Fury.

The Overseers of the Naga Southern Plantation felt the air charge with this single emotion, sweeping through the slaves in a psychic wave that came crashing down on Lord Yakuma and then came for them.

Those who dropped their weapons and fled had the right of it – they were the ones who managed to make it to the palisades and alert the marksmen there of the coming storm.

Those who stayed behind to stem the tide of fur and blood and anger were rendered helpless – torn limb from limb just as their leader was. With the end of Lord Yakuma there had been only a momentary silence followed by a general war-cry from the mouths of those who the Yokun guards had once known were broken.

Now, the reality of their mistaken assumption was made evident in every slash and claw they received against the maelstrom of rending, living flesh that tore through the Plantations four corners, converging on the central spire of the Overseer headquarters. The Hakka storeroom was already decimated – even though it had cost the slaves at least 70 of their own. The great fire that swept up from its ruin like a hellish pillar stained the sky above a bright, foreboding crimson. To the Overseers and guards who now ran to the walls for high ground, it was as though a portal to Akira’s fiery pit of agony had opened up under them.

“What’s got them so riled up?” one running guard asked his comrade as they returned fire from the hip, running desperately to the North palisade.

“Didn’t you hear it?!” one of his compatriots shouted over the whooping dins of their war cries. “The…the voice.”

“What voice!?”

“…the voice of the Pale One.”

This rumor had spread through the ranks of the guards with as much haste as the inmates’ revolt did. Those who had been there to see the commander of the plantation die kept their mouths shut – lest they be accused of heresy.

But the way things were going…who would be left to put them on trial?

Amidst the storms of chaos, a few of the senior Overseers had managed to make a stand, however: at the Northern section of the Plantation, hidden behind the ruined sandstone gatehouse of the old Oshu temple that one stood here, they had taken up firing positions and scaled the walls. The one advantage they had over the Keji-Sai who were not of Yokun blood was their maneuverability. And after the initial shock of the impromptu attack, they were using this to its full advantage.

“Heft, second unit!” one particularly zealous Overseer roared above the din of combat below. He had managed to get his meagre force of twenty five men into a volley formation, switching up the frontline and replacing them with another row to keep the pressure on the slaves below. The muskets of the Yokun might have lacked the stopping power and speed of those employed by the master craftsmen Dwarves, but they made up for it with their sleek design and ease of use. Every YokunZhurkin of the newest generation had been trained to handle a firearm, and the five years of mandatory conscription implemented by Patriarch Jung had cemented their discipline and general combat prowess. That was why their Empire would stand the test of time whilst the stub-footed manlets below wasted away against rats and spume.

The Overseers, bolstered by their new command structure, had managed to stem the tide of angered slaves enough that they no longer clambered over the bodies of their fallen brethern to reach them. Now, they cowered within the Warden’s old tower, breaking the windows and returning fire as best they could.

“We’ve got them!” the Overseer leader screamed. “Aim for the windows and take them down! Leave none alive!”

None of the Overseers and guards around needed any further encouragement. By this point, they knew the Plantation had fallen. But the story of their glorious victory over the unruly slaves here would echo across all of the Yokun Empire. It would serve as a warning to the rest of the Keji-Sai who dared to believe in the lies of the Pale One.

These thoughts were little more than the fleeting imaginings of warriors who wanted glory above all else – and they were lost as soon as the Yokun defenders heard one single word bellowed with power from the depths of the Arasaka behind them.

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“FIRE!”

The skies glowed with the intensity of a new sun being birthed above the earth, and the Yokun knew, without even turning to witness the sight, what it was that was currently rocketing towards them from the foliage at their backs.

“ABANDON POSTS!” the new captain of the Overseers screamed. “FLEE!”

