Graduation Day

Loyalty in the Dread Empire Legions runs squad deep. You live with your squad, you die with your squad. Over time, that loyalty is supposed to grow to encompass your Legion. I honestly cannot see how. When we finished today, almost two thirds of us would be dead. Six Cohorts worth of troops stepped onto the Field of the Damned. Two cohorts would march off. The rest would die. I was struggling to process the message from our Legate. The Butcher.

“Listen to me you little shits, this is the last time I will call you shit, because it is the last day you will be shit. You came to us nothing but mortals, organic machines that turn perfectly good food into shit, or squealing brats who produce nothing but noise and shit, the perfect encapsulation of mortal man. We have taught you to become something more. Yn’Tereth sees inside each of you the seed of darkness that can grow to be something to rival, or even exceed that of his own demons. But you are only mortals, and there is not enough inside any of you to rise above your mortality. Before you ask, the cultivation we taught you was the true path of darkness, but we kept from you the final truth, the final truth and your final initiation.

There is not enough soul inside any of you to rise beyond your mortal flesh, and the Dread Empire’s least Legionnaire is as far above mortal flesh as Yn’Tereth is beyond even me. This day you will battle, and the strong shall slay the weak. Upon this Field of the Damned you will make sacrifice. The strong shall kill the weak, and offer their souls to Yn’Tereth. His dark majesty, in his infinite mercy, shall return half that power to you, weaving it forever inside you, binding your soul forever to his service. You will no longer be made of mortal flesh, you will be a shadow wrapped in skin, hellfire quenched in blood, your mortality will be fed to him, and your weakness, all that will be left is your Will To Power.

Hear me. We are Legion. You are none of you worth a drop of my spit, but working together could cut the wings off an angel, and force even a golden dragon to quit the field or die. You fight as one, you succeed or fail as one. You will find your place in my Legion as one. We are not the pawns of light, we need no heroes. We are the Legions of the Dread Empire. You will be forged into the sword I require, or you will be the blood in which it quenches.”

I looked over at Janice, and her face was shadowed.

“My father and grandfather would never talk about this. They grew silent, and twice my father tried to mention a name, and my grandfather silenced him with ‘I have only one son’. Then they would drink until they passed out, but not one of them would speak or look at each other. I always knew that most died, and that every Legionary knew they were the strongest because the weak died, but I always thought training did that. I started to wonder when so many of us made it to graduation.” Janice whispered, gripping her bow.

Lvov looked down at his hands and spat. “I won’t do it. I was willing to do anything, to pay anything to not go down into the damned mines to die like everyone else in my family, but I won’t do this. At least in the mines the darkness is cleaner.”

Brencis laughed, the darkness inside him rising from behind his shield to hiss at the light. “Relax. Do any of you feel like eating anyone’s soul? Do any of your tentacle friends sound like they want any of those pale pathetic demonlings inside with them?”

I laughed too. As one, each of us spawned tentacle with teeth and yawning mouths that opened and made open spitting or puking gestures before coiling tight back around us. We had been cultivating along side our brethren, but while we could improve to match them, in general, we could not match the way they did things at all.

There were some of the cultivators that focused on speed, they could move faster than the wind, for as little as ten seconds or as much as thirty from the best, they could move almost too fast to see. Some focused on strength, and they had their carrier trolls bear weapons weighing a hundred pounds that they could take up and use for as much as thirty seconds, to sweep entire ranks away with the power of their attacks. Others turned the darkness into a shaping tool, they could cast fear at enemies they looked upon, or draw the strength from their limbs and leave them too weak to stand. Others could drain the life of one creature to heal themselves or others. In every case, the cultivators used their growing soul to sheathe their body in shadow, letting their mortal flesh become the shadow of the demon whose aspect they borrowed.

We couldn’t do that. We cultivated, but instead of becoming less mortal, less connected, we became the opposite. We were no longer purely flesh and blood. We were flesh and blood, woven with threads of golden divine will and threads of primordial chaos. As the light and darkness wove through our flesh, that flesh became more tied to the world than before. We could feel the elements driving the earth. We felt the land, the life in the soil, the slow hum of the bees, the struggle of oak to slay all that dared to keep it from the sunlight, the slow dreaming of a snake full of rat, content to feel the sun on its scales, and taste the wind on its tongue. We felt the currents in the waters around us, and under us, we felt the awareness of the plants that swayed in it, the fish that darted in it. Most of all, we felt the wind, for the storm was in us. The storm was the source of the dance we did, the dance of life and death. The dance of war. We could not resist it, nor could it resist us. When the storm raged, we danced, and when we danced, the storm raged.

We grew stronger. We could not wield a hundred pound weapons like the strength cultivators, yet they could only wield those weapons for thirty seconds before their working failed and they had to drop them for mortal weapons instead. We used weapons forged for us. Our spears were solid steel, twenty pounds of forged steel that could punch through plate, shatter shields, yet we wielded them like they were balsa wood. Vong and Janice drew bows forged from spring steel. They had a draw weight of two hundred and fifty pound, but it was the infusion of their will that allowed the bow and string to function, as the forces of the release would literally shatter the bow without infusion. We could not equal the peak speed or strength of each type of cultivator, but we did not cloak our flesh in something else, we trained to our limit, and when part of us failed, we paid in blood, sweat, and pain to regrow it stronger and more flexible than when it failed last.

