Heroes of Newerth Story: A Time of Heroes (part 1/7)
We believed it was us or them, Man or Beast, civilization or savagery. We poured all our hearts into that belief --a faith stronger than any religion-- and devoted our arms, our blood, our sons, our very lives to its cause. We built whole battlements from the bones of the beasts we killed in the war, wiped out their tribes, fed flocks of crows fit to black out the sky. In return, they raised shrines to their false gods upon the broken bodies of men, devoured the fallen, and choked our streams with flesh and blood. We had to destroy them or they would destroy us. Man or Beast. That was the cause of our Legion, and we gave everything to it. In the end, we gave our souls.
The Hellbourne were a weapon, we convinced ourselves, no more than a burning sword or some spellbound siege engine. If we did not use that weapon, the Beast Horde would. In our creed of unlimited war, we knew this without any doubt. Prince Jeraziah knew this, and ordered us to claim their damned altars and practice the daemonic rites. Ophelia knew it, and ordered her Hordes to do the same. Only weapons in a war, and whatever price the Hellbourne demanded, that was the cost of victory. For we knew that defeat was riding hard upon us, never more than a day behind. And the beasts knew that destruction hungered at their heels. So Horde and Legion alike raced forward, heedless of the precipice toward which we rushed, our leaders howling victory at our backs and our dead brothers paving the way before us.
The Hellbourne laughed, as we plied them with souls.
And as Man and Beast worked tirelessly together to raise a gibbet large enough to hang all the world, the daemons waded through our ranks wielding butchers' blades and spitting fire. As we summoned their armies to our land --our land-- perhaps they allowed themselves a mockery of a smile. As our forces dwindled and theirs grew, as our faith in the justice of our cause drowned in the bloodbath that Newerth had become, Jeraziah and Ophelia discovered that the Hellbourne were not the puppets. They were the masters. And we, broken things, would soon be discarded.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes (part 2/7)
Heroes of Newerth Story: A Time of Heroes (part 2/7)
It was said that Jeraziah and Ophelia were linked by birth, and though those bonds had been battered by war, they could not be sundered. The same fears haunted their mirrored souls, just as the same man, the once-king Maliken Grimm, roved their dreams and urged them onward. Both knew that there had to be an end to the endless struggle, something other than utter ruin, but neither dared to withdraw from the field of battle. How could they? For nearly twenty years their people had traded atrocities, and a whole generation had been taught nothing but war without quarter.
Wearily, warily, each moved war-bands like dwindling pawns across the lands of Newerth and shuddered at the inevitable need to call upon more and more daemons to augment their forces. Like long-separated friends, each imagined a glorious reunion that could turn their years of division to nothing; but whenever Prince and the Priestess met, their only words were war cries.
The Hellbourne hunger swelled with anticipation, and they shook us by our strings for a final dance.
The last forces of the Legion of Man -- barely a fraction of those who had set out to unify the world a generation before -- gathered themselves at the Old Stump, in the very heart of the beasts' wilderness. It was a gesture of defiance, of desperation, but above all of the desire for a final closure to the struggle that had lasted so long.
The almost-feral tribes of the Beast Horde encircled them in the surrounding woodlands, starving, slavering, eager for the end.
Ophelia and Jeraziah each knew that no matter the outcome, Newerth was doomed. They faced this with the sad certainty that Fate, not their decisions, had brought them there. Destiny, they knew, could not be denied.
On the eve of battle, beneath a brooding, starless sky, they shivered and slept as fitfully as their followers. And in their sleep, divided by sword and claw, they dreamed together.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
It was said that Jeraziah and Ophelia were linked by birth, and though those bonds had been battered by war, they could not be sundered. The same fears haunted their mirrored souls, just as the same man, the once-king Maliken Grimm, roved their dreams and urged them onward. Both knew that there had to be an end to the endless struggle, something other than utter ruin, but neither dared to withdraw from the field of battle. How could they? For nearly twenty years their people had traded atrocities, and a whole generation had been taught nothing but war without quarter.
