WARLORDS IV – STORY

Chapter Seven: The City of Broken Dreams

Within the ruined city, the Daemon Eligos seemed to grow in confidence. His army of Gnolls was joined by Orkish wolfriders who patrolled the city's borders, and by Goblin archers. He ordered his prisoners to be split up and guarded, while he himself made "preparations."

I know this place.

Terrwyn's voice in his mind stirred Daerec from dark thoughts. He was being kept in a the ruined foundations of a small home, unchained, but watched over by a pair of sneering Orcs.

But not. . . like this. There is a legend among my people, that in the violence and hunger of the early days, a prophet promised peace and comfort to those that would follow him across the mountains, into the wild countries of the east. He promised that he would bring protection from beyond to guard their lands, and summon servants to bring bounty and prosperity. Many followed, and for a time, travelers would return, bearing word of the glory of the great city of Altelan. But then, one day, without explanation, all such stories ceased, and no travelers came, and none ever returned.

Daerec sighed and stared at the ruins around him. What does it matter? So they died, so we will die.

The Altelani died because they fled from life, from the struggles of living. Do not share their mistake, Daerec. If the gods had meant for us to die, we would have died already.

Surrounded by the crimson marsh, by the smell of death, by the savage denizens of Kor, Daerec's cold thought was only, There are no gods here. With that, he closed his mind.

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Night fell on Aceldama. The wet heat of the marsh did not abate, and sweat clung to Daerec's filthy, swollen skin. The night air was abuzz with the sound of insects, and torn occasionally by the guttural grunt of an Orc. The Gnolls, it seemed, had been dismissed, sent back to roam the western plains.

Daerec had no idea where the others were. The ruins were too expansive, and they had lost sight of each other quickly. Even if he could somehow escape, fight his way free, what then? He could neither find nor abandon his friends; he would be captured and imprisoned until Eligos completed his dark plans, or else killed and cast into the marsh, to be slowly consumed by rot and swamp creatures.

Daerec, came Terrwyn's voice. She had been calling to him, but he had ignored her. He had been in her mind as she had been in his, and he had known how she had suffered since being brought to Aceldama. He had heard the screams that she had tried to muffle, felt the revulsion that she had tried to shield. He had known the cruel touch of Eligos, had felt it as if the Daemon's hands were upon him, and not Terrwyn.

His weakness was to blame. And in his shame, he could not face her.

Please, Daerec.

He would not answer.

Even if. . . even if I would rather die, even if you would rather die, we cannot. Our lives, our deaths, are not our own to give. Just as you and I have shared our lives. . . so have we tied our lives to all of Etheria.

He tried to shut her out, but was too weak even for that.

You know why I came. You know that my Order turned its back. As Lysea has turned its back. There are so few left, now, who can stand to face the darkness. And if we can do what all those others cannot, and go to our deaths defying evil, must we not do that?

And now he knew -- that Terrwyn had been his strength when death held him, that the bonds of duty he felt had been strengthened by her will, not his. But no longer. Whatever world had brought him to this doom deserved no saving.

I don't want to die, Daerec. I want to see you again.

Without willing it, indeed, against his will, he thought, No.

Daerec! Terrwyn's desperate cry screamed in his mind. You're there.

I cannot see you again, Terrwyn. I cannot look in your eyes. You should have left me to die.

Those who have always been deaf cannot know silence, as those who have been blind cannot know light. But worst of all are those who have known sound, know sight, and then had it taken from them. In that moment of silence, Daerec realized that even when Terrwyn was not speaking, even when all his will was bent against listening, still she had been there. And now, she was not. A terrible solitude crept inside him then, more profound than any he had known.

Terrwyn. He quested out and sought her in all the crevices and hidden places of his mind. But there was nothing.

He realized then that he feared death. Not the pain, nor even the end of his own being. He realized that the thought of being wrapped in darkness eternal, without her star to shine for him, was more than he could bear.

With that, he stood.

