Year 215. Gortinda - Khirn

“Very few things ever survive a fight with the bearfolk. They are the mighty hammer of the gods. And we are the smelted iron they strike.” - Acominatus, On the Nujant Chhank Pg. 9, Par. 1.

GÍLA SENGHU

On the field of battle, in a horde of blades and meat where life could end in the flash of a second, chance and opportunity were kings. All the strategies in the world meant nothing when those who would employ them felt keen to do away with battle standards and logical practices in favor of blood and guts. A battle plan the commanders had prepared could only be employed for so long before those fighting in it decided to fall into a deluge of gore spawned from an unknown flash of light. Skill only worked for so long before some no-name soldier took an opening to stab a great warrior in the back, distracted by the frenzy around them.

Nothing would work in the confines of modern tactics when the narrative of tyrants resurfaced to invoke its terrible influence upon the world. Like those warlords of old that Gíla had studied so much, the armies of Dioúksis Audax and Vasileús Aslofidor clashed in a storm of hatred. The field north of Gortinda had been destroyed, the grass trampled, and the dirt scuffed up with boots and scars from blades. Crimson flowed from a hundred wounds across thousands of combatants, and mounds of torn muscles and snapped bones dotted the landscape like anthills.

Gíla grimaced, seeing friend killing friend, kin slaying kin, merchant slaughtering baker, and scholar violating history. Dozens had died in those opening moments. When the shield walls fell under the advent of that bright light that told no origin or reason, hundreds chased after those dozens.

That light.

The Bear Maiden gripped her hands into fists as the last batch of survivors ran into Gortinda’s streets. Barricades of carts, carriages, and scrap were placed in the streets, and a swell of truce filled the air.

That truce would last only a short period. Gíla was certain.

She had killed many. No, she had humiliated them, voiding any strikes that came at her, allowing them to break their weapons against her body, or simply incapacitating her foes with a single hit. Only when the tumathios called for a tactical retreat into Gortinda did she realize the depth of her savagery, not unlike that of her family, when their tempers flared to boil over. She had thought herself fully capable of killing another in battle—to see their life flee their body as a result of her actions and feel nothing but satisfaction, knowing that it was necessary. She had done this with bandits in self-defense. But this was different. When her senses were returned—her hand at the throat of a woman with black hair—she found that she had none of the willpower her comrades had. She had stood there, trembling.

It ended with Gíla tossing that woman away.

Despair and loathing filled her, her eyes increasingly glowing until they were like freshly minted coins in a bank’s vault. To those Druyans and kingsmen, she was a prize unlike any other. An inhuman to present to Vasileús Aslofidor as some jewel or trophy. Such an opportunity had pushed them to call upon the true limits of their training. Only by her inhumanity was she spared death.

“Most Noble be damned for this day,” Loukas Tamasos cursed. They swiped their blade clean of brain matter and entered the streets with the last survivors, hollering and grunting commands at the ones assembling the barricades. Their attention shifted to those who had entered with them—a mere eighty. “And damn you all for your stupidity. What provoked such a loss of sanity, you inbred shits?”

“I don’t know, sir,” one of the warriors remarked. “There was this...this-”

“This light!” another squawked. “Brighter than anything I’ve seen. It showed me things. Horrible things.”

“You saw it, didn’t you?”

“No, I did not see any light,” Loukas boiled, their face so twisted with wrath that they appeared almost draconian. “Mass panic in the midst of the most important battle of this war, the army commanded by damnable Harkides. Just my luck. Get yourselves situated and man the barricades!”

The eighty warriors scrambled to do as they were told, bleating like scalded sheep. Loukas ran their hands over their bald head. A scream of dismay escaped them.

Gíla breathed sharply and approached them. "Hoplitus?"

The Bulldog snorted in surprise. “What? Oh, you. You’re still alive. That’s good, at least. What the hell do you want?”

“Orders? What am I to do?”

The Bulldog shrugged. “Man the barricades. Ensure the village isn’t going to drown in blood. Kill any King's Men who comes into this place.”

“Simple enough orders,” Gíla mused with a grin. “Is there anything else?”

Loukas grunted and picked a chunk of meat from a crevice between the plates of their armor. “Build the barricades. Carry injured to the healers. Be a barricade.” A short blast of a haunting horn alerted the Bear Maiden toward the west. Loukas’ typical grunts morphed into growls. “The Devil’s rotten heart. It beats for the madmen carrying steel into the fire.”

“What?” Gíla narrowed her eyes.

Loukas reached behind their back and produced a small, curved horn made of blackened bone. “The Horn of Malignance. A challenge to the enemy from one of our champions, given to all knights of the Akaios Opos. It is a tool for those who have become blinded by the zeal of our faith and find no other recourse but to kill on their own—a last stand to perhaps find ascension. You would think we all had one out there. Some madman just made the challenge.”

