November 26, 1639 – Val Fleury city, Esthirant Capital Region, Parpaldia Empire

The train clawed through the shadowed woodlands of western Parpaldia, its iron wheels shrieking like wounded beasts under the strain of coal-fed engines. A relic of the empire’s Great War, it spewed acrid smoke that wreathed towering pines and veiled mist-soaked clearings in a choking haze. The air outside was heavy with soot and the damp rot of autumn, a stark contrast to the polished stone and gilded spires of Esthirant’s heart.

Inside the diplomatic carriage, thick velvet curtains dulled the rumble, and brass fixtures glinted under flickering lanterns. Remille sat rigid, her face an unreadable mask of imperial resolve as the countryside blurred past—pine forests giving way to the gentle swells of Marl’s borderlands. Kaios rested his chin on interlaced fingers, his gaze distant, as if searching for answers in the shadows. Elto, Director of the First Foreign Affairs Department, pored over a notebook, its pages worn from days of relentless revisions.

Silence reigned, not from comfort but necessity. The journey’s weight demanded preparation, not words.

On the second day, as the coal smog thinned and rolling hills emerged under a pale sun, the world shifted.

The train groaned through a narrow canyon, emerging into the Urietch Valley—and reality fractured.

Elto lurched forward, his breath catching. “By the gods…”

Black highways stretched in flawless symmetry, wider than any Parpaldian road, their surfaces gleaming like polished obsidian, marked with pulsing white and yellow lines. Strange poles lined the edges, their glass panels drinking sunlight. Steel arches spanned the lanes, bearing signs that flickered with shifting text and vibrant colors, alive without a trace of enchantment.

Remille’s lips tightened, her voice low with uneasy awe. “No mana, not a whisper of magic. Yet it all… moves.”

Kaios said nothing, his eyes locked on the horizon. Glass and steel towers pierced the sky, cradled by cranes swinging like skeletal giants. Massive screens blazed across the skyline—one flashing a sleek vehicle slicing through a desert, another a blue flame coiling into a corporate sigil.

“It’s…” Elto whispered, “a wall of glass, painted with living images.”

The truth hung heavy: Earth had claimed this land, reshaping Marl Kingdom in its relentless image.

The train slowed into Urietch’s station, a surreal blend of gothic stone arches and luminous panels that shifted as they approached. Ticket gates parted without human touch; maps reformed in cascades of color. The structure pulsed with an alien vitality.

The doors hissed open, releasing a blast of mechanical heat—clean, sterile, devoid of soot’s bite. Engines droned distantly, the air sharp with the scent of cooled metal and misted water.

They stepped onto the platform.

A tall figure in pristine white robes awaited, his smile calculated, posture immaculate. “Princess Remille, Prime Minister Kaios, Director Elto,” he said in flawless Parpaldian. “Welcome to Urietch. I am Ambassador Khalid al-Faroun, of the United Arab Emirates.”

Remille inclined her head, her tone formal but guarded. “We are honored.”

Al-Faroun gestured toward the exit. “Come. You’ll find this… instructive.”

The city swallowed them whole.

Towering screens cast images sharper than any arcane illusion, their colors searing. Vehicles flowed along broad boulevards, guided by invisible laws, never faltering. Workers shouted into glowing rectangles, faces lit by ethereal light. Cranes pivoted with mechanical precision, hoisting steel to heights that mocked Esthirant’s tallest spires.

Remille paused, watching a man speak urgently into his device. “Are those… spellbooks without incantations?”

Elto shook his head, his voice low. “No runes, no chants. Just machines, bridging distances instantly.”

Al-Faroun glanced back, a flicker of pride in his eyes. “Silicon and steel, nothing more. No mana, no reliance on nature’s whims—just human will.”

Kaios’s gaze fixed on a massive banner stretched across a rising tower, emblazoned with a Volkswagen crest. “This reconstruction—all Earth’s doing?”

“Indeed,” al-Faroun replied. “ADNOC paves the roads, ExxonMobil commands the ports, Volkswagen electrifies the grid, Aramco fuels the industries. Five years ago, this was barren land. Now, it’s a hub of progress.”

Remille’s tone darkened. “You’re reforging an entire kingdom.”

“Elevating it,” al-Faroun corrected, his voice calm but pointed. “Marl’s nomadic past is gone. This is a partner in a new era.”

The weight of his words sank deep.

