Choices of a New Age
The chamber fell quiet as Kael scrolled through the glowing tablet, files shimmering like forbidden scripture.
"We can't do everything at once," Damian said finally, voice low but decisive. "We choose. Military or civilian."
Kael tapped a file that showed crop rotation and irrigation methods. "Civilian first. Food shortages kill kingdoms faster than swords. If we make the peasants love us—if they're fed—they'll fight for us willingly."
Riven snorted. "And if Hollowmere or Cazwyn marches before harvest? You can't bribe a knight with grain when he's splitting your skull. Military first—formations, siege engines, steel discipline. We win the war, then we worry about feeding mouths."
Damian smirked, looking between them. "Both arguments have merit. Which is why I propose a split: Kael, you spearhead civilian reforms. Riven, you drill the men in new tactics. I'll weave both into propaganda—make the people think we're gods not only of war but of prosperity."
Kael exhaled, half-relieved. "Compromise. Fine. But don't come crying to me when you're starving in winter."
Riven clapped him on the back. "And don't come crying to me when you're bleeding on the walls."
Damian only smiled thinly. "Then let's see which of us is right first."
They left the chamber and walked the corridors of Greymoor Keep, still buzzing with ideas. The torchlight flickered against stone walls that stank faintly of smoke, sweat, and mildew.
Kael pinched his nose. "Jesus Christ, this place smells like a wet dog kennel. You know what I miss most? Hot showers. Endless, scalding, clean showers."
Riven barked a laugh. "Showers? I'd kill for a toilet that doesn't involve freezing my ass off in an outhouse. Indoor plumbing, now that's civilization."
Damian raised an eyebrow. "Gentlemen, you're both thinking too small. The first indoor bathroom we build here? The peasants will worship us as gods even more. Imagine it—'The Sky-Lords Who Shit in Warmth.'"
Kael groaned, but couldn't help laughing. "Gods help me, I'd build a fucking palace just to have a flush toilet again."
Riven slapped his chest, still chuckling. "Then add it to the blueprints, Kael. Forget muskets, forget crop rotation—the first miracle of the House of Voss Arclight Cross shall be the sacred shitter!"
Damian shook his head with a small smile. "We'll change the world with fire and steel, and yet… history will remember us for plumbing."
The three laughed, their voices echoing down the ancient halls—modern men in a medieval keep, caught between empire-building and the simple human ache for comfort.
The First Reforms
In the wide yard of Greymoor Keep, soldiers moved like a tide under Riven's sharp commands. No longer did they shuffle in loose, chaotic groups. Instead, lines of ten formed ranks, shields overlapping, spears bristling like a hedgehog.
"Shields locked!" Riven bellowed. "No gaps! You give me a gap, and that's where a knight's sword takes your balls off!"
The recruits grunted, sweating, straining as the shield wall wavered, then steadied. Riven slammed his fist against the front rank. "Better. Again. March!"
The formation lurched forward in unison. To the old knights watching from the wall, it was strange — foreign. But to the CEOs, it was progress.
Damian watched with arms folded, murmuring, "Discipline is a weapon sharper than steel."
Kael smirked. "Spoken like a man who's never had to actually hold the damn shield."
Beyond the castle, in the villages, peasants bent over furrows, scratching their heads at another new orders. Crop rotations. Mixed planting. Strange methods the "sky-lords" insisted would bring greater yields.
"Beans with wheat?" one farmer muttered, confused.
"Gods above, who plants beans with wheat?"
Another shrugged. "They say the gods know better than us. Let 'em have their way."
Yet some muttered with excitement. "If it works, maybe next winter won't starve us all."
And so the orders were obeyed, though with suspicion, though with whispers.
Outside the walls, at the scarred crash site, the three stood with Sir Aldric and a small honor guard. Beneath a cairn of stones lay the pilots who had died in the fall.
No banners, no priests, just silence. Kael bowed his head, murmuring, "You got us here. We'll make it worth something."
Riven muttered, "At least they didn't die for nothing. Their bones buy us a kingdom."
Damian spoke last, voice steady. "They are part of the foundation now. Greymoor stands, VAC rises, because of them. Let the stones remember."
The cairn was sealed. A crude cross was planted above it, cut from the wreckage itself. And though few in this world would ever know the names beneath, the three did — and for a moment, even they stood in reverence.
Public Relations
Weeks later, VAC began their tour of the villages under Greymoor's banner. Where Halbrecht had taxed harshly and beaten harder, VAC brought food caravans, healed wounds, and listened.
Kael sat with farmers, explaining new plows.
Riven drank with blacksmiths, arm-wrestling them and earning laughs.
Damian stood in a church hall, rewriting laws in simple, fair words.
Peasants whispered in taverns and fields:
"The sky-lords are strange, but they give us food."
"They speak with us as if we mattered."
"They buried even their own dead."
"Maybe they really are gods."
And so, little by little, the House of Voss Arclight Cross was no longer just feared — they were loved.
Schemes in the Dark
In her private chambers of Greymoor Keep, Lady Maelwyn reclined by a fire, her delicate hands wrapped around a goblet of wine. The keep bustled with the noise of reforms and drills, but her world was silence and whispers.
Her spy knelt before her, head bowed low.
"My lady," the man murmured, "we've watched the crash site for weeks. The lords of VAC guard it like a dragon's hoard. No one but Sir Aldric and their chosen men are permitted near it. Whatever they recovered… it is hidden."
Maelwyn's lips curved into the faintest smile. "And when men hide things so fiercely, what do they reveal? That it is valuable."
The spy nodded. "Yet we cannot say what it is. The soldiers who stand watch are loyal to Sir Aldric. They would sooner slit their own throats than talk."
Maelwyn swirled her wine, eyes distant. "Then we probe elsewhere. Watch their reforms. Their drills. Their farms. Men cannot remake the world without leaving fingerprints."
The spy hesitated. "The peasants whisper that they have miracles. That they plant crops no farmer has seen, that they train soldiers in strange new ways. Some already believe they are gods."
At that, Maelwyn's smile thinned. "Gods are dangerous things. If peasants believe too much, a god becomes harder to kill."
She rose, moving to her writing desk, where half-finished letters already sat sealed with wax. "We do not yet know what weapon they clutch, but we will learn. And when we do, we will decide whether to wield it… or to bury it with their corpses."
Elsewhere in the shadows of the keep, Maelwyn's lesser spies whispered among themselves.
"What could it be?" one muttered in the dark of a stable loft.
"A weapon. Has to be," another replied. "They guard it too closely."
"But I've seen them laugh like boys after training, as if they'd discovered a toy."
"A toy that terrifies Lady Maelwyn? No. Whatever it is, it will decide wars."
They fell silent as Sir Aldric passed nearby, his eyes sharp, hand on the hilt of his sword. The spies shrank deeper into the shadows, certain that if they were caught, their tongues would be torn from their mouths before sunrise.
And still, for all their watching, they remained blind. The secret of the crash site — the tablet — was VAC's fortress within a fortress.
That night, alone by candlelight, Lady Maelwyn set down her quill and stared into the flame.
Three sky-lords, adored by peasants, feared by nobles, hiding a secret I cannot reach.
Her jaw tightened.
"They are not gods," she whispered to herself. "And gods can bleed."
The candle guttered, casting her smile long and sharp against the wall.