RuneScape Forum Archive | "The Warrior's purpose."

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“Please, have as many weapons ready as you can before next battle.”

Torva left, the blacksmith said nothing more.

That night, Torva lay in his bed. A rough, but soft cloth stuffed with hay from the fields and feathers plucked from chickens, set in a wooden frame, thick furs warming he and his wife.

His wife rolled next to him, kissing him softly on the shoulder. “Did you speak to the blacksmith today?” she asked.

“Yes.” Torva answered, his eyes staring deep into the wooden-hay ceiling of their home.

She laughed, shifting the top of herself over Torva, staring down at him, her long, brown hair draping over her face as her beautiful eyes stared down at him. “No more details than that, huh?”

Torva laughed, and pulled his wife into him, holding her. “There are too many details in this world.”

She kissed his chest again, but then, in a serious, hushed tone, asked “When do you think they’ll attack again?”

“I have no idea.” Torva answered bluntly. “I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.”

His wife lay across him, “Will we ever have our peace again, Torva?”

Torva closed his eyes. “I have no idea.” he answered again.

She said nothing.

Torva gripped her against him, however, and continued, “But I do know, that even if that peace never comes again, I’m going to keep fighting. I’m going to keep fighting and winning, for all of us.”

“Torva.” She said softly.

“My purpose is that. I know it is, and no matter what, that is what I’m going to do.”

Torva let his head sink back into the wad of furs serving as a pillow. “Even if I die, even if both of us die, I’m going to make the future livable.”

“I know you will, Torva.”

They slept.

02-Apr-2013 13:03:38 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:07:32 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The horns woke Torva up early.

Cursing as he kissed his wife quickly goodbye, as if he were simply leaving for a day’s labor, Torva dressed in both simple garb, and then in his battered, dented armor.

Rushing out into the muggy, early morning, Torva ran past, and with, other men who were waking up to the sounds of alarm as they prepared to gather up, to set out and meet the other villages and move to meet the enemy.

Torva was just taking count of the gathered men- Only Sixty-eight men. (Where had they all gone over the years?) when the hurried voice of the blacksmith interrupted him.

“Torva! Torva!” he called as he quickly pushed a cart, with the aid of a few other villagers, towards Torva and the men.

“The weapons! They’re all done!” he beamed.

Torva was confused. Surely the blacksmith could not have meant the weapons from the other day. How could any of them be done already?

The blacksmith saw Torva’s confusion and grinned wide, to explain. “This Iron, it is like nothing I have ever worked with, Torva! It smelted down and hardened within only minutes, and when I retrieved the hardened metal from the molds, the blades were already folded and sharp! It’s incredible!”

Torva, forgetting the direness to hurry into battle, walked inquisitively over to the cart, and peered in.

Like candles of radiant light, the blades shone, so bright it hurt Torva’s unprotected eyes to stare directly into them. Picking one carefully and slowly up, as if it were a beast that might bite at any moment, Torva studied the blade.

It felt incredibly light in his grasp, and holding it seemed to calm him somehow. He gave it a swing, and it cut as if the sword itself guided his hand. It might be suspicious, even a trap of some sort, but Torva had to admit; it was a worthy weapon.

02-Apr-2013 13:03:44 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:09:12 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

At the back of his mind, Torva wondered if it was just coincidence that the blacksmith had been given the “Blessed* Iron so soon before another attack, or if there was more to it, but that did*’t matter right now.

Torva took the sword for himself, and allowed a few chosen men to take weapons for themselves from the cart. The rest would be divided quickly among the other villages once they all arrived together.

It was only a few hours march to meet the others, and Torva quickly explained the weapons to a few of the men who acted as somewhat generals to him. They all took a weapon, and supplied a few amongst their men, until all of the strange, new blades were wielded.

With that, they marched again, to meet the enemy.

What they saw, made even Torva almost drop to his knees.

The front-lines of Torva’s men had just broken out of the thick forest that ended at the ever-familiar field of death, but now, they faced a literal ocean of demons. The field was vast, easily an entire half-mile wide, the opposite side ending in the unnaturally dark, dead trees of the over-taken land of their enemies.

