laneys.info Beware of Yankees, drunks, and loose women.

We had traveled for weeks, forced to flee in the face of overwhelming opposition. It was a position we were not used to being in yet we bore it well. I watched the remnants of our once great civilization fade in the distance as the glow of fire consumed our city. The walls still undulated with the shadows of our bravest who remained behind to slow our enemy and give the survivors time to flee. After all, it wasn’t conquering our enemies were interested in. It was annihilation. The extermination of an entire people.

The beginning has been lost to the sands of time. No one remembers what act brought the hate of an entire world against us. Many believed the gods had lost patience with us as we grew farther from our faith and deeper into the hubris only man can create. Man, woman, and child, no one was spared their wrath. I tried to see what lay before us but was blocked by the mists. Our shadows walked in the fog of death, they swallowed our very souls. Light failed to penetrate this shroud as our essence bled from every pore. Through it all we foolishly believed we could survive and for several centuries we managed but then our enemy grew wise and sought favor with those we had once called friends and allies.

The Varakii suffered as much as we did and yet they never lost their focus. Their aim was true, their blades sharp, and they never faltered in their determination to see us destroyed. Our cities, once proud centers of craft and commerce were slowly and methodically reduced to piles of ash and rubble. The smoke filled the glades and forests where we hunted, its tendrils chasing us as if to give us away as we fled like rats from a sinking ship. One by one they fell as our people were forced farther and farther into our realm. For a time, as the lines collapsed to an ever-tighter border, we were able to resist and hold them off. A stalemate had been forced and held for several years but eventually that border became our noose as we realized our enemy had found new allies.

So it was that our earth brothers had formed ranks with the pointed ears and a few human settlements outside of our influence. And so it came, the first day of spring, after two hundred and thirty years of conflict, as Lord Sengvesti and myself stood looking out to the horizon we witnessed Aloryn’s fate for us. I remember a massive cloud formed in the shape of the Reaper himself as the army below him marched to the walls and began their assault. The earth shook, fire rained, lightning cracked all around us. The city burned bright as the fires jumped from building to building casting eerie shadows down the smoke filled avenues. I watched as warriors and civilians were cut down without mercy or hesitation. The blood of our people ran deep that day.

I stood on the battlements of the keep staring down upon the destruction below, watching as our enemy pushed closer and closer to the main wall. The stink of death was as thick as the smoke and the cries from the dying will haunt my dreams forever. I shed tears for our demise and prayed quietly for my people and their quick ascension to the afterlife. I knew our time was short. Suddenly I was grabbed and whisked away by several of the king’s guard. The stairs rushed up beneath my feet as we descended to the ground floor then below into the cellars. Dust and small stones fell from the trembling earth above my head and yet we never faltered.