in the pass had been lost. The king was growing tired of it.

“Listen to me, you fucking pedant…” A mailed fist closed around his throat, pinning him savagely to the stout stone walls. He was shocked at his treatment. For years, the king had been a skilled diplomat. “There is no longer a place for your politics or your cowardice. Your bannermen, and you yourself, will stay here, at the keep, and defend the country to which you owe your status. I don’t have time for these games of intrigue anymore. The battlefield has changed, and I suggest you adapt.”

“Y-yes, highness.”

He nodded, and released him, not even paying him the courtesy of watching him gasp and cough as he slumped to the floor. The king was already on his way, preparing to deliver the news to his young daughter.

* ~ * ~ *​

“She’s going to refuse, David. You know what she means to the defense of the keep.”

The king looked at his wife. “I know.” He eased into a chair, and suddenly he looked much older than his diligent façade. “She’s important. More than she knows. Maybe more than we know. We have to get her to the westlands. No matter… No matter what happens here.” No one wished to say out loud the Alfierans chances to repel the invasion. It amounted to a vulgarity.

The door swung open, and Kari entered, a determined expression on her fresh face. The group that could speak to King David such was few. “I know what you have planned. I’m not leaving.” She wasted no time. “I could turn the tide. We could end this now!” The events of the previous battle had settled into her mind, and hardened her over the course of the previous week. Her anger had been naïve, but palpable. At this point, she might have been a danger to herself on the battlefield. And, to David, she was still his little girl. His irrationality supported his suspicions that she was, perhaps, far more instrumental to the fall of the hordes than he.

His voice was gentle, though his words were firm. “You will do as I say, Kari.”

Her eyes lost none of their fire, though she kept silent. She glanced at Erik, who mirrored her fathers expression. “I don’t like it any more than you, Kari. I’m to go with you. She looked away, fiddling with the skirts of her simple dress. There was a time for finery, and a time for rough wool. Still, she remained silent.

“You will leave at once, and head for the frost wall-“ She ran and threw her arms around him, stifling her tears. The king had never had much patience for such emotion. “…Gather your things. You are to take the servants with you.” His knarled hand patted her back, affectionately. “May the dragons grace protect you, sweetheart.”

“Edna…” It was a delicate thing, to break tradition so brazenly. But the keep would fall. Of this there was no doubt. For generations, the Dragons tears had been worn by the queen of Alfhier. She nodded knowingly, tears forming in her eyes, and reached behind her neck to unclasp the silvery choker necklace. The diamonds of the twin dragons’ eyes twinkled in the dim light, and their magnificent wings spread to cover a goodly portion of her chest, resting above her breasts.

“I won’t wear it. Not yet.”

She nodded silently, and embraced her youngest.

* ~ * ~ *​

It took a demoralizing several days to reach the wall, with the smoke of the keep rising in a column at their back. Everyone knew that the last of their army had fallen. Alfheir was gone. Father and mother… And her brothers… were dead. She had kept it inside, all her pain. As her horse clop-clopped its way through the overgrown trail, she remembered.

The were wolves had come, by day and by night. Their purpose was only terrorization, and they were succeeding. Her magic was not enough to save the bitten. Randomly, they fed of the mass of food that trounced through the wood that they had claimed. Kari sat, as the camp slept, against a tree by herself. She inhaled a broken breath, her half-frozen tears streaking down her cheeks. She turned the dragons tears over in her hands. Frivolous wealth to go with whatever the servants had packed of her possessions in the wagon. There was little hope.

They ran into the arms of the King of Sudenwald, but they had no leverage left. No army, no economy, and no product. He might receive them to look good. But despite peace, there was no love lost between their kingdoms. For the first time, Kari prayed to the absent gods. But why should the Dragons help them now?

As she wept, she heard footsteps, and she stood abruptly, clutching the fur lined crimson cloak about her slim frame. It was Erik. When he appeared, he looked down on her with little sympathy. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes went to her red-rimmed, averted eyes, to the Dragons Tears, and back to her face. “That’s right, Nothing.” He snatched the jewelry from her fingers. Tilting her chin up, and pushing her shoulders back. Her eyes flashed in anger. He shoved it in her face. “Put it on!”

