Post by Timeon on Oct 3, 2017 19:24:09 GMT
The Eclipse was over.
One of its few surviving witnesses stood upon the lip of a vast limestone hill. The ancient city of Falor exhaled fingers of black smoke. Beneath its walls lay the cream of generations, slaughtered. Across the plains and hills one could see survivors threading into nothing. These ropes of men were often sliced and trampled by knots of metal and fury. The Sistorian Cavalry of the Dominion had no intention of letting any sinners evade divine judgement. Those they did not ride down they took captive, marching them back to the walls of Falor in shattered throngs.
Constantin Noval turned his back on their fates and unbuckled the last bits of his armour. They had already captured him once before, earlier during the fighting, and he had been the only one of his men to escape intact. They had released him as a messenger. The thumbs of the other captives had been cut away. Hundreds had been mutilated and released back into the ranks. Only Noval had been left intact, as the commander of the First Citizen's bodyguard. His black breastplace thudded against baked earth, and Noval stepped over it. Although he did not sob, there were tears in his eyes. He had lost his master in the fighting, and there was no finding him now. But the First Citizen had failed them as much as he had failed the First Citizen. There were others who depended on him now. Other survivors, rallying to his leadership.
Ten thousand years!
A cry which echoed across hills of gore and rivers dyed red.
Radiance lives! Radiance awakens!
There was only a dream of escape, to somehow find his way back home. But fleeing south towards the Republic would spell his doom - the Dominion had closed its maw on those roads. The evidence lay in the Sistorian cavalry behind him. Leading a company of survivors, Constantin Noval signalled them and headed eastwards towards the ocean. Away from the most bitter chapter in the history of man. Towards a tomorrow. For if there is only one battle worth fighting in this life, it is against the inevitability of death.
-
Across field and stream they walked, hiding in the muck and filth from the Dominion. Like an exhalation, the wrathful agents of the Dominion spread out from ancient Falor, hunting down the survivors of the Republic. Constantin Noval ambushed one patrol that drew too close, and gorged himself on their meager supplies. Standing over their bodies with his few remaining comrades, he shook his head with deep bitterness and shame. Like so many in the Republic, he had been born in the Dominion. His family had fled to the Republic while he was a child. Many in the Republic had dreamed of liberating the lands of their forefathers. Yet standing over his fallen foes, Noval wondered if any amongst the dead could not have been his brother or cousin from a lifetime ago. Perhaps Noval's blurry childhood could even be retraced to these very regions he fled through, as a pariah and sinner.
-
By the light of dawn, Noval was brought to his senses, lying on cold earth. Fumbling to his feet he saw looked across the hills towards the River Tircon, the most majestic in the world, if Varantian scholars could be believed. The Tircon had truly birthed the Empire, and had watered the people of Varantium in better days, connecting them through trade and life. If there was any hope of salvation, it lay by the mouth of that river, where the Republican fleet might yet be at anchor. Word had reached them during the battle for Falor that Admiral Jack Timbale was dead. Yet what of the fleet?
His men assembled, following his gaze. Starving but not yet broken, they marched.
-
When they reached new heights, their vista was not what they had dared to hope. For a moment, Constantin Noval wondered if they had travelled in a circle back to the city of Falor, to see smoke on the horizon. Realising that impossibility, he dared skirt further eastwards, until he could see that the smoke came from a city under siege.
"The city of Alat." one of the men by Noval's side rasped. "But how?"
Yet Noval could guess. He marvelled that it could be so, but it could mean but one thing. That the Pretender, Armant Freic, who claimed descent from the Palaienid line, had succeeded. As they had marched on Falor, they had all heard of the Vulgar Army, that assembly of thousands of exiles, mercenaries and opportunists marching under the banner of the Palaienid. Armant Freic had been born in Varantium, like Constantin Noval himself. The difference between them had been the claims of Freic's descent, as the legitimate heir to the Imperial family of old. A claim that would have been cast aside, were it not for the Spirit that Freic had mastered, a House Spirit of the Imperial family.
