An Angel Called Eternity

The Tribesman and the Tyrant: Kliran's Legacy

The First Day of the Third Moon, 352 BD.
Aegos, Aegan Hills, Dathan.

The walls had to hold. If they fell then his people were as good as dead, and so the walls had to hold.

The last few hundred years had been a constant series of disappointments for the Kliran. Again and again they were denied the ability to return home, and again and again they accepted the answer of the Tyrants. When the Tyrants became the Imperators they'd asked once more, only to be told that there wasn't the further forces to spare on so wide-ranging a campaign. They'd conquered a small portion of their homeland alongside the Aegan Legionaries, and a new city named 'Tyranopolis' had been founded at its heart, but that was about the only good news they'd had this whole time.

Their populations had been kept concentrated and urban, so as to ensure that their culture remained broadly untouched. Of course with how long they'd lived in Aegos it was inevitable that some intermingling would take place, and indeed the city of the gods had left many marks on the Kliran people, but broadly speaking their culture was still as distinct and selfsame as it had been so many centuries ago.

Kliranhen, they had called the town that had been built for them. Against the northern walls of Aegos it did lie, housing the hundred-thousand Kliran who remained in the city whilst the rest of their people formed similar communities outside the walls of the other cities in the Aegan Empire.

Their living conditions were poor, with cramped housing and little enough food, but at the very least the Tyrants and later the Imperators had maintained their end of the bargain; they had a place of their own to stay, and they were able to continue practicing their culture and religion in peace. That was enough for them, no matter the distasteful acts they had to partake in under the orders of the Imperators. The checkmating of slave rebellions wasn't something that their people took any sort of pride or enjoyment in, but it was something they did nonetheless.

They had, in effect, become the mercenary bodyguards of the Tyrants of Aegos. They carried out his wishes, and in return one day they would be permitted to go home. One day.

August thought for a moment on whether or not their descendants would understand the people they had been back here, on whether the necessity of their actions would continue to be known or whether their reasoning would fade into history.

It mattered not, of course. They would do whatever it took to ensure the survival of their people. It was the same oath that August's ancestors had sworn, as far back as the legendary Kliran who had lead them here, and it was one that would be sworn again and again for as long as they remained in Aegos.

Kliran's people would not be consigned to oblivion.

Of course, nowadays that oath was tested more than ever before.

When the Silence had first broke unto the world, he had suppressed a savage joy. It had been the Skraelings that had been in the way of the assault you see, by and large. There were a few raiding parties here and there, a few groups of Umbra moving in packs too diverse and large to be normal, but they weren't really concerned.

Then the daemons had poured southwards. The daemons and the fallen.

Tyranopolis had fell. The legions had faltered. The Kliran auxiliaries had taken charge of the defences and had needed to tear their own shanty-towns down in case they provided cover for the enemy. These days seemed like the end times, and yet they had held out in this city and had repelled three different sieges from the walls already.

The days were dark, the skies ashen, but mankind would not fall. The Kliran would not fall. Something would have to give, sooner or later at least. There was no chance that August would allow the walls to fall, for if the walls were to fall then the teeming masses within the city behind him would surely follow.