Kingdom of Kemet [Egyptian New Kingdom]
Shedet Sepat [Province of Crocodilopolis]
Outskirts of Shedet
3rd of Epip, 1455 BC [July 10]
Evening [10:55 PM EET]
It was simple, really.
Nobody was up at night. Nobody - except the Medjay, and those the Medjay were after, and even then, unless one or the other was out doing their job (such as a bandit or other such criminal has a job), even they would be asleep when the sun went down. Especially so when full twilight rolled in, which was about 10 minutes ago by Neferure‘s reconing, and she usually had a good sense of time.
Nakhte, the Phantom. He thought himself immune to the law. He and his men used clever and convincing disguises - makeup, clothing, the works - to sneak into temples buildings throughout Shedet and steal whatever slorry their fancy. It was minor things at first, but as the number of times they weren’t caught mounted, they got bolder. A jewel here, a bag of wheat tossed onto the ‘wrong’ donkey cart there. Small stuff, that no normal man would notice, and the average corrupt scribe would pass off as a miscalculation of a subordinate, whom they would summarily whack with the nearest object.
But the Medjay had eyes like Horus, and they managed to catch one of the Phantom’s thieves in the act. They got quite a lot of information out of him - where Nakhte ate, where his hideout was, when the guards woke and slept, when their shift changes were, how many there were. It was almost suspicious how much they got, so they sent someone to make sure it was accurate.
Information is the key to any successful sting, and the information proved true. So, here they were, at an ungodly hour, ten Medjay invading a sleeping camp of six bandits and two guards sleepily guarding the only door entry in or out of the compound.
They entered with ease, dropping down from a tree whose branches hung over the wall and landing silently behind a group of bushes. Hotep took the lead briefly as they spread out through the compound. The guards hadn’t even noticed yet.
The eight split up, each one heading for the bed of a different bandit except the last four - they would take care of the guards outside, two to a guard to better ensure no sound got out.
Simplicity in itself. Neferure was just walking out of the bedchamber of the man the informant had identified as ‘Ipuki the Fat’ - a more accurate name one would be hard to find - when things went straight down the throat of Ammut. Nakhte was silent as the tombs in life, but in death he was more than loud enough to alert all of Shedet to his demise.
Suddenly, there weren’t eight bandits in the camp, there were eighteen - and the Medjay were now evenly matched. Lamps were lit, shouts were heard, and arrows started flying as eighteen became twenty-eight, bandits pouring over the walls. Thirty eight? She didn’t bother counting when she was sure they were outnumbered.
A trap. Apep be cursed, they had fallen so easily for a trap. They should have used far more than mere whips on the informant. Neferure certainly would when they were done.
It didn’t matter - they were Medjay, and these were simple bandits - common rabble, with barely enough training to handle a pointed stick, let alone the khopesh or bow of Kemet’s guardians. She drew her bow, and with practiced motion ended the life of a man charging through the door. She kicked him aside, drew again, and fired at another coming down from the compound’s wall.
A scream behind her. She whirled around, kicked a spear aside, and drove her dagger into someone so wrapped in bandages she wasn’t sure if they were man or woman. It mattered not - they attacked a Medjay, death was a suitable punishment. She flicked the blood off it and drew her khopesh in the other hand.
She batted aside an attacker’s mace with the dagger, then chopped into his neck with the khopesh. It didn’t take it off, the man’s neck was much too thick for that, but he was down and that was the important part. His body dropped just in time to see the arrow coming straight for her chest. Already it was too close to move out of the way.
She closed her eyes, expecting to meet Anubis when she opened them again. She didn’t see the flash of light, that stopped the battle and left a lot of confused Egyptians behind.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland/Irish Republic
Province of Munster, County Cork, North Cork Constituency
Cork
April 22, 1921
3:33 AM GMT
It was a typically foggy April morning in southern Ireland that day, as a pair of lorries rolled out of a warehouse, each one loaded down with men and women ranging from the precipice of adulthood to the precipice of what most would consider elderly. Their clothes ran the gamut - simple farming clothes, working-class garb too dirty to tell what color it was (though it was probably green), all the way to the sort of thing one would be forgiven for thinking was a proper military uniform. One could only tell from close up, as with the headlights and taillights painted over, the only light came from the odd cigarette.
All of them had masks, and each and every one was armed, with everything from rifles to pistols and grenades to rocks. Some were there because of loved ones lost the past December, some even earlier than that. Some were there because their friends were involved. Some were there out of some sense of patriotic duty. Others, all of the above.
