pre-rats story
Rating : PG
Timeframe : 1260
I love this piece, so I'm not going to delete it or remove it from public viewing or the list or anything, but there are some details that just don't fit canon anymore. So it's gotta go. I might salvage some ideas from it, in fact I know I will, and use them elsewhere.
Lyssa urged her horse up the steep incline, her rapid pace sending showers of gravel and clouds of dust flying in her wake. She no longer remembered in which direction behind her the road lay, only that it was a fair distance away. Nor was she certain where she might be headed. She simply pressed on, determined not to lose sight of the demon bird overhead.
“Lyssa!” Rune’s tone was growing agitated, but still he followed.
“What is it?” she snapped. She slowed to let him catch her, while keeping her gaze focused anxiously skyward.
“You do realize this is a trap,” he said, bridging the distance between them.
Strangely, the bird increased its lead only slightly as she waited for him. “I had considered that,” she said, continuing after it. “I’ll deal with it when I get there.”
“This is foolish, Lyss,” he insisted.
“One less demon is one less demon.”
“And if five await you?” he asked. “Or ten? Or twenty?”
Lyssa shrugged, trying to remain as casual as she could. Ski and Tess had chased another demon bird in the opposite direction. She’d be damned if she was going to turn tail and run while her sister took care of everything. “I have you to put me back together,” she said, forcing a grin.
Rune paled. “That’s not funny.”
“Relax,” she said. “I won’t do anything stupid.”
He scowled. “I’m going to hold you to that, even if I have to drag you back to the fort, kicking and screaming.”
“I’d like to see you try.” He just shook his head.
The incline came to an abrupt end, the ground before them dipping down into a narrow, sparsely wooded gully. The demon bird lighted on a nearby tree, far overhead, leaving Lyssa and Rune to wonder what they had been led here for.
The two did not wait long before a demon charged at them from a copse of pine. It was a small demon, apparently no more than the animated corpse of a dog, and Lyssa quickly repelled its attack. As she severed its skull and sent the beast crumbling to the ground, another appeared from the other side. With a wave of his hand, Rune sent this one, no larger than the first, sprawling. Before the monster could recover from his spell, yet another, no more fearsome than the other two, approached. Lyssa quickly disposed of the third demon as well. The two looked to each other in puzzlement as a fourth and then a fifth attacked them, all quickly meeting their ends.
“This is hardly a formidable ambush,” Lyssa commented, effortlessly cleaving the head from yet another demon. The gully was rapidly becoming filled with heaps of jumbled bones as the demons fell, disenchanted, into the materials from which they had been summoned. “If they were all to attack at once, perhaps we might have some difficulty. But, as it is, this does little but keep us occupied.” She gasped sharply as realization struck her, and, from the look on Rune’s face, he had suddenly come to the same conclusion.
Destroying one last demon, she turned her horse back towards the embankment. Rune stopped another from pursuing them with a spell and quickly followed after her.
“Which way to the fort?” she asked, clearing the top of the ridge.
“West,” came his answer as he aimed another blast at two more demons tailing them.
“And just where the hell is west?” she said, impatiently.
“This way.” His horse surged past her and she swung her sword at a demon that nipped at her mount’s flanks as she followed him.
Lyssa was grateful for Rune’s sense of direction as he confidently led the way back to the fort while she swatted demons with her blade. Before long she had completely lost count as to how many of the beasts had thrown themselves at her. She wondered just how long the return trip would take when she had to keep taking the time to strike them down.
The road came back into sight and then the fort. Lyssa paid neither much attention, as she was busy with the meddlesome creatures and their constantly renewed attack on the two of them.
Rune swore and Lyssa turned from the series of demons she was currently beating off their trail. The fort was not far now and there was a commotion at the gates. More than half the fort’s troops were gathered around the largest demon Lyssa had ever seen. Smaller beasts and even skeletal warriors joined the fray.
“So this was their intent,” Lyssa said, batting another beast away with the flat of her blade. “They’ve been so quiet lately because they’ve been planning this. It was a trap, and I fell for it. We all did.”
Rune aimed a spell as they approached the fight and quickly took down one of the skeletons. Lyssa lashed out at the nearest demons as soon as they came into reach, felling one after another with each swing.
