Rise of the Order 2.1

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Gallet makes her way into the city, giving the Matriarch - Venara - a chance to escape with the children.

Gallet was already a block north of the dormitory when she heard Venara’s wing song pass over head.  Though she had planned on being her friends distraction, she needed Venara to act as bate in order to sow confusion amongst the veteran guard.  Solders were in the city limits but she did not know where.  The Son had known about the Matriarch so there was bound to be archers posted at the city limits as well as, she hopped, here on the upper levels of the town square.

The moon was directly overhead now eliminating shadow except under direct overhang.  The square was a sort of court for the Children of Order.  A single red stone building encompassed it, pulled directly out of the earth by keepers of the Root-gate centuries before.  Where once was a bustling place of commerce, now was the home of endless bureaucracy.  The balcony below the bell tower had once been a used by auctioneers. Since the Order’s take over, it had been used as a priest’s parapet where disciples would preach the love of Order to the masses, quenching the fires of chaos and bringing unity to the outlands.

The only way they sought to quench the fire of chaos, however, was burning and pillaging everything she and her family had known for generations. Fight fire with fire, she thought, and we all get burned.

Venara’s wing song rained down on the square, the sound of a thousand crystal goblets humming with vibration; Gallet saw the guardsmen clearly, rising with the sound. It was a single squad, no more than six.  Gallet scanned the rest of the squares roof top and saw no movement.  She made her way to the west end of the square to begin her night of revenge.

Her modest attunement to the crown gate allowed her to feel the six men’s exact location even when she lost them from her vision ducking under the overhang of the square.  It was this same skill that found her the Head Mistress position with the Ministry and how she was able to keep Venara from sneaking up behind her.  Some could communicate this way, as the Son of Order had to organize this resistance, but she took the skill she had and used it to her best ability.  She jumped, swinging from one of the circular drainage posts connected to the roof and lifted herself onto the platform above.  The song of wings over head was the perfect cover to any noise she made.  The archers knocked arrows just as they came into her vision.  They loosed, headed straight for the Matriarch but she had seen them, diving with a sharp pitch to avoid them. 

The archers knocked again as Gallet leapt over the guard rail.  The first in the line knew he’d not turn in time to fire his arrow and slacked his bow while reaching for a belted knife.

He misjudged Gallet’s speed.  Tapping her root gate gave her a surge of strength she took into her legs, closing the distance in a matter of seconds.  She slammed her forearm into the bridge of his nose while halting the hand trying to draw the knife. He staggered back, blood coming from his broken nose as she slipped the knife from his sheath and drove it into the chest of the man next to him before he could lose the arrow toward the Matriarch.

With all the men in her sight she closed her crown gate, focusing instead on her third eye.  As the gate opened she watched as the companies sergeant drew his long sword and thrust it directly into her abdomen: a vision of the immediate future, one she could use to her advantage.  Before the thrust came she fell to her hands and hip, throwing a foot up and under the sergeants thrust striking wrist and pommel. With the crunching sound of the impact she knew the wrist was broken, as surely as the sword falling limply from his grasp did.  She wasted no time taking up the weapon, striking down two of the archers who had kept their focus on the Matriarch.

The guard with the broken nose began to run, seeing his comrades routed; Gallet pulled her last throwing knife from under her right arm with a backhanded fling, striking the man in the neck where no coif was there to protect.  He gurgled a final breath and stumbled to the ground. 

He third eye gate did not warn her of the coming arrow until it was nearly too late.  She swung sharply to the left and the arrow struck her in the right shoulder instead of just above her sternum.  She let out a grunt exchanging sword from right to left hand and swung the blade cutting through the beautifully hewed recurve bow and it’s wielder’s right hand. 

Bringing her sweeping blade around for another pass, she cut the man’s throat and he gurgled silently before falling forward.  The sergeant was behind her now on his knees, pleading.  She didn’t hear his words; every man was forced to serve The Order, but so long as they didn’t resist that command she found little room in her heart for pity.  Opening her root gate wide, a swirl of red light at the base of her spine, she sent her boot laces first into his face with the force of ten men.  His sputtering gasps followed him as he soared over the guard rail to land on stone floor of the square.

She panted heavily then; the arrow still protruding from her shoulder.  She kneelt down to catch her breath.  Opening her root gate so suddenly left muscles aching as they were overstrained from the boon the earth gave them.  When her gate closed, which it must else irrevocable fatigue overtake her, she was left with an adrenaline surge that made her light headed.  Venara’s wing song still hummed through the air.Gallet looked up to see her, wings beating hard against the air, regaining her altitude and making her way towards the perimeter of the city to the east.

She reached up tentatively to her shoulder and touched the arrow shaft; the arrow heads she saw lying about the ground were flat as daggers.  She gritted her teeth and tugged at the arrow.  It lurched and then slowly pulled out of her shoulder.  The arrow wasn’t tri-tipped, which would tear her muscle apart as she pulled it free, but the head was made of a porous stone; it ground and tore at her muscle tissue none the less as it worked its way free.

She watched as Venara flew over the commons, the large outermost part of the city.

The commons were a relatively new addition. Kanton was the most defensible position in the region, with the surrounding forest to the east and the sheer cliff face of a mountain range that wound in a crescent shape around the south west. The commons became the housing district for all the refugees after the Sundering. There was no money to channel the rock from the earth into living spaces: all of that had gone towards fortifying the walls.

Thinking about the Sundering always brought a shudder. She took the knife from her belt and cut off a strip of cloth from one of the fallen solders tying it around her shoulder wound to slow the bleeding. She had been a child of no more than six when the ground shook so violently that the earth of her family’s ranch had torn from beneath her feet. It had gone on for hours. In the end, their home destroyed, her family packed up what little they had left to start their journey to Kanton.

Then the golems appeared. She shuttered at the though – though it could have been from the blood loss.

Kanton’s councilmen begged The Order to come. The beasts seemed to attack at random then, crushing mercilessly anyone who crossed their path. Her family had avoided them without knowing, simply trying to avoid bandits and other opportunists come to take advantage of the confusion sown from the earthquake. It hadn’t been until they reached Kanton’s gates that the stories started to take shape, and the reality of what the golems were set in. The City Guard was stretched to the limits posted around the perimeter of the city, there hadn’t been a wall built then, and Gallet and her family huddled in the streets en mass with the other survivors.

It took four months. Gallet cried every night, but her father rallied the refugees together, organizing what semblance of sanitation and resources they could to survive. When the army arrived they brought with them Root-keepers who pulled the stone directly out of the ground to form the wall now surrounding Kanton and placed the guards around it.  With the golem threat pushed from everyone’s minds, a collective sigh of relief washed over the city. But it was then that the real blood bath began.

The Order referred to The Sundering as an incident of Chaos, and cast their dogmatic eyes upon the entire city. To banish Chaos from our lives, they demanded an oath of fealty. The council resisted to begin with, but one by one concessions were made. In the end Gorn, the Order’s most adamant supporter, was made Regent – Gallet found out later that his opposition on the council was relieved of their positions after their… execution.  Her father led a rebellion after they declared Kanton, and the lands surrounding it, property of the Order. She never saw him, or her mother, again.

Thinking of the past always brought a swell of emotions back, but she had long sense passed the point of tears. No, tears had gotten her nowhere. Anger was a much more suitable emotion for action. There was nothing more she could do for the wound in her shoulder; she had to press on to make sure Venara wasn’t pursued.  Instead of following Venara’s path toward the edge of the city however, she turned to the cliff face – the backbone of the city – to the heart of the Order in Kanton.

On to Rise of the Order 2.2 > >