The Lost and Forgotten, Part 1

The small scattering of trees enshrouded the small squad in a thin cloak of foliage. Their progress through the undergrowth was marked by the cracking of twigs and the muffled cursing of the armoured infantrymen. 'Quiet' one of the men hissed, by his rank markings the sergeant, 'Do you want the whole fraggin' enemy force down on us.' Most of the group stiffened, and made a conscious effort to reduce the noise they emitted. 'Sarge' One of the soldiers next to him hissed, 'We haven't seen those bastards in days, do you think its likely us of the whole regiment meet them now?'. The squad winced almost as a whole, whatever you did, you didn't bait fate, because you might need him the next time you found yourself faced with a barrel of a large callibre pistol. Without ceremony, the forest was suddenly alive with the sound of gunfire, and the squad hit the floor of the wood, mostly with their pulses racing. 'Move!' The sergeant bellowed, his weapon already up and firing at their unseen adversaries, before he'd even raised himself to his knees. 'They've got the pin on us, just move!' His cry had barely left his mouth before a shell landed and three of the squad were ripped apart by shrapnel. The sergeant ran to the site of the impact, and hauled something from the crater, firing as he moved.

The steady rain of projectiles shredded the forest as the squad fell back, all sense of formation lost as the retreat descended into a rout. The sergeant ducked behind one of the stouter trunks, as his men fled around him. "Command, Section 3 Alpha is coming under concentrated and sustained assault by the enemy." He yelled into the long range communications unit that he had liberated from the back of one of the fallen soldiers. "We're being forced back. If you don't do something soon-" he continued, before a mortar shell shredded a tree next to him, covering him in a rain of splintered wood and shredded foliage. When the haze left behind evaporated, he looked down at the comm-unit, to find a foot-long spar protruding from it's casing, and the electronics firing and stalling erratically. "Sh*t" he cried, and tossed the comm-unit aside, as it began to smoulder. With that, he scrambled to his feet and followed his scattered troops.

Sergeant-Major Malicant Foivre awoke with a slight shudder. That'd been three years previously, on a planet he no longer cared to remember the name of. His squad had run right into the heart of an ambush that'd been waiting for them three miles along their line of retreat. The abruptness of his waking had nothing to do with the trauma he had suffered, but rather to do with the trauma that had followed it. His unit was listed as being entirely destroyed, and the memory of their mutilated and desecrated bodies still turned his stomach. He had managed to avoid the ambush because of his late arrival, and managed to find an alternate route towards their field base. When he reached it, he found it in flames. He managed to commandeer a small biwheeled vehicle left behind and drive back towards the Command Head-quarters. He was accepted back into a refugee camp, to be processed, a few miles out from the building, and was found to be listed as killed in action. He was then told that he could take a fresh serial code, and continue to serve, or join one of the crews who were part of the army's auxilliary staff. He chose to continue serving, preferring it to the life of the pions who's job it was to manufacture munitions, and lay roads through the seemingly impenatrable forests. Stick to what you know, his father had told him in his youth, and so he did. He received his orders, and joined the one unit of the collected armies who's sole purpose was to account for anomalies like him: The First Irregulars

The Lost and the Forgotten.

Pearl in the Hilt, Part Four

The flame danced merrily upon the rope, the wind of the open plains marring it's progress but dispersing the black smoke which rose from the flame nicely. The kobold within the cage looked at the flame in an amused sort of way, the light reflecting in its eyes and giving light to an otherwise dull face that did little to conceal the kobold's facination, and ill-gotten mirth at its situation. However, the guards had more pressing issues on their mind, most pressingly how to ensure that the young sire Markelhay made the final stroke upon the small lithe and tricky, and too little interest in dealing with Kobolds to recognise but their most common emotion as seen upon the plains; that of terror. The flame danced its dance to the conclusion, going out just before the cage was released. The guard in charge of the release cursed mildly, made his excuses, and jumped off his horse, tinderbox in hand to relight the, mostly, charred and blackened rope. As he neared the cage, one hand clutching the rope, the kobold spewed another gout of flame that took the guard in the centre of his chest, knocking him backwards onto the ground, and burning the length of the rope through.

The cage clanked through, and the kobold slipped through the newly created gap, while the horsemen were still milling about in confusion as their horses reared and whinneyed. The horizon held no easy options for the kobold, as the nearest cover was the city of Fallcrest, less than a mile to the north-east was less than inviting. The kobold took off at speed to the south, it's limbs pushing it far faster than would have seemed usual or possible to the puzzled riders. Lord Markelhay the Third, called to his riders, and to his son. "To Arms! Our blades shall taste this creature's blood this day!" The riders caught the look of his eyes and made an impressive movement to line up once more, but their pace was ultimately dictated by the slugish pace of the Young Lord Markelhay, as the riders continued to mill about until the young lord was fully ready. Then, in a thin line, the riders surged forward after their prey.

Behind them, the fallen guard lay motionless beside the cage, as the horse gently prodded him with its muzzle.

Pearl in the Hilt, Part 3

The horsemen moved closer to the cage. "Scrawny looking fellow, isn't he?" Markelhay the Fourth said, looking closely at the cage. The scaly creature growled as loudly as it seemed its frame could manage. Markelhay IV moved his hand to poke the kobold. It turned to him, its eyes glowing with a power that hadn't been there previously. Markelhay IV managed to muster enough of his own sense of self preservation to toss himself to one side, as a burst of flame filled the place that his body had once filled. "What in the name of Erathis was that!" Markelhay IV said, partially exasperated. The man standing next to the cage smiled, his scarred face more apparent up close. "Best catch we've had all year. Just the thing we needed to spice up your first hunt, Master Markelhay."

