02-15-2018, 01:52 PM
The drow had receded into the shadows, but anyone who had dealings with the dark elves knew they would return. Throughout the last two years, they had steadily declined as a nuisance to Darkshire, but they had never truly vanished from public memory. One every couple of months, someone would discover the corpse of a farmer or merchant mutilated by the vile creatures.
Yet, for all the irritation they provided, Shang appreciated the drow. If not for their attempts to destabilize Darkshire, the sorcerer would still be on the outside of the established order. The dark elves’ efforts to wage psychological warfare against the frequently beleaguered and besieged city had allowed it to shed its old order and develop into something stronger and more stable. Without the drow, Shang Tsung (and Atelos, for that matter) would just be another soldier patrolling the walls.
Like many thoughts, the bureaucrat kept those thoughts to himself.
“What’s the next move, Sirs?”
Shang turned to see that the question had been posed by Private Lopez. The woman had broken a sweat, but she seemed to be holding herself together a little better than her peers.
What ever happened to that night elf with the Puerto Rican accent? Shang recalled such a warrior a few years ago. Mireya. She had traveled with the steel boy and joined the ranks of the Defenders. He vaguely recalled that she had arrived in the aftermath of the assault and stayed a while helping the injured and wounded. Under normal circumstances, Shang usually kept a close eye on Defenders, whether they were primes or secondaries, because nine times out of ten, they were some of the more reliable persons in the city.
“Sirs?”
When he heard the tepid inquiry a second time, the sorcerer turned to face the Spartan, who stood deadly still with his eyes focused on the woods. While Lopez was speaking in the plural, the man in the bronze armor was her superior.
Anyone who is a fan of physical fitness will give you a similar warning: If you stop exercising, you will get weaker. Muscles, when given the opportunity to do nothing, will grow softer as they are cannibalized by the rest of your body for energy and macromolecules. There were other types of muscles than the ones that operated an individual’s skeletal system. ‘Muscle memory’ was more than just a soldier ducking at the sound of a faraway explosion.
Shang’s mental muscles took a while, but when they clicked, they did so with all the impact of a runaway train.
The taut muscles. The narrowed eyes and clenched jaw. The slightly depressed breathing.
They were the Spartan’s ‘tells’—tells that indicated a reality that would be filled with blood, bruises, and flayed tissues.
Atelos sprung just as the lance of fire came blazing from the trees. The Spartan hit the ground shoulder-first and rolled with his momentum up into a crouch. Crossbow bolts buzzed from the trees, and while four of them clanged uselessly against the bronze shield, a trio sank into the warrior’s right calf and shin.
Drawing the jian, Shang Tsung turned his focus into the forest and rushed into the fray. At least eight quarrels had issued forth, which meant there were probably close to a dozen drow lurking in the area, with four of those creatures concealed above or below. The sorcerer couldn’t turn his head for fear of projectiles, but he heard the clamor of steel behind him and orders being barked between the squad of soldiers. If they were smart, they would form a protective phalanx—they would be at a disadvantage if they tried to pursue the dark elves into the cover of the trees.
“Come out and face me!” Shang bellowed as something flashed to life along his left hand.
Fire!
Instinct told the man to drop down and attempt to extinguish the flames that had manifest on his arm, but he paused long enough to look at them with a little more scrutiny.
No heat…
It was a classic drow trick—faerie fire.
While it didn’t cause him to panic, the cantrip stole from Shang the focus he needed to prepare for the two figures to drop down onto him from above. In a flash, a dagger slashed across the bureaucrat’s left bicep. Blood petaled out along the length of the wound as the other dark elf landed a long, vertical cut down his target’s chest. That second attack failed to cut through the thick robes, but the stinging pain in his arm prevented Shang from a rapid follow-up attack.
Clasping his opposing hand over the torn, bloody sleeve of his left arm, the Defender of Darkshire backed up at the drow stalked in for the kill. The sneering dark elves were close, but they weren’t close enough to prevent their prey from throwing out a palm. That same distance also meant that the targeted drow didn’t have the space to evade the immolated skull that erupted forth from the bureaucrat’s palm. The heat and concussive force blew apart the drow’s thin armor and removed enough flesh and muscle to showcase parts of a few ribs.
The surviving dark elf drove forward and stabbed his curved blade at the sorcerer’s ribs. The attack, fueled more by desperation than determination, sliced through empty air as Shang shifted to the side.
