A Perverted Path to Victory

The Last Knight

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Emeric took solace in the steady clop of Gallant’s hooves against the dirt. No matter how far he’d traveled since his first death, no matter how strange the circumstances he found himself in, Gallant remained. It was the only mercy Amarat had offered him.

The bitter cold of this southern land left the ground hard as stone, even though the ocean lay but a few hundred paces away, and the frigid air was filled with the clicking of wooden boots on the dead soil. He was at the head of a soldier’s column, a sword resting in his lap, eyes scanning the horizon as they emerged from the boreal forest.

A Goddess had ordered him to find a war fought with honor. Thousands of miles later and after four wars found, joined, and abandoned, he had only begun to truly grasp the impossibility of it. The further he and Gallant had traveled the more peculiar the people and their lives became, yet war, no matter who it was waged by, seemed to be the same everywhere. 

Food rotted. Crops burned. Innocents died.

He had chosen this conflict for a different reason than the others. If an honorable war did not exist, he had hope that fighting for a cause that pleased his tormentor might afford him some small solace. So he had joined a holy war. 

Emeric had never heard of a war waged in Amarat’s name. Soldiers prayed to her, their bloodied passion glorified her, but few fought for her alone. After all, there was no kingdom or people that was devoid of emotion. Only the hells could produce such terrors. Until he lived to see the terrible day where their kind breached the layers between worlds like the ancient stories, Emeric would have to content himself with the causes of other gods.

The soldiers behind him were worshippers of Daylagon. Of course they had their own name for the God of Beasts and their own way of worshipping him, but the divinity at the core of their religion remained identifiable. The master flesh-crafter, he who wrought the forms of all the creatures that lacked the mind of man. 

These worshippers considered themselves the highest of purists. They wore armor made of wood, grown into its shape by mages living reclusive lives in the snowy forests. Emeric had been astounded to find that the soldiers went into battle wearing only that wooden armor, forgoing any clothing beneath it, even in the worst of chills. They believed that the closer one was to their natural state in combat, the more their god would approve of their victories in battle. Emeric had even seen a precious few go into battle naked, but those fools had all quickly and unceremoniously died. The weapons of their more sensible brethren were tipped by the teeth of deep-dwelling sea creatures, lashed to crudely carved spears and clubs. 

Primitive. That was the word for them. Any village smith’s apprentice in Sporatos could have made a finer weapon. Yet these were holy soldiers, and the primitive craftsmanship of their equipment mattered less than it should. The blessings of priests and the fervor of their faith had turned the ugly things into weapons that slid through flesh like razors. 

A woman approached, bowing respectfully as she fell into place. Her bow was not directed to Emeric, however, but to Gallant. Perhaps nearing her fortieth year, with tanned skin rendered pale in the shadow of her wooden armor, she was a Priest of Daylagon, and the leader of this band of fanatics. Only after observing a respectful silence before his steed did she turn her attention to Emeric.

“The enemy is great and terrible, animal-rider-man. Assaults have been many. Victory few.”

When he had first arrived, they’d not had a word in common. Now the priest-woman spoke in a halting mixture of the local tongue and the Continental language, and it made Emeric feel a fool every time he tried to speak with her. He could sense the same frustration in her. 

“I here to…” He licked his lips. They were cracked and bloody from the wind. “I here to fight a good battle,” he haltingly explained. “Cause good. So I fight.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he returned her attention, looking down from atop Gallant. She was dressed in the battle regalia of her people, and it surprised Emeric how little he was distracted by it. Though its magical growth fit her form well, her wooden armor had no interest in preserving his idea of modesty. Without its leather straps tightened, he could see far too much. A single short year ago, he would have been horrified, trying his best to preserve her decency by averting his eyes entirely. Now…

Now he simply couldn’t bring himself to care.

“You are a Rider. He trust you.” She pointed to Emeric’s armor. Plain, unenchanted steel, acquired two wars ago. Then she pointed to Gallant’s bare chest. “You protected, but he not. He fool for trust you?”

Emeric felt a flicker of emotion rise up in his chest. It was the first in many days, and it was not a kind one. He broke eye contact with the priest. 

“Gallant didn’t fail the gods. I did. I may be hurt, maybe die, but not Gallant.”

“You not know that.”

“I do.” He picked up his longsword, holding it in his offhand, opposite the woman. “You want help fight? Trust needed.”

The priest-woman looked from Emeric, to Gallant, and then to his steel sword, which had been such a marvel for her people. They knew of metal-working, of course, but they had thought it was a tool of those who opposed the god of nature. To see someone wearing metal willing to fight with them was apparently a fascinating novelty. 

“Don’t trust Emeric,” the priest eventually decided. “Do trust Gallant. Will trust his trust of Emeric.”

“Good.”

