Dreams in Eldrim; Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Invaders of Troma



Serenity strained her eyes as she stared out across the fields of wheat, struggling to catch sight of the being that she'd seen just moments before.  It had looked as if there was someone approaching town; a large group of beings, in fact, and that usually meant trouble.  Caravans hardly ever traveled from town to town on foot anymore.  Most of the time, when there was a big group, traveling together, it meant that the enemy was on the move.

Of course, it wouldn't have been prudent to jump to conclusions about that.  Unless there was some kind of proof that the figures on the horizon were enemy creatures, it would have been a mistake to try to call the castle for reinforcements.  That was why Serenity had been told to keep watching and see what they did.  She had sharper eyes than any of the other guards, and she was more motivated than ever to protect her hometown since the birth of her first child only a few years before.  Serenity had a passion for her work that went beyond any personal fears for her own safety.  That was the reason why she'd joined the local military to begin with, and it was the reason why she was so dependable.

Serenity continued to stare across the fields, watching the wheat and corn for any signs of movement; a job that was made infinitely more difficult by the light of the setting sun, which kept getting in her eyes.  She squinted as hard as she could, trying to make out some kind of specifics about the figures moving on the horizon.  For the moment, it seemed like they were just wandering back and forth, as if talking with each other.  That wasn't typical behavior for the enemy.  Usually, enemy creatures were far more ferocious than that.  Even so, she didn't dare to let down her guard.  After all, there was no telling when they'd make their move.

Pretty soon, the figures were starting to get closer to town, and Serenity tensed up a little.  She couldn't predict for certain what their next move would be; whether they'd start running forward or make some attempt to attack, but the moment she was able to identify them as enemies, she planned to send a signal to the knights.

Troma was a relatively small farming village with no real defenses to speak of, except a few guards and one captain.  However, they also had the good fortune to be a mere ten minutes' ride from the Gelem Castle by horse, and that meant having almost-instant protection when they sent a signal to the castle's inhabitants, because the Gelem Castle was where the knights lived.

At one time, Serenity had thought about trying to become a knight herself, but as talented as she was at her work, she wasn't quite that talented.  She was an excellent lookout and a top-notch guard, but the knights were on a whole different level.

However, as she briefly considered those things, the sun had sunk over the horizon just a bit further, and its glare on her eyes was decreasing.  That was when she started to see more clearly that the beings who were approaching town were definitely not human.  They had large, bulky muscles, gray, discolored skin and enormous fangs that rose up from their bottom lips on either side of their noses, each one nearly three inches long.  They weren't wearing much armor, but they had helmets, and each was carrying a shield along one arm and a big axe with the other.  They also had what looked like animal-skin covering their shoulders and chests down to their loins.

The new arrivals were definitely agents of the enemy; monsters known as Jocrum, though most people just called them orcs, and they were pretty terrifying, because their enchanted nature gave them absolutely inhuman strength.  The worst thing about the sight, however, was that they'd started running directly towards the town of Troma as soon as Serenity had recognized them, as if they'd realized that she'd discovered the truth about them, even from that huge distance away.

"Blast it..." Serenity muttered, trying to fall back, but just then, she saw that there were two children, standing right behind her; both of them boys, and she knew that if she left that spot to sound the alarm, those boys were going to get cut to pieces.

She was feeling furious on the inside, even as the parents of the boys rushed forward to try to grab them and take them away, but it was already too late to run for the alarm.  In fact, it might have been too late, even if they hadn't been there.  Quickly, she spun around to face the invaders and barked orders to the parents of the children behind her.  She knew that no matter what happened to her, she had to do what was best for the town.

"Listen to me!" Serenity exclaimed sternly, "I want you to go to the guard house to the north end of town and have them raise the alarm for me.  I'll try to stop these things."

"I can't!  You'll be killed!" the father of the family exclaimed.

"You can't help me.  You don't even have a weapon." Serenity shouted back desperately, "We both have to do our jobs.  You need to protect the town while I try to hold them off.  Hurry!"