At the back of one lorry sat a boy, barely awake and no more than sixteen with a mess of black hair under an equally black newsboy cap and lumpy but free-moving shepherd’s clothes. He nervously handled a very unshort Lee-Enfield almost as tall as he was sitting. Next to him sat a young woman, on the near side of nineteen, in something more resembling a uniform and a gasmask with a hole-punched metal plate where the filter usually was, in which she had stuck a lit cigarette.
She was well aware of the irony.
“First time, kid?”
The boy let out a sheepish noise before nodding. The girl tapped out the ash from her cigarette and grinned beneath the mask.
“First time’s always hard like. Don’t worry, you’re in the Republican Army now, lad,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get ya home safe. Do your part, and ye’ll help someone else get home safe, too.”
He smiled a little at that. In the fog, there was no light but the cigarettes, but it was a wide enough smile even she could tell through her goggles. “What’s yer name, lad?”
“W-Willy Moore, miss-”
She raised an eyebrow, but that was one of the lesser reactions. The man across from them, a bear of a man as wide as he was tall and as hairy, too, let out a gruff sound before stepping into the conversation.
“You a Protestant, boy?”
“Y-ye-”
“Oh, shut up, Cormac,” she said. “Wolfe feckin’ Tone was a Protestant, if a Protestant wants to fight for Irish freedom, they can.”
A chorus of hear-hears resounded through the lorry, and the man known as Cormac glowered at the two of them. The woman grinned, and offered her hand to the boy.
“Emer O’Riordan. Don’t mind Cormac, he’s a thicko shitehawk who was too busy diggin’ for silver in South America to help everyone else his age dig for mines in Belgium.” Willy took her hand and shook it. After the Cormac incident, he opened up well enough - it was night and the drive was to be long through never-used dirt and moors throughout Cork, and the IRA at this point knew most moves the English made. Conversation turned to childhood, football, the experience of the older men in the War, and eventually to what had happened the previous December.
Emer crushed her cigarette and lit a new one, letting out a cloud of smoke that soon joined its watery brethren in the air.
“Right then, all this craic has been quite uplifting like, but if we’re to sit around on the damp ground waiting for the Auxies for a few hours, we may as well cheer ourselves up. Let’s have a little song, then - the air is damp and there’s no Auxies around, so it’s not like anyone but us will hear.”
With cheering, rousing cho-orus
As round our blazing fires we throng
The starry heavens o’er us
Impatient for the coming fight
And as we await the morning’s light
Here in the silence of the night
We’ll cha-ant a soldier’s song!”
“Soldiers are we,
Whose lives are pledged to Ireland,
Some have come
From a land beyond the wave,
Sworn to be free,
No more our ancient sire-land
Shall shelter the despot or the slave,
Tonight we man the bhearna bhaoil
In Erin’s cause, come woe or weal,
‘Mid cannon’s roar, and rifle’s peal -
We’ll cha-ant a soldier’s song!”
Four hours later
Water must have gotten into the second bomb. That was the only logical explanation for it not going off. And it was logical, because Eren hadn’t made that one - that’s what I get for trusting someone else to make the explosives, she thought to herself as she ducked to avoid another round of Auxie fire.
Someone shouted to keep fecking firing in a Corkish accent, and another shouted not to surrender one inch to the rebels in an East Anglian one.
Bastards. English bastards, one of their lorries had been tossed onto its side, blocked the road, and smushed the front of the second, half their men were lying injured or dying, and they wouldn’t stop firing. They pushed into the Auxies, and they backed up, but they wouldn’t stop firing. Irish were on two of the three hills surrounding the lorries, with them now pushing the Auxies towards the third - the road around it was blocked off by their own lorries, and the Auxies certainly couldn’t go forward into the Irish guns.
Eren looked up for a moment and saw a group of men from her group, Cormac included, skirt around the Auxies to encircle them. She smiled beneath her mask as she returned to focusing on where she was fighting. Tough bastards they were, but they weren’t soldiers, and they weren’t stupid - if forced, they would most likely surrender. They had far more wounded comrades than she did.
Someone on the other hill shouted something in Gaelic too fast for her to understand, and they all charged, rifles up. Eren had fast legs, so she soon pulled ahead, and got an uninterrupted view of at least eleven Auxies lifting their rifles in a form of surrender.
