As he stared at the bck walls of Vissborg bathed in the darkening lights as the te afternoon passed towards early evening, an unease crept into Nikoias’s soul. “It lives up to its name, that is certain.” The Dreadfort, as was called even back during his days of service during The Great War, one of the few pces no one wanted to be posted, except for the truly psychopathic members, the ones that were affected beyond their appearance by the Orminian Elixir of the Snow-Scaled Host, the ones who became as cruel as the dragons of the dark nds below.
Back in those days, Vissborg still served as a prison for the worst of the worst. The most prolific serial killers, the leaders of revolutionary groups – otherwise known as terrorists in the eyes of the majority, and the government – and of course, like his target who he was sent here for by the handsome half-dark elf Bratva, the high-ranking members of underworld organizations like the Noyachny Family, or the Bck Sons of Theggn. “Though in recent decades, they expanded on the guest list.” Nikoias pondered as he walked towards the ever-growing fortress sprawling in a hexagonal outline, nestled between the tall trees not far from the Yearning Gorge – which waters glistened in eerie dark shades as night approached.
For a moment he faltered, feeling a distant gaze upon his form and as he searched for it, he met the gaze of bck stone dragons protruding the seamless walls, just beneath the triangur merlons resembling the great fangs of the dreaded elder dragons. “Third floor” He took a mental note as his eyes furtively pierced through the yers of inscriptions flowing into the unseen etheric line connecting into the main structure hidden by the walls and towers. He inhaled the chilly air and continued onwards until he reached the fluted gates with scaled surface, and waited as a long moan followed them opening up, revealing the outer yard.
His inquisitive gaze searched, burnt and etched every detail, every guard marching, standing as the wind swept through their uniform-cd forms. Orcs and Feykin from Eoran stood against the stirring blizzard; elves kept vigil atop the towers and the walls; humans and a few dwarves carried crates over their shoulders, loading them onto the nded flottirions and thopters; a small group of stygians walked around, lightning a few mps with hellish fmes that cast an eerie glow, enhancing the haunted cursed fortress image of the pce.
All this and more retreated into the deepest recesses of his mind, waiting to be called on in a few seconds, ending by his gaze meeting the dwarves in the small guard house near the gate, stamping and calling out the names as the unassuming guards stepped forth behind him. Without hesitation and feeling a bit courteous, he stopped behind a tall stygian with a monstrous, draconic muzzled face, horns cracked and searing with an infernal fiery glow. “Come Steffambar.” The elderly dwarves voice was deep, sounding like the rumbling of the earth, softened a little by time.
“A dwarf of the southern Agrorh Cn, I guess the Host is growing as inclusive as the Roses.” Nikoias thought with half a smothered smile as he took off his ID badge and handed it over the windowed counter. The crimson red draconic eyes ran over the card before the meaty hands ending in long cws and with a complexion and texture of the earth beneath concrete, their feet and the snow. “Another uneventful stroll huh?” The dwarf said as the device scanned the anima wavelengths, his hand now stroked the long and lush beard that may or may not have repced the hair on his head – Nikoias thought.
“Well, at least the area is breathtaking – corpses withstanding.” He answered jocosely just as the red and violet light turned green and blue with a soft and short avian bellow. “Now you make my bones ache.” The dwarf said, handing back the ID badge, then as if no words were exchanged sent Nikoias further in and called for the next.
As he walked towards the entrance door, Nikoias stopped and offered a courteous smile to the two passing by drengriars carrying a rge metallic crate with both corners engraved with runic symbols spelling out Truth Extractor Devices. “So, the grim humor still remains.” His eyes – for a short moment – met with the stygian’s with an oily light reddish or vibrant pink complexion with luxuriant, silken hair bundled into an elegant low bun with a few tresses dangling over her horned, serrated forehead. “Maybe another time.” For a moment, as their gazes met, lecherous thoughts invaded his mind, but went against them as he waited for a few moments.
“Now, if I was the mad architect of this pce, where would I pce an escape route?” Speckles of azure etheric dust floated about in his faux eyes as he rotated slowly around with a pensive gaze of one indecisive about whether they pnned to finish their report first or head back to their room to rest for a bit after a mostly boring, uneventful day. As his gaze swept past the few structures near the wall, their opaque bck walls turned translucent, revealing the vast network of corridors and rooms fitted within edifices not rger than a commoner’s house.
“Fort it is!” He came to the conclusion after finding no etheric wall of inscriptions, astral runes carrying the intent to conceal a door, a passage in any of them. Though when he turned at the fort itself, he was assaulted by a tide wave of nausea, and as he struggled to keep his composure, the spell faded.
