A Fist to the Dark-Blooded: A (Hopeful) Megacampaign AAR

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 1: A Foreign Visitor

"769 AD," flickered the display, just before the last of the vehicle's energy gave out. The time traveler stared at the blank screen in disbelief. It was supposed to be a short trip back in time. How did it come to this? Was it his own fault, perhaps? Some misplaced digit in the endless procedures behind every leap? Did the machine foul up somehow, as they were wont to do?

He tapped the lifeless monitor with his finger. All the mysteries of how he got here would be forever unsolved. He intended to visit a more recent past, one where refueling for a return trip would be no trouble. Unless he could personally bring about a millennium's worth of advancements in engineering himself, there was no hope of return. His eyes widened as the sobering reality finally reached him.

"I'm stuck here," he mumbled. Wherever "here" was. He opened the door of the time machine to take in his surroundings for the first time, and was greeted by an endless verdant field, a shade of green so blinding his eyes could scarcely believe it existed.

“Ireland,” he realized after much wandering. How the hell did he get there? His original plan, long since discarded, was to travel to the same location he had been back in the past, back at his best chance to set things right. Though he’d never been there himself, he knew he had Irish blood. Maybe the time machine, unable to take the traveler to himself, settled for the nearest genetic match? The closest man on the patrilineal line?

He shook his head. Focus on the future, or at least what passes for it now. His mission’s been derailed, but it was not beyond salvage. He intended to travel to before The Catastrophe, and he had, albeit far further back than planned. He could still prevent it, he reasoned. It just wouldn’t be as simple as he first hoped.

There were other advantages to his new medieval life. Without fuel, his time machine was nothing more than a large pile of metal, but there was no shortage of local smiths willing to pay for just that. Even better, the local tribal chieftain was quick to cede his title at the sight of a modern firearm. In no time at all, the stranger had become the Chief of Airgialla.

With a position of power, however minor, the traveler could begin his new plan: manipulate the courses of history to create a new world, a better world, so far removed from his own time that nothing resembling The Catastrophe could ever happen. A future that every person in the 8th century, himself included, would be too long dead to see.

If there was any hope of his dreams being realized, the world would need successors as devoted to the cause as he was. They needed to know what to do. They needed instructions.

The chief’s first act was to write a book. A set of commandments that all in his throne would be obliged to obey for centuries to come. A set that, on a small corner of an island of tribals destined for British conquest, were highly in danger of becoming worthless. To prevent this fate, the chief delivered his first order:

I. Retake the Ancestral Lands

The time traveler may have now been an Irishman by the error of machines, but his blood spanned throughout Europe, as well as more distant lands none of his new subjects had ever heard of. The commandment served two purposes: To give whoever holds the book a greater position of power to enact its will, and to increase the chances that the time traveler, or someone close enough to him, would still be born to see this better world.

To take the ancestral lands in their entirety was an unthinkable task, one that may never be achieved, but the time traveler could start small. The first goal was a simple one: Take Ireland.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 2: Bígí Torthach

With the book, the time traveler’s heirs would have the means to carry out his will, but this meant nothing if he bore no heirs. A royal marriage was in order, and he found his bride in Princess Cyneswith, daughter of King Aethelred of East Anglia.

Though few at the time knew it, the princess possessed a remarkably gifted mind, and was willing to accept her new husband’s claims of coming from the future. However, her genius was accompanied by zealotry, and she viewed the time traveler’s tale through a religious lens that he repeatedly denied. How can a man gladly admit he came to save the world from a dark fate, yet claim God had nothing to do with it? The royal couple’s nighttime conversations frequently turned into arguments, but it was no matter to the chief. However strained his relationship with the princess was, it was good to have somebody, anyone, to tell the truth to.

Besides, she could bring him an heir, as she did in September of 770.

With his title secure, the time traveler turned his attention to the conquest of rival chiefdoms. In December of 772, he had usurped Chief Eochaid mac Fiachnae of Ulaidh from his title, granting himself a demesne large enough to be called a petty kingdom. His next closest neighbor, Chief Domnall of Tir Chonaill, was a proud man, but not a foolish one. He rode to Airgialla to personally swear an oath of fealty to the strange new conqueror, who now already ruled a quarter of the island.

With Ulaidh conquered, the time traveler set his eyes on the chiefdom of Meath, to the south. The sacred hill of Teamhair had been used to crown High Kings since days already seen as ancient. If he dared to take such a title for himself, it couldn’t be done without the hill.

As he readied his armies for a new war, the father of five (with a sixth lost in infancy) placed even more attention within his home. The children of Ulaidh, born before their father, were given many things by him, but one was held above all else: Duty.

The time traveler’s descendants would not merely inherit a title. They would inherit a duty, the unenviable task of struggling to steer the world in a new direction. A duty that would continue long after they, and their own children, had been reduced to dust. It pained him to leave his children with such a burden, as much as it did to carry it himself. Nonetheless, it had to be done, and they had to understand it from an early age. The future was bigger than any of them.

The petty king’s firstborn son and heir apparent, Tanist Aillil, understood his duty and then some when he came of age in 786, a masterful soldier, yet with a cruel temperament far unlike his father. Day after day, he was told of how he was a slave to destiny. “You MUST rule after me,” said the time traveler. “You MUST retake the ancestral lands. The future depends on it.” Despite the prestige granted by his princehood, he had never known a day of true freedom in his life, and channeled this resentment to anyone in his vicinity. Even his betrothed, the Frankish Countess Bernegildis, was often frightened by his presence, and secretly dreaded the destined wedding once she had come of age.

As the time traveler prepared his family for the task ahead, his rivals favored a more direct approach. By 790, Meath, Dubhlinn, and the Hill of Teamhair he had coveted for so long were all under the rule of King Cathmug of Connachta.

King Cathmug was a man of many virtues, his only flaw being all too eager to spy on his councilors. He was a gifted strategist, a tireless worker, and one who only ever thought of the best for his fellow tribesmen. In another lifetime, the Duke of Ulaidh would’ve hoped to call him a friend. But he was in the way of the future, and for that, he would need to die.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

I've opted for a more character-focused approach with this chapter, but I'm not sure how much I like it. Any feedback is appreciated. Do you prefer this, or something a little more clinical and textbook-ish?

Chapter 3: A Viking Comes Early

Though all of Ireland would hate him for declaring war without apparent cause, and his face would be forever scarred from a Connachtian axe at the Battle of Meath, the time traveler would hold yet more land to his name by 791.

He would have little time, however, to enjoy this triumph before great loss overshadowed it. It was a warm autumn evening, as the time traveler sat down with his wife to another dinner of roast swan.

“Best to bide my time before striking Cathmug again, I think,” he said as he bit into a leg, trying his best to avoid any sign of disgust. The food was the hardest part of his new life. Though the meat was tender, something about its preparation ensured it would never taste quite right. “We’ll take the smaller tribes for now, expand our armies. God willing, our chancellor will have found a proper claim by then.”

“Why pray for His will when you disregard it every other time?” asked the princess, crossing her arms. The time traveler rolled his eyes. It was an all too familiar argument, one he suspected she only started each time for fun. “Perhaps you’ll get your claim if you’d attend a service or two.”

“Cyneswith, you know I don’t have time for that. I’ve got too much planning to do. Real work, to save us all.” The princess bit off a piece of the swan’s neck.

“Bishop…” she stopped a moment to catch her breath, rubbing at her chest as the food made its way down. “Bishop Coilboth says you can’t even save yourself.”

“Then I’m glad I don’t attend his services.” As one hand tore off another chunk of the swan, the king’s other held a pen, scribbling down indecipherable plans.

“Not just you…” The princess took a deep breath. The indigestion was unusually difficult tonight. “Nobody can save themselves, he says. Only Jesus can get you to Heaven when Judgment Day comes.” The time traveler looked up from his papers. His fist clenched involuntarily.

“Judgment Day?” He rose from his seat. His wife gasped. “I know about Judgment Day. I’ve seen it, and it makes The Revelation look like a children’s bedtime story.” Cyneswith hunched her shoulders, suddenly without the energy to speak up. Her right arm grabbed her left, as if she was trying to hide herself. “Jesus didn’t save anybody. He didn’t save me. I did. So the next time Coilboth thinks he can lecture me about the End Times…” The princess’s chair tipped over backwards, as she fell to the ground. In an instant, all the anger left the king’s voice. “...Cyneswith?”

As the time traveler sat at the front of the church, staring at his wife’s corpse as Bishop Coilboth eulogized her great faith, he couldn’t help but realize the cruel irony that she had got him to attend a service after all.

For all their disagreements, the princess had been a confidant to a man in a situation nobody could hope to truly understand. She had patiently suffered the burdens of a man who cared for lofty visions of the future, and the guilt of yelling at her as she died would stay with the time traveler for the rest of his days.

Still, though he suffered, the plan could not. No death could interfere with the plan. Not his own, not his wife’s. Cyneswith had only just entered the ground before the time traveler looked to a new marriage, with new claims to the ancestral lands to gain.

He found his answer in Ylva af Munso, sister to King Ragnar Lodbrok of Svitjod. As councillors and courtiers alike gathered for a royal wedding in the same church where, just weeks prior, they had attended a royal funeral, few felt any joy for the new councilor. To the proudest among them, Cyneswith was already too foreign for their liking. Ulster being under an English queen was too absurd for them to even think about. But few were entirely sure where this woman was even from.

However, her culture was the least of her problems to the masses. Far more damning, literally so, was that Ylva was a pagan. Ulaidh had gone from a queen who loved Christ above all else to one who didn’t even know of Him. An outrage to all but the time traveler, who saw only opportunity.

The traveler was not a religious man. Not anymore, at least. He once prayed for an end to The Catastrophe, as had many others, and when no answer came he decided any gods out there must have forsaken him.

In truth, he had no more faith in Odin and Thor to help him than he did Jesus. But even if all of those figures didn’t exist, the Pope did. If he could rid his realm of that influence, he reasoned, the plan would have one less hindrance. His trusted heir, Aillil, was quick to agree.

Though he may not have truly believed in his new gods, it seemed as if his conversion was enough to earn the favor of Tyr. He launched a series of new campaigns against the poorly equipped chieftains of central Ireland, each of which ended as quickly as it began.

However, this was not to say that the traveler’s many battles were won without cost. The first morning after returning home from the conquest of Dublin, he found himself so exhausted he could barely leave his bed.

“I’m just tired,” he rationalized it. “Tired from the war.” But he knew it wasn’t true. By now he’d been tired from war dozens of times, some of them even before his journey to the past. It was never like this before.

“It’s time to begin the day, elskandi,” said Ylva as she rose from the bed herself.

“I … I don’t think I can,” the time traveler admitted. “I can’t … I can’t move.” In an instant, dread overtook Ylva’s face.

“Where is Flaithbertach?” she called. “Flaithbertach? Flaithbertach!”

Weeks later, the court physician was staring down the duke’s throat with uncertainty. His mind was elsewhere, conjuring images of boats that breathed fire. How he wished he was still studying them instead. On the day he was summoned, he was in Constantinople, unraveling the secrets of technological marvels known only to the Byzantines. He was none too pleased at having to take a long boat back to Ireland, and to do it all again once the visit was done.

The time traveler was no more pleased by the examination. Though Flaithbertach was skilled enough to serve both jobs, he couldn’t help be disturbed that his spymaster and doctor were one and the same. He was trusting his life with a professional master in abusing the trust of others.

Personal issues aside, the time traveler just hated the fact that he lived in a more primitive age of medicine. Though he had no real training, in many ways his medical knowledge was better than those who did. Flaithberthach had no idea that germs caused disease.

“Well, it isn’t a flu…” mumbled the spymaster.

“I could’ve told you that.”

“Of course you could have, my liege. You seem … impatient today. An imbalance of the humors, perhaps. I recommend we drain you of your yellow bile, then…”

“Again with the humors. I’ve told you before that’s all nonsense, right? Fuck, ‘yellow bile’ isn’t even a thing. It’s all just bile. Now do you have any real advice for me or not?” screeched the duke, specks of foam flying from his lips with each word.

There were many words the time traveler’s subjects could have used to describe him, but one stood out more than any other at this moment. He had always been a man of passionate beliefs. He focused on his goal to save the future with a rabid determination. He was rabidly opposed to spending any time with the priests. As difficult he could be at times, his military campaigns proved that if anyone threatened his family or his subjects, he would fight back with unimaginable rabidity.

The time traveler was rabid.

Once the diagnosis was official, the time traveler found himself overwhelmed with the unique sort of dread that only came through thoughts of mortality. For a few days, he spoke to nobody, not even Ylva. He mostly sat at his throne, staring at the other side of the room, lost in his thoughts. He knew from the start, of course, that he would die with his grand scheme still in its infancy. But there was still something about knowing just how soon it would be.

In another life, he would’ve succumbed to the despair. He would’ve collapsed on his bed, abandoned all hope, and waited for the end. Deep down, he still wanted to take that path. But that when he was an ordinary person. Now lives depended on him. The future depended on him.

Though he didn’t have long for this world, he was still alive. And as long as he could breathe, there was a job to do.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 4: Death of the Future

Pope Anastasius III stared down at the man kneeling before him, trying his best to maintain composure. The man embodied many of the seven virtues, but patience was not one of them, and he’d had nothing but reluctant thoughts since the day he was first invited to crown the King of Eire. A trip from Rome to Airgialla would’ve been dreadful enough at an ordinary time, but now any route he took would lead him through West Francia, where King Gedalbert Karling had declared his spymaster an antipope. For every night until his last, he would thank the Virgin Mary he had somehow passed through enemy territory unnoticed.

But even these troubles were trivial compared to when the pope finally set eyes on the time traveler. He’d heard many rumors about the new king along the way, from his magical book to his secret animal sacrifices. The pope saw fit to dismiss it all as hearsay, however amusing. Even if he believed them, though, it would’ve done nothing to prepare him for the sight of the man.

Nine years before, the time traveler suffered a scar across his face at the Battle of Meath. Since then, he’d been in a state of near-perpetual warfare, and to the public he showed more scar than skin. There was a metal hook where his right hand once was, the result of an ill-fated treatment for a disease that the foam around his mouth proved he still had. Most unsettling of all, though, was the fact that he was smiling. Every minute the Pope saw him, he grinned, proudly showing the teeth that had now gone thirty years without modern dentistry.

This man shouldn’t be happy, the Pope thought. He shouldn’t even be living. But unlike many of his predecessors, he took the duties God had chosen him for seriously, and wouldn’t let these feelings show for a second. He spoke to the king about the procedures for the coronation, and made sure to not say a word of anything else.

The king also kept to himself, out of necessity’s sake. An atheist, pretending to be a pagan, pretending to be a Catholic, had an audience with the Pope. Wouldn’t it be fun to reveal his double deceit, asked a voice in his head? You could do it right when he gives you the crown. By now, the king had survived much that should have killed him, but even he knew such a thing would do the trick.

In the end, the coronation occurred without incident, none of the many spectators in attendance privy to the secret awkwardness behind it all. The next morning, the Bishop of Rome set on a boat back to the Eternal City, and the two men never spoke again, though they thought much of each other.

The time traveler was now the King of Eire, at least by law. For him, however, this was no more than a symbolic victory until the entire island was his.

At present, two rivals remained to challenge the new king’s rule. The first, King Eichnechan of Connachta, was the son of the late King Cathmug. Born into a humbled dynasty, Eichnechan thought of little besides avenging the many humiliations he and his father had suffered in the midst of the time traveler’s conquests. Day after day, he would train to become the perfect soldier. Whether he would start it himself or not, he knew war with the time traveler was inevitable. Even if he could not win, he’d be sure to take as many of the king’s men as he could on the way out.

The second, King Mael-Duin II of Mumu, though a gifted warrior, lacked Eicnechan’s martial passion. His interests laid in stewardship, and was content to manage his realm at its already considerable size. He thought little of the king’s realm, and assumed the apathy was mutual.

Mael-Duin would quickly pay for his carelessness, as the time traveler had yet to feel the weight of the crown on his head before commanding his armies towards Tuadhmhumhain. On Christmas Eve 800, Mael-Duin swore an oath of fealty to his newfound vassal.

Only Connacht remained, though an existing truce signed at the end of one of the king’s previous campaigns kept Eicnechan safe for the time being.

As he waited for the opportunity to strike again, the time traveler focused inward, building new facilities across Eire, as well as recruiting fellow pagans wherever he could, with varying degrees of success. One day, as he sought out sympathetic councillors, the man who saw himself destined to save mankind suffered a failure that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

In what little spare time he had, he worked alongside Flaithberthach in hopes of bringing an end to the disease that caused him so much pain each day. One fortuitous evening, the pair managed to devise a cure for the king’s rabies, albeit not without great cost.

Had the king believed in divine arrangements, he would’ve surely called it so that Ylva was pregnant one last time before his penultimate sacrifice. When the baby Aibinn came in October, the king was be a father of eighteen children, twelve still living, and eighteen that number would forever remain. His armies now numbered 3,750 men. King Eicnechan had 180.

The child was a blessing, but an even greater one came soon after, as the time traveler was now free to disregard the Connachtian truce. Though he lacked the means to perform the same immediate vassalization he had for Mumu, not that Eicnechan would ever agree to such a thing, he could still take apart the rival duchy piece by piece, as with the capture of Breifne in 807.

By this point, Connachta would be helpless in the fact of any future attack, and the king thought less of his foreign conflicts than those back home. Prince Ailill had grown restless within the comforts of his castle, and demanded a share of royal responsibilities to better prepare him for his succession. Knowing full well how likely he’d be to accept a refusal, the king put his heir where his temper would do the most good, appointing him court marshal.

Despite his father’s initial fears, Ailill quickly proved as skilled a commander as the king had ever had. Each night, the time traveler convened with his son, discussing war plans for Connacht, Britannia, and all the lands beyond.

“Hel take the truces, I say,” scoffed the marshal before taking a swig of ale. “Slaughter the Connachtians now, and we’ll be in Pictland this time next month.”

“If Pictland’s not in us,” the king retorted. His son may have mastered the battlefield, but he had much to learn about the court. “If we’re seen as truce breakers, everyone with a sword to swing would have it in for us. The conquest must be a gradual thing, you see. Take the Ancestral Lands so slowly nobody thinks of putting an early stop to it.” Ailill put his beer down, the vestiges of a smile forming as he swallowed.

“A bit of advice for you?” asked the marshal.

“Advice for your father?” The time traveler laughed. It had been so long since he last did it he barely remembered how to. “Sure, go on then.”

“Never show weakness,” he said. “You don’t want Pictland coming after you? Don’t make them think you’re the kind of boy who bows down to truces. You let them see you like that, even for a second, and the whole world will walk all over you.”

“I … see,” mumbled the king. It amazed him how sure Ailill was of himself as he spoke. Though he rarely agreed with his son, he did trust him. When the time traveler’s plans passed to him, he knew the future would be in good hands. “Until tomorrow, then?”

“I’ll be ready to go before you are.”

The next morning, the king woke up with a strange rush of motivation. Somehow, he’d positioned himself in his bed the night before in a way that granted him near-superhuman energy. Today was a day to be productive, he thought. Maybe he could storm Connacht this morning, all by himself!

“Wake up, Ailill!” screamed the king as he swung open the door to his son’s chambers. “The night’s too far off! What do you say we head over to the keep and check in on our troops?” The room fell silent. No answer, no insults demanding to let him sleep.

Ailill was a cruel man, but he was not a hypocrite. He followed his own principles, and never showed weakness. Not to his enemies. Not to his father. Not even to his physician.

By now, the king was no stranger to loss. He’d already seen his wife die, buried seven other children, and witnessed countless soldiers fall in battle, to say nothing of the things he’d seen in his former life. But even then, he was unprepared for the agony of finding Ailill’s corpse in the morning. It wasn’t just the death of his firstborn son, his marshal, his heir. It was, or at least felt like, the death of the future. Whatever his faults, Ailill understood the plan. He’d been trained to since childhood.

The newly chosen tanist was Ailill’s second son, a candidate of considerable appeal. He was almost as skilled a soldier as his father, albeit without the vicious temper. “He can be trained,” the king assured himself. “There is still hope.”

But the new heir was already eighteen years old. That was eighteen years of life without instruction, without expectation. What if the plan failed to imprint on him the same way it had his father? What if he carried an even further imperfect mutation of the plan onto the next generation?

Meanwhile, the king was fifty-eight. He no longer thought of himself as a man from the future, though those privy to the secret still did, as he’d now spent more of his life in the past. He also no longer saw priests with the same venom he once did, as the fact that he hadn’t died long ago could only be the work of divine grace. Perhaps Jesus was protecting him. Or maybe Odin. Or some strange unseen force gave him temporary immortality until he was old enough to have it taken away. Still, he would soon be dead. How much time did he have to prepare his heir?

For now, all the king could do is mourn his old heir, and pity the new one. Eighteen years old, and he’d been trusted with a millennium.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 5: Tráth Breithe, Tráth Báis

Tanist Ryan put a hand to his temples, his whole body growing tense with anxiety. Maybe it was just a headache, the young heir thought? Surely not everyone with a headache has it. The quarantine was starting to take its toll on his mental health, with the king decreeing everyone must stay indoors as an outbreak of slow fever plagued Eire. He knew it was a necessary decision. As the heir to the throne, he may have to make a similar one someday. But by God, was it taxing. He’d almost give his soul just to go outside and spar with one of the commanders again.

“His Majesty has requested you, Tanist,” said a chamberlain standing at his door. Without a moment’s hesitation, he leapt from his seat. Normally he faced the regular instruction from his grandfather with reluctance, but with the seclusion he was just grateful for something, anything, to do.

It soon became clear, however, that this was far from a regular meeting. A team of masked physicians stood over the time traveler’s bed, staring down at their king as if he was nothing more than a science experiment. The king himself was covered from head to toe in bright, blood red sores. Despite his best efforts to stay isolated, the infection had come to him as well.

The tanist wanted to speak, but couldn’t conjure any words from the myriad of thoughts that raced through his head. What could he say that wasn’t already clear to everyone in the room? The king was just as silent. Without words, he stretched his arms out to his heir. He was holding something in his hands, something large and bound in leather.

