Confrontation
It was raining in Minz, a steady drizzle that leaked from the leaden sky like sand from a broken hourglass. Beneath the rain and the sky lay the mountains and, beneath them, the plains of Minz spanned from horizon to horizon, lush, fertile, and full of life. Today, however, the plains of Minz had become a place full of death.
Arrows sped through the sky, thick as gnats on a rotten fruit, above bellowing Steel Warriors and into the chaos of the R'lyeh ranks. The glassy-eyed spawn of R'lyeh paid them no heed even as the shafts fell, wreaking unimaginable carnage amongst the melee. Nearly every arrow found its mark amidst the swarming R'lyeh host; hundreds of Slave Warriors and Lobo Guards flopped to the muddy ground, filled with more wood than most trees.
But the spawns of R'lyeh felt no fear, save for that of their terrible masters, and they pressed manically on, crashing into the Ulmish lines with overwhelming numbers. Though each Warrior of Ulm is tall, well equipped and skilled, the incredible numbers of their foe gave momentary pause to their blades and, for a moment, it seemed as if the lines would be broken.
But at that very moment, the Wizards of Ulm unleashed a terrible new weapon, summoning the Steel of the Earth to the surface and releasing it in geysers of razor-sharp blades into the sea of R'lyeh soldiers. The blades were not mortal to the Warriors of Ulm thanks to their might and thick armor, but they inflicted even more carnage upon the minions of R'lyeh than the flights of arrows, if that was possible. Even the prophet of Sijansur himself, the mighty Tsagosh, was overwhelmed by the onslaught of blades, arrows, and Ulm Warriors.
The sea of spawns, visibly reduced but still vast, receded from the battlefield, leaving behind their uncounted dead and an ankle-deep red mud that stank of rotting fish and seaweed.
There was a momentary peace, there in the rain, as the wounded gasped their last gasps and the living sucked in great lungfulls of the foul air, momentarily thankful for continued life.
But even as the once-numberless horde of spawns dwindled, dark shapes appeared behind their ranks; huge, tentacled, and horrible. From the flanks they slithered, sliding across trails made slick and traversable by the spilling of their minions blood. Behind them billowed a horrible dead-gray fog.
A murmur ran through the lines of Ulm: Sijansur, slayer of men, had appeared. But Mord himself, the godly titan of Ulm, was with his people that day and his command was to stand firm. The faith was strong. Warriors made ready, and volley after volley of arrows was fired at the approaching horrors or into the fog, but to no effect.
Then, with a crack of lightning, the Monsters reached the battlefield and all dissolved to chaos. Men hacked at tentacles and fins only to find their swords pass through the ethereal body of their foe, clank harmlessly against Iron-tough skin, or, worse yet, inflict some small injury only to watch the wound close itself immediately. And though the monsters were ungainly, even helpless-seeming, they proved quite deadly indeed. At last, with their army literally disolving around them, the generals of Ulm crossed their enchanted steel for an oath to Mord and sortied against Gordius, leader of the R'lyeh Mind Lords. Though each felt as if his mind were leaking from his ears (as, horribly, they may have been), each man was driven by a fanaticism for Mord that was beyond cognition. As one, they drove their steel through the four tentacles of Gordius' body, grounding it in the soggy earth before succumbing to the astral predator. And Mord was not blind to their sacrifice. With his remaining magic, Mord opened the sky and called down His Wrath upon the pinned Gordius, blasting its body with one Thunderstrike for each brave general. With it's highly conductive ironskinned flesh and steel grounding, Gordius writhed with electricity for an instant before bursting like a tomato squeezed a Jotuns fist, showing the field with smouldering tentacles and ichor.
Seeing the triumph of their faith, the Ulmsmen let out a raged cheer, and the remaining Aboleth Mind Lords trembled in sympathetic dread; thoughts of Mind Lord mortality, especially great ones such as Gordius, were anathema to the Great Race and shook them as the death of a million slaves would not.
But even as the Mind Lords faltered, the fog rose up as a great wave, blotting out the cowering monsters and hiding the fields of the dead. Silently, it crested and fell across the ranks of Ulm. And from the blood-drenched fields of Minz, only screaming was heard.
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