Tulian Republic Year 0
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Empire Year 1285 of the Aydrion Era
253rd Year of Civil War
Mui Thom walked along a very narrow, winding track in the mud. He was following the thin stretch of ground which the carts had passed over, rather than through, where the wheels had cut deep ruts in the mud. It was not as simple as one might expect. The carts took winding, twisting paths, as driver and steed alike tried to find an easier path across the sodden ground. The mere passage of fifty thousand marching soldiers and the hundreds of wagons required to supply them tore apart ndscapes with ease. He could only imagine what it would be like to travel in one of the true armies, instead of this northern skirmish force. Far, far worse, he could only assume, and he already found himself often leaping across several feet of demolished terrain to nd on a patch of unsoiled ground. Every time he did so, he imagined he could feel eyes boring into his back.
Oh well, he thought as he hopped across yet another gap, that's the privilege of being a Sergeant.
The yellow petals of rank had been stitched onto his uniform just a week before, and he wore the flowery insignia with beaming pride. For a man who had served five years in the army, he was far behind his peers in attaining his first Rank of Merit. For the spritely age of twenty-one, however, he was amongst the youngest Sergeants he knew. Many of the soldiers in the squad he'd been given command of were in fact older than him, which was a source of no small discontent.
And his present behavior wasn't helping. While he hopped from clear patch to clear patch, his squad slopped along behind him, forced into the mud by their rigid formation. He knew they despised the happy, downright jovial demeanor he carried himself with. Mui didn't want to say that he didn't care, but he had to admit that their opinion wasn't his greatest concern. He had spent five years marching in simir conditions, and he thought that his half decade of drudgery had at least earned him the right to spend a bit less time scraping muck from his boots at the end of each long day. Let them be irritated with his antics for now; what really mattered, and what would truly earn their loyalty, would be his success in command. Mui knew from long experience just how much a soldier would tolerate from an officer, so long as that officer proved competent in battle.
Unfortunately for Mui, as he stepped aside to relieve himself at the edge of the jungle-woven trail, he could see something very unfamiliar ahead. He had confidence in his ability, true, but he had always fought in very specific, intimately familiar fashions.
Now, for the past two days of their march northward, the trees had been shrinking. The titanic trunks that he had lived his entire life within had been thinning with every step, their green canopy slowly descending. It was an odd thing, to see trees that ended a mere fifty feet above his head. And now, as he looked to the north, he could see something even stranger. Something utterly alien in all his years of travel.
The trail ended. Not in a dead end, where the jungle had grown over the road. Not ending by virtue of turning to cobblestones, marking the entrance to a city. Not even ending in the way he occasionally saw when a ke y ahead, reflecting the blue skies above.
No. It just... opened up. There wasn't anything further. The grass that tinged the edges of cleared trails spread, and spread, and spread, until it covered every inch of ground. Already he could see an entire mile ahead, and he could have seen even further, if it weren't for a single rising hill. When the army climbed that small rise, Mui imagined, he would have clear sight for many miles more.
He pulled up his pants, shouldering his spear as he hurried to retake with his pce in the long line. While one part of his mind tracked the sodden terrain, turned over by fifty thousand marching boots, he tried to imagine how the generals would fight such an unfathomably unconstrained battle.
How could he keep his squad safe, when any group of soldiers could simply wheel around to press at the army from the sides? How could he ensure his squad would receive the safest posting, when one couldn't even know from what direction the enemy would attack? All military strategy he had ever known was predicated on two armies meeting between walls of impenetrable jungle, forced into a brutal shoving match as either side tried to wear down the enemy's resolve. The greatest commanders were those who could dig the deepest into the enemy formations, convincing their opponent's soldiers that defeat was inevitable. There was no way to do the same on an open field. What was there to stop your opponent from simply disengaging in the midst of battle, fleeing in any random direction? It seemed an impossible dilemma, and he hated that it was one which faced him so soon after earning his command.
