By fate of fire, a bastion of civilization nestled into a leeward sky island rises up to the black skies in death. One of many modest jewels found in Xin when stretching out from the Imperial Capital, its tactical location among the territories represented by an elvish gameboard is reduced to only two positions from that holy site in places.
A million jubilant beasts feast torch the priceless city with alchemical liquids in their butcher’s high. Mad arsonists dance upon every thatch rooftop and star-pointed pagoda of the city’s old imperial architecture, even as the fires start to chase them through the alleys down below and climb ever upward.
The inhabitants that escape the death maze are clamped upon and weighed down by chains to be led out!
Music from all around that was triumphal turns gloomy.
“Next one will fall, now!” The head beast inches closer on a great leaf closing the gap from west to south, an odorous wind reeking of carnage drawing her closer to her arch-enemy.
“Demonstrations of futility.”
With both blackened stone and charred wood, and by the furred hands of unlearned savages, the survivors of “learning to fly” hammer together the next catapults that are aimed at the province of Langzufoel.
“All armies will come! Advance on the Boss!”
From the sands fly endless flights of screaming kobolds. Cities adjacent to where the western tyrant claimed empty out their garrisons to add these reinforcements from further back. Done also when claiming an Emperor’s oasis in the sands, this fearless king alone has chosen to push beyond the second breakthrough to a third while leaving her borders and interior less secured.
[The rules of Four Seasons state: if one embraces the signs given by the Ascended, then a conquest with clear victory and sustainable numbers becomes an extra conquest past the first after all others stated have occurred; for, the wisest embrace the heaven’s mandate and risk all in their plans for the future.]
A series of [9] tiles trumped any lesser ones when assaulting the island, with only a single random [6] losing to the Emperor’s [8] placed “general”. Generals that should serve until next Summer are expended with a gambler’s frenzy.
Allergic to the bone-white tiles, Kol trades leaders for more flying kobolds!
“They fly thick as sparrows so that you may become a raptor!” At the top of the city’s keep, a monster clad in armor scales riveted by human hands yells down at his defenders.
It is one of the few cities of Xin still lit both day and night by the oldest works of the mighty Emperor. Normally only the Emperor’s character will glow upon a home, but this city boasts the jade-glass tubes and corner facets built into the infrastructure that exude a pale, pleasant light too. Its omnipresence reminds its people of His eternal presence in their lives.
But not all colors are peaceful.
Great jade lenses built into these defenses illuminate outward the entire battlefield so that no black minion may hide. The walls and bastions of the ancient star fortress are alive with the many forms of aura streaking out to meet the incoming black rain.
(The energies come from within the earth, but not even the sworn would comprehend the workings. It is enough that they hear My whisperings within them by this effect.)
Flying swords cut through the incoming “droplets”, while scintillating fields envelop swaths of them to reduce a constant tide into screaming, tumbling crisps.
Only one in a hundred kobolds from the air lands within the city, and only one in a thousand survives their greeting by the warriors and militia; but, the moment these luckiest flee from the chasers on the ground, there is a licking orange that broods soon after in hidden places.
This terrifying color sweeps through the clustered, cluttered slums where the peasants thrive, turning the din of distant battle into a closer crackling inferno. On an island where water is scarce and only dust exists to heap at the flames, fire is a cowardly tool.
(I approve of this “alchemy”.)
“Always saying ‘little dog’, or ‘crush the mutt’, or ‘small is weak’! Humans like those words for kobolds, but we like the Castile word that means ‘havoc’!”
The midget barbarians that land shy of the fortress, the vast majority of them, assemble under deadly hails of projected mental and real arrows to march up the sloping mountain toward the defenses. In waves they carry debris to the outer moats below the high walls’ forward bunkers. Techniques crash upon them from every direction, but there’s never a break from the siege they haphazardly develop with surprising guile.
“Humans don’t understand when things don’t work the way they think they will!”
Despite guile, after developing their siege and accomplishing forward breaches past the bunkers, the infinite rain of furred berserkers struggles to take a single bastion. They languish in the second moat behind the forward battlements. When trying to uproot the entrenched warriors within this bunkers, by the thousands they perish under coordinated fire from walls angled to leave no blind spots.
The Emperor nods in comprehension of how these weaklings replace every soul lost instantly, making such losses irrelevant. Xin’reh dedicated to defeating mighty opponents struggle to quell an army that knows no fear of death. As a calculation of attrition, the Emperor knows exactly when his forces will falter.
(My sworn would never face motivated peasants upon the battlefield, so they have cultivated very few Techniques that do not utilize terror to disperse weaker threats.)
