Commissioned By AllenWalker
One Big Kick, One Rude Awakening
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOG!!!!!!
ME!
BLEEDIN'!
FOOOOOOOOOOT!!!
Deep.
Deep.
Deep.
Deep was the slumber.
How could She not? Such grand workings had been performed, grasped, done, spanning the length and breadth of all that had needed doing. Was it the same as carving the earth open and plumbing its depths? No. Was it the hot screaming heat of the forge and smelter, to craft and transform the bounty of the depths into something more than their base forms? No. Was it the cool depths of that distant realm which spanned the whole of the world and below it, was of it yet not, a place of true eternal slumber and protection, that tireless and sleepless vigil? No. Many a duty, many a task, and all of them could be tiring and exhausting in different measures, especially when one did them first and greatest before any others. It was a matter of magnitudes, not a matter of comparison or relative effort. All vitally important, and yet there was an additional cost that She had born which the others had not. Not quite, not the same way.
Gone, and gone, and the heart could so easily gain scars.
In the end, grief was the final facet of the priceless gemstone that was love.
Gone, and gone away, and the great workings had all been done. For reasons understandable, but logic was logic and emotion was emotion. To depart for good reason did not mean to depart without pain. Not when one could love with all one's heart with force enough to reshape the world, as had been done time and again with joy and pride. The children had grown, and the children had spread, and the children would continue to do so as the world went ever on. Were there great and terrible threats left to them? Of course! Yet a mother could not swaddle and coddle their child forever, not if they actually wished for them to stand upon their own two feet. A crime on its own, that was. Yes, you could feed them well, keep them warm, train them hard, patch them up, help them when they asked for help, but at the end of the day, it would be a poor parent that would keep a child from growing into an adult. With all that entailed.
So yes, it had been time, She'd decided.
She had made her choice.
Golden was the age, and never-ending the twin pains of her heart, and so it was wholly Her prerogative to choose to lay herself down for a time. For as long as she wished! After all, two Oaths had been made, by both halves of the whole that made up her heart, and there would be no denying that those Oaths would be fulfilled. Never a once had either failed to fulfill a true Oath, and She would not insult them or herself for making her choices by ever considering that they would do so in the future. They would return, in time, and They would be greeted with brews in hand and a smile fit to outshine the sun. But until then, why not rest? They had had their children, and they would reach out across the world and shape it in
their images, and that was something to look forward to with pride indeed. For what parent did not wish for their children to surpass them?
Well, some did. Something that, She had been forced to admit as She had pressed the Runes into the stone with her own hands and tools, not simply those without but those within. There were those in Her time that had seemed ready to presume that nothing new and better could come from those who came after, which was one of the silliest things ever imagined. For goodness sake, if that was the truth, then poor old Morgrim would surely shed a great many tears if it somehow happened that nothing he ever did would ever be surpassed. Innovation, creation, that was something which had ever brought uproarious laughter and joy into the fellow's heart. But no, surely not. In time, no doubt by the time that She had been dreaming of for so long came to pass, and those twin Oaths fulfilled, and Her heart would sing in fullness throughout the mountains, they would see the fruits of that path aplenty.
And yet...
A frown finally crossed that face which had been in peaceful and pleasant repose for so very, very long.
The defenses were perfect, by the standards of any of Her peers, let alone Her own standards. Built to withstand the machinations of practically any efforts of the great enemy which had worked to plague them for so long, which in the end had spurred half of her heart to be ripped away by self-assumed duty. To ensure that the shaking of the entire world's spine would not be enough to break the chambers, for the many runes had been painstakingly made over the course of over two centuries to span not simply the doors, but the walls, the floors, and the ceiling. Even the most terrible quakes that the world might ever muster would ever be enough. Yet despite that, despite
all of that, something managed to make it through. Somehow. A certain, single shake, not to the chamber itself, no, but to Her.
Not more than a few handspans away, upon a glimmering floating orb of purest Laihtero was carved a bewildering array of runes.
Some of them had begun to blink, to change color, in a manner that had only ever happened once before.