The Republic had tolerated Freic's presence in its borders, as Freic paid lip service to their Spirit enslaving ideology. The Palaienid Spirit was not his master or equal, Freic claimed, but his servant. And Freic had assembled his supporters in the wake of the crusade - the Vulgar Army - and he had come home. With the Dominion's armies centred defending Falor, Freic had carved farther inland into the soft underbelly of the Dominion than Constantin Noval had dared to imagine.
The question remained - were they friends or foe?
Noval and his ragged gaggle of survivors wound their way towards the burning city of Alat, to find the Vulgar Army in an orgy of celebration. Their banners fluttered around the gutted city, proudly displaying the House Spirit of the Palaienid upon them, a vast lizard.
When they drew close enough, mounted scouts found them and herded them wearily into a vast encampment which overlooked the death of Alat. Casting his black badge of commander of the First Citizen's bodyguard into the dirt of their camp, Noval was grudgingly allowed further in. He was escorted to a summit, where he found himself facing the back of a young man, trailing a violet cloak and leaning theatrically upon a sword. Armant Freic, no doubt. A weathered old woman bearing Binding tattoos upon her face and forearms stood by Freic's side, though from her simple garments and gender, Noval doubted that she was an Inquisitor. Perhaps it would have been safer if the woman had indeed been an Inquisitor - that at least would be predictable and legal in the Republic.
"Commander." Constantin Noval bellowed in his most authoritative voice. He was a large man, built like a wall. Yet the long march had weakened him, and he could hear it in his own voice. He croaked what should have been a call to attention.
When Armant Freic turned to regard him, it was with a look of surprising concern in his eyes.
"I was surprised to hear of your presence, Constantin Noval."
"And I of yours." replied Noval, regarding his friends and captors wearily. Very few wore actual Republican military uniforms. This truly was a council of scavengers, brought to feast upon a dying Dominion. "Word of our defeat must have reached you."
"It has." Armant Freic answered.
"Then cease your advance inland, and take your men home. The Dominion will not be long to regroup." Constantin Noval looked past Freic's shoulder, at the burning city of Alat. "Radiance lives."
Armant Freic, such a frail man to claim such legacy, nodded his head. He extended an arm, his sleeve falling back to reveal Binder tattoos. They were much like those of the old hermit at his side.
"That time may come. But the people of Varantium rise up for their sovereign. My own crusade has begun."
"I have seen only death." Constantin Noval's breath came out dry, but his eyes were wet before the glow of Alat.
"Then you have not seen enough." the old woman at Freic's side said, smiling with a missing tooth. "The very people of Alat burn their own city in glory of their new Emperor."
"Emperor?" Noval guffawed. "What do you offer that our democracy has not?"
"Victory." Freic stated. A humming sound suffused the air about him, almost like a song. "The dream of Empire."
And Constantin Noval could see no sign of the First Citizen about him. Avus Gula was gone.
An amber light emanated warmly from Freic, tendrils beginning to take shape in the air about them. As he did so, the guards about him prostrated themselves on the earth, and as others in the camp saw this, they came rushing closer and did the same. A cry tore through the camp and even seemed to reach the city of Alat beyond, carried by its plunderers and citizens.
"Blood and light!"
The amber glow was soon blinding as it took shape above Constantin Noval and Freic. When the light suddenly calmed, Noval took his face from his hand, and saw the golden form of a great four-legged lizard glide step onto the ridge before Freic. It screamed beautifully, its call echoing beyond Alat and the plains, reaching the River Tircon. Perhaps the river would carry that call upstream, towards ancient Falor - towards Radiance, who had betrayed the Imperial family so long ago. For this was the call of Perivales, surely the last of the House Spirits of the Palaienid Imperial House. Not even the Palaienid Empress of Malvern had a family Spirit as this to prove her lineage.
And Constantin Noval, born of this soil as was Armant Freic - Aleimon Palaienid - finally felt that he had come home. The folk tales told to him in the cradle came alive. And Constantin Noval, who had served the First Citizen's democracy, who had watched it die under the walls of ancient Falor - he fell to his knees before his Emperor and wept for joy.
