Horrors in Timbrethinil

[Ataraxis]

It had taken them over five hours to catch that rabbit, and Lillian had half a mind to criticize their preparedness, survival skills and general worth as men from one of the most respected races in Althanas. The victorious smile on Rávion’s face contrasted with that hangdog look on Orophin’s, however, were too antithetic to their personalities for her to ignore. Unfortunately, she could get nothing out of her prying except their diversionary promise that they would skin, clean gut, empty, debone, slice and cook their catch on their own. Just as well, since those extra centuries they had on her at least came with extensive culinary skills. With the sun gone and the evening repast done with, they quickly fell asleep, knowing that every minute wasted awake at night was another wasted after dawn.

The next morning had been similar to the previous, with Orophin setting up a soundproof field around the hilltop so that the noise from Lillian's lessons would not reach across the forest and into the area of corruption. After all, they always said that trees had ears – quite literally at that, for the ones that had fallen victim to the dark infection. That afternoon, they decided to fish instead, and the haul was much more abundant than it had been before, thanks to some of Orophin’s slightly more sublime songs. Rávion would keep working on that crystal rod, or pore through a book he had already read countless times whenever he hit a snag.

As the days and nights cycled, few pins had vibrated. One time, they had caught several squirrels passing through, and that had made for a very unusual supper. Another had been a rather auspicious catch: a deer had wandered into the spider’s den, and while the imagery did not quite match reality, they still devoured it whole over the course of a week like a pack of famished beasts armed with sharp teeth and only a modicum of table manners. The rest of the time, undead sentries had wanderered through, but as was the protocol for multiple pins that oscillated in unison, they never bothered to investigate until the scouts made their exit on the opposite end. While they had to be careful in case of stragglers, they never ran into any actual trouble: the enemy was as oblivious to their presence as ever.

“How long until they come, do you think?” Lillian asked the soundsmith as they sat against the cavern walls. The girl’s back was resting snugly against his chest, and he loosely cradled her waist in the crook of his arm. Orophin had found it a strange picture, but what surprised him most was that there was nothing more to it than what he saw. Unlike those fictional tales where harsh circumstances were all it took for dreadfully codependent characters to unite under a flimsy banner of love, these two were ever the realists, simply finding comfort in amiable contact. Rávion, he guessed, must have realized since their rabbit hunt how inappropriate the difference in their ages was, and Lillian… well he had never seen her display any interest in males or the concept of love. That was something he would have found worrying, if Rávion had not revealed to him that only days ago, he had been just as clueless as the girl in that respect. He then mused on the possibility that she found her romantic interests in the fairer half of humanity, a preference not uncommon amongst elves as well. The gender one knows best is one’s own, after all.

“I wouldn’t want us to get our hopes up with too early an estimate,” Rávion replied at last. “I think it’s fair to think they’ll come before the infection overruns the whole of Timbrethinil, at the very least. They couldn’t risk it spilling out into the rest of the country, if it hasn’t already. I doubt they’d wait long enough for the undead to recuperate their losses either.”

“Sounds reasonable. That would give us a few months, I think.” Lillian looked at Orophin, who had been silent for far too long considering his usual talkativeness and and incorrigible tendency to boast. “I think we should be able to last... If the rot spreads to the cave, we’ll probably have to find shelter somewhere else, though. We could even leave the forest and wait outside until we eventually hear the sounds of battle. What do you think?”

“I think,” Orophin began, pointing to the wall they were leaning on, “that those five pins are vibrating.”

[Ataraxis]

Lillian started at that, spinning back with head askance to observe the pin-board, as did Rávion. There it was, clear as broad daylight. When she paused to consider the implications, however, she came to the conclusion that though this was the first time, five pins was not an untenable number. Twenty or so undead foot-soldiers could theoretically trigger this reaction, but if they kept quiet, then there would be nothing to worry about. There was the small kink in her surveillance system that did not take into account troop formations: a single pin could be triggered if a troop filed into her perimeter, but most groups of undead scouts were scattered to cover more ground, and soldiers kept to their bivouacs at the center of the forest, well within the security of that field of corruption.

“We’ll wait it out. Statistically, it was bound to happen some day,” Lillian concluded after her long musings. She detached her eyes from the pin-board, and took a moment to stand up. They had been sitting on the frigid stones for too long, and she felt her bones grind and wail as she stretched. “It shouldn’t be much more than an hour or two before they leave. In the meantime, do you have your next lesson prepared, Orophin?”

“Well, you have been a decent student this past week - your recent abstention from butterfly rants should be proof enough.” The High Bard hummed in wonderment from his chair, red-dyed boots tapping at the stone a playful tune. “Yes, I think I have. The first was the easiest of the uncommon elements, but I believe you have the potential to tackle the next. Or would you rather I teach you a more complicated song of the same nature?”

“Well, I’ve always been more about versatility than mastery, so I’ll tackle the next for now. When do we start?”

“Once the pests are gone, we can begin.” With that said, Orophin leaned back on his seat, thumbing open one of the books Lillian had managed to bring along with her – he had long since finished those he had brought himself for leisure reading during his travels, and had thus traded them for the girl’s own collection. With a rhythmic snap of his fingers, lantern orbs sparked to life over his head, casting a faint but adequate light over the yellowed pages.

When he looked up from the maddeningly minuscule scripts of his book, two hours had passed, on the dot. He afforded a glance to the leaf-pigmented map of the forest Lillian had drawn on the pin-board, casually expecting to see broken webs hanging from a handful of pins that usually announced an intruder’s exit.

His eyes squinted in the dimness of the cave, alarm clear in their intensity. “I noticed it too,” Lillian said from the other side of the stone table. From the looks of it, she had been silently practicing her flute-work when she saw it. “They’re still here.”

“Undead do not take breaks,” Rávion said from his side of the table, settling a crystal tube and a diamond file on the coarse surface. “Are they looking for something?”

“Or someone?” Lillian added in a grim note.

“You think they know?” the young elf asked, his voice almost breaking as he looked out to the grey skies outside. “How?”

“There’s a possibility,” Lillian began, turning to the two elves with apprehension in her eyes. “Do you remember the grounds where we fought? It was the region located under… this pin,” she continued, index pointing to one of the southwestern markers. “The previous undead intruders came two days ago. It was right after I came back from replacing the broken webs from one of the rare nightly patrols that actually come through here. These were scouts that triggered two pins… pins pointing right next to the one you two triggered, one week ago.”

