The Norse hall appeared in an ocean of fog with a flash, bringing a sizable chunk of the mountain it was on with it. The hall fell 200 feet before landing on the ground with an ear-splitting crash. Rooms slammed into each other, boulders crushed hallways, roofs caved in. Once everything had fully settled, the hall lay wrecked on the ground, engulfed in a misty-grey haze. Only a handful of rooms still had all four walls, fewer still had a floor and ceiling to boot.
Hurat weakly pushed a rafter off his chest and got to his feet. Looking around, it seemed like he and the several dozen others with him were at the bottom of a small ravine formed by the collision of the hall and the mountain. The top of the gorge was just visible through the fog.
Hurat heard stirring behind him. He turned, feeling sharp pains in at least three spots on his body. Most of the Primoi he had landed with were slowly getting up. One or two still weren’t moving. Thankfully, he didn’t see any Aztecs.
Hurat looked around at the Primoi who had made it down with him. “Everyone okay?”
The Primoi that could hear him groaned, clutched several parts of their bodies and looked at the people around him.
“Good enough.” Hurat looked up at the ‘sky’, or whatever miasma was obscuring it. “Anyone know where we are? While we’re at it, who knows what just happened, who attacked us and how we’re going to get out of here?”
One of the nearby Norse looked at him, puzzled. “W-what are you doing?” She grunted in pain as she attempted to lift her leg. “Who even are you?”
“I’m Hurat, Tlatoani of the Aztec Domain. As for what I’m doing, I’m trying to get us out of dodge. Because the only thing I know about what just happened is that it’s really, really bad for us.”
“Cool, uh, Tall-tony…”
“Forget the title, nobody calls me that. I’m in charge of the Aztecs, is the point.”
“Yeah, sure, neat. Well, I’m Gilnevn of the Norse Domain, and given we’re in what’s left of my house, I’d say that you don’t really have the right to boss us around.”
One of the other Norse limped forward to back her up. “Yeah, you’re just some small-time New Worlder, you aren’t in charge of us!”
Hurat held up his hands as he walked over to a hurt-looking Primus. “Look, I don’t care who’s in charge of who right now. What’s important now is figuring out what to do before-”
The Norse who had appeared during the speech, Hurat believed his name was Sardok, raised his hand. “Hey, you might want to know that one of those giant bird-things is gonna fly overhead and maybe spot us in, like, ten seconds.”
Hurat bolted to his feet, pulling up the other Primus with him. He quickly looked around, trying to find something to work with. He spotted a piece of wood jutting out of the wreckage, shielding a patch of ground from aerial view. “Everyone under there! Bring someone with you!”
Dragging those who couldn’t walk, the survivors scurried under the overhanging wood and huddled together. Sure enough, they heard the sound of beating wings a few seconds later.
Hurat breathed a sigh of relief. “Great, we’re safe for now. Yeah, uh, everyone do a head count, let’s figure out if everyone’s okay.
-
Ligivul flew over the wreckage of the hall, surveying it for any survivors. She figured that the people near the entrance would have ended up somewhere near here, but she didn’t see anything move. Plenty of broken corpses were visible, though. Then again, the fog out here didn’t make the job easy. All that could be seen were the shattered remains of what was once her home.
Her eyes drifted away from the ground and to her belt. Gingerly, to avoid damaging her broken bones yet further, she unsheathed her dagger, staring at the flecks of golden blood staining the blade. Some of Katri’s remains had dried before she could clean it off, and she didn’t think she would be able to get it off. She wasn’t upset about that, she’d only gotten the knife a few days prior.
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What occupied her mind more was the thought of what she had just done. Katri was dead. The Primus who had rendered her mute and imprisoned her for seven centuries, the leader of the Domain that had tormented her for more than a millennium. A nagging voice in the back of her mind told her that she should be happy, that she had gotten vengeance on someone that had taken her future away. But she didn’t feel happy. She felt empty.
