Loremachine: The Pilgrimage – Act Three: Traitor
Feora and her followers have returned to the Protectorate, but their journey is far from over. With the faithful facing threats on every side, the Priestess of the Flame must decide where Menoth’s people are needed most.
If you missed the first two parts of The Pilgrimage, you can catch up here:
Last we left things, Feora, Stallos and their companions had reached Ancient Icthier, where they learned of a terrible new threat rising from the ruins of Acrennia. Now, Feora must lead a force of Flameguard into the desert to confront it.
All the world’s execrations must be bathed in the flames of purity.
Feora, Priestess of the Flame, 604 AR
Sul, 606 AR
The blazing inferno swallowed the screams of dying soldiers behind its roar. Smoke choked the survivors’ lungs, and left them blinking tears from bloodshot eyes. The blaze which had consumed so many of the invading men and women was Feora’s latest effort to break the enemy’s resolve, yet the Caspians still marched forward. The fire had cut them off from reinforcements, but the warcaster leading them was relentless, demanding the soldiers under his command push on.
Sporadic rocket fire erupted nearby as Stallos’ fellow Menites withdrew to seek a better-fortified position. The Temple Flameguard had attempted to rally, but their line remained ragged and incomplete. The whole force had pulled back into an ancient temple, one of the largest buildings still standing in this quarter of the city.
A crack of gunfire echoed and a Flameguard to Preceptor Stallos’ left dropped. Another surged forward to fill the gap. Blue-armored soldiers, their weapons lit bright by lightning, rushed forward to engage the Menites.
This had been Stallos’ world for months. The war between Caspia and Sul had moved like the tide, pushing against the Cygnaran city on the west bank of the Black River, then falling back to Sul on the east. Walls which had weathered the might of the Orgoth had been breached. Thousands were wounded or dead on both sides of the river, and the skies had not been free of the columns of smoke that rose as funeral pyres since the fighting began.
Stallos had but one remaining of the warjacks he’d been entrusted with at the start of the campaign; a Crusader he’d named Hymn of Wrath. He commanded the machine forward to intercept the Cygnarans. It was damaged, limping on one good leg, but dutifully obeyed. The warjack met the line of advancing knights and smashed its mace through them. Bodies, broken and ablaze, flew through the air.
Before Stallos could urge Hymn of Wrath to finish the survivors with a crushing fist, an enemy warjack crashed into it. Stallos could only watch helplessly as the Ironclad brought its massive hammer down upon Hymn of Wrath’s hull. The impact sent a shockwave through the earth that he felt even from a distance. His awareness abruptly contracted to his own senses alone, as Hymn of Wrath’s cortex blinked out.
“Shields!” A voice rose above the clamor, high-pitched and panicked. Cygnaran knights swept into the Menites, lightning cascading over their storm glaives. The Flameguard front rank twitched grotesquely as electricity coursed through their bodies, filling the air with the scent of ozone, burned hair, and charred meat.
The surviving defenders struck back with their flame spears, and a row of Cleansers behind sprayed flaming arcs of Menoth’s Fury over the Cygnarans. The heat made Stallos’ skin draw taut. He gripped his spear tighter and stabbed through a gap in the shield wall, feeling it strike true.
The press of Cygnarans did not abate. A knight with a rifle-like weapon raked a bolt of lightning across the front line of defenders. A snap of pain ripped through Stallos’ body as it struck his tower shield. The contact was enough to turn the metal red hot and Stallos tore his shield free, dropping it to the ground as his flesh began to blister. A moment later the lightning stream snapped off, chased by a deafening thunderclap.
Stallos shouted an order to the nearest Flameguard, as he led a counterstrike against the assault. His spear darted forth like a serpent, finding gaps in Cygnaran armor. After burning for so long in the field its flaming tip threatened to gutter out, until he whirled the weapon and coaxed more fuel from its reservoir. Stallos need not have wasted the time; he stabbed the weapon into the armpit of a Storm Knight, and it became entangled within the mess of the dying knight’s flesh and armor plates. Stallos had to hurriedly abandon his weapon to avoid reprisal from the fallen knight’s companions.
Skyhammer rockets fell like hail around him. Some struck close enough to blast both Cygnaran and Flameguard soldiers alike, broken cobblestone and dirt raining across Stallos’ shoulders. The warjack which had destroyed Hymn of Wrath bowled through the Protectorate line, trampling men and women underfoot like a runaway train, crushing swathes of bodies with sweeps of its hammer.