She breathed deeply, a glower twisting her pretty, elfin features. “You are not permitted to touch me like this.”

“Put it on!” He repeated, challenging her.

“No!” She stepped forward as she shouted, aqua eyes burning.

The silence stretched for a moment as their conflict simmered in inaction. It was Erik who broke the stalemate. “For your entire life, you thought yourself politically irrelevant. That time is over. The people need their princess.”

Her eyes softened as he continued, towering over her diminutive form. He shoved it in her hands, and she took it. Once more, his deep voice spoke to her, softer this time. “Put it on.”

As she clasped the silver chain about her neck, and tucked it beneath the high-necked dress, she replied after a pause of reflection. “I want you to be my advisor.”

“M’lady, I have no experience… I am unsuitable.” He turned to leave, but looked over his shoulder as her feminine tones rang out again.

“This is not a court, Erik.”

Now, the frost wall towered above them, and Kari stared, determined, up at the guards. Erik patted one of his soldiers on the arm, and the mans voice boomed. His words were inelegant, but clear. “Open the gates! Before you is Princess Kari Vadula the third, and fifty of her countrymen!”

 

[Light Ice]

"Someone comes, Captain."

The words found him through the howling breeze, sharpened on its arm amidst the dark of the battlements. Along the wall lay a hundred men, a hundred of his brothers, drawn now from their patrol along its seemingly endless stretch by the flicker of torchlight they saw upon the road. He joined them, straightening, his hands upon the long-frozen crenellation beneath him. In the dark he narrowed his eyes, looking beyond the bend in the road he could still see to the shadowed reach of it beyond. There, sure as the words from the man beside him, were perhaps two-dozen lights bobbing steadily towards them.

Garrus Undus, twenty-seven years of age, reacted on instinct. The words left him before he'd time to think them. It was the start of a reflex, a rippling current of consequence, that he had become familiar.

"Formations, man stations."

The men became a machine of motion. He'd admired it in the past. This, the Black Watch, was his first station. Back home, in Kirkhaven, the whispers of the post had inspired him to imagine criminals and peasants in ebon rags freezing in the night of the ever winter. He'd come to the Frost Wall and Castle Black anticipating his noble heritage and education to be a matter of distinction here. He'd thought that to make his name he would begin to slowly whip the wall's collection of killers into proper soldiers.

It'd taken all of some hours to realize that the men, from the skirmishers to the infantry, were the most disciplined example of soldiering he had ever known. The "Bastard Black" as they referred to him in Kirkhaven, had taken him by the green of his noble ears and in a matter of months stripped him of his simpering, pampered, entitled arrogance. It'd taken several more months to be reborn amidst the dark, to understand and embody what it meant to wear the Black.

And since then, despite memories of those early days, Garrus knew only the expectation of perfect order and the pneumatic certainty of procedure.

The men found themselves at the Battlements, clothed almost entirely in ebon. Their armors, blackened in the forges, lay beneath the heavy coal-fur coats of the great bears. His own was a lighter gray, marking his station along with the simple silver clasps that bound it about his neck. He was the youngest of Lord Black's Captains.

"Sir," said a runner. "the muster has sounded."

Garrus nodded and looked out, watched as the torches grew close enough that the figures that bore them could be seen. The stature of the men, their breadth, was not betrayed by the haggard appearance that they wore upon them. Alfheirians, mountain people. His heart sank at their condition. The droop in their strides. The grim look in their broken faces.

"Simon."

"Yes, Sir?" The page answered.

"Inform Lord Black of their arrival. Quickly."

"Yes, sir." And he was gone from the wall in the scuffle of his boots on frozen stone.

He turned to another, forged his orders. A hundred men woken from their bunks soon began to take up formation just within the gates. They were nearly finished by the time the Alfheirians reached him.

“Open the gates! Before you is Princess Kari Vadula the third, and fifty of her countrymen!” One called.

Garrus answered into the night, looking down as the glow from the wall's braziers cast the weary column in its yellowed light.

"I am Captain Garrus Undus of the Black Legion, stand clear and have patience beneath the light of the wall. Your request has been made known."

