Year 215. Gortinda - Khirn
"In the storms of war and the bloody heart of battle, one will find their truest self. But to remain connected to such is to accept the failings that come with it." - Unknown
JIRA ne'JIRAL
The space where she had been standing burst into a cloud of dust from the cobblestone surface. The warrior cried out, and the spears of the two next to him were thrown. Jira voided the first. The second carved through the interlinked chains of her mail and through two inches of her right arm. She buried a grimace and continued running. She reached such a speed that when the warrior swung his maul for her head, he missed entirely as the silver-haired woman slid to her knees under the weapon.
She came to a stop near the two others. She rose and swung. The blade of her longsword cut through the first's face just underneath his nose, a glut of blood rushing down its fuller. Jira spun around to slash it across the exposed throat of the second, cutting through his jugular and trachea, leaving him tumbling to the ground as blood fountained from his neck. A third appeared from the doorway of a burning apothecary. He swung for her face with his arming sword. Jira parried and stuck the blade into his eye. He yelped like a kicked dog and reached up to grasp at his face, only to die seconds later. Jira found that the attack had consequently lodged her weapon in his skull. Quickly retrieving the dead man's arming sword, she rushed the two who had emerged after him from the building, flames outlining them like demons. She sliced open one from the armpit through his ribs, leaving him gasping as his lung was ruined by a gash. A ripost and upcut follow-through nearly decapitated the second, his head flung back and held to his torso by his spine alone.
"Codros!" the first warrior cried as the nearly decapitated man fell onto his back.
Five more appeared from the alleyway next to the apothecary, coughing as the smoke from the building and the countless others assailed them. Two of them were Druyans. Spearmen, their sunrise-dyed armor glinting from the fire. Beasts among those barely passing for humans themselves.
He lunged for her, swinging his maul with such ferocity that the very air was capable of pushing her away. She nearly impaled herself on the spear behind her, its wielder stabbing at her with a screech. Pivoting saved her, though another armed with a mace cracked her along the back, dropping her to the hard ground. She scrambled against the pain, stifled a series of growing coughs as the exertion of the bout troubled her lungs, and barely voided a series of swings from the three. A parry of a fourth saw his throat cut open. A fifth charged her with his body, tackling her as she escaped more attacks from the other three. Instinctively jabbing her fingers into his eyes, Jira pushed the screaming man off and rolled away just as the maul came down for her head.
"Kill her!" a voice suddenly called from the other side of the horde that filled the central village square.
The Druyans and kingsmen had reached some tentative agreement despite their animosity in the midst of Harkides' death and the improbable nature of their routing by the defenders. The two armies had met in the village once more, engaging in brutal guerilla warfare that saw more skirmishes than outright combat like this in the square, entire squadrons reduced to sole survivors and regiments wiped from the rosters. Jira had spent the entirety of this battle securing chokepoints, bracing weaknesses in the inner defenses, and developing strategies with the new leadership in Misandros and Loukas. Eos was charged with massacring any champion he came across, calling upon the rights of the Horn of Malignance. He had so far done this with great success. Astera Rodel was to take her band of archers and scouts and eliminate the backlines from the rooftops of the northern edge of the village. Given that many of the streets now laid unassailed by volleys of arrows and spears and javelins, it was likely going as well as could be expected. Nicias, Phoibus, and Praxis had been assigned with leading the survivors of Gortinda's garrison, keeping their morale intact and the shield wall to the south stout. Oeagnus, the fleetest of all in the Akaios Opos, had finally been granted leave to race out of Gortinda and meet up with the Bulls, wherever they may have been, and urge them to make haste to the sieged settlement. With hope, they would arrive quicker than half a month. Here, in the central square, the remaining forces of the Akaios Opos would hold out as best they could against the Vasileús' forces.
The man with the mace was the first to try at her again, swinging hard but finding his arm snatched in her hands and snapped broken. Grabbing the falling weapon mid-air, Jira swung up and crushed his jaw. She ducked a wild swing from the first warrior, who had become so enraged and blind with his attacks that he smashed the face of the man to his right. A Druyan spearman. Jira pivoted, finally standing off against the impromptu leader.
"You loyalists really are persistent," she heaved, nearly breathless.
He bellowed and charged her with a series of vicious swings. She voided each one, attempting to control her breathing, leading him as she worked her way back to the dead man who held her longsword in his skull. She rolled under another attack, rising up to her knee to smash the mace against the side of his knee, bending it inward. He cried out and crumbled, granting her enough time to pull her weapon from the skull before leaping at him and skewering it through the first few centimeters of the man's nasal cavity. He choked and gurgled, his hands reaching up in some attempt to plea for his life.