From the clouds of dust and smoke, a man-shaped figure emerged.
He wore a warcaster’s armor, the metal plates wreathed by a nimbus of lightning. His eyes were those of a feral dog, his sneering face a rictus of rage. Stallos watched him take the head off a Flameguard soldier with his oversized mechanikal sword, pivot, then shove the barrel of his hand cannon to another's temple before firing. The noise the man made as his victim crumpled was inhuman, a bellow of wrath and victory. As the figure screamed, blue runes flared around his body, and tendrils of lightning crashed down on the Flameguard in the front ranks.
Stallos’ fingers went numb, his spear slipping from his grasp. In the temple's shadow, where the Priestess of the Flame took shelter, he felt his will to fight leave his body. Following its path, he fled from battle. Behind him the feral Cygnaran entered the temple. Panicked screams rose from the common folk within.
Stallos did not turn back to protect them.
--
Ancient Icthier, 623 AR
Stallos shot upright in the dark, arms thrashing and violently knocking against the headboard of the bed he lay in. His heart was pounding and his breathing rapid and panicked.
Slowly he calmed as his senses returned and he realized he was free of the nightmare. The city faded, leaving him in a dusty barracks chamber, located within the High Temple of the Canon.
Feora’s group had arrived late, much to the bewilderment of the Temple Flameguard who had been watching the city’s gate overnight. When Feora announced herself by name, Stallos saw the confusion among the soldiers. He knew the Priestess of the Flame was considered a fugitive from justice throughout much of the Protectorate, but she was still the woman who had established the Flameguard order in its modern form. Many members of the Flameguard still privately held her in deep regard.
“Let me spare your consciences,” Feora had offered. “I am turning myself in, and seek an audience with the most senior scrutator of Ancient Icthier. Is it still Jarok Shaw, or has he finally relented to meet the Creator?”
What happened next fell somewhere between surrender and homecoming.
While Feora’s entourage was asked to surrender its weapons, the order had been in the gentlest language Stallos had ever heard used for such a request. They were then offered provisions and wine, and the local Flameguard made space for them in the barracks. The unexpected travelers were to wait there, both guests and prisoners, until Feora could meet with Scrutator Sovereign Jarok Shaw after the morning prayer.
Isur the Pilgrim’s bier was taken into the temple’s vault to be watched over by Icthier’s most senior Flameguard—at least, the most senior assigned to the night’s watch. After supervising the soldiers, Feora had requested a private chamber to meditate, prompting Kerr Malek to ask for one as well. Stallos had found that while he had concerns about the airs assumed by the High Scrutator, he was too exhausted to voice them and retired along with the rest of the Flameguard.
Returning to the present, Stallos breathed deep and exhaled slowly to further calm his heart. In the darkness around him, he heard the quiet breathing and occasional shuffling of the other soldiers, sleeping on nearby beds. Lying back down, Stallos let the sound guide him back into a hopefully dreamless sleep.
--
An arms-master arrived with a squad of Flameguard after the morning prayer, and escorted Feora, Malek, and Stallos to the chamber of Scrutator Sovereign Jarok Shaw.
The space looked more like a scriptorium or archive than a sacristy. Columns of light, tinted jeweled colors by a bank of stained-glass windows, cut bright bars through the gloom. Every flat surface was piled high with books and scrolls, ranging from the most ancient Stallos could imagine to documents so new the ink might still be wet.
Hunched by his many years and navigating the stacks with the aid of his staff of authority, the aged scrutator sovereign approached them. At his side stood a younger potentate, the older man's guide.
Shaw signaled their escort to clear chairs so they could sit.
“Under normal circumstances, Feora, it would be my duty to the Synod to see you put in chains and dragged along the road to Tower Judgment. But, you’ll forgive me for sidestepping that duty at the moment. You have twice as many warcasters at your disposal then I do, more functioning warjacks than otherwise remain in the city, and I can’t be certain any Flameguard I’d order to perform the task wouldn’t take your side.”
“How fares Ancient Icthier?” Feora left his words unacknowledged.
“About as well as the rest of our kingdom,” Shaw answered. “With each passing day I fear we approach the final breaths of the Sul-Menite faith. The world has changed since you ran off into the desert, Priestess. Westerners now conduct their battles from the skies, and fresh wars have begun burning across the distant north. The Intercessor does what he can, but his mettle was forged for the battlefield, not the governor’s table. We are fewer than ever before, weaker than we should be, and beset by foes on all sides. I would share more if I could, but Icthier hasn’t received much news from abroad in recent years.”
