Diary of Mørk Gnomslayer
Franklin needs to learn....
Franklin..needs to learn...
The night is cold. I feel like I've been carrying Franklin for a long time, even though it's only been a few hours since we set out from the Stead. The slope didnt seem like much at the time, but the constant uphill has started to take its toll, and the air has changed from cool to cold. Freezing. The last rays of the sun are just disappearing behind the horizon, bouncing off the hardened tundra soil and shooting off into the cloudless sky.
I had been staring at it so long I lost track of if it was blue that looked black or black that still held a faint memory of blue. I turn my gaze lower, now, as the ground begins to level out.
Wild torches are evident in the distance, and pretty soon I hear a shuffling nearby. We pass the first guard - a hard man, sure, but he has the untrained look of a farmer, still trying to get the feel for the leather skins he has draped around him. Steel boots and gauntlets clink in the night, the sound sharp and suprisingly close before quickly getting swept away in the windy howl.
I'm close to him now - a few paces away, but where he is wrapped in furs, I am wrapped in shadows and go unnoticed. He turns from me and I see steam in the dark - he's stepped away from camp to relieve himself.
I continue closer in.
'Where are we?', Franklin asks.
'Somewhere that we could be.' I answer. The wind howls and a deeper understanding of my purpose is also swept away.
We've entered the camp now - some cargo and debris scattered into a rough perimeter, but otherwise a number of burlap tents seem stark on the hard dirt.
Several small groups huddle around fires near the entrances to these tents, but only one stands apart with any real sense of construction.
At the far end stands what resembles a barn - hastily built, but with strong posts penetrating the firmament, at the very least. Orange light flickers our from under the large door, though it remains closed.
I saunter in the general direction of the people by the fires - they are a mixed group, entirely human from what i can tell. Some are men like the guard I saw earlier, but a fair number are also women, grasping at the tattered cloth of their hoods and clutching at baskets of various possessions, seemingly tossed together haphazardly and at a hurried pace. I do see one youth - a scrawny lad with matted hair. With a wry sigh I note that it's the same color the sky is now.
He is darting back and forth between the campfires and the barn when barn door opens.
Inside is simply another fire and a round, wooden table. Six or seven older men stand around it, these in (mostly) full steel armor. Their swords move against the chainmail as the move and gesture in a lively way, but all I hear is the wind.
One man comes out and head over to sit by the fire with the others, lowering his head behind his knees and slumping his shoulders.
"Is he cold, too?" Franklin asks.
Instead of answering, I draw Franklin from the reins I used to secure him and place him on the ground near the campsite.
I back off.
As soon as Franklin leaves my hands his veiled sheen begins to glisten and glow in the flickering light of the fires. Several guards are nearby, but they have more on their hearts than the cold, and it takes several minutes for them to notice the huge hammer that has just appeared before them.
"Hey.." one nudges another. "What's that there?", pointing.
The man from the barn picks up a tankard and stands tall above the fire, peering out.
"It--" His tankard spills everywhere as he takes a step back, his whole body studdering.
An arrow tears his him in the chest, tearing straight through the steel and gorging him.
He looks down, back up, and back down again as three more smaller arrows hit him like a pincushion. Time stops moving and for a moment it seems even the wind has disappeared. His fingers release the tankard one by one and it drops forward into the fire as he drops backwards into the night.
The liquid hits the flames in a curdling scream of smoke and steam as time resumes. The cry of the fire is engulfed by a larger, harrowing cry from around the ourskirt of the camp. Flaming arrows appearing in the air and formless shapes quickly move in from the shadows, swift and low to the ground.
Slower, a cry arises in the camp, but within the width of a breath, people are running in all directions - some towards the enclosed space of the tents, others into the maw of the night. The men from the barn have stepped out. Their faces show none of the confusion of their camp, but a somber fear.
Even now, it chills me more to see men who know their fate then these North winds ever could.
I've lost track of Franklin in the commotion now, as the camp is overrun by small bodies from the darkness, nimble enough to avoid the few humans trying to fight. These invaders are fully armored, and carry daggers, shields, and bows.
They spring on the folks from the campsite, and the fires sputter beneath the blood.
Hacking and slashing, running after anyone who might have made it away. I look to the barn where one might expect the soilders there to be putting up a last resistance, but I can already see seven armored figures face down in the snow. There are screams as some are beaten with armored fists, before silence. One last member of the camp miraculously finds a clearing and calls out loudly into the night, "GNOMES!" but the night is hungry and the wind takes his cry.
In shadow, I wait. Everything moves faster now but, eventually, slower. The raiders move on and the sky is grey with light.
Sifting through the camp, I find Franklin under the body of a woman, unrecognizable now.
"Franklin," i address him as I wipe off the blood. "We must crush Gnomes."
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