Albonium

Prologue

2304 - The Fall of Iost

Fire was falling.

Marius stood, unflinching, whilst chaos from the sky insured, until his senses overtook him, and him being alone, the sole guard of a gate, ran. The pounding against the outer walls continued. He didn't want to imagine what would happen if they fell.

He was in an alley considered too close to the wall, and too dangerous for civilians. He ran, his pilum and shortsword with him, as he had become familiar with running for the past four years... since the fall of the Republican capital of Aelum.

As each heavy foot sought towards shelter, he was shot repeatedly, stung, as a barricade of corrugated iron, broken furniture, and barrels wounded him repeatedly with crossbow bolts, striking his arms, torso, and legs. As his face slammed against the asphalt remnants of what was fought for, he yelled, in Orcish, "I'm not an invader! I'm on your side!"

But it was not enough, and in times like these, the deaths of the innocent were nothing to the escape of the heretic. He, with his remaining muscle, held up the Fellic Aquilla, which had the symbol of Tharizdun. The firing stopped, and there he lay, once at the butt of the equivalency of muskets, now, helped up by two goblinoid and human medics, who carried him towards their barricade of cover. Their mistake was small, and their confusion withstanding yet unacceptable; it was nothing compared to the constant vigilance they had to pay to the outside.

Mere hours later, it was ordered that Marius was to be moved discreetly, as his injuries did not disallow him to ride, and so he was to deliver a message to a garrison somewhere Northeast, although the exact location is unknown. He, acting as a courier, should have managed to ride around thirty miles that day, but hardly any time later, the torrent of defeat after defeat rose again, as faced by the losing side against the crusade of the successor.

A great thunder threw him off his horse, who stopped as well, in fear. A great fire had erupted from the white buildings of wood and plaster, and fervent shouting could be heard in the masses from the far distance where he was. Iost had fallen, swarms of legionnaires had entered, and from his perspective at least four legions had entered(around 20,000 men). The place he had called home for the past six months, once his legion once led by Felix Lucius himself had settled there, had been overthrown. He got back on his horse and continued to ride. Why? Why, then, so little territory remained? Why didn't he give himself up, turn back, and surrender? It was because he couldn't bring himself to it, because he felt that it was wrong, because of his will.

Anything that went through his head only served to distract him. He kept on riding, but his wounds quickly became worse.. and worse, and worse. He heard fighting and shouting in his path, and was forced to detour.

Here, he was by himself, unable to move forward. There seemed to be no way forward to achieve his goal. He could do nothing... it seemed. But he realized he had been fortunate. Near him was a river... and by the map he had, as a courtier, it seemed that he could still be there... that he could still deliver. He knew not what his message contained, nor what it was meant for, but he struggled to deliver it, deliver it anyway, for the scrap of paper was the Holy Grail of Arthur to him, and the world seemed small.

He waited for boats of Gudenå to come, and one did. Three legionnaires and an orc were in it. He yelled "Over here!" as an injured man who sat, for standing was too painful.

In the boat, one of the men, who had the name of Sam, decided to venture inland. The traveler at the shore kept on yelling, "I can't stand! Over here!" The tide soon made the boat try to wash away, but he made it towards the man and the boat in time.

Why did he walk towards him, this stranger, who he did not know? Why even try at all? Especially when the stranger, whom he knew as Marius, began to stop panting, and then rested, and said, "Friends! Friends! I know not where you are headed, or why, nor am I someone of great rank. I'm a mere legionary with no rank, but I was entrusted by the Balor Me'ka'lar of Iost to take this message northeast. I need to-"

"Shut up. Why even try? We've already lost the war. Gnaeus is dead, Nepos is an emperor. It's over. Now all he has to do is take over the leftovers. We're fleeing north.", said the Orc.

To Marius, this was the worst of all things, to see men and Fellics disheartened, broken, with nothing pushing them. War, after all, was fought to achieve an ideologically superior peace.

"No... no, you're wrong. We still have to try. What were we then, at the Insurgency? Or at the Siege of Rome? Or at the conquest of Tarraco? What would we be now... if we just surrendered? If we no longer fought, like they did, for this glory? What are you all... you're an Orc, you're what... Dutch?"

One of the two other boys, who seemed somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, who he was referring to, said, "Belgian."

"Belgian. All those words... they'll all be meaningless if we just give up. And you want to run... run, and not die."

"Aye, run and live, like a sane man."

"And sane old men you'll be, many years from now, when you live under your Big Zeus's Pagan worship. But you just have to understand. We still have to try... to trade all that, for a chance to keep on living... because that life isn't free, so that, even if our enemy has defeated us, they'll never have defeated us, because we died freely!"

There was a long pause.

The last man was a decanus, and moved by his flowery words, and by the remnants of discipline and honor that still bound him somewhat, and felt small shame towards himself, said, "Well, I was a decanus, and you've spoken better than me. But if you can speak like that, then you know a few things. We are the comrades of the barricade, and those saved by Jean Valjean. Welcome to our makeshift... warband."

There was the exchanging of hands, as this new stranger took advantage of their shards of honor and shame, and was accepted. Black swords led to hope, a brief nirvana when one decided to ignore reality, and live life with a form of hope unable to be attained by rationalism, when one was losing but still rich, but decided to push harder and lost all.

A song from the boat was heard, as it drafted farther away, of Les Miserables,

"Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!"

The day had been a blur.

Late at night, when the boat was laid to rest and the five of them camped in the woods, unnoticed by them, a patrol of Second Roman veterans crept there, and killed them.

Iron frames and steel minds, clad in adequate mail and arms, nothing was enough compared to organization and plan, without the nonexistent power of fate.

Once, that message could have contained a legendary secret that allowed the Fellic Republic to still push a stalemate, or perhaps even a victory, but that never occurred, as after all, they were simply too weak, too unable, to achieve victory. The universe had never dictated it as an impossibility, nor had it placed the Fell as a stepping stone for the ascent of Nepos. Nepos carved his throne by himself and his supporters, regardless of fate and against natural order. Songs were never sung for these five, poems were never written, no matter how close they were, for life is a kratocracy, in which he who has the wealth to paint history shall paint it.

Yet there was still one last question, that Gnaeus could not find an answer to. Why, why did Tharizdun, infinitely wise, despite his past mistakes, decide to reveal the location of Aelum? Did he consider the Isle of the Fell, the great civil war, to be utterly worthless and impossible? The most likely solution would be that the war was lost once Caesar was not assassinated by Marcus Albon, who instead instigated a powerful pact of magic at the Battle of Florentia, but how then could an entire war hinge on a single gamble? And why then would a grinding war of attrition be less favorable?

But nonetheless, history passed, and as Xerxes failed in Greece, or as Alexander passed, in the absence of an ultimate being, the struggles of history were only defined by the combatants. And those that remained unscathed, after the bout that collapsed the Lucius' Fellic Republic were the oppressed Elven, and the man in the mountains ... Marcus Albon.