A Battle in the Past

Author: Taarhal

The bodies were heaped around the battlefield, it was an horrific sight, something Anorai had never witnessed before, this wasn`t her first battle, but this one felt different, it felt like this one they were losing and losing badly. She passed whole detachments of dead elves as she slowly advanced forward, they lay where they had stood, in deformed and crumpled piles, eyes no longer filled with life, but empty and devoid of who they had once been. She had passed many she knew, had known for thousands of years, the elf who had trained her to shoot, the friend she had spent long years playing with when she was a youngling, her tutor that had taught her the histories and lore of the world, the elf she had stood side by side with laughing and joking with not a week ago, now all dead, all taken from the world forever. The smell if anything was worse than the things she saw, you couldn`t block that out, couldn’t turn your eyes away from it, it was just there all the time…the overpowering stench of death.

Her gaze moved forward as she crawled through the mud and the blood and the body parts, her sister was a few feet ahead, edging herself forward and caked in the filth of the battlefield, they were the only two left from their scouting detachment, all the others had joined the dead, how she and her sister had survived she did not know, maybe it was fate, maybe it was luck, maybe it was just some cruel trick to torment them further before they too joined the dead.

The two elves crawled for what seemed like an eternity, pushing on through the filth and using the heaps of bodies as cover when they could, after a time they came to a ridge that dropped away to a flatter plain below, the world tree was visible from here, it was surrounded by demons, assaulting it from every side, Fel energies crackling out at those trying to defend it.

“Rai” her sister spoke softly as she looked back to her position “move around….to that ledge over there….cover my flank as I move down”

Anorai motioned that she understood and started to move to the indicated spot.

Her attention was drawn to her left by movement, a group of figures stood in a dip, they seemed at first glance to be Kirin Tor mages….but as Anorai focussed her keen elf vision on the group they seemed to blur and shimmer, Anorai glanced right to check on her sisters progress, satisfied she was safely in position, Anorai crawled closer to the group so she was just able to pick out some words

“A blue scale….” She caught the words on the wind, something about dragons they were discussing something about dragons…. She peered down at the group, the more she looked the more it all looked wrong. They shimmered as if in a heat haze of a hot summer day, she concentrated more, staring at the faces….the shimmering seemed to fade, but to be replaced not by mages but …. She had not seen such creatures before…they had horns and tails and hooves… and were displaying a tabard she was not familiar with.

She studied the group for a while longer, memorising the faces, but as she watched one of the group seemed to cast some kind of spell and a portal opened, each of the strange creatures vanishing into it….and then silence….no trace of them, it was as if they had never been there at all.