The best laid plans – Taffeta
May 2, 2018 10:22:36 GMT
Leocanto, Varis/G'Lorth/Sundilar, and 1 more like this
Post by Malri 'Taffeta' Thistletop on May 2, 2018 10:22:36 GMT
The explosion has got stuck inside Taffeta’s body somehow. It’s filling her skull like a bottled earthquake and burning in her bones. A while ago, in another place, she was in the explosion; now the explosion is in her, and it feels like it will never end.
She’s sitting under a starry sky, holding her daughters tightly to her sides and with Nerry’s arms around all of them. Others are sitting all around, talking. She can hardly feel her family’s touch or hear her companions’ conversation: she is too full of the explosion.
Some of the others are telling the story. Seraphina and Aramil are quiet. Lachlan and Leocanto are doing most of the talking, with Daisy, Rholor, Dorian, and Aurelia joining in from time to time. Coll and Cecil move slowly among the group distributing drinks, and Quint is tinkering with his mechanical armour. A large group of inhabitants of Daring Heights – are they still its inhabitants? – are listening solemnly, asking hesitant questions. It’s the middle of the night but no one seems interested in sleeping.
Rholor and Leocanto are describing the preparations that were made for the defence of the town: the magical wards placed on the gates and near the portal, the illusions of hostile terrain in front of the north and east gates, the barrels of pitch outside the west gate. It was a mild day, and it’s a mild night now, so far away, back in Faerûn. A typical Greengrass day.
Now Daisy and Lachlan are telling how the party of twelve waited all day on the walls of the town, watching the distant fort and the horizon beyond, knowing that the town’s main forces were massed there to intercept the orcish attack. How, at nightfall, by the light of a bright moon, the enemy became visible – most of them attacking the fort, but one company avoiding that battle and heading toward Daring. Aramil mentions seeing blasts of fire at the fort. A thought struggles to the surface of Taffeta’s clanging brain: it isn’t Greengrass day any more. Aila’s birthday is over. She missed it.
Aila is clinging to her arm but listening intently to Lachlan’s narration. He’s vividly describing the hundred or more grotesque blue creatures that the twelve saw coming down the road. He dwells especially on their leader – nine feet tall, three-headed and three-armed, horribly deformed, and wielding three chain-linked glowing rods – who he calls ‘Xvugly’. Lachlan is weaving the story like any other entertaining tale. Is he not taking the situation seriously? Or is he trying to spare the scared refugees by making it all seem like a story?
Taffeta struggles to concentrate on the conversation. The many voices, muffled by the explosion in her head, seem as confused as her own memories of the battle. There was a time when they were up on the wall, raining fireballs and crossbow bolts onto the advancing xvarts and dodging their return attacks. Rholor is talking about the Xvugly’s incredible speed and magical power. Leocanto reports being turned into a sheep and then thrown off the wall by his husband. Dorian is telling how the xvarts magically opened the gate and triggered the wards, consuming the western gate and many xvarts in flames.
Taffeta remembers running. Down from the wall, through the streets. Seraphina and Aramil running ahead of her. The roar and crash of flames and lightning and xvartish fury behind. A shouting voice she didn’t recognize: ‘Xvarts at the north gate!’ Dorian, Leocanto, Rholor, and Lachlan are all talking at once now, apparently recounting further struggles with the xvarts inside the gate. No one, of course, is telling the part of the story that only Taffeta knows: how she was separated from the others, arrived at the portal alone, took up a position in the upper window of a nearby building; how the xvarts and their deformed leader started to pour into the square and, with no allies in sight and struggling to remember this part of their plan, Taffeta started picking them off with her crossbow; how there were too many, far too many, and they trapped her in the building and piled in; how she was burned and slashed and punched until a flurry of magical lights seemed to entrance her attackers and let her escape. She looks over at Leocanto, who smiles at her and gives a slight nod. Is he acknowledging her silent gratitude, or just displaying his usual charm?
Though the voices are still muted and overlapping, she is beginning to understand what was happening elsewhere. Aramil and Seraphina had arrived at the square and lay in wait. Aurelia was in her house, watching in panic as the xvarts constructed some kind of magical force-field around the portal, powered by three arcane machines; despairing as the towering three-headed xvart, protected by the field, started to chant into the portal, corrupting and twisting it. The others were gathering at the Three-headed Ettin with Coll and Cecil, planning and strategizing. The sound of a fire-blast from across town brought the news that more enemies had breached the north gate.
Taffeta feels Idari’s weight leaning on the side of her sore and blood-stained torso. The sleeping girl looks peaceful and untroubled. What visions made her insist the family must leave their home and go to Daring? Why were they there? And now, why are they here, homeless and frightened, under the open sky on a small island in the Sea of Swords? Was this part of Idari’s vision?
Rholor is describing his plan to defend the portal. Daisy, Seraphina, Aramil, and Lachlan tell of their various gambits to distract the xvarts and draw them away from the centre of the square. Taffeta remembers hearing the shouts and seeing buildings shatter; firing into the square; being engulfed in noxious gas; hearing another strange, animal-like voice shout ‘More have got through – orcs too!’ Leocanto has an arm around Lachlan’s shoulder and is telling the attentive crowd how his husband destroyed one of the generators with a blast of lightning. Aurelia recalls dispelling the magic of a second generator.
