Rieraon

[Sir Mandorallen]

<font color="silver">Okay guys.... I know that this is a slow board but I needed to post this somewhere and I thought this place best.

This is a short story I wrote and I need feedback. Please take the time and read it and give my your opinons.

Rieraon

The lands of Rieraon are the lands of myth and legend, filled with stories of grand heroes, heroines, powerful magic, and evil villains. Here most anything is possible, arch mages, wizards, and warriors of extreme power shape the world around them, as the gods themselves control the fate of men. With conflicts between the gods come terrible wars between the forces of good and evil. Now, in the time of our story, the land is torn by war, as the dark demi-god Artaneus and his father, the god of chaos, war, and death himself, lead the barbarians of the south against the civilized nations of the north. While war just begins bands of great heroes still cross the lands, seeking fame and fortune.
Our tale follows one such band, although the title “great heroes” is not quite what other people may refer to them as. On the run from the city of Kal Morana, capital of the nation of Almarara, they are nearing the small town of Valleyside…

“Can we make camp now? I’m hungry,” a small rouge wearing a black cloak, that had a large bulge in one side, remarked. Walking next to the small man was his complete opposite. A tall strongly built man with a great sword five feet long in one hand. The large man was kicking a stone in front of him as he walked. “Hey! We will stop when I’m ready! And don’t forget you’re the reason we’re here in the middle of nowhere, Jermin.”
The rouge’s eyebrows shot up as he peered out from under his cloak towards the man. “Me?! You’re the leader, my friend, and you lead us here!”
The man stopped and turned to the rouge. “Well, I didn’t try to steal the grand duchesses jewels, you no-good excuse for a thief!!”
Behind the two men were two more travelers. One, an elderly man with a walking staff and the other, a lean woman of average height with a bow slung over her shoulder. “There they go again,” said the woman with a sigh. “They have been arguing like that since Kal Morana. And that was fifteen leagues ago.” The women looked at the two men who had started waving their hands about amid their shouting. The woman sighed again. “Sometimes I wonder why we put up with them.”
“Sometimes?” the elderly man said in a tired voice. “I ask myself that question everyday I spend with them.” The tall man had thrown his sword down violently and was screaming and pounding his fist into his palm, while the small thief yelled back just as loudly. “Well?” the woman asked as she watched the two yelling. “Why do we put up with them?” The old man stopped and leaned on his walking staff, a thoughtful look upon his face. It was about this time when the tall man grabbed onto Jermin, and pulled one fist back as if to punch the thief.
The old man looked over and noticed the impending doom for the thief, and jumped up, moving with a speed that should not have been possible for a man his age and thumped both the tall man and Jermin on their heads with his walking staff. The elderly man turned to the tall man. “Brend!” the old man yelled. “You know better than to try and hit one of your friends! How many times has he saved your life?!” Brend shifted on his feet and his eyes took on a glazed look, which happens to occur every time he attempts to think. “Well… umm… uh… well-uh… maybe uhhh-” Brend’s eyes were completely glazed over by this time and the old man looked at him shaking his head. “No need to answer that Brend, just don’t go hitting Jermin.”
Brend stared back and nodded his head. The old man, however had turned before he got an answer and rounded in on the thief. “And you”- The old man stopped suddenly staring at Jermin. The thief was rubbing his head but somehow had feathers on and, sticking through, his cloak. “My boy,” the old man asked with a curious look on his face, “Where did all of these feathers come from?” The old man looked to the bulge of the thief’s cloak and used his staff to push the cloak off. There, strapped to the thief’s side, was a chicken, with a piece of cloth holding its beak shut. The group of adventurers were staring perplexedly at Jermin who was shifting uneasily under their gazes.
The sound of a horse’s hooves quickly brought the attentions of the companions to a fat plow horse galloping down the road ridden by a man with a rusty sword in one hand, the reigns in the other, and an old helmet, that was too small, comically strapped on his head. The lean woman looked at the man as he was coming towards them and suddenly her eyes got wide. “That’s the old farmer from way down the road! You know! The one that gave us lodging in his… chicken… coop.” Everyone’s eyes turned toward Jermin again. Brend, eyes still partially glazed after that horrible attempt to think, looked at the small man and screamed. “Stupid thief!” Jermin looked back just as defiantly and yelled “Brainless oaf!” The old man thumped them again. “Not now you fools! Run!!” The farmer was barreling down upon them yelling “Thieves! Thieves! Die as you should!” The party ducked off into the surrounding woodlands and began to run. After five hours the old farmer gave up and the party found themselves at the gates to the town Valleyside.