-------------------------------------------------------​

The night's moon shined strangely; filtering through the passing clouds amidst the night sky and surrounded by its wreathe of a thousand glimmering stars. It was cold. A stiff wind blew, pushing at the coats and hair of ten-thousand dead as they lay strewn upon the worn stone. In a breath he could see that they were entangled amidst even more of the rotten darkness. Orcs. Werewolves. Monstrosities of the Eastern World were entangled with them in death.

For a moment he can see them, see living beasts upon the walls and ruins so thick they may as well have been ants. Their vast number posed and hungry. A doorway, jaws flashing. A dark eye filled with hate and grief. The sound of a blade hacking into woman's torso. Scarlet spraying out to soak pristine white snow.

And eyes. Black as hell.

And then Colton was awake, and shaking, as a maille-clad hand remained upon the broad stretch of his shoulder and jostled him until he could look upon the face of Dregor without sleep in his eyes.

"Why do you wake me, brother?"

The whore beside him stirred but slept. She'd been drunk on brandy and learned to sleep amidst far more commotion. Colton did not look to her. Instead, he studied his brother's face.

"There is a column of Alfheirian's at the Black Gate. They are perhaps fifty in number."

He was rising then, pulling from the covers of his bed and crossing his room even as Dregor went to his door. The portal was opened by his brother's hand and the man looked to him, lean features knit with sudden concern.

"Colton, you do not look well. Did you dream again?"

"Yes."

"Did you see his face?" Dregor asked him, frowning.

"No."

Silence crept between them as Colton pushed open his armoire and began to dress. At his back he felt the eyes of his oldest friend, and ignored the desire to round and speak more of it. The dreams had haunted his sleep for a month's time. Ceaseless. Unchanging. There was naught to be said that had not been said and so they remained, caught in a rare stalemate between them.

"You were always easily frightened by your nightmares, brother." Dregor said at last.

Colton did not have to look. He could feel the more handsome man's smile scorch its way into his back with rough, familiar affection. Still, he could not muster an answer. His hands worked laces and clasps until he was suited before he reached for his sword and shield.

"A life with you ever at one's side is a nightmare garish enough to disturb anyone.”

_______________________​

The Frost Wall was a grim marvel of the past age and loomed between the Kingdoms of West and East with all the dark foreboding of the ever-winter. It had grown in the many centuries from sixty feet of stone to nearly eighty feet of stone and ice where years of snow had packed to it and frozen. The length of it was dotted with iron sconzes, most unlit, but some blazing their yellowed fire along the courtyard leading from the Great Gate and beyond.

The road was overlooked from here by the ancient Castle of Marahorn. It was a small but remarkable fortification of mortar and stone that had seen battles and proven strong, all but the Spartan equivalent of the Alfheir’s much heralded Keep. In the days since his arrival, since the quiet rise of his Legion, the Castle had been known as Castle Black though he himself never embraced it as so. This country had ancient and reverent bones. It was not of Colton’s way to tread upon them.

He approached the iron and oak gates with brisk strides and felt the presence of Dregor more than he heard it. Their movements cut beyond the attentive formations of soldiers and their looming spears. It was unlikely they would have course to use them. Soon, as he neared the gatehouse, he could see Garrus Undus make his way towards him.

“My Lord,” Undus said, his words hurried as he clasped a fist to his breast.

The gesture was mirrored simply.

“Your report, Captain.”

“There are forty-seven in total that we can count, Sir. Some women, a few children. The carry nearly no supply and nothing of any real worth. There is a small group of men with them that are dressed as soldiers of Alfheir. The leader of them claim that the Princess was amongst them, My Lord.” Captain Garrus was an educated and professional man.

He’d become a capable and promising officer.

“The Jewel of the Mountain? Here?” Dregor’s question laden with skepticism.

The Captain said nothing, his eyes fixed upon Colton’s own.

It was a bold claim. A dark one. All at once Owen felt the creeping chill of the winter reach beneath his armors and soak into his bones. Memories of his dreams, unceasing, and the gaunt wolf stalking its place in time with him. The wind lifted and set the flames of nearby sconces to lick savagely as it passed. Beyond the Captain, held at the strictest of attention, the men of the gates waited.

“Open the gate.”