“Why is that?” asked Malek.
Shaw’s head turned toward the High Scrutator. He leaned forward, and Stallos could see his eyes squint behind his mask. “High Scrutator Malek, is that you? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you would seek out someone like the Priestess of the Flame. You have always enjoyed sharing the warmth of another’s rising fire.” He turned to his guide. “Colten, tell them what we know. My voice needs a rest.”
In spite of his words, Stallos detected little change in the old man’s tone to indicate fatigue.
“We haven’t heard from Imer for some time.” the younger man stepped forward and spoke. “Word has reached us of a great malignance on the Burning Road, north of the Monastery of the Order of the Fist. Without word from Visgoth Scarrel, the Scrutator Sovereign has had to keep his own counsel on how to respond to reports of attacks on pilgrims traveling there.
“A phalanx of soldiers with a dozen consecrated warjacks was sent to deal with whatever banditry had claimed the place. We assumed it was some vestige of a skorne army. We were very wrong. Of the thousands of men and women sent forth, only three returned, and two of them had been driven to such madness that the mercy of death was the only balm we had left to give them.”
“What manner of foe was it?” Feora’s voice had turned hard.
“One not of Caen,” Colten replied. “The survivor who retained her senses, a Cleanser named Thora Sael, described an army of madness rising from the sands, laughing with mirth as it hewed into her comrades’ flesh. By her account, the world shifted in unfathomable ways to impede the phalanx, as if the battle were waged in a nightmare. She begged for purification on a wrack facing the Menofix Titan.”
“Were no warcasters sent?” Stallos interjected, aghast at what he’d heard.
“No.” Colten shifted in place, like a student answering questions from his instructor. “We have never had the blessing of a dedicated warcaster in our garrison. Such privileges are reserved for cities like Sul and Imer.” The potentate did nothing to conceal the rising anger in his voice. “Despite being the first city of Menoth’s faithful, despite having his very law inscribed into our stones by his own hand, we are a forgotten backwater to the ruling powers in Imer. Our own Visgoth doesn’t see fit to spend his time—”
“Enough!” Shaw silenced the potentate. He turned to the others. “My potentate’s blood runs hot. What he means to say is that since the Infernal War, the resources of Icthier have been needed elsewhere in the Protectorate. It has been a bleeding of many tiny cuts, but when added together, the loss is… significant.
“Without the Burning Road, we are effectively cut off from Imer. Trying to circumvent it through the Erud Hills means fighting through tribes of farrow and bogrin, and that is before one takes the wild beasts that roam the Bloodstone Desert into consideration,”
Colten glowered out the nearest window. “We have been working with the Order of the Fist to support each other, but even they haven’t managed to make it past—”
“Past Acrennia,” Shaw’s ancient voice broke as he said the city’s name. “The cursed vaults of that city have stirred in recent years. Something provokes its dormant spirits and unending wrath against the Lawgiver’s children.”
“What of the sea?” Malek looked between the two Icthieri priests’ masked faces. “I saw masts rising from the mouth of the Harber River. Surely, you could avoid Acrennia and reach Imer by boat?”
While Stallos could not read the younger priest’s face, he saw the potentate’s shoulders sag, and knew the man was crestfallen. “There are new and greater perils beyond our shores. We have never been a strong nation on the waves, and we have seen black-sailed ships with increasing regularity. To send one of our ships would, I fear, be to feed its crew to the gulls.”
While they spoke, Stallos saw Feora shift in her seat. She threaded her fingers together and brought them to the chin of her own mask, seemingly lost in thought. After a time, her head rose toward the Scrutator Sovereign. “How many of my Flameguard are still in the city?”
Shaw cocked his head to the side like a curious dog. “If you inquire after our garrison, I will have to ask the preceptor… but I should hazard no more than five thousand at most.”
Stallos felt his eyebrows rise. “That’s less than a third of what was here before.”
“Many cuts, as I said,” Shaw shot back.
“And I am afraid I must bleed you a little more.” Feora rose from her seat, prompting Stallos to do the same. “I ask you for a thousand Flameguard, but I swear in the Creator’s name I shall rid you of this evil. Only through Menoth’s flame is the world cleansed and are the vile purged. Those who went before us did so without a warcaster to fight by their side, but through Menoth’s divine wisdom he has now put two on this path.”
