Dread Empire of Yn’Tereth trade city of Kosol, military checkpoint. Banner Sgt Ivos POV.

The dwarven caravan was welcome. It was a continued irritant that the best and closest spice supply was in the Holy Kingdom, and they had their nose so far in the air they would never deign to trade with the Dread Empire for their precious spices. Let’s not think about the fact no one else on the continent had the ready cash to afford any amount of the stuff. The spice was going to end up here anyway, but later, degraded in quality and hugely inflated in price after being sold to the neighboring kingdoms, who in turn sold it to the Dread Empire. Only the dwarves had a treaty strong enough that their caravans could trade what they bought in the Holy Kingdom to whoever they chose, even the Dread Empire, without the Holy Knights seizing and burning the whole thing. He had seen the caravan’s lead wagon present their bona fides and get waved through. What he didn’t understand was why the dwarven mercenary leader was marching directly to the military watch commander’s office with a grin on his broad bearded face.

“Good day trooper! Have I got a magnificent gift for you!” The dwarf boomed. Two dwarves behind him grinned just as cheerfully for some reason. Beware of dwarves bearing gifts. The only they gave as gifts to non dwarves were threats and axe blows.

Banner Sgt Ivos shifted his sword in his scabbard, and made a jerking motion with his chin to the ready squad bitching in the room behind him, causing them all to troop out and form a wall behind the Sgt as he faced the dwarves.

“What sort of gift do you bring me, good dwarf?” The Banner Sgt said, eyeing the grinning dwarves with suspicion. It wasn’t that dwarves didn’t have a sense of humour. They did, it was just fairly alarming.

The dwarf grinned and spread his arms wide and said in a voice trained to project over the din of caravan or battle. “Why the finest recruit the Dread Empire of Yn’Tereth has ever received. Marched across two thirds of the Holy Land just to reach your recruiting station, and it was our pleasure to help him march the last half way.”

Banner Sgt Ivos internal alarm bells began to ring. No one from the Holy Land came to the Dread Empire as a recruit for the army. Some came as refugees sure, but they had all been in the service of one Dark Lord or another and fled just ahead of the Holy Knights when their scheme went pear shaped. Most of those honestly they should have let the Holy Knights burn. If they would sell their own people out, how could you trust them at your back?

“And this recruit is riding in one of your wagons?” The Sgt asked, more or less just to buy time to think about how to handle this.

The dwarf grinned, and the two behind him laughed outright, slapping each other on the shoulder and laughing even harder. The lead dwarf, their officer grinned and stroked his beard.

“Not in the wagons, no. You see the lad has been training the whole way here. Trying to get up to snuff for the Legions. We may have played up how strong they are, and how strong they expect their recruits to be. The lad took his training seriously. He ran in armour for the first weeks of the trip, but then we had a bit of a health issue. Lameness, it’s an issue even on your fine roads.” The dwarf said grinning happily.

The Banner Sgt thought he got the joke. They were bringing him an idiot recruit who trained so hard he got lame before he got here. Little idiot probably couldn’t even walk now. Ha ha. Very funny.

“So that’s why he is in the wagon. The boy is lame?” The Sgt snarled.

As the dwarves laughed, a strange sight was causing a stir in the main gate. One of the heavy dwarven wagons was coming through the gate. Not pulled by a team of four horses like the rest. This heavy freight wagon was being pulled by a man in shining chainmail, with a crested spangenhelm on his head, a large heavy shield on his left arm, and a huge bronze spear in his right hand. His legs were driving like some sort of bronze golem as he pulled the whole wagon by himself. A grinning dwarf woman was waving from the driver’s seat, and four horses, each with wrap on one leg, limped behind.

The dwarf chuckled happily. “No the boy is fine. We had a few of the horses came up lame, and the lad thought that pulling the wagon himself would be in the nature of good training for the Legions. So, what do you think. Do you want him? He’s green as grass, strong as any dozen bulls, brighter than he looks, and without a lick of fear or good sense anywhere in that beardless head of his.”

The Banner Sgt watched the boy break into a trot to keep up with the wagon ahead as they cleared the gate congestion, and tried to calculate how heavy the wagon he was pulling was. Deciding the answer was deeply alarming and not mathematically important, he kicked the problem to his officer in the fine tradition of the Dread Empire’s Legions.

