OH GODDESS, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! THEY ARE COMING OUT OF THE GODDESS DAMNED WALLS! WHAT THE FU-
-Last words of general Maltza
POV Esstrey the Mad Queen of Quintillius
A man stands before me in the dark. He's wearing Spetsnaz gear, and carries an AK-103. His features are visible before me, yet I forget them even while looking at the man.
"Who are we?" The man asks while he looks at me seriously. I cannot recognize the man.
"Irrelevant, may our actions speak for us. I will not explain ourselves." Explaining who we are hasn't been relevant on this world.
The man doesn't look happy with the answer, but continues anyway. "Why are we?"
I look the man up and down a bit. A Russian soldier who still goes unrecognized. A man detached from command, his country, and his people. "We are the wrong that rights, we bring others what we can't have."
The man looks frustrated at this point, he looks down at his own gloved hands. "What are we!?"
"Alive." The man grows angry at my comment, but quickly calms down afterward. He looks me in the eyes, and steels himself for what he is about to say.
"Esstrey!" I look at the man, I wasn't expecting him to say that.
"Esstrey, wake up, ya halfwit fishstick!"
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"Esstrey!" I'm face to face with Bessielle, who looks about as pale as someone could get.
"I'm awake!" I look around me, corpses of many are across the theater, but there are still the living here as well.
Someone tries to speak up, but Bessielle instead grabs me tightly. "Esstrey! Luna is real! Remember, Luna is real!" Bessielle stands up, seeming satisfied she brought along the message.
She then proceeds to fall over to the ground. Kyla is already rushing to her. Her last words didn't sound like something a religious fanatic would say to get more devotees.
"I can't heal her! There are too many poisons running through her system!" Kyla clings desperately to the dying minotaur, tears begin to well up in her eyes.
"I didn't know you were capable of blood magic." Carmilla looks like she's been crying.
"Neither did I, but I gave it a shot when I had nothing left." A powerful new weapon to add to the arsenal, the ability to puppet my own body using blood magic.
"This is everyone who is left of us." As Eden says that, cloaked men storm in, and I quickly take Urist's crossbow. One of the men is carrying my crossbow.
"Don't shoot! We are with the Emperor!" Eden holds his hand on the crossbow in my hand. So these really are friendlies?
Eden begins to talk to the newly arrived group, if he has so much faith that they won't kill him, he can choke on it for all I care. I take my crossbow from the imperials.
"Lady Esstrey, you may want to [see/gaze/behold] this." Cathy gestures me towards the window. This shit just never ends, does it?
When I look outside the window, I quickly see what's wrong. The sky has a massive tear in it, and strange creatures that look sort of like Cathy run around outside fighting the guard.
"MY FATHER IS DEAD?!" A cry of anguish is heard, Eden drops to a seat while holding his head in his hands. The Emperor is dead? I could at least begin to guess who the hell could have done this, but I need time, and information. I look around the room, and see Kyla still desperately trying to revive Bessielle to no success. Carmilla is hyperventilating at the things outside, and Eden is doing his best to imitate Napoleon post-exile. Everyone else just looks lost, except for Cathy. She looks to me for salvation.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"ALRIGHT YOU SORRY EXCUSES FOR COUNTRY LEADERS, MAN THE FUCK UP." Everyone in the theater is shocked to attention. I don't blame them either, as I'm doing my damn best to imitate my old drill sergeant. "YOU ARE ALL IN CHARGE OF THE LIVES OF PEOPLE THAT ARE STILL WITH US, ACT LIKE IT. EDEN! Get out there and organize your men! They are looking for the Emperor and god bless you will give them one!" Eden actually recovers easier than I expected.
"Kyla! Get out there in the skies, and annihilate every invader you can! Someone out there is trying to kill the demon queen, are you just gonna let them?" Kyla wipes some tears from her face, and Jalaha comforts her.
"Carmilla! Produce a list for Eden of all the nobles who are likely to have betrayed the Empire. Work with Eden to cut their lie spitting tongues out!" Carmilla tries her best to focus on the task I gave her, and is helped by some of the Shadow Hand members, guiding her to a separate room.
