Long Way Home
Overjoyed at the opportunity to skip dinner duty, Jarco Forgeson’s hand shot up. A few of the soldiers immediately near him sighed in relief; apparently the stew incident from last week had yet to fade from recent memory in the squad. “It wasn’t that bad,” he thought to himself, “and it’s not like any of these guys are master chefs themselves.” He had only joined the Bronze Legion a month ago, and already he had managed to gain a reputation as incompetent. Part of him wanted to stay and prove himself to his squad mates, to chat over a less-charred meal and smooth things over. They had enough in common; he was just one young recruit from Kellith among many. Sandy blonde hair, standard-issue Bronze Legion chainmail, tanned skin and toned muscles from a lifetime working underneath the sacred sun. His mother always insisted that he was at least a little more handsome than his peers, but his lack of success with women might have suggested otherwise.
When Captain Gorthili solicited volunteers to scout around camp for the evening, Jarco was beyond eager to accept a task that was impossible to fail. After a one-sided farewell and a few minutes of walking, he was left to his thoughts and the empty plains around him. Trying to make the best out of his situation, he stopped in place and took a deep breath. The air out here just tasted and smelled different; the familiar, crowded scents of Kellith’s markets were nothing like the salt of the sea. This was the first time he had been more than a day’s walk from the city, and he could only regret that it took him nineteen years to get here. Having crested one of the countless hills in the area, he looked around to take in the sights. To the south, the familiar tall grass and wheat fields of the Kellithian Plains. Blessed by the light of the sacred sun, this was the heart of both the Sorian Empire and Jarco’s life. To the north, the rolling hills of the Empire’s border. The Empress’s reach expanded every year, but the desolate wastelands beyond remained untouched. To the west, rocky cliffs that overlooked the sea. None of the Empire’s voyages had ever found its end and these days no one bothered to try. To the east, the faint silhouette of the forests that dominated Vilratha’s center. The Empire’s sworn enemies lurked there, but so too did all of the continent’s wonders that Jarco yearned to see. Until he had to raise his sword against the Brethren, maybe life in the Bronze Legion was not so bad. There were definitely worse jobs that paid less, and he had already worked two or three of them.
“If only Rannil could be here,” he thought to himself as he resumed his walking. When he mentioned that his squad was set to go on a mission to Voran’s Landing, the youngest of his little brothers incessantly begged to come along. After three nights in a row of the child tugging at Jarco’s shirt, it took the stern frown of their mother and the promise of a souvenir to make him relent. Rannil was obsessed with stories, far more than his four other little brothers, and Jarco was already prepared to be bombarded with questions when he got home. Despite featuring prominently in the Sorian faith, very few people took the time to visit the small village tucked away on the northern edge of the Empire. Supposedly it was the place where Emperor Voran Dawnlance I, progenitor of the Sorian Empire, was born. As the War of the Eternals drew to a close and the First Eclipse cast its shadow across Vilratha, this was where it all began. Jarco stopped giving much thought to those stories years ago, but if they made Rannil smile then the trip would be worth it.
He had left Kellith hopeful and energized, but the same could not be said of his captain. Loyal, cunning, and charismatic, Foralin Gorthili was undoubtedly above such a routine reconnaissance mission. By his masterful leadership, the fifth squad of the Bronze Legion’s Eighteenth Division had been transformed from a ragtag group of conscripts into an elite unit. Even though Foralin was openly unexcited about spending weeks to track down a missing caravan, he made a point to live by his words: there was no room in the Legion for those who did not know their place. It was widely known that his retirement was long overdue, but his sense of duty had not eroded in the slightest.
Jarco took out his map and consulted it once more in vain. Five days ago they had crossed the point where the flat Kellithian Plains gave way to the rolling green hills of the Empire’s northern boundary, and yet there had been no signs of their destination. While Captain Gorthili prepared some rather uncharitable words for an inept cartographer back in Kellith, he sent a few scouts to patrol the immediate area. The sun was beginning to set and he had nothing to report beyond more grass, so he decided that this particular hill would be the last he would climb today.
The nameless tune he was humming to himself abruptly stopped as he finished his climb and looked below. In a secluded valley overlooking the sea, only the faint outlines of Voran’s Landing remained. All of the signs of a humble village, but none of the substance: paths and indentations in the grass, and yet not a single stone or plank of wood. As his eyes followed the trail to where the main square would have once stood, his stomach reeled. All that was left of the first Emperor’s birthplace was a perfect circle of blackened earth and neatly organized rows of human skulls, their mouths frozen in silent screams. He had a strong feeling that Rannil would not be hearing about this particular story.
********************************************************************************************
Captain Gorthili watched the sun dip below the horizon, wordless and deep in thought. He had asked Jarco to join him for the first watch, but so far he had said nothing while the two waited for night to fall. As the last traces of daylight faded, Jarco quietly observed his leader with a slight sense of reverence. The captain had a stockier build and darker skin than his men; it was well-known that he grew up on the southern edge of the Empire and most likely had some Ultharan blood in his veins. His face, an equal mix of scars and wrinkles, bore none of the confidence now up close that it did from the back of a formation. He was tired, they all were, but Jarco could see in his eyes that something weighed heavily upon him. Foralin had seen bodies littered across the battlefields of the Ultharan rebellions, seen his comrades skewered by the arrows of Brethren raiding parties, and he was always able to muster a confident grin for his men. Tonight he only stared blankly at the distance.
