Chapter 36 - Prisoners (Part 2)

Arnulf could hardly believe that a person could be so powerful.

Magic activated all around the Stormlord. The air flared with it, shining like stars bursting in the air. Yet the most impressive feat was still to come. Just as Arnulf thought they would soon be overwhelmed, two portals appeared in the pens at the same time!

Arnulf raced into action. He began to harangue the dazed prisoners to go through even as he ran to pick up his little sister.

“You came back for me,” she said as she hugged him fiercely.

“I said I would,” as relief swept through him. She was alive. He’d seen bodies of his friends outside, but his sister was still alive. “Let’s get out of here.”

It was slow going, getting exhausted, starved prisoners through the portals, far too slow. The gnolls showed up and began to fight. Arrows rained down from Aina’s position on the pens, while Arbiter Katla and Runolf actually charged the gnolls.

Then Arnulf was too busy getting people through the portal to watch the fight. He actually had to go through himself, and go back out the other side to get to the other pen, so that he could help on that side, when it seemed it was going too slow at one point. Despite his own weakness, he refused to stop carrying his baby sister. Finally, it was done and the pens were empty.

Empty of living people, anyway. He was careful not to look at the dead ones too close. It was too painful, seeing people he’d grown up with, or folks he’d gotten to know in the camps, gone forever. He darted out through the portal into the woods, and both portals winked out of existence, leaving their saviors behind with the enemy.

But Arnulf wasn’t worried for them. Not after what he’d seen.

When the gnolls had raided his village, they’d slaughtered the handful of men, including his father, who had tried to defend them. It hadn’t even been a real fight. The gnolls had laughed and made a game of it. Arnulf had watched in horror as his father died slowly as the gnolls stabbed him with shallow cuts in his arms and legs, and made him fight until he collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss before they cut his throat.

After the gnolls seized him and his sister, and most of the rest of the villagers, to be kept as sacrifices to their evil god, Arnulf thought that surely humanity was as doomed as they were. If gnolls could best them so easily, every town and city was fated to go up in flames.

Yet it wasn’t just the Stormlord. This entire group destroyed gnolls as easily as breathing. It was amazing. He’d only seen them for a scant few hours, but he’d already witnessed incredible things. The scout, Aina, could disappear into thin air, and could move in ways that didn’t seem real. The warpriest, Arbiter Katla, was a terror with her sword and cut through gnolls like wheat before a scythe. She hadn’t even needed to call on her Forging, even though he knew by her skin and horns that she had to at least be at the Second Forging.

Then there was Runolf. He scowled at the thought of that vile man, who had argued against rescuing his friends, his family, his sister. He could fight, Arnulf conceded. But that was his only redeeming feature.

And of course the Stormlord. Even in the few brief hours he’d known him, Lord Taliesin had shown himself to be a true hero. Arnulf had seen him throw around crazy magics the likes only existed in stories, and yet he was willing to help rescue lowly peasants from remote farming villages.

Arnulf sat down next to his sister and handed her a piece of soft bread and the leather skin of water that he’d been given. She trembled in disbelief. “For me?!”

“Of course. You didn’t think I’d get us rescued and forget to bring you food?” he teased. The little five year old was thin, so thin.

A portal opened up and the Stormlord and his group raced out of it, all of them looking like they’d taken a beating. But his sister didn’t look at them at all. Instead, she looked up at him with shining eyes in her gaunt face. “You’re the best.”

At that moment, Arnulf decided he’d follow the Stormlord anywhere.

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Taliesin leaned on his Empyreal Staff in a white-knuckled grip as he held open the Greater Portal. Gaunt and dead-eyed prisoners streamed through, with an anxious Arnulf racing around behind them to make sure they kept moving before the gnolls found their hiding spot in the woods. The minor Ring of Health on his finger was working hard to repair the injuries from where the gnoll’s club had smashed through his defensive spells, and he winced when he felt a rib grind back into place without warning.

Katla paced back and forth next to him, while Runolf simply stood at the ready, until the last of the prisoners were through. Arnulf went immediately after, then Taliesin’s group followed. With a sigh of relief, Taliesin let the portal snap closed.

“Is this all of them?” asked Jarl Gunther, concern etched across his young face. “I thought there’d be more.”

Taliesin nodded tiredly, but he was already recovering his energy. “More than a few were dead in their cages, or sacrificed on the gnoll’s altar to their gods. Still, we’ve saved near five dozen.”