Many within the time traveler’s family had been told of small parts of the book, but until today only he had ever had the privilege of meaning it. The implications of this gift went without saying.

“I’m not ready, Grandfather,” the tanist admitted. The king stared back at him sorrowfully, fighting the urge to cry.

“Neither am I.” With that, the king sent to save the future breathed his last. Born 1991, died 813.

As the newly-crowned king, only twenty years of age, read through his instructions, it soon became clear just how out of his depths he was. Most of the book wasn’t just complicated, it was impossible to understand, laced with terms and names that nobody could ever hope to understand. Instructions, he hoped, that were intended for rulers of a later age.

For now, he would focus on what he could read. Retake the Ancestral Lands, he already knew that part. Of equal interest was the rule that followed after.

II. Rule with strength, but not cruelty.

Seeing it spelled out so plainly, King Ryan could see how his grandfather followed this rule in life. Whenever the choice presented itself, he always reacted with a sense of mercy near unseen in the rulers of these times. Prisoners were always released as soon as it was safe to, and the civilians of enemy cities would always be spared at the end of a successful siege.

At the same time, though, he showed little patience for any challenge to his authority. Over the course of his reign, he’d managed to erode, though not erase, the political powers of his council, allowing him to make most decisions unopposed, without a hope of veto. Strength, but not cruelty. The new king was unsure what to make of the prospects of a benevolent dictatorship, but he’d sworn to follow the time traveler’s instructions.

He decided the best way to prove himself a worthy successor was to complete the task that the time traveler had left unfinished. In the first few months of his reign, the last pocket of resistance in the county of Muaidhe capitulated. He was now the king of all of Ireland.

To those not privy to the king’s secrets, one would imagine that this victory was a cause for celebration, that the nobles were holding the most raucous party imaginable in the comforts of the king’s castle. In truth, King Ryan II mostly spent the day after receiving the news sitting on his throne, lost in thought. This was an important first step to reclaiming the Ancestral Lands, but a first step was all it was. He, and those who followed after him, were still expected to conquer the rest of the British Isles. Even that was only a second step. Then came war against the Karlings, the Vikings, the Byzantines, and a place none of his best scholars had even heard of. The thought of it all made the king tired, and he expected he would feel tired for the rest of his life.

Even if he could stop thinking about the plan for a moment, there was no time to celebrate. The time traveler was dead, but the epidemic that claimed him was still alive and well. The Slow Fever was not satisfied with taking one the king was close to, and saw it fit to infect his wife, Queen Gormlaith.

Though the epidemic still subsided, the queen continued to suffer chest pains long after. In a way, so did the king, now overcome with anxiety. Desperate for any sort of release, he took to combat. If he was destined for a life of war, he may as well enjoy it. The sparring chamber was now a greater source of pleasure than the bedroom, and he developed the skills to justify his hobby.

Day after day, the king attempted to transform himself into the perfect soldier. He thought little of the tedium of court life, even avoiding his family as much as he could help it. Let the courtiers care for his children, worry about whatever it is his wife was complaining about today. The first king of Ireland saw his wife die of a heart attack. The second was so occupied with wargames he didn’t hear his wife died of a heart attack until the next day.

In life, as in the battlefield, the king had trained himself in pragmatic thinking. As the court arranged the funeral for the mother of his children, he thought only of who to remarry. The obvious choice lay in Countess Ecgwyn of Chester, an English title his dynasty could easily take through inheritance.

The new king had been instructed to not rule with cruelty, and he obeyed, in a sense. He would never delight in death, never spill more blood than was necessary. But the time traveler, wise yet imperfect, had only said to avoid cruelty, not coldness. He expected his grandson to be a machine, a tool to further his goals without thinking about what he was doing, and that was precisely what King Ryan II had become.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 6: The Last Vote

“The Council of Eire is now in session,” read the king, a phrase he’d recited so often he could swear he mumbled it in his sleep. He looked up to see the usual six faces staring back at him. “All are present and accounted for. Chancellor Conn, how have you fared in Dyfed?”

“I long for Dyfed as much you do, my liege,” said the chief of Westmeath, son of a Welshwoman. “But there’s not much I can base a claim on. It doesn’t seem like your family’s ever set foot in Dyfed.” The king frowned. All this talk of claims and diplomatic channels before the war. He had the book. He had his orders to take the Ancestral Lands. That was the only claim he needed, though nobody outside of this castle would ever believe it.

“Well, keep at it. Those tasks are what your talents are for. Steward Natfraech…”

“Tanist Natfraech,” corrected the king’s brother, leaning back haughtily in his chair. Having studied and excelled at proper administration since childhood, the chief of Tir Eoghain had proven such a capable governor that the kingdoms’ electors had declared him heir apparent. Though he secretly envied the crown, he loved his brother more, and hoped to be as faithful a councillor as he could be.

“Tanist Natfraech, of course,” said the king with reluctance. “How is the war chest proceeding?”

“Taxes come almost faster than I can carry them,” his heir boasted. “At this rate you’ll be able to outfit your men with golden swords.”

“Golden swords would be useless in a battle,” interrupted Marshal Ailbrenn, a wandering knight who had pledged himself to the crown’s service. “Although His Majesty will be pleased at our smiths’ latest work, I should think.”

“If you are pleased, then so am I, Ailbrenn. You know I trust your judgment. In all things.” The king leaned slightly closer to his marshal, staring directly at him with a knowing glance. “Onto the next matter. I have a proposed royal decree that awaits the Council’s vote. He passed six sheets of paper, copied by hand, to the council.

“Did you dip your bod in ink for this?” asked Conn, staring at the decree with confusion. The whole text seemed to be scribbled in a haste, its text borderline illegible. What few words could be made out were too strange for the chancellor to comprehend.

“You know I was never too good with my hands, Conn.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, my liege!” said Ailbrenn. “You’re nearly as deft with a sword as I am!”

“Yes, thank you, Ailbrenn.” The king looked back to his chancellor. “You can call it a decree to reward all of you, my faithful council. Each of you have worked so hard and given so much in the name of this kingdom, and I want to ease your burden, give all of you more time to spend with yourselves and your families…”

“It means he’s in charge of everything,” scoffed Bishop Martan, tossing the sheet behind him. The court chaplain was a learned man, but not a civil one. Early into his priesthood, he decided to read the entire Vulgate, from “In principio” to “Iesu Christi cum omnibus.” When he’d finally seen it all, he decided he’d had enough elegant words for a lifetime. He’d only use plain ones going forward. “This vote here? He wants it to be the last vote. He always gets his way, and we can all go to Hell.”

“Are you serious?” asked the chancellor. The whole council was staring at the king now, though he barely seemed to notice, as stoic as ever.

“It’s a mutually beneficial agreement. Better for all of you, even. You’ll all have the same share of the treasury you do now in exchange for less work. With the extra time you can spend on your own desmesnes, you’ll likely make more money.”

“We’re not stupid, Ryan!” The bishop slammed a fist on the table. “You want to rule over all of us like slaves and make sure nobody can stop you.”

“If there’s a slave in this exchange, Martan, it’s me, as I’ll be assuming the full brunt of royal responsibilities.” The king’s eyes sunk lower. He was beginning to believe what he was saying. Despite what he’d become, there was still a voice deep inside him, the remnants of the child that once was before his royal grooming, who knew this was all wrong. He didn’t want this decree. But he needed it. “If any of you have objections, of course, that’s what this process is for. How does the council vote?”

“Nay,” said Conn.

“Nay,” added Martan.

Ailbrenn looked around the room with uncertainty. He was a soldier, not a politician. He barely understood the decree, much less how to feel about it. The only thing he knew for certain was that he’d sworn undying loyalty to the crown, and that much hadn’t changed.

“Aye,” voted the marshal. The king smiled, though just slightly.

“One for, two against,” he counted. “Advisor Fallaman, your vote?”

The king stared at his uncle, a silent reminder of the secrets the two men were privy to. The Duke of Laigin was the youngest son of the time traveler, and by now the only son still living.Though he’d never been a serious candidate for the throne, the late first king made sure all of his children, Fallaman included, understood the plan.

“Aye,” said the king’s uncle. The liege nodded contentedly, only to have the next vote instantly end his mood.

“Nay,” voted Natfreach.

“Really, Steward Natfraech?” interjected the king.

“That’s Tanist … no, Brother Natfraech! And as nice as inheriting absolute power sounds, I could do without the kingdom of angry subjects that come with it.”

“You know about the plan, brother.”

“I do know about the plan, yes. But unlike you, I also know about dealing with other people, getting them on your side. The plan won’t go anywhere if you make the whole world mad enough to want your blood. The bigger you make your crown, the more likely it’ll crush your head.” The king glared at his brother, unsure of just what to say, before turning his attention back to the paper in front of him.

“Natfraech … votes … against,” he read flatly as he wrote down. “Two for, three against. Spymaster Eorcenberht, your vote, please?”

As in most of the council’s meetings, the spymaster had yet to speak a word. Much of this was due to how uncomfortable he was speaking outside of his native tongue. The son of an Essexian duke who did not live to see his birth, Eorcenberht had been brought to Eire by the time traveler to marry Scathach, one of his many daughters. The hope was that he would bring more children to the time traveler’s dynasty, a task he’d utterly failed at.

But though he was a bad husband, he was an able spy, and took full advantage of his talent of disappearing into a room. Why talk when he could listen? In this moment, though, the silence was to his disadvantage, as now the whole room waited anxiously for his vote.

“...Aye,” whispered the spymaster.

“Three for, three against, and in the event of a tie a vote falls to the crown. The motion passes.”

“Diabhal Sassanach!” screamed Martan. The court chaplain ran towards the spymaster, forcing the marshal to get between the two and restrain the priest. “How much did he pay you, Eorcenberht? What did you sell our freedom for?”

“Everyone knows the Englishman would dig up and suck his father if the coin was good enough,” said Natfraech. “You bought him off, you must have.”

“I don’t believe I’m even capable of what you’re accusing me of.” The king straightened the papers in front of him, clearing the meeting room for another day. “As you’ve admitted, I don’t know how to get people on my side.”

“You can’t take our voices like this!” demanded Conn. “Not off of a tie! It isn’t fair! This whole vote was rigged!”

“All the more reason to do away with them, then.” Without another word, the king departed, leaving his council in the chamber to argue and scream among themselves. As he traveled the halls of his castle alone, forced to listen to his own thoughts, he nearly wished he was back at the meeting.

Establishing absolute rule was a difficult decision, but a necessary one. His grandfather’s book said much about the world from which he escaped. Most of it was nonsense beyond the new king’s comprehension, a long series of words he’d never seen before, and that nobody in a thousand years ever would. Other parts, however, were easier to imagine. In the future, he was told, there were still councils and votes and arguments that seemed to never end. Instead of six, though, they numbered hundreds, nearly all of them vile. By the time the Catastrophe had arrived, half of them refused to admit it, maybe even wanted it, and the second half didn’t want to upset and drive away the first. The world ended while they were locked in debate over what to do.

If councilors and votes had doomed humanity once, King Ryan II knew they could again. It was far better to remove any potential hindrances to the plan. The more people who held power, the more chance of power falling into the hands of someone evil, someone who would bring the world to ruin once again. It was better to just act, to do the right thing without worrying about approval. Votes were nothing but trouble, but how could anything bad happen with an absolute dictator?

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 7: The Heretic King

“What’s with all these little hammers lying around?” asked a voice in Laigin’s town marketplace.

“They say the duke’s gone into hiding!” whispered another. A cloaked Englishman walked through the crowd, taking in the gossip of everyone he passed. Most people would think it was a curse to be ignored by everyone around them. To Eorcenberht, it was a power. It astounded him how many secrets people were eager to let slip in broad daylight, to anyone who cared to listen.

He wasn’t the only thing in the market the crowd was ignoring. As he walked, a small metallic glint caught his eye. At the corner of a building lay a bright silver coin, completely unnoticed by anyone who passed. This day couldn’t get any better, thought the spymaster. All manner of rumors to report to the king, and a silver that was his to claim. He bent over to pick up the coin when a wall of leather appeared to his left. A pair of boots, he quickly realized.

“I guess it’s true what they say,” said Chief Conn as his fellow councillor looked up at him. “Drop a coin anywhere in Eire, and soon enough Eorcenberht will come to pick it up.”

“Conn?” asked Eorcenberht. “I thought you were in Dyfed.”

“So does everyone else.” The chancellor lifted the spymaster by the collar of his cloak. “Found my silver, I see. Guess that gives you thirty-one, doesn’t it, Judas?”

“Whatever you’re thinking, Conn, you don’t understand!” Eorcenberht smiled, or at least came as close to it as he could at the moment. Conn grabbed his neck and pinned him against the wall.

“Really? Did you sell us all out to a lunatic king in ways I don’t understand, too?”

“We’re not all nobles with land, Conn! Some of us need to feed our wives with whatever we can get!’

“You know, I bet you’re pretty proud of what you can do, aren’t you?” The chief of Westmeath stared out at the passing crowd, none of them who dared to look into the alley. “I don’t know how you do it, turn invisible like that, but nobody ever sees you. Unless, of course, they’re looking for you.”

“You’re the chancellor, Conn!” pleaded the spymaster. “You’re a diplomat, aren’t you? A man of peace, using words!”

“But what if you want to be seen, hmm? Can you make people notice you? What would happen if you screamed for help?” The chancellor removed his dagger from its sheath.

“Come on, Conn! We’re allies in this, aren’t we? We both want what’s best for the kingdom! Maybe we … disagree on some of the details, but…”

“Start screaming, you English bastard. They’ll have plenty of time to find you, we’ll be here for a while.”

Though King Ryan II’s heart had grown harder since he came to power, it had hardly disappeared. As he watched a boat sail to England to bring Eorcenberht’s mutilated remains back to their true home, all the king could think about was how he had done this. He had indirectly killed a man who, for all his faults, trusted and supported him. The spymaster was neither the first nor the last person to die in the name of the plan, but this did nothing to console the king. For the next few weeks, he did and said little, merely stared out into space and made mental notes of how others remarked at Eorcenberht’s passing, notes his mind would bear like a branding for the rest of his days.

The guilt only grew worse the morning he learned that faithful Ailbrenn’s heart had given out. A natural death, at least according to the physicians. The king wanted to believe it was so, but his anxiety refused. He thought back to the way Ailbrenn danced across the sparring field during their regular wargames. He had always seemed the very picture of health. These images were always followed to a council meeting weeks prior, in which Bishop Martan mentioned his latest research, while the king only half paid attention. He swore he’d heard--or had he imagined it?--the chaplain mentioning that he’d discovered herbs with all manner of strange properties, that could slow and quicken the pace of a man’s heart. Perhaps it was all a series of strange coincidences, but the paranoia lingered all the same.

In times of crisis, some people are brought closer to God. Others are pushed farther away. Not long after the deaths of his councillors, the king found a strange book lying in his bedroom. He wasn’t sure who had left it, but in his hour of darkness there was something about its passages that simply made sense to him, made him feel like, no matter what, things would work out in the end.

Like his father and grandfather before him, King Ryan II was now a secret worshipper of the Aesir, a member of the hidden cult the time traveler had founded so long ago. Unlike the past generations, though, there was no politics behind his decision. When he prayed to Odin in the dead of night to guide him as a better ruler, to make him the king his grandfather hoped him to be, it was done with total sincerity.

But it still wasn’t enough for him. He still had to put on appearances, attend the weekly Mass with Bishop Martan, the man who voted against him. He knew, of course, that it wasn’t yet time for his fellow Oathkeepers. He couldn’t publicly be a pagan. But did he have to publicly be a Catholic?

The next Sunday, Bishop Martan stared out at the sparsely filled pews, attempting to conceal the contempt in his voice as he read his sermon. In all his years as a clergy, he’d never seen such a pitiful attendance. It could only mean one thing: blasphemy had come to Airgialla.

When the service had ended, the bishop followed his few attendants outside. Even the area outside the church was curiously deserted. Where could everyone be? He wandered through the empty streets until the first sign of life presented itself: a large crowd gathered in an open field. He pushed his way through the gatherers to see what deserved their attention more than God, only to find his king sitting on a rock with a book.

“Agus na goiridh…” read the king, as he pored over the Vulgate carefully. He’d never attempted something like this before, reading in Latin then translating it live for an audience. “...bhur nathair do dhuine ar bith ar talamh…” The king looked up at his crowd, now with the bishop staring in disbelief. He smiled. “...oír is áon Athar a tá agaibh, noch a tá ar neamh.”

“What are you doing?” asked Martan, pushing himself into the crowd’s view.

“Reading the Bible. It’s Sunday, after all.”

“If it’s Sunday, you should be in church. All of you.” The king turned a few pages back in his book.

“Oir gidh be aít ann a bhfuilid días nó tríur ar ná gcruinneaghadh am ainmsi, a táimsí ann sin ann a lár súd.”

“Don’t quote the Bible at me. I’ve read it all! In the original language! Where did you even get that? You’re not a priest. That’s illegal.”

“Illegal, yes. I’m sure the king will be furious when he hears of this.”

“No, but the Pope will.” The bishop turned to the crowd. “You’re all listening to a tyrant and a heretic, I hope you know. He’s taken away your freedom, and now he’s trying to take away God.” The king turned forward in the book.

“Biodh gach uile anum úmhal do na cúmhachdaibh…”

“Enough!” Bishop Martan stormed off to the comforts of his empty church, where a bilious letter would soon depart to Rome.

Like the time traveler before him, the king’s conversion was followed by a curious surge of military success. Once was a coincidence, but twice was a trend. The king was now all the more convinced that Asgard was watching him, ensuring his success. Though it would be a long, slow process, the king’s armies were now marching through the south of Breatain Bheag, looting the Pope’s property along the way.

One morning, King Ryan II got out of bed with a curious feeling in his stomach. Was he sick, he thought? He put a hand to his chest, searching for any sort of anomaly, when he realized what it was. He was happy. He hadn’t truly felt that way since the day he was crowned. With his campaigns against Wales a success, the Kingdom of Eire had made its first steps into Britannia. He was living up to his purpose, retaking the Ancestral Lands. If only for today, everything in the world felt like it was all right.

Though the king was happy that day, one of his vassals couldn’t be farther from it. The zealous Chief Aed of Tir Chonaill still failed to miss a Mass, unlike many of his subjects as the king’s heresy spread. “It’s like the End Times,” he thought at the latest pitiful church attendance. He and everyone else were all stuck under a king who declared himself all-powerful, then spit in the face of God a second time to boot. But even that didn’t bother him as much as the fact that most people didn’t even mind. Where was the outrage? Where was the mass prayer to deliver them from this tyranny? Had the whole world gone insane?

“Good to see someone else hasn’t lost their mind,” whispered a voice from behind. The Chief of Tir Chonaill turned around to see Chancellor Conn. “Makes you want to scream, doesn’t it? Having a heretic for a king?”

“Go to Hell, Conn,” scoffed Aed. “I know better than to trust the king’s lapdog.”

“This lapdog’s waiting for the right time to bite.” The chancellor slid into Aed’s own pew. The bishop looked up from his Bible and began to read at a slower pace. “The beauty of being the king’s chancellor is I’m the one who talks to all the vassals. Connect with anyone who may be discontent. To the point they may even be a threat.” Conn was smiling now. Aed’s own face was flush with confusion.

“Are you … are you proposing a revolt?” he whispered.

“You’re in Mass right now, unlike your subjects, so you must love God.”

“With all my heart.”

“Well, right now, you’re in Babylon. This is Egypt, this is Rome. You’re under a tyrant king who cares nothing for God. Anyone not standing up against him isn’t on God’s side. And if you’re not on God’s side, whose are you on?”

“...All right, then,” Aed said with a reluctant nod. “What do you propose?”

The next morning, the king took to his throne to see Chief Aed and his chancellor standing side by side.

“Chief Aed of Tir Chonaill requests an audience, my liege,” said Conn with a little bow.

“Very well, then.” King Ryan II put a hand to his forehead. Noble petitions were a waste of time when there was still so much left to conquer. Norns willing, whatever this was wouldn’t take long. “What is it?”

“Are you serious?” he groaned. The king thought of the plan falling to pieces for the sake of noble entitlement, the future ruined so they could have whatever privileges they wanted to play with. “No, of course not. Leave now.”

“You don’t seem to understand,” said Conn. “If you refuse, it means war.” The king stared at his vassals, so eager to tear apart everything he and his grandfather had given their lives to create. In an instant, his imagination shifted the scenery to a more pleasant image, the two staring vassals’ heads now impaled on pikes.

“Then war it is.”

The first Irish Civil War had begun.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 8: The Irish Civil War of 825

For centuries to come, historians would debate why the War of 825 would extend so far past the year for which it was named. King Ryan II was a gifted commander, as his recent Welsh conquests had proven, while the rebels held a mere four counties to their name. The conflict seemed destined to end as quickly as it began, and modern academics will never be able to satisfactorily explain why it didn’t.

One proposed theory, albeit an unpopular one, was that the king, like most people, never expected the revolt to be a major concern. Even if the vassals’ threats were serious, which he doubted, they’d never find a local army willing to rise against him. What self-respecting Irishman wouldn’t want to be part of a united kingdom?

Though the idea of Ireland divided in two was too absurd for him to consider, the revolt would materialize all the same on October 10. Fortunately, many vassals remained loyal, particularly those within the family. The king was particularly pleased that Tanist Natfraech, who had voted against his absolute rule, stayed by his side during the war. Though the brothers disagreed on how to best carry out the plan, they both knew the plan’s future must be protected.

What the rebels lacked in numbers compared to the king, however, they compensated in organization. While the king’s forces scrambled across the island to begin properly coordinating against this unexpected enemy, the revolt laid siege to Connacht at a superhuman pace, with only the meager levies within the duchy to defend. It seemed that King Ryan II’s tyranny would be brought to an end after all, at least during the first year of the war.

As soon as the king had managed to assemble a proper force of his own, however, he wasted no time compensating for his early losses. A massive army soon stormed upon Dubhlinn and captured Chief Iomhar, the weakest link of the rebel faction. A dull man already rendered infirm by the time of the civil war, the king had never suspected Iomhar even capable of a revolt, even if his weaknesses did nothing to hinder the chief’s desire for dukedom. Nevertheless, he was a ruler so inept that it was only by the grace of his wife and council he had any military skill at all, leaving Iomhar as the king’s captive within the year.

