Phealafarian Frontiers : 23 : Wrymspath
The battlefield lay quiet in the wake of blood and snow, the silence broken only by the hiss of wind through the rocks. The bodies of Borglins and wolves were strewn across the ruined campsite, their crude weapons half-buried in frost. The party gathered themselves, catching their breath, the adrenaline ebbing into exhaustion.
Tobias stood apart, one hand pressed against his side where the bolt had struck. His voice was low, heavy with unease. “I didn’t want it to come to this,” he murmured. “They didn’t have to die.” His words hung in the cold air, a stark counterpoint to the reality around them.
Nearby, Tosk still held a limp Borglin in his trunk, the creature alive but resigned, its arms dangling uselessly. It no longer struggled, as though it had already accepted its fate. The others looked to Tosk, then to one another. There was only one question left: what to do with it?
They chose to ask.
“Why did you attack us?” Tobias demanded.
The Borglin blinked, dull-eyed but sharp-tongued. “We gave you a choice. Give us your stuff, or die. You didn’t give us your stuff, so you chose die.”
“That didn’t work out for you,” Tobias countered.
“Clearly not,” the Borglin muttered, shifting in Tosk’s grip.
“Where are the rest of you?” Erisa pressed.
“All over the place.”
“You’re going to take us to your main base,” Zaryth said firmly.
“Sure,” the Borglin replied, almost cheerfully. “I’ll be your guide. My fee is two teeth per day.”
Tosk’s fist answered faster than words, and the Borglin slumped unconscious. The group gathered in a tense circle, debating. Tobias and Guardian urged they let the creature go, while the rest voted to keep it as a prisoner. In the end, they bound it with rope and tossed it into the cart—Tosk’s new ‘pet,’ as the giant insisted.
When Tosk picked up the strange bag of teeth they’d found among the Borglins’ belongings, Guardian immediately paled. “Put it down—it could be a fae trap!” Trauma still coloured their every suspicion. Thomas, more grounded, reminded them that the Borglins back in Stormwatch Bay had used teeth as currency. The others wondered aloud why they valued teeth when perfectly good gold circulated nearby.
“Gold only has a value because you assign one to it,” the Borglin muttered faintly, still unconscious, though the words were clear enough to earn a startled silence. The party ignored the comment, choosing not to dwell on it.
With a sigh, Tobias crouched beside the prisoner. He pressed a glowing hand to the Borglin’s chest, channeling a sliver of divine energy. A single point of warmth flowed into the creature, its eyes fluttering open as the cart lurched forward. Bound, bruised, but alive, the Borglin’s journey with them had just begun.
The climb grew cruel. Snow came in fine, needling sheets; the wind scraped the skin from their cheeks and stole words straight from their mouths. The Borglin in the cart never stopped complaining. When not grumbling, he sang off-key marching songs that looped endlessly—Tosk, unhelpfully, learned the choruses and bellowed along.
Tobias walked beside the cart, jaw clenched, murmuring to himself between breaths. “I am a paladin of compassion. I am a paladin of compassion.” The Borglin joined in on the refrain until Tobias pinched the bridge of his nose and kept walking.
By late afternoon a dark line cut the white horizon: walls—tall, raw logs spiked together, a squat keep of timber crouched behind them. The captive perked up. “Oh that? That’s our base. Wyrmspath—or summit like that—” He drew a breath and threw his head back to shout, “HE—”
Tosk’s trunk filled the Borglin’s mouth with a whump. The shout melted into a muffled whine. Thomas leaned close, voice soft as a knife’s edge. “Quiet.” Tosk added, deadpan, “If you make noise, I blow.”
The Borglin nodded vigorously, eyes wide, understanding achieved.
They ghosted downslope toward the fort, hugging the snow-laden pines. Erisa slipped ahead and knelt behind a fallen log, fingers brushing the frost. “Smoof,” she whispered. The little not-quite-cat crawled from her hood, blinked, and flowed into the snow-shadow. Through Smoof’s eyes, the world tilted: timber grain up close, resin gleam, the breath of wolves pluming below.
Smoof scaled the wall, silent claws finding purchase. Inside, the yard was a smear of tramped snow and ash. Borglins tramped between watchfires; a bugbear in a patchwork fur vest sharpened a cleaver on a whetstone; two worgs paced, muzzles scarred and ears torn, glaring at everything. Along the back wall: two logs that made up the wall had fallen leaving a gap, an invitation.
The familiar scurried down and returned, paws light, tail flicking. Erisa’s sight snapped back into her own eyes. “Patrols inside, angry worgs, one bugbear. There’s a breach at the rear—big enough to slip through.”
They huddled. Tobias wanted words. “If we can talk, we should.”
Zaryth shook her head. “Talk about what? This place isn’t theirs. They’ll want our gear or our lives. We only want them to stop.”
