"For your liberty and mine!"
— Motto of the International Brigades
*******************
Theresia remembered.
The golden wheat that once blanketed the ruined wastes of Kazdel.
The distant reaches of greenery where various beasts roamed freely.
She remembered the wheat harvested by the scythes of peasants, the livestock slaughtered by the knives of herdsmen and loaded onto trains, and those trains rattling along steel rails toward the Nomadic Cities.
The cities would churn that wheat into bread and that meat into tin cans, loading them back onto the trains in a virtuous cycle.
Through this repetition, industry would grow, populations would surge, and the national power would naturally solidify.
Theresia had walked her long path solely to witness this vision. She had lived her life longing for the day she could see this beautiful scenery alongside her friends and her brother.
But now, that pastoral yet progressive vista had become a ghost of a dream that could no longer be seen.
"Kill them all!"
"Eek! P-please, have mercy!"
Warlords raided the villages, and the inhabitants were thoroughly violated by plunderers. Militias formed for protection would collapse into the hands of the enemy if they were weak; if they were strong, they merely morphed into yet another warlord faction to prey upon their neighbors.
The clash between Theresis's Military Council and Theresia's Babel produced thousands of casualties in a single engagement, leaving the surrounding villages scorched and desolate.
Even without intent, the madness of war swallowed the soldiers, leading to pillage under the guise of 'local procurement' and massacre and oppression in the name of 'stabilization.'
As this engine of destruction churned, the current state of Kazdel began to mirror the horrors of the ancient civil wars. The steel of the railways was ripped out to forge weapons, and the wheat and livestock were reduced to ash by the hands of marauders.
Theresia looked upon the completely shattered villagers and their broken homes. She saw everything she had built over a hundred years crumble into dust.
"Ah... why..."
Buildings could be rebuilt. People would, someday, return to the village. But...
She felt a profound, biting sorrow that her brother, Theresis—who had once been her ally, sharing the same grand purpose—had betrayed her.
However, she was the Lord of Fiends. To achieve her desire and to protect her subjects, she had to overcome this grief.
"...I still do not understand why Brother betrayed us."
Theresia suppressed her tears and stood tall. Clenching her fists, she gazed toward the ridgeline behind her.
"I will, without fail, break his resolve."
Trucks bearing the red star of the International Communist Party were descending the ridge toward her.
**********************
"Hey, Sergey, are you going to volunteer?"
"Of course, Ektorff. I have to."
Sergey, a citizen of the Ursus Soviet Socialist Republic, spoke while looking at a propaganda poster for the International Brigade.
Sergey was originally a subject of the Empire. Born to a father who was a soldier and a war hero respected by all Ursus, Sergey had, at some point, become stained by the ideology called communism flowing from the south.
The Sarkaz who devoted themselves to the Empire yet remained discriminated against; the violence toward the Infected that never lessened but only intensified; the power that the autocrats refused to let slip from their hands—all of it was enough to drive him into the Union Front of Ursus Communists.
When five years had passed in his clandestine activities, the Union Front collapsed. Exposed by Duke Kashchey's intelligence agents, the Front vanished, leaving behind nothing but the sight of hundreds of members' necks slipping into the hangman's noose.
The remnants of the Union Front—barely dozens surviving through the sacrifice of several leadership comrades—became radicalized and joined the Social Democratic Labor Party. Who would have known that this would be the cause of his fate twisting so drastically?
"If I become famous, won't my father finally learn if I'm alive or dead?"
"Ugh... I don't know if that father of yours, so overflowing with loyalty, would ever change."
The Social Democratic Labor Party rose in revolt when the situation became chaotic during the Great Ursus Rebellion. Embracing a 'spirit of bombs and bullets,' he had spent his time across the country engaging in sabotage, propaganda, and assassinations. His meetings with his father grew sparse until they were no longer possible.
It was only when the Rzhev Incident neutralized much of the revolutionary leadership, and the 4th Battle of Dieti Graiferburg ended in a massacre of the revolutionary forces with an abysmal exchange ratio, that he saw his father again.
"...Father."
His father's eyes, reflecting his son through a glass pane as he held a crossbow, showed neither hatred nor pity. There was only a look engraved in his father's eyes—a desperate hope that his son would survive the storms.
And that was the last of it. Without even a proper farewell, without even a word wishing him good health, Sergey was forced to flee Dieti Graiferburg.
Even after enduring the Long March where all but two of his former Union Front comrades perished, and even when the Social Democratic Labor Party narrowly emerged victorious from its power struggle with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he still missed his father.
