When she reached the stairs to get up on the northern wall, the guards nearby saluted. She mentioned she was there on business, and they didn’t ask further questions. Word got around in both the army and the guard this past week that she had a good reason to be wherever she was.
Up top, Lara walked a short distance west and looked into the distance. The mountains spread across the horizon before ending off to the east. Robert told her that parts of the city were built into it, though there were no tunnels back then. Before her now were rock faces, angled away from Thogt at a very sharp angle, as if the mountains reformed themselves to just barely touch the city. On the wall, Lara could see the rock as far out as the foothills she rode through earlier in the week.
She ended up at the corner of the city. Though it was too far in the distance, Lara knew exactly where the tunnel underground was in relation to the city. The moonlight showed her the path to the foothills, which were bumpy to begin with and bordered by the occasional patch of high grass. Robert used to lead her and the others down that path, she thought. In her mind, Lara saw them trotting off to the tunnels with a few others following.
Her eyes saw something different.
Behind one of the larger tufts of grass, she saw movement. It had to be something large. Even the most eagle eyed of scouts couldn’t spot a rabbit or anything similar at the distance she was looking. Lara focused harder. Whatever was in the distance was not one creature but several, and they were coming towards her.
Lara peered out over the edge of the wall, careful not to get far enough to fall. The small group of the figures were running towards her. They were about halfway from the foothills to the city when the moonlight hit them well enough for Lara to see.
Grays.
She howled. Many questions flew through her mind. She paid attention to none of them as she sprinted south to find the stairs that led back down to the ground. When she arrived, she slowed only enough to not fall down the steps before gaining speed again on dirt. Minutes seemed like moments as she ran, stopping only when she arrived at the western gate.
“Hey! Hey, hold on, what’s the matter? Oh, Lara, it’s you. Why are you running so fast?!” the guard asked.
It took a moment for her to gather her breath. Another guard offered her water, which she eagerly gulped down.
“Grays! They’re coming!”
Each of the guards looked at her as if she grew another head.
“Grays! Get fire! Lots of it! One torch, each hand, stand in gate!”
Their eyes went wide, and then they ran to follow Lara's commands. Now alone, she bent over and caught her breath. Once upright, she watched out from the center of the gate with a sword from the guard quarters. Nothing in front of her moved, even though she scanned the road ahead as best she could.
“Ma’am! We got what you needed. What now?”
She had three guards to work with. Each had a blazing torch in both hands, but the gate was wide enough for two wagons.
“There’s only three of you?!”
“I-I’m sorry, ma’am, late night shift just came in, and-”
“Give me one of those, and go get another. You, to that end. You, to the other. Whatever you do, do not advance on anything that walks toward us from outside, you understand?”
Two guards nodded as the third handed Lara a torch and then ran off to get another. By the time they returned, Lara was standing in front of the gate, staring north. She saw something out of the corner of her eye, slinking along the edge of the wall. There, five bodies were moving towards her at a decent pace.
“There!”
She pointed them out while she moved closer to the side of the gate closer to her foes. The guard there tried to ask questions, but couldn’t quite get words out.
“Everyone, stay where you are! Don’t go to them, they’re dangerous!”
Now that the grays were closer, they hesitated a moment when Lara yelled. She wondered if they understood her. Once the creatures started moving again, they ran towards the edge of the light and fanned out around the gate. After looking at each other a moment, they hissed at Lara and the guards and raised their arms.
“What do you want?!” Lara yelled. “You’re not getting your friend back! It killed one of ours!”
One of the grays tilted its head and pointed at Lara. She felt a breeze over her shoulder. She lifted her sword at them.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all if I have to! You’re not going to hurt anyone else in my city!”
She waved her torch wildly. The grays recoiled, but did not retreat. Past the one standing on the south side of the gate, Lara saw another figure moving in the night. This one was bigger than the grays and moved much faster. She noticed it before the others, who followed her gaze. As it drew nearer, the creature let out a roar, which Lara recognized.
“Help me kill them, Lara! The rest of you, get inside!”
Not more than a stone’s throw away, Diedra raised a mighty war club. She brought it down on the nearest gray as soon as she could. Once the orc smashed one, the other grays panicked. They were quick enough that the next one Diedra tried to bash dodged. The grays charged north while Diedra growled at them from the gate.
“Diedra! What are you doing here?!” Lara said.
Behind her, the guards didn’t know what they were looking at. Each of them moved to the other side of the wall, but remained in a defensive position.
“We need to talk to Felas! Make sure those things can’t get in the city any other way!”
“You heard the lady, I need the fastest one of you to hand off your torches and run to the north gate. Tell them I’m ordering them to close the gate right now, and to not fight these things. If the grays get there before you do, light up and keep them at bay until someone can help you. The other two of you need to close this exit right now!”
One of the guards waved his torches as fast as he could to get them out while the others ran to the gate mechanism. Lara and Diedra started jogging back to the castle, going straight to the office when they arrived. Along the way, every single person that saw the pair stared in fright at the big green humanoid that followed Lara. One or two even thought they saw fangs. Before they entered, Lara shouted for one of the stewards to get a messenger to the north gate to see if it was shut. If it wasn’t, that person was to come back as fast as they possibly could. Despite direct orders, the man stared for a moment at Diedra before turning. Lara yelled at him to go before she led her orc friend to the office.
