Story:

Gideon stepped forward to the parapet edge, and drew the holy sword.

Excalibur came free of its sheath with a ring like a struck bell—

A sound that carried across the whole assembly ground and silenced ten thousand men at once, because they had all heard the stories of that blade since they were children, and now here it was, here in front of them, raised against the pale sky.

"Knights of Astonia! Allies of the desert and the deep woods!" His voice carried without needing a herald's help.

"We have been slandered as remnants. Hunted as rebels. Told that our kingdom was dead and our honor should die with it. But the Violet Witch sits a stolen throne in a stolen capital, and every year she sits it, the wound of Astonia stays open!"

He raised the blade higher. "Today we take the war out of the border hills. Our engagement is set: the twelve fortresses of the north of Droughtsburg—every one of them the empire's chains upon this land—every one of them a key. And when the twelve have fallen—"

He swept the sword north, across the horizon, toward the far-off line where everyone knew what waited.

"—the pathway is open. Open to the reclamation. Open to Capital Alexandria itself!"