A crackle sparked her brain—a jolt of judgment—as she looked at him. Her expression darkened. The hatred in her eyes shone through the emotion like the moon, so full of abhorrence. She sliced the blade up, carving the man's face from nose to eye socket. She sliced the blade down, leaving a deep gash from forehead to jaw that spilled blood so ruinous in her vision that it appeared like sludge. Another slice, and another, and another until the man was left twitching and unrecognizable.
"ne'Jiral!" Misandros cried out from behind her.
She spun around to see him tossing away the remains of a Druyan. A brief glance to his right hand spotted it smoldering with auric smoke for only a second—the same as Loukas' eyes after the second flash of light that turned the tide. She ignored it, sequestering it among the rest of her evidence.
"Tateas," Jira saluted briefly, forced to deflect the charge of another Druyan. She threw them in the direction of Misandros, who promptly skewered them with a driving thrust of his sword.
"How fares the square?" he asked.
Jira looked around them. "It fares well enough. As well as it can. I'm not sure how much longer we can last, though."
"We will," Misandros demanded. "For the good of the realm, we will hold Gortinda."
Another scrap against the loyalists pushed Jira and Misandros back toward the southern edge of the square. "I might be persuaded to disagree."
"Trust me, ne'Jiral. We will hold Gortinda," Misandros promised.
Jira wished later on that she had expected the levels Misandros had intended to go to save the village and the war.
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It had been an unthinkable feat. For nearly a week, they had held Gortinda, reducing the horde warfare fully into skirmishes and returning to actual tactics and strategy rather than barbarism and maniacal slaughter. The Bear Maiden, so stout in endurance and power, had returned to the field as well in ludicrous time—highlighting for all in the Harbingers the strength of her people. But she had returned changed and hesitant.
The Bear Maiden sat on the ground far, far from the others. So far away that the cobbled stone of the street underneath her was strong and gray, unspoiled by the conflict. At this distance, the thousands that remained in the nearly leveled village seemed like an ocean of steel and red, pierced by poles of black wood and flags wrapped in veils of smoke. Cries and shouts and cheers and toasts were made despite Tamasos' request, reveling in the fact that they had survived the impossible. Most of the intact bodies had now completely been piled up into mounds and carts by the serfs. The squires and the priests wandered about performing their duties. Sun-gold robes, faceless and devout. They did not suffer the consequences of this battle, not physically. Yes, they saw the dead and the rotting, but they did not inflict it. They did not take the lives of young men.
"What are you doing out here, Lady Senghu?" Jira asked in a voice that was equal parts sickly sweet and bitterly snakish. She could see that Gíla felt pins and needles pierce her hide at the very utterance of such a voice.
Gíla looked up into the blinding rays of the sun and covered her eyes with her arm. "Who-oh, you. My apologies, I do not recall your name, Lady..."
"ne'Jiral," Jira answered. "Jira is fine. And I asked you a question," Jira asked again, stepping closer. Her voice planted more pins and needles into the Bear Maiden's body.
"I...um...wanted..." she stammered, wrong-footed.
Jira chuckled. "Just wanted to get away from the carnage?"
Gíla nodded.
Jira hummed and knelt to meet the Bear Maiden's gaze unhindered by the sun. She ran her gauntleted fingers along the ground and traced particularly long strands of grass poking through the gaps in the stone. "Well, enjoy it while you can. Soon enough, there are going to be a lot more villages like this one. All bloodied and ruined and repulsive."
Gíla blinked. "I know."
"It's good that you know. You should be prepared for it."
Gíla stood up, towering over Jira with immensity. Jira held back an awed grin and stood up as well. "I am aware. I have already become prepared for it."
"Then why do you sit alone all sullen? You seemed quite exuberant the few times I saw you breaking through the Vasileús' lines."
"Why are you over here?" Gíla asked, her voice somewhere between inquisitive and irritated.
"I saw you sitting all alone," the knight answered. "You are a special case, and most recently, almost died at the cost of unprecedented diplomacy between your people and my people. It is my job to ensure that such a thing does not happen."
"Ah, so you are not here to listen to my stories or talk about battle strategy?" the Bear Maiden said.
"Maybe I am," Jira countered, shifting her voice into something calming. "I've been meaning to talk to you since you joined our ranks, but...clearly, circumstances have kept us from conversing."
"I see," Gíla mumbled. She made a motion with her arms. "Well, you found me."
"That I did," she said with a matching motion of her arms. "You're far drearier than I expected. Your first battle, correct?"
"My first real one, yes," Gíla said.
