The Revenge of Rondhol
Fortifying Positions
Briars Breach a Broken Bastion
1st Step: The Approach
She races forwards, as much time spent bounding on all fours as running bipedal, just one sister in the massed pack of feral forest folk. Her is focus is wholly on the prey awaiting her; a small band of human soldiers, their bodies filling one of the crevices in what were once formidable fortifications. Whether the thick, stone walls were shattered when the city fell from the sky, or whether some battle since has toppled them, all that matters now is that they are vulnerabilities open to exploitation.
She and her sisters hoot and howl as they cover the final stretch. This close, she can see the light glimmer on the metal plates which the humans encase their torsos in, and on the metal tips of those pointed sticks they carry.
One human shouts an instruction to its fellows, and the sticks are lowered, the blades on their ends aimed squarely at the onrushing Brood. She does not slow or falter, nor do any of her sisters. Each dryad continues to do her utmost to outpace her nearest neighbours, desperate to be amongst the first to reach prey-flesh with tooth and talon.
Then they are upon the foe. She leaps, maw wide, wracking talons outstretched towards a terrified, pale-faced guard. Only to hear a sudden thunk, and come to a jarring stop, as a blow to her midsection almost doubles her over.
She glances down to find one of those pointy bits of metal embedded in her gut, her bark split and the blade sunk deep into heartwood, amber-hued bloodsap welling up around the wound.
Snarling, she glares back at her prey, so tantalisingly close, yet still out of reach, the wooden shaft keeping her from it. She takes a swipe at the human anyway, her claws coming nowhere close. Snarling with frustration more than pain, she strains to get at her meal, to no avail.
Then her knees give way, and she falls. Stupefied, she’s unsure how to react, her body never having betrayed her like this before. The human drops its spear and draws a sword, which it holds in shaking hands. It’s looking past her, though, dismissing her as a threat.
Bloodsap boiling at the audacity of the stupid prey-creature, she tries to shuffle forwards—determined to make it regret disregarding her—but finds that after advancing no more than a few inches, the pain in her stomach swells to an unbearable level. Groaning, she curls up into a foetal position.
Then her twigs are snapping, her branches breaking, and her face ground into the dirt, as she is crushed underfoot by the mass of sisters behind her, pushing forwards to get at the foes.
She knows this is the way of Ghur; there is no mercy here, and being wounded on the hunt is just as much a death sentence as a killing blow would be. She does not rail against her fate, though. Instead, she smiles grimly, as the last sounds she hears are human screams.
2nd Step: The Pursuit
She surges after the fleeing human female, as it cries out its terror. All around her, similar scenes are enacted as sisters fan out from the breach, pouring into the streets behind the wall, their disorderly mob disseminating through the city’s outskirts, in search of fresh meat to devour.
Meat like this prey she is soon to gorge herself upon. She lunges, swiping at it, but it just barely manages to flinch aside in the nick of time, and her talons merely brush its long, brown hair, rather than tearing flesh and breaking bone. She lands on hands and feet, jaws snapping indignantly, as the wailing human dashes into an alleyway between two of the big, stone dens that the humans nest in.
Growling, she darts after it, not keen on letting the precious prey evade her and fall into the clutches of another. It knows the layout of these alleys, but she is faster, and over every straight stretch, she gains ground, the human female only escaping by diving around corners at the last moment, but its luck cannot hold out forever.
Then she follows it around one particular corner, and finds herself with not one prey, but three. The female rushes past the other two, which are human males, wearing similar coverings to those who had held up the Brood briefly at the wall. Rather than long sticks, though, these two hold strange wooden contraptions in their arms.
The female spins around the moment it is past the others, facing her with a smirk on its face, all trace of fear gone. That strikes her as odd behaviour for cornered meat. Then it speaks a command in its complicated language that she does not understand, and from each of the males’ wooden contraptions darts a short, thin shaft, both of which connect with her torso, one burying itself in her shoulder, the other in her midriff.
She yelps—the sudden, painful jolts taking her aback—but doesn’t pause, which seems to surprise the prey, if their bulging, fish-like eyes are any indication.
One of them fumbles with its contraption, but she’s upon it before the human can shoot a second time, and a swipe of her thorn-like claws has it forgetting all about that, falling to the pavement, screaming and clutching the bloody, ruined remnants of its face.
The other male drops its ranged weapon and draws a long piece of metal, while the female pulls out a shorter sliver of steel from somewhere. The two attack in tandem, and she is hampered by the male’s metal shell, which her talons scratch but do not penetrate when she attempts to eviscerate him.
They strike her incessantly, and she staggers under the combined assault. Having no notion of defence, she relies entirely on her bark for protection, even as its inadequacy is proven time and again, a plethora of fresh wounds marring her form. Her tenacity pays off, though, when a well-timed swipe of her talons tears into the meat of the male’s leg, causing it to cry out and fall. She pounces upon it then, clamping her jaws around its throat, and ravaging the soft flesh.
The female takes that opportunity to plunge its own metal into her back, undeterred by her thorny branches. Its coverings and the skin beneath are soon covered in tiny cuts, but they are nothing next to the fatal blows it is inflicting as it brings down that blade repeatedly.
It isn’t long before her strength leaves her, and with a groan, she collapses atop the corpse of her final victim.