-
Leaving the wreckage of Alat behind them, hundreds and then thousands rallied from their homes across Varantium to join the Vulgar Army. Many had been fanatics of Gideon before, or else had hidden heresies and hidden dreams of their own for generations. For lack of all else, for the hope of Perivales, they rallied to a final battle of their own. Their long slog dragged from weeks into months, and Constantin Noval found himself one of the foremost generals of his new Emperor. Noval's own entourage grew as survivors from the Eclipse Crusade found their way to the Vulgar Army. Many prisoners ended up joining their cause, and Noval's best advisor turned out to have been a Dominion prisoner taken during the Eclipse campaign, now converted to the Emperor's vision - a man who called himself Acastus. They would become fast friends.
As they marched, an army of broken men and exiles transformed under the fire of Perivales, turning into a brotherhood of thousands upon thousands. Though a wicked Spirit, enslaved within the tattoos of their proclaimed Emperor, Perivales became a symbol of hope and renaissance. Noval led them, and soon saw them as Vulgar no more, though First Citizen Avus Gula had referred to them as such. Yet free of the whips of the Inquisition, free of the tyranny of Man or Spirit, shielded by the love of their Emperor, the monarchist fanatics pillaged ever northwards.
One night, Constantin Noval gathered the courage to speak at length with the old tattooed woman who gave so much counsel to their Emperor. She had been there the day that Noval had pledged his fealty. Her name, he found, was Paolina Caccini. Born in the nearby Port de Iachia, she had fled with her family, friends and relations to the Republic many years ago, escaping the judgement of the Dominion. Now she was coming home, tailed by her niece, the young Aurelia dala Vachio.
"To you, he is surely still Armant Freic at heart. No matter what you claim to believe." Paolina Caccini said, leaning over a fire in the still of night. "But I have followed him since he proclaimed himself. All his life, in a sense. He is the hope of generations. A refugee of Port de Iachia, like myself. A blessing from within our own midst."
Noval, beard grown out and arms bare, stared into the fire with aching eyes.
"I have given him my all, like any other, and you doubt me?"
"I do not doubt you. But you do not yet see his true majesty. There are many who claim the Dream of Empire. The Dominion sees itself as its continuation. Malvern speaks the same. Even the Republic thinks it is the true inheritor of Mankind's achievements. Yet it is only the Palaienid that embody the hope for Mankind. Your mind is dull with Inquisition dogma. You have forgotten what it truly means to see Ideas for what they are. The higher universal concepts which guide us. The Palaienid are an Idea, but they are also men. They break the cycle of tyranny between Man and Spirit, one over the other."
Noval took notice once more of her tattoos, but now thought grimly on them. Perhaps the time had come to broach the subject.
"And who are you, exactly? I am no philosopher. But you lay claims to knowledge and truth. Why is it that you really follow our Emperor?"
Paolina Caccini regarded him as only the wise can.
"Because his is a story unlike any other. What are Ideas, if not Stories we tell ourselves, about our place in the world? So great is his Story, that he has taken us back to our origin. Back to Port de Iachia."
"And what awaits you there?" Noval asked.
"The Emperor has sworn to help us find my sister. For it is an impossible mission, but full of impossible hope. And there is great power in Stories, in Ideas." Paolina Caccini answered. Then turned away. "I have come to find my sister. And to do the impossible. To draw her out from the Chimera she has become."
-
At last the Vulgar Army, though swelling in ranks, was caught in the open on the plains of Perchium, several leagues away from the Port de Iachia. A host of Dominion steel and magic had assembled from Falor to end the nascent Emperor. As Noval watched them advance across the plains towards the Vulgar Army's own barricades, he was horrified to find the rumour was true - for the personal standard of General Garrek flew amongst those of the Dominion. General Garrek, who Noval had stood shoulder to shoulder with so often, had truly turned. The rumours were indeed true - Garrek had cast aside his facade, betraying himself to still be Renal Sistorian at heart still. Now Garrek was High Palatine, a servant of Radiance, the God he had sworn to destroy. And he had come to end them.
