Light in the Dark

by RussianDuckie

Chaos only leads to more chaos. The Gate opens in the peacekeeping operations in South Sudan, turning an already bad situation worse. The survivors of regular raping and killings have another hurdle thrusted upon them, this time an otherworldly one. Is all out war the only thing this world knows, or can the UN hold itself to its own mandate, becoming the light in the dark?

21. Chapter 21

A/N:

Bit of a new writing style to start with, lemme know if it works. I'm not the best at writing, I can do movements and procedures, but the subconscious and emotions bit is rather difficult.

Chapter 21: Will They Hold The Wall Or Will The City Fall

Italica, Falmart

Late Night

Janus Zhou

19 Year Old, Magistrate Guard Recruit

Gongs and drums ring out throughout the barracks, waking you from slumber. Each resounding crash of the gong is like a rock, thrown into your face, bashing into the back of your head, and falling to your stomach. The drums string a beat into your heart rate, wrenching all thoughts of sleep from your brain. Your muscles grumble as the ache from the fighting yesterday flare up as you pull yourself from the makeshift cot, your eyes half-lidded from the exhaustion from the three hours of fighting and ten hours of sentry duties suffered yesterday. Damned Saderan bastards know when to conduct attacks.

Groans echo out in the low light of the room, others struggling to raise themselves to the alarm. You fumble a bit donning the tight fitted black robe of the Magistrate Guard's uniform, the dark sleeves hardly contrasted in the darkness of the room, flapping about as you force your limbs into them. Clasping down the wartime issued leather lamellar vest to your torso, the straps tied haphazardly in your haste and fumbling, the weight and tightness of the vest comforts you slightly as it hugs you.

The burning soreness in your arms needs to be largely ignored as you finish adjusting the cloth and leather to more comfortable places. With your attire in place, you grasp up the final piece of your uniform, the red cone cap with the onyx gem tip denotation of your junior rank in the Magistrate Guard, tucking it under your left arm. Moving torches outside barely lit the room with the slightest touches of light, the shine from your scabbarded sword glinting and calling you to its location. With a heave, you pick up the heavy broadsword with your right arm, that very arm screaming in protest from the strenuous work of the day before.

Jostling out of the room with the rest of the men who had finished preparing at the same time, you see the more senior ranks of the Magistrate already formed up in formation and ready to fight, torches in hand. Before you could even join the formation, a voice sounded out from the front. A knight from the Rose Order, you recognize him as Norma from his tied up blonde hair, shouts out while waving his hands to the South.

" Damn the formation! The bandits are attacking the South gate, we are taking casualties, double time to the South gate!"

With this, he dashes off to the south, hands clasped to his sheathed sword. The senior guardsmen follow suit closely, their robes flapping loudly as they pump their legs, their handheld flames casting shadows all around as they run. With a sigh, you chase after them, the rest of the junior guardsmen with you lagging slightly behind the senior group and into the moonless night.

By the time you and the junior guards arrive at the gate, all of you are panting like dogs and spitting phlegm to the ground. You can see some of the slower men throwing up near the back of the group, hurling what little food intake they had. The seniors were slightly better, breathing heavily, but largely ready to fight. Looking over to the gate, you see the last of the militiamen who were already manning the battlements get cut down, bodies falling from the wall and weapons clattering onto the walls. With loud laughter, the bandits rush down the steps to the gate, trying to reach the gate to allow their comrades in.

The sound of a drawn sword and a flash from a blade draws your attention away from the enemy, Norma had his sword raised above his head, standing near the wooden fence that surrounded the gate. His mouth moves as if he were shouting, but you stand too far to make out his rallying speech. He finishes his speech by pointing his sword and rushing the wooden gate, the senior guardsmen who heard the speech charged alongside him, war cries sounding out into the melee.

The burning in the back of the throat prompts you to spit out phlegm once again as you bend over from exhaustion. Raising your head, you glance around at the other junior guardsmen, most out of breath and bent over as well.

After a couple heaves, the other men recover quickly, unsheathing blades, throwing their scabbards aside, and charging to the aid of their seniors. You join them, pulling your own blade from your hip, vaulting the fence, and run in alongside your comrades.