“They found clues?” Rávion was sweating now, thinking back on what blunder he could have done. Though not the youngest, he was clearly the most inexperienced when it came to common sense when surviving in the wild or when eluding capture by trackers. “The tree I scored? Do you think that was it?”

“No, it wasn’t. I went back to dirty it up and darken it. If one still managed to notice the notch, it would have discarded it as something left by a claw or a beak. They might be smarter than the foot-soldiers in terms of observation, but not enough to notice the subterfuge.”

“Then… my blood?”

Lillian’s head spun at that, and so had Orophin’s. When Lillian had tossed him into the air towards the song-mage, the soundsmith’s shoulder had been injured by his blade. The gash was not deep, but it was a bit more than superficial. Lillian had tended to it before they left, thinking a trail of blood could have lead unwanted visitors to the cave, but once that was done, she had discarded it wholly. “I didn’t clean up what blood was already spilled!”

“Quiet,” Orophin said in a hiss, holding out his hand as he angled his ear towards the cave’s mouth. “I hear movement…” Slowly, he rose from his chair and lowered his body to the ground. He crawled on all fours up the sloping stone floor, head peaking over the ledge and in between a thick patch of halberd leaves to see what waited beyond.

“That sound… whirrs and clicks?”

“It is a cart,” Orophin whispered through clenched teeth. “Escorted by a dozen undead.”

“Who’s driving it? What’s it carrying?” Lillian asked as she made her own way to the ledge, closely followed by the soundsmith.

“A living human,” the High Bard snarled, but the girl could feel the contempt had nothing to do with racism.

“What is it carrying, Orophin?” she repeated.

He hissed. “Corpses.”

[Ataraxis]

“Are you certain you need me here?” the rotund man asked from the saddle of a gaunt horse, wiping the cold sweats from the bald pate of his head with a dirty kerchief. “I’m certain if there was an intruder, he’d be already gone by now, or dead.”

One of the soldiers walked up to him, his swagger oddly proud for an undead. When he came close, the carter knew just why: he had retained much of his shape in death, and the signs of his passing were very few and far between. His face had been conserved frighteningly well, the cyanotic hue of his skin the only indicator that blood had long stopped flowing through his dead heart. There were scars – no, not scars. There were open wounds that had never mended, but they were not bleeding nor had they festered. They simply existed, revealing coils of darkening muscles under the parted skin.

“That does not concern you, gravedigger,” the soldier spoke, his tone more assuasive than menacing. The carter almost felt like the man… the thing was sparing him from gruesome details. “Yet, I will humor you.” Then again, perhaps not. “Once we found the blood, we scouted the area, and stumbled upon the faintest traces of presence. Common scouting protocols would not have allowed us to detect it: we expect to find traces of fools passing through, not coming to stay.”

“The intruder is living here? Why in the hells?”

“Motives do not concern us. They are here. We discovered a rabbit hole, and the brood were dead within. Not for very long, considering the rate of decomposition. They waited to be fed, but the mother never came back. No traces of her corpse in any ditch or the like, and as you know… the undead do not eat rabbits.

“Moreover, though the intruder was wary not to leave visible footsteps, we became more… thorough in our methods. We could not trace them back to a shelter or any sort, but we do know what locations this trespasser frequents the most… it is only a matter of time.”

“What are you going to do afterward?” the gravedigger asked. Then, with a look to the decomposing merchandise in his cart, he felt foolish for asking. “You’re going to turn him into one of you?”

“Does that offend your sensibilities?” Again, there was no amused tone in his words. “You come here to sell us the corpses you were meant to bury, but only now you consider the moral implications?”

“I… For my family… I have to. Galonan will not stand… if this can spare them from such a terrible fate…”

“Of course, it will not stand. Of course it won’t, if you keep bloating the ranks of your enemies with the corpses of those who died to protect your pathetic lives in the first place!”

“W-why are you… but you are…”

“You tire me,” the soldier snarled as he turned away. He attempted a sigh, but there was only so much he could do with such a dry esophagus and lungs that had long collapsed. He could see the winds blow through the leaves, hear that deep whistling. Yet he could not feel it with his deadened nerves, nor smell its fragrances. “Be ready to load your cart with one more. We should weed him out anytime, now. Then, after you unload him and your fallen protectors at our bivouac, you can be on your merry way back, thinking yourself a savior. And even if my words convince you otherwise, you will return, with just as many corpses. You will come back, every time, because it is your nature.”

“Found… more traces,” one of his underlings muttered brokenly, the air hissing out of the rotting hole in his left cheek. “Stool in bushes… fresh enough. Was small hole, hidden under leaves.”

“Then his shelter must be close by. At the very least, within a two hundred yard radius. Still, quite clever of him, considering we cannot smell.” The soldier turned to the other undead, knowing they awaited his command. “Continue combing the area, then. Once we turn him, we will move on to the next carts. It won’t be long before our forces fully recover, so there is no time to- ”

A screeching from skies. The carter slapped his palms to his ears, but the deafening noise would not dampen. The undead, only looked about the skies in confusion, unable to feel the pain of their eardrums. Only the soldier, however, had the presence of mind to find shelter beneath the carted mound of corpses.

Blades of wind fell from the heavens, striking at the earth with the ferocity of a hailstorm. Plumes of dust and blown soil burst like blood from an artery, and soon the debris were joined by severed limbs festering entrails. When it finally came to a stop, the ground still seemed to quake in fear of what cataclysm had just befallen.

A pair of boots came to rest on a patch of grass right before the soldier’s eyes. Hands shot from above to drag him away from the safety of the cart, pulling him up by the collar of his chain mail as easily as if he were a child.

“Until the undead recover from their losses… how long exactly?” Orophin asked, staying the cold rage in his voice. The soldier looked about the clearing at the foot of the hillside, and he saw massive grooves in the earth, as if left by the hands of a vengeful god.

And that god, he believed, was currently holding him by the neck.

[Ataraxis]

“A month, at most.”

Orophin blinked at the simple, honest answer. Even if the undead had just lied to him, he did not understand to what ends. Perhaps the undead army would recover much sooner than in a month’s time, but that was irrelevant: even a single month was far too soon. Whether it be the Legion of Light, Tor Elythis or any other of the current Raiaeran forces, they would never make it to Timbrethinil in time.

