Chapter 55

There and Back Again (part.1)

When Elijah awoke that morning, the sun had yet to rise. The muscles in his bones ached in a rhythm of soreness and pain, and as he tossed and turned in bed for a few minutes before deciding to finally get a realization hit him with heedless violence.

'I am old.'

The room he had rented was small, barely enough to allow one devotee to move at ease in that narrow space.

The dining hall was not much larger, but it had a small fireplace that, once lit, allowed him to change without feeling too much pressure from the cold. Elijah put on his robe and allowed himself a quick breakfast. Going down to the sacristy, there was no surprise to find it empty. Only dullness. A bitterness that was familiar at this point, for how sad it was to admit.

'No one today either.' The Cult of the Three Stars had not been very successful in the Union to his displeasure, while in his old home, the old Empire of Sorsilia, had been close to be religion of state. 'Better clean up.' With the aid of『Clean』, resolving the matter would have taken a few seconds at most, but the dust accumulated since the night before was insignificant, and he needed to conserve mana for the rest of the day's incumbencies.

The broom provided by the owner was a solid piece of wood, but with a few protruding splinters on the sides that had a bad habit of scratching his beautiful plumage. The beak was on the verge of opening to snort, but even that gesture appeared insignificant and superfluous to him.

For an owlin, that pace was intolerable. For Elijah, barely sufficient. The Union did not have enough nocturnal races to justify a life spent under the stars as was the custom in many communities of the Old Empire. It had been hard to get used to at first, and even now his senses were all out of sorts, strained by an unnatural lifestyle. Magic easily relieved the weariness of body and mind, but healing the soul would need another miracle.

The small mansion he had rented would have quickly bled out all his resources if not for the services he rendered to Karnasus, the host city that now was his home. Elijah waited a few minutes in the vain hope that some onlooker might decide to enter before closing the door.

'Perhaps by lunchtime there will be some improvement.' That simple phrase was the consolation that accompanied him whenever he left his little church.

Crushed between other palaces, the building was bare, but well cleaned and maintained. In the suburbs where immigrants like him gathered, courtesy and friendliness were the perfect cures for not lingering in homesickness and regret. With his left wing Elijah greeted more than one neighbor who did not hesitate to return his good morning. The smell of freshly baked bread, a kind tribute from the oven a few steps away, made walking down the street an altogether pleasant experience.

'Did I miss something?'

If there had been any valuables the priest would have put more care into checking if everything had been locked up perfectly, but as things stood, the only precious items were the necklace of healing, granting access to the incantation『Light Recover』twice a day, and the ring of temperance, whose properties relieved fatigue every forty-eight hours, preventing him from sweating like a madman whenever he had to hurry the garrison.

In truth, the prospect of a thief entering his house did not bother him much. There was always the possibility that a snooping intruder would stumble upon his texts and notes, even to the point of deciding to convert to the beauty of the night. It was a meager hope, of course, but at present it was the only one Elijah had to be able to carry out the mission entrusted to him by the archbishop.

'Mission I am failing miserably.' After years in the Union the owlin had come to realize that it would be easier to proselytize a horde of drunken trolls than the citizens of the Cities State Alliance who remained faithfully attached to their traditions and customs. 'Around here there are hundreds of different faiths, and mine is just a small grain in the sand. Maybe I should contact the capital and get a new area assigned to me. It's been a long time since I last received new instructions.'

'New indications would have been sent already. Is it a delay, perchance? Or a plan I can't envision?' The few engraved『Message』scrolls available -archbishop's concession- were still secure in his bag, but reluctance to use it without justified cause blocked any initiative. The fear of wasting them in vain was too persistent in the back of Elijah's mind. Compunction for the lack of initiative be damned.

And then where would he go? 'The initial sum, ended. The protectors of my security, perished.' If an insignificant priest like him could make ends meet, it was only thanks to the patronage of the Karnasus army which made use of his skills as a divine caster. A temple, even one as small as his, was sustained by the offerings of the faithful. If those were not there ... making do was the only option.

And because the other faiths would frown upon him if he offered his services as a paid healer, Elijah was practically forced to join the army as an auxiliary. The loneliness of his current condition was his only friend.

'War will soon ravage this whole part of the world. I will have to find an alternative—and quickly.' The rays of dawn struck him in the face, forcing a squint from his eyes. The streets were still empty, and the owlin decided to fly to save time. His wings started to flap in measured movements, avoiding wasting too much energy. That physical activity would warm his gray feathers which were already beginning to numb from the morning chill.

Streets that were beginning to fill up intersected with corners to which the first lights were posted. From above what could be glimpsed was flat and ordinary calm, delightful in its incessant repetition day after day.

"Oh, master Elijah, it is a pleasure to see you again this morning." Commanding the garrison was a low-ranking sergeant whose race was not easy for the owlin to discern.

He had a steel carapace shining of silver and the small, graceful head of an ant, which suggested his belonging to a particular breed of anthropomorphic insects, whose declinations in abilities and characteristics were as many as the stars in the firmament.

'A formian, if a bet was to be held. The pawns don't lie.' Ant-men had more upright, humanoid legs and back. Their trotting was not synonymous with crawling.

"Are my tasks decided already?"

"There is not much to do today," Traces of sugar on the nostrils. Each species knew its own drug, accepting the ramifications. "Give the troops the usual check-up and stay until the end of the shift, then you can take your leave. With any luck, we're in for another uneventful day."

Although Elijah had heard his interlocutor's name at the times of introductions, the intricate and endless combinations of letters and words made a mockery of a polyglot fool. Too many consonants repeated one after another, without the break of a vowel. Something like Artrporttrop or Artprtiilrpt. Forced to act as a second father to him, he had renamed him Artie for no one but himself.

"Don't the scouts have anything to report?" Mere curiosity. There was no risk of being deemed an expert because of that candid innocence.

"Scouts? That's a good one." The antennae on the sergeant's head swung. It was a reaction of amusement. A rebellion against the tyranny of ennui. "There are barely enough soldiers left to keep a thin line on the walls. And none of them have experience regarding reconnaissance activities. None of them have experience in the art of warfare, actually. "

It was an intricate specialization, there was a need to acknowledge that. That current circumstances did not make it optimal was a different sort of argument.

"What will be our strategy if they should attack us, then?"

"Who knows. I only got orders to stand by." Both of them knew that most of the talents and skills had left the capital along with the royal army. If not for the improper circumstances, the image of an emptying anthill would have fit like a glove.

Artie had reached his current rank simply to leave someone to run the whole show. The spear resting at his side gave off a faint trace of magical energy, a fourth-rate enchantment that would have been called poor quality even by the last of the apprentices. He wore no armor or other equipment because they most likely did not compare to his natural protections.

"Do we intend to surrender, then?"

"Quite frankly, I don't see how we could resist. The few remaining lieutenants are considering surrendering the city without a fight."

"Treason?"

"Or survival."

"As a matter of fact, the soldiers do not seem eager to throw themselves into the fray."

Artie offered him a sugar cube, which Elijah politely declined. At their first meeting the formian had handed him a cup of greenish liquid, which the owlin had readily identified as the product of nutrients regurgitated and reworked from the new sergeant's crop. In the antmen's colonies it was seen as a gesture of exquisite courtesy, but the strong toxic component made it a tad exaggerated for a first meeting, in Elijah's frank opinion. Thankfully, the label of ill-mannered had been avoided by pouring it with unexpected skill into a nearby plant, unnoticed. An owlin had prevented a nasty figure with the sacrifice of a vegetal friend. Elijah would not forget it.

"Officially we have to hold out to the last man, but the Prince himself has given instructions not to waste too many resources. As if we had any in the first place," the jaws on Artie's face twitched right and then left in what must have been laughter. "Those centaurs devastated my colony the first time they invaded these lands, forcing me and the other survivors to settle in the cities. I lost ten brothers and seven sisters, not to mention the havoc they wreaked on our queen mother. I do not deny that I would like to take revenge, however, good intentions alone are not enough."

The prospect of fighting was not pleasant for Elijah either. His skills in defending himself were feeble. After the loss of his last escort in one of his last journeys, the owlin had waited for a long time for another one to be provided, but the request, like the last ones made, had been disregarded.

"I understand," he nodded to the soldier, without revealing his true sympathies. "We will find a solution. They won't necessarily attack in the first place." The centaurs of the Great Plains had proved ruthless with opponents and rebels, but fair and just with citizens who accepted their rule. Some would even venture that their rule might have been better than that of the Prince.

After all, they had lowered taxes as compensation for the invasion, eradicated criminal syndicates in a short time and established extraordinary courts that administered justice in speed of courtesy and procedures that were unbelievable.

Some of them had even proved receptive to his preaching. The religion of the three stars and the worship of heaven had much in common, so much so that they even seemed to be bifurcations of the same starting point. 'No despoliation of self by higher beings. Only harmony and peace to be sought in the individual. Power granted by an ordered creation that needs no creators.'

A tinge of regret had struck Elijah the morning he realized that the invaders had been driven out. The owlin had put up only one tower of that sand castle, and the tide had carried that away as well, lacking compassion. Being at the mercy of events did not make acceptance any less of a hardship.

"It would indeed be a miracle. If you were right I would be glad to hear one of your sermons as a reward, Master Elijah."

'You, who have a pantheon more exterminated than your family? I would have finished explaining the whole history of my belief, that you wouldn't even get halfway through the list.'

"Let us hope that this tranquility continues then. Now, with permission I would direct myself to the performance of my duties."

"Of course, of course. I won't stop you any further."

After taking his leave, the owlin headed for the small office where he had been allocated. In truth, there was not much to do there. Simply, every soldier who was to take station had to have a quick check-up by him to make sure they were in ready health to fulfill their duties.

Since this was a very perfunctory inspection, magic was not used unless absolutely required for the sake of saving mana. Elijah, who had traveled far and wide, was perfect for the task and given his experience with a wide variety of races, it was easy for him to recognize at a glance the signs of illness or exhaustion.

In his pilgrimages he had come into contact with many of the cultures that lived in the Union shared by parts of Sorsilia, the republic of Argland, the Commonwealth that stretched to the center of the continent, the kingdoms of Bahal Geesi and Qualisandir to the south.

Even in the great principality of the Minotaurs that lay in the center of the world.

How magnificent the tomb dedicated to the Great Sage was! Marvel of art and splendor! Beautiful Karnasus, with its narrow streets and palaces that hid decadence with wealth, was a pale imitation of a distorted idea of greatness by comparison.

However, the City States had shown him that there was still much he had to learn about. 'Ignorance, thy name is humankind.'

Humans had proved to be his weakness. Some resided in Sorsilia, but only in the outermost parts of the empire. Those few he had seen in the Argland territories had not made much of an impression on him. Otherwise, they were treated as nothing more than pack animals, at best. At worst ... nature was wonderful precisely because of that diversity.

With that pink pig-like skin that changed color and hue at the drop of a hat they always undermined his healer's certainty. Soft, lacking feathers and scales. The mouth had no fangs or organs for sensory perception. The field of vision was too dependent on light. No wings to fly, or gills to breathe underwater. And, icing on the cake, their mortality rate was extremely high and their lifespan abysmal.

His unfamiliarity with these strange apes without fur, then, meant that his experience with them was entirely lacking. If there had been no priest belonging to that species, his job would have been much more thankless.

"Good morning to you, master Elijah."

The man in question was a worshiper of an ordinary cult, which did not stand out for originality. Four deities, each representing an element. Fire, earth, water, wind. The transmutation of the powers that ruled the world into anthropomorphic gods was scarcely a novelty.

"Good morning."

Jean-Joel, that was his name. And, as far as had been ascertained, he came from a purely human nation nearby. A real rarity.

Despite the many differences between the two of them, they had maintained a cordial relationship, after an initial distrust.

"She is already here," Jean-Joel announced, as he sat at one of the two desks, intent on scribbling on a crumpled sheet of paper. Dull blond hair framed a face marred by the wrinkles of time. "There's not much to do today. No soldiers have any problems to take care of. If you want, I can provide for your attendants."