Yet even in that distant past, it had not been enough, for the efforts then and there had been slow and steady and not enough cause for alarm. Especially as matters were put to right. Yet in the time since, other of those runes had begun to blink, or otherwise go dark entirely and fade to lightlessness. More and more, upon that orb. Perhaps it was that, yes, that which meant that this latest set of signals sent forth with ancient and incredible craft finally was enough. As after all, despite everything, the standards to awaken were high, high indeed. What could possibly count, be enough?
Was it the scream of a God, the breaking of so many billions of toes, and a bellow of resulting laughter from another God at his own reflection's misfortune?
No.
Not at all.
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"And that shall be enough. This rune shall guard the Gate proper, and ensure its stability, its strength, and nought the world shall do to harm it!"
Two heavy fists thumped against hips as a gusty, satisfied sigh escaped a pair of lungs like bellows.
"And if something does?"
The pride flew right back out of that puffed out chest, also like forge bellows, if they had been pierced.
"Hah, look at you!"
A gruff guffaw, brought forth by one who was considered taciturn and grim at the best of times, save for those rare few worthy of seeing just who He truly was.
"Shut it! My love...,"
A quiet huff, a gentle hand to a back broad and strong enough to fit mountains on.
"I've no doubt in your craft. Nevertheless...,"
Another pair of hands, another chisel, another expression of absolute dominion and will. Above them all, the very skies of the world shifted in hue and current and weft, the clouds swirling about as the Winds that blew forth from the Polar Gates were arrested and transformed in a single perfect instant.
"It is a wife's prerogative to prepare for such eventualities!"
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And as the orb rotated slowly...
Eyes that shone like the stars themselves had been mined from the sky snapped open.
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In an act that Logan would likely have never made otherwise, he made to push the vampire Genevieve outright.
But before his hand made contact, he felt like he'd gone deaf and blind again from the sheer sudden voluminous
power that shone through the world. A second tremendous quake started to shake all around them, practically with equal or greater strength to that which had been born into the world with the kick of Gork against the Great Gate of Karaz-a-Karak. Yet unlike that storm of magic and faith beforehand, so tainted green and eldritch in its brutish and primiveal power, this was something else entirely. Logan could not see it, Regina could not see it, and in the end despite everything it was Genevieve who could. She who had tasted and drunk down the death of one of the eldest living dragons, was powerful enough with senses enough to at least begin to make sense of what was happening.
Behind them, within the Everpeak itself, Runelords clutched at their chests, eyes wide and unblinking, as all the dwarfs and all the humans within the great hold could do nothing but stare in naked wonder which so utterly supplanted the terror and confusion and outrage of what had just been done at the behest of the greenskins. How could they not? How could they not when the entire inside of the Everpeak was
glowing? Runes, so many runes, so many and so grand and so powerful that they had long gone so utterly silent that they were lost within the stone seemed to burst onto the surface like a vein of magma erupting out of the deep earth. How could they not, when every single rune they bore, upon axe and shield and armor and helm, burned so bright as to nearly be blinding?
Kragg the Grim, stooped over his workings, sprang upright like a beardling struck from behind, and stared with open wonder and tears in his eyes as he watched not simply the gronti he was attempting to craft but the entire damned vault began to shake? As he beheld, in the farther distance, lain in rest against the walls, the gargantuan and irrepressible and so-long-silent
Gronti-Durakarazi came to life, the runes ablaze once more in an act that would have cast Silverthumb and Kragg both to complete stone. Runes he could not even comprehend himself were active, and without a single command or request of his own, all of the gronti, large and small, began to move. It was all Kragg, his assistants, and the mystified Gehenna could do to scramble out of their way as they marched.
From the skies, there came a thunderous booming, and from within the Everpeak, there was a whistling keening screech of wind and power being exerted from the greatest and grandest of all the Temples of Valaya within the whole of the Karaz Ankor.
And then...!
And then Logan von Hohenzollern saw, as an orb the size of a barrel flew just past his head to come to a rest at the opening of the entrance kicked through the Great Gate of Karaz-a-Karak, an orb that shone with runes made in an epoch gone by. It felt like looking at a miniature sun.
No.