"You have killed before it?"
Gíla breathed deeply. "Yes. But war is different than bandits on the road."
Jira raised her brows and turned to look back at the devastation behind them. "Indeed it is. Who was the one that brought you low? Some old man with an ax trying to hunt you down like some wild animal? A crooked woman hoping to bring your head to the king like some trophy to mount on the wall?"
Gíla did not respond and looked away.
The knight hummed, then snapped her finger—a horrible scraping noise of metal. "I see. One of the champions. Well, if anyone was going to put the legends of your people's endurance to the test, it would be them."
"Why are you asking me these things?" Gíla blazed, her eyes widening with a burst of frustration. She quickly calmed herself. "I apologize. I have only just recovered from my injuries, and I am quite tense."
The knight laughed haughtily, something that added pincers alongside the pins and needles. "I don't blame you, Gíla. You have a reputation for being invulnerable and then almost die in your first real fight against things that are not Dragons. Anyone would be upset at that."
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Gíla tried to laugh, then furrowed her eyes. "Are we going to attack again?"
"Soon. Eos is itching to combat what champions of theirs remain. The bastard has amassed quite the trophy collection."
"Perhaps the Colossus can win this battle single-handedly then, and we can all go home."
"Wouldn't that be grand?"
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Night had fallen upon them with practice like the curtain of a stage play. The buildings around them, dark and only occasionally lit by lanterns, whispered tales of old bent trees cut down for industry and groaned with their ancient homes that knew no sunlight or people. Beyond the borders of the village and its fields, the forests bore leaves so darkly green they looked black in the moonlight, shaking distantly with a light breeze. Critters of diminutive size bounded and crept through the bush - staring at the masses of flesh and metal that encroached on the borders of their home. Larger beasts like wolves also stalked, but they kept their distance. At worst, they ran. The forest never ran, and when all fleshy mortal life was gone, they would remain tall and strong.
Her parents had taught her of the forest and its ancient ways that knew no morality or judgment. No bias or hatred or love. It was too old for it, they said. Too old to care for what came after it, knowing that until the stars themselves descended upon the world to set it aflame, they would always stand and live. Not like the desert, which was cruel and barbaric, or the ocean, which was wicked and greedy.
Jira regarded the survivors who rested in this place. She wondered if they felt the same about the forest, if they cared about it or even cared to care. Of those from the Harbingers, she had an immediate answer, for they prayed not to the forest that it remained as peaceful as it was but to their god. They prayed to him that the night stayed calm and they could defeat the fiends just to the north. Jira wondered what Gíla would think.
"You sit with people for once," she remarked as she came upon the Bear Maiden and two others. A young boy with the features of a lion cub, and an older man with gray hair and a body akin to that of a troll wanting to crush everything in sight.
Gíla looked away from her companions to see the thin figure of Jira ne'Jiral approaching her, outlined in the firelight of the Bear Maiden's campfire. A black pot rested over it on an iron, savory smells wafting from within. A kettle was on the lip of the stones. Jira was dressed in her off-duty clothes - loose gray garments and leather boots that accentuated her figure and height. "And you ignore my comments, once more, too," Jira said with a chuckle.
"I am sorry," Gíla said, blinking. She motioned to the boy and older man. "I have been resting with Alden and Goscelin here. They are good people. Alden, Goscelin, this is Jira ne'Jiral. She is commanding the Harbingers alongside Loukas and Misandros."
Alden and Goscelin both gave small salutes before returning to the bowls of stew in their hands.
The silver-haired woman smiled with her dagger-thin lips and sat on the opposite side of the fire. Though small, the flames were warm and combated the cold of the night. "I am glad you have friends in this place," she said plainly.
"I am as well," Gíla's lips curled back to reveal teeth that looked once chipped but now reformed at jagged marks.
"Do you mind if I join you?" Jira asked.
"Not at all," Gíla said. "Would you like some stew?"
"Please."
Gíla grabbed a spare bowl and filled it with the simmering, meat-filled broth. "Alden here was just asking me about my people. Goscelin too."
"Is that so?" Jira took the bowl graciously and sipped the excess before it spilled. It was hearty and warm. "What was the last question?"
"Do the Dray- - I'm sorry - the Nujant Chhank eat horses?" the young boy suddenly questioned.
Goscelin sighed and rolled his eyes while Gíla laughed and took a sip from her cup of what smelled like black tea. "We eat whatever we must, but thankfully that is mostly fruit, berries, deer, and fish. Our homeland has those in abundance. We are also partial to sweets. Pastries and the like. If times are tough and the family has gathered enough food for a resting season, we will hunt moose and elk, sometimes even lion."
