Help Us Hope

The blood dripping from his forehead was becoming a more-than-mild irritant, slowly reaching his eyes and interrupting his vision. He panted his way through the pain, "Do we have… anything else… that needs to die?", his hand reached up reflexibly to his forehead, wiping it and flicking the blood from his hand to the ground. It took barely a second for Arkadius’ eyes to be distracted by the blood pooling on the floor at his feet, instead of being drank by the ground as he was lead to believe was ‘tradition’ in these areas. His dazed brain took a few more moments to truly consider this discovery, his eyebrows rapidly raising high once it had processed. "Erm, folks? I think we have a bigger…"
His words were cut off by the loud rumbling.
 

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Dearest Swan,
 
I’ve not written to you in a while. Again, I let things slip. Things have changed since the last time I wrote to you, and I’ve been spending less time writing letters, and more time… well, delivering other people’s letters. Since we last spoke, I formed Port Ffirst’s first postal system, Ffirst Airmail, and have been running that as a private enterprise for a little while. I even started a band! But that’s not why I am writing to you.
 
I’ve been avoiding the subject of war for as long as it was going on, over in K’ul Goran. I’ll admit, at times I can be a right coward. I don’t want to die, or be hurt, or anything. Some days, I wonder what you saw in me that made you think I deserve all this, all that you have given me. But I digress… K’ul Goran alerted us that the final throes of war were approaching through a simple message, “Help Us Hope". Naturally, those I call my closest allies said they were heeding the call, and those pangs of cowardness hit me like a horse-drawn cart in the chest. But… I put those feelings aside. I’m willing to put myself in danger for those I care about. Those I have grown to love. Sheryl, Matthew, Mace, Taz, Gegrun and Wil are the folks I joined with naturally. I made arrangements in the days before the war for a plan to be in place in case anything especially happened to Sheryl, the familiar I now summon through your power was to sit in her inner pocket and I’d push through healing power through her if something were to happen. Thankfully, I didn’t have to resort to this. I should add, I’ve been honing in on my latent childhood musical talents as of late, and have been enjoying it. We shall see where that adventure travels in the future.
 
Once we set off, via Daring Heights, we were transported directly to one of the forward bases of the war, and were quickly dispatched to somewhere in Nrav’Garat. The giants had already laid siege to the area. We were advised by the K’ulgoranians in the forward base that we needed to rescue some people trapped in nearby houses. Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief, a rescue mission is a lot more within my capability. Given what one ogre did to me in Kundar all those months ago, imagine what a swarm of giants could do. Doesn’t bare thinking about.
 
We agreed, as a coterie, that stealth was going to be key and we could get around the bugbear and goblins in front of us easily enough, in-fighting between them. Of course, that would have worked had I not tripped, and hurtled nose-first straight at the floor. I could have probably avoided screaming the loudest swear word ever heard too, but it really, really hurt. So, naturally the goblins and bugbear reacted, and we ended up fighting. Sure, I didn't do a massive amount to help with that, but I did annoy and make fun of the bugbear enough that he felt the need to throw his weapon at me (ow), shortly followed by his shield (OW). Thankfully, as a team dispatched them quick enough.
 
Sheryl took the opportunity, while we distracted the combatants, to head off to the houses in the distance. I made sure that she was within range so I could push my healing magic through Ida at all times, I think I’ve become quite a good judge of distances. I took it upon myself to keep distracting the bugbear, he was the biggest target other than the giants at the time, and… I think I did a good job. When something throws both it’s offensive weapon and it’s defensive object at you when you’re flying, that’s when you know you’ve made an impact on that person’s day, right? Yep, that happened. And I am still standing, and they aren’t! Score.
 
After they were dispatched, I moved on to help Sheryl search the houses, as did Taz. Sheryl found people, we didn’t. We searched every intact house, and didn’t find anyone else. We guided the children Sheryl discovered to the safety of the base, and were informed they were falling back. Giants were starting to approach this part of the city (having already very nearly crushed me with a boulder or three), and it was no longer safe. Tactics and safety, I can get behind that.
 
So, our next challenge was heading back to where we just came from, and to face the giant head-on. Hooray. When we returned, slightly further through the city space than we were before, we heard noises from behind us approaching at rather high speed. While others took the opportunity to dodge out of the way, instead curiosity had settled in and my cowardice had now apparently entirely vanished and I flew upwards, looking out for what was approaching. I didn’t have to look hard to see something crashing through the city towards us, stopping not far away from me.
OH YAY, OGRES. THREE OF THEM. My worst nightmare, coming back to haunt me, this time in triplicate. That cowardice returned again in full right there and then. Well, I wish it did, I wish it even had time to. What actually happened was Matthew making his grand re-entry and being… well, him.
 
Battle restarted between a huge pile of everything, Taz and Matthew dealing with the ogres, Sheryl, Mace and Wil dealing with the giant and wolves and things, and me floating in between suffering from flashbacks. Taz and Matthew did an amazing number on the ogres, but not without the ogres doing a number on Matthew too. I would have helped, but he looked fine. Instead, I patted him on the back offering inspiration, before launching an artillery fireball in the direction of the giant. Shame he was a fire giant, so he took the damage much like I would. Sigh.
 
It took a while, but everything went well, nobody died, and Nrav’Garat was… destroyed, but I think we did an absolute marvellous job of fighting off whatever came our way, and holding our line.
 
Would I do a war again?
No. No I would not.
 
Regards, as ever,
Arkadius Hogg, Port Ffirst Postmaster