Iron, Blood, and a Scolding (4k)

"When I led you out through the gates of Lokos and marched toward a nation that had forsaken propriety and good faith, I did not foresee that we would face a trap."

Peturabo crossed one leg over the other as the microphone was pulled toward his mouth. Every draft of his speech had been torn to pieces, partly out of anger and partly because those scripts had become useless.

What he needed now was not encouragement and mobilization—there was no need to repeat that routine prewar task after the war had already begun. His speech had nearly returned to language's most basic function: communication.

He simply wanted to speak his mind to his army.

"Perhaps you are wondering whether this offensive violates the wish for peace. Perhaps you have already been discussing why our army was suddenly attacked, and whether your commander will be like countless generals before him—keeping the most important secrets to himself, enjoying the fruits from the rear while merely ordering you to charge into battle, to bleed, and to be wounded."

He closed his eyes as the scent of gunpowder rushed into his nostrils. Waves of furious roars drew ever closer. He could hear blood pounding against his eardrums, while the drums of war thundered from every direction.

Peturabo rose from his seat, and the microphone's mechanical arm moved automatically with him.

The sound of his heavy breathing passed through electrical currents into the auditory systems of countless soldiers, stirring every soldier's heart and reminding them all that, no matter how much he had resembled an artist in the past, he was a born commander.

Perhaps even a tyrant.

"I will tell you now why we were ambushed. This is the trap set by your First Prince, my soldiers! This is the greed and corruption of your First Prince!"

"This is unparalleled disgrace, a terrible betrayal. Your iron-crowned Prince is a traitor conspiring with foreign powers! What is there to hide? Are you happy? Is this worth celebrating? Do you feel honored?"

His fist slammed onto the table, sending countless small objects jumping into the air. He opened his eyes and lifted the roof panel of the war vehicle, allowing the bloody stench concealed within the seemingly beautiful, tranquil landscape to flood his nose like a warning.

In the silent camp, countless people swallowed and clenched their teeth in tension.

"Answer me!" Peturabo roared.

"No!" the soldiers answered, their voices pushing aside the valley's wind and trees. "It is a disgrace!"

Peturabo lowered his voice, his tone becoming deep and powerful.

"But I will not look down on the people of Lokos because of this, my soldiers. You are not like Harkon's followers. Your fortune and wisdom led you to choose me. While those foolish traitors are killed and slaughtered in the city, you! You are following me toward victory! Toward conquest!"

"Listen closely, my soldiers! When you return home, go to the city walls. Find the heads of those cowardly wretches hanging from spearpoints, and tell those bastards the following!"

"Tell them: you defeated Kardis and Pelekontia, crossed Arex, Cadisia, Evrius, and Valte, and breached the fortresses of Selenia, Sodalian, and Delkhenia. You crossed countless mountains and rivers. Your treads crushed grasslands stretching thousands of miles, and your cannon muzzles aimed at passes no one had ever breached."

"Tell those traitors that while they were starting their idiotic little rebellion, you were following Peturabo and dragging all of Olympia into war—to fight, to occupy, to unify, and to become masters of all Olympia!"

"Tell me, what is this? Do you know what this is?"

"We do!" the soldiers cried, like the roar of the sea. "This is glory!"

"Then attack!" he shouted.

Someone rang his communicator. He went to answer it, but his trembling hand knocked the electronic device to the floor.

He blamed it on the rage that had built up within him over the past few days.

The death of Mityad's squad, the accident, Harkon's betrayal, and the sudden attack—each had become fuel for his anger.

War brought submission, submission brought unity, and unity brought peace. His grand theater would finally serve its purpose—he had never told anyone, but he had built it for unity.

He remembered the Olympic Games Mors had mentioned. Though Mors had never formally asked anything of him because of it, Peturabo wanted to witness that magnificent spectacle.

For that, he would make the earth burn.

The blazing sun had already risen over the edge of the sky. Every edge of all things gave off a deep red glow, while scarlet blood-mist blanketed the road to Kardis, scorching everything dry and bleeding like a field of red sand.

Wherever his gaze fell, the color of blood spread into every patch of light and darkness. In the bright, pallid sky, drifting clouds dimmed like corroded brass. Thick blood flowed from their edges, gathering in the air into countless streaming crimson lines that connected heaven and earth.