“Tribune Chang! I have a recruit you need to see!” The Sgt shouted for his officer. This kid was too good to be true, but dwarves don’t lie, and the Holy Kingdom didn’t have enough pull with the short little bastards to get them involved in any scheme to plant spies. Whatever the truth was, it was above his pay grade.

……..

Camp Tarterus, Clover’s POV.

I was a little sad that I had to give up my shiny new armour and shield, even my Xiphos and spear, but the Legion had rules. They would issue me what I needed, when I needed, after they taught me why I needed it. I could have all my stuff when I finished training, but when I marched in the ranks, I would do so in the kit I was issued until I was buried in it. That was reassuring. I mean, if they were going to bury me in the armour they gave me, they must not think I was that likely to die. Everyone in the Holy Kingdom was very clear about how expensive armour was, and that only the officers and Knights rated steel at all.

Before I could get my armour, there were apparently some intake procedures for those recruits that were from outside the Dread Empire. I found myself with two Dark Elves and a troll, awaiting the medical and interview. I was reassured. The Dark Elves were not even from this continent, and they were under a death sentence in the Holy Land, even as were the trolls. Ryklos told me the Dread Empire were “cosmopolitan” which means accepting of differences between peoples, although Rosalie said they were “frigging degenerates who would trust anyone who tupped the same sheep they did”, which sounded more than a little judgemental. While Daryl assured me sheep tupping was not a requirement of the Dread Empire’s Legions, he stopped short of actually saying it was unknown.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The first tests required us to strip down naked and walk into a magic circle to test for magical compulsions or to reveal “oath marks”, which from the context I take to mean magical oaths sworn to nations or gods that might not like the Dread Empire.

The Troll walked through, and the circle flared up in dark flame just strongly enough to be visible in the shadowed tent. The medical mage running the test just grunted and pointed the troll to move on to the next stage. The two Dark Elves that went through had tattoo’s on their right arm burn black as they stood in the circle. That caused a bit of excitement until they revealed these were marriage oaths, and that they had fled the Southern Continent when they got married. It seems two female dark elves cannot marry under their kingdom’s laws. Turns out the Dread Empire didn’t care. They got waved on.

I stepped into the circle and the circle flared for a second, and I felt something try to bore into me. I felt my blood surge in instinctive response, and a bright golden flash caused the dark magical circle under my feet to shatter. The medmage who had been half asleep doing the testing shot to his feet and screamed out a chant that caused the shadows about the room to whip towards me in an attempt to bind, but my tentacle friends had surged hissing out when the magic circle had attempted to push it’s magic into me, and they radiated around me like a halo of hissing onyx eyeless snakes.

The dark magic of the med mage failed utterly in the face of the deeper darkness of my tentacle friends, and two of them chased the mage from the room, nipping at his bottom like a mother spanking a child who was moving too slow.

…..

Captain Tanya Xiang POV

Captain Tanya Xiang was tired. She had been removed from combat command when the XVII Legion had destroyed her own IV Legion in what was called the “September Crissis”. She had lost an eye, a leg, and a career. She was too good to throw away and too good to be trusted in command of any troops near the Butcher that had killer her own Legion and lord. They didn’t regrow her eye, or leg, but they didn’t dismiss her from the colours. She was too valuable to throw away, but too dangerous to trust with trained troops. She was instead relegated to running the training depot, training troops for other legions to use as replacements. Normally there wasn’t much for her to do at intake, her real skills came into play far later in their cycle when the need to turn individual legionaries trained to eat, drink, sleep, shit, march and fight in lockstep with eighty of their closest friends needed to learn how to move inside an actual formation on the battlefield. This time, she had an actual problem with a recruit in intake.

The med mage was incoherent, demanding I put the recruit to death. Said recruit was standing completely naked, at attention, looking like he stepped off a recruiting poster. Sure there was the small issue of what looked like a wreath of demonic tentacles hissing like a gorgon’s head snakes on a bad hair day, but this was the goddamned Dread Empire, the Black Legions thereof. You couldn’t piss yourself every time you saw something a little demonic or you would forever have wet pants. That led to chafing.

“He’s a Holy Knight in disguise. There was a flash of holy light and the circle was dispelled. Kill him Captain, before he tries to purify the summoning circles or murder a Legate.” The med mage hissed, hiding behind Captain Xiang.

