}!{
Sorlanmaeger's roar rolled across the heavens like a deafening peal of thunder, alerting the Cintran watchtower guards. Three shapes appeared in the sky, growing larger with every passing second. They recognized the mottled gold and black scales of the greater dragon, and the typhaeon mounts of dragonriders. The word was passed along; the queen was coming, and she was alone. Some other news accompanied the message as well, but did little to bring comfort to the bewildered populace. The royal army had been defeated at the Marnadal Stairs, its soldiers put to rout and scattered to the winds. The king was dead along with his Skelligean warriors. With nothing to stand in their way, the Nilfgaardian armies resumed their march unabated, spilling freely into the North to at last begin their long coveted conquest of the upper half of the Continent.
If the arrival of the queen's dragon didn't spell out their impending doom, the rising smoke in the horizon from burning towns and villages spoke volumes. Still, there were some who stubbornly remained within the walls of Cintra, trusting in the host of soul-bound warriors who possessed the powers of the wandering world. They were all that were left, a few hundred against hundreds of thousands. A dozen at a time would patrol the span of the walls, operate the siegebreaker machines built into the towers, and another dozen would watch the gates as they would be the first to bear the brunt of Nilfgaardian assaults.
Lady Belen, the court wizard, was summoned to the palace gate. Averon brought the broken body of Queen Calanthe before her courtiers, gently removing her from himself by unbuckling the straps of her saddle. His arms didn't strain with her weight, nor did his lips betray his despair. He was the epitome of stoicism, a walking statue unflapped by the battering elements. Beneath that veneer of calm, his heart roiled with raw emotion. Yet again, he'd failed the crown. Unworthy was he, commander of the queensguard, to bear the title any longer. Calanthe coughed and uttered a strangled cry as her bones reset themselves at the behest of Belen's spell. The sorceress endured her cries with focused silence, bringing in the final incantations to renew the queen's broken body. When she'd finished, Calanthe rose up with hateful fire burning in her eyes. She did not take to the news of their defeat, nor did she weather the death of her husband well.
"Grandmother!" Little Ciri called out from beyond the open doors of the palace. The princess ran up to the queen, concern furrowing the lines on her tiny face. She saw the lioness covered in her own blood, though the wounds had been closed thanks to Belen's help. Frantically, she looked around for any sign of her grandfather. Calanthe chose to break the news to her slowly, and both shed a tear at the thought of the king's passing.
"Your Highness..." Averon began, only to be cut off by the queen's grateful words.
"You returned from the treacherous forests of Brokilon, ever faithful to your charge." Calanthe said, "The blackclads are on their way here, they will surround the city and cut off escape. But Cintra must live on. Into your hands once more, I commit the life of my heir. Will you do me this one last thing, Averon?"
Averon remained silent for a moment, realizing what Calanthe planned to do. Her eyes betrayed her anguish, her desire for vengeance. They were far greater than her desire to live, but she would not have Ciri die with her. The queen would lead the defense of her city, bring the Nilfgaardian menace to the tips of Cintran pikes and force them to bleed for their victory. But the princess would be taken far away from the city, to ensure the future of the kingdom. Averon didn't like the idea, he wanted to stay and fight. The very nature of the queensguard was to protect their queen, to be far away from her was to betray that sacred charge.
"I stand ready to serve, my queen."
"Take her north, past the Yaruga, and find Geralt of Rivia. She will be safe with the witcher, as she was always fated to be." Calanthe hushed Ciri as the princess started to fuss, "Now now, my dear. Don't argue, behave yourself and listen to Commander Averon. Now go, you mustn't delay."
The last caravan heading northward was at the third gate. Whole families loaded up into wagon trains, some stuffing their stows with luggage filled with valuables and furniture. Serah and Sandy prioritized the women under their employ before packing up for their own wagons. The marchioness knew they would be the most vulnerable in times of war, she didn't want to leave them to the Nilfgaardians. It came as a surprise that Averon arrived, bringing in one more passenger and a squad of his queensguard.
This was the first time she'd seen him since his disappearance.
"Bov, why didn't you come to me straight away?" Serah asked after taking him into her arms, "Where's your brother?"
She would want the whole story, but how could he even begin with the words to describe his experience in the forests of Brokilon?
"The queen needed me the moment I came back. There wasn't any time to say hello, I'm sorry." Averon apologized, "As for Rey, I haven't seen him since the battle."
"Gods'a mercy!" Sandy exclaimed, pressing her lips into her folded hands. She prayed that her little boy would be alright, that his father's gifts would keep him alive.
"He'll be fine, Auntie." Averon assured her, then pushed Ciri forward. "This is the princess. She'll be traveling with us north."
Misty eyed, the young girl bit her lip and looked back in the direction of the palace. Serah and Sandy did their best to keep up assurances, bringing Ciri up to the wagon with the rest of the women. Lyra, ever eager to make friends, made the start of the journey pleasant enough by sitting beside her.
"Shouldn't we wait?" Sandy asked, her eyes wide with worry. "Rey might be back any time soon."