The priest fell back into the group of soldiers. Emeric glanced over his shoulder at them. He had traveled with this group for several weeks now, and he’d been continuously shocked by their discipline. Those who were born in huts and lived in barbarous tribes were not supposed to march with precise synchronicity, their backs straight and weapons held ready at their shoulders. They should not know how to fall out of column into a defensive square, how to take commands amidst a larger army, and should not have the discipline to stand strong in the face of an overwhelming assault. He’d seen these barbarians do all that and more. He almost wished that he knew their language, if only to learn the story of how they came to be this way. 

Gallant crested the hill and let out a quiet snort, the pace of his trot altering just a touch. Emeric returned his attention forward, curious to see what had drawn his steed’s interest.

Ah. We have arrived.

The cool, dry hills gave way to a wide stretch of dirt, providing the staging ground for an army unlike any he had seen before. While it was rare for any but the wealthiest and most professional of militaries to wear true uniforms, this congregation was a celebration of chaos. Tribes like the one he had arrived with mingled amongst stern-faced mercenaries, mixed groups walking to and fro in a camp composed of every sort of face Emeric had ever so much as heard of. Skin, fur, and fang of every color stood side by side, coexisting without so much as a raised voice or scuffle amongst the ranks. The camp’s perimeter was protected by towering creatures, from trees uprooting themselves to shift their weight from foot to foot, to clusters of fanged harpies, to even stranger things that he had no real name for. 

I would never have thought such a thing possible.

For the first time in months, Emeric felt himself taking heart. He had been right to come here. Service to the gods united the world’s peoples like nothing else could, and of all the armies he could have joined, it seemed this one was the least likely to show dishonor. They had a pure purpose and pure hearts. 

As he and Gallant traipsed down the hill, however, he also saw that they had other things. Most notably, wounded. They entered the camp through a triage center where a great deal of makeshift bedding spaces had been laid out to provide the injured comfort. Haggard-looking healers moved between them, their magics sparse and sputtering, the signs of spell exhaustion plain on all their faces. 

Emeric explained to the priest-woman that he would reunite with her tribe later, then dismounted from Gallant, giving him a small snack and a brief brush of his mane to encourage him to stay put while he searched.

It took him a while to locate someone he could speak with, which he did by offering greetings in Continental, Carrion, and the Western Continental dialect. He ultimately found, predictably, one of the wounded who had a passable grasp of the Carrion tongue. Even here, where the name Sporatos was but a foreign-sounding whisper few had heard, one could make a lucrative career trading with the Carrion Navy. 

The wounded he returned his greeting was wrapped in thick, dirty bandages, old blood turned brown about her ribcage. Judging by the pockmark tinges of regrown flesh across her body, her injuries had been much more severe a short while ago. Now she was simply biding her time until the healers regained their strength. A painful fate, but likely survivable, if with prominent scarring. She was laying on a spread of tanned hide from an animal Emeric did not recognize, her head resting against a pack that likely contained her only belongings. He knelt down next to her, speaking softly. 

“You speak Carrion?”

“I do,” she confirmed. She had a phlegmy gargle to her words that sounded dangerous. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Emeric glanced up at the menagerie of humanity. On a raised cot nearby was a man sporting the marred red skin of a hellspawn, his injuries revealing the ruby bird’s nest in the hollow cavity where his heart should have lay. 

“No, I am not,” Emeric agreed. “But that doesn’t seem particularly uncommon.”

“Bah,” the woman scoffed. Then she turned her head aside and spat a wad of blood to the ground. “You’re from further than most. And you look more like the ones we fight than y’do one of us.”

Emeric’s brow raised. “Oh? Interesting to hear. I was hoping to ask you to describe our foe. I’ve traveled long with a tribe to whom I can barely speak. I know little of the threat. Only that this will be a holy battle.”

The injured woman’s hollow eyes, set deeply within the dark rings of exhaustion, sparkled with a cruel amusement. 

“Ah, what a shame. You don’t even know that you came to die in this battle, do you?”

“I do.” Emeric met that cruel sparkle with an even gaze. “Death in battle is my lot. I’ve already accepted this more times than I can count.”

The woman’s momentary alacrity seemed to fade, replaced by a tepid confusion. She tried to push herself up, but Emeric quickly put a hand to her shoulder, forcing her back down. 

“Do not strain yourself. With any luck, you will survive what I will not.”

“You’re different.” She struggled for a moment against his hand, but soon fell back to the bedroll, panting. “I wanted to be a priest, once upon a time. I still have a Skill or two from those days, and I can see something over your shoulder. What is it? What’s wrong with you?”

That surprised Emeric. He had not expected Amarat’s curse upon him to be recognized by any living creature’s eye, much less a half-dead woman of no particular importance. If he could be recognized so easily, it would make things far more difficult in the years to come.