Those were the gloomy thoughts that battled with the still-bubbling joy of his recent promotion as he marched the final mile out of the jungle. He was so occupied by his thoughts that he didn't notice he had actually emerged from the jungle. Not until he was well beyond the threshold. When the cart he had been following creaked into a sharp right turn, revealing the emptiness ahead of him, reality was thrust upon him.
The world slipped out from under itself. It was exactly as he had imagined, and all the more baffling for it. There was truly nothing ahead. No trees, no brush, no cities or rivers or kes. Just grass as high as his waist, waving in the warm winds of the dry season. Only two things broke up the ndscape: a single sprouting of sparse trees clustered around a rainwater pond some few hundred yards to the north west, and one tiny, lonesome vilge.
A vilge? He realized with a start. That shouldn't be here.
Now aware of his surroundings properly, he realized that the vilge was the discussion of everyone but himself. His recent promotion had come with the temporary honor of marching near the head of the army, and so it was mostly cart-riding merchants, but a Warrior soon approached atop his slobbering animal.
"You! Sergeant! There is movement in that barbarian hovel. Bring its occupants for interrogation."
Though he had been marching since sun-up, and knew his squad was nearing exhaustion Mui dipped into a sharp bow, calling out a sharp, "Yes, sir!" He turned to his squad, who numbered twenty, and drew the side sword that was his official mark of rank. "You heard the man! Spears on your shoulders, shields on your arm!"
With the paradoxically zy urgency only career soldiers could truly embody, they equipped themselves as he ordered. Packs were dropped in the half-empty cart of a merchant, whose name Mui officially recorded to ensure the fellow would not "lose" their supplies, and then they were off.
Moving at the double-pace down the hill, Mui was once again struck by the strangeness of being able to see so far into the distance. He was nearly two miles away from the vilge, yet he could already count individual homes.
Unfortunately, the same was true in reverse. The moving dots began to gather, and it was only a few short minutes before they became a solid blob, standing some hundred yards beyond the outmost building. Mui ordered his squad to continue approaching, even as he began to pick out the glittering tips of spears.
"They're just some barbarian militia," Mui called, alying any concerns his troops may have. "And we are not going to fight them. Only investigate what the northerners are doing so close to our jungle, and bring one back to a Warrior for their interrogation. Even barbarians are not foolish enough to fight over such a thing."
His soldiers grumbled, reluctant at the prospect of potentially coming to blows with even half-trained fools, but did not slow their march. That would be enough for now. Mui would have been a fool to expect genuine loyalty after only a week in command.
After a brisk half-hours march to the vilge, Mui called for a halt at the edge of arrow range. Despite his assurances that there would be no violence, he ordered the squad to drain the st of their canteens and adjust their armor as a precaution. While they did so, he studied the barbarians.
They were much as he had expected of the northern tribes the army's commanders had told them occupied this nd. Their clothing was simple and undyed, clearly worn by a hard life of tending tiresomely unproductive fields. Their spears were well-made for what they were, but of uninspired design. With simple iron heads secured by a wooden crossguard, they were weapons meant for dealing with animals, not soldiers. Their line was jagged, but still a line, rather than an undisciplined mob, which suggested they'd received lessons of some sort in the past. It wasn't enough to pose a threat to his squad, but it was worth noting.
The only irregurity came from two individuals standing at the rear of the line. They were both orcs, and could easily see over the rest of their fellows, a fact which they were using to point some strange contraption at Mui's squad. At first he thought they were crossbows, judging by how they were being held, but they had no strings, nor even a visible arrow, only a metal tube bookended by a wooden grip. That they were being pointed at Mui's squad in such btantly threatening manner gave him reason to pause, however. With the fact that the two orcs were at the center rear of their little rabble, it seemed the devices were something the vilgers thought worth protecting. Dangerous, then. At least in the mind of a barbarian.
"Hold firm, and take no hostile action except for self-defense," Mui instructed his squad tersely. "Keep your spears on your shoulder, but have your shields held before yourself. I don't want to lose my first soldier to some field-mad barbarian lobbing a rock when they weren't looking, understood?"