“Why are you so compliant?” The High Bard hoped to better delve into this mind that was far too… aware for an undead monstrosity. He needed something, anything to offset the troublings news he had just been given. “You have not even considered stabbing me with that dagger you keep hidden in that arm guard.”

“Would it have worked?” the soldier asked, laughing. Orophin only smiled, perfect white teeth bared viciously. “I thought so.”

“I must say I am not accustomed to the idea of conversing with one of your kind. Since you seemed to be the only one to have the answers to my questions, or at the very least the ability to try and answer them…”

“Dull boys, aren’t they?” the soldier said scoffing, dead eyes set on the remains of his subordinates. “But I don’t hold it against them. In fact, I considered them the most fortunate of us… even now.”

“How much... how much do you retain of your previous life?” the bard asked, loosening his grip around that fold of chains. While he knew full well the answer would be irrelevant to the circumstances, he had still felt compelled to seek the answer. “And why do you retain so much?”

The soldier seemed surprised. Warily, he looked away to the range of trees to his left, noticing that whatever magic this elf had cast had reached that far, as some had seen their bark blown off by the pressure of the descending winds alone. “I seems I do not have much of a choice... How much, you ask? Everything. And why? Ah... cruelty, perhaps.”

“You recall your life, yet you fight along these... these mistakes of nature? I can only conclude you were a knave before death.”

Those grey eyes that had still in death, they had come afire for the span of an instant. “I was a soldier of Galonan. I saw my comrades die in battle, just as I saw them rise as his puppets. And I... with my own hands, I had to sever their heads, that they may die again!” The skin between his eyes folded in rage as he shouted, crackling open from dehydration. “I could see the horror in their eyes as they were brought back to that perversion of life, and I spared them from it… but no matter what I say, I still slaughtered my own brothers and sisters... slaughtered them as if they had been naught but rabid dogs.”

“But no one slaughtered you.”

“No… because I lived. Or at least, I lived long enough after the battle to die on a proper deathbed. I was relieved… I thought myself lucky.”

“But a gravedigger took you from your resting place,” Orophin concluded, looking back towards the cart. The portly man had fallen from his horse, but he was not dead: only unconscious. He had made sure to spare him, for now. “And they brought you back with your entire mind, that they may garner more information on Galonan’s defenses. No doubt they had a few of you already, but you must also have been formidable enough a warrior to warrant this... reanimation.”

“But I tire of this perversion. To hear that slithering voice invade my mind, push me to these atrocities, compelling me… no more. Had I been one of his grunts, I would have foolishly attacked you by now, and I would be dead… truly dead. This nightmare would have run its course, and I would no longer be sickened by my own existence... Why can I even tell you these things? I don’t know myself… but as I can, then so I do.”

“Then let us test how far you can, if you would agree to it?” With a wistful smile, the soldier only nodded. “Who is your current commander?”

“Valainistima Lithôniel,” the soldier replied. Orophin blanched at the name, fingers curling white about the soldier’s chain mail. He realized he was still holding him up, and let go. “It seems you know her,” the undead man said as he righted himself from the sudden drop, almost as a query.

“She is… a High Bard. Or was.” Orophin palmed his forehead, feeling the cold sweats there for the first time. “Where have they made camp? At the very heart of the forest, or is that a lure?”

“It is no lure,” the soldier answered once more, though there was a clearer struggle now. “It is only at the heart of the corruption that abominations such as I – no, worse than I are made.”

“I know of what you speak… tell me now, of how many undead does the army consist?”

“I… I am unsure. Tens of thousands, perhaps a hundred?” He was clutching at his heart now, and Orophin knew what was happening. The Black had sensed the betrayal, at last. Or at least, what necromantic command was left in all his pawns had detected it and was now consuming the soldier from within. “The corpses from Galonan and Trenyce… they replenished over a third of the numbers we… they lost.”

The soldier fell to the ground, feeling his body boil from within. He watched as the cyanotic skin of his hand quavered, bubbling underneath. “You would think pain would be a welcomed change from the numbness… but even now, I loathe it. Ask, while there is still time.”

“I have but one question left for you.” Orophin knelt to the ground, folding his bardic robes under his legs. He pressed a hand on the man’s shoulder, and looked him in the eye. “What is your name, soldier?”

If there had ever been life left in this man after death, then Orophin had seen it all gathered in his eyes, burning brighter than sunshine in that look of pain, of bewilderment… then of solace, and of gratitude. “Manwë… Manwë Arphenion.”

The convulsions had reached their paroxysm. His body was spastic, the boiling of his dead blood from within now reaching the High Bard’s nostrils in a gut-wrenching draft. Yet, he did not recoil. He took the silver blade that hung at his hips, placing it against the moribund’s neck, and in the silence that followed had been a question. As his only answer, Manwë closed his eyes, and nodded without fear.

The blade swept from side to side, slicing effortlessly through flesh, bone and sinew. Before it could fall to the ground, Orophin caught the severed head with his hand. “Once Galonan is saved, I will tell them of your courage,” the High Bard told Manwë solemnly. Gently, carefully, he placed it on a patch of grass, then stood to sheathe his sword.

“Lillian, Rávion,” he said after a moment of prayer. “There will be a slight change of plans.”

[Ataraxis]

That day, a whole troop of undead had been relieved from their curse. It was, however, because of that klling mercy that they could no longer hide away. Once the undead forces realized the loss, they would know an enemy was lurking in the shadows of Timbrethinil. While powerful, Orophin could not contend with a hundred, a thousand, let alone tens of thousands of these abominations. They could no longer wait, but they could certainly not fight the hordes head on. Were it that easy, then the Raiaeran forces would not be struggling against the pawns of Xem’Zund. He had realized that when he heard Manwë speak of the undead’s recovery, and the seed of his plan had been germinating ever since. That was why he had spared the traitorous gravedigger from his onslaught.

That was why they were being smuggled amongst the corpses into the very heart of Timbrethinil.