The old man looked up to the gates and nodded. “I think that this will be the perfect place for us to weather out this bounty notice on us.” The old man turned back to the party and looked towards Brend. “Brend, this time do you think that you can avoid starting a street brawl over something anyone else could have solved with words. I don’t want another fiasco like the one in the last town.” Brend stared back at the man with a completely vacant look, which showed exactly what was between his ears… nothing. Finally Brend seemed to have heard what the old man had said. “Okay Varlennon, no more street brawls over… uh… over…”
The old man, Varlennon, sadly shook his head. “That’s good enough Brend. Don’t worry about the rest.” Varlennon turned to Jermin “And you, you little rapscallion. No more stealing from the farmers, angering the local nobles, or fighting with Brend. Understand?” The diminutive man, looking ashamed, nodded as he shifted from foot to foot. “And Keria,” The man looked to the woman with the bow. “You go and buy supplies while we get ourselves some rooms in an inn. I will never trust Brend to get the supplies again after that unforgettable incident two days ago.” Keria nodded “I don’t blame you,” she said with a smile.
The group walked into the town and quickly found an inn. “All-right Keria you can go get our supplies, here is the money.” Varlennon handed her some golden coins as he talked. “Meet us back here. I will get a room for you.”

Several hours later the group was eating a chicken dinner as they listening to a bard on the far side of the common room. A serving girl came up and offered four glasses of wine. They all gladly took a glass, except for Brend who shook his head. “Just bring me a mug of the strongest ale you have.” The serving girl shrugged and walked away to get some ale.
Two farmers and a man from the local militia were sitting at the table next to the group. The farmers were staring intently at the militiaman “T’aint right,” the militiaman was saying in a low voice. “Something is out there. Heard the Wilson farm was burned down yesterday, and the bodies, or I should say pieces, of ‘em were found less than a mile away. Only one whole was Wilson himself. Looked like he was shot with an arrow while ‘e was running. Rest of ‘em musta been hit by something from some mage.” The militiaman looked sick. “I-I-I aint gonna go into it. It’s just not right.” The man took a swig of his ale. “With this war and the Wilsons being the farthest south… gots me worried.” Jermin was listening intently to the conversation and was turning pale. “Did you hear that?” Jermin had turned around and whispered to Varlennon. “This doesn’t sound good. Almarara is the furthest south of all the nations! That means we are close to the border!”
“Now, now, Jermin, you know how the militia can get eccentric. They will tell anything to try and impress the locals,” Varlennon said. The rest of the adventures looked uneasy as well. Excepting Brend, of course, whose eyes had glazed again.
“But is it just the ravings of a drunken soldier, Varlennon?” Keria asked. “Please tell me it is. I mean we are adventurers, but mages that blow people up… I just don’t want to encounter one.”
“Phaw! That’s just gibberish!” Brend said loudly as he came out of his daze. “He don’t know what he’s talking about! This town may be in Almarara and Almarara may be right on the boarder, but this town is too far north to be bothered by barbarians! I say we just wait and see if we hear any more about this! And if it’s true then we can worry and then we can do something about it!”
Varlennon sputtered. “Well-wha-eh? My boy! That’s the first good idea I think I’ve ever heard from you!” Varlennon said amazedly. The rest of the party was looking at Brend as if he was a ghost. Jermin’s eyes looked as though they were going to pop out of his head. “My god…” he muttered.
“Yes well, Brend has a point,” Varlennon said. “I know it’s amazing but that’s what we will do.” Keria was shaking her head in disbelief. Varlennon continued. “If more comes up about this then we will act upon it. Until then Brend… was… right.”
By the time the shock had worn away, the serving girl reappeared. “Here ya go hon,” she said as she handed the mug to Brend. Brend took the mug and drank it all in one gulp. The serving girl’s jaw dropped. “Can I have the pitcher too?” Brend asked as he pointed to the pitcher in her left hand. She nodded. Quite visibly shaken, she turned to Varlennon. “Is h-h-he supposed to drink like t-t-th-that?” Varlennon was simply staring at Brend, shaking his head as he watched the man drink out of the pitcher. “It never hurt him before,” he said.