Better, this was our body all the time. We trained every day at full speed and power, we did not borrow speed or strength that was not ours for half a minute a few times a day. This was our strength, this was our speed. We learned to face power that shattered wood and steel, our eyes learned to count the spines on a fletching feather of the arrows shot at us as we dodged. Our bodies learned to ride out impacts that broke armour and ribs, and hit back. We hurt all the time, but we did not return to the form that broke, we paid the price to grow stronger, to grow better. This was our flesh, we did not carve our soul out of it and use it like a tool. We used our will to separate that mortal clay into threads of golden will and blackest primordial chaos and wove them back through the flesh. We did not reject our mortality, we bound ourselves more deeply to the world with every heartbeat.

We bound ourselves to each other, and to the world in ways that rude soldiers did not have the poetry to capture, but whose pure joy was shared in ten faces.

Ten.

Ah yes, our trolls. Gracie and Fuckhead. Gracie was given to us as she was the weakest troll of her litter, and honestly too gentle a soul for being born as a troll. Because of that, she was often attacked and beaten by the other trolls. I say plural because she was a nasty handful in a fight, the runt of the litter that lived. In troll society beware the well fed runt, they aren’t alive by accident. Fuckhead was a troll of insatiable curiosity. He poked into everything, and everything poked back. He was named Fuckhead when he came to the Legion as a troll thrall, and it seemed to fit him.

The role of the Troll in each section was simple. They were baggage handlers on the march, they bore the super heavy weapons when the strength cultivators weren’t using them, and they did the heavy lifting for the engineering work. The last role was one that everyone in the Legion understood, but the wise didn’t talk about in front of the trolls. There were times when defensive lines were too strong, and whoever charged the line first would die on those spears, or spells. At those times, you drove your trolls out in front, and charged the gap over their corpses.

We didn’t need baggage handlers, as we could carry more than a mule ourselves easily. We didn’t let anyone else carry our weapons, because you never know when you are going to need them, and how are you going to grow stronger if you stop carrying the heavy bits?

Everyone knew trolls could not cultivate. This was because Yn’Tereth was a human god, and he had no place in his future for other races save as slaves. Clearly he would not teach them to walk the path of the immortals. That was for his chosen people. I had this explained to me several times as I was teaching Gracie and Fuckhead how to cultivate.

Gracie got it first. She didn’t make a big deal about it, simply grunted and picked a fight with Fuckhead. Once he threw her to the ground hard enough to break her back, we pulled him off. The watching cadre assumed Gracie would then die. Small loss as her crooked back made her weak, and not worth her feed anyway. Four hours later, she stood up, all the way up, and walked over to sit with us and cultivate. Fuckhead tried to pick a fight with her the next day, and she broke both his arms, and sat with him until he could use his own will to straighten them out, and begin the long night of reshaping his body to not break so easily the next time. If you looked closely, you could see Gracies black hair was writhing like an anemone, less like hair than a forest of black tentacles.

Seven men, one woman, a troll of either gender. One squad of primordial cultivators in the better part of a Legion of demon cultivators stepped onto a field bound by the strongest ritual sorcery of the Yn’Tereth the Defiler as a mass sacrificial initiation ritual. What could possibly go wrong?

We were marched forth. The first battle of the day was North/South, the second would be East/West, the two victors would then battle and the survivors would meet in the middle until victory was decided. The battle would be halted when the Butcher’s Tribune decided enough troops were left to fulfill his draft order. The only stakes on the table were survival. Our squads would either march out of the training camp today and towards the base of the XVII Legion, or we would be demon food. We marched forth with a song in our hearts. Well, honestly, we marched forth singing which disturbed a lot of our fellows.

Our squad learned from Captain Xiang that we should never talk about our cultivation where other instructors could hear us, as what we were doing was honestly quite the abomination. Captain Xiang smiled when she said it, but I wasn’t sure she was joking. On the other hand, we had to talk about our cultivation because nothing we were taught was right for what we were doing, and it wasn’t like my memories of things Ajax thought worth remembering were kind of spotty. I mean I knew a lot about making celestial bronze, which was useless as the Dread Empire issued its own kit. I knew a lot about killing things with spears, some of which was relevant, but much of which would only come into play if I faced demons, elementals, dragons, giants, or cosmic aberrations. I also had a huge number of deeply embarrassing memories with women, which I would love to stop thinking about except my little tentacle friends found them deeply fascinating and tried to keep steering my dreams that direction. We had to talk about what we did. We had to teach ourselves. The answer was given us by Gracie.

Gracie was trying to train Fuckhead, but Fuckhead was Fuckhead, so training him was difficult. She came to me for a deeper understanding of what we were doing. Trolls honestly don’t have the mouth for human speech beyond the most basic, which is why most human’s think they are stupid. Fuckhead isn’t stupid, he is just a fuckhead. His intelligence allows him to find more ways of being a fuckhead than a stupid troll would have access to, and even allows him to realize how wrong they were soon enough to make a solid try at surviving. Because of her need to understand better, and the troll problem with speaking common, we talked about it in troll. Janice knew troll from her father who taught her to swear in it so granddad wouldn’t wash her mouth out with soap for swearing. Turned out granddad knew trollish too, but didn’t let on until she was nine, as he mostly wanted to keep grandma out of his hair and was okay with her swearing as long as he didn’t get in trouble with grandma.