They normally clashed around the middle of the field, but this time, the entire area was packed with rows upon rows of roaring, angry demons. Not just that, but the sky was polluted with the nightmarish forms of low-flying demons who carried themselves on huge, leather wings, incredibly long spears ready to cause havoc on ground units.

At the back of the sea, Torva could make out more than a few tiny, distant figures, robed in gross red. Unlike the demons, however, these forms were smaller. Flesh-colored.

Human mages, sided with the demons.

Disgusting.

Torva grit his teeth as he realized why it took so long for a new attack. The demons had clearly become fed up with how long it was taking to exterminate Torva and his kin. They had reorganized, and came out in full force.

02-Apr-2013 13:03:50 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:11:05 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Of course, Torva could speculate, this wasn’t nearly all of the demons that were invading their world, but Torva understood he was likely looking out at the entire sect of the demonic hordes that had been sent to capture this part of the world.
The entire enemy army lay upon them.

They outnumbered Torva’s forces fifteen to one, give or take, and judging from the lack of color on his men’s faces as they stood beside him, gazing out at the onslaught of demons, the odds were stacked even greater against them.

Torva gazed down across the demons. They were assembled, but waiting. Torva found it, in some strange manner, comforting the enemy was being so smug. They were all there, their entire, massive force. They wanted it to really sink in to Torva and his men that what they had been fighting all these years was nothing but fractioned forces, sent in only because the demons thought Torva and his men so weak, there was no reason to come in full of force.

“Give us the time we need to get ready, then, damned beasts.” Torva thought.

His men assembled, laughable in comparison to the amount of Demons before them. To all of their credit, however, none of them even looked as if they were about to retreat. Then again, there was nothing to retreat to, really. It was do or die.
Torva breathed in heavily, and spoke to his men.

“Look, at our enemy, men.” He began, shouting so they could all hear his words.
“They, for years, have battered against us, vainly attempting to overtake us. Vainly attempting to subjugate us. To exterminate us.” He paused, as the faces of the men before him drawn to him, listening.

“They thought us weak, easy to trample. They’ve sent nothing but throw-away forces to us, and what have we done, men? What have we done?”

He shouted the last line hard, his throat straining under the intensity of the command.

02-Apr-2013 13:03:57 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:13:52 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“Won!' came the collective shout of most of the men.

“What have we done?” Torva repeated.

“Won!' came even more cries, louder this time.

“Now the enemy comes before us, pulling all their stops, because they know that united, we are a threat to them. We must be taken seriously, because we win. Because they cannot beat us.”

Torva’s nostrils flared as he pulled in air to shout again.

“They think to outnumber us! They think to belittle us, to embarrass and defeat us, and then have their way with our families and friends.”

The demons, though only a few of the more intelligent ones among them could understand any of the words coming from the human before them, laughed and snickered with one another. The humans were trying to rally, like mice before the lions.

Behind them, a demon inquired to a sinisterly robed man, the man’s bald head painted in intricate, odd markings, his eyes outlined in bright, deep rings of red. In the tongue of Zaros, the demon asked, “Shall we give out the word to attack, Lord Fhalin?”

The man flicked his eyes towards the demon. Sickly, oozing green irises bore into whatever he looked at with cold, calculated steadiness. “No. I’m enjoying the speech.” He said, dismissing the demon and studying again on the words he could not even hear from so far away.

Torva rose his clenched fist. “I promise that none of us may return to our homes after this. But even if that is our fate, to join the brothers before us on this field, and to lay with the fowl beasts of our enemy forever in death; if we defeat them here, and now, then we may truly be free of them. I gladly give my life if it means peace tomorrow, for our wives, for our children, for our friends.”

He raised now, his sword, the shining light catching the sun and sending a glare shining bright across the demonic army.

02-Apr-2013 13:05:05 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:15:49 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The demon next to the robed general screeched loud as the shining glare from the sword shot all the way over the army, hitting him in the chest- and burning him. The demon collapsed, his massive, sharp fingers rubbing the spot that still burned, eating away at him.