“This is madness,” the gravedigger whispered from his horse, wary not to look back. They were in enemy territory now, and the trees were twisted sentinels, eavesdropping on the unwary and invisible eyes spying from the hollows in their trunks. The slightest disturbance, the slightest oddity would be reported to archivists within the undead ranks. Thankfully, a human ranting on to himself about the madness of things, life and everything in it did not seem to be considered unusual. “This is really, really madness…”

“Won’t they know something is amiss, if the carter isn’t escorted?” Rávion was whispering to his right in a nasally voice, as he had been squeezing the bridge of his nose. Worse than the unbearable stench, however, was his indescribably sense of wrongess about hiding within a pile of corpses. To feel that cold chill, like a slab of frozen meat, to feel crowded by the knees and elbows and foreheads and bellies of people who had once laughed, loved and felt sorrow as he had, but no more... it revulsed him. It made him feel heinous.

“Manwë mentioned something about escorting other carts.” Orophin had answered in a murmur, his golden hair peaking in between the crook of a leg and a swollen armpit. For a man of his standing, he evinced none of the expected repugnance in this situation, only that sense of discomfort a professional would feel and discard before a dirty job that needed to be done. Rávion felt his insides roil at the notion that the bard might have done something similar in his lifetime. “I asked the gravedigger, and he confirmed that once within the field of corruption, his escorts would always leave to fetch others like him. I would assume the trees, or any other infected inhabitant of this forest, would be enough to keep him… safe.”

Rávion remained silent, watching as an oddly black ant slipped from the edge of the cart, scurrying in between the fallen leaves in the utmost silence. It had not been the first, and he knew it would not be the last. “Do you think this is going to work?”

“I should hope so, or you would have made a very poor choice in following me, the originator of that plan. But silence: I believe we approach.”

“Wait: shouldn’t we wake Lillian up?” The soundsmith looked to a patch of black hair to his left. There, Lillian lay unconscious, her nostrils and mouth shrouded by an almost invisible mask of webs. She had said she wanted to inhale as little of the rot as she could, even while asleep, but all he worried about was that her brain would keep being supplied with enough oxygen.

“If I dispelled my song of slumber now, she would scream and faint... much like she did when I fist announced the plan.”

“Once we’re unloaded, then?” Rávion muttered as he returned his eyes to the forest. The trees were dark and gnarled, devoid of their leaves. They seemed like crooked old men wearing crowns of twigs, and he could imagine them lurching over young whippersnappers with a cane in hand and ready to unleash a harsh lambasting. The sordid image would have been laughable any other time, but right now, it terrified him.

“Indeed.” As Orophin gave his simple answer, three more ants leapt from the cart, skittering in opposite directions as they vanished in the soil and shadows. “While I do believe that, thanks to her ideas and contributions, our chances of success are much higher… her presence of mind would only be a liability at this moment. But again, silence: someone comes.”

“Is it you, Maurice?” a woman’s voice crooned from the front of the cart; the two elves slackened their bodies and closed their eyes, feigning death as best they could. Their breaths had almost slowed to a stop, and to the naked eye they were as unmoving as their deceased neighbours.

“Y-Yes ma’am,” the portly man said as he slid off the perch of his saddle, little sandaled feet whipping at the dry leaves as he scurried ahead. While she looked away to inspect the merchandise, his hand went for his crotch, rubbing and scratching away furiously at the soreness of too long a ride.

“You are late,” said the commander of the undead army, crossing her pale arms over an ample chest as she stole him a chiding glance. Maurice stared intently, feeling sickened by his lust for a woman that had been dead for months. Yet, she was so well preserved… even her skin did not look like that of the dead, only slightly paler than that of a living elf. It pained him to look at her face, however: that ugly, open gash across her mouth marred what would have been one of the most beautiful countenances he had ever beheld, even in his wildest - and lewdest - dreams. “Is Manwë to blame?”

“N-No ma’am. I was late because the guards were being more careful about those leaving the city. I had to circumvent their security to-”

“Yes, yes. Come along, now.” Valainistima turned on her heels, her bardic robes fluttering about her hips in gracious billows of veridian and aquamarine; Maurice cursed at himself once more for the gaudy thoughts the image had stirred within. Quickly, he mounted his horse once more, feeling a slight wave of pain as his crotch struck the saddle. With a spurring tap of his boots, the gaunt horse trotted onward, its drawn-out neigh a lazy lament. “Seventeen other carters have arrived today. They had a more abundant haul than you, as well. Might I suggest you create more corpses, like some of these innovators have?”

“I… I will consider it.”

The encampment was unlike any Orophin had ever seen – he had afforded a few peeks. Somehow, he had naively expected tents and camp-side fires, but these were monstrosities animated by the darkest facet of the Tap. Fire would be more of an inconvenience to them in this pitch-black darkness, but they seemed to have lit a few torches and braziers to allow various murderers and gravediggers to move about the bivouac more freely. There were no tents, but Orophin realized that the undead needed to shelter to sleep, or sleep at all.

There were no camps or mess tables, for the undead did not eat, either… or at least, they did not need to eat. Once, he had seen them pounce and pile over a soldier like emaciated hyenas; they had ripped him apart, scraggly fingers plunging into live flesh like fork tines into cooked meat, and they had lapped at every gush and fountain of fluids, had fed on any visceral matter they could scoop from his belly as he screamed in untold agony, witness to his own horrific cannibalism. That had seemed more of a barbaric nightmare than a need for sustenance, and he had an inkling that it was a command in their curse for the purpose of striking fear into their foes.

Yet outside the battlefield, these undead only sat or stood, on rocks or against trees, or simply in the middle of nowhere with dead eyes staring into oblivion. Some were being outfitted with armors and weapons supplied from Trenyce, taken from crates that lined the a cluster of twisted trunks. Here, the undead were only commodities, as valuable and inanimate as the swords and spears they wielded. Other than that, Orophin could only see the carts brought in by the living traitors. Still, despite that strange sense of emptiness… the encampment was immense. The cart clicked on for what could have been a mile or two, and not once in that distance did he see the line of statuesque undead flitting past his vision thin in numbers at any point.

The horse’s reluctant hoof falls came to a stop, at last. Though he could not see what it was from his vantage point, he could see the eerie glow it emitted, bathing the area in a soft, purple light. That softness, however, was one he associated to malicious shadows, to that silent radiance of demonic eyes or the numbing serenity of a ghastly apparition.

“Well, well,” Valainistima began in a curious, lilting voice. “What shall I cook up tonight?”

