CHAPTER 1

The Battle of Wieese

“Get up!" Keen says, lifting me up by the breastplate. “We’ve got to get out of here. They’re coming!”

"The answer, I had the answer," I say but I can't remember what it was. I don’t even remember the question.

I pull at Keen’s fingers, trying to pry them off of my armor, but his grip is too strong and my arms are too weak. It’s like waking from a deep sleep and not being able to work my hands.

We are in the middle of an avenue, the gate to the city of Wieese crashed upon us, half our force destroyed, and my men lie dazed and dying. I knew they would die, but now that they are buried beneath what used to be the Western Gate, the certainty of their demise twists in my gut.

Keen lets go and raises his shield at me, as if I were the enemy, and the white smoke that has been building up at our feet rises, gets thicker, and swallows him up. Keen, my first declonate, disappears into the ghostly sea.

The rest of our battalion climbs up and over the mountain of rubble, loose rock and dust raining down the face of it, and reaches the bottom where they are quickly swallowed up into the fog, entering the madness of this city, the same madness eating away at Keen.

Where is he?

I can see his face, clear as midday, but I shouldn’t be able to. He’s looking around like a wild animal surrounded by wolves, turning his head from screaming boy to screaming boy, many of them with boulders half their size crushing their chests and legs, many of them crying out for someone.

"You are responsible for this," Keen screams as he retreats with the other soldiers running in and out of the thickening fog. “This is all your fault!”

I wipe the sweat from my brow and blink harder, but I can still see him. I can see everyone and everything, the dirt between their teeth, the pain and confusion in their hearts. I’ve gone mad and I’m frozen, just like every survivor of the nearly two thousand regulars, supporters, commanders, and motivators we came here with, all unable to move.

I see the city of Wieese in its entirety. Something flickers on a spot on the highest hill, blue and unsteady, an erratic rhythm and an odd color: the color of lightening, but coming from the window of a building. How is that possible?

For centuries, the superstition surrounding Wieese has protected this city from invaders too fearful to attack it, and now the rumors of sorcery and spirits have come true, come to punish us for our arrogant ways, and have taken over our minds, especially mine because even though the reasonable part of me knows it’s impossible, I know what I saw. When that gate fell, it did not simply fall. It flew apart like a greatwood being struck by lightning, and the Earth shook as if Ceros himself had pounded the butt of his axe on the ground and raised the land into the sky. It did not fall; it exploded in a ball of fire, forced apart by something, and knocking us all to our feet.

And I see the enemy. They are clearer to me than everything else, hidden in alleys, hidden inside the houses surrounding us. They are the Dominion, leather hoods casting ominous shadows over their fiery eyes. They creep through holes in the ground burrowed up through the floorboards of kitchens and bedrooms, straight from the nightmares of children.

But unlike us, frozen in fear and penance, they move. One of the demons opens a shutter and releases a bird from his hand, which takes flight, breathing fire from its beak and shooting ice from its eyes. It flies into the air and hovers above us, joined by more feathered devils, judging us from up above for our folly down below.

When they reach the apex of their arcs, they descend. An arrow clangs on the stones by my feet, made of steel, fired from catapults in bundles, heavy tips keeping them on target, breaking through the thickest of shields of the strongest of shielders, and it’s quickly followed by more of the hell birds morphing into the deadly weapons.

I run for cover but stumble into a soldier. He is frozen, his eyes blank, his skin lifeless, his spirit gone, not a man but a statue.

I shake him by the shoulder plates, but he does not wake from his trance. I’m shaking his body when an enemy projectile bursts forth from his abdomen, splattering his blood on the ground and onto my boots, keeping his entire body stiff as he falls over sideways to the cobbled stones of the main avenue.

“Keen!” I bend down and take his shield and cover us both, angling it as much as I can. Keen is gone, recruited by Ceros for the heavenly war.