“Nami! Nami, are you awake?” Lara said as she barreled into the room.
Nami screamed, then scrambled with her back to the wall as she saw who Lara brought with her.
“Who are you?! What are you doing here?!”
“Calm down! This is Diedra, she’s an orc. She’s on our side.”
“Woah, I haven’t seen anyone like you in years!”
“We are around,” Diedra said. “But, that is not important right now. We have problems.”
“Problems? Great, OK, right. What problems?”
Lara closed the door behind them and walked around to the other side of the desk.
“To start, on my walk, I found a couple of grays trying to sneak up to the city. They would have attacked if Diedra here hadn’t arrived and tried to club one to death.”
“Clubbing grays to death, OK. I can get used to having you around. What else?”
“I’m not sure. I arranged for one of the guards to run to the north gate and shut that, so hopefully they won’t be able to get in. The south gate usually isn’t kept open at night, so that will be fine.”
“Your problem is that the grays are outside,” Diedra added. “Lara, you said they followed you out of the tunnel, right? That should not happen.”
“Shouldn’t happen?” Nami said. “You mean you know what should happen?! What do you know about these things?”
“More than I have time to tell. We need to see Felas.”
“The king? What does he know about
these things?!”
Diedra stared at Lara and sighed.
“He knows a lot more than we do, doesn’t he?” Lara asked.
“We need to talk to him.”
Lara sat down and put her hand on her head.
“This is not how I imagined this job to be.”
Nami snuck out the door to find someone to check on the gate and another to wake the king.
“So, why are these things out of their hole? Did killing the queen bother them that much? Do they even understand loss? I know one of them looked at me when I was yelling at them before you got here.”
“They do not understand our tongue. Possibly, they are confused. They also do not seem to affect you like normal.”
“Affect me?”
“Their magic is strong. Most humans who try to fight them die. You do not, and I cannot understand why.”
“Well, that’s reassuring at least. What should we do about them? Charge back in the mountains and hope the ceiling doesn’t fall on us until we kill every last one?”
“Talk to Felas. That’s what we need to do.”
Diedra sat down. Lara worried for a moment that the chair would be too small, but the orc chose the desk instead. Moments later, Nami returned.
“I’ve sent for messengers. The king will be ready soon. What are we going to say to him?”
“We tell him what you have seen, what I have seen,” Diedra said. “This is an issue between nations.”
“What does that mean?” Lara said.
“I have sent word back to my people. Our leaders will need to talk. For now, we deal with the immediate threat.”
Lara fumed while Nami sat in her chair, confused. They didn’t have to wait long before someone arrived to invite them to the council chamber. Lara, Nami, and Diedra ran there. Once inside, the king greeted them in robes, like when they brought the gray back the first time.
“There better be a good reason for you getting me out of bed again, Lara. I like you, bu-”
“Your highness,” Diedra said.
Felas sat down.
“There is a good reason, isn’t there. Oh my.”
“You have a problem, Felas. I have already sent word home.”
“How bad is it?”
“The grays are out of the mountain. Lara held off five of them with two guards and torches until I scared them off.”
"Hold on! What's going on here?!” Lara said.
“Lara, please, I’m sorry. There is a lot I have not told you. We just haven’t had the time, I swear. I’ll tell you everything once things calm down, but you have to trust me right now.”
Lara scowled. Felas continued.
“How soon can you arrange for a group to round up queens? We need to eliminate as many grog as possible, but stopping the flow outright is a better solution. If you can handle these other creatures too, that would help,” Felas continued.
“Well, you have the two of us. Maybe we can get some of wall guards, though I don’t know if they would come along. This isn’t what they signed up for, though I made sure they knew being up there was dangerous.”
“I will join you,” Diedra said.
“Oh, then you have the three of us and whoever we can get from the wall guard.”
“I’ll have stewards sent out at once to gather who I can. This is now our top priority. Please, prepare and leave at once.”
Nami nodded, but Lara stared for a moment before turning away. With Diedra following, they went back to the office first to grab maps and their weapons.
“Diedra, what am I missing here? It’s like there is a whole new world I haven’t been aware of for seven years with Robert.”
“You are correct. No one but the king, his council, and Robert know about this.”
“So I’m supposed to accept that the whole city has no idea a bunch of beasts want to tear everyone apart?! They think the grog are just isolated incidents, like a weird skinny bear that’s much angrier and harder to scare away!”
“Lara…” Nami said.
“No, this is ridiculous. I’m through going along with things. We’re going up there, and we’re going to end this threat. Then, I’m going to force the king one way or another to tell me what’s actually under that mountain.”
“Force would not be wise, Lara. The king does what he does because he must,” Diedra said, hoisting her club over her shoulder.
Lara harrumphed and led them down to the entrance of the castle. There, a young man flagged them down.
