Circle of Chaos Part 1
Paul Mitchell has written a great story about the
Circle of Chaos and we will be releasing it over the next few days in several parts.
++Please be aware that it contains some strong(ish) language++
ONE.
Pedrogo stared at the mewling woodland thing caught in the pit-trap at his feet. It was desperately trying to escape. So much effort. If left alone, it would probably make it, he thought. He brought down the butt of his staff hard on the creature’s skull, ending the pitiful struggling.
He had been thinking of the day he himself had crawled from the collapsed tunnel, fleeing his home and family, pursued by his vengeful clan. Spitting dirt and blinking in the sun, clutching the relic Kenhorr’s Curse, he had found a hooded hunchback standing over him. Beneath the hood was a face of frozen glass, the skin quartered with black and white. Impassively the thing regarded his helplessness.
'Not yet,' it said and went away.
He ended his reverie with a savage twist of the staff-butt which ground the skull into shards. He hoped he wouldn’t dream tonight.
Eventually he had started to find others. Not like him as such, but cut from the same bolt of cloth. At first he had struggled to survive, the forest was so… alien to a dwarf.
Later, things got… less difficult. The long-necked brute in the rusty armour was the first. It seemed to feel some sort of bond with the dirty dwarf in the torn robes, felt the need to help him even. It almost never spoke, merely cooing and giggling like some sort of malformed child dressed as a killer. So, he simply called it The Guardian. Together they were better able to waylay travellers and corner forest beasts.
Later came others. The goblin muggers Friki and Diki. The loathsome rat-thing scout, mutated almost beyond description. The wandering and murderous outlander, Brok; too brutal even for his plundering kin. They were now strong enough to seek out isolated farms, mills and trapper cabins. Pedrogo searched for victims in the scrying flames and then led them to the killings. Usually they did it for food or strong drink but sometimes when they grew restless he let them kill those with nothing, purely for the pleasure of it.
Pedrogo had cut himself a staff from the Twisted Willow and topped it with the stolen stave-cap, Kenhorr’s Curse. As he gradually learnt how to focus the power within, his scrying became clearer. Though, it was at this time that the dreams began.
A bird-thing, missing feathers, old, weary, lay on her back. Straining hard, her eyes shot through with veins of blood. Finally, the strain is too much, she will never pass the egg. Instead, it splits her in two and she dies. The egg moves, cracks, in a flash of light it bursts asunder and a scintillating bird throws open both wings and throat, giving voice to triumph. It stalks over to the corpse of the mother and begins to eat. The meal is grotesque, there is little left of the mother yet the bird chews on the gristle and bones as if they were a kingly feast. It looks into the dreamer and speaks.
'This is perfectly natural.'
After the dream Pedrogo would always awake abruptly, sweating and panicked. He would look about the campsite for some form of comfort in what, laughingly, had become his normality.
There lay Brok, cradling his warhammer as it buzzed in his ear. He would remonstrate with it sometimes, kiss it lasciviously other times, always he would do as it said. The Guardian peered at him with mournful eyes. The goblins both twitched in unison, he could imagine them dreaming of beating a helpless stranger to death as if doing it every day wasn’t enough. Constantly quivering Chirrik trembled so fast he seemed to vibrate, the labyrinthine contortions of the thing’s windpipe created a snore like wind through caves.
Recently they had found the wicked forest sprite Ajjatahr and the gigantic four-legged monster Ooko too, they lay in their bedrolls as if they had always belonged. Ajjatahr had been warring with everything it could find until Pedrogo charmed it and added it to his followers. As for the enormous beast with the armoured grey skin, it scared him even while it slept.
His band was strong enough, he thought. They could leave this miserable place and find better hunting grounds. Maybe then the dreams would stop.
Maybe the check-faced hunchback would stop following him.
CIRCLE OF CHAOS KICKSTARTER
