What She Was Not

[LithiumSedai 5750]

Spoiler

 

 

 

What She Was Not

 

 

The clash of the Imperial vassals at Westmark, 2044

((100 Years War Battle Scene, Tomas Honz))

 

“BLOOD FOR ASHFORD! DEATH TO THE HALFBREEDS!”

 

The sound of a thousand hooves beating upon the earth drummed across the valley, and pulsed in Katharina’s helmed head. The mass of cavalry streamed forward as one, their plumes and colourful banners fluttering in the breeze; she, the field captain of the Black Band, held the standard of that Alstreim regiment, raised high, among the panoply of Ashford flags as they advanced. But she thought not of the countless victories in battles past embroidered upon that standard, nor of the men-at-arms carrying that storied tradition alongside her - as they galloped across that field, her mind was overcome with rage, and her blood, so tainted with the curse of an impostor, boiled with the desire to kill.

 

She exchanged the flag for a lance with an ensign, as they briefly halted, and their counterparts emerged across the ridge in a flurry of steel and foreign banners of war. On both sides, the lances soon dropped in one mind, and the charge commenced. Screaming a battle cry at the top of her lungs, the Knight aimed her charger and her ferrum-tipped lance towards the fray. The Black Band struggled to follow her, and indeed soon became embroiled in the clash alongside the Druscans, as men and steel became entwined in grotesque slaughter. But Katharina cared little; soon her lance ran deep red with the blood of an Adunian, and she pressed on at full speed between the bodies so haphazardly thrown into war. A hellish shrill escaped her as she recalled that the warriors of Númendil were once allies to the House whose colours she claimed.

 

Sweat poured in streams beneath the bascinet she wore, crowned by a Waldenic torse of intertwined crimson-and-black. Mad fervour danced in her eyes like fire - deep down she knew she deserved not to bear those symbols. But she could suppress that feeling, knowing that those foes frantically parting before her path were far worse. Harrenite halfbreeds. Heretics in service of a false Faith. Adrians who spat on their own holy ancestor. They believed not in what they were, and she believed in what she was not. And what she was not fueled her fury; she wished to destroy, to utterly eradicate those who had dared to take up arms against the high seat of Merryweather of Alstreim, the marble halls of Calliopeburg, that domain she had claimed as hers and stood in very opposition, by wicked choice of the Priest conspiring with Orenid, to the mad puppet-hordes of Lemon Hill.

 

And if all her men, and she alongside them, were to cast their bodies upon the pyre of war to see them both burned away, she would light that fire gladly. Men and horses around her were felled and cut down in agony, and she struck another Adrian with her lance, pierced another Adunian’s mail. The pole soon cracked, and the ferrum tip was blunted to uselessness. Deep in the fray, she even sighted the plate-clad Prince of Blackvale, and tossed the remains of her lance at the royal, striking him with hardly any force, unmatched by far in ferocity by her crazed laughter.

 

It could have been a pikeman of his personal retinue that finally felled her charger with a well-placed jab. In her daze of bloodthirst she hardly noticed this setback, as she lunged and rolled over the field, to the point of bruising, to avoid being crushed by the carcass of her once-companion. Quickly her side-sword had found its way into her gauntleted hand. The men of Alstreim, and the banner of the Black Band, were nowhere to be seen; indeed, fewer and fewer Druscan flags still stood. Cries of agony still resounded over the valley, but the ringing of steel faded ever quieter, with fewer and fewer soldiers still standing in the clash. She hacked at whatever levyman of the coalition was the closest. An Adunian swordsman fighting nearby turned and repaid her in kind, thrusting his blade at the gaps in her half-plate. A mist fell upon her eyes, and wherever she now stood, the Knight was soon left a bloodied, shambling mess.

 

She collapsed to her knees, but the wretched halfbreed, fatigued and injured himself, ambled elsewhere; she tossed aside her bascinet and spat blood in his direction, and fell upon the ground, crawling towards him with the last of her strength. She hated him more than she could hate herself, though she inched across the bloodstained grass and between the mounds of corpses to her own detriment and demise. An eerie silence soon reigned upon the field; it seemed as if the battle was finally over, though Katharina could not tell if it were just a trick played upon her by her fading mind. But on she crawled, her crimson tresses muddied, blood seeping from her wounds and her scars of Sutican rot reopened upon the ground with every jolt, and she sought to avoid the direction of wherever the medics of the Empire could be.

 

And she understood full well that she would draw her last breath upon that accursed field of Westmark. In her final moment, numb to what should have been overwhelming pain, she instead felt immeasurable joy, and vivid delusions of being welcomed to the Seven Skies themselves, by a hand offered by Saint Ottomar, danced in her mind. It was an ugly, degrading death for an Elf from Fausten who would never see that Heaven, an ignominious end for a girl who once was Falion.

 

But for what she was not - one Knight Katharina of Calliopeburg, it was a death in glorious martyrdom befitting the elder blood of House von Alstreim.

 

 

Spoiler

Required reading:

 

My thanks for the RP go out to everyone who's interacted with this character. Unfortunately, due to OOC circumstances and various events beyond my control, I did not get to make full use of Falion's backstory and the build I had prepared for her, the Fortified Chantry of Calliopeburg; nonetheless, this vassal war has led to some of the most enjoyable RP I've had on the characters. Thus, I am also thankful to everyone who made it possible entirely on the players' initiative, past the staff-mandated war pause, and I do not regret cutting the story short here. When the time is right, I might return with a character who I hope will have the potential to be as interesting.
 

 

[ChainedDragons 1374]

Spoiler

Beautifully written