The first obstacle of the campaign presented itself when the army arrived at Gregory’s Pass.
The keep there was a testament to the ingenuity of ages past, an impregnable bastion that had never before fallen to foreign assault! Such was the profundity of the ancient construction that even after millennia of service, it continued to stand proudly, a stalwart sentinel of defense.
Truly, if the CEO could overcome this invincible bulwark, it would be a feat worthy of a thousand songs!
“Damn. Are we in the right place?”
“We are, my [Liege].”
“And that’s the keep at Gregory’s Pass?”
“It is, my [Liege].”
“The unconquerable keep that’s never once fallen?”
“The one and the same, my [Liege].”
“Wow. I mean, I read all of your reports, but damn. Seeing it in person is something else. I’ve seen sturdier tents.”
“Our camp auxiliaries are indeed experts in the creation of temporary lodgings, my [Liege].”
Melpomene took one last appraising look at the distant keep. Too small to even be considered a castle, the unnamed keep was nothing but a few small towers connected by crumbling walls. If it weren’t for the fact none of her predecessors had ever had the opportunity to launch a counteroffensive, this place would have been destroyed long ago.
Melpomene cracked her neck and began stretching her shoulders. “Alright, Eurymedon. The [Solarian Courts] once claimed that this place could withstand the combined might of every Daemon on the continent. Let’s see how they fare against us.”
The battle for the keep was a true showcase of the CEO’s tactical acumen!
Despite the enemy’s fortified position, the CEO was able to secure victory without losing a single one of her soldiers!
“You’re… surrendering? But we haven’t even started fighting!” complained Melpomene, feeling a sudden sense of déjà vu.
“Yes, we are,” rasped the greying soldier, falling to his knees in supplication. “Please! My men haven’t eaten a proper meal in weeks! Steal our swords, shave our heads, and throw us in chains, but please! Please give us something to eat!”
Behind their leader, the keep’s entire garrison of a few hundred low-tier troops were similarly on their hands and knees, too far away from their crumbling walls to dream of fleeing. None of them were even armed, save for a few brooms and mops to which they’d tied grimy white bedsheets.
Melpomene frowned. It was good news she’d won without her troops suffering a single injury, but she couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that there wouldn’t be a fight.
Apparently taking her frown as a bad sign, the garrison’s leader fell completely prostrate. “Please spare us!” he screamed, face in the dirt. A few of the men behind him passed out from a combination of exhaustion, hunger, and fear, and Melpomene smelled fresh piss.
Her frown turned into a wince. She stole a quick glance behind herself, at the columns of nearly seventeen thousand Daemons fresh and ready for a fight, armor shining black in the light of the setting sun. The closest unit was the score of [Drake Berserkers], their magma-skinned draconic mounts drooling and staring at the humans like food.
Can’t blame them for being intimidated, I suppose.
She let out a sigh. “We won’t kill you. Prisoners are more useful than corpses, after all. Eurymedon, please see to it that these soldiers are searched, chained, interrogated, and fed, but not necessarily in that order. Oh, and give them the whole ‘join the dark side’ talk. I hear Terpsichore was looking to add some [Apostate Phalanx] to her army.”
“At once, my [Liege]. They shall soon become enlightened of the fact that there is no greater good than being Evil™!”
“Thanks, old friend,” Melpomene said, putting a hand on one of Eurymedon’s six shoulders. “I can always count on you.”
Eurymedon turned to address the new prisoners, and as they began going over the intake procedure, Melpomene went to survey the ruined keep.
She’d at first hoped it would prove sturdy enough to become a key logistics center for supply lines, but that clearly wasn’t the case. The question to answer now wasn’t if the keep needed repairs, nor even how many repairs it needed. The real question was whether or not this place was worth repairing in the first place.
Melpomene walked up to the keep’s sturdiest looking tower and offhandedly knocked on the stone with her knuckles. She only did it out of a sense of bored whimsy, not expecting the knock to provide any useful information — architectural stability could only be gauged with a full structural assessment, after all — but something in the knock’s resulting sound gave her pause.
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She knocked again, this time in a slightly different spot, and pressed her ear up against the tower. Again, something just sounded off, and so she changed spots and knocked again. She kept knocking and listening, shifting her position between each knock in accordance with her intuition in order to track down the source of that wrong feeling.
After a few minutes of this, she thought she found the source of her unease, and one of the engineer auxiliaries made their way over to her. “Is everything alright, Autarch Melpomene?” asked the three-armed, three-eyed Daemon holding a clipboard.
“Yeah, I suppose. I just have a bad feeling about this particular stone…”
Melpomene placed a hand on the tower and gave the offending stone an idle kick, and then the tower began leaning away from her.
CRASH!
The whole tower fell down.
“…”
“…”
“…Autarch Melpomene?”
“…Yes, Theo?”
“I take it we’re tearing down and rebuilding the whole thing?”
Melpomene opened her mouth to respond, but then the other towers all started leaning over as well. A moment later, they all collapsed in on themselves, and the walls fell soon after.
Luckily, all the structures had collapsed away from where she and the engineer were standing. When the dust settled, Melpomene and Theo were completely unharmed.
