Shadow War campaign In-Game: Chapter 74- Where It All Began

[Strifeter]

As Tren lands he stands as tall as he can while cooking his head to one side. He jerks his head to stare at the tormentor he had slain and then in one fluid motion jerks his head back up to look at the crowd and prepares a battle stance.

PEOPLE OF WEST WELLINGTON...... THIS IS A WARNING. I represent a new order coming to your world and let be seen today that not even Illuminated greatest angel is beyond OUR reach. We can bring castles out and into the sky. We are the wind in the night. We are the creature who lives in the forest.......We are the WATCHERS of everything you do. We are everywhere and everything.

We have grown tired of those who would do harm to one another. Ones who are more than ready to step over another for personal gain. No peasant, no farmer, No King, NO GOD is beyond our judgements.

WE ARE THE GUILD OF THE ARK MOON and we will no longer tolerate the nature. Death will come to those of which it is required.

Tren moves swiftly in a circle with a finger pointed out around the crowd moving his head back and forth.

And you already know who you all are.




Remember, we will always be watching....

{Tren teleports to the forest patch he met Aerik.

[Navarre]

The looks on the faces of every person within your sight is one of fear, possible guilt, and understanding. No one rebukes you. No one replies at all.

Many avert their eyes. Most kneel. Before them is a force beyond all understanding or known power; and it is angry.

Even the cries of the women and children grow silent. The air becomes still though somehow far from calm. You have no doubt these people will acquiesce to your demands and that word will quickly spread.

The shadow of the cloud castle and the very city vanishes as you teleport. You find yourself in the familiar patch of forest where you met Scout Aerik Dayspring.

A wave of nausea overtakes you as you appear. This time your body cannot contain it and you relieve the contents of your stomach onto the ground.

As you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, head still hung outward away from your boots, you notice something dangling from around your neck. You reach for the hand-width strip of cloth that has apparently settled around you as the breeze blew through West Wellington.

It is a bright red strip of shimmering silk; darker in one spot from what must be the blood of the one who wore it. You lay it across your open palms and stare at it, your mind and heart burning.

It is the bodice strip of Serena's dress; a single golden hair stuck to it by the drying blood.

[Navarre]

{I am going to declare combat over. So the aerial party is free to act as they wish.}

[Navarre]

Above West Wellington, Coby looks at the trapped Anti-Seraphim and then to Moira.

"Good priestess, might ya be able to send these two Angels home the same way ya did the other two?"

Moira shakes her head.

"I am sorry. I cannot. That was a very taxing prayer. I could not manage something like that again until tomorrow."

Aldina shrugs, barely listening as she stares down hundreds of feet toward the tiny spot that is Jackson.

"The force cage will hold for some thirty hours. It will last until you banish them."

She continues to stare, almost blank in expression as tears roll unhindered from her eyes.

"We need to clean this up. Thomas and Valor and ...," she breaks.

[Strifeter]

Tren looks at his hand closing his fist of the only attachment he knows he could never just walk away from. His hand shakes until he finally ties the silk to a dagger.

I know your out there Lyric. Causing this nonsense. Pitting people against one another just like that hag once did. I hold in my arm the power that even Nexus fear and I will not allow one such as you to prevent peace these worlds need.

The day you chose to appose me was the day you chose death and this dagger will be it I promise you.

Tren carves a Crescent moon into the tree in front of him. Across it he strikes twice creating almost parallel lines through the center of the Ark.

I know your out there Lyric. Causing this nonsense. Pitting people against one another just like that hag once did. I hold in my arm the power that even Nexus fear and I will not allow one such as you to prevent peace these worlds need.

I promise you.

[Navarre]

"It hurts, doesn't it? Having someone rip the person you love away from them and there's nothing you can do but watch?" comes a soft...lyrical...voice from some thirty feet to your left.

Lyric Blackthere stands leaning with one slender shoulder against a thick elm tree. She is corporeal, not at all the young wraith you knew.

Her ginger hair and porcelain skin marks her of Elven blood as much as her sharply pointed ears and slightly arched eyebrows. The many freckles that dot her tiny nose would make her adorable if not for the dark scowl on her face.

