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Artois was a mess of smoke and fire that none of the men in the trenches had ever imagined in their life. The air smelled sickly sweet after the rain had stopped, but the fog still held itself in place. Hiding their position from, the cruel creatures that belched smoke and pissed death soared. They weren’t creatures in the sense of the monsters that lived in the forests. They were not magical animals used as weapons. They were Atlantian Gristals, were what they’d called them early on, though they lacked a true name. They resembled great and monstrous birds, but in place of feathers was parchment, a kind of an awful bit of old writing stapled to a frame made of discarded wands. They had rendered what had once been farmland into a wasteland of smoke and meat stench.
There were three of them then, Nathan, Waid, and Henri. Nathan was the brains of the outfit, or at least he thought of himself as such. He saw himself as being above all of this as an Englishman, serving in France as a favor to Bors. Waid fancied Nathan, though there wasn’t a lot that could convince him to be upfront about it. He’d often couch it in jokes. A laugh and a sight gag while surrounded by the existential meat grinder of Artois. Then there was Henri. He was from the place that was now a battlefield. The rest of their company of soldiers were either dead, or dying, or they were smart enough to flee.
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All of them had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of Treason and Atlantis’ aggression as they annexed the northern tip of their country. In any other world, they all might have been doing it some somebody else, though. Henri had lost half of his face when an acid bottle struck him. He took a pipe in his half mouth. The half that showed off his exposed, sharpened teeth. The assault by the Treasons had rendered him more of a beast than a man, and he made sure that they’d see it every time he’d catch one of their soldiers nearby.
Henri crouched against the wall of the trench and lit his pipe with a match. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking since he first witnessed the destructive power of a Gristal. Afterward, he and one of the company men who were now dead cut up an Atlantean that had tried to make a dash for their trench. Waid and Nathan hadn't been there, but the could see the pale fingers that Henri had made into a necklace. They both had nightmares about it.
"We should go,” Nathan said.
Waid looked at him. "Where?"
"Anywhere. We can't stay here."
Henri took the pipe from his mouth. "He's right. We can't stay here."
"Haven't we a duty? To France?" asked Waid, attempting a smile.
"To hell with France. If France wanted us to save it, they'd have gifted us with wizards and magical beasts that could kill Atlantians by the thousands," hissed Henri.
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Waid looked at him. "What about the people? The civilians?"
"What about them?" said Henri. He breathed a harsh, inward hiss, sucking in smoke from his pipe. " I haven't seen a citizen since the leveled Artois. As far as I know, we've been abandoned."
"That's not true." said Waid
"No?" Henri leaned forward. "Where are the reinforcements? The support? The goddamn food?" He gestured with the pipe. "We've been eating rats for a week, and I'm fresh out of fucks to give."
They stared at him.
"You’re right." admitted Waid.
"No," said Nathan. Breaking from his previous state.
"We can't stay here,” echoed Waid.
Nathan shouted, "But we're not going to just abandon our posts!"
"What posts?" said Henri. "There is no post. There is no France. There is only us, and them, and we're losing."
Nathan looked at him, then at Waid.
"We're losing," Waid said quietly. “It’s tough tit, but we are losing. We need to cut our loses and fuck off to a beach in spain or anywhere else, but here.”
Nathan shook his head. "No. We can't."
"Why?"
"Because."
“Because why?"
Nathan looked at the two of them, then down at his hands. "Because it's all we have." he said. "Because there is nothing beyond here! If we leave. If we get to that beach in Spain, we will not be free from this land of death, I can see it all so clearly, even when I can briefly catch sleep.”
Silence fell then. But it did not last long. It was the middle of the day, and none of them were prepared for the Earth itself to shake. It was small at first. A light, barely noticed tremble, followed by a soft metallic ring. A bell somewhere in the Hell that was Artois rang out. It jingled really. Then the shaking became more rapid, and the three men rose to their feet and drew their swords. At least they would die staring into the enemy’s face, rather than at the bombardment of some cowardly magic beast in the sky.
When they emerged from the trench, they could see that the fog had cleared. Then they spotted him cresting over another. None of them had ever by chance seen a human man who looked like him. He was a mountain of a man. He seemed like a Hellenistic statue made of flesh. His eyes glowed like hot coals, but that was not the strangest aspect of this warrior. It was not his sword, nor his impossible physique. It was the fact that he was running towards them, sword in hand, and dressed in the green and red garb of a jester. The bells on his hat jingled and rang, while his boots shook the earth.
"What the fuck is that," said Waid. The fake smile that he'd plastered to his skull was gone. It had been replaced by a look of mad horror.
"I don't know," said Nathan.
"He's coming this way," said Henri.
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"I can see that," said Nathan.
The man was a blur as he ran, and in a blink, he was upon them. Henri was the first to die. The man ran him through with his sword and lifted him off the ground. With a quick jerk of his wrist, he tore Henri in half and let his entrails spill to the ground. The other two men, Nathan and Waid, were too stunned to react. The man then grabbed Nathan by the throat and lifted him off his feet. He looked into Nathan’s eyes and then snapped his neck. As Nathan’s body fell to the ground, the man turned to Waid.
The man grabbed Waid by the throat and lifted him off his feet. He looked into Waid's eyes and then snapped his neck. As Waid's body fell to the ground, the man turned and ran back the way he had come.
On the field of battle, the War Jester took up the entrails of the dead Frenchmen and began to do an erotic dance for his god, utilizing the offal of the war in place of silken scarves. From that day on, the warriors of France would develop a cultural fear of the sound of bells jingling. The king of France would later publicly execute his jester, as a show to the public that they could not be taunted. It did little to soothe their fears.
The trenches were clean of French Influence by the end of the afternoon. Zeus was. Well, in a cosmic sense, Zeus didn’t exactly notice until some jackass in a jingly jester hat had done a sensual dance in the middle of a field of corpses. War was more of an Ares thing, but the Treasonans had taken to him-centric monotheism like it was nothing. Frankly, he didn’t mind. His sister-wife did, but he hardly cared for her opinion on the cult.
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