Fallenreaper
Ti
Jumbus
Silly
Echotech71
Astro
Kuro
Chronic
Lildear18
pantothenicAct One: The Defense of Relouse____ __ _ _
Chapter Five: Pyrrhic_________ __ __ _ _
đť… Relouse, Parrence
They fought down to the very bitter end: two immense armies relentlessly throwing bodies against each other until the gates of Relouse closed, the last few defenders were left to die for their nation, and powerful magics came down to form an impenetrable protective shell around the town's walls.
For every Kol that pounded at the stone with fire, force, and fury, there was an Eleanor on the other side. For every Hrothgar, an Arcel, for every Sweyn, a Talit. Relouse stood firm in the face of the onslaught. From their redoubt, the defenders hammered back at the Eskandr horde and the King's banner was raised that night from the steeple of Notre Dame de la Liberté. Try as they might, the Southmen could not prize it forth nor set it ablaze.
Terror stalked the night for hours yet, people killing and dying for ideas: Parrence, Eskand, friendship, hatred, vengeance, faith. Nerves frayed and bodies wearied. The Gift was called upon to shore up flagging strength and rebuild broken flesh. Every time ground was given, it was taken. Sleep found no purchase where it could very well lead to death, and the making of war continued.
It was during the later hours of Ipté, by Parrench reckoning, that the King of Kings called upon his army to step back from the walls. They gathered what they could from their ships and began to move inland, first trickling and then streaming past the towers and parapets of Relouse. Some were bloody and sullen. Some sang as they marched: paeans to their gods, bawdy war songs, promises to return. If the city still stood, so too did the Eskandr on Parrench land, and they were not to be easily rooted out.
As the first rays of the sun stretched their hazy golden fingers across the dew-covered ground, banners hung limp and wet from flagposts and ramparts. Knights slept sitting propped against walls. People walked the streets, eyes wandering, necks craning, gazing up at their changed home and hoping that the fireballs, lightning bolts, and boulders of their enemies had not struck the small places within that they called their own.
Yet, as the final wisps of smoke petered out within the confines of Relouse or were torn to ribbons by the persistent drizzle that had replaced the night's furious storm, fire hungered elsewhere in earnest. Work of Tourarre horsemen, Hrothgar would later claim, four hundred longships burned on the beach, black smoke from their deaths billowing over the city: symbol of some kind of victory.
Among the first to step out from the protection of the walls was Arcel, his arm linked with that of his beloved. If the Queen was a radiant dawn, her golden hair and silver armour glowing against her grim backdrop, the king was a solemn dusk, walking with the deaths of thousands stacked upon his young shoulders.
Casualties lay about the killing fields of Relouse, scattered, dessicated, piled in great stinking mounds that reeked of blood, burnt flesh, and feces. As the drizzle faded and droplets clung to them, slowly drying as another day began, the flies, newly hatched at this time of year, came upon a feast. Crows and dogs picked at the bodies, tearing at these things that had once been sons and daughters, that had once held hopes, fears, and dreams, that had laughed, loved, and wondered at the world, until they no longer looked like the people they had been. Still, there were so very many that the animals would gorge themselves for weeks and the poppies would grow thick for years to come.
Arcel did not flinch from his duty. He walked his path as king and only his beloved felt the tightening of his grip around her fingers or the quiver in his voice. He stood by the ocean, staring out into its greyish-blue bulk for a moment before turning and giving his address to the people who would bring news of the battle back to Solenne. Behind him fires guttered among the blackened skeletons of the Eskandr fleet. Somewhere beyond the low-lying hills and the forest on the horizon lay the men and women who had come here to kill his people.
đť… Four Miles Northwest
It was barely six kilometers away that the Eskandr made their camp, near the coast on the way to Port Morilles. The force was vast but ragged. In the early morning sky, behind and around them, rose tails of smoke that spiraled up from ransacked farmsteads. Some ate greedily from their provisions or their plunder, others teetered on their feet, standing guard. Still others dozed where they could, collapsing and lying on the ground now that the rain had abated.
Yet, spreading out from this epicentre, foraging and raiding parties hacked down trees, looted and burned homes, and hunted game. This land was not theirs but it was not so different and they now had no choice but to make it a temporary home, perhaps in preparation for something more permanent for their children and their children's children. They could only hope, for Eskand, cold and bitter, both made them and constrained them.
