Last Mission
Volume 5: The Eternal War
---------------------
In every world, there are secret places known only to the World itself and – by extension – the Elemental spirit who inhabits its core.
There are places so deep and dark that no living thing would ever dream of finding it – no thing except the Nameless spirits long forgotten by Man.
One of these hidden places is a deep network of tunnels, intricately webbing across the under dark. These tunnels aren't naturally formed, though, as the tunnels are circular and carved unnervingly smooth.
There, in these long forgotten passageways, creeps a lone, shapeless figure. The creature slinks discreetly through the deep darkness and crawls with its belly nearly touching the ground. Its head is bent low to the floor as it's flesh slowly changes shape.
Its long, hard legs and sharp teeth are replaced by naked, soft flesh. It's previously armored head changes shape and sprouts hair so long that it drapes to the floor, despite the creature standing on two feet now.
The creature then dips its hand into a warm stream of water, then it dunks its head in, drinking greedily and finding brief relief from the hot temperature scorching its feet.
The thing looks down and winces in pain as it feels an empty rumbling in its belly. "Hungry. I'm always hungry."
It reaches out with its hand with fingers outstretched – as if beckoning for something else in the dark.
There is a soft sound of something hard pitter pattering across the floor towards it. Within moments, something is standing next to the creature with a rock hard leg pressing against its side, invitingly.
Smiling, the creature immediately grabs the leg, rips it off the body of its visitor, and crushes the hard shell in its palm. "Hungry!"
Surprisingly, the thing standing next to the creature seems to be undisturbed about having one of its legs ripped off. It even stands by passively while its companion noisily rips away the armor and starts chewing on the raw flesh inside the shell.
Once its meal is finished, the creature sees that its guest is still standing there. Feeling suddenly annoyed, the creature glares at it. "GO AWAY!" it commands mentally.
Neither the creature itself, nor the others down here had ever learned a formal, vocal language before; their master's ability to communicate directly to the mind was all they ever needed.
As the master of this place is eating its fill, it suddenly feels a buzzing in its brain as foreign thoughts stream into its mind. She perks up and looks around "A light? Where?"
The creature reels back in shock; the last time its kind had seen a light was when one of them accidentally discovered fire down here. The red flame had burned some of them, so it was deemed dangerous and banned from use.
"No… this isn't like the fire one of the children made. This fire is coming from the ceiling!"
The creature closes her eyes as thoughts continue streaming into its mind…
… Some of its brethren see a large group of 2 legged figures descend down the hole in the ceiling – shouting strange things at each other with their mouths.
The creature here has no idea that mouths are used for communication, so it thinks the alien trespassers are moving their mouths because they're gnashing their teeth out of hunger or something.
Why else would you move your mouth up and down while you're not eating anything?
The creature feels its mouth salivate as it senses more thoughts sent into its mind. "Whatever. They… smell nice."
---------------------
After completing their mission and finally getting back to the Threshold, several familiar faces are standing at Commander Fisco's desk. Haalfrin, Resburn, Faylin, Jay... and even Fhulk is here.
Jay is holding the orders, and he hands them to Haalfrin. "The Commander put you in charge of the team this time. You've more than proved yourself by now."
Fisco smiles awkwardly, "Well, this WILL be your last mission before our 100 year deal is up, so I'd mind as well let you feel what it's like to be in charge for once."
"Oo! Can I see?" Fhulk butts excitedly as he subconsciously steps towards the parchment containing their orders.
Haalfrin gives a warning glare at Fhulk, "Anyway, little boy. These orders are for us. You have training to do. Off you go."
Once the dragon leaves, Haalfrin reads the orders off the scroll…
---------------------
The mission this time is to go to the main mine that they use to gather Spirit Stone from. Unfortunately, their only stable mine of this stuff is a few hundred miles away from the Threshold, so it's not easy get word from there when the teleport gates are down.
Despite the Miners having Far Speak Medallions, nobody in the Threshold has heard anything from them in days.
The commander fears that something happened to such an important source of resources. Fearing one of the hostile Rehkin Clans had issued an attack, he tells Haalfrin to go and investigate.
Just in case the mine WAS attacked, Fisco is going to need new personnel there as fast as possible. Thus, Haalfrin and his men will be travelling ahead of 100 Threshold soldiers, who will catch up to them as fast as they can.
