Hjelmstad, the Palace of the Heavens.

A man from the Communication Commission came running. His intentions were questioned as the guards stopped the man. The man, however, insisted that this message he bore was a curse that struck him; the Empress must be informed immediately. 

According to the man, this was a bad omen not to be ignored; a sign of terror and Armageddon refined into scrambled paper. The ultimate being or his creation would shiver and tremble if they ever acquired these tenebrous news.

The guards stared at each other. One of them asked the man what he was talking about, while the other grabbed him by the arm.

The man wiggled and snuck his arm out of the guard’s grasp. He dashed forward to knock on the door. He managed to hit the door but could not do anything more than a thump; both guards grabbed him from the arms on either side. The lump of paper he was carrying fell on the floor.

While he was carried away, the doors of the Throne Room made a loud noise. It opened ceremoniously, displaying the Empress sitting on her throne.

“Let him forth,” she commanded. “I would like to hear what he has to say.”

The guards saluted the queen and kept their arms up in the air, with their arms straight, their right hand at eye level and their palms facing the ground. The man corrected his posture, feeling pressured now in the Empress’ audience. He walked forward, grabbed the scrambled paper from the floor, and walked forward. The doors shut behind him; whence the guards quit their stance and stood guard in front of the door. 

The man walked with hurried steps and stopped in front of the stairs that ascended to the throne. He got down on a single knee and quickly unwrapped the paper in an awkward silence.

The man read the letter sent from Heaven, addressed directly to the Empress by the Chief Ambassador. It explained that they had received a letter from one of the soldiers stuck in Heaven. This letter was written very poorly in handwriting and written in Demonian, which the Chief Ambassador interpreted as a sign that it was likely written by a senior soldier who had not learned Commonspeak.

This letter of unknown origin was a warning to us, the man quoted the Chief Ambassador, allegedly warning the Embassy that an envoy and a group of attachés arrived at Heaven, proposing an alliance to soldiers stuck there. The soldiers were split, with some of them allegedly betraying their oath of loyalty to the Empress because they were tempted by the promise of ending the fatigue resulting from low Essence in their body.

Naturally, I couldn’t ignore such a message, but I was dubious about its legitimacy. Therefore, I thought I should investigate the issue before informing Your Majesty about this issue.

In the next paragraph, the Chief Ambassador apologises with fancy vocabulary and expresses deep regret at this contretemps. She states that now that her research has concluded; she is forthwith presenting both the ambiguous letter and what she had learned.

The Chief Ambassador explains that, after succinct preparation, she had requested knights from the military to come with her to investigate the matter.

Although I asked the knights to come with me because of suspicion of this mysterious envoy, it was because of our own soldiers that the knights in my company could not make it back, the Chief Ambassador had written. 

The Chief Ambassador then explained in the letter in detail what happened. She confirms reports that Heaven was not the same as it once was with his presence, decaying endlessly the longer it had been left abandoned. As they tried to find their way in the decay of reality around them, they were ambushed by fellow Demons.

It may sound bizarre; after all, everything around us was, the letter read, I have a feeling the ambush was not a coincidence. Those soldiers were the very same soldiers that once fought by your side, Your Majesty. And yet, they attacked us with endless bloodthirstiness and fiery eyes of delirium. If those brave Knights had not endured a battle of catastrophic lengths to buy me time, I would not have survived. 

I cannot confirm whether those knights have survived or if they are still fighting. New soldiers were emerging from the bizarre nothingness of the unidentifiable mass Heaven is made of. There were so many that I could not begin to count.

I believe after experiencing this saddening encounter, it is reasonable to suspect that a considerable chunk of Demons are gradually falling victim to this strange delirium, the last paragraph quoted, I would advise swift action.

The Empress had not spoken once, even when the man ran out of breath a few times while reading through the message as fast as he could. After the man finished, she kept her silence. She put her chin on her palm, pondering as her nail rings gently grazed her cheek. Getting nervous by the silence, the man mentioned that there was a copy of the strange letter the Chief Ambassador spoke of written in the Chief Ambassador’s handwriting. 

“How do you know what the Chief Ambassador’s handwriting looks like?” she questioned. There was no emotion apparent in her voice.

“I-I work in the Communication Commission,” the man’s voice cracked, “this is my job…” The man couldn’t continue and faced the ground.

The Empress stared at the man. Upon receiving no further reaction, “Summon the Chief Ambassador immediately,” she commanded, “and come back along with her.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the man shrieked. He got up, spun on the axis of his left heel and took quick steps towards the door. He walked fast enough that it looked like he was sprinting.

The doors started opening with a tender movement of the Empress’ fingers. By the time the man had reached the door, it had already completed its majestic opening sequence. 

The man walked away to fulfil his obligation. His eyes were tearing up. He was on the verge of breaking down. Somehow, he held the tears back. 

Vendetta had no r in it, after all.

A few hours earlier in the village of Yderemea.