Farran and Ilya stood near the gate, cutting down the wave of demons that charged at them. Tristan rallied his men against the skeletons. In the center of the battle, a gruesome, winged beast flailed its massive arms, striking both friend and foe.
Lyssa pressed through the fight, clearing a path to the enormous demon. Suddenly, it seemed her foes began to fall away around her faster than she could swing her blade. She looked up from her grim task of destruction to find Ski beside her.
“So you uncovered the enemy’s deception as well,” Ski observed.
“I only hope it was soon enough,” Lyssa said.
The two cut their way through the fray, rapidly nearing the beast at its center. The monster stood more than twice the height of horse and rider combined. The soldiers stood their ground against the skeletons, but, with no more than a casual swing of its arms, the demon sent men reeling as if it were swatting so many flies.
Ski took as swipe at the demon with her blade. Without even looking her way, it whipped a sturdy snakelike tail at her. She ducked, and the blow, aimed for her head, caught her shoulder. Lyssa took a slash at the tail as it passed her, carving a deep hole across its surface.
After taking a moment to recover from the demon’s strike, Ski swung again. The arm hit by the demon moved shakily and she gripped her weapon with some difficulty. She winced as her blade made contact with the base of the monster’s tail, jarring her injured arm.
Lyssa stabbed at the demon’s haunches. Howling, it turned its attention from knocking down soldiers to dealing with the two of them. A massive boney hand fell between them. Ski and Lyssa dodged to either side of the wicked claws which, instead, struck the earth. Ski wasted no time in bringing her blade down on the creature’s outstretched arm. With a resounding crunch, the demon’s bones shattered. Gasping in pain, Ski let her hand fall from her sword, balancing it precariously in the other as she recoiled from the force of her blow.
“Ski!” Lyssa called. Her horse dove past her sister’s, narrowly permittng her to block the demon’s other hand with the flat of her blade as it came hurtling towards her. Ski backed her horse away, her weapon carefully poised in a defensive position, as Lyssa held the demon’s claws at bay.
The demon pressed her and Lyssa strained to hold her sword. Her arms threatened to give way beneath its force, when suddenly the monster drew back, howling. She relaxed, recovering her grip, and prepared for another advance as Rune steered his horse alongside her.
He turned to Ski. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“I will be fine,” she assured him. “Just not of much use. You can worry about me later. Take care of that thing for now.” He nodded, sending another blast of energy at the demon, which Lyssa followed with a swing at its already injured arm.
To the left, Tess emerged, wading through the flood of lesser monsters to the demon’s side. Without a word, she joined their fight, striking at the demon’s ribs. The creature howled again, waving its good arm in Tess’s direction as its tail swept a handful of soldiers from its wake. Tess sidestepped the attack and stabbed viciously at the demon’s underside.
As the demon turned and exposed its side to her, Lyssa struck it, cleaving a hollow among its ribs. “This is getting us nowhere!” she said, noting the extent of their damage to the beast and its minimal reaction.
“We need to break the enchantment,” Ski agreed, swatting away, one handed, one of the smaller demons that nipped at her.
“I can’t even reach its head, much less get a clean blow,” Lyssa said, dodging and slicing as the creature took another swing at her. “Rune?”
He grimaced. “I think I could bring it down, but I’ll need to get my hands on it.”
Lyssa nodded. “Tess,” she called. Tess looked up, pulling her blade from the demon’s ribs. “I need you to get its attention.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Tess offered, thrusting her sword back into the demon’s side. The creature bellowed and swung at her. The blade caught on the demon’s ribs and Tess could not dodge fast enough. The demon swept her roughly from her mount.
“Tess!” Ski called as she tumbled to the ground. She steered her horse between the demon and her fallen friend, holding her sword in one hand like a shield before her.
Rune started to follow. “No time!” Lyssa cried, sliding her blade beneath one of the monster’s ribs and forcing it out on the other side of the bone. She braced herself against its side before it could turn again, hampering its ability to move. “Now!” she told Rune.
He reached out and took hold of one of the demon’s exposed bones. The creature reared up with a startled cry, wrenching both riders from their saddles. Lyssa let go of her sword, still lodged in its side, and rolled to safety. Rune kept his hold on the monster and, as his magic forced it to the ground, was dragged with it.
