Battle of Isenloft

In the Third Age, the Old Ones spread across the land, an invasion beyond understanding, beyond the reality of those who called Rathe home. Cities fell, civilizations were consumed. Beleaguered refugees gathered to the remaining Ancients, elemental titans of the natural order. And at three of humanity's remaining bastions, the brave held their ground. Aldengrove to sustain them, Valahai to empower them, and fierce Isenloft to guard them all.

The scream rent the air as a ravenir talon tore the Wayfarer's leather armor. His crackling bow dropped to the stone walkway. He looked down, wide-eyed, at his gaping abdomen, the reddened worms of his own entrails poking out like a tongue from a grinning face. He opened his actual mouth to scream again, but Jarl was having none of it. Fear was contagious, a fever that weakened everyone it touched.

The attacking ravenir clambered over the battlement, jaws snapping on oversized teeth built for fighting. Its legs gripped the cold Isenloft stone with the brushy feet of a scorpion while its talon-tipped arms reached for the Wayfarer's fellow archers who now scrambled to get clear.

Jarl swung his polearm with a half measure of his full might. The jagged head of the weapon caught the wounded Wayfarer in the back and smashed him into the ravenir. Both exploded in a meaty storm of viscera that rained down upon the enemies clambering up Isenloft's sheer walls.

The Wayfarer's companions lowered their bows and stared at Jarl, horrified. One ranger stepped forward as if to challenge him, but another grabbed her by the arm. Jarl heard his name hissed in her ear, saw the ranger's face blanch.

Their commander, Kalsharpe, shouted at them to keep firing. The order spurred them back into action, their lightning arrows picking ravenirs off the wall with admirable accuracy, leaving Jarl the remaining few to meet one on one.

An enemy head appeared atop the parapet. Jarl reached over and wrapped his gauntleted hand around its mottled scalp. The creature squealed and wriggled, but Jarl held tight and squeezed until the skull gave way and the thrashing stopped. He let the carcass drop into the seething mass of enemies below and deemed this section of the wall 'under control', for now.

He strode on, seeking the next trouble spot. Wayfarers, wizards, Rosetta, and guardians shrank out of his way. Whether Isenloft veterans or fresh-faced trainees from Enion, all knew the reputation of Jarl Vetreiđi.

"Never get between Jarl and something he means to kill," he'd overheard Oldhim say to a batch of new guardians.

He glanced down at the bailey. Oldhim, flanked by Ragnar and Valgard, rallied another shield wall across the breach where the north-western tower had stood only a week ago.

Women and men, clad head to foot in steel, braced tower shields against a heaving stream of monsters.

Synveri directed Valahai runeblades through carefully timed gaps to strike down the Old Ones' creations with glowing blades and glittering symbols of arcane potency.

Kalsharpe fired a bolt of lightning, a signal to the thousands of archers arrayed around her. Moments later, the sky was thick with missiles of ice that showered down upon the besieging horde, flattening entire fields of ravenirs in a deadly deluge.

The Old Ones answered the attack with an otherworldly howl that echoed across the mountain peaks and drove many a frightened mind to the brink of madness. In response, the ravenirs swelled like fleshy siege engines preparing to strike. They belched great balls of bilious poison that streaked toward Isenloft and broke upon its towers and mighty keep. Rangers tumbled from the battlements, lungs scorched, faces melted.

From the observatory at Isenloft's summit, wizards used the Isenhowl Weathervane to burst the Old Ones' meaty machines with jagged comets of ice. Jarl's keen eyes picked out Syberys, resplendent in his white robes, gesticulating wildly as he split the air with lightning, targeting the membrane-winged monsters that preyed upon the citadel's loftiest recesses. Ravenirs exploded in clouds of spark and sinew, but some made it through to pluck mages from the tower, only to drop them to their doom upon the ragged rocks below.

Jarl looked out over the Old Ones' horde. A sea of enslaved life from all across Rathe. The flesh, blood and bone of a continent's creatures, consumed and regurgitated into forms beyond even the most twisted of imaginations.

Was there no end? No hope of victory? While others trembled at the sight, Jarl gripped his trusty polearm and snarled behind his helm. He was born for this. He would die for this. If it helped the Ollin, if it helped humanity, all the better. He'd kill until he was killed.

He caught movement to his right and casually backhanded a foe as it mounted the parapet. Further along, through the cloud of red mist down in the breach, another apparition appeared, huffing fetid breath from its six slavering maws.

Glutgorr. Mountain of Meat. A giant grown from a multitude of willing bodies. A singular aberrant baby born from a thousand mothers.

Anticipation stirred Jarl's blood. This was a monster worthy of his personal attention. A bottomless vessel into which he could pour his immeasurable violence.

He spared a glance for Oldhim, the one Ollin he could trust with this moment. The one man who might understand. Oldhim had seen Glutgorr through the breach in the wall and was already shouting his preparations. He looked up from the bailey, as if sensing Jarl's resolution. Their eyes met and a nod was all it took. An acknowledgement. A farewell.

Jarl leapt from the wall, savored the rush of cool air, the suspended moments almost peaceful as he plunged into the fray. He landed hard upon Glutgorr's largest head. The resulting impact stove a crater into the creature's cranium. Brains bubbled through cracks and tremors shattered the bone beneath Jarl's boots. Five other heads turned his way, their necks elongating as hungry maws gaped.

