Intruding soldier : "Forgive my interruption ! Urgent message for the Brigadier Generals !"
Brigadier General Zettour : "Yes, you. What is the code ?"
Intruding soldier : "Sir ! The code is : The Reich is above all !"
Brigadier General Zettour : "Ah. Then it is done. Thank you, that will be all."
Brigadier General Rudersdorf : "Ah ah ! Magnificent !"
Minister of the Exchequer : "Zettour ? Rudersdorf ? What does all of this mean ?"
Brigadier General Zettour : "It means, my dear friends, that our plan to destroy the headquarters of the Republican Army on the Rhine Front using a new Wunderwaffe have succeeded. As of now, the Francois are nothing more than a disorganized mob, and our own forces have begun to advance in order to encircle and break them."
Brigadier General Rudersdorf : "So as you can see, your worries about the state of the war following the Republican attack on Arene, while well-meaning, were unfounded. Our apologies for concealing the fact that we stopped our advance only in order to prepare for this, but after the enemy managed to locate Division Y's movements in Arene, secrecy was paramount to Operation Shock & Awe's success."
Minister of Foreign Affairs : "If you have destroyed the Francois headquarters and are moving to encircle the army … Then, forgive me if I am mistaken, but isn't the war all but won ? Should my staff and I get started on drafting the peace treaty ?"
Brigadier General Zettour : "It is not wise to tempt fate so, Minister. We have received troubling reports that indicate that the Republic might have magical superweapons of their own. But do not fret : precautions against such an eventuality have been taken, and the officer in charge on the front has my full confidence. As for the peace treaty, you would know about such matters better than I, I'm sure."
Excerpt from the minutes of a late-night meeting between Brigadier General Hans von Zettour, Brigadier General Kurt von Rudersdorf, the Chancellor of the Reich, and various Ministers, May 25th, 1925.
"Colonel Drake,
You and your unit are to deploy at once, fly across the Dodobird Strait, and head straight for the Rhine.
The Imperials deployed another of their nightmare weapons, and now the Francois Army is collapsing after their headquarters were somehow taken out without anyone noticing the Imperials slipping past their lines. The Reich's forces have taken advantage of that mess, obviously, and our people in Parisee tell us the bulk of the Republican Army is mere hours from complete annihilation.
If that happens, the Empire will be all but unstoppable. Therefore, it's been decided that the Kingdom will get off the fence and join the war in earnest. Your unit will have the honor of make the first strike and announce that fact to our enemy.
Your target is the vanguard headquarters of the Imperial Army. Intercepted transmissions indicate that the local leader of the Division Y assets deployed on the field is located. Apart from whatever wiped out the Francois headquarters, they have also deployed two different kind of supersoldiers on the Rhine : the stealth mages that took down the Osfjord, and some sort of anti-infantry monsters that tear through tanks like paper.
If you encounter the later, run away. If you encounter the former … you will be remembered.
Attached are the details of your assignment. Be aware that intelligence acquisition is just as important, if not more, than preventing the destruction of the Francois Army. Even if we manage to turn things around this time, it won't mean anything if we can't stop the Imperials from doing it again.
Also, though we don't have any details, we know that De Lugo has launched some kind of desperate, last-throw-of-the-dice operation. We aren't expecting much out of it given what happened the last time the Francois tried to get clever, but keep an eye out for that.
For King and Country."
Excerpt from the deployment orders received by Colonel Isaac Dustin Drake, Albish Aerial Mage Forces, May 26th, 1925.
May 26th, 1925 – Imperial Central Command Bunker on the Rhine Front
So far, everything was going as planned.
Entire Republican units were surrendering, their morale already battered from the weeks of being pushed back by the Imperial Army's occult combined arms tactics followed by the ominous pause during which the Empire had prepared for Operation Shock & Awe, and then the sudden silence of their headquarters accompanied by the unleashing of the Werwölfe.
In one notable instance that would probably end up in the history books, an entire regiment of Francois infantry had shot half its own officers before freeing an Imperial soldier they had taken captive a few days ago, given him his weapons back, and then promptly surrendered to him before handing him a radio and asking him to call his friends and please ask them not to kill them all, thank you very much.
Colonel Eric von Lergen knew this wasn't cowardice, no matter how some might choose to see it. These men had simply been pushed to the breaking point by the repeated failures of their leaders to solve the crisis presented by Division Y's supersoldiers. It was one thing for a patriot to give his life in defense of his country, and quite another to die pointlessly after the battle and the war had already been decided. The Empire's broadcast on all frequencies announcing that offers of surrender would be accepted in accordance with the laws of war, perpetually reminding the Francois that the nightmare around them could end if they just managed to make their capitulation clear, had also helped. Some were still willing to fight to the death or too afraid of the Werwölfe to risk captivity, but they were a comparatively small number.
The frequently-updated map in front of Lergen showed that the encirclement was almost complete, and when it was, the remaining Republican commanders would have no choice but to surrender or risk being shot by their own men. It was a textbook example of the art of war, which would go down in history even if all the bits about the Untoten and Werwölfe needed to be censored.
