BECMI Chapter 410 – The Fires of Conceit
A month had passed since Archduke Eischler had died, and the cream of Angru society had also died during his revelation as a mere disguise for the evil of Thanatos Himself.
Siricil was still reeling from the hit, and the explosive reaction of the Church of Tenya. Not only was the Church anything but sympathetic to the Angru for finding out their Lord was a demon Immortal, they had flooded into the Duchy with mayhem on their mind and began their purges with fire and zeal.
The focus of their activities was naturally the Blitzengard, who overnight went from the most respected and ideal warriors of the Angru to hunted villains and corpses hanging from gibbets. Rapists, wife-beaters, and abusers of women who’d been getting away with their desires for years among the Angru suddenly found themselves being confronted by a great number of very angry priestesses and templars of Tenya, who had utterly no sympathy for them.
The Angru had a dominant role in the Teuthonic Order, which also came rapidly under intense suspicion for their role in the Knighthood, and it took very little investigating to verify that the Angru heresy had set its claws deeply into the Knighthood.
Perhaps they wanted to flee, except suddenly their new and mighty airships wouldn’t even get off the ground, and whole swathes of Teuthonic warrior-priests found their goddess not only wasn’t answering them, but the lash of Her displeasure virtually emanated from their own holy symbols!
The Angru did try to fight back, but all that did was piss off the Church even more, and their reputation throughout Siricil plummeted, taking away all support and letting everyone know that heretics like them weren’t protected by the laws of gods or men.
Which was about when the slave revolt started, and it caught fire like nobody’s business.
Utterly distracted by the purges ripping through their society and their warriors being beheaded or shown the end of a long rope, the Angru couldn’t control their slave population during the political chaos and disorganization that followed the gutting of their higher nobles during the Revelation and subsequently during the purges that followed. As the oldest and noblest families of the Angru died, their hold on their slaves, especially the women, faltered, faded, and then it ignited.
In one night, twenty different noble’s manors went up in flames, along with all family members. Slaves rose up, slaughtered the depleted household guards, seized their armor and weapons, and went out to kill more of them in a frenzy.
The revolt blew through Siricil like an angry firestorm, following the lies of the Angru and the Blitzengard like dragons opening their maws, and didn’t take long to flare up in the great city of Siricil itself, what with half of its population being slaves, and most of the remainder being poor and living barely above the poverty line.
Fire seized the hearts of the downtrodden, and there was vicious and brutal battle.
There were plenty of warriors among the enslaved, and they were finally motivated with the drive to take down their oppressors or die trying. The legions of Siricil faltered, their own command elements having suffered under the purge of Tenya hunting heretics. The soldiers found that this was also a great opportunity to advance their own position in life with a little thoughtful arson and killing of the overly wealthy… whose sons were often officers and frequently ended up being ganked by their own troops.
If those slaves were somehow getting organized with fantastic speed, and more importantly, coordinating in a manner more like a fiendishly clever guerrilla general managing an armed force both overtly and covertly, well, things were a bit frantic and disorganized among the government at the time.
A third of Siricil’s naval vessels, whose crews were often made up of press-ganged conscripts or citizens sentenced to the duty, tossed their officers and captains overboard and sailed off for other lands to find their fortunes.
Much to Tenya’s lack of amusement, She found Herself being blamed for all this, instead of praised for it. The slaves had little respect for a goddess who supported slavery like She did, and considered turning the violence She loved upon Her priests and supporters only fair. A large number of churches to Tenya burned in the conflicts, and Her servants were both not trusted and were preyed upon as false neutrals in the conflict, blamed for instigating the fighting and stirring up all sides to fight more.
Emperor Magni regained control of the capital only by calling out his Praetorians and personally leading a great slaughter of the rebels, ending up setting the entire poor quarter on fire to drive them out of the city and into the surrounding areas where his cavalry could harry them and ride men and women down alike. Unfortunately half of his horses ended up eating poisoned feed and died spewing bloody guts from their mouths, and those horses that survived were the ones stolen by the slaves for their own use.
Of course, slaughtering the innocent poor only enraged the population of Siricil more. The slaves proved extremely adept at stirring up sentiments among the martial population against the wealthy ruling class, and had little problem finding supporters among the lower population… and a fairly wide array of rival churches to Tenya whose tenets did not include slavery.
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More to the point, the rebels were vanishing without being caught!
Hundreds, then thousands of rebels scattered across the provinces were escaping into thin air before they could be surrounded and butchered for their deeds. Behind them were left burnt-out towns, homes, temples, manors, and especially slave farms and plantations, many of them stripped of wealth, goods, and livestock, and just… gone.
There was no decisive battle or lingering force of slaves who could be faced head on with military force, duplicity, or simply bribed into going away and not bothering them. No, the revolt spread like a wildfire, devastated a great deal of the country and all the major cities as it swept through, and then the slaves seemed to flow away like a receding tide.