With one of the rebel leaders safely removed, the king’s armies turned towards Tir Chonaill. After all, it was Chief Aed who had begun the conflict with his ultimatum. The lands of Chief Conn were initially ignored, being of a lesser concern than those of the public leader. Soon, nearly every civilian in Tir Chonaill, be they noble or peasant, refused to leave the safety of their homes for fear of the menacing army that laid waste to their streets.

Chief Aed’s own forces were still occupied with sieges in Connacht at the time, oblivious to the destruction waiting in the revolt’s capital. By the time a weary messenger was able to reach Aed’s camp, he had scarce time to assemble a force capable of returning home to defend. The army was led by Chief Aed’s most trusted priest, Bishop Cu-Cen-Mathair of Rath Bhoth. Though his faith had waned in recent years, and the troubling thoughts that plagued his mind hampered his abilities as a priest, nobody could deny the bishop was a community patriot. He loved his church, as he did all of its visitors, and he would die before he saw it looted by the army of a heretic king.

As the bishop’s forces rode through the pillaged streets of Tir Chonaill, the sight of what had become of their home was too much for most of the soldiers to bear. This time last year, people were going about their business, buying food in the markets, attending services in the church, and nobody gave a moment’s thought to what issues their liege had with the king. Now the streets were lined with nothing but debris and the hoofprints of enemy horses. How could their own ruler do this to their home? Wasn’t the king meant to be a just man? The only one in the army who felt even the slightest solace in the horrid scene was the bishop himself, pleased to see his church still stood intact.

“Near the chief’s barracks, Father!” shouted a scout peering into the distance. Bishop Cu-Cen-Mathair led the army further into the town, where the king’s men looted what supplies they could from Chief Aed’s own armory.

King and priest stared at each other’s forces for a few moments, not a man in either army daring to make the first move. To Bishop Cu-Cen-Mathair, he was looking at a tyrant, an aspiring Caesar who wished to bring about a godless regime in which all good, innocent men would suffer. To King Ryan II, he was looking at a servant to an archaic order, the very forces of authority his grandfather had traveled back to warn the world about. He wants to interfere with the plan, let the horrible future he was sworn to prevent begin anew.

Though history would call this the Battle of Tir Chonaill, to both of its leaders it wasn’t about Tir Chonaill, or even about Eire. Both men saw the other as a threat to the entire world, and for that he would have to die.

Despite the considerable casualties his forces suffered as the enemy fought to defend their homes, King Ryan II somehow found himself alone with the bishop, standing in front of his church with a sword in hand. He wasted no time at charging towards the threat to his grandfather’s vision.

Soon the bishop lay on the ground, helpless. He looked to the cloudy sky above, a serene painting nothing like the carnage below. Somehow, this felt right. What better to look at than Heaven during his final moments on Earth? The view was ruined soon after by the king standing over him.

The king watched the squirming, bloodied priest, analyzing him like he was what remained of a strange new animal. Tradition dictated that defenseless enemies be captured, not killed. But tradition also dictated the king be obeyed. Bishop Cu-Cen-Mathair was a threat to the well-being of the future, and there was no doubt he’d hinder the plan again if he ever had the opportunity.

The king plunged his spear into the bishop’s stomach, making sure to finish him as quickly as possible. Strength, but not cruelty.

With Tir Chonaill under royal occupation, King Ryan II turned his attention towards Westmeath, home of his former chancellor. Resistance in the province paled compared to that in the revolt’s capital, and Westmeath capitulated soon after the brief siege had begun. As the king took survey of the spoils of his recent victory, he caught sight of a familiar face among the new prisoners.

“My liege!” said Chief Conn with audible relief. “Thank God you’re here! The commanders aren’t listening to me. I wasn’t part of the revolt! Not really. I’d only joined it to sabotage it from within!” The captive vassal smiled as best as he could, stretching out folded hands to his king.

“Could’ve put up less of a fight when we arrived, then.”

“That was for appearances! A good diplomat has to be subtle, you know. If I made what I was doing too obvious, the rebels would have locked me up!”

“And now, instead, I’ve locked you up.” The smile disappeared from the count’s face.

“You have to believe me, my lord. Haven’t I been a faithful councillor all these years? You’d never have taken Seisyllwg without the work I did finding claims for you! I’d say I’ve done more to help Eire than anybody else! After you and your house, of course. Can’t you … can’t you tell them all this is just a misunderstanding? I’m on your side, I always have been, I swear to God!”

“Take them to the dungeon,” ordered the king to the nearest commander. “We’ll figure out what to do with them when this is all over.”

“Figure out what to do?” repeated Conn. “What does that mean? That means it’s temporary, right? Lock me up until the war ends, then let me go? Have to keep up appearances, yes? Just like I did?” The king walked off without another word, retreating to the comfort of his tent as he prepared for a long night of strategy. “What are you going to do with me, my lord? I need to know!”

While the king’s forces were occupied with Westmeath, Chief Aed focused his efforts on recapturing his home. As their liege rode through the streets, many residents of Tir Chonaill assumed it was safe to leave their homes again. Soon business, and rudimentary fortifications, had returned to the land, if only for the time it would take for the king’s forces to hear of the news.

“This was it,” thought King Ryan II as he stared at the hastily rebuilt walls of Tir Chonaill. This was the last obstacle before he could put this silly hindrance behind him. Three years, he’d wasted fighting his own vassals. Three years closer to the catastrophe his grandfather had warned him about. He didn’t intend to waste another day.

In a haste to build any protection, no matter how thin, Tir Chonaill’s new walls were built in only a few weeks. The king’s trebuchets demolished them in considerably less time. The civilians of Tir Chonaill looked on in horror as a stampede of horses ran through their streets once again.

“Back inside!” ordered the king to anyone in his way. Strength but not cruelty, he reminded himself. He didn’t want to spill any more blood than necessary, though necessary some would be. He and his army had a singular objective. Find Aed.

With the town’s pitiful resistance already all but gone, the king soon found himself combing each room for Aed’s own castle, in search of the revolt’s leader.

“We’ve searched everywhere, my liege,” reported one of his soldiers. “He’s not here.” The king stopped in thought, if only for a moment. If Aed wasn’t home, he’d have to be seeking refuge somewhere safe, or at least where he considered safe. A sanctuary.

The king’s men marched to the bishopric of Rath Bhoth, the one building in the county still untouched by the war. He expected all that remained of Aed’s army standing outside the church’s doors, preparing for a final defense. What waited outside instead caught him off guard. Chief Aed was standing at the church’s doors with his hands held up, facing the king’s army alone and unarmed.

“What’s this?” asked the king. “Some sort of trick?”

“No trick.” Chief Aed adjusted his eyepatch, the horrible reminder of defeats past. “Just terms of surrender. Stay out of the church, and you can have me. You can have it all.”

“As long as the Pope interferes with my business, I’ve a right to do the same with his.”

“No, no, you … not THE Church. This church! Promise you won’t go inside, and I’ll surrender.”

“Why? What’s in there?”

“People are in there, Ryan. Ordinary people praying to God for their lives, for all of this to be over. The bishop here was a friend of mine, you know. He was a good man, looked out for his congregation. And you killed him right here. You’ve destroyed all I have twice now, and I’d rather rot in your dungeon than see you do the same to the one thing left. Promise me, Ryan. Say you’ll stay out of the church.” The chief was beginning to cry now. The king’s nostrils flared before turning to his commanders.

“Put him in irons,” he ordered. “And any of you stand too close to the church you’ll be going with him. The war is over!”

“Know this, though,” said Chief Aed as the cuffs clamped around his wrists. “I was willing to give everything, even my own freedom, to protect Eire. You were willing to destroy it. Which of us really won today?”

“Um … me. I won. That seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?”

With the surrender of Aed in 828, the civil war came to an end, with all of Eire back again under the rule of the time traveler’s dynasty. During the celebrations that followed, King Ryan II, and many of his secret peers, made a special announcement: a public conversion.

It was Catholic zealots who stood in the way of his absolute rule, and Catholic priests who supported the revolt against him. Jesus Christ Himself was on the side of the rebellion, and yet still it failed. To the king, his triumph in the civil war proof that his kingdom had earned the favor of Odin. With the blessings of the Aesir, he knew he had nothing to fear, public perception included.

The king traveled across his kingdom with three fat sows, prepared for a series of public sacrifices to Eire’s new patron deities. At Caill Tomair, he offered a pig to Thor, who the forest was sacred to. At Ard Mhacha, where in centuries past St. Patrick spread his lies, he offered a pig to Odin, praying that his own rule be half as just as the Allfather’s. Finally, at Rath Bhoth, where the civil war had come to an end, he bled a pig outside the church for Tyr, thanking him for all his past successes in war and praying for many more in the years to come.

Though the sacrifice was performed right outside the cathedral’s doors, the king was careful not to touch the building itself.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 9: Other People

King Ryan II wandered through the endless field, brushing away the fog with each step he took. There was never a new sight. Nothing but a flat black field as far as he could see, which admittedly wasn’t much with the dense fog that surrounded him. The unpleasant scenery was a minor concern, however, compared to the circumstances. He had no idea where he was, or how he got here.

After what seemed like hours of aimless wandering, he caught sight of another person. A woman was standing in the distance, shrouded in a black cloak.

“Excuse me!” cried the king, running towards her. “My lady! I … I think I’m lost, can you help me?”

“I can,” said the woman. Her voice was stern, almost emotionless, and yet it was still strangely calming to hear her. “What do you need?”

“I need … I need to get back home. Back to…” The king put a hand to his forehead. It was so hard to think straight. “...Airgialla! Back to Airgialla.”

“It could help to retrace your steps,” suggested the woman. “What were you doing before you arrived?”

“I was … I think I was at a desk, and … I can’t remember,” he weakly admitted. “I don’t know how … I can’t remember anything.”

“Easy, now. Calm down.” The woman put a hand to the king’s cheek, though it was little comfort. She was as cold as the air that surrounded both of them. “You must remember something, anything. Go back as far as you need to.”

“I remember…” The king squinted, mustering all of the energy his mind could spare. “I remember my name. My name is Ryan. Ryan mac Aillil. But everyone called me … something else.”

“Stop to think about it. Maybe it’ll come to you in a second.”

“Second! Yes! Ryan the Second! King Ryan the Second!” In the middle of a world of despair, the king managed to smile. “I’m a king! I’m the King of Eire!”

“Kings lead very busy lives. No wonder you can’t keep track of it all.”

“Busy, yes…” Slowly but surely, the king’s past was beginning to return to him. “I remember … a war. A civil war! And I won! And then…”

“And then you abandoned the White Christ for older gods, gods of the distant north.”

“Yes, I … wait, how do you know that?” The king pointed at the woman. “Who are you?”

“A friend. Who want to help you remember. What happened next?”

“After I converted … that’s right, there were sacrifices. First of animals, then of men.”

“Of men?” asked the woman. “Didn’t somebody close to you warn you of strength, but not cruelty?”

“Strength, but not…” The king rubbed his temples in frustration. So much knowledge had already returned to him, finding there were still gaps angered him beyond words. “Where was that from? The Bible?”

“A different source. One you never stopped believing in.”

“Wait, I know now!” said the king with relief. “This wasn’t cruelty, it was justice. I didn’t offer innocents to Odin. I offered cruel men. Men who wished to do my kingdom harm...”

The king closed his eyes and smiled contentedly. He could still hear the final pleas of the treacherous chancellor before the dagger pierced his spine. “Yes, and men who wished to deceive the good people of the kingdom with falsehoods…”

“I thought the point of a sacrifice was to give up things you would miss,” said the woman.

“I did lose things I missed! Not at the blot, but after … other lands heard of the Catholic king’s conversion. Didn’t take it well, took out their frustration at whatever pagans they could…”

“The holy set aflame…” mused the woman. “I cannot imagine how you felt.”

“There weren’t words for it. I wanted…” The king’s fists clenched involuntarily. He could remember the day he heard of Irminsul’s destruction. Remember the unbearable pain inside. “I wanted to run across the sea, find every last person who had a hand in it, and choke the life out of them while their families watched.”

“But you didn’t do that, did you?”

“No,” he answered with regret. “I had to settle for Christians closer to home. I remember … hiring a smith, yes. I forged a special axe just for that day, replace that worthless chicken bone in the treasury, cleave some skulls with fresh steel.”

“Then I brought my armies to Breatain Bheag, found all the followers of the White Christ that I could.”

“And what did you do then?” The king closed his eyes, letting the visions of a lengthy campaign overtake him. This time the memories only came in fragments, bits and pieces He saw churches, and flames. Heard singing, and screaming. The most vivid memories couldn’t be seen or heard at all. They were only words, echoes of “Plan” and “Irminsul” written again and again like the scribbling of a deranged monk.

“I did … what was necessary to retake the Ancestral Lands,” he answered. “Strength, but not cruelty.”

“You know, I think I’ve figured it out. I know where I am now.”

“Do you, now?” asked the woman. “Please tell me. I’d be delighted to hear your answer.”

“This is…” The king stopped to collect himself. His mind was nearly at full strength, yet he felt so weak. “This is Valhalla, isn’t it? I’m … am I dead?” At this, the woman pulled back her hood, letting the king see her for the first time. She was beautiful, yet terrifying, her face permanently locked into a stoic frown. More unnerving was her skin. Half of her body was a dark, icy blue, divided cleanly among the center.

“Valhalla is for those who fell in battle,” said the daughter of Loki. “You fought bravely many times, King Ryan, but that wasn’t how you died. This is my realm. This is Hel.” The king stared blankly at the goddess as the reality of the situation began to sink in.

“No…” he mumbled. “That … that can’t be right. All those battles, really? I didn’t die in one? No Welshman ever got a lucky arrow in?”

“It seems your final memory still eludes you,” said Hel. “Allow me to assist you.” The goddess put a blue finger to the king’s forehead. In an instant, he was back home, back in Airgialla. He sat at a private desk, facing a mountain of papers demanding his full attention all at once. On one corner of the table lay a crude map of Britannia, a giant island of too many kings and dukes to remember, and he was expected to conquer all of them. Beneath it was another map, even less accurate, depicting all of Europe.

Next to them was a stack of domestic affairs, vassals and courtiers all expecting him to do something or other. At the top of the list was a request concerning a border dispute between two counts. The previous land survey conducted to determine the boundaries of their provinces was found unsatisfactory, and they wanted him to do it again, at the expense of all the other assignments waiting. Domestic affairs were a Sisyphean errand. No matter how hard he worked to diminish the stack, the demands always grew larger. By now, the list was so large and disorderly it had mostly obscured the ledgers for the royal treasury, still awaiting his verification. And of course, there was his grandfather’s book, its withered pages now a dull yellow. The plan that must always be upheld, be on his mind all the time.

The king closed his eyes, tried his best to shut all the thoughts and demands and obligations out of his head. He wished, just once, he didn’t have to think about any of it. He wished he could just rest. He wished he could just…

“I died at my desk,” said the king, as his surroundings returned to the afterlife. “Me, a king. That’s a sad way to go, isn’t it?”

“Few choose their deaths. And those that do are even sadder.”

“So, all that work, all that fighting, and … this is what I get? No Valhalla?”

“Don’t despair, good king.” The fog cleared, and the king found himself in a bright green meadow, like the Irish wilds he rarely got to see, save from his window. “I promise you, only good things await for you in Hel. There are meadows, and mansions, and even people you might recognize…”

The goddess stepped to the side, revealing a man standing behind her. The king immediately recognized him, despite never seeing him like this before. He was young again, his cheeks unscarred, his mouth without foam, and both hands still intact, but the structure of his face was unmistakable. More importantly, he wore the exact same crown as the king.

“H … hello again,” said King Ryan II. The visitor in front of him smiled, though only slightly, before opening his arms and embracing the king in a hug.

“How fares the plan?” asked the time traveler.

“Well, last I checked,” answered the new arrival. “There’s still much to do, of course, but I have faith the future’s in good hands.”

 

[DiagorasCinna]

First of all, I'd like to give a big thank you to @Lord Decobius for nominating me as Character Writer of the Week! I've been going through a lot of doubts lately, both with this AAR and writing in general, and it warms my heart seeing so many people enjoy what I have so far! I guess I need to find a successor for next week, though.

Chapter 10: Where the Demons Dwell

As the crown was lowered by a local Gothi onto the head of the third King of Eire, the crowd erupted into tears. King Natfraech himself said nothing, save the oath of coronation. As the chief of Tir Eoghain, he always considered himself a man of the people, beloved by noble and commoner alike, a trend that seemed to continue on this day. Inside, however, he scarcely felt like a man at all. Even ignoring the unique burden of his family, there was something dehumanizing about the crown. He was no longer allowed to be himself, to be a person, not when the fate of a kingdom rested on every decision he made. He’d have refused the crown if he could, but he knew nobody else was better equipped for the royal duties. He had been humbled through pride.

These concerns only grew when he read his grandfather’s instructions, or at least as much within his understanding, for the first time. He’d had a lifetime of education in the basics of the plan, yet even that had failed to prepare him for seeing it in full. Natfraech thought back to the day he voted against his late brother’s plan for absolute rule. It all made sense now, he thought. The plan was like an elaborate mechanism, enormous yet delicate. It only took the failure of a single part to mangle it all beyond recognition.

King Ryan II was a soldier at heart. His home was the battlefield, a chaotic environment where those next to you could be killed at any moment. He was used to unpredictable events. King Natfraech had always preferred the study of mathematics, a world of proofs and logic. With math, everything made sense. Every equation had a solution that could be reached through a rational method. Now he’d been tasked with managing more variables than any one man could hope to keep track of, where he could do everything right and still very well fail, not that he’d live to know. The plan wasn’t math; it was madness.

One number weighed especially hard on the mathematician king’s mind: at 46 years of age, his reign would likely be a short one. In many ways this was a relief, knowing the royal burdens wouldn’t trouble him for long. However, it left him with scant time to train his successor, whoever that would be. Before King Ryan II’s death, Natfraech’s heirdom was repeatedly taken and returned at the ever-changing will of the vassals. Tanistry was a flawed system, the king had decided, and though he wouldn’t live to see its end he hoped his tanist, whoever it would be, would share his sentiments and work towards a better law.

Though King Natfraech’s reign was brief, it did bring an important milestone to the Kingdom of Eire. In April 837, the king’s mother, Countess Bernegildis of Mortain, passed away, passing her title to her son. Though the loss troubled the king, he knew nothing could be done about it. After all, she was quite old.

With this, the time traveler’s kingdom now possessed its first territory in the European mainland, an important, if largely symbolic, step in the quest to retake the Ancestral Lands.

In the end, however, for all the promise he held before his coronation, King Natfraech’s only true achievement as king would be to outlive his mother. In 840, old age brought his brief reign to a close. He passed away in his sleep, clutching his grandfather’s book in his hands. Hearsay soon spread through the kingdom, even among those who knew nothing of the mysterious royal book, that the king had been exposed to some sort of horrible truth, a revelation so maddening it drove him to death. In time, though, these rumors, much like the once-loved king himself, were forgotten.

In his place was King Cainchomrac, a son of one of the time traveler’s matrilineally wed daughters. Despite his unique ancestry, Cainchomrac was, at his core, a simple man. Skilled in the art of diplomacy, though poor in intrigue, Cainchomrac was less interested in conquering people than befriending them. He was a man who always spoke honestly, and assumed those around him did the same. Though he knew his crown came with an oath to uphold his grandfather’s plan, it would only be done with extreme reluctance. Like Natfraech before him, he had begun to rue the laws of tanistry that granted him the throne to begin with. It was a system that seemed to always elect able kings, but not willing ones.

Though he has little interest in fighting, he knew war was expected of his ancestral obligation. Fortunately for him, as more citizens of Eire abandoned Christ in favor of older gods, organizations appeared in which the new king could train his martial prowess.

His membership in the Wolf Warriors brought King Cainchomrac a new interest, not only in the art of war, but in his faith. Gothar within the society hoped to educate the king, explain that his home was once host to a whole set of local gods, though not the Aesir. The cathedrals that now covered his kingdom were the products of invasion, he was told, a hostile attempt to deprive Eire of the old gods.

One evening, the king had difficulty sleeping, tortured by thoughts of the Aesir and Vanir, of the Tuatha De Danann, of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Though Eire was now a pagan nation, many subjects stayed true to the teachings of St. Patrick. “Foreign invasion,” the phrase repeated in his head, again and again. Though most churches had long been converted to shrines to Odin and Thor, many still kept their crosses intact. Was his kingdom still victim to a long invasion as he slept? Could Roman agents be silently working to subvert everything his grandfather had done to save the future?

In an unusual burst of sleepless panic, Cainchomrac hurried out of his bed and staggered to his study. Lighting a candle, he aimlessly flipped through the ancient pages of his grandfather’s book. There was so much in The Plan, the time traveler must have advised something specific he could use. Soon, a sentence caught his eye, faintly scrawled in the margins of one of the page in crude, panicked handwriting.

“Don’t trust the priests.”

King Cainchomrac didn’t remember seeing that sentence before, although he’d only half paid attention during his original reading. What did it mean, he wondered? Should he not listen to what the Gothar told him? After all, they were priests, of a sort.

No, he decided. His grandfather was writing in a Catholic kingdom. “Priests” could only mean the priests of the White Christ. This part of the plan deserved special attention. Though those before him spread the word of the Aesir throughout Eire, they still patiently suffered the foreign invaders that remained. If it weren’t for them we’d have the whole Isles by now, a voice in Cainchomrac’s head told him. Christianity must be purged from the Kingdom of Eire.

An opportunity to stop the foreign threat presented itself in the English county of Wiltshire, just outside of Eire’s new Welsh borders. There, the Gothar told him, lay Stonehenge, a magnificent construction of the pagans of old. Before the Angles, the Romans, and Jesus Christ, it stood strong, a testament to the power of the pagans of old. Back in the mainland, he was told, the Christians claimed outrage that Jerusalem was under the rule of the Muslim Abbasids. Yet just outside the king’s own borders, they controlled the Jerusalem of a far older faith, regarding it as little more than a curiosity.