Gíla swallowed roughly, her throat catching like it was stuffed with food she had failed to chew. “What does that mean for us?”

Loukas pressed a finger to their nostril, closing it, and exhaled through the other sharply to remove a glob of bloody mucus. A trickle of crimson followed soon after. “Nothing, only that one of our knights is a madman driven to the brink by whatever happened out there. Most likely Eos, or—if the Most Noble is feeling particularly snarky—Misandros. The Devil sired that boy, I swear. Stupid. All of it. I tried telling the tumathios that we should never have met them in the field like that. Glory. Ascension. That’s all I got in response. Stupid, old man. Now we suffer for it.”

“You do not sound particularly aligned with the Akaios Opos thus far. Are you sure you did not see that light?” Gíla tried to joke, nerves gripping her heart to the point of burning.

Loukas glared at her. “My life, my friends’ lives, and the future of this land are at stake because Menoitios couldn’t be asked to stay back and fortify Gortinda properly in the time that we had. The mind of a martyr, I tell you. Demented.” The Bulldog tapped two fingers against their temple.

Gíla had nothing to say and turned her head down to the cobbled street until Loukas departed upon the sounding of another Horn of Malignance. Trusting the Bulldog's orders to be the best fit for her skills, Gíla departed the area as well and began an inspection of the largest barricades on the north end of Gortinda. Everything looked relatively put together if unable to survive a long-term siege.

It was at the last of the barricades in the east that she stumbled upon Alden and a familiar face in Goscelin Evenios, fifty others working on defensive spikes and layers of wood and metal. “Gíla!” Alden yelled, elation burning the sorrow from their face. They ran to her with a grin. “I knew you survived! I just knew it!”

“It was touch and go for a bit, Young Alden, but how did you escape?” Gíla asked. She knelt to their level, a confused grin on her face. “The horde swallowed you.”

“I don’t know,” Alden shrugged. “I remember the light hitting us, everything in my body burning. It was like I’d fallen into a fireplace. Then I was in the middle of the fighting. I think I got hit a few times by weapons, but I never felt it, and I don’t have any wounds. What about you?”

“Similar,” Gíla answered, choosing to forgo the details of blades, hammers, and arrows snapping ineffectually against her hide. “I am glad you are alive. And found yourself here with Goscelin.”

Alden’s eyes widened, and they turned around to point at the broad smith. “Goscelin saved a lot of us. He ran out into the field as we were retreating, carrying the most injured into safety.”

Goscelin merely waved their hammer in response before returning to fortifying the barricade of carts and scrap with nails and metal parts.

“Not a big talker,” Alden commented. “How do you know him?”

“We rode into Gortinda together,” Gíla answered, rising to her full height at the sound of a third horn. “I believe we should get some rest before the King's Men decide that this moment of peace is lasting too long.”

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“What are Dragons like?” Alden asked as they shoveled a spoonful of chicken stew into their mouth. The tavern was smoky from the tobacco pipes lit in mass by the warriors seeking respite from the carnage, and the clatter of plates and cups was a subtle song played by bards who were not there.

The Bear Maiden snickered. “Big. Winged. Multi-colored.”

Alden smiled. “No! I mean...what are they like? You said they live by a cycle of sleep, conquer, rule, repeat. They aren’t evil, either. So what are they like?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Gíla ate her spoonful of stew, enjoying the brothy taste to ignore the burning hateful stares from the others in the tavern. “They are unique beasts. Dedicated, loyal, and honorable in their own ways. Subservient to the tenets their gods gave them for their lives and cycles. They see no other alternative but to follow that path, which unfortunately puts them at odds with most other lifeforms in Aqella. They are not evil; they are just faithful.”

“Highest Above...inhumans and their gods. Makes me sick,” she heard someone mutter.

“So you’ve spoken to them?” Alden asked.

“No, just read. I have spoken to others who have encountered them firsthand. They describe them in various ways, but the most common is how I have. My people have a begrudging respect for the Dragons despite our wars and a healthy fear.”

Alden ate four massive spoonfuls and sighed contentedly. “Would any of them consider coming to Khirn?”

“Oh, no,” Gíla shook her head, noting more murmurs of discontent from the rest of the Akaios Opos in the tavern as she continued to speak. “The cycles they follow keep them locked in Aqella. They could if they wished, but they do not.”

“I would have liked to have met one,” Alden bemoaned.

“You’d get fried, boy,” Goscelin muttered as they approached the table, carrying a bowl of stew and mug of ale—both practically spilling over the rims. “Dragons hate humans if my own books have any truth on the matter.”