Averon paused for a moment, then glanced at Sgt. Silas. The man met his gaze and gave him a nod. "Sir, I can take it from here. You can ride hard after us when you've met up with Sir Reyncourt."
The Myrmidon smiled and placed his hand on the man's shoulder, "I owe you one, sergeant. Gods be with you." He then turned to Sandy, "I will stay long enough to bring him back to you. The blackclads will not claim my brother."
Sandy's eyes brimmed with tears, and she uttered a quiet word of gratitude before boarding for travel. Only two queensguard and the dryad woman Morénn remained to help him with the task. The caravan of refugees rolled out of the gates and disappeared down the road. Averon knew he was breaking his promise to the queen somewhat, but he trusted Silas. The young man had taken control of the queensguard well since his absence. He deserved a promotion with his fine work. The four of them, mounted on horses, rode out in the opposite direction to find Reyncourt.
"I hope the people of my city were nice to you." Averon said to Morénn.
The dryad shrugged, clutching tightly to the man's waist. "I take it they've never seen someone like me before. They weren't that all bad."
"I suppose we should both be thankful they have other things to worry about." Averon remarked, kicking his horse to a full gallop.
Reyncourt returned to find New Amendale in flames. All around him, he saw desolation and ruin. The houses, the barns, the halls he helped build lay in wastes. Blackened timber, burned out husks of things once men, littered the ground. The very earth was stained with the blood of men, the women and children too. Scoia'tael arrows had cut them down where they stood, another sign of the endless feud between races.
Dread gripped the young knight's heart as he guided his horse towards the manor.
He dared not call out her name. He already knew, even before seeing her, that Fenne did not escape. For what felt like an eternity, Reyncourt stood at the path bending towards the front door of his home. His head was bowed, eyes clenched shut with tears streaming down his bloody soot-covered cheeks.
A mournful sound rapped against his quivering lips, demanding release. The knight's steps slowed the closer he got to the crumpled form of his beloved woman. Fenne lay beside her maid, a girl who had naught but fifteen summers to her life and one Reyncourt hired just to care for a pregnant Fenne. Two arrows pierced her body, and her throat was slashed open. Lifeless pale blue eyes stared into nothingness, reflecting the pained expression adorning her betrothed's visage.
Reyncourt dropped to his knees and wept. It was all he could do. He'd failed her, and now she was lost to him forever.
The knight reached out and touched her face, closing the eyes with a furtive brush of his fingers. Tenderly, he took her into his arms and walked out into the woods. There, he burned her corpse on a crude pyre, so that Fenne would not suffer any indignities beyond the grave. Reyncourt stared into the flames with a dead man's eyes. He never before felt so hollow, like the shambling undead that roamed the shadowed realms of the Continent.
In that moment, when he was at his most vulnerable, the flames spoke to him. They didn't speak in the tongues of mortals, nor in faded Elder speech, but whatever words they used- all ears could comprehend. The god that the Church claimed to serve, its attention was drawn to Vandal's bastard son. He who bore the nascent heart of ember, it would give the spark breath and kindling. Reyncourt looked into the dancing red lights upon Fenne's pyre, an inadvertent sacrifice offered to the Eternal Fire. The god touched his mind, leaving something to haunt his dreams, before slipping away into the nothingness from which it came.
Reyncourt caught a glimpse of himself, shedding his molten blood into a chalice from which hundreds of men drank deeply. He saw whole worlds of frost and ice, wandering worlds like Saggrel, roaming the mute expanse of the void. He saw riders clad in the bones of kings, jumping from world to world, on the path of conquest. Both brought death and destruction. But then, he saw those same men who drank his blood stand together like a wall against the black tide. Where the other worlds succumbed to the icy death of Saggrel, theirs would not.
When the vision ended, Reyncourt noticed that night had already come. The city of Cintra was under siege. Nilfgaardian mangonels hurled stones and fire bombs at her walls, while Zerrikanian Fire Scorpions fired green bolts of magically infused missiles into the towers. Dragons fought from above, striking the soul-bound soldiers defending the walls. The Cintrans were fighting back, as was the nature of any siege. No side left the assaults unanswered. Reyncourt could see a few mages among them, bringing low the winged beasts with some fire of their own. Arrows rained down from either side, heralding the storm of boiling hot tar spilled atop the assembling blackclads.
They were just about readying their siege towers for deployment when the knight slipped out of the ruins of New Amendale. The lumbering clumsy-looking machines were easy targets for Sorlanmaeger, and the Nilfgaardians lose scores of their knights and engineers to a fiery death when the dragon made his pass. Around and around the walls he went, ignoring the arrows and bolts striking his armored hide.
Reyncourt would know of the vision's meaning later. His empty soul needed to be filled with the blood of Nilfgaardians. And so, he took up his mace and rode out into the battlefield alone.