They left the whole of the empire tottering on the brink of starvation and ruin. With no cheap labor to work the fields, the citizens had to go out and do the job themselves, leaving massive amounts of acreage unable to be worked and going fallow. Livestock and horses had been stolen away, depleting the great herds feeding the city, and the armies of slaves had looted seed and grain reserves with great abandon to feed themselves and their people, spiriting away even more food and leaving it unavailable for the poor.
It took only three months, but the Revelation and the Great Revolt went down in Siricilan history rather emphatically. They gutted the sprawling and conquest-minded empire from within, collapsing all of its military ambitions and forcing it to consolidate and withdraw its expeditionary forces quickly and thoroughly.
Of course, some other things happened during this period, too.
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His birth wasn’t exactly strenuous for her, courtesy of the Alter Self effect of her Marks that completely removed the need for squeezing such a big baby out through her uterus. Moving her skin and muscle out of the way basically allowed a cut-free Cesarean section with ease and speed, reaching in to lift out her baby boy directly from her womb.
He was a big baby, of course, taking after his father’s bone structure as expected of a Rantha Hagspawn, coming in at nearly eleven pounds. Sama laughed as she personally cut the umbilical cord and tied it off for him, and performed the circumcision herself, too.
But there was no nuzzling or nursing to speak of. Sama gave him a kiss on the forehead, settled him into my arms, and then watched me walk through the Portal to the Other Shore with him, intending him for another world and another destiny before his Source could lock him into this alternity.
If she wanted to cry, she held that back for Briggs and in private, I didn’t need to see it. The fact was, the number of people who knew she was pregnant could be counted on one hand, and all it meant was that her slow-down in activities for the last few months suddenly went completely in the other direction.
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The guards didn’t see her pass by, because she didn’t want them to. If they didn’t see her enter, she was going to kill someone.
Magni was out in the field. Naturally his Consort had to remain by his side and run his household while keeping her influence over the emperor, watching what he was doing and correcting any reservations about what he had to do here.
“You assisted an Immortal of Entropy in his attacks on my people.”
The words swept over the camp, turning heads skywards trying to locate the source. Not many people recognized the voice, but those who did immediately tensed up in shock.
“You actually gave said Immortal an Artifact of Time to help with His schemes.”
The razored whisper of her voice stole into the private tent of the emperor, where the eyes of his consort went wide.
“You aided him in opening a Portal to the Realm of Death, and sending the corrupting clouds of its power into our lands.”
“Grandmaster Sama?” Emperor Magni gasped, looking around. “Sama Rantha? Where are you, woman? Show yourself!”
“You’ve turned the Emperor of Siricil into a puppy chasing after tail, manipulating the entire empire into situations where war after war is the only solution, spending the lives of its men and women like cheap coppers for your entertainment.”
Eyes blinked, and those of Magni and his generals turned slowly upon the Consort standing there, her beautiful face a cold mask of control and rising anger.
“You kidnapped an armada of our people and sent them off to the Delphan Remnants for your entertainment, hoping to stir up a war between Delpha and Siricil for even more fun.”
Her chin rose slightly, and something heavy and primal began to push the mortal soldiers back from her.
“Give her your Sword, Magni. I’m going to kill me an Avatar of your bitch of a goddess, and it’s going to get bloody explosive. You know, because an Avatar of another god is going to die.”
Thoughts immediately turned to what had happened in Angru, and even the Consort’s eyes widened fractionally at those words, confirming what had been seen was what she suspected.
Emperor Magni, staring at the woman who’d shared his bed and chased his Empress out of her own family, took the scabbarded short Sword that was his personal weapon, laid it upon the table, and slowly pushed it across to her. Saying no words, keeping his eyes on her, he followed his men out of the tent, leaving her alone within.
The attack came in an instant. Sharding strikes chopped through the poles at the corners of the Tent, razored light sheering through the wood, the ropes binding them down, and the fine magical cloth all at once. A hurricane-force Wind smashed into the tent and tore it completely away, tearing up the seats and tables and chests within and sending them tumbling.
An impossibly quick hand snatched up the Sword and held it ready as a blur of motion came in, two notes ringing Ding!, Ting!, in the air, and a Blade that few had ever seen without it being the last thing they saw was coming for her throat.
The impact smashed her backward, barely deflected, a line of crimson across perfect features as heavens-blue eyes glowing with wrath met her own without fear, and a writhing scar-brand of purple and black wriggled happily, marring savage yet beautifully noble features in contrast to her own human perfection, while eight canines gleamed for attention in a too-wide and joyful smile.
“Tremble, you bitch,” Sama grinned wildly, and the fight was on.
The Avatar could access the highest levels of mortal magic, but could not exceed mortal abilities with Her Avatar.
Magic was not something Sama was afraid of at all, oh no…