The Sundering of Old Ayenee Pt.1: Of Ways and Means

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The Venerable Jai

Rumored to be alive...
The scent of the shambling horde of walking dead was in the air before they reached the gates of the Nikeli village. The stone walls of the gates were ancient, a relic of the last great war, when the village had been an out-post for some nation or another that had fallen and reinvented itself a dozen times since.

As the masses of limited intelligence undead threw themselves at the cracked foundation, several sections gave way. A throbbing wave of bodies shambled idly into the village as the call-to-arms was sounded by the night watch.

Roused from a dreamless sleep, young Arken arose from his meager beddings and slipped silently and calmly downstairs, where his maid had finished barring the doors, absolute terror evident in her eyes. "What seems to be the trouble, Shayla?" His soft Ayenee accent clear of the muddle of sleep. "An atrocity, m'sovereign. The village is under attack by undead."

Arken quirked his lips to the side before returning upstairs to his room. He fished out his clothing and hastily donned his studded-leather armor. Grasping and applying his shadow-woven cloak, he dashed downstairs. "My weapons, Shayla." he said in a somber tone. Shayla was aghast, "No! You can't go out there!" she protested but was silenced by a withering glance and complied with his original request.

Arken slipped his short sword into it's sheath, tucked a kama in his utility loop, and grasped his prized enchanted scythe. Shayla frowned, "I'd beg you to reconsider, but I realize the futility of such requests." She took a small bundle from beneath a counter. "My mask..." he said softly. She nodded and applied it to his face. Scarcely had she finished tying it then he had lifted the bar and quickly dashed out, his voice floating about "Bar the door behind me."

The watch and the village militia had both been roused and were valiantly swinging their swords and blocking attacks. However, the overwhelming size of the horde forced them to abandon formations and any formal training they may have had faded away in the face of such scattering. Arken quickly made use of the chaos to scale the tallest nearby building, which happened to be a granary.

From atop his precarious perch, Arken surveyed the make-shift undead army and determined that no leader was present. Obviously, some fiend or necromancer had simply raised this vast horde and sent them with orders to overrun and destroy the village. He leaped down to the ground, the charms in his armor overriding gravity and allowing him to land on his feet. Swirling around, holding his scythe, he waded into battle like the unholy terror that he was. The various undead fell to pieces around him, quite literally swept like wheat and chaff before his unconventional scythe.

With the devastation caused by Arken, the morale of the village warriors rose and the redoubled their efforts. Slowly, they began to turn the tide and organize. With the familiar formations of their past training returning, they easily broke the siege of the undead and slaughtered them by the score. Less than an hour after it began, the invasion had ended, and the ground was littered with the the broken and decimated corpses of what was once the living dead.

Arken called upon a lesser gift of his powers and touched a severed arm to determine why and from whence these creatures had come. What he saw, no one would ever know. The insight drove him to madness...
 
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