Defenders of Varigoss: Chapter 1

As always, Shundarr was late.

The rest of the Defenders waited in silence and darkness. The only light came from the glyphs over which they stood that marked their appropriated places around the edge of the vast pillar that rose from the abyss. The light was enough that they could see other such pillars, though these others rose beyond them, out of and back into the darkness. What they stood upon now was a broken column that had once, with its brothers, supported the stronghold that hung over them, now. In times of extreme peril, the columns would retract, lowering the entirety of Blackfang Abbey into the protective belly of the mountain from which it was hewn.

“Where is he!?” demanded Thyriol. He, like the others, had yet to remove his armor. The battle-worn windsuit flickered, causing portions of Thyriol to disappear and reappear sporadically.

No one answered.

Gyrdak leaned on the butt of his golden mace and ran a golden, gauntleted hand over his face and down the length of a white beard flecked with blue AntRoid blood.

Beside him, Kuri stared blankly at the center of the pillar. Of all of them, she was the only one who had discarded her armor prior to teleporting to the Council. She wore a stretch of black spyger-silk across her breasts that pressed them nearly flat against against her chest. Her stomach was bare, save for a hastily-applied healing stone bound to her side by a length of Blessed Linens. Her legs were concealed by a black spyger-silk skirt that reached the floor. The silk swallowed the glyph-light. That her raven hair reflected it was the only indication that it, too, was not made of spyger-silk.

On the other side of her, the metallic mass called Rak stood perfectly still. The dull orange light in his eyes pulsed regularly, like a heartbeat.

Beside Rak, Grumdag growled and shivered. A thin tendril of water reached out from Slryx’s aquapod and stroked the coarse mane that ran from the base of his skull to the base of his spine. Grumdag looked over at her, floating in the center of the bubble of water contained by the magic runes enscribed on the spyger-legged machine below her. Her calm, black eyes smiled at the worlog, soothing him. Her lithe, powerful body was human above her shapely waist. Her her back and shoulders were a sky-blue, and her face, breasts and stomach were a pale white. Webs of translucent flesh reached from her wrists to her hips. Below that, her legs appeared human still, save for the same translucent flesh that stretched between them, forming a wide, paddle-shaped fin. She spoke, and her voice escaped the Aquapod through a voxcaster set into the front of the walking-mechanism.

“Peace, friend.” The voice was as soft as the glow of her Aquapod in the light of the glyph’s. The Grumdag lowered his eyes bashfully and trembled a little as the water tendril stroked his length again.

Dalana’s voice sang in everyone’s mind at once.

He is coming.

Grumdag roared and beat his fists against the tusks protruding from his upper jaw.

“Finally,” Thyriol said. He felt Dalana in his mind, chastising him. He looked over at her. Her mouthless face was perched on a delicate neck that sloped outward into narrow shoulders. Her purple skin gave off a sweet, honey-tasting scent as the sweat beaded against her hairless scalp in the humid subterranean cavern. Her large, pupilless eyes were the shape and color of summer leaves. She crossed one pair of her arms across her scorched chestplate. Two of the thick leather straps had been cut by an AntRoid’s mandible, and her arms were there to keep the armor from slipping off. The second set of arms, below the first, held her spear.

Caution, Thyriol, came her voice. Her green eyes narrowed.

“Caution?” he snapped back, “Alda is gone!”

Grumdag howled.

A light flashed at the center of the pillar. The heretofore unlit glyph sparked and steamed as it came to life. An instant later, Shundarr stood before them, wreathed in clouds of smoke in which lightning flashed and from which small thunder rolled.

Shundarr stood easily twelve feet tall. His armor was removed, and he wore a spyger-silk robe. A black stone the size of Grumdag’s head hung from around his neck, clasped in the dead, scaled claw of a zarkrok. In his left hand he clasped a staff, taller than he by two heads, fashioned from a silver wood not found anywhere on Varigoss. His body was a pale lavendar, and very nearly human, save for its canine features. His short snout sniffed the air, and he turned to face each of the Defenders gathered on the pillar. His glowing sapphire eyes lingered the longest on Thyriol.

At length, he spoke. His voice was what happened when thunder was given a tongue.

“We have all lost Alda, Thyriol.” Even though he spoke softly, the chamber still trembled. Thyriol lowered his eyes to the pommel of the shiftblade on his hip.

“No,” Thyriol said, “You lost a soldier. The rest of you,” he looked around the pillar, “lost a friend. A comrade. But I…I lost Alda!” He pounded his chest. “I loved her!”

“You!?” Came a shrill voice from beside Dalana. Axia stepped off of her glyph, toward Thyriol. Shundarr stepped between the two, but Axia shouted around the wizard. Her blonde hair was matted with sweat and AntRoid blood. Her armor all but burned away in the battle, revealing the white mesh underarmor beneath that hugged her body like a second skin. “She was my sister! What have I lost, then?”

We do not even know if she lives or not, came Dalana’s voice, We saw her carried away. Not killed. She could be alive.



Shundarr turned to Dalana, his face grim and shadowed.

“She likely is,” said the wizard.

Silence followed. The Defenders looked at one another.

“Then we shall rescue her!” Thyriol said, casting his eyes around the room for support.