The Raid On Castle Storm
Tyler Needham

 

CHAPTER ONE
As the first rays of dawn came on to the sky, Fire Paladin Coldknife drew his sword. His mission was to lead his foot soldiers into the Great Hall of Castle Storm. The evil Skull Paladins lived in Castle Storm, and they were very dangerous; being very skilled in both blade and magic.
In Coldknife’s legion he had many swordfighters, a good amount of archers, but only two mages. These mages were Fire Mages, and they used good offensive magic like fireballs. Coldknife himself was a paladin, a high-ranking swordfighter.
Coldknife now rallied his troops and his legion came closer to the castle’s defenses. As they got closer, Coldknife commanded his troops to hide in the dense forest on the side of the road. When he was sure that the defenses were not enough to hold them out, he commanded his archers to secretly start picking off the castle’s defense on the walls. When the work was done, Coldknife said to his archers, “Good work. Now we must make it through the gate and into the central courtyard.”
At this point, the legion took out the tree-trunk battering ram the mysterious Tree Paladins (who were not their allies, but hated the Skull Paladins so they wanted to help the Fire Paladins destroy them) had made for them. When they got closer to the gate, they heard noises in the central courtyard. The Skull Paladins must be having a sacrifice ritual, thought Coldknife. He grimaced at the thought. The Skull Paladins were known for making sacrifices of their own people, while those people were still alive! They would call forth their evil god, Death, and he would inflict as much misery as possible on the sacrifice, then, if this wasn’t bad enough already, he would take the sacrifice into his realm, and they would be his slave forever.
Coldknife decided that if the Skull Paladins were having a sacrifice, they wouldn’t notice the battering ram on the gate. So with this reassurance, he commanded his legion to hit down the gate.

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Standing in the central courtyard of Castle Storm, the Skull Paladins leader, Chorm, said the enchantment to bring their god Death to the world. “Shirak uak eak deak coak sho, sho, shirak!” As he said the final words the ground started trembling around the sacrificial alter. With a sound like a volcanic eruption, Death exploded out of the ground roaring like a lion that was really, really mad.
“Where is my sacrifice!” Death roared.
“I am right here, ready for you to kill me,” answered the man that was the sacrifice, for he thought it would be a great honor to serve Death.
“Stand back!” yelled death to the Skull Paladins as he got out his wicked looking curved knife. Death then started to carve out the sacrifice man’s nose. After that he moved on to the organs, taking them out carefully and, using magic, making the sacrifice man stay alive while he did this. Lastly he cut out the man’s brain and heart and said, “You now belong to me in both mind and soul!” And with an earsplitting cry from the man, he and the sacrificed man went down into the ground, to Death’s realm.
“Go check on the defenders on the walls,” said Chorm to a soldier.
“Yes sir!” he replied quickly. When he got to the top of the walls he yelled back down to his commander, “They’re all dead sir!”
“How could this happen?” muttered Chorm. As he was thinking the matter over he heard a banging on the front gates. “Get into defensive positions everyone.” Then he went to his personal guards and whispered, “Come with me to the top of the inner tower.”
       


Chapter Two
Coldknife knew he was almost into the castle. He had heard the shout of the soldier, and he knew they would be ready for him. So, when he thought there would be only one more bang on the door to open it, he got his archers and his mages into as good positions as he could to inflict the most damage in the beginning of the battle. He was a bit worried because his sword fighters had to carry the battering ram, so they wouldn’t get into the battle very fast.
No matter, we’ll do fine anyway. Then he ordered the foot soldiers to hit the gates with the final blow. As the gates flew open, the mages called up their fireball spells and the archers fired their arrows. After the first volley of arrows and the fireballs were sent (the fireballs had burnt to the crisp the people they had hit, and they had hit a considerable amount of people), the sword fighters dropped the batter ram and heading into the battle drawing their swords. A huge cloud of smoke went up around the Skull Paladins and, not being able to see them the legion stopped the attack. They found when the smoke cleared that none of the Skull Paladins were there anymore.
Coldknife sheathed his sword and commanded, “ Come, we must go into that door on the tower to find the Skull Paladins and the Great Hall.” They soon went into the door and, cautiously, looked around the first floor of the tower and there was no one to be seen. The bottom floor of the tower was not well kept and smelled gruesome. It also had lots of dust and spider webs. The Great Hall was on the third floor (there were eight floors in the tower) of the tower. Coldknife led his legion hurriedly to the stairs.