With a deafening crash, the first gate shattered beneath the repeated blasts of mangonel missiles. At the signal of the trumpeters, the Nilfgaardians sounded a unified cry and marched towards the breach, one company at a time to meet the Cintrans desperately filling up the gap in their defenses. Nilfgaardian shields met Cintran pikes, while arrows and spellcraft filled the air. Lady Belen, protected by the soul-bound elite, tested her arcane might against that of Nilfgaard. The blackclad sorceress, Fringilla Vigo, used a deadly array of fiery spells in the form of bolts, balls and waves of sweltering heat. So fierce was their duel that the very stones that formed the walls and street around them melted away into bright red rivers of molten rock. Even through that hellish plane, among sundering towers and arcing jets of flame, men fought with the black devils. Cries of pain, fury and anguish filled the air as the defenders gradually withdrew inwards and further into the city. The Nilfgaardians followed, putting whatever the mages did not burn to the torch.
Then, the dragons joined in.
Valiant Queen Calanthe fought with all her heart, with all the strength of her loyal dragon Sorlanmaeger. She was a lioness borne upon serpentine wings, unleashing the wrath of a viciously violated kingdom upon her assailants. For the briefest of moments, she was the embodiment of Cintra's enduring tenacity, the rock that broke the waves of the surf. But eventually, even the hardiest stone would not weather the tides long. She was torn apart in the air when the gigabeisten descended upon them both in swarms. Sorlanmaeger followed her in death not long after, and when the great dragon fell so did the last of Cintran morale. Without their beloved monarch to guide them, the soldiers dropped their weapons and rushed for the other two gates. The Nilfgaardians rode them down and slaughtered the battered, broken fleeing throng.
In a bid to fight for another day, Lady Belen used the last of her strength to open a portal that sent her and a handful of the surviving soul-bound into the unknown. With the last defender struck down and the city in ruins, the Nilfgaardians rejoiced and rallied for the long march into the North. Meanwhile, Menno Coehoorn searched the crumbling remains of the palace for any sign of Princess Cirilla. Throughout the night and well into the morning of the next day, he and his men turned the whole place upside down, to no avail.
The princess was gone.
"Sheisse!" Menno roared, kicking a fallen warrior's helmet in a fit of rage. They'd killed everyone in the city, leaving no one to tell the Marshal of the whereabouts of their quarry. He would have to employ the use of the darker arts the Nilfgaardian mages were privy to. He turned to his men and snapped, "Vigo! Fetch me that sorceress, quickly!"
On the fields outside the burning desolation that was Cintra, a great field sown with the dead and dying stretched for near a quarter of a mile. Those of the Cintrans who did not fall to the Nilfgaardians inside the city had met their end in that battlefield, to mingle with mud and soot. Among the dead was Lord Strauss, spymaster and Lord Protector. He'd put up a brief but courageous sortie with his skeleton army against the Nilfgaardian light cavalry, but they were struck down by a storm of arrows shot from treacherous Scoia'tael bows.
Among the dying was Vortiger, a little known captain of a mercenary band hired to bolster the ranks of the Cintran army. The man was clad in the ruins of what used to be his trusty hauberk of steel, broken into gaps by Nilfgaardian lances. He lay among the rocks, propped up by a large stone and clutching the kite shield that saved him a few minutes of fighting from the elven arrows. Blood oozed from the crack in his head, staining the rough stubble on his face. His brown eyes were glazed with fading agony as he surveyed the carnage. Faces familiar to him stared up from the ground with lifeless eyes.
His men, his dear rowdy bunch, were dead. And he, their leader, would soon follow. The necrophages were coming, he could hear them howling from the darkest corners of the wilds.
"No, gods..." He whispered, praying to whoever would hear. Vortiger's fingers curled, embracing his sword. "Not like this..."
The shadows moved in the dim light of the stars, only to be washed away in the fire of Reyncourt's breath. The knight emerged from the wealds, leading his horse through the battlefield until he came upon the dying captain. Their eyes met and Vortiger raised a trembling hand to beckon him close.
"Hold, sir... please." His voice hissed through gritted teeth, "I implore of you, take my sword and run me through... lest the fiends come and devour me while I yet live!"
Reyncourt approached and knelt before him. With a casual glance at the captain's injuries, he knew it to be so. The man was not long for this world, but long enough to be meal for the necrophages. However, his thoughts did not turn towards ending his life. Rather, he would save it. Moved by the strange vision in the fire, Reyncourt removed his gauntlet and drew out his dagger. He slit his wrist and allowed the blood to flow, moving his arm to hover above the man's bewildered visage.
"No, my good man. I forbid you to die."
Vortiger's eyes widened, the blood glowed hot. It dripped freely into his open mouth, filling him with a godlike strength that he'd never felt before in his life. The captain sputtered, coughed and retched. Godsblood overtook him, changing his body and soul from the inside out. His wounds mended and closed, spitting out the hateful barbed arrowheads that up until then remained firmly etched into his flesh. Violently did he convulse and twitch, like in his final death throes. Vortiger cried out as a burning sensation set all his nerves aflame.
When the deed was done, the captain was on his knees before the knight. His eyes, once brown, now glowed bright gold with divine power. They stared up in wonder at the proud smile Reyncourt was sporting, "Now rise. Take up your sword and follow me."
}!{