No Sunshine in Hell

[Shang Tsung]

No Sun.

The paladin groaned into the dusty red earth and tried to wait through the ringing in his head. When he could finally lift his head without feeling as if it would explode, he saw that he wasn’t in Silent Hill anymore.

No… This was far worse.

With his knees planted into the barren soil, Argento Camarinos shifted into an upright position. Memories flashed into his mind—a lab, the sorcerer, and then …a terrible pain in his neck. Although he knew the vile truth, there was a part of him that would be unwilling to accept the fact that he may have been betrayed by one of his allies. What would motivate a man to stab his friend in the neck when his back was turned?

Metal fingers clenched and unclenched as Argento tried to wrap his mind around it. There was no world in which he could fathom allies betraying one another. His codex of morals had no space in it for betrayals of any sort.

But this wasn’t just any betrayal…

This was the Underverse.

“Sorcerer, what have you done?” Argento whispered as he looked up at the red skies. Black and gray clouds filled what would otherwise have been a sea of crimson. In the distance, a thunderstorm was brewing near what appeared to be a settlement of some sort. A naked fist reached behind his back and grasped only at air. The paladin was without shield or hammer, and most of his armor was gone, having been discarded after suffering gross damage at the hands of Tyrant.

Have I been forsaken? Argento thought to himself as he stared back up at the sky. There was no sun up there, yet the skies were not pitch-black. Would the paladin have to endure this trial without his beloved one?

For the first time in a long while, the Champion of Darkshire felt entirely too human.

He felt afraid.

[Shang Tsung]

With a blood-curdling shriek, the succubus slung her head forward and released a bolt of energy toward the paladin. Argento knew he was too close to avoid the hellish projectile, so he did his best to roll with the attack. It struck the right side of his chest, scalding the steel as it skittered off and screeched passed him. Although he had avoided taking the hit head-on, the man could already feel another bruise forming under his plate mail.

“Foul demon,” Argento rasped as he clenched and unclenched his gauntleted fingers. Although four of his ten fingers were numb, his mind still willed them into action. Warm sunlight bubbled inside his palms as he clenched his teeth and glared at the wicked creature before him. Even here, in the belly of Hell, her continued existence made the bile well up in the back of his mouth. If he had to be damned to this place, than Argento Camarinos would do his best to bring the Sun and its cleansing rays.

“Spare me,” the creature hissed as she lunged at the paladin. He tensed up but did not play his card until she was too close to avoid what was coming to her.

“Repent!” Argento boomed as he threw forward one of his glowing hands. As his fingers unfurled, a beam of concentrated sunlight flared forth. With a less intimidating shriek, the succubus tried to stop herself, but she was speared by the yellow-orange beam, which burned cleanly through her impure flesh and set the rest of her defiled form ablaze. As Argento watched, his eyes stern and unwavering, the baleful creature was consumed by fire—her screams wailing up into the crimson skies overhead.

Once he was certain he had won some solitary time, the paladin exhaled. As the adrenaline started to wear out, he became all-too familiar with just how much his body had suffered over the last few days. The heavy plate that sheltered his body was blackened, bent, and badly dented, and beneath all of that, he was bruised and burnt as well. When he had some time, he would have to repair both his body and the suit of armor he wore.

Unfortunately for the paladin, the most peace and quiet he had experienced was only a pair of hours. He knew that, as a prime, he didn’t require the normal things that flesh-and-blood people needed to survive. Food, oxygen, and rest—or the lack thereof—didn’t affect him physically, but that didn’t stop the sleep deprivation from getting to him psychologically. Like an amputee experiences the presence of phantom limbs, so Argento endure the ghostly pangs of sleep loss, exhaustion, and a growling stomach.

Even so, he wouldn’t stop. He would never falter. He would never fail.

Shine on.

[Shang Tsung]

Argento Camerinos floundered.

How long had it been?

The paladin stared blankly at the wall of the Colosseum bloodworks.  How long since Trixie?  The last coherent human interaction he'd enjoyed in this realm of misery and torment.

Meant to break you. Argento pressed a hand against his chest.  

No Sun.

The man clenched his eyes shut.  The sound of footsteps echoed all around him as the screams of a battle in the sand pits wafted down from the gateway.  

Which life was this?  His sixth?  The light grew dimmer each time he lost his grip on this realm, yet each time, he was dragged back to his place.  His body never had a chance to heal.  

Argento opened his bloodshot eyes.  The world seemed dim and unfocused.  Memories bled into reality as the paladin drifted...

A happier time?  No...

The darkness.

When the Darkness had first started to fester into his soul.  The time before this dreadful place of fire and sunlessness.  The time even before the realm of the smiling god.

The darkness.

***

Sunshine always brought a smile to Argento Camarinos’ grizzled visage.  Even with a black eye and a swollen lip, he managed to flash his nearly too-white teeth at the celestial body as it poked over the horizon.  In time, its strength would suffuse him, and the events of the last eight hours would feel like distant memories.

Argento had spent the better part of the night hours tracking a fel beast through the forests boarding Ceuta, his home town.  He had volunteered to track the creature that had been slaughtering livestock and threatening food stocks.  A paladin, Argento had devoted his life to the protection of others, and his life-long crusade was empowered by the Sun and the righteous tenants of its worshipers.

Unfortunately for the sun-blessed warrior, no ne else had bothered to join him.  Despite the protestations of his wife and two young daughters, he had not allowed his peers’ lack of courage to impact his resolve.

While it had taken almost the entire night, Argento had tracked the creature and smote it back to the depths of the abyss.  His fortitude, and more importantly his armor, had persevered despite the ferocious attacks from the monstrous beast.  Fresh scars marred the dense plate armor, and in a few places, the thunderous impacts had bruised his skin.  Even so, he had emerged victorious.  As a paladin, he owed his life to the Glorious Sun and his strength to Saint Aureus, its chief instrument in the mortal plane.

With the sun beginning to creep up on the horizon, he had started his journey home.  Argento began to feel the effects of his wounds and a sleepless night just as he reached the crest of the hill that looked over the fields to his hometown.  

Much to his horror, most of Ceuta had been razed.  What wasn’t smoldering debris was ablaze, and the skies above the town were black with ash and smog.  His fatigue melting away by the second, Argento drew his weapon and charged across the once verdant fields toward his despoiled home.

As he entered the outskirts of town, a ragged group of neighbors and other members of the community immediately flocked to the paladin.  

“What happened?”  The paladin surveyed his surroundings and began to see the true extent of the devastation.  Bodies of people he recognized were in clear sight.  Their forms were broken and their features mutilated.  For the time being, he saw no members of his family midst the dead.  He did, however, spot numerous orcs lying among the corpses of the townsfolk.

One of Argento’s neighboring farmers spoke first among the shell-shocked mass of citizens. “The orcs from the southern mountains struck late last night.  They slaughtered those who fought back and abducted over three dozen men, women, and children.”  

“Annabelle?”

“I’m sorry, Argento… they have your family.”

The remark struck deep.  Without a response, the paladin traversed the crowd and rushed through town.  As he reached the other edge of Ceuta, he felt his stomach knot up as he drew closer to the ravaged shell of his family’s farmstead.

Vaulting the broken gate, Argento stormed the pathway and crossed over his home’s violated threshold.  Much like the exterior, the inside of his house had been thoroughly ransacked.  Paintings and other valuables remained, which reinforced Argento’s belief that the raid had been about more than plunder and goods.  The southern tribes were known to traffic slaves, and it was that realization that gave Argento a glimmer of hope that his family may still be alive.

With newfound resolve, the paladin walked into the defiled shell of his family room.  One of Saury’s—Argento’s youngest—dolls had been torn in half and left for dead on the floor.  More than the burning town or the ransacked house, the battered toy fueled the flames of the paladin’s righteous fury.  With the doll in his hand, Argento left his desecrated home behind and threw back his head.  “Maximus!”

After a slight delay, a horse’s whinny pierced the silence, and the sound of hooves thudding on bare earth turned the paladin’s eyes toward his burning, ransacked fields.  His faithful friend and companion, seemingly uninjured from the events of the last night, dashed over to him.  Argento sprung up onto the horse and righted himself in the saddle as if he were garbed in fine cloth rather than battered plate mail. As if waiting for orders, Maximus let out a snort and craned his neck to look upon his rider.  The warrior saw his same righteousness reflected in those big, black eyes.

“Ride on my friend!  Ride!”

[Shang Tsung]

The memories faded as a bucket of blood and viscera was dumped over the man’s head, cascading over his grimy form and soaking into the sand beneath him.

“Get up, you dog.”

A long time ago, the paladin had lived a beautiful life. A wife. Two beautiful young daughters. A church that he loved as much as his family. The world he found himself in was a culmination of the darkness which had permeated the last few weeks of his life.

Yes, he was dead. Although his blood pumped and his lungs worked, Argento knew that the Omniverse was a realm of the fallen. And this – the Underverse – was the ultimate penance for those who had truly fallen from grace.

Argento had barely clambered to his feet when the collar clamped around his neck. A moment later, he was being dragged on his hands and knees across the rough sand floor of the bloodworks and up the ramp. Fresh blood trickled from his body as the unrepaired surfaces tore apart his flesh. As the gate creaked open, he was thrown forward, his form rolling like a desiccated log beneath the rampart and into the loud, harsh realm of the pit. The noises that had wafted down from the tunnel ramp now assailed his senses—a horde of demons shrieking for his blood.

They would receive it. May not on this day, but their nigh-orgasmic joy at seeing his collapse would be within the week. They had pushed Argento hard since ‘recollecting’ him from the hellscape. This was his fourth match in the span of two days.

His left foot had swollen, but the paladin managed to get it underneath his body. Pushing up from the ground, he held out his hands and cleared his thoughts. The Sun had left him, and the residual powers he had were on the wane. Yet, he still had enough power to summon the Day’suis, and in a frail blink of light, the warhammer manifested in his mangled fists.

It was heavy, but the muscle memory remained. He held it to his chest—a dying link to a man he had once been.

On the other side of the colosseum pit, a black-skinned elf snickered. The drow saw weakness in this unshaven human who looked as if he had been pulled off the streets of Darkshire, Minas Tirith, or some other hovel of humanity. Discarding its racial disposition toward subterfuge and chicanery, the drow marched across the pits to the delight of the slobbering crowd of sociopaths and fel beasts. Reaching to its belt, it plucked out a dagger and sent it spinning toward the disheveled paladin.

Eying the projectile, Argento feigned a stagger and collapsed. The knife soared over his head, but the moment was seized upon as weakness by the drow. The dark elf rushed forward, clenching a curved dagger in its hand. It went so far as to leap into the air, hoping to dispatch the human in a spectacle that brought some in the crowd to their feet, hoping to watch the splash of gore as the blade plunged down into Argento’s spine.

Instead, the paladin—body numbed by adrenaline—sprung to his feet and swung the hammer like a forty-pound baseball bat. The head of the hammer struck the drow in the ribcage and sent it flailing like a ragdoll to the far wall of the pit, nearly twenty yards from its initial position.

The creature was dead. Perhaps it had died instantly. Perhaps the impact against the stone wall had been the final nail.

Either way, Argento could momentarily wallow in the ire and rage of the crowd.

Was that a smile he felt on his face?

A hammer blow crashed against the back of his skull, and after a moment of blackness, he found himself in a daze as yet more memories of the before time bled into his subconscious.

*

Argento had ridden for a few days when he reached the small hamlet. If the last town had pointed him in the right direction, the collection of old buildings should be a place called 'Barrow Hills.'

The small mountains that rose up behind the settlement led him to believe that he was on the right track. That meant the Plains of Bone—a scorched, barely hospitable wasteland—would await him on the other side. Aside from bleached carcasses, the region was host to various orc tribes.

After dismounting from Maximus, Argento retrieved his coat from the saddlebag and placed a hand on the beast's snout. "Don't wander too far, my friend. I may require your help down the road."

The horse let out a snort and darted off toward one of the small patches of green that dotted the prairie-like landscape.

From the look of things, the old town seemed well-off despite the prevalence of raids in the lands bordering the Plains of Bone. With his holy icon—a plain silver emblem of the Glorious Sun—clenched in his gauntleted fist, Argento made his way into the quiet town. His first goal was to locate the tavern. While he rarely indulged in mead or fermented beverages, the paladin knew that ‘public houses’ were the best locations to find information in a hurry.

On the other side of the swinging doors, the interior of the building was just as plain as the facade. Only a sheepish-looking bartender was visible. Upon seeing the armored warrior, the man grabbed a nearby mug and started to wipe it with a cloth.

The paladin made eye contact and flashed the man a warm smile. "This is a quiet town."

With a nod, the bartender watched from the corner of his eye as Argento strode across the floor and sat a wooden stool at the counter. After taking note of the religious icon, the man set down the mug. "Can I get you a drink, holy man?"

"Water." As the bartender shuffled to the backroom, Argento leaned and rested his forearms on the counter. "Do you know the easiest way to get over that mountain range?"

A response came from the backroom amidst a great deal of rattling bottles. "Why do you want to go that way? Doesn't seem like the place for a roaming priest."

"I'm not roaming." The barkeep returned with a corked bottle of water and set it on the counter. The layer of dusty grim told Argento that the town liked its spirits. “Thank you,” he interjected as he handed over some coins. "I have some business with one of the orc tribes in the Plains."

Upon hearing the explanation, the man shied away from his customer, who had taken a small sip of water. After glancing around the clearly empty room, he leaned across the counter. "We have a very tenuous deal with the orcs… if you plan to antagonize them; I'm going to have to ask you to vacate our town."

The remark elicited a frown from the paladin, who took a long swig from the warm bottle of water. "Don't worry; I won't hamper whatever blood-deal you made with those cut-throats.” Argento rose from his stool and stared the man dead in the eyes. “I intend to tear it to pieces when I bring those killers and slavers to justice." With his peace spoken, Argento departed the tavern.

If he would receive no aid from the town, he would simply have to forge his own path over the mountains. This certainly was not the first time he had to do so, and he doubted it would be the last.

*

When he regained his senses, Argento found himself in blackness of a different kind.

The noises of the colosseum were gone.

“Solitary.”

Did they not understand their folly? The dark room, barely larger than Argento, was designed as a psychological trick. The demons and devils used it to ‘break’ people. In the months that he’d been forced to live and die in the colosseum, they had tried this on Argento many times. While his body had deteriorated and his faith wavered, this type of intended torture never worked.

When you’ve lived the blackest darkness, and suffered as much as the paladin had, nothing that the material or fel world threw at you had the effect they intended. If anything, the solitary chamber gave him some time to focus his mind and work to restore some of the damage to his body.

[Shang Tsung]

Was he dead?

Argento felt like he was floating in the dark.

He was dead again, wasn’t he?  The blade had cut him a little too deeply, and his body had failed him.

How long until the light would return?  Last time, the paladin swore it had been months.  All the faces he had recognized in the colosseum had been dead by the time he regained consciousness on the hellscape and been dragged back to waste another life suffering and dying for the pleasure of eldritch monstrosities.

As he drifted, the world started to take form—was he being reborn already?

No.

