PROLOGUE: THE GARDENER

Second Era, Green leaf, Year 1629

Mage Heirarch Alian von Harus touched the second finger of his right hand against his inner left forearm, pressing the finger deep into the grooves of carved flesh, allowing the skin of his finger to touch the pattern under the skin of his arm. He felt the heat rise and he pointed his left arm towards the Swadian soldiers as they attempted to push past the small rubble wall that his men held in a rather desperate attempt to break through the line of surrounding Imperial soldiers. There was, of course, no way they could do so, they were vastly outnumbered, outnumbered a good twenty to one. Even then Harus didn't relax, he instead felt more apprehensive. A cornered enemy with no hope of retreat or victory was the most dangerous sort of enemy. If a man had nothing more to lose, that man with nothing left, well he was liable to do anything.

The green flame washed over the advancing men. Once they had been dressed in proud and stately uniforms and armor. The Swadian troops were armed and armored much like his own men, steel halfplate with open-faced helms, though the design was different from Kurtz's armor and the cloth was red and gold instead of the stark white of his troops. Now, however, he looked at the men as they burned, screaming, the fat in their bodies igniting and feeding the flames, spewing a greasy black smoke up towards the sky, their peers behind them backing up in horror at the sight. These men were dirty and ragged, not the consummate soldiers he had been expecting. He sighed and closed his eyes, deciding once and for all he did not like the new machines of war that his empire had made. They could easily carry a full battalion of troops, allowing them to flank enemies with remarkable speed and ease, but it took all the challenge out of the fight, all the art out of the defense. “Line volley!” he called, and men stepped up, forming a stacked rank of soldiers, each with a Kurtz voltlock to his shoulder. There were three staggered rows, in the front men kneeled, behind stood another row of men, voltlocks at the sky, and behind those stood a row of pikemen, there to make sure no bayoneted Swadian force got too close. “Line fire!” he called and the kneeling men fired their voltlocks, black smoke billowed across the battlefield as a good hundred rifles all fired in unison. “Rotate!” he called and the front men moved back as the second line went forward. Staggered rows like this were the most effective way to wage war he had found up to this point. Well, short of striding in himself, and though he was powerful he couldn't take on an entire army, he knew his limits.

He rubbed the inner part of his left wrist with the right thumb and a soft wind came up, blowing back the black smoke and revealing the carnage. It was a bloodbath, inside the killing circle almost all the fighting men of Swadia were dead, they had managed one or two voltlock shots of their own, but surrounded like this they stood no chance. If Harus had to guess he was willing to bet that most of the dead he found among his troops were because they had circled the enemy and fired on them. Some of the voltlock balls were bound to go through the ranks, or miss some Swadians and hit his men on the other side of the circle.

That didn't bother him, what did bother him however was the knot of men standing in the center of the carnage, completely untouched, even as thousands of voltlock balls had passed through this area. Around them was a shimmering field of something. It was hard to explain, you could see it, but also couldn’t. It was like looking at something across from a fire, where the heat distorts the image from the other side. “Ah, Mage councilor Nara, we have been looking for you,” Harus said, stepping forward. As he walked, blood splashed up over the white leather of his boots, splattering them a scattering of scarlet before slipping off of the waxed surface, leaving a few bright solitary beads. She turned and regarded him, her bright green eyes aglow with the light of her magic, she was a middle-aged woman, one that still bore the markings of being exceptionally beautiful in her youth. If you asked Harus he would be inclined to say she still was beautiful, it was something about the eyes, high cheekbones, royal bearing, and posture, and the gray that was creeping into her hair. All of these things seemed to elevate her beauty past that of what a younger woman could achieve, she still had a youthful vigor, it was however her regality and wisdom that were the driving points of her appearance. She turned and in one hand she held a pistole, the one-handed voltlock smoking from the discharge, and in the other, she held her needles.