Looking to be barely an adult by Elven standards, she wears pink leathers trimmed in black beneath a reversible pink and black cloak. A rapier hangs at her side but her arms are crossed as she stares at you. Her look is a nearly incomprehensible expression of hatred mixed with something that seems like the deepest of sadness.

She maintains the Elven tongue, though you are quite certain she understood every word you just said.

"You are ridiculously easy to find. Did you feel the universe coming apart at the seams when you 'ported in? I did. ... I don't care."

"All I've wanted for a dozen years is to make you hurt the way you hurt me. I am sorry for what happened to Serena, truly. She was like a daughter to Helsbeth, as I became after you stole the girl away."

"But you're good at that, aren't you? Taking what you want and demanding to be seen, using then forgetting everyone else in your wake?"

"There are those who call me 'Mourningsong' now. Fitting enough I suppose, as if any of them understand the sorrow in my heart."

"But you feel it now, don't you? Now you know how it all feels."

"I still feel sorry...but only that I wasn't the one to do this to you."

[Strifeter]

Tren lifts up the mask and takes his normal form back.
"I suppose you expect me to weep and mourn don't you. That's what most of this is about then?

Spare me....."

Tren throws the dagger with Serena cloth attached to it to the feet of Lyric.

You feel bad about being left behind when you can go and leave whenever you want. You fool yourself more than you fool me. What if I use people and leave them behind. I survived how many years of torture and literal hell to come so far. I keep people alive and no one listens. What do I care if you chose to stay in that room. I left with my teacher and I told you to go with the others.

Did I not. You would have survived and would have been with those who found you.

Tren turns and points directly at her.

You wish you could have been the one to do this. You cause turmoil and hatred with your tricks from behind a veil. You travel. It completely unlike myself and you show up when I am not around and cause the death of those a call allies. Who I turn called you friend.

Again spare your smug smile Lyric if anything you helped further my cause. I just killed Illumians Tormentor and you finally show your face when I am. It at my fullest strength. Truly a student of that hag. I knew it was you the minute I found your trace in the hobgoblin village.

Tren smiles.

come now Lyric tell me why your here. If its truly just to gloat then you are sadder than the little wraith I met all those years ago.

[Navarre]

Lyric gives a small derisive laugh. The wind blows through her fine hair, causing it to drift in the breeze as she fingers the hilt of her rune-carved rapier.

"I am to blame for being left behind? Did any of you even remember me?"

"The way you revise history to suit how you wish to see it would be almost admirable if it wasn't so cruel. Now you wish to take your pride one step farther and create history as you wish the world to be?"

"Well, history is about to be written, I assure you. But it won't be you holding the quill."

The Elven girl looks eastward past you, beyond the creek that separates Sashca's holdings where you stand from Illumian's holdings and West Wellington.

"As always, your every action plays into the hands of the only one worthy of ruling a universe. Note I didn't say this universe. No, this one is all broken, as was the last."

"You and your friends are going to do exactly what we wish you to do. The best part is, you will be doing it all of your own free will."

"After all, nothing is really true unless the person makes the choice themselves. That's a new lesson I recently learned."

"We simply don't have all the players on the field yet. No, the most important ones have been in hiding for far too long, allowing their followers to do their work for them."

"They just need a little nudge, that's all. Say, for someone to slaughter their Angels or threaten to subjugate their people? Or maybe turn their best worshipers, snipers, and scouts away from their thrall and take them into the holding's of an enemy god?"

"I wonder what would happen if one side even found out you were responsible for the chain of events that led to the kidnapping of their princess?" she smiles slyly, her soft Elven features darkening in the shadow of the trees.

[Navarre]

In the sky over West Wellington, all of you reconvene on the cloud island. Inoke looks at the carnage on the ground and the thousands of people, only now rising to their feet in the wake of Tren Moonstride's vanishing.

"What was Tren doing down there? Why everyone bowing to him?"

Moira frowns.

"We have made an incredible spectacle of ourselves this day. I believe Tren was trying to capitalize on that, hopefully for the right reasons."

"But we still have the Trust to recover from a man who may not even have arrived in the city yet. If I were him and witnessed this, West Wellington is the last place I would be."

Aphra grunts to herself.

"So, now what?"

[Strifeter]

Tren laughs out loud. Almost uncontrollably.

"Lyric how can you be so stupid. You speak of revenge and yet you still answer to someone. Truly that Hags servant you have become. One who is worthy to rule a universe. I tell you now that there is no such being.

