When Heroes Die

“One can never be too meticulous when preparing in the face of the inevitable. Destiny’s a funny thing. It loves to watch you trip over your own sword.”

— Dread Emperor Terribilis I

Amadeus watched the flames consuming the warehouse for a few more moments as the remaining rebels clashed with the Legions at the doors before he turned away.

His black cloak didn’t even stir.

“The target?”

“Took a blade through the heart,” Eudokia informed him from his right, “I’ll see that the corpse is thrown into the flames regardless.”

The Eyes had identified an individual who they suspected could serve as a mediator within the rebel group. Mediators could not be allowed to survive.

“And the rebels?”

“Learned nothing about where we relocated the Goblin Fire.”

“Good.”

Only the dull roar of the flames occupied the silence for a few moments, before Amadeus spoke again.

“Are you certain that you can remain ahead of the Reluctant Strategist?”

“She is still new to her Name. The answer might change given another five years, but for now I remain several steps ahead.”

“She won’t survive the year.”

“Not if she keeps killing herself with that Aspect of hers,” Scribe agreed.

“The relocation?”

“Proceeds apace.”

That meant that Marchford, Summerholme, Dormer and the border with Procer would be well provisioned before the season was out. There were some exceptions in terms of supplies. Goblin Fire was being recalled back to Praes. Both to deal with the expected conflict there and to prevent the growing rebellion from seizing it when his attention was once again turned east.

There was an uneasy silence between factions within the Empire ever since Malicia had warned the other High Seats that Praes had received a Red Letter back during the reign of Nefarious. Black would have preferred to purge the nobility, but Alaya had asked him once again to stay his hand. Nobody knew how the machines the Mad Inventor was in the process of building operated. He hadn’t left any schematics before he perished. It didn’t matter. Everyone was aware of how calamitous its completion could have been. The threat posed by the gnomes was severe enough in the wake of the new Names to catch everyone’s attention. The High Seats had turned their attention towards the Names sprouting up within their borders to ensure that it did not happen again.

The High Seats were only pleased with the appearance of new villains when those villains were under their control. Many of those who now darkened their cities were not. It would be some time before order reasserted itself. Tasia Sahelian had gone so far as to announce Wolof was investigating potential solutions to the problem. Amadeus was certain he could already see the clouds of trouble blotting out the horizon when the cost of that solution was inevitably unveiled.

The unspoken truce between factions could not last for long.

“Good.”

There was another moment of silence then, followed by the dry rustling of her grey cloak.

Amadeus marched away from the blaze.

Eudokia stayed behind to ensure nothing was left undone.

Assassin was left outside the burning warehouse, inscribed within the body of a former Squire at the site of the confrontation for several duties. The first duty was to act as bait for any potential stories that might follow on from the confrontation. Scribe had caught numerous potential heroes through a repeated application of the tactic, with careful variations to ensure it did not bait out other stories.

The second duty was to continue serving its role within the rebellion. While Assassin was known for taking lives, it was far from the only task it was capable of with the right commands. Eudokia was using Assassin to encourage discord within the rebellion through both a web of subtle manipulations of mid level officers and the encouragement of villainous Names. Sabotage through internal politics, rather than through murder.

Amadeus left the warehouses and halted beside the docks while he thought. A strong breeze from the lake scattered the smoke from the fire, sending it in all directions.

The current rebellion was little more a spark in the wind, threatening to extinguish before catching alight. Two uprisings against the Empire had been suppressed since Liesse. The first was quelled outside Laure itself, the second was crushed in a pitched battle outside the walls of Marchford. Those battles had done much to cull those who would take up arms against the Empire. While it was true that at least half the beds in Callow still had a sword under them, it was also true that perhaps only one in a hundred of those owners knew how to wield the weapon.

The disaster in Liesse had unravelled his plans to instil a sense of apathy within the people of Callow and replaced it with a swelling undercurrent of resentment. Resentment which would be the work of decades or perhaps even centuries to root out.

Time that Amadeus did not have at his disposal.

Amadeus had spent time examining the outcomes of both uprisings and concluded that the current state of affairs was not acceptable. Not because he expected Callow to free itself soon. No, even the next five uprisings would most likely fail to throw off the Empire’s shackles without outside assistance. However, the hatred for the Empire within the population would inevitably doom Praes to facing a catastrophic defeat in the distant future, much like the end of the Crusader Kingdoms.

