Chương 12: [1-6] A Most Unwarlike Man

The landscape fanned out before Hague. To the left and right rose high, pointed peaks. They sloped down to a gigantic lake in the center, so placid the sunlight reflected off and nearly blinded him. (Now he really wanted his shades.) The lake extended from the horizon to less than one hundred meters from the wall. Since the Floating City apparently dropped out the sky, it seemed insane luck it dropped where it did and not just a tiny bit ahead, where it would've taken a cold plunge in all that water.

But Hague saw the river branching off the lake and winding along the edge of the city to his right and realized luck had nothing to do with it. The city fell first, the lake came after. The river had been dammed. Because of that, there was barely any land directly in front of the wall. MacCoor's army assembled not ahead but off to the left, packed in by the lakeshore. From up close, it surprised Hague how small the "army" actually was.

Maybe there were more in the tents set up at the back, but a quick estimate put their total force at around one hundred. Honestly probably under. Then again, the Floating City didn't have many troops either. It looked bizarre to see, especially when Lord of the Rings primed you for epic fantasy battles with thousands of little soldiers bashing into each other. But in your average Fire Emblem, you recruit maybe forty characters over the course of the game, and you only deploy between ten and twenty of those.

Enemy armies maybe reach a hundred at the upper end. A game abstraction. The mechanics and map design made fifty enemies feel like a monster force. But here, it looked kinda pathetic. Nobody could muster more goons than this? What about all the townspeople running around, they couldn't slap swords in their hands and pressgang them onto the wall? Gaspar mentioned the Knack, Tuatoru how those without it couldn't "level up." Did that render them totally irrelevant as far as combat was concerned?

Hague already imagined plenty of uses for an army of level 1 losers; after all, he did 0 percent growth runs all the time, which was functionally the same thing. Though he was for sure better at Fire Emblem than whoever commanded armies in this world. I do not see Polymath Truth. Nor even Captain Marpasia. Hague looked down at Lord MacCoor. Must I speak only to a Sage? Hm. So this the level of respect you give the new King of Ulrica. Frankly—I'm insulted.

MacCoor stood in the center of the tiny strip of land between the gate and the lake, at the fork of a little cobblestone road that branched left and right. He was completely alone save for a single bodyguard, a woman in heavy armor stonefaced beside him. The woman was taller and broader, so she stood out more. An older woman, hair in a no-nonsense gray bun, face tanned and weather-beaten. She could've been a statue. She didn't look up at the wall, only straight ahead.

Despite that, she exuded more presence than MacCoor himself. When Hague finally saw him, after seeing everything else possible to see first, he thought it had to be a mistake. That wasn't Lord MacCoor, nefarious schemer, king poisoner, adherent of the obligatory evil cult that probably masterminded everything wrong with this world from the shadows. It must be his envoy. A nameless ambassador. Someone to dictate MacCoor's terms in his stead. Brick looked like a throwaway minor boss.

MacCoor didn't even reach that level. He looked like nobody who would ever appear on a battlefield in Fire Emblem. Not just because of his bland clothes, a simple gray robelike tunic that extended in a featureless cylinder from his shoulders down to his ankles. That was workable; he might be a mage or something, which would make sense for a guy who went to a university. The problem was his face. He had no distinguishing features whatsoever. Every single part of his face looked like the template default.

It was impossible to describe, it was impossible to remember even when you were staring at him. Maybe closer up there'd be something, a line, a wrinkle, a birthmark, an acne scar, anything at all, but at this distance his face was tactically designed to be forgotten. He had perfectly normal black hair in a perfectly normal style that sat flatly on the top of his head, he had average ears and an average nose and an average chin, he was just a dude. Just some dude.

The only thing that could even approach distinctiveness was his glasses, thin little half-moon lenses that sometimes glinted with the light coming off the lake, but on second thought the glasses also contributed to his nondescript vibe. He held his arms folded behind his back. He maintained an unreadable smile. Since nobody was looking at Hague anymore, he loosened his grip on Adelheid's cape, ensuring his shades could see down below.

"That's him, chat," he whispered.

"I've never seen a more obvious fakeout villain in my life."

"Polymath Truth will not be coming," Brick shouted.

"And Captain Marpasia is busy commanding the Lucian Escort from the air." He pointed to the shadows cycling above.

"In addition, neither the Sophic Church nor the Queendom of Lucia recognize your claim as King of Ulrica, and as such shall not receive you with the usual honors expected by one of that title." Surprisingly, Brick spoke with some finesse. Maybe he really was a "Sage."