It was a battle that could not compare to the horrors of the Eclipse, but it was a slaughter that was all too familiar. The Vulgar Army found itself routed to the Port de Iachia, where it was besieged for a week. Amidst the bloodshed and despair, Armant Freic was officially crowned as Aleimon Palaienid by Paolina Caccini. The glory of that day repelled the invader well enough to buy them the time they needed.
They lay desperate and surrounded. The Republican Navy they had hoped to attain salvation from never arrived.
Prepared to fight until the last they held on, until beyond all expectations, Plutarian ships sailed into harbour from the islands beyond. Though the Plutar merchants had remained neutral in the conflict of Dominion against Republic, ships bearing the mark of the Bank of Dreyal delivered them from certain destruction.
The Vulgar Army was allowed ashore upon the beaches of the Republican city of Ostonus. There, Republic messengers met the remnants of the Vulgar Army and proclaimed Armant Freic a usurper and heretic for crowning himself. An arrest warrant was presented, signed by the new High Inquisitor, Tomas de Campo, and by the First Citizen, Avus Gula. To learn of the First Citizen's survival had shocked Noval, but it did not prepare him for the fact that the messenger bore a second letter.
"Commander Constantin Noval. You are hereby ordered to bring Armant Freic before the First Citizen in chains, and resume your command of the First Citizen's bodyguard."
On the shores of Ostonus, Constantin Noval tore up the arrest warrant and sent the messengers home with words of warning.
-
By night and candlelight,
Hushed wives still sing,
Of a dream of Empire,
And of light it will bring,
Through Camperia and beyond the Tircon,
To the walls of old Falor,
Through village and city, by day and night,
A wind comes calling, borne on its wings we hear,
"Have you seen the Emperor, by day or by night?
Will still he sleep, beneath the mountain?
O Palaienid! Forever shall we gaze,
Towards Falor, golden Falor, until the end of days."
One of its few surviving witnesses stood upon the lip of a vast limestone hill. The ancient city of Falor exhaled fingers of black smoke. Beneath its walls lay the cream of generations, slaughtered. Across the plains and hills one could see survivors threading into nothing. These ropes of men were often sliced and trampled by knots of metal and fury. The Sistorian Cavalry of the Dominion had no intention of letting any sinners evade divine judgement. Those they did not ride down they took captive, marching them back to the walls of Falor in shattered throngs.
Constantin Noval turned his back on their fates and unbuckled the last bits of his armour. They had already captured him once before, earlier during the fighting, and he had been the only one of his men to escape intact. They had released him as a messenger. The thumbs of the other captives had been cut away. Hundreds had been mutilated and released back into the ranks. Only Noval had been left intact, as the commander of the First Citizen's bodyguard. His black breastplace thudded against baked earth, and Noval stepped over it. Although he did not sob, there were tears in his eyes. He had lost his master in the fighting, and there was no finding him now. But the First Citizen had failed them as much as he had failed the First Citizen. There were others who depended on him now. Other survivors, rallying to his leadership.
Ten thousand years!
A cry which echoed across hills of gore and rivers dyed red.
Radiance lives! Radiance awakens!
There was only a dream of escape, to somehow find his way back home. But fleeing south towards the Republic would spell his doom - the Dominion had closed its maw on those roads. The evidence lay in the Sistorian cavalry behind him. Leading a company of survivors, Constantin Noval signalled them and headed eastwards towards the ocean. Away from the most bitter chapter in the history of man. Towards a tomorrow. For if there is only one battle worth fighting in this life, it is against the inevitability of death.
