War-Forged 801: Hesitating No Longer

Hardship, grief, sacrifice... the words and emotions associated with them might have well have been the motto of the Bloody Flanks. There was nothing easy or granted about their lives, and hadn't been since the banishment. Ordell knew this, on both an intellectual level (they had, after all, lived it) but also on a deeper, more primal level. Something felt in the bones, as much a part of them as anything else. The process of survival at Ghosthold was a brutal one, and those who survived it came out the other side tempered, broken down and built back up again stronger, sharper, angrier. It made weapons out of flesh and blood.

So, no. They were none of them strangers to hardship, a concept that in their less charitable moments Ordell thought that no unified Onean truly knew. Not like they did, not woven into their bones.

A trek across an enemy continent (an ancestral continent, a stolen continent) was harrowing, certainly, but it was not crushing, was not defeating as it might be for so many others who had led softer lives, who had not been forged into weapons. Indeed, the land was more lush and the climate more temperate than life at both Ghosthold or at sea, and there were far more places ready-made for concealment. 

And yet.

The loss of Ghosthold, the loss of Vidar, the loss of their ships... it had been so much. Almost, too much. Almost. Even tempered weapons could break. But they hadn't. Wouldn't. 

Ordell let their gaze rest on Astrid and Grigori in the muted pre-dawn light, as they were in the habit of doing. Both mare and colt tended to ignore them, which was not new to Ordell. The uninterrupted silence gave them space to think, and to remember. Remember, when a new god had looked out of Astrid's eyes and into their soul. Never had Ordell felt so seen, so known.

'Take them and claim War-Forged in my name,' the god had said. Commanded. Ordell thought on that exchange often, and discussed it with the others as it came up... though the Scout did not reveal the depth of its effect on them, the way it resonated in their bones.

Shrike's arrival and report lifted Ordell's head, and they flared their nostrils, drinking in the faint aroma of the wild Onean sea. It called to them... but no more than did the ground they walked, the home that had once been theirs.

"Thank you," Del said to their fellow Scout. Truly, Shrike's wings were an invaluable resource. "Could you see much of the city? Was it intact, or too buried to tell?" In truth they were very curious about the reports of the ruins... and the way something in their bones seemed to be pulling them towards it.

Was it merely their imagination? Perhaps. 

Jaded, angry, tired, confused... Del was all of those things, and yet as they followed Rose and picked their way down the slope, they felt all of the emotions melt away. Or if not melt away, at least... fade, pushed to the background. Something else was swelling in their chest, pushing against their ribs until they felt them creak. What was it? A sense of hope? Of belonging? Of something else, something divine? Maybe it was all of those things. Or maybe Del was just a sentimental fool trying to assign meaning to the broken pieces of their life. 

Del glanced at Hestia, then shook their head wordlessly. They didn't know, but it felt old. Proper old. The kind of old that was no longer inanimate, no longer owned by the constructs and conceptions of mortals, but had developed a sense of self, of sentience.

"It knows we're here," Astrid said as she brushed past Ordell, as if confirming their thoughts. It ought to have unnerved them, but as the Scout continued to look around the ruins in wonder, they felt nothing but that swelling, expanding sense of belonging. 

"The statues are all unicorns," Ordell said suddenly, stopping and looking up at one such statue. It was intact, and in the muted, soft light of the crystalsand bio-luminescent fungi... the statue seemed almost alive, as it stared back down at the Flanks.  Ordell was just leaning in closer, trying to decipher the symbols carved into the statue's base, when the floor beneath their hooves shuddered, then went still. Del's head swung around. "What-"

And then a roar split the air. It was so loud that Ordell wasn't even sure that they did hear it, or if it was simply something felt, something that resonated in their very bones and threatened to shatter them. Del might have screamed. They couldn't tell. They opened streaming eyes, and caught just the barest flicker of a shadow moving past the walls. A bare flicker, but it had been colossal. Had been, perhaps, the cave itself moving. 

Ordell quickly forgot this, however, as the ground beneath their hooves shuddered again, and then began to split. It was almost as if it were bubbling, as if something fought to rise to the surface. As if many things did. 

"MOVE!" Ordell shouted, stumbling away, deeper into the cavern. Astrid and Grigori followed, Astrid looking almost... smug, though there was a wild light in her eyes. Grigori was merely terrified, and stuck to Astrid's side like a burr.