After the Scourge had warned him again that the scene would be gruesome, she glided back to her original position at the table. As the minutes marched on by, Daniel mused with the thought of making small talk, but the dungeon, and the Scourge did not combine well to give off a friendly atmosphere that allowed any but the most awkward of small talk. As he stood there, intermittently fiddling with his beret, Daniel looked around at the torture engines again, knowing that it was a good thing he wasn’t in one of those devices.
A few minutes after the Scourge had returned to her first position, a very strange sight entered the area. A man, at least a mannish figure, who appeared to be in the buff, entered the area. It took a moment of analyzation for Daniel to glean that he wasn’t naked, he was wearing pitch black armour, with human skin stretched over it, the face of which wore a permanent expression of pure terror. Daniel didn’t know if that was how the donor of the skin died or if it was done post mortem. Either way, the outfit was very creepy, and brought back a memory of Daniel’s days overseas.
Daniel at the Battle of the Cembalo Peninsula
“Wake up! We have orders!” Lieutenant John Cornwall shook his tent mates awake with the good news. “We’re to finally charge the enemy, and take possession of that ridge overlooking Cembalo!” Lieutenant Daniel Blackburn sighed. The brass had been talking about that ridge for a month now. The weather was starting to get cold, and they hadn’t been sent any winter clothes. Many feared that if they didn’t take Cembalo, or retreat by the end of the year, they would lose more men to cold than to the enemy.
“Now men,” Brigadier Samuel Stoddert began, fifteen minutes after Daniel’s tent had put on armour and armament, “we are about to engage the enemy. They believe us to be lazy, and unable to attack in broad daylight without sustaining heavy casualties. They are wrong. We will charge right up that valley, and through the enemy centre, breaking them up and dispersing them to the four corners. We will capture that ridge which will allow our trebuchet corps to set up their engines and tear down Cembalo’s walls.”
“Brigadier,” a major piped up. “Why are we going right through the middle of the valley? Why not go around, attack from the flanks, where they won’t see us coming?” Brigadier Stoddert thought for a moment. “The answer, major, is this. We received orders to storm through the valley. Our duty is not to question why we are ordered to perform actions, our duty is to carry out those actions, or die trying. Alright men, mount up, and charge!”
Daniel in the Scourge’s Dungeon
“…no consequence,” the Scourge said to the strange man. Daniel had missed part of the conversation with his flashback.“You know the price I ask?” was the first thing he heard the strange man say. His accent was impossible to place with his knowledge, very deep and maybe a bit of foreboding about it. Thinking about what he said, Daniel did not want to know what sort of payment he demanded for bringing a corpse back to life, if it could be done.
After it was confirmed that he would be paid, the man drew a poignard, not unsimilar to Daniel’s, though this one was black with mystical symbols on it. After stating he would do the job, the figure stabbed the poignard through Rothaw’s heart and began to kiss the corpse. This elicited a scream from the corpse that brought Daniel back to Cembalo.
Daniel in the middle of combat outside of the City of Cembalo
“It’s everywhere! Help me, somebody!” But nobody would help Lieutenant Cornwall, nor could if they wanted to. A disguised enemy trebuchet, set above the valley walls, had thrown a stone right through John, tearing him in half. His innards were streaming out behind him as he somehow crawled toward a low overhanging rock, a trail of blood and bits of flesh and innards leading about 30 feet behind him, where his legs had just stopped twitching. Daniel had problems of his own.
His helmet had been knocked off, and was laying somewhere in the valley. His breastplate was dented and one of the shoulder straps was nearly cut through. His left arm was almost completely red from a few cuts, as was his forehead. His exposed clothes were tatters, and he felt he was close to death, for this particular enemy soldier was very skilled with a sword, and was easily blocking Daniel’s strikes, and nearly making contact with his own. Just as Daniel felt his luck had run out, a dues ex machine (it appeared that way to Daniel), jumped from a ledge, and struck the enemy down.
As Daniel walked over to where his saviour had fallen, he noticed it was Lieutenant Isambard Morrison, a fellow tentmate. As he bent over to help Morrison up, Daniel accidentally knocked his helmet off. He was horrified to discover that the top of Isambard’s head was gone, with not a trace in the helmet, not even a red stain. Daniel was certain he had heard Isambard issue forth a scream as he jumped, and had definitely seen slashing, as his former enemy could attest, using his mangled body as evidence, were he still alive.
Daniel in the Scourge’s Dungeon
Daniel returned from the flashback just as the figure disengaged from Rothaw, who proceeded to open his eyes, and began looking around. “He’s alive!” Daniel exclaimed. “Now we can question him, correct? Find out why he assassinated those noblemen, and what he wanted Lord Uurden to do. Is that correct, Scourge?”
