Torvald Glenn—Renners Fork Township Torvald appeared in a shower of blue sparks, a mage at his side, staff in hand, and strain visible on his face from teleporting them. They were in the dead center of a small, cozy town; wooden buildings with neat planter boxes nestled under windows lined the streets. An idyllic river flowed gently past the scene; a half dozen single boat docks draped into the waters. There oddly wasn’t anyone on the streets, just a few fearful faces peeking out from behind colorful homespun curtains. The mage huffed for a few minutes before addressing Torvald's towering form. “Why in all the hells would you pay so much to be teleported here?” His eyes looked around the small township and up the hill to an out-of-place manor complex surrounded by high wrought iron walls with decorative etchings on the rounded spike caps. Torvald handed over a rather large bag of gold, more than most people would see in a year of labor. “You see that big-ass pile of sturdy buildings with all the fancy money can buy up on the hill, the one surrounded by the shit-scared town guards, who are in fact besieging it to get at the power-mad local lord.” “Uhuh…” The mage trailed off, waiting for Torvald to answer the damn question. Torvald gestured broadly at himself from top to bottom. “I needed to be the first one here so I could break the siege of Renner’s Fork singlehandedly. I can’t take any chances with another adventuring party beating me here.” He smiled widely and twirled his oversized hammer dramatically. The mage looked even more confused; his brows furrowed farther. “Okay? Uhh, don’t die. Thanks for the business?” Torvald loped up the hill to the cluster of guardsmen who held defensive positions behind arrow- and burn mark-riddled carts that had been flipped onto their sides. As he approached the first cart, an arrow came sailing down from one of the top windows of the manor, scraping off the edge of his leather vest. “Get into cover, man; you are a big fucking target!” A fresh-faced guard hissed at him, rushing towards him, shield raised defensively to try and cover Torvald's frame from the archer. Torvald tackled the brave but stupid guard back behind the cover, saving him from an arrow that had veered mid-flight around the guard's shield. “Stay in cover; that archer isn’t fucking around!” The guard said with a grimace after Torvald pulled himself off the man. Torvald looked around. “Hey, so this is a siege, right? Like everyone here would consider this a siege with projectiles flying both ways over walls and such?” A portly guard tucked behind a high stack of barrels answered unconvincedly, “Well, I mean, mostly they have been shooting at us; our one archer got smoked the first day.” Torvald looked around until he found a large stone and hefted it up, stepping out of cover and throwing it in a spinning, full-bodied heave that sent the stone flying so fast it was lost from sight until it hit the frame of a window in an explosion of wooden fragments, followed by curses and screams from inside the upper floor. “Ehh… that should count, right? Really trying to make sure this counts…” The fat guard looked at him aghast; Torvald hadn’t even noticed the arrow sticking slightly into his vest. “Who the fuck are you, man? You seem pretty...uhh, strong? And all but where is the rest of your party? These guys aren’t fucking around.” Torvald struck a dramatic angle, flexing just a bit. “Torvald Bearsbane! Silver rank adventurer.” A guard two carts over squinted at him in surprise. “Wait? Like Torvald, the Forsaken Paladin’s bodyguard?” “Who?” The fresh-faced young guard asked. “That mad mage everyone’s having a tizzy about in Hopes Path that killed off like a dozen paladins in the dungeon.” The portly guard answered. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ nοvelfire.net “Oh shit! I heard about that, but doesn’t that guy like make demons and snuff out the life around him? Why would he need a bodyguard?” The fresh-faced guard looked at Torvald with newfound concern. Torvald crouched low into a sprinter’s stance, eyeing the meager fortifications ahead. “One and the same! Although I'm more of his minder, stopping him from doing truly stupid shit. Now if you will excuse me, I have a siege to break.” The fat guard chuffed, “And how are you going to get over the gate and around the barricades? Don’t be dumb; they will turn you into a pincushion.” Mana swirled around Torvald as he prepared to charge. “Who said anything about around? I’m here to break a siege.” Torvald exploded forward, launched by his charge; he took four catastrophically powerful leaping steps before charging again as he exploded off his front foot, shoulder first, into the metal gate. Like a wrecking ball made of muscle, he cratered through the gate, sending both doors cartwheeling through the well-manicured yard. He didn’t slow at all, weaving left and right as a hail of arrows and bolts of fire rained down at him from the windows above. Torvald warded off the firebolts with impossibly deft short sweeps of his hammer, scattering the magic harmlessly over himself. Most of the arrows he dodged, but a few curved back after his mad dash, slicing into the meat of his shoulder and thigh. He reached the manor's main entrance; it was a stalwart wooden door three strides tall reinforced with bands of iron meant to hold against battering rams. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Torvault launched himself upward in a duo of charges, seeing him crest over the top of the manor itself to the astonishment of its defenders, their horrified faces meeting his own briefly as he rocketed past. He stopped himself suddenly in the middle of the air and came back down like a wrathful meteor trailing booming laughter all the way down. Torvald charged three times on his way down, each time building more and more speed; the wind screamed past him by the time he hit the door. Torvalds' hammer arced down with momentum imparted to it by a mountain of muscle and multiple skills designed to do one thing exceedingly well: break things. The hammer hit the door on the top edge with a crack that shattered windows. The door slammed open in a shower of metal and stone; the door broke and was wrenched from the stonework simultaneously. The defender right behind the door disappeared in an explosion of gore as Torvald's blow carried straight through into the startled man's shield. Torvald looked around, taking deep breaths, his weapon