May 2nd, 1925 – Parisee – Ministry of Defense
Lieutenant-Colonel Severin Vianto, commander of the Francois Republic's Special Operations Army's Second Mage Wing, walked into the office of Vice Minister Pierre-Michel de Lugo after being allowed in by the two soldiers guarding the entrance. A grim mood hung over the entire Ministry, and it was evident in the appearance of the man sat at the desk in front of him.
The Vice Minister of Defense and the Armed Forces looked like he had aged ten years since the last time Vianto had seen him. His dress uniform, on which the insignia of a Major General (which had been the man's rank before his nomination to his current post in the Ministry) was wrinkled, his eyes were surrounded by deep circles, and there was a hint of grey in his mustache that hadn't been there before. Looking at the map on his desk, where the latest reports of the Rhine front were represented by colored pins showing the known positions of Republican and Imperial forces, it wasn't hard to guess what the cause of all of this was.
The last two weeks had been a nightmare for the Republic that all but made the previous months of grinding warfare look like a pleasant summer picnic. The new Imperial Wunderwaffe hadn't been as immediately devastating as the one used against the Dacian Army, nor had it immediately shifted the course of the war as it had at the Battle of the Osfjord. But the Devils of the Rhine, as they had so quickly come to be called by those who knew of their existence, were a force multiplier that the Republic simply had no counter to, especially when deployed alongside the Empire's mysterious mage-hunters.
The best theory their own experts had been capable of presenting regarding the Devils of the Rhine was that they were the product of decades of careful breeding of magically-altered chimeras, a branch of magical science that was only theoretically possible. Where the Hell the Empire had managed to hide such a hypothetical breeding facility that none of the other powers had ever heard of its existence before the war was unknown, but Vianto had to admit it was slightly more believable and slightly less worrying than the more frenzied theory that the Imperials had made alliance with the Devil himself.
So the suggestion to send exorcists and priests to the frontline had been rejected. For now.
Regardless of where the things had come from, their presence was undeniable. The Francois public had yet to learn about the Devils of the Rhine's existence, thank mostly to the sheer impossibility of them being real, but even the most stubborn of rear officers had been forced to confront the truth.
At first, some officers had suggested to wait for the Empire to over-extend and then launch flanking attacks to cut off the vanguard from their reinforcements and pounding them with artillery until there wasn't even a single bloodstain left. The problem was, the Imperials were being very careful. They made sure to consolidate their gains before pushing again, and keep their line of reinforcement and retreat open.
Desperate plan after desperate plan had been implemented, with dismal results. Trenches had been mined and abandoned to the enemy before detonating the charges, only for the Devils to dig their way out of the rubble, howling with rage but looking none the worse for wear. Soldiers carrying flamethrowers had been concentrated in front of the Devils in the hope that fire would be more effective than bullets, only for the beasts to walk through the flames before ripping the soldiers to pieces, the burns they'd suffered already half-healed by the time the last of them died.
The most costly such gambit had been when the entire First Wing of Special Operations Army had been smuggled to the frontlines, refraining from using magic or doing anything that would reveal their presence before the Devils' nightly attack, when it was hoped their combined magical firepower could overwhelm the creatures' unnatural resilience. These had been good men, whom Vianto had been proud to call comrades-in-arms and even friends for some of them. And he was still convinced that the plan would've worked, if the other Imperial Wunderwaffe loose in the Rhine hadn't turned out to be even more dangerous than they had previously believed.
Not a single one had returned. Somehow, the mage-hunters had known exactly where they were hiding and had ripped apart their hiding places with explosives, before picking off the few who had survived the explosions without the benefit of their protective shells. Thirty-six of the Republic's most elite mages, lost in an instant and, as far as they'd been able to tell, without scoring a single kill in return.
Someone had even suggested they should shell their own trenches after ordering the soldiers to hold the Devils in place no matter what : the artillerists had told the officer in question to fuck off, though Vianto knew the possibility was still being considered.
The simple truth was, wherever Division Y was deployed, the Empire would win. And with every failed plan, the Republican Army's already tattered morale grew worse and worse. Casualties rate on the Rhine Front had always been ludicrously high compared to previous conflicts, but the latest figures showed a sharp increase, with the soldiers who died under Imperial bombardment during their flight from the Devils added to those killed by the monsters themselves. Before, losing several hundred sons of the Republic in a single day had been on the low end of casualties, but since the Devils' arrival, not a single day had gone by without at least a couple thousand losses.
At the rate things were going, the Army would collapse long before the Imperials reached Parisee, its soldiers no longer willing to sacrifice their lives in vain. And the attitude of the Rhine High Command wasn't exactly helping either. Besides their useless plans, they had also withdrawn entire squadrons of aerial mages from the front, assigning them to the protection of important facilities in the rear to guard against the possibility of nocturnal raids by the Imperial stealth mages. That might make sense from a strategic perspective, but all the grunts on the ground saw was desperately-needed reinforcements were pulled back to protect officers who had never visited the frontline in person.
