A Relic Called Reaper

Sully

Sully was back underground, sadly. After defeating Sier Fredrickson at Crossing Hills with a massive manmade sink pit and dual simultaneous landslides, they were lying low. There were no survivors.

They had all gone underground and divided up. Sully ended up with mostly non-warriors. Most Undien were not soldiers. Some were Rats, diggers of the tunnels integral for the success at Crossing Hills. Some were healers like the Green Growers, though they gave healers a bad name. Most were simply displaced people, sick, poor, tired, rotten, people. Many weren't even Undien. Many Æureans, Felene, Gnomad, Avidians, and others were with them. Most were children. Sick, hungry children. 

Rahaf was one such girl. Rahaf lost both her legs to Rott and neglect. She was forced from her home by the Duke's men and made to walk unattended and untreated until blisters grew into severe gangrene. Her parent lost their land and home. They had no food, no money, no medicine. They certainly couldn't afford prosthetics. So she hung onto Sully's back, climbing his spinal growths like they were a play toy. Her arms had grown incredibly strong was quite strong. 

Sully wanted to make the Duke more than anything. That wasn't true. He wanted to feed her more. Sully had gotten a nice old crabapple in his rations. He gave it to Rahaf, and the smile on her face was enough to make everything he had been through worth it. Sully would cry if doing so didn't risk further infection. Instead, sang an old Keltish song from Rahaf. 

"Sully, Rahaf asked. "Can you tell me the story of the Messiah?" It wasn't the first time Sully was asked, and it wouldn't be the last. 

The story of how a farmer like Grimm came into possession of a powerful ancient relic of the Progenitors was well known to Sully. In part, it was his story. The Reaper had been the symbol of the Sullivan clan for generations. Sully's ancestor, Old Sullivan, as his father had called him, had dug it up as in a landlord's fields. He had been a poor peasant farmer worker. It looked no different from any other scythe. It was quite ordinary. It had a shillelagh stick staff and a dark grey stone-like blade that was sharp as anything. Old Sullivan had used it, and his harvest had been so rich that the landlord hired him full-time. Eventually, he accrued enough to buy a small plot of land. He hired his fellow farmers and paid and fed them well. Eventually, he even bought out the landlord before him. Old Sullivan died a rich and powerful lord in Kelton. 

The purpose of the Scythe was forgotten over the years, and it took on more of a ceremonial role. By the time Sully was a boy, his grandfather hung it above the doorway as a source of luck and fortune. It hadn't served either when the Duke and the Pax Publican Army arrived. They arrested Sully's father, stole his land, and gave it to a Paxan Landlord. Sully had been away at war and later served in the Knights of Undien and knew nothing of his father's fate as he languished and rotted in a cell. 

One day, one of the Rott-inflicted farmers had demanded more food. He was beaten by the landlord's goons, and a riot had broken out. In the chaos, one farmer made it into the manor. He claimed Reaper as a token and used it to execute the landlord. That was how all of this started. By the time Sully came home, he found not his father, who had died in prison, nor the landlord who had robbed his father, but Grimm the Reaper running his father's land. He was a common nobody farmer, elevated by Sully's own people to lord. No, to a King. Sully did what he knew he must. He swore himself to Grimm's service. Then he planted the seeds of war. 

"There are more out there like us. I can call on the Greengrowers, the Knights of Undien, and the other Undien lords. We can take more than one lowly keep," Sully declared

This seemed to be just what Grimm had wanted to hear. He charged Sully with command of his forces and set him to assembling their people. They would strike the farms in mass. They would strike while the Paxans were off-guard, licking their wounds from the battle with the Wolves and the Royalists. 

The legend had been Sully's idea. That the Many, Æurea herself, had buried the Reaper deep in the ground of Grimm's croft plot. That was how the legend began. How the Messiah was born. With the fight they were fighting, they needed religious zealotry. The need devotion. They needed a King.

Once Sully told the story, it took off. Many thought it was left there for Grimm to find. The Messiah. Sully didn't even have to believe it. Hop has a way of spreading among the downtrodden. The oppressed. The Underfoot. But they were going to shake this kingdom up from below. 

They came to an open cavern filled with deep roots. The Gnomad Rat is leading their party called a halt. 

"This is it. This is the Heart of the Darkwood," the moleman declared.