"Mount up!" The call came down the line, and the horsemen all stood ready, Markelhey IV scrambled to get himself mounted upon his horse. "Ready?" the man by the cage called. There was a chorus of assenting cries. He moved to face the cage, and looked the kobold, the scaly creature, square in its eyes. "Now friend, we know you don't like us, and we don't like you. But if you can get it through your brain, we want to give you a fair shot at getting away. So, we're giving you a good two minutes to get clear from here." The Kobold just growled at him. The Guard lit a rope that when burned the whole way through, would cause the cage to open. Once the rope was burning through, he ran to his horse and mounted quickly.

A Pearl in the Hilt, Part 2

The group of horsemen began their ride to the keep, rounding the hillock that marked the start of the ascent up towards the large walls in the upper tier of the town where the Upper-class, and their servants were resident. Their course wasn't as straight as they'd like to imagine, and their control of their mounts was less than ideal, showing their lack of true combat experience, in the last five decades of peace, before the reclamation of hte outer stretches of the Glimmer. They wore the heraldry of the Lord Warden of Fallcrest, Lord Markelhay, as every guard in the town did. As they reached the gate of the keep, it's large wooden entryway looming above them, one of their number pulled a large horn from his saddlebag, and let loose a blast from its wide mouth.

Sire Markelhay the Third, Lord Warden mounted his charger at a run, his blood pumping in his veins and his armour clanging on his body. This was the feeling he loved, the feeling that he was sure his grandfather had felt as part of the large army that left Lorinan to conquer the wastes from the savages that had roamed there. His horse snorted, and reared its head. His son, Sire Markelhay the fourth, walked out, the armour that ill-fitted him so much clanking about his frame. "Where's my sword, father?" he asked, "You promised me a sword for my eighteenth birthday." His father wheeled about on his horse, his forehead glinting in the mid-morning sun. "That I did. And you promised me that you'd practice with your trainer each and every day until today." His son snorted, "You didn't expect me to actually do it, did you?" As the gates opened, the page rode in, his arms full with the recently acquired sword. He dismounted, before Sire Markelhay the Fourth and knealt, presenting the sword to him. His father eventually responded, his eyebrow raised, "Evidently I did not."

The horsemen passed forward through the town, passing over the river and northwards up towards the plains, where another of their number stood beside a cage, in which a small reptilian creature squatted through clenched teeth at anyone that came close to it. "Ready for the hunt?" The man asked.

The Pearl in the Hilt, Part 1

As he took the sword in his hand, the runes upon his hilt flared into light. He snorted, Of Course, he thought, that's what it was supposed to do. He lowered the blade, and sheathed it in the embossed leather sheath that had been supplied by the leather-workers down at the mill. He had spruced up the sheath with a golden leaf, and a stalk that ran around the sheath. He put the weapon aside, and sighed. It wasn't always like this. Once, heroes, or at least warriors wielded his weapons. Now, it was only the rich nobles that bought his swords, because they wanted a piece of shine when they readied their weapons for a last charge on their hunt.

"Sire Markhelay sends his regards," a man entering through the door said, his talbard bedecked with the signs of the Markhelay household. "He is eager for news on the progress of his sword, Telderhorn." Telderhorn looked up, his aged feet finding their purchase on the floor as he stood. "Sire Markhelay will get his sword, page, when it is ready."


The page looked disheartened. "Would it help if he said that his son would not be seen dead with a sword that was not made by Telderhorn's capable hands?" Telderhorn shook his head. "These things cannot be rushed." The page raised an eyebrow, and leaned to one side. Telderhorn lifted the sword, and handed it over. "If he wants the next one more promptly, perhaps he could ask for a Proper enchantment upon it." The page nodded, "Well," he said, "He says they're too expensive." Telderhorn shrugged. "If he can show me another maker nearby that has a comparable price... I might do him a deal." The page nodded, taking the sword. "I'll let him know."

As soon as the page left, Telderhorn sagged slightly. He looked over to the wall where there was a wide variety of weapons hanging off hooks on the wall. He walked over to them and took an opaque black staff off the wall. As his hand settled into a well worn groove on the staff, a small white pearl revealed itself like clouds clearing from across the face of a moon. As his hand left the slot, as he put it back on the wall, the pearl disappeared back into the black surface of the staff.

A Door in the Wall

The light filtered down from the skylight, the dust of the attic spiraling in its wake, and alighted upon the dark polished wood of the carved and engraved edifice. The attic was filled with relics, the wrinkles of time showing upon the features that encapsulated a time gone by. The week before, such things were open to the air, but now the air in the attic was still, but for a slight breeze that drifted in from the stairs that lay beyond the door that sat, illuminated, in the dead center of the wall. It guarded the past from the future, but couldn't save the shrouded and huddled shapes from the dust that billowed and tumbled around the small space, nor the piercing ray of light that escaped around it's bulk, and through the small skylight.

A chair sat by itself, in a corner, representative of a tie that had long been left to itself, but for penpushers and students who's interest could never compare to that of those who could not see beyond the world of their birth.

A uniform hugs the last body that would ever fill its skin. The dusk holding it close in its hollow emptiness, a belt hanging round a waist, that missed but one leg that it used to stand. Its owner, long gone from thoughts of glory and light, beyond the veil that words imposed upon them. A cold night years earlier, papers sorted told the tale of husbands, brothers and sons returning only in the hopes and thoughts of their relatives.

A flag draped a small chest, its contents taken, one by one. Other packets and cases of glass consuming them, their importance shifted from a personal to a historic. The era becoming them far more than their owners could ever bestow.