--
Stallos silently thanked the Creator when he saw the forces arrayed before him. The city’s garrison mixed Flameguard disciplines, drawing from both the Cleansers and temple defenders. He noted that some carried skyhammer rockets, traditionally Deliverer weapons. Given how different Icthier now felt since he last saw it, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see the Flameguard had come to adopt pragmatism over regimented doctrine.
The local vice preceptor had selected which soldiers to send on this sortie. Judging by the way they mustered in Icthier’s Plaza of Justice, they were picked from among the more experienced fighters. The temple defenders were absent of the indecisive shuffling feet that betrayed recruits. The Cleansers held their weapons with barrels pointed down across their bodies and inclined slightly forward, indicating they were well-drilled to avoid friendly fire.
All in all, they had enough troops to form a small and hasty interdiction force, if one with slightly less warjacks than Stallos would have liked. There were only five warjacks between him and Feora, just over half of what Stallos would have believed ideal.
Behind them a group of citizens had gathered a series of wagons, upon which they’d heaped provisions, coal, tools and components for repairs, and hundreds of gallons of water. The baggage train also included the elements Feora’s entourage had lacked when it set out from the Spire of the Flame; namely, portable ovens manned by bakers, provisioners with butchers to accompany them, armorers, weaponsmiths, surgeons and nurses, launderers, carpenters, and laborers. They were the oft-forgotten or forgone part of moving a significant force of people overland over any appreciable distance. A group the size of an interdiction needed half again as many people to keep its war camp in order every night, preserving as much of the soldiers’ strength as possible for fighting on the front lines.
Stallos was relieved that, for the first time in too long, he could sleep on something better than his pack. It made for a rough and unpleasant pillow when it was time to stop marching.
These camp followers gradually fell in behind as the soldiers formed up, moving unhurriedly at their own pace. They knew they would catch up with the main force once they chose where to make camp.
The plan was simple. The procession would march up the Burning Road in column formation. Valeria and a select group of soldiers, chosen for their keen eyes, would form the vanguard. At the first sign of the enemy the vanguard would fall back to the main column to report, and Feora would choose the battleground.
Without further ceremony, the column set off across the sand-draped land of the southern Protectorate.
Stallos soon saw the Burning Road remained as desolate as ever. It was well known the trail had a tendency to vanish beneath drifts in places; accordingly, over the centuries faithful hands had erected waystones several yards tall, allowing travelers to keep to the path. They dotted either side of the wide stone slabs that made up the road, tiny specks on the horizon which danced and shimmered in the heat. Very little else broke up the landscape. To the northeast, the Erud Hills were a dark smudge. To the southwest, the Bay of Cygnar’s waves glinted like shards of broken glass in the sunlight.
It was not long before the column began to encounter the remains of ramshackle camps that once upon a time had served pilgrims traveling between Imer and Icthier. The largest were little villages that somehow remained even without travelers on the road, populated by a few hardscrabble families too stubborn to abandon what either they or their ancestors had built. The people of these settlements came out of their homes to marvel at Feora’s entourage as it passed. Some few even joined the camp followers at the rear, swelling their ranks. Most, however, simply stared or shouted questions at the soldiers as they marched past.
The column continued its journey for long days, filled with little but the sound of their footsteps and the eerie wind that swept across the dunes and cracked stone. Having reached so far into the sands, the waystones eventually stopped, lending a sense that the army marched across a lawless frontier; if any bandits or highwaymen were in the area, however, they knew better than to take on more than a thousand trained Flameguard, and no resistance was met.
At midday on the tenth day, Stallos finally spied the distant ruins of Acrennia. The ancient city jutted awkwardly from the sand, an incongruous bit of dark stone in a vast desert. As they drew closer, Stallos saw black stones, hewn from the desert's hardpan and jutting forth from the sand. At first he assumed them to be irregular mounds, perhaps half a man's height; but as the column marched another league they grew even taller and he became convinced the stones were artificially placed, much like the waystones had been.
When the camp stopped for the evening, Valeria’s unit returned with news of the land ahead, conversing with the Priestess of the Flame in urgent tones while the soldiers took their supper. Shortly after, Feora ordered the followers stationed in the camp’s center, with the Flameguard arranged around them to shield them from anything that might try to pick them off. It initially seemed an unnecessary measure to Stallos, but in the morning several of the soldiers reported hearing voices on the wind or strange chants and prayers that seemed to come from just over the next dune.
