It is said that some men age like wine, becoming finer and more distinguished with age, while...
Storming the Gates
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Setting Out
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It is said that some men age like wine, becoming finer and more distinguished with age, while others age like milk, going sour and losing all their positive characteristics.
Kirl, on the other hand, had aged like oak, which was to say heavily gnarled and that one could bounce an axe off both, doing more damage to the axe than the wood.
Kirl the Barbarian. Kirl the Outlander. Kirl the Mercenary. Kirl the Conqueror. Kirl the Undefeated. Kirl the Indestructible.
Kirl the Old.
Sitting on the bench in the wing of his family cemetery dedicated to just his animal companions, Kirl felt the last one most of all. He had just buried his latest boon companion, and it struck him just how old he was that he had lost so many faithful dogs and horses to simple age that he had needed to rearrange the graves just to fit them all for the honourable burials they deserved. The only reason all of his children weren't already underground was because he'd still been having them at an age when most men were being tended to like babes by their grandchildren.
Even then, he didn't have any direct children who weren't also adults by now.
And yet he only really felt old here, in the heart, when surrounded by the staggering number of friends and family who had passed on to the next life before him. Oh, he wasn't quite as strong or as quick as in his heyday, which was now so long ago that he didn't really remember it so well under all the other things he had done since, but time had only sharpened his mind and his instincts, and even his body had not particularly become frail. Some had even suggested that any decline in peak health had only come about because he no longer needed such abilities as acutely as he once had.
It was, perhaps, because he was "The Old" that he was also feeling the title "The Undefeated" with the sharpness of a dagger in the back. While he had never really bought into the hubris of such an appellation, it wasn't entirely false either. If you were being uncharitable he had more than a few defeats to his name, but only if uncharitable, because if they were real defeats he wouldn't be on this side of the grave being all thoughtful and contemplative. He had set backs, times were he needed to retreat in good order before coming back from another angle, and victories that had felt like losses at the time, but somehow, in the end, no matter the odds, he always pulled off final victory or an honourable tie of the sort where both parties could be said to have won in their own way.
Wandering away from the most recent burial of those close to him, he wandered through the graveyard to the next most recent marker stone and gently laid a hand upon the cut and polished granite. Nothing but the finest for the people near and dear to him. The gesture was an apology and a promise as his mood curled in upon itself. There had been some delay due to the fact that he had wanted for Lucky IV to pass on naturally, because it would be cruel to subject an animal to what he had in mind. He had killed many, many people and animals for many reasons, but he had always tried to avoid needless cruelty. He had stabbed many a dog going for his throat because he was fighting with its master, but that did not mean that he particularly enjoyed that. He had raised so many pups himself, and they had no understanding of the quarrels of men, just of loyalty to their family.
Mostly though, the delay had been in preparation for his latest campaign, which required the gathering of supplies and troops of a quality he had never before done, and that had produced an unavoidable delay. It had only been in the past week or so that he had introduced an avoidable one to allow his final dog his final rest first, and even then the past week had not been spent in idleness.
Marching away from the buried bodies of friends, companions, and so terribly many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, Kirl made his way down through the steep, narrow streets of his adopted home. The adobe buildings dusted with horse coloured sand and decorated with blue and red tiles in intricate patterns and shaded under fruit trees sat between the ice capped teeth of the mountains and the wine dark waves of the sea, and encapsulated ever environment Kirl had ever been to and fought on. He had ridden from frozen forests into sandy deserts and signed up on ships that sailed between walls of ice and walls of hot forest. He had fought in more battles than he had descendants, until finally one day he had discovered that he had stumbled into a city that was in a jumble of every environment in its own way, and it was calling him its king for some damn fool reason.
Along the way from the cemetery to the port, the people all stopped and stared at him in passage, all silent in fear and awe... although the former was probably in part caused by his grumpiness at that latter. He was a really good killer with a taste for inexpensive pleasures that didn't drain the coffers, that didn't make him some spectacular king worthy of such reverence.
Then again, maybe they were just in awe of how stupid the old man was, which cheered him up a bit.
Arriving at the docks, all other good byes having already been said before he went to bury Lucky, he smiled broadly at those there waiting for him. Chief among them was his oldest surviving lieutenant, Sorn, who had been a boy learning from a great mercenary captain once, and was now easily the second oldest warrior in the kingdom. A finer, more seasoned campaigner and canny general a king could not ask for, and no truer friend could Kirl find on this side of the grave. Grinning toothlessly, the white beard asked with a twinkle in his dark eyes, "Said your last goodbye?"
"Second last, if this all goes right," Kirl grunted as he ran his eyes over the crew of the longship of this final mission. They were all so young to him, and yet the darkest hair among them was still silver. Old warriors all, still with fire in their bellies and strength enough in their arms, and all with their children raised and wives buried.
"And if it doesn't go right?" Sorn asked mischievously.
"Then in a thousand years they'll still be talking about us for what fools we were," Kirl answered with a grin, and both old men let out harsh, barking laughs.
Standing to one side with a bow in hand, Kirl's eldest grandson and designated heir - another grey haired campaigner himself - just shook his head and said, "Grandfather, might I have one final request of you?"
"Well, since you're going to be king, I suppose I might as well see if I can obey someone properly for once in my life," Kirl noted.
Rolling his eyes and muttering, "Like that's ever going to happen..." his grandson then said, "Well, anyway, if you're going to haunt me over this, could you at least make it a public one so I can tell your ghost 'I told you so' where everyone can see?"
Both elders cackled at that and Kirl said, full of all the sombreness he felt the occasion demanded, "Tirjan, I can promise you that whatever happens, this was my choice, as it was the choice of everyone else, and I'm only going to haunt those who blame you for my decision here so I can tell them to lay off you."
A twinkle in his own eye now, the younger man said, "Ah, well, then I guess this isn't our final goodbye then either."
Smirking, the ancient barbarian warlord said, "Careful with that quick wit of yours boy, you might earn yourself responsibility with it one day."
Tirjan nodded once before he paused and then surged forward to wrap his grandfather in a great hug. Tears rimming his eyes, he brushed them away with a silken sleeve before he turned away and said, "Your crew is waiting."
Descending the gangplank to the specially made longship, Kirl silently made his final inspection even as he was fitted in his panoply. Finding everything in order and the sky in the correct position, he ordered his ship to cast off, taking the tiller even as Sorn sat down at the drums to beat out the timing of all this. Rowing without conversation as they made their way from the docks, Kirl finally said, "Last drink boys, and then we see just how mad I really am."
Pulling out the specially prepared witches brew, the old men all shared one last drink as the sun touched the horizon. Casks of extra strength pomegranate brandy were opened and spread across salt and sand soaked sheets and boards, filling the air with intoxicating alcohol fumes even as the strange potion they had all drank started to take effect, making them feel light headed and detached. Now fully pointed in the direction of the setting sun upon the sea, Kirl gestured to the shore. For a brief moment he wondered if his grandson might balk at the last moment, but his faith in the man who would always be a little boy in his mind was rewarded with a single flaming arrow arcing out from the docks.
Kirl smiled as the arrow landed true, catching the liquor soaked ship in blue spirit flames in a handful of heartbeats. Inured with potion and preparation and sheer bloody minded experience against the flames, the men roared as one as they strained with all their might against the oars, desperate to meet the frantic pace set out by Sorn. Blowing a horn he had first blown generations ago and raising his banner high, Kirl called out his final charge.
Of the gods he worshipped, it was said that the best afterlife was reserved for those who fell in honourable battle. Kirl was very old and very skilled, and no one had bested him yet, and he had decided that he did not particularly want to give up his title The Undefeated.
Not even to Death.
Not even to Time.
He wasn't going to wait anymore. Not for his strength to finally give out entirely so he could be beat by a punk with no skill. Not for Death to sneak up on him in his sleep. He was going to charge the gates of the Underworld itself. At least then if he died it would be a truly memorable death and it would be on his terms, and at least in the minds of men he would remain Undefeated.
And, if this worked, maybe, just maybe, his legend wouldn't be just among men when all was said and done.
The sun was slipping beneath the horizon faster than they could chase, even as the fires began to spread beyond the preparations to control it and the stamina of the white beards began to fade, but still Kirl grinned at it all. A strong wind had picked up and perhaps it was senility fuelled insanity and perhaps it was the strange concoction running through his body, but he felt alive like he hadn't since his neighbours had learned to negotiate with his grandchildren instead of picking fights. Tears in his eyes, he knew that if his heart burst here he could still accept whatever came next.
The sun finished setting.
The sea dropped away.
The heat of the flames died off, even if the light did not.
It was like stepping through a doorway, the desert winds across the sun warmed sea disappearing, replaced with the clammy, stagnant air of a bog in winter.
They were through.
A pale starvation victim in a dark cloak was poling a ferry barge across the black waters, illuminated by a lantern that burned with sickly green flame. He looked up from his duty just in time to be run over by the longship, the unexpected arrival possessing more solidity than he was used to. Laughing maniacally as the ferryman floundered in the water, Kirl tossed out an air filled bladder as a charitable gesture. He always felt a little bad for running over people who were only in his way because they were doing an important job, but that had never stopped him before!
Looming out of the mists that closed in at the edge vision yet never drew closer, a shoreline of black stone and white shells appeared before them. Rowing hard as Kirl kept them steady, the men rammed the far shore of the Underworld with the ship and then began to pile out, as if this were any other raid on any other day. Snatching up spear and shield, Kirl jumped out along with them, feeling more spry than he had in a generation, if simply because what protestations his body had simply did not register as important any longer.
Dead spectres drifted in the mists and were shoved out of the way by the wedge of elderly madmen as they charged, screaming, into the Underworld.
Their roars were answered in turn by something from just beyond the fog, the sound like a physical thing that slapped them in the guts even as it failed to perturb them. Uncoiling from about where it had been entwined with the Pillars of Creation, guarding the Gates of the Underworld to keep the living and the dead separated, was Yarmrunyin the Dead Serpent. Slain by the gods in the workings of prophecy, the immortal being could not truly die, and so it sat at in the liminal space between life and death. Clad in scales of white bone and black iron, its yellowed fangs were taller than a man even as they dripped with all the poisons and disease of the world, and its breath smoked with the bone cracking heat of the funeral pyre in its belly.
One day the Dead Serpent would destroy the world, making way for its rebirth and the rebirth of the world by the hands of the gods; or at least that was what the shamans had told Kirl as a boy. Were the tales correct this was a beast that not eve the gods themselves could truly slay, and were they incorrect it was still a giant snake with horrifically deadly venom and fiery breath.
The very point of the wedge, personal banner flying as his spear lead the charge, Kirl kept up his roaring challenge as he ran onward.
His objective...
[] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
[] Was close at hand, guarded by the Serpent
[] Was the Serpent itself!
AN: Something crazy and that should be relatively short to see if I can get my creativity running again
Kirl, on the other hand, had aged like oak, which was to say heavily gnarled and that one could bounce an axe off both, doing more damage to the axe than the wood.
Kirl the Barbarian. Kirl the Outlander. Kirl the Mercenary. Kirl the Conqueror. Kirl the Undefeated. Kirl the Indestructible.
Kirl the Old.
Sitting on the bench in the wing of his family cemetery dedicated to just his animal companions, Kirl felt the last one most of all. He had just buried his latest boon companion, and it struck him just how old he was that he had lost so many faithful dogs and horses to simple age that he had needed to rearrange the graves just to fit them all for the honourable burials they deserved. The only reason all of his children weren't already underground was because he'd still been having them at an age when most men were being tended to like babes by their grandchildren.
Even then, he didn't have any direct children who weren't also adults by now.
And yet he only really felt old here, in the heart, when surrounded by the staggering number of friends and family who had passed on to the next life before him. Oh, he wasn't quite as strong or as quick as in his heyday, which was now so long ago that he didn't really remember it so well under all the other things he had done since, but time had only sharpened his mind and his instincts, and even his body had not particularly become frail. Some had even suggested that any decline in peak health had only come about because he no longer needed such abilities as acutely as he once had.