Lyssa picked herself up, intending to retrieve her blade, as Rune’s spell pinned the creature down, but before she could do so, Farran appeared at the monster’s head. Farran raised her sword and brought it down, in one swift arc, cleaving the demon’s skull from its shoulders. With a sound like a sudden, violent gust of wind, the creature disintegrated into a heap of decaying flesh and bones.
Pulling her blade from the demon’s remains, Lyssa spotted a black robed figure watching the battle from a hill not far away. Around her, her comrades were rapidly disposing of what little remained of the lesser monsters. Rune staggered, limping slightly, from where he had fallen beside the demon. Lyssa caught him and helped him stand.
“Look,” she said, pointing out the man. “He must be the one controlling them.”
He followed her gaze and nodded before turning his attention to where Ski still stood over Tess.
“She’s alright,” Ski assured him. “Just stunned.”
As the last of the demons crumbled under Farran’s blade, the figure turned and slipped beyond the hill. Sword in hand, Lyssa set out down the road, after him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rune demanded.
“After the mage,” she answered.
“Like hell you are,” he said, his hand closing firmly over her shoulder.
“He’s getting away!”
“Let him.”
She pulled away, knowing he was in little shape to chase her. Someone had to stop the mage before he brought another wave of monsters down on them.
“Lyssa, please,” he said, clutching at her arm.
“I can handle this,“ she snapped. She shoved his hand away and took off at a run towards the hill where she had last spotted the man.
A sudden wave of heat struck her from behind. The sensation was not painful but it was certainly uncomfortable and definitely quite familiar. It traveled swiftly down her spine, taking hold of her legs. She tumbled forward as the lower half of her body ceased to obey and went limp beneath her, barely catching herself on outstretched arms before striking the ground.
Shuffling footsteps approached and Lyssa turned to stare in shock at her companion, now looming over her with arms crossed against his chest and a scowl on his face. Too flabbergasted even to throw at him all the insults that suddenly hovered at the tip of her tongue, she just moved her mouth ineffectively while struggling to find any feeling in her legs.
“I have enough of a mess to clean up here,” Rune said flatly as she sputtered incoherently. “I’m not coming to pick you up after you try to get yourself killed as well.” With that, he turned and limped back to the aftermath of the battle, leaving Lyssa squirming helplessly on the ground.
She wasn’t certain how long she lay there fuming, watching as Rune moved among the injured knights and soldiers. Though some bore serious wounds, amazingly enough, there had been no casualties. Rune was able to mend them all at least well enough to be taken back into the fort without worry. None among the knights sustained more than superficial injuries, and even Rune’s slight limp was quickly healed.
Though she could not make out their words, he was speaking to Ski as the soldiers still incapacitated were taken inside by their comrades. Ski looked pointedly in her direction and asked something of him, which he quickly dismissed with a wave of his hand before turning to approach her himself.
“About time,” she said, forcing herself up onto her arms while the rest of her sagged along the ground. Rune knelt beside her, she assumed to release her from the spell, but instead he scooped her up and threw her, still limp from the waist down, over his shoulder as he rose to his feet.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, flailing at his back with her fists, which, it seemed, the spell had weakened as well, as Rune paid her attack no heed.
“Dragging you back to the fort, kicking and screaming,” he answered and she didn’t need to see his face to picture the grin she knew him to be wearing. “Well, screaming anyway,” he amended. “What does it look like?”
“Put me down!”
“What happened to wanting to see me try?”
Lyssa finally found the voice to unleash the string of curses she’d been holding onto since his spell first hit her. Having cleared that from her system, she ordered again, “Put me down!”
“I really don’t think that would do you much good,” he said calmly. “I’m used to using that spell on demons. Seems I overestimated when I cast it on you.”
She uttered another choice phrase. “What did you have to go and do this to me for anyway?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to abide by your doing anything foolish. You‘re no match for a Cult mage by yourself.”
“I am not a child,” she snapped. “You don’t need to treat me like one.”
“Then stop behaving like one,” he said. “I am sorry I overdid the spell.” She snorted in contempt. “Really, I am. It should wear off before long anyway.”
“Hmph,” she sighed, resigning herself to the humiliation of being carried into the fort while the soldiers looked on.