Fhalin glanced down at the demon as it turned off to dust, the others assembled around it standing back in shock and surprise.

Fhalin looked back again, to the blade the man was holding, rubbing his painted chin with a finger pierced with a golden crest of Zaros. “How about that.” He said to himself. “I bet it shone right on his heart.” He smiled and laughed.

“And I know in my heart, you would all do the same.” Torva spoke on, “Before, we would have fought one another, or lived in tentative, fickle peace. But now, now we happily go to death, side by side, village by village. Each man fighting just as hard for the other villages as he does for his own. We have seen, together, that we are all afraid of losing our homes and families to these monsters, that we all have something precious to us, something we must defend. It is not just individual to each of us, or individual to village, it is something we all share, something that makes us all whole.”

“What started as an alliance of simple convenience for us has turned us into a brotherhood of death and victory.”

Torva shook his sword high, and the others all joined their weapons in to do the same.

“We will fight together, we will die together and we will win together!” he cried.

“That is our purpose!”

The men all cried, as if they all thought they stood a chance of winning, and those with blessed weapons sent their own glares flying across the assembled demons, as more than a few of them fell down, burning to the glare of the holy metal.

“General! Something is going on, they have blessed weapons from Saradomin.” One of the human magi shouted to Fhalin.

02-Apr-2013 13:05:11 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:17:18 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“It has taken you that long to figure that out?” Fhalin said, coldly, raising an unimpressed eyebrow towards the younger mage.

“Well, I mean-“ the lesser mage began, but cut himself off with a shrill, blood-curdling scream, as, with a wave of a hand, Fhalin turned the other man into a pile of smoking bones.

Fhalin, from his seat at the fore-see’rs camp of the army, leaned towards a demon that had stepped in to replace the one recently turned to ash. “Sound the attacks.”
The thin, high-pitched horns of the demons sounded, and the stirring ocean of bodies began falling on the small group of men.

Torva said no more, but screamed as he charged head first, into the mass of demons.

In moments the two forces met. Torva swung his blade left and right, battling a demon. He parried blow after blow, returning them with his own, locked in combat with the single demon.

With one final arcing slash, he split the demon’s stomach open, and it fell, shrieking.

Sparing just a second to catch his breath, he turned to look upon his brethren.
Only, they were many yards away.

Torva let his vision register, shaking his head to clear the blurry, red haze of battle.

He hadn’t been fighting just a single demon. A trail of red and black corpses lead behind him, and he swathed into the ranks of demon. He had slain at least…. Twenty? Thirty?

What was more, was the demons around him were backing off, the sword in his hand glowing sharply in the daytime sun. Torva looked at the demons, their ugly, hellish faces mostly hidden beneath heavy, spiked masks that served as helmets. All that was truly visible of their visages were the glowing red eyes from within the blackness of the masks.

Torva saw an expression in them he’d never seen before. Something he never thought he’d ever see from them.

Torva saw fear in the eyes of the demons.

02-Apr-2013 13:05:17 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:19:17 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Torva backed off, the sword keeping all the demons at bay as he backed himself towards his men. Carefully retreating back to the rest of his men, his eyes scanning back and forth across the demons before him. He might be holding a weapon of untold power against the demons, but he wasn’t going to be foolish about it.

Torva edged himself towards a group of his men, two of which wielded the blessed weapons which were cutting through Demons like nothing. Torva asked one of his ‘generals’ from the corner of his mouth what in the world was going on, just as Torva cut the hand off of an advancing demon, who howled in pain and fell to the ground, turning to dust.

The general let himself turn his head towards Torva, taking his eyes off the thread before him; his face confused, but happy. “I was going to ask you the same thing. These weapons, the demons can*t seem to do anything about them. They’re amazing.”

Torva nodded, smiling. “Aye.”

What was more, was, with the ground troops in such disarray, the flying demons were proving very little issue for the archers to pick off. Archers, in teams of five to six, focused their fire, turning the demons into pin-cushions that fell onto their own troops below.