His troops did as ordered, bringing their shields up to protect their bodies. He thought he even detected a smirk or two, which he was gd for. No matter how dispassionate in their duties they were, the idea of a soldier of the Emperor being felled by a tossed stone was an amusing thought to them all.
Mui ordered them forward in a slow march, slower even than walking pace. He did not want to startle the vilgers into doing anything stupid. He knew the Warrior who had ordered him to this task was watching even now, and the stakes for seeing his first meaningful order seen through were high.
To his relief, the barbarians held. They were chattering amongst themselves in words he couldn't quite pick out, but they did not charge, flee, or loose arrows.
Mui called a halt when only fifty yards separated him from the barbarians. Once more unsheathing his Sergeant's sword, he stepped ahead of his troops, trusting his armor to protect him from any hasty shots. He paid close attention to the strange metal tubes, but seeing as they had no bolt or arrow loaded, he considered himself reasonably safe.
"Hello!" He called, tapping the tip of his sword to the Sergeant's Petal on his shoulder, as if the barbarians would recognize its meaning. "I am Sergeant Mui Thom of the True Emperor's Adjutant's Northern Expeditionary Taskforce, and I have been gifted the orders of a Warrior. He asks that I bring one of your number, the most educated among them, to tell the tale of your humble home."
The militia stared at him bnkly. Mui hesitated, opening his mouth to say more, but stopped when one of the orcs with the strange contraption spoke.
"Sergeant Mui Thom?" She asked. She spoke in a slow, grating tone, pointing at Mui as she said his name. Her brow was crooked by curiosity.
"Yes," he said, irritated. "Of the True Emperor's Adjutant's Northern Expeditionary Taskforce, as I said."
Once more, he was met with bnk stares. Then the woman spoke again, and he suddenly understood.
"Bhadi hadc dofs Sergeant dos tyr amiir army?"
Sweet gods, Mui mented to himself, have they really been so corrupted by their exposure to this maddening emptiness? It hasn't been three centuries since they were civilized, and yet they've already forgotten their nguage!
Clearly some words had been kept through the centuries, and so he hoped that some mutual communication could be established. He began speaking slowly, exaggerating his pronunciation.
"Mui Thom," he confirmed, tapping his chest. "Army," he said with a nod, this time pointing at the hill which was even now spilling over with soldiers making camp. "You vilge?" He circled his finger around the group, indicating their whole group. "Need one. Talk to army." He held up one finger, walked it towards the hill, then made a chattering motion with his hands, imitating two people talking at each other.
Later, when he had gained a firmer grasp of the northern nguage, he would recognize the orc's sordid response for what it was.
"Y'all, are we sure this kid isn't, uh, a bit touched?"
Having no idea what had been just said, Mui nodded with a wide smile, waving in an exaggerated a 'come here' motion.
Before he could get a meaningful response, however, one of his soldiers cried out.
"Sarge!" The man called. His voice was shrill enough for Mui to whip around, hand on his sword, searching for an ambush.
He followed the man's pointing arm, however, further and further, until he saw that he was pointing at no ambush at all.
At least, not one for his squad.
The hill he had come from was vomiting a pilr of billowing, pallid smoke. Mui could see more fires being lit each passing moment, stocks of skywreathe thrown from carts as fast as could be managed.
"How?" He whispered, whirling to shade his eyes as he searched the skies. It shouldn't have been possible. There should have been no way for them to have scouts so far north! Had the army mistaken some native bird for an enemy, throwing themselves into a panic? He thought they were better than this!
Then, a chill running down his spine, he spotted it. A dark shape towards the east, a blot against the pale blue sky. It was too far away to see much detail, and he had never heard of the enemy acting alone, but there was nothing else it could be. It was too rge, too high, too fast to be anything else.
"Back to the camp! Back, back, back! Grab whatever javelins you can find, then take your positions!"
This time, his squad responded near instantly. They broke into a run as soon as he was finished speaking, spping their shields on their back and tucking their spears as close to their shoulders as they could.
Behind them, unbeknownst to Mui, the orc muttered once more.