The Republic had launched massed attacks on other sections of the frontlines (always under daylight), but the rest of the Imperial Army hadn't magically become incompetent with the arrival of Division Y's horrors. Some small gains had been made, but the casualties had been horrendous. Apparently, the rest of the Imperial troops were more than happy to let Division Y take point, while they focused on strengthening their own positions while the monsters drowned the mud in Francois blood.
Orders had been sent to the colonies to draft as many able-bodied men as possible into service and rush them through training to make up for the losses, but even rushed training still took time, as did transporting these new troops across the sea and up to the front. If nothing changed, the defeat of the Republic was inevitable.
Yes, if nothing changed.
"Lieutenant-Colonel Vianto, here as ordered, Vice Minister !" said Vianto with a sharp salute.
"Lieutenant-Colonel," De Lugo replied with a weary nod. "Thank you for coming so promptly. Take a seat, this is not a conversation we should have standing up."
While Vianto sat down, De Lugo pulled two glasses and a wine bottle out of his desk. After they had both taken a sip of their drink (Vianto noticed that his superior's had been a lot deeper than his own), the Vice Minister began :
"Three hours ago, I received a message from our friends in Albion." Despite everything, hearing such a high-ranking officer of the Republic speak that way of the nation's long-standing rival still felt strange to Vianto. "They managed to intercept a message to the Rhine sent to the local commanding officer of Division Y. In three days, another Wunderwaffe will be delivered by train to Arene. According to the Kingdom's spies, judging by the message's context, that weapon will break the front completely and help secure complete victory for the Empire."
Vianto had expected bad news, but this was worse than he could have imagined, and he was grateful De Lugo had asked him to sit before springing this on him. He took another fortifying sip of wine (it was a great one, really wasted in such circumstances), and struggled to find his voice :
"Can … can they really do that ?"
"They destroyed the Dacian Army in a single day," De Lugo reminded him. "While our forces are better equipped than the Grand Duchy's ever were, we have to assume it is within the capabilities of their accursed Wunderwaffen. However, this also represents an opportunity. The very first opportunity to strike a significant blow at Division Y."
Vianto hadn't risen to his current rank solely thanks to his magical prowess and social pedigree. He immediately saw where De Lugo was going.
"We know when that weapon will be delivered to Arene," he said slowly, "and that at least one representative of Division Y will be present."
"Exactly," confirmed the Major General. "Therefore, we'll be advancing the schedule of our special operation in Arene."
The Republic hadn't just been throwing lives away just to slow down the inevitable. Once the initial shock of the Empire's monsters had passed, they had realized they still had a shot at stopping the Imperial advance once and for all. Located in the contested territories the Empire had seized during its last war against the Republic, Arene still had many Francois sympathizers within its population. Now that the Imperial Army had made Arene into a logistical hub to supply its forces in the Rhine, the Republic had a unique opportunity to repeat what the Imperials had done to the Entente at the Osfjord.
If Arene could be liberated, then the Imperial lines would be cut off from resupply. Even just doing enough damage to the railway network would be enough to cripple the enemy logistics. However terrifying the Empire's Wunderwaffen were, they had only ever advanced in coordination with the rest of the Imperial Army. Losing Arene would force them to contract their lines or risk running out of ammo, food, fuel, and whatever the Wunderwaffen needed to keep slaughtering Republican soldiers. They would recover in time, but this should buy the Republic enough time for its allies across the pond to finally get off their arses and join the fray.
Also, the Empire was unlikely to deploy its Wunderwaffen in a city, and if they did, such an atrocity would turn the entire world against them. Vianto wasn't especially comfortable with what essentially amounted to using the civilians of Arene as a shield, but he was willing to bear the stain on his honor and participate in a lesser evil for the greater good of the Republic.
"Is the uprising ready to be activated ?" asked the Lieutenant-Colonel. "I thought our agents still needed a couple of weeks to smuggle in all the weapons and finish preparations."
De Lugo nodded gravelly. "It won't be as effective as we hoped, I know, but we have no choice. We will launch the operation on the day of the weapon's arrival. Assisting the brave patriots of Arene will unfortunately have to be your wing's secondary objective : your top priority will be neutralizing Division Y's assets. You'll strike during the day, so their damned mage-killers shouldn't be active. If you can …" De Lugo hesitated, then sighed before continuing, a disgusted expression on his face : "if you can and it is at all practical, try to recover the weapon in question for study. If not, destroy it."
"Study ?" repeated Vianto, aghast. "Vice Minister, are we really going to follow in the Empire's footsteps ?"
"Not if I have anything to say about it," growled De Lugo. "We are a righteous, God-fearing nation and we won't soil ourselves like this. But we need to know what we're up against."
