Clouds shift, momentarily veiling the sun in a shroud of gray.
Nikolai, having concluded his intrusive inspection of the village hall and its surroundings, paused as he walked. He sensed a discordant note in the air.
"I hear a familiar cadence. A sound I last encountered on the front lines. The roar of defiance, the whistle of bolts."
What kind of nation was the Ursus Empire?
It was a war-state, a behemoth that grew fat on the marrow of perpetual conflict. Its hegemony was forged in the fires of endless expansion.
Consequently, the office of Imperial Inspector was no post for a common functionary. It demanded a predator's instinct.
This was doubly true for a Chief Inspector. Having spent twenty grueling years in active service, he recognized the acoustics of insurrection immediately.
"The inhabitants have committed an act of subversion. No... at this stage, it is proper to call them what they are: rebels."
He processed the tactical situation in a heartbeat.
His pupils dilated with a sudden, febrile heat, and the corners of his mouth arched into a jagged grin.
To any onlooker, the transformation would have been jarring. The bureaucratic mask had shattered to reveal a fanatic.
Nikolai spoke, his voice vibrating with a manic, obsessive edge.
"Finally... I can stain these hands with blood once more..."
As he spoke, he allowed himself a moment of nostalgia for his golden years—the years of true service.
The days of purging the Eastern insurgencies.
The days of trampling the aspirations of those idiomatic visionaries who dared plot against the Empire.
The days he had offered his soul as a tithe to the throne!
In those wars, he had been a tireless harvester of lives.
The victims were varied: veterans, separatist militias, local intelligentsia. They had all fallen before him.
'Cease this! Our village never cooperated with the rebels!'
'Our militia is neutral! These armaments were for our own defense!'
'I am no deserter! I beg of you, show mercy! I simply lost my way in the tundra!'
He had liquidated them all—the failures who could not uphold the Emperor's will and the opportunists who doubted the Empire's absolute authority.
Yet, a lingering dissatisfaction had always remained.
High Command had issued draconian orders to minimize civilian casualties, reasoning that the land was meant to be annexed. He had viewed the matter through a more pragmatic lens.
Was it not more efficient to preemptively cull those with the potential for enmity?
In these backwater regions, the populace was a tangled web of kinship and shared grievances. To spare one was to seed a future uprising.
Thus, he had specialized in 'preventative liquidation.'
From the toothless elder to the newborn, from the widow to the pregnant mother.
He butchered anyone who stood in the path of the imperial machine.
In truth, 'killing' was too dignified a term for his work.
That word was reserved for the termination of humans. In Nikolai's eyes, he was performing a service of industrial slaughter.
The people were merely livestock. Every village he traversed was painted in a grim fresco of gore and viscera, yet he had never faced a tribunal.
On the contrary, he had been lauded.
The Ursus medals pinned to his greatcoat were the iron testament to his 'virtue.'
If there was any punishment to be found, it was his current assignment.
Command had rewarded him with a 'promotion' to Chief Inspector. It was a role he despised.
Boring, annual village cycles where the occurrence of Oripathy was statistically negligible, and where the presence of fellow inspectors made it difficult to manufacture evidence of treason.
Blood. He was parched for it.
Now, he could smell it on the wind. The quenching of his thirst was imminent.
The clouds shifted again, and the sun reclaimed its dominion.
The light caught his imperial medals, making them flare with an arrogant radiance against the cold sky.
He glanced toward the heavens, then back at the frozen earth.
Slowly, he smoothed his features. The manic grin vanished.
His eyes reverted to a state of glacial detachment.
"If I am to do this properly... I must first seize their vulnerabilities. Fascinating. Truly fascinating!"
With that, he vanished into the tree line.
He left behind the copper scent of Ursus blood rising from the village. He ignored the gathering tide of rebels at his back, focusing instead on his own lethal intent.
*********************************
"We can't find the bastard anywhere!"
"I have no idea where he vanished to! Should we check with Lyova?"
"Lyova? You and him were assigned to the same sector!"
"What? That was Seva!"
Because the uprising was a desperate, spasmodic surge, the organizational structure was a chaotic mess.
The man they had spent ten minutes hunting was often standing right in front of them. The eastern and western patrols were both reporting enemy contact simultaneously, and communications with Wrangel in the north had gone cold.
They had successfully liquidated two of the inspectors in the opening minutes, but the third—the chief—was the crux of the problem.
"How strong is a Chief Inspector, exactly?"
"Immense! He is a monster! It would take every one of us fighting in concert just to stand on equal footing."
"Have you actually seen him in action?"
"No. But the stories I've heard..."
The location of the final inspector remained a mystery, as did the extent of his combat Arts.
While the first two had been lured into an ambush using false pretenses of hospitality, the Chief Inspector was of a different caliber. He was a draconian legalist who showed no affinity for the locals—a man impossible to deceive with a friendly smile and a bottle of vodka.
"Ugh... what does Wrangel say about this?"
I massaged my temples, feeling a burgeoning migraine. The village was a hive of frantic activity; the elderly and the children were being bundled off to hide while the able-bodied men and women scoured the area with makeshift weapons.
Maxim was coordinating the evacuation of the non-combatants, while I was tasked with directing the 'militia.'
"I... I can't remember the term... Ah! The 'War-Dragon' hasn't returned, so I don't know!"
