Halkeginia, a continent made up of several kingdoms, each possessing their own personal territory. Among all of the countries that make up the continent, the focus for this story is on Tristain; a small country that could easily be overtaken by one of the bigger countries like Germania. It is ruled by a princess that goes by the name of Henrietta de Tristain. Due to the death of Tristain's king, the queen, Marianne, stepped off from the throne. Not having the heart to rule the country without her beloved, she handed the crown to her daughter, Henrietta.

Currently, Henrietta could be seen sitting on her war horse with a grim but determined look on her face. Beside her are her personal generals, each from a very influential noble family each looking stoic but nervous on the inside.

In front of them are the rows and columns of Tristain's sons and fathers, each holding a tool of war, sword and shield forming an impenetrable defensive line.

Spears pointing up to the heavens, ready to pierce enemies who dared to break their line, a whole line of archers ready to rain down hell upon the invaders.

Mages, powerful nobles capable of altering the elements themselves to tip the balance into their favor.

Soaring high in the skies are Tristain's pride, the Griffin Riders, veteran mages capable of riding the mythical griffins into battle.

Lastly is the musketeer brigade, wielding one of war's most dangerous and most high-tech weapons, musket, and flintlock pistols. Such is the power of these weapons that they could simply take down a fully armored knight with a single shot.

Despite this astounding army that is assembled in front of Henrietta, she could not help but feel a sense of dread when she looks at her opposition. A sea of humans hailing from the country of Albion, slowly marching towards them, none of them had any sort of standardization, the army that stood against them only had what they could scavenge from their past battles. A beaten up sword, a broken shield, dented armour. The only advantage that this army had was its sheer number.

There is no sugar coating it, Tristain's army is outnumbered. A single Tristain soldier is fighting against three Albion invaders. To top it off, Albion has large flying ships carrying wind dragons, dragons that are capable of fighting against their Griffin Riders.

A tense silence graced the open field of Tarbes. Soldiers gripped on their weapons so tight their knuckles turned white. For a second, it felt like the whole world was silent.

"CHARGE!"

By that singular word, the ground trembled, boots marched on the ground as both armies approached each other, arrows soared across the skies, spells of many kinds were casted in an attempt to gain an advantage. Henrietta has a plan. Speed is key for this war; the faster they lower the enemies' numbers the higher their chances are at winning. It is simply a matter of showing a strong start.


The scent of smoke was evident in the environment. A groan escaped from her mouth. Reaching out with her hand, she found leverage on a desk which she used to pull herself up. Her head was throbbing, but she still remained calm in the discord that is happening around her command centre.

"LEGION, give me an overall report."

To any normal individual, they would've found this person crazy due to the fact that she was talking to no one in particular. A deep humming voice came out and red lines started to light up around the room.

SCANNING A.I. INTEGRITY…

SCANNING STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY…

SCANNIN LIQUID TIBERIUM STORAGE…

After a few seconds of silence, the voice named LEGION answered.

A.I. INTEGRITY AT 100%

STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AT 84%

LIQUID TIBERIUM STORAGE AT 100%

A sigh of relief came out from the young commander. "At least you and the liquid tiberium are still in full condition. Begin repairs with the MCV. Also, while you're at it, send out some scout drones to survey the area."

REPAIRING

QUERY: DID THE TRANSPORTATION WORK?

Her eyes widened in surprised, realizing that she had forgotten her goal for a moment. She closed her eyes and remained in silence for a time. A small smirk spread across her lips. "Yes, LEGION. The transportation worked, I'm finally home. I could feel the familiar mana."

Just before she could celebrate, a blaring notification came from LEGION. Speed walking her way towards the dock of the MCV, a holographic screen popped up showing the first person perspective of one of the scout drones that LEGION sent forth earlier. The drone flew past acres of trees before the trees opened up to a large open field. Her brows furrowed when she saw what was happening on the open field.

Dead bodies lie on the earth. War cries were picked up by the drone's built-in microphone and the sounds of spells being casted and muskets being fired. LEGION and she stumbled upon a battlefield. From the looks of it, the battle was already decided. The army on the right is slowly overwhelming the army on the left; while the left army had quality, it was simply not enough to go up against the sea of humans that the right army had in great supply

As the drone skimmed across the bloodied battlefield, the young commander noticed something among the crowd of humans. "LEGION, zoom in on that area of the battlefield."

LEGION followed her orders and commanded the drone to zoom in on that area that she pointed at. Amidst all of the chaos, amidst all of the faces both dead and alive, there was one individual in that battlefield who the young commander recognized. Her eyes went steely, the tone of her voice changed into a commanding one and she spoke.