Vianto was seasoned enough an officer to read between the lines. "The Allied Kingdom is pressuring us to try to acquire it, aren't they ?"
"Exactly," confirmed De Lugo, apparently too tired to play games. "They are very interested in the Empire's so-called superweapons, and the message they sent me is apparently the only result of their spying attempts on Division Y so far. Besides that, their own preparations to join the war are still ongoing, and beyond the obvious advantages of learning more about the foe, they are looking for a just cause they can present to their population to justify going to war. The Empire has been very careful in toeing the line to avoid handing them an easy justification so far – one of the drawbacks of how well the Legadonian evacuation went."
De Lugo wouldn't say it out loud, of course, but the interests of the Republic would have been better served if the Empire had managed to corner the fleeing Legadonian fleet and politicians when they'd made render-vous with the Albish ships (which had just so happened to be performing 'training exercises' in the area) and caused an incident the Allied Kingdom could have used as a casus belli.
One might think deploying monsters on the frontlines would be enough, and indeed Vianto had heard more than one voice among the Republic command staff claiming as much. But such simple reasoning failed to take several things into account.
To start with, the only evidence of the Devils' existence was the original recording : they had been incredibly lucky that the fragile orb had survived battle, and no other record had been found since. While the Republicans knew it was genuine thanks to the testimony of the survivors who had faced the Devils themselves, the other powers were unlikely to take the words of obviously traumatized soldiers at face value, especially with such wild accusations. Illusion magic was difficult to identify on orbal recordings, especially damaged ones : it was all but certain the Republic would be accused of fabricating the whole thing wholesale.
Secondly, even if the existence of the Devils was proven beyond doubt, magic had become more and more widespread and accepted in the last few decades. The sheer potential of the computing orb had been recognized by most nations of the world, who had taken measures to quietly ensure the lingering prejudices against magic that remained from the great Inquisitorial purges of the Dark Ages were pushed back. Yes, the Devils were horrifying, but then so was war in general, especially in its current industrial incarnation in the Rhine. Crying foul about the enemy's weapons being too effective would only be seen as the whining of a loser. And despite De Lugo's assurances, Vianto knew the other powers would be eager to acquire the Wunderwaffen for their own armed forces. The higher one went into politics, the more pragmatism replaced idealism, after all.
(Of course, the Republic officers on the frontline weren't telling that to the soldiers under their command. Instead, they made sure to denounce the Empire's use of infernal sorcery, in the hope that religious fervor would help the troops overcome their terror and follow their orders.)
And then, finally, there was the simple fact that using the Devils didn't break any of the laws of war. There were many, many precedents to using animals in war (the horse being the first one to come to mind, even if their use was being faded out as warfare became more and more mechanized), and those were often bred over the course of generations for maximum efficiency. And that was if the Devils were animals at all : the soldiers who had seen them fight swore they were sentient creatures. Morally abhorrent as the thought was, there was no international ban on using such … supersoldiers, Vianto guessed would be the word. That was because nobody else had ever made them, of course, but the diplomats and international lawyers wouldn't care much about that.
As a result, any intelligence the Republic could gain on Division Y would be a priceless bargaining chip as well as a strategic asset. Presented in the right way, it might be enough to convince the Albish public to support joining the war. Coupled with the importance of Arene to Imperial logistics, this made the upcoming operation all the more vital.
"I won't fail you, General," Vianto promised his superior. De Lugo nodded soberly.
"I know you won't. Remember, Lieutenant-Colonel : the fate of the Republic rests on your shoulders and those of your men. If you fail, the very best case scenario will see Francois reduced to little more than a client-state of the Allied Kingdom for years as we pay back our debts to them."
De Lugo didn't elaborate on the worst case scenario was, for which Vianto was grateful. Given what they already knew of Division Y's work, there was no point in tempting fate.
May 3rd, 1925 – Parisee – Cathedral of Our Beloved Lady
When he'd left the Vice Minister's office, Vianto had expected to spend the days leading to the Liberation of Arene preparing for it, drilling his men and studying the maps of the city they had available until the last moment. He had not expected to find himself kneeling inside what many considered the greatest and most holiest cathedral in all of Francois, along with the rest of his Wing's First Squadron. And yet, here they were, twelve of the Republic's most dangerous soldiers prostrating themselves before the icon that filled the back wall of the building.
The day before, only a few moments after his meeting with De Lugo, the Archbishop of Parisee, Baptiste Beauvais, had asked Vianto for a private meeting, citing urgent concerns as to the safety of the Republic. Vianto, who had thought he could certainly use a priest's advice before going to Arene, had agreed. To his shock, the Archbishop had told him that he knew of his upcoming mission, having received a vision from the Lord warning him that, without help, Vianto and his men were doomed to failure and death. Only with the blessing of the Lord could they hope to accomplish their mission, and save Francois from the vile heresies that had grown within the Empire without anyone realizing.