He called him a priest, but Elijah recognized that Jean-Joel was only an itinerant healer, with few affiliations with the clergy associations nowadays. There were never enough divine casters, and the human had rescinded the chains of his church, without giving up his faith. Belief without structure, in the man's opinion, was true devotion.

"I thank you, but there will be no need. And are you sure about what you say?"

"Very sure. Before I started my shift I saw her going up to the walls, as she has been doing every morning the last couple of days."

"Good."

The space they lacked could not have been said to be unwelcoming, but on a bright day like that the owlin much preferred to conduct his visits in the open air. He entered the cramped space only to set down some rolls he had prepared earlier, checking that they were all in place.

As Jean-Joel had foretold him, there was not much work to be done. Dawn had recently passed, and Elijah was already on the walls, looking for her.

The owlin had first seen her not long before, when the Prince's troops had already moved away from the city. It had been a bolt of lightning, an epiphany. The cult of the three stars worshiped the night, worshiped the peace and serenity that silence brought.

The crown of the three stars, the empire's most sacred relic, was a testament to that devotion. Arrived on their lands centuries earlier, just seeing it had convinced the founding fathers and mothers of the church that there were no gods in this world. Only the eternal beauty of darkness, and the few lights that illuminated a bottomless pit, in a slumber that was meant to never end.

Elijah had observed the crown only once, in passing, when he was studying as an apprentice in the capital. Ecstatic, he had treasured that brief fragment of an image in the deepest and most precious part of his memory.

If memory was the soul, that had been the defining key to his individuality.

When he saw the girl, the first time, it was like reliving that moment of his youth. An elf -the conformation of her ears left little doubt- who sat there every morning, punctually, to watch the sunrise. She would stay for a few hours, without anyone disturbing her, with solitude as her only companion.

Like everyone else, the owlin had seen the moon shining in the sky in the late evening hours, in the early morning chimes. Never, however, had he observed it when the sun was already high in the sky. That would have been nonsense.

'Yet, there she is.' That morning, he would take courage and speak to her. He wanted to know. It was a basic need that had to be met. 'Why, when I look at her, do I see the three-star crown? Why, when I look at her, do I see the moon?'

Giving all his courage, Elijah approached, only to notice that she was not alone that time. 'Another elf?' he wondered. The newcomer, like her, was also of a magnetic, almost unnatural, beauty. Not quite comparable, though.

This was not mere attraction, for as admirable as the elves' grace and ethereality were, they remained something foreign to him. 'Such resemblance. Could they be siblings?'

The elves conversed with each other, paying no heed to everything around them. It was paradoxical. On the one hand, sentries trembling over something that now even for Elijah did not matter; on the other those two who kept talking alone, uncaring of the world that revolved around them.

He who had the attributes of a king.

She who shone like the eternal night.

No, it was not her.

"How many?" It was the elf.

"Thirty a day. Five in total at the same time."

"Pay attention."

"Always."

It had been a kind of three-pronged spear she now wielded. Indeed, more than a spear it was an extremely large, almost gigantic, wand, especially compared to the girl's thinness.

'It is not a spear. Nor a wand... A scythe? What an unusual weapon.' Scythes were tools for harvesting. Some were modified to serve as weapons, true. 'Calibrated to the physical models of the users. Adjusted for different and irregular limbs compared to normal humanoids.'

"Elijah, you are here! What are you doing? Can't you see what's going on?" Jean-Joel was a pool of sweat. The priest looked at him as one would look at a madman. His hand rested on the owlin's shoulder as his colleague caught his breath. "Haven't you noticed that we are being attacked? The centaurs are here as of now."

And he pointed with his free hand outward, beyond the walls, where the enemy had gathered. So many, they filled the horizon.

"They are... They are here."

"That's what I told you. Don't you see the crush around? We have to get ready. Now!"

Soon all hell would break loose. Artie and his paragons had mustered what few defenses they could. Magic and arrows would be unleashed on their walls in moments, heralding the start of the conflict. The wind itself had stopped, as if its breath had been cut off, fibrillating awaiting the unfolding of events.

A first tremor was felt.

"Damn," cursed Jean-Joel. "They've already started!"

"Where is the girl?!"

"She has come down from the walls," Jean-Joel turned his head. A vein was on the verge of leaking from his forehead. "There she is!"

The elf had jumped down. Elijah and his human companion had to lean out in turn to catch a glimpse of her. The army of the Great Plains was a troop of thousands of components, as many as there were stars in the sky. And it was well established that they had surrounded the rest of the city as well.

Following the pattern of the previous time, the centaurs would strike at several points using their siege machines until they were able to cause a breach in the fortifications. At that point their numerical superiority would allow them to continue shelling the defenders as they surrounded them by taking the city from the inside. It was a simple but effective strategy that given their small numbers would not require long to grant success.

"What is that elf doing?"

A long shining bow, completely covered in gold. The willow wood trim. The string stretched to infinity. The arrow he shot.

Elijah admired all this. The elf's eyes were covered, his expression an indecipherable enigma. The first arc that crossed the sky dragged the arrow toward a path of stardust. The second arc was a rainbow after a heavy rain. The third, last he could glimpse, a leaf sinking into the deep lake.

This was what the owlin was able to see. He did not resent his eyes for being blind to the rest. He did not resent his senses, for remaining on that endless chasm that united quiet and despair. When the rain fell, who was the saphead who would count the drops?

If the process had been breathtaking, the result was no less impressive.

There was a ceaseless rumbling in the earth. The smell of death already permeated the air, clothes, skin until it seeped under every muscle, every strand, triggering tremors of a primal sensation that could not be described.

That did not need to be described.

Death needed no trappings.

The screams that surrounded him a deafening silence. The sky wept stone. The Druidic fire burned. It burned on the stone falling from heaven. It burned from the fireballs that poured down on them. It burned from Artie, who had been consumed by that madness. And who was now screaming in pain.

Those were silence, too. It burned from Jean-Joel's eyes, fixed on the long-bowed elf, still aiming at that horde.

So much death.

"We must go," the owlin spoke to someone undefined, as the wounded piled up, while the ground on which they rested groaned with endless tremors.

"No! Look!"

The walls gave way. Elijah felt the fortifications crumble, the arcane secrets that had woven and pasted their defenses crumbling at a dastardly violence. Most of the soldiers protecting them had already been exterminated. A handful of survivors led by an orc watched from the other part of the rift, mesmerized, the Union that had shattered.

That small world dilapidated by ages that passed by in mere seconds. A natural disaster that had not caught them by surprise, because there was nothing to be surprised about. Civilizations had ended in a heartbeat, in a blink of an eye. Peak and decline sang the same tune, articulating the same melodic strains.

It was not Karnasus, it was not the Union that would see the end that day. The new beginning would have to wait. Yet another triumph for stagnation.

"The Emperor was right. The Emperor was right..." murmured Jean-Joel, running his fingers through his hair more than once, ignoring the sufferers who came to them for help, perishing in indifference. In his hands no longer rested the church of healing, but the spasm of the blind fanatic. "No. He was not right. It is worse, much worse. Or better? I have to report it to him, yes. I have to report it to him as soon as possible. Elijah, look! Behold how far humanity can reach. Behold, and repent!" By now the human was repeating everything in the throes of a mystical crisis. The abeyance of belief was dissolved by the frenzy of exaltation.

Elijah could understand him.

But pity him? That he could not do.

The elf again strung his bow, preparing for more shots. The enemy's arrows fell on him like the drops of a summer storm, regenerating after the long heat. Those that could hit him, at least.

The one who surpassed the many, not limiting himself to quality. Quantity was of the mysterious archer, who hurled more projectiles than an army, who covered the clouds with his work, while concepts like distance and error escaped his aim.

And all that fell short.

Elijah saw it. The moon that had fallen to earth stood alone against the stars, just as the morning sun was now at its zenith. Echoes of death gushed from rottenness made of pure darkness giving birth to the most profane of existences. A chthonic creature contravening creation's command. The night without light. The moon without stars. Only the infinite abyss of the cosmos, and the horrors that watched from that inscrutable distance.

The cult of the three stars had spoken of the one who had delivered the jewel of the world into the hands of the first emperor of Sorsilia. At the dawn of every civilization, in that primordial cry they had called life, lay the secret of forbidden knowledge. The permanence of superstitions and legends that persisted to sway the prophecies of shamans and augurs, which could not be pondered by what was limited.

The cult of the three stars had remembered those who had shaped creation in their image, those who had made the blasphemous sacred, and the sacred blasphemous. Of the Eight who had made the world One, and of the others who had followed in their wake.

Of massacres that had foretold purification. Of filth that had been deemed pure. Five lights in a dark room, and choruses repeating in ecstasy, "Four lights, there are four lights!" The last cries of agony of a world doomed by its quest for possession and progress, on a quest to break free from their fate, and the Greed they had wrought with them.

The cult of the three stars had taught of goodness. And it had preached of evil. Of the highest virtue. And of the deepest depravity.

The three-star cult had spoken about the Players.

----------------------------------------

When Arsalan had woken up that morning, he was still a coward. Not that there was any great astonishment. The night brought counsel, not courage.

Still vivid, in that awakening, echoed his father's last words:

"It doesn't matter if you have courage. When the time comes it will be your fear that you will thank." With them, those words carried an unceasing regret, and a plea that had not been answered. A final moment, a breath ceased in agony, and a coward who had failed to do what needed to be done. And, to finish, a smile. A smile of forgiveness, for one who did not deserve it.

'It will be my fear I will thank.'

Still, Arsalan had made words his own, ever since he took his first steps in the imperial academy.

Ever since he had been given his first spear, breaking it on the training dummies.

Ever since he had achieved his first results in war drills, little more than mediocre for others, incomparable for him.

Ever since he had been torn to the ground, without giving up. And ever since he had scored his first victories, relishing that success so ephemeral.

His father's words were always there with him.

"It doesn't matter if you have courage."

His father, who of all had been the bravest. His father, who when the Equestrian King had come knocking on their tribe to demand submission had dared to stand up. His father, who had been a hero, while Arsalan was just a coward.

A coward who was just waiting to show off, whose mockery may have been belated but unavoidable. When the captain of his squad intimated that he and his comrades should prepare to fight, Arsalan was in the front row, his faithful spear clutched in his arms.

Blight-Scourge.

So he had called it.

Not because it was a special spear. The tip had a sharper finish compared to army standards, and some enchantments increased its piercing ability. But it was not even comparable to the treasures with which the Immortals in the service of the Equestrian King were clad.

Nor was it up to the standard of many weapons wielded by sub-generals, chief hunters, squad leaders and many high ranks of the Equestrian King's army.

Simply, Arsalan believed it needed a name. Something to be able to distinguish it, something to whisper while giving himself courage in the worst of predicaments.

"You lot must stay focused and never, I repeat never, underestimate the one you will be facing. You should all follow his example!" The superior, an armanite like all the members of that unit, had been singing his praises every morning since they had begun that punitive expedition. "We will arrive in Karnasus around the early hours. I don't want to see anyone back!"

That had been the first theater of battle for many of them, Arsalan included.

Recruits who had been given the opportunity to show their worth, for the glory of the Empire. And that they had done. When they had broken into the two Gaiths after dismantling their fortifications the Armanites who made up the central line had been the first to throw themselves into the action, breaking through the enemy defense lines, giving the other army corps the opportunity to overwhelm the enemy with ease.

Arsalan had shown valor and courage, they had said. Arsalan had been a hero of the nation, they had said. Worthy of all commendation and honor, worthy to scar himself with the title of champion.

What they did not know, and what they had not said, was that Arsalan was a coward, that he had waited until the last moment before leaving, that his valor, his contemptuous charge had only been a twitch of pure dread, his legs in terror that had caused them.

That his victory had been pure luck, as indeed it always was on the battlefield. That his hooves still trembled when he thought of that fetid, putrid aroma of death.

What they knew, and what they whispered, was that his father had been a hero. One of those who had stood up to the Equestrian King, paying the price with the only precious thing he had.

The tree had been shaken, and the apple had fallen away from it.

When those who were to remain in the conquered cities had been chosen, Arsalan had more than once been tempted to nominate himself, giving up only at the last so as not to be judged.