[Ataraxis]

“She sounds like she has just as bad a taste for puns as Lillian,” Rávion whispered as lowly as he could, though he had been careful to see if there were any undead soldiers standing close. The freights of cadavers, however, seemed to have been isolated from the troops who only stood in a tentative circle about the ritual circle. It seemed relatively safe to murmur.

“I know. I have met her before,” Orophin muttered back, a clear wince on his face. That had come as a surprise: considering how gorgeous she remained while dead, he could not fathom how much more ravishing she was when gifted with the glow of life. If the rumors on the men from the House of Súrion were true, then she should have been one of his prime targets.

“Conquest, or?” Rávion asked, finding amusement in the repulsive idea. Only then did he realize he was talking towards a bloated stomach that stank of swelling gases. “Oh... ugh. Mother Aurient...”

“Or.” Orophin seemed rather intent on clarifying that. “She was a beauty, I have to admit… but I could not take her personality. No one could. She was such a... a child, and she was my elder by centuries. The mere idea of pursuing her was...” Orophin paused at that, then scowled out of remorse. “Not that I wish to speak ill of the dead. Bless her soul… eventually.”

“Perhaps, I would knit a patchwork golem?” Valainistima continued, clearly amused by the sound of her own voice in tandem with the palpable cleverness of her wordplay. “Or… or weave a basket of… hmm…” She clicked her frail fingers impatiently, trying to find that elusive word. “Weave a... bag of bones? Wrap myself a mummy? What do you think, Maurice?”

“Those had nothing to do with cooking,” Rávion commented sharply, finding the practice of puns more and more ridiculous with every failed attempt. “Lillian was better than that, and that says something.”

“Perhaps… she was going for a housewife repertoire?” Orophin surmised, a dubious hook in his brow. He snapped back to attention, however, eyes returning to the scuttle of four more ants that dropped to the cracked earth and disappeared beneath the cart. “But shush.”

“Uhm,” the plump gravedigger considered, the sheer volume of sweat he had accumulated since this evening giving him chills. “What if… you, uhm, looked into the… wight of their eyes for the answer?”

“But I’m asking you… oh!” Valainistima laughed at that, a crystalline sound made only slightly hoary from the dryness of her insides. “I see, because of the idiomatic human expression, and the homonymy of the creatures’ common appellation... It’s good. Though, that doesn’t work with the housewife theme I had.”

“…You know her too well. Are you sure you didn’t?” Rávion pressed on the matter, but Orophin only grunted his contempt of the idea, then shushed the boy as silently as he could.

“But I’ve decided: patchwork golem it is! We’ll need the added muscle to plow through our enemies.” That last note had been tinted with an unequivocal sadism, and that had been enough to remind Rávion that this quirky elf woman had not only been a feared and revered High Bard, but was now the corrupted commander of this army. “Though, since you were such a good sport, we’ll start with your offering, Maurice!”

“What?” came their common reply, though only Maurice’s surprise had been heard.

“Pick them up and throw them into the circle, will you Chéri?” Orophin could only hear a bloody grunt come from his right, then heavy series of footsteps that pounded into the ground hard enough to make the bolts in the cart shake loose.

One colossal hand pushed down on the mound of bodies, the sudden pressure knocking the breath from the High Bard’s lungs. Its meaty fingers closed around three or so corpses, lifting them up like a wooden crane before tossing them into the air. A second later, they heard three wet thuds on the ground. Orophin sighed in relief...

Until the hand pressed down again. This time, Orophin felt its disproportionately large thumb and index slide around his waist.

“Oh… no.”

[Ataraxis]

“Phin?”

Valainistima stood akimbo at the edge of the ceremonial circle, golden brows quirked above eyes of quizzical amber. She swept a finger through her flaxen locks, which seemed oddly well-maintained for a woman that had stopped breathing for half a year. Then again, perhaps that was due to an absence of perspiration. In any case, Orophin found that her personal maintenance of basic hygiene was the least of his concerns, as of this moment.

He had flied for the first time in his two thousand years of life, but his landing had been rather brusque and painful. The stomach of a corpse had broken his fall, but the more circumstances treated these unfortunate cadavers as objects of serendipity, the more he felt ashamed of being the prime instigator of this dishonor of the dead. Without saying much, he drew to his feet, industriously dusting the folds of his crimson cloak and matching bardic robes.

“Hello, Val.” He felt the idiocy as he spoke. In a hopeless effort to correct that, he waved at her with a lethargic hand. “Long time no see.”

“Well…” He saw her eyes light up then, and he knew to steel himself for the worst. “It’s really nice of you to- ”

“Please do not say drop by.”

Her spirits sunk after that, but she shrugged it off eventually. “You know, you’re putting me in quite a pickle, Phin.”

“I am certain I must be, and for that I apologize.”

“Personally, I would like to jump at your neck and cling on, you know?” She clasped her hands and gyrated ecstatically, her innocent smile revealing rows of teeth barely dirtied by her untimely death. When she considered her duty, however, the light in her eyes had dulled considerably. “But professionally... I’m supposed to jump at your throat and tear it off with my teeth.”

“I am… thankful you are still considering.” Orophin stepped forward tentatively, watching with care to see if any of the undead would slay him there and then. While the more sentient commanders stood taut in a readied stance, they could not act without the General’s orders: as such, their underlings could not as well, and this meant he would be relatively safe for the time during. This, he knew, was a golden opportunity. “Val, are you certain of this? I do know you, and this… this is not you. You were always… eccentric in your own, special and… endearing way, but you were never heinous. Your interest in the necromantic arcane, in treating the make of such abominations as nothing more than a new recipe? And then your leading an army of these same abominations against your own true blood?”

“Let me stop you there, Orophin,” Valainistima cut his supplication short, holding a satin-gloved hand up as she stepped into the circle herself, the sway of her hips graceful and indicative of no aggression. Even in undeath, her alluring silhouette was given even more appeal by the soft glow of the braziers surrounding the ritual array. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to appeal to my memories when I was living, to my convictions and my loyalties. To make me reassess my position as the General of this army, and to have me gain this one moment of lucidity wherein which I sacrifice myself for the sake of the country we were both born in, raised, taught and tempered.” She smiled despite herself, amber eyes rolling down in the burden of her reality. “I understand that very well, and I do sympathize. I would try the same, were our situations inverted.