It was, perhaps, because he was "The Old" that he was also feeling the title "The Undefeated" with the sharpness of a dagger in the back. While he had never really bought into the hubris of such an appellation, it wasn't entirely false either. If you were being uncharitable he had more than a few defeats to his name, but only if uncharitable, because if they were real defeats he wouldn't be on this side of the grave being all thoughtful and contemplative. He had set backs, times were he needed to retreat in good order before coming back from another angle, and victories that had felt like losses at the time, but somehow, in the end, no matter the odds, he always pulled off final victory or an honourable tie of the sort where both parties could be said to have won in their own way.
Wandering away from the most recent burial of those close to him, he wandered through the graveyard to the next most recent marker stone and gently laid a hand upon the cut and polished granite. Nothing but the finest for the people near and dear to him. The gesture was an apology and a promise as his mood curled in upon itself. There had been some delay due to the fact that he had wanted for Lucky IV to pass on naturally, because it would be cruel to subject an animal to what he had in mind. He had killed many, many people and animals for many reasons, but he had always tried to avoid needless cruelty. He had stabbed many a dog going for his throat because he was fighting with its master, but that did not mean that he particularly enjoyed that. He had raised so many pups himself, and they had no understanding of the quarrels of men, just of loyalty to their family.
Mostly though, the delay had been in preparation for his latest campaign, which required the gathering of supplies and troops of a quality he had never before done, and that had produced an unavoidable delay. It had only been in the past week or so that he had introduced an avoidable one to allow his final dog his final rest first, and even then the past week had not been spent in idleness.
Marching away from the buried bodies of friends, companions, and so terribly many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, Kirl made his way down through the steep, narrow streets of his adopted home. The adobe buildings dusted with horse coloured sand and decorated with blue and red tiles in intricate patterns and shaded under fruit trees sat between the ice capped teeth of the mountains and the wine dark waves of the sea, and encapsulated ever environment Kirl had ever been to and fought on. He had ridden from frozen forests into sandy deserts and signed up on ships that sailed between walls of ice and walls of hot forest. He had fought in more battles than he had descendants, until finally one day he had discovered that he had stumbled into a city that was in a jumble of every environment in its own way, and it was calling him its king for some damn fool reason.
Along the way from the cemetery to the port, the people all stopped and stared at him in passage, all silent in fear and awe... although the former was probably in part caused by his grumpiness at that latter. He was a really good killer with a taste for inexpensive pleasures that didn't drain the coffers, that didn't make him some spectacular king worthy of such reverence.
Then again, maybe they were just in awe of how stupid the old man was, which cheered him up a bit.
Arriving at the docks, all other good byes having already been said before he went to bury Lucky, he smiled broadly at those there waiting for him. Chief among them was his oldest surviving lieutenant, Sorn, who had been a boy learning from a great mercenary captain once, and was now easily the second oldest warrior in the kingdom. A finer, more seasoned campaigner and canny general a king could not ask for, and no truer friend could Kirl find on this side of the grave. Grinning toothlessly, the white beard asked with a twinkle in his dark eyes, "Said your last goodbye?"
"Second last, if this all goes right," Kirl grunted as he ran his eyes over the crew of the longship of this final mission. They were all so young to him, and yet the darkest hair among them was still silver. Old warriors all, still with fire in their bellies and strength enough in their arms, and all with their children raised and wives buried.
"And if it doesn't go right?" Sorn asked mischievously.
"Then in a thousand years they'll still be talking about us for what fools we were," Kirl answered with a grin, and both old men let out harsh, barking laughs.
Standing to one side with a bow in hand, Kirl's eldest grandson and designated heir - another grey haired campaigner himself - just shook his head and said, "Grandfather, might I have one final request of you?"
"Well, since you're going to be king, I suppose I might as well see if I can obey someone properly for once in my life," Kirl noted.
Rolling his eyes and muttering, "Like that's ever going to happen..." his grandson then said, "Well, anyway, if you're going to haunt me over this, could you at least make it a public one so I can tell your ghost 'I told you so' where everyone can see?"
Both elders cackled at that and Kirl said, full of all the sombreness he felt the occasion demanded, "Tirjan, I can promise you that whatever happens, this was my choice, as it was the choice of everyone else, and I'm only going to haunt those who blame you for my decision here so I can tell them to lay off you."
A twinkle in his own eye now, the younger man said, "Ah, well, then I guess this isn't our final goodbye then either."
Smirking, the ancient barbarian warlord said, "Careful with that quick wit of yours boy, you might earn yourself responsibility with it one day."
Tirjan nodded once before he paused and then surged forward to wrap his grandfather in a great hug. Tears rimming his eyes, he brushed them away with a silken sleeve before he turned away and said, "Your crew is waiting."
Descending the gangplank to the specially made longship, Kirl silently made his final inspection even as he was fitted in his panoply. Finding everything in order and the sky in the correct position, he ordered his ship to cast off, taking the tiller even as Sorn sat down at the drums to beat out the timing of all this. Rowing without conversation as they made their way from the docks, Kirl finally said, "Last drink boys, and then we see just how mad I really am."
Pulling out the specially prepared witches brew, the old men all shared one last drink as the sun touched the horizon. Casks of extra strength pomegranate brandy were opened and spread across salt and sand soaked sheets and boards, filling the air with intoxicating alcohol fumes even as the strange potion they had all drank started to take effect, making them feel light headed and detached. Now fully pointed in the direction of the setting sun upon the sea, Kirl gestured to the shore. For a brief moment he wondered if his grandson might balk at the last moment, but his faith in the man who would always be a little boy in his mind was rewarded with a single flaming arrow arcing out from the docks.
Kirl smiled as the arrow landed true, catching the liquor soaked ship in blue spirit flames in a handful of heartbeats. Inured with potion and preparation and sheer bloody minded experience against the flames, the men roared as one as they strained with all their might against the oars, desperate to meet the frantic pace set out by Sorn. Blowing a horn he had first blown generations ago and raising his banner high, Kirl called out his final charge.
Of the gods he worshipped, it was said that the best afterlife was reserved for those who fell in honourable battle. Kirl was very old and very skilled, and no one had bested him yet, and he had decided that he did not particularly want to give up his title The Undefeated.
Not even to Death.
Not even to Time.
He wasn't going to wait anymore. Not for his strength to finally give out entirely so he could be beat by a punk with no skill. Not for Death to sneak up on him in his sleep. He was going to charge the gates of the Underworld itself. At least then if he died it would be a truly memorable death and it would be on his terms, and at least in the minds of men he would remain Undefeated.
And, if this worked, maybe, just maybe, his legend wouldn't be just among men when all was said and done.
The sun was slipping beneath the horizon faster than they could chase, even as the fires began to spread beyond the preparations to control it and the stamina of the white beards began to fade, but still Kirl grinned at it all. A strong wind had picked up and perhaps it was senility fuelled insanity and perhaps it was the strange concoction running through his body, but he felt alive like he hadn't since his neighbours had learned to negotiate with his grandchildren instead of picking fights. Tears in his eyes, he knew that if his heart burst here he could still accept whatever came next.
The sun finished setting.
The sea dropped away.
The heat of the flames died off, even if the light did not.
It was like stepping through a doorway, the desert winds across the sun warmed sea disappearing, replaced with the clammy, stagnant air of a bog in winter.
They were through.
A pale starvation victim in a dark cloak was poling a ferry barge across the black waters, illuminated by a lantern that burned with sickly green flame. He looked up from his duty just in time to be run over by the longship, the unexpected arrival possessing more solidity than he was used to. Laughing maniacally as the ferryman floundered in the water, Kirl tossed out an air filled bladder as a charitable gesture. He always felt a little bad for running over people who were only in his way because they were doing an important job, but that had never stopped him before!
Looming out of the mists that closed in at the edge vision yet never drew closer, a shoreline of black stone and white shells appeared before them. Rowing hard as Kirl kept them steady, the men rammed the far shore of the Underworld with the ship and then began to pile out, as if this were any other raid on any other day. Snatching up spear and shield, Kirl jumped out along with them, feeling more spry than he had in a generation, if simply because what protestations his body had simply did not register as important any longer.
Dead spectres drifted in the mists and were shoved out of the way by the wedge of elderly madmen as they charged, screaming, into the Underworld.
Their roars were answered in turn by something from just beyond the fog, the sound like a physical thing that slapped them in the guts even as it failed to perturb them. Uncoiling from about where it had been entwined with the Pillars of Creation, guarding the Gates of the Underworld to keep the living and the dead separated, was Yarmrunyin the Dead Serpent. Slain by the gods in the workings of prophecy, the immortal being could not truly die, and so it sat at in the liminal space between life and death. Clad in scales of white bone and black iron, its yellowed fangs were taller than a man even as they dripped with all the poisons and disease of the world, and its breath smoked with the bone cracking heat of the funeral pyre in its belly.
One day the Dead Serpent would destroy the world, making way for its rebirth and the rebirth of the world by the hands of the gods; or at least that was what the shamans had told Kirl as a boy. Were the tales correct this was a beast that not eve the gods themselves could truly slay, and were they incorrect it was still a giant snake with horrifically deadly venom and fiery breath.
The very point of the wedge, personal banner flying as his spear lead the charge, Kirl kept up his roaring challenge as he ran onward.
His objective...
[] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
[] Was close at hand, guarded by the Serpent
[] Was the Serpent itself!
AN: Something crazy and that should be relatively short to see if I can get my creativity running again
Across the Threshold
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Lay beyond the Gates, the Serpent was but a distraction
"Onward! Onward!" Kirl bellowed as they continued their mad rush. The Serpent was but an obstacle between them and their true objective. It was the guardian of the gates, but they merely needed to get past it, for it could not pursue them down the paths they would travel.
The cosmic monster reared up and Kirl was pleased to see that its motion was as that of natural serpents. He had fought and studied snakes and dragons and such creatures in life, and while none could compare in size or sheer durability of this creature, he knew how it would move, how it would strike, and he had made sure that the men behind him knew it too. Still, in the actual moment it was so much more than one could imagine, the creature striking forward with a sound that was equally akin to a whip cracking and a clap of thunder. Curiously Kirl almost thought that he heard the tremendous crash after he saw the serpent lunge forward, but perhaps that was just his mind playing tricks. In any case, the moment he saw the telltale quiver of a strike building the beast's body he was already diving forward into a slide, those around and behind him following suit. He had tried to keep his spear from actually connecting with the body of the beast, but it still nicked across a black iron scale and produced a shower of sparks.
Behind him some of the shouts had turned to screams as men were crushed, skewered, burned or infected with toxin. Kirl had no time to fight this though and just kept moving, refusing to turn back. Everyone had already agreed that they would not dally with Yamrunyin, and everyone knew that there would be those who would fall. All there was to it was to press forward. Still, hearing a strange laughing yell, Kirl had to glance backwards even as he charged for the Gates of the Underworld. One of the men with him, Dyran, had somehow managed to get himself wedge on the serpent's teeth such that he could not be easily dislodged even as he slammed his sword into its massive eyeball, the sharpened steel bouncing off the orb without doing damage but clearly irritating the creature such that it began to thrash. A single shake of its head was probably enough to kill Dyran, but the vexations blows threw it into a total fit. Men were crushed, but it was also badly distracted, allowing the majority - more than had been planned for - to finish their mad dash through the gates.
Passing through the pillars of stone that marked the ultimate boundary between the living and the dead, the now reduced band of elder warriors found themselves in front of a vast crowd of wispy spirits, all gathered about to be judged by the Auditors. Skeletons the size of barns draped in heavy black cloaks, the trio of dead giants was tasked with sorting through the souls that came before them, allotting those who had not died in battle to their places in the Underworld. Taking but a moment to catch their breath after having run past the Dead Serpent and to let the shock of their arrival ripple through the crowd, the hunched over Auditors all rising and drawing their tools - sickle, scissors, and pick, all larger than a two handed sword in their grasp - from the shadows.
Clashing his spear against his shield in a beat that was picked up by his men and thumping his feet on the bleak ground, Kirl pointed at the central giant and proclaimed, "Well, come on then, if you think you can take us!"
