As one might expect, there were a lot of scenes and details which had to be removed from my many drafts and even the submitted final version. Word counts are a pain point for most writers, I suppose, because the desire to expand in particular directions can be pretty compelling, and for someone of my level of experience (or rather, lack thereof), this should come as no surprise. Also, I rather obviously let my pro-elven biases in at first, as there was a lot cut which focussed on the Iosan-Skorne conflict and the aftermath of both the war and Elara's actions. I... can be persuaded to share some of it.
Henge Hold Scrolls - Summation Part 8
(first published @hengeholdscroll on Twitter, December 2021-January 2022)
(story by Jason Soles & Matt Wilson, creative direction by Matt Wilson, additional direction by Matt Goetz)
“Ravyn, you can’t be serious,” Kaelyssa, Night’s Whisper, touched her commander’s shoulder as they left the assembly hall.
“Extraordinary times require extraordinary means,” the Eternal Light replied.
“What’s extraordinary about you taking up your Fane Knight’s panoply again?”
“The Nine Voices agree it is necessary to show unity among the people. There are many who still disapprove of us, and our primary goal remains: the restoration of Scyrah and Nyssor. We need the Houses--all of them—to act with one purpose. My return to the Fane helps this.” The younger mage hunter was silent for a few moments, so Ravyn filled the silence.
“Worry not. Look to Garryth and Narn as you have done before, make sure Elara doesn’t stray too far, and we will endure. When we endure, things change as necessary once more.”
***
“Do you think he was right?” Elara, Death’s Shadow, asked.
“Right about what?” Kaelyssa asked, wary of the conversation’s direction.
“Our gods…” the younger commander continued. “That their deaths…”
She stopped when she noticed Kaelyssa glaring at her.
“Best not explore that belief—only heresy may be found. Especially now, when we may have a solution within reach.”
Elara merely grunted in response, the rest of her thoughts silenced now.
***
“Lord Arbiter.” He looked up to see his vassal, Tyrant Timaar, standing before him.
“Yes?”
“How goes your work with Ghyrrshyld?”
“Poorly. Combining mortitheurgy and their arcanika is proving difficult.”
“That does not seem to be the only thing that bothers you.” “Lord Ghyrrshyld seems distracted, as if he is plagued by doubt and convinced of his impending failure. He considers himself ‘Cursed’ again, though quite why I do not know,” Hexeris smiled, “Perhaps that was a former epithet.”
“Do you know what caused this?”
“No, but I have my suspicions.”
Of an infernal master, in fact. They did something, but he did not know what. Hexeris kept this to himself.
***
“Let it be recorded I disagreed with this.” Hexeris shook his head as he and Ghyrrshyld watched their forces join battle against the infernals before them.
“So you have said many times already,” the elf growled back as his gaze darted about.
He was focused, watching for tell-tale signs of an archon’s manifestation.
“Our previous attempts ended in no few deaths and more than just some harm to ourselves, Ghyrrshyld,” the Lord Arbiter noted. “This is a great risk we take.”
“I know the risk. Means to contain an archon’s power is what we lacked before, but we have it now. I will succeed.”
“Or you may die,” the skorne snarled.
“Then what would you have me do?”
Skorne and elf glared at each other, neither willing to concede.
“Lord Ghyrrshyld!” Elara cried, pointing at a shimmering space close to a heavy concentration of horrors.
“I see it!” he kicked his horse to a gallop, eyes fixed upon where the mage hunter indicated. He left the other two behind him.
They were only close enough to watch as Ghyrrshyld prepared the mortitheurgically infused arcanika, to see him activate it and attach it to his armor. The explosion crushed his mount and blew both Hexeris and Elara from theirs, knocking down every moving thing around him. It took them all a moment to realize the otherworldly scream came from Ghyrrshyld himself as the manifesting Void Archon was drawn into the arcanika at his chest by tendrils of rippling energy. With difficulty, Hexeris and Elara managed to get to their feet again.
They saw a black-winged angel, beautiful and terrifying. With an aura of seeming dispassion, this elven archon, if he could be called so, surged into the infernal lines, banishing all within Voass’ reach, the blade of Nyssor’s sword freezing and shattering all it touched.
***
Falcir, the Merciless observed from her distant, concealed vantage point, silent and motionless. The small crowd of soulless made way like water as Ghyrrshyld glided across the now eerily quiet battlefield. They grow more numerous with each victory, it seems, Falcir thought as they followed in his wake. She focused her sight and invoked a significant part of her arcane strength. Unseen by all except herself, runes flashed above the elven archon’s form.
“My lady,” one of her attendant executioners handed her a cup of water.
Tired from the exertion, Falcir took the proffered drink, closed her eyes and took a sip. However, she did not sense the executioner step back as he usually did.
“Bad news from Nyrrothyl, I presume?” she asked.
“That would depend on whom you ask, I’m afraid. They have declared joining the ranks alongside Elara, Death’s Shadow, specifically.” “What I would do for some objectively good news for once.”
***
“You came back all this way to tell me this?” Ravyn raised an eyebrow at Kaelyssa.
“I don’t know who else to express my concerns to.”
“At least circumstances gave you cause to withdraw from the front lines.” The reinstated Fane Knight gestured at her friend’s bandages.
“Garryth, Narn, and Eiryss do well in my absence.” “But it is Elara who is your… concern.”
“Perhaps we should have been more insistent on not allowing her to lead the teams assigned to Ghyrrshyld.”
“I am at fault there more than you. Again, though, this is not what truly troubles you, is it?”
Kaelyssa took a moment to collect her thoughts, “I thought it was just a random quip, but it seemed she really believes it, if my knowledge of eldritch mentality is worth anything.”
“Believed what?”