You see to the front rank of your higher ranked comrades crash into the backs of the legionaries as the enemies attempt to unlatch the wooden gate. The senior guardsmen slash through the Saderans as they advance, aiming for unarmoured areas as limbs and necks start to bleed. The Saderans give back just as hard though as they turn about and push back, gladii thrusting forward and wooden shields deflecting slashes as they draw Italican blood.

Your eyes flicker back and forth, analyzing which of your comrades require assistance and notice a senior guardsman fighting off two legionaries on his own. He doesn't see the third coming up behind him. You run to his aid and perform a downward slash on the approaching soldier, your blade smashes into the helmet of the legionary, knocking him to the ground before he could turn to stab into you. Your sword merely dents the helmet, concussing the man at best.

Another gladius lashes out at you from the right, you deflect the sword away by pulling your blade up, knocking the legionary off balance. Allowing gravity to act, you drop the flat of the blade on the man's right shoulder before pushing it across his neck, your right forearm assisting on the dull side of the blade as the other side slides through flesh. Your blade comes to a stop with a clang as the edge halts on the standing metal-rimmed scutum in the dying man's left hand. The Saderan glares at you as he slumps down, gurgling as he drowns in his own blood.

The man you knocked down earlier has already risen to his feet, throwing his shield away enraged before rushing you with an overhand thrust alongside another legionary who had just run up. You turn to face them, returning back to a ready stance as you brace for the attacks. A glimpse of light reflecting steel and the new legionary is decapitated, Norma's sword slipping through the man's neck before jumping another distracted legionary.

The concussed legionary is hyped up on adrenaline from your previous strike, the man not noticing the fact that the comrade who came to his aid was already gone. He's upon you before your attention returns fully onto him. You attempt to block the stab, but mistimed his desperate charge. The gladius catches you on your side, a searing hot pain and burning liquid erupting from the point of impact, the legionary pulling away unbalanced from his own offensive. You push through the pain with a lunge, the enemy launching a spoiling attack with an off balanced thrust in an attempt to save himself. A quick upwards parry and a left-to-right horizontal slash dispatches him easily. Returning back to the ready stance, you once again brace yourself for another combatant, yet none come. Adrenaline ramps down as you relax slightly, a quick glance down shows that the gladius that got you was not slowed by cloth or leather, dark blood leaks through the black fabric and marks the dirt below. Quickly reaching and clamping down on your wound with your left hand, further agony shoots up from your abdomen from the pressure and tapers off after, the sword in your right weighing your relaxed arm down and drooping to rest on the ground. You take a breath, head leaned back in exhaustion.

Looking around, tens of bodies litter the ground, comrades and enemies piled onto each other. Of the twenty junior guardsmen, only you and another made it through, absolutely exhausted and barely able to lift your swords. Of the forty senior guardsmen with their jade tipped caps, ten remain standing, bloodied and winded. Your commanding officer, Imperial Order of the Rose Knight Norma, stands nearest to the gate. The Saderan man panting hard, covered in blood that didn't belong to him, staring out the gate. You follow his gaze only to see another wall of scutums staring back from the gate, beady eyes peering shadowy above the metal shield frames shrouded by shining helmets, the flicker of flames flashing the bold red and yellow paint at you menacingly.

Damn.

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Princess Pina Co Lada chased after the forest of halberds as they ran forward, the militia men outpacing her easily in their determination and light armour to aid the dying defenders. Screams of agony and sounds of warfare clashed with each other as they echoed from the south, eerily bouncing about through the dark and narrow cobblestone passageways. The civilian guard followed their training as they reached the fences they constructed the day before, manning the wooden fence that surrounded the gate and mounting their "Ji" halberds on the wooden rails, forming a semi-circle pincushion surrounding the city entry point. Another line of reinforcements formed up behind the first rank ready to take their place or counterattack. They stood as steady as their nerves would let them, as they watched the last of their policing force die right before their eyes.

