Imperial Tales: Letter from an Ancient Soldier

    *Archaeologists excavating stone ruins in the Arabarish desert uncovered a glass vessel filled with sand. This curiosity moved from owner to owner in private collections and in museums across Croix for decades before being sold to a historian from Hanalan on the Ravashira continent who wished to study it further. He saw something none of its previous owners saw, or didn’t do anything about, that the lid was actually screwed on. This historian before his peers for confirmation examined the glass vessel and found that with-in the sand was a clay pot with a lid. They opened the glass vessel, poured out some of the sand into a jar, so they could put the sand back in after. They took out the pot and found with-in a letter, written almost eighteen hundred years before.

 

   This is the content of that letter.

 

   From the time I was a lad to the time I became a man my village paid a yearly tribute to the Stingers. Those thieving demons that came from the sky, they took half of our harvest and told us that it was for the better good that the weak would die in the winters for the strong to thrive. They told us who we could marry; they told us they wanted us to become strong. Since growing up I now know they intended, once in a generation they’d pick a woman or a man to become the mate of their queen; a horrible fate for the woman, an even worse fate for the man from what I hear. They wanted us to become strong so they could take our strength, yet keep us few in numbers so would couldn’t rise against them.

 

  Then the day came, she arrived, instantly the whole world knew and was freed. She is a figure of legend, a myth from the time of our great grandparents’ great grandparents. The elders would tell the story to us; not sure how well known the story is or how much it’s believed in as I travel the world as a soldier in her army. I was raised to be a story teller in my village, secretly by the elders, so the Stingers would not know.

 

    It’s said that our people came from a place beyond the sky, a cold dark hell, where we were sheltered from it in metal tunnels inside a giant metal boat. There were no trees to call our own, no sky to look upon, and no soil to walk upon and cultivate. The gods too resided in this boat with us; however mortal hands held the wheel. The two greatest of the gods decided to save us and give us a home; one of them the great god Rhoan sacrificed himself in a dark whirlpool to save us from the demons of that dark cold hell as the captain Strata-Lee steered the boat through another whirlpool created by the goddess Rhulan. They say our people scattered upon this new world, the goddess saw everything was good and left to the heavens to search for her lost brother.

 

   I never really believed this story; very few I’d met really did, not with the world we grew up in. She banished the Stingers, those vile sky demons, and announced to us all she had returned and would bring a new age of glory to the world. She has given us things, magical things beyond any magic and sorcerer had dreamed of till now, and taught these spell casters new magic. I have seen an age when few men could spin fire and wind too an age when many men could command great spheres of flame and conjure cyclones. With this “technology” as she calls it, and magic we who serve in her army have seen many things, we see cities being built as well as mechanical vessels and metal creatures which we command that I don’t have words to properly describe. I have seen men bow to her, and men worship her as the goddess returned.

 

   Not all men bow however, there are many men who would want the world for themselves, who deny her divinity, who worshipped the Stingers; I have seen all manner of questionable ideologies and selfish desires by warlords and kings. Those who refuse to accept her rule are forced to accept it. She refuses to have even one nation not part of her empire. She says for us to be safe we must be united as a single people; we must share our wealth of knowledge and experience with one another and trade resources so those with out will have. I confess I resented being made a soldier rather than becoming a story teller. Today however I saw her for the first time in person, until now I’d only seen her face on the magical pictures she uses to speak to all the peoples at once.

 

   The battlefield was harsh, the kingdom was indeed strong, an empire in this sandy land with powerful magic and great resolve. We could barely hold the beach as our ships fired from off the coast. Then she arrived, like a dainty seed she floated from the sky, the spells and arrows filling the air not affecting her in the least. She landed on the water, she walked upon it as easily as a man treads upon the earth.  No, even more so, her foot falls were silent, not a splash or sound, even her cape made no waves. It was like watching a tigress move upon a grassy field, her eyes fixed on the enemy with a predatory stare, her foot before foot movements captivating my eyes. She walked right past me, so close I could smell her sweet scent and feel the strange warmth coming from around, this un-natural, divine it must be, hot breeze circling her gorgeous frame. Her clothes were tight, yet not like any cloth I’d ever seen; a shameless woman of great power; a goddess no doubt. The men before us coming from the forests, their king with them spoke harsh words to her, about being a woman, offering her his mercy to become his wife if she surrendered to him. She spoke not to this man, but with a wave of her hand he was killed by some strange power I’d never seen before; a violet wind that shimmered everything and spared nothing it hit.

 

    I fight stronger now, with more resolve than ever before, for the empire she wishes to create. Perhaps I have fallen in love with the goddess, perhaps I am inspired. I write again as I fight; but this letter I am afraid can not be shared while I still draw breath. So I will hide it, and preserve it, so that someone in the future may know my experience and the feeling I have with out risk to myself. For this reason, in case its found while I still live I can not, unfortunately, sign this letter with my own name; know only I am a loyal servant of her majesty, my goddess, the beautiful Rhulan.