A Sorcerer’s Journal

  Overgod

  Jeron Warder

  Entry 1

  The Year 1219 After the Breaking

  Our trials can either break us, or they can strengthen us to do something great. There’s a progression to this that only God can see until much later. By the time these events had taken place, I’d already survived two assassination attempts, and though I still didn’t know much about my abilities, I’d had the benefit of a two-year Terran apprenticeship and two years of military service in Stonekeep’s militia.

  “Apprenticeship” was a laughably inappropriate word to use for this time period, but that’s what they called it. Bran and I were twelve years old when it started, and we were worked nearly to death and beaten mercilessly every day. For two years. It was brutal. Effective, but brutal. It was one of the reasons Terran warriors were so superior to human ones, and it did me a lot of good. Of course, it took humility and hindsight to see that, but both Bran and I were better off for the experience. Those trials prepared us for the threats we faced later, threats that would absolutely have killed us if we didn’t have the benefit of those experiences.

  After I’d smashed the main force of the Grunbar ogres’ army, I fell into a deep sleep I couldn’t awaken from. I was still unconscious when the events in this entry took place, but I’m writing about it because journaling about what happened even when I wasn’t there helps me keep things in perspective. I was blessed with great friends in Bran, Elle and Mira, and shining a light on their heroism helps me both to deal with my trauma and to keep my hubris in check. The three of them did a great deal with a lot less potential.

  The ogres had come a long way to plunder, and even after suffering such devastating losses to their army, most of the survivors weren’t willing to just give up and go home. They massed around the largest ogre present and tried to assault the gate one last time. The defenders of Stonekeep fought them off from the relative safety of the walls. After a long night of fighting, the survivors finally started giving up. Their forces deserted one ogre and a score or two of goblins at a time. When the last of them were repelled from the walls, the prince rested his army for a few hours and waited until morning. Most of the invaders had crossed the Deepflow River to raid and plunder their way back to Grunbar, but there were a lot of them still on the west side of the river. The prince knew they’d be licking their wounds in the forests somewhere during the daylight hours, so he sent out talons of troops in all directions to scour the forests on Stonekeep’s side of the river clear of invaders.

  Bran, Elle, and Mira took their duty seriously, so they’d docked on one of the two mostly intact piers remaining after the ogres’ final retreat. Our talon hadn’t returned from their extended patrol yet, so Bran, Elle and Mira were assigned temporarily to a new talon who’d suffered casualties to help root out the last vestiges of invaders. There was an old expression: a cornered rat fights the hardest. When those “rats” were ogres and goblins, who were universally evil to the core, everyone knew they’d soon be fighting for their lives.

  Their talon was marching through a densely forested area, stepping over huge roots, and crunching through the fallen leaves. The path they followed could barely be called a game trail. They were able to see maybe a hundred feet in all directions before the tree trunks cut off their line of sight, but they were approaching an area of dense thickets. Bran, currently marching behind the sergeant, began to have a bad feeling, like ants were crawling on his scalp.

  “There’s something bad ahead,” Bran said to his sergeant as they marched.

  “What?” Sergeant Lanson asked, slowing and peering back quizzically at his soldier through his visor.

  “There’s something evil close by, a lot of them, and we need to prepare, sir. They’re in those thickets,” Bran calmly answered. Bran drew his sword.

  Sergeant Lanson regarded Bran with a puzzled expression, but he signaled a halt with an upraised plate-armored fist as soon as he glanced at Bran’s sword, which was gold plated and had large pearls inset into the hilt. It quite obviously wasn’t a common weapon, and it was currently glowing with golden radiance. The sergeant knew of only one reason a sword like that would be glowing, and though he’d never seen a holy sword before, he trusted Bran’s word instinctively.

  “Battle positions! Circle up!”

  Bran took a position to the left of Sergeant Lanson and scanned the dark woods around his comrades in arms. The woods ahead of the eleven armored figures were dark and thick, full of undergrowth surrounding the trail, which went straight through. It was a good place for an ambush. Ahead there was a trader’s wagon blocking the way forward on the trampled game trail. The invading ogres and goblins had to have dragged it there and abandoned it.

  Elle had taken the position to the right of Sergeant Lanson, and Mira took the spot to Bran’s left as was dictated by their marching order. Bran, Elle and Mira were all wearing plate armor, so they were usually placed at the front and center in formations since the other men and women in the unit were wearing chainmail. The other members of their talon took their positions, raised their slightly curved, rectangular shields protectively, and readied their weapons, mostly shortswords.

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  “Lord God, thank You for the warning,” Bran whispered. “Please strengthen us for the battle to come.”

  A golden glow covered Bran and then spread to all the soldiers in his unit. They could feel divine strength course through their limbs as the blessing manifested. That blessing came not a moment too soon, too. Without warning, javelins came flying from the undergrowth on both sides of the wagon and clattered off of the soldiers’ shields. Deep voiced war cries sounded from the undergrowth, which were taken up by smaller voices as goblins charged out of the undergrowth towards the talon’s formation.