“But Phin, while I am still capable of sympathizing… I can no longer empathize.” The undead bard swept a hand outward in deliberation, while bringing the other to gently rest upon her deadened heart. “The Black removed this from me when he brought me back as a commander, to avoid such moral crises. Any contradiction that I become aware of, any realization about the absurdity of my circumstances… they have no effect on my new directive. None at all.”

The commander stepped forward once more, letting her arms drop to her sides. Orophin still did not move, letting her come to him, his eyes wistful as she took what time she could to explain to him the futility of it all without ever once mocking him. “I cannot disobey, nor can I even feel a desire to disobey: this is a specification he has weaved into the souls of his every General, and because of it, his control over me, over all of us… is flawless.

“Everything that is currently passing through your mind… it passed through mine as well. And just as you cannot understand it, neither can I. It is a sick, cruel, twisted torture, and I cannot revolt. I cannot even feel wronged. Therefore… I can only comply.”

“Then, you have made your decision?” Orophin took one step toward the woman, his arms spanning wide open as if to welcome her in his arms… but he knew she would not throw herself into them. She had told him she would so often in life, if the opportunity ever arose. She had told him how much she yearned for it in that joking manner that hid the truth of her desires. Though they had never been intimate, he had known for long that she had wished it were so. Seeing her like this, he regretted... not because of what he missed, but because she had died with her heart unfulfilled. “Not even... for the sake of old times?”

“You cruel man,” she replied with a sorrowful smile, unable to shed the tears her body could not produce. “You know it is no longer mine to make.”

Her hands lunged for his throat, just as he knew they would. Without reacting, he let the fingers coil around his neck, let them tense and bunch and crush as they needed to. Valainistima picked up him, slowly, carefully so as to avoid his neck snapping under his own weight. “With what little control I have… I will end your life without bloodshed. Forgive me, Phin. It was nice seeing you again.”

“It is I… that should be asking you… for forgiveness,” he managed to mutter in between dry hacks. He looked down at her hands, at the countless ants that were now streaming across her arms and onto her neck, chest and legs. Valainistima looked up in confusion, noticing that he had raised a hand, fingers poised to snap. “That’s all… of them.”

A single snap echoed through the camp... and her ears perked. Lillian darted up from the cart as stiff as a spear, freed from both the sleeping charm and the mounds of bodies that were piled upon her, as Rávion had pushed them away while Orophin stalled for time. She spun to face the ritual circle, saw the undead general drop the High Bard to brush the ants aside with both hands. Without a moment’s waste, she ripped the mask of webs from her face and brought a strange crystal flute to her lips. With a single breath of power, she played a melody as fast as lightning.

Surrounding her in an ethereal halo were specks of blue light that sparked into existence, fluttering about her body as they grew faster than the eye could follow into a majestic swarm of butterflies, radiating with an electrical glow. In one shrill note, they bolted away from the girl in a circle, speeding across the clearing like shooting stars. They searched and searched for their elusive partners, these black ants that were shrouded with a shadowy blur, these black ants that each dragged behind them the thinnest of threads that now spanned miles and miles across the forest.

And from their fated union came the violent birth of fire.

[Ataraxis]

Orophin had not spoken in jest when he had said the girl’s webs had an explosive adversity to magic. When Rávion had heard the plan, it seemed more fantasy than a real strategy, but if their frightful confidence in those threads had not convinced the soundsmith then, they certainly had him persuaded now. He had watched in silent awe as the butterflies alighted on the backs of Orophin’s shadowy ants, discharging their electricity into the threads that the magical insects had carried throughout the infected regions of Timbrethinil, unseen from the prying eyes of the sentinel trees. For a single instant, the webs burst into a pale blue network that spanned the core of the forest, reaching to the outer edges of the corruption. The following instant, however, was brighter than any fireworks he had ever seen: the threads exploded into bright flames, igniting the dry leaves, the dust, the infected bark and clawed boughs. It had also ignited throughout the encampment of the undead, though the trees and any other form of kindling were sparser there. Still, the ensuing inferno had spread in the blink of an eye, the wildfire having already climbed the treetops in the immediate area. He felt a surge of pride then, not because he had instigated any of this, but because the tools used by those who had were of his make.

After all, it was his crystal flute that Lillian had used to summon these creatures of lightning, just as it has been his crystal flute that Orophin had used to call his shadow ants beforehand.

“Stop day-dreaming, Rav!” came Lillian’s voice, and he quickly returned to the reality at hand. They were not out of the woods yet, and quite literally at that. He saw that Maurice had already mounted his thin horse, and so he hurried to help Lillian push out the remaining cadavers from the cart, repressing his shame that they had become nothing more to him than ballast to jettison. With a spur and a tug of the reins, the gravedigger sent the horse into a mad dash towards Orophin, the cart bouncing shakily in its tow.

The High Bard was picking himself up woozily, having barely shielded himself in time with a quick defensive cantrip when the webs the ants had wrapped around Valainistima exploded into binding festoons of smoke and flame. It pained him to hear her screams of shock, but knowing the hurt he caused her heart by this last betrayal was worst than anything else. It was only luck that made him notice the wild beast charging at him, and even more luck that it missed him by a hair’s breadth. Rávion and Lillian had extended their hands, catching him by the waist and tossing him into the cart with intense groans of effort. Maurice, his eyes frenetic, spurred the horse on towards a break in the walls of fire that were flaring throughout the encampment. The undead were throwing themselves to the ground, rolling and rolling to douse the flames, but the many that had been spared in the blast and were now converging towards them.

Lillian resumed her song of lightning, and swarms of her crackling butterflies soared from the tip of the crystal flute, darting for the undead that came to close. Unfortunately, without her explosive threads, their power had been greatly reduced. Aware of this, Lillian had aimed more efficiently for their eyes. As they burst into sizzling blue flashes, they left singed, somewhat molten craters in those empty orbits, sending those unfortunate undead running blind in circles.

Orophin had raised his hands, clapping them in a quick and rhythmic beat at first, consistently widening every arc and increasing the volume of his claps. Soon, the air around them warped in a heat haze, until massive spheres of fire sembled into existence. As the undead rushed close, strands of flame would arc like solar flares, turning to ash anything that dared to cross their path. They fed on the corpses, using them as combustibles until they expanded to a critical size. In the ensuing explosion, they cremated all those caught in its wake and intensified the flames that were already raging across the encampment, before finally vanishing into puffs of smoke and haze.

