Dark Race

[Galleoyn]

“At last! It is complete!” the shrill voice echoed through the shadowy stone hall. The hundred foot long stone hallway was lined with sparking metal rods and tubes flowing with viscous liquids. Large rats with overly intelligent eyes darted in and out through complicated iron machinery that no sane man could hope to understand. The dark hall crept onwards and opened at the end into a round chamber that towered up out of depths of the black keep and into the night sky. Electricity cracked and popped in the air as gargantuan steel coils snaked up the hundreds of feet to the top of the tower, drawing energy from the storm that raged overhead.

The center focus of the bottom half of the tower was the two-hundred ton iron maiden that vibrated from time to time as thunderous roars erupted from inside every time lightning coursed through the colossal torture device. The great cries of pain rivaled even the thunderclaps overhead.

On a platform level with the head of the iron maiden, stood a sharply-dressed-half-elven-necromancer-overlord with a hunched, caricature of a man who limped from one end of the platform to the other flipping switches and pulling levers, muttering “Yes master! Thank you master!” as he worked.

“I’ve done it!” the necromancer cried. “Behold the fruits of our labour Eh-gor! Galleoyn, The-Sharply-Dressed-Half-Elven Necromancer-Overlord has given life to the greatest creation Althanas has ever seen!

The great iron maiden burst asunder with a mighty roar, as massive, rusted iron sheets fell to the floor of the chamber with a deafening clank. The keep’s foundations shook as Galleoyn’s monster roared once more and took its first breaths. The creature was nearly a hundred feet tall itself, fitting tightly in the stone tower, wrapping both sets of its gory, skinless arms around itself to fit into its close confines. Two great iron jawbones the size of coffee tables, grated noisily as the creature’s two great mouths open and closed. Each jaw was equipped with lines of gore-spattered coffin nails and old mining and digging equipment and torture impliments, all sharpened to a razor edge. The creature’s face was vaguely humanoid, although devoid of skin. Red, mucousy blood leaked out from the gaps around its fish-like black eyes. Brain matter spattered the earth as the creature shook its head, the back of its skull being held open by great steel hooks and chains. The distorted faces of men and women with permanent masks of pain and anguish rose to the surface of the translucent grey matter before sinking back into the squishy, filthy mass.

“Arise Percy! Take revenge upon those who labelled your conception madness! The world shall be our kingd-”

The grand speech was cut short as the great monster unravelled its mighty arms, crushing the small black figure against the stone wall and machinery behind him. The sharply dressed half-elven necromancer was killed on impact, every bone in his body shattered and his organs liquefied. Eh-gor raced down the spiralling stairs that wound around the inside of the tower to the safety of the hall below, but the lame leg he was cursed with at birth would not take him fast enough as the creature’s oversized scorpion tail caught him in the mid section, filling the poor soul with its vile venom.

The behemoth easily tore down the fortified stone tower and leapt from the keep, charging down the rocky mountainside on all six-hundred-and-sixty-six legs, towards the small fishing village below...

“Galleoyn...”

Cries of terror and panic erupted from...

“GALLEOYN!”

The half-elf opened his eyes suddenly to find himself propped against a young oak in the middle of the small grove he and the small envoy of mercenary soldiers had chosen as their camp. The mercenary band leader, a young upstart by the name of Bozen, stood over the white-robed mage, looking unimpressed even through the half-elf’s bleary vision, his glasses laying in the grass beside him.

“You were screaming in your sleep. I did not imagine that necromancer’s got nightmares,” Bozen said with a smirk, drawing laughter from the other men scattered around the camp, now quiet and listening intently. “Did the great and powerful necromancer have a bad dream?”

Galleoyn, the poorly-dressed-and-very-dirty-after-three-days-of-arduous-travel-on-foot-half-elven-fledgling-Necromancer-with no-title, rose to his feet with a sour expression on his face. He balanced his half-moon shaped spectacles on his nose before collecting his few belongings.

“Quite the opposite,” the necromancer said quietly, almost under his breath.

There was nothing like being woken from a wonderful dream to start the day off badly.

[Spirit Hunters]

Green fireworks exploding over the ocean during the day. If you could see fireworks during the day that is.

That is what tall grass looks like, upside-down and contrast to the crystal-blue noon sky. Flickering hues of light and dark green shimmering as the sun filtered through the rustling tree leaves above. There was a toss of strawberry-blond as Pourquoi rolled onto her stomach and took in all the wonders Spring had to offer.