Between their tents and bedrolls, by their bonfires and stewing pots paced Hrothgar: a tireless presence the entire day amongst their ranks. He joined them in mourning or celebration, offered words of praise and encouragement, assured them that this fight was now there to be won and that the gods were with them. Why, even now, he could feel Mother warming their fires, Father mending and crafting, Sister's light and laughter in the camp, and Brother's strength and daring in the parties that ventured out. These visits from their king filled the cups of rank and file and nobility alike, buoying their spirits and imbuing them with energy and vigour.
It was all the Gift of Essence and the minds of young men and women who wanted to believe. In truth, Hrothgar did not know if the Gods were with them. He did not even know if the Gods were real. But they had to be. There was no other choice: they had to be because his people needed them. His people were hurling their lives at the feet of the Gods so that it was not on his account that they threw themselves into the fire.
It weighed on him - it would not be a lie to say so - the sacrifice demanded of this generation. Children, half of them, still boys and girls in mind and spirit if no longer in body, and part of him recoiled at the barbarity of the task he had set before them, at the way that their religion not only justified but glorified it. And yet, his guilt did not cut long or deeply. Their lives were the stones that paved tomorrow's road, that gave the Eskandr a chance to remain what they were. The Parrench were as blades of grass and, where you mowed one down, more would spring up to take his place. That they would crawl like ants over this continent, that they would seduce his people, coerce them, convert them until there was no more Eskand: of this he was certain.
Unless something was done.
Unless something was done, the Greenlanders would not stop. They were too many, too greedy, and they did not know how. Their lands afforded them advantages that his people did not have, and avarices. Extinguished would be the flame of his culture, his people, their names: fallen by the wayside of time, something to read about in dusty old scrolls. The excitement of gathering for the Althing on a sharp sommer's day when the bugs hummed thick in the air would be no more, the childhood games of Thistles and Neskals among the birch and pines, the hiss and snap of the Yule log and warmth of its fire as one gathered with his family in the dead of vinter. He could not bear for these things to be lost: not to a soulless people who did not respect his. And so he had burned his own fleet at anchor and blamed it on the Tourrare. Now, the Eskandr could not retreat, and he would shovel more of their lives into the fire like coals to be consumed. If it was his fate to be named 'villain' by those living a thousand years hence, then it was a crown that he would accept if it meant that his people endured.
When he returned to his tent, Hrothgar had nothing left to give. All day, he had been lending his Gift to his allies and countrymen. There were some who counted only dubiously among their number who wanted to see him: yasoi. He had called for them, and so held himself upright through their meeting, muddled mind outlining his plan as best he could. That these Red Thorns were enemies in allied dress, he was under no illusions about, but they could be useful until they no longer were. More awaited him yet: some of his finest, faces that he would've wanted to see under almost any other circumstance, and so the king met with them too. By the coast, where the seas churned against boulders, sheltered a handful of knorrs in a small cove. How he ached to be leaving upon one: to see his wife and children again, but it was his job to lead and he would not let them near the fighting. He would send some of his most trusted people - those now before him - to Meldheim in his stead. They knew their lines. He had been scribing their talking points all day as he'd made his rounds: first in his head and then onto parchment. Eskand had given much. It had taxed itself to its limit. He needed still more.
The man himself had given his everything, however. He had nearly died many times over against the young monster known as Arcel of Parrence: the Blessed. Hrothgar, called 'the Black', for both his armour and his disposition, remained steady on his feet until he pulled his curtain closed and collapsed into the welcome nothing of sleep.
đť… The Yasoi Lady
That they loved the same man was the tragedy that lay between Eleanor and Talit. It lay open between them like a festering wound and infected the words that they spoke and the time that they spent around each other. It could not be helped. Right now, however, the two women knelt side by side, drawing upon the same Gift. One prayed as she did so, under her breath. The other bit back the bile rising in her throat and hummed silent hymns of Loriindton to distract herself.
