3. Tales of the Jewel

Tales of the Jewel


  • This will be a place where I'll be posting short snippets of stories relating to Peltarch, they could be completely superfluous, or they could vaguely relate to or foreshadow plots that are running.

    Coming Home

    _He still remembered it when he slept. He had become unused to change over the long years he had dwelt in the City…in its dark places. He was glad of the memories troubling his dreams, for the nightmares they replaced were worse by far. Even so, being forced to leave his carefully constructed sanctuary and walk again among the thronging masses, writhing about him in utter confusion...these new dreams may be an improvement, but they were still jarring. It was moot though, for the most part, for he rarely required sleep. He had found a new sanctuary, he had decsended there into the comforting dark of Oscura, to wait and to recover.

    And now they came to him again, telling him it was time again to leave. This time, though, he was not jarred, he was prepared. He had fixated over every minute detail, for months upon end while the lands far above were torn apart by the chaos of war. He reflected that it might be foolish of him to leave Oscura. It had felt...almost welcoming to him. Ready to become a new home, though it never had. He knew why...too near the underdark...there was no way he could ever stay sane so close to its silent maw.

    And returning to his true home had become a matter of pride. It burned softly in him over the years, that he had been cast out, by fools barely out of swaddling clothes, fools who scarcely even knew his name. These thoughts sifted through his head for the hundreth time...his was a slow mind, examining and reexamining the same thoughts again and again...as he stepped aboard the narrow ship, his tall form, even cloaked and hidden somehow still causing the rowers on the deck to tense, whispering and making superstitious signs. He did not linger to extend their discomfort, and quickly strode to his carefully preprepared cabin below decks, away from the flickering torchlight needed to guide the ship through the precarious caverns.

    He was going home...and the heart that he sometimes forgot still lay beating beneath the malignant skin and twisted bones of his chest felt a little lighter..._


  • Fortescue

    _Night was falling, two blue-grey eyes watching the sun's last rays fading behind the mountains to the west, two among many that stood atop a cliff overlooking the foothills below them. They had been stationed in the giantspires for a month now, keeping recent Ogre aggression in check. Fortescue enjoyed the posting, Ogres were ferocious fighters, in size and strength. He was like many of his companions there, young and in pursuit of glory and honour to take back to the City with him. His company, of which he was a sergeant, was having little difficulty keeping the Ogres at bay. They had set up a line along the cliff, dug in and the Ogres who attempted to break past them were usually peppered with ballista bolts and arrows by the time they reached the men, where they were cut down. Captain Sent had devised the strategy himself, and also led a few raids at night into the very caves of the Ogres with his best men, to steal supplies and take out their foul shamans if possible.

    The Shamans had been the main cause of casualties to the Defenders, as they were capable of raining lightning, ice and fire down upon the line from afar. What can men do against such power, Fortescue had wondered. He had seen, like many of the others, those beside him fall to great pillars of flame from the skies, leaving naught but ashes. It had been a sobering experience, but they were soldiers. They would not all come back.

    As darkness fell that night, the young Sergeant did not yet know it would be a dark night for all. Captain Sent was assembling his best men again for a raid to slay a particularly vicious Shaman that had taken the lives of three men and injured several more earlier in the day. The Sergeant had sustained a light scorch to his left leg, so he had been relieved of his watch for the rest of the night, and he was free to watch Akton Sent and his men as they set off silently into the night. He shook his head in mild envy that he had never been selected to join one of the night raids; the head of a Shaman was one of the greatest prizes to be had out in these mountains. His keen eyes surveyed the stealthy men as they became smaller in the distance of the now still battlefield, before they vanished into a cave mouth.

    He was about to look away and see about some dinner, when some more movement caught his eye. Dark shapes, moving from behind a jutting cliff in the distance, moving around towards the very cave the Captain had entered. An ambush! He sprang to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg and grabbing the nearest soldier, "Go get Lieutenant Del'Rosa, tell him the Captain's party is about to be ambushed in the cave!" Without waiting for a response he sprang over the pickets, and was soon down on the field running awkwardly across it towards the cave.

    He stopped to catch his breath outside it, and to cock an ear to listen for the sounds of battle he was expecting. His heart skipped a beat as he realised there was nothing but silence coming from the cave; could he be too late!?

