Scroll: Claiming the East Gate of Ellish

From FiranMUX

Summary

This scroll was written by Centurion Kelarik Cylisti during the Campaign for Ellish in 42 A.U.

Scroll Text

Claiming The East Gate of Ellish

This chronicle, I write because I sit impatiently awaiting the attentions of a healer, and therefore I've a few moments to jot down my thoughts. With luck, it will be enough time. Hopefully I can get a runner to take it back to stash with my other scrolls.

This morning, the day we marched on Ellish, truly was a time of grim anticipation. We knew full well that we had much to confront here; some forty-two years of oppression and hatred, enslavement and fear. And even now, as I write, it is still not fully taken into our hands. Soon, it will be a Republic city once more.

It began with the giant eagle Garissa swooping across to scare away some of the griffons which ranged above the city walls, Sharin on her back. The air force moved in shortly thereafter and began plowing through the enemy as best as they could, as well as trying to take out the archers on the city walls.

There was an immense Ticanee totem pole which had been erected, and the goats were slaughtering Ticanee slaves, their blood splashing over the wooden structure. I remember being sickened by this, but had little time to act, and while there was this horrible thrumming sound in the air, my focus was on the task at hand: to move the battering ram forward to destroy the eastern gate of the city of Ellish, which had been weakened by Republic pilots with firebombs.

With me were many people - the Fighting Fifth was out in force, and led fully and truly by General Alexa, who was with the ram itself, as was I. Among those who I remember being there were some who were not of the Fifth, too... but those who were not were artillerists and carpenters, masons and other skilled craftspeople who could determine how to exploit weaknesses in the damaged gate structure.

Yacen and I were both positioned at the very front of the ram, on either side - myself on the right, Yacen on the left - just within its maw. The ram itself was a triangular roof mounted on wheels, inside of which was suspended an enormous tree's trunk. The front of that trunk had been carved into an immense Republic fist, ready to knock on those gates... and knock them down.

I recall seeing many of the people who I deal with regularly here on the front there with us. Aranos and Sabria, Alexa and Kalina, just to name a few. But Father Brizo of the Kamnestran temple was there. Niobe and Lord Marsalos were two of the artillerists who I remember seeing. And there was a Hydra - Zutanos, I believe his name was. There were many other faces, but I honestly can't put names to them.

When the horns sounded, we began to push our battering ram, moving forward while parallelled by siege towers. The sky above us began to darken with the volleys that the Shamibelian archers launched, and then the clattering, thwacking sound of those arrows as they struck the wooden surface above us. There were screams, too - people caught by arrows, falling all around us.

Yacen took an arrow through the gut. He faltered, but he did not fall, and we moved onward, pushing that ram to the gate, occasionally correcting its angle of access.

Time seemed to move infinitely slow. The screeking, rattling sound of the wheels, the blackened sky as our archers volleyed against theirs, the whizzing of arrows, the pounding of hearts and ragged breathing of others around me. That is all I recall of the movement towards the gates, really. My right shoulder was jammed into the wood, and I was shoving with all my might.

As we maneuvered between the walls, there was a sickening thud of wood on stone, a horrible jarring that shook through my torso. We had arrived, and it was time for us to focus our attentions on what we were here to do. I, with the others, took up one of the ropes of the ram, looking closely to ensure that indeed, we were lined up properly. We noticed little splatters of oil suddenly dripping through the planks above us and cursed, and worked faster, getting the ram swinging fluidly, and it began to strike dully against the gates.

And then the world exploded around me. Everything was eerily silent, and yet there was sound. I do not think it is possible to describe the sensation of your entire world bursting into flames, but while everything seemed to suddenly stand still, and my heart leaped in my chest, there were still cries all around me, inside and outside of the structure which housed the battering ram. For the first second or two, the heat didn't register, and then with blinding force, my body was singing out with pain, all the hair crisping on my arms, turning to so much ash.

I could not think, I could not look, but I could act, and act I did. I cannot determine how, exactly, I managed to keep heaving the ram steadily into the already-cracked, iron-fortified wood, but it was no longer a matter of thought. I was going to die, or so I thought, and therefore I was going to take the damned gate down with me.

My brother fell when the fires ignited, I think. I am still confused on this fact, because I saw Kalina with her healing supplies, crouched down beside him, just before I shouted that we needed to reposition the ram to the left more. But he was up shortly thereafter, so perhaps he'd just hit the dirt to avoid the explosion as best as he could. I don't really know.

All I can say for certain is that we got the ram repositioned, and then the artillerists began directing the angle of the impacts, and I simply swang the ram forward with the others, the fist knocking our intended entrance on the gate. It began to splinter, and by then, my eyes were watering, my throat was bone-dry from breathing superheated air, my hair - a long ponytail which had been threatening to almost dust the back of my knees only moments before - had started to burn off in huge chunks. I remember the sleeve of my priest's robe catching fire over my right bicep from a tonguing flame that burst inward at me, burning the skin beneath its linen surface. My breastplate became like a heated cooking pan, and burned my chest.

But yet I swung the ram, kept the rhythm, screamed for the others who were with me to take down that gate. And a few more blows caused a rain of wooden shards to burst outward and into us. I kept one that impaled my robe, and suspect I will treasure it.

My heart beat hard with every resounding thud, every crash, and then suddenly, the fist punched through the gate, and when we pulled back, a sickening creaking sound accompanied as we tore it free once more. A few more strikes, and Ellish's gate lay in rubble there, taken down by the brave men and women of the Fighting Fifth.

At the sound of the roar of infantry behind us, we began to retreat, pulling the blazing ram and its securing structure back with us, dragging it backward so that the rest of the military could move in to Ellish. And we dragged it back behind the lines, carrying our wounded with us.

I hacked the Republic's fist off the end of the ram, then, in a blind and searing rage which was very similar to the blinding, searing heat which had scorched my entire body. But the eastern gate of Ellish lay in ruins, and we remained, and we had a trophy of that fight. Forty-two years, and we had finally knocked on the gates of Ellish with a ferocity which they could not refuse.

I know that the battle raged on around us, but I was forced then to come back to safety here so that the healers could look at me. And I hurt, and I am sore, and I can scarcely breathe from the combination of soot and ash which I'd breathed and the superheated air. But I am alive, at least for now, unless I choose to fight more, to return to the forces on the field. I hope the healers will let me. And as the healer has finally come to speak with me now, I will stop writing. But we are at Ellish, and we will prevail.

{Signature} The signature of Kelarik.

{Date} Dated Oct 18, in the year 42 A.U.