The next day they resumed their passage, eventually reaching one of the strange markers. As its surface was revealed, Stallos saw inscriptions upon its face. The runes carved into the rock glowed with inner malice, as if the stone's center was molten. Stallos scowled at the message.
Oh Lawgiver, who fashioned us from dust and named dominion over us your covenant; where was your hand when your children cried out? You wore a veil of silence and abandoned us. Even beasts watch over what they beget, yet you left us in a world of thorns. What father kindles life only to forsake it? What God demands obedience from children he would not stoop to shelter?
“Do not allow your eyes to be stained by such blasphemy,” Feora called back to her soldiers, who passed her words down the column.
Later that evening the camp arranged itself as it had the night before, and those assigned to sentry duty were accompanied by initiate priests from among the civilians. Throughout the night the sound of prayers drifted through the camp, bolstering faith and morale. Even so, as Stallos stood watch in the early hours of the morning, he heard the distant baying of a creature whose voice sounded like a mix of a coyote and a man screaming in pain.
--
On the third night, as Stallos rose and made to relieve one of the sentries from their watch, he saw Feora sitting awake outside her tent, illuminated by the soft light of a small campfire. She sat cross legged, rolling an unlit flame spear between her hands, seemingly lost in thought.
Stallos quietly approached. The Priestess of the Flame acknowledged him with a subtle nod, gesturing for him to join her. Long moments passed, the only sound the crackle of the fire, and a distant hymn drifting on the wind from the edge of camp.
Eventually, she spoke. “I have seldom spoken of him these long years, but I once had an older brother, a member of the Temple Flameguard. I would always know when he was home. When he returned from his duties, he would lean his flame spear against the wall by our door, even though our mother warned him not to, over and over.
“I envied him terribly. He was much older, but to the child I was, it seemed a special cruelty that he could carry such a marvelous instrument and wield it whenever he pleased, while I was forbidden even to touch it. I would wait until the house had gone still, then slip outside with his spear in my hands. Something in it called to me, and awakened a spiritual sense that had always been within me.
“I would find an empty plaza somewhere in the city and set its tip alight.” The Priestess of the Flame paused, and held the spear aloft. A mote of fire kindled inside the spear’s tip, drawing fuel through its central wick with a low and hungry howl.
“I loved the fire,” Feora continued. For a moment, her voice took on a gentle and youthful wonder. “It pulled at something deep inside me. At first I was afraid of my gift. But, when I stopped fearing that part of myself—when I stopped trying to smother it—I could make the flame dance.” The flame in the spear flickered wildly as Feora drew a rune through the air with the fingers of her free hand, leaving a supple stream of amber light. “I was never happier than in those stolen hours, dancing with the fire as the world slept.
“But our world is not one that allows little girls to dance.” Feora’s voice hardened. “One night, a member of my family followed me and saw me guide the flame. The men of my household seized me, calling me a witch and a sorceress. Amid the chaos, I dropped my brother’s spear.
“They say it started a fire that burned down part of my home, along with several others. I couldn’t tell you whether that was true; by then my family had dragged me from the plaza and thrown me to the scrutators. I can still remember the men arguing in raised voices. It went on until after dawn. Some said they should send me to Tower Judgment for purification. Others argued that my control of the flames was a gift from Menoth.”
With a flick of her fingers, the fiery rune dissipated and the flame in the spear went out.
Stallos regarded her. “Why are you telling me this, Priestess?”
“Because I am the one who turned you over to the scrutators, after Sul. Because…” The word caught in Feora’s throat, before she swallowed it down. “Because I was once a girl who wanted to dance with her fire. I too nearly ended up in Tower Judgment. I know how it feels to have failure and abnormality fastened around your neck until it feels heavier than any chain. I know what it’s like to wonder if you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to outrun the shadow of who you used to be.”
Feora met Stallos’ gaze for the first time since he’d sat down. “What I did to you was cruel. But you’ve become a better man because of it. A better man than the old Stallos ever would have been.”
Neither pity nor absolution softened her voice.
Only understanding.
--
On the fourth day after seeing the first blasphemous stone, the master of Acrennia made his presence known.
It came to pass like a sudden summer rainstorm in the desert, when great black thunderheads roll in from the Stormlands to the east, displacing clear blue skies and unleashing a torrent of water from above. One moment, the column marched as it had for nearly two weeks. The next, the desert landscape around them shifted, breaking up like a reflection in a still pond when a stone is hurled into the water.
