Sons of Ironstorm - Book 3: New Alliance

Chapter 1: A Final Thrust

"With the Star Sword a brilliant blue beacon in hand,

the young Wielder stood against the Shadow.

Denying it the elven lands and leaving the enemy stricken.

The first true blow against a feared and prophesied foe

in the war to protect all living on Ramnor." 

- from Cephanon's 'Ruminations', ch. 14

As the falcon saw it, the vastness of the Landshawl Forest, named the Jakandi'ef Sylva'Aijur by the elves long ago, was an uninterrupted sea of rolling green. That dark carpet hid all beneath it: hills and vales, grove and meadow. Only the long, winding ribbons of silvery blue that were the mighty rivers of central Reutha broke the sylvan plain with their seething channels. 

Even then the Landshawl was reluctant to yield up its dominance of the north central lands, crowding close to the riverbank to send heavy boughs reaching out over the water. It marched to the mountains in the north and northwest and to the very edge of the Rift on the west, bounded by the Giant's Teeth to the east and the vastness of the Aramas to the south. It was truly a master among masters of the forests of Reutha.

For centuries the dense forest also hid a puissant people, mighty in force of arms and ancient in heritage. Here, some of the most powerful of the elven Houses made their homes, building their fortresses in the thickness of the Jakandi'ef Sylva'Aijur, and letting the forest conceal their sprawling cities and immure their nations in a cloak of wood and leaf. And here they gathered to yet again make war against the Shadow!

Banik of Aquila looked up as yet another contingent of Hydran Sylvasin marched by, already in Redeemed blue, weapons held close as they moved into the portal connecting the Redeemed encampment with the distant forward command post deep in the Evanor'ef Sylva'Beledin, the vast forest north of the Yatual. Forgotten for the moment were detailed lists of equipment, troops and supplies that he was working hard to juggle between the two camps.

<<His Majesty's Seventh Lancer Regiment.>> the Hydran officer beside him, her face tattooed in the manner of the Hydran elves, noted in accented Vanje, consulting a list herself. <<That should be the last of the Tor Kal'adin contingent, general. They complete the Hydran contribution to the forward command base.>>

Banik let a smile touch his lips for a brief moment, the big Lithosin officer considering the leviathan effort his command had engaged in since the Lord Wielder had decided to create the forward base in the Beledin. It would be nice to truly consider things complete. The smile vanished. But that wouldn't happen until the Shadow, and its tool here, in the elven marches, the Ka'thesck was finally, and irreversibly crushed.

It was nearly two tendays since Shawn Ironstorm, the human Wielder of the Star Sword had opened a gate deep into the northern forests to send in the Redeemed, elves that once embraced the Shadow but were redeemed by the power of the Star Sword's awakening. Since then, having discovered magic to uncover the magically cloaked hordes of Tjor'riin the Ka'thesck were building from the reawakened breeding pits of the Hammer Peninsula, thousands of soldiers had poured out of the Redeemed primary encampment to the forward operating base in a new, and hopefully final offensive to crush the Ka'thesck's supply lines and stem the flow of dark soldiers.

The fighting had started almost immediately, the Lord Wielder impatient to have the Ka'thesck destroyed as he felt the Return chill his heart as it continued to unfold to the south. And now, even as further reinforcements poured in from Aeshin'laur nations, it churned across the glades and glens of the Shield, the dense heart of the Beledin, driven by the power of the Star Sword and its relentless and determined wielder.