Throne of Steel

Chapter 9 -Rain of Fire

Under the rustling of papers and uneasy steps abound, the many new assistants and secretaries working in the Commodore's office strutted about trying to sort the many documents delivered every day. None of them knew why this was happening, most of them didn't bother to question it. They just followed orders as they always had. In response to the setback when the Separatists freed Kryta from the Shining Blade, Scarlet Briar reopened recruitment for the Lionguard and founded a slew of completely new divisions whose ranks were filled with new blood.

All of which were more eager to fight for the city's banner than the old guard was comfortable with and all of which Scarlet insisted to micromanage in person. Which was why any and all reports were not processed by the new divisions' immediate superiors, but rather were kept sealed and sent straight to her personal office.

The Sylvari emerged from her personal quarters, checked the red sprouts on her head and adjusted the corset holding her elaborate leather costume together. She looked upon her new office workers with satisfaction, all these devoted worker bees breaking their backs for their new queen. The new staff was overworked and exhausted, but the stressed and desperate air between them was soothing and harmonic in Scarlet's eyes. It was all in service to her after all. But her reveling in the blood and sweat of her underlings wouldn't last, as an all too frequent face barged in through the door.

"Ceara! The situation in Ascalon has gone too far! We have to act now!" Pact Marshal Trahearne, a green Sylvari with purple brambles for hair, marched into the office. He was dressed in a uniform hand-designed to stand out between other Sylvari despite being made of the same fibers, and was as worked up as always. He had been pestering her about the Charr all too often in the last few days.

And as usual, he had the audacity to presume to call her by her old name, just because they were both Sylvari. She was fuming on the inside over this, but unlike those vapid simpletons in the Shining Blade, she had the self-control necessary to not let it show.

Scarlet sighed in an overdramatic fashion and rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes, the flamies are burning buildings and killing Charr, blah, blah, blah. Tell me something I don't know - better yet, make it actually important in some way."

"Every further day that we don't take action, more innocents are killed for not pledging loyalty to the Flame Legion. It was bad enough that the Iron Legion was doing the same thing!"

The Commodore held one hand in front of her mouth and yawned. "Boooring! Listen here, Hearnie, I could care less what little squabbles the cats have going on. They'll always be around either way."

Even though they had been through similar discussions many times, Trahearne still found himself staring at her with complete disbelief. "Those are our allies, Ceara. When we joined forces to fight the Flame Legion, we made agreements. We have obligations to them, we can't just sit idly by and watch them get obliterated."

"The cats have been fighting this war for centuries. The flamies will bite their teeth out on the Citadel's walls, like they always do."

"They have a new weapon, they melted one of the largest forward bases the legions had, all the way to its foundation. And they did so without even touching it!"

She paced past him to sit on her wide desk, which was covered in sealed reports and had brand new golden lion statues adorning each corner. "So they got a new toy and now the ironies can't hide in their little fort anymore. Big deal."

Trahearne followed her and refused to let up. "If they do to the Citadel what they did to that tower, they will come for Lion's Arch next! The lives of your citizens are on the line here. They could destroy this entire city and kill everyone in it!" Scarlet was about to ask where the problem was, but caught herself in time not to. It wasn't time to show this much colour just yet.

She leaned back in her gold-framed, red-upholstered chair and shrugged with her hands open. "Even if I were to indulge this trifle, what do you propose that we do about it?"

"Authorize me to send the Pact's fleet! If we bombard the Flame Legion while they're still on the way to the Citadel, they won't have the numbers to take it by the time they arrive."

She leaned forward, placed her elbows on the table, put her hands together and rested her head on them with a smug expression. "So your answer to cats killing each other is killing more cats?"

"We would save the lives of innumerable civilians."

Scarlet waved him out with one hand.. "Enough of this. Don't bother me again until there is a real problem."