Even when he was appointed to the Republic's People's Commissariat of Defense, he thought of his father. But the more he succeeded, the more the normal path to sending news to his father vanished.
If his name—already known as dead in the civil war—were called once more, even his father, with all his martial prowess, would be crushed by the weight of the Empire's retribution.
Thus, Sergey decided to use a pseudonym to hide himself. He chose the name Sergey—one of the most common names found in the Ursus countryside, distant from his father's name.
By changing his name, and with his photograph lost when the Revolutionary Committee burned the central archives just before the Long March to protect comrades and their families, the Empire remained unaware of his survival.
Therefore, for Sergey to let his father know he was alive, he had to become an 'atrocious communist bandit' (to use the Empire's phrasing) whose face would be splashed across the front page of every Imperial newspaper.
This was his golden opportunity.
"I am resigning."
"Truly? After climbing all the way to that position?"
"Yes."
And so, he stepped down from the Commissariat of Defense and joined the International Brigades. He was assigned to the 79th Regiment of the International Brigade, 'Brown Bear.'
Calling it a regiment was, of course, a formality; the actual force was company-sized, comprised of volunteers from the Social Democratic Labor Party. The 'Brown Bear' barracks were not a warehouse, but an old railway maintenance depot.
The roof was half-crushed, and rain stains marked the ceiling like ancient bruises. Their uniforms were not standardized. Some still wore the red armbands from their days in the Social Democratic Labor Party, while others had sewn the new Brown Bear insignia onto their military greatcoats.
Their weapons were even more wretched: semi-automatic crossbows, standard issue for the Imperial Ursus Army. The eagle emblem remained faintly visible under the grips.
Some had painted over them with a red star; others had drawn the circled 'A' of anarchism; some simply hadn't bothered to erase the eagle.
"No point in wiping it off," Ektorff said, polishing his crossbow. "We seized these, after all."
Their polearms were a mismatched collection. The spearheads were stamped out from Imperial munitions factories, while some shafts were merely carved from farming tools. There were no guns. The International Communist Party did not officially provide weapon support.
To be precise, they couldn't—at least not if they wanted to avoid political fallout.
"No matter how much Comrade Vladimir is the General Secretary, the export of firearms is a taboo within the Union. The criminal code dictates a minimum sentence of thirty years without parole. And knowing him, he wouldn't dare break the law."
Thus, the 'Brown Bear' Regiment marched toward the Empire's past, wielding the Empire's own weapons. Sergey checked the loading mechanism of his crossbow several times. The sound of clashing metal was coarse. The quivers swapped in place of magazines were old, the wood splitting with age.
"Are you afraid?" someone asked.
Sergey shook his head.
"No."
It was a lie. It wasn't that he wasn't afraid—it was that there was nowhere left to run. He had fled once before at Dieti Graiferburg. He had fled then to survive. This time was different. If he ran this time, it would simply be the end.
The Political Commissar of the Brown Bear Regiment stood atop an old crate. "Comrades," his voice was low. "The Union, the Republic, and the Party have not given us guns."
A brief silence rang out. But the Political Commissar raised his fist. "Does that make us weak? Are we cowards who will sit on the floor and abandon everything just because we lack guns?"
Someone chuckled darkly. "No."
"We are not moving for a state; we are revolutionaries moving for the Revolution!" He slowly thrust his fist higher. "Then let us shout! Our motto!"
Fists reached toward the sky. "For your liberty and mine!"
Dozens of voices followed suit. ""For your liberty and mine!""
Sergey shouted along with them, his throat rasping. The slogan was shouted in the Ursus tongue, in Gaulish, in Victorian, and in the language of the Sarkaz. Each was different, yet strangely, they sounded as one.
They boarded the trucks. They bore the star of the International Communist Party, but the chassis were dilapidated. Fuel was scarce, and their rations were limited to hardtack and dried meat. As they crossed the ridgeline, the wind changed.
The air of Kazdel was dry, laced with the scent of charcoal. Smoke drifted in the distance. A scout whispered, "Military Council."
Sergey slung his crossbow over his shoulder. The Imperial crest caught the sunlight and flashed. He brushed his palm over the emblem. It didn't rub off. Good. It didn't have to.
Father... the name you'll see in the papers might be 'Communist Bandit Sergey,' but the crest left on the weapon in the photo will tell you exactly who that bandit is.
Sergey took a long breath. He wouldn't run this time.
The truck came to a halt. The Political Commissar barked a short command: "Disembark."
The members of the regiment stepped down quietly. The roar of artillery echoed from afar. The battlefield was calling to them.
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