"...did that weird catfolk's whole army just light itself on damn fire?"
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Tinvel
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Eight hundred feet above the green waves of southern Tulian, Tinvel's hair was being blown back by a wind of nearly seventy miles an hour. He was traveling faster than almost any human being had traveled, his distant shadow a blur over the ndscape. Below him was a view of breathtaking majesty, once known only to the Dragons and those lucky few that had ridden them, the inspiration for untold numbers of poetic epics.
And he was having a panic attack.
“Why hasn’t it stopped yet?!” Chona yelled at him, her fur whipping wildly in the open cockpit.
“I don’t know!” He screamed back.
“Why don’t you know?!”
“If I knew that I would have fixed it already!”
Though he was technically in control of the bipne, Tinvel’s eyes were on anything but the majestic view ahead. He was awkwardly twisted around in his wicker seat, neck crooked over, with only the tips of one hand barely nudging the control column. His other hand was running along the gemstones set into the wooden paneling behind him, sending tiny sparks of energy into each one. Even with wind roaring in his ears, he watched each gem’s response to the stimulus carefully, trying to figure out what exactly had gone wrong.
“Tinvel!”
“I’m working on it!”
He shifted further in his seat, ignoring the painful jabbing of various protrusions that dug into his skin.
Who would have thought we’d have trouble with the pne going too fast?
Yet again finding nothing on this particur check of the eight rhythmically thumping gemstones, Tinvel was forced to begin the process anew. This was only their third flight of the bipne, and they were well beyond the pnned scope of the test. The Governess had wanted them to take the pne up near the southern border to track the progress of the jungle’s steady northward encroachment. He and Chona had agreed at once; the southern fields were perfect testing grounds for the aircraft, well away from any prying eyes, with ample ground to nd should any problem arise.
The pne had been built with three speeds. A takeoff speed, emergency speed, and what David Brown called a “cruising speed.” Takeoff speed was self-expnatory, being the power setting required to lift the bipne off the ground, while cruise speed was supposed to be what they kept the pne set to most of the time.
The emergency speed, however, was the absolute maximum power output the gemstones were capable of. It had been added almost as an afterthought, when he'd realized the gemstones had just a little bit more to give before shattering. He'd reasoned it might allow them to get out of a bad situation as fast as humanly possible, after which they could return to the more sedate cruising speed. On the previous two test flights, they’d only ever used the takeoff speed, circling the area for a few short minutes before cutting the engine and gliding back to the runway. Today had been the flight that would test their ability to transfer between speeds mid-flight. The test had been running almost fwlessly, up until a few minutes prior.
Now it was going very, very poorly.
“They won’t switch back!” Tinvel yelled, barely audible over the wind. “They’re stuck on emergency!”
“Then cut the power!”
“That’s not working either!”
“How?!”
“Stop asking me that!”
As he twisted further in the seat, trying to get a better angle, his tenuous grasp on the control column suddenly slipped.
The pne jerked, control surfaces fluttering wildly as they were buffeted by the wind which his grip was no longer counteracting. The entire vehicle rolled hard to the right, threatening to invert entirely, and then, just as abruptly, snapped to the left, smming the side of Tinvel’s head against something hard. The tail began a violent osciltion in the same moment, adding a nauseating corkscrew to the violent left-right whipsawing.
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” Tinvel spewed a litany of curses as the pne continued to bob and weave uncontrolbly, tossing him around in his seat. If he hadn’t been tied in at the waist, he certainly would have been tossed free, likely flying straight into the massive propeller whirring inches behind his head.
After a few moments of sheer panic, Tinvel finally grabbed a hold of the control column, freezing the pne in pce.
“Up!” Chona screeched. “Up, up, up!”
A spike of dread shot through Tinvel as he looked forward, finding his entire view filled with a sea of green. He tore back on the control column as hard as he dared, trying to find a bance between pulling out of the dive and not ripping the wings in half from the stress.
The sudden feeling of swallowing his own tongue was thoroughly unwelcome, as was the gray which began to tinge the edge of his vision, but nothing was worse than the fact that the ground kept getting closer.