All of them had rifles, and most of their pouches seemed to be laden with bullets. Good, this would be a reversal of fortune from the last few rai-
Emer didn’t even feel it when the second bomb went off without warning. Neither the Auxies nor the Republicans would notice a flash of blue in the browns and reds of the explosion, nor would they be surprised as to not find a shred of Emer O’Riordan left behind.
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Helmand Province, Lakshar Gah District
Near the Helmand River
October 22, 2018
0110 AFT
Night missions were rarely this nice, thought Claire Wagner as she popped the head of a Taliban grunt like an overripe melon with her rifle.
Sure, she was ‘only’ a Ranger, and the compound they were assaulting was probably only a regional warlord at best, not a hub on which the wheel of the self-called students in Afghanistan turned, but they had money, they had power, and normally they’d be able to hire some decent goons.
She racked the bolt, lazily scanning for another target. Some man with an AK trying to sneak around the back, not far from where most of the gunshots were coming from. Rangers didn’t use AKs, and he seemed to think the low wall he was hiding behind was cover enough from a sniper.
He was wrong. Rack the bolt. Next.
Left side, hiding between a dumpster and a wall of thin chicken wire. Not an easy shot, nor a fun one - the wire was at an angle, which he probably knew about. If it hit one wire, it’d bounce at an angle but probably still hit. More than that and the bullet would merely sting.
Inhale, exhale. Fire. The bullet bounced once, angling down and smashing into a rib instead of the skull. Not a killshot, but he was out of the fight for now. Reload. Move to a new position on her snipin’ hill, 25 yards to the left and about 10 yards further up the hill. Practically crawl along the ground, hide behind a bush. Next.
She could be on base watching Gridman. But no, the Taliban just had to stubbornly continue to hold onto areas of Afghanistan, and here she was punishing them for it. Two men both with AKs, behind a truck. One, the second one tried to fire at her, but he was using an AKM. Not known for accuracy at long range. Rack the bolt. Two.
Two men, behind a large canister with some fluid on the top. Sadly, gas canisters do not explode when shot, so she had to take the one out. Rack the bolt. Two. The second got caught in the leg, hit him in the head. Three. Reload. New position, 3 yards right 7 yards down. A tree provides ample shade if it was knocked down three days ago by a thunderbolt. Next.
The gunshots inside the building had quieted down now. It seemed like her fellow Rangers were finished inside. One last man, armed with an LMG and far too scrawny to be thinking of using it accurately. But hip fire in a building was more than capable of clearing a room.
Pull the trigger. A flash of light surrounds her that Claire barely notices. One-
Cair Core
??/??/????
??:?? ?M
The Portal Chamber in the depths of Cair Core was a great salon of marble and gold, whose fine statues and tapestries displayed centuries upon centuries of Coreland history. Queen Aether suspected that the room’s dignified legacy would have been soon overwhelmed by the grand summoning.
The portal, a circular gate to a starry beyond, shuddered. Sparks of sapphire and silver erupted from the magical runes carved on its rocky body, as the whole structure cracked dangerously. The noise of the Royal Guard battling the Necrogolem just outside the keep’s walls were drowned out by the booming sound of people, objects and a horse or two being plucked away from a faraway dimension, sent hurtling through the cosmos in a most uncomfortable way, ripped apart from their Earthly lives.
Most of them landed back or butt-first on the marble floor.
“Finnegan!” Queen Aether yelled in distress, glaring at her old, aging archmage’s grin as the various interdimensional travellers crashed violently on arrival. “You had told me they would walk through the gate, calmly and slowly, and here they are, getting injured before the battle has even started!”
Confusion.
Eren nearly drew her Webley but lowered it to look around at what was happening. Neferure’s eyes were still closed tight, only opening them after the wizened old man started talking.
The wizened old man stroked his white, mighty moustaches and chuckled. “Your Highness, as much as I am aware of your inexperience in matter of warfare, I cannot avoid to point out that your guests will witness much more pain than a mere fall in the coming days. Alas, the weird mana attunement of their homeland will do wonders to fix that.”
“Umph” Aether muttered, shoving away two castle guards who had been too eager to point their pikes at the multicoloured, varied crowd before them. Aether had seen them through the scrying orb of the archmages’ council, but was nonetheless surprised to find that the interdimensional hosts looked much like the various peoples of Creation. Well, the humans, at least.
“I am Queen Aether of the Corelands, first of my name. Brave warriors, you have been summoned just in time to escape your untimely demise. You all hail from the same plane of existence, albeit from different times and longitudes. My words may seem confused at first, but the winds of magic will translate them into a common tongue that all of my kingdom speaks. There is much to learn about my world and I am afraid I will not be capable of truly teaching you those, because an evil tyrant is sieging the last stronghold of my people.”