Even for an Emperor… this might be a first.
For in all of Xin, there exists nowhere near enough lives to utilize a cruel tactic such as this. “Break and run”, this is what human militia correctly do when set against demi-gods.
(Losing the fear of painful death removes all limitations. Aura is not inexhaustible. I concede that this is… woefully effective.)
Her peculiar answer denies the natural order, and the tyrant gleefully gloats about that fact. “When the ‘weak’ are winning, humans learn that taller beings fall harder!
KAKAKAKA!”
The western tyrant pinches her fingers together, then pops them out like an explosion. Cheekier tiles set onto the continent lift up at this taunt.
[9], [9], [9], and [4].
One [9] and two other tiles that get trumped up boom loudly. The crushing wave of authority traverses the land to slam into the city’s walls.
After a silence… with tremendous eruptions of stone shooting chunks upward, those walls lift and buckle!
(Sappers?)
A constant stream of smaller and larger detonations cut a furrow through the south-western, eastern, and northern sections of the city in unison. The defenders and attackers both vanish into the plumes of debris. Only the militia refuse to rise after the upheaval, yet the Xin’reh that recover now waste ever more aura when standing their ground on the compromised battlements. Their murdering of the black host that pulls at the savaged walls with large curved hooks, hoisted by many besiegers like ants maneuvering a giant fork, is compounded by defending against what comes from behind.
From the packed earth that lifted up in the explosions, furious rats emerge from the blast smoke. Blade-wielding lunatics flood the interior outskirts despite the living rot born from the depths eating through their flesh to leave much of it wrinkled and pus-filled. Into every alley and street they disperse to force defenders into chases.
(I see, the subterranean defenses my Eminence devised sought primarily to punish aura wielders. Their resistance to the Dreamless Salts I laced into the porous depths long ago is impressive, even if its potency has reduced.)
The Xin’reh tasked with sensing for dangers overlooked what blends with the depths, for no Xin’reh would waste time learning to sense mundane soldiers. To overcome his foundation’s old architectural traps shows also their tenacity for digging carefully, while their fearlessness eclipses even those Xin’reh who eventually abandon their positions when there is only mortal sacrifice left for them to perform.
(I am… glad that they chose to surface after the walls instead of pursuing the center of the fortress, kukuku!)
Astounding truths crystallized into majestic Techniques wipe away any single force foolish enough to stand before any the Emperor’s Xin’reh. But the tide that brings mountains of corpses spilling over and onto battlements, the hours flying by with this siege unending and the game abbreviating the waves, proves with sacrifice the weakness of few against many.
Enlightenment is denied by unthinking aggression.
(They do not live as my people should, keeping the worth of the self. To fight to the last is for my constructs!)
Xin’reh turn tail from the walls each time they’re overrun, stampeding the witless peasant militia into retreat lest they perish when abandoned.
Once the outer bastions are all near collapse, the flank routes fill with the clanking of Xin’reh aiming for the city’s center.
“Withdraw to the fortress!” Aura warriors, even if their lines collapse, are not cowards who would abandon other possible defensive lines; yet, their most powerful warrior calls for a total retreat.
“Boss is ready to surrender!? GO FOR THE THROAT!”
“GYAAAH!?” The western tyrant drags down one of her sycophants by his arm, then chomps on it!
Every wall teems with furred brigands further incensed by their master’s order.
The cramped city, with its old-yet-esteemed civic palaces and pleasure avenues included, is turned inside out by the ransacking of the thronging kobolds that scrape through domiciles looking for loot.
Only the central keep, a pagoda with a narrow base that rises to overshadow the rest of the central streets of the wealthy merchants, is spared assault. Its truly immense, many-tiered jade-painted overhangs allow the Xin’reh who have not exhausted themselves to unleash bursts of deadly fire, lightning, and stickily-acidic torments upon the invaders that try to cross the open fields beneath the pagoda. Heavily armored house Xin’reh form lines at the narrow bridges necessary to cross to reach it. A gap that drops into the island’s glowing depths cannot be jumped.
Outside of the range of these Xin’reh and regular archers, the great horde tests the defenders by running forward, then back while cackling.
“We can take forever, starve you out!” The kobold lord gyrates on her pile of treasures, whipping her tail like a hungry rat. “[Coppers] are TRAPPED!”
“… Mukukuku!” The Emperor’s laugh is spared once more, unsettling even the miniaturized kobolds below that halt in their pillaging to stare up toward the heavens.
(Where are the citizens you sought to claim, disciple?)
