The Isle of the Fell

VI - The Tragedy of Coriolus Gnaeus Part I

2295-2296: The Regrouping of Gnaeus

Gnaeus hid in the shadows for several days. In this time, several more legions came concentrated in Rome, expecting another attack. Through tactical follies, he had lost ten thousand in casualties. Yet once he had replanned and reorganized, despite the death of his ally Cathulk-Kas, the expendable, everlasting perseverance of the Fell drove on.

From the mountains, the Alps, came twenty five thousand more Orc-Goblins, three Fellic legions, and eight thousand demons. Fifteen legions had already assembled themselves, and the naval blockade ordered beginning to falter, yet against all odds, he had to move on.

Near Florentia, the skeleton corpse of a veteran washed from the river. It was nighttime, the day before the second assault, and Gnaeus stood with a Primus Pilus of his.

"So, what happens after we win? We go back to our old countries, right?" said the subordinate in his deep voice.

"Yes." After all, with cultural separation came discord. It was inevitable.

The corpse then revealed itself. It still carried its armor, its sword, its lifeless eye sockets still glistened with the long-lost pride of a carrion warrior.

"You know who he is?" said the Primus Pilus in his rough, gravelly voice. Gnaeus shook his hood.

"He was a fighter. One that opposed us. He crossed the mountains and fought past the Fellic cults of the Alps. Because he had a dream, that inevitably, he could save Rome."

Gnaeus thought of Lucius, and of his staying in Florentia. Aye, He thought to himself. I am the crusher of dreams, and the killer of hope. Look at the heroes that lay opposed to me, fighting for what they believe is a noble cause, with such honor, such courage ... They believed that they were the angels of light. Just like supporters of the Tsar and Charles the first. History repeats itself.

I am this great eater of dreams and hopes. I am the soul-crusher, and I am the reaper. Oh, those forgotten men, those heroes fighting for a lost cause.

And then he gritted his teeth and looked at the moon. It seemed to look back at him, and seemed bigger than ever.

I will not be one of them.

And with that, the stars became brighter, for nighttime seemed darker, and the outside candles flickered away.

2295: The Battle on the Rubicon

Gnaeus approached rapidly once more, dividing his forces into three armies of roughly forty thousand. The march was slow and steady, and soon the Rubicon was crossed once more and Rome was in sight.

Yet Arripan flooded with an invasion of many legions, numbering at least seventy thousand, and, although he could not hope to outnumber the host, he attempted to subdue, to hold back, and with a strike in the center, Gnaeus would surely fall.

His legions burned the fields as they marched. Gnaeus could never be allowed to reach Rome. Yet it was the first mistake, and many others would come, for in the chaos that was created by the departure of the villagers in the countryside, there fostered a sense of fear, fear which was not fully contained by order. Yet that fear was not enough. Arripan's men led a central attack on Florentia, and outnumbering Gnaeus nearly two to one, attempted to destroy him mercilessly. He knew that Gnaeus most likely had reinforcements somewhere, as he rode against the wind on his silver horse, but it was a common tactic of gargoyles, infantry, and mass paratroopers deployment that secured against that. In the great bouts of merciless carnage he attacked, again and again, the stone angels clawed from the sky, and the longswords dug into the flesh of the enemy. Once crippling the formations of Gnaeus, Arripan ordered a retreat, for he saw Gnaeus retreating as well in the deceptive, Mongol fashion that usually brought in more reinforcements, and so did not follow.

But this did not follow well. Soon a single Bull Demon, a singular red, short, large-mouthed creature of glowing red eyes and long claws, appeared in the midst of Arripan's army. It straightened itself, then crippled and its corpse fell down. Soon, nine Bull Demons came from the material of its corpse, and they died too. The dozen or so men that noticed them cried out and tried to stop them. But it was too late, because in an instant, there were several thousand demons, with a twisted white-faced abomination with dark, terrible wings, and lifeless eyes. Its cloaked arms were made of insects, which fell from it, much to the horror of the men it was fighting against. It was a Star Spawn Annihilator, born from the designs of a faraway realm, and it was here to lead and destroy.

Several portals opened and the Orcish knights poured from them, themselves shouting chants of the dark tongue, as their blades and lances cut and pierced through the Aquilla, and the Legionnaires protecting him. It was a drastic mistake and a terrible blunder, for Arripan had only prepared himself for conventional warfare. But this was not conventional warfare any longer.

He should have instead continued to chase Gnaeus, despite the Fellic ships which would have deployed reinforcements against him, for at the very least, despite being surrounded and outnumbered, there would always be possibility of safe retreat within the unburned villages, and even if they had been burned to the ground, there was still the possibility of naval rescue. But it was too late now, and even then, Gnaeus had played brilliantly, for dangerous conflict surrounded the seas, and fellic cults had sprung up and would take some time to diminish in the occupied cities and towns.

Arripan was forced to retreat to the desolate wastelands in which he had evacuated, and from there, there began a truly brutal stage of war. For isolated his army was from adequate food and sources; no longer could he simply live off the land. And although the pounding of Gnaeus slowed, he was only supplied further, and more freely, by more and more Orc-Goblin reinforcements as they fell from hunger and starvation, and they continued.

Camps were discovered by both sides and burned to a crisp. Any form of resources; food, weapons, ammunition, even labor in the form of slaves, they were taken. villages were seized, occupied, and ruled tyrannically and desperately, and it was seen that even the tyrant had to watch what flowed in his pockets. The combined casualty amount was of perhaps fifty thousand combined, and the ground was littered with corpses.


