Beyond Dagothar (The Oraclon Chronicles Book 1)

by Jason Breshears

  Half an hour later the last of the lizard people had disappeared into the broken walls. For over an hour about twenty thousand waited for some sign of the controversy inside the city. Dark elves on wingmords were of little value because most of the Arch was not open to the sky, whole levels of the city were inside the mound or below the plain. There was nothing to see from above except towers that now appeared abandoned. The dark elf subcommander turned to the general.

  "These be an ancient race, General Imok. They are up to something. They will not be so easily subdued." The Aelvatchi assassin ignored the reproachful regard of the general.

  "From what I can see all goes well."

  "We cannot see anything, general," the black elf hissed.

  "Then go and find out what they are doing."

  General Imok stood quietly stupified when the headhunter without hesitation mounted a basilak and rode the beast quickly straight into the wall.

  * * * * *

  From the perspective of all those living on the surface world, the Ayr were among the world's first inhabitants. They were not. But as the ancient among the faeries, they were Noble Ones for putting themselves at risk for the protection of others. Knowing that this army of underworlders were going onward to endanger others, the Ayr collectively opted to devote themselves to removing this sinister threat.

  The telepathically-linked defenders were first going to kill all of the hideous six-legged monsters for which they had no memories of. Sigils Arch was vast. In its day when occupied by elves it required at least ten thousand to defend it. Its subterranean galleries and levels exceeded in depth the height of its towers. The winding streets, courts and halls were perfect for the plan Eganosh had made.

  As the howling of the umberslogs increased with their proximity, filling the corridors with the echoes of their approach, panthers quickly darted from hallway to hallway. The little eyes of the slogs caught their movements and they roared in pursuit. Slogs chased panthers almost snapping their razored teeth upon their hindquarters before the cats found a burst of speed. New panthers suddenly appeared and others slogs chased them down adjacent halls. Over two hundred and fifty slender panthers ran away from umberslogs right behind them and the herd was divided over and over again until almost every single slog pursued but a single panther to some remote area of Sigils Arch, some to a level below. In their greedy hunger to slay and eat the large cats the slogs were unaware that they were totally alone.

  Every one of the umberslogs were led into an ambush. Before slog teeth bit down to rend an evasive panther, it suddenly found its own legs, all six of them, in the sharp jaws of other panthers and bruun that had been concealed and waiting. At every ambush a seventh Ayr, either panther or bearlike bruun tore into the now defenseless slog as it howled in rage as if feeling no pain. In the confined spaces chosen for the ambush site the umberslogs had no room to move as they were bitten, chewed and clawed to death.

  This successful tactic resulted in the easy slaying of the first two hundred and fifty slogs by about eighteen hundred Ayr, but as slogs kept storming into the Arch some of the apanthoi and bruun fell to their ferocity before others could draw off their numbers to again lead the monsters into ambush sites. Those groups attended by a bruun very quickly killed their slog victims, but ambushing apanthoi without the presence of the huge and violent bearlike Ayr had to spend time biting and slashing for the beasts to bleed out.

  Almost as frantic as it had begun, the slaughter of the six-legged beasts was over. Without a moment's rest the apanthoi scouting the wall breach came racing back with news of the hornback orcs and lizardfolk entering the city.

  The Ayr, flushed with their success and all bathed in blood and gore, rallied around the lionlike Eganosh. His whole face, muzzle and underside was soggy with blood. Hearts thundered and a renewed sense of self-preservation permeated throughout the crowd as the hope of surviving this battle began to wash through their hearts.

  Standing rampant and majestic to his full height, Eganosh roared, his mighty voice rumbling down the galleries and halls onto the plain as the underworlders listened.

  "Let the Arch be their tombs!"

  * * * * *

  Durina studied Michel's face in the twilight.

  The Borderealm ranger human was oblivious to the panicked squawks and gutteral screaming of the lizardfolk females and young all throughout the colony. Ferocious apanthoi, large bruun and flying hawkmen descended upon the families and broods of their enemies in a slaughter offering no mercy. The majority of the males were at Sigils Arch leaving Dretchwold to the old to defend. They did not do well. Reptillian females faught to the death in defense of their young in mud-filled birth-warrens but they could not stand for more than a few seconds against the battle experience of thousands of years pent up in the anger of the Ayr. Pantheresses tore apart the race of the lizardfolk.

  Michel stood amidst the rampage and carnage, an island of sorrow and rage inflaming his own soul. All discomfort over the vengeance of the Noble Ones against their reptillian enemies was burned away. Michel trembled with restrained violence, gritting his teeth but wanting to cry.

  Unsheathing his knife as a pantheress gleefully tore out the neck of a nearby lizardman already missing a hand, Michel stood in the middle of a dying colony looking up at the hardly recognizable body of Trevor Sindair III. Not even the bloating and insects had hid what the lizardfolk had done to his body. The Borderealm ranger had been tied to a post and his own scimitars had been thrust through his body. The folk had cut off his ears for trophies. A sob escaped Michel's throat and Durina lightly touched his arm.