The world moved and heaved. All around the column, circular pits yawned open, erupting into pools of fire that shifted like hundreds of eyes of flame. The air filled with a cacophony of voices speaking ancient tongues, their overlapping prayers and beckoning forming a maddening noise. The sky above warped into the color of an aching bruise, and a few yards in front of them stood something that both was and was not a man.
The figure wore the garb of a heroic rendition of an ancient priest-king, with baroque armor reminiscent of the statues of Hierarch Sulon in Imer, and a golden metal halo rising behind its head. Stallos felt his temper flare in indignation at the sight.
Who dares tread upon the land I claim as my own?
The words did not issue from the figure’s lips. They boomed from the heavens like distant thunder, then faded. The figure peeled away its face as if removing a mask and held it closer to the column, the eyes squinting to discern Feora more clearly.
Is this a whelp of the adversary, whom I have loathed through the fathomless ages? Why do you trespass within my hold?
Feora made no attempt to parley with the figure. A stream of flame erupted through the air toward the creature, threatening to overwhelm it. With unnerving speed and grace, the figure slipped out of the flames’ path before he could be consumed.
Seek you battle? Then battle shall be yours. I have gone too long without feeling the bones of the faithful crack beneath my feet. Find me at the walls of Acrennia.
The figure stepped back into the darkness, which closed around him like curtains falling across a stage. Where it once stood, only the open desert remained.
--
The Burning Road approached Acrennia between a low rise on the right and a dry plain on the left. The remains of the archaic settlement were a carcass stripped to the bone, barely recognizable as what it once had been, only misshapen lumps of stone which had once been towers and spires reaching into the sky. Even the great temples were reduced to broken shells, and Stallos felt the terrible slight their presence inflicted upon the Creator.
Their opponent kept his word. A patchwork throng of an army awaited outside the ruined walls. They were a horde of irregular and misshapen things. At their center stood the strange figure, flanked by hound-like shapes of glistening black flesh. Behind the army’s commander stood a tall humanoid form wielding a pair of wicked, hooked blades. A tapestry of stitched-together faces covered its form like a shawl. To Stallos’ horror, each face sang a pained rendition of a Menite hymn, rising in a discordant and unholy chorus.
Feora commanded a pair of Crusaders, and a smaller Revenger. Shield of Devotion stood alongside Stallos. The other warjack assigned to him, an aged Crusader, waited further away alongside a line of Flameguard. Both warjacks seemed eager for battle, Shield of Devotion in particular.
From the corner of his eye, Stallos saw a Flameguard preceptor staring aghast at the many-faced horror before them. He nudged the preceptor with an elbow, and offered her quiet advice. “Have the soldiers dress their ranks. You can stare at that thing when it’s dead.”
The woman nodded, and hastened to repeat Stallos’ order. Shields banged together along the entire front rank of the Menite force, as the Flameguard closed the gaps they had left while watching the horde beyond the road.
Four hundred yards behind their front line, the wagons were drawing together. Stallos could still see people moving among them, unhitching animals and carrying water toward the surgeons. Malek had gathered the accompanying priests in a single group. From here, the High Scrutator’s gestures looked impatient, though Stallos supposed the man might direct a prayer and complain about his accommodations with much the same movements.
Stallos tightened the straps on his own shield, and then joined Feora, who was studying their enemy.
“They seek to lure us forth, but I will give them no such pleasure. Stallos, have the Cleansers remain behind the shield wall, and use Skyhammers to rain fire upon our foes. If they fall back, do not pursue them into the ruins. They have the advantage of numbers. We command both fire and faith.”
Shield of Devotion moved to Stallos’ side and emitted a brief burst of steam, as if reassuring its master that it stood ready. Stallos offered it a gentle smile. “Mind your footing, friend.”
Across the field, the figure in priest-king armor raised its hand, holding its fleshly face aloft. The chanting stopped, and an odd silence descended.
Behold, servants of an unworthy creator. Acrennia is the fate of all things made in Menoth’s name. Reduced to ruin and dust, inhabited by monsters.
A volley of rockets launched from behind Stallos. If the enemy commander had anything else to say, the shrieking missiles arcing across the sky swallowed it. Twisting smoke trails reached across the open ground. The first warhead fell short of the enemy, throwing clouds of sand in their faces. The second impacted among a cluster of ragged soldiers, tearing their bodies apart and scattering the pieces. The third fell near the towering hulk, scorching it with flames.