The last standing fighters in the semicircle, Imperial knight Norma and a young magistrate guardsman, were being bashed around and surrounded by scutum shields as the brigands finished off the wounded lying around on the ground. The two men continued to fight, throwing exhausted slash at any openings and beating their flanks clear in vain. The legionaries boxed them in their shields to the point where their arms were pinned to their bodies, the two men struggling and pushing frustratingly against the closing walls, up until gladii thrusted into the gaps between the shields. The shortswords pierced cloth, steel, and flesh over and over again, stabbing from every angle, blood draining from the bodies. Pina watched as one of her few knights, one of the young men who joined her order and trained alongside her at her villa, slowly died in front of her with nothing she could do to save him. Both defenders soon crumpled to the ground, their final strength bleeding away as the Saderans finished them off. The brigands backed off from the punctured corpses, their attention drawn away by the new foes who now face them. The two groups stared each other down, the jeering, grinning faces of the army-turned-bandits and the grim faces of the civilian army.

The silence seemed to permeate for hours, but just minutes later a thumping crash sounded out far away, slowly building up as it crept to the walls. Soon the thumping reached the walls, a maddening racket that came from the legionaries, iron swords smacking wooden shields in unison.

The militia fence trembled from the show of force, the men wavering from the sound of imminent death that rang out from beyond the bricks and mortar and from within. Shouts sounded out along the line, the Princess' rentinue steadying the line, squeezing the littlest amount of morale out of the poor terrified souls to brace against a breakthrough.

Yet no offensive renewed. The grinning legionaries continued to beat their shields as they backed through the stone gate, a group of them stopped and shuffled about some of the bodies on the ground. Two heads were raised above them, faces barely lit by the fires below and flickering in the darkness of the night, but recognizable at a glance.

Pina could only try to cover her mouth as she gasped at the bloody sight of one of her early knights and longtime friend, his head posted on a spear, his neck ending jagged and red. The enemy withdrew completely from the walls, disappearing into the night with laughter and merriment. She turned away, no longer wanting to see the desecrated remains. Yet the night would not end.

Gongs soon ring out once again, the clanging echoing from the East. The defenders all looked in the direction of the clanging in consternation; they had assumed that the attack here, at the South gate, was the main attack. Soon a light pitter patter of sandals joined in the noise filtering, gradually louder as a child, he couldn't have been older than seven years old, emerged running down a flight of stairs to the gate. He was wildly swinging his torch trying to attract the attention of the commanders standing at the fence.

" LEGION AT THE EAST GATE, LEGION AT THE EAST GATE, PLEASE SAVE PAPA!" the boy choked out. As he reached the fence, the child runner keeled over from exhaustion as he clutched onto the wooden rails, the torch lighting up his tear streaked cheeks and blood soaked clothes. He could only whisper another "please" before breaking down into sobs, his face breaking up in emotional pain.

Grey Co Aldo let out an expletive, patting the boy's shoulder reassuringly before screaming for the militia rearline to regroup once more, the men jogging into formation for the march to the other gate. Pina followed along absentmindedly, her face scrunched up in frustration as she processed the death of a friend as well as adding up her losses. The math was not on her side. The last of the swordsmanship trained Magistrate Guards were finished, the last standing member slaughtered alongside one of her knights. She had only brought ten knights to Italica total, the rest of the order dispersed with the First Legion evicting villages. Now the first princess of the Saderan Empire only had nine knights and just over two hundred of the old and maimed Italicans to defend four thousand citizens from the ravaging storm of two corrupted legions.

The half of the active reserve formed by Grey and began their march off to the East gate, the middle aged lieutenant jogging just ahead of the group. They were merely treated to the same scenes from the South gate, militia men massacred with minimal losses to the brigand legionaries. The Rose knight who commanded this gate, a veteran who joined alongside Grey, was able to avoid Norma's ill-timed fate. He had fought his way to the wooden fence and pulled his wounded body over the rails, bleeding from multiple lacerations that painted his armour with his own precious life juice. The bandits had just reached the wooden fences as the ill-timed Italican reinforcements filed into the gate clearing. The some in the front rank of the militia were able to get to the fence in time before the Saderan bastards backed away, their Ji's slashing down and hooking into the shoulders of the unfortunate, the pinned men falling to their knees in pain and dragged into the militia's ranks. Those soldiers were stabbed to death on the ground with no mercy given by the enraged rear ranks once they were dragged back behind the Ji wall, the civilian troops viciously avenging their own dead. Once again, the Saderan actions repeat themselves, beating at their shields as they retreat through the gate and disappearing into the darkness of the night.