"LEGION, I want a tier 2 base up and running as soon as possible. Once our base is ready, start making Awakened bots. "

QUERY: FOR WHAT PURPOSE IS THIS?

"The losing army is Henrietta's army." She said and without skipping a beat, she gave another order. "As soon as five squads are available, send them out to aid Henrietta's army."

There was a moment of pause as LEGION searched through his massive databanks as to who Henrietta is. This only took a microsecond. Once he knew who Henrietta was and what kind of status she held, LEGION immediately got to work; using the scouting drone, he marked the ones that were a part of Henrietta's army, and the rest were labelled as hostiles. An action that took a single second.

TARGETS MARKED

TRAINING…

The young commander scrambled towards her personal armour built in the MCV. She walked towards a pod that opened as she approached it, entering it, the pod closed with a loud hiss, a few seconds later, the young commander emerged from the pod wearing tactical combat gear that fit perfectly around her feminine body. Padded with the highest quality of body armour, the tight suit that she wore could survive anything bar a nuke or GDI's ion cannon blast. A mechanical arm descended from the metal ceiling and handed the young commander a helmet.

Wearing the helmet, information started flowing into her visor showing her suit's integrity, vital signs, and the ammo count of the weapon that she has yet chosen. Walking over to a wall, red lines lit up forming a large rectangle before turning clockwise revealing a large wall of high-tech weapons. She skimmed through most of it and simply picked up an automatic laser rifle.

"LEGION, are the Awakened bots ready?"

ANSWER: 5 AWAKENED BOT SQUADS SUCCESSFULLY TRAINED AND ARE WAITING FOR YOU.

"Good, I'll leave their controls to you. For now, tell them to follow me until we've reached the battlefield."

COMMAND RECEIVED

The young commander jogged up a nearby elevator and went down and left the MCV. Outside the MCV, five squads of Awakened robots were waiting on her.

"Let's go."

Her back tingled as the nanomachines running in her veins began to work. She took a step with turned into a jog and finally a full blown sprint, reaching sprints no normal human could achieve. The machines in her body worked overtime; healing torn muscles, forcing her body to run faster than any normal human could and even stimulating the brain to make sure that she does not feel the pain of torn ligaments and muscles.

At the current speed that she was going, she would be intercepting the battle in 3 minutes.


This was more than what Henrietta had anticipated. While they initially had the upper hand, the momentum of the battle is slowly turning against them. With their speed halted by the bodies of Albion's armies, Tristain blood started to flow across the ground. The sound of metal clashing on metal could be heard and the death cries of those who have fallen.

"Where is the king of Germania's army?" She thought out loud.

Agnes, Henrietta's most loyal musketeer captain spoke out. "Princess, at this rate, I don't think the king's army is going to make it." She aimed her musket and fired upon another Albion conscript.

"Great, another thing to worry about." Henrietta quipped in her mind.

Earlier, Tristain's army numbered in the ten thousand. Now a rough estimate of five thousand are left and that number is decreasing rapidly. A war cry coming from a random Albion conscript came from her left and with her wand-mace, she smacked the conscript, knocking him unconscious.

"We need to retreat, princess!" Agnes said.

"And simply give the town of Tarbes to them?"

"We must gather back our numbers; we can take it back once we are capable again."

Just before Henrietta could come up with a counter argument, one of the knights ran up to her bringing terrible news. "Princess! Movement has been spotted past the north-eastern hill!"

"Could it be Germania's army?" She asked hopefully but only received a confusing reply from the knight.

"No, your highness. According to the earth mages, the trembles coming from that north-east did not feel like an army."

Out of the corner of her eyes, Henrietta looked over to the north-east hill, past the two armies fighting, a large group, of what looks like golems, went over the hill and is making a bee line towards the battlefield. Her captain, Agnes, was already on the move and is already barking orders at the soldiers to cover their north-east flank.

Among the whole group there was one golem that stood out, this golem moved less mechanically and more fluidly. The body of the golem was more feminine. It raised a peculiar looking musket. Despite the noise of war, Henrietta could faintly hear a war cry from the female golem.

"FIGHT FOR NOD!"

The following events will forever be cemented to all the survivors of this battlefield. Henrietta watched as the golem group charged, not at them, but at Albion's army. Each golem raised their arms, and all hell broke loose. Rays of blue light streaked across the battlefield, incinerating Albion's armies in terrifying succession. The golems displayed an amazing display of accuracy, only shooting at Albion's army.

Suddenly surprised by the new enemy, Albion quickly rallied up a small army and charged the golems only to yield the same result. All bodies, incinerated beyond recognition. Nothing could get past the blue light of death, any metal that came in contact was instantly warped and rendered useless, the armour that some of Albion's armies wore melted, cooking the wearer inside.