Wearily, warily, each moved war-bands like dwindling pawns across the lands of Newerth and shuddered at the inevitable need to call upon more and more daemons to augment their forces. Like long-separated friends, each imagined a glorious reunion that could turn their years of division to nothing; but whenever Prince and the Priestess met, their only words were war cries.
The Hellbourne hunger swelled with anticipation, and they shook us by our strings for a final dance.
The last forces of the Legion of Man -- barely a fraction of those who had set out to unify the world a generation before -- gathered themselves at the Old Stump, in the very heart of the beasts' wilderness. It was a gesture of defiance, of desperation, but above all of the desire for a final closure to the struggle that had lasted so long.
The almost-feral tribes of the Beast Horde encircled them in the surrounding woodlands, starving, slavering, eager for the end.
Ophelia and Jeraziah each knew that no matter the outcome, Newerth was doomed. They faced this with the sad certainty that Fate, not their decisions, had brought them there. Destiny, they knew, could not be denied.
On the eve of battle, beneath a brooding, starless sky, they shivered and slept as fitfully as their followers. And in their sleep, divided by sword and claw, they dreamed together.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes (part 3/7)
Heroes of Newerth Story: A Time of Heroes (part 3/7)
About them spread a vast paradise such as they had never seen. A golden sun shone upon them, not the crimson orb that hung like an omen over Newerth. They stood in a verdant field still damp with dew; all about them life could be seen and smelled and heard and touched. Butterflies and songbirds and the scent of a thousand wildflowers moved through the warm air. Woodland creatures, not so much tame as unafraid of man, stared at them with gentle curiosity. A stream rolled over worn stones and flashed silver with fish. It was a place that knew neither war nor death.
But it was the great tree that rose before them that demanded the greatest share of their reverence, that compelled their silent awe. Ancient, massive, and holy, it seemed to encompass within its boughs time itself. Upon its trunk was the sunspot of Sol, God of Man, yet its majesty was that of the Earth Goddess, to whom the Beast paid homage, and upon its branches were the long and slender seedpods that were the Horde's most sacred relics.
Proceeding as the dream directed them, Jeraziah and Ophelia turned from the tree. Their vision stretched far and they saw that at the edges of their paradise was a land blighted by hellfire and disease and despair. And they knew, as one knows in a dream, that it was the tree that held these things at bay.
A sound and smell pulled their eyes back to the tree. Standing at its base, the ground beneath him scorched and withered, was their father, Maliken Grimm. Gone was the withered form that age had left to him, gone the madness, the weakness, the doubt. This was the King who had conquered the world, grown huge and mighty. But his eyes were dead and burned with hellfire, and when he spoke his voice was like the grave. For his children he had but a single word. "Fools."
And then they woke, upon the day decreed to be the end of all things.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
About them spread a vast paradise such as they had never seen. A golden sun shone upon them, not the crimson orb that hung like an omen over Newerth. They stood in a verdant field still damp with dew; all about them life could be seen and smelled and heard and touched. Butterflies and songbirds and the scent of a thousand wildflowers moved through the warm air. Woodland creatures, not so much tame as unafraid of man, stared at them with gentle curiosity. A stream rolled over worn stones and flashed silver with fish. It was a place that knew neither war nor death.
But it was the great tree that rose before them that demanded the greatest share of their reverence, that compelled their silent awe. Ancient, massive, and holy, it seemed to encompass within its boughs time itself. Upon its trunk was the sunspot of Sol, God of Man, yet its majesty was that of the Earth Goddess, to whom the Beast paid homage, and upon its branches were the long and slender seedpods that were the Horde's most sacred relics.
Proceeding as the dream directed them, Jeraziah and Ophelia turned from the tree. Their vision stretched far and they saw that at the edges of their paradise was a land blighted by hellfire and disease and despair. And they knew, as one knows in a dream, that it was the tree that held these things at bay.
A sound and smell pulled their eyes back to the tree. Standing at its base, the ground beneath him scorched and withered, was their father, Maliken Grimm. Gone was the withered form that age had left to him, gone the madness, the weakness, the doubt. This was the King who had conquered the world, grown huge and mighty. But his eyes were dead and burned with hellfire, and when he spoke his voice was like the grave. For his children he had but a single word. "Fools."