Swadian mages were not like Kurtz, indeed they were not even like the Helheim mages to the east. The way they practiced magic was in many ways unique, though the underlying principles still applied. To use a spell one needed first to have a reaction by combining reagents with an infusion of Mana. Two or more reagents were mixed, causing this reaction, and the mage then amplified it or channeled it. In his case, and the case of all Kurtz mages they had the reagents tattooed in their skin, over the years the reagents would be used up and would need to be tattooed in again. The process eventually left grooves in your skin, lines where the tattooed area was significantly lower than the rest of the skin. The process lessened the power of the actual spells, but it also meant that a Kurtz mage was never disarmed. Helheim’s mages were more powerful as they directly mixed the reagents, but were ultimately slower as well, as they needed to directly mix the reagents, not simply perform a gesture that could be driven into a young mage recruit. As for Swadia’s mages, he looked at the needle stabbed into Nara’s arm and felt his derision. Swadia’s mages put the reagents in hollow metal needles with compartments, mixed them with oil, and then injected them into the body. It meant that they directly ingested the reagents.

It had a strange effect, most magic was an external thing, aside from some basic healing parts, at least that was so for most mages, but not so for the Swadian mages. They did no external magic, instead, all of their magic was internal. It limited what they could do without hurting or killing themselves, but the five or six spells they could do were rather impressive in their own rights.

She stood up straight and held her head high as she stepped out of her protective shield. The second row of soldiers shouldered their voltlocks and aimed at her but Harus held up a hand to withhold that attack. She wore her Swadian mage armor, they wore full plate armor much like that of Helheims’ though the design differed in several places. While Helheim’s breastplate was segmented for ease of movement Swadia’s was solid and significantly more ridged. Over that breastplate, they had several pouches that would hold their needles. Their helm was different too, instead of an angular visor with a single eye slit Swadia had multiple vertical lines to provide more protection at the cost of vision. The red hood that normally covered that helm was matched with a monastic scapula that hung from the waist, hemmed in gold. She was without the helm, either she had lost it at some point or else she had not had time to retrieve it. The red hood down around her shoulders seemed to frame her lovely face nicely.

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She strode up to him through the blood and around the corpses of her men, of her countrymen right up to Harus, the spent voltlock dropped along the way, a forgotten splash in the crimson puddle that covered the paver stones here. In one hand she held her needles, and in the other, she gripped the hilt of the basket-guarded short sword at her waist.

“Nara,” he said, holding his arms out to the side, making sure to show her he was not about to make any moves. “Give it up, your city has fallen, and with it the country, there is no need to fall with it,” he smiled at her, the sort of smile he only reserved for those on the other side of a negotiation table.

“Swadia is not dead,” she scoffed, “we are bloodied but unbroken,” she said the words loudly. He almost believed that she believed them, but he could see the truth in her eyes. Those words were not for her, they were not even for him, they were instead for the frightened men behind her. She knew, just as well as he did, that there was no escape, not this time, and she wanted those men to go down with a sense of pride, with some hope that their sacrifice was noble and for the greater good. It was a lie, but it was a powerful one, and it was one that he was happy to give her leave to have.

A small leniency for one who used to be a friend.

“And here we are,” she sighed, these words were quieter than her previous ones, these words were meant solely for him. “Is there no way for you to let my ward pass unmolested?” she asked, and he glanced at the young child huddled in the middle of those soldiers. The boy had to only be five or six, his eyes wide as he looked at the company of soldiers that had so bravely fought to protect him.

“I cannot,” he said sadly, “if we do not deal with him now he will only be trouble in the fu-”

“He is the heir to the throne!” she hissed, her hand tightening on the hilt of the sword, causing the leather wrap to creak. “And he is just a boy, please Alian,” it hurt to hear her say his name like she used to, all those years in the past, during those better times...

“There is no throne in Swadia, it is a part of the Kurtz empire now,” he said looking her in the eyes, ignoring the second part of her plea, his hands were tied, there was nothing he could do for the boy. Still, better an honest death than the work camps, those were true hell on earth.