The scenery was too familiar.  The rolling hills, devoid of shrubbery and littered with the giant, polished carcasses of ancient species.  Once more, he saw his old world taking shape around his drifting consciousness.  On this occasion, he saw the faces of his allies form out there in the wilderness.  Ravik, the marksman, peering from his spyglass as Argento strode toward his fortified destination.  The human had always been a bit of a wild card—brooding and a bit off-putting with his choice of words and tone of voice.  The dwarf Tordeck, who approached from a different direction than Argento, had been a fearsome warrior.  A barbarian by birth, the dwarf had been a diamond in the rough.  The two warriors, along with the pair of elves, had been the last souls Argento had befriended.

But the scene taking shape…

The paladin felt his chest tighten—this was the memory he always dreaded.  The horrible day where he had met his final companions and seen the destruction of all he had cherished.  The first cracks in his devotion had set in this day, and while his rapturing into the Omniverse had stopped their spread, they had never healed.

Now, with the Underverse vying to shatter him completely, Argento was forced to watch helplessly as his lowest moment played out before him.

*

The journey to the Plains of Bone had been long and arduous, but the paladin Argento had never once faltered in his mission.  He had traversed the small mountains without too much effort.  Beyond that physical obstacle had been nothing but a long stretch of baked earth adorned with the remnants of deceased creatures.  Two days of riding had finally brought him to his destination.

As he looked out across the field at the crude encampment that contained the orcish marauders and their human prisoners, the loyal servant of the Glorious Sun knew that he didn’t have time to rest.  From the look of things, the orcs had been bivouacked in the area for quite some days, and one night could easily make the difference between success and failure.  Furthermore, the cries of agony and despair that the wind carried to his ears made it impossible for Argento to stall any longer.

The paladin returned to the saddle and set his sights on the camp.  Argento drew of deep breath of air into his lungs and let it slowly slip out through his lips before leaning over to touch his horse’s mane.  “Do you feel it in your bones, Maximus?”

Although he had been riding for days, the steed snorted defiantly at the palisaded encampment.  Unlike the beasts of burden utilized by farmers, tradesmen, or soldiers, the paladin's faithful mount would rarely falter, for Maximus was endowed with the same holy power as Argento.  The Glorious Sun and Saint Aureus had made them as one in their crusade for justice.  To the warhorse, the camp lying before them must have looked like a tiny pathetic thing, and the indignation in his friend’s eyes only fueled Argento’s resolve despite the heavy odds.

Looking to the sun, the paladin placed a hand upon his icon and whispered a prayer to his god.  Once his message was finished, the weary man reached for his other icon-a mighty hammer imbued with divine strength from Saint Aureus.  “Ride, my friend... Ride!”

Maximus let out one final snort and broke into a dash toward the ring of wooden pikes that encapsulated the slaver’s camp.  Given the great volume of suffering individuals, no one must have heard the thudding of the beast’s hooves upon the dead earth.  Once the horse vaulted the wall and crushed a hapless orc beneath its front feet, the others immediately took notice.

Without skipping a beat, a group of three greenskins grabbed nearby weapons and charged the mounted warrior.  Argento gestured with the reins despite knowing that Maximus needed no such direction.  

The horse pushed off of the dead orc beneath its forelimbs and turned to face fresh attackers.  After glancing back at its rider, Maximus charged the trio, which managed a few more paces before routing at the sight in front of them.

As the group split apart, Argento swung the hammer in a downward arc that caught one of the slavers right above the brow line.  The impact crushed the skull and knocked the already dead orc onto its haunches.  

At the same time, Maximus plunged his front legs into the ground and lashed out with his rear limbs at the orcs trying to flee behind him.  The calks on the horse’s shoes sheared through the flesh of the greenskins’ backs, but the real damage came from the vertebra smashed to powder by the impact. The pair of orcs flew a few feet through the air before crashing through one of the many leather tents that filled the encampment.

At the sight of her slain comrades, a female orc clad in leather armor and wielding a spiked club began to back away from the holy warrior.  After a few paces, she turned tail and fled toward the center of the camp.

“Don’t run, villainess!”  Clenching his bloodied weapon in his gauntleted fist, Argento braced himself as Maximus ran down the fleeing orc. When the pair caught up to the brutish warrior, the paladin swung another wide, sweeping arc that struck square between the female greenskin’s shoulder blades.  A faint groan escaped his target as she collapsed to the ground in a motionless heap.

Pfft!

The paladin’s ears caught the sound of the bolts whistling toward him just soon enough for him to twist his torso to face them.   With dull thuds, the first two projectiles ricocheted off his armor, but the third found a thinner segment of armor between his chest plate and shoulder.

The impact knocked Argento from the saddle and to the ground below.  Maximus, realizing what had happened, let out a whinny and reared up onto its hind legs to cease his momentum.

Stunned more by the drop than the projectiles, Argento’s first instinct was to gingerly plant a hand on the ground and reach his other for the bolt impaled into the chainmail joint.

A few yards away, a grinning orc lifted his axe above his head and charged the dazed paladin. The greenskinned warrior made it three paces before an irate Maximus reared up and came crashing down onto the monstrous humanoid.  

A mortified gasp escaped the orc’s maw as he struggled against the weight of the celestial beast, but before he managed to do much more than thrash wildly, a hoof came down onto his countenance. The impact and the weight of the horse crushed the orc’s face down into the back of his skull.      

Meanwhile, a less dazed Argento let out a grunt and wrenched the bolt out of his body.  Fortunately for the paladin, the projectile wasn’t barbed like most conventional arrows, otherwise it would have pulled most of his shoulder out with it.      

Discarding the bloodstained bolt, the paladin collected his hammer and rose to his feet. His focus shifted immediately to the three orcs actively reloading their heavy crossbows.  Maximus, who stood nearby, let out a snort and reared up on his hind legs in defiance.

Realizing that his mount’s armor wouldn’t endure the assault, Argento snatched his shield from the horse’s saddlebag and smacked its side. “Retreat, my friend.”

The glare of indignation the paladin received informed him that his mount did not share his feelings, but the intelligent beast understood the situation enough to obey Argento.  As the horse galloped off to the perimeter of the encampment, Argento turned-shield leading the way—toward the ranged orcs.      

The movement couldn’t have come a moment later, lest the trio of bolts would have found their marks on the paladin’s back and head, rather than burying harmlessly into his shield.

After taking a quick moment to ensure his forearm was properly strapped to the shield, Argento charged the orcs.  All but one, a stout female, turned tail and fled in an attempt to distance themselves from the armored warrior.  The remaining orc gritted her teeth as she fought to reload her weapon and bring it to bear on her foe.

Argento, his shield still leading the way, clenched his gauntleted fist around his hammer and felt the righteous fury well up within him. As he neared his target, the ambient glow of his weapon surged, giving the impression of ethereal white flames dancing across the steel and wood.

The orc sneered as she shouldered the loaded crossbow, but before her finger could close around the trigger, the shield lashed out and bashed her weapon.       The force cast aside the female’s dominant arm and exposed her face and chest to the shimmering head of the hammer.

When the arcing blow found its mark upon the chin of the orc, the might of the divinely infused attack carried enough strength to rend away the head of the humanoid.

As the broken body fell away, the glow of the paladin’s weapon subsided to its normal state, and without skipping a beat, Argento turned and readied himself as three more orcs emerged to confront him.  

Behind him, he heard the shuffling of worn leather boots on the dirt, and knew that he was being surrounded.  The members of the camp seemed to have finally organized themselves.  

Despite the odds quickly beginning to stack against him, the holy warrior smacked his hammer against the front of his steel shield. “Come now, savages, let us do battle!”

The response came in the common language, although the orcish accent made it barely coherent.  “You’re outnumbered, Human, you can’t hope to escape here alive.”

Without relaxing his stance, Argento glanced up and to his left to see that the speaker was a particularly muscular orc standing on an elevated platform.

Unlike the other warriors in the camp, the greenskin wore exquisite armor crafted from finely tanned animal skins and dotted with metal accents on important parts of his anatomy.  The differences did not stop there, for the hulking orc’s dull green flesh had been etched with orcish tribal symbols and some other spiritual markings.  In its hands, the orc held a double axe comprised of two axe heads on opposing ends of a metal pole.  For orcs, size often mattered.

“A Champion?” Argento’s light studies into the beliefs of the monstrous races had invryiolved a couple stories of orcish deity's favored disciples.  To become a champion, an orc had to win over both his people and his god, which was apparently a trying endeavor for the savages.  Much of the creatures flesh had yet to heal.

The orc snorted as he lifted the hulking, double axe over his head and rested it on his shoulders.  

“It was unwise of you to come barging in here, Paladin.”  Although its common was heavily accent, Argento understood enough to understand the sentence.  “You will go to meet your god on th—” Midsentence, the Champion dropped his weapon and yanked a nearby orc in front of him.  Before the other greenskin knew what had happened, a crossbow quarrel was buried through his heart.

Discarding the fresh corpse over the small platform, the Champion glared down at a group of orcs and pointed to somewhere beyond the palisade walls of the camp.

“Find out where that came from!”

Argento could not understand the command, screamed in the orcish tongue, but when the Champion retrieved his weapon and set his sights upon him, the paladin knew it was time to channel the full might of Saint Aureus.  He would either defeat this symbol of malice or join his ancestors in the here-after.

With a casual leap, the Champion landed in front of the holy warrior and brought one of his axe heads to bear on the man.  

The paladin swung up his shield and batted aside the blow, which fell away with little effort.  As it did, Argento came in with his hammer, which found itself lightly deflected by a rather deft twisting motion that brought the other axe head up to intercept his swing. The exchange finished, the two backed up a few paces to size up the other once more.

"You won't walk out of this camp in one piece."  Stepping back, the Champion motioned to two nearby orcs.  The pair of eager savages charged at the paladin from two opposing angles, forcing Argento to make a critical judgment call.  

As a jagged-edge axe came cleaving in at the back of his skull, the holy warrior twisted his torso and threw up his shield to deflect the blow.  At the same time, his hammer flew out in the opposite direction to intercept the longsword of his second attacker.  Throwing his weight out toward the axe-wielding orc, Argento threw his foe off balance long enough to give him the time to swing the shield around and bash open the swordsman's green visage.

With one orc still reeling back on his heels, the paladin turned and swung his hammer, catching the other savage square along the jawline with the requisite force to shear away its mandible.

Unfortunately for Argento, his little victory had little spoils, for as he watched his jawless adversary crumble into a heap, one of the Orc Champion’s axe heads lashed out at his neck.  The paladin maneuvered his shield to intercept the blow, but the impact nearly threw him to the ground nevertheless.

No longer opting to casually duel the human, the Eye stepped forward and brought the other axe head to bear on the paladin, who was forced to retreat to find the space needed to block the next attack.  Deflecting the blow down toward the ground, Argento moved closer to his foe and swung his hammer toward the orc's chest.  The battle-scared warrior let out a grunt and, without relinquishing his grip on his awesome weapon, leaned back enough to escape the arcing trajectory of the hammer.

Before Argento could curse the orc's dexterity, he was suddenly and violently plucked off the ground by a charging orc.  The paladin left the earth for but a few moments, before he and his attacker crashed through a wooden observation platform.  

Without hesitation, the orc on top of him drew a dagger and started jabbing at his armor, trying to find a weak part in the chainmail.  Despite a lot of enthusiasm, the greenskin failed to plunge its knife through the warrior's armor before a gauntleted fist connected with its throat.

Suddenly deprived of the ability to breath, the orc dropped its weapon and began to sputter and gag as its eyes widened in disbelief.  Argento's next punch broke the orc's nose and knocked it off of him, giving him the freedom he needed to scramble free of the wooden debris.  

As he rose up to a fully vertical position, the paladin collected his weapon and set his sights on the Champion, who stood where he had been prior to the scuffle.  The battle-hardened orc flashed the holy warrior a mouthful of jagged, yellowed teeth as he leisurely twirled his double-axe as if it were light as a hatchet.

From his left, Argento spotted another orc rushing at him.  Not one to fall to the same tactic twice, he dropped his hammer and reached for a piece of broken plank.  Planting one end into the ground, the paladin quickly punched off part of the other end, leaving him with a nice, pointed tip.  As the orc drew its weapon to strike at him, the paladin, his left hand still braced on the makeshift spear, dropped down to his haunches.

Without realizing it was being played for a fool, the sneering orc impaled itself onto the jagged wooden plank with enough force to push the tip out through its back.  Only Argento's body prevented the dead greenskin's momentum from carrying it all the way to the other end of the improvised weapon.

Ignoring the blood that now decorated his face and chest, the paladin ducked around the limp orc and tried to find the Champion amidst what seemed to be a state of general panic.  To his knowledge, Argento was the only intruder, but from the looks of it, several orcs were ignoring him en route to the other side of the camp.  His empathic connection with Maximus told him that his friend and mount was out of harm's way, which meant the horse hadn't tried to intervene once more.  

To add further to the confusion, one of the orcs scampering away let out a yelp and collapsed into a lifeless heap.  A crossbow quarrel, embedded in the back of its neck, glinted in the sunlight.

It was then that Argento spotted the Orc Champion standing next to a cage that housed a terrified young girl.  The clearly irritating orc was actively trying to command his underlings and seemed to be relaying orders to a lieutenant.  "Start liquidating the prisoners and get ready to move on to the mountains.  Solomon says these ones aren't worth the hassle."

While the paladin could barely understand the orcish language, he soon realized what was happening when the underling orc drew a sword and ran it through the little girl.

"No!"  Argento's scream drew the attention of the Champion, who grinned when he saw the clearly distraught man charging at him.  As the paladin drew near, the battle-scarred orc noticed the intensity of the glow around the human's weapon.  Knowing full well that he wanted to avoid such an interaction, the Champion shoved his unfortunate underling at his opponent.

With the might of Saint Aureus to guide his hammer arm, Argento ended the wide-eyed orc's life before it even realized it had been thrown onto the sacrificial altar.

Ignoring the spectacle of gore that came when his divinely infused weapon popped his opponent's skull like a lanced boil, the paladin spun around the dying creature and bashed his shield into the chest and face of the Orc Champion.  If not for the fact that its double-axe was planted on the ground, the veteran warrior would have surely been thrown prone by the force of the shield.

Scowling at the coppery taste of its blood that now tainted its mouth; the Orch Champion hoisted its weapon up and threw all its strength into an attack aimed solely at breaking the human's momentum.  

Argento easily parried to blow, but he was forced to pull back a few steps to prevent the other end of the weapon from swinging in from another angle.  Unlike the last time they had crossed steel, the paladin held nothing back—his hammer led the charge.  Although ferocity wasn't very becoming of him, the man pressed his opponent, forcing the orc to devote most of his focus defensive measures.

For the next several minutes, Argento and the Orc Champion exchanged a cacophony of blows.  Axe blades and hammerheads collided in short, violent succession, often eliciting fleeting sparks that danced across the steel before fading into oblivion.  

Neither combatant held an advantage, although the Orc Champion found himself constantly retreating in order to maintain the space he needed to use his weapon to block and deflect the onslaught of hammer blows.  

Try as he might, the orc knew that he was running out of space, for he was being driven down a dead-end path between a few cages.  In the end, it was a terrible coincidence that turned the tide against Argento.  As the paladin parried a blow and threw the orc off balance, his eyes caught the contents of a nearby cage.  

Despite the ragged clothes and the dirt and blood that stained them, Argento would never fail to recognize his wife and two daughters.  Throughout all his journey he had waited for this very moment, when he saw the mother of his children once more.  The woman—frail from her trials—had her oldest daughter clenched tightly to her breast, while their youngest cowered against her thigh.