For Arsalan's cowardice also manifested itself when he interacted with those around him, those who had come to admire him. A childhood spent running across those great plains. For hours, getting lost in those wild and unspoiled places, before the empire brought its roads and aqueducts, taxes and services; everything that represented civility.

When some areas were still unexplored and dangerous, when his fear was not the fear of a coward, but the fear of one who respects the unspoiled nature that everything offered.

One armanite did not change the course of a war. A small and insignificant armanite did not tip the balance. A useless weight in the scales of the universe. In that truth, being insignificant, being superfluous, there was a comfort, a special meaning that not everyone would appreciate as much as he did.

'A coward never changes.' These had not been his father's last words, but would be his own. More fitting, for someone like Arsalan.

"It shouldn't take us long. We have conquered that city once before, and we will do the same again."

Arsalan and his peers had been marching for a short time, and the optimism of the prospect of an easy win was creeping in.

"I just hope to return home soon. My son has begun to take his first steps. I wouldn't want to miss any more moments like this."

"It's about getting your hands dirty, but there is no alternative. If these Union fools had given up after the first defeat..."

"I heard that some of the Immortals have disappeared..."

"Nonsense. They've been sent south! There's been a lot of turmoil over there lately. Besides, have you ever seen a dracotaur? I have, and let me tell you that if someone managed to beat the Immortal that guided them it must be at the very least a being at the level of a real dragon. Buddy, believe me when I tell you that the only thing we did wrong was not wiping those settlements off the map once and for all!"

The others chartered around him, almost as if they had been unaware of what was waiting ahead of them, almost as if it were not them who had to go to war.

"Hey, Arsalan, make sure you leave us some and don't take all the glory." A joke, devoid of malice. "Apparently we will have to fight with a flesh-and-blood dragon. You could become as famous as the Equestrian King!"

A laugh, not one of derision. Not fully, at least.

"I'll try," Arsalan chuckled with them.

Everyone respected him, the armanite who had brought honor and glory not only to himself but to all members of his species. The story that he had single-handedly mowed down the famous General Pausanias had spread to every department in the army.

How would they respond if they learned that Arsalan had done nothing at all? That it had all been a misunderstanding, a scam? He had merely arrived at the upper part of the citadel of West Gaith where that horrible giant lay surrounded by heaps and heaps of theirs.

Smashed, the work not of legendary weapons, but of mere hands. Just thinking about it a chill still ran through his entire lower body. Herded like mountains of cattle, the differences between species and affiliations had finally disappeared. Ah, what joy! War truly united all nations! The slaughterhouse that provided equality!

When the other soldiers had found the corpse of the general, Arsalan was raging over the remains of the giant, making sure it was dead and could not get up and devour him with a single bite, barely holding back the vomit caused by all that stench. At the time, the young recruit had not had the courage to explain the situation, and had despite himself found his persona being celebrated as a hero.

"I did that," said the coward. "I did that, thanks to all that are no more. Celebrate them, not me!"

An army always needed heroes, real or not. The very Immortals who led all of them, the Infinity Charge, the King's Fang and the Hell Spear, had praised him. The supreme commander, Satrap Galastis herself, was contemplating awarding the armanite a medal for the shown valor and courage.

His father's words rang in his ears: "It doesn't matter to have courage. When the time comes it will be your fear that you will thank."

'Should I then thank my fear for getting me into this?' How much would he have given for an answer. He would have offered himself without hesitation. A coward for an answer. A fair exchange.

"When we get there, leave some samples for us as well. Glory is a river in which everyone should be able to bathe."

"I'm not going to do that, don't worry," trying to remain coy, to remain humble, would bring about the opposite effect. The more he diminished his perceived achievements, the more Arsalan became the object of almost unrestrained worship. "We just have to have each other's backs and everything will be fine."

Gradually, some had begun to gather around the rookie, ready to follow him in his endeavors. Not only armanites, but also centaurs, wemic, hybsil, lamia, and all the other tribes that made up the vast expanse of the Great Plains. A vast expanse of young people laden with dreams and hopes, who were distinguished by tradition, skill, gender, and experience. All gathered by the desire to return home celebrated as heroes, as guardians of the new order that would be established under Heaven.

The Great Plains war machine was a well-oiled but not perfect mechanism. It still lacked perfect internal coherence, an amalgamation between the various components that made it perfectly capable of making up for each other's shortcomings.

It was rumored that the Equestrian King had been pleased with that prolonged conflict. A way to perfect tactics and strategies, to put down formations and siege machines. A training camp that incorporated an entire nation.

The army wings had refined coordination, but they still acted separately, leaving each tribe and each species to be sharply divided from the others. The new recruits, however, were beginning to cooperate, to make up for their weaknesses and augment their specializations. For the higher ranks, Arsalan and his people were an experiment worth cultivating.

"So high."

The walls of Karnasus were far different from those of other Union cities. A comparison would not have been fair.

For the peoples of the Great Plains, like the brave armanites, enclosing yourself in narrow, cramped spaces was synonymous with cowardice. And, more importantly, it was a capping of one's freedom, a restraining of the marriage with the strong and breezy wind flowing in the world.

And those endless walls, which required those endless steps to reach, rose so high that it made one dizzy just to look at them. Their defensive capabilities were unquestionable, and their grandeur a sight that could not be described by words alone.

"Prepare the siege machines! Arrange the archers! Infantry be ready to break through!"

Each unit reported to one of the Immortals, who in turn had several generals and sub-officers for field operations.

The Armanites were under the control of the Hell Spear, arranged into Druidic wards for siege machine preparation, magic projectile creation and processing, and terrain control; divine wards for blessings and healings; assault units divided into light and heavy cavalry, and then mobile bow units for disrupting ground troops and longbow units for enemies encamped defensively on the walls.

Given the lack of some of the Immortals at the time, and to begin to harmonize the various species that served the Empire, the classical formation had been arranged with various mixtures, divided into sections under two or more generals.

'I am ready... I am ready...'

Arsalan, taking his place in formation, noticed the comrades to his right and left. A wemic not much younger than him and a centaur with more than one scar on his face. Between a veteran and a novice he stood out as a midpoint.

"So it begins." The centaur had unsheathed his short sword and a light shield, raising a light layer of dust with the kicking of his hooves. "Will this be my last time?"

'Will I keep asking myself this too, should I survive?' All it took was little. Some people didn't even notice. The lucky ones. Many healed in the body. The mind, however, lagged behind in some cases. It remained in that place, in eternal imprisonment. His father had not been among the lucky ones. 'Tonight, what will become of me? What will I be when I wake up in the morning? A coward? Or...'

"It shouldn't take long," muttered the wemic. The mane was small and sinuous. A woman. "It shouldn't take long," said, again, the wemic. As if it had been a matter of duration. A simple endurance competition. "I heard that most of Karnasus' troops are elsewhere. Resistance will be low." She brushed away the long dark hair that covered her face. How strange they looked. Soft and thin, they flowed down like a wavy line over the rest of her body, losing themselves in the brown of her fur.

Arsalan nodded, feigning agreement. "It will not be difficult. The Union capital will be ours, and then we will go home. Home, yes." In conveying confidence to that wemic, the armanite was trying to find comfort in what he was stating.

She reacted with a sneer, and they seemed to be in a different place than they were.

That was an experiment, for the high command. A way to field-test a more rational division of the army, and assay its effectiveness in an actual trial.

Each species had its own aptitude. The hysbil were excellent druids, the armanite perfect as spearmen, and the bariaur archers of the first order, just to make an example. The old traditions, based on division, demanded that each tribe be organized on dispersion, leading to a fragmentation of the skills conferred by nature. But under the leadership of the Empire each could give vent to his or her vocations, strengthening both status and beliefs.

'Yet, something doesn't add up.'

The armanite did not know how to explain it. Everything was falling into place. Nothing was there to cause concern.

"Noises are starting to be heard."

Arsalan was assigned to the left wing, in an area far from the reach of enemy defenses. They were hidden by a thicket not too far away. Their rangers had not noticed scouts from the other side. Thus, that place was deemed safe for a sneak attack when the opportunity would arise.

Their duty was to intervene should Karnasus decide to send troops to counterattack their siege and target the war machines. There was a good chance that they would not have to enter in action at all until the city was taken, when the result could already be said to be settled.

For a coward, there was no better task than that.

"Get ready," the superior had ordered, taking just a handful of soldiers to be able to cover the distance faster and be ready to signal them to attack.

An exchange of arrows and magic. Losses on both sides. There was an illusion that it was all a farce, a macabre game with no consequences. It continued for a few minutes. Karnasus' resistance was more tenacious than expected. The torrent of bullets gushed from a single point in the high ground. Soldiers who had been placed at a distance from the classic range of the arrows were also beginning to infiltrate their rear. The work of an extraordinary individual, no doubt. If a single man could have made a difference, there would have been no need for the thing called war.

A duel would have sufficed.

'Except for our Heaven. But even he can't do it all by himself.'

"They broke through!" The centaur moved into position. The wemic was ready to charge. Every single row of the army kicked, eager to begin.

Arsalan clutched Blight-Scourge. Before him were endless possibilities. Glory and honor. Death and oblivion. To return home a hero, like his father. To die forgotten, again like his father. Almost as if fate was indifferent to any outcome.

'In the right moment, it will be my fear I will thank.' And Arsalan was afraid. A dread that devoured him, digging into his soul little by little, unceasingly. It was there, telling him to run away, to hurry as far as possible from that battle. It was there, coloring the smiles of his companions black, tearing the shape of their faces, defacing the landscape before him.

In those futures that had no limits, only one thing followed, unexpected.

Silence.

How could there be silence, in war? How could the shouts of commanders, the roar of magic, the rumblings of grief and the hymns of victory cease? How could every single soldier stop to make any noise, even indirectly, even if not as a result of his own will, albeit only for one measly instant?

It was ... strange. As if a pestilential epidemic had struck all that multitude in the faculty that most characterized it, that was, the use of words: a plague of language that manifested itself as a loss of cognitive force and immediacy, as an automatism that tended to level expression on the most generic, anonymous, abstract formulas, to dilute meanings, to blunt expressive points, to extinguish every spark that sprang from the clash of the intellect with new circumstances.

It was a second. A second that lasted a minute, a day, a year. It was a single second that never ended. When, at last, it passed, all the suspended breaths, all those plugged mouths went wild in one echo, in order to disturb that involuntary stillness.

Everything was covered. There was a thud, and the earth trembled. No, it cried. The earth itself wailed in pain. A second thud followed, louder. Shields slammed into the ground. The splendor of the sun had been stolen, and now it stood to protect the newcomers ornamenting their metal. A third thud, something metallic that began to advance. A fourth thud, and then a fifth, a sixth.

"...What are those?"

The walls of Karnasus had given way. Victory was at hand.

So why?

Why, thought Arsalan, had they lost? Why were they on the verge of extinction?

The darkness gave form to five creatures. Five creatures who had given up the sorrows of the flesh, the thrills of life, the pleasures of existence.

When they moved, the whole world moved with them.

"We must go too!"

"We have received no orders..."

"The captain is already dead! One of the enemy's arrows impaled him!"

Confusion. A disease that had spread rapidly and would find no cure in that chaos. Arsalan did not know what to do. He was a coward. A coward did not throw himself in front of monsters, did not throw himself contemptuously toward death.

Because even death could have been endured. Instantaneous, it would have brought nothing else that was not already vaguely desired. But that? The slow decay of every hope and faculty? The passive but inexorable awareness that dug its wickedness into every nook and cranny of the mosaic that constituted consciousness? That was not something that could be dealt with.

The five undead continued their relentless advance. The raised shields that formed a fortress impenetrable from any assault. A small group tearing through their ranks one by one.

The army of the Great Plains had been trained to counter the pikemen. The reach of the spears could pinch the warhorses, and halt the running of ordinary riders. But for the peoples who served the Equestrian King it took more than a mere caress to stop; for those who had run all their lives in the endless expanses of the Great Plains, wounds were a medal to be celebrated, the pikemen who thought to overwhelm them with spears alone were prey to their strength and their bows.