The Solarian Humans were screaming and freaking out even though none of them were within the affected area. The Daemons, on the other hand, knew that Melpomene was nearby, and so trusted that there was nothing to worry about. Theo hadn’t even flinched.
“…”
“…”
“…Theo?”
“…Yes, Autarch Melpomene?”
“When you redesign this place, add a sewage system. They’re good luck.”
And then the CEO destroyed the fortress in a single kick, and it was really really cool!
—Selected excerpts from The Founder’s Glory Vol. III: An Unbiased, Factual, and Unexaggerated Account of Historical Events during the Dusk War, written by Eurymedon, COO of [Despoiled Legions Incorporated]. First edition, published 296 PD by [Evil™ Press].
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The “Founder’s Glory” series is complete horseshit! This reviewer has never before had the displeasure of reading such drivel!
I used to believe that every voice deserved to be heard, that every one had a story worth sharing. Reading this series of works has destroyed my naiveté, and I now realize the cruel truth of the world:
Some stories are hell-spawn.
Some stories are thought-parasites that consume a reader’s intelligence and rot the mind like a corpse in stagnant water.
Some stories are so putrid, so maddening, so horrid that they expose the folly of having sentience and make one crave the ignorant bliss of being a rock.
Truly, I say that given the choice between rereading this series and shitting spikes, I’d reach for the closest box of nails and get to chomping.
From a literary perspective, this series is nothing but thinly veiled propaganda, and it even fails at that! Instead of writing and printing this many-thousands-of-pages-long testament to idolatry, it would have been more effective to take that wasted paper and print flyers saying “evil is cool.” It also would have required the same level of talent.
From a historical perspective, Eurymedon’s work is less valuable than a counterfeit wooden penny that’s been eaten by a donkey, shat out, and then eaten again by a rabid mutt. This hypothetical penny would’ve at least provided some amount of fiber for both the jackass and the cur, but this piece of “literature” remains indigestible to even the simplest of dullards!
Take for example an anecdote contained within Volume III of this accursed nine-part series. The anecdote in question takes place in 1 PD, during the Dusk War when the [Despoiled Legion] had just begun their invasion of the [Solarian Courts].
The author claims that near the beginning of this campaign, Melpomene was able to defeat a [Tier V] [Calamity Dragon] in single combat! The fuck?
Eurymedon, if you’re reading this (and I’m beginning to doubt if you can even read, because no one with even the simplest grasp of language could write as poorly as you do) then I suggest you learn how to lie a little better. If you want people to believe what you say, say something that isn’t LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE!
—Selected excerpt from the online review “Nine-Volumes of Cancer,” written by xX_RabidReadingRabbit_Xx on https://BadReads. evil. Published 22/07/298.
Melpomene stood over the unmoving body of the unidentified dragon. Her armor was smoking, and the once-icy mountaintop she’d been standing on was now about a dozen feet shorter, blackened, and had cratered in on itself, but she was undoubtedly alive and relatively uninjured. The dragon, on the other hand, was completely inert save for its breathing and the scattered arcs of electricity that danced across its blue and white scales.
“My [Liege]! Are you alright?” Eurymedon asked, flying in.
“No need to worry, Eurymedon. That trick Morgan taught me was more effective than I was expecting.” From the dragon’s neck right below its jaw, Melpomene removed her golden flamberge, revealing that she had stabbed the creature through where one of its scales were reversed, pointing in the wrong direction and creating a gap in the dragon’s otherwise impenetrable armor. “And thanks again for trusting me enough to let me try this out on my own.”
“It was foolish of me to harbor even a modicum of doubt! I am once again awed by your expertise, my [Liege]. To think that the nigh-invincible dragons had such an easily exploitable weakness…”
“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than just stabbing it in the right spot. The reverse scale gives you a way in, but you have to feel around and hit a nerve within the neck so that the paralytic poison on your weapon can make it directly into their nervous system. Doesn’t work any other way, apparently,” Melpomene said, pointing out a few other scrapes she’d inflicted on the dragon during their brief battle.
Eurymedon tilted their central column in confusion. “You have a paralytic poison that works on dragons?”
“Yeah, and it only works on dragons. Doesn’t even work on wyverns or drakes — I tried, with their permission of course. Oh, and sorry but Morgan asked me not to share the recipe, by the way. It’s her original creation, and she wants to keep it a secret.”
“My [Liege], you will never need to apologize to me for anything! And besides, if anyone is worthy of keeping a secret, it is you!
“Now, have you decided what to do with your prize, my [Liege]? You could kill it and gain the [Dragonslayer] keyword, or you could have the troops kill it to nourish your soul, or perhaps you could even have an individual kill it in hopes they gain a class! And no matter who you decide shall end its life, its corpse will provide a horde of valuable reagents! You have created a truly wondrous boon!”
Melpomene smiled at her friend’s adulation, but didn’t speak just yet. She turned to the dragon and took a long, considering look into the its eyes of pure white. She pondered a minute over the question of who should have the privilege of killing it… but then she questioned if the creature even needed to be killed in the first place.
She asked her friend a question. “How hard do you think it would be to make it a mount?”