Elves always held a fondness of Spring but Pourquoi’s bordered on obsession. The scent of the pollen in the air filled her nostrils with their perfume aroma and distant memories of childhood happiness taunted her train of thought. The young Spirit Hunter rose to her feet. Having seen more than half a century’s worth of season cycles, the much slower aging elf girl did not appear to have even seen her twentieth.

She was short; a whole head shorter than the average human, and layers of coats and sweaters belied both her slender form, and the unseasonably warm weather. Alabaster skin and a youthful face was framed by her mane of cherry-hued pale hair. Strange black swirls and patterns lined her scalp and the sides of her delicate face like the edges of a drama mask. Rays of light glistened in the elfling’s honey coloured eyes as she took in her hilltop surroundings.

Pourquoi and her human warrior friend had set up camp on the grassy peak overlooking a small waypoint village with a population so small it wasn’t even given a name. Wisps of smoke rose from the largest of the small collection of stone buildings - presumably the inn. The other large structure would be the garrison, Pourquoi assumed. The village was on the frontier, and chances were, the most popular occupations in the area next to farming were grave robbery and banditry. A small, vulnerable village like that would definitely need at least some military presence to keep it safe from brigands, thieves and roaming monsters.

Other than the two noteworthy large buildings, the rest of the town was very small indeed. There was maybe another twenty to thirty buildings; a few located in the hub of the village, and the rest nothing but small farms dotting the hillside.

Those honey eyes were drawn to a pair of figures cresting the hill and closing on the Spirit Hunter camp. The two were human men, armed with guardsman halberds brandished casually and suits of plate armror adorning their bodies. Both wore their facial hair in short, well maintained beards and had similar hawk-like noses that indicated they might be kin. The soldiers walked slowly past the covered wagon and closer to Pourquoi, seeming to be relieved that the intruder in the city limits was nothing more than a lone girl; hardly what they were expecting.

“You must be lost lass. Nothing here of interest for a young sprite such as yourself,” the slightly shorter of the two men said calmly but with a note of suspicion. “I might be asking you to turn around while there’s still daylight for you to turn in.”

“No offense gentlemen, but I won’t be going anywhere during the day, or during the night for that matter.” The young elf said with a hint of a grin. “We’re here on official business and we’re just passing through,” Pourquoi continued, looking at the two men evenly, not backing down in the slightest. The young woman knew that her burly companion’s honed warrior sense of hearing had already awoken and alerted him in the back of the wagon where he was napping. At any moment he would leap out and put an end to the misunderstanding and come to her rescue as was the way they usually operated. Pourquoi found the problems, Qu’est-ce solved them.

The two soldiers looked around, confused, not seeing any other people present. “Yes, any second now,” she thought to herself growing slightly worried as a long minute passed with no signs of re enforcements.

“Alright, we better take her in for questioning, just in case there are others nearby. We’ll send someone for the wagon when we get back to base,” the elder and larger of the two men said to the other who nodded and grabbed Pourquoi by the sleeve of her dark purple overcoat.

The elven girl struggled against the forceful man’s grip on her coat, but to no avail. She protested loudly, calling for her knight in shining armour, but he never came. She was escorted down the hill by her captors and towards the town center where the Spirit Hunter suspected she was about to spend the better part of the day in yet another dusty jail cell. Pourquoi knew that her beautiful spring afternoon was only going to get worse as she heard the sound, deep snoring of her great protector, back atop the hill and completely unaware of what had transpired.

[Galleoyn]

Bozen wasn’t quite six feet tall. He was certainly well muscled although not the largest man Galleoyn had ever seen. It wasn’t his size that was intimidating however, but his bountiful youthful energy. He was constantly alert and eager to prove himself to his more seasoned and vicious mercenary comrades, which made him all that much more dangerous. A teenager with a sword and something to prove was more dangerous than any run of the mill bandit or mercenary.

There were seven other mercenaries in the camp each looking more like a lost soul than the last. Their names were impossible to remember, each Merc hailing from a different land with a different naming system, and a hundred different dialects, so instead, Galleoyn assigned them all private nicknames known only to him.

Bones had at least twenty years on everyone in the group and spoke with a thick, somewhat dwarven accent. He was named after his gaunt appearance, almost skeletal, which just further emphasized his age. Cannibal was a gorgeous young woman, both shapely and muscular. She was a swordswoman of no little skill, and threatened that if Galleoyn should choose to come within ten feet of her, she would eat him alive. Scrapes was covered from head to toe in scars in various stages of healing, some still fresh and bleeding. Even the Necromancer’s morbid curiosity could not bring him to ask Scrapes where he got them, and whether or not they were self inflicted.