A family sped by on a silent two-wheeled machine, the child in the rear glancing at the delegation with bored indifference before returning to her glowing screen, chewing wrapped food. No wonder, no fear—Earth was ordinary here.

Elto’s whisper carried dread. “We’re centuries behind.”

Silence fell, heavy as iron.

Remille’s eyes traced the cranes, neon pulses, and elevators climbing like silver beetles. “Runepolis has its temples, Otaheit its factories. But this… it defies gods and nature alike.”

Kaios clasped his hands behind his back, his voice low. “Otaheit chases ambition. Runepolis grips power. Urietch… it’s forging something sharper.”

A steaming concrete sign loomed: DUBAI PETROCHEMICAL LOGISTICS – PHASE II.

Elto stared, his voice tight. “They’re not done. They’re building toward a future we can’t grasp.”

Remille’s gaze hardened, her words cutting. “Soon, they’ll weigh us against this—and Parpaldia will seem a forgotten myth, its wealth from Altaras’s gem mines a fading echo.”

No one spoke. Parpaldia, once a colossus, was now a shadow.

Al-Faroun’s tone was gentle yet unyielding. “Runepolis is majestic, Otaheit proud. But they’re static. Here, we evolve—ceaselessly forward.”

Remille met his eyes. “And our place in this?”

“That depends,” he said, “on whether you cling to ornaments or embrace what endures.”

Kaios’s jaw tightened. Survival meant shedding imperial pride.

A silent bus glided past, its passengers oblivious behind dark glass.

“They don’t even see us,” Elto murmured.

Remille’s reply was cold. “Why would they? We’re ghosts to them.”

The words lingered like ash.

They pressed deeper into the city—past children glued to screens, vendors with gleaming carts, towers rising from fresh earth. Each step hammered home: Parpaldia had entered a world racing ahead, indifferent to their legacy.

Remille paused at a flickering panel. “Their signs shift without sorcery…”

“Digital displays,” al-Faroun said. “Solar-fed, networked. No lunar cycles needed.”

At a construction site, Marl workers toiled under foreign-branded gear—Japanese, German, Arabic names on every tool.

Elto’s voice was taut. “None of this belongs to Marl.”

“Of course not,” al-Faroun said. “They offer land and labor; we bring precision. This boulevard, nonexistent five years ago, now carries half their trade.”

Remille stopped by a shrouded statue—an ancient Marl king, veiled like a discarded relic. Beside it, a billboard pulsed: COMING SOON – HYUNDAI BUSINESS COMPLEX.

Kaios broke the silence. “At what cost?”

Al-Faroun shrugged. “Some say the kingdom’s soul. Others say it was already bartered.”

Elto pressed. “No one resists?”

“Not loudly,” al-Faroun said, a thin smile flickering. “Tripled wages quiet rebellion.”

They continued, the city’s din enveloping them: grinding machines, blinking signals, tireless engines. A glass overpass arched above, cooled by hidden vents. Below, highways teemed with orderly vehicles—no mages, no guards, just seamless function.

Remille pressed a hand to the glass. “How does this exist without spellcraft?”

No answer came—she hadn’t sought one.

Elto whispered to Kaios. “We’re not equals here. We’re beggars in their domain.”

Kaios’s silence was assent.

Remille scanned the skyline, Earth’s logos branding every surface: Total, Aramco, Volkswagen, Emirates Logistics. “Are we mere pawns to them?”

Elto’s reply was grim. “Pieces to move, sacrifice, display.”

Kaios added softly. “As we did to Louria, when we held the board.”

The irony stung. Parpaldia had crushed weaker nations with tariffs, fleets, fire. Now, they looked up.

A billboard flared: a smiling couple on an unbuilt balcony. MODERN LIFE. BUILT FOR A SMARTER TOMORROW.

Remille whispered. “Runepolis feels like a mausoleum now…”

Elto’s mouth twisted. “Runepolis is stone, eternal. This is steel—reborn every few years.”

Remille mused darkly. “How long until Earth rewrites Marl’s laws, its armies, its soul?”

Elto hesitated. “If it hasn’t already.”

A Marl police vehicle flashed by—Earth-crafted, split between local script and Arabic.

Kaios muttered. “This kingdom’s slipping away.”

Undeniable. If Marl bent so easily, Parpaldia’s fate was grim.

