Month: July 2018

*Scene 01* – 00:00 (Monsters in The Lake)

Despite the serenity of the scene, we noticed something moving along the edge of the large pool, just below the surface.  A whitish form, roughly oblong in shape, created a pale, cloudy, luminescence below the green surface.  Its sinuous undulating motions created a rippling wake, though no part of it appeared to break the crest of the water.  Other than that, its form was elusive.  More fish-like in motion than that of an animal.   Yet in the Mid-Worlds, no possibility could be completely ruled out.  If we were to learn any more, we would have to get closer.  And the way ahead must certainly require we pass within a neared proximity, whether we wished to or not.

Additional movement caught our eye, as something large and moving fast came into sight at the far left end of the pool, moving fast down the tree-shrouded slope, noisily crashing through the underbrush, huffing and rumbling as it slid and skidded downward towards the water’s edge.  Finally, it crashed through the skirting brush and skidding to a stop on the mossy, grassy bank.  Gray smoke feathered steamy tendrils from its tawny back, and its powerful front claws dug into the mud and grass, tearing out great gouts of the embankment, scaring the shoulder as it bounded towards the water.  It was one of the manticores, that had laid siege to Azragoth.  It mewled and growled angrily, its hide blackened and burnt, its great mane singed and matted with melted fur and fiery welts where the oil and tar continued to smolder and lick its body with fading blue flames.  The hide of its back was red and raw, the fire had peeled it and cauterized the wounds so that they merely wept rather than bled out.  Its face was contorted, disturbing in its partial human and bestial mix, its feral eyes roving for something to take its fury out on, its slack and fanged jaws champing at the misty air from the pounding falls.  It gathered itself, muscular hind legs bunched, front legs and chest lowered nearly to the ground, segmented and scorched tail lashing back and forth in angry whip-like motions, before it sprang into the large green pool with a mighty SPLOSH, water exploding up onto the shore as the weight of the savage creature plunged downward.  The aura of flames, finally doused, the creature surfaced, its wet matted mane plastered against its neck as it paddled to and from allowing the cooling water to soothe its suppurating wounds.  One might have even felt sorry for the creature, had we not known of its capacity for violence and the threat it posed to our friends and us as we traveled further into the interior.  If the beast survived its wounds, it would surely stalk us through the forest and eventually bring us down.  Manticores killed in a very insidious way.  Being part lion, part human and having what appeared to be the insectile tail of a scorpion, they are formidable killing machines, with a singular thirst that drove them to obsession.  The taste and need for blood.  With the mouth of a human, except for the slightly larger mandible, they could not extend their jaw to the extent that an average lion could in the Surface World.  As such, they could not rip and tear such great hunks of meat off a carcass to slake their hunger in the way our great cats could.  But they could drink up the blood of their kills by the gallons.  You might even say they preferred a juice diet.  And that furry, segmented tail, scorpion-like in appearance, actually have two barbed spins at the end of their telson.  One with a hard carapace vesicle with a gland that injects a stunning mix of venom and anti-coagulant, and another sting bard that is a hollow proboscis that jabs into a body and serves as a sucking pipe.  With their mauled victim pinned, the manticore engorges on the blood flowing from the stab wound, with bellows-like spiracles that strengthen the pumping action as their victims are rapidly drained of their life essence.  A manticore may or may not linger to taste the meat of their kill, but these are usually cursory bites in the soft tissue areas, and rarely result in a large-scale stripping of flesh.  If they drag their victims, it is with some difficulty since they do not bear the large jaws of a true giant cat.  To say the least, these are savage creatures, and with full knowledge of what they are capable of and how they go about their kills, makes sympathy for such a rather ridiculous waste of misplaced emotion.  Manticores were a scourge.  A violent and unnatural threat to civilized and domestic creatures, that could barely be contained.  Only The Pan held sway with them, for reasons not fully known to me.

We dismounted and crouched down edging our way to the overlooking ledge, to observe the waterfall and basin below, careful not to be seen or noticed.

From our vantage point, we watched as the manticore swam in the pool, its head skimming and frothing the surface as its submerged legs and torso churned the water below.  Its face was larger than a human man, streaked with soot and scorch marks.  Feral and fierce, its eyes luminous with a yellow scintillation.  If we were able to do so without getting ourselves killed in the attempt, this stray manticore also needed to be put down.  I also wondered, if whatever we had seen moving under the water before had also seen and taken an interest in this creature.  When the manticore entered the water we had been distracted for a moment, but the other unidentified creature that had been swimming near the surface had submerged as if it had never been there.  Some of us wondered aloud if it were possible that the Manticore might have frightened it away.  After a while longer, it appeared that that had been the case.  At least until young Will spotted new and sudden movement in the water.  From several sides at once, the water appears to bunch up and churn with rolling waves.  Evening darkled on the distant horizon, as grey shadows grew to slushy, roadside snowbanks in the sky.  A pale-yellow twilight pulled the rays of the sun across a fading pastel spectrum ending in a mountain-rimmed edge of pink and rose.  As the greying darkness approached, the agitation in the basin waters grew, causing the Manticore to cease its leisurely swim.  Noticing, at last, the rings of concentric waves approach him in advance of an undercurrent of pushed water.  From approximately five sides, the underwater disturbances began to converge on the beast, the presences below causing this still unclear and undefined.

The Manticore, though formidable on land, was out of its element in the water.  It seemed to realize this and began swimming more rapidly back towards the shoreline.  A rising cross wave indicated a shift below the surface, as the submerged creatures moved to cut off its access and drive it back out into deeper water.  The movements suddenly became more pronounced, causing the resulting wave crests to cut across the water’s surface.

Like circling arrows in a decaying gyre, edging ever closer to the swimming manticore, the unidentified creatures were clearly and strategically working in coordination.

The occluded green water began to glow as the evening drew an eyelid of darkness across the basin lake.  White ghostly tendrils, like long pale nimbuses of hair, striated the surface with a milky greenish sort of writhing phosphorescence just below the surface of the water.  From each of the five swimming crests, tracers of light glowed through the water, the light growing more pronounced with the ebbing rays of the fading sun.  From the forest, sparkles of light began to flash from among the darkening leaves and zip about in the air swooping in and out from the edge of the dark wood to the water’s edge and then back into the darkness, as if hesitant to fly across the water of the basin.

The manticore trod water, fearfully watching the movements of the waves.  Its ugly, bobbing, head turning this way and that, in an attempt to gage from which direction the attack might come.  The tiny erratic flying lights from the forest line, distracting it a little as if these flashes were in league with the water beings below the water.  The gyre began to close on the manticore, their white green hair sweeping behind the crests of the waves as white fin ridges broke the surface of the water in a ghostly paleness.

Maeven had been watching the developments closely, curious to see what kind of beings would dare threaten a manticore and when she saw the fins and the bleached paleness of their skin she thought she knew at last what these could be.

*Scene 02* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 03* – 00:00 (The Pearl)

The water rippled as the tendrils, with a bulbous pod shape at each end rose and skated over the surface of the water.  The forms of the beings rose up like submerged manatees, their hides sparkling in wet radiance with an opalescence lunar light.  As evening mastered the day into submission, the rising moon’s light began to glimmer across the basin lake surface.  Somehow its light seemed to embolden the creatures as their torsos broke through the water, revealing these beings to be stranger in appearance than anyone could have imagined.  A white pale head with aquatic, unblinking eyes and no apparent mouth scanned the lake surface, its head a tentacular mass of wet dreadlocks that seemed to each have a volitional movement of their own.  At the end of these tentacles were the pods, each with a tiny mouth with a pale hooked beak.  These then were the mouths that had bitten the carcasses that had been retrieved from the lake.  These were the means upon which the creatures relied to feed their bodies.  Pondering this, I felt my gorge rise as I heard Maeven whisper her conclusion on what these creatures were.

“Moon Sprites,” she muttered, “Once called Gorgons, in the Surface World, in Ancient Greece.  The Medusa was thought to be one of these.  Fearful creatures.  It was believed they could turn a person to stone, but that is a mere myth.  They use a Mesmer technique, their pupils dilate and pulse and appear to swim in their sockets.  It’s hypnotic.  And these things are adept at it.  The glow is a sort of pulsing strobe.  Deep-sea fish have this ability.  I’ve seen it in certain jellyfish as well.  An electric shimmer.  They will subdue the manticore if they can and then move in to consume it.  I’ve never seen one of these up close.  And never five of them together.  Something must have drawn them here.  They are typically in saltwater seas.  I’ve never heard of them occupying a waterfall basin pool.”

“Why Moon Sprites,” I asked, “Aren’t sprites supposed to be like fairies or something?  I thought they were also small?”

“These are very old sprite clusters.  Don’t always believe the mythical accounts of them.  The Surface World tends to distort and exaggerate the accounts over time.  Some begin with a grain of truth, but people are prone to add in and embellish.  Especially tales that are old and the truths of the tales have been lost to antiquity.  With little or no corroborating body of witnesses, and even those being few, the probability of exaggeration becomes more likely.  Especially when some learn that there can be a profit to be had by the telling.”

“So, what are they?” Christie asked.

Maeven indicated the circling water and the white waving tendrils from each of the manatee shaped creatures, “The hair is their feedlings.  Their young.  They are like living umbilicals, only instead of the infants getting fed by their mother, they are the instruments through which their mother feeds.  When they are old enough to separate from the mother host and swim on their own to mature into their own cluster, the mother births another in its place.”

It was rather a fascinating and repulsing notion, alien to Surface World mammalian life, but perhaps in some way akin to some bizarre fish-like or amphibian species.  The very thought of those bleached white things slithering away gave me the creeps.

