3430 of the Fifth Age
Mordurel, Vorostmark Region
Khoyanna
As she trotted along the dirt road she grew concerned as she saw pillars of smoke rising from the village ahead. with the sun against her dusky skin she gripped the reins harder and with a motion caused her horse to ride faster. She hurried down beside the stream that trickled passed the village. It was too much smoke to be a simple bonfire and pondered if a group of highwaymen had become bold, however she found that unlikely. They robbed, raped and killed but never burned down villages. Too far away from any coast for a raid by Sverdmen or Iceborn and nothing could have come out of Darkwood. Mayhaps bandits had loss themselves in the slaughter or Fauns she pondered. A group of savage Beastmen might indeed be the most likely possibility.
She followed the stream until the village would come into view. The poor dirt road curved thrice before her blue eyes spotted the mill and it was ablaze and burned bodies had been placed on pikes in front of it. She narrowed her eyes and spotted a Faun carrying a woman’s body. Fauns were the smallest of the cursed Beastmen race. She unsheathed her longaxe from the saddle and galloped forth. When the goat-head half-man saw her it was too late and her axe cut into its head and sprayed its blood. She continued and left it to bleed out in the dust of her horse’s hooves. The only noise he managed was a gurgling roar.
With another turn she rode into the village proper and the farmsteads were all ablaze and bodies were everywhere. With a lack of screams it appeared to her that none had survived. With an anger boiling inside her her axe caught the face of another Faun and opened his skull. A roar went up and she knew they all knew she was there. Yet two more fell before they managed to react proper and charge forth towards her with spears and axes of simple iron raised high. She saw a Faun that dropped a child sized limb he had feasted on. On her pass beside the Faun she heard the sound of bone that cracked upon impact and for a mere second she thought the axe would get stuck in but luckily that was not the case.
“Ihim bürgut rhabnék,” she whispered and the runes on the steel of her axe began to glow with a dim crimson light.
When next she slashed at Beastmen flesh her axe left the wound smoldering and the tall and thin Faun screamed in pain. Wit5h a shift of the reins she dodged three charging foes and temporarily returned the longaxe to the saddle and picked up a spear from the ground. She threw it with all her strength and it pierced the naked chest of the Faun she had wounded. He grew silent and collapsed to join the corpses of Fauns and innocents that littered the village center.
“Come on you beast!” She yelled.
Khoyanna screamed as she slashed at the snout of one that came at her. He roared and fell on his back with a splatter of sanguine blood.
“Come to my axe beasts!” She cried. “I shall paint the ground with your foul blood!”
As one charged right towards her to intercept her mount she cut a gash from a foe’s right shoulder to his abdomen. The bloodied axe was turned to its next target and with three mighty blows only the horns of the beast showed that the pile of smoldering gore, blood and bones had ones been a skull. With axe in one hand and a bloody horn grabbed in the other she charged one of the closest and upon striking his axe it was cut in half and she thrusted the horn into his right eye, thus making the beast stagger back and roar in pain. In two seconds she buried her axe in his forehead. She turned about just in time to block the next. His roar sprayed his disgusting spit at her, yet she did not flinch. She unleashed her own battle cry it was the beast that flinched. That flinch was enough to plant the axe in his chest.
Upon looking around she found the short battle over. The remaining Fauns fled. Mayhaps one of the last she slew was their leader, their Beastlord.
“Northwest, towards the Darkwood,” she noted before she threw her axe into the back of one of them. He immediately toppled over and she made her way over and unsheathed her weapon from the dying beast. A single blow finished him off. Her eyes turned to wander over the ruins of the former village. Burning houses and torn apart corpses everywhere. The only potential comfort would be the unlikelihood of the Darkwood’s master to allow Fauns passage. She spent a short amount of time to search in case of survivors and as she had expected none had survived the massacre.
She moved on to see if her cottage had survived at least. On the outskirts of the village she thought it was possible but soon found that hope to be unfounded. There was nothing but blackened timber. As the rage in her had faded away she felt a hint of sorrow but quickly decided that there was no point in grieving and mounted her horse to depart the carnage. After all she had the one possession she required. Her trusted longaxe.
ns 15.158.61.18da2
