The Damned

Captain Anatien Daniel and his troops approached the villages collectively named “the Three Sisters”, close to the informally defined borders with the Dread League. The messages his chapter monastery had received from the neighboring settlements spoke of a glacial howl in the dead of night. One filled with terror and anguish, as if the lives of hundreds had just been ended and trapped in their end state. A sound so piercing that it had sent shivers down the spine of all. Some even reported that the air around them had turned impossibly glacial. Following it, the witnesses spotted what they described as a blue, glistening mist evaporating in the air before dissipating in the nightly sky.

Messages like these were a grim regularity for the few steadfast villages and forts of the borders. In the perpetual winter of the north, poetry and melancholic writings were commonplace among the stubborn inhabitants and soldiery. The Three Sisters was the congregating point for the Boreal Poetasters. A festival for the grand presentation of the passing year’s creations was supposed to be held in a few days. At first, many thought the cavalcade of messages was just part of the coming festivities neighboring settlements were jesting in. It had not been the first time it occurred, but as the deluge of ever-pouring missives and calls kept coming in and the atrocities described bewildered imagination, the knights took a wary and ready stand until the early hours of dawn. As soon as the Sun had risen, in all haste, Anatien made wake to the Three Sisters, gearing his knights for an imminent assault from the accursed necromancers.

Anatien and his troops closed on the village. It had lightly snowed a day before, and the air remained freezing. Several trucks had started malfunctioning from the cold; as such, a quick halt for haphazard repairs and for the mages to exercise their talents on the engines. He walked outside, ready to direct the defense. Anatien took a puff of air, knowing he would regret it. He coughed hard, but at least he was kept more aware of his surroundings.

‘Moulis,’ he called for the officer in charge of communications. Moulis – a Griffon midway between his thirties and forties, and like Anatien, nothing that would make them stand out from the crowd except for their knightly insignia – only answered back with a positive grumble. ‘Have the scouts answered back?’

‘Not yet. Neither have the planes been able to report anything substantial.’

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed. ‘They may not have the ability to make planes, but they bloody know how to hide their doings from them. For every spell we develop, they readily adapt to them.’

‘And we are in the interim period,’ added Moulis, clenching his right claw. ‘We got one of the good ones. It seems,’ barely covering the curse underneath.

‘Or a very opportunistic fellow,’ smirked Anatien.

Moulis returned the gesture. ‘I prefer not, sir. They are the most mad of the bunch.’

‘It is the nature of youth to test themselves. Some are almost as old as good Celestia and Luna. In the place of the apprentices, I would feel the need to prove myself in front of my mentors.’

‘Want to join the League, sir? I can use my gun to give you quick access to it. Where would you like me to drop your body for collection?’

‘Can you give me time to think about it? I have a few places in mind.’

‘The Gates of Moment would be an amazing spot.’

Anatien played with the white feathers of his neck. ‘Ahhh! Pas con, ça. J’dirais pas non. Ah!’ He curled too hard on one feather that it fell. Merde! One more to add for the collection, he thought. ‘Une bonne p’tite mort, là! Hmm! Pourquoi pas?’

‘Hm,’ Moulis smiled, feigning his understanding. ‘When Croute will report back, sir.’

Anatien nodded. ‘Good continuation.’

Only an hour later would the scouts return with pertinent information. Anatien ordered a column to be formed and for the Order to be contacted instantly and reliably.

It was carnage, streets full of gored bodies. Some of its inhabitants had a swift death. Others appeared to have been eaten alive. More had their head severed or exploded, pink brain matter buried in white snow, and more had died from sheer fear alone. Blood and viscera were sliding down the stairs and walls of the still-standing habitations; limbs dispersed in every direction. Entire gored families laid dead in single-room houses, their essence drained from them utterly. A father clutched to his terrified children as their mother hurried for their weapons, frozen forever in the frozen north in a terrorized death. Others had been faster, having their guns and swords ready for a combat that never came; their bodies left devoid of a heart before any reaction could be registered.

The Three Sisters had been extinguished of all life.

Anatien ordered his troops to patrol the rancid-fill streets. He took a group toward the villages’ center, commanding the mages to burn the eviscerated corpses as they progressed toward a scene he was sure ought to be even more gruesome. The display of wanton gore sickened them; he held onto his puck as the horrid smell of decay invaded his senses.

‘Sir?’ asked one of his knights, the unuttered but intended question obvious behind his discipline-veiled, fear-coated tone.

‘I don’t know, Frederic. I don’t know.’ His gaze drifted across the atrocities, pulling his eyes away at the sight of a body split in two with its head laying a few centimeters from it.

‘Haven’t you participated in the war?’ Referring to the last great incursion of the League more than a quarter of a century ago.

‘I did. But not that deep in our territory and that horrific. And I have seen my share of atrocities. They are efficient in the art of artisanal killing and malefic displays,’ reciting what his superiors repeated about the League’s practices. Anatien sighted. ‘Artists, right?’ he attempted a joke.

‘Shouldn’t the Watch have reported an intrusion? I don’t understand.’ Frederic gripped his weapon closer to him, tightening his grip even more to the point he felt he could bend its metal.