Begglar, Nell and Dominic had been watching with wary fascination, and Begglar spoke up, “So how’re we ta get by those beasties?”

Maeven nodded at me.

“Mr. O’Brian has something with him that might do the trick.”

I jerked my head around.

“What do you mean?  The Honor Sword?”

Maeven shook her head and then gestured to the sack hanging from my belt, lowering her voice, “If what I think is in that sack of yours, you are the one who can stop this right now, before these things kill that manticore.”

“That manticore attacked Azragoth,” I answered, “Why should we intervene here.  It would just as soon as kill us.  Perhaps we can move past the basin and falls, in the distraction when they do attack.”

“That is short-sighted.  That may buy us only a few minutes.  If the manticore makes it to shore, you can bet it will sniff us out and be hot on our trail.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Depends,” she answered enigmatically.

“On what?”

“On what you’ve got in that sack there.”

I had lain prone to be able to scan the area and witness the goings-on, and I rolled to my side so that I could undo the straps that held the sachet bag.  I separated the cinched gathers and opened the bag and peered inside, surprised at what I found there.

“What is it?” Begglar asked.

“I…it looks like…” I reached into the sack and felt its smooth cool surface, perfectly round, and it drew it slowly out, careful not to drop it.

“Ahhh…” some said in a collective expression of amazement.

“It looks like a giant pearl.”

Maeven bobbed her head smiling, “Perfect!  Just perfect!  Just what I thought it might be, but we’ll have to move fast if we are going to make our bargain.”

I withdrew it, “No, we can’t.  Mattox said we would need it in Skorlith.  We cannot part with it now.”

Maeven shook her head, “I am not asking you to part with it.  I need you to use it.”

“Use it how?” my brow furrowed, “What is this supposed to be, in your mind?”

“You truly do not know what this is that Mattox has given you, do you?”

“It appears to be a pearl,” I answered, “I’m not exactly sure what you think it’s supposed to be.  A very unusual pearl for its size, I’ll grant you, but it should fetch a fairly high price in Skorlith, for all the things we will need to get safely across Lake Cascale.”

Maeven nodded, “Aren’t you curious where Mattox might’ve gotten it?”

I was dumbstruck.  I only knew that Mattox had said this was a pearl that was from the spoils of my battle.  That the pearl had not come from the Mid-World.  I had never heard of an oyster producing something this great in our world, and I could not fathom any other natural method by which it could have been formed.

Maeven acknowledged my internal reasoning and came to my rescue.

“The Dust Dragon.  It came from the tongue of the Dust Dragon.”

“What?”

“These are embedded within the flesh of their tongues.  It is the only thing good about such creatures of deception.  The pearl is the grain of truth that they surround with lies, then cast mentally out to discourage and defeat their victims.”

“How do you know about Dust Dragons?”

She was quiet a moment, and then she said, barely above a whisper, “Because you are not the only person here to have one come after you.”

I could tell, from her demeanor that the memory was not one she cared to recount at this moment, so I did not probe further.

“Okay,” I conceded, “So what is this particular dragon pearl supposed to be able to do?”

“Follow me,” she said as she edged back away from the overlook.

We swung into our mounts and Begglar and family and the young men took their places in the wagon.

She led us down a brief winding trail with the wagon following some distance behind.

*Scene 04* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 05* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 06* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 07* – 00:00 (Letting It Go)

After leaving Azragoth, we had refined our choices of weapons according to the lessons that Ezra had given us.  James, a rather tall man, with long arms and stout legs, found that he was much more adept at using pole weapons, such as a halberd, or pole-ax than wielding a small short sword.  His length and stature made short sword fighting very dangerous, even though his long arms allowed him an advantage in cutting reach.  For stability, his fighting stance required him to extend his legs wider than most, to give him a pivoting center of balance, but that meant that his legs were fair game in a conflict and an adept opponent would use that to deadly advantage against him.  With a pole weapon, the deadly bladed end required an enemy to maintain distance from the long deadly sweeps possible, by a tall man such as James was.  His feet were safe from short dive-and-retreat assaults because the cleaving blade would find them, slice them and propel any severed part of them into the air long before they ever could press an advantage.

James bore his halberd cross-wise, its hooked blade extended to the front left of his horse, its reins gathered in one hand and his backward right hand holding the back shaft at length and in balance, ready for a defensive swing and thrust should the need arise.  Maeven rode along-side him, impressed by James’ carriage of, what in other hands would be, an unwieldy weapon.  “You know how to use that?” she asked, playfully teasing him.

He smiled, “We’ll see.”

“We might soon need you to demonstrate that confidence.  Be ready.”

James nodded and with that she rode on ahead, bringing us to the level of the falls basin and within closer hearing of its hissing roar.  The manticore was still out in the pool about thirty yards from the shore.  The Moon sprites feinted in and circled it, their taunting flashes causing it to oscillate from side to side, trying its best to face its attackers on multiple fronts.  Behind it, the water swished and swirled in an eddying fashion, no doubt from the defensive posture of its stinging tail movement beneath the waves.  Its fearsome aspect and fire scorch face glaring angrily at the white-mouthless faces of the Moon Sprites as they swam around him.

We dismounted and quietly approach the water’s edge, the Moon sprites occupied with their manticore prey, the manticore with its back to us, facing the opposite and closest shore.  Moonlight danced upon the surface of the small lake.  Rolling waves rustled the bullrushes and cattail reeds as the basin water lapped at the shore below us.  I held the bag with the pearl in my clashed hand as Maeven approached me.

“What I am about to ask you to do, may sound foolish, but you will have to trust me.  You will not lose the pearl if you do as I tell you.”

I regarded her calmly and reached back into the bag, once again lifting the bright white and opalescent pearl out for her observation.

“Tell me what you need me to do.”

She scanned the shoreline and noticed a log half-submerged half-floating along the side of the shore.

“We’re gonna need that,” she indicated, “Guys can you pull that up further onto the bank, for a moment so that it fully clears the water?”

Will and the boys scrambled down from the wagon and Dominic joined them as they lifted the log and tugged it up onto the bank.

Then she turned to me.

“Mr. O’Brian, you’re not gonna like what I have to tell you.  But you need to put that pearl down and allow it to roll down the bank towards the water.”

“How do we keep it from going into the water.”

“It won’t.  You’ll soon see.  Trust me on this.”

I sighed and knelt down, tucking the bag back into my waistband, and I opened my palm to allow the grapefruit-sized pearl to follow gravity to the shore.  What happened next shocked us all.

*Scene 01* – 00:00 (The Jengu)

Nothing could have prepared us for the spectacle of the fire on the mountain.  Nor could we dismiss the savage and agonized roars from seemingly all sides of the forests and hills, striking terror into our company.  From the open field, we could see tongues of streaking fire, moving out and away from the now illuminated walls of Azragoth, flashing through the slight breaks in the tree cover, igniting some of the dried brush.  Conflagrations erupted with a crackling and popping noise as dried pines caught fire, sounding like the whoosh of a rapidly approaching rain. The ground and brush shook as large animal creatures moved swiftly, scalded by the bath of the liquid oil fire, licking them all over in agonizing blue and orange flame.  They would be upon us within minutes, we realized, so we all rushed to our horses, spinning up and over into the saddles, gripping pommel and reigns tightly, giving our horses their heads.  The animals were wide-eyed and terrified as well, stamping nervously and desperate to be given the slightest nudge to run.  And run they did.  I was worried about our younger travelers, but I need not have been.  They quickly acclimated to the bounce, jolt, and stride of their bolting animals like they were born to it.  Feet firm in the stirrups, legs bent and crouched, their seats slightly lifted over the churning saddle, knees pressed into the polished leather, their hips forming a central spring to absorb each footfall of their racing steeds.  The wagon rattled and bounced over the stonewashed basin, the metal-rimmed wheels clacking, spinning and shuddering through alternating silt beds, stone and gravel, and splashing noisily through shallow pools of standing water, water wings lifting in wet disturbed flight.  The wash had evidently been cleaned out of impeding detritus to allow wagons a relatively covered and passable transit along the shallow watercourse.  With any sudden mountain rain, however, the dry riverbeds could be filled at an instant, expunging all evidence of the passage of wheel ruts and shod hoofprints.

Fast as we were able, we could not escape the cacophony of the growing noises behind us.  Whatever was happening to or with our friends in Azragoth, we could no longer bear to think about it.  In the immediate, we had to focus on fleeing the aftermath of the destruction if we were to somehow manage to save our own skins.  We had to get further down to the valley.  All eyes in the surrounding villages, though still many miles away, would be turned in our direction, curious and unnerved by what was happening, but also clearly attuned to discovering us fleeing away like bandits from the scene.  The danger to us, and the chance of our being discovered, followed, ambushed or captured by the suspicious onlookers was real.

I rode alongside the wagon, with Begglar and Nell alternately driving the team of horses, holding fast to the side railing of their spring-balanced bench seat and to the tracer reins and straps of the charging team.  Mud and water flew and spotted everything in their wake.  Gravel ground, popped and peppered from the wheels, as the weight of the jostling supplies, threatened to slide out from under their tied and rope-bound canvass sheet and ditch the wild ride of the wagon altogether.  Dominic and Will and another young man I had yet to speak to were doing heroic yeomen’s work, attempting to hold and contain the supplies in the back of the wagon, while not also being ejected from it themselves.

Maeven, Christie and a man who had introduced himself to me as James led the charge through the riverbed, as it yet wound around another embankment, turning into a further slope downward.  Tall trees flanked us on either side as I heard a shouted message get relayed back to me from many mouths to my ears, just above the uproar.

