Eternal
Even if the svelk weren’t as thorough as they claim, whatever defenses the shadows have or don’t have aren’t going to be enough to stop you anyway, so you decide to get this done with once and for all.
“Alright Tyren get your people together, we’re going right now.”
“Don’t presume to order me about human. Just because you took down a few of my weaker subordinates does not put you in charge here.”
“No, the fact that I am on important Empire business and you’re just hired hands DOES put me in charge. If you would prefer a more physical demonstration of my authority however, I can certainly oblige.”
Tyren gives you a look that he like to put you up to your threat, but common sense causes him to back down. Instead he forces a fake smile.
“Sheesh, you Eternals are so damn serious about everything. Glad the Empire never cooked up more of your type. We’ll be ready to go in a few minutes, large bar tab to settle up with you understand. Wouldn’t want our sterling reputation be tarnished by not paying our debts.”
You shake your head and wait outside. Naturally the dark elves take a little longer than a few minutes, but eventually they emerge from the tavern and all of you are on your way.
The journey deeper into the swamp is fairly uneventful. Despite the unfriendly nature of the terrain, there aren’t any dangerous denizens in these swamps. The only creatures of any note are the Sul monkeys, which the dark elves continually make jokes about how humans are related to them. Tyren still gives you a glare every once in awhile, but that’s to be expected given that you threatened his authority in front of his people. He probably had to reassert it after you left the bar to wait for them.
Eventually you start getting closer to the temple and you wonder if you should cloak yourself, but there really isn’t any point considering you’re traveling with all these dark elves. Actually you’re a little surprised you haven’t sensed or detected any shadows skulking around. You’d think they’d at least want to patrol the outer perimeter of their temple. Between that and what Tyren told you, this behavior of the shadows has been very strange, unless they believe they can hide for another couple hundred centuries to get revenge. If that is the case, they’ve gone completely delusional.
“We’re here.” Tyren says when you arrive within the sight of the temple.
“This is very strange. I would’ve thought they would’ve had a patrol or even a look out standing outside the temple. Even if they were cloaked I would’ve sensed something.” You reply.
“Told you they haven’t been seen leaving the temple that much, so how did you want to handle this?”
You’re a little amazed that Tyren openly asked for your advice. You tell him that when you get inside the temple to just be a little cautious as the shadows could be hiding anywhere insider it and maybe they set up traps inside. Tyren nods and relays a couple of orders in his native language to the rest of his people.
All of you quickly move towards the temple entrance and suddenly you get that sense of something not being right, you at first figure it’s the shadows about to decloak for a surprise attack. The reality is a lot worse.
The shadows cloaked something, but not themselves. They cloaked some sort of explosive which more than a few dark elves bump into when approaching the temple. They go off immediately and cause a spectacular chain reaction. The only thing that saves you, is the fact that you speed yourself up just quick enough to avoid the majority of the blast. Even then the explosion still catches you and you’re thrown into a tree at high impact several feet away. You’re hurt bad enough that you’ve broken a few bones and you struggle to stand up.
You fully expect a shadow to come leaping out from somewhere or Cyrus himself to appear, but that doesn’t happen. In fact when you stagger back to the temple area, you see that it’s practically collapsed on itself (along with the charred remains of a lot of dark elves). You have no idea if the shadows planned to destroy their own temple, but if there were any inside, it would be unlikely that they survived. Still, you can’t take that chance, and you begin to limp over to the devastated temple.
You hear a noise and swing around to defend yourself, but see that it’s Tyren and a couple of his people. One of them looks in pretty bad shape, and Tyren himself looks a little worse for wear.
“(Cough cough) Shit…certainly didn’t expect that.’ He says.
“Well maybe if you’d done your job correctly your little band of mercs wouldn’t be in pieces right now. Come on, we have to make sure all the shadows are dead. For all we know they aren’t even here and this was just a set up.” You reply and turn to head towards the temple.
Maybe if you’d been thinking more clearly and weren’t still a little scattered from the explosion, you wouldn’t have turned your back on Tyren. However, you did and he took full advantage.
You feel the piercing pain of the first bolt going into your back, followed by three more. You collapse to the muddy ground attempting to crawl away. You even try to use your shadow magic, but as fate would have it, it doesn’t work. It would appear Dendrin’s “favor” has been finally taken away. You’re left with the question to as why now of all times and there are several answers that pop into your head, but the only one that comforts you is that perhaps he finally lost all power due to losing all his followers.