Dread eclipsed awe as the port loomed, the sun dipping to paint cranes crimson. Metal arms swung over massive ships, docks reeking of diesel and salt, not wood or hay.

November 26, 1639 — ISIS Headquarters, Port city Saint-Boyeux

Saint-Boyeux, once a tranquil coastal haven of bobbing fishing boats and salt-laced markets, now pulsed with the relentless clamor of hammers, shovels, and generators. Black banners snapped from the weathered port authority building, their edges fraying in the sea breeze. The docks, once alive with traders’ shouts, were now fortified checkpoints manned by fighters in green PASGT armor, their rifles glinting under the fading sun.

Patrols moved in disciplined pairs—human and semi-furry auxiliaries, not Saint-Maloire’s veterans but war-hardened newcomers. A jackal-headed giant barked orders to human laborers unloading crates stamped with foreign script. A bear-headed brute hauled steel plates toward warehouses, muscles rippling under coarse fur. A fox-eared scout, eyes sharp, slipped into an alley clutching a rolled blueprint, her chest rig clinking softly.

The city’s surface was a facade. Beneath, a sprawling labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers burrowed through ancient rock. Engineers, faces caked with dust, worked in grueling shifts, blasting shafts with stolen tools and crude explosives. Some tunnels snaked from abandoned basements; others hid under false warehouse floors.

“This one hits the river route,” an engineer muttered in Arabic, gesturing to a reinforced hatch in a wine cellar’s shadows. “Harbor’s cut off? We slip men and cargo inland.”

The commander, eyes on a tablet’s drone feed, nodded. The screen showed Saint-Boyeux from above: barricades, mined roads, troop placements—a fortress disguised as a port.

Along the docks, masked fighters assembled mortars behind weathered crates, tubes angled seaward. Nearby, an IED crew wired artillery shells into steel casings, chuckling as they rigged remote triggers, their ease born of grim repetition. In the central square, inside the gutted mayor’s office, the ISIS emir studied a wall map, its red lines tracing tunnels to mountains, highways, and allied towns.

“Saint-Maloire fell to us,” he told his lieutenants, voice low and resolute. “It can fall again. We won’t be caged.”

As dusk bled across the port, shadows stretched over anchored ships—some smuggler allies, others targets for raids. From a rooftop, the jackal-headed commander swept binoculars across the horizon, the hum of generators blending with pickaxes below. Saint-Boyeux was no haven; it was a citadel built to vanish underground when the first shells rained.

The emir’s map marked more than defenses. Each line was a vein in a network pulsing with Parpaldia’s stolen wealth—gems from Altaras’s mines, once the empire’s lifeblood, now bartered for rifles and drones. Earth’s technology had seeped in, not as progress but as a tool for chaos, arming insurgents who thrived in the cracks of a crumbling world.

“They think they control us,” the jackal-headed commander growled to a lieutenant, lowering his binoculars. “But we’re the ones who’ll choke their trade routes.”

The lieutenant, a human with scars tracing his jaw, nodded. “Their machines, our tunnels. Let them come.”

The port thrummed, its heartbeat a mix of diesel and defiance. Saint-Boyeux wasn’t just a stronghold—it was a wound, festering under Earth’s shadow and Parpaldia’s fading grip.

Outskirt

The outskirts of Saint-Boyeux, once open fields of olive groves and weathered fishing shacks, now bristled under barbed wire and ramshackle watchtowers cobbled from scavenged timber and corrugated steel. Rows of green cannabis plants swayed in the salty sea breeze, their leaves catching the fading sunlight like blades. The air was thick with the musky scent of earth and herb, undercut by the sharp tang of diesel from idling generators.

Under the jackal-headed commander’s piercing gaze, dozens worked in silence—locals with black ISIS armbands, Parpaldian ex-slaves, and hollow-eyed laborers from fallen territories. Their hands moved mechanically, harvesting buds with practiced precision. Armed guards patrolled dirt paths between rows, AKs slung low, their boots kicking up dust. The fox-eared scout prowled the perimeter, her eyes scanning the sky for drones, her chest rig clinking faintly with each step.

Every plant was tagged, cataloged with ruthless efficiency. Harvest baskets fed into a converted warehouse, its air heavy with the cloying reek of drying cannabis. Inside, bear-headed heavies operated presses, crushing the yield into dense bricks wrapped in oilskin, labeled as “grain” or “dried fish” for smuggling. Each crate was a lifeline—Parpaldia’s lost Altaras gem wealth, once fueling imperial fleets, now traded for guns and explosives.