“We are headed to where this stream joins and feeds into the area just above Trathorn Falls.  The stream bed ends there.  There is a hidden path near The Falls, down to the basin below it, but we will need to stop just short of there, before proceeding.  Be ready to stop soon.  There is something we need to discuss.  Mr. O’Brian, you are wanted at the front.”

No doubt the relayed message had originated from Maeven.

In response, I nudged my mount forward into a steady gallop.  Just enough increase to still allow it to find its footing on the alternating stone, silt and gravel stream bed, but to progress to the head of the line.  When I came within range, I matched pace with the lead horses and rode astride Maeven.  She glanced sidelong at me but continued to re-focus her shifting gaze on the path ahead.

“I need to tell you about the Jengu,” she said, just loud enough so I could hear her above the heavy breathing and snapping footfalls of her horse.  Pronounced, /Jenn-Joo/, by her.

“I’ve heard of them.  They are some kind of water sprites if the tales were true.  Tell me what you know.”

“There are a series of enchanted basins below Trathorn Falls.  They are recessed under the cliffside.  Deep pools behind the curtain of The Falls.”

“Okay.”

“No one knows how deep those pools run.  They are like chimney chutes in the granite.  No light at the bottom, though the pools are filled with clear water.”

“What of it?”

“It was said that mystics guarded these sacred pools because they were underwater passageways to another world.”

“Another world?”

“Some say, it is the Surface World.  Our world.”

She let that and its implications sink in for a moment.

“So where do the Jengu come in?”

“From time to time, the surface of these pools act as mirrors into our world.  It is how so many of the people here learned about our world.  The mystical order, a sort of priesthood which lives in proximity to The Falls and studied the pools and chronicled the happenings of what they witnessed within them, were known to interpret the signs within to have meaning for the Mid-Worlders living here.”

“Yes?”

“They used their study of the pools, to their own advantage.  They charged people to be taken back behind the waterfall curtain to witness the strangeness of the images shown in the pools.  And for additional fees, they would interpret the images for the people.  Sort of providing personal fortune-telling services.  There were a few mystics that were sincere about their study of the pools, but then, over time, there were far more charlatans numbered among them, than there were sincere and humble chroniclers.  It was a profitable business bilking people based on their superstitions, and eventually, the protestations of the sincere students were drowned out by the opportunists profiteering from the enchanted pools.  That is until the Jengu came.”

I pondered this a moment.

“The Jengu never leave the water of the pools.  It is rumored that they cannot, but one never knows for sure.”

“Where did they come from?”

“As I said the pools are deeper than anyone knows.  It is believed that these came up from within the pools far, far below.  They are water breathers but have a way of temporarily breathing surface air.  The enchantment of the pools always shows up at sunset and sunrise.  No one is sure why this is, but that is when the otherworld images can be seen.  The surface of the water glows from below, but not so much as to completely obscure the hazed, rippling view of the surface images.”

“What caused the mystics to stop taking advantage of these pools.”

Here Maeven turned her focus away from the front swale and regarded me calmly and soberly.

“The mystics believed that the pools might imbue them with personal powers, so when the waters began to reveal the images of the other place, they routinely stripped down naked and would dip into the pools and swim across the basins from end to end, over the swirling images, hoping to absorb some of the power from the enchantment causing the images to appear.”

“And did they?”

“Not a whit.  One particular night, in practicing this custom, the acolytes living in the forest camps heard their elders screaming.  Splashes and gurgling cries greeted them as they rushed up the passages to the cut behind the falls.  The pools swam with a cloudy oily substance, that appeared greenish in the ghostly light.  It took some time before the acolytes realized the substance was blood, tinted by the strange luminescence.  Only five of the twenty-four elders lived to tell the tale of that fateful night.  The five who were the most reluctant to profit in the superstitions surrounding the mysterious pools.”

“Owing to the tragedy of that night, the decision was made to wall up the side entrances to the pools in the recess behind The Falls.  Superstitious people from the surrounding communities, found the priest camps cleared out, the bodies and whereabouts of their fortune-telling gurus nowhere to be found.”

“A group of fortune-seeking youths once tried to remove the collapsed walls to the hidden pools but were unable to do so.  Attempts to navigate the lip of The Falls to enter the recess from the front always proved fatal.  The sheer weight and strength of the wall of water falling over the spillway above sluiced away anyone or anything beneath it, down slippery wet-moss to be raked, crushed and mangled in the pounded rocks below.”

“Is there still danger from the Jengu now that the access to the pools is sealed.”

Maeven nodded.

“A few years ago, scores of dead fish began to flow down into the lower streams emerging into the valleys beyond.  The lower Trathorn river tributaries were choked with the bodies of the fish and the forked rivers that were too narrow to allow the floating fish to pass began to stink.”

“Foresters tracked the trail of dead fish upriver to the large basin pool below the main feed of the Trathorn.  They believed that somehow the Jengu had escaped the pools and made it down into the basin and were lurking somewhere deep below the green water.  Many people who relied on the Trathorn as a freshwater source were afraid that the river and all streams below the basin were being poisoned by the Jengu.”

“Few there are who will go near the great basin pool.  Legends have arisen, as they often do until one can no more sort out the facts from the fictions.  There are tales of animals being pulled into the basin when they arrived to drink.  There are stories of spirits gliding across the surface of the water looking out above billowing mists, watching all who cautiously skirt the shore.  It is amazing how even a few fireflies buzzing over and waterbugs skating across that basin can cause a few well-primed and nervous travelers to panic.”

“So, did the Azragothians make use of the superstitions, somehow?”

“At first, we did, until we learned that the legends had an element of truth about them.”

That gave me pause.

“There is some kind of very strong and carnivorous water creatures living within the Basin.”

“What evidence do you have of this?”

“Some have claimed to see them, but those were initially dismissed, but others have witnessed and corroborated the presence of muddy prints and great tears of earth and clawed up grasses, as something pulled fairly large animals into the basin from the shore.  The bones of these animals have been recovered and drawn out from the water with grappling hooks, and there are signs of gnawing and slashing on them as the carcasses rotted underneath the shallows of the shores.  Something was pulling them into the water, there could be no doubt about that.”

“Could it be a freshwater crocodile, like in the Surface World?”

“I wish that could be the explanation, but the condition of the recovered bodies does not easily comport with the evidence that would be left from a crocodile attack.”

“How so?”

“Crocodiles and alligators like rotted meat.  In fact, they rely on their meat to tenderize before they can eat it and rip the flesh off the bone.  A gator or a ‘dile will launch out of the water, grab a bite hold of an unsuspecting animal and then wrestle it back into the water, thrusting away from the shore into the deeper water where they use that powerful tail to take their victim into a drowning death roll, spinning them over and over until their meal ceases to struggle and finally drowns.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so inconsistent with the marks on the shore you described.”

“You’re right.  It’s not.  It is the fact of where the carcasses were found that is the inconsistent part with a croc attack.”

“In the shallows?”

“Precisely.  It takes time for a body to decompose, but it is quite a bit faster submerged in water.  Crocs and gators will haul their victims to undercuts below a bank or submerge them in a shallow cave so that they can eat them later once the water-logged meat softens.  A croc tears long strips of meat off of the body.  Their upper jaws are fixed so they have to tear and chew in a side to side motion.  That is why gator hunters are able to subdue them with a loop around their upper and lower jaws.  A gators bite is often secured from a lunge to the side.  They strike from beneath and below, like a shark does if they are swimming, but with feet planted it will be a sidewise strike.”

“And the bodies…?”

“Much smaller bites.  Too many to count well enough.  The victims were alive when they occurred and most likely died of blood loss.  The savage attacks started close to shore but the feeding occurred within fifteen to twenty feet of the shoreline until the torn body sank and was abandoned.  Its attacker’s hunger finally slaked and satiated.”

It was a lot to take in.  The detached description of the account came forth in a monotone recounting as if Maeven had completely removed her emotion from the telling.  Somehow this made the description that much more chilling.  But even that did not put ice into my spine as much as what she told me next.

“If I did not know these creatures were water creatures, I would swear that the bites I saw in those carcasses came from a human mouth.”

The pit of my stomach turned, and I felt my gorge rise.  I steadied myself on my horse and leaned forward to keep from swooning at the thought and possibility.  The Jengu, if that is what these creatures in fact were, were far more horrible than I could have imagined them.  A thought crossed my mind that nagged at me, but I mentally struggled to reject each time it surfaced throughout our conversation.  Could these creatures also be part of that cursed brood of half-men?  With the bite and mouth of a human, it was a little too probable for me to be able to dismiss or ignore.  Soon we would be heading into The Pan’s territory, and the odds of us surviving a journey through it was growing ever more out of our favor.

*Scene 02* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

 

*Scene 03* – 00:00 (Missing Rainbows)

We rode in thoughtful silence for a piece until the stream bed began to shallow and rise up even with the bank and fan out into a delta with more rounded stones and gravel.  A portion of the bank extended upward in a smooth packed-earth grade to join a forest trail above it.

We turned the wagon and team out of the swale and up onto the graded path, and then upward further onto the forest trail road.  The wagon threatened to pivot and tilted off of its wheels momentarily, but the boys were able to keep the weighted load in the back of the buckboard from shifting further and overturning the wagon as the team of horses struggled to pull it back straight again.  More than once the horses’ hooves lost purchase on the dirt grade and threatened to pull the team off balance and backward into the swale, but Begglar and Nell continued to encourage their efforts, and several of us tied draw lines from our mounts to our saddle horns and were able to assist the team and wagon with the load upward.  Once on the forest trail, in no particular hurry, we followed the rutted trail upward until we reached an overlooking ledge and were able to take in the full magnificent view of the power and grandeur of Trathorn Falls.  These were the lower falls, descending down from the high mesa.  Another set of Trathorn Falls was higher up, spilling over the lip of the mesa and high plain, and those were nicknamed the Headwater Falls, even though they were fed by the same major river.  Since the lower falls were much larger, however, these took the principle moniker of the river, because of the greater volume of water that moved down its rock face and into the larger basin below it.