Soon the whole squad was doing our serious cultivation talks in troll. That way no one would notice what we were saying. The Dread Empire was deeply racist, and while they believed dark elves and dwarves had secrets worth stealing, the idea a troll could know something they didn’t was about as ridiculous as the idea that their horse was a better swordsman. The main effect of this was that we could sit about the fire and talk deeply about our most secret heresies surrounded by thousands of our fellow candidates who would have cheerfully sold us out, or cadre that would have killed us on the spot. The side effect was we learned that troll work songs had the right pace for Legion marches and battle drill.

We marched to war, leading the forces of the North straight south, on point because we had been voted most likely to die first by our beloved cadre, with a song on our lips. The song? Things I have stepped in.

We marched at the head of our legion. The standard formation was a rather uninspired box marching at another uninspired box. This made for generally safe battles in which the elite knights would decide things by shattering one of the formations and allowing us to trample and slaughter the broken foe. Without knights, we had the two choices of a slow butcher’s clash of box on box, or daring to switch into swine array, the boar’s head attack formation. Generally this was done with massed trolls to break the shield wall and soak up casualties. We had been told point blank that trolls were cheaper than legionaries, but we were still little shit recruits, and worth less than the trolls which carried our baggage, go die yourselves.

Worth less than trolls was us! We were not our cadre’s favorites. We disturbed them. We were either incompetent as we could not do what we were taught, or freaks because we were so much stronger than recruits should be, even if we couldn’t meet any of the cultivation target indicators. The Legions didn’t do well with different. They did well with casualties, so it was decided that if the different became the casualties all would be right in the world. If we survived, it was the will of Yn’Tereth and besides we would be the XVII Legions’ problem and the Butcher made no friends.

So we sang. We sang the glorious troll song “Things we have stepped in” It was a simple call/refain. I would call out the line, and they would all roar back “Squish” and on that call we would shove forward with our shields as strongly as we could and thrust. When we were fifty yards from the foe, they prepared to throw their plumbata javelins and I ordered the charge. We put our Will into our shields and our tentacles began to bleed out of us, behind the shield, writhing in readiness to feed. The plumbata mostly arched over us to hit the line that stood firm. No one expected a lone squad to do anything against an unbroken line.

“I stepped in the shit of a chieftain,

Squish

I stepped in the shit of a king

Squish

I stepped in the shit of a hero

Squish

They all squished the same to me!

Squish”

When we hit the shield wall with a crash, it was a surprise. Gracie and Fuckhead had their halberds, great long axe and spear tipped pole arms that could be used from the back rank to crash down on those locked shield to shield with us. They were supposed to be used that way, but we didn’t fight that way. We were supposed to stack shield to shield and let the trolls cut over us as he held the enemy in place, and our archers would fire high angling shots to harass the rear ranks and hopefully catch someone above the shields.

When we hit the enemy shield wall, the first rank blew backwards like they had been hit by charging elephants. When they went down, we stepped forward singining.

“I stepped in the shit of a chieftain” I sang, ramming my shield through a standing legionnaire, knocking him flat.

“Squish” I shot my spear forward into the second ranker who was reeling back and whose head was too far above his shield. His helmet blasted backwards as his head shattered as my spear point took him between nose and top lip, bisecting his head.

“I stepped in the shit of a king,” I strode forward locking shields with Brencis as Janice and Vong stepped beside us to fire

“Squish” Two arrows punched through shield and breastplate to hammer the left and right flanking spearmen of the second rank back and farther sideways to strand the two in front of us alone.

“I stepped in the shit of a hero,” I sang as I clashed my spear with the man in front of me, pushing him backwards into the man behind him, tumbling both to the ground, alive but helpless.

“Squish” Gracie and Fuckhead swept their Halbards horizontally on the ranks we had broken, the front and second ranks to left and right of us exploded as bodies were tossed aside broken and bleeding.

“They all squished the same to me!” I sang as I leaped the bodies of the fallen to ram my spear into the open side of the man turning to face me, as my shield slammed the man to my front.

“Squish” Janice and Vong shot beyond us to the last rank, killing the two startled recruits who should have been moving up offset of the rank in front to thrust between the shields as the rank we were facing locked shields with us. Gracie and Fuckhead swept again with their halbards, clearing the flanks on the gap we opened.

The remaining swine array of our forces hit the gap in the shield wall and began the methodical work of cutting apart a wall that you have effectively internally flanked. In barbarians, this is an array used like a spear to drive into the middle of a formation and shatter it. Either smashing it to pieces or stalling to be slaughtered by the better disciplined force. When done by the Dread Empire, the swine array was less a spear, and more like an augur or boring drill. The troops forced forward but struck to the flanks. Each rank was defended by the rank in front from frontal attacks, so they struck to the flank to widen the gap. Tower shields are many things, but handy in tight quarters on the wrong side is not one of them. At this point the short chopping and thrusting swords came into their own and the swine array worked like a sausage grinder. The reason it seldom had the chance is that it is almost impossible for a small force of equal power to break an intact shield wall.

“I stepped in the guts of my brother” Demons rose from the dying, and our tentacle friends lashed out like so many striking serpents, reaping them like sharks loose in a salmon weir

“Squish” The armour on us glowed golden as our will infused it. We could not be beaten, could not be stopped, we shone like suns in the growing darkness

“I stepped in the guts of my sister” Black tentacles lashed about and above us, smashing arrows, plumbata, spears. They reached and ripped at those summoning demon forms for strength or speed.

