A Grim Fable with an Unhappy End

[The SSB Intern]

You rock, dude. Not enough fantasy stories have stumbling, vulgarian fairies.

[DFM]

I fixed some lore and added Chekhov's gun to the third chapter:

If you're interested.

They'd been overly complacent and now they were paying for it. He took another breath of the cigarette, watching the exhaled smoke twist in front of the electric lamp. There was an old saying, that if you lift up a dog and make it prosperous, it would not bite you. That this was the chief difference between a dog and a man. Archer had not truly believed it before, but with an attack on their homeland by their own protectorate, a desperate enemy now giving shelter and amnesty to slaves and prisoners willing to fight in their service, he was slowly beginning to see the truth of this.

"As pleasant as can be expected." Benet adjusted one of his leather gloves, biceps almost ripping through his uniform as he did so. His right hand flashed under the light of the study, a tiny green gem woven into the back of white leather glove. "But I've not come here to bore you with formalities."

I also have PART of the fourth chapter finished, posting because it's about as much as I've written and it has a lot of character development and I would like to GET THAT OUT THERE. Rest of the chapter will outline the main plot and objectives etc. Also I was a little disappointed that until now no one mentioned my favorite character. Good show, SSB!

CHAPTER 4

Shadow of Legends

Jarsong grasped the handle with both hands, rotating the crank with the full force of his body, nearly knocking himself off balance on every go-round. The morning light revealed a neatly pressed and impossibly clean uniform in place of the assortment of muddy tatters he'd worn into town. His hair was slicked back with copious amounts of grease, and his beard was neatly tied at the tip, lined with numerous braids. The leather on his boots very nearly gleamed. The Colonel, however, had abandoned cleaning in favor of a completely new uniform, no duster in sight now. He was standing beside the car and discussing some terribly important scraps of paper with the four-eyed second lieutenant who was always following him around with a clipboard. Three hundred years and all the elves weren't dead yet. Lucky him. He slowed his toil, spitting on the ground and glancing upwards at the child sitting on the roof of the car. At least, she looked like a child from this angle. Was probably a pixie or a really skinny, wimpy dwarf. Jarsong hadn't seen a human child anywhere near the front lines since Neveroth, and it was probably better that way. Things were always whining about food and ice storms and always wasting their ammunition shooting at the big, scary rats. This one was giving directions to the enlisted soldiers loading weapons and rucksacks into the back of the trunk of the car. Too competent to be a human child, then. Maybe a dwarven teenager. With a piercing blast the engine sprang to life, an unending chorus of tiny explosions coming from inside the steel paneling. Jarsong tore out the crank and tossed it into the side compartment underneath the engine, slamming the door closed and brushing his hands as he walked around the front of the car past the officers.

"All ready to go. One of you need to drive, unless you're going to strap blocks to my feet."

"Not necessary, corporal." Colonel Lindura was folded the telegram he was holding and slit it into the breast pocket of his new uniform. Plain olive drab with a slanting line of brass buttons running from his left shoulder to his right side and a decorative strap hanging over his right shoulder sporting a wide array of pins and medals.

"Not that I don't appreciate getting out of the city, sir..." Jarsong pulled open the rear door of the army car, climbing into the back seat. "...but I'm still not exactly sure why I'm here."
"Suki said we ought to have you along, that's enough for me." Talidon slid into the driver's seat, pulling his door shut in unison with Jarsong's slam.
"And who exactly is-" The dwarf turned to his right, the young girl seemingly materialized from thin air. She was staring at him, almost waiting for the dwarf ot notice her. She gave him a friendly wave.

"That's me! I'm Suki."

Jarsong breathed in sharply through his nose, disbelief apparent.

"What, by Maxwell's Hammer, are you wearing?" He paused for a moment, looking at the girl's sharp, black uniform and prominent silver trim. He knew of only one branch with a uniform even remotely similar. "...You're OSS." Jarsong said, amazed.

"Second Circle!" Suki replied proudly, flashing her lapel. "I won the Bronze Cross in Parsai!"

"How did you win the bronze cross?" Jarsong asked as Kaliel Carson slipped into the passenger's seat and closed the door, hair bundled tightly up and glasses firmly on her nose. The car pulled away from the castle's bailly, checkpoint not bothering to stop it. Suki tilted her head, animating the story with her hands.