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Chorm was sitting in his huge, ornamental chair on the eighth floor when a messenger from the main group of troops ran in. “Sir,” he said, gasping for breath. “The enemy has made it onto the first floor of the tower. We had a devastation loss in the courtyard, leaving a third of our men dead. We used the smoke potions to retreat to the third floor of the tower, to hold off enemy attacks from the Great hall. We have regrouped and we think we can hold them off for a while, but we will need reinforcements from our allies, the Earth Paladins. I doubt that they will have reinforcements from either of their allies, the Lava Paladins or the Sun Paladins. But, the Sun Paladins have a fortress only ten miles from here, so if they need assistance, they could call on them and then we will be surely lost. I think that you should leave now and go to one of our more fortified fortresses in the north. That is all I have to say,” the messenger finished.
“No, I will not retreat! We will hold this castle!” yelled Chorm. “We will not be defeated!” Finished, Chorm dismissed the messenger and told him orders to have all his knights defend this castle with their lives. He then told his personal guards to seal the entrance to the throne room and not let anyone in no matter who they are. We must hold this castle, Chorm thought, or my reputation will be destroyed.


Chapter Three
“We must act stealthily, or we are surely lost,” whispered Coldknife to his knights. They had already planned to get to the second floor, than, if there were no resistance there, they would attack the third floor quickly, hopefully surprising the evil knights and killing them before they were surely aware of what was happening. After that, it would be an easy task to kill Chorm.
As they approached the second floor, they heard creaking in the floorboards above. Oh no, they must have guards on the second floor thought the knights. This made them all the more ready and all the more quiet.
“Ready your swords and bows,” Coldknife whispered as they approached the door to the second floor. In an instant Coldknife threw open the door and yelled his battle cry. Then he noticed that there was no one on the second floor. The castle was just old and its floorboards creaked.
“Come on, we must hurry to the door to the third floor.”
As they opened the door they ran straight into the defenses of the Skull Paladins. The Skull Paladins though, were surprised, but they fought back well. As Coldknife slashed his sword, he saw the bodies of enemies and friends fall. This powered him more than ever. He went into a frenzy, slaying every enemy in sight. The Skull Paladins were so surprised at this onslaught, that they yelled a retreat and ran back to the fourth floor.
 
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The Skull Paladins were at a great loss. They had lost almost half their men and they needed to regroup. This being the case, they decided to go to the seventh floor, so that there would be no more retreats, but only a final battle.
They then retreated to the seventh floor to begin readying themselves. First of all, they gathered all the furniture in the room together and used it to barricade the door to the seventh floor.
“We need to hold them for as long as we can,” said one of the officers. “So that our lord will have time to call reinforcements.” Hearing this, the Skull Paladins started making defensive positions around the floor, readying their arrows on their bows so they would not be surprised again.
They then sent a messenger to tell Chorm to call reinforcements. Since the door to the eighth floor was barricaded, the messenger sent a note under the door. The Personal Guard of Chorm read the message and relayed it to Chorm. After seeing this, Chorm told one of his messengers to send a Phoenix to deliver a message to the Earth Paladins. The messenger then got the Phoenix from it’s perch, and showed it the message. The Phoenix, being very intelligent, read the message quickly, then grabbed it and flew off. Satisfied with this, Chorm told his servants to bring him dinner.

To be continued…

      

 

 

Copyright © 2003 Tyler Needham
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"