The hissing roar of the Falls grew louder as we approached the overlooking pass that eventually wound down through the trees to the large round basin beneath it.  The wide pool frothed with the churn of water as if a giant, white, out-of-focus, thumb pressed and extended into the center of a large, bright-green disk.  It was a visual pavilion of dancing sparkles.  Rays of the sun pranced across its surface.  The effect was dazzling and awe-inspiring as our company peered down upon the spectacle from our high prospect.

It was hard to imagine that any dangers lurked in that scene of serenity and peace.  The susurrations of the moving water were soothing, almost hypnotic.  The white noise of the falling water lulling and sleep-inducing.

Tall pines lined the sides of the basin and continuing riverbanks in regimental evergreen, silently shepherding the flowing water downward into the lower valley, beneath the trees.  The stone face of the cliffside alternated with white and black banding from the water stains as the volumes of water pouring downward ebbed and flowed through seasonal changes, rain, and snowmelt.  A haze of moisture rose and descended from the wet pounding, blanketing the foliage and rocks and grass with dew causing it to glisten and gleam.

Then I noticed something missing that would have been germane to any similar scene such as this in the Surface World.  Despite all of the resplendent moisture and light dancing upon the rippling pool below and the reflective watery sky mirrored from above, there were no rainbows.  No customary arc of refracted light, spreading the white spectrum apart into its blended components.  The thought struck me as odd at first, but with deeper consideration and intimate knowledge of the Ancient Text, it made sense.  The Mid-World was not a place of rainbows.  The lights that shone above were not the same lights that occupied the heavenly canopy of our Surface World existence.  The whole of the place was something of an inversion of the Surface World, occupying a dimension similar to, though distant from, our world.  Connected but still distinct, similar yet not exactly a carbon copy of the world we know.  An echo, Nem had said.  Yes.  That explained it in some way yet it created more questions in others.  A world without rainbows.  A world without certainty.  Yet a world still under the curse of mankind’s original stain.  The reason was painfully obvious to me.  Wherever mankind went, the curse followed.

*Scene 01* – 00:00 (Azragoth Under Attack)

We saw the fire….and so did everyone else in the valley below and surrounding villages.

The account I have of it was pieced together and reconstructed here to the best I could gather from eye-witnesses and the principal parties involved.  Mattox had ridden back into the tunnels upon leaving us and was joined by his attendant soldiers that had guarded our flank, from a distance, as we made our way out of the city.  Four other Azragothians, two from the east and two from just to the west of us, both hidden from our view during our departure, joined them after following us about a league by different hidden paths down the switchback trails until we had reached the dry riverbed.  By Mid-World and Surface World measure, a league was about the distance a healthy person could walk in an hour’s time (approximately 1.4 miles).  They all were mounted on horseback and rode into the tunnels and sealed up the grotto entrance, by pivoting a cleverly balance stone slab and sifting dirt down grooves cut in the top so that its base appeared undisturbed by the movement.  A mere shallow backing to the small cave, rather than the great stone entrance to a series of complex tunnel systems.  They seize the flickering firebrands from sconces in the cavern wall and rode downward, carrying their lights aloft and before them, picking up their pace when the cavern floor began to even out enough for the horses to feel secure in their footing.

Mattox addressed those following and riding astride him, “The others should be clear of the enemy beasts soon if we timed it right.  But we must hurry if we’re to share in a part of this.”  And with those words he rode forth, pushing the cavern’s darkness ahead within the light of his fiery torch.

At no time was Mattox ever really left unattended.  A guard was always present within shouting distance to relay an order to another within earshot so that The Eagle’s commands always had a swift reach to the larger company needed to carry them out.  His attendants had a gift for blending in and making themselves seem part of the background citizenry going about their daily lives.  Where none were expected, these agents of his often resolved into the shadows and recesses, every watchful for their leader’s command or signal, scanning the perimeter for anything that looked out of place or may pose a mortal threat to their general.

A great strategist and good with maps and military terrain advantages, Mattox and his men had studied the environs of the hills and forests surrounding Azragoth.  Much of their time was spent outside of the city rather than within it, though Mattox was always aware of the progress being made by Nem and his craftsmen, and met with him regularly and often when he was not on a military campaign, providing strategic suggestions for the rebuilding effort when needed.  Nem valued the keen understanding of The Eagle and often consulted him when there were plans to be drawn up for the remaining vulnerable sectors of the city.  The point was that Mattox and all of the leadership of Azragoth and its people had been planning for a siege attack for many years, and they stood in readiness.  Mattox did not have to be present, observing and directing from the battlement walls, for the people of Azragoth to know what they were expected to do.  They had drilled in emergency procedures and had discussed scenarios if there were to be a break in the chain of command.  They could regroup and fight on as coordinated units, or fight as independent battle groups, as needed.  Each of the bastion towers housed soldiers on duty, ready to defend the walls from the heights at a moment’s notice.  The black death resided in the wall of the city’s outer curtain and beneath the killing zone, short courtyards choked with vines and twenty years of weeds and rot, burned-out domiciles and collapsed buildings and broken rubble was strewn about from the destruction of those times before.  Charred arrows and half-chewed, mold-blackened children’s toys lay beneath the weeds in the old dead sectors of the city, sinister symbols of its historical tragedy.  Stray herds of goats haunted the breaks and defiled the once hallowed family homes that now moldered with decay and neglect, char and ruin.

Yet some other things moved about under the overgrowth in the dead sectors as well.  The bleating of the goats and the braying of the wild donkeys had not only been signifying their presence but, of late, also signified their distress.  Many of these now lay dead under the canopy, their carcasses were torn apart and pulled under the blankets of vines to be further savaged.  Skulls and twisted haunches, and partially gnawed legs, all matted with dried decaying flesh crawling with worms and maggots disintegrated silently under the leafy canopy.  The awful smells blending in with the moss-rot odors of the kudzu and mushrooms growing through the pavements of the dead sectors.

Malevolent eyes of ancient creatures newly arrived in the old town of Azragoth had watched the comings and goings of the hidden inner city.  They had seen the silhouettes of the people standing on the terraced balconies beyond the blackened wall, looking down into the places of the old town, unaware that they were being observed from beneath the bushes and vine mats.  They had witnessed how a party of newcomers, a party they held in extremely heated hatred, had been led into the inner city by the secret town’s guards.  They had suspected these were not received with a welcome by the hidden citizenry, but there had been no sense of furtherance of danger.  No punishment for their crime.

One of these angry watchers was a short squatty creature called Grum-Blud…and he carried the evidence with him.  He glared with piggish eyes, as he absent-mindedly gnawed on the ripped haunch of a goat.  Fresh gouts of blood mixed with his own drool, spilled over his lips and matted his grizzled beard as he ate.  His dark, glowering face remembering the sight of the one responsible for the rolled up and tied, fire-blackened remains he had bound to the wild donkey, he had cornered and caught and broken its spirit to suit his transport needs.

The others had arrived at nightfall.  Word had reached The Pan.  And it had sent its agents to remove this incursion upon their lands.  There would not be another, like the one before it.  Surface Worlders must be kept out.  They were not welcome here.

The Xarmnians were being told.  Mowgrai, and Darloc had met with them at the Inn at Crowe.  The fat innkeeper and his wife and boy were nowhere to be found.  Nowhere they could be immediately captured and held to account for the killing of his brother.  But they would soon be rooted out.  No one escaped Xarmnian justice for long.  And with the help of the creatures supplied by The Pan, no one giving these interlopers shelter or aid would either.

Grum-blud dug at his chest, with his free hand, angered by the black stuff that he could not seem to get off of his clothing and the shaggy coarse hair on his forearms and beard.  He was not a particularly clean or fastidious creature, by any stretch of the imagination, but the black sticky stuff annoyed him and pulled at his hair whenever he moved his arms.  He wondered if later he should allow himself to be combed or worse yet, washed by the one who had birthed him.  Naw, he thought.  She kept trying to change him back.  He wanted nothing to do with her again.  She was not happy with the transformations that had given him so much power.  What did she know of this newness?  How could he have ever believed that he once felt compassion for her, pity for her,…love for her.  Bah!  Stupid thoughts!  He grunted to himself.  But his brother, now.  These fools would pay dearly for what had been done to Pogsly.  Dearly and painfully!

The Xarmnian Protectorate Guards had lost the party of Surface Worlder’s temporarily.  Fools!  But they soon discovered something else that was pursuing them.  Something large and unseen and dangerous.  A creature from the Between.  Things of the other that did not properly belong to either world.  The being had left a destructive wake.  A damage path, in its pursuit, that the Xarmnians soon picked up on, though cautious enough to follow at a distance, giving it a wide berth.  Their dogs had to be driven after it by force.  Beaten to follow commands.  Trained as they were as young welts, the dogs abandoned their loyalty in abject terror.  Well, Grum-Blud, thought to himself, no matter.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Though he angrily fisted his hands at the thought that that Enemy of his Enemy, might get to them first.