The ragtag army surged forward. Most of the soldiers were a mismatched lot, wearing tattered old soldiers’ coats, pilgrim robes, and clothes so old and worn that Stallos could not recognize them. They carried an assortment of tarnished rifles. Here and there, their heads lolled at angles no living neck would allow. Stallos heard no order shouted among them, but the nearest group raised their rifles as one and loosed at the shield wall, the smoke of their blasting powder obscuring their position.
The jarring impact of a heavy round on his shield made Stallos brace his feet on the gritty road. “Hold steady! Let them come to us!”
The enemy emerged from behind the smoke, sprinting across the ground at a horrible pace. Bounding between their legs were grotesque fanged creatures with long hare-like ears. At Stallos’ shout, the Flameguard Defenders lowered their spears. Behind them the Cleansers opened their purifiers' valves. The air grew thick with the breath of battle.
Fire arced from between the gaps in the shields, as the Cleansers washed flames across the enemy's front rank, setting them alight. Burning figures crashed into the shield wall, seemingly unaware the fire was consuming them. One came at Stallos, driving its bayonet forward to scrape down his shield. He drove his spear through its head and had to plant a boot on its belly to pull the weapon free. At his side, Shield of Devotion pressed into the enemy advance. Its heavy shields scythed through the air, lashing out at the enemies within reach. Stallos left the warjack to its own devices, letting it crush whatever targets it pleased.
For a little while, the fighting went exactly as planned. The shield wall held, giving the Cleansers free rein to pick apart their more numerous foes, immolating any that reached beyond the defenders’ spears.
Then the priest-king loosed his black hounds.
The creatures moved with terrifying speed, weaving between rocket blasts as they charged the shield wall. To his left, Stallos watched a hound leap into the air before reaching the line, diving straight down into its own shadow. Inexplicably still moving, the shade slipped behind the Flameguard position, only for the hound-creature to explode out among the Cleansers. The beast wasted little time, clamping its jaws around the throat of one Cleanser and ripping it free in a shower of gore. To Stallos’ right, the other hound leapt onto Shield of Devotion, biting and grasping at the warjack’s chassis.
“Close the gap!” Stallos broke from the line to turn on the gore-spattered hound. The Cleansers’ weapons had bladed bayonets, but they couldn't match his spear. He struck the beast, piercing its flank. It responded by thrashing a distressingly long tongue at him like a whip. The tongue wrapped his spear arm and pulled him closer, too close for the weapon to be effective. Instead, Stallos formed a spell in his mind and hurled a wave of cleansing flames at the creature. Its skin caught like fresh oil and it bounded away as a living torch.
Stallos took a moment to survey his surroundings. Valeria stood on high ground, loosing arrows into the enemy’s ranks. Feora’s handmaidens had advanced beyond the shield wall, and were cleaving a path through the hollow-eyed riflemen. On the left flank, the enemy had wrapped around their position and was firing on the Cleansers. Stallos urged his Crusader to move in that direction and cover the exposed flank. Bullets rang off its hull as it moved into place.
Looking to the right, he saw Feora. She too had pushed out from behind the line, her warjacks following in her wake. Streams of fire showered from her wrists, engulfing the foe. The warcaster was moving directly at the priest-king and his towering abomination of stolen flesh. Stallos shouted for the Flameguard to circle ranks and move forward to support Feora.
Then something caught his eye.
In the foe's rear formations, he spotted a purple light. Something about it seemed so familiar. So… comforting. His feet began to move, slowly at first but then faster, drifting toward the light. At the corners of his vision, things began to grow dark and unimportant. He wasn’t supposed to be here, fighting against madness in the dark, he realized. He was supposed to be somewhere safe. After all, he’d run from one battle in his lifetime. What would one more be? He’d be better off—
“Stallos!” One of the Daughters of the Veil grabbed his pauldron, and pulled him back. When his eyes left that distant light for a moment, he came back to his senses. Across the battlefield, an enemy soldier held a lantern atop a pole, its unnatural purple light shining in the dark.
“Shoot that cursed thing!” Stallos ordered Valeria, who promptly complied.
Stallos resumed moving to aid Feora. He felt his awareness contract as he moved away from the Crusader, the machine at the limit of his ability to influence it, and bade the warjack to hold its position on the flank, before it was beyond his reach entirely.
