Year 219. Acocaea - Khirn

YVON ne’BANUUS

The sky was cloudless. Blue as blue with a golden sun in the center. Noon. A perfect day for a village now occupied solely by warriors sworn to defend it.

Yvon ne’Banuus stood atop the north-facing wall of Acocaea, one hand gripping the haft of her double-headed silvered axe and another holding onto the edge of a crenelation. Sweat ran down her pale, snow-white face in tensed rivulets, strain creasing across every pore with unhidden fear. Her chest heaved with shaken breaths and a thumping heart, and her spine struggled to maintain an upright posture. Her single red eye was transfixed on the destruction marching closer by the second, over a million feet trampling nature down into a crushed paste and threatening to create sinkholes of unimaginable depths.

She began to consider the safety of her environment. The walls were an architectural decision long ago to defend against possible raiders from the north - be they from Dekun or Aslofidorian banditry - and the Great Blade had never been happier to see Aslofidorian grandeur and paranoia in action. As with all things in Khirn, the village of Acocaea was immense and should have passed as a small city at any other time, and its walls were undoubtedly no different. Twelve feet tall and nine feet thick of stone rapidly reinforced by barely practiced arcaeno, supported by battlements, interior defensive halls, and various switch-activated traps. A village constructed to collect kingdom-wide food and defend against those who would steal it. Yvon ne’Banuus hoped the walls would hold against the near-million that infected the land outside them.

“Are scouts should have been more accurate,” the Wolf commented solemnly after taking her place to the Great Blade’s right. “Something went wrong. Is it possible their minds broke at the sight of such a mass of humanity? Something so inhuman?”

“It is, but what is done is done,” the Great Blade choked out. “We must make our stand here and hope the rest are set to fight according to strategy.”

“We have the numbers now to survive a straight contest, but the Devil’s magic...” The Wolf stopped and took shuddering breaths as the reality of their situation settled in her mind.

Yvon ne’Banuus examined the Wolf and inwardly sighed at the despair written on her kin’s face. Megare ne’Actë was young, no older than her thirties, and was already one of the greatest minds ever to be put into battle. She had proven her valor and tenacity time and time again, always finding victory on the brink of defeat in the many “wars” against Dekun and the occasional coastal raid from Aqellan pirates. Yet, she had never faced the true horror humanity could produce when driven into the madness that this Runemaster and his cohort had been. ne’Bannus pitied her and silently willed that the siege of Acocaea would spark a change in her mindset into the one that allowed the Great Blade to survive her journies across the known world on pilgrimage.

“The Devil’s magic will win us this day, Great Huntress,” ne’Banuus said with a strained voice. “What we suffer after can be dealt with accordingly, but it will help us now.”

“Everything I have believed in is insulted by this,” the Wolf whispered. “We joined this rebellion to combat the usage of the Devil’s magic and its corruption of humanity...and now, we use it. The Duke says nothing. The Prime says nothing. Do they even know? Do they care?”

“Unlikely that they know,” ne’Banuus said. “It was a last-minute decision and rapid foray into training. They won’t know until the battle is over.”

“And we will be executed for it. Rightfully so.”

“No, we won’t,” the Great Blade muttered. “We will have defended their most critical settlements. Regardless of using the magic, we will have done that, and to execute us would be to lose the minds that lead that defense and risk breaking the alliance of Bela’nore and the Duke.”

“How are you so certain, ne’Bannus?” the Wolf asked, turning her head toward the Great Blade.

The Great Blade attempted a smile. “I have seen it happen before.”

A series of horns blasted from the north, drawing their attention to the great scape that expanded beyond the horizon. A slew greeted them. Siege machines of exotic make; divided regiments of heavy cavalry, light infantry, elite ranged units, and savage wall-breakers; distinct organized lines of arcaenomancers; the cohort of the Runemaster, who took his place at the front of his army and rode ahead with a cadre of guards. A tapestry of flags fluttered around him from his horseriders, bearing the marks of his house, Dekun, and his personal heraldry. A broken sun entrapping a moon skewered by a great spear from the heavens. Surrounding these images were runic lines that glinted in the sunlight.