Shipments vanished under cover of night. Fishing boats, cloaked in fog, hid bricks beneath nets and salted catch. Trucks rumbled through tunnel networks, escorted by armed pickups under drone overwatch, snaking into ISIS strongholds and black markets where gold and munitions changed hands.

In a shadowed warehouse, the emir counted profits: silver coins, gold pieces, and foreign notes piled beside a laptop flickering with encrypted buyer messages. “This arms a hundred fighters,” he declared, voice cold. “Tunnels expand. No one starves.”

But weapons trumped food. Cash flowed to underground arms factories, fueling a war machine that thrived on chaos. The fields were more than profit—they were chains. Workers earned meals and protection but lived under relentless scrutiny. A stolen leaf, a whispered doubt, and they vanished into the tunnels, never to return.

As dusk fell, floodlights bathed the plantation in a harsh glow. The jackal-headed commander made his final round, exchanging clipped words with the fox-eared scout before striding toward the port. Night crews took over, their silhouettes merging with the fields’ endless sway.

Saint-Boyeux’s outskirts were no longer pastoral—they were a cog in a relentless machine, grinding out rebellion with every harvest.

Old Saint-Boyeux theater

The old Saint-Boyeux theater, once a haven of music and laughter, now stood gutted, its velvet seats replaced by splintered benches on a scarred wooden floor. The stage’s crimson curtain was long burned to ash, the platform stained with sweat and time. Dim lanterns cast jagged shadows, their flicker barely reaching the cracked ceiling where chandeliers once gleamed.

The room was packed—Parpaldian ex-slaves, dockhands, orphans, and laborers who once hauled cargo under foreign flags sat shoulder to shoulder, their faces hollowed by hunger and loss. Human and semi-furry guards loomed at the edges, rifles slung across green PASGT armor, eyes scanning for dissent. The air was thick with the musk of unwashed bodies and the faint tang of gun oil, a far cry from the theater’s former perfume of wax and roses.

On the stage, a bearded ISIS preacher stood tall, his voice a thunderous cadence that filled the hall. Beside him, a fox-eared woman in black fatigues translated into Parpaldian, her words sharp and unyielding, each syllable a hammer driving the message home.

“You were tools,” the preacher roared, gesturing to the crowd. “Fed scraps, paid nothing, deemed less than the dirt beneath their boots. Parpaldia chained you, bled Altaras’s gem mines to gild their palaces, while you starved!”

The fox-eared translator echoed, her voice cutting through the murmurs. “You carried their loads—they laughed. You built their empire—they scorned you.”

The crowd stirred, some nodding, others staring blankly, their eyes dulled by years of servitude. A young woman clutched a child’s hand, her face etched with wary hope. An older man, scars crisscrossing his arms, gripped his bench, knuckles white, as if wrestling with the preacher’s words.

The preacher leaned forward, his gaze burning. “Here, you are not slaves. Here, you fight for a cause—freedom, vengeance, a future. Join us, and you’ll eat, you’ll arm, you’ll rise!”

The translator’s voice rose in tandem, her fox ears twitching. “Parpaldia’s mines are lost, their fleets crumbling. Earth’s shadow grows, but we carve our own path—through blood, through will!”

A low chant began in the back, faltering but growing, spurred by guards’ nudges. The preacher’s words were a spark, igniting desperation into fervor. Yet, in the crowd’s eyes, fear lingered—freedom promised, but at the cost of absolute loyalty.

Outside, the port’s generators hummed, a reminder of the war machine beyond these walls. The theater was no sanctuary—it was a crucible, forging broken souls into weapons for a cause that thrived on their despair.

Underground

Beneath Saint-Boyeux’s scarred surface, a labyrinth of tunnels burrowed through ancient limestone, their jagged walls slick with condensation and the acrid reek of explosives. The air was heavy, thick with dust that clung to lungs and stung eyes, illuminated only by flickering LED lanterns strung along rusted cables. The faint hum of generators pulsed like a heartbeat, mingling with the distant clatter of pickaxes and the low rumble of collapsing rock. This was no mere hideout—it was a subterranean fortress, carved to outlast sieges and vanish when empires came knocking.

