CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Prologue!

“They’re breaking through!”

“How's this happening? They’re Penguins for Ascetic’s sake!”

Daniella looked on in horror as the once serene Elven Camp was ruthlessly stomped flat by an onrushing horde of monsters. She had admired the Camp's strange, ethereal beauty, where the Elven craftsmanship had blended nature and tundra together into one scintillating whole. At the same time, she’d been cautioning against it ever since the first day she’d been exiled to Jotunheim.

“Aesthetics do not equal defensibility.” She let out a soft growl of frustration as she watched dozens of enormous Penguins bounce over the walls, squawking in what seemed to be mocking laughter to her ears. “I told them! Joe warned me, and no one would listen! It would’ve been better not to have the walls in the first place if they’re just going to be impairing our vision and not helping us.”

Daniella’s heart was racing with a mix of fear and determination. She didn’t have much in the way of combat skills, having always preferred to be an observer, to study and appreciate the world around her. To build up the skyline in a way that both preserved natural wonders and offered functionality to the people living in the buildings. That was why she’d joined the Elves in the first place: she had assumed that the sheer beauty of their creations would be what she’d been searching for her entire life.

“But look how useless it is.” Letting out yet another frustrated grunt, Daniella turned and sprinted toward the Camp, her feet barely touching the ground as she raced to find some modicum of safety. Even so, compared to the Elves fleeing around her, she may as well have been running through a swimming pool filled with molasses.

*Hwabam!*

A tiny scream escaped her lips as chunks of glittering stone blasted through the air around her, some small shards of stone digging into her exposed back. The Architect stumbled and barely managed to catch herself, throwing her weight forward and performing a small hop that put her just out of range of a hulking Penguin that *splatted* on the ground behind her. It was uninjured, and quickly shook the dust off of its fluffy feathers. She turned her head, meeting its eyes, and it let out a squawk that would sound more fitting coming from the maw of a lion.

Adrenaline surging, she leaped over the crumbled ruins of the wall and sprinted toward the only building that was still standing. Unfortunately, even though it represented the best chance at safety, Daniella also understood that it was the main target of the incursion. The Treehouse, the Elven version of a Beginner-rank Village Hall, was acting as a loadstone for all of the hundreds of monsters boiling over or through the wall that had been meant to protect the Camp.

The Hoardlings were swaying through the Camp, going out of their way to attack anyone too slow to keep ahead of them. Their eyes were gleaming with hunger and greed as they ripped apart tents, smashed through stable structures, all the while being driven toward the Treehouse. Daniella quickly scanned the area, realizing that they were surrounded on all sides. She got closer to the Treehouse, noting that every single Elven defender had vanished from view. That could only mean one thing, “Those pompous brats left us out here to die!”

Already she could see her fellow humans pounding on the entrance to the Treehouse, but no matter how they struggled, the door wouldn’t budge. Desperately trying to find a way to escape the tide, Daniella turned off her original path and ran toward a structure that had already been mostly destroyed. It was a collapsed building of some kind that had space among the rubble to hide, and she could only hope that it would suffice to keep her from danger long enough to make her escape.

She would escape, given the chance. Not just from the monsters of Jotunheim, but from the Elven Theocracy that had cut off her access to resources and study material, and only gave her a pittance of food, coinage, and a place to sleep. “Abyss, now I won't even have that.”

Not for the first time, she cursed at herself for not following along with Joe when she had the chance. She knew he was thriving, as was the community he’d built, and if she would have just gone along… Daniella shook that thought off, remembering the circumstances she’d been in while Joe had been making his own escape. If she had tried to run from the Elves while standing next to the Children of Light, she wouldn't have gotten the light rebuke of a few years in exile—she would’ve been tossed into a prison camp somewhere. “Which… this is kind of that. How did I not realize that till now?”

Cowering among the rocks, her whirling thoughts latched onto a single question: what did she do to make them so angry at her? Before she could search any deeper for an answer, vines erupting from the ground across the area caught her attention. The Elves were invoking their spells, growing plants and attempting to channel nature's wrath against the invaders.

The vines were thin and pathetic, freezing in the air even as they grew. Even the weakest of the Penguins mostly ignored the lashing of the plants as they threw themselves bodily at the tree house. Each *thud* drove home her resolve to get out of here and try again somewhere else, hopefully somewhere no one knew her. “Or maybe… I could find a way to get to-”

With a shriek of tortured wood, the Treehouse toppled to the side, collapsing on the Elves still within it. Most of them easily survived the rubble, springing out with swords and bows drawn. The leadership of the Camp, faces etched with determination, circled together and formed a defensive line, their weapons gleaming with reflected sunlight and bright enchantments. With practiced, coordinated precision, they threw everything they had against the onslaught, pushing the Penguins and Hoardlings back with each swing and thrust.

Settlement upgrade (Camp to Hamlet) failed!

“Well, isn't that just the icing on the cake.” Daniella decided that it was time to put her plan into action. Creeping along the ground, sprinting from chunks of stone to blasted detritus, she quickly moved out to the very edge of the Elven-claimed space. A harrowing, beautiful voice let out a mournful cry that slowly faded instead of being abruptly cut off. “I don't know how they do that… seriously, they die as if they’re in a Hollywood production.”

She was certain that the last of the Elven protectorate had fallen, and with the destruction of the Treehouse, the monsters were scattering and looking for any tasty morsels they could find. With a last burst of energy, she escaped through an enormous hole in the wall and started running out into the vast, snow-covered landscape.

For a few long minutes, she was certain that she had escaped. Daniella still had a smile on her face as a pair of blue eyes snapped open in front of her, and she was frozen solid.

You have been slain by an Ancient Ice Salamander! Respawning in 20 hours. Ooh, bad luck! Your spawn point has been destroyed, which means that you’ll respawn at the nearest aligned settlement. Stay warm out there!