Without another word, the Pact Marshal stormed out of Scarlet's office and paced through the streets, without stopping until he reached the Pact's headquarters. Representatives of all three orders saluted him when he arrived. "I have new orders. Deploy the fleet. Make every single airship ready and head for Ascalon. Bombard the Flame Legion's army until they stop their advance."

The Vigil's representative, a Charr dressed in their signature spiked black armor plates, whot had grown visibly disgruntled with his superiors as of late, asked him: "Are you sure? Do we not have express orders from Commodore Briar to stay our hand?"

Trahearne put his concerns to rest. "We do, but I'm choosing to ignore those orders going forward. We can't sit by and watch millions of innocents get slaughtered without so much as an attempt to do something about it. If Ceara disagrees with this, she can take up this issue with me personally. Perhaps then she would prove a little less aloof."

Trahearne's words conjured up a look of relief on the Charr that hadn't been seen in months, since the Citadel's defeat at the eastern border of Diessa Plateau. He turned to a few officers waiting behind him. "What are you waiting for? You heard him. Ready the airships! Send the engineers for last minute checks on all systems and then bring in the crews to move out. Let's rain fire on these Flame Legion traitors!"

After the Flame Legion melted the Citadel's forward base, their march through the barren plains and the small patches of farmland in-between continued unabated. And Imperator Garadin was every bit as cruel to the farmers as Smodur was, and more. They didn't just search for deserters, they dragged every single peasant out of their home and ordered them to swear fealty to Flame Legion.

Those who complied, were spared.

Those who refused, were executed on the spot.

Their army didn't just do this with every settlement in their path, they took detours to hit as many settlements as they could. In Garadin's words, they wanted to ensure that being alive alone was proof enough that the villagers had pledged themselves to Flame Legion. That there could be no denial of it, no rewriting of history, even after they had left. It would be known throughout Ascalon that every gladium in the regions around the Citadel was sworn to serve Flame Legion, not Iron Legion.

And the northern wall, the giant wall still standing, centuries after the humans that maintained it had been killed during the first Searing, wasn't as much of an obstacle to them as the Commander had hoped. The Flame Legion simply rolled out the focused furnace, the steel tube that allowed them to channel their shamans' fire into a single, scalding beam and reduced thousands of tons of solid rock to nothing but puddles of lava within minutes.

Three hours. A colossal stone structure, sky-high and stretched across the entire northern border of Ashford, built so solid and at such a scale that it lasted for centuries after Ascalon's destruction and it could only ward off the Flame Legion for three hours total. As soon as the molten rock cooled down, they marched over it like it was nothing.

At least the choke point they created, forced them to spend an entire day reorganizing their troops. Once they passed the northern wall into Ashford, battalions of Flame Legionnaires separated and moved further apart to make way so they could realign themselves, hours and hours were spent hauling carts and primitive-looking vehicles between the hills. All while some of their foot soldiers fended off the blue ephemeral ghosts emerging from the tombs south of their point of entry.

This was when the Commander first heard it. First from up high on the wall, where some of the Flame Legion's scouts had taken position, then from regiment to regiment on the ground, scouts and supply workers carried word of long-missed aid: "Airships to the west! Enemy airships! An entire fleet of them! No, an armada!"

When one of them came too close to Garadin, the Imperator grabbed him and lifted him by his throat. "Speak clearly! How many of them?"

The Charr in his grip, a meager man with beige, spotted fur and unfortunately small horns, choked in an attempt at answering. "Lots, enough to carpet this entire region with cannonfire!"

The Commander spelled out what he had long hoped, and what the legion dreaded: "The Pact! They're finally coming to help!" And not long after he said that, the vessels in question began to emerge past the mountains and Citadel walls to the west.

The Imperator turned to the prisoner cart with a grin. "Don't think we're not prepared for this. Shamans! Ready the cauldrons! Three should suffice!" The name of cauldrons alone made the Commander freeze. Among the nearby troops, Shamans and workers ran to three of the closed-off vehicles, undid locks and opened hatches to reveal searing cauldrons - giant bowls with long spikes converging together towards the top - and several of them. Just like in the illustrations every human was shown and taught to fear from a young age.