“Swadia will never be a part of your empire,” she spat at him, “It and I will die first!“ she said softly as she inserted all four of her needles into the crook of her arm. In a burst of inhuman speed, she rushed forward and pulled her sword free of the scabbard at her waist, intending to remove his head with the dangerous length of steel. Harus danced back, leaning slightly as the blade passed mere centimeters from his neck and pressed the middle finger of his right hand against the inner palm of his left hand, pointing them down, the blast tossed both him and Nara back, pushing them in opposite directions. His feet hit the ground and he almost lost his balance as the bottom of his boots slid along the blood-slicked ground, he had to open his arms wide to keep from falling over. It meant he had no time to react to her charge. She hit him with the weight of a cannonball launched with a double charge of powder, and as she impacted they fell to the ground. His head hit the ground and he felt something crunch as much as heard it. His vision flared first white then red and finally black in a matter of a single second.

Only instinct saved him, despite his pain he moved his head to the side and heard the blade of her sword impact on the stone paver just right of his ear. Something shattered, crystalline, and clear as sharp lines of pain and fire carved their way across the right side of his face and jawline. With a growl, he clapped his right hand on the elbow of his left and willed the magic to work. Lightning arched from his skin and jumped to the ruined blade of the sword in her hand, running up her arm and causing it to fall limply to her side. It fell out of numbed fingers and he opened his eyes to stare at her. She had pinned him down, placing her legs on either side of his chest, obviously intending to hold him there and end him in a single stroke. Now however she sat rigidly, her muscles spasming uncontrollably, clenching and unclenching, reaching up he pushed her off and stood, watching as she spasmed in the pools of blood that slicked the stones. Closing his eyes as a wave of nausea rolled over him he slid his right thumb over the left and felt the warmth of healing as the Calamine embedded in his skin came in contact with the Cuprum, when he opened his eyes he saw that she was struggling to get up from the ground, her muscles still twitching and betraying her, unable to even hold her up. Swadian men attempted to rush forwards in a desperate attempt to give her cover but as they exited the protective bubble she had placed up they were cut down by a few rather well-placed voltlock shots from Harus’s officers. The fallen men added their blood to the growing river of wasted life. Her teeth gritted in a rictus grin, Mage councilor Nara died. Her heart gave out as the electricity coursed through her system. She fell back seemingly in slow motion, the light of her eyes dying and growing glassy long before she came to rest, the tailings of her silver-blonde hair soaking in the red dye, her shield dying as she did.

A rather undignified death for a rather dignified woman.

Sighing Harus leaned over and picked up the ruined sword, a good third of the blade had shattered, but despite this, he still held it up inspecting it. “A rather nice piece,” he said to himself, flashing it through the air experimentally. “This will go rather nicely in my collection,” he nodded to himself, broken it might be but it was still his trophy.

“Sir,” an officer stepped up to him, he ignored the man, continuing to look over the sword and to think of the past battle. Mage battles were always like this, never taking more than a minute or two, never lasting beyond a single attack or two, often it was the one that struck first that won the encounter.”Sir-”

“What?” Harus snapped, the weight of what he had done and what he would need to do too much for him to keep his mask of composure at the moment.

“Sir, the Swadians have surrendered,” he said, his voice shaking slightly.

“And?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at the man.

“Well, sir, what are your orders sir?” the officer asked, shrinking back further. Harus paused, considering the question fully before answering.

“Get rid of them,” he said, “And before you ask yes, that includes the boy, in ten years he would come to resent the empire and work to undermine it, you pick the weeds early, that way they don't choke out the flowers.“

“I- yes sir,” the man saluted then moved to carry the orders to the standing rows of men. Mage Heirarch Alian von Harus turned away as twenty voltlocks barked their reply to his order. Men screamed, cried, and cursed him and his descendants, and somewhere in the chaos, a boy cried out one last time.

“Yes,” he said, his eyes closed, a single tear sliding down his cheek as the thunder of voltlocks sounded again and again in his head. “I am a gardener...”