Engineers, their faces caked with grime, toiled in endless shifts, their stolen tools—drills branded with Earth names like Hitachi and DeWalt—screaming against stone. Some tunnels snaked from the basements of abandoned homes, their entrances hidden behind false walls of crumbling plaster. Others opened beneath warehouse floors, concealed by trapdoors rigged with crude hinges. Each passage was a lifeline, designed to smuggle fighters, weapons, or crates of Altaras’s pilfered gems—once Parpaldia’s pride, now bartered for RPGs and drones.

In a cavernous chamber, its ceiling braced with scavenged steel beams, a wiry engineer knelt beside a newly framed hatch in an old wine cellar. His headlamp cast stark shadows, revealing crates stacked against the walls, their faded labels reading “medical supplies” but heavy with the clink of ammunition. “This one hits the river route,” he told a field commander in hushed Arabic, gesturing to the hatch. “Harbor’s sealed? We slip inland—men, cargo, all unseen.”

The commander, a lean figure in green PASGT armor, studied a tablet glowing with a drone’s aerial feed: Saint-Boyeux’s docks, mined roads, and barricades etched in grainy detail. “How long to link it to the eastern tunnels?” he asked, voice low, eyes never leaving the screen.

“Two days,” the engineer replied, wiping sweat from his brow. “Faster if we get more charges.”

The commander nodded, his fingers tracing a red line on a tattered map pinned to the wall. It marked a network sprawling toward mountains, highways, and sympathetic coastal towns—a web of escape and ambush. “Saint-Maloire fell to us,” he said, echoing the emir’s words. “It can fall again. We dig deeper, stay invisible.”

Above, the port thrummed with the chaos of a city remade for war, but down here, silence was currency. Fighters moved with practiced quiet, their boots muffled on dirt floors. A bear-headed heavy, his fur matted with dust, hauled a crate of mortars through a narrow passage, his grunts echoing faintly. A fox-eared scout, her rifle slung, checked a tunnel’s supports, her tail twitching as she tested a beam’s weight. Human laborers, some former Parpaldian slaves, carried sacks of smuggled goods—electronics, chemicals, cash—each marked with the weight of survival.

In a side chamber, lit by a single flickering bulb, a team rigged loitering munitions: commercial quadcopters, their sleek Earth designs bastardized with wired explosives. A young technician, barely past his teens, soldered a trigger mechanism, his hands steady despite the tremor in his jaw. “This’ll gut a convoy from a kilometer out,” he muttered to a comrade, who grinned, testing a remote’s signal.

The emir’s voice carried from a deeper chamber, where he stood before a wall map, its red lines a spiderweb of defiance. “They think they control the seas,” he told his lieutenants, his tone cold as the stone around them. “But these tunnels—they’re our veins. Parpaldia’s gems, Altaras’s wealth, fund our blades. Earth gives us tools; we give them chaos.”

A lieutenant, his face scarred from battles Parpaldia once waged, nodded. “Their ships dock, we strike. Their drones fly, we hide. These tunnels—they’re our answer to their machines.”

The map showed more than escape routes. Smuggling lines stretched to black markets, trading Altaras’s stolen gems for AKs, C4, and night-vision gear. Earth’s technology, meant for progress, was twisted here into instruments of rebellion. A crate in the corner held laptops—Lenovo, Dell—running encrypted software, their screens flickering with coordinates and buyer codes.

A distant explosion rumbled, dust sifting from the ceiling. The workers paused, eyes darting, but the commander’s voice cut through. “Keep moving. It’s just another shaft.”

The tunnels were a gamble—each blast risked collapse, each crate a potential betrayal. Yet they dug, driven by the emir’s promise: survival through defiance. Families above ate because of these passages, but dissenters vanished within them, their fates unspoken.

As night fell, the jackal-headed commander descended a ladder, his binoculars swinging at his chest. He checked a tunnel mouth, its entrance rigged with sensors—Earth tech, stolen and repurposed. “They’ll come for us,” he growled to the fox-eared scout, who nodded, her eyes gleaming in the dark. “But they’ll find nothing but ghosts.”

The generators’ hum grew louder, a relentless pulse. Saint-Boyeux’s underground was no mere refuge—it was a machine of its own, grinding out resistance, fueled by the ashes of Parpaldia’s empire and the cold precision of Earth’s tools.

