For a time, the Naxians grew and flourished, and began to resemble what would be recognized as Naxian. For the Minotaur, however, their success was alarming. They feared that unless something was done, that the humans would overrun the islands. So they set their enslaved Leoi warriors upon them, to cull.
The Leoi were set upon the Naxians in the night, and slaughtered many of them. After many nights of this onslaught, Naxian fighters and hunters tracked and slew the Leoi in turn, taking their hides as trophies, and warning against any future attacks. Believing this to be an attack made by the Leoi, of their own volition, they secretly sailed to Mykonos to retaliate. Instead, they found the true and sad life of the Leoi left on their home island; starving, and nearly all men taken as slaves. It was then and there that they learned of the true origin of the treachery they suffered; the Minotaur.
This revelation was brought back to Keros, and the outrage was immense. They began to secret the Leoi from Mykonos to their homes, leading the Minotaur to greater fury when they learned of this. With the women and children of the Leoi now among the Naxians, their slave-soldiers would not attack the Naxians. For this, the Hierophantes called for the genocide of the Naxians, and began to assemble their own warriors and formal allies.
As the Minotaur assembled, the Naxians and Leoi formed their alliance, and swore a blood-oath to each others people; to be the brothers of one-another, and to destroy the Minotaur, thus beginning what would be later called the Tauromachy.
The Minotaur, along with Satyr and Centaur allies, attacked Keros. The carnage was immense, with the survival of the Naxian-Leoi peoples on the line. By the end, much of the island was a wasteland, and would be even into contemporary times. But the Naxian-Leoi alliance emerged victorious, but the losses were high, and the remainder of the war would be fought asymmetrically. As the war wore on, the reliance on guerilla fighting led to increased paranoia amongst the Minotaur, fearing the wilds outside their temple-cities.
Out of desperation to regain control, the Minotaur began to seek out anything they could think of to gain the upper hand, eventually seeking darker and darker powers, which demanded more and more in return. The Satyr and Centaur watched their allies and lords became warped darkened shadows of themselves, and what they had to pay for it; their willingness to ally with them began to diminish.
The Satyr and Centaur parleyed with the Naxians and Leoi. They offered to turn against the Minotaur, under the condition that the Leoi swear, now and forever, to never again hunt their kind. A bargain struck, the enlarged alliance sailed to the Minotaur main island, and capital of Aegos.
The combined strength of the arrayed peoples; Naxian, Leoi, Centaur, and Satyr quickly overwhelmed the main island, and the Minotaur quickly retreated to Aegos, a mighty fortress city that housed may holy sites of the Minotaur that once venerated the Sun and earth. Now, after a long time of strange ceremonies and rites conducted by the Hierophantes to gain victory, nothing natural would grow within its walls.
As their foes surrounded them, the Hierophantes pledged what little their people had left to their new fell gods, and for better or worse, their masters felt fit to answer. The Minotaur that were inside the city disappeared from this world in a flash of dark red light in the night, leaving the remaining warriors outside to fight a bleak battle to their end. The few that survived fled the field, and would become the mindless beasts sometimes seen around The Duchy today.
Their victory complete, the rebels razed Aegos to the ground, so that no two stones stood atop another. The leader of the Naxians claimed dominion over the ruined city, and proclaimed that it would one day be the greatest city of any in the world. His name was Poleon.
Next week, we will look at the post-war period and the reign of Poleon.
Comments
Post a Comment