Storm and Stone Ch. 04

He knew the truth of the human's words, and Grok's grin grew to match that of his friend. For the first time in ages, he truly hungered for battle. The big orc drew his sword and raised it high into the air and called out to his men, "You heard Lord Stonebrook! Form up and prepare for attack!"

*********

True to Arawn's estimate, the sounds of soldiers on the march were heard from down the roadway thirty minutes later. The chevaux de frise had been moved into double rows on each side of the exit into the plain a good eighty feet and extended the bottleneck into an open area. It would leave them dangerously vulnerable to ranged attacks before they ever had a chance to spread out.

He tapped the gem on his medallion and spoke, "Lorup, get your boys and move the water-bikes into position. This is happening now."

The tarps were pulled from two dozen motorcycles with sidecars. To call it a sidecar was an understatement, however. They were more like modified armored turrets, the bikes were no less armored as well. Twenty four riders gnomish riders started their engines, Lorup at the lead, and twenty four more gnomes climbed into the turrets and and strapped themselves in. On the shopmaster's command, the bikes rolled out from their parking spaces and onto the battlefield, their engines barely a whisper. The turrets spun and released some of their payload onto the ground along the way; it was a thin, black mixture of pitch and ethanol and would be nearly impossible to put out. The stream stopped and the bikes took up a staggered, two-line formation on each side of the chevaux and awaited the Vaszul.

A fireball streaked across the sky toward the allied encampment. Arawn expected this after yesterday. The Vaszul would seek to soften up the defenders before they tried to march in again. His friend would also be here soon for their little show.

Arawn drew one of his swords, stepped forward, and assumed the position of a batter at home-plate. He focused the energy in his solar plexus chakra and willed it into the blade as he tightened his grip on the handle and eyed the incoming inferno. It was roughly the size of a pickup truck. He smirked, then swung the blade at an invisible ball.

The crack of a baseball bat rang out from the blade and the fireball immediately reversed course back to its sender at the Vaszul camp.

He only realized that everyone on the battlefield had seen his feat when the cheer went up behind him. Then came the Vaszul soldiers.

Arawn's hand went back to the gemstone in the medallion, "At the ready, boys. They're here!"

At the human's command, the drivers all tightened their grips on the handlebars and the turrets spun and took aim at the space between the chevaux. When the soldiers reached the halfway point of the barrier wall, all hell broke loose. The bikes revved up and took off like a hive of angry bees and sprayed their improvised incendiary on every Vaszul soldier within reach.

A hail of arrows came from down the road, aimed at the defenders. With dramatic wave of his hand for effect, Arawn returned them back to their senders with love, courtesy of a psychokinetic burst from his third eye chakra.

Since when did I know that all this came from my chakras? Must be more Nithraksi... oh shit! His thoughts were interrupted when he saw that the Vaszul had reached the end of the barrier wall. He relaxed, however, when he saw that the gnomes were already on their way back. Good job, boys. Now it's my turn.

He smiled at Amevina, then looked back to the battlefield and snapped his fingers. Lightning struck the outer edge of the ground where the gnomes had poured the black fluid and set it aflame. The Vazul could not escape the spread of the blaze and were caught up, their bodies already soaked in the same fuel as the ground. It was a grizzly sight as hundreds of men were trapped by their frantic compatriots and all burned to death in a cluster, rendered immobile by panic. The men at the rear of the formation tried to move back, but even they had been doused and were not missed by the flames. The dry portion of the troops held firm and awaited a decision by some superior that had not yet made his presence known on the battlefield

"Vina," Arawn called out, "Can you give us a nice easterly breeze before we get hit with the smell of burning flesh?"

Her eyes widened in realization and she quickly nodded, "It would be my pleasure!"

His wife wasted no time and summoned the requested breeze, only to realize the purpose of his specifics when she saw the unharmed and waiting Vaszul retch and vomit all over each other from the stench of their cooked brethren.

"You planned that!"

"Yup," he admitted, "everything I've done so far has been mostly psychological warfare. Why should this be any different?"

"I...," Amevina shook her head, "Point taken."