“ROLL LEFT! LEFT!”
For once, Tinvel did as Chona said without a second thought. He released his pull on the control stick, smmed it to the left for one agonizing second, and then heaved backward once more.
The blue horizon that crawled into his line of sight was maybe the most beautiful thing Tinvel had ever seen. The pne began to choke its way back up into the skies, yard by yard, while Tinvel kept a white-knuckled grip on the controls, refusing to let go for even a moment.
“You were driving us straight into the ground!” Chona yelled at him, once she’d caught her breath. She was half-turned around in her seat, pupils dited with anger and terror. “What in the gods' names were you thinking?!”
“You said to pull up!”
“I meant go up, not pull up! We were upside down!”
“How the hells was I supposed to know that?!”
“By using your eyes!”
What Tinvel wanted to say was that he couldn’t see over her massive head, but there wasn’t much point in arguing. Of course that normally didn’t stop him, but for once he had something better to do.
With a monumental effort, Tinvel forced one hand to release its cw grip on the control column. This time making sure to keep his gaze firmly ahead, he felt at the crystals, trying to diagnose the problem once more.
"Wait," Chona said, causing Tinvel to freeze. "Look! Look over there!"
Tinvel followed her pointing finger, expecting to find some horrible damage to the aircraft that was going to send them plummeting out of the sky, only to find her pointing ahead. He leaned to one side, mindful of the control column, peering through the web of support spars that secured the pne's wings.
"What in the hells...?" He muttered. The words were snatched away by the wind, but he felt sure his expression gave Chona the gist.
Pooling on a rge hill, just beyond the jungle wall, was an utter impossibility. A teeming horde of people, unlike anything he had ever seen before, with more still trickling out of the jungle. He knew at once it was a military force of some description, if only because the great throngs were divided into neat rows and marching columns, but who they belonged to, or just how many of them there were, he couldn't say. All he could say was that he had never seen so many people in one pce.
"We need to get closer!" Tinvel yelled, when he finally got his wits about him. He tilted the control column to the right, sending the pne in a sweeping curve.
Chona whirled on him. "Woah, what? No we don't!"
"Do you know what that is?" He called back.
"No, of course not!"
"Exactly! We we need to find out!"
Chona stared incredulously at him, her vanara eyes widened with arm. Beneath her gss-pted 'aviator' goggles, the expression looked rather comical.
"No the hell we don't!" She cried. "What are you thinking? We almost crashed, like, five seconds ago!"
"But we didn't! I can keep working on it while we get closer, alright? Keep a lookout!"
Making a point to keep staring straight ahead, Tinvel fumbled behind himself once more, struggling to split his attention. Flying the bipne was already a near impossible task, with the way every twitch and turn was puppeted by nothing more than unpowered metal cables, and now he was trying to fix the engine while he was at it.
I told her we needed secondary controls in the front seat! If she could be flying, I could actually fix this damn thing!
The bipne that David Brown had helped them invent was a messy, complicated affair. The Champion's illusory recreations of otherworldly machines could only do so much, leaving much of the design to their own ingenuity. Tinvel thought they had done a decent job, considering the fact that the thing really did fly, but even he couldn't say it flew well. According to Mr. Brown, the pne they had tried to replicate was, while innovative for its time, hopelessly outdated after a mere few months spent fighting in what he called the Great War. Pcing the prop behind the pilot, for example, was apparently bad practice, but it was also the only way they could see for Chona to be able to loose spells ahead of the aircraft. Simirly, having two sets of wings slowed the pne considerably, but they cked the ability to build something sturdy enough to survive with only one pair of wings. It was, by all accounts, a stopgap measure, unlikely to be remembered for much beyond the fact that it was the world's first.
Despite all this, as he rocketed towards the strange army at a thousand untouchable feet above the ground, Tinvel could feel just how profoundly the world had changed. He was charging towards untold thousands of soldiers, and he didn't think he was in the slightest bit of danger.
"How many do you think there are?" He asked.