"No! Where did you get these? How is this even possible?"

The Imperator turned to the carriages to watch his soldiers haul the cauldrons over to open spots on the ground. "My allies are more resourceful than you think. As the Pact will soon realize first-hand!"

Rytlock roared at the Imperator: "You're a madman! A single cauldron like this burned all of Ascalon to the ground! And you want to repeat this? What do you think three will do?"

"They're weaker than the first cauldron. Weaker, but more precise. And unlike the Charr of old, we've had some practice using them." The Imperator pointed directly at the encroaching fleet. "Shamans! Localized cauldron fire! Aim for the airships! Meteors only!"

The Shamans gathered around the cauldrons. With incense and circles set around the cauldrons, they began their invocations, channeling fire magic onto the cauldrons, causing burning whirlwinds to form within them. Within a short time, the sky turned dark, the smoke covering the sky like clouds caught fire and giant burning rocks descended from above. Raining directly onto where the Pact's fleet was coming through.

Garadin took a few steps in the fleet's direction and spread his arms. "The Pact! The lapdogs of Lion's Arch shall be the first to feel the true might of the Flame Legion!" And all legionnaires around erupted in cheers and roars, as the sky rained fire and brimstone upon the airships.

Many of the airships vanished in bright explosions, sending parts in all directions the moment the rocks made contact with their upper hulls. Others, missed by the initial wave, were tossed around by the sheer force of the explosions around them, sent crashing into other airships and then soaring down onto the landscape. Even if the first few rocks didn't hit their targets, the fleet was set upon by a relentless cascade of them. Several vessels at a time, the Commander's hope for relief went up in bursts of flame while other ships shook the ground with their frequent impacts.

When the fireworks were at an end, the sky was still covered in smoke and a silence settled within the army. Mostly out of patience and curiosity. The legionnaires all faced their Imperator, who stepped up the stairs to his moving throne and announced with new vigor in his voice: "None can stand against Flame Legion! Not Lion's Arch, not the Pact, no uppity cabbage and most of all, not the Black Citadel!"

The Commander stared dumbstruck at the sight of the Imperator gazing upon the destruction he had wrought while thousands upon thousands of beasts roared with approval of what had just happened. All the work that went into building all these ships, destroyed, all the people who manned them - some of which he knew by name, dead. All within mere moments.

Destruction at an efficiency only few things in the world could match. And when the cheers and roars finally died down, the realization that struck him upon seeing those burning rocks fall, burst out of him. "It was you!"

Barely fazed by the implications of what he had just said, the Imperator slowly turned to face his prisoners. "What was us?"

"Gendarran Fields! The second searing! It was you! You're the only people with the means to do it!"

Garadin bore his fangs and marched to the prisoner cart with steps made heavy by his armor. "We're not the only ones with cauldrons like these, but we were the first ones to use them!"

Only one question coursed through his mind, everything else, the anger, the frustration, all of that could wait: "Why? Why us? Why Kryta? Didn't you have other priorities? Do you just hate humans so much?"

"Humans and their provinces are irrelevant to me. We needed a target to test the cauldrons on. My allies - the same ones that supplied me with the cauldrons - they were the ones who said to target Gendarran Fields. They told us where and when. It was on their mark."

"On their mark? What does that even mean?"

"I tire of walking this balance. Siegeblast! You deal with the prisoners! Answer whichever questions you can!"

Varrock got up from the neighboring cart he rode along on, and straightened his leather garb to join them next to the Imperator's throne. He sighed, but it came out as more of an annoyed growl. "He means that some friends of ours needed to wait to see if your little 'queen' would commit to her new treaty. The assassination, the searing, it could all have been avoided, if she had just not signed off on giving away her country."

The Commander looked back and forth between Varrock and Garadin. "It's both connected…the shooters and the Flame Legion - you're all working together, aren't you?"