held wide and ready. He had burned through most of his mana getting in. The foyer had a barricaded staircase ahead with two men entrenched behind bookcases, spears poking out. Torvald let out a bellowing war cry that made both of them flinch back. “Now’s your one chance to surrender,” Torvald shouted while reaching down to pick up a sharp, blood-covered hunk of shield. A hardened voice shouted back. “Bring it ya big bastard! We have the stairs locked down!” “Never really been a big fan of stairs, too slow,” Torvald said mirthfully before charging straight up and erupting through the second-story floor in a shower of tiles and broken potted plants. He was in a wide ballroom with a grand table and a white and green tile mosaic across the floor. The two archers and one mage whirled in horror from their window perches at his arrival. “Hi, Bye!” Torvald shouted cheerfully; already within arm's reach of the first archer, he grabbed him by the skull and threw him mid-sprint at the other archer. They slammed together in a tangle of limbs and the snap of breaking bones. The mage managed to hit him dead on with a fire bolt that burned a deep hole into his abdomen before his hammer reached out with a deep whump sound, caving the mage's chest in. A weedy man in a fine-looking raiment in the corner of the ballroom watched his men almost instantly savaged in dawning concern. “I surrender!” He practically screeched at Torvald in terror as Torvald approached him in a low sprint, hammer held high. Torvalds’s sprint slowed to a jog, then a walk, as he held his arms high in victory. “Fuck yes! Siege broken, motherfuckers!” One of the remaining guards came charging up the stairs, having missed the "we surrender" memo, spear leveled at Torvald. Torvald threw the hunk of broken shield like a demonic Frisbee, nearly beheading the man. "Hey, I'm celebrating here. Fuck off unless you are bringing mead!" Vraxious—The Forsaken Lands “Goddammit, I think you’re beyond help, sorry buddy.” Vrax picked past another still twitching daisy body. He had been working his way through the aftermath of the battle. He had lost an awful lot of his creations during that fight, especially daisies; there were only four or five of them still intact and running around. Sunshine was just a pile of writhing, burning roots and a single tendril by the time Vrax added him back to the Stigmata Garden. Vrax had no damn idea if it was going to recover from that or not, but putting it into the garden would be its best bet. He was midstep back into the war-torn courtyard to try and go retrieve the siren's call when the world stopped. Dandelion seeds froze midair, the grass no longer flickered in the breeze, and daisies stood stock-still, frozen in time. Oh, I think I might be about to die, or I already did… Vrax cautiously skulked slightly into the chapel; the only sounds in the world around him were his own footsteps and frightened breaths. And the distant sound of steady footfalls. A man that could have been from any adventurers hall in the world strolled down the stilled street. Late forties in appearance, wearing a well-made armored battlemage's robe, metal plates layered over heavy leather swayed with his steps. He carried a small traveler's pack and leaned on a staff seemingly carved from fossilized wood. Vrax’s heart quickened as the man calmly approached, stopping a few strides from the chapel. His voice was reassuringly steady considering the circumstances. “I traveled an awfully long way to come to talk to you, king to king, young man. Firstly, congratulations. My name is Chronus Archerion, monarch of the empire of strands.” Chronus finished with a smile and sat down heavily on the steadiest-looking gravestone on the edge of the yard. “Ah, excuse me, I have walked an awful lot today.” King Chronus? Oh hell, how and why? It's been like a month. What the hell did I do to attract his attention already?! Vrax put on his best charming smile and stepped out with a flourish and a bow. “Your Highness, what an unexpected honor. I would have cleaned up or at least put away some of my, uhh...less friendly citizens…” Vrax nervously eyed the murderous tree that was still frozen in time just a few strides away from them. Chronus gave a guffaw at the attempt at a diplomatic greeting. “Ha, I certainly appreciate the attempt at statecraft, but this is a very informal meeting; as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we haven’t met yet. So Vrax, I'll get right down to it. What do you intend? Will you raise armies and create city-leveling abominations even I must fear? Or will you build a paradise only you understand amidst the bones of the greatest empire to ever exist in this world? Building wonders and horrors unimagined by any mind before and letting civilization bloom here again. In short, are you going to be a fucking problem or an unexpected boon as a neighbor?” Vrax’s fake confidence faltered for a moment at the unexpectedly straightforward words of the king, “Uhh, well, shit...I certainly have no intention of being a conqueror; I just want to have a home where I can experiment and explore to my heart's content. And well, it would be fucking grand if I didn’t have to worry that my family and friends were threatened by the church of Rembrand…and honestly, sire, by your duke.” Chronus gave a stern grumble. “Yes, the church and the duke are unjust as of late, but that is life, and if I had any easy alternatives that wouldn’t throw a fifth of my realm into exploitable instability, I would have turned them all to dust by now—the church and my bloody duke….”Obviously if you repeat a word that is said here, it won’t go well for you.” Chronus said while flourishing a single finger towards Vrax, the chapel eroded around him, dripping down into sand and dust as it aged a millennium in but a few heartbeats. Vrax froze like his life depended on it because it probably did. And waited for the king to continue. Chronus gave a sigh and met Vrax’s eyes, a sad look on his face. ” Let me tell you a story that few know, one I think should serve as a cautionary tale to you, and explain part of why I came to speak to you in person and get the measure of you. The story is about how my friend and confidant, my first true duke, Cormag, fell from the path of a healer and became the scourge you all call the Necromancer lord. He didn’t do it out of a lust for power or wealth; he did it for love and to try and save his beloved duchess and daughter.”