Taffeta feels she is drifting further away from the conversation, being pulled into the explosion that still roars inside her head. The voices and faces are fading away. Images and sounds of battle fill her mind. Flashes and groans and screeches. A huge animal bounding into view, long and lithe and spotted, shouting to Lachlan in a half-human growl: ‘They fucking lost’. Lachlan glancing in the direction of Daring’s Hope, a look of horror on his face. Inside the wavering force-field, a sudden flash of light and, where there was nothing before, the sight of Dorian clutching Rholor by the arm. Rholor stretching out his other hand toward the Xvugly, spewing forth a cloud of black pestilence. The Xvugly screaming, breaking out in boils and blood, falling to the ground. The magical field flickering out. The portal itself starting to flicker, bulge, and warp.
Then the explosion.
And after that, nothing. Peace. A whisper in her ear. A feeling of magical life-energy pouring into her. Pain. Lachlan’s bloodied face, studded with fragments of brick and glass. The explosion trapped inside her. The night sky visible through the torn roof of the building. Silence broken by the voices of her allies calling to each other. ‘Are you hurt?’ ‘Who’s down?’ ‘Any xvarts left?’ ‘Stay there, I’ll help you.’
Back on the island, back in the present, Aurelia’s voice. Exhausted, flat, detached, she’s explaining what happened to the portal. Taffeta doesn’t follow the details. It was lucky it wasn’t completely destroyed, Aurelia is saying. Seraphina tells of the were-leopard – so that’s what it was – running through the rubble to bring news of more than a thousand orcs on the march from the fort toward the town. Taffeta remembers looking around at the battered group. Everyone alive, barely. Everyone knowing that the twelve of them could do nothing to hold the town against those orcs. Everyone trying not to think of their friends at the fort and what might have become of them.
‘So we came here,’ Aurelia concludes. ‘And closed the portal behind us.’
Nobody says the rest. The xvarts are defeated, apparently. Their plan for the portal, whatever it was, is thwarted. But the orcs have Daring Heights. Whatever is left of it. The way back is gone. The defenders of Daring’s Hope are dead, captured, or stranded in Kantas.
Everyone is silent. A few start to get up and go to their sleeping-places. Taffeta feels Nerry squeeze her shoulder and looks at him with as much of a smile as she can muster. Her face feels numb and burning with pain at the same time. She thinks there are tears on her cheeks but it’s hard to tell. She looks at Aila, who is staring into the distance. She almost says ‘happy birthday’ before realizing the bitter joke it would seem. She says, ‘I’m sorry.’
She’s sitting under a starry sky, holding her daughters tightly to her sides and with Nerry’s arms around all of them. Others are sitting all around, talking. She can hardly feel her family’s touch or hear her companions’ conversation: she is too full of the explosion.
Some of the others are telling the story. Seraphina and Aramil are quiet. Lachlan and Leocanto are doing most of the talking, with Daisy, Rholor, Dorian, and Aurelia joining in from time to time. Coll and Cecil move slowly among the group distributing drinks, and Quint is tinkering with his mechanical armour. A large group of inhabitants of Daring Heights – are they still its inhabitants? – are listening solemnly, asking hesitant questions. It’s the middle of the night but no one seems interested in sleeping.
Rholor and Leocanto are describing the preparations that were made for the defence of the town: the magical wards placed on the gates and near the portal, the illusions of hostile terrain in front of the north and east gates, the barrels of pitch outside the west gate. It was a mild day, and it’s a mild night now, so far away, back in Faerûn. A typical Greengrass day.
Now Daisy and Lachlan are telling how the party of twelve waited all day on the walls of the town, watching the distant fort and the horizon beyond, knowing that the town’s main forces were massed there to intercept the orcish attack. How, at nightfall, by the light of a bright moon, the enemy became visible – most of them attacking the fort, but one company avoiding that battle and heading toward Daring. Aramil mentions seeing blasts of fire at the fort. A thought struggles to the surface of Taffeta’s clanging brain: it isn’t Greengrass day any more. Aila’s birthday is over. She missed it.
Aila is clinging to her arm but listening intently to Lachlan’s narration. He’s vividly describing the hundred or more grotesque blue creatures that the twelve saw coming down the road. He dwells especially on their leader – nine feet tall, three-headed and three-armed, horribly deformed, and wielding three chain-linked glowing rods – who he calls ‘Xvugly’. Lachlan is weaving the story like any other entertaining tale. Is he not taking the situation seriously? Or is he trying to spare the scared refugees by making it all seem like a story?
Taffeta struggles to concentrate on the conversation. The many voices, muffled by the explosion in her head, seem as confused as her own memories of the battle. There was a time when they were up on the wall, raining fireballs and crossbow bolts onto the advancing xvarts and dodging their return attacks. Rholor is talking about the Xvugly’s incredible speed and magical power. Leocanto reports being turned into a sheep and then thrown off the wall by his husband. Dorian is telling how the xvarts magically opened the gate and triggered the wards, consuming the western gate and many xvarts in flames.