By the work of their hands, bodies repaired themselves. Burns turned to healed pinkish skin. Hair regrew itself, wounds filled with flesh, and pus dissolved under the push of Binding magic. From one to the next they moved in near silence, issuing occasional thanks, pardons, and necessary comments. By some unspoken agreement or out of simple familiarity, they stuck beside each other. Yet, Tali was convinced that they each had a different effect on those who they healed. There were many who would make full recoveries: whose bodies were battered but whole. There were also many whose newfound pain the yasoi remembered stingingly well. Each bowman short an arm, huntress short a leg, knight rendered an invalid, or child whose eyes had been popped like grapes by Sweyn Thunderspear's evil lightning: she presented herself before them, rendering something more concrete than the personal care of an awesome glowing figure of queenly majesty. Talit simply was, and she was recognized. It was as clear as the couple inches of stump that hung, soft and limp, from her right hip, and yet she was in a position to walk among them as a healer and protector. She could not offer anything so trite as verbal encouragement or platitudes of strength, so her mere presence would have to suffice.
Then, after four hours, she needed to be present elsewhere. She bade Eleanor a quiet, polite goodbye and made her way out of the church that they had been using as a hospital. Nearly all were healed or as healed as they could be. Aches and pains that the battle had hidden were back. Joints grated in pain. Muscles stabbed and stiffened with the exhaustion of an entire night's worth of struggle for survival and a day without so much as eating or resting. Tali leaned against a wall, not trusting herself to sit, lest she be unable to stand back up. Her limbs were nearly numb, her senses buzzing indistinctly, hazily. She let her head back, setting it against the cool rough stonework behind her. Oirase, I know that I am not you, as I once thought, but thank you for forgiving my childhood arrogance and sparing me. Thank you for allowing me more of this adventure called life.
The young woman made a mistake out of breathing through her keen yasoi nose, and vomit burbled up in her throat. She strained and blinked it back, eyes watering. She left them closed for some time longer, just being, just feeling: the cool drying sweat in her hair, the chirp of birds, the inconsequential aches and scrapes on her knee and elbows, the damp scratchy wall against her back. Old Grandma Merit had been twenty-three when the empire had fallen, and Tali was now that age herself, now renowned herself. She, too, would witness the fall of an empire, so long as her heart remained beating. She lifted a hand to her chest, feeling the weight of one crutch swaying gently from its cuff.
She had stayed with her people. She had protected them and they had won in the Witch Wood. The legend of Talit'yrash'osmax would only grow. Other legends would have the chance to grow as well. There were less dead yasoi than there would've been without her. Three deep breaths, Tali took. She pushed off of the wall and opened her eyes. Calling upon the Gift to dull herself to pain, she began to walk in a way that she just couldn't help, searching for Arcel and asking those she ran into of his whereabouts. She could not very well ask Eleanor. It was part of their wordless agreement.
The mounds of bodies were... otherworldly. It overwhelmed her to think of it, and so she tried to imagine them as hillocks, stone hedges, old cairns. Just not people: humans and yasoi, for they were so the same as much as they held themselves apart. They had fought together on this battlefield and died together as Parrench. Tali was Parrench, just as she was yasoi, and did not see why those two things should not be combined. She had even encountered Eskandr yasoi who had hissed at her in their odd dialect about fighting in a human war. Meanwhile, they were doing the same.
Tali wandered, eyes roving this way and that, stopping and talking to people, taking in the sensory overload, staring up - every so often - at the crows circling in the sky. It was late afternoon before she found Arcel. He was lying beneath an apple tree at the edge of the woods, his personal guard some ways back. They recognized her and let her pass. His head turned languidly her way and he pressed his eyelids shut for a moment, before turning to stare back up at the branches and their sweet-smelling blossoms. "Tali. Thank Oraphe."
"Beardless." She sat on the damp grass, feeling it through her hose and then her shirt as she lay down beside him. Their hands found each other and held fast. "Did we win?" she asked, not taking her eyes off of the branches. "We didn't lose," he answered, grip tightening momentarily on her hand. Talit went silent and so did Arcel. When she turned his way, loath to be idle any longer, she was surprised to find a tear rolling down his near cheek. The last time that she had seen him cry, he'd been fourteen and leaving Loriindton to return home. She had wiped his tears away even as she'd wept too. It was not her place to wipe them anymore, however.
"I failed them, Tal. I failed my people."
She watched his face in profile. "Relouse still stands," she offered lamely.
"Thousands of people. I can't look at their faces." He turned to her suddenly, eyes red-rimmed and searching. "Every one was just like us until a few hours ago. Then, I sent them to die: gone. They don't get to finish their lives."