This was the way it was supposed to be. As it had gone before, when they had overwhelmed the Union for the first time. A charge they had believed would be unstoppable forever.

What foolishness…

The arrows on their side proved useless, while on the enemy's part they kept falling from the sky, imposing their judgment. The spells that proved no help, a futile attempt fading into nothingness.

The army of the Great Plains had been tempered in steel, in blood. It was an army that knew no fear, no surrender. Arsalan was the only anomaly, the only who had forsaken courage.

And because of that he was the only one who realized it.

Infantry that threw themselves into hand-to-hand combat were destroyed instantly.

The undead continued to advance. And for every step they took, ten of their own relinquished their lives. They were a tsunami that encompassed them little by little, scattering them with no way out.

The overwhelming leonine power of the wemics crashing like waves on the rocks, the foam of their blood leaving traces of their passage on the still wet bones; the bariaurs that kept flinging back after every mouthful, after every throw; the hybsil druids summoning the power of the elements, invoking the blessing of nature to drive those monstrosities into the underworld they had came from, to no avail. This was not something natural, something that could be challenged by reasoning alone.

And the priests and clerics of Heaven, who continued to invoke magics for the destruction of the undead to prove their faith, savored what it meant to see their beliefs challenged. Their creed no longer had the symphony of absolute truth, but the atrocious sneer of a taunting jeer.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Daeva..." That word was whispered by each of them before they took their last breath. And it was on the lips and thoughts of each of Arsalan's companions. It was read, as clear as it had ever been, over hesitation and doubt. Some might even have found it ironic that any difference had been erased, only when everything that distinguished them was made superfluous. They had only one thing in common now. Just one. And it was enough.

"We have to go too," said the scar-covered centaur. "Let's gather all the experts in blunt damage! Those who can employ martial arts to add fire or sacred attributes to attacks come forward! We have to do something!"

"First, we must reunite the whole army in one place if we are to have any hope of succeeding," Arsalan retorted. "And call the dracotaurs and Immortals. Let's send some messengers as soon as possible!"

When they had begun the assault they had divided the army into three, so that each side could lay siege from different directions: north, east and west. Each of these could count approximately a number equal to seven thousand.

Then the elite troops and dracotaurs had remained in a secluded encampment protecting the satrap Galastis. They, too, had to intervene.

Meanwhile, a decision had to be made.

"We must also move," proposed the centaur. The others joined him. Their attention focused on Arsalan, the only one who was worthy to offer their self-sacrifice to at the moment.

A coward! If only he had been able to spit out the truth. 'I will be the messenger! Say it… Say it…'

"So, charge!" Giving everything he had, the armanite tried to forget. Forget about his deceptions.

It was just as they began to give themselves momentum that it happened. One of the priests' miracles worked. The friction had finally been resolved in favor of their side, and one of those undead had evaporated, dissolving into a beam of light.

"We can do it," Arsalan repeated. "Let's go, too. Let's send those monsters back into the abyss... What?"

When all hope was accepted, when the sky had begun to clear, the opaqueness returned, stronger than before.

It reassembled its shape, feeding on the carnage it had sown until then, screeching with the intensity of a thousand pieces of glass crashing at the same instant. And another one of those skeletal lancers joined its devilish fellows, giving the impression that it had been there from the beginning.

Did they have a limit, those monsters? Or would they return endlessly, until they brought each of them to the other side? Perhaps one last effort would have sufficed. Perhaps it had been an anomaly, an unforeseen event. So many perhaps.

At that point, few had the strength to continue. The Equestrian King's army disintegrated as the Union soldiers found the strength to reattach and headed toward the breach to push them back. And the arrows... The arrows kept raining down on them. By the dozens, by the hundreds... Thousands? How was that possible? Where had it found all those archers, a moribund country?

"Let's react! Reinforcements will be here soon! Let us not be discouraged!" Too late.

It was too late.

The vanguard impacted with something. A solid body broke through using the transfixing pull of a thousand conflagrations, assuaging itself with the disaster the sheer inception had provoked, enthroning the trail of unrecognizable remains with the devastation of a catastrophe inked in the filthiness of what had once been agglomerations of sweet aspirations, coarse desires and unclean sins.

Shit and pus, all that was left behind. Shit and filth. Puke stuck in the throats and piss trapped in blisters.

'A ruse! A legerdemain! Trick of the non-believers! Martial Arts can't conceive all of this! Heroes can't reach this realm. Heaven doesn't acknowledge this folly!'

Arsalan closed his eyes. Until he opened them again he could claim to be alone. That everything had been a figment of his imagination. A dream-a dream to wake up from.

'I am stuck in a reverie. My father! Where is my father? He is still alive, isn't he? To find him, I have to wake up!'

"Hey, you. Yes, I'm talking to you. What are you doing there, gasping in the corner? Zany jesters are out of place here, don't you agree?"

He did not speak to the voice calling him. Bringing his hands to his ears, giving up even Scourge-Blight, Arsalan showed himself for what he was.

Briefly, there was peace...

Something forced him to get up. A hand of indescribable might ripped his hands glued to his face, violently opened his eyelids ... and forced the armanite to see.

The centaur at his side was dead. The wemic at his side was dead. The whole right wing had been exterminated, and, to his gaze, they had achieved that state of quiet he so longed for. Arsalan had given none of them a name, and so now they lay without a title, with an already blurred memory of their lives, on the verge of already being forgotten.

"Oh ... at last! I generously left you alive because you were the only one who didn't even try to fight back. Not even a gratification... Was I so slow that you could ignore me? Ah, never mind. Tell me, is the Equestrian King here?"

The one who was talking assumed a form. A shape. A... elf? A girl, very young. Difficult to tell, in regard to that race. Diaphanous like only the ethereal night could be, a strange weapon was resting on the shoulders, almost as if alive. Lance? Wand? Or a combination of both? The three blades of it dived the cardinal directions in a cross of silver darkness.

A white bow tied to the left arm waved carefree in the air. Petals of a blue flower peeked out from an armor of pure adamantium. A maiden's gown masquerading as a warrior's garb.

Strangest of all, however, was that not a trace of the ongoing combat had marred her. If purity still made sense, it had graced the girl with it. A paltry purity, without true cleanness.

Leaving aside blood or wounds, not a speck of dust disfigured the white skin, or stained the cuirass, that remained shining as just out of forge. That cleanliness possessed something unnatural, something frightening. It was a bizarre image, and at the same time tremendously disturbing. It was to wonder if that wasn't an angel of death, come to transport him to the next stage, the one everyone was unaware of.

"I asked you a question," she resumed, annoyed. Arsalan looked for a trace of regret for all she had done. The elf was numb to it. "What is it? Don't you know how to speak? Did you also forget how to breathe?"

"... No. He is not here." Arsalan relented. "However... However, don't think you have a chance! There are still many of us! The Immortals will wipe you out!"

"The Immortals?" The girl, bored as could never have been conceivable in that hellscape, brought the spear -or wand- on her shoulders closer to him. "Like one of these?"

The decapitated head sprouting on one of the three points moved uncertainty, on the verge of breaking off. The gaping mouth, about to utter an unhearable cry, and the glassy eyes begging for a mercy that had never come left no doubt. It was Hell Spear, the best of the Empire's armanites. The exceptional warrior that could take an army at bay alone.

But it had not been an army that had claimed him. Just one. Just one girl.

"And don't think there are many of you left then. While your friends were so busy concentrating on the Spartiates you didn't even notice that I got rid of the other lines," the elf was unusually talkative. "And to think that your comrades even managed to eliminate one of them, what a pity. Maybe I should have let your army get together and stayed out of the game until the end to make the competition more interesting. Ugh… even I start to feel a little nauseated after killing so many thousands…" The elven girl licked her lips, not holding back an edge of disgust. Was that a game? A trickster play? "Well, I had some help, I won't deny that. Without it, it could have taken some minutes more, and many of you would have escaped. Retrieving everyone would have been annoying. And the Great Plains did well, in getting rid of most of the Union defense. Less witnesses to worry about later."

Arsalan did not believe for a minute that she was telling him a falsehood. Deception? And for what? A mockery of the victor to the vanquished?

"You lie!" He denied, in any case, what she was reporting to him. Not because he could not accept it, or because he was clinging to a futile hope. It was simply that a different reaction was not even contemplated in his reasoning.

The elf did not give it much thought. "You'll realize that in a little while," then, with her back to him, she began to stray. "There are others left, aren't there? I will head to them."

The armanite's breath stopped.

It was over.

In the end, the coward had saved himself.

"Why don't you kill me?" What drove him to that outburst, Arsalan could not explain. So he hated himself, cursed himself, but did not back down from what was said. "I am here, at your mercy."

The elf turned back to him, pointing her left finger at Scourge-Blight, who lay abandoned next to the armanite. "You are already dead. Neither do I find pleasure in killing the same ant twice," and then walked away, uncaring of leaving a soldier of the Empire -her enemy- there alone.

'...It will be your fear you will thank.' His father had been right.

Arsalan was alive.

'But alone.' As when his father had left him, Arsalan was left alone. Even then, he had not had the courage to do what had to be done. Even then, in the past, Arsalan had let the person he cherished above all else die in excruciating suffering rather than plunge the blade into his heart. 'I am alone.' Even Scourge-Blight that coward had decided to give up.

'A coward. Yes, I am a coward.' Until the very end. 'What now?'

That elf would have exterminated even the satrap. The remaining Immortals, and perhaps even Heaven itself. She would not rest until the entire Empire of the Great Plains was destroyed, reduced to sand for the wind to blow.

Arsalan struggled to get up again. Even without fighting, he was exhausted. The armanite grabbed the spear he had thrown and began to run.

He ran, to warn the satrap. To report the incident in full detail. To show that, when things mattered the most, even a coward like him had a place in that world.

He ran until he glimpsed the camp of the superiors. He ran until he began shouting for attention. He ran until that squad of Union soldiers intercepted him.

'One last ride together, Scourge-Blight!'

He kept running even when an orc with two mighty cleavers severed his chest from his body. The rest of him kept moving forward, in that running that continued even after death. Arsalan watched the perspective change inclination, while part of him drifted away, unable to stop it, having achieved nothing of importance.

The ultimate satisfaction, though, was that he had tried. To not have let his nature define him until the end.

'Father, now I understand. What a good death.'

That was how died -and lived- a coward.

----------------------------------------

Without achieving anything.

When Byrabolg woke up that morning he took a glance at the mirror, not recognizing the orc looking back at him, disfigured by the shards of glass from that aging furniture. It was a ghost moving at the other side of the reflection, repeating his every gesture and cadence.

The orc rinsed his face with a worn cloth as the mass of greasy, black hair covering his dull gaze. After tying it into a small pigtail, Byrabolg stood fixedly watching Cal and El for more than a minute, cleaving the air with a burst that appeared as ungainly as it was lethal, before putting the swords back in their cases and tying them around his waist.

'Everything changes today,' he mused to himself, dressing up with particular eagerness. The Union uniform was a cobalt blue, a hue badly matched with his greenish complexion, yet when preparations were completed Byrabolg never felt more stunning. More dignified. 'Today the bards will have something new to praise.'

The orc's nostrils drew in air for a breath worthy of the name, being flooded with a sour odor clinging to surfaces of the walls. A carboy of wine was placed on the table, the scent of grapes beckoning Byrabolg, enticing him to try it. "Just a taste," it promised. "Just a taste. What could possibly be a drink?"

Byrabolg threw it into a basket, preventing the repentance of that gesture from bringing an afterthought. It reeked so foul that it was like being in a hoghouse that hadn't been cleansed in ages.

'Today Byrabolg Uzrok stops being a drunkard. The tavern clown no longer performs. No dragon-killers, nor troll-stretchers. I will never think of anything like that again. I'll pretend it's not there.' Nor did he wonder how that bottle had ended up in his place while throwing it in the trash can. In all likelihood, some of the boys had forgotten it on that table the night before, when they had enjoyed their revelry until after midnight, as had been customary for them the past few days. A more mischievous tongue might have implied that it had not been mere forgetfulness. Such poison was better left for those who still had friends to spare. 'No matter. I stopped touching that stuff. Today, Byrabolg Uzrok will be reborn. A champion again. I stopped touching that stuff.'

