Twilight Hope, Crux of the North - Chapter 1
Chapter 1: A Dirty Page, A Child’s Tale
A woman in leathers holds a book in one hand and a map in the other. She looks up from the map and down the road, trees on either side and wind in her hair. She turns back toward the others.
“It’s not much further. We must rest the horses and resupply.”
She turns her attention back to the tattered book as the others ride by. One man stops on his horse and looks back. “Come. The horses need water.” She nods, looking seemingly through him.
They ride on down the path towards Adyinn’s Watch, the only bastion of order on the northern coast. That place the orcs landed and rushed over the hills. And this, the very path they tread down so long ago.
“I’ll water the horses.” Agawa takes the horses, leading them away down toward the creek.
I sat then on a stone fallen from the wall of the watch. The history of this place felt so thick. The book in my hands weighed enormously then. I could smell the sweat of the Orcs still. I opened the book and read again those pieces that remained of the passage:
“And the twin sons of Gulgrethor, Ashiji and Razranu, they took Landsview, the Stone of the North, and smashed it on the backs of its people. … Two of the sons of Lord Gulgrethor chopped down the people of the villages and burned everything in their path on the way to Landsview. … Twin devil sons rode to Landsview, the first to pay the price of their evil ways. Landsview was shaken to its foundations, and cracked at its cornerstone, it was emptied of life.
First to pay the price.
First to tell the tale.
Of the Sons and Lord, Gulgrethor.
Look in the dark.
Look in the deep.
For the Sons and Lord, Gulgrethor.”
The Twilight Hope. That’s what the passage referred to. A rumor of a myth, something I had heard about back during my teachings in Khal.
It was my master who I had first heard it from. During one of his teachings of the history of battles, he was finishing up a particularly long series of lectures on the Gulgrethor Orc invasions of Thestra. He muttered ‘The Twilight Hope’, and he sat there for a minute lost in his own thoughts, but neglected to share with us what he was thinking.
After the class had been dismissed, I asked him what he was talking about. About The Twilight Hope. He didn’t tell me much, only that he heard a story once about something the Orcs left behind in their wake of destruction that could restore northern Thestra to its former peace and glory. He said to forget about it. A fool’s hope.
I pressed him, but he couldn’t tell me any more than that.
The very next day, I started the long journey to finding out what The Twilight Hope was. And you can understand my lack of surprise when nobody could answer my questions: I asked teachers, scholars, the priests, and even the Mayor himself.
When the learned couldn’t answer my questions, they showed me books that might tell. None of the ones in Khal could tell me. Nor the ones in New Targanor. For weeks I scoured any place that had a book to be looked at.
And then I was surprised when I found a book in Lakeview. A book passed down a generation, and stuffed into a trunk, never to have been read since. I poured over the text, and found the passage which spoke of The Twilight Hope…but which here in the North is called The Crux. It’s a kid’s story, apparently.
The Sage Orachar here in Adyinn’s Watch says the child’s tale tells of the two bracelets worn by the Twin Sons, and the power the bracelets hold over the wicked. And another of a torque of some sort. I have found it! The Twilight Hope! The Crux! From a dusty page in a book and from a child’s tale, The Twilight Hope, Crux of the North is bound in these trinkets.
… In the dark. In the deep.
“The horses are ready.”
I looked up. Agawa was there with the reins to Sugar, my horse. A strong hand on the reigns. He didn’t yet believe what I had told him, but he would soon see.
“Let’s head out then. … To Landsview.”
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