Arawn cast his gaze back to the battlefield and sighed, "Looks like they have the fire out. Time to finish this."

He turned back toward the battlefield, but before he could complete the movement, he saw a gnome fall from his bike and hit the ground. A crossbow bolt stuck out of his upper-right shoulder.

Arawn dashed over and scooped the little man into his arms. It was Yarrik and there was blood on his lips. He stood and reached into the gnome's body with his senses.

"Shit, the healers aren't going to get here in time, he's dying fast."

He rolled the limp body over to see the wound more closely. It struck between his spine and the shoulder blade. Had to have hit his lungs, he thought. Arawn clutched the tiny man to his chest.

"Don't you die on me Yarrik, I'm not worth it! Get back here!"

Oh fucking hell! Please let this work!

He sent out a stream of energy straight from his heart chakra and into the gnome. The intensity of the surge forced a grunt of exertion from Arawn and brought him to his knees. Onlookers saw the pair bathed in a warm, green light. Yarrik had not lost consciousness, he had simply been too weak to move or respond. The light energized him and he felt the crossbow bolt pushed from the wound by his body itself. His eyes widened as he realized who held him and he clung to Arawn for dear life and thanked him with every breath he could draw.

That was how Kem'erra found him when she ran up with three other healers in tow. She became confused when her eyes took in the conflicting sights of the happy, supposedly dying, gnome who showered Arawn with his profuse gratitude, and the bloody crossbow bolt on the ground and the huge bloodstain on the gnome's upper-right shoulder.

"Lord Arawn, what has happened? We were told that the gnome was near death and required urgent care. How is it that he looks so...alive?"

He managed to extract himself from Yarrik's giddy embrace and looked up at Kem'erra from his knees, "I... healed him."

It was not the answer that she expected, "You healed him... how, M'lord? I thought you were a mage, not a healer..."

"The Nithraksi gave me arcane knowledge and skill, yes, but that's not what I used. I used the gifts that I was born with, the ones that the Nithraksi only enhanced."

Kem'erra shook her head, "I still do not understand, Lord Arawn. How did you use that to heal him? Your power seemed so different, before."

"Empathic ability is basically the assembly of the various schools of magic, shamanism, and the healing arts all under one unifying current... emotion. I use emotional energy from different chakras to do different things. Healing energy comes from the heart, and instead of using my hands as a conduit I just bathed him in energy poured straight from the source. I wasn't entirely sure it would work, but I had to do something. He wouldn't have lasted till you arrived."

From the corner of his eye, he caught movement from the Vaszul troops, "Kem'erra, I'm going to have a shit ton of explaining to do for everyone you can think of once this is over. Can I add you to the list and catch up with you? We have a battle to fight..."

Kem'erra nodded and gathered up the non-combatants. While she hurried away, Arawn focused on the circlet and called out to the guardian, "Time to party, Vulkan. Show 'em what you got!"

The great beast roared and hammered his chest with cupped hands, then leapt into the fray to confront the advancing Vaszul. He was every bit the rampaging silverback as he postured and hammered his fists against the ground. The Vaszul stopped in their tracks when the metal behemoth snatched up one of the chevaux and hurled the jagged blacksteel barrier into the farthest ranks of the enemy formation down the road. When the last of the troops had ground to a halt, the massive beast stood guard on all fours and dared them to move.

Arawn laughed and shouted across the allied lines to Grok, "Now THAT, is how you stop an enemy advance!"

The orc laughed with his friend, then called the archers to attention. Vulkan leapt aside on Grok's command to the elven bowmen, and five thousand arrows rained death upon the shaken enemy troops. More Vaszul corpses added themselves to their charred brethren on the ground.

It must be noted here that among the defenders, only half of the ten thousand archers were elves. The other half were orcs that armed themselves with heavy wooden recurve bows which looked robust enough to beat an ogre to death without being damaged. The arrows were no less intimidating; Arawn estimated them at around four feet long, and half the diameter of a broomhandle, with blacksteel heads that looked big enough to widen a human's eye socket if one should find its mark there.

