Duty Fractured

“As I’ve told you before, Captain Twicesworn.” Sorrah Nikos’s voice twittered merrily like a birdsong, now that she was at luxury to be her true self. “I need you and yours to bring me back anything you can secure in Furyoth Dell. The board might have changed a little, but the game we are playing is still the same, wouldn’t you agree?” The scientist grinned at Tana with sloping, serrated teeth, newly uncovered in light of her seizure of Civilia.

It was all Tana could do to keep her focus on Nikos’s silver-tinged eyes and off the unfortunate subject strapped to the nearby examination table. The occasional twitch had her eyes quickly glance over to the horror, the subject with their limbs splayed, flesh carefully sliced open to allow Nikos to insert whatever foreign apparatus she’d constructed directly into the victim. Even the Captain of the Emissaries of Forgelight, survivor of some of the most brutal Khornate tortures known to the Realms, knew she couldn’t look for long and keep her regimented focus. “You’re right. Of course.” Tana’s words came out clipped. “And what of the approaching Seraphon?”

A scream punctuated the air as Nikos had absently returned to her work, attaching a portion of a metal frame to her victim’s skeleton. “Hm? What?” she asked the captain, looking over her shoulder.

“The-”

“Ah, yes, right, the lizards.” Nikos readjusted her spectacles. “Yes, they most certainly are a threat, but I’m sure your force can scythe down more than a few on your way to The Dell.”

Tana pursed her lips skeptically. Nikos seemed to read the expression and roll her eyes.

“If you must know, I do have at least some plan for dealing with them. All you need to do is look outside.” Nikos stretched a hand out to the wall opposite her “test subject”. In response, the bricks parted, revealing the water-logged workcamp the city had devolved into. A shimmering barrier of magic lent all below it an eerie blue glow, one that caused Tana’s chest to itch, still remembering her Khornate brand’s intolerance for magic. High above the barrier hovered what looked like a shard of a god’s broken sword—a Silver Tower. “That tower has already proven itself against those reptilian whelps. I don’t believe they stand much of a chance against me.” Nikos let the wall reassemble. “But, Captain, if you are so inclined to provide us with an extra line of defense, perhaps consult those Stormcast I befriended or that—what were they called?—oh, Grey Company. The one with that lovely cannon. Warn them of what will become of the citizens if they turn their swords upon me. I’m certain that will, shall we say, ‘motivate’ them towards our cause.”

Tana knew the venom concealed within Nikos’s words, how she was masking her intention to kill those of Civilia she’d claimed to have cared for all this time without a second thought if now the forces of Order chose to betray her. It’d been a devious trap; now it seemed left to Tana to check if it’d actually snared any gullible louts. Tana politely bowed to the scientist. “I’ll continue to promote your town’s prosperity, so long as you will provide whatever knowledge you gain from these…experiments to my aides.”

“A reasonable request. I’ll see to it, but I really must be returning to this project in earnest. You’re welcome to observe, if you wish!” A drop of Nikos’s verbal venom coated even her words to Tana now. The captain knew it was her time to leave.

Tana proceeded out of the chamber, deathly shrieks following her.

 Jacques awaited her in the adjoining corridor, an impatient hand on his hip. Something told Tana that he’d heard everything. “So,” he said, accusation already dripping from his words. “We follow this madwoman’s orders now?”

Tana sighed. Now was not the time to be questioned. “No. You follow my orders, Decuriarch. Just as you’ve been trained.”

“With all due respect, Captain, I have not been trained to use civilians as hostages and bargaining chips! I’ve never been trained to allow them to be used as test subjects for some sick experiment.”

“Of course not. You’ve been trained to defend citizens of Forgelight, and to see to their interests abroad.” Tana continued towards the base of the tower, following its twisting path downward. “As you may have noticed, Decuriarch, we are not in Forgelight, or even in its same Realm.”

Jacques approached after her, his footsteps heavy with his frustrations. “That’s the only difference you see? You’d let the people here be treated like cattle—herded by Skaven, no less!—just because they’re not our people?”

“I have my orders.” Tana replied, not meeting his gaze.

“From Nikos?” Jacques scoffed.

Tana turned sharp. “From The Illuminate, someone I’m told you respect.”

Jacques bit his tongue, glancing down at the rug guiding their path.

Tana straightened and let her momentary emotion abandon her. “I have my orders to secure allies to Forgelight and you have your orders to follow me. I suggest you do so, before even you lose that right.”

The soldiers continued forward in silence, save for the ambient wails from higher within the tower. Then, Jacques ventured somewhere dangerous. “Does it not hurt you, Captain?” he asked, genuinely.

“Come again?” Tana asked flatly, testing his conviction.

“Does it not hurt? To see people used like you were once.”

Jacques attracted Tana’s gaze—a rare and foreboding honor.

Jacques swallowed, knowing the pit of snakes he’d just wandered into, but continued. “It’s no secret really to any of The Council, how you…appeared, entering Forgelight. A brand of the Blood God on your chest, drawn in Hyshian script, this…lost look in your eyes… I don’t think anyone knew you could speak for at least a few days.” He seemed unsure what point he was trying to make, instead trailing into needless recollections about a Tana who’d been far more pathetic. The Tana of the present was far less pitiable, reshaped into a cold, unfeeling tool to The Illuminate’s will. Perhaps Jacques mourned that loss. He appeared to regain himself. “What I mean to say is, I know you’ve been through things not unlike the people here will endure. Is that…really something you want to force upon them?”

Tana didn’t stop to think. She pressed forward, resolute in her view. “It is not for me to decide. This is just simply the way things are. People are born with a certain value they can provide to others. They live in service to one another—willing or not—and once that value’s been used up or no longer exists,” Tana took in a sharp breath. “They are discarded. Simple as that.”

“Tana- Er, Captain, you can’t be serious…”

“How can I not be?” Tana boomed as she turned to glare daggers into her subordinate’s eyes. “Answer me that, Decuriarch, if you so claim to know me and my so-called ‘tragedy’.”

Fixed in his captain’s eyes, Jacques stammered weakly. “I-I…”

“You can’t, can you?” Tana offered herself a small sneer, a shade of her former master. “That’s right. You don’t know who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and it seems you’ve forgotten just what it is I do now.” She leaned in close to Jacques’s quivering expression, so as not to be misheard. “I am the Captain of The Emissaries of Forgelight. I exist to gather allies to The Illuminate and his people alone. I have deemed Sorrah Nikos a valuable ally and thus seek to protect her interests until activity in this region subsides enough for proper negotiations to take place. I do not care a singular iota for those ‘lost’ in this effort. So long as their use keeps Nikos on this side of Shyish for our Illuminate to gain value from, they will have served their purpose. You, as well, Jacques, will—without question—follow my orders in achieving my goal. That is the only value you are of to me. Am I understood?”

Jacques meekly nodded.

“Am I understood?” Tana shouted.

“Yes, Captain!” the Decuriarch crooned with a quavering voice.

Tana turned about face to march out of the tower, once again relegating her subordinate to an afterthought. “To me, then. We’ve Seraphon to skewer.”

*END