While these golems were massacring Albion's army by the hundreds, Henrietta noticed that the female golem acted differently. While the larger golems simply shot whatever they saw, the female golem was more precise with her shots, each shot that came out of her unnaturally shaped musket was aimed for the head.

At this point in the battle, Albion's army has completely forgotten who they were originally fighting and focused all of their forces on the golems. Yet, despite the clear number advantage that Albion had against the golems, they never seemed to pass a certain line before getting completely incinerated by a blue streak of heated light. Albion's remaining wind dragons decided to enter the fray, the mages mounting these beasts already chanting their spells only to be interrupted when another streak of heated blue light passed through both dragon and rider.

It was not fired from one of the golems but rather it was fired by what looks like a flock of large, black, metallic… fish?

"What in the name of Brimir…" Agnes muttered as she watched with astonishment.

The flock of seven metal fish, hovered in the skies before splitting up in great speeds, chasing down the dragon riders while accurately shooting blue streaks of light. One metal fish flew close to one of Albion's floating war ships and started shooting, immediately setting the war ship on fire.

Plenty of questions ran across Henrietta's head but there is one thing that she is certain of. Whoever is controlling these golems, they are not there to finish of Tristain's army. They are there to help them. Raising her mace and with a rekindled vigour, she yelled.

"THE GOLEMS ARE HELPING US! WITH THEIR POWER, WE CAN STILL TURN THIS AROUND! TO ME!"

Henrietta buckled her war horse, it whinnied, and it was followed by the reinvigorated war cries of Tristain's army.

Eager for vengeance, eager for revenge for their fallen brothers.


Roughly ten minutes have passed, and Albion's army finally retreated, unable to take the heavy losses. A moment of silence finally gave way followed by a cheer. Despite the losses, they have successfully stopped Albion from invading. It was a pyrrhic victory; tens of thousands of lives were lost and only a few thousand remained.

"Agnes, do a body count… we lost so many." Henrietta said with a tired tone.

"But we have successfully fended off the enemy." Agnes said.

"A defense that we have paid a heavy price for."

Agnes gave a somber nod before leaving the princess to do as she was told. Henrietta looked over to their saviours, the golems still standing still, not leaving the spot that they stood on. She also noticed the female golem staring at her. Confused, Henrietta, along with two musketeer escorts walked up to the female golem, her escorts looking antsy the closer they got.

Now that Henrietta got a closer look at the female golem, she slowly came up with the conclusion that the golem was actually a human wearing some questionable and scandalous skin-tight outfit and wore a helmet that is smoother, and sleeker compared to Tristain's standard helmet. She did not care about her attire; she was simply too tired to care right now.

A tired smile spread across Henrietta's face. "I would like to give you my sincere gratitude for assisting us in this war."

The woman looked at Henrietta, her rifle at ease. "Don't mention it. What are friends for, right?"

Confusion overtook Henrietta's mind. "I do apologize, we are friends?"

"Yes!"

Henrietta shook her head. "I do not recall befriending someone like you."

"Wait, you don't recognize me?" the woman asked.

Again, Henrietta shook her head. "I do not."

There was a moment of silence before Henrietta could faintly hear her whispered voice beneath the helmet.

"I-I knew that… shut up LEGION."

The woman turned around and let one of the metal golems hold her rifle. With her back facing Henrietta, she slowly took off her helmet. A look of shock was on Henrietta's face. Where there was once a long and beautiful pink hair, it was now short and a little discolored. The woman- no, girl, turned around. Henrietta spotted a deep scar on her left cheek, but despite the damage on her face, she could still recognize her.

"L-Louise?" Henrietta said with a trembling voice.

Louise Françoise le Blanc de le Vallière, the girl who was lost for months stood before the princess of Tristain.

A somber smile was on her face followed by a soft chuckle.

"Hello, your highness."


This is my first story; I sure hope you guys like my writing. I decided to write this because I've taken inspiration from 'The Foundation Must Be True' by Tankred. I like the idea of Louise commanding a Brotherhood of Nod army but there are some changes that I've done with Nod's forces.

One of the major changes I've done is rather than cyborgs, LEGION's army is made up of robots. More about this will be explained later on as the story progresses.

Another thing I should probably lay out immediately is Louise's time displacement. I'm basically saying that while she is missing in Halkeginia for months, she's spent a few years in Tiberium infested Earth.

Lastly, I will not be telling any kind of backstory on how Louise got to where she is now. That will be for a separate story after I finish this one.

I hope you guys enjoyed the first chapter as I have!

A-GOO-BAI!