In the middle of the night, Ødger had collected the belongings he prepared the previous night. Reginleif prepared him food for his journey. Husband and wife kissed each other goodbye and Ødger left Yderemea, heading towards the capital at daybreak.

At dayspring, the silent rise of the glorious sunshine was intercepted with explosions and a man grunting as he ran.

The man in question was Hennigh Thorn. He was an archivist at the Yderemea branch of the Records and Archives Commission. He had also received education on Commonspeak back when it was a rough draft; before it became a full-fledged language. With his success, he managed to rise up the ladder slowly. 

He had been offered a job at the capital. A stress-free, 9 to 5, office job, not to mention he would have been paid with gold coins. That would have been a major step up from his current life; a life of dreams folk from the south would die for.

He had been to the capital. He had been granted an audience with some of the highest up of the Records and Archives Commission. He had received an offer that should have been impossible to refuse. But he had gone up there, talked to the highest, bathed in his fame as a linguistically educated individual, and brought forth a crude “No” to the table, his excuse being that his family was content with what they had in Yderemea. His children were in a vital phase and a change of scenery, especially that of the isolated capital of the Kingdom, would not be an excellent influence on them. They may, in the worst-case scenario, run away… again! How could he risk that as a father?

Nonetheless, the man was drunk on his success. He jumped around as he walked, performed a perfect pirouette on a whim, bounced around and praised himself vocally.

Success, with no succour, too! He had become a wonderful father, a brilliant linguist (, even though he studied for years to master Commonspeak, he would claim it is just a hobby) and he contributed to the Kingdom directly by working a 9 to 5 in the Records and Archives Commission.

During his celebration with him, his inner voice and whoever else he imagined with him, he had walked by a horde of Meorné trying their hardest to navigate through the snow and find the way back to Oceania.

There was no new blizzard that ran rampant, but the remnants of the previous had not disappeared.

The Meorné, which were a subspecies of sea horses, had evolved during wartime periods with overarching amounts of Essence lingering across Khevreg. They learned to function in hordes, to throw fireballs through their snout, and to float in the air. After all, rain, too, falls from the sky, does it not? What stopped them from swimming in that water, no matter how small they were? The answer was that it no longer stopped them.

Nothing stopped them from burning the ecosystem down once their hibernation ceased biyearly, during the winter and during summer. Meorné, however, were neutral creatures; they were too busy picking on birds and eating their eggs and eating unsuspecting bugs to go on the offensive.

That is not to say they did not self-defend when necessary.

The passersby Meorné must have felt threatened by the peculiar way Hennigh acted. They started shooting fireballs at him.

As the brilliant linguist he was, Hennigh had not received combat training. His magic was but a few tricks that helped with his line of work… not… this…

His strategy was shouting in both languages, Demonian and Commonspeak, one after the other, as if they were synonyms and thus interchangeable. As he ran, he could hear the explosion that left minor craters on the surface. The fires had not posed a threat because of the frigid weather and the snowy surroundings, but the carbon dioxide emissions from the explosions could easily make one dizzy, with a sensation as if their lungs were filled with gasoline and someone lit a lighter.

Hennigh’s shouting and pleas for help were as useful as a Cryptid tasked with casting magic. His voice was inaudible beneath the deafening din the Meorné made as they were preparing to spit fire on their foe.

What was to Hennigh’s advantage, however, was that he was minutes away from the village when the assault of the Meorné started. The very same pandemonium that surpassed even a decibel of his voice had alerted the Knights stationed in the village.

The knights quickly surrounded the village for any Meorné that may appear to assist the initial cluster. Meanwhile, they situated the majority on the western end, where Hennigh was running towards the village from. The Meorné followed closely behind him; they were coming the same way, too.

There was a single mage deployed on the back lines of the western defence line. They were to hold fire until they could save Hennigh and send him to evacuate with the rest of the village if the Meorné did attack.

It was as they feared. The Meorné took the clusters of armed men as an even bigger threat. Their fireballs were turned from the running man towards the village, which was more dangerous because even with cold weather and tons of snow, most structures in the village were wooden; therefore, highly flammable.

They had no choice. The only mage deployed, along with everyone who knew ranged spells, were told to fire and take as many Meorné as fast as they could to minimise damage. Then, those who did not have the means to attack the Meorné were divided in three: First, about 2/4s of the infantry were tasked to evacuate the villagers to another settlement; it did not matter where, as long as they survived. ¼ of the infantry was sent as a backup to the other defensive lines. The last ¼ were those chosen to risk their lives and become decoys so the others would acquire time to shoot the Meorné down.

Explosion over explosion followed. War cries echoed across the land. Birds did not chirp, animals woke up from hibernation but did not dare go investigate the source of this abhorrent din. The mountains of Oros inspected their fight like an astronomer with a telescope. The wildlife had ceasefired, for they were about to witness destruction and wrath for no apparent reason.

All because a man was too happy.