The War of Transition

Chapter One (Valeroy)

     The sun was a pale white star in the sky when Valeroy spotted the bodies.

     "Ten coppers says it's Karden's work." Muttered Daryn. His horse trotted up beside Valeroy for a better look at the blackened village below. "Hm, that's Karden." He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and turned his horse to Valeroy with a smile. A pale scar bit into his lip, traveling down to his stubble of a beard. His black cape answered to the wind, tugging lightly at his shoulders. 

     "You always guess Karden. You're always wrong." Jarold replied in his distinctive Oppalic accent. His horse came up on the other side of Valeroy and began to make its descent to the village before Jarold tugged the reins, urging the mare to turn. His hair was thick and black, dripping with sweat. He wore no helmet like Valeroy did, and he preferred bioled leather over the cumbersome steel plate issued to Emmurese Victorians. Jarold's skin was a mix of brown and orange hues, darker than a sunburn, as were most of Oppalic heritage.The seven pointed star glistened proudly on the knight's shoulder.

     "This is Karden's work, no doubt about it." Daryn insisted. "Where do you think the Pyromancer came from?"

     Valeroy shuddered. Karden had been incinerating villages across the country for the most part of the last year, brutally butchering citizens and often hanging those who he found had been practising Black Magic. He was a brute of a man, broad shouldered and favoured a giant two-headed axe. He had built a reputation for himself as the man who was single handedly purging the country. The Pyromancer was a slight against him, a title whispered by commoners while he was too focused on pillaging to hear. The title implied he was a magician well practiced in the art of fire, branding him as the very minority he was campaigning to eradicate.

     "Karden's out west in the Servitalo." Valeroy stated glumly. He had scarcely uttered a word since the division parted from Tiempas Port. "He's been there for a month, maybe more."

     "You see? This one knows very little." Jarold kissed his teeth and gestured to Daryn.

     Daryn grimaced, his scar twisting with his expression. "I know what I see. And I see a burned village. Do you see it as well, or are you blind?"

     "I see, but I also see your senses have left you. There are many who know how to play with fire, not just this Pyromancer." Jarold smiled, revealing a row of shining teeth. "I myself have played with fire."

     Daryn grumbled in reply and spurred his horse down the gradual slope to the village. What may have been two dozen hovels huddled together now looked like mounds of black mud, wood and stone, poking out of the ground around a sea of bodies and charred earth, much like the old forts Valeroy had glimpsed from a distance on scouting missions. He found it difficult to believe one man could do so much damage, no matter how skilled the peasants claimed he was with fire.

     "Jarold, return to the Captain and show her to this village." Valeroy said as he watched Daryn's horse rear its head and shy away from the hovels. He had always known Daryn to have a strong relationship with his horse, a certain charm he lacked amongst the presence of women. Jarold had proved to be quite the opposite. But now, Daryn's horse would not take another step to the village. As he patted its side and urged it forward, the fear in the stallion's whinny was clear.

     "Of course. And should I tell the captain we've chanced upon a pile of soot and bone?" His tone suggested confident sarcasm. His royal blood hadn't seemed to dissipate when he joined the Victorians.

     "Tell her," Valeroy said in a bitter whisper, "we may have found a necromancer."

     The entire scouting division was forced to dismount before the horses reached the village. None of the soldiers could coerce their mounts to move any closer to the remnants of Black magic activity. Captain Talia strutted through the burnt remains in her golden armour, her orange cape dragging across bodies and bones as she stepped over them.

     "Thronstead." Daryn whispered as he squatted in the mud, tracing four fingers along the ground.

     "Sorry?" Valeroy watched the other fifty soldiers curiously poking through bodies and examining the armour of other fallen Victorians.

     "This is Thornstead. I hadn't known Tornstead to house necromancers. You're sure that's what it was? Whatever did this?"

     "It might explain the horses." He turned to see half a hundred stallions and mares grazing in the grass as if untamed. "The bodies as well. It looks like these people may have gotten mad before death. The fire may have started for a hundred other reasons."

     "I had heard the necromancer tomes were burned." Daryn stood, adjusting his sword belt. "Strange that fire can have so many uses."

     "Everything burns, my friend." Jarold announced as he approached, his leather swathed gloves clutched a soft peach. "Even your Pyromancer can burn unless he himself is made of fire."

     "Some peasants may say so." Daryn sounded as if he half believed the rumour himself. It wouldn't surprise Valeroy, Daryn had been prone to common superstitions and stories he heard from the whisperings of merchants traveling along the White Road.

     "Some peasants may say the sun is made of glass and the moon silk." Jarold smiled thinly, his sharp eyebrows pointing to his nose. He was one man in a hundred who had left the beautiful lands of Oppalice for the endless plains and hills and dark forests of Emmurise. He came bearing tales of the kings of his homeland, the mountains and valleys where miles of orange crystals ten feet tall sprouted from green earth outside cities.

     "And they are wrong. The sun is fire and the moon is stone. I am no fool, I know what stories are true and which are false."

     "What does the Captain intend to do next?" Valeroy interrupted before Jarold could speak. He wanted nothing more than to hear an end to the bickering between the two.

     Jarold seemed annoyed by this, as he would have taken pleasure in lecturing Daryn. "Sit. Walk. Ride. The things we seem to do so often without reaching any sort of goal. Would you have us do any different?" He bit into his peach. Juice dribbled down to his chin from the corner of his lip. How he found the appetite to dine amongst the dead unnerved Valeroy. It came as no surprise, however, as the Oppalic had never been a man of decency.

     "I would sooner have us learning where the necromancer received his tome from."

     Jarold sighed. "Perhaps this necromancer has been hiding it for some time. Since before the rest were burned, yes?"

     "We will not know until we find out for ourselves." When the purge began during the third year of Warren Avyrentus' scientific expedition, only nine years ago, the previously outlawed necrotic tomes were gathered and burned in a pit of fire in Tameria. Valeroy had been there that night, and remembered seeing the otherworldly glow above the tops of houses from his bedroom window.

     "The closest city is Tiempas Port," Valeroy went on. "he may have found one there. It seems the most likely place."

     "Does it?" Jarold lifted his chin with superiority. "What of Tiannima? I hear the city is so poorly governed it is ruled by mercenaries and and cutthroats. And what of Free Market? Merchants from foreign lands bringing very strange trade flourish there. Could this necromancer not have acquired this book from these cities?"

     "It is possible, Jarold. But the Captain will not travel so far on suspicion alone." 

     "She will not investigate Tiempas Port on suspicion alone, my friend." Jarold added, tossing what was left of his peach into the reamins of a hovel.

     "No." Valeroy nodded. He had a different idea in mind. "But we will."