However, those words weren't out of Serenity's mouth for even a moment before the enemies reached her position, and one of them was already attacking with its axe.  At that point, she couldn't afford to encourage that man to do the essential job that she'd given him anymore.  She had to focus on fighting the orcs and hope that he could handle the rest.

Quickly, Serenity ducked out of the way of the first axe swipe and swept her spear along the ground, driving it between the legs of the first orc that had attacked, then twisting it, and tripping him.  In a moment, he'd fallen to the ground with a crash, but she couldn't afford to finish him off, because his buddies had already caught up and were swinging their own weapons at her with surprising speed.

At that point, Serenity knew that she only had one possible chance to continue fighting with the orcs on even terms, because there were so many.  She had to use a special technique she'd been practicing with for emergencies.

In just a moment, Serenity spun her spear around a few times, knocking aside the blades of several enemy weapons, and giving her just enough time to draw the sword that hung from her belt.  In battle, the sword and spear hadn't been designed to be used together because of their weight and the balance problems it created when one tried to wield both, but she knew that she just wasn't fast enough to beat those kinds of enemies unless she could use two weapons.  That had been the reason for her recent training, and it had, she knew, paid off.  She was already at the point where she could wield both weapons without any real difficulty.  The only question was whether the strength of her spear attacks would be enough if she performed them one-handed.  There was only one way to find out, however.

In just a moment, Serenity had her sword in her right hand and her spear in her left, and the orc behind her was starting to get up.  Quickly, she lashed out, striking him in the back of his head with the bottom of her spear, then sweeping her sword around.  Almost at once, his head was completely separated from the rest of him.

The other orcs, however, didn't hesitate at the sight of their companion's blood.  In fact, if anything, they looked even more eager for battle.  Quickly, two more rushed forward, swinging their axes, but Serenity was on the move again, diving off to one side, away from both attacks, then threading her spear through the legs of one of her attackers and impaling him on her sword on the way to the ground.

Serenity was covered in orc blood as she moved to the attack again, but she wasn't deterred.  She had a purpose that no amount of bloodshed could take away from her; she had to do whatever she could to protect her town and all its people.

Three more of the monstrous orcs advanced on her from the front and sides, but she didn't wait for them to make their move.  In just a second, Serenity dove directly towards them, brandishing her spear and sword in a well-practiced fashion.  Only a moment later, two more had been beheaded, and a third was charging at her in a blind rage as more approached from the sides.  The third orc seemed to have better aim than the others, and she found that she had to use her sword to deflect the blow of his axe away from her before she could trip him with her spear.  In just another moment, she was on top of him, raising her sword above his head and preparing to drive it downwards.

Just then, however, she heard the sound of grinding metal, and felt an aching sort of warmth along her back.  In that moment, she knew that she was dying.  One of the orcs had gotten the drop on her from behind and driven his axe into her spine.  However, with her last ounce of strength, she drove her sword downward, finishing off her fifth orc.  She was losing so much blood, that she definitely couldn't have gotten back up or fought with any more of them, but she could already see the gleam of metal on the horizon, and knew that the knights were coming to Troma.

When they arrived, the knights would succeed where Serenity had failed; they'd defeat the remainder of the orcs and save the people of Troma from them, including her husband and son, but in spite of that, she was still worried about Sal and Don.  She wished with all her heart that she could have lived just a few years longer, to help raise her young boy.

She didn't have that choice anymore, of course.  In fact, it was possible that she'd never really had a choice.  She'd always done the only thing that she believed she could have; the only thing she thought was right, up to the very moment when she died.



Sal swallowed hard as he watched the other guards silently removing Serenity's body from among the numerous orcs that the knights had helped to slay.  The knight commander had said, when he'd left, that the knights had counted up the number of orc bodies, and the number of orcs that they themselves had killed and determined that, somehow, his wife had managed to slay five of the beasts by herself before they'd even arrived.