Yes, everything had been going well for the few hours since Operation Shock & Awe had begun, which meant Lergen's stress kept getting worse as he waited for what his pessimism told him was the inevitable moment where this ceased to be the case. When the bad news finally arrived, it was almost a relief.
"Colonel Lergen," one of the radio officers called out, "the Eikons have been sighted."
Ah, there it was.
"How many ?" he asked.
"We are still collecting data, but definitely more than those who escaped Arene."
Shit. That wasn't good. They had hoped the Republic had expended its trump card in the failed attempt to kill Degurechaff and lay waste to Arene. Instead, as they had feared, that group had just been the vanguard.
"Where are they ?"
The Eikons had struck the Imperial units moving to surround the Republican Army in the flank upon their arrival (assuming they had flown here in a straight line, they must have come straight from Parisee itself, and Lergen shuddered at the thought of Division Y working in Berun).
Getting a clear picture was difficult, but in short : it wasn't good. Division Y's assessment of the Republic's supersoldiers had been on point. The Eikons were throwing around the kind of spells that normally required entire mage squadrons working together. They were moving all across the battlefield helping take the pressure off the beleaguered Republican troops, and shrugged off anti-air fire as if it were a gentle rain. Heavier calibre might be theoretically able to shoot them down, but that was easier said than done.
As one might expect, the Francois were taking heart from the sight of angelic warriors coming to their aid in their most desperate hour. The collapse of their chain of command had all but destroyed them, but now that they didn't need to keep running or die, front officers were starting to reach out to one another.
Lergen checked the clock. The Eikons had doubtlessly flown here straight from wherever the Republic had hidden them in the middle of their capital city at full speed, but even so, there was only a little less than two hours of night left. And even if they had more time, ten Untoten against superior numbers of Eikons was a losing proposition according to Division Y's analysis. If all the mage wings still fighting focused on the Eikons to overwhelm them, then maybe they could win, but the casualties would be atrocious.
Which meant that it was time for him to do his job and give the order he had hoped he wouldn't have to give since the box Major Degurechaff had sent as insurance had arrived.
"Transmit the following order," he told the radio officers. "All instances of Projekt U are to fall back to my position for resupplying prior to immediate redeployment."
All communications were encrypted, but it didn't hurt to be cautious and keep the order as vague as possible. Besides, the less Imperial soldiers knew the true nature of the Untoten, the better. Keeping a handle on the rumors about the Werwölfe was difficult enough (as far as the average trooper who saw them fight was concerned, they were supersoldiers created by a classified military research program, their nightmarish appearance was the result of an illusion spell meant for intimidation purposes, and the details were above your pay grade so move along, soldier).
The insurance package the Major had sent him contained ten small bottles. In her accompanying letter, Degurechaff had made it clear she wasn't happy about the prospect of essentially giving combat drugs to vampires, and Lergen couldn't say he was happy about it either. Imperial regulations proscribed the use of such substances for normal soldiers except in very particular situations (though there had been word about lifting those as the war dragged on, nothing had been done yet), and for good reasons.
Still, judging by the research notes that had also been included with the bottles, he could expect good results of this 'Endlose Nacht' serum.
May 26th, 1925 – The Rhine Front
Grantz knew that the Republic had taken to calling the Werwölfe the Devils of the Rhine. It was as fitting a name as any, really. The Rhine was a Hell created by human hands, and so too were the Werwölfe monsters created by the ingenuity of Mankind.
I wonder if the demons of Hell also want the suffering around them to end ?
Given the stories that they had once been angels cast down for rebelling against God, maybe that was the case. At the same time, however, Grantz couldn't imagine that Hell was worse than the Rhine Front. After all, there were only damned souls in Hell, whereas war consumed everyone, sinner and innocent alike. It was perhaps cruel, but it was ordered.
Whereas this ? This was madness.
At first, the Republican Army had cheered their deliverance when the Eikons had arrived. But most of those cheers had soon faded away. The Eikons' voices were booming across the battlefield, calling for all true sons of Francois to stand their ground against the Empire's vile heresies. And when that wasn't enough, they didn't seem to hesitate in firing with those Republican units who kept retreating – even when doing so in order to regroup with other units was clearly the best tactical option. Grantz wasn't going to say the Eikons were killing more Republicans than Imperials, but it was still appalling to witness. Which was why he now stood against one of Francois' counterfeit angels, with a gaggle of terrified soldiers of two countries behind him.
The Imperial soldiers had been escorting a company of their Francois counterparts out of the chaos after they had surrendered when the Eikon had started raining fire on them indiscriminately, killing prisoners and captors alike. Grantz had seen it happen from afar, and before his mind had caught up with what his body was doing, he had covered the entire distance and was howling at the flying warrior, trying to get his attention away from the men he was slaughtering.
Wonder of wonders, it had worked. If the Francois supersoldier had stayed in the air and bombarded him with spells, Grantz would have had no way of fighting back. Instead the Eikon had come down to fight him face-to-face. But then, it was clear the Eikon's sanity was questionable at best. There were countless more valuable targets than this group of infantry soldiers.