“Squish” Golden light blazed on arrows as they punched through shields and flesh, blasting out the back of one soldier to wound the one behind.

“I stepped in the guts of myself” Thunder rolled in the heavens, and in time with our heavy tread, our screaming chants, the sky answered.

“Squish” Lightning lashed down from the heavens, shattering those to our left and right, the black clouds blocking the dying sun but lightning shattering the welcoming dark

“I stepped and I stepped then I got him” Our spears blasted shields aside shattering arms and spinning men to the ground broken

“Squish” Stomping down with the lizard sticker on our spear bases, our second rank kept their shields pressed to our back to drive us deeper as their spears hammered down to kill the fallen we stepped on

“I stepped on the bastard who killed me”My body rocked as I felt a spear hammer into my armour, my rib cracked and the breath grunted out of me. I felt the metal bend.

“Squish” Lvov’s spear took the bastard in his crotch, glancing up and off his thigh plate to ram into him at the join of his thighs.

“They all squished the same to me!” I roared out the last line of the song as I used me shield to half turn the man to my front, taking him in the side with my own spear and punching it deep into his armour.

“Squish” I kicked him off my spear and realized we were through the last rank.

“Right wheel, roll up the flank!” I turned us into the spear side, the shield-less side and we rolled up the rear rank of the embattled line. Now those who stayed safe in the swine array were facing soldiers pressing on all sides, shield to shield, sword and spears reaping, while we were grinding into the shield-less flank of the rear rank, where every spear was pointed the wrong way, and no shields would cover them. We were done fighting, we were solidly into the butchery, and the troll song sounded as we reaped the field like farmers, black tentacles lashing out to feed on demons fleeing the corpses of the slain. The storm raged about us, black clouds answering our every shout of “Squish” with a blot of man killing lightning.

The South Cohort broke as its center block collapsed, and the machine that was the Dread Empire’s Legion did what it did best. Turned the weak into meat. On the Tribune’s platform, a shudder went through the Tribune as he felt power running wild. There were no spells being cast beyond the bog standard basics even the rawest recruits could handle, but the power that he felt was similar to when the Sorcerer Generals clashed, wild magic, raw untamed power roused to wakefulness but directed only by whim and chance not contained safely within the spell forms taught by the holy gods.

His demon priests looked at their formations and frowned. Not enough. The killing was too much for the souls they were capturing. Not enough demon seeds were being recovered, and there were actual souls lost. Souls that passed into the lands of the dead, rather than being bound to the demons as their cultivation and initiation required. Looking up at the lashing lightning and the reaping of the Legionaries by the storm, they shuddered and simply decided that powers beyond their ken were taking the souls for themselves. To report this to the Butcher was to risk his betting his ego against whatever was doing that. The Butcher, being the Butcher, would survive, even if he had to sacrifice a hundred acolytes like themselves to do so. The absolute number of souls lost was not that large, and the demons lost were lower level.

I looked at my squad, we were splattered in blood, and mud, because the whole of the battle line was hammered by a downpour of rain that turned the field into a churning mess. All about us the Legionaries were slipping and falling in the mud, but I couldn’t understand why. The land writhed under the unnatural magics warping and tainting it from the demonic rituals that served to feed off the fallen, but the land taint washed free in the purity of the power touched storm. Where the primordial darkness had walked, the taint was consumed, its order eaten by the primordial chaos that was true darkness in which no shadow could live. The pure driving will of the squad of soldiers, the song of the hunt, the song of war, the song of the storm called to the earth, and the earth answered.

The ground grew firm under their feet, gripping and thrusting each foot as they dug in and pushed, then releasing them as they stepped forward. Behind them the churned earth drank in the spilled blood and life and stirred the sleeping life within. Blood and rain filled the soil as it stirred new life within. Days from the battle, the earth trod by the squad would birth pure wheat that rose in the churned earth pure and green, taller than a man, heavy with seed. It would resist the march of another series of legion testing and require soldiers be sent to reap the golden harvest that grew to eclipse the field, and finished the erosion of the magical seals of the field of sacrifice. Rather than pointing to the squad as the cause, this made it clear to everyone that the aberrant results were not a failure of Legion training or magic, but direct sabotage by the gods of light. That was after all a lot more logical than the field was broken by a squad signing “Things I stepped in” to the sky.

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The centurions overseeing the North stalked over to us, expecting to see a depleted unit that was ready to be broken up and used as replacements after being thrown on an intact shield wall to break it. Instead the three Centurions found us sitting in lotus position, meditating in the hammering rain, a golden light pouring from our eyes, and great cobra of deepest black writhing in time above our shoulders. Even the trolls sat meditating, their eyes burning gold like sunlight as their black manes seemed to writhe like the tentacles of an anemone in the sea.

Determining that the squad was not right, they determined not to allow it to draw any further attention. They would not be the center for the next fight. They would be tossed to the extreme right of the line. Let them hold against any flanking attempts but be far removed from the decision point. They wanted no higher eyes on this squad, and they could not afford the rest of the recruits to see these freaks succeed without so much as a scratch. One freak squad was livable, a whole cohort beginning to question Legion doctrine was something that could lead to investigations, crucifixions and worse, pension loss. No, whatever that was, it wouldn’t be permitted to happen again.