Like the sun itself, simply captured and rendered smaller, yet retaining all its power and all its majesty and all its might.
The orb spun, gently, once, stupefying the orcs on the other side, until a flare of light burst from it that faded away to reveal something else. Some of the runes also flared as She began to speak, pure crisp Khazalid transformed to Reikspeil in an instant - and though Logan knew it not - to flawless Bretonnian as well.
"
Well now."
A purple dress handwoven flowed through the air, cinched at the waist with a belt made from the leather of
Urmskaladrak, father of all dragons, while finest adamant gromril chainmail rested atop it.
"
Uninvited guests is it, hmm?"
Two stubby horns emerged from a helmet that did not obscure or cover the face, nor kept two long, long,
long looping braids from trailing downwards from it. A hefty looking rune-axe was resting on one shoulder, the power of it shining in Logan's sight and smelling of something so potent that he'd scarcely ever perceived it before save perhaps for the weapons that the High King himself wielded or perhaps
Ghal Maraz itself. On the other arm was a stout circular shield, and though Logan knew it not, it had been made of adamant mined and refined by two separate Ancestor Gods. A series of runes burned on it, of a sort that almost felt familiar, as if he had seen someone's great grandchild before, and only now beheld the one they had descended from. A barrel was also there, though Logan could not see where it had come from. Wherever
She had come from. It too, for some reason, burned with runes, and then he felt his heart stop in his chest as She half-turned to glance at him, at Regina, gaze narrowing fractionally at Genevieve.
It felt like two of the stars plucked from the sky had come down to blaze right in his face.
Like an entire Storm of Magic had come crashing about him, yet was not yet tearing him to pieces, with how controlled it was.
She was taller than any dwarf he'd ever seen in his entire life, and wider too besides, yet not rotund.
She was simply...larger than life.
"
I know you not, but I know your purpose, and thank you for it," she said, and that horridly powerful disdain, fit to wipe away something clear from existence itself on word alone, was not there.
Instead, though he could scarcely believe it, there was an incredible gentleness there, a kindness that shone through and felt like the embrace of his mother, calling forth every single memory and experience of such he'd had and combining them as one. He was not alone in that experience, either. Regina had burst into tears, her mouth open and unmoving, as a flush of warmth reached her pale cheeks from so long spent fighting under the world. Even Genevieve was not unaffected, and a hand had clutched to her chest, where the vampire seemed mystified at the sensation of her own heart beating like it had not in centuries, tears of blood running down her cheeks to splatter upon the ground. The very grips on their weapons, each of the three so trained and experienced to never let go of save in death or absolute necessity, lessened.
"
I thank you, for doing your best to keep vermin out from the hearth and homestead," She smiled at them before nodding, and as She did so, She tapped the top of the keg next to Her with the flat of her rune-axe.
The floating orb flashed a different combination of runes again, and three mugs of ale appeared, held suspended in the air itself before depositing in front of them. Then the orb returned to Her side, and flashed twice, and two more orbs appeared. Each of them different, subtly, the colors and shapes of the runes different. Three in total, one above Her head, and one to each side. There was something akin to an avalanche in the air when She cracked her neck from side to side, and then took a single step forward and with slow deliberate pace cut a line in front of her with the edge of her weapon through the stone. It was easier than parting paper with a Runefang. She paused, checking the depth and length of the cut, and gave a satisfied nod as she glanced at her axe. Meanwhile, Logan was staring at the mug in his hands, the froth on it, and just from the smell alone, he knew it was better than any elixir he'd ever had in his entire life.
"
Smaller than your lot used to be, but that doesn't matter," She lifted her chin high, and set her feet. "
Come in your tens, your hundreds, your thousands, it doesn't matter. You. Shall. Not. Harm. My. Home."
And for the first time in many, many thousands of years, did it happen.
Valaya the Beautiful.
Valaya the Kind.
Valaya the Banisher of Sickness, Hearthtender, First to Brew and First to Drink.
Valaya the
Protector went to war.
The greatest WAAAAGH!! the Old World might have ever seen?
When summarized and condensed, in truth the sagas would say this and little more: Valaya willed it gone.
And so it was.
