Maukland, Spring 1, 39 A.U. (Atlesian calendar)

“To Maukland!”

The sound of guffawing and shouting came from the men gathered around the barrels of mead. Although it was close to midnight, the bright full moon shone joyously on the village square as people danced in it’s pale light and the bonfire in the center. Ale and mead were served on the edges of the square, and peasants gathered all around the square, talking and dancing and singing along to the minstrels playing. Four strong men, lowering their tankards from their toast, drank deep for the eighth time that night. Or ninth. Or twelfth. Nobody cared on such a joyous night as the New Year.

“So,” one of them said. “I suppose now that we’re drunk, we should talk about… things.”

“Who says us drunks are obligated to talk about things?! Damn all of you. I’m going to talk about nothing,” said a reedy young man.

“Well, I’m going to talk about the war. You fellows remember the war?”

The one with a bulging belly roared in laughter, nose redder than an apple. “Oooh, I do, Wallace, I do! I was in the eighth musket brigade! I have nightmares. Every single night! Of enchanting Atlesian women butchering our ranks! They were adorable. But horrifying!”

The reedy one spat on the ground. “I don’t wanna talk about that. I’ll fight ya if we do! Fuck those Altesians. I tell you what though, it was an inside job. We could have won. If he-”

“What!? Who’s he?” the fat man interjected.

“The king, Irrin, you nob!”

“Ow, hey! You mean the alive one or the dead one?”

“Doesn’t matter! Listen. What we needed was more guns. If we took all the guns in the country, and put em in one place, and just, fired all of them-”

“All of them?”

“Yes, all of them, Wallace, it would have gone straight through their pansy magicks.”

“Oh, calm, Peyier,” Wallace exclaimed. “At least they’ve got to be better than being under the foot of Altsnard!”

“Atlard?” The final man asked incredulously. “I don’t think they still even exist. It’s been, what, a thousand years?”

“Two hundred, Aldrick,” Irrin said. “Not that long,” he muttered while helping himself to another drink.

“That’s still a lot, Irrin. I don’t think they’d be much of a worry anymore! Why, we could probably take them.”

Wallace chuckled. “With Atlesia, probably.”

“We don’t need any Aramesians!” Peyier shook his fist angrily.

“Atlesians, Peyier.”

“Don’t matter. We could take ‘em both on!” Aldrick interjected, to a cheer from his comrades.

A pause in the conversation followed as everyone pondered their thoughts. After a moment, Wallace opened up the conversation again. “Well, my friends,” he said, “we survived another winter. The harvest was plentiful. Peyier got married-” he paused as the group cheered again.

“The gods have blessed us, brothers. They have seen fit for us to live through another winter and a prosperous year. Let us hope for many more!”

The four cheered and drank deep once more, glad to be among trusted friends.

The forward detachment of knights rode quietly across the moonlit field, trampling the windswept grass beneath the trotting hooves of their horses as they went. A dour rider acted as the tip of that detachment. She lacked a helm, for she enjoyed the feeling of rushing winds whispering in her ears. Their plate glistened and shined with luster as the full moon guided them on their path. It led to the nearby township. To the sounds of jubilance and celebration. The knights wordlessly steered their horses left and right, front and center, slowing and speeding their entourage as was appropriate for the rolling terrain. Eventually, near a lone oak tree that sat vigil upon a small, grassy hill, they slowed, surveying the town below them.

A knight beside the leader extended a spyglass and peered through the scope, analyzing the area. “A thorpe, milady. Seems to be meant for farming, and the like.”

She rolled her eyes in disappointment.

“And here we expected that the oh-so-mystical portal conjured by these snooty scholars and witches would finally lead us to the realm of the gods. Well… ” she took in a deep breath, and smiled. “Wherever this land is, at least the view is breathtaking. The natural life here does bring a refreshment to my spirit after all those cold, dreary months in Morosa. So many wondrous vistas.”

The knight beside her nodded.

“Indeed, Frau Martha. Would be a nice place to settle, with so much vast, free land. Miles in every direction. Although… we must first speak with the residents.”

