Three graves laid by glimmering fragments of glass in the dirt. The disconcerting silhouette of their home. The sight of it had instilled Octazarus' heart with some mix of pride and joy in lighter times. To him, right there and now, it was little more than a monument to failure. His failure—to protect his children, his wife. His failure to be normal. Lucretia, bless her soul, she believed in his ability to maintain that quiet life for them.
Octazarus' fingers curled, balled into bloody fists as tears freely streaked down his face once more. The remains of his daughter's stuffed ragdoll hung limply from one hand, gingerly wrapped in cloth to keep it in one piece. He failed her worst of all. His daughter—his first child. His heart and soul, stolen from him, only a stuffed goat left of her.
He removed the dinked brass band that had clung to his ring finger. He stared down at it for a few moments before clutching it tightly. He wanted to tell her so much—but a few words would have to do. He dropped the ring over the cross embedded into the largest pile of stones. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry this happened to us. To you. You'd… I know you'd hate to see me do it, but I'm going to destroy them for what they did, my love." He picked up the line of twine that sat atop the small cairn. His fingers trembled ever slightly as he slipped the brass ring into the loop with its matching gold partner. He tied the loop and slipped the rings discreetly under his shirt. Octazarus lowered himself down and placed his lips briefly to the arm of the wooden cross atop the cairn, then the smaller cross to its right, then the carved rock at the top of the littlest cairn.
Octazarus' footsteps echoed in the silence of his house, a candlestick in his left hand while his bloodied war-hammer was clutched near the head in his right. The floor was mottled with the off-colour blood of the inhuman creatures that had taken his daughter and slain his wife. Their corpses burned outside in a stone-wreathed pyre, their weapons crushed, helmeted heads ripped from their necks and piked on a fishing spear crafted of fine bronze and iron.
He only cared to take a few things—the stable-house with the warhorse he'd ridden so many years ago laid in ash and cinders. A long march across the countryside prohibited what he could carry by a margin greater than if he could have ridden his steed. The matter of what to take proved trivial. His bloody boots carried him to his bedroom. He slumped onto a knee, wincing at the pain lancing across his arms—whatever horrid poison was in those needles had failed to kill him, but it had caused plenty of damage. Octazarus placed the war-hammer on the floor and the candlestick on the flat top of the leftmost bedpost. His fingers fumbled with the buckles on the steamer trunk he had kept at the foot of their bed.
His hands didn't quite tremble as his eyes flicked over the tarnished steel of his wargear—a cuirass made by an elderly smith, black paint still covering most of it. The eyes of that horrid red bull's head stared at him from the breast of the armour, but he didn't linger on it for long. The navy-blue gambeson, trousers and silver gorget came out next.
Octazarus ran his fingers over the lettering on the gorget, then the symbol of the tyrant—his coat of arms, two crossed axes over a shield that was edged with lugs like that of a cog with the word for steel leaping across the top. His grasp tightened briefly at the thought of the man, though it loosened just as quick. He took a few deep breaths, and he was rummaging deep into the steamer once more. A haversack came out, alongside a pistol—some relic gifted to him by the tyrant for his successes. It didn't function like any pistol he knew. No place to pour powder, with a bore so thin that no ball would fit down it. It had no ramrod, no cock-piece or even a frizzen. His rancid boots were replaced with the shined black jackboots of the uniform, his bloodied clothes tossed carelessly with them as he adorned the navy-blue garments of his past.
He was glad that it all fit him still—a tad looser, he noted, but form-fitting and comfortable enough, all the same. The cuirass was thrown over his gambeson, the gorget tucked under the neck of the armour. His haversack was filled by stained hands with a spare set of clothing, a few motley provisions and a leatherbound journal. A cloak was fetched from the bottom of the steamer, made of hemp and bear's pelt. The roomy hood fashioned from the head of the bear was thrown over his head, the cloak thrown around his shoulders and fastened at the shoulders with a steel brooch stamped with the symbol of a cleaver.
Octazarus slung his war-hammer over his shoulder with a leather sling, stamped with bronze clamps at either end, clipped over two loops along the weapon's handle. He snuffed the candle sitting on the bedpost and walked out the door of his home, shutting the door quietly behind him. He scooped up little Vinicia's headless ragdoll that had been left by the cairns as he made his way out. He held the thing tightly in his hands for a long few seconds before stuffing the decapitated sheep under his breastplate, letting it sit pressed against his hearts.