    He stormed in, too fearful for his commander to remember caution, and the next few things happened too quickly, blurring together in his mind. There were the Ogres, there were the Defenders…and there was Captain Sent. Speaking with the very Shaman he was supposed to be slaying. He did not hesitate to question what he saw, for he was not a man to mull things over. His hand tightened on the handle of the vicious axe he wielded...his vision clouding over with a blind rage at the men in front of him. He had not even stopped moving, but all at once his rush to aid his comrades had become a ferocious charge towards his Captain, axe already mid swing as a fellow Sergeant stepped in his path, hands raised and weapon not yet even drawn. He was cut down, a bloody gash across his chest, with a mild expression of shock on his treacherous face. One more soldier managed to get between him and Sent, a pair of short blades in his hands that sliced out with lightning speed to make a light stab at Fortescue's shield arm, causing him to drop the shield in an uncontrollable spasm of his hand, the other glancing off his armour. The man fell, trying to leap back in time to avoid a beheading blow to his neck, which he did, but not enough to avoid his throat being neatly slit by the edge of the axe.

    The Ogres were in disarray, their none too intelligent minds still trying to work out whether they were being ambushed or what was going on at all, though their Shaman was less confused about the matter at hand. As he stepped up to face his Captain, Fortescue felt the air around him crackle, and side-stepped just in time to avoid the most of a roaring pillar of flame that materialised from overhead, the young sergeant letting out a bellow of rage and pain as he levelled his axe at the traitor captain.

    Akton Sent was already well prepared, he dodged the blow easily, and with wicked precision, slipped a blade deep into a chink in Fortescue's armour, letting go of its hilt as he easily hopped back out of the way of another wayward swing. "You're going d-" his vitriolic words were cut short, as his body sudenely froze, even his eyes transfixed on his foe, unable to look to the Ogre he knew to be the source of the holding spell that had paralysed him. He cursed to himself softly, he had hoped to at least deal Akton a fair blow before he fell. He felt his weapons being taken away by the remaining soldiers around him, as Akton stepped nearer.

    "You know what happens to men who see what they aren't supposed to see, Gerard. Times are going to change soon. General Telan is already dead..." As the tall, rakish man spoke to him, his voice took on a sadistic air that was at odds with the daring, cheerful tone Fortescue knew so well, then he felt a white hot pain in his left eye, as the Captain thrust his thumb deep into the socket with one vicious movement. Then he felt a sword slipping into his back and his remaining eye still open he lost consciousness.

    When he awoke, aside from his surprise at being alive at all, he was blindfolded. His missing eye, he surmised, had been treated somewhat, but still burned with pain, as did the wound in his back, which shifting himself slightly he felt was bandaged tightly. He spent his next few days in a state of confusion, unknown persons bringing him food and water...still soldier's rations so he assumed he was in some kind of cell in a Defender building somewhere. Not long after, perhaps days or tendays, he heard muffled explosions and shouts. He heard a door nearby breaking open, and many footsteps. "I knew it! I told you he was a sneaky bastard, General, Sent has a whole secret prison down here!" Fortescue didn't recognise that voice, but he knew the one that responded, "Release them. Give them swords if they can stand, and tell them what's happened." Vick Dunderstone, head of the city Guard.

    After being handed a sword himself, he was told the city was in chaos; Senator Koreth had attempted to overthrow the Senate, and half the Defender Captains had joined him. Fortescue growled low as he emerged into the torn apart streets, taking more than a few seconds to recognise he was in the docks. Apparantly the remaining Defenders and the Guard had already been briefly driven from the city, and were now in the process of retaking, rallying under Captain Kaster Lavindo and some of the Senators who escaped the city. Fortescue stuck with the band of released prisoners and the small group of guards who stayed with them to keep them organised, as they aided in rooting out the remaining enemies from the docks.

    After it was all over, he joined many of his fellow captives in joining the guard, who had released them, the thought of rejoining the Defenders only releasing a surge of bitter thoughts and memories in his mind. It took months to restore any order to the docks after the civil war had ended, but by the time these months had passed, Fortescue was already a sergeant inspector. His bitter streak had given him a growing reputation as a hard man, something the guard were eager to have in the docks. He later found out that it had been the timely response of Lieutenant Del'Rosa that saved his life back in the cave, as the Lieutenant arrived with backup forcing Captain Sent to slay his Ogre allies to preserve himself, he had then told some clever lies and Fortescue had been locked away. He began to take a grim pleasure in his work in the docks, taking out many thieves, brutes, wretches and killers over the years, his hatred for anybody out for themselves driving him everyday. Eventually he settled into his work, his ire resolving into a churlish sort of calm, though his temper was ever close to the surface. The morose General Dunderstone had told him, on the day he had made him a Captain, he admired his passion. "I just hate the bastards we see out there on our streets, sir", he had replied which illicited a rare chuckle out of the General. "From what I hear Captain, they hate you right back...", then the man turned back to the seeming mountain of papers on his desk and Fortescue had taken this as a dismissal, returning back to his docks._