Moving in between blinks in puffs of smoke and shadow, the Auditors were considerably faster than Kirl had expected, but somewhat fortunately for him and his men they were only armed with tools, not proper weapons, and for all their strength and speed the awkward devices were still an impairment. They couldn't just sweep his men away all at once, and once the initial shock was over they began to fight back, stabbing out to catch the cloaks and the gaps in the bones of their foes. The first few times the giants were able to flash away before they could properly be pinned, but Kirl managed to stab his spear through the foot of one of the Auditors, pinning it in place. It swung its pick down upon him in a murderous downstroke, but one of his men threw himself between Kirl and the attack, and other another grabbed the creature's cloak and began to haul upon it. From the sounds of his barking orders Sorn had also managed to tangle up another of the Auditors. Leaving the colossal skeleton he had already pinned to be dragged down and tied up by those already around him, Kirl drew his sword and rushed to where the Auditor with the sickle - Griglu if he remembered right - was still hacking away at his warriors. Seeing its brothers being hauled down, it flashed away from the scrum where it was fighting to get some distance and assess.
A mind honed by generations of war took apart the motions of the oversized taxman, and Kirl gave a subtle gesture to one of his men as a began to run towards the giant. Taking its own account of the gnarled warrior, Griglu flashed across the battlefield, only to discover that Kirl wasn't deviating from the course he had set. Pausing in what it was doing in confusion, the creature eventually decided that it could both take the isolated old man and that Kirl obviously had some non-obvious objective that he was going over. It flashed over to the side of his path just as the warrior Kirl had signalled to stepped out from where he was, shield braced as a stepping stone. Leaping upon it as the still thickly hewed old man heaved upwards, Kirl was launched above the incoming sickle and straight into the face of the surprised Auditor. If it was a proper warrior it might have been able to flicker away before he could connect, but as it was its mind, so used to the slow grind of consideration of a soul's worth, was not up to the task of fighting the elder. Slamming his sword into its hollow eye socket, Kirl suspected that he did no damage, but he did confuse and startle the thing. Hauling himself up on its face, away from the desperately gnashing jaws while dodging the flailing of its bony hands, Kirl began to kick it in the teeth repeatedly. Around the third time he swung his steel boots something gave way. Now with a safe foothold, he jammed his foot into the gap and his shoulder into one of the eye sockets and began to push with his entire body.
It was at about that point that his warriors tackled the beast's shins as a mass, hauling it down. Adjusting his positioning as they toppled like a felled tree, Kirl held his armoured elbow against the inner side of what was to become the upper eye socket, right at the bridge of the nose. The impact was like a sack full of dice being dropped, with the notable exception of the dry wood crack of Griglu's nose being broken. Scrambling up off the giant as his men swarmed it to tie it up in the remnants of its own slashed robe like its brothers, he accepted his spear back from Sorn with a silent nod even as he lightly jogged away to assess the situation.
The Gates of the Underworld on the Underworld side were settled at the top of a great dome of black earth upon an acropolis. Beneath a dark sky with faint, alien stars great black mountains peaked in ash grey snow surrounded them, the valleys below flooded with smooth obsidian waters fog cloaked fjords. Upon many of the mountains there were bone white citadels illuminated by flickering green torches and lanterns, with great arched bridges linking many of the structures at a height no mortal hand could build at. Taking a moment to compare little details in case they might be important later, Kirl noted that there were more stars reflected in the waters down below than there were in the sky above.
He also noted that there were winged harpies furiously flapping in their direction, men dangling from their talons.
"Shield wall! Shield wall!" Kirl called out as he fell back to the lines, which rapidly evolved into a circular formation of overlapping shields and spears and swords pointed outwards. A quick estimate suggested that between the Auditors and the Dead Serpent Kirl had already lost about half of the men he had started this raid with, but that was already more than he had hoped to face the Zwerjy with.
Dropping from the sky to land with surprisingly adroitness, the spectral bodies of the honourable dead wailed out their deathly cries even as they raised their black iron two handed swords. The first such berserker to reach the shield wall was dispatched with quickness that surprised the already slain warrior, a single stab of Kirl's spear to the throat that practically floated through the man's guard. A shield bash from the man to Kirl's right knocked the warrior out of the way, and a man behind Kirl gave a second stab to the chest to ensure the kill even as Kirl ordered them all to advance and trample their enemies underfoot. They could not be bogged down here.
The Zwerjy fought as bears do, bundles of muscle and fury without heed for injury or death that would disappear with the morning. Every one of them was a warrior slain in honourable combat who had been sharpened by unknowable years of battle against each other. Fast, strong, heedless of any damage that could not fell them, and brutal in their screaming frenzy, they still bounced off the shield wall like rain upon a plate harness.
Unlike the Zwerjy, every man in the formation could claim that he had never fallen in battle.
Still, if one left plate out in the rain, it would be worn away, and the flow of eternally reborn warriors was more akin to submerging them in a river. Spears and shields shattered when the pressure became too great for the shield wall to kill before a swing could connect, and when that happened strength count for more than skill. Kirl's banner spear was damaged, and while he managed to retract it before his banner could be lost in the swirl of bodies, he was still forced to draw his sword in the second time during the battle. A massive sword stroke came in out of the swirl of the confused melee and Kirl barely managed to deflect it off to the side with his own blade, the scraping impact shooting off a hailstorm of hot sparks from the clash. Even as his arms shook with the blow, he let his left hand strike out to catch a Zwerjy warrior in the throat with the edge of his shield. The grin that the man had even as Kirl stabbed his sword up underneath the sternum and into the heart suggested that he should go seek out the warrior on another day and ask him to share an ale in the evening.
If he died here, he knew he would be happy, and from the way a warrior's drinking song seemed to have spontaneously sprung up among all the combatants, he knew that every man who had followed him into battle felt the same. To fall here, past the Gates of the Underworld and its guardian, the Auditors subdued, and against overwhelming numbers of the Zwerjy who had already fallen in greater numbers, this wasn't dying.
This was kicking in Death's Door while he was at supper and demanding to know why he hadn't picked a fight with you yet!
The thought proved prophetic when the air suddenly took on a strange stillness, as if before a storm, and the Zwerjy abruptly scrambled to get away from the remaining bundle of battered old men they had been fighting with. Dropping from the sky with eye searing and ear breaking force, a great thunderbolt landed before the raiders, before Kirl, and once the spots faded from his vision, revealed just the person he had been looking for.
Standing a head taller than any man in Kirl's force - in their primes at that! - and nearly as broad, the being before them was mostly concealed behind a polished obsidian helmet in the shape of an eagle's skull and a cloak of raven black eagle feathers. He did however hold an enormous spear of yew and shining silver that crackled with residual lightning.
Wyr, the Black Eagle, the Keeper of Lost Things, the Rider in the Storm, the Warlord of the Dead, the Father of Kings, and - most importantly - the Lord of the Underworld.
Kirl's smile was beaming.
He then revealed his purpose by proclaiming...
[] "I challenge you to a duel!"
[] "I am a mercenary here to sell his services!"
"Onward! Onward!" Kirl bellowed as they continued their mad rush. The Serpent was but an obstacle between them and their true objective. It was the guardian of the gates, but they merely needed to get past it, for it could not pursue them down the paths they would travel.
The cosmic monster reared up and Kirl was pleased to see that its motion was as that of natural serpents. He had fought and studied snakes and dragons and such creatures in life, and while none could compare in size or sheer durability of this creature, he knew how it would move, how it would strike, and he had made sure that the men behind him knew it too. Still, in the actual moment it was so much more than one could imagine, the creature striking forward with a sound that was equally akin to a whip cracking and a clap of thunder. Curiously Kirl almost thought that he heard the tremendous crash after he saw the serpent lunge forward, but perhaps that was just his mind playing tricks. In any case, the moment he saw the telltale quiver of a strike building the beast's body he was already diving forward into a slide, those around and behind him following suit. He had tried to keep his spear from actually connecting with the body of the beast, but it still nicked across a black iron scale and produced a shower of sparks.
Behind him some of the shouts had turned to screams as men were crushed, skewered, burned or infected with toxin. Kirl had no time to fight this though and just kept moving, refusing to turn back. Everyone had already agreed that they would not dally with Yamrunyin, and everyone knew that there would be those who would fall. All there was to it was to press forward. Still, hearing a strange laughing yell, Kirl had to glance backwards even as he charged for the Gates of the Underworld. One of the men with him, Dyran, had somehow managed to get himself wedge on the serpent's teeth such that he could not be easily dislodged even as he slammed his sword into its massive eyeball, the sharpened steel bouncing off the orb without doing damage but clearly irritating the creature such that it began to thrash. A single shake of its head was probably enough to kill Dyran, but the vexations blows threw it into a total fit. Men were crushed, but it was also badly distracted, allowing the majority - more than had been planned for - to finish their mad dash through the gates.
Passing through the pillars of stone that marked the ultimate boundary between the living and the dead, the now reduced band of elder warriors found themselves in front of a vast crowd of wispy spirits, all gathered about to be judged by the Auditors. Skeletons the size of barns draped in heavy black cloaks, the trio of dead giants was tasked with sorting through the souls that came before them, allotting those who had not died in battle to their places in the Underworld. Taking but a moment to catch their breath after having run past the Dead Serpent and to let the shock of their arrival ripple through the crowd, the hunched over Auditors all rising and drawing their tools - sickle, scissors, and pick, all larger than a two handed sword in their grasp - from the shadows.
Clashing his spear against his shield in a beat that was picked up by his men and thumping his feet on the bleak ground, Kirl pointed at the central giant and proclaimed, "Well, come on then, if you think you can take us!"
Moving in between blinks in puffs of smoke and shadow, the Auditors were considerably faster than Kirl had expected, but somewhat fortunately for him and his men they were only armed with tools, not proper weapons, and for all their strength and speed the awkward devices were still an impairment. They couldn't just sweep his men away all at once, and once the initial shock was over they began to fight back, stabbing out to catch the cloaks and the gaps in the bones of their foes. The first few times the giants were able to flash away before they could properly be pinned, but Kirl managed to stab his spear through the foot of one of the Auditors, pinning it in place. It swung its pick down upon him in a murderous downstroke, but one of his men threw himself between Kirl and the attack, and other another grabbed the creature's cloak and began to haul upon it. From the sounds of his barking orders Sorn had also managed to tangle up another of the Auditors. Leaving the colossal skeleton he had already pinned to be dragged down and tied up by those already around him, Kirl drew his sword and rushed to where the Auditor with the sickle - Griglu if he remembered right - was still hacking away at his warriors. Seeing its brothers being hauled down, it flashed away from the scrum where it was fighting to get some distance and assess.
A mind honed by generations of war took apart the motions of the oversized taxman, and Kirl gave a subtle gesture to one of his men as a began to run towards the giant. Taking its own account of the gnarled warrior, Griglu flashed across the battlefield, only to discover that Kirl wasn't deviating from the course he had set. Pausing in what it was doing in confusion, the creature eventually decided that it could both take the isolated old man and that Kirl obviously had some non-obvious objective that he was going over. It flashed over to the side of his path just as the warrior Kirl had signalled to stepped out from where he was, shield braced as a stepping stone. Leaping upon it as the still thickly hewed old man heaved upwards, Kirl was launched above the incoming sickle and straight into the face of the surprised Auditor. If it was a proper warrior it might have been able to flicker away before he could connect, but as it was its mind, so used to the slow grind of consideration of a soul's worth, was not up to the task of fighting the elder. Slamming his sword into its hollow eye socket, Kirl suspected that he did no damage, but he did confuse and startle the thing. Hauling himself up on its face, away from the desperately gnashing jaws while dodging the flailing of its bony hands, Kirl began to kick it in the teeth repeatedly. Around the third time he swung his steel boots something gave way. Now with a safe foothold, he jammed his foot into the gap and his shoulder into one of the eye sockets and began to push with his entire body.