"Antonia!"

The haggard, emaciated woman smiled faintly and reached through the bars for her husband, but before Argento could reach to touch her, the Champion pounced on the opportunity.  

A sudden, heavy blow caught the paladin across the chest, stole his breath, and threw him to the ground.  Instead of taking the warrior's life, the orc stared the fallen man right in the eyes as he thrust the barbed tip at the top of his axeheads clean through Antonia Camarinos’ chest  The woman let out weak scream as the blade was torn from her bosom and driven through her older daughters’ neck.

With wet thuds, they collapsed onto Saury, Argento's barely six-year-old daughter.  In moments, the last of their fleeting strength drained out with their blood.  

That moment would be forever etched into the paladin's mind—the image of his family broken forever at the hands of a savage beast.  All at once, a deluge of emotions overwhelmed the holy warrior as his already weary mind simply failed to process what had just transpired.  Fear, denial, and hate blended together in his heart; threatening to tear down every facet of the belief structure he had built his life around the last thirty years.

Looking up, Argento saw the grinning Orc Champion advancing toward him, double-axe hoisted above his head and ready to deliver the killing blow.  A small part of the paladin screamed at him to move, to lift his shield… to do anything to avoid the inevitable outcome of the situation.  The greater part of the paladin, however, was numb to everything except the blood of his wife and daughter wetting the barren earth around their cage.

A shadow fell over the human as he remained fixated on the morbid tableau.

A snicker escaped the orc's maw as he brought the axe down onto the paladin's skull.

Before the deathblow fell, the Champion let out a shriek that seemed equal parts agony and rage.  The orc warrior's weapon veered from its intended course and crashed into the ground as the greenskin fell sideways onto a knee.

The jarring noise from his opponent broke Argento from his haze, and the broken man looked up to see part of a hatchet buried in the orc's right shoulder.  The paladin followed the monstrous creature’s red eyes to a few feet away, where a blood- and viscera-stained dwarf in platemail stood laughing up a storm.

"Truth be told, I've always been rubbish with those things!"  Again the dwarf broke out into a fit of hearty laughter as Orc Champion bit down on his cracked black lips and wrenched from his shoulder.

Although fresh blood continued to spurt and bubble through the wound, the battle-scared orc paid little attention to the injury.  His years as a disciple to his brutal god gave him ample fortitude to suppress a great deal of pain.  

Paying no heed to Argento, who remained fixated on his dead family, the enraged Orc Champion charged the dwarf.

***

The situation in the camp had disintegrated into complete and utter chaos in barely a half hour.

A human and a dwarf, for whatever reason, had managed to assault the encampment within a ten-minute window of one another.  Despite odds that should have made it impossible for them to lose, the orcs had been broken by what could easily have seemed like a planned attack to the untrained eye.  Ravik, from his assortment of hilltop vantage points, could tell that neither the knight nor the axe-wielding maniac had coordinated their efforts.

Then again, the fact that nearly a dozen orcs were bleeding out from crossbow quarrels logged in their necks didn't help the greenskins' moral.

Whatever the case, it was obvious from Ravik's newest patch of cover that the orcs were cutting their losses.  What had once been groans and moans of agony and hunger had been replaced with the screams of the dying—the orcs were slaughtering their cargo and high-tailing it for the mountains.  

While he didn't care for the fate of some grungy peasants or their homely wives and bonnet-clad children, the assassin knew he couldn't afford to wait for the chaos to subside.  If he wanted to locate the elusive Solomon, he needed to get into the camp.

With his crossbow loaded and snuggly secured to his waist, Ravik slipped out from the patch of scraggly trees and strode across the field toward the camp.  The general chaos meant he didn't need to bother with camouflage or stealth.

***

"Is that all you got, you woman?"

The dwarf’s insult came even with the Orc Champion continued to force him back.  Yet with each blow from the double-axe that fell upon his own weapon, Tordeck's grin grew wider.

Even the battle-seasoned orc—his temperament soured by the blood still oozing down his chest, chin, and arm—couldn't restrain himself as he tried to get around the stout warrior's oversized axe and dense plate mail.  But even when the dwarf was too slow or absent-minded to block an attack, the edge of the orc's axe failed to cut through the armor of his opponent.  

As Tordeck lazily shrugged off another blow to the chest and shoulder, the orc stepped forward and slammed his foot into the dwarf's unguarded face.  The impact sent the bearded warrior to the ground, where he promptly spat up a mouthful of blood and saliva.  Feeling as if he had proved a point, the Orc Champion grinned down at the fallen dwarf and snarled.  "Your armor is as thick as your skull, mountain vermin."

Instead of responding, Tordeck clenched his hands around the handle of his weapon and glared up at the orc.  The Champion immediately noticed the change in behavior—the dwarf's pupils had constricted and his breathing became ragged, almost seething bursts.  

Years of combat experience made the transformation less of an unknown to the seasoned orcish warrior.  "Barbarian."

When the dwarf spoke, his words sounded more akin to a guttural growl than the lackadaisical brogue of a few minutes prior. "Let me show you how it's done!"  Lunging from the ground, Tordeck swung low, forcing the Orc Champion to jump back and avoid losing both his feet at the kneecaps.  Upon landing, the orc spun his double-axe around and swung down at the skull of the dwarf, who sidestepped the attack.  Without wasting a beat, the barbarian's brought his own axe to bear on his opponent's weapon.

A grating metallic screech filled the air as Tordeck's axe sundered its target.  The orc let out a frustrated growl as he stumbled forward, his balance gone the moment he lost half of his weapon.  The orc wasted no time in countering, and with a surprising amount of dexterity, the warrior switched his grip and swung the remaining head at Tordeck's neck.  The impact dented the gorget and left the beginnings of what would be a colorful bruise, but it did not have the intended result of severing the bearded head from the rest of the stout, muscular frame.

Once again, Tordeck lunged into the melee—his axe leading the way.  The dwarf's twisted his axe handle and jabbed with the head of the weapon as if it were a sword.  A resounding clang filled the air as the orc parried the blow out to the side and swung his spare hand at the barbarian's gruff visage.

Even as the green knuckles smashed into his cheekbone, Tordeck reversed his grip and brought the shaft of his weapon into a collision course with the orc's groin.  The reeling Champion clenched his jaw shut and slammed a knee into his opponent's face, knocking the dwarf onto his armored haunches.  Although he expected a follow-up attack, the barbarian looked up to see the orc oblivious to anything but the pain.

"Well at least we know you have a scrotum!"  Even though his rage kept his heartbeat elevated and his breathing erratic, Tordeck was able to spew out the remark as he rose to his feet and lunged.  

The Orc Champion let out a growl and grabbed the broken ax head resting on the ground.  The dwarf grinned and smacked the improvised projectile from the sky a beat later, but in his hubris, he failed to realize why the orc would stoop to throwing a broken weapon at him.

As Tordeck's weapon went in one direction to deflect the projectile, the orc took a step forward and swung his axe in from the other side.  All the barbarian saw were stars as the blow to his chest drove the wind from his lungs and sent him crashing to the ground like a metal sack of potatoes.

"Die, dwarf!"  Tordeck, his vision blurred from a probable concussion, could only watch as the wounded orc stalked over to him and lifted his weapon up for the killing blow.

Instead of splitting the dwarf's thick skull apart, the Orc Champion took a final step, tensed up, and let out a sudden shout as a blade punched out through the right side of his ribcage.

Behind the orc, a still winded Argento let out a grunt and twisted the handle of the sword, further shredding his foe’s lung.  

The act wasn't valorous.  It wasn't heroic.  

But with the sight of his butchered family still fresh in his mind, the paladin had been able to set aside the more recommended tenants of Saint Aureus.  "Send my regards to your fel god."

The response that Argento got was the back of the orc's skull slamming into his nose, staggering him and breaking his grip on the sword.  As the paladin faltered, the Champion spun around and lifted his weapon to destroy the holy warrior with the last of his fleeting strength.  

At that moment, the three warriors all heard a subtle twang, and before Argento or Tordeck knew what had happened, the Orc Champion had dropped his weapon and clutched his fist around something outside of his neck.

The orc brought his closed hand to his eyes, where he saw the tail-end of a crossbow quarrel.  "You…"  Nothing followed the remark, for the Orc Champion opened his trembling hand to see that the tip of the projectile was stained red.  

It was then that the already dying warrior heard and felt the blood start to spurt from his punctured carotid artery.  With one weak, defiant snarl, the greenskin fell forward onto his face and was swept away into the winds of oblivion.

[Shang Tsung]

Did he have a legacy?

Was he remembered in his old world?

…did they remember him here, in this world?

How many years had it been since he had been betrayed?  Although it had healed, the wound in his neck still stung when he recalled that final campaign in Silent Hill.  The loss of all those companions hung heavy on his heart, but it was the sorcerer turning against him that hurt the most.  What had he done to that man to warrant this fate?

*

The orc was dead—certifiably and unabashedly dead.

As the dwarf watched, the knight limped over to the body, set a foot under its chest, and rolled the corpse onto its back.  The human’s eyes said he needed to know that the orc was dead.  

A few yards back, Tordeck watched as the third individual, reloading a handheld crossbow, walked over to them.  The barbarian—his mind clearing up as the battle rage subsided—knew he was looking at the owner of the quarrel that had been the final nail in the orc's coffin.

Without introducing himself, the new arrival crouched next to the body and looked it over a few times.  Meanwhile, the bloodied man had moved over to a nearby cage.

Tordeck, never a scholar, immediately connected the grief in the man's eyes and the sag in his shoulders with the three dead women crammed into the blood-soaked pen.  He was experiencing something Tordeck never had or never would—the death of his family.  

Given his lack of such background, the dwarf knew he couldn't begin to understand the knight's mindset.  He merely watched in silence as the man collected his hammer and used it to bludgeon the lock that sealed the cage.  Throwing open the door, the man sobbed as he cradled the limp, still-bleeding corpse of his wife.

After what felt like an eternity of sob-filled silence, it was a new human voice that spoke.  

"You've all caused my operation and me a great deal of duress today."

The dwarf spun on his heels to face the strange voice, half-expecting that he would have to battle the silent crossbowman.  Instead, the dwarf watched as human in full plate strode from the compound's central tent.

A taut bowstring let out a sudden twang as the cloaked human fired his weapon without so much as a sound.  Reflexes that Tordeck would have thought impossible beneath such armor allowed the target of the sudden attack to evade the quarrel and draw his sword before his adversary could reload.

A response came from the cloaked man in the form of a rasping hiss.  "Solomon."

With his bastard sword still out in front of him, the man in the armor grinned and pointed the tip of the weapon at his attacker.  At the sigh of the weapon, Tordeck felt immediately unnerved.  Something about the unnatural sheen of the blade told the dwarven warrior that Solomon did not wield an ordinary sword.

"Your surprise is lost, Assassin."  The armored warrior snickered and playfully thrust his weapon toward the crossbowman, who must have surprised the other man by refusing to flinch or even blink.  "How ever will you defeat me now?"  At that, the cloaked figure pulled back a few paces, but he wasn’t trying to retreat. Tordeck saw the maneuver for what it was—the 'assassin' was trying to mentally map a course that would get him around the swing of the blade and at the man that lay beyond it.

Rather than let the skirmish unfold, Tordeck cleared his throat in his usually obnoxious, boisterous fashion.  "Oh, I think I have a bone to pick with anyone who fraternizes with orcs and uses 'em to kill and murder helpless people."  To punctuate his threat, the dwarf slammed the flat of his broad axe blade against one of his meaty fists.  

From behind the dwarf, the knight rose up from beside his slain wife and pointed his scintillating hammer at the armored warrior.  "You shall face the full wrath of Saint Aureus for your actions."

Solomon grit his teeth as the crossbowman took a few steps back to bring himself in line with the knight and dwarf.  The assassin grinned beneath his cowl as his fingers closed around the drawstring of his weapon.  Despite the blood that covered the two more physically imposing members of the trio, it was clear that little—if any of it—had come from their bodies.  

"You can't stop what's already in motion.  Killing some orcs and costing us some slaves won't prevent the ritual from as planned!"

The assassin lifted his weapon for another chance, but Solomon punched over a nearby brazier filled with glowing chunks of coal.  The ensuring blaze and cloud of ashen dust was distraction enough for the warrior to slip around the other side and vanish from sight.

"He's in full plate, he can't get far if we pursue him!"  The cloaked man moved to dash forward when a dwarven fist closed around his wrist.  "What are you doing?"

Tordeck frowned beneath his beard and gestured toward the knight, who had discarded his weapon and returned to his dead wife.  "The human grieves…we should allow him some time before we leave this place."

"Foolish."  The man replied, which elicited a rather incredulous expression from the dwarf.  A moment later, however, it seemed the assassin had a change of heart.  "Fine…the paladin can have his time to cry, but I'm not going to wait the entire day."

Although the cloaked human stormed off, the dwarf knew the threat of leaving was hollow.  Whether he liked it or not, the assassin now had to rely on the assistance of Tordeck and the grieving man if he intended to deal with Solomon and his strange, unnerving blade.

From somewhere behind the dwarf, he heard a faint whimper.  A glance over his shoulder let him see that one of the girls inside the cage wasn’t dead.  The realization brought the faintest inkling of a smile to the knight’s visage as he rested his dead wife on the ground and moved toward the cage.

***

Although his youngest had survived, Argento knew nothing would heal the wounds on his soul.  Anytime he was left alone with his thoughts he saw the ensanguined visages of his wife and eldest daughter screaming at him from beyond the veil.  They were crying for him to save them—desperate for salvation that would never come.  Argento squeezed his eyes shut and ran a hand through Saury's matted curls.

"What's her name?"

The dwarf, his armor shed to reveal a stout barrel-shaped form, leaned over the seated paladin to see the girl.  Although he had lost his protective outerwear, the awesome axe he wielded in battle remained strapped to his back.

"Saury."  Argento looked up at the dwarf and flashed him a half-hearted smile.  "I'm sorry, I have no manners…what is your name?"

"Tordeck."  The bearded warrior smacked a fist against his chest.  "The most undervalued exile of the Dwarveholm Vanguard!"  At that, the dwarf let out a series of hearty guffaws, which managed to elicit a chuckle from the downtrodden paladin.

"I am Argento Camarinos of Ceuta."

"What do you do when you're not threatening tin soldiers with white-hot justice, Argento?"

The paladin furrowed his brow, off-put by the dwarf's odd and incredulous word selection.  "I am a farmer.  I love the feel of the soil and the reward of growing great crops for my family and the community.  Not so certain I'll be back for the harvest this year…"  

He trailed off then, his eyes moving to the mountains that jutted just a few days forward into the horizon.  They both knew their course of action would lead them up through those dangerous peaks.  That would come in time.  For now, Argento wasn't ready to pick up the pieces of himself and move on with his quest.  "You said you're an exile?"

Another fit of hearty laughter befell the dwarf.  "That's true.  I'm…what'd they say?"  There was pregnant pause before Tordeck snapped his fingers and grinned.  "A reckless, damnable insubordinate.  They threw me out of the army after the Tradesman War and exiled me from my own home!  All for doing my part to keep them safe…" The barbarian let out a grunt and reached for his axe.  "Might be my own fault, though.  This here is all I know."  Tordeck held out the axe and smiled at the blood-stained surface.

