It was in this time that Queen Retine created what she swore she never would. An army. Coated in mistera, carrying swords, daggers, throwing knives, and bows and arrows, they marched out to meet the threat to their home.
They started meeting the enemy one hundred miles from the (supposed) enemy stronghold. Lurras. Fabled creatures designed for war. Six limbs coated in long, coarse, brown hair; pitch-black leathery wings sprouted from a thirteen-foot long body. Deep blue eyes, almost black were the only features on the face. Short, blood red hair covered the top of their heads. And carried by two of their limbs, were a broadsword and an axe.
It wasn’t until they had started to reach the borders of the actual enemy stronghold that problems began to happen. Fifty-foot drops, supposedly bottom less caverns, walls covered with acids and poisons, pits with razor sharp spikes coating them. They lost one hundred and fifty four men out of twenty thousand before they even got to the enemy’s base, named Orthasto, Deaths Tower.
A great ring-wall of stone, like towering cliffs, stood out from the shelter of the mountainside, from which it ran and then returned again. There was only one entrance, a great arch delved in the southern wall. Here, through the black rock, a long tunnel had been hewn, closed at either end with mighty doors of iron. They were so wrought and poised upon their huge hinges, posts of steel driven into the living stone, that when unbarred, could be moved with a light thrust of the arms, noiselessly.
Those who passed in and came at length out of the echoing tunnel, beheld a plain, a great circle, somewhat hollowed like a vast, shallow bowl, measuring a mile from rim to rim. Once it had been green and filled with avenues, and groves of fruitful trees, watered by streams that flowed from the mountains to a lake. But no green thing grew there now. The roads were paved with stone-flags, dark and hard: and beside their borders instead of trees, were long lines of pillars, some of marble, some of copper and of iron, joined by heavy chains.
There were many houses, chambers, hall, and passages, cut and tunnelled back into the walls upon their inner side, so that all the open circle was overlooked by countless windows and dark doors. Thousand could live there, workers, servants, slaves, and warriors with a great store of arms. The plain, too, was bored and delved. Shafts were driven deep into the ground: their upper ends covered by low mounds and domes of stone, so that in the moonslight, the Ring of Orthasto looked like a graveyard of unquiet dead. For the ground trembled. The shafts ran down by many slopes and spiral staircases to caverns far under, treasuries, storehouses, armouries, smithies, and great furnaces. Iron wheels revolved there endlessly, and hammers thudded. At night, plumes of vapour steamed from the vents, lit from beneath with red light, or blue, or venomous green.
To the centre all the roads ran between their chains. There stood a tower of marvellous shape. It was fashioned by the builders of old, and yet it seemed not a thing created by the craft of mortal man, but made from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard: four mighty piers of many sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives. Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain.
The soldiers tore through the Lurras. Soldiers fell to Lurras, Lurras fell to the soldiers. Blood stained the battlefield and corpses could be found at least every ten feet. The leader of the army, Tursto, was the first to reach the doors, and in a fit of rage, with the rest of the following soldiers, the doors soon became shattered. Stone lay cracked and shattered into countless jagged shard.
Tursto tore up the stairs seeking the enemies’ leader. All of the surviving soldiers still capable of fighting followed him. After encountering countless patrols, they reached the tower room, and found the enemies’ leader.
Standing in the middle of the room, illuminated by the fires in the room, was a cloaked figure, eight feet tall. His face was completely hidden beneath his hood. Tursto’s eyes darted downwards, and what he saw made his stomach churn. There was a hand protruding from the cloak and it was glistening, greyish, slimy-looking, and scabbed, like something dead that had decayed in water.
And then the man beneath the hood, whoever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it was trying to suck something more than air from its surroundings, something intangible, like fear.
In a burst of courage, Tursto leap forward and thrust his dagger towards the man, but the man dodged and drew his own dagger. He again thrust and was met with thin air. The next ten minutes were spent thrusting, parrying, and dodging the others dagger, until Tursto saw an opening. He smashed his dagger into the other mans chest and was rewarded with a blood coated dagger. But his own victory was soon diminished, as the other man had seen an opening for his own dagger.
A burst of pain later found the enemy on the ground dead, and his dagger dug deep into Tursto’s side. Tursto pulled out the dagger and pushed his shirt onto the wound to try to staunch the bloodflow. Tursto looked up and saw a small stone pedestal, upon it was a green silk cushion on which lay the Serpents Tear. He grabbed and ran out the door, calling for the fastest horse they had.
Tursto rode for two days straight, not sleeping. He reached the palace, and ran straight to the Queen. He thrust the Serpents Tear into her hands, and collapsed at her feet, blood pooled around him, dead.