She didn't have anything good. Tali felt things in her own way, but not like Arcel. Besides, she was not one to inspire with words. "You did your job as king. We can't very well let the Eskandr butcher our people and take our land."
"Our land..." he echoed softly. "Is it?"
The yasoi propped herself up on her elbows. "Well, it isn't theirs."
"Is it yours too?" he inquired. "Do the yasoi think this was worth it?"
"The yasoi are a free people. I don't command them. If they came here, they came of their own will."
He propped himself up beside her, twisting slightly to meet her eyes. "Are things going to be okay for you? I know you put a lot on the line. I know the... damage my father did still hasn't totally healed." He glanced away.
Tali sat up, pulling her knee in and sitting cross-legged. Well, not exactly, she knew. You can't cross your legs if you only have one. She thought for a moment, tucking some hair behind an ear, and shrugged. "I probably need to go back and see. I shall leave on the morrow." She was sore and exhausted, not looking forward to days in the saddle, but she could rest among the trees of Loriindton. "Without a resounding victory," she continued, "Dyric will be stirring things up. We caught a Tar'ithan agent in the lower town a week before I came here. More will be active."
"I'm sorry, Tal."
His apologies were starting to vex. "Don't be sorry. Be a king. Do better next time. I know you can. I've seen you at your most brilliant."
He let out a snort that trailed off into a sigh. "We had them too. I was just so busy with Hrothgar, so focused on taking the head off the snake that I didn't see it for the distraction it was. Then, Montblaise panicked and I wasn't there to allay him." Arcel sat up beside her, and they were two children, cross-legged in the shade of a tree again.
"I believe in you," Tali said softly, and she meant it. He had always been the warm, strong hand that guided and protected. He would find a way again. She couldn’t imagine otherwise, "You will find a way. The gods will stand behind you. We will be free of this war, to live and move across this land as we desire."
"I love you." It came after a long, steadying pause.
"I love you too." Yet, she knew that the love that each referred to was of a different species.
đť… Evening Prayer
They knelt beside each other: husband and wife. "In nomini Ipte, Chune, Oraphe, Echeran, et Dami, Amen."
“Oh heavenly Pentad,” they recited, the mere ritual of prayer one that centered Eleanor, “who hath crafted the heavens, the sea, and the earth beneath our feet, who hath brought life, love, learning, and laughter to us, who destroy so that we may be renewed, who give us choice, magic, and freedom, for the day that has passed and for these things we give thee thanks:”
"Ipte," began Arcel, and it was hard not to reach out to him, but he ever forbade it during prayer. "We give thee thanks for keeping the fire of love burning in our hearts, so that we found the will to protect the things that we cared about and that we remembered the gift of beauty even as we stood amid carnage."
"Chune," Eleanor said, and she did not know if his eyes were upon her. "We thank you for your wisdom: for revealing to us the enemy's trap so that we maintained our forces on the beach. Without that quick thought and action, the city would have been lost."
"Oraphe," continued her husband, but then he paused, and a silence built where they both knelt. Eleanor opened her eyes and looked his way. His left eye twitched and his hands were clenched so tightly around his prayer beads that the knuckles were white. "Why didn't you save more of them?" His teeth were clenched as well. "Why couldn't I?" he was breathing heavily, rapidly. "We pray to you every day! We are ever loyal. We defend your lands and your people against those who would kill them. I do not understand! What have we done for you to desert us this way?"
Just as surely as Eleanor was horrified by his words, her heart went out to him. The death that she had witnessed - the bodies - she had never seen anything like it and she was shaken. Yet, she knew that, perhaps, it should've shaken her more. She had passed by the faces of a thousand dead people: Parrench and Eskandr alike. She had witnessed human suffering on a scale she had not imagined possible over the past twenty-five hours. Yet, all that hovered inside of her, aside from those moments when she forced herself to truly think, was the dull sense that it was a horrific thing and that she should've felt something more strongly, done something or said something more. That her husband had always felt more deeply than most was one of his greater qualities: one of those that made him a good king as opposed to simply another greedy man on a throne. Now, it was breaking him, though. "My love -" she began, and his eyes snapped to her, red-rimmed. "And Echeran," he grated, "why does he empower the swords of those butchers, those murderous heathen against us? Why are they our equals: they who give him nothing while we give him everything!?" His mouth formed a hard bitter line. "Dami, how were we so stupid? Truly, it was our doing. You took no hand here." He shook his head. "For years, you haven't. For years, we've been stupid."