Today, was the day Byrabolg Uzrok would kill the Equestrian King.

Before stepping through the doorway of the small apartment he had been provided, the orc noticed the book of poems resting on the shelf near the door. Byrabolg flipped through a few pages, rereading his favorite titles: The Death of the Black Blade and The Epic of the Demon King in Three Acts. Knowing their contents by heart, after entire nights spent declaiming those passages to replicate the legendary deeds, it was more than spontaneous to find himself flipping through its pages.

They took him back to a past when it was music and song all day long, the enchantment of words and the harmony of sounds, the cheers of the roaring crowd and the gestures of respect exchanged with rivals, giving meaning to his love. Love that he had soiled. Love he had failed.

The stench of draught beer and fermented ale still lingered among the papers, despite the fact that Byrabolg was sure he had asked more than one spellcaster to cast『Clean』on that relic that maybe had never existed, if not for him. That it had all been in his head? A lingering reminder of his mistakes that would never leave him, condemning him to eternal humiliation?

'The Dark Knight,' thinking back to his idol, and to the human woman who had humiliated him in the Mutual Wallop, Byrabolg was assailed by an uncharacteristic melancholy. 'Not now. Not anymore.' That oath he uttered in the half-light, sealing his resolve with a few words. A reminder of his shame. An oath for the future that was to come. 'I don't touch that stuff anymore.' That stuff. That's what he had to call it. There was power in names. 'That stuff…'

As he headed for the walls, Sir Niles and his last words replayed in his thoughts. On the stage, there were he and the King of the Union champions, intent on reciting their last words, in a piece in which history and reality gave way at alternating intervals. Recent memories stagehands of that foul play.

"Be careful!" The minotaur had advised. "I granted you permission to stay here in Karnasus to keep an eye on the elf. Do not provoke her or get in her way. Should the enemy arrive, you will provide adequate support. And that's it!" Severed. A tone that admitted no reply.

"I won't!" The orc had retorted. And he had lied, for it was the lie that accumulated the performer -artist was too presumptuous of a term- with the drunk. Barybolg had yearned to become the former, and had ended up turning into the latter. "An opportunity, though, I ask. An opportunity for redemption."

"And you shall have it," the King of Champions had huffed, moving earth and hearts with his might. The one Barybolg longed to be, and who he was not. "But you will have to be careful. And, at the risk of repeating myself, you will have to keep an eye on the elf!"

The elf! The elf that everyone in the high command venerated and dreaded. The elf who sat where kings and queens could only stand. Even Sir Niles' team, made up of those who had excelled in various of the sixteen disciplines of the Union games, dared not counter that girl who had been able to slay the unslayables.

For Byrabolg it did not matter. He was already dead when the human woman had spared him after her triumph. When defeat had been coupled with humiliation. When he had begun to believe that happiness could only be found at the bottom of a glass, that glory was to be sought in empty bottles and void promises.

Since then, the orc had been a corpse walking among the living. Since then, the orc had been living as an undead.

'Never again,' repeated Byrabolg to no one, if not himself. 'Never again!'

He was done with that stuff.

Life was a ring. When you were thrown out, you could get up and climb back up to continue the challenge, or you could crawl and avoid facing your opponent. And Byrabolg had chosen the second option, at first. But after digging for a bottom, the orc had found out how much he missed the surface.

That he yearned for the sun, the light. That he longed for the support of the crowd, the same crowd he had ditched. That the rivers of alcohol he had swallowed in rivers would not grant him oblivion. The pleasure of the drink was not a pleasure meant to last…

And so he had risen again. Little by little. Small step after small step.

The air on the walls of Karnasus was wonderful. Fresh and invigorating, with that wind blowing up to cleanse away all dirt, all mistakes.

"They've arrived," announced Timaheus, an aarakocra who stood out for his expertise, gliding past Byrabolg and the rest of the stragglers and misfits which had joined his band. "It won't take them long to begin the siege."

"The city guard won't be able to hold out here for long. We have to wait until they are distracted and then aim directly for their headquarters." Even if the Equestrian King had not been present, surely one of the satraps was leading the imperial army.

'A chance for glory, honor, cheers and all that stuff…'

Byrabolg quickly squared the small group that had gathered around his figure. Most of them did not even realize what it meant to fight, to face risk. Low-grade criminals, third- or even fourth-borns, sellswords without a sword to sell, or simply desperate enough to believe in something else...

The orc did not expect them to contest alongside him. Yeah, war was a trial of worth and bravery. It was enough for them to have his back and give him an opportunity to infiltrate. "I am not inclined to give encouraging speeches. I will only remind you that the future of those you care about rests on what your actions will be today. A surgical strike is the only path to victory, and to salvation. If you have second thoughts, it is best to externalize them now."

No one complained. They had confidence in him. Confidence in what had once been a celebrity for many of them, even the younger ones. What a godsend! Byrabolg saw them and remembered what it meant to be the center of attention. "What should we do?" Watching these youths, trembling to show off, reminded the orc of the passion of his best days, now lost.

There were no more than a dozen in total. Cloudy past, uncertain present. But the future - the future could still sparkle for each of them. Immortality was not precluded to anyone. Byrabolg felt almost like a thief, in plundering their trust, in using the esteem they had for him as stepping stones to his ascent.

"Let's wait. There will come a time when they will be able to break through the fortifications. Centaurs are not accustomed to climbing, and they hate to use『Fly』to overcome obstacles, so they will be forced to open a breach. At that point, when most of them have poured into the city, we will sneak toward the heart of their command. But we will have to be quick."

Many of them would be dead, at best. But it was a sacrifice Byrabolg was willing to make without regret.

"We'll do that, then. Should we encounter one of the Immortals, will you be able to defeat him?"

"We have no alternative."

The others agreed. There was a temptation to have a drink, to dispel the last doubts and wish each other good luck. 'I'm done with that stuff,' Byrabolg repeated to himself again and again. He observed the others toasting with a hastily found bad wine, found who knew where. 'I'm done with that stuff.' Cheap perfume intoxicated his nose.

"We will wait," he said, when the others had finished. "We will wait."

And that they did. They waited.

And waited.

They waited until the first commands were heard, imprinted forcefully in the surroundings, stealing the echo of the landscape. When the first arrow was fired, and the first victim claimed; when the first boulder hurled, and the vibrations from the impact caused upheaval in the foundation; when the first magic formula was recited, and the bulwarks began to vibrate under the fury of the elements Byrabolg and his companions remained there, waiting.

Waiting for what? An opportunity, Byrabolg thought. An opportunity for which he had looked for years, in silence, and in infamy. The dry throat demanded something sweet, to soften it. The sweat dripped, each drop a cascade of disgrace. Fingers trembling, from abstinence, begging to even touch a bottle of ale. Even a glass would have been enough. Even a glass… Not to drink it, just touch it. To know it was there, within reach. That the desire could be fulfilled, if he wanted. And that the relinquishment was all about his will.

The orc was forced to grasp Cal and El, so that he could put an end to that turmoil that was tearing him apart from the inside. He attacked a tune, diverting his mind from certain afflictions.

"The sun flees, and the night is silent.

The stars grow heavy and dark, beyond the haze.

And the moon..."

The orc found that he could no longer remember how it ended. The moon was-what was the moon like? Red? Red how? Like wine? 'I'm done with that stuff!'

As the absolute end collected its harvest around him, and as dreams and hopes, which may never have been there, were cast into the mud, Byrabolg focused on that one verse, which just didn't come to him.

"Are you seeing too?" Timaheus called him back to attention with a snap of his fingers. The wings, folded, quivered with something that could not easily be explained. "That girl… What is she? Not a normal elf."

From the elevated position, a few steps away from the central lookout, they had been able to see how the Great Plains army had split into three parts, each focused on a different cardinal direction.

"It was no overstatement," Byrabolg and Timaheus had also noticed how someone, who did not lack temerity, had jumped into the fray, leaping from the walls to land with one simple dive right in front of the horde coming from the east. "Am I dreaming, perhaps?"

The others near him shook their heads, to make it clear that if they had ended up in a collective slumber, the disbelief they shared was not mere fabrication.

Byrabolg recognized, in the one who had thrown herself with such bravado, the elf who had opened the door for them to resume Karnasus. The same elf the King of Champions had declared dangerous.

The elf, a girl or so, had crossed the blurry line between courage and madness. Which side she found herself on after that journey did not matter. For Byrabolg understood.

"She slew the Immortals, Byrabolg. Mirina and I haven't even come close all these years. The Brave died by their hands. And she... She forced them to change their epithets." Sir Niles, once again. King of Champions. The minotaur, Lord of Every Arena. And the care -the revance- that had traced their final farewell.

A revelation always came when least expected.

"Chief, she'll die if we don't help her," one of the boys had whispered in his ear. That concern was the child of a nobility that the orc, as much as he had longed for, had renounced.

"No," he asserted with conviction. The girl was a drop. So small, you could barely see her. Could a drop...could a drop have stilled the sea? "Observe, boy. Have you ever found yourself on a battlefield? Have you ever raised a shield to protect yourself and the comrade standing beside you? Raised a pike to block the enemy? Unsheathed a sword to protect an innocent?"

"Sir ... I don't understand."

Byrabolg tried to remember that elf's name. Antilene? She was not from those parts. Antilene... That was the name of the one who had summoned the dead. That was the name of the fury that hurled itself among the enemy with the might of a mad god, the indulgence long unconstrained.

"You will understand if you learn to observe."

----------------------------------------

The orc had fought once upon a time, in the war called Mutual Wallop. Ten warriors from each city, a hundred and twenty in all, in an immense amphitheater. Until only one remained standing, to claim the victor's laurel. A simulation, a game.

It had not been a war, though Byrabolg had deluded himself to the contrary. He had never realized what that word, war, had that was so special about it. Why it was so regarded with such scorn, such hatred.

The war familiar to him was synonymous with fame, with the roaring applause of an audience that loved him, and whose affection he reciprocated. The war he had adored were fabulous salaries, pharaonic contracts, women throwing themselves at your feet, and men looking at you with the utmost respect and sincerest devotion.

Prone sycophants licking your asshole, polishing their lips with what came out and then kissing your cheeks with them still wet. To this, only a response: "Thank you! See you next time and bless!"

It was an art. The art of war.

The war he had known was the war of epic and poetry. The right one, if a bit bitter. Ruthless, yes. But supported by rules that made it more than just a conflict for supremacy. It was the war in which self-interest did not exist, and valor and heroism stood between determined and palpable evil. The needs of the many ripping apart the wants of the few.

It was the noble war! The war that brought every action its justification. To every condemnation, its pardon. Through war, one could reach the eternal. To be immortalized in the collective consciousness as more than just a man! More than just a warrior. And be something else!

It was the war that bards sang with the sweetest of smiles, inducing everyone to whistle the same ballads, hoping one day to become part of that legend. The Dark Knight fending off the Evil Deities, the Leader of the Thirteen standing between Landfall with bravery and pride!

The war he knew now, at that juncture when everything would change, was the war that was untold.

'What a fool I was. Wine-is there no wine? No ale? Rinse-guts? I must drink. I must drink, yes. Sweet oblivion, how much I seek you now. Give me some of that stuff…'

It was a point, the elf. A point that was first here, then there. From west to east, from north to south, that point moved in that brothel of steel and blood. It was fear, it was shock, it was awe, it was reverence for a creature that was beyond explanation.

How could one possibly account for what was happening? How could the unexplainable be described?

There was a girl, an elf.

There were thousands and thousands of soldiers from the Great Plains Army.

There was a girl, an elf. And with this girl walked the undead.

There were thousands and thousands of soldiers from the army of the Great Plains. And of these thousands and thousands there were hundreds and hundreds. Dozens and dozens.

There was a girl, an elf. And with this girl there was a scythe. And that scythe did what a scythe was supposed to do. It ripped. It teared and it mowed. Pressing on a density that exceeded the thickness of that clutch, she leapt forward as an army and the army fell back in line as the single man! Someone -Equestrian King or Heaven no difference made- had sown wind, expecting storms. The storms had not come, but instead the elf had arrived!