There was a chance that the chaos which was unfolding across Calernia would allow him to slip the noose of such a story. Amadeus was not prepared to leave the future of the Empire to good fortune. Providence lay deep within the domain of heroes. It was not for him to grasp at.

Villains had to forge their own luck from the cooling corpses of their enemies.

Expecting the High Seats to remain passive during the next few years of chaos would also be utter stupidity. Amadeus was certain that at least one of them would make a play for the tower once they had achieved some kind of internal balance within their own borders. The Legions of Terror would need to be recalled to contain the inevitable conflict between them and Malicia. Leaving that mess to be resolved at a later date would leave Callow ripe for a different kind of rebellion.

A crusade with the full support of Procer to the west.

The Principate was still busy licking its wounds in the aftermath of its civil war, but Amadeus expected that it would be geared for a crusade within another decade. Both of their northern borders remained uncharacteristically quiet. Neither the Dead King nor the Chain of Hunger tested the might of the Lycoanese defences. The nations across their southern borders were also otherwise occupied. Levant was busy contending with a new wave of Names both heroic and villainous who wished to protect the sanctity of the creatures within the Brocelian forest, and the Free Cities were fully engaged in a civil war.

Ashur — although not technically sharing a border with the Principate — claimed in intercepted correspondence that it had temporarily repelled a Yan Tei invasion fleet. Amadeus doubted that it was anything so dire. Ashur would no longer remain standing if it was. However, even if it was only Yan Tei offloading their undesirables somewhere, it still added even more fuel to the raging inferno that was Calernia.

Procer faced a similar plague of Names to Praes, however unlike Praes it had a hero who could teleport. The heavens truly were more brazen than ever in tilting affairs their way, rather than allowing events to unfold at a more natural pace. The Eyes of the Empire had reported seeing the child of chaos who had created this complication for everyone within two different Principalities on the same day. That ability allowed her to serve as a widespread stabilizing influence that Praes did not presently have.

Wekesa and Sabah were deployed in Praes at present to help both Malicia and the Eyes mitigate the spreading discord. Amadeus and Scribe remained within Callow. They would have departed as well, only it would be tantamount to turning over Callow to the rebellion.

Amadeus could not afford for the Empire to face Procer with a rebellion in Callow hiding only skin deep below the surface. Neither could he afford for the current hatred towards Praes to exist in the long term. Allowing either would be tantamount to conceding defeat to the heavens. A long, drawn out defeat over the span of many years, but a defeat nonetheless.

The Black Knight was not willing to accept such a failure.

Alaya had assured him that the intermittent support of Wekesa and Sabah was enough to contain the chaos within Praes until he had resolved matters in Callow. That alone would not be enough to satisfy him. However, the increase in frequency of Named appearances had also boosted his reputation among the people of Callow to the point it rivalled the horror to the north. Heroes were far more hesitant to act against the Calamities now than they were even a year ago.

The plan to integrate Callow into the Empire over many decades had been cast aside and replaced with another as a consequence.

His new strategy involved carefully manipulating the current rebellion while every other nation was too occupied to involve themselves, much like the conquest had hidden behind the veil of the Proceran civil war. The rebellion was unlikely to amount to much without his intervention. He needed to accelerate the pace it operated at and crush it in a way that prevented another uprising for hopefully centuries to come.

The Black Knight believed that he could achieve that kind of victory by weaving a narrative so heavy, it dragged all others into the wake of its current. Amadeus had to manipulate the story in such a way so that the people of Callow came to hate their own heroes more than they hated the Empire. He knew that twisting stories this way was dangerous. Such a task would have been an act of folly even a year ago, but if there was one advantage to the influx of new Names, it was that Amadeus could be selective in which ones survived to band together.

Heroes with strong personalities who either conflicted in method or ideology were allowed to earn their Names. Those favouring extreme tactics in one way or another were preferred over others. Those who were liable to connect with one another were killed. Two bands of five competing heroes had been gathered from all corners of Callow within the borders of Laure as a result of his machinations.

Two bands of five where none could truly tolerate each other.