“As I said.” He lifted his hand from her shoulder. “I’ve accepted my lot. I only came to ask who our foes were.”

The woman stared at him for a time, eyes focused in a strange way as she searched for something deep within him. Eventually her attention turned back to his face. 

“God-cursed thing,” she rasped. Her head fell limply to her pack, face turning away as she whispered to herself. “I’ve fought for the wrong side, haven’t I? I’m sorry, God of Mine. I am sorry.”

“Daylagon,” Emeric said cautiously, “does not seem to be a god welcoming of apologies.”

“No,” she whispered, even quieter this time. “Only deeds. So I suppose I’ll have to live, won’t I? Oh, damn it all…” Each word she spoke grew fainter and fainter, until he could just barely catch the last few syllables, and then she fell silent.

Emeric waited for a time. When it seemed she was no longer going to speak, he stood, turning away to find someone else. 

Suddenly, a hand grasped his ankle with shocking strength. He looked down to find the woman staring up at him, eyes alight once more. 

“We fight a ship,” she hissed, suddenly animated by fury. “A lone bastard of a ship with the biggest, blackest sails I’ve ever seen, and a hull darker than the depths she sails over. She has spells like no other, spitting shrieking, fiery iron from that horrid white stripe. She’s like nothing else, and nothing has touched her. Seven Locks she’s broken, and today she’ll try to break the eighth.”

Emeric’s heart seized in his chest. A black ship with a white stripe. Fire and iron. 

He knew what this was. 

He tried to pull away from the woman, but her grip held firm.

“You recognize it, don’t you?” She hissed. “You know what it is! What did we fight? What killed my sister?”

With a forceful jerk, Emeric tore his foot out of her grip. He whistled for Gallant, scowling furiously. As he threw himself into the saddle, he glanced down at the woman. 

“You fought the future. And you paid the price for defying fate.”

Emeric did not wait for a response. He urged Gallant into a trot, weaving expertly through the camp. He stood in the stirrups with one hand shading his eyes, searching for someone of authority. 

It was too late, he realized. The front ranks of the camp were disgorging themselves onto the dry plains, forming marching ranks as they went. The battle was already in motion. 

Damn it all! 

Emeric tapped his heels to Gallant’s flanks, encouraging him to pick up the pace. 

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Ignite Parables

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Ignite ran a thumb along the barrel of his rifle-musket without looking, contemplating the smooth, polished iron. As he reached the three-quarters mark, his thumb hitched, finding a chip in the material. A few inches later, another one, and an inch after that, a third. Each mark was from successive blows of a long-gone enemy combatant’s cutlass, all three fended off by the barest of margins. 

His finger reached the end of the barrel, bumping into the bayonet lug. The blade was attached. It had gutted the cutlass-wielding boarder that had come so close to killing him, giving him enough time to retreat behind the line of marines under his command. It had saved his life. 

While his thumb rubbed the musket’s scars, Ignite looked out at the distant shore. The wind was light today, and they were approaching the Lock of the Sea at an accordingly sedate pace. He could see an army lining the stone construction. 

It had been two months since they had reached the first Lock of the Sea. No one had been ready for it, and they had battered it down with a day’s worth of cannonfire, sailing further into the manmade isthmus. The second Lock had been more difficult; the locals were ready, and they had tried to defend it. 

To no avail, Ignite recalled. Ballistae bolts and spellfire had sputtered out at a fraction of the range that the anchored Waverake’s cannons could fire. It had fallen almost identically to the first, save for the far greater death toll that had been exacted upon those who’d chosen to oppose them. 

In times too ancient to give a number to, the Locks of the Sea had been created, becoming known as one of the greatest feats of engineering mankind had ever accomplished. Until their construction, the ocean Ignite had spent his life sailing across had once been joined to the Great Outer Sea. Said to stretch for hundreds of thousands of miles, the Leviathans which grew in its endless depths had been so monstrous as to make travel upon the open water nothing more than a sure death. 

No one knew how long it had taken for the Locks to be constructed. Only that they were still being built up to this day, always reinforced, always growing. Archmages and tens of thousands of pilgrims had turned a hundred-mile pass into solid ground, laying low entire mountains to find the material to fill the sea. Today, in Ignite’s time, the Locks of the Sea were a series of ten stone dams, each separating lakes that were still being slowly filled by worshippers of Daylagon. The Inner Sea had become a sanctuary for the divine’s creations, a breathtaking variety of life flourishing in the absence of the Great Outer Sea’s monstrous Leviathans. Though the beasts did on occasion try to smash their way through the outer Lock, they had not ever pierced through all ten. The worshippers of Daylagon ensured that. 