Empty of all but kobolds, there is a general frustration with their hisses when the loot proves insufficient. The militia they could take successful vengeance on; of the peasants though, no men or women are left to dominate.
“There is folly in certain strategies, my treacherous disciple.”
The Emperor opens his fist and extends two fingers.
His will lifts the defensive tiles to reveal [5] and [0], with both being a tile that he threw from his hand.
“[0]? This is…?”
“A lesson. That not all fortresses are tombs.”
(One of the rare tiles, made specifically for ME.)
“Separate the fortress!” The titanic enforcer of the Emperor’s Truth bellows this to the faceless, robed seneschals standing at his back. They nod in unison before scampering off into the pagoda’s dark interior.
After a time, the dim jade-glass coverings of the pagoda flare up!
A piercing groan accompanied by mechanical grinding sends the structure shaking. This cue stands for the armored Xin’reh which guard the bridges to turn their backs in unison and march back into the fortress. Its base retracts the walls that support it into the foundation, then the bridges made of beautiful carved stone, twelve total for the same number of wondrous revelations of the Emperor, collapse into the depths one by one when their support bolts retract.
“Okay… kobolds flying made sense, but not this.”
The great glowing pagoda of Langzufoel, higher than twenty men standing upon each other’s shoulders and far wider, levitates ever upward like a leaf carried by a clever wind. A steady stream of jade fire shoots out the bottom.
“Want this cool thing! Take it~!”
(It’s… it’s flying!?)
The Emperor nearly gasps upon witnessing this, then catches his emotions in check with a single banishing litany through his mind.
The strange shock passes when the screaming kobolds try to leap the gaps and fall in.
(… My Eminence crafted it, why would it not soar? Though it has not done so for many centuries, nothing made by a master’s hands would ever degrade.)
Pennants of the Emperor flap upon every open tier. The surviving Xin’reh who were trapped now uproariously laugh. Looming out over the invaders, they continue to pick off with Techniques the ones that try to throw across makeshift bridges.
For this plan Xin’reh stood without breaking, to feign cowardice and confirm the plot. Just as they put faith in themselves, they hold faith in what has the family character of “Xin” gilded upon it everywhere.
“Hah, escaping!? BAH!” The western tyrant slides off her treasure pile, fuming with her mouth pulled into a snarl. After growling, she calms down and sneers with eyes so tight that her forehead has lines. “Folly? You still lose the city to KOL! The winner…!”
After rubbing her hands on her own sides, the tyrant bursts into an energetic pose which drags her underlings to collapse next to her.
“… is us!”
“KAKAKAKA!” They laugh after the abuse, joining with their master.
(Indeed, I sacrifice the city.)
“Receive our Emperor’s parting poem.” The First Sworn answers for him with the toss of a sparkling rainbow jewel from the flying pagoda once the flying building reaches the necessary velocity.
The kobolds’ many eyes seem stuck to it as it drops, then disappears into the jade-glowing depths of the city’s deep center.
“What was that… amazing concentration of ‘voices’ that he threw in?” Silent in spectating before now, two elves also appear mesmerized by the object they glimpsed. “Emperor of Black, that sparkling rainbow reminds me of the cup that we drank from?”
(Astonishing that you’d recall such a thing, my pet.)
A horde’s many members stare at each other with confusion at the change in events, then twitch their ears and look around more.
The arrogant midgets then rush around in a frenzy, bumping and trampling each other with sudden terror!
“… EARTHQUAKE!!!!!”
““““AGAGAGAGA!?””””
Bestial soldiers hear it long before the Emperor’s ears can, yet the ground does start quaking. Jade energies filling the many radiance tubes and crystal facets of the city grow so blindingly bright that the stampeding kobolds can’t see where they’re going.
“Run! Kol’s troops, get—!”
Percussion instruments slam a new beat at the change in the fight, the energy of its racket punctuating the rising danger!
A pillar of jade light singes the edges of the floating pagoda that barely clears away in time.
The city center that the horde massed at vanishes into a distortion wave which radiates from the island’s core. It sweeps through the claustrophobic streets, scours inside buildings, and roars over rooftops to catch even those hanging on the backsides of structures!
Screams, half organic terror and half the catalyzation of aura, steal the capacity of thought from those witnessing it.
The sight of others recovers, with the tyrant rubbing her eyes to discover that a half-million kobolds have vanished.
