The Powers Of Dornwich

The camp was silent when John followed Urga out of their tent. It was strange to be led around by a blind person, but the Orcess had been so determined to learn to walk on her own with her new condition that she made it a point to learn the camp’s layout quickly whenever they put it back up. There was no chatter, no screams of pain from fighting or cries of pleasure from fucking going around through the camp. The Orcs didn’t drink or party as they were prone to do while they were in the safety of the camp. They just stood in place… and growled at the haze of purple light that surrounded the land around them. Dark, still, lifeless clouds turned the sky gray above them like a storm that had been frozen in time… but there was no lightning. There was no rain. There was only ash. It fell like snow in the midst of winter while the warriors around John stared out through the purple light.

Not a single person reached for a bow. They all held melee weapons, John remembered with a grimace as Urga took him along the edge of the camp. They didn’t have walls, foxholes, or wooden spears set out in the dirt as obstacles. They had determination and anger to show the elves… except there were no elves that John could see. All around the camp the purple glow pervaded, but in it… was only ****. Thousands of rotting dead faces surrounded the camp at Duskacre. Endless hordes of skeletons, zombies, and elementals stood completely still around the perimeter of the camp and the crowds of dead just continued on… for as far as John could see. There were so many that the dead formed a sea of rotting faces and heads with only the occasional Beacon or undead monster standing up above them all like ships in the distance. Most of the bodies were so old and so decomposed that they simply looked black and rotten… yet there were some among those bodies that John paused to look at. The faces were unrecognizable but the bodies were dressed in all types of gear and held weapons. They wore old, rusted armor shaped like the faces of animals, monsters, or other random items; armor that was thick and artistic in a strange way. If not for the fact that every plate of metal was covered in a layer of wet, coppery rust, then John might have stopped to see if it was engraved too.

Ghouls with silvery sunken eyes and humans larger than John had ever seen stared back at him. He only realized after a few steps that the men towering ten to twenty feet tall in the midst of the crowds all had to be Giants. The skin on their dead bodies was stiff and leathery like rawhide that cracked when the Giants' heads turned to follow him as he walked. Screaming faces appeared on the crystal surfaces of the Beacons closest to John; Beacons that had grown to the point that they could hold spears made out of their own rocks and gems, and some of the Orcs that John passed shivered in response to their screams. He assumed the ones full of fear to be cooks or slaves… but the truth was that John could see the doubt in the eyes of all the warriors as he passed too.

That may have been what scared him most of all.

He hadn’t entered combat yet. Technically, he could still leave. The Elves would surely slaughter everyone in the tribe if he left, including the people south of the Burning Pass once they realized that the Dragon no longer inhabited it. However, if the Elves weren’t attacking, then it meant that they wanted to talk. They had enough to wipe out John and he knew it, the Elves clearly knew it too, otherwise he felt like they wouldn’t have so blatantly shown the amount of soldiers they had. The most damage he would be able to do would be with his grenade launcher, and if he used that, he doubted that he could even make a dent in the number of enemies that stood outside Duskacre now. The hordes of undead were simply a display at that moment. If they wanted to talk… to negotiate, then John was willing.

He just… he needed a backup plan, one that didn’t just involve leaving his tribe to die. He tried checking his kingdom tab as he turned and walked back into the heart of the tribe again and put his back to the army of the dead, but the only option he found was unavailable. Fast Travel was locked… and even if it wasn’t, the option didn’t seem to extend to anyone other than him. He tried to find another option, sifted through tabs of information as quickly as he could, but… there was nothing that he could find before he approached the only pillar of smoke rising up from the center of Duskacre. Familiar warriors, slaves, and weapons appeared and disappeared from sight as John approached Mub’s tent.

Tyrea was standing at the edge of the makeshift forge outside of Mub’s tent when he arrived, dressed in the same silken, translucent dress she always wore. Her hands were clasped together in front of her around a large chain leash that clattered softly when she squeezed it. A giant, metallic collar sat heavy on her neck when John looked at her, her wavy crimson hair fell like a soft curtain around the collar enough to almost obscure the image of runes and sigils that had been inscribed into the metal from John. He saw them barely, and his brow furrowed when he saw the sullen look on her face as she held the chain, but he didn’t stop to ask her about it.

He didn’t need to. Directly across from her another **** was being collared and chained in the same way. The enchantment on the collar flashed with a dim amethyst-colored light as it took effect on the person it had been equipped to, but it didn’t stop the girl from asking why it was happening. She had been good, she told her master. The Orc who was doing it to her only gave the girl a passing explanation.