After Scrapes, Galleoyn had no patience or creativity left in him, and so the remaining mercenaries were named “One-Eye”, “Knuckles”, “Piggy”, and “Skunk”, all for painfully obvious reasons. None of them stood out with anywhere near as much of the charisma or presence possessed their leader Bozen. The cocky young mercenary strode about in the clearing, tapping his heavy longsword on his shoulder as he paced.

“So necromancer,” the youth began. “Tell us once more why we are in the retched frontiers, so far from civilization, and women!”

The latter remark brought forth great laughter from the other mercenaries and an angry scowl from Cannibal.

“As you wish,” Galleoyn replied, ignoring the young man’s obvious attempt to display superiority over the more experienced and visibly weaker mage. “My employer, the great... Mr. V, is paying you to escort me into the frontier hills, in search of a magic relic. The hills are rumoured to carry a radiation charge which will not bring any harm to us on such a short term visit, but it is thought to have varying long term affects on the generations of local wildlife. That is why you are here, to protect me from them, which you have all excelled at so far, and I would like to extend my deepest...” Galleoyn was interrupted as One-Eye made a rude noise, drawing yet more laughter from the other mercenaries. Galleoyn ended his thought on that note, smiling politely, and eyeing One-Eye intently. The man shifted his weight uncomfortably under the necromancer’s stare and cleared his throat, asking a question to clear the tension.

“So what kind of monsters are we looking at here? None of those vampires or ghouls you hear tell of in the speak-easy, eh?” One-Eye asked trying not to sound nervous, but he could not stop his eyes from darting to the shadows cast by the tall oaks in the grove.

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Galleoyn asked pointing past One-Eye into the shadows. One-Eye jumped back and drew his sword instinctively, and turned around facing the trees, but no attack followed. All the other mercenaries had a good chuckle at One-Eye’s expense and shook their heads. Bozen however, was not laughing. He too had his sword drawn and his eyes seemed to be following something none of the others could see in the darkness of the thick grove of trees. With a flash of steel and crimson, One-Eye gasped as blood sprayed everywhere freely soaking him and the grove clearing floor. The other mercenaries drew their weapons but quickly realized the blood was not his own. At One-Eye’s feet lay a wolf at least twice as big as any wolf they had ever seen before, split down the middle. Bozen was already cleaning the red smears off his blade while the wolf was still in its death throes, convulsing uncontrollably as the last signs of life left its body.

“A frontier wolf,” Galleoyn said calmly, walking towards the tree line and gently patting Bozen on the back as the necromancer passed him and the giant deceased hound. “Mutant wolves affected by the aforementioned radiation from the hills. Doubly vicious, and it also happens to be spring, which means mating season should be in full swing soon, making them even more of a problem. You should all take care to watch the shadows, especially at night. Most frontier creatures are nocturnal,” the necromancer continued, studying the blood-soaked One-Eye. “One last thing you should know about frontier wolves, by the way,” Galley called over his shoulder. “They also travel in packs, like most normal wolves. One isolated attack is very unlikely. There are probably at least one or two more nearby.”

Galleoyn turned to face Bozen with a smile on his face as the warrior grappled with a five-hundred pound canine. Cannibal and Knuckles stood back to back as a pair of the mighty animals circled them. The other Mercs took up flanking positions and the grove became a cyclone of flashing teeth, fur, and steel.

As the surprised men and women defended themselves valiantly, Galleoyn hid amongst a copse of ferns, waiting for the sound of battle to end. He wasn’t a coward by most standards. He simply knew that a mage’s place on the battlefield was not the front lines. He had placed a spell of armour upon Bozen when he patted him on the back a few moments earlier and hoped that it would be enough to keep at least the young mercenary alive through the battle. The necromancer had done his part and now there nothing left to do but wait for the outcome of the battle.

He only noticed the wolves in the first place because of his keen hearing, a gift from his elven-blooded father and had only known of the creatures because of his more in-depth mission briefing. Galleoyn had to face the fact that had he been stuck in that clearing with the other combatants, he would most likely not fare as well. The cunning half-elf needed the other mercenaries. For now anyways.