Most of the people in town seemed to find the news astonishing, and there was talk of holding a ceremony to honor the fallen heroine of Troma, but to Sal, the whole thing was like one large joke.  He'd never agreed with the job that Serenity had chosen, because he'd always feared for her life, and suddenly, she was gone.  It was, by far, the most painful loss that he'd ever experienced.

Serenity had been the only person who'd really made him feel like a whole person himself.  She'd been the only one who he really felt like he could share anything with.  Both of them had struggled for years to love one another; to keep from offending each other, but on that day, he wished with all his heart that she'd made different choices.  He felt helpless and alone for the first time in months; an incomplete and broken man.

That was when Sal swore to himself that no matter what, he was going to make sure that Don never made the same mistake.  Don was the only one left who, even after a loss like that, could comfort him and make him feel better.  The thought of his son gave Sal strength, even in the face of that monstrous disaster, and the determination to protect his boy was growing in his mind through the entire week that followed, until well after Serenity had been buried.



Don Deley sighed as he sat in the middle of his classroom; a plain, wooden room, full of desks and other students his own age; both boys and girls.  There were a couple of windows off to one side, letting in the fresh air of the spring day, and almost distracting him from the work he had in front of him.

Of course, the test that he was working on was very special and important, because he knew that if he could pass it, it would be the last test he needed to complete before he graduated.  He'd already mastered all the other standard subjects taught at his school; language, physics, geography, religion, social ethics and so forth, and math was all that was left.  Once he finished it, he reminded himself with a smile, he could start training for the job of his choice.

However, although Don tried hard to focus on the test in front of him, and the thin parchment that he was being asked to write on, his thoughts continuously drifted out of his control, seizing upon his deep worries about his own future, and his fear that he might never be able to fulfill his dreams.  He really only wanted to do one thing with his life, and he was afraid that he wouldn't even get the chance to work towards it.

However, Don had barely even filled in the last answer on the test when he heard the sound of church bells ringing from outside the walls of his school.  It wasn't just the central bell, or even the two primary ones, like on Sundays.  All five bells were ringing, and he knew what that meant.  It was the alarm; the call to action for the guards, the signal for Troma's jerah master to summon the knights, and a warning for everyone else to get indoors, preferably into a basement or safe house until the crisis was over.  The alarm meant that the enemy was approaching the town of Troma.

Quickly, Don dropped his parchment and the quill he'd been writing with, then ran away from the class, out through the small classroom door and into the long hallway beyond; which was made of wood and brick, heading towards the pair of large, double-doors at the far end.  That was the exit of the school, and it was where he wanted to go, no matter what everyone else was doing.

Of course, the teachers were encouraging everyone to follow them and stay close, but Don knew where they were headed.  They were trying to take everyone to the safe houses, and he didn't want to get stuck in one of those underground structures while the knights were outside, fighting for the people of Troma.

Just as he was about to run off, away from the school, however, Don could tell that his flight from security wasn't going to be that easy.  Three of his classmates were following him towards the school's front doors, and he recognized them all.  They were, he realized, his best friends, and the people most likely to understand why he wanted to watch the knights' battle.

The first was Sharon; the only girl who'd ever taken an interest in his life, probably because he seemed pretty sad a lot of the time, and she'd wanted to comfort him.  That was the reason why they'd first started talking, and it was the first thing they'd ever talked about; his worries over his future, and what he was going to do when he got older.  Sharon had the kind of smile that helped others feel better when they were trying to relax or cope with some difficulty in their lives, and she was really a lot more considerate than she needed to be, which was probably the only reason why she and Don had gotten along.

The second of the kids following Don was Neil.  He was a black-haired young boy, about a year younger than Don, who looked up to him because of what Don planned to do with his life.  For some reason, Neil seemed to find his ambitions and determination inspiring, so he'd started following Don around, and in the end, they'd become pretty good friends.