The Dominion archers were also nowhere to be found at the moment. Grok and Arawn were not worried, however. Before the enemy could regroup, another hail of arrows rained down and more dead and wounded littered the battlefield. When they attempted an ordered retreat, the missing Dominion archers struck.

The orcs had split their forces and snuck into flanking positions in the woods to the north and south. When the Vaszul fell back, they sprang out of hiding and fired upon the rear lines of the bottlenecked troops at will. The enemy were so tightly packed that the slaughter was over in minutes as men were skewered two and three at a time by the orcish arrows that felt more like spears to the dying Vaszul.

When the dust settled and the arrows ceased, the ground was littered with the dead and the dying. To the last man, all were Vaszul. That filled Arawn with a tremendous sense of satisfaction. Between the barriers, here and there men still stood, dead and unable to fall, pinned to one and sometimes two of their comrades in ways that kept them on their feet after death. One trio had fallen to their knees and now looked to have spent their dying moments in prayer to an unknown god. Before, there had been nothing left but ash and random bits thrown down the road, there was no escaping this, however. Perhaps another four thousand bodies lay piled on the ground where they fell on top of one another in their failed escape, and the piles were highest between the chevaux.

Arawn Stonebrook was no stranger to death, but this was carnage on a scale that he could not have imagined outside of old black & white war footage from earth. First they vaporized the Vaszul and, in response, the enemy sent the lich to coerce him into betrayal even while the Pale snuck up on the camp to attempt a thwarted assault. Then they roasted them with Arawn's improvised incendiary, and still they marched to their death by a storm of arrows. Even the movies from Earth failed to do justice to the grisly sight before him, and Arawn was not comforted by the knowledge that the battle was not yet over. It took him back to that night when he was fourteen. He almost wished he had not shared that with Amevina the night he got free. He had avoided thinking about that night for the past fifteen years and had done damn good for it, he thought. Now it was fresh in his mind again. A lone tear found its way down his cheek and he wiped it away with renewed focus. Everything so far had been head games and defense. He had one more card left in his deck of tricks, however, before the bloodshed of real combat would add itself to his eternal torment. Arawn pulled down his mask and tossed his hood back, and strode into the battlefield alone.

The orc archers retreated to form back up with the main contingent while Arawn stopped in the center of the field and waited. While he did so, he stuck his arms straight out in front of him and pressed the backs of his hands together and drew them slowly apart. The chevaux de frise were parted with his hands and the bottleneck was thus removed. Still, Arawn waited in silence. Everyone on both sides had become restless by the time something finally happened.

The lich appeared at the front of the Vaszul army and walked casually to the human. As the lich made his way, the human drew a blade from his waist and drove it into the ground between the two, and backed away five steps. The undead elf walked up to the blade, lifted it from the earth, and lay it across his upturned palms. In a move that left the defenders speechless, it then closed the distance between the two and knelt before the human, then kissed the blade and offered it up to him in supplication.

Arawn took the blade from the lich, then turned to the defenders and raised the blade high in the air to a rousing cheer from their ranks. He turned back to their new ally and smiled.

"You have honored your promise to me, are you ready for me to honor my promise to you, Karva'uh Tel-Duraalith, last of the Elgoniyth?"

Karva'uh nodded, and the undead managed a hideous smile, "Yes I am, Master." The smile might actually have looked friendly, had the lich's lips survived the ravages of time and decay. Instead, the piece of lip on the upper right half of his mouth was the only thing to move as it was the only piece of his mouth left intact.

Arawn placed his hands upon the creature's shoulders and his face took on a look of extreme focus. He closed his eyes and charged his crown chakra. A tiny but nonetheless brilliant point of violet light appeared at the top of Arawn's head and cast its light across the battlefield. The intensity of the light slowly grew until none could look upon its center without pain, then it pulsed and vanished down into Arawn's body. The human's eyes were open and none would know from his visage, but Arawn's mind had completely left the battlefield and fallen inward. He raced through his mind in search of information, millions of lifetimes of memories flashed in front of his eyes until he found the subject which he sought... tonal magic. It did not escape his notice that his intuition could lead him to the information he sought much more quickly than his active mind.