  The soldiers tightened their ranks in the shield wall as the battle was joined. The goblins were small and stooped, standing around four feet tall with dark, misshapen complexions and darker hearts. They were armed with bits of chainmail armor and carried small, round shields and long knives, cleavers, and all sorts of other pointy things. There were several dozens of them trying to overrun the defenders, which were grim odds for only eleven soldiers. As the goblins hit the shield wall, they stabbed at whatever they could see. With the divine strength granted to the defenders, the soldiers withstood the charge, then began their bloody work. Bran began fighting with ferocity, each swing of his holy sword bringing death to a goblin. Dozens of goblins circled around the formation trying to find a weak point, but they only found firm resolve and confidence in the defenders.

  Then the momentum of the battle shifted. Lumbering from the trees came the three owners of the deeper voices. They were ogres, each at least ten feet tall, warriors of tremendous strength and savage ferocity. They, too, wore chainmail armor with very thick links and carried massive, two-handed greataxes. The ogres had almost human facial features, if you discounted the thick, sloping brows and tusks jutting up from their lower jaws. They shouted their war cries and charged, knocking their minions aside as those goblins in their path tried to get out of the way.

  The biggest, loudest ogre saw Bran’s sword and charged straight at Bran with his axe raised, roaring its war cry. The other two ogres flanking him ran straight for Sergeant Lanson and Elle. The biggest ogre raised its axe to launch a powerful blow at Bran’s upraised shield, but Bran stepped forward quickly and chopped straight through the haft of the weapon as it descended, deflecting the giant head of the axe into the dirt at his feet. The ogre’s momentum carried it forward to slam into Bran’s upraised shield, but he was ready for this. With the divine strength filling his body, Bran stood firm against the brute, making it double over with an “oof!” and hitting Bran on the helm with its chest.

  The ogre that charged Sergeant Lanson swept its greataxe down with enough power to buckle the sergeant’s shield and snap his forearm. The sergeant was smashed down to lie helplessly on the ground and cried out in pain. The third ogre had charged Elle and used the same overpowering downstroke, bringing its greataxe down on her shield with tremendous force. When the axe struck Elle’s shield, it rebounded straight back into its owner’s chest, knocking it back five feet to fall prone and clutch weakly at its own weapon. The ogre had no idea that Elle’s adamantium shield had a potent magical defense that was able to reflect the harm meant for Elle back onto her enemies.

  The lead ogre stepped back from Bran and gaped stupidly at its ruined axe. Bran struck at it savagely, cleaving through its collarbone despite its thick armor. The ogre that had felled Sergeant Lanson had stepped into the circle and was about to swing its axe in a great horizontal arc into the soldiers fighting the rearmost goblins, but Bran yanked his blade out and attacked from the side, chopping clean through the back of the ogre’s knee. That ogre gave a pained bellow and collapsed onto the sergeant’s legs. With Elle now covering the gap in the circle, Bran finished off the wounded ogre with two great chops.

  The goblins were in a battle frenzy and stabbed at the soldiers with all the ferocity they had. It wasn’t nearly enough. The soldiers of Stonekeep methodically struck out from behind their shields until the attack faltered and the few remaining goblins ran off into the woods.

  Bran thrust his sword down into the abdomen of a dying goblin close at hand, then left it there so he could roll the ogre off of the sergeant. Elle was at the sergeant’s side very quickly and whispered a prayer of healing over him. The sergeant’s breathing steadied, and he regained consciousness, looking around frantically. His expression showed he was amazed that he was alive.

  Sergeant Lanson held his right hand up to Bran, who hoisted him up to his feet. “Thanks for that,” he said as he took off his ruined vambrace. He rubbed his forearm, still clad with his gambeson, thankfully, and flexed his fingers experimentally.

  “Is anyone else hurt?” Elle asked her comrades.

  Those who replied with an affirmative were healed quickly by Elle’s prayers as the members of the unit all caught their breath. Surveying the scene, Bran was surprised that there were so many dead goblins around with only two casualties. The other soldiers could all see who’d done the majority of the fighting, too. There were quite a few dead invaders where Bran, Elle and Mira had fought. Elle used her magical shield to defeat her foes, but Mira was surprisingly quick with a blade, as the goblins had learned the hard way.

  “You all right?” Bran asked Elle.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I actually wish you-know-who was here,” Mira said.

  “Well, I’m glad you guys were here,” one of the female soldiers said.

  “Me, too. That could have been worse,” Bran said as he retrieved Vengeance from the body of the goblin it was currently sheathed in. He wiped the blood off the sword with some piece of clothing one of the dead goblins had, then slid it into its scabbard.

  People with divine abilities were not known in this day and age, which made Bran and Elle very special. They were special in a good way, though, as opposed to sorcerers. Even so, everyone in Stonekeep knew that paladins and priests of religions other than the Church of the Overgod were executed upon discovery. Very few people actually knew the truth of why that was, though.

  “I don’t sense any more of them close by,” Bran said.

  Sergeant Lanson nodded, clapped him on the pauldron, and took command. “We’re bringing the dead back to the city, and we’ll report in. Danson, is that wagon in working order?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  In a few minutes, Sergeant Lanson had the talon ready to move with some pulling and some pushing the wagon back to the city. Though that was the end of the talon’s fighting for that day, there were more bands of invaders in these woods, and they weren’t going to fall on their swords. The war raged on.