Near the end of my twenty-second year... I began to meet with the Queen of Alexandria. I believed I could fan to life the rage in her, to start a real conflagration. A riotous chorus of fresh ghosts... just by digging at her buried grudges, against her two neighboring countries.
In our talks, I tipped my hand to her in bits and dregs. There was a secret weapon that already rested in the palm of her hand... were she to but seize it. I knew I could burrow out that coal, if I just kept gently feeding it breath...
One day, I heard her musing... toying over a figure, for how many bodies strong, she might need, for the whole task. Just a fantasy, of course. The toll in lives of loyal soldiers would be unfathomable, after all...
I professed a way to make that fantasy real. A few months later, I'm twenty-three... and we've started putting together the factory, hidden away in a nothing village, high on some lonesome plateau.
I think... it was in operation for...
... I.. stopped looking at the numbers after a point, Muffin, but it was several thousand. We called them "Black Mages," to obscure what they were, and they became the bulk of her army.
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In our talks, I tipped my hand to her in bits and dregs. There was a secret weapon that already rested in the palm of her hand... were she to but seize it. I knew I could burrow out that coal, if I just kept gently feeding it breath...
One day, I heard her musing... toying over a figure, for how many bodies strong, she might need, for the whole task. Just a fantasy, of course. The toll in lives of loyal soldiers would be unfathomable, after all...
I professed a way to make that fantasy real.
A few months later, I'm twenty-three... and we've started putting together the factory, hidden away in a nothing village, high on some lonesome plateau.
I think... it was in operation for...
...
I.. stopped looking at the numbers after a point, Muffin, but it was several thousand. We called them "Black Mages," to obscure what they were, and they became the bulk of her army.