"Xygar! I want you to start bringing the dead back into the fight. Revive as many as you can, and bring the fight outside the capital. I want that place to be a special type of hell!" The lich looks baffled at what I want from him. He looks to Eden, who simply nods to give his approval. He instantly gets to work on raising our fallen classmates. The others look on in disgust, but don't do anything to stop it.
"Nylchai! Get in contact with the mermaid spies you have in the river! Get word out to the world what happened here!" Nylchai's face grows red at me calling out her spies, but the ones who would care don't bat an eye.
"Urist! Help Eden draw a defense plan." Urist was already taking out quill and papers, no doubt expecting what I was going to ask.
"Jalaha! Get my guns delivered to the Royal Library. I will need them there." Jalaha gives me a baffled look, but does not protest.
"Cathy!" The Shoggoth is already at my side before I can even say what I want from her. "Understood Lady [Esstrey/Spetsnaz/Ṉ̵̽i̷̛ͅg̴͕̓h̸̥̍t̷͚͛m̴̳͛a̷̪͛r̶̲̓ê̶̺]."
"I am heading to the Royal Library to confirm some suspicions. We will meet back at 20:00 in the classroom."
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Arriving at the Library, I find that the place is sparsely defended. The royal guards that normally hang around here have all moved to active patrols throughout the palace against incursions from eldritch horrors. Near the library, I was also informed by a Shadow Hand member that the former Emperor was blamed for the massacre of the academy, and the Emperor was killed by multiple high ranking nobles who were visiting at the time. After they heard of the slaughter, one of the nobles presented evidence to the others claiming the Emperor was the cause. It was effectively a failed coup from there on out, considering the assassins never managed to kill Eden.
Cathy follows me inside, and I already hear the heavy footsteps of people carrying heavy equipment. A squad of heavily armed minotaurs are carrying the weaponry of an entire former Spetsnaz team. Weaponry that apparently had something of mine with it.
I take a half slagged shotgun from the large hands of one of the minotaurs. The Vepr-12 floods me with memories of a paranoid man. Dmitri Artyomov was always thought to be FSB by the other, but even if he was, that only served to increase his paranoia. "Listen <@(*&#>, it's all in psychological warfare. Think like a foreigner thinks." Now that I remember him, I realize how truly paranoid he was all the way to the end, but he did care for his team.
I put the shotgun aside, and grab the PKM. The couriers having left while Cathy is simply going through some books. The PKM itself was a practically ancient weapon, but Ivan Smirnov used it nonetheless. Saying that his father used it in Afghanistan, and it never failed the man. Ivan liked to smile, yet he never seemed truly happy. "<%^*&@#>, I don't think it's normal to want to be a soldier, but it is important to remember why we fight." Even if he wasn't the happiest of us, he was the most sentimental.
Putting the PKM aside, I make a quick note of how it's the only gun to still somewhat fit in my claw if I were to remove the trigger guard. I pick up the SV-98. The memories I get are vague. From what little we knew of Boris Novikov is that he wasn't the brightest tool in the shed, but he knew he didn't need to be if he simply remained silent. The memory that stands out is one where we go berated by the quartermaster, but Boris stayed so silent, he was never even mentioned to the drill sergeant. He got out of latrine duty that time by simply not saying anything.
Moving on from the sniper to the last gun, the AK-103. I pick up the AK and hold it close to me. Nothing. I try reloading. Nothing. Not even a speck of what should be my own memories. Just a significant lack of anything. A shame, but I have enough of what I wanted.
"Cathy, can you find me the other thing I was looking for?" Cathy looks up at me, and begins to concentrate. I don't know how, but she always seems to know things slightly ahead of time. I don't need to know how it works to know I can use that to my advantage.
It doesn't take long for Cathy to point at a piece of the floor. I grab the PKM, and smash the floor in with the butt of the weapon. Below the false floor lies a small notebook, and an alarm goes off.
"We should have enough time to get back before I have to explain anything to anyone. Would you be so kind as to carry the other weapons?" Cathy gives a curt bow, and easily wraps the guns in her tendrils, those will come in handy later.
I pick up the small notebook titled 'Logbook of The Grand Scientist', and leave the Royal Library.