"Furthermore," Brick continued, "your unannounced approach on the Monadic See of Evergained Knowledge with such considerable forces is an act of provocation according to Article III, Statute ii of the Lucia-FFIR Ecumenical Defense Covenant. Regardless of your titles or your birthright, Lord MacCoor-Peñaranda y Salzbach-Goemoto, we view you solely as an enemy commander and shall parley with you using etiquette appropriate to that standing. As commander of the ground forces of the Monadic See, I, Sage Mallarmé T.

Brick, shall hear whatever it is you wish to say. If I deem it appropriate, I shall relay your words to Captain Marpasia and Polymath Truth. Is this acceptable to you?" MacCoor kept his same smile. Hague started thinking, how do I get this Brick guy to join my team? He actually seemed kinda cool. The armored woman next to MacCoor raised a hand. It held some sort of object, but it was too small to see what it was. What it did was obvious enough.

MacCoor leaned forward slightly, spoke into it, and amplified his voice to that earth-quivering level: You hide behind your statutes, Sage. You'll find them a paper shield. I remember all who appraise me at less than my worth. The vague threat didn't even receive a response from Brick, who waited silently as if expecting a statement of actual substance. MacCoor allowed the silence to settle. Then he said, Let me be clear: I am a most unwarlike man. Hague fought to stop himself from laughing. A most unwarlike man!

With his army standing right there in plain view!

"What a fucking jackass. I think we're gonna have to kill this guy, chat."

"Amen," said Tuatoru. As king, I seek not strife. War is, in my view, anathema. Needless death and loss; reduction, rather than increase. An aphorism by that most insightful scholar and author, Henri Hashimoto, rings true: 'There is nothing war changes that wisdom changes worse.' Yet, when wisdom is nowhere found, war suddenly seems inevitable. It's of sadly little surprise, then, that the leadership of this once-wise church expects now only war.

I come defended, yes, but only as a new king whose position is threatened by a court terminally diseased with intrigue and a pretender who as we speak exhorts foreign nations to her aid to depose me.

"Bro," said Hague. I come to your door today for one reason and one reason only: the matter of Lady Adelheid. Mark that I say 'Lady' Adelheid, not 'Princess' Adelheid —spoken while retracting one of the arms folded behind his back to extend a single finger upward— for princess she is not. I have in my possession signed correspondence by the Queen Dowager, Mathema, admitting to the infidelity of Adelheid's conception; she is not King Nicanor's trueborn heir; she is illegitimate.

As Queen Mathema could be described as a cousin of Polymath Truth, and as they have known one another in younger years, I thought that the Polymath may verify the hand herself, if she suspected my words false. Alas, seeing only war in my heart, she has elected to leave this matter to whom it is most inappropriate: boorish prelates such as yourself, bereft of either grace or manners.

"You know," Tuatoru whispered, nudging Hague in the ribs, "he's not far away. I could shoot him from here. I wouldn't miss. The only issue's the bodyguard, but she's not looking this direction." Hague surveyed the terrain. MacCoor stood on flat ground, not even a lone tree to shelter him. Could his bodyguard block an arrow? Maybe with warning. Tuatoru was right, though, she wasn't looking at them at all. Her gaze lifted, but it turned toward the other end of the wall. Wait. Something was wrong here.

Why did MacCoor come out by himself just to say all this crap? (He was still going, by the way. A longwinded spiel about how Adelheid is not treacherous, merely naïve, how he will not punish her, only ensure she cannot undermine his reign, all that bullshit.) An envoy would be enough to get the message across, unless MacCoor was just that assured in his rhetoric. Why make a show of standing in bow-and-arrow range, almost completely undefended? To make his "most unwarlike man" point?

Yeah, Hague didn't buy it for one fucking second. Something stank to high hell. All at once it hit him. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. The assassin. He wasn't here to kill Brick. He put on a priest-soldier's clothes and came up here to...

"BRICK!" Hague shouted.

"The far end of the wall! There's a—" It happened before he had a chance to finish. The assassin stood at the end of the line, in the shadow of the wall's left tower. Hague only spotted him because he knew what to look for. The white cassock kept him from blending in completely, but he still barely existed beyond a flash in the dark as he nocked and fired an arrow with casual, effortless ease. The arrow zipped through the air.

The moment before it nailed MacCoor in the chest, his statuesque bodyguard shifted her feet. The spear she held came down like a guillotine and knocked the arrow into the dirt. A second, third, fourth arrow fell in rapid succession, each black fletch gleaming like oil as they embedded in the road around MacCoor. By then the bodyguard woman had placed her entire body in front of MacCoor, while his voice cried: Attack! Attack! I've been attacked! The King himself, coming in peace, attacked!

Aggression, aggression, this unprovoked aggression shall not stand! The smarmy fuck didn't even have the decency to be a halfway passable actor. Did it matter? Hague felt like an idiot for not realizing sooner. The assassin was here for only one thing: casus belli. All at once, in undulating rows of bodies, the encamped army started to march. Brick drew the holy book from his hip and flipped it open, already pushing past the men toward the end of the wall.

