war, all of them laid a hand on the bodies of armour while striking the anvil. Corpses dropped as the anvil bound the souls to the metal in that horrifying display of bending the natural orders of the world. I decided it was time to go into exile as the empire I once knew was now lost to something I had done. Men becoming metal had been one thing but displeasing the old gods was another. Every year or so after, I snuck back into the empire to oversee how many more people would want to be smuggled out.
Thirty years after that day of its creation and I saw the inevitable revolt from within. I had heard the empire was expanding and enslaving all in its path. Eight cities were now one with the anvil at a size of a house being the centre of all. The Preparatory was gone, torn down by the contingent of centurions as they were known by orders of the eight Lords. I had also seen the newest abominations that had emerged. Gigantic towers of steel loomed over the buildings and were men shaped. Steam driven monsters made from many souls, I heard rumour that shards of the Anvil had been entombed within the boilers of those huge things because the armies couldn’t go beyond a certain range of the anvil.
Colossi they were named and true to that name they certainly were. Generals would be their equivalent and masters of their assigned contingents of soldiers of metal, moving conduits for the Anvil’s menacing power. This new empire of Illistarta was an abomination to the scriptures of our religious texts and to the memory of Illistarta Prim. The older smiths were inexperienced to making metal armour and used the old lacquered wood armour as a basis, so all of their automatons looked similar to the living equivalent. With the younger generation, they were crafting armour like the barbarians living outside the boundaries of the empire but none of these suits needed wearers, only their souls.
The rebellion from us old way’ers, as they called us, was short lived and easily repelled by the new Illistarta masters. Most of our numbers were slaughtered as we tried to attack and destroy that soul binding anvil at the heart of the former Preparatory. I and a few others had been spared by the grace of one golden made Colossus; it had an aura of the preparatory masters. Then I realised it was all of the masters of the preparatory, even Pol, to see that blue sparking smoke rising and pouring through the battle face of its helm was frightening enough but knowing the souls inside were now enslaved to it forever was even more disturbing.
When our rabble fled in panic, we left that condemned city and ran to the ridges of the caldera where the entirety of the empire had come from. From a noble people to monsters of steel, the Illistarta were no more. Many of the lesser peoples that envied our neighbouring cities or had traded the short men slaves with us were fleeing the iron tides. Those with enough soldiers and war machines managed to bring down one contingent before being overwhelmed by bodies repairing themselves at the end of the battle. I even heard that the self proclaimed Lords or Kings of the bastions at that time had ignored their differences and banded together to dam the flood. I was surprised to hear it had gone to some success as the strongholds were much more defendable in comparison to the old Illistarta forts but it was their arrogance which was more worrying. At least they had stopped the infection for the time being.
Living on the ridge for the later years of my life, our people managed to revert back to the ways of building mud huts and hunting with stones strapped to sticks. I told the stories of how the world used to be in front of the children while sitting and looking over at the smoke clouds, only to point and say that used to be home. We soon learnt where the Wyverns had gone, and we had settled near the nesting grounds but they chose to keep their distance. We were content for a few years before the peace we ran to would be shattered.
Former short men slaves had joined us in making a small village but most were still enraged and insisted we call them Pygamar and they would be our new masters. Though the few that tried had most of us ignoring them while others embraced their freedom and returned to their homelands. Out of the few that tried to lord over us, two knew that we were already a broken people. They helped our pitiful looking town by crafting stone homes but they were shocked when we tore them down. I explained we had learned enough about the dangers of technology and preferred to live like humble folk. Soon the short men made their own stone houses in the earth as they mined for minerals to trade with.
It was only a few months that had passed and our bane had come back to haunt us, the ground shook with fury then. I remember running out of my house and seeing a huge sword blade diving into the ridge and stripping the cliff edge of its severe drop. The creaks and screams of metal was enough to get me to move but the height of the cliff was at least twenty men high. A new monster was forged and on the move. Some of you children may remember that day, the day when the scourge returned.
As that cliff was cleaved of stone, we all ran, leaving everything behind. Wyverns panicked as the hatchlings weren’t ready to fly just yet and we were being driven into their nesting grounds. What happened to the Pygamar, we do not know but what we saw traversing the rubble and clambering up the ridge was a godly sized mechanical man walking on six crab legs and wielding a sword the size of a Colossus.
As the mothers carried their children so too did the Wyverns allow their offspring to clamber onto their backs. I saw a few bucks ready to fly and clambered onto one of them, I can tell you for a man of my age then it was dumb luck that I managed to wrangle one. Younger men followed suit and took a couple of the female Wyverns to help out with our need to flee. Collecting our friends and families, we tried to get them all, some were inevitably unfortunate enough to discover what those legs hid.
I watched that titan use its blade to carve through some of the Wyvern flock, the Wyverns and their severed parts were falling to the floor in a storm of gore. And many wonder why I can be heard screaming at night.
Gaining height in our flock soon revealed the scale of the enemy numbers, they were marching out into the world. For what purpose they marched was beyond the minds of mortal men like us but they were marching to war. I remember seeing the watchtower of our nearest neighbour’s town as a tiny stick standing over little grey blocks and moss. Responsibility drove me to break off from the flock to give the people a quick warning. A stunned face of the guard seeing a man such as myself riding the ravenous Wyverns, as I came close I shouted run and nothing else. Cowardice stopped me from ever warning them fully of the danger approaching.
As I flew past I turned to see in the distance of the ten leagues we had travelled so quickly, the evaporating black smog from the enemy approaching. While the distance grew, the advance of the enemy wouldn’t change and that thing leading them was unthinkable. It gave me chills just to think about the merciless monsters I helped spawn into this world.
Seven days and nights later I returned to the township, even if the land around it was an unrecognisable hellscape it was a landmark that would burden my spirit beyond the ending of my days. A few younger men followed with their newly acquainted mounts and we saw the horrors unleashed upon this town. Buildings and walls were crushed, trampled even, bodies lay ruined for the entire world to see. Warriors were hole ridden and sliced through, women and children had been hacked and beaten to death. Rats and vermin were nowhere to be seen. We had found some evidence for the mechanical menace’s attack as detached limbs were left and cracked boilers had been forgotten.
I wondered what this town may have been like in the days before my menace marched through here. But I couldn’t linger there any longer as the boys were spewing their bowels at the sights they were seeing. Air soon filled with a screeching that sent the Wyverns mad, a screech from the day the anvil was made. Sudden as it came, it was over, I needed to investigate.
Riding that buck back home I was desperate to know what had happened. The caldera had changed, smog rose through the air in one final bout of glory. Everything was silent apart from the thundering march of several armies. Peoples I had never seen before but it was a host of ten thousand leaving through the path carved out by the titan.
The host w
as mixed with savages wearing animal hides and furs, I passed to look at them, and they were human but savage at the same time with their primitive warlike aura surrounding them and their animalistic features showing their naturally vile nature. What did my menace do to rally these unlikely allies together? That will never be fully known by myself as later found out that these savages would wage their own wars again to scour the land their way. I landed near the ridge and inquired as to what happened, the closer I was to the allied forces I saw most were in need of treatment for their wounds and others were dragging corpses. A blood-soaked Pygam came to me and said “The Battle of Soul Forge is over and the madness of the Illistarta is at an end” His last words cut deep into my heart, it was never madness of the Illistarta, it was the fear of death that drove this. Once the hordes vanished, I went to the city to see what it looked like.
Nothing could prepare me for the sight, the city was nothing but rubble, huge ruined furnaces were left with embers lighting them. A garden of metal statues all in fighting stances watered in blood decorated the scene around me and at the heart;