CHAPTER 75: The Scattered Venom
CHAPTER 75: The Scattered Venom
The Northern Reaches – Beyond Stonefall Citadel, Weeks After the Fall
The cold, biting wind was a constant companion in the northern reaches, a vast, desolate expanse beyond the reach of Highcourt's new order. The land here was a deliberate scar, a testament to Lord Marshal Daegarn's final, bitter act of defiance. Mines lay collapsed, their gaping mouths choked with rubble. Granaries were blackened skeletons of timber and stone, their precious contents either burned or scattered to the wind. This was the Empire's last gift to Kael Ashmark: a wasteland.
And in that wasteland, venom stirred.
Dren cursed under his breath, his axe resting on his shoulder, as his patrol picked its way through a deliberately flooded valley. Mud, thick and cloying, clung to their boots. "Gods' teeth, they didn't just retreat, Sovereign," he muttered to his second-in-command, a grim-faced rebel named Lyall. "They purged the earth itself. What kind of madness leaves this behind?"
His men, hardened veterans of Duskwatch and the Serpent's Spine, moved with weary vigilance. They weren't hunting soldiers now. They were hunting ghosts of an empire, men who had shed their uniforms and taken up the mantle of desperate outlaws.
The Serpent's Brood – A New Kind of Enemy
They found the first signs of them near what had once been the thriving village of Riverbend. The village itself was mostly intact, spared the torch, but its granaries had been systematically emptied, its livestock slaughtered and left to rot. And in the central square, strung up from the gnarled oak, were two farmers, their throats slit. Pinned to their chests with crude, scavenged Imperial daggers, were crude Imperial lion sigils, torn from uniforms.
"Not bandits," Theron Varkhale rumbled, his scarred face grim, as he arrived with his own Varkhale detachment. He knelt by one of the bodies, examining the knot. "This is military. Disciplined. They want us to know who's doing it. They want us to know the Empire's still here. Still biting."
In the following days, they encountered more. Small, mobile bands of heavily armed men – remnants of Imperial legions, proud Vellgaard guards, even some disgruntled Purifier acolytes who had abandoned the Archlector's hopeless cause. They were no longer fighting for the Crown. They were fighting for survival, with a desperate, nihilistic fury. They pillaged any remaining pockets of loyalist peasantry, terrorized remote villages, and ambushed supply runners trying to reach Kael's newly integrated territories.
These were not the large-scale battles of the past, but brutal, localized skirmishes in the wilderness. Rebel patrols, moving to secure the newly pacified northern territories, found themselves ambushed from hidden ravines, their convoys raided. The remnants knew the land, knew its secrets, and fought with a ferocity born of utter desperation and a burning hatred for the Ashmark.
One rebel squad, sent to secure a vital bridge, was found later, their bodies dismembered and arranged in a chilling tableau, not unlike Seyda's work, but lacking the cold precision. Around them, scrawled in their own blood on the stone, were the words: "For the Emperor. You will not have peace."
The Seeds of Rebelllion – Kael's New Horizon
Back in Highcourt, Kael received the constant stream of grim reports. Myrren, overseeing the administrative efforts, presented data on the widespread destruction. Nalen's intelligence confirmed the true nature of these remnants: Daegarn's deliberate scattering. They were not just a consequence of victory; they were a calculated, final act of war.
"They leave us a thousand needles in the flesh of our new kingdom," Myrren said, her face taut. "Every loyalist they abandon, every granary they burn, creates a new problem. A new desperate element we have to fight. It drains our men. It drains our resources. It breeds fear among the very people we claim to save."
Kael listened, his gaze fixed on the map, tracing the countless small, dark marks representing the scattered remnants. He thought of Daegarn, the old Marshal, broken but unbowed, choosing to leave him with this bitter inheritance. It was a viciously clever move, turning defeat into a lingering poison.
He turned to his council, his voice cold and deliberate. "We will not give them the satisfaction of perpetual chaos. We will not let their dying breath define our reign."
He set out new, comprehensive directives. Theron Varkhale and Dren would command highly mobile, elite units, tasked not just with eliminating hostile remnants, but with distinguishing between desperate deserters and malicious bandits. Those willing to surrender and offer service to the new order would be given the chance. Those who continued to terrorize the populace would face the Ashmark Scythe. No more lingering. No more allowing festering wounds.
Lady Virelle's network was tasked with intelligence on these scattered groups: their numbers, their leadership, their patterns. She was to identify any potential weakness, any flicker of pragmatism that could be leveraged.
Seyda's Red Veil, with their unique methods, would be deployed selectively. Not for full-scale purges, but for targeted psychological warfare against the most hardened, defiant pockets of loyalists, pushing them to surrender or break. Her terror would now serve to hasten peace, not just victory.
Kael knew this was the grim work of state-building. The old Empire was dead, but its shadow stretched long and dark across the land, a poison in the very soil. He would have to root it out, systematically, brutally, if necessary. The nature of this task was in the grim determination to eliminate lingering resistance, the harsh justice meted out to those who refused the new order, and the enduring brutality required to forge peace from the ashes of total war. He would not just conquer the land; he would cleanse it.