The Chronicles of Outsider: Humble Beginnings

by Justin Wayne

The End

  Epilogue:

  Dradewen slammed his pack down and threw clothes into it quickly, then stuffed them down with food and rations. He slipped on his boots and heavy coat, tied his sword onto his back and slung the pack on. With the most care he had ever taken not to be heard, he eased his door open and peeked out.

  A few guards stood on the other side of the hall.

  With a deep breath he squeezed out and closed the door behind him with a click. The nearest man turned to look but saw only black as Dradewen slammed his head against the stone wall. At the sound the others spun around and saw a large figure looming over their comrade.

  “Halt, you!” one of them ordered and drew his sword. The others did likewise and in a V formation of four, they closed in on him. “By Commander Robaine’s orders I place you under arrest for assault of an official guard.”

  Dradewen dropped to his knees with the speaker before him, one behind him, and two on his sides. The one behind him removed a length of rope to bind his hands, a sword to his left and right, while the speaker remained unarmed.

  “If you refuse your right to--" Dradewen headbutted the man holding the rope with the back of his head, smashing his nose, and lunged forward into the speaker, throwing him off his feet. Dradewen rolled over the man and slipped the unconscious guard’s helm off.

  He fit it around his fist and deflected a clumsy strike, then gripped the man’s off hand wrist and punched his elbow with the metal; splitting the bone as his arm overextended the wrong way.

  The man screamed then was thrown into the second guard who fell over under the weight. He tried to push the man off but was promptly struck on the head and passed into unconsciousness.

  Dradewen rushed away from the torches and dropped the helm; the red raven against a black sun insignia glinting in the firelight. He sprinted with his long legs up the stairs to the top of the tower.

  He kicked the hatch open and rolled forward as the two men on watch spun around in bewilderment. The Warrior leapt from his roll to his feet and into a jump that transferred all his force into an uppercut. The guard flew back and into the wall just as the second reached him and skidded to a halt.

  “Wait, I--" Dradewen grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the stone. Dusting his hands off, he turned from them and to the ballistae mounted to the tower. With a single thick arm he yanked the lever back and turned the heavy weapon to the right on its hinges.

  Already he could see the window he was aiming for; the one looking over Robaine’s bed.

  “Take my clan under your spell will you?” he spat and steeled his gaze into the storm that blew against the tower and stung his dark eyes. “I don’t think so.” He thought it all too fortunate for the former guard captain to strike such an impossible bargain of joining forces with his clan, and just before the last leader of the guard died in a sudden accident.

  Not to mention the equally mysterious death of his grandfather whom Robaine had asked of repeatedly with some sort of urgency he didn’t understand.

  He had brought it to his clan’s attention and begged the elders to speak to Dunawar, and they all agreed it was an unorthodox plan that would bring many changes but also saw it as a way to make the clan’s position more powerful over the dwarves they shared the town with.

  Dradewen scowled further and wanted to thrash his entire family for being so blind. How could they not see it, he often wondered and watched in sickening silence as the Guard had accumulated in their private tower to “combine control and gain”. In the last several weeks he had taken to sealing himself away from the others to avoid whatever poison or magic plagued their minds as he believed there was.

  Specifically his father who had grown unbearable. Always skulking around their castle with Robaine in tow, their conversations often silent; Dradewen shivered in thought of what the plotting captain…commander, had done to him.

  The Warrior’s temper fueled even further, veins stuck out against his skin and spiderwebbed his neck.

  The ballistae stopped short of the window as the hinge turned to its maximum range. Shaking his head and muttering “No” over and over he pressed against it mightily with corded muscles bulging and swelling in his back, arms, and chest. He snarled as the metal hinges popped and bent as he forced them to turn further inch by inch.

  His body steamed against the winter air by the time he was done and sweat froze to his brow. Dradewen didn’t even notice, he was so intent on that stainglass window. He leaned forward and aimed down the sights similar to a very large crossbow and smiled.

  The trigger clicked beneath his finger and sent the five foot long bolt coated in explosive oil hurtling through the air. A second later the window shattered and flames leapt through it as the oil ignited by the sparks cast from impact reached out to the sky with coiling tendrils of white hot fire.