"Any civilization that worships something they can't prove should burn to the ground."- excerpt from Guard Kioni, salvaged 9/3/29 AD, found in [RETRACTED] estates.
"I don't know why they thought giving liquor to posted guards would be a good idea. If I was Gernal Emme, I would have let us go a day without water than have to endure a day of 200 or so half-drunk soldiers." Okoyo said as he hid my face from the increasing crowd. I was pretty much gone at this point. I wanted to stay away from the liquor, but I was extremely dehydrated and thought it would be best to have some form of liquid in my body before the long shift. The masks felt heavy on my face, almost as if someone tied bricks of cement to my face and blasted it with my liquor filled breath. It was a temporary thing. I knew it was. It just sucked. What Okoyo didn't know is that General Emme had enough water for us; in fact, getting water is a lot easier than wine. He gave us liquor for civilian control. Once they see some of Jorri's best guards tipsy on post, they'll ease up a little, distracting them from the real threat. It was a weird strategy that my teacher during training told us to skip over. It was never something that was supposed to be used in action, only an academic theory locked in the abandoned pages of a book.
"Here comes the party bus!" Okoyo whispered as large baskets carried by border authorized guards came our way. Blood trailed the path they walked, layered onto the recently dried blood. Dozens of people were stacked in life defying ways. Their arms twisted 360, their legs held on by a single muscle. The boxes were filled to the limit with bodies, some of them with broken rib cages just to accommodate them all. All the guards were border control, but on closer inspection, they all held the inner circle sign of General Emme. I don't know how he got clearance within 12 hours from the Eze to execute the suspected traitors. The Eze is notorious for never handling issues that didn't involve money or imminent war.
The border control guards walked into our general direction, pinning us down with their slank expressions.
"General Emme wants you two near the stronghold. If you see anything alive, shoot it." He slipped a small sliver of paper in my pocket and walked off, seemingly unaware of the nerves shooting down my spine.
"Love letter I assume?" Okoyo whispered, his voice increasingly flat. His stance tightened up, making me increasingly on edge to a potential threat. The city didn't scream danger, most people staked out in their homes, frightened by the guards drunken state and the body parts that occasionally fell off the baskets.
"It's probably nothing," I whispered, keeping my head down. Love letters and affection towards any guard is high treason. The rule became heavily enforced once I swore in, mostly because guards had the reputation of sleeping around whenever they got the chance. But even with the rule, most people didn't dare to approach me, since the public swore of my femininity the moment I took up a sword and casted me out as an outsider.
"It might be something, Kioni. Something that can finally kill the guy and teach them a lesson," Okoyo laughed, pointing his sword towards the sky.
"He's a kid Okoyo. Barely even 15. Let him live a little," I said, feeling for the note. No one ever gave me a note before outside of outdated war plans from the takeover. Even after we annexed Zahere and paper became widespread, I never got my hands on one or thought to even buy one.
After a little bit of soul searching, we finally made it to the stronghold. It was a lot nicer than the lookout from yesterday but didn't have the optimal height. There were a few other lookout points about a mile away from each other, each with canons and armed personnel. Of course Okoyo and I had the most vulnerable lookout. Closest to the ground and the forbidden tales lurking on the forest floor. Okoyo was still pissed and refused to talk to me unless I showed him the note. Which of course I wasn't going to. It was quite unusual for him to act like this. Normally his black eyebrows didn't have such a violent arch, even in the heat of battle. His hair used to be lush dreads but cut it off right after graduation after someone compared him to the late Zahereian spiritual masters.
"What the fuck is that!" Okoyo screamed, throwing spears dangerously close to my eyes.
The smoke was back, accompanied by large bellows of orange tinted rain hurtling towards us. Horns set off like bombs, the noise traveling in somewhat of a straight line for dozens of miles inland. The droplets didn't disform after they hit the ground, instead they bounced off the land, crashing anything too light to withstand its fury from the sky.
"It's hail!" I screamed as I tried to fasten loose armor from the cabinet. Hail is an ancient weather pattern, last recorded in the nation 500 years ago. Typically, before the onslaught of the Zahereians.