“Then we go in the back,” Thomas said. “Hit hard, end it fast.”
Tobias met their eyes. “I try the gate. If it goes wrong, you move.”
“Front door and back door,” Eldrin agreed. They arranged themselves: Tobias, Guardian, and Zaryth to the front; Erisa, Tosk, Thomas, and Eldrin to the breach.
“Probably not a great idea to plan right outside the front door,” said the captive Borglin, somehow wriggled half-free of his bindings. Thomas blinked, cursed, and tied him again with a neat, unforgiving knot.
They split. Snow hissed. Breath smoked. Somewhere a raven called.
Tobias strode to the gate and rapped with the flat of his axe. A long moment. Then a helmeted head popped over the battlement, nose wrinkled. “Wot you want?”
“I wish to parle with your leader,” Tobias said, voice carrying.
The Borglin squinted. “Wot’s parle?”
“It means to talk.”
“Oh. No thanks. You can leave your stuff, or we take it.”
“Please,” Tobias said, steady. “We want to talk—peacefully—about what you’ve been doing to travellers.”
“Eh. We had no-one complain.”
“What about the people who used to be at this fort?”
“Well, they all dead. So no complainin’. Ha.”
Tobias’ jaw tightened. “Open this gate. Now.”
“’Okie.’”
The gate lurched outward. Three Borglins waited with bows half-drawn, and from the yard a worg launched forward, snow spraying from its claws. The first string sang; three arrows lifted into the pale light—arrowheads bright as teeth—arcing straight for Tobias as the worg’s snarl filled the gate.
The first arrow struck Tobias just below the ribs. His shout—half command, half pain—ripped across the yard and carried through the pines. On the far side of the fort, Team Backdoor heard the yell of pain, the signal to begin.
“Go!” Thomas barked.
They surged through the rear breach. Eldrin’s bow sang the instant his boots hit packed snow; an arrow snicked past a torch and planted in a Borglin’s shoulder. Thomas raised his pistol, braced, and fired—the crack slapped against the timber walls and sent a lookout scrambling for cover.
Ahead, the bugbear turned at the roar of Tosk expanding. The Luxodon doubled in shadow and muscle, snow blooming from under his feet as he charged. He met the bugbear like a fallen tree meeting a river, wrapped both arms and trunk around it, and lifted. The bugbear’s cleaver clattered to the yard.
Up the watchtower, Erisa moved like quicksilver—hand over hand, boot to rung—cresting the platform to find a Borglin gawping at the chaos. “Down you go,” she breathed, and hip-tossed him over the rail. He pinwheeled, hit hard, and lay coughing in a spider of cracked ice.
At the gate, steel and fur swirled. Zaryth stepped into the choke point with her shield high as a worg crashed against it, claws scrabbling for purchase. Tobias gritted through the pain, met a rushing Borglin with the haft of his axe, and shoved it back into its mates. Guardian snapped out a palm and loosed a line of crackling force—his eldritch blast caught a bowman square in the chest and hurled him from the balcony. Boards splintered; the Borglin vanished in a spray of snow.
“Now!” Tosk boomed. Still clutching the bugbear, he trudged to the low ledge that overlooked a hard-packed service lane—an eight‑foot drop to frozen earth. He stepped out into space. Gravity did the rest. The bugbear hit first with Tosk atop like a falling anvil, the impact buckling the ground and flattening an unlucky Borglin beneath with a wet crack. When the cloud of snow cleared, two bodies lay still and Tosk rose, the trident’s points catching the pale light.
Not to be outdone, Erisa took three quick steps along the rail and launched herself. She tucked, turned, and unfurled into a sweeping arc that would’ve made a showman proud—then crashed down on the prone Borglin she’d thrown, driving the breath and the fight out of him in a single, clean finish. She rolled to her feet, hair full of frost and grin feral.
Another gate within the yard banged open. More shapes spilled through—worgs low and fast, Borglins bristling with spears, and behind them a second bugbear with a hammered-iron gorget and a scar that split his lip. He pointed his cleaver at Tobias and roared.
“Front and centre!” Zaryth called, voice ringing. She met the first worg with a downward cut that lit the snow in radiant sparks. Tobias turned a spear aside with the back of his axe and used the momentum to crack a jaw. Guardian blinked from the gate to a balcony in a smear of shadow, then blasted the ladder to kindling as a pair of Borglins tried to climb.
Eldrin and Thomas kept moving—shoot, step, shoot—pinning lines of advance with feathers and thunder. One worg skidded and slid; a spear clattered from a numb hand. For a heartbeat the yard held its breath.
Then the scar-lipped bugbear lowered his shoulder and came on like an avalanche, and the fresh wave of raiders flooded the gap.
Snow, splinters, and steam rose together as the fight deepened—no parley now, only the hard arithmetic of who stood when the flurries settled.
