What Little Remains Of Terpsichore Ironheart

Napoleon was very good at what he did, but sometimes, that wasn't a good thing.

"Are you sure about this?" Elken asked, for the fifth time this week.

"The entire 13th Legion is going to come through here," Napoleon said as he finished drawing the sigil. "They'll be reinforcing the siege at Rosewood, but if we can take them all down before they get there, then the siege could be broken, and we might be able to win this war."

"And you really think you can do this on your own?" Elken asked.

"I'll have to," Napoleon said, before calling upon the Living Earth to swallow this ritual site whole, enclosing it in a solid dome of earth and roots, with enough tiny holes to allow airflow. "The ritual has to be done with clockwork precision, and High Elves are usually bad at taking orders."

"It's also an atrocity," Elken said, staring at the unconscious, vine-bound Paladins stacked up in Napoleon's cart like firewood. "Human sacrifice is illegal pretty much everywhere, Napoleon."

"This isn't a sacrifice," Napoleon corrected him. "I'm not appeasing a higher power. I'm just spreading the load of this grand spell across multiple people, which is a perfectly normal thing to do."

"You're spreading the load across unwilling participants who you hope will die from the strain of the spell," Elken said flatly.

"Oh, sure, this is murder," Napoleon cheerfully agreed. "But bear in mind, Elken: We're at war, on a scale beyond even the typical Dark Crusade. Killing enemy combatants is an inevitability. And if they die in a more creative way than usual?" Napoleon shrugged. "Well, Lysander's successor can take me to task for this themselves, if they really give that much of a shit. Seems to me like we'll have bigger problems."

"Like the absolute catastrophe this spell is designed to produce," Elken said flatly. "Napoleon, I know you're a virtuoso with Druidcraft, but I really don't think this spell is a good idea."

"I need a wide-area spell that will destroy the entire Thirteenth Legion," Napoleon explained. "Any ritual I design therefore has to be able to hit the entire Legion at once- armies don't move as a single point on a map, they travel as marching columns that are miles long, and I can't risk being in the area of effect while it's going off to make sure they're in the exact right position, so I'm going to have to make the area of effect at least a dozen miles across to make sure I get all of them."

"And what do you think your cataclysm spell is going to do to the land itself?" Elken demanded. "Because I think you're going to create the world's harshest, most desolate wasteland out of this patch of land, and I feel the need to remind you: people live here!"

"They used to," Napoleon said, jerkily gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb at the devastated forest they stood in, where everything had been either clearcut or burned. "Face it, Elken. Even if you win this argument, this land has already been ruined for those who lived on it. There is already going to have to be a cleanup effort. Sure, I'm making the mess worse, but..." Napoleon shrugged. "Well. Again, they can yell at me after we win the war. Maybe they'll even make me help clean it up. That oughtta kill a few years. Now, if you're done pitching a fit about the horrors of war, I'm going to need you to help me move the cart to the next nexus point."

Elken sighed in defeat. He was sworn to obey Napoleon, and if there was no changing his mind, then there was no changing his mind, and Elken simply had to make his peace with that.

"Still," Elken said, quietly. "The... the scale of this... We're using a full hundred and twenty five Paladins to power this... At once, it feels like too little and too much- twice their number would not be enough if they cooperated, yet kidnapping and mutilating half their number would still be a grand atrocity..."

"There isn't no element of Spirit in the Primal," Napoleon said, quietly. "The horror and atrocity of this ritual compounds and paves the way for the grander horror and atrocity of its effect. I assure you, Elken, I know full well how monstrous this action is. I know what I'm doing. But Elken... You weren't there when Joseph was born. You didn't hold him in your arms when he was a baby. You didn't feel the pain as sharply as I did, when he died of burnout trying to protect the rest of us." Napoleon paused for a moment, reaching up with one hand to wipe away tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. "I will burn and wreck and ruin whatever I have to to make sure the Paladins pay for what they've done to my little brother."

Elken closed his eyes.

Stolen novel; please report.

"...I suppose that's that, then."

---

Napoleon considered himself quite fortunate, as he peered through an abandoned scrying pool. Whichever Druid had lived here previously must have left in a hurry- Napoleon could tell they hadn't died near here- if they hadn't destroyed their scrying pool to deny its use to the humans. Whatever the case may be, he was grateful for their negligence; a proper, fully-fledged scrying pool like this one was a major working of Druidcraft, and Napoleon had to conserve his strength.

"That's a big army," Elken remarked. They had a bird's eye view of the column as it marched; the entire column, including the baggage train and artillery wagons.

"Nearly ten miles long, fully stretched out," Napoleon said. "At typical marching speed, the head of the column has to stop to set up camp about five hours before sunset in order for the back of the column to make it there before dark. Which, incidentally, they're almost done doing. We'll start the ritual soon; did you find us something to eat?"