It was at about that point that his warriors tackled the beast's shins as a mass, hauling it down. Adjusting his positioning as they toppled like a felled tree, Kirl held his armoured elbow against the inner side of what was to become the upper eye socket, right at the bridge of the nose. The impact was like a sack full of dice being dropped, with the notable exception of the dry wood crack of Griglu's nose being broken. Scrambling up off the giant as his men swarmed it to tie it up in the remnants of its own slashed robe like its brothers, he accepted his spear back from Sorn with a silent nod even as he lightly jogged away to assess the situation.
The Gates of the Underworld on the Underworld side were settled at the top of a great dome of black earth upon an acropolis. Beneath a dark sky with faint, alien stars great black mountains peaked in ash grey snow surrounded them, the valleys below flooded with smooth obsidian waters fog cloaked fjords. Upon many of the mountains there were bone white citadels illuminated by flickering green torches and lanterns, with great arched bridges linking many of the structures at a height no mortal hand could build at. Taking a moment to compare little details in case they might be important later, Kirl noted that there were more stars reflected in the waters down below than there were in the sky above.
He also noted that there were winged harpies furiously flapping in their direction, men dangling from their talons.
"Shield wall! Shield wall!" Kirl called out as he fell back to the lines, which rapidly evolved into a circular formation of overlapping shields and spears and swords pointed outwards. A quick estimate suggested that between the Auditors and the Dead Serpent Kirl had already lost about half of the men he had started this raid with, but that was already more than he had hoped to face the Zwerjy with.
Dropping from the sky to land with surprisingly adroitness, the spectral bodies of the honourable dead wailed out their deathly cries even as they raised their black iron two handed swords. The first such berserker to reach the shield wall was dispatched with quickness that surprised the already slain warrior, a single stab of Kirl's spear to the throat that practically floated through the man's guard. A shield bash from the man to Kirl's right knocked the warrior out of the way, and a man behind Kirl gave a second stab to the chest to ensure the kill even as Kirl ordered them all to advance and trample their enemies underfoot. They could not be bogged down here.
The Zwerjy fought as bears do, bundles of muscle and fury without heed for injury or death that would disappear with the morning. Every one of them was a warrior slain in honourable combat who had been sharpened by unknowable years of battle against each other. Fast, strong, heedless of any damage that could not fell them, and brutal in their screaming frenzy, they still bounced off the shield wall like rain upon a plate harness.
Unlike the Zwerjy, every man in the formation could claim that he had never fallen in battle.
Still, if one left plate out in the rain, it would be worn away, and the flow of eternally reborn warriors was more akin to submerging them in a river. Spears and shields shattered when the pressure became too great for the shield wall to kill before a swing could connect, and when that happened strength count for more than skill. Kirl's banner spear was damaged, and while he managed to retract it before his banner could be lost in the swirl of bodies, he was still forced to draw his sword in the second time during the battle. A massive sword stroke came in out of the swirl of the confused melee and Kirl barely managed to deflect it off to the side with his own blade, the scraping impact shooting off a hailstorm of hot sparks from the clash. Even as his arms shook with the blow, he let his left hand strike out to catch a Zwerjy warrior in the throat with the edge of his shield. The grin that the man had even as Kirl stabbed his sword up underneath the sternum and into the heart suggested that he should go seek out the warrior on another day and ask him to share an ale in the evening.
If he died here, he knew he would be happy, and from the way a warrior's drinking song seemed to have spontaneously sprung up among all the combatants, he knew that every man who had followed him into battle felt the same. To fall here, past the Gates of the Underworld and its guardian, the Auditors subdued, and against overwhelming numbers of the Zwerjy who had already fallen in greater numbers, this wasn't dying.
This was kicking in Death's Door while he was at supper and demanding to know why he hadn't picked a fight with you yet!
The thought proved prophetic when the air suddenly took on a strange stillness, as if before a storm, and the Zwerjy abruptly scrambled to get away from the remaining bundle of battered old men they had been fighting with. Dropping from the sky with eye searing and ear breaking force, a great thunderbolt landed before the raiders, before Kirl, and once the spots faded from his vision, revealed just the person he had been looking for.
Standing a head taller than any man in Kirl's force - in their primes at that! - and nearly as broad, the being before them was mostly concealed behind a polished obsidian helmet in the shape of an eagle's skull and a cloak of raven black eagle feathers. He did however hold an enormous spear of yew and shining silver that crackled with residual lightning.
Wyr, the Black Eagle, the Keeper of Lost Things, the Rider in the Storm, the Warlord of the Dead, the Father of Kings, and - most importantly - the Lord of the Underworld.
Kirl's smile was beaming.
He then revealed his purpose by proclaiming...
[] "I challenge you to a duel!"
[] "I am a mercenary here to sell his services!"
Struggle for Employment
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Explain yourself mortals the god before them stated without actually saying anything.
"Wyr, Lord of the Underworld, I Kirl, Son of Yolim, do challenge you to Hemting!" Kirl announced with a shout, slamming the butt of his sword into his shield.
Kirl could feel Wyr blink in unconcerned surprise despite being unable to see his eyes, and after a moment the god replied You dare challenge me?
"I do dare!" Kirl announced. "I dare on the fact that I am here! In all the stories of the gods I have ever been told, two things always stuck out at me: fate, and strength. The way I figure it, either I'm fated to be here and make this challenge so I'm only doing what I'm supposed to; or I'm strong enough to get here on my own merits and thus I can challenge anyone face-to-face, which by being here means you too!"
State your Issue.
"Mostly I just want to fight you, but my Issue is that I am mercenary. I sell my sword, and I only fight for free if someone else starts it, or if someone has earned my service with deeds worth more than mere gold. I figure if I'm going to find an honourable death and then fight under your banner until the End of Days, I should at least sell my titles of 'Undefeated' and 'Indestructible' to the one I'm going to be fighting for," Kirl stated.
And should I refuse your challenge?
Lifting his sword to his throat and tapping it against the maille there, Kirl replied, "Well then, as the arbiter of honour refusing my challenge, I guess an honourable death is not all it's cracked up to be. I hear the Lady of Death is always hiring and she should have some of my relatives in her thrall."
Wyr seemed to consider this for a time before he replied My shields are flesh and spirit. Break three of my Zwerjy, one by one, and you will confirm your strength to face me naked of their protection. You may have as many shields and weapons as you require.
Lowering his sword and sheathing it, Kirl nodded and said, "Deal. It is Hemting then."
I require no second, but I name Skae, Kol, and Junym as my shields. Name your second.
"My lieutenant Sorn," Kirl replied without hesitation.
Behind him, all of his companions but Sorn collapsed into dust at the completion of his statement, and at their shock one of the three Zwerjy stepping forward out of the ranks surrounding them said reassuringly and yet also threateningly, "You'll see them again at midnight."
Frowning at Wyr, Kirl said, "You could have at least let them watch! Or waited until after!"
The Lord of the Dead gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
Frowning deeply as he and Sorn paced out the area of the duel, one of the Zwerjy standing between Wyr and him while the other two waited on the sidelines, and the assembled warriors, spirits, and harpies all watched starting a pace back from the ring. Once satisfied, Kirl walked to the centre of the ring, fresh spear with his banner attached to it and fresh shield in hand, and he got up as close to Wyr as the Zwerjy would let him, as if the dead man really were a shield. Glaring upward, both Kirl and Wyr nodded before stepping back five paces each. The Zwerjy was grinning, while Kirl's face was neutral in thought.
Taking his sword off his back, the two handed warrior proclaimed, "You fight well old man, I shall seek you out in the morning tomorrow, and again in the halls for ale and wine the night after."
Kirl nodded and said, "I'll buy everyone a round with my first payment for services."
Laughing at Kirl's confidence, the warrior moved forward. Unbound by the restrictions of life on strength and having trained every day without fear of death, he was certainly in his element in a one on one duel rather than a mass formation where the Zwerjy were more likely to interfere with each other. With a single skip forward the distance between the two of them was closed, a thrust bouncing off Kirl's shield before looping around shockingly fast into an overhead blow that transformed at the last instant into a straight thrust of the hilt towards Kirl's face. It was fast and brutal with the sort of easy confidence that all of these moves would come together in harmony, and the warrior doing so was definitely correct in his assessment that he could pull it all off even as Kirl was responding in his own way.
The dagger Kirl had quietly dropped on the ground during it all did however provide a slight complication to it all, especially since the Zwerjy closed too quickly so as to best leverage his strength to have any chance of seeing it through Kirl's shield. As it was, he only had enough time to realize that he had tripped before the boss of Kirl's shield slammed into the man's face, followed an instant later by the old warrior's spear sliding across his neck as Kirl backed up. While the dead man recovered from his trip with surprising quickness, ethereal blood was still spurting out of the wound at an alarming rate, and Kirl was now pressing forward with spear and shield. His foe managed to swat aside several thrusts before the mortal wound caught up with him enough that Kirl finished him with a thrust to the skull.
The body faded away in an instant as the second Zwerjy jumped forward to take the place of the first and said with mocking scolding, "Naughty, naughty there."
"I don't see what you're talking about," Kirl replied with a grin as he kicked the stray dagger out of the way. That trick would only work once.
Sending his sword flashing through a complex series of looping defences, the man brought it up into a high guard and said, "Well, old man, it appears that we're not going to be able to do this quickly."
"Probably not," Kirl agreed. This man was not going to be a fun fight, he could tell. He was confident in his abilities, but he wasn't going to leave any openings by trying to do this fast. Seeing that he was not going to press the attack, Kirl launched a probing strike only for his opponent to shatter his spear with a brutal chop of his two handed sword. Backing up quickly as he drew his sword, Kirl had to fend off another blow that cracked the edge of his shield and nearly ripped it out of his hands. While he managed to knock a follow up thrust out of the way with sword and shield, it was obvious how this was going to play out. The objective was to break his weapons, to take him apart piece by piece at range and let the fact that the Zwerjy would not tire while Kirl would start lagging soon enough win the day.
'Soon enough' came after only three more such exchanges, Kirl's second shield - tossed to him by Sorn after a desperate scramble to get enough distance - already a splintered wrecked. The brutal black two handed sword wielded by Kirl's opponent on the other hand showed no signs of damage, nor its wielder of tiring, while Kirl was definitely showing signs of having difficulty keeping his arms up properly.
Fortunately for Kirl, his opponent was too skilled to believe that Kirl was truly that tired yet. A dumber man might have done something bold that would have felled him in a single blow. As it was though, the probing, distance strikes intended to wear Kirl down allowed him to impale his damaged shield upon his opponent's blade, dropping his sword so that he could twist the shield with both hands and wrench his opponent's weapon out of his hands. Following up with a savage headbutt to the jaw, Kirl unfortunately did not manage to avoid taking the fight to a grapple on the ground, where he knew he was at a complete disadvantage. He landed on top at first, but the enemy warrior was simply fast and strong enough to immediately reverse the position. The scramble of a grapple was always almost comical from a distance, but in the moment even as Kirl sunk teeth into spectral flesh he knew that he was probably going to have his head crushed.
Then Sorn, ever the dutiful lieutenant and second, kicked the dagger Kirl had used as a distraction before back to his hand. After planting it firmly in the Zwerjy's head, Kirl twisted it hard enough to snap the blade off in his skull.
He was somewhat glad that the spirit warriors broke apart when slain for the day because it probably would have been embarrassing getting the body off of him. As it was Kirl found a hand offered to help him up from his last opponent before he could fight with Wyr. While the thought of trying to take advantage of the situation flashed through his mind, he decided against it and let his foe haul him to his feet.
Stepping back respectfully before taking his sword out of the ground where he had planted it, the man asked, "Do you need a moment?"
"Not in a battle," Kirl replied even as he took a moment to catch his breath and have Sorn toss him a pair of bearded axes.
Leaning jauntily on his sword as Kirl gave both weapons an experimental twirl to orient their weight and balance in his hands, his foe asked, "Curious that you would sacrifice so much reach and protection."
"Got my reasons," the white haired warrior told the semi-translucent one.
"Can't wait to see them," the dead man replied, just as Kirl exploded into motion.
For the first time in the duel it was Kirl on the offensive, attempting to batter away his opponent's sword with one axe while striking with the other, but the range difference in the weapons was made painfully obvious as the Zwerjy could simply dance away with little problem while still being able to threaten Kirl with his blade. After a time, both seemed to tire of the play, and the dead warrior asked the elderly one, "Are you quite done?"