Argento leaned forward and glanced at the dwarf's weapon.  Like his warhammer, the axe had an unnatural luster to it.  The blood that had remained after a few wipes with a cloth was burnt on rather than simply dried to the steel.  Much like Solomon's sword, the paladin could tell something wasn't normal about the dwarf's axe, but at the end of the day, he knew he'd be better off just keeping the remarks to himself.  It'd be very close-minded of him to think that magic weapons—fel or divine—didn't exist outside his own personal sphere of belief.

“This is all I know,” Argento muttered as he placed a hand on the icon of Saint Aureus that dangled down from his neck.  “And it may be all I have left,” he added as he brushed some dirty from his unconscious daughter’s emaciated cheek.  

The dwarf’s response was a firm one.  “We’ll avenge them all.”

“It’s not about vengeance.”  The paladin lifted his tear-stained eyes to meet the dwarf’s gaze.  “Vengeance only blackens the heart and soul.  It’s about justice.”

“Justice, vengeance… it all ends the same way, Tordeck responded as he returned his axe to its makeshift sheath.

“We will have to make sure those who still live are safe before we pursue Solomon.”

Tordek nodded his head as he let his weapon rest against his shoulder like a fishing pole.  “I’m going to go pay a visit to our crossbowman.”  The paladin nodded his head but didn’t look away from his battered daughter.  Seeing that he wasn’t going to get any more meaningful discussion out of the wounded warrior, the dwarf left him to his contemplations.

***

The assassin’s scowl never left the mountains that lingered on the horizon.  Although his instincts told him to pursue Solomon, Ravik knew he’d be unable to take the renegade guardsman on his own, especially if there was a small army of orcs involved in the equation.

But a paladin? The irony is confounding… With a sigh, Ravik pushed back the sleeve of his right arm to reveal the elegantly crafted bracer.  

To a random stranger, it would seem like nothing more than an accessory or a forearm guard, but beneath the steel, the gemstone of the assassin’s arsenal lurked.  The missing ring finger stood as a testament to his dedication to perfecting his craft.  With that simple sacrifice of flesh, blood, and bone, he had gained the very tool he had used to slay dozens of victims.

Just a matter of separating him from his cronies and that sword.  By himself, Ravik would have a great deal of difficulty achieving both goals, but with the barbarian and the paladin, he’d have the proper meat shields at his disposal.

“Deep in thought?”

The deep-throated voice of the dwarf caused the assassin’s left eye to twitch—a knee-jerk reaction more than anything else.  Before Ravik could spin to face the axe-wielding solider, Tordeck was already next to him and staring out toward the horizon. “Why do ye think he’s gone through all the trouble to get those orcs?”

Ravik shrugged as he glanced back at the ravaged camp.  The tents and carefully constructed palisades had been destroyed in the fight and the ensuing retreat, leaving behind smoldering remains and assorted piles of rubble with incoherent origins.  

Given his training and way of life, the assassin rarely bothered to ask the ‘whys’ of a situation.  He focused more on the ‘hows’:  ‘How to kill the mark’ and ‘how to escape undetected’ were the two questions he cared the most to answer.

“You’re not the least bit curious?” The dwarf prodded as he turned his attention from the landscape to the pallid countenance half-concealed beneath a black hood.

Feeling the dwarf’s eyes on him, Ravik scowled and looked in the other direction.  As someone who had spent his life existing in the backdrop, the cutthroat hated being stared at or serving as the center of someone’s attention.  He couldn’t feel calm and collected with foreign eyes glued to his every move.  “I don’t care.” The assassin spit out after a few moments of lingering silence.  “He needs to die.”

“Needs to die?  That’s a rather strange way to phrase it.”

“Why are you even out here, Dwarf?  The paladin grieves for his family, but you have no clearcut reason to be wandering the Plains of Bone.”  While he cared little for the barbarian’s motivations, Ravik figured the question would make him immune to incessant probing for a while longer.

“The orcs threaten my home of Dwarfholm with war, and as long as I have my axe, I won’t allow any greenskins to kill my kin.”

“This is a task for a squad of dwarven warriors, and you are one unkempt, smelly barbarian,” Ravik’s thin lips curled up into a venomous smirk as he turned to glance down at the warrior.  “Something tells me the denizens of Dwarfholm want nothing to do with you.”

Despite the scathing nature of the remark, the dwarf threw his head back and let out a booming laugh.  “Tordek would never turn his back on his kin, even if they continue to shun him.”

Ravik rolled his eyes and pushed aside part of his cloak that concealed his belt.  “Great, I’ve got to rely on a bloodthirsty exile and a disillusioned paladin…I’m sure we’ll just mow down Solomon and his orcish thralls,” as he spoke the words, the rogue was taking a catalog of the small pouches that lined his belt.  At some point in the next few hours, he would need to mix fresh poisons for his blades and quarrels.

Oblivious to his new ‘companions’ actions, Tordek took the insult with another laugh and slapped Ravik on the small of the back, staggering him from the shock and impact.  “I’m sure our assassin will have a few tricks up his sleeve!”

Damn you, Solomon.  The only thing worse to Ravik than being the focus of someone’s prolonged attention was someone understanding the nature of his lifestyle.  Oh well, I can always tie up this loose end if I must.  As the thought swirled in his head, the man looked down at a tightly secured pouch that contained a gram of black lotus powder—an amount powerful enough to kill a giant. Always have a plan b.

“We should be ready to move on in a day or so,” the barbarian interjected, pulling Ravik’s focus from his belt of vile tricks.  “Argento wants to make sure the people here will be safe for a while before we push into the mountains.”

The assassin rolled his eyes as he set a hand on his crossbow.  Paladins… Ravik had murdered plenty of the holy soldiers as a member of the guild, and in every incident, he’d been more than happy to remove them.  He had no qualms with the notion of believing in structure or order, but there was something the man found off-putting about people who were so self-sacrificing.

A day could make all the difference in a job like this.  Even so, Ravik knew he’d have to ‘play the game’ with these people.  He needed their help.

Turning around, Ravik looked at the dwarf and nodded his head.  “I’ll go see if I can’t round up some provisions.”  It was a lie.  The assassin had enough dried foods to last for a week in the wild, but he had to find some way to get some peace and quiet if he’d be stuck with these damn people.

***

The man limped up the sloping hills with his left leg dragging painfully across the rolling terrain.  While he had maintained a strong front for those sniveling fools, the reality was that his entire body throbbed.  Even know, he could hear the blood sloshing around in his left boot as he dragged the barely responsive limb.

Despite the agony, he knew that the blade would renew him.  As long as he clutched the long, elegant blade within his shuddering fists, he would live forever.  There was a reason that Bauru had chosen him to wield it.

It knows that I am a man without equal…

Solomon looked down at the sword in his hand.  To the untrained, it might seem like just an ordinary blade, but Bauru was anything but a simple weapon.  The three eyes set into the steel stared back at the warrior, their unblinking gaze conveying more emotion than he’d ever experienced from another living thing.

In many ways, it was more alive than any person he’d ever known.  Anytime he was near it, he could feel what it felt and know what it thought.  There was a bond between the two of them that made them as one.

The sword had seen several generations come and go.  There had been other hands before Solomon’s, but none of them had been truly worthy to hold the blade.  None of them had been capable of drawing out the true potential of Bauru.  Not a single one of them had been able to help the sword fulfill its destiny.

All me… Solomon smiled as he dragged himself toward the entrance of the hidden leading to the summit.  

I was the only one who was able to the find the book.  The only one who was able to find the ingredients for the ritual.  The only one who could find a warlock capable of performing the ritual.

He was a man among children.  A legend among paupers.

There was no other reason why the blade had chose him.

In the time it took for the assassins to find their way up the mountain, the ritual would have be complete.  With any luck, they would arrive in time for him to kill them himself.  Nothing would please him and Bauru more than the deaths of those interloping assassins.

I will become a god among men.

***

After thirty agonizing hours of sitting on their laurels, the group set off for the mountains.  In the interim, they’d managed to procure enough horses for themselves and the refugees from the destroyed camp.  While the waiting period had taxed Ravik’s will and gone against every instinct in his body, he was happy to have the mounts when they arrived.  The horses would cut down on the time it took them to reach actual mountains.  After that point, though, they would no longer be useful.

The survivors from the orc camp were off to the southeast, where they would be able to find some temporary sanctuary in a small village a few miles outside the Fields of Bone.  The paladin offered promises of returning with mothers or absent children.  At first, Ravik thought the man was just giving false hope, but the paladin’s conviction (not to mention his background) wasn’t false.  He believed, so the others believed.  Some sort of mutual catharsis.

Drivel.

With all of the rabble removed, the group was just Ravik, Argento, and Tordeck.  For his part, the assassin remained as quiet as he could.  The holy man and the dwarf hadn’t asked him many questions about his occupational history, and he preferred them remaining in the dark until the conclusion of the operation.  Once he had Solomon’s head, Ravik could deal with the others in whatever way he saw fit.

“Skinny human!”  Tordeck’s thick brogue elicited a twitch from the assassin, who had been lost in his thoughts for the last half hour.

Ravik shot a glance over at the heavily armored warrior.  “Yes?”

“Argento and I were just discussing how talented you are with that little crossbow.  Where did you learn that?”

The assassin glanced over at the paladin, whose expression seemed to be one of genuine interest.  Since the dwarf was too dimwitted to try and lull him into a trap, the pair was probably just trying to ‘chit chat’ with him.  The very notion caused Ravik to stifle a groan as he thought over an acceptable lie.  “Lived in the woods.  My parents wanted to make sure I could hunt well, and the old man always thought a crossbow was more accurate than a bow.”

“Interesting assessment,” Argento responded after a moment of silence as the trio trekked onward, the ground beneath their feet gradually growing more uneven and rocky as they passed up into the foothills of the mountain range.  “I never knew my parents.  They perished at a young age.”

The assassin swallowed down a bit of bile as he willed his mouth to continue the fruitless conversation.  “What happened to them, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Orcs.”  The paladin muttered softly as he rested a hand on the holy symbol he wore around his neck.  “I was only six years old when life brought me to the church… And now I find my life-blood claimed by the same dishonorable beasts.”

A sharp laugh from the dwarf drew the attention of Ravik and the Argento.  When he realized he’d chuckled out loud, Tordeck shook his head.  “My damn parents got drunk and accidentally dropped a tunnel onto themselves.  The damn idiots,” at that, he resumed a fit of hearty laughter as his companions turned their focus back to the gradually sloping terrain.

In his own stupid way, the dwarf’s inconsiderate outburst had saved Ravik from having to carry on the conversation.  Perhaps I won’t put a knife through your spine after all of this, Dwarf.

What he had hoped would be a few minutes of silence blossomed into a beautiful pair of hours marked only by the sound of their boots and the dwarf’s occasional belches.  The foothills gave way to actual hills, and as they neared the end of the second hour, the hills became mountains.  

If they were going to progress any further, they would need to find a path or resort to climbing up nearly vertical inclines.  Since his ‘allies’ were clad in heavy armor, that was probably a terrible idea if the assassin wanted to get them safely to the orcish hideout.

Coming toward an almost thirty-five degree slope, the trio brought their horses to a stop.  One by one, they dismounted and grabbed their satchels and various effects from the animals.  From this point on, they’d have to move on foot.

Before they started their ascent, the dwarf posed the obvious question.  “What the hell do we do with these smelly things?”

Argento smiled faintly and rested a hand on the side of his horse’s snout.  Ravik knew that paladins didn’t have normal mounts, and that the all-white creature was probably several lifetime’s smarter than their dwarven companion.  “Maximus will escort the other animals to safety before returning to me.”

The assassin suppressed both a snicker and scowl—a difficult task even for someone like him.  I don’t see any wings on that thing…  Without changing the expression on his visage, Ravik watched the paladin’s mount gracefully turn around on its hind legs and trot down the uneven slope with ease.  

A beat later, the two other horses followed after Maximus, although those beasts had far more apprehension in their steps.

It wasn’t until the animals had departed that the group saw the man casually standing ten or twenty yards away from them.

How long has he been there?

Realizing that he’d been spotted, their watcher waved a hand toward them.

“You’re a long way from civilization, Travelers!”  Whoever he was, the man wore armored gear made from tanned hides.  The presentation and quality indicated someone with a clear amount of talent and experience.  On his belt, the man had a few small knives and a compact crossbow a little larger than Ravik’s sidearm.  All the weapons were polished and well-maintained, which was more than the assassin could say for his own gear.  The stranger smiled and smoothed down his wild brown hair before jogging up to the top of their slope.  “Hello, there.”  His blue eyes seemed to sparkle.

“Who are ye?”  Tordeck demanded, stepping forward and glaring up at the much taller human.  

Must be some sort of hunter… Ravik suppressed a scowl as he scanned the man and his body language.  He seemed relaxed and unimposing, but what reason would he have to be this far up into the mountains?  There weren’t that many people who lived on diets exclusively made of mountain goats and whatever else lived in the caves a thousand feet above their heads.

As if he could read the assassin’s thoughts, the man gave another warm smile.  “My name is Darius.  I’m a hunter and a tracker who normally makes a living guiding people through the Plains of Bone.”

“What are you doing way out here?”  Ravik inquired as he gestured down the slope of the mountain.  “Plains are down there.”

Darius flashed a smile but didn’t turn to look at the panorama of half-dead grasslands and bleached skeletons behind the trio.  “Truth be told, I heard that there was a party making their way up into the mountains.  I ran into a caravan of people.  They had quite the story about a trio of heroes who liberated them from the orcs.”

Oh yes, that’s me… The hero.

“Do you know these mountains?”  Argento inquired before pointing a gauntleted finger toward the steep slopes that lay above.  “We seek an orcish stronghold up near the summit, but we are unfamiliar with the area.”

Ignoring Ravik’s glare as it burned into him, Darius focused his gaze on the paladin, who was the most outwardly pleasant member of the trio.  “Of course, I travel through this region every few months.  You’ll have to do some climbing with gear, but I can guide you up the most stable parts of this chain.”

“I fear we have no money to reimburse you.”

Darius chuckled softly before shaking his head.  “No price.  What you did to help those people was noble.  I respect noble.”

Tordeck took that moment to let out a hearty guffaw and smack a heavy hand on the tracker’s back.  “You are a good man indeed!  Let’s be off!”

The assassin remained silent as Darius took the lead.  While he wouldn’t voice his concerns, Ravik didn’t trust the man.  No one looked that clean and polished if they were willing to offer free services to total strangers.

*

He continued to float in the ether.

In hindsight, Argento knew that his companions had been deeply flawed individuals.  Ravik harbored secrets, and Tordeck was often a slave of his most corrupting emotions.  For his part, the paladin had likewise been a fool.  His family had been slain, but his youngest daughter had survived the ordeal.  He should have taken her home.  He should have made his exeunt from that enterprise to retire back to repair Ceuta—it wasn’t as if the people there weren’t likewise in danger and suffering from raids.

Instead, he had pursued Solomon and the sword.  At the time, Argento had believed his motives driven by justice.

The world started to shimmer again, taking form once more.  With no physical form, the paladin braced his mind as he expected that initial onslaught of sensation following his reawakening on the steppes.