“Belanorians!” the Runemaster shouted some fifty paces from the walls. “I have come to offer you a chance for surrender.”

“You will find no discussion to be had regarding it, Runemaster,” the Great Blade called out.

“I would caution against this, Belanorian,” the Runemaster said. “As you can see, you are outarmed. Even with our reports of your reinforcements from two other legions, you cannot hope to defeat us, and I would greatly loathe to see your lives end so needlessly. Use the logic of your homeland to see the reason for accepting this offer. Lay down your arms, let us pass through this...village, and we can see a brighter tomorrow rise...together. As friends.”

Yvon ne’Banuus turned to the Wolf and down the uncountable lines of archers and spearmen standing in formation atop the battlements with them. Beneath those good soldiers’ helmets, she could see their intensity and willpower. She could see their fear and trepidation. She could see their desire to litter the earth with dead Dekun’ians.

Yvon ne’Banuus, the Great Blade of Bela’nore, the Thrice-Killer of the Elven Pirate Lords of the Emerald Sea, sneered at the offer, following a confirming gaze with the Wolf, and pointed her double-headed axe at the rainbow-armored man. "Vo yï tsu tsït, Dekun'ian. Be gone from here. You will find no friends here.”

The Runemaster laughed loudly and let his voice carry far in the air. He slammed the haft of his spear into the dirt, sticking it into the moist ground, and pointed at ne’Banuus. “You must be the Great Blade! And the woman next to you is the Great Huntress. Am I correct?”

“You are.”

“Good! Or, rather, not good! I’ve heard of you and your skills in negotiation. I do not believe telling us to leave as one of your opening statements contradicts that.”

The Great Blade lowered the axe and silently signaled the Wolf to prepare the archers atop the wall and on the ground below. “And I have heard of you, Runemaster. Enough to know that whatever you offer is merely a chance to kill us when we least expect it. Kïsǐn bǐw yu ěb’."

The Runemaster laughed again, joined by his guards, who paced on restless steeds. “You are a feisty woman, ne’Banuus. I’ll give you that. What about you, Great Huntress? Do you share in your companion’s opinion?”

The Wolf leaned forward onto the crenelations without hesitation. "Kabni zěsgïk tǎ ki, ïfǎts."

The Runemaster slumped his shoulders, shot his arms out, and then turned to face his guards. He shared words with them. “I will make the offer once more, Belanorians,” he said, returning his attention to the pale warriors. “Do not make the mistake so many others have made. I will spare your lives if you lay down your arms. You fight to protect Duke Audax. Not Belanore. Do not give your lives for a foreigner who will betray you when he has the opportunity.”

“We of Bela’nore do not break oaths, Dekun’ian,” the Wolf hissed. “Keep your offers of mercy and surrender. We will not have it. We will fight and wipe you from this earth once and for all.”

“You disappoint me, Great Ones. I had hoped to end this peacefully and spare the lives of so many,” the Runemaster lamented. It sounded genuine to the Great Blade, causing her to cock her head in confusion. “But...you leave me no choice. You will all die now. Prepare for battle, Belanorians. Tepia yopyi hu.”

The Great Blade scoffed as the man rode away with his guards, a gust of wind picking up in the cloudless air as his figure became ever more distant. “What did he say?” the Wolf asked, ordering the archers to stand down. “Did he say...”

“God protect you,” the Great Blade answered. “Funny to hear that from him, knowing he will kill most of us personally.”

“Unless we kill him first,” the Wolf snarled.

“Yes,” the Great Blade sighed. “Let this battle commence as it should. Let them inevitably break the walls down. Then we will trap him and end him with his own powers.”

Rage.

Rage.

Rage.

That is all that the Great Blade felt as she carved through hundreds of Dekunians, soiling her soul in an ocean of blood and a forest of limbs as the images of that cruel man in robes, his hands constructing the vilest obscenities known to humankind, refused to leave her sight. The cracks of siege engines roared in the sky that had flashed white with lightning and red with fire before charring to a starless black that wept tears of agony.