-
Across field and stream they walked, hiding in the muck and filth from the Dominion. Like an exhalation, the wrathful agents of the Dominion spread out from ancient Falor, hunting down the survivors of the Republic. Constantin Noval ambushed one patrol that drew too close, and gorged himself on their meager supplies. Standing over their bodies with his few remaining comrades, he shook his head with deep bitterness and shame. Like so many in the Republic, he had been born in the Dominion. His family had fled to the Republic while he was a child. Many in the Republic had dreamed of liberating the lands of their forefathers. Yet standing over his fallen foes, Noval wondered if any amongst the dead could not have been his brother or cousin from a lifetime ago. Perhaps Noval's blurry childhood could even be retraced to these very regions he fled through, as a pariah and sinner.
-
By the light of dawn, Noval was brought to his senses, lying on cold earth. Fumbling to his feet he saw looked across the hills towards the River Tircon, the most majestic in the world, if Varantian scholars could be believed. The Tircon had truly birthed the Empire, and had watered the people of Varantium in better days, connecting them through trade and life. If there was any hope of salvation, it lay by the mouth of that river, where the Republican fleet might yet be at anchor. Word had reached them during the battle for Falor that Admiral Jack Timbale was dead. Yet what of the fleet?
His men assembled, following his gaze. Starving but not yet broken, they marched.
-
When they reached new heights, their vista was not what they had dared to hope. For a moment, Constantin Noval wondered if they had travelled in a circle back to the city of Falor, to see smoke on the horizon. Realising that impossibility, he dared skirt further eastwards, until he could see that the smoke came from a city under siege.
"The city of Alat." one of the men by Noval's side rasped. "But how?"
Yet Noval could guess. He marvelled that it could be so, but it could mean but one thing. That the Pretender, Armant Freic, who claimed descent from the Palaienid line, had succeeded. As they had marched on Falor, they had all heard of the Vulgar Army, that assembly of thousands of exiles, mercenaries and opportunists marching under the banner of the Palaienid. Armant Freic had been born in Varantium, like Constantin Noval himself. The difference between them had been the claims of Freic's descent, as the legitimate heir to the Imperial family of old. A claim that would have been cast aside, were it not for the Spirit that Freic had mastered, a House Spirit of the Imperial family.
The Republic had tolerated Freic's presence in its borders, as Freic paid lip service to their Spirit enslaving ideology. The Palaienid Spirit was not his master or equal, Freic claimed, but his servant. And Freic had assembled his supporters in the wake of the crusade - the Vulgar Army - and he had come home. With the Dominion's armies centred defending Falor, Freic had carved farther inland into the soft underbelly of the Dominion than Constantin Noval had dared to imagine.
The question remained - were they friends or foe?
Noval and his ragged gaggle of survivors wound their way towards the burning city of Alat, to find the Vulgar Army in an orgy of celebration. Their banners fluttered around the gutted city, proudly displaying the House Spirit of the Palaienid upon them, a vast lizard.
When they drew close enough, mounted scouts found them and herded them wearily into a vast encampment which overlooked the death of Alat. Casting his black badge of commander of the First Citizen's bodyguard into the dirt of their camp, Noval was grudgingly allowed further in. He was escorted to a summit, where he found himself facing the back of a young man, trailing a violet cloak and leaning theatrically upon a sword. Armant Freic, no doubt. A weathered old woman bearing Binding tattoos upon her face and forearms stood by Freic's side, though from her simple garments and gender, Noval doubted that she was an Inquisitor. Perhaps it would have been safer if the woman had indeed been an Inquisitor - that at least would be predictable and legal in the Republic.
"Commander." Constantin Noval bellowed in his most authoritative voice. He was a large man, built like a wall. Yet the long march had weakened him, and he could hear it in his own voice. He croaked what should have been a call to attention.
When Armant Freic turned to regard him, it was with a look of surprising concern in his eyes.
"I was surprised to hear of your presence, Constantin Noval."
"And I of yours." replied Noval, regarding his friends and captors wearily. Very few wore actual Republican military uniforms. This truly was a council of scavengers, brought to feast upon a dying Dominion. "Word of our defeat must have reached you."
"It has." Armant Freic answered.
"Then cease your advance inland, and take your men home. The Dominion will not be long to regroup." Constantin Noval looked past Freic's shoulder, at the burning city of Alat. "Radiance lives."