Our tentacle friends had eaten so many demons. They were more than a little drunk on what they had consumed and manifested more strongly in the late afternoon than usually they could in daylight. The dark storm clouds gathered about helped hide the light of the sun and allowed them to hold even when the light of the living sun strove to burn their flesh away. I lead our squad into meditation. We had killed together for the first time. It had not been anything like training, nor had it been like hunting. It had been something more.

I remembered Mom dancing naked in the storm, how her dance seemed to capture the whole of life. She danced the wind, and the wind answered. She danced the rain and it caressed her, wrapping around her like a veil, she raised her arms up to the sky and screamed her joy and the storm answered back with lightning, that she should dance in a spray of raindrops shining like diamonds, her golden hair caught in the lightning as she whirled, leaving it a crown of golden fire, a sun on earth. She was the storm and the dance, and the world shook under her feet as it woke to follow her. Her dance was life.

Mine was death. My dance was the shadow of hers. I was born from her, and my dance was born from hers. She was the sower of seeds, I was the reaper of fields. She was the bringer of life, and I was its ending. Yet that wasn’t the whole of the truth. That was a child’s understanding. I danced my dance upon the earth, my squad danced with me. Man and woman, human and troll, we stepped as one, danced as one, sang as one, and the sky answered us. We raised our song in steel and blood, and the earth woke beneath our feet. We took blows, our flesh offering our pain and blood, yet the golden will was written in our flesh. Perhaps we were but the feeblest shadow of the Titans who once walked the earth, whom the gods joined together to cast down, but we were a true shadow. We had woven into our flesh the golden will that looked upon the primordial chaos and by act of violent intent, brought existence into being. We had woven in us that primordial chaos that contained all possibilities and none, that existed before light and form and hungered to return all that was into nothingness. When I danced, they danced within me. Creation and destruction, making and unmaking. Unbound by the laws of any god, we danced the dance of the birth of the world, and this world was born in blood.

We had learned to dance without fear of the cost, for either we would die and become part of the dance, or we would live, and grow stronger in the broken places, become closer to the dance. We trained hard, but training could only echo the dance faintly. The dance was life and death. Only in life and death could we lose ourselves in it. No wonder the demons fled from our coming, no wonder the storm gave answer when we sang, and the earth woke beneath us, because for the first time in thousands of years, the dance of creation and destruction was danced in blood. For the world thirsts, and creation groans under the strain of the order imposed by gods, of power locked forever behind the spells given to mortals so that they would have a ready path to power, and never seek to know the truth of the world.

The feeling of eight of us striding together, the will of eight turned into a single living thing, for the song of the shield din called, the song of slaughter, the song of creation and destruction, the storm of chaos that had been building since the first creation of order demanded release from its hated form. I hit the enemy shield line and my will was in my shield, in every fiber of my muscle. I felt the shield of my brothers pushing my back, and when I hit my enemy, his shield shattered, his arm shattered and his body flew back like a ball struck by a swung bat. I felt my spear drive through skull and brain, felt the reaping as my will turned life into death, turned the bound order of life into the chaos and corruption of death, and the dance rose up in me as never before. The demon seeds strove to eat the souls bound to them, and the formations of Yn’Tereth darkest of the gods of this new age strove to take those souls to the hell it had created, but I would not allow it. This was the dance of creation and destruction. In the beginning the universe was one, was chaos, primordial, unknown and unknowing. This was the true darkness. It was not shadow, it was not corrupted and fallen light. It was all things, it was nothing. It was clean. The golden light of my will drove my weapons in the reaping, but the darkness of my tentacle friends lashed out, eating souls and demons both, returning them to the chaos of the infinite. The souls’ mortal energies were food to the primordial, but the soul returned to the darkness from which all potential came, to one day be born again. The dance was eternal, for creation and destruction was a cycle, was one dance. No demons grew from those we killed, nor did we take their souls into our own. We grew strong in the reaping from the dance, but those we killed were partners in the dance, we were all a part of it, as it was a part of all of us.

Only in the killing did we truly understand. Only in the killing did we truly live. I felt the joy of Janice as she stepped beyond my shield to fire. The knowledge that her arrow would kill the man who would have been free to strike me as I thrust forward, the trust that as she stepped back, Lvov’s shield would cover her from the thrown spear. I felt the pure unadulterated joy of Fuckhead as he swept aside the front ranks to our flank who turned in a panic to close behind us, the strength of his will turning the usual oxlike power of his troll muscles into that of a charging war elephant, and casting those who looked at him as nothing but a mindless beast to fly in broken heaps with a single sweep of his heavy halberd. I felt the gentle surety of Gracie as she calmly swept her halberd like a farmer reaping wheat, the song filling her as she worked the battlefield as she once worked the farm fields as a small child, the strongest warrior nothing but wheat before the halberd she wielded as a scythe as she had given herself fully to the song, and every weapon and warrior moved inside the song by its will.

We cultivated our darkness and our light. The chaos of the ending of lives, the light of our will, we watched the battle of East and West, the forces of the West falling as they attempted the charge as we had, but failed to break the lines. Flanked by a second square, the first square tried to hold while its two flanking squares marched to secure its flanks, but with the central square stopped and flanked right, the last Eastern square simply locked onto and refused the flank of their center, the whole of their formation rolling gently around the flanked Western center, and by the time the wheel had been completed, the Western central square was ground to meat paste, and the two remaining Western squares were out of contact. The East continued its rotation, now grinding up the closer Western square between two of its own, as its third simply held the last at bay. When the second square was slaughtered to a man, the umpires halted the battle. The surviving Western square would be broken up for replacements of the Eastern forces.