From the now silent center’s point of view, though, no one has left the view of where the pagoda once was. Forever fleeing from it, every invader is an eternal shadow burnt into the stony grounds and sleek walls; memories eternal, the last residents of a now dead city. Plumes of toxic green smoke continually billow from the core, filtering through the cracks in the city’s foundations to leave a mysterious phenomenon of flitting shapes that seem to still walk through the foggy streets where only shadows are singed into.
“… That…!? [0]…? Nah? Why, shadows of those hit only small!?”
The pagoda that slowly floats away is the answer to the tyrant’s cry when the Emperor points at it; for, it is a fat, ponderous fortress that can transport an army within itself to a distant land at an Emperor’s wish to claim it.
“Agh!? This, this is what that meant, that it denies a single tile’s ‘remaining’ if it wins?” The western tyrant scratches feverishly at the sides of her head, grasping in practice what she should’ve devoted brain power to when witnessing previously.
([0], as My brilliance explained, is dual purpose: it may negate one tile if it defeats its sworn opposite, but it does not specify attacker or defender.)
“Not just sending away Kol’s piece if Boss wants before damaging, it can also send away Boss’…!? [5] beats [4] because ‘general’, then escapes!? Annoying!”
For an Emperor to have the ability to explain in any perceived language an idea conveyed, it is the fault of the listener for not grasping the full implications of what he chooses to convey.
A precious automaton would’ve never misunderstood. If any question remained, she would’ve known it is reasonable to ask for clarification without that being a sin.
(Half of your army vanishes, defeated, while I withdraw all of mine.)
For a defender, the [0] has fewer uses except for specific outcomes sought.
One is the use of a general [0] with the hopes of defeating at least one other random tile with your second general.
“Kol still wins, because ‘majority’ means most armies staying to win, right!?” The mad tyrant boggles her eyes in sequence, almost shrieking this question.
“Indeed, disciple. That you comprehend this nuance is promising.”
“Yes!? Then…”
Crossing her arms, the tyrant sneers again with renewed satisfaction.
“Everything still fits to Kol’s plan.”
For the tile to be withdrawn after dealing damage as a part of the trap, the Xin’reh that retreated from battle did so without staying to further defend the city.
To the credit of elvish trickery, an appropriate scenario is crafted to match the realities of Four Seasons’ rules while being demonstrative of what the Emperor knows to be true.
“Fine! Kol was going to pull armies from the rest of the cities anyway!”
Another conquest is claimed, and so more armies transfer from the interior of the tyrant’s territories. As the black tide that is diminished, but not beaten, streams in, it is only the Emperor’s capital that remains in their path.
“Is… the west going to win?” A sweet girl whispers this question. Her confused expression, yet beautiful face, momentarily hurts the Emperor’s heart; for, that she would need to feel even a little doubt as to his magnificence is a cruel necessity for his lesson.
(This farce has continued long enough.)
When the black kobolds start crashing upon the outer gardens of his capital, far below the mighty palace which hosts his true form, it is necessary to step off the leaf to personally instruct.
Through the great sky he plummets into the haze of many colors intensifying around his mighty body!
Winds whip through the flat garden of still waters. From far below shines the rainbow that is His remembrance of the Sea of Stars and the Drops of Creation which fell long ago to sink within it.
The Emperor’s feet cause musical stresses with each step, for the transparent glasses fitted over the surface bonds with his aura to stay rigid. Only the finest aura control can make such a fragile sheath not crumble under the weight of even a mouse.
A mile wide and long, this immense private place exists solely for him.
Coming to the center over the Sea, the Emperor lifts his arm to cover his nose with his robe. Dressed in somewhat of a rush with the tight functionary style that his people favor, it is the rainbow gems bound by silver that hang all over him that he is reluctant to expose to the taint assaulting him.
Overcoming the incense which burns throughout this outer heaven, a bestial scent oppresses.
“““““KAKAKAKAKA!”””””
Unable yet to cross into the inner domain of an Emperor, the black horde has successfully submerged the empty outer capital. The gleaming gold and jade trim is absent when underneath furry bodies. Totally surrounded by this army that masses to cross the Imperial Bridge, the Emperor sighs at how they forget their places.
“My Eminence does not deign to walk the earth for the sake of these insects. Come, disciple.”
A rampage of fire, a wall that winds through the black tide, burns up the enemy as well as scorching the Emperor’s palace!
Its summoner crashes forth out of the blaze.
“But you do it for Kol!”
The smallest knight wielding the largest axe imaginable clanks forward.
Clad in shining silver marred by where the plate has been struck, only from this one worthwhile being does aura, the mark of true nobility, thickly exude from beneath the armor.
“Where is Boss’ army!?”
“My Eminence has never had need for others to begin with.” The Emperor curls his hand, inviting her forward.