Immediately, one of the two Orcs bellowed out a warning. Daerec turned and stared at his squat, green-skinned captors. They thought that two Orcs could keep him from Terrwyn?

Something in his eyes must have warned the Orc, for it stomped toward him growling out dire threats. Daerec stepped forward and swung his fist with all the coiled rage of a lifetime of watching the darkness push back the light, of watching civilization make way for savagery, of watching love and honor ground away. His fist slammed into the Orc's throat and for a moment, the creature's eyes widened, wide enough to see death in its last moments of life. Desperate gasps wheezed out of the Orc's crushed throat, as it fell to its knees and blood streamed from its open mouth. Daerec snatched the Orc's undrawn sword from its corpse.

The second guard rushed toward him, valiantly brandishing a huge mace. But both Orc and Man, eyes locked, knew exactly who would die. The Orc brought its mace down with brute force, so much that when Daerec spun to the side, the steel head shattered a huge chunk of the stone ruins. As the Orc struggled to swing its weapon back up, Daerec brought his sword up across its chest and face, in a spray of blood and torn flesh.

As the Orc clutched at its bleeding face, Daerec swung his sword high, cleaving halfway through its neck. Kicking the corpse aside, he stalked forward, ever calling out in his mind: Terrwyn, Terrwyn!

The moment he stepped out from the ruins that had been his cell, he heard the shrill cry of a Goblin. He spun and saw the archer notching his arrow from ten paces off. By sheer reflex, Daerec hurled his sword at the Goblin, charging behind it. The sword crashed into the Goblin's shoulder, stunning it. As the Goblin fumbled to recover its hold on the bow, Daerec leapt forward, tackling his foe. Pinning the smaller Goblin beneath him, Daerec scrambled for a grip on the arrow. His filthy, cracked nails scratched against the Goblin's green fingers, each of them frantic, breaths gasping, hearts pounding. With a jerk, Daerec managed to pull the arrow away. He clutched it in one hand, and then jammed it through the Goblin's eye, roaring no less bestially than his Orkish captors.

His hands wet with black blood, Daerec rose from the corpse, a snarl frozen on his face. He picked up his sword and continued his hunt through the ruins. Terrwyn!

But still no response.

This time, he was cautious as he rounded a corner and turned onto a new avenue. A short distance away, looking the other direction, was an Orc wolfrider. His canine steed was enormous, larger by far than any of the dogs that prowled Lysea. The Orc himself was armored in black chainmail, and held loosely over his shoulder a crescent axe.

Daerec approached slowly, silently, moving through the shadows. If the wolf heard him, if it smelled him, if the Orc turned -- a thousand possibilities could have stopped Daerec, driven him back down some other route. But he saw none of them. In his mind were two things: the desperate silencing of Terrwyn's voice, and the image of Eligos gutted and bloody. Anything else was to be ignored or destroyed as necessary.

He lunged, raising his sword and burying it in the wolf's hindquarters. With a howl of pain, the wolf began bucking wildly, its back legs dead and useless. The wolf's thrashing tore Daerec's sword from him, but the Orc, thrown from its mount, had lost its weapon in the fall.

The Orc scrambled to its feet and dove into Daerec, knocking him to the ground. Before Daerec could react, a huge fist slammed into his face, crashing his head against the stone cobbles. Daerec refused to give in to the unconsciousness that rushed up around him. His vision cleared just in time to see the Orc raise its fist once more.

But at that moment, the wolf, mad with agony, spun and snapped its jaws around the Orc's outstretched arm. The Orc howled in rage and began striking the wolf with his free fist. Daerec, still pinned beneath him, struggled to free his arms. The wolf slowly gave up its bite and the Orc turned back to Daerec -- just as Daerec freed his arms. Before the Orc could swing again, Daerec grabbed its arm in his hands. A look of sneering disgust stretched across the Orc's face, confident in its superior strength and in the weakness of the soft human beneath. And then that look began to change, as Daerec force its arm back, and, with a heave, threw the Orc bodily off him. Daerec scrambled to his feet moments before the Orc did the same.