Stonehenge had to be liberated.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 11: yesmen

“Rocks,” said Duke Eadweald of Wessex to the neighboring nobles that had gathered in his castle. “That’s what the crazy heathen killed so many good men over. That’s what one of my own burghers was sacrificed to a false idol over. He didn’t want money. He’s spending money fixing the rocks up, my agents say. He didn’t even want the title he took from me, I don’t think. He just wanted the rocks.”

“They are very big rocks, aren’t they?” asked the Duke of Lancaster. “Can’t fault an Irishman for being impressed.”

“Our host has a point,” said Duke Gospatric of Mercia. “The Irish may be happy with Wiltshire for now, but if you think they’ll stop there you’re dumber than they are. We need the one thing that Cainchom...cainker…”

“Just call him King C,” said Eadweald. “It’s easier.”

“There’s something King C has that we don’t: organization. The whole damn island working together to serve one king. All together we’re still bigger than he is. He’d stand no chance against us if we were one kingdom.”

“And who would the king be, I wonder?” asked the Duke of Essex. “We all know you’d stab your mother for another acre of land, Gospatric. Your pitch won’t fool anybody.”

“Eadweald,” Gospatric pointed at his host. “Are there churches in Wiltshire?”

“Of course there are. It’s not savage land.”

“Not yet it isn’t. And those churches have priests, right? A sweet old bishop?”

“He’s hardly sweet, but an old bishop, yes.”

“Well, the old bishop is dead. If King C hasn’t torn out his guts for Odin yet, he’s sharpening the knife. The church is gone too. Probably taking it apart one stone at a time to give him more rocks for his little circle!” An uneasy laughter circled among the crowd

“The fact is, I’m the biggest of us here,” Gospatric continued. “And as I see it we’re all about to have a king no matter what. The question is, will he be an English Christian who wants to protect you, or an Irish heathen who wants to throw you to the wolves? I know which one I’d pick.” The crowd was silent now, each of the nobles glancing to each other, as if any of them had a hint as to how to respond. Eventually, Duke Eadweald walked up to Gospatric, a guest in his own home, and got down on one knee. After some initial discomfort, everyone else had done the same.

The Kingdom of England had been formed, with zealous Gospatric as its first king.

When news of the rival kingdom first reached Airgialla, a panic overcame King Cainchomrac. For as long as The Plan had been existed, the only advantage the family from the future had in the near-impossible task of taking the Ancestral Lands was that their neighbors were as small and conquerable as they. The time traveler had little to say in his writings about the original history he hoped to erase. After all, if the Plan was followed such information would be useless. One aspect of the old timeline was made clear, though, lest the Plan be brought to an early end: Ireland must beware England.

In truth, however, the gathering of English nobles was far less a threat to the plan than one that occurred a short ride from the king’s own home. By now, Cainchomrac had proven the most controversial ruler in the history of a dynasty with ample competition. Disloyalty had run rampant through the kingdom, growing more and more suspicious of their ruler’s claims that everything was done in the name of a better future.

“Si tibi voluerit persuadere frater tuus filius matris tuae, aut filius tuus vel filia, sive uxor quae est in sinu tuo, aut amicus, quem diligis ut animam tuam, clam dicens: Eamus, et serviamus diis alienis, quos ignoras tu, et patres tui, cunctarum in circuitu gentium, quae juxta vel procul sunt, ab initio usque ad finem terrae, non acquiescas ei, nec audias, neque parcat ei oculus tuus ut miserearis et occultes eum, sed statim interficies: sit primum manus tua super eum, et postea omnis populus mittat manum. Lapidibus obrutus necabitur: quia voluit te abstrahere a Domino Deo tuo, qui eduxit te de terra Aegypti, de domo servitutis: ut omnis Israel audiens timeat, et nequaquam ultra faciat quippiam hujus rei simile.” The bishop looked up from his Vulgate to face the crowd in front of him at his. Most of them were listening intently, staring with a furious determination as if they hung on to every word, though they didn’t understand any of it. A few others were simply there for the ale. It was pitiful, having to hold Mass in a tavern, but doing it at “The Temple of Odin,” as it was now called, was out of the question. At least he was far from alone in his outrage.

“That means that if someone you know worships false gods, they must be put to death.” The priest banged a fist on a nearby barstool. “Not coddled, not invited into your home. Killed. It’s a commandment that hasn’t received its due attention as of late. When Old Queen Ylva got off the boat all those years ago, she should have been stoned. Instead we gave her idols a space in Eire. We broke God’s law, and we’re paying the punishment for it. We didn’t kill the heathens, so now they’re killing us. They’re looting our own churches, building shrines to their idols everywhere they can. They’re sacrificing people, for God’s sake! And as long as we stay quiet and let them do it, we might as well be doing it ourselves!” With this, the crowd shifted from the traditional silence of Mass to the raucous cheering of the tavern they were sitting in.

“I say we kill the king!” screamed one of the attendees. The crowd grew even louder now. The bishop smiled, but said nothing. The dignity of the cloth prevented him from seconding such a statement, but he didn’t see a need to silence it either.

“Ite, missa est,” he said contentedly. With that, the crowd hurried out of the tavern, every one of them in search of arms. God had given them a commandment, and they could ignore it no longer.

By this point, Eire had been no stranger to revolt. Too many failed to understand all the sacrifices The Plan required, who would happily jeopardize the future for their own selfish gains. King Cainchomrac paid the newest form of rebellion no mind at first, confident that, in time, it would be crushed like all those before it.

In doing so, however, the king underestimated how many followers of the White Christ still lived within his borders. The revolutionary rhetoric of one bishop soon spread throughout the clergy, incensing Christians across Eire to stand against the tyrant.

The rebels were supported not just by church, but state. Shortly after the Christian revolt had begun, fleets of missionaries sailed from England, hoping to spread the word of God to pagan lands. Officially, these visitors denied any connection to King Gospatric. They were sent by the church, if not there of their own free will. They were not English priests, they insisted to any authorities that stopped him, but priests who happened to be from England. However, by some means or other, the king could never be sure of the precise contents of their sermon, nor what supplies entered the kingdom aboard English boats.

As the population’s ire festered, the revolt soon graduated to a civil war, with Irish and English Christians (still insisting they were independent volunteers, of course) alike taking arms against King Cainchomrac’s comparatively small forces. While the diplomat had learned much of combat during his time in the Wolf Warriors, no training could prepare him for five thousand men storming the capital walls.

The mood inside the royal palace of Airgialla was difficult to think about. A thick sense of anxiety seemed to permeate the air, infecting anyone inside it. Most people, including the king’s own wife and children, sat in the corner of a room behind barricaded doors, waiting in terror for the end of the siege, whichever form it took. Others were running across the castle in a panic, looking for their loved ones, or improvised weapons, or some intangible sense of safety that surely must have been in some room.

Only one person did neither. King Cainchomrac knelt in front of a small shrine, eyes closed, his only company a crude wooden carving of a one-eyed man. He attempted to shut himself off from the panic of the outside world, take no notice of it, and hope it similarly ignored the fear in his heart. Once he was calm, or as close to it as the circumstances allowed, he folded his hands and began to pray.

“Oh, great Odin … Dagda … Jupiter … Jesus Christ, if you’re able to listen…” he pleaded. “I … I don’t know what’s about to happen. I never wanted any of this. I swear on all my ancestors, everything I did was to help the kingdom. I don’t know why they have to hate me so … I just wanted to do good, but they couldn’t … wouldn’t understand me.” The king grimaced, plagued by intrusive thoughts that seemed to have no hope of ever stopping. It was getting harder to think straight. The faint noise of besieging soldiers was growing ever louder.

“I need this to work, gods.” With nobody but Odin watching, the king began to shed a tear. “Maybe I don’t deserve your favor, but The Plan is bigger than I am. I need it to keep going, even after I’m gone. All this work, all the suffering that’s been brought for it … it can’t all be for nothing. If there’s any justice in this world, it can’t all be for nothing. People have died for it. Family’s died. I’ll die, by the looks of it. They can do what they want to me, if that’s what it will take, but please, don’t let The Plan suffer.” The king lowered his head, crying and concentrating all at once, trying to sift through the fear and the sorrow and give the prayer the energy it deserved.

A stiff, cool breeze blew through the indoor shrine. The king could feel the soft vibrations of footsteps behind him. He turned around to see a man he couldn’t quite recognize. He didn’t even seem like a person at all. He was more like the vague impression of a person, the hazy memory left after waking from a dream. King Cainchomrac forgot the stranger’s face even as he stood there.

“Whatever your faults, nobody can deny your piety, Cainchomrac. Not many kings would humble themselves like this.”

“They couldn’t hold you off, then?” retorted the king. “Fine, then. Do it quick.”

“I am not here to do you harm,” said the stranger. “I’m here because I heard you.”

“Heard … me?” The king looked back at the carving of Odin. “Are you…?”

“A friend. A friend who knows of The Plan. That’s all you need to know.” The stranger adjusted his cloak, further obscuring his already inscrutable face. “It’s a worthy goal to work towards, isn’t it?”

“‘Worthy’ doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s all I can think about anymore. When I’m not at work on the plan, I’m berating myself for neglecting it.” Cainchomrac squeezed his arm in anxiety.

“There must be other pursuits in the life of a king.”

“King’s just a job, and I doubt it’s much better than the fields. I slave away all day, piss off the world without even trying…” Even with the stranger’s conversation, he could hear the readying of catapults in the distance. “...and it’s lonely. By Freya, is it lonely. Being king means you’re never a normal person, to anybody. Councillors are probably all plotting against me, courtiers are afraid to talk to me any more than they have to, even my family’s only here for their royal duty … only reason I haven’t taken off my crown and walked off into the sea is because of The Plan. I need to do it. I need to save the world. Without it, I might as well not be a person at all.”

“The world is not yet meant to fall,” mused the stranger. “I come to you with an offer. I can end this revolt, make it as if it never happened. I can guarantee Eire never falls from within, nor wants for money.”

“Bullshit. They’re at the walls right now. Nobody can do that.”

“I assure you I can. It just requires a certain … command.”

“But not for free, I take it? What do you want in return?”

“Only your understanding that this is temporary. It must be ordinary men who decide the fate of the world. When all of Albion is under your rule, my protection will expire.” A storm of footsteps were heard in the halls. An army had entered the castle.

“Well, you can’t make things worse, can you? Fine, I accept.” With a curt bow, the stranger stepped out of the room, leaving the king alone by the shrine once again. Moments later, a courtier peeked through the door.

“My liege?” he asked. “Duke Tudur of Seisyllwg requests an audience.” The king stepped out of the shrine to see the leader of the rebel forces, sheepishly avoiding eye contact with his enemy. Behind him stood a legion of soldiers, each of them looking similarly ashamed.

“We surrender,” said the duke.

“...What?” asked the king. He craned his neck at the enemy forces in front of him. “...Really? Why?”

“Never mind why.” The duke’s eyes widened. “Just … do what you want with us. We’re done. It’s over.”

As the rebels willingly lined into the king’s dungeons, Cainchomrac felt more terrified than before, despite his victory. They were on the verge of victory. There was no reason whatsoever for them to surrender, yet they had. It felt like he, or the stranger he spoke to, had cheated somehow, tore apart reality to force a shape that made no sense. He wasn’t sure what it was, but powerful forces somewhere had a stake in The Plan.

Once his armies were returned to full force, the king expanded his presence on the mainland, conquering the French county of Caen through a naval invasion. To the inhabitants of the province, the brief war seemed an impossible sight. Who could ever imagine boats of soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy? It didn’t take long for Caen to surrender, earning Eire the contempt of even more neighbors.

But the war in France would prove to be nothing more than a small prelude to Cainchomrac’s greatest triumph. Though it was through his mother he was part of the time traveler’s dynasty, the king--and nobody else--still remembered his father: King Uuen II of Pictland, a ruler so unpopular he was assassinated in Cainchomrac’s infancy. From the start, The Plan had ordained Scotland (as its new Frankish rulers now called it) as part of the Ancestral Lands, but for the current king this was doubly true. It was time to avenge his father, to reclaim his birthright.

With Scottish forces still recovering from a recent civil war against their foreign liege, the conflict proved trivially easy for Eire. As his army laid siege to Din Eidyn, Cainchomrac scarcely thought about the war he was in. His mind was still in the past, of when he was on the other side of the siege. “I shouldn’t be here now,” he thought. In the first days after the revolt, he suspected the stranger who blessed him with protection was Odin. He since decided that couldn’t be the case. After all, the stranger had two eyes … did he? What did he look like, again?

He was no normal man, though, that much was clear. Eire had the favor of the divine. King Cainchomrac believed this long before the revolt, he believed it after, and as he snatched the crown off of the humiliated King Arnoul’s head and lowered it onto his own, he believed it more strongly than ever before.

By the end of the Irish-Scottish War in 862, King Cainchomrac boasted the thrones of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. Though the English threat remained strong, Cainchomrac felt his realm was large enough to warrant a new title, an announcement for the entire world to pay heed to.

As the newly-crowned Emperor sacrificed a sow to Odin at the end of his coronation, he looked at the crowd of admirers. He once complained he was a lonely man, yet for just one moment as he gazed at the field of cheering subjects, he wasn’t.

He looked down at the pig, only to see something in the corner of his eye. He looked back at the crowd. Standing in the back, was there … somebody he recognized? He scanned the area again, only to see nothing of interest.

Maybe it was in his head. Best not to think about it. Best to enjoy the moment.

The Irish Empire had begun.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 12: On Thee, Our Hopes We Fix

Eanhere woke up from the most wonderful dream. He dreamt that he was a king.

This alone didn’t mean too much. Even after he woke, he was still the King of England, for whatever that honor was worth. In the dream, he was king over all the Isles. England, Scotland, Wales … even Ireland. He strained his head, trying to remember as many details in the dream as possible, when he remembered a crowd of protesters. Irish protesters. The Irish were angry about the English taking over their land! Ridiculous. How did he not realize it was a dream until he woke up?

But his imagined rule extended far beyond the Isles. In his dream, Eanhere controlled more land than Alexander and Trajan, combined and tripled: the largest empire of all time. He ruled much of the Middle East, still under the rule of the Abbasid Caliphate in the waking world. He ruled Egypt, and Nubia, and even the uncharted southernmost depths of Africa. He ruled the distant kingdoms of India, known to him and all his subjects only by vague reputation. He even controlled lands in distant unknown continents, the fictional product of a sleeping imagination.

A moment later, another detail of the dream hit him: there was a song. A song his millions of subjects would sing to honor him. There were lyrics to it … what were they? Were they even real words at all, or perhaps the same nonsense he saw when he attempted to read in a dream? The lyrics were lost, but the melody still lingered in his head: Hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmhmmhmm…

“Daddy! Daddy!” shouted young Princess Sigrid as she ran into the room. “Wake up! Wake up!”

“I’m up, dear, calm down.” King Eanhere lifted his daughter up onto the bed, careful not to place her too close to her still sleeping mother.

“It’s Gorgeous Day! It’s Gorgeous Day!”

“It is a gorgeous day, isn’t it?” The king looked at the rising sun out the window.

“No, no, Daddy! It’s Gorgeous Day!” The realization hit the king. It was April, wasn’t it?

“The festival is today, Daddy! You’ll take me, won’t you? Please?”

“Don’t I always?” the king said with a laugh. “Come on, now, wash up and we’ll be off.”

The streets of Lundenwic were stuffed with villagers, laughing and dancing with glee, oblivious to what lay outside their walls. The royal family paraded the roads, accompanied by a sizable escort of armored soldiers. Eanhere waved to the crowds, attempting the most earnest smile he could. As far as his subjects were concerned, there was no reason to not be happy today, and as their king he had an obligation to pretend that was so. In the back of his head, the song from his dreams kept repeating: Hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmhmmhmm…

“Daddy?” whispered Sigrid, tugging at the sleeves of her father’s robe. “Why do we have Gorgeous Day?”

“You asked me that last year, didn’t you?”

“Well, I want to know again!”

“Just tell her the story,” whispered Queen Aethlthryth through the teeth of her smile. “She’ll be begging all festival if you don’t.”

“Well, if it would please my liege,” said the king with a mock bow, as his daughter laughed. “It isn’t Gorgeous Day, dear. It’s George’s Day. Saint George’s Day. We hold it to celebrate Saint George.”

“And who is he?”

“He’s the patron saint of England! Who God has protecting us all. He was a Roman Christian soldier, who was persecuted for his…”

“I want to hear about the dragon, Daddy.”

“I could have guessed. Well, one day Saint George was visting Libya…”

“Where’s that?”

“Libya? Oh, I don’t know … somewhere in Africa, I think?”

“I thought he was the hero of England, Daddy.”

“All right, fine, have it your way. Saint George was visiting England, when he found a village terrorized by an evil dragon…” With the word, King Eanhere’s mind began to wander. He thought of his own dragon: Emperor Conri of Eire, the newest leader in the long campaign of British conquest.

Conri didn’t look like a dragon, of course, though he hardly looked like a human being either. When a plague of consumption overcame Eire, the stricken emperor was left at the mercy of an incompetent physician who could think of no solution beyond repeated amputations.

An eye was the first to go. Conri didn’t mind this so much. Indeed, he took his new resemblance to Odin in stride. But the disease persisted, and with it left a leg, then an arm, and by then the emperor was half gone.

The one comfort of his injuries was that Conri frightened his enemies as much as his own court. With every raid he committed against England, rumors soon spread of cities falling to the Metal King, outfitted in so many prosthetics he seemed like a machine, a weapon of war in his own right.

“Daddy?” asked Sigrid. “Are you going to finish the story?” Eanhere returned to the present, still waving to the crowds without even realizing.

“Right, of course. Sorry, dear. So, the villagers thought they could make the dragon happy with sacrifices. Every day, they’d send somebody for the dragon to eat so he’d leave the rest of the village alone...” Once more, the king’s thoughts shifted to Eire. Conri didn’t have the means, financial or diplomatic, to bring about the full-scale invasion of England he dreamed of. Instead, the dragon settled for small offerings, seizing a new county every half a year or so.

“I don’t get that part, Daddy. Even if the dragon eats them one at a time, after a while wouldn’t he eat everyone anyway?” The girl had a point, the king realized. Conri’s conquest of England may have been slow, but the results were already visible. Eire now controlled the entire duchies of Cornwall and Wessex, with the capital itself bordering the now-Irish counties of Oxford and Winchester.

It wouldn’t be right away, maybe not even in Eanhere’s lifetime, but if it kept up for long enough, the dragon would indeed swallow up all of them. And yet all throughout Lundenwic, everyone celebrated as gleefully as they had in all the years before. Bless the poor bastards, he thought. The water was rising so slowly that nobody had any idea they were drowning.

“Well … well luckily they stopped the dragon before it came to that, sweetie. You see, the day St. George came, they were about to sacrifice the mayor’s own daughter.”

“Come on, Eanhere,” whispered the queen. “You’re going to give her nightmares with this sort of talk.”

“So … a princess, then?” asked Sigrid.

“No, not a princess, the mayor’s daughter, she was…”

“...like me?” With that, the most repulsive image entered the king’s head. He saw his own daughter, chained to a tree and dressed in a bridal gown. A gruesome, slavering dragon crawled towards her, an army of unwashed Irish barbarians following shortly behind.

“...No, not like you, Sigrid. I’ll never give you to the dragon. I’ll die before I do.” The princess took a step back, eyeing her father with confusion. A few spectators still applauded the royal family, but slightly slower than before. Why had the king stopped smiling?

“...But the dragon is gone, Daddy,” said Sigrid with a nervous laugh.

“I wish, but no, it’s not.”

“Uh … yes it is. St. George stops him, remember?”

“Oh, right! Yes, of course, the story… well, Saint George finds the princess, and when the dragon shows up to eat her, he sticks it with his lance!” The king mimed a jab as his daughter laughed, in imitation of the brave warrior he wished to be.

“And he kills the dragon, right?”

“Not yet, no. He ties the dragon up and carries it into the town square. He says he’ll kill it right there if the whole village was baptized. They agree, of course…”

“Of course,” he repeated in his head. Because who wouldn’t accept Christ after a visit from a living saint? In the present day, conversions didn’t seem to come nearly as easily. As the time traveler’s pagan kingdom grew, many a missionary had traveled to Airgialla in hopes of saving their souls, from England, France, and even Rome itself.

Every time, the result was the same. As soon as word of the priest’s arrival had reached Conri’s ears, they would be locked in his dungeons, with no hope of poisoning the minds of Eire. After a while, they would be held for ransom, then sent back to wherever they came from, shaken yet unharmed. Strength, but not cruelty.

The Saracens fared no better, as an Andalusian imam learned when he came to Eire with the teachings of the Prophet. Jesus and Muhammad alike seemed helpless in convincing the new empire to abandon their idols. Theirs was a kingdom in which truly nothing was sacred.

“And once they’d all converted…” The king raised his arm up into the air. He could almost feel the hilt of the sword in his hands. “Whoosh! He sliced the dragon’s head clean off!” Sigrid laughed and clapped to herself at the hero’s triumph.

“So Saint George saved the princess, then,” she said.

“Well, he was only there because God knew he needed to be. God saved the … king!”

“I thought we were talking about the princess, Daddy.”

“No, no, I mean the song! That’s how the song went! ‘God save the king!’”

“What song?” The king didn’t bother with an answer, too busy replaying the song in his head. Hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmhmmhmm, something something something, God save the king. That was part of the dream, he was sure of it.

“...Are you all right, Daddy?” asked Sigrid. In an instant, the king returned to his senses and noticed his daughter looking up at him with concern.

“...Uh, yes, of course I am. Come along now, dear. There’s still so much of the festival to see!” With that, the king tried to put the thoughts of Irish invasion and strange dreams to rest, enjoy the moment with his family. The thoughts still lingered in his head, though. They always did.

Before too long, night fell, and the royal family had returned to the safety of their keep. Princess Sigrid thought of Saint George, whisked to sleep by images of knights and dragons. Queen Aethlthryth thought of England, and not in the way she usually did, as she recalled the day’s festivities. King Eanhere, however, tossed and turned in his bed, tormented by thoughts of Conri. God had helped England’s patron saint triumph against a monster. Where was God for England now?