We meditated as the slaughter unfolded. We felt the battle through the earth, we saw it through the storm. We felt the will to live of those who battled as it stirred the light inside us, we felt the dying of the slaughtered as it stirred the darkness inside us, but worse, we felt the demons feeding on the fallen. Those who should have returned to the primordial were stolen. Those who died were denied the darkness, their song was stolen, the silence they had earned was replaced by the eternal scream of being bound undying as anchor for the demon seed. The demon cultivators from the winning cohorts would feed their demons on the souls of the slain, and the demon seeds within. That is how the Dread Empire surpassed human limitations on power. This was wrong.

I rose, I looked at Janice, she was the closest to a true believer we had, She spat and shook her head. Taking up her bow she stretched her neck, relieving the tensions of so much combat shooting. “We can make it clean. We can set them free.”

I looked at Vong, “Better to die free.”

I looked at Brencis who was grinning. “We kill them all, because we are mother fucking heroes!”

Fuckhead pounded him on the shoulder and roared his approval. Gracie just sighed. To find yourself agreeing with Fuckhead was dangerous, but he wasn’t wrong.

The last battle, North vs East started. Now the Tribune had his weather wizards turning their magics to bind the storm and give us dry ground for the battle. The trumpets sounded, and the centurions screamed at us.

“None of that fucking troll singing. This is the Dread Empire, we don’t need to hear shit from recruits like you except your dying scream, so if you aren’t dying or you aren’t giving a fucking order, you keep your cake hole shut!” The Centurion screamed at us.

The lines marched forward, three blocks marching with the terrain eating stamp of the legion. The trumpets sounded on the other side, East had set its lines to receive the charge, both flanks angled back, one square forward, one to either side and back. They had proved their ability to move those squares to shift facing and attack in any direction. For recruit formations they were well drilled and dangerous. Their earlier victory gave them even greater ability, as the survivors had learned that listening to orders was living. They would be more responsive to orders, and that made them more dangerous in this second fight.

Our center was flush from its victory, a victory built on our charge and that confidence honestly argued bad things if they thought to try the same against the unbroken lines of East. Our left was largely untouched from the last fight, they were steady and confident. We had been shifted to the right which had taken most of the casualties when it failed to remain coherent when crossing the writhing bodies of the battle line when they met a line that kept together even when the ground screamed and grabbed at their legs. Confidence in leadership was low. Coherence was low as many squads were broken and filled with replacements. Those who were left were strong individually, for they were the ones who had seen the lines break, and had the balls to reform. They were the ones who stepped forward into the breech to close it. They had been broken, but struggled to reform. Now it was time to teach them our truth, to become strong in the broken places.

Our commanders had us move forward line abreast. Three blocks moved together, leaving only the main block in contact with the forward block of the East.

The temptation was clear, for central to let us curve forward to close on the forward block. If we did this, it dared the block facing us to move around us and take us in the flank, driving their formation forward onto our side, trusting their center to form an anvil to smash us against.

Our center drove forward, confident that they could break East as they broke South. It had been us that broke South, and we were not with them. Their bravado lasted until they met the meat grinder that was East’s central formation. They were getting the better of the exchange, and already our left flank was starting to crab inward, seeking to pressure the flank of the central block. Much more of this and they would curve in enough to risk being flanked.

No signals were being given from central to do anything. If we let this continue, I could hear the song beginning to sing the song of the East. They were better singing the song of the Dread Empire, they were setting themselves up to bleed us in a thousand cuts, to watch as we exposed ourselves out of impatience and gave up our lines.

I heard Gracie begin to sing softly, and I took up the song. I took up the song and gave the order.

“By the right, quick march!” Our squad began the advance, but the other squad leaders echoed my command and the song began to spread as this time I sung one even the human troopers knew.

“Mother my spear is sleeping.”

“Strike!”

“Mother my spear is thirsty.”

“Strike”

“Mother my spear is lonely.”

“Strike”

“Mother my hand is trembling.”

“Strike”

“Mother my heart is heavy.”

“Strike”

“Mother my blood is falling”

“Strike”

“Mother my sight is fading”

“Strike”

“Mother I hear your singing.”

“Strike.”

“Mother I see you smiling.”

“Strike.”

We strode forward, all the trolls in every squad singing along with us. Those troopers that knew the troll words sang the words, but every man, woman, and troll screamed the one command we knew in every language, as we screamed “STRIKE” the thunder boomed. On the Tribune’s platform, dozens of high cultivation wizards and one of the priests captured demons poured their magics into spells to bind the wind to stillness, to bind the rain inside the clouds, to stop the lightning from seeking the ground. The magics of their wizards beat the air like summer heat, a haze of power visible in the air the answering demonic energies of the sacrifice gathering formations surged in response, and the air itself wavered like the heaviest desert heat haze.

Our block ignored the central block as we marched in lock step forward towards the formation securing their flank. Our trumpeters signalled the charge and we pushed into them.

“Mother my spear is sleeping.” Our second rankers threw plumbata, feathered heavy darts soared overhead to pepper the ranks behind the front to force them to move their shields up or get pierced.