Back on the outside world, people were once again without words. Arawn's throat produced the deep thrum once again... although this time at a slightly higher pitch and his body was surrounded with a translucent, rich blue aura. A green light now pulsed outside of his body, just in front of his heart, and the violet light returned as well. His aura faded and concentrated itself into a third point of light, and the three lights joined at eye level between the two... blended into a beautiful shade of amethyst.

Arawn removed his hands from Karva'uh's shoulders and plucked the light from the air with his thumb and forefinger.

"Are you sure about this? I can't promise you that this won't hurt like a sonofabitch."

"Please Master, I want this more than you can know. Ever since last night, when you freed my mind from both the geas and Uldakka's meddling, I have remembered and done nothing but mourn the fate of my people. Free my soul of his dark taint, My Master, and you will never need the advantage my vessel provides for I will serve you gladly for the rest of your days and mine," he told the human as he knelt once more, a gesture of his own volition.

"Then by your words, Karva'uh Tel-Duraalith... our pact is sealed."

Those last four words vibrated with power that could be felt across both sides of the battlefield. With Arawn's final declaration, he pushed the light into his forearm over the spot where he had encased the needle within his bone.

Karva'uh groaned in pain and crumpled onto his side as gouts of thick, black smoke hissed from his body. Arawn was similarly affected and clutched his arm with his free hand, his face clenched tight in concentration and pain. The same thick smoke forced its way between his fingertips, and Arawn fell to his knees. Amevina was at his side in an instant and erected a magical barrier around the three of them. Then it came...

The ground trembled under the weight of the great beast's landing. The elder wrathling had joined the field. It stood a good eight feet taller than Vulkan, and the late Dakkrig's description was not inaccurate. The vaguely-humanoid beast looked like extra layers of muscle had been piled on everywhere, and rows of jagged spines ran down its arms. Fingers ended in savage claws, and there was no skin to be found on the beast anywhere. Saliva dripped from jagged teeth and black eyes stared out, all from a skinless head that would have looked more at home on a dinosaur than anything else. The head tipped back and the beast screeched its fury. Then it headed straight for the dome.

From the allied lines, Grok called out, "Defend them! "

Vulkan leapt from behind the allied lines with a roar to lead the charge, and his footsteps thundered across the battlefield. The creature never reached Arawn and company, the titanic blacksteel gorilla that housed the guardian spirit of Lake Home slammed a spiked shoulder into the wrathling's chest and sent the huge beast sprawling into the Vaszul lines. None beneath the creature survived its landing.

Spurred into action by their general's command and further emboldened by the sight of Vulkan in real action, the orc lines roared their return call to the metal behemoth while they surrounded their downed allies. The remainder streamed forward and slammed into the Vazul ranks and the clash of steel on steel rang out to signal the start of more death and destruction. Both sides would feel the pain of loss, however, as orc and human fell in equal measure in the initial moments of the melee.

Within Amevina's shield, Arawn struggled with far more resistance than he expected. It was as if the corruption within Karva'uh's soul possessed a will of its own and fought for survival. The undead elf now writhed and screamed in pain next to Arawn, but results could be seen. Arawn could never restore life to the creature, that had been given up before the corruption had taken place, but he could return Karva'uh to his original state if he could just hold out a little longer. The creature no longer looked so decayed. Quite the opposite, in fact; he had the appearance of an extremely supple mummy, and his features continued to fill out slowly.

The human finally prevailed and he slumped forward onto his forehead while Karva'uh went still. Suddenly, Arawn sat up in wide-eyed alarm. At the conclusion of the cleansing process, the needle had been destroyed by the degree of corruption and Karva'uh's soul had begun to leave the mortal realm.

"Fuck! No, no, no, no, NO! Don't you dare do this to me now," he shouted at his forearm. He looked frantic as he formed a blazing ball of violet energy in his right hand and slammed it into his left forearm at the site of the needle. "Stay PUT!" Arawn vanished momentarily in a flash of violet light.