3rd Step: The Catch
The door slams before her, but she is scarcely more than a pace behind the prey. She rams into it, leading with her right shoulder, and feels it give slightly, sees a narrow gap open, but before she can jam a hand or foot through to keep it ajar, the wooden panel is shoved back into place.
Snarling, she staggers back, before charging again, with all the force she can muster. This time, though, all she achieves is to hurt her shoulder. The door barely budges, some sort of bolt, bar or other locking mechanism having been hastily set in place to keep her from bursting in.
Gingerly shifting her pained shoulder, to confirm she still has her full range of motion, she glances about for another means of egress, and spots the small, shuttered window.
A savage smirk splitting her inhuman features, she backs up several paces before taking a run up and diving straight at it. The thin, wooden slats do nothing to impede her progress, but the narrowness of the gap is more of an issue, and she chokes back a gasp of pain as several branches are broken from her back.
Despite this, she lands gracefully on the other side, her talons digging into the surface of the dining table she finds herself perched upon. She pauses there a moment to collect herself, her body trembling involuntarily as the agony from her back courses through her, and sticky bloodsap sluggishly trickles from the stumps of her branches.
The humans inside take advantage of her hesitation, the brawny male shouting something, at a wide-eyed female who clutches an equally fearful youth. At his words, the other two flee further into their home, and the male brings up the rear.
She doesn’t give them long, soon bounding down from her landing place to give chase. The area beyond the first chamber is empty but for more doors, and an uneven incline at the far end. She may well have struggled to find them with so many places to hide, but hears the young human crying from up above, and more faintly, the female desperately attempting to shush it.
She scrambles up the steps, across another room with several doors, and slams into the one from which the noises emanate. Upon making contact, there is an alarming crack. Whether that noise comes from the slab of wood or her already-battered shoulder, she cannot be sure, but judging by the fresh wave of pain, she’s not inclined to closely inspect her right arm, lest she discover something not to her liking.
The door does give way, though, and the burly human staggers back, having been holding it shut. Stumbling in, she sees that this chamber is dominated by a large, soft-looking object, likely for sleeping on. The weaker prey cower behind it, while the male faces her.
She raises her talons, or tries to, and discovers that her right arm is unresponsive. Noticing her haggard state, the human seems encouraged, and closes the distance between them. This prey is not one of their warriors; it neither carries nor wears any metal, yet with its mate and offspring in danger, that disadvantage seems not to concern it.
One hefty fist collides with her jaw, sending her reeling, then before she can recover, the other slams into the centre of her face, where a human’s snout would be. Whilst some of her sisters share that feature, she is fortunate not to, making that area less of a weak spot, though the force of the blow does keep her off-balance.
The human lands a few more punches on her head and torso, the former being more impactful than the latter, and soon its knuckles are torn and bloody from connecting repeatedly with her bark. It does an admirable job of holding her at bay, considering its lack of natural weapons, yet it accumulates more injuries than just those to its hands. Whenever her claws make contact, they slice flesh and cloth with equal ease, and soon her prey bleeds from a half dozen shallow wounds to its arms and legs.
Then she gets in a lucky hit to its unprotected torso, and is reminded of why human warriors are generally so eager to cover that area, when that simple, glancing blow disembowels her foe. With a ragged gasp and a look of dawning horror, the prey staggers, arms falling limply by its sides, face going pale.
Tempted though she is by the feast right before her, the constant wailing of other two rises to a new pitch at this turn of events, and she finds the noise irritable, so heaves her aching body across the space to where they’re huddled in a corner.
Looking down upon their tear-streaked faces, her maw splits in an inhuman grin, as she raises her still-functional left arm high, talons flexing in eager anticipation.
4th Step: The Musings
As she ambles through the carnage, the branchwych is all but oblivious to her physical surroundings. On the metaphysical level, though, she sees all there is to see, even the feeblest flurry in the winds of magic being clear as day to the witch-sight she has been bestowed by the greenwood scythe she carries.
Ghur is a beautiful place, overflowing with life, both flora and fauna, yet here in this city, that life is restrained, held back by the bonds of civilisation. That is something that she cannot permit.
She had hoped her new friends would aid her in destroying this travesty, but alas, they’ve proven as fickle as she herself has been, the fae having abandoned the Brood with no more thought than she gave the orruk Waaagh! upon leaving their company.
This does not bother her, though. The Knights’ sudden change of plans and their decision not to march upon the Gaping Portal did free her up to return to Khardhir, after all.
Will her allies succeed in freeing Rondhol from the leash that keeps it bound? Will the continent itself then rise up against its invaders, obliterating all the sapient creatures who would dare assert their influence upon it? She cannot say. Perhaps they shall triumph, or perhaps they shall be foiled at the last by some great hero or villain.
Either way, their schemes should make for a most suitable distraction.
Truth be told, after all the hardships of this war, she is not certain that her Brood alone can muster the strength to wipe this foul place off the map, even stripped of its mightiest defenders, whose focus is on counteracting the fae threat.
One way or another, this will be their final battle with the forces of the fallen sky-city. Either they win here, or they perish. Should the latter eventuality come to pass, she will simply have to be content with having wrought such destruction that Khardhir shall be wounded for years to come.