If not for the detailed knowledge of the operation possessed by the Archbishop, which were known only to a handful of people, Vincent would have ignored him. But combined with the images he had seen of the Devils of the Rhine, suddenly the prospect of the Lord taking a direct interest in the Great War hadn't seemed so far-fetched. And so here he was with the rest of his Wing's 1st Squadron, ready to receive the Archbishop's blessing before departing on their mission to Arene.
If nothing else, the Lieutenant-Colonel mused, his unit certainly could use the boost to morale. Part of the briefing for the operation had included seeing the record of the first Imperial breakthrough. Added to the knowledge that the stealth mage-hunters of the Empire were active on the Rhine front, it honestly was humbling that none of the men had protested their orders.
"You twelve have been chosen to bear the light of the Lord into battle, but be warned. The blessing of God is not for the weak of spirit," warned the Archbishop as he advanced toward the line of kneeling mages, all of them in uniform. "Even the greatest of us are but flawed mortals, while He is perfection incarnate. Fill your mind with that which you hold most dear. Focus on the sacred duty that has been bestowed upon you. Hold it close to your heart, and let His light fill you with His strength."
Vianto closed his eyes, and thought on the orders he had received. But no, those weren't important enough. He thought of the oaths he had sworn as a soldier of the Republic, but those weren't enough either. Instead, he focused on the purpose behind the orders, on the spirit behind the words of his vows.
I will protect Francois, he swore to himself as the Archbishop began the ritual of benediction.
He repeated the mantra to himself over and over as the priest applied sacred oils to his forehead and spoke words that had not been spoken in more than ten centuries.
I will protect Francois. I will protect Francois. I will protect Francois.
Conviction and determination filled him, and along with them came something else, something that seeped into his body and soul and crystallized around the very core of his being.
I will protect Francois.
Come hell or high water, come all the hosts of Hell …
Whatever foulness threatens this land, I shall destroy it.
May 4th, 1925 – Imperial City Arene – Train Station
All in all, I had not exactly been impressed with the Francois response to our combined mystical arms approach so far. They had succeeded in slowing the Empire's advance, yes, but the cost in human lives was abhorrent. I hadn't been surprised when I had been told summary executions for insubordination were apparently on the rise in the Francois army, as young men understandably objected to recklessly throwing their lives away in suicidal charges. Really, I would have expected tactics like this from the Red Army, with its infamous political officers and enforced fanatical devotion to communism, not the comparatively civilized Francois forces.
I had considered splitting the Werwölfe into two teams in response, one advancing at night and the other helping hold the ground during the day. I didn't care how scary the Francois officers were, the Werwölfe were scarier, and with the technology of the era all human wave tactics would accomplish against them was getting a lot of Francois killed. But during the day, they would be without the support of the Untoten. Sure, the Empire had plenty of other air support I could call on, but none of them were on Projekt U's level when it came to sweeping the skies clear of enemy mages, and enemy mages were what I was worried about. The regeneration of a Werwolf didn't work if they were killed instantly, and a high-powered spell to the skull might just do the trick.
Besides, it wasn't as if the Imperial Army really needed the help. Sure, they had been forced to give ground several times, and the damage had forced us to delay further advance as we restored communication lines with the rear, but the Western Army had been fighting on the Rhine for months at this point. They knew what they were doing and could kill the Francois just as well without the Werwölfe holding their hand in their claws.
Really, at this point, deploying Projekt V felt like a moral imperative as well as a strategic one. It would save lives in the long run, and the people it would kill were really asking for it with their callous disregard for the lives of their countrymen. War was inherently wasteful, yes, but what they were doing was appalling. Any reasonable person would have sued for peace by now.
But, as I had been forced to face time and again, people were rarely reasonable. And so here I was, at the Arene train station, waiting for the delivery of the weapon that would hopefully end this whole morbid farce once and for all. Visha was with me, her uniform completely protecting her from the sun's deadly rays. The rest of the Untoten were at rest outside the city, along with the Werwölfe.
The train was on time, of course. Since the fall of Legadonia had allowed the Empire to focus its resources on the Western Front, Arene had become a center of Imperial logistics, its rail network allowing to bring in men and supplies close to the front much more efficiently. I looked at the clock as it came to a stop, and smiled at the display of human ingenuity.
Men began to descend from the train, met by local personnel, and the unloading started. Visha and I walked toward a wagon that was conspicuously left alone. I greeted the squad of soldiers who had been sent along with the wagon by name, recognizing each of them from Castle Schwartzstein. Division Y didn't have many true, ordinary soldiers assigned to it, but they were a vital part of our operations all the same, being some of the few people working under me whose judgment and common sense I could trust. After checking that everything had gone well, I gave them permission to go on leave in the city : having spent the entire trip on high alert, they certainly deserved to relax with a beer or two.
