They were all traitors, every last one of them.And they knew it.
Each man present had spat upon the Imperial Law, the sa law they had once sworn their swords to defend, and instead thrown their lot behind the serpent they had nursed since his youth, the prince they’d raised under their own roofs, taught their customs, and fattened with their hospitality.
Not that their betrayal was without reason. Between the three sons of the War Emperor, it was almost a matter of arithtic. The eldest, Maesinius liked to play with his snow and ignore everything.
The youngest, barely out of his milk’s years , would have needed a regent for eight more, which ant rule by proxy, a dream for schers and for nobles, except for those that were too distant to take advantage of that.
And then there was the middle son.
Mavius Rolia.
The darling of the East.
He had made the Eastern Provinces his ho in truth and spirit, draping himself in their customs, their silk, their language. He dined with their nobles, hunted in their forests, laughed at their tables. And in ti, he made himself one of them,marrying into their bloodlines, charming their daughters, and whispering promises of a reborn empire with them at the heads instead of those arrogants bastards of the Core, who had supremacy over the titles of the court.
Now that he had the test of ti, Willios understood he had nurtured the betrayal since the very start...
When the Fingers fell, when the mountain passes that shielded the capital were shattered like a clay wall, it seed the gamble had paid off. They believed the war would last no more than three months.Three months to march, to take, to crown.
Fools they all were.
The civil war stretched not for three months, but for eight long, grinding years, years that ground the empire into dust and salted its wounds with the blood of its sons.
Most of them guilty of what they had done, but they were too far gone to turn back.
What had begun as a march beca a at grinder; what was ant to unite under a new banner, instead unmade. Cities bled dry, harvests burnt in the field, and whole provinces of Rolians vanished without foreign intervention.
And now, as the eastern wind swept across the broken streets of yet another "liberated" city, Willios rath could not help but see the ghosts of what they had destroyed.
He stood before the open gates of Eratene, the city that had surrendered even before the man dismounted.
He had been young when they called him the Hamr , hero of the Fingers, the man who cracked the fortress like a nut. He still rembered waking up that dawn, half-dead, his body wrapped in linen and glory.
They’d called him the new Romulus, after the hero who slaughtered the Pashiani who had besieged the Eternal city so four centuries ago. How proud he had been then. How naïve.
Now the only hamr he felt was the dull thud of regret, pounding endlessly behind his eyes.
They had gutted their ho from within, leaving only carcass and cinder. The War Emperor’s sons had torn apart what their father had bled to unite, and Willios had been the hand that swung the blade.
Pride, they said, was the worst sin of all.But wasn’t it greed that ruined kingdoms, the hunger for just a little more power, a little more gold, a little more glory?
"Please, my lord, ride behind ," said one of the knights at his side interrupting his moral wailing. The man’s tone was respectful but strong.
Willios did as bid. The knight spurred his horse ahead, hand falling to his sword as they approached the Imperator special soldiers.
Willios’s stomach churned. Every ti he looked at them, he felt it, the sa crawling unease, that sa whisper of sickness in his soul. Disgust and fear, born of ignorance of what they would be used for and of the faint, unspoken truth he dared not na.
That Mavius Rolia, second son of the War Emperor, was in league with sothing foul.
Magic, they nad.
He had once been beautiful, that boy. The kind of beauty that drew faith from n and lust from gods. The golden prince with the voice that chard snakes and senators alike. But that man was gone now, or perhaps sothing else had taken his place.
The years had marked him in ways no blade could. His once-lustrous black hair had dulled, his skin mottled with dark, cracked stains like burnt parchnt. They crept up from his neck, disappearing beneath his collar and gloves, leaving the rest to imagination. None had seen his full face in two years, not even his closest advisor and father in law, Willios’s uncle, Landoff.
And that voice, once clear as crystal, the kind that could fill halls with light, was now little more than a rasp, coarse and broken, as though ground out of stone.
Still, when he spoke, n obeyed.Not because they loved him, but because they feared otherwise.
Willios drew a long, unsteady breath and looked once more toward the distant palace where that thing waited.
Suddenly, a shout tore through the air.
"STAND DOWN!"
It was the sa knight as before, the one who had insisted Willios ride behind him. His voice cracked like a whip, shrill with panic. The next instant ca the unmistakable sound of chaos: steel rasping from sheaths, hooves scraping stone, and the cold ring of tal eting tal.
Willios’s hand went instinctively to his sword, his heart pounding. Assassins?Is the lord in league with the boy-Emperor.
Before he could see what was happening, his knights closed in around him, shields raised, cutting off his view. The sll of sweat and fear filled the air.
Then, over the din, ca the wet, familiar sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life , it was not that of steel slicing through flesh , which he had earned long ago, but it was instead the pleased hum that followed that.
A mont later, the circle of knights broke just enough for him to glimpse the scene beyond.
A man stood in the middle of the path and swayed a smile frozen across his face, drool running down his chin and dripping onto his chest mixing with the blood.
The most surprising thing being the sword hanging from his collarbone, which it seed he did not feel.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t even flinch. He only gurgled once, the smile still carved into his lips, before the sword was wrenched free by that sa, now horrified as he was, in a spray of blood. The man wobbled, knees buckling, and collapsed face-first into the dirt with a dull thud, quickly followed by one another and last pleased hum.
The silence that followed was heavier than any cry.
"Apologies, my lord," said the knight who had given the order. His voice trembled with restrained disgust. "We thought it was an assassin. It was... one of the Imperator’s specials"
The explanation brought no comfort. He probably would have preffered an assasin to that experience.
Willios stared at the corpse, at the slack face pressed into the mud, the glassy eyes that still seed to glimr faintly even when dead.
Why in the Emperor’s na was he bringing these things with us?
They weren’t soldiers, anyone could see that. They didn’t march so much as shamble. They had no disciplines nor reason apparently. They were like beasts, or puppets pulled by invisible strings.
A chill crept up his spine. He rembered the whispers. The stories. The black marks on Mavius’s skin. The rasping voice.
He wanted to dismiss them as campfire nonsense, the kind of stories n told when they had nothing to do.
But the sll of blood and drool in the air told him otherwise.
They were winning. The war, after eight long years, was finally theirs. City after city had thrown open its gates. The nobles who once scorned Mavius now groveled before him. The banners of the second prince flew proudly across the East and beyond.
Victory had never been closer.
And yet here, on the eve of triumph, the Imperator marched not with n, but with these drooling husks, these smiling corpses that bore no crest, nor had any weapon for that matter.
Willios’s jaw clenched. "We move forward," he said, his tone leaving no reprieve to linger on.
His n hesitated only a mont before obeying, eager to put distance between themselves and the abominations that shared their path. As they rode, the mounted knights passed through clusters of the "specials," whose eyes rolled loosely in their sockets, whose heads bobbed as if listening to so unheard tune. A few lay sprawled in the mud, grinning at nothing, their hands twitching as if grasping invisible swords.
Even the bravest of his riders spurred their horses faster at the sight.
The road curved, leading them away from the unsettling scene. But Willios turned once more in his saddle, gaze lingering on the corpse left behind, the one who had smiled as he died.
For a heartbeat, he thought the dead man’s fingers twitched. Perhaps it was the wind. Perhaps not.He wanted to get out.
He tore his eyes away and faced the horizon ahead, where the spire of the city’s keep rose. Going toward the place where the man who had brought this plague upon Rolia , the prince turned Imperator, the apostate who had unbound the malice their forefathers had sealed away centuries ago, waited.
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