Armant Freic, such a frail man to claim such legacy, nodded his head. He extended an arm, his sleeve falling back to reveal Binder tattoos. They were much like those of the old hermit at his side.
"That time may come. But the people of Varantium rise up for their sovereign. My own crusade has begun."
"I have seen only death." Constantin Noval's breath came out dry, but his eyes were wet before the glow of Alat.
"Then you have not seen enough." the old woman at Freic's side said, smiling with a missing tooth. "The very people of Alat burn their own city in glory of their new Emperor."
"Emperor?" Noval guffawed. "What do you offer that our democracy has not?"
"Victory." Freic stated. A humming sound suffused the air about him, almost like a song. "The dream of Empire."
And Constantin Noval could see no sign of the First Citizen about him. Avus Gula was gone.
An amber light emanated warmly from Freic, tendrils beginning to take shape in the air about them. As he did so, the guards about him prostrated themselves on the earth, and as others in the camp saw this, they came rushing closer and did the same. A cry tore through the camp and even seemed to reach the city of Alat beyond, carried by its plunderers and citizens.
"Blood and light!"
The amber glow was soon blinding as it took shape above Constantin Noval and Freic. When the light suddenly calmed, Noval took his face from his hand, and saw the golden form of a great four-legged lizard glide step onto the ridge before Freic. It screamed beautifully, its call echoing beyond Alat and the plains, reaching the River Tircon. Perhaps the river would carry that call upstream, towards ancient Falor - towards Radiance, who had betrayed the Imperial family so long ago. For this was the call of Perivales, surely the last of the House Spirits of the Palaienid Imperial House. Not even the Palaienid Empress of Malvern had a family Spirit as this to prove her lineage.
And Constantin Noval, born of this soil as was Armant Freic - Aleimon Palaienid - finally felt that he had come home. The folk tales told to him in the cradle came alive. And Constantin Noval, who had served the First Citizen's democracy, who had watched it die under the walls of ancient Falor - he fell to his knees before his Emperor and wept for joy.
-
Leaving the wreckage of Alat behind them, hundreds and then thousands rallied from their homes across Varantium to join the Vulgar Army. Many had been fanatics of Gideon before, or else had hidden heresies and hidden dreams of their own for generations. For lack of all else, for the hope of Perivales, they rallied to a final battle of their own. Their long slog dragged from weeks into months, and Constantin Noval found himself one of the foremost generals of his new Emperor. Noval's own entourage grew as survivors from the Eclipse Crusade found their way to the Vulgar Army. Many prisoners ended up joining their cause, and Noval's best advisor turned out to have been a Dominion prisoner taken during the Eclipse campaign, now converted to the Emperor's vision - a man who called himself Acastus. They would become fast friends.
As they marched, an army of broken men and exiles transformed under the fire of Perivales, turning into a brotherhood of thousands upon thousands. Though a wicked Spirit, enslaved within the tattoos of their proclaimed Emperor, Perivales became a symbol of hope and renaissance. Noval led them, and soon saw them as Vulgar no more, though First Citizen Avus Gula had referred to them as such. Yet free of the whips of the Inquisition, free of the tyranny of Man or Spirit, shielded by the love of their Emperor, the monarchist fanatics pillaged ever northwards.
One night, Constantin Noval gathered the courage to speak at length with the old tattooed woman who gave so much counsel to their Emperor. She had been there the day that Noval had pledged his fealty. Her name, he found, was Paolina Caccini. Born in the nearby Port de Iachia, she had fled with her family, friends and relations to the Republic many years ago, escaping the judgement of the Dominion. Now she was coming home, tailed by her niece, the young Aurelia dala Vachio.
"To you, he is surely still Armant Freic at heart. No matter what you claim to believe." Paolina Caccini said, leaning over a fire in the still of night. "But I have followed him since he proclaimed himself. All his life, in a sense. He is the hope of generations. A refugee of Port de Iachia, like myself. A blessing from within our own midst."