Your living too much for the moment while silmultaneously you live for whats to come."

Tren looks at the trees.

"All I bring in a change in sight. Twist my actions in any which way... I do not care. You see Lyric thats the difference between you and me. You see everything as an opportunity to cause havoc and mayhem whereas people can see the logic on my part."

Tren stares directly at Lyric.

"You pretend to know what I have planned but I gaurantee you have barely touched the surface..."

[Gaumer]

Bedlor maneuvers his mount and lands on the cloud, joining his allies

"Now? Now we do what we aim to be gettin' done: We find the damned Trust.

Tren's aims be 'is own. 'E claims we be a group an' goes 'bout makin' things done all by 'is own doin's. If'n 'e be choosin' to go 'bout things on 'is own, I say we be lettin' 'im. 'Is doin's do nothin' but 'urt our aims to keep in the shadows o' the enemies that be takin' the all o' us down one by one.

First thing to be done is to be tendin' to our fallen allies. They deserve more than what be comin' to 'em.

After that we need to be speakin' o' our plans an' goin's on this day wit' the all o' this castle in the clouds. Sure'n more be comin' to set this place to siege sooner an' not later."

Bedlor silently speaks to Warsong.

<Be tellin' the other Protector that we need to be meetin' in secret, Dubya. It be time that those given the task o' keepin' this world safe be keepin' it safe instead o' lettin' those who be thinkin' 'emselves so lose this war 'fore we e'en be gettin' a chance.>

[Navarre]

You see Coby glance at you and nod, letting you know he has received Warsong's telepathic message. He looks to everyone.

"Moira, you're our only priest. If ya would like to say a prayer for the safe return of our friends' souls to whatever rest finds 'em I'd much appreciate it. We'll have to do somethin' about the bodies of everyone who's died today, and make sure these last two Angels o' Light don't do somethin' stupid."

"Hey, Bedlor, I think I need a word with ya. Kinda lost here and I gotta figure out what's goin' on with that hammers there. Y'mind?" he asks, walking into a comfortable tea room on the other side of a door that suddenly appears in the castle wall.

[Gaumer]

Bedlor follows Coby into the newly appeared room and, once inside,

"DAMN IT ALL!!"

And tosses Warsong to Coby

"This be war, on that there be no arguin'. I can be takin' a few losses, its to be expected durin' battles o' this sort. But wit' no chain o' command or e'en there bein' a look o' us actin' on what be best for the all for a stretch o' time instead o' what be best for the one in the moment we see 'em who call 'emselves a general in this war o' makin' 'is own way for 'is own ends based on 'is own feelin's. There be no place for it in war, an' sure'n if Dubya be selectin' ye, Coby, ye be knowin' it as much as I be knowin' it. Be sayin' so if'n ye not be agreein' but I fear if'n we not be puttin' Tren in 'is place an' wakin' 'im to knowin's o' 'is own doin's it'll be the end o' us. Our enemies be set on takin' this world an' usin' as there own, an' Tren sends word to e'ery man, woman an' child in that town that makes the warriors o' this cloud appear to be nothin' more than the same. 'Is allegiance be not wit' us, but wit' 'imself, as shown in 'is doin' what 'e be thinkin' best for 'im. 'E not be a king, by Kallum's beard, an' we need to be convincin' 'im o' that fact.

*sigh*

We also need to be usin' Warsong to our best advantages in battle. If'n we can be settin' ourselves up in a way to be usin' Warsong to both our styles o' fightin', the weapon becomes doubly useful to fight this war. Tell me 'bout yer trainin', mate."

[Navarre]

Lyric walks straight up to you, Tren. Her young Elven face turns upward to yours, accentuating the freckles on her nose and her deep green eyes.

"I don't have to know your plans, Tren. Only mine."

She smiles as her hands flash into the air. Above you, a Flare spell bursts into being.

Looking up, you see the Eye of Illumian, glowing in brilliant gold.


{If you wish to take action, Lyric is right in front of you.}

[Navarre]

On the cloud island, all but Coby and Bedlor (inside the castle) see the Flare. Moira blinks, staring toward the western border of Gallia Forest where the magical symbol originated.

"That is a distress signal from one of my priests!"