Vol 2 Prologue – Life of a Monster

Then.

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The Emperor's arrival was always a matter of great importance. The Wight had come to understand this early on, even in those hazy days when his mind was a boiling cauldron of madness and rage. The atmosphere changed in his presence. His soldiers, usually boisterous and eager, became hushed and anxious. Even the crudest and most foul of the bunch became like a noble's footmen, and none dared to say anything for fear of risking his ire.

Years since his revival, the worst excesses of that rage dulling from a boil to a simmer, and that atmosphere had not changed or dimmed. People were as gracious and subservient as ever when even the faintest whiff of his eminence was in the air. Already he knew Novos was on the way, the body language of the other soldiers a dead giveaway.

They had captured the northern port city of Greywater only the other day, and now only a modest amount of clean up was left to do. It had been a long and protracted siege, the forces of Rhonde obviously eager to maintain control over such a port. The imperial navy had been kept at bay by a strong blockade at sea, and the city walls had endured weeks of attacks thanks to the pair of wizards who were able to ward off the worst of the shelling with he magic at their command.

As the city was able to continually draw in supplies from other Rhondian ships, the city could have perhaps endured indefinitely (or certainly for far longer than Novos would tolerate). Until the Wight had appeared, at least.

He had come at the head of the host, weathered the hellish storms the wizards had born down on him, and had been the one to smash the walls wide with his blazing hammer. And with that the imperial army had been free to push in, more and more.

The defenders had done what they could to hold their ground, fought for every bloody inch of it, buying time for some of their own to escape back across the sea. Including those damn wizards.

But it was all over now. At least, this siege was.

The Wight stood silently in a crater of his own making, his ironclad boots partway sinking to the sodden and ash-caked soil. Ahead of him stretched what had once been the looming terraces and spires of a proud city. All shattered and ruined now. They had 'taken' the city, but how much of it even remained standing? How much time, money, and labour would it take to rebuild it? Was it even worth conquering a place if it was left as a ruin in the first place?

There was a time when such questions never occurred to him. He hadn't cared, hadn't even seen the results of his own actions. Those memories were just... red. Violent dreams of the seemingly endless Murder March. Killing and killing and killing, a tornado only given directions by the soft words of the Emperor.

But the red had been clearing of late. The rage dimming. Reality had a precarious foothold in his mind.

Rain, black and ashen, began to fall upon the ruined city. Smoky breath hissed from the edges of his mouthguard. Then, slowly, he marched from the crater. If Novos was coming, he'd be expected to greet him.

A column of prisoners in heavy chains was being led past him. Soldiers, mostly, and a few desperate citizens of Greywater who had joined the barricades in desperate resistance. They would face the worst of the penal labour. That was the irony of it, the Empire's most vicious foes would go on to fuel the war efforts against their will.

Many would die in the process.

The Wight could not bring himself to care. And yet... he took no joy in that either. Wasn't this what had all been out? Finding some satisfaction in hurting the pigs of Rhonde?

"It's not the same." It was barely a whisper. The sound of his own voice, when it was screaming in abject rage, sounded so... alien to him.

His ironclad fingers curled around the hilt of his claymore, which had previously been hanging almost limp in his grasp. Again he surveyed the city, the rubble that dominated large swathes of it. People had lived here once. Not soldiers, civilians with no stake in the war. "It doesn't feel good anymore."

One of the prisoners, passing only a few paces from him, turned and spat at him. "You fucking animal!" he snarled, his face caked in the blood from some gash in his forehead. "You won't win! You and your emperor, you'll never fucking win!"

The Wight turned, already set to strike him down, only to pause. The person who spat at him couldn't have been older than fifteen. A lean and scrawny boy, he wore no tunic or tabard, or even an empty sheath where a weapon would have been. He didn't even have the Greywater flag cloak, a long-legged heron on a field of grey, like the other soldiers.

He was just one of the locals. A boy who'd done what he could to protect his home, even in the face of impossible odds. Just like...

A chill ran down the Wight's ironclad body.