But the rumors continued, and eventually they became truths. People were dying and farms were being destroyed. The fifty men of the local militia were sent out to locate and dispatch the problem. One runner was sent back, reporting that they had tracked whatever was destroying farms to the rocky area to the south and discovered a large cave, which was where they thought the people who were behind it all were hiding. Two days later a runner from the militia arrived with an arrow in his back. Nearing death the last words he managed to say were “Ambush… barbarians… mages.”

Back in the common room Jermin was looking up to Varlennon. “I’m telling you right now we should leave, this town is too far south!” Jermin turned to Brend. “Don’t you agree to it!” Nether Brend nor Varlennon appeared to be listening. Keria was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. “Yeah but if there are barbarians and mages, we have to stop them,” Keria said determinedly. “If we don’t, and we just leave, we will simply run into the Kal Moranain militia again. Plus this village will probably get destroyed before help, other than us, can arrive.”
Brend pounded the common room table. “Then its simple! We go and kill them all!” He began to stand up and said. “I will go to the Mayor and tell him that we will go and kill the barbarians.”
“Wait, Brend,” Varlennon said. “We must think this through first. If they have mages, then how do you expect we can defeat them?” Jermin looked up happily, “Yes, yes! That’s right! We just leave, we don’t want to tangle with mages!”
“Shut-up Jermin!” Keria said angrily. “Varlennon, you’re a wizard. Wizards are twice as powerful as any old mage!” Varlennon sighed, “Yes, but do you know how many mages they have? Or how many barbarians are with them? I might be able to handle up to three mages, but if they have a hundred barbarians backing them up, what can we do?”
“That doesn’t matter!” Keria said as she stood up. “You know that if the barbarians lose their mages, their spirit and their will to fight will break and they will scatter.” “Yes, yes, Keria, I do know,” Varlennon said. “But what will happen if we have to cut our way through a hundred barbarians to get to them?”
“Simple! We will!” Brend said as he again started to stand up. “I will go and tell the mayor we accept his plea and will slaughter all of the barbarians!”
“No you won’t, you oaf!” Jermin said as he too stood up. “I refuse to sacrifice my life for some two-bit poor excuse for a back-water town!”
“Both of you shut-up and sit down!” Varlennon yelled. Both men, startled, sat down immediately. “I have decided what we are going to do,” the old wizard said. “We are to accept, despite the risks…” Hearing this Jermin began spluttering… “and if you don’t like it Mr. Jermin then I will use my power to take you back to that nice little cavern we visited not long ago. Do you remember? The one with the big… nasty… mean… spiders.”
Jermin’s eyes started twitching in fear. “Y-y-y-you wouldn’t d-dare!” “Come now, Mr. Jermin, I thought you liked spiders?” the old man said with a malicious grin. “O-o-okay! I will go! Just don’t send me back to those spiders!” Varlennon laughed. “I knew you would see it my way.”