Martha shrugged. “We are an empire. And an empire is meant to expand. But we must first gauge what these native folk are like before we do anything too brash.”

Father Dimetrus staggered around to the front of the chapel at the very edge of the village, eyelids heavy from wine. He swallowed drink from the tankard he held, causing more to fall to the ground than into his mouth and scraggly beard. Leaning on the front door, he raised and dropped the knocker. “Bertrand! Bertrand, open the damn door! Oh, right, Betrand’s … hic … at the festibal … fesvistal … ah, fuck it. He’s - hic - there.” Dimetrus fumbled about in the folds of his robes, pulling out a set of keys. “Now, which one … “ finding the right key, he punched it into the door. He was about to turn the key when he got the peculiar urge to look behind him. Peeking over his shoulder at the rolling plains beyond the village, he could see nothing but a rosy corona over the hills. Whatever that was, Dimetrus had no idea, but he hardly cared. Turning back to the door, he noticed shadows out of the corner of his eye. The priest turned around, examining the land. A quarter mile away, he saw what he had glimpsed. Riders descending from a hill and approaching the town, fast. Twenty, thirty, forty, he couldn’t tell. Grumbling, he reached into his robes to pull out an old chapel relic: a spyglass from the days of Altgard. Unsheathing it, he held the artifact up to his eye and peered through the glass, magnifying his view. He couldn’t place the armor they had, nor their strange garb. But he could place one thing. Even in his drunken state, Father Dimetrus could identify the symbol on their shields.

He dropped the tankard, splashing what little was left onto his soiled robes. Eyes widened, he backed up in terror, stashing his spyglass away as he turned around and fled for the village center.

“War! Horror! Doom! They come!” a voice erupted from one of the entrances to the town square. Everyone turned to see the priest, Dimetrus, dash into the town square, flailing his arms. “We must flee! They-” The father tripped over a stone, landing flat into his face into the mud of the dancing area of the square. A burst of laughter weaved its way through the crowd to see such a venerable figure so stupidly drunk.

“Father, I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink,” the large man, Irrin, shouted to the amusement of his companions. “I think you need some rest.” He picked up the priest and leaned him on his shoulder. “Come with me, Father,” Irrin said as he walked the priest to his church. His amused friends watched the pair go as the festivities resumed.

“Just a bit, eh?” Peyier joked. “Seems a little much to me!”

“You’re one to talk, Peyier. Which drink is this?” Wallace asked.

“Just me eighth. Or … ninth. Or tenth.”

“Riiight, Peyier. No matter - as long as you don’t spout any doom like our Father, we’re fine and dandy,” Aldrick assured him.

“Not to worry, friends,” Peyier hiccuped. “No doom here. None at all I can see!”

The knights stopped just short of the village proper, wreathed in shadow. “You hear these people? They seem friendly enough and it sounds almost like Goethian, but their dialect is strange. Seems a lot closer to Old Aberranic,” one said.

“It’s remarkable that these folk even speak something resembling Goethian. This dimension is a great deal like ours,” added another.

Martha frowned. “The few villagers we passed by on our way into the village jeered at us an awful lot since we came in here. It appears this nation is not aware of the concept of knighthood.”

“They were drunks, milady. Can we judge the character of a people off their worst men?”

A gut realisation struck her. She had watched every aspect of the festival closely as they strode through the town. Strange accents. Jeering. That man running after staring at them. And their faith… it was unlike any she had seen in the entirety of Altgard. The banners that fluttered over that stone church were completely alien. No gods that she knew of, and she was familiar with many deities.

Every piece of information was slowly pooling in her mind. This could be a different dimension, or more likely, a distant land on the very same plane of existence. It could be the land that they had fled to. In the old tales. “Could these really be… the apostates?”

Her bodyguard looked at her in bewilderment.

“Milady, I beg your pardon?”

“You saw how that man reacted when he bore witness to our insignia. There is definitely something here that could indicate-”

She was cut off when a little boy tugged at the fauld of her armor.

“Hmm? What is it, lad?”

The boy giggled. “What are you wearing? Come, you’ll miss it!”