But the assassin was right next to the tower, he kicked open a door and disappeared inside.

"Get him! Get that man," Brick shouted.

"He's none of ours! His head'll be enough to disprove this farce!" Yeah right, like it fucking mattered. MacCoor knew what he was doing, he planned this perfectly, and even if you counted the pegasus girls his army vastly outnumbered the city garrison. The only question was the wall. How did he plan to get through that? Hague pulled his glasses out from Adelheid's cape and put them on. The city's soldiers had other things to worry about than him right now, and he needed to see through this sun.

Chat was going ballistic— HeyManHey: youre fucked now lul tulsasiivat: We warned you bro LetterSequence: Hague, you won't believe what this guy does next. xosyn9914: bricked up penrost: I have been trying to contact you via your business email. PLEASE CHECK YOUR EMAIL it's important —but he couldn't get distracted. He gripped the parapet and scanned MacCoor's army, looking for one of two things. First: siege engines. Ballistae, maybe stone throwers. Fire Emblem had plenty of those.

But they were large and would stick out, he didn't see any. That left the other thing, way harder to spot: Mages. Mages with long-range magic, who could rain lightning from afar. His blood chilled. There, right on the front line. A woman wearing a wide-brimmed, pointed witch's hat. A universal symbol if Hague ever saw it, platonic signifier of magic. In one hand she gripped what he first thought was a spear or poleaxe, making him question his initial assessment. Squinting, he realized what it actually was: a staff.

A staff with a bright red crystal sphere at the end. The witch extended her arm and aimed the sphere at the wall. The sphere started to glow, to pulse with crackling energy.

"Damn!" Tuatoru had his bow out, aimed down at MacCoor.

"There's no shot—that armored woman—!" Hague considered redirecting him toward the witch, but one second's thought and he knew it'd never work. The crystal blazed now like a miniature sun. Whatever it was charging up to do, it was already past the point of no return. Hague yanked Tuatoru back by the collar of his vest.

"Run!" When they first climbed onto the wall, Hague made sure to stay as close to the stairs as possible. The decision saved his life. The other soldiers noticed the charging crystal too late, and most of them were running across the wall to chase the assassin. As they turned to stare, as Brick screamed "EVERYONE DOWN NOW," Hague and Tuatoru dove down the stairs. It couldn't have taken more than a second. It felt like eternity.

Hague seemed to be falling in suspended animation, the jagged stairs perpetually rising to meet him. Everything went dark. The sun just blinked out and the sky became black. At the same time, silence. No screaming, no crackle of magic energy, not even the deluge of words MacCoor continuously blared with his amplifying device. Hague hit the steps hard but felt only a dull ache as his rainbow forcefield flashed. His body bounced and rolled in midair. The sky exploded red. Sound came after light.

A ripping, a rending of reality, a roar rushing into the newly-torn vacuum. Like the mask of the world was wrenched off and the face beneath only horror, ceaseless senseless endless horror, perpetually shifting in and over itself. Twisting, Hague saw the top of the tower, the priest-soldiers standing there, Brick among them frozen mid-shout, any sound he could possibly make consumed amid so much more sound. Then the light consumed them too. The edges of the parapet reddened, as if superheated.

Rainbow flashes spread across the bodies of the soldiers, but only for an instant. Then it was all gone. A blasted mess of stone and limb, shooting outward, crumbling to more and more meaningless pieces. By the time the sound died it had become so ubiquitous he thought it would continue, forever, etched inside him.

But new sounds replaced it, sounds that made some amount of sense: screams, shouts, the rumble of boulder-sized stone chunks as they slid off the cracked center of the wall and crashed down through the gate, or at least the parts of the gate that hadn't already been blasted away, portcullis and all. And bugling. The pegasus girls were bugling again. Hague had landed on his back at some point, though he didn't remember when. Tuatoru groaned beside him, struggling to lift himself on trembling arms.

He didn't look hurt, just covered in dust, so Hague figured the trembling was from fear. Can't blame the guy. Hague glanced at his hands, he was trembling too. Chat blitzed: IronMarcus: GET OUT OF THERE HAGUE brave_lakche: battle of barhara vibes on this cutscene rintintinabulation: holy SHIT DanTheReaper: Okay now I HAVE to know how Hague made this hack xosyn9914: wtf 1111111111111111111111111: XA XA XA XA XA XA XA XA XA XA!!! YOU ARE DIE!!! Kmarticuno3: Pog as fuck?????

