Chapter CLXVI – Then shall the lame man be celebrated as an hart.

8th of Summer 5860
Inkwell Estate, Casamonu

The Inkwell Estate – firstly, it was way too presumptuous to call it an estate. Unlike the noble estates dotted around the countryside, from castles to mansions built around plantations, the house of the Inkwells was quite miniscule. The printing press, most ironically, was not a money printer. Especially now that they had lost the monopoly on printing… even their old maids had been dismissed, leaving the house deserted except for the old man Yaz Inkwell.

A knock on the door. “Father! We’re here. Me and my friend.” Azra and Shakira entered the garden of the estate, being greeted by the old man chilling in the garden with book in hand.

“You and your…” Normally, Yaz would have a few words to say about his daughter associating with the adventurer sort, but the world had turned upside down about a year ago and he wasn’t sure what to do. Nothing made sense, and his last attempt at bringing normalcy back had been crushed the moment the Imperials imprisoned him. After that, what could an ex-mayor do but lay back and chill in his garden, waiting for all of this to blow over? He was just grateful he was spared execution for the attempted treachery. “Welcome, dear.”

“Hi.” Shakira casually raised her hand up to greet the former nobleman.

“…hi.” Yaz raised his hand back, returning the greeting. At this point, the world was too messed up, everything turned upside-down and wrongside-up for him to care. “How have you been doing, Azra?”

“Pretty fine! Business has been booming. The guys over at the Republic really appreciate the written word. Our presses have been running day and night. I’ve even ordered a few more presses from Doctor Rabanowicz, just to keep up with the demand!”

Yaz let out a hearty chuckle, patting his daughter in the back. “I was more asking about you, not your business.”

“Oh, sorry, sorry…”

“What’s wrong, Azra?”

Azra walked to the front gate of the garden, leaning forwards to look at the street passing by. “I thought I heard something – there’s quite the commotion. A whole lot of people.”

“A whole lot of…” Yaz sat up, with the sort of groan that all middle-aged men are fated to make, and joined his daughter in the street-gazing. Shakira joined them too, for a lack of a better thing to do. Indeed, there seemed to be a procession of sorts heading down the street. They didn’t seem riotous however, bearing no weaponry. Just a bunch of townspeople following something, whatever it was.

“Let’s go!” Azra suddenly opened the gate, and hopped on to the street while dragging Shakira and Yaz along by their arms.

“Where to?!” Yaz asked, though it was a bit too late considering he was already following along.

“To wherever these people may lead us, to adventure!” replied Azra. Such unladylike behavior but – again, at this point, Yaz had given up on making sense of this new world. He only followed along, like a leaf floating on a stream, floating along with the crowd. They were following the tail-end of this crowd too, the part where nobody had no idea where and why they were going. They were following the person in front of them, who followed the person in front of them, so on and so forth until an entire street was occupied by people.

Casamonu itself, which had become briefly abandoned, seemed alive once more. Watching over the crowd were a few members of the National Guard, up on a roof, having been tasked with repairs that were ongoing to this day. Repairing the streets, repairing the walls, constructing housing for fugitives, cleaning duty… the “yellow-clad men” were becoming a welcome sight in the Republic. A few of the National Guard had been caught up in the crowd too, and they were doing their best to slow down the crowd to prevent a stampede.

Eventually, the stream of people seemed to stop, coalescing somewhere around the town square. There were people surrounding a horse carriage that seemed pretty plain and ordinary. Just a simple undecorated wooden box, with little slits for windows. When the door opened however, it was clear that the people in it were far from plain and ordinary.

First came out a familiar sight: the Commander-in-Chief, John Brown, and his magnificent beard and ragged leather coat. For the people of Gemeinplatz, it was odd seeing such an authority figure be out and about and mingling with the common folk, but at this point they were used to the eccentricities of their liege. The fact that they could recognize him, compared to the Emperor who they had no idea how he looked, gave him a few points of favorability. The old man would be seen wandering around now and then, overseeing the projects of the Republic. He’d even allow people to talk to him and ask questions, and a few of the townsfolks boasted about having hosted their liege in their home.

Following the well-known old man was an old man that was even more well-known, though most would not recognize him if not for his uniform. He was missing his hat, it having been left behind during his swift extraction, but the rest of his outfit made it definite. It was His Upmost Eminence, the Head Priest Castellan, seemingly on a visit to Casamonu. To “enemy” territory, to the Demon Lord, to the so-called Hero. Behind him was a lower-ranked priest, known to some of the residents as Vaiz the Priest, and the crowd stepped aside in awe to let him and his party venture into the middle of the square. There were people praying, pleading, hoping for their pleas to be heard in the presence of the “shadow of the Divine.”

With a whisper far too quiet to be heard by the crowd, Vaiz whispered into the highest representative of Divine will: “Have you memorized your lines?”

“Yes, yes I have” replied Castellan. He had three whole days holed up in the cart with his captors. There wasn’t exactly anything else to do but memorize the speech he had been given. He was nervous – not only because of the part where he had been captured by the Republic that had defeated his forces not so long ago. No, it was a simple matter. “Don’t you have anywhere more… dignified?”

“We have the Temple, but I don’t think we could fit the crowd there, Your Upmost Eminence.”

Castellan looked at all the people around him. They stood at a respectable distance, equally worshipful and afraid of his office. He could see their faces, their eyes looking directly at him, eye to eye. “Darkskins too…” The kind of folk who had grime under their nails, whose hands were calloused and whose skin were dry and wrinkled from being out in the sun. The kind of folk who’d get to see their local temple’s priest at most, maybe a higher priest on a pilgrimage, never anywhere close to the Head Priest. Yet, here they were. At spitting’s distance from the holiest man in the realm.

It was clear to Castellan that the Divine knew very well how to humble a man.

“Ahem- Please, if we could have some quiet and peace for His Upmost Eminence!” Vaiz called out to the crowd, which promptly calmed down. “Thank you, may your morning be blessed by the Divine, praise be to Its name. For, truly, we have been blessed this morning, by the presence of His Upmost Eminence.” With that, Vaiz took a step back. He had always dreamt of coming to a place where he had the honor of introducing the Head Priest, though he was beginning to doubt that the Head Priest was a position of much honor as it stood.

Castellan took a deep breath. This was it. “Dear believers, men of The Hallow Word, followers of Its Prophet, praise be to His name, I have been brought here to deliver upon you a warning: the Empire is rotten, it is undivine, it has led itself astray from the Divine Path.”

That was it. With that, the Head Priest had committed treason against the Empire itself. Overthrowing a mad chancellor to preserve the Empire was one thing, calling the Empire itself rotten was another. Treason, to the highest degree. Deserving of the death penalty, but… well, he was afraid the Commander-in-Chief would have given him the same penalty if he hadn’t cooperated. He was the Demon King after all, as much as the so-called Commander-in-Chief denied it. Better to live another day than have your blood spilt in some carriage out in the woods.

“The Republic will begin a new era, true to the Divine Path. The Imperials are heretics, and as the Hallow Word layeth out, it is the duty of a believer to conduct divine war against them.”

Today, the denizens of Casamonu heard the Head Priest say some strange things indeed.