There were thousands and thousands of soldiers from the Great Plains Army. And with these soldiers, there were just as many weapons. There were spears, shields, swords, rods and staffs, longbows and shortbows. Plus others unknown. Pieces of glitter bronze, hard iron, sharp steel, precious mithril, astonishing orichalcum.

There was magic and spells. There was the incandescent heat of fire, the smashing seisms of earth, the raging hurricanes of air and the calm fury of water. The buffs that overcame limits and the healing that alleviated grief. Arrows. Arrows that darkened the clouds. Arrows that covered the sun.

Formations honed with every conceivable sweat and sacrifice, tactics studied in every minute detail and finesse. There was a plan, a pattern that stood on principles and doctrines, conditions to be fulfilled. Manuals on weaknesses to exploit, commentaries on that or this path. The way of the warrior, the aspiration of the wizard, the wish of the druid...

There was a girl, an elf. And this girl walked alone. She was fighting alone. One against many. One, two, three, four… You couldn't count them one by one, who were already gone.

The drums that acclaimed the champions appealed to a Heaven that would not listen. "All hail the Hell Spear! All Hail the King's Fang! Now you will die by my hand! Now you will know the fury of my spear!" Cloven the choruses, divided the spirits, trampled the Immortals. Immortals... Extols rejected by the elf.

Titles and ranks didn't distinguish. The panoplies of a thousand and one legends were rain-soaked paper, the blades of yore a forgotten legend. There were no noises of collisions, steel ringing on steel, dissonances between the interval of the blow and the decision of the lunge. The formulas were rescinded before they came to an end. The arrows would never meet the bowstring.

The final curtain would have a different closure for any given story. The limits? Only her imagination.

Swaying in the huddled mass of sweat and saliva, the elf ran afoul of the laws of equality, the certainties of numbers and the comfort of quantity. Armor transmuted, as if by atrocious miracle, into shrouded robes. The connections between nerves and organic structure, drift and stasis, undone and reassembled, if not discarded.

No last-stands. No occasion for repentance. Antilene's plod did not indulge in pleonasms in seek of pity or pledges to establish allegiance. Cut-throat methodicalness and disdain for anything that did not fit into her perfect world came under the judgment of her maleficence.

When she attacked, the universe was made her own. The clay to be molded was made of flesh and bone, and the masterpiece she had to create opened a window of endless opportunities before her. Opportunities that converged, like the sequences of endless strikes and counterstrikes, on a single outcome. An outcome that recognized only one favor. Hers.

Numinous mist dawned on the noon of the battleground. The howls of sufferance and excruciation reshaped those lands in shores of castigation.

There were hundreds and hundreds of soldiers of the Great Plains Army. Their leaders were no longer guiding them. Children left without anyone to hold their hands. And these hundreds and hundreds began to enquire about a cardinal conundrum, "What are we witnessing?" Foregone conclusions and legs shaked in sync.

Because the girl was passing by, and they were falling. Because the girl was being run over by their every attempt, their every most unimaginable effort, and she was going forward with always the same mission. The same intent. "I am coming…" The ominous prediction. "I am coming…" The ultimate threat.

Their churning, now, a disorganized mess. Their chances, now, could not aspire to a benevolent fate.

There was a girl, an elf. There was a girl, she was Death. How could one fight death? Was it not inevitable? The inviolable destiny? How could one fight what blades could not wound, what magics could not conceive, what fangs and nature could not grace?

There were dozens and dozens of soldiers from the Great Plains Army. And these few soldiers slowly realized one thing: "We are dying. The warrior on the right is dead. My comrade on the left is dead. The priest who was supposed to bless me is dead. The archer I was protecting is dead. The wizard, and the druid, and the sorcerer who were supposed to cover me are dead. No generals to lead, no leadership to inspire, no heroes to rise." And so the only thing to ask remained "Will I be the next?"

There was a girl, an elf. She was alone, that elf. She stood alone, because there was no one left.

----------------------------------------

"Eheh," one of his own began to laugh. "Ehehehe," another as well. "Ahahaha," yet another. They all laughed in the rummy, in the wine that did not flow from the bottle, in the frenzy that was not satisfied with the stirring of delightful delirium.

"This is what war is all about, you see? Bodies falling and no one to bury them. Finding yourself with one or more limbs severed, and the lifeless body of those you had called comrade, even friend, suffocating you while on the ground. The vulture banquet, the last supper of life. No better stuff to experience!"

Byrabolg wanted to drink so badly. He wanted to drown in alcohol, cursing himself endlessly for his foolishness. Champion, him? What a sick joke. Where was the champion while a girl, one girl only, was rewriting history, rewriting the fundamentals of war, its very definition?

Yes, that was war. It was the phantasma you dared not look at, carelessly scorching away what you held most dear. The nightmare that watched over eternal dreams.

'Wine. Give me wine. Or ale. Something, at least. Anything goes. Anything!'

The army of the Great Plains had been pretty much exterminated. A few survivors had fled, deeming it wiser not to continue something already set.

The walls of Karnasus were that white carved from marble. That white, which had been obtained with toil and sacrifice, had now been ruined, devastated. The breach had been opened. 'So fast,' Byrabolg admitted. 'So fast, they could have won. They were stronger than we were. More prepared. Yet they lost. Where is the justice in that?'

The answer, trivial as it was, he now realized, was that there was no justice at all.

"Let's go down, fast! There is no more glory. Honor? Forget it. There is nothing left for us but the last crumb. Timaheus, fly and lead the way."

The aarakocra sprang into the air. The orc and his followers headed for the new entrance. When they arrived, there was hardly anything left. Five hell devils were walking on an expanse of massacre, thriving on that carnage, so still and silent as to be deafening.

Flies and cockroaches burrowed through the carcasses, sucking up the last remnants of what had once been an abundant glut of life, ready to restart the cycle from scratch. The golden river had run its course, yes, but of that dirty, dark red that had once been the greatest treasure of numerous unawares. Not silver, not gold, nor platinum. Scarlet, that river that weepingly bathed the earth was now.

"What happened here?"

"The infamy of war," Byrabolg said. "Just this."

The elf, at the center of it all, proceeded calmly. On the battlefield, the very act of walking was disrespectful to those who had fallen. Her steps etched the name of the strongest in that calm.

----------------------------------------

When Orodaltis woke up that morning, she did so with love by her side. It was a kiss – just one kiss – that roused the lamia from wonderful dreams. Dreams that nevertheless paled compared to reality. Lucky, she had been. Lucky for similar awakenings in the past, and with good intentions of repeating them in the future.

"Are you awake, my beloved?"

Satrapa Galastis placed her lips on hers again, entwining the tail with Oradaltis's. Squamous was the face, as was the tail. That stinging sensation invigorated she who was known as Infinity Charge, one of the Immortals of the Great Plains.

"I am now." Heat. The satrap's much larger body enclosed her in a tender, affectionate embrace. The silks on which they had rested wrapped around them, relieving out the hardness of touch with their softness. "We must go, before someone notices that I have not slept in my tent."

"Who? Dracotaurs don't mind these things. The rest of the army is far away. Victory is assured... What's one more kiss?"

Nothing. Or everything.

"It's late."

"Not for us."

"Our people will die soon."

"More reason to celebrate love."

"Is love we celebrate?"

"Yes. I repeat: do you yield?"

"I concede. What is one more kiss?" That time, temptation won. The next… "There are some priests nearby. Many of them are close to the Equestrian King..."

"Let them talk, or see, if they wish. What are the words of priests? Our Heaven does worse with his only friend. Bedfellows as foals, bedfellows in adulthood." It was supposed to be a secret. But if it was on everyone's lips, could it continue to be called such just because it was not whispered clearly? "Let the priests think about politics and religion... Love is not for them."

Orodaltis struggled to flinch, regretting it with a few moments delay. "What we do in intimacy is our business. But the new nation needs unions. Not the kind we practice here." A lamia and a dracotaur would have been seen as an unusual couple in even the most libertine circles. "Besides, there is a conquest to be accomplished, it seems to me. Let's not let ease deter us from the goal."

"As always, you are right." Galastis had finally shifted away from her, beginning to cover herself with a fine tunic, line motifs of quartz and amber shaped a marvelous strand, which nevertheless maintained a certain restraint. Of all the four satraps, she was the one who most rejected the comforts and softness. The silks on which they had shared more than one night had been a gift given to Orodaltis for stealing her heart. "Do you think we will find a more tenacious resistance than the one that greeted us in the Two Gaith?"

The lamia, who was forced to cover her chest with the clothes from the previous evening, sat a few steps away from her beloved, crossing the feline paws on the ground. The Eye of Blasphemy she wore around the neck awakened at just the slight contact, sparkling with pure magical energy, giving substance to small purple thunderbolts that blended into the deep, dark red of the eye's interior. It beckoned Orodaltis to invoke its power gently, tempting her with promises of love. But unlike a kiss, that was a desire that could not be surrendered to. Not so lightly.

"We had it easy once. It doesn't mean we will have it again." She brought her hand closer to the dracotaur's, already aware of what was to follow. "Satrap Filede wait for you to show weakness to gain more influence. Her son is one of the Immortals who are commanding this advance. The King's Fang is renewed for strength and bravery. Spoils of war he will bestow to our Heaven. And..." Orodaltis paused, to avoid adding more. A fresh wound needed time and care to heal.

"And I lost my brother, my champion. No Immortal reports directly to me now. That's what you meant. Even if I were to give my king a kingdom, I will not offer him a champion."

The lamia lowered her head in shame. Her beloved took the chin between her fingers, forcing her to mirror herself in her gaze. That pain that had not yet ceased was not, however, condemnation.

"Dracotaurs have lost influence, while wemics still have much to gain. Can a small lion compare to a dragon? It would have been imaginable just a few years ago." Galastis covered her eyes. If there were tears, no one had the right to witness them. Not even her love. "As a leader, I am a failure. Dracotaurs have always respected the law of the strong, but times are changing and I struggle to keep up. The Kingdom of Heaven is no longer just the Kingdoms of the Great Plains. You adapt, or you die. And in all this, those who were supposed to stay by my side have gone, leaving me alone."

"I am here."

"You have your own people to think about. The lamia have lost a lot since the conquest. Already they lost a queen. Will you also make them lose a princess?"

"There are more capable leaders than I," like those who had perished, rebelling against the invader, against the one they now called King and Heaven. Anguish still scarred the chest. "We will think first of finding your brother, and saving him."

"Do you think he is alive?"

"He is a valuable hostage. And I can't imagine anyone, except for our king, being able to overpower him." Orodaltis had heard that same question many times since before they had started that conquest. Or reconquest, as Heaven had declared it. And each time the answer had been the same: "If someone has harmed your brother, we will avenge him." There was no need for illusions.

The Dragon's jaws, the Forest's horns, the Emperor's sword.

Three Immortals. That moniker now had the flavor of a prophecy . Three Immortals whose trail had been lost since they had set foot on Union territory. Perhaps they were still alive. Perhaps they endured, in the name of their emperor. Or maybe getting their hopes up was anserine.

"They say it was a daeva..." The monsters the new religion called demons and abyssals, the shadows that disturbed harmony and order. A vague concept whose imprecise meaning changed from sunrise to sunset.

"Daeva," Galastis repeated. Names concealed power, and she was trying to wrest it away. "If what the priests say is true, the harmony of the world is the basis of everything. If wallowing in war means dispersing this harmony, then each of the dracotaurs is a daeva. If what the priests say is true, what would that make you?"

The mysteries and dogmas of the new religion eluded even Orodaltis. The lamia had accepted it, as you would accept someone new ruling you, but she had not made it her own, and the same could be said of her beloved. The Eye of Blasphemy was her legacy, and that heritage did not admit masters.

"Whatever they call themselves, there may indeed be an outstanding individual among the Union soldiers."