The last of the students following Don was a boy of about his age named Vince.  Like Don, he had red hair, and although he didn't share Don's dream, or even understand it, Vince was probably his best friend.  The two got into arguments a lot, but they hardly ever hurt each other's feelings, and really, they enjoyed those little debates quite a bit.  They were both spirited debaters, though they often disagreed, and that was the biggest reason why the two had been able to develop such a lasting friendship.

Don knew that a battle between the knights and the approaching enemy would begin in minutes, so he didn't like having to waste time explaining himself, even to his best friends, but he knew enough about them all by that point to realize that there wasn't any alternative.  He couldn't go to watch the fight if they were following him, and he couldn't get them to stop following him without some kind of explanation.

"Don?" Sharon asked as soon as the three had caught up to him, "What are you doing?  We have to get to the safe house."

"I'm not going into any safe house." Don replied, letting a little bit of irritation show as he spoke to his friends, "This is the only chance I've got to watch the knights work.  I have to see what they do."

"Don't you even realize how dangerous...?" Sharon tried to ask, but Don interrupted her at once, starting to get a little angry; though more with the situation than with her.

"Yeah, I know." Don replied, "It's really dangerous to be a knight, or to even try to be one.  I know, but that's what I want, so if you want to get to a safe house, you go ahead.  I'm not going."

Then, without another word, Don started off across town, towards the northeast, where the alarm had been sent from, and he didn't look back anymore.  He liked his friends, and he cared about them a lot, but he couldn't give up on his dream; not even for them.  He wasn't very old yet; barely past his tenth birthday, but Don Deley had already decided what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.



Soon, Don was running past old, wooden houses, and fields full of fruits and vegetables, and before long, he found himself at the edge of town, near the wheat fields to the north, and the corn to the east.  The air smelled pretty good, even considering that it was almost midday, but there was a scent to it that he didn't recognize; a less-pleasant scent, which he'd never smelled before, coming from the fields of wheat and corn.

Of course, for an invader, the cornfields would have been the perfect spot to attack from, since the corn provided much better concealment for invading forces than an open field did.  However, Don could see the corn swaying as the enemy forces moved through it, drawing closer to Troma.  There were definitely invaders there, and the knights hadn't arrived yet.

Quickly, Don concealed himself behind one of the nearby farmhouses and peered out at the swaying corn, which heralded the attack of the enemy.  It was frustrating, because although he'd never been quite that close to the enemy before, what he really wanted was to be able to face them and fight them head-on, just like his mother had before she'd passed away.  The problem was that his mother had been a very talented fighter, and Don had very little fighting experience.  He knew that he wasn't ready to fight the enemy yet, and it really made him angry.  In fact, that inability to fight had made him so angry, in the past, that it had driven him to practice in his spare time; to try to train himself in what he thought the knights needed to learn.  His desire to be a knight was more than just a dream; it was close to being an obsession.

Don's mother Serenity had been a town guard with plenty of skill in combat.  When he was only four years old, however, she'd been killed in an invasion.  A group of orcs had tried to invade Troma, and she'd fought them with all her might, dying in battle.  From the moment that he'd learned what had happened to his mother, he'd had a lot of anger in his heart, and from that point on, he knew that he had to fight the same enemy and protect the people he cared about, no matter what it took.

However, anger wasn't all that Don had in his heart.  His dream of knighthood wasn't solely a search for revenge.  To him, it seemed wrong that he should be helpless to protect the people in his life.  He didn't have a huge number of friends, but he cared about the ones he had, which was why he hadn't wanted them to follow him to the site of the impending battle.  He didn't want them getting hurt, but he knew that he couldn't really protect them by force.  After all, he was still just a kid with no formal training.

Of course kids like Don couldn't protect the people they loved.  Most of the adults that he knew, in fact, couldn't protect their loved ones either.  In fact, even the town guards had a difficult time protecting the people under their care.  The only ones in the kingdom who could really be depended on to protect others were the royal knights of Gelem.  They were the best of the best, the warriors who inspired him; the ones he most wanted to be like, and they were the reason why he was willing to risk his neck just to catch a glimpse of the fight that would soon take place to the northeast of town.

