After the calamitous events with the Von Deyls, we set off deep into the shadowy mountains. It was a long and hard journey, and the mountains we traversed didn't make it any easier. The hunger, the hardships and the constant threat of the goblins that roamed the area did not help my mental state; perhaps I was particularly sensitive when I first beheld the dingy grandeur of the ancient ruined city-fortress of the dwarves, lost among those remote peaks for so long. In any case, I remember that I had a terrible omen regarding what we were going to find in it and, as will be seen, my fears were fully justified...
Elysia, 'The Adventures of the Dark Hero', vol. I,
Printed in Riverheim, Arcadia.
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A scream echoed through the cold mountain air, and Elysia drew her sword and went on guard. Snowflakes were falling and an icy wind ruffled her long black hair. She threw her woolen cloak over her right shoulder to free her sword arm.
This mountainous landscape was a perfect place for an ambush, full of holes and rocks.
She glanced up the slope, where a few stunted pines clung to the ground with gnarled, twisted roots, down the slope to the right was an almost sheer drop. There was no sign of danger in either direction; no bandits, or orcs, or any of the other dark things that lurked on those remote heights.
"The noise is coming from up ahead, cat girl." Frey said as he rubbed his chin with a huge armored hand. The dark hero's crimson cloak that fell from his shoulders fluttered furiously in the breeze. "There is a fight going on there."
Uncertainty gripped Elysia. Surely the dark hero was right, for even exhausted from days without sleep, he had sharper senses than she did. The question was whether to stay where they were and wait, or go ahead and find out what was going on. The Mountains were full of potential enemies, and the chances of finding friends were slim. His natural caution prompted him to do nothing.
Frey charged down the stone-strewn path with the huge sword perched on one of his shoulders, and Elysia cursed to herself. Why, for once, couldn't Frey remember that not everyone had the power of a hero?
"Not all of us seek death in combat," she muttered before following him more slowly, for she lacked Frey's sure footing on treacherous terrain.
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Catgirl caught a glimpse of the carnage ahead of them. In the long depression, a band of monstrous green-skinned orcs battled a small group of humans. They were fighting over a fast-moving stream, which ran down the little valley and then disappeared over the edge of the mountain in a cloud of silvery droplets. The waters were red with the blood of men and horses, and it was easy to imagine what had happened: an ambush as the humans crossed the stream.
In the middle of the brook, a huge man in shining armor was facing off against three burly, bow-legged attackers. Swinging the two-handed sword effortlessly, he slashed to the left, then decapitated another enemy with a mighty slash. The force of the blow nearly knocked her off balance, and Elysia realized that the riverbed must be slippery.
On the nearest bank, a man in dark brocade robes chanted an incantation; in his left hand, he burned a ball of fire. A dark-haired warrior, dressed in the deerskin hat and clothing of a hunter, protected the sorcerer from two howling orcs with only a longsword, which he wielded in his left hand.
As Elysia watched, a blond-haired man fell trying to hold on to his entrails, which were spilling out through the gash in his stomach from a scimitar. As he collapsed, the burly, half-naked savages hacked him to pieces. There were only three men left then, and the orcs outnumbered them five to one.
"Orc shit! Prepare to die!" Frey howled as he charged down the slope into the fray.
A huge orc turned to face him, but his face was frozen forever in surprise as Frey lopped off its head with a mighty slash of his greatsword Lævateinn. Emerald-colored blood splattered onto Frey's armored body and, raving and snarling, he charged at the orcs, taking their lives left and right. Wherever the sword fell, corpses remained everywhere.
Elysia came down the slope, running and slipping, and she fell when she reached the bottom of the small valley, where the grass tickled her nose. She rolled to one side of her as a scimitar-wielding monster twice her size unloaded a blow to kill her. She jumped to her feet, ducking to avoid a lunge that could have split her in two, and in response, she severed the enemy's earlobe.
Startled, the orc clutched at his wound in an attempt to stop the blood from flowing down his face, and Elysia took the opportunity to launch an upward thrust, entering the creature's lower jaw and striking its brain. .
As she struggled to free the sword blade, another monster leapt at her, swinging its scimitar over her head. Elysia dropped the weapon to meet the attacker, catching her wrists as she lunged at her. As the orc fell on her, her fetid breath made him sick. The creature dropped its scimitar, and rolling toward the stream, they grappled.
The copper rings that pierced the orc's skin scratched him; the creature was trying to bite his throat with its sharp teeth. As the catgirl squirmed to avoid having her windpipe severed, the orc lowered her head under the water. Elysia's eyes stung, but she still saw the creature smile down at her. Frigid water filled her mouth, and she realized that she had no air in her lungs. He writhed and clawed frantically in order to knock the enemy down; They both rolled, and suddenly Elysia found herself straddling the orc, trying to submerge its head in turn.
The orc grabbed her wrists and pushed toward Elysia; locked in a deadly embrace, they began to roll down the cold stream. Again and again Elysia's head went under the water, and again and again she struggled out of her, panting, to the surface of her, as her sharp stones stabbed at her body. The danger she was in flashed like lightning in her mind as the current and the very momentum of the fight carried them toward the edge of the ravine. Then, Elysia gave up the idea of drowning her opponent and tried to free herself from her.
When her head broke the surface again, she looked for the cloud of spray, the sign that the rill was falling, and, to her horror, she saw that it was only a dozen paces away. From her He redoubled her efforts to free himself, but the orc clung to her as if he were her lover and they continued to roll down the slope.
There were perhaps ten paces to go, and Elysia could hear the roar of the turbulent waters and feel the distortion of the current.
She pulled back her hand and tore at the orc's face; Even though she broke one of her nails from her claw, she ignored him.
There were only five steps left. She clawed at him once more, and the orc's head bounced across the creek bed; at that moment, he loosened his grip. Elysia was almost free now.
And she, all of a sudden, she began to fall through the water and the air, while she was frantically trying to hold on to something, anything. Her claws miraculously managed to rip through the rock and she wanted to cling to the slippery stream bed; the pressure of the icy water on her head and shoulders was almost intolerable. She risked a glance down.
Far in the background she saw the valleys that stretched out at the foot of the mountains, and she realized that the precipice was so deep that the thickets looked like clumps of moss on the landscape. The orc hurtled towards them like a howling greenish drop.
She used the last of her strength to pull herself over the edge and drag herself against the current, holding on with fingers numb from the cold. For an instant, she thought she wasn't going to make it, but then she found herself facedown on the bank of the creek, panting in the bubbling waters.
She crawled onto dry ground and saw that the orcs, their leaders dead, had been defeated. She shrugged off her sodden cloak as she wondered if she was going to catch a chill from the frigid mountain air.