“Strike!” Our line hit theirs with a crash, these were the survivors who knew the cost of breaking ranks, they held together and covered each other.

“Mother my spear is thirsty.” My squad blasted through the front ranks, my own shield turned the stroke of a troll halberd, and my own spear punched through its breastplate and heart.

“Strike” Janice and Von shot arrows to reap the two directly behind the troll I slew, and above us thunder shook the sky.

“Mother my spear is lonely.” Lvov and Giorgi surged past us to strike at the charge into the ranks behind, their spears burying deeply as the golden glow blazed on their edges as they shattered shield, plate and body.

“Strike” Janice and Von shot beyond them, their arrows blazing as they punched through helmets front to back, spraying blood and brains over the rank behind.

“Mother my hand is trembling.” Gracie and Fuckhead began plying their halbards in sweeps that swung and caught legionaries two and three at a time, throwing bits of them in different directions as the song filled them with power

“Strike” Brencis and I charged past Lvov and Giorgi as we shattered the lines that stacked up to face us, spears thrusting through one man fully, to pin the man behind. I switched to my sword.

“Mother my heart is heavy.” The survivors of our formation were those that watched the hesitant die screaming, they were raging beside us, driven beyond their own strength by the song of war that rose around them.

“Strike” The spears of the others in our formation lanced out as one, and when they did, lightning rained down from the sky to rip through the legionaries we faced, and the rain shattered the wizards bindings

“Mother my blood is falling” Pushed so tight we could not use our spears, I pulled out my sword, and rammed my shield into the bodies in front of me. When they could be pushed back no more, I thrust beyond my shield into screaming meat.

“Strike” Lightning lashed down, and in its light I saw arrows pass to the left and right of my head as Janice and Von shot impossibly fast arrows through armoured men pushing back against us.

“Mother my sight is fading” Something screamed under my feet, so I rammed down with my shield, feeling bone crunch as I lurched off the uncertain footing of the dying to ram my sword through an arm holding a spear. The arm fell.

“Strike” Lvov and Giorgi charged past me, shields knocking their foes down, as they thrust beyond into the flanks of those whose ranks they pushed into.

“Mother I hear your singing.” I used my shield to turn a man, and Brencis cut across the backs of his thighs to the white shine of bone. As he fell he tripped another man, I stabbed him through the neck as he fell.

“Strike.” My sword broke as I shattered a helmet. I took a spear from the ground and thrust under the man who hammered down at my shield, driving under his breastplate. The spear broke.

“Mother I see you smiling.” Fuckhead swept his halberd above me like a scythe, and I could stand again. I grabbed the sword of a headless man who was busy falling.

“Strike.” I felt a plumbata ring off my helm as the lightning lancing down from the sky rivaled the flashing in my head, but my body was a machine, my arm lanced out in the brutally economic thrust of the Legion and another trooper fell. We were through the lines were broken. Easts flank was turned.

I ordered us to reform, the roared commands echoed by Gracie in troll to cause the big beasts in every squad to move to follow the command. The surviving squad leaders saw the change, and screamed their own orders. Soon our square reformed, and the commanders of East’s central formation on the brink of their own victory saw us reformed and marching on their flank. With the resolution of the veterans they would live to become, they abandoned the fight they were one push away from winning and ordered the retreat. Falling back in good order, they revealed that both their central and left flank blocks had managed to slaughter most of our center and left. Only on the right had they lost. Marching in good order, we moved to close on the remaining blocks. The milling mass of our other two formations struggled to answer their own signals to reform.

It was the Umpire’s trumpets that ended the battle. The loss of control by the Wizards over the weather and the loss of the soul gathering formations had worried them more than they dared admit. There were slightly too many replacements still alive, but it would profit no one if the killing didn’t strengthen what was left. Still, three blocks of legionaries moved like veteran formations. Two of East’s and one of North’s moved like veteran formations. They would be moved intact into the Legion. The rabble that was left would be used to bring those formations up to strength. Any that were left over would be sent as fresh meat to the worst hit of the Butchers own line formations. Veterans hated newbies inside their squads, so they tended to die even faster than their inexperience and lack of relative strength suggested. It was always better to move formations that had fought together and learned to trust each other. In an army founded on sacrificing others, building loyalty was an art that the Centurions practiced and the best of the Legates learned. For many of the Legates, their absolute personal power was enough that their failings as a commander were largely survivable, but the best of them were not just powerful demonic cultivators but masters of the art of war. Not the Butcher. He was just that. A butcher. He would win, and he would survive. If his legion couldn’t defend a whorehouse with the survivors, it wasn’t his problem.

We had survived. The casualties among first company, the one we had lead to victory in the battle against south were terrifying. They had tried to do what we had done, and broken upon the unyielding professionalism of the East. The left flank had tried not to get deeply involved in the fight, but when your commanders show a lack of resolution, your troops smell it as fear, and that is when the dying starts. The troops on the right flank who we had joined for the second fight had been defeated in the first fight because their leadership didn’t act in time to keep them together. They were the survivors that learned from loss and did better. We led them into the second fight, and led them out again alive. Not with heroics, but with being daring what it was time to be daring, and being conservative when it was time to be conservative. They heard our song in the first fight, and know only that we followed it to victory. In the second fight, they heard our song and they listened. They didn’t understand it, but they understood that victory was at the end of it.