As the young boy watched the cornfields carefully, however, a creature emerged from the corn that he hadn't noticed a mere five seconds before, and it was horrible to see.  It was all the evidence that he'd needed to convince him that Troma was under attack by the enemy.

The creature that stood just outside of Troma definitely bore a lot of resemblance to a human, but it was twisted in shape, and wounded in several places.  Its muscles seemed to shift unnaturally as it moved, and many of them were visible in the open air.  It gave off a nasty stench of rotting flesh, and there were signs all over the creature of death and decay.  If not for the fact that it continued to move towards town, Don might have sworn that it was a hundred-year-old corpse.

The beast definitely fit all the descriptions that Don had ever heard of a ghoul.  He swallowed hard at the sight and tried to suppress his fear and revulsion over the hideous creature, terrified of drawing its attention.  It was, after all, undead; the dead brought to life by sorcery, and that made it not only dangerous, but an agent of evil as well.  If it got even a glimpse of him, he realized, it was very likely that it would try to kill him.

However, just as he was trying to inch away from the terrible monster, he caught sight of the glint of metal on the horizon, which meant that the knights would arrive in moments.  He was so pleased by the sight, that he started to relax a little and was shocked a moment later, when the town lookout gave three blasts on his horn.  Don knew what those blasts meant.  The number of blasts was meant to inform the knights of how great the emergency was; the length of the blasts was intended to tell them which direction to ride when approaching the town in order to reach the source of the emergency.

Don had studied the horn blasts in the past, because he knew that he'd need to have them memorized if he ever became a knight himself.  Three horn blasts indicated a class three emergency, which meant that the people of the town were in danger of being killed by enemy forces, and the knights should make their move at once.  There were five classes of emergency, each of which required a different response from the knights.

However, although Don knew what the sound of the horn meant, it was still surprising to hear it so suddenly, and it gave him a start, causing him to knock his head against the wood of the house in front of him.  At that moment, the ghoul turned its own head with an unearthly jerk, and its empty, inhuman eyes were fixed on the small boy at once.

"Blast!" Don muttered as he tried to run, but the ghoul had leapt into the air with unnatural strength, and was diving towards him with a snarl.  Quickly, he dove backwards, dodging the creature's first swipe, but it was more by luck than anything else.  The monster landed on the ground and sprang back towards him again in one motion, faster than he would ever have imagined it could.

Don was terrified as he watched the creature's bony hands getting closer to his chest in a clawing motion, but he knew that he couldn't dodge it again.  In despair, he closed his eyes tightly, feeling angry over having put himself in that much danger.

However, in just a moment, Don heard a loud thud, then another and a third.  When he opened his eyes, the sight was an ugly one, but it was a relief nonetheless.  The ghoul that had been after him was lying in pieces on the ground.

He had no idea how the monster had died, but he didn't have time to worry about it anyway.  More ghouls were starting to emerge from the corn, and the knights were almost on top of them.  The battle would start in moments, and he needed to get out of range in a hurry.

As fast as he could, Don rushed behind the nearest house, and started to get a pretty good idea.  Those monsters could definitely jump a lot further than a human being, but he doubted that they could get all the way to the top of a house in one leap.

Quickly, Don braced his body between the wall of the nearest farmhouse and one of the nearby support poles for its porch, then scaled the wall by climbing to the top of the porch's overhang.  After that, he swung one arm over the top of the porch roof, then climbed up a nearby window sill to the roof of the farmhouse, and peered over the edge.

Down below, the knights had made their first attack, and were charging through the ranks of the vicious undead as fast as they could.  Swords and spears were drawn and wielded expertly as Don watched in awe.  From there, he counted the knights on the field of battle, and discovered that there were twenty, all displaying great expertise in tracking down and fighting the undead creatures.  Soon, the last of the undead fell to the sword of one of the knights, and he was amazed by the sight.  There'd been something like twenty-five ghouls hiding in the farmlands, but every last one was dead.