Catapaults rained down payloads of burning rock that torched the Bela’norians by the hundreds until they fell to the ground as charcoal. Trebuchets launched boulders coated in tar that set aflame and burst into shards of puncturing debris at the moment of impact. Strange explosive machines blew holes in the walls and broke apart the Bela’norians at the seams. The Great Blade had never seen the like of it before, acknowledging with a burning hatred that the Dekunians must have kept it hidden until a war necessitated its use. The Dekunians or the Apas, to be exact.

The Great Blade raised her axe in time to deflect a harrowing arc of steel aimed at her head. The Dekunian’s falchion snapped at the hilt, instantly breaking the man’s resolve. ne’Banuus stomped forward and dropped the silvered head through the man’s skull. Blood and brain spilled from the split in his face. He was still falling when ne’Banuus killed three more identically, breaking through their defenses as flawlessly as a baker baked his bread. She spun on her feet to carve through the mouth of a fourth, this one preparing to unleash a verbalized spell upon her. One of the arcaenomancers, broken rank by the chaos sewn from the storm. But she did not see an arcaenomancer. She saw the old man, bearded and robed, with his hands wrist deep in the chest of a skinless, hairless, eyeless thing with limbs of metal. She killed him in this vision and all others that followed.

Five squadrons of Dekun’ian spearmen crept on her and dozens from her legion. They were lined up in perfect formation and jabbed with synchronized attacks, grunting in their language as they eradicated the defending Bela’norians despite the latter’s attempts to defend themselves with their reputed skills with the shield.

ne’Banuus battered them all away with furious, mythical speed as her comrades fell in slow motion. Her muscles swelled with fury at the image in her mind, threatening to burst through her armor’s containment. Her veins protruded against her skin; her mouth contorted in wrath so profoundly that her teeth began to crack. She lunged, wild and animal-like, at the phalanx, battering against them with powerful thrusts of her shoulder. They held together for the first three, moving to attack her after each one, yet frantically stiffening and shrieking as she recovered each time with increasing speed. The fourth broke apart the phalanx, scattering the Dekun’ians like ants from a crushed hill. ne’Banuus slew five by the time they recovered, joined by more who gawked at the grievous woman. In the fires of the chaos, the Dekun’ians held onto their traditions of combat. It could have been respectable to a more intact mind.

They attacked her with skill and patience, both keeping them alive as the Great Blade was reinforced by members of her legion who adopted the defensive walls of Bela’nore with their tower shields. Their armor was radiant in the darkness—shining beacons of holy might. The Great Blade only saw abominations waiting for the table.

“Attack!” the Dekun’ians shouted, crossing the square this bout took place in with a mass charge of spears and rounded shields.

The legion stood fixed around their commander, chanting psalms from the Codices of God as lightning cracked through the starless sky. Spear and sword met shield in a repeated dance of blocked and deflected attacks. Elsewhere, the walls of Acocaea became further harmed by great spires of lightning spiriting down from the sky. Motes of fire rushed through the village, engulfing entire buildings within seconds.

The clash was over in only two minutes. The Wolf arrived with members of her legion, flanking the phalanx with howling cries and arcing steel. Hundreds lay dead in the wide streets in seconds, gurgling blood and spitting curses. Only when the Wolf had joined her side, bubbling from a bit tongue and gnashed gums, did the Great Blade free herself from the horror of her mind. She focused on the true scope of what had broken free from its restraints.

Utter savagery now spread through the vast streets of Acocaea, the plan somehow still working despite the chaos. The Runemaster was somewhere within the village, his voice carried by the dark winds as he unleashed gouts of flame with but a snap of his fingers and a twirl of his spear. What powers the arcaenomancers of Dekun could still unleash had yet to be seen, but ne’Banuus knew that unless they took care of the main insect, the colony would live on.

“We must find the Runemaster!” she screamed to the Wolf as the woman brought up her shield to block three arrows careening toward them.

“You go! I will stay here, keep morale alive for my men, and search for the Great Crusher. Reclaim your legion’s senses, ne’Banuus! And your own. GO!”

