The Rise of the Eight

There weren't always dragons in the Valley…

“At least, that is what our ancestors have said each time they passed down our history throughout the ages,” said the old woman as she turned around to face the children sat in the classroom.

“The Valley, if you have not learned yet, is where our magics are the most wild, and while dragons were never unheard of, they were scarce and far away from civilization. This was until one fateful day when the dragons roosted within the Valley.”

“Miss Granegur,” spoke a young, red-headed girl with light green eyes.

“Yes, Dee?”

“Why did the dragons decide to go there?”

“Well, little one,” Miss Granegur said as she sat down, a gnarled wooden staff by her side, “we do not know it why the dragons made a home there. Some have speculated it is the wild magic that lays there. Others have said the gods lured them there for reasons we don’t know. However, after they laid roost there, the dragons that we have known changed and merged into something new. This is what our lesson is about today.”

After using her staff to prop herself back up, she walks back to the chalkboard. “Now, originally, the dragons comprised the four core magical elements that make up our world. Who can tell me what they are?” she said as she grabbed the chalk and turned back to the classroom.

“Fire,” a boy yelled from the back of the room.

“Correct,” she said as she turned to write fire onto the chalkboard.

“Earth and air,” another boy said, though closer to the front of the room.

“Good, good,” she said as she wrote earth and air beside one another, but above the word fire, “and the last one?”

“Water,” said Dee.

“Good,” she said as she wrote water above all the other words, but making sure that it was directly opposite of the word fire. “Now, these four elements also make up the magics we use. Those talented enough can use one or two of these elements, but some special individuals can use all four elements. This is similar to the dragons, though they only specialize in one of these elements.”

Another boy, half elven, rose his hand. “Did that change when they moved to the Valley?”

“It did, Vanros, but not how we thought. Over the ages, we saw new types of dragons. A mix of two elements turned into one. These combinations are ice, lightning, lava, and nature or manipulation of plant life.”

With each additional element she wrote, she positioned the element in its proper place. Ice between water and air, lightning between air and fire, lava between fire and earth, and nature between earth and water.

“But what about the story Miss Granegur?” said Dee. “Has anyone asked the dragons why they went there?”

Miss Granegur just chuckles. “No one talks to the dragons, my dear. We just do our best to stay out of their way.”

“Why?”

“Now Dee, this isn’t the purpose of my lesson for today. Please, no more questions about the history of the dragons.”

“But…” Suddenly, she feels a hand on her shoulder, then hears the voice of Vanros, the half-elf.

“Dee, you need to wake up.”

“Huh?” The voice was Vanros, but deeper in tone. Almost like an adult’s voice.

“Wake up!”

Sleep crusted mint-colored eyes shoot open and immediately take in the surroundings. Knelt above her was her long-time friend Vanros, the campfire light revealing a thin smile drawn across his face and a dagger readied to pierce his side.

“Easy Dee. It is just me,” Vanros said, his arms raised to ease the tension.

The spike of adrenaline of being rudely woken up sobered her enough to realize that the dagger against Vanros’s side was hers. “Sorry, Vanros,” she said as she withdrew her blade before taking in the cool night air.

The small stretch of grassland they camped on lied between the forest they came through and the mountain range they were going to head into in the morning. Dew hadn’t formed on the grass just yet, but the low mist in the area meant that it would happen soon.

“Wait, Vanros, why did you wake me up? Is something going on?”

“No, nothing at the moment. I just wanted to talk with you about the job we took.”

“And you thought now was a good time?”

“How long have we been friends? You know I have no proper sense of timing. Plus, I couldn’t sleep because of where we are going to.”

Letting out a soft sigh, she picks herself up from her bedroll and sits up closer to the campfire to warm herself. “I have to admit, it too has been on my mind.”

“A dragon’s den is something no one should mess with, let alone pilfer,” Vanros said as he joined Dee at the campfire.