Ignite turned his attention toward the ship’s wheel. Admiral Nora O’Gallison stood at the helm with, as always, a mad smile on her face. She claimed she was a worshipper of Daylagon. A Champion of the god, in fact. She said that the worshippers that opposed them were misguided, that the God of Beasts had never wanted the strait closed. Ignite had believed her, as had the rest of the crew. To serve the Champion of Amarat before serving the Champion of Daylagon was natural to the Waverake’s crew, and they had been proud of their work. They had trusted Admiral Nora, and they had believed in the cause she gave them. 

Had. After two months of naval siege, Ignite was just tired. 

He slid the musket strap over his shoulder, leaving it loaded. The distance to the great wall of stone was being eaten away, and he could make out the enemy standing ready to oppose them. He so wished that they would abandon their efforts, but knew it was a vain hope. They believed themselves warriors of a righteous cause, and they would fight to the death. 

“There’s more of them than before,” a voice noted. Ignite turned his head, finding Master Gunner Balon approaching the gunwale, spyglass to his eye. “A lot more.” 

“There are,” Ignite agreed. “And we received reports of ships on the shore, camouflaged by illusions. It seems that they might attempt to board us yet again.”

“Aye, I heard.” Gunner Balon snapped the spyglass shut, pocketing it. He opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated, looking left and right. Seeing there was no one in easy earshot, he dropped his voice low. “We’ve almost done it, haven’t we?”

“We are getting close,” Ignite agreed passively, without looking Balon’s way. 

The Waverake’s Master Gunner licked his lips. “Do you think that the captain will honor her word? That she’ll sail back to Tulian when the final Lock is destroyed?”

Ignite searched the surroundings for himself, now. Satisfied he would not be overheard, he sidled closer to Balon. 

“I don’t know,” he half-whispered. “This has been her quest for longer than I’ve been alive. She’s wanted to sail the Outer Sea since she first set foot on a ship. I can’t imagine she’ll be satisfied with anything else.”

“But will she return to Tulian first?”

Ignite took too long to respond. Balon was cursing under his breath before Ignite could think of anything else to say. 

“What’re we going to do, then? Mutiny? Against her? No, we can’t.”

“We can’t,” Ignite agreed quickly. “But I don’t think she will. Of all the powers in this world a Champion would be reluctant to betray, I imagine another Champion is first amongst the list. We will deal with that eventuality if it happens, and not a moment sooner.”

“If we survive that long,” Balon grumbled, looking at the still-growing mass of soldiers on the shore. “Look at them. They’re organized. Ready for us. They’ve seen plenty of rifle and cannonfire. They know our tricks by now.”

“They know what they are up against, yes. But are they capable of doing anything about it?”

“If an Archmage—”

“If an Archmage were going to involve themselves, they would have done so already.”

“Bah.” Balon spat over the ship’s side. “I know we can win. But I’ve begun to question if we should.”

Ignite chewed his cheek. It was a difficult question. Admiral Nora was brilliant beyond compare, but ‘eccentric’ did not begin to cover her behavior. 

“Do the rest of the crew feel similarly?” Ignite asked. 

“They’re beginning to wonder,” Balon replied. “The officers most of all. But they— we— are loyal.” He chuckled. “Serving beneath two Champions? I can’t imagine a better way to sail into the afterlife than that. If things go well, we’ll have our pick of the heavens.”

“If we survive long enough to make a worthwhile impression, that is,” Ignite said, giving voice to the unspoken caveat. “We’ve been away from Tulian and the Champion of Amarat for far too long. We’ve done precious little in Daylagon’s name, and we fight against those who think themselves his faithful.”

“Aye.” Balon adjusted his hat, squinting at the cold southern sun. “Aye, that’s all true, too.” Looking morose for a time, his expression eventually lightened a touch. Stepping to one side, he slapped the top of a 32-pounder carronade and grinned lopsidedly at Ignite. “But no matter what path we might have taken over the last few years, only one of us ended with us aboard the Waverake, no? A finer ship there never was.”

Ignite allowed himself a small, wan smile. “True enough. I only hope that we find she’s been put to good use.”

Their hushed conversation ended with the chime of a bell from atop the mainmast. All eyes turned to the ship’s wheel, where Nora was stepping forward, straightening her officer’s uniform with a sloppy grin. 

“Alright, sailors! Time for yer sorts to learn how the battle’ll be won today, eh?”

Ignite joined the rest of the deck crew and officers assembling before the wheel, waiting for their orders. 

He reached beneath a sash he wore about his waist, brushing his finger along the hilt of his revolver, ‘Kate’. The first of its kind built in this world, named for the first slave Sara Brown had ever freed. 

Evie entrusted this weapon to me. A sign of faith.

As always when he felt the revolver’s cool steel, the conflict in him receded. Even more than he had in the Carrion Navy, Ignite knew where his loyalties lie. 

Daylagon, he prayed, briefly bowing his head, if this conflict is truly in your name, I ask you only this: allow me a path home, no matter how arduous.

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