Exposed and overextended, a look of horror twisted the drow’s usually stoic features in the moments before the elbow smashed through the side of its jaw.
“Cherish these moments,” Shang whispered as he drew the jian and plunged it down through the small of the dark elves’ back. After taking a few moments to relish as the sub-human monster writhed and died beneath him, the sorcerer wrenched the blade free.
Hubris wasn’t a foreign concept to the sorcerer.
He knew very well the limits of his ego.
On this occasion, his reveling in the slaughter of some nothing drow left him exposed as a quartet of crossbow quarrels slammed into his shoulder, chest, and upper arm. While the pain would subside, it was the burning he felt almost immediately that brought Shang the most discomfort.
Some sort of poison. The drow love the stuff.
His senses weren’t impaired, so the sorcerer quickly recoiled from the direction of the attackers. Stooping low to the ground, he lurched through the tree line. As he emerged from the brush, a second volley of quarrels went overhead—missing him by hairs and inches.
Sliding to his knees, Shang glanced up to see a very elegant phalanx of Darkshire soldiers. One of the shields parted to reveal a face that was starting to become blurred around the edges.
“Triumvir, are you okay?”
“Where is Captain Atelos?” The sorcerer barked as he took the short reprieve to catch his breath.
“He’s still fighting in the forests…”
Shang Tsung cursed beneath his breath as he shoved up from his knees and turned back to the trees. Unlike before, the foul woods seemed to loom miles into the sky and cast the darkest shadows he’d ever seen. “I’ll be back,” he muttered as he drew the Day’suis from his back. The weapon glowed bright as he rushed into the unknown in search of his former compatriot.
With the golden rays of the hammer clearing a path through the shadows, Shang quickly found Atelos wrestling on the ground with a pair of drow. Four feet away, three dark-skinned corpses lay in still-expanding pools of blood.
Without pause, Shang dashed forward—his legs quavering but not failing him. The Day’suis descended in a glittering arc and crushed the skull of one drow into the blighted soil below.
Vision blurred but understanding that help had come, Atelos let out a growl and slammed a knee into the dark elf hunched over him.
“Here comes the light,” the sorcerer cackled as the air around the hammerhead sizzled.
The drow managed to make it three paces from Atelos before the bolt of lightning tore through his chest.
Yet, for all the irritation they provided, Shang appreciated the drow. If not for their attempts to destabilize Darkshire, the sorcerer would still be on the outside of the established order. The dark elves’ efforts to wage psychological warfare against the frequently beleaguered and besieged city had allowed it to shed its old order and develop into something stronger and more stable. Without the drow, Shang Tsung (and Atelos, for that matter) would just be another soldier patrolling the walls.
Like many thoughts, the bureaucrat kept those thoughts to himself.
“What’s the next move, Sirs?”
Shang turned to see that the question had been posed by Private Lopez. The woman had broken a sweat, but she seemed to be holding herself together a little better than her peers.
What ever happened to that night elf with the Puerto Rican accent? Shang recalled such a warrior a few years ago. Mireya. She had traveled with the steel boy and joined the ranks of the Defenders. He vaguely recalled that she had arrived in the aftermath of the assault and stayed a while helping the injured and wounded. Under normal circumstances, Shang usually kept a close eye on Defenders, whether they were primes or secondaries, because nine times out of ten, they were some of the more reliable persons in the city.
“Sirs?”
When he heard the tepid inquiry a second time, the sorcerer turned to face the Spartan, who stood deadly still with his eyes focused on the woods. While Lopez was speaking in the plural, the man in the bronze armor was her superior.
Anyone who is a fan of physical fitness will give you a similar warning: If you stop exercising, you will get weaker. Muscles, when given the opportunity to do nothing, will grow softer as they are cannibalized by the rest of your body for energy and macromolecules. There were other types of muscles than the ones that operated an individual’s skeletal system. ‘Muscle memory’ was more than just a soldier ducking at the sound of a faraway explosion.
Shang’s mental muscles took a while, but when they clicked, they did so with all the impact of a runaway train.
The taut muscles. The narrowed eyes and clenched jaw. The slightly depressed breathing.
They were the Spartan’s ‘tells’—tells that indicated a reality that would be filled with blood, bruises, and flayed tissues.