“If fate wills it.” He murmured as the nausea subsided upon meeting the gaze of the enchanting stygian who with her partner entered the front gate – a rge and oval metal sb with a draconic serpent slithering on the edges. By the time he reached the gate the aching completely subsided and before he entered, he answered the welcoming salute of the two guards stationed outside.
Beyond the heave doors, and contrary to his expectations, a quite welcoming sight greeted him. A polished marble floor greeted him instead of a rough, granite one stained by drying blood. A pair of pilrs connected to the railing above, white serpents looping around them, matching the wooden barristers above. On his right, a counter pressed against the wall and almost reached the other side, ended just where a rge door led further inside, behind it clerks of the Host – mostly comprising veterans whose injuries were more long-sting and most importantly, ailed their minds in furtive manners. All dressed in a snow-white suit of the same arcane-weave leather and jet-bck dress shirt with contrasting neck tie. “Quite the elegant ones.” He thought as he remembered the st time, they practically wore street clothing.
“Must be Lythienne’s influence upon the High Hersith! Must be!” He added jestingly whilst he took a short gnce to the left where tables and sofas lined near the walls. A few guards sat and talked, though they kept their voices low. A rare sight back in his days, though the constant presence of cannon’s bellowing compelled pretty much everyone to yell except when they travelled near enemy territory. All of these small things made him feel yearning, even pondered whether he should retire as an assassin for hire and return to the ranks of the Host. “They would definitely take me back with wide open arms.” But in the end, he smothered out the idea and headed for the counter where a blonde umbral elf – another rare sight – greeted him with a genial smile.
“Here. Do you need a pen?” Asked the quite handsome clerk, leaning a bit forward, sending meager and vagrant winds of her aroma towards Nikoias whose mind was sliced between her and the four drengriars conversing at the table directly behind them. “Yes, please. By the way, anything interesting happened here?” He brought up the question listening to the four talking about the arrival of an extra contingent of soldiers.
“Nothing special as far as I am aware.” She said pyfully tapping her meaty lips covered in glistening jet-bck lipstick. Contrary to her, the four mentioned their new prisoner from the Noyachny Heimrad being the reason for the increase in personnel. “Just what I needed.” He though whilst scribbling down on the paper his report regarding the patrol of his appearance donor, a retively short one consisting one paragraph mentioning half-truths like running into a small hunting pack of goblins, a wild direwolf that sensed the corpses and the ogroid creature sauntering about, punching one of the trees in hopes of bringing down one of the hanged corpses for dinner – possibly.
“Thank you.” She said, her smile softened a bit whilst her eyes focused on the report. “My, my. It seems it will be time for the annual culling.”
“A ray of sunshine in this gloomy pce.” Nikoias said with a smile that could cut – even wearing another’s visage. And just as he finished with the boring bureaucratic proceedings, one of the guards – a naurdian in the middle of his meager lifespan evident from the gray tresses in his shortened, slicked back hair and bushy beard – stood up and excused himself to visit the Mirage room. He followed after him after bidding a warm farewell to the blonde umbral elf. “Please go to the right one!” Knowing the Snow-Scaled Host’s tendency to monitor their bases with multiple Mirage Mirror Rooms, Nikoias prayed silently whilst keeping his distance from the drengriar.
**
Pressed against the wall, Nikoias took a deep breath, wreathed in an aura slicing him away from the regur flow of time and pcing him into a hastened stream. His hands furled into fists and his gaze moved onto the door leading into the Mirage Room – screens reflecting at least more than a dozen rooms and corridors within the fort, including the Bck Cells, shifting constantly between each at five-minute intervals. “Here we go.” With a st murmur, he looked around once more, certain that the two guards patrolling this section were retively far.
The door creaked open, and his right fist stroke true and precisely in the center of the skaeze drengriar whom he followed carefully. He stumbled a bit back, nose bleeding profusely before the uniform’s restorative enchantments fixed it, but not before Nikoias’s hand stroke at the joint of his neck, crumpling the coat’s near-smooth surface. His honed form colpsed onto the stone floor, arms spreading whilst the other – a quiet average looking drengriar with short, roughly trimmed shaggy hair of a deep auburn, smallish round eyes of a deep green with a hint of sky blue slit in the center of the pupil like a dragon’s – leapt up from the chair, looking distressed before she regained her calm.