Even when, despite his torment, sleep finally overtook him, he felt no better. Afterwards, he found himself inside a palace far more decadent than his own, wearing strange clothing unlike any he had seen in his life. The dream from before had returned.

All night long, he heard advisors of another age and world discussing the news of his glorious empire, filled with names and terms he couldn’t understand. “The President of the United States is on the telephone … the Soviet Union has tested a hydrogen bomb … President Jiang wishes to talk about Hong Kong…” It was confusing, yet at the same time blissful, the idea that his own kingdom could ever be so large.

As the sun drew closer, the dream ended just as it had the night before. A choir of loving, devoted subjects singing the same song in his honor: God save our gracious king! God save our noble king! God save the king!

Then Eanhere opened his eyes. Back to reality, back to an England that doesn’t even control all of itself, let alone lands beyond. Back to meetings with his council to discuss defensive plans for the next Irish invasion, destined to fail as badly as all those before. His dreams of an all-powerful England was lovely, but in the end that was all they were: dreams.

The dream replayed the next night, and the one after that. Night after night, for months, that was all he knew. The king began to dread sleep; though his dreams were pleasant, the return to the world of the waking, the reminder that his fantasies were never meant to be, grew maddening.

It was February now. King Eanhere II had heard the same song in his dreams every night for ten months straight now. As his council spoke, he said little, just stared at the wall in front of him with a dazed glare. The more he slept at night, the more tired he was in the day.

“Next item on the list, Emperor Conri has accepted our latest terms of surrender,” announced the king’s chancellor. “Peace has been restored in exchange for the Isle of Wight.”

“Wight, eh…” The king slumped deeper into his seat. “They really can’t leave anywhere alone, can they?” Though he was awake, the choir still sang in his mind, reminding him of what could never be.

“Finally,” added the steward, “preparations are underway for this year’s Saint George’s Day celebration. We’ve found a local theater troupe willing to perform a play on Saint George and the Dragon. They’ve built this giant leather dragon that multiple men get underneath … it’s quite fun.”

“Sure, seems nice…” mumbled the king.

“The best part is, the dragon looks like a giant snake, just in case!”

“Just in case?” Eanhere repeated. “What do you mean?”

“Well…” The steward tugged at his collar, avoiding eye contact with his liege. “If … circumstances were to ever make our celebrations … inappropriate.”

“What kind of circumstances?”

“Oh, any kind. Weather, disease, dragon attacks … the whole play would require only minor rewrites to change it from ‘Saint George and the Dragon’ to…” The king was staring at the steward now with a silent fury none of his council had ever seen before. “...‘Saint Patrick and the Snake.’”

“I can’t believe it,” answered the king’s marshal. “Do you know how much of an insult it is to even suggest something like that?”

“Yes! Thank you!”

“The Irish have their own gods now, remember? When they take over…”

“When?”

“...if we put on a play about Saint Patrick for them, they’ll have our heads!”

“Well, they’ve got some giant snake they believe in, don’t they?” added the spymaster.

“Oh, right, the Midgard Serpent,” said the chaplain.

“Well let’s just make the new play about that somehow.”

“Hey, what if instead of a lance, Saint George had a hammer?” asked the chancellor. “Then he could be Thor!” The whole council nodded in agreement, leaving the king to stare at them all, speechless. Only in his dreams was there any hope for England.

Send him victorious! Happy and glorious! Long to reign over us, God save the king!

“Daddy! Mommy! It’s time for breakfast!” shouted Sigrid as she skipped into her parents’ chamber. “Come on! They made cake!” She opened the door to see only her mother in the bed alone.

“Mmgh … I’ll be there in a minute, dear” the queen mumbled, still half-asleep.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“Probably passed out at his desk, I’d bet. Go get him for breakfast, would you?” Sigrid nodded, then ran through the halls of the castle, arms stretched out and laughing to herself the entire time. She would have walked slowly, had she known she’d never experience a moment so carefree again.

The study door creaked open. As the queen had predicted, King Eanhere was slumped over the desk, as he’d been found many mornings before.

“Daddy! It’s time for breakfast!” Normally the sound of his daughter’s voice was enough to wake the king, though this time there was no response. “Come on, Daddy! Aren’t you hungry?” Sigrid poked her father’s shoulder. Still no acknowledgement. “...Daddy?”

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 13: A Beautiful Dungeon Wall

Though Emperor Conri had many enemies, particularly in England, he rarely thought of them. In his mind, anyone who opposed him wasn’t really a person, or even a threat. They were an obstacle, a stone in the road for him to step over. When you were trusted with a task that the fate of the world depended on, it wasn’t worth the energy to worry about those in your way any more than necessary. There was only one exception to this rule, one adversary that kept the metal king up at night: his brother.

King Mac-Laisre of Bhreatain Bheag was not only the ruler of the Welsh section of the empire, but the man chosen by the royal electors, most of them recently conquered, as the heir apparent to the imperial crown. His true loyalty, however, was not to the Emperor of Eire, but the King of the Jews. Despite the efforts of most of his dynasty to replace the White Christ with the Aesir, Mac-Laisre remained a devout Catholic who saw the songs of Valhalla as no more than a poor imitation of the Pope’s promises of eternal life.

This opinion was rare in the time traveler’s dynasty, but not in the general population. Though Eire had been under pagan rule for over a century now, most provinces of the empire, especially those newly annexed, remained Catholic. Many local Gothar attempted to proselytize among the population, but even more local bishops were quick to remind their flock that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

With every visiting missionary that Conri imprisoned, the resentment of Eire’s Christians grew stronger. Before long, a faction had emerged demanding an emperor who respected the one true God, and rallied around Mac-Laisre as the most likely to achieve that goal.

“Emperor Mac-Laisre,” the king whispered to himself one evening as he stared at himself in the mirror. “It doesn’t sound too bad.” When he first heard the talk of a new Christian rebellion, the king was reluctant. For all his religious disagreements, Conri was still his brother. Mac-Laisre also knew of The Plan, even if he wasn’t privy to its full details, and knew a civil war could only hinder it. Still, the thought of being emperor grew more tempting with each day. Besides, his chaplain told him Eire deserved a pious emperor. The Plan wasn’t more important than God, was it?

“It is…” said a voice. Mac-Laisre turned around to see a man whose face he couldn’t quite make out in the dark. “...a nice title, but one I’m afraid you’re not meant to have yet.” The king unsheathed a dagger and pointed it at the intruder, though he remained as stoic as before.

“S … stay away from me,” Mac-Laisre stammered. Though the details of the stranger’s face eluded the king, it almost seemed as if he was smiling.

“I’m no threat to you, good king. You have plenty of others already. The only thing I’m out to kill are these silly thoughts of revolt.”

“You’re an agent of Conri, then?” The king asked, lowering his dagger.

“I agree with your brother on this matter, but I don’t take orders from him, no. It doesn’t matter who I am. Just what I’m here to do. Tomorrow, your Christian friends are going to start a revolt. You’re going to stop them before they do.”

“I doubt they’d listen if I told them to stand down.”

“I didn’t say that. You’re going to tell the emperor you surrender. War starts, an hour later, war ends. Like it never happened at all. Business can continue as usual.” The king stared at his guest for a moment before bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

“Just surrender? Really? He’ll throw me into the dungeon.”

“He probably will, yes.”

“So why on Earth would I do that?” The stranger put a finger to his face, chuckling to himself.

“You’re a Christian, aren’t you, Mac-Laisre?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not at all, just asking. What do you think about Jerusalem?”

“What do I think about it?” asked the king. The spirit nodded in response. “I’ve never been myself, but I imagine it’s … incredible. To stand on the same ground as Christ…” The king stared at the wall on the other side of the room, picturing a world far away from Wales. “It tears me up, knowing now all those Saracens live there.”

“Well, how’d you feel if nobody lived there?” The stranger took a step closer to the king. “Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, the whole Holy Land and everywhere around it, nothing but one big burning desert, barely fit for a lizard to live.”

“Are you saying a revolt over here will destroy Jerusalem over there?”

“Give it enough time, and what happens here will carry into places you’ve never even heard of, Mac-Laisre.”

“A pretty line, but no word from a stranger is worth sacrificing my freedom over. The door is behind you.” The king pointed a finger in his guest’s direction. In response, the stranger placed his hand on Mac-Laisre’s forehead.

The castle walls melted away. In their place were a million grisly images of a different, darker age. An endless war fought by machines that could tear apart a man in ways never thought of before. Thousands of children so emaciated they were nearly skeletons. Lakes receding, fields barren, cities flooded. Innocent civilians transformed into ashes. People on fire. A world on fire.

The stranger’s hand drew back. Mac-Laisre was once again surrounded by familiar walls, though the terrible images still lingered in his head. He felt his face, assuring himself he was truly safe, panting in agony the entire time.

“What … the hell … was that?”

“The world without The Plan,” answered the stranger. “Just some of what it’s meant to prevent. What anyone who interferes will cause. Makes the dungeons look like Heaven, doesn’t it?” There was a stirring in the king’s stomach. He felt an urge to vomit. “Now, you have a choice. You surrender tomorrow. You stay in the dungeon for a while. But not forever, I don’t think. Either that, or you fight against The Plan, and I make sure the future you chose is all you’ll ever see for the rest of your days.” With that, the stranger departed, and the nauseous king was alone.

The next morning, Mac-Laisre set sail for Airgialla on a boat filled with the most zealous Christians in Wales, aspiring heroes of the revolution. There wasn’t a quiet moment the whole trip, as the soldiers drank, sang, and talked about what they’d do to the heathens of Eire. The only silent one among them was their leader. King Mac-Laisre refused to say a word until the boat had reached port. The few times he set foot outside his cabin, he simply stared into the sea, refusing to acknowledge any of his men.

Emperor Conri looked over the roof of his castle to see an army at his gates, brandishing swords, lances, and banners adorned with crosses. At the front of it all was King Mac-Laisre, clad in regal armor yet wearing the same distant face as he had on the boat.

“What’s this about?” asked the emperor, so accustomed to the comfort of home he was unaware of the discontent outside.

“I have an army with me!” announced Mac-Laisre. “An army willing to fight to place me on the throne! And as their leader…” The king turned around. The mob was smiling at him, waiting eagerly for his next words. “...We surrender.”

“What?” asked the emperor and his enemies, in unison.

“We surrender. Lock us up. Me, them…” he gestured at the crowd behind him, so stunned they’d forgotten the weapons in their hands. “Then … do whatever you want.”

“...Why should I?” yelled the emperor.

“Would you rather fight a war?”

“I would,” said one of the rebels behind the king.

“I’m not asking you.” Mac-Laisre looked back up at the emperor, who was still trying to make sense of the scene in front of him. After a moment, he pointed at a nearby guard.

“Open the gate!” he ordered loudly, though not too confidently. “Escort the prisoners to the dungeon!”

Within the hour, King Mac-Laisre was sitting within a cell, listening to countless other new prisoners praying for God to strike him dead. The king gave no response. In fact, most days he said nothing at all, and did nothing beyond the bare minimum his body required. As the gaolers patrolled the cells, day after day, year after year, the disgraced king was nearly always doing the same thing: staring at one of the walls in his cell. It was plain, undecorated stone, covered in so much grime it had gone from gray to brown. But it was there, and it belonged to a world with The Plan, and for that, it was the most beautiful thing the king had ever seen. For fourteen years he enjoyed his perfect view, until one day when the door to his cell slid open.

“It’s time,” said the guard as he entered the room.

“Lunch already?” asked Mac-Laisre, eyes still fixed on the wall.

“No. Time for your coronation, my liege.”

Though he betrayed an army of his fellow Christians a decade prior, everyone who knew of Mac-Laisre’s treachery had since died in the emperor’s dungeons. To the rest of Christendom, Mac-Laisre remained a hero; a martyr, even, suffering unjust imprisonment at the hands of a pagan tyrant. Though he’d long since lost his freedom and his mind, the king still had the vote of Eire’s Christian vassals longing for a pious emperor. And so, with the death of Emperor Conri, the crown had no choice but to pass to a decrepit prisoner who’d spent the past fourteen years staring at a wall and loving it.

On his first day as Emperor, Mac-Laisre read The Plan, just as all those who came before him. On his second, he performed a sacrifice to Odin, renouncing the White Christ after a lifetime of faith. Observers to the ceremony noticed a dull look in the new emperor’s eyes, always staring directly in front of him, his vision never shifting. It was as if he was performing the entire act in his sleep.

As strange as the new emperor appeared to those around him, his rule was little different from his predecessor, continuing Conri’s lengthy campaign against England. If the kingdom could only be taken one county at a time, he decided to at least opt for the biggest symbolic victories. In 890, Irish forces took London, forcing the English crown to relocate their capital to Surrey.

Four years later, Eire marched on the county of Kent, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the most sacred Christian site in the Isles. With English forces weakened by a recent civil war, the conflict proved trivial. The only resistance of note came when Irish troops reached Kent’s castle, where a young woman had chained herself to the gates.

“I won’t let you take this, you bastards!” screamed Duchess Sigrid of Kent. “You took my father, and I swear to God I’ll sarding die before I let you take anything else!

“Do we kill her, my liege?” asked an Irish commander. Emperor Mac-Laisre looked at the woman, staring back at him with intense hatred. In her head, the emperor was suffering every torture her imagination could conjure. Mac-Laisre himself only thought of the visions the stranger had granted him so long ago. The look in Sigrid’s eyes was as close as he’d ever come to seeing them again.

“...Only if we can’t cut through the chains,” he ordered. “Try those first.”

“No! Get back!” screeched Sigrid, kicking as soldiers approached the gate. “You’ll never be satisfied, will you, you Irish shits? How many more children need to be orphaned just for you to have a bigger crown? You! Judas!” As the troops examined the locks, she turned her focus back to the emperor. “You’d better kill me right here, you godless old sard. I swear on my lord and savior Jesus Christ, as long as I’m breathing I’ll make sure you know a taste of what you’ve done to me. Englaland aefre! Englaland aefre! Pater noster, qui es in caelis…”

To this day, the precise fate of Duchess Sigrid remains a mystery. Modern historians have proposed a myriad of theories, each as thinly backed as their competitors. Perhaps she was killed that day. Perhaps she not only lived, but was responsible for the emperor’s own suspicious death. Perhaps Mac-Laisre took pity on her and granted her a small title and pension, or she fled elsewhere in England to live the life of a commoner. In the nineteenth century, a drunken professor at Ollscoil Átha Cliath proposed she married Romulus Augustulus, the only man who understood her plight, and passed the time confusing historians together. Nobody has ever been confident enough to say he was wrong.
What is known was that on that day, Kent came under Irish rule. The former Christian emperor had rendered Canterbury a former Christian holy site.

Though much of England still remained, with this new conquest Mac-Laisre controlled enough of the British Isles to be called their rightful ruler, and so he declared the Empire of Eire to now be the Empire of Alba.

That night, Mac-Laisre allowed himself the first moments of personal enjoyment he could remember. The castle of Cluain Eois was alight with dancing and drinking, and none felt as much ecstasy as the emperor. In the midst of his drunken rambling, the founder of the new empire mumbled to himself “I’m just like Alexander the Great.”
Two days later, the comparison proved more apt than he thought.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

First of all, I wanted to apologize for the long delay (this was actually supposed to be the first half of a much longer chapter, but I decided you all deserved something after this long). I've never been as fast a writer as I'd like, but I promise I'm working on it every day.

On that note, I was hoping to get some opinions on what you'd like to see going forward. So far I've been writing more or less in real-time, never skipping over an emperor, but there are likely to be some dull spots of the playthrough going forward. Would you prefer I keep the same approach I do now, skip ahead and only write about interesting moments, or maybe do some semi-comedic chapters where I cover the boring parts as quickly as possible? If I'm going to take a long time I want everything I do to be worth the wait, so feedback is appreciated.

Chapter 14: The Scarred Woman and the Blind Man

The Gothi stood in the center of the hall, gilded crown in his hands. Nobody was looking at him, though. The crowd had turned backwards, watching the other side of the room as they waited for the new empress to emerge.

Most of those in attendance were there purely out of a sense of duty, repelled by the thought that a woman now ruled them. When Emperor Mac-Laisre died, the Empire of Alba was so newly-formed that every vassal in charge of electing a tanist had yet to even hear of the title. The only vote for Mac-Laisre’s heir came from the emperor himself. The old emperor wasn’t known for being rational, but this choice, at least, he was sure of. He would choose the smartest man of the time traveler’s dynasty, the one with a mind best equipped to endure The Plan, to not suffer as he had. Little did anyone know that the smartest man of the dynasty was really no man at all.

Cumman, the youngest daughter of the late Emperor Cainchomrac, was as shocked to learn of her new title as everyone else. A gifted youth, the princess had taught herself to read early into her childhood, and quickly made full use of the imperial library. Had she been a man, Cumman’s intellect would likely have earned him a position in the clergy, if not a duchy of his own. Instead, she was born with a curse that sealed her fate, or at least it seemed. Before Mac-Laisre’s passing, she had already been pledged to a young French count, where she would move and carry on her royal duties as wife and mother in obscurity. Instead, through the final wishes of a mad, dying emperor, she became the first woman ever trusted with The Plan.

The few vassals happy to attend the coronation felt so only through lecherous intent: men watching the doors with hungry anticipation to see the beautiful young empress for the first time. When Cumman finally presented herself, though, they were as outraged as the rest, if not moreso.

A fat figure walked down the halls, pillows stuffed into her clothing. She wore not the elegant gown expected of her, but a modest tunic of similar make--thought not extravagance--as those worn by her male predecessors. Her hair was cut shorter than most men of the empire, and certainly more than any woman’s. Most distracting of all, though, was the thick fake beard obscuring most of her face.

Like Hatshepsut before her, Cumman suffered no delusions of the stigma she would face as a woman crowned. If her sex was to be a distraction from her rule, it should be as small a one as possible. The public wanted a man to lead them, and so they would have one.

“I am ready for the ceremony, father,” said Cumman, in the deepest voice she could muster. The Gothi looked down at the bearded empress, allowing himself only a brief hesitation before he proceeded as normal.

The crossdressing coronation was the first time Empress Cumman shocked her subjects, but it was soon followed by so many more it would be forgotten. Weeks later, she would break her betrothal and form a new one with an unlanded husband, willing to debase himself and grant his children to the time traveler’s dynasty. Royal women were expected to provide children to continue their line, and before her new betrothed came of age she shocked Alba once more by fulfilling the royal duty.

With the empress upsetting her subjects more with each new day, the most powerful men of the empire, with an imperfect understanding of The Plan, began fancying themselves as de facto emperors, able to ignore Cumman’s rule and convince those below them to do the same.

Most notable among them was King Eogan III “the Brute,” a vicious disciple of Tyr who loved the battlefield above all else. He usurped the Scottish crown through civil war, then wasted no time following the sole instruction of The Plan he knew. He would retake the Ancestral Lands, reducing England to half of its previous size. Eogan made significant strides in the mainland as well, bringing the Kingdom of Brittany under Alban rule.

The empress would be grateful for her vassal’s conquests, but she knew a man as bloodthirsty as Eogan must have had her in his sights, perhaps in more ways than one. Unlike her adversary, Cumman was a woman of letters, uninterested in the battlefield. Indeed, it was only due to the demands of the plan that she thought much of war at all. But with a revolt seemingly inevitable, she knew it was necessary to project an image of strength. And so, like her father before her, she joined the Wolf Warriors.

When she first set foot in the faction’s halls, filled with men twice her size wielding weapons to match, the empress couldn’t help but feel vulnerable. What if there were supporters of Eogan among them, asked an anxious voice in her head? She didn’t belong here, and they all know it. They could kill her right now, and she wouldn’t have a prayer of stopping it.

A man blocked Cumman’s path, staring her down as he crossed his arms. In this moment, the ruler of the empire seemed like no more than a frightened little girl. The man snorted loud enough for the whole hall to hear, then smiled.

“I thought you’d join sooner, my liege!” He said with a laugh, patting the empress on the back. “Come outside, we’ll find someone for you to duel.” As the cheering and sparring of the group resumed, Cumman’s sigh of relief went unnoticed. These men looked like Eogan, but inside they were nothing like him. Politics didn’t matter to the Wolf Warriors. Gender didn’t matter. Anybody who loved the Aesir and knew how to hold a sword was welcome.

Though it could never replace the comforts of the library of Airgialla, the empress had to admit there was something about the Wolf Warriors that made sense. For once, she was free of all the constraints, all the demands expected of her. For once, she could simply be, act without fear of offending a vassal she barely recognized. Even better, it wasn’t difficult to imagine Eogan’s face on whoever her latest sparring partner may be.

Although the empress won her fair share of duels against her fellow warriors, she lost even more, and suffered the scars to prove it. In the days before her father’s passing, Cumman was told she was such a beautiful princess. Even after her coronation, her political enemies begrudgingly admitted she was a radiant woman, if nothing else. No longer was this the case, as thick, hideous scars rendered her beyond recognition.

Though the courtiers who had to look at her lamented the empress’s injuries, she did not. Indeed, she welcomed them. If her beauty was the only thing about her the men of Alba who stood against her could tolerate, she was happy to deny it to them. Those who oppose The Plan deserved nothing.

Though she was happier than she once was, there was only so much stress the training grounds of the Wolf Warriors could hope to relieve. The duties of empress soon grew so taxing she ceased to be surprised that so many before her had gone mad. She was smart, though, she told herself each day. She would stay resilient, lucid in the face of it all. Whether through sheer determination or the will of the Aesir, sure enough, her mind never withered. Only her body.

Cumman lay on a filthy bed in the middle of a secluded shack, covered in rashes and barely suppressing the urge to vomit. This must be the end, she thought. If the plague didn’t kill her, someone willing to attack her in a moment of weakness would. At the very same moment, Eogan’s men were practicing wargames. Purely to prepare for the next English conflict, he claimed, though the empress wouldn’t be so easily fooled.

With the court’s physicians failing to provide any relief, a desperate Cumman searched for any kind of aid she could find. This brought her to France, to the home of Rogier, a blind Spanish mystic forced to flee the Umayyads for his idolatry. Rogier held his hands out over the empress, chanting quietly in tongues she couldn’t understand.