Alden cupped his chin, mimicking the classical scholar. "Have you ever eaten a...human?"
Gíla looked appalled. "No! Never. We are scholars and nomads. Not savages. Not beasts."
Jira swallowed a spoonful of stew and tapped her knee afterward, joining the conversation. "Has it ever happened in your history, though?"
"Has what happened?"
"Has there ever been a Nujant Chhank who went savage and bestial?"
Gíla considered the question. "Not to my knowledge. Well, maybe. There was one tale of an overlord from long ago. My parents recounted it to me."
"Tell it to us."
Gíla cleared her throat, clearly unaccustomed to such eagerness to hear of her people. "It is from near the beginning of our recorded history, not long after Vran Nayku established our species in the world. Prut, he was called. He was said to have made a voyage to the furthest reaches of the north, to a land of ice and cold. Beyond the sight of our birthland. He took with him a thousand-thousand Nujant Chhank, establishing outposts and frozen cities across a land larger than the known world combined."
"That is impossible," Goscelin gruffly declared. "Khirn is already improbably vast, larger than it ought to be. I assume Aqella is as well. To have another land larger than both at once would be...mythical."
Gíla sipped her tea. "Hence why it is a legend."
"What made him an overlord?" Alden asked.
Gíla finished her cup and poured another. "He returned south after an unknown amount of time. Some versions say it was a hundred years, some say one hundred thousand. No one knows. He returned paler than the moon where he had once been red like lava, speaking in riddles and armed with the Pact of Perdition, a Spellblade designed like a double-edged saw that rent the soul from the body entirely and destroyed it."
Jira's eyes widened, as did Goscelin's. "Prut returned with a Spellblade?" Goscelin asked.
"He did," Gíla beamed, surprised that two of her fellows knew of the mystical weapons. "And in his newfound madness, used it against the Nujant Chhank, claiming that he was obliging the rule of Fpank Winch. Some entity who said that our people were too disruptive to his plans."
"If that is true, then the Nujant Chhank would all be dead," Jira said with a mouthful of stew.
Goscelin agreed. "My oldest books have told warnings of the Spellblades still scattered across the known world. Entire civilizations were ruined by them and their singular wielders. Your people would have died against Prut."
"Hence why the tale is anecdotal rather than pure fact," Gíla snarked. "What likely happened was that Prut returned as he was following a disastrous journey into an endless ocean and simply waged a maddened war against the people who called him insane for daring to attempt the voyage. He allied with similarly minded people and did enough to become a bedtime story generations later."
Jira sniffed. "Fair. Now tell me this, then...why do you sit alone with these two when you could be sharing these tales with everyone in the Harbingers? Tell them about you and your race and get them to understand that you are not this...dangerous thing."
"You want me to tell them about the time one of my people apparently conquered a land larger than Khirn and Aqella, so far to the north that we cannot even find it, returned home as the champion of an unknown being, and expect them to trust me?" Gíla finished her question with a hearty, mocking laugh. "They have a hard enough time believing I am even allowed to be here by the orders of their Dioúksis."
"Hell, they have a hard enough time accepting that you are even on Khirn," Goscelin mused. "Goes against their ideas of the Highest's intentions for this world."
"Exactly. If I go around telling them that story or anything remotely similar, they would burn me on a pyre with their precious Dioúksis presiding over the matter."
Jira snorted. "Well, perhaps not that story or anything remotely similar. One step at a time. I don't know, tell them about your cultural practices. Some of the old lore you've uncovered about humanity. Drayheller marriage rites, I don't know."
"Nujant Chhank do not marry," Gíla corrected, wagging a clawed finger. "We just choose and live with that person for the rest of our lives."
"Sounds like marriage to me."
"Let me correct: we do not marry as you humans do. There is no ceremony, there is no church, no gathering, or what have you. We just choose, and everyone accepts it. A partnership, I suppose you could call it. It is simpler than having to work with ceremonies and such. We live for so long that having a piece of paper that could be lost or damaged or a rustable ring or pendant would just be impractical. My parents have been together for over five hundred years. Not a shred of documentation for it, but every other family we have met just accepts it."
"How long do your people live?" Alden asked.
Gíla filled Jira's bowl at her request. "No one knows. Not a single one has died of old age as far as we have recorded in our history. According to my parents, some of those in Asne Unarith are believed to be as old as the span of time that humans have lived on Khirn, a total stretch that can no longer be properly chronicled."
Goscelin finished his portion of stew. "How do you mean?"
