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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Patriarchy" data-source="post: 69290" data-attributes="member: 162">The Marshfields, once a proud sweep of living grass and shallow streams, now stretched a mud churned wasteland beneath a sky that smoldered with angry red. Spears some shattered, some only bloodied jutted from the ground at irregular intervals, as if the plain itself had sprouted them in a last, pointless protest. Ragged banners of black and gold hung limp on their staves, the cloth so soaked with rain and other fluids that no wind could urge them on.The Drokhan Host, or what remained of it, assembled along the far bank of a rivulet already half-clotted with the day’s losses. Their armor was patched with scavenged mail and smeared with the runes of a faith much older than Ingersol’s own. Faces gleamed behind dented visors, some hopeful, most merely exhausted, and above them rose the grumble of generals arguing over how much dignity they could salvage before surrendering. It was, Ingersol thought, a fine moment for a miracle.He stepped forward onto the battlefield’s stage. The dying sun caught on the polished edges of his copper gorget and painted his skin in sickly gold, accentuating the streaks of sacrificial blood he had not bothered to wash away. Behind him, his own men stood in the formation of the vanquishing: spears fanned in disciplined ranks, every shield locked, every helmet forward, every eye trained on their priest rather than the enemy. They needed to believe this day would be different from all other slaughters.He let the silence stretch, tasting the flavor of attention. Then he strode out alone, boots sinking into the stinking slop. The enemy watched, eyes narrowing, hands tightening around whatever weapons they had left. Some spat curses; some simply gawked, unwilling to look away from a holy man so plainly courting death.He stopped a spear’s length from the first row of Drokhan, squared his shoulders, and knelt. The churned earth sucked at his knees and painted his calves with black paste. He closed his eyes. He listened, first, to the sounds of dying—the whimpers of the wounded, the far-off sob of a mother who’d never find her son, the occasional, oddly gentle splash as something big and dead rolled into the river.He breathed deep, filling his nose with the rot and copper tang. Then he began."By the pain endured in the cradle, by the lash and the lash’s master, by the world made new in each scream—so we consecrate this ground to the agony of Magonia."A wind, sudden and sharp, rose from the east. The banners behind him stirred, and the enemy’s banners—those so recently dead—seemed to twitch in response. Ingersol waited until the gust faded, savoring the way silence always grew denser after a miracle’s first syllable.He lifted his hands, palms open to the Drokhan. He thought of Elwin Marsh, the tearful supplicant, the man whose hope had smelled so much like surrender. He saw the faces of the Fenlands: gaunt, desperate, and ready to follow any god that listened. He offered up their misery as fuel."By the plea of the lowest, by the starved and the shamed, we remember the promise made in blood: no agony is ever wasted. No suffering is unseen."The mud around him began to tremble, ever so slightly. The closest Drokhan soldier flinched, raising a shield, but the earth did not swallow Ingersol. Instead, a faint light gathered at his fingertips, an iridescence that reminded one less of fire and more of the feverish glow of wounds healing wrong. Ingersol pressed his lips to the agate talisman that hung at his neck, its runes invisible but present, felt rather than seen.He whispered the third part, the words forbidden in all but the most dire ritual:"Let the old gods hunger. Let the new god feast."The tremor became a pulse. Petals not leaves, not blades, but petals the color of arterial blood erupted along the shafts of every abandoned lance and spear. From the tips of pikes, at first only a few, then dozens, then a hundred, unfurled star shaped blooms that glowed with their own blue-white light, brighter with each heartbeat. The phosphorescent corona washed over the plain, illuminating the faces of every witness: fear struck, lips parted, eyes wide in the new, impossible dawn.A gasp swept the Drokhan like a single, collective breath. Soldiers who had never flinched at the whistle of arrows now staggered back from their own weapons, some dropping to their knees. Others reached out, hesitant, to touch the blossoms only to flinch as the petals stung and drew beads of blood. But they could not stop looking. Even the dying, even the dead, seemed to glow with a measure of the miracle.For a moment, the world was still. Ingersol remained kneeling, head bowed, as if the pain of creation was nearly too much to bear. Only when the last spear on the field bloomed did he rise, slow and deliberate, and face the enemy anew.He saw in their faces what he had come for: the shudder as terror became awe, the moment when hope and fear were the same thing. He watched as the hard men of the Drokhan Host scavengers, heretics, men who had never worshipped anything but their own survival—looked at the miracle and felt, for the first time, the yearning to believe.He let the silence settle. He let the miracle’s sting soak into every heart.Then he spoke, voice ringing clear across the river of blood and into the night:"See what agony can bear! Lay down your arms, and rise with us witness what comes next, and know that the old gods have no power here."He spread his arms wide. The wind, now steady and cool, carried his words across the field. The enemy’s general, a giant in soiled lamellar, tore the crest from his helm and threw it to the ground, jaw slack with the weight of what he’d seen. Others followed, some kneeling, some weeping, some simply standing motionless as if afraid that moving would shatter the spell.On the Magonian side, a rumble of astonishment ran through the ranks. The youngest recruits, still caked with the mud of their own bowels, stared at Ingersol as if seeing a god in the flesh. The old veterans crossed themselves, uncertain whether to be proud or deeply afraid.Ingersol strode back across the battlefield, each step parting the flowers at his feet. He saw the doubt dissolve from his own men’s eyes, replaced by a hunger that would not be sated by victory alone. There would be more battles, more suffering, but now, now they would march with the certainty that theirs was the hand on history’s throat.He reached the line, blood and mud caking his boots, and looked to the sky. The sunset, once blood-red, now burned clean as new fire. He knew the vision would haunt these men forever: the agony that flowered, the pain that grew bright.And as the last petal drifted to the ground, High Priest Ingersol smiled.</blockquote>

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