The largest setback was that there weren’t more leaders among the crop of heroes that he had cultivated, but planning for a third band would likely amount to defeat by hubris. Even two heroic bands were pushing what the Calamities were capable of facing, and it was only their inexperience that stayed Black’s hand. However, if Scribe found the opportunity to seed new villains into the rebellion, then Black was willing to take the risk. The presence of a villain on the opposing side would muddy the waters of their story, making them far less liable to succeed.

The Reluctant Strategist led the first band of heroes. Black considered her to be the most dangerous hero and had only allowed her to survive after careful consideration. Both her calculated approach to warfare and her foreign heritage sowed the seeds of distrust between her and the rest of the heroes. It was likely that all the heroes would either splinter or stand behind the Faithful Warrior without her influence, which would make for a far weaker story to unite Callow and Praes behind in the long term.

Her band consisted of the Stalwart Defender, the Loyal Aegis, the Wandering Bard and the Learned Tactician. The band of five had quiet, but firm and unyielding individuals who had united behind her in favour of using measured tactics. The only outlier — who was both a genuine exception to the rule and complication to the Black Knight’s plans — was the unknown arrival of the Bard. The eyes had noted that the Bard often disappeared for long stretches of time. Nobody was sure of where she vanished to. She was the only hero aside from the Reluctant Strategist who the Eyed had noted to have been born somewhere outside Callow.

The second group of heroes was led by the Faithful Warrior and favoured a general uprising. They were much bolder and counted the Radiant Archer, the Gallant Youth, the Silver Lancer and the Vengeful Warrior. It was their much deeper attachments to the story of Callow and their propensity for violence that Amadeus was planning to leverage to undermine the rebellion.

The Reluctant Tactician had so far managed to curtail the boldness of the Faithful Warrior. She prevented him from making aggressive strikes that would injure uninvolved peasants and gradually erode their own influence among the people of Callow. Amadeus was certain that with mounting failures, the Reluctant Strategist’s influence would wane and eventually conflict would come of it.

One of the risks of his larger strategy was the broader array of Aspects that the heroes would inevitably develop. The heavens liked to award their Chosen with the perfect tools to counter their opposition. The Black Knight had been steadily undermining Above’s efforts by presenting them with the wrong kinds of challenges. Administration, surveillance, subterfuge, logistics, everything except the direct combat with villains that many of their Names were suited for. It was forcing them to occupy Roles that ran contrary to the purpose of their Names. He intended to continue to tease out their aspects over the next few months and weaken them that way as a result.

A gradual removal of his own administrators would force the heroes into taking up those duties without the requisite skills, while also safeguarding those individuals when the rebellion at last became hot. Praesi gold which had once gone towards seeding conflict in Procer was now spent on buying goods within Callow in excess, leaving just enough for peasants to remain satisfied. For the heroes to fund their war efforts, they would need to take from their own people what their people did not have to give.

A skeletal figure clad in nothing more than rags passed Amadeus while he contemplated the situation in Callow. Eudokia would almost certainly evaluate her as a potential hero candidate and kill her as a consequence. Another orphan.

Amadeus grimaced as the gears of his mind turned towards that complication once again. It had taken some time to determine the cause of the new villain stories, and by then the problem had become self-sustaining. Rumours of children disappearing from orphanages continued to spread, sowing paranoia within the population of Callow. This in turn led to an increase in children who had both a heroic and villainous bent to their intentions, with the latter reinforcing the current state of affairs with each new appearance.

The Black Knight had modified his overall strategy to handling orphans, although he was uncertain of if the efforts would yield any results given how the issue appeared to sustain itself. By now, Callowens appeared to expect these darker names to arise from orphanages.

His new strategy involved having select members of the Eyes adopt the orphans who were identified as either heroic or villainous candidates, then carefully guiding their upbringing. It remained to be seen if this would be enough to curtail the issue in the long term, but for now it was the initial stage of solving what Amadeus expected would become a much larger, thornier difficulty.

Few things remained untouched as the world was rapidly consumed by strife. Wekesa’s home outside of Creation was one of them. Wekesa took out his dragonbone pipe and casually stuffed it with bangue to Amadeus’s right.

“Are the preparations in Summerholme finished?” Black asked the Warlock.