Timeframe : 1260
I love this piece, so I'm not going to delete it or remove it from public viewing or the list or anything, but there are some details that just don't fit canon anymore. So it's gotta go. I might salvage some ideas from it, in fact I know I will, and use them elsewhere.
Lyssa urged her horse up the steep incline, her rapid pace sending showers of gravel and clouds of dust flying in her wake. She no longer remembered in which direction behind her the road lay, only that it was a fair distance away. Nor was she certain where she might be headed. She simply pressed on, determined not to lose sight of the demon bird overhead.
“Lyssa!” Rune’s tone was growing agitated, but still he followed.
“What is it?” she snapped. She slowed to let him catch her, while keeping her gaze focused anxiously skyward.
“You do realize this is a trap,” he said, bridging the distance between them.
Strangely, the bird increased its lead only slightly as she waited for him. “I had considered that,” she said, continuing after it. “I’ll deal with it when I get there.”
“This is foolish, Lyss,” he insisted.
“One less demon is one less demon.”
“And if five await you?” he asked. “Or ten? Or twenty?”
Lyssa shrugged, trying to remain as casual as she could. Ski and Tess had chased another demon bird in the opposite direction. She’d be damned if she was going to turn tail and run while her sister took care of everything. “I have you to put me back together,” she said, forcing a grin.
Rune paled. “That’s not funny.”
“Relax,” she said. “I won’t do anything stupid.”
He scowled. “I’m going to hold you to that, even if I have to drag you back to the fort, kicking and screaming.”
“I’d like to see you try.” He just shook his head.
The incline came to an abrupt end, the ground before them dipping down into a narrow, sparsely wooded gully. The demon bird lighted on a nearby tree, far overhead, leaving Lyssa and Rune to wonder what they had been led here for.
The two did not wait long before a demon charged at them from a copse of pine. It was a small demon, apparently no more than the animated corpse of a dog, and Lyssa quickly repelled its attack. As she severed its skull and sent the beast crumbling to the ground, another appeared from the other side. With a wave of his hand, Rune sent this one, no larger than the first, sprawling. Before the monster could recover from his spell, yet another, no more fearsome than the other two, approached. Lyssa quickly disposed of the third demon as well. The two looked to each other in puzzlement as a fourth and then a fifth attacked them, all quickly meeting their ends.
“This is hardly a formidable ambush,” Lyssa commented, effortlessly cleaving the head from yet another demon. The gully was rapidly becoming filled with heaps of jumbled bones as the demons fell, disenchanted, into the materials from which they had been summoned. “If they were all to attack at once, perhaps we might have some difficulty. But, as it is, this does little but keep us occupied.” She gasped sharply as realization struck her, and, from the look on Rune’s face, he had suddenly come to the same conclusion.
Destroying one last demon, she turned her horse back towards the embankment. Rune stopped another from pursuing them with a spell and quickly followed after her.
“Which way to the fort?” she asked, clearing the top of the ridge.
“West,” came his answer as he aimed another blast at two more demons tailing them.
“And just where the hell is west?” she said, impatiently.
“This way.” His horse surged past her and she swung her sword at a demon that nipped at her mount’s flanks as she followed him.
Lyssa was grateful for Rune’s sense of direction as he confidently led the way back to the fort while she swatted demons with her blade. Before long she had completely lost count as to how many of the beasts had thrown themselves at her. She wondered just how long the return trip would take when she had to keep taking the time to strike them down.
The road came back into sight and then the fort. Lyssa paid neither much attention, as she was busy with the meddlesome creatures and their constantly renewed attack on the two of them.
Rune swore and Lyssa turned from the series of demons she was currently beating off their trail. The fort was not far now and there was a commotion at the gates. More than half the fort’s troops were gathered around the largest demon Lyssa had ever seen. Smaller beasts and even skeletal warriors joined the fray.
“So this was their intent,” Lyssa said, batting another beast away with the flat of her blade. “They’ve been so quiet lately because they’ve been planning this. It was a trap, and I fell for it. We all did.”
Rune aimed a spell as they approached the fight and quickly took down one of the skeletons. Lyssa lashed out at the nearest demons as soon as they came into reach, felling one after another with each swing.