“The information on the job is good, Vanros. There hasn’t been a dragon spotted in the den for two years now. The danger there is minimum.”

“I know,” he said, pulling his legs up to his chest. “I just don’t want any surprises. We have had a long run of bad luck recently, but I know we desperately need the gold.”

“Well, if you stopped buying medicinal herbs all the time, you might have more gold on you and we may not be so desperate,” she said with a smile.

“If you did not jump into danger all the time, I wouldn’t have to buy medicinal herbs,” he said with a smile of his own.

Soft laughter filled the air as they reminiscent on everything they had been through since they were kids. Nothing accumulated to what they were about to do in the coming days, but there were some special moments. Their laughter, however, wasn’t loud enough to mask the sudden shuffling sounds within the forest behind them.

Alerted by the noise, both had gotten up and drew out their weapons. Dee had both of her daggers poised to strike, with her stance lowered as if she were about to dash towards the threat. Vanros’s left hand held his quarterstaff that was strapped to his back with the butt end of it smashed into the ground – his opposite hand outstretched as if he were about to ready a spell.

“What’s the play, Dee?” he whispered.

“Depends. What do you see?” she whispered back.

“I’m not sure. Whatever is out there has stopped moving. My best guess… it could be an animal blending in, or maybe someone in dark clothing.”

Seconds felt like minutes as they waited to hear something more or see any movement within the forest’s edge. “I don’t like this,” Dee said as she continued to scan the forest edge. “If it were an animal, it would have shown itself or fled by now. Something is stalking us.”

“You are right about that little girl,” spoke a deep and throaty voice from within the forest.

“What are you doing, Tilge?” said another voice within the forest, though slightly higher pitch, yet still throaty.

“Shut it, Onog. Your plan of sneaking has failed. Now we do it my way.”

Out from the edge, three shadowy figures walk into the low mist before them – the three of them slowly being illuminated by the campfire’s dim light.

“Orcs,” said Vanros, his elven eyes finally picking out the details of their faces and forms.

“Perceptive eyes, elf filth,” said Tilge. “Now, we’s been following you for quite a while. Just a waiting for the right moment to jump ya. Sadly, Onog here could’nt keep his steps quiet like. So, I aims to make this a direct approach. Give us all your valuables, and we may spares your lives.”

Dee, upon realizing that they were just a trio of common thugs, bursts into a laughing fit. All three orcs look at each other, confused at the odd reaction to being mugged, while Vanros puts on a half-crooked smile and joins in on Dee’s laughter with an uncomfortable chuckle.

“Dee… what exactly are we laughing at?” he said as he leaned into her.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she sheathed her daggers and wiped away her tears. “Tilge? It was Tilge, right?”

“Uh… yeah.”

“Who exactly did you think you were following?”

“I, uh… plunderers of a sort.”

“And you got it in your head that we had a wealth of valuables?”

“I… err… maybe.”

“Well, you figured poorly. Here,” she reaches into her side pouch, pulls out a single gold coin, and tosses it onto the ground, “that is all we have to our names. You want it? Then take it.”

“We are not fools, little girl, we knows you were given a job in town,” Tilge said as he tugged on his belt – showing off the weapon sheathed on his side.

“Well, you are correct about that, but we do not have any valuables. Vanros, give me your gold.”

“Uh… yeah… sure.” Still apprehensive by the whole situation, he reaches into his pouch and pulls out three gold pieces and hands it over to Dee. She then tosses them on the ground as well, though in a more disgusted way.

“There, that is all we have. Now, take it and leave, or just simply leave us poor folk at peace.”

A slight pause followed as Tilge looked to Onog on his left and the other, more feminine orc, on his right. While Onog just shrugged, the female orc wasn’t convinced and simply shook her head at Tilge.

“How bout this? We take your gold and the job you took, then we spares your lives,” Tilge said with slight glee.

“I grow weary of this, Tilge. We should just kill them and take everything from them,” said the female orc in their party.

