Company of the East Road

Author's Note: This story is borne of the mention of three 'random' names of the dead at a recent kin event (news of three fellows killed while guarding a caravan bound for Imladris on Company business). It offers some background for a future kin RP about the items taken.

Time for Action

Durthang burned quietly.

Not with open flame.
Not yet.

But beneath the fortress, hidden in forgotten maintenance shafts and abandoned furnace tunnels, death had already been planted by Deorla’s own hands.

The battle outside still raged.

Echoes in Udûn

Two months had passed, and Udûn had begun to whisper again.

Not with the crackle of forges or the grind of war machines—
but with the rumor of her.

Deorla the Herald.
Deorla the Returning Flame.

Some orcs swore they saw a pale silhouette stalking the borders.
Others claimed their patrols were cursed—missing men, silent blades in the dark, fires snuffed while their backs were turned.

Nothing decisive.
Nothing final.

Ashes That Answered

Udûn had grown quieter.

Not weaker — never that — but quieter.

The forges of Anglach no longer roared without pause. Deorla had ordered the fires controlled, rationed, disciplined. She had no intention of burning through strength too early. Ugrukhôr’s supply lines had been bled carefully rather than shattered. She did not want chaos.

She wanted ownership.

But Anglach was not yet fully hers.

For weeks she had haunted it.

(( This is happening about four months after this story here: https://laurelinarchives.org/node/66594 ))

In a small tavern in Cardolan in Herne to be exact, a weird figure appears, wearing all gold and black outfit with a golden scythe, you can clearly tell he's searching for someone, or something.

Deorla did not have to search long.

Sereg had chosen his ground with the instinct of a born commander — and she recognized it immediately. His base lay cradled in a bowl of blackened stone near Anglach, the mountains rising steeply on all sides like clenched fists. Only a single road led inward, narrow and steep, choked with sharpened wooden stakes and iron-spiked barricades. Watchtowers rose at measured intervals, each manned and alert. Fires burned low and disciplined, never flaring high enough to betray their numbers.

OOC - Author's Note:

Naridalis returned to the kin house late in the night. The dust of the road was matted into her cloak, and as she entered, she finds a letter on the ground by the door, where it should not be.   
  

The march-cry of orcs echoed far behind her as Deorla slipped deeper into Udûn, moving not along the obvious roads, but through slag-filled ravines and forgotten service tunnels known only to those who had once ruled this land rather than merely survived it.

She did not approach Anglach by the main causeway.