Hopping to a stop, his legs hummed with energy. Walking to cool himself down, the strider's small, tight chest still sucked air greedily. Cocking his head left and right, Krogenar pulled his neck bones back into place with a dull crackle. His breathing slowed, and his legs began to cool. He shook his hands at his sides, and rolled his wide shoulders. A cool breeze toyed with his shaggy red-brown hair, like a surprise visit from an old friend. The sweat on his brow was chilled by it, and streaked down the sides of his stubbled face. Putting each of his thickly calloused thumbs at the point where his shaggy eyebrows touched, he pressed them outwards. Sweat squirted past his fingers and streamed down in his cheeks.
Ardeep Forest lay behind him, and the open plains lay ahead. His mental almanac of this area told him he would sleep well. The grass of these plains was especially thick and luxurious. At night he'd would lay down, and pull the greeness around him into a thick pad, and sleep in the plains' perfume. The splash of stars would swirl its chaotic lullaby for him tonight.
The sun began to dip behind the distant mountains beyond the plains. In the twilight, the half-orc walked serenely in the grass, with no particular thought in his mind, and his feet moving in no particular direction. Nightfall was about to descend.
He looked up at the sky, childlike, and waited for the first stars to arrive.
A flashing white dawn rose up over the mountain's shoulders. Krogenar's eyebrow's arched, and he stared at the unnatural dawn in wonder. A white brilliance built up slowly, and night was turned to day. And then it receded to darkness again. A moment ago, the grass had waved around him in a fitful breeze. Now it became still. The air around him seemed to somehow recede, to pull away. Fingers pulling at the grass, Krogenar tried to rouse them back into their dance - but they would not. The green strands bowed their heads solemnly.
He squinted into the distance, and horror began twisting in his stomach. His legs suddenly came alive again, hot in an instant. Instinct warred with the doom in his heart. His head sagged down against his chest. Somewhere, he knew, another half-orc would be on a mountaintop somewhere, undead arms open in a rapturous embrace. Westbridge was gone. He longed to picture the Mystrans huddled in The Archive, but he could not be sure. Built using the funds and resources of The Pax Faerunis, it was to all outside observers an ordinary library. In that deep shaft underground, they, and the knowledge that they could fit inside would be safe from The Rok's impact.
If they went inside.
Krogenar lifted his head, and peered out between fear-sweat soaked strands of hair. His hands twitched where they hung loosely at his sides, reminding the strider that they were ready to act - if he could only think of something to be done.
The first white clouds could be seen now, racing along the ground towards him. Small flecks of black could be seen bobbing on their surface. A snarl twisted its way onto his face, and he screamed at the wall of whiteness.
The shout's sound was clipped to silence as his lungs explosively decompressed, and the strider was swept away, limbs pulled from their fleshly moorings, joining what remained of him in the chaotic flotsam of the shock wave.
Krogenar bolted upright from his bed of grass. The stars drifted above him, and the smell of wildflowers drifted on the wind. Hringorl, his great bear companion snored softly some distance away. He lay back again, and tried to sleep.