No such solace came.  Instead, a grayscale scene unfolded before his weary, ethereal eyes.

*

It had been most fortuitous that Darius had stumbled upon them when he had. Truly Darius had to have been led to them by Saint Aureus. With the guidance of the hunter, Argento and his new associates were well on their way to locating the orcs and their villainous leader. Due to the intensity of the climb, their words were few and far between, and while he always enjoyed a good conversation, Argento liked that they were focused now on moving as quickly as their bodies could carry them.

“It’s not too far,” Darius remarked from five or six feet above the paladin’s head. The woodsman scrambled up onto the flat surface and reached down to help Argento the remainder of the way. A few yards further down, Tordeck and Ravik were making steady progress.

“How much?” Argento inquired, his gaze turning to the collection of sharp, jagged mountains still hanging overhead. By now, they had to have traveled a few thousand feet toward the roof of the world. The remaining peaks looked more like monstrous brown teeth than natural rock formations.

“We finish scaling the remainder of this cliff. That will take us to a nicer, wider place where we can catch our breath and have a quick meal. After that, we have a much smaller cliff face to scale, and then we’ll pass through a few tight corridors that will take us to a flatter region where the cave networks start.

Before Argento could once again voice his thanks to their guide, the gruff voice of Tordeck called him to the ledge.

“Help me up, Argento!”

With a smile, the paladin twisted, knelt, and offered a gloved hand for his stout companion. A moment later, the dwarf was upright on the wide ledge with the other two men.

A quick glance up at the remainder of the cliff elicited a scowl from the barbarian. “When does this end?  I don’t have enough ale to drink off this climb.”

*

Now, seeing the events play out around him like pages from a book sprung to life, he saw the folly of his ways.  It had been vengeance, not justice that drove him up those mountains.  It had been a thirst for revenge that saw him hunt a wounded man up into that inhospitable terrain.

They had welcomed that stranger…

Darius.

The name still elicited a scowl from Argento as the memories played out around him.

*

Tordeck found himself ‘taking up the rear’ for their group once again. He didn’t mind. As long as he didn’t have to physically take anything up the rear, he would do his part to make sure nothing nasty crept up on his new friends.

“This is the last mountain side we have to scale?” He shouted up at the others, who were spread out over twenty yards above him.

“Aye!” Darius shouted down at the dwarf. “Atop this cliff face, the mountains plateau out for a while… just gullies, little slopes, and a labyrinth of caves and tunnels fit to hide a small army.”

Argento, who was about five yards above Tordeck, glanced down and smiled at the dwarf. “I think after this I’m going to need a solid day’s worth of rest to get some feeling back into my body.”

“A hearty mead will do the trick!” Tordeck laughed, knowing that the paladin didn’t imbibe any sort of ‘fun’ beverages. For a human paladin, Argento was a nice person to talk with, even if he didn’t indulge with the dwarf in the finer things like alcoholism and a rich vocabulary of inventive curses. As they neared their destination, the dwarf began to wonder what they would do after they chopped off Solomon’s grimy head. These mountains had to be filled with all kinds of vile monsters, and what was more fun to bond over than a little senseless murder of unintelligent beasts?  Argento would need more of that cat-tharsis to move on from the recent events.

Plenty of giants and ogres shitting and pissing all over these mountains. Has to be…

Nothing pleased Tordeck more than cutting an ogre down to size, both literally and figuratively. It’d been too long since he’d met someone he felt comfortable around, and this Argento fellow would make a great friend on the battlefield.

How strange was it that he got along easier with a prudish human who worshiped some frilly god, and his own people thought he was some type of vile filth worth exile?

I’m more dwarf than all of those womanly gits!

The thought brought a grin to Tordeck’s face as he continued to pull himself up the rope. How many dwarves had traveled mountains in this direction?

“Not many!” Tordeck spoke beneath his breath as he took a moment to brush some rock dust from his beard.

From up above, Argento glanced down toward the barbarian. “Did you say something? Are you all right down there, friend?”

“Aye!” Tordeck shouted.

***

The assassin groaned at the saccharine exchange between his two ‘associates.’ Was this how people were expected to behave when thrust into ludicrous situations with one another? Did they expect Ravik to start exchanging chest thumps and fist bumps with them over pints of ale? The man would rather ramm his own wrist blade up through his skull than degrade himself to such fraternal revelry. The very thought made his stomach twist in knots. With any luck, they’d be done with this business long before that point.

Ravik was just an arm’s length away from their guide, who took a moment to pause right near the top of the cliff face. When he lingered in that position for a few more seconds without voicing any concerns, the assassin scowled. “Is everything all right, Darius?”

The woodsman glanced down, and for the first time, Ravik saw through the handsome facade. He saw the predatory expression in the other man’s eyes and knew that his little group had made a terrible mistake.

“Did you think you could betray the guild so easily, Ravik? Nothing is going to be all right for you.”

With a mechanical hiss, a hidden blade sprung from Darius’ wrapped wrist and cleaved through the rope. Ravik let out a growl and slung his hand up, grabbing onto the other assassin’s boot before the rope lost its tension and and slipped away.

Beneath the cloaked assassin, his makeshift companions scrambled to adjust to the fact that they were falling down a fifty foot cliff face.  Armored heavily, both found it hard to simply catch themselves. Argento, one hand desperately scraping along the stone, clutched the icon hanging from his neck and uttered a solemn prayer.

Less composed, Tordeck uttered a string of curses before managing to stall his descent long enough to bury his axe into the thick stone. His free hand grabbed Argento’s dust-covered gauntlet. “I got ye!”

Meanwhile, Darius, dangling from what remained of the rope, scowled as he tried to kick off his intended prey. Ravik, avoiding the hunter’s other foot, let out a snicker as his own blade slid from his free wrist. In a fluid motion, he plunged the blade into Darius’ ankle.

With a grunt, Darius pulled himself and Ravik up over the ledge. As Ravik reared up to strike a blow on the prone huntsman, he found himself staring at a handheld crossbow much like the one dangling from his belt. The assassin twisted his body to evade the bolt, but despite his agility, it got through thick leather padding and sank into his flesh.

A curse found its way from Ravik’s mouth as his attacker scrambled to his feet and started toward the gorge up ahead. Although he felt something not altogether comforting about his wound, the assassin rose and, ignorant or apathetic about the fate of his traveling associates, pursued Darius. Struggling to keep pace, Ravik nearly tripped as he jumped to an uneven patch of the mountainside shelf. A few yards ahead, Darius had paused to reload his weapon. The tracker’s next shot, however, flew wide of its mark as the assassin sprinted forward.

A metal shinck was heard as Ravik’s hidden blade sprung forth again from his wrist guard. Stabbing forward with his trademark weapon, the assassin scowled as his attack was parried by a mirror image around Darius’ wrist. Rolling with the momentum, Ravik spun and swung out with his other elbow, catching the rugged tracker in the chest. His opponent staggered but quickly retaliated with a straight kick that caught the cloaked assassin in the chin.

Stumbling himself, Ravik tensed for a follow up attack that never came. Instead, Darius took the pause in the scuffle to put some distance between himself and his intended prey. Up ahead, the terrain was dotted with trees.  The woodsman, reloading his crossbow as he moved, slipped behind cover and launched a bolt.

Ravik dipped and fired back, but his shot sank into the trunk of a tree.  Scurrying forward, the assassin reloaded on the move as he eyed the cover for a sign of his adversary.

Pfft!

Eyes wide, Ravik jerked out of the way as the tree behind him ate on oncoming quarrel.  Paying no head to the shot that could have ended his life, the assassin lifted his own weapon and scanned the foliage for his foe.  When he saw the flash of black and heard the rustling of leaves, he pulled back on the trigger.

There was no satisfying squelch of metal sinking into flesh, so Ravik reloaded and rushed forward, hoping to move parallel to Darius through the trees.  He could see the woodsman slinking quickly through the expanse of green and brown, but there wasn’t a good angle on the shot.  Whoever he might be in real life, the other assassin knew this area well enough to understand that he could run without being gunned down by even an excellent marksman.

Woods won’t last forever.  As the thought swirled in his head, Ravik had to duck as a crossbow quarrel whistled through the air somewhere close by.  He didn’t stop to see how close it had been, but when he emerged from the treeline, he paid for his pace.  A boot swung down and crashed into his face as Darius dropped down from behind him.  

Ravik held back a curse and fired once more, surprising his opponent by managing to score a hit despite being off-balance.

The other assassin let out a curse and fell back once more.  This time, he rushed ten yards before slipping down into a tight ravine that separated two higher peaks of the mountain range.  

Once he primed another bolt, Ravik pursued his attacker into the tight gorge. He made it about twenty paces before he realized that Darius had vanished. As the assassin paused to process that information, a bolt zipped down at a fifty degree angle toward his chest. Instinctively, the man dropped and the quarrel struck a thicker part of his clothes. While it didn’t find purchase on the skin below, the impact and the shock was enough to cost Ravik his awareness. From up above, Darius let go of his grip on the tight gorge wall and dropped in front of his quarry.

The first punch caught Ravik in the jaw and knocked him down onto his back. Once again, survival instinct kicked in, causing him to tuck his legs up into his chest as Darius lashed forward, this time with his hidden blade primed for the strike. As the woodsman came in, Ravik planted his soles into Darius’ gut, and with a grunt, he redirected his foe up and over him. The other assassin landed on his head with a dull thud.

Rather than the burst of energy he’d expect from having adrenaline surging through him, it took Ravik a little longer to will himself to his feet. As he spun to confront his attacker, his balance faltered for just a moment, causing him to sway briefly before catching himself. It was then that he had a terrifying realization, and despite his best efforts, his eyes went wide as he staggered forward.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Darius snarled as he scrambled up to his feet. “The paralytic burning its way through your veins? Succumb to it, Ravik, and maybe I won’t torture you before you expire.”

Words muddled together in his mouth, and his tongue felt three times large than it was. Instead of a verbal response, Ravik loosed a bolt toward his opponent. With a scowl, Darius tried to get out of the way, but the tight walls of the gorge prevented him from maneuvering enough. The bolt plunged into his left pauldron with a dull thud that knocked him backwards, but despite the close quarters, his reinforced hide armor kept the projectile from biting too deeply into his flesh. Instead of fleeing, the woodsman lifted his wrist blade and rushed forward. It wasn’t until he got within a few paces that he felt his knees suddenly buckle beneath his weight. Surprise spread across Darius’ features as he felt his stomach wrench into a tight knot as the poison crept further into his bloodstream.

“You little bastard,” Darius growled as he planted a hand against the valley wall to try and steady himself. Just yards away, his mark stood and grinned at him, unable to will his muscles into action as the powerful poison burned through him. “Y-you better hope that was your best shit, because I’m going to tear your throat out for this.” For a few more moments, neither man was able to more of his own free will. After a tense, poison-riddled standoff, it was Ravik who staggered forward and threw a sloppy bladed strike at Darius’ skull. The woodsman parried the attack and tried to slam his knee up into his smaller opponent’s gut. With a groan, Ravik lashed out with his empty hand, smacking his opponent across his cleanly shaved visage. A beat later, a blade swung at the exiled assassin, whose head lolled out of the way as the blade tore through his collar

“You missed,” Ravik hissed as his fist found the side of his opponent’s face. Stepping closer to the other assassin, the exile grabbed a handful of Darius’ hair and smashed his would-be killer’s head into the side of the valley wall. He heard something crunch and yanked back Darius’ head to repeat the process.  As the other man’s ruined face peeled away from the blood- and flesh-stained rock, a mouthful of spit and blood spattered against Ravik’s face.  Everything went red as the assassin shoved away from his opponent and tried to wipe away the moist, ichorous spittle from his eyes.

Even though his vision was blurred, Darius lurched forward and drove his hidden blade through Ravik’s left shoulder.  The smaller assassin barely had enough time to shout before an elbow crashed into his jaw.  Wrenching his wrist-mounted weapon free, Darius smashed a boot against the stunned man’s chest and sent him toppling backwards.  “Farewell, Ravik,” the woodsman rasped as he moved to drive his blade into his target’s heart.  Instead, the traitor lifted up both his arms, and Darius caught his victim clutching at the vambrance of his bladed wrist.  Before Darius could figure out what the other assassin was doing, Ravik’s hidden blade sprung out from its guard and sank halfway through his would-be killer’s throat.

Scarlet fluids bubbled out from the wound and the mouth of the woodsman as he stumbled back.  Eyes wide with horror met the smug grin of the bloody, half-conscious assassin lying on the ground.

Ravik continued to smile as the assassin fell against the side of the valley, his throat sputtering blood with every desperate movement he made. The spurts painted the stone walls as Darius clawed at them to stay upright, but for all his training and a lifetime with the guild, he had just as much blood as any human.  After a few more moments of manic spasms, Darius collapsed and fell still against the ground.  

Stepping over to the dead man, the victorious assassin knelt down and tore his wrist blade out from the throat of the corpse.

One of the many things which had ‘endeared’ Ravik with the masters at the guild was his fondness for altering any and all pieces of equipment they gave him.  The old bastards acted like their unadaptive, unaltered designs were holy artifacts.  All it took was the incorporation of a few grooves at the base of the blade and a little release mechanism.

With a gentle click, the blade locked back into place, and a beat later, Ravik threw the other trigger and watched it slip back into the concealed vambrance.  Once that was settled, he looked down at the corpse and grabbed for the pouch around its waist.  Quickly rifling through its contents revealed a few unlabeled vials of poisons and a letter rolled tightly into a tiny scroll.

“Your mark is a traitor to our guild.  A man by the name of Ravik.  He was last seen fleeing toward the Plains of Bone.  He should be considered extremely dangerous and should be terminated with extreme prejudice.  If he has surrounded himself with associates, they should likewise be exterminated.  Leave no witness.  Leave no loose ends.  Pay shall amount to the sum of five hundred gold pieces to be delivered upon proof of the mark’s expiration.  Go with deadly grace. ~J.

“That’s all I’m worth?  Five hundred?”  Despite the fact that he still felt numb from poison and the loss of so much blood, that line from the letter annoyed Ravik more than anything else.  The grandmaster thought he was worth little more than a low-ranking politician or a shopkeeper?  Grimy, bloody fingers crushed the letter into a tiny ball as Ravik started back toward where his associates had been before the unfortunate turn of events.  If anything, his killing of Darius would buy him a month or two without a guild assassin trying to stick a knife in his back.  The next messenger scroll better state that he was worth ten times the previous amount, or Ravik would start to consider a little more direct backlash against his former home.

***

Betrayal was such a foreign experience for Argento.  Almost all of his life had been spent around the same close-knit community of merchants, farmers, clergymen, and businessmen.  Everyone who lived around him was his friend on some level, and Ceuta had one of the lowest crime rates in the region.  That was one of the many reasons why he was so passionate about the work he did.  Nothing motivated someone more than having an entire community who propped you up when you fell down but also shared every small victory with you.

So it was hard to deal with the fact that the woodsman—Assassin… he was an assassin—had betrayed them after nearly an entire afternoon of helping them to navigate through tight canyons and up steep rock walls.  If it had been his plan all along to do them harm than why had he bothered with such pretenses of chivalry and charity?  He could have just as easily shot them in the back or accidentally knocked them off a tight ledge overlooking a steep drop.  The fact that he had been toying with them the entire afternoon…

I should have noticed… I should have been able to detect the malice in his heart.