Varrock pointed at himself with his thumb. "I was the Charr who sought out Gaheron's cub and set him up with all his new friends. Everything you see around you, his new 'allies', I made it all possible. Some of those new 'allies' of his are humans themselves. We're all in this together."

"I'm supposed to believe that? That all these townspeople, all these villagers, hundreds of millions of innocent people, burned to death overnight - that they were target practise - that all this is for some greater cause?"

Varrock shrugged. "Hey, I'm not the one who came up with the second searing. I scratched my head at the idea too, but I can't argue with the results and I can see where he was coming from. Your little cat lady of a queen set you Krytans up with a one-way ticket to extinction, and most of you were poised to go along with it. The Searing of Gendarran Fields was exactly the wake-up call you needed. It shook you up and reminded you of what matters in life."

"That's a pile of dung and you know it." Rytlock roared at them, struggling against his ties. "Flame Legion is always out for blood, no matter whose it is. They were just itching to use their new toy, whatever 'cause' you're holding up is just an excuse."

"Tell yourself that all you want, but it was good enough to bring us - people of all races accused of hating each other - together to fight a common threat. We don't know what she's planning to do yet - or why - but we know for a fact that she needs to be stopped."

"Who? Who is this 'she'?"

Varrock started walking back to his own carriage. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. First for the catacombs, one revelation at a time."

Rytlock turned away and snarled. "Multiple cauldrons - how did we not know anything about this? We had spies in here, what were they doing?"

One of the female Charr chained to Garadin's throne perked her ears up and then tried shuffling towards Rytlock. "Hey! Over here! I tried! But they caught me before I could-"

Hearing her raise her voice made the Imperator turn around with a terrifying speed. He sped towards his captive and swung his arm, striking her with the back of his hand. The sheer force and the spikes on the back plate bloodied her face and tore several wounds in it. "Did I permit you to speak?", the Imperator said. He gave her a few seconds to shake off the stupor he caused and answer, and when she didn't, he grabbed her by her throat and screamed: "DID I PERMIT YOU TO SPEAK?"

Finally, she managed to squeeze out a meek "No…",

"No, I did not, " he replied calmly, his words laced with a deadly chill.

The tone alone was enough to make clear to the prisoner that her life was at knife's edge again. "I'm sorry, I…"

Out of instinct, more than anything, the Commander shouted at Garadin: "Stop hurting her! She didn't do anything!"

The Imperator froze and slowly faced the prisoner cart, with the struggling captive Charr lifted off her feet by one hand. "How I treat my slaves is none of your business."

"Whatever she did, it can't be worthy of putting her in chains and hurting her like this!"

"If she didn't want to be a slave, for us to do with as we please, she shouldn't have snuck into our camps and fed intel to our enemies."

"Then keep her as a prisoner, you can interrogate her all you want, but there's no reason for this."

The Imperator tossed her up slightly and while she was still mid-air, punched her face, his fist large enough to cover the entire side of her muzzle - and launched her to the side, breaking one of her forward-grown horns and several of her teeth. "You humans and your false assumptions. I have no reason to pull punches on my enemies, I could have slain these slaves just like I did with their compatriots when my men marched through their outposts. None of them are above this, and neither are you. They hunted us like animals. No cruelty was spared. Nothing was too much so long as it was aimed at Flame Legion. Why should we grant our enemies the same mercy that we were denied? No! Any morality you espouse is a lie. You treated us this way because you thought you could get away with it! You thought that this would never come back to bite you!"

The Commander had nothing to retort with. It was like with the Separatists and the Shining Blade. This perspective made him think of all he witnessed on his past visits in Ascalon. Fireheart Rise, the Citadel of Flame: He was there when the Pact assaulted the Flame Legion's home. They were people as much as the other legions, with friends and loved ones, all of which they killed without a second thought. And he was at the forefront of killing them.

Varrock clapped his hands at the Imperator's words. "Good job rattling that down. Words they should recognize." Which he did, from the Separatists. Whenever one of them had second thoughts about an attack or an act of torture, whenever a Seraph begged a Separatist to withhold some cruelty towards the Shining Blade or the queen's loyalists, the Separatists cited this exact language. Almost word-for-word.