What had the Republic done to these men to warp their minds like that ? Grantz had seen many things during his time in Division Y, but never anything such as this. It was as if the Eikon had abandoned all reason, all logic, in favor of a twisted fanaticism that should have been left in the dustbin of History centuries ago.
His preternatural senses were screaming at him that there was something wrong with the being before him, like a diseased animal that would never recover from its sickness and needed to be put down before it spread its plague to the rest of the flock.
"It is time to die, monster," the Eikon proclaimed, his voice utterly self-assured and dripping with zealous hatred. "You don't belong in this world !"
"We are both monsters," Grantz replied, feeling the unnatural way in which his mouth moved to accommodate the human words. "But at least I don't kill my own allies."
"Victorus aut Mortis. The true soldiers of God either triumph, or perish."
"They have surrendered. That means they are under the protection of the laws of war."
"There are no laws but the Word of God, and I am one of His Holy Knights."
"A Holy Knight ?" Grantz laughed, keeping the rage he felt contained until it was time to unleash it. He had seen what the Eikons were capable of, and he needed every advantage he could get – and making the enemy too angry to think was almost always a good plan. "How foolish. You are nothing but a usurper, a false idol. An Eikon."
"I am His Word. I am His Wrath. I am His Judgment !"
"You are a deluded maniac who gave his soul in exchange for power. And from the looks of it, you got scammed in the bargain."
The Eikon charged him, brandishing a flaming sword nearly the size of a man over his head. Grantz fired at him with his ranged attack : the blast from his third eye slammed into the Eikon's chest armor, but it only dented it. The Eikon barely stumbled from the impact, and Grantz moved to meet him head-on, blades erupting from his forearms without the need for conscious thought.
His blades cut deep gouges into the Eikon's armor, but failed to penetrate. Meanwhile, the Eikon's blow struck true, and Grantz was nearly blinded with pain as his left arm hit the mud. Absurdly, his first thought was that he had to recover it, but not to attach it back : they couldn't risk the Republic finding it and learning something from it. Then the Eikon kicked him in the back with enough strength to break something inside him, and he fell down into the mud. Scrabbling to turn around, he saw the Eikon towering above him, his blazing blade held high.
"Beg for mercy, monster," he told him. "Beg for the Lord's forgiveness, that He may cleanse your tainted soul in Purgatory."
Grantz forced himself to laugh. Really ? This again ? Hadn't the Eikons learned anything from Arene ?
"I am a Werwolf," he replied. "We do not beg, WE HUNT !"
He jumped up at the Eikon, only for him to move aside contemptuously and punch him in the chest with his weapon's cross-guard. Its touch send a new explosion of pain across the Werwolf's pain centers, and he fell back into the mud, twitching uncontrollably. It wasn't so much the pain that Grantz resented – being torn apart by artillery shells had hurt a lot more, as had the Rite of Union. It was the helplessness, as his body refused to move according to his will, his perfect control of his transformed flesh taken from him by the enchantments on the Eikon's weapon.
Was this how the Francois soldiers he had faced had felt ? Probably. Well, in that case, he could hardly die any less bravely than the few of them who hadn't tried to run from him.
Grantz stared up at the Eikon, defiant. His healing factor was already kicking in, but he could feel that it would take too long before he could move again.
"Then may you burn in Hell along with all the rest of your miserable kind," spat the Eikon.
Then, the sun vanished behind dark clouds. The temperature plummeted, patches of wet mud freezing over.
"What is this ?" the Eikon questioned, looking up in surprise.
As if in answer, a human-shaped missile descended from the skies, screaming like a damned soul and slamming into the Eikon, sending them both crashing into the mud.
The Untote, for that was what Grantz's salvation was, had discarded his gas mask. His mouth was open wide, revealing his extended fangs in a mouth covered in blood. His eyes were two spheres of purest black, and his face was contorted in an expression of predatory ecstasy that had no place on a human visage.
The vampire tore into the Eikon, ripping his golden armor to shreds with claws wreathed in black un-light before biting into the exposed throat and gorging himself on the Eikon's blood. The Francois supersoldier struggled, weaker and weaker as his lifeblood was drained away, and then stopped moving entirely, his body going slack. In death, Grantz found that the Eikon looked much less impressive and much more like just another corpse laying on the mud of the Rhine.
When the Untote was done with his meal, he dropped the corpse and turned, letting Grantz see his face. There was only the barest hint of reason left in it, besieged as it was by savage joy and bestial hunger. For the first time since the Rite of Union, Grantz felt something like fear, but he forced himself to stand his ground : showing fear to a predator was always a mistake.
For a moment, the vampire held his gaze, then he was gone, flying off in search of more pretender angels to kill. Grantz let out a shuddering breath. He understood why Colonel Lergen had decided to risk handing over the Endlose Nacht to the Untoten, especially after fighting an Eikon himself, but that had still been a considerable risk. He was happy to not be an Imperial aerial mage any longer : the look in the Untote's eyes had made it doubtful they could distinguish between friend and foe while under the serum's effects.
"You," he asked the one with a Captain's insignia on his uniform. "What's your unit designation ?"