Taffeta remembers running. Down from the wall, through the streets. Seraphina and Aramil running ahead of her. The roar and crash of flames and lightning and xvartish fury behind. A shouting voice she didn’t recognize: ‘Xvarts at the north gate!’ Dorian, Leocanto, Rholor, and Lachlan are all talking at once now, apparently recounting further struggles with the xvarts inside the gate. No one, of course, is telling the part of the story that only Taffeta knows: how she was separated from the others, arrived at the portal alone, took up a position in the upper window of a nearby building; how the xvarts and their deformed leader started to pour into the square and, with no allies in sight and struggling to remember this part of their plan, Taffeta started picking them off with her crossbow; how there were too many, far too many, and they trapped her in the building and piled in; how she was burned and slashed and punched until a flurry of magical lights seemed to entrance her attackers and let her escape. She looks over at Leocanto, who smiles at her and gives a slight nod. Is he acknowledging her silent gratitude, or just displaying his usual charm?
Though the voices are still muted and overlapping, she is beginning to understand what was happening elsewhere. Aramil and Seraphina had arrived at the square and lay in wait. Aurelia was in her house, watching in panic as the xvarts constructed some kind of magical force-field around the portal, powered by three arcane machines; despairing as the towering three-headed xvart, protected by the field, started to chant into the portal, corrupting and twisting it. The others were gathering at the Three-headed Ettin with Coll and Cecil, planning and strategizing. The sound of a fire-blast from across town brought the news that more enemies had breached the north gate.
Taffeta feels Idari’s weight leaning on the side of her sore and blood-stained torso. The sleeping girl looks peaceful and untroubled. What visions made her insist the family must leave their home and go to Daring? Why were they there? And now, why are they here, homeless and frightened, under the open sky on a small island in the Sea of Swords? Was this part of Idari’s vision?
Rholor is describing his plan to defend the portal. Daisy, Seraphina, Aramil, and Lachlan tell of their various gambits to distract the xvarts and draw them away from the centre of the square. Taffeta remembers hearing the shouts and seeing buildings shatter; firing into the square; being engulfed in noxious gas; hearing another strange, animal-like voice shout ‘More have got through – orcs too!’ Leocanto has an arm around Lachlan’s shoulder and is telling the attentive crowd how his husband destroyed one of the generators with a blast of lightning. Aurelia recalls dispelling the magic of a second generator.
Taffeta feels she is drifting further away from the conversation, being pulled into the explosion that still roars inside her head. The voices and faces are fading away. Images and sounds of battle fill her mind. Flashes and groans and screeches. A huge animal bounding into view, long and lithe and spotted, shouting to Lachlan in a half-human growl: ‘They fucking lost’. Lachlan glancing in the direction of Daring’s Hope, a look of horror on his face. Inside the wavering force-field, a sudden flash of light and, where there was nothing before, the sight of Dorian clutching Rholor by the arm. Rholor stretching out his other hand toward the Xvugly, spewing forth a cloud of black pestilence. The Xvugly screaming, breaking out in boils and blood, falling to the ground. The magical field flickering out. The portal itself starting to flicker, bulge, and warp.
Then the explosion.
And after that, nothing. Peace. A whisper in her ear. A feeling of magical life-energy pouring into her. Pain. Lachlan’s bloodied face, studded with fragments of brick and glass. The explosion trapped inside her. The night sky visible through the torn roof of the building. Silence broken by the voices of her allies calling to each other. ‘Are you hurt?’ ‘Who’s down?’ ‘Any xvarts left?’ ‘Stay there, I’ll help you.’
Back on the island, back in the present, Aurelia’s voice. Exhausted, flat, detached, she’s explaining what happened to the portal. Taffeta doesn’t follow the details. It was lucky it wasn’t completely destroyed, Aurelia is saying. Seraphina tells of the were-leopard – so that’s what it was – running through the rubble to bring news of more than a thousand orcs on the march from the fort toward the town. Taffeta remembers looking around at the battered group. Everyone alive, barely. Everyone knowing that the twelve of them could do nothing to hold the town against those orcs. Everyone trying not to think of their friends at the fort and what might have become of them.
‘So we came here,’ Aurelia concludes. ‘And closed the portal behind us.’
Nobody says the rest. The xvarts are defeated, apparently. Their plan for the portal, whatever it was, is thwarted. But the orcs have Daring Heights. Whatever is left of it. The way back is gone. The defenders of Daring’s Hope are dead, captured, or stranded in Kantas.
Everyone is silent. A few start to get up and go to their sleeping-places. Taffeta feels Nerry squeeze her shoulder and looks at him with as much of a smile as she can muster. Her face feels numb and burning with pain at the same time. She thinks there are tears on her cheeks but it’s hard to tell. She looks at Aila, who is staring into the distance. She almost says ‘happy birthday’ before realizing the bitter joke it would seem. She says, ‘I’m sorry.’