Nodding as he panted to catch his breath after his explosive exertion, Kirl admitted, "Frankly, I was out of ideas. Can't really use the same trick twice on fighters like you."
There was a flicker of a heartbeat as the warrior let his eyes dance across the battlefield, catching sight of the sword Kirl had dropped fighting the last Zwerjy. To his credit, the man blocked the axe thrown at him since it was a very awkward snap throw to minimize the movement of the toss for maximum surprise. Also, the axe wasn't balanced at all for throwing.
As such, when the second axe embedded itself in his skull, the Zwerjy had to comment, cross-eyed, "You've practised that."
Kirl nodded as he went to pick up his sword and said, "Getting your limbs to do two different things like that takes a whole lot of effort."
Well then Wyr noted impassively.
"Well then indeed," Kirl replied as he took a fresh sword and shield from Sorn.
The god inclined his head ever so slightly in acknowledgement. Then, he simple was in front of Kirl with a single arm extended from beneath his black eagle feather cloak, his hand balled into a fist, and Kirl was tumbling away, his shield shattered along with many of the bones in the left side of his body. Before he could get up, a foot was upon his sternum and driving him into the ground, not quite crushing him outright, but pinning him painfully in place. Still intact bones creaked against the shards of broken ones, and Kirl screamed involuntarily in pain, every individual nerve in his body feeling like a red hot poker had been shoved into it.
Wyr leaned down over Kirl, eagle skull helm leering at him, even as he silently judged him. The change in posture also brought an increase in pressure, although the god avoided crushing Kirl like a bug outright.
Kirl swung the sword he had still somehow managed to hold onto into Wyr's head. He was rewarded with an explosion of steel sparks as the weapon shattered against the helm without so much as scratching it. Kirl swung a punch and broke bones in his hand. Sorn tossed him as many weapons as he could, but they all bounced off uselessly or broke against every point that Kirl aimed them at.
Yield Wyr ordered.
Kirl spat upwards, but the spit only landed in his own face. Wrinkly face going as white as his hair as he bled out internally, Kirl smiled and said through gasping breath as he died, "I... I wouldn't... be... be here... if... I... I could..."
Wyr tilted his head like a bird of prey regarding a most curious mouse within its talons.
"Death... doom... you... you're it. I... I... I fought... fought with... against... you... all... all my... all my life. Can't... can't... give up... now..." Kirl stated with a blood foam flecked smile as he felt the death that had been perched upon his shoulder his whole life come down to nest in his heart and peck the light from his eyes. He tried to lift his right arm one last time, but for the first time in his life his strength failed him. It was a distinctly novel experience. He didn't like it and was glad this would also be the last time he ever had to feel it.
Wyr leaned down close enough for Kirl to think that he saw golden eyes behind the sculpted metal helmet. A surprisingly neutral breath, like a lukewarm wind over sterile grave sand, blew in Kirl's face, and he thought for a second that he heard something being said rather than simply knowing it, but everything had faded in volume so it was hard to tell exactly. He felt almost dreamy then, all the pain and pressure of the world removed, like he didn't have a god stepping on him.
Then something stabbed him in the chest.
Pick one...
[] Fire
[] Ice
[] Light
[] Dark
[] Earth
[] Sky
[] Tree
[] Grave
"Wyr, Lord of the Underworld, I Kirl, Son of Yolim, do challenge you to Hemting!" Kirl announced with a shout, slamming the butt of his sword into his shield.
Kirl could feel Wyr blink in unconcerned surprise despite being unable to see his eyes, and after a moment the god replied You dare challenge me?
"I do dare!" Kirl announced. "I dare on the fact that I am here! In all the stories of the gods I have ever been told, two things always stuck out at me: fate, and strength. The way I figure it, either I'm fated to be here and make this challenge so I'm only doing what I'm supposed to; or I'm strong enough to get here on my own merits and thus I can challenge anyone face-to-face, which by being here means you too!"
State your Issue.
"Mostly I just want to fight you, but my Issue is that I am mercenary. I sell my sword, and I only fight for free if someone else starts it, or if someone has earned my service with deeds worth more than mere gold. I figure if I'm going to find an honourable death and then fight under your banner until the End of Days, I should at least sell my titles of 'Undefeated' and 'Indestructible' to the one I'm going to be fighting for," Kirl stated.
And should I refuse your challenge?
Lifting his sword to his throat and tapping it against the maille there, Kirl replied, "Well then, as the arbiter of honour refusing my challenge, I guess an honourable death is not all it's cracked up to be. I hear the Lady of Death is always hiring and she should have some of my relatives in her thrall."
Wyr seemed to consider this for a time before he replied My shields are flesh and spirit. Break three of my Zwerjy, one by one, and you will confirm your strength to face me naked of their protection. You may have as many shields and weapons as you require.
Lowering his sword and sheathing it, Kirl nodded and said, "Deal. It is Hemting then."
I require no second, but I name Skae, Kol, and Junym as my shields. Name your second.
"My lieutenant Sorn," Kirl replied without hesitation.
Behind him, all of his companions but Sorn collapsed into dust at the completion of his statement, and at their shock one of the three Zwerjy stepping forward out of the ranks surrounding them said reassuringly and yet also threateningly, "You'll see them again at midnight."
Frowning at Wyr, Kirl said, "You could have at least let them watch! Or waited until after!"
The Lord of the Dead gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
Frowning deeply as he and Sorn paced out the area of the duel, one of the Zwerjy standing between Wyr and him while the other two waited on the sidelines, and the assembled warriors, spirits, and harpies all watched starting a pace back from the ring. Once satisfied, Kirl walked to the centre of the ring, fresh spear with his banner attached to it and fresh shield in hand, and he got up as close to Wyr as the Zwerjy would let him, as if the dead man really were a shield. Glaring upward, both Kirl and Wyr nodded before stepping back five paces each. The Zwerjy was grinning, while Kirl's face was neutral in thought.
Taking his sword off his back, the two handed warrior proclaimed, "You fight well old man, I shall seek you out in the morning tomorrow, and again in the halls for ale and wine the night after."
Kirl nodded and said, "I'll buy everyone a round with my first payment for services."
Laughing at Kirl's confidence, the warrior moved forward. Unbound by the restrictions of life on strength and having trained every day without fear of death, he was certainly in his element in a one on one duel rather than a mass formation where the Zwerjy were more likely to interfere with each other. With a single skip forward the distance between the two of them was closed, a thrust bouncing off Kirl's shield before looping around shockingly fast into an overhead blow that transformed at the last instant into a straight thrust of the hilt towards Kirl's face. It was fast and brutal with the sort of easy confidence that all of these moves would come together in harmony, and the warrior doing so was definitely correct in his assessment that he could pull it all off even as Kirl was responding in his own way.
The dagger Kirl had quietly dropped on the ground during it all did however provide a slight complication to it all, especially since the Zwerjy closed too quickly so as to best leverage his strength to have any chance of seeing it through Kirl's shield. As it was, he only had enough time to realize that he had tripped before the boss of Kirl's shield slammed into the man's face, followed an instant later by the old warrior's spear sliding across his neck as Kirl backed up. While the dead man recovered from his trip with surprising quickness, ethereal blood was still spurting out of the wound at an alarming rate, and Kirl was now pressing forward with spear and shield. His foe managed to swat aside several thrusts before the mortal wound caught up with him enough that Kirl finished him with a thrust to the skull.
The body faded away in an instant as the second Zwerjy jumped forward to take the place of the first and said with mocking scolding, "Naughty, naughty there."
"I don't see what you're talking about," Kirl replied with a grin as he kicked the stray dagger out of the way. That trick would only work once.
Sending his sword flashing through a complex series of looping defences, the man brought it up into a high guard and said, "Well, old man, it appears that we're not going to be able to do this quickly."
"Probably not," Kirl agreed. This man was not going to be a fun fight, he could tell. He was confident in his abilities, but he wasn't going to leave any openings by trying to do this fast. Seeing that he was not going to press the attack, Kirl launched a probing strike only for his opponent to shatter his spear with a brutal chop of his two handed sword. Backing up quickly as he drew his sword, Kirl had to fend off another blow that cracked the edge of his shield and nearly ripped it out of his hands. While he managed to knock a follow up thrust out of the way with sword and shield, it was obvious how this was going to play out. The objective was to break his weapons, to take him apart piece by piece at range and let the fact that the Zwerjy would not tire while Kirl would start lagging soon enough win the day.
'Soon enough' came after only three more such exchanges, Kirl's second shield - tossed to him by Sorn after a desperate scramble to get enough distance - already a splintered wrecked. The brutal black two handed sword wielded by Kirl's opponent on the other hand showed no signs of damage, nor its wielder of tiring, while Kirl was definitely showing signs of having difficulty keeping his arms up properly.
Fortunately for Kirl, his opponent was too skilled to believe that Kirl was truly that tired yet. A dumber man might have done something bold that would have felled him in a single blow. As it was though, the probing, distance strikes intended to wear Kirl down allowed him to impale his damaged shield upon his opponent's blade, dropping his sword so that he could twist the shield with both hands and wrench his opponent's weapon out of his hands. Following up with a savage headbutt to the jaw, Kirl unfortunately did not manage to avoid taking the fight to a grapple on the ground, where he knew he was at a complete disadvantage. He landed on top at first, but the enemy warrior was simply fast and strong enough to immediately reverse the position. The scramble of a grapple was always almost comical from a distance, but in the moment even as Kirl sunk teeth into spectral flesh he knew that he was probably going to have his head crushed.
Then Sorn, ever the dutiful lieutenant and second, kicked the dagger Kirl had used as a distraction before back to his hand. After planting it firmly in the Zwerjy's head, Kirl twisted it hard enough to snap the blade off in his skull.
He was somewhat glad that the spirit warriors broke apart when slain for the day because it probably would have been embarrassing getting the body off of him. As it was Kirl found a hand offered to help him up from his last opponent before he could fight with Wyr. While the thought of trying to take advantage of the situation flashed through his mind, he decided against it and let his foe haul him to his feet.
Stepping back respectfully before taking his sword out of the ground where he had planted it, the man asked, "Do you need a moment?"
"Not in a battle," Kirl replied even as he took a moment to catch his breath and have Sorn toss him a pair of bearded axes.
Leaning jauntily on his sword as Kirl gave both weapons an experimental twirl to orient their weight and balance in his hands, his foe asked, "Curious that you would sacrifice so much reach and protection."
"Got my reasons," the white haired warrior told the semi-translucent one.
"Can't wait to see them," the dead man replied, just as Kirl exploded into motion.
For the first time in the duel it was Kirl on the offensive, attempting to batter away his opponent's sword with one axe while striking with the other, but the range difference in the weapons was made painfully obvious as the Zwerjy could simply dance away with little problem while still being able to threaten Kirl with his blade. After a time, both seemed to tire of the play, and the dead warrior asked the elderly one, "Are you quite done?"
Nodding as he panted to catch his breath after his explosive exertion, Kirl admitted, "Frankly, I was out of ideas. Can't really use the same trick twice on fighters like you."
There was a flicker of a heartbeat as the warrior let his eyes dance across the battlefield, catching sight of the sword Kirl had dropped fighting the last Zwerjy. To his credit, the man blocked the axe thrown at him since it was a very awkward snap throw to minimize the movement of the toss for maximum surprise. Also, the axe wasn't balanced at all for throwing.
As such, when the second axe embedded itself in his skull, the Zwerjy had to comment, cross-eyed, "You've practised that."
Kirl nodded as he went to pick up his sword and said, "Getting your limbs to do two different things like that takes a whole lot of effort."
Well then Wyr noted impassively.
"Well then indeed," Kirl replied as he took a fresh sword and shield from Sorn.