He'd to give the man credit : he managed to tell him with a minimum of hesitation, despite being faced with over two meters of monstrous killing machine and having just witnessed an angel brought down by a frenzied vampire. Grantz committed the information to memory, then told him :
"Get back to the rear with your prisoners, Captain, and make sure they stay separated from the rest." His gaze passed over the other soldiers, who shivered as his inhuman eyes turned in their direction. "None of you are to speak of what you witnessed today. This is all classified information, and we know the enemies of the Empire have spies searching for any scrap of information about the Wunderwaffen."
He would have smiled if he thought that would've reassured them, but he knew what his smile looked like in that form, and now wasn't the time for them to pass out in fright.
"You should also prepare yourselves for a change of assignment very soon. The Empire abhors waste, and you've proven your valor a dozen times over today alone."
Once the men were in motion again, Grantz picked up his severed arm and followed them, keeping his distance so as not to make them panic. He might still be able to fight, but the Major would have his hide if she learned he'd stayed in the field after an injury like that when it wasn't absolutely necessary; and with the Untoten darkening the sun, only a fool would argue that was the case.
The clouds obscuring the sun all across the Rhine were underlit by fire and lightning as the Eikons fought the Untoten in the heavens. It was like walking through a rainless thunderstorm, made all the more terrible by the constant rumbling of artillery in the distance. The gods of the battlefield were fighting, and as always, it was mortal men who paid the price.
Forces from both sides were fleeing from the clashes between Eikons and Untoten, not even bothering with taking potshots at one another. It reminded Grantz of the effect the Major's own confrontation with the false angels had on the people of Arene : when faced with the sight of such powers battling above them, suddenly the struggles between mere mortals seemed all too insignificant, even if they'd been fighting to the death mere moments prior.
For his part, Grantz felt only awe at the spectacle. This was like nothing he had ever seen, and it made even the inhuman part of him uneasy (which was different from afraid, and he should know, having experienced more than his fair share of mind-boggling terror during his time on the Rhine Front as a rookie mage). Even as he watched, the part of him that had been trained to make full and complete reports to his supervisors in Division Y noted the way in which the greater battle was going.
From what Grantz could see and sense, some of the Eikons were giving a better accounting of themselves that the one he'd seen butchered like an animal, able to protect themselves from the Untoten's entropic sorcery with shields of blazing light. If he had to hazard a guess, he would say that those were the survivors of the first batch of Eikons that had attacked Arene and managed to escape the Major. It seemed the Republic didn't follow the rigorous documentation procedures the Major had forced all of Division Y to follow, if their prototypes were so much stronger than the ones created later. That would never fly in Castle Schwartzstein : results that couldn't be reproduced were all but worthless, except as potential new avenues of research.
But most of the Francois enhanced mages seemed to be of the same calibre and precarious sanity as the one he'd fought, and while they struggled mightily against the Untoten, they couldn't prevail and fell one by one. That was good, and yet Grantz couldn't help but remember the concerns that the Major had shared with him in the weeks following Projekt W's deployment on the Rhine, before the Eclipsed Liberation.
What would this look like to someone who didn't know war, who hadn't seen the Eikons fire on their own troops for daring to surrender ? Even in victory, there would be consequences for this. Of that, Grantz was coldly certain. He just didn't know what the full extent of those consequences would be.
Well, at least it wasn't his job to deal with things like that. Right now, he just needed to make sure he got back to safety in no more pieces than he currently was in, along with the Imperial and Republican units.
"The Endlose Nacht serum is a development from the team researching Projekt U. While the process of creating new instances of the Projekt has been as streamlined as can reasonably be expected, the Director pushed for deeper research into the nature and abilities of the Untoten, as well as means by which the latter could be improved. The Endlose Nacht is one such improvement, and though it has long been in the works, upon returning from Arene the Director accelerated work on it in response to the newly discovered Eikon threat.
We discovered early in the Projekt's development that the abilities of the Untoten are fuelled by mage blood. More extensive testing also indicated that the more powerful the mage, the greater the energies the Untoten can extract from the same amount of blood. Given the scarcity of mages, finding a substitute to allow the Untoten to fight at their full potential with less logistical constraints was given priority. While we have yet to perfect a blood substitute suitable for their nutritional needs, imputing the research done so far into the Denkmaschine and asking it for suggestions returned the recipe for the Endlose Nacht serum.
The exact contents and preparation process of the serum can be found in file BLUT-U-819, and have been noted to share some similarities to the process of creating the Kosmosblut, 'in the same way making a soup is similar to baking bread', to use the words of one of the alchemists. Once the first dose was ready, Lieutenant Serebryakov volunteered for testing, and received the Director's approval after pointing out that given its expected effects, only someone who was absolutely trusted could be used. Given that even she struggled to resist the mental effects of the serum, despite her closeness and loyalty for the Director, it was likely a good idea.
Endlose Nacht dramatically increases the physical and magical abilities of the Untoten, giving them access to spell-equivalents of great entropic power. Unfortunately, it also induces a state similar to the frenzied rage that has been known to overcome non-augmented soldiers in the thick of battle, which in itself has been likened to the heightened state of awareness and joy that can result from drug usage. The effects of a dose last for a little over seventy minutes, but the duration can be increased if the Untote feeds during that period, potentially ad infinitum, although of course that possibility hasn't been tested due to our reserves of mage blood's paucity following the Legadonian campaign.