One would think scaling the inner walls of this old town might be easy enough.  And one would be wrong, in thinking so.  The black coating smelled and resisted all growth of any kind.  No vines protruded from the mortar lines, not even a mushroom cap or blanket of moistened moss could be seen anywhere along its surface.  Kudzu, a most hearty plant, curled away from it and any creeper vines extending to touch it was yellowed and dried and crumbled to powder between the fingers.  Without a ladder to lean against the top of the wall, there would be no way to get over it, except to get enmired in its black coating by attempting to scale it with hammered spikes.  Not an attempt one could hope to achieve with any degree of stealth or secrecy.  Black gaping murder holes lined the top, just two to three feet shy of the top.  No doubt the means by which the thick sticky substance had been poured down to thoroughly coat its outer face.  One might hope to snag the claw end of a rope and grappling hook within these gaps, but it would be quite a trick to do so and not a feat in which he was confident he could pull off even on the best of days.  A rock mound ramp might be attempted, but not under the watchful eyes of those manning the bastions and battlements.  No, The Pan’s creatures were more adept at this kind of assault.  That is why Shellberd had to be sent off to them.  Shellberd the Dope.  He slept too much!  Had to be motivated continually with a good kicking and a clout every now and then.  It had taken a few days, but Shellberd did come through.  The Half-Men were here now.  They had insisted on eating first, before any fighting, and he had given them their will.  They hunted through the great leafy nets, killing whatever they could catch and corner.  Insatiable for blood, but skilled in tracking and surprise, they were mostly able to catch their prey without causing too much noise.  He had insisted that the city within not be alerted too soon, but they only half-listened.  Not being accustomed to following any orders except those given by The Pan.  The Pan did not share authority unless it served his interests to temporary seem to do so.  Something even the Xarmnians did not know.  Something that would have made the creation of Trolls, like himself pointless in continuing in practice.  There had to be a usefulness to everything serving the greater good.  The fact that the Trolls were given recognition by the Half-men was a useful thing in the eyes of the Xarmnian leadership.  And the Trolls relied on being viewed as useful to the Xarmnians and to the Half-Men to preserve their continued existence and to continually grow in numbers through the propagation and administration of the mysterious elixir.

Shellberd had not returned with these Half-Men, and it did not surprise Grum-Blud in the least.  He was annoying and The Pan and his creatures had probably eaten him in celebration of the opportunity to hunt and fight Surface Worlders.  They had a deep-seated hatred for these peoples, that Grum-Blud, was not quite able to understand.  Something about their ancient past.  Something lost to antiquity, buried as it was in their animal brains, and what passed for their collective memory.

Though the kills had been relatively silent, the Half-men creatures were noisy eaters.  They slurped, grunted and snorted while they ate.  A few of them farted.  Not particularly keen on manners himself, but Grum-Blud was irritated by it, and by how much louder it seemed, when he had warned them not to create noise and attract the attention of the guards within.

Grum-Blud had wondered which of the Half-Men creatures The Pan might send and how much Shellberd had relayed to them concerning the walled city and the challenges needed to surmount the inner wall.  Three days it had taken him.  Three days to find The Pan’s Half-Men and another two to get them to return.  It Shellberd hadn’t been eaten, he was no doubt somewhere outside of the city’s old curtain wall, under a shade tree sleeping.  The Ninny!  If Grum-Blud were to catch him, Shellberd might wish he’d been eaten by the Half-Men.  But that was for later.  This was for now.  Anger focused and determined to get over that wall and cut through those people with tooth, claw, and blade until they surrendered the traitorous, murdering Surface Worlders.  These would not be shown the mercy of dying so quickly.  These would be given over to The Pan, to devise something horrible that he could watch and savor.  Hear their screams as perhaps they were served piecemeal to The Pan’s subjects.  Perhaps he would eat a few pieces of the one who had led and the one who had killed his brother as well.  He licked his fat bloody lips at the thought.  The blood of the goat refreshed him in some odd way.  Perhaps his tastes were already changing to becoming more aligned with those of the Half-Men, rather than those of the Xarmnian peoples that he had once been.  Perhaps, in time, the Xarmnians themselves might be fair game for tasting and slaughter as well.  Perhaps in this way, they might become useful to the greater good of Trolls too.  The dark-eye mind trick did not seem to work on the peoples of the Mid-World, as it did on Surface Worlders.  Perhaps that too might one day change. One never knows.

Of all of the Half-Men types that The Pan could have sent, these kinds seemed the most suited for scaling walls.  Grum-Blud was amazed at their ferocity, even though he was annoyed by their reckless disregard for keeping and maintaining a low profile.

If Captain Jahazah the Crusher were here, he would be pleased with Grum-Blud.  Once the attack was complete, Grum-Blud’s name would be venerated in Xarmnian legends and songs.  His name would bring terror and give him power among the masses, and might even give him a place of his own at the tables and in the meetings of the High Xarmnian Council.  And one day, he might be asked to lead a company into the mountains and at last rid the Mid-Worlds of their traitorous brothers, the Capitalians, living so smugly on the other side of The Great Wall.  They would tear it down, stone by stone, crushing each piece with hammers until they formed a gravel road between the two lands.  And once it was down they would pillage and plunder their arrogance into cowed and mewling submission.  Begging for little scraps to be left to feed their families.  One day.  One day soon.

If Jahazah failed to acknowledge his contributions or dared in any way to take shared credit for his glory of this raid, perhaps someday, he too might be served in pieces on a plate in the great counsel dining hall, and Grum-Blud would savor that taste of revenge as well.  Jahazah had beaten him with a rod for allowing the escape of the traitor Corimanth, to get out of the city, and it had taken Grum-Blud weeks to no longer feel the sting of the bruises across his back and to ride upon a small horse without help and wincing in pain with every jostling step.  Grum-Blud vowed to himself, that he would never allow himself to be beaten in such a way ever again.  If beating were to be meted out, he would be the one holding the end of the rod, and not the one receiving its blows.  But tonight the taste of blood was already in the air, and he wondered to himself, what an Azragothian might taste like.

Manticores.  The Pan had sent him twenty-six Manticores.  Creatures adept at climbing with thick razor-sharp claws and the body of a leopard or lion, as the old books of legend tell were in the Surface World lands of the ancient Persians.  The mystical seers of that land, it was said, worshipped the Manticores when they saw them in dreams and painted images of them with pigments on the walls of their temples and crafted statuary of them to guard their tombs and the entrances to their great halls.  They often embellished these with other animal traits from their own worlds, occasionally giving them wings or the tails of serpents or scorpions, as suited their fancy.  But the ones occupying the Mid-Worlds only consisted of three joined elements.  Half-man, with the human dominating the upper portions of the creature, and animal, lion, leopard or panther, occupying the lower ends of the creature, and an insectile propensity expressed as a menacing, articulated scorpion tail, with a deadly black barb on the tip.  The Manticore’s face was human in part, except for its ability to hyper-extend its lower jaw and unveil a triple row set of jagged teeth.  Manticores were not big on speech and one wondered how they could be made to form their growling low rumbling words around so many teeth.  Their heads were hoary, almost always heavily bearded, as if their facial hair made up for the mane of fur that would have grown had they remained a lion of legend.  Their visage was fierce, their skin dark and reddened like tough leather or blackened with the dried glut of blood from so many kills.  Their eyes clouded and vacillated between human awareness and animal aloofness, subjected only to instinct and primal desires.  Their animal fur varied between the beige-tan of a lion, the black velvet of a panther and the spotted patches of a leopard.  Large ferocious cats.  When these creatures climbed the wall they might as well all have panther fur, because they would be very blackened once they reached the top of the wall.  If they reached it, he knew he should say, though he could not contain his optimism seeing how anxious they were becoming.  They paced beneath the black wall seeking and scanning its surface, looking for a break in the stone that they could not find beneath the thick viscous coating.  They were growing impatient with Grum-Blud’s delay.  There was fresh meat on the other side.  They could smell it.  The kills had only whetted their appetite.  The long run from the marked and scented territory of The Pan had been tiring but their energy was returning will their recent meal.  The meat on the other side had very little hair to have to cough up later.  The one called Grawldo, glared at Grum-Blud and growled in annoyance.  It wore a collar around its neck with the loose end of a rope.  Grum-Blud’s way up and over.  The Manticores were big and powerful, muscular and tawny, their claws oversized and thick, extending and retracting from their giant powerful paws.  It was going to be a massacre inside.  Grum-Blud grinned and raised his hand to give the signal.

Meanwhile above, the soldiers of Azragoth had observed the Troll and its newly gathered beasts for some time now.  They had seen the little squat creature crawl over the battered and twisted portcullis gate beneath the Barbican under the silvery moonlight.  They saw the other three Trolls argue and break camp in the early morning hours.  The two who had arrived on onocentaurs, miserable creatures with the body of a small donkey and the top half of a man.  These had been left outside of the city to forage in the surrounding woods, while the trolls scouted the ruined city.  A company of forest soldiers observed two of the Trolls leave on these creatures and return up through the back trails, joining the main road again and proceeding upwards to the high plains from which they had first come, no doubt to join up and report back to the Xarmnian Protectorate Guards still searching the woods for the lost party.  In so doing, they had narrowly avoided the large, invisible creature that had damaged so much of the backtrail bridgeworks before it finally burrowed into the underground tunnels beneath the city.

The onocentaurs, left to the two Trolls remaining, had been tied to the lower trail forests in a copse.  The onocentaurs argued with them very heatedly, and the bemused Azragothian spies almost laughed aloud and gave their hidden location away when the larger Troll in the lead was overheard telling the onocentaurs that “Asses should not be fitted together with a human mouth!”

Eventually, the other Troll had left the lead Troll as well, grumbling unintelligibly, but soon after rode southward alone, having also received some angry reprimand, coupled with a few kicks from his now blackened counterpart.  The observers correctly surmised that the leader Troll’s initial attempts to get over the inner walls of the city of Azragoth had failed miserably.  It was almost too comical to watch.  That is until the nature of the other beasts were seen a mere five days later as they came into the city the night before and joined the lead Troll, below the walls and leafy canopy.  The situation was no longer comical at all.  It had become extremely dangerous indeed.