“My Lord.” The Captain spun towards the guards and called out in sharp, capable relay. “Open the Gates!”

Along the gatehouse frame the men moved into action, their arms reaching for the pulleys and mechanisms to which the gate were operated. For a moment they did naught but creak, groaning slightly as their tremendous weight was tested by thick chains and ingenious creation, and then all at once they began to noisily swing outward.

And all at once the tattered column of Alfheirians began to filter themselves within the wall, some shambling like corpses on the heels of exhaustion’s whip. Even in the dim light he saw relief in their pale faces, terror echoed in their eyes, and with one passing glance to Dregor he could see that his brother saw it as well. The humor, the ceaseless mirth to which he carried, was now vacant in his handsome features. It suited Colton to witness it.

“I am Colton Black, Lord of the Ice Wood and servant to the King of Sudenwald. Why have you come to the High King’s lands in the dead of night?”

 

[DemureDryad]

"I am Captain Garrus Undus of the Black Legion, stand clear and have patience beneath the light of the wall. Your request has been made known."

The soldiers voice was faint beneath the brutality of wind, and the distance, but it retained its hardened strength. Others stood watch over the haggard remnants of her people, their faces equally disciplined and stoic. The Black Watch stood seemingly in defiance of their reputation, Kari noted. Her face was furrowed deep in the crimson hood of her cloak, as she looked up at them, and over at Erik. "Do you believe they will let us in? I fear my name is perhaps not sufficient..."

Erik grinned darkly, despite the circumstance of thier visit. "Your name is known far beyond these walls, M'lady. They will recieve us."

She pursed her lips, looking away, as her hand went to the heavy silver encircling her neck, tracing the curves of the creatures portrayed. She had not objected to the adornment, since the mans outrageous confrontation with her. He had been correct, of course. It was about her subjects, and their faith in her. They needed to see it on a Vadula. But, the dreams... She did not want to believe the ethereal demon who visited her while she slept.

The thing lied, whatever it was. Please, by the light, let it be a lie... She pleaded with reality itself, knowing that the past was written in stone. Perhaps, should their be a being who existed beyond such material realms, it would hear her plea, and ignore the boundaries of time. There was nowhere to turn but the metaphysical. And, of course, the ill reputed band that stood before her. The Iyotars had been acting suspicious. In recent years, her father had spoken of their strange allegiences and questionable politics. A smart ruler would have asked for Kari's hand in marriage. The absense of this request placed question marks upon his reason, or his loyalty.

Gloved fingers ran through the mane of the fine mare she sat upon, wriggling her frozen toes in the sturdy leather of her footwear. Impatience began to bubble over from the recesses of her thoughts to the surface of her presentation. What is taking so long... A flash of white amidst a sea of white. Her pale eyes were drawn to it like a moth to flame, unable to resist. Perhaps she was supposed to look. Obligated by fate or chance, she took in the small winter fox, flitting amongst the trees. Black eyes met her, boring deep into her mind, and examining her from the inside out. Kari froze in the saddle, staring back, trying to discern its mercurial meaning within some superstitious system of omens which so few people admitted to subscribing, yet did despite themselves. There was a commotion beyond the gates, and she looked away. When her eyes returned, the creature had gone.

The gates creaked and complained with their unfathomable age, slowly swinging open. They might as well have been a lover, holding the covers open. Welcoming. Or so her people, and Kari herself, felt. Too laden with heartbreak the group had become. However cold their welcome, it was very much needed. Her voice rose, speaking to those who had suffered so greatly. To those who no longer had a country. "Rejoice, good people, there will be no wolves on this night!"

Gentle smiles greeted her words, thankful for the encouragement, though they knew it was only that. Somehow, she would do better by them. There was no choice but to do whatever it took to give them happy lives, even if she could not give them a new home. It was her new responsibility, which weighed strangely on her inexperienced shoulders. But she embraced it, and looked upon them with affection and sympathy. There was no time for her own hardship. No time for the sobs she had buried beneath her obligations.

A group of three men, staring grimly at the procession of beleaguered peasantry, and dressed as fighting men, stood at the center of a stoic formation of soldiers. All of them bore the features of nobility, though only one seemed to project rugged toughness. The man in question looked as if he had all the lives of a cat, and none of its frivelous subtletly. Kari and Erik trotted briskly up to them, and Kari dismounted the fine horse as he spoke.