"Well, we were all inside one of the old bailiff mansions watching the city exploding bit by bit with Colonel Taylor telling everyone which explosions were good and which explosions were bad, and I tugged him on the shoulder and said 'We need to leave the building now' so Taylor gathered everyone up and got all of us outside and then the shell I saw it the building and the whole thing went KERZPLOOW and then EEEeeeeeeeeeeeFOOM." Suki mimicked the ruins of a large building slowly collapsing in on themselves. She looked up at the dwarf, who had not changed expressions since the story began.

"Taylor gave me the cross thingy but he also gave me some ice cream and a chocolate bar. Everyone else just gave me a bunch of hugs. He's the only one who got me chocolate."

"Colonel Taylor was a good man." Talidon replied from the driver's seat as the car made its way through the crowds.

"Was?" Suki tilted her head for a moment before her expression changed. "Oh... yeah." She looked down at the floor of the car, resting her hands in her lap. "He was."

Talidon brought the car to a halt near an intersection, an army jeep pulling around the corner in front of them and forming a roadblock as another jeep passed. Then another, and another. Then a convoy of a half dozen transport trucks, each teaming with enlisted soldiers. As the last truck passed, the roadblock jeep pulled away, following the convoy. Talidon and the crowd of pedestrians quickly filled the empty gap that trailed behind it.

"What was Veerson like?" Kaliel asked, looking up briefly from her open manila envelope. "I've never met him."

"Well..." Talidon paused for a moment, unsure of how secret the general's identity was supposed to be. Having seen no warning and heard no mention of it from anyone on the command staff, he made a tenuous, almost uncharacteristic, assumption. "...he's a dragon."

Kaliel frowned.

"A what?" She asked.

"He's not a dragon." The little girl's voice came from the back seat, almost shocked. "You didn't call him that, did you?"

"No, I... what do you mean he's not a dragon?" Talidon glanced in the rearview mirror.

"Okay, calling Veerson a dragon is like calling a human a monkey. I mean, there might not be much difference to you but they're there and they're relatively major in the scheme of things. If he heard you calling him a dragon he'd be pretty pissed off."

The car jolted, crossing over the railroad tracks and towards the north exit of the city, speeding up as the crowds began to thin. A flock of songbirds darted above the street as they crossed from rooftop to rooftop, backs against the pale blue sky. Their chirping carried over the din of the city and even the rumble of the engine, appearing to Talidon as something of a good omen.

"What is he, then?" The colonel asked, looking over his shoulder.

"A Wyrm." Suki replied.

"A worm? What's the difference between that and a dragon?"

"Well..." She started. "You were talking to him. That's a big difference right there. Dragons are basically overgrown iguanas with wings and fire breath. They're stupid and violently territorial, big dumb lizards who steal trashcans and jewelry because it's shiny. Wyrms are a lot smarter. And tougher. And even a lot bigger. They're also usually a ton older but that has more to do with not being stupid than any kind of biological superiority."

The car was silent as it zipped away from Dermoor, every eye focused, in one way or another, on Suki.

"What?" She asked after a moment.
"What did you just say?." Talidon replied.
"I told you what the difference between a dragon and a wyrm was."
"You... know and awful lot about dragons. And... biological superiority?"

"I know an awful lot about an awful lot of things. I'm a seer." She raised her hands in mock exasperation. "Remember? That's why I'm here."

The road north was a heavily traveled stretch of dirt, surrounded on both sides by fully grown fields on slowly rolling hills. Farmhouses, barns and occasional windmills arched over the crests of wheat. In the far distance of the east, several peaks of the Mas'avea mountain range could be glimpsed rising over the hills. Beyond them lay Earana and the Emerald Sea. With Tel'Alharun fallen once again, there was little to stop the Commonwealth from swarming out of the mountains into Dermoor and the imperial lands beyond. Weapons and supplies from Parsai were coming too slowly and too few to make a difference against the arriving armada. Even the weapons that had arrived were inferior to their commonwealth counterparts, the arcanology behind the originals too complex for Imperial scientists to understand. What they were given were cheap, haphazard substitutes. Clockwork Men instead of Steel Knights, steam powered Paladin tanks instead of Sentinels or Dreadwraiths, nothing comparable to a heavier than air transport or fighter and nothing, nothing, even approaching a battleship.

The car wound its way north through the countryside, the two hour ride broken only occasionally by idle chatter or the passing of a waving horse-drawn cart. Open farm land began to give way to dotted forests, woodland growing thicker the closer they came to Pesadas. Jarsong pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his still impeccably cleaned uniform, pulling a matchbook free with the other as he held the cigar between his lips. Ribbons notwithstanding, he looked more the part of a general than an army sergeant. As they crested the hill, Pesadas itself came into view, tucked away within the coniferous woods. It was smaller than Dermoor by a wide margin, mostly single or two story houses with somewhat larger public buildings and a single large estate on the very edge of town bordering the woods.