His training should have prevented this.  Had his god turned a blind eye to him?  Had this been some sort of test?  If it was a test, then Argento feared that he had failed in a spectacular fashion.  Even worse than the doubt in his heart, his grip on a fragile stone outcropping was fading, and the moment his fingers gave, he would plunge another eighty feet onto an assortment of jagged rock formations.

From just below him, Argento heard the dwarf shout up to him.  “I can’t hold on much longer!  This is a real shitty situation, my friend.”

Despite himself, the paladin smiled at his new friend’s frankness.  “Yes… your assessment is quite valid.”

Tordeck chuckled despite the fact that he was likewise clinging to shallow fissures in old, weathered stone.  “I don’t think your god will smite you if you say ‘Fuck yes’ once or twice, Paladin.”

“Given our situation, I’d rather not test that theory, Tordeck.”

There was a brief pause.  

“Aye, good point.”

Just as he was about to resign himself to their fate, a slight shadow fell over Argento.  Glancing up, the paladin saw the lithe figure of their third companion leaning over the top of the cliff wall.  

“You two look like you could use some help,” he muttered as he tossed a line of rope down the side of the cliff.  The cord draped across the back of the paladin, who would have clutched at the icon on his chest had his hands been free.

I knew you hadn’t forsaken me…

*

How could Argento have forgotten the tracker who had betrayed them?  Even years after the fact, the events still twisted a knot in the paladin’s stomach.  A seemingly benevolent stranger had strung them along and brought them within arm’s reach of their goal.  It was on that precipice that Darius had betrayed them, and while Argento never resolved the man’s motives, it was the act itself that hurt worse than whatever motive may have been behind it.

His memories of Darius should have tempered his partnership with the sorcerer and the Spartan.  Instead, Argento had once again colluded with unsavory and sinister elements.  The woodsman had been felled by Ravik… Shang Tsung had driven a blade through the paladin’s throat and sent him to this blasphemous place.

I am a fool with no equal...

[Shang Tsung]

The world shimmered.

Argento felt the hot air against his face as his throat tightened with the thirst that often associated the revival process. Gravity took hold as he dropped a few inches to the warm ground of the Hellscape. How long had it been this time? The paladin glanced at his hand and wondered if his skin had always looked this cracked and weathered. Primes couldn’t be permanently killed but did that also mean they couldn’t die?

He was clothed in rags, as he had been for the last half dozen or so lives he’d lost in the pit. The only armor he ever saw was what he could scrounge from the remains of a dead gladiator from a previous fight, and even then, he was never able to retain it for future battles. Any effort he’d try to summon it for his own use would be met with mild physical torture and theft of the stuff. The hammer was the last link he had to anything associated with his old lives, either that life lost in his home realm or his days as Darkshire’s champion.

“There he is!”

Already? Argento clenched his eyes shut in the vain hope that the demons were just some dementia—some façade of a mind now truly shattered. A swift kick sent him onto his side and back into the reality of the situation. Opening his eyes, he saw the trio of slobbering fel orcs grinning down at him. Had they figured out some means to track where he would reenter this hellish world or was he simply a man who had long ago lost his luck?

“Ready to go back to the pits, human?” The orc snarled as he reached down and grabbed Argento by the head. “I got a bet that you’ll last a little over four days this time.”

“Three days!” One of the other orcs snickered as the paladin was dragged to his feet by his hair.

“The way he looks, he might not last the ride back,” the third creature laughed as it stepped forward and smacked Argento in the side of the head. “Path—”

The creature’s words were lost amid the gurgle of blood that started to sputter from its jawed maw. A beat later, it crashed to the ground next to Argento, who found his vision blurred from the head trauma. He looked up, but everything was out of focus and his vision was likewise impaired to the point where everything sounded farther away than it should. Amid the sensory deprivation, he could see other figures behind the two orcs. There were flashes of light and what sounded like the clanging of steel against steel. Something wet splashed across the paladin’s face as one of the tusked monsters fell backwards and tripped over him.

The other orc was gone—Argento didn’t catch what had happened to it. All he knew was that he was being pulled to his feet by two of the blurred figures. A rival gladiator arena? Small time peddlers hoping he was worth something? A hand fell against the side of his head, and just like that, the paladin could see and hear again. More than that, all the aches that radiated across his body seemed to melt away in a matter of seconds.

He looked to his left to see the smiling, caring, and very human face of a man in chainmail armor. His eyes were a crisp blue that seemed to glimmer. Argento opened his mouth but the many quickly shook his head. “Questions for later. Save your strength. Just know that we are not demons, and we mean you no ill will.”

With that, the paladin lowered his head and tried to clear his thoughts as he was aided away from the corpses of the three fel orcs.

[Shang Tsung]

Two weeks had passed in the foul depths.

In that time, the man had started to feel some of his old strength returning to him. His bones had less aches, and his muscles no longer felt permanently strained and sore. His saviors were not the purest people he had ever met, despite their almost celestial appearance. Escapees from one of the pits on the Central Hellscape, they had taken to guising themselves as angels to strike terror into their adversaries.

Far from warriors of the Light, the tales they had accounted to the paladin in his time with them were more akin to guerilla war. They would strike out fast and quick—murdering who they could and stealing what they could carry before they encountered stronger resistance. When he asked why they had been banished to this place, none of them would look him in the eye and offer him a solid explanation. Knowing that he owed them his freedom, the paladin didn’t push the issue, but it simmered at the back of his mind with every step he took with the small group.

Had this all taken place in the world ‘up above’ or the world from which he had been stolen, Argento would have labeled them vagrants and highwaymen. Down here in the Underverse, they were slaughtering demons and devils and turning their own weapons and possession against them. More importantly, they claimed to have connections to Tyrael.

His time in the Omniverse had started long after the sacrifice that Tyrael had made to seal this wretched realm off from the burgeoning societies of the surface. For that, Tyrael was quite possibly the only individual in the entire Omniverse who came close to deification. Who else would make that ultimate sacrifice? King Aragorn had been all-too willing to let Tyrael go it alone in this realm, and the society of Coruscant operated at the behest of one man and one man alone.

Of course, Argento’s priority upon realizing the affiliation of these glorified highwaymen was to find Tyrael. The paladin knew from his time in the gladiator arenas that—angel or no angel—Tyrael knew secrets about the Underverse. Could the living legend of Camelot have a backdoor from the Underverse?

Perhaps a backdoor out of the entire Omniverse? Argento doubted that the mysterious entity had that much power, but at this point, he would cling to any dreams.

After all, his real dreams were little more than nightmarish visions of the world he had left behind upon entering the Omniverse. He tried to rest, but the images came to him anytime he closed his eyes. Mostly in fragments and shadows, but sometimes, they were as clear to him as if he was reliving them.

***

For now, it seemed as if they were finally near the end of their mission.

After dealing with Darius, the trio had managed to make the final steep climb. Just as the tracker had told them, the journey was less arduous from that point forward. After a small plateau and a somewhat cramped passage through a gully, they emerged on another flat stretch.

With a smile, Argento clasped a hand around the religious icon that hung from his neck. Very soon, he would be able to deliver swift and furious justice upon the blackguards and monsters who had been kidnapping and murdering people. Once they had slain these vile creatures and the villain who led them, the paladin would be able to return to what remained of his family. Sweet, beautiful Saury would have to be the center of his world now—her and the church he held so dear to his heart.

“It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Ravik muttered as the trio turned to face yet another tunnel entrance.

“Aye,” Tordeck spat as he shuffled forward and glanced into the tunnel. “You can’t smell ‘em in there?” He asked as he glanced to the paler of his two human companions. When Ravik shrugged his shoulders, the dwarf let out a chuckle and smacked the crossbowman on the back. “Well I do! They’re stinky bastards, the lot of them…”

“Like you’re one to talk.”

Although Argento wasn’t sure he sensed much humor in Ravik’s tone, Tordeck must have, because the stout barbarian let out a heavy laugh and gave his companion another jarring thwack on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, lad! Let’s kill us some fucking orcs!”

Before the trio could progress into the tunnel, the paladin and the cloaked man heard a rustling of stone behind them. Both spun on their heels to see another triumvirate emerging onto the open plateau from the same tunnel they’d exited. While the two elven warriors—one wrapped in heavy plate and the other in a mixture of cloth and leathers—didn’t perturb Argento, the giant-sized orc behind them caused him to reach for his hammer. Before he could draw the weapon, the lightly armored elf lifted his hands and took a few steps forward.

“We’re not here to fight,” he said with a voice that sounded strange by elven standards. “We seek only the rogue orcs and the slaver they follow.” Yes, the elf definitely had a bizarre accent that the paladin had never heard during his sparse dealings with the reclusive species. Despite the elf’s remarks, the orc who stood behind him wasn’t just some random outcast warrior. The seven-foot mountain of corded green muscles had all the trappings and ceremonial marks of a Tribal Champion.

“Beg pardon,” Argento muttered, his gauntleted fist still clenched around the handle of the hammer. “The last Orc Champion we encountered tried to tear our innards out before we put an end to his tyranny.”

*

At the man’s remarks, Damien turned and glanced at Dengar, who seemed unaffected by the news. Instead, the orc pushed passed the monk and glanced down into the eyes of the knight.

“You did my people a great service by killing that traitor.” Dengar declared, his eyes never moving from the gaze of the human. “While I would have wished to kill my betrayer personally, I am glad that he has met the fate he deserved.”

That news made the armored man relax a little. His grip dropped from his hammer as he glanced back at Damien and Quarion. “You have the same goals as us?”

“We’re here to put an end to Solomon,” Damien spoke as he walked forward to stand next to Dengar. For his part, Quarion remained in the backdrop—always the observer, never part of the scene. It was the role the soft-spoken elven cleric preferred in the majority of social interactions. “He tore apart Dengar’s tribe.”

At that moment, the smaller of the two humans spoke up. “Why are you here?”

There was something in the cloaked man’s voice that Damien didn’t appreciate. Distrust? “He kidnapped a family friend,” Damien said with a scowl. “I knew nothing of the man or orchish tribal politics, but when he took the child, he made this personal.” While he was playing up his frustration for effect, the remark wasn’t far from the truth. He hadn’t known his younger sibling, but that didn’t stop Damien from being frustrated that someone would attack an isolated swamp tribe.

“And the other elf?” The cloaked man asked. Before Damien could respond, he received something that gave some credence to the other group’s mildly mistrusting attitude. “You must beg our pardon, but the last person we ran into tried to drop us off the side of a cliff.” The remark made the stout dwarf, otherwise a silent participant in the conversation, let out a series of guttural laughs and clutch at his armor-encased stomach.

“And we sure showed that twat!” The dwarf cackled before smacking the pale-faced human on the back, much to the man’s clear irritation.

It was obvious to Damien that the trio before him was woven together through necessity, rather than the tight bonds of fellowship. “That is Quarion, my best friend. You must excuse him, he’s not very talkative.”

To prove that he wasn’t a mute, the cleric stepped forward and lifted a hand. In the process, he brushed away the cloth that covered the elvish religious iconography that adorned his pauldrons. To anyone but Damien, it would have seemed like nothing, but the cleric’s friend knew it as a carefully practiced motion. Quarion only displayed the emblems and insignias when he needed to ‘prove’ that he was an elven cleric to strangers. Much like the false face that Damien wore, the armor of his long-time friend was a carefully manufactured facade. “Hello.”

“An elven holy man?” The tall armored man replied, his eyes seeming to light up as he reached for something beneath his chestplate. He pulled out an ornamental piece at the end of his necklace—a logo of Saint Aureus, the human’s patron saint of righteousness, chivalry, and judgment. “It’s been too long since I’ve met someone who walks the ascetic path.” His attention turned to Damien. “What does this make you?”

Knowing that was his cue, Damien retrieved a small statuette from one of his pouches. It was an icon of the same god whose colors and elbems were emblazoned on Quarion’s usually concealed shoulder plates. “I am Damien, and I am but a humble monk,” Damien replied after returning the tiny piece of art to his pouch. Anytime he had to touch the little piece of bronze and recite that lie, he felt a little dirty, but he knew that his true god would understand.

The paladin smiled and smacked a hand against his chest. “I am Argento Camarinos, and it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I travel with the dwarf Tordeck and Ravik, our resident crossbowman.”

Damien glanced over at the cloaked man and wondered if ‘crossbowman’ was some sort of code. The monk had met many ranged experts in his days, and there weren’t many of them who wore heavy, concealing cloaks and hide their weapons where no one could see them before it was too late.

“Does the orc have a name?” Argento inquired, his attention moving back to Dengar, who continued to stare holes through him.

“Dengar.” The Orc Champion responded. “We must move quickly if we are to have the element of surprise against the stronghold.”

“Have you been up to these caves before?” Ravik interjected.

The orc grunted. “Aye. Solomon seized one of our ceremonial strongholds up in these peaks. It is from there that he tainted my tribe.”

Argento scowled heavily and drew his hammer. “We must move quickly, then.”

Before the man could leave them behind, Damien took a step forward and set a hand on his shoulder. “Wait… I have an idea.”

*

Solomon marched down the central aisle of the chapel. To his left and right, the pews were filled with his orcish thralls. They sat in silence, giving their prayers to the good work of the warlock who stood on the elevated platform at the head of the beautifully crafted chamber. Some of the orcs had mentioned this placed having been crafted by dwarves a few decades ago. Based on the skeletal remains the slaves had unearthed recently, the man believed the accounts.

Although he loathed all things, Solomon had to give the gruff, ground-dwellers a little credit for their skill with stone. Instead of the stain glass usually found in human houses of worship, the side walls of the chapel had large, ornate columns carved from the chamber walls. At the top of the columns were little ledges adorned with tiny guardrails and the remains of old sconces. Whatever use they’d served for the dwarves, the orcs didn’t understand.

The warrior paused a few yards from the front of the chapel. Aside from the warlock, the only other orc who wasn’t seated in prayer was his new second. Although Gark wasn’t that smart and lacked the powers of a true, christened Tribal Champion, he was strong and bullheaded. “How are preparations?” Solomon demanded before glancing down at the eyes embedded into Bauru’s blade. The sword knew that the time was almost here. Solomon could feel how eager and excited it was to see its plans realized before its very eyes.

“Good,” Gark responded after glancing at the warlock, who was deep into a series of incantations. “He start ceremony a few minutes ago… won’t be much longer.”

All of a sudden, a thunderous crash reverberated from the front of the complex. Aside from the chapel, the stronghold had about a dozen other chambers that provided space for sleeping, eating, storage, and relaxation for whoever was garrisoned. There was also a large library filled with old books in dead languages. While they did have a handful of slaves shackled inside one of the barracks, the noise had come from the entrance of the stronghold, not from off to the left. The clamor shook a few of the orcish members of the laity out of their prayers. A handful of them turned and glanced at Solomon with confusion on their faces.

At once, the man felt frustration and anxiety from Bauru.

Interlopers? They wouldn’t dare defy us.

In all his rage, Solomon wasn’t certain if the thought in his head was entirely his own, but he knew that the rage he felt was certainly born from his heart. Turning to Gark, he growled a command. “Take a handful of the warriors and figure out what that was. The ceremony mustn’t be interrupted. Go now!”

***

Solomon.