“Lara! Come quick, they need you at the north wall!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Grog! Fifty of them, easy!”
She looked at Nami and Diedra then started towards the stable. Nami followed, but Diedra started running north.
“Your horses are not big enough!” she yelled.
Lara and Nami mounted and rode towards the wall. Diedra could clearly run faster than either of them, but the horses outpaced her at a full trot. A few minutes later, they arrived to a panic. The gate guards were at the top of the wall, and several townsfolk who heard the ruckus came out with old swords.
“What’s happening?” Lara yelled as she dismounted and began to climb the stairs.
“They’re at the bottom of the wall! I can only see fifty of them, but those other creatures your messenger warned me about are behind them! One of the patrolling soldiers fell over and isn’t moving, so I ordered everyone to take cover!”
“Good! Get them off this wall and find me as much fire as you can!” Lara yelled.
Behind her, Nami scoured the scene. At the bottom of the wall, as the castle steward said, fifty or more grog were clawing away at the stone. They barely chipped it, even with their fierce claws, but any stone would whittle away eventually.
“What do we do?” she asked.
Lara responded by grabbing a torch and dropping it on the mass of writhing grog flesh. They dispersed before the fire made it halfway to the ground. The grog did not scatter back to the mountains, but regrouped around the grays behind them. All five that approached the west gate had pivoted north. Neither Lara nor Nami could guess where the grog came from.
What the torch did was create some room for them to breathe, but only for a moment. The grays pointed towards the wall, and their pets began to slink back towards the stone. One of the grays pointed up at the wall. Nami taunted it, sword drawn. Her foe pointed at her, which both women understood to be a reason to move. Lara felt nothing, but Nami recoiled and growled back at the beast.
“Come up here and try that, you coward!” she yelled. “See how well you do without your sharp little idiots!”
Lara blinked for a moment.
“Wait, did it get you?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I barely felt it. They don’t seem to do so well when their enemies aren’t scared. I’ll slice that one up myself, I swear…”
“I’ve got an idea, Nami. It’s not a permanent one, but it’ll do for now,” Lara said before turning back over the inside of the wall. “Bring lots of wood and a half dozen torches to the gate! One of you come back up here, and have some people ready to open the gate on my command!”
“What?! You’re going out there?” Nami said.
“Yup. I think our plans were accurate, but where we wanted them were wrong. We have to light up the wall, but it has to be down there.”
“Crazy. I like it. But what about the grog?”
“We’ll have to drop more fire on them while I get set up. Keep an eye out for me, OK? When I’m out there, if they get too close, light ‘em up.”
Lara darted down the stairs. In front of the gate, lumber began to pile up as the guards and townsfolk brought it over. She wasn’t going to question where they got it from, at this point. If someone complained, they could take it up with the king when the city wasn’t being assaulted. Lara also noticed that Diedra was helping.
“I’m glad you’re here, Diedra. We’re going out there.”
“Unwise, but I do not know what else we
can do.”
“Glad to have you on board.”
Lara wrangled one of the townsfolk, a dock worker, to grab as much lumber as he could. Another, a clothier, grabbed two torches. Lara appropriated one of the townsfolks' swords. She wielded it alongside her own as Diedra grabbed her war club.
“Ok, we go out, Diedra and I keep them away if they get past Nami’s barrage. You two know how to start a fire?”
They nodded.
“Good. Do it as quick as you can. Once you’ve made one, we’ll have to make more along the bottom of the wall, even if these things retreat.”
“Lara! They’re pretty far from the gate! Now’s a good time to do what you need to do!” Nami yelled from up above.
“Lift the gate! Just enough for us to get out!”
To the side, chains grinded as the guards began to move the gate. Lara and Diedra went out first, though Diedra had to duck to get under. Behind them, the two townsfolk started to make a fire a dozen paces from the wall.
Gray heads turned, and grog started to charge. Nami and the other guard began threw flaming torches to stem the flow, but a few got through. Diedra brought her club up in a brutal swing that threw one grog back two dozen steps. Another reached Lara, dived at her, and missed. It did not have time to get back up before Lara was upon it. She pinned it to the ground with one sword through its abdomen while she bisected its skull with her main blade. While her back was turned, Diedra annihilated the skull of another grog that aimed to sneak up on Lara.
Behind them, the fire started to catch. Though they had no kindling, the wood they gathered was dry enough that the torches lit it quickly. The grog that did stay close did not charge, but instead stalked around the edge of the light. When the fire grew more intense, they retreated back to the grays.
One blaze burned bright. The dock worker ran under the gate to get more wood while the clothier held the torches high. Her hands shivered as the hissing of the grays buzzed her ears.
“What are they doing?!” she said.
“Don’t worry! We’ll handle it!” Lara replied.
Blades free, she moved forward with Diedra. They stayed within the range of the fire’s light, but on the edge of the glow close to the wall. One grog leapt at Diedra, but she caught it by the throat and hurled it into the stone. Lifting her war club high once more, the orc brought it down where the grog fell, breaking its back. Another smash ended its life and turned its head to mush.
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