14th Slate, 353Armok.Thirty years and not a word. Not a whisper or thought. Yet there it had been in the dream. The great toad, the creatures crying out the name.
Armok, Armok, Armok! It had been the only barely intelligible word amongst their incomprehensible gibber. They had screamed it while they held the knives, slitting throat after throat of her elven companions while she lay bound to the rock.
Armok, and
Jreengus, two words that would just keep coming back.
Ragna ran the cold, wet rag over her face, glaring back at the shadows in her room. Her bed lay dishevelled from her sudden awakening. It had been after her trial, her time with the Elves. She had been sentenced to stay with them for seven long years, to pay penance for the deeds of her kind. She had learned peace from them, both inner and outer. She had learned the ways of the Force that permeated all living things. She had learned even some of the secrets of their magic, and the terrible price it wrought if used without respect. And, at the end, she learned fear.
In the seventh and final year of her sentence, Ragna had journeyed to the edge of the forest with a number of her Elven friends, not far from both human and dwarven lands. They had heard rumours of dwarves, humans and elves going missing in the region for months, but had only recently connected them with tales of a kobold cavern nearby. Suspecting a small group of kobolds preying on travellers, they had gone directly to the cave with a force of huntsman.
They had underestimated their foe in every way. Traps assailed them from the moment they entered, vicious devices aimed at maiming rather than killing. Before they had even laid eyes on a kobold, they had been ensnared by nets or their limbs had been broken to an elf. When their scaly captors brought them to their destination, the sheer scope of it both bewildered and terrified.
A great cavern had been channelled out of the rock, the roof supported by massive pillars of stone arranged in concentric rings. The cavern was cut into descending layers, each fitted with dozens of smaller pillars. Above it all, the carved image of a giant toad glared down with bulbous eyes. It was when Ragna saw the gutters running from the base of the pillars downward to the central pit that she understood its horrific purpose. Scores of victims, human, elven, dwarven, goblin and even kobold alike had been chained to the pillars, ready to take part in whatever unspeakable design the kobolds had planned. Not that it was difficult to guess; ancient bloodstains had etched themselves into the rock. Whomever had built this place had done so countless generations before its current inhabitants.
Ragna and her companions were chained to the pillars and the hundreds of kobolds gathered began to sing in their strange, sibilant tongue. Their priests strode from level to level, slitting throats and ankles so the blood drained through the grates in the bottom-most pit. Ragna was bound at the topmost level and it was by sheer chance that she was doomed to die last of all. At first she could not bear to watch the slaughter, but eventually she forced herself to look at what all this bloodshed was due to accomplish.
At the very centre of the pit, a hazy figure of smoke had appeared. With each death the figure sharpened, coming closer and closer into focus. The thing was the size of a kobold and of a similar shape, yet its skin seemed to be made of a black, shiny metal, not unlike that of a beetle's shell. The image grew clearer, almost as if this thing was becoming more real, down to the long, sharp black claws and the evil, burning yellow eyes.
The last priest was working his way along the line towards Ragna. The creature was very nearly complete and all around she could hear the screams.
Jreengus! Jreengus! Jreengus!Ragna closed her eyes and waited for the blade that would take her out of this world and bring the beast into it. It never came.
A mace had crushed the shaman's head as he approached, and a storm of dwarves had charged into the arena, scattering the terrified legions of kobolds. The shadowy figure had given Ragna one final glare, its gleaming yellow eyes burning themselves into her memory, then it had faded from existence. Of the hundreds gathered in the summoning chamber, only Ragna had survived. The dwarves brought her home and she was re-integrated into society once again.
All this, she knew. All this, she had dreamed again. But why now?
Chapter Five: Bloodlines
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Topic: Olonkulet - Bloodlines (Read 62431 times)