“Peons are appropriate for boring tasks that are beneath My notice. For you, my prodigal student, there is an allowance for personal attention.”
“Kakakaka! Kol feels very special,
but…!”
Pink eyes set behind a wolf-helmed visor are bright with avarice.
“No more threats!” His disciple swings her axe, then points the hefty giant at him.
Enormous white tiles start to lift in the distance.
[9], [3], [9], [6]
Two generals, two peasants.
An army thrice his garrison, even after retreating, demands to meet him.
“No more retreating!”
The Emperor’s only worthy child stomps out onto the fragile glass.
Sashaying in armor is impossible, but the disdain she manages with her clomping strides still brings a thirsty smile to a being much older than her.
“FIGHT! For kobold freedom!”
“Disregarding those lesser slaves, you will always call me…”
“WE WILL NOT BE SLAVES ANY LONGER!”
“… master.”
The tide howls!
Through the priceless ancient and near extinct trees and plants they trample to reach the Sea, they feel none of the justified fear for the Emperor that they should.
All that he has considered worth enduring is defaced.
Ruined.
(Mutants that know not terror. A useful trait, but also a terminal one.)
“Kol is Kol’s master!”
“You are unkind to them.”
“CHOOSE TO FOLLOW BECAUSE KOL IS STRONGEST!”
“But I am merciful.”
Catching afire like a white blazing star, the western tyrant hefts high her axe and charges with her horde!
“HAAAAAAAAAAH!”
To answer this, the Emperor lifts a cross that shines with rainbow. When pointing it at her, the black skies cling low to his palace standing like an old, tall oak.
“Xin’reh… Xin’el…
‘All living, thinking creatures’ as you named them…”
A ringing cross that pierces the heavens, more enormous than any other monument ever created by any other being, calls forth from beyond the storm the truth of all creation to swirl around it!
The tiles that lift from within the palace are twins.
And they are proof that encountering a living god is a trap within itself.
“… are my precious slaves.”
When the rainbow ray strikes the knight tyrant’s head, her proud wolf helmet bursts into ash.
Revealed is the enraptured face of a total beauty paralyzed by glimpsing eternity, the Empror’s own bride-to-be stuck staring at only him before she’s crushed through the fragile glass she once tread on.
“I have heard your desire.”
“… Beau…!” Her own fascination dies as words, for she’s stunned when the rest of her armor carries into the winds. Slowly, her firm body sinking into the boiling Sea of Stars joins it, particle by white particle as a rainbow beam projected by a cross grows to envelop the entire city’s infestation.
“You are mine, as I belong now to you.”
None of the ugly rabble are gifted the dignity to scream before their last glimpse of heaven cleanses.
[0], [0], the tiles that burn rainbow along with the rest of the Imperial Capital are the reason that [Total War] fails.
Half of the black tide is consumed by starlight, and the rest flee after dropping their weapons.
For they have rediscovered what [fear] is.
“All your desires become my own.”
The western tyrant slowly lifts herself up, patting at the smoke coming from her nearly naked body to extinguish what burns. Only a thin tunic of burnt weave clings to her otherwise.
“It was a worthwhile strategy, my disciple, but your growth lacks balance.”
Her stiff tail finally flicks. “… Two [0]s?”
Both within the city and also on a floating leaf, the Emperor relinquishes the hold that elvish mists claimed on placing him as real there.
That incarnated miniature of the Emperor walks across the bridge into the depths of His Imperial Stronghold, then the large gates shut.
“Boss… saved THREE [0]s!?”
“If you can save so many high tiles, then why not three of the rarest? Used sparingly, precisely when needed?”
“… Boss… was only aiming at…?”
“If you aim a blade at me, then I will turn it back on you.”
The tyrant’s armies flee, with all the brown leaves finishing falling from the trees of the world.
Snow starts to fall.
“Before the moment that you decided your plan, I had already read your heart. As I’ve told you countless times, disciple, I know — you. Whatever brings you joy, that joy is defined by what you love. What you would love… is easy to guess.”
“… Mmm…”
Cringing sycophants cower beside the tyrant after her defeat, but they eventually help their leader back onto her pile of treasure.
“You must also have a plan against the plan of the enemy.” Kind in attitude even when his sarcastic tone remains dry, the Emperor strokes his chin while preparing his disciple for her next shock.
“It is never you against only one threat. It is you against every conceivable one. And if you cannot claim to know me, then you know not what My Eminence is capable of.”
“… Good lesson. Kol, kind of remembers this when important, kind of forgets when not. Frustrating… to not…?”
