A Letter Home

Dear Jais,

I’m sorry.

I promised I’d write when I got here, but I barely had time to speak with the elders before I was fighting for my life. Remember how we used to play as kids? We’d pretend about how the war would be? Remember how neat and easy the battles were with time between chores to restock our arrows, sharpen our swords, and raise an imaginary mug to an enemy’s defeat each day before running home?

We knew it wasn’t like that, even then, but the difference between the skirmishes and fighting we’ve done for father on the borders after growing up is as different from this war as our real fighting was from those days of childhood.

This foe is not the Korgeth barbarians, Kamir separatists, or the Emerald Legion. This foe defies every rule of warfare. As I write this, I have to push back the ever present headaches I get from the droning voices of the monks. They line the walls, unified and encouraged by High Priest Sagon’s voice, singing the hymn of light over their droning chant with a voice that echoes off the stone. This is the closest thing to silence we get anymore, and while it was reassuring for us the first few days, now it threatens to drive us mad. What I wouldn’t give for some real silence for just a few minutes.

But the alternative is worse.

Their chanting buys us time, time to rest, time to reload, time to…

I keep forgetting you don’t know how it is out here. I’ve had to learn so much in so little time that it’s easy take for granted how the routines of my life have changed these last few weeks into something twisted and strange even to a seasoned soldier like you.

I got sent to Skyspear fortress without a lot of explanation at the time. This place makes the castles of home look like toys. The fortress blocks the only pass between the Athyan valley and Kiel highlands; twin towers to either sheer mountainside straddling the pass and cutting it in half with a series of walls over fifty meters high. A network of courtyards runs between those walls giving the heavily armed platforms circling each spire at alternating levels full view and ability to empty warehouses full of oil, arrows, and any number of magics down onto those who might come seeking to bring hostility to our plains. This place is a relic of the old imperial wars, far too massive and grand for any of the conflicts our people have faced for centuries.

But we’ve never been more grateful for the excesses of our forefathers. Every resource has been required and every weapon deployed to hold back this new foe and gods help me I can’t say it’s enough.

Galock is yelling again, adding to the noise by bashing his axe on his shield with a steady rasping clang that every single soldier knows all too well. They struggle slowly to their feet, trying to focus sleep bleary eyes. That old orc is as relentless as our enemy, his skin glistening with the same sweat that shines on the arms and faces of every soldier stationed here. He can hear the change in the chant, the wavering in the song, he knows the power of the priest’s music will falter soon and with it the respite we’ve earned. We never get more than a few hours. The fatigue is so bad here that after each wave, the men who walk along the lines gathering the dead slap them across the face in order to find out if they’re casualties or have simply collapsed from exhaustion.

The tired are dragged into the towers, the dead are thrown off the walls. The process isn’t perfect. More than a few times I’ve heard screams from those waking up half way through a descent after the percursory slap failed to rouse them. That’s the price of this war. We simply cannot afford to leave our dead anywhere behind our lines when the singing stops.

Jais, we’re losing. We’re losing because we never had a way to truly win. Our enemy is piled at our feet, covering the base of our walls in mountains of dead flesh and when the singing stops, the power from the valley floods back in and every one of the dead rises, picks up their weapon, and attacks again. We fight valiantly, we fight creatively, we fight with the best of leaders and the most seasoned of generals and we are victorious. We win the day over and over only to watch as our numbers slowly dwindle and theirs swell with the bodies of our fallen.

There are plans, desperate plans, plans that involve powerful magic to destroy the bodies utterly or to reroute the Riftwyrm river to sweep away the undead legions. Meanwhile, the dead sleep in piles at the base of our towers and walls like kindling wood around a roast, patiently waiting until the eventual fatigue of the monks causes the power of their song to fail, green eyes blazing back into an unholy inferno of unquenchable hate. But each of these plans risks something worse. What if the waters simply carry the polluted dead deep into our country? What if the spells to destroy them go wrong and topple the towers?

These risks might be more acceptable if we were the only gate under siege, but the valley is flooding outwards, pushing every keep and border. Its holocaust making the wars between the two empires and even the underdark encroachment a joke by comparison. I’ve seen dark elf and paladin fighting side by side since the black flood started, and yet with all the power of shadow and light, we cannot stem the tide.

If you get this, I beg you to take our family north, into the mountains, away from the lowlands. The tide of reinforcements we’ve gotten has faded to a trickle, and in time we will run out of men to hold this place. When that happens, I can promise nothing of our future, but if there is a chance to be had it will be out and away from the cities or highland farms. Your injury spared you a post in this doomed place, and perhaps that disappointment may be our family’s salvation.

There. I heard it. The song has faltered, and the rustling rumble of the shifting mass far below is echoing up the stone and whispering through the cracks its promise of inevitable undeath. I hear Galock yell for oil, his bellow echoing upwards as the last of the flaming liquid drops in sheets onto the shifting piles below. Leaning forward, I watch the bones knit and shift, rise and hiss, flaming skeletons and beasts made of sinew rising to dig lifeless claws into the mortar of our keep and begin their climb again. Hideous shadows rise into the air, ghosts of the tortured fallen, floating upwards to meet the blessed arrows and magics of our tower wizards. I have to go. My spells may be the difference between life and loss for dozens on the walls against enemies their steel cannot touch.

Jais, do not wait. By the time this raven reaches you with my letter, it will have been days, and this place will not last as long. I will do what I can to survive, but it is our family who needs you now. If by Ashra’s blessing I escape, I will join you soon. Hold me in your prayers, and comfort our mother. Be strong, and remember I love you all.

Kimeon Talman

Archmage of the Second Circle