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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 8, 2020 4:32:43 GMT
Page 302:
“...for the Empire!” young Jacob called, His blond hair shining like Molly’s had the night before, when I took her in her own brother’s bed. Jacob was the finest of lads and as the Ashenwraith recoiled from our mighty assault he charged in, enchanted sword glowing orange as he slashed and hacked, his strokes nearly as puissant as my own.
Never have I missed a comrade as much as Jacob and his sister Molly. Raithe herself shall have them as honored guests in her dining hall for now and until the Great Clock chimes its last...
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 8, 2020 5:10:02 GMT
Twelve years and Hammerfall has the same appearance in his mind. The fortress has near doubled in size between the Ashenwraith’s offensive and Nigel’s laying on his back on the Odyssey, staring at the ceiling as his injured tendons and ligaments heal in his elbow. Unlike his peers, he had survived to begin his sixth decade of life. He felt his enchanted armor was aging with him some days, hadn’t it stopped blows from something as meek as a shrimp before?
In the hours between midnight and dawn were the worst. His spells maintaining his appearance faded, leaving him not the supremely handsome and fierce warrior of thirty he could still channel, but a fifty three year old with a sore back and bad knees. The knees made it the worst. The only consolation was that his libido needed no help. Nigel Thornheart had done more to secure Innuria’s future by fucking than any swing of a sword could manage. His bastards were nobles and soldiers, rogues and bards and wizards.
“Nigel wake up!” Jacob said. “The Ashenwraith is near. It’s time to go!!!” How the boy ignored his naked sister curled against him was something the Thornheart would never understand, but he never noticed.
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Post by Nigel Thornheart on Jul 10, 2020 20:00:30 GMT
"Huzzah!" Nigel exclaimed, sitting up in bed with a boundless energy that defied his age. One rule he held sacred above all others was to live each day as if someone were writing a book about his life. No one wanted to read a chapter wherein the hero spends all day in bed while adventure happened to others. He forced himself from the warm embrace of Molly, throwing her off him as one discards a blanket, planting both feet firmly on the ground. He armored and armed himself for the battle at hand, curling his mustache with a bit of wax, preening and primping as if preparing for a date rather than a slog through mud, blood, and horror.
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 10, 2020 23:54:34 GMT
When he had finished Molly had clothed herself and Jacob and a hundred good soldiers formed up. The Mist swirled in towards the causeway leading to the great fortress, and a host of boglops rushed towards the assembling line. Boglops were the tar of the Mist’s forced; it had infinite numbers of the beasties it seemed and they simply gummed up any formation that dared fight them in a set battle after a time. The roar of cannons behind the line erupted and hot burning steel crashed into their ranks, slaughtering dozens.
Molly and the remainder of the elementalists summoned a...ir had been a wave, right? Was that the word? No, cyclone. A tornado made of ocean water. It had smashed the strange little creatures by the hundred until the larger monsters grew bored.
As his books would never say, the true challenge of fighting the Mist is simple. You have to win one thousand times out of one thousand, and no human is perfect. Eventually the cyclone began to fade and its water sprayed out in an increasingly less dangerous circle, and before a replacement spell was formed some sort of black shape flew towards them at an impossible speed. Nigel has seen them before. His patented name for them (yes, patented), was a cannon golem. The beast smashed into the wizards like the living boulder it was, sending crushed body parts everywhere. Jacob screamed at his sisters sudden death and the youth rushed towards the great beast...
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Post by Nigel Thornheart on Jul 13, 2020 18:36:49 GMT
The smell of burning gunpowder was thick in the air as Nigel spent the opening salvo of battle loading and firing his prized cannon with deadly efficiency until the barrel was hot to the touch, transitioning from round shot to grape shot as the foe drew close. He cycled from cannonfire, to pike and shot, to sword and shield as the enemy advance waned and waxed in a tempo that was all too familiar to him, bounding between lines like a murderous coked up jack rabbit, always where the fighting was the thickest.
As Molly was reduced to pink mist, Nigel told himself there would be time to mourn later. But that was a lie. He never left time to mourn, not when he could distract himself with drink, women, and peril. There were some things even the Adventurer Extraordinaire was afraid to face.
"Reclaimers! On me!" Nigel bellowed, voice carrying supernaturally over the roar of the cannons and screams of the dying. "Remember, the Mist can slay a man, but legends live forever. So be legendary! Huzzah!" He drew his sword and shield and charged, vaulting over craters and corpses to glory. He hoped Maximillian had chosen a good vantage point to illustrate this scene...though he would of course alter it so he was side by side or a little ahead of Jacob in the final draft.
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Post by The Forgotten God on Jul 13, 2020 19:26:12 GMT
Somehow he had cut through the beasts, the few remaining magicians using spells to enhance his power and blst a hole towards the great Mist Creature. A cannon’s roar belched out and Little Nigel had fired an enchanted blast of grapeshot which cut into the Ashenwraith just as Nigel arrived, his blade slashing its great belly, the creature’s bulk swallowing it up like the worlds most painful splinter. Another cannon sounded and a chunk of the monster came off, and Nigel’s magically boosted strength kicked in and he grabbed a fallen man’s spear and jammed it up into the beast’s eye.
As it collapsed he heard the remaining men bringing down the cannon golem as the loss of the Ashenwraith’s power made the boglop hordes lose cohesion and begin running. It takes him a minute to see Jacob‘a corpse, buried under the beast’s great claw, his own sword jammed between its toes. A good death if one believed in that sort of thing.
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