The tyrant searches her master for a moment, a look of solemnity to her stony expression. “Told Elf not to give away plan, but did it anyway for Kol’s own? Kakakaka!”
Rather than more mad displays of rage, the exposed tomboy of a tyrant props her legs up and lets her pleasurable contours and exposed tight muscles be seen by all.
“Learning takes a very long time! Keep doing the wrong things.” Unafraid of being revealed as lacking, she just heaves a deep sigh and relaxes.
“It was a valiant tactic!”
“Nah?”
“You’re right outside of his capital!”
With the fires of war burning out across Zennia, a pleasant girl who should be a competitor calls across with a cheer and waves both hands energetically.
“Even if you got stuck at the last moment, you can still beat him with that momentum, Kol! Like I tell you, don’t lose hope in your own growth! You thought up your own plan for a game you’ve never played, and it almost worked!”
“… Ah? Umu, that’s not wrong?” The tyrant seems mystified at the support at first, then smiles brightly and cheers back. “Then… next Spring, Kol will win over Boss, then conquer you, eastern elf!” After cheering up, colors flow from the gold under her to clothe her once more in a protective gambeson and plated silver. The tyrant renews!
“That… that is not exactly great.”
(Nor is it accurate.)
“The game, for you, is over my disciple.”
“How!?”
The Emperor lifts his hand, drawing upward the huge tile that is his Grand Stratagem.
“It’s time for you to reveal your complicity in My brilliance, Kainan.”
“Hmmm!?”
When the Emperor calls across the world to his true foe, both the pet elf and the worthy disciple startle.
As the Emperor does, this silent murdering elf lifts her own hand.
A second Grand Stratagem activates at the conclusion of the season.
Hers is of a black-silhouetted figure that carries an open tube skulking within a grain storehouse packed to full.
His is of the lands stripped bare of even grasses, baked by the eye of the Torchlike Sun.
“[Despoiler].” Kainan emotionlessly states this.
“[Dead Lands].” The Emperor hisses his.
Before either can explain what these tiles mean, cries are heard from the remote northern cities that were attacked by shadowy elves.
“Everyone falling over!?”
“Don’t eat it! It’s gone bad!”
Kobolds collapse while clutching their stomachs, many vomiting violently. The feast they planned to meet the winter with disagrees with them, starting a panic through the chaotic festival at the center of their forts when the organizers push the soup pots over.
The western tyrant swivels her head left and right, watching between the north and the south.
“No food! Everything… gone!”
“All dead!”
The rotting bodies of the great herd beasts that bury themselves in the sands during the day are instead bleaching in the cruel sun. A huge graveyard of them is what the scouts discover after their conquest. To the force of invaders squatting in the remnants of the human lands, this lack of meat spells their doom in the parched desert.
“Turned green! Don’t eat, don’t even touch!” A foreman of the kobold horde screeches from the leeward island that grows tough grains, incensed by the fate of the harvest they sought to claim. Equally, he’s helpless to cure crops that expert poisoners laced before retreating from the invasion.
“Nobody can get anything from the city! They poisoned all the forest!?” The jewel of a city that was civilization in the wilderness offers no hope, either, for its unstable subterranean core continues to pollute the streets and suffocate all that enter it. Outside the city, any source of food is toxified by the loosed aura seeping into the environment.
Only monstrous strains will survive here when all normal creatures perish, mutated by concentrated aura and sustained by the presence of it.
“Nah?” The western tyrant cannot process the multitude of misfortunes collapsing her empire, for the great numbers of her followers begin to thin as winter snow blankets the cities and the lands of Castile sing with the harsh night winds.
“Starve…? Starving?”
“Winter is the time of attrition.” The Emperor explains as the onset of winter prepares for his own victory. “Kainan’s attacks surreptitiously poisoned the crops of the cities she struck. Your short-lived conquests over-extended your armies to the south, right into the expertise of my Xin’reh.”
“But…!? Kol has many cities!?”
The tyrant looks to her south, rediscovering that “useless” cities taken by the Emperor provided food to the enemy and not to her.
“… Foooood…!” So proud in their victories, the kobolds curl up from the pains wracking them.
Punishment for their lacking piety, all who invaded Xin perish.
“[Dead Lands] doubles the maintenance of armies within territories taken from me. Therefore, you will suffer an attrition quite impressive since I showed… mercy when I allowed half your troops to withdraw.”
“NO!”
The tyrant is shown the truth of an ill-fought war when her home armies also fill the streets. Instead of raucous parades, they’re entombed by snow that also buries the cities themselves when no moving occupants clear what piles up.