“E … excuse me,” said Cumman hoarsely. “I’m not sure how this is supposed to help me.” Rogier went silent. His hands trembled slightly, as if feeling for something that wasn’t quite there.

“It’s such a pity what happened to your face, you know,” he said. “You used to be so beautiful.”

“You can’t see my face.”

“No, but I can feel the scars.”

“You’re not touching me either.”

“You know, my liege, your illness may not be entirely physical. Have you been … stressed at all lately?”

“I don’t think stress leads to plague.”

“If you expect to be treated, I’ll need your cooperation.”

“Fine, yes, I’ve been stressed. By Freya, who wouldn’t be?” The queen grimaced. All the frustrations of the world were attacking her head at once. “It’s bad enough having to deal with the crown and the…” She stopped herself before she realized what she was about to say.

“...The Plan, yes,” Rogier said with a chuckle, unaware of how the empress was now staring at him.

“How do you know about The Plan?”

“Odin gave an eye for wisdom. I gave two. Continue what you were saying, please.”

“...People don’t respect me,” Cumman admitted. “I’ve tried all my life to do good, but because of how I was born … nothing is ever good enough. They’re plotting against me as we speak, I’d wager. Eogan must be. He won’t be happy until he has the crown, and my head with it.” The mystic lowered his hands. He turned his head up to the ceiling, his chanting replaced with a low, dull hum. A moment later, he smiled.

“Eogan is the source of your disease,” Rogier declared.

“What, are you saying he…” Cumman stopped to cough. “...poisoned me?”

“He’s the source of the sickness, that’s what I can say. Remove the source, and given enough time the illness will disappear.” The mystic gestured for the empress to get off of the table. “Return home, my liege. I’ll begin work on the treatment right away. Try and get some rest until it’s ready.”

“How will I know when it is?” asked the empress as she headed towards the door.

“You’ll know.”

By cart and boat Cumman journeyed back home, back to Airgialla. The entire trip she nursed her own sickness as best she could, all the while taunted by the thoughts of her conversation. How far had word of The Plan traveled outside her dynasty? Back home, another week would pass before the mystic’s promise of treatment revealed itself.

“King Eogan of Alba is here, my liege,” reported a servant approaching the empress’s chambers.

“The usual round of demands, I take it?”

“King Eogan has been … left at our gates, Your Highness. Tied up.” In an instant, Cumman had nearly forgotten her sickness.

“Is he … alive?” she asked. The servant nodded. “Bring him to me. Leave the bindings.”

It was a sight too perfect to see, the man behind so much of her suffering bound like a suckling pig. If the conqueror of Brittany valued anything more than strength, it was the image of strength. He wanted the whole world, Cumman most of all, to believe he was Tyr in the flesh: an invincible force for whom every battle was already decided. If you stood against him, your only choice was whether to die by his hand, or your own. Cumman couldn’t help but smile at that image stripped away, mighty Eogan the Brute bound and gagged, shaking in fear.

The empress lifted his vision upward, made sure he knew full well whose mercy he was at. Inside, her conscience repeated the ancient words of the time traveler: “Strength but not cruelty. Strength but not cruelty.” But she also knew Eogan refused to recognize strength unless it was cruelty. She removed the gag from the king’s mouth before searching for her dagger. She’d let him speak in his last moments, say his prayers and pleas in full instead of muffling them. It was more kindness than he would ever show her.

The next morning, Empress Cumman woke up in better spirits than she had ever remembered. True to the blind mystic’s word, her sickness died with Eogan. She would live, yet every step of the recovery process brought with it new questions. Rogier’s methods seemed to go against logic, perhaps even all earthly science. As the ruler of the empire and a scholar, it pained Cumman to know that so much remained beyond her understanding.

She needed to know more.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 15: Pawns on the Board

Cumman demanded to see Rogier, in hopes the mystic would explain himself. However, the scouts dispatched to Auvergne found his shack abandoned. Like the Caliphate before it, Rogier seemed to have abandoned Alba for a new, unknown land.

When told of the news, the empress’s curiosity only grew stronger. She’d have her explanation, even if it meant traveling the ends of the earth. Through Christian and Saracen lands walked the scouts of Alba for years, in search of anyone willing to speak of The Plan. No answers were found in Rome, nor Constantinople, nor even the Great Library of Baghdad. It was only at the furthest edge of Alexander’s empire that a worthy candidate presented herself.

Her name was Maki, and though only a child her wisdom shocked even the empress herself. From her time in the imperial library, the name “Buddha” was not new to Cumman, but the name was all she knew. Speaking to one of his disciples was unheard of. Indeed, with her appearance in the court of Airgialla, the empress was certain Maki had become the first Buddhist to ever set foot in Eire.

“If it’s not too rude to say, all of your ideas seem so … foreign,” said the empress to the child, near the end of one of their late-night discussions as they walked through the castle’s halls.

“Foreign only in presentation, Cumman. The Noble Truths belong to the world. They say your Odin hanged himself from Yggdrasil for nine days in his pursuit of knowledge. Gautama meditated beneath the Bodhi Tree for seven weeks in his. Even in this distant land, people seek enlightenment. You do.”

“I’m afraid what I want to know most of all is different from our usual talks,” Cumman confessed. “You came here because you told my men you know of The Plan.” At this, Maki smiled. The empress had never seen her face depart from its stoic frown before.

“I do, yes.”

“And just what do you know?”

“I know a man, your ancestor, came from another time with visions of changing the world. He had known suffering in his former life, and hoped to create a world without it.” Maki closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “A noble goal, but a foolish one.”

“Are you trying to say you know better than our founder?”

“The first step to enlightenment is to acknowledge duhkha. Existence is suffering. That can only change if the nature of existence itself does. Your Plan should encourage change from within, for people to improve themselves, so that it may spread to the world around them. Instead it advocates only changing the world, while the people who make it remain the same. A dead tree will not bear fruit no matter how much you ask it.”

“That isn’t true! The Plan tells us the right way for a ruler to ask. It says to…”

“...to rule with strength, but not cruelty,” finished Maki. “And where was this wisdom when you killed a man who could not fight back?”

“That…” Without realizing it, Cumman grabbed at her hair, turning just slightly away from the child’s gaze. “That was a special case. Eogan was…”

“...someone you desired to kill. Tanha. Desire is the origin of suffering. The Plan does nothing to discourage these wicked thoughts. It even encourages them. Its first command is to conquer land, to desire territory that you don’t have.”

“So what should I do, then? What should anyone in Alba do? We’ve been working towards The Plan for two hundred years now. Are you saying it’s all wrong?” Maki closed her eyes and turned her head down to the floor. It was difficult to make out in the darkness, but the empress could have sworn the child was silently laughing to herself.

“The Plan is … like your story of Odin,” she answered. “There’s a truth at the core of it all. A man really did find wisdom underneath a tree. But that truth has been twisted, corrupted until it can no longer be recognized. The Plan seeks nirodha, an end to suffering. A noble goal. But its commands have only brought more suffering. To yourself, to the men before you, to your subjects, to your enemies. As long as it seeks to achieve a better world through evil means, it will fail.” The child stopped walking. Cumman looked around to realize they were standing by the gates of the castle. “I’ve enjoyed speaking with you, Empress. I hope you’ll heed what I’ve taught you. But I’m afraid there is nothing left to say. I’ll be returning home now.”

“What, tonight?” asked Cumman. The child nodded. “We haven’t arranged a boat for you yet.”

“No need. I can return home myself.” Maki pushed the door open, revealing the black landscape of Airgialla at night. Were it not for the stars in the sky, it would seem as though nothing were outside at all, the child stepped into a void.

“You can’t walk back to India.”

“I won’t.” With that, the child walked into the darkness, disappearing from Cumman’s vision, and her life.

The empress never forgot Maki’s warning, though as the years went by she tried to. Day after day, a nagging voice in her head planted doubts, and an even louder one countered with a new rationalization. Perhaps The Plan really was a set of bad guidance, but it was still more guidance than most rulers ever received. Any instructions that could turn a lone village on an island of tribals into an empire must have had something worth adhering to. Besides, they were the words of her ancestor, the founder of her kingdom, the man from the future. Who could ever trust the word of the Buddha, whoever that was, over his?

So she upheld The Plan as best she could, and continued the endless campaign for the Ancestral Lands. If her own assuring mind ever failed to silence the doubts, the screams of the English always worked.

As the years went by, Cumman scarcely worried over her actions at all. Sometimes, in the dead of night, while she struggled to sleep, Maki’s old words would keep her awake. But with the sun came confidence, came pride. She was in charge. She was the empress, and a damn good one, she could say by now. At the start of her reign, the vassals doubted her, thought a woman ruling was doomed to fail. She was sure plenty in England thought the same way, before she slaughtered them. She was an empress and a warrior, confident that she would never fear a man again.

But as vicious as she could be on both the throne and the battlefield, Cumman tried to be as pleasant as she could elsewhere. When meeting someone new, she always attempted to introduce herself with a cordial bow and a big smile. It was a practice she employed when she saw a face she didn’t recognize in the imperial gardens one day.

His name was Augusto, a Catholic monk on a pilgrimage to where St. Patrick’s Cathedral once stood. Cumman’s predecessors would’ve arrested a follower of the White Christ on sight, particularly one who had somehow entered palace grounds uninvited. But even if she wanted to, she couldn’t bring herself to send him away. The empress had done much in her strange life, but she’d never met a Christian. She’d seen--and killed--many, but the idea of a normal conversation with one intrigued her too much.

For the rest of the afternoon, Cumman and Augusto walked through the garden, talking of Jesus and Odin, of how the pristine view of Sliabh Beatha compared to the seven hills of Rome. Though the monk’s face was stern, there was something calming about it. For once, the stress of royal life, the fear and doubt in Cumman’s head, were all gone. There was nothing to worry about today. Just a pleasant day talking with a new friend, learning of a strange land and stranger gods.

“Dear me, when did it get so late?” asked Cumman, looking up at the dimming sky.

“We weren’t paying attention, I suppose,” laughed Augusto. “Darkness can surprise you if you don’t keep a watch for it.”

“Well, I did very much enjoy meeting you, Augusto…” said Cumman. She always hated her attempts at royal formality. She sounded more like a child at play. “I should prepare for bed. With my husband. I wish you the best of luck with the rest of your journey.”

“Dominus vobiscum, Cumman,” answered Augusto with a bow. “I hope your kingdom can be as kind to all Christians as you are to me.”

“I told you, friend, I can’t just wave my hand and make something so. There are … certain policies in place here, much older than I am. But I’ll do what I can. You have my word of that.” With that, the empress departed for the comforts of the castle. She expected to never see the delightful pilgrim again, unaware she’d encounter him in her room that same night.

Cumman stared at the chess pieces in front of her, crude imitations of a kingdom at war. They were a preferable sight to her opponent. Though he was the same man she’d spoken to hours before, Augusto’s presence was so sinister she could barely bring herself to look at him. The monk himself didn’t seem to notice. He simply watched the board, smiling wickedly as he pinched the head of his queen.

“You know, if your plan was to improve Alba’s impression of the White Christ, threatening murder is not the way to do it,” mumbled Cumman, without making eye contact.
“I wouldn’t insult Jesus right now, if I were you.” Augusto moved his bishop with one hand, still brandishing his dagger in the other. “You don’t have much time left to accept him, but you can still be saved. Sic enim Deus dilexit mundum…”

“That’s enough of that!” interrupted Cumman, blocking the bishop’s path with a pawn. “Kill me if you must, but please, don’t pretend you’re a mystic. I’ve seen the act before, from people who did it much better than you.”

“Ah yes, Rogier and Maki. Wonderful characters.” Augusto’s bishop took the empress’s pawn. For the first time that evening, he had left Cumman unnerved.

“...You know them?”

“I am them.” For a moment, the empress was left speechless. Just a moment.

“Ridiculous. Rogier was blind. Maki was just a little girl.”

“I contain multitudes.” The monk made his move. Cumman was finally looking at his face, though by now it was less interesting than her own, eyes widening in realization.
“So…” She put a finger to her rook, thinking about the castle’s position. “Odin, Buddha, and now Christ. Just which god do you really follow?”

“Why do I have to be a follower?” Augusto said with a smile. “Don’t worry about what I am. Or do. Checkmate’s not far off, might as well do what you want in your last moments.” The empress said nothing to this; she simply made her next move. “I didn’t want it to come to this, I really didn’t. I hoped you’d realize the truth about The Plan on your own. Thought if you killed someone over it personally, with your own hands, you’d be put off enough to never do it again.”

“So you gave me Eogan…” mumbled Cumman as she made her move.

“That’s right. Didn’t work, though. Might have just given you a taste for blood, judging by how England looks these days. That’s my fault for being too subtle. So I decided I’d just tell you, make it clear no good could come of the path you’re on. But you didn’t listen. That one’s on you. The peaceful solutions didn’t work, so now you’ve got to die…” A knight took the empress’s rook. “But like I said before, it isn’t too late for you to repent.”

“And abandon The Plan?” The queen avenged her castle, capturing Augusto’s knight. “I’ve read of what becomes of the world without it. I’d be a monster to let it happen.”

“You’d be a bigger one if you follow The Plan.” A bishop aligned itself with Cumman’s queen. “You’re building a dictatorship, Cumman. I know that doesn’t mean much in this age, but eventually, there’s going to be a time when people realize dictators are bad. Like, you’ve read about Athens, right?”

“Of course, it’s part of the Ancestral Lands.” The queen retreated to safety.

“In a different book. Did you ever read about the government they used to have in Athens? Democracy? It’s supposed to return. Around the world. Everyone able to choose their own government. And you’d replace that to make them all slaves.”

“The Plan says that’s a flawed system that belongs in the past.” Cumman moved her king to the side, where pawns remained to shelter it. “If King Ryan II hadn’t abolished the council, they’d still be arguing with each other to this day. Nothing would ever get done, even if their survival depended on it. They might even elect a tyrant with all the power you fear, but not the restraint The Plan provides. The Roman Republic failed, and so will anyone who imitates it.”

“Of course The Plan says all that!” scoffed Augusto. “You’re not even yourself anymore, you’re just The Plan’s pawn!” With that word, the monk moved a pawn of his own. “You used to be smart, now there’s only one book you care about. You used to be beautiful, now you’re covered in scars you got fighting and killing for The Plan. Forget what I said earlier. I don’t feel bad for what I’m about to do. I’m not killing you, not really. The real Cumman died the day she was crowned.”

“So you preferred me before, then?” Cumman’s grip on the table tightened. “A helpless little girl, all set to be married off and forgotten? The only queen that’ll die tonight is your own.” With that, Cumman’s spare rook took the monk’s queen. “Your move.”

As Augusto stepped away from the board, there was a visible sadness in his eyes. He wished to disregard the game and slaughter the empress right there, but he had made an arrangement. He was a steward of the natural order, of things being how they should, and to go against his word would violate all he believed in. As he warned the empress so long ago, a goal cannot be achieved through opposite means.

The spirit departed, and Cumman’s campaign for the Ancestral Lands would continue without further incident. She would never sleep well again, though. The voice of doubt, of questioning The Plan, remained. And it was now terribly loud.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 16: Isten Akarja

Pope Urbanus II anxiously paced around his throne room. When he reached one side of the lengthy chamber, he spun around on one foot, then began walking towards the other. The Vicar of Christ had become possessed by fear.

In his younger days, when he was a mere bishop, the state of the world made sense. There was the Roman Catholic Church, the one true faith. There were those to the east who followed the Patriarch of Constantinople over the Bishop of Rome, still brothers in Christ despite their differences. There were the perfidious Jews, who he regularly prayed that they might still accept Christ. Then came the Saracens, disciples of a false prophet, conquerors of the Holy Land, Egypt, and Hispania. Like the Jews, the Pope prayed for their souls, though he feared any contact with their kind would be by the sword.

Finally, there were the heathens, savages clinging to their idols because the word of God had yet to reach them. The answer here, the Pope always thought, was simple: send missionaries, give them a chance to accept Christ and be saved. It would not be a quick process, but it had seemed to be one with guaranteed success. The once indomitable gods of Olympus were long dead and buried, replaced with Jesus Christ. The very city he called home once claimed Jupiter as its patron. Now, it was Saint Peter. What hope could any lesser idol stand?

Somehow, though, the situation had changed. Not only were the pagans resisting conversion, but, in apparent imitation of the Mohammedans, they’d spread their faith by conquest to Christian lands. To the west were the Norse pagans of Alba, led by Emperor Finnacan “Red-cheeks.” Blessed with both fierce anger and insatiable ambition, Finnacan had spread Alba’s reach further into France. With each new day, more in the former domain of Clovis tossed aside The Bible for some new strange scripture, known only as “The Plan.”

To the east lay an even greater threat, the Tengris of Hungary, believers in shamans and spirits. At least the Albans, savage though they were, had a veneer of organization. The Hungarian leader, Grand Prince Jeno Zsigmond II, was a syphilitic tribal and made no effort to hide it. He had no desire to build, only to conquer, and he did so with terrifying efficiency. Though France had been left smaller from its struggle against Alba, the kingdom still remained. Meanwhile, Hungary had already removed the Kingdom of Germany, the Pope’s homeland, from the map.

If left to their own devices, soon Odin and Tengri alike would push to the center of Europe, leaving Italy cornered. To the Catholics of the region, including the Bishop of Rome himself, the entire peninsula felt like walking the plank: the sea on one side, murderous pirates on the other.

“Your Holiness?” said a servant, doing his best not to comment on the unusual scene he’d walked in on. “A messenger has arrived from Constantinople.” The pope stopped in his tracks and hurried to the Chair of Saint Peter. He straightened himself in his seat, gripping firmly onto both armrests, attempting the best image he could of a man in control.

“Yes, of course,” said Urbanus. “Bring him in.” A Greek man clad in silk robes entered the room, lowering himself on one knee before the pope.

“The Emperor of the Romans, Valerios Souanites, requests the aid of the Patriarch of Rome,” said the messenger. “Emperor of the Romans,” repeated the Pope in his head. Ridiculous. Urbanus ruled Rome. Valerios had never even seen the city for himself. He was an emperor, to be sure, but not a Roman. Especially not to anyone here.

“Aid with what?” asked the pope.

“For too long, Jerusalem has been in the hands of the Saracens. Christians throughout the Orient are expected to pay tribute to warlords for denying the Prophet. Truly, these are a people for whom nothing is sacred. If their campaign continues, how long until Constantinople falls? How long until Rome? The only way to prevent this fate is for Christians to fight back. We ask that you, and all your subjects, assemble an army to assist us in freeing the Holy Land from the godless Arabs.”

Urbanus shifted in his chair. He bit down, tried to hold his breath. God’s living emissary had an image to maintain, especially in the presence of a guest. It was soon too much to hold in, though. The pope held his head back and laughed, raucously and without shame.

“Muslims!” Urbanus shouted, letting the word echo through the hall. He leaned closer to the messenger, who was far more skilled at staying silent. “You want Christians … to have a war … against Muslims! Now! That’s the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard!” He pointed to the door. “You go back home and tell the Greek Emperor to thank God he’s only got Saracens to deal with! At least they’re not complete heathens. They’ve got one false prophet. We’re surrounded by dozens of whole false gods. Don’t waste my time asking me to even think about the Saracens!” Without another word, the messenger returned to his feet and began the long, awkward walk to the first boat to Constantinople.

“Are you all right, Your Holiness?” asked the servant, once the two were alone. Without even looking at him, the pope snapped his fingers and pointed to the door again.
“Wine,” he ordered. The page ran off, leaving Urbanus to slouch in the Throne of Peter. A moment later, the servant returned, carrying a bottle of wine and a metal goblet on a tray. As soon as it was close enough, the pope snatched the bottle and began to drink directly from it.

“Unbelievable,” mumbled Urbanus, mostly to himself. “The Greeks are worrying themselves over Saracens when there’s a much bigger threat over here. It’s not even worth thinking about them. Not when God’s about to be wiped off of Europe.” He took another swig of the bottle. “We shouldn’t be helping them. They should be helping us.”

“Yes, they … should be helping us,” said the servant with a bow. The pope sat up, though only slightly.

“Christians … Christians fight back, hmm…” Another sip. The bottle was nearly half empty now, though he’d started to see it a different way. “You know what? I’ve got an idea.” With his free hand, he made a vague gesture in the page’s direction. “Maybe we go send a messenger boy of our own.”

“To Constantinople, Your Holiness?”

“No. To the world.”

Within the week, the Pope’s agents had spread across Christendom with an announcement: if the pagans would not accept Christ peacefully, if they desired violence against Christians, they would receive exactly that. The time had come to take arms against the heathen, to subjugate their lands as they had already done to Christian kingdoms. The first target would be the closest to the Vatican’s own walls: Germany must be liberated from Hungarian rule.

The thought of a holy war quickly proved a popular one. First in Italy, then France, Catholics began assembling arms as they fantasized freeing Europe from the pagan menace. Though the Prince Jeno tried to avoid the news reaching his own subjects, the gossip of a trader proved stronger than any law, and the Christians of Germany began to eagerly await the invasion of their home.

Similar thoughts would reach the Catholic community of Alba, who grew more disgusted by the faith pushed by the crown each day. It was not of Christ, that much they knew, but by now they weren’t sure if it was even of Odin. From the outside, it seemed that the Alban crown now only worshipped itself, with the time traveler as prophet, The Plan as gospel, and only a rudimentary acknowledgement of the Aesir. The remaining faithful prayed that they would be next after Germany, that the Apostles’ Creed would once more be chanted in place of “Strength but not cruelty.”

They found themselves in unlikely company, for though he would never admit it, there was perhaps no greater supporter of the coming crusade than Emperor Finnacan, whose marshal first told him the news during one of his traditional dinners: an entire roast swan for himself alone.

“Great,” he murmured, as he tore off as much of the bird’s leg as could fit in his mouth. “Let them fight each other. Without Jeno, Germany will be easy pickings.” Though Alba would play no direct part in the crusade, Finnacan had standing orders to deliver any rumor on the movements of both sides.

