When the adventurers had to leave, pale men with shorn heads and little symbols had come hither to the halpess village. In the teachings of Hurg and by the way of fire, they cleansed the corruption with cold flames. Soon, the river ran clear again, but the snails were gone and fertilizing ash seeded itself in the earth as all the piles of corpses burned. The men-at-arms chased them to no avail, for they hid in the darkness and under the bodies of the dead or inside the very earth. The inquisitors had spies and traps for them, but all they caught died by the way of a poison pill wedged between their teeth. And yet, their efforts were in vain. The Empire knew that sometimes, you had to make an investment. The hurgists were enemies of the old order and the chaos of voided power was abhorrent.
When the demesians mercenaries arrived at the village, they made a list. They went from door to door, took who they found. The peasants stood up and folliowed. They did not know what laid in store and Gryffin had impressed the need to bear what was done to them. They were not seen again by their peers. It was not a list of any reason and therein laid its genius. They noticed the missing people, but what could they do? All who drew attention to the fact that their fathers, mothers, siblings and children or even friends disappeared, disappeared.
The demesians build a house and waited. And as was commanded by their scriptures, they only kept useful things in it.
"Valislav is Hurgist." One said to a mercenary-slave in front of it. The demesian, with his square, beautiful and hard face added the name and took both into the house as one of the captives had tried to save himself by naming that man a Hurgist.
With this, they knew that when the demesians told them of the evil of the Hurgists, how they had corrupted the snails to then purge them, that the demesians spoke the truth. They knew that the demesian order, their pragmatic acts and all they brought, were the only way on a road without alternatives. The Hurgists had told their own story, one of hope for a better world and understanding and beautiful chaos. But the demesians, in their black-and-white and their inviolable panoplies told it with more rumor and with fools to despise and fear and the hope to be the one in a million, chosen for greatest and the rest condemned.
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More and more disappeared and the demesians did not even lift a finger as they sat upon the thrones of their own strong hand and did great calculations and plans in accordance with the will of all the gods of men and by the way of the marriage of planets and stars. And when barely a hut was still filled with people, they bought the land and the river and the world beneath and above it with but a small satchel of gold. Then, they brought the people into the house they had build and they saw the hurgists and the neighbours they thought to have been corrupted into Hurgists to be lined up. Before them was a man with a crossbow, for the demesians loved the expensive yet easy to use weapon and he shot and butchered. The blood became meal to feast the new lords' cattle and their flesh became fertilizer. Upon the peeled lumps of flesh they brought their wonderous seeds that spread quickly upon the blood of men and grew tall and strong, overshadowing all and they blossomed into a tethered flock of cotton like lambs thatt budded from the stem, the dead's faces reborn upon the head of floral beasts that strode with neither will nor reason until the harvest of plantwool. And their skeletons became their servants and their skin became beautiful handles, embrodery and more that the demesians proudly placed upon their swords and arms so their lords might sell them better to their next lord and contractor.
And the peasants saw the rationality of their irrational world and they saw that it was necessary and welcomed these blessed and profitable deeds everafter. When the slave-mercenaries went on, they laughed about the pitiful resistance, about the culpability of the helpless and hapless villagers in these deeds of theirs and how merry and blessed their holy war for profit was.
Everyone had a place in the empire, even the rebel.