And then they woke, upon the day decreed to be the end of all things.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes (part 4/7)
Heroes of Newerth Story: A Time of Heroes (part 4/7)
Few of the haggard human warriors had slept that night. Faces chiseled by hunger, bodies matted with the dust of endless marches, eyes drained of emotion by the extremes their hearts had known, they seemed like gargoyles strewn upon the field by an architect of nightmarish imagination and no coherent vision. Here they crouched about the dying embers of a fire. There they sharpened notched blades on whetstones worn down by the long years of use. Across the way, stewing in the gangrenous air of the hospital-tent, they lay waiting for a weary chaplain's last rites. Some, having waited years for death's last mercy, could not stay their impatience and departed early. Such were Man's finest warriors.
On the low rises in the otherwise flat meadow, scouts locked their keen eyes on the trees, waiting for any movement beyond the ripple of leaves in the wind. The dull thud of workmen's hammers marked the passage of time and the slow construction of rough battlements and arrow towers.
Jeraziah paced, said prayers he did not believe. He turned his eyes to the dawn sky and found it scabbed over with clouds. He closed the book of Sol and checked his blade against his fingertip, drawing blood. It rose in a perfect bead, like a seedling, and then raced down from his fingertip, plotting a streamway to his palm. He watched with muted curiosity, then wiped the still-bleeding finger on his breeches. Of pain, he felt nothing.
The stench of brimstone was heavy in the camp, even though the Hellbourne stood at the fringes. They knew no need for sleep or comfort. What hunger they had was not a mortal's need for food but a daemon's need for destruction; insatiable, yet it had found forage aplenty as they marched with the army like scavenging vultures and wolves. Jeraziah had no need to speak to them. He felt them in his mind, bade them array themselves for battle with his will alone, and watched as they ringed out around the camp. He readied the archers, order the legionnaires to form a wall before them. Called the chaplains from their duties with the dying so that they might aid in killing instead. His savage barbarian warriors moved into place without instruction.
It was morning, though there was no sun. And in his heart, he knew what was coming.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
Few of the haggard human warriors had slept that night. Faces chiseled by hunger, bodies matted with the dust of endless marches, eyes drained of emotion by the extremes their hearts had known, they seemed like gargoyles strewn upon the field by an architect of nightmarish imagination and no coherent vision. Here they crouched about the dying embers of a fire. There they sharpened notched blades on whetstones worn down by the long years of use. Across the way, stewing in the gangrenous air of the hospital-tent, they lay waiting for a weary chaplain's last rites. Some, having waited years for death's last mercy, could not stay their impatience and departed early. Such were Man's finest warriors.
On the low rises in the otherwise flat meadow, scouts locked their keen eyes on the trees, waiting for any movement beyond the ripple of leaves in the wind. The dull thud of workmen's hammers marked the passage of time and the slow construction of rough battlements and arrow towers.
Jeraziah paced, said prayers he did not believe. He turned his eyes to the dawn sky and found it scabbed over with clouds. He closed the book of Sol and checked his blade against his fingertip, drawing blood. It rose in a perfect bead, like a seedling, and then raced down from his fingertip, plotting a streamway to his palm. He watched with muted curiosity, then wiped the still-bleeding finger on his breeches. Of pain, he felt nothing.
The stench of brimstone was heavy in the camp, even though the Hellbourne stood at the fringes. They knew no need for sleep or comfort. What hunger they had was not a mortal's need for food but a daemon's need for destruction; insatiable, yet it had found forage aplenty as they marched with the army like scavenging vultures and wolves. Jeraziah had no need to speak to them. He felt them in his mind, bade them array themselves for battle with his will alone, and watched as they ringed out around the camp. He readied the archers, order the legionnaires to form a wall before them. Called the chaplains from their duties with the dying so that they might aid in killing instead. His savage barbarian warriors moved into place without instruction.
It was morning, though there was no sun. And in his heart, he knew what was coming.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
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