“A worthy endeavor to save human lives, and a blow against the foul Olympians,” said Katla fervently. “Holy Freya is most pleased with righteous battles such as this.”

“Well said,” nodded Gunther emphatically. He gestured to his men. “Let’s get them cleaned up and fed, and properly clothed.”

“Jarl Gunther, are you prepared to see the end of today’s attacks?” asked Taliesin with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Indeed.”

“Then let’s go visit the North Gate.”

A procession soon left the warehouse, a mix of Taliesin’s varingjar and the Jarl’s House Guard mingling comfortably as they encircled Taliesin, Jarl Gunther, and Arbiter Katla. Aina ranged ahead of the group, invisible to all but the Stormlord. Sounds of battle could be heard up ahead as the gnolls continued their assault on the walls.

Soon they reached the command area where Sheriff Hallfred and the Obsidian Enclave magus, Gundovald, stood surrounded by their own guards.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded the Sheriff, his hand immediately straying to the hilt of his sword in a panic. “Who is tending your sections of the wall, if you are here, putting your noses in my business?”

“Calm yourself, Sheriff. Our friend, Lord Taliesin has a trick up his sleeve to end the battle for today, if you’d care to join us on the wall and witness it.”

With a frown, the Sheriff and Gundovald exchanged glances, before following them to the North Gate. It seemed the truce would hold for a short while longer, at least.

A scant few moments later, the Sheriff and the Jarl were on the wall together, separated by Arbiter Katla, an archmage and a mage. Taliesin stood with his Empyreal Staff planted firmly between his feet, all eyes on him. With an exaggerated gestures, he swept his right hand out and made a complicated hand motion. The staff began to glow as the sigils of a new spellform cast a new magic circle in mid-air.

“[Activate: Tornado Array]” he intoned. Although he spoke in a normal voice, it reverberated and deepened, echoing across the entire battlefield.

The arcane energies for the spell, all pre-cast and prepared ahead of time, unleashed in an instant. A beam of light arced away from his staff and towards the gnoll camp, where it split into six parts and darted towards each of the enchanted stele they had snuck into the camp that morning. The battle froze as all eyes on both sides watched the streak of light.

A second ticked by, then another. The light faded, and nothing happened. A gnoll cried out a command, and the gnolls turned back to attack.

“Is that it?” asked the Sheriff contemptuously.

“Wait for it,” said Taliesin calmly.

There was a sharp pressure drop in the air, similar to what one feels right before a dangerous storm blows in. It was the type to make the hairs on one’s arms stand on end, and everyone on the wall began to look at the sky out of pure instinct. The wind switched directions without warning, and began to blow towards the gnoll encampment.

Faster and faster, the wind became a gust, the gust became a gale wind. The fighting stopped again as ladders on the walls became unstable and began to fall over. Arrows couldn’t be fired as they were being blown out of the sky, and rocks from the gnoll slingers were being flung right back at the ones who slung them. Dirt and dust began to get picked up, and it soon became obvious the wind was twisting around and around. Thirty seconds later, the winds were howling in a low, hollow, haunting whistle and the tornado properly formed in the sky above the gnoll camp.

The terrifying wind construct touched down on the gnoll camp and mindlessly bounced around from one end to the other, penned in only by the six stele that had created it as it snatched up tents, equipment, weapons, wagons, supplies and gnolls without care or mercy and tossed them in all directions.

The townspeople were soon forced to duck behind their walls as the tornado began flinging everything it picked up in all directions, including at the very walls of the town at projectile-like speeds. The gnolls and yeti who were assaulting said walls were in the path of most of these objects, but the bang and clatter of objects striking the timbers quickly proved that taking shelter was the wisest course.

In an instant, the tornado was gone. The haunting sound vanished, leaving behind the sheer devastation that came from harnessing a force of nature.

“I… How?” Gundovald’s face was drained of blood as he regarded the unassuming form of the archmage before him. “Who are you?”

When Taliesin looked at him with an amused smirk on his young-looking face, the Obsidian Enclave mage averted his gaze and bowed his head.

All around, the battle had stopped. Archers stood with bows at their sides, slingers and fighters stood at the walls and stared dumbfounded at the fleeing gnolls. Jarl Gunther seemed torn between shock and glee. Taliesin suspected this backwater town hadn’t seen a true working of magic at this scale before, and certainly not one timed to drive off an assault on the walls.

Taliesin turned to the Sheriff, who was staring slack jawed out at the wrecked battlefield as the gnolls fled away from the walls towards their camp. “I think that’ll be enough for now, don’t you?”