Before his enemy could regain balance, Daerec kicked the Orc's knee. With a sickening crunch, the leg bent wholly backwards. The Orc stared down in bafflement before collapsing. Still, it was undeterred, and crawled toward its axe.

As Daerec raced for his sword, he saw another hand pull the axe off the ground. Daerec spun and swung, stopping only inches from his presumed foe's neck; stopping, because there before him, his one eye wild, was Kurgen.

"Duernoth!" the Dwarf roared, embedding the axe in the Orc's back. As the creature twisted and flipped, Kurgen gave Daerec a bitter smile. "I heard you coming," he said wryly. "Now let's find the wizard and the Sirian, and see if we can't bring a bit of doom of our own down on that Daemon."

Daerec returned the Dwarf's smile, but not without worry. "Something is wrong with Terrwyn," he warned.

"Aye," Kurgen answered, dragging his axe out of the Orc's corpse. "But naught that the Daemon's death won't fix, eh?"

Terrwyn, Daerec queried once more. And this time, there was just a tiny spark, a hint of life. "This way!" he cried, running through the streets.

They fell upon a goblin patrol before either group knew what had happened. Yet the Goblins, sure of themselves, in their own domain and under the leadership of a Duke of Hell, could not have suspected the fury of the loosed prisoners. Within moments -- moments of blood and death, seconds of screamed, unanswered prayers to Goblin gods -- the patrol was reduced to corpses and severed limbs.

"Archers," the Dwarf sneered. "Never much cared the like."

Daerec could not share in his black humor. He led them on, through the winding streets, careful now to stay in the shadows. But they saw little of the city's guardians. If they knew of their prisoners' escape, they must have been seeking them elsewhere.

"There!" Daerec hissed, pointing toward a building whose state was somewhat better than the rest of the city. Though no roof stood, its walls were still high and whole, and there was a wooden door, clearly recently built, in the one entryway. "Terrwyn is there."

The two raced across the street and into the building.

There, indeed, was Terrwyn, lying limp and seemingly lifeless upon an obsidian alter, stripped of armor and weapons, cleaned of the grime of the road, but clean as a corpse is cleaned for a funeral -- too pale and pure to be living.

There, too, was Eligos, waiting, his enormous sword drawn, its point resting upon the ground and his two armored hands upon its hilt. "Good," the Daemon laughed. "You spared me the effort of bringing you here myself."

Daerec kicked the door shut behind him. "You will die here, Eligos."

The Daemon laughed. "You would threaten a deathknight with death? Next will you threaten the sun with fire? Mountains with pebbles?" He shook his covered head. "No one will die here. Not even you." His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "You see, you were meant to come here. The Mistress needs new captains. Captains whose souls are as black and twisted as her own, but whose purposes are just as pure."

"Pure?" roared Kurgen, taking two steps forward.

"Careful," the Daemon warned. "Or the paladin might be harmed." Kurgen bristled but advanced no further. "Yes, pure, Dwarf-lord, though happier I would be if she were not. She, like you, knows that this world's ruin is upon it. And she, like the departed souls of this city, seeks to forestall such ruin by summoning my kind to be her slaves." He laughed. "You can see how fine a proposition that was here. But Elves, for all their long lives, learn their lessons no better than Men. Now I am to offer you a choice -- the same choice I offered the paladin. Serve her freely, or serve her as slaves." Again, he laughed. "As for myself, I would rather you give me the opportunity to break your will."

"Ha!" Kurgen spat. "Any hag that consorts with Daemons, Orcs, and dog-men should know better than to claim a pure heart." He swung his axe a few times and rolled his shoulders. "And if you want to break a will, come and try. You'll find we Dwarves are more stubborn than you'd expect."

Daerec gave a hard nod. "Whatever else comes, one of us dies here, Daemon." He pointed his blade at Eligos's heart. "This sword has drawn black blood already tonight, but its work is not yet through."

The deathknight's eyes flared, and he raised his sword. "Then let us play."

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