"Thousands!" Chona yelled back, gripping the wall of the pne's cockpit as she leaned over the side.
That's an understatement, Tinvel thought as he tried to make his own appraisal. The closer they got to the massive army, the more he seemed to pick out. Dots he'd thought were individuals proved to be clumps of soldiers, many of which were busying themselves by setting up tents or emptying supply carts. Forlornly, he found himself desperately wishing David had finished creating his binocur devices before this flight. He would be able to tell so much more if he could just see them a little bit closer.
Unconsciously, Tinvel tilted the pne's nose forward. The propeller's whirring buzz ticked up a notch as they began to accelerate into the dive.
Before Chona even had the chance to yell at him for his recklessness, however, something unexpected happened.
Signaled by some unheard horn, flurries of motion erupted across the entire half-finished encampment. Tinvel squinted as hard as he could, trying to see what was happening, only for the army to announce its intentions for him.
A fire began somewhere near the center of the camp, a normal wisp of smoke beginning to drift upward, only to abruptly burst into a roiling grey cloud. Other fires began beside it, then beside them and beside them in a growing chain, until suddenly the entire camp was covered by an impenetrable tower of thick smog. It wasn't smoke like Tinvel had ever known it. Instead of soot, it was the color of pale grey ashes, the remnants of a cook fire thrown into the air.
"Get away from that!" Chona yelled.
"Why?"
"Because they're doing it to hide from us! And if they already had a pn for hiding from something flying, doesn't that mean there's something nearby that can fly too? Something that's a threat to an entire damned army?"
Tinvel's short-lived euphoria was poked through by her words, his sense of invincible confidence defting in a sputtering gasp. She was right. What kind of army made pns for hiding from something flying?
He reluctantly began to tilt the pne away, diverting towards the east. He wouldn't be getting any more detail on the army, not without flying through the cloud itself, and the st thing he wanted to do was sm into the ground because his vision was choked with ash.
He saw Chona sigh in the seat in front of him, shoulders rexing. She turned her attention away from the massive army behind them, instead slipping a compass from one of the many pouches she'd sewn around the edges of her seat. After waiting a moment for the jittering needle to stabilize, she pointed towards the pne's 11 o'clock.
"They should be back that way!"
"Okay! I think we're going to have to circle above the others until we run out of power! I can't fix this in mid-flight!"
"Better hope nothing explodes before it runs out of juice then, right?" Chona asked, a nervous ugh in her voice.
Tinvel didn't return the humor. He'd felt the crystals himself. They were draining too much, too fast. Explosion was a very real possibility.
Before he could try and talk it over with her, he was yet again derailed by an impossible sight.
Another army emerging from the jungle, some five miles east of the first. Though he couldn't see all of the soldiers, half-hidden by the trees as they were, it was already looking to be as rge a force as the first.
"How?!" Chona screeched.
"I wish you'd stop fucking asking me that!" Tinvel yelled back, curving further north to avoid overflying the army. Once he was on a better course, he dipped a wing, affording himself a view of the absurd sight.
"There's no way we can beat an army that size!" Chona yelled. "Not even a Champion can do that! What the fuck do we do?!"
"I don't think we'll have to do anything!" Tinvel yelled back. He lifted a hand to point. "Look! They've got their weapons out, and they're heading west!"
"Are they going to fight each other?"
"I sure hope so!" Tinvel tipped the pne into a dive once more, this time on purpose. "Either way, we've got to get the hell back home!"
The world's first bipne gathered speed, wings jittering and tail bouncing. Behind it, two massive armies began to close on one another. It was a camity in the making, Tinvel knew.
"...hey Chona!"
"Yeah?"
"I call dibs on not telling Evie!"
The vanara girl's head thumped back, bouncing off her headrest as she groaned.
"Shit!"
Tinvel ughed. He supposed he shouldn't have been ughing, considering the circumstances. Their third test flight had been disaster after disaster, and it would only get worse when– if– they managed to nd.
Tinvel ughed again. He couldn't help it; he was flying. That's all he needed.