"A deer," Elken said, shrugging the carcass of his back. "Not exactly gourmet, but some meat will do us both some good, I think."

"And I get to prepare it, obviously," Napoleon said, as though he expected his unicorn to not foist that task off onto the elf with opposable thumbs. "Right, well, I suppose this time I'll allow you a few cracks at my shitty cooking, considering the task ahead."

---

The ritual itself was deceptively brief; Napoleon had already laid out most of the groundwork over the preceding month, inscribing the incantations into the circles he arranged his captive Paladins inside of. The effect, however, was... more drawn-out.

"Is it too late for me to say I have a few regrets?" Napoleon asked, as the ground below them transitioned into lifeless black sand, reminiscent of nothing so much as Hell itself.

"It certainly isn't doing this land any favors," Elken said dryly.

Even just to the eye alone, the devastation was so complete as to beggar the imagination. Elken and Napoleon, steeped in magic as they were, could see beyond that, as vital essence shuddered and warped, becoming mortal essence- the energies of decay and death. The earth itself crumbled and dried out, plants turning to dust, and animals...

...Well. They were lasting longer, but not by much.

Dusk was upon them, and the nearly-full moon was already above the horizon, lighting their way. Not that they particularly needed to see clearly; Elken's horseshoes were enchanted to let him run on thin air up to two yards above the ground, handily avoiding any obstacles in his path. The landscape, too, was rapidly beginning to flatten, as everything crumbled into the black sand of death-dust, leaving nothing to obstruct their path.

The Thirteenth Legion's camp came into view, and Napoleon took a grim satisfaction in watching the assembled Paladins flailing around as they all keeled over and died.

Well. Most of them.

Paladins were already sturdier creatures than the rank-and-file infantry of the Hikaano Imperial Army, and only the greenest of their number had died already- a large proportion, considering the heavy losses the High Elves had managed to inflict, but still not the whole Legion. The core of veterans and officers was holding up better, but still losing strength and keeling over. The only one among them who seemed unharmed was their Primogen, Harrison, one of Hano's famed Thirteen Peers, and rumored to be the god's own son.

Napoleon was mildly curious how, exactly, a half-elf managed to father a child. However, he found himself more concerned with what sort of ghoulish trophy he'd take from the boy.

"Y-you!" Primogen Harrison yelled, pointing accusingly at Napoleon as he spotted the incoming Mage-Knight by the light of dying campfires, and the cold, distant moon. "You'll pay for what you've done to my people. For the widows and orphans you've made-"

Napoleon dismounted from Elken about ten paces from the Primogen, and left his bow in its saddle-holster.

"Draw steel!" Harrison commanded, sword already in hand.

"Shut up," Napoleon said flatly, before dashing forward, slipping inside Harrison's guard, and sweeping his legs out from under him with a low kick. He disarmed the Primogen with a dismissive flick, and then, raising his foot up, brought it back down in a stomp heavy enough to cave in Harrison's breastplate in an awful noise of crumpling metal and crunching bone. "You killed my parents." He stomped again, this time on a shoulder, warping metal and shredding flesh. "You killed my brother, and then his wife." He got the other shoulder. "You invaded our homeland, in a war of conquest. You bombarded our cities with artillery, killing millions of civilians."

He pulled his foot back, and kicked the helmet off the Primogen's head- it was an open-faced helmet, to avoid obstructing his vision or his voice, and so Napoleon was forced to aim for a side wall; to call the kick in the jaw that went along with this accidental was to imply that Napoleon wasn't perfectly happy with that outcome.

"You die tonight," Napoleon said simply, as he knelt down and looked Harrison in the eyes; getting kicked four times by a Mage-Knight, with one of them being to the head, wasn't good for one's composure. For Harrison to still be conscious, let alone alive, after everything Napoleon had done? Well, clearly, he really was made of tougher stuff. "Even if the rumors are true, and Hano is your father? Well. Daddy's not here to save you, little boy. You're in my hands now."

And with that, Napoleon started to punch him in the face, with fists like iron. He didn't stop when he felt the skull crack beneath his fists; he didn't stop when he felt the skull fully give way to drive bone shards into the brain. He didn't stop until, with Harrison too dead to resist the effects of the ritual, his body dissolved into black sand.

Napoleon stood back up, idly brushing sand off his armor. He didn't yet fully know it, but this day would be remembered for centuries to come, the Hikaano treating it as a day of mourning- the day when an elven archmage destroyed the entire Thirteenth Legion and scarred the land. A day that he'd celebrate with his friends with noisemakers, champagne, and festive music.

This desert, too, would remain for centuries, untamable by nature even as the spell that created it faded, and with the Hikaano being unable and unwilling to try to rehabilitate it. The Black Desert would cast a long, ugly shadow over his legacy. A shadow that, one day, would claim the life of his own son.

"Right, Elken," Napoleon said, shrugging off the weight of history in the making. "We're done here. Let's go find our next target."