Argento had been chasing him for weeks by the time they had reached the summit of that mountain and discovered his lair. The others he had partnered with likewise sought the swordsman for their own reasons, and while the paladin had doubted the valor of Ravik and the two shifty-eyed elves, he had found a friend in the vulgar yet warmhearted dwarf Tordeck. Despite their flaws, they had been his companions on what had seemed as little more than a suicide mission.

The weary-eyed paladin had recounted much of the story to his new ‘traveling partners’—the false angels. From what he could gather about them, the oldest was his junior by at least a decade. Despite the tribulations they had endured, they still had that look in their eyes. A look that said ‘I can conquer the world.’ The paladin didn’t have the heart to tell them that they had experienced nothing of the Underverse. He found out within a week that all five of them had been rescued from the Hellscape within their first fortnight.

They know nothing of Hell.

Even so, they were his way to reach Tyrael. Only through gaining their trust could he acquire an audience with their patron.

Thus, Argento became a guerilla. His normal armor—a blend of plate and chainmail—became burden in quick fashion, and within the first few engagements, he found himself opting simply for the chain and a handful of lighter metal pieces covered regions that wouldn’t inhibit his movement or dexterity. Plate boots gave way for something like sandals, and the heavy gauntlets he so enjoyed were replaced by leathers. In a sense, he felt less like a warrior of the Sun and more like a hunter.

He never gave up the hammer, though. The Day’Suis, once he could properly wield the weapon again, continued as his instrument of justice. They offered their gladii and small, metal-adorned cudgels. At every turn, the paladin denied them. Just because the hammer looked heavy and unweighty to them did not make it so. After he started to feel less like a shadow of his former self, the Day’Suis was light in his hands.

There was no sunshine in Hell, but that didn’t mean Argento couldn’t shine bright.

[Shang Tsung]

This was the day he had looked forward to since the highwaymen had saved him from a return to the blood pits. After nearly five months of glorified raiding and brigand activity, Argento’s new ‘associates’ were taking him to meet with ‘the big man.’ Over time, the paladin had met an increasing number of higher-ranking individuals, each one a step up in the nebulous web of insurrectionists that occupied Tyrael’s network.

With a sack tight over his face, Argento had been ushered for nearly an hour and a half through a variety of different climates and altitudes. When he could finally see clearly, he noticed that his final destination was someplace either underground or deep in a mountain. The walls seemed to indicate that the area was natural, so perhaps he was in a secluded cavern.

From the far end of the chamber, a figure wreathed in a pale glow stepped out from the darkness of a connecting room. The six individuals around Argento dropped to their knees and lowered their heads as the cloaked individual strode forward to meet the new arrival.

“Welcome, Argento Camarinos, Chosen of the Sun.” Although the entity stood just a few feet in front of the paladin, Tyrael’s voice sounded disembodied as it filled the dank air of the cavern. “I have long looked forward to making your acquaintance.”

Argento placed a hand atop his heart and nodded his head. “The feeling is mutual. Your story is legend in the world above.”

Lifting a pair of hands sheated in heavy gloves, Tyrael pushed back his hood. As the shadows fell away to reveal the visage of the fabled figure, the once unnatural glow that suffused the air around the warrior simply ceased to exist—as if it never had. Underneath the heavy shadows of the hood, there was the grizzled and gently scarred countenance of a bald man with dark skin. The presence of his visage elicited a subtle shift of Argento’s features that his new acquaintance was quick to notice.

“Is this not what you had pictured, Argento Camarinos?”

The paladin paused for a moment before simply tilting his head. “The stories made you out to be something more like a…”

“Angel?”

Argento nodded. “Aye, something like that.”

“Legends are like that, Argento. Folk heroes are never just men—they have to be larger-than-life, lest they be easily forgotten to history.”

Understanding the words of the man, the holy warrior just gave another nod.

“You have worked alongside my legion for countless months… How does that make you feel?”

There was pregnant pause. In that moment, Argento made a decision to follow his heart and speak

“Your operation is devoid of honor and justice. You strike in the dead of night and from the back. There is no valor in what you do.”

Gasps could be heard around the paladin, but the mythic figure who stood before him remained seemingly unaffected by the remarks.

“I am the most wanted man in the Underverse. Those who serve me and fall into the custody of the Lord of Terror suffer fates worse than torture and death, Argento. Our very existence, regardless of the means through which we fight back, is valorous. Would you have use senselessly charge into the Chaos Sanctuary, guns blazing, and throw away our lives for nothing?”

The paladin had no rebuttal, because he knew that Tyrael spoke the truth. “I did not say your mission was without value, Tyrael.”

“Of course,” the warrior replied as he motioned for the others to leave. “Follow me, Argento.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, the devotee of the Glorious Sun followed Tyrael into the back chamber of the cavern. As they passed over the threshold, what had once been darkness was instead replaced by the dull, warm glow of torches. A glimpse over his shoulder revealed to Argento that they had passed through some type of perception filter—the corridor they had once been in was blackened entirely in shadows despite the presence of the burning lights.

“Your instincts are correct. That’s just a bit of theatrics to keep out anyone who may accidentally stumble into these caverns.”

More shadows and subterfuge…

“Is this your base of operations?” Argento inquired as he turned to see that, despite being inside a mountain of some sort, this chamber was decorated much like one of the nice homes in Darkshire. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, and the floor was covered in a rug that matched the bookshelves and tables. “It’s very…”

Tyrael shook his head as he came to a stop at a table. “This is just one of our many safehouses. We have dozens, possibly a hundred. We never use one for longer than a few weeks.”

“Makes sense.”

Much to Argento’s surprise, the next remark cut straight to the point of it all: “Why did you find me, Argento Camarinos?”

“Legends say you know the way out of this place. A method that doesn’t go through the Lord of Terror,” the paladin replied. “I heard the whispers while I was in the pit. Are they true?”

While he initially seemed more interested in the blank top of his table, the man lifted up his eyes and gave a simple nod. “There is a way, yes.”

Argento was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. “What’s the price?”

Tyrael snapped his fingers and the surface of the table bubbled upward as if it had been superheated. In a matter of moments, a replica of a structure Argento knew quite intimately had formed from the wood. While some of the details weren’t perfect, it would be clear to anyone that it was the blood pits. The colosseum that dominated the Central Hellscape.

“I want you to go back, Argento Camarinos.”

[Shang Tsung]

“You ask me to do what?” Argento demanded.

Tyrael’s expression remained unchanged. “I ask you to return to this place.” He responded as he rested a hand above the model of the colosseum. “This place where you experienced great heartache and discomfort.”

The paladin felt his blood start the boil in his veins. “Heartache and discomfort? They tried to break me. Every day for who knows how many years, they wore me down, killed me, and dragged me back when my accursed, immortal body was reborn. Do you mock me with your words, Tyrael?”

The bald figure shook his head. “The truth, Argento? A member of my network was recently… kidnapped by the demonic forces that run the bloodworks and the colosseum. I fear that once they understand this individual’s past, they may do much worse to them than death, especially if this person lacks your resolve. If Melthor is discovered, tortured, and broken by the demonic patrons of the arenas, the information he possesses could set us back years.”

“You want me to risk everything to save one of your moles?”

Tyrael at last seemed a little ruffled. “Do you want to escape, Argento? Do you want out of this place or would you prefer to live your immortal life without the rays of the sun?”

Argento bit his tongue. He was still a paladin, and he would not speak the words he felt in his heart.

“When I do this for you, Tyrael, you will set me free from this place.”

The warrior extended his hand.

“You have my word, Argento Camarinos.”

[center]***[/center]

A day later, Argento found himself in the back of a wagon heading toward the Central Hellscape. As he drifted in and out of sleep, his mind reflected upon the life he had known…

[center]***[/center]

“Taste justice, murderers!”

Argento rushed forward and swung the massive hammer as if it weighed less than a plank of a wood. The glinting hammerhead crashed into the chest of a slobbering orc, knocking the creature from its feet and launching it back the rear of the room. Next to Argento, Dengar let out a roar and swung his axe down through the shoulder and ribcage of one of his former tribesmen. With a swift, fluid motion, he wrenched the double-ax free from the corpse and moved onto his next victim.

“This is what I call fun!” Tordeck shouted as he barreled forward. The barbarian slammed into an orc and kept running. With the orc half-draped over his shoulder, he made a beeline toward the nearest stone wall.

A beat later, there was a sickening wet sound as the unarmored orc found himself smashed between a stone wall and the metal-encased dwarf. As Tordeck backed away and drew his axe, his opponent slumped down the wall, leaving behind a glistening wet trail. For good measure, the dwarf loped off the orc’s head before turning to defend himself against a pair of smaller axes.

“Size matters!” He cackled as he shoved them both backwards and rushed ahead, axe leading the way.
As the three warriors hacked and smashed their way through the guards, Quarion stood his ground. The cleric’s eyes danced as he followed the actions of his allies. Although his mace was ready at his side, he was in his preferred role in combat.

When two orcs exploded through the side door and tried to rush the paladin, Quarion performed a quick incantation that sent a lance of energy crashing through the pair, killing them mid-step as they raised their weapons.

Hearing the thud of bodies behind him, Argento craned his neck, noting first the corpses and then the smoldering hands of the cleric. He gave a brief nod before turning to smack away another frantic ax-wielding warrior.

The other thing that Quarion was good for?

With a smile, the cleric whispered a short incantation beneath his breath and gestured toward his allies. There was a gentle hum in the air before the armor of the three warriors began to glow with warm, translucent white flames.

The handful of remaining orcs let out growls and shouts as they backed off from the trio. Before the orcs could realize what they were looking at, the heavily armored attackers moved in to slaughter them.
From the front of the room, the large double-doors flung open, and a sea of crudely armed orcs rushed toward the quartet. Before the doors slammed shut once again, Argento caught a harrowing sight—a robed warlock wreathed in arcane magicks. Whatever was going on, it was bigger than just their grudge with the slaver.

“Fight onward, my friends!” The paladin bellowed as he tapped a finger to the spot on his armor above his religious icon. With any luck, the elf’s plot would turn the tide in their favor.

*

Damien shuffled awkwardly down the side passage. He had to clutch his hands a little tighter around the chain in his hands to prevent him from scratching at the thick layer of makeup and crude cloth prosthetics on his face.

Normally, he could have easily masked himself to look like an authentic orc if given enough time and the removal of his elven visage. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury of being able to remove his second face before applying the disguise he now wore.

“Are we sure this will work?” Ravik whispered as the pair walked down the tunnel. Dengar had informed them that the stronghold had two hidden side entrances.

The knowledge would be known only to orcs, so the doors would only be partially guarded. With the human as a captured slave, Damien had disguised himself to look like an orc. It wasn’t his best job, but all he had to have was a believable face and accent. Once he had the door unlocked, he’d be free to unburden himself of the tertiary countenance and commence with the removal of Solomon from the material plane.

“We’ll make it work,” Damien replied, his voice a bit slurred through the fake fangs that filled his mouth. The human scowled, but despite his usual confidence, the monk knew this wasn’t going to be pretty. With any luck, the person guarding this door would be a little more dimwitted than most orcs.

If they couldn’t force the door (and Dengar had mentioned the doors could be sealed with heavy bars), they’d have to double back around and join the others who would be fighting the bulk of whoever and whatever was inside the mountain stronghold.

The time that took would almost certainly leave the others to face some rather terrible odds, especially if the place was fortified with anything worse than orcs.

“Then let’s get this over with,” Ravik rasped as Damien rounded the last turn and approached the wooden door.

From this side, it looked like a nondescript entrance made of planks, but the other side was apparently reinforced with steel bracers that could be slid into the stone walls around them. Nothing short of an explosion or a great deal of corrosive fluids would open the door once it was locked into place.
Damien approached the door and gave it two solid raps near the center. After a short pause, he knocked once on each corner—it was some type of orcish code that informed the guardsman that he was dealing with one of his tribe.

A small view slit in the center of the wooden door opened up to reveal the gruff visage of an orc. Although the creature was obviously surprised to see orc-Damien standing outside the door, he also seemed a little nervous in general. “What?”

“I come with slaves for Solomon,” Damien spoke, his lips and tongue working overtime to try and emulate the gruff language of the greenskins.

The doorman’s face twisted up as he stared a hole through the disguised monk’s synthetic faces. A beat later, Damien heard the orc start to fumble with the door’s mechanism. “You are out kidnapping humans while we are being attacked? You’re an idiot!”

When the door swung inward, Damien dropped the chain and rushed forward. The doorman opened his mouth to say something but was silenced by a swift palm to the jaw. Whatever additional insults the orc had prepared were drowned out by a roar of frustration as he turned to attack the invader. Before he had a chance, there was a soft noise like someone trying to whistle but finding no sound. A second, gurgling scream escaped the orc as the crossbow quarrel buried itself into his throat.

The doorman collapsed to the ground and clasped at the projectile as blood began to sputter out from his wounds.

“Thanks,” Damien rasped as he stepped forward and brought the heel of his boot down onto the orc’s forehead, caving the creature’s skull into its brain.

Behind the monk, Ravik quickly discarded the unlocked manacles and slipped into the room. The man, who had a very interesting skill set, swooped down toward the dead orc and tore out his quarrel with surgical precision.
Damien watched the young man pull up a pantleg to reveal a small, hard leather case strapped to his right ankle. After placing the bloodstained projectile inside, he smoothed out his trousers and rose back up to a standing position.

“I don’t like to waste the ammunition,” Ravik muttered.

“Let’s move,” Damien muttered, unconcerned with whatever reasons his new associate had for what he did.

Leading the way, the monk followed that path that Dengar had told him to use. The side entrance connected to a short hallway, and the last room on the right led them into a small library.
From the large room, they could hear the distant clamor of combat, but beneath the faraway crash of steel and stone, they also heard what sounded like chanting of some sort.

A ritual? The thought made Damien scowl as he reached into the small red bag on his waist. He fished out two red vials and handed them to Ravik. “You don’t need to uncork them but make sure you’re not standing nearby.”

“I understand how ever-fire works,” Ravik muttered as he gracefully whipped the vial toward one end of the room. When it struck the stone shelves, the vial shattered, letting the volatile chemicals within feast upon the oxygen around them. A heartbeat later, there was a flash as a blanket of flames spewed out from the initial point of impact. The foul, pungent flames immediately devoured the old books on the shelves and belched out thick, dark smog.

Eying their exit, Damien turned and hurtled his vial at the only other door into the room. Flames spewed outward as the nearby door shot open to reveal a handful of confused orcs. Seeing the fire and the two attackers, they reached for weapons, but Ravik chucked his remaining container of ever-fire at them.
The orcs shrieked by spooked farm animals as the hungry flames quickly ate away at their clothes and flesh.

In a matter of minutes, the burning library was filled with the stench of burnt flesh, something that Damien had become too accustomed to over the years.

Why did all living things, regardless of their species, have that same, acrid scent when their bodies were wrought with fire?

“We should keep moving,” Ravik whispered as Damien pocketed the fourth container of ever-fire. At the rate the room was crumbling into ash, there was no reason to overdo it. They wanted to create a distraction and deterrent… not an inferno that would just as readily consume them.

Dashing forward, the pair entered a small chamber with only one door that lead into the central chamber. From this location, they could hear the choir-like chanting in the next room. Both knew they were adjacent to what Dengar described as a ‘churchy-looking room’ at the epicenter of the stronghold.
The small room that the monk and his new ally stood in was probably some sort of storage or relaxation area for whatever priest or holy person had once used the mountain as his church.