“Now, now Mora,” said Tilge, “we’s supposed to be a hospitable band of orcs. We’s got to give dem the chance to be hospitable as well.”

Vanros leans into Dee again, “When I tell you to run, you run.”

“Wait, I can talk this out, Vanros,” she said, trying to keep a smile on her face.

“Now, now, no whispering allowed. We needs an answer,” said Tilge.

“I think our answer is this,” Vanros said as he tapped the end of his quarterstaff on the ground – a green wispy pulse shooting from it and down into the ground.

After the green energy entered the ground, a minor quake shot through the ground towards the orc’s feet. Mere seconds later, thick roots and vines burst out from the ground beneath them. Onog and Mora were the first to get enveloped in the plant life – both unable to pull away from it in time. Tilge, too, was being entangled by the roots and vines, but his sheer strength made him able to tear free from it.

“Now, run,” Vanros shouted as he turned to gather his things.

“I think not,” Dee said as she tightly gripped the hilts of her daggers.

Lowering her body slightly, she bolts towards Tilge and lashes out at him. With his focus on his fellow orcs, her attack was effortless and near deadly. Leading with her offhand, she digs her dagger just below the trim of his leather armor. This instinctually made Tilge turn to face his attacker, which made her second strike against his chest. Her blow was swift and high reaching as she plunged it into his lower right shoulder and dragged it downwards before pulling away.

Vanros, shocked by Dee’s sudden urge to attack, pulled back slightly and watched in disbelief as she went in for another flurry of attacks. With a quick sizing up of his form, she decided that the blow she made below his leather armor was where she needed to focus on. In one swift move, she plunges her daggers into his lower body and pushes him down onto his knees.

Onog and Mora screamed out for Tilge as he roared in pain with the blows he endured. Though, the roar he let out slowly turned into a low chuckle as spat out a bit of blood from his mouth before looking into Dee’s eyes.

“You should have left us alone, orc,” she said as she pulled out the daggers from his body – the rush of getting the upper hand on Tilge, leaving her slightly lightheaded.

“Did’nt peg you as a fighter girl,” he said before coughing some more purplish blood, “but I’m glad you are.” Taking in a deep breath, he flexes all of his muscles and bellows a raged filled, painful roar. The sound of it was so guttural and so filled with pain and anger that she felt herself flinch.

However, her fight reflex was still present in her mind. She knew she had wounded him badly. It wouldn’t take much to finish him, but when she made her first thrust at him, he countered instantly by snatching her wrist and pushing the attack away from him.

The shock of this sudden change of his speed made her second attack falter, allowing him to stop her follow up attack as well, but only just. Instead of grabbing her wrist, like before, he was only quick enough to grab a hold of the blade, which cut into his hand.

“You made a big mistake, girly,” he said as he pulled himself up from the ground.

With this sudden shift in power, Dee’s flight reflex kicked in. With a desperate move, she lifts her up legs to kick off from his chest – ripping herself away from his grasp on her. Even with his decent grip on her wrist, the spike of pain from the kickoff on his chest was enough for him to let her go in order to clutch at his wounds.

“Could use a little help here, Vanros,” she yelled out as she backed away from Tilge.

“Enough talk,” Tilge yelled before turning to his group. “Fools, tear yourselves free quickly.”

“We’re trying, Tilge,” Onog said as he struggled against the roots and vines.

Letting one more angered roar out, Tilge turns back to Dee and goes into a full charge at her. Still thrown off by how raged filled Tilge was, Dee could only stumble backwards as she tried to dodge his charge. It wasn’t enough, however, and when he pummeled into her, he grabbed and lifted her up before tossing her back a few feet away from Vanros and the others.

As she lied there on the cool grass, coughing and gasping for air, she watched Tilge prowl his way towards her with his menacing rage. “I’m going to enjoy killing you, girly.”