The “rocky areas to the south” were actually mountains. The party traveled over the foothills, eventually coming to the cave where the militia met their fate. About a hundred yards out from the cave lay a flattened out area where the surrounding trees seemed to have burned and fallen. The ground was full of holes and pieces of armor, and bodies lay on the reddened, burnt grass.
“Oh god, why did I agree? Why, oh why, oh why?” Jermin was saying as he surveyed the carnage that surrounded him. “Spiders, my good man, spiders,” Brend said matter-of-factly as he too looked around him.
“There is the cave,” Keria said. “We will probably need to fight our way into it a ways until we encounter those mages.” Brend looked up and screamed, “Then what are we waiting for!? CHARG”- Varlennon put his hand over the big man’s mouth, but it was too late. Yells erupted from the cave and voices screamed in strange languages. Men dressed in mismatched armor and leather, wielding a wide variety of weapons came running out of the cave like ants from an anthill. Varlennon let his hand drop in horror. “CHARGE!!!” Brend screamed with rage and began running toward the sixty or so barbarians, heaving his five-foot long great sword over his right shoulder, ready to strike at the nearest barbarian. With little choice left the others charged forward. Keria notched an arrow to the string on her bow and let it loose on the run. The arrow lanced forward striking a running barbarian directly in the heart. Even as he fell Keria loosed another arrow and another. Jermin, short sword drawn, looked to Varlennon, who was running right along with the others. “What are you doing old man?!” Jermin yelled at the wizard. “Call forth lightning, make a big fireball, tear a hole in the earth, uh-call forth a flock of seagulls! I don’t care! Just do something!!”
The old man looked back. “I can’t!! I need all my energy for my battle with the mages!!” Jermin looked back to the elderly man. “Oh bloody hell,” he said as Brend came into contact with the barbarian horde. Brend swung his mighty great sword down, cleaving a barbarian in two. Then in the same motion brought up his blade skewering another yelling barbarian on the five feet of steel. Varlennon stopped running and yelled for Jermin to defend him while he prepared spells. Jermin cursed under his breath, as it was his plan to keep running, but in the other direction. Without a choice Jermin stopped and turned to defend the wizard against any possible attacks. When he turned, however, he turned into a large barbarian with a wicked half moon axe in his hand. Jermin squealed and ducked off to one side just as the axe went through the spot he had been standing in. Jermin moved quickly and used his short sword, and short stature, to evade the axe and slice the barbarian’s hamstrings. The barbarian fell with a howl and Jermin finished him by stabbing him in the back. “Well, that wasn’t too hard,” Jermin remarked. Then Jermin felt a boot hit his side and he fell over in pain. Towering over him was a huge barbarian with an equally huge two-handed sword poised above Jermin’s head. The diminutive thief heard Keria yell and an arrow appeared in the barbarian’s throat, splattering blood on the thief’s cloak.
Varlennon just finished his spell casting as the arrow stabbed into the barbarian’s neck. “Luck,” Varlennon said as he turned and saw Brend surrounded by dead barbarians but fighting at least thirty more. Directly behind them were two men dressed completely in black. The mages. They looked up and noticed Varlennon. But they were too late, and Varlennon was ready. The old wizard raised his hands, and a blue light encompassed them. He pointed at the mage on the right and a bolt of lightning flew out from the wizard’s hand, striking the mage in the head. As the headless body fell to the ground, smoldering, Varlennon looking to the stunned mage muttered several words in the ancient tongue, calling on power from the god of the sun and light. The mage looked in horror to Varlennon then began chanting fervently in a low voice. But it was too late. The mage’s skin turned red, then he proceeded to explode.
The barbarians, seeing their all-powerful mages killed so quickly, broke and ran as if the Demon Lord himself were staring at them. As they ran Varlennon heaved a sigh of relief, and Keria was already busy scavenging for arrows that were still good to use. Brend was leaning on his sword, unharmed, but extremely tired and Jermin was standing over the body of another dead barbarian. “Ha. Ha. HA, HA!!” Jermin laughed loudly. “Ha! Yeah run, cause we killed your “great mages” ha, ha!”
“Well thank god that’s over with,” Keria said. “For a minute there, I didn’t think we would make it.” Varlennon nodded “We had better get back to the town,” the old man stated. “I think the mayor will be very pleased and we will be well rewarded.” Jermin was still laughing as the party began to head back to Vallyside.

“Well I can’t believe you boys did it!” the mayor said jubilantly upon their return. “We here owe you our very lives, and you all will be well rewarded. But first, there is someone here to see you. Uh, he says it’s urgent.” Brend looked to the mayor, “Well let him in.” A guard opened the door to the mayor’s audience chamber and in stepped a man dressed in full plate armor. He had the Kal Moranain militia’s insignia on his helmet.
“Are you Jermin Del’Alera?” the man said in a gruff voice to the thief. “Uh…. Yes I am. But isn’t that the militia’s symbol on your helmet?” Jermin asked with a great deal of worry in his voice.
“Yes it is, my good thief, yes it is. I have spent quite some time following you. Come with me,” the man said.

The dungeons were a dark and damp place, and in the distance, in one of the many cells, voices could be heard. “You good for nothing thief!!” a man was yelling “Shut-UP you brainless, ugly, moron!!” another man responded. “UGLY?!?! WHO ARE YOU CALLING UGLY?!?!”
A dungeon guard turned to his partner. “I guess we will have to get used to this,” he said as the door to the dungeon swung shut.

And BTW: I know that nobody on here would try this... but this is copyrighted by the U.S. postal service. I sent it to myself in a registered mail thingy and so now... no one can take it or I will take you to court!

P.S. I just posted this above as a precautionary method as I do not know all seven-thousand eight-hundred of you and I don't really feel like someone stealing this idea and me going to court about it!

So read and enjoy, and please give feedback! </font>