One of the tentacle things tried to reach the med mage behind her, and Tanya slapped it down with her sword hand without thinking. It wasn’t a shadow, it was a real tentacle, with real teeth. Interesting. That wasn’t how low level darkness magic worked. She knew demons, and this thing didn’t radiate otherworldly evil, it radiated upset dog when someone was shouting at its master. One thing it did not radiate was Holy Knight. They would no shit burn this kid at the stake for whatever these little tentacles of darkness were.

Not my problem, Tanya mused, stepping forward. Good looking kid. A bit young maybe, long and lean, not yet filled out with the full weight of muscle he would be putting on but he was a fine specimen of the breed. He had too much muscle for how young he was, and his eyes were so young it made her bones ache, but his body was something else entirely. She walked close to him, slapping the med mage as she had slapped the tentacle when the idiot refused to shut up and let her think.

The boy was covered in scars.

She traced the scar on the hairline. “What did this?”

“Crossbow bolt. My boar tusk helmet stopped it. The tusks broke and the pressure cut my skull anyway.” The boy said, standing perfectly at attention, not moving, and keeping his eyes fixed. The record said the dwarven mercenaries had brought him. It looks like they trained him up on the way. Not a bad job. Not a bad kid. What the hell had he been through.

She stroked a finger down his left arm to a puckered wound over his left forearm, the boy answered. “Another crossbow bolt. It went through my shield.” She nodded. Close range then. Same age, so took two bolts and kept coming. Good troop.

Stomach and chest had older, broader, and more ragged scars. “These?” She asked

“Lance from mounted men at arms under the Sherriff.” The boy answered, leading her to the bit that the med mage missed, which was inexcusable, but which really would settle the issue in her mind. She pointed to the tears and burns around both his biceps his chest and back. Wounds as old as the spear wounds, but which bore the traces not only of cutting, but a very specific sort of burning. One she knew well.

She traced the wounds around his chest with a finger. “And these?”

“The Sherriff was a Holy Knight, ma’am. He used his Chains of Judgement on me. They cut into me and burned me, they tore into my body and my mind until I broke them.” The boy said.

Tanya rolled that around in her head for a while. Broke the Chains of Judgement cast by a Holy Knight. She wanted to call bullshit, but he just broke the Circle of Truth, and ignored a journeyman dark mages attempt at Shadow Binding, neither of which a boy with the tiniest bit of hair on his balls, and none on his chin, had any business doing. The finest sorcerer knights she had worked with required at least a dozen years to get to that level. Maybe someone destined to be a future Dark Lord could get that strong in a decade, but before your first chest or chin hair grew in? Not a chance. This kid was, something else. Without really thinking, she had continued to circle the boy, her fingers stroking his back, his arms, his chest as she did. Wandering around in front, she found herself stopped by what she bumped into.

The boy was blushing furiously, but being the age he looked, he had zero control of the sidearm that was standing up for inspection. She gave the improbably large and eager thing the same smack that she gave the tentacle that tried to sneak past her to bite the med mage, and when the anatomy in question bounced, she noticed yet more scars on his junk.

“Alright, what the hell did that to your staff and satchel?” She asked.

The boy, blushing furiously as he moved the member this way and that to look at the scars on his junk, and both thighs.

“A wild boar ma’am. But I killed him for it.” The boy said defiantly.

That raised the question about the Holy Knight. “And what did you do to the Holy Knight who tried to kill you with his Chains of Judgement?”

The boy turned his head for the first time, and looked over her shoulder. The black tentacles had formed a puppet man out of pure blackness. Four tentacles pulled the puppet’s arms and legs into a big X. A fifth ran between the puppets legs, opened a tentacle tip filled with teeth in a grin, then drove up the puppets ass. The tentacle mimed thrusting again and again up the puppet, and the puppet waved its arms and legs in desperation until the tentacle that entered the ass burst out from the puppet’s mouth and grinned at Tanya.

“You sodomized a Holy Knight to death with tentacles of darkness?” Tanya began to laugh. Leaning on the naked boys’ chest and laughing until she cried, she pounded the boy on the back as she laughed and laughed.

“Fucking excellent. Welcome to the XVII Legion, The Butcher’s Own. I think he fucking deserves you!”

…..

Thus began my enlistment in Alpha Cohort, First Century, XVII Legion (The Butcher’s Own). Glory to the Dread Empire, long may its shadow stretch!