Once they were gone, I returned my attention to the wagon itself. Visha opened it, revealing a massive metal box that was only slightly smaller than the wagon containing it, and held in place during transit by thick metal chains that we removed using the keys the escort had handed over before their departure.
The box was heavily reinforced, and it was only the second layer of protection around Projekt V (the wagon itself being the first). The actual Wunderwaffe was much, much smaller, but given its destructive potential I had erred on the side of caution when transporting it. For instance, the lock of the second layer could only be opened with a specific key, only two of which existed : one in Castle Schwartzstein, and the other kept in my possession precisely for times such as these. I reached to take it out, and stopped, my hand half-way to my neck. What was that mana signature -
The outer wall of the train station exploded in a shower of stone and glass shards. Screams of shock and pain filled the vast space where several railways ended.
My brain froze. Despite all that I'd seen since starting my work with Division Y, my mind refused to accept what I was seeing.
It was an angel, or at least a very convincing cosplay of one. Two wings of bright light stretched from his back. He wore some kind of elaborate plate armor that wouldn't have looked out of place in one of the video games of my previous life's homeland, gleaming scarlet and blue in the light of the midday sun. His face was of the kind I'd have expected to see on paintings in some nobleman's house, and his eyes burned brightly gold. In his right hand, he held a jousting lance that sparked with magical energy – and what magical energy it was. To my senses, it blazed like a caged sun. The only times I had felt something more powerful had been during certain experiments in Castle Schwartzstein, none of which had ever been repeated or would be as long as I was in command of Division Y.
"Imperial witch," the angel declared, his voice booming across the station and raising the hackles on my back. "Despair, for the hour of your judgment has come. Today is the day the Empire's evil is brought low by the sword of righteousness !"
As he spoke, I saw other shapes moving through the air behind him, and dimly sensed their mana signatures, small as they felt compared to the angel's own. Then, with my vision augmented by a quick spell, I caught a glimpse of a plane, and the pieces fell into place. The Republic had air-dropped aerial mages on Arene in order to try and replicate what we had done at the Osfjord. It was a cunning move, and I would have appreciated the craftsmanship if not for the fact that I could also hear non-magical gunshots, panicked screams, and what sounded distinctly like an armed mob doing what armed mobs had done since the human race had started to live together in numbers sufficient for group-think to swallow individual reason.
This wasn't just a strike on the railway hub on which the Empire's frontline logistics depended, bad enough as that would have been. This was a full-on partisan uprising, and I refused to believe it happening right when I was in the city was a coincidence. Not when the pseudo-angel hovering above me radiated far too much power for it to be natural, unless the Francois had been practicing magical eugenics for the last couple of centuries without anyone noticing.
… Wait. Was this Being X's work ? After using me to create monsters meant to inspire terror, was he sending champions to defeat us and promote his creed of unquestioned religious obedience ? The thought of such manipulative tactics made me sick to my stomach. At least part of the reason I'd been so very careful while leading Division Y had been to spite that would-be god, but it seemed he had other strings to his bow.
"You bring war in the middle of a city full of civilians, and you've the gall to call us evil ?" I answered his accusation, keeping my thoughts from showing on my face.
Seeing that the newcomer's attention was on me, the rest of the Imperial personnel in the station wisely got out of the way. I was slightly annoyed at how quickly they left, but it wasn't as if they would have been any help anyway.
"The people of Arene have seen through the lies of the Empire," he proclaimed. "Even now, they rise up against your unjust oppression to reclaim their freedom !"
"You gave guns to a bunch of undisciplined malcontents in an enemy city to try and cause problems in order to compensate for your generals' strategic failures," I sneered. "Don't try to paint this as some kind of righteous act. The international courts certainly won't."
"Your thoughts truly are as twisted as the monsters you surround yourself with, witch, that you would think the world would ever stand with you against the forces of true justice," the 'angel' droned on. "Did you truly think your heresy would go unpunished ? Know that I am Severin Vianto, First of the Francois Holy Knights ! In the name of the Lord, I shall strike you down !"
He charged straight at me, spear held high, going from immobile to full speed so suddenly I was briefly caught by surprise – some part of me had expected something with that kind of heavy armor to need more time to reach such speed. Fortunately, I hadn't come to Arene alone. Visha slammed into my side, pushing me out of the way, before twisting in the air with all the preternatural speed of the Untoten and the blatant disregard of momentum conservation allowed by their flight ability once properly mastered.
She barely managed to avoid being skewered herself, but the shaft of the spear still caught her on the backhand, with enough force to send her crashing through the nearest wall. I felt a spike of worry : the Untoten's uniform was as tough as we'd been able to make it while remaining practical, but it had limits. And with the sun shining brightly outside, a single tear and she'd have to abandon the field, leaving me completely alone. As we had found out in the early stages of the Projekt, the flesh of the Untoten would start to burn the moment it was exposed to sunlight, resulting in the complete destruction of the affected part within moments. They could regenerate from that with enough blood, but the process took weeks on the equivalent of the diet we'd fed them during the Northern push.
