K i ' i r a
Two men lay in wait, silent as the night, watching. They had first heard a mighty crack following a formless, intense heat that they were incapable of discerning the origin of. And then they had seen a female –or girl, they could not tell which– with strange, otherworldly ears like that of a wild beast, sprint from the brush. She was entirely in the nude, but bounding as though her mind was like that of a feral beast.
"What the-?" one man whispered to the other.
"I don't... I don't know," the other hastily replied.
Both men resumed watching intently. They watched this woman effortlessly move through the forest, though she continued to get further and further from them. They tried their best to remain out of sight and downwind from the woman (god knows, bandits really were an unkempt bunch. Even the most anosmic of people would have detected their scent otherwise).
"Is she... covering herself in mud?" the first man asked the second with a hint of confusion hanging in his voice.
"She's covering herself in mud," the other affirmed.
"Oh," the first man said. "Shall we?"
The second man, and clearly the leader amongst them, nodded, not wishing to make any more noise. He, after all, did not want this strange, animal-like woman to hear them or their plans. The pair of aspiring bandits had sauntered into the forest with hopes of ambushing and robbing a few unprepared travellers and adventures. They had found their target after hours of searching...
It took a few minutes of waiting for their target to finish pasting her naked body in a thick coat of mud, and a few minutes more for her to begin to head in their direction, getting closer and closer. It was then they could just see the whites of her eyes that they revealed themselves from the shrubbery, screaming all hell at the woman to hand over all her money.
"Stop!" the first man screamed.
"Give us all of your money! We know you're hiding it on your... uh... body somewhere!"
"Yeah! Hand it over or we'll gut you like a pig!" they continued. The second man had produced a small knife and was pointing it ominously at her belly.
E l l a r i a n
"It can't be!" came echoes from far away. A clamour of voices shouted and exclaimed and celebrated. Surely it could not be? The cacophony of excited voices grew louder and nearer as a crowd gathered beyond the crypt, eagerly making their way down to see for themselves what the new recruit had told them.
But how could it be that Ellarian had returned? The great Rampart of Hope had been long dead, rotting in his grave for thousands of years. The captain originally brushed off the conscript's claims as heresy as he had first bolted from the tomb, screaming bloody murder at the top of his voice that their champion had somehow risen from the grave. However, his insistence suggested that there was some maddening validity to his claims. As the captain hurried to the tomb, others followed suit, the rumour spreading fast. Soon there was a small crowd of soldiers, all learned in the history of their champion, making their way to the crypt.
The captain's eyes grew wide upon turning the final corner at the end of the winding, narrow, stone stairs that led into the cold earth below the fortress. There, in full, torchlit glory, sat a giant of a man inside the stoneforged casket that was the final resting place of Ellarian. Beside for the very alive man sitting there, the grave was empty. The man was bulky and was marred with scars, and adorning a thick, grizzly beard that few men had the stones to grow. This... man. He was a spitting image of the Ellarian that the soldiers had come to know.
"Gods, you are kind," the captain whispered to himself.
A murmur of astounded voices grew in a slow crescendo behind him. Joy and confusion reigned for those few moments as nobody knew what to make of the situation, though this
awakening was entirely beneficial for the soldiers garrisoned at the fort.
The captain allowed the restless men behind him to express themselves to one another for a moment longer, before the men were silenced by the captain's approach to the legend. He promptly took to his knee to address Ellarian.
"My lord, we know not how you have returned, but we welcome you back. Perhaps the Gods themselves sent you to aid us, for we are in grave danger," the captain spoke. he dared not look Ellarian in the eye for some irrational fear of making him mad. Nobody had any idea what this man they so revered was really like. "Foul sub-men come from the Far North, beyond the realm of Ansus, and they bring to bear a force greater than our garrison. We have been under siege for weeks with no means of breaking the assault. We have equipment and a shield that we would be honoured to grant you. Will you aid us once more?"
N o r c o K h a n
"The wolf!" the aged chief shouted over and over. "The wolf! The wolf!"
He had stood from his simple wooden stool with such force that the chair itself had been sent spiralling into the wall. The chief was a large man, but he paled in comparison to the man who had just revealed himself unto them.
"You..." he struggled with his words. "You. Wolf."
The chief set down the two sticks of mutton that he had been simultaneously devouring and slammed down his flagon of Eastern ale. With a single hand command he demanded that the rest of his retinue observe silence in honour of the return of the King in the East. The chief was entirely sure of whom he gazed upon; the eyes like great pearls of pure white were a dead giveaway, but no man but Norco Khan himself could behold such stature and size; he was a giant of a man, standing at least two heads taller than the chief.
"Anosh dafini," he spoke in the old Eastern tongue, approaching the Wolf slowly. "Brother. King. Beast," his lips trembled. "You have returned. To what end I wonder."
He looked the newcomer in his celestial eyes, and did not even attempt to greet him with a hearty handshake. He immediately fell to his knee, offering the Wolf his hand as a sign of respect, before offering him his weapon: an old Eastern custom to show fealty to another.
"My King, I do not have your axe. It was lost many years ago to the great Ice Dragon in the depths of the Cold Ridges. We have been unable to recover the artifact; the beast is too great. But perhaps now that you walk once more, our people may go on one last hunt... with you at our head once again."
P r i c i a
"Wut' are you talkin' about?" one grave robber asked Pricia. "Wut' is she talkin' about?" he asked his accomplice. The grave robber looked back to Pricia. "Wut' are you actually talkin' about? Wut' do you mean the year?"
The second grave robber stunned, did not say a word. He simply stared at the woman, unable to take his eyes off of her. The first robber, unable to understand his companion's silence, quickly turned back and gave him a quick slap on the face in an attempt to bring him out of whatever daydream he was experiencing.
"Ow!" exclaimed the second grave robber. "Why'dya do dat'?"
"Because you's was bein' slow!"
"I weren't bein' slow!" he began. "I think she came outta that grave," he continued, raising a trembling finger to point at Pricia, particularly the way she was sitting upright in what was otherwise an empty grave.
The first robber took a moment and assessed the situation. He looked over the woman in the tomb, he looked over her tomb, he looked over her expression and her body language. She seemed tired and malnourished, as if she had just awoken from a very long sleep. He raised his eyebrows. How could somebody really come back from the dead?
"It has bin', uh, sixty one thousand and twenty three years since the foundin' of Ansus," he hesitantly replied to the woman's question. "Now tell me yer' name and how ya' got here. We ain't here to kill, just to plunder."
A l t i m
"Well then,
young one," the Priest retorted snarkily. "You will have to journey to the Heartlands. They don't keep Altim's Violin here anymore. Not since the Fire went cold."
He stared this imposter down, assuming his claims of being Altim to be an alcohol fuelled vie for recognition and fame. He raised his walking cane and poked Altim a couple of times, before forcing himself to his feet. The ravages of time had not been kind to the priest, and even standing was a struggle nowadays.
"It is kept in the Bastion of Light. If you want to try your luck with the God Guard Legion then you are more than welcome to tell them your story. Maybe they will buy it. But You aren't Altim. Altim is long dead," the Priest asserted. "If Faerthus is gone, then Altim would be too. So take your stories to some other old fool and convince them of it, you heretic!" he shouted.
The Priest turned his back in such a rude fashion that he almost felt bad for doing it.
Almost. S i k e s
Something with eyes like the night lay in wait in the high trees, watching with a certain intent. A man was journeying through the forests, making significant headway inland. He did not seem to be afraid of what lay in wait in the forest, though stopping occasionally to apparently daydream, legs crossed, and heart rate slowing.
A fresh meal. Ripe for the harvest.
The creature waited for a few moments, waiting for the man to stand and resume his arduous journey by foot. It could take him days, if not weeks to reach the Bastion from his current location. He was alone in the wild, with naught but the gifts of a dead God to keep him company.
The creature bounded from one towering canopy to another, making little sound as it went. Only the snapping of a single branch would have given any hint to the predator following. It sauntered down the colossal tree trunk in complete silence, six powerful and sinuous legs carrying it slowly closer to its prey. It slithered into the tall undergrowth, making its way through thick growths of leaves and brushing aside flimsy twigs that held it all together. It got close, perhaps thirty feet away from Sikes. Its teeth were bared, its eyes narrowed, its heart rate increased. All signals for the beginning of a hunt.
With a horrifying shriek the creature emerged from the shadows with exceptional speed, lunging at its target. But the predator was not privvy to the idea that the one it had stalking was capable of seeing glimpses into the future. Perhaps that would be the downfall of that mighty beast of the forest.
