The Unburied

The Flood of Ammonath

Fear.  it possessed him in every waking moment.  The clash of blades echoing in his ears, the blood showering his face.  Letifer could not bear it.  And as he drove his blade through the throat of yet another foe, he could feel the blade that had felled him, impaling him once again.  Yet still, he trudged onward.  The minute the Rott Kin crossed the bridge, all intention of victory was cast from Letifer’s mind.  Despite the fact that death could not take him twice, still, the insatiable urge to survive had driven him.  Of course, it was no boon to his waning courage, that the first of the Rott Kin had entered aflame, set ablaze by the oil poured over the bridge.  Thus, there he stood.  And though he was surrounded by the soldiers of Fereldin, he’d never felt more alone.  They had melted into the oceans of blood and steel that now threatened to drown him.  And in his terror, Letifer fell to his knees, staring at his shaking hands, and the blood upon them.  

He could hear Hallyenne calling to him, “Letifer!”, but the sound was muffled, distorted, blocked now by the constant ringing of his ears.  Looking about him, Letifer gazed upon the horrors of war once again.  The cruelty of the Rott Kin.  With the pikes now broken, they ripped and tore, thrashing the flesh of their foes, dismembering with tooth and nail, devouring them alive.  And though he had few memories of it, Letifer knew all the while, that he’d seen it all before.  How else could sheer terror possess him so?  

   Another foe came about him, seething and snarling with hunger.  Instinctively, Letifer raised his blade, impaling the creature as it charged him.  Desperately, he threw the roaring corpse to the side, proceeding to slash its throat.  Nearly congealed blood of deep red mixed with black spouted from the wound, showering Letifer’s face.  And as it found its way amid every crack and crevice of his grisly visage, he could recall the taste of it in his mouth, when the blood was his own.  

Another of the Rott Kin assaulted him from behind, sinking its teeth deep into the pale flesh of his shoulder.  Letifer threw the beast to the cobblestones, only to be dragged to the ground as well.  As such, he felt the rocks batter him once again, as they did when he was cast from the ramparts of the mountain keep.  And for every stone that met him that day his fist did strike the decayed face of his foe.  Screaming in a mixture of horror and rage, Letifer beat his foe into the ground.  One strike following another.  He struck the beast once, twice, thrice, one for every rock that had struck him, when he fell from the ramparts of the mountain keep.  Again and again, until the screeching of his foe came to a halt.  

He could hear Hallyenne calling him still, although the voice was not hers.  It was that of a young boy.  Where she cried, “Letifer!”, nothing rang through his ears, but cries of “Father!”.

Attempting to stand, immediately he stumbled forward, back down to the now red cobblestones, catching himself on bloodied, shaking hands to match.  And in the light of the full moon, overpowered by the orange glow of the abundant flames, a shadow loomed over him.  

A low guttural voice uttered above him, “The phantom of Belfennse.” 

  Raising his gaze, Letifer observed above him, a figure clad in heavy, blackened plates of steel, and a helm melded in the shape of a beak.  This could be none other than the first of the Herald’s wretched Leper Knights.

The knight uttered, “Pitiful.”  

Before a chance for retaliation, the shadow clad warrior brought his mace to Letifer’s visage, sending him skidding backward across the stones.  Desperately grasping at the floor, Letifer found the hilt of his blade, gripping it with white knuckles.  Or rather, they would be, had he possessed any manner of pigmentation.  Frantically he swung back, his blade colliding with the shaft of the Leper Knight’s morning star, with which he applied increasing pressure.