“It’s an Elvish collar,” he grunted and batted the hands of the next **** out of the way to collar that one as well. “There’s no need for the Elves to kill you if they see their own magic already keeping you meek.” It was a last resort... to make sure that the innocent continued to live on even if everyone else did not. Whatever the Orc or the **** said next never reached John’s ears. He arrived at the entrance to the tent and became part of a whole new conversation.

“-orry, but whoever you are waiting on will not be returning. Retrieve your Elders and bring them to us so that we may speak.” The voice speaking seemed… feminine in nature, barely, because at the same time it also seemed masculine. The owner of the voice somehow spoke with an echo, like someone had layered the voices of a hundred others on top of her own. Beneath the tones of all these different voices, John could barely make out a single, focused, natural sound that he assumed to have actually come from the woman who stood in Mub’s tent, a sound that wasn’t a product of magic like the others.

“He will return.” This time it was Mub’s voice that John heard as he pulled open the entrance flap of Mub’s tent. Mub didn’t tremble when he spoke. He didn’t speak with a soft voice or any other traces of uncertainty. He spoke with a growl like he was annoyed at the fact that someone would doubt him. “He always does. He-” There was a brief pause in conversation as John stepped into view and Mub’s one good remaining eye widened. The Orc pushed up from a large wooden table in the center of the room he had been leaning over and straightened as the woman he had been talking to on the other side of the table turned to look at John as well. Like John’s own abode, most of the tent had been cleared out. Only chests full of gear and valuables remained inside, along with the table and the things sitting on it. A handful of cups and a giant brass pitcher sat on the middle of the table, but only one of the cups had been used.

The Elf in the room had not touched the drink. She kept herself collected and composed, one hand held dutifully behind her back while the other rested on the hilt of a long, thin, sheathed cutlass that hung from her hip. She had no other weapon, no shield. She wore a full suit of armor, except for a helmet, made out of thick sheets of metal that had been treated until the plates shone like it had been made from silver coins. On her breastplate sat the image of a storm cloud, with lightning bolts crafted out of sapphires raining down the front of it. Her hair was pulled back and braided until it formed a unique web of combed scarlet locks and left her short, sharp ears out in the open for all to see. Her lips were small and red and pressed together in a thin, unmoving line. Her chin was pointed, but soft like creamy white silk, but he paid no attention to her hairless, unblemished jawline. He barely paid attention to any part of her other than her eyes... which projected a bright, glimmering, cobalt-blue light from the irises.

He didn’t even leer at the Elf as she stepped away from the table and gave him a scrutinizing glare of her own. Her armor was too bulky for that, which seemed a little strange to him since the few parts of her body that he could see were all slender and long like she didn’t fit in the armor she was wearing. She towered half a head above John as he approached the table in silence and her presence filled the room with the scent of various flowery soaps and perfumes. It clashed with the pervasive scent of dust that had been present in the area ever since John left the Burning Pass. She didn’t nod, she didn’t bow. She simply lifted her chin up high as John approached and then sighed loudly. She pointed to the door as if to direct him back out of the tent like he was just another one of the various slaves that the tribe had collected… but Mub spoke up before she could.

“Alpha,” he addressed John with a grunt, and likewise there was no bow or nod from the Orc. Honestly though, John wasn’t actually surprised to see that Mub hadn’t bothered greeting him like he was some kind of important leader. He called him by a proper title instead of using some kind of slur for humans, and that was good enough for the time being. That single statement only needed to be said once before Mub left John in charge of the discussion and left the room, growling at the Elven woman before he disappeared from sight and the redhead’s eyes widened and burned even brighter. She took a step back away from John when he finally reached the mugs on the table, but he didn’t get anything to drink. His throat felt so dry that he refused to try and sate his sudden thirst with anything but water. Orcish ale would only make it worse.

“You’re the leader here?” her layered voice cracked like a loud whip in John’s ears, even while just posing a simple question. “A human? How?” she asked, and John’s jaw tightened. Instead of answering her, his eyes fell down to the sword at her hip and stared at it. Already it didn’t seem like Dornwich had sent someone out here to talk to them. It was more like she had been sent out to intimidate him and the rest of the tribe into surrendering. When he didn’t answer her question, the Elf followed his gaze. Her eyes dropped down to the blade at her belt and her lips tightened and curled into the start of a snarl while the glow in her vision burned brighter. Her hands clenched on the hilt of the weapon for a long moment… and then she lowered them to the belt at her waist. Her fingers flickered and danced, and when she pulled them away again, the sword came away too. It clattered noisily on the table as she set it down with her weapon belt… and then slid it across the table to John. When he looked up at her in confusion, she refused to meet his gaze. “Why do the Bomasi listen to you?” she asked, her voice growing taut… and John grabbed her weapon and slid it further away from her. The arm that she had kept over the hilt of the blade retracted back to her hip where she clenched it into a fist over and over again in front of him.