In the coming months, a curious sight came to each village of Germany. Every town across the kingdom saw a new fleet of cavalry, commanded by Magyars who refused to speak to the local population, not that most of them could. New fortifications were hastily built, particularly around the southwestern border, across from Christian lands. When pushed for an explanation by local authorities, Hungary’s commanders would insist it was an effort to aid the laborers of the community, creating new construction jobs so that they may not grow idle. Nobody was convinced, not when each night was accompanied by the loud prayers of shamans that Tengri might grant them protection. As unthinkable as it sounded, Germany would soon be the sight of a great war.

One fateful morning in 933, an army with crosses painted on their shields approached the Hungarian border. Most were there under orders from Rome, some from Constantinople, and a rare few even from Alexandria. They hailed from realms as close to the battlefield as Lombardy and as far from the battlefield as the failing kingdom of England, still praying their own liberation was to follow. At the front of it all was Erichnoald Petringi, a knight in the Pope’s command who held every word of Christ dear, save “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

In the distance, Alban scouts watched the border. As ordered, they would only observe the conflict, so as to deliver a report to the crown. They saw Christian and Tengri charge towards each other at the Hungarian border. They saw lances piercing throats, axes cleaving apart heads. In the days to come, they would have seen the walls of Stuttgart demolished, heard the screams of civilians as the armies of Christ rode through the streets, watched soldiers run out of the local temples, shattering any item that carried even the illusion of idolatry. Their full report to Emperor Finnacan can be viewed to this day in the private collection of a library in Clauin Eois, and has been reproduced in its entirety here:

“It’s terrible.”

Though it seemed at the time it never would, the terror eventually ended. As Pope Urbanus II had hoped, Germany was liberated. The Kingdom of Hungary, though still alive, had been crippled in a way it would never truly recover from. Erchinoald was crowned the first king of the new Germany, and wasted no time purging his lands of whatever pagan influence remained.

Back in Rome, the Pope had the first restful sleep he could remember. Christianity had triumphed over paganism once again. He didn’t delude himself into thinking his mission was over, though. Elsewhere in Europe, Hungary still remained. And so did Alba.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 17: The Pitiful Adventures of Ceithernach the Mad

For nearly two centuries now, the Empire of Alba had grown strong. Though the British Isles were not yet completely conquered, it seemed it would only be a matter of time before the meager remains of England fell, paving the way for the rest of the Ancestral Lands.

What had led to such success? What turned an island of tribals into the empire that terrified all Christendom? Much of it could be attributed to The Plan, of course, which lent its leaders an unprecedented foresight. But even this gift was worthless without capable leaders that could carry out its instructions. Somehow, the time traveler’s lineage had produced just that, a lengthy series of rulers who, despite their personal flaws, were capable of understanding and executing The Plan.

A series that would finally be interrupted when Emperor Finnacan choked to death at one of his nightly feasts, leaving the throne to Emperor Ceithernach.

Before he claimed the throne, it was easy to see the appeal that led to Ceithernach’s election as tanist. He had mastered the art of diplomacy from an early age, and was a skilled warrior on top of it all. Though he was short, he was of a fierce physique, leading to the more devout pagans of the empire to think he was one of the dwarves of Svartalfheim in the flesh. The idea was enforced by the emperor’s own piety, for he revered Thor so much it was no stretch to believe he was one of the forgers of Mjolnir.

He was a man of many strengths, and only one weakness: He was insane.

Nobody was sure if The Plan had driven him to madness, or if he’d been that way long before, but the emperor clearly wasn’t well. Many servants reported seeing their liege late at night, running through the halls shouting curses at unseen enemies. Eventually, he’d stop in his tracks, out of breath, fire in his chest. He’d heave and moan loud enough to wake the whole castle, even spit on the ground, before running and screaming once more.

This isn’t to say that he was blind to The Plan. If nothing else, he understood the military campaigns it demanded. This meant the marshal deserved special attention among his council, much to the pain of whoever held that seat.

“Have you conquered England yet?” Ceithernach asked the marshal, as he did every morning.

“We’re still working on it.” The marshal breathed deeply through his nostrils. His new job had quickly taught him the importance of patience. “Once our forces are resupplied, we’ll ready a siege of Norfolk.”

“What about Sussex? Have you done Sussex yet?”

“...No, the army’s en route to Norfolk. But once they’ve finished, we could send them south if you’d…”

“Send them to Sussex! Top of the list!” The emperor demanded, pointing his thumb to the ceiling.

“Of course,” said the marshal, through clenched teeth and a forced smile. “I’ll send an order to redirect them right away.” The next morning, Ceithernach approached the marshal again.

“Have you conquered England yet?”

“The order to redirect to Sussex is en route,” the marshal answered calmly. In the days to come, this exchange would repeat, again and again, word for word. Hundreds of miles away, soldiers at the gates of Norfolk cursed and complained as they abandoned a mission in progress for their new orders.

“We’re really pushing this to Sussex?” whined a siege engineer, gesturing towards his catapult. But they were in no position to refuse a command from the crown. After a trip so miserable the battle that followed felt like relief, Sussex had fallen.

“Have you conquered England yet?” asked Ceithernach the next day.

“Sussex is now under our control,” announced the marshal, smiling proudly. The emperor didn’t share the sentiment. He simply stared at the commander.

“...What about Norfolk?” he asked.

“You said to go to Sussex instead.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re way past due on Norfolk now. I need you to take over Norfolk. Top of the list!” The marshal’s body began to shake with rage. He threw his hands up into the air and screamed, storming out of the council chambers. At this, Ceithernach smiled.

The next marshal brought in to take his place would soon quit himself, though not nearly as dramatically. So did the one who replaced the replacement. As the cycle repeated again and again, Ceithernach’s marshal was seen as a cursed position. The only thing more dreaded than fighting the Alban army was managing them.

The rest of his council didn’t fare much better. At times it seemed the emperor thrived on granting assignments that would place them in harm’s way, such as when he sent a seeress to convert the Archbishop of Canterbury. “It’ll save so much time!” Ceithernach insisted. “Convert the archbishop, and then he’ll go convert everyone else when they come to church!” Seeress Gydja questioned her liege’s reasoning, but knew that a good employee always did what was asked of them.

The castle staff at Airgialla soon devoted most of their time ensuring no word of the emperor’s madness left the castle walls. The future depended on Alba’s survival, and with silence, they hoped, it would endure the reign of one bad emperor.

Despite their efforts, however, rumors of Ceithernach’s antics soon spread, particularly among those with a claim to the empire. The first to take advantage was Iestan, a distant offshoot of the time traveler’s dynasty, which was by now so large many of its members knew nothing of their duty. A proud Catholic, Iestan had long wanted to rise against the ruling apostates in his family, and saw this as good a reason as any to finally take action.

A powerful friend had once promised Alba would never fall from within, and even now he honored that agreement. Iestan sheepishly surrendered days into the revolt, just as many would-be usurpers before him. But such events were now a near monthly occurrence. Throughout Alba, nobles and commoners alike rallied around the nearest claimant to the throne they could find, in hopes of someone, anyone, being a new, saner emperor.

One particular camp in the Isle of Man hoped to install Princess Lerben, a daughter of the late Emperor Finnacan who remained a guest in the castle halls. Eventually, word of the faction reached Ceithernach. The little girl in his castle was a threat to his rule. Every time he saw her, playing in the halls, eating breakfast in the morning, he was haunted by the thought that she’d take it all away from him.

So he ate her.

For all of his flaws, though, Ceithernach still understood the importance of expanding Alba’s realm. Indeed, under his rule, the empire made its first forays into Scandinavia, settling on the coast of Westrobothnia. Long before that, Roman missionaries had convinced the northerners to accept Christ and toss aside the idols of Asgard. Now, the Gothar of Alba had a means to return the Aesir to their native lands.

By now, the tales of Ceithernach the Child-Eater had spread well outside Alba’s borders, to even ears in the Vatican. To Pope Silvester IV, the time was ripe for a second Crusade. He had the perfect enemy in Ceithernach, a ruler so unpopular even the most devout pagans of Alba were likely to welcome their Catholic liberators.

Of course, rumors of the Pope’s plan traveled to Airgialla just as easily. As with the princess before, Ceithernach used this threat to his rule to demonstrate his unique talent for creative problem-solving.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” asked the new pope, as he watched his predecessor be lowered into the earth. “We’ve got Jesus Christ on our side. They’ve got a bunch of statues. We have God’s messengers on earth. They have a man who ate a little girl. How are we losing?”

“Unified leadership, perhaps,” whispered the Patriarch of Constantinople, sent to represent the Roman Empire at the funeral. “One order is easier to follow than two, even if it is from a man who eats children.”

“Can’t even wait until the old pope’s all the way in the ground before you start stirring trouble again, can you?”

“Not stirring trouble, just making an observation. Christians have two people to listen to, me and you.”

“And Jesus.”

“Right, and Jesus, of course. The Saracens have got two different caliphs, don’t they? But the heathens just have their emperor. One person, one set of orders to follow.”

“But he’s a lunatic.”

“You think pagans care? If they were capable of making good decisions they wouldn’t be pagans in the first place. We’re divided, and they’re not. We argue with each other, and they act without thinking. As long as that’s the case, we can’t compete.”

“And which of us would you want in charge, I wonder?” The old pope was fully buried now, but the new pope wasn’t even looking.

“I suppose the fairest method would be to pick whoever’s been a leader longer.” The Patriarch could barely conceal his smile.

“That’s you, though. I just became Pope, that’s not fair and you know it.”

“All right, then. How about whoever tends to the most people?”

“That’s you too.”

“The one closest to the Holy Land? The one that the strongest secular ruler favors? The one with the language more people speak? The one who hasn’t already lost to pagans again and again?”

“Stop it! Stop, this isn’t funny! All of these are you.”

“Really?” The mourners had begun to disperse. The few who hadn’t were looking more at the new pope’s scowling face than the old pope’s grave. “Well, I suppose it should be me, then.” The Pope leaned towards the Patriarch until they were close enough to kiss, not that either of them ever would.

“I have a plan to unite Christianity,” said the Bishop of Rome. “One where we’d both have a chance to lead.”

“And what would that be?” asked the Patriarch, already knowing the answer.

Without even realizing it, the madness of Ceithernach had pitted Christian against Christian, too obsessed with their differences to even think about the enemy that threatened them both. The Pope summoned the full forces of the Roman Catholic Church, demanding that the Greek traitors to the line of Peter be brought to justice for their heresies. A mighty army marched east, walking through Tengri Hungary without even a second thought to the pagans they once fought a crusade against. They weren’t worth it. They had to focus on the real enemy. The true threat to Christianity.

Through Greece the Catholics marched, breaking into every Orthodox church they could find and destroying everything inside. (“Not again,” remarked many a bishop.) Eventually, they arrived at Constantinople, and the indomitable Walls of Theodosius. For centuries, the city’s fortifications had stood as a testament to the invincibility of the Empire. But no wall could ever hope to stand if enough people wanted it down. Every healthy Catholic man in Europe was part of the lengthy siege. As West pushed against East for days on end, the army’s accompanying bishops read from the Book of Joshua, reminding both sides of the siege what God had done to the walls of Jericho. It took more time than seven days, and greater weapons than trumpets, but Constantinople’s walls would soon meet the same fate.

The Patriarch of Constantinople, who had indirectly started the Crusade, was unharmed in the ensuing carnage, as the soldiers had strict orders to not touch the Hagia Sophia. Instead, he had the unique privilege of watching in horror as the rest of the city burned. Sources claim that Kyros, the last Roman Emperor, escaped the city, but like his Western counterpart five centuries prior nobody is sure of what became of him after. As far as most are concerned, he simply disappeared, and a prestigious line of emperors as ancient as Augustus Caesar went with him.

The Roman Empire had fallen, destroyed on orders from Rome.

When news of the fall of Constantinople reached Airgialla, Ceithernach burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, cackling madly for hours on end, only stopping to breathe. Greece was part of the Ancestral Lands. Many an emperor dreaded the day they’d finally fight for it, to face an older, greater empire. Now they’d never have to. The Empire was in pieces, each of which could be trivially picked up.

Ceithernach decided to celebrate with a night of passionate, furious lovemaking with the only woman he ever desired.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 18: Rule Hibernia

Despite the fear of many an Alban that being ruled by an idiot would spell the end of their nation, Ceithernach’s many bizarre sexual exploits would one day kill him, and the Empire did not go with him.

In his place was Emperor Lorcan, already 59 years old when he took the throne. Frail from birth and wrought with bouts of paranoia, most assumed Lorcan’s reign would be brief and unremarkable. The first aspect proved true, but the second was as far from it as could be. Lorcan would receive the great privilege of being the ruler to finally unite the British Isles.

By the time of Lorcan’s coronation, the Kingdom of England was on its last legs. Save a small exclave in Normandy, all that remained of England was a small circle in the center of the island. They were surrounded on all sides by Alba, like sharks circling their prey.

Culturally, they had already fallen to Alba, as a series of royal marriages with Bhreatain Bheag had placed the Kingdom of Lloegyr, as its new king called it, under Welsh rule. Yet the English remained independent, with no regard at all for the plan. Like all those before him, Lorcan knew the things England would do one day if it was not destroyed. His predecessors were satisfied with incremental change. Pick England apart, one province at a time, and eventually it will fall. Two hundred years of that, and it still stood. No more, he decided. It was time for real change, by any means necessary. On the night of his coronation, long after the party had ended and the new emperor was by himself, he placed his hand on The Plan and swore a solemn oath to the time traveler and all the gods of Asgard: England would die before he did.

However, the greatest enemy in Lorcan’s reign was not England, but a force much smaller, and from farther away. It started as nothing more than rumors from traveling traders, passed along from one market to another until it had gone as far as Airgialla. The core of the rumor was clear, though: something was wrong in distant Cathay.

When the word first reached Emperor Lorcan, he didn’t think a Chinese plague was any concern of his. There was a time, he knew, that Alba would need to concern itself with the Far East, but he was sure he would be long dead by then. There were too many pressing issues that demanded his attention right now.

But just as word could travel far beyond China, so too could the plague. Not long after, the same traders, looking considerably paler than before, spread rumors from Persia, claiming the Saracens had suffered the same sickness.

At this, Lorcan cursed. He was stubborn, but no fool. The plague was heading west, and it would only be a matter of time before it reached Alba. So much of the royal coffers had already been spent outfitting the army, preparing for war against England. Now he needed to divert whatever funds he could into the empire’s physicians. Few things were as frustrating as a plan falling apart, and he was working with the most elaborate plan of all time.

Fortunately, past rulers with a better heart than he had already built hospitals throughout Eire. A small sum was set aside for whatever expenses the empire’s doctors might deem necessary, and a team of scribes ensured no province was without at least a basic understanding of Hippocrates and Galen.

But in spite of it all, Lorcan’s soldiers still wielded the best arms money could buy, and they still drilled daily for the coming war. The pandemic had not stopped Lorcan’s aspirations, but only made them stronger. He swore an oath England would die before he did. With talk of a plague on all the world, Lorcan feared his death would come sooner than expected. This meant, of course, England’s must as well.

When the order came to march on England, Lorcan’s knights could scarcely believe the order. Most of them were dying already, or at least felt close enough to it. If they had their way, they’d be doing the same thing as the rest of the empire, lying in bed and waiting for relief, in one form or another. But the crown had deemed their work essential. Lorcan made this word sound like high praise, yet the workers who heard it felt more like sacrificial lambs than heroes.

Still, it was an order from the emperor, and that made it law. The final, horrible campaign against England had begun, blood in the summer of plague.

Though the war lasted only a few months, to all involved it seemed like it would never end. The Bishop of Worcester, tasked with comforting English soldiers in their final moments, observed a cruel irony as he reflected on the war in his later writings from prison. The dying English had Heaven to look forward to. The dying Irish had Valhalla, an eternal battlefield. They would leave a war that only seemed unending for one that truly was. Hell seemed merciful compared to their Heaven.

The battles themselves would have seemed comical, were they not so gruesome. Soldiers on both sides appeared more like shambling corpses than fighting men, slowly teetering across the battlefield with all the energy of the sick, barely able to hold their swords. Most men fell over dead, or close enough to it, before an enemy weapon could go anywhere near them. At times it seemed less a war between Alba and England than man and disease, and at least there the winner was clear.

As for Lorcan, he would know nothing of the war he had started until after it was over. As the land was consumed by equal parts plague and fear, the emperor had closed the gates of Airgialla’s palace as soon as his armies first marched off. He, and the most trusted members of his court, were trapped inside, physically safe yet cursed with maddening isolation.

None of them knew when, or if, they’d ever be allowed to see the world outside again. Minor annoyances, like the heat of the room, were now infuriating. Things once seen as the comfort of home, like the imperial library, seemed more like the amenities of a cell. They had each other, at least. But they also had each other’s thoughts.

“What if this is punishment from God?” asked a bored chambermaid, rocking back and forth as she cradled her legs in a fetal position.

“Which god?” asked Lorcan, idly brushing the dust off the nearest wall.

“You know which one.” At this, the emperor scowled.

“There’s something there, isn’t it?” asked the court Gothi, a converted bishop. “I remember before, there was this story…” He put a hand to his forehead, struggling as he recalled forbidden knowledge. “...Something about a plague and a king?”

“So Eir heals plague and the White Christ starts it.” Lorcan was pacing around the room now. “All the more reason England needs to be crushed.” He stared out the window, out at the radiant sky. Even on a pristine day like this, it seemed so dark inside.

“What if it’s already over?” he mused. “What if we won days ago, and nobody ever told us?”

“What if we lost?” asked the marshal. Before he could even realize what he’d said, Lorcan ran across the room and punched the soldier in the face.

“Then we gather whoever’s left and do it all again. England must be destroyed.”

“Sure all the widows we’ve already made will love that,” retorted the marshal, rubbing where he was struck.

“I’m dealing with the fate of the world here. I don’t care what some widows think.”

“You should, you’ll be one of them soon.” His first remarks came with immediate regret. This one, an unrepentant smile. Everyone remembered the events two days prior, even if they wouldn’t speak of it.

For the emperor’s safety, he claimed, Flannacan refused to let Lorcan see his wife while he tended to her. All he had was the physician’s word that she was sick, but stable. He’d tried his hardest not to think about it until now. The marshal was still smiling. He knew he’d suffer for it, but telling off the emperor was the only relief he’d had since the quarantine began. Lorcan said nothing. He simply charged at his councilor, pinning him to the ground with both hands wrapped around his throat.

“You … evil … bastard!” mumbled the emperor. “I’m going to turn you into meat pie and eat you while your children watch for that!” The marshal pushed the emperor away and returned to his feet, unsheathing a dagger. The rest of the room said nothing, but made no effort to leave, only watch.

“Big talk! Big talk! I fought the whole French army, you think I’m scared of a scrawny old man? You want your pie, come cut a piece.”

“It’ll take more than a child’s knife to stop the emperor!” Lorcan drew his longsword, barely able to be held indoors without scratching the walls. The rest of the court stared on in silent horror, desperately wishing the two would start but unable to conjure the words. The two men ran at each other, only for a panting messenger to run into the room before blade could meet flesh.

“It’s … it’s over!” the young courtier declared. In that moment, it was as if the marshal never existed.

“What is?” Lorcan asked.

“The war, my liege. They’ve surrendered.”

If the quarantined in Airgialla were on the cusp of madness, their counterparts in England had long since crossed the threshold. At least Lorcan’s castle was far apart from any battlefield. The court in England was surrounded by war. Even in the dead of night, as they tried to sleep, they could hear the screams of the dying, the thunder of cannons. After months of death, both the fear inside and the reality outdoors, the remaining lords of England were willing to do anything to make it stop, and so the ultimate sacrifice was made. The last trace of resistance in the British Isles had capitulated. Alba was now a truly united empire, underneath the rule of Lorcan and The Plan.

After the plague had subsided, Lorcan threw a celebration unlike any seen in Alba before. The castle of Airgialla was stuffed with visitors from all across the empire, drinking and dancing with a fervor not seen in years. The emperor himself was smiling the brightest of them all; the cruel warlord his court had grown accustomed to seemed to have disappeared.

Similar joy could be found on the faces of all those attending from Scotland and Wales, by now all too accustomed to life under the rule of The Plan. The humbled visitors from newly-annexed England had the weakest smiles at the event, though they won every single drinking contest. Even a few foreign dignitaries were in attendance, mostly in hopes of placating the man who’d soon set his eyes on the mainland.

The few exceptions were refugees of the old Roman Empire, many of them former Orthodox bishops. Following the fall of Constantinople, the Pope had formally declared the faith of the Greeks to be heresy. Ironically, the bishops found more tolerance in Alba than they did under any Catholic ruler.

Though it seemed as if the entire realm and then some had attended the feast, the highlight occurred in the dead of night, with only one witness. With a pulsing head and a mouth of cotton, the barely conscious Lorcan wandered into his room. Empress Aelflaeda was still in the ballroom, celebrating the victory--and her recovery--with more energy than she’d had in her life. Lorcan didn’t mind. It meant he could enjoy the space of the bed alone, or so he thought.

He shut his eyes and tossed and turned for a few minutes, trying to force himself to rest in spite of the fire that lingered in his body. After a while, it hurt to even keep his eyes closed. They sprung open, and his heart skipped a beat. A figure was standing over him in the darkness, though the emperor couldn’t see his face.

“Congratulations, Lorcan,” said the stranger. “I’m surprised it had taken this long, but England is yours.” The emperor tried to speak, or maybe scream, but found himself without the energy to make a sound. “The challenges ahead are even greater, though. Perhaps I should extend the agreement I made. It’ll have to end eventually, though. After you have all the Ancestral Lands? Would that be fair?” The room fell silent, as one of the men waited for an answer the other couldn’t possibly give. “...Well, I’ll find something that works. In the end, it’ll all go according to Plan.” With that, the figure stepped out of the door, leaving the frightened emperor alone.

He didn’t sleep that night.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 19: The Crusade for France

With the British Isles now safely under Alban rule, the empire could shift its focus to the rest of the Ancestral Lands. During his quarantine, Lorcan had prepared some rudimentary plans for an invasion of France, though he found himself with no time to make them a reality. He swore England would fall before he did, and it was that oath, through plague and war, that kept him alive. Not long after fulfilling his vow, he paid the price for it.