Octazarus eyes turned outward as he left his home. The countryside was desolate, though no smoke could be seen. No fires burned, no screams echoing into a purplish sky. A silence like the service of a wake had befallen the landscape. He had waged war and knew well what it did to the peaceful farmsteads like these—it wasn't quiet. It was fire and brimstone, cast unto the earth.
His thoughts turned inward as he followed the well-trodden dirt road North to Zotteschot. He thought somberly of his wife, whose skin he could never touch again, whose lips he couldn't kiss, and he cried. He thought of Ermingard, his firstborn, and Vinicia, his second born, undoubtedly suffering at the hands of monsters, and cried. He thought of his youngest, who had drawn so few breaths, whom he would never get to raise, and he cried. His tears flowed down his cheeks, still dimpled with droplets of blood.
His sorrow turned to rage as tears freely flowed. Perhaps this was the way it was meant to be. Fate, as it were. Lucretia had always seen the butcher in him—even as they settled into the countryside on a farm, away from the tyrant and his wars. The butcher, that horrible voice inside him that yearned for more than a quiet life, that voice which yearned so desperately for war, she had always seen it in him. He tried to bury it—he vowed to never let it surface when he placed that golden ring on her finger, but it was always there. Waiting. Lucretia could see it in his eyes when they spent their nights watching the stars—the ambition that he had, the desire to reach out and take those small, silvery dots in the sky for himself. It was the butcher that wished it the most. He had tried so hard for her to never again be that man. He spat a whispered curse. What a fool he had been to deny it. He would always be that man—the butcher, the monster. Perhaps it was better to accept it, to again don the cleaver and carry the torch. His thoughts darkened and Octazarus kept walking, following that dirt road.
OoOoO
Miloslaw Aleksy knew of few evils quite as awful as a boring courtroom. His advisors babbled on as his metal fingers gently tapped at the ornate oak table, while his eyes drank in the sight of one of his servants working their way across the room with a duster.
"… And as such, it is vital that the Fruca rebellion be crushed, lest we all be next." Aleksy's bionic eye threatened to roll out of his skull at the petty fearmongering, but he ignored it. He had been to Fruca before. Poor and impoverished nobles, all of them, and their peasants more so. It was no bloody surprise that their pitiful little army had revolted. What a wonder it was that these bawling little runts could dare to even bring such a waste of time to him, Ferrus Tyrannis of Udren.
"I see no reason that this had to be brought to your tyrant, Aldric. We are busy fighting a war here with those childish little anarchists down south of our border, or did you forget that?" His voice came out as a low, staticky snarl as he stood, staring down the disgusting, bloated man that stood before his war table. Bald, fat, and ugly with a big, bulb nose and beady eyes. He offended Aleksy's metal-swathed eye-lenses.
"M-Milord, please—" Aleksy growled lowly, silencing the wretched man. "No, none of that. You will return home, you miserable whelp, and you will handle your own bloody affairs. There are Havernites at the gates, and it is my priority to see them gone. I have no great butcher to slaughter them in their swamps, or burn their filthy caravans and tent cities, so unless you would like to try fitting into steel, you fat little rodent, then I recommend you leave. Now," Aleksy boomed, his full, imposing height casting a shadow on the nobleman and bringing winces to his advisors' faces as diplomacy was given a prompt and hasty defenestration through the highest spire of the Tyrant's castle. The nobleman stammered for a moment, searching for words as his greasy face turned pallid before he scurried out. The rest of the diplomats soon followed—an onrushing tide of portly nobles and their cabinets of snake-like advisors fighting to be the first out of his war-chamber.
Miloslaw quietly chuckled at the prospect, watching the room empty… save for one. Aleksy's anger flared again as he watched that stupid, blathering Francish mercenary saunter up, in his all-too large blue hat with the white feather in the brim, that frumpy blue gambeson and its tacky brass buckles, ringed hand on that ugly saber on his hip. The man smiled faintly up at the towering wall of clockwork machinery and man that was Miloslaw Aleksy.
"Quite the show of force, mon ami." Aleksy's bionic eye flickered briefly and he chuffed hot air out his nose at the flamboyant little mercenary. "Hardly," Aleksy grunted, stomping over to the wooden cabinet at the far end of the wall behind his throne. His metal gauntlets clicked and whirred as they parted at the fingertips, allowing the slim and dexterous metal pincers to extend and manipulate the handles on the cabinet. A flagon and a tall brown bottle were retrieved. The mercenary paced nearby, a hair's breadth out of arm's reach. The man glanced up at Aleksy as the tyrant uncorked the bottle and filled the flagon with a dark wine.
