Set during Bozja, spoilers through MSQ 5.5 and for all Field Notes. Minor references to animal cruelty and NPC death, a IVth Legion short. For the writing challenge of 'Adversary Insight' - an alternate POV of an ending section from 'unicorns for those who have none.'
You could always smell one of Lyon's beastmasters long before they arrived. Their boots were perpetually covered in mud and shit; their hair was either greasy from neglecting to bathe, or grimed from whatever river they'd thrown themselves into in passing. They elevated crudeness to an art form, all of them braying along behind their master like the war was their personal playground, each of them jockeying for his favor.
Yet Lyon was old. Well beyond his prime. Once the man was gone, Gabranth would surely discharge the rest, and bring in proper soldiers - ones with both education and talent.
That day could not come quickly enough. Fabineau sat as far back in his chair as he could, scowling at the pair of beastmasters that stood before the Legion's panel for questioning. The loss of Llofii pyr Potitus was incidental - but the monoceros was not. Such creatures were precious things, ripe with aether and the instinctive ability to channel it. Fabineau had been eager to advance to the next stage of experimentation, where they could begin to examine how well the monoceros could heal and purify its own tissues from increasing degrees of injury.
But, no. Two senior beastmasters had not been enough to properly keep track of a mere animal, and Llofii had scampered directly into the arms of the Resistance with it. Despite being faced with the outcries of countless higher-ranking officers, skilled mages, and even engineers, neither Clarricie nor Hernais seemed to truly grasp just how unforgivable their lapse had been. Instead, they both stared impatiently at the inquisitors, rattling off the same boring answers again and again as if unaware how to make themselves useful by reporting something that might make a difference.
Albeleo had already given up on getting anything productive out of the interrogation; the man rested his chin heavily on his hand, his attention drifting constantly down to the datapad before him, more interested in the latest results on the auracite. Fabineau couldn't fault him. Clarricie quo Priscus was clearly too caught up by the loss of her would-be pet to be of any use commenting on its performance in battle. He doubted that she even knew about the monoceros's powers to begin with. The woman had almost certainly latched onto the creature merely for its rarity - to brag about another addition to her obnoxious collection of animals, dismissing its true value as a research specimen that would drive other mages to heights of unparalleled jealousy.
The man beside her was equally vexing. From the numerous times Fabineau had been exposed to her, Clarricie had always struck him as gratingly eccentric: flighty, as rabid as all the rest, but easily steered towards any exotic beast dangled her way. Hernais had been just as negligible. Another of Lyon's dogs, as loud and loutish as the rest, and too mind-numbingly stupid to understand the true breadth of war's consequences.
But when Fabineau switched his disdain over to Hernais's direction, he found the beastmaster already watching him first.
Hernais's dark eyes were steady. There was no sign of ignorance within them; they were as calm as if they had already read over every scrap of Fabineau's thoughts, and had found nothing worthy of fearing. They held his gaze without wavering, with the cool, lofty indifference of one of Fabineau's own test subjects before the collars came down and the knives began.
Transfixed, Fabineau found himself jerking his chin as his own body tried to break the stare on his behalf - but he couldn't. Again, he tried and failed. With only a single glance, the beastmaster's will had proven strong enough to keep him pinned in place, even though Hernais should have been the one cowering in shame.
Eventually, Hernais turned his head away, dismissing Fabineau first.
In the end, there had been no time to demand a suitable chastisement of Lyon's troops. Bozja's battle lines shifted with every bell that passed; each dawn brought a map redrawn. They were losing, opportunities shut down before their research truly had a chance to shine. Magickal arts which should have been extolled and discussed in halls of learning were instead being trampled beneath the crude boots of invaders. Every belly that Fabineau cut into felt like another useless attempt to spill entrails upon the floor in hopes of scrying a better future, and he rubbed exhaustion from his eyes and ordered up another.
The Bozjans pushed forward. Despite all his posturing, Lyon allowed the Castrum to slip through his fingers - utterly wasting Albeleo's sacrifice, a brilliant mind lost to the mud it should have rightfully soared over.
Left headless, the mage detachment scrambled for direction, entrenching themselves in the colder hills of Zadnor as more and more of their territory was nibbled away. Sicinius had already loftily abandoned the battlefield, describing it as beneath him - and Menenius had let him, had allowed the engineer to waltz free, as if the entire fate of the IVth Legion had suddenly become negligible. A good third of the surviving mages had banded together under Sartauvoir, openly rebelling against the same research practices that Albeleo had pioneered - and Fabineau bitterly pulled together the remaining zealots who were willing to set aside such petty constraints, intent on carving their slow way back to victory.
He had little time to think. On every front, they were running out of resources. No matter. Desperation made minds much more pliable when it came to embracing measures they would normally plead squeamishness towards.
"We've received the latest shipment of corpses that were recovered from the Bozjan Southern Front," the mage announced nervously, casting anxious glances towards the muttering clot of zealots nearby. "Some of them are our own troops. Should we, er... use them as material for Shemhazai?"
Irritated, Fabineau mentally marked the soldiers who appeared the most squeamish; they would be next on the list of fodder. He was about to turn away with a dismissive shrug - but then the bright crimson of a beastmaster's uniform caught his attention and he stalked across the field, prodding the dead body roughly with his boot until he managed to roll it over.
The mangled face of Hernais stared back.
Decay mottled the corpse's skin. Its uniform was even filthier than before. Its eyes were blank, filmed over with death: incapable of ever challenging Fabineau again.
He could not look away.
Instead, he scowled down at the cadaver dispassionately, feeling a distant sense of humiliation calling back to him, a giggling whisper that kissed the back of his neck with lips as cold as grave dirt. It had no right. How dare such a creature think to put on airs, to have the gall to defy its betters. It should have bowed its head in obedient servitude every time that Fabineau had passed, the pathetic animal that it was.
Taking his silence for disapproval, the mage began to babble. "Or mayhap it is disrespectful. They are our own people, of course. Their families will want them returned. Pray, forgive me for my error - "
"No." With another jab of his toe, Fabineau shoved the corpse a few ungainly ilms. "Use it. This meat is good for naught else."
It was past time for him to depart. Thanks to Sartauvoir's stubbornness, it fell to Fabineau to coordinate the motions of the zealots across Zadnor; if nothing else, at least their research might survive. Someday, the entire world would know of the work they had performed in Bozja: of the auracite, the magickal techniques gleaned from methodical testing, the use of aetheric recombinations that could warp the rawness of life into new forms of being.
They would murmur in awe of his genius, and say nothing of fools like Sicinius.
But he lingered, unable to leave the battlefield abattoir even after the zealots came and began to drag the bodies away - he lingered, looking at the ghosts articulated within the stains left upon the soil, the sterile outlines where a head had lolled slack, a hand scraped against the stones.
Every specimen he had ever worked on had known to be afraid. If they had not come to him already so, they had learned.
That was not how he could remember them anymore. They hadn't deserved individuality. Their records had been married to designations of project compatibility instead of names. He had barely bothered to keep track, racing along behind Sicinius to prove whose work could consume the most materials. The consequences were tucked between the lines of his research papers, endlessly submitted in neat, clean piles.
They were all looking back at him now, these creatures he'd put upon the table for vivisection: a contempt they'd never shown him in life while huddled in their cages, left behind in the face of Hernais.