They didn’t share in the song the way we did, they didn’t feel the light of the Will burning inside us, building with every clash of spear, brighter with every drop of blood, they didn’t share the hungry primordial darkness that lashed out from us to feed on demons and magic, that slapped aside arrows and spears, as they slapped aside killing spells and fear castings, but they could follow where we lead, and trust that we who heard the song would follow it to victory. There were a lot of mutterings among those in the First company who had intended us to die in the first fight, then who tried to imitate us in the second fight and died in the failing. No one heeded the words of losers. The strong were right, the weak were prey. The strong ruled, the weak gave thanks to be allowed to live. This was the Dread Empire.

The third company survivors; man, woman, and troll, had latched onto my squad as leaders. They had seen what we did. They had felt the sacrificial formations and their own demon seeds rising in them, as ready to feed on their souls as they died as they were to feed on those they slew. At the time when they doubted the ways of the Dread Empire’s teachings, yet had seen for themselves the power of it’s legions, they had before them another path. A darkness darker than Yn’Tereths’s god of Evil, and a light brighter than the judgemental pricks of the gods of light. They had seen power, and survival. In an empire in which the strong took and the weak gave thanks to be left alive, they had been shown a way to become strong that did not bind you to the demons of the Dread Empire, and to the Sorcerer Generals who owned the demons more truly than the Legate owned his legionaries.

In the camps of the XVII legion, I began to teach the third company, Alpha Cohort, XVII Legion trollish. And a new kind of cultivation. We were off to the border, for the Butcher to teach the Knights of the Holy land that neither their numbers nor their prayers couldn't save them. Our company didn’t care a bit about heresy. They cared a lot about the Holy Knights, and the fact that Dread Empire Legions that won “glorious victories” against them tended to not have enough living to bury the dead, and not enough strength to hold what they took. While the Legate got to go home to celebrate his triumph and look to join the Imperial Senate and try for real power, the smarter soldiers realized that there were not enough surviving Legionaries to fill cohort.

I got permission to use my Xiphos, as I couldn’t keep a steel sword alive. I just broke them. I eventually got permission to arm all of my squad with the celestial bronze Xiphos. The armourer couldn’t understand why anyone would want a bronze sword when they had the finest forged steel swords, forged in literal hellfire so its iron retained only the desired impurities and hardened into something stronger than any but the masterwork blades of other kingdoms. I couldn’t explain how bronze took the Will better than iron, that the weapons of the Titans and gods hadn’t been bronze because they didn’t know iron, they were bronze because bronze infused with the golden light of your awakened will became Celestial Bronze. Eventually, they got sick of replacing every spear, every bow, every sword, and every halberd we used, and let me mould them out of bronze.

They called us “Goblin company” because only goblins still used bronze. I made a mental note not to take them lightly. The first sign you are facing celestial bronze not normal bronze is when it cuts through your steel shield boss like cheese and then punches through your chest plate. I wondered if goblins knew how to work it, how to use their will. I dearly hoped not. The little shits bred like rabbits and hated people. It didn’t matter. Janice and Von got bows of celestial bronze, with strings woven of their own hair infused with their willpower. Without enhancement, they could shoot through a legion standard shield and breastplate. With enhancement they could shoot their arrows through a one foot stone wall to kill a man standing behind it. Our spears and the sung hardwood shafts were similarly potent. The sung wood is something my mother had taught me and I only half remembered. It was Gracie who listened to me try and fail a dozen times before she sang to the tree and it offered her a perfectly shaped shaft of wood that had the power of the song inside it.

Might be a woman thing, might be I just am not the singer that Gracie is. I will keep trying, but Gracie sang the wood for all of our spear shafts, and I forged the celestial bronze for all of our weapons. I would love to bring Gracie home and see if she could dance with Mom. I have a feeling they have more in common than Gracie does with me. Of course that would mean I had to bring Fuckhead home, because even Fuckhead thinks Fuckhead needs supervision.

Still, I have a company now. A company that is learning to grow strong in the broken places, that is learning to not turn outward for power, not seek pact or bargain, not give their strength to spell or ritual. They are learning not to reject their flesh, not to reject the mortal world itself. Of the world we were made, and the song of the making fills this world. Mortal races were born of the falling blood of the Titans spilled during the war of the gods. Common mud of this earth mixed with the blood of the Titans, the primordial who set their will upon the chaos of the abyss and made the universe. The mud that blood fell upon was that primordial chaos bound into form. When we turn inside, when we seek in ourselves the echoes of that song, we find the stuff of the Titans, the blood that gave rise to the gods, and we find the primordial darkness, the abyss of potential and howling nothingness that the gods themselves never knew. When we come together to dance the song of creation and destruction, we step outside the world the gods intended for us. We walk the path of the primordial, where there is only Chaos and Will, where there is no path to power save the endless path of growth through pain.

In any other kingdom on this world, for the darkness that clings to us, we would be burned alive. In this realm of pale shadows playing at darkness, in this land that mistakes evil for chaos, we can hide what we are, and strive to walk the path of the primordial that had been unknown since the gods slew their parent Titans, and chose the form the world and what scraps of power the mortal races would be allowed to play with. In this kingdom, we have to hide the light of our will inside the darkness of our tentacle friends.

Here in the Dread Empire, where evil is accepted, where power is the only truth, where the strong rule and the weak are prey, it is good to have friends. It is better to have tentacle friends.