A terrible sound, like that of a bull being ripped in half, shivers down my spine. More rips and tears echo down the street and I brace myself as a panicked rush of soldiers bursts through the clouds and I’m thrown upon a wall like a wave crashing upon the shore. They are not the enemy, but my own retreating men, shields, shoulder plates, and upright spears and terrified screams, push me down the wall, my breath ejected from my lungs. Men fall and scream in my face and the light fades. The crowd grows thicker, a flurry of fleshy hands and fingers grasping desperately onto my face. I’m buried alive.

“Deelo Con.”

I’m being dragged across the hard, dusty floor of a house. The man dragging me plops me down in front of another man’s armored boots and returns to the open door, closes it, and slides a bar of wood to secure it from the inside.

"Are you okay?" the man standing above me asks. He's covered in bright red blood, as if someone had poured it over his body from a bucket, his ghostly eyes poking through the horrific mask, but even in this condition I still recognize my own brother.

“They broke, my men broke,” I say.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Novak says. “But how the hell did you survive it? That’s what I want to know.”

It’s late evening, the cool stillness of the air chills me, and the battle is over. There are only the faint screams of two, maybe three men being chased down alleys by whatever attacked and killed us, but they’re too far off for us to help. The main avenue is quiet, a pile of dead soldiers. And the inner keep, where the main assault is taking place, is on the other side of this city. Whatever attacked us has not yet gotten to the other battalions. If we don’t send word, my men will have died in vain, and our flanking effort will surely have been a complete failure.

"What are you doing at the front, Novak?" I ask my brother.

"Besides saving your life?" he says. "Surviving."

I pull my weight back onto my feet and test my footing. I’m uninjured. I take a step towards the door but the other soldier, Novak’s man servant turned guardsman, Dirwin, puts his hand to my chest.

"You don’t want to go back out there," Novak says.

"We have to regroup," I say.

"Regroup whom?" Novak asks. “There’s no one left.”

The way he speaks of them so casually, he does not care about these men. But what do I expect from a man who comes from such an important family like the Vaskillians? They were not his charges. But, since the day his father adopted me, and since the day Novak rescued me from the hangman’s noose, I am his. I owe him my service. I owe him my life. And according to the military counsel, I serve a lifetime sentence in this army under his direct order.

"We wait until the smoke clears and then retreat to the rest of the reserve division outside the city," he says. "There's nothing more we can do here."

"We have to warn Seventh and Eighth," I insist. "Whatever has done this to us is on its way to do it to them."

“There’s nothing we can do," Novak says, looking down at his armor as if to indicate where the blood had come from. “My guardsmen exploded. You want us to get exploded too? You’re my charge for a reason, remember, and that reason is your poor judgement.”

“Exploded?” I say.

Something scrapes against the outside of the door and Dirwin presses his hands against it.

“What was that?” my eyes scream at them.

I go to speak but Novak holds a finger to his lips. After a moment, Novak and Dirwin stand up straight, signaling to me that the danger is gone.

“What do you care if I die?” I whisper. “I thought you wanted me dead.”

“Why do you want to go out there anyway?” he asks.

“We have to know what we are dealing with. We’re no good to anyone just hiding out here while Seventh and Eight take the inner keep blind to what we know. And what did you say about exploded?”

“Is that the false commander rendering his false judgement again? Or is that the glory-seeking fool wanting to die?”

“It’s basic procedure,” I say.

"Fine," Novak whispers. "Go out and scout around. Get yourself killed if that is what you want to do. But you can’t go out that way."

Novak nods to Dirwin and we follow him through the house to the kitchen in the back and stand before another barred door.

"You never answered my question,” I say.

“I know about as much as you do about what attacked us out there.”

 “Why are you here, Novak?”

"Glory," he replies, and then breathes out his nose sharply, “just like you.”

"Commander?" Dirwin says, lifting his head up from the door, “It sounds clear.”

"Where are you going, little brother?” Novak asks.

"I'm going up that hill and getting a better look at what we are dealing with. Why don’t you two make yourselves useful and come with me? I could use the extra eyes.”

Novak reaches across me and swings open the door, the dim light from outside shining on his ghastly image. “We’ll wait here for your report, Captain, if that’s what you’re really going out there to do.”

