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[Arahim]

---

Hope dwindled.

Thygrin had been High Warden for less than a year. The oaths he had taken to his home and his people included the inevitability of great sacrifice, even unto the ending of his life. The title, while honorable, was not one to be envied. It was a promise, and a weight he had taken without regret.

He had sent men to their ends.

Personally bore grave tidings to new widows ignorant of their sudden change in station.

He had lost loved ones. Bonds to kith and kin equally strong, and equally painful in the severance.

He had turned his face from all thought of a simple life of routine and comfort for sake of diligence. To play a role that few would. Never once daring to dream that all his works, and personal sublimation would be reduced to blood and ashes in a span of hours.

Grim faced, the men and women of Cove strove in force of arms with methodical efficiency. The rise and fall of halberd, and spear creating a grisly, droning dance of death. The tempo allowing for no rest, nor respite.

Hacked orcs fell from the walls with some great regularity. The beasts found bristling barbs shot through the steel latticed gates at close range. And still their numbers seemed undiminished, while every Warden that fell was an irreplaceable cog in a machine slowly grinding to a halt.

Defenders died without ceremony, looked upon by their fellows as an empty gap to be filled. Knowing with certitude, that for all their effort, their company they would soon share again. The ceremony of remembrance utterly unnecessary.

With one voice sang they a dolorous song taught to them by their fathers.

The language was old.

A psalm of wind and sea, shoring their hearts to their Fate, and at once, binding them to a greater whole.

Thygrin, ever at the fore where the fighting was fiercest, mouthed the dirge soundless, and knew the words for a farewell to the waking world.

He had never felt such pride as this.

[Arahim]

---

...Thygrin's sword screamed over the cacaphony as steel across stone, cleaving red ruin wherever it struck in a desperate bid to stem the multitudinous tide. Pressed flush to his left side was Solv Forfalsket, a relic crafted by the first men of Cove, and passed down as a mark of the office of High Warden.

Thygrin could recite the names of every man who had ever bore the shield in service to this land, as was proper to so weighty an honor.

More than half as tall as him, Solv was of burnished silver and shone with an intensity found only in the Nightsky when the air was clear, and pure. The symbol of the Serpent was carved upon its face, encircled by a field of raised studs.

The art, and subtlety in making so fell an armament was said to be lost in the old days. The original artificers' secrets buried beneath time, and the growing of the world.

The last of the unique metal, birthed from a storm, and hurled like thunder to the earth, spent and left without a name.

Proof against fire and dart, the argent shield served as both rallying point, and target. For even in the black, Thygrin blazed like a raging star. And as with all things that hate, and rail at the light, the orcs were moved to snuff it.

[Arahim]

---

The tale, the words, the names recited were all known to the unbroken Circle gathered in the dark time before Dawn. Each of them, man and woman, had heard it many times before. Most had sang it themselves, either alone, or to their children, or to a group such as this.

Bloodstained, and weary. In need of some token to bolster them as they do what they do.

The faces around the fire were grim, and set in unmoving masks of flickering gold. Betraying no hint of self beyond slight cosmetic differences in rainment, and what weapon they held.

Faces of the vigilant dead.

Bound as they were, and silent, each was taken nonetheless by a dim remembrance that grew clear and focused as the song wound about them.

And all along differing paths, as their fathers, their people, the Land spoke to them from across a great chasm of years gone by, but not forgotten.

The singer stopped, though the story was not yet finished.

[Arahim]

---

Arahim found himself very suddenly alone. The town behind him emptied and still, the sea beyond calm, and grey.

The world in hues of black and white.

Something like a sigh brushed across him.

A last breath.

A first breath.

A word which stirred the blood within him.

With a caress that grew firm, and stolid, a presence not unfamiliar to him marked him as Its own.

It bid him to see.

There was a clearing, lost in the trees, where the snow still caught the unfettered stars, and gathered their cold light upon its unsullied surface. Glittering as if strewn with silver coins. Ancient treasures laid aside in secret, but not forgotten.

An old magic made this place Its own. It wove Itself into the cool Northwinds, and sang songs in the highest swaying boughs. Shaking leaf, and sweeping down through the grass. It carried the fragrance of Spring when it dawned, dew laden, and new, and the tang of salt when the tides were fair, and gold with dancing sun.

But always tempered with the promise of Winter, and the lean times. Where forests became like shrines. Pristine and sacrosanct. Heavy with ice and frost.

And jealous of the day, for it was the Moon who most loved Winter.

All these things were told to him, and he saw far, and was whispered a bargain.

The magic did not offer peace, but terms. They were not lengthy, but set out plainly.

Thus was the deal struck with a simple nod, and Arahim found himself on a mist laden path of which he had no recollection of ever having tread though he lived in Cove for most of his years, and had never gone long without a visit.

He shed his concerns, and walked as shadow parted before him.

In the dim distance, a howl beckoned, but he was not afraid.

[Arahim]

---

When darkness had fallen fully, so much so that order, martial or otherwise, had become a word without promise and nothing more, the last men and women of Cove strove against the logic of numbers to face each their individual ends with a bloody handed solemnity found only in exaggeration and song.

The wall was breached in many places. Many fires blazed unchecked. Some working in the defenders favor as the flames, like living things, greedy and hungry, barred the path of the virulent, green horde. Mending yawning gaps with a blistering intensity that roared and wove its flickering fury high into the moonless, cloud choked sky.

Burning pillars as monuments to death.

No tale tells of those last mad hours that passed, for those few that lived through such trials knew only their own desperate deeds, be they stalwart, or those of the coward, and lost the bonds of fellowship to an oppressive darkness that some in their later, most secret thoughts would recall as blessed.

Some, but not all.

What is known is that Night broke like glass in an instant unlooked for, with the howls of a thousand wolves. And as a great tumult, the forests around the walls, now rent in agony, exploded outward with the fleet shapes of lupine shadows in full sprint.

Snarling and snapping their jaws.

Their breath, as though exhaled all as one, frosted the cold air in heaving draughts, and made a host of forgotten spirits to go before them.

The Dawn came red.

[Arahim]

---

Flurries of snow fell in slow drifts. Each flake danced and hung at the ends of string hung from on high. Invisible, unknowable fingers plucked and pulled, set the Dawn in motion, before losing interest and letting things be.

Dropping slim tether, and bond.

A calliope, the wisps of white mingled, and twined with grey ash, and red embers that flared hotly in the cold air then curled to black, then nothing.

The petals of flowers fallen by the hands of Gods in their own lamentation.

A portent that nothing here was forgotten, or overlooked.

Those that met this new day sang no praise, nor thanks for its coming, and were heavy with grief and uncertainty so that the dead that belonged to them were for a long time unattended to. Until, without wailing, or tears, but astonied to the brink of dumb bewilderment, the men and women of Cove walked through the bodies, and fallen weapons, and in grief too hard to tell, forgot them.

Then the snows came harder, quenching the fires that lingered, and covering all that was left.

Orc, Man, and Steel.

This too was trial for the survivors, for there was little shelter, and warmth was only made by huddling together as one. But those who could not find sleep watched their corner of the world, and saw it was blanketed in Winter as the hours drew on.

New.

When the next morning came, everything was gone.

Of the wolves which had set upon the backs of the orcs in the lightless Night, there was no sign.

And of Solv Forfalsket, and this heirloom, or that, whether axe or sword or adornment; those things whose art had been lost to the ages, and whose like would not be seen again, there was nothing.

This loss was not counted as the least by the peoples of Cove who still held to the old ways, and remembered.

This loss would oneday be remedied.