Gíla filled Goscelin's bowl next and then offered Alden a cup of tea. "The first concrete time period that Khirn has on humanity is the Age of the Golden Lords. Acominatus' time, most popularly known. That was eighty thousand years ago. But humanity has lived on Khirn longer than that. Much longer."
"As have other species before humanity. The Tahririans have discovered that," Jira said.
Gíla nodded. "All you know for sure is that you came here to escape the inhumans of Aqella."
Alden's mouth gaped open in shock at the information. Goscelin sipped his second serving and nodded. "The world is old. Very old. It's a marvel we have as much information as we do."
"The passage of time is deliberate and expansive," Jira added. "We will discover more eventually. Just look at Tahrir. All those tombs being excavated."
"How long have you been alive?" Alden asked the Bear Maiden.
"Two hundred and sixty years. I am the youngest child. My brother is three hundred. My parents are...a lot older."
"Where are they now?"
"Working with the Dioúksis in exchange for me being here."
The four were silent for a while after this, now gazing into the fire and watching the sticks crackle and snap with embers. Somewhere overhead, an owl hooted, and another responded. Jira smiled, small and thin, and breathed through her nose. She stood up and cracked her back by twisting. "You should tell your guild these things. They may like you for it. Knowing more about your people."
Gíla smiled as well, though hers was smaller and sad. "I doubt it."
Jira made a noise and looked back at the solemn streets and all the fires lighting up the sky. "Well, I like you for it, Gíla," she said without returning her gaze to the Bear Maiden. "I am going to name you my traveling companion once this battle is done. So make our journey enjoyable and tell me your tales."
Gíla said nothing as Jira walked away, disappearing in the darkness between campfires.
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It started as dissonant whispers in the distance after nearly another half-hour of fighting, something normally negligible for those of sufficient willpower. Then, it grew into a discordant whirring noise, unlike anything Jira had heard outside of the Black Glass. The closest, she thought, was when Erik Apa utilized his abilities. Then came the rumbling in the ground and the growing silence of every combatant in the vicinity of that village. The only noise beyond this was the sudden, worried howling of the Druyans, many of whom ordered an immediate retreat from the area. Only the wisest of the Vasileús's army followed this order immediately. Men and women Jira recognized as Sotera, Iomene, Androbulos, Chacodon, and Mysius. Jira attempted to get the Harbingers to follow suit, only to realize by the face of Misandros that it was they who would bring the incoming catastrophe upon the Vasileús's army.
First was the third crack of light—brilliant white, filled with golden flames and orange rays of power—followed by the glowing, coalescing sickly light somewhere in the west.
Jira turned to run, but it was too late. The lights detonated into a catastrophe of raw mystharin that sunk into the ground and uprooted everything inside. Rock, stone, dirt, roots, vines, plants, and rusted sewer pipes. All of it flew into the air like the tentacles of some sea beast, grasping for anyone that they could. Young Timo was taken, bent in horrible ways as her body crunched and burst from the small hole the vines pulled her into. Another named Richemanus hacked at a strand of rocky earth that hand wrapped around his body only to violently twitch as it tightened. Gregorius wailed as branches of earth pierced his eyes like daggers and dragged him across the land.
"Misandros! What have you done!?" she screamed, her ears buried in her hands as the erupting power reached deafening octaves.
"Enacted The Will," Misandros replied in a droning voice. The Will. Jira had read of it in The Codices: a special clause in the most obscure, incoherent section of the ancient laws dictating that the truly faithful of Khirn may call upon the divinities above and charge themselves with their power. With mystharin.
Something flew from the ground and struck Jira in the temple. Her vision spun, and she stumbled into the arms of Misandros. He lay her on the ground as her vision slowly returned to normal. The sound of the battle disappearing further and further away was a source of discomfort to the knight, who rolled onto her stomach and heaved a slurry of bile onto the cobbled road. Yellow fluid trailed down her lips as she struggled back up to her feet, gasping as she felt warm hands wrap around her to steady her ascent.
"Easy, Jira," Gíla comforted, her strength an undeniable boon.
"What's happening?" the knight heard Alden ask.
"I do not know," the Bear Maiden said in a hushed voice.
Her eyes refocused on the carnage around her. In a split second, the battle had been turned undeniable in the favor of the defenders of Gortinda. The kingsmen and the Druyans were routed, retreating from the shockwaves of power that had burst from the earth around them. Into the distance, back into the north, they fled. Screaming, pleading, praying. Misandros, Loukas, and their champions rallied the defenders in a scouring of the army. Jira closed her eyes and grieved. More evidence to sequester away. More reasons to want to return home and do away with the mission.
To hell with the plan.