Seven days ago, the two of them had seen something beyond explanation. Unable to formulate the words, Jarco brought Foralin back to witness the remains of Voran’s Landing. The immediate order was to speak nothing of it to the other men; as far as they were concerned, the town had been ransacked, perhaps by bandits or Brethren. The instability of the Empire was not a particularly well-kept secret, even to Jarco. Between recovering territory from the last rebellion and their age-old conflict with the Brethren, the last thing the Sorians needed was yet another enemy, especially one capable of that.
Standing back on the tall grass of the Kellithian Plains, nothing around them in all directions, they were alone for the first time since Voran’s Landing. Foralin occasionally shifted, his mouth twitched, but he remained quiet. There was no protocol for this situation. Jarco had been struggling to cope, and it was vaguely comforting that a man of Captain Gorthili’s years seemed just as lost as he was. Training in the Legion had not prepared him for what he had seen, but growing up with a house of younger brothers had not prepared him for awkward silences either.
“Captain…” he sheepishly offered. Foralin sharply inhaled, but remained otherwise still. “I didn’t tell anyone. I swear I won’t. I really need this job, please, at least for another few months. Not that I think they would believe me anyways.”
“Two more missions,” Foralin grumbled. “Just two more, that’s all they would give me before they’d force me out. Now there’s going to be paperwork, interviews, investigations. So much for getting a cottage out in the plains and kicking back. General Stonewright thought he was giving me an easy one here. I might not be able to beat him sparring any more, but I’ll have a good laugh over this.”
Looking up at the moon, he sighed to himself and kept his back toward Jarco. “You’re a good kid, Forgeson, I know. I’ve seen a lot of folks come and go in the Legion, I have an eye for these things. But I’m going to tell you now that things are going to get messy when we get back. We’re in a delicate situation, putting it lightly. Whatever it is that we saw, that wasn’t the Brethren. That’s not how they work. It wasn’t even human, I’d say. It’s not for us to make the call, but after hearing what we have to say they’re not going to just let us walk away from this. You’ll get back to your family, I’m sure of it, but it might not be for a while. We must have faith in the Bronze Legion, in the Empress. You do, don’t you?”
The answer was not as simple as Jarco had hoped. He had lived a modest life, hopping from one job to another to provide for his family. Once his father had been injured, there was little time for frivolities like church or Legion rallies. The Legion kept the Brethren at bay, but everything else was left to fall on his shoulders.
In that brief moment of hesitation, Foralin tensed up and reached for his sword. A lone human figure was approaching slowly and deliberately. It was difficult to tell from the darkness and the distance, but it appeared that they were entirely covered in a long robe: strange attire for the heat of the Kellithian Plains.
“Stop right there,” Foralin barked. “State your business.”
The figure bowed down graciously, spreading their arms to show they were unarmed. When the man spoke, his cold voice sliced through the air and sent a chill through Jarco’s body. “I am Envoy Malekhaar, just a humble servant of the Tainted Lady. And you two must be loyal soldiers of the famed Bronze Legion. I hope you can appreciate the momentousness of this occasion.”
“Cut the formalities,” Foralin warned him. “Foralin Gorthili, captain of the Eighteenth Division. Not many people wandering around the plains by themselves, and it doesn’t sound like you’re looking for help.”
“How disappointing,” Malekhaar said. “No blades of light, no righteous flames. So far have you fallen, so diluted is your blood, and yet you would call yourselves the masters of this world. I had hoped that this mission would yield a challenge, but it would seem I am to be a simple messenger of the Lady’s will.”
Feeling increasingly unsettled, Jarco could feel his grip tightening on his sword. Like the remains of Voran’s Landing, something about the man’s voice felt unnatural. “There is a perfectly capable delivery service in Kellith,” Foralin said. “The Legion carries lances, not letters.”
“My apologies, captain, but I believe that you misunderstand my intentions,” Malekhaar replied. “Your Empress will not be receiving a parcel or letter. Instead, she will be receiving news of your untimely demise.”
Foralin charged forward to close the distance between them, but Malekhaar just calmly lifted his hand. A strange shimmer darted through the dark skin of his exposed arm, spreading in complex patterns before condensing in his palm. The moonlight behind him warped and twisted as a perfectly round sphere of darkness formed above his hand. In an instant, a shadowy tendril shot forth from the sphere and drove through Foralin’s shoulder. He stopped in place, a gasp escaped from his lips, and then he was gone.
“So deeply underwhelming,” Malekhaar muttered to himself as the tendril retracted back. “Centuries in the making, I thought our reclamation would be something more of a spectacle. A pity, but not much to be done about it.”
Jarco was frozen in place, his scream for help hopelessly stuck in the back of his throat. The robed man casually walked forward, stepping over the ground where Foralin Gorthili had existed a moment ago and stopping just a pace away. A profound, indescribable coldness emanated from the dark sphere; Jarco struggled to breathe as it sapped the air around it.
“I suppose you will do,” Malekhaar hissed. “Only takes one to deliver a message.” His free hand snapped forward, grabbing Jarco by the wrist. His skin burned with excruciating pain, but Jarco could not take his eyes off of the sphere as it ballooned in size. It halted its growth, and a multitude of tendrils burst forth from its surface and extended towards the camp behind him. As he felt his consciousness fading, his last thoughts were of little Rannil with his wide eyes and eager smile.
Reflections – Legion
“My path has rarely crossed the Bronze Legion, the self-proclaimed rulers of this land. Ever vigilant, unshakably loyal to their cause. This creed is an effective tool for ruling an empire, but also a shackle for its people. They stifle their questions to prove their loyalty, and in doing so abandon their need for answers. Their lances may be strong enough to claim Vilratha one day, yet the truth of its heart will always be beyond them. I prefer to stand on my own; the roar of an army drowns out the whispers of the world.”