She scratched her head in bewilderment.

“You know! The Banner Burning! At town square! Follow meeeee!” His voice trailed off as he sprinted with his small legs to the town center.

And with that, he bolted off with youthful rapidity, to the center of where the celebrations were being held.

“Goodness. Children these days.” The bodyguard next to her shook his head. “And it would seem that even through a portal between worlds, they change not.”

“I suppose we should follow the lad.” Martha intoned. “Seems to be leading us to where everyone has converged.”

The knights began trotting to the center of the town, and maneuvered through the large gathering of peasantry in the midst of celebrations. “Now seems as good a time as any to state our intentions.”

They tried pushing towards the center of the crowd, but the concentration of people was too dense. As such, Martha began beckoning the attention of any individual immediately closest to the entourage. “Excuse me. Excuse me! We are knights representing the Empire of-” The peasantry seemed to be getting kicked up into a jubilant fervor. No matter how loud a voice she could muster, it was drowned out by their wild chants. “Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!”

“Hey! Could you liste… ”

Martha’s voice tapered off. She stared in abject horror. Her knights could only watch in shock. These strange villagers and their unusual practices had not bothered them up to this point. But now an unbending expectation was shattered. They witnessed the holy banner of Altgard, crudely painted onto a slab of fabric, being hoisted up, and put to the torch. It smoldered unforgivably, the pale yellow and red of the field uniting the Great Raven and King in Yellow turning an evil black, sending smoke and ashes up into the sky.

A peasant next to her turned and finally seemed to be the first, other than the priest, to notice her shield. He thrust a grubby finger at her. “Altgard!”

That one word seemed to be enough to attract the attention of much of the village square, as the villagers stared in bewilderment at the three riders standing in their midst. A moment of silence, permeated only by the burning of the fabric banner, followed.

“They dressed up!” someone exclaimed happily. “They dressed up for the occasion, to celebrate our secession! What clever costumes!”

“Burn the shields!” an old woman cried out. “Burn them!”

The peasants began a new chant. “Burn the shields! Burn the shields! Burn the shields!”

As Martha stared at the peasants, dumbstruck, she felt a tug once more, and not of a little boy. She looked down to find a drunkard pulling at her shield, trying to take it off.

There were no longer any qualms as to what this nation was. What it stood for. And who these people were. She drew her blade and shouted three words. Three words only.

“Heretics! Apostates! Die!”

With one swing of her now-drawn blade, she lopped off the head of the drunkard. Martha’s men followed in kind. They laid into the crowd in a gore-soaked frenzy. One of her bodyguards produced a sea conch from his sack, and blew into it with all his might. The deep sound of war echoed over the hills, through the valley, and back to the camp near the portal not far away. Within seconds, the rest of her knights charged into the square, cutting down any they came upon and trampling the fallen. For Martha, this was not the beginning of a war, but a purge.

She imbibed her stardust through her nostrils, feeling the dripping at the back of her throat. The resonating ringing vibrated through her ears, the whispers of the gods. In a matter of seconds, a swarm of eldritch bolts leapt from her fingers and melted peasantry flesh into grotesque, unsightly lumps of pink slime. With sword, spellcraft, and shot, the detachment of knights scourged the village through and through. Leaping flame lurched from the mouths of some knights, sticking to buildings, and no matter how much water was drawn from the wells, the Mauklings were helpless to quench the arcane inferno. The blasts of blunderbusses embedded hundreds of steel pellets into the swarming crowds. And the knights cleaved, stabbed, and trampled, turning the town square into a swamp of blood.

Shrieks, screams, and weeping echoed all throughout the night. A single Maukling slipped out of the village, fleeing the genocide, and mounted a steed from a nearby farmstead. He rode as quickly as he could, tears and snot streaming down his face, feeling the sting of the wind against his cheeks as the village he had called home for his entire life rise up in flames behind him. When he finally reached the city, over the hills and fields and farms, past the old wooden gates, only one thing could leave his lips, over and over, as he galloped through the streets.

“Run for your lives! Altgard is here!”