“What do you think all that noise is about?” Ravik asked as the pair stalked toward the plain wooden door that led to the chapel. “Sure doesn’t sound like what you’d expect in a slaver’s little mountain castle.”

“Quite true,” Damien whispered as he punched at the hinges that connected the door to the stone wall. The wooden clasps broke away beneath his bandaged fist without offering much resistance, and with the help of the human, he slid the door away to give them a glimpse into the chapel even as the smoke from the library fire started to waft in behind them.

Damien had never seen Solomon before, but he immediately noticed the man standing before an elevated platform at the head of the church.

Garbed in full plate, the human was staring down at the weapon in his hands. He seemed almost mesmerized by the sword, but his mouth was moving, whispering words that the monk couldn’t hear over the hymnal of the orcish congregation spread throughout the half-occupied pews.

More harrowing than Solomon, however, was the robed individual who stood on the raised platform behind the man. Whoever the figure was, he or she was reading from a large tome that lie upon the altar at the head of the church. All around the reader, the air seemed thick and heavy, as if the cloaked figure was radiating heat like a furnace.

“What is going on?” Ravik muttered as he checked his single-handed crossbow. “Some sort of summoning ritual?”

“I don’t know.” That much was true. The dialect was orchish, but it was some sort of archaic version. Half of it was gibberish in Damien’s ears. “We’ve got to stop it, whatever it is.” The last thing Damien wanted to do was deal with some sort of extra-planar monster or ritual magicks. “Can you take one of them out from here?”

“Possibly,” Ravik replied as he lifted his crossbow and alternated between his two targets. After a few moments, he settled on Solomon and loosed a quarrel at the armored man. Much to the pair’s frustration, their adversary spun and used the sword to deflect the bolt.

In the process, Damien noticed the trio of unnerving, life-like eyes embedded into the surface of the blade.

That’s no simple sword…

Before Solomon could move to deal with them, the large double doors at the head of the church rattled enough to be heard over the clamor of the congregation. An unnaturally shiny, blood-marred axe head tore through whatever braced the doors shut. A moment later, three dull blows threw open the entrance, despite the five orcs piled against it. In a flurry of steel and armor, Damien and Ravik’s newfound allies pressed forward their attack.

“Do something, Mal’goul!” Solomon barked after turning his focus to the figure huddled over the book.
Instead of an affirmation, the cloaked figure threw its hands toward the ceiling and screamed something in a language that even Damien’s collection of fluencies couldn’t decipher.

In a flash of light, the platform at the head of the chapel shuddered before splitting open in various locations. Hammers and maces punched up through the floor and nearby walls, and in their wake, several long-dead dwarves pulled their dessicated and mostly decayed corpses out from their stone crypts.

“Damn it,” Damien muttered. “I’ll deal with this. You go put your talents to use.”

[Shang Tsung]

The wagon jiggled as it traversed the uneven terrain.  

Argento was lucid now, but the memories were still there—vivid in his mind’s eye.

***

“They’re thinning out!” Argento shouted as he swung his glowing hammer and crashed through a trio of orcs trying to pounce him.

From behind the horde of dying orcs, a distinctly human voice could be heard above the clamor of steel weapons. “Your time is limited, interlopers!”

After a moment of silence, a thunderclap filled the room, and a wave of force threw back everyone fighting near the entrance of the church. Tordeck grimaced as he struck the wall a few feet from the door.

Despite the ringing in his head, the rage burned stronger, and he found himself on his feet faster than his allies.

In front of him, the orc warriors were regaining their senses, and while there was only a dozen or so of them, the dwarf noticed something a little less pleasant. The various pews in the church, about half of which were filled with orcs, were now empty.

The chanting had stopped, and nearly three dozen additional orcs had sat up from the stone benches and turned to face the quartet of warriors. In the background, Tordeck swore he saw the skinny elf dodging away from a group of shambling skeletons, but the green bodies moved to cloud his view.

“More want to die?” Tordeck roared as he smacked one of the flat sides of his ax. “Let me taste yer bits!”

***

The monk ducked under a lethargic swing. With a swift jab of a bandage-wrapped fist, he smashed apart the mostly skeletal dwarf’s spine near the base of its ribcage. Even as its severed torso fell backwards, the animated corpse kept trying to grab Damien, who pivoted and sidestepped another stiff jab from a rusted sword.

A quick kick removed the skull of the nearest skeleton, but before Damien could turn to deal with the next, there were three of them swarming around him. Although unarmed, the mostly skeletal creatures threw themselves around him in an attempt to strangle or smother him with their lightly armored husks.

“Get… get off,” Damien rasped as he removed a helmet from one of the dwarves and used it to bash off the walking corpse’s skull. With one set of fingers sliding off his body, the monk twisted and used the ancient steel cap to smash away a second dwarf.

Before he could find the third, he felt a sharp, blinding pain as a sword tore through his thin cloth armor and sank into his back.

With a grimace of pain, Damien frantically smashed away the skeleton in front of him, but before he could turn to deal with the sword now twisting through his flesh, it suddenly stopped. A beat later, he heard the sound of bones crashing against the floor behind him.

After gingerly removing the blade, Damien glanced and saw that a finely aimed crossbow bolt had smashed through one of the skeleton’s cervical vertebra. The monk followed the path the quarrel had taken and spied his talented ally reloading his crossbow in the far corner of the room
‘You’re welcome,’ the human mouthed with a grin as two more skeletons came shambling toward Damien.

*

Bauru burned with fury. For the first time since he’d picked up the blade in that old, crumbling elven crypt, Solomon felt like it was more alive than it had ever been.

Its rage burned like fire through his veins and made it hard for him to think clearly as he watched his orcish zealots cut down at the front of the church. Behind him, another pair of warriors was struggling to deal with the centuries-old corpses of the chapel’s former parishioners.

Kill. Kill everything.

Were those his thoughts?

Solomon couldn’t be sure anymore. It was too hard to focus on anything other than the anger and frustration that seemed too strong and too alien to be his own.

KILL.

Was he moving his body at this point? He didn’t remember walking forward, but as his vision started to sharpen once more, he saw that he was advancing toward the four at the front of the church. His fists were clenched around Bauru’s handle as if it was the last possession he’d ever own.

The eyes on the blade seemed to twitch back and forth. Had they ever moved before? Were the pupils always that large? Did they always look so bloodshot? So menacing?

The answers never came. Solomon blacked out.

Yet his body, sword clenched tightly in his hands, broke into a sprint toward the attackers.

***

Had they really been honest men?

Argento had spent a lot of time reflecting upon his decisions.

Is Tyrael an honest man?

Legends in Camelot had spoken of Tyrael as some sort of angel.  After all, who but an angel could smite the forces of evil so easily and so selflessly?  Stories told of a winged figure wreathed in white charging head-first into an onslaught of devils and demons.

The cloaked figure skulking in the mountains was not an angel.

He was a guerilla, just like his lackeys.

Did that make Argento a stooge?  The paladin reached to his chest and rested his hand on the emblem of the Divine Sun.  He would do this task for the false angel, and then he would be free from the Underverse.

He would feel the Sun again.

***

[i]The floor of the church could no longer be seen.

Nearly an inch and a half of orcish blood and viscera obscured what had once been finely crafted stone tiles inlaid with ancient scripts. Every step Argento took sloshed around the garish layer of ichor, which had painted his boots and greaves a hellish shade of crimson.

Anyone unacquainted with the horror of a battlefield would have found the scene enough to turn their stomach. Fortunately, none of the warriors fighting through the mob of zealous orcs were bothered by the growing gore surrounding them.

In the background, black smoke wafted out through one of the exits near the back of the chapel. The thick, curling clouds made their way up toward the high ceiling, but given more time, they would soon fill the room.

Argento didn’t know what the place had looked like before their arrival—he’d never had a chance to enjoy whatever beauty may have once been here. All he knew now was that it looked more like the Twisted Hells than an old dwarven chapel.

“You dare defile my stronghold?”

Although the voice sounded human, there was a distinct wrongness to it. Almost as if there were two voices talking at once, with one being something not at altogether human.

The paladin knocked down the orc before him, crushed its skull with a hammer blow, and then looked up the central aisle to see Solomon stalking toward them.

Unlike their last engagement, the dark knight seemed a little off. His movements were jerky, as if he was trying to shake off some soreness or unresponsiveness in his muscles. Eyes that had once been expressive and sharp were now dull and devoid of any emotion. The sword in his grip glowed much like Argento’s divinely infused hammer, but the eyeball-laden blade reeked of malice. Its fires were pure hatred and ill-will.

That sword must be destroyed.

“Come now, Blackguard!” Argento roared. “Let me purify your immortal soul!”

Solomon’s mouth twisted into an uncomfortable sneer as he charged at them. His hoarse voice was barely human as it roared across the chapel. “I will rend your flesh, Paladin!”

Tordeck took that as a moment to interject. “By all means, you may try!” The barbarian rushed to join the battle.

Even though his stout body was in full plate, the mixture of his trained rage and the natural adrenaline coursing through his veins let Tordeck leap one of the pews to get within swinging distance. His gore-soaked ax was intercepted a few inches from Solomon’s neck by the villain’s blade. The dwarf growled an obscenity as the sudden and powerful parry knocked him off balance.

A swift kick threw Tordeck onto his back, and a second sent his weapon skittering down between two pews.

“You ba—” The dwarf’s curse was cut off mid-syllable by a boot to the face that sent him spiraling toward unconsciousness.

Instead of finishing off the stunned barbarian, Solomon stepped over his prone form and advanced toward Argento, Quarion, and Dengar. “We will enjoy watching you die a second time, Champion, and then I’ll go finish the rest of your tribe.”

“Bold words,” the orc rasped as he and Argento moved forward to engage the blackguard. Behind them, Quarion started to whisper another incantation.

***

The demons fell upon the little wagon.

For his part, Argento feigned being caught unware, despite how acutely aware he was of every little thing around him.

There was a howl as a claw tore open the throat of the wagon’s operator.  The body slumped to the side and sputtered red fluid as the panicked horse broke free from the cart and rushed off into the ashen wilderness.  Argento paid no heed to the slain driver, because he knew that it wasn’t a person.  While Tyrael had initially wanted to provide a real operator, the paladin had insisted that no other souls risk themselves in what could likely be a fool’s errand.  

Clawed hands grabbed at Argento as he opened his eyes to glare at the collection of pig-faced monsters.  He could tell by their expressions that they were hoping for some sort of fight, and while the paladin was certain they would offer him little resistance, he offered no physical rebuttal.  He allowed them to believe they had ambushed a slumbering traveler, and within a few minutes, he was being crammed into a cage.

***

Ravik stepped forward and plunged his wrist-blade up through the skull of the skeleton. With a solid twist, he popped the crumbling bone away from the rest of the body, and the reanimated remains toppled into a heap before him.

After discarding the skull with a heavy flick of his wrist, the assassin pulled up his crossbow and fired a bolt at the warlock. Now that the skeletons were less in number, he finally had a clear shot.
Unfortunately, the speaker twisted their body at the last second, and the bolt sailed over their left shoulder.

Whoever they were, their reading and spell-crafting didn’t absorb that much of their awareness. Ravik would need something else to give him the advantage. He shot a quick look over at the elven brawler.
For someone from such a fragile race, Damien could handle himself rather well. Aside from the oozing wound near the small of his back, the elf had absorbed only a handful of scrapes and cuts as he dealt with nearly twenty shambling bodies. If all elven warriors were like Damien, Ravik was glad they opted to stay behind their walls.

Turning his focus from the monk, the assassin let out a long sigh and tapped into the handful of self-taught magical skills he had at his disposal.

A pair of skeletons were lurching their way toward him, but he kept his focus. He felt the air around him hum with heat, and just like that, the two corpses stopped in their tracks.

They stared at him for a few moments longer before shifting their focus over to the monk.

Excellent.

Although the invisibility trick was a potent tool, he rarely had the time and focus to activate it. Most situations where he would want to use the trick, he usually had half a dozen guardsmen or hired bodyguards hot on his heels.

With his surroundings secure, Ravik jogged to the other side of the elevated platform. Digging into his satchel, he found his desired vial and removed the cork. In a perfect world, a few drops would do the trick, but the assassin let the slimy poison coat the head of the quarrel. He had no reason to believe the cloaked individual would have a normal constitution, regardless of their species. In his profession, ‘better safe than sorry’ was a good quote to live by.

Once the poison was capped and back in its protective pouch, Ravik lifted the crossbow and took a moment to study his target. He blocked out the noise around him—another skill he’d trained over the years—and analyzed every visible facet about the cloaked individual.

Soft steps took him over to a new vantage point, giving him very little additional information. Even so, he’d need as much as he could muster given the clothes that masked the individual’s physical features.

***

Argento had never faced anyone quite like Solomon. Even the hellions he’d slain in defense of Ceuta weren’t as vicious as the black knight who easily contended with a trained paladin and a ferocious, rage-fueled Orc Champion.

Solomon’s blade seemed to move of its own accord as it danced between separate parries and deflections. Every now and again, their foe would even manage to lash out with a fist or a blow from the weapon’s pommel!

At the rate they were going, both Argento and Dengar would be exhausted before they could manage to defeat Solomon.

What is that cleric doing?

One hundred percent of Argento’s focus had to be on the swordsman before him. Anything less would result in his death. So to say he was almost thrown off guard when he saw that Quarion was now behind Solomon was an understatement. The paladin made brief eye contact with the cleric, enough to understand that he had to keep doing what he was doing.

“Die, villain!” Argento roared as he stepped forward and swung his hammer with renewed fury. Once more, Solomon bashed aside the blow with strength beyond what should have been his physical limit.
As the knight moved to deflect the ax blow coming from his left, Quarion reached out and grabbed hold of their foe’s shoulders.

In an instant, the expression on Solomon’s face became one of confusion and pain. From between Quarion’s gauntleted fingers, steam started to bubble up as Solomon’s armor began to liquefy beneath the cleric’s grasp.

“Damn you!” Solomon roared as he threw his head back at the elf.

The cleric growled and held his hand in place until a second head butt shattered his nose. Quarion lost his grip, but he’d already done the damage.

The knight’s pauldrons and much of the armor from his upper arms and around his collar bones had been outright dissolved or reduced to malformed steel putty.

In his rage, Solomon twisted around and swung his glimmering blade. The foul weapon tore through the cleric’s chest plate and knocked him to the ground, where he lay in a motionless heap.

“Villain!” Argento boomed as he moved forward. He was met quickly with a blow from the broad face of Solomon’s sword. As he stumbled back, the paladin failed to block the sudden burst of force that struck him and bowled him over like a metal-encased ragdoll.

As his head crushed against the wall of the chapel, the paladin stared forward into the carnage as his vision blurred. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a shriek.

***

Argento spoke nothing on the journey.

Better they think him dumb and mute as they took him to the gladiatorial arenas.  The less the paladin had to converse with festering hell-swine, the better.

Within six hours, he found himself sitting in the rancid blood works beneath the colosseum.  He wasn’t sure if this was the exact pit where he would find Tyrael’s agent, but it would have to be the start of his investigation.  

Once he found Melthor, he could be finished with all of this.

The sooner, the better.[/i]