His last word was swallowed by the first volley of Hakka charges slamming into the North palisade and breaking it apart, sending its blooming fiery discharge into the air to coat the scaled skin of the defenders. Those who bore the brunt of the first strike screamed their agony into the uncaring, de-oxygenized air, and those who still had any energy left in them had already thrown their weapons aside, sprinting for the nearest exit before the next volley smashed into the Oshu temple spires and brought them down upon the pitiful resistance that was left in the Plantation.

Only one Yokun guard – his skin already sheared away by the burning fires of Akira, regained consciousness in time to see an entire army of heretics then storm what was left of the North wall. His life was ended by the downward swing of a screaming cat who slit his throat with a single strike.

…

Finish them, Marcus commanded from beside the roaring Hakka carts.

His command was executed by the Pipers who had been watching with baited breath, totally in the grip of zealous excitement as they watched the slaves of the Plantation tear apart the bodies of their captors. They had waited, with extreme patience, and every few minutes had begged Marcus to let them storm the place.

But he had kept his cool, looking at Mari’s smile as she watched the Plantation burn. He wondered just how often she’d done this with Jin’an as her proxy. It was like instant propaganda – the ability to broadcast not only thought, but visuals…it was a power that gave Marcus the greatest force multiplier he’d ever held in his hands.

When he’d given the command to the slaves to barricade themselves in the Warden’s tower to protect themselves from the Hakka volley, they had obeyed as best they could – truly believing the voice they heard to be that of the fabled Shai-Alud who was the Pale Lady’s grand champion. Marcus could feel it as he broadcast his mind to them – he could hear the chorus of their own thoughts pulse back in his brain, each one of them acknowledging his presence and realizing that their Gods had not forsaken them after all. Many of them knew who he was – well, the version of him that Mari had propagated among their ranks throughout her rebellion.

He knew something then in the moment that he’d thrust his arm out and compelled the Pipers and the slaves forward with a single word and action: they would follow him. Together, he and Mari had the power to re-shape this world in the palm of their hands…

After the initial charge and the burst of Hakka to clear the walls, Marcus entered the broken Plantation and witnessed the carnage that had unfolded within through his own eyes. Burned, broken lizards lay beside the forms of eviscerated slaves. There had been casualties, true, but…the people who met him at the foot of the Warden’s tower did not seem to mind. The slaves who remained were at least 500 men strong, and each and every one of them came out to see him pass into their realm – the realm that had just been made his.

The first to meet the slaves were the Oshu, who palmed their old brothers and sisters, some of them even being reunited with their parents who had been taken together when their villages had been raided and put to the torch. Their leader Sekri even turned to Marcus in front of his reunited people and lowered his head, offering him a single, jet—black feather from his brow.

“Shai-Alud and Pale One come,” he said. “They come to speak for the people and slay the old Masters. They come…to save us all.”

Amidst first quiet awe, Marcus took the leaf from the ailing hands of the old tribal leader, unsure how to even address him or the people who now looked at him, stepping over a gallery of broken Yokun to just get a glimpse of the one who they had already seen in their dreams.

Then he felt Mari beside him, and she took his hand in his and launched both their fists into the air.

“Marc,” she whispered. “This is all you. Tell them. Tell them who you are.”

He met their eyes – eyes glazed over with sleepy wonder – and saw too that the others looked the same. Even Karliah watched with intent to see what he would say. He, who had risen and come to them from the deepest, darkest crevices of the earth, who had seen the worst of this world and had still clawed his way out, was now standing on the precipice of an entirely new destiny.

A destiny that he might as well accept. He’d denied it for long enough. He’d denied himself for long enough…

“Bondsmen of Thea!” he shouted. “Your chains are broken! Come with us to the Empire of Marxon. Come, and see the better life that awaits you. Come, and fight against the Masters across this world. Let us burn them in their homes, and let us set their very minds aflame. Let them hear the voices of a thousand free souls and let them know – we are coming for them!”

And in the wake of this speech, the jungles of Arasaka themselves seemed to bend. They bent to the wills of a thousand free men and women who had just chosen their new Lord to follow into the abyss itself.

***

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