The god inclined his head ever so slightly in acknowledgement. Then, he simple was in front of Kirl with a single arm extended from beneath his black eagle feather cloak, his hand balled into a fist, and Kirl was tumbling away, his shield shattered along with many of the bones in the left side of his body. Before he could get up, a foot was upon his sternum and driving him into the ground, not quite crushing him outright, but pinning him painfully in place. Still intact bones creaked against the shards of broken ones, and Kirl screamed involuntarily in pain, every individual nerve in his body feeling like a red hot poker had been shoved into it.
Wyr leaned down over Kirl, eagle skull helm leering at him, even as he silently judged him. The change in posture also brought an increase in pressure, although the god avoided crushing Kirl like a bug outright.
Kirl swung the sword he had still somehow managed to hold onto into Wyr's head. He was rewarded with an explosion of steel sparks as the weapon shattered against the helm without so much as scratching it. Kirl swung a punch and broke bones in his hand. Sorn tossed him as many weapons as he could, but they all bounced off uselessly or broke against every point that Kirl aimed them at.
Yield Wyr ordered.
Kirl spat upwards, but the spit only landed in his own face. Wrinkly face going as white as his hair as he bled out internally, Kirl smiled and said through gasping breath as he died, "I... I wouldn't... be... be here... if... I... I could..."
Wyr tilted his head like a bird of prey regarding a most curious mouse within its talons.
"Death... doom... you... you're it. I... I... I fought... fought with... against... you... all... all my... all my life. Can't... can't... give up... now..." Kirl stated with a blood foam flecked smile as he felt the death that had been perched upon his shoulder his whole life come down to nest in his heart and peck the light from his eyes. He tried to lift his right arm one last time, but for the first time in his life his strength failed him. It was a distinctly novel experience. He didn't like it and was glad this would also be the last time he ever had to feel it.
Wyr leaned down close enough for Kirl to think that he saw golden eyes behind the sculpted metal helmet. A surprisingly neutral breath, like a lukewarm wind over sterile grave sand, blew in Kirl's face, and he thought for a second that he heard something being said rather than simply knowing it, but everything had faded in volume so it was hard to tell exactly. He felt almost dreamy then, all the pain and pressure of the world removed, like he didn't have a god stepping on him.
Then something stabbed him in the chest.
Pick one...
[] Fire
[] Ice
[] Light
[] Dark
[] Earth
[] Sky
[] Tree
[] Grave
Awakening
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Primary [X] Tree
Secondary [X] Grave
Kirl's eyes fluttered open, and he was shocked by the amount of pain that his awakening involved. He supposed that dying might do that, but he would probably...
A trio of harpies were staring at him very oddly, intensely, and closely, and everything felt out of place. The first thing that struck him was the charnel stink of the harpies' breath. While they had the faces and chests of comely women, the rest of their bodies were that of oversized vultures, their feathers the colour of their hair in life. Drawn from the souls of women who fell in battle, it was their duty to ferry the souls of honourable dead to Wyr's halls, and their curse to have a taste for the mortal remains of those they flew off with. At a distance they could be attractive, but up close their carrion feeding habits became obvious and created an unpleasant dissonance.
"He's awake," the harpy at the centre of the trio noted, her feathers a medium brown tone that distinguished her from the cardinal red harpy to the left and the dirty blonde one to her right.
Kirl tried to move, and it was then that he realized that he was held immobile in a vertical position. Scanning his eyes around he discovered little but a strange night sky out beyond whatever grove the tree he was tied to was in. The harpies all just blinked at him as he tried to figure out what parts of his limbs he could move, discovering that he basically had his eyes and his jaw, everything else too tightly bound to even begin to budge.
"Our Lord wasn't sure you would survive that, why he left us to watch you, but it seems that He was right," the redhead stated to Kirl, causing his eyes to widen in surprise.
"I... I survived?" Kirl asked, completely incredulous, and the harpies all nodded in confirmation.
"Bolgammin mostly slays, but it can hold the heart still between life and death. Our Lord desired to see how deep your defiance went, and it was to the bone. You live, but you are reborn as well, weakness eaten away," the blonde explained, even as all three advanced closer to him, each laying a hand upon his chest where he could not turn his head to see, although whatever it was that they were touching was sending spikes of pain through his body.
In eerie synchronicity the trio stated, "Our Lord sends His regards, and says that you owe Him for this."
As one they twisted and pulled at something, causing Kirl to nearly black out from pain as something wrenched about and slid out of him under their ministrations. Everything went weightless for a moment and somewhere along the way he hit the ground, but when he came to he had control over his limbs again, and he was looking up at the harpies from the ground as they held a spike of black iron and stared down at him. Turning his head even as the residual pain faded with frightful speed, he looked up at an impression of his body dug into the trunk of what appeared to be a stupendously huge yew, to the point where they were apparently in some sort of hollow within its trunk.
Raising a hand to his forehead, Kirl paused in shock as he beheld the limb. Gone was the thinning of his musculature with his extreme age, restored was the third-remembered thickness of his arms from his distant youth, although the wrinkling of his skin was still present and his colouration had taken a strange turn, darkening a shade or two towards a light, woody brown somewhat reminiscent of oak. Glancing down at his chest, he found it and the rest of his body similarly altered, although right where his heart was there was an enormous, puckered scar that looked like roots had been threaded through his veins.
"Our Lord used His iron to nail you to Yamdridding, Tree of Worlds and Life. It healed you, made you stronger than you have ever been, and made your flesh harder. Mortal you remain, but you will age like a great tree, vulnerable only to the intent of others. Other benefits may come with time and experience, but for now our Lord will hire your services to pay Him back for this advance and retainer. He has a number of tasks in His domain that He feels you would be put to good use at," the brunette explained.
"Huh," Kirl grunted as he rediscovered the ability to stand properly, although despite the changes his control over his body was returning quite quickly.
"Our Lord has need of an unruly greater spirit of the Underworld be brought to heel that it is inconvenient for Him to do directly," the redhead stated.
"The spawn of a chained titan grow too numerous and require thinning," the redhead continued on.
"Something lurks in the mines, where the Underworld touches upon the Great Dark, and requires slaying," the blonde provided.
Again, all three said in synchronicity, "All three will be done, but any of these will pay your debt. Choose your task."
"Not a lot to go on there," Kirl noted as he paced to get his feet properly under him. "Do you have anything else to explain?"
"One task may be achieved without violence, possibly without even the threat of violence, but violence will likely be required to deal with a noble and his estate and his retinues," the brunette explained for her part.
"Another task guarantees violence against many, both bestial and cunning, each individual of at most moderate threat, but their numbers representing the greatest danger," the redhead detailed out.
"The final task is a hunt through a labyrinth for a single great beast," the blonde stated for the tasks she had assigned to her.
"All are judged equally dangerous, if differently so, and all are far enough from each other that the journey to those who can explain further will require commitment to the task first. A single sword and warrior's garb shall be provided, all other resources it is up to you to obtain with strength and cunning," the harpies said as one.
Kirl nodded at that, and felt that this was a test for him as much as it was letting him pick his first mission.
He chose...
[] The path of intrigue
[] The path of extermination
[] The path of the hunter
Secondary [X] Grave
Kirl's eyes fluttered open, and he was shocked by the amount of pain that his awakening involved. He supposed that dying might do that, but he would probably...
A trio of harpies were staring at him very oddly, intensely, and closely, and everything felt out of place. The first thing that struck him was the charnel stink of the harpies' breath. While they had the faces and chests of comely women, the rest of their bodies were that of oversized vultures, their feathers the colour of their hair in life. Drawn from the souls of women who fell in battle, it was their duty to ferry the souls of honourable dead to Wyr's halls, and their curse to have a taste for the mortal remains of those they flew off with. At a distance they could be attractive, but up close their carrion feeding habits became obvious and created an unpleasant dissonance.
"He's awake," the harpy at the centre of the trio noted, her feathers a medium brown tone that distinguished her from the cardinal red harpy to the left and the dirty blonde one to her right.
Kirl tried to move, and it was then that he realized that he was held immobile in a vertical position. Scanning his eyes around he discovered little but a strange night sky out beyond whatever grove the tree he was tied to was in. The harpies all just blinked at him as he tried to figure out what parts of his limbs he could move, discovering that he basically had his eyes and his jaw, everything else too tightly bound to even begin to budge.
"Our Lord wasn't sure you would survive that, why he left us to watch you, but it seems that He was right," the redhead stated to Kirl, causing his eyes to widen in surprise.
"I... I survived?" Kirl asked, completely incredulous, and the harpies all nodded in confirmation.
"Bolgammin mostly slays, but it can hold the heart still between life and death. Our Lord desired to see how deep your defiance went, and it was to the bone. You live, but you are reborn as well, weakness eaten away," the blonde explained, even as all three advanced closer to him, each laying a hand upon his chest where he could not turn his head to see, although whatever it was that they were touching was sending spikes of pain through his body.
In eerie synchronicity the trio stated, "Our Lord sends His regards, and says that you owe Him for this."
As one they twisted and pulled at something, causing Kirl to nearly black out from pain as something wrenched about and slid out of him under their ministrations. Everything went weightless for a moment and somewhere along the way he hit the ground, but when he came to he had control over his limbs again, and he was looking up at the harpies from the ground as they held a spike of black iron and stared down at him. Turning his head even as the residual pain faded with frightful speed, he looked up at an impression of his body dug into the trunk of what appeared to be a stupendously huge yew, to the point where they were apparently in some sort of hollow within its trunk.
Raising a hand to his forehead, Kirl paused in shock as he beheld the limb. Gone was the thinning of his musculature with his extreme age, restored was the third-remembered thickness of his arms from his distant youth, although the wrinkling of his skin was still present and his colouration had taken a strange turn, darkening a shade or two towards a light, woody brown somewhat reminiscent of oak. Glancing down at his chest, he found it and the rest of his body similarly altered, although right where his heart was there was an enormous, puckered scar that looked like roots had been threaded through his veins.
"Our Lord used His iron to nail you to Yamdridding, Tree of Worlds and Life. It healed you, made you stronger than you have ever been, and made your flesh harder. Mortal you remain, but you will age like a great tree, vulnerable only to the intent of others. Other benefits may come with time and experience, but for now our Lord will hire your services to pay Him back for this advance and retainer. He has a number of tasks in His domain that He feels you would be put to good use at," the brunette explained.
"Huh," Kirl grunted as he rediscovered the ability to stand properly, although despite the changes his control over his body was returning quite quickly.
"Our Lord has need of an unruly greater spirit of the Underworld be brought to heel that it is inconvenient for Him to do directly," the redhead stated.
"The spawn of a chained titan grow too numerous and require thinning," the redhead continued on.
"Something lurks in the mines, where the Underworld touches upon the Great Dark, and requires slaying," the blonde provided.
Again, all three said in synchronicity, "All three will be done, but any of these will pay your debt. Choose your task."
"Not a lot to go on there," Kirl noted as he paced to get his feet properly under him. "Do you have anything else to explain?"
"One task may be achieved without violence, possibly without even the threat of violence, but violence will likely be required to deal with a noble and his estate and his retinues," the brunette explained for her part.
"Another task guarantees violence against many, both bestial and cunning, each individual of at most moderate threat, but their numbers representing the greatest danger," the redhead detailed out.
"The final task is a hunt through a labyrinth for a single great beast," the blonde stated for the tasks she had assigned to her.
"All are judged equally dangerous, if differently so, and all are far enough from each other that the journey to those who can explain further will require commitment to the task first. A single sword and warrior's garb shall be provided, all other resources it is up to you to obtain with strength and cunning," the harpies said as one.
Kirl nodded at that, and felt that this was a test for him as much as it was letting him pick his first mission.
He chose...
[] The path of intrigue
[] The path of extermination
[] The path of the hunter
To the Mines
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] The path of the hunter
"Take me to the hunt then," Kirl stated, and the blonde harpy nodded while the other two just sort of wandered off after that, immediately taking flight once they left the grove.
"Come, I shall take you where you need to be," the harpy stated, gesturing with her wing-arm outside the grove. Nodding, Kirl then paused and asked, "Do you have a name I could refer to you by?"
The harpy tilted her head in a very bird-like manner before she said, "Few ask it, but I was once called Birga."