  "He was already dead, Michel...before they did these things," she said, then remained quiet. Without speaking, Michel cut down the body as two enormous bruun silently, with reverence for the body of Trevor, lowered his body to the ground as another bruun lumbered closer and began clawing up the earth for a burial. The other two joined him.

  "He fell in love with an Aelvani woman." Michel said softly. The dying of a crowd of huddled lizardesses holding eggs sounded far away, ignored. No human would have heard him, but Durina did.

  "Do the wood elves know this, Michel?"

  "Yes," he answered absently, looking at her surprised. "They are a famous couple in Everleaf...the first they say, between Aelvani and humans."

  "They are like us, then."

  Michel slightly nodded as his surroundings came to him. He glanced around at the mayhem. Reptillian bodies were scattered everywhere. Not even the wounded were permitted any amount of time to live out their last moments before tooth and fang ended them. The heaviest concentration of bodies were at the entrances to the birth warrens. He knew that the Ayr would be destroying all the eggs too, and that what was unfolding here was occurring throughout all of Dretchwold. This might be the ending of an entire race, if the lizardfolk all lived within the hills. He watched as a pantheress jabbed a spear into a muddy hole where a lizardess had pushed some eggs before her head was torn off by a bruun.

  The three bears finished with their grave, Michel and Durina watched as they respectfully laid Trevor's body in it atop a bier of lizardfolk spears set in the bottom. More spears were laid on top of the ranger's body and the three bruun then pushed and clawed earth into the grave burying him as several Ayr came bearing large stones for a marker cairn.

  Durina turned to see someone's approach and at the recognition that something was wrong her eyes widened. Michel noticed and looked to see Alaryel morph into his lionlike man form on two legs, but he did not stand tall.

  "Dark tidings, ranger," he spoke, mane and right arm dripping in blood belonging to others. His face was worn with sorrow. "I grieve your loss." Michel nodded but Durina saw something in the eyes of her leader and she pressed him.

  "What has happened, elder one?" she asked, tentatively moving closer to the ariel. She reached out and touched Alaryel's arm and Michel understood that she had perceived something in his manner that had escaped him. The three bruun burying Trevor stopped,
looking. Many heads turned and three apanthoi females approached, sensing a moment.

  "My brother...Eganosh." he spoke slowly, moisture pushing out the corners of his eyes. "They are trapped in the Arch."

  "Then we shall go back!" Durina exclaimed instantly and the others all assented, more apanthoi pressing in.

  "No, we will not. The enemy was upon them before they could clear the tunnel. They have chosen to punish the underworlders."

  * * * * *

  The Ayr inside Sigils Arch found the armored orcs more difficult to battle than the stupid slogs. And out of sheer terror the lizardfolk faught valiantly.

  Hornback orcs grunting under their helms sought to fight in open spaces and the apanthoi and bruun fell back so as to allow more and more of their kin to fight the orcs. Almost a thousand orcs chasing a group of retreating panthers pushed into an expansive underground court with high walls all about them. Once they had entered the area of ruinous opulence about two hundred hawks hidden in the ceiling recesses, balconies and entryways to high levels began pushing deliberately placed rocks over the edges bombing the unsuspecting orcs. Many turned to retreat from the expansive court but hundreds of tons of rubble cascaded from above burying the entrance. Many of these ambush traps were set up by the Ayr in times past but never used. The orcs bellowed in rage and frustration as the Noble Ones dropped pieces of architecture, large stones, benches of rock and pillar fragments on them with impunity. Bruun lifted and threw entire blocks of masonry. All of this rained down from thirty and fifty feet.

  Another force of about one hundred and fifty orcs pursued some injured panthers in to a cul-de-sac ending at some forgotten temple complex once well-tended by the elves. The apanthoi long knew this to be a dead end. As the battle hungry orcs gave chase and entered the temple precinct closing in on the scrambling panthers, they watched in shock and anger as the black cats, apparently not wounded, adroitly climbed the crumbling walls. The last of the panthers turned to knock down the large rocks at the top of the tier which dislodged all the detritus in a slide making the wall smooth, unable to climb. The cats one by one scampered along the tier above as the orcs cursed and turned around to follow their movement. They leapt back out of the precinct entrance. The last pantheress turned and bared her fangs as the orcs rushed back outward but three bruun pushed a massive wheel portal over the entry sealing the orcs in. The trapped orcs were unaware that the apanthoi woman had smiled at them.

  The wheel portals of Sigils Arch were all over thirty-five tons and five feet wide, a single dolorite stone ornately carved front and back with effigies of gate guardians and spell-wards, most having lost their potency. While the bruun easily managed rolling it into place, all one hundred and fifty orcs would never be able to move it sideways due to its immense weight, its width preventing it from being toppled over and the finger-deep track it slid in and out of holding the wheel-stone perfectly in place. Not even the beating on the rock by the orcs could be heard. The temple would be their tomb.

  Panthers tried desperately to keep up with Eganosh. The Lion of Shannidar had descended into a primal rage rippling through the orcan ranks painting the walls of Sigils Arch red with their blood. Helmets, sometimes still containing heads, arms, and hands were bitten or torn free from their owners as the ariel lunged forward through the mass of bodies. Orcs were crushed in the press as others tried to flee the rampaging lion, a surface world beast unlike anything they had encountered in the underworld.