November 26, 1639 — Main Square, Port city Saint-Boyeux

The main square of Saint-Boyeux was packed by midday. The black banners of ISIS fluttered from the rooftops, the green-painted fighters and semi-furry auxiliaries lined in tight ranks. The smell of salt from the harbor mixed with dust and the faint tang of machine oil drifting from the workshops.

A long convoy rolled in from the western road — three armored pickups in the lead, a bus with blacked-out windows, and another three technicals in the rear. Armed fighters walked alongside, their rifles held high, eyes scanning the crowd.

The convoy came to a stop before the old courthouse, now the emir's headquarters. The bus door swung open with a metallic hiss.

One by one, the trainers stepped out.

They were not fresh recruits. Their movements were sharp, deliberate. They wore mismatched gear — fragments of NATO fatigues, desert camo, and civilian tactical vests — but every man carried himself like he had seen combat for years.

The crowd murmured. The emir stepped forward, flanked by the jackal-headed commander and a wolf-armored guard.

"These," the emir announced in Arabic, his voice carrying across the square, "are warriors who turned their backs on false nations. Seventeen men, expelled from NATO for refusing to bow to their corrupt masters. Some were called fascists. Some were called traitors. Some were called extremists. Here, they are brothers."

How do they even come here? Only the top-dog know.

The fox-eared translator repeated his words in Parpaldian for the gathered former slaves and local recruits.

One of the trainers, a scarred man with a shaved head and mirrored sunglasses, stepped forward. His accent was Eastern European. "We came because we saw the truth. The West hides behind lies — democracy, human rights — while killing millions. We will do the killing openly."

Another, tall and broad-shouldered with a French flag patch half-ripped from his sleeve, spoke next. "I fought in Mali. They told me to protect civilians. I saw what they did to those civilians. I stopped following orders that day."

The emir let the silence settle before he spoke again. "History remembers the strong. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, even Pol Pot — men who bent the world to their will, whatever the cost. The weak curse them. The strong study them."

The crowd shifted uneasily at the names. For ISIS, these figures were not moral examples — they were proof that brutality could shape history.

"But here," the emir continued, "there is no hiding behind speeches. You will prove your loyalty, now."

He gestured to the side. From the courthouse steps, fighters dragged out five prisoners — three men, a woman, and a boy no older than thirteen. Their clothes were ragged, their wrists bound. The crowd's noise died to a low murmur.

A wolf-headed guard growled under his breath, "Parpaldian rats. Caught feeding intel to the enemy."

The emir turned to the trainers. "You kill them here. In front of your brothers. In front of those you will lead."

The first trainer, the one with the shaved head, took a battered AK from a nearby fighter. He didn't hesitate. He stepped in front of the first prisoner, raised the rifle, and fired a single round into the man's chest. The body dropped like a stone.

The second trainer — a wiry man with a neck tattoo — pulled a combat knife from his belt. He grabbed the woman by the hair, forcing her to her knees. "I've done worse in uniform," he said coldly, before slitting her throat in one clean motion.

A third trainer, an older man with a limp, took an RPG warhead from a crate, armed it, and pressed it into the chest of the next prisoner. "Hold it," he said. The prisoner trembled, whispering for mercy, before the warhead detonated in a deafening blast, scattering fragments across the square. The crowd flinched but did not move.

The boy was last. The emir glanced toward a tall, bearded trainer in desert camo. "Your turn."

The man looked at the child for a long moment. Then he spoke, his voice low but audible. "Mercy is for the living who will never see war." He raised his sidearm and fired. The boy crumpled.

The crowd erupted in cheers, fists raised, rifles lifted into the air. Human and subhuman fighters shouted "Allahu Akbar!" again and again. The sound rolled over the square like a wave.

The emir stepped forward, raising his hands for silence. "Now you have seen. These men are not like the generals of the West, who smile for cameras while ordering massacres from behind desks. They kill with their own hands. And they will make you killers too."

The jackal-headed commander bared his teeth in a grin. "With them, Saint-Boyeux will not just hold. We will take more. And more after that."

The trainers moved into the crowd, shaking hands with fighters, trading short greetings. A fox-eared scout passed one of them a cigarette. The bear-headed loader who worked in the underground factory clasped another trainer's forearm in a warrior's grip.

The emir turned toward the courthouse steps. "Rest today. Tomorrow, training begins. Every rifle will find a hand. Every hand will learn to kill without hesitation."