“I fought my way into the tribe,” he answered finally and watched as the Elf slowly lifted her head. Her glowing cobalt eyes squinted at John as he pulled his hand away from the sword and formed two fists of his own.

All he needed was a thought. If events took a turn for the worst, then all he needed was a single thought and he could be ready to fight… but if he fought, then he couldn’t leave the kingdom. He had to hit the button before anyone could strike at him.

“No.” She wasn’t answering a question of his own, she was denying his answer. “That doesn’t work,” she snapped, and her eyes burned even brighter. For a second he thought she might have been talking about his plan to leave the kingdom… but that was impossible. She was talking about the Orcs. The flickering lantern flame that had doused the room in orange light seemingly vanished as her stare hardened, but while John waited for her to accept it, the blue light in her gaze gradually diminished, and the lantern’s glare came back a few seconds later. “How did you protect them from our summons?” she asked, and John cocked an eyebrow at her.

“There’s no point in lying. If we need to, we can bathe them in the light of the Hallowed and simply watch you try to shield them.” Again, the Elf straightened up. John’s silence gave him a short moment to think.

‘The light of the Hallowed?’

He could only assume that she was referring to the Beacons when she said that. The only thing he could think of with light that related to the Hallowed were the Beacons of Ruin… and suddenly it all made sense to him. The fact that the tribe hadn’t been blind when they approached Dornwich must have been why the Elves were confused. She didn’t introduce herself or ask him his name because they didn’t come out to ask for a surrender or negotiate for peace. They came out to get answers. They came out to learn about John’s magic. They only cared about satisfying their own curiosity.

“We saw the Deceiver flying away from the Burning Pass. We heard the Dragon’s singing. How did you let her loose?” she demanded answer after answer… but John didn’t feel ready to give them to her. If they were here to learn… then maybe there was a chance for him to talk his way out of this. “Where did you find those?” she asked, and pointed at the Thrall King’s boots on John’s feet. He followed her gaze down to his legs for a moment, and then stopped when his eyes landed on the sword at the table.

If she truly wasn’t there to negotiate… then he didn’t want her to have any access to her weapon. He needed as much of an advantage as he could get, because as soon as he answered her questions then there was nothing stopping her from ordering the army to attack. That realization must have shown on his face because she darted for the weapon as soon as he did.

Thankfully, he was closer. His fingers merely needed to touch it before it was whisked away to his inventory. The Elf’s armored torso slammed against the top of the table as she tried and failed to dive across it. Her sword hand snatched at nothing but thin air two times before she finally caught on to what had happened and stepped back. Her other hand still didn’t even move from her back.

+1 Sword of the Tempest.

The information for the blade was not yet relevant, so he let it sit in his inventory for the time being. He hadn’t practiced in fighting with swords anyways. The Elf scowled and slammed her fist against the table… and then straightened up and glared at John again, but before she could say anything, John took control of the conversation. He took a step closer to the emissary from Dornwich… and then tried to give her the best smile he had. It was hard to maintain and the muscles in his cheeks quickly began to ache whenever he had to suppress the urge to scowl or let another expression take up residence on his face, but he managed it and silently thanked his high Charisma score for the ability.

“If you want answers… then let’s both actually talk...” he grunted and watched as the blue light coming from the Elf flared brightly enough to hide the whites of her eyes. She also took a step towards John, the hand at her hip clenching and unclenching faster and faster, but she crouched low as she walked. She moved like she was getting ready to attack him, so John finally relented the thought he had been holding back on. His fists squeezed tighter as he imagined them wreathed in flame once again… but they did not ignite. Instead, his eyes flashed too. His magic was not detected or visible in any way that either of them noticed, but the light of a familiar pop-up screen did appear in his vision as he cast Observe. “Elisrya.”

Elisrya Philynn Morbella Ki’Valmys
Level 14 Spellsword
<The Tempest>
Health: 451/451
Relationship: -151
Effects: Stoneskin, Greased Lightning, Hive Linked.