Crimson Mist

As the sun dips down below the mountains and the veil between worlds weakens, the six, deliberately dismembered, Orc bodies are swallowed up by dark shadows and the pools of sticky blood start to stir. The torsos and severed limbs shudder and twitch but they’re incapable of housing any form of life now. Broken vessels beyond repair.

Instead, in silent frustration, the dark red blood rises like vapour from the useless corpses, coalescing into an unsettling red mist before slowly, deliberately, creeping up the mountain path in search of fresh hosts. 

(S)Elf Abuse

The Older Grey-Elf; Tamerlane, finally finishes his lengthy explanation, to his recently returned son, before falling silent.

“So you understand now, when I came to see your Mother's people that century-and-a-half ago, we were trying to recruit the High-Elves into attacking Theranthor. The Demon Prince, or so we thought, was semi-permanently dealt with and we’d spent the last hundred years secretly undermining the great Blue Dragon’s support and power. The Grey are more thinkers than fighters though, and we couldn’t do it alone.”

Sitting across from his Grey Elf Father, Arowe pushes his glass of wine away from him. It’s a fine, dry white, but it currently tastes like vinegar in his mouth.

“You tried to recruit the High-Elves to attack the Dragon for you, after actively defending her from them? No wonder you were thrown out of Glendorne’. It wasn’t just the man I thought was my Father who despised your people. Pretty much everyone I knew growing up in Glendorne spoke angrily about the treacherous Grey. ‘Worse than the Drow’ they’d say! Everyone except my Mother, and now, after meeting you, I fully understand why.”

Tamerlane has the grace to place his glass down, unfinished.

“There’s a greater reason why your people… Your Mother’s people hate us. We didn’t just align ourselves with Theranthor, we actively protected her. We fortified her body with our spells. We bolstered her lightning breath with our enchantments. We defended her from all attacks… Even when those attacks were from the other Elven races. She HAD to live long enough to destroy Zartak’s material plane form and drive his essence back to the Nine hells!”

Arowe finds himself scowling. He hadn’t realised until he’d arrived at the mountaintop city of Falutin, how much prejudice against the Grey Elves had permeated his Sylvan heart.

“There HAD to have been a better way?!”

Tamerlane just shakes his head.

“You’ve seen the Tapestry. We had no choice. If the High Elves hadn’t tried to attack her directly while Zartak was still active on this plane, we wouldn’t have been forced to counter-attack them in Theranthor’s defence.”

Arowe bristles.

“It was years before I was born, but I heard the stories. Your people killed hundreds of my people! Uncles, Aunts and Cousins!”

It’s Tamerlane’s turn to get angry.

“Your people?! You’re not ‘Your people’. You’re half ‘My people’. They attacked us! Killed us! I am sorry for all the deaths… On both sides. Unlike the Orcs and the Humans, there are too few of us to spare in unnecessary battles.”

Arowe nods as he calms himself down.

“My Mother used to say that it was a consequence of our long lifespans; Elven children are few and far between.”

Tamerlane mirrors Arowe’s nod.

“Exactly right. Your Mother was always clever… for a High-Elf. That was why, as a race, we had to be practical in our decisions.”

Despite the unconscious but obvious insult aimed at his Mother and the High-elves in general, Arowe smiles ironically at his Father’s assertion.

“Your ‘practical’ decision has come back to haunt you now though, hasn’t it?”

Tamerlane’s grey eyes cast downward, just for a moment.

“Unfortunately, despite our plan succeeding and the Great Dragon; Theranthor defeating the Demon Prince in their final battle. It has made us enemy number two on Zartak’s hit list. Only the relentless Orcan hordes angered him more. It’s almost certainly why he’s using them as meat puppets now to herald his return.”

Grayeux Tapestry

Standing in the large, magically illuminated circular room, side by side with his newly discovered Grey-Elf Father, Arowe examines the section of the vast tapestry indicated. The whole tableau is about eight feet tall but is sewn into a hoop-like circle, covering everything except the single entrance. From start to finish, the mostly monochrome tableau must stretch out over several hundred yards.

“What is this place?”

Tamerlane places a reassuring hand on his son’s well-muscled, bow-strengthened shoulder.

“This chamber is called ‘The Circle of Time’. The tapestry was woven by a group of our women over a millennia ago. Women obsessed with their task… Possessed by it, some say. It shows the history… And future of my…of our people.”

Arowe draws his keen eyes back to the tapestry.

“So what exactly is it that I’m looking at?”

Tamerlane tilts his elegant, silver haired head to one side.

“Do you not recognise your pink shirted self?”

Looking again, Arowe’s eyebrows shoot up at the rare splash of colour.