The trainers nodded. In the crowd, the recruits — human and subhuman alike — looked on with something between awe and fear.

Above, the black banners swayed in the sea breeze. Saint-Boyeux had just gained seventeen new predators.

The square still smelled of blood and gunpowder. The bodies of the prisoners lay where they had fallen, staining the cracked stone. The emir stepped forward again, a smile creeping across his face.

"You have seen what they can do," he said, his voice booming. "Now you will know their names. These are the wolves who will sharpen your claws."

He gestured to the scarred man with the shaved head, the one who had fired the first shot.

"This is Viktor 'Bonebreaker' Sokolov," the emir declared. "From the frozen east, he has fought in wars where winter killed more than bullets. They say he once snapped a man's spine with his bare hands. Ask him to teach you — if you dare."

Viktor smirked, looking over the crowd. "I don't train cowards. If you can't keep up, I'll send you to dig graves... for yourself."

The crowd gave a few uneasy laughs.

Next came the wiry man with the neck tattoo, still wiping his knife clean on the dead woman's clothes.

"Jean 'The Butcher' Marveau," the emir said. "From the streets of Marseille. In Mali, in Syria, in Libya, he cut throats in the dark and walked away before the bodies hit the floor."

Jean grinned with yellowed teeth. "You think killing with a gun makes you a soldier? Wrong. A real fighter knows what it feels like when the life leaves someone's eyes. I'll make you all feel it."

A few of the wolf-headed fighters chuckled, nodding in approval.

The older man with the limp stepped forward next. His hands were still trembling from the RPG blast.

"This is Marko 'One-Leg' Dragan," the emir continued. "Lost his leg in Kosovo, kept fighting anyway. Now he says he fights better because he can't run away."

Marko barked a laugh. "If you can't kill a man standing still, you have no business breathing. I'll show you how to kill fast and leave nothing worth burying."

He spat on the ground near one of the bodies.

The tall, bearded man in desert camo took his turn. His cold, gray eyes scanned the crowd like he was already picking targets.

"Elias 'The Preacher' Vaughan," the emir said. "Once a chaplain for foreign troops. They say he found God in war, and now he worships only the killing."

Elias spoke quietly, but his voice carried. "Mercy is a disease. I'll cut it out of you like rot from meat."

The crowd shivered, but none looked away.

Next was a stocky man with a crooked nose and a permanent scowl. His tactical vest was covered in patches torn from other units' uniforms.

"Rolf 'Dog of War' Steiner," the emir announced. "From the deserts of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan, he's never fought for anything but himself — and always survived."

Rolf gave a short laugh. "I fight for pay, for blood, and for the joy of watching someone's hope vanish. You give me that, and I'll teach you how to win."

Finally, the youngest of the group stepped forward. His shaved sides and wild top hair made him look almost like a street thug more than a soldier.

"Tyson 'Smiley' Kane," the emir said. "From the back alleys of London. They say he smiles more when he's killing than when he's eating."

Tyson flashed a wide grin. "War's a party, mate. You'll learn to love it. If you don't, I'll dance on your corpse."

The six stood together, a wall of arrogance and menace. The emir raised his hands high.

"These men will turn you into weapons. You will obey them. You will learn from them. You will become them."

The fox-eared translator repeated every word in Parpaldian. The crowd's murmurs swelled into chants. Fighters pounded their rifles against the ground. Semi-furry auxiliaries raised their fists. The chant became a roar.

"Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!"

Jean "The Butcher" threw his knife into the air and caught it by the blade, grinning at the noise. Viktor "Bonebreaker" spat on the ground and nodded in satisfaction.

Rolf "Dog of War" growled something in German to a nearby wolf-headed fighter, who laughed. Tyson "Smiley" winked at a fox-eared recruit in the front row.

By the time the emir dismissed them, the square was chaos — men cheering, subhumans clapping, weapons lifted high. The six trainers walked through the crowd, shaking hands, slapping shoulders, and trading short, vulgar greetings with the fighters who would soon be their students.

Saint-Boyeux had just welcomed its new warlords.

Tomorrow

The sun had barely risen when the square filled again. Fighters — human and subhuman — stood in loose ranks. Some still wore mismatched gear: faded PASGT helmets, surplus ballistic vests, civilian belts stuffed with ammo. Others had no armor at all. The only common thread was the mix of weapons slung over their shoulders: battered AKs, old G3s, Chinese Type 56s, and even a few pump-action shotguns.