“They are.”

“Excellent.”

Black focused his attention on the water on the table before him.

The basin of water shimmered before Black. His green-eyed reflection faded away, before the surface resolved into the dark skinned face of Alaya of Satus. She was seated at the dark wooden table within the council chamber on the twenty-third floor of the tower. A candle flickered to one side of her, highlighting the shadows circling her eyes.

“Amadeus,” she greeted him with a warm smile.

“Alaya,” he raised a wineglass in reply.

“What are your thoughts on the Proceran House of Light’s new book?” Alaya asked.

“It’s a trap,” Amadeus gave a blunt reply.

Obtaining a copy of the book had been as effortless as having one of the eyes pay the fee after filing a request for one at a Cathedral in Salia. It had been harder to lay his hands on one of the original copies to account for the possibility of errors in transcription, but it had still been achievable.

“You think the stories inside are false?”

“The stories she knows are not the only stories that exist.”

“And yet…”

“She did include stories where villains owned the ending,” Amadeus agreed.

Amadeus would be lying if he refused to acknowledge the temptation to lean into those stories. The trouble was that they shared far too much in common with classical Praesi tragedies for Amadeus to bet on them. The Black Knight was not willing to gamble that much with the future of the Empire when other roads yet remained open to him.

“I take it that the trouble in Foramen is resolved?”

“It is,” he confirmed, “a faction of goblins attempted to splinter from under the matron’s control and seize control of Foramen for themselves. The Legions have put down the rebellion. Marshal Nim and the seventh remains garrisoned there, however it will be some time until Foramen can be trusted to function without direct oversight.”

“Good,” Alaya’s smile turned into a calculated frown, “Tasia Sahelian continues to pay fines in an effort to ignore tower laws in spite of Procer refusing to extend her loans of silver.”

Alaya had still not given him leave to purge the High Seats, despite the obvious danger that was bubbling beneath the surface of the Empire. A tenuous peace had emerged in the months since he had departed Laure, and old rivalries had resurfaced once again. Alaya had begun to play one faction against another once more. Given the chaos that was unfolding within Praes he expected that sooner or later an uncontrollable element would slip into her web and unravel it from the inside out.

“They refused?” Black’s eyebrows rose, “didn’t you predict that girl would attempt to fund your opposition?”

“She’s too busy putting out fires in her own house to start fires in ours,” Alaya explained.

“There has been an increase of Circle of Thorns activity within Callow,” he countered.

“But nothing of substance has come from it.”

“Tasia definitely has the coin,” Amadeus said. “Her network of spies has not been reduced, even now we still need to root them out of the Legions.”

Scribe remained within Callow to oversee the situation there, but her reach remained vast despite that. The past few seasons were the first time in decades that the Calamities had been spread so thin.

“The Eyes' penetration of Wolof has waned as well,” Malicia admitted. “The new bank in Mercantis is willing to extend her loans.”

“The Ravel Bank?” Wekesa asked.

“I didn’t know you’d found a new interest in coinage,” Black stated drily, “you’re a bit too old to be looking for new hobbies.”

Wekesa snorted.

“I found some of their coins in the pockets of one of the new heroes during dissection. It bore all the hallmarks of Fae magic, which prompted further investigation.”

“The bankers at Ater came to a similar conclusion,” Malicia added. “I’m placing a ban on the currency, even if it upends all of my existing work.”

“We have enough troubles already to not need to add the Fae to them as well,” he agreed.

Some tension remained coiled within the frame of his long time friend.

“What else?” Black asked, “there’s more, isn’t there?”

“The Sahelians have at last unveiled the first stage of their gambit.”

The table creaked as Black’s hand gripped the edge tighter.

“I’ll expect another of those if you go and break it,” Wekesa grumbled from his right, “that antiquity was imported from across the ocean, and it would be costly to replace.”

Warlock had been in high spirits for the past few months, in spite of how frequently his research was interrupted. Every interruption presented him with the opportunity to examine a new oddity, and his collection of new research material had been accumulating at an otherwise unprecedented rate.

“How badly have they overstepped?”