“Four Seasons’ rules on attrition state that armies shall succumb starting with the furthest city from the capital to the closest.” The Emperor is even when reminding of the rules, for there is no need to gloat. “A city that has no garrison collapses immediately. If no army garrisons a city, no reinforcements can be deployed to it in Spring.”
“This was a rule with such repercussions?” The eastern snake charm’s morose question proves how little the game’s participants thought of the essential rules. Not only a game, it is a reflection of life.
“Winter is also the time for daring strikes after armies eat… or don’t.”
(My disciple will need to learn much to be of use to me in conquering Zennia.)
“NAH!? But, that means that every city in the south is—!?”
“Your capital is within reach, just as you thought mine was. When it is taken, everything that is yours will fold into my holdings.”
The Emperor does spare a grin when considering the coming Spring. So long as he holds the territories by Fall, he can recruit as many armies as he wishes from his new acquisitions and still keep them.
“Boss and Plucked Elf ‘stratagems’ were this!? But, Regular Elf! Use yours, perfect strategy where you beat Boss right now!” At the tyrant’s demand from the east, the last Grand Stratagem lifts.
“… Well, mine was a bluff.” So peppy before about it, the eastern snake’s tile reveals as a useless [1].
“BIGGER IDIOT! WASTING-TIME, SLINKY-GREEN, WET-NOODLY, FU—!?”
With her smile thin, the bluffer looks away while the kobold lord yells more epithets.
(She committed so many tactical near blunders with a useless bluff. Luck is the strongest skill of all.)
To place a bluff Grand Stratagem is natural. For a player to do it three seasons in a row, yet still take the board’s center and advance on all fronts, is proof of being a total cheat. Any reputable den of criminality would have slit her open from belly to tail tip by now.
“Your rebellious race has proved itself worthy of My notice. My disciple, the most important rule of war is that you should never believe your own propaganda.”
“FUCK ‘PROPAGANDA’!” Finally his disciple does rage, throwing her arms and kicking at the pile of treasures that is her throne. “Plucked Elf and Boss should be enemies!? Why work together if Plucked Elf hates Boss!?”
The silent elf that backstabbed his disciple stares at the Emperor while answering.
“Why does the order matter if I despise you both equally? After we owls return your capital to nature, Spring whispers the Pig’s butchering.”
“Kol is coming for you!”
Kainan tilts her head, that inhuman affectation of an owl cutting harder. “With what tiles left from your squandering?”
“GRAAAAH!?” The defrocked tyrant rocks back and forth, horrified by the carnage she inflicted on her own troops.
“… Not… right!” Rarest of rarities, this beautiful loser removes her hands from her face to show tears.
(Why do you shed tears over lives you would’ve wasted anyway?)
There’s no rhyme to her sudden rush of emotion that leaves her shaking.
It comes on so suddenly to the Emperor that her loss to him and his lesson seem unequal to the heart ache she feels now.
“Actions like these are more disgraceful than your loss, disciple! My Eminence has not cast you aside.”
“Don’t call ‘disgraceful’! Kol’s loss isn’t the worst… it’s that… Kol cannot also make again what lost important ‘family’ before!” Fists clenched and leaning forward, her tail beats the leaf as she ceases to sob but remains quavering in her voice. “… In Castillo, food was none until we found Kitchen! All of us left cried when happy to taste… why, why do some have nothing!?” The tyrant sobs anew with this question despite trying to steel herself, whining in a way that sends her sycophants huddling next to her with genuine care for her. “Any others, understand, what feels like when the hunger ends without eating, and just feel heavy!?”
(Intimately…!)
A shock of empathy jolts through the Emperor, along with an out of place thought about what an Emperor would never know the feeling of.
The stench of unwashed people, filling alleys where the only food after others stole it all would have a face you once knew.
That feeling of loss, of revulsion, seems to come before the memory, but then joins it.
(That’s why I took to the rooftops. Why I plucked purses of coins…
Why succumb to emotional weakness so easily!?)
He catches himself choking when he tries to goad her more to cease showing weakness, but it’s the elves that respond before that.
“How could the wind be deprived? Be without?”
“… I… I don’t… know how that is.”
“Even if every fruit and piece of bark were stripped, the forest provides for its own.”
Both owl and snake lack comprehension of what motivates such sadness, but neither have the time to try when something gongs closer on a downward arc.
“Shitty… elves! Boss, too! Wasting food!”
The tyrant rises, then braces against another white beast that opens its jaws to consume her!