Once the 100 soldiers reach the mine, they're either going to join the existing stationed forces, or they're going to occupy it themselves until more reinforcements can arrive.
The instructions seem to be pretty straightforward. Go to the mine. Check it out. Try to secure the Mine, or flee with a suitable report.
Just when Haalfrin is about to leave to carry out his orders, Fisco stops him. "By the way," Fisco asks before they leave his office, "how has your language learning been going?"
This has been a really important concern for his team ever since their chief interpreter (Myra) left.
Frowning, Haalfrin replies with embarrassment, "I've been learning the lion clan's language, but it's not going very well."
With a deep sigh, Haalfrin wishes that this world had a unifying language, like how his native world all ended up learning the Brancotte tongue and treated it as "common speak".
Here, however, Haalfrin can't be expected to learn these hundreds to thousands of different languages! His brain isn't freakishly adapted to learning languages like Myra!
So, the Commander sends a translator for one of the Fox clans, since the land their Spirit Stone mine rests on has been leased to them in the middle of the Fox's territory.
---------------------
When the next dawn rises, Haalfrin and his 3 (temporary) subordinates goes to the front of the Threshold to gather with everyone who'll be travelling with them – both the 100 soldiers and the lone Fox guide.
Seeing as how Haalfrin is technically the leader of this expedition, he feels that he needs to address them all. Since they all have already received their orders, all that's left is to introduce each other.
So, Haalfrin gets up on a rock and says, "Commander Fisco put me in charge of this expedition. I'm not one for frilly speeches, so I'll be brief. Me and my 3 companions have always been specifically assigned to missions OUTSIDE the fortress, so leave all the inter-clan interactions to us, unless there's further orders. You're to occupy the mine – not deal with the Clans. Don't die trying to do our job. Me and my soldiers will make sure to let you do your job unhindered. Are we clear!?"
The captain of the platoon claps his heels together, and he solutes – followed by the rest of his men. "We're clear."
"Good. Let's get going."
---------------------
Along the way, Haalfrin feels very little motivation to actually interact with the platoon accompanying them. He can't even remember any of their faces or names, so it's just embarrassing trying to have conversations with them.
Though, the soldiers seem to know about Haalfrin very well, given that he's carrying around the rumored dragon bone ax. This must be the dragon slayer, right?
Since Haalfrin has been out of the Threshold on missions back to back for nearly 100 years now, his very existence in the fortress is more of a myth or even just a rumor. People hardly ever see him; they just hear about him.
And so, they try striking up conversations with him every now and then out of curiosity, but Haalfrin just keeps to himself and sharpens his ever growing arsenal of weapons.
The only time he actually grows interested in talking back to these soldiers is during the long march on their 1st day.
They aren't very far into the day when one of the more fanatic young men walks up and solutes excitedly. "Haalfrin! Remember me!?" the boy exclaims.
Haalfrin blinks rapidly, then looks at them with a blank face. "…What?"
"I'm one of the boys who sailed with you from Stanrock Island!"
"Oh! I remember you now!" Haalfrin smiles awkwardly. In reality, he doesn't remember their faces at all even now; he only remembers the fact that there were a few boys who came across the sea. He even vaguely remembers telling them all about the Threshold, and how they'd have to work really hard at becoming a mage to get there.
Now that he thinks about it, he should be proud that one of them actually got here.
So, Haalfrin pats the guy on the shoulder and asks, "How's everyone else?"
"Oh them?" the young man smiles, "Nella and Vic ended up adopting all 14 of us; it made it easier on the paperwork. Under their tutelage, 3 of us became mages, though I'm the only 2 Gate mage among us. The rest passed away."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's ok," the young man waves him off, "They lived till they were old, and they died happy."
"What was your Name again?" Haalfrin asks.
"Garr."
"Good to meet you, Garr" Haalfrin nods. "Well, it was a nice coincidence I got to see a familiar face."
Haalfrin really doesn't want to keep talking, but since they're in the middle of marching, he can't come up with an excuse to shut the boy up; it's not like they have anything more urgent to do than walk.
And so, Haalfrin lets the boy jabber on incessantly until his throat goes sore. Every now and then, he just nods as if he's listening, then keeps focusing on walking.