While the Director disapproves of the mental toll Endlose Nacht takes on its user, and is especially wary of the possibility of the Untoten developing a dependency on the serum, its military applications cannot be overstated. The Untoten's ability to fly undetected is what has made them such valuable assets to the Empire, but with Endlose Nacht, they can be elevated to another category altogether. With the threat of the Republic creating more Eikons for use on the Western Front, production of additional doses of Endlose Nacht for dispatch there has been approved."
Excerpt from an internal Division Y memo regarding the Endlose Nacht serum, May 13th, 1925.
May 26th, 1925 – The Rhine Front
Colonel Isaac Dustin Drake, head of the Drake family of Albish mages, flew in the skies above the Rhine Front and cursed his luck, his superiors, the Francois Republic's incompetence, and the Imperials, in no particular order.
The two battalions of aerial mages under his command had flown across the sea in record time, before plunging south to strike at the rear of the Imperial lines. The spooks of the Secret Services had managed to locate the Imperial headquarters on the Rhine Front – if they struck now, maybe, just maybe, they could disorient the Imperial Army enough that the Republic forces could withdraw in something approaching good order.
That had been the plan. Judging by what they were hearing over the radio, and the utterly insane mana signatures they were detecting in the distance, however, things had clearly gone off the rails.
As soon as they had entered Imperial territory, the comprehensive mana detection arrays covering the airspace had picked them up. They had met the first group of interceptors within minutes of crossing the border, and though they had been swiftly eliminated, the Empire had clearly realized what was going on and what their objective was.
Drake's unit was the Kingdom's elite, however, each of its members descended from a long line of mages thanks to the fact the Inquisition's influence in the Kingdom had been much lesser than in the rest of Europa. They punched through the aerial mages gathered to stop them, relying on speed to reach their objective before the Empire could assemble enough numbers to overwhelm them. Even so, they still took casualties, for the Imperial mages were veterans one and all, survivors of the Rhine Front, which some were already calling the most brutal battlefield in History. They were trained, cold-blooded killers, using the very best equipment the Empire's ingenuity could provide.
At least it was daytime, so the stealth mages of the Empire shouldn't be active – unless, a little voice whispered in the back of Drake's mind, the Imperials had been bluffing all along on their capabilities precisely in case of something like this. That voice had gotten a lot more insistent when, suddenly, the Imperial mages had disengaged and withdrew, leaving them a clear path to their destination. Every single one of Drake's instincts was screaming that this was a trap, yet he'd no choice but to press on.
"What is that ?" one of his men called out as they made their final approach to the target.
A human silhouette was hovering in place in front of them. Just one, straight above their destination.
"I'm not sensing any mana signature," said Drake's second-in-command nervously, confirming what the Colonel's own senses had told him. "I thought they couldn't deploy during the day ?"
"Stay focused, men," Drake said, ignoring how the nagging voice at the back of his mind was now shouting 'I told you so'. "Even if this is one of the Empire's stealth mages, it's still just one of them, and we know he's here. Keep him in your sights and we'll prevail !"
With the help of an optic magnification spell, Drake took a closer look at the enemy. So far, the Kingdom had little to no intel about the Imperial stealth mages : anything he could glean would be priceless information in the battles to come. The Imperial mage was wearing some sort of full-body uniform, along with a gas mask, and … was he looking back at Drake ?
Slowly, as if wanting to make sure Drake could see it, the Imperial raised a small tube to his gas mask and jammed it inside some sort of mechanism. For a moment, nothing happened. Then he jerked violently, like a puppet whose strings had abruptly been pulled.
Now Drake could detect something from the stealth mage. It wasn't a mana signature : in fact, it felt very much like the opposite of that. Just trying to scan it left him feeling as if he was swimming naked in a lake in winter. He forcefully shut down the detection spell and opened his mouth to tell the rest of his unit not to try it either, when –
"EVADE !" Drake screamed without knowing why, even as he poured every bit of mana he possessed into a sudden motion away from his current position as well as reinforcing his shields as much as he could.
Something vast, black and cold passed where he had just been, and when he turned to look back, crumbling bone and dust fell in the wind, all that was left of a dozen of Albion's elite mages, slain in the span of a heartbeat because they hadn't reacted in time.
That wasn't an optic spell, or any kind of spell Drake had ever heard of. This was Death made manifest, the inexorable entropy of the universe bent to the Empire's service. Merely witnessing it left Drake feeling as if the entire world had become a colder, darker place.
Then he realized it wasn't just a feeling : the world had gotten darker, because the sun was now obscured by a thick cover of black clouds that had seemingly come out of nowhere.
Was this what the Entente had faced ? Shit. It seemed the Kingdom owed Councilor-in-exile Abensoll an apology. There was no way anyone could have stood up to that kind of nightmare.
"It's coming!" shouted someone.
A quick glance confirmed it : the Imperial mage was charging straight at them. The sight of a single mage charging over forty of the Kingdom's elites should have been ridiculous, but instead it filled Drake's heart with dread.
"Scatter !" he roared. "Don't give him grouped targets !"