Life is won or lost on information. As Regional Commander of the Western Frontier, as my men made formation, they drank, chanted, screamed, and danced themselves into a fighting frenzy while I coldly and soberly assessed the enemy, watching them form their own lines, watching for any signs of weakness or hidden intentions. Rarely is there a moment in life much different than that. But I already got a good look at this city on the way in. Far from mancers, demons, and flesh-eaters luring brave soldiers to their deaths as the stories had led my young men to believe, what I saw was an ancient and majestic city crisscrossed with stone streets, tiled roofs, and courtyards adorned in festival lanterns and banners. My brother is right. To get a second look of the city is not really why I’m going up there. I need to find out what I saw. That gate erupted. And something glowed inside that building on the hill. I know it wasn’t sorcery. But it was something. And perhaps it can explain what caused that fog, or what killed our battalion. And Keen. He was frozen as solid as a statue. I saw it with my own eyes. He was like a son to me, and I can’t just let his death go unanswered.

I stop short of closing the door all the way. "What happened out there in the avenue?" I ask.

"What do you mean?"

"The gate? It flew apart. And then the fog rolled in so quickly.”

"An ox pulling out a support beam or something. I don't know. It's devious, yes, but they're womps. What do you expect?"

“That gate and the surrounding watch towers exploded. It did not fall,” I say, but he already knows that. I grew up alongside this man. I can read him as well as he can read me. We know each other, but growing up together has made us hate each other almost as much. I hate him for his abuses, and he hates me because I was taken from the bottom, a lowlife from a follower’s camp, not a true-blood Daylon like him, and I surpassed him in military stature. So even if he knew the answer, he probably would keep it secret just to spite me.

When he doesn’t answer my question, I ask him something he might be more receptive to. “How did you find me in that pile of bodies?”

“Luck?” Novak shrugs, and he closes the door, the sound of the wooden bar sliding back into place telling me it’s time to go.

I turn up the alley and step lightly, keeping tight to the walls under the awnings, and play in my head what I really wanted to say to my brother.

"The Church of the Redeemers in Wieese?” Novak would have laughed.

“If anyone would be harboring weapons unknown, would it not be them?” I hasten to add.

“You believe in every rumor your men tell you? The church and sorcery, how juvenile. I thought you were a member of the Order of Reasoners or some other order like that. I thought you fancied yourself a Daylon.”

Dirwin would have probably joined in the conversation by saying, "The Order of the what?" The man doesn't look too smart.

And then Novak would have dismissed me with something he always seemed to say, as if it were funny every time he said it, "We never could get the villager out of you, could we?"

I clench my fists. It’s not superstitious villagry to investigate what one saw. The Church of the Redeemers at Wieese has so many rumors surrounding it that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the church itself that started and perpetuated such stories in order to appear more important and influential than they really are. But the light did come from their building. Their symbol of a four-armed man inside a circle of light was unmistakably silhouetted in the evening sky, even through impenetrable white fog. I know what I saw. Whoever figured out how to harness the power of Ceros himself, is in that building.

I get to the top of the hill. To the East the sky is a dark purple and the stars are coming out, but to the West, outside the walls of the city, the sky is still a burnt amber, and camp fires flicker in the forests surrounding the city where our reserve battalions await our return, and try their best to block any escaping distress messages from the city.

I enter the courtyard and move towards the church. When I step onto the porch, I take in more of the city. It’s just what I thought: nothing really to see. The attack is gone, and so is the entirety of my battalion. Seventh and Eighth continue to fight on the other side, a rain of fiery arrows pouring down on them and siege bolts returning fire.

But that still doesn’t answer my question. What happened to us?

The windows to the church are shuttered closed, with gaps in between where the light must have emitted. I'm surprised no one else saw it. But now that I think about it, I’m not even sure of what I saw, or how I saw it. I should return to Novak with my report, but when I move, I don’t move away from the church back to Novak’s position, I move towards the double doors and before I know it I’m inside, my need to know compelling my feet forward.

The faint light of the moon casts a ray of light on the swirling dust dancing in its cone of light. Beyond that, it’s pitch black in here. I close the door and wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they do, a faint glow beckons me forward. Where is that light coming from?