Atelos sprung just as the lance of fire came blazing from the trees. The Spartan hit the ground shoulder-first and rolled with his momentum up into a crouch. Crossbow bolts buzzed from the trees, and while four of them clanged uselessly against the bronze shield, a trio sank into the warrior’s right calf and shin.
Drawing the jian, Shang Tsung turned his focus into the forest and rushed into the fray. At least eight quarrels had issued forth, which meant there were probably close to a dozen drow lurking in the area, with four of those creatures concealed above or below. The sorcerer couldn’t turn his head for fear of projectiles, but he heard the clamor of steel behind him and orders being barked between the squad of soldiers. If they were smart, they would form a protective phalanx—they would be at a disadvantage if they tried to pursue the dark elves into the cover of the trees.
“Come out and face me!” Shang bellowed as something flashed to life along his left hand.
Fire!
Instinct told the man to drop down and attempt to extinguish the flames that had manifest on his arm, but he paused long enough to look at them with a little more scrutiny.
No heat…
It was a classic drow trick—faerie fire.
While it didn’t cause him to panic, the cantrip stole from Shang the focus he needed to prepare for the two figures to drop down onto him from above. In a flash, a dagger slashed across the bureaucrat’s left bicep. Blood petaled out along the length of the wound as the other dark elf landed a long, vertical cut down his target’s chest. That second attack failed to cut through the thick robes, but the stinging pain in his arm prevented Shang from a rapid follow-up attack.
Clasping his opposing hand over the torn, bloody sleeve of his left arm, the Defender of Darkshire backed up at the drow stalked in for the kill. The sneering dark elves were close, but they weren’t close enough to prevent their prey from throwing out a palm. That same distance also meant that the targeted drow didn’t have the space to evade the immolated skull that erupted forth from the bureaucrat’s palm. The heat and concussive force blew apart the drow’s thin armor and removed enough flesh and muscle to showcase parts of a few ribs.
The surviving dark elf drove forward and stabbed his curved blade at the sorcerer’s ribs. The attack, fueled more by desperation than determination, sliced through empty air as Shang shifted to the side.
Exposed and overextended, a look of horror twisted the drow’s usually stoic features in the moments before the elbow smashed through the side of its jaw.
“Cherish these moments,” Shang whispered as he drew the jian and plunged it down through the small of the dark elves’ back. After taking a few moments to relish as the sub-human monster writhed and died beneath him, the sorcerer wrenched the blade free.
Hubris wasn’t a foreign concept to the sorcerer.
He knew very well the limits of his ego.
On this occasion, his reveling in the slaughter of some nothing drow left him exposed as a quartet of crossbow quarrels slammed into his shoulder, chest, and upper arm. While the pain would subside, it was the burning he felt almost immediately that brought Shang the most discomfort.
Some sort of poison. The drow love the stuff.
His senses weren’t impaired, so the sorcerer quickly recoiled from the direction of the attackers. Stooping low to the ground, he lurched through the tree line. As he emerged from the brush, a second volley of quarrels went overhead—missing him by hairs and inches.
Sliding to his knees, Shang glanced up to see a very elegant phalanx of Darkshire soldiers. One of the shields parted to reveal a face that was starting to become blurred around the edges.
“Triumvir, are you okay?”
“Where is Captain Atelos?” The sorcerer barked as he took the short reprieve to catch his breath.
“He’s still fighting in the forests…”
Shang Tsung cursed beneath his breath as he shoved up from his knees and turned back to the trees. Unlike before, the foul woods seemed to loom miles into the sky and cast the darkest shadows he’d ever seen. “I’ll be back,” he muttered as he drew the Day’suis from his back. The weapon glowed bright as he rushed into the unknown in search of his former compatriot.
With the golden rays of the hammer clearing a path through the shadows, Shang quickly found Atelos wrestling on the ground with a pair of drow. Four feet away, three dark-skinned corpses lay in still-expanding pools of blood.
Without pause, Shang dashed forward—his legs quavering but not failing him. The Day’suis descended in a glittering arc and crushed the skull of one drow into the blighted soil below.
Vision blurred but understanding that help had come, Atelos let out a growl and slammed a knee into the dark elf hunched over him.
“Here comes the light,” the sorcerer cackled as the air around the hammerhead sizzled.
The drow managed to make it three paces from Atelos before the bolt of lightning tore through his chest.