When the signal below was given, the Azragothian soldiers stationed with smoldering torch standing just inside the doorways of the bastions along the inner wall, waited in readiness, to do what their commander The Eagle had instructed them to do.  Nem and his craftsmen had rebuilt and redesigned the inner wall in a very unique way, with characteristics unlike any other city wall in all of the towns and citadels within the Mid-Worlds.  The inner wall had a shelf at its top, called a machicolation, with a V-shaped trough running along the top of the stone shelf filled to the brim with a petroleum-like oil.  The lip-edge of the trough was also coated with tar and pitch, spilling over and down the wall where it ran partially into the horizontal gaps of the murder holes about a foot below.  From the inner-shelf of the Inner wall, about waist high from the battlement walkway, was a slanted grooved-trough in each merlon between the crenellation caps of stone, where hot oil, tar, boiling water or stones and arrows and could be poured, dropped or shot down upon anyone attempting to scale the Inner wall.  A wooden bench lined the inner wall rampart, allowing archers to raise themselves between the crenellations and fire down into the killing fields of the narrow outer courtyards upon any enemy who had successfully breached the outer curtain wall.  Bundles and full quivers of arrows lay at the ready in the dry boxes below the benches, which allowed the archers to always have an ample supply of darts ready to come to both hands and bow should they run out of those in their carried and strung quivers during a protracted battle.

The manticores could not be permitted to enter the city.  Between the torch-bearers and the archers of Azragoth, they would see to it that that never happened.  Manticores were irrepressibly vicious and savage.  They would pursue, maul, kill and give no quarter.  No one would be safe from their fury.  If ever there was a beast that could be compared with a berserker of old, the manticores were those creatures.

With flared claws, the Manticores, spaced out all along the city walls leaped almost as one, though slightly staggered, as they saw the movement of the signaled cats commence their attack.  Ferocious roars struck terror in the men atop the wall as the creatures lunged against the blackness, scrabbling to gain purchase in the buried grooves beneath the coating.  Invariably they slipped and became enmired with blackness, their powerful paws caked with tar, their hides gleaming with the thick, black, glutinous ooze.

The torcher bearers in the bastion doorways looked down upon the horrible spectacle and from one to the other, waiting for their own signal to be given.  A lookout sentry, from higher up on the clockwise running stair within the bastion tower, watched and observed as each of the creatures became more and more enmired and coated with the pitch, but each was still making some degree of progress up the Inner Wall.

The Troll ran from creature to creature as fast as its stocky legs would carry it, loping and bounding from its knuckles in the characteristic Troll gait, urging the beasts onward and upward, each time they slid back downward.  Their broad paws, sweeping away more and more of the viscous tar, with every attempted ascent, exposing the stone wall below, and the mortared grooves.  With persistence, these creatures would soon make it over the wall, and then in anger and frustration, these monsters would tear them apart.

Suddenly the word was given.  Nem and Ezra watched as The Eagle and his attendant soldiers burst forth from the gates of The Keep, and rode off of the galley loader on horseback.

“Light them up!” he shouted, racing his horse at full gallop through the streets, the hooves of his mount pounding into the cobblestone streets as he rode forth.

Instantly, from every corner of every bastion tower located along the city’s inner wall, a wall of flames burst forth with a loud whooshing noise.  So intense was the sudden flash of heat that the men watching along the wall dove for cover, backing away from the edge as flames tore across the outer portion of the machicolation rim and fiery oil spilled down the external side of the Inner wall, igniting the blackened pitch, creating various blue flames whooshing over and around the embattled manticores still attempting to ascend it.  Roars of pain and screams of rage formed a cacophonous dark symphony, a deafening crescendo that caused Azragothians to hold their ears in uncertain terror.  Unsure whether the sounds signified their imminent death or a successful rout and repulsion of the enemies from without.

Doused and roiling in engulfed flames the manticores ceased their assault on the fiery Inner wall, their own immolations imminent.  The pitch and oil covering their human and animal bodies licking all over them with painful blue and yellow tongues of fire.  Howling and roaring, they tore through the underbrush, colliding with buried and hidden detritus from times gone by, bouncing painfully off stones half-buried and crumbled from partially collapsed walls.  Blinded with searing hot pain, they raced along the killing fields over and under the vine mats and weaving and bounding in great leaps over obstacles searching for the twisted gate of the Bastion through which they had entered.

The conflagration and the howling and roaring echoed balefully throughout the forests and hills surrounding the cliffside, redounding off the stone peaks, reaching even to the lower valleys and villages beyond.  Truly, the foretold black tongue of the city of Azragoth took a far second place to the city’s angry tongues of fire.

The inevitable effect of this was that for miles and miles around and after twenty years of silence, the city could no longer be quietly hidden among the forests at the foot of the mountain.

From our vantage point in the valley below, we witness those once hidden interior walls suddenly blaze into the night sky and shine through the trees blazing forth in a bright ring of fire.  Flaming balls of fire streaked out from what we assumed could only be the old front gates of the city, and raced in flicker blazes through the smoky forests, setting some of the drier vegetation ablaze as well.  The sight of it was terrible in its fury, the noises of it even worse to behold.

As the evening dusk settled in colored bands upon the distant horizon, Azragoth appeared to have, at long last, awakened from the dead and was stunningly revealed to the surrounding communities below, and to all its friends, and foes alike.

*Scene 07* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

A woodsman armed with a longbow, riding a dappled mare at the edge of the forest, looked up as a flash of light passed through the tree cover, and he heard the terrifying sounds beasts and fowl shriek as smoke and flame billowed upward from somewhere deep in the forest of Kilrane. Monstrous sounds bellowed into the chilled air, echoing off of the canyon rims, burrowing into the cacophony of the crackling trees alive with the sounds of burning and animals fleeing under their flaming bowers.  He gaped as he realized where the sounds were originating from.

“What are they thinking?” he mumbled at first, and then with frustration and conviction, “It is way too soon!  What ARE THEY DOING?!”

With that, he leaned forward in the saddle, made a loud clicking noise with his mouth, and lightly kicked the flanks of the mare signaling her to gallop with all haste, not away from the fiery woods but deeper into the very heart of it.

He hoped there was still time to get to the hidden cache and back out again.  He was taking quite a risk doing so, for he suspected he was being followed by creatures he had not seen in these parts for many years now.  Creatures only partly human.  It had been a mistake telling Tobias anything.  He had long doubted that the man could be trusted, even if he was assisting the resistance movement.  The man had too much love for the coin, and unless he had missed his guess, he suspected that both he and Sanballat were the very ones responsible for the mysterious disappearance of Noadiah.

The flames had come from the last known location of the dead city of Azragoth and whatever was happening there now, would have dire repercussions for them all.

*** End of Part 1 ***

“For evil does not come up from the dust, nor does trouble spring up from the ground, but people are born to trouble, as surely as the sparks fly upward.” [Job 5:6-7 NET]

“If the distance to the nearest city of refuge is too far, an enraged avenger might be able to chase down and kill the person who caused the death. Then the slayer would die unfairly, since he had never shown hostility toward the person who died.” [Deuteronomy 19:6 NLT]

“Never again will you be called “The Forsaken City” or “The Desolate Land.” Your new name will be “The City of God’s Delight” and “The Bride of God,” for the LORD delights in you and will claim you as his bride.” [Isaiah 62:4 NLT]

“I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death. Death, where are your barbs? Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.” [Hosea 13:14 CSB]

“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal [must] put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory?” [1 Corinthians 15:53-55 KJV]

“God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” [Romans 6:2 KJV]

Author’s Note:

Azragoth in this story represents many things. On one level, it is a city reborn after judgement in the form of a plague that consumed it, as even the surrounding woods of Kilrane, pronounced “Kill – Reign”, grew thick and dense around it. When judgment comes, death seems to reign.

But rebirth and resurrection comes from The Almighty alone, for he holds the keys to death and destruction. On another level, the parallels to the destruction and rebirth of the ancient city of Jerusalem should also be clear, drawing heavily on the biblical accounts in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, with situations and characters drawn from those accounts as well.

Most of the names I give in the story have hidden significance. Some of those are a conglomeration of word root forms joined together. The Hebrew word Azubah, means “forsaken.” I tend to note similarities in words, while also being cognizant that word means have fluctuated over time and with usage. The seer/prophet Ezra’s name literally means “help” in Hebrew. So, I gravitated toward the phonetics of both words with a nod towards their meanings.

Azragoth /Az-Rah-Gawth/ – In Israeli, the name Azra means – pure. In Israeli, the name Gath means – a wine-press. Hence, Azragoth means, Pure Wine-Press. The New Wine, pressed out of trouble and crushing.

It struck me that the character of Brian/O’Brian was struggling with his own guilt and identity, with the added weight of a calling that he feels neither prepared for nor worthy of. A place of trouble and crushing seemed like a place he might wish to avoid, but it is the very place he needed to go, despite what he might believe. God puts us through trials to refine us. (Isaiah 48:10, Zechariah 13:9, Jeremiah 18:4) O’Brian, at the direction and counsel of Begglar, comes to think of Azragoth as a place of refuge. The kind of place that an accidental murder, like himself, might go to hide from a slayer. But it is the place where he must face up to the reason for his running, and meet the monstrous slayer [Sheol], accept the calling and accountability for his actions, and receive the renewed forgiveness that cleanses him. More importantly, it is there he is compelled to give up trying to be his own savior, for his own sake and for the sake of protecting and serving others.

Truth be told, we are all murderers at heart, guilty of betrayal, and the death of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ–the only pure and innocent sacrifice, taking our guilt and shame upon Himself as punishment for our sin: past, present and future. But the point of this story goes beyond that initial step of accepting Christ’s completed work to satisfy our past and present guilt.