That’s not to say the Demons did*’t have their own gains, however.

Here and there, Torva’s men were slowly, but surely, getting picked off.

Mixed in with the cries of dying demon was the occasional pitch of human as demon metal rended deep into the soft flesh of mortal man.

To the far west of Torva, a man wielding one of the holy blades suddenly found the spear of one of the flying demons lodged through his head and chest. The broken body immediately dropped the sword, and demons poured over it before anyone could retrieve it.

The demon, shot full of arrows no sooner than he had slain his target, fell to the earth dead and smiling.

02-Apr-2013 13:07:49 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:20:41 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Beside Torva, one of his men suddenly screamed in pain as smoke twisted out of his ears, curling to the ground before going deadly silent. The mages.

Torva tried to see up towards where the mages sat, at the far back of the demonic horde, but he was no longer on the hills of the forest, and couldn’t see above the demons. He ground his teeth as he cut two demons down at once. Something had to be done about the mages.

Fhalin sat, brooding as two small demons attended to him. It was only minutes into battle and already nearly two hundred demons were dead.

Saradomin himself must have spat on those accursed blades, Fhalin thought to himself. His magi’s magic couldn’t even target those holding the weapons, and scout reports were showing at least thirty men wielded the blessed blades. Two were dead, and a small number of human troops were sent to attempt to retrieve the blades from the churning mass of demons.

Fhalin bit his lower lip so hard that a thin line of crimson quickly seeped out from between tooth and flesh. This wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. He wasn’t supposed to waste this much time, this many troops.

Victory was assured, that much was certain. But victory at what cost? Fhalin felt himself shudder in fear. This had to end. Fast. He got up, moving down towards the battlefield. “Where are you going, Master Fhalin?” one of his demonic servants asked.

“To end this, before Zaros has all of our bones flayed.”

Torva had reformed some ranks, though some of his men were still isolated in the tide of demons. The weapons turned out to be much too good, and his forces had gotten split up much too easily as they cut into the enemy ranks.

Still, he had most of his men back together at this point, and had them mowing into the demons quite nicely. Formed into a “V” point, those with blessed weapons made up the tip of the wedge, with Torva near the head. Archers sat in the middle, raining volleys of arrow down far in front of them.

02-Apr-2013 13:08:06 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:21:36 by Ghondor

Oct

2023

Ghondor

Posts: 3,764 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Torva basically thought, at this point, their best bet was to quickly cut through the demons and see if they couldn’t make it out to the other end. Maybe then they could get close enough to the mages to kill them. After that, he was sure that they could kill at least most of the remaining demons before all dying themselves.

If they were lucky, at least.

Torva turned as he heard weapons clash behind him. They had gotten about halfway into the thick of the opposing army, but now the end of their wedge was being closed in on, they were starting to get surrounded. A man beside Torva was suddenly pulled into the throng of demons, his cries for help cut short by a heavy thwacking sound from within the jungle of monsters.

Torva growled deep in his throat. He gave a call, and his men formed into a loose circle, those with blessed weapons on the outside of the ring.

Which worked fairly well. The weapons were completely turning the tide as far as Torva could tell. He just wanted to make sure they finished off the demons before whatever was granting the weapons so much power potentially faded off, and left them all for dead.

Fhalin, at this point, simply blew demons out of his way, knocking them aside with heavy bursts of air. Most fell, and were unharmed, but more than a few impaled one another by mistake as they fell, the mage intent on reaching the band of men currently cutting through his army.

Behind him, followed the rest of the magi, eight of them.

Slicing the head off of a particularly large demon, Torva took a quick count of how many men he had left. There were twenty-two, counting himself, who wielded blessed weapons, with around thirty more normal soldiers and less than twenty archers. Less than seventy-five.

He found himself smiling. Whatever happened, he surmised, at least they’d all go down in one hell of a fight.

02-Apr-2013 13:08:13 - Last edited on 02-Apr-2013 16:24:03 by Ghondor

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"The Warrior's purpose."