Noval, beard grown out and arms bare, stared into the fire with aching eyes.
"I have given him my all, like any other, and you doubt me?"
"I do not doubt you. But you do not yet see his true majesty. There are many who claim the Dream of Empire. The Dominion sees itself as its continuation. Malvern speaks the same. Even the Republic thinks it is the true inheritor of Mankind's achievements. Yet it is only the Palaienid that embody the hope for Mankind. Your mind is dull with Inquisition dogma. You have forgotten what it truly means to see Ideas for what they are. The higher universal concepts which guide us. The Palaienid are an Idea, but they are also men. They break the cycle of tyranny between Man and Spirit, one over the other."
Noval took notice once more of her tattoos, but now thought grimly on them. Perhaps the time had come to broach the subject.
"And who are you, exactly? I am no philosopher. But you lay claims to knowledge and truth. Why is it that you really follow our Emperor?"
Paolina Caccini regarded him as only the wise can.
"Because his is a story unlike any other. What are Ideas, if not Stories we tell ourselves, about our place in the world? So great is his Story, that he has taken us back to our origin. Back to Port de Iachia."
"And what awaits you there?" Noval asked.
"The Emperor has sworn to help us find my sister. For it is an impossible mission, but full of impossible hope. And there is great power in Stories, in Ideas." Paolina Caccini answered. Then turned away. "I have come to find my sister. And to do the impossible. To draw her out from the Chimera she has become."
-
At last the Vulgar Army, though swelling in ranks, was caught in the open on the plains of Perchium, several leagues away from the Port de Iachia. A host of Dominion steel and magic had assembled from Falor to end the nascent Emperor. As Noval watched them advance across the plains towards the Vulgar Army's own barricades, he was horrified to find the rumour was true - for the personal standard of General Garrek flew amongst those of the Dominion. General Garrek, who Noval had stood shoulder to shoulder with so often, had truly turned. The rumours were indeed true - Garrek had cast aside his facade, betraying himself to still be Renal Sistorian at heart still. Now Garrek was High Palatine, a servant of Radiance, the God he had sworn to destroy. And he had come to end them.
It was a battle that could not compare to the horrors of the Eclipse, but it was a slaughter that was all too familiar. The Vulgar Army found itself routed to the Port de Iachia, where it was besieged for a week. Amidst the bloodshed and despair, Armant Freic was officially crowned as Aleimon Palaienid by Paolina Caccini. The glory of that day repelled the invader well enough to buy them the time they needed.
They lay desperate and surrounded. The Republican Navy they had hoped to attain salvation from never arrived.
Prepared to fight until the last they held on, until beyond all expectations, Plutarian ships sailed into harbour from the islands beyond. Though the Plutar merchants had remained neutral in the conflict of Dominion against Republic, ships bearing the mark of the Bank of Dreyal delivered them from certain destruction.
The Vulgar Army was allowed ashore upon the beaches of the Republican city of Ostonus. There, Republic messengers met the remnants of the Vulgar Army and proclaimed Armant Freic a usurper and heretic for crowning himself. An arrest warrant was presented, signed by the new High Inquisitor, Tomas de Campo, and by the First Citizen, Avus Gula. To learn of the First Citizen's survival had shocked Noval, but it did not prepare him for the fact that the messenger bore a second letter.
"Commander Constantin Noval. You are hereby ordered to bring Armant Freic before the First Citizen in chains, and resume your command of the First Citizen's bodyguard."
On the shores of Ostonus, Constantin Noval tore up the arrest warrant and sent the messengers home with words of warning.
-
By night and candlelight,
Hushed wives still sing,
Of a dream of Empire,
And of light it will bring,
Through Camperia and beyond the Tircon,
To the walls of old Falor,
Through village and city, by day and night,
A wind comes calling, borne on its wings we hear,
"Have you seen the Emperor, by day or by night?
Will still he sleep, beneath the mountain?
O Palaienid! Forever shall we gaze,
Towards Falor, golden Falor, until the end of days."