I made a snap decision. "Visha, go ! Get the others, call for reinforcements, and clean the airspace of the rest of these morons !"
"But, Major !" she protested, her voice muzzled by pain and her gas mask as she rose from the debris of her impact.
"That's an order ! GO !"
This time, she obeyed, vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye. Sending my bodyguard away while I was under attack might seem like a rash move, and it probably was. My reasoning was that there was little Visha could do alone against this monster, but with the rest of the supersoldiers stationed outside the city, she should be able to keep this whole debacle from escalating into a full-blown disaster. It would take some time for them to get here, but the partisan uprising the Francois had concocted shouldn't be able to do any real damage to the Imperial war effort in so short a time. As long as the pseudo-angel was dealt with, the rebellion would be over the moment the sun set.
Was it the correct move ? Maybe, maybe not. In the heat of battle, you had to go with your guts, because taking time to carefully think things through would get you killed. The whole point of training was to give you the correct set of instincts. Or, if not the correct one, then the one your superiors approved of, which hopefully would also help you survive a bit longer on the frontline.
My own instincts saved my life as the so-called 'Holy Knight' pointed his lance at me and I sensed a tremendous amount of energy gathering at its tip. I had the measure of his speed now, and hurled myself away just in time, but even moving out of the way and with my barrier spell cranked up to maximum power, I still felt the heat of the blow scorching my exposed skin. The sight of what the attack had done, however, was almost enough to make me forget the pain of the burns.
The attack had burned a hole through at least three civilian homes after it had missed me, and I could see a couple more starting to catch fire. That fanatic had unleashed the equivalent of an artillery shell in the middle of a crowded city, and one he claimed to be here to liberate to boot !
"That's one more war crime to add to your starting a battle in the middle of thousands of civilians," I called out to him, trying to play for time while I wracked my brain for a plan that didn't rely on my most desperate contingency. "Are the people of Arene aware that their would-be liberators are willing to set their beautiful city ablaze ?"
"Their sacrifices will be remembered, and God shall welcome them in His embrace as martyrs," he answered, utterly unconcerned. "We, the chosen instruments of His wrath, shall bring an end to your evil, witch !"
The sheer self-righteousness of his words made me furious. How the hell was I supposed to convince my superiors to open peace talks before we accidentally destroyed the world, if the other combatants were unwilling to see reason and determined to fight to the very last ?!
No, that was a question for later. Right now, I had to survive, and to do that, I had to kill the enemy in front of me.
Thankfully, I wasn't exactly without experience fighting monsters with weird superpowers. I had personally led the training of the Untoten and Werwölfe, knowing that their prowess would reflect on me as their superior, and I had been forced to take action several times when one of my subordinates' experiments had gone off the rails in spite of all the precautions I forced them to take. I was also carrying a top-of-the-line computing orb, which had been enhanced by some of our more traditionally-minded magical engineers (we were still far from the frankly terrifying prospect of a Mythos-based orb, but the research notes sent to us by Brigadier General Zettour had shown a few relatively easy improvements). My mana was in the upper limits of what was possible for a human mage, and I had experimented with a few spell formulas the Denkmaschine had patched together but that had never been used in real battle conditions.
It was going to be hard, but I was confident I could beat that moron who kept talking on the battlefield.
Of course, just as I convinced myself of that, eleven others just like him, except with slightly less ornate armor and power, descended from the skies, completely surrounding me and laying waste to this entire section of the station. Their mana signatures were so near to identical that, with my senses blurred by the sheer intensity of the first one's aura, I had completely missed them until now.
Well, Scheiße. There was no way I could take them all head-on, or even flee and hope to escape or survive long enough for someone to come to my aid.
Clearly, Vianto realized that as well, because he spoke to me again :
"Do you see ? Your defeat is assured. But the Lord is ever merciful, even unto those such as you, who spat in His face. Kneel before the Throne of God. Submit to His judgment and accept His Grace within your wicked heart, and you may yet be saved !"
Oh, that bastard had not just said that. I saw red, all caution vanishing from my mind.
"I am Tanya Degurechaff, little knight, and I. DO. NOT. KNEEL !"
As I roared (or, well, shouted : my tiny body wasn't exactly capable of something anyone would call a roar), I pulled out a thin metal tube out of my jacket's inner pocket.
I hadn't wanted to resort to this, and not just because it was untested and the description the Denkmaschine had given along with the instructions to create that serum had been both worryingly vague and dreadfully ominous. I had brought it here in a fit of paranoia, both because I didn't trust the madmen not to do something stupid with it in my absence (its effects were supposed to be temporary, but that didn't mean someone couldn't do a lot of damage during that time, especially with all the dangerous stuff we kept under lock and key at our headquarters), and to serve as insurance in case things went very, very wrong.