“Yes, that’s me and my friends, but I’ve never fought those weird six-legged panther creatures before…”

And looking further along.

“And I’ve never crossed a river on a burning barge either!”

His, recently reunited with, Father nods. 

“These battles were fated to happen and yet, somehow they didn’t… At least not to you. You were never meant to come here. We were never meant to have met and yet, for some unknown reason, the future’s been disrupted.”

Slightly confused, Arowe pulls a quizzical expression.

“Is that what the first Grey Elf meant when he said ‘I shouldn’t be here’?”

The older, Grey Elf nods. 

“You being here disrupts the grand scheme of what’s meant to happen and what’s not. Although I am glad of this chance to see you, I fear your presence, in a place you were never destined to see, will have long term ramifications on both the Grey Elves and the future of Fissa.”

Running to the end of the tapestry, Arowe comes to the final scene; A huge demon leading a vast army of red-eyed Orcs.

“Do we win?”

Tamerlane unhurriedly catches up.

“As you can see, the tapestry’s predictions are coming to an end, and for the first time in a millennium, we literally have no idea what’s going to happen.”

Eternally Ancient

Lord Urdurel’s hand trembles as he gulps down his morning goblet of the magical Fey water and he feels it literally wash away the weight of the previous day. As an added bonus, the water is so pure and so clear, any attempt at poisoning it have, so far, proved impossible.

At almost a hundred years old, his eyes aren’t what they were and he has to stretch out his arms to focus on the crepey, liver-spotted skin of his boney hands.

To live endlessly as a feeble and arthritic old man? To exist eternally but in constant pain? To endure day after day, week after week, month after month, without any hope of finding love again or fathering more children?

Eternal youth is a blessing, but eternal old-age?

Placing the clear, crystal goblet down on his bedside dresser, Lord Urdurel stiffly clambers out of his bed with just one resolve.

“This doesn’t have to be forever. I just have to survive long enough to protect my kingdom, my legacy and my people.”

I Dream of Demon

Ethereal eyes blink open, but Fortu can’t immediately comprehend where or when he is, or even what he’s looking at. He seems to be floating high up in a bleak void, looking down on two distant but familiar figures. The first is heavily armoured and male, the other bent-backed and wizened but female and they’re facing something… huge and monstrous.

It takes him a moment, from his elevated vantage point, but he eventually recognises the two figures as the loathsome, pony-tailed; Sir Briefadel and, what can only be the undisguised form of the aristocrat’s supernatural Hag Mother; Hetzabah!

Just a nightmare or another one of his hyper-real visions? They’re coming more frequently now though and it’s hard, sometimes, to differentiate between the dreams and his actual memories. Some seem like glimpses of the future or past, but they’re never accurate. The places, times and people, are always confusing and muddled up.

Everything below is black as pitch or burning red. Looming shadows and boiling lava pits fill his entire line of sight and at its centre, in a huge, deep and smooth sided pit, is chained a colossal, crimson skinned and bull horned Demon!

Bigger than any creature he’s ever seen.

Bigger than the massive hooked horrors that had almost killed him in the Givrad Void.

Bigger than the towering Frost giant; Droofin, who had saved them in the frozen-world of Kik-Ri.

Bigger even than the gigantic burrowing ice monster that had tried, nearly successfully, to swallow his friends whole.

However, regardless of its apparent power, the Demonic creature is securely bound, with multiple iron chains linked to thick iron bands around its neck, wrists and ankles shackling it to the solid rock beneath its cloven hooves.

Something is wrong with it though. Despite being impossibly large, it seems emaciated. Sucked dry. Its thin, stick-like forearms are covered with translucent tubes, connected to weird, cold-iron needles piercing its immortal flesh and veins. Black/Red ichor still slowly dripping down and through them to somewhere beyond Fortu’s ghostly sight.

Suddenly, the creature’s huge head snaps upwards, away from the dream versions of Briefadel and Hetzabah, and the demonic beast locks eyes with the invisible, hovering dreamer.

“I SEE YOU THERE, SPAWN OF MY SPAWN!”

His real eyelids snapping open, Fortu jerkily sits up, takes in the cool darkness of the real world and feels his bedroll under him, slightly softening the reassuringly solid ground beneath. It’s only been a day since they’d escaped the barn fire at Eisen-Heart and they’re still a day’s ride away from Thorn-Flek. Controlling his breath, he sees the recently joined but stalwart Dwarf; Banaal standing guard in the mid-distance and allows himself to slump back down in the warm glow of Cookie’s campfire. 

Slowly shaping the sulphurous word in his mouth, Fortu quietly spits out the strange name echoing around his head.

“Zartak.”

A name that, he innately understands, carries immense power and fiendish importance, yet simultaneously means nothing at all to him.