It leans instead into the ways we forget that, while we walk into the newness of our rebirth, we must remember to cast off our grave clothes, and stop living chain-linked as prisoners under the shadows of our past. As redeemed, we too often forget that God’s payment extends beyond the moment of our first acceptance, but must be carried into a daily acceptance of Him as Savior for each failing that we have in this present new life. This is what Lordship is about–taking up our cross daily. (See Luke 9:23-27) There is no point at which we can become our own savior. Rather, we must be willing to surrender and repent of our guilt in a daily process, until we are completed in Him by His work through us alone.

Mankind was born in the dust, and it was only by the quickening Breath of God that he arose from it to become a living being. (See Genesis 2:7 & 1 Corinthians 15:45-49) From the very begging, we, ‘the man of dust’, were meant to arise from our inert grounding, to find and walk in a restored relationship our Redeemer. That is our primal and defining purpose and calling.

But in the interim of the course through which we walk, in our being conformed to His image, to becoming refined vessels of honor, we must pass through trials and hardships in this land of trouble. (John 16:33) Initially, in our young walk there are some sins we readily take to the cross and ask for forgiveness. But strangely, when we believers live a little more of this new life, and find that we commit a sin that has dire consequences for more than just ourselves, we seek forgiveness from those hurt by our actions, but the hardest one we have trouble accepting forgiveness for is ourselves. Especially, when the cost to another came at the expense of their life.

As an example: The Christian who may have been driving distracted, leading to a car wreck that claims the lives of others, especially those they were charged with protecting will have a tough time forgiving themselves, even if the family of those lost forgive him. Though not entirely the same, O’Brian has a similar struggle leading to debilitating self-doubt. Not only is his character arc centralized on finding forgiveness for himself, but it takes a turn, with him learning to extend forgiveness to an enemy. Something he even unwittingly alludes to concerning the initial discovery of the Cordis Stone.*

(* Chapter 21: Scene 4)

The difficulties ahead of O’Brian and the team he leads will force them to confront past grievances and dispel assumptions that could undermine the stone quests entirely. For as the following verse states, “people are born to trouble, as surely as the sparks fly upward”, trouble will most certainly come.

[Job 5:6-8 NET] “For evil does not come up from the dust, nor does trouble spring up from the ground, but people are born to trouble, as surely as the sparks fly upward. “But as for me, I would seek God, and to God I would set forth my case.”

In the story ahead, they will be both driven by fire and threatened by ice.

Join us to see how that unfolds in Excavatia Book 2: A Swirl of Embers.

*Scene 01* – 00:00 (Taking the Mountain)

Taking the Mountain turned out to be more of a challenge than I realized.

It was not so much a literal direction as it was a state of mind.  A commitment to face the obstacles before you and surmount them.  Like Caleb, of old, there were giant Anakim living in the mountains that were given to him as his possession.  He was then an 85 year-old-man, fourscore and five, as he says.  The term “score” is equivalent to twenty years.  So, fourscore would be 4 times 20, which would be 80, plus five additional years would bring the total to 85.

Now considering also that while he was the approximate age of some of your grandfathers, he still had it going on.  Caleb had some guns on him.  The strength of a man in his youth.  But more impressive than that was his moxy.  Not mojo, Moxy.  Okay, Spunk, for your younger ones out there.  Caleb had a level of confidence in the promise of His Lord, that made him defiant in the face of threat, determined in the teeth of defeat, and wholly and completely trusting in the value of a promise given, because of the pristine character and goodness of the One who promised it.  The Ancient Text says:

“114 You are my refuge and my shield; your word is my source of hope.” [Psalm 119:114 NLT]

In the Surface World, promises made are too often akin to bounced checks.  They have no backing.  They are used as currency for people to get what they want in the most immediate fashion possible, but tragically the one giving in trust to the promisor can easily lose everything if what is given in trade is purchased with a questionable currency that has no backing.  Commerce and fair trade depend upon mutuality of trust.  Caleb had no doubt of the backing of his promissory note, and he was ready to put his life on the line to cash it in.  An eighty-five-year-old man, dauntless before a mountain of giant half-men.  Not only that, but he took ownership claim, not only to conquer those in the mountain, but to rule it afterward, and populate it with his family and their generations to come.  To take the mountain, he was also putting not only himself on the line, but his family as well.  All his poker chips were on the table, so to speak and he was betting the farm.  He knew he had been dealt the winning hand.  To some, that would seem risky, but he was confident of his backer.  In his mind, it was no gamble to place complete faith and trust in the “promises”, the currency, of his Lord and God.  But that kind of confidence was not just an abandonment of reason to blind faith.  Caleb was a confident spirited lad when he and Joshua were first sent into the land of giants to spy it out for Moses and the rest of the Hebrews, encamped on the outer desert perimeter of The Promised Land.

They were literally within sight of the land flowing with milk and honey, that God had promised them on their miraculous flight from Egypt, through towering walls of water of the Red Sea, and following a pillar of cloud by day and a column of fire by night.  They were watered by a dry rock, they were fed by manna from heaven, and every promise made to them was being fulfilled before their very eyes.  They fought battles being displaced nomads with the armies of established cities and conquered along the way, but when they go to the edge of the whole purpose for their journey, they hesitated, stopped short of claiming it, and decided not to trust in the One who had called them and delivered them miraculously this far.  Caleb, like his people, had a faith born of firsthand experience.  Yet, some of his fellow kinsmen, having shared in the same experiences, still lived imprisoned by their own fear and distrust.  Though the promised land was before them, and they survived a miraculous journey overshadowed by the power and guidance of the One who promised them good, they distrusted Him because they saw and feared the giants in the land of the promise.  They forgot their history, they abandoned their trust and faith, and instead chose fear, trusting in their own strength without considering the promise of their backing.  This is why John the Revelator reminds us of yet another title of the One.

“11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him [was] called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.” [Revelation 19:11 KJV]

One point that few people acknowledge in that very affirmation statement, is that righteousness does require judgment, but it also requires the might to back it up, and yes even to the point of making war if required.

Isn’t it amazing that the very Prince of Peace must sometimes resort to war to effect righteousness?  I’ll bet that will come as quite a shock to those who advocate for pacifism and appeasement with evil regimes of this world when they piously and sanctimoniously are forced to wrap their heads around the fact that Christ Himself counts righteousness as a cause worth fighting for.  But that should not come as a surprise to any soldier, or military personnel, or police officer or judge who witnesses the human stain of sin and corruption and fight against its surfeiting current every day.  Evil must be resisted for a sane and safe society to flourish.

There is a battle going on for the minds of mankind, and it takes many shapes and forms to distract and confuse them, to cause them to place their hopes and trust in human panaceas that have no backing.  Histories are forgotten, and in some cases re-written by pernicious minds so deceived by their own faith in modern falsehoods they cannot abide by any other perspective that does not join their conclusions.  These are an unteachable people, unwitting acolytes of an ancient and invisible enemy that seeks their enslavement and ultimate destruction.  That enemy’s agents have been at work since the beginning of time in all of the created worlds seeking to unmake all that the Master has made but unable to touch the eternal.  Save for one thing.  He must cause mankind to forget who they were created to be, to forget the historical record of their miraculous deliverance through time and how they were spared destruction by the One.  For he knows that if a generation can be made to forget their past, then they will have no hope for their future and no will to resist his ultimate rule.  They will be snuffed out, like a candle in the wind.  Already, they were smoldering embers, with a faint white-gray ribbon of smoke unraveling into the sky, signifying their dying surrender.  A white flag harbinger of retreat.  The essential point of my calling and my mission was to cause these few that I led into the Mid-World to come back to themselves and remember.  To see again that promises made by the One are promises kept.  That every launched ship of dreams that carry their hopes into the storms of life on the high seas, always have a safe and protected home harbor to return to.  There are no sea-faring men, no matter how full of bravado and wanderlust they may claim to be, that do not find comfort in the memory of their home port when maelstroms threaten to swamp their vessel and swallow them into the cold, dark depths of the beckoning, and unforgiving sea.

It was with these thoughts in mind that we gathered together around the supplies wagon, and climbed up on our geared traveling mounts, and followed Maeven as she led us onward through the winding forested trails down the slopes and away from the hidden city of Azragoth, where we knew we had friends and allies who might possibly be in danger due to the approach of the Protectorate squads still hunting and pursuing us.