"It's 'messenger,' not 'war-dragon'..."
"Same thing, Comrade Chairman!"
In the heat of the chaos, my title had officially become 'Provisional Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the International Communist Party.'
In the vacuum of power, a few of the more eager members had concocted the most grandiose name they could think of.
Our true objective—world revolution—hadn't even crossed the village borders yet, making the title feel absurdly bloated.
With a membership of fewer than two hundred peasants, calling myself 'Chairman' felt as pathetic as those fringe 21st-century Korean leftist parties with ten members acting like a shadow government. But the people needed a symbol, so I accepted the burden.
Suddenly, my thoughts drifted, but I snapped back to the present reality.
"So, are you saying the messenger arrived but hasn't reached me, or what?"
"No! The messenger just left, so he isn't back yet!"
My head throbbed. I had ordered that runner to depart thirty minutes ago, and he only just left?
"Exactly when was 'just now'?"
"Roughly... five minutes ago."
God help us.
Even for an improvised vanguard, their sense of administrative urgency was non-existent. Did they think a revolution was a leisurely afternoon stroll?
"But he'll be back soon! The boy's as fast as a steppe-pony!"
"I'll hold you to that."
I suppressed my fury, pressing hard against my aching brow. It was then that a figure stumbled into view.
"Huff... huff... I'm back!"
The messenger arrived, his breath coming in ragged, freezing gasps.
So, the boy really was fast. I grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Report. What is Comrade Wrangel doing?"
The answer that spilled from his lips was a freezing tide of dread. Those of us standing nearby, straining to hear the news, felt the blood in our veins turn to slush.
"Comrade Wrangel is engaging the enemy alone! He told us he had to buy time for Alexandra to escape! He needs immediate reinforcements!"
What?
How did it come to this?
*************************************
Nikolai had been prowling the woods for what felt like hours, hunting for the girl, yet Alexandra remained elusive.
"Little girl~? Where are you hiding?"
He hummed a low, tuneless melody as he poked through potential hiding spots. He was thorough, checking every hollowed trunk, every jagged outcrop, and every cluster of thicket.
"Hmm... quite the elusive one. This game of hide-and-seek is beginning to lose its charm..."
Then, his eyes fixed on a massive boulder in the distance.
His veteran's instinct, honed by decades of finding the cowering and the weak, told him with absolute certainty that the girl was there.
"Shall we take a look?"
He advanced with agonizing slowness. He could hear the shallow, terrified breathing of the child now.
He ignored his flanks, focusing all his predatory intent on the rock. Just as he reached for it, a shadow surged from the side, a spear whistling toward his throat.
—CLANG!
"Tch! Damn, missed!"
"Hmph! Nearly took my head off with that one!"
Nikolai had parried the strike at the final microsecond. He turned his cold gaze toward the interrupters: three members of the ragtag uprising.
Wrangel stood at the fore, flanked by two villagers.
"I'll handle this butcher. You two—get Alya out of here! Now!"
"B-but Captain! If we leave you, you'll—!"
"If I fall, go to Vladimir! Don't argue, move!"
Seeing the iron resolve in his eyes, the two villagers hauled the terrified Alya to her feet and vanished into the depths of the forest.
Nikolai moved to intercept, but Wrangel's spear lashed out, barring the path.
Nikolai looked at Wrangel with an expression of faint amusement, as if finally placing a face from a distant memory.
"You... the one who offered me the drink earlier. Why would a collaborator join a doomed rebellion?"
Nikolai flicked his blade, shedding the frost. His swordplay was precise, a work of martial art designed for nothing but lethality.
"Yes, I was a collaborator. A sycophant who managed the moods of parasites like you."
Wrangel gripped his spear with white-knuckled intensity, leveling the tip at Nikolai's chest.
"But that man is dead. I have been reborn as the vanguard of the revolution."
Nikolai's response was a dry, raspy laugh.
"Revolution! Ha! That's what the dreamers always say. But I've never seen one of those fools stand before me without shaking. They all tremble, they all piss themselves, and then they all die. Do you truly think you are any different?"
Nikolai expected to see the tremors. He looked for the tells of a man about to break.
But Wrangel was still. His eyes were not filled with fear, but with a searing, incandescent passion.
His stance was unrefined but carried the weight of a prepared warrior. Nikolai narrowed his eyes.
"You served in the military? Your posture is... disciplined."
Wrangel bit his lip, his voice low and dangerous.
"I have no obligation to share my history with a walking corpse. Stop wagging your tongue and raise your steel."
Nikolai simply twirled his sword, his tone shifting to one of haughty disbelief.
"That a peasant such as yourself would dare speak of disobedience... the rebels are indeed as stupid as they are idealistic. To resist the reign of the Empire is to invite the void!"
He opened his mouth to deliver another mocking retort, but Wrangel cut him off.
"Are you frightened? You keep talking to fill the silence. For a Chief Inspector, you're surprisingly pathetic. Truly pathetic."
The mockery struck home. Nikolai's aristocratic mask shattered instantly.
His face flushed a deep, violent crimson.
"...Very well. I will grant you the death you seek."
The idle spinning of his sword ceased. He settled into a classic Ursus military stance—low, aggressive, and lethal.
The two men surged forward.
The scream of steel against wood filled the silent birch forest as the veteran butcher and the newborn revolutionary collided.