On the ground, the shadows of the marching army joined with the distant city walls he would shatter. The outlines of withered bones emerged from the shadows, yellow-brown oxidized bone fragments replacing the stones on the road before solidifying into a path within the dark red shade.

He lowered his head. Under his gaze, the skulls' eye sockets shattered, turning into flying sand that melted into the river of blood.

Peturabo clenched the hammer in his hand, though his hand held nothing. He gripped that steel handle, his other hand sliding along it to the sharp blade jutting from the hammer's head. With the slightest pressure, his own blood flowed over the entire metal surface.

"Let the blood of your enemies flow beneath your hand!" he heard a voice say, incomparably coarse and hoarse.

It was the voice a warrior would make upon the battlefield, the roar of the earth and the pulse of a volcano. His blood surged through his veins in a fervent summons, and more visions drifted before his eyes.

He saw himself wielding an enormous warhammer, crushing every enemy upon it. His body grew unimaginably huge, and endless strength supported him as he swung his weapon in every savage, frenzied manner he desired.

He was a fighter, personally tearing apart and pulverizing the bones of scum.

He was a leader, commanding countless soldiers who desired only slaughter and a fight to the death.

He was a conqueror, his captives kneeling and trembling in pools of blood, countless trophies displaying his victory and glory in the form of severed limbs.

"I want victory..." he growled. "Take Kardis!"

"Come! Let your enemies' bones submit beneath your throne!" The voice laughed madly, shaking his heart.

Peturabo saw more scenes.

He saw artillery bombard fortresses. Heat and thick white smoke erupted from within breached strongholds. Tank treads rolled over shattered cities, while bombs and machine guns swept every obstruction away into flowing pulp of blood. Gunpowder smoke burned high into the sky. Layer after layer of city walls broke apart with precise explosions, huge stones and metal rupturing inward. The most primal terror came from force.

He destroyed everything before him with effortless ease.

His heart pounded fiercely. The warhammer and his blood-soaked hand were tightly joined, as though they had always been one.

He alone was a terrifying war machine. He was an epic, a hero, a beast.

He was Peturabo, an eternal warrior born for war.

"Come, this is your calling, your seat! You belong to us!"

The voice fused with every beat of his heart, rising from the depths of his own soul. Peturabo could not deny that hoarse roar. This was what he wanted: an eternal arena, an everlasting victor, courage and strength glorified beyond measure.

The iron in his blood reflected the raw material that had forged him, and his soul roared aloud. He would tear and hack apart every obstacle. He would let all blood run dry. His steel was the source of every war!

Peturabo turned around.

His iron throne stood there. Its broad back was cast from sharp swords, sickles, anchors, and hooks; its seat was made of shields melted back into iron and cooled into solid form. Broken bones and dried corpses formed its carpet, while blood flowed from beneath the throne, soaking the yellow sand until it became a deep iron black.

A moment ago, he had risen from his seat, yet now it was entirely different—or had it always looked that way? Peturabo no longer remembered.

There was only iron and blood.

He heard the wails of souls and endless slaughter. With every step he took toward that seat, the warfare upon the battlefield came nearer.

Peturabo extended his hand toward the iron throne of blood.

Peturabo! You damned brat, did some damned dog eat that calm of yours you're so proud of?

A familiar voice shouted furiously beside his soul. Peturabo felt as if a basin of ice water had been poured over him from the crown of his head down to every inch of his body. He shuddered violently, and the blood throne's temptation vanished in an instant.

He immediately pulled back his hand, pretending nothing had happened.

"Mors, where are you?" Peturabo asked.

The surrounding landscape was still yellow sand, blood, and withered bones. He scanned the area but did not see those black robes he had seen countless times.

Who cares where I am! You can't stay clearheaded if I'm not around? Where's your brain? Did you spread it on that damned multigrain bread of yours with cream yesterday? Look around you! Where are you trying to sit? Aren't you afraid that shitty chair will skewer you to death?

Peturabo's face reddened. He staggered back a step and nearly fell.

"I wasn't sitting! You're talking nonsense, I didn't sit down!"