Farran and Ilya stood near the gate, cutting down the wave of demons that charged at them. Tristan rallied his men against the skeletons. In the center of the battle, a gruesome, winged beast flailed its massive arms, striking both friend and foe.
Lyssa pressed through the fight, clearing a path to the enormous demon. Suddenly, it seemed her foes began to fall away around her faster than she could swing her blade. She looked up from her grim task of destruction to find Ski beside her.
“So you uncovered the enemy’s deception as well,” Ski observed.
“I only hope it was soon enough,” Lyssa said.
The two cut their way through the fray, rapidly nearing the beast at its center. The monster stood more than twice the height of horse and rider combined. The soldiers stood their ground against the skeletons, but, with no more than a casual swing of its arms, the demon sent men reeling as if it were swatting so many flies.
Ski took as swipe at the demon with her blade. Without even looking her way, it whipped a sturdy snakelike tail at her. She ducked, and the blow, aimed for her head, caught her shoulder. Lyssa took a slash at the tail as it passed her, carving a deep hole across its surface.
After taking a moment to recover from the demon’s strike, Ski swung again. The arm hit by the demon moved shakily and she gripped her weapon with some difficulty. She winced as her blade made contact with the base of the monster’s tail, jarring her injured arm.
Lyssa stabbed at the demon’s haunches. Howling, it turned its attention from knocking down soldiers to dealing with the two of them. A massive boney hand fell between them. Ski and Lyssa dodged to either side of the wicked claws which, instead, struck the earth. Ski wasted no time in bringing her blade down on the creature’s outstretched arm. With a resounding crunch, the demon’s bones shattered. Gasping in pain, Ski let her hand fall from her sword, balancing it precariously in the other as she recoiled from the force of her blow.
“Ski!” Lyssa called. Her horse dove past her sister’s, narrowly permittng her to block the demon’s other hand with the flat of her blade as it came hurtling towards her. Ski backed her horse away, her weapon carefully poised in a defensive position, as Lyssa held the demon’s claws at bay.
The demon pressed her and Lyssa strained to hold her sword. Her arms threatened to give way beneath its force, when suddenly the monster drew back, howling. She relaxed, recovering her grip, and prepared for another advance as Rune steered his horse alongside her.
He turned to Ski. “Are you alright?” he asked.
“I will be fine,” she assured him. “Just not of much use. You can worry about me later. Take care of that thing for now.” He nodded, sending another blast of energy at the demon, which Lyssa followed with a swing at its already injured arm.
To the left, Tess emerged, wading through the flood of lesser monsters to the demon’s side. Without a word, she joined their fight, striking at the demon’s ribs. The creature howled again, waving its good arm in Tess’s direction as its tail swept a handful of soldiers from its wake. Tess sidestepped the attack and stabbed viciously at the demon’s underside.
As the demon turned and exposed its side to her, Lyssa struck it, cleaving a hollow among its ribs. “This is getting us nowhere!” she said, noting the extent of their damage to the beast and its minimal reaction.
“We need to break the enchantment,” Ski agreed, swatting away, one handed, one of the smaller demons that nipped at her.
“I can’t even reach its head, much less get a clean blow,” Lyssa said, dodging and slicing as the creature took another swing at her. “Rune?”
He grimaced. “I think I could bring it down, but I’ll need to get my hands on it.”
Lyssa nodded. “Tess,” she called. Tess looked up, pulling her blade from the demon’s ribs. “I need you to get its attention.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Tess offered, thrusting her sword back into the demon’s side. The creature bellowed and swung at her. The blade caught on the demon’s ribs and Tess could not dodge fast enough. The demon swept her roughly from her mount.
“Tess!” Ski called as she tumbled to the ground. She steered her horse between the demon and her fallen friend, holding her sword in one hand like a shield before her.
Rune started to follow. “No time!” Lyssa cried, sliding her blade beneath one of the monster’s ribs and forcing it out on the other side of the bone. She braced herself against its side before it could turn again, hampering its ability to move. “Now!” she told Rune.
He reached out and took hold of one of the demon’s exposed bones. The creature reared up with a startled cry, wrenching both riders from their saddles. Lyssa let go of her sword, still lodged in its side, and rolled to safety. Rune kept his hold on the monster and, as his magic forced it to the ground, was dragged with it.
