Sons of Ironstorm - Book 1: Griffon's Rise

The End of a Rebellion

The Southern Aramas, a land considered by many peoples and races as the crossroads of the continent. With its endless, rolling hills carpeted with lush grasses, broken only occasionally by scattered clumps of shrubs and trees, there was no questioning why the Quada called this place the Ffta, the Sea of Grass. A traveler could stand and look in every direction and see only those rolling hills, given motion by the wind rushing through the chest-high grass, making it truly appear like waves on a sea.

The grasses grew in this place for good reason. The Southern Aramas was fed by no less than the waters of four great rivers, including the undeniable Hadron. Carrying rich silt from other lands and depositing it here for over thousands of cycles, those rivers had turned the Sea of Grass into a land blessed with a fertility seen in no other place on Ramnor. And for this reason, it was coveted by more than a few.

And yet, no single being had the power to lay claim to the vastness of the Southern Aramas, with borders broad and continental. To the east, purple with distance, stood the snow-capped heights of the Giant's Teeth, the vast escarpment that marked the beginning of the great Hammer Peninsula and the Sea of Polua beyond. To the north lay the central Aramas, the heart of the continent and the domain of the human kingdom of Talemon. And to the south were the vast deserts and swamps of the Scattered Kingdoms, which were hemmed in on the northwest and west by the dusty slopes of the Baek Akhan Mountains and by the sea to the south and east.

Within sight of the Baek Akhan, and perched on the border of Talemon and Baal Iafra, the northern most of the Scattered Kingdoms, sat the great southern capital of Tal Yraal. A massive heap of stone and earth raised seven cycles ago by the engineers of Nerrod's Southern Command, it was an earthen leviathan casting a baleful gaze southward, a bulwark against northern incursions by armies out of the Scattered Kingdoms.

A tenday to the northeast of that southern capital sat the great southern fortress of Tal Gendon, Tal Yraal's twin in defending Talemon's southern border. With walls and towers cut from the living stone of the Giant's Teeth, which tumbled around it as they fell into the swirling waters of the northern Polua, and garrisoned by soldiers of the Eastern Command, Tal Gendon also cast a watchful eye to the south and to the east, where it guarded the passable foot of the Teeth.

Here the Giant's Teeth became the Asein Nakada, the Jaw of the Giant, a series of low, sprawling hills that grew into the Teeth as they passed northward. Talemon's enemies in the Hammer had attempted to pass into southern Talemon not a few times through the Nakada Hills, to bypass Tal Furan and the Keep of Storms, only to find Tal Gendon waiting for them.

Yet, despite Talemon's strong presence in the southern Aramas, no human could truly lay claim to the vastness of the rolling grasslands. This was the domain of the Quada, the center of the centaurs' great Aramas realm, and home to hundreds of their communities. Here, the Herds ruled, accompanied only by the animals of the Aramas and watched over by the silvery crescent of Rimnor, a horizon spanning half globe dominating the western sky. 

 It was into this vast Sea of Grass that Tromn's quada marched side by side with Jerald's humans, using the arrow-straight line of the ancient Summer's Way highway as a guide to the rebel stronghold of Kiersee Reach.

With Bren's attention removed from the scene of the ambush, the magically strengthened rain storm quickly dissipated, taking with it the heavy fog created to hide Vegadorn's troops in Drell's Gap. As the thick rain clouds and clinging fog evaporated, a zephyr blew up from the south to replace the cold, driving rains from the west and east, fueled by the heat of the desert. 

 Hot and aggressive as only a desert wind could be, it dried the hard ground and sent the man-high grasses rippling like waves on the ocean, yet again giving life to the region's name. On horseback, they still came to a man's chest. Jerald, King of Talemon, found himself staring at the undulating green as if he stood on the prow of a ship as he led the forces of retribution southward. South, to Ur Morun and his queen.