Great, more feckin’ royals, thought Eren, though she had enough manners to say nothing as she stood up, using her rifle to lift herself up.
Finnegan grinned. “I am her wiseman, or shaman, or archpriest, or spin doctor, according to your various cultures”. Aether raised a questioning brow at the words ‘spin doctor’.
“This man, my archmage Finnegan, is the greatest wizard to grace the Corelands. He summoned you to fight for my cause, and studied your cultures in-depth.”
Claire stood at attention, but with rifle at the ready.
Finnegan coughed. “Mostly.”
Neferure just stood.
Aether resumed. “I have called you forth to defend my kingdom and the entire world, Creation. You will have to stay here forever, for the Portal that brought you here unfortunately broke during your summoning and will take decades if not centuries to work properly again. I apologize for those you will have left behind in your world. I carefully selected men and women close to death, like you, to give you another chance in proving your heroism. Some of you are not warriors, but learned persons or great talkers. You will all have room in our war against the Deathless Emperor and his armies of darkness. I will grant you land, and permit you to marry into the kingdom to preserve your Earthly bloodlines. Unlike Creation’s mankind, your homeworld’s version of humanity is much more attuned to mana, which unlike in your world, flows freely across Creation, the life-breath of the world.”
A bloodied knight suddenly barged into the room, holding himself aloft with a sword broken at the midpoint. The young rider coughed up blood. “M-my Q-Queen, the G-Golem broke thr---”
Golem?
The feck’s a-
Words cut short as the ceiling of summon chamber was torn off by a giant, bony fist punching the dome-like cupola of the room off into the horizon, revealing the scene of an huge medieval battle ensuring across the grounds of a vast castle of white marble. Armored footmen engaged into melees with hordes of short, green-skinned hominids, while larger ogres chopped the heads of horses off with crude axes and rallied to the cry of a warhorn.
Sitting atop a black throne carried by four great ogres, a maiden of the fairest hair, most frozen eyes and most wicked grin observed the battle from afar, motioning with glee as catapult projectiles coated in a vile, purple energy came crashing down the outer walls of the castle. The young woman shouted something shrill in a dark language at the huge shadow looming over the uncovered summon chamber.
Aether witnessed in horror as the bloodied knight was rendered into a grindy pulp of flesh and steel, before the grim visage of an oversized human face made of bones glared at the portal newcomers, roaring with a graveyard stench over their paltry forms. The giant grunted, took a thundering step back, and roared again. Gnoblars riding ponies and donkeys jumped out its mouth, landing in the vast chamber and yelling madly as the flailed their shivs around, surrounding the few guards, Aether, Finnegan and the newcomers.
“There’s no time to explain! Portal Heroes, strive forward!” Aether yelled.
Emer was the first to act, not bothering to think about the situation - best not to think about the situation, or how far from her beloved Ireland she was. With a yell, she drew a grenade and threw it into the bone golem’s face, grinning in satisfaction as it lodged between a pair of bones. The gnoblars still inside paused to look at it and laughed, which was the last thing they ever did as it exploded and took out an entire cheekbone.
Neferure looked at Claire, who looked at her back, shrugged, and charged forwards, swinging khopesh and dagger alike as she charged towards these green-skinned humanoids. She was a little surprised when the blades cut through them like the claws of Sekhmet instead of the simple bronze they were, but her mind was elsewhere.
Claire sighed. This was gonna be one hell of a bizarre adventure, that was for sure. She dashed behind the ruined Portal and rested her rifle on the stone. In such a target rich environment, she’d have to focus on high-value targets.
Emer started firing at the horde of gnoblar, racking the bolt with practiced speed as she focused on anything higher than her stomach - and kicking anything that wasn't. She didn't even notice she wasn't running out of ammunition, or that the gnoblar's weapons didn't seem to hurt as much as they should.
"Die! Die, bastards! Go to Hell, and tell Cromwell I sent ya when ye get there!"
An ogre bearing a warhorn would make a suitable target, he (it?) was clearly an officer of sorts, or at least a commander for the other ogres.
A .300 Winchester Magnum, the first to be fired in this world, penetrated his eye and bounced around the ogre’s thick skull, turning his brains to the consistency of mashed Jell-O. He dropped like a ton of bricks, crushing not a small number of gnoblars beneath his form.
Rack the bolt. Two.