“[NOBODY WHO DIED IS DEAD!]”
A backfist slams into the spinning rule-making tiger, launching it back toward the heavens with a strange decree.
“If Boss and Shitty Elf wanna make rules against Kol, then Kol will make—!
Hmm!? Oh!”
The silent lands below that shelter for winter groan.
A fanciful game shrieks with the hatred of the song all around them that was once soothing.
“The beauty of being does not return!”
“What have you done, Kol!?”
Though the Emperor notes no change with his aura senses, both elves scream in outrage at the rule and stare at the dark lands of Zennia with abject horror.
Darkness spreads across the winter continent, enveloping all in the starless gloom of an unending nightmare!
“Kol made a rule to fix things! Look, Kol’s followers are already…!”
A disciple stops her cheerful report when the buried cities below see thousands of arms poking through the snow.
Clumsily and with great difficulty, kobolds rise to stumble about.
“… Umu, they’re up? Eh!? Boss’, too!?”
Where Xin’reh and Xin’el fought beside each other against a black tide, they also stand up to embrace their service again and shed the white piling atop them.
Or so the Emperor would hope, yet has those hopes are dashed when they groan with pain and do not fall upon the kobolds that rise beside them.
They stare ahead without seeing, and have no care for their tattered appearances which besmirch their honor. Instead, they join as a mob and shuffle toward the warm cities.
“Aura wraiths.” He states this for their benefit, so that these unlearned creatures will know their foe. Those who have died but refuse to stay so. Remnants of ambition, taken by tainted aura as shells.
“You have dreamed of the possessed dead, disciple, and so they long for you in turn.”
(My Xin hasn’t need of such empty things!)
No conquest has been declared, but still they swarm to devour!
The forests of the east and north add their share of groans, too. Armies which must obey the rules of Four Seasons overcome their shock at their comrades returning. Xin’reh and elves strike without attachment, while the other races take longer to comprehend the threat.
An entire continent’s dead refuse to stay low and buried by time.
“Mockery of us! The breathless form!” Kainan’s whiny revulsion is unfitting for the swift massacres she inflicts with her shadowed kin. Before the Emperor’s own can seek out to slay the hordes, elves are already on an offensive against both the dead and the kobolds that called them.
“Kol made a rule for something different! Didn’t mean for this!” The kobolds lack cohesion as the endless dead surround their cities that were already ruined by war.
(There are no non-aligned enemies in Four Seasons!)
An Emperor’s hatred for these undead stems from their mockery not of life, but of the lessons he had planned!
There must be no attacks out of order! It is the nature of war that he mastered which is truth. Aura wraiths do not exist in these numbers, nor do they congregate and spread.
“Be purged with them back to the shaded shadow, slave of humans!”
“Refuse!”
Fiery battles erupt along the north and west’s border, adding to the casualties which after resting stiff in Vigor soon rise to fight anew for a different reason.
The Emperor’s options are limiting by the moment, for his own Xin’reh collapse one by one against such incomprehensible numbers, trapped with nowhere not covered by the dead to flee to.
Who could, after all, fight all who have ever lived!?
(Cease your useless—!)
“… Cease your hatred of each other!”
“NAH!?”
The western tyrant shouts, and both she and the Emperor shield their eyes when the world’s gloom is pierced from the east by radiance born from the earth instead of the sky!
(Holy snake?)
“Living or dead, we are all children of Zennia!”
The emerald tail that glows as bright as her humanity sends the lumbering dead shrieking away from her soldiers. Usually given to the moment’s fancy, the eastern king’s countenance is fierce, yet contrite.
When she’d added more pomp to her dancer’s dress the Emperor had wanted to seethe at it being “gaudy”; but, when she slithers out from the protection of her muscular retainers, all the extra fluttering cloth makes her like the sun reflecting in a pool of clear water!
“Do you not feel their anguish, that they cannot find the help that they have no will to beg for!?”
(Where does this passion stem from so pliable a pet?)
Kainan’s owl-shaped elves revealed by the east’s star drop to their knees, even though their king does not. The angry game starter grips the handle of her saw so fiercely that its old wood might crack.
“North, west, south, east…!?” A deep pain mirroring the groans of the dead lingers in her once sweet voice, making the instruments from all around which screech of the dread of the unliving halt their notes.
“Who cares who rules if all Zennia is lost!?”
An army of many races gathers under the protection of this speaker, then begins its march west.
(MY Eminence does!)
“Throw off your despise, your despair, and…!
Struggle forward! For their sakes AND yours, let the Alliance add your own wills to its many!”