Of Gods and Warriors ✓

Chapter 35

Despite all, she still had no idea how to free a deity from his own statue.

"I could break the statue apart, you know? With a pickaxe or something. But it'll take time, lord."

What? No! Why is that the first thing that comes to your mind, mortal? That could be disastrous.

He was right. She would upset the whole village. An angry mob with pitchforks chasing her would just be the perfect rotten icing atop the rancid pie that was her life.

Now her immortal friend-- Dresius, had better ideas, it turned out.

A sudden tug jerked her sideways, nearly landing her in the lap of the skeleton.

"What the--?" She tried to scurry away at once, but the immortal soul seemed to gain power over her, enough to resist her movements. Another yank pulled her nose-to-nose with the skeleton's bony, helmed head.

She stopped struggling. Dresius was trying to communicate.

What did he imply, pulling her toward this centuries-old remnant of a tragic demise?

Farren stared into those hollow pits of the skeleton's eyes-- searching for any answer they could offer. The worrying thing was-- the spider nested there was nowhere to be seen; she found it hard to concentrate. She took a deep breath in.

A musty smell of mould rode the air. The scent of decay.

One by one, she took in the details arrayed before her. The scraps of tattered leather that hung on its bony shoulders. Leather armor.

The mould-ridden bear pelt wrapped around the back. A cloak, of the sort commonly used by North Midaelian warriors of the tundra plains.

Strapped to a belt around the waist was an empty wooden scabbard, snapped in half. The antlered helmet spoke for itself.

A loud flapping noise filled her ears as a night-bird took flight outside-- blocking out the ray of moonlight for a fleeting moment, and realization hit her like a savage punch in the gut.

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Visions flooded her mind; long-lost memories that were not hers, but of a young commander of the Chosen Warriors.

All around her, the Autumnwind plains swarmed with ranks upon ranks of soldiers. Yet she knew she hadn't moved an inch from the cave behind the waterfall. This was but a faded memory of the warrior whose corpse now rested in solitude, hidden away in this cavern behind the shrine of a nameless deity. She was seeing through the eyes of the ancient warrior.

The sky above swirled with dark clouds, the blood-tainted wind glacial. Dresius was in the lead, high on his horse in a sea of horned helms. A bear-pelt cloak rode his broad shoulders.

"For Midaelia!" he roared, sword unsheathed and held high. His blade was no ordinary one. Green veins glimmered within its transparent shaft, just like the crystal dagger. All of Dresius' soldiers wielded crystal bladed weaponry.

"FOR MIDAELIA!"

From the other side of the plains came bestial roars. Among the ranks of the green-clad soldiers the Drisian flag rippled. The reek of sorcery emanating from them choked the air. And Farren recognized the magic.

She had sensed it when she fought the Vasaen in the woods. These Drisians she was seeing now were the same, numbering in hundreds of thousands.

Despite the war-cries rising from his army, she knew-- Dresius knew, this was but a losing battle. Yet he needed to survive.