05-04-2017, 12:10 PM
The pair of women crashed out through the backdoor of the market. Without needing words, they rushed around to the side of the nearby dumpster and quickly pushed the garbage-filled metal crate in front of the exit.
With a few moments reprieve gained for the pair, they both collapsed against the wall of the adjacent building and tried to catch their breath.
Four months earlier…
The Tangled Green was a quiet place. It was one of the constant that Mireya had grown to appreciate in the years since her travels with Proto Man. While random ‘things’ often happened—disrupting the usual order—they often faded away after a few weeks. In a verse comprised of jungles, mountains, and rivers, it was hard to create a large enough shock to disrupt the status quo. Only the Blight had come close, and memories of that travesty were hard to come by in most of the verse’s residents.
This was the Omniverse. Time was an abstract concept.
Mireya’s quaint little community operated as nicely as it always had, with her oddball neighbors supporting one another in their farming and mercantile endeavors. The half-night elf had even built a few additional buildings and taken to raising a small handful of animals. Nothing as serious as cattle, but she had a vast array of rabbits, chickens, and a pair of llamas that kept her entertained when the moogles got too busy organizing their shipment timetables.
On one such lazy morning, Mireya awoke to a gentle ping on the small piece of electronic equipment she kept in her home. Slipping out from her bed, she snatched her robe from the nearby hook and slipped it on as she traversed her bedroom. The beeping had subsided by the time she crouched down and tapped the screen of the Dataverse uplink. After a slight pause, the screen light up to show that she’d received a message from Darkshire.
After a few more taps, the contents of the electronic missive appeared on her screen.
Attn: All Darkshire Defenders
Rumors swirl of a large army amassing in the interior of the Pale Moors. Reports speak of an upstart prime who seeks to attack our city at the behest of our nemesis, Count Dracula. If you are receiving this message, it is because you are either a fully-fledged Defender of our fair city or someone who has stood for us in the past.
We humbly ask for your assistance in our time of need.
Yours,
Dobson Skendor and the Darkshire Council
“By Elune’s tit!”
Mireya brushed the sleep from her eyes and made her way out of the bedroom. She slipped through the hallway and into the room that functioned as both her tool shed and her armory. With a swift motion, she slid a rack of hammers and lumber axes to the wayside. Behind them, her ‘hunting gear’ hung on the back wall. A pair of kukris, a poleax, a bow, and a quarrel of polished arrows hunk on hooks. Mireya kept the equipment cleaned and polished, just in case anything big came stomping through their little slice of Green.
While she had felt uncomfortable in Darkshire, she nevertheless felt a small connection with the city. In the whole of the Pale Moors, it had been the only place with a shred of civility. People called it ‘the bulwark’, and they were right. Darkshire, miserable as it was, kept the rest of the Pale Moors corked into its own verse. The last thing Mireya needed was for the city to collapse and for the Moors to start exporting more Blights to its neighboring verses.
With her equipment still in sight, the hunter-turned-farmer took a few steps to the left and swung open the dusty chest that contained the reinforced leathers that she wore in the wilds.
“Hello, Beautiful,” the woman whispered as she lifted up an arm guard still sporting a few splotches of dried blood.
Two verses and time unknown removed from the half-night elf, a woman clad in chainmail armor drove her blade through the slobber-filled maw of a ghoul. The creature continued to lash out at her for a few moments, even managing to rake its claws against her chest plate before falling limp against her weapon.
Tearing the sword free from the beast’s corpse, Sergeant Abigail Reckner stumbled backwards and lost her balance. Was the battle close to being over?
Some fresh blood dribbled down the right side of the woman’s head. Two hours earlier, an errant blow from a deformed monster had dented her helmet and nearly cracked her skull. There had to be some fractures, but the worst had been the chunk of her scalp torn by the twisted, collapsed steel. Aside from the blow to the head, a few sturdy hits had left her with bruises across her chest and legs. A diving hellion had hooked its claws into her right shoulder, torn apart the armor, and dislocated the joint. Had it not been for the stellar aim of a nearby crossbowman, the soldier would have been either thrown from the walls or dragged off for a worse fate than a plunge to her death.
“They’re falling back!”
The scream, somewhat muted by the ringing in her ears, brought a smile to the battered woman’s visage.
