The Fey Conquest, # 1— "The Lowest Thoughts"
- David Parker
- Oct 2, 2023
- 4 min read
[Short stories. Images generated by hotpot.ai]
Swain was taken as a conscript when he was only fourteen summers, though if you asked Swain, he would say “fourteen winters”. He grew up on the battlefield, and military life became second-nature, even first-nature. He trained with a lance, bow and a sword, and knew how to swap between them at a moment’s notice, on horseback. He was prized as a military asset, having talent as an officer and a soldier. However, the hubris of the selfish powers of Ivalice preferred him beneath their thumb, his reward for his leal service never forthcoming. No matter how accomplished Swain was, the nobility kept him as a landless officer, this seeming to be mere expertise in greed.
When he was a boy of fourteen winters, it was by the grace of Zakarum he survived shock after shock of pitched battles, for he had no particular prowess at the onset. But after his fortunate survival as a callow youth, he became a true warrior, forged by many battles. However, he mourned the greenhorns who died in battle, knowing that he himself was once like them, having no clue what it took to survive such an ugly war. He had survived for a reason, under the light of Zakarum. But at his very first battle, though he had killed two adversaries, he had also soiled himself, never knowing that much of war depended on how recently you had moved your bowels. He had been as green as summer grass. Still a boy.
A boy who would go crying to mama if he really wanted to go back there. To be honest, he thought he would be a knight if he tried hard enough— and the battalion depended on him as a mid-level officer, yet because of his descent, he was never knighted. Such favors were bestowed by nobles for other nobles and their pets, while Swain’s dagger mouth was useful in the battlefield, but not so much in court. It was doubtful he could yet learn to read, once you had fleas and a stench it was difficult to put it out of mind, and his frostbitten accent repelled the ancient families.
But after seeing nearly every man he knew at the onset of the conflict killed, captured, deserted, or maimed, Swain put his expertly harsh mouth to good use, and in one “swingy” moment, quickly fomented discontent and rallied a large number of soldiers away from Ivalice, as has already been related. The conquest of the Rune Lords began soon after the desertion of the ranks of their masters’ armies. In truth, not one of them could really be qualified as noble, but all of them had completed their military training, which compared to the Fey Realm was worth much indeed.
Maka was alerted to Swain’s presence approximately a month after the actual incursion began. The people from Ivalice began in poverty and were kept in line by force, their reckless masters raising levies without sufficient funds to furnish their welfare. In truth, The Fey Realm should have been a place of refuge… perhaps. The histories are uncertain how inevitable it was that Swain should slay the espers and rise to power in the land once entirely controlled by the Fey and their patrons. At least, that’s what historians would say in the future.
"This one also left behind magicite,” said Harrow, a fellow swordsman. “Thirteen espers in this village. Some kind of ability to make things cold.”
Krest, one of the battalion’s few magicians, spoke, “Give it to Swain’s best mates, which includes me. There will be a shared spoils system, meaning it will be a combination of merit and spread-out distribution of these materia.”
Dunbar, a fletcher, spoke up, “We need to take some of these women with us. We ain’t joining a monastery just to pamper the natives.”
“Their gods will start to muster if we go much further,” said Swain, but he considered that his men were just barely under his control, “But if we divide into small raiding parties, we can gather enough magicite so they can’t prey on us. And it will take months to convert the magicite into runes. You know how painful it was, before.”
“I don’t much feel like settling,” said Morris, “Finally, something I like doing. For the first time in my whole life, I ate as much cheese as I wanted. Why ever go back, ever?”
“Someone makes the cheese, Mor,” said Swain, his blood like ice, even though Morris was swine, “That could be us, you know.”
“Damn you for making me think that, Master Swain.”
There was the merest of laughter among the gathering of the future lords of the Fey Regions.
Maka was made aware of glimpses of the character of Swain and his men by rumors and small amounts of divination/scrying. It came to be that Maka’s fellow clergymen continuously anticipated the brutality of the invaders, and how their minds worked, and of course how they could stop them. Maka, having received glimmers of Farsight to view Swain and the rest of the invaders, wondered in her imagination: All the lowest thoughts a man can have, and Swain’s responsibility was to keep them in mind at all times, in order to control them. How did anyone live under such selfish and harsh people?
On the other hand, the whispers of the dark espers were no picnic in the Fey Realms, and even a whole company of guardians of the Fey Lands was not safe from the volatile spirits that dwelt in the many groves, hollows, pools, and shrines that covered their region in about as many stars there were in the night sky.
*-------------------------------------------*
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