His men obeyed at once, firing at the enemy mage as they did so. None of them managed to land a hit : the Imperial was too fast, his movements too random as he jerked left and right, up and down, with such suddenness he had to be using a spell to cancel out the g-forces or his bones would have been reduced to soup inside his uniform.
And then he was on them, and more men died, torn apart by close-quarters spells that definitely weren't mage blades. The air shook with screams, shouts, and the demented, bone-chilling laughter of the Imperial mage, made only more sinister by the gas mask muffling it.
We cannot fight that monster, Drake thought to himself as he tried and failed to lock onto the Imperial mage's position. But in front of such a display of power, his mission was even more important than ever before. By sending his unit here, the Kingdom had already committed itself to war against the Empire.
"Hold its attention," he ordered his men grimly, knowing he was signing their death warrant. "Jeffery and I are going in for the objective."
There was a series of tense, affirmative answers, and then the two of them plunged down, boosting their shields against the stream of anti-air fire that was almost immediately directed their way.
Simply blasting the Imperial forward command center wasn't enough. For one thing, there was no way to be sure that it would actually kill the people inside, given that the Imperials were sure to have fortified it as best they could. For another, even removing that forward command center wouldn't be enough to turn the tide of the battle : maybe if they'd targeted the Imperial general headquarters on the front, but Drake's superiors had been more interested in crippling the Empire's Wunderwaffen and gaining as much intel on them as possible than in helping the Republic.
Drake and Jeffery blasted their way past the guards and stormed inside the bunker, their shields and mage blades at the ready. They walked quickly through the cramped underground corridors, ready for anything – but to their surprise, they met no further resistance until reaching their destination.
A squad of soldiers had their rifles aimed at the entrance, covering a man with a Colonel's markings on his uniform. His glasses gleamed in the electric lighting, giving him a sinister aspect. Drake couldn't feel any mana from him, nor from anyone else in the room, and nobody was wearing the same uniform as the stealth mage tearing through his men in the skies above. Even so, caution stayed his hand.
From the moment he had seen the position of his target in the mission briefing, he had been worried. It was much too advanced, not quite directly on the frontlines but still far closer than any self-respecting high-ranking officer would tolerate. He couldn't think of any reason why it would be required in a modern army, which meant that in all likelihood, the bunker's position had something to do with the Wunderwaffen the man in front of him had deployed across the Rhine – weapons that had broken the Francois lines, destroyed their headquarters, and were killing his men.
The man in front of him was no ordinary man, of that he was certain.
Wait. Man ?
The briefing for this mission had contained everything the Kingdom knew about Division Y, which admittedly hadn't been very much when facts had been concerned as opposed to rumors and guesswork. But it had named one Tanya Degurechaff as the chief representative of Division Y on the Rhine Front, and the one responsible for the Arene debacle. And unless Drake was badly mistaken, 'Tanya' was a feminine name.
"You are not Tanya Degurechaff," he said, somewhat stupidly.
"A fact for which you should be grateful," replied the Colonel in slightly accented Albish. "The Major has far less tolerance for fools than I."
"'Major' ?" Drake quickly recovered from his shock, his mental gears whirling. "So you are her superior then. Even better. You will be coming with us, Colonel. We have lots of questions for you about the Wunderwaffen and Division Y. Come quietly and there's no need for your subordinates to die."
The Colonel chuckled, looking supremely unimpressed and completely unworried. Drake's worries intensified.
"If you think I'd tell you anything of value, then you really are a fool. But then again, what else should I expect given the reason for your presence here ? A surprise attack on our rear, while we are engaged with another foe, without even the courtesy of a formal declaration of war after all this time spent scuttling in the shadow supporting our enemies. I suppose this is the true face of the Allied Kingdom : a hyena wearing a gentleman's mask. Do you have any idea what your presence here will mean for your country ? For the world ?"
"You will have all the time to explain that to me later," Drake promised, concealing his anger at the Colonel's insults to his homeland.
The man's face contorted into a grimace that was the very picture of Imperial contempt.
"No, I don't think I will. You should have stayed on your island. Sergeant ? Open fire."
Drake felt Jeffery tense at his side, but the two held their ground. They had kept their shields up the entire time : they could've survived an artillery shell, so no mere infantry squad was going to take them down – wait. Those guns weren't like any Imperial model he knew of –
Once again, Drake's instincts saved his life, as he moved just in time to avoid being struck in the chest by the beams of cerulean light that erupted from the muzzles of the soldiers' weapons instead of bullets. His second-in-command wasn't so lucky, and the Albish Colonel watched in horror as the lower half of Jeffery's body fell to the ground, everything above his waist having vanished, along with a good chunk of the cave wall behind him.
Then the horrific pain hit him, and he realized that he hadn't completely dodged the attack either. His right arm was gone under the elbow, and a chunk of his left hip was missing. At least the wounds were cauterized so he wouldn't bleed out, but he still almost passed out from the pain. Fortunately, he managed to fire a mental boosting spell just in time, blocking out the agony long enough to activate his flight and protective spells at maximum, and burst out of the bunker before the soldiers could fire their fey weapons again. He might have been able to kill them with an attack spell before they shot, but that was a risk he couldn't afford to take. Perhaps it was just the terror of being faced with so many things he didn't understand talking, but Drake was convinced trying to attack would have resulted in his death, and the Kingdom needed to know what he'd discovered.