Anatien gripped him on the left shoulder ‘We tried to contact them, but nothing. They are dead – it is the best we can hope for them…’

White silhouettes strode through the lifeless center; phantoms of the fallen walked between the ravaged bodies. Their eyes were of a beautiful bleu. Their bodies appeared solid, though parts of them remained transparent enough to distort their familiar shadows. Some had wide gashes in the center of their frames or the middle of their neck. They did not wail. They did not shriek. They simply walked impassively to what was, to them, a normal place.

Intrigued, Anatien moved to contact the ghosts. As soon as he raised his voice, the things turned their plain blue eyes in rapid synchronicity. Then in unison, they hurtled in an eerie silence toward the knights, cleaving through soldiers and sowing seeds of doubts and fear as they whistled through them. Their gaseous limbs congealed into sharp sabers, impaling all that crossed their path with brutal efficiency. The knights opened fire, not harming the ghostly things with regular weapons – only vulnerable to attacks conjured by mages or the hard-to-produce magical ammunitions the Crystal Empire provided. They only had their magically imbued swords to rely upon if they wished to escape this spectral ambush.

Anatien called upon the troops stationed outside the Three Sisters and sent for his scouts to join them in their fight.

As soon as the call was sent and amid their redeployment, the rear was beset by the dead. Anatien saw Moulis and other soldiers retreating to engage the enemy in more favorable terrain, trying their best to protect the mages assigned to them. Those that had made it far from the convoys did not remain whole to tell of the experience.

One mage fell. Then a second, her head unable to withhold the strain of sudden use.

Only four were left to protect their rear. In any other circumstance, coupled with the quicker reaction time of the Griffons, it would have been enough to deter any attacker, but the very nature of the foes almost rendered their effort null. The stories of old chivalric bravery seemed to have come with a vengeance. The elders once said firearms would be the doom of the Order. Not only morally but physically, deteriorating its foundations beyond the passage of no return. As a youth at the time when those same elders still lived, he had rebuked them as many did. It was simply the ramblings and complaints of the past generation. The subsequent victory in what was dubbed a “black crusade” by chroniclers was enough to make even the most stubborn of their number retreat from public view.

“Black crusade” - a childish name as Anatien had ever heard before. Still fitting for those that grafted themselves centuries. Be it be born from the madness of age or the fact of existing in a land with no set boundaries, their behavior and the way they had so carelessly made use of their creations had all the actions of a child in need of entertainment. Yet it was during that “playtime” that one… thing – he could not properly describe what it had been, nor the creature it once was. Half-dead and its jaws balancing freely, its skin barely hanging on yellowed bones and decomposed legs, the thing had moved with outstanding agility and resisted his shots. It had come too close.

Bayonets were still a thing at the time, though gradually phased out, the sword with it; he had been the only knight in the squad with them still part of his uniform. He had always liked to stand out from the rest. And what best manner to signal your difference than going against the established norm? His superior at the time had insisted on him removing them. Anatien had promised, but the temptation was too great for him to just follow such an inconsequential order. Or was it laziness? He wasn’t sure himself anymore. Regardless, this lacuna of his had quickly proven decisive for his survival.

It was with that sword that he later killed the puppet master as he had stopped to spurt out introductions in what the necromancer thought were just the verbose openings to their duel. His name was Pestus Bile. He had been exactly 377 years old, born on the third day of the seventh month of the year- It was then that Anatien plunged his bayonet deep in its head, then decapitated that false lord. When Anatien landed the final blow on the green, putrid flesh of the necromancer, of the thing that slew his friends, as the blow cut threw exposed arteries and the fetid trachea, as an agonizing pain should have arrested any normal being, the necromancer kept discoursing. And the worst part: he died laughing. A genuine laugh only the most content could emit. One born of zealotry rather than mockery.

Had the sorcerer pity the young Anatien? What was it in their life that could bring forth such satisfaction?

Questions Anatien preferred to not search for their answer. Yet… It must have been an incredible feeli-

Enough! He forced himself to cease doubting.

For a moment, that laughter, that thing engraved into Anatien’s psyche was heard whistling between the ghostly murmurs.

He ignored it. He did not let it take hold of him, not letting any fault exposed in his soul for them to exploit. If death beckoned for him on that cursed day, then it would be of his own accord. Not for the pleasure of a child in need of attention.

It wasn't the case for others as they went mad from their fears made manifest. Many ran shrieking or turned on their comrades as the bonds of trust and kinship eroded completely.

The remaining four retreated to the truck, barricading themselves with Moulis and the rest desperately sending radio messages, making sure their communication had not been disrupted. Rushing as fast as his wings could take him and fending off the cursed souls with his retinue, Anatien wondered if the elders had, what assuredly had been, their final wish exhausted. As he raised his sword and plunged into the anathamic body of a Griffon teen and then of two adults, the captain smiled. It had been years; he had still not lost it. That creeping feeling in the back of his mind telling him to never cease combat training when others had taken it as a simple sport proved right.