I move down the center aisle between the pews and get to the pulpit. I walk across the wooden boards of the stage until I’m standing at a doorway, my eyes now fully adjusted to the light coming from the bottom of the staircase. A lantern. It must be. Someone is downstairs.

I take in a deep breath. What am I doing here? Houses of worship are left unlocked during war for a reason. We leave them alone and they leave them open as proof that they are not harboring anything. The Daylons respect religion. It’s why we have so many. My being here might be misconstrued. But I’m not ransacking the place. I don’t even have a sword, just my two daggers strapped to the front of my breast armor. When they pulled me out of that pile of bodies they must have unbuckled my belt and left my sword with my fallen men.

I pull out my daggers and descend the narrow stairwell, each creak different than the one preceding it.

I peek down into the cellar, holding my breath. It’s empty.  The cellar is wide, cold, and stale, the same width and distance as the church is from the outside, and the lantern hangs in the middle of the room from a low ceiling beam, abandoned as well. There are tables along the walls, some with wine barrels and others with hammers and chisels. One table is stacked with several wicker baskets full of flowers and weeds, with a grinding stone resting in a bowl next to them.

Past the glare of the light, something sends my heart racing into my throat more than if there were a hundred guardsmen hiding down here waiting to ambush me: a bookshelf stacked full of books. It sits awkwardly in the middle of the long, stone wall at the far end of the cellar.

Books, in this cold and dampness? What are they doing here?

I cross the room and take the lantern from its hook. I walk to the bookshelf and run the light across the titles. ‘The Divine Right of Kings’, ‘A History of the Religions of the Frontier Lands’, ‘The First Daylons of Dayl’, ‘Peace War and Stability’. The entire collection that the Order of Reasoners currently possesses, my group and all the other groups in the empire, would not constitute a tenth of what is down here.

I put a finger on the spine of a book and pull it halfway out. The Six Year War. I’ve read this one. But one need not know how to read to know what lies inside its pages. Every Daylon knows it more intimately than any words could possibly convey.

“It took the Eudatee Kingdom only six years to conquer all of our empire, an empire that had ruled the world for a thousand years,” Lord Vaskillian said to us over supper one night. When he spoke, he only said what he had to say, and he only said it once. “But to their credit, the Eudatees changed nothing. Far from ousting us from power, the Eudatees made Dayl the 11th province and us the new overseers of our own territories. We paid tribute, fought in her wars, but rarely have we seen a Eudatee since.”

“Never under-estimate Daylon pride,” I say out loud. That was it. He liked to talk about how proud the Daylons were. He liked to remind us how the Vaskils where thought to be direct descendants of the first people of Dayl. What would father have thought of Governor Cartheon crowning himself Emperor Cartheon and calling it the New Daylon Empire? I know he would have foreseen Wommdornia, the two-faced liars, going back on their word and dragging Vok, Phylo, Pania, Craenan, and Inea with them in non-revolt. I know he would have. But would he have approved of this attack? Would he have approved of me and his son fighting in it?

“And that is why we are here, to bring our lost Wommdornian brothers and sisters back into the cause,” I said to my men outside the Western gate, father’s own voice echoing in my head as I said it. But those words did little to ease the fears of my men, nor did they do anything to keep them alive. How proud I was just hours ago, like a Daylon. And foolish, like a villager.

I set the lantern on the cold floor and pull out a sack from my satchel. I carefully set the book inside and grab several more, stuffing the sack full.

What am I doing? This is surely against any code of honor we have. But I don’t care. The Wommdornians don’t play by rules of honor. They used sorcery and trickery against us, and I aim to find out what the source of their power is. Perhaps the answer lies hidden in these pages.

I reach for one more, a book on horticulture, but as soon as I grab its spine, the cellar is cast in darkness, and I’m frozen listening to the sound of the lantern crackle along the cold, wet floor.

My ears burn and my eyes widen as I try to see through the nothingness. There's no way I did that. And there's no way some animal did that either. There's someone here and he’s standing directly in front of me, breathing on my nose and down my neck at the same time.