As he made his way back to the skies, he sensed the pitifully few remaining mana signatures of his unit, and screamed at them to retreat. A couple flew towards him, picking him up and carrying him away as the rest covered their flight : shamefully, he was too in shock from the pain (which was beginning to pierce through the mental doping) to protest. Despite their losses, his men retreated in good order, and he felt a twinge of pride at their discipline, coupled with the sorrow of knowing so many of them wouldn't make it home.
Before he passed out, the last thing Drake heard was the demented laughter of the monster who had cut his troops to pieces, a sound that would follow him in his nightmares for many nights to come, along with the image of a bespectacled Imperial Colonel calmly facing him despite all his magical prowess before ordering his death, illuminated by blue light that passed through mage shields as if they weren't there.
May 26th, 1925 – Imperial Central Command Bunker on the Rhine Front
Sergeant Barchet, originally attached to the Eastern Army before his transfer to Division Y, sighed in relief as the foreign mage disappeared into the sky. That had been close. The M-912 rifle had many good points, but its rate of fire was frankly appalling : it took several seconds after every shot before it could be fired again. Usually his squad would fire in turns to keep the target suppressed, but with a pair of enemy mages in close proximity, overwhelming them before they had a chance to react had seemed like the safer option.
It had been a gamble, but after the time he and his men had spent as security for Castle Schwartzstein, it would take more than a pair of enemy mages to frighten them. After all, the best thing about this assignment was that, even if the living conditions were miserable, the only inhuman monstrosities on the field were on their side … well, most of them anyway. At least he hadn't needed to fight an Eikon himself. That wouldn't have been fun, given what he'd read in the reports he'd been given access to before leaving the castle.
At first, the Major had been about to send one of Projekt P along with the Endlose Nacht. But while the lieutenant had a healthy respect for the abilities of Professor Gehrman's 'friends', he had managed to convince the Major that Colonel Lergen probably didn't need the additional stress of dealing with another breed of supersoldier on top of everything else he already had going on.
The look the Major had given him had been nothing short of horrified, as if she was shocked she hadn't realized that herself.
And speaking of Colonel Lergen, he really ought to check he was okay now that they were in the clear.
"Colonel, are you alright ?"
"I am fine. Thank you for your assistance, sergeant." Lergen turned to the radio officers, who were emerging from their hiding places. "Report !"
"The Albish mages are disengaging !" one of them called out after a moment. "Our observers on the surface tell us the Untote is pursuing them. We have ten, eleven … twelve enemy magical signatures left – correct that, eleven, one of them just went down."
"Out of an initial, what, fifty that made it through our defensive screens ?" The Colonel sighed. "That wasn't even close to a fair fight, was it. Don't bother trying to recall our friend in the air – let him have his fun. What about the Eikon situation ?"
"Hard to say, sir. None of the Untoten are responding to calls at the moment. But from what the units on the ground are reporting, they appear to be winning."
"Any losses among the Untoten ?"
"None reported so far, but again, that's hard to tell."
Unfortunately, that probably wouldn't last. Division Y's supersoldiers had been very lucky so far, helped by their unusual gifts and the Major's absolutely ruthless training (even Barchet, who had gone through the standard Imperial drilling procedures, shuddered at the memory of what that child-looking terror had made them go through before judging them ready for deployment). But every streak of luck ended eventually, and from the sound of things, what the Untoten had gained in power thanks to Endlose Nacht they had paid for in discipline. Against enemy mages, that might still be alright, as the one who had stayed behind to cover the headquarters had proven, but against monsters like the Eikons ? Now that was another story.
"Well, I knew the risks when I gave them the serum," Lergen sighed. "Let's move, gentlemen. We are too exposed out here with that hole in the roof."
Barchet nodded in approval, and they all started to move, one of the aides rushing to pick up the map with the pinned positions of known units.
"You know, sir," he told the Colonel as they moved through the tunnels towards the secondary command post, "the John Bulls are going to make some assumptions about you when they get back home."
He wouldn't have used the slur commonly used to describe the people of Albion before. But they were at war with the Kingdom now, so it was practically his soldiery duty to mock the Albish at every opportunity so long as it didn't lead to underestimating them or forgetting that most of the poor bastards on the other side didn't have any more of a choice in their whole situation than he did.
"Hmm ?" Lergen asked, distracted. "What do you mean ?"
"Well, the way you talked to that mage, didn't it seem like he thought you were the Major's superior within the ranks of Division Y, not just as a member of the Central Headquarters ?"
"Oh. Oh." The Colonel paled, a pained expression on his face. "You really think they …"
"Seems likely to me," Barchet shrugged. "I'm no Intelligence expert, of course, but you were the one who came to check on the Major after Arene, and then you took command of the Division's assets on the Rhine. And it was only after that the Untoten got access to Endlose Nacht. And you were protected by us and our guns. I think it paints a rather clear picture, don't you ?"