  Wickedly violent and roaring bruun terrified the orcs as they too plunged headlong into the chaos of bodies in an adjacent corridor. Many armored orcs had not been attacked but due to the press had fallen down and were being trampled, unable to get back up. From two more halls filled with orcs a wall of teeth and talons ripped apart orcs so packed together they were unable to defend themselves. From every available crevice and alcove apanthoi slashed and bit at the orcs.

  Two thousand lizardfolk warriors turned in panic, many dropping their weapons, and fled back in the direction they had come. The series of halls they thought they were familiar with suddenly made no sense. The way out was blocked by strange surfaces having elaborate carvings on them and out of all the connected corridors the shadowy panthers assailed them. Rapidly they retreated down one hallway into another all the while losing their numbers to the insanely quick apanthoi. Lizardfolk squawked and ran blindly into the ruins and everywhere they turned it seemed black panthers appeared out of the darkness. There were no directions to flee where one could not already pass over dead lizard warriors.

  Not one orc or lizardman made it out of Sigils Arch alive. Four thousand dead of the enemy.

  Under piles of dead and dying orcs they found Eganosh the Old. He was dead, a scimitar of a strange purplish metal had been run through his thick neck. During the battling a four-armed dark elf had appeared. Its reptillian basilak steed was killed, the lion having chewed it apart. The Aelvatchi headhunter was dead as well, crushed under the weigh of the ariel.

  Out of a number of thirty-three hundred Ayr that stayed in Sigils Arch with Eganosh to buy time for the others with Alaryel and Michel, slightly over twenty-four hundred remained. Among the bodies strewn about the Arch were those of panthers and some bruun.

  The eldest pantheress was quickly surrounded by the others who looked to her for leadership. They could all clearly hear the distinct sound of more sections of the wall being taken down to widen the breach. The muffled explosions reverberated throughout the structures of a seemingly endless barrage of missiles and magecraft.

  "Myriam! Winged goblins and dark elves are flying among the upper towers. They are many," reported a panting pantheress.

  "A new breach fills even now with the enemy cavalry, creatures ridden by orcs," another informed, having sprinted back from the walls. Myriam looked at him curiously.

  "What of the first breach?"

  "Nothing. They are not using it any more."

  "We will be overrun inside the Arch," a blood-soaked bruun of heroic size said calmly. Myriam turned to face them all.

  "Our fate may be sealed, but we are not destitute of obligation..." she spoke loudly for all to hear.

  "What do you mean?" asked the same bear who had spoken as more Ayr gathered around.

  "We are strong," Myriam began. "We still number enough to punish our enemy," she proclaimed. Her bold words reinvigorated those that listened as they in turns looked down at the lifeless yet majestic body of their leonine leader.

  "Yes, Myriam, but if we advance upon the wizards we shall surely die by a hundred arrows each," lamented a lithe, gore-spattered female. Then the second scout spoke up.

  "The lizardfolk are gathered against us but separated from the main host of underworlders. They stand very close to the original breach, a good run but not far. The eyes of the Ayr hardened at his words. The folk had been enemies for a long time but their allying to the Taran Warlord was an unforgiveable trespass.

  "Yes, listen," Myriam continued. "We shall divide our forces. All of the bruun and seven hundred of us shall fall upon the folk. But the majority of us shall break away at the last second and turn straight into our true objective."

  "And what is that, Myriam?"

  The older apanthoi leader, fire in her feline eyes, reached down and touched the dead ariel's famous mane. "Eganosh is dead...we must kill their general, any black elves we can and all who foolishly stand in our way."

  * * * * *

  General Imok was worried long before the sentries returned with the word. It was confirmed that his two hornback orc battalions were dead, as were the two thousand lizardfolk auxilliaries. No umberslogs reappeared nor did the dark elf subcommander. Now headhunters were reporting that not one of the enemy could be seen in the towers and buildings of the upper city.

  The seige engines and war wizards brought down a ninety foot wide area of wall that exposed inner chambers and corridors. The orcs on their basilaks and hammertaurs were send into the enemy city. Two more orc battalions were filing in
to the breach following the cavalry. Three thousand more hornback orcs were marching toward the first breach.

  As they neared it the chaos erupted.

  A single orc runner came sprinting out of the first collapsed section of wall and was about a hundred and fifty feet out of the city when two lightning fast black panthers ran him down and pulled him apart between them. The two slender females stood defiantly after morphing out of their panther forms, both pointing at the lizardfolk. They screamed in unison some ancient faery battlecry as dozens, then scores followed by hundreds of sprinting black panthers ran out of the Arch and split the plains grasses into furrows full of death-bringers. The lizardfolk, choked with disbelief and fear, turned around and ran. Over two thousand black panthers pursued, and among this dark mass of writhing fur and fangs were huge, brown-haired bears with hate-filled eyes.

  The folk lost all reason and fled. They dropped their weapons, screaming in unknown syllables for the underworlders to help them. But they were too far away. The lizardmen spared no time or regard for those already screaming behind them as the wave of apanthoi began overtaking their flight. They ran faster, listening to their own kin chewed apart.