“Is that true?” Alden asked Gíla.

“It bears some truth,” Gíla admitted. “Your kind were especially violent towards the Dragons during your exodus from Aqella. That was when you used riyu—mystharin—as a species. Before your kind lost their way with it.”

“Well, I guess I don’t want to meet one anymore,” Alden pouted, to which Goscelin patted them on the back.

“In time, you might meet something of equal quality,” Gíla smiled sadly. “A nari or tui.”

“What are those?” Alden asked, their eyes bright again.

Another human joined the table before she could answer. This one was rat-faced, lean, and pungently odorous from the mire of battle. “Well, it looks like a proper good table,” they said in a voice equal parts distressing and stomach-churning. Their accent was thick and made their voice nearly indecipherable. “Might I join you fine people?”

“Be our guest,” Gíla said diplomatically, extending her hand toward the empty chair.

The rat-faced human sat down and crossed their arms over the table. “Right...well, introductions. Name is Iphino. Yours?”

“Alden!” the young one said through a mouthful of meat and potatoes, the broth dribbling from the corner of their lips.

“Gos,” the smith answered in a wary tone.

“Gíla Senghu,” Gíla said, offering her hand for the human to shake.

They took it. “Yeah... you’re the Drayheller. That’s what your people are called, right? The bears from Aqella.”

“Well, Drayheller is the Khirnian name for us, yes. But our real name is ‘Nujant Chhank,’ which we greatly prefer, but understand if Drayheller is easier on your human tongues,” Gíla explained.

“Huh...so important you need two names to your name, eh?” Iphino laughed lightly.

The Bear Maiden shook her head. “I would not say it is because of importance; it is simply what we were given.”

Iphino snapped their fingers at the bartender and their few servants to produce and deliver several mugs of frothy ale. They downed it in seconds and belched. “Well, the Dioúksis seems to think it was important enough to sign off on you joining us despite Khirn being an ‘inhuman free land.’ So to speak. Got to say, I have to agree with him. Saw you fighting in that chaos. You did well being impervious and putting the fist to those King's Men scum.”

“Thank you,” Gíla said politely.

Iphino began to sip a second mug. “You’re quite welcome. Now, why is it that you’re even here in the first place? I’ve been wondering.”

“Historian!” Alden answered loudly, drawing an ireful glance from Goscelin.

“Ohhh, a historian, is it?” Iphino drawled. “Well, what are you historizing?”

“Why do you want to know?” Goscelin asked.

Iphino leaned back in their chair and cracked a smile. Half of their front teeth were missing. The Bear Maiden only just noticed the whistle in their speech. “I am merely curious. So many Akaios Opos have been whispering of discontent and even malcontent about the bear’s—I’m sorry, historian’s—presence here. I just wanted to see what the issue was.”

“Have you found any issues?” Goscelin almost dared.

Various vocalizations from the tavern answered Goscelin in the affirmative, but Iphino alone shook their head. “Nope. The boys behind me will probably hate me for it, but I saw this Drayheller rip a man in half like kindling. Inhuman or not, believer or not, that makes a fine ally in my book. Even a temporary one.”

“Unusually cordial for a Harbinger,” Goscelin muttered before casting another glance at Alden. “Though you did recruit this little bastard, so I shouldn’t be surprised your ranks hold unique people.”

Iphino smiled. “Nice of you to say, Gos. Gos, right?” When the smith nodded, Iphino turned their attention back to Gíla amid the rising murmurs and thinly veiled insults thrown throughout the tavern. “So, what are you historizing?”

“Khirn’s ancient past and its survival into the present day,” Gíla answered. She spotted Iphino’s friends rise from their table and march out of the tavern, leaving the rat-faced human behind. Iphino seemed to be barely bothered by this.

They ran a hand through long, flaxen hair. “Big task. You learned any secrets of humanity?”

“A few, but our big project was put on hold for me to be here at the request of your Dioúksis Audax.”

“What was the project?”

“Asking a lot of questions, Iphino,” Goscelin said with a hint of suspicion.

“Merely curious, Gos, as I said. Can’t a man be curious?” Iphino said with a smirk.

More humans entered the tavern. “Afraid I cannot say,” Gíla said.

“Secretive!” Iphino exclaimed. “I like secrets. Hazardous ones. More fun to uncover.” Before the three could respond to these words, Iphino finished their drink and rose from the table. They bowed their head. “With that, I’m afraid I must be gone.”

They departed the tavern with a skip to their step. “That one worries me,” Goscelin declared.

“He seemed nice enough,” Alden said in a hushed way. “One of the nicer people in the aedo, in any case.”