'No cruelty was spared', Lord Aldryn expressed the same mindset, often with the exact same phrases. After all that had been done to the Separatists, they saw no point in holding back once the tables were finally turned. It felt wrong to the Commander, but he couldn't fault them for thinking this way.

Varrock raised one finger and spoke to Garadin: "But, Imperator, you're forgetting that he barely flinched seeing you wipe out the Pact's fleet. And before that, the same went for hearing what we're doing with the gladia around the Citadel. He's seen his fair share of cruelty. The difference is that he's seeing it from up close and that she's female, remember what I told you about humans and their 'chivalry'."

Garadin, baring his teeth with annoyance over what he recalled, faced the Commander. "Now I see what's going on here. Siegeblast told me all about you humans' antics. How you elevated your women's status to that of saints, worshiped them like a fool would worship false gods. How you trapped them within their own inflated egos and reduced them to sterile figureheads. How it culled any criticism towards your queen and almost brought along the downfall of two peoples, Krytans and Ascalonians both. Not even the other legions debase themselves that much. But even less so Flame Legion!"

Hearing these words rubbed the Commander the wrong way, it struck a chord with him. "We just treat our women with respect! Just because you're too narrow-minded to understand what-"

While the Commander spoke, the Imperator marched up to the prisoner cart until his imposing stature loomed over him and grabbed him by his collar. "What Siegeblast described to me goes beyond 'respect'! It is self-deprecation. I will not be lectured on what makes a working social order by a race that has almost gone extinct."

He let go of him, allowing him to sag back onto the cold, wooden surface. "What do you think how we manage to stand here? Those last few months were an outlier. Flame Legion has never had a winning streak this long since the days of Kalla Scorchrazor! How do you think it happens that while the Citadel struggles to replenish its ranks, they defeat us time and time again and yet every time, we come back stronger than before?"

Varrock cut into this with that usual knowing smirk on his face: "Did you never notice how all the Flame Legionnaires seem to be men? Ever wonder what happened to all the women?"

Instead of admonishing Varrock for interrupting him, the Imperator simply continued after he spoke: "While the other legions send their females out to die in the battlefield, ours are tucked away safely, free to raise the next generation unhindered. This is why for every bladestorm and every shaman you strike down, ten more rise to take his place!"

Varrock cut into his speech again: "In hindsight, who would have guessed that reproducing makes for a good reproductive strategy? Good thing I came to Kryta when I did and got you guys to clean up your act." Now a lot of things that made the Commander wonder, made a lot more sense. That massive social overhaul the Piercing Spear put Kryta through after taking over, some of the ideas must have come from Varrock.

And when further reflecting on it, the Commander tried to come up with some way to refute these ideas of theirs. The legions always complained about lacking manpower, their warbands were half the size that they could have had, and he couldn't think of a single instance in his life in Divinity's Reach, where acts of chivalry were met with respect. The Charr's way of thinking about this was completely new to him. But the more he tried to refute it, the more he realized that they were correct.

He hadn't known any better. It was just what he grew up with, it was all he had known. All Krytans grew up being taught from a young age that their way of life was better than everyone else's and that everyone else was just backwards, bigoted or narrow-minded.

But he couldn't argue his preference with them, he couldn't come up with a rationale that made any sense, he failed to reconcile it with his past experiences, especially the recent ones. The searing may have been the Flame Legion's doing, or that of whoever pulled their strings, but the Gendarran FIelds Treaty was all Jennah. It was her decisions that sent them on this downward spiral and it took him, Logan and Lord Aldryn to stop it from getting worse.

As the army began moving again and marched eastwards, he gazed dumbfounded at the encroaching catacombs. It was easy to praise other races and to claim that one could learn from them. But actually accepting that they had ideas and notions that were better than one's own, that was a challenge even the Commander struggled with.