Succeeding him was Emperor Donnucan the Butcher, leader of the Wolf Warriors. Though his reign was brief, it marked a noticeable break from tradition. Unlike every emperor before him, Donnucan did not dedicate his first day on the throne to reading The Plan. He was a warrior and a brute, through and through, and detested anything intellectual. To him, any time spent on the mind was neglecting the body, and “literate” was just another word for “weak.” The Plan said to take over France. That, he felt, was all he needed to know about it.

But before he could even think of France, a quirk of inheritance had caused the Scottish county of Fife to leave his realm. It was now under the rule of the Latin Empire, the new Catholic kingdom propped up by the Vatican as the new heirs to Constantinople. Ironically, the Bolghars who ruled the Latin Empire were recent converts from Tengriism themselves, less Christian than the Orthodox Empire they had seized their territory from. But Khagan Shilki pledged allegiance to the Pope, and that was enough.

Not long after, Latin boats stuffed with Catholic settlers set sail for Scotland, a Christian enclave in the middle of the Ancestral Lands. Shrines to the Aesir were gutted, returned to the Catholic churches they originally were. Shilki himself praised the retaking of Fife as a second, smaller Constantinople, a symbol of how Jesus Christ would always triumph over heathens and heretics.

From the comfort of the Great Palace, this was an easy claim for the khagan to make. To the Catholics of Fife, there was no doubt their defiance would be short-lived. A lone Catholic province surrounded by a zealous pagan empire, ruled by a warlord who loved conquest more than all who came before him. The churches prayed to Jesus once more, but mostly they prayed to survive what was to come.

As expected, Donnucan soon declared war on the Latin Empire to take back what was his. The khagan dispatched his armies as quickly as he could, but the time it took for a boat to travel from Constantinople to Scotland was more than enough for Donnucan to lay waste to the province. He hadn’t read The Plan, knew nothing of the phrase “strength, but not cruelty.” The emperor showed no mercy to traitors, even to the point of desecrating the graves of fallen saints.

Though the churches were destroyed, a certain piece of Christian imagery became even more widespread in Donnucan’s wake. If they wanted to be like the White Christ, he reasoned, they should meet his fate. When the Latin Army finally reached Fife, they were greeted by a forest of giant wooden crosses, a dead Catholic nailed to each one of them.
“Your Holiness?” said a servant in Rome. “Khagan Shilki is here to see you.”

“A messenger from him, you mean?” asked the pope in his throne.

“No, sir.” The servant stepped aside to reveal the khagan, clad in the bloody armor of a Bolghar warrior. Despite his conversion, Shilki could never abandon the aesthetic of his pagan ancestors. There was something to be said for striking fear in the hearts of king and priest alike just by looking at you. As the ruler of the Latin Empire, Christendom praised the khagan as the new Caesar, but deep down he’d rather be the new Attila.

“They’ve had it easy for too long,” he snarled. “They spread their idols, they loot our churches, and now they’ve ruined my land! I want another one.”

“A … another what?” asked the Pope.

“Another Crusade, what do you think? Burn the whole damned thing down, like we did to the Greeks.”

“The Alban Question isn’t as easy to answer as you think. Their forces might be larger than the Greeks by now. They’re farther away too.”

“I don’t care if they’re on the moon.” Shilki stepped uncomfortably close to the Throne of Peter. He could have grabbed the pope’s throat in that very moment, if he wished, and they both knew it. “They attacked my people, and they’ve got to pay for it.”

“Beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur,” quoted the Pope, a hand held up to Heaven. His eyes were shut in solemnity, not looking at Shilki, not looking at his anger, not looking at what drove him here. He didn’t care. He was glad they were dead. That must be it. The khagan spat on the ground, inches away from the pope’s throne.

“Beatus qui tenebit et adlidet parvulos tuos ad petram,” he quoted back. “The Latin Empire will march on Alba. With or without your aid.”

“You can’t win against them alone.”

“No, I can’t.” The khagan looked to the ground in shame. “But I can take as many heathens with me as I can. And if I do nothing, I’ll never know peace. I’ve made my choice. Now make yours.”

While the Bishop of Rome agonized over his decision, the Emperor of Alba enjoyed the most pleasant evening he’d had in years. He had celebrated his victory against the Catholic menace by spending the evening with his fellow Wolf Warriors, singing and dancing and downing all the mead he could handle. It was a perfect day, but like all of them, it had to end. The emperor was now in bed, silk covers on top of him, a loving wife asleep at his side, and a belly of mead to satisfy him until the morning. He could die happy, he thought. A few hours later, he did.

In the days to come, rumors would circulate through the Empire over Donnucan’s death. One servant claimed he’d seen a chambermaid in the castle earlier that day who had never been there before. A few members of the Wolf Warriors complained of feeling sicker than usual after their drinking contest, as if someone had tainted the mead. Countless theories would develop over the years of just what killed the emperor. One of them was even true, though the man who guessed it would never know. But whatever the reason, Donnucan was dead.

In his place was Emperor Dubthach, only eighteen years old. Despite his youth, he was blessed with unusual strength, making him appear almost like a hero of classical myth. He had the temperament to suit the reputation, a man of ambition and pride, already blessed with the empire’s highest honor at a young age. But behind the new emperor’s impressive facade lay a man of only modest skill. The only true achievement to his name was finishing his schooling, and just barely, at that.

This was not to say that Dubthach didn’t care for his royal duties. Indeed, on his first day alone he proved an improvement over his predecessor by reading The Plan, or at least attempting to. But not long after, he would inherit a responsibility not even the wisdom of The Plan could prepare him for.

Though Emperor Donnucan was dead, Khagan Shilki’s demand for justice remained. In fear of the new heir to the Romans dying violently, the Pope had given in. The Third Crusade was underway, targeting a child who had never even heard of the first two.

When news reached Dubthach that all of Christendom would soon march on his borders, the young emperor thought little of it. To him, the crusade was a chance to prove his worth as both a ruler and a warrior, nothing more.

The beginning of the war seemed to confirm Dubthach’s attitude. The first army to join the Crusade for France was France herself, the kingdom with the most to lose. The initial battles were no more than one-sided conflicts between Alba and France, the same skirmishes Dubthach’s predecessors had fought for years to pick the kingdom apart, county by county.

Eager to prove himself a worthy successor to the crown, Dubthach even traveled to the mainland to personally fight in the Crusade. The idea that he’d be up against an entire religion never occurred to him. To Dubthach, the entire ordeal wasn’t even truly a war. It was a game, the sort of make-believe war he’d played at with his father years ago.

The gravity of the situation only reached him as reinforcements arrived. With the fall of the Orthodox Church, the Pope commanded nearly all of Christendom, with all the soldiers that entailed. France, Germany, Lombardy, and the fractured remnants of old Byzantium had all gathered for the young emperor’s head. At the front of it all rode Khagan Shilki. The crosses of Fife were trapped in his mind. Even as he slept, he could see his subjects rotting away. It was time for Alba to know a fraction of the torment they’d done to others.

Though Alba’s mainland holdings offered considerable levies, the bulk of her army remained in the Isles, too far to offer aid in time. The forces at Dubthach’s side quickly proved no match for tens of thousands of Crusaders. With each day came news of another defeat, of Alban France pushed further away until all that remained of it was a thin rind of beach.

The war reached its ultimate low at the Battle of Mortain, where the Latin Army had pushed its way to the coasts. “Let them swim!” roared Shilki, as his men routed Alban cavalry into the sea. “This is God’s land, and they don’t deserve an inch of it!” In the midst of the carnage, he caught sight of a young soldier holding a pristine axe, one that had clearly never known battle before this day. Such a weapon this late in the war could only belong to a man of wealth. To the emperor.

“Come over here!” roared Shilki, charging towards Dubthach. Before the emperor could even realize what had happened, the khagan had pinned him to the ground. Shilki tossed his sword aside. For this, he wanted his bare hands.

“Let them be like their god!” Shilki sunk his hand into Dubthach’s eye socket. In a battlefield filled with screaming, the emperor’s agony drowned out all others. “That’s what your old emperor said, didn’t he, huh? When he put my people on a cross? That’s what you think is right, is it, you damned heathen?” He felt something thick, deep inside Dubthach’s head. He began to pull. “Well maybe … you should be … like yours!”

In the safety of his tent, Dubthatch felt the bandages wrapped around where his eye used to be. There was an unbearable phantom pain, begging him to rub at an eye that no longer existed. In the distance, the horrible sounds of battle raged as strongly as before, even without their leader.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” asked Dubthach despondently.

“I don’t think so, no,” said the physician, wrapping another row of bandages around his liege’s head. “But I’d trust in what the soldiers have to say.”

“No, it’s over,” moaned the emperor’s marshal, swaying back and forth with a bottle of wine in his hand. “Better practice your surrendering now, this time tomorrow this whole land will be Catholic.” Suddenly, in spite of all the misery, the emperor began to smile.

“That’s just what I’ll do,” he said. “Send a messenger to the crusaders. Tell them we’re prepared to discuss terms of surrender.”

The Pope writhed uncomfortably in his seat. The chair offered to him by the Archbishop of Rouen for his visit may have been fine for anyone stuck out here, but it paled in comparison to the comfort of the Throne of Peter. Khagan Shilki chose to stand, cleaning his sword as he waited for the enemy to arrive.

“You don’t need to do that,” said the pope. “It’s a surrender. There won’t be any fighting.”

“You know, the Greeks left a lot of books behind in Constantinople.” Shilki held the blade up to his face, taking a moment to admire his reflection. “One of them’s got a funny story about a surrender. See, there’s this giant horse…” The doors of the church swung open. Emperor Dubthach approached his enemies, armed escorts at his side.

“We surrender,” he said plainly, as he sat opposite the pope. “All of Alba’s holdings in the region will be placed under Catholic rule, and I’m willing to attend a humbling public ceremony to make the announcement official.”

“We’re both pleased to hear that,” said the pope. He turned to look at the khagan, who was staring at the door, trying to avoid eye contact with both of them. “You’d cede it back to France, I assume? Although I’m sure the Latin Empire would be happy to take it under its rule.”

“I didn’t say I was giving anything up. I said they’d be placed under Catholic rule. And I’d attend a ceremony for it. A baptism.”

“You can’t be serious!” screamed Shilki.

“I am. Following false idols has caused me nothing but pain. You should know that better than anyone.” The emperor tugged at the bandages hiding the hideous wound that was once his eye. “I’m prepared to accept Jesus as my savior, and teach all of Alba to do the same.”

“It’s the horse,” whispered Shilki into the pope’s ear. “It’s worse than the horse. He’s planning something. He has to be, if we’re supposed to let him keep everything.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said the pope, even quieter. “But we’re not in the business of turning away converts. Especially one as big as this. We say no to him, every other heathen will assume we’ll do the same.” Both of the Catholics looked to the pagan in front of them.

“Quod Deus purificavit, tu commune ne dixeris,” Dubthach quoted with a smile.

The next day, Emperor Dubthach was lowered into a baptismal font by the Pope, cleansed of his sins for all of France to see. All of Christendom cheered at the end of another victorious crusade.

Soldiers who survived were reunited with their families. The dead were buried and mourned. In Rome, the Pope celebrated another triumph of Christianity, and went to sleep at night with wonderful thoughts of Hungary. In Constantinople, Khagan Shilki publicly praised the victory, but went deep into the imperial wine cellars when nobody could see him. And in Airgialla, the newly converted Emperor Dubthach opened a new cathedral. He attended Mass every week and sang the praises of Christ. And when everyone had returned home, when the Crusade was nothing more than an ugly memory that nobody would dare revisit, he sacrificed to Odin once more, an offering from one oathbreaker to another.

Days passed since the great deception was revealed. Each morning the emperor woke with a strange anxiety. This would be the day, he thought, an angry messenger came to him and announced the crusade had begun anew. And every day, he was proven wrong. After a while, Dubthach’s de-conversion was as old and forgotten as the war that preceded it. Once more, he could resume his royal duties without fear.

“Where to, my liege?” asked the driver, as the emperor shut the door of the carriage behind him. With the crack of a whip, the horses began to walk.

“Dubhlinn,” said the emperor. “There’s a new shrine to Tyr for me to dedicate.”

“Dubhlinn it is.” The carriage headed towards the nearest southbound road. “You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not as smart as the priests. Tyr’s the god of…?”

“War,” said the emperor with a smile. “Protector of soldiers. They said they wanted a warrior king at the ceremony. The champion of the Crusades!”

“Champion of the Crusades…” repeated the driver. The carriage was outside of the city now, nothing but wilderness as far as anyone could see. “But that’s not right, isn’t it? You lost that.”

“No I didn’t!” said the emperor with a chuckle. “Still got the crown, still got my land … only thing I lost is this right here.” He pointed at his eyepatch.

“But you surrendered.” The horses started to pick up speed. “You were only allowed to keep anything because you promised to accept Jesus Christ. Which you then went back on.” With this, all the levity vanished from the emperor’s face.

“So who sent you?” Dubthach asked. “The Pope? Shilki?”

“My employers value principle,” he said, eyes still on the road. Not even for a moment would he honor his victim with a glance. “They like order. They like it when things go according to plan. A proper plan, not the ramblings of a crazy old king.”

“And what does this plan lead to?” said the emperor. The only answer to this was the driver’s silence and the gallop of hooves.

“There are things my employers dislike too,” the driver eventually said. “One of them is cheating. Maybe that’s why they hate your Plan so much. Kind of one big effort to cheat the world, when you think about it. But your kingdom’s done plenty of little cheating along the way, with the help of that friend of yours. Cheat yourself more money, cheat away any revolts, even cheat your way out of a crusade.” The horses were moving at an unnatural pace now. Outside, the emperor could see nothing but a bright green blur.

“Listen, I don’t know what the men before me did, but I’m not like them!” The carriage was beginning to shake. “Tell them I’m willing to talk with them! Negotiate!”

“Like you negotiated with the Pope?” The driver let go of the reins. The horses were now moving without guidance. “We forgive you, all we’re doing is giving you a pass to cheat again. No, we’re done with forgiveness, Dubthach. For you and everyone after you.” The carriage careened to one side. Dubthach felt weightless. He felt his stomach rising up to his head. And then, he felt nothing.

 

[DiagorasCinna]

Chapter 20: Skipping Ahead

Though it spelled his own doom, the deceit of Emperor Dubthach had succeeded in its goal. The Empire of Alba had survived intact, even with God Himself calling for its destruction. Every emperor to follow, as well as all those lower in the chain of command, were now convinced the empire was invincible. The true challenge of The Plan was no longer in implementing it, but in waiting. Given enough time, future emperors decided, eventually it would bring about itself.

This seemed to be confirmed by the greed of the empire’s lesser vassals, who waged constant wars of conquest to expand their demesne, inadvertently bringing more of the Ancestral Lands under Alba’s wing. The Kingdom of France would fall not at the hands of an enlightened emperor, but of King Dyfnwallon II, an English Catholic vassal. He knew nothing of The Plan, and would have called it blasphemy if he had. He did not take France because a man from the future decreed it must be taken, but simply because he wanted it.

The empire permitted these vassal-led invasions, as it would fulfill the first order of The Plan sooner. But trusting these conquests to the aimless whims of vassals also brought a slew of unexpected new territories, firmly outside of the Ancestral Lands, such as when the newly-conquered French vassals chose to veer into northern Iberia.

In the years to come, many emperors would agonize over what to do with these unwanted spoils. It seemed wrong to object to any new territory, but the Ancestral Lands had firm borders. To take land elsewhere was to deviate from The Plan, and not following The Plan, they were told, would mean the death of mankind.

The Plan itself offered no specific guidance on this subject. The time traveler had never anticipated his kingdom extending beyond the Ancestral Lands. In truth, he’d be surprised to learn it had already come this far. The closest he ever came to giving any advice for this unthinkable issue came in a single passage:

Stay out of Africa. Stay out of the Middle East. Stay out of the Americas.

A command that was somehow both clear and confusing. There were boundaries Alba was never meant to conquer, that much was clear, but what of places that were neither the Ancestral Lands nor these forbidden regions? Were they “the Americas,” whatever that meant?

The issue wouldn’t receive a proper resolution until the reign of Emperor Dunadach the Bear, the former king of Scotland before inheriting the imperial throne. Though more concerned with the battlefield than legal tactics, Dunadach was a shrewd man who opted for an unorthodox approach: ask someone else. It had long been a tradition to never reveal The Plan to anyone, but the unwritten rule was literally just that. Nowhere in its unbearably lengthy pages did The Plan explicitly forbid sharing itself.

It couldn’t be shown to just anyone, of course. The new emperor was no fool. But surely there was no harm in inviting a small team of scholars, sworn to secrecy, who could interpret it better than he? The ports of Airgialla were soon overwhelmed with boats of literate men from all over the known world. Most, of course, already lived within Alba’s borders, but the emperor couldn’t afford to miss out on any perspectives. Christians and Muslims--though never particularly devout ones--were specifically sought out, just in case God had an insight the Aesir could not provide.

Even the wisdom of the seldom explored South was consulted. For centuries, Alba, like most of Europe, thought little about Africa. Its northern coast, once home to mighty Egypt and Carthage, had now long been under Saracen rule. There were a few friendly traders with interesting goods, carrying fruits seen nowhere else and statues said to be carved from the teeth of great beasts. But little thought was given to the land they came from, especially south of the cruel Sahara.

Ironically, it was The Plan’s commandment to “Stay out of Africa” that sent Dunadach’s mind there for the first time. “Stay out of Africa. Stay out of the Middle East.” To The Plan, these two regions were fit to be mentioned together. Both had Muslims, he knew of that much. But the Middle East had ancient and enviable empires, the finest scholars in the world, the Library of Baghdad. Could Africa be hiding treasures on the same level? Better, even?

He dared not defy The Plan, and as it commanded, he would never even consider conquest in Africa. But surely it did not prohibit the peaceful exchange of ideas? Any people The Plan demanded he respect must have something to say about it themselves. For this reason, Namandje the Fearless, a Mande mystic, became a respected advisor in the emperor’s court.

After months of study and deliberation, the scholars delivered their interpretation: If The Plan explicitly prohibits conquest in certain areas, rather than just saying “Stay in the Ancestral Lands,” taking land anywhere not listed, though undesirable, was permitted. Though none of them could tell the emperor just what an “America” was, they were confident Alba’s new territories were an America. The time traveler wouldn’t have used such a strange name, they argued, if these “Americas” were called anything else.

At the ruling that would be known for the ages as “The Law of Dunadach,” though he had little to do with it, the vassals of Alba cheered. They now had a license to loot and pillage as much as they see fit, at least in their immediate surroundings. Stay out of Africa, stay out of the Middle East, stay out of the Americas, and stick your fingers in wherever else you’d like. The easily excitable king of Finland had sent his armies towards the Slavic east within minutes of the decree, adding even more to Alba’s unplanned expansion.

While Alba’s reach grew, its rival empires found themselves unworthy of the title. Despite its biggest threat being bound to go nowhere near it, the Abbasid Caliphate could not survive the outrage of its own subjects. For God to favor a kingdom of idolaters over the followers of the Prophet could only mean that they had been led astray by a corrupt caliph.

All sorts of heresies spread throughout the empire, each of them denouncing the rule of Caliph Al-Mustamsik. The growing discord would soon erupt into revolts, then civil war, until it was clear the prosperous, united Arabia of years past would never return. Rather than draw out its demise any longer than it needed to be, the caliph reluctantly abdicated, ending the lengthy reign of the Abbasids, and the Islamic Golden Age with it.

Christians throughout Europe soon rejoiced at the fall of the Saracens, unaware that they would soon meet the same fate themselves. Though officially the Greek Orthodox Church was no more, many Greeks of the old empire still secretly resented Rome. To them, the Pope was nothing more than a tyrant who had forced them to embrace a false religion, with the Latin Khaganate less a legitimate state than a twisted insult, handing the former capital of the Romans to a group of barely-literate Bolghars.

Like the caliphate before it, the Latin Empire was soon host to a great nationwide revolt. When ruled by an unfit tyrant who cares nothing for, maybe even delights, in the suffering of their people, it seemed like madness to enable them. Even after the ruling Dulo dynasty, seeing the writing on the wall, hoped to abdicate, the Pope refused. For the first time in centuries, Christianity had united leadership. Was such an admirable goal not worth any earthly hardship? It was only when a crowd of armed Orthodox zealots stormed the Hagia Sophia, beheading the Catholic Archbishop of Constantinople as they shouted the Nicene Creed in Greek, without a “filioque” to be heard, that the Pope relented. The Latin Empire was dissolved, its Bolghar rulers fleeing to the seclusion of Trebizond, while the holy city of Constantinople was placed in the hands of a more enlightened ruler who would respect its subjects.

Islam and Christianity alike had lost their greatest kingdoms, but the people of The Plan remained strong. Emperor Dunadach took advantage of his rivals’ fractured rule to push further east into the Ancestral Lands. With most of France now under Alban rule, the empire’s main focus shifted to taking Germany. The emperor felt particular pride after the successful siege of Cologne, the final resting place of the Magi. Though the bones of the three kings remained undisturbed, the shrine was repurposed into a propagandistic museum of the Catholic Church’s misdeeds, a reminder to the newly conquered Germans to be thankful for the tyranny they’d been freed from.

A permanent garrison was established in the city of Trier, which The Plan described as the future birthplace of a great hero. The Kingdom of Germany, established during the first Crusade, was now the greatest obstacle to Alba’s goal of reclaiming the Ancestral Lands. A force at the kingdom’s borders would allow for war to resume in an instant, as needed.
However, this was not to say the empire’s efforts were concentrated in Germany alone. Similar skirmishes of conquest occurred in Scandinavia, as Dunadach sought to wrest Sweden from the hands of the Catholic converts who now ruled over it.

Before too long, Alba had made such strides through Germania and Scandinavia that all of the the gods’ most sacred territories were under their control. Emperor Dunadach personally planted a sapling in Paderborn, at the spot where old Irminsul once stood, and offered a sacrifice to the Aesir at the Temple of Uppsala. After centuries of struggle against the Messiah and the Prophet, the growth of Alba, combined with the collapse of the Abbasid and Latin Empires, had turned Germanic paganism into one of the largest faiths in the known world.

It was time to make that official.