The look on the Colonel's face kept getting worse as Barchet talked. Frankly, considering how calmly he'd looked when he had faced the pair of Albish mages, the contrast was more than a little amusing, but Barchet kept his own expression carefully neutral. After all, this was a man the Major herself respected. And even if Barchet was pretty sure he'd been bluffing while facing the John Bulls, it still took balls to stand up to two aerial mages and throw their country's behavior in their faces.
Yes, Colonel Eric von Lergen was definitely a man worth having on the side of Division Y at the Imperial Army's Central Headquarters. He could see why the Major had gone against protocol and sent him and his men to ensure he got through this whole mess in one piece.
"The M-912 rifle (commonly called 'raygun' after the Director's nickname for it spread through the ranks of the troops wielding it) is a marvel of Imperial engineering combined with the properties of Elder sorcery. It can also be considered the Division's greatest work at adapting the potential of a Projekt to a smaller scale, as it is a derivative of Projekt M, [Mjölnir].
Although the exact mechanisms of the M-912 are complex (see report M-912-Gamma for the detailed explanation and schematics), its basic workings are relatively simple. At the core of each M-912 is a blue crystal no larger than a fingernail : upon pressing the trigger, a small electrical current (using a standard Imperial battery) is sent through it, resulting in a burst of energy that is then channelled through the use of small, specifically-prepared mirrors into a single beam that leaves the barrel in a straight line.
Careful training in handling the M-912 is required for several reasons. First, the weapon requires specific maintenance. Secondly, getting used to a recoilless rifle with a light speed projectile takes some practice even for the most seasoned of marksman. Finally, the M-912 is far more destructive than even the most overpowered sniper rifle : if the wielder isn't careful, a great amount of collateral damage can happen very quickly. Attempts to modulate the beam's destructive power to create different settings have all failed, and a single shot of the M-912 can pierce straight through a tank, although its energy dissipate quickly in the air, limiting its effective range to around a hundred meters.
Despite these limitations, the M-912 has seen great use within Division Y since its development, as its superior firepower to all equivalent conventional weaponry allows the soldiers assigned to the Division to face the results of failed experiments and contain and suppress them with great efficiency. No natural armor has proven able to resist it, and even differently corporeal entities can be damaged by its beam. Of course, the vagaries of combat mean that the M-912s are frequently damaged, and the entire production line is presently dedicated to maintaining the current stock.
While the process could potentially be industrialized in order to provide hundreds or even thousands of M-912 rifles to the Imperial Army, the Director has vetoed any increase in production. According to her, beyond the comparative frailty of the weapon and the need for extensive training to know how to maintain it properly, it is much more expensive than standard rifles while also being grossly overkill and short-ranged for use by the common soldier. She has also taken note of the strange readings that occur when multiple crystals are in close proximity to each other, and how industrializing the process would require storage of greater quantities of the material, which would have, in her own words, 'unforeseen and most dire consequences'. Even the small quantities produced for the use of Division Y's soldiers are kept in separate vaults behind thick metal walls."
Excerpt from an internal Division Y memo concerning the M-912 rifle, April 6th, 1924.
AN : Untoten most of the time : horror movie monsters weaponized for modern warfare, but unfaillingly polite and respectful.
Untoten under the effect of the Endlose Nacht : I HAVE THE POWER OF THE MAJOR AND ANIME ON MY SIDE !
Lergen when facing all but certain death by enemy mage : Come at me, bro.
Lergen when facing the prospect of being associated with Division Y in the eyes of enemy Intelligence : Oh God oh no.
Welp, over eight thousand words written in four days. Apparently you people are still sacrificing goats to the Muse to fuel this story's writing. At least I hope it's just goats.
I know I said the Francois arc would end in this chapter, but I ended up having to cut it in two. While this chapter described the Battle of the Rhine, next one will be about its aftermath and how the war will change following the Empire's victory on that front.
An anonymous reader pointed out that I should go with Projekt P as Lergen's guard because Tanya's message mentioned "a bodyguard", singular (along with other, more narrative-driven reasons that made a lot of sense but that the Muse told me to ignore, sorry). That one is on me : in my head, I was thinking of "a bodyguard" as a singular units, like "a guard of elite warriors" is singular while referring to multiple people. Or does that not work in English ? Eh, you get what I mean. I have said it before and I'll say it again: the kind of absurd speed at which I'm writing this story comes at a cost when it comes to little details like this one.
Barchet is a canon LN character, who shows up in volume 7. He is a Second Lieutenant there, but I assumed he got promoted by fighting on the Eastern Front and was still a sergeant at the time of his transfert to Division Y. And yes, certain other canon mages were also transferred to Castle Schwartzstein from the Eastern and Central Armies. They are just busy helping with research and security back at the Division's HQ.
As always, this chapter was finished in a state of semi-trance, so please tell me if you see any typos that eluded me.
The support on this story has been phenomenal, so thank you all for that. If you have suggestions for new Projekte, tactical utilizations or recommendations for the strategic and geopolitical sides of things, don't hesitate to tell me in the comments/reviews : they, along with the dark sacrifices, are what fuel the writing of this story.
Zahariel out.