DanTheReaper: It's such high quality, the graphics are insane KagasHypnoFetish: EXPLOSION!!! The_Nuremberg: Hague is getting destroyed on the war crimes count here tulsasiivat: dude what if hague really is trapped in a video game lmao Kiboh: this is cosmic punishment for having a savings account jsyk, real men buy stocks Hanbo: Needs a dubstep drop WUBWUBWUBWUB Phandelmo: SHAMBHALA Argonautic: I'm as speechless as Hague is! Speechless? No.

Hague lifted his head and fixed his askew shades and balled his hands into fists. Just mad, mad enough to mask the fear. He hadn't been thinking, not quick enough. He fucked up with the assassin and now this. He'd expected long range magic the way it showed up in almost every Fire Emblem, a pinpoint accurate sniper strike. But there was one Fire Emblem with something different, wasn't there? Chat already alluded to it. It hadn't crossed Hague's mind in the moment, because he didn't like to think about that game.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The most popular game in the franchise. By far. Awakening made Hague's mentor quit. Three Houses almost made Hague quit.

By then he was already established as a streamer, no diploma, this was his job, so-so close on the savings account, surrounded by fans, and he was too good at Fire Emblem to give up no matter how many tea parties Three Houses made him sit through, how many tedious grindy training sessions to assiduously maximize the weapon ranks of your units just so you could make the informed decision to reclass them to the exact same broken class (wyvern rider). Awakening looked like anime but it was Fire Emblem.

Three Houses looked like Fire Emblem but it was something far more sinister wearing its skin.

"Save me," he mumbled, "save me from the eternal monastery." BingusFromADistantLand: Why do you look like that"Bro why do you think, I just got nuked!" Ah fuck. He was dazed. Babbling. Thinking about things that didn't matter. Why did he remember Three Houses? Right. Because of chat.

Because of the subterranean city of Shambhala, home to Those Who Slither in the Dark, that gaggle of comically evil Agarthan mole people wielding the magical equivalent of cruise missiles while honest-to-god unironic dubstep perforated the soundtrack. A monster smiling under the mask. Shambhala, Shambhala, Shambhala! They hit Hague with a magic missile. From now on he could take nothing for granted. Not if he wanted to live.

"Are you okay?" he asked Tuatoru. Tuatoru opened his mouth with a fragment of a smirk as though he was about to make a casual quip but he couldn't muster it, only nodded. They helped each other up. Hague patted dust off Tuatoru's fur trim. Together, stabilizing, they slowly descended the rest of the steps. It wasn't easy. The steps were relatively clear of debris due to their narrow switchback flatness against the wall, but they did cross a body. Half a body.

Farther down maybe the other half, maybe an entirely different half. Hard to tell. Hague kept his focus on his footing. By the time they reached the base of the steps it was clear the same forcefield that protected him during the fight with Marpasia had saved him from any incidental damage. So it wasn't just a gameplay abstraction. Did that mean he was less than full HP now? How could he track his HP out of combat?

His glasses were able to show more than they currently did, but he hadn't had the chance to fiddle with them. Didn't have the chance now, either. No longer needing to support each other, Hague and Tuatoru stepped onto the rubble that surrounded where the gate had been. Nothing moved except settling and cooling rock. Dust hovered everywhere. Hague covered his mouth with Adelheid's cape and coughed.

"What the fuck was that explosion?" Hague finally choked out.

"I don't know," said Tuatoru. His slick coolness all gone.

"I have no idea. It has to be something the Solophones built. Or the College of the Two Henries, I don't know." Okay. At least whatever it was wasn't common. Of course not, otherwise nobody would bother to build a wall in front of their city to begin with. The question was, could MacCoor's army do it again? No. Real question. What was Hague's plan to deal with it?

"Hague! Hague!" The dust started to settle and out of it, from the direction of town, came running a silhouette that turned into a figure. Adelheid. Without her cape her tight-fitting black doublet gave her an awkward, boyish look, but she stepped with certainty over the blasted rock.

"Hague! Are you okay? It sounded like an earthquake."

"I'm fine." He whipped off her cape and held it out to her, and after five seconds of staring she finally understood and took it. Overhead, the pegasus girls clustered, but Hague figured they had more immediate problems to worry about than them. Gaspar clanked and clunked up behind Adelheid. He carried Truth, no longer over his shoulder, but bridal style: she was awake. The dust made her blink. She looked dazed and pained.

"What happened to the wall?" Adelheid said.

"Your cousin—scratch that. Let's get out of here first." With the gate down, the army would come soon. Now was the perfect time to try that mountain climbing strat to sneak out of the city. Given what Hague just lived through, a little rope swinging wouldn't even faze him. Which side of the city did Tuatoru say Signy went down? The right side, yeah? He turned to lead his troops. He got one step and time froze. Oh no. Oh fuck no. OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT ENEMY COMMANDER TURN 1 PLAYER PHASE START