Chapter 1
The Shooting Star
The Road to Argorant, Egidian County, Republic of Artagna
Besides the occasional herd of sheep or goats, the hill country of eastern Artagna was largely uninhabited. It was simply too dangerous for most people to live outside the safety of the towns. When the Hessians would come, peace treaty be damned, you did not want to be on a lonely homestead with your nearest neighbor several kilometers away. Even the Hessians were not so bold as to march into the towns, at least not for now. That was bound to be changing, though, if the rumors of the coming invasion were true.
On a narrow dirt road cutting across the pasturelands, a lone figure could be seen. At first glance, he appeared to be a common vagrant, shabbily dressed, as if he had robbed a scarecrow of its clothes. However, a keen-eyed person would see that his boots did not match the rest of his outfit. They were in good condition, soldier's boots, though that was somewhat difficult to tell at a glance because they were not being worn with trousers bloused. Also, the typical vagrant is rarely in much of a hurry to get anywhere, but this particular traveller walked at a brisk, well-measured pace. Wherever he meant to go, he was neither wasting time nor exhausting himself through overexertion. It would certainly appear that he knew what he was doing.
As the sun was beginning to set, the traveller did not show any sign of apprehension. Though it was late autumn, the chill had not quite set in yet. The prospect of sleeping out in the open did not seem to pose much of a concern. It could have been that travelling at a late hour when there was less chance of encountering another person was actually more convenient for him.
Because you did not much expect to see anything or anyone on these back roads, just about any sight would come as a surprise, but few so surprising as this. A fireball streaked through the sky. As it hurtled toward the surface, it appeared to disintegrate, but after some pieces broke off and the flames scattered, something that looked like a mushroom cap bloomed out the top and the now-cooled heart of the fireball began to slowly float to the ground. Before it could reach the ground, though, the mushroom cap collapsed, leaving the heart of the fireball to the mercy of gravity.
A cloud of dirt was kicked up when the heart of the fireball struck the ground. Any curious fool in the vicinity might be tempted to get a closer look. The traveller cursed himself when he realized that he was that very sort of fool.
He was still a few hundred meters off when a large explosion erupted where the heart of the fireball landed. Even from that distance, the traveller could swear he was being pelleted by some of the more far-flung fragments.
It seemed that there would not be anything left that was worth investigating, but then the traveller saw a human shape walking away from the site of the explosion. As curiosity had already taken him this far, he approached the human shape to discover it was a woman wearing some sort of military uniform. Blood was running down the side of her face and she was holding her ribs as she stumbled along. She had a vacant expression, likely the result of her head injury, and looked rather pale. It was as if she were one of the shambling corpses from a penny dreadful the traveller once read.
The traveller approached the woman warily and as they closed the distance between them, there was a faint hint of acknowledgement in the woman's eyes as she reached out to him. Her mouth opened and her lips moved wordlessly. She touched the side of his head, then leaned in and kissed him full on the lips. It was not the first time the traveller had ever kissed or been kissed by any means, but when their lips touched, there was an electric sensation unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
The woman held the kiss well longer than you would normally expect. It was not the sort of passionate kiss with a lot of movement or heavy breathing but a literal lip lock. Even for as long as the kiss was, the traveller was too taken by surprise to do anything about it, if he even wanted to.
At last, the woman broke off the kiss and she looked at the traveller with a faint smile before her eyes rolled back and she collapsed.
After just standing there dumbly for a moment, the traveller crouched down to check the pulse in the woman's wrist. She was still alive, but there was no telling for how long as the traveller's very limited medical knowledge was woefully insufficient to gauge the extent of her injuries.
It probably would have been wise to leave well enough alone, but it would seem that the traveller was not so wise. He cursed himself again and prayed he would not regret this.