You have the nerve to say you didn't want to? What do I usually teach you, you little bastard? That you should sit whenever you see a seat? That you should believe whatever some other thing howls at you? Is this our great sage Peturabo?

"What have you ever taught me? You just speak in riddles every day... you bastard! I don't even know what that was!"

Don't let me find out what word you originally wanted to use, brat.

"You..." Peturabo drew in a breath, furious but unable to argue. "Why are you here?!"

Mors laughed in rage. Take a guess why I'm here? Get the hell out of that damned place... get out...

The latter half of the man's words suddenly became broken and difficult to hear.

Peturabo tensed. "What's wrong with you?"

What could be wrong with me? You cause me trouble every day, and you ask what's wrong? I'm fine! I'm finding you an exit!

Mors's anger continued spilling out. For some reason, Peturabo felt that the rage he had been brewing earlier was not worth mentioning before Mors's.

He took two more steps away from the throne, keeping a respectful distance from it.

The roar of that earlier chattering thing echoed through the murky yellow sky, and Peturabo pretended not to hear anything.

"Should I not attack Kardis for now?" Peturabo asked.

The roar in the sky now rumbled like thunder.

Keep fighting first... Mors's voice became fragmented again. Finish... then return to Lokos.

"What did Harkon do? Do I need to return and reinforce you?"

Don't come back! Cough... Wait until I deal with this!

Mors shouted urgently.

Go fight your war properly! You're turning around and going home halfway through your first campaign? What kind of joke is that? Are you a child playing games and building sandcastles on the beach, quitting whenever you feel like it? Cough... You have nothing better to do, so hurry up and unify Olympia for me...

"These things..." Peturabo looked around, unsure what to call these abnormal phenomena. "Are they because of me?"

Take a guess.

"What?"

Fine, they're not because of you! Come to think of it, they still owe me something. Damn it, I don't even know what exactly I lost...

"What?"

Stop asking me. If you have the guts, ask that person yourself later... I should have known. What a destined calamity... Come!

A jagged tear suddenly appeared in the vast yellow-sand sky. A strip of black cloth hung down from the opening. It looked impossibly thin and fragile, yet the golden runes flashing upon it made it seem unbreakable and extraordinarily sacred.

Peturabo immediately seized the cloth strip. Though he had barely practiced climbing ropes, the instant he grasped it, he knew what he had to do next.

Hurry...

Mors's voice became even more distant. Peturabo quickened his movements, drawing closer and closer to the crack in the sky.

The fresh wind of the forest blew in from the real universe through the rift, sweeping away the blood stench around Peturabo. Yet before he could touch the sky, the entire strip of cloth suddenly began swaying violently, and Peturabo could barely hold on.

The slightest shift in the strength of his fingers sent his whole body dropping a short distance. Looking down, he saw the cloth beginning to vanish from bottom to top.

"Mors!" he shouted.

He did not receive an immediate answer. Then he heard a teeth-gritting sigh. I really do owe you two damned idiots... Fine...

The three chains that had bound him for years shattered at once. Surging power instantly filled his limbs. Countless pieces of knowledge pierced the fog and returned to his mind, filling nearly every gap in the map of thought he had constructed over the years.

He felt himself growing at tremendous speed. His body became tall, powerful, and indestructible; his soul became full and possessed of unique strength; his thoughts accelerated another thousandfold.

Everything he had always possessed returned to him fervently and completely. It was as if all things had been wiped clean of dust and become incomparably bright once more.

The cloth strip vanished entirely. Peturabo fell until a brilliant golden light pierced the yellow sands from the rift Mors had opened, taking over the black cloth's task.

He looked at the golden band of light, and his face became wet.

Peturabo seized the golden light and completed the final stretch of the climb.

In the next instant, his consciousness returned to the real universe. From the rustling of leaves to the movement of the wind, every trajectory reminded him that less than one thousandth of a second had passed since he finished his speech.

Peturabo raised his hand and wiped away the bloody streak mixed with tears that had fallen from his eye. Every expression vanished from that stone-like face, leaving only calm.

Seven days—no, five.

He would finish this war within five days. He knew his warriors could do it.

At this time five days from now, he would return in triumph.

He would see Mors.