<<Taking a short break from aWLoN! I dug this up. It is some of the original concept pieces I made for Alarad. Admittedly, it’s kind of jazzy… I cut it up into 3 pieces, though may end up as 4. (Nope, it’ll be 3, definately 3!) enjoy!ty,DD>>
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It was but an echo, though the fear was palpable, like tendrils stretching through the forest. From leaf to leaf, branch to branch, across open glades, every animal in turn suddenly lifted its head, if not bolted outright. Birds swiftly took to the sky, even the smallest insects found a crevice. The tendrils of fear found their way deep into the ground, into caverns and lairs long since sealed off from the mortal races. To where a slumbering spirit-bear had made his den.
It was his forest, though he was but a sliver of what he once was. He laid in slumber for centuries not to be awakened until the End. This though, this palpable tendril of fear, reached even into his domain. He awoke with a roar, the Primal Eidolon of the Bear, the Great Father, sent the tendrils sprawling back to their source. In a devastating charge the great bear followed close behind.
The Great Father, once worshiped as a god amongst the ancient elves, had long since laid down his power over the living, long since given up the ways of war and battle. This Eidolon never expected to experience a full blood rage again, not before the End, not before it was his time, though he was in a rage, for the forest cried out in one voice. A voice which sounded as a raging roar throughout, a roar that the bear suddenly realized was coming from his massive salivating maw. He would speak for the forest once again, and more so.
The Great Father entered the blazing glade, the source of the disturbance, fire had left it all but barren, though the flames still raged at its outskirts. This was no natural fire- this was the fire of demons. At the center of the blaze was what was left of a wagon, the small humanoids were lifeless except for one, the very source of the fear was a child gnome, a gnubling, as yet, and miraculously, unscathed. Though the forest sensed intent, and the raging ogre that had assaulted the travelers, was bearing down.
Hellfire burned in the ogre’s eye. The bear knew no ogre could wield such magic naturally; this ogre was a product of demon worship. And this ogre’s intent was the murder, or sacrifice, of this one crying child.
All this and more the bear concluded before he ever collided with the demonic ogre. The ogre proved far stronger than the Great Father first expected, though still the bear’s claws raked across the monster’s chest, and ferocious bite chomped down on its throat. An attack that would kill a mortal ogre outright, it was not until the bear ripped the very throat from the ogre that the unnatural fires fell away, and the creature vanished, magically whisked away before the bear could find a way to kill it completely.
——-
It was many years after and still when the small gnome, not yet an adult, closed his eyes, he still saw the burning flames. Flames that had blasted the small wagon, and ripped his parents away for good. Flames that engulfed everything he had ever known, loved, or cared about, flames that had been the result of an ogre magi’s assault.
“My eye is blind I cannot see. Not physically blind, though inside, inside I may as well be. It was all taken from me. What was once so clear, now gone. What would once unfold without a doubt; past, present, future. Though much of my past is with those I lost, and my present is filled with that void… What future could a void bring?
The flames themselves have insured that I will never recreate what was. There is no chance of my happiest memories ever being shared with those that had shared so many of those times before. And now, to say the very least, it makes my life so bleak, that in fact I wish the flames had taken me too. Though the thought itself is against every fiber of my being, to take the leap is to be free… I feel as nothing without those the fires have claimed from me.
The assault itself shook me to my core, I felt fire lick my skin and smelled the flesh burn around me, behind the flames a silhouette of a monster, an evil demonic fiend that seemed such a distant threat compared to the imminent threat of the flames around me.
I sit here staring into the same flame though tame. I am not sure if I fear its sudden attack, or my sudden will to plunge myself in, to become engulfed, and join those I lost.
To be so loud, so abrasive, the courageous roar that was that of the ancient bear, a massive spirit of good that had fought off the ogre fiend, had rescued me from the flames and brought me to the very foot of the wild tree, home of the wild elves…”
