Entering the City

Stravburg. The bustling city was now plunged into an eerie silence. Behind tightly barred doors and shuttered windows, its citizens waited quietly for word from the outside world. Following the coalition's earlier "Grand Requisition," discarded belongings and smashed furniture littered the streets, alongside mottled stains of blood upon the cobblestones. "Citywide martial law!" "No leaving the city without orders!" The city garrison patrolled the streets time and again, vigilant against an intrusion by outside enemies. "Anyone harboring outsiders will hang!" From time to time, they pounded on a household's door—partly to search for spies, and partly, of course, to collect an expected "fee for defending the city." Upon the towering, time-worn walls of Stravburg, the actual commander of the city garrison, Count Garrod Ponte, stood atop the gate tower, gazing with deep anxiety toward the distant horizon. "This war will decide everything." "The coalition... will emerge victorious in the end, just as we have through every disaster in Northland history." So he always told himself. Every moment of waiting was torment. Garrod longed desperately to see a dispatched messenger, to see the lion banners of House Bosque fluttering in the wind. Yet he knew this war was far different from anything before. Its scale, intensity, and duration could all prove unprecedented—a resolution within a matter of days was hardly likely. The eleven remaining Northland realms had pooled their full might as never before, assembling a coalition of over a hundred thousand troops to confront an unprecedentedly formidable enemy that had seemingly materialized out of thin air: the Kingdom of Cinders. Even when facing the "Frost Calamity" and "Dragon Calamity" from the north, the Northland realms had never united with such shared hatred. For the nobles of each realm knew that frost giants and white dragons brought plunder and death at worst—disasters that could even weaken rival nations and allow one to profit. The Kingdom of Cinders, however, would string them all up on gallows without distinction, destroying everything they depended on for survival. "No one can defeat the united Scanians." "Not even that dragon," Count Garrod muttered under his breath. Suddenly, heavy hoofbeats and footfalls echoed—unhurried, measured. At once, along the towering ramparts and below, officers and soldiers and even common craftsmen turned in unison toward the distant horizon, hearts leaping into their throats. "How can this be?" "Only thirteen days have passed... Could the war really be over?" Garrod's expression turned grave. He glared fixedly at the horizon, sweat beading on the hand that gripped his hilt. A dreadful suspicion took root in the count's mind, yet he refused to believe it. After a moment's thought, Garrod turned to the adjutant beside him. "Send out a scout squad to assess the situation. Remember—" But he broke off almost immediately—for indistinct figures had appeared in the distance. They wore yellow-black and brown uniforms he knew intimately—the colors of House Bosque, which served both as effective camouflage and as an emblem of a lion's pelt. "It's the ducal army!" "They've returned in triumph!" At the sight of the returning soldiers, cheers erupted along the gate tower, and men raised their weapons into the air. Yet Count Garrod rubbed his chin, head lowered, his brow still furrowed deep. "How can this be...?" Something was wrong. If it truly were such a great victory, the messengers would have returned with the news long ago. Yet not a single courier had arrived. Moreover, at the vanguard of that army, proud lion banners ought to have been flying high, rather than this muted, sluggish advance. Suddenly, the soldiers' cheers choked off. A tomb-like silence swept over the gate tower. Count Garrod instinctively looked up, only to see a roiling, shivering black cloud appear on the horizon, casting its shadow over the army beneath. No, that was no cloud. He wiped his eyes in disbelief, his lips trembling faintly. "Wy... wyverns?" "Could it be... the Kingdom of Cinders?" Wyverns and chimeras darkened the sky in dense formations, wingtip to wingtip, like heavy thunderheads blotting out the sun. And upon the earth, marching behind the dispirited, captive soldiers, came disciplined ranks of tieflings and hobgoblins, flanked by hill-sized land drakes. "Ye gods..." "Is that our enemy?" "The coalition... the coalition was captured?!" Only now did the officers and soldiers snap out of their daze, crying out in terror before this incomprehensible foe. Amid deafening roars, the dense host of wyverns parted abruptly in midair, clearing a vast corridor through the skies. In an instant, the heavens were dyed an orange-red hue. Flapping his colossal wings in measured beats, the red dragon appeared against the distant sky. "The Northlands have fallen..." "Cinders shall endure forever." The calm, resonant voice rolled across the wild plains, reaching every ear within and outside Stravburg. "The Northlands have fallen! Cinders shall endure forever!" Down on the ground, the ogres and tieflings roared in fanatical battle cries, welcoming the red dragon's arrival. The players joined in with rowdy shouting of their own, some even streaking naked across the wasteland, filling the air with the breath of freedom. "No..." "The Northlands are finished." Count Garrod dropped to his knees with a thud atop the gate tower, his eyes filled with despair. He had contemplated the worst-case scenario, yet when this suffocating reality actually unfolded before his eyes, he felt his entire world collapse into dust. Garrod Ponte had been personally invested as a count by Grand Duke Leo when the duke rode out of the city. The grand duke had solemnly promised that if he held Stravburg, he would grant him a true duchy upon the coalition's triumphant return, elevating him to the pinnacle of Northland nobility. But now, everything was gone. Count Garrod's hand shook upon his sword. ... Before long, marching to rhythmic footfalls, the vanguard of the kingdom entered the city. Hobgoblin and tiefling infantry scaled the battlements with assault ladders, quickly securing the entire wall without meeting a shred of resistance. They also discovered a high-ranking Northland noble who had slit his own throat atop the gate tower—though to them, it hardly mattered. The city garrison left behind in Stravburg was no elite force; most were ruffians and conscripted thugs. Confronted by the disciplined host of the Kingdom of Cinders, and seeing tens of thousands of coalition soldiers marched along as prisoners, they could muster no will to resist. Some were already waving white flags while the kingdom's forces were still hundreds of paces away. "Don't kill me!" "I surrender! I surrender!" The guardsmen who normally swaggered and lorded it over the townsfolk were now mostly on their knees, shivering in terror, some so petrified that they wet themselves on the spot. Stravburg—this ancient, prosperous city of nearly a thousand years, the capital of the Principality of Bosque long hailed as the "Unfallen City of Lions"—had fallen to the kingdom.