Lyssa picked herself up, intending to retrieve her blade, as Rune’s spell pinned the creature down, but before she could do so, Farran appeared at the monster’s head. Farran raised her sword and brought it down, in one swift arc, cleaving the demon’s skull from its shoulders. With a sound like a sudden, violent gust of wind, the creature disintegrated into a heap of decaying flesh and bones.
Pulling her blade from the demon’s remains, Lyssa spotted a black robed figure watching the battle from a hill not far away. Around her, her comrades were rapidly disposing of what little remained of the lesser monsters. Rune staggered, limping slightly, from where he had fallen beside the demon. Lyssa caught him and helped him stand.
“Look,” she said, pointing out the man. “He must be the one controlling them.”
He followed her gaze and nodded before turning his attention to where Ski still stood over Tess.
“She’s alright,” Ski assured him. “Just stunned.”
As the last of the demons crumbled under Farran’s blade, the figure turned and slipped beyond the hill. Sword in hand, Lyssa set out down the road, after him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rune demanded.
“After the mage,” she answered.
“Like hell you are,” he said, his hand closing firmly over her shoulder.
“He’s getting away!”
“Let him.”
She pulled away, knowing he was in little shape to chase her. Someone had to stop the mage before he brought another wave of monsters down on them.
“Lyssa, please,” he said, clutching at her arm.
“I can handle this,“ she snapped. She shoved his hand away and took off at a run towards the hill where she had last spotted the man.
A sudden wave of heat struck her from behind. The sensation was not painful but it was certainly uncomfortable and definitely quite familiar. It traveled swiftly down her spine, taking hold of her legs. She tumbled forward as the lower half of her body ceased to obey and went limp beneath her, barely catching herself on outstretched arms before striking the ground.
Shuffling footsteps approached and Lyssa turned to stare in shock at her companion, now looming over her with arms crossed against his chest and a scowl on his face. Too flabbergasted even to throw at him all the insults that suddenly hovered at the tip of her tongue, she just moved her mouth ineffectively while struggling to find any feeling in her legs.
“I have enough of a mess to clean up here,” Rune said flatly as she sputtered incoherently. “I’m not coming to pick you up after you try to get yourself killed as well.” With that, he turned and limped back to the aftermath of the battle, leaving Lyssa squirming helplessly on the ground.
She wasn’t certain how long she lay there fuming, watching as Rune moved among the injured knights and soldiers. Though some bore serious wounds, amazingly enough, there had been no casualties. Rune was able to mend them all at least well enough to be taken back into the fort without worry. None among the knights sustained more than superficial injuries, and even Rune’s slight limp was quickly healed.
Though she could not make out their words, he was speaking to Ski as the soldiers still incapacitated were taken inside by their comrades. Ski looked pointedly in her direction and asked something of him, which he quickly dismissed with a wave of his hand before turning to approach her himself.
“About time,” she said, forcing herself up onto her arms while the rest of her sagged along the ground. Rune knelt beside her, she assumed to release her from the spell, but instead he scooped her up and threw her, still limp from the waist down, over his shoulder as he rose to his feet.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, flailing at his back with her fists, which, it seemed, the spell had weakened as well, as Rune paid her attack no heed.
“Dragging you back to the fort, kicking and screaming,” he answered and she didn’t need to see his face to picture the grin she knew him to be wearing. “Well, screaming anyway,” he amended. “What does it look like?”
“Put me down!”
“What happened to wanting to see me try?”
Lyssa finally found the voice to unleash the string of curses she’d been holding onto since his spell first hit her. Having cleared that from her system, she ordered again, “Put me down!”
“I really don’t think that would do you much good,” he said calmly. “I’m used to using that spell on demons. Seems I overestimated when I cast it on you.”
She uttered another choice phrase. “What did you have to go and do this to me for anyway?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to abide by your doing anything foolish. You‘re no match for a Cult mage by yourself.”
“I am not a child,” she snapped. “You don’t need to treat me like one.”
“Then stop behaving like one,” he said. “I am sorry I overdid the spell.” She snorted in contempt. “Really, I am. It should wear off before long anyway.”
“Hmph,” she sighed, resigning herself to the humiliation of being carried into the fort while the soldiers looked on.