Aegis did not build his army with patriotism or gold. He built it with debt, desperation, and carefully leveraged resentment. His lie to his King was a heavy mantle, and he wore it with the solemn dignity of a man carrying a sacred trust. He was now at war, and his first battle was one of recruitment.
His summons brought Labyrinthos and Malleus south. The reunion was tense.
"We lie to our King?" Malleus's voice rumbled from behind his brutish iron mask, the sound laced with disbelief. "He will see it as betrayal." Malleus was a hammer; to him, the simplest solution was to inform the King and let him unleash his terrible, awe-inspiring wrath.
"He is a king, Malleus, not merely a general," Aegis countered calmly, his bronze mask seeming to soothe the big man's agitation. "And a king who has suffered a great loss. His focus is on rebuilding the heart of his kingdom—its people. It is the duty of his council, his Canopy, to shield him from the storms at the border so that he may do so. This is not betrayal. It is fealty."
Labyrinthos, his layered mask unreadable as ever, offered the deciding opinion. "Aegis's logic is sound. We cannot ask a grieving father to fight another war for us. The Hegemony and Theocracy see him as a monster. They will never stop. But they see Aegis... as a diplomat. A piece on the great board. They will underestimate him. And in that underestimation lies our only chance."
With the Order united in their benevolent deception, they began their work. They had no nation, no treasury. But they had secrets.
Labyrinthos was the key. His web of informants, his knowledge of the Hegemony's dirty laundry, was their greatest asset. They started with the disgraced mercenaries. Labyrinthos knew of a dozen Free Companies who had been hired by the Hegemony for past campaigns and then been cheated of their pay. Aegis, the noble emissary 'Aegis', approached their captains. He did not offer gold. He offered revenge.
"The Hegemony grows fat while men like you, who bleed for them, are discarded," he would say, his voice calm and reasonable. "The Luminant Theocracy gathers to burn a forest you have been paid to claim. I offer you a chance to reclaim your honor... and your severance pay, with interest, from the Hegemony's own coffers when they are weakened by their holy war." To these hardened men, Aegis's talk of a "defensive war" was a convenient fiction. They saw a brilliant power play and a chance to bloody their former employer's nose. A thousand desperate swords pledged their service.
Next, Aegis approached the rogue mages. The Magus Circle of Cyrene had officially disavowed any involvement after the Arclight disaster, but many of their junior members felt abandoned and cheated by the Hegemony. Aegis found them in the smoky libraries and arcane dens of the southern cities. He promised them not just protection within the "Ashen Kingdom," but something far more valuable: knowledge.
"My King is a master of... esoteric arts unknown to your Circle," Aegis would tell them, choosing his words carefully. "He commands elements and spirits in ways your masters can only dream of. Fight with us. Help us preserve his domain from the ignorant zealots of the Sun, and a place will be made for you in his court. A new Circle, free from Hegemony influence, with access to a library of power that will rewrite your understanding of magic." To mages hungry for power and resentful of their old masters, the offer was irresistible. A few hundred volatile, but powerful, mages joined his cause.
Finally, he leveraged the political landscape. He met with the leaders of the Free Cities. "The Hegemony and the Theocracy are forming a holy alliance," he explained gravely. "Today they burn a forest. Tomorrow, filled with righteous zeal, will they not turn that fire on your own 'godless' cities of trade and secular law? This is not just an attack on my kingdom. It is the beginning of a Grand Crusade that will consume you all. I do not ask you to join my war. I ask only that you lend me the disenfranchised, the exiled, the ambitious soldiers within your walls. Let them fight under my banner, and I will be the bulwark that stops the cleansing fire at my border."
Faced with this terrifying logic, the Free Cities "reluctantly agreed" to look the other way as thousands of their city guards, restless second sons, and ambitious minor nobles flocked to Aegis's banner. It was a perfect solution for them: they weakened their rivals without officially declaring war or risking their own trade armies.
Malleus served as the perfect recruiting sergeant. The hulking, silent figure in the beast-like mask was a legend in the camps. They called him the 'Ashen Ogre'. His sheer presence enforced discipline better than any whip, and tales of him wrestling down rampaging desert beasts single-handedly became campfire legend.
In a whirlwind three months, Aegis the Diplomat had forged a chaotic, disparate, and utterly unlikely army of five thousand souls. Mercenaries who wanted pay, mages who wanted knowledge, nobles who wanted glory, and soldiers who wanted a fight. They were united by nothing save their shared resentment for the two great empires and their belief in the charismatic, bronze-masked man who led them.
The Hegemony, of course, was aware of this gathering storm. Archon Titus and Praetor Kaelen received daily reports.
"He dares?" Titus seethed. "The envoy of the demon builds an army on our southern border to interfere with the sacred rite?"
"It is a brilliant distraction, Archon," Kaelen analyzed, a sliver of admiration in his voice. "He forces us to divide our attention. If we send a legion south to crush him, we weaken the cordon around the Blackwood, potentially allowing the Warden's true horrors to spill out. If we ignore him, he may amass enough strength to strike at our soft underbelly."
"He is an envoy! A gnat! Crush him!" Titus roared.
A disciplined legion of four thousand men, a mix of Hegemony regulars and Theocracy auxiliaries, was dispatched south with a single, clear order: annihilate Aegis's "mongrel army" and send his bronze mask back to Argent in a box.
Aegis learned of their approach and knew his time was up. He stood before his new army, a strange collection of banners snapping in the hot desert wind. Malleus stood at his right hand. Labyrinthos at his left. He was no longer just an emissary. He was a General. A Lord Commander. A king in all but name, leading a war his own true king knew nothing about.
"Men of the south!" he called out, his voice magically amplified to reach every soldier. "The zealots of the north believe the world belongs only to them! They march to burn a sovereign land and call it justice! We march to meet them, not just to defend a kingdom they do not know, but to defend your own freedom! The freedom to choose your own path, to forge your own destiny, free from the iron fist of the Hegemony and the blinding fire of the Theocracy!"
A roar went up from the crowd. They were an army of outcasts, led by a man in a mask, fighting for a demon-king they had never seen. And they were ready.
"We march!" Aegis commanded, pointing his sword towards the north. "We march to show them that the fire they have started will be met not with shadow, but with a storm of our own making!"
The army of the Ashen Canopy, the Unlikely Shield, began its great trek north, marching towards a battle that would decide not only the fate of the Blackwood, but the future of all the lands that lay cowering in its shade.