What we did not know at the time, was that the real threat to Azragoth was presently from an entirely different enemy than that posed by the Xarmnians.  This enemy had a particular grudge to settle with the denizens of the resurrected city of Azragoth and it had formed a tenuous and temporary truce with the Xarmnians brokered by the unreliable creatures with whom they both shared some commonality.  This enemy had lain in wait for more than twenty years, pondering the right time to strike and overrun the secret remnant within the city with one final sweeping attack to snuff out the remaining ember of hope that it represented to the oppressed peoples of the Mid-World.  The Xarmnian high counsel knew that something remained in the lost city of Azragoth, but they had no definitive proof of it, until now.  This surprising secret was delivered to them through their dealings with a former enemy that they had only recently normalized relations with.  The brokerage of the truce was handled by the Xarmnian Trolls.  Being part human, part something else, gave them an advantage in dealing with the Xarmnian’s former foes who contended with them for ultimate rulership over all of the Mid-World lands and people.  These enemies were the ancient races of Half-Men.  Creatures that had an amalgam of human and animal and plant origins stemming from their ancient paganism and ritualistic transit through the now-closed former portals of the Surface World to the Mid-World lands.  These were the embodiment of the ancient legends of the Surface World.  The source of those legends, though the Surface Worlders’ added much to make up the mythological canon.  These creatures were observed through dreams and odd reflections in pools of water or in mystic glasses until the strength of the connections between the Surface World and the Mid-Worlds weakened to the point that observers only saw these beings in blurry flickers out of the corner of their eyes.  In the Surface World, these unfortunate cursed beings were venerated and proclaimed to be gods worthy of worship and appeasement.  Distractions from the belief in the One true Creator God.  Priests and priestesses saw the veneration of these gods to be a means of control and power, and a way to enrich themselves through the awe and dread of these creatures whom they claimed to represent as their personal oracles between the divine and the common.  Great temples were built to honor these cursed and trapped creatures of the Pantheon.  When the cursed creatures in the Mid-World learned of this they were at first stunned and then saw it as an opportunity to also revenge themselves against The One who had caused them to be cursed and trapped in the Mid-World.  With no subjects but themselves, they waited for thousands of years before mankind finally re-entered their world.  When these human sojourners began to occupy the land they presented themselves to their descendants as being the gods they were believed to be in the Surface World and demanded worship.  They were at first resisted, but over time, the humans began to pay them homage.  The Half-men, it was said and later revealed to be of a certain truth, that these beings were denied the liberation of natural death.  They could be killed, but only through violence done to them.  They aged, and their bodies suffered the rages of passing time, but with no natural release.  Their animal minds continually warred against their human minds.  They could not contain their passions, so they indulged them but found no relief in them and only temporary satiation.  They blamed humans, the favored ones of the Creator.  These who reminded them of what they once were and had irrevocably left to become something else.  They could not abide the sight of humans without waking their violent passions fed by their animal desires.  No relations could be had between these Half-men and the humans of the Mid-World until the emergence of the creatures known as Trolls.  Something about them pleased the Half-Men and tamed their wildness when dealing with them as emissaries of the Xarmnian humans.  That brokered relationship had brought the truce.  The Half-Men saw a sinister kinship between the Xarmnians and themselves that they could, at last, identify with.  The Trolls represented the Xarmnian effort to become more like the Half-Men.  With each one, either voluntarily or by compulsion surrendering part of their humanity to be enjoined with the bestial, was a form of emulation and worship that they found pleasing and appealing.  The elixir was a masterful stroke, as far as the Half-men were concerned, and the Xarmnians who came up with changing some of their children to become more amenable to the Half-men was seen as a brilliant compromise that had provided a peaceful solution and resolution to a centuries-old conflict.  Xarmians were now free to pass through Half-men territories unmolested, and certain secrets were shared between these two groups that proved mutually beneficial to both groups.

Having had some limited experience with Trolls, as they were only newly becoming a people, I did not realize that there was an underlying reason for the Xarmnian alchemists creating such ugly and unstable beings with their transformative elixirs.  Having that knowledge now sickens me to even think about it, though it is reticent of something happening in my own world which also distresses me more than I can elaborate on just now.

*Scene 02* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 03* – 00:00 (Switchback)

We rode further downward on a switchback trail cut and camouflaged beneath the lower forested canopy.  I watched as Maeven rode up to the end of a trailway, pushed against certain branches on the trees there and areas once hedged about by bushes swung inward revealing a continuation of the trail not previously seen in the shaded light.  Time and time again, certain trailheads that seemed to terminate were uncloaked by this method of hidden cantilevers and pivoting shrubs, and I wondered at how Maeven was able to remember them all.

Above and behind us, at some degree of distance, we begin to hear furtive movements in the brush.  Rustling noises that were caused by unknown creatures moving with some degree of speed through the forest underbrush.  Grunts and guttural growls were interspersed within these noises, and we were gripped with a fear that the Xarmnian dogs were once again on the scent of our trail with the Protectorate Guards close behind.

Maeven and I both paused to listen, attempting to quiet the others growing more noticeable uncertain and afraid.  A few circled their horses as if wanting to flee back to the safety of the caves beneath Azragoth, but I bid them hold their peace and keep still.

“They’re coming.  They’re going to find us and kill us.  We should have never left Azragoth.”

Maeven interjected, “Be still.  Let us hear for a moment.”

After a bit, I turned to Maeven, “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?”

“Yep.  They’re moving away from us.  Not toward us.”

I turned to the two riders whose actions showed that they were wanting to go back.

“If you ride back that way, number one, you’ll never find the hidden route we took to get down here, so you’re sure to get lost.  And number two, you will be riding right into the ones making those noises above us.”

I cleared my throat and eyed them each for a moment, letting the implications of my two-point arguments sink in before I put the question to them.

“So, what’s it going to be?”

They each took hold of their reins and turn their horses back into the line, not saying a word, yet not having to.  Their actions spoke for them.

Maeven looked at them and then at me.  I saw the conflict in her eyes, and I knew what she was thinking.  She wanted to turn back, but for very different reasons.

I gave her a half-smile, nodding and acknowledging her struggle.

“They’ll be alright.  Whatever is coming against them should be perhaps pitied, if I know Mattox, as well as my memory serves.”

She gave me a grateful smile, but I could still see that worry lingered within her.  She turned and pressed on, leading us further downward until we crossed a shallow creek bed, and turned to follow its winding course towards the lower plains and the lake country.  It would be a fair ride yet, and we were making rather slow progress since we were not free to travel upon the open roads and more direct route.  Whatever threatening forces were rushing upward toward the old city of Azragoth had a nasty surprise awaiting them.  The black tongue of the city was waiting to spring forth and deluge those threats with rotting disease and death.  Considering that we were still on a slope below the city, though several thousands of feet away, such horrible filth would run beyond the ranks of the enemies, and pour through the forests and dry streams below.  If we were caught in its path, Azragoth’s destructive defenses would deal out death to us as well.  That is why we had to make haste to get off of this mountain as soon as safety might permit us too.  Any further delay would cause the Azragothians delays in being able to use their city’s secret weapon, and those delays could risk their lives as well.  They would wait for us to reach the plain and send up a signal fire so that they would know we were in the clear.  Having known Nem and Ezra and Corimanth but a little time while sheltering in their city, I was fully confident that they were honorable men who sincerely wished us no harm.  They had entrusted Maeven to my charge.  Corimanth sincerely loved his sister, nephew, and brother-in-law, so I feared no threat from him as well.  And, even though there had been some tension and bad blood between Mattox and me, I had no doubt that he had become a changed man, and I could not believe that he would willingly send us to our death.  He most certainly would have before, but not now.  The difference in him was profound enough to cause one to wonder at the transformative power of the One who had called us here.  But time was precious and we did not have much of it left.

I spurred my mount forward until I was alongside Maeven.

“We need to get out of here soon and light the signal fire.”

“I know,” she looked straightforward, not turning to me, “It is not that far now.  I wish we didn’t have to take the riverbed, but the supply wagon couldn’t have been brought down any other way.”

“If we have to, we may need to abandon it and find some other way to forage for what we need along the way.”

“Mr. O’Brian, I know these parts, and I know what we are going into.  Remember, that my last years here were spent in marauding raids, and supply runs for the resistance.  I am not the same little wilting flower of a girl you remember when you and Begglar first knew me.  I’ve seen the gathering of the armies, and the Xarmnian reach even in these rural lands far from its capitol.  People are frightened, harassed, slaughter or even worse.”

“Worse?”

“Forced to witness atrocities, degrading mockery, and the abuse of their innocents.  The human heart, for all of the bestial wildness that The Pan and his Half-men creatures are reported to be, is far darker, and wilder still.  With the Half-men, it is mere animal violence, but with the Xarmnians it is an evil expression that goes beyond savagery.  We will not be at liberty to range far enough into the wilds for a hunting or foraging party to be of much use.  We will need to stay together, knowing the whereabouts of each other at all times, if we are to survive.  We will need to be ready for surprise attacks at a moment’s notice, and coordinate our fighting styles and patterns so that we serve a common objective to route the enemy and not let them divide us, even if some of us fall or succumb to their tactics.  We will need these supplies to convince others to barter with us, even if they are reluctant too.  We will have to rely on the foodstuffs to get us through lean times when the game is scarce and the wild-growing edible vegetation is spartan or out of season.  Right now, what this wagon carries is crucial to our survival as well.  I only wish the rainy season might have made this riverbed softer with more silt than rock.”

“Your points are well made, Maeven,” I paused and then added, “Storm Hawk.”

I dipped my head in deference to her reputational title, and I saw the edges of a smile play about her lips.  Gratitude for my show of respect for her valued input slightly moistening her eyes, in that unguarded moment.  I knew this was hard for her.  And I knew what courage she was demonstrating to be willing to leave her surrogate family in Azragoth on the cusp of an imminent attack to follow and help me lead our company into an uncertain future.

It took us another 45 minutes to an hour roughly to finally emerge from the river bed and to reach the edge of a clearing below the foothills of Azragoth.  Once there, we quickly used flint to tinder a firebrand made from a sheaf of straw and soot polished wood, that kept it from quickly burning down the shaft.  Maeven spurred her steed, brandishing the torch held high above and behind her so that the ash and loosening pieces of straw would not fall and ignite in her hair as she rode back and forth across the green field.

From the angle of the lower field, we would not be able to see the walls of Azragoth, covered as it was by the forests, but we should see an acknowledgment firelight, gleaming through the forest canopy.

Unbeknownst to us, the siege of Azaragoth had already commenced long before we emerged from the forests below it, and shortly after Mattox had left us to return back into the caverns below the city.  And the counterforce, the Azragothians had to employ to repel the threat had nothing to do with what was stored within the other walls of the city, but what had been coursing through a V-shaped groove cut along the top of the inner walls separating the old dead city from its living and still-strongly-beating defiant heart.