Fine. Being X and his puppets had left me no choice. Whatever happened next, it would be on them, not me.
Before my common sense could catch up with me and stop me, I braced myself, flicked the security cap off, jabbed the needle into my throat, and pushed the injector.
The pain of the small stab was nothing compared to what came next.
"We had been told there would be mage reinforcements dispatched from the Republic to help the Liberation, yes, and that the whole thing needed to be rushed because the Imperials were slaughtering our brothers in the trenches with some kind of infernal monsters. But we had no idea we would get aid from angels. When we saw them descend from the skies, it was incredible. I truly felt that we had been blessed by God and were doing His work. All doubts and hesitation vanished from my mind.
My friends and I were deployed near the train station, with orders to keep the Imperial law enforcement from reaching it. The big angel went right for the train station while the others stayed in the air and the aerial mages scattered across the city to provide support, just like we had been told they would. Me and the boys took out our weapons and moved to block the entrance, and we got into a fight with a group of policemen. And just as we were knocking the last of them out, we heard an explosion from the station. We turned, and saw the other angels come down. I remember thinking that they must be fighting some kind of Imperial devil, like we'd heard there were in the trenches. And … that's when it happened.
All of a sudden, the sky went dark. We all looked up, and we saw it. It was A moon, but it wasn't THE moon, if that makes sense. It was the wrong color, for one, but the patterns on its surface weren't right either. And I've never seen an eclipse in my life, but I doubt they are anything like that. Yes, it blocked out the sun, but we could all still see perfectly fine. Everything was just … gray. Colorless. Except the blood, I remember that clearly. The blood was still just as red as ever.
We could still other stars in the darkened sky. Except, I know what the night sky above Arene looks like, and the stars were all wrong.
Silence fell on Arene as everyone took in what had just happened. Then there was fire and thunder, and screams came out of the train station, horrible ones that I somehow knew where the angels'. I hadn't thought that it was possible for angels to scream in agony. I never want to hear that sound again in my life. It shocked everyone back into motion, and there were more screams, human ones this time, rising from all across the city in a symphony of panic and terror.
I saw six angels emerge from the hole in the front of the station, and it was clear that they were fleeing. For a moment we all stood still, unable to understand how these divine warriors could possibly be running. Then she emerged from the station in pursuit, and we all immediately understood.
When I was a kid, my parents took me out to the countryside to visit my grandparents, and I went stargazing one night. Far from the city, without all the lights, you can really see all the stars in the sky, you know ? It's really beautiful, but I don't think I'll ever be able to look at it the same way again.
She was like if someone had cut off a piece of that star-filled night sky and made it into a human figure. She was half as tall again as the angels she battled, and flew without wings. Seeing mages fly has always seemed weird to me, but when she did it it seemed completely natural, as if gravity had no right to hold her down.
We couldn't take our eyes off her. She pursued the angels across Arene, ignoring the fire they hurled at her. Whenever one of their shots missed, it would slam into a building and destroy it, but they didn't care.
I felt so small. How could anything I did matter when such powers were battling right next to me ?
Just a moment ago, I had been fighting for the freedom of Arene from Imperial oppression, for the glory of the Republic. But when I saw that, it all felt insignificant. Meaningless. The sensation of glory and patriotism was gone, and all that was left was the blood we had spilled, the buildings around us set ablaze by the careless fire of angels, and the screams of the wounded and dying.
I dropped my weapons and fell to the ground, unable to move, to act, to think. Most of my comrades did the same. Those who didn't went to help with the fires, all thoughts of liberation gone.
I am ashamed of many of the things I did that day. But most of all, I'm ashamed I didn't have their strength."
Extract from the interrogation of Martin Girault, Arene citizen and member of the FLA (Front de la Libération d'Arene) partisan group, recorded in custody of the Imperial Army following the events of the Eclipsed Liberation.
"We were deceived, my friends. We spilled blood in the name of false idols, and told ourselves that this was just because our victims were Imperials. As if such petty things as mortal borders matter in the eyes of the Heavens ! And when the winged warriors came, we saw it as yet more proof of the righteousness of our cause, for they were magnificent and powerful.
But is it not written that, when the true celestial messengers came to bring word to Man, they did so in a most fearsome form ? What we think of as angels today, brothers and sisters, men and women with wings and flaming swords, is but the construct of our feeble minds struggling to recast the divine into something more familiar.
The Republic sought to deceive us by sending false angels, wrought in the image our ignorant forebears had of the heavenly envoys. But the true chosen apostle of the Celestial Truth was ready for them, oh yes !