Yet there were still so many. They were all too slow on foot to catch up to the cart, but those who waited beyond had attempted to throw themselves in the horse’s path, or to clamber onto the cart to weigh it down. Orophin did quick work of the wave to his side with his silver blade, but seeing that Lillian only had a glass dirk to fight off those on hers, his worry invariably grew… that is, until she brought down the crystal flute Rávion had crafted in a heavy swing. He saw the crystal vibrate, saw it shape itself in a flash of reflected fire until the flute was gone. In its place was a transparent sword, sparkling majestically in the firestorm even as it sliced off the hands of an undead. “I told you all you needed was to trust yourself, Rav: you mastered it!”

“Let’s celebrate my professional breakthrough after we’re done with this!”

“That’s it! They’re starting to thin! We’re losing them, we’re losing them!” Maurice cried out in joy from the saddle, piglet eyes filling with tears of relief.

Loud, heavy thuds, reverberating from far behind. They felt them quake through the ground, felt them getting closer. “No… no, no, no!”

“It is Chéri,” Orophin whispered. “And it sounds furious.”

“How much do you think it weighs?” Lillian asked, out of the blue.

“Seems like a ton, maybe?” Rávion answered. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Orophin, start wetting the ground behind the cart now,” the girl asked simply. He had not noticed it until now, but her pale blue eyes were now ringed with a deep red, far thicker and bloodier than they had seen before. She weaved a long strand of her webs and tied it around her waist, then affixed the other end to the sturdiest part of the cart. With that done, she placed her hands on the back end of one of the wooden panels, snapping a piece off as easily as one would a twig. “Wish me luck,” were her only words as she jumped off.

The hulking behemoth was upon her now, just as she righted herself from her fall. The creature was truly a patchwork of countless corpses, all of its limbs of colors mismatched, but its face was the most gruesome piece of work she had ever seen, what with its rows of malformed eyes, huge grinning smile of filed teeth and the bony hole for its nose. As it came closer to slam her down, it threw up those massive hands, so far out of disproportion with the rest of its colossal body she wondered how it could even lift them. Lillian wasted no time: she dashed a dozen steps, ground she covered in the blink of an eye. Upon that final step, the tip of her boot bit the ground, leaving a cratered imprint as she leapt high, reaching the forehead of this ten-foot tall aberration. Her knee struck it head on, applying a maximum of force at the point farthest from the ground: the sheer moment was enough to send it crashing on its back, breaking the roots caught beneath it in an impact worthy of an earthquake. Yet, Lillian was not done.

She landed silently past its head, poised on her feet. While it thrashed like an upended turtle, she rushed to its shoulder, picking it up at first, then throwing it upwards in one impulsion. The girl rushed beneath to catch the behemoth as it fell, her hands moving along the spine until she reached its center of gravity. Once there, she coiled her legs… and spun.

When she tossed it with the added momentum, the patchwork body crashed into a burning tree with just enough speed and force to snap it partway. The behemoth wailed as the sharpened wood impaled its back, blood seeping from its eyes and mouth as its mass slid along the immense stake, black blood and viscera trailing behind as it began to cook under the heat.

And just in time, she felt the thread tug at her hips. She rushed the opposite way to pick up the wooden panel and continued her run, picking up speed until the thread she had weaved had unfurled its length. She jumped, slid the panel under her feet, and aimed to land on the slippery trail that Orophin had left behind with his song magic.

The shock was intense, and the strain of the rutted pathway on her knees was nearly unbearable, but she held on to the thread, pulling at it as the board underfoot slid along the hosed passage. She could see Rávion and Orophin pull from their own end, fearing that she would trip from the board and crash to the speeding earth at any moment.

It was a minute before she made it safely back to the cart, gasping and panting from the strain. Rávion spat a thousand oaths, cursing her for her recklessness, but Orophin only watched the creature fade away in the distance, its thrashings quelling to a stop as the smoke rose from its insides, and it died one final time.

“Quite a gambit… but it saved us all.”

“There’s still the final leg of the plan, though,” Lillian managed in between huffs and puffs, wiping the sweat from her brows. In vain, as it seemed to be replaced by more perspiration almost instantly. “It’s all up to you now, Orophin.”

[Ataraxis]

Up in the dark heavens, a great cloud had begun to aggregate. It rumbled, sparks flying within in sheet lightning. The three watched as it grew with every second, knowing full well it was no work of theirs.

“Valainistima,” Orophin said in utter awe, still sitting in the cart that Maurice had stopped in a clearing just outside of the infection. “Only a High Bard could manage this… and she is much stronger now than she had been before.”

“She intends to douse the flames before they can inflict enough damage on her army… and on the corrupted forest,” Lillian said, though she was not surprised. “It’s as we guessed.”

“Lend me the flute,” the High Bard said, his eyes focused only on the thunderhead that was now casting on the forest the deepest shadow Timbrethinil had ever known. “I cannot let her get more of a head start.”

He pressed his lips against the crystal embouchure, and began a melody with a single note that wrenched their hearts. The sound crossed the forest, reverberating throughout in crestfallen echoes until they rose to the skies themselves, rose to meet the construct of water and mist. The melody played on, rushing, ever rushing, until there was a break in that despair, a beacon of light that tore through the darkness of its music.

And just as it had enlightened the sound of his melody, so had it torn through the overcast skies like a spear. Far above, the clouds parted, sucked inward to form a clear path for the moon's light to pass. In that single moment they could see the untainted starscape, and it was a time of clarity that purged the mind.

Yet it was not long to last. The clouds boomed before they could dissipate, thickening, growing darker as the lightning arced within that heavenly gash. Soon, the clouds sembled, swallowing the light again, and the rift was closing alarmingly fast.

“Try harder, Phin! You need to fight it longer: the fire hasn’t reached our side of the corruption yet!”

“Light… it’s not your forte, is it?” Lillian asked, not expecting him to answer while he still played. “But she was always like water, wasn’t she? Valainistima is fighting with her strongest asset, and she is also empowered by the Necromancer’s boon! You can’t win with just light… you always were fire!”

“That can’t be,” the soundsmith replied. “He told me that a song-mage with an affinity for the basic elements would need to go through hell to learn any of the rarer ones, but he wields light, shadows and lightning!”