But not in time to protect herself from the strike at her left cheek that sent her onto the operating console that led to all the images’ chaotic shifting. As she helped herself back, Nikoias wrapped his left arm around her slender, wiry body in a half a bear hug, the other cmped over her wide lips and emanated a strong, aromatic fume. It took only a few seconds for it to knock her out she spent peeling away the illusory spell coating his right hand, revealing the gold beneath tainted now by her blood. Slowly, he lowered her back to the chair, and for a moment gnced upon her ID pinned on the right side of her coat’s bosom. “Szarlotta. Quite the common name befitting such a face.” He thought sneeringly.
Not wanting to waste anymore time on unnecessary comments – a bad vice of his – Nikoias quickly procured a few coils of rope, he got down on his knees after rolling the man onto his sides and looped and knotted the rope around his cuff hidden wrists. After he bound his ankles with the same precisive loops, tightened knots in-between, he lifted him halfway up and coiled his chest, pulling firmly, pushing his arms into his sides and onto his back, then let him fall back. He quickly peeled off a long strip and wounded it across his bearded face, feeling a bit bad when it shall be torn off.
Initially, he pnned to bind Szarlotta to the chair, that changed on further thinking and instead heaved her gently down to the floor. As he pulled the rope looped around and betwixt her wrists – its dry moaning mingled with the leather’s and Taffaerna’s mumurs – he eyed the lone and bulky credenza with the coffee machine and a few cups and pot on it. Nikoias halted in the binding, and walked over opened the door and fitted the fully trussed up drengriar inside, and fiddled around a bit, forcing his bound legs to stay inside. “There, nice and tight.” After a few minutes of struggling, the man remained still, groaning from being folded in a not too comfortable position.
He quickly intwined the white siphoning ropes seemingly merging with the snow-white combat boots like a chameleon slithering about the trunk of a tree. Upon tightening, he hushed Szarlotta who subconsciously moaned as all the fabrics pushed onto her coarse skin. “I’ll guess from this point on I’ll have to mind the surroundings.” Nikoias thought to himself upon pulling out the st coil and swiftly wrapped it around her lifted torso and tightened it into several entwining loops behind. “Or just use this frugally!” He attached the open end to her left cheek and lengthened it over to the other side while his right hand wreathed in illusory spells tapped it gently onto her skin before he torn it off.
With his arms wrapped around the rope binding her torso, she dragged her towards the credenza and fitted her opposite to the man. Thanks to her somewhat slenderer silhouette, the process of fitting her inside took less of his time and stamina. “Rest well, soldiers!” He said jestingly before closing the glossy onyx doors on them. Nikoias waited near the door, his gaze focused on the Mirage Mirrors fixed onto the walls and etched each scenery, each patrolling drengriar on his path down towards his target.
Author's Note:
And here is the second part. Just a bit of setting the scenery, a bit of GID and DID, or well CID as I grew accustomed to writing the former. Even after a year or two, I am just getting used to writing GID segments.
But anyways, just some fun facts/worldbuilding facts. The first and shortest is Taffaerna. I don't really remember what was the previous textile I given to the Snow-Scaled Host's uniforms, but after doing a bit of research into what materials are used for clothing, I stumbled upon Taffeta. After a bit of back and forth, I went with it, instead of going back to st year's Halloween story with the serial killer.
The other a minor one is just the Umbral Elf Clerk in the story. For a while this segment went down with the dwarf at the gate, but instead it seemed more proper to write one more scene and use it as set up for the CID scene, though at first it was just a DID one. And whilst brainstorming what the clerk should be, I had a sudden flesh of an elf with porcein white skin and blonde hair that felt eerily... bewitching so I went with it. Though a part of me wishes I would have given it to the Bck Roses, butt for why I still don't know honestly.
And the st "minorest" part is the nding pads in the courtyard. Honestly, I nearly forgot that the Snow-Scaled Host has Dragon RIders as one of its unique ranks. Not completely, but whilst writing him looking around, I remembered it, and that I want to write a short story with a Dragon Rider POV character. It just haven't materialized yet beyond taking pce in the skies. Plus I have been thinking of giving the Bck Roses too dragon riders, but not convinced fully yet. Want a bit more distinction between the two beyond the Bck Roses being drop-dead beauties. And at this point, I may give either the Grauburgians or the Hoshigawans dragon riders. Probably the letter, just with the more serpentine dragons.
Anyhow, that is enough rambling. Thank you truly for reading this and my works. The st piece will come around the same time tomorrow, so till then take care and have a nice tuesday folks! [Oh yeah, I am also now on Bluesky, though I am still not very social when it comes to posting]
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