Feora and one of her Crusaders, armed with a heavy shield and long pike, had made contact with the fleshy hulk. The machine took the first blow on its shield, sparks spitting from the impact, and drove its polearm into the creature’s belly. The tip sank deep, rich gore sliding along the pike’s haft.
For a moment, Stallos dared to think the enemy was finished, before his hopes were dashed. The monstrous being pulled itself forward along the pike, the faces across its body breaking into manic laughter. Seemingly unphased by the wound, the creature brought its blades down on the Crusader’s hull in a flurry of blows, ripping the armored chassis open.
Feora intervened, dowsing the creature's head and shoulders in flame. The sewn faces screamed in agony, as the burning monster tried to pull itself free of the damaged Crusader and beat at the flames. The machine fought back, raining its own blows upon its weakened adversary.
Stallos finally reached Feora’s side as the profane priest-king appeared before her.
You bear his mark.
The words were intended for Stallos. The Menofix brand on his forehead began to burn.
Did you beg him to make them stop?
The pain increased, reaching behind his eyes. His mind returned to the room in Tower Judgment. The smell of old blood mixed with hot coals, sweat with incense. He felt the bite of restraints at his wrists and ankles, and across his throat.
Did you ever imagine his mercy felt like this?
Stallos collapsed to one knee. The other, his weakened knee, gave out as memories of a scrutator’s tools shattering his bones flooded his senses.
While Stallos writhed in pain, Feora attacked. She and the priest-king traded blows, his ornate mace finding its mark with every blow. Yet Feora did not relent, leaping forward to jab her weapons, Truth and Consequences, into gaps in her foe’s ornate armor. One sank in, and Feora twisted it, causing the priest-king to cry out in a strangely human howl, the first time it had made sound with its lips.
Feora’s foe backpedaled a step. The face in its hand registered surprise, then confusion and anger.
Why do you fight for a worthless god you have never even seen? I have stood in his presence, heard the lies falling from his lips. I rejected him. Why grovel for your absent creator?
Flames swelled around the Priestess of the Flame, rising to a deafening roar. She stepped toward the priest-king, a trail of fire scorching the sand underfoot. Stallos could hear her warcaster armor humming as she channeled her arcane force into it, amplifying her weapons' power.
“Menoth has judged you and found you unworthy. I am the instrument of his justice!” Feora struck, and white-hot flame burst between her and the priest-king, consuming them both in a raging conflagration that lit the entire battlefield. Stallos had to shield his eyes and look away, yet the flame's brilliance still dazzled him. Winds whipped around his body as fire devoured the air.
When the flames died down, there was no sign of the priest-king, only a molten patch of black glass where he had once stood, crackling as it cooled. Feora reached down and helped Stallos back to his feet. Unlike her foe, she had been cleansed by the flame, her armor unscathed and scoured free of stain.
Together, the warcasters went back to the business of battle.
Their opponents did not last long.
--
The sun was setting over the desert by the time they had cleared out the last of the enemy army. Its ragtag survivors fled back into the cursed city. Feora’s force accounted for the dead and wounded, and the Redeemers released those who had fallen, offering silent prayers of absolution for all who would go to Menoth’s city in Urcaen.
Once they had accounted for the dead and tended the wounded, one of the Redeemers approached Feora in her command tent. The hooded woman silently touched the breastplate of Feora’s armor, then gestured northeast, pointing the way.
Feora stepped from her tent, Stallos and High Scrutator Malek close behind. The three of them looked where the Redeemer had indicated.
In the gloaming, beyond the campfire light, a small flame burned in the road. Another shone a few paces farther on. They were narrow, scarcely higher than a candle flame, and at first Stallos thought someone had spilled a trail of Menoth’s Fury while bringing supplies forward.
Then he made out their shape. A bare heel. The ball of a foot. Five separate points of fire where the toes had touched the ground.
The footprints left the road and continued into the open desert. One after another, they burned among the stones, dwindling with distance until Stallos could no longer distinguish them from the stars close to the horizon.
“In Menoth’s name,” Stallos whispered, stunned by what he saw.
“No,” Feora said, shaking her head. She looked back at the Redeemer before adding. “By Menoth’s hand. As his daughter and the Priestess of his holy fire, I will go where he guides me.”
What next?
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Browse the Covenant of the Flame collection and see Feora, Stallos and the faithful brought to life in miniature form.
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Pick up a Warmachine app subscription to explore the lore of armies across the Iron Kingdoms.
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Join the #loremachine channel in the official Warmachine Discord to chat about the story with other readers.
