Chapter 70: Nexwarren and Knights

Subject: Knight Eris Location: Arlcada Territories - Blood Amber Thickets Hexaline Knight Fragmata seemed to walk in slow motion, stalking closer to her prey, bone-white shortblade in hand. Her prey was a common variant of spinner known as a Crawler, the spinner foot soldiers. A black carapace covered much of its soft flesh. Eight legs maneuvered in a position to pounce on its opponent, deep green fangs were twitching, itching to deliver a passionate kiss of venom. “Common variant” did not mean “trivial threat”. This was still very much a dangerous enemy that Fragma treated like a toy. The lord had a habit for breaking her toys, slicing them, cutting them, and burning them. She even found more inventive ways of drawing out pleasure, but those were special cases. This assignment would be a special case. The knights called her “Fragma” because it was easier to say, and she didn’t seem to care how they referred to her. There was a story behind how she was assigned such a bizarre holy name, but the Hexknight’s lips were sealed. No one who knew her for what she was dared ask. As a member of Fragma’s Chaos Knightmares squad, Eris knew not to interrupt her lord on a hunt. She looked elsewhere for more targets. Spinner legs, fangs, and other various parts lay strewn across the ashen-colored ground. Foreboding gray trees blocked line of sight beyond the clearing, but Eris couldn’t see any more of the tenacious critter for a distance yet. Of course, there were always more spinners. It was an endless battle of attrition against the spiders, so the knight had no confidence in the nation’s ability to fully cleanse the land short of making it uninhabitable to people too. The Crawler strafed around to try and get the jump on Fragma, but the Hexknight simply swirled and sliced off a limb in a fanciful motion. There were seven more, but now the creature was wounded, and its opponent seemed to be growing bored. Eris should have expected Fragma would grow tired of playing with crawlers, but the search for more pleasurable targets would take them further into the Blood Amber Thickets, which became more uncharted the further from Arlcada city they traveled. Fragma’s short straight hair was matted down with sweat. It was black with purple highlights, but the lowlight of the thicket beneath the afternoon sun made the Shroud-atypical highlights hard to see. The hair asymmetrically covered one eye, but which eye she chose to cover alternated depending on the day. Today, it was the right eye. Her height was slightly below average, and a knight-typical athletic build of heavily toned muscles lay concealed beneath layers of thick black leather and cloth armor. The top-grain leather was developed by some of the government’s best tanners, hunted from prized wilderbeast prey by the Hexknight herself. There was one tanner Fragma trusted in particular, and she kept his identity secret from all but her squad. There was a reason for that. The armor took on a different motif depending on how she chose fit on the interchangeable shoulder, elbow, and knee pads. Her knights had, over time, gotten a feel for which set she would wear on which job. They did not dare ask the reason, and she did not offer up such explanations. Again, the bold and curious cartemi's airships flew through dangerous solwinds. These knights knew their place. Even so, someone so precious fighting on the front lines like this should normally guard themselves with durable metal armor. Eris would never voice those concerns for fear of her lord's reproach. And besides, Fragmata was the only Chaos Knightmare who could cast non-trivial magic, so she was hardly unprotected. A smile on her face, the Hexknight’s lavender eyes locked on her target while she cut off two more limbs. The spinner’s mobility was heavily hampered now. It’s time bled out in green droplets on the clearing dirt. In Eris’s eyes, her lord was beautiful, but not for reasons so trivial as physical attractiveness, though that she was too. She was a “pure creature”, untarnished by corrupt politicians and petty attachments. Fragma went where her whims took her, and Eris had eagerly followed these impulses all over Shroud, bearing witness to delights at every turn. The Hexknight dealt the finishing blow to the Crawler and looked around at her knights and then deeper into the thickets, brimming with vicious satisfaction. This was anticipation, plain and simple. Eris knew what the Fragma wanted to do, she wanted to lead them headlong into the jaws of the Broodmother herself. A blasphemer might even call the lord a curious cartemi. Promptly before the rest of the Chaos Knightmares silence the hypothetical blasphemer for good. The others were not so quick to come around to their Hexknight’s ways, but they were chosen for a reason. Like moldable clay, they were trained to enjoy new things, until they came to appreciate the delights their lord offered them. Fragma didn’t even have to try to convince them that her will was just, they need only participate to learn that truth. “The Nexwarren are surprisingly fun~, but these dull ones are just in the way,” Fragma gestured with a bloodied blade to the arachnid corpse at her feet. “Nexwarren” was the official term for the spinners, but Eris has never heard it before coming to Arlcada, where they posed an ever-present threat. There were no spinners near the capital cities. Not yet, at least. “As you say, my lord. This fight is new, and they sure burn good,” Knight Zelarra chimed in approvingly. Zelarra was the squad’s pyrotechnician. Plainly put, she liked burning things, and she burned things well. Without Fragma’s guidance, she’d have probably