"Very well Birga let's..." Whatever it was that Kirl was going to say completely disappeared from his mind as he walked out of the grove and discovered to his shock and complete numbing of the mind that he wasn't in a grove, not exactly.
He was on the World Tree, yes, but he had never really understood what that meant until this moment. He was standing on the tree, in a little hollow among its twisting boles, looking out at a strange night sky that went on forever. There was no ground beneath him, just the tree twisting through the star studded blackness in either direction. He just stood there in shock, trying to process what he was seeing, when Birga hopped up onto his shoulders, grabbing them with her talons to hold Kirl firmly. She then took off and hauled him off into the void, racing "down" the tree, although Kirl rapidly came to realize that that word didn't really mean anything. Faster and faster they travelled, the green and brown tree so tall it seemed more like an enormous vine flashing past them. Eventually everything was going so fast that everything became a greyish blur...
Without warning the blur popped into clarity and they were drifting above the bleak, dark landscape of the Underworld. The shock of suddenly seeing something understandable if from a radically different angle than he was used to was enough to pop Kirl out of his stunned fugue and actually realize what was happening. A thrill of something approaching fear came over him as he realized that if Birga dropped him, he would die on impact, and he honestly had no control over anything here. While it didn't overcome him, the last time he had felt this sense of the world out of his control had been a decade or two back aboard a ship in a storm, and even then it had been more muted since there were things he could do to influence his chances of survival. Here if Birga decided to drop him the only thing he could do was attempt to take her with him, if that was even possible with what he had on hand.
Actually, considering the difference in appearance between the spectral and translucent Zwerjy and the much more solid seeming harpies, there was some possibility that he could do lasting damage. The differences were strange if both groups were supposed to come from human souls. Was it a difference between male and female souls, or whatever was done to them to transform them? Kirl felt unusually thoughtful while dangling so many leagues above the hard ground, and he wasn't entirely sure if it stemmed from his stay nailed to Yammdridding or from the fact that he didn't have anything better to do, other than look around. While much of his reputation had rested on his personal martial skill, becoming a mercenary captain of such skill that a city crowned you king meant that he had needed a very sharp mind. Careful attention to the world around him had always been a part of him, he just wasn't entirely sure how much of that being turned inward was new or not.
While he had never had much use for philosophy, they could sometimes pose interesting questions while under the influence of wine and having nothing better to do. Going down such pondering paths did help kill what time there was during which he could only contemplate his own relative fragility otherwise. Fortunately, it did not take long before they were circling a massive mountaintop citadel that had completely reshaped the dark stone tooth it rested upon. From the air the walls could be seen to mostly encapsulate an ant's nest of holes and a termite's mound of smoke and fire belching industry, but Kirl suspected that from the approach the central keep dominated the view, although he also suspected that much of the size was based on rubble and spoil from the mines and forges being used to bulk up certain structures.
Landing upon a platform that appeared to be set up for such things, Kirl found himself being flanked by a number of dead warriors and strange spirits all in black iron arms and armour. One in particular had a much more solid look to him, and he was dressed in a heavier, more ornate harness and appeared to be in charge around here. Much less solid spirits dressed as servants immediately ran forward to Kirl with bundles of clothing made from grey leather - from something like a crocodile if he had to judge - for him to don. Taking them as they were offered, the leader of the group said to him, "Welcome warrior, we were told to expect the arrival of a specialist by our Lord, and I, Castellan Tumbis, greet you."
Nodding at that, Kirl said, "Good, good, just let me get my pants on and then if you could fill me in on what exactly I'm supposed to be killing here."
"Of course, although that is part of the reason why we sent word requesting assistance. We're not quite sure what it is we're facing right now. It's in the deep tunnels, in the places were the stone hollows in strange ways, and while something is attacking the workers and guards, we haven't had any reliable accounts yet due to a lack of survivors up close. It's probably some form of titanspawn, but those depths brush up against Szvediding so it is possible something entirely worse has slipped in, out of the dark," Tumbis explained.
"Hmmmmm..." Kirl said as he dressed, beginning to move into the castle after he had boots to prompt further motion so he could follow while still working on his shirt. He had some vague recollection from stories and the like of the things being described, but he had to admit that he was a little out of his depth on some of the terms. While he wasn't particularly keen on revealing his ignorance, he also didn't want to go charging into an unknown situation without information. Eventually he asked, "What are conditions like down there?"
"Cramped and dark for the most part, as one might expect, but there are veins of void glass created by Szvediding pressing against the deep stones of the Underworld that attracted us into an ant's nest of natural tunnels, many with enormous open galleries and strange things taking root down there, almost in imitation of the forests and fields of the living world. Those can provide a source of rare and valuable materials beyond just the void glass, but they also make dangerous hunting grounds for whatever is down there," Tumbis detailed out.
"I was afraid of that. I was told that I would be issued arms and armour - don't know where my last stuff went - so I will have to consider whether or not to ask for a Zwerjy sword or if you have something else available," Kirl mused out loud.
Considering, Tumbis said, "We were told to avail to you at the very least a minimum amount of equipment, and while for the most part we just transform ores into bars for shipment elsewhere, we do have our own smithies for making finished goods, so we have an armoury full of whatever a warrior might need. I can make a few recommendations on equipment best suited to tunnel fighting, as I agree that the arms of the Zwerjy would be of less use in the majority of places down there."
Kirl's weapon of choice from the armoury...
[] Write-in
His first action was to...
[] Learn more about the mine and its operations
[] Poke around for additional work he could do while achieving his main task
[] Head off for the mines immediately
"Take me to the hunt then," Kirl stated, and the blonde harpy nodded while the other two just sort of wandered off after that, immediately taking flight once they left the grove.
"Come, I shall take you where you need to be," the harpy stated, gesturing with her wing-arm outside the grove. Nodding, Kirl then paused and asked, "Do you have a name I could refer to you by?"
The harpy tilted her head in a very bird-like manner before she said, "Few ask it, but I was once called Birga."
"Very well Birga let's..." Whatever it was that Kirl was going to say completely disappeared from his mind as he walked out of the grove and discovered to his shock and complete numbing of the mind that he wasn't in a grove, not exactly.
He was on the World Tree, yes, but he had never really understood what that meant until this moment. He was standing on the tree, in a little hollow among its twisting boles, looking out at a strange night sky that went on forever. There was no ground beneath him, just the tree twisting through the star studded blackness in either direction. He just stood there in shock, trying to process what he was seeing, when Birga hopped up onto his shoulders, grabbing them with her talons to hold Kirl firmly. She then took off and hauled him off into the void, racing "down" the tree, although Kirl rapidly came to realize that that word didn't really mean anything. Faster and faster they travelled, the green and brown tree so tall it seemed more like an enormous vine flashing past them. Eventually everything was going so fast that everything became a greyish blur...
Without warning the blur popped into clarity and they were drifting above the bleak, dark landscape of the Underworld. The shock of suddenly seeing something understandable if from a radically different angle than he was used to was enough to pop Kirl out of his stunned fugue and actually realize what was happening. A thrill of something approaching fear came over him as he realized that if Birga dropped him, he would die on impact, and he honestly had no control over anything here. While it didn't overcome him, the last time he had felt this sense of the world out of his control had been a decade or two back aboard a ship in a storm, and even then it had been more muted since there were things he could do to influence his chances of survival. Here if Birga decided to drop him the only thing he could do was attempt to take her with him, if that was even possible with what he had on hand.
Actually, considering the difference in appearance between the spectral and translucent Zwerjy and the much more solid seeming harpies, there was some possibility that he could do lasting damage. The differences were strange if both groups were supposed to come from human souls. Was it a difference between male and female souls, or whatever was done to them to transform them? Kirl felt unusually thoughtful while dangling so many leagues above the hard ground, and he wasn't entirely sure if it stemmed from his stay nailed to Yammdridding or from the fact that he didn't have anything better to do, other than look around. While much of his reputation had rested on his personal martial skill, becoming a mercenary captain of such skill that a city crowned you king meant that he had needed a very sharp mind. Careful attention to the world around him had always been a part of him, he just wasn't entirely sure how much of that being turned inward was new or not.
While he had never had much use for philosophy, they could sometimes pose interesting questions while under the influence of wine and having nothing better to do. Going down such pondering paths did help kill what time there was during which he could only contemplate his own relative fragility otherwise. Fortunately, it did not take long before they were circling a massive mountaintop citadel that had completely reshaped the dark stone tooth it rested upon. From the air the walls could be seen to mostly encapsulate an ant's nest of holes and a termite's mound of smoke and fire belching industry, but Kirl suspected that from the approach the central keep dominated the view, although he also suspected that much of the size was based on rubble and spoil from the mines and forges being used to bulk up certain structures.
Landing upon a platform that appeared to be set up for such things, Kirl found himself being flanked by a number of dead warriors and strange spirits all in black iron arms and armour. One in particular had a much more solid look to him, and he was dressed in a heavier, more ornate harness and appeared to be in charge around here. Much less solid spirits dressed as servants immediately ran forward to Kirl with bundles of clothing made from grey leather - from something like a crocodile if he had to judge - for him to don. Taking them as they were offered, the leader of the group said to him, "Welcome warrior, we were told to expect the arrival of a specialist by our Lord, and I, Castellan Tumbis, greet you."
Nodding at that, Kirl said, "Good, good, just let me get my pants on and then if you could fill me in on what exactly I'm supposed to be killing here."
"Of course, although that is part of the reason why we sent word requesting assistance. We're not quite sure what it is we're facing right now. It's in the deep tunnels, in the places were the stone hollows in strange ways, and while something is attacking the workers and guards, we haven't had any reliable accounts yet due to a lack of survivors up close. It's probably some form of titanspawn, but those depths brush up against Szvediding so it is possible something entirely worse has slipped in, out of the dark," Tumbis explained.
"Hmmmmm..." Kirl said as he dressed, beginning to move into the castle after he had boots to prompt further motion so he could follow while still working on his shirt. He had some vague recollection from stories and the like of the things being described, but he had to admit that he was a little out of his depth on some of the terms. While he wasn't particularly keen on revealing his ignorance, he also didn't want to go charging into an unknown situation without information. Eventually he asked, "What are conditions like down there?"
"Cramped and dark for the most part, as one might expect, but there are veins of void glass created by Szvediding pressing against the deep stones of the Underworld that attracted us into an ant's nest of natural tunnels, many with enormous open galleries and strange things taking root down there, almost in imitation of the forests and fields of the living world. Those can provide a source of rare and valuable materials beyond just the void glass, but they also make dangerous hunting grounds for whatever is down there," Tumbis detailed out.
"I was afraid of that. I was told that I would be issued arms and armour - don't know where my last stuff went - so I will have to consider whether or not to ask for a Zwerjy sword or if you have something else available," Kirl mused out loud.
Considering, Tumbis said, "We were told to avail to you at the very least a minimum amount of equipment, and while for the most part we just transform ores into bars for shipment elsewhere, we do have our own smithies for making finished goods, so we have an armoury full of whatever a warrior might need. I can make a few recommendations on equipment best suited to tunnel fighting, as I agree that the arms of the Zwerjy would be of less use in the majority of places down there."
Kirl's weapon of choice from the armoury...
[] Write-in
His first action was to...
[] Learn more about the mine and its operations
[] Poke around for additional work he could do while achieving his main task
[] Head off for the mines immediately
Gathering Resources
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Shield and Spear, with an axe for back up
[X] Learn more about the mine and its operations
Lead to the armoury, Kirl examined the weaponry there and selected a short spear and shield with a small axe with a prominent back-spike - it was almost like a cross between a hatchet and a pick-axe, really - for utility purposes, along with a pair of daggers for general purpose work and as a back up for the first dagger. The axe and daggers were of the ubiquitous black iron of the Underworld, but the spear and shield were somewhat different, being of a particular construction taking advantage of the peculiar materials available to the Underworld and the mines here.