"Could be. But why hide them until now? It makes no sense," Galastis hardened the cadence of the voice. There was an untamed anger dormant in the tone. "Only once did my brother lose. Just once. It's impossible for it to happen again." One lied to oneself because the truth was too hard to face. In this, even the dracotaurs, the mighty and indomitable warriors who were said to be descended from dragons, were not so different from the rest of the species that rode in the Great Plains. "Those cowards must have taken him by surprise. A trap! They must have overwhelmed him with numbers! Without honor. There is no one left with honor in this world."

Perhaps there had never been from the beginning. What was honor anyway? Could it be eaten, touched, hidden, admired? If the answer was no, then it was worthless. The Eye of Blasphemy snickered at those statements, as if a holy relic had free will.

Orodaltis licked Galastis on the neck, as a sign of affection. "Now think of something else, my love. It is a long day ahead of us. If justice is to be served, we will not be long in passing our sentence."

The satrap ran a hand over her cheek, brushing it with a caress. A small gesture, which meant a lot to both of them.

"What would I be without you?"

"One of the Four Satraps. One of those who intercede for Heaven."

"I would be nothing."

"You would be everything. And more."

"I will see you later in the council meeting. After taking the city, there will be a lot to take care of."

Another kiss. Whether it would be the last could never be foretold.

The lamia went out, emerging into the forest near Karnasus that they had chosen as their home. Many were already on their feet -the servants preparing, the sentinels relieving, the priests celebrating the first masses- and if anyone noticed her coming out of the tent, they pretended not to mind.

The final arrangements for the army had been made the previous evening. Hell's spear and King's Fang would direct the field operations, while Orodaltis would provide the satrap's safety. For those who knew Galastis, and had seen her wielding the ax, that would have sounded like an unfunny jest.

"My lady," Nikou was waiting for her a few meters from the gazebo they had set up as central command. "Has agitation brought you restless sleep, perhaps?"

"I wanted to make sure everything was on track," Orodaltis patted her subordinate's shoulder, causing her to tremble slightly. "How are things progressing?"

The other lamia crawled, moving her serpentine body to cover the albeit small distance that separated them. She did not want anyone to be able to hear them too easily. "I have set up divination spells every half hour, as you requested..." While lamia with feline bodies excelled in the physical arts, those blessed with the form of reptiles performed well in the mastery of spellcasting. In this, Nikou was an excellence among excellences. Of course, such rules were made to be broken. In this, Orodaltis was the perfect example. "At first, we did not encounter any problems. Our troops began the siege with little resistance. Our archers overwhelmed theirs, and their walls would not have withstood the centaur-built machines for long."

"But..." As the years passed, it was almost natural to predict what was left out. And of years with adorable Nikou, Orodaltis had spent several.

The other lamia lowered her voice even more. No one needed to pry in that conversation, it seemed. "They have a very powerful necromancer. Five undead like we've never seen blocked our advance, and now they are clashing with the part of the army proceeding from the west."

"Five..." Orodaltis used her own experience as teacher and guide. "Don't we have clerics and priests in abundance? What are they doing?"

"Exorcisms are proving ineffective."

This was therefore an unusual category of undead. "To summon five the summoner must be skilled in the arcane school like me. However, obviously five must be their limit." The purpose was to prevent her second from sinking into anxiety and despondency. For this, a rough estimation could be fitting, even though the future would prove it ludicrous. "If taking down those undead proves too costly in terms of lives, we will have to concentrate our efforts on the summoner. They are probably hiding somewhere, perhaps within the walls. They should not be found very far away, or they could not direct them effectively. Have the rams been put into operation? We will break through another of the doors."

"They were preparing them… But what if the summoner is stronger than their creatures?"

That prospect was gruesome. "Who do you think would win between me and another of the Immortals if I did not employ my summons?"

"I..." Orodaltis was almost grateful to Nikou for that hesitation.

"Be honest, go ahead."

"I don't think you would be able to win."

"That's right. But what if you were to use them instead?"

"No other Immortal could beat you!"

Orodaltis was not the only one overestimating, evidently. "I doubt that would be the case. But the result would certainly not be set in stone. We will summon some thousand-eyed demons to flush out the necromancer."

"Do you intend to use your talents?"

"I still have a lot of mana, and for low-rank summons like that it would be wasted. I can only use it once a day, don't forget." The shadow that had begun to descend on Nazanin finally stopped. Yet, why was she the one who felt agitated now? The Eye of Blasphemy whispered to her, "Fool." The Eye of Blasphemy could not speak. It was a mere fabrication repeating that 'fool'.

"Is everything okay?" Her second was trying not to let her gaze drop to the Eye of Blasphemy. Every time Orodaltis had told her about those strange feelings, Nikou had repeated the same antiphon: "The Eye of Relic is completely closed. I do not perceive anything."

"Sure," said Orodaltsi, covering the Eye with a hand. "Come, let's eat something. I haven't had breakfast yet, and I bet the same goes for you. In the meantime, convey the directions I gave you to our girls via 『Message』."

"As you wish."

The two lamia headed toward a small table set aside for officers. Orodaltis was on the verge of grabbing something among the various choices before her when she noticed that Nikou had made astonishment and concern color her expression.

"No one... No one answers."

Of jokes, at that hour so close to dawn, the Immortal felt no need for. However, she quickly realized that Nikou had never played the slightest prank on her since she had known her.

'Fool!'

"What do you mean no one answers? Did you give instructions to stay in the rear, so that you could keep us constantly updated?"

"Yes. We had exchanged information not more than 20 minutes ago when those undead showed up."

No one could have worked their way through thousands of soldiers in such a short time. Assassins? But her girls were spellcasters of the highest order, surrounded by the Empire's elite guards. Who could have? The five undead? The stronger the summoning, the smaller the possible number to invoke. A simple rule of reason... That learnedness in arcane had induced underestimation?

'Fool.'

It was not foolish to use common patterns and rules as an outline of reasoning. The only one who could have done it was the Equestrian King. But considering that case as replicable would have been a dangerous illation. Which was absurd. The sky above was one, and only one.

'So… The Immortals truly were…'

"Call those who specialize in divination. Order them to find out what's going on! I want a situation report before now!"

Nikou was already on the verge of carrying out, when something caught the attention of them both.

"My lady..." A voice came from the distance.

"What is it now?" As the only remaining Immortal, Orodaltis was in effect the highest authority after the satrap.

Some dracotaurs were carrying prisoners in chains. They were deposed at her feet without too much graciousness . "These intruders tried to sneak into the camp. They avoided the traps and eliminated some of our people before we could catch them."

Orodaltis squared them off. In the center stood a greenish-skinned orc. Like all the others, he wore a Union war uniform. A cobalt blue that spurred the memory of that sea that the Immortal had glanced at in amazement only once in her short youth.

"We warned the satrap as well," continued the dracotaur who had captured them. "They claim they have valuable information for us."

The Immortal turned to the orc, who gave the impression of being the leader of that band of misfits. "Were you on the battlefield? Report to us what you witnessed."

He remained impassive. "You lost. I'm sorry." He addressed Orodaltis as if she had been the one in chains.

"Insolent!" One of the dracotaurs slammed his skull into the ground. Hard. He lifted him up by pulling him by the hair. "Tell the truth, before I make you spit more blood."

The orc continued to remain composed. No reaction. No satisfaction. "I have told the truth. If you do not wish to believe me, it is up to you."

"We will kill you and your companions. But not before we make you suffer."

"Wait..." Orodaltis attempted to calm those hot spirits. "Let him speak. Nikou, heal his wounds."

"I don't know whether I should..."

"Don't worry."

But the orc refused the treatment. "It won't make any difference. Neither for me, nor for you."

"What is your name?"

"Byrabolg. Byrabolg Uzrok."

"Nice to meet you, Byrabolg Uzrok. I'm Orodaltis, of the Immortals. Why do you say that?"

For the first time since that brief interview had begun, a trace of vitality could be discerned on that very unusual orc. "You can escape now while there is still time."

Orodaltis approached him, as polite as she could be. "I repeat: What do you mean?"

"I am only warning you... Victory is unattainable. For you, but also for the Union."

Nothing made sense.

'Fool.'

"Is it those undead? Can't we beat them?"

"No... It's about the one who summoned them. She will kill you all... "

"There were thirty thousand soldiers besieging Karnasus."

"All dead." The Eye of Blasphemy revealed to her that he was not lying.

"My lady, let me put an end to this insolence."

"No," she could not have controlled the dracotaur for long. "What can we do?"

"You can surrender… or run away." The Eye of Blasphemy was adamant: no lies.

"If we were to resist?"

Orodaltis didn't even care that the relic had never revealed deception since she had started wearing it.

"Then no more stuff for you…"

'Fool.'

"What stuff?"

"You know it. The stuff…"

"You don't make sense."

"Nothing makes sense anymore."

The lamia then turned to the other prisoners. "Does anyone have anything else to say?" Everyone stayed silent. "I understand. Kill them."

"My lady..."

She had Nikou worried. How much Orodaltis hated herself for that. "Prepare an escape route for the satrap. And call all our spellcasters. We will perform a ritual on the spot." The Eye of Blasphemy shone with violet energy; the Immortal was dazzled. Enthralled. "We will call the strongest class of demons."

----------------------------------------

When that morning…

…

Nothing…

That morning… That one did not yet exist.

…

…

There was only His Lady. The moment the Lady said, everything became language. Language became construct. And then the construct divided into intellection and deed.

The one was not a he, he was not a she. She was not a they, they were not a it. For convenience, the one called himself a He.

'Arise, Spartiate Number Six!'

The Lady was the whole. Forged in the inner darkness and sculptured in the radiant light the one became Spartiate Number Six because the Lady had so decreed. Where there was emptiness, there was fullness. Where there was drought, there was bounty. There was no past before the Lady. There could be no present without the Lady. The future was unimportant without the Lady.

'You are now my will.' Spartiate Number Six knew what the word was, knew what the verb was because His Lady knew, and His Lady had made sure that he understood.

Spartiate Number Six was nothing else that existed between His Lady and the rest. Spartiate Number Six gained the knowledge that the Lady had shaped for him.

And what was the Lady's will? He had been given a spear, and a shield. For fighting, and to kill.

No one had taught Spartiate Number Six what those tools were for. No one had taught him to place the shield next to that of the other Spartiates, to form a barrier against those that stood against him.

No one had given Spartiate Number Six lessons on how to wield the spear to pierce those who were called 'enemies'. When he slaughtered them, he did not feel a thing.

He was Spartiate Number Six, and that was it.

'First order: kill all these beasts.' The Spartiate had gained knowledge of the world in fractions of a second, in the mere span of what was act and what was pause. Everything he needed had been loaded into him the moment he was given form, when desires -desires to serve His Lady- had been shaped, and tools -tools to sacrifice for His Lady- had been granted. Soul and body coincided in the Spartiate. There could not be one without there being the other. 'They are our enemies. What more there is to it?'

That word, 'enemy', had meaning because it related to those who now stood before Her. Of convex, the word 'friend' was none other than His Lady. Friend and foe, but only Her. Against the whole world.

And, again, the word 'world,' with all its nuances, in those contradictions that silenced the doubts, encompassed only the smallest part of what His Lady was.

He was not unique, the Spartiate. Four others bore that title, that identity. Those he had been ordered to eliminate were partly similar. Those His Lady called centaurs, or lamia, or wemic were all the same as the others, with small differences that deluded them into distinguishing their parallels. Not like the Spartiate, who knew there were numbers like him.

Spartiate Number Six, indeed, was perfectly identical to Spartiate Number One, as he was the specular copy of Spartiate Number Two, who was the perfect twin of Spartiate Number Three, all of them perfectly resembling Spartiate Number Four.

'Keep fighting, as long as I order you to.' His Lady was not really communicating with him. What she did was forbidden to be scrutinized. What she thought was for hers and hers alone. What she accomplished was for others to admire. An echo, of a sound that had never been uttered. A shout, of a word that had never been spoken.

'Who am I?' Was this the thing called a question which defined the ego? For the Spartiate, such inquiring was absolutely groundless. A Spartiate was a Spartiate. There was nothing else that could be added. That 'Who am I?' therefore was addressed by someone, or something else. For him to hear it within himself was irrelevant. The Spartiate felt and perceived what a Spartiate should feel and perceive.