Horrified by Tilge’s sheer force of strength, Vanros froze in place as he tried to figure out what to do next. Though, when he heard the snapping and chopping of plant fibers, he snapped back into action. With a quick glance at Onog, he saw he had pulled out his hand axe and cut his way out of the entanglement.

“You’re dead elf filth,” Onog said as he pointed his axe at Vanros.

Even with the amount of panic pumping through his system, Vanros knew he had to enact his one last trick if they were going to get away. Kneeling on the ground, he lays his hand on the ground and focuses his vision on the roots and vines he had summoned. A deeper green energy pulsed out from his hand into the ground, but it wasn’t just the one pulse. Several lighter green pulses followed suit and pierced into the ground as well.

Like before, Onog felt another quake beneath his feet. He was quick to realize the similar sensation in the ground and quickly moved to charge the elf before he got trapped again. However, he only got a few strides forward before he heard a gurgling scream from Mora behind him. This time around, it was the orcs’ turn to stare in horror as they turned and watched the plant life grow double, triple, quadruple in size around Mora and the surrounding area.

“Mora,” Onog yelled as he turned tail from Vanros and charged back to Mora. With each step he took, the surrounding grass shot up several inches, and by the time he got to Mora, it had grown up to his chin. Seconds later, he was engulfed by the grass.

“Argh… curse magic users,” he said as he cut down the tall grass around him. Though, no matter how quickly he cut the plant life around him, it would come just back.

“Onog…” Mora barely choked out.

“I’m here,” he said as he switched from cutting the ever-growing grass to chopping into the roots and vines, crushing Mora.

With each swing he made to free Mora, he had to stop and make a sweep around him so that the encroaching plant life wouldn’t entrap him again. As much as he was succeeding in both freeing his mate and keeping the other plant life at bay, it was at the expense of his stamina.

Once Vanros felt the last of his magic pulse into the ground, he looked back to where Tilge and Dee were, but only saw a wall of grass. “Dee,” he yelled, “we need to go now.”

She didn’t need to be told this, however. The moment the plant life around her and Tilge grew wild, she crawled and ran back to their camp. While she wasn’t far from where Tilge had thrown her away from the camp, the grass was growing exponentially, and soon enough, she was struggling to pull herself through the foliage.

As the light from the campfire grew brighter, hope of escape filled her heart, giving her the strength for one last push out of the forest of grass. What she didn’t expect was losing track of where everything was and subsequently fell onto the campfire.

“Oh shit, Dee,” Vanros said as he rushed to her side.

Fortunately, she was quick enough to roll off the campfire before it did any serious damage to her. “Gods above…,” she breathed out, “You just had to talk about surprises.” With Vanros helping, she picked herself up from the ground and rushed to her bedroll and bag. “Do you still have that oil flask?”

“I do,” he replied as he, too, gathered his bedroll and bag.

“Good, pour it all over the ground and the wall of grass there,” she said as she tossed her pack onto her back and tightened the straps on it.

“Where are you?” Tilge roared into the night air, which caused Vanros to search his pack more frantically.

“Hurry V,” Dee said as she grabbed a piece of burning wood from the campfire.

“I’m looking, I’m looking.”

Another roar shot out from the grass wall, instantly quickening the pace of Vanros’s search. Soon thereafter, he found purchase on the clay flask of oil. Breathing heavily, he picks up his pack and throws it on his back before pouring the oil in the area in front of them.

“Okay, okay, let’s go,” Dee said as she grabbed Vanros’s hand and threw the burning piece of wood onto the area soaked in oil – immediately igniting the area.

“We will have to head into the mountain range now so we can lose them,” Vanros said as he moved to her side while they continued their escape.

“Agreed.”

Sprinting their way towards the makeshift path that led up into the mountain range, they looked back to see the fire spread out. They didn’t know if the orcs would make it out, but based on their roaring and screaming, they didn’t have to worry for quite a while. With a bit of luck, they could hide themselves in one of the many valleys within the mountain range and evade the orcs. However, if the orcs were proper trackers, they would eventually meet them again.