The Italicans did not sleep at all as night turned to morning.

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Outside UN Fortress Alnus, Alnus Hill, Falmart

Afternoon

The green and brown blotches of the camo pattern foldable fabric seat rustled as Duran leaned forward as the group of soldiers "breached" into a building frame, closely examining the precise movements of each man. To an unknowledgeable onlooker such as himself, the soldiers were wasting time, not charging in and stabbing the supposed surprised enemies within the mock rooms. They were slow, stepping into rooms and just pointing sticks at corners. But as his Ja-pan-ese liaison and caterer pointed out from beside him, small details began emerging from the movements. Each man swept the point of his green and black stave across certain angles within the rooms, exact movements done over and over again, smoothly ensuring that every space in each enclosed area was secure while protecting the other men.

Colt Formal leaned back beside the Elbian king in his own seat, his own Ch-i-nese liaison leaned over and lectured softly on the demonstration. Both of them had inquired for a show of force from the United Nations, the Italicans wanting assurances in their new allegiances and the vassal kingdoms wanting an answer to their first defeat. The higher ranks of the kingdoms, from kings to sergeants, were brought into a clearing put together outside the towering walls. Seats unfolded for the lords and kings, while their men stood behind them, all facing towards a wooden frame of a building. There it began, a group of soldiers uniformed entirely in chaotic green boxes introduced as a contingent of the Canadian Armed Forces came forward, marching in neat rows up to the structure. The drill was then performed, liaisons assigned from the many different nations that formed the United Nations explaining matters of factly as the soldiers completed the task. The mens' adorned red-white flags and black-green C7s stood out as they ran through the drill, but the drill itself was mostly ridiculed by the Falmarti men, who saw it as a waste of energy. They were, however, completely thrown off when braids and ponytails were tossed up into the air as what turned out to be females mixed in with the group, performing in war acts alongside male soldiers. The Canadians were soon dismissed after they had reformed ranks upon clearing the building and replaced with a Russian squad coming forward carrying a variety of weapon systems.

Binoculars were handed out and taught to the seated dignitaries, the men fidgeting with the gadgets with wonder as they scoured the landscape. They were then pointed out to silhouettes in the distances, explained to be two hundred metres out, as the Russians set themselves up. The Russian uniforms were similar to the previous performing soldiers with darker greens and a blue armband inscribed with a large white UN. Proning out or kneeling in firing positions, the captain nodded the team's readiness to the two MP standing to the side of the team, their red beret drawing the gaze of the audience. The lead MP raised his right arm straight up before dropping it forward with a shout, his brethren raising a small red flag into the air.

"Огонь!"

The NSV let out first, barks of deafening 12.7mm burst with their tracers flashing and impacting two hundred metres away and jetting plumes of dirt into the air from the kinetic force. RPK and PKM fire filled in the spaces between the large caliber barks with the chattering of automatic 7.62mm and 5.45mm rounds, their own tracers dancing over the target. Solitary pops chimed in as the rest of the rifle infantry peppered the target with their AK-74s, a continuous cacophony that echoed out when their larger brothers stopped to reload. A RPG was loaded and unleashed onto the cardboard, the projectile ripping the air as it threw itself just short of the target, the fragmentation grenade bathing the silhouette with metal and smoke. As the second belts and magazines completed themselves, an echoing silence blanketed the area with only the rattling of box magazines and ammo tins could be heard as they were collected and returned to pouches and packs. The men stood to, before they were dismissed and joined the Canadians to the side. A magnified view of the cardboard people showed that the targets were torn apart, any little bit left intact had large holes covering the pieces.

Duran nearly fell out of his seat by the end of the shooting, his hands death-gripping the fabric armrest held him upright as he gaped. He was absolutely awestruck by the firepower placed onto an exact area from such a small amount of people and equipment at that range and limited time. All the weaponry was carried by single men, except for the largest weapon which still only needed two to carry it.