This satisfaction would not last, however. The smile faded when a gigantic, electric deflagration came avalanching from Moulis’ position, resonating through the cold air with a deluge of elements.

The wind settled; half the trucks were still whole, protected by a magical bubble. Anatien reached Moulis’ truck. Of the four, only three mages remained after the explosion caused by the shattering of a unicorn’s horn in the moment of conjuration. The phantom mist in the area vanished; what remained of the forces present were the charcoaled bodies of dead creatures, with some groveling through the burned patch for any sort of assistance. What had remained of the survivors in direct proximity eventually succumbed to their wounds. Those still able to stand gathered around two mages and the radio station.

‘Moulis!’ cried Anatien, unable to pinpoint his transport in the sudden chaos his mind threw him into.

‘Sir!’ shouted a familiar voice from the truck Anatien had failed to notice. ‘I am with Horty! We are… half-fine…’ The voice trailed off.

Anatien approached him, feeling silly for not recognizing his truck. ‘Ah! You have those black feathers, finally.’ Moulis replied with a sight. ‘And you,’ he addressed the mare with the stained purple mane, ‘I don’t like your new hairstyle.’

‘Blame the League and poor Ulto, n-not me, sir,’ she stammered a little behind a smile; her horn still brightly alight. She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘There was a small f-flicker in the field,’

The captain thought of the worst. ‘Have any signals reached the Order?’

‘Yes, sir… I’ve got a confirmation. But the radio was gone for…’ He put a claw on his left eye. ‘You know.’

‘Sir, we can-’ cried Frederic between shots; three missed, and one landed on its target. He realized his thought of blowing up the trucks would be completely stupid. ‘I advise… I advise we take the tree- three of them to safety. We can use our-’ He dropped his gun, gripped the sword he had planted on the ground with his claws, and ran it with full force into one of the ghosts’ necks. Then three more approached in a quiet run. The knight shot one dead on the head, priding himself for the feat, then took a slab from the destroyed trucks and imbued it with a quick incantation. It would not hold more than a few hits, but it was enough for the time being.

Anatien continued where he knew Frederic intended to go. ‘Can you walk, Horty?’ he raised his voice for Frederic to hear.

‘I-I think so, yes,’ she did the same.

‘I can still shoot too,’ added Moulis with a jagged smile.

Anatien nodded. ‘Follow us, then!’ declared he.

The call for withdrawal was sent.

Three of his soldiers died protecting their flanks before they could regroup at the center.

The phantoms would finally be defeated at a tremendous cost. Anatien torched the villages before departing, letting his fallen soldiers be consumed by the flames instead of offering them a proper burial. The entire Order was put under high alert; messages were sent for foreign polities to stand ready for intervening in the north.

****

The thrall returned to her master’s obfuscated sanctum, following her a blue and white, shifting mist. Sometimes it took the form of creatures to then morph back into their gas-like state. Screams made manifest moved as low or high shrieks, but the tall figure cared not for those. She remained stoic and impassive. She had not been ordered to quiet the wraiths in the madness’ abode. She was only told to get the fruits of the slaughter she had led and showcase them to the necromancer.

‘It appears you have done quite well. Very interesting.’ The benighted mage examined the pale cloud. ‘All of them?’

‘No.’

‘How many fell?’

‘No one is left alive,’ she said, a hint of aversion made its way beneath her answer.

‘Ah.’ The mage moved away from her at blinding speed. ‘Regardless. You have done well.’ The mage took the staff from one of the claws. Then in a swift motion, arks of white lighting destined for the revived Changeling channeled out of the griffon-thing’s staff.

She fell to her knees, wanting to cry in pain and wallow in her misery. No sound was uttered – no order had been given. She could only convulse uncontrollably until her master deemed she was back in line. The ghostly figures dissipated, released from their limbo to finally rest in the after-life.

When the mage ceased, the Changeling was drowning in her own drool, observing her master in an empty gaze bereft of emotion. Her internal rage was unrestrained but with no venue to let it out. She observed the griffon-thing in a reignited fire, ready to lash out at the opportune chance.

‘Know your place.’ Words rained on her like thunder as the mage struck her once again, resonating within her with two jolts. As her face froze in a silent shriek, in her imprisoned conscience, the female Changeling cursed and seethed uncontrollably. She blamed her peers. She blamed the Alicorns – all of them. They permitted her resurrection; they let her fall; they destroyed everything she had ever strived for. Her emotions churned, but her enthraller would not let shape-shifter rest as the discharges abated.‘You are queen no more. You are my tool. My weapon of war. Act in this manner once more, and you will not be spared my wrath. Understood, Fallen-Queen?’

No answer.

Another electric discharge came, striking in a concentrated hit that almost completely shut down her functions.

‘Answer. Did you understand my words, Fallen-Monarch?’

‘Yes,’ she struggled to utter from beyond her drool.

‘Good. Recuperate now.’

The mage left the once queen to heal her wounds. Her bio-magically enhanced body progressively repaired itself. Eventually, her breathing steadied, but she remained on the floor as she waited for the order to stand back once more.