Gíla nodded. “I would like to trust them—him...him?”

“Him,” Goscelin said.

“Him. I want to trust him as well, but I assume I should be wary of humans who are nice to my kind.”

Goscelin snorted. “You wary around me?”

Gíla narrowed her eyes on the smith and formed a small simper. “I am very wary around you.”

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“Defend the barricades! Defend the barricades! Hold the defenses! Hold the line!”

Two days had passed in the temporary truce before the King's Men laid siege to Gortinda. In that time, Gíla had heard of many attempts at diplomacy between the respective tumathioss, only for those attempts to end with vile insults, accusations, and murders on the field. Eos the Colossus had sounded the Horn of Malignance, challenging one of the Vasileús’ champions. When no one answered, the zealot broke rank and charged the assembly of King's Men. A warrior named Esin Ere—a Druyan—was their victim, their head smashed into pulp. Another named Akba Aka attempted to avenge Esin in the chaos that erupted from this, only to find their spine shattered into a thousand pieces.

Or so Gíla was told.

All she knew for sure was that Eos the Colossus had broken rank and instigated the siege of Gortinda. The barricades were nothing to be proud of in a proper defense, but they were stout enough in their purpose. Initial waves of the King's army were held back for a time. Archers, lancers, spearmen, and those armed with long-reaching weapons like halberds and great blades managed to cut down swaths in defense of Gortinda. Loukas Tamasos and Misandros Tateas proved themselves to be leaders in the anarchy, holding morale together with dire threats and bombastic confidence, respectively. Gíla fought at the central barricade with them, Alden and Goscelin joining her with trepidatious unity. Though she was still incapable of killing, she managed to incapacitate many, shoving them back or scaring them off with her mere appearance and a well-timed roar.

It all held together until Tumathios Menoitos ordered the two knights to reinforce the western and eastern flanks. A wise decision, given that more and more reports of King's Men slipping past the barricades became all too frequent. Unfortunately, it was also the decision that decided the first half of the battle. Without Tamasos and Tateas, the rank and file of the Akaios Opos at the central barricade began to falter until sheer numbers broke through the defenses. Thousands swarmed into the streets—infantry, archers, cavalry, barbarians all.

What happened after this was nothing short of a massacre. Tumathios Menoitos fell from their horse at the central barricade and was trampled underfoot until their legs were crippled. The opposing tumathios, a brutish figure named Harkides, grabbed Menoitos by their throat and throttled them with a single hand until they fell to the ground with bugged eyes and blood running from their mouth. Liohagos Alexias attempted to avenge the fallen tumathios, proving the ample swordsman by dueling the larger figure. Several blows were landed on Harkides until the great giant of the Vasileús struck down Alexias with a blow to the head from their battle axe. In less than two minutes, the upper leadership of the aedo had been slain.

“Gíla! We need to get out of here!” Alden and Goscelin bellowed in tandem as the Bear Maiden stared in horror at the abject brutality around her. She screamed in frustration as she turned and fled with her comrades, leaving behind those too slow or too injured to fall back into defensive lines.

Goscelin grabbed the Bear Maiden by her shoulders as a moment of respite fell upon them. “Gíla! What the hell happened to you? You’re not killing them!”

“I-I cannot...” Gíla breathed, unable to shake the image of the army’s leader falling helplessly to the enemy. She had no choice but to draw more comparisons to the tales of the Golden Lords and the fantastical nature of their battles. For the longest time, she had thought them to be simply that. Fantastical. Improbable. Yet, everything she had seen thus far in Gortinda, from battle tactics to the sheer violence unleashed upon the land, was nothing short of identical to these stories. Two armies of grotesque size engaged in brutal combat with no structure or plan beyond winning at all costs. The sands were soaked with blood, and barbarians hollered as they slipped and tumbled over one another.

“Aqella cannot be the only place so civilized,” she muttered to herself as she drew further comparisons to how those of Aqella waged their battles. There, strategies were developed and held in place, not so easily discarded. Why was it not so here? Was it that light?

Goscelin slapped her in the face. “Gíla! Wake the hell up!” they roared. “What is your issue?”

Gíla shuddered. “I cannot...the violence here is so...my father always said...”

Goscelin slapped her again. “Your father isn’t here. You are. And you need to defend yourself and do as you swore to do. You swore to fight! You swore to kill! Now you have to do that, or we all die! And I don’t plan on dying today!”

“Gíla, please. We can’t do this alone,” Alden pleaded.

Gíla breathed hard, breathed sharply, and then slowly. Her eyes inflamed to brilliant gold. She nodded and locked her gaze with Goscelin. “I...I need a weapon.”