Kirl managed to subtly get information on the 'void glass' that had been mentioned before as he tested out the spear. It was apparently made when the realm of Szvediding pressed up too close to the Underworld, the ultimate darkness of the place seeping out the material substance of the stone, leaving behind a sort of glass that was almost perfectly transparent, weighed very little, and was significantly stronger than steel. It was in fact such a problem to work it that was usually only used like panes of glass for the fantastically wealthy and powerful, with certain simple designs like weaponry being possible if combined in certain ways with black iron and other fantastical metals. While the material would be perfect in terms of strength and weight for making armour, it was too stubborn to work into the proper, complex shapes. Kirl was actually a little surprised at the value of the spear he received, since it wasn't just an alloy of void glass and black iron, but it also had a special metal mined in an entirely different plane of existence alloyed into the black iron, giving it a silver sheen like flowing water and apparently enchanting it for quickness. The balance was peculiar since it didn't have the sort of flexibility of a wooden haft and most of the weight was at the ends due to the void glass haft barely having any weight at all, but Kirl could feel that this was an exceptional spear compared to what he had used in 'life'. The shield was similarly a melding of black iron and void glass that made it tougher than a hundred pound shield of solid, sword quality steel while weighing less than even a linden wood shield.
Kirl also managed to get his hosts talking about the virtues of the weapons such that he could fish for information. While better than mortal steel, the primary reason for the use of black iron as the material of choice for making weapons for spirits was that the stuff had a certain spiritual weight to it that allowed it to interact with the dead whether or not they had gained a semblance of material form by drinking of wine made from pomegranates grown in the underworld, and objects of black iron were one of the few substances that 'bound' to the dead even in a worked state. So when a Zwerjy was 'slain' in battle, when Wyr's magic reanimated them at midnight, they returned with their weaponry instead of it all having to be retrieved from whatever battlefield they fell on. This also meant that the souls of the dishonourable dead could be sent down into the mines with black iron picks and their rations of pomegranate wine could be kept miserably low for the most part. The only ones who needed a significant ration of the substance giving wine were the ones hauling out the ore, and if they were mining the ore for black iron they didn't need even that... although mining black iron for the dead was a truly miserable experience since dust and shards and slivers of the stuff could bind to them, inflicting considerable pain that required even more painful methods to work the stuff out.
Being ever aware of how slave rebellions could brew up, having been hired by and against such groups in the past, Kirl also made sure to check against the possibility that this was the groups running off, and he was assured that while the freshly dishonourable dead were just the sort to dream up such things, honourable service could elevate you out of the mines quite quickly and being an outlaw was even more miserable in death than in life. While only the gods knew how to permanently destroy a soul, there were monsters that could get close enough by destroying memories. Individuals who had been drained of all personality and left as empty husks unable to function were kept around as general labourers to perform the simplest and most repetitive of tasks and as reminders of what defying the Lord or Lady of the Underworld brought about. All but the dumbest and most belligerent souls preferred to just do what they were told and work their way out of the mines and to less miserable and dangerous work.
That no souls had been found wandering about, drained of memory and dulled in thought, in the wake of the attacks was extremely concerning, hence why a call for help had been made and why Kirl had been given the assignment.
Before he actually made his descent, he also made sure to grill the castellan and his staff and the barely corporeal workers about the mines, poring over maps to get the lay of the land. Map reading was perhaps his strongest 'abstract' skill, which he knew contributed massively to his success on campaign, and he had always kept that skill sharp. While he knew that the map was not the terrain, just having something to orient against in unfamiliar terrain could be tremendously useful. Aside from learning more about the network of tunnels, he also learned about the various hazards he might encounter. That also let him pick up more about the sorts of materials that gods and spirits had to work with by finding out more about their ores and the sorts of rocks they might be found in. Knowing that infernal stone was used for firing the forges for working the strangest and toughest of materials might be useful knowledge for later, but down in the mines he wanted to know about the way the stuff could produce explosions or toxic vapours if a vein was exposed to the air, although fortunately he wouldn't find any still active veins in the explored areas. There were about a dozen other things that he learned this way, and while he knew that only an experienced miner would be able to instinctively have a feel when down in the dark, just having asked about these sorts of things could be of immense use down there and mean the difference between life and death.
As he was collecting all of this knowledge, both practical and esoteric, word came up from the mines that there had been another attack. This attack had been bolder, striking into more worked areas instead of happening in the relatively well patrolled areas instead of the unmapped natural caverns they had broken into. While there were no good witness accounts, those more distant in the account had all agreed that it had been a bestial thing that had struck a mining group, although the exact details were blurred by distance, shadows, and confusion. The creature was probably some sort of titanspawn then.
Titanspawn. Kirl had quietly been refreshing his mind on the stories of the gods creating the universe and finding out where they differed from the truth, and found that the titanspawn were a notable gap in mortal knowledge, although some sorts of monsters in the mortal realm were likely related. In any case, in creating the cosmos from chaos, the gods had warred with older beings. Unable to kill them but still able to wound and subdue them, they had slain Yamrunyin to create the Underworld as a place to chain the titans away from the rest of the universe. The beings still thrashed against their imprisonment, but the Underworld cut them off from most of their powers, and so they most they could do was spawn powerful but mortal monsters to try to dredge them up from the deeps they had been buried and gnaw at their chains. While they came in myriad forms, they were the chief source of dead souls being drained of their memories in attacks.
While now better armed with knowledge, Kirl did have to admit that had he gone down earlier, there would have been a much better chance of being able to confront the beast in patrolled areas and thus been able to get back up more quickly, and have an easier time retreating should things go poorly. As it was, he would be tracking it back wherever it came from, giving it the home field advantage.
So, he had what knowledge he was seeking, and there should be a fresh trail to follow down below. He could spend some more time seeking out other information and other tasks he could achieve while hunting, but that would likely let the trail go cold, and he didn't want to tarry too much on this lest his patron grow irritated with him.
His next action was to...
[] Learn more about the mine and its operations
[] Poke around for additional work he could do while achieving his main task
[] Head off for the mines immediately
[X] Learn more about the mine and its operations
Lead to the armoury, Kirl examined the weaponry there and selected a short spear and shield with a small axe with a prominent back-spike - it was almost like a cross between a hatchet and a pick-axe, really - for utility purposes, along with a pair of daggers for general purpose work and as a back up for the first dagger. The axe and daggers were of the ubiquitous black iron of the Underworld, but the spear and shield were somewhat different, being of a particular construction taking advantage of the peculiar materials available to the Underworld and the mines here.
Kirl managed to subtly get information on the 'void glass' that had been mentioned before as he tested out the spear. It was apparently made when the realm of Szvediding pressed up too close to the Underworld, the ultimate darkness of the place seeping out the material substance of the stone, leaving behind a sort of glass that was almost perfectly transparent, weighed very little, and was significantly stronger than steel. It was in fact such a problem to work it that was usually only used like panes of glass for the fantastically wealthy and powerful, with certain simple designs like weaponry being possible if combined in certain ways with black iron and other fantastical metals. While the material would be perfect in terms of strength and weight for making armour, it was too stubborn to work into the proper, complex shapes. Kirl was actually a little surprised at the value of the spear he received, since it wasn't just an alloy of void glass and black iron, but it also had a special metal mined in an entirely different plane of existence alloyed into the black iron, giving it a silver sheen like flowing water and apparently enchanting it for quickness. The balance was peculiar since it didn't have the sort of flexibility of a wooden haft and most of the weight was at the ends due to the void glass haft barely having any weight at all, but Kirl could feel that this was an exceptional spear compared to what he had used in 'life'. The shield was similarly a melding of black iron and void glass that made it tougher than a hundred pound shield of solid, sword quality steel while weighing less than even a linden wood shield.
Kirl also managed to get his hosts talking about the virtues of the weapons such that he could fish for information. While better than mortal steel, the primary reason for the use of black iron as the material of choice for making weapons for spirits was that the stuff had a certain spiritual weight to it that allowed it to interact with the dead whether or not they had gained a semblance of material form by drinking of wine made from pomegranates grown in the underworld, and objects of black iron were one of the few substances that 'bound' to the dead even in a worked state. So when a Zwerjy was 'slain' in battle, when Wyr's magic reanimated them at midnight, they returned with their weaponry instead of it all having to be retrieved from whatever battlefield they fell on. This also meant that the souls of the dishonourable dead could be sent down into the mines with black iron picks and their rations of pomegranate wine could be kept miserably low for the most part. The only ones who needed a significant ration of the substance giving wine were the ones hauling out the ore, and if they were mining the ore for black iron they didn't need even that... although mining black iron for the dead was a truly miserable experience since dust and shards and slivers of the stuff could bind to them, inflicting considerable pain that required even more painful methods to work the stuff out.
Being ever aware of how slave rebellions could brew up, having been hired by and against such groups in the past, Kirl also made sure to check against the possibility that this was the groups running off, and he was assured that while the freshly dishonourable dead were just the sort to dream up such things, honourable service could elevate you out of the mines quite quickly and being an outlaw was even more miserable in death than in life. While only the gods knew how to permanently destroy a soul, there were monsters that could get close enough by destroying memories. Individuals who had been drained of all personality and left as empty husks unable to function were kept around as general labourers to perform the simplest and most repetitive of tasks and as reminders of what defying the Lord or Lady of the Underworld brought about. All but the dumbest and most belligerent souls preferred to just do what they were told and work their way out of the mines and to less miserable and dangerous work.
That no souls had been found wandering about, drained of memory and dulled in thought, in the wake of the attacks was extremely concerning, hence why a call for help had been made and why Kirl had been given the assignment.
Before he actually made his descent, he also made sure to grill the castellan and his staff and the barely corporeal workers about the mines, poring over maps to get the lay of the land. Map reading was perhaps his strongest 'abstract' skill, which he knew contributed massively to his success on campaign, and he had always kept that skill sharp. While he knew that the map was not the terrain, just having something to orient against in unfamiliar terrain could be tremendously useful. Aside from learning more about the network of tunnels, he also learned about the various hazards he might encounter. That also let him pick up more about the sorts of materials that gods and spirits had to work with by finding out more about their ores and the sorts of rocks they might be found in. Knowing that infernal stone was used for firing the forges for working the strangest and toughest of materials might be useful knowledge for later, but down in the mines he wanted to know about the way the stuff could produce explosions or toxic vapours if a vein was exposed to the air, although fortunately he wouldn't find any still active veins in the explored areas. There were about a dozen other things that he learned this way, and while he knew that only an experienced miner would be able to instinctively have a feel when down in the dark, just having asked about these sorts of things could be of immense use down there and mean the difference between life and death.
As he was collecting all of this knowledge, both practical and esoteric, word came up from the mines that there had been another attack. This attack had been bolder, striking into more worked areas instead of happening in the relatively well patrolled areas instead of the unmapped natural caverns they had broken into. While there were no good witness accounts, those more distant in the account had all agreed that it had been a bestial thing that had struck a mining group, although the exact details were blurred by distance, shadows, and confusion. The creature was probably some sort of titanspawn then.
Titanspawn. Kirl had quietly been refreshing his mind on the stories of the gods creating the universe and finding out where they differed from the truth, and found that the titanspawn were a notable gap in mortal knowledge, although some sorts of monsters in the mortal realm were likely related. In any case, in creating the cosmos from chaos, the gods had warred with older beings. Unable to kill them but still able to wound and subdue them, they had slain Yamrunyin to create the Underworld as a place to chain the titans away from the rest of the universe. The beings still thrashed against their imprisonment, but the Underworld cut them off from most of their powers, and so they most they could do was spawn powerful but mortal monsters to try to dredge them up from the deeps they had been buried and gnaw at their chains. While they came in myriad forms, they were the chief source of dead souls being drained of their memories in attacks.
While now better armed with knowledge, Kirl did have to admit that had he gone down earlier, there would have been a much better chance of being able to confront the beast in patrolled areas and thus been able to get back up more quickly, and have an easier time retreating should things go poorly. As it was, he would be tracking it back wherever it came from, giving it the home field advantage.
So, he had what knowledge he was seeking, and there should be a fresh trail to follow down below. He could spend some more time seeking out other information and other tasks he could achieve while hunting, but that would likely let the trail go cold, and he didn't want to tarry too much on this lest his patron grow irritated with him.
His next action was to...
[] Poke around for additional work he could do while achieving his main task
[] Head off for the mines immediately