“Good morning, City of Hell!” High atop the tower, banners streamed, and Zelo laughed aloud.
He stood at the very peak, one hand gripping the flagpole, while the stench-laden gale whipped at the hem of his clothes.
In the distance, brass-colored blast furnaces stretched row upon row as far as the eye could see.
Boilers spewed foul, scalding vapor into the air; dust mingled with the fumes, clumping together like willow catkins before drifting down to the ground, where the clamoring, jostling throngs of workers kicked them aside.
“Good morning, our sovereign!” On the streets, the crowd erupted like boiling water poured into an anthill.
They raised their arms and cheered with the same frenzy they might have shown if golden rain were falling from the sky.
“We are ready!
We are ready!
Lead us in the charge again!” Zelo’s grin widened.
He threw open his throat, and a bright, piercing cry rode the gale: “Remember our mission!
Remember the mission of the Stollians!
Smash the skulls of heretics with our bones!
Drown the breath of heretics with our blood!
Make the final charge with our lives!” “Fight!
Fight!
Fight!” “Kill!
Kill!
Kill!” Zelo let go, leaping straight outward, surrendering himself to gravity and the void as he plummeted toward the ground, phantom psychic light howling around him.
With his back to the earth and his face to the sky, he spread his arms and laughed wildly.
Even greater and more astonishing cheers exploded from the crowd.
Workers converged like true ants upon the place where Zelo fell, flesh piling high into a tower of humanity.
As the crowds gathered, countless long, narrow passageways opened through the streets and lanes.
This giant’s kingdom suddenly grew countless capillaries, winding blood vessels that stretched from the bursting heart to the limbs.
The boilers boiled over.
Creak…
clang!
The heavy metallic sound of gates opening rang out like furious roars.
Every factory gate was hauled open by stooped workers.
The sleeping dragon had awoken; knights on warhorses emerged from the depths of the factory halls, the crisp sound of alloy horseshoes striking step by step upon the muddy roads.
These knights were clad in heavy armor of red and black, their plate scrawled with blood-written wards, and necklaces strung from human teeth hung around their necks and waists.
Especially striking was the longspear clutched tightly in each knight’s hands, its shaft nearly the full height of an adult man.
The lance seemed forged from the bones of some nameless creature, sickly yellow-white throughout.
The lances were gripped in a death clutch by the knights, or rather, it was as if their hands had long since fused with the weapons.
Huge spikes jutted from the spears’ hafts, piercing through clenched palms, then bound again and again with iron chains around the knights’ hands.
Even death itself would not make these knights release their weapons.
Behind each lance’s tip, some twisted lump of flesh, or perhaps some living thing, writhed and screamed as psychic glimmers hissed and sparked.
But their anguished cries were long drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.
“Fight!
Fight!
Fight!” “Kill!
Kill!
Kill!” Zelo fell from the tower and was caught by his loyal people.
The crowd surged like an unceasing tide; it rose, then ebbed.
When the people withdrew in their frenzy, Zelo stood steady upon the street.
The light around him grew even more brilliant, the light of the soul, which some called witchcraft and others psychic power.
Zelo was a master at wielding such sorcery.
The crowd pressed around him, yet he stood head and shoulders above them all.
Zelo was far taller than ordinary men, over three meters in height, with black hair, pale pupils, and extraordinary features.
A certain mad flame burned in his light-blue eyes.
He should have been the Maker’s perfect creation, but a certain suffering, a certain ultimate torment, which some called fate, had visibly descended upon this young man.
Zelo’s face bore a massive scar.
His mouth had been brutally torn open and then healed, the skin there gone, revealing the sharp teeth beneath, making it seem as though he was always smiling.
He was like an ancient statue praising the Gods, come to life and walking among the people.
The warriors brought him his mount.
Unlike the warhorses ridden by the other knights, Zelo’s steed was not one of those fierce and loyal warhorses raised by human hands.
He was too tall and too heavy; even the great warhorses native to Stoll could not support Zelo’s weight.
Thus Zelo’s mount was two captured Greater Daemons, stitched and fused together through precise violence and psychic power into a horse-like shape.
When Zelo kicked these two Daemons hard with his spurred boots, this “warhorse” understood exactly what it needed to do.
The warriors also handed him two longswords, forged from the hardest Adamantine on the entire planet.
For Zelo, however, these weapons were disposable.
He kicked the warhorse’s rump hard.
The beast let out a pained cry and began to walk.
He rode along the main thoroughfare of this great nation, and the people made way for him.
Fresh blood from the side roads gradually flowed into the main artery.
Knights and warhorses followed behind him, loyal, fanatical, ready to charge together with him.
“Let us cheer for the Charger!” On the tower of the first defensive wall, the workers’ leader Nora shouted.
With one hand she hoisted a sheep, and with a long knife in the other, she chopped off its head in a single stroke.
The white head and fresh blood rained down upon the warriors.
“Let us cheer for the Charger!” On the tower of the second defensive wall, the great poet Bel stood beside a yak.
He shouted, raised a great axe with both hands, and cleaved off its head in one blow.
Curling lashes and gore fell together onto the warriors.
“Let us cheer for the Charger!
Kill!” On the last defensive wall, the warriors shouted.
They had no time to slaughter livestock for Zelo; they were too busy.
Flames spat from the muzzles of their guns, roaring as they poured down upon the xenos army besieging the city.
Countless evil, blasphemous humanoid creatures were attacking this city, wave after wave, without end.
Beneath the blood-red sky, the Iron-Shackle Lord brandished his staff.
From its tip, terrifying soul-flame shot toward the wall.
The horned Shredskin Vanguard roared as they climbed the ramparts, only to be swept down by the molten iron poured by human soldiers above, bursting into shrill screams.
Ever since this “City of Heresy” was founded, such attacks had never ceased; not for a single moment, not for a single second.
They had already lasted for more than ten years.
The xenos lord Syllax, who ruled this planet, would not allow its slaves to rebel, nor permit them to build a city that belonged only to slaves.
The slaves called “humanity” were meant to grovel at its feet, to be tortured and sacrificed to the God, not to raise their blades in revolt.
It sent its entire army to exterminate the sole miracle on this planet, this city founded under Zelo’s leadership, belonging only to humanity.
But every assault was repelled.
Again and again, those who could no longer endure the pain and torment held the line with their flesh and blood and poorly made weapons, drowning the enemy in the bones of the fallen.
Whether it was the Soul-Locking Overseer Valko beneath its command, who could imprison human souls, or the Soul-Screeching Herald Lisia, whose single scream could shatter a whole wall, all those xenos who took pleasure in torturing humans had their heads struck off by Zelo and hung high on the city walls, mocking the Daemon’s impotence and consoling the souls of the human dead.
Ten years were enough to string those xenos heads one by one like shriveled clusters of grapes, hanging them over the city gate to dry in the sun.
A harvest belonging solely to the resistance.
Zelo laughed.
“Open the gates!” He cheered.
The engines roared.
The heavy gates swung open for the charging riders, and gunpowder smoke, rushing ahead of blood, burst through the gap of the half-open gate, slamming straight into their faces.
Light blazed in Zelo’s eyes.
The warhorse beneath him snorted steam.
He raised his sword high.
“Let us put an end to endless hardship!
Let us grant rest to the tormented souls!
Charge with me!
Until we can no longer lift our blades!”