"Arcel, my king, please." She reached out to him and laid a hand upon his shoulder. It rested there, cold and alone for some time, while he stared up at those five benevolent faces that gazed down from the woodwork in this little alcove of their chambers. Eleanor glanced their way too, an anxiety building in her chest. Then, his hand reached up and enfolded hers. His eyes turned her way as he brought it to his lips and kissed it. His voice was calm and steady and he looked her in the eyes. "The gods will not favour us," he said softly. "They created all people: those who recognize them and those who don't."
"This is true," she confirmed, and he nodded at her response.
"The Gods will not save us," he said. "They have given us the tools to do that ourselves, and we will fail or succeed on our own merits."
"They may yet intercede, my love." She had to believe it. She had seen it during the fight, after all, with Arnaud, with Camille, in her own fight against Sweyn. "There remains -"
"We cannot rely on that," he said firmly. "We cannot beat swords and magic with trust and prayer, just as we cannot crush or inspire the minds of men with mere force alone."
Absently, Eleanor made the Sign of the Pentad. Arcel followed her after a moment and they rose. "So what is it that you propose?" she asked as they walked, both intrigued and concerned.
He stood there in profile on the other side of the bed that they shared. Eleanor bent down to peel back the covers and found his eyes upon her once more. "On the morrow, I will have my best gathered in the Archbishop's residence. If we cannot put the love of the Gods into these Eskandr, then we shall instead instill the fear."
𝅘𝅥𝅮The Red Table, Notre Dame de la Liberté
Last night, they had burned as many of the bodies as they could. The raspy smell of smoke and the sweet stench of cooking flesh had filled the senses of all those who stayed within Relouse. Flames had danced in the darkness and shadows against the city walls, yet Arcel had found sleep despite it.
Talit and some of her yasoi had left with the dawn, hoping to reach the next town by nightfall. Sir Rodric of Lindermetz, who had been such a force of nature during the fighting, was also preparing to depart, and so he was not present. Otherwise, the group that now gathered around the enormous red table in the Archbishop's residence was perhaps the greatest collection of storied warriors to gather in a single place since the collapse of the empire a century and half ago.
Arcel took his place at the table as they gathered - not at the head, for it was round - and stood. "I thank all of you for attending, as I thank the almighty Pentad for sparing you in the terrible clash of two days prior. I was... greatly relieved to find your names among the register of the living." His eyes scanned the room, meeting everyone else's, one by one, and he leaned forward, posting his hands on the tabletop which was covered with maps and models. "You are here because each of you possesses skills that have proven hugely useful in the fight so far and I know will continue to prove useful in the fight to come." He paused to let his words sink in. "Relouse yet stands, and I thank the Gods for that, but this is no complete victory. We must fight the Eskandr now, on our own soil, and I pray for Echeran's blessings upon us all. Yet, it occurs to me," he continued, standing and clasping his hands behind his back, "that we cannot merely defend. These Eskandr are brutes. They refuse to be led into the light through peaceful means, they seek relentlessly after our land on their own terms and are more than willing to kill our people for it. What is the one thing that we can count on such savages to understand?"
"Force," Eleanor offered quietly, from opposite him. Arcel nodded. "We must not remain solely on the defensive. Certainly, we shall dispatch forces, under our ablest commanders" - Comte de Montblaise was conspicuously absent - "to hunt down the forces that, even now, I have been told, are splitting apart and ravaging the countryside. But we shall do more." He leaned forward again, gaze steely and unrelenting. "It is with a heavy heart that I say this, for it was always my hope that this war could be conducted in a way that would not draw the ire of Oraphe, but that has proven a fool's dream. The fear, the suffering, and the deprivation visited upon our people, we must return to our enemies. We must strike at them as a great beast when struck and harried enough by a lesser one. You twenty-five are gathered here this day because I believe that you are the right people to lead such efforts." The blood red shadow of Aun-Ipte's rose fell upon him from the great stained glass window behind. "We shall stab into the very heart of Eskand and deal them a blow to break their spirit."
Act One: Fin.____ __ _ _
- next -
Act Two: Scattered to the Winds_________ __ __ _ _
Served Cold // Tall Trees and Long Shadows // Fields of Fire