Knowing he would need its strength for what came next, Jarl looked to the Ancient that loomed large across the battlefield. Galcia stood taller than the highest tower of Isenloft, a titanic figure of ice. From its sides, avalanches crashed down upon the ravenirs, crushing hundreds. Its lower half roiled as water thawed and froze in a perpetual cycle that propelled the Ancient onwards, plowing everything in its path into the ground.

He drew on Galcia's raw power, claiming it as his own. As Glutgorr's heads reached for him, mandibles wide, glistening with bile, Jarl swung his polearm with every ounce of his prodigious strength. The hook bit deep between eyes like orbs of gelatinous phlegm, and through cold steel, Jarl channeled the chill of a thousand winters.

Frost engulfed the creature's head, turning its eyes milky white like a glacial river. Jarl tugged his polearm free. The frozen cranium lolled, snapped free of its neck, and rolled down to crush the close-packed ravenirs below.

Another head lunged at Jarl, faster than thought, knocking him off his feet, sending his polearm bouncing across Glutgorr's scaly skin. Sensing victory, it pressed its attack, meaning to swallow him whole, but Jarl caught its mandibles, one in each hand, and ripped them clean off the monster's face. Blood painted him red, head to foot, yet the thick fluid froze and cracked away as he rose to his feet, chilled by the hoarfrost that now glittered across his armor. Howling like a berserker, he drove the mandibles into the thing's eyes, popping them like blisters to pierce the brain beyond.

The head slumped lifelessly, but another was all too eager to replace it. This one, with a mouthful of tentacles, struck from behind, wrapping its writhing appendages around his legs and dragging him into its mouth. Jarl barely had time to grab the handle of his polearm as he was swallowed whole like a rat down the throat of a snake.

To those looking down from the fortress, the battle seemed to slow. The ravenirs crawled sluggishly, as if wading through drifts. Arrows floated down like flakes of snow. The roar of the ravenous multitude was muffled. The aching in muscles, the stinging of wounds, all somehow dulled.

Ollin looked to Ollin, disbelief writ large on their flushed faces. The best of them, the worst of them; no matter what they thought of Jarl, they all thought the same-when a man like that fell, what hope remained for the rest of them? One by one they looked away, resumed the fight, the world around them restoring its frantic tempo.

Only Oldhim continued to watch. Only Oldhim saw the first geyser of gore from Glutgorr's flank. He raised his hammer and bellowed a single word at the top of his graveled voice; "VETREIĐI!"

As if to punctuate his cry, a bloodied hook burst through the immense monster's skin. With a wet ripping of sinew and hide, a great tear appeared, and out spilled a ragged figure drenched in guts and filth. Though his armor was bent and buckled, his cloak in shreds, Jarl Vetreiđi rose proudly, alive and resolute while the surrounding ravenirs fled their now toppling giant. It hit the ground with such force that the earth cracked, the impact sending the Old Ones' minions tumbling into the chasm.

A cheer swept across the walls of Isenloft, a wave of hope inspired by this singular moment of survival. Jarl himself trudged through the wet wreckage he had wrought, weary yet satisfied as he admired his own handiwork.

The moment was short-lived.

From one side of the chasm, six heads bubbled into existence from sinuous necks. On the other side rose six more. Ravenirs that had previously fled now surged toward Glutgorr to forge its flesh anew. By the hundred they melted into that simmering stew, two gigantic forms growing larger still until they towered over Jarl-leering twin monuments to Ollin futility, to human fatality.

Jarl looked up at those beastly brothers as he dug deep into his own soul, driving mental fists through mixed feelings until he grasped something solid, something enduring, and dragged it to the surface. A lump of pure, cold fury.

Icy waters flowed through his veins, extinguishing the fires of pain. He hefted his polearm and called upon Galcia to imbue him once more with the desolation of winter.

Only stillness answered him.

Blinking the sudden sweat from his eyes, he turned to the Ancient. The titan stood unmoving. Across its vast body, cracks had appeared, crevasses gleaming with elemental power. Yet none that he could reach.

Ravenirs swarmed up Galcia's sides, blackening it with their clambering bodies. They clad the Ancient in hide and chitin and fur and scales. Ice chattered and screamed as they dug at the Ancient with claws and talons and pincers and teeth. They spread over Galcia until the elemental seemed a mountain of meat, just like Glutgorr, just like any of the Old Ones' greatest creations.

Jarl watched until he could stomach it no more, until his fury cracked and burst. With a heedless bellow, he turned to face the closest Glutgorr. The creature opened its maws to greet him, ready to swallow him for good this time. Jarl didn't care. He would hack and destroy. He would go down swinging until his very last-

A flash in the sky, over the mountains to the south. Then another to the east, brighter, painting the clouds a gleaming silver.

The thunder followed, first from the east, sharp as shattering rock, then from the south, a deep, rumbling bass.

Jarl felt it in the ground beneath his feet, resonating up through his bones, the realization touching even his ice-locked heart.

Yvor. Davnir. They were gone.

He looked to Galcia, saw the white-cold that now shone through the smothering blanket of ravenirs. Raw, elemental power, contained for an eon, releasing at last.

The concussion blew him off his feet. He planted his polearm and twisted around to meet a wall of white. Ravenirs froze solid where they stood. Glutgorr, first one, then the other, reeled back from the blizzard, only to topple and shatter like porcelain statues.

Jarl couldn't move, his armor locked in place, his flesh growing heavier with every passing moment. His lips stiffened into a scowl, and in his cooling brain, huddled one final thought.

The war was over. For now.