“I am Colton Black, Lord of the Ice Wood and servant to the King of Sudenwald. Why have you come to the High King’s lands in the dead of night?”

She looked sideways at the man, as she patted the mares neck. His face was blurred by the soft fur of her hood. Without revealing her face, she spoke. "Hdun has fallen, Lord Black." She pulled back the hood and looked at him, her nose high and her back straight. It did nothing to hide his considerable height advantage, but it made her look proud. It was a mask, for the words that left her mouth filled her with a deep, unshakable sorrow. "We are the last of the free people of Alfheir."

 

[Light Ice]

Around them the wind spoke of sorrow and anger. It whined and whipped its way through the crowd of refugees with the mercy of a slaver. It’s lashes struck their fur-clad forms and the stout shoulders of the few men that stood amongst the women. They were a broken lot and , while looks could be deceiving, there was nothing in them that spoke of defiance or danger. Colton Black allowed his manner to soften, a subtle thing, found in the pale intensity of his eyes and the faint warmth that crept into them. He had, at times, found it to his benefit that beyond the walls of the Ice Wood he was known as a cruel man. Reputation, deserved or not, came with it small benefits to which he had learned were not entirely beyond appreciation. Still, in the elegant features of the small woman before him, he saw only truth and the weariness of grief. It gave her beauty a powerful and solemn cast. It moved him.

“You’ll be sheltered.” His diction was clipped but his words were even. Those that knew him, that precious handful, would have even found it warm. “And word sent to the King.”

When it came to the handling of nobles, the pomp and circumstance that so often was required, Colton Black relied upon Dregor implicitly. He looked to him now amidst the cold, lean and proud, far more handsome and already wearing his trademark and typical smile. This was a dance that had been made time and time again. The exchange, ushered in with a familiar cadence of word, saw the dashing young man slip in to steal the lady’s hand and show her to quarter or charge or the wonders of tale upon tale until at last her priviledged eyes saw past the questionable lineage and her chamber door was thrown open.
Many a girl of the court had found themselves bedded and pleased in such a way. They did not like the Lord Black, bastard half-brother, to the King. His hard features and brisk manner was uncivilized. His clothes bland. Utilitarian. It was some great sympathy, they believed, that had seen him made a “Lord” at all. They, like the Princess before him, had all been glad to be taken from his company. His nights had always ended with courtesans when the need came. It was an arrangement both he and Dregor had enjoyed.

“I’ll show you to your chamber.” He said.

She did not look afraid - only tired. The fatigue wore in the otherwise elegant lines of her face and still she was beautiful. Beauty was not a rare thing in the Ice Wood. It was born with each morning’s fresh snow and shaped on the Arctic wind. This place, for all its hardships, was a country of old and heralded bones. It whispered of the Old Ways and found its way into a man’s heart. The Princess looked as though she belonged for she was fair and sad like the snow-frosted saplings that waited now for Spring to come. He imagined that her laughter would be like the season’s change. A blossoming.

“See to the others, brother. Take from them five that are respected and bring them to me in an hour’s time.”

Dregor went without a word, quick and sure. The clearing already beginning to empty as his welcome spread throughout the otherwise vigilant men that stood amongst him. At the head of each formation the Captain’s waited for orders, looked back to their columns with sharpened eyes, and kept order. It was still and quiet save the shuffling of her people through the gate and the slushing of snow. The wind had died down abruptly and afforded them all a moment of false warmth. He knew it would come soon and remind them of the Ice Wood’s reputation.

“Your people will spend this night with mine, in their homes, out of the cold. I will explain to them, and to you, what we expect of them and what they can expect from us after I have shown you your quarters.” It was the most he had said to any stranger in some time. It sounded foreign to him to use them all at once. Unnatural. His voice was quiet and dark. He’d not meant it to be.

“Come.” He added. The brisk and clipped diction a welcomed familiarity as he stepped amidst the snow and moved towards the Castle’s keep. In the wind the torch light cast the world in a dim, yellowed glow. He kept his strides slow for the sake of the Princess behind him.