Returning to No Applause, Only More of the Same

Chapter 50, Mud

It was the day before Yuletide. Or, rather, the day everyone in the Empire celebrated Yuletide on. In the theocracy, it was usually celebrated the day before.

This, alongside several other customs and traditions, were simply things that Kreig had to get used to. His comrades, the other soldiers and officers of the Empire, knew a parody of his life. Hed been captured and tortured by the theocracy, only rescued when the theocracy fell and the country was destroyed, crushed into a muddy wasteland up north where the sky was always red.

This, too, was something Kreig accepted. As a matter of fact, he was thankful for what the Empire did for him. In a certain sense, at least.

Warm food. Whole clothes. Work and comrades. After twenty years in prison, he had to forget his hatred at some point. Forgive, forget. Cherish what you have instead of longing for whats already long gone.

It was during this time, before he was fully comfortable with his German, before he was fully integrated into the Empires walls, that an officer of the crown approached him with a private mission in hand. A rolled-up parchment dripping in the perfume of the Emperor, a telling marker for any subservient. Kreig didnt like perfume, not then, not now. The parchment spoke in long, strung-together words about something he had to retrieve from up north. Something that had been buried with the theocracy when it should have been retrieved to the Empire.

Since he used to be an inhabitant of the theocracy, and a major player in it too, it was for him to go get it. A simple mission. Travel north alone, retrieve it and return with the item in tow.

Simple. Mundane.

...Suspicious.

Usually, when Kreig felt a knot of uncertainty ball up the pit of his stomach, he had people to turn to. People more clever than himself who could look at a piece of text from all angles and tell him what was strange and what to do about it. His main comrade in this department had been Peter, who, despite his eccentricities, was a very quick and thorough man when it came to things needing a good think-through. But he was dead. The thing here was that Kreig currently knew such people.

The man who sat right across him, scarfing down a stupidly normal-looking sandwich, was one such person. Erwin Strohesser. But secrets were secrets, and Kreig could turn to no one with his suspicions for fear of being charged with treason. A crime usually punished by death or over thirty lashings.

He didnt mind the latter, but dying wasnt something he wanted. Not yet. Not before passing on the faith he had learnt to love.

That was his reason for living, and right now, that meant not questioning his mission. Hed do it, and hed see what was up with it when he got to the north.

Travelling there was no easy feat. Usually, no soldier would ever try to brave the wilds on his own, but Kreig had no choice. No squadron, no comrades. Just him and the world. In hindsight, part of the reason he was given the mission at all might have been to test his loyalty. See if hed try to run or something.

He didnt run. A stupid choice, but his curiosity really did get the better of him. So he travelled north.

His strength was only barely enough. Monsters and animals and the temperatures all attacked him as if rabid, but he took it. These animals were known to him, from the thick-limbed frosty lizards that barely moved to the dune-covered quick-footed drakes. Snowstorms and meters of snow and frozen lakes that housed the clawed crawlers.

Home. Dear, detestable home.

Not a place he had ever traversed fully alone, but he made do.

The Empire was a very northern country. Above it, not much could grow at all. It was just cold and frozen and dead. There was only a single country that had been able to survive and prosper up there.

And now, Kreig saw it again, after all these years. Now he saw why it had survived.

It wasnt warm but it wasn't cold either. A moderate temperature that had let crops grow bountiful and people live in harmony. Every house and every wall and every church that had once been there having been torn down and destroyed, replaced with mud. The blue sky was gone, a bleeding red overtaking it like a plague. He could barely stand upon the ground. Now, he just had to find it.

He stood there for a full moment. The whole of it pushing inside his mind and his body. The terrible nature of it. He hadnt seen it like that before. How it was all just gone. The one spot in the frozen wasteland up north, the magical, divine place where the warmth was everywhere, reduced to mud and cinders and-,

And he wasnt alone anymore. The mud squirmed and twitched, forming into what seemed like worms, all collecting and breeding around things, until these rose. Kreig had never seen them before.

Mud-movers. The second he sliced one open he saw not only ashen mud spray, but the shards and fleshy rotten remains of a man. It was no secret that the remains of the mournful at times arose to become monsters. It was not an uncommon sight to see in the aftermath of a large battlefield. But this wasnt a battlefield. This was a slaughter.

Believers and atheists and mothers and children, killed and domesticated into muddy abominations.

Kreigs first instinct had been to run. To turn around, and flee, and damn this mission and damn the Empire to the soil.

But behind him was only a hundred more acres of mud. A thousand more mud-movers, reaching towards him as if he, as their sole survivor, as their Oracle and Body, could save them. Grant them relief.

Kreig, please, you dont have to say anymore, Im sorry for asking, you dont-

He tried. He really tried. Days and nights he spent there, and he hadnt developed beyond the need for sleep and food yet, so he could barely stand. Every time he turned around, he saw another mud-mover. Every time he killed one, he was presented with a dirty, tarnished skeleton. Another civilian he hadnt been able to save. Death, death, death. Muddy lands and red skies.

Every time his eyelids fluttered close, every time his mind went blank for just a moment, he fell back and the mud greeted him like an old friend.

Come, it said, were all down here.

But he wouldnt sleep. He fought and he fought and when a mountain of mud rose like God himself emerging from below, and when a cloak formed out of mud and when its hand held a golden, beautiful spire that he knew had to be it, that half-corroded skeleton stared back at him, its flesh blackened and oily, its neck sliced by the blade of a guillotine, and Kreig knew who it was and it knew who Kreig was and he fell on his knees, sword and shield falling at his sides, claimed by the mud, and he stared up at that great figure, looming overhead, mud slipping off of its half-exposed form, and Kreig wanted to say Im sorry Peter, and Im sorry I couldnt save you, but his mouth was stuck and he couldnt breathe and Peter wouldnt leave and he couldnt stand and he didnt want to see but he had to see and then when Peter was close enough to touch him, close enough to touch his face and end it all right then and there, Kreig stood up.

He ran. He ran, and he ran, and he ran.

All the way home to the Empire.

Where the sky was blue and I could live in peace and everything was-,

Kreig, I get it, Im sorry for asking, so please, will you stop that?

Kreig hadnt noticed it, but when he looked down, the world bleary and red and muddy, the metal in his hand, the part of the vehicle he was in, the side of it, it was crushed, and he still held it. It was crushed. He destroyed it. Such a dear thing of his brothers. Gone. Destroyed by his hand. He-, he did it again, he just-, he destroyed, and he destroyed. Everything he loved, his brother, his country, his religion, all destroyed, at his hand, destroyed, gone, ruined,

Muddy.