Yes, Katri had ruined her life, but she couldn’t bring herself to hate him. After all, didn’t she deserve it? She had murdered his brother, and he had to protect his family somehow. But that nagging voice remained, telling her that she had done the world a service, that she had delivered justice, that she was fulfilling her destiny to get rid of the worst of the Norse.
The voice didn’t go away as her mount turned around and brought her back to the base camp. Ligivul looked out over the collection of tents outside the ruins. The group was still small, barely over two dozen, but small bands of new arrivals were arriving by the minute. More would be coming, were it not for those with the tools already heading out to destroy humanity. In any case, what was already here was enough for Ligivul to do what she needed. The camp was comparatively easy to spot through the fog, contrasted against the pale blue light of the massive pillar of ice in the distance.
Ligivul landed in the center of the camp. A few attendants took her bird-bat-thing to the stables, and she left to find the commander.
One of the first people to arrive at the announced location was a massive, four-armed beast of a humanoid named Tarbella. When the two had first met, he had introduced himself as the vanguard of the forces of some mighty city or whatever. Ligivul hadn’t been paying attention, honestly, she’d had bigger things to think about.
She limped into the largest tent she could find and came face-to-solar-plexus with Tarbella. Hearing her enter, he turned away from a map on a table. “Ah, Lady Veil.” He thumped his two left arms against his chest, which Ligivul assumed was a salute. “I am glad to see that the first strike was a success. I hope my expeditionary forces were sufficient?”
Ligivul shrugged and sat down at the table, unclipping her veil from the top of her hood and pulling the bottom out of her shirt. She hated being called Lady Veil, it sounded like her original name had been garbled in a game of Telephone. Maybe that was what happened.
She snapped out of her reverie and examined the map. A rough sketch of the ruins of the hall had been drawn up, with a simplified drawing of a collection of tents at the bottom of the image. Roughly half a dozen brown tokens had been placed by the tents, as well as a smaller green one.
Tarbella leaned over Ligivul and looked at the map. “If you can’t tell, the brown circles represent us, and the green one is you. I have spares.” He pulled a crate of tokens out from under the table. “But now, to business. Did you succeed in eliminating the necessary targets?”
Ligivul shrugged again and gestured vaguely at the furthest end of the map. When she had some spare time, she really needed to learn some sign language.
“I see. Well, our artillery is almost ready.” He moved two tokens to either side of the hall. “We will soon be ready to begin bombing. Either we smoke them out, or they stay in there and die.”
Ligivul instinctively swiped the two tokens off the table. She couldn’t let them do that, there were still innocent Primoi in there. She’d seen them in the crowd, there were several Primoi that she didn’t recognize. She didn’t want to kill anyone that she didn’t absolutely have to.
“...No? Then what do you suggest we do instead?”
Ligivul thought for a moment, then took the remaining tokens and spread them out in a rough circle around the hall. Then, she moved the green token into the center of the hall.”
“...I see… A siege, in which you hunt the targets down yourself?”
Ligivul nodded. She didn’t particularly trust any of the troops under Tarbella’s command to be clean about the operation. If she wanted the job done well, she had to do it herself.
“Understood, Lady Veil. I will notify the rest of the vanguard of your decision immediately.” He stepped back, did the salute again, then left the tent and began barking orders.
Ligivul stayed seated at the table, motionless. After a few seconds, she flipped the map over and grabbed a comically oversized quill (Really? Tarbella couldn’t be bothered with a novelty pencil?) from the desk nearby. She wrote down the names of every one of her siblings that she could remember on the blank side of the map. That was them. If they weren’t killed in the crash, every single one of them would have to die at her hand.
She pulled out her twin daggers, already stained with blood, and looked at them for a moment. Looked like she had already started.
She sheathed her daggers again, stood up, pulled her hood over her head, clipped her veil to the corners of the hood and stepped out of the tent. Time to get to work.