"Down!" One of the Novosian spearmen cracked him with the shaft of his weapon, driving the boy to his knees. Soon there were three men upon him, beating and kicking him into the ashen ground. And the other prisoners, before they could utter a sole word of protest, were being harshly dragged away by the other guards.

The Wight watched, motionless as a statue. And yet some part of him wanted to tell the soldiers off, to get them to stop, to toss them aside. And yet he... didn't. Why couldn't he bring himself to?

'Stop! He's just a boy! Stop, gods, stop!'

The words were there, in his head. And yet he said nothing. Did nothing. A bystander to another atrocity.

And really, maybe it was a kindness to let him die there. What was the difference between this, and being beaten to death by the guards at the camps? Or worked to death pulling metal from the earth? Or taken out by disease, starvation, the cold, or a dozen other factors that steadily thinned their prisoners?

A hush fell across the city, and the soldiers stopped kicking the boy into the mud, They turned, along with everyone else, and looked skyward. A column of blackness was tearing across the sky, churning shadows that moved tenfold faster than a cannon ball.

"The Emperor," one Novosian soldier said, nearly dropping his spear.

"Get that boy out of here."

All eyes turned to the Wight, shocked that the armoured giant had spoken. Certainly, the Wight was also shocked that he had said anything. But the soldiers complied, dragging the limp and bloodied form away.

The Emperor's column of shadows struck the earth only a few strides from the Bloody Wight, the ground shuddering in protest. The shadows parted, melting away, and there stood Novos in a finely tailored robe of white and emerald. Ruby bangles weighed heavily upon his slim and pale wrists.

The wind stirred his pale hair, and luminous eyes fell upon the Bloody Wight. Yet no rain touched him, or even got near him.

"Fine work as ever," he crooned.

The Wight slid to one knee, a practised motion. Flames rose and danced off the edges of his plate armour, seeming to burn brighter in his presence. "All is as you will it to be, your eminence." It always was.

"Sometimes I fear you are the only worthwhile man in my life." Novos sighed, gently resting a hand atop his head.

He strode lazily around the Wight, unspoken permission to rise, and the Wight moved to follow him. Novos breathed a sigh, a smile touching his face. "You have done a magnificent thing today.

I've turned this city into a charnel house.

"Another fine step in making this continent more to... my liking. To the way things should be."

Another step. Out of how many? How many more are left? How long do we have to do this?

The Wight had learned, some time ago, that Novos could not read his mind as easily as he could his other underlings. He had to put active effort into it. And, as such, he knew his own thoughts were safe to him. 

"And yet there is still so much to do." Novos sighed, slowly folding his hands together behind his back. "I've been sending you back and forth across the border for a while now, repelling the Rhondians and reinforcing our weaker areas. It is a heavy burden for one man to carry."

You have... no idea what I'm carrying. His eyes blazed brighter in his helm. Anger, stoking in his breast. Anger hot enough to melt the ice of his apathy.

"We'll get them all, don't you worry."

Again that anger swelled, indignation prickling through his brain like a cluster of hornets.

We? Who... the FUCK is WE?! It's been ME out here, damn you. Me.

He stood motionless. "Of course, your eminence," was all he said. Servile and meek, like a lamb.

"Please, take a moment to gather your breath. Maybe get a drink. I have a city to survey." What little of it that could still be called a city, at least. And Novos strode off, trailed by a small gathering of clerks.

The Bloody Wight stood alone. Somewhere in the ruins of Greywater, someone was screaming. A building, standing on broken foundations, finally gave up and tumbled apart. The sea sighed in the distance.

The longer he stood there, the more he could feel it. The oppressive atmosphere of this ruined place, a slaughter he had created. And he had done it because... why? He couldn't... quite remember anymore.

The cavalrymen who had destroyed his village, they were all dead by now weren't they? And yet... this was still going on. He was still going.

The marching death just... continued, seemingly without end.

And for the first time, as the horror of Greywater wrapped him like a hug from a corpse, the Wight asked himself a question:

Can I really keep doing this?