Heroes of Newerth

Story

Jeraziah watched the burning piles of corpses. His soldiers. Men and women, humans and beasts. They were killed because they were defending each other, their faith and their home. Their king. Martyrs roared their prayers beside the fires that crackled and sizzled as the bodies were burned. A shamanic monkey with blood-stained fur chanted words of mourning for the fallen, and though Jeraziah didn't understand the language, he knew exactly what the words meant. The priests did this work for the souls of the dead, helping them into the afterlife that awaited them. Not so long ago, Jeraziah would have taken part in the ceremony. Now he simply watched as the bodies were cremated to make sure they didn't have to be killed again. He recognized faces in the flames. They were friends he had shared a meal with the night before the dawn raid. They grimaced as the fire touched them. Jeraziah knew it was the heat tensing the dead flesh and muscle, but he still fought the urge to reach into the pyres and pull them out. Perhaps there was still a spark of life in them, a faint light he could hold in his hands to make it glow again and give it back to a desperate family. The faces reddened, blistered and blackened. The king did not look away. Only when the flesh was gone and the empty skulls stared back at him did he turn to the other fires burning beside the dead Legion warriors. The demon bodies emitted a foul, acrid smoke and burned stubbornly. Most of the creatures were born in fire and needed the Pyromancer's attention to succumb to the flames. "Whatever it takes," Jeraziah had told them. "There is nothing left but ash. Then dump it with blessed water and bury it all." The Hellbourne piles were smaller than the Legion's. That said nothing about the actual number of casualties, for the demons had a habit of eating their dead even in the chaos of battle, but Jeraziah knew he had lost too many. He also knew it could have been much worse. The raid had been successful. It was one of several initiatives by the Paragons, whose presence had immediately changed the course of the war. They had also changed the alliances within the Legion - the Holy Order found their presence blasphemous, and some members of the King's War Council found their cold, detached deliberations and loss estimates offensive - but Jeraziah could not dwell on that now. The Paragons were at work. That was all that mattered. The URSA corps had been silenced by the overwhelming might of the Argentine wizards. Temporarily, perhaps, but the king was savoring every moment while the self-righteous URSA licked their wounds and tried to cobble something together against the ancient, elemental magic of the Paragons. And as much as Jeraziah welcomed this sorcery, the knowledge of Newerth they carried with them was perhaps even more valuable. The Paragons knew the land as it had once been, its secrets, and they sensed every new disturbance in Newerth, from the smallest leaf settling on the floor of the Rulian swamps to a monument toppling in a valley of the Sang-La Mountains. The crystals in their bodies communicated with the massive rock faces of the Iron Mountains that glistened with silica, with the grains of sand and dust that blew across the Great Desert, with the tiny fragments absorbed through the roots into the flora of Caldavar, Death's Cradle, Fúathmoor and even the enigmatic Luminary. To the Paragons, the corruption of Newerth was like a bloodstain soaking a white shroud. They knew where it was at all times and where it could be thwarted. And to Jeraziah, that information was better than any scouting reconnaissance or bestial divination. The Emerald and Bloodstone Paragons had shown Jeraziah the ancient, hidden path through the Ardu Foothills to the west of the Burning Fields. Considered insurmountable, the promontory served as a natural barrier to the keep of hell and the endless corruption that flowed from the Scar. While this kept the demons from pouring into Newerth en masse, it also made it impossible for Jeraziah to conduct a proper siege without moving north into the Iron Mountains or south into the Great Desert. Both would lead to countless casualties through attrition before the actual battle had even begun. After this small raid, an advance into Hellbourne territory, Jeraziah allowed himself to hope that there was another way. He left the smoldering fires and found the two Paragons watching the sun rise over the eastern mountains. They were slightly wounded, but not bleeding, nor in need of the food or wine that humans craved after coming close to death. "You wouldn't tell me anything before," said the king. "And what about now? Why didn't we know about this path through the Ardu? My patrols have searched every crevice of these rocks." "Over it, yes," said the lapis lazuli wizard. "Not through it? Or into it?" The emerald sorceress nodded once. "The path is not open to those who have not walked it." Jeraziah gritted his teeth. The Paragons' penchant for cryptic statements and answers