The Great Blade nodded to her companion and rushed away from the scene of carnage. She hollered out in her native tongue, calling all her legion nearby to her with a shrill order. The streets were swollen with massacre, the buildings collapsing under the weight of combating thousands. No. Hundreds of thousands. An impossible number that should have only been in the tall tales of the Golden Lords. She had told those at the Star Bastion that this was a truth they needed to face, yet she barely had the willpower to do so herself.

Her legion followed her through roads and crossways wide enough to support fleets, the sounds of the Runemaster growing ever closer. Each step was marred by combat and duels, the Dekun’ians swathing into the village by the thousands through their breaches in the walls. It was an equal number between the two armies at first, matched in all things save the siege equipment that had rendered much of the walls useless. This was expected, of course. What was not expected was the resurgence of the storm that had caused such disorganized marauding at Gortinda, nor the images that accompanied it.

“Protect the Great Blade! Yo Bela’nore!” the legion rallied as walls of Dekun’ian cavalry rounded a corner, slaughtering their way through the streets with mighty arcs of their falchions and thrusts of their lances—empowered strikes, slicing through steel plate with ease. The legion formed a shield wall with thirty knights on ne’Banuus’ command, their shields propped up to defend against the stampede. Those armed with poleaxes readied themselves behind the guards. Equally powerful thrusts and hacks from these men and women stopped the charge. Gleaming plate mail was stained red as horses and humans fell by the dozen in the momentary skirmish on the nameless street.

“Advance!” the Great Blade roared. A swarm of arrows pelted her legion, dropping seventeen with barbed metal sticking from their necks and visors. Within an hour of this advance, the streets of Acocaea had filled with hills of corpses.

“Hibi tǎk, Gǎn Kidz!” shouted one of her war-bonded. ne’Banuus was pulled to the ground as a spear of electrical might jolted past where her head had been. Her war-bonded took the blow and screamed as her flesh was cooked to the bone, leaving only a blackened, grinning skull.

The Great Blade turned her gaze to the source of the attack. A line of arcaenomancers, their eyes wide under their regal blue cloaks. The earth trembled under them, splitting as they chanted their arcaenic Scripts. ne’Banuus stood up and pointed at the enemy, screaming for her legion to kill them. It was a guttural, bestial command. A brilliant orb of fire erupted from her company not seconds later, colliding with the central arcaenomancer and setting him ablaze. The Dekun’ians felt silent against the din of the battle, staring at the cause of such an attack.

"Yo Yěs tǎ D’i, tïts gefev ti wǎgyǐ!" Aurlin le’Catlus seethed. His fingertips were scorched from summoning the attack, his eyes bleeding from their corners due to the sheer strain of it. With curling of his fingers and a receding of his lips, le’Catlus uttered a prayer to God Almighty and formed another orb of flame in the palm of his hand.

“Why is it that each realm had its own method of casting arcaeno?” Pinnacle asked. “Dekun formed Runes, recited arcaenic Scripts, carved Glyphs. Belanore prayed it seemed, and Aslofidor did...what? The same? Did your family teach them different ways to cast it?”

The Bear Maiden smiled brightly. “They did. Each realm had its own strand of arcaeno that could only be cast in a certain way. No one knows why it was like this, only that it was. Very few people then could simply cast it without regard to these requirements. Dekun was the most defined in what was required because they had never truly abandoned their use of it. Belanore and Aslofidor were less defined.”

"What of Tahrir and Veoris?" Alden inquired with a mouthful of coffee.

“Even less so,” Gíla answered. “At least, at first. After the war, they quickly became defined as the use of arcaeno began to return to the front of society.”

“What happened with Acocaea?” Nina Aulffe asked, trying to return to the story at hand.

Gíla made a noise and planted her hands on her knees. “The Great Blade managed to slaughter her way to the Runemaster alongside her legion. She found him in the village center, bogged down in a mire of combat against others of her legion, some of the Great Crusher’s legion, and the Blessed Harbingers. You can imagine how that affects things before I describe it.”

Mordo Skald bounced in his seat. “Did they fight? ne’Banuus and the Runemaster.”

“Oh yes. They fought. And the fight between Yvon ne’Banuus and Erik Apa was nothing short of superhuman.”