The banners flying above it were unmistakable.



Elizabeth Drephas sat in a red leather chair with dark wooden trim, a faded and hand bound book covered in foreign scrawls was held in her wrinkled hands. Her sitting room was covered in historical marvels, statues, sculptures and paintings organized by artist and dynasty. Books as old as five centuries and as young as a few months filled her ornate bookcases until they were almost overflowing. The side wall faced the outside of the mansion, three decorated windows stretching nearly floor to ceiling. The light from them struck the floor in the middle, crawling up the far wall past the midway point, their beams visible through the ever present dust. She adjusted her reading glasses, still marveling at the treasure she'd managed to import, to smuggle really, across the Emerald Sea. She was interrupted by one of her serving boys, the short blond one, telling her there were soldiers outside the front door asking about Mr. Drephas. She smiled once, setting the book upon the end table and extinguishing the lamp.

"Take me to the door, then. I would like to meet our guests."

They crossed the grand entrance of the Drephas estate, a building that had belonged to the family for centuries. Suits of armor lined the vacant halls in eternal vigilance, weapons held forever at the ready. The banners of the Drephas noble family hung from the high ceiling, above paintings and tapestries that retold the glory years of their rule while ignoring the blood soaked fortune that built their name and their eventual slow decline. The family ruled Pesadas more than any Imperial Adjudicator or Commonwealth Lord, but beyond the city it was a quiet, forgotten remnant of what had once been an empire in all but name.

Elizabeth found it somewhat fitting, then, that the Drephas estate had since become the largest private museum in Althesia. Whether these soldiers were here to learn more of Althesian history or for her family's dark past, she couldn't be sure, though they were often one and the same. The serving boy followed ahead of her, eagerly pulling open the oaken double doors and bowing to the side, humbly introducing her.

"Lady Elizabeth Harthon Drephas, Baroness of Pesadas and heir to the throne of Relling."

"There are no more thrones, child, no matter what the family would like to believe."

"Of... of course, my lady." The boy looked away, still holding open the door and wishing very much to hide in one the many dark and forgotten rooms of the empty estate. Elizabeth stared at the soldiers standing outside her doorway. Though her eyesight was failing, she had learned a great deal about reading emotions and histories from the tiny, subtle cues of body stance and movement. The tallest and most distinguished was an elf, amazing as that sounded. It must be. Tall and statuesque, with snow-white hair. There had been rumors of an elf somewhere within the Imperial ranks, but she never truly believed it. The last of a long dead race, here on her doorstep. Incredible. Ahead of him and to his right stood a dwarf of significantly lower rank. He was well groomed, though his face was savage. It was, however, not a natural deformity and underneath the scars of war and time, Elizabeth believed he would have been quite beautiful. There was a sadness in his stance, the bearings of someone who had... no, who almost had, everything. It was not just his face that had been torn asunder by war, she guessed. To the left of them both was a human woman who looked like she belonged in a library instead of a battlefield. Calm, collected... bookish, even. But... there was something off about her. Something Elizabeth couldn't place, but didn't entirely like. Her eyes, perhaps. They were... grim. Almost empty behind her glasses. A shell of a woman long broken by war.

Behind the three of them was the strangest soldier of all. A human child, no more than ten, clad in the midnight black of the Imperial OSS. The uniform of murderers, assassins and torturers. She was smiling happily, leaning from behind the elf and waving at her.

"...Not the company of soldiers I expected, I will admit."

"I'd worry about you if it was." The elf took a small courtesy bow. "My name is Talidon Lindura, Colonel in the Imperial army. We're looking for Folion Drephas. We know he isn't here, but-"

"May I inquire as to why?"

"It's about one of his recent projects, I don't believe I should say more than that."

"Oh, more military applications for ancient artifacts of unimaginable power. I'll inform him immediately. What is it you're after this time, the Ugon'thidas? The Nerravore? The Chalice of Vin?"

"The... I didn't know this happened often." The elf answered with what was surely uncharacteristic hesitation and self-doubt.

"At least once a tenday, though not usually from soldiers. Must you really be told whatever you're looking for is a legend that either never existed or was lost centuries, maybe Ages ago? Most people figure that out before they leave primary school. Perhaps I should direct you to the cathedral where you can pray to Katriona to win your war."