The Perimeter, the Hills of Asphodel
For a moment there was a breeze, as though a goddess himself had awakened him, or opened a window to the divine, letting a gust of wind to lighten the air of the mortal realm. It was a sudden silence and a sense of dread. He wavered, and nearly fell.
But the gust took his cloak, and with it the weight on his mind. In a flourish of fine black cloth the fire in him blazed there upon his belt, for a moment like a second sun, but the light was quickly extinguished. The man had worn a delicate looking cloth, draped ornately around his neck, bound about his stomach with a gem as orange as the firelight, as red as blood, blossoming with new color at every different angle. The gemstone and its setting that had been so carefully hidden was to be worn to battle.
But the moment was lost under the singing of arrows, and the rushing of the Dendapim beneath strange starched leather canopies which sprung up like trees from the footsoldiers. In quieter times it would seem like a festival in the rain setting up parasols.
But the rain came down as sinew and iron, and the thunder was the screams and the quaking of the earth under hoof. Menale gave a cry and the first volley of bullets soared erratically about, cloaking the battle in its first cloud of smoke. The Dendapim rushed to the hillside, pouring from the countless bags at their feet a shimmering flood of caltrops, to break the Flamarite formation should they take the hill.
The Flamarites were unfazed by the illumination of Menale or the spiked balls rolling down the hillside, littering it with dangerous spikes. In a tremulous wall of heat the caltrops began to glow and warp, and with her power Alyss cooled the iron. When the Flamarites reached the bottom of their hill, the Dendapim let loose their first volley, laying the first cloud of black smoke on the battle field. With the thundering of horshoes against flattened caltrops the Flamarites burst up the hillside at the Dendapim front line moving swiftly at an angle to flank the Dendapim forces.
Menale spied their leader, Alyss, between shots from his muskets, which squires were handing him as fast as they could clean them. The second volley exploded through the Flamarites as they began to flank the Dendapim, and Menale saw Alyss, already swarmed by Flamarites protecting her, fall as her horse gave out.
"Aim for the legs of the beasts!" cried Menale, taking a plain boxy gun from a squire, and mounting it on his shoulder. Its blast startled his own horse. The smoke and heat was becoming unbearable, but the Flamarites moved swiftly into position against the coughing Dendapim. At the flanks, as men furiously cleaned their guns behind walls of armored musketeers formed in phalanx with their bayonets, the Flamarites taunted them, daring Dendapim to break formation and fight them. The cacophany of arrows against flesh and the stamping of horses drowned out much of the words.
Menale heaved on his horse, which feared the battle, and gave a shaken signal. With that signal the Dendapim beneath the canopies, protected by the rapidly growing wall of corpses, began to toss the pellets of explosives and shrapnel into the midst of the approaching wall of Lancers, who had dropped off the Flamarite horsemen and now moved to blight the Dendapim's soft underbelly.
There was another volley, unpredicted, shaking even Menale with its thunderous blast. The Dendapim were pulling back from the crest of the hill. The casualties seemed too severe to allow the dying men to roll haphazardly down the steep hill as they were. Those who managed to survive the fall fought blindly over the bodies. There was little sense in the front lines. Men jabbed their bayonets against the coming swordsmen, but it was the fire and the gunblasts which sent men flying. Those on the ground sank into the soft earth, and held a line while the horsemen backed away, throwing caltrops with slings to break the Flamarite mob, and give them some distance as they fled back towards Osialquienem, breaking their formation and fleeing for their lives.
Menale was struck with a gunblast to the back, shaking and coughing, but clinging to his horse, and it finally began to kick and heave, and darted back to Osialquienem. The slingers began to heave shrapnel filled explosives behind them, often littering their trails with Dendapim corpses. The flashes of gunpowder were smote under Flamarite horsemen trampling, the heat truly unbearable.
The smoke trailed lazily upward,
And the snowdrops bent their heads like red veiled mourners.
The Avatar's Palace
The room was strewn with papers, and the stillness was broken sporadically by a scratching of pens and the clicking of typeset. The Scribe at the table, carefully bent over an ancient looking book, was carefully deciphering the scribbling alongside the text. He had just finished translating a manifesto by the Propagandists. Even thousands of years ago they were talented wordsmiths. Admittedly some of their aphorisms didn't translate well. "A citizen alights the streetlamps" was trivial in modern parlance, but in the archaic language "Alight" had implications of patriotic fervor, and the phrasing implied unity with other Dendapim against some sort of oppression. Funny how, with so much meaning loss, it could be considered a "translation."
But this book was much larger, and riddled throughout with annotations in a variety of different hands and even regional accents. Even in its first page there were nearly fourteen points of view, and all of them conflicting. The actual text was handwritten, and neat, but the lines were heavy. The fact that it was so nicely preserved had the scribe particularly interested, so much so that he dedicated his time to it, directly against the order of the Avatar, who figured the book was simply a novel and not worth the effort.
It started out with a dramatic retelling of the battle of Kel'p-Hai, beginning with the death of Avatar Annipe as she threw herself into the fire. The oddest part, however, was that the names were off. Annipe was called Eleuma, which was like a mispelling of devil, and Nemea was called Yorinaphe, a title that was rarely applied to her. Though the story was quite dry, the comments were livid, many of them facing the same questions the scribe did. Why the change of names? What perspective is this from? Who was the author?
The Hills of Asphodel
Avatar Igavene could see the smoke along the hillside, and the horsemen retreating. The bastard had fought the Flamarites, with a force that was nothing short of pitiful. Now the men saw the investment a horse was, it got you home swiftly. The commoners who fought with sling and bayonet were scorched and skewered while the other men went free. Even from here the Avatar could see Menale, or the red light on his stomach. He saw the arrow canopies collapsing, vanishing into the swarms of men being quickly overcome by the Flamarites.
He got ahold of himself, and quickly undid the Starweave that formed his left glove. He ran it down the empty sheath he carried, and began to flail it wildly, the light catching it, but the wind turned, and the smoke blew back over the hillside, and obscured him and his meager peace offering.
But now he wished, more than anything, that Menale would die for this foolishness, at least then the smoke might have been incense burning in thanks. Deliverance from that pest.
Our Lady's Bathhouse, North Cliffs of Osialquienem
A woman as thin and lithe as a nymph paced the room with a serene sense of grace against the riotous laughter and yelling which echoed through this corner of the bathhouse. The room around her seemed a cocoon of elegance for some unseen light, the metalwork and sumptuous cloth hanging down from the ceilings, opulent and sweet smelling.
She wore a golden ring, with a gem of peculiar, stark blue, that tore through the room, and begged the eye to marvel at it. She was so universally beloved amongst the Dendapim that she was called "Our Lady" and now she, in all her composure, paced slowly around the carpeted room, circling a set of notes on the table as though dancing.
Her spindly fingers occasionally perused the pages, but she did not cease to circle the table, nor did she stop to actually read them. The enormous doors to the room creaked open, and a young boy, a eunuch, as identified by his shaved head, approached with yet another note. The lady snatched this from him, and almost immediately dropped onto one of the cushioned couches that lined the walls, examining the note carefully.
It read, in hurried but neat print:
"The Avatar is outside the city, and the palace is being looted. The books are being taken. The past shall give light to the future.
A poet even in the midst of such intrigue. She liked the sophistication of it. The past shall give light to the future. She copied that phrase down on paper with an elegant ink-pen and moved hurriedly to the door, where another boy awaited her.
"Take this to my friend Valataja at the Propagandist's guild. Tell him it is to replace all existing condemnations."
And the boy ran off, and the Lady entered into a great courtyard, where a great many people laughed heartily and toasted her arrival.