His existence was his own purpose.

The data around him was analyzed and translated into thought forms that were beyond typicality. That thick, red liquid was blood. That twitching in the eyes and faces was fear. Those who retreated as they passed were fleeing. The weapons that caressed him were futile. That absence of sparks was death. Each of these things was compressed, reworked and synthesized.

'Why am I doing this?' The Spartiate was outside that spectrum that the living called emotions. If he could conceive it, it was only because His Lady was able to materialize it. And what His Lady saw, the Spartiate could observe, even if from afar.

When the Spartiate pierced a heart, it was His Lady who asked, 'What does it feel like?' When the Spartiate crumbled a skull, it was His Lady who queried, 'Do I feel something?' 'Should I feel something?' When insults and imprecations were hurled, it was the Spartiate who sacrificed for His Lady. 'Am I a savior? Or a monster?' 'Am I all of these? Or neither of them?'

When the Spartiate saw those who were the 'enemies' fleeing before his passage, it was His Lady who wondered about the reason? It was not. His Lady's world was a dimension that a Spartiate might be aware existed, but that did not mean he could pry into it. So what was it?

'What am I?' Why am I here?' 'Is home I long for?'

The remnants of what His Lady was experiencing? The fragments of an existence that was incomplete, scattered along a path of reminiscences? The heart, that organ that pumped the liquid called blood, and that was at the origin of every mechanism of life, was also the door to a mirror of what was baptized the soul.

The Spartiate had uncovered numerous hearts, in the brief, fluctuating moments he had been gifted, and found nothing there but veins and arteries. The pumping had been interrupted, and with it the essence that guarded it. An elementary biological mechanism.

That information, though, had to come from somewhere? For the Spartiate everything came from His Lady. The Lady therefore was sure that the heart concealed the soul. And if not the heart, some other part of the body had to. The mind? The liver? The lungs? The skin? None of these seemed to hold unknown secrets.

And, at the same time, the Spartiate possessed none of this. Did that mean that there was no soul in him?

But Spartiate Number Six was sure that a soul dwelled in him, because his soul was the body he had self-sacrificed to His Lady.

The Spartiate did not understand. He did not understand why, he who could not make acquaintance with that thing called sadness, felt imbued with it. He did not understand why, he who had known nothing but His Lady, who was everything and nothing, who was far and between, could feel such ruthless loneliness.

'Heathens, hearken the halcyon heart of Heran. Fait accompli the faithfulness of Fouche. The Six, Slaine, engraved in the wreckage of my wrath.'

It could not be His Lady's, because His Lady was unhesitatingly. 'Look at her works, O mighty ones, and despair!' But if no one was left, who could stay and watch? Who could despair? There was only His Lady now. His Lady, who was left alone, on the battlefield where only sorrow and sadness remained. Together with Spartiate Number One, Spartiate Number Two, Spartiate Number Three, Spartiate Number Four and Spartiate Number Six.

'Others are waiting for us. Let's proceed!'

"Please wait." Someone approached his Lady. Spartiate Number Six did not receive any orders, so she merely observed the two figures addressing her.

"Who are you?" Ecstasy with beak and wings knelt at the Lady's feet. "How did you do all this?"

"We should not have approached, Elijah," whispered the other, in tune with the first. He was like his lady, and at the same time he was not. Staring in amazement at the Spartiates, trying to figure out what they were the child man sought. "We did not wish to disturb you, O mighty warrior." His face met his torso as he bent to follow his companion.

"We had to, Jean-Joel. I had to see this moon shining on the earth."

The moon was high in the sky, and came only when night swapped places with day. What His Lady did not understand, the Spartiate could not fathom.

One, two, three steps back for the human, but not for the owlin. One, two, three steps forward for His Lady. Halfway they met, where the passage between shadow and light diverged.

'What a mess.'

"Magic casters, are you? Check for survivors. Burn and benedict all these traces..." The balance of the world was precarious. All that life would not be merely dropped, but would take on a new form. A form comparable to the Spartiates. Unlike the Spartiates, however, they would not serve Their Lady. "Others from the plains remain to take care of. I don't want to waste any more time. Can I count on you?"

"Definitely!"

His Lady's desire to eliminate them on the spot was the desire of Spartiate Number Six to get rid of both of them. When suppressed, it disappeared.

The Spartiates followed Their Lady, as was natural for them to do. 'Forward,' she commanded. And forward they moved. 'Stop,' was the successive bidding. And all of them, in unison, halted.

The willows intoned a slow, melodic rustling that Spartiate could only hear with his Lady's ears. 'All this... Useless.' A Spartiate brought no consolation. A Spartiate did not give comfort. A Spartiate was nothing but a tool.

A tool did not try, a tool did not reach, a tool could do nothing but serve.

He could do this until he would be dismissed. He could slaughter the new opponents that got in the way of His Lady's new path.

If His Lady needed a shield, he could be that shield. If His Lady needed a spear, he would be that spear. If His Lady needed something else, he could have tried to not be anymore Spartiate Number Six.

"Your end has come, daeva!" A fiery circle. His Lady recognized what was within it. A lamia, spitting hell from her mouth, and whose body was consecrated to sin. The tail, a serpent that was hideous poison. The mantle, the fierce fair that rode the earth. The eyes, the center of every infernal pit.

Surrounded by aberrations like her, progeny of demons and devils, the lamia stood standing alone, singing a melody in harmony with the pleas of those who had lost their way. At her feet were the remnants of sacrifices, the last scraps of those who had fulfilled her ambition, the last vestiges of what had been offered up for damnation.

Two singers led that supplication immolated to the below.

The skin, a blue that rotted inexorably on its way to the white of the end. Gauze-like veils embraced the grim and burnished forms. Threads sutured their hands to the rest of the body. The same threads sealed their eyelids and mouths, in a cage of silence and blindness. Their tears were carmine ashes, flooding their cheeks where bones dug into flesh, falling on the earth they had soiled.

And for every tear that married with the abyss they dug the extreme madness of song regurgitated new and insane notes, which were not music, were not melody. They were the laments of those who had paid the price, the last curses of spirits who had been torn from the cycle of eternity. Withered away, never able to sprout anew.

Around their circlet was what the Spartiates had brought between them just before.

Death. Death for the below.

Spartiate Number Six shared His Lady's thoughts: 'Why eliminate yourself? Were they looking forward to the last acts, the last breaths? Foretelling the end, did they seek a new beginning?'

"Demons? I think they are supplicants, but I have never seen any in fleshes and bones." His Lady forbade them to approach her, having come within a few steps of the circlet. Spartiate Number Six felt no concern for His Lady, for she worried was not. His Lady pointed The Guide, who had summoned the Spartiates, toward the lamia. "So what should they do?"

They pleaded, the supplicants. They were pleading for whatever a demon could worship. They begged, with their bowls sewn together, their hands immobilized, their eyes half-closed, whoever would hear their prayer. But an unheard prayer was just a postulation without resolution.

'I am here,' thought His Lady. 'I am listening.'

The supplicants strained their mumblings even more, made their singing elysian until they reached the divine, in an attempt to reach godhead. While all that remained around them was the lamia who had invoked them, and His Lady approaching. The Guidance was retracted, while she remained in heed.

"The supplicants' song should drive every living being who comes in contact with it to madness," the lamia disconsolately stroked one of her kind whose throat had been cut. The knife, still fresh, was placed between the fingers of the one who had left. On the neck of the summoner, something indefinite pulsed to the rhythm of that anguished chanting. "Have I sacrificed everything? To achieve nothing?"

Spartiate Number Six could not realize that besides them and His Lady, besides the weeping lamia and the chanting supplicants, there was no one lurking. He could not realize that the last command given to him, 'Be on guard,' was pointless. So he held his shield high, just as the other Spartiates did. Without knowing rest.

His Lady entered the circlet. The fire as fierce as the one of her gaze. Glittering flames engulfed the Lady in a blaze of fulgent inferno. Unscathed, she passed by, her figure a gossamer spectacle, glaring as did the sun and the stars when they were still young. "Our efforts are not always rewarded." If compassion had graced His Lady, then the Spartiate could have shared it as well. "Before I put an end to your suffering, a last inquiry. Please do not lie, for I will be cognisant of it. Tell me, is your king here?"

"My king..." The lamia continued to caress her companion, while the supplicants continued to chant, in the grip of a mystical trance that only His Lady could end. The something that was now an eye vibrated. "My Heaven… That's what I should have called him. A Heaven that walks in the sky is a contradiction. I yielded to that contradiction. But a demon cannot look above himself. I... I pointed my gaze toward the earth, and now the Abyss came to call me back. Are you, perhaps, that Abyss?"

"I am nothing of the sort," replied His Lady. Between Heaven and Earth, she was unmoved by those afflictions. A mountain could never share the view of the plains. Their horizons were not the same. "Call me Abyss, if you want. Call me daeva, or demon, or monster, if it pleases you. If you want me to be the object of your hatred, hate me as well. If you want me to be the end of your wishes, heap a curse on me. Call your King Heaven, if it delights you. Call those whom you loved hope, deluding you. That will not change what is. What you have done, and what you will do, is the result of your work, and your work alone."

"I chose madness!" The lamia tore the skin of her neck, where the eye she blamed for her mistakes lay. "This was Orodaltis's work!Orodaltis Indere, who chose madness! That's who I am! And for what? I do not need to hear the wailing of penitents to give up reason!" She tore, but did not perish. The eye fell. But did not close. "Abyss, cover the sky that condemned us to all this! This will be my last plea!"

The supplicants continued with their entreaty.

"So be it."

His Lady reaped what was left to reap. Even when the demons dissipated, remaining only traces of corrupted magical energy, one could still hear the reverberation of those invocations. Although they had been useless, the Lady did not want them to remain worthless.

'Let us pray.' His Lady was devout. Spartiate Number Six could not pray, for praying was the meeting of doubting thought and unwavering faith. His thought, was that of His Lady. His faith, was that of His Lady. He could at least listen, though. That he could do.

His Lady did not pray for the lamia she had killed, nor for those she had trampled in her path. His Lady did not pray for her own sake, and for the future that loomed. His Lady did not pray for atonement, to redeem the sins of the past. Praying, for her, was simply an expression of herself. She prayed because she wanted to, without any secondary purpose.

'Bless this world. The strong and the weak, equally. Those who oppress, and those who are oppressed. So that the suffering inflicted on us may be repaid. So that the sacredness of our task may endure.'

The Spartiate repeated in words that had never been spoken, in a language that had never been concocted, sentiments that had never been felt.

'Thank you for your love. Thank you for trying to understand me. Thank you for the loneliness. Thank you for being by my side. This will be the last time we will see each other. Those who come after you will be different. Friends I have cherished. Companions who have protected me. Soldiers who fought by my side.'

When the time for goodbyes came, Spartiate Number Six could not smile like His Lady, because Spartiates did not smile. He could not address His Lady, because the Spartiate could not communicate.

Yes.

From the very beginning the Spartiate did not understand His Lady. From the beginning the Spartiate had only been able to craft in his mind that girl who had called Him back to serve Her.

What had happened for the Spartiate did not correspond to reality.

Yet...

For the Spartiate it did not matter. Even if the Guidance would have called him back to the origin, even if those memories would have been forgotten, shared with no one, even if it had been a mere fabrication, they would have been no less important to the Spartiate. And for His Lady.

Even if they had concealed falsehoods within them. Even if they would have been destined to cease after a single miserable second.

Disappearing, Spartiate Number Six could sense the girl's gratitude. He had not done much, the awareness of this was concrete as the thought -the being- returned to emptiness. He had relieved, just for a little while, a burden that would grow increasingly larger.

By the time Spartiate Number Six was no more, the girl was already gone. Antilene had not hesitated, before teleporting to those who still needed her.

Perhaps, however, before leaving, the half-elf had been able to turn back one last time, just the moment needed to be able to express her gratitude to all those who watched over her. That slender, gallant figure could adjust the bow she had tied on her arm, and the blue rose she wore on her chest one more time, happy for not being by herself.