You’ll never know of course, just like you’ll never know if the svelk will be punished for killing you when the next bolt goes into your skull.
“Alright Tyren get your people together, we’re going right now.”
“Don’t presume to order me about human. Just because you took down a few of my weaker subordinates does not put you in charge here.”
“No, the fact that I am on important Empire business and you’re just hired hands DOES put me in charge. If you would prefer a more physical demonstration of my authority however, I can certainly oblige.”
Tyren gives you a look that he like to put you up to your threat, but common sense causes him to back down. Instead he forces a fake smile.
“Sheesh, you Eternals are so damn serious about everything. Glad the Empire never cooked up more of your type. We’ll be ready to go in a few minutes, large bar tab to settle up with you understand. Wouldn’t want our sterling reputation be tarnished by not paying our debts.”
You shake your head and wait outside. Naturally the dark elves take a little longer than a few minutes, but eventually they emerge from the tavern and all of you are on your way.
The journey deeper into the swamp is fairly uneventful. Despite the unfriendly nature of the terrain, there aren’t any dangerous denizens in these swamps. The only creatures of any note are the Sul monkeys, which the dark elves continually make jokes about how humans are related to them. Tyren still gives you a glare every once in awhile, but that’s to be expected given that you threatened his authority in front of his people. He probably had to reassert it after you left the bar to wait for them.
Eventually you start getting closer to the temple and you wonder if you should cloak yourself, but there really isn’t any point considering you’re traveling with all these dark elves. Actually you’re a little surprised you haven’t sensed or detected any shadows skulking around. You’d think they’d at least want to patrol the outer perimeter of their temple. Between that and what Tyren told you, this behavior of the shadows has been very strange, unless they believe they can hide for another couple hundred centuries to get revenge. If that is the case, they’ve gone completely delusional.
“We’re here.” Tyren says when you arrive within the sight of the temple.
“This is very strange. I would’ve thought they would’ve had a patrol or even a look out standing outside the temple. Even if they were cloaked I would’ve sensed something.” You reply.
“Told you they haven’t been seen leaving the temple that much, so how did you want to handle this?”
You’re a little amazed that Tyren openly asked for your advice. You tell him that when you get inside the temple to just be a little cautious as the shadows could be hiding anywhere insider it and maybe they set up traps inside. Tyren nods and relays a couple of orders in his native language to the rest of his people.
All of you quickly move towards the temple entrance and suddenly you get that sense of something not being right, you at first figure it’s the shadows about to decloak for a surprise attack. The reality is a lot worse.
The shadows cloaked something, but not themselves. They cloaked some sort of explosive which more than a few dark elves bump into when approaching the temple. They go off immediately and cause a spectacular chain reaction. The only thing that saves you, is the fact that you speed yourself up just quick enough to avoid the majority of the blast. Even then the explosion still catches you and you’re thrown into a tree at high impact several feet away. You’re hurt bad enough that you’ve broken a few bones and you struggle to stand up.
You fully expect a shadow to come leaping out from somewhere or Cyrus himself to appear, but that doesn’t happen. In fact when you stagger back to the temple area, you see that it’s practically collapsed on itself (along with the charred remains of a lot of dark elves). You have no idea if the shadows planned to destroy their own temple, but if there were any inside, it would be unlikely that they survived. Still, you can’t take that chance, and you begin to limp over to the devastated temple.
You hear a noise and swing around to defend yourself, but see that it’s Tyren and a couple of his people. One of them looks in pretty bad shape, and Tyren himself looks a little worse for wear.
“(Cough cough) Shit…certainly didn’t expect that.’ He says.
“Well maybe if you’d done your job correctly your little band of mercs wouldn’t be in pieces right now. Come on, we have to make sure all the shadows are dead. For all we know they aren’t even here and this was just a set up.” You reply and turn to head towards the temple.
Maybe if you’d been thinking more clearly and weren’t still a little scattered from the explosion, you wouldn’t have turned your back on Tyren. However, you did and he took full advantage.
You feel the piercing pain of the first bolt going into your back, followed by three more. You collapse to the muddy ground attempting to crawl away. You even try to use your shadow magic, but as fate would have it, it doesn’t work. It would appear Dendrin’s “favor” has been finally taken away. You’re left with the question to as why now of all times and there are several answers that pop into your head, but the only one that comforts you is that perhaps he finally lost all power due to losing all his followers.
You’ll never know of course, just like you’ll never know if the svelk will be punished for killing you when the next bolt goes into your skull.