The six trainers stood in front, arms crossed. Viktor "Bonebreaker" Sokolov broke the silence.

"Half of you look like beggars," he barked, his Russian accent thick. "You want to fight a war dressed like this? You'll be dead before you see your enemy." He pointed at a wolf-headed recruit wearing a fishing vest over a T-shirt. "That won't stop bullets, mutt. That's bait."

The wolf growled low in his throat. Viktor only smirked.

Jean "The Butcher" Marveau paced along the front rank, his knife spinning in his fingers. "Today, you learn to move. Not walk. Move like a predator. You hesitate, you die. You blink, you die. You cry..." He stopped in front of a rabbit-eared teenager. "...you die."

The recruits stiffened.

The morning began with live-fire drills. The trainers herded the fighters into the old fishing warehouses by the docks, now turned into kill houses. Wooden walls were riddled with bullet holes, the floor littered with spent casings.

Elias "The Preacher" Vaughan stood at the entrance. "Go in," he said. "Clear every room. Kill everything. Don't ask if it's an enemy. If it moves, it dies."

The first squad of recruits charged in, their boots thudding against the warped floorboards. Shots rang out — some wild, some hitting the old target silhouettes propped up in doorways.

Inside, Tyson "Smiley" Kane leaned casually against a wall, watching. "Sloppy," he called out after the first two rooms. "You're all shooting like drunks." He stepped forward, grabbed a fox-eared fighter's rifle, and demonstrated — two shots center mass, one to the head. "Do it like that, or I'll shoot you next."

Out on the pier, Marko "One-Leg" Dragan set up an ambush drill. A fishing boat was anchored thirty meters out, its deck cluttered with crates. He crouched beside a mounted PKM machine gun and shouted to the squad in hiding.

"They come down the pier, you wait. Let them get close. Then kill every last one."

A human recruit whispered, "But what if some are—"

"Shut up," Marko cut in. "You think Stalin asked questions? You think Pol Pot hesitated? You want to live, you kill first."

The squad nodded grimly.

In the tunnels under the city, Rolf "Dog of War" Steiner ran his own lesson. The air was damp and smelled of oil and earth. The recruits carried flashlights taped to their rifles, beams cutting through the dark.

"You can't fight above ground forever," Rolf growled. "Here, noise kills you. Light kills you. And if you get lost..." He grinned. "...we won't come looking."

A wolf-headed recruit muttered something in Parpaldian about being treated like dirt. Rolf stopped, turned, and slammed the recruit against the tunnel wall.

"You think I care what you were before? Here, you're just meat that hasn't rotted yet."

By midday, the trainers regrouped the fighters in the main square for the final exercise: psychological warfare.

Jean "The Butcher" tossed a bloodied burlap sack onto the ground. It landed with a wet thud. "You want the enemy to break before they fight? You give them nightmares." He opened the sack, spilling severed mannequin heads covered in pig's blood. "Leave these where they'll find them. Works every time."

Elias "The Preacher" stepped forward, holding a battered loudspeaker. "Fear is louder than any bomb. When they sleep, you keep them awake. When they eat, you make them sick. When they pray, you remind them their god isn't listening."

The crowd listened in silence.

Viktor "Bonebreaker" closed the day's session with a speech, pacing slowly in front of the assembled recruits.

"You've all been slaves, workers, outcasts. They laughed at you. The Parpaldians called you animals. The West used you and threw you away. Now, you will take back everything. And if they beg..." He smiled coldly. "...you make sure they beg in their own blood."

The square erupted in noise. Fighters banged rifles against the ground. Subhumans raised their fists.

Tyson "Smiley" threw an arm around a fox-eared recruit. "See? Not bad for your first day. Tomorrow, we make it worse."

Jean "The Butcher" tossed his knife into the dirt at the feet of a human recruit. "Pick it up. Sleep with it. You'll need it."

Marko "One-Leg" Dragan limped to the edge of the crowd, lighting a cigarette. "Next time, we do it live. You'll thank me when you're still breathing."

As the emir stepped onto the courthouse balcony, the chants began.

"Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!"

The trainers stood at the center, basking in the noise, their arrogance feeding the frenzy. This was no army yet — but with six predators leading them, Saint-Boyeux was becoming a city that lived for war.

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