Memoirs of a Fallen God

Chapter 8

In the 17th year of the reign of Artoc, in the 274th year of the Empire, war came to the continent of Erda.

From where they perched atop their high towers, ever vigilant, the enchanted eyes of the empire's farseers spied the enemy ships a hundred leagues from shore. Messages flew, magic and mundane. The Emperor was informed without delay. Armies were assembled and marched.

By the time the invading ships could be seen with the naked eye the Emperor himself stood ready to greet them, there on the craggy shore known as Hermit's Hollow, and before him sprawled the armed might of a continent. The army of darkness and light, it was called, for the sheer variance, and it was a force unlike any other ever assembled. Warriors from a dozen nations stood ready to defend their empire, their homes.

But the enemy came on undaunted. Their red ships broke over the shore like a bloody tidal wave, and sleepy Hermit's Hollow came awake with the sounds of war.

The invaders burst from their ships in their thousands, in their tens of thousands. They wore armor of hide and bore weapons of horn and fought like madmen eager for death.

For long hours, battle raged. The enemy attacked in a seething horde, savage and howling, but the army of darkness and light stood firm. Gradually, the invaders were pushed back towards the ocean from whence they’d come.

And on a ridge above the battle, in clear sight of all, stood the Emperor and a hundred of his wizard-born. Magic rained from them in a constant, deadly deluge.

But the enemy had not come without their own arcane powers. From the midst of the enemy army emerged their wise men, their shamans. Each was naked save for a loin cloth and a swirling pattern of tattoos, and even their own soldiers recoiled at their passing. A train of slaves was brought forward and the shamans went to work with their wicked knives, harvesting the blood necessary for their dark spells.

At last, the final slave dead and drained, the shamans unleashed their vile blood magic. The air itself seemed to scream in terror as that dread force went hurtling towards the ridge, towards the Emperor. The defenses of the wizard-born, potent as they were, crumbled in the face of such raw, terrible power. To a man, the wizard-born fell to the grass, unconscious or dead, their reserves exhausted.

For a long moment every eye on the battlefield turned toward the armored form of the Emperor, as he stood alone upon the ridge, a shadowed silhouette against the darkening sky beyond. Then the image shimmered and vanished. A gasp of disbelief went up from the surviving warriors of the army of darkness and light, but there could be no denying what they had witnessed.

The Emperor had fled.

The invaders charged forward with renewed vigor, and the battle became a rout. Though the shamans had spent all their power in the attack on the Emperor and his wizard-born, they had served their purpose well, and the heart had gone out of the men of Erda. Many fled, casting down their weapons as they went so they might run the faster.

But a determined core remained, though they knew the fight was lost. Better to die fighting with a blade in their hands,they thought,than to die running with a knife in their backs. So they battled on, unrelenting.

But, as will men ever do in the face of despair, they cried out to their gods. For salvation, for hope. "Aid us!" they pleaded. "If we fall, our kingdoms will be pillaged. Our families will be massacred. Take our lives, oh gods, but please, spare our people!"

And there on the corpse-riddled shore of Hermit's Hollow, amid the remnants of a broken army, the seven gods of Erda heard, and gave answer.