One of this story's premise contains Maria's progressive genocide against certain groups of enemies she encounters throughout the chapters.
This story contains four branching endings, with each ambigiously placed for the writer to decide their canonicity.
The author of this story is also obliged to set pieces of the worldbuilding and piece together the events, major warring powers, important battles, and terminologies that make up and support the Great Paradise War before its Final Years. A separate chapter containing supplementary lore may be made in the future.
I.I THE FIRST VERMILION
The Forest Kingdom of Norbraine, 46 BE IV.
The Cursayne Battlefield… is a national tragedy worth telling, to you, reader from up above, whoever, or whatever you may be.
What cruel madness befell us all, we who became wrathful, and enraged? When did we become so bloodthirst, like the predators of the land that lived to hunt and tear through the skins of the weak, and frail prey that cry, helpless—only to die the same fate under this Bloodsword disease?
We all died in this hill, and for what?
Perhaps we’ve forgotten what we were fighting for all this time during the mindless slaughter, but maybe it is best a mercy to forget…
But I fear of what we have become, humans and devils of the same knight-rose, and I worry for His Majesty’s safety… and most of all, our lioness of a daughter, Maria.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
I am so sorry, Orwell. I cannot after all, protect our son and daughter till the end. Not after that day came…
Veronika Pavell, her final letter
THE FIRST VERMILION – THE CURSAYNE BATTLEFIELD
“Mom…?” A voice was heard from a cave with piled-up corpses of soldiers. “Mom, wake up. We have to get out of The Cursayne.”
Beneath the shadows of these lifeless bodies, in the distance, a young bloused figure was carrying an adult knightess by her shoulder, bled out, and lifeless. As she ran through the light outside, the rays revealed the restless Maria, tattered.
She looked at her mother, still clueless from the death of her own. The armor boasted the steel roses of Miriam, a nation proud and ever-united under the blade of their monarch. Yet they stood alone against waves of imperials in the battlefield that recently ended in an unjustifiable bloodshed... a one-sided genocide that the latter force had won.
“Mom, why aren’t you saying something? Are you okay?”
… Maria had a striking, worrying thought of removing her mother’s bascinet. Doing that revealed a lifeless, unkempt woman; and immediately dropping the bascinet down to the sand ground. She then stopped walking and judged everything, starting with a deep, stressful breath.
Maria then stopped, laying down on the stone wall with the backpack to provide some comfort for her back, to think about the beasts of Miriam folklore.
“Do the beasts only exist in folklore? Or that the beasts were the same people that killed you?”
The gales of the wind mourn alongside Maria beneath the desert cliff that provided shelter from the sun. The daughter was exhausted to carry on, tilting up to relieve herself. She lifts her hand, closing her mother’s eyes with each finger; then brushing her mother’s hair and leaned down to give one final forehead kiss of gratitude. After those twenty brief seconds remembering their moments, Maria gave in to this loss and sobbed alone.
“What do I do without you, Mom…?”
…
In the midst of the quietness in The Cursayne, Maria covered the body of her mother with the tattered Norbrainian flag, blue, white and lion on its sigil; but ever stubborn and dumb under their own pride. She picked up her mother's longsword, trusting she would be happy that its grip ends at the hands of her own stubborn daughter. The mere thought of it made Maria grin split-seconds before holstering the weapon around her right hip.