Mass conscriptions were made in Rome, yet the bodies of the untrained and unready proved worthless. In a few days, Arripan ordered the ending of such conscriptions from the bleak peninsula he fought in. At last, the limping Second Roman army came to Rome, and the large, but tired and starving Fellic army behind it.

Gnaeus knew what he was doing, and looked at the faces behind him. They were new, or at least they were, for they had seen enough fall in the great march to Rome. Villages were devastated, raided, and looted. In desperate times some turned to corpses; others kept their honor and starved or died.

It was a cold, harsh, and brutal winter as well, many would lie out there, freezing, away from the comfort of fire and furs, and one day, out in the once-friendly snow, they would lay unmoving, dead.

He remembered at some point addressing a new decurion of Legionnaires. It was not only of legionnaires, but of Orc-Goblins as well, for the demons had known war and only war, but the Orc-Goblins were the subtype of Man Tharizdun had cultivated that were obedient to his image, essentially they were what Man should have been, uninnovating yet intelligent, brutish yet reliable.

"Will we make it?" one of them said to another. He was a short fellow, five foot six, with blond, messy hair that did not fit adequately with his helmet.

"You will." he told them, as they marched into the great unknown, for they were ahead of him as a scouting vanguard.

He did not tell them of the numbers of corpses he had received, or how many villages destroyed he had seen. He did not tell them of the trenches dug, and the flies that surrounded all forms of food, no matter how rotten and gruesome. He did not tell them of the frozen bodies they would see, the great years that could be used lost and wasted. He did not tell them at all, that the men they would come to know as brothers, the men that were in their conterbinium of ten men, they would see many of them die. They would make links only for them to fall.

To him, they should not deserve to know. And yet he did.

2296: The Siege of Rome Continued

Yet, although the city had been surrounded, the army oppressing it was too tired, and too weak to conquer it, and so a long siege followed. It could be seen as a time of stalemate, but it ultimately was not, for the city had been surrounded and was slowly rotting as food struggled to persevere, yet new numbers rolled in.

Despite this, despite the grim determination of the Fellic army which sat, choking Rome, all determination was finite. One day, faith would be overtaken by instinct, and then they would lose their will. There would be more honorable ones, certainly, who would execute the weaker, and thus the perseverance would continue for some time, yet even this was finite. It was strange, yet ordinary, for execution and punishment to be righteous and honorable. Morality, henceforth, always conflicted.

They were cold, desolate times. The people of Rome starved, and unlike the honorable nature reported by false spies, they revolted in marches for bread enforced by blades, and broke their lines for soup and broth in mobs of violence and frenzy, as was the nature of starving men.

Yet, even so, the darkness of the winter plagued the camps surrounding Rome, and the bombardment of the Orc-Goblins, although constant, would eventually run thin. It was an inevitable victory, if a long one, for although many succumbed to the cold, only more replaced them, and slowly, the spirit of Rome suffocated.

But it was not a victory for the soldier, for he did not believe he would live long, and had already seen the damage of war. The truth could not be hidden any longer. Yet he refused to rebel, to desert, to break from his formation, for he had been trained too, and that breaking point had not come yet.

Still, the soldier looked outwards, past the desolate plains, away from the company of the newly made friends of his warband, away from the bare fire which cooked mushed bean-mutton broth, and wished he were home. No matter the social norms imposed upon him, the thoughts of heresy still bloomed.

2296: The Return of Nepos

Nepos, due to his status as a murderer in the legal courts of Second Rome, had disappeared completely. He had been assumed dead. Yet in the town of Pompei, a long shadow loomed. The accepting community of Fellic influence had given way to the twisted organization of crime known as the Hand. The fellic universities had been burned, the temples and cultists died in their homes, or were killed in the open. Yet the people did not move, did not report anything, for the Hand controlled the press as well.

The status of the Second Roman Empire was far greater than the first, for although education had taken a significant toll, the literacy rate remained unchanging. And so flyers and posters were everywhere, in their cheap, yellow format, describing the enemies of Rome and justifying the deaths of the opposed.

The rise of Nepos' power was simple. He had stolen; he had acted as a hired gun. Yet every night, he would look at the mirror and slap his face with water, and ask himself who he was, and how he could be treated so lowly. And he knew now that he would have to rise. He could bear his subordination no longer. He was walking a path of humiliation, even if it was one of fidelity, and he would have to turn.

Although Nepos had at this point attempted to oust power for himself, he always believed in the preservation of integrity before the optimality of the self. He was going to reward Castellano, but he had betrayed him. He had left him. And he had seen already, the damage of the Fell, and how, to him, they had murdered the greatest man he had ever known.

He became louder. He became more active, and gave more ideas. And through this, he became a bulldog, on a tight leash, yet he was watched constantly, for he was always in a position where he could take power.

But the old superiors could not withstand the techniques of the new world, and he was a man of the new world. One day, he ambushed a spellcaster, attempting to sell his services for the gain of some coin. He gave him some denarii, but only enough for him to live decently for a single day. And then Nepos told him thus, that as long as he remained loyal to him. he would continue to pay him. It was a perfect relationship, for it was one held in monopoly, and if the spellcaster ever desired to betray his master, he would die out in the streets, alone and in the cold.