“That Scyrah must die for the good of the Iosan people.”
Ravyn’s eyes widened in shock.
“Battles have seen Ghyrrshyld, whatever he’s become, resurrect more fallen warriors, and he’s preserving elven souls, but…,” Kaelyssa gestured respectfully, if awkwardly, toward the entrance of the Fane.
“Yes, the rumors are true,” Ravyn said. “They were weakened even before Ghyrrshyld came here. The priesthood does not know how to tell the people. We have lost a great many to the infernals. Far more than what the Archon of House Vyre can save.”
“As though that were bad enough. If only that were our only problem.”
Ravyn nodded, “I’ve heard about the soulless, thanks to how he denies the infernals the souls they need to remain strong. I believe that to be why they willingly follow Ghyrrshyld without command.” - she paused to take a deliberate breath - “And the emergence of the eldritch from Eversael. They have taken up arms to fight with us.”
Kaelyssa was visibly shaken by this last, and a fearful shake of the head was all she could express.
***
Ghyrrshyld’s hyperion brought the infernal gate tumbling down in a pile of accursed rubble. Cheers rang out among the massed ranks of skorne and elves. All that remained were the infernals, their horrors, and their mortal allies on this battlefield within the Bloodstone.
However, the elven archon had the colossal withdraw to where Elara’s battlegroup stood. He looked to her and nodded. His enhanced myrmidons turned in unison with Elara’s. Upon their next salvo, hundreds of skorne warriors and their beasts fell. As they prepared to fire again, Elara signalled to the eldritch under her command. Together, they charged into the ranks of their new enemy, striking at the skorne commanders.
***
“That BASTARD!” Incissar Vyros shouted as he sent his manticores against his erstwhile allies.
Across the battlefield, he could only spare a glance for the Supreme Archdomina in the distance. He could sense the same hatred he felt for Ghyrrshyld emanate from her. He turned to the nearest Dawnguard officer, an issyr, who, like many of her fellow Iosans, stood unsure of what to do while many of their allied myrmidons maintained their fire on skorne and infernal alike.
“Find Falcir of House Ellowuyr. She has a job worthy of her talents at last!” he snapped at the unfortunate soldier.
***
Hexeris stood dumbfounded by the Iosan attack. Tyrant Timaar raced ahead to meet with his officers. Soon, he was hurriedly issuing a stream of orders to runners bound for his dakars and primuses. There was little Hexeris could do as waves of skorne warriors were struck down. Praetorians, venators, even cataphracts—none were immune to the unrelenting barrage of arcane gunfire. Extollers stood powerless as Ghyrrshyld’s mastery over souls extended even to barring the skorne from exaltation. Eldritch warriors surged toward skorne command posts.
“Timaar! Beware!” the Lord Arbiter bellowed.
He hurled Gulgata and impaled an eldritch close to striking the tyrant with his raised swords. The eldritch snarled, looking down at the weapon in his chest with faint amusement. Before Hexeris could draw his fearsome ceremonial sword, another eldritch appeared close by. With her fellow undead warriors, she charged him, cutting him off. As he struggled to defend himself, the Lord Arbiter looked on as Timaar and his honor guard were overwhelmed. Trembling with rage, he willed his titans against the elven traitors, futile though he knew it would be. He knew he could not prevail against this surprise attack with so few forces immediately available and not many more he could issue orders to. Reluctantly, Hexeris fought his way towards his marquee, marshalling what few soldiers he could as he went. More important, he had books, writings, and artifacts to recover, worth more than the lives of almost all the skorne present.
***
“I believe you were right,” Elara said, broaching the topic at last, “where the gods are concerned. They must be united, regardless of state or location to—”
“That matters not for now,” Ghyrrshyld interrupted. “We have more important concerns at hand.”
“But when the skorne are defeated—”
The elven archon stood as a statue for several moments. The only sound was the labor of soulless mechaniks.
“Do as you will,” he stated as flatly as his previous utterance and glided away.
Unsure if it were a dismissal, permission, or agreement, Elara frowned. Her sneer deepened when Nayl appeared beside her. Behind him, many soulless paused in their work, watching Elara. Were she a living Iosan, she might have been disturbed by such blank-faced attention.
“What of you, Nayl?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and thrusting her chin at the others. “And them?”
“I—we—follow you, my lady,” he replied slowly and deliberately.
She did, however, pause at how he addressed her.
***
“I did not expect you at this time.”
Falcir was irked by how much Ghyrrshyld’s tone of voice had changed since last they spoke.
“That is one positive, then, at least,” she replied, setting her helmet down on his desk so they could regard each other directly.
“What changed?”
“What else but you?”
“Our gods shrivel away within the Great Fane and our last enemies stand on the precipice of utter defeat. Yet here we are.”
Falcir was not often disturbed, but his complete sense of detachment left her dangerously uncertain.
“So our duties compel us to be,” she searched his expression for something, anything, but found nothing.
“Yours, perhaps. But mine is more than a mere duty.”
“Is what you do truly yours to claim for yourself, though?”
He was taken aback for the barest of moments, and knowing she had no better opportunity than this, Falcir triggered the first set of marked runes she had placed on the elven archon. It was the first time in months Ghyrrshyld’s expression betrayed pain, even weakness.
“Do not think this is enough.” He glared at her.
“I never did. I merely hoped it would not be necessary.”
She triggered the second set, and he fell to his knees with a heavy grunt. The third set immobilized him. The fourth silenced him. Falcir hefted Iconoclast as she triggered the remaining runes. Slowly, she stepped toward the debilitated elven archon as he tried to get back to his feet.
“It was too much for you to be all our hope,” she said, a bead of sweat dropping from her chin.
She lifted her axe.