I saw it with my own eyes, on the very steps of Kalerian Cathedral, like so many of you. I saw the Lady of Stars as she brought the leader of the false angels low at last, after hunting him and his cohorts throughout the city. I heard her voice, booming like thunder as she denounced him as the puppet of a pretender godling, all under the pale radiance of the fey moon and sky that had covered Arene upon her arrival. I saw the imposter writhe under her heel, and lash out with fire that let her unharmed but burned scores of innocents until, in her rage at his callous cruelty, she broke his lance and ended his existence so that he would hurt no one else. I saw the remaining pretenders flee from her wrath, the lie of their glory laid bare for all to witness.
And I saw the Imperial soldiers, who mere moments ago had been fighting for their lives against the fools waylaid by Francois deceit, direct their efforts to suppressing the fires set by the ruthless invaders. I saw us all come together to help one another, our differences washed away by the realization of our common nature in the face of the Lady's power, even as she vanished within the Kalerian Cathedral and the sun and skies returned to what they had been. And I wept, as you did, overcome with grief and joy and wonder all at once.
For years now, the Imperial scientists have been rightly proud of their pursuit of the world's mysteries. What better way is there to honor the beauty and wonders of the universe than by learning more about them ? It is not through blind obedience to foolish notions of patriotism and bestial slaughter of our fellow man that we shall reach the heavens. That path leads only to the hell that is war, and which so nearly consumed our beloved city. Only through the pursuit of reason and the contemplation of the divine truths revealed to us through the use of our god-given intellects may that be accomplished !
The Great War, which is great only in its horror, has distracted us from what really matters. It has poisoned our hearts and turned us against one another and away from the most simple and obvious truths ! Is not 'Love Thy Neighbour' one of the guidelines that were given to us so that we may find our way through this life ? And yet, the Republic dares to claim to be blessed by the Heavens, when it was the one who declared war first, creating the nightmare that is the Rhine front, where young men die by the tens of thousands !
We who have been blessed with this glimpse of the divine must make sure the lesson isn't forgotten. We must come together and ensure that, within our walls at least, peace and harmony reign, not hatred and discord. Only then will we be able to walk the Path of Stars toward illumination …"
Excerpt from an anonymous pamphlet found across Arene following the Eclipsed Liberation, titled 'The Path of Stars'.
AN : This story just keeps going ! Do not expect that kind of writing speed to continue for long. I still have no idea what foul bargains my readers have made that make the muse so enthusiastic about this story, but I live in dread of the creative backlash that surely must come at some point.
I got a lot of suggestions on SB when I asked for help with the Francois response to the deployment of Projekte U and W on the Rhine front. I used some of the ideas in this chapter, though far from all of them. Some might even have worked, and I couldn't have that, but this is WW1-era-style generals we are talking about.
No Arene Massacre this time. I find it deeply amusing that giving Tanya access to eldritch horrors has, in fact, resulted in LESS civilian casualties than in canon. There is a lesson in there somewhere about the inherent evil of war, man's inhumanity to man, and the unnerving similarities between Mythos-induced insanity and fanatical nationalism, I am sure. But since this is at the very least supposed to be a parody story and I am writing it by the seat of my pants (a new experience that I'm finding very enjoyable), I'm not going to think too hard about that.
After asking my readers on SB (yes, I do that a lot, it's probably part of why I update this story so fast), I decided that, in this story at least, Arene used to be a Republican city that was captured by the Empire in a previous conflict between the Empire and the Republic, hence why there are partisans in it and why the territories around it are "contested" (which fits with the history of the Alsace-Lorraine region in our own history). Given that the Empire is supposed to have just finally pushed back the Republic's initial push back to the border, the idea that they captured Arene during the Great War didn't fit in my mental picture of how things, and I couldn't find a definitive answer in the source material.
The Holy Knights were inspired by the Order's research in Devil May Cry 4, and the Heaven's Ward Knights from Final Fantasy XIV. You didn't think Being X was going to stay out of the story indefinitely, did you ? I saw a lot of speculation on what he was doing after Tanya started working with Division Y, and whether or not he is truly the one behind her unexpected success. Reading all those theories was very interesting and helped me flesh out the crossover's cosmology, so keep speculating !
Meanwhile, Tanya's own transformation was inspired by the upcoming (unless Wizards of the Coast decide to do something even more stupid than they already did recently) book Steinhardt's Guide to the Eldritch Hunt, which I have pre-commanded and gotten access to the preview materials of. I needed something for the [Mythos serum that gives Tanya superpowers] placeholder in my notes, and inspiration struck while perusing it. While putting the finishing touches on this chapter, it also helped with another placeholder much later in my story notes, so that's already money well spent, especially given the incredible artwork and tantalizing lore. It really feels like reading a Bloodborne TTRPG.
The next chapter will contain the aftermath and fallout of the Eclipsed Liberation, and a POV you have all been waiting for. As always, I look forward to your reactions to this chapter and ideas for what comes next.
Zahariel out.