Each weapon covered each other perfectly, as long as the bronze arrowheads in the different boxes were continuously fed to each handheld death machine, death would be continuously dispersed across any battlefield. It made any attempt at a field battle suicide, without even talking about the wrath of the Gods they had called upon the first battle for Alnus hill.

{ Not sorcerers, but just men with weapons?! Just how do they wage war on the other side of the gate without exterminating each other?! With such a combination with non-stop output of death, not even a phalanx could overwhelm such odds!}

Quick glances showed the same expressions across the Falmarti men, all shocked from the racket of death as it came to an end.

He violently waved Yanagida in close, with a loud whisper he began to blurt.

" Yanagida, you must sell these weapons to me. You must! I will convince the vassal kingdoms to swear fealty, we need these weapons!"

The Japanese man merely pushed his glasses up, " my apologies king Duran, but at this moment, all technologies from our world are off limits to trade."

Duran's face scrunched up in disappointment at the news, only to relax in curiosity to Yanagida's next words.

" However, we can open some history records for you to learn about our wartime history and techniques."

The Lion King could only slump back as he relaxed into the seat, looking forward to learning from otherworldly military records, hoping for a path out from under the Imperial thumb. A beastly growl and the ground vibrating to life drew his eyes to the next group, this time two tan dyed armoured elephants grinded their way to the front of the audience, closely followed by what could only be described as two smaller green slugs.

Two Indian Ajeya MBTs quieted down to a halt just in front of the crowd, a pair of "Sarath" BMP-2s rolling up right behind them. Liaisons soon leaned close to their charges, explaining the next demonstration would be the Indian mechanized units showing off an advance under fire, this time pointing out a large boulder resting at the crest of a small hill in the distance past the destroyed targets as the enemy. Confusion of terminology plagued the archaic men as they peered out at the rock, whispers and head shaking growing among the groups. The engines ramping up soon killed the conversations, smoke spewing from the machines as they began trodding out to the supposed enemy. A single soldier on the backs of each creature, all wearing an odd black, three ridged helmet, began waving the same small red flag the Russians were waving earlier before planting them on the backs of the animals. The rear doors of the BMPs threw open to the surprise of the crowd, soldiers dashing out and falling in behind the iron animals.

BOOM…BOOM

A flash of fire, a plume of smoke, and an echoing blast erupted from one quickly followed by the other iron elephant, the snouts letting off a wisp of smoke as they raised and lowered. The force of the eruptions whipping the air around them and jolting the men in their seats. Duran stared through his pair of lenses at the rock, now damaged with large cracks and smoking, bits of earth and stone falling from the sky. He remembered this sound, sight, and feeling from the night of his lost battle. The concussive force, the feeling of powerlessness, and the sight and sound of this fighting monster still resonated in his heart, that small hidden voice panicking in the deepest corner of his brain still screaming for him to run. He steeled himself in the seat, however, gripping tightly at his armrest.

{ I am not the enemy this time, the rocks are.}

Yet terrified as he was, he watched raptly as the force advanced, men working with iron beasts.

BOOM TUNG-TUNG-TUNG BOOM TUNG-TUNG-TUNG

More resounding eruptions followed, the elephants letting loose again within seconds, the same amount of force from each. This time, the slugs joined in, their fires smaller yet rapid. Their snouts reeling back with each chuff of metallic ringing as they pockmarked the boulder. All projectiles impacting the rock from their respective angles, the war animals still shuffling forward as they placed accurate shots onto target. Soon as the distance closed down, the men let loose with their rifles, leaning around the vehicles or resting on the top of the hulls as they fired. The elephants came to a stop at this point, the slugs rolling past with the soldiers following closely up to the rock before they too stopped at the foot of the hill. The men then emerged from behind the iron plates and dashing up the sides of the boulder, upon which they planted a flag, fluttering its orange, white, and green. A salute was given by the troops before they took it down and re-embarked their vehicles, leaving the field with a puff of smoke.

The Falmarti men could only shudder in the face of such military force.