“They technically haven’t,” she admitted. “They have modified their city wards to account for a new defensive array. The new array requires the sacrifice of five prisoners a week to fuel the enchantment. The final construction is modelled on the effects of a Beast of Hierarchy and is allegedly capable of identifying and preventing the formation of new Names within the city walls.”

Amadeus leaned back in the soft green velvet chair and considered the words. The room was silent save for the crackle of flames from the furnace to his left. While it was not legally an overreach, this was still beyond ambitious even for the Sahelians. The use of both demons and devils were banned within the Legions. Amadeus had long desired to extend that ban to the rest of Praes, but acknowledged that even in more stable years it would not be enforceable.

“What do we know?” Wekesa inquired, looking up from his papers.

“They published a brief proclamation claiming that the array had already identified seven unwanted nascent Names within Wolof that have since been eliminated as an illustration of its effectiveness.”

“And the Due?” Wekesa pressed.

“Funnelled away into the sky.”

“Have they published the specifications of the array itself?” Wekesa asked.

“That information remains undisclosed,” Alaya denied.

Black felt a stirring of rage for a brief moment, before he pulled it aside and shoved it away deep in a box. That box had grown considerably heavier over the past year. Diabolists from one side of the Empire to the other with more ambition than skill would be working to establish a similar array. They would call upon demons to study and replicate the effect. Then their magics would fail, and the demons would break loose.

“I’ll give it an inspection and puzzle it out for myself,” Wekesa smiled, taking a deep sip of an Arlesite red.

“Who is responsible for this working?” Amadeus asked. “Their new Hieress is of the old breed, but I doubt she’s had the time to grow that far yet.”

While it was known that the Sahelians were in possession of the demon which had once shattered the city of Shango, the ability to learn from it to such an extent was well beyond what most sorcerers were capable of.

“Dumisai of Aksum is the culprit,” Warlock mused, “he was on the cusp of earning a Name before the Aspirant went and turned Creation on its head.”

“At least four of the other High Seats are funding research into duplicating the feat,” Alaya continued, “I’m certain that it will be all of them within a fortnight.”

Amadeus looked closer at the image of his friend in the pool. There was still a tenseness to her, a sense of ominous secrets still withheld.

“What else?” he asked.

“Praes received its second Red Letter not even one hour past. Somebody is attempting to recreate Goblin Fire through material sciences,” Alaya admitted, “I have yet to announce it.”

“Who?”

“The High Lord of Thalassina Idriss Kebdana thought that he could hide the inventions of his Sinister Scientist from the gnomes in a research facility under the ocean floor,” her tone was so scathing that the words could melt through steel.

“How did it escape notice?”

“The Eyes are spread too thin. Small issues compound into larger ones, trouble slips through the cracks.”

“There is no telling how fast events will spiral out of control if they are being this brazen,” Amadeus stated.

“At least we are not alone,” Alaya laughed bitterly.

Both the Principate and Delos had received Red Letters only a month past. A machine that made lightning elicited the first Red Letter in Procer, and a device for the mass reproduction of text earned the Red Letter in Delos. It was a grim time to rule anything larger than a chamberpot.

“What else?” the words were almost rote by this point. Amadeus realized that Alaya had been hiding much from him, hiding how grim the situation truly was.

“We can expect the High Seats to rebel against the Tower.”

“The Sahelians?”

“Are not behind this,” she denied, “they will unite behind High Lady Abreha of Aksum in their effort to cast me down.”

“What gives her that confidence?”

“She won the lottery of new Names within her family. That, combined with some new discoveries and hired slave soldiers from Stygia that she thinks I don’t know about, have bolstered her confidence. She’ll try pushing for the Tower before the end of the season. Wolof is likely to make their play once Aksum’s bid has fallen through.”

“The Legions need to be recalled.”

“They… do,” Alaya admitted. “And Maddie… if you need to, then you have my permission to purge them.”

“Dark Days protocols?”

“I…” she licked her lips, “Yes, Dark Days protocols.”

The words were spoken softly. So soft, that it was almost a whisper. It sounded as if she was admitting defeat. There was more to the situation. This response all but confirmed it in his mind. The future was dark, but this alone was far from enough to wear his friend down.

One question at a time, Amadeus teased out how much he had been kept ignorant of while attending to both Callow and the goblins.

And of how much trouble was yet to come.