“Then, at the very least, he went through hell thrice,” Lillian whispered, and Rávion said no more. “But now is not the time for those. If you can do all those wonders I’ve just seen you execute with the snap of your fingers or the clapping of your hands, then you must know what you could achieve armed with a full-fledged song!”

And what she then heard was fury in the music. It boomed across Timbrethinil in a maddened tempo, the motion of his fingers too rapid to follow across the flute. Across the skies, singularities of dark red light had begun to form, beseeming spheres of molten lava that spewed arcs of fire. They floated up, up, up, until they were positioned right beneath the darkening storm. The melody quickened again, and the spheres burned brighter like miniature suns. The clouds hissed under their heat, the vapors swirling about the spheres until they were no more. As they kept rising, the clouds became thinner, while the fires beneath raged with renewed vigor, as if deriving even more ferocity from the suns that watched over them. The smoke was rising high above the forest now, and they knew that this towering signal would not escape the sight of all Raiaerans.

“That’s it! It reached our end!” Rávion exclaimed as he pointed to the gnarled, black trees that were now wailing as the infection was being burned out of their cores. “Keep it up just a little more and-”

The melody came to a sudden stop, and the suns shrank high overhead, until there was nothing more. Orophin fell to the cart unconscious, completely spent by the continuous abuse of his bardic magic over the course of this night. The broken clouds gathered again, smaller this time, but there would be no stopping them now.

Soon, the rain came in a heavy downpour, dousing the flames from the encampment first. It was only half an hour later that the last of the fires had been snuffed out, and even a few regions of the forest that had not been corrupted were now nothing more than ashes. Lillian was far from concerned about that, however. If their sacrifice had ensured that the rest of the forest could be saved, then she was content. Moreover, the army that had escaped Nenaebreth had been dealt a second crippling blow, and the corruption that had grown and reigned unchallenged in Timbrethinil had been stunted. Whatever friendly eyes had seen the towering smoke rise from the forest would know the tides there had turned, and would press themselves to capitalize on this chance to sanctify the sacred forest, and perhaps even annihilate their weakened enemies.

The only thing she truly cared about right now was that albeit weak, Orophin’s heart still beat. Because of his rank as a High Bard, they had asked far too much from him, having him bring about what could only be considered as miraculous phenomena one after the other. The power he had shown just now, however, exceeded even that… and Lillian knew that Raiaera had found a new beacon of hope.

Sometimes, she had a hard time believing this beacon was a lecher… but in the end, beggars could truly not be choosers.

“When do you think they’ll come now, Rávion?” Lillian asked, cradling the spent song-mage in her arms with care.

“If no one’s here within the week… believe you me, I’ll have a few choice words about Nalith’s organizational skills.”

The girl chuckled, thinking to herself she would enjoy seeing that. The two were brought back to reality by a familiar, sweaty grunt. Maurice was coughing from his saddle, hoping to attract their attention. “You realize… we’re still not out of the woods? Physically speaking, that is.”

Rávion looked at Lillian, blinking in agreement. “What say you we remedy that?”

“Yes, let’s. If I even spend another day here, I think I’d burn the forest down to the ground again – and for good, this time.” Sighing, Lillian leaned back against a wooden panel, closing her eyes for a well-deserved moment of respite. She found much comfort in Maurice’s cry of ‘giddy up’ and the following whirs of the cart wheels.

But as the sickly horse pulled them along, Rávion had found one last thing to comment on. “You know… at this pace, leaving this place will be a two day ride.”

He heard something snap, and he knew it was not Maurice’s riding crop.

[Ataraxis]

I hope that you few who've read this from start to end could find a measure of enjoyment in it! It's very different from my usual writing, since I used it as an opportunity to unclog my writer's block. Probably the fastest solo I've ever written. Well, it's the second solo I've ever written, and the first one took 500 days, so it's not really that hard to beat.

But yeah! Hope you liked it.

Oh, and before I forget or before this gets judged, this quest was taken from an eponymous mission found in the Retribution Dawning Mission Board. Details were discussed with Flames of Hyperion after I claimed it through PM. Not sure if that changes anything about rewards, but that's mostly where I got the ideas for the spoils from (specifically from this broken link in the Mission Board), so hey. ICly, it seems to be pretty important, but I guess I'll leave that to the people in charge.

Spoils

Wilwarin's Signature - A rapid melody that allows for the player to summon a swarm of sorcerous butterflies. Their wings glow an ethereal blue, and their flutter is accompanied by a sound much like the crackling of electricity. In large numbers, they are small and individually deal medium shocks, but they are larger in small numbers and can stun and cause a notable level of pain by electrocution. The effects of the song are best with a flute or when sung, but a very small fraction of the tune's potential can be used with finger snaps or hand claps. (Exact numbers to be determined either by judge or by the RoG mod).

Crude Maple Flute - A simple flute crafted from maple. It has no special properties. It was a gift from Rávion.

Valdaglerion Flute-Blade - Crafted from an unknown crystal, this flute is imbued with the magic of Valdaglerion soundsmiths, allowing it to transform into a flute-blade with a rapid swing or a strong grip. In its blade form, it still has apertures for wind to pass, allowing for the use of toned-down song-magic in combat. The use of song-magic through the flute form, however, enhances its effects by 1.5x. It was a gift from Rávion. (Strength to be determined the same way).

The equivalent of 4 shirts or 2 jackets (4 spools) in her magical black-silk cloth, as stated in her ability, Seamstress of the Sinister. They approach the strength of dehlar.

And the last spoil... isn't for me.

The Return of Orophin Súrion - I request that he may officially rejoin the ranks of the High Bard Council (of which Nalith is the only purported survivor). This would entail actually returning to Eluceliniel with whatever army picks them up from Timbrethinil, and him being hailed for his feats of pushing back by months the recovery of the undead army and of burning down over two thirds of the corruption there (with some credit to Rav and Lily). Also, by that time, Rav will have made him a crystal blade-flute too, and one much better than the prototype he gave Lillian. Otherwise, I don't expect he'll do anything other than apologize to Nalith for not being there to support her, and, well, actually start supporting her in battles and the such. Basically, it'd be cool if he started appearing places, and was written by other people as an official NPC of importance, maybe.

If there are any questions, qualms or doubts about the spoils, I would be glad to clarify through either PM or AIM (Username: Necathys).