self-immolated or scorched her way to the death sentence by now. The girl wasn’t a sadist, she was just a little too “thermally impassioned”. This earned her the nickname "Zeal". “It’s strange though… The count didn’t say anything about a spinner infestation so close to his land.” Lucrue was the voice of reason among the Chaos Knightmares, but that didn’t mean much, and he was a little less so when he was high on another of his “experimental concoctions”. Given that he hadn’t passed out battle stimulants to the others yet, he likely hadn’t dose himself either, and he was probably as lucid as he was going to get all day. Her lord did delight in gathering odd fellows. Of course, she was an enthusiastically odd fellow herself. “I want to find more spinners to play with, but you bring up a good point. We haven’t found a hint of those heretics that serpent made mention of, either. Something tells me the count was a little less than truthful when he asked us for this favor.” Uh oh. Fragma was a chaotic “go with the flow” kind of girl, but if there was one thing she really didn’t like, it was people misleading her or trying to use her. Eris knew what came next. “You think someone asked the count to lead us here to get rid of us?” Lucrue asked. Three more Crawlers crept into the clearing and the knights readied themselves for combat. Knight Noxianna threw one of her poisoned knives and pierced an arachnid’s abdominal carapace. It buried deep into the soft innards beneath. She waited for the spinner to seize up and eventually twitch itself to death. “That’s the blend I needed. I’ve finally picked a poison to woo them with!” Noxianna, or “Noxi”, as her squad called her, was their poisons expert. She was responsible for both finding effective means of torturing targets and immunizing the squad against those very same vulnerabilities. She herself was resistant to dozens of known lethal poisons, and she was constantly working on accumulating more. Fighting against spinners meant coming in contact with all manner of toxins produced by their various venom sacs. As it stood, all they could guard against were the relatively benign excretions Crawlers produced mostly for the sake of easing digestion. A Crawler's venom could hardly be called a venom comparatively. Noxi would have her work set out for her devising methods of protecting them by the time they came up against anything remotely deadly, such as another relatively common variant, the Weaver. None of them were accustomed to fighting spinners, so it would be an excitedly, extremely deadly journey. “If they don’t like how I handle things, why am I still a Hexknight?” Fragma added with a grunt after burying her blade deep in a second Crawler. “Maybe ‘cause we kill anyone that says otherwise?” Zelarra laughed. Oh, yeah. They had indeed done that. Anytime a faction decided the Chaos Knightmares were more trouble than they were worth, another mercenary company would come swinging. Fragma would target them and kill until she got bored. Sometimes, boredom would only come when the mercenaries had disbanded, but either way, it never stopped there. The Hexknight would tell her squad to find whoever hired the mercenaries, and then the real fun began. “We help out a bunch, too. Doesn’t that count for anything? Those stuffy biters in the capital need us and they know it.” Fragma laughed as she retorted, wiping blood from her blade on a nearby bush. As she did this, the last Crawler made a lunge for her exposed back, and Eris quickly sliced the creature in two with her battleaxe. The foremost portion of the diced enemy continued it’s momentum and bounced off her plate armor. As Hexknight Fragma’s loyal “vanguard”, Eris couldn’t say anything about how her lord could have been dead if she’d failed to stop the attack in time. It was her job to do it and her lord literally entrusted her life to her knights. Maybe her actually dying is a huge exaggeration. Either way, it might have been painful. “They need us, but even our Paragon is afraid of you,” Lucrue pointed out. Hexaline Knights reported to the Paragon that appointed them. When appointed as one of the six Paragon ruling the theocracy, answering only to the Channeler themself, a Paragon takes two names. Their personal name is given by the Channeler, and they take the family name of their Hexalignment. The Paragon of Judgement, Hector Brand, was responsible for upholding law in The Shrouded Theocracy. He was the terrifying cleaver of the 48th Channeler’s militaristic inclinations, enacting policies to cleanse Shroud of dissent. Yet, the last time they had reported to him, their Paragon wasn’t such an intimidating figure. That was just the kind of beautiful influence Fragma had. Her magnificent purity showed people how small they really were. By snuffing out delusions of a roaring blaze, the Hexknight’s presence revealed naked embers that could go out at a moment’s notice. “Old man Hector knows I’m on his side so long as he doesn’t try to order me around too much. He appointed me to be an agent of discord, judging all who would challenge Shroud. I’m just being me, fighting fire with fire. He won’t cut me loose because it would bring him closer to a Hexalign Disavowal.” That was true. No Paragon wanted to be stripped of power. It was a horrific death sentence. Any scheming faction in Shroud would exploit an opening in a Paragon to get to the Channeler himself, too, which meant that the Chaos Knightmares probably wouldn’t bite off more than they could chew. “Actually, let’s go have a talk with that count again. I’d like to know just where these heretics of his are. Who knows, they could really exist among the count’s people.” Fragmata chuckled darkly.