[Spirit Hunters]

“No. You were just sleeping the day away while I had to eat oatmeal that looked like it was scraped from under a rock, with a spoon that might have actually been washed once. Maybe. With spit! Oh my god, you let me eat gruel with a spit-spoon. I don’t even know what to say to you right now. Were you purposely trying to see how hard you could fail at protecting me? Because if that was the case, you did very well...”

Pourquoi sat across from her partner with her arms crossed tight in front of her chest and a very pouty, almost childish expression etched on her usually gentle face. Across from the small elf sat Qu’est-ce, another Spirit Hunter; Pourquoi’s partner, and the current subject of her ire. He was a large man by any standards, but not exactly the pinnacle of human condition. A small but noticeable paunch belied the great man’s great love of food. A suit of sturdy chainmail protected most of his body and was still in fairly good shape, although most of the shine was gone from the steel, tarnished from use. Next to his barstool leaned a large shield and longsword that had seen a similar amount of use. Qu’est-ce was a practical man and never had any use for flair. His hair was dark brown and shaggy, but clean. A matching scruffy beard adorned his face and his eyes matched the beard and hair. There wasn’t very much else to describe about Qu’est-ce, save his smile. Legend said that one smile from the warrior could earn a warm hug from Medusa herself. There was just something so calming and gentle about it that quelled almost any fire in any heart.

Any heart except Pourquoi’s at that particular moment it seemed. The two had been arguing the remainder of the afternoon away in the common room of the inn after the overly long process of freeing Pourquoi from the local jail.

“I already said I was sorry!” Qu’est-ce pleaded, his bear paw-sized hands raised in self-defense. “How can I make it up to you?”

The giant of a man had never seen his shy companion so agitated.

“Look, we got some valuable information out of all of this didn’t we? We know that there’s another group heading towards the barrows. Maybe we can join up with them and make our lives a bit easier right?” Qu’est asked enthusiastically.

“That’s true,” Pourquoi answered after a few moments of silence. In truth, her anger had subsided a while ago and the sly elf was starting to enjoy hassling him, but it had run its course and so Pourquoi decided to focus on the matters at hand. “So who are ‘the Delyn Panther’s?’” she asked, tilting her head to the side and sipping the tea she had been letting cool on the hardwood bar table.

“The Delyn Planatars?” Qu’est clarified with a chuckle. “I don’t remember much about them but I’ve heard that name before. A group of adventurers I think. Or maybe mercenaries. That’s all I’ve got.”

“They could be scouting for the Wight as well,” Pourquoi guessed. “Maybe a bounty or a commission? I mean regardless, it might be good to have some other people out there in case we run into trouble.”

“Exactly. I just wish I could remember where I’ve heard the name before...” Qu’est went on with a sigh. “At any rate, we know the target has been seen in the barrows North of the village and has made contact with the locals.”

“Any confrontations?” inquired the elf.

“Yes. Mostly farm animals but there have been about ten reports in total in the last 2 years of disappearances, mostly before the knights set up the garrison here in town. Not so much in the last little while,” Qu’est answered optimistically

“Not that it matters, but what’s the reward?” Pourquoi asked gathering her possessions and heading out of the inn towards the large elm tree that sheltered their wagon and horse.

“Not much this time. Five-hundred gold for the clan. Two-hundred for us, and the captain of the guard here in town told me that he would toss in a little something extra on behalf of the townsfolk if we can get the job done before anyone else gets hurt. I know it’s not the payload we’ve been looking for, but I guess we really can’t complain. Just one monster. A spook too. No crazy special powers. Just hits fast and hard and bullies the peasants into tributes and sacrifices.”

“That’s not very nice. We’ll have to teach Mr. Wight to be a little more courteous to his neighbors,” Pourquoi said, climbing into the back of the covered-wagon while Qu’est-ce mounted the driver’s seat and took the reins. The elf leaned out of the back compartment over the back of the driver’s seat and continued her conversation.

“Once we get to the base of the real hills, we’ll have to leave the wagon and do the rest on foot,” Qu’est said, quoting the directions he received from the guard captain along with the sincerest apologies of the two guards who arrested Pourquoi. “Hey, by the way. When you asked about us getting paid, what did you mean, ‘not that it matters’?”

Pourquoi looked as if she was caught off guard, but quickly composed herself and looked around the outskirts of the village at the view of the rolling hills, and beautiful budding trees and flowers, remembering once more how much she loved the beauty of her favorite season.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”