Cool. I think… I think I’ll take a breather now.
With a few moments reprieve gained for the pair, they both collapsed against the wall of the adjacent building and tried to catch their breath.
Four months earlier…
The Tangled Green was a quiet place. It was one of the constant that Mireya had grown to appreciate in the years since her travels with Proto Man. While random ‘things’ often happened—disrupting the usual order—they often faded away after a few weeks. In a verse comprised of jungles, mountains, and rivers, it was hard to create a large enough shock to disrupt the status quo. Only the Blight had come close, and memories of that travesty were hard to come by in most of the verse’s residents.
This was the Omniverse. Time was an abstract concept.
Mireya’s quaint little community operated as nicely as it always had, with her oddball neighbors supporting one another in their farming and mercantile endeavors. The half-night elf had even built a few additional buildings and taken to raising a small handful of animals. Nothing as serious as cattle, but she had a vast array of rabbits, chickens, and a pair of llamas that kept her entertained when the moogles got too busy organizing their shipment timetables.
On one such lazy morning, Mireya awoke to a gentle ping on the small piece of electronic equipment she kept in her home. Slipping out from her bed, she snatched her robe from the nearby hook and slipped it on as she traversed her bedroom. The beeping had subsided by the time she crouched down and tapped the screen of the Dataverse uplink. After a slight pause, the screen light up to show that she’d received a message from Darkshire.
After a few more taps, the contents of the electronic missive appeared on her screen.
Attn: All Darkshire Defenders
Rumors swirl of a large army amassing in the interior of the Pale Moors. Reports speak of an upstart prime who seeks to attack our city at the behest of our nemesis, Count Dracula. If you are receiving this message, it is because you are either a fully-fledged Defender of our fair city or someone who has stood for us in the past.
We humbly ask for your assistance in our time of need.
Yours,
Dobson Skendor and the Darkshire Council
“By Elune’s tit!”
Mireya brushed the sleep from her eyes and made her way out of the bedroom. She slipped through the hallway and into the room that functioned as both her tool shed and her armory. With a swift motion, she slid a rack of hammers and lumber axes to the wayside. Behind them, her ‘hunting gear’ hung on the back wall. A pair of kukris, a poleax, a bow, and a quarrel of polished arrows hunk on hooks. Mireya kept the equipment cleaned and polished, just in case anything big came stomping through their little slice of Green.
While she had felt uncomfortable in Darkshire, she nevertheless felt a small connection with the city. In the whole of the Pale Moors, it had been the only place with a shred of civility. People called it ‘the bulwark’, and they were right. Darkshire, miserable as it was, kept the rest of the Pale Moors corked into its own verse. The last thing Mireya needed was for the city to collapse and for the Moors to start exporting more Blights to its neighboring verses.
With her equipment still in sight, the hunter-turned-farmer took a few steps to the left and swung open the dusty chest that contained the reinforced leathers that she wore in the wilds.
“Hello, Beautiful,” the woman whispered as she lifted up an arm guard still sporting a few splotches of dried blood.
***
Two verses and time unknown removed from the half-night elf, a woman clad in chainmail armor drove her blade through the slobber-filled maw of a ghoul. The creature continued to lash out at her for a few moments, even managing to rake its claws against her chest plate before falling limp against her weapon.
Tearing the sword free from the beast’s corpse, Sergeant Abigail Reckner stumbled backwards and lost her balance. Was the battle close to being over?
Some fresh blood dribbled down the right side of the woman’s head. Two hours earlier, an errant blow from a deformed monster had dented her helmet and nearly cracked her skull. There had to be some fractures, but the worst had been the chunk of her scalp torn by the twisted, collapsed steel. Aside from the blow to the head, a few sturdy hits had left her with bruises across her chest and legs. A diving hellion had hooked its claws into her right shoulder, torn apart the armor, and dislocated the joint. Had it not been for the stellar aim of a nearby crossbowman, the soldier would have been either thrown from the walls or dragged off for a worse fate than a plunge to her death.
“They’re falling back!”
The scream, somewhat muted by the ringing in her ears, brought a smile to the battered woman’s visage.
Cool. I think… I think I’ll take a breather now.
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Dante's Abyss 2015
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