"As much as I enjoy watching you make those fat little worms squirm, I imagine you called me to your little castle for something more urgent than a drink and a show?" The man leaned to one side, hand on hip as he stared expectantly at the clockwork amalgam that was Miloslaw Aleksy. He turned to face the tiny man, briefly sipping his wine. His eyes fell upon the stained-glass window, the untrustworthy rendering of his father standing triumphantly over the kneeling form of the Francish king of yore. "There was a runner that came in, early this morning. Must have been traveling for days. Dirty, disheveled. Reeked of death and fresh kill. He said he came from Amzell, a farming hamlet a few dozen kilometers south of here. He said that it had been raided in the night, he had been… drunk in a ditch, or some such nonsense, and was spared the same fate as so many others." Aleksy stared down at his wine with mild distaste. He didn't much care for the feeling broiling in his guts or the unease that came with it.
"I believe I heard from the captain, the one with the white hair, wearing the bull on his helmet," the mercenary nodded along, rubbing his chin. "What of it? It sounded like another raid from the Havernites, the way the captain described it." Aleksy nearly crushed the flagon in his hands. That captain was a thorn in his side. If he didn't have the hearts of half his castle guard, he'd have the man flayed alive, but it was a gamble not worth the waste of an officer that he begrudgingly admitted was more than competent. The little metal pincer of his index finger traced the rim of the flagon.
"Much as I would like to believe that… I don't think so. A few dozen kilometers south of Zotteschot is still too far north. The army has kept a tight blockade across all routes from the Glenn to the Crystal Path." The Francish mercenary raised an eyebrow and began to pace again. "I see. I take it you want my people to do something about it? Why else would you call me down," the tiny man's eyes met Aleksy's. The towering behemoth of steel and brass frowned.
"I want you to follow the road we found the man on, follow it all the way to Amzell. He said the hamlet had been raided, confirm the story for me. I'll pay you for the trouble." The mercenary narrowed his eyes briefly, his arms crossed and his body language closed off. Aleksy inwardly swore, hoping he hadn't pushed the useful little bastard away with the openness. His diplomacy advisor would be flayed alive if his advice led to him having to waste any more funds on some other mercenary, or Gods forbid, sending down one of the few units of the army he had on hand.
"I'll do it, though I must ask, what is so special to you about this small farming hamlet?" Aleksy gave a stilted smile. "Am I not allowed to care for my subjects' wellbeing?" The mercenary was quick to stare him down, his smile far more genuine, the implied joy making Aleksy uncomfortable. "Come now, Miloslaw Aleksy. Your care for your people goes only as far as your coin purse." Aleksy allowed the smile to melt into a frown. His thoughts wandered briefly as he nursed his wine. Openness, his advisor had said… might as well take it the extra distance, he figured.
"The Butcher settled in Amzell after the war. He is still living there, as far as I know. If there were any man that could survive a raid—" he needn't speak more, it had seemed. The mercenary's face had gone pale, his attention turned to swearing in his native tongue as he made for the door in a rush. Aleksy grinned into his wine. If there was one thing he could rely on to get the Francs to move quickly, it was their horrid little code of honour. He stomped over to that ugly stained-glass window, staring up at it. If his father had died a few years earlier than he did, Aleksy would have had the window smashed, but alas, the old bastard had stamped out those plans by living nearly five years longer than his son would have hoped. It wasn't the scene that the clockwork cyborg despised, rather that it was a lie. A neat little lie to build his father's god-like image to the peasantry and to instill fear in the foreigners who passed into his war room. It was a man with a cleaver-like axe and a hooked hammer that had stood over that Francish king, a man that Aleksy was overdue to see again for advisory. He would never have admitted it, but he was more inclined to trust a Francish mercenary with investigating a raid on Octazarus Atredian's home than he did his personal guard. Had it been any other town, he probably would have sent them instead. Truthfully, he didn't trust them not to run after their retired general and leave him defenseless in this castle. Aleksy frowned into his wine, then finished it with a large swig. He stomped out of the war room with a grumble, not caring to put away the wine or the flagon.