Continued from Recruit (http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/celestial-hills/topics/Story-Recruit)

“[filtered] Argons.” He spat into the camp fire, rubbing the infected wound on his exposed shoulder. An inhuman claw had rent the tanned leather espauliere from his main sword arm, along with a portion of the fair skin and knotted muscle below. The injury had darkened to purple, and oozed a pustulent yellow fluid where he pressed at it. The pain coursed secondary to seething anger, and spite inspired his grimace more than the inflamed gash.

“Quit complaining. We’ll get it taken care of once we get back to Velika.” Tre scanned the contents of the old, leather-bound tome in his lap, bejeweled fingers eagerly but delicately flipping through its arcane and ancient passages. His disk hovered over his shoulder, the hollow center occasionally shivering in green light at intermittent flashes.“This is priceless. I’m not surprised she wants this thing destroyed.”

“Remind me why we risked our necks, again.” Jasten stabbed one of his twin blades into the earth, set to honing the other on a whetstone’s edge despite the nagging pain in his shoulder. His Castanic friend kept a leisurely pose, reclined against a fallen log and oblivious to the howls in the night from the Argon patrols set to chase and harry them after they’d obtained their quarry. Tre trusted in his obfuscating enchantments much more so than his warrior companion, and though not glimpse of light, whisper of sound, nor trace of scent escaped their encampment, Jasten wore his unease plain on his lightly bearded face. In the last hour alone, two phalanxes of fel armored devils passed within a few dozen meters of their ensorcelled camp, and in such instances Jasten held his breath and gripped the pommels of his blades, while the sorcerer pored over the contents of the Stricken Chapter.

“It’s another side of the story. The nightmare behind the dream, my friend. Our figureheads aren’t such the paragons of virtue we make them out to be, if you believe any of this. They’re as petty a lot of never-do-wells as anything we could imagine. Like here,” he began, lips twisting beneath his thin, white beard as he translated the old text, “Amarun and Zuras had it out for each other way before the Divine War. Seems the seducer plied his charms on Amarun’s consort even before the fight began.” Tre turned to lay on his other hip, nestled against a fallen tree as his flickering gaze took in the contents of the tome.

“Burn the [filtered] thing. Arun’s flex, Tre, the other side of the story wants to see us rotting like so much spoiled meat!” His dark hazel gaze burrowed into the campfire between them, refusing to meet the ambitions secreted behind the sorcerer’s eyes.

Tre rose to his feet, watching his compatriot levelly and dismally. One thin, delicate hand found its home in the deep recesses of his crimson robes, while the other held fast to the tome. “Many believe the answers we seek cannot be found in books. They’re wrong. This is everything, don’t you see? We could bargain with the gods themselves with this thing. All the infantile, petty squabbles they’ve had, and brought upon us to resolve -- we could expose them and-”

“And what?!” Jasten barked, rising to meet the Castanic and towering over him with a sneer. “Blackmail them? It’s war, you idiot. We choose a side and we stick with it to the bitter end, because fence-sitters die, and losers fare worse, and we are not the people in charge. For the first time ever, all the mortal races are allied, and you want glory for yourself!”

Tre shriveled under the warrior’s harsh glare, glanced at the Stricken Chapter and took a seat against the rotting log near his feet again. “Not for myself. For mortals.” A moment of silence passed between them before Jasten eased himself back onto the boulder serving as his own perch. “We shouldn’t be subject to their whims,” the Castanic muttered.

“Once the storm passes, Treshionix. Once the storm passes.” He began filing blade against whetstone again. “Burn the damn thing already.”

“Yes. Of course.” He thumbed through the last few pages, his disk flickered green a few more times, and with a careless fling he tossed the book into the camp fire. The last copy of the Stricken Chapter, reduced to ash over long minutes without a word shared between the men. While Jasten returned to sharpening his weapons, Tre summoned his disk to his left hand and activated a glimpse of the images the tool quietly recorded, each flash a page, a precise recall of the unspeakable deeds committed by the high-and-mighty gods who sought mortal favor, secrets they would murder to see buried forever.