User:LJCOMICS
[color=gold][h2]THE OVER-TYRANT[/h2][/color]
The camp quickly began its preparations for igniting the mountain pass, and driving out the demonic taint with a deathly inferno. Warriors were woken from tents and given orders, which they set about slowly and grumbling, weary from the night’s festivities. Many had been awoken hours earlier by the screaming madman that came running through the camp, and so rumors and confusion spread quickly among the working Northmen. A demon in the pass? Were there more? What foul forces had brought about such monsters? Would these fires even harm them? The barbarians toiled as the Over-Tyrant and her pet court relaxed in her tent of excess and splendor. However, the Trade Queen, blinded by her own arrogance and avarice, failed to notice an important fact: tracks in snow are easy to follow, and Harlwarn had left a trail of blood and footprints running all the way back to the camp.
The first attack did not come as a total surprise; the men at the camp perimeter saw the approaching pack of demons some distance away, but their fatigue, terror and confusion led to them reacting slowly and poorly. At first they made for their weapons, but realized too late that they should alert the camp instead. Rather than the call of an ox-horn sounding over the camp, the screams of painful death heralded the arrival of the infernal monsters.
There were half a dozen, as far as most could tell. It was difficult to say, as their forms shimmered and sometimes vanished altogether as their anchor in this world receded or strengthened. Most of the warriors had never seen a demon before; horrific things cast in shapes that made mockery of the human form. They cackled in unearthly tones as they leaped from man to man, carving flesh from bone with teeth and claws as sharp as blades. Men gripped with fear or caught unawares died in droves, but some few men of extraordinary skill or courage managed to surround and kill the agile monsters. Unfortunately, each that died was quickly replaced, the body erupting into a plume of emerald hellfire that birthed a new demon into the world.
As the cretins carved their way through the Mourslev camp, a trio of strange figures walked slowly behind. They chanted in foul and terrible tongues, hands raised in worship to unseen forces. The skies above the camp lit up with unnatural lights and otherworldly energy. The strangers, dressed in the shamanic furs and fetishes recognizable to any Hyperborean, weaved between bodies and burning tents as they continued their mad chorus. All the while, their eyes burned with infernal, green flames.
[color=gold][h2]THE LORD OF BLADES[/h2][/color]
With the superficial acceptance of Lord Ashewoode’s contract, the Crimson Company marched into the Borean lowlands to begin their terror campaign. The duchy of Farsil was a beautiful region by most accounts; rolling hills and rich forests as old as the land itself. Its people were civil, but pragmatic folk. Life had been hard since the feud with House Ashewoode erupted some fifteen years ago, and a life outside of castle walls was difficult and short. Still, they carried on, and the arrival of the Crimson Company was yet another tragedy for the smallfolk.
The early weeks of raiding proceeded smoothly for the mercenary company. The villages put up nearly no resistance to their attacks, but held nearly no wealth for looting, either. Villages were burned, fields of crops put to the torch, herds of cattle slaughtered, and entire settlements razed to the ground. The Crimson Company suffered no casualties, having lost not even a single horse to wolves at night.
As the destruction in his men’s wake grew, Damion realized that the raiding was too easy. There should have been at least armed resistance by now, if not a mobilized army hunting them down. He gathered his lieutenants for a secretive meeting, hoping to narrow down the issue and hopefully adjust their strategy. Under the silver light of a full moon, as most of his men slept, the commanders of the Crimson Company convened. As they discussed their grand plans and how to keep them from going astray, the howls of beasts unlike any that walked the earth ripped through the night, and the true battle began.
Damion quickly learned why there were no wolves in the forests of Farsil.
[color=gold][h2]IOANNES[/h2][/color]
The scout, once returned to the Ionnes’ camp, proved less than informative. He was by all appearances an ethnic Atlantean, though he seemed sickly and starved. His flesh was pallid, his features shrunken, and his eyes dark and withdrawn. When interrogated and tortured, he spoke only in a strange tongue that resembled an antiquated form of Atlantean. Only small fragments of information could be gleaned from him: vague mentions of shadows, warriors and some sort of mouth.
Their captive died within a week, seemingly from starvation. The men burned his body within the hour of his death, seemingly unnerved by keeping the corpse in their presence. The city ceased to send forth scouts and outriders, though sentries continued to man the walls and towers. When Ioannes’ army arrived, the city was quickly encircled without resistance, and a secure supply line from his conquered poleis was established without much difficulty.
The black walls of the dark city were too tall to scale, and so Ioannes set his men to put the city under siege. The first two weeks were uneventful, as though the citadel did not even notice the army encircling it. However, as the moon went dark in the night sky, they began to strike back. Gates opened briefly, and small contingents of slave warriors struck out against the Atlantean soldiers. Slaves robed only in rags and armed with iron spears clashed against phalanxes of Ioannes’ trained soldiers, and were quickly put down. As time passed, these attacks became more frequent, eventually striking so constantly that there was no time to move corpses from where they fell.
All the while, Ioannes worked at what was once Aquilonia’s port. With the supplies brought by his few precious ships, he constructed rams to batter the metal walls where there had once been a gate. As he had suspected, the walls were weakest where they had been built over an abscess, and he was able to break into the dark citadel. A city of death and twisted iron awaited him, as well as the dark forces that corrupted the once-greatest city in the Iron Kingdoms.
[color=gold][h2]THE HUNTER[/h2][/color]
Ryan sat in the dirt, clutching her knees and softly sniffling. Her eyes were cast in Emily’s general direction, but she wasn’t looking at her. Once the fire began to burn steadily, that caught her attention. Ryan silently stared into the flames, the fresh bout of tears that had nearly broken through now gone. For hours, not a single word was passed between the women with hair like fire.
Only when Emily began to roast a small woodland beast that she had caught in her traps did the girl speak up, softly. “I didn’t mean to do it. Honest. Ever since it started I’d been scared of it getting out of control. But when she started talking to me, I thought I could control it. I thought it would be safe.” Her voice was wavering, as though she was about to cry again. “But she lied to me!” Instead, Ryan screamed, and the flames at her feet screamed with her, erupting in a billow of pale, green fire. “She lied! Everything she told me just made it worse! And now they’re dead!” She